Forever punk?

"Oh YES, that’s exactly it!” I exclaimed excitedly at the telly.  Or, more precisely, at Chris Packham on the telly.  And it happened more than once as I watched the recent BBC Four programme, ‘Chris Packham - Forever Punk’;  it was that jubilant feeling of being a kindred spirit, that understanding of why a certain musical movement seemed so important to those of us who felt like outsiders in our early teenage years (and maybe still do...)   Confirmation that punk was there for us and, yes, it did change things.

I’ve never really felt I’ve been able to get this across effectively to anyone who either ‘wasn’t there’ or who only picked up on what the papers urged them to at the time.  I remember once, soon after I’d left school in the Summer of ‘79, I was talking to a friend I met at college and it turned out that her neighbour had been my former Geography teacher, Mrs T.  Apparently a conversation about me had taken place  – I’d made quite a name for myself at school being the only girl there with an overtly punk image (which got me into a lot of difficulty, but that’s another story).  Mrs T told my friend she had been surprised when I had become a ‘punk rocker’ (a term which only people who didn’t get it would use!) because I was too (in her words) "nice”...   always the quiet one, a nerdy, shy student... it didn’t fit with the media’s portrayal of punks as gobbing, spitting, fighting yobs.

I never knew any gobbing, spitting, fighting yobs who were into punk.  Not one.  Any bristling aggression against the world, against injustice, right-wing politics and persecution - all valid targets - was channelled into music.  We were harassed and insulted by many non-punks, though.  Shouted at from across the street, barred from pubs and shops before we’d even opened our mouths, chased, even beaten up for our choice of clothes and hairstyle.  All this abuse came from non-punks – and often the straightest of people.  Funny, that.  What was it they found so threatening, so offensive, about a few kids in fluffy mohair jumpers, bleached hair and badges?

One of my “Oh YES, that’s exactly it!” moments during the programme came when Chris articulated how inaccurate that thuggish tabloid caricature was and that punk had been much more about inclusiveness.  Right from the start my own experience illustrated this too – punk felt like a place where us ‘outsiders’ could be on the inside, on our own terms.  The scene at my local music venue was a perfect example; a friendly gaggle of local teenage punks alongside a motley crew of others who just fitted in for not fitting in elsewhere.  And they genuinely liked the music.  C with his shoulder-length hair and Afghan coat, L with his thick-lensed glasses and total lack of sartorial style, a good few years older than the rest of us and like a kindly uncle, plus his biker mate W.  N, who booked all the bands, a little bloke in little round specs and a big hippy greatcoat.  At one time there was J, a lovely black guy who put flour in his hair to give it a bright white streak, as well as ex-public school boy/geeky punk E.   As Chris said in this interview in the NME , “Punk was never unkind.  It was about fairness and equality.”

The documentary drew attention to the causes with which punk associated itself, such as Rock Against Racism, and how the release of the Tom Robinson Band’s single ‘Glad To Be Gay’ early in 1978 was a ground-breaking moment that could only have happened at that special point in time, proof of punk’s whole ethos of defiance and standing up for the right to be different. 

In my view punk was a brief, once-only event, and from its early, genuinely rebellious and more creative/artistic origins, aspects of  it inevitably evolved in ways that weren’t always so positive (e.g. the Oi! movement) – then, as so often happens, things became more watered down and appropriated.  But other good things happened because of it. Now too we have a whole new crop of bands clearly influenced by it (e.g. Idles, Slaves, Savages, Fontaines DC, etc.) and the state of contemporary music is all the better for them.  I guess we still call them punk but it's intrinsically different just through no longer being a new nor shocking phenomenon.   Still, if we go right back to what drew us to punk's initial incarnation all those years ago, it does make sense that its spirit should live on forever.  For me that doesn’t mean trying to dress like you did when you were 15, nor even playing your old Adverts records all that often, it’s about maintaining faith in who you are, caring about equality and staying true to what you believe in, however non-conformist that may be in the eyes of the mainstream.

I won’t give too much more away about the programme in case you haven’t seen it and want to catch it on BBC iPlayer (here), but it was interesting to see some old faces and to be reminded of how well a lot of people have come out of it (even though our teachers may have told us we wouldn’t!)  Many are still motivated to bring about some positive change in any small way they can.  I came away feeling quite uplifted and even more pleased to have this history in common with Chris, whom I’ve long been inspired by and admired for all things nature-connected anyway.  And he does have a fantastic record collection!

We’re not so bad, eh, us old punks?!

Chris Packham's all-time favourite punk song is 'Shout Above The Noise' by Penetration,

but this is the Penetration song that truly spoke to me...

Anniversary snapshots: 28th May 1978

On May 28^th 1978 Adam & the Ants were booked to play at my local venue.  I was barely able to contain my excitement when I heard.  It was only five months since I’d been to my first gig, when Siouxsie & the Banshees had played at the same place.  Five months is a long time when you’re 14 and in that interim the venue had become my regular haunt, usually twice a week (depending on the demands of homework).  My three friends and I always went together to watch bands, drink cider and mingle with fellow punk fans.

We felt at home there in a way we rarely did anywhere else; we were all outsiders together.  Mostly punks, a few rock types, a couple of hippies and one or two general oddballs.  The club occasionally played host to artists who were not too well-known to overcrowd its intimate small-town setting, but were established or culty enough to have made it into the music papers or perhaps recorded sessions for John Peel.  Bands like Adam & the Ants who, in spite of not even having recorded their first single yet, had gained an underground following I’d read about.

And they were coming to my town!  Presumably with Jordan – the embodiment of London art punk outrageousness, the most outstanding looking woman I’d seen in the whole of this brave new underworld  - I was in awe.

But my friends couldn’t come that night.  At fourteen, and female, was I brave enough to go on my own and spend the whole evening there without them? 

“Well we’re going down to the Jazz Club later, so you can come home with us,” my mum said – meaning that she and my dad would be in the adjacent bar for the latter part of the night and my lift home was assured.  It was a deal.  (I was deprived of any excuse to rebel against them - they were too liberal!)

It was a warm, light evening as  I walked across town on my own, then waited nervously outside the door to get in, along with some unfamiliar faces who’d clearly come down from London - but the queue wasn’t as big as I’d expected.  And then I noticed the hand-written sign and overheard the conversation filtering through the line:  Adam & the Ants had cancelled.

So on this date 40 years ago I didn't actually see Adam & the Ants, or Jordan.  I saw The Automatics on my own instead.  Regulars at the Marquee and with a vocalist who'd briefly been a member of the Boys beforehand,  they were pretty good (listening to them again now, they sound quite power pop too).  And being on my own had its advantages;  I got chatted up by the guitarist from a local band who was also there on his own, a bloke a fair bit older than me, about 20.

 “Can I buy you a drink?” he asked. 

“Oh yes, a pint please”.   

“A pint of what…?” 

“Beer”, I replied helpfully, thinking myself very grown up.

And then we stood together with our drinks, hardly able to talk above the noise.  I think the ‘beer’ went to my head a bit, because it wasn’t long before I turned round and kissed him full on the lips. Well, he looked like Mick Jones.  I think I took him a little by surprise.

When the evening ended, it was a little awkward, as I had to wait for my parents, which didn’t seem very cool.  But ‘Mick Jones’ and me said lovely if slightly clumsy goodbyes and, even without Adam & The Ants, I’d had a great evening.  Then I waited there in the foyer alone, as the last few people filed out of the hall.  A great big older punk bloke whom I’d never seen before – a Londoner, I think, maybe he'd been part of the Automatics' entourage – stopped and looked at me. 

“Do you wanna fuck?”  he asked, just like that.  Straight to the point.

I don’t think he was too chuffed when I said a polite “No thank you”, trying not to show my disbelief.

With that, he called me a “boiler” and marched out the door – just before my mum and dad appeared and drove me home - I didn't tell them.

It felt like I’d grown up pretty fast that night.

Adam & The Ants did come to my town in the end – in March the following year, six months before the release of  Dirk Wears White Sox.; they were great.  And I stood and watched them with the bloke who’d bought me that pint, as we'd been going out together for 2 weeks.

The Automatics: When The Tanks Roll Over Poland Again b/w Watch Her

1978

Adam & The Ants: Zerox Machine 

1979

This wasn't supposed to happen

Last year I was reminiscing fondly about my young punk days to some people I’d never met before who hadn't 'been there' themselves.  I say 'fondly' because it was the first genre of music I got into, it was my entry point.  It gave me an outlet, satisfied something creative inside, helped me find my young teen identity, inspired me.  It was sealed in its relatively brief time, in my youth.

When asked about the violence so often associated with it I was happy to explain that this wasn’t my experience; there had been a great sense of camaraderie in our local scene out here in the provinces circa ’77 -’79 and no-one went around beating anyone up.   I was in with a peaceful bunch who just wanted to be left to our own devices and enjoy the music (and the look), a small group of united outsiders.  It was only afterwards when I reflected on it that I realised I’d misunderstood the question;  I’d answered as if the suggestion of violence was inferring that punks themselves were the protagonists and I’d missed the chance to explain how much we were the victims of harassment and aggression from strangers instead.

The reality was that everyone I knew had had some experience of confrontation.  Luckily in my case it was rarely more than people shouting boorishly at me in the street, usually corny stuff, like, erm...

 “Oi punk!” 

... (imaginative they were not).   More specific derogatory comments about my hairstyle and clothes were also so frequent as to become incredibly boring; just the norm.

Thankfully I was never on the receiving end of physical abuse (apart from being pushed to the ground in a park once by a drunk, overweight hippy... luckily he was so pissed, and so fat, that I got away).   My friends and I did once get chased around town by a gang of – this puts it into its era – Teddy Girls.  We gave as good as we got with the verbal sparring but one of them was decidedly bigger (and older) than us and when they threatened to ”bash us up” (oh, how quaint) we found ourselves in a ridiculous cat-and-mouse pursuit (we were the mice) through shops and streets.  We ended up at a friend’s mum’s where we took cover until they tired of hanging around on the pavement outside and went home to change their bobby socks.

But just about every male punk I knew at the time was less fortunate.  Being set on at train stations, attacked at bus stops, punched by bouncers, it happened.  And more often than not the assaults came from straight blokes – ‘straight’ as in not into anything in particular, just ordinary geezers who went down the pub and watched football who, for some unfathomable reason, found those less conventional than themselves to be a threat.  Is there not some kind of irony there?

How quickly we forget.  People hated punks. 

---

Now we have 'Punk London', and it's being backed by Boris Johnson.

----

Sean O'Hagan in the Guardian, 20th March 2016:

'...That Boris Johnson, a key player in London's ongoing hyper-gentrification and creative cleansing, sees no irony in his role as the most prominent backer of Punk London speaks volumes about our times.  It has given us an endlessly self-congratulatory culture industry, but no meaningful culture to speak of save for the tyranny of the art market. And, like an old Labour radical tamed by age, the spirit of punk has now been so drained of threat as to be an object of uncritical nostalgia.  It was not always thus.

Forty years ago, Sex Pistols so incensed Boris's Tory forebear, Bernard Brook-Partridge, Conservative member of the Greater London Council, that he declared:"Most of these groups would be vastly improved by sudden death.  The worst of the punk rock groups I suppose currently are the Sex Pistols.  They are unbelievably nauseating.  They are the antithesis of humankind.  I would like to see somebody dig a very, very large, exceedingly deep hole and drop the whole bloody lot down it."  Punk, like all provocations against dull conformity, revealed more about the nastiness that lurks beneath the veneer of conformity than it did about the frustration of those who railed against it.

And rail against it Sex Pistols did, more powerfully and more disgustedly than any pop group before or since....

...The group's singer, Johnny Rotten, was stabbed in the street, their drummer, Paul Cook, assaulted by a thug wielding an iron bar and punks across the country were attacked by outraged local citizens. It does not take much to reveal the nastiness lurking beneath.'

----

 Did you see Joe Corré, son of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood, on Channel 4 News last night, being interviewed by Cathy Newman?  I thought he expressed his views against 'Punk London' brilliantly.   He also talked about the real violence experienced by his parents and associates at the time and the controversy caused by the release of  'God Save The Queen'. He even managed to get in the story that Boris had undertaken the infamous Bullingdon Club initiation ceremony of burning £50 notes in front of a homeless person.  Cathy was quick to point out at the end of the interview that this was unfounded and merely an allegation, to which Joe replied, “Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?”  (and briefly it felt as if that original punk spirit was still alive and well.)

----

Joe Corré in the Guardian, 16th March 2016:

'....The Queen giving 2016, the year of punk, her official blessing is the most frightening thing I've ever heard. Talk about alternative and punk culture being appropriated by the mainstream.  Rather than a movement for change, punk has become like a fucking museum piece or a tribute act...'

----

It's sad really - I didn't want to feel this way - but my fonder memories are being tainted with all this rehashing of the whole punk thing and its absorption into the mainstream which is undoubtedly peaking right now.  Especially when I see things like this:

Punk Rock 2016

My bestest most favouritest songs ever ever - part 1

I can't do lists... certainly not hierarchical ones, I don't have Top Tens, etc. in anything.  But when it comes to music there are some songs which just endure - which always make me smile and still give me that special feeling.  It's hard to analyse exactly why, isn't it?  - maybe it's about the context as much as anything? - what it aroused in me on hearing for the very first time, where I was, what I was doing, thinking, etc.  Sometimes it's as simple as just having a particular penchant for a heavy bass-line or a hooky chorus, one common element in different and often disparate tracks which always satisfies something inside.  I've been through many phases and into several genres in over 40 years of listening to music (oh jeez) and as with most things in life I don't think you want the same again and again or forever, not the same food nor the same clothes, etc. so that also applies to this  - but there will always be the special examples which just never lose their original appeal.

I'm going to pick out a few here from time to time - expect a very varied selection!

To kick off, it's Modern Politics by The Panik from November 1977 (the first track on their  'It Won't Sell!' EP).   When I first heard this at the time of its release I just couldn't believe the sound of that bass rumbling its way through and I loved its stop-start punctuation, plus the (slightly over-ambitious) guitar solo...  it sounded so serious, so raw, but relatively 'slow' (hmm, sort of) for '77 punk, not too ramalama.  The band came from Manchester and listening to it again now I'm reminded of early Joy Division / Warsaw.  I've just looked them up in the excellent book 'No More Heroes' by Alex Ogg and indeed there is a connection: the record was co-produced by band manager Rob Gretton, plus drummer Steve Brotherdale  also played in Warsaw.  Apparently at one time they even tried to convince Ian Curtis to be The Panik's singer.

One to blow the cobwebs away - play loud (of course) and feel 14 again, listen here:

The Panik: Modern Politics

Gig memories

Scott, over at the excellent Spools Paradise, recently wrote a thought-provoking post about first, last and favourite gigs.  My first 'proper' one was in January 1978 when I saw Siouxsie & The Banshees at my local venue at the other end of town.  I've written about this before here so I won't repeat myself but it started me thinking specifically about how lucky I was to be going to gigs at the tender age of 14.  It was never accompanied by adults, just two or three friends the same age.  Our parents had no qualms about letting us go to these events, where we drank pints of cider, smoked and flirted with boys... we could've been doing just the same at a disco, I guess, but we had no interest in those.  It was live bands we wanted to see, not DJs, and punk we wanted to hear, not Boney M - and we were incredibly fortunate to have a safe and easy little venue in our home town which provided both on a regular basis.  The bloke on the door, who was a dead ringer for Dave Vanian at the time, never asked us our age.

That night at the Banshees, my close friend met her husband-to-be.  And not long after that, I first saw the man whom I later married, playing guitar up on the stage there.  Not that we spoke for a while, I thought he was too old (!) and he had a girlfriend.  But it was where we first hung out.

A few weeks after the Banshees' gig, Generation X were booked to play.  I was so excited, I could hardly believe it.  I spent about an hour drawing big hooks around my eyes with a kohl pencil and filling them in with garish colours, quite a work of art, just for Derwood.  And I was then so disappointed on turning up that evening to find that they'd cancelled.  Derwood had broken his arm or something.  The Jolt played in their place and I didn't think that much of them.  Not long after, Wayne County & The Electric Chairs came to town, opened by Levi and the Rockats.  We were all given Eddie & Sheena badges as we filed in; I wore mine with such pride.

One time none of my friends could make it but the headline band were The Automatics and I was keen to go, so I just went on my own.  Would a 14-year old girl be allowed to go to a gig unaccompanied now?  I don't know.  To be fair, my parents came down later that evening to see the local jazz combo who were playing in the adjacent bar, so they weren't far away.  At the end of the Automatics' set I waited alone in the foyer for them.  A big punk bloke who wasn't one of the usual crowd stopped when he saw me and asked, very nonchalantly,  "Do you want a fuck?"

Local groups played every Tuesday too.  The Newtown Neurotics were like the house band.  I must've flung myself around to their version of Blitzkrieg Bop more times than I can remember.  It's Colin Masters/Dredd's funeral tomorrow... a sad day.  But let's dwell on the good stuff - they were an important band to many and they certainly were in my formative years - decent blokes too.

In fact, the whole place was incredibly important, and I have to wonder if I'd be who I am today without it.

Here's a photo from those days.  I'm afraid I can't remember how I came to be in possession of it so I can't credit the photographer, but if it's MM and you're reading this, then thank you - and I hope it's ok to include it here!

I believe it was taken shortly before my 16th birthday.

In fond memory of AS too, pictured left.

Women in punk

The Culture Show have done it again - with another excellent special, this time a feature about women in punk.  It was broadcast last week but is available on iPlayer until tomorrow night (8th July).

New interviews with Viv Albertine (her autobiographical book is perhaps at the core of this programme) alongside eminent others, including Gaye Advert and a rare one with Jordan, feature amongst archive footage of the Slits and X-ray Spex, etc.  I was going to wax lyrical on the subject as it's one that's close to my heart and the influence these women had on me was so significant, but I haven't left myself enough time to waffle on here today.  Perhaps another post!

In the meantime, if you didn't see it and you're interested, then take a look while it's still up there:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b048s4tj/the-culture-show-20142015-7-girls-will-be-girls

My 1970s home-made screenprint of Jordan!

Talk Talk

A quick musical diversion - last night we randomly dug out the 1977 'Streets' punk compilation and I had completely forgotten just how excellent this song by Mark Hollis' band The Reaction is....

I love it!  I love the rhythmic guitar and the song in general makes me think of the mod revival sound that was to follow soon after, before Mark's new band revisited it in 1982...

But before that we had the Music Machine and a totally different, but still brilliant, song with the same name:

And now it's just a telecoms company...

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.

Ted Leo and a band close to home

I may be biased, but “strive to survive causing least suffering possible” has to be one of the best maxims for life that there is.  You just can’t fault it.  Without realising quite what a lasting impact it would have on many people, anarcho-punk band Flux of Pink Indians chose these words for the title of their seminal album. I shared my roots with members of FoPI in our small local punk scene of the late '70s (a Hertfordshire market town's equivalent to the Bromley Contingent!) and was especially close to them at the time when they recorded it and first showcased the ‘Strive...’ set at gigs up and down the country.  So it really warms my heart when I hear that their 1983 release is still often referred to with reverence by fans old and new around the world.  Bands like Flux and Crass may not provide the kind of music I'd actively choose to listen to so much now - at least not for its own sake - but perhaps that's partly because I was just so immersed in it all at the time.  And because I'm not quite such an angry young thing any more ;-)   

Anyway, about 6 or 7 years ago a very cool friend introduced me to the music of US band Ted Leo & the Pharmacists and I was immediately struck by their accessible, anthemic, punk/power-pop/ska/rock sound and Ted’s heartfelt vocals, all of which tick the right boxes for me now.  Songs like ‘Me and Mia’ and ‘Where Have All The Rude Boys Gone?’ are well worth a listen if you’re not already familiar – and their general melodic-with-an-edge style sometimes makes me think of early Jam.  I also knew that Ted Leo was a prolific and renowned song-writer as well as a man of integrity, unafraid of coming at things from a political angle.   Ok, so now you may be thinking: what’s that got to do with Flux of Pink Indians and ‘Strive To Survive Causing Least Suffering Possible’?

Well, apart from the fact that I like it as a typically strong, catchy track in its own right, I was just amazed to hear a certain reference in the lyrics of ‘Ativan Eyes’ from Ted's 2010 album 'Brutalist Bricks’.  When I first listened to this and heard him sing "We strive to survive causing least suffering possible - the Flux of Pink Indians gave me words for that"  (around 2 mins 9 seconds in) I couldn't believe it.  I know it probably doesn't mean a lot to anyone else but it means a lot here!  Boy, is my heart warm now :-)

Ted Leo & the Pharmacists:  Ativan Eyes

(A special 30th anniversary edition of FoPI's ‘Strive...’ with extra tracks, including the live set from the Feeding of the 5000 gig at Shepherds Bush Empire 2007, is released on One Little Indian 2nd September 2013...)

Tee hee

(Something from the archives!)

“You look like you’ve just seen a ghost!”

“Punk Rocker!”

“Who’s your hairdresser, love?  I’ll have a word with ‘em…”

“Just had an electric shock?”

“Johnny Rotten!”

“Punky monkey!” (?)

(those were the polite comments)

This was my sound of the suburbs

On 13th November 1979 John Peel opened his radio show with this song...

The Epileptics were home-grown punk heroes in the small market town where I spent my formative years.  Before they’d even played a single gig, their name, logo and rather inspired slogan, 'smash guitar solos', had become a common sight on walls and hoardings around the locale. 

I’m quite pleased to be able to say that I was there for their very first live outing in August ’78, which was rather oddly on a Saturday afternoon as it was part of an all-day punk event at the town's regular music hang-out.  They looked a motley bunch (and not a spikey haircut in sight).   There was a pixie-faced lad with shoulder-length hair on guitar (he left the band soon after) and as their bassist was on holiday they’d drafted in Steve Drewett from the Newtown Neurotics (as the Neurotics were called, pre-Red Wedge).  At that time his blonde barnet was long and curly making him look a little bit like Ian Hunter from Mott The Hoople, especially with the tinted specs he wore.  I remember theirs being a short and endearingly shambolic set, with the nice-looking skinhead drummer attempting to do fancy twirls with his sticks and frequently dropping them.   Looking back, I don’t know quite how their charismatic singer managed to deliver the lyric, “I wanna give you a sixty-nine” with a straight face, but he did.

The Epileptics went on to gain a certain amount of notoriety in our neck of the woods, particularly when the vocalist tried to swing from one of the light fittings whilst on stage which got them banned from the venue for a while, and then when complaints were levelled against them from the British Epilepsy Association about the name.   It was never intended at all to offend anyone suffering from epilepsy, but it’s a good example of that ‘shockability’ crossed with naïvete which seemed just a natural part of that whole early punk thing.  The label who issued their first single weren’t happy about the name, though, and for a short while they became The Licks, which is how they were introduced on the Peel show.

Nearly thirty-four (thirty-fucking-four!!!) years later this track still sounds good to me (of course): energetic, catchy, fresh, a little rough around the edges and, perhaps most poignantly, forever frozen in its own decade by the lyrics “1970’s…” 

Ahh.   Even though school was a pain at the time, these were amongst the happiest days of my life and I have hugely fond memories of many nights out at my local music haunt watching this band just get better and better.  The drummer even stopped dropping his sticks.

NB - The Epileptics later evolved into Flux Of Pink Indians.  There were several line-up changes and they released three very different albums, but their first, ‘Strive To Survive Causing Least Suffering Possible’  is the one to remember them by.

I'm with the band

A slight smell of stale cigarette smoke lingers in the stingingly cold night air. The floor of the back of the transit van where I sit feels icy, even through my trousers. My back hurts, leaning against something hard and unyielding, its corner poking into my shoulder.

There are six of us – no, hang on, actually there are seven of us, trying to ‘snuggle’ down between amps, drums, guitar cases, backdrops and bags of leads and pedals, behind the cab, hoping to catch a little bit of sleep as the vehicle we’re travelling in rumbles down the motorway in the bleak early hours of a winter morning.

The guitarist, drummer and bassist, and their three girlfriends, one of whom is me, make up six. The vocalist and his girlfriend are sitting in the front with her brother, the informally appointed roadie. The seventh person in the back with us is a ‘fan’ who is cadging a lift back home after the gig. When everyone was packing up at the end of the night - always a long-winded and frustrating business - he’d asked, “Any chance of dropping me off in Hull?”  (or wherever it was).  With the band’s badges on his lapel glinting in the streetlights as he’d made his request, the bass player and self-appointed spokesman for the group could not have refused. However, the detour for this additional passenger takes us an hour out of our way back home and it feels like an eternity when we’ve got another 150 miles to go. But this often seems to happen at gigs; there is always someone in the van travelling back with us who hasn’t travelled out with us, and usually it’s someone who smells strongly of sweat and dope and farts, with long limbs and a bulky rucksack, taking up precious space and time. And space and time mean more than anything on the home-bound stretch, because everyone is knackered, hungry, dehydrated, cold, squashed up, uncomfortable and grumpy. Everyone just wants to get home as soon as possible, longing for deep sleep in a warm, soft, bed. But at least nobody can accuse the band of being ungenerous in that respect.

It was the early 1980s and this became quite a frequent event for a while as I travelled with my boyfriend’s anarcho punk band to an assortment of venues up and down the country. We usually tried to get back the same night, which in reality meant arriving home just as the sun was coming up.  A few times we stayed over, like once in a damp squat – a condemned terraced house with no plumbing (ironically it was in Bath) - and another time on the floor of tiny council flat in a high rise in St. Helens. That one had plumbing but, by strange coincidence, the toilet was broken. We had to use the bath.

My memories of those days are a melange of odd moments and images. From being stopped and searched by the Mets as we travelled home through South London, to seeing a cow giving birth as we ventured through the Cumbrian hills on the way to a gig near the Windscale (as it was then called) nuclear plant. From hearing rumours that British Movement skinheads were going to storm in and give everyone a kicking at Grimsby (they didn’t), to paddling in the sea before a gig in Fareham. There were the unkempt crusty/hippie children climbing on top of the van at Stonehenge, where tales of Hells Angels with knives made the place feel distinctly unwelcoming and the schedule got so far behind that in the end the band didn’t play anyway. And there was the punk in Burnley who was ‘wearing’ a condom, attached to his face between safety pins (one in his lip, one in his nose. It was quite a look.) It turned out he was the singer in one of the support bands, whose only memorable number was a re-worded demolition of Eddie Cochran’s ‘C’mon Everybody’ endearingly entitled ‘Fuck Off Everybody’.

I remember the inter-band arguments, the waiting around at soundchecks, the sharing of bags of chips with chilli sauce at The George Robey, the listening in on fanzine interviews, and the way only Northern punks sported moustaches… Strangely enough, perhaps, the thing I probably remember the least about is the performances. They were good, though.  Of course.

So where are they now? The bassist founded a record company, the vocalist and drummer are fine and I met them again a few years ago, and the guitarist… well, he’s in the kitchen right now, making me a cup of tea.

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 ;-)

Dancing through dark times

At an age when my friends and I should have been enjoying the most hedonistic time of our lives, there was something dark and ominous looming over us like a monstrous headmaster ready to dish out discipline at the merest hint of any mischief: the threat of nuclear war. 

For me - and maybe for you too?  - the early '80s were schizophrenic in the extreme.  On the one hand there were 'Protect and Survive' pamphlets dropping through our letterboxes and, a little later, visions of a post nuclear apocalypse would be beamed into our living rooms via programmes like 'Threads'.

Even the children’s author and illustrator Raymond Briggs, best known for his wonderful books ‘The Snowman’ and ‘Fungus the Bogeyman’, stepped into this terrifying territory and haunted us with ‘When The Wind Blows’.   And ‘Only Fools And Horses’ parodied our deepest fears of imminent nuclear conflict with an episode entitled ‘The Russians Are Coming’ in which the hapless Trotters build a fallout shelter at the top of a tower block.  This was not so far from reality – anyone could buy DIY shelter kits through the Sunday supplements, which carried adverts for them as if getting one was on a par with purchasing a new shed.   With one of these safe havens in your back garden you could relax in the knowledge that when World War III kicked off (which it was definitely going to at any moment) you’d be protected against radiation by a few layers of lead, dirt and concrete and some strategically placed cushions.

On the other hand - perhaps as a direct response to the above - there were a lot of bright  and creative things going on behind the scenes.  However, the mainstream took colourful frivolity to an extreme, and seemed dominated by a culture (if you can call it that) of bubble perms and padded shoulders.   Frothy bands like Bucks Fizz (pun intended) topped the charts – their name, their look and their songs all summed up this strange, frilly party atmosphere.  They may as well have been singing, “Let’s all fiddle while Rome burns!”  On the surface it was all primary colourrs and lipgloss, and I can’t blame anyone for wanting that escapism.  If I’d been into plastic pop and not into punk – or at least the ‘anarcho’ element which one area of it had evolved into -  maybe I could have remained ostrich-like too, and emerged from the sand a few years later, blinking incredulously while asking, “Did I miss anything important?” 

It wasn’t just about nuclear war.  There were dozens of other political issues to worry about and to rail against.  (Life was ever thus.)   For a short time I was right in the thick of it, immersed in a scene in which fanzine writers interviewed bands less about their musical influences and more about their stance on fascism and veganism.  Record sleeve artwork no longer exposed us merely to horrific fashion crimes, but instead to the horrors of crimes against animals and the inhabitants of third world countries.  Although… speaking of fashion, the faded black shapeless uniform of protagonists and followers did suggest an almost criminal lack of imagination. (With the exception of Rubella Ballet, who brought a much needed splash of dayglo to those murky days.)  

Around ’81/’82, when I was most involved with this particular musical movement, I was at art college and, not surprisingly, many of my illustrations reflected the burning issues.  My portfolio at the time included collages of mushroom clouds, strange drawings of women bound by bandages and barbed wire, and a lot of black and red.  I was even commissioned to do a picture of balaclava-wearing activists carrying puppies and guinea pigs for an Animal Liberation Front flyer.  One of my favourite artists of the time was Sue Coe, whose uncompromising and often brutal, bloody imagery made my spine tingle.

Of course, I still had some fun; skiving off college and travelling halfway round the country in the back of a hired Sherpa Van with my boyfriend’s anarcho punk band was not without its lighter moments.  There were nice people around and good gigs and sometimes a very genuine sense of connection, especially in the face of this cold-hearted world we were kicking against.  And the causes were very real; I cared deeply about both human and animal rights, the divisive effects of the Thatcher government, the miners’ strike, police oppression, poverty, sexism, racism, etc.   It’s easy to feel downhearted about the notion that we didn’t make any difference – but in a small way I think we did, and maybe I’ll write more about that another day.

Meanwhile, it seems strange now to think that I actually spent some time in my late teens giving serious consideration to what I’d do when the four minute warning was sounded (eat chocolate? - snog the first person I saw? - slash my wrists?) whilst at the same time Top Of The Pops gave us fluffy pink-clad dancers flashing vacuous grins to four minute pop songs.

And here’s a song which, to me, absolutely sums up the feeling of the time with both its dramatic arrangement and poignant lyrics:

The Passage: Dark Times



Quadrophenia, my first time

So Quadrophenia was screened on BBC4 on Friday.  It’s nearly 33 years since its release but I still love that film (even with its well-known chronological / continuity errors!)  I saw it soon after it came out, at the local Odeon, which just happened to be a five minute walk from my college.  It immediately attracted the attention of some of us who’d just started on the Art Foundation course.  Terry, a kind and unassuming mod, was very excited, and suggested that we skive off one afternoon to catch it, so a little gaggle of us did just that.  There was Ivor, the Sid Vicious lookalike (except that he had curly hair – the bane of his life) and his soul-boy mate Jake (white socks), my fellow punk friends Jill (slightly Siouxsie-ish) and Andy (chided for wearing 'Jam' shoes with bondage trousers), parka-clad Terry, and me (spiky peroxide-white hair).  Being a midweek matinée the cinema was nearly empty and we spread ourselves over two seats each, right in the middle.  Munching on bumper packs of Opal Fruits and Butterkist, we lapped up the gritty tale of a troubled young mod from ‘60s London and his cohorts, as they battled through a lot more than just the obvious conflicts with their nemesis rockers, to a vibrant, evocative soundtrack. For a start it was a much better way to spend time than designing a label for a box of dog biscuits (to a soundtrack of marker pens squeaking on paper), but, more than that, for us teenage viewers it had it ALL.  Music, parties, youth tribes, aggro, sex, drugs, unsympathetic parents, disillusionment, misunderstanding, fashion, anger… 

Like Quadrophenia’s central character, Jimmy, there were some lost souls in my local punk scene too.  Jimmy could have been pink-haired Allie, whom I remember admiringly for being one of the first to buy proper Crazy Colour from London (while the rest of us were still using food colouring).  Being a punk meant everything to him but he had that unsettled edge, as if constantly seeking something he was never going to find.  The last time I heard of him, an unhappy home life and hard drugs had taken their toll and he’d ended up in a psychiatric hospital.  I hope he recovered, and didn’t take a trip to Beachy Head. 

In Quadrophenia, Jimmy did take a trip to Beachy Head on The Ace's stolen scooter - and my college friends and I couldn’t quite figure out if he’d intended to go over the edge with it as well.  Still, we enjoyed the whole film.  Terry particularly loved the soundtrack, the scooters and the clothes, of course.  Jill, Andy, Ivor and me were quite chuffed to see Toyah – she was still a bit of a punk figure largely from her ‘Jubilee’movie appearance – and I think Jake was quite happy just to see Lesley Ash being shagged in an alleyway.   But the main thing was its relatability, in spite of its retro theme.  At that time I didn’t really care about the past and had little interest in music or fashion from another era.  I would have turned my naïve and snotty punk nose up at a Who single (I know...) - yet I liked some of what I’d heard by mod revival bands because they were contemporary.  Daft as it sounds now, ‘Mod’ to me then only meant 1979 Mod ! Some months before seeing Quadrophenia, my local gig venue had put on an all day mod event...

Wonder what the prize was for the 'best decorated parka'..? 

Punks and mods had mingled relatively easily there – just as we did at college too - because for the main part we felt some kind of allegiance.   A mutual liking for the Jam probably helped us to cross those boundaries too.   Any rivarly between us was generally confined to light-hearted ribbing.  Some elements of our look were shared, like short hair, straight trousers and multiple badges, and separated both tribes equally from hippies, teds, skinheads and disco kids.    I guess we had a joint feeling of being in the margins through our own choosing.  Our parents laughed at the records we bought... "is that how you're supposed to play a guitar now, then?" ...and couldn’t understand our sartorial obsessions... "I suppose they wear wet jeans'n'all?".    Kids got beaten up for the way they dressed and teenage dreams were shattered by adult reality.  Of course Quadrophenia acknowledged all of that.  It couldn’t have been a better time for me to see it.

When some other friends said they wanted to go to the pictures just a week later, I was happy to join them and watch it all over again.  And I watched it again last Friday night, all these years on.  Even from this distance and with some very different priorities and cares, I recognised a lot of those teenage feelings once more. 

A little bit of inspiration for the Who from Slim Harpo

Fantasy punk band

I was never going to make it as a Slit or a Raincoat but that didn’t stop me fantasising about forming an all-girl punk band with my schoolfriends in ’78.  We couldn’t play any instruments (apart from the recorder on which I was at least adept at Greensleeves and the theme from The Wombles) and we couldn’t have afforded guitars and drums even if we’d intended to learn.  Hope had glimmered briefly the previous Autumn upon finding a discarded electric bass thrown onto the huge communal bonfire down the road before its potential incineration on Guy Fawkes’ Night but, seeing as it had been stripped of its pickups, strings and electrics etc., it wasn’t going to be easy to do much with.  So we just looked at it admiringly and wondered if it could be used as a prop one day in our promo photo-shoots.

With or without instruments, promo photo-shoots were a must.  Most were posed outside my mate’s dad’s garage, made of grey breeze-block and thus looking suitably cold and urban, with us trying to look unapproachably snotty while her dear mum took the pictures and tried not to laugh.  Fortunately she knew it was vital to keep the adjacent hanging baskets out of shot.

Finding a name was of the utmost importance – far more of a priority than actually playing anything.  I borrowed mum’s thesaurus and looked up words like dirt  and chaos and noise etc. to get ideas.  A long-list was compiled – names like The Dregs, The Deranged,  The Blasts… nothing really seemed to fit.  Then we got a bit more imaginative and for a while called ourselves The Xtremists - never mind that we were 14-year-old schoolgirls from nice suburban homes and the most extreme thing we could do was to swear within earshot of a Geography teacher.  Some time later I preferred the name The Arseknickers.  I thought it was a neat play on words and it sounded a bit rude – it looked good written on the cover of my school rough book too.

But our fantasy punk band remained just that. 

One day we made the mistake of telling the older blokes who worked in our local jeans shop that we were in a group.  “Oh, have you got many songs?  Do you have any tapes?” one enquired.  I think he must have had something in his eye because it sort of twitched when he looked at his colleague as he said it. Desperate not to lose face we told them that we’d recorded loads of songs.  I frantically searched my brain for lyrics I’d scrawled out in school break-times, most of which went along the lines of  “I hate teachers, they don’t understand, they just want to rule, they’re so bland”…

“Well, bring a tape in next Saturday and we’ll play it in the shop”.  Whatever it was he’d got in his eye was seriously troubling him by now and causing his mouth to twitch at the corners too.  “Okay…” we replied with brash outer confidence, whilst wondering inside what the fuck we were going to do.

An emergency plan was quickly scrambled.  We gathered round my house the next evening with all the equipment we needed to make our tape:  my dad’s TEAC portable cassette machine with its little microphone, a Maxell C60, the Clash album on the turntable of the family stereogram, and a few pages of hastily scribbled lyrics - Clash album lyrics.  The mic was carefully positioned to pick up both the record playing and our voices singing over the top, fingers poised to press the clunky Record and Play keys just as the needle dropped on the vinyl.  Yes, you’ve got it: we just did Karaoke Clash.  “No-one will know”, we thought.

I don’t think our girly choruses of ‘I’m so bored with the USA’ really drowned out Joe Strummer’s vocals and I’m not sure that the finger-tapping on the sideboard added much to the drumming either.  Of course it sounded horrendous, not helped by the fact that the crappy little mic probably picked up the sound of my mum hoovering halfway through Protex Blue better than it did my “he’s in love with Janie Jones, whoa”.

When it came to Saturday morning, I seemed to have developed that twitching condition myself…  So we did what any self-respecting rebels would do – we bottled out and went back to posing instead.

What's my name?

A great post over at Kolley Kibber set me thinking about nicknames recently.  I had a friend whose slim limbs and bony joints earned her the soubriquet Beanpole, and no matter how many Curly Wurlys or Freddo bars she ate, to everyone else’s chagrin she stayed as skinny as one.  At the same time, a classmate of rather more generous proportions was affectionately referred to as Podge. She took to this quite happily as a term of endearment and the name endured - I could never actually think of her as Caroline.  It has to be said too that this being in the olden days meant she was one of very few chubby pupils in the entire school and the body type which merited such a ‘fattist’ term then might perhaps be considered quite average now. 

For a short while I was rather unkindly called Pasty Face which I understand was a reference to being an insipid looking twelve-year-old with a complexion the colour of wallpaper paste, rather than resembling a Cornish meat and potato dish.  And Goldilocks seems quite sweet now, but at the time I didn't take it well, maybe it sounded too babyish.  Before that, my first name was conveniently tweaked a little to turn it into an unfashionable and slightly comical-sounding boy’s one. I didn’t like it but just learned to take it on the chin.  At least it was better than my young German neighbour’s nickname, Spaz, which, for all its un-PC-ness, was simply a contraction of Sebastian.

Fast forward to my mid-teens and down at the local music venue, which became the centre of a thriving punk scene in the late seventies, there were very few people whose real full names I ever got to know, even though I’d see them there at least once a week.

The punk world was perfect for spawning some memorable monickers, especially useful for those who played in a band. So we had Anarchy and Chunky (no relation to Podge) in one, and Stringy, Snout and Bondage in another.   Less evocative-sounding and of unknown origin, but still inextricably linked to their owners, were the names Milky, Till and Dim.  And for anyone reading this who knows the poetic output of one Attila the Stockbroker I can reliably inform you that back then he was Basil Boghead. 

Then again musicians and singers have been using handy epithets for decades.  Iggy Pop has so much more of a ring to it than James Osterberg, Twinkle far more exotic than Lynn Ripley. 

I didn’t expect to be using anything other than my given name later on in life – it just seemed to be something you grew out of.   And then this internet business changed all that.  At least we get to choose our own.

Dress, shirt

I couldn’t help feeling an unlikely sense of excitement when my sister told me she'd volunteered to catalogue Victorian underwear at her local museum.   I had this vision of mountains of white lace, linen, ribbons, strange things made out of whalebone and lots of stockings.  Words I rarely use tumbled into my mind: bustle… petticoat… crinoline… bloomers…  I can’t wait to find out exactly what kind of drawers she’s going to be rummaging through – probably some made from calico.

I think it’s pretty amazing that any undergarments from a hundred years or so ago would survive at all.  Why were they ever kept?  I don’t know about you but, whilst I’ve been tempted to hang onto the occasional special garment, or at least pass it on to a new owner rather than throw it away, I’d never have considered my undies.  

I had one of those muslin ‘Destroy’ shirts which I bought from Seditionaries on the Kings Road in 1979, sold to me by (ooh!) Vivienne Westwood herself.  I loved it dearly, I loved its soft feel and the little metal spring clips on the sleeves.  At 16, I had no qualms about wearing a logo which combined a swastika with an upside-down crucifixion and our decapitated Queen on a postage stamp (I know…).  I have to remind myself of how all this imagery seemed in the context of that time.  It meant nothing more then than just being into punk; it was where all that shock-symbolism began and ended.  That shirt was one item of clothing I hung onto for many years; I’d stopped wearing it long ago of course but I was reluctant to throw it out. It had some kind of meaning, it was from a very specific era.  Eventually, about six years ago, I sold it for £100 to a collector who didn’t even mind the paint stains on the sleeves (I’d worn it to college); I think he was going to frame it and hang it on his wall.  The money was more essential to me than having it as a piece of memorabilia by then.  Maybe in another hundred years it will end up in a museum somewhere.

There are a couple of items of clothing I’ve continued to keep, however, even though they weren’t mine originally, but just ended up in my possession. 

One is this fantastic Sixties shirt which I feel extremely privileged to have been kindly given over twenty years ago. 

It’s made by ‘Donis of Carnaby Street’ and it’s in lovely condition, with the most amazing collar and cuffs. 

I just love the idea that it would have been bought and worn by some trendy young thing, probably at the height of psychedelia… Maybe he wore it to the Speakeasy where he danced the night away to the Yardbirds..?   My reasons for keeping it are perhaps quite romantic, really.

Then there’s this now musty and literally moth-eaten dress.

The dress as it  looks on me today.  Amazingly, it still fits -

it’s just a shame that it smells like a stagnant pond…

It was my mum’s; she bought it in the late 1940s.  It's made of layered lace and has velvet straps and neckline.  Originally it had whalebone in it too but she took that out some years later and let my sister and I play dressing-up games in it, adorning ourselves in plastic beads and clip-on earrings from Christmas crackers, whilst hobbling about in mum’s five-sizes-too-big-shoes with fancy old curtains draped over our shoulders.

There was a spell during the Eighties when I discovered it was a good enough dress to actually go out in and it ended up as an essential item in my (mostly black, mostly second-hand) wardrobe.  Apart from being genuinely vintage it had all the credentials for that indie/post-punk/goth look.  Black.  Velvet.  Lace.  And it was nicely tatty and torn by then too.  It went perfectly with fishnet tights and crimped hair.  Now, nearly seventy years old, it’s stored away in a box.  I don’t know quite what to do with it but I just can’t bring myself to part with it. 

These are two items of clothing which aren’t going to be discarded anytime soon - unlike my old undies, which no museum in the future will be cataloguing, I can assure you.  And I’ll resist saying any more about volunteers rummaging through them, too.

Here’s a song…