A one, two, a one, two

I find it hard to say I like hip hop these days – as people misunderstand and talk about this artist representing and that artist rockin da club. And all that is shit to me. Now I am not claiming that I was there when Grandmaster Flash played the bloc and Bambaataa brought peace to the streets and the clubs as gangs got down to the sounds of the [future] underground but there is a part of me that has witnessed the rise and rise [might touch the sky] of hip hop and all its associated parts.

I guess like any one of my age – our introduction to the art of sampling and scratching was formed as we watched Malcolm McClaren cutting back and forth, cutting back and forth on The Tube – claiming he’d stumbled across the Zulu Nation whilst riding the C train down to the Bronx. Or Herbie Hancock rockin it with robots and rhythm. Paul and I immediatedly set about cutting records back and forth, back and forth – creating squeals and scratches in upstairs rooms.

Licensed to Ill was duly purchased in the storm of media hype as the beastie boys brought their bad boy bonhomie to British shores. We all owned a copy - as Rick Rubin rocked the spot and the brats of Brooklyn [okay I know one of them is from Manhattan – but let it go for now] unleashed their call to arms as we all partied for the right to fight [or was that the other ones?]

And then somehow the trail went cold – well not cold but lukewarm. Even though Slow and Low was the tempo we wanted to go and Run DMC had been recorded on the Whistle Test – coz they were illin’ something kind of got in the way. All anoraks and fuzz guitars – instead of break beats and rhymes and bars. And the nascent hip hop scene was left to evolve with all its potential without me listening in. And what a scene it was. Each day these microphone fiends would be tearing out new joints and rocking da spot with the best of them - whilst we strummed Byrdsian odes to girls two years older than us. I should have been sporting a cap and gold chain – firming up my b –boy stance and not thinking about industrial romance with the girl from Common Lane.

But these things happen.

So odd purchases happened – a Public Enemy record here or a DMC track there - but the years from 1986 kind of drifted away – in tight canvas and Cuban heels.

And then a reawakening.

Before I left for London the sounds of computers and samples had begun to break into our independent haze. The beats were getting harder all through late 88. Not quite embraced yet but the radar was on. And then Lewisham - all pirate radio, hardcore refrains and well you know the score. De la Soul released an album that crossed over and over and over. I returned to Scunthorpe with a penchant for American Football team hats – Green Bay Packers if you ask and puffa jackets and Nike Trainers and the emerging hardcore techno scene had hit the Scunthorpe Baths Hall as Nik and Danny and Chris dropped breaks that ached. Danny passed on a tape – a hardcore delight of a mix. Three fingered bass lines and breaks.

I listened to that side. But Paul would turn it over.

On the b-side of the cassette was Paul’s Boutique. Freshly recorded from its release on vinyl – no track list just refreshing hip hop. Loaded up on the funk and the funny. MCA. Mike D and Ad-Rock had made a masterpiece and Paul wouldn’t let it go – he’d make you listen to it. High Plains Drifter or the Sound of Science – because things had changed – the beasties had come of age. There is a whole heap of writing about the recording of Paul’s Boutique – of the LA excursion and the basket ball courts and swimming pools – but this was the beasties taking control and mapping out what hip hop was – and is.

And from that moment you know - you don’t stop – you keep on till the break a day.

And then release after release refined the rhymes and the rhythm – there was a hip hop explosion in our house and it hasn’t stopped. It is sometimes hard to say you like hip hop these days but there’s some wonderful shit out there – Odd Futures anyone? But that tape and Paul’s insistence on playing the b-side and not letting it go that the Beasties had made an all time classic means that the rows and rows of records in my cupboard are peppered with beats and rhymes rather than just guitars and howls.

Hearing Paul’s Boutique was good.

And that’s why I like hip hop.

I should be listening to the beastie boys.

There’s a howling coming from that there room

In adolescent times you could kick over the statutes by turning up the volume and raging at the world from the comfort of your bedroom – safe in the knowledge that you were in your room and no one was going to know whether you were playing The Birthday Party or Showaddywaddy. What now sounds like a confessional session but merely is thinking is that those rooms saved our lives many a time.

If I think what went on in my bedroom – it was the carving out of this.

There is a sense of unbridled energy lurking in the walls of teenage rooms. I was watching the classic albums programme about Screamadelica and there in those photographs of McGee, Innes and Gillespie was that energy – that building of confidence through shared understandings and mis-timed joking. Of microphone posing and record jockeying.

Bedrooms are the catalyst to action.

Once Paul and I recorded a feedback fuelled tribute to the death of Shep in minutes of Noake’s announcement that his trusty dog had left his side or hit record on the Amstrad Studio 100 as we attempted to out do the Butthole Surfers with a one stringed kazoo version of Hurdy Gurdy Man – that simply revolved around the speakers on playback all muffled and sat on.

Or forming a hip hop group as we sampled and scratched our ways through the beastie madness .And the list goes on, the T-Rex salute to She Sells Sanctuary or the pulsating drones of the Juno 6 as I tried to recreate Pink Allen’s Rising High ambient ‘sounds’. The tribute acts to Mud and the hyponotic tremors of Spiritualised meets David Essex – all happened in rooms with beds in.

Time and imagination fuels production.

When I had moved out and then returned it was with a different set of records in my bag – but it was still about getting your tunes played – as tapes were placed in decks and records spun in an attempt to get to the root of  it all. I guess I should have been taking more time to actually learn things – find out stuff that mattered but playing Ill Communication followed by The Beach Boys, Denim an old funk 45 and the Dust Brothers Chemical Beats [purchased from Danny in Record Village that morning] was shaping the sounds and ideas in our heads. Ideas of escape for the most part.

I remember up in a loft in Brockley – sat with Richard as we listened, tipsy and smoke ridden, to demos of his band on portable tape recorders – all these moments of beauty locked into tiny spaces or staring out the top windows of grand houses on Granville Park as The Pixies or Teenage Fanclub provided a soundtrack to new living. Or cramped in Lee’s room as he played the solo from I am the resurrection by the Roses and we all sat in awe. Or seeing how far our Alba systems could go with young continentals and hard jazz sounds. In those rooms – you took risks and you were always looking to nudge that volume up – just that little bit more.

As I get older – and spaces become mine – not borrowed from others. Not that I resented my parents having a front room. A record player of their own. But now I am that adult – that responsible being with a record player in my front room – the bedroom is just that now – a bedroom. I don’t think I make the same racket as I used to – I know I don’t - the volume is louder in the car than in my front room – well only room. Open plan – maaaaan.

I think the responsibility of age is a good thing – it’s not endless late nights and german acid tracks making the walls bounce or atonal post punk rock that communicates with cats – it’s different now. At times I will seek to enlighten the family with an obscure gem pulled from the racks. But my selector days are quieter now. Currently the Jonny album is in the CD tray, it replaced Beethoven who slid in after the Aphex Twin Ambient Works Vol.1. The Minus records album is in the car, alongside Justin Robertson’s Art of Acid or Weatherall’s Fabric Mix [Number 19 if you want to buy it]

Still the thrill of hitting start and letting the music course through speakers whether tiny or woofing never really leaves you. Before we moved to this house – we had a place in Lewisham all Victorian stories and that and I put the record player up in the top loft rooms alongside the vinyl haul – and in part it felt like those early days in rooms with others letting sounds ring out and making us all scream and shout and talk about that production and this bass line and that snare and this sample. I have always been fun to live with. I listened to Smile for the first time – when Wilson had deigned to redo it – up there – up in that room – in my room. Blew my mind.

This weekend I will play a record in my front room.

Not loud. But just let it play in salute of all the bedroom revolutions taking place. And I am racking my brains and trying to tap into memories to decide on what it should be – so many times I stepped up to the record player and pulled a tune from a sleeve and waited with anticipation for it to begin. From the sha la la flexis to records that arrived through the post or were discovered in charity shops and caught my eye or cadged of friends to take home and tape. There are simply too many of them to choose from.

Perhaps it should be the first single I ever bought – XTC Sergeant Rock – a staccato psychedelic exploration of ‘manning up’ as John Terry would say – a Top of the Pops glimspse, a 7inch from Boots and descent into music autism for the rest of my life. Thanks Andy Partridge – thanks. Although now I’m not certain whether that was the first 45 I bought – it may have been Motorhead and Girlschool ‘Please don’t Touch’ that garage chug with a glint in its eye. No, I’m sticking with Sgt Rock – and so will you.

There isn’t a great deal to say about XTC – I was never really a fan. And then Paul got hold of the Dukes of Stratosphere albums and clearly there is a great deal to XTC.

Born out bedrooms see – it’s where it all begins.

XTC Sgt Rock – purchased one month before Motorhead [I googled it]

and like they invented disco and grunge and new wave and that

I found a copy of one of my fanzines – tucked in a file and stuffed in a cupboard. All courier new and cut up – pritt stick and photographs sitting behind words that meant something once. I laboured over those fanzines, those words – in between school then college and setting up market stalls and serving old folks in Kwik Save. Because I guess that it mattered. Like it does now I suppose.

Nowadays words come ready selected from Oxbridge journalists mining pop culture in broadsheet pages. Everybody’s clever nowadays. I say this because we take The Guardian in our house – all delivered and that – rolled up and half stuffed in the letterbox. When I was paperboy – I was told to push them all the way through – stopped them getting wet and all that.

Anyway lately I have found myself more reluctant to read the thoughts of these people. So I know how people might feel about all of this self indulgent scribing. But what seems to have offended me was the ‘free guides to music’ that appeared this week for Pop, Hip Hop, Rock and all the rest. I mean I was already having my gander put up and out by the fact that the Friday Film & Music supplement has a blurb that reads voted the UKs best Music Newspaper – I mean what other fucking newspaper exists – and it isn’t a music newspaper – it has seven reviews, an article by Bob Stanley and someone ripping off my blog and calling it Hail Hail Rock n Roll [that actually was meant without irony].

Now, don’t get me wrong I wasn’t hoping for an in depth discussion of the micro-politics of the death metal scene in Norway but I was looking for something more than the ‘clip culture’ we have come  to view as the norm. Sort of a Blue Peter for the rave age – a sound bite – a record mentioned and a touch of glo-stick – you know what I mean. Before I left this morning to get to work I managed a paragraph – well actually the journalist had only managed a paragraph – it was on Blondie – it said that Blondie was like a punk icon and that she released like an album and that it had some songs on it – and she named a few – because she could google ‘Parallel Lines’ and then it ended by explaining that she did like disco and new wave and rap.

And that was it.

And I was all huffing and puffing and thinking I was sweating blood over the words I wrote about The Impossibles, pale saints, Spaceman 3 and The Field Mice all those years ago and stuck down on card to be taken to a printers and manufactured for the masses. Which demonstrates how you don’t get a career in music journalism – although I read an interview with Danny Baker recently [okay it was in The Guardian] and he said he never gave a shit what the public thought rather he wanted to make his mates laugh in the office. Yeah cheers Dan – I think I bought The Chesterfields ‘Ask Johnny Dee’ because you made it SOTW.

This is a lie.

But part of me felt that yeah – if you’re getting a reaction somewhere from your writing then at least to see that happen where you work – well it helps. And the thing about these guides these listless lists for nothingness is the fact they reinforce the utter banality of popular culture. And whilst I fill up my head with the superficial sounds of Blondie or The Stones or the Pistols and Autechre I still want people to give it credence and write with some feeling about it – not simply serve it up as the commodity it is. Before I turned thirty I read countless biographies and auto biographies of bands and weighty tomes on the rise of bass culture and rebellion. I will be forty this week and here I am looking for some more answers in pop music.

In music.

It’s not like I’m after a great deal is it?

And sometimes the answers stare you in the face and tell you that with them everything will be alright. I used to get that feeling listening to The Impossibles. The Impossibles were Leeds’ answer to Simon and Garfunkel in mini-skirts and pea coats – they sang with harmony and finesse but could pack a punch. I fell in love with it all – and so did Kevin Shields who produced their first single – simple songs and simple strumming. All falling through the music hedge – through the forties and fifities, the sixties and seventies, even the eighties and finding parts sticking together at the end – but somehow sounding alive in the 1990s as rave raved and we looked to softer sounds in our comedown times.

Lucy and Mags were funny, unpretentious and joyful.

None of it was studied and The Impossibles have not made it into The Guardian’s Guide to the greatest pop moments in History – but being in The Duchess as the exploded into song or seeing them nervously take the stage supporting The Primitives at their all day event at Tufnell Park - you know that these are our secret histories – our own Top 50 events. It is hard to explain all of this in a few paragraphs and perhaps I should find my teenage ramblings – delve back into those feelings untainted by age.

I know there will be no paragraphs, epitaphs or half full baths to The Impossibles. They did not bring us new wave, punk, disco nor rap – but they did bring a great deal of joy. I Think they may well have been No.51 in The Guardian list and couldn’t be fitted in.

The Impossibles How Do You Do It?

Hit the North

The North can sometimes turn out the coolest sounds – amidst the humdrum towns that drag you down – there’s something in the constant mither and moans – rains and winds that has us all running to music to soothe our ills.

Because everybody’s got to live their live.

However, it was and never will be fashionable the North that is – you can add a touch of gloss here and there and often northern souls are hip in a way that can’t be recorded or documented with the lens of the capital cameras. But fashionable it is not. I guess anyone thinking that the Beatles had it, or The Buzzcocks started it, The Smiths lived it and the Mondays partied with it would think that the North was awash with glamour and excitement. But that means you negate the existence of:

Doncaster

Rotherham

Grimbsy

Hull

Preston,

York,

Skipton,

Scunthorpe,

Scarborough-on-Sea,

Chester,

Chorley,

Cheedle Hulme,

Ormskirk,

Accrington Stanley,

and Leigh,

Ossett,

Otley,

Ikley Moor,

Sheffield

These places are all in the north, filled with fury and futility as kids kick cats and hit each other with baseball bats. And growing up you would wrestle with the ‘big’ kids or find alternative routes home to avoid a kicking through ten foots and alleys, over railings and walls to retreat to the sounds that filled you with hope and security. And as I grew older I fell in love with it all – a romance with the bleak outlook and frustrated faces – the furnaces and the smoke. And we would play records and dream of escape but a little part of me reels around the [central park] fountain and is forever wedded to cheap pies and ale and those discos with deejays who talked over seven inches and scraps with your chips. Holed up in the council house streets – in our shared bedrooms we played tunes to soothe our troubles and growing pains.

I remember the revolving 45s and 33s – the wait as the needle hit the record and the drumbeat went like that. This was our heaven up here, up the stairs and away from the folks – we would roar through The Birthday Party EPs, rock to the Spector sounds of Rock n Roll by Lennon, immerse ourselves in the electric jangles of bands from foreign places and sunny climes and discuss lost albums by the Beach Boys or how we could track down Metal Machine Music by Lou Reed. It’s all at a touch of a button these days – a sharp hit on the return key and you can hear it – find out what others think – study the style [and go wild]. Back then it was a [mystery] it was trips to the library to seek out books on music – and leaf through back issues of NME – perfectly stored in boxes under tables. And you could even take records out – take them home under your arm with the books. Now you’d be lucky to get a book out.

Existing on one photograph of Lou Reed or The Byrds to create your [Scunthorpe] style was a challenge – but one we relished and warmed to. Sub-culture the meaning of style – having a look because that’s all you got to distinguish you from the masses [and attract the lasses] And never to be recreated. I know I discussed that this writing should not be about looking back – but it is permeated with loss – it’s the age thing creeping in and the disconnection from the real on a day to day basis. Like an alzhiemer’s waltzer – spinning and glimpsing and then forgetting for no reason other than it pops and springs into the mind.

But amidst the spit on the streets was a mapping out of the attitudes the opinions – it was where friendships sparked with wit and naivety stem from – of getting things wrong and working things out to the backdrop of bass and guitars, thumping drums and screams of alienation – which sounds so death metal – but it wasn’t - it was quite light to be honest – full of fun apart from the occasional thumping – which I often deserved anyway, as oversized kids on ‘peds – confronted you with fucks and fingers because of your hair or this or that. Although,I did own a mustard crimpoline cardigan – an homage to Mancunian miseries – that riled many a person up. I mean a cardigan causing confrontation and consternation – THIS IS THE NORTH.

They take offence at a built up shoe, or a slow queue or a badly pulled ale.

So we thank them for the music and the songs I am singing. I never really subscribed to the North/ South divide – you’re either thick or you’re clever – it don’t make no difference what dialect you speak in or what you call a bread roll. And I haven’t worked it out – no doubt somebody will – an ex-accountant with a penchant for the indie scene of the early 1990s – how many bands have risen from the North as opposed to the South - but i guess i like as many bands from down south as do from up north. You know I own an Airstream box set for christ’s sake.

I haven’t felt excited about a band in a long time – well not in the way I used to as a young man. It was what got you through the week. But a friend I worked with gave me a burnt CD – it had Arctic Monkeys written on it – he said they we’re good – had seen them a couple times in London dives and on small stages and the crowd went wild and everybody sang along. I was worried to be honest – never felt that next big thing really – you know I cock an ear to it – but don’t exactly follow it. I mean Glasvegas or the XX anyone? All that studiedness and Brit[school] pop charm and sensibility. No,no, no – I don’t love that anymore. So it may well have been a while before I could be bothered to listen to it. It was certainly after lots of people had believed the hype. [But Flavor told me to not believe and you tend to do as Flavor says] So it was with a sense of knowing about these lads that I hit play – and I was pleasantly surprised at first. Hadn’t thought that it would appeal – but found myself returning to lines – of sentiments and situations that resonated with realness as I remembered ‘cuddles in the kitchen just to get things off the ground’. Clearly within this cacophony of guitar – all mastered LOUD was a band with a heart –and a band with an attitude you could just about respect. Young lads, making young music for young people. It is not hip to bluster in on someone else’s scene. But that first album – as it was these songs were the authentic ones – the demos you know – the ones given away – at gigs - as the myspace world made bands an all of that – but these songs became that angry Arthur Seaton two fingered salute to all the [my] generations trying to claim them as their own. As I said I don’t want to be part of a [music] scene – heavy on the [music] scene – but the Monkeys [see what I did there] were pretty much creating it with each strum of their guitars.

But whatever people say about that album that is what it is not. It is Northern though. And some tunes just capture that spirit – that bleakness you get from darker nights and cheap lager. I once saw a kid just dragging a curtain rail around – it was like twenty feet and he was about 5 ft – and he was dragging it around – I think he was going to school. But there’s a certain romance with all of that – not sentimental – more brutal. Like Loach’s Kes or Meadow’s England. Of bigger lads and chances and nods and winks and Rugby club dances. There’s a simplicity and a mockery that I love in the lyrics on that album and it reminds me of being there. Of course now ruined by Emma’s brother mentioning George Formby as ‘Bet you look good on the dancefloor’ came on. So all I have in my head on hearing is a ukulele or banjo working class caricature – strumming tunes with wild abandon.

It is clear the North will [not] rise again - not in ten thousand years.

But I do like it.

Buying the Plastic Ono Band and reeling

I remember when I first discovered the ‘Music and Video Exchange’ in Greenwich, to be honest it isn’t hard not to discover – it’s on the high street. Now if you’re a record obsessive like me – you’ll be able to recognise how important a place like that is. It doesn’t look much – all scruffy front and in need of a lick of paint or at least its windows need cleaning.

But it promises so much.

A shop filled with old records, new sounds , new experiences. I had arrived in 1989 , a mere youth. green and new to the workings of a south London I knew nothing about. However, my vinyl obsession was firmly in place, always scouring the record shops, second hand stores and cardboard boxes of market stall traders for those elusive sounds of the underground. And here was a shop full to the brim of them.

A sound explosion.

I would walk across the ‘heath on a Sunday, a lazy day, a recover day to spends hours in the company of fellow ‘anoraks’ carefully flicking through piles of records. Pausing over the covers, flipping them over in my hands and reading the track listings on the back.

I stumbled across, well I say stumbled – to be honest I had most likely looked at every single record in that store over the course of a year, a pristine copy of the John Lennon Plastic Ono record. A record full of anger and sadness. That and Pet Sounds – it was a summer of desolation. Believe me as I revelled in new found loves and guilt and loneliness within these London streets.

I remember putting the record on the revolving deck and placing the needle on it, on Love, and it all came swimming back to me how I stood alone and felt the hairs on my neck rise. It turns out Spector was hardly at any of the sessions for this album – but it’s him on piano on Love. Him and Lennon keeping it simple and heartfelt – obvious and honest. You know the Love song was passé man – but there’s honesty about that tune – as Lennon’s primal wailing gives way to singing. The whole album is a classic – not a word I choose lightly – you know I’m not making lists.

There’s a sense of accomplishment – of Lennon getting back on it – and I guess that’s how I felt on first listening to it. Coming out of an isolated summer to an autumn of something else. Lennon [along with Wilson] just helped me get right along.

Funny how people do that to you

sounds from the overground - solitary rants for the listening man No.1

I read my old fanzines

I added randomly to the windows media player playlist and hit shuffle

I grabbed a handful of records

I downloaded 'wede man'

I sang along with 'Sympathy for the Devil'

I texted a friend to play 'Twist and Shout' by The Mamas and the Papas

I recieved my Jonny ticket in the post. The concert starts at 7.00pm. That's my kind of time - old man's time - last train back.

I contemplated buying the remastered Screamdelica and the new Panda Bear album

I played the Live at the Social - by The Chemical Brothers whilst travelling back and forth to Sainsburys

We listened to rock 'n' roll together in a dirty car.

I listened to a pirate radio station

I listened to Radio Three

Everyone should listen to Dion and the Belmonts and i will return to this.

Things are getting repetitive

In order to change the style [go wild]

I have decided to abandon the format that the previous entries were taking for a post that is just simply a piece of music.

Just waves of sonic experimentation building to bleeps and bass. There are no facts to uncover - there are stories - but I'm not going to write them.

A grower.

They have been known to call it.

A grower.