When I grew up in the 60s youth culture was hard to find. Now that it is everywhere it seems strange to remember what hard work it was to find it. But that certainly did make it seem more personal and a real adventure of discovery, these things were well hidden. There was no record player in my house so, for example to hear the Beatles, the only chance was random moments sifted out of the humdrum BBC boredom. Funnily enough request shows like Family Favourites aka Forces Favourites on the BBC Light programme would play the Beatles occasionally, as did the chart show Pick of the Pops and Saturday Club. But these shows were on just once a week. There was no pop music radio station until the Pirates came along in about 1965. So it was with great excitement that I found Radio Caroline North on 257m Medium Wave, however that didn’t last long, since they were closed down by the Marine & Broadcasting (Offences) Act 1967. Radio 1 then arrived to replace the Pirates, using many of the same DJ’s, but I refused to listen for some time since I was so annoyed by the closure of Radio Caroline. It had felt like a radio station just for me and, despite the ads, was dedicated to the music . Eventually I purloined an old valve radio from my grandparents. It was large and heavy, mains powered and took several minutes to warm up. Yet it was in a cool bakelite case and had a 5 inch speaker, as shown above. On this ancient radio I discovered Radio Luxembourg on 208m, in particularly David “Kid” Jenson and his progressive music show, usually broadcast every weekday at midnight from October 1970. Here I heard The Band, Lou Reed and Neil Young for the first time and made many musical discoveries. There was a lot of staying up late, but the big radio sat right by my bed, glowing in the dark. The only comparable programme on Radio 1 was Top Gear with John Peel, broadcast just on a Saturday.
Despite not having a record player or radio for many years I did come into possession of an early Grundig dictaphone. It had been given to my father as a business gift, but since he didn’t use it I eagerly adopted it. This was a tiny (c.125cm) Mini Cassette Voice Recording Dictaphone, similar to the one illustrated. This amazing machine was really an early cassette player, too small and tinny for music, but great for the radio. I had just one tiny cassette for it (I did not realise you could buy any more!) which lasted for 30 minutes. Still I put it to good use, recording the classic BBC Radio 2 comedy I’m Sorry, I’ll Read That Again, so my cassette was exactly the right length. Having recorded the show I would listen chortling under the bedclothes at night. And of course I could replay any great joke I had either misunderstood or greatly appreciated. I wiped and then recorded the next show until the poor little tape wore out, while receiving an education in outlandish humour still with me today. The line-up of the show was John Cleese, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden, Jo Kendall, David Hatch with script input from Graham Chapman and Eric Idle, so as you can see it contained the roots of Monty Python, all of the Goodies and was responsible for the still running I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue on Radio 4.
Monty Python’s Flying Circus would go onto becoming the defining comedy show of my youth. An early introduction to this zany type of humour had been Do Not Adjust Your Set featuring the magnificent Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, on ITV 1968-9, ostensibly a children’s programme. From this show Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin went on to join Python along with John Cleese and Graham Chapman, which started on the BBC in October 1969. At school we loved them so much we invented a fake religious assembly involving lining up, flipping the radio socket and shouting “Dinsdale” as gruffly as we could. This was performed just before the actual school assembly to put us all in a stupid mood. Dinsdale was one of the gangland Piranha brothers and a very naughty boy, haunted by an 800 yard long hedgehog called Spiny Norman. I also had the privilege of seeing Monty Python’s 1st Farewell Tour at Liverpool Royal Court Theatre in 1973 (although we knew all the jokes) and to appear as an extra in Monty Python and the Holy Grail in 1975. Only last year I sang Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree in a choir for Michael Palin, the comedy never ends…
On Sunday 27 October I saw the Otomo Yoshihide Special Big Band at Cafe Oto. This 17 piece ensemble from Japan played the gamut of modern big band music, starting off with the stomping rhythm of Stone Stone Stone (I believe). One of the glories of this orchestra is that it functions as separate bands within the band, the sectional conductors calling out changes for their own ensembles. This makes for great excitement and dynamism, a feeling that each moment, each break is special. During the evening they covered nearly every known genre from French Romanticism to Northern Soul, I heard the systems music of Steve Reich for a few bars, and plenty of Sun Ra, spinning off into atonal galaxies. You never knew what was coming next, yet it was all held together, with the great joy and happiness evident within this big band.
It took me some time to appreciate big bands, they seemed too amorphous and maybe old fashioned, belonging to a previous generation. I was brought up on The Beatles, you could hear what everyone was doing, and hear exactly how they all worked in unison and why every component was vital. They had the power of amplification on their side to make even four people sound like an orchestra. However before electrification and the public address system took over, all bands had to be large, simply to make enough noise to fill the hall. So back in the 30s big bands ruled the roost and they played acoustically. That now seems admirable to me, I want to hear the musician, not the processing. So what is a big band? Basically it should contain at least 10 performers and a brass section, that is the limit of my definition. It is a very open category, the keynote being dynamic excitement.
Probably the first big band sound I loved would be the fabulous arrangements by Nelson Riddle for Frank Sinatra, without even thinking they were a big band. I got into a great deal of trouble at Sounds (a rock music weekly) for making Songs for Swinging’ Lovers (1956) the No. 3 in my Top 10 albums of all time, which meant it would have appeared in their Top 100 – I had to remove it! While that album may have been too jolly for Sounds, I wonder if my first truly memorable gig by a live big band, Sun Ra at The Venue in 1983, would have been acceptable with the album Jazz in Silhouette (1959)? I was to see the Sun Ra Arkestra at Cafe Oto many more times from 2009 to 2014, cementing my love of this music. In fact thinking back, I had bought Escalator over the Hill by Carla Bley in 1972 while still at school, yet I did not even think of this as jazz or big band at the time, more like experimental rock featuring Jack Bruce. I guess what made these records acceptable was the pulsing and dynamic rhythm section, after all big band music was originally made for dancers.
In my pantheon of great big bands there many are I have discovered over the years. You can’t go wrong with anything by Duke Ellington, and my first choice of his would be Ellington Uptown (1952) featuring A Tone Parallel to Harlem (Harlem Suite). Another great modernist composer is Stan Kenton, you can hardly believe this music was made back in the early 50s, and albums such as Innovations in Modern Music (1950) feature a 37 piece orchestra with a 14 piece string section. Following up on some of Kenton’s inventiveness there is Don Ellis who brought a swaggering 60s feel to big band music, and if that’s a bit much try Gil Evans, famous for his work with Miles Davis. A contemporary acolyte of Gil Evans, who has also worked with David Bowie, is Maria Schneider with several Grammy Awards to her name – check out Data Lords (2020).
Closer to home there is the fabulous Spanner Big Band, playing modern arrangements of 50s classics from Mingus, Ellington and Basie as well as a few reorchestrated pop tunes. They are led by the dynamic Dan Spanner and regularly play at the Three Compasses in Hornsey for free. Also recommended are Orquesta Esterlar, a community-based Cuban big band, playing monthly at The Post Bar in Tottenham, and that’s free as well. So do go along…it’s always a privilege to see a crazy big band and financially these days they are performing for the love of it. You can tell from the smiles, on your face and theirs.
My Father and Godfather committed suicide. That was their privilege, they were Doctors. They knew they were terminally ill and they had access to the relevant drugs, and so did not need to involve a third party, which would be currently illegal. They assisted their own dying. In fact, my Father failed the first time, which shows just how difficult it can be. Don’t forget providing information, advice, support or assistance to anyone intending to take their own life is against the law. Until 1961 attempted suicide was itself a crime, leading to prison and loss of all goods.
Unfortunately, my Mother, who had made it clear through several documents such as a Living Will and DNR (do not resuscitate instructions) that she did not wish her life to be prolonged, lived through 6 months of Hell. She also had a sympathetic local doctor and had already refused further chemotherapy for breast cancer. All of this appeared to make no difference. At her lovely hospice, I was told by a tearful doctor my Mother would die within 2 weeks. Sadly my Mother survived too long and was ejected from the hospice, and had to be placed in a retirement home, which turned to be a very unpleasant experience for us all. She fervently wished for assisted dying for that 6 months. Despite trying not to eat, she lived too long for a happy ending. I blame our outdated legal system.
Thus to say I support assisted dying would be an understatement. Of course at my age I’m already worrying about my own lack of choices. Assisted Dying is a right which should belong to us all. Thank you Jonathan Dimbleby, Julian Barnes, Patrick Stewart, Jo Brand, Prue Leith and Esther Rantzen for raising the profile of Dignity in Dying.
As Prue Leith says “While I am healthy at the moment, I’d very much like to have a little lethal concoction sitting in a safe waiting for the right moment. And I’d rather it was legal.”
It is beyond my comprehension why anyone who is not a millionaire would vote for the Tories. Still there are only 2,849,000 millionaires in the UK (4.8%), not enough to win an election. But people still vote for them – At least for the last 14 years. Shows how much I know…
I Saw Keir Starmer speak in 2014 before he was an MP for Holborn & St Pancras (aka Camden). He answered every question at Camden Girls School better than anybody. I told my hairdresser (who also held a hustings, see my video) he would be the Prime Minister one day. I believe I will be proved right.
Personally I will be voting Independent.
The Labour Party is a War Party.
Nuclear weapons can destroy the World.
Hence I do not vote for them.
I hope that is not a surprise.
I can’t remember when I first came across Murakami, but it was some time in the early 90s, probably his 3rd novel A Wild Sheep Chase (1982). From that first reading I was hooked, entranced by his surreal imagination, the contemporary view of Japanese society and his wide ranging and accurate musical references. You could tell you were taking off on a wild careening ride, destination unknown. In fact this is the way he writes, the novel expands autonomously as he works on it, yet he nearly always manages a satisfying conclusion. As he says “writing itself is like dreaming”. To me this makes him a truly modern novelist, you don’t feel manipulated by the characters and events, the door is ajar and there is simply a sense of mutual exploration. The often bizarre characters grow organically, reacting to strange events in a totally plausible way. These are open books, there is no predestination. He manages this because his writing style is somewhat prosaic, relating them in a very down to earth way, however bizarre they might be.
This unique style is probably down to the fact he never intended to be a novelist and certainly never trained to be one. He found his own unique voice, he explains in Novelist as a Vocation (2022) , by writing in English and then translating this back into Japanese. This gave him the simplified, pared down and highly readable style we know today. He is not in any literary tradition, which lends him an honest and personal voice. In fact the story of how he became a novelist, which he has told several times, could come straight out of one his novels. At the age of 29, he was running his own small jazz club called Peter Cat, when he went see his favourite baseball team and…
The satisfying crack when the bat met the ball resounded throughout Jingu Stadium. Scattered applause rose around me. In that instant, for no reason and on no grounds whatsoever, the thought suddenly struck me: I think I can write a novel.
I can still recall the exact sensation. It felt as if something had come fluttering down from the sky, and I had caught it cleanly in my hands.
After the match he bought writing paper and a pen and proceeded to write every night for six months, producing his first novel Hear the Wind Sing (1979).
Before he became well known in the West, I always felt that Murakami readers were like a secret club. If in conversation with someone unknown and the subject of his books arose and they had read them, a mutual friendship seemed assured. A particularly bizarre experience of this nature happened in Northern Armenia. The country was suffering at the time from a complete breakdown, the Russians had left a few years previously, leading to the closure of farms, factories and even the education system. Nobody seemed to know who ran anything, people were just getting by in unregulated chaos. I was reading Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), a surreal cyberpunk novel about a crumbling walled town. There were many strange parallels between the book and the situation I found myself in and Murakami has stated that “I was so popular in the 1990s in Russia, at the time they were changing from the Soviet Union – there was big confusion, and people in confusion like my books”. Anyway to my surprise, one of our drivers (in fact from Syria) had read some Murakami, so I had leave my copy of the book with him, it seemed both appropriate and fair in the strange circumstances.
The lack of pretension combined with the acid and surreal wit in Murakami’s work, often makes me reflect on the similarity to British writers like Charles Dodgson aka Lewis Carroll, J.G. Ballard and even Brian Catling. There is an unusual symbiosis between Japan and the UK as islands at the end of continents, which perhaps leads to a unique form of isolated irrationality, as well as a secret understanding of the others situation. While his authorial voice can always be heard, his novels are quite varied, and he appears to have great fun with the design, Norwegian Wood (1987) appearing as 2 small volumes in a box, 1Q84 (2010) had a heavy black burnt look and Killing Commendatore (2017) had bullet holes on the cover. He always entertains the reader.
My admiration for Murakami was cemented by perhaps his greatest novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1995). If you read only one of his novels, this is the definitive one, for me at least. Shortly after this I read Haruko Murakami and the Music of Words (2002), a biography written by his translator Jay Rubin. Murakami had always been a quiet and mysterious character but this book revealed both his life story and the vast range of his output once he became an author. He writes translations of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Truman Capote, Raymond Carver as light relief from his novels, as well as a several collections of short stories, interviews and reportage. The novel Norwegian Wood (1987) which ensured his popularity in Japan and led to his living in the USA for several years, is charming, sad and maybe a little dated. Perhaps avoid 1Q84, it is huge and highly repetitive, but let me recommend nearly everything else. There are two semi autobiographical works What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (2007) and Novelist as a Vocation (2022), both of which are fascinating. All of his short story collections are highly entertaining and I thought his most recent novel Killing Commendatore (2017) to be a return to form. Looking forward to The City and Its Uncertain Walls due to published in translation later this year.
I have a bad memory. I know this because at the age of ten I had to remember the poem Froggie Went a-Courtin and repeat it to the class. This I failed to do and ended up bottom of the class at “Poetry” in my school report. Even now it takes maybe six months for me to remember people’s names, I seem to have a blank spot there. I work around it, and it requires special effort if I am forced to name someone, who may even be a good friend. However give me a hint, or even better a multiple choice question, and I will usually get the answer right. Hence I am pretty good at quizzes like Pointless or Michael McIntyre’s The Wheel. This was brought home to me when I did the first ever multiple choice O Level in Chemistry and unexpectedly got an A. My teacher was amazed and so was I, but show me the answer and I will do well.
I have maybe the best memory of anybody I know since I learnt the part of Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello, one of the longest in his whole magnificent oeuvre. I repeated this about twenty times on stage and very rarely used the prompt. I did have a method for when I got stuck, by substituting the word anything for the missing word, and nobody seemed to notice. To learn and remember all this, the role had to occupy my whole being and life, and for many months it was uppermost in my mind. At several points I thought the whole project was impossible, and I remember being on the top deck of a London bus, while trying to memorise lines, and realising I never would. Fortunately I was wrong, the mind is a bit of plastic elastic which can accommodate priorities and it is remarkably powerful. The bizarre end of this story is that I do not remember a single word of the play Othello, and would be hard put to even recognise any of those lines now.
The pain of learning lines is one of the reasons I gave up acting. Some people say they find it easy, but I never did. The role had to subsume me, take over my life and become an obsession. I found this an unpleasant trade-off. Once in a semi-pro production of Max Frisch’s The Fireraisers I was playing the lead character Mr Biedermann, and ended up comping or even inventing half the dialogue, since I hadn’t been given time to learn it all properly. Again nobody noticed, it was done with conviction! Personally I also had to revise dialogue on a daily basis if I was to remember it, and life is too short for that.
Now of course I am simply amazed I manage to remember anything, so I try not to. My mind is already full of stuff I am barely aware of or cannot access when I want, so I am trying to look after it. Does the mind ever get full I wonder, and certainly some of the rooms in this ever expanding mansion seem very distant. Yet it is a cave of treasures, constantly surprising me! This very blog is an example of random memory syndrome.
I read the book above in 1976, after I had taken LSD aka acid for the first time. It was a profound, yet relatively short lived experience. The book itself is an entertaining, if over the top read. Let’s not forget Timothy Leary was a well educated university lecturer with a Ph.D, he knew how to write, lecture and entertain. The Politics of Ecstasy was first published in 1966 in the USA and would become the foundational story of the late 60s hippie drug culture. It was first published in England in 1970, and I read it with a pinch of American salt, I already knew exaggeration when I saw it, yet it had an authority and intellectual chutzpah which was invigorating. I was already well aware of the profoundly spiritual and dangerous properties of this drug, having quizzed the few people I knew who had taken it, they had my admiration at the time. I had done my my homework, but nothing could prepare me for the reality. I believe it was on this first trip that I discovered how disorientating it could be, since I was at a concert in Pathfoot, Stirling University. Feeling spaced out, I realised I should be lying down and relaxing, so I departed early. As I was leaving through a long, large corridor I discovered I could rotate the whole corridor until I was walking on the ceiling. This was a great feeling until I start thinking too much about it and realised that this might not be a good idea since the corridor was not under my full control, it seemed to to have a mind of its own and I did not wish to fall to the floor – hey where is the floor, what is a floor, I thought gravity was supposed to exist, apparently now it does not… Most of Leary’s musings are based on The Tibetan Book of The Dead, and that should tell you before venturing any further that we are in dangerous territory. This territory was politely called a “bad trip”, yet it could destroy lives. We all knew what had happened to Syd Barrett, the former lead singer of Pink Floyd. For a good example of the foggy synaesthesia brought on by LSD, listen to his 1969 album The Madcap Laughs.
The “shit hit the fan” on my second trip a few years later, when I was back at Stirling. That night I kept notes of this profound experience, which do not make much sense now, but do provide a few pointers which I will attempt to interpret and explain:
No.1 : Everything was melancholy and industrial because we were probably listening to Escalator over the Hill by Carla Bley, not the best choice in the circumstances, but I liked it. It is also possible we were listening to Physical Graffiti by Led Zeppelin, in particularly the tracks In The Light and Kashmir. These notes begin when we had retreated to my little room and I was choosing the music. There was a lot of chaos in the next door flat (of which more later) and I had determined to have a spiritual experience by listening to cool music lying on my bed.
No.2 & 3 : These were my flatmates, also tripping – everyone was, and no doubt we were arranging ourselves in my tiny bedroom, with most people lying on the floor, finding cushions and trying to get comfortable.
No.4 : Any minor interruption seemed freighted with meaning back then.
No.5 : No doubt this was me playing the album Big Fun by Miles Davis, released in 1974, an electronic jazz album with an Eastern drone vibe, and probably the track Great Expectations which goes on for 27 minutes.
No.6 : Fweejum is a made up word that has stayed with me. I was attempting to express the noise a a large vehicle or other object makes sweeping past you, think of it as the imaginary noise that time makes when it is moving very fast, with a doppler effect. Pronounce it without enunciating the letters and you might be getting close to the sense of dropping through the floor, through time and space at great velocity.
No.7 : My flatmates were probably getting fed up with the music and had decided to use the experience to make some unconsciously inspirational art. I have no idea really, it could easily be an imagined drawing in the great dome of starscape enveloping us. Pretty sure I wasn’t physically drawing.
No.8 : Here we are in proper meaningless drug addled territory, there seem to be an infinity or maybe just 166 rabbit holes, blind alleyways or dark caves to plunge into. They multiply as you examine them and it is easy to get confused, you might choose the wrong one. At least it wasn’t 666.
No.9 : By this time I am probably listening to Go Ahead John, the third side of Big Fun and featuring the jazz rock guitarist John McLaughlin. On acid anything visualised tends to mutate and expand, yet seem real.
That was the sensible part of the evening. Beforehand an older and I thought wiser friend, also on drugs, had been violently sick. I looked on dispassionately at the fabulous technicolour mess, containing a wonderful mass of imaginary writhing creatures, just grateful I hadn’t experienced the nausea of feeling the soft organs of my body decide to leave home. Never mix drink and serious drugs I thought selfishly to myself. Meanwhile next door my fellow students were in full on LSD party drinking mode, which soon turned sour. Among our number was a garrulous French student, who spoke perfectly good English. As the evening progressed she was picked on and her every utterance became a source of great hilarity, purely due to her French accent. At an early point I had tried to intervene, to no avail, which was probably when I sloped off to my bedroom to listen to music. At dawn, many hours later, I returned, and she had been reduced to a gibbering wreck, who could no longer speak in any language, completely incoherent. She was truly in a state, yet the barbs continued and I felt powerless by this time to intervene. The behaviour of my fellow students, despite being on drugs, had been appalling. After several days she did recover the power of speech, but I believe she left Stirling and went back to France.
By this time I was trying to look after myself, sleep seemed impossible, life extended emptily, all desire had gone leaving yawning emptiness. That next day I attempted to behave normally and attended a lecture. I was beyond caring, nothing went in and it appeared nothing ever would. I had heard about flashbacks, when you regress to a drug induced stupor, and I was in fear of a slowly repeating chaos. Had I ruined my life? Would this go on forever? Of course not, after 36 hours with no sleep I was simply at my wits end and exhausted. Still it would take a good few days before I re-assembled my life, and determined to slowly clear up my mental state.
The fact that drugs were everywhere at Stirling can be clearly seen in the covers of The Student Handbook for the years 1975-1977. In addition drugs were openly traded in the Students Union, Alangrange, while the University itself hit the headlines in 1976 when a student broke his leg while “attempting to fly” from a third floor window. The young man broke his leg, and in court claimed he was high on LSD. A few months later, to my horror, there he was in our kitchen high on LSD. I did not think this was a good idea as we were on the top floor. I also vividly remember talking down a minor member of the Royal Family who had taken too many mushrooms. I was a bit annoyed since I had to buy him lunch and midday seemed to be the wrong time to take drugs. He had probably been up all night, I guess. Closer to home my flatmate, who was a big burly motor-biker from Dundee, decided to decorate his room with black bin-bags, which covered every surface – walls, floor and ceiling, and I nicknamed his room the black hole of Calcutta. What started off as a bit of fun soon descended into something more serious, he refused to leave this room and I presume he was taking lots of drugs. A form of psychosis crept in, he didn’t listen to any of us and stopped attending lectures. Suddenly he became obsessed with saving frogs. It was spring and the frogs were migrating across a road from the large lake at the centre of the University. There were literally thousands of frogs and it seemed inevitable a few would be killed on this quiet road. I was concerned enough to try and help my flatmate save some of these frogs, but I soon realised it was a pointless exercise, and that this formerly robust human being was being brought low by a serious mental illness. He disappeared at the end of term, never to return.
After promising myself that my LSD days were over, I believe I did take it once again, but it was a much milder experience, I am glad to say, and have little memory of it. I was lucky, and never did experience a bad trip, but I could easily see how that could happen if taken in the wrong circumstances and without due respect to the dangers. Later in life I did try ecstasy and MDMA briefly at festivals, pleasant but nothing compared to the mind curdling power of the acid trips mentioned above. I had lost the desire to lose control in this way, although I still knew a few people who ended up in hospital due to imbibing so called soft drugs. I certainly do not regret taking LSD, it was a remarkable lesson in the powers of the mind and how sanity can be paper thin. However, much to my disappointment, this experience was no spiritual shortcut. I did not arrive in Nirvana, but maybe discovered there are other ways to get there.
If you want to hear the real atmosphere of these times and the liturgical, obsessive nature of the promotion of LSD listen to Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out by Dr. Timothy Leary, a motion picture soundtrack album made by Mercury in 1967. Here is a taster from a track called The Trip: Root Chakra: “…Drift single celled in soft tissue swamp, sink gently into dark fertile marsh, drift beyond the body, float to the centre (I’m Drowning!) float beyond life and death, down soft ladders of memory.”
The sad and much too early death of Benjamin Zephaniah this week prompted memories of the first time I saw him way back in 1983 at the Angels of Fire Festival. I was excited to see him since I had heard about him through the New Musical Express, which was my reading matter, rather than the Poetry Review. To put this in context, Angels of Fire was a six night poetry festival featuring new performance poetry and upcoming modern poets, at the Cockpit Theatre near Marylebone. The choice of performers was certainly prescient and varied, since several of them went on to have long careers. This festival of poetry, which gave me an excellent grounding in many different voices, was shaken up by the rockin’ dub protest poetry of Benjamin, which seem like a righteous breath of fresh air at the time.
I went to every night of the festival, since I regarded it as my first documentary photography project. I did not really know what I was doing, but was allowed to take photos as a member of the audience (times have changed…). Of course I was not being paid, but I managed to wangle my way in for free for a few nights through British Library Sound Archive contacts, who were recording it. I felt at home there since I had worked at the Cockpit as a Stage Manager. Fortunately the festival was sponsored by City Limits, a London listings magazine, and I made some early print sales, with the photos being used in their poetry column. Eventually some of theses photographs were exhibited at The Drill Hall in Chenies Street WC1.
I was also looking forward to seeing Seething Wells (aka Steven Wells 1960-2009), who lived up to his moniker, along with other early ranting poets such as Little Brother and Joolz. The more refined feminist poetic tradition was also represented by Michèle Roberts and Alison Fell, while a notable contemporary wordsmith was Jeremy Reed, full of Bowie references. The world of sound poetry was not forgotten either, with the appearance of the legendary Bob Cobbing (1920-2002), later to be seen at The Klinker in Islington. Here are some of the photographs I took of these poets:
I was heartened to see Benjamin Zephaniah become become a Professor of Poetry and part of the National Curriculum, turn down his OBE, and always act with generosity, wit and humility. Here he is in full flow at the ICA a year later, I believe.
I don’t think the word “belief” means anything. It’s a hovering wobbly, jelly phrase meaning something like: “I’ve decided to think something’s true because I wish it were true.” Different Every Time, 2014 – Robert Wyatt
My problems with belief started when I was 8 or 9 at Junior school. We had an excellent form teacher, Miss Laister, whom I trusted and understood. However, one sunny day we had a discussion about Christianity, and we were asked if we believed in Jesus Christ. I wasn’t sure, but he seemed to be popular, kind and interesting, so I was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. I felt a bit too young to give a definitive answer and maybe expressed some reservations. It was then that the bombshell in my mind exploded, since Miss Laister kindly told us that it wasn’t a question of supposition, logic, science, history or anything else, simply one of faith. You just had to believe, all your problems and worries would be solved, it was that simple. That was it, there was no other choice. This immediately appeared antithetical to everything I had been taught. Even then, to make this exception for Jesus and no-one else seemed unfair, I would have to investigate further. I was already aware other religions existed, and that for instance Jewish people did not have to attend religious assembly or recite The Lord’s Prayer, so what happened to them at the pearly gates?
Like many of my peers I attended Sunday School, basically biblical study, and engaged with the many fascinating stories. I got hold of a St. James Bible and determined to read it cover to cover, but failed to get much past Genesis, it was not an easy read. Later I was awarded a beautiful red leather bound version of the New Testament, this was bit easier, and I proudly took it along to my Sunday School. From my limited studies I was already not prepared to accept the Bible as the infallible word of God, since I was aware of the many inconsistencies, plain cruelty, changes of tone and competing gospels. Later, aged 11, I had a Christian fundamentalist classmate from Bahrain, who I used to tease with choice quotes from the Bible, asking if he believed in the contradictory and confusing verses I selected. I also vividly remember having an attack of the giggles, if not hysterics, when told the Fishers of Men story from the Gospel of Matthew. This did not go down well at Sunday School, but I would guess by this time I had already decided I would not be confirmed. That is I would not ask God’s Holy Spirit to give me the strength and commitment to live God’s way for the rest of my life. Most certainly I would not be living as a disciple of Christ in the Church of England. I have never regretted that decision. My position at the age of 14 or 15 is demonstrated by the moment when I called Jesus a bastard, not that I wanted to. My good Roman Catholic friend had somehow bet me that I wouldn’t say it before a graven image, yet I felt mentally obliged to follow through on my convictions and did so. I was of course being quite accurate (Joseph was not the father), but my friend believed I was going to hell in a handcart. Such is the power of indoctrination.
Well it was a long journey, via an interest in Western Buddhism during my 20’s, to finally arrive at my own version of agnosticism. Quit simply I agree with this statement: “I cannot know whether a deity exists or not, and neither can you”. Getting to this point may have taken some time, but it was certainly encouraged by one of the bravest books ever written, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, published 2006. It was as if I had waited nearly my whole life for someone to take on the exceptionalism granted to religion, this medieval way of thinking, and the lip service paid to plainly outdated ideas.
The whole point of religious faith, its strength and chief glory, is that it does not depend on rational justification. The rest of us are expected to defend our prejudices. But ask a religious person to justify their faith and you infringe ‘religious liberty’. The God Delusion, 2006 – Richard Dawkins
The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species. God Is Not Great, 2007 – Christopher Hitchens
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. New York Times, 1999 – Steven Weinberg
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. Questions sur les miracles, 1765 – Voltaire
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1788 – Edward Gibbon (from a quote by Lucius Seneca, 50AD)
The idea that any religious document is the “Holy Word of God”, as is claimed, can now be fully put to bed. Here is a brief resumé of what we now know regarding the great religious texts. The Bible as we know it was formulated in c.367AD during the councils of Hippo and Carthage, and excluded the Apocrypha. The Gospels were written forty to eighty years after the death of Jesus in Rome, they are pseudepigrapha, the claimed author is not the true author. This is the case for the majority of the Bible. None of the authors of the New Testament actually met Jesus. The Old Testament is part folklore and part mythologised Jewish history, formulated in 1400BC, centuries after the events portrayed. For example, there is no historical record of Israelis (Moses and the Exodus) in Egypt. Watch out for Pseudoarchaeology! The Koran has an even more confusing history since Mohammed was allegedly illiterate and it was dictated to him by the Angel Gabriel, this oral tradition only being written down many decades later. The Hadith, “the backbone” of Islamic civilization, was cobbled together from many contradictory oral sources, generations after Muhammad’s death. Strangely Islam posits that God is an Arab, as the Koran is always recited in Arabic, and hence a translation cannot be the “Word of God”. These are the western patriarchal religions for the last 2000 years: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. They come form the same Abrahamic root, use the same basic stories and, given their authorship, cannot possibly be the word of God. We should remember that these religions represent just a moment in our evolution, whose time has now passed. In the Eastern world it is somewhat more complicated since there is no specific word of God, but rather a series of myths, stories and philosophies of life. That is fine, but I was under the impression that myths are not meant to be factually true, so I don’t believe any of that either. The Bhagavad Gita may be a great book, but no-one claims it was written by God, thank heavens.
When you end up not believing in anything (don’t follow leaders…) life can take a strange, slightly dystopian angle, which was encouraged by science fiction in general and the band Joy Division in particular. Like John Lennon (cf. his song God) my I don’t believe list is long, including fairies, ghosts and UFO’s, although they can all make interesting stories. I am a believer in the French principle of laïcité, which separates church and state since the 1789 revolution (confirmed in 1905), and includes the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. This principle does include a right to the free exercise of religion. Still, we all need somewhere to place our own spiritual needs, and obviously the Church no longer managed to fulfil this role for me. I did manage to read a religious book, recommended by my Mother, written by our local C of E vicar. However I could only manage to do this by replacing the word God with the word Gaia (thank you James Lovelock), which seemed to work quite well. I took refuge in the work of Alan Watts, a former Anglican priest who became a Buddhist hippy, and the classic series Zen and Zen Classics (1960) by R.H. Blyth. Later still I spent 4 years doing Tai-chi, which fulfilled many of my spiritual needs, but it’s not a religion. We live in a spiritual desert, where can we put these feelings?
Science appears to hold the answers since it is an open system, constantly being revised. It is empirical, open to scrutiny and genuinely man-made, but is that enough? Certainly the classical religions no longer answer the fundamental questions that led to their creation, science has filled that vacuum. There are many wonders of evolution and nature, yet do they really fulfil our hidden desires for a transcendent belief system? Humans appear to have a millenarian death wish desire, we need to dream and confront an apocalypse, however illogical that may be. Every generation searches for a New Messiah, we all self-dramatise and seem to think we live in the end times, as if history never happened. No-one wants to die, feel their life is pointless, and traditional religion came along to solve that problem. Such is the power of wishful thinking – believe this (or that) and you can live forever in heaven! For a long time we were all a member of an eternity cult. In reality the hope, promise and drama of traditional religion is over, and we await the replacement with some agitation and trepidation. At least there are fewer pointless religious wars, there is no heaven and hell, blasphemy is over, while the churches are empty. And lo, let there be no more self-appointed divine agents, defenders of the faith, no more confession, transubstantiation or apostolic succession. In the meantime, we should all become Secular Buddhists, that is the best I can say.
Reality is that which, when you stop believing, does not go away. Introduction, 1972 – Philip K. Dick / published 1985
Update 30/08/23 The day after I published this article, this was the headline in The Times newspaper, saying only 24% of clergy would describe Britain as a Christian country today.
Update 08/10/24 Just read Rationality by Steven Pinker and I was glad to see he uses the Philip K. Dick quote about reality, referred to above. He makes a strong point about the difference between the mythology mindset and reason, and why we humans are both tempted and fascinated by the myth makers. The book is humorous and pointed, although sometimes repetitious, and there is a bit too much algebra for me. Still it is highly recommended and here is my favourite quote, of many:
Submitting all of one’s beliefs to the trials of reason and evidence is an unnatural skill, like literacy and numeracy, and must be instilled and cultivated. Rationality, 2021 – Steven Pinker
Is it Ronald Reagan’s idea of an April Fools Day Joke to say he is going to reduce nuclear weapons?
This was my question on the 88th edition of Question Time on April 1st 1982 at the Greenwood Theatre in London.
I invented this question on the actual evening as I entered the building, due to a headline in the Evening Standard that day. We had already posed another question on the invitation weeks earlier. The minute I wrote down this question I felt it had a good chance of being selected, it was right on cue. Even then I knew it fulfilled the brief to be up to the minute.
My question was highly apposite, since our Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the American President Ronald Reagan had been spending many millions on installing Cruise missiles at Greenham Common, leading to widespread protests. Reagan would later declare Russia to be an “Evil Empire”, making the case for deploying NATO nuclear-armed intermediate–range ballistic missiles in Western Europe. Yet on this day an Evening Standard headline falsely claimed that Reagan would be reducing the deployment of nuclear weapons, which I believed merited some suspicion, if not downright disbelief.
Sir Robin Day, the host (see above), was magnificent and I was very impressed with the Tory Norman St John-Stevas. During the warm-up with test questions they were both hilarious, but a lot more circumspect when the show went live, to my disappointment. Little known to me at the time was John Smith, later to become Leader of the Labour Party in 1992. The other panel members were MP Mike Thomas, a founder member of the SDP, and Terry Marsland, a feminist member of the TUC.
I wore a very loud and gay pink shirt, so I certainly stood out, and I believe you had to stand up when suddenly you were told to ask your question. For many years, if not decades, people would tell me they had seen me on TV. I had already long forgotten about it, but it was a powerful lesson in the power of the media, since it had been seen by many millions of people.
Of course the response to my question was a lot of humming and hawing, no-one said that nuclear weapons were an insult to our culture, civilisation or even religion, as I wanted them to. No-one came out in direct support of the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, though some expressed sympathy. I thought it was a poor response. Yes, I was a strong supporter of CND at the time and still am. I should point out here, that in 2020 the UK are still spending $6.2 billion every year ($72.6 billions spent worldwide) on nuclear weapons, which could destroy the world as we know it. While I was proud of my question, I gave an anodyne response when the question was referred back to me, which I had not been expecting. This was a very live show at the time. I simply said I agreed with John Smith. Always prepare a witty and cutting answer!
In 1982, at the instigation of Patrick D. Martin, I became the photographic co-ordinator for Robodevco. This later became The Roboshow, where a prototype multimedia computer controlled a forty-three screen, three dimensional sound experience. It was hosted by ‘Q’, a virtual robot at a large warehouse off Torriano Avenue in Kentish Town, London, 1985. It proved to be a “a completely new screen sensation”.
Before the Roboshow there was the Technocab, the most enjoyable part of the whole experience. This was a blacked out London taxi cab containing a Trinitron TV and a BBC computer. Due to the size of the huge cathode ray tube monitor it was a one person experience with binaural headphones, like a solo cinema. The cab would start up as if going on a journey, often dry ice was involved, sometimes we rocked the cab to simulate movement. A taste of what you would see (2 mins in) is contained in the following video, the Roboshow Electronic Press Kit. This low-res video features my stills animated with Bob Lawrie of Blink Productions, as well as the triggered micrographics of Richard Brown.
On the strength of this intense experience nearly a million pounds was raised to fund the Roboshow experience, which was intended to be franchised. A prototype multi screen cinema was constructed and the images would fly around the space in a truly fresh and disorienting manner, after being introduced by Q, a TV robot. Out on location Q was sometimes an American football style roller skater with a video boombox, who featured in the video shot by Charlie Arnold.
The Roboshow garnered a lot of good press, being featured in The Observer, The Face and New Scientist. This description of the show was published in the Evening Standard, January 1987:
“We went into a room that seemed smaller than it actually was because the 20 chairs on the raised platform were pointing towards 50 TV screens that ran around the front and side walls. There was one big screen in the middle. The lights dimmed. A rollerskater zoomed straight across our line of vision from left to right with an accompanying sound effect that seemed almost three dimensional. The show had begun– and for the next seven minutes images flickered, jumped, danced and propelled themselves across the screens. Sometimes it was the same picture. Sometimes it would break up so you were seeing the same thing from divers angles on different screens. It is an experience 50 times as intense as watching regular TV because of the interplay between the screens and the meganess of the sound system.”
These are some of the quotes from the Robodevco Press Pack, which demonstrate why Roboshow garnered so much attention:
“Totally wild … any explanation would fail. to do justice to this experience” Bruce Dessau, City Limits, Aug 21 ’86.
“The next medium to take over where Cinema left off’ Televisual, Nov ’86.
“Q makes Max Headroom look about as wacky as Sooty” Direction, Oct ’86.
“Superb -look forward to seeing it in Piccadilly Circus” Juliet Rix (BBC Newsnight).
“The technical possibilities are extremely exciting” Roma Felstein (Broadcast).
“Very impressive” Barry Fox (New Scientist).
“The most important development in Entertainment since they got rid of the Proscenium Arch” Anthony Horowitz.
This is my photograph of the actual prototype Roboshow in Kentish Town. It was intended to expand the show and run it at Paul Raymond’s Revuebar Boulevard Theatre in Walkers Court Soho, London. Unfortunately this never happened.
It is important to remember that all this was happening before the advent of the internet, digital cameras, HD video or flat screen monitors. In fact analogue video was equivalent to 720×576 pixels at best, that is 625 (576 visible) interleaved scan lines in a 4×3 format. At the time Video 8 with it’s small form factor was the most exciting camera development, but most video was filmed on large and heavy U-matic cameras. Nevertheless The Daily Mirror observed that “the revolution starts here… Shock the music industry and change the world of video”. For an in depth explanation of all this technology the article in The Games Machine magazine, dated August 1987, reveals the many participants and innovations involved:
As well as the visuals, audio was an integral part of the experience. A holographic cassette was produced with music by Phil Nicholas, a Fairlight programmer, later to work with The Willesden Dodgers, Stock Aitken Waterman and Def Leppard, among many others.
Here is a promo pic of Patrick Martin, Phil Nicholas and Marcus Kirby taken at Robodevco headquarters:
By 1985 I was fortunately working for New Musical Express and so mostly avoided the machinations involved when new directors and accountants were appointed to Robodevco. The freelance crew (who made the Roboshow) were encouraged to sign contracts to make them rich when the project succeeded, yet were to become liable for large debts as bank guarantors without real equity. Thankfully I did not sign up. Ultimately, after the failure to produce an actual show, this led to arguments about the structure of the project and ultimate dissolution of the company. The directors became XYLO and took the technical assets which opened at a disco called Zhivagos in Darlington in 1988. RIP. Meanwhile Patrick regrouped and formed Psychovision with a new Technocab, but this time in a Dodge van. I went to the grand unveiling at Chelsea Harbour, but disastrously the new van was not yet finished. Shamefully the many punters were told it had broken down on the Westway. Eventually the Dodge Technocab aka Psychomobile did surface at Covent Garden:
There was some mitigation for the previous disasters when in 1992 Psychovision created a 5 screen show for the Victoria & Albert Sporting Glory Exhibition which was later screened as part of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. In 2011 Justin Kirby made Roboshow Reboot, a website to document this story, but it has long since disappeared. Here is a brief 44 second clip of my submission for this. It sure all was groundbreaking fun while it lasted…
To conclude here is the full interview Richard Brown made for Roboshow Reboot at the Rewire 2011 conference, which sums up the whole story very well:
The first point is pointless. I was with the careers advisor at school aged 17 and I did not have the guts to tell him I wanted to be a rock singer. Of course I already knew that to say such a thing would be treated as some kind of joke, if not a reason for him to laugh at me and tell me to grow up. There were no degrees in this subject, and he probably had no conception of what I was not talking about. Still I was disappointed with myself not to raise the subject, not to make the point. In retrospect I realised other errors were made, since I was about to become the Editor of the school magazine. At the time time I had no conception this was an actual job, since once again there was no degree available in this subject. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the correct degree was English Literature, which I in fact did end up partially studying. Yet the idea that this was an actual job evaded me. You could only be a Teacher.
Later I had my big break as an actor, I was to play Iago in Othello at the Oxford Playhouse, sponsored by The Observer. This I managed to do and was quite good, and certainly better than the Zambian playing Othello. Unfortunately he was having some kind of nervous breakdown, having been accused of actually strangling Desdemona. This massive production became a laughing stock when he refused to go within three feet of her, so my performance became rather incidental. After the first night we never saw the Director again, yet there were many more nights of pain in front of thousands of people. Thus ended serious acting.
Another disaster, at least to my mind, put an end to my film career. We had written a touring youth theatre show called The Life and Death Show about the nuclear apocalypse. After many performances we had honed down the Protect and Survive story into a tight and entertaining forty five minutes. This had involved meeting the Secretary of CND, Bruce Kent, and hiding under a table. I was thrilled that this led to making a film at The Albany in Deptford. However this was early days for video, still on reel to reel video tape I believe, and quite simply the Director lost all the audio during the edit! Despite this setback something was recovered leading to a Premiere at the ICA Videotheque. That was all good, but the incomprehensible dialogue sounded like a deep sea quagmire. This naughty Director went on to win many prizes and became a Professor of Film, I never appeared in another film. Such are the breaks, those moments…
Again The Observer was to blame, kind of. I took my huge photographic portrait portfolio into their Art Editor at the ‘Colour’ Magazine (the supplement) and they loved it. To work for them was my dream, so I thought that I had made to the big time, after doing covers for NME and Sounds. It was all close-up black and white portraits, rather in the style of Steve Pyke or maybe even Avedon. However I ended up “second choice”, that is nowhere, and I gave up. Or at least changed my style, I had tried and failed, but of course (in retrospect) I should have tried harder.
The writing was on the wall in 2011 when Tate Britain removed my panoramic tour of Peter Doig from their website, because they were being sponsored by Google. Of course they did not inform me, despite saying “it looks absolutely brilliant”. It was replaced by some fuzzy auto-made panoramas full of stitching errors and incomprehensible angles, the writing on the wall was truly invisible. Yet Jonathan Jones in The Guardian said “Google Street View-style tours of galleries are not to be sniffed at”. He had probably never seen a real panoramic tour in his life. You can’t compete with world organisations working for ‘free’. There is no actual point here, just a gradual decline as Google Street View took over the world, at least in panoramic terms.
That was, in a sense, a list of endings. The high points are not being mentioned here since this article was inspired by the The Last Days of Roger Federer and other endings by Geoff Dyer who makes the point that whole lives can turn on a sixpence, or, at least in terms of tennis, on a single point.
This is my Grandfathers Dress Stewart Kilt, not the one I wore to school.
Of course it wasn’t a skirt but a kilt, but to everyone else but me, it was a skirt. I was age 10 at Farnborough Road Junior School, Southport, on summer clothes day. Was I bullied? You bet and I expected it. This was a challenge which I paid for, punched to the ground, constant skirt flipping. Much to the disappointment of my tormentors I had serious underpants on, unlike my grandfather.
He was a London Scottish soldier at the trenches in World War One and was regularly inspected to make sure he wasn’t wearing any, which was “illegal”, and a sign of enfeeblement. A few lashes would fix that. Later I noticed a fab tartan pair of boxer shorts he had, but they were from his dress, not army, kilt. I still wear them (as not visible above).
I was so proud of my kilt and wee sporran, bought by my grandfather in a splendid shop along the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. I took the blows with flamboyant outrage, and I would guess none of my school chums had ever seen a kilt, apart from my Scottish friend Maurice. I was well aware of the notional provocation. I also had a Sgian Dubh, a ceremonial stabbing knife kept in the sock, but thought it wiser not to take it along. This black dagger had not gone down well at Sunday School. Although it could have come in useful!
Years later I wore shorts to my senior school, it was summertime. I was pilloried by my adolescent peers in long trousers. What a hoot! Don’t zig, zag. Have confidence. Always a joy to be different.
Well it was the M1 Mac I had been waiting for, so on announcement day I plumped for a Mac Studio with M1 Max, 24-core GPU, 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. The migration from a Mac Pro 2010, 2×3.46ghz and 96GB Ram went smoothly considering I was coming from the 2018 Mojave 10.14 system. As you can see I am using all the ports on the back, grateful for their inclusion. One of the main reasons for this update was simply to be on a modern and supported system, yet I am hard put to find any useful improvements in the system software.
In fact I am disappointed that there are still so many glitches after all this time, there should have been plenty of time to iron all these out. Firstly it took the Music app 40 hours to re-index my iTunes library after several crashes. In addition the Music app still appears to be in development, being unable to scroll artwork, so this is all you get, half a picture, and the rest is missing:
No Scrollbar !
Surely it can’t be that difficult to make a scrollbar like we had in iTunes. In addition you can no longer drop music into a playlist – it appears briefly then disappears. I then have to go and hunt for it in the Recently Added Playlist. Of course I was also faced with the plethora of permissions issues, simply to use an attached disk, slowly I am overcoming them. My Keychain refused to transfer, so I was forced to use Two Factor authentication, despite Apple saying it was optional, still dealing with issues arising. It then took 12 hours to update Final Cut and X-Code, while Apple System Status said everything was OK – oh no it wasn’t! On the monitors front the system regularly refuses to respect my 2 monitors, forcing everything onto one screen, especially after trying (it takes several times) to sleep the computer. I was plagued with the notorious flickering HDMI connection initially, making the 4k monitor run at 50 instead of 60hz, seemed to assuage the problem, but not an ideal solution. This problem has now been resolved, but the Sleep function appears to be broken. I was also surprised to see the spinning beachball so regularly on this fast computer, in particularly just looking up recent items can cause it. I had none of these problems on my 12 year old Mac Pro, so I was expecting better.
There have been lots of minor changes for the sake of it. Overall there are some improvements with connectivity and the neural engine, yet in day to day usage the computer is not much faster than the old Mac Pro, despite the hype and carefully chosen speed graphs. I would call it incrementally faster, seconds here and there, some things still take a long time! The neural engine certainly makes video encoding a breeze, that is many times faster. I have noticed the computer settling down after a few weeks usage, this may be due to Trial aka triald which uses machine learning to improve usability. This is good but apparently allows parts of macOS to be automatically updated regardless of your settings, which I am not so keen on. There are also some documented problems, which I have avoided or worked around such as the issues with kexts (kernel extensions) which are being deprecated, but can still provide useful functionality. Yet, since the Library is now locked , you can no longer delete old, unused kexts! It should be noted that MontereyOS still cannot provide SMART monitoring of external disks without a kext. It is also now nearly impossible to make a proper backup disk of your system. Of course I had to lose all my old 32 bit apps and regret the loss of iView Media Pro and several disk repair apps. I have found a useful replacement for Media Pro in Photo Mechanic Plus, but there is a lack of repair and analysis apps for M1 Macs. More seriously there appears to be a variety of issues with the Thunderbolt ports, which do not give the advertised speed of 10GB/s for USB3.1. If in doubt use an expensive Thunderbolt 3 or 4 enclosure as I had to (see OWC Envoy Express 2TB NVME SSD above). My favourite Mac Guru Howard Oakley says: Lack of support for 10 Gb/s SuperSpeed+ in USB 3.1 Gen 2 is arguably the most serious failing in what has otherwise been a very successful transition.
A part of me thinks this is all a brilliant sales pitch to make us buy new computers. Simply refuse all updates to the old ones, tell us they are no longer supported and slowly make them incompatible. Yet people have still managed to take old Mac Pro’s past the 2018 Mojave system, by hacking and “illegally” installing newer systems. Why can’t Apple themselves do this, if the hardware is capable?
Despite all the aforementioned I would still recommend an M1 Mac (see Do not buy an old Intel Mac). Things can only get better!
Update 26/05/22
Bargain Samsung 32” 4K Monitor for £250!
I bought a Samsung M70A monitor for only £250, matching my much more expensive BenQ PD UHD monitor. It was cheap since it has been superseded by the M80. This is allegedly a smart monitor and does have USB-C, but I have resolutely switched off all the smart possibilities and ended up with a 100% sRGB display. A few caveats: there is no proper profiling, but using a Spyder Pro monitor colour calibration tool it now looks great and runs full sRGB 3840 x 2160 @ 60.00Hz. In addition, despite being sold as a 32” monitor, it is only 31.5”, still Samsung make cheap good looking screens.
PS. If you require the sRGB Colour Profile to make this a good monitor drop me a line!
Due to popular request I am listing my albums of the year, that is the ones I have listened to extensively. This is an eclectic list, starting with new albums and then drifting off into reissues or older albums re-discovered. I hope you find something of interest.
Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra: Promises A truly contemporary chill out album combining electronica, masterful sax playing and gorgeous orchestration. You can hear the six decades of jazz history in the playing of 80 year old Mr Sanders, so relaxed yet so authoritative, I would have liked even more. A unique and wonderful combination of talents, the beauty makes you want to swoon.
Arooj Aftab: Vulture Prince Another slow burner from this Brooklyn-based Pakistani composer and singer. At times reminiscent of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the singing is peaceful and plangent. There is a an overlying senses of sadness, but it is not cloying or without movement. Many of the lyrics are based on the Ghazal, an Arabic poetic form steeped in loss and longing. A ghazal may be understood as a poetic expression of both the pain of loss or separation and the beauty of love in spite of that pain, says Wikipedia.
Mdou Moctar: Afrique Victime
Burning guitar, as if Hendrix had joined Tinawaren. This is a powerful album to be played loud, packed full of galloping riffs from the Azawagh desert of northern Niger. I had the pleasure of seeing him a few years ago at Cafe Oto, you can see the pics here.
Hedvig Mollestad Trio: Ding Dong. You’re Dead.
The discovery of the year and the gig of the year. Instrumental Rock-Jazz combining the Goth sensibilities of her Norway home and intense guitar shredding. She manages to sound totally original, with a huge vocabulary of psychedelic and jazz riffs, constant excitement. She plays with a huge sense of élan, yet never forgets the atmospherics. This is a proper power trio with bassist Ellen Brekken and drummer Ivar Loe Bjørnstad together in HM3 since 2011. Wow, what a night, as you can see here.
The Coral: Coral Island
A delightful album using spoken word and pop songs to take you on a journey to Coral Island, a seaside resort with ballroom, funfair. pier and a werewolf. The charming story songs seem like a throwback to more melodic times. Of course it all reminds me of my home town Southport, not surprising since they are from Hoylake, just across the Mersey on the Wirral Peninsula.
Olivia Rodrigo: Sour
It’s the popular choice! If you’ve had enough Fiona Apple, Taylor Swift or even Lana del Ray then try this. Yup the kids have been lapping this up and I enjoy the yearning, the swift changes of pace and the vocal gymnastics. Proper pop entertainment from California.
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss: Raise The Roof
Perhaps not as strong as their classic Raising Sand from 2007, the chemistry is still unique. It is strange to think that the bombastic vocalist of Led Zeppelin has become such a sensitive singer, and paired with the golden tonsils of Alison Krauss, the contrast is often very moving. The odd mixture of country, rockabilly and blues is very relaxing.
Sly & Robbie meet Nils Petter Molvær: Nordub
Well this was released in 2018, but I’m still playing it regularly. It is included here in memoriam to Robbie Shakespeare, who sadly died in December 2021. They were a unique rhythm section, playing on many reggae classics as well as with Serge Gainsbourg, Grace Jones and Bob Dylan to name but three. To find out more about Nils, see my blog.
Max Richter: Voices
A unique album setting readings of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights to music. It is both ghostly and moving and flows along beautifully. As the voices and instruments intermingle a genuine aural landscape is constructed, without being cloying or didactic. In 2021 Max released an instrumental reworking of this album called Voices 2, but I prefer the original – with the voices!
Journeys In Modern Jazz: Britain (1965-1972)
Yes they are still making Jazz compilations in 2021, and this one is very well put together and sounds remarkably contemporary. Several of the tracks would be very hard to source and it’s great to hear them fresh and remastered. Strangely we thought that British jazz lived in the shadow of the real guys in the US of A, this album gives the lie to that, being both funky and adventurous. Big rediscoveries were Don Rendell and Ian Carr, and especially the great closing track by Michael Gibbs. Heavy!
Bob Dylan: Man On The Street
This is a weird one, being a 10 CD package which I presume is a bootleg, or perhaps it is out of copyright. Still it is available on Amazon right now for a mere £22. All these CD’s contain the radio broadcasts, home recordings and live concerts from 1961 to 1965, famous to any bootleg collector. Thus you get the contents of the first ever bootleg, Great White Wonder, as well as his 1961 Carnegie Hall gig and the 1965 BBC recordings. They sure sound better than the versions I have heard over the years and contain many unreleased tracks and hilarious interludes.
Black Gold: The Very Best Of Rotary Connection
This was my soul epiphany of 2021. Of course I knew ‘I Am The Black Gold Of The Sun’ from many raves, but was not aware just how crazy this band was. I thought they were lightweight and not funky enough, but I was coming from the wrong direction. They were a truly psychedelic choral soul band, with an amazing arranger in Charles Stepney and a world class singer in Minnie Ripperton. During the years 1967 to 1971 they took soul music and made it epic with massed choirs and orchestras, covering rock classics from Hendrix, Cream and The Band. They deserve their own church.
Gustav Holst: Choral Works
A recent discovery recorded in 1984 and composed 1908-1912. It was a great solace during the lockdown when singing was outlawed. Most of it is a predominantly female choir with the harpist Osian Ellis and it is very dynamic. My reference point was the work of David Axelrod and albums like Earth Rot, although this is much more ethereal. The singing itself is very rhythmical and builds to powerful climaxes, very satisfying and quite strange.
The Lost Jockey: Professor Slack EP
Another result of lockdown was the digitising of some rare vinyl albums from my vast collection. This 10″ EP was my favourite, recorded in 1982. The Lost Jockey were the British answer to the systems music of Philip Glass and Steve Reich. However they seemed to be much funnier, poppier and funkier to me, and I held out great hopes for them. I was so keen on them I even wrote an article about them (unpublished). Still this EP, full of restlessness despite the pulsing, was as good as it got. Their solitary full album was a disappointment, although several members went on to have very interesting careers with Man Jumping, The Shout and on the ZTT label.
Black Box Recorder: Life Is Unfair
Totally missed this group 20 years ago, although I was aware of Luke Haines, but found him a bit arch. Yet with the addition of Sarah Nixey on sensual and domineering vocals it all seems to work, the irony of the lyrics arrows straight home. They really are the funniest English group ever, the black humour skewering school, motorways, sundays and, in their only hit, the facts of life. This is the 4CD box set of all their albums with a free poster.
The onslaught of Covid-19 deaths, government confusion, social media madness and exaggerated statistics have brought us to a pretty pass. Yes we should all wear masks and socially distance forever say the British public. Or at least until Covid is under control worldwide, which is as good as forever, let’s be honest. Covid, like flu and the common cold, will not be going away in my lifetime. However, it gets even worse, we are truly living in fear when 27% of people say we should have a 10pm curfew, while 43% say all nightclubs and casinos should remain closed – although personally I don’t object to closing casinos, for other reasons entirely. This is definitely the most depressing poll I have ever read, and makes me worry profoundly about the country I am living in.
This poll was brought to my notice by an article in The Guardian by Joel Golby. He believes the reason behind these poll results is just that “being British is a type of madness”.
Ipsos MORI interviewed a representative sample of 1,025 British adults aged 16-75. Interviews were conducted online from 2-3 July 2021. Data are weighted to match the profile of the population. All polls are subject to a wide range of potential sources of error.
On a brighter note you can apply for your Covid “passport” letter here, presuming you are double vaccinated, like all sensible people. This URL should be front page news, but it is well hidden on the NHS website.
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Update 20/05/23
Meanwhile in 2020 the Tories were organising parties in the midst of the Lockdown! At the time, London was under Tier-2 restrictions which banned indoor socialising, said the BBC. Shaun Bailey was a prospective Conservative candidate for the Mayor of London campaign, and has now been awarded a peerage by Boris Johnson.
First Rule of Life Club 1. Never talk about any of these things
This is a story rarely told, yet apparently we nearly all do it. The subject may upset you, if so stop reading now. The subject of wanking aka masturbation aka self-abuse has not been covered in most of my reading, and in my researches I have only found two recent articles which mention it, by Lily Allen and Giles Coren. In 2009 NHS Sheffield published a controversial leaflet called Pleasure stating “An orgasm a day keeps the doctor away”. A more recent booklet titled Masturbation (see above) expresses the current medical opinion succinctly: “Masturbation is a natural, healthy expression of sexuality, which can have a large number of health benefits, not least that of sexual pleasure.” Anyway, for better or worse, here is my personal take on the subject, of which the keynote is honesty. I hope it will be amusing, informative and kinda bizarre.
I have no particular memories of erotic stimulation before my adolescence, although it was a subject of mystery and fascination. Come adolescence and the floodgates opened and haven’t closed since. The utter shock and mess of my first ejaculation was totally unexpected, despite having been told the “facts of life”. Obviously they had censored a few chapters, I soon realised. A veiled enquiry was made to my mother, and I gathered that everything was normal and I was perfectly healthy. “Night emissions” were apparently to be expected from someone of my age. However I found all the semen a great inconvenience, and it made masturbating in bed rather problematic. I decided to use the toilet, where tissues were available. A box of Kleenex by the bed was not a good look in those days.
Anyway new doors and avenues of exploration were opening before me, but where could I find real information? I had no idea and amongst my peer group it was either a no-go area or just filled with nudge-nudge wink-wink big boys talk. I was on my own and for me the answer was books. I tried the dictionary and yes in those days it simply described masturbation as “self-abuse”, which wasn’t very helpful. However my father was a doctor and I found a huge volume called Cunningham’s Text Book of Anatomy from the Oxford University Press 1937. This 1500 page academic tome was well illustrated with photographs of naked men and a whole chapter on the Uro-Genital System with graphic illustrations. It was highly informative, but not very sexy. To make up for that I found on the bookshelf nearby the classic photo documentary book The Family of Man, created by Edward Steichen for the Museum of Modern Art in 1955. Now I am sure this was not the intended usage of a book documenting the greatest photographic exhibition of all time, but already on page 3 there is a naked lady lying in a forest. There is a lot of reality, wonder and romance in the many photographs, but of much more importance to me at the time was the appearance of a few naked ladies. I was desperate.
Expanding my search through the bookshelves I finally found a cache of sexual classics, not hidden exactly, but well out of the way. These books were to be my window on a hidden world. I started with the Kama Sutra which proved interesting, but rather frustrating, not sexy enough. There was also The Jewel in the Lotus by Allen Edwardes, written in 1959 and apparently a historical survey of sexual culture in the East. More down to earth and sometimes plain obscene was The Perfumed Garden by Sheik Nefzawi, a fifteenth century Arabic sex manual, translated in 1886 by Sir Richard Burton. Now this book was really the business, both serious and lascivious, I found it very arousing. Of course I could not take these books away, I could not not wank while reading them, they had to be read surreptitiously and immediately replaced in the bookcase. They were my secret. Then I discovered Walter, My Secret Life. This book was closer to home, allegedly being the memoirs of an unknown Victorian gentleman and his erotic life, involving many prostitutes and brothels. It has been prosecuted for obscenity many times and was only finally legally published in 1995. This was an edited two volume set, apparently there were eleven volumes in total and Wikipedia describes it as “one of the strangest and most obsessive books ever written”. Opening the book at nearly any page there was a panoply of detailed sexual encounters.
So after the brief period of night emissions I would get home from school, read a bit from the from the naughty library, carefully replace the book and then retire to the toilet with a Sunday Colour magazine or a copy of Vogue. In retrospect I am pretty sure my mother knew what I was up to, but nothing was ever said. At this time, and for many years, I did not have any “dirty“ magazines. I was far too intimidated to purchase them, if not too young, and in any case there seemed to be no safe place to hide them. This was not the case at school, where there was a lively blackmarket for copies of Parade. This remarkably cheap pinup weekly, had originally been named Blighty Parade and aimed at servicemen. A bit more raunchy was Fiesta, which as the cheapest “porno“ magazine (bare breasts only at the time), became very popular. The sexuality portrayed was down to earth and blatant, reinforced by having the first Readers Wives section. Playboy was occasionally available, but regarded as too expensive, classy and American, although with better printing. I believe it was the centre spread from Fiesta, which was attached to the inside of the new boy’s desk in our class, who had no truck with such publications. We all enjoyed the look of horror on his face, yet the irony was that he would become the biggest heart throb in our school only a few years later. At the time he would not believe that his parents could possibly have had sex. O tempora, o mores!
Sex education at school was relatively farcical, and none of the teachers wanted to undergo the embarrassment. Different teachers tried, they all failed, there was no textbook. As part of these occasional lessons we were invited to write down our questions on bits of paper, to overcome our own apprehension. I wrote “What is menstruation”, leading to a prolonged bout of blushing by our teacher when read out in class. I never did receive an accurate explanation, although I already knew the answer. There was one event of note which has stayed with me, there was a school cinema trip to see Helga, a West German Federal Government sex education documentary. This was a very graphic movie including a live birth, and we needed special permission to see it, being under age. Pretty sure my parents had to sign the dispensation, and as a result only half the class made it to the cinema. It taught me more about sexuality than any of our lessons, and I was very taken with Helga herself. For many years this was the most explicit movie I had the privilege of seeing.
I started experimenting with different places, our toilet did not feel right. Down the end of our road was a wild piece of bracken and paths next to the golf course. While exploring there I found a damp stash of abandoned dirty magazines, which proved to be an exciting discovery. After a few visits on my bike, they disappeared and I thought about making my own secret stash there. Nothing came of it, simply too uncomfortable among all the brambles. Another time I found a building site with a stack of magazines left by the builders, I became a regular visitor on Sunday when no-one was about. Pictures of Lily solved my childhood problems sang the Who, and how right they were, they helped me feel alright. Once on a long boring holiday drive through France I had been amusing myself with sexual fantasies. We stopped at a mountain lay-by and I ran off to have a wank over the glorious view, quite risky but eminently worthwhile. Sometimes the urge to wank would simply overcome me, this happened particularly in afternoon history lessons at school, teacher droning on, dull as ditchwater. Yes I got caught in flagrante by a schoolmate, said I had itchy balls, but this did manage to rather put me off the idea. Later I had a fondness for wanking in other peoples bathrooms, always made it seem more dramatic. Must have been a consummate red-faced liar by this time.
One of the problems of my adolescence was the unexpected erection. This could occur at any time, no erotic thoughts or stimulation needed, this thing appeared to have a mind of it’s own. That is one of the reasons I have never worn those loose boxer shorts, and I found that even Y fronts appeared to have an escape hole. I was sitting innocently on the train home from school and suddenly the sharp eyed girls noticed a pointy lump in my trousers. I shifted position as if uncomfortable, but it was too late, my dick had escaped from my Y fronts and there was little I could do about it. I went bright puce and shrugged my shoulders. I was powerless to conceal the truth, there we are folks. Even worse was being caught in my pyjamas early one Sunday morning, dick sticking straight out through the loose fabric fly. My mother came into the room and I attempted to hide behind the empty dining room table, shuffling nervously. She asked what I was doing and I mumbled some blatant excuse. I presume she realised what was going on, because I was quickly left in peace. Ever since I have worn good tight briefs, hold it in place man.
A few years later both my parents were often at work, so if I got off school early I had the house to myself. I proceeded to explore their bedroom and found such erotic classics as Fanny Hill, Portnoy’s Complaint and In Praise of Older Women. In addition there were some old copies of Playboy and Mayfair in the bedside cabinet. Much more exciting was a copy of The Joy of Sex subtitled A Gourmet Guide to Lovemaking, a British illustrated sex manual. To get round censorship issues this book did not have photographs but pen and ink line drawings. As a result they were highly explicit for the time, while also conveying a certain sensitivity and tenderness. I did not find them highly erotic, the bearded man didn’t help much, but this groundbreaking and popular book was certainly informative. For just a few weeks I did find some copies of the truly pornographic Danish publication Color Climax. This was well printed in A5 format with full orgy photo stories, from the fully clothed meeting, then oral, then anal, of course intercourse and finally the naked ejaculation. Not much has changed from this template. I presume these illegal magazines must have been loaned from a friend, dad had not been to Denmark, where pornography had been legalised in 1969. This was the the first hardcore pornography I had ever seen, it was both highly arousing and intimidating, if not slightly unpleasant. It was though a relief, in some ways, to finally see the real thing: pornography in color.
The rest of the magazine bares no resemblance to this opening spread…
I spent a year in France as a language assistant, where pornography had been legalised. Here I saw the gamut of poorly made sexploitation movies in the local town cinema. This was still a novelty so the cinema would be quite busy, and it seemed bizarre to be watching this smut with the headmaster of the school where I worked. The French didn’t care, in fact I discovered their sensitivity in these and other sexual matters were quite different to the prim British mores. In the local town there was a red light area, many blatant prostitutes on one lively street. I often walked down this street in fascination, though not temptation, to visit the school where a friend from the UK worked. As well as Deep Throat and The Devil in Miss Jones I did get to see one moving and powerful film in Paris featuring real sex, In the Realm of the Senses (Ai no Koriida) by Nagisa Oshima. Well over a million people saw this film in France, it was finally released in the UK in 1991. Fortified by this sexual liberation I was possessed to buy a gift for my parents, which I presumed would be unavailable in the UK. For reasons beyond me I chose Histoire d’O by Pauline Réage, beautifully illustrated with gothic line drawings by Guido Crepax. It was a proper large coffee table hardback edition, very popular in France, despite the S&M undertones. It was welcomed with a forced smile and obviously went nowhere near a coffee table in our house. What was I thinking? I blame the Marquis de Sade.
I have decided to end Part One of this memoir here, while I was still a frustrated virgin. Of course the wanking continued (to my surprise), but the whole situation becomes more complicated, if not compromising, when involved in a relationship. I should make it clear here that somehow my sexual fantasy life and my real sexual life have alway remained separate, though they are interconnected, because that seems to be healthier to me. I can also say that real sex is so much more than having a wank, that I feel embarrassed to put them in the same sentence. It’s the difference between fantasy and reality.
Of the many lurid texts I have read, this simple phrase has proven to be a sincere comfort:
“I move not without thy knowledge” Epictetus (c. 50-135 AD)
How do you dance when you are 14? How do you even know what to do, without looking stupid? My solution was to copy the girls, they all seemed so self assured as they shuffled mellifluously. I was in the Church Hall of St James Church, Birkdale, Southport. It was at least dark, which helped my embarrassment, since this was before the arrival of the flashing disco lights. It was my first experience of a discotheque, and my first dance song was the hit of the day, Sugar Sugar by the Archies. This classic of bubblegum pop had a moronic and repeating rhythm, which seemed to make dancing easy. I was already aware it lacked the danger of say The Rolling Stones or even the funk of Tamla, but this was after all a church disco, and even the suggestion of kissing a girl seemed quite outré, in the building which had been my Sunday School. Well I had broken the spell, and managed to dance in public, although no-one could see me, all for the better. The narrow horizons of the Church Hall disco would soon spread out into the brand new world of the discotheque, which would later become the de facto night out. It never failed to amaze me that I was listening to the most orgasmic song ever, Je t’aime by Serge Gainsbourg, while next door the the vicar would be sermonising against all this sexual behaviour among young people. Down the disco was the only place I could hear this song, since I did not have a record player and it was banned by the BBC.
Of course Je t’aime was not much good for dancing, it was the smooching song played at the end of the night. The real staple of dancing was Motown, in fact Tamla Motown Chartbusters Volume 3 was practically a disco in it’s own right and used as such for house parties on a Dansette. The girls laid down their handbags and jackets and danced in a circle around them, a little club it was often difficult to break into. As a guy there was always a question, could you dance on your own? Sometimes the boys would form their own little circles, but they did not last long, after all you were supposed to be picking up girls. At some places it was OK to dance with a guy, but often you felt obliged to ask a girl for a dance, even though you might not fancy them at all. It was not deemed gay as such to dance with a guy, since that usage of the word did not yet exist for us, nor in reality did the concept. The insult was to be called a “homo”, but most people didn’t bother with that, they knew you just wanted to have some fun and enjoy the music.
The world of church hall discos expanded into sports clubs and eventually schools. Once you got in, sports clubs were cool since you could buy under age alcoholic drinks with no questions asked, while obviously at the church hall disco the staple drink was Cola. Some school discos were more like snogging contests, the dancing used as a polite introduction. Couples would then be seated all along the walls, french kissing for hours, forgetting the perfunctory disco. Dancing at the time was pretty basic and followed the sedate formula seen on Ready, Steady, Go and then Top of the Pops. Being a good dancer appeared to involve fancy footwork, as if we were all auditioning to be Irish dancers. Yep a few steps forward, a few back, what we would now call Dad Dancing. Occasionally for a rock song there would be a bit more animation from the guys, involving leaning over and shaking the head to and fro. If you were lucky a bit of jumping might be acceptable.
This was the situation at my first school disco, where I finally experienced proper rock music and managed to dance to it. The excitement was palpable when any of the following records were played: Summertime Blues by The Who, Paranoid by Black Sabbath and Black Night by Deep Purple. We felt we were experiencing the dawn of a new age, the search was on for “heavy” music, which was at the cutting edge of our adolescent experiences. This music belonged to us, our parents could not comprehend it. Near the end of that sweaty night, the lights suddenly came on, a Stanley knife had been found on the floor. There was often an undercurrent of violence at these dance venues, which you could put down to peer groups, nascent gangs or just the basic enmity between different schools. I avoided all this macho posturing as much as I could, but you had to be aware of when the trouble might start. My school did not hold another disco.
Another key dancing experience was at a Caravan Park in Woolacombe, Devon. For the first time I went on holiday with friends and not parents. As part of the provided entertainments there was a nightly disco, designed for families and bar regulars. The most popular song was Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep by Middle of the Road, need one say more. However during the evening there was usually a Rock interlude, and then the 5 of us would take over the dancefloor, trying to outdo each other. There were no girls to dance with and we didn’t care, this was a celebration of youth culture and showing off. Hardly anybody else wanted to dance to these songs anyway, but we loved In My Own Time by Family, Devils Answer by Atomic Rooster and Won’t Get Fooled Again by The Who. After a few days we knew every word and electric chord and were jumping all over the place, fuelled by the local cider. I spent some time perfecting my split leg jumps to the power chords of Pete Townshend, it wasn’t easy to do that on time. The locals managed to put up with us, maybe we were deemed part of the entertainment. Of course, being under age, we couldn’t dance anywhere else.
Shortly after this the music scene was hit by T.Rextasy, all the girls seemed to love Marc Bolan. For a time T.Rex seemed to be all there was to dance to, and I did quite like Get It On and Hot Love. However it all seemed a bit retro and vapid, lacking in funk. At the time the Charts were a battleground, we all had our favourites, which helped define our personalities. At 6pm on a Sunday there was the Top 30 Chart Show on Radio 1, which was listened to in both horror and amazement, depending on who got to Number 1. Bizarrely it was followed by Sing Something Simple, as if to calm us all down. Over on television there was Top of the Pops on the following Thursday, where T.Rex had made their name with Marc wearing glitter and make-up. My most vivid memory of watching the show was the day my father declared the end of British civilisation while watching Sweet. Maybe he had missed the wondrous transgressions of David Bowie. Slowly TOTP seemed to become even more of a marketing exercise, with the real music appearing on Old Grey Whistle Test, where the groups actually played their own instruments, although there was less dancing on view.
And then came my Latin revolution. At the time I did not even realise I was listening to Latin music, it was all Rock to me of a particularly funky variety, with beautiful guitar playing. I am talking about Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen by Santana. I already knew and liked the original Fleetwood Mac version, but this was the song that started a new dancing style, my hips took on a life of their own. The break as they segue into Gypsy Queen and the tempo slowly increases was like a magic potion to me. I could certainly dance to this on my own, in fact usually had to, since I was behaving like some kind of whirling dervish. The first time was in Southport Rugby Club, surrounded by muscle men. Vague sense of danger, but I was kindly regarded as some kind of hippy loon. Only rarely was this record played in discos at the time, so you had to make the most of it. I believe I certainly made the most of it a few years later at a disco bar in Biarritz and upset the locals. Out of the blue I was punched to the dancefloor and received a good kicking, dancing can be a dangerous business. With shouts of pédé ringing in my ears, I hightailed it out of there, to be met with much tea and sympathy. I am still dancing to Latin music, but a bit more aware that the dancing style should match the situation.
Now all this is not exactly Idiot Dancing, that was yet to come. However I wrote the phrase “Bring Back Idiot Dancing” on my work folder around this time. I was already feeling I had missed the Sixties, that the craziness I had witnessed in the film Woodstock had disappeared and we were stuck in a kind of anodyne normalcy, behaviour could only go so far. I was proved wrong, yet by this time I had been to some exceptional rock concerts by The Who, The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin, but these were not dance events, there was no raving. At concerts you had to go right to the back to dance, you couldn’t dance properly in a packed, seated venue, let alone stand up. Of course at a good concert, you all jumped out of your chairs for the last song or encore and shimmied about, but you cannot call that proper dancing. Later at non-seated venues like Pathfoot at Stirling University I began to experience the mass psychosis and craziness that a thousand people raving together could bring on.
So now, for the time being, Rock became predominant. Everything else seemed lightweight, if not uncool. I was schooled by Darrell Jay’s Progressive Music Show at the Dixieland Showbar on Southport Pier, a huge ballroom. Here we preened to Rebel, Rebel by David Bowie, but eschewed the southern rock of Lynyrd Skynyrd. Can you dance to Be Bop Deluxe? Only with difficulty I found out. Meanwhile at Stirling University there was a free disco every night in the most amazing Student’s Union, The Grange. There was a bar, then some seats and tables alongside the DJ booth. In the middle of this large room there was a dancefloor, and then at the back, raised up and in the dark, sat all the dope dealers. Here the beer was 9d a pint or about £1 today (it was subsidised) and dope cookies were available on Tuesdays. So yes dancing nearly every night to all forms of rock known to man in 1973, as well as a fair bit of soul and then some plain weird stuff. The dancefloor was only about 5 metres wide and could become absolutely rammed, but anything went there. I learned how to dance in a confined space and still enjoy myself. I befriended the DJ’s to find out how they chose their music, but they were not very informative. Still in my second year I became the DJ Convenor for Stirling and managed the discos at Pathfoot, which would open a few days a week after the Grange closed at 10pm. We had 2 turntables, but usually no microphone. People could bellow in your ear for requests. The must play record was Alright Now by Free, not forgetting Brown Sugar by The Rolling Stones and Layla by Derek and the Dominos. I would try to slip in the heaviest song I knew, The Nile Song by Pink Floyd. However this was only available on the Relics album, side 2 track 4, and was very difficult to cue up in the darkness, so I often gave up. Also I would attempt to slip in a few tracks which I wanted to dance to, although vacating the DJ turntables was frowned upon. Silence was a sin. We danced to my selection of the hits, which I had a budget to choose and purchase every week.
Around this time I met Eric (and his pet rat), who was a big Northern Soul fan. Wow he could dance and in a totally new way, gliding around like a cool well oiled machine, none of that stomping and angular histrionics found in the student rock fan. I then discovered that people liked what they knew, and inserting a Northern Soul section into my playlist did not go down well with a writhing mass of drunken students at Pathfoot. This was old soul music and not regarded as cool, though on the other hand they loved It’s Better To Have (And Don’t Need) by Don Covay and demanded Superstition by Stevie Wonder. Not to be put off, I found some smooth leather soled shoes, which could allow you to swish around a wooden dancefloor, with your feet never leaving the ground. All the action became contained in the hips, incredibly fast and smooth. This was my home made version of the style used at Wigan Casino (without the dips), which I succeeded in trying out at the disco behind the Scarisbrick Hotel in Southport. However I soon found out this style did not work for Rock or on carpets, and I never plucked up the courage to go to Wigan Casino itself. There was also a high risk of ending up on your arse, if you got over excited.
Talking of gliding around, I did learn to waltz while working in France and it was wonderful. Well it was just one night, and the elderly teachers at the Lycée where I was working took me on board and taught some basic steps. Of course I was never leading, but by the end of the evening I was floating round the room, aided by some glasses of Crémant. It was never as good again. Everyone in France appeared to have gone to dance school, it was all Le Roc (a form of swing and jive dancing), there was no freeform or solo dancing. Eventually I approximated a clumsy form of this, using my waltz steps, but felt constrained and I constantly went off-piste, which did not go down well. What happened to the Rock revolution I wondered, it was like dancing in the 50s. I did not want to remember steps but to express myself. It felt like being one of the regimented souls on the original Come Dancing, which I despised. There was one fantastic night in Paris at a small sweaty club watching the crazy rock group Au Bonheur des Dames (like Sha Na Na meet Bonzo Dog Band) perform Oh Les Filles, the crowd intermingling and dancing like people possessed for the whole set, no sign of Le Roc, but plenty of hand holding, hip swinging, clapping and shouting. Magnifique!
Then came Punk, I cut my hair and loved the spirit, but you could hardly call it dance music, more like a mosh pit of anger and idiocy. You can only pogo up and down in one kinda way. As mosh pits go, Grannies in Cardiff with Stiff Little Fingers was pretty intense. Ian Curtis of Joy Division was certainly a mesmerising performer to watch, which I did at The Nashville Rooms in Kensington, but there were only a few tracks such as Transmission which I wanted to dance to. Soul music was the guilty pleasure of my Punk years. This was reinforced by going to see John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, which I secretly loved and introduced me to K.C. and the Sunshine Band, but it was regarded as deeply unhip by my punk counterparts. The Disco wars had started and never the twain shall meet. That did not stop me from buying a Chic 12” on the same day as a 7” single by the Clash. I can fairly say that Shame by Evelyn ‘Champagne’ King is one heck of a record, but I might not have proclaimed that back in the day. I had missed the early records of Michael Jackson, but when I first heard Billie Jean it was electrifying. Down the empty disco I had no-one to dance with, so I ended up dancing with a pillar. Since then I have regularly used pillars as dancing partners, you can hang onto them or swing round, push away or nudge up to them. At a squeeze, walls can also provide a platform to bounce off or get close to, I love dancing with walls. If needs must, you understand.
There is a certain unwritten etiquette involved when you dance in public. Firstly you have to choose your space carefully, a favourite of mine was the gap in front of the speakers. If it’s too busy there try and carve out a space on the edge or in the shadows, which allows you to manoeuvre into a better position. Try not to come between couples or break into groups, unless invited. Once there, at least make an effort to synchronise your movements in some way or another, a lot of good dance moves are learnt by copying others. Lots of eye contact, respect all around and make clear your intentions. Sometimes I would dance with other people, at other times just on my own to get lost in the music. If there’s a pack of wild dancers down the front, head in and join them, it’s a communal activity after all, and give everyone the space they need as you interweave. Watch out for and avoid the flailing drunks, just move on if you feel uncomfortable. The worst mistake is standing on other people’s toes, always apologise. My biggest bugbear is people just standing there, not properly dancing, like some kind of bollard taking up valuable dancefoor space. Participate in those good times!
Falling out of love with the bombastic nature of Rock, it was African music that came to the rescue. The first real soukous music I heard was by Franco & T.P.O.K. Jazz, but it was his countryman Kanda Bango Man who I got to see and fell in love with. He appeared at WOMAD in the I.C.A, and the Africa Centre in Covent Garden, no seats there and room to dance. Nearly every song was an exhortation to dance, by the dynamic frontman. The revelation was the interweaving of the guitar line by Diblo Dibala, the very fluidity of his playing encouraging you to nearly ignore the rhythm and simply follow his swaying melodies raining down on you like an excited waterfall. Wikipedia says of Kanda Bongo Man “His form of soukous gave birth to the kwassa kwassa dance rhythm where the hips move back and forth while the hands move to follow the hips.” Reggae was also becoming popular, but that required a very laid back shuffle after a few blunts, not quite my animated style. Much more to my taste was Papa’s got a brand new Pigbag, an anarchic mix of tribal rhythms, James Brown bassline and funky jazz. I then tried Sol Y Sombra , a world music club in Charlotte Street, London, but it was all a bit fey and earnest dance wise, for me at least. The search was on.
Heaven. That was what proved me wrong. Heaven was a Cathedral of Dance, and probably still is. This is a gay club underneath the Arches at Charing Cross, London. The entrance is down an intimidating tunnel and to gain admittance you had to demonstrate you were gay, in which I falsely succeeded. Once inside there was a luxurious bar area and then the most cavernous dance hall I had ever seen. Not only that, the sound system was poundingly 3D loud, my bones were vibrating, while the lighting spread the length of the entire hall scanning and pulsating in time to the hi-energy music. The place was full of men, only men, frugging as if their life depended on the music, amazing dancers of all types. They carried on regardless all night, showing off their moves in a splendid array of S&M costumes. It was all bit much for little me, if not intimidating, but upstairs there was a chill-out bar with occasional live music where I could relax. This apparently was a superclub, I had never seen the like of it, dancing had arrived and was simply massive. All that came later (House, Raves, EDM) pales into insignificance with this first revelation, I have never been in a more amazing dance venue. I went back many times, saw friends performing upstairs, New Order downstairs, and my best man was the star of the first gay play performed there. I was also called out by a good gay friend for going there when I wasn’t gay, I didn’t care. Nevertheless I did not always feel at ease dancing there, it was all a bit motorik after a while, plus I was me on my own usually and felt a bit exposed, had to keep moving around, it was a predatory place. I was not part of the club, just a visitor. I remember going to The Fridge in Brixton and seeing Leigh Bowery, but he was a fashion icon rather than a dancer, plus I just wasn’t in the mood for dancing that night. Still, if you wanted to dance, gay clubs were the place to be in the early 80s.
There is no doubt who was the greatest idiot dancer. It was Jesus aka William Jellet, who really was an idiot, or at least severely misguided. Some of his quotes include “I never wanted to be Jesus, but I realised I was”; “Music has been used by God to open up people to find their true spiritual selves.”; “I’m completely free of the forces man has created, which stop him from being himself”; “If you want to know the truth, listen to Jimi Hendrix”. From the late sixties onwards and for many decades he would be the first man standing at a gig, his long blond hair waving over his kaftan (if he was wearing clothes that day), freaking out to the music in a sepulchral manner. He appears in several films of the period, including Cream’s last 1968 performance at The Albert Hall, The Stones in the Park in 1969 and the 1971 Glastonbury Fayre. One acquaintance said he told her that he loved Isadora Duncan and admired her for her free dance form, and that it was his bounden duty to dance. I first saw him at the Reading Festival in 1974 and forever after he would crop up at a huge variety of venues, even at punk gigs, although his preference appeared to be for the hippy era bands. He was often greeted with an ironic cheer when he stood up to start dancing, sometimes with maracas or bongos, and he was a regular at The Marquee in Wardour Street. For me he was an inspiration, the first man standing and you always felt he was behaving out of a sense of admiration for, and surrender to, the music. There is an excellent article about his life and crazy times by J.P. Robinson at Medium, from which these quotes are taken. There was also Stacia Blake, who danced with Hawkwind, but I think you would have to call her a professional, I presume she was paid. The same goes for Bez with Happy Mondays, a few decades later. Another public figure who I saw dancing like a dervish was Gareth Sager of Rip, Rig and Panic. This stands out since we were at an Ornette Coleman gig in the Victoria Theatre, Pimlico. Usually no-one dances at free jazz gigs, although this time there were two drummers and a pounding bassline from the album Dancing in your Head. It was a lesson that you could really dance to anything.
I may not be a trained dancer, but I did follow some movement courses. For nearly a year I had to move like an Orangutang every morning at 10am. This was part of theatre training at the Sherman Theatre, Cardiff, where I also learned some basic tumbles and acrobatics. These classes have stayed with me and certainly influenced my dancing. I also met my first professional dancers there, truly dedicated and fit people, even if they were always getting injured. They used to rehearse to the great roots album The Path by Ralph MacDonald, a percussionist influenced by both Trinidad and New York. It was at this time that Mike Bradwell of Hull Truck Theatre impressed me by saying his actors never went to the gym, but down the disco instead. Indeed, the BBC has stated that dancing is one of the best ways to reverse the ageing process. Years later I spent a good few years studying Tai Chi, I took those dexterous hand movements and incorporated them into my style, to the extent that I now dance a much speeded up version of that art form, with a bit of clapping included. I also worked with some professional dancers in theatrical and alternative productions. Again their work ethic was second to none, but they were useless down the disco, maybe it was too much like work. I saw Ballet Rambert in in 1976 doing proper modern dance, loved them. Later the seminal Michael Clark with The Fall at Sadlers Wells showed me how disparate art forms could work together, while my modern dance favourites were The Featherstonehaughs. The greatest dancer I ever saw was Louise Lecavalier of La La La Human Steps performing Human Sex in 1985 at The Town and Country Club, Kentish Town, London. Incredibly physical and acrobatic to a pounding, fractured live rock soundtrack. A thousand barrel rolls, a thousand swoops and swings, this was a work of unfettered abandon. Closer to home my flatmate was in Zoo, the hip TOTP follow up to Pan’s People, now he could dance and do the dips, great fun! My dance style is the culmination of all these influences, I hope.
It is important to remember why I was going out to these clubs. As opposed to most of my friends, I was not trying to pick anyone up, get drunk or score drugs, though that may have happened. If there was no dancing, or I just stood watching, the evening was a disappointment. Many a time at a party I retreated into a corner and started dancing with myself. There would be no dancing if I didn’t like the music, I was strict about that, but as you have seen I would dance to nearly anything. Sometimes though I just wasn’t inspired, you had to feel the music begin to pulse through you, get ready for take-off, then make your move. At other times the music was so funky I just had to start the dancing, get the party started. Dancing is like a virus, someone has to get infected. These were often the best moments, you had to find your style for that moment, be totally engaged, prove the validity of the music. And of course one was on show, so you did your best in the circumstances. Too much flailing or being too fast would put off the other dancers, this had to measured, you were aiming for mass participation. I often failed.
There are many ways to dance to songs and sometimes it is the very words which become the expressive root. I was in a small back street bar in Antiparos, Greece called The Doors. As the night progressed tables were cleared and the tiny floor became a writhing mess of bodies, with people also perched on the bar and chairs, shaking along to the music. As expressed by the name, this was a rock venue, and unexpectedly the highpoint was Hurricane by Bob Dylan. This is not a dance song, but a story song, and the words became the source of the movement. I knew every word and proceeded to act them out, howling the key lines along with Bob. A similar experience happened with Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen at The Boogaloo on Archway Road in London. The very intonations of the words can provide the rhythm for dance. It is your choice what aspect of a song to dance to, usually it is the percussion, sometimes the bassline. If a song feels a bit slow pick out the tambourine or congas, they are often at double tempo. The problem with a lot of electronic dance music it that it mandates the rhythm, you are locked in with no real variation for minutes on end, I soon get bored. Dancing should be dynamic, not formulaic.
This is a description of my behaviour at a jazz venue, Cafe Oto for example. I am sitting down because that’s what you do. I still can’t believe how static people are listening to live music. I know some people don’t like to dance, in particularly many of my musician friends, yet I get a strong physical reaction necessitating movement. The music plays, light rhythm, singer songwriter on electric guitar with cool amplified foot beat. The audience sit there like Easter Island statues, kinda riveted and not moving. Out of the corner of my eye I see a lady holding a glass. There is one finger tapping it. I am a mess of subdued kinetic movement. Right now my head is sharply flicking maybe five degrees every few seconds, mainly to the left. My arse is constantly shifting weight in time to the music, the muscles there causing a rolling motion in my torso. The shoulders too are rolling, moving back and forth about one to two centimetres. Legs currently stationary, being careful with a bottle under the chair. All quite contained. I look around again, no one is moving. A few minutes later I have shifted position and my legs are at about 90 bpm, bouncing on the toes. My head has calmed down. No one else is moving. Are we listening to the same music? Why am I the only person moving?
Maybe after that I should provide a little list of my own great dance experiences, although you have to imagine them since talking about dancing is even worse than trying to describe music. OK, dancing barefoot on hessian mats to the Ace Records soul extravaganza (featuring Jimmy McCracklin), feet a mass of blisters the following day and I could hardly walk. Dancing calypso with a Prime Minister, Maurice Bishop of Grenada, cruelly assassinated a few years later. On La Isla Bonita with squaddies in Belize, quite competitive. In China dancing solo in a an empty venue the size of Camden Palace with a 16 piece band – just to show them how it’s done. Down Philip Sallon’s Mud Club, in various London venues, all of a haze now. Standing on the chairs at the Royal Festival Hall as the crowd erupts over Khaled, all night. The Tropicana Beach Club, off Drury Lane, non stop samba party, and what a great dance club! Freaking out to The Hives at the back of The Roundhouse. The bass speakers at Cargo in Hackney going right through me, giving me palpitations. Bukky Leo at Passing Clouds in Dalston, packed full of Fela Kuti rhythms. The Big Chill and Womad festivals, too many events to remember. Most recently at a Disco Soul night in Hornsey Town Hall, for maybe the last time. Lots of kudos from the young people that evening. Many a time I have been asked what drugs I am on, or whether I have some to sell. The answer is always “Nothing. I am high on the music, Thank You”.
When I say Idiot dancing, I am referring to a totally freeform type of movement in response to the music. It can be of any style, but energised with a sense of wildness, even danger. I love kinetic performers, reacting to their music. The best recent example is Samuel T. Herring of Future Islands dancing to Seasons (Waiting On You), as seen on the Jools Holland TV programme. I dashed out and bought the record, trying to incorporate some of his moves into my own style. Another revelation was Beyoncé on her first solo hit Crazy In Love, that performance turned her into a star, every word actuated with movement. Certain records instantly make me want to dance, for many years the best was Boogie Wonderland by Earth, Wind and Fire, at other times Finally by Ce Ce Peniston or Too Blind To See It by Kym Sims. A certain record can just click into place, it consumes you, you forget yourself and life can’t get better. This has happened dancing to Step It Up by the Stereo MC’s, My Baby Just Cares for Me by Nina Simone and You Get What You Give by New Radicals. You have to get involved to get the feeling, the unexpected are often the best, trust the DJ and follow his lead. “Enjoy this trip and it is a trip” said S-Express on one of the craziest and most stupid dance records ever, a glorious meaningless wind-up. It has all calmed down a bit these days, so to conclude on an elegiac note here is a quote from the album Record – Nine euphoric feminist bangers from Tracey Thorn – or so says the sticker.
Dancefloor by Tracey Thorn (2018)
Play me Good Times, Shame Golden Years, let the music play It’s where i’d like to be Is on a dancefloor with some drinks inside of me Oh it’s where i’d like to be
This is a list of the issues confronting the cyclist in London. In theory we are supposed to be enjoying a new government push to encourage cycling. New cycle lanes and bike superhighways are being built, some of which are excellent. However many of them simply end at the roundabout or busy junction, they are hard to find and badly signposted. In addition scant respect is paid to cycle lanes by drivers, often ignoring or parking in them, while the bike box at traffic lights is regularly full of cars.
Potholes!
Well, obviously first on the list are potholes. Here are three in a row. On their own they are dangerous enough, causing hospital visits by simply throwing people off their bikes. Combined with the dangers of traffic, you are often forced to take evasive action confusing other road users who will not be looking at the parlous state of the road.
In this example you are forced to cycle in the middle of the road, competing with traffic accelerating away from the traffic lights. PS: Hole is even bigger now!
Same A Road a year later – complete leg breaker!
The Road Narrows
This is a particular bugbear of mine. Sometimes the road narrows because of roadworks, which can often drag on for months. Recently they are often building bike lanes, but during construction the cyclist often has nowhere to go, endangering themselves and other road users. Yet often the road appears to narrow by design, either as a traffic calming measure or to aid pedestrians. On a busy road these are a disaster waiting to happen, we are suddenly much too close to buses and heavy lorries, often feeling forced to pull out in front of them, hoping we get noticed. Below is a classic example in my local high street, they are supposed to be making wider pavements for social distancing.
This A Road will soon be a liability for cyclists.
Is there room to get through? Who takes priority? Dangerous decisions forced upon cyclists by narrowing the road.
The Cliff Edge
I understand the reasoning behind sleeping policemen, they are to slow the traffic. However when the speed limit in Camden and Islington is usually 20mph, how much slower can you go? In addition they appear to be some kind of work creation scheme, 1 or 2 is never enough, they sprout everywhere. Why on earth are there so many on bus routes?
For the cyclist they may be annoying, but some are so badly conceived and made that I find them plain dangerous.
In this example the camber to the gutter is simply too much, you are forced to ride at least a foot away from the pavement on a busy and narrow road.
Perhaps keeping the yellow line was more important than safety.
Skid Pans
Yes I have done it, that is skidded on the metal street furniture that infests our roads. I now avoid them assiduously, however on busy roads that is not always possible. In wet or icy conditions these metal plates are particularly dangerous, please no braking or turning while bumping over them.
I hope to post a better example of one placed bang in the middle of a right hand turn.
Signposts for Cyclists
If they exist, signposts for cyclists are confusing and way too small. Why are they blue like motorway signs? Signs are important for all road users, we should not have to stop in order to read them. Many “signs” for cyclists are placed on the road and soon deteriorate. There needs to be a national signage for cyclists campaign.
In this example the sign is just plain wrong. The road is NOT No Entry for cyclists, it has a bicycle lane.
The intimidating camera sign should of course say “Except for Cyclists”.
Crying Wolf
This temporary sign is an insult. It is supposed to tell cyclists to slow down, because they are outside a school. However since the school is closed, like on this Sunday, it should not be there. This sign is fake news, there is no reason whatsoever to slow down. The more fake signs there are just encourages cyclists to ignore all signs. Stop crying Wolf !
Bollard in the Road
What is this black bollard doing here? It appears to be of no practical use, but is particularly dangerous to cyclists, especially at night. Surrounding the bollard are 8 confusing signs, distracting the cyclist. The bollard is completely black, nothing reflective, it simply disappears at night. Remove this dangerous piece of useless road furniture now!
These are just a few examples from my local area, which I hope to add to in the near future. Happy Cycling!