Phil Burdett profile picture

Phil Burdett

Mr. Grumpy grows a chin...

About Me



BUY PHIL's LATEST RELEASE *Dandelion Wishes and Atheist Prayers* Price: 9.99 (UK pounds)/$17.66/14.44 (euros) (incl Post & Packing) Delivered anywhere in the world
Hello - Thanks for popping by my page for a cup of cyber-tea, as it were ... I was born in Kent but evolved slowly but surely in Basildon in Essex if that is not too unimaginable a concept. I learned guitar (aged 6) from my older brother's teaching & album collection. Early favourites include John Fahey, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Richie Havens, Son House, Stevie Wonder (especially Talking Book & Music Of My Mind) and other sundry blues & folk recordings. I can remember thinking "Sugar Sugar" by The Archies was the zenith of pop/soul at one point...still do, come to think of it.
After leaving school with no major qualifications other than disillusionment & left-wing tendencies I began writing my own songs & performing in local punk-based clubs around Essex & London. This engendered a tolerance/liking for the idea of noise as art. However, I remained faithful to the more subtle revolution that is inherent in "songs lots of people listen to"..believing in sugar-coated cyanide tablets to ease the unlistener into bitterness and vengeful catharsis..which would be a fabulous theory if "lots of people" listened to my "songs"..may as well have joined Einsturzende Neubaten after all...Hi ho, head in the po...
Years on - trials and errors -and I have just released my fifth album, the second in a row that is self financed and I can actually listen to without alcohol... and despite advancing years, a questionable beard and world weary cycnism ("I don't mean to sound bitter but I am and it just comes out that way" - Bill Hicks R.I.P.) I continue to write and (very occasionally) gig and am available for public performance either solo (for peanuts and a sofa bed smelling of cat to sleep on) or with the stellar and quietly explosive Phil Burdett Group (for as much money as you can spare whilst still breaking even). The fifth album titled - 'Dandelion Wishes and Atheist Prayers' is now available via this page. The sixth, the third part of the 'Unrequited Trilogy' - entitled 'By The Time I Get Tomorrow' will be completed early in 2008..after which anything goes as i'm moving to the leafy backstreets of chalkwell park to concentrate on turning 23 notebooks, 12 post-it notes and 34 fag-packets into my first novel 'Maledictus'...forming a working group to play my songs, putting scrawled notes in biro stating 'Cello player required' in newsagent windows and generally starting my third adolescent phase..oh and a book of poems too 'Rhyming Vodka With Kafka' that may or may not be incorporated in performances by request..sayonara sarfend!...x
I still live, frugally & in solitary calm occasionally interrupted by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune & the russians in the flat above.. I'd like to meet John Pilger, Scott Walker, Christopher Hitchens & Snoopy for a hearty meal and beers but only if they're paying...x.
Many images on this page are by by Ian Tomey - thanks for the photo's Ian!
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Check this personal website for musics, lies and reviews!
I was the subject of a BBC documentary by film maker Ray Hough titled (but not by me!) 'GIVE ME MEMPHIS, BASILDON.
Diesel Poems front cover - click link for discography
SEE YOU LATER FOREVER @ CDWOW
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Track featured on Drumming Up Hope album
DIGITAL DOWNLOADS CENTRE
Patchouli Electric

See You Later Forever
Last year I was contacted by an indie dvd company to be a talking head on a documentary about Basildon synth band Depeche Mode because of my old connections with Mode head-honcho Martin Gore (see biography page for detail) well, the resulting interview can be seen in all its edited, hungover glory on something called RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY during which I politely reminisce and nothing of any value whatsoever is imparted about a band I care next to nothing for whilst wearing cheap but superb sunglasses. Essential.
Click HERE to view/buy DVD

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 8/22/2005
Band Website: philburdett.com
Band Members: Past and present members include : - Phil Burdett ,Terry Lewis, Tim Huskisson, Phil Aldridge, Russ Strothard, Miche Revivo, Trevor Newham, Grev Parker, Claire Furley, Maddie Maxwell and Jane Winiberg. Not forgetting..Ian Stewart, Carl Skinner, Domenico Monaco & the legendary Sundry Others..The late, great Pete Jacobsen also performed on recordings and at live shows.

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Influences: Music..Mr Dylan, Mr Cohen, Ms Mitchell, Scott Walker, Early Van Morrison, The Band, Tim Buckley, Jimmy Webb, Brian Wilson, Dan Penn & Spooner Oldham, Son House, Willie Nelson, Mary Margaret O'Hara, Phil Spector, Davey Graham, Tom Waits, Pavement & anything Stephen Malkmus touches, Randy Newman, Townes Van Zandt, Robert Wyatt, Warren Zevon, Little Feat, Steve Earle, Lou Reed, John Fahey, Mark Eitzel, Laura Nyro, Mark E. Smith, Tim Hardin, Ewan MacColl, Pere Ubu, Fred Neil, Jackie Leven, Neil Young, Donald Fagen & Walter Becker, Merle Haggard, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Elvis Costello, Television, Ann Briggs, Thelonius Monk, Bowie (Station To Station & Low mainly), John Otway, Louis Jordan, Billy Bragg, Pete Shelley & Howard Devoto, John Martyn, Ivor Cutler, Bonnie Prince Billy, Prefab Sprout, Early Stevie Wonder, Johnny Cash, CSN&Y, Cecil Taylor, Marvin Gaye, Nina Simone, Miles Davis, Frank Zappa, Harry Nillsson, Chet Baker, Arvo Part, Edgard Varese, Kokomo, Nick Drake, Gustav Mahler, Patti Smith, PJ Harvey, Ian Dury, Husker Du, Kevin Rowland, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Beck, Frank Sinatra, Little Richard, Taj Mahal, Ramones, Beach Boys, Captain Beefheart, Jimmy Rogers, Carole King, Gamble & Huff, Bacharach & David, Mann & Weill. Dion, Robert Johnson, Rickie Lee Jones, Phil Ochs, Mick Remmington! Dave Dulake..Art-wise...Cezanne, Otto Dix, Marc Chagall, Duchamp, Egon Schiele, Soutine, Hopper, Modigliani, Mr Bacon & Mr Freud..Dadaists..more music...Vic Godard, Jackson Browne, Wreckless Eric, Holland, Dozier & Holland, Jacques Brel, Hank Williams, Gene Vincent..most country soul, some post-punk, bits of jazz/reggae/rap, lots of acoustic blues, And much else besides...Writers/poets..Mr Joyce & Mr Beckett above all other mortals but also Thomas Mann (esp. Doctor Faustus), Arthur Rimbaud, E.E.Cummings, Herman Hesse, Donald Barthelme, Walt Whitman, bits of Wallace Stevens, Virginia Woolf, Knut Hamsun, Michel de Montaigne, Brendan Behan (esp. Borstal Boy), Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Merton, Gore Vidal & Clive James (essays not novels), Thomas Wolfe, Kafka, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Melville, Keats, Hart Crane, Philip K. Dick, John Berryman, Anne Stevenson, Osip Mandlestam, Kerouac (for Doctor Sax & Big Sur mainly), Don DeLillo, Mr Larkin, Mr Eliot...otherwise...Lester Bangs, Clive James, Richard Dawkins (join the RDF now!), Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Philip K. Dick, Steven Pinker, John Pilger, bits of G.I. Gurdjieff, P.D. Ouspensky, Tony Benn, Robert Fisk, Dalai Lama, Snoopy, Steve Bell, Martin Rowson...Comedy..Chris Morris, PETER COOK & Dudley Moore, Hancock, Larry David, Bill Hicks, Eddie Izzard, Steven Wright (not that anus of a dj), Ricky Gervais, Woody Allen, Kenneth Williams, Sid James..TV (mostly on vid/dvd)..South Park, Python, Family Guy, Columbo repeats, Bilko, Most Stephen Fry things, Let's Punch Jeremy Clarkson Hour (fictional unfortunately), Trumpton, Laurel & Hardy, Simpsons, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Radio 4, Fawlty Towers, Channel 4 News...Films..Jungle Book, On The Waterfront, Raging Bull, Heat Of The Night, Les Amants De Pont Neuf, Odd Couple (most Neil Simon in fact), Eraserhead, Guys & Dolls, Fisher King, Most Ken Loach & David Lynch, Most Scorcese, Don't Look Back, Terry Gilliam always fun, Ditto Michael Moore & Alex Jones, Christopher Guest too, any chat show with Christopher Hitchens as guest, well constructed conspiracy theories (Who Killed John O'Neill?), Hitchcock on a rainy sunday afternoon (Alfred not Robyn)..News..Guardian, Independent, Morning Star, The Skeptic, Humanist, Private Eye, New York Review Of Books.. Miscellaneous..my strange & wonderful boys Jed & Brad, Penguins, Bears (i am a bear, you know?), Cats (hello Mrs Tibbs), sitting on benches near water and railway lines, Guinness when raining & Mexican or Indian lager when sunny, tequila when insane, putting paint on canvas in an attractive manner, putting paint on canvas in an unattractive manner, Giraffes, The Sea, Beagles, Gypsophilia, the thrill of an unknown city, Lighthouses, Daisies en masse, cactii in groups of two or three, Telegraph poles across a winter field, Aubergines (colour & shape not taste), Dublin, Amsterdam, Blue Teapots, A production of Endgame by Beckett starring Michael Gambon & Lee Evans that occupied one of the most powerful & happiest matinees of my life, crumpets, Southend to Leigh-on-sea coastal walk, globes, Camomile tea, watching right-wing bigots squirm in the face of their inadequacies & wine gums.
Sounds Like: "Haunting & bewitching with echoes of Van Morrison, Jeff Buckley, Brian Wilson & Bob Dylan, Phil's fourth album is a bittersweet, poignant and touching affair."
Record Label: Suburban Mythic.
Type of Label: Indie