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Primera Persona In Barcelona

Sunday, May 6th, 2012

Arriving in Barcelona early on Thursday evening (3 May 2012) I was whisked from the airport to Hotel Jazz in the city centre by Ana Pareja and Claudia Cucchiarato from my Spanish publisher Alpha Decay. Having dropped my bag, I was taken on a quick walking tour of the city before we arrived at Bar Ramón where we watered for the rest of the evening. The first thing Ana did was order drinks and tapas, after which we were able to relax and enjoy the groovy sounds…it was blues to start with but switched to sixties soul. The food was incredibly good and I ate more of it than anyone else! When we arrived around eight the bar was empty but it quickly filled with regulars and people connected to the Primera Persona spoken word festival in which I was participating.

I was introduced to a slew of hipsters including Jonathan Ames who was performing at Primera Persona the night after me. We talked about writing and writers, and although Ames is from New York he only knew of – rather than knew – most of my close east coast novelist friends like Lynne Tillman and Darius James….  Primera Persona organiser Kiko Amat and Miqui Otero somehow found time to talk to everyone, including me. With Kiko I got into a passionate discussion about smoking seventies bands who’ve been left out of the rock canon such as The Dictators and The Gorillas. I also caught up with a couple of journalists who’d interviewed me for the Spanish press – Laura Sangrà and Jaime Casas. Ironically the barman who was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words ‘Cannabis Street’ still looked completely straight by the end of the night….

After Bar Ramón most of the crew went on to some other late-night drinking place, whereas I went back to the hotel and was in bed by 2.30pm. The next day I got up in time for breakfast and without even a whiff of a hangover. Spain isn’t really a breakfast country and I’m always shocked by the number of cakes on the buffet in Spanish hotels. I stuck to muesli and even that was way too sweet (I prefer it without sugar added to the mix). I risked the coffee but it proved to be beyond bad and I didn’t even manage to drink half a cup of the horrible shit. It isn’t hard to get good coffee in Spain, just don’t expect it to be good if it comes in a jug… I think they make the bad coffee mostly to please American tourists – who for reasons that beat me seem to like the beverage extra weak!

At noon Claudia from Alpha Decay came to meet me and shortly afterwards Paul Geddis from Vice Magazine arrived to do an interview. I took them both up to the swimming pool and sun bathing area on the roof of Hotel Jazz, and we had these facilities to ourselves as I answered the questions Paul put to me. We rapped about all sorts of shit including my books and political activism in Spain – but as this wasn’t an interview for a Spanish language publication we didn’t talk about Memphis Underground, my most recent book in that territory.

After Paul left, Ana from Alpha Decay arrived and we had a car to take us to a radio station. We had to produce ID, be signed in and pass through a scanner – making it feel like going into the BBC in London. There was a link up to the main studio in Madrid and I talked mostly about Memphis Underground with some very nice tunes played either in the background or inbetween the talk – including the Herbie Mann instrumental I’d used for the title for this book. The final question I was asked is apparently put to all guests on the show: “What’s your cloud?” This seems to be based on a Spanish phrase about daydreaming and I suggested my cloud was a purple bubble floating across the universe as if I was on an acid trip….

From the radio station we went on to the CCCB where I was performing that night so that I could do a soundcheck. The theatre had just been build and the equipment was top-notch – not since I’d participated in an event at The Barbican Theatre in London a year earlier had I had such a perfect environment in which to strut my funky stuff. I did my headstand reading and got applause from the technicians and administrators in the theatre despite the fact it was only a run through. One of the things I really appreciated on this trip to Barcelona was just how well the hospitality was handled. I never get treated as well in London! And so naturally enough my soundcheck was followed by a very late lunch with Ana and Claudia at the CCCB. Then I had an hour-and-a-half of free time before I had a photo session booked, so I went and chilled at the hotel. Returning to the CCCB I found Miqui, Kiko and their friends drinking beers, so I joined them. We had a bit of a crack before Claudia and Ana turned up.

The photographer was running late so we went into the theatre to get on with the event. First up was the young English novelist Ben Brooks who read while getting members of the audience to tattoo random words on his legs. This was apparently painful and at times Brooks pleaded with his tormentors not to push the needles in so far. I liked the idea of a distraction making it harder to read, although not being a self-harmer like Ben (or at least his fictional self) I prefer pleasurable distractions of the type suggested by my old Apeman Performance. The performances were being filmed and so we had close ups of blood oozing from the needle marks on Ben’s legs projected larger than life on a screen at the back of the stage.

Each section of the night was to run for around an hour with a break inbetween – so I didn’t have to go on straight after Brooks. I found Javier Calvo in the backstage area and had a quick chat with this legendary Spanish novelist. Javier was reading my story New Britain in Catalan, and he went on before me, immediately after my video based on the piece he was doing had been screened. Javier is an incredible performer and had a range of voices for the different characters in my story, making his reading style very different to my rhythmic monotone. When Javier finished we had Cranked Up Really High by Slaughter and the Dogs blasting from the PA, and with that as accompaniment I bounced out into the centre of the stage. The first thing I did was a recite a passage from Memphis Underground, then I moved on to 69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess. Next I did a bit of talk partly based on my book about punk rock Cranked Up Really High, but at the same time explaining why I preferred power pop bands like The Hammersmith Gorillas to The Sex Pistols. Finally I stood on my head and recited the final section of Blood Rites of the Bourgeoisie. I left the stage basking in the warmth of my reception and a lot of applause.

I chatted to various people in the break after my hour. Juanjo Sáez and various friends appeared next to speak about their comics in Catalan. Since I couldn’t follow this, I nipped into the green room  to stuff my face with the food put out for performers, and while I was at it I grabbed a few beers. The cut-off jeans Ben Brooks had been wearing onstage were on the floor in the middle of the green room and someone picked them up and laughed that he was so teenage! After I’d eaten, the photographer who’d taken some shots of me onstage finally got around to snapping the long planned posed pictures of me.

The final act on the bill that night was Tobi Vail who I’d last seen perform as the drummer of Bikini Kill nearly 20 years earlier. She did a mixture of readings and music. When I saw Bikini Kill live I found them thrilling and I was hoping for something similar from this solo set. Vail sang and played electric guitar backed by only a bass player – and without a full rhythm section I found what she did lacked the kick of Bikini Kill. However, I was pleased when her last tune turned out to be a song in support of the imprisoned members of the Moscow grrrl power band Pussy Riot. Politically I thought Vail’s heart was in the right place, although I found her views about indie culture and her self-identification as a punk rocker way too earnest to groove me. That said, I’m obviously not a part of the demographic of teenage girls Vail is aiming to inspire, so I’m sure the fact that what she’s doing these days isn’t my bag won’t bother her at all…

After the first night of Primera Persona was over at the CCCB, I ended up at Bar Manchester where I mostly talked with Ana from Alpha Decay and Txell Torrent from the MB Literary Agency. Txell expressed amusement at the outrageous nature of my fiction, but also chatted about various London writers we know. She told me that she was a huge fan of horror fiction and absolutely loved Kim Newman (who she represents in Spain). Having performed I was able to really relax and enjoy some beers. The results of this are perhaps predictable, so I think I’ll end things here on a high rather than providing any more details of my trip to Barcelona. I left Txell in Bar Manchester and… Well let’s just say that since embarrassing confessions are a Ben Brook’s speciality, I’m happy to leave such things to him…

And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!

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Posted in books, culture gossip & parties, exhibitionism, performance | 29 Comments »

Bill Wyman’s Gallery “Art” – Or The Rock Star Considered As A Complete Scumbag

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011

Aside from The Beatles, The Rolling Stones were pretty much the most tedious British Invasion band of the 1960s. Both these acts lacked the mod flash and live excitement of the way superior Who, Small Faces and Creation; not to mention the raw primitive energy that enabled the likes of The Troggs, The Pretty Things and The Downliners Sect to completely outclass bigger rock and pop names. While Mick Jagger’s staid middle-class mannerisms and absurd attempts at imitating Tina Turner’s high sixties dance moves meant that his glossed lips were forever begging for a mod fist to bust them open, Rolling Stones bass player Bill Wyman proved himself to be the biggest tosser in the group by dating 13 year-old school girl Mandy Smith in the 1980s.

While Whyman’s affair and subsequent marriage to Smith generated a lot of media coverage, he somehow managed to avoid the kind of excoriation heaped upon other kiddie fiddling scumbag pop paedophiles such as Gary Glitter or Jonathan King. That doesn’t necessarily make Wyman better than Glitter or King -  he was just lucky to have been operating from the more powerful position of belonging to one of the very biggest acts in the entertainment business.

Throughout October and November 2011 there has been an exhibition of Whyman’s photographs entitled Second Nature at Rove in London’s Hoxton Square. Like most celebrity exhibitions the show sucks. The selection and presentation of work is incoherent – a mix of music related shots and nature photographs; with stuff such as a portrait of Marc and Bella Chagall thrown in for no good reason (this is the only portrait of a painter).  Wyman is a mediocre photographer and there is little of interest in his nature pictures. For those in thrall to celebrity, his snaps of his fellow Rolling Stones and those around them (Jerry Hall, John Lennon) may hold some interest although overall they are nothing special. Constant privileged access means that there are a couple of lucky shots – but even those pictures showing the Stones looking completely threadbare and worthless (such as a scrawny and bare chested Keith Richard pathetically holding up his fists) pale in comparison to the way the Maysles brothers film Gimmie Shelter explodes Jagger and Company’s empty posturing.

Looking at Second Nature I couldn’t help but feeling I’d seen exactly the same kind of celebrity junk art many times before. Then I remembered I’d not only seen it all before, I’d also written about it for The Big Issue back in the 1990s. What goes around comes around, so rather than saying any more about Wyman – who is a typical Tory supporting rich toe-rag – I can just reproduce what I wrote about celebrity art 14 years ago…. it remains as valid today as it was then!

But first a quick comment on the celebrity art claims made by a pair of academic clowns – Dr John Schofield and Dr Paul Graves-Brown – as reported by the BBC yesterday. The Beeb quotes these ejits as saying: “The tabloid press once claimed that early Beatles recordings discovered at the BBC were the most important archaeological find since Tutankhamun’s tomb. The Sex Pistols’ graffiti in Denmark Street surely ranks alongside this and – to our minds – usurps it.” The Beatles and The Sex Pistols both contributed massively to ruining rock and roll – the success of these fifth rate acts led many others to imitate everything that was bad about them.

Schofield and Graves-Brown are reported as dating all the Sex Pistols graffiti from 1975. If this is in fact the case it illustrates nicely why they are archetypal academic idiots: one piece of graffiti features Nancy Spungen and it wouldn’t take much research to discover Johnny Rotten (who allegedly did the cartoons) wouldn’t have known what she looked like until she arrived in London in 1977. Thus this part of the ‘art’ either dates from at least a couple of years after 1975, or else it isn’t by Rotten. Of course, it also remains possible that none of the graffiti is by Rotten and it is not anything like 36 years old. Judged on what the Beeb report Schofield and Graves-Brown as saying, it would take someone with considerably greater historical and archaeological skills than they possess (zero basically) to determine the provenance of this work.

And after that detour here’s my old article about celebrities and art.

THE ANTIQUES ROADSHOW

Throughout the swinging sixties a good many young people imagined that they belonged to the first generation that could do anything, which mostly meant being a bohemian. Although no longer far out and fabulous, sixties has-beens still cling to the belief that it is possible to do one thing today, and another tomorrow. The sheer number of once beautiful people who’ve waddled onto the gallery circuit in recent years is proof of a tenacious, if largely misplaced, belief in their own creative capacities.

Thirty years ago, self-important groovy people like David Bowie and the recently dead Allen Ginsberg were inspired to mix different art forms by the burgeoning ‘happenings’ movement. More recently, mixed-media experimentation has given way to self-indulgence, with sixties stars attempting to revitalise their celebrity status through exhibitions of paintings. Most pop icons who’ve made credible art works did so at the height of their fame, through a marriage of music, theatre and painting. Attempts by former members of the glitterati to reinvent themselves as artists are rarely successful.

Sixties movie icon David Hemmings shot to fame when he starred in the Antonioni film Blow Up. This portrait of swinging London included a scene where a game of tennis was played without a ball. Eclectic Similarities by Hemmings, a solo art show which opens this week at London’s Osborne Studio Gallery, promises to be considerably more pedestrian. Working in the highly traditional mediums of pen, pencil and water-colour, the faded luvvie now finds artistic inspiration in what Pimm’s swilling toffs still call ‘the season’. Occasionally broadening his horizons beyond Henley, Lord’s, Ascot and Goodwood, Hemmings has also knocked out some London townscapes and a series of pictures on the theme of magic. However, it’s with the storyboards from his film and tv production credits, including The A Team, that he finally manages to scrape the bottom of his threadbare barrel. Don’t expect any surprises, Hemmings doesn’t have it in him to fling a pot of paint in the public’s face.

Infinitely superior to Eclectic Similarities is Brian Eno’s current show Music For White Cube, running at London’s White Cube gallery until 31 May. Eno being Eno, it comes as no surprise that there is nothing to see in this exhibition. Instead, there is a room of randomly generated ‘ambient’ music, something the former Roxy Music star pioneered in the late-sixties. In the words of White Cube, ‘the installation consists of four CD stations each playing a specially cut CD containing between eight and sixteen tracks. The CD players are set to ‘shuffle’ mode, thereby selecting tracks at random, to produce a landscape of sound that continually remakes itself.”

Don’t be put off by the po-faced promotion, the work is a lot more interesting than the press release implies. After all, Eno has a great sense of fun. He is rightly notorious for having relieved himself in the dadaist ready-made Fountain – an ordinary urinal that artist Marcel Duchamp signed R. Mutt and then submitted for exhibition.

Considerably less successful are the paintings and sculpture of Eno’s fellow glam rocker David Bowie. Some of these were shown a couple of years ago under the title New Afro/Pagan and Work 1975-1995 at Chertavia Fine Art in London. Bowie’s pictures were a mixture of expressionistic squibs and fantasy figures set against an underlay of Laura Ashley wallcoverings. With his usual aplomb, Bowie admitted in the accompanying brochure ‘in neither music nor art have I a real style, craft or technique. I just plummet through on either a wave of euphoria or mind-splintering dejection.’

Beyond the obvious financial rewards, one is left wondering why Bowie bothers himself with creative matters. The same might be said of actor Tony Curtis, who is currently showing his sub-Cubist paintings in Cannes. The Berlin based art curator Berthold Golomstock is currently putting together an exhibition of social realist style paintings by original Stones guitarist Brian Jones, to be toured internationally in 1999.

Art exhibitions by long forgotten sixties stars are likely to become an increasingly common feature of the cultural landscape. Former teen icons suffering from middle-aged spread find painting landscapes on a Sunday afternoon a considerably less demanding pursuit than making innovative music and films.

First published in The Big Issue #233, May 19-25 1997.

And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!

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Posted in art criticism, exhibitions, music | 27 Comments »

Pleasure never hurt anyone… some Cocteau Twins pre-history and the way London rocked 30 years ago!

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

I’ve never been into the Cocteau Twins myself… just ain’t my thing. However, I recently got into an online discussion in which I mentioned that I’d known their second and main bass player Simone Raymonde in the old days when he’d been in a band called Disruptive Patterns, and that this group had morphed into The Drowning Craze. Or rather, I mentioned that the Drowning Craze had emerged from a band whose name I couldn’t remember off the top of my head! It took some serious thinking to retrieve the name…

In the late-seventies and early-eighties I belonged to various groups that played and rehearsed in and around London and its south-west suburbs – the furthest out of London I played was in places like Guildford and Stevenage (okay Stevenage is north of London, but mainly we played south-westish), usually in pubs or sometimes clubs like The Starlight in West Hampstead (the less prestigious upstairs venue twinned with the relatively small Moonlight Club). We practiced all over the shop too, but the best place I ever rehearsed (circa 1980-81) was in an 8 track recording studio located in the basement of Theatre Projects in Neal’s Yard, Covent Garden.

Dave King, who drummed for a band I was in called Basic Essentials, worked at Theatre Projects as a recording engineer and so we were allowed to use the place at the weekends for free, not just to rehearse but also to record. It was amazing, during breaks we’d rake through  old tapes and dig up demos by the likes of T. Rex and The Average White Band who’d used the Theatre Projects studio…. although during the week the bread and butter work there was recording stage effects for plays. At the start of the eighties, Covent Garden was still in the process of being transformed into the shopping mall from hell it has become today, so we’d have a laugh in the area and after rehearsals we’d usually go to a tiny caff on the north side of Leicester Square which we called The Basic Essentials Cafe (I can’t remember it’s actual name and – like Theatre Projects in Neal’s Yard – it isn’t there any more) for espresso.

Anyway, because I was playing in various small time groups, I got to know a lot of other bands, including Disruptive Patterns. I’d guess Disruptive Patterns were a going concern around 1979-80, I certainly saw them several times and one of their tunes is still lodged in my mind. It was probably called Pleasure Never Hurt Anyone, since that line was the main refrain of the chorus. Disruptive Patterns were a fairly straightforward new wave act with some backwards and forwards psychedelic nods (and more like The Psychedelic Furs than The Sex Pistols). The two members of the combo I recall being on friendly terms with were singer Andy McInnes and bass player Simon Raymonde, although I’d imagine I spoke to other members of the group as well. Both Andy and Simon struck me as nice guys, but given the way bands work it didn’t surprise me when Andy was kicked out and an American girl called Angela Jaeger was brought in to front the group, which simultaneously changed its name to The Drowning Craze (the line-up and name change may have been at the instigation of the indie label Situation 2, who the group signed a record deal with, but I’m not certain this was the case).

I went to see The Drowning Craze early on somewhere in central London (I don’t remember which venue, but some small club) and didn’t like the new singer or the new songs (the set was completely different to the one Disruptive Patterns had been performing). I lost sight of Andy McInnes pretty soon after this, but carried on running into Simon Raymonde by chance on the street or in clubs pretty much up to the time he joined The Cocteau Twins, I haven’t seen him since then. Since I didn’t like Angela Jaeger as a singer, I only ever saw The Drowning Craze once when she was in the group – but after she was replaced by Frank Nardiello, I have a very dim memory of giving them a second chance and liking what they did with him a little bit more (but whether this was a gig or a rehearsal I’d been invited to witness, I can’t recall).

There are a couple of photos of the Disruptive Patterns on Fred Pipes’s Flickr pages, and a comment in a Cocteau Twins discussion thread riffing off Fred’s photos. But it would be nice if someone could help me recall some other Disruptive Patterns tunes, the venues they played (mainly around Guildford as far as I recall – Wooden Bridge etc.), and possibly even upload any demos that might exist! Also am I right in thinking there is a link between Disruptive Patterns/Drowning Craze and a late-seventies punk band called The Rubber Flowers who were probably based in Farnham (which is further south-west than I ever ventured) and whose line-up included Alex Binnie?

It was interesting attempting to dredge this minor piece of music history from my memory, and thereby realise how much of it I must have forgotten. That said, there are a lot of tunes that probably never made it onto vinyl rattling around my head from that time. For example, I can remember two songs by a band called The Lasers, Living In A Television (‘livin’ in a television, ray tube for a home, livin’ a television on my own!’) and Show Us Your White Bits. I can’t recall where this band were from but I assume it was south-west or west London suburbs. Anyone know anything about them? I guess I’d better stop there or this is gonna get too seriously obscure!

And while you’re at it don’t forget to check - www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!

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Posted in deep topology aka psychogeography, music | 25 Comments »

1970s nightmares part 1: seeing Sting & The Police unannounced at a punk gig

Friday, July 24th, 2009

I knew 1979 was gonna be a bad year before it even started, although I didn’t see Thatcher’s election as a certainty until it happened. Much of my take on the world back then was filtered through the  music I loved.  On 29 December 1978 I headed up to Camden to catch a multi-band new wave gig at The Electric Ballroom headlined by The Brian James All Stars. This was the band that eventually became The Brains. Their performance that night was so-so and for me it didn’t compare with the excitement of seeing The Damned live when James was their guitarist (or even when they reformed without him).

I don’t remember who was bottom of the bill on 29 December 1978 at the Electric Ballroom. I hope it wasn’t 4th Reich, who used to do a lot of central London support slots at that time; they were one of the worst named punk bands of that era. As far as I could tell this group weren’t political, they had a female singer and their most memorable song was a cover of the early sixties hit Bobby’s Girl. But the name 4th Reich was so stupid that I never paid them much attention, although I saw them at least half-a-dozen times as support to other bands.  Billed immediately beneath Brian James was Squeeze. I was more interested in Squeeze then than I would be now, since I’d rather liked their Packet of Three EP (more to do with John Cale’s production than the band’s live sound); their subsequent chart hits failed to groove me. Anyway, at some point it was announced that the Squeeze van had broken down with them and their equipment in it, and since they couldn’t make the gig, the The Police would play instead.

I knew before I heard them that any band calling themselves The Police had to be terrible. The filth were scum and no one in their right mind would name their group after the old bill. Brian James hadn’t pulled much of a crowd, and there were only about 50 punks in the Electric Ballroom, which I guess had a capacity of something between one and two thousand. When The Police took to the stage everyone in the venue walked away from it and headed for the bar at the back of the room. Pretty much the entire audience had their backs turned on Sting and company for their entire set. Unfortunately this was the most memorable thing about the night… Not a good gig.

I don’t remember what I did that New Year, my recollection of the following one is much better since I was back at the Electric Ballroom to see in 1980 with a double-bill of The Lurkers and Adam & The Ants. Musically this was a much better night than Brian James and The Police a year and two days earlier. That said, while the Ants were playing a girl who was standing close to me tried to pull Adam off-stage, and rather than taking it out on her, the bouncers beat me up. Then, because I looked a mess with my bloodied face, I got pulled by the filth on my way home. I’d picked up one of the free clear vinyl flexi-singles The Lurkers used to give away at their gigs, and the old bill held me for ages while they tried to work out what this was. I told them it was a record but they didn’t believe me; apparently they’d never seen a flexi-disk before. Eventually, after a radio conversation with their controllers and a close inspection of the grooves, they concluded my Lurkers freebie was indeed a record and not some drug paraphernalia, so plod let me go with a warning that if I was caught fighting again, I’d be nicked. I headed off with their verdict on my flexi-single still ringing in my ears: “Very clever!” Little things impress little minds.

Three days later I made my way to Wardour Street in Soho to catch Eater who’d been advertised as playing at The Marquee. This schoolboy punk band were best known for bitching that The Sex Pistols were too old, and I really dug their super-dumb sleaze-bag thud. Unfortunately, being almost as young as me (I was sixteen at the time), they tended to bicker a lot. When I arrived at 90 Wardour Street  (now a swanky Terence Conran restaurant, but back then a rock and roll toilet) on 3 January 1979, there was a sign saying Eater had split up and Marseille would play instead. I’d heard the Marseille song Do It The French Way and seen pictures of this Liverpool based group, so I knew they weren’t for me. Back then people didn’t use the phrase New Wave of British Heavy Metal, but that’s what Marseille were subsequently tagged.

I was on my own and since Eater weren’t playing, I decided I’d only go inside if some of my mates were around. I couldn’t see anyone I knew but got talking to punkette in the queue and since she was going in, I decided to hang with her. I warned her that Marseille played heavy metal and we should go somewhere elsewhere. I wasn’t interested in Marseille but I was taken with the girl, so I parted with 50p to get in. Afterwards we both agreed that Marseille sucked and I walked the punkette down to Charing Cross station, where she caught a train to south east London. Unfortunately she didn’t invite me to go home with her but I did get her phone number. When I got around to calling the punkette a week later, she wouldn’t meet me coz I’d taken so long to bell her. I was playing cool, not hard to get.

So 1979 started badly and ended badly too with a beating at the Electric Ballroom.  There were some good gigs in-between, with The Specials just before they broke being particularly memorable. First time I caught them was bottom of the bill to the reformed Damned (without Brian James) and The UK Subs (I think), at The Lyceum Ballroom in The Strand. The Specials were even better when I saw them headlining at The Nashville in South Kensington – unfortunately they had the same support band both times, Madness, who were fucking awful. The best gig I saw at The Marquee that year was Slaughter and the Dogs on Monday 3 September. The most impressive act at The Lyceum in 1979 is hard to pin down, Pure Hell from Philadelphia were memorable – but I’m unsure whether I saw them there in 1979 or the year before. Ditto Destroy All Monsters, who I saw at The Lyceum, but this might have been in 1980 rather than 1979. Both Pure Hell and Destroy All Monsters were right up there with some of the class US acts I’d seen in 1977, such as The Dictators and The Dead Boys.  But even The Fall, who I’d hated when I’d seen them at The Marquee the year before, were excellent supporting Stiff Little Fingers at The Lyceum in 1979. The audience loathed them and Mark E. Smith did a perfect job of winding up the massed ranks of punk zealots. Smith is very entertaining when he has an audience that really hates him, but under all other circumstances I find him a bore.

I was also going to see a lot of the mod revival bands in 1979: Purple Hearts, The Mods, The Chords, Secret Affair, Back To Zero etc. But rather than the big events like Mod’s Mayday at the Music Machine, the best gigs were smaller ones at places like The Notre Dame Hall off Leicester Square and at The Global Village under the Charing Cross arches (then a straight disco, but later the gay nightclub Heaven). I liked catching bands from around London who you could see play every few weeks, and if they had a pop sensibility that made them even better. I saw both The Vapors and The Members repeatedly in 1979, as well as some of the more dire-hard acts like Chelsea and even Raped; the latter more after their name change to Cuddly Toys. So there was some good music, some bad music, but the winter of discontent was the real groove sensation – even if it was followed by the affront of Thatcherism. And since the current economic crisis is reopening the revolutionary possibilities that the ruling class wants us to believe were closed down back then, the seventies are on my mind a lot right now….

And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!

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Posted in music | 37 Comments »

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