Patrik Fitzgerald (an introduction)

OK. So it happened like this.

A while ago, a bunch of crazy, enthusiastic Norwegian kids centred round Crispin Glover Records contacted me and asked me a) if I wanted to contribute to a Patrik Fitzgerald tribute album and b) wanted to come out and headline at a Patrik Fitzgerald tribute concert (featuring the man himself) in Norway. Around that time, or maybe a little before it, and I don't know if it was coincidence or not, and this was while I was still living in England, a nice fellow from the UK called Dom Shaw asked if I'd care to be interviewed for a DVD biography he was making around Patrik.

Sadly, I had to say no to the second, because by this time I was living in Brisbane with no way of leaving the country. I'd have loved that - and apparently, when the concert happened, featuring Patrik and Atilla The Stockbroker and Milk Kan amid several ferocious and sensitive Norwegian hardcore bands, they finished up with a cover of a cover of mine, the 16-guitar orchestra version of Patrik's 'When I Get Famous'. And I'd have loved to have seen that, or even better, have played on it.

Whatever.

So I contributed to the first and to the third, and was very happy to do so, Patrik being by some way a major early inspiration of mine - with his gentle, passionate, acoustic cries of rage and alienation first created round the time of early punk in London, playing live on stage with nothing for support, just himself. Remind me someone, and I'll link you to an article that explains all this better than I'm doing here.

Whatever.

So many months, possibly even almost a year has passed, and the concert has long been and gone - filmed by Dom, of course, for inclusion in the documentary. And the tribute album has come out, a double, an excellent double entitled All Sewn Up after one of Patrik's songs, my own song proudly finishing up CD1. And the film has even appeared, or premièred, or whatever it is that films do these days - featuring myself and Garry Bushell and Benjamin Zephaniah and, um, Patrik, of course.

So.

It's long overdue that I write something about all this here, and it looks increasingly likely that I'm never going to, so what I'm going to do is this... (watch out for part 1 and part 2)...