My bestest most favouritest songs ever ever - part 1

I can't do lists... certainly not hierarchical ones, I don't have Top Tens, etc. in anything.  But when it comes to music there are some songs which just endure - which always make me smile and still give me that special feeling.  It's hard to analyse exactly why, isn't it?  - maybe it's about the context as much as anything? - what it aroused in me on hearing for the very first time, where I was, what I was doing, thinking, etc.  Sometimes it's as simple as just having a particular penchant for a heavy bass-line or a hooky chorus, one common element in different and often disparate tracks which always satisfies something inside.  I've been through many phases and into several genres in over 40 years of listening to music (oh jeez) and as with most things in life I don't think you want the same again and again or forever, not the same food nor the same clothes, etc. so that also applies to this  - but there will always be the special examples which just never lose their original appeal.

I'm going to pick out a few here from time to time - expect a very varied selection!

To kick off, it's Modern Politics by The Panik from November 1977 (the first track on their  'It Won't Sell!' EP).   When I first heard this at the time of its release I just couldn't believe the sound of that bass rumbling its way through and I loved its stop-start punctuation, plus the (slightly over-ambitious) guitar solo...  it sounded so serious, so raw, but relatively 'slow' (hmm, sort of) for '77 punk, not too ramalama.  The band came from Manchester and listening to it again now I'm reminded of early Joy Division / Warsaw.  I've just looked them up in the excellent book 'No More Heroes' by Alex Ogg and indeed there is a connection: the record was co-produced by band manager Rob Gretton, plus drummer Steve Brotherdale  also played in Warsaw.  Apparently at one time they even tried to convince Ian Curtis to be The Panik's singer.

One to blow the cobwebs away - play loud (of course) and feel 14 again, listen here:

The Panik: Modern Politics

This is still London

I needed a treat.  Thankfully one came in the form of some visual delights, courtesy of this recent purchase.

First published in 1959, this is one of a series of successful books created by Miroslav Sasek about cities of the world.  They may have been designed for younger readers but their charm, wit and contemporaneous detail is universally and timelessly appealing.

I sent myself off on a little search to find up-to-date images of some of the subjects featured in these illustrations.

Have things changed much in nearly 60 years?

It's quite comforting to notice that not everything has.

Perhaps people have changed more...

...or maybe not.

'This Is London' by M Sasek, is available as an updated reprint from Universe Publishing.

Notes from a semi bohemian suburban childhood #2

I've mentioned my small local venue 'Triad' before - it was where I attended my first ever gig in January 1978: Siouxsie & the Banshees.  For a while this really was the place to hang out locally if you were into music, particularly punk.  I saw dozens of bands there in the space of a couple of years, sometimes two or three times a week; it was also where my sister's ears nearly bled after she'd had the pleasure of a Motorhead set; where I first met Mr SDS, and where his band cut their teeth.  It was the regular haunt of the Newtown Neurotics; I watched Wayne County there before he became Jayne, Adam & the Ants pre-Dirk Wears White Sox, plus the Passions, Crass, the Jolt, UK Subs, the Automatics, Purple Hearts, Disco Zombies, ... mod bands, heavy metal bands, crappy bands, bands with one-legged singers, many many bands.  I feel very lucky.

It was also where I saw my first full frontal male nude.  Perhaps I should explain...

Prior to it being primarily a music venue, it was an Arts Centre, started up in the early '70s.  My mum was a keen supporter so, long before I was going there as a teenage ligger getting tipsy on cider, I was exposed to its cultural delights in the form of poetry readings, puppet shows, sitar performances, macramé exhibitions, yoghurt-knitting contests, that kind of thing.

When was it, some time in the mid-70s, about 1973/'74?  Children's TV programme 'Vision On' was compulsive viewing after school, oh how I loved Tony Hart (he'd have been one of my 'fantasy dads') and Pat Keysell seemed really kind. The Burbles... the Prof ... and then, do you remember there was also a very bendy, beardy man who only appeared on there for a short while?  I liked him. I just looked his name up: Ben Benison.  (Bendy, beardy Ben Benison, I won't forget that now)  Always dressed in black - ring any bells?  Anyway, Mum came home with tickets for an event being held one evening at 'Triad' and the blurb said that the small improvisational theatre group who'd be performing included Ben Benison from 'Vision On'.  Ooh, I was very excited at the thought of seeing him in the flesh.  We had front row seats too!

Now I can't remember that much about the show in general but yes it was all about improvisation and it was packed with an appreciative audience which was mostly adults but included several kids like me (no doubt also fans of  the 'Vision On' Gallery, animated plasticine and bendy men).  All was going so well, until those wacky thespians on stage asked the audience to suggest some themes around which to develop an improvised comedy piece, and someone called out,

"A desert island!"

Ok, so whose bright idea was it to take all their clothes off  in the rather questionable character of an 'uncivilised desert island native'?  Actually, no, it wasn't Ben Benison.  But it was one of the other actors, and he came right out onto that stage in the nude without even some well-placed genital cupping.

Right out onto that stage, and right in front of me.

As a naive young girl I actually found myself, well, so embarrassed that I couldn't move my head, which meant I couldn't look away.  It was like I was paralysed, staring straight at a man who was completely naked and fully grown (no, not that kind of fully grown, but still...) and seeing things I hadn't seen before.

This is the point in the story where I'd like you to imagine an eerie whistling sound, like the wind on the moors, and a ball of tumbleweed rolling past....

Awkward silence.  Or maybe a few choked coughs.  And a few families hurriedly getting out of their seats and leaving (although for some reason not mine).  The show finished soon after...

...but what has been seen cannot be unseen.

As you might imagine, there was some furore afterwards and I vaguely remember my mum telling her friends and there being a lot of angry letters in the local newspaper, there may even have been calls to get the venue closed down.  Would it create more? - or less? - or the same amount? - of controversy now, I wonder? It was just a naked man, nothing sexual, but these lines are so blurred.

Still, I'm so glad that the venue stayed open, as my life would not have been the same without it once all the bands came to play there (fully clothed).

...the rain in my eyes

Notes from a semi bohemian suburban childhood #1

I didn't like it.  Perhaps as a younger child it felt slightly threatening, having to share my space with a stranger and, more to the point, having to share my mum with one too.  Car doors would open and after a brief exchange a heavy-looking haversack (and sometimes dirty boots, plastic bags, cardboard signs with 'Wigan' or 'M1' written on them in marker pen) would be loaded onto the back seat beside me.  Then we made the next leg of whatever journey we were undertaking in Mum's green and white Triumph Herald with a new passenger on board.   For however many minutes and miles required, the attention would be focused on them - more often than not a young man, occasionally a young woman too - whose back of the head was all I could see, until we dropped them off at a junction or a lay-by some way closer to their final destination.  Mum could rarely drive past a hitchhiker without stopping to at least check if she could be of any help.

So, as a child, I didn't like having to give lifts to strangers, but my mum was a warm, gregarious woman who enjoyed engaging with people of diverse backgrounds - especially young people - and as I reflect on this with the benefit of these extra years, I now envy her.  I wish I had her ability to chat with ease to anyone, the same openness of her heart and the generosity of her gestures.

One day, by which time I was a young teenager and my mum now separated from my dad, she came home from a long journey and spoke enthusiastically of a hitchhiker whose company she'd enjoyed for several miles.  It seemed as if a special kind of friendship had been formed even in that short time and in spite of them being disparate characters - she a middle-aged mother and he a young, long-haired hippie type by all accounts, but with the added exotic credentials of being French and also (or so he told her) having some Native American ancestry.  From what I remember her telling my sister and me, it didn't matter that they were ostensibly so different as they talked about philosophy and art, about spiritual and cultural beliefs - deep and stimulating conversation from the sound of it, and as far away from the usual bland small talk as you can get.  Mum was most enamoured of him, her eyes flashing with excitement as she described him and shared his stories and insights with us, just as her passenger had  with her earlier.  "And I told him to come and visit us any time, if he's ever in this area," she concluded.

 "Mum!" my big sister and I exclaimed, in a manner more suited to that of a parent admonishing their child, "You mean you gave him our address?!"  We were not impressed.

"Well, yes of course," she confirmed, unperturbed by our reaction.

This was Mum all over.  Trusting.  Maybe too trusting?  But she had helped out waifs and strays before (and perhaps I'll write about those too in another post); it was just in her nature.

It was about a year or two later I guess, hard to say as the passage of time seems to move at a different speed when you're younger, nevertheless it had been many months after Mum's encounter that I came home from school and she said we had a visitor.  He had turned up out of the blue, having walked some distance through the town (and perhaps the county), carrying a piece of paper with our address on and eventually finding his way to our front door.  And he was welcomed warmly, sleeping on the camp bed in our living room for just one night before continuing on his wanders, the perfect house-guest, grateful, kind and honest, no money went missing, no privacy was breached (mutually!):  a hitchhiking French hippie with Native American ancestry.  It was a sweet, simple reminder of what it is to truly trust a stranger.  Proof, I believe, that most people are good.

And on that cheery note - Happy New Year!

Not mum's actual car

The First Nowell

Well, I couldn't resist one more post for this year...

It's just that we were watching Coronation Street the other night and the subject of Christmas carols came up; the lads at Webster's Autocentre were discussing which was their favourite. “So what's yours?” I asked Mr SDS (turns out his is that melancholy-sounding one O Come O Come Emmanuel) and from thereon we tried to remember the tunes we'd learned as kids and got them all mixed up. I mean, can you tell the difference between Hark The Herald Angels Sing and Once In Royal David's City, or are they the same melody? They seem interchangeable...  But as we mumbled our way through the first bars of Away In A Manger, strong memories were evoked.  These songs have endured since early childhood, learned in my first year at school and forever with me in spite of a lack of religious belief.  I wish I could say they conjured up cosy festive scenes and perhaps the taste of mulled wine, presents round the tree, the smell of woodsmoke – any nostalgic Christmas cliché you care to choose – but my associations are, unfortunately, quite unpleasant. Silent Night, O Little Town of Bethlehem... name any carol... and they evoke just three things (not kings): fluorescent striplights, a nervous knot in my stomach and a big puddle of vomit. And the vomit has pinky-purple chunks in it like diced beetroot, eww!

It was only one night but it sticks. The fluorescent striplights: being inside my primary school after hours in Winter. It was wrong, somehow - wrong to be in the school hall when I'd normally be at home watching Nationwide and Z Cars but it was my first Christmas concert and I had an important role playing my recorder. Being at school during the evening was surreal too: the smell of floor polish, the coolness of the plastic chairs, the big patterned curtains at the side of the assembly hall stage – all so familiar between 9am and 3pm, yet it was as if they took on a different importance and somehow seemed less friendly when exposed under a new night-time role. Harsh lights seemed harsher.

The nervous knot in my stomach: ugh, performing! In front of parents and teachers – an audience! This was major stuff for my nine-year-old self. Major. The sort of thing that would worry me so much I'd have sleepless nights.

I think Ben must've felt the same because, the afternoon of the concert, just before home-time, we were sitting opposite each other in the classroom, only a couple of feet of floor between us, when suddenly –absolutely no warning – he threw up violently and copiously right in front of me. I mean, it landed at my feet. And all I could see (and still can) were those peculiarly coloured lumps of whatever the hell it was. That smell of sick, followed swiftly by the smell of Dettol, lodged itself in my nostrils. Then I had to go home and eat my tea (but I couldn't, because all I could think about was Ben's vomit, such was my trauma), as the nervous knot in my stomach grew larger by the second, before going out again to perform God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen on my recorder to scary grown-ups under harsh fluorescent striplights.

That's what Christmas carols evoke for me (it was a long while before I could eat beetroot again too - and I will never ever dice it.)

Happy Christmas!

To blog or not to blog

I haven't been in a very bloggy mood lately so I may stay subdued for a bit (mind you, having now said that, there's always the chance I'll be unexpectedly overcome by a strong urge to do exactly the opposite. We'll see...)

But life has been bizarre lately; I've met some interesting people and had quite an extraordinary, exciting experience, yet it's also one of the saddest and most distressing periods I've lived through in a long while, as I witness the deteriorating health and cognisance of my dear friend and try to come to terms with it all. Both the ups and the downs, even just within the last week, have been somewhat extreme. Part of me wants to talk about it more, but part of me doesn't, so for now perhaps it's best just to be quiet!

I'll still be dropping by all the usual much-loved places whenever I can - so I'll see you there, if not here!

It is right it should be so:
Man was made for Joy and Woe
And when this we rightly know
Thro the World we safely go

W Blake

Beautiful face

I was greeted by a most beautiful face this morning....

You may have seen him before here

This gorgeous image, the subject of which could so easily have been one of Edward Curtis's models, came courtesy of photographer Barnaby Hall.  Thanks to a wonderful charitable initiative and Mr Hall's personal generosity (thank you!) in donating it, I was so delighted to receive this print in return for a small contribution to Artworks For Aid, who are raising money to help refugees at the 'Jungle' camp in Calais, a cause which I am very happy to be able to support.

I am mesmerised by those clear, expressive eyes - the kind of eyes that could make you fall in love, without the need for words, the kind of eyes that prompt so many questions:  who were you?  what kind of life did you lead?  what were you doing that day... maybe 100 years ago? So I looked it up - by which I mean looked up the artist Barnaby Hall - to see if I could find out more about how this young man's enigmatic and quite haunting portrait could feature in his picture.

Oh wow!

He IS Barnaby Hall!  The shot is an old passport photo of the man himself, taken by a street photographer in Brazil, from about 1971.   Am I allowed to fall a little bit in love with the face of his younger self?!