Hey, Steve From Every Records Tells A Story! Let’s Play 20 Questions!

With Steve of Every Record Tells A Story being my featured blogger of the moment, it seemed like a great time to have a 20 Questions interview with him.  If you’re not familiar with him or his site, now’s the time!

1. What quality do you most admire in others?  I admire many things in other people. Their ability to do two things at once. Their ability to not shout at their kids when the kids are raising Cain. The ability to watch X-Factor and not have a little piece of them die every time. But I most admire people who know whether a particular shirt goes with what pair of trousers. No matter how many times I stride confidently in front of my wife wearing what I think is a delightful combination of shirt and jeans she will only make a sort of disappointed face like she has just caught me stealing money out of her purse, followed by a brief summary why what I am wearing will give nightmares to gargoyles….

That whole matching clothes thing is an utter mystery to me – up there with The Marie Celeste and why men have nipples…

2.  What trait do you most dislike in yourself?  You know when you have a chance to either show compassion or empathy and generally be a really nice person, but you’ve just thought of a great joke that would fit the occasion perfectly? I go for the punch line every time…

3.  If you could come back in your next life as anything, what would it be?  I’d give my right arm to play guitar like Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top, something I realise wouldn’t work from a practical perspective. If it has to be a “thing”?… Lamppost has to come bottom of the list given the abuse they get from the canine world. I’d say a bird of some sort, swooping and flying around. What a feeling that must be! But then I just passed one in the street eating out of a bin. That’s no life. Even if you can fly…

4.  You’re suddenly made the absolute ruler of your country.  What is the first change you make?  I realise that there are more urgent problems than this, but I would take control of the radio playlists we have in the UK. I put the radio on the other day and heard The Wombles. Unacceptable.

5.  With which Peanuts character do you most identify?  I’m probably most like Schroeder. He’s sitting there engrossed in his music (he plays Beethoven on piano whilst I’m playing Beatles tunes on guitar) whilst the world passes him by. I just hope my wife doesn’t feel like Lucy when talking to me.

6.  What 3 songs do you think you’ve listened to more than any others in your life?  Well – my blog is called Every Record Tells A Story, so I should be able to name a few records that have had an impact on my life. However…

My dad was a vicar and so I have heard a lot of church music in my life. As a result, I can definitively confirm that the Devil really does have all the good tunes. It only takes a few chords to come from a church organ for my stomach to turn over and for a small cloud to hover over my head like it did on those Peanuts cartoons. So one of those tunes will be Sing Hosanna. They even made us sing that one at school as well.

My second tune is probably the theme tune to BBC TV series Blackadder starring Rowan Atkinson. I videotaped all four series when I was a teenager and watched them over and over. I can quote those shows like “Quotey” Jack McQuote: the winner of last year’s “Mr Quote” competition…

The third? Probably George Harrison’s “Run of the Mill,” from his All Things Must Pass album. The reason is that I tried to learn to play it on guitar and played it over and over and over. I finally nailed it after two days of trying when I worked out he used a capo on the fifth fret of his guitar (am I sounding too geeky?) That was a big moment – up there with when I once picked out a tie that matched my shirt.

7.  If you could relive one day – either keeping it the same, or changing something – what would you choose?  I would relive my stag night. Perhaps this time I would prevent my friends from stripping me naked and tying me to a lamp post. With a John Major mask on. On a roundabout. At two in the afternoon. The police were good about it. When they’d stopped laughing.

8.  What is your biggest fear? I often fear that the stats page on WordPress is just a randomly generated thing that has been lying to me this whole time, and the only people who actually read my blog are me, my wife and my mum. Oh, and my kids getting ill and stuff. But mainly the stats page.

9.   What would you like the title of your biography to be?  Mariah Carey: My part in her downfall

10. What is your favorite thing about blogging/primary art form?  I really enjoy reading comments from people who have had a shared experience – I often look back on stuff that happened in the eighties, and at the time it sometimes felt like I was the only person who liked the music I liked. Thanks to the Internet, I have found almost seven other people like me. That’s enormously comforting.

Blogging also acts as a good excuse to get off my backside and go to events and gigs – there’s now a good reason to go to something, as it provides new material. It even led to my making a BBC TV appearance on a music documentary about the pop charts after someone from the BBC read an article I had written on that subject.

11.  Least favorite thing about blogging/primary art form?  If I’m not careful, I could sit watching the stats page wondering why this article was less popular than that one, and slowly waste away like an internet-savvy Lotus Eater…

12.  Which superpower would you choose if you could: the ability to fly, or to turn invisible at will?  It would have to be the ability to fly. I already have an invisibility cloak.

13.  What is your idea of perfect happiness?  Sitting at home with the family, eating good Belgian chocolates, drinking a decent pint of beer, with the record player on whilst I rack up a thousand daily hits on the blog. Four of the five are within my control. Not managed the fifth yet…

14.  Which of the 7 Deadly Sins are you most guilty?  Definitely Gluttony. Not wrath. I had to look up wrath in the dictionary.

15.  What public figure (past or present) are you just sure you’d be friends with, if you ever met?  Very tricky. I asked my wife – she said they’d have to like music, football, and be slightly geeky. She then said she couldn’t imagine me knowing anyone famous! That’s my wife saying that… She then came up with Jonathan Ross and Steven Merchant.

16.  What public figure would you really like to sit down and give a good talking-to?  To explain why they’re wrong, wrong, wrong.  I would say George W Bush. But I think it’d be really difficult. I’m not sure he’d understand any of the big words I might use. Such as “idiot”. I went to Madame Tussaud’s in Vegas once, and took a photo of myself berating a wax Mr Bush. I think that’s as close as I’ll get.

17.  If you could spend a year in any time and place, when and where would you choose?  I’d love to live in London during the sixties, hanging out at the Bag o’Nails with Hendrix, Jagger and McCartney…

18.  If you could “steal” the creation of any book, album or movie – to just suddenly be the creator of it, what would you choose and why? George Lucas just sold the rights to Star Wars for what? $2bn was it?  (ed note: $4 Billion, but who’s counting…)  Yes – that’d be a good one to be the creator of. I would never have come up with Jar Jar Binks either. A win win situation for everyone concerned.

19.  If you could be any TV detective, who would you choose?  TV detectives appear to have pretty strange lives. Miss Marple, for example, has retired to live a quiet life in a small village of a hundred people that seems to have a dozen or so murders a year. If you ask me, there’s a common thread right there – and it’s not the people she’s framing with preposterous stories and putting behind bars… I think therefore I’d need to be the TV detective that puts all the TV detectives behind bars.

20.  What would you most like people to say about you after you’re gone?  I’m not sure I’ll mind too much – I won’t be there. Perhaps “He was still a nice bloke, even after he won £100m on the lottery in 2013”..or even “He was the first guy to live to be 200 years old”