Burnt Oak, Punk rock and basic decency

Due to my holiday in France, work commitments and life, I completely missed the fact that there is a play on at the Leicester Square Theatre called (and about) Burnt Oak. Here is an interview with the playwrite Laurence Lynch on the Robert Elms show on BBC London 94.9.

I have booked tickets to see the show next week. I am really very excited about it and will write a review here. Laurence has a great story. He grew up in Burnt Oak, became a plumber, moved to Soho, became the plumber to the stars and one day showed a friend a play he'd written years before. They thought it was great, and as the saying goes, the rest is history.

There is a little bit more to Laurence's story. Back in 1979, there was a burgeoning music scene in the area. As any regular reader will know, my band - The False Dots - were one of many who took up Mark Perry's call to war to learn three chrods and form a band. At the time, one of my best friends was a schoolmate at Orange Hill, Joe Malone, one of a large family of Irish descent, who lived up the road. The three elder Malone brothers Twins Joe and Chris, with slightly younger brother Dale, also were in the process of forming a band. Joe shared my tastes in Punk rock. His favourite band was art punk outfit, Wire. Joe was higly influenced by a show we saw at the Jeanette Cochrane Theatre. Wire staged a show with four acts. Even more interestingly, they had no visible amplifiers. It is fair to say, Joe was pretty blown away by the gig and thought he'd seen the future of new wave music. The program for the show was more like a theatre show and had the acts summarised. Other arts were also featured. Joe took his ideas back to his band. The Malone brothers were the original customers of Mill Hill Music Complex. They were so paranoid that people would rip off their ideas, that everyone was soon banned from their rehearsals. My band, the False Dots liked visitors (especially female ones). Joe was so protective of his ideas that he even had a punch up with the lead singer of our band, Pete Conway, over who'd been the first person in Mill Hill to wear bondage trousers. Such things were highly important.

It is fair to say that the rest of us were intrigued. Joe had a reputation. He was highly unpredicatable and was given to grand gestures. When playing for the Orange Hill School football team, he once ran the entire length of the pitch and banged a superb goal into his own net, in protest at the atrocious performance of his team mates. Even the name of the band was secret. We christened them "The Mojes" a sort of bastardised anagram of Jo Ma and the name stuck. In 1980 I organised a series of gigs at the Harwood Hall in Mill Hill. As Joe was a mate, I asked him if they fancied playing. Joe said "Yes". I was quite excited. I asked what the Band is called "We'll tell you on the night". I explained to Joe that it didn't work like that. We had to let people know who was playing etc.

One of the people Joe had recruited was none other than Laurence Lynch. Like all other members of the band, he was sworn to secrecy. I knew Laurence's sister Barbara (Babs). It is fair to say, I thought she was lovely. We used to all meet on the 113 bus back from gigs at the Marquee. I was intrigued to find out what the Mojes were up to, but even Babs was in the dark.

The Mojes took the show extremely seriously. Demand after demand came in. No recordings, no photos, no videos, their own sound man, an intro tape, to be played, no one in the dressing room before they plated, so they could prepare. Eventually Joe relented and announced the name of the band - Kabuki - this is the Japanese word for a form of dance drama. Had anyone else in the world come up with the name, I'd have sniggered, but as I said, the Mojes had an aura.

On the day of the show, five local bands assembled in Harwood Hall. A mate of mine, Dermot Fanning, had agreed to DJ. He just loved playing records. Kabuki were on third out of five bands. I'd been rather keen to make sure that as headliners, we didn't directly follow them, as I thought they may be good. I'd been intrigued by the whole secrecy thing, as had everyone else. The hall was packed.

When time came for them to emerge, their plan went into action. Every light in the building was turned off. 130 people stood in darkness. Then the sounds of Opera singer John McCormack, eerily ghosted over the PA as we all stood in the dark. In this day and age, this probably doesn't sound that unusual, but in 1980, local bands just stood their, picked their nose and played badly. As the tape finished, a couple of ultra bright spotlights clicked on and their stood the Moje brothers band with Laurence, in what can be best described as crusader style outfits. As I recall brilliant white with red crosses painted on them (not in  a BNP sort of sense), it reminded me of a bleeding red cross. The band was absoletly brilliant. The whole audience just stood and stared for the whole show, not knowing what to make of it. At the end they got a raptuos response.

I was really pleased for them. I've always been supportive of my mates bands, and thought they were destined for great things. At the end, none of them wanted to discuss it, they packed up and left. A couple of days later, I saw Joe. I told him the show was brilliant.  He was infuriated. "No it wasn't, I knew we weren't ready, we should never have done it there". As far as he was concerned, it was terrible. It later transpired that as he'd gone on Dermot had said about the intro tape "That's John McCormack isn't it". Joe had replied "Yes". Dermot had then said "Yes, that's my Dad's favourate opera singer". Dermot said Joe seemed gutted.

I think that is probably the last time I saw Laurence. I can't remember if Kabuki knocked it on the head immediately or where they went from there. I still see the Malones up the road. I should say that all of this is my personal memories of the time. At the time I knew Joe far better than the rest of the band, I'm sure that they all had a big say in it, it was a band not his project - Please don't take this as a definitive history of their band. As we were all banned from the rehearsals, I guess we'll never know. It would probably make a great follow up play. All I can say is that I'm really chuffed that Laurence has gone on to get his play staged in such a prestigious venue.

Recently there has been lots of bad news happening in Burnt Oak. Murders, stabbings, brothels etc. I am chuffed that this play has come out now. It is a great reminder that the vast majority of people in Burnt Oak are decent people who just want to get on with their lives. The snooty members of Barnet Council etc look down their noses at the estate. As my grandparents lived at 55 Milling Road for most of their married lives, I hate such snobs. It was great hearing two Burnt Oak boys - Laurence and Robert Elms - discussing the estate on BBC London 94.9 in such warm positive terms. I just hope that in 30 years time we're talking about a new generation of people who've used their positive experiences on the estate to do great things.