The Saturday List #473 - My Top Ten benefit gigs!

Yesterday I went to perhaps the most incongruous gig I've ever been to. Let me start the story back at the beginning. When I was about fifteen, my brother Laurie was living in Montrose Avenue in Burnt Oak. He'd pay me to babysit his son Christopher. Chris was the perfect kid, I'd play silly games with him for an hour, then he'd trot off to bed. Laurie would leave me a bottle of cider and use of his record collection. He'd also give me recommendations. I'd often ask my mate Pete Conway to come around to keep me company. We'd listen to the albums and try and be inspired to write songs. Laurie's collection was amazing, with all manner of weird and wonderful album. He was into The Velvet Underground before anyone, and there were other gems such as The Electric Prunes, The Who and The Steve Miller Band. On the day in question, he said "You must listen to Electric Music for The Mind and Body by Country Joe and The Fish, it is the best debut album ever recorded".  We were punks, so you may think that a slice of hippydom would not go down too well, but he was right. It was amazing and I instantly became a fan. Anyone familiar with the work of Country Joe McDonald will know that he is a huge figure in sixties counter culture. The lead guitarist was Barry Melton, a genius, who went on to become the public defender for the state of California. Of all the bands I ever listened to, CJF were the most, to me, exotic and unfathomable. I saw both Joe and Barry a few times over the years. Joe has retired and has become a world expert on Florence Nightingale. I'd sort of forgotten about Barry until Thursday. A mate of mine, Pete Williams nipped into the shop to hire a guitar amp. I asked Pete what the gig was. He said "Barry Melton is playing a benefit gig for the An Cat Dubh animal sanctuary in Co Clare at the Leytonstone Ex Servicemens club".

I just had to go. The chance to see a Woodstock legend, in Leytonstone ex servicemens club for a donation to an animal sanctuary. What is not to love. Not only that, there are a couple of great pie and mash shops in Leytonstone to try. It was great to see Barry. He is a very senior citizen now. He can still play guitar and has a great voice. As you can imagine, he is none too happy with his new President. People like Barry should be running the USA, not the Gingerbread moron! The sheer incongruous nature of the gig got me thinking about the benefit gigs which The False Dots have done over the years. When we started the band, we made it a principle that we'd play suitable benefit gigs for what we considered good causes. We've done a few. Here are some of note!

1. 13 December 1980 - The Harwood Hall, Mill Hill - Our first gig was officially a benefit for Rock Against Racism. We put it on ourselves and got Stylo, a local reggae band led by Kenyan guitarist Roy Nkoji, a good mate of mine, to support. It was a great success. When I rung up RAR to ask where to send the money, they told us to keep it and use it to put on more gigs for good causes. They also sent us a load of badges and posters.

2. 13 March 1981 - Hendon Rugby Club (supporting The Chevrons). This was a benefit for The Friends of The Earth. The Chevrons were allegedly a big local band. The promoter was a guy called Alan Grote, who promoted lots of gigs. For us, doing this seemed like a big deal. The Chevrons were really unfriendly and got the soundman to knobble our sound. A local Hells Angel, saw this and politely explained to the sound guy that this was unacceptable. After that, the sound improved. Afterwards, I bought him a drink and it began a good relationship between us and the local bikers, that lead to us playing a bunch of bike festivals over the next few years. The guy was a Lou Reed fan and we did a cover of Sweet Jane, which was his favourite song. 

3. 18th July 1981 - Harwood Hall, Mill Hill. A benefit for CND, the worst gig we've ever done. Mind you, we raised £29 for CND and got a nice thank you letter. 

It was meant to be a real triumph, we had replaced Craig Withecombe with mercurial guitarist Captain Ubungus. He didn't learn the songs and didn't tune his guitar. We got Boz Boorer of the Polecats to come down and jam with us, you can see him in the doorway with the quiff. I ended up hitting someone around the head with my guitar after they spat in my face. Oddly, the audience seemed to think it was OK. We sacked Ubungus after and got Craig back. 

4. 30th June 1984, Bald Faced Stag, Burnt Oak. One of the more incongruous gigs we did. A benefit for Greenham Common at The Bald Faced Stag in Burnt Oak. Perhaps the most notorious pub in the Borough of Barnet. It was an amazing gig. The last in our series of gigs of our residency at The Stag. It was even video'd for posterity, although I never saw the video! Clarence Mitchell at the Barnet Times was a big champion of the band. He is now the Conservative leader of Reading Council. How times change!

5. 13 December 1985, Old Bull Arts Centre, Barnet. Another CND benefit. Notable as the first time my parents came to a gig. My Dad thought CND were idiots, but he wanted to support me. He brought some of my young nephews and nieces. The act before us was a feminist lesbian dance troop who appeared nude, daubed in green paint, under a polythene sheet. I doubt they had quite the effect that they hoped for on the male members of the audience. After the gig I asked Dad what he thought of us. He replied, he hadn't noticed us because he was still thinking about the dance troop. My 12 year old nephew rather liked it. 

6. 20th April 2002, The Red Lion, Colindale. The saddest benefit gig we did. It was in memory of Ernie Ferebee, who had been the manager of Mill Hill Music Complex 1994-2001 and died of pancreatic cancer leaving three children under six. It was our first gig for twelve years. Mixed emotions

7. 3rd November 2006, Mill Hill Sports Club (Kate Nash was support act). A gig for MacMillan Cancer Relief. Kate was brilliant, one of her first gigs. Six weeks later, she was in the charts with Foundations. 

8. 3rd March 2008, The Bull Theatre (supporting Lee Thompson & Chris Spedding band). Another gig for MacMillan. A brilliant night. Notable in that it was the last performance with The False Dots of Paul Hircombe, who quit after 28 years to become a career criminal. When Paul was being sentenced, a couple of years later, I met with his brief  to be a character witness. I told him Paul was a great guy who'd gone off the rails. I mentioned all the benefit gigs he'd done for free and the thousands he'd raised for charity. I was told not to mention this as "it was not credible, given his record". I felt really guilty, as it was all true. Pauls brief said I'd get torn apart by the prosecution if I came up with such a "cock and bull story". Paul got three years. 

9. 15th December2009, The Claddagh Ring, Hendon. This was a benefit for Barnet Unison trade union and their fight with Barnet Council, trying to get them to reverse their plans for outsourcing the council to Capita. History proved us right and them wrong. I did what I could!

10. 29th January 2011, The Arts Depot, Finchley (supporting The Foundations). Rock against the Cuts (with a silent N). Again organised by Unison to raise awareness of the Tory council's planned cuts to services. It was a brilliant day, with a march from Finchley Central to The Arts Depot. It was packed..

I'm proud of the benefit gigs we've done over the years. When we started it was mostly political causes, more recently it's been for cancer charities etc. We are probably well overdue one for a cat sanctuary!

And to finish, here is a video from the Harwood Hall gig. This was 1981, not 1979 as labelled on the video. This was the Vektors from Edgware supporting us at the above mentioned CND gig at The Harwood Hall. Proper Mill Hill rock and roll history!

Recalling the wonderful days of CND benefit gigs

 There is only one nation on earth that has voluntarily given up nuclear arms. That nation is Ukraine.  I was looking at some old photo's of my band recently and I fondly recalled the CND benefit gigs that we did. I can recall having long arguments with my Dad about CND. He felt I was a naive idiot for believing that dictatorships would respect any nation that voluntarily disarmed and adopted a neutral position. I pointed to the examples Switzerland and Sweden, who seemed to do alright. I had a dream last night that I was having a beer with him and he said "Do you still think supporting CND was a good idea?". 

The expereinces of Ukraine would lead one to conclude that giving up nuclear weapons may not be the most sensible move. It also poses the question "what would have happened if Ukraine kept the nukes?". Would it have deterred Putin? Would any Ukrainian leader be crazy enough to launch a first strike in the event of  a Russian invasion? It would have certainly given him pause for thought. 

Some of the very first gigs I organised were CND benefit gigs. I also played quite a few locally. I asked myself if, in hindsight, I'd still have done that. Looking at the old pictures, I felt rather nostalgic, but I one has to ask if it was a sensible cause. On one level, I think CND's aims for a world without nuclear weapons is a completely morally justifiable position and it should be the goal of every politician. But CND believe that the UK should unilaterally give up its nuclear deterrent. This is a far more complicated question. It is also not as simple to answer as it was in the days when my Dad was around and we had those conversations. To me, the Presidency of Donald Trump laid bare just how fragile the worlds military alliances really are. 

The UK does not really have an 'independent nuclear deterrent. We rent a system from the USA and we could only use it with their blessing. Trump may well end up back in the White House in a couple of years (or someone even worse). The plug could be pulled on the UK's Trident system at any time. I'm really not sure that, in the ever evolving world, it offers value for money. If the UK had a genuinely independent system, maybe I'd feel different, but I genuinely believe that Trident is not a good use of the UK's money and resources. Whilst Nato exists, I doubt anyone would seriously plan a nuclear attack on us, although a breakdown in diplomacy and an uncontrolled escalation of tensions leading to a nuclear war once again seems possible. I suspect that to Putin, the UK's deterrent makes us a more important target than Spain or Italy. 

We need organisations like CND to ask the questions that they ask in a democratic society. You cannot face down people like Putin with good intentions, but a world where we move on from such leaders should always be a goal and it will never be achieved whilst there is a huge arms industry lobbying governments and supporting war mongers. There is a narrative in some quarters that the situation in Ukraine is somehow the fault of Nato. Anyone who actually knows Russia and the former Soviet Republics will know that this is absolute rubbish. The Putin regime is a very dangerous entity, but like many dictators, Putin has totally overplayed his hand and made some classic miscalculations. The failure of his plans has created a very dangerous situation, as his very survival is now at stake. I never really believed that a Russian or a USSR leader would deliberately start a nuclear war, although they nearly started one in 1983 when they misread the runes of a Nato exercise. That resulted in a whole swathe of new checks and balances to ensure that such a scenario didn't happen. Putin has shown a complete disregard for his own people and a contempt for his armed forces. Would he be crazy enough to use tactical nuclear missiles? I still, on balance, don't think so but I am far less sure than I ever was previously. The one thing I am 100% sure about is that if he does, the UK possessing Trident will in no way colour his decision and the concept that we would respond unilaterally without US approval is crazy. 

In one conversation I had with my Dad, I remember saying that the UK had been the global superpower in the 19th century, the US in the 20th century. I asked who he thought would be the next superpower. His answer shocked me. He replied Australia. When I asked why, he said "If theres a nuclear war, they are well out of the way". I was neve rquite sure if he was joking or not.

By the way, is anyone in touch with the former Hendon CND organiser Tony Byrne. He has a video of the False Dots from 1984 that I'd love to get a copy of.