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. 

Reformation time [Part One]

My brother and my sister have tickets to see The Stone Roses. They bought them when they were announced. They didn’t buy me one. Now this in itself is no bad thing. When I read in the pages of The Guardian that Ian, Reni, John and Mani [sort of has a ring to it – but it’s no John, Paul, George and Ringo] were calling all the hating off and journalists started writing up fawning pieces on how the late eighties witnessed the coming together of tribes and the roses as the ones who united to save us all through their fusion of funk and fucking attitude.

I started to worry that I wouldn’t recognise the crowd – the feeling in that place. That big open space in Manchester.

Now there are many bands I have not seen – in fact I think I have written about that somewhere on here – but I never had the chance to see the Roses. Emma has. She saw them at Spike Island. This was before we met. And Rob saw them – he told us about them – he’d seen them in Coventry – at the university. All jangles and attitude – saw the light – the second coming [geddit?] But I remember that sudden shift – there’s talk that it was all down to that TOTP Mondays / Roses edition – but that certainly is after the event. Besides the North suffered a temporary blackout on that Thursday back in the late 80s – the signal just stopped and the television went off.

We didn’t see it. I think we went to the pub – instead.

But there was a change a comin’. We wanted to dance [and have some fun] and you couldn’t do that to Lush and MBV. You could shake your head – possibly jump up and down – but you couldn’t dance, dance, dance. The Scream had gotten close with Sonic Flower Groove – they would pretty much rewrite it all with Screamadelica – but this was still in its infancy. The Stone Roses were all swagger and style – seemingly arriving out of nowhere and setting the pace.

It was everything a band should be. A gang. The Stooges and the Family Stone all rolled into one.

There were walk offs, and chart show clips, front covers and interviews – but it seems that good old conversation pushed the Roses into our consciousness. And here they are again – back in the press and we’re talking about them.  I remember a trawl uptown – early days in the city – Lewisham to the last stop – and a wander up Charing Cross road – and there was Mani, Reni and John – carrying a massive boxed ghetto blaster – all cardboard and heaviness – they were the other side of the road – where The Marquee used to be. Taking a breather and looking around for something. And they just looked so different – you eyes were drawn to them. But I was crossing the road – so I looked away – straight into Ian Brown’s eyes – that simple acknowledgement that he was a star but also one of us. A nod – half smile – reciprocated and moved on. The Stone Roses taking up both sides of the road. Totally assured and utterly hip.

Will they be able to it again? I guess they have to – it all ended fairly messy - in missed cues and notes – ramblings and ramifications. I have to be honest – I think I’ve played The Second Coming more than the first long player – it’s got this real heavy groove at the heart of it. Yes, I recognise there’s indulgence but even the build into Breaking into Heaven works – so it’s reminiscent of the opening to Welcome to the Pleasure Dome [Liverpool did it first?] – but the whole long player is done with finesse – all riffs and rolls – building to Love Spreads  - well The Foz actually – but lets say it ends at Track 12 and not Track 90. And in between this band of brothers unite to take this small nation under a groove – from burning south swamp rock and blues – where the devil will give you all the best tunes and through the feral funk of Begging You – with it’s repetitive loops and Hey Bulldog bass lines mixed with a Brown at his in your face Lydon scowling best – into Good Times [my friend]– that shouter of fun , falling into hate and bitterness with How do you Sleep which simply documents the fragility of friendship, of six string relationships and strung out nights –until they ultimately spread some love around.

Which they will again

And all that energy is still there – it took five years to get there through courts and concerts, much like that other reforming troupe – The Beach Boys. Two decades of pills, writs and heartache to be united around the globe in slacks and shirts and Love’s baseball cap – I’m hoping that the Stone Roses will be wearing better gear.

And so it goes

If one band reforms then they all come crawling out the woodwork. Although Shed Seven have seemingly never gone away – nor the Bluetones if I come to think of it. But there’s a reformed Mondays playing the clubs [rocking the pubs] and the Inspirals and even the fucking Farm playing Spartacus ‘in its entirety’. It’s as if we are returning to Thatcher’s E fuelled end of the eighties were nothing much mattered apart from dancing and getting one over the police. Whilst I welcome a roses revival but aren’t going to go to it – and I’m feeling embarrassed at the thought of Love offering fake platitudes to Wilson in concert halls as bank balances burst – but I’ll be sitting in the front row helping that circus along – I’m not sure if a nostalgia filled landscape of musical highs from our youth and our parents youth will help this ‘pop’ thing along.

I hope that it inspires some youth to think that all of this is from an another era – its Jurassic – you know Dinosaurs and all that – like it did the three Johns from Kilburn. I hope it does – like the landscape at the time of the Roses when being a fully-fledged star was seen as somewhat arrogant and certainly not in keeping with the independent tradition. 

Sometimes you can be in the right place at the right time.

I hope that field in Manchester will be it this Summer. The past was theirs and now the future’s ours – or something like that.