I had a hoot last night. John Burgess, the inspirational union convenor for Barnet Unison asked me to help him organise a gig to promote community cohesion and anti racism. Last night was the big night. We had three bands, my band - The False Dots, London's finest Irish Band Seanachie Og and Timeline, featuring Alan Warner from the Foundations and DJ Jack Funk.
There's nothing I love more than playing my guitar to an appreciative audience. The three bands had the audience dancing and singing along from about 8.30 when we took the stage to the very end at about 2am. So how do you fight racism and beat the BNP by having a gig? Well, for a start we didn't have any impassioned speeches, we just had a party where everyone got along. We had all shapes, sizes, colours and ages and everyone had a great evening. We deliberately chose three rather diverse bands. My band are a punky rock band playing original numbers. Our line up last night reflected the diverse nature of our great city. Me half Aussie and half Irish, Fil from Portugal, Rhomi from Slovenia and Adi who is a through and through Londoner. It's very hard to spout racism and xenophobia if you look at the way music has enhanced life in our city. If you took away all of the external musical influences which immigrants have brought, you'd be left with a few people Morris Dancing around a maypole (not that there's anything wrong with that). The Stones and the Beatles were criticised in the early days for playing "black mans music".
To me, music is the strongest cohesive force of all. That's why we sing hymns at church, play music when we get married, play music when we die, go out dancing, when we have a nice dinner with the person we love. When I started the False Dots in 1979, I could hardly play the guitar. It didn't matter then as it was the tail end of Punk Rock. Rather perversely, we never set out to be the "next Beatles or Rolling Stones". We wanted to be a strongly local band playing for the community. Over the years, we've done gigs for CND, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, MacMillan Cancer relief, The Teenage Cancer Trust, Save Edgware Hospital campaign, Barnet Unison, The Jade Wallace Appeal and The Burnt Oak Labour party. Last night, someone asked me why we've "never made it" as they thought we were quite a good band. Truth is, it was never a priority for me. Although we toured around Europe a bit in the early 1980's, which was an absolute hoot, I never wanted anyone to tell me what shoes to wear or what songs to sing. Through my studios we've helped launch the careers of a few top artists, who started there career's rehearsing at our place. I'm proud that Amy Winehouse and Kate Nash, two Brit awards winners got record deals whilst using our studio. In some small we we've changed the world.
I love playing gigs for the community. I love seeing 80 year olds dancing with 18 year olds (as happened last night). I believe in the idiom "Think globally, act locally". I can't change the world, but just possibly I can make my little patch of it a bit better. If we all did this, it would be a much better place. I was talking to a friend who's a campaigner for third world trade fairness. She said to me that the best thing everyone could do is follow the 5% rule. You may ask what is this. Well it's not practical to buy fairtrade everything, but if everyone just bought 5% of their shopping basket in fairtrade items, that would make a huge difference to the lives of tens of millions of people.
In the early 1990's I organised a benefit gig for a long forgotten local cause. I happened to bump into a rather obnoxious former Mill Hill Conservative Councillor and asked him (rather politely, as I believe in cross party support for local campaigns). He sneered at me "Your one of those idiots who thinks that you can change the world by organising pop concerts". Well we won that battle and he lost his seat in 1994 to a Lib Dem who supported the campaign.
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