of Half Man Half Biscuit yet again -
Paintballs Coming Home
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxR0JY-FMh8
I am genuinely not worthy.
”If I were a linesman
I would execute defenders who applauded my offsides”
As scams go, this is a cutie:
I don’t want to get too bogged down in all this, but it seems to me that the British hippie phenemenom has been as undercovered as punk has been analysed out of existence. In this respect, here’s an interesting piece about the festival:
years:
“In the last few years of Stonehenge there were 40-50,000 people attending an event that went on for a month, and the free market ethic became completely dominant; with signposts pointing to dealers of the drug of your choice, it was like a surreal scene from some extreme right-wing libertarian fantasy- an economy with no restraints. “
The rest is here:
http://web.onetel.net.uk/~davewalton/archive/local/omsweetom.html
As I’ve noted on the FITDCD, my worldview was heavily influenced by the woman of my life at that time. Who looked really straight but felt really hippie. Somewhere in there was contradiction enough to kill herself.
She was the reason I heard Melanie and got into the emotional side of music. I would later discover that what I really loved on that side of things was called soul music. But back then, this was my first adventure outside punk. The b/summer of love:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HLf4CRyFjM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdZeFtrs4R8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz9sjMGUM9k
Frankly, I’m not sure whether this is a good thing to be promoting or not – this music influenced many Flowers songs, but it also influenced the death of the one I loved. Go figure…
With this random Daily Mail headline generator
Says its maker:
“I was going to give the generator a sophisticated grammar for more varied sentences, until I realised the Mail’s grammar is nearly always the same.
If you get bored of this, why not try the new David Blunkett policy maker, Michael Howard Sings The Smiths, or Alastair Campbell’s Wheel of Retribution?”
Anna is a regular poster on a music forum, and has just posted this history of her music past in response to a thread Share your Musical Life Story – it’s kind of relevant to FITD so here it is. Alans Deep Bath, referred to in the piece is Gerard, and a reference to an episode of British comedy show Alan Partridge.
Anyway, here’s Anna’s story:
The earliest musical memories I have are about age four or five. My dad had spent his youth loving rock n roll, but I don’t remember him ever playing any in the house. My mum,having been reared in a different country for the first twenty years of her life, didn’t really transport any of her musical memories with her, but she was very drawn to theatrical, emotional ditties and one of my earliest memories is her sat at the dining table crying to ‘Seasons in the Sun.’
1977 was the year that our lives all changed in lots of ways. We moved into a new house, and unbeknown to me, their relationship was already heavily on the rocks. Whilst lots of crying was going on in rooms around the house, me and my brother would immerse ourselves in music. I had just discovered the Bay City Rollers and decided I was going to marry Les McKeown; and my favourite pastime was to skip round the front room in my dressing gown singing ‘they sang shangalang as we ran with the band’ and my brother would draw moustaches and glasses on my album covers, much to my annoyance. He was thirteen then. He had a keen idea on what was happening to our parents relationship, and spent much of his time trying to distract us both.
Then he discovered punk.
He started to come home in leather jackets, stripey shirts and wear fluorescent patterns. I would stare goggle eyed at the troops of lads wandering in the door with trousers that were too small and jackets that were too big. They wore sunglasses indoors. They were fearless.
I started to listen to what he was bringing home. The Pistols, The Clash, The Jam, Penetration, X Ray Spex, Ultravox, Suicide. I fell in love. He would hold my hands and spin me round while I sang ‘The Day the Wooooorld Turned Da Gloooooooo’, and I would chew my fingernails in fear listening to Frankie Teardrop. My mum was even won over by Ultravoxs Hiroshima Mon Amour, which caused her to cry uncontrollably. Actually, in retrospect that was possibly because my dad had left six months before, just weeks after we had bought a new home. She would sit in amongst my brothers friends and drink cider; telling them all how she had been wronged, and they would nod and burp as she passed the bottle around.
So, from the ages of 7-10 I was a punk rock chick. Nobody in my peer group at school knew the songs I did, I felt I had a special friend in Joe Strummer, who talked to me. I have the school report from 1978 that says that ‘Annas mind is very full of punk rock at the moment and I do hope this does not influence her future.’
I had a major Gary Numan fixation in 1979. My brother bought me ‘Cars’ for my birthday. To hold that 45 in my hand, grey cover, with a heavily made up Numan on the cover was just incredible for me. I played the fucker to death. I did robotic dances round the front room and borrowed my mums eyeliner to look like him. My bedroom was adorned with Numan posters, which my brother took pleasure in sticking pins in. I also started to flirt with Toyah, and had an unsuccessful attempt at dying my hair orange.
Years 1980-1983. Very emotional ones for me. My brother had moved out in 1980 to go and love with my dad and stepmum and our stepsister and stepbrother. He couldn’t deal with mum anymore and it fair broke his heart to leave me there, but he would have killed her if he stayed. Musically, around this time I had discovered new wave and was listening to a lot of electronica, Soft Cell, Human League, Duran Duran, and I discovered Bowie purely because Duran Duran rated him as an influence. I would mime to ‘Open Your Heart’ in the living room at my mums again and again and again till the needle on the record player just collapsed and died. That was one of the worst days of my life – I didn’t know where to get needles or how to attach them, and I remember sitting crying as I tried to play Ashes to Ashes and the stylus slid noisily across the vinyl without making contact. I thought my world had come to a fucking end.
In 1983, after a long night of listening to my mum pretend to kill herself and ring ambulances for herself I rang my dad and begged him to come and get me. By the end of the week I was living with my stepmum, dad and my stepmums two children, and the first thing I did, as shallow as I am, was make a beeline for the record player. I fucking hogged that thing for years to come. They bought a ‘vertical’ standing turntable which as anyone who has tried to mosh around a front room to them knows, they are fucking shit. They jump and skip and are useless bits of shit. Luckily by this point I had a cassette player of my own and I could slam my bedroom door, call my parents bastards and slide under the duvet with the knowledge that John Taylor loved me (probably.)
Still, in the midst of all this musical turmoil my first love remained a constant, punk. I would alternate Soft Cell with the Ruts, much to the relief of my brother who I feel panicked that I would desert the cause once I seemed to be in a bedroom wallpapered with Simon le Bon. He was friendly with Ian Astbury at the time and used to hang around with Southern Death Cult who would invite us along to his practice studio on Lumb Lane and we could play on the drums. I stopped listening to Duran Duran and discovered the One in Twelve Club, (I wont go into details yet ). I developed a liking for bands like The Three Johns, and stopped wearing pastel pinks and started buying camoflouage and army tops. Do you remember when every fucker in the world wore German Army shirts? Jesus, there were THOUSANDS of them in our house – and I wore them 24/7 with studded belts, a beret and my doc martens. My best mate at school and I went to see The Smiths. We stopped eating meat. We had black nail polish. I sang in my first band, and hung out with mates who drunk cider at lunchtime and had nicknames like ‘Boris’ and ‘Fuckface’. I did a cover of English Civil War for the school concert, and when it finished my pal smashed his guitar then chewed his nails nervously cos he knew his mum would kill him, as she hadn’t finished the payments on it yet.
I fell hopelessly in love with a sixth former who I nicknamed Spike who was a jutting cheekboned skinny Paul Simenon lookalike . He wouldn’t have noticed me if I had spontaneously combusted next to him.
By the time I was sixteen I had been dragged to a few gigs by my brother which had pretty much sealed my fate, I wanted to leave school, join a band and spend my time getting drunk and laid. Whilst still living at home, I met someone who would change my social/musical life forever. My best mate and I went out on a rainy Saturday night to the local punky type pub and playing there were Flowers in the Dustbin, whos’ singer posts on here infrequently as alans deep bath. They were on the last night of their tour I seem to remember, and I fell promptly in lust with the drummer, who I had an on-off relationship with for years. Enchanted by tales of living in London and being pernk, I left home and moved in to a student house with several other green haired ne’er do wells I had met at college. The next five years were essentially described as follows – an immersion into anarcho punk culture, becoming politically active, drinking endlessly, sleeping with people who didn’t wash and going to see some of the worst bands possible because they sang about Nestle. In fairness there were some wonderful bands in this genre – Chumbawamba et al – but there was some fucking awful dirge at the time, really.
I found some real hostility amongst other anarcho punky wunkies who despised the fact that I loved The Clash et al. I had endless arguments with housemates who would roll their eyes if I took them out to nightclubs that played pure punk (Bradford used to have a couple of these- The Spotted House being one, which was like a second home to me) but the greatest joy I had was Saturday night, pissed, dancing to PiL and throwing my red crimped hair about. I couldn’t play a Clash album without getting a lecture on why I should despise such a ‘sell out’ ‘conglomerate’ band etc and there were times when I seriously questioned my own taste. Luckily these moments never lasted long – and working behind the bar at venues where I listened to the eighty fourth song that was two seconds long and had the lyrics ‘KILL POLICE’ was simply the icing on the cake for that decision.
Then rave happened, and there was a lot of interesting crossovers culturally – lots of my pals, me included, thought the idea of going into a field at 2am to dance was a great idea. And why not indeed. And hot on the heels of this was the Madchester scene, which caused a great unification of the love of hooded tops. This was when I most enjoyed being a DJ – playing to a dancefloor that would listen to the Specials, Orbital and still kick off at the Dead Kennedys. Pure pleasure, to control a dancefloor like that,if I ever stayed sober enough.
That brings me to the end of this story really. From 22 upwards I have embraced most things both popular and more leftfield, I think 22 was the symbolic age as it was the year I started my nurse training. Being in full time occupation left me less time to seek out new music, and then becoming a nurse, getting into a long term relationship with someone who didn’t share my music tastes, ‘growing up’, leaving certain friends behind with a move to a different county – all these things contributed to me listening less to things I would usually have done 2/7. But I would say over the past five years my passion for music has been re-discovered to the extent where I am almost at the point where it mattered so badly when I was ten years old – I am eating new bands for breakfast and wanting to hear everything, now, NOW!
My only musical regret is that I haven’t had time to explore making more music with alans deep bath due to distance, and both of our lives being hectic, and being miles apart. Being on stage and performing is an immense high for me and is something I would like to explore.
And still I return endlessly to my chief love, punk. I think this is why I get defensive when people say der, punk, meh. It was the soil on my roots as a youngster and to criticise it is not just like saying that you don’t like my lipstick or my cooking, it feels like a direct attack on me. And I know that is nonsensical and the sensible part of my head wants to understand that, but it’s the way I feel.
The Levellers have just re-released their Zeitgeist album, featuring new sleeve notes by George Berger, which is Gerard’s writing name:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Zeitgeist-Remastered-Expanded-Levellers/dp/B000RGUGWE/
Some good soul has scanned in the booklet that accompanied the Flowers 96 Tapes release ‘All The Best People Are Perverts’.
It can be found here
Unwashed and somewhat slightly dazed, with all the hate and violence that seem to have cast a shadow over London since the war came home, I seek solace in Paris and, of course, fall in love.
What better way to defy the men of violence than to blossom a new love in the most romantic city in the world? When you strip away all the labels, pretensions and vocabulary that we seek to define (and thus limit) our freedom with, the real battle is between love and hate — it’s an internal battle within us all, and one we must win at times like this.
I’d been considering my reactions to the bombs ever since July 7th, when the two sevens clashed and the most tolerant city in the world felt the murderous intolerance of the religiously insane. I wrote an impassioned article the day it happened, but resisted from sending it for publication, aware perhaps that knee-jerk reactions to momentous events can be the wrong ones. Sometimes you can just be too near. Usually though, you’re just too far.
The most poignant reaction to the initial murders came the next day on a radio phone-in. A Portuguese woman rang the Robert Elms radio show on BBC London to say that although she’d lived in London for twenty years, she’s never completely felt herself a Londoner until she grieved for the victims alongside her fellow workers. And as I drove my car and listened, a tear trickled down my cheek: I realised the same thing had happened to me — a chemical reaction had bonded me forever to a city I love. My city of birth and breeding is Liverpool. But…I cried for her, I cried for me and I cried because somehow she seemed to have touched on something far bigger.
The danger, however, still lurked, and I was tired. Paris then.
In my last column, I’d finally written, albeit in riddles, about the woman who left both me and this mortal coil; and haunted my dreams ever since. And the minute I’d said it… the second I’d let it out… it was released. The haunting — 15 years of it (25 if you include the living years) — finished and I was cleansed and free. So…
That chapter of my life over, I sat in the majesty of the Place De La Concorde, near the River Seine, waiting for my life to change. And then my mind exploded.
Because she was there… We spent the next 72 glorious hours blissfully wandering the beautiful streets of Paris, both knowing that this was just the beginning. Along the Seine, through the Latin Quarter, sitting in the sun outside restaurants, both drinking in the feeling. Holding hands in parks, getting lost and not caring. Just wandering and wondering. It felt like being in the sort of film where Cary Grant would fall in love with Audrey Hepburn. With Scott Walker writing the soundtrack (as indeed he did). Only better. Much better. If you’ve been there, you’ll know. If you haven’t, then I can’t possibly draw you a map; but I hope you get there. I’m generous when I’m in love. I think we all are.
We lay in our hotel room on the Boulevard de Magenta, watching as a sparrow surfed the sunrays in through our window to perch itself on the back of a chair and stare approvingly at us. Now the film was Walt Disney, and the fact this was really actually happening (repeatedly) was Salvador Dali. A formidable array of allies with which to liberate the city.
In each other, we together discovered our dharma, and gently began to nurture a deep deep love that is surely the antithesis of the twisted hate that drives young men with all their lives to live and all their love to give to transmute frustration into hate and blow up tube trains and themselves. A love and peace that is the most magnificent middle finger you could give both suicide bombers and the world leaders whose hate and wars inspire them. And as we rode the Metro, I pretty much knew there weren’t any reasons for malcontents to blow themselves up on it. Which was a relief in itself, and a stark contrast to London. And I think I also knew that we were activists for love and peace.
As she took a shower, I lay on the bed, not really thinking about anything. Just happy to be in some kind of Taoist contentment zone. And humming a song…
“When Joanna loved me, every town was Paris…”
And tears started to roll down my cheeks again. And I smiled.
I didn’t support my government when it dragged us to war: a war that now has indigenous civilian casualties on all sides, as it inevitably would. I stand for love: the men of violence stand for hate. We can, and will, beat them: the idiot bombers and the idiot world leaders that wage war and oppress. They got the guns but we got the numbers.
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