There’s a natural mystic in the air

I stumbled across Golden Clouds today. A Perry/ Orb collaboration that borrowed from one tune and cheekily became another over four minutes. The subtle sequences of fluffy clouds laying host to Scratch’s observations and overstanding. As this red, gold and green wizard kicked off his shoes and walked in ponds and streams to bring his musings on things that floated.

I like Lee Scratch Perry. He’s a nutter. But I like him.

I wrote some time back about jury service in industrial ports. Of Grimsby streets and barbaric youth stood up in docks made from wood not ones that produced ships or unloaded goods. I was young myself then. I was judging not being judged. Unlike now as I wait for the suits and the clipboards to hasten an exit from a profession I am actually good at but they will fail to see. But that’s another story. And I’m telling this one.

I have talked about purchasing Linton Kwesi Johnston’s sounds. I have yet to tell of the second tape purchased from that record store – which is now a simple stolen shot that I find hard to recall. A shop on the streets full of sounds and surprises. As I said before I was looking for tapes – digging the crates – to fill the journey on hard train seats from Grimsby to Scunthorpe. A scenic route as yet to feature on any holiday programme or Portillo’s travels by train. It’s all blast furnaces, coal trucks, articulated lorries and corrugated sheds.

It was my vista. Show me yours.

And there nestled in the ‘reggae, reggae’ section with UB40 and Aswad was a little tape. Red and green – the gold being the music – do you get me?  An almighty allegiance with the Mad Professor – all gated reverb and twisted pitches  - dubbing them crazy. It spoke to me at that time – and listening to it now it talks again – all version and sound sound sound. This upsetter was making me happy through dub workouts and smoked up sounds – (duppy) conquering. There was something magical in licks and rolls, the snatches and snippets of bass and drum heavy in reverberation that tickled and soothed my brain.

I’ve always liked those dub sounds – as tapes melted and heated and expanded and sounds merged and extended with rimshots and bursts of melody. It’s a Jamaican ting. This warmth of sound in the warmth of the sun. Yet it translates to concrete streets and struggles. It’s excursions and versions sound tracking our resistance and anger. You can understand why PuNk got it. As I said in a post about P.I.L – John didn’t have a support act – he simply had some dub. It starts deep and takes you deeper.

There used to be a wonderful public house in New Cross. By the university, all smoky corners and pool hall bravado and simple reggae sounds. The Tavern – a haven for the Goldsmiths’ underground – well a place to drink after hours. You would hear a mighty tune in there of an evening. It was a mellow place. As I have aged I think I’ve become more aware of the trouble that bass can cause – as it seeps under floorboards and through walls. But this was a public house – you can play that kind of stuff there. I don’t pull out my Augustus Pablo records or King Tubby 12s these days. Even though we’re end of terrace – it doesn’t seem fair on the neighbours. As the grey hairs come thick and fast you just buy better headphones.

There’s a wonderful book heavy in weight and attitude called Bass Culture. It rides the beginnings of bass right through those West Indian struggles and leaves you feeling knowledgeable about politics, race and sound. You should read it – you probably have done. Scratch pops up in there from time to time. A pioneer, a seer, a shaker and a maker. His imprint sitting in all things reggae. You can’t ignore his presence and what presence he has.

And over the years Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry has bubbled and popped up across a variety of records I’ve bought. Through Trojan sets, MC battles and blissed out ambience Scratch can be called on to provide that sideways stomp. The unexpected. Not lyrically  - his musings and bubblings have a familiar ring – but his philosophy is one of not compromising.

Build it up. Burn it down.

I don’t buy into all that mysticsm – I don’t need a God to explain a thing – we’ve got scientists for all of that. And I like them. But possibly not chatting on records. This crazy witchdoctor can provide that and the Mad Professor can man the mixing desk. Dubbing it crazy for those who like their bass on the heavy, heavy, heavy side.  The professor really is an academic of dub. He can twist and tickle a line – make it say something else – educate the mind without words – through sounds.

I like Lee Scratch Perry. I like the Mad Professor. I like them working together.

This is was on the tape. Now it’s in your house. 

I got a letter this morning.

There’s a long history of rock and the post office – a long history.

I had returned from university and found myself temporarily in charge of a red framed bicycle and post bag. My degree had been in Sociology and Communication Studies and wandering back into Goldsmiths’ to pick up my ‘award’ for best UK animation etc and explaining to my previous tutors where I was currently at I was met with the line – ‘well it is a form of communications I suppose – the post office’.

Yes thank you for the support – it was reminiscent of Casper receiving his careers advice. Still I had to leave the capital [Exit this Roman shell] at that time – I had those empty pockets and I couldn’t afford the beer.

I used to sing to myself when I was on the post round. Post rounds have that kind of freedom. I was living out a Bukowski phase of my existence. The round was a means to an end – the round was clouded in the rounds I’d had the night before.

Bagging up and off into the emerging morning – sometimes wide eyed from the night before or tired eyed from the weekend – that sense of camaraderie and then emerging isolation all thrown into one. Shouting out inanities as letters were thrown in racks and bandied up in elastic and then just you and your bike – riding to deliver the good, the bad and the ugly.

I used to get a whole heap of things through the post.

Having attempted to write [insightfully] about music on the page – and then thrust it on unsuspecting bowl headed youth at gigs and concerts – somehow my late night ramblings as to the power of The Impossibles to change the world or how the next Clouds release would bring down western capitalism had broken into the ether and people would scrawl letters and sellotape fifty pences to card asking for a copy from all over the world.

Letters with suggestions of bands and sounds – places to visit and voices that chimed with mine. It was an indie scene see? All wrapped together with staples and photocopies. It was the Post Office uniting minds and [teenage] dreams [so hard to beat] so that we felt part of a gang – a movement – a wave – even if we walked our sodden towns’ streets alone.

I didn’t by the way – I had friends – real ones.

But postmen – like me - would have to deliver these letters with scrawls about ‘that’s love ba ba ba ba’ or ‘see it glow and paint a rainbow’. Our own S.W.A.L.K as we borrowed Stephen Pastel’s words to give our ideas a voice. It was fun really. And inside these delicate envelopes came outpourings of independence – of fight and fury as we rallied against the world with our band allegiances proudly displayed on our [t-shirt] sleeve or in my case [my college folder – lever arch maaaan] You had to wait for a letter – a correspondence between two minds – feverishly trying to drop a new piece of indie news into a letter. Have you heard Dolly Mixture? Here’s a tape of my band – a friend’s band – my dad’s band. It was counter to all the NME blurgh – it was social networking without technology. It was different. We didn’t ‘like’ one another’s page see – we wrote letters to each other – if we disagreed – we either worked it out in ink – or stopped writing. No flaming or trolling for us. So sounds emerged slowly, with less fanfare. You could argue that it gave everyone time to make a decision about music – about selecting and rejecting – living with the listening rather than flipping and shuffling. You had a cassette from someone – they’d taken some time to tape it – it deserved a listen – a real listen – you were going to have to write back.

I ‘liked’ a page on Facebook this morning – and then had a quick skip through a ‘deep house session’ on Soundcloud that I was directed to from the page and haven’t really given any of it my attention. I left with little opinion. But when Stephen from Middlesborough wrote and asked again what it was I didn’t like about the tape he sent – I had to return and listen - form judgements and write down my reasons – perhaps this naïve correspondence of hurt feelings and the race to impress shaped my thinking processes – perhaps I just pause for thought sometimes.

You have to take a breath to read - to listen.

Which brings me to this – a simple song – that I discovered through a shared love of anoraks and bowlheads – or should that read rock n roll and anger. And of course Paul’s recommendations too. There wasn’t anything twee in digging The Pastels - it was about the real rock in roll. There’s that simplicity in all The Pastels songs – chugging guitars and heartfelt responses. Melodies that linger and race around your brain.

Stephen and Aggi making beautiful noise and shared cassettes and memories scrawled down on paper making connections.

They’re raising the price of the post. No more time to pause then.

Put away your pens.

University life – Fantastic life [PART 1]

On arriving in London – that long odd journey down with my dad at the wheel – thinking about that now – he was only 40 years old. That’s me this year. My mum helping with directions – specifically after the Blackwall Tunnel, but let’s say it hadn’t been an easy ride from Scunthorpe to the smoke – i blame the directions on the A2 – you want Blackheath take the Peckham turning. But we were not to know. My sister tucked in the car - journeying to London with her brother. 

And a girlfriend in the back – all young love and pots and pans, bowlheads and dreams. Well that wouldn’t last.

I wasn’t exactly fresh faced – I had grown up in a northern steel town – the girls there would break their arms just to get out of PE – but London was a different place - I say London – this was Lewisham [before the Police Station – still rocking the Army and Navy] Been rolling up that hill - been running up those streets – to Granville Park. It wasn’t a bad place to begin a romance with London. 1989 – Goldsmiths’ – halls with students and the fading grunge scene mutating into ecstasy and sharp suits. This was the ‘baggy’ crossover writ large – like the trousers I would wear. ‘Tell mum to get no less than 20 inches – otherwise they might as well be a pair of straight legs’ – I had said to my brother – as my mum took a trip down to Ashby Market – but hey Ashby has always been a touch seventies so the stalls had those loons stacked high- waiting – just waiting.

I had arrived deep in love with the velvets and leather – from our dalliance and then friendship with the Scream. Straight up to Camden – for fifty pound biker jackets and dreams of Sid Vicious like behaviour in the clubs as we bounced bike chains of NME journalists heads. We didn’t – but we did once shower Bob Stanley in fanzine confetti in Deptford because he said we were too obvious – all Mary Chain and predictable – when we thought we were loud and dangerous. We weren’t and he wasn’t right either but perhaps he didn’t deserve it – although I always hated St Etienne after – irrational but deep seated.

Being in London then was exciting –it still is exciting. I love the city – I was returning from Nottingham this weekend and as the 125 approached this sprawling mass I had to marvel at its size. It’s sheer bloody vastness. All stories and streets. In the city I’ve a got a thousand things I want to say you. And as a slightly vacant, opinionated and arrogant young thing coming to London gave me a further spring in my step. Student life started at Granville Park – all Victorian floors and grandness – I was coming out a three bed semi council house – this was a different experience completely. One wrapped in cheap cassettes and cigarettes.

I remember the interview at Goldsmiths’ – I’d had a couple already Liverpool, Birmingham and Bradford – and I ventured down to this one with a yearning to get in. I had chosen my universities and polytechnics because I wanted to see bands – go to gigs – feel the throng of the crowd – and of course London was the holy grail of gigs – of the ULU, Camden Falcon, the Town and Country Club and Hammersmith Apollo – all those adverts in the NME announcing tours and shows by singers and groups that bypassed the North East time and time again.

But to this fine city they came – again and again. I had travelled by train – my mum lying about my age and using the family railcard to purchase a ticket for a pound. I would leave her in central London and make my way to New Cross station and then follow the map round to university. Suited and awkward I travelled on trains – with my rucksack full of notes and this and that.

And there it was a simple building on a busy road. Home of the YBAs and soon to be Blur, the studying point for John Cale and Brian Moloko although not at the same time – the list goes on and they tend to with universities – they attract people – people that do stuff. So it was show around and wait a bit – me nearly blowing all my chances as I asked if my interview at 2pm could be moved – why – because I wanted to record shopping – I needed the afternoon to peruse the racks – turned out my interview was even later – I’d jinxed it see. Met Phil on that day too – a wonderful friend who I’ve since let go by the wayside –like the fool I have always been. He takes pictures now – he does stuff.

So ushered in to a small stuffy room expecting to quizzed on the ideology of Marx, or critique the construction of sexuality in the modern age – but Mike Phillipson talked about the fanzine I had written and put in my application. It was an instant connection – an anthropological trawl through the sub culture of style. This place had Dick Hebdidge – I wanted to go. Tutors talked of art, of politics and fanzines.

I wanted to go so badly. So I worked a little harder – it’s as simple as that.

Left as dusk was coming – I had to meet my mum at HMV on Oxford Street. Simple. No phones then – no text to tell how the interview had gone. Just meet outside at 4pm. So I got there. Get off at Tottenham Court road and walk up Oxford Street. And wait. Well buy a few records. And then wait.

Time ticking – darkness setting in. Waiting for my mum. I’m waiting for my mum.

Not panic – more frustration. She wasn’t showing – which meant I wasn’t going home – picking up the train and making our way back to sulphuric skies and blast furnace dawns. So what do you do? You can’t phone – you shouldn’t leave your spot – she might appear. I think I spent half my teenage years waiting at specific places for faces that I needed to see.

However – what you need to know in all of this is that Oxford Street is a fair size and HMV had two shops. You can work out the rest. Suffice to say we used the managers to convey messages and eventually made our way to Kings Cross and home.

Tucked inside the rucksack was My Bloody Valentine’s Ecstasy and Wine – a Lazy compilation to unite the chiming and bending guitars of the group who would go on to break Creation [I know this is a lie] I often return to this album more than Loveless and Isn’t Anything. It has a spine tingling beauty and youthfulness that I like to wallow in sometimes.

It’s filled with possibility – much like I was back then in London.

This also has added karaoke appeal

Remember how it started?

I first met Mark Straw at a party – in a darkened room – my head swimming with cider and my mouth brimming with words. Mark made me laugh. A lot. Mark was also a marine with a slick side in modernist aesthetics – he was a ticking, clicking, gin sipping time bomb who put a smile across your face in an instant. I miss Mark. A lot.

Mark and I liked Paul Weller. We did not know this at first but we would [solid] bond over Weller’s look, lyrics and loves as those summers raced by. Clean living in dirty times was our mantra. To be fair I looked a right old hippy when I met him – in some attempt to grow out my hair – through what I would still like to imagine as a quality Ian Brown phase – but in retrospect I looked like a fat version of my mother in the 1960s – with a more pasty complexion and sunken eyes. So my hair was getting wilder but mind was staying focused. Again I would liken this to Roger Daltrey’s modernist balance in Tommy – it’s reckless, relentless but focused with the right amount of humour and aggression. This is where I was at.

I was in the throes of trying to hang on to a London life I had left behind – arriving back from that hippest of institutions – that Goldsmiths’ vibe man – I had surrendered the cultural sights and slights to a life at first behind a bar and then propping one up. But at least those Scunthorpe soul [less] days were spent with soulful people. All will be written about at some point. You are not forgotten.

Once again Paul has the underlying role in all of this [I have discovered some tunes myself] he returned home from town one day clutching THE PAUL WELLER MOVEMENT 12 inch single – those first bars of Into Tomorrow – descending scales and fluid bass as we all took a trip down boundary lane – and here I found myself again. I’d been losing track of myself [somewhere] for while – I would do again funnily enough but now was the time to wallow in the Weller and take that modernist approach to getting high/ by. This sudden grand return to modernism – a backlash against the grunge – the Seattle [freak] scene was welcomed in the North – it meant a return to suits – you see you know where you stand with a suit – you get dressed up for a Friday night. See me walking around – I’m the man about town that you heard of.

And Paul Weller was the catalyst for all of this – the loaded scene – the reinvention of the new male – one who could laugh at the 70s but secretly yearn that it was all a lot easier when Benny Hill was prime time. Now I had my fair share of mightily misogynistic moments – but I didn’t want to nail my colours to a scene of ignorance and stupidity of football chanting mediocrity - and Weller I feel had a little more soul than areshole about him. And that first single chimed with the times – it embraced the changes we were all looking for – and it made the style council seem redundant. It seemed if Weller had really channelled the Marriot magic and the Paul Weller Movement album just proved this - it’s underlying funk and RnB riot laying siege to the modernist within.

 

So we bought flat fronted trousers in markets in Manchester. Scoured second hand shops for shirts and tops and looked for new loafers to loaf in at public houses. And a dear friend Richard even got handy with the sewing machine, an iron and some soap – and was turning out the four button high collar suits with flat fronted fixed crease narrow cut trousers. I cannot fit into mine now. At that point I was the face. If you wanted it.

But let’s get back to Weller.

I saw him at the Royal Albert Hall – early Wild Wood tour. He simply was on it. It was excess with finesse. Craddock and White holding it all in – as Weller strutted in his Peacock Suit and sang with the masses. This was not dad rock – it never was to be honest. But lazy journalists like lazy terms.

But Mark and I’s love of the Weller would culminate in us sending ‘Stanley Road’ home in a taxi as Paul raged evermore and I drank to excess in The Honest Lawyer. You see I was a postman – that meant I was always up early – not always awake but up early. To sort my round – to put the letters in the frame – to bag up and get out. Feeling resentful like Jimmy in Quadrophenia. So with instructions to purchase the CD box set of Stanley Road – in its 12inch Peter Blake designed glory – I finished my round of the downtown of Westcliff and the surrounding environs and made my way to Mark’s so we could go buy it together.

Duly purchased we made our way to the finest public house in Scunthorpe – The Honest Lawyer and had what would be described as loosener. And then we had several more. All the time that Record Village plastic bag lay at the bar – shouting out that it was meant to be being played in a bedroom somewhere on the way to Ashby. It was one of those drunken epiphanies – to call the local cab office – to send it home – in the front seat the belt on. It arrived safely and I eventually rolled home. You see music can do that – it can send you spinning into places unknown.

And often with Mark the unknown turned out to be a revelation.

And often Paul Weller provided the soundtrack.

Paul Weller Time Passes