Pretty pretty vacant

A cringe moment:

I was Johnny Rotten.
Singing 'Pretty Vacant'.

On an open air stage.

In front of a hundred people...

...Maybe more.
Without a mic.

I wasn't alone - my friend accompanied me.

Pretending to be Sid Vicious.

With curly hair.

And no bass.

We snarled and swaggered and posed our way through our chosen song and won third prize in the Miming Competition.  Maybe there were only three acts.  I think we got away with it; we must have been pretty... convincing?

Despite being a bit drunk.
And fourteen.

And, you know...

...female!

Thank god there was no YouTube in '78. No camera-phones. It must have been horrendous.  But perhaps that's why we were so uninhibited too?  It was a moment in time, spontaneous, never to be recorded or viewed again. A moment, that's all.  Here today, gone tomorrow.  Whatever happened to that?!

So, how it was is this: my friend and I had tipsily convinced ourselves we could enter a competition (part of a free live music event in a local park)  just as it was happening, with no real forethought and certainly no preparation.  Oh, the bravado!  I would never do something like that in all the years since. I suppose it was like a forerunner to Karaoke (we're talking 40+ years ago, after all) although without the live vocals, just the posturing.  I do remember standing there and not really being able to see the crowd, just looking out in a cider-induced daze, imagining myself as Johnny - a silly, inebriated, normally shy schoolgirl doing her best to mimic a fully-grown man.  There are two key things about that which I was just never going to pull off:  fully-grown and man (if you'll please excuse the double entendre).  And glancing across at my dear mate, who was doing the same. I think we 'won' some record tokens.

When we came off the stage we were both immediately chatted up by a pair of young lads who perhaps saw our bluster as a sign that we were a couple of goers. I don't remember a lot about what happened next but suffice it to say I became vaguely acquainted with a skinhead boy who told me he was on holiday (?!) from Borstal.  Class!  Actually I seem to recall he was quite nice but I only got to see him in the dark so who can say?

Pretty vacant sums it all up....

Aren't you glad sometimes that, like me, you're all grown-up and sensible now?!

Never mind the baubles

If you didn't see it on BBC Four last night, there are 6 days left in which to catch 'Never Mind The Baubles' on BBCiPlayer.  Apparently there are no plans yet to show it again, nor to release it on DVD, so if you can spare an hour I urge you to watch it while you can!

Here's the link.

I remember reading about the Christmas Day 1977 Sex Pistols gig in Huddersfield in support of striking firemen and their children - but only in the music papers.   It seemed that coverage of this worthy event was otherwise studiously avoided by the general media. Thirty-six years on, this Julien Temple film provides the context of that time as a stark framework for previously unseen footage of the gig itself and fills in all the blanks.  And one of those blanks is filled in with obviously happy kids in 'Never Mind The Bollocks' T-shirts singing along to the chorus of 'Bodies'!

It's revealing, interesting and thoroughly heartwarming.

ThE ghoSt of chRiStMaS pAst

It was Christmas 1977 - I was fourteen and there was only one thing I really wanted for my present that year (apart from being asked out by a gorgeous boy): Never Mind The Bollocks...  And, sweetly, my parents bought it for me – well, I think they probably persuaded my twenty-year-old sister to go into the little local record shop, Startime, to actually get it, but it makes me smile to think of my mum looking at it later while she wrapped it up in sparkly snowman paper.

I loved that album and it had seemed a long wait since its release that October so I was incredibly excited to have it at last.  I listened to it on Christmas morning as I lounged about in my pyjamas playing with the cats and poring over a Cadbury’s Selection Box. And then I put it on again on Boxing Day, when the cousins were over, but after a soporfic lunch and everybody was too drowsy and tipsy to notice the lyrics to ‘Bodies’.  Or if they did, they never said anything…   

Shocking stuff ;-)