Grebo

Pippa from the Silk Cuts, who we've talked about on this podcast.

would often be there, and her friends, and then the other guys who were into the Grebo stuff would be there.

And you just get all these people mixing, and often, actually, at our gigs.

Because I don't propose to go through all of our gigs from this point on.

There were two or three other bands who were playing at the time, Jam Down and Blenderhead and the Frantic Spiders.

And they were all very much guitar bands playing.

I suppose the Jam Down and Blenderhead were more in the sort of Grebo end of things.

And Frantic Spiders were more indie, but also, I think, influenced by We've Got a Fuzzbox and We're Going to Use It.

I was a bit of a punk rocker.

And she copped off with a Grebo, a heavy metal fan.

So she came back.

She chucked me.

And then to add insult to injury, she told me what the new boy, who's called Gaz, was like.

That he was a Grebo.

It was like my life was over.

For about...

But the other thing that's been on my mind this last month has been grebes, the water birds.

When living by the Thames, I see a lot of grebes, but every time I see one, the 1990s pop wallita self-song, Grebo Guru, comes into my mind, which, if you don't know it, is a song about 1990s subculture and not about common river birds.

But every time I see a grebe, this automatic brain connection kicks in and the words of Grebo Guru are in my head, and it drives me mad.

So I wondered if painting a big grebe with the words Grebo Guru would exercise this from my psyche and the act of putting it on paper would stop it from happening.

And I'm not sure if this has worked yet, I only did it a few weeks ago, but the act of doing the painting led me down a fascinating grebe rabbit hole.

Because I wasn't sure whether to paint a whole grebe or just a grebe's head.