Less than a week to go now! The False Dots release our brand new album "We don't live in America". The songs are a celebration of the things that separate us from our wonderful American cousins.One of the best things about London is our amazing selection of culinary variety. I was blessed with a Dad who had travelled and loved the various cuisines he'd encountered. When I was a wee nipper, the biggest treat was to go for "Chinese Nosh" in Burnt Oak. There was a wonderful restaurant up on the High Street, proper old school. In about 1969, the New China Garden opened on Station Road. A short sequence in an episode of Budgie, starring Adam Faith was filmed there. As I loved the food and I loved Budgie, this seemed like the ultimate endorsement. I remember watching the scenes being filmed.
The New China Garden went througha series of rebrandings. It was the Moon House, Wok Epress and Hee's takeaway. There may well have been others that I've forgotten. I was friendly with the family who ran it as the Moon House. I can't recall how many times I stopped off on the way home from work, after a few pints, for a takeaway. I'd have a spring roll (the old schoool one with beansprouts), Kung Po Prawns and special fried rice. I'd have a chat with the family and I was really sad when they left. About 5 years ago, I met the former owner, working as a waiter in another restaurant. He came over and we had a good chat. The food was proper old school. In truth I much prefer that to the more fancy version you get in more expensive establishments, although I must say Mill Hill's Good Earth is superb.
Even better though, and something that always makes me smile, was the banter I'd have with the other drunks who got off Thameslink at Mill Hill, and stopped off for some sustainance. There was a litte community who'd gather shortly before they shut. We'd have great banter. Jokes about crispy duck and greasy prawn balls! These days we get our takeaways from Tangs at Apex Corner. I suspect that per sqare foot, it is the busiest food outlet in Mill Hill, maybe the whole of London, they re incredibly busy and rightly so. The problem is that its a bit of a shlep when you get off the train, so I eat a lot less of it!
Whenever people start to go off on one about immigrants, I think of restaurants like the Moon House, the Mill Hill Tandoori, etc. I think how dull London would be without all of the various communities. I love Chinatown and the restaurants there, much as I also love Brick Lane and the Indian restaurants around London. My wife always used to berate me when I turned up with a Chinese, usually worse for wear after a night out. She'd point out that it was not exactly health food. For me, the Chinese takeaways on the corners of our High Streets are part of the absolute fabric of my London. Sadly, they are disappearing. I really wanted to write a love song to them. An American friend pointed out "you can get excellent chinese food in the USA". This is true, but it aint the same as London takeaways. I don't know if it is the air in the UK, the ingredients or the fact that they have tweaked it perfectly for us philistine Brits, but there is nothing better!
Chinese Nosh
I loved the China garden down
on Station road
With Spare ribs, spring
rolls and orange gunk that glowed
When I was skint I’d have
the Chinese chips
Served by the guvnors
daughter, with the luscious red lips
I asked a girl called
Penny if she fancied Crispy Duck
But she said I’m not a
cockney mate, your well out of luck
Tracy was quite partial to
some greasy prawn balls
But she said she be
unhappy if the portion was too small
Chorus
What I really want is some
Chinese nosh
But the Missus won’t let
me, she doesn’t think it’s posh
She makes me get Sushi or
a tiny Kinoir pot
Which is green and
horrible and tastes like snot
Middle eight
Don’t lie to me, you’re getting hungry, You can’t fool me, I know what you want
Six pints of lager and some silver containers, You’ll be inheaven quicker than you want
Verse 2
My honey says “Darling
lets get a take away”,
But her idea of food, is
horrible and grey
It tastes like cardboard
and it doesn’t make you full
But you know we have to
eat “whats good for you”
I love nice chow mein with
some hot curry sauce
Salt and pepper squid And
Kung Po pork
But the Doctor Gone and told
me I’ll have an heart attack
Cos I put on forty kilos
since I gave up smack
Chorus
What I really want is some
Chinese nosh
But the Missus won’t let
me, she doesn’t think it’s posh
She makes me get Sushi or
a Kinoir pot
Which is green and
horrible and tastes like snot
Coda
Healthy living is just a
big lie
Life just seems longer
till you die
What I really want is some
nice junk food
But the missus says no,
cos you know its killing you
In exactly one week from now (I am writing this on the stroke of mid day), The False Dots will be launching our brand new album "We don't live in America" live on stage at the Jester Festival in Fortune Green. When I initially started writing the album, I very much envisaged a different album. My original concept was an album with a real Northern Soul vibe. However, as it developed and I wrote songs, it became clear that this wasn't to be. Our trumpet player Tom Hammond was a big part of this change of direction, which is ironic, because I recruited him specifically for the purposes of giving us a more Northern soul feel. But when Tom heard some of the old, legacy material, he loved it. Much of it doesn't really suit my voice, which is why we don't do a lot of it.
One of the songs that Tom heard and really liked was "Please myself", which was written by our old singer Allen Ashley. Allen is a brilliant writer and poet. His lyrical style is mostly what I'd consider classic romantic, with a dollop of bitter lemon to give it a twist. But "Please myself" is a diatribe, a real two fingers up at the rise of social media and the billionaires who make fortunes by sucking us into the platforms then bombarding us with ads for rubbish we don't want. We played it and Tom loved it. The song had been the centrepiece of the set when Allen was in the band. It is a huge part of our musical legacy and it fits the theme and style of the album perfectly. We do a different arrangement and play it in a different key from when Allen was in the band, but it works perfectly and is a rich nod to the bands past.
Please myself
Four bar intro then
stop
All you trolls and haters,
with your messages and spam
You won’t say things to
our faces, coz your only half a man
All you commentators,
trying to set the news
Have you heard the latest,
no one’s listening to you
Chorus
We don’t need
your adulation, we are just our own creation
You won’t find
us in the mainstream we’ve been hived off to the slipstream
We’ve been
struck off all your playlists whilst running from the bailiffs
I may be hard of
hearing, but I’ve never heard you
cheering
But I did the
whole thing just to please myself
STOP - Please myself
All you spinning doctors,
with your data and your claims
Spinning words to fit your
meaning making language just a game
All you corporations
turning workers into clones
Writing algorithmic
profiles set to fill the sky with drones
CH
Smily Dick and Jesus Rabbit,
you’ve got one chance
you’d better grab it
Or you’ll never kick the
habit
of trashing things you couldn’t dream of
Breakdown riff
achieving
I’ve stopped watching
programs, I won’t vote by phone
Catch us in the margins
making shows up of our own
All you fashionistas on
your Sponsored chatty shows
Brashly lacking substance
just the emperors new clothes
It's only eight days to go! Are you getting excited, we are. The False Dots new album, We don't live in America is released on Saturday 4th July. I am doing a countdown on the blog to this momentous occasion. I doubt any album on the planet has been so long in gestation! Although this is not our first album, it contains two tracks from the very earliest days of the band, albiet radically different arrangements etc.
Today we look at track 3 on the album. This in some ways is the most interesting of all in how it came together. On Thursday December 28th 1978, The Fall played at The Electric Ballroom with the Monochrome Set and Subway Sect. As The Fall were one of my favourite bands, as were Monochrome Set, it was a big highlight of the year. Myself and a school mate, Pete Conway, had got into punk music and were excited to go. Pete was working as a butcher at Dewhursts, and I was at Orange Hill School. I was sixteen years old, although I felt a lot older, as we'd been going to gigs for well over a year. I was quite tall, so I never had any trouble buying beers. No one asked for ID. As was our way, we had a few beers before the gig in Camden. The gig was notable, as we got chatting to Dave Edwards and Mandy Spokes at the gig. Dave would become our drummer and Mandy our singer/guitarist at our first rehearsal on Feb 14th 1979!
At some point, long before The Fall came on, myself and Pete became separated. This was not unusual. We had different mates and we often got up to all manner of shenanigans. Usually, we'd meet up at the end and get the last tube home. On this occasion Pete had completely disappeared. Next time we met up, Pete told me a tale of woe. He'd drunk too much, maybe taken something he shouldn't have. He'd woken up at 4am in the morning in the Ladies loo. All the lights were off and he didn't know where he was or what was going on. He stumbled out, and found his lighter. As soon as he had light, he saw a gentleman who looked like he wanted to kill him staring at him. In a panic, he punched the man, only for there to be a terrible crash. He'd smashed a mirror. Realising what was happening, he emerged into a dark, empty, locked venue. Eventually he found a fire escape and let himself out. He said an alarm then went off, so he scarpered.
A year later, we had been through one line up of the band. We chucked out all of the old songs and decided to write a new set. Pete presented a song called Reality Ballroom. It was a rather left field look at his experience. I loved the chord sequence, the breaks and the vibe. However I felt that Pete, as he sometimes did, went a bit off on one. There were lines about Vietnam killing its own race, for instance. But there was a line I loved "The mirrors smash dissolve the vein". I didn't tell Pete at the time, but I thought it was overly pretentious and missed the mark. By Xmas 1980, Pete had left the band.
I rewrote the lyrics. I got rid of all the waffle and focussed it on the events at the gig. I then added a third verse. This was based on a different event. Diingwalls used to have a "half price drinks before 10pm" policy. We went to see someone there, and I had six pints of cider and started to feel ill. I left early and got the Northern Line. I fell asleep on the train and woke at Edgware. As soon as I woke up, I realised I had to throw up. I ran up the stairs and around the corner to the alley that runs beside the sidings. I was just about to throw up when three large, aggressive skinheads approached me. I suggested this was a bad idea, but one grabbed me by lapels of my jacket. Bad mistake, a large torrent of vomit covered him from head to toe. Oddly, he seemed to shrink before my eyes. The other two backed off. Having emptied the contents of my stomach, I felt much better and strolled off home. I looked back, to see him picking bits of regurgitated kebab off his jacket. It seemed the logical end to the story.
Last year, I was playing with ideas and decided to slow the song down, with the rewritten words. I asked Tom to sing it, as it had no trumpet on. Tom loved the idea and has brought a whole new dimension. Fans at gigs have taken to holding up lights/lighters during the song. Although the lyrics are 90% changed and the arrangement is different, I still feel it is Pete's song. I am no longer in touch with him, but if he ever hears it I hope he likes it.
Electric Ballroom
I went to see The Fall at
Electric Ballroom
Only sixteen so we had to
bribe the doorman
Hit the cider, hit the
lager
Mate gave me something a
little bit harder
Started feeling dizzy so
ran to the bog
Sat in the traps went out
like a log
None of the staff heard me
snoring
Woke up in the dark at 4
in the morning
--Chorus 1
Down at The Electric
Ballroom Down at the Electric Ballroom
Full of panic where am
I ?
Am I alive did I die
At the Electric
Ballroom
--
Couldn’t see at thing
needed some light
Sparked up a match and got
a nasty fright
Horrible Ghoul staring at
me
Whats that monster who
could it be?
Saw an evil glare in his
Eye
Knew straight away wanted
me to die
Smacked him in the face oh
what pain
The mirror smashed
dissolved my vein
--
CH 1
--
Found an exit started an
alarm
Blood was running down my
arm
Had to walk as I’d missed
the bus
Ran right into a terrible
fuss
4 Skins grabbed me to give
me a slap
I tried to tell them to
cut that crap
You’ve made a mistake
leave me alone
Covered them in vomit and
strolled off home
--
--Chorus 2
Down at The Electric
Ballroom Down at the Electric Ballroom
On Saturday the 4th of July, The False Dots release our new album, We Don't live in America. The band will be perforing at Jesterfest in Fortune Green at Noon to celebrate. I am previewing the album here and looking at the tracks as we go through. Today we look at Track 2, Dave The Roadie. I wanted to write a tribute to all of the mates of ours who helped us and acted as roadies, etc over the years. Special shout out to Dermot Fanning. He was our first real roadie, by virtue of being the first mate to pass his driving test. Before that, it was my wonderful Dad and a few other band mates parents who'd ferry us around. Derm used to borrow a green camper van off our mate Emil Bryden. We'd get about ten of us in it, and set off on adventures far and wide. The skeleton of the song is based on him, although I've borrowed a few things from a couple of other mates of mine, who acted as roadies for other bands. Derm never set up a dog refuge after being nicked for drug smuggling, although another mate has, who was a well known roadie back in the day. He is now a man of the Lord. It is one of our good fun songs and always gets people dancing. The ending, "All your family are quite mad" is deffo not Derms. His Dad was a chief of police. It was actually inspired by another local roadie. Any visit to his house was fraught with jeopardy, as his Dad was a proper old school nutter, who'd by drunk by 10am, but would still drive his van around, often abusing old ladies at zebra crossings. His Dad was eventually jailed for drunk driving and the family moved to Scotland whilst he was inside, to get away.
Running a studio, I often get to know the crew better than the bands. They will sit around, drinking tea and chatting as the band rehearses. This is often where you find the juicy gossip. Dave The Roadie, we salute you. It is quite sad sometimes to see how unnappreciative some bands are of the people who make things happen. I can recall seeing one well known band in Stockholm. They had free beers courtesy of the promoters, but I got chatting to their roadie, as he had to buy his own! I was shocked, but he told me they were one of the nicer bands he'd worked with.
Here are the lyrics
Dave The Roadie
Dave can’t Dance and Dave
can’t sing, Dave can’t do anything, He can’t play drums and he
can’t play guitar, But our mate Dave he’s got a car He’s six foot four, looks
like a God, trouble is he’s a lazy sod He don’t buy a round, he’s
tight old git, but he’s got a sister and she’s quite fit. Dave don’t work, coz he
likes a toke, andhe gets his gear ,down
in Burnt Oak He’s got no style and he’s
got no taste, but it’s always Dave who saves the day If Dave weren’t here, we’d
have no band, Cos good old Dave drives us round He don’t drink and he
don’t chase girls, our mate Dave’s in his own little world Chorus Dave’s the
roadie he’s our mate, we all love him think he’s great He drives us
round in his uncles van and if you need a spliff, he’s the man Dave The Roadie,
we salute you, though half the time we want to shoot you We fancy your
sister but we’re scared of your Dad cos all your family are quite mad Middle 8
Breakdown Every band needs
a mate like Dave to get them from Ato B And sometimes some C and E's, We all salute you Dave disappeared for 20
years, nicked in Columbia for smuggling gear Stayed in Columbia and got
a wife, Started up a brand new life Set up a refuge rescuing
Dogs, Joined a church and discovered God Wrote to say he’s a
different man,but told us all he’sour number one fan! Chorus Dave’s the
roadie he’s our mate, we all love him think he’s great He drives us
round in his uncles van and if you need a spliff, he’s the man Dave The Roadie,
we salute you, though half the time we want to shoot you We fancy your
sister but we’re scared of your Dad, cos
all your family are quite mad Sharp Stop here La
La Laaa La La La Laa LasAll your family
are quite mad x 4 (La’s Staccato) Coda Dave, Dave he’s our mate,
we all love him think he’s great He rescues dogs with his
wife, I’m so happy he got a life Sharp Stop here
La La Laaa La La La Laa
LasAll your family are quite mad x 2
(La’s Staccato)
When my mate Boz Boorer got the gig as guitarist/musical director for Morrissey, I went to see them at Brixton Academy. I stayed for the aftershow party and then had a wander around with Boz. For The False Dots, the roadie was a mate. I couldn't believe how many people were involved, or quite how much gear the band had. The crew were all massively professional and the vehicles were not rusty old vans. How times change!
On Saturday the 4th of July, The False Dots release our new album, We Don't live in America. We will be playing live at the Jester Festival to launch the new album. The album has been 48 years in gestation featuring on track that was originally conceived in 1978, at a gig at the Electric Ballroom, performed by The Fall. It also features the first track ever played by the band, at our first rehearsal, which sounds amazingly fresh. Every day I will be previewing a track and telling the story behind it. We start with the title track - We Don't live in America.
This is a track that has taken on a life of its own in our set. I wrote it very much as a reaction to certain right wing commentators, politicians and people on X/Facebook, etc around the time Donald Trump first became President. I was not overly impressed by the fawning and the desire to become more like a distopian Trumpite version of Great Britain. As I often do, I listened to the breakfast news, looked at social media, then walked to work. On this particular day, I felt I had to write a song stating why I love living in London and why I would never live in America. It is a great place for a Holiday, but I could never live there happily. Here are the lyrics.
We don’t live in America
We don’t live in
Ameri---ca x 4
Verse 1 We don’t have a president with
big big cars We don’t have a
flag which has any stars (Tom) We don’t fry villains in
Electric chair! We’re not allowed guns and we don’t care (Rog and
Tom) Verse 2
We call all our mates
something rude We love a cup of tea to wash down
food We knock back beers with indecent
hurry And have three more with a Ruby
Murrey
Restaurant portions
aren’t that big But then again we're not greedy pigs Chips are something
we eat with fish Roast beef dinner is our national dish Chorus We don’t live in
Ameri---ca x 4
Verse 3 We drink warm beer, kick round
footballs We love the proms at
the Albert Hall (Tom) Liz was the boss, now we’ve got
a King He wears a crown and genuine Bling
(Both) We moan
at the bus stop in the rain And
dream of a holiday over in Spain If you want a ciggie it’s an oily rag! When
you see the Queen she don’t wear drag
Chorus We don’t live in
Ameri---ca x 4
I wanted it to be a joyous upbeat of what is best about the UK. I worked out a basic chord progression that seemed to work, then I was on a London International Ska Festival Cruise and the DJ played the song Pigbag. As we have a brilliant Trumpeter in Tom Hammond, I thought it would be a good way to start the set. We had been starting our set with a slow, dub reggae style number from our last album, called Wacky Races. To make life easy for soundmen, we always start with a song that starts on drums, brings in bass, then trumpet then guitar to help them get a level. I realised that we could use this.
At the first gig we played it, people were blown away. They also loved the sentiment. I realised that it was actually an absolutely fundamental pillar of what we are. Tony Gleed, who runs the music at the Dublin Castle told me we had to put it on the albums. We got a load of mates down to do some chants and then filmed it and it all just came together really easily. Once we recorded it, I realised that it had to become the title track for the album. Some things in music need a massive amount of work and are pretty average in the cold light of day. This number works really well and we spent almost no effort on any aspect of it.
As the Presidency of Trump has progressed, almost none of the commentators who inspired the song are still openly associating them with Trumpism. I think most Americans are embarrassed at how it has panned put. Here is the 8 second canvas we did for Spotify.
Of all the football rivalries in the UK, which is the most toxic? Most people would probably say "Rangers and Celtic. However they are known as "The Old Firm". Have you ever wondered why? Well The most popular origin points to a 1904 satirical cartoon published in The Scottish Referee sports newspaper. Drawn ahead of the Scottish Cup final between the two sides, it depicted a dishevelled man holding a sandwich board that read, "Patronise The Old Firm." The cartoon mocked the fact that the two clubs practically ran the sport in Scotland and profited heavily from it. When Rangers were relegated from the Scottish Premier League for cheating, it cost Celtic nearly as much money as it cost Rangers. Whilst the fans loath each other, the boards of the two clubs have always worked behind the scenes to assure their dominance.
What has this got to do with Kemi Badenoch and Andy Burnham? The answer is quite simple. Whilst the ordinary loyalists for Labour and the Tories hate each other, for decades, there has been a similar 'understanding' to squeeze out other parties. The UK, as a single entity is by nature a centre right block, with the emphasis on the centre. Much as those at the fringes of the left and right would love it if we were all secretly communists or fascists, the vast majoirty of us are not. We have an Island mentality, that explains Brexit, but we are not by nature racists or religiously intolerant. We embrace traditions such as a curry after the pub, a Pizza with football and a Chinese takeaway. Our music is a mish mash of cultural influences. Reggae is more the music of London than any English folk music will ever be.
Elections and changes of governments have historically happened when one side has lost the plot. But the top levels of Labour and the Tories do not hate each other as they know that whilst this comfy cartel runs, they will both get their turn sooner or later. I had a freind who was a civil servant working for Nato in Brussels. When Blair became PM, I asked what the Europeans thought of the change. He said "As far as they are concerned, Labour and Tory are the same and it is business as usual". I suspect that post Breixt that view may have changed, but the comfy cartel has worked very well for the bank balances of all involved.
But the collapse of the Boris Johnson regime and the abject failure of Sir Keir Starmer to turn a landslide into a platform to address the concerns of ordinary voters, has lead to the rise of Reform. The reason we have Andy Burnham turning up to pick up the keys of No 10 is because both Labour and Tories are terrified that the comfy cartel is coming to an end. Labour have correctly identified the need to get someone who connects and resonates with ordinary working class voters. Rightly or wrongly, Starmer was seen as a disconnnected posh boy. Being a top level barrister wins arguments in courts, but it does not win you friends in the working mens clubs, which were the bastion of the Labour heartlands. Somehow millionaire commodity broker, who was the son of City stockbroker has persuaded many that he is a man of the people. It is a trick that is easy to pull off when you are up against someone like Starmer, less so against Burnham.
The problem for Reform is that they've never managed to get a poll rating of anything above about a third of voters, apart from a couple of dodgy polls. This has declined to around 27%, even whilst Starmer was secure in No 10. What has intrigued me most has been the behaviour of Kemi Badenoch. She has said all of the things you'd expect a Tory Leader to say, but with almost zero enthusiasm. In fact, her response has been rather more nuanced than I expected.
The argument sounded clever: Conservatives have never won in Makerfield. Do a deal with Reform. Stand down and they’ll do the same in Aberdeen “Unite the Right”.
I decided it was more important to Unite the Country. That’s why we won in Aberdeen.
Badenoch knows two things. The first is that she is safe for the moment as leader, the Tories are not stupid enough to know that it would look terrible to replace her now. The second is that she knows much of Reforms support in Red Wall areas is Labour not Tory. a drift back to a Burnham Labour party will push Reform's ratings down and make the Tories look more like the credible opposition. She does not want to be the Tory Leader who destroyed the party. She has twigged that Reform has done her a favour. They have hoovered up the worst basket case councillors and bonkers marginal figures, as well as Robert Jenryck, her most potent enemy. She has a party purged of the lunatic fringe, which can start to develop a positive way forward. Reform has repeatedly come out with uncosted and unworkable policies, that sound attractive after nine pints at the pub, but simply won't work.
So long as the Tories and Badenoch hold their nerve, I can see a very realistic scenario where she could find her way to No 10. If Burnham manages to persuade the Red Wall that Labour are credible again and get their polling figures back up to the mid 30's, this would knock Reform below the Tories. Those on the soft and hard right would have to consider the Tories as the best way to keep Burnham out. Badenoch will hold all of the cards. At the last election, the Tories were squeezed by both the Lib Dems and Reform. I doubt they will get too many back from The Lib Dems, but if Badenoch can sell herself as the only credible right wing party, there is plenty of scope to win back seats.If the Greens decide togo after the Lib Dem vote, then she could find herself in an unexpectedly strong position.
Just about every political commentator has decided that Reform are now well past their high tide mark in the polls. Farage has shown that he is an ineffective leader, when it comes to turning polling figures into election wins. The Party has shown it cannot pick credible candidates. Following the council elections, all manner of dodgy candidates that were not properly screened have now done the walk of shame away from the council. Many people who elected Reform Councils are seeing taxes go up, rather than down as promised.
If I was advising Badenoch, I would be saying to appear sane, reasonable and rational at all times. He biggest weakness has been to go off the end of the pier with excitement at the drop of a hat. She would be well placed to wait for Burnham to start moving his agenda, then calmly lay out why the Tory response is rational and contrast it with the Reform position. Farage takes a scattergun approach to policy and I have always beleived this is his downfall. The Tories were on the receiving end of a good hammering at the last election. Badenoch simply needs to get a respectable result to leave a positive legacy. I don't seriously think she'll ever be Prime Minister, but I thought the same about Starmer before Boris imploded. I think Burnham will get Labour on track. The Keir knockers are not changing their play book, which plays into his hands. Given all the defections to Reform, without by-elections, Farage looks like a hypocrite demanding a general election. He has been shifty and evasive about the £5 million gift he received, claiming it was simply because he's a marvellous chap, rather than for political benefit. When all of your opponents seem to be hell bent on self destruction, keeping calms is always a good strategy.
Of course it is far too early to say, but it may well be that Badenoch is one of those politicians born lucky. When Boris Johnson won a Landslide and Corbyn was leader of Labour, everyone thought the Tories were in for a decade. In this febrile Social media age, I suspect that being PM for three years may well come to be seen as an achievement.
What makes us human? We are living in the age of the rise of AI and there is much talk about AI achieving sentience. There are AI chatbots that appear to be human to those interacting with them. We already have the technology to make robots that have the physical appearance of a human being, can be programmed to act like a human and do many of the tasks that human beings do. Who knows, such andriods may already walk amongst us. If such a robot looks human, behaves like a human, talks like a human and no one can spot it's a robot, is it a human? Is it a sentient being. I used to work for a company called SPL International, a software company. They had a subsidiary called "British Robotics". It sounded very exciting, but the systems they manufactured were automation products for manufacturers such as British Leyland cars. The year was 1983 and we were living through the rise of Thatcherism. My boss told me that there was a bright future for British industry, as we were world leaders in industrial automation. This was the future. We'd have huge factories, where the only staff would be the security guard on the front gate and a few staff to service the robots and make sure they were oiled.
I said "What will all the workers do?". He said "Every time there has been a technological revolution, the same question has been asked, people always find something to do". He explained that in 1800, the UK had an extensive network of Stage Coach routes.. There was a huge economy built around them, estimates of over 100,000 horses being used to run routes between cities, ports, etc. As railways started replacing the stagecoach routes, the stagecoach operators started campaigning against them, saying it would destroy the UK's economy, if all of those horses were made redundant. Instead we got the industrial revolution and the UK became the worlds wealthiest country.
Sadly, he was wrong. Margaret Thatcher decided that the UK should not be making anything and rather than being automated, our factories shut down. The people that used to work making things largely moved to working in call centres, answering phones. Now we have AI to do that, we all know what a joy it is chatting to chatbots. Invariably, they waste ten minutes of your time and then you get put onto someone in a call centre, usually offshore, where you get another hour of your time wasted. Eventually, if you are lucky, you get through to someone who can actually sort the problem out. Usually they are up in Scotland or somewhere. My business had some major issues with BT a couple of years ago, we ended up with our own "Incident manager". A real human being, who ensured we didn't have to go through hours of hell talking to AI chatbots and offshore people who have a script that doesn't cover your problems.
The problem with AI is that it is superb at fixing problems that it has encountered before. However if it is a new problem, that isn't in its knowledge bank, it has no answer at all. But it is the future, so it seems. Which brings us to the question, what will we all be doing ,when AI is doing all of the clever stuff and robots are doing all of the menial stuff? I think the demise of the stagecoach network might give some clue. Before the steam engine was invented and the railway network mushroomed, no one really had a clue that it would usher in the industrial revolution. By 1885, Britian was different place to what it was in 1775. The steam engine facilitated all manner of industrial innovation, that would have been unimaginable a hundred years before. So the answer is that if AI really is going to be a revolution in the way that the steam engine launched the industrial revolution, we are simply not in a position to predict.
To give you an example, in the 1960's Gene Roddenberry created a futuristic world. The crew had communicators, there were automatic doors that went swish when they opened. The brigde of the USS Enterprise had all manner of knobs and buttons. It was a great stab at predicting the future. But it had not anticipated the fact that we'd be using touch screens. When the Internet was first devised, it was anticipated that its main use would be for sharing scientific papers and trade information. A relative of mine was working for Microsoft, when the general public first started getting into the online world. He suggested that they set up a system to monitor what people were using Microsoft's search engine to look up. To his and most other people's surprise, the most popular search term was "Fisting". It was the first clue that people were far more likely to share porn than scientific papers on the net. I was chatting to an expert in robotics and he said that he anticipates the two big markets for humanoid robots to be the military and the sex industry. He added that the conflict in Ukraine is actually redefining what military conflicts of the near future will be like. In effect, there are huge zones patrolled by unmanned zones, that it is unsafe for a human to enter. Hollywood predicted androids like the Terminator, but there is no real need to make a military robot humanoid in form. It is cheaper and more effective to build things that are suited to a single purpose. Which I suppose means that it will be the sex industry that will drive the development of humanoid style robots. What worries me is that if people start to prefer sex with sexbots to other humans, then that might end up finishing off the human race. It would be quite ironic if the robots that did for the human race were not ones like the Terminator, but ones built to facilitate the realisation of every fantasy we could have.
This week, I went to see Octogenarian American Jazz Pianist & Singer Ben Sidran at Ronnie Scotts. The show included a set of his rather thought provoking songs and some amazing improvisation. While we have musicians of such quality, who produce such wonderful music, but also provoke us with challenging lyrics, I think humanity will be alright. In just under two weeks, The False Dots release our new album "We don't live in America". It is the product of a team of musicians and an excellent producer working as a team. I hope you listen to it and enjoy it, but also I hope that it persuades you that humans can still do stuff that is pretty interesting. There is hope!
As I stated, predicting the future is almost impossible, but there are lessons and pointers. Perhaps the biggest is that there is no point trying to stand in the way of technology. The second is that the future rarely ends up looking like we think it will. The third, is perhaps the most disturbing. All empires come to an end and usually they collapse from the middle, when the people running them get too lazy and debauched to do the hard work of running them. The achillies heal of technology is that it needs huge amounts of electricity to run. AI is gobbling up ever more huge amounts of electricity. In some ways it is like a virus attacking a body, it multiplies continually, taking over cells. Eventually there are none left to take over and the host and the virus dies. I do wonder what happens when AI needs more energy than the world can produce? Will we all go back to pens and papers? The trouble with distopian tales of the future and conspiracy theories, where all of the ordinary people get eliminated, is that it misses one simple fact. If you can't get a bloke to unblock your drain, your house will become uninhabitable. I suspect that if you want a future proof job, then being a plumber is not a bad option. Until people no longer need a toilet that works, you will have a well paid job.
I have no idea whether this list is absolutely hilarious, utterly depressing, sick, disturbing or all of these things. I have agonised over whether to share this more or less since I started doing this blog. I have mentioned most of this, often obliquely at some point. I went to three schools during my childhood. St Vincents Roman Catholic Primary School, Finchley Catholic High School and Orange Hill Senior High School. Sadly, not every thing I was told by teachers has, shall we say, stood the test of time. I thought I'd list the biggest whoppers that I was told.
1. The British Empire was a benevolent organisation that did no harm, except in Ireland. This whopper was told to us by Mr Nick Kelly, AKA Ned, Headmaster of FCHS. Whilst he was trying to emphasise why Irish independence was a wonderful thing (something I doubt too many people at the school would have disputed), it was totally dishonest in relation to the behaviour of the British in various places. About 20 years I bought the Rise and Fall of The British Empire by Lawrence James, to read on the plane when we went on holiday. I realised that Kelly's analysis was very wide of the mark.
2. Homosexuality is a form of depravity caused by mental illness. Again this was Ned at his finest. He informed us that if ever we had lustful feelings towards other men, it was a sign that something was wrong with our brains. He suggested that we should resist such feelings. I have to confess that I've never really had "lustful feelings towards other men" but I now have plenty of friends who have, and I think any mental illness they may have experienced had more to do with denying their orientation. I discussed this once with an Anglican Vicar, who informed me that God makes some people Gay and if you believe in God you don't believe he makes mistakes. Although I've never been attracted to males, I had a deep fear as a teenager that I may develop a mental illness, start fancying men and end up in Hell. It sounds ridiculous, but it is true. At 13 I was diagnosed with severe anxiety and was put on Valium. The paediatrician informed me that it was a form of mental illness and I was absolutely terrified as to what it may do to my soul.
3. Only Roman Catholics can go to heaven. This was told to us by Danny Coughlan, Head of The Lower School at FCHS. Danny would teach RE to us. His view of RE was, shall we say, rather odd. His teaching method was even stranger. He would simply dictate something, we would write it down word for word and they he'd mark it, to see how accurately we'd transcribed his rantings. Now you may say "Well who knows who is let into heaven, you cannot prove that people of other faiths are allowed in". That is a good point, however he was supposed to be teaching Roman Catholic dogma and The Vatican II council under Pope John stated categorically that it wasn't Catholic teaching to say all other faiths are excluded and that the mercy of God is unbounded.
4. People from Africa are ignorant and uneducated. I vividly recall one of the Nuns telling us at St Vincents that Africans are uneducated and ignorant, which is why we need to raise money so that missionaries can be sent to Africa to set up schools. No mention was made of things such as the Egyptian civilisation, the Aksum Civilisation (Ethiopia and Eritrea) and The Kush (who built more pyramids than the Egyptians). Mathematics etc originated in Africa. Sadly, it is true that imperial powers did little to educate people under their rule. This was a deliberate policy, as an educated population is not one that takes kindly to imperialism. But we were not taught that.
5. The Beatles and The Rolling Stones are not music. This was another of Danny Coughlans rants. He stated that the form and structure of modern pop music could not possibly be considered musical. He said that it was a form of hypnotic brainwashing, to make us have loose morals and be more inclined to worship the Devil. He cited The Rolling Stones song Sympathy for the Devil as evidence. I suspect that was the moment I realised he was a fool.
6. You will not be happy if you marry a Jewish woman. This was another of Ned's specials. He explained that if we wanted to be happy, we should find a nice girl from a good Catholic home. He stated that if we married someone from any other religion, we'd be unhappy and it would all end in tears, but he gave special attention to Jewish females, listing all of the their supposed faults. I guess that as I've not had a Jewish wife, I can't specifically say he was wrong, but my mate Richard is a good Irish Catholic lad with a lovely Jewish wife and he seems pretty happy. Ned was pretty anti semitic generally. I am delighted that such stupidity is no longer acceptable.
7. All of the stories in the Bible are 100% true. Now I am a Roman Catholic, so I guess that I should accept this, however there is evidence to show otherwise. My personal view is that much of the early books of the bible are simply man's attempts to make sense of the world. To me, it is interesting that it predicts the big bang, millennia before it was scientific orthodoxy. "Let there be light" Bang. However, I don't buy that the world was fully formed seven days later, and I don't really think it matters. I don't believe that people (like me) who eat prawns should be put to death and I don't think that too many people believe that the first human alive was 6,000 years ago. I have always taken Adam to be the first human to become aware of the presence of God, but unlike my teachers, I accept that is a view, not a fact.
8. No good Catholic would ever use contraception. This was another of Ned's blatherings. Of course, he was simply reflecting the teachings of the Catholic church, but it is clearly wrong. If you go to any Catholic Church post the advent of the Pill, no families have 10 kids any more. What enraged me was the fact that Ned was judging people. I nearly got expelled for arguing with him about it in an RE lesson.
9. If schools could not use the cane, there would be total mayhem and society would break down. My children all went to school in the post corporal punishment era and clearly there was order. There is also less violence in society.
10. Your teachers are your elders and betters. Danny Coughlan was keen to tell us this. I will accept that they were older than us, but the mere fact that they told us a bunch of porkies has meant that I cannot accept that they were our betters. As I went through FCHS, I became increasingly more irritated with all of this nonsense and would regularly argue with Ned, which lead to my eventual departure. When I went to Orange Hill Senior High School I was astounded to find that we were not subjected to all of this old cobblers. If I tried to argue with a teacher, they would retort with a reasoned argument. No one ever said "I am right because I am right", something that was said to me regularly. I was even asked to do a lunchtime talk on the evolution of Punk Rock from Jazz music. That was the point when the true scale of the brainwashing became apparent. It was also evident that it had failed. I've often wondered if anyone actually was fooled.
Anyway, it made me what I am today. I suppose it is why I write a blog. I hate misinformation. Here's a tune that seems appropriate. I wrote this song at the time of The Falklands War. It is about awakening to the fact that you've been lied to by those who are supposed to be taking care of your interests.
Are you enjoying the hot weather? I certainly am, or I would be if I didn't have to work!
Matt is one of my favourite cartoonists and he is dead on the button today. As is the tradition in Barnet blogs (should that be singular as the rest seemed to have stopped blogging about Barnet), I thought this would be a superb Friday funny. It ticks a few boxes!
And on to the local music round up. First the news you've all been waiting for! The False Dots next gig will be a free gig at The Jester Festival at Fortune Green on Saturday 4th July. The band will be premiering their brand new album "We don't live in America" which is released that day, to celebrate independence day. There are some other fine bands on the - CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL SCHEDULE
This week we have an exciting array of gigs on locally. Here is the local gig guide courtesy of Mill Hill Music Complex Studios.
Now normally, I don't do anything about news or politics on a Friday, but hey ho, rules are meant to be broken. There are a few things that have gone on in the last few days that warrant a word or two. Firstly the success of Andy Burnham in the Makerfield By Election. Burnham has been the Mayor of Manchester since 2017, winning three Mayoral Elections. It is no secret that he wants Sir Keir Starmers job. Unlike Starmer, Burnham comes into the job with a degree of experience of holding executive responsibility. Although Boris Johnson demonstrated that this doesn't necessarily mean he'll do a good job, he has had to make tough calls.
Andy Burnham is one Labour politician I quite like. He has been steadfast in his support for the Hillsborough victims for decades. Unlike Nigel Farage, who dons an England shirt as a fashion accessory, Burnham is a proper football fan. HE understands, unlike Farage, that supporting a football team is not just about wearing a shirt, drinking a beer for the cameras and cheering when they score. Burnham strikes me as a bloke I could have a beer and a chat with in the pub. There are very few Labour politicians I feel that about. More than that though, he has demonstrated that he can build alliances across party lines, working effectively with former Tory Mayor of Birmingham, Andy Street. He seems to understand that Labour has become too discinnected from its core supporters. He has also shown that he is prepared to take risks. RUnning in Makerfield, where Reform have polled well was a big risk. He got more votes than the rest put together. Does this mean I will be re-applying to join Labour? No. I feel that it has become the party of incompetent stuffed shirts. Burnham will have to do a hell of a lot to convince me that Labour is a party I could align with again.
And then we have Donald Trump and his deal in Iran. The monumental incompetence of Donald Trump has made the world a very dangerous place. Iran has shown that the USA does not have the military power or political will to defeat it. Trump has let Iran seize the world economy by the gonads, closing The Straits of Hormuz and made Trump sign up to a deal that he would have derided as treason had another leader signed it. The money will flow into Iran now. Trump has made it all about Iran's nuclear programme. The Iranians have shown they have a far more effective weapon in cutting off the worlds oil supply. Trump has given everyone a lesson in the limits of US power. He has alienated allies, empowered enemies and enriched his inner circle. For me his one redeeming feature during his first term was that he didn't start any wars. Even this fig leaf has gone. Not only did he start a war, he lost.
Which brings us onto the situation in Israel. Trumps capitulation and his falling out with the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is perhaps the most significant aspect of the failure of Trumps middle east policy. I have no idea whether Netanyahu has a strategy to move forward and save his political skin from the debacle but he now faces a situation where he is facing an Iran that will have the financial clout to be very difficult towards Israel. Iran have demonstrated that you can bomb them, kill their leaders, assasinate their local proxies, but the threat remains and it will be more, not less of a threatgoing forward. Israel's biggest worry was Iran getting a nuclear bomb. I've always believed that this was a smokescreen for the Iranians to distract Israel from what their real agenda and threat was.
Iran has shown itself to be resilient as well as tacitically and politically astute. They have also managed to somehow come out on top against a superpower. This is not unprecendented, but unlike Vietnam, there are implications beyond the immediate region. I was talking to a local member of the Mill Hill Shul earlier, who is as hard line a Zionist as you can find. When Israel and the USA attacked Iran, he was telling me that Trump going to go down as the greatest US president of all. He believed Trump had the balls that Obama, Clinton, Bush, etc lacked. The terrible truth is starting to dawn. Trump is not a genius and when you get into bed with him, you are only their for one reason and that is not particularly pleasant.
Anyway, finally, it's the weekend, so I didn't want to end on a sour note. Here's a suitable tune by The False Dots for a Sunny weekend in June!
When you've been in the False Dots for 47 years, you've met a few characters along the way. People discover the band, become fans and then disappear. As we are a grassroots band, it has always been part of our manifesto to love and value our fans. We always try and chat to them before and after gigs and make them feel part of the False Dots family. Our gigs have always been as much about people meeting up with friends and having a good time together as it has been about wtching a band play a few numbers. Over the last few years, when our profile has been higher than ever a few people who saw us in the very early days have turned up at gigs, mostly out of curiosity. I think most have been shocked, both at how much and how little we've changed. Ithink most expect some sort of bunch of geriatrics playing turgid blues rather badly. Not that we ever did that, but many of our contempories have moved into doing covers and being a bit staid. I don't think that can be levelled at us. That the feedback we've had though.
Perhaps even more interesting is when occasionally I meet someone from the very early days, who I'd completely forgotten about. Most are doing good things now. Occasionally, I will learn that a mutual friend from those days has passed away. Once in a while, there is a story that is so strange and bizarre that it leaves me speechless. The story of Saucy Sally from SW3 is one such person. One of the first False Dots gigs, I didn't recall it as it wasn't deemed 'an official gig', was at a mate called Sean's party at his squat Elgin Avenue in Maida Vale. The property is now a multi million pound house. At the time, Elgin Avenue was full of such buildings that were derelict squats. Sean worked at the Tyre shop at Fiveways Corner, with our bassplayer Paul Hircombe's brother. Paul was doing some work there and got friendly with Sean. Sean was havinga birthday party at his squat in Maida Vale and invited us to play. We were delighted to.
Sean invited the residents of many of the local squats, a fascinating bunch. The Dots did our set. We were nothing like the band we are now, far more punky and still really finding our feet. But we had written our first classic song, Not all She seems. A cautionary tale about exploitation of sex workers. Hank Marvin donated the guitar lick to us, when his son Paul was in the band. After we had played the set, a very attractive young lady, who I thought was about 21 started talking to me. She was clearly ons omething stronger than tea. She had listened intently to the band and asked about Not all she seems. I was quite shocked when she said "I really get that, you have no idea what pigs powerful men are". We had a pleasant chat and I was quite keen on her. She went off to do something and one of the other squatters said "watch her, she's trouble, don't get involved". I was about 17 at the time. When we played at the Moonlight club a year or so later, she turned up. She looked terrible. She was with a rather dodgy bloke, but said she desperately wanted to see us again. We had a chat after we played, she wanted to come back to our after show party, but the bloke wanted something else. I never saw her again.
Well not until 2014. I used to voulunteer at a homeless daycentre. One day, a new volunteer turned up. She seemed nice enough. Rather posh and well spoken. She had been doing some volunteering at Centrepoint. We started chatting and I mentioned I was in a band. She was really interested and asked the name. When I told her, she seemed completely startled. She asked how long we'd been going. When I told her, she asked if we'd ever played at a squat in Maida Vale. I said yes, and mentioned our friend Sean. To my amazement, she then revealed that she had seen us there and remembere me. Not only that, she remembered the song "Not all she seems". She then said about seeing us at the Moonlight Club. I twigged who she was. She told me she'd been going through a bad time. The bloke was in effect a pimp and also a bit of a dealer and a nasty piece of work. Someone we knew owed him some money.
I said "You were looking ill then, what happened?". She had spent several years strung out on drugs, in and out of rehab, paid for by her parents. The last time, she OD'd and nearly died. She then said "I had a near death experience. Jesus came to me and said he'd give me another chance, but I had to stop taking drugs and right all of the wrongs I'd done". She said she immediately gave up drugs. Oddly, she said that she had no real cold turkey, something that she'd had before when she'd tried to clean up. She cut all ties with her old associates and moved away. She then asked if I knew any of the old squatter tribe. I said that when Paul Hircombe died, I lost touch with Sean. What really shocked me was that she was my age. I had assumed she was a good few years older. She said that the drugs had taken a real toll on her, but clean living and yoga had got her back on track. She then asked if we still performed Not all she seems. I told her that it wasn't in the set at that time, but we may bring it back sometime.
What she told me next broke my heart. She said that she was not going to volunteer at Centre anymore. She said that she had to keep well away from all of her old contacts. I was really sad. I said "I don't see them", but she said "I have to stay away from that world completely". She told me that she no longer dated men, she had a real trust issue and lived with another woman. I was quite upset in truth. I was delighted that she was where she wanted to be, but felt she was associating me with a world that I was only on the very margins of. She said "You really should bring "Not all she seems back", you know sometimes when people are at the gates of hell, music can be a liferaft". True to her word, she never came back as a helper.
When Allen Ashley left the band in 2020, we brought Not all she seems back and recorded it on our last album. Recently, I was thinking about it. What happened to the person in the song? I have always assumed tragedy (in real life that was the case), but what if things had turned out different and they'd got their shit together? I used the conversation as the model. There is some artistic license in there but as happens in many False Dots songs, various people and various stories get aggregated. So I wrote Saucy Sally From SW3. The band rehearsed it last week for the first time and I did an unplugged version on the recent Tales of The Dublin Castle podcast. So in case you are wondering. she not called Sally, she's not Saucy anymore and she ain't from SW3, but the rest of it is all pretty accurate. I have no idea whether she'll ever read this or hear the song. If she ever gets in touch, I'll give her a credit. I hope she'd like it. You've got to respect people though and if she lives in a different world now and is happy, that is good enugh for me.
