Sounds from the overground - solitary rants from the listening man No.4

I have finished 'Don't Rhyme for the sake of Riddlin'. It was about Public Enemy. It could have been better - but it got me listening to Chuck and Flav again.

I made four compilation CDs for a drive up North.

I read a review of Camp Bestival and how the Happy Mondays were a triumph.

I was offered the chance of a ticket to the closing ceremony Hyde park concert with New Order, The Specials and Blur. I turned it down.

I played Show Biz Kids by Steely Dan to my brother.

I looked through a whole heap of old concert photographs including Primal Scream, The Cure, The Groove Farm, The Pastels and My Bloody Valentine.

I heard Adam Ant in the distance.

I continued to to create more lies about George Harrison.

I further lost touch with modern pop music.

I looked up where the HMV Forum was in preparation for going to see P.I.L. I also read the Mojo article with Lydon and his band and kind of got excited.

I found myself becoming increasingly frustrated that an article in Mojo had included No UFO's over Strings of Life as the most  seminal and important 'electronic' records from Detroit and don't get me started about the inclusion of Selected Ambient Works II and no sign of The Orb'd first long player in it's Top 50 records. Easy journalism on the rise again.

I wondered,with Emma, why the Stone Roses didn't feature in Danny Boyle's opening ceremony musical interlude. Clearly a Blur fan.

I noted that the ongoing transformation of Alex Turner into Bono continues at a pace.

I got my brother to copy a load of music for me - which he had already done but I had lost the discs. It happens on a frequent basis.

I recorded the first two Sha La La flexi discs to computer and an single from a Manchester band called The Weeds.

I started several posts for this blog. I have yet to finish them.

I did watch this again though. Public Enemy rockin' the spot at the London DMC awards 1989 - the video says 88. But don't believe the hype. What makes this is the way that Flav makes this happen - the record will get played and the audience will get entertained. Hip Hop as rock n roll. 

Rock n Roll and wearing a bootlace tie in Doncaster

In my line of work you often come across the emerging tribes, the cults and fashions of the young and ridiculous. And I cannot fail to acknowledge the obvious fact that that once was me – all dressed up with nowhere to go – but putting on a show anyway. It transpires that the mid-eighties in Scunthorpe was part of a large scale sociological experiment where by all sub cultures were allowed free reign in schools and on the streets.

I mean I used to go to school in a tweed jacket topped with a quiff – we had a uniform – but it didn’t seem to matter as Patrick jackets collided with Donkey ones and doc marten boots. It was a free for all in the playground. It was a freedom we don’t always get under Gove and his return to the headmaster ritual of the 1950s.

I still look at clothes. I can’t fit in them but I still look at them. I’m no hipster – do you get me? I may have to start dressing like Tad to make up for my inability to sustain a healthy diet. These flirting with fashions fit snugly alongside our falling in love with sounds. I’m not sure whether it’s the clothes that lead to the finds or the songs which dictate the style – which takes me back to those pre-adolescent moments of developing a look to match the eclectic tastes being shaped through radio, film, television, friends and records, an older brother, record shops and market stalls.

I wore a bootlace tie. It was purchased in Scunthorpe Market. It may well have had a skull on it – or something rockabillyesque. I bought it because I liked Showaddywaddy and Matchbox. There was a rock n roll revival taking place – the late seventies a throwback to the fifties. All crepe soles and blue suede. A friend even had a drape made.

He was ten.

He would wear it at our first year disco in Secondary school – I wore pleated trousers and a grey mesh vest. By then the bootlace tie had been discarded and Visage and the new romantics were taking hold – the beginnings of my love affair with the synthesizer carved out in tributes to Bowie and Berlin. I have vivid memories of venturing to Doncaster. A city. It didn’t make Scunthorpe seem quaint or backward. This was not cosmopolitan.

It was larger and just as violent.

We never seemed to turn out the bands like the North West did. There is no equivalent of The Beatles this side of the country. Our ports brought in fish not rock n roll. Doncaster. Like any good city had a shopping precinct. All concrete and glass with punks and that, sat around smelling of glue and cider. I had come with my mum and brother – I am not certain why. I would wear my jacket – it had a Shakin’ Stevens patch and a Stray Cats one on the back. I would wear my bootlace tie too.

I was scared of the punks.

I thought they wouldn’t like the rockabilly clothes that I wore with pride. These names pinned to my back to mark me out as a fan. If I am honest they didn’t even notice me walk by. Those moments of dwelling that blow up but don’t go pop in your (inner) mind (y’all.) As I have said before rock n roll music – which any old way you might choose it – has always been coursing around the fringes throughout my life. And dressing to demonstrate your idols on t-shirts and badges and patches and bags is all part of that allegiance and defiance of youth. I would always buy a t-shirt at gig. Sell the fanzines in my bag and give the loose change to the t-shirt sellers or invariably the members of the band at the beginnings or ends of set filled with shimmers and jangles – feedback and attitude. And my t-shirt said ‘I understand – I get all of this’.

Whilst wearing the patches of rock n roll across the concrete streets of Doncaster and Scunthorpe – I thankfully had not gravitated towards the wearing of my idols on fabric so close to my skin. I did not own a Showaddywaddy t- shirt – although I would wear one now – postmodern maaaan. I think the first t-shirt I bought to ‘rep’ the band was The Smiths. A black Hatful of Hollow one from the Meat is Murder tour – Sheffield City Hall – five pounds well spent.

I wore it till it frayed.

And then came countless other t-shirts – at first mainly Smiths ones – The Queen is Dead, Shelia Take a bow, Shoplifters – the list goes on. And The Primitives ‘Stop Killing me’ black and white number, The Groove Farm, The Cure and and and. I still wear them today – in a nod to the allegiance and cultural belonging that liking pop affords. I have an Edsel Auctioneer one, various Brian Wilson ones, My bloody Valentine ‘Feed me with your Kiss’, a Primal Scream ‘Ivy Ivy Ivy’ one, Public Enemy, the Pistols and the most recent purchase a grey one with Metroplex records emblazoned across the chest. These emblems of safety and tribal belonging have shaped the fan world since they cottoned on you could get the kids to part with more cash if you but a name and face on it. Okay so the The Sidddleys never had a pencil case made but I swear my brother and I contemplated the Brian Wilson dressing gown that was available on the ‘That Lucky Old Sun’ tour. It would have gone nicely with our Smile bags – mine is currently gathering dust in a cupboard.

It is unlikely that I will ever seize the zeitgeist again and rock up a look with patches and badges – not that my rock n roll tributes were ever of the moment. I may occasionally venture out to Sainsbury’s proclaiming my love for the valentines as the young folk busily stay hip to music’s ever changing moods.

They’re wearing the crepe soled shoes again. They are as yet not modelling The Edsel Auctioneer gear.

This is The Edsel Auctioneer – they were/ are from Leeds – I will write about them at some point in the future. I did like them so much that I bought a t-shirt – so they’re worth a listen. Kind of like a northern Buffalo Tom – but much better.

He played records and we danced

Last week I was in Clerkenwell – all gastro pub and the rubba dub dub as old friends discussed eventful weeks and weekends. And I fell into talking about [not] going out, about the 1210s and nights of simply turntable celebration. I have been fascinated by the spinning decks for years. Those early formative years in school discos and clubs as DJs spun 45s on mobile systems. It wasn’t like this was Kingston and we were in Tivoli Gardens skanking to DJ Coxsone and those heavy heavy sounds.

We were in Scunthorpe. We were at teenage discos.

This was playing records for steelworkers kids. We liked Wham, Adam Ant, The Sweet, Duran Duran and Tina Turner’s Nutbush City Limits. We weren’t yet grooving to our own choices. You made a request to the DJ – if he had it he might play it. If he didn’t he wouldn’t and if he thought that your taste was questionable he told you so.

But we also had the Baths Hall in Scunthorpe a sanctuary from what I considered the mainstream at the time. But this was just as mainstream in many ways except you heard The Smiths or The Fall playing. It was all escape from the grind. No different to the beer monsters at Henry Afrika’s [I kid you not - all garish fibre glass models of explorers and natives outside – we’ve come along way since the Windrush docked] We just wore more black than the sport Billies back then and got to dance to a different beat rather than the drummer’s – it was and is the same as it is then as it is now. Put your hands in the air and wave them like you do care – you care far too much – as I’ve said I was the type to dance to my tunes and slip from the polished floor when the sounds moved me no more.

But talking about wanting to go out and hear a DJ brings those moments flooding back. This post could detail countless nights getting ready for the dancefloor – waiting for the ‘jam to start pumping’ but I think I’ll make it about John Peel. John Peel was a regular visitor to the Scunthorpe Baths Hall. A veteran of Doncaster Road and all that walked up it. He would play and talk – not exactly MC – with tunes from his bag and always finish with The Undertones Teenage Kicks. The Baths Hall was like a rite of passage for all alternative teens in the Scunthorpe scene. It was where you went to be part of it all. Drink cider and sway – cadge cigarettes and be sick on the streets and steps. It was for the argy bargy with burly bone men on the door and the thrill of the getting in when you were far too young. I remember once that Paul was turned away – even though he was eighteen and they let me in when I was three years younger. It’s what you do – try and pull a fast one – because we were a generation going nowhere fast – so the antics of youth were all we had.

And every year John would appear. This familiar sound in the flesh. That voice from the radio – a real DJ – but one of us. The every man with a record collection we all wanted. You can visit his records now – not in person – you can’t turn up at Peel Acres and riffle through it – it’s virtual and photographed – it’s arrrtttt maaaaan - it isn’t meant to be a shrine – but it’s a dead man’s vinyl. Sometimes listening is not possible anymore. But you can see the dedication – the connection he had as he gently sorted the Ds from the Es. Shelia’s going to get rid of them - you can’t leave them lying round the house forever. Yet every year he would sort through the ever growing collection that rules from the centre of the ultraworld – well Great Finborough actually – to find tunes that would make teenagers rock [in Scunthorpe]. And I believe he thought about it – what new ones to bring and which Fall ones for Pete Lazenby – because you knew he was going get on the dance floor.

He would arrive without fanfare John that is – not Pete – Pete would arrive with fanfare. This was not a ‘roadshow’. It was not a show at all. It was the selection of records to make you dance – to jump about with joy and abandon and forget the morning and work ahead. Be it industrial or school. It was escape. Peel knew this – he didn’t mock us – he escaped every night with the spin of the turntables – in his studio or at home. Here in the echoing hall of the revamped municipal baths - beats would bounce of walls and bass bellow in corners as we glanced and romanced and dreamt and danced on carpet and wood to the sounds of the underground – made overground by our very own vinyl womble.

I don’t necessarily want to go out and listen to this – although the Baths was good – sensible opening and closing. The conversation in Clerkenwell was about Derrick May – he played last week – a set in a series from the innovators of Detroit – he was number one – Juan’s coming and Kevin. And there was a realisation that the sets would start late and end in the early hours. I can’t do it. I can’t do that. They should play from 5pm till 9pm – I could fit it in then and get a decent night’s sleep. Still completely stomp it – but sleep too, without losing touch with reality and being there to help in the morning.

Families not forty fives come first – I guess.

Instead I will select for the kids. My kids until their taste is foisted on me. I remember Paul and I asking my dad to play a Nick Cave live cassette on the way to Scotland – to Edinburgh. It didn’t go down too well – I don’t think it helped his concentration – what with the poor quality recording - the hiss and the malevolence inherent in Cave’s performance. Still Blind Lemon Jefferson would still make it on to my playlist.

But that pull of the DJ to select and make a crowd rejoice – to join together for whatever the length of the tune is a pleasure that I will always crave. I may not witness this again in a club setting but I can still tap into those teenage dreams – so hard to beat.

This is the recording of the single - something different - if you wan to hear the song you can look it up - it's everywhere.

 

Why I hate The Doors

I had wondered around Pere Lachaise clocking and checking the important, the famous and of course the dead - Comte had been first – it’s a sociology thing – founding father and all that. Inevitably though you stumble across old Mr Morrison in a corner of the cemetery. All incense sticks, cigarettes and armed guards. It’s an odd state of affairs to have an armed gendarme protect the ‘soul’ of the Lizard King but he’s there each day – at the ready in case some immaculately stoned youth decides to scrawl their own poetry over the headstone and further add to our misery.

It’s a depressing sight – you’d think in a cemetery it was always going to be – but there’s something fevered in the response of the visitors to this dead centre. I don’t think I’ve seen any other rock n roll graves – it’s not something I’ve taken an interest in to be honest. You know check out Bolan, Curtis, Ogden’s graves. I did read once that Andrew Innes had been sick at Elvis’s ‘shrinestone remembrance area’ [tm The Colonel] in Gracelands’ getting himself, Duffy and the Throb thrown out as a result. I thought this was an honourable way to recognise the impact of the King. Excess and reverence and retching rolled into one. But I haven’t really gone in for the whole great and the dead tour – laying 45s at the final resting places of the decadent and confused.

We happened across his big old grave to be honest – there was some foreign exchange student all wild eyed and haired staring intently at the stone – strung out on LSD and just going with the flow – no headphones – no ipod – just the soundtrack of his mind. I hope he didn’t have a Jefferson Airplane moment that brought him crashing back to reality – it can happen you know. Anyway he was giving the grave the wide eye and the guard was guarding – he may well have had his own soundtrack going on in his mind – it was hard to tell. He did look mightily bored though – I guess it doesn’t help the esteem when you’re down the local tabac and you say you’re pretty much security for someone who already took the bullet.

Except Jim never took a bullet – he took a bath. And died in it.

Not exactly like Marat is it? Not as important - although it was clear from the historical archives that Marat needed a wash – he’d been down in the sewers. It’s probably fair to say that Jim needed a sponge down too – what with all the leather and the blubber he’d piled on. And I’m not saying you can’t be large and a rock and roller – once again ladies and gentleman I give you the King. There’s a whole mythology that runs riot with Morrison all mystical musings and predictions and contradictions about words and actions and this is why I guess I hate the Doors. Because you don’t happen to find the Doors – no paths lead there. You are told about the Doors by a guy who’s finding his inner Native American and his experimentation has opened up the way to discover truths and that about himself, and America and the people [because they’re strange right?] and that he once looked at the skies above Arizona and Jim spoke to him.

And that person always wears a pair of leather trousers and will invariably drink ‘bourbon’ and will harangue you at your first university party.

I once had a pair of leather trousers and long hair. I hadn’t meant to tap into the Jim zone – I hadn’t witnessed a car load of dead Native Americans on a dusty Scunthorpe street – I had just grown my hair and bought some trousers from Daryl because he didn’t want them – it was more a club thing – the trousers were from William someone – bought in Manchester or Covent Garden or something – not Camden.

Anyway there were those that lost their way to the JD and the poetry of the Californian highway – I had made sure that I wasn’t one of them. I think it’s the studiedness of it all that grates with me – the elevation of a few choice words and phrases that taken as a ‘gospel’ and enlightened look at the now or in this case the ‘then’. I get the feeling Morrison was the Madonna of the 1960s – soul less and shallow but justified by those around him because they felt they should know a few references to this book and that he’d read and quote. I had a moment of transcendence with The Doors – found myself feeling quietly safe at a party in Brockley when Jim and the boys were playing – mild freakin’ whenever the Pixies were played. I got through it. Ended up throwing fried chicken across the streets of Lewisham – funny how the Doors can lead to that.

Wild abandon in a vacuous manner.

So as I said I think the overblown [American] saga that goes with the Doors and constant elevation of ‘god like’ status galls me and may well be the barrier to actually listening to them. Coupled with the fawning over Ray Manzarek’s keyboard action [I have a recollection of reading endless articles in some musical instrument magazine found in my local music shop] and already the gander is up. There’s a nod to the leftfield on the cover art that rankles me as well – and I can’t find the inclination to find out more. Perhaps I like my cool from the East coast – a different kind of leather.

However alongside this irrational hatred of The Doors comes the acceptance that they pretty much invented the ‘baggy scene’. And though it pains me to admit ‘Peacefrog’ is a groove that’s good to get down to. It rolls and it trips – jangles and jumps in simple lines and fluid bass. It’s like The Charlatans early demos. I haven’t heard them – but I guess this is what they would sound like.

So whilst inviting you in to hate The Doors with me. I give you this a testimony to the enduring ability to forgive and not take sides. I’m too old for that. I’m 41 today – so here’s The Doors. I’m a changing man.

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. 

Watching the Eurovision Song Contest

I watched the Eurovision song contest on Sunday. It was a ‘likely lads’moment – without the spoiled ending. I had spent the best part of Saturday night and the whole of Sunday avoiding the media coverage – to relive it ‘live’ in the comfort of my front room with Emma as she couldn’t be there on the Saturday. We have watched the Eurovision song contest for some time now. We watched it before we met. Now we watch it together.

I don’t watch it with ironic detachment.And neither does she.

I watch it as a pop show – a popular cultural moment. I know it doesn’t define Europe – or the ever widening boundaries of Europe. I know that Turkey’s charts are not filled with little numbers like their entry – all limbs and eastern Oliver as guys break danced in cloaks and formed boats. I get that – but there is a wonderful blurring of the popular boundaries and a reaffirmation that pop is just pop – ephemeral – a zeitgeist moment of simple melody and other people’s tunes.

Sweden won it.

I missed putting a bet on. I had it tipped. A David Guetta number it seems – with a few hairy dance moves courtesy of the local dance class from around my way. Not Kate Bush as some had suggested. I can see why it won – it tapped into that euphoric ‘club’ feeling but was lit in chiaroscuro and dressed in rags – all very austerity. Germany’s entry was shit though – economic power horse see – thought they could get away with murder.

But the Eurovision song contest has a place in my heart. And as I say it’s not that kitsch thing – or the misunderstanding of kitsch. You have to be sincere for kitsch to work. That’s why John Waters films work – they don’t reflect of revere. They just are. And that’s how I watch the programme – that’s my point of consumption. There’s always a moment in between the final acts and the scoring that sets the creative minds of host countries soaring in cirque to soliel excess. As if Leni Refienstal is back in style and the more pompous and bombastic the ‘filler’ is will result in regime change and the start of a new ‘european’ order. It kind of happened on Saturday/ Sunday as the boyfriend of the President’s daughter sang his new single – that seemed to sound like last year’s winner – amidst the history of the musical heritage of Azerbaijan and lasers. You’ve got to have some lasers. For the dark bits.

Yet on the semi final show [see I told you there is no irony here] on Thursday they brought together the previous five winners and segued into Waterloo. I didn’t need Scott Mills and that professional northerner Sara Cox adding witticisms from the comfort of their broadcasting box to make it work – or see it’s significance.

It was priceless and classy and utterly right.

Still the politics of the show are wonderful – not in a who’s voting for whom way – but in the way the songs reflect the current times. It’s better than Dylan. You get me? There’s lyrics reflecting chances and change and cold times ahead. There’s the frivolous and two fingered. There’s regret and national identity. It’s kind of Newsnight with tunes.

But there was one tune that was missing. Well two if you count the Netherlands – but they haven’t qualified for six years. Shame really. However, I am talking about Israel – all Prince – but more ‘queen’ playing a simple pop tune with integrity and a hint of show bizz. Not as grubby as T-Rex but as tubby when the Bolan was bingeing. These phone votes skew the system see – they rely on the immediacy of technology – of whim. Oh and of course the politics of it all.

Still it was a tune I would like to hear again.

But as ever with the fleeting, transient nature of pop – it bursts and melts into air. Some things aren’t meant to be saved- except they can be now – trawled up and held for prosperity – after the event. It’s not like home taping – but that’s another piece of writing for another day. So here’s to Israel. They didn’t make the cut on Thursday but they were in my Sunday final along with Engelbert – lost in the first flourishes of the final. A Johnny Cash twang to  a simple ballad that deserved more than it got.

Like this tune.

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.