What We All Want?

What do we all want? On Saturday 24 June, England's Guardian newspaper heat sealed a CD into the plastic bag which contained their listings guide and magazine. It was Pills n Thrills and Bellyaches by Happy Mondays. Inside the paper one of their writers contributed an article on why he won't be going to see the reformed Stone Roses next weekend, when 225,000 others will brave torrential rain (inevitably) to see the Mancunians perform their twenty year old back catalogue in a Manchester park. The writer's not going because actually, they won't be very good, and he saw them in 1990 when he was young and impressionable, which is a valid point.

On Friday night hundreds of thousands of people crawled through rain and mud, traffic jams and a forest of news reporters wearing flak jackets, to reach a field on the Isle of Wight. Once there those hundreds of thousands could strain their hearing, possibly poking an ear out of their pac-a-macs in order to catch a chorus or three of songs originally written and recorded forty (Bruce Springsteen), thirty-five (Tom Petty) and twenty-five (Pearl Jam) years ago.

Like most everyone else, I didn't really care enough about my past to have collated, collected and filed away physical or metaphysical artefacts of a life well lived. I barely keep any memories, either. Only musicians get to re-sell their past, in the form of 'new' editions of old recordings, or by performing those songs from a long time ago when they were relevant, exciting even. Now they're mostly stale 'classics' performed in order that the punter gets to sing along with the star.

I do still have a collection of vinyl records, a 1977 black Fender Telecaster Custom and a 1963 Ampeg Reverborocket amplifier (both gathering dust) that remind me of some parts of my distant past. I also have a backstage pass for the Stone Roses at Alexandra Palace from 1990, a laminate pass for Farm Aid VI in 1993 (Willy Nelson, Johnny Cash, Neil Young and Lyle Lovett in Ames, Iowa) and a pile of old magazine and newspaper cuttings printed with interviews, reviews and articles I contributed to a range of different magazines (1987-1995). But they are all lost somewhere in the attic, waiting for my passing away when they will be sold (on eBay, probably) by the inheritors of my 'estate'.

While I don't 'want' them, other people clearly do. Old gig tickets, old records, old magazines, old t-shirts, hell even old cigarette butts are traded and prided by 'collectors'(one of George Harrison's old ciggys once sold for thousands of dollars at auction). What such physical items contain is a kind of runic authority, a link with a now almost mythical past. In many ways attending gigs performed by aged and ageing old rockers are a kind of pilgrimage to a past that the attendees never had, even those people who might have been at Spike Island, Alexandra Palace or even the original 1970 Isle of Wight Festival.

What we all want is a shared past and experience that in actuality very few people ever had. Creators of what was cool and anti-social in decades past have been serially exploited and co-opted by media manipulators who use them to sell crap to people who think that by buying an Xbox because it uses a track by the Gang of Four that they are somehow 'cool'. They're not, they're just several hundred dollars less well off. Lydon selling butter was entirely expected and refreshingly uncool.

What's not cool are the promoters and musicians who make up the bill of the numerous ludicrously over-subscribed open air festivals which blight the European and American countryside during the summer. At the back of everyone in the crowd's mind as they make their weary way toward their own 'garden' in front of a stage is the hope that they're going to be part of a 'new' Woodstock/Altamont/Bath etc. Glastonbury (mercifully not on this year) is the best con job of the lot, with it's faux-mystical stage shapes (a fucking pyramid) and eco-concerned message: what damage do you think that the hundreds of thousands of cars and tons of human crap produced at the event do to the environment?

What we all want, it seems, is to have lived someone else's life, in another time. The middle-aged, middle class managerial class who glamp out at festivals doubtless think that they're 'having it large', and maybe they believe that the odd distorted guitar solo wafting from the stage is the ghost of  Jimi Hendrix. Maybe the unlucky people who weren't even born when the supposed rock n roll hero up there creaks through the millionth version of the hoary old chestnut that helped forge their reputation, believe that it's just like it was in 1972/1977/1989, and they're 'being' rock n roll.

What we all want is a little bit of past cool, whether it comes from an old ticket, a haircut that only ever looked good on Steve Marriott (without exception; Weller just looks stupid), a 1960s-vintage electric guitar or a 1970s-era scooter. We might think that by buying into a past life we're avoiding the crass consumerism and homogeneity of modern life, but actually we're just buying into another aspect of it.

Once upon a time religion was the opiate of the masses; now it's nostalgic pop culture. What we all want?

Skinhead's Return (Kollaps)

Following the smashing of the windows and door at Kafe Kollaps (see earlier post), the Spiders Web Gang made themselves scarce for a while. Then we heard from Hippy Steve the dope dealer that Geronimo the head Skin was inside, serving a short sentence at a young offender's institution—he was not yet 18, we were amazed to discover. With Geronimo away, the gang didn't know what to do, nor how to do it. There was no natural leader to step into Geronimo's size 10 boots while he was otherwise indisposed. But that didn't stop a couple of skinny runts with big ideas from attempting to take over.

About 4 weeks after the trashing of the Kafe, four of the gang turned up early on a Saturday night. The Mob were due to play later, but being early, there was only Darlington Dave, fast Alan and Jerry the Junkie in the place. Dave was minding the bar when a slight skinhead wearing a too-big Crombie, checked shirt and jeans rolled up above his DMs stepped up, sniffed loudly and croaked.
'Weer gonna give you pr'tection'.
'Oh aye?' drawled Dave.
'Yer, and it won't cost much.'
'Oh aye?'
Yer, give us a ton every week and we'll make sure no-one busts the place up'. Skinny-skin shrugged over-padded shoulders up to his ear lobes and stepped backwards, so that he was sideways on to Dave, giving him a 'hard' stare.
'Nah'.
There was a pause and the sound of Martha and the Vandellas sparked the speakers into life.
'Wot?" Skinny looks puzzled.
'Nah', repeated Dave.
'Nah wot?'
'Nah thanks?'
'Butbutbutbut…' Skinny looked as if he would either cry or headbutt the crudely constructed bar, which consisted of a piece of corrugated iron bent over sturdy lumps of off-cut wood, picked up from beside the West Hampstead railway lines.
'Wanna a drag?" Dave pushed a four-skinner toward Skinny. He looked even more likely to cry.
'We'll smash the place up!' Skinny took his fists out of his pockets.
'But there's nothing to smash up,' Dave was calm, almost apologetic. 'You did away with the windows on your last visit, and that plywood's pretty well banged on the frame of windows and door. We got rid of the chairs and I don't think you'll do much damage to the bar. Do you?'

Skinny looked around. He was bewildered, stumped.
'Alright then we'll… we'll…smash you lot up!'
'No. You won't.' Dave pulled the gaffer tape-wrapped snooker cue from a ledge under the bar. Alan and Jerry stepped behind him and picked up similarly enforced cues. Alan whistled as if calling a dog, and the thunder of footsteps came down the stairs. Soon the door was filled with Big Stan, all 15-stone of him. Behind Stan were a half dozen mohicans, newly shaved heads (the Mercs) and Big Janet.
Skinny peered anxiously outside to where his three fellow spiders webs had been.
'Go on, have a toke and let's talk business', said Dave evenly, with joint in one hand and weapon in the other.

Two hours later, stoned out of his tiny brain, Skinny returned to the Abbey Rd high-rise squat he shared with the rest of the gang, having agreed that they could go into the Kollaps anytime it was open and either buy beer or swap pills, powder or weed for similar and no-one would bother them. The truce lasted a few weeks. Some of the spiders web gang would come down to the Kafe late on a Friday or Saturday night to dance, get a little rowdy and have a laugh. They never got violent or too out-of-order. Until, that is, a new 'leader' arrived one Saturday night.

'Ahm Johnny Rabbish, ahm frae Perth!' A squat, plug-ugly semi-skin wearing what looked like Skinny's Crombie, with a bright red Mohican beginning where a particularly badly drawn web ended on the right side of his face, stood in the doorway of Kollaps.
He attempted to glare around at the almost empty Kafe (it was about 9pm).
'Really,' drawled Dave, 'You don't sound Australian'.
'Yahfookingcant, ahm frae Perth SCOTLAND!'
'Right. And…?
'Ahm here ta get tha dope'.
Dave sighed, looked down at his feet for a few seconds, and then beckoned Johnny Rubbish over to the bar.
Johnny obliged, marching up to the corrugated iron with what might have been a malicious smile on his face; it was hard to tell because of all the nasty tats.
'Yeragudboy…'
Dave swung the cue right handed, catching Johnny just below the Mohican. For a split second the Mohican-skin looked surprised. Then he fell over.
'I can't be fucking bothered.'
Dave signalled Big Stan over and together they dragged Johnny Rubbish out the back of the Kafe. There they set to kicking some sense—and respect—into Mr Rubbish.

Skinhead Summer '83

London was hot that summer. Islington was stinking, its air clogged with diesel fumes, melting tarmac, smouldering avarice and Nazi spite. The Blue Coat Boy, a big old-fashioned pub on Upper Street near to the junction with City Road was almost visibly sinking into a pit of right-wing, shaven-headed slime which was added to every night by the gangs of dim-witted, Combat-clad Nazi skins who met there to drink, fight and discuss plans to take over the world—after closing time, of course.

Lou, Dennis and The Lizard hated the Blue Coat Boy and all who sang in her. Two brothers and a cousin who regularly hitch-hiked and jumped trains between squats in Berlin and London, they were the constituent members of a post-punk, pro-Red Skin band named the Mercs (short for Mercenaries). They had a plan to create havoc at the pub.

Upstairs at the Blue Coat was a small, square room with a low-rise platform stage, on which every Saturday night a variety of nasty Skin bands could be seen and heard chanting 'Oi! Oi! Oi!' Although the Mercs all had mohican haircuts with straggly tails, and wore dyed-black army surplus gear (Crass had start the fashion by dying their clothes all black and stencilling 'Eat The Rich' neatly on the breast pockets), they decided that guerrilla warfare against the Nazi skins called for drastic action. So they had Big Janet shave their heads, borrowed some MA-1 flight jackets and rolled their skinny jeans up above the big boots they always wore, before marching into the Blue Coat one sunny Wednesday lunchtime.

The Lizard (an unfortunate reaction to illicit drugs turned him green whenever he took them—which was regularly) threw out a straight-armed salute and he shouted 'Sieg!" Attention gained from the fat, sideburn-wearing skin behind the bar, Lou stepped up and demanded,
'We wanna play 'ere on a Saturday night.'
'Why?'
''Cos weer a fuckin great Oi band, thats why, fatso'. Dennis wasn't the brightest of the Mercs.
'Youfuckinwot…'
'Orright, orright', Lou shifted between his brother and the barman. 'Wanna 'ear our demo?' he held out a cassette tape. Fatso took it, turned, and pushed it into a player underneath the almost empty optics.

The Mercs had recorded two songs just as an audition tape for the day. They'd chosen to do versions of Skrewdriver's 'Where's It Gonna End' and 'Plastic Gangsters' by The 4-Skins, laid down on a 4-track machine kept in a basement squat rehearsal room on the Finchley Road. The Mercs were a raw and powerful sounding bunch, and they put a lot of energy (and hate) into the songs. Fatso nodded half-way through 'Gangster' and growled 'Sat'day night. Be 'ere at 7, you can support Infa-Riot.'
'Great, can we use their PA?'
'Yer. Now fuck off'.

That Saturday night the Mercs arrived at the Blue Coat with a dozen similarly-dressed mates, expecting a dozen more to arrive later. They had a  'plan'. It was for them to get on stage at 9, turn all the amps up and launch into a fast and frenzied version of 'Nazi Punks Fuck Off'. The first chorus was the signal for their mates—standing at the back—to wade into the nazi punks and trash the place. Great plans have a way of falling apart, though, and this one was doomed to failure.

By 9pm the only people upstairs were all mates of the Mercs. The nazi skins were all getting stuck into snakebite downstairs, waiting for Infa Riot to get on stage. Still, the show had to go on, so the Mercs played 'Nazi Punks', twice. When no-one came running up to see what was going on, they simply reverted to style and played their usual post-punk set to their mates. They even played an encore.

After they finished, Lou gathered everyone together and suggested that they storm downstairs and attack the Nazis anyway. Dennis, thinking this was a great idea, unstrapped his bass and carrying it over his shoulder, stormed toward the stairs—where he was stopped by two enormous bouncers. He swung his bass at the head of the first, who ducked, twisted and came up from under Dennis' outstretched arms with a perfect uppercut. Dennis was out before he hit the deck. The bouncers, being rather seasoned professionals simply stepped backwards, swung the door closed and bolted it from the outside.

Carrying Dennis, Lou and The Lizard trekked down the back stairs to the carpark and loos, followed by their mates. Outside the bouncers were waiting with snooker cues. Peering past them into the public bar, The Blue Coat was heaving with shiny heads, MA-1s, and checked shirts and braces.
'Get yer gear and fuck off', said the head bouncer evenly.
'Orright', mumbled Lou.
'Unnhhh,' groaned Dennis

The Blue Coat Boy was renamed The Blue Angel by the end of 1983, and the landlord replaced with someone without known nazi sympathies. The Mercs became a Goth band.