I like the television.

They’re making a film about Spike Island. They’ve made a documentary about the Stone Roses – they’re selling our youth back in celluloid, as there isn’t any new music to push.  We’ve got 250 hours of Glastonbury coming our way – you can watch the Stones and all those other hit making machines. You can sit and chose. 

That’s the way it is (something’s will never change – that’s just the way it is)

I’m forty two this month – looking backwards as ever to those halcyon pop moments and heady days of bedrooms and revolving records. But do I want it on film, on my television and not on the radio nor in the flesh? I only listen to the 3 and 4 you know – and catch that pirate house station when the kids are taking a bath – it’s a random dial thaaaanng.

But invariably I’ve ended my weeks with documentaries about this style and that genre – this singer and that roller.

They showed a series on BBC4 about punk rock.

They’ve showed a whole heap of programmes on this style and that. It had talking heads and clips and stuff in it - tidying up the punk movement in sixty minutes tops and following it with more footage of [raw] power guitar chords and discordant screams from the great and the dead. It’s what it would have wanted – the punk movement – its own documentary strand on digital television. I guess I’m being ironic [moronic] here – but whenever I’m watching – note watching – not listening to programmes on music I get slightly touchy about it all. Drop into anecdote mode and say that I never really liked The Clash. Which is true – I could never warm to them. Don’t get me wrong I like the dub roots, the bass and guitar scowls and howls – but I never thought they had any grace.

I didn’t want to be in them.

You see when the Pistols arrived all full of froth and posture – it was a two fingered salute – a start – that quickly went nowhere – bound to really – it’s far too easy to claim you're bored when you doing nothing to stop the rot[ten] but at least it was a start. It was clouded in this and that – it didn’t care. But clearly it resonated – clearly it was a (rolling) stone dropped in the pond. Vacancy was predicated on alienation – on reaction to the grind.

And that’s why The Fall are the most vital of all those late 70s bands. In every record by The Fall is a reaction – a working ethic that had no time for boredom – it didn’t want to speak for the youth – it had more to say- ah. (I’ll return to this – later on – down the page – because today I’m rambling – I’m the half ten rambler – I can’t stay up that late anymore)

Anyway when I was younger – which was an age ago – it was always about taking sides (I’ve said this before – but you should know that this  repetition repetition repetition’s in the writing and I’m never gonna lose it)  – wearing your heart on your sleeve and telling anyone who would listen that your favourite band was the one that mattered the most. I tended to choose the obscure – the shambling cacophony of a new band I had on tape that had just emerged from Lanarkshire – bands that would sink without a trace. I’ll write a post about The Bachelor Pad at some point (they didn’t sink without a trace – they never really made a trace did they?)

So now you’re dipping in and out of genres and styles, geography and fashion –walking that New Yawk walk and talkin’ in a manc accent depending which strand of documentary programming you’ve been exposed to that evening. I ended up watching music inspired by The Eagles the other night – all California hair and  strumming as footage from 1974 poured through my television’s speakers and moved me to inertia – to bed.

But hey ho – let’s go  - I was talking about sounds on the screen – sold back to us – to send us to itunes and download that nugget of nostalgia. I was talkin’ ‘bout PuNk on the TV.

I’ve said it before but I first became aware of the dark side of pop – the chaotic and the immediate when Paul – my brother - introduced me to The Pistols, The Exploited [I know it’s not first wave punk – but they seemed exciting and dangerous at the time], The Velvets and of course The Fall. I’d only heard them – on the radio – in a disco – on a tape from a friend. I hadn’t seen them. I hadn’t seen The Fall move – not at that point.

Now there’s a band I would want to be in – to be honest there’s a high percentage that I could have been  - I think Mark E Smith I has got through something like a 100 members. I could imagine finding myself playing out of time as Mark turned down my amp and told me to stop showing off. There’s a left field – outsider art that courses through the veins of The Fall and whenever I’m in need of blast of diffidence and difference Mark has the sounds to represent it. 

I have yet to see The (mighty) Fall.

And another opportunity has passed me by. December - full of cold and coughs and pills and powders I couldn’t muster the energy to haul myself to Islington and get a piece of the MES. It just wasn’t going to happen.  I think in ‘indie’ circles seeing the Fall must be akin to seeing The Beatles. They sit outside the whole thing yet bring everything to the ‘scene’ – heavy on the music scene. And there was John Peel championing them every night – well every other night. It feels weird writing about Peel at the moment – as sagas rage and roll about who did what – with whom – in which studio or ‘green’ room. But for now I’m just going to go with flow and acknowledge that if there was ever a champion for a band then Peel was one for The ‘mighty’ Fall. Countless sessions from garage band veterans. Multiple hits in festive charts. Tape em. Tape them.

And I missed The Fall again. This time it was the throes of Spring. I read a wonderful review over at louder than war (the best place for up to date information – not like this ole place) – but I missed them. Again. That MES scowl – that ambivalence to the modern but thoroughly up to date (mate).

So where do I get my fix of the Smith ways of the world?

I find it on clips and bits in programmes about the Manchester scene – or documentaries with the good man himself. (Well he’s not really a good man – he’s a cantankerous fucker with wit that sits to the right – but you know he never played by the rules  - why should he? We don’t want that cloth cap clutching WMC attitude of deference round here)

So perhaps they’ll make a film about The Fall playing Doncaster. 

A film of Totale’s Turn. It isn’t Spike Island. It isn’t new music. 

But as this month has my birthday in it – I can be forgiven for looking back – not listening – looking.  

So here's the first piece of film I saw of The Fall - late night on a So it goes Special. Most likely BBC2 - it's on a video tape somewhere. 

And i've put in a performance of Blindness from Later - because it's brilliant. Because it's The Fall and that's what they do. 

Without the writing how would you know?

 I have been trying to teach the inner workings of the uk music press to a group of 16 year old students. Students who have been living through exponential growth in digital interactions – who don’t write things down but communicate through speed and shape – texts and expressions – image and colour – url and sound bite. They have never read an in depth interview with Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine trying to break America with pithy commentary by Steven Wells. They have never seen a photograph of Elastica in a public house in Camden. Their lives are neither better nor worse for it.

I can’t imagine growing up without a world of type and bombast. I still like to read the music press – well Mojo – it’s gotten to that stage – I’m not slick or hip enough to find the new sounds – I don’t want nostalgia but seem to be content to read about Black Sabbath’s 1978 appearance at Hammersmith Apollo or the transition of Floyd from acid fuelled psychosis to hip atom muthas. The press shaped conversation and tastes and allegiances, fashions and faux pas (should you admit to liking U2), opinions and confidence. It filled hours – it hinted at tantalising finds – obscure gems – and future sounds. I’d sit in bedrooms, common rooms, classrooms, front rooms and back ones discussing the writing about sound – thinking what purchases to invest in that weekend – oh whether my teenage hate would boil over at another feature about St Etienne. Paul would be reading Melody Maker, I was on Sounds, the NME waiting to be opened as we read about The Beasties tour of Japan, or the Scream in America.

It pulled the money from our pockets. Which we spent on records recommended in reviews in the views of the privileged and hip. Money heading straight to the labels and stables of future dreams. So they could put out more vinyl and more words would be written and more money spent – does your money go round, does your money go round?

The young ones don’t get it really.

This class of difference.  This idea of interviews as text – as features and follow ups – they don’t get it. They can tell I was passionate about it all – but they can’t see the reason that it felt exciting to walk into town and roll into WH Smith. You see, if Lady Gaga wants to speak to them – she can – it’s 140 characters and instant connection. It doesn’t require a plane trip – the journalist swagger or a photographer in tow. It’s Instagram representation and a chance to unite the masses. In some ways every artist I ever read about would have benefitted from this social media madness. The press was just a way to connect with the band – maaaan – you know find out what they were about – it could be politics – it could George Michael’s favourite pizza topping – it was snippets and insights – stories and highlights – rocksteady and uptight. That has been swept aside in the relentless speed and efficiency of bringing you 24 hour solid music news – its one thing after another.

You know they found a story last month in Robbie Williams mouthing off about the late shoegaze and emerging Britpop scene – as if he was still stuck in a spat with Adorable and he couldn’t let it go. You know he’d been rounded on by Echobelly in 1993 and he still felt bitter – like George Costanza – all rage and fury and ready to get his line in despite the time between the slight and his retort (hey  - the ocean called and they’re all out of you). They ran with this – because it fills a page – this generated content – this updateable site – it needed a story. It needed a celebrity and a spat – the tabloids communicate like that – so we better had too.

Sounds came out once a week. Sounds had an irreverent quality – it didn’t take itself quite as serious as the NME – it felt like a daft teenager itself. It was hip enough. It had news stories – it filled pages – but its stories had words and words and words. We like it in short bursts now. They like being taught that way too. I don’t know how they’d be able to sustain that level of reading these days – it might be just the ‘kids’ in front of me – they’re skewing my view – but have you read an NME these days? You’re lucky to get two pages of writing about anything. You don’t need that many words now – you get it from the horses mouth – from the artist – unmediated (well less mediated) – so why wait for the week to be over and the next column written. If I want to talk to Stuart Kidd and Marco Rea – I can – then I can click on over to Soundcloud and get the demos – they’re The Wellgreen by the way.

They are brilliant. But without the writing – the recommendations – where do you go – how do you know?

I’m set in my ways in a digital age.

You see I got The Barne Society CD through the post. Five pounds for twelve songs. A cottage house industry producing beautiful sounds for a few pounds. My words won’t give it the column inches it deserves – it’s got a new Wellgreen track on it – and that was the prompt to purchase I guess. That and a message to check out the site – so you visit – you have a listen and point and click – and then it’s there on the mat – dropped through the letterbox by your postman. He hadn’t heard of the Barne Society. Well he might have done – but for the sake of this writing I need him not to have – so he hasn’t.

He might have heard of this lovely, honest and fragile label – if it was getting the inches across the weekly ‘rock’ rags that it actually deserves.

But the press don’t work that way – it’s quite a simple relationship – sell more newspapers on the back of building up a scene that may or may not exist. It becomes a self-fulfilling madness – invent a scene – big it up and knock it down. The Barne Society don’t deserve any of that  - they don’t need writers decamping to Scotland with A&R in tow – calling the shots – renaming it all. The press would call this the Sound of Scotland (revisited) make references to the second, third or fourth coming. They would hang it on a notion that Postcard records was the template for all the ‘scottish’ things – you know – they might have had that idea anyway. Talk to Stephen McRobbie – he’s quietly got on with just releasing wonderful music. And so have these guys.  

There’s a sense of that eclectic Scottish culture – borrowed and proud – there’s spoken word and melancholic tones seeping through the expertly designed sleeve and CD – this is the whole package my friend. This is a fragile Scotland – with confident undertones. Songs with spaces and silences – muted moments in late nights and early mornings (hear Linden ‘My Beating Heart’ for a little of that).

Sometimes you just want the music out. And it should be – everyone should hear The Springtime Anchorage – it’s not a name that trips of the tongue – but it relocates that west coast jangle to the west coast of this isle. It’s The Byrds without the sun – psychedelic (haggis) suppers – The Junipers ‘They lived up in the valley’ is a beauty – understated and simple – okay so it has a little of the ‘glen’ in it – but why wouldn’t it. It represents – do ya get me? Kontiki Suite – will be one of my summer tunes – sunlight fading – driving through the countryside  – because I’m the music man – maaaaaan. There’s a power in that there tune.

But it’s always The Wellgreen – I come back to. My first love – I guess – partly because I wasn’t expecting it. I said in a previous piece way back then when I went to watch Euros Childs that The Wellgreen kind of blew my mind – there was this sense of accomplished musicianship combined with a playful energy and a smile on the faces of those making the music. I like authenticity – not earnestness – and they made you feel ‘up’. They properly entertained with their two man pop voyage. I had them down as The Everley Brothers for a modern day man. But I’m hearing so much more Bacharach in there – jumps in time signature and wonderful scales – they really are pleasure to listen to. Either in a room with them living or in a room with them singing from speakers.

You will listen to them as well.

I spent many a summer in Scotland – so there’s an inherent fondness for it all - except I was East coast (not exactly leather trousers and VU shades – but close). You need a wee bit of Scotland in your soul too? (Okay I know the Barne Society has other bands on it – from other places  - but I wanted to write that line – so I have)

So let’s support The Barne Society. Let’s all go buy their records. 

This isn't on the compilation - you can find that via the links embedded in the post. This is from The Wellgreen album. You can buy that at their site too. 

I want to hear some hip hop

I wouldn’t recognise the stars of the hip hop world these days – the status and credibility of the artist. I would only hear the sounds of their spittin’, the beats they be rhyming over and the samples peppering the track. I have no idea who’s cool and who isn’t – I have no idea.

There was a time when the hip hop beats were a constant thud in the inner brain y’all. When the latest beats were spun on the ones and twos. This is not the life I lead at the moment. It may be the fact that I have this young family – these innocent and creative minds and I am yet to fill it up with the magic of the gravediggas and NWA. That time might come – it might not. I can’t really say what they’ll listen to and I’m certain I won’t know how they’ll listen. You can’t tell ‘em what to like. It doesn’t work like that – I might have to leave a few Velvet Underground records lying around – but you certainly can’t tell them. It’s safe to say that my parents were not as excited by the latest Sha la la flexidisc from Remember Fun, than I was. I couldn’t see my Dad marvelling at the wonder of Phuture’s Acid Tracks as much as I may have done. We were family – but we had different tastes. It should be like that really – although I hope that my children dig The Beach Boys – you know right through their whole career – not just the hits, hits, hits.

I was talking with a class of mine about the music press – it already sounded antiquated and old in this world were the stars and the gagas tweet to audiences larger than Brazil – who needs a Paul Morley, Julie Burchill, Steve Sutherland or Alex Petridis to tell them what to like or think? You know Morrissey wouldn’t know where to send his letters anymore – saying that he’d probably have a tumbler account. All borrowed shots from the sixties, scraps of poetry from Yeats and few choice words about meat eaters. I might set it up actually. It may get more readers than this.

But it was good to have gatekeepers – you know – it was good that someone was doing some of the filtering – it’s fucking hard to find out anything these days. We’re drowning in sound – not waving. So this brings me back to my dilemma – this age thing maaaan. I have forgotten how to find new sounds and where once I had claimed on here that it was no nostalgia rides – it seems that the modern world may just have got the better of me.

I’m seeking out those old school beats. It’s by the far the simplest thing to do.

I like my hip hop with a touch of honesty and humour rather than misogyny and glamour. I can’t do sunglasses indoors, helicopters and furs, ‘I'm sick of bitches shakin' asses, I'm sick of talkin' about blunts,

Sick of Versace glasses,

Sick of slang,

Sick of half-ass awards shows,

Sick of name brand clothes.
Sick of R&B bitches over bullshit tracks,

Sick of swoll' head rappers

With their sicker-than raps

Clappers and gats

Makin' the whole sick world collapse’

But there was a student I taught back in the Midlands. Quiet. Piercing eyes but utterly enthralled to the underground. You could tell he was a music fan. You could sense it. He was soaking it all up and mixing it all together in his head. I can spot them a mile off – the ones who listen with prejudice. He felt the intensity of music and bands and sounds and styles. It has to be at that age – to catch a fire – to light the fuse. Otherwise you may as well keep on buying the NOW CDs and claiming you like a little dance now and again.

You could tell he’d get into a debate about whether Bulhoone Mindstate was by far a superior long player than Three Feet High and Rising. Which it is by the way – but we can talk about The Daisy Age another day.

Because taking sides – weighing up the odds - thinking about this and that – and hoping it has worth lends itself to critical thinking – acts of choice and not being part of the flock (of seagulls). He still thinks about sounds now – about layering this with that – scratching that needle back and forth, back forth –because out of that student emerged Beatmasta Bill. A Nottingham DJ of distinction – a warrior on the 1210s running the gamut of groove to provide a soundtrack for your waking hours. I’ve never heard him playing in a club – I should have really – but it wasn’t to be – see – I moved down here and these things happen – plus I was his teacher and you know hanging out with the kids – getting down in the street – well that just ain’t fly – I don’t need to tell you why.

But we are both older now and he still spins the records. I remember when he and his brother and another student tore into Bring tha Noise in a school hall. There was that sense of freshness and just trying things out – that’s what you get with Bill -a sense of freshness and trying things out. So it was a pleasure to hook back up with those sounds through fibre optic cables and late night searches. There is a sense of adventure and play in all of his mixes and remixes – a knowing nod to the source and a twist of the (odd) future. There's a wonderful hip hop scene in Nottingham - it gets called UK rap - but its different from city to city. It seems to turn up this eclectic approach to things. The Midlands is like that - it's far from water.  

So listen to the end. It changes – it prompts different reactions.It is good music. It is good music selected by Beatmasta Bill for you to listen to.

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?