NWA: Noise with Attitude

Right – this piece is about noise – it’s about recapturing the past and it’s about not having the time to book a ticket at 9am to a concert that I would so like to go to  – because I am at work. Because  I have hinted at this in the past - the changing ways of capitalism and the industry’s way of making a tidy sum – quickly – it accrues interest see –all that money pooled in one day – from your interest…see.  

So McGee announces the JAMC will play Psychocandy – three times – in November – in the two of his favourite cities for music (the other being Liverpool ) – but fuck it – you know London sells – so there’s a show there – I guess you can argue McGee brought these leather clad miscreants to the Smoke in the first place – so why shouldn’t he book a set in London 30 years on? Then it gets announced that Creation Management are up and running again and before you know it were right back there at the start.

Rolling down the hill falling and laughing and all that.

Careful, we might see The Mighty Lemon Drops playing some sort of ‘first’ album anytime soon. It’s like 1985 in 2015 (I think The Legend!’s going to put some 10” flexi out for RSD2015 (that’s record store day  folks) probably a red flexi – or possibly blue – but it will be limited edition -  to kind of sum it up…maaaaaaaaaan)

Now do not get me wrong – the JAMC were an awakening for a fourteen year old lad who’d missed out on that big punk/ plastic explosion – the JAMC were the third coming – an amalgamation of the Pistols, Velvets, Ronnettes and Stooges cool.

Absolutely grand – in so many ways.

And if I’m reaching for some noise it’s those boys I’m going for – all Spector beats – sqwawks and shrieks – rising feedback matching our rising alienation and the feeling that we just wanted to have a party (we’re gonna have real good time together). I recall the Whistle Test – 6pm in the evening and the scowl of Jim – swaying and posturing with his microphone – semi acoustic guitar slipping and a sliding around him – adding to the feedback fizz and William’s hunched guitar play all furious and on fire as Bobby and Douglas gave it that steady backbeat (you can use it) . It was riotous – not North London Poly riot – I mean generally riotous – it was noise on the telly – real noise.

Noise with Attitude (NWA) 

Now I loved The Smiths – they spoke to the insecurities of my teenage years – a confidence  expressing my feeling beyond thuggery – but you know I was never going to articulate that like Johnny Marr on the guitar – and thirteen olds shouldn’t write words to songs – they haven’t done out yet. They haven’t lived. So it was just me and my guitar – and as I said I was certainly no Marr – I’m hardly a Reid – but that cacophony and bluster – that attempt to control the sound yet let it run for itself – I thought I could give that go.

I never said I was a shy retiring teenager.

Those three chords gave you power and the ferocity of the JAMC’s raw power gave you confidence to try it out – in local pubs and clubs – on small stages or spaces with tables pushed aside – tuned up and turned up – irritating locals but not through choice – because you believed these were the best tunes ever written.  The Mary Chain did not set out to annoy – the just picked up the pieces from where rock n roll had fallen and broken. They put it back together. They meant it maaaaaaaan.

So the JAMC were perfect for me ( and you) they just used those basics of rock n roll and turned it into something of their own. This was a band hated by that muso scene – heavy on the muso scene – in their eyes they had no finesse – no grace – but to my eyes they simply had it all. I mean it – they had it all and I could at least emulate those ways – because I love/ hate rock n roll.  I just wanted something that was immediate – and so they were – Paul (my brother) duly purchased the album - we taped sessions from Janice Long, Jenson and Peel and fell in love with the whole fucking thing.

I still have a Jesus and Mary Chain T-shirt – I mentioned in a postway back then – one of the first or so – I still have that t-shirt now – it’s as old as Psychocandy.  I can’t get into it – I’m no lithe teenager now – in canvas and Chelsea boots.

So I probably won’t get to see/hear the JAMC –at the Troxy – because it will sell out – in minutes – faster than the length of ‘Upside Down’. We’re all into noise nostalgia now.  The good people of Shoreditch will lap it up. Perhaps that’s the way it should be - New audiences for old people.

But you know the JAMC are not a postmodern thing. They are the real thing.  That was modernity.  They were a part of my youth on the small streets of Scunthorpe – an alternative from the grind. I could hold my guitar to the amp and hope. As blast furnaces blew smoke to the skies.

Here’s to a wonderful set of concerts. Driven by sound and fury. Signifying something?  Enjoy it – because if they get half as close to that rush of energy from 1985 – then you’ll be in for a treat. 

Here is what I want it to look like . i actually think I have posted this before - but no one read it then (most likely like now) 

The Jesus and Mary Chain on The Whistle Test. 

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. 

The ever popular Denim

Not many people write about Denim as they do about Felt. These are bands by the way – not fabrics. I haven’t changed the nature of the writing. It’s still about music. Lawrence – as it simply is - gets all fawned over for the Felt beauty whilst the throbbing and bubbling glam stomping pure rock n roll of Denim is seen as an aberration – a record that poured scorn on the sensitivity and style of Felt. Saying that it’s not as if Felt get written about a lot. Although recent ‘media’ interest in a film with Lawrence (of Belgravia) made a few headlines in the back pages of music magazines. This is of course not true because music magazines don’t put those sort of things in the back of the papers. And if I’m honest I don’t read music magazines – or as they were called in my day – the music press – the papers as avidly anymore. So I may have missed a six page feature on the Rise and Fall of Lawrence. I somehow feel that I haven’t – but you never can tell.

Paul and me used to buy the music papers – you know - read it in the press.

There was a lot of them back when we wore donkey jackets to protect us from the cold on our walk into town. Broke and on the dole. Just hanging around. Uptown. We would buy nearly all the music papers every week – there was writing in there. Lots of words about records and that - it was relevant and irreverent.

We would only buy Sounds if we had too. It was a bit metal in the eighties. We weren’t metal. But each to his own. Paul did once own an Iron Maiden picture disc and I bought Gillian’s New Orleans on 7 inch in Boots. In the precinct – just down from WH Smiths – I think you can say that made us ‘metal’ for a week or so. But I never could take to the clothes. You need creases in your trousers – give it an iron and that – and the denim is so faded – I like mine dark.

I couldn’t get enough of Denim when I first heard them. The excitement had been building for months in our Scunthorpe bedroom - as Paul (my brother) and I read of Lawrence’s plans to form this group, this rocking behemoth of a band. Two drummers. Synthesizers and guitars and Lawrence’s studied coolness. Denim were so much more Britpop than any of that unnecessary nonsense that came out in the nineties. They were British and they made pop music. Not eccentric or located in the past. Pop music for the day which referenced their youth. Arppeggiated synthesizers and theme tune melodies wrapped in a disdain for the eighties – beautiful really. And again if I’m being honest - sounding so much better than Felt.

I had a wonderful friend at university – who loved Felt. You know - felt Felt – if you get me. I admired his patience – his integrity. You either get it or you don’t. He formed a wonderful band – part in his head – part in real life – Bellevue – they would have been brilliant. They had a master plan – like Felt did.

Except theirs and Felt’s never came off.

Saying that I wanted Denim to be huge – but it wasn’t to be.

If I remember rightly – and I seldom do. So I’m told. We ventured to town – along Ashby Road – past The Beefeater and over Howden’s Hill to Record Village. The home of ‘smart. music – this wasn’t their slogan – I just made it up. But you get my drift – you could buy those alternative sounds of the underground there. You could find good music (if you liked good music – do you like good music?) And we wanted to buy the long player by Denim all bright blue and 70s fonts.

It was the song title ‘I’m against the eighties’ that had chimed with us all. It was everything we had felt in this disposed decade – Thatcher’s ruin. The running down of every public service and any act of collectivism – of organising and protesting – was the norm. You know you’re a teenager and you’re growing up feeling fairly hopeless. Just as she had wanted. Because you can be crushed then – and we are now. This was being left out in the cold and Lawrence channelled all of that into a fix of pop. I took a look around there was nothing going down in the ‘80s. As I have stated previously – music cannot change the world but it can chime with a thought and a feeling. I’m sick of winklepicker kids - mary chain debris. Lawrence achieved that on Back in Denim – this reflection on things past as ‘Robin’s Nest’ synths bubbled and squelched and guitars riffed. Or Middle of the Road that challenged all that coolness and being hip.

I hate to be hip – I want to be square. So there.

I wish I could have seen them perform live. I remember video tapes at the ready for a performance on ‘Later’. They were wonderful. This was what Denim had sounded like in my head. They were making glam rock for a modern age – they were taking a bit of care. This was a band that signed to Boy’s Own at the time. Taking the idea that they were a dance band – rock music was finished – this was about doing it differently. You need different strokes for different folks.

Yet Back in Denim cost so much to make that Boy's Own went bankrupt. Or so they say. Denim were never going to hit big. That was until EMI said they would sign Denim if Lawrence came up with hit material. I mean imagine that – the band already had an album’s worth and here were these A&R fuckers asking for the hits. So he gave them one – a bubblegum pop called Summer Smash.

EMI loved it. It was Radio 1's single of the week.

"It was all set to come out on a Monday," remembers Lawrence. "Then Princess Di died on the Sunday before. EMI melted all the singles down."

Cursed – some might say.Lawrence would go on to form Go Kart Mozart. They're brilliant too. Lawrence tends to add that touch of magic.

So here’s to a Denim revival. It’s 2012. Let’s all have a bit of Lawrence in our lives.

Oh and stick with the clip – I think the beginnings some programme on Spanish television but suddenly Lawrence appears. You can look up the recorded version on line – if you like the beauty and soul in this performance.

Me, John and the masses

Last week I ventured to Kentish Town with old punks and grey haired romancers to watch a taut and well voiced Lydon sing with gusto and energy. I pogoed at one point, wrapped up in a moment of realization that this would, most likely, be my one time with John and me in a room.

I wanted that memory.

I created it amidst the mosh and the mass. Bespectacled and beered – well singing with cider that anger is an energy as I pushed myself on the shoulders of older men to ‘rise’ in the air and be part of it….maaaaan.

It was an odd concert to be honest. As I get older I tend to obsess more about train times than set lists – about routes and changes. I had met a friend early – soaking up the [unpretty] vacant Hirst exhibition [and we ‘should’ care – there was nothing pretty about his empty money grabbing greed and lack of style and grace – what a fucking rotter – next question.] We had settled near London Bridge  where the Shard stands like an intruder in the city and talked about this and that – but my mind was half on the clock and working my way up the Northern line to be on time for show.

Arriving only to be greeted by bouncers and barcode scanners. Like a supermarket where the staff wear tuxedos. Check your ticket -  that you printed – further saving costs – I used to keep hold of my old tickets – they had been designed – thought about – already providing the first steps of anticipation for an impending night,  sometimes weeks in advance. Don’t get me wrong – I do anticipate a night out – in fact I had done since I was given the ticket in a card on the morning I turned 41. Slowly clutching at middle age and tales to tell round the meeting table – not the public houses. But ticket design is a thing of the past. Perhaps it will help the hoarder in me.

So I arrived early – I wasn’t the first  - the place was filling up as men surveyed t-shirt prices and looked at flyers or simple wandered around holding carrier bags and looking lost. I had my bag over my shoulder – I knew where I was. Then randomly snapping photographs of empty stages – to capture and collect our moments – our nights out on iphones and apps to announce our attendance through digital means to all our other ‘friends’ on pages and sites.

The rituals. The motions.  All of us going through them.

There were no ‘special guests’ as promised. Just the incessant chug and fug of bass of the dub variety welcoming our hot bodies to relax and sway. I have always found the irony of the dub workout  - the slow and [rock] steady rolls and rimshot – as a means to generate anger and edge in confined spaces as bass shakes walls and floors and minds become ever more frayed as the subsonic shifts moods and moves. And on and on it played. I could feel that filling room filling up with the feeling that they’d been cheated – if it says guests – then give us some – because we knew that this PILzone wouldn’t be in effect until 9pm. But somehow through the fleeting appearances of ‘guitar techs’ we knew that something would ‘appen. So we beared with. We waited.

And then – once his manager/ guard was in place – stage right, PIL towel down – ready for the masses and the bass –there was John – all Carharrt camouflage and caterwaul. Not pantomime villain – but well rehearsed singer. The sounds were shrill and dense – echoing and reverberating off walls. I had gone fearing that the chorus and shine of the guitar would distract from the heavy bass bottom end. It didn’t. With Lydon’s scowl and growl, his scream and shout sitting and swirling in the mix. This was not for the faint hearted. This is not a long song. This was no easy trawl through the greatest hits, so far – this was confined space and bass in your face. You could see the whites of his eyes but we knew he would do us no harm – it’s the politicians who do that – as he took us out to deeper water and we were happy to bathe in it. Right until the final electronic sounds of Open Up he meant it. For real – as it where. There wasn’t a shout for a Pistols tune – we were there for PIL. For this public image of John.

I guess I got lost in all of that – and found myself bouncing up and down. Wild abandon in North London. No one got hurt. We police ourselves.

On the tubetrain on the way home – Johnny Cash arrived to serenade the midnight marauders with his Folsom Prison Blues as two young punks drank bottled beers and shared their wonder with one another. And as the train stopped and the Olympic hoards jumped on board  - I was struck by the fact that John still scares people. Clocked by a Team GB aficionado all indignant and self righteous – he looked at me and cursed in his suburban sounds that ‘he hadn’t seen anyone like those two fucking wastes of space on the Olympic field’ – trying to draw me in with a nod and a wink. All Daily Mail headlines – and leader columns – ‘Punks not Patriotic’. It’s if he wanted them to swap anarchy for Team GB. So he bristled and postured and muttered and he moaned all the while thinking I agreed but was just less confident to say it. What did he want me to do – lynch the fuckers?

I simply nodded. See as that other John said – the one who was vicious (so vicious) 'I’ve met the man on the street – and the man on the street is a cunt'.

I am an anarchist. Simple as that really. So is Lydon. It was good to be in his company. It was good to be with like minded people.

This is me jumping up and down. And this is a link to a wonderful Mayor in Spain. I think these things go together.

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. 

It’s not like I’m Jimi – you know.

And sometimes I pick up the guitar and play. I bought that guitar in 1992. A double payment from the dole office. Income support and unemployment benefit. A double cheque – clearly with no checks – as they never came looking for the money. The guitar and the wah-wah.

Now we got the funk.

Its paint is chipped – the single coil pick-ups worn – the knobs just metal. But it is my guitar. I can play that guitar. One day I will own the Fender Jaguar but in some ways some ways that will be an old man’s purchase – a vanity guitar – it will never have the love and attention like that one. The struggle to pick out a new chord on the neck, the wearing away of the wood, its weight in my hands. A new guitar – however much better and beautiful - will not really be the same. I am precious about it – but also non-committal – it can fall over – the kids can bang it.

It’s a guitar – it is built to kill fascists – it can take a knock.

Sometimes I open the pages of those ‘How to play’ books and rattle through a song – making shapes that resemble a chord and noises that pass for a tune. I was very anti-muso as young un – and there’s something of a sneer in me when I see a rocker grinding the axe man. Not when I witness the spectacle of an orchestra – it’s most likely a class thing. That elitist thing – which as I age and discard the postmodern pointers that equate the mundane with the sublime – I increasingly subscribe to - I blame reading F.R. Leavis at an impressionable age – although Emma will tell me that you can’t elevate the Pistols over Wham because they’re all pop – and therefore disposable. But we’ll leave that for another day – another rant. You’ve still got a hierarchy in pop.

But I was anti learning in a way. Not when I was at school – I lapped it all up – Christ I attended every lecture at University - bar one I think through illness. I loved it. But when it came to the guitar – I didn’t want to ‘master’ it – I wanted it to feedback and scream – I wanted it to buzz and fuzz. I didn’t care about tunings – or proficiency to the point of abstinence.

Three chords really was a mantra. Or four.

The first guitar I owned – all Kay’s catalogue and slightly too short strung perfectly for a week until the top E broke and I continued to learn – fucking up my finger positions as five strings was better than six. I had heard Keith Richards had done this – clearly this was not true. The spirit of the stones in Scunthorpe homes. Except it wasn’t – because I was anti – blues – I was anti this and anti that. I should have just shut up and played the guitar. I should have studied Scotty Moore’s technique, or the Stooges riffage, the arpeggios of Simon and Garfunkel and the major to minor Beach Boys cadence.

I didn’t - I learnt four – possibly five chords and refused to do cover versions.

This would haunt me for some time. Those knockabout sessions – where a guitar appears and people say you play – but you don’t really – you know chords – not tunes. So you make excuses but really want to hold it – but no one will sing along to your tunes. They are not hits my friend and never will be. Oh I could’ve been a YouTube sensation – but the net didn’t exist back then [this is an outright lie – I mean only 20 people ever read this] So this reluctance to learn was grounded in a sneer to the muso scene – the Phil Colllins thumping or the bass slapping of that Mark King from Level 42. It put up walls to it. And thus built walls around far too many things. So it’s taken a while to appreciate the skills and sleight of hand of many guitarists – because I was anti – music. As if Will Sargent couldn’t play or Johnny Marr or Bernard Sumner [actually he couldn’t - he’s more my kind of style]– but I don’t practise much these days.

And now I can appreciate it - I should.

A week ago I was in Nottingham placed firmly at the back of a merry pack of blistering guitarists. We played Valeria by The Zutons, I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor, Panic by The Smiths and Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You by Andy Williams. I was able to mask my incompetence through stumbles and jangles. It's not like I’m Jimi – you know.

So here’s to three chords or four – but no more than five and what you can do with them. 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 stone dropped in the pond.

And I should learn those chords as an old man. I should play the tunes to the family – all strummed out.

So here’s to simplicity and anger – all wrapped up in that Steve Jones style. It’s good to make music using your hands.

 

Play the record - just play the record

I found an old Stooges CD this weekend – stuffed in a draw – it was Funhouse. All that energy tucked inside a draw. Is this how my children will discover sounds – in draws on scratched CDs or mini-discs piled up in boxes shoved at the back of a cupboard? Or the record boxes in the garage – or on USBs - or even on soundcloud as we remix the oldies and throw them up for the youth.

Actually don’t get me wrong I think Soundcloud is wonderful – there are talents and possibilities now. It’s not looking for a drummer amongst four friends or having someone in your band who has a perm and thinks that’s alright – it is a remix – reload and re-present in the most open way. You don’t form bands down your street you run rings around the world.

I chance upon sounds these days. I don’t actively search. I read about them but I never go and search them out like I used to. I guess I’m not as immersed [bothered] in the same way – don’t have the time to be honest.

I look at all that vinyl taking up space in my house [and my life] and wonder – like the books on the shelves will I ever get round to listening to or reading it again? And then I think how will they discover it – not through shops and racks but downloads and apps. They will look at the covers and type in the tunes.

Never listening to the full album as it stands – as it is presented.

There was a time when you would wait for a record’s release – a journey in and a journey out of town – not knowing whether they had it or not. And then purchased and placed in plastic and carried round town – if there were other visits to make –to the market, the library or possibly Fosters for a new t-shirt. And then later in the small shop fronts with different postcodes shopping uptown in Ladbroke Grove or centrally in Covent Garden. New releases and racks upon racks of records.

The act of playing a record - of watching it revolve is both comforting and pricked with anticipation. Have your heroes lived up to your expectations? I was going to write a line about pop stars never being my heroes and then I remembered the long list of names and styles I have followed and appropriated over the years. I am currently devoting much time and energy to the mid 1970s Brian went to bed look. There are hundreds of these moments to mine – I think getting The Queen is Dead by The Smiths was a big un – all gatefold sleeve and grandiosity. From the opening chants to take me back to dear old blighty to the closing guitar refrain from Marr as we discovered that some girls were bigger than others - this was a successful purchase from Record Village and would not be returned.

There’s a scene in Control – the film about Ian Curtis – in fact it’s the opening scene after the bit about all hope and ending an that – that’s a bit depressing innit? There’s Ian walking through the concrete jungle of Macclesfield – all flares and purpose. A record tucked tight under his arm. Aladdin Sane by Bowie sound tracking the colour in this dreary landscape. But that was it – the impact of the 12inch piece of plastic. As Curtis takes his drag on cigarette laid on his bed as Bowie plays in his room – it’s clear he’s thinking. And all those grooves can make you think. Perhaps music doesn’t much these days – for me. It might for you. That scene, it taps into the power of the record – right there. I’ve said it before and I will continue to write it down. Immersing yourself in sound should be through conscious choice not passive and futile in its approach.

Turn the fucking radio off.

But I was reading about the Kaiser Chiefs all future technologies and that – you know come down our shop and pick a few tunes – you take the effort to make the album because we can’t be bothered. We can’t make decisions like you. So choose your top ten songs from the twenty or so on offer and we’ll throw in a cover so you can recognise it on the ipod.

And then the listening experience becomes removed from everybody else. Because Frankly Mr Shankly will not end and I know it’s Over begin. Because I put it in a different order – I bought different songs to you - in fact my The Queen is Dead opens with Panic.

So it will be odd to witness the ways they listen – because when I was growing up the world wouldn’t listen – well not to our tunes – our selections. The Clouds didn’t get a TOTP performance – nor BMX Bandits. But I was meant to be discussing the ways in which the whole experience of listening is caught up in the grooves of the vinyl – the breaks in between before the sound surges and wraps itself around the room. For every pulsating hit record comes the filler - side two of Parklife anybody? So what if you don’t return to it or you lift the needle and pass it by – you know it’s there. That song you didn’t quite like – but you might find it again – you might stumble on it and suddenly there’s a whole open road ahead – it happened with The Beach Boys for me. I had purchased a straightforward sounds of the sixties Beach Boys compilation, by its very nature it should have been the hits anyway – all killer – no filler. Yet once played it sounded weak, light and conservative. I wasn’t dazzled by the production, the harmony – none of it. Then a chance suggestion and a purchase of the Pet Sounds led to discovery and returning and retuning my ears to listen again – listen with brother.

And I’m not certain that those non single tunes will ever be listened to in the ways they were meant to be. Sometimes you have to make the effort to break on through to the other side. I once met a man – the owner of Glendevon Enterprises – on Broadway in Ashby. A place that has resisted change so much that even its shoppers rock a seventies look. Glendevon Enterprises is no more. He must have sold up, taken the Alsatian out the cot and dropped all the rot in a skip. It was a tantalising, illicit sort of place – all books and fag ends, electrics and magazines deep in the back – on a rack. Paul and I would go there and sell stuff – to make up the coppers for the records we wanted – selling this and that for £8 or a fiver. He ripped us off – it was daunting in there. But he liked his tunes and he told us – with a serious look on his face and no twinkle in his eye that he was saving the second side of Dark Side of the Moon for when he was truly depressed – because he marvelled at the majesty of the A-side and knew the B-side could bring him down from the ledge. Paul and I thought he was a daft fucker for missing out – you know - what if he died without listening to it. But there lies the power of all the songs on a long player.

The bands put them on for a reason.

They at least made the effort – so I think it’s worth a listen.

Not something to be skipped over because it wasn’t a hit. So getting back to that Stooges CD – Funhouse. I hope that at some point when Constance is digging through the crates and she comes across it – she doesn’t just skim over it. Rather she has a listen in full. Gives it a go. Like we had to and not resort to typing the stooges into a itunes and picking the hits.

Saying that did the Stooges really have any hits?

I’m not saying that there isn’t a whole heap of filler on the slabs of plastic in my house. But I do think I’ve given them a fair chance. That’s all I’m saying – give them a chance.

Here’s to the songs that follow the singles.

Loose The Stooges – coming after the single Down on the Street. It’s the second song on Funhouse.