Two musical icons passed away this week. The first, Sly Stone, was the man who taught me to groove. Some time around 1980, Paul Hircombe, then bassplayer in the False Dots suggested we all go down to the Scala to watch a late night screening of the documentary film Woodstock. As with many things related to Paul, this was as much to smoke spliffs in peace as it was to watch the film. Paul was still living at home, he was only fifteen or sixteen, but he was already rather partial to smoke. A group of half a dozen went down. The film? It's about three hours long and in parts incredibly boring, punctuated with some moments of sheer brilliance. Santana, Richie Havens, Country Joe & The Fish, Crosby Stills Nash & Young are worth paying the admission fee for. However the real outstanding moment was Sly & The Family Stone performing Higher. In amongst all of the hippy nonsense, you have the worlds greatest ever funksters doing their stuff. I cannot emphasise enough how good that moment was. I was totally blown away. I am not sure it had the same effect on my mates, but for me it altered how I wanted the band to shape. Sly Stone was a force of nature and the more I listened, the more I liked. That, along with the Specials and Prehistoric Sounds by The Saints, made me want to have brass in the band. The False Dots new single Groovetown is my homage to Sly Stone. I wanted to write a song that Sly and The Family Stone might feel comfortable playing. Tom Hammond on trumpet has made such things realiseable. Have a listen.
The other great loss was Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys. I have seen the Beach Boys a couple of times and have a few albums. Whatever you think of the band, there can be no doubting that Wilson was a genius. I read an interview, where he said that when he heard Rubber Soul by The Beatles, he locked himself in a studio and didn't come out until he'd topped it. The result was Pet Sounds. I find it reassuring that even a genius on the level of Wilson could still be inspired by another band to that extent. The Beach Boys are not really my thing musically, but when we saw them, it brought home how good the songs are.I was mulling over these two sad passings, and it got me thinking about all of the artsist who inspired me to try and make better music. It is a journey. Where to start? That is easy. June 6th 1977 at The Roundhouse. The Ramones take to the stage and I will never be the same again. I'd not really 'got' music until I saw The Ramones. They were the best live band on the planet. But nothing they did was intricate of difficult. It was just raw power, but they were funny and sharp as well. They played for 32 minutes as I recall and in that short set, I decided that I wanted to form a band. It took two years to come to fruition.
The next band to have a big impact was The Fall, who I first saw at The Marquee club, which was on September 8th 1978. Mark E. Smith's persona was like nothing I'd ever seen before. He had total belief and confidence in his own performance. Nothing about The Fall should have worked, but they were magnificent. Their debut album Live at The Witch Trials confirmed their genius. Their playing was basic and ramshackle. Smith would insult the audience, insult the band, go off on one. You couldn't keep your eyes off him. To me, he was what a rock and roll singer should be.
Shortly after, I was having a cup of tea in a cafe in Camden and Ian Dury walked in. As I recall he ordered a cup of tea and a piece of toast and lighting up a cigarette. I decided that as we were getting a band together, there could be no finer mentor than a certain Mr I Dury, so I approached him. I asked if he could help our band out. He asked if we had any demos. I said no. He then asked if we'd done any gigs, I said no. He then asked if we had any instruments. To my eternal humiliation, I replied I was borrowing my sisters guitar. He rolled his eyes and said how can I help you then? I felt like an idiot. Shoulders sloping, I started to walk off, to be greeted by the humiliation of my mates. Then he said "Come here son". He had clearly decided to take pity on me. He said "Look, get yourself your own guitar, get yourself some gigs, make some demos and then I'll see what I can do". He added "Always give it big son, never be scared to shout about your music and you'll be fine". My mates derision stopped. Ian Dury would be our mentor, when we got our act together. Sadly, that was the one time I met him! It did however inspire me and I wrote a song about it!
In February 1979, the False Dots had our first rehearsal. On the 8th April, all our plans got messed up! I saw The Specials supporting the Damned and The UK Subs. Up until then, it was all about Punk. The Specials blew all of that away. They were mesmirising. Pete Conway, who I formed the band with, was mates with Charlie Harper of The Subs, but for me that gig was the day I discovered Ska music. I'd been aware of the sounds from the football terraces and a few bands on TOTP and at Church discos, but the genre was looked down on by most of the muso types I knew. The Specials opened Pandora's box. I actually think Two Tone was socially more important than punk (excepting the fact that it owed its birth to punk). It stood on the side of right. Rock Against Racism, do it yourself and amazing music. From that second, I wanted a Ska Band, but we could barely play punk, so first things first.
As the band improved, and my tastes evolved, I got a clearer idea of what sort of band I wanted The False Dots to be. This was derailed by the reality of working with other musicians, most of whom were far better players than I was. I've always believed that in a band, all parties should contribute and have a stake. It is creatively better when this happens, but also means I never really realised my own dream of what the False Dots could be until the grand old age of 60 years old in 2022. The departure of Allen Ashley and my decision to sing the songs After a 41 year break from such things, meant I could finally deliver my material as I wanted. The band operated as a three piece for a year, then Tom joined and it all fell it into place.
I'd spent two years writing songs, mostly in a Ska/Punk style. Some I was able to bolt on a Trumpet arrangement, some already had brass arrangements worked out by Boz Boorer, when we recorded at his studios. However I realised that for us to really benefit from Tom's talents, we should integrate him into the writing process. We've done this and the new material, draws from all of the stages of the bands development. An added bonus is that Tom is now singing some of the songs, ones which didn't suit me.
I still find inspiration. When I was watching the Opera Arias at the Mill Hill Music Festival, it got me wondering about an operatic arrangement of The False Dots track "We all love a party". That's what good musicians do to you. I am sure that Ian Dury forgot our conversation in Camden three seconds after we had it. I doubt that he ever had a clue that he'd given me the faith to push on with the band, when things weren't working. When Sly Stone sang Higher at Woodstock, did he ever imagine that nearly sixty years later, it would be inspiring s Ska/Punk band in North West London to try their luck at writing a song in that style? Mind you, when I started to write the Barnet Eye blog in 2008, it never occurred to me that I'd inspire a bunch of other people to blog and become the famous five Barnet Bloggers. Who knows where the seeds we sow will travel. I believe that every song any artists writes, performs and records is a gift to the Universe and thos reverberations travel further than we couldn possibly imagine. Let me finish with an example of how this works, one that I only found out about last week!
Back in 1982, my beloved eldest sister Valerie had a terrible cycling accident. We were told that she had brain damage and her chances of survival were almost zero. My Mum and Dad took the first plane to Scotland where she was in hospital. We were all in a state of shock. I convinced myself that she'd died and I wrote a song for her, called A memory for you. We had a female singer at the time, who quite liked it. After about three months, Val was out of the woods. I hated the song. I was embarrassed that the world saw a side of me I tried to hide, a weak, vulnerable side. But we recorded it and it found its way onto an album called Directions on 101 records. By the time the record was released, that iteration of the band had split!
I rarely even thought about the song after the singer left, never played it again. But.... I was astonished to learn that it appeared on a compilation CD of tracks by female fronted bands put together WFMU radio, released in 2024! So someone, somewhere must have been moved by it. So there you go. The wind carries seeds far and wide to places you may never know! If nothing else came out of it, surely the fact that an obscure track recorded in 1982 is still making someone, somewhere happy is a thing of great wonder! I still don't particularly like the track, that incarnation of the False Dots was not a happy one but here it is anyway.
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