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. 

This is the new record by

There was a chance twitter feed – a facebook post – and suddenly there was a new album – new sounds from the past. Existing out there in spite of the industry - maaaan. A rush and a push and the songs are ours – they just threw them up on the net. This is not how things used to be done. The times they are a changin’. Everyone has gone a little Bowie – a touch Radiohead.

You used to have to live with the anticipation of something emerging – hints that the band were recording – that they’d played a new song live in someplace in Norfolk. You might find a bootleg cassette at a record fair in Doncaster with the track listing saying ‘New One’ on it. Could this be on the new album – would it sound like it did on the tape – would the lyrics have changed?

I saw The Smiths in 1985 – in Scotland – a short tour of the isles – an intimate thing before the onset of superstardom – if you count getting to number 14 a blast of the big time (mind you  - you did have to sell more records then – to be in the charts) and they played Frankly Mr Shankly and Bigmouth Strikes Again – two new ones – real things played for our very ears. A glimpse of something fresh coming our way. It made the wait that much harder – us – that is my Scottish counterparts and I knew that The Queen is Dead would already have two wonderfully lyrical ditties that we could fail our arms and look effete to. What I’m getting at is that the wait and anticipation of the ‘next’ album was both exhilarating and frightening.

Or seeing Smile performed by Brian Wilson in the Royal Festival Hall. These familiar songs all fitting into place as Wilson let us all share in his vision – his sound and vision. It wasn’t released at that point – it was bootlegged and shared and discussed and whispered about  - this long lost long player – and now we we’re hearing it. And we knew it would be released. It built the anticipation. It filled the waking hours. Okay – not quite – I had a newly born beauty at that time and she was taking up most of my thoughts – they tend to take most of them these days too. I do remember buying SMiLe though – I was so worried that the local shops wouldn’t be stocking it (this is in London mind) that i left work – boarded a train to the centre of the city and purchased my copy in HMV on Oxford Street and then zoomed home – to the loft to listen and feel the psychedelia (do you get me?)

Our two bit rock n roll band once played some merry dates with Primal Scream and I remember Gillespie playing Automatic by the JAMC over the PA – it was just out and he was digging it. This new record (well cassette) in his hands. Was it living up to expectations? In Bobby’s eyes you could tell he was happy – you could tell that this third record by his friends was a beauty – full of scowl and growl – tight drums and loud guitars. There’s something beautiful and tangible in a new release – a new record by.

In some ways I’ve known this record was coming for years – we knew Kevin hadn’t given up on music – on sonic experimentation – on turning his amp on and making a racket. No he’d continued that trend since the inevitable collapse/ demise/ retirement of My Bloody Valentine in the early 1990s. There where snippets and gossip – map references that led us nowhere. So Sugar given away with a magazine was a song buried in layers of dirt with squirming guitars and rolling electronic drums – a continuation but a difference. Then suddenly nothing. Rumours on pages and casual conversations that heralded Shields as the new Lee Mavers – obsessed by ancient equipment and elusive sounds that couldn’t be drawn from his head to his strings – from his hands to his amps. It was as if we forgot that Belinda, Colm and Debbie also played a part – they have ideas too. So over the years Shields became this revered thing of sonic manipulation of playing with the very foundations of pop music. Ephemeral and concrete – loud and soft – right there with you but dancing in the distance. I have downloads and bits from ballets and outtakes but what I didn’t have until Saturday was the new record by My Bloody Valentine.  There was a fading hope that there would never be a new record by My Bloody Valentine – but here it is.

And already there’s disappointment floating and filling cyberspace – oh if only it had been more like this – or I think it should have pushed the boundaries more. You know as if the valentines were a contrived thing like Sigue Sigue Sputnik – out to unite the pointless and facile. They weren’t making music that they considered new and dangerous they just happened to forge out this sound – you could see it building from This is your Bloody Valentine – it’s already there – visceral, pounding and in your face. They are a band who make music. Some of it sounds similar. Christ, The Beach Boys put out an album last year – it kind of had harmonies and eulogies to God on – maaan that’s so 67 – soooooo Petttt Sounnnds. It was bound to be. And this is My Bloody Valentine – the guitars take off like aircraft and shimmer like the heat on the pavement – they are loud and the words are not clear. What did you want a fucking U2 meets Radiohead type of vibe?

It’s music – and it’s very good music too. M B V is a wonderful modern album – an extension of and looking back at the past. Why? Because it was always going to be like that. And I’m alright with that. I do think the sound has changed though – it sounds more live in its feel. Guitars are scratched and strummed – they feedback and jar at times. Nearly drag the song to a standstill. They sit on top of the mix – they are instruments in themselves – not the wash and blur of Loveless. It feels a little hurried – which is ironic – you know twenty years in the waiting all that. Perhaps it is the download copy I have - but the songs stop and start – they explode into sound whereas Loveless just felt like it floated along – these songs were there to breathed.

But it isn’t Loveless – and that’s fine.

I’ve already found myself singing along with the opening tune – making up sounds like a male Liz Frazer to fill my lack of real words. It takes off from where Loveless ended – it skips around the houses – pops to the shops and ends back where it started – with flanged double speed breaks and stuttering guitars.

There’s always been a beauty in the noise that the Valentines create, something aching at the heart of it. And it’s there tucked inside every tune – a fragility covered in bombast – as guitars breakdown and seek therapy. This post shoegaze psychedelic melee – this unique sound of a band as an army – taking down the enemy through sonic prowess. I fucking love ‘em. Once again I trawled the comments and barbed quotes about waiting 20 years to post a review because that’s how long it took to release the album and someone on The Guardian debating whether Throbbing Gristle were the real experimentalists – of course they were – but we’re not all listening to them on a regular basis. They hurt your ears. Someone even managed to get into a spat about whether Ned’s Atomic Dustbin really had pushed the boundaries in the 1990s rather than My Bloody Valentine. There was no irony – or a knowing wink – it was all genuine.

The thing is – Shields and co have released a beautiful noise ridden long player – it isn’t polished – it is neither contemporary nor rooted in the past  - bar those early 90s drum and bass riddim breaks. It sounds like the valentines – it has new songs on it. Brian had to follow Smile – Jonny Carson on Fifteen Big Ones was not a step forward – so why are we wanting and expecting more from this? In some ways I wish there was more of the ambient textures of Loveless – that unif(r)ied sound that captured waking in a dream. I used to listen to the Tremolo EP at New Cross Station – up for work and travelling to Euston - on a cassette player from Boots – kind of a walkman – but you could record with it – and those songs used to merge with the outside world – sounds swapped over – cars, birds, trains and announcements, conversations and shouts, bleeps from ticket machines and the very thoughts inside my head mixing in the spaces and shapes that they created. I used to drift to work.

So here drums are buried and sounds layered – except this time you can seem to tell when Belinda’s axe is riding over Kevin’s – this is a guitar band writ large. There’s the sound of computerized bass – but with added feeling – and tremolo guitars in a song like ‘new you’. Or synthesised organs, like a futuristic ‘Meant for You’ and heartfelt honesty in ‘if this and yes’. Then grinding repetitive posturing in ‘nothing is’. It’s like Panda Bear got angry. If you understand what I mean.

This is the new record by My Bloody Valentine. I like the new record by My Bloody Valentine. 

This is new electric pop and soul

When I was in my twenties – Paul – my brother and Ian – our bassist – and of course friend – used to fantasize about seeing the return of Brian Wilson. Not the Eugene Landy version – although we thought the ‘Brian Wilson’ album was sublime in places – it was just the digital production that was letting us down. That momemt when the keyboard sounds over enhanced or the reverb is too crisp and lacks the warmth [of the sun] we had become accustomed to from repeated listens to Today and Summer Days Summer Nights. 

No we collectively channeled our desire into seeing the real Brian ‘back’. Our late night haze creating the set lists that Brian would sing as Mike Love took a kicking from all of us for stepping on Brian’s [vocal] chords for all those years.  We never thought it would happen though – much like hearing Smile – it was the stuff of dreams.

Those holy grails of pop.

Yes we had bought the Smile t-shirt from Pet Sounds in Newcastle – postal orders duly sent off – we had the artwork – just not the tunes. Well not the real finished item. Somehow we had acquired tapes and bits and pieces of unfinished teenage symphonies to God – mainly from Duglas from the BMX Bandits – a lovely listener and unselfish sharer of sounds all the way from Scotland on handwritten C90 cassettes. He made bleak days in steeltowns somehow seem sunny.

But it happened. Paul and I – unfortunately not with Ian – it should have been with Ian – but he wasn’t ‘on the scene’ then. First witnessing the beauty of Pet Sounds in fourth row seats in a Nottingham hall to finally shaking Van Dyke Parks hand as Smile was aired for the first time in London. And we were there. Witnessing that Brian was well and truly ‘back’.

So Smile was dutifully bought and loved beyond reason. I guess it wasn’t the real Smile – but it was a Smile made with love and [mercy] and affection – it felt like it belonged to Brian and therefore it mattered to us. It wasn’t 67 but it was still breathtaking and ‘out there’.

Blew my mind – phew – with all its good vibrations.

And this got me thinking to all those lost gems – those mythical musical monsters that we’ve heard excerpts and snippets from. Records like the legendary third My Bloody Valentine album – although to be honest they have released four albums but Berlin squalls and Lazy simplicity don’t seem to count in that story. It’s the Creation years – the big bankrupt stories – the perfection and re-re-re-recording of guitars and bends. And now it looks like it will eventually see the light of day – somewhere in Shields sonic schedule we’ll get to final bathe in the bliss of blended guitars and claustrophobic beats.

Then there’s the maverick Maver’s and that second La’s long player – but even with sprinkles of sixties dust on monitors and mixers has yet to be finished. You can find bits and pieces – scattered over limited CD releases and bootleg files that do the rounds on the internet. But it isn’t the album we were meant to – going to hear – it certainly isn’t the record that Lee wants to hear – otherwise it would be here. Now.

But the one that keeps me up at night and would have kept Paul, Ian and me up all night is mention of World of Twist’s second album. The Twist were a wonderful Manchester band of real entertainers and dreamers. They were the future of rock n roll – an acid Manc MC5. Looking forward with an eye on the past. All of that and so much more.

Genuine pop potential. They never made it big. Their first album ‘Quality Street’ is a treat. Popping and fizzing with shock and awe all over its tracks. Except it sounds shit. No bottom end – all treble and no amps turned to 10. They made up for it live though – you forgave everything when they performed. They had it. Simple as that. So even though I often play Quality Street and I’ve written about the Twist before – I stumbled over something at the weekend that blew my mind again.

When Tony Ogden – the lead singer of World of Twist died I was gutted. Paul as ever had tracked down his recent excursions into the studio – most likely situated in his bedroom – and purchased Escape from the Love Machines by placing a tenner in his hand – a tenner that most likely went on hedonism and good times. And I thought there was that returning beauty in songs like Honey and then he goes and dies. Dead. No more tunes. Over. Obituaries written and mention of a second glorious World of Twist album, John Robb rubbing it in that it lived up to all those expectations we had – a Manchester ‘Smile’.

So another trawl through the internet – a hopeful google search and a set of redundant returns. Hoping that one day someone – perhaps the Adge would just put it out there – not looking for a return. And so to Soundcloud – I was looking for something else  - that’s sure fine looking man – something like a Carl Craig mix when a fleeting unguarded moment meant I’d typed the twist into the search facility.

And there it was. Nine tracks – mostly instrumental – but nine tracks of new World of Twist material. Nine new ones. I immediately rang my brother. I asked him to record it – he has his ways and means. I was shaking when I said what I’d found. It’s 2012 and I found the fucking Twist. This was the culmination of what the internet was invented for – that and shifting your old Adam Ant badges [but that’s another story about how I invented social networking and ebay before other people’s minds caught up]

I know it’s not in its final mix and they’ll be no unveiling at the Royal Festival Hall – but this one chimes right up there with sitting and hearing Smile played in it’s entirety by Wilson and friends. It is simply the World of Twist making music that begins to hint at how it should have sounded. It’s an Indiana Jones moment when you chose the right grail – it’s Tony and friends making pop music.

It is as simple as that. I will not describe it. You’ll either get it or you won’t.

There are some things that should never be lost to the masses.  There is no youtube link – this is a soundcloud file.

Play it and listen to it all. 

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

when they scream they hurt your ears

There was a time when the incessant screech of feedback would be enough to hook me – to reel me in. This anti-musical sound. As the children now scream at the tops of their voices over everything from the type of spoon they have to whether they can have a bath – ‘right now’ it seems that I am living in my own version of Metal Machine Music – endless looping on the locked groove of side four. This appeal to wallow in the primal [scream] sound of fuzzing guitars and discordant melody that rattles and shakes the windows – let alone the bones was amply fulfilled in the teenage years of angst and anger.

There is a point in Sister Ray where the feedback curls into a phrase that I am sure was sampled by the Beasties. It’s the simplicity of the thing – the movement of the guitar, the speaker, the volume – and you can hear it – rushing to fill the emptiness. I would listen to those frequencies throughout my teenage years.

I think a steel town is made for feed backing guitars

And those moments in You Made Me Realise where guitars breakdown and the sound of screaming emerges. I had been into the valentines for some time – that anorak rush of ‘paint[ing] a rainbow’ while we [sunny sundae]smiled. It had all been bowlheads and treble guitars – our band ventured to a Leeds studio to recreate the highs of the Ecstasy long player – we were shrill [they were brill]. But the valentines kept on subsuming, rewriting, becoming fluid, this sound – this heavy heavy sound. Another Adelphi moment was had in the company of My Bloody Valentine, as I fired inane questions at Kevin Shields whilst he ripped pieces of paper from my question list to sort the floating tremolo on his Jaguar guitar. This was the start of Isn’t Anything - a disengagement from that Lazy past to a lazy future.

I stumbled across the video for You Made Me Realise – this super Super 8 footage of broken things and destruction as looped psychedelia washed over and over – not a bad way to start your day – as the Chart Show counted down the Top 10 Independent tunes. You knew it was a good day if you had managed to wake up early and have watched the Chart Show – how do you set your achievements with a rolling video station? If you saw the Chart Show you had made it up by 11.30 am – you’d seen in a morning.

And I would spend many a time in the company of My Bloody Valentine – I mean I would listen to them a great deal. The Tremolo E.P on tape- pushed into a Boots tape player all hiss and fizz in itself – as Honey Power played through the speakers as trains pulled in at New Cross Station – not the station’s speakers my headphones – but those merging of the everyday and the slow pulsating noise of Shield’s and Butcher’s guitars combining to create a new way of sensing the world – through haze and dreams as aeroplanes landed just outside. I witnessed the explosive effect of MBV several times – in Leeds, in York and London. Standing in the ULU alone within the crowd for two nights on the bounce – my body burning from the searing heat I had allowed it to be revealed to – this lobster turning redder – this celtic complexion having no favours done as the rough denim and large black jumper rubbed against that sunburnt skin. But I was there – right within the experience as You Made Me Realise came to a stop and the growl was released – slowly unfolding – sending us back – literally to the doors. I had a ticket for the Manchester MBV reunion – my brother having sorted them out – the tickets not the band that is. I couldn’t make the London shows and instead plumped for the sonic Sunday shenanigans in the North. Except I never made it – in a sad attempt to focus on my career I decided the futures of potential sixth formers was more important than Colm, Belinda, Debbie and Kevin’s attempts to make eardrums bleed and stomachs somersault. So the train was not caught and a well earned day off from school not had and the ticket remained unused – and my hearing was intact for a little longer.

So I have been listening to the ‘holocaust section’ from the ICA warm up concert – a stop start shambling sonic experience as the band slowly begin to lock into that symbiotic soul set up – creating beauty from noise. It lasts for fourteen minutess – I think it was stretched to around twenty minutes by the end of the tour. It isn’t the kind of ‘tune’ you kick off your Saturday night with. No that’s going to be a Sly and the Family Stone track. But as Kevin kicks in the effects and the initial squall begins to settle and through the chaos comes ambience [with teeth] it hurts and it rattles around and I have the option to switch it off – to forward the file. But I linger – I stay sucked in and listen – as pitches descend and tones ring with one another, against each other – discordant and melodic and slowly these frequencies take on even more shape – more substance as the rise and fall of the decibels continues – and somewhere in there I hear a plane – pushing its engines – searching for lift as the sky explodes in strobe light. As we begin to lose our breath and wake within that dream that Kevin and co. are beginning to soundtrack – and slowly we sway – we lose ourselves in this expansive mess of sound.

And then when we are thoroughly submitted – stupefied by the screech –we are jolted back with Debbie’s push of bass and Colm’s thump of the skins. That final riff – left ringing in the air.

This is music.

It may be in debt to this and that – the Stochausen and Sonic Youth and No Wavers and 60s chancers – but this is music that asks to be acknowledged – to be confronted – fought with.

And sometimes I feel like a fight.