Sunday Morning Coming Down

The announcement of the Spirit of Talk Talk book from Rocket 88 Books reminded me of early Sunday mornings in various squats of North London in the mid-1980s. Having spent most of Saturday night and well into Sunday either making music or 'serving' behind the bar at Kafe Kollaps and bullshitting with 'customers', there'd always be a few bodies scattered around the communal spaces, chilling and listening to a surprisingly varied range of music.

Because this was before 'chill out' became a recognisable and marketable musical genre, and because we had only record decks and cassette players to provide the 'ambient' sounds, either whole LPs were played, or mix-tapes made up for the purpose of aiding the come-down from whatever chemically-enhanced high people had been on. Oddly, Talk Talk's second album, It's My Life received some Sunday morning plays in the large, brightly lit by sunshine (through four windows facing the Finchley Road) living room above the Burn It Down Ballroom.

That might be considered odd when you looked at the mix tapes that we blasted out in the Kafe or Burn It Down in the hours prior to the come down. They were invariably filled with the sounds of Killing Joke, Dead Kennedys, Crass, Adrian Sherwood's On-U Sound, The Clash, Abwarts, Birthday Party, The Mob, Misty In Roots, Pop Group, Rip, Rig & Panic, Husker Du, Bronski Beat, Sir Joe Quarterman & Free Soul, Gang of Four, The Undertones…

Yet when the smoke cleared and the last body had been heaved out onto the cold slabs of pavement outside, whoever lived in the place would move upstairs for a last drink, toke or joke, just as the sun was making the moon look daft. As would be expected The Velvet Underground, the Stones' Sticky Fingers, Pink Floyd's Saucerful of Secrets and Meddle were regularly heard drowning out the birds and early morning traffic as they grew in volume outside. But we were an eclectic lot, and so Frank Sinatra (Where Are You?), Eric Dolphy (At the Five Spot), Synanthesia, Joyride by Friendsound and Nilsson's Greatest Hits might also be played along with the first Monkees album, Anita Baker's The Songstress, Ready For Teddy or Let's Get It On; each piece of vinyl was carefully placed on the turntable with much effort made to not smear anything on it by the person closest to the stereo and boxes of records.

Alongside all the old stuff though, there were a few newly released albums, records made by people who were our age, and who usually lived very different lifestyles—though there were some by bands that we knew, vaguely. Like The Go Betweens who lived in a block of housing asssociation-let flats in the Oval, or Microdisney, who were regular Saturday night customers at the Kollaps, or Scritti Politti (Songs To Remember was played both in the Kafe and in the morning after). Prefab Sprout's Swoon was a much-loved early Sunday morning sound, as was The Smiths' early singles and The Dream Syndicate's Medicine Show.

These are all records that I haven't heard in years, but they're all so embedded in my memory that I can see, smell and hear each track on every one of them as they would play, in sequence. Spirit of Talk Talk did that to me, and I suspect that it'll do something similar to many other people, too.

Skinhead Gets Married

Jerry the Junkie and Marilyn the Madam had their wedding reception at Kafe Kollaps. It was a double wedding—Jerry married Krysta from Poland and Maz got hitched to Goodman from Nigeria. The short ceremony had been held at Camden registry office with two witnesses and Fast Alan, who'd driven them in the Citroen Dyane to and from Euston Road. Once at the Kollaps, it didn't take long for Krysta's boyfriend to decide that the Mercs were too loud and so he took her home to Green Lanes. Goodman disappeared almost as soon as the car pulled into the space beside Raymond's Ambulance at the back of the Kafe.

Jerry was a Liverpudlian, and almost incomprehensible when straight. His nasal whine registered somewhere above middle-C and he mangled vowels and consonants as if chewing nails as he 'spoke'. But given an armful, and when he wasn't nodding out, Jerry spoke almost perfect English with only the slightest hint of what sounded like an Irish twang. He had arrived at the Kafe one day with the Mercs, and became their roadie, guitar-tuner and ineffective stage security. He weighed about 96lbs when wet, his cheekbones were the most dangerous part of his body (sharp) and when he tried to punch anything it looked as if he was throwing a bitch-slap with his eyes closed.

Jerry first met the Mercs in Berlin when he was there with Maz to visit her father. They'd been in Germany for three months when the Mercs moved into their squat. Maz was turning tricks to feed them both (ice cream, Rote Hand cigarettes and crudely cut smack, mostly). Her US serviceman old man had kicked them out of his digs two days after they'd arrived in the city. It was a real 'surprise' visit for him, though—he didn't know Maz existed until the two skinny, stoned Brits fell over his doorstep early one morning, with her calling him 'Daddy' and Jerry saying something that sounded like 'alllraynowinityouse'.

It turned out that 'Pop' might not have been Maz's father at all, but neither of them could be sure—he remembered an affair with a Liverpudlian redhead almost twenty years earlier while stationed in the UK, and Maz's mother's death had thrown up a diary which had his name and regiment in it, at a date that corresponded with Maz's conception, so… When 'Pop' caught Jerry trying to sneak out of his house on day 2 with a Military-issue pistol wrapped in a laundry sack, he flipped, laid Jerry out with one punch and searched the pair as he put them on the sidewalk.

That had been a year earlier, now Maz was established as a small-time Madam in Brixton with two girls and a half-blind 'maid' to run the upstairs apartment, and Jerry was lodged in a Housing Association studio with Big Janet a few doors away from the Kafe. The marriages were her idea, and she'd taken a percentage of Jerry's fee of £400. We'd been happy to hold a wedding reception—our first and only, as it turned out—with the Mercs supplying live music and Darlington Dave spinning the deck (he only had one) after their performance. It was to be a usual Saturday night for the Kafe too, closing only when everyone had drunk the place dry.

Jerry had become a skinhead when the Mercs auditioned for the Blue Coat Boy, and while it made him look like an Eastern European refugee with malnutrition, he took to the gear with enthusiasm. Mind you, he'd strongly objected to the cut at first, mostly because he knew that he'd no longer be mistaken for Blixa Bargeld any more—they could have been separated at birth. But, after nicking a couple of pairs of white Levis from Camden Market, he'd swapped a heavily stepped on £10 bag of skag for a pair of Doc Marten boots, and most days now almost looked the part. He borrowed my one good suit—a genuine 1960s-made, blue two-piece with drainpipe trousers and lapel-less three-button jacket—for the wedding. He also shined up the boots and put on a white Ben Sherman with a button-down collar.

Maz looked like she'd stepped out of a 1950s b-movie. Her style icon was Diana Dors, and she'd given up her smack habit in order to put on some curves months back, and she now filled out her two-piece tweed pencil-skirt suit, worn with seamed stockings and open-necked blouse, beautifully. Her hair was bundled up in a near-beehive 'do', her stiletto heels sharp enough to puncture a lung with a flick of her ankle. She had a loud laugh and a filthy mouth, and wanted to run her brothel on true socialist principles. Her customers were charged what they thought they could afford, or should pay, and every penny was shared equally between the girls and Maz. Which was why she also ran a few quick cons on the side.

Green card marriages were all the rage in the early 1980s, and checks on identity and follow-up on the arrangements must have been slack: this was Maz's second wedding in six months. She'd managed to get herself a birth certificate and accompanying National Insurance number in the name of a dead girl, born in almost the same year as she'd been. Throughout the night her voice could be heard firmly intoning, "Call me Gloria!" followed by a low, lingering chuckle. The Mercs threw in a version of the Van Morrison song for her and she clambered on stage to sing it with them.

One of the Kollaps collective, Stanley, a vicar's son from the West country was clearly in love (or lust) with Maz, and she knew it. For the past few weeks whenever she came North to discuss the wedding, Maz would flirt outrageously with him, but always either leave without as much as giving him a second look, or when she stayed the night, she'd enjoy a long tease with him. She'd disappear into a spare room in order to disrobe, and emerge shortly after wrapped in a towel in order to knock on Stan's door. She'd ask for cigarettes and the towel would 'slip'  as Maz leaned across the threshold of his room. But as Stan froze in the doorway, she'd chuckle, tut, and turn away, padding back to her room with the towel trailing lower and lower down her back.

On her wedding night though, and after quite a few celebratory drinks and dances —some real close—with Stan, just as the sun was threatening to appear over the Arkwright Road, Maz fixed her eyes on him and said, "Right, it's my wedding night and the groom's fucked off. Are you man enough to fill in for him?" With a smile that would have outdone the emerging dawn, Stan escorted the bride to his handmade platform bed, tucked away in the attic of the Kollaps.

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.

Punk Is Dead

A very wise Canadian once wrote that 'fish don't know water exists until they're beached. Without anti-environments, all environments are invisible. The role of the artist is to create anti-environments as a means of perception and adjustment' (Marshall McLuhan, Culture as Business, 1970). Back in the mid-1970s when the world was young enough to believe that art could change the world, a bunch of New Yorkers, among them Patti Smith, Television, The Ramones and Talking Heads formed a 'scene' around a couple of lower East side clubs and set about making a musical anti-enviuronment that wasn't generally to be found via the airwaves in America (or anywhere else, for that matter). When they made it to London in 1976, Patti Smith and the Ramones inspired a bunch of scruffy oiks into forming bands and making similarly loud, raw, exciting music without guitar solos, ambient bird-song or pompous, nonsensical lyrics. Punk music was the thrilling epitome of anti-environment.

For two brief years, London and a few other urban British centres spewed out some great Punk bands intent on making music and records in their own way, without the interference of corporate record companies or old-school promoters or managers who'd fleeced countless young hopefuls in the past two decades. By 1978 the spontaneity and originality of the scene had dissipated, with the majority of the pioneering Punk bands either burning up or selling 0ut and turning into stadium-bound 'alt-rock' acts. Former pub rock bands adopted dumb names in order to cash in on what they  hoped would be a fad to make them rich (The Stranglers) and 'New Wave' acts (Boomtown Rats) sailed into the music press and pop charts propelled by the tail wind whipped up by the original Punks.

Thirty-five years later a new wave of revisionist 'opinion' is spewing onto the airwaves, television screens and newsprint (newscreenprint?) purporting to tell us all about the 'original' Punk scene. Because only the victors get to write history, arch exploiters of what had been genuinely artistic movement—one that sought, however inarticulately, to create a new perception on the environment from which they wanted to escape—are being paraded as 'experts' on Punk. Fashion designers who thought Punk was about ripping off a punter with ripped shirts, record company 'entrepreneurs' who wanted only to build a new EMI, record stall owners who wanted to start their own chain of stores and musicians who wanted a forty-year career churning out ludicrously nihilistic nonsense will doubtless tell us all how lucky they were to be a 'part' of the scene. Even if they weren't.

The BBC series 'Punk Britannia' (Friday June 1, BBC4) begins with what promises to be a cliché-filled hour of irrelevant nonsense…TO READ MORE, GO TO http://rocket88books.com/