Frightened

Perhaps the best present I received this Christmas was a new stylus for my turntable. I rather suspect Clare has been sorely regretting her act of kindness. Although our musical tastes collide in some places, she isn't a massive fan of the obscure punk rock which I'd spend my days listening to given half a chance. We all have strange indiosyncricies which drive our partners mad. Mine is that I love music which perhaps 99% of the population finds unfathomable. As I've run a studio for 33 years, played in a band for just as long and know a fair few people of note in the industry as friends, people assume I have an encyclopedic knowledge of all things musical. The sad truth is that nothing could be further from the truth. I am a total anorak for certain genres of music and an avid collector of vinyl, especially 70's punk rock and 60's psychedelic music. Sadly most other genres are of passing interest, if any. If I was spend a night spinning my favourite records to my friends I'd very quickly be in a room on my own. People assume I have a love for such acts as The Beatles, Queen and Foreigner. I find them all rather hard work. Give me the Fall, The Heartbreakers and the Lurkers anyday.

At school I had little interest in music at all until I was fourteen. Whilst mates were into heavy rock such as Led Zeppelin and rather dull concept album bands such as Pink Floyd (although I have always loved the Barratt era classics such as See Emily Play), the only bands I really liked were T Rex and Bowie. Most of my friends dismissed Bolan as "pop" and Bowie as a weirdo. Then on the 6th June 1977 I saw the Ramones, Talking Heads and the Saints. All of a sudden it all fell into place and I knew what I wanted to do with my life. Mark Perry published three chords on the front cover of "sniffin glue" magazine and urged everyone to go out and write songs. The Sex Pistols had been on the Bill Grundy show. I instantly associated with them, although I had no clue what their music was like. My schoolmates were still into all the old prog rock on the Old Grey Whistle Test. I discovered the John Peel show. All sorts of bizarre music was played. Peel would think nothing of following a track by the Sex Pistols with one by the Northern Dance Orchestra. I'll never forget when the Buzzcocks released another music in a different kitchen. Peel played eight songs in a row, then declared he'd play the other three tomorrow.

The thing we seem to forget about Punk is that it wasn't just a couple of bands playing a similar type of music. It was also a fashion style which was massively important. The bassplayer of my band, The False Dots had a punch up with the bassplayer of another local band, called the Mojes (by us) over who was the first person in Mill Hill to wear bondage trousers. Sadly for our bassplayer, the Mojes bassplayer was a bit of a hardnut, but he couldn't let the matter pass as a point of principle. Punk also gave birth to a whole crop of independently published magazines, and a new crop of journalists. The three "young turks" of the NME have become national figures. Danny Baker, Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons covered the punk scene and built huge reputations. Interestingly they often didn't even bother going to see the bands they had reviewed. I remember Burchill getting pulled up for slagging off a Souixsie & the Banshees performance at Leeds, when the band hadn't played. I personally never forgave Parsons for a dishonest review of the Ramones at the Rainbow at Xmas 1977. Interestingly the gig was captured on video for a film, proving Parsons claim that the audience were bored was rubbish.

What is interesting to me is the state of music in 1976. It was dire. I see many parallels with the current music scene. People had stopped making music for the sheer joy of playing. The whole scene had become bloated, lazy and dull. Over indulgence was the order of the day. There was nothing to get excited about. As I survey the current music scene, I see the same thing. Our studio has seen a big fall off in the number of young people forming bands. This has been compensated by a rise in pop acts aspiring to X factor. What scares me is that there is little creativity in much of the music. People seem to have given up trying to write good songs.

I am usually a good judge of such things. I anticipate a resurgence of creativity in the coming year. All of the factors are ripe. As in 1976, we had a recessive economy, a sudden realisation that "the system" won't deliver jobs and easy money. I believe bad economies are good for music and religion. I expect an upsurge in interest in both. With the Friern Barnet Library occupation, I have detected an awakining that amongst ordinary people that if you sit around and do nothing, you get shafted in such a climate.

I was trying to recall the last time a really top notch protest song got anywhere in the charts. I honestly couldn't remember. Our current crop of teenagers have borne the brunt of the assault by the Tory establishment. The government seems to have singled them out for a good going over. I believe that our Tory masters think that if young people are enslaved to debt, they can be controlled. I suspect that they will find something rather different happens. I alone of all my brothers and sisters did not do any post school education. There are several reasons for this, but one of the main considerations for me was the fact that as my parents were well off I would not receive a full grant. This meant I would have to rely on parents. Instead I left the country at 18 and went to live in Sweden for six months. When I returned, I had to work to pay off my debts. I realised that I'd had my fill of education. I worked as a painter and decorator for a while to pay the bills.

By the time my friends had left University, I had a wealth of work and life experience. I found that if you want something, the way to get it is to work hard. What did I want? I wanted a band, I wanted to play music. Strangely I didn't want to be a famous and rich pop star, I just wanted to play music. I have seen so many people who were talented lose their way because they want music to be a career. I believe that you should make music you like and if you get a career from it, then great. One of the shows I always listen to on the radio is Robert Elms on BBC 94.9. This week he's been playing the best interviews from his show this year. Stand out interviews were Tom Jones and Rod Stewart. Althoug I'm not a massive fan of either, the interviews were top notch. What stood out was the fact that both love the music they make.

I think the problem for many youngsters today is that their lives are racked with fear. Some of this is instilled by paranoid or pushy parents. There's fear of debt, fear of academic failure, fear of walking down the street, fear of "outsiders".  None of these things need to be feared. I've been in serious debt, failed academically, walked down the street and always felt like an outsider. I'm still here and doing ok. Life is only worth living when we take chances. A totally safe life is a totally sterile life. I'm not urging people to take stupid risks, but for heavens sake, we have moved too far towards a culture where we wrap people in cotton wool, both physically and intellectually.

I foresee a backlash against this. If there isn't the country will end up as a place where we all lock ourselves in after 5pm, and have no life at all.  I've been doing a lot of thinking recently. When I started writing this blog, I did it out of sheer frustration that nobody was covering important issues. I've never particularly enjoyed it. I can't see people being thrown to the wolves and stand by. Luckily, there are plenty of bloggers in Barnet now. All of them are better educated and more literary talented than I am. I am not going to "quit blogging", there is too much work to do. I am however going to dedicate less time to writing and researching blogs in 2013 and more time to the things I've neglected for the past four years and especially the last year.

I hope that the shortfall is met by my ever growing army of guest bloggers, who have lit the blog up. Expect more blogs on subjects such as music, local history and the environment in the coming year. I will still be covering One Barnet and all of the other issues, but it is time I delivered on the promise I made when I started writing a blog on the Hendon Times. That was to promote the local music scene. The political blog was an accident of fate, caused by the atrocious Stalinist reaction of the local Conservatives in Barnet Council to some justified criticism I made of their policies and behaviour.

Sadly in Barnet, I've seen some truly atrocious things happen to the way young people are treated by the council. Perhaps the most crass example was the way the Rythmic Project at Canada Villa has been dismembered. This gave local young people an opportunity to make music. A local Conservative councillor asked me what I thought of the project. I responded that I was overjoyed that the council was developing young musicians. He asked if it bothered me that the council were providing facilities for free, that my business charged for. I responded that it was a good thing as young people can't afford a commercial studio anyway, and when they start earning they will step up. He replied rather tersely, "if they knew you felt like that, they'd probably shut it down". When I heard that the staff were under threat last year, I immediately wrote to the council asking that they reconsider and listing reasons. Sadly this award winning project, that received Youth Music funding was not spared.

What frightens me is that if you give young people nothing positive to do, they do negative things. I expect to see vandalism, drug and alcohol abuse, anti social behaviour and petty theft to rise. Music offers a get out of jail card to many young people. That is why it is important. That is why we need to get young people involved. I've read the Mayors strategy. It talks about "elite music". This, in my opinion, is a mistake. Music and sports are the one thing everyone can participate in for little or no cost. Both are healthy and stimulating. Why would any sane person want to steer young people away from such things?

I am working on some new intitatives for the new year. If you notice a few changes here, that is why.

35 Years later - The Ramones Vs John Cooper Clarke

On the 6th June 1977 my life changed. That was the day I saw the Ramones, The Talking Heads and the Saints at the Roundhouse. That was the day I was bitten by the punk rock bug. I was fourteen years old and had never even considered playing a guitar. I only went because my sister had a spare ticket and I was at a loose end. That weekend there was a bank holiday for the queens silver jubilee. I wasn't at that point too aware of the music scene. We didn't have wall to wall TV and music, downloads or iPods. It was all vinyl. The only two music shows were Top of the Pops and the Old Grey Whistle Test, which both ignored punk rock. I had seen the Sex Pistols on the Bill Grundy show. I thought it was hilarious, but they seemed like aliens from another planet. Unlike today, there was no flood of twittering. I'd never even seen a computer, let alone used one then. My musical tastes at that point were T Rex, Bowie and the Rolling Stones. I knew every bar of every verse of every song on "Sticky Fingers" backwards. I had even spotted the mis-edit in "Bitch". It tried to explain this to my sisters but they hadn't a clue what I was on about.

I have very strong recollections of that night. The Saints strolled on and were just a kind of cool wall of noise. I knew they were Australians. I can remember Chris Bailey was wearing a mac and the music was frantic and the band looked completely out of it. Next up were Talking Heads. I found Tina Weymouth intriguing. As a fourteen year old boy, the highlight of the show was Psycho Killer. Not because I particularly liked the song, but because of the way Tina's breasts moved in time with the bass on the Dum Dum Dum Dum Dum Dum Dum der Dum bit. I didn't know any song by any band, so it was all a bit odd. I thought Talking Heads were a country and western band.

Then the Ramones strode on. Joey shouted 1-2-3-4 and 33 minutes later they finished. I was drenched in sweat and had found meaning in life. I went out the next week and bought their first two albums. I then found that due to a campaign by a Conservative MP, the track Carbona Not Glue had been replaced on my copy by Babysitter. I spent the next six months tracking down a copy with Carbona on. I also started planning to form a band. we actually had the band for a year before we had any instruments. We'd go and sing Acapella versions of songs such as "The Vietnamese Boat refugee" song to the people queueing outside gigs. On one famous occasion we took a crate of overripe bananas to Camden Town and pelted the people in the queue with them (after drinking a couple of bottles of Vodka). A reporter from the NME took umbrage at getting hit in the face with a banana and stepped out of line to take his revenge. He slipped on another banana and broke his arm, which we found hilarious. What was even funnier was the fact that he wrote in the paper that the crowd had been attacked by vicious fascist thugs chanting obscene nazi slogans and one of them beat him up, breaking his arm. He couldn't admit that he'd been called a twat by a pissed teenager singing a song slagging off the Thai government for executing refugees and he's slipped over on a banana. His story couldn't have been further from the truth, especially as one of our little gang was a Kenyan. After that we'd always give him as much abuse as possible whenever we saw him. I even wrote a letter to the NME explaining just how wide of the mark they were, but it was never published.

Thirty five years later, I'm celebrating the diamond jubilee by going to see John Cooper Clarke at the Stoke Newington Literary festival tonight. Will it have the same effect as the Ramones? I doubt it, but I am sure it will be a great night. These days I don't drink bottles of vodka, throw bananas at journalists and laugh when they break their arms. I guess I'm still guilty of occasionally calling out a pompous twat or two. Thirty five years ago, as I got ready to see the Ramones, I had no idea what sort of effect it would have on my life. There are very few seconds of that ride I'd change. Here's to the next thirty five years.

However you spend the Jubilee, I hope you have a wicked time !

A Sunday meditation on numbers

The last blog I posted was the 666th. I'm sorry, I'm a Roman Catholic of part Irish descent and I'm just too superstitious to leave that as the last blog for too long, especially when I titled it "Sympathy for the Devil" without realising it's numerical significance. To be completely honest, it rather freaked me out when I noticed, especially since I never normally even bother checking the number of the blogs.
Anyway in deference to this numeric milestone, I thought I'd do a little blog on the significance of numbers to me.

I am probably the most superstitious person you'll ever meet. I get this from my Father, who as a wartime bomber pilot.  He was shot down on his 40th mission. He flew for 40 squadron. The night before he was shot down, his rear Gunner had a dream that they would be given a mission to bomb the Ploesti oil fields in Romania. In the dream, they got shot down and the rear gunner perished. He begged my father to cry off if Ploesti was the chosen target, my father told him not to be so superstitious. It was the last mission on the tour of duty and he wanted to get home. The target was Ploesti, they got shot down and his Rear Gunner F/O Andrew Murphy died. He used to tell us a strange story about how, shortly before the Me109 attacked them and shot them down, one of his best friends, who had been shot down a week before, Jack Schieder, appeared in the seat next to him and said "It's a killer the way these Wimpey's go down". My father was just about to answer when Scheider disappeared and the 109 attacked.

My Dad said that as he was fighting  to get out of the plane before it crashed, he said "Lord, it says in the bible a man lives for three score and ten years". He said he had a great peace then and new he'd survive. As he was a pretty indestructible sort of guy, I never really thought about this, until he died of  a Heart attack unexpectedly in his 70th year. I suppose when you are 26 years old, 70 seems a long way off. I am reminded of Jack Benny. He once said that "everyone say's that no one wants to live till they are 100, but if you ask any of my 99 year old friends, that is a lie".

I have certain numbers I don't like. For some unfathamble reason, I'm none to keen on the number 7. I am rather partial to the number 6 (spelt SEX in Sweden where I lived for a while), but only because I have a childish sense of humour. I always felt that the number 5 was a bit of a fraud. I can remember that when I was a tiny toddler, I thought that when I  became 5 I'd be a "big boy". I got to 5 and felt I'd been robbed, I was still a little kid. I can remember buying the Steve Miller Band album "Number 5". I put it on and the first few songs are great, but it totally loses the plot on side 2.Having said that there is a great song there called "Industrial Military Complex Hex" which contains the rather insightful line. (The song was written in the wake of the police killings of students at the Kent State and Jackson State Universities in 1968).

Ain't too clear to pay my income taxes
'Specially when I know it goes to kill the masses
Love to hear the President make it perfectly clear
How the donkeys and the elephants are police up here

Not being a Yank, for years the line about the the Donkeys and the Elephants intrigued me. I assumed that Steve Miller had just smoked a bit too much POT when he wrote it and is sort of made sense at the Time. When I finally found out that the Donkeys and The Elephants refer to the Democrats and the Republicans, I felt a bit cheated. Having said all of that, when I play football, I always wanted to play Centre Half for Manchester City with the Number 5. Even playing for Old Hendonian's I usually had to play No 3. The Number 5 has always treated me rather like a Harlot treats a punter ! Interestingly enough, Peter Mandelson is an old boy of Hendon School, but he never turned out for the old boys football team when I played for them. I can't imagine what number he'd play. I rather suspect that he'd be a bit of a goal hanger, he doesn't really strike me as Centre Half material.

So what is my favourite number? Since you ask, it's the number 14. Now I never, ever wanted to have the no 14 shirt in football, as traditionally it's a Sub (the worst sub), but it's always been a lucky number for me. Coming back from Sweden, I once had my last ten Krona left. I put it on the number on the Roulette table on 14 and won. I saw the Ramones when I was 14 (see poster left). The first rehearsal of my band, The False Dots, was on the 14th February 1979. There are many things I did for the first time when I was 14, but as my kids read this blog, I'm not going to list them here (especially as my daughter is 14 and I don't really want her getting any ideas about getting lucky any time soon). I was 14 when all of my favourite Punk Bands hit the music scene, I was 14 the last time Manchester City had a trophy in the cabinet.

Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed "The Barnet Eye" blog no 667.