I liked The Cult as a teenager

The transition from juniors to secondary school has faded somewhat from my mind. I can’t remember whether I was full of fear or excitement. It was just another school – you know just another brick in the wall and all that. Blazers, ties and band allegiances – I’d cultivated that at an early age. That’s probably why I can’t quite remember the feelings – blotted them out with Shakin’ Stevens and the Sex Pistols. We used to have school discos in the main hall at my juniors – at lunch times – you could bring your own records – I would follow ‘Hot Dog’ with ‘Friggin’ in the Riggin’ – I was a shock jock then.

I’ve always been eclectic maaaaannnnn.

I arrived in secondary school clutching on to the late 1970s – early eighties rock n roll revival. Not quiffed yet – that would come two years later with The Smiths and awkward moments on the dance floor – or should I say cringe worthy moments. The thing is – I like dancing – we want to dance and have some fun – but I must have spent a fair part of my youth with arms flailing and fringe swinging. It used to make the girls go giddy - well actually – it didn’t – that’s artistic licence for you – I could say that it did and you’d just have to believe me. Still I’ll write about the dance floor again another day. This is about the switching and changing of musical taste of hearing something new and embracing it – which you’re ripe to at that early age – sponge like and not set in our ways. Saying that – I wasn’t open to it all – this whole thing is a ball of contradictions – it preaches have a listen and then puts the boot in too.

I’ve always been like that you know. Contradictory and opinionated. You could say I’m not that easy to get along with. The family recognise it – my friends recognise it – I care not to and blindly carry on doing it. Saying one thing – meaning another – tying up my tongue in frustration and incoherence.

So how is this going to get to talking ‘bout (love) Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy – this chief and warrior union through glam goth rock and the stomp of something rocking? I had a cousin further up north – so far in fact it’s another country – and she was a few years younger than my brother – they enjoyed the dark music – they embraced the backcombed in their lives. Now as I have previously stated – I wanted a piece of the alternative too – I once wore a ribbon in my hair in a heady tribute to Porl Thompson of The Cure (at that time) However, I’m not sure the wider general public of Port Seaton recognised the dandy in me – it was more likely that they laughed. See you – aye – see that ribbon.

So you could say I was open to suggestion at this point – it was time to move on from ‘Shirley’ and ‘Green Door’ and Matchbox weren’t cutting it anymore – I didn’t want the girl’s to cry on my shoulder. I didn’t want Jump the Broomstick – at Heslam Park Rugby Club disco – I wanted guitars, scarves, chants and emotions – I wanted an alternative. And The Cult initially filled those transient times – they weren’t The Cure – Paul (my brother) had claimed them. That sudden shifting from the Top 40 to all things independent. You know what it’s like with men – we’re just looking for a perfect list. So it seemed that the mainstream wasn’t quite cutting it for me. The arrival of the music press in the house was slowly shifting my agenda and ideology. Writing could do that then – I’m not certain that the current readers of NME (.com) ever get that feeling. I maybe wrong – but the newspapers back then had articles about music and misery, unemployment and anger coursing through those inky pages. Writers who wanted to write about music and about life. There were four page interviews – you know – lots of words and that.  Oh I know it was affected – isn’t this?

And as my cousin played me Spiritwalker and Resurrection Joe – up there in the bedroom at the top of the house  – there was something different –a kind of groove – mixed with yelps and the feeling that it was alive – I couldn’t reference The Doors then, and this in itself was a good thing – because you know how I feel about The Doors. 

I hadn’t even seen them – at this point. I don’t mean live – I just mean moving. It had been still photos and words on pages. I was reading something the other day from an American about The Smiths and there was a line that resonated with me – he said he never saw The Smiths move until 1986. This lack of internet look ups – DVD sales and promo videos – you know Derek Jarman made the first Smiths videos or should that be films and they weren’t in them – all this music coupled with all those static images – it meant you had to think what they would look like moving – grooving – playing and dancing – even just walking.

Nothing could have prepared you for Ian Astbury – this hip (shaking) shaman – this screamer and bawler in leggings and leather – feathers and fur. He was cartoon like in state – larger than life – and the songs referenced tribal gatherings and dream walking and all that spiritual shit. Beside him quiffed and ready for action – Duffy heading up the troops – all blonde hair and low action.  But I fell for it – I liked the fact that Resurrection Joe was eight minutes long – it wasn’t digitally produced – it was flawed – in production and composition. You don’t come out fully formed – you kind of grow into it – and boy would The Cult grow – into a muthafucking rock stomping behemoth of a band. All hair and Gretsch White Falcons – double bass drums and Marshall stacks – by the time Love Removal Machine emerged – Astbury was inflicted with a rock tourettes all yyaoowws and yelps – screams and yeaahhhs. Sweat pouring down his made up face – more bloated than Morrison – a sort of Rob Zombie version of Mick Jagger.  He’d eventually slim on down (to the other side) and join The Doors 21^st Century – life – art  - you know the saying. He made a good Morrison though – but it’s weird watching it. It’s studied – it’s knowing – it’s honest – yet it doesn’t quite feel right. Like the wig might slip.

I stuck steady with The Cult – well I was steady with the Cult from their Southern and Death incarnations – and then when She Sells Sanctuary crossed over – in appearances on TOTP and The Tube. This single line floating melody that kicked in with a bang and made all our heads turn as this band from the Midlands (with some northern parts) made a beeline for the top of the charts. Okay – it got to number 14 – but to us ‘outsiders’ looking in that was success  - that was gate crashing the party. And then came the long player – Love – I liked it – I listened to it a great deal. I was part of their cult. I was into the gatefold cover – the graphics – and the tunes. The Cult felt like a band that was mine – they weren’t overly gothic – they flirted with it – but there was a straight rock ethic flowing through it. Plus they were always brilliant - self-deprecating in their interviews – it helps to have the ability to laugh at yourself  - it’s taken me about 30 years – but I’m getting there.

And then suddenly they ‘broke’ the US – and that was that – an almighty clash of Zepp and AC/DC – they went proper raaawkkk. It didn’t scare me – just disappointed – I hung in for a while – but eventually we went our separate ways. I just happened to come across an odd glam rock version of She Sells Sanctuary that my band did years ago – in a Scunthorpe bedroom and it brought me back to the original – that first dalliance with the Cult.

It was good to be friends with them – through vinyl and reported speech. It was a decent dalliance. Cheers Ian. 

He played records and we danced

Last week I was in Clerkenwell – all gastro pub and the rubba dub dub as old friends discussed eventful weeks and weekends. And I fell into talking about [not] going out, about the 1210s and nights of simply turntable celebration. I have been fascinated by the spinning decks for years. Those early formative years in school discos and clubs as DJs spun 45s on mobile systems. It wasn’t like this was Kingston and we were in Tivoli Gardens skanking to DJ Coxsone and those heavy heavy sounds.

We were in Scunthorpe. We were at teenage discos.

This was playing records for steelworkers kids. We liked Wham, Adam Ant, The Sweet, Duran Duran and Tina Turner’s Nutbush City Limits. We weren’t yet grooving to our own choices. You made a request to the DJ – if he had it he might play it. If he didn’t he wouldn’t and if he thought that your taste was questionable he told you so.

But we also had the Baths Hall in Scunthorpe a sanctuary from what I considered the mainstream at the time. But this was just as mainstream in many ways except you heard The Smiths or The Fall playing. It was all escape from the grind. No different to the beer monsters at Henry Afrika’s [I kid you not - all garish fibre glass models of explorers and natives outside – we’ve come along way since the Windrush docked] We just wore more black than the sport Billies back then and got to dance to a different beat rather than the drummer’s – it was and is the same as it is then as it is now. Put your hands in the air and wave them like you do care – you care far too much – as I’ve said I was the type to dance to my tunes and slip from the polished floor when the sounds moved me no more.

But talking about wanting to go out and hear a DJ brings those moments flooding back. This post could detail countless nights getting ready for the dancefloor – waiting for the ‘jam to start pumping’ but I think I’ll make it about John Peel. John Peel was a regular visitor to the Scunthorpe Baths Hall. A veteran of Doncaster Road and all that walked up it. He would play and talk – not exactly MC – with tunes from his bag and always finish with The Undertones Teenage Kicks. The Baths Hall was like a rite of passage for all alternative teens in the Scunthorpe scene. It was where you went to be part of it all. Drink cider and sway – cadge cigarettes and be sick on the streets and steps. It was for the argy bargy with burly bone men on the door and the thrill of the getting in when you were far too young. I remember once that Paul was turned away – even though he was eighteen and they let me in when I was three years younger. It’s what you do – try and pull a fast one – because we were a generation going nowhere fast – so the antics of youth were all we had.

And every year John would appear. This familiar sound in the flesh. That voice from the radio – a real DJ – but one of us. The every man with a record collection we all wanted. You can visit his records now – not in person – you can’t turn up at Peel Acres and riffle through it – it’s virtual and photographed – it’s arrrtttt maaaaan - it isn’t meant to be a shrine – but it’s a dead man’s vinyl. Sometimes listening is not possible anymore. But you can see the dedication – the connection he had as he gently sorted the Ds from the Es. Shelia’s going to get rid of them - you can’t leave them lying round the house forever. Yet every year he would sort through the ever growing collection that rules from the centre of the ultraworld – well Great Finborough actually – to find tunes that would make teenagers rock [in Scunthorpe]. And I believe he thought about it – what new ones to bring and which Fall ones for Pete Lazenby – because you knew he was going get on the dance floor.

He would arrive without fanfare John that is – not Pete – Pete would arrive with fanfare. This was not a ‘roadshow’. It was not a show at all. It was the selection of records to make you dance – to jump about with joy and abandon and forget the morning and work ahead. Be it industrial or school. It was escape. Peel knew this – he didn’t mock us – he escaped every night with the spin of the turntables – in his studio or at home. Here in the echoing hall of the revamped municipal baths - beats would bounce of walls and bass bellow in corners as we glanced and romanced and dreamt and danced on carpet and wood to the sounds of the underground – made overground by our very own vinyl womble.

I don’t necessarily want to go out and listen to this – although the Baths was good – sensible opening and closing. The conversation in Clerkenwell was about Derrick May – he played last week – a set in a series from the innovators of Detroit – he was number one – Juan’s coming and Kevin. And there was a realisation that the sets would start late and end in the early hours. I can’t do it. I can’t do that. They should play from 5pm till 9pm – I could fit it in then and get a decent night’s sleep. Still completely stomp it – but sleep too, without losing touch with reality and being there to help in the morning.

Families not forty fives come first – I guess.

Instead I will select for the kids. My kids until their taste is foisted on me. I remember Paul and I asking my dad to play a Nick Cave live cassette on the way to Scotland – to Edinburgh. It didn’t go down too well – I don’t think it helped his concentration – what with the poor quality recording - the hiss and the malevolence inherent in Cave’s performance. Still Blind Lemon Jefferson would still make it on to my playlist.

But that pull of the DJ to select and make a crowd rejoice – to join together for whatever the length of the tune is a pleasure that I will always crave. I may not witness this again in a club setting but I can still tap into those teenage dreams – so hard to beat.

This is the recording of the single - something different - if you wan to hear the song you can look it up - it's everywhere.