This mornings journey to New Ferry and The Farmer’s Market ended up being more meat oriented than I had originally intended.

All I really wanted was a piece of steak for lunch and something to throw into a chilli.

I had been planning on making the chilli with lamb but when I got to the butcher’s counter I spotted a sign for mutton. I thought that would go just as well so I asked for some. It transpired they had run out but I was offered some higher instead.

I also picked up some bacon, the steak, a ox heart, two pig’s feet, some lamb’s kidneys and a chicken. So the rest of the family didn’t feel left out I bought two punnets of strawberries.

The fridge is groaning and I am probably another few days closer to an early grave.

I know of no better mark of musical quality than the name Alex Chilton.

If you are browsing through a record shop and come acrosss something with his name on it just go ahead and buy it. You will not be disappointed. It may sound scuzzed up and out of sync but it will be the sound of rock’n’roll as it out to be played.

He sold a million records with The Bix Tops and ‘The Letter’ and next to nothing with Big Star – some of the most glorious combinations of The Beatles, The Who and The Stones (with some Kinks as well for good measure) you could hope for.

More years ago than I can remember I was leafing  through the garage section in Probe Records back when they were on Wood Steeet and came across an album by a band called The Gories stamped with the words “produced by Alex Chilton”. Of course I bought it.

The Gories are playing in Liverpool Thursday 13 July. It will be very hot and sweaty. Make sure not to miss it!

I have a theory about gigs and guitars. The more changes of guitars there are the worse the gig will be no matter the music.

So I remember going to seeing Sonic Youth in their prime some 25 years ago in a club in Birmingham. They had released a couple of albums on Geffen and were riding high but all I can remember of the gig is the time that was spent between songs as guitars were changed over and retuned and then retuned again before the music could start over.

On Sunday lunchtime walking through town I spotted a flyer for the Thurston Moore Band playing in St George’s Hall on Monday evening.

Thurston Moore was one of the two guitarists in Sonic Youth and must have been at least partly responsible for all that time spent retuning and changing guitars. But there was something New York about him playing in Liverpool (another theory – if you spend a week in New York and spot a random flyer for a gig  how far out of your way would you go to see it – it works  – on the one time we tried it we saw John Lurie playing his saxophone in a redundant freezer in the meat packing district).

I got myself a ticket and went along. The gig was in the old theatre to the side of St George’s Hall where Charles Dickens had stood up to read 150 years ago. The noise, feedback and shuddering reverb should not have worked amongst the gilded pillars and mirrors but somehow it didn’t matter and Thurston Moore didn’t change his guitar for the whole one and half hours and the only retuning was done after sufficient violence had been done to the guitar to justify it.