The Lincoln Imp and the possibilities of live performance

I have noticed how much of this writing is tinged with the buzz buzz buzz of live performance. Of witnessing [tha fitness] the moment a band, a singer, a this or a that gives you that moment of sincerity and you fall head over heels in love with them again. Or even love them more.

There is a small local public house in Ashby – well not even Ashby – just sort of deposited in a road behind some houses – with a small drag of shops servicing nobody these days. I mean it’s not on Broadway – do you get me? I used to do boxing there – under the bar. All blood, sweat and tears. Leather gloves and Scunthorpe thugs.

I lasted a few weeks.

Head ringing in the ring. All Tom and Jerry birds circling heads – which is something my boys have taken to saying when they pretend or actually hit their heads – ‘can you see the birds, daddy? ‘ Well I have done. Downstairs in that public house. So I packed it in and most likely started listening to Frankie goes to Hollywood on a regular basis. It was always about extremes with me. However, I would venture there again – not down the steps to the ring but across the carpeted backroom – well I think it was a side room – and to the stage – let leash the sounds rehearsed in bedrooms, garages and church halls. All feedback squall, or glitter beat glam and acid modernism – to audiences of ten or more. There was both a sincerity and pomposity in it all. Small time promoters in small town situations – but you felt like Andrew ‘Loog’ Oldham - shaping a scene with a sprinkle of ‘pop’ magic.

It wasn’t just the Lincoln Imp mind you – there was Bentleys, The Crosby, The Royal Hotel, The Bridge, The Wortley or the Baths. There were others as well - local WMCs putting on bands  – all honky tonk C&W and synthesizer duos called ‘The 2 of Us’ or ‘Mirror Mirror’ – our anorak culture from 1985 – 89 wasn’t suited to that really. But I would have my taste at the Snooker club dances held throughout the year as Mandy tottered on heels and I put on a shirt to eat pie and peas and ‘jive’ with the best of them to the latest act booked by Sean Coleman’s dad or mine at a club located opposite a cemetery with my secondary school a stone’s throw away for walks home in the dark.

And each one of us would aim to put on a night of this and that. Some live – some just playing records. Nonetheless the possibility of live performance fuelling our minds with super rock stardom and pure adoration spurred us onward. It was a Scunthorpe scene maaaan. But as I’ve previously stated there is something explosive about sounds happening in the real. When things can fall apart or the edge [not The Edge] in the room gets soaked up in the songs.

I haven’t been to a gig for a while. I was going to go and see The Primitives this week – keep it in the past Alan, keep it tucked right back in the past. And time races by in bedtimes and bottles and kisses and cuddles. I still might go and see The Primitives this week. It’s on Friday at the Borderline – a venue I seem to find myself in once a year – as old artists’ audiences shrink and deplete and only the most ardent are prepared to pay the ticket price. That’s if there any tickets left.

I once followed The Primitives around the North and the Midlands, taking in the heady rush of bass and fuzz, fuzz, fuzz guitar coupled with simplistic rhythms and bittersweet vocals. In an orange Hillman Imp driven by a wonderful friend named Darryl. That thrill of it all – entering a venue – I was 16 at the time all underage and ready for booze and shouting. In a positive manner that is – not a late night Scunthorpe brawl in a tarmaced car park off Doncaster Road. You could smell the cigarettes and spilt drinks worn in from endless nights of energy. It’s what the youth did. Does.

My love of The Primitives live experience stretched to Paul and I hopping on a train down to London for an all dayer at The Boston Arms in Tufnell Park [The Impossibles played too – I think our love knew no bounds for them] Nowhere to stay but up for it anyway – all wide eyed and green – but we managed it – sleeping rough in some school grounds until the first tube trains started running. You do that kind of thing when you’re young – I couldn’t imagine it now – or letting my kids do it. But we did.

And we returned. Safe and sorted.

I would stay out far past my bedtime in this capital city on many occasions since then – but that was the first time. And all of those fears and teenage trepidation where outweighed by Tracy Tracy singing (We’ve) Found a way (to the Sun) just for me. I know it wasn’t - but it always felt that way. And that’s what I get from those moments when the notes collide and the feedback lingers longer than the producer would ever allow. It’s the live ‘feelin’ – it’s being there. From the small stages in steel towns to aircraft hangers we watched The Cure in time and time again there’s a feeling that goes with the territory that you can’t emulate at home. Paul sent me all the Velvet Underground records sometime last month. Buried within the mp3s was a live album that has Lou and co just rocking uptown with the glamorous and fawning. But you can tell this is a band who are at the top of their game – confident – inventive and not feared to take a risk. Switching from the chug and fug of basic guitars whilst feedback howls and things get spiked up to the simplicity of Mo Tucker sticking with you through it all. And in all of that is a super funked exploration of Waiting for my Man – all fluid and loose with rolling bass and guitar licks. It’s incredible – but not Andy’s vision for the album. I know I wasn’t at the gig – but I can feel it. There’s something special taking place in the room. I’m not certain that always happened at The Lincoln Imp – but it has to start somewhere – so credit to the owners of all those local establishments who allowed us to promote and gloat and float our ideas out there. We might not have quite been the velvets but it was all about experimenting.

Should I go to see The Primitives this week? I think I’m convinced already.

Are you coming down the front?

Here’s the Velvets. It takes a while to get going. But stick with it. This is a faster version than the one on the bootleg album I was writing about above but I think it rolls particularly well.

Jimmy Saville is dead and the Velvets never played TOTP

There is a constant need to elevate Top of the Pops to mythical heights – a programme that could supposedly bring about cultural and political change because ‘acts’ had done a ‘turn’. The power of television to transform and shape our futile existence. And they’re turning up ‘lost footage’ of glam rock and putting it on the news last month – not the fact that Thatcher was going to let Liverpool rot after the mines closed down. Bowie’s better – see. The six o’clock news. You know all those talking heads – it was like Bowie was speaking to me – just me – and all that because he appeared on TOTP. It resonated and reverberated in homes across the country – sparking revolutions in the bedrooms.

They never say that about The Roxy do they?

I remember The Fall on The Roxy – not on TOTP.

Did it alter what I was doing on Scunthorpe streets – probably not – but it was good to see Hit the North on television – okay I admit that TOTP was important – and at times it felt incredible – but it was just performance and further acceptance that bands where dancing to the industry shilling. I was a watcher – a viewer – one of the fifteen million regulars. Waiting with my brother or sister to witness the The Teardrop Explodes or The Stray Cats pound through their tunes and offer a glimpse of decadence and difference. I’m not totally negating its influence – but let’s not rewrite history here. Jimmy Saville played some records once –started presenting a pop programme – was distinctly odd and thankfully fucked off our screens – he was not a ‘national treasure’ nor a purveyor of the underground – The Last Poets did not appear, nor the MC5.

The 1970s was a bleak time – the eighties made it worse. There were teachers in schools who fought on the beaches and Boy George in the living room. There was no ironic post modern twist – life was throwing up some odd alignments back then. Minds were thinking. Was it challenging the system? Unlikely. Not that it vowed to be political or even analytical – it was simple singers and fancy pants [let’s dance, dance, dance] We only had three channels to choose from. It was bound to happen. And of course there were performances that moved me - I can remember appearances from The Jam, Frankie goes to Hollywood, Adam Ant – the list goes on. All etched quickly into young minds. But I forget the disappointment and the horror of the filler and formless bands and singers who tried [and they failed] to entertain us. It seemed like another world – because it was one – but a dull one – in bright knit ware and hairspray.

I was listening to Sister Ray by the Velvet Underground sometime last week or month – this chugging fug of ferocity and feedback and it is clear that ‘DLT’ would never have introduced this – in a throwaway link and a smile at the ‘sisters’ in the house. I didn’t get into The Velvet Underground because of Pan’s People – I think I read about them. We [that’s Paul and me] bought a compilation, a long player in Woolworths. It had on it Run, Run, Run, White Light, White Heat and Beginning to see the Light. It intrigued and it delivered. I guess I’m torn here – I want TOTP full of the freaks and oddities yet have come to realise that this run of the mill programme was never going to change things – it might give you a few ideas.

Sometimes Top of the Pops had a moment – a spark. That glorious performance by New Order when I coveted the keyboards that helped send Blue Monday down the charts. It’s a beautiful performance – all nerves and electro squeals. But it fits into the whole picture. New Order existed outside of all that in the first place. Perhaps I’m doing Bowie a disservice – that arrival of the alien to mainstream houses for some would help shape and form experiences and ideas. But if I’m honest – I remember my granddad just laughing at Culture Club – because it wasn’t threatening, or challenging – it was just a bloke in a dress. Should I have felt liberated as my mum sang along to Karma Chameleon? Probably not.

I think I did when Divine sang Think You’re Man – but that’s different – that is counter cultural and you could sense it. I’m not certain why that ‘found’ footage has got me so wound up – I think it’s because I feel a rush and push and falling back in time. There’s a riot goin’ on – but like the track it’s just silence – being lost in the mawkish and reminiscence of when things were good – looking back instead of letting us push things forward.

Much like the writing in/ on here.

When Simon Reynolds met the World of Twist they said they wanted to build a gulf between the audience and the band. We want superpop back I guess but  Bowie’s footage seems so contrived – so obviously different – and  listen to the chug chug chug of the song. It grates after a while.

There are so many bands that didn’t play TOTP.

There has never been a revolution here because of television. There has never been a revolution here.

The Fall on The Roxy. It changed nothing.