McCarthy never had the internet at their disposal

Well Thatcher died.

And it’s all been pomp and circumstance and bowed heads and lowered voices round here – these London streets and grey brick buildings. They’ve sold it as a memorial for a mother (mutha) whilst forgetting the union flag and horse drawn carriages and coppers waiting to stave your head in if you feel like disagreeing. Or was that at Orgreave?

And it throws me back to that humdrum town. That did its best to drag me down – hold me down – spin me round. I was a teenager when the hair helmeted bag-clutching woman ruled the (air)waves. They were banning records under her then – but relax (don’t do it) that wouldn’t happen now. So an old tune fails to make the top spot – the BBC won’t play it – lives will not be changed – weren’t going to anyway, anyhow or anywhere.

Ding Dong.

It was an odd climate during the 1980s. You couple a selfish politics with a teenage angst and you get what? A rollercoaster ride with The Smiths and Rick Astley and  Wham and the Bunnymen. If there’s a legacy from that era it’s the mixtapes and mis-purchased 7 inch singles from shops in precincts all over this green and pleasant land. As I’ve said before it was about taking sides (it’s what you do when you’re young – perpetual opposition to this and that) and feeling passionate about things – well that was just the teenage me – forever passionate - you’d wake up to a (beautiful) morning and fill it with everything she would set about dismantling – you’d read a newspaper or a book from the library – go to your comprehensive school with your friends from down the road  - closing your door on that council house and make decisions. A great deal seemed possible then – a lot less seems possible now.

I don’t recall the moment I thought she was wrong. You have to remember I was 8 when she was voted in but it  didn’t take Billy Bragg or assorted red wedgers to open my eyes to the inequality in England’s dreaming. It was there in the culture of the everyday. I was born looking at the furnaces. Which sound kind of blues – except our delta started on Frodingham Road – do ya get me? And if I’m honest I was born in Yorkshire – but hey hum you’ve gotta have a bit of artistic licence aintcha? And as I’ve stated before – it’s all about repetition, repetition, repetition  - this isn’t some Northern rant about the values of Middle England and overpaid City types not caring about our New England. Believe me there were plenty who respected that woman in my own street.

It’s all muddled now – it was then those politics and industry. I’m currently reading How Soon is Now? By Richard King, a weighty tome – but an easy read about the ‘mavericks’ in the music business (in readiness to manage The Pale Blue Dots  - that’s a lie – a possibility – but a lie nonetheless) Already his depiction of the world then so contrasts with the world now – except it still doesn’t listen. But you kind of had goodies and baddies – the ones you trusted and the ones you couldn’t stand. The Queen is dead, tramp the dirt down, Free Nelson Mandela, Reggae fi Blair and whose side are you on boys? You know where you stood. On solid ground – not sinking sands – I am not a changed man. I had a plan – I wasn’t waiting for it.

I hated hectoring, lecturing and holding forth. But I did it anyway. I once extolled the reasons why love didn’t exist in a lesson based on social mobility and class in  A-level Sociology – I was fun to be around. Not knowing now how much that means when you look at your own children and wonder what you’ll do when they fly the nest (which they won’t – I won’t let ‘em) Or actually how much The Beach Boys can save your life when you’ve  just been dumped and feel your heart would break. Nonsense the lot of it – but music finds its way to worm and wriggle inside you.

All the while sounds accompanied my moves as policies eroded my liberties. Trade unions diminished and people set about mistrusting each other – they might be HIV Aids ridden junkies or different in colour, pro abortion or Greenham common missile stompers, Argie sympathisers or flare wearing lefties. You were fucked with a beard in the eighties – unless it was designed mind you – you’re welcome with a fucking beard today - you can join Mumford and Sons and that. I was sifting through tapes over Easter – of interviews and live performances – of excitement and not knowing then what I know now. But it seems everything we did had a political bearing someway on what we do now. From small time fanzine writing – to starting chain letter collectives – and record labels and distribution channels – perhaps we were just mini Thatchers  - perhaps we wanted the big time after all – I honestly wanted equality and art and aesthetics and understanding to rule the day. I was (not) naive I was thinking.

It just seems you can’t think like that anymore.

Which brings me to McCarthy.

McCarthy would have been massive had they had the internet at their disposable. The enraged would have inherited the earth. What is apparent is that not everyone wanted to play Live Aid – that music didn’t have to be over-produced and conveyor belt built – it could be both thought provoking and wonderful to listen to. I remember venturing over to see McCarthy in Leeds - the Duchess –it’s closed now – it’s got a shop in it – I’d been rehearsing a play all day – Andy Capp – in the sixth form – all cloth caps and pints – which is fairly reminiscent of today – but that’s another story.  Made the train station just in time – my brother already there – long gone without me, mainly because The Impossibles were supporting. I wasn’t completely familiar with McCarthy at the time but I was happy enough to surround myself in melodic guitar and honest – yet brutal lyricism with these four comprehensive Barking blokes making that great leap forward in musical manifestos to the downtrodden and class divided masses.

At the time I thought they were massive – I mean they were on a tour – selling out The Duchess – they had t-shirts and that – to me their message was reaching the people (and more power to them). I found my meandering words about them from that time – my inept sermon on politics and pop (I’m continuing it now) – and I focus on the slide show – the cut up images and slogans that accompanied their set – and there’s a line – written twenty five years ago – and it states simply that – it would be nice to imagine that everybody in Leeds who saw them that night- woke up and realised that things could change – and in my own strange way I enjoyed it for that political element.

They confronted in jangles and rhymes.

Nicky Wire has said of the band: "McCarthy - the great lost band of the '80s they redesigned my idea of politics and pop, it could be intelligent, it could be beautiful. They were frail, tragic, romantic idealists. The songs soothed your body but exercised your brain. They were my education, my information and they are partly to blame for the realisation of the Manic Street Preachers.’ Once I would have considered that abhorent – but I’m glad Nicky Wire formed the Manics because of McCarthy. There’s always been a sense of opposition with the Preachers rock n roll.

Couldn’t fail to be really.

Maybe it was living through all of this and that – her sleights and mistrust of us – of an emerging selfishness in others – in ourselves maybe -  in this Northern town that politicised and energised us – caused argument and offence – shaped outlooks and opinions. All this youth power – not divided by gender – or gimmick felt so very real at that moment. And then came acid house – and we forgot our anger – we organised and caused chaos with grins on our faces. But they had us by then – they had us all where they wanted.

There was no going back.

Thatcher’s dead. There’s no going back. So let’s listen to McCarthy – we’re all bourgeois now aren’t we?   

This bird has flown.

I used to ride my bike out and about the sallow streets of Scunthorpe. People to see, places to be – busy busy busy me. There was a sense of freedom in having a set of wheels that could propel you from A to B (then down to Zee). I never progressed to a moped – or a Honda 50cc – it was pedal power. I would cycle out to Normanby Hall up and over that steeltown to pastures new and fresh. Escape the town. Searching for some tranquillity, well some privacy. And when you are young and run free [keep your teeth nice and clean] you feel alright.

You feel that anything just might be possible.

And I’ve been thinking about this green and pleasant land somewhat. England’s dream an all that. Those flashes of countryside and the urge to go running through fields and meadows – all bowlheaded youth and innocence.

You know when I look at this town – brings me right down.

Which brings me to Kes.Most things eventually arrive at that film’s door. It’s why I do what I do I guess.

I can’t exactly pinpoint when I saw this film. I feel I lived it. It felt incredibly alive to me. That opening sequence of shadow and silence – as bags filled with newspapers are shipped round streets by children on bikes and worn out shoes. I used to post the papers. I used to post the letters. Solitary jobs with banal chit chat in between.

I’ve spent my life doing that.

And I mean the chit chat is banal whilst at work. It’s hard to get to know a person when you wear the suit and carry the clipboard. Well ipad these days – we’re all hyperlinked now maaaan.

But back to the film with the bird in.

It’s a film that seeps beneath the skin. All extinguished hope and brutality. And this is where the score is so important. I am fan of the sound in film. The need to guide and explain through timbre and tone. I like its absence and its abundance in the frame – it helps a film if you can feel it to. John Cameron’s pastoral shadings grounded in the blown and plucked instrumentation of a quintet ready to conjure up hope and cheer whilst ultimately pegged to the melancholic and solitary, is both haunting and exhilarating. I wanna be free – free as a bird. This combination of simple instrumentation that documents the countryside and floats on air whilst tethered to that fragile state on land makes my heart bleed.

As I get older – and believe me it seems to becoming thick and fast – swift and sharp I return to that beautiful film and wonderful score. Emma bought it for me. A simple CD of soaring tunes. Untethered in Jarvis Cocker’s words as John Cameron composes and conducts this five piece to flight. English composers need sharing. We don’t share enough of this. This music is not about winning competitions. This is cold houses and bingo callers, booze in pubs and fights and chips. It is not a fairytale. It is music to soundtrack the humdrum – the inevitable - yet it asks us to want that little bit more.

It is socialist in sound – egalitarian in spirit.

I caught a moment of Downton or some other serialised shit that only has the working class as servants. There are no other depictions of them – of us these days. Unless you count the horrorshow of public aping and baiting from Jeremy Kyle to Britain’s got Talent. You see Hines had a care – Loach had this film made. They want us to have a voice even if we fucking choke it ourselves. There’s nothing wrong in being eduated you know. Nothing wrong about that. It gives you some choice – not a great deal – but something better.

There is thought in every moment of this film.

This is not a soundtrack of the time. It resonates now. Thought given to frame and direction as Cameron scores this tragedy from beginning to end. They used a clip from the film in the Olympics they didn’t use Cameron’s score. Missed opportunity – and I thought Cocker was involved.

Having children and being so close to those pit villages when I was younger and swaddled in this industrial life reminds me that choices might have changed for the youth but the class system still fucking grinds you down. And Cameron’s music serves to remind us that we deserve better. There’s nothing wrong in escape – of wanting some beauty in your life. Casper wasn’t looking to tear down this existence – he wasn’t a poster boy for Thatcherism – Casper sought his beauty in nature – in the opposite of the filth – he was still full of fury though.

We’re all full of fury at times. Little fury things.

There’s no real point discussing the film here. You either know it or you don’t. Suffice to say that it’s in most things that I do – the humour, the politics and the style. I once taught a Film Studies class who bought me a signed poster by the cast, Hines and Loach as a leaving present. It wasn’t ironic – they loved Kes too. I want it shown on the BBC on a monthly basis – so it gets stumbled upon by the unassuming. Either that or it goes head to head with the X Factor.

The bird wins every time.

I want my children to have some opportunities. I want them to be able to listen to music like this. I want them to do what they want. I will not let them have their wings clipped.

John Cameron re-wrote Whole Lotta Love too – the TOTP theme tune. That was different from this. But you know there’s a few sides to everyone.

This is from Kes. Listen.