NWA: Noise with Attitude

Right – this piece is about noise – it’s about recapturing the past and it’s about not having the time to book a ticket at 9am to a concert that I would so like to go to  – because I am at work. Because  I have hinted at this in the past - the changing ways of capitalism and the industry’s way of making a tidy sum – quickly – it accrues interest see –all that money pooled in one day – from your interest…see.  

So McGee announces the JAMC will play Psychocandy – three times – in November – in the two of his favourite cities for music (the other being Liverpool ) – but fuck it – you know London sells – so there’s a show there – I guess you can argue McGee brought these leather clad miscreants to the Smoke in the first place – so why shouldn’t he book a set in London 30 years on? Then it gets announced that Creation Management are up and running again and before you know it were right back there at the start.

Rolling down the hill falling and laughing and all that.

Careful, we might see The Mighty Lemon Drops playing some sort of ‘first’ album anytime soon. It’s like 1985 in 2015 (I think The Legend!’s going to put some 10” flexi out for RSD2015 (that’s record store day  folks) probably a red flexi – or possibly blue – but it will be limited edition -  to kind of sum it up…maaaaaaaaaan)

Now do not get me wrong – the JAMC were an awakening for a fourteen year old lad who’d missed out on that big punk/ plastic explosion – the JAMC were the third coming – an amalgamation of the Pistols, Velvets, Ronnettes and Stooges cool.

Absolutely grand – in so many ways.

And if I’m reaching for some noise it’s those boys I’m going for – all Spector beats – sqwawks and shrieks – rising feedback matching our rising alienation and the feeling that we just wanted to have a party (we’re gonna have real good time together). I recall the Whistle Test – 6pm in the evening and the scowl of Jim – swaying and posturing with his microphone – semi acoustic guitar slipping and a sliding around him – adding to the feedback fizz and William’s hunched guitar play all furious and on fire as Bobby and Douglas gave it that steady backbeat (you can use it) . It was riotous – not North London Poly riot – I mean generally riotous – it was noise on the telly – real noise.

Noise with Attitude (NWA) 

Now I loved The Smiths – they spoke to the insecurities of my teenage years – a confidence  expressing my feeling beyond thuggery – but you know I was never going to articulate that like Johnny Marr on the guitar – and thirteen olds shouldn’t write words to songs – they haven’t done out yet. They haven’t lived. So it was just me and my guitar – and as I said I was certainly no Marr – I’m hardly a Reid – but that cacophony and bluster – that attempt to control the sound yet let it run for itself – I thought I could give that go.

I never said I was a shy retiring teenager.

Those three chords gave you power and the ferocity of the JAMC’s raw power gave you confidence to try it out – in local pubs and clubs – on small stages or spaces with tables pushed aside – tuned up and turned up – irritating locals but not through choice – because you believed these were the best tunes ever written.  The Mary Chain did not set out to annoy – the just picked up the pieces from where rock n roll had fallen and broken. They put it back together. They meant it maaaaaaaan.

So the JAMC were perfect for me ( and you) they just used those basics of rock n roll and turned it into something of their own. This was a band hated by that muso scene – heavy on the muso scene – in their eyes they had no finesse – no grace – but to my eyes they simply had it all. I mean it – they had it all and I could at least emulate those ways – because I love/ hate rock n roll.  I just wanted something that was immediate – and so they were – Paul (my brother) duly purchased the album - we taped sessions from Janice Long, Jenson and Peel and fell in love with the whole fucking thing.

I still have a Jesus and Mary Chain T-shirt – I mentioned in a postway back then – one of the first or so – I still have that t-shirt now – it’s as old as Psychocandy.  I can’t get into it – I’m no lithe teenager now – in canvas and Chelsea boots.

So I probably won’t get to see/hear the JAMC –at the Troxy – because it will sell out – in minutes – faster than the length of ‘Upside Down’. We’re all into noise nostalgia now.  The good people of Shoreditch will lap it up. Perhaps that’s the way it should be - New audiences for old people.

But you know the JAMC are not a postmodern thing. They are the real thing.  That was modernity.  They were a part of my youth on the small streets of Scunthorpe – an alternative from the grind. I could hold my guitar to the amp and hope. As blast furnaces blew smoke to the skies.

Here’s to a wonderful set of concerts. Driven by sound and fury. Signifying something?  Enjoy it – because if they get half as close to that rush of energy from 1985 – then you’ll be in for a treat. 

Here is what I want it to look like . i actually think I have posted this before - but no one read it then (most likely like now) 

The Jesus and Mary Chain on The Whistle Test. 

I'm digging your scene (in between)

It’s been a mixed up, muddled up sequence of months. I can’t seem to find the in to write about sound. There’s old Junior Boy’s Own mix CDs in the car, back to back with a compilation of Horrible Histories numbers – all wonderfully sung and set up and they are jostling with three separate CDs for the kids  - hand picked for the holidays – Adam Ant, The Pale Blue Dots, Dion, Floyd, The Mamas and the Papas, Euros Childs, The Wellgreen and The Velvets and The Ramones – their choices – not mine – and I don’t need to buy them childsize t-shirts to prove a point – they just like the tunes  - and they are competing against downloads of every Festive 50 from 1977 with J Peel’s dulcet tones telling me that Mega City Four are at number 47 and all that. And then chancing across a Planetary Assault Systems Archives Two CD in a second hand shop in the ‘village’ – all adds up to a mixed up muddled up month of this sound and that.

So where to begin?

Sam Knee has a book coming out – book, well collection of photographs and interviews and recollections. It’s called ‘A Scene In Between’. It documents in colour and print this heady mix of youth rebellion neither post-punk nor grunge – not acid house or Britpop. It documents those that existed out there in cities and towns (guaranteed to bring you right down) dressing in secondhand clothes – not ‘vintage’ – we weren’t trying to start a fucking fashion trend. We weren’t stockpiling and ebaying as a business – it was what we wore. We had no money.

The clothes in Oxfam, The Salvation Army, Banardo’s and piled high on jumble sale tables – smelling faintly of death –reflected our 1960s and 1970s mentality. Not mining our past but repositioning style in an age of rampant commercialization and greed. We didn’t pay over the odds for our fabrics and fashions – it was a 50p t-shirt and an old fella’s anorak. Preferably brown.

We had home cut hair and found Chelsea boots in Shoefayre. It wasn’t a scene you could get just off the peg. There wasn’t ‘Urban Outfitters’ – you couldn’t even get it at the time in one place – not Topman nor Clockhouse (note intentional 80s referencing) We did not want to dress like Spandau or Duran Duran. We just wanted something that little bit different – shaped by our musical musings – our attentions drawn to the screech of feedback and threat of rock n roll.

And I guess – as Sam documents so well – it was a scene.  A whole freak scene – this in between lark. We were like minded youth dotted across the country. Of course there was that odd emergence of brutal working class thuggery – I remember in the final days of The Smiths – coach trip to Nottingham – when football chants merged with the chords of The Queen is Dead. Or those throwback misogynistic ogling and bellowing at the blonde singer in whichever ‘shambling’ band was hitting the charts that week.

Now I haven’t seen Sam’s book yet. I’ve read about it – and I hope you have too. I was goint to get myself along to the ‘release’ party – all private invites and nods and winks from publishing companies. It’s hard to imagine that photographs of bowlheaded youth and bands playing the Hull Adelphi and Kool Kat’s in Nottingham suddenly becoming worthy of a private launch – but here we are. Those photographs of an emerging scene – The Pastels or My Bloody Valentine snapped on cheap cameras (110 film anybody?) with cube flashes attached suddenly winging their way around the world into your arms.

But they are.

Sam’s got Stephen Pastel deejaying down at Rough Trade – ba baa ba ba ba baaa (that’s love). Heaven’s above.

It will be a great night I’m sure. I can’t get there. Other commitments. It’s what happens when you get older – but my photographs are in there. I guess yours are too. But seeing those snapshots of past times and fond crimes (against fashion and hair) had me return to the sounds of those singers and strummers of independent pop music. Music on the outside – yet to reach the charts. As I said earlier – way back at the start – my brother managed to get hold of the Peel Festive fifties. Ranging from 1977 right up into the 1990s. And I haven’t listened to it all – I never will – if I’m being honest. But I can read the entries – you don’t have to wait for each night when Peel played them. It’ a simple stream of songs. I  never voted in the Festive fifty. I remember a form in the NME – I think – it may have been a different end of year thing. Anyway you could fill in your choices and send then to John Peel. He would compile and count them. I believe he genuinely counted the votes. You’d just make it up now – you’d have a phone vote and rig the results.

Apologise, take the money and carry on regardless.

But it was that scene – the one from in between – that 85, 86 and 87 thing. Peel’s fifty begins to hint at the crossover – where in between becomes mainstream. Now don’t get me wrong there’s nothing untoward in being popular. Every artist wants the recognition. Just on whose terms is where the line is blurred. But you can sense the change – where Mega City 4 and The Weddoes becomes The Roses and De la Soul. I like the change. But you can we were entering different times. Flares were coming back. I don’t think you’ll see a pair of flares in Sam’s book. You might. Duglas was a true hipster – so you never know what to expect.  Yet I have a feeling I won’t see a pair. That was a scene too far.

Yet I was one of those bowlheaded youths in Sam’s book. And the connections made in the past resonate in the present.  We were all out of time and step with the modern world. We weren’t trying to recreate a sixties – we were just having our phase of experimentation with jangling guitars and stand up drums. It was a backlash to mass production. We were sick of style over substance – of that wake me up before you day-glo sheen on our screen when the Tory government were tearing down everything the spirit of ’45 had overseen. You know common sense prevails in the face of socialism – because it just wouldn’t work. Oh well – better listen to the Sea Urchins then – takes your mind off the fact the factories were closing and you were on free school meals. Or it just might have focused it.

Different strokes for different folks see. 

Sam’s book is a majestic affair – an affair of the heart. I can see why we all contributed those photographs from the past. Because back then it mattered. It felt we weren’t just part and parcel of a system that serves to commodify and homogenise culture. We were politicised – we talked about equality – we wanted a different system.

My Bloody Valentine feature in the book, you know that Dave Conway era – slightly airbrushed and rewritten now. But MBV offered something different beneath it all, and the Mary Chain, and The Pastels – and  and and.  MBV can’t even get nominated for an industry award these days – because they’re still on the outside looking in – well actually not looking in – looking away.

Looking the other way. Just as we did back then. Here’s to more scenes in between – they unite the fray(ed) and the fucked up.

As it’s been a while here are three songs to listen to.  They represent the scowl and the menace – the aesthetic and dedication to find glamour in the faded towns we all grew up in. 

Doing it for the kids

There is always a moment of genuine disappointment with any musical find - that point when someone else connects with your band, group or singer  and you feel they have invaded your house with their rowdy ways and sullied everything.

This used to happen a great deal when I was younger - thinner but thicker - as I clearly missed the point that record companies only wanted our money and anyone's loyalty. But there were record labels that tried not to sell out - at the beginning - and had an independent spirit - a small scale cottage industry approach to getting the 'new sounds' to the kids.

So when Paul bought a Velvet Underground record - or I found a Bachelor Pad record it was because we had somehow taken that journey to that discovery by ourselves [with a thousand other people - but it felt like our own] I'm not certain that I care about the 'find' anymore - it used to be the defining moment of an 'indie kid's' life - but having three children that tire you out - that take up all your thoughts and fears and hopes and therefore your love doesn't leave much space to devoting your life to The Driscolls and all that they released.  But there was a time when I remember that record arriving at my house and finding its blend of chiming sixties beat pop and catchy simplicity to be a discovery akin to Darwin's. It wasn't and I find myself thinking more about Darwin these days than i do about the Driscolls.

To be honest I'm not certain how my children will discover music - my house had a few records in - good ones and bad ones. Elton John's Greatest Hits, Queen's Greatest Hits, The Rolling Stones Greatest HIts [no Beatles - pure rock n roll my parents] Simon and Garfunkel, and an Elvis Presley gatefold live affair that I seriously thought had been signed to my mum with 'Mary Thanks Elvis' - clearly it was 'Many Thanks Elvis' and it was a real signature it was part of the 'personal design' - in fact if you think about it if it had been signed I'm not sure why my mum would have kept it in a cabinet with the telephone on it. But there you go. My parents weren't keen to school me in the ways of popular culture - they didn't have time.

I actually saw a kid yesterday with a RAMONES t-shirt and different coloured Croc sandals - he was about eight and his mum was with him [clearly coming out of her goth revival days] now that kid might like the RAMONES. He really might have found the RAMONES for himself. Actually I don't know why I feel so bitter about it - I am certain my children will rummage through the records. Although we are currently dancing to a 7inch of Scottish Country dancing and a french song called Mashed Potatoes.


So this brings me to the Jesus and Mary Chain - a McGee discovery on the b-side of a cassette tape all fuzzed up, feedbacking fuckery. Whilst Upside Down was the breath of [dirty] air I was inhaling it was 'Never Understand' that really made sense to me.

I remember the red cover of the  Jesus and Mary Chain 'Never Understand' - it's simplicity and brutality there on the sleeve - now clearly the JAMC had switched to Blanco Y Negro - but McGee had some how orchestrated this move to keep with the independent foundations of Creation [well i'm saying that now] But it was that initial Creation release that led to this - the rise of the independents - their moving into bed with the big boys - oh it came back to haunt them but still - i still view 'Never Understand' as an independent record. So let's return to putting this slice of honest angst on the record player. Again if I remember - Paul had somehow found his way into the JAMC vibe and was introducing it to his younger brother - this 7 inch single purchased in WH SMITHS i think - rotating steadily at 45rpm.

The simple crackle of a rotating disc as the needle finds its way into the sounds contained within. A slow shriek of feedback growing ever monstorous as those Spector[ish] drums help us navigate the feelings of people just getting you wrong. You never understand me - you never understand. It's this heavy thrill of rock n roll at the core surrounded by the scottish temperament - there's a coldness - an estate mentally that says we live here - we hate it - you hate us. This machine kills all idiots. I bought a t-shirt too - a JAMC t-shirt - always show your allegiances - well you do at that age - and i can just about fit into it - in the mornings generally. The t-shirt is 25 years old. The Mary Chain still matter. Some things are as simple as that.

The Jesus and Mary Chain - Never Understand