Anniversary Snapshots: 24th September 1993

I should’ve posted this a couple of days ago really, but never mind, it’s still a 25^th anniversary, give or take a few days!  The anniversary of the very first time I flew.

I had the chance to travel through my work on a complimentary trip.  Free flight, free hotel and free entertainment laid on - I know, pretty good.  Destination New York!  Just for the weekend.  Never been on a ‘plane before and my first flight was to be 3500 miles across the Atlantic – talk about nervous / thrilled / overwhelmed, all at once. 

I recorded the experience in real time through a few scribbled notes.   It’s strange when you look back on things like that and try to recapture the memories, not just of where, but also of who, you were at the time.   I loved the feeling of flying,  I remember that.  So enthralled by the beauty and stillness of the world from above that I recall thinking, “if we crash and I die, I don’t care, it’s worth it.”   Must say, I don’t feel the same way now, but it probably wasn’t a bad way to get through my first flight.

So that bit was good before we'd even landed.  Then, the excitement of my first glimpse of America.

I made notes as we came into land:

There are just loads of huge lakes and woodland.   Now more built-up – also lots of boats and light aircraft. Getting ready to land, can see the cars on the roads. 

We’re in the US and I can’t take it in!

A ride in a fancy stretch limo took us out of JFK and into Manhattan.

Some of it looks like London… until you look upwards!  Impressive NY skyline.  Little old houses in amongst blocks, I scrawled in my small spiral-bound notepad.

I was with a group of strangers, all in similar roles, travelling for their work.  It’s one of those situations where you’re with people, but you feel quite alone really too.  We were taken to a jazz club the first night to eat, the ‘Red Blazer Too’.

Jazz, sautéed mushrooms was all I had to say about that.

Later, I added briefly and clearly suffering from jetlag:

Yellow cab back to hotel.

Sleep?!!........

No – look at TV and video in cabinet.

Nirvana news item on WNYW! “Morality in the media”.  Knocking the lyrics.  Kmart not selling. “Rape Me”.  News item: Wildman of 96^th Street...  a long-term resident, mental inst., murderer!!

Then dozed off, but not before noticing and being bewildered by there being a phone in the loo.

Next morning, some sight-seeing.

Really interesting.  Harlem. Famous places – Madonna’s house, etc. . Central Park beautiful. Upper East Side – rich.  Upper West Side, saw 96^th Street…

(No 'Wildman', at least I don't think so.)


I took photos.

Harlem

?

Central Park

We did a bit of walking about and I quickly jotted down other things of note, as an aide memoire:

So many yellow cabs. Jewellery/watches, bartering. People seem nice – not aggressive. Good atmosphere in Chinatown. Turtles for sale.  “Have a pleasant Sunday” 

(I’m not sure who said that and when, it was Saturday.)

I remember it was weird, though, seeing a policeman with a gun.

That night we had a late dinner at somewhere called China Grill

…Left there gone midnight.  Back to hotel for change of clothes.  Off to ‘China Club’, back 3.50am! Bit of a dive but pics of famous people who’ve been there on walls. Keith Richard, Rod Stewart, etc. and guitars on walls.  Mostly club/soul music. V American in feel. No hassle, no bad atmos, just people enjoying themselves. 2 Buds then cab back and off to bed.

I clearly didn't realise at the time, though, quite how cool that club was according to this feature

http://nymag.com/nymetro/nightlife/barsclubs/features/4009/

Beyond Hip and Unhip, There's the China Club

Back when the China Club started, Reagan was president and Adam Ant was a major musical figure. After fifteen years as one of the hottest rock clubs in history, it's as strong as ever. (Where do you think the Yankees party?) The secret? No attitude.

I suppose I was just not with the people I'd have chosen to go there with!

The following morning, I walked to Tower Records, just round the corner.  Felt I couldn’t go to New York and not buy something in a record shop and I seem to remember that in the UK in 1993, Tower Records seemed a bit of a novelty. 

Breeders and Buffalo Tom, good prices, I wrote (and bought 'Last Splash' and 'Big Red Letter Day'.)  Weird mag called Nose – brutal pics!  But I wasn’t that impressed with the store, overall:

Not much, weird selection, ‘Rock + Soul’ together!

After that it was a boat trip. I found some photos earlier that I’d taken from the deck, shots of the Twin Towers, and it feels a little strange to look at them now.  I didn’t get as far as climbing up the Statue of Liberty, but I bought a mug in Macy’s, with a pictorial map of New York on it (I do like a good map) and some Hershey’s bars in a little deli in a side street where I suddenly felt as if I’d walked into a film set, all those plumes of steam rising from the manhole covers....  it all felt quite surreal.  Actually, the whole place felt like a film set.  What a a brilliant city to visit, though, on my first ever flight.

I wonder if the place has changed all that much in 25 years?  Perhaps in some ways yes, but not in others  - much like us.

Anniversary snapshots: 28th May 1978

On May 28^th 1978 Adam & the Ants were booked to play at my local venue.  I was barely able to contain my excitement when I heard.  It was only five months since I’d been to my first gig, when Siouxsie & the Banshees had played at the same place.  Five months is a long time when you’re 14 and in that interim the venue had become my regular haunt, usually twice a week (depending on the demands of homework).  My three friends and I always went together to watch bands, drink cider and mingle with fellow punk fans.

We felt at home there in a way we rarely did anywhere else; we were all outsiders together.  Mostly punks, a few rock types, a couple of hippies and one or two general oddballs.  The club occasionally played host to artists who were not too well-known to overcrowd its intimate small-town setting, but were established or culty enough to have made it into the music papers or perhaps recorded sessions for John Peel.  Bands like Adam & the Ants who, in spite of not even having recorded their first single yet, had gained an underground following I’d read about.

And they were coming to my town!  Presumably with Jordan – the embodiment of London art punk outrageousness, the most outstanding looking woman I’d seen in the whole of this brave new underworld  - I was in awe.

But my friends couldn’t come that night.  At fourteen, and female, was I brave enough to go on my own and spend the whole evening there without them? 

“Well we’re going down to the Jazz Club later, so you can come home with us,” my mum said – meaning that she and my dad would be in the adjacent bar for the latter part of the night and my lift home was assured.  It was a deal.  (I was deprived of any excuse to rebel against them - they were too liberal!)

It was a warm, light evening as  I walked across town on my own, then waited nervously outside the door to get in, along with some unfamiliar faces who’d clearly come down from London - but the queue wasn’t as big as I’d expected.  And then I noticed the hand-written sign and overheard the conversation filtering through the line:  Adam & the Ants had cancelled.

So on this date 40 years ago I didn't actually see Adam & the Ants, or Jordan.  I saw The Automatics on my own instead.  Regulars at the Marquee and with a vocalist who'd briefly been a member of the Boys beforehand,  they were pretty good (listening to them again now, they sound quite power pop too).  And being on my own had its advantages;  I got chatted up by the guitarist from a local band who was also there on his own, a bloke a fair bit older than me, about 20.

 “Can I buy you a drink?” he asked. 

“Oh yes, a pint please”.   

“A pint of what…?” 

“Beer”, I replied helpfully, thinking myself very grown up.

And then we stood together with our drinks, hardly able to talk above the noise.  I think the ‘beer’ went to my head a bit, because it wasn’t long before I turned round and kissed him full on the lips. Well, he looked like Mick Jones.  I think I took him a little by surprise.

When the evening ended, it was a little awkward, as I had to wait for my parents, which didn’t seem very cool.  But ‘Mick Jones’ and me said lovely if slightly clumsy goodbyes and, even without Adam & The Ants, I’d had a great evening.  Then I waited there in the foyer alone, as the last few people filed out of the hall.  A great big older punk bloke whom I’d never seen before – a Londoner, I think, maybe he'd been part of the Automatics' entourage – stopped and looked at me. 

“Do you wanna fuck?”  he asked, just like that.  Straight to the point.

I don’t think he was too chuffed when I said a polite “No thank you”, trying not to show my disbelief.

With that, he called me a “boiler” and marched out the door – just before my mum and dad appeared and drove me home - I didn't tell them.

It felt like I’d grown up pretty fast that night.

Adam & The Ants did come to my town in the end – in March the following year, six months before the release of  Dirk Wears White Sox.; they were great.  And I stood and watched them with the bloke who’d bought me that pint, as we'd been going out together for 2 weeks.

The Automatics: When The Tanks Roll Over Poland Again b/w Watch Her

1978

Adam & The Ants: Zerox Machine 

1979

Anniversary snapshots: 3rd July 1981

Blimey, I'm finally managing to write again! Thanks for your encouragement and understanding. But hope you'll forgive some retrospective indulgence...   It could even turn into an occasional series, tho' that might be over-ambitious.  Anyway, this started because I was thinking about a gig I was at on this exact day many years ago - hence 'anniversary' - and it dawned on me just how much has changed, although the band in question are still performing (albeit not the complete original line-up).  More on them in a mo.

First, time to forget everything we now take for granted about modern technology.  Rewind to an era when we weren’t all connected, forget having a home computer and transmitting words and pictures like I'm doing now.  I'm back to a time when we still had £1 notes and had to get photos developed at Boots and wait two weeks.  I won’t go on, you were probably there too.

So I'm in the early '80s, and 1981 in particular.  How was it for you?

The music I think of first is that post-punk / embryonic goth thing because I was really into those bands I’d heard through John Peel, like Modern English, Psychedelic Furs, Positive Noise, the Cure...

There were other new sounds too  - I loved the first New Age Steppers album with its dub rhythms...

...and still had allegiance to the anarcho-punk of Crass who released 'Penis Envy' that year.  I don't recall ever enjoying that in the way I did others, but it had its place.

These were varied times musically; I could play New Order’s ‘Ceremony’ alongside Dead Kennedys ‘Too Drunk To Fuck’ and Radio 1 could play Bucks Fizz next to the Jam. So much was going on.  Then, thrown into the mix, was something altogether different: electro ‘machine music' from a German band who’d already been around for over half my life.  Kraftwerk.

Kraftwerk seemed pretty old in '81 (in their 30s!).  I knew this because my sister already had Radioactivity in the dark ages of 1975, a record she'd been given by a German boy during a Town Twinning week.  I was 12 in '75, I liked Showaddywaddy and guinea pigs.  So, yes, they were ancient but, at the same time, so ultra-modern.

On Friday 3^rd July 1981, I saw them at the Hammersmith Odeon.  It was the first time I’d been to a gig venue with seats.  I was used to black-painted halls with sticky floors and being close enough to a band to look up the nostrils of the guitarist and count the hairs.  Down there on stage – a long way away, no up-nosing for me - were four figures who looked more like androids than people, each producing synthetic sounds from a personal console, behind them a huge screen projecting the kind of digital graphics I’d only really seen on Tomorrow’s World.  

Honestly, this is what I mean about forgetting what we know today because back then it seemed so futuristic.  Like when we were little and tried to picture what life might be like in the year 2000 (all jet-packs and holidays on the moon), the computer world that Kraftwerk envisioned wasn’t one I could imagine living in.

Now, as I type this using familiar technology, their version seems retro, like Gameboys and Space Invaders do too. But in 1981 we were still gawping at magic flashing signs on the motorway telling us we were too close to the car in front as we travelled down to Hammersmith in P's Vauxhall Viva.

I’m not sure quite how Kraftwerk fitted in to my musical taste, they just did.  Seeing them felt like witnessing something special.  The sophistication of sound and imagery took us to an other-worldly place, where our hosts didn't seem fully human.  How different from the gigs I'd been to before.  At the same time it was highly accessible, especially in songs like the wistful electro-pop of 'Computer Love'.

We were enthralled for two hours by four automatons, but just occasionally they let slip their robotic façades and smiled, and we loved them for it.   They filled our senses.  It was such a memorable and awe-inspiring night.

And unlike gigs I’d been to before, the ones with sticky floors, there was no real fashion style dominating the audience - there were all sorts there, with no aggro.  P wore a black cape! I don't know why - or perhaps I do - I mean, this was an era when many of us aspired to be vampires, at least part-time.  K was wearing brand new purple creepers from Shelley’s.  I donned my moth-eaten black lace dress (my mum’s from the 1940s), my hair deliberately tangled.

In the foyer on the way out we spotted Toyah! ‘I Want To Be Free’ was in the charts - she was going to turn this world inside out and turn suburbia upside down.  I'm not sure how she got so far with that voice, but she did have the look.

 As we queued to leave the car park, we were amazed to hear a tape of what we’d just listened to being played back – someone must’ve recorded the set on a portable cassette machine. Maybe smuggled in under a cape.

Possibly still dazed from the Kraftwerk experience, P took a wrong turn as we headed home and started driving West instead of East.  We didn’t know as we drove towards Southall that something serious was happening there that night.   The first we heard was in the papers the next day - there was nothing then to tell us what was going on in real time, no tweets, no rolling news.  

Luckily we turned around in time, oblivious to what was unfolding further down the road.  Petrol bombs were being thrown and a pub set on fire when a violent conflict erupted after a number of Oi bands  booked to play the Hambrough Tavern brought many of their racist supporters to an area with a high Asian population.  That was another side to the hot Summer of 1981: riots.

It's weird to think of Oi bands, riots and Kraftwerk in the same breath.  I’m so glad I’d been in the company of the latter that night.  I don’t think Oi fans would’ve taken kindly to seeing us dressed in cape, creepers and lace, singing 'It's More Fun To Compute' out the car windows, and laughing at the ridiculous idea of that ever becoming a reality.

Hmm.

As for Kraftwerk, they're touring again with 70-year old Ralf Hütter as the only original member, and by all accounts their performances are not that dissimilar to the one I enjoyed 36 years ago today.  Whereas so many other things have changed...

Developed at Boots, July 1981

In the digital age, July 2017

Thought it was about time I said hello properly!