Sixteen

Bagging Area is sixteen years old today. On the cusp of adulthood, at the age of majority, able to leave school, join the army, get married (with parental consent) and buy an aerosol in a shop. 

The world I started typing this stuff into- 1st January 2010- seems a very long way away in all kinds of ways. Back then I thought I'd do this for a year and see what happened. What happened was I just kept going and here we are, still going, 6, 296 posts later. 

Some sixteens from my record/ CD/ downloads collections...

In 1955 Tennessee Ernie Ford recorded Sixteen Tons, a song about the coal mining industry in the USA, being owned by the company, having to haul sixteen tons every day and every day ending up deeper in debt. A series of strikes and the growth of trade unions put an end to the practices of the truck system and debt bondage that Merle Travis describes in the song and that Ernie sings about. 

Sixteen Tons

In 1980 The Clash gave their European tour the name Sixteen Tons, the band comparing their situation with CBS to coal mining in the 1930s and 1940s, trapped by debt. The band kept gig and record prices as low as possible, the record company took it out of their royalties. 

Clash associate Don Letts released an album on the Late Night Tales series, Version Excursion, that included Sixteen Tons Of Dub, a dub version of Ernie's tune by OBF...

Sixteen Tons Of Dub

In 1983 Jazzateers released a 7" on Rough Trade, Show Me The Door and Sixteen Reasons. Glaswegian post- punk/ New Wave, with Ian Burgoyne and Keith Band as the core members and on this single with Paul Quinn on vocals. The band split and became Bourgie Bourgie and then reformed as Jazzateers.

Sixteen Reasons

Let It Be is The Replacements masterpiece, a 1984 album where it all came together for the band. On Sixteen Blue Paul Westerberg writes yet another anthem for teenage outsiders, one about empathy and sexual blurriness. His vocal on Sixteen Blue is maybe the best on the entire album, not least when he croaks and then goes full throttle with the line, 'Your age is the hardest age/ Everything drags and drags/ One day baby, maybe help you through/ Sixteen blue'.  There are entire teen/ rites of passage films that don't manage to nail what The Replacements do in three minutes here... 

Sixteen Blue

Oh look out, here's Iggy...

Sixteen

'Sweet sixteen in leather boots/ Body and soul I go crazy'. From Lust For Life, Iggy's second solo album and his second in 1977, the band sound totally on it, fully focussed and as one, straight ahead drug/ proto- punk rock with Bowie at the producer's desk. In 1982 a gaffer taped Iggy turned up on The Tube and did Sixteen for the early evening teatime crowd. I'm going to end this post here because I'm not sure it's going to get any better than this today. 

Sixteen

The little girl in this photograph, our daughter Eliza, turns sixteen today (coincidentally also the day she takes her last GCSE exam). The toddler in The Clash t-shirt seems a long time ago now. In recent time honoured fashion she has booked a day ticket for the Leeds festival, a rite of passage for today's teenagers. Happy birthday Eliza- enjoy the physics exam and your last day at school.

For many years Eliza and her friend have gone to dance classes, joined the team and performed locally and at shows. I've often gone to pick them up in the car from the classes. On one occasion when they were both much younger I had Misty Waters by The Kinks playing on the car CD player. They latched onto it and started singing along. It then became a thing, playing Misty Waters and all of us belting it out on the drive back from dance. We were still doing it a few weeks ago.

Recorded by The Kinks in 1968 Misty Waters was an outtake- an outtake!- that failed to make it onto either Four Well Respected Gentlemen or The Village Green Preservation Society and only turned up much later on The Great Lost Kinks Album.

Misty Waters 

Amps cranked up and at double the speed, Billy Childish and The Buff Medways covered the song for their 2000 album Steady The Buffs, about the time I started to get into Wild Billy Childish and his enormous back catalogue.

Misty Water

Sixteen

At 7.37 am sixteen years ago today our first child, Isaac, was born. He had breathing difficulties from the start and spent the first two weeks of his life in hospital, two hospitals actually, in the special care baby unit and then maternity. He ended up spending a lot more time in hospital over the following years. At eight months he was diagnosed with a serious genetic disease, Hurler's disease, following a series of problems- deafness, hernias and then hydrocephalus. Before the age of two he had several operations and two bone marrow transplants, one of which nearly did for him. He has lived with many serious health issues and some severe special needs. In 2008, due a very weakened immune system, he contracted meningitis and survived. A very long operation to straighten his back was delayed by the meningitis and then some months later done successfully. Three years ago he had a cochlear implant which has changed his life, opening up a new world of sound to him. Funnily, a lot of this stuff I'm describing here seems like a long time ago- chronologically and in other ways too.

This list of medical issues and procedures only partly defines him and us. There's no denying it is and has been very difficult at times and that more troubles probably lie ahead. But almost everyone who meets him and gets pinned down for a chat leaves feeling happier. He knows far more people than I do. He makes friends wherever he goes. He has endless reserves and goes on where many others would just take to their beds and stay there.

So, turning sixteen today is a big deal in lots of ways.


Run Wild

Run Wild was a late addition to New Order's 2001 comeback album Get Ready. The tune is lovely, acoustic guitars and melodica and a sweet tune. Unusually the lyrics were written by Stephen (not Bernard), written for his and Gillian's seriously ill daughter. It's always struck a chord with me.