B*Witched, bothered and B*Wildered

The last poster magazine I published was in August 1998, the month pop music died – for me anyway.

     I’d watched it dying for 20 years. It was like shoving your mum into a care home when she’s 85 and a complete burden and seeing her live until she’s 105 after spending every last penny of her substantial savings, including the house, on the fucking fees.

     Okay, I admit, I was getting older. But throughout the eighties and most of the nineties I had to know everything about pop music in order to make a lucrative living out of publishing mags about the latest flames from Aha to Hanson. I’d turned into a 40 year-old man who scanned the Smash Hits dominated pop mag shelves in Smith’s and Menzies looking for inspiration. How pervy was that?

     Like I said, I published postermags. You remember them – looked like a normal mag on the racks but opened up into a giant poster of the featured artist with a load of coolly designed guff and photos on the back.

     The biggest selling poster mag I ever published was right at the start of my new career – 1980. We distributed 65,000 copies of ‘Adam Ant – King of the Wild Frontier’ and sold 60,000. It was all downhill after that and I knew someday it would end, but magazines on John Lennon, The Beatles, Wham, Culture Club, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Aha, Kylie, Jason, Bros, Bon Jovi, Elvis, Michael Jackson, Duran Duran, New Kids On The Block, Take That, East 17, Oasis, Blur and the Spice Girls helped me make it through the night.

     The postermag sorted the men from the boys. For every Bros there was a Brother Beyond, for every Kylie there was a Yazz. If a mag didn’t sell you betcha that particular artist wouldn’t be around too long. Sales continued to dwindle throughout the nineties and nothing ever measured up to Mr. Ant again.

     My final featured artist – although I didn’t know it at the time – was B*Witched, the all-girl Irish band with Boyzone connections, who hit the big time with their first few singles. The mag was, for the first time, heading to foreign lands in numbers because the UK market was fucked and Europe was apparently opening up.    

     Well, it didn’t open up for me. The title, along with a number of others on bands I can no longer remember – and don’t fucking want to – that preceded it, sold doodly squat and that was the end of my pop publishing career, one that had lasted 18 years and no passes. Kids didn’t want, didn’t need pop idols anymore; there was a whole new world out there that didn’t involve guitars and sweet harmonies.

      Princess Di dying the previous year didn’t do me any favours either. My tasteful idea for a poster mag was tastefully turned down, but when the sales of Di die mags started shooting through the roof, I was given the go ahead to publish a tasteful funeral special. It was one fat cock-up from beginning to end and I ended up in the High Court without a lawyer – shit creek and paddle my friend –  being sued by the paper supplier for non-payment of a disputed bill. It was shit, fate, and we settled out of court, after I got a lawyer. Ironic. Huh? And the magazine never saw the light of day – but the proofs looked great.

      Oh yeah, and the Spice Girls sued me after I brought out one too many mags ‘celebrating’ their success and I ended up writing out a cheque for a grand made payable to ‘The Spice Girls’ plus an agreement never to publish another. Was that what I wanted, what I really, really wanted? Or was it a case of C’est La Vie as in the world according to B*Witched.

      The years begin and end in the bleak midwinter and the winters of 1998 were the bleakest of all.

      So, let’s celebrate the tenth anniversary of the death of pop music. Let’s all drink to the death of a clown.

       Cathy’s clown...  

 

      I think the strangest moment in the last mightily strange six months came at a book festival where I’d been invited, along with two other writers, to read a few pages from Strip during a non-fiction session. I was up second and the first guy, a renowned author, read from a new work in progress. He was very correct, very straight, very articulate. Not a word was misplaced, not an expletive uttered.

       The bit I read started and ended with fucking – with, I think, a couple more in between. I’d got clearance to swear during the reading from the selection committee. After the third guy, a national paper journalist who did a good off-the-cuff number, the floor was open to questions.

    The renowned author was asked the first question and his answer involved the description of a square in a city overlooked by a, ‘big, fucking dome’. I convinced myself I hadn’t heard it. He never swore again, nobody did during the Q&A, not even a simple ‘shit’. I assumed my ears were tired and emotional and brushed with stardust. Too many fucks on my mind. He never said, ‘fucking’. Never.

    ‘Hey, did you hear him say, ‘fucking’?’ said one of the committee members when she walked into the student bar where I was drinking Guinness with a few 21-year-old guys who knew more about 1977 music than I did. ‘I couldn’t believe it,” she said and looked me straight in the eye. ‘I blame you.’ It was an affectionate, ‘I blame you’, so I didn’t break out into a sweat. We laughed. I haven’t laughed with a 21-year-old girl in many years

 

     The other day I did a radio interview with media celeb Garry Bushell to promote ’77 Sulphate Strip. Garry and Barry, old fashioned names though Garry was far cooler than Barry and lasted longer, finally losing out to one r Gary. You don’t see many Bary’s about, huh?

     Oh, Barry’s okay if you’re Welsh or if it’s a surname – Gene Barry, John Barry, Gareth Barry even Len Barry. But as a Christian name? Gimme a break. And, just to rub salt into the wound, Barry is forever associated with soap’s biggest wanker, a certain Mr Evans, late of Walford Square.

     Garry is an absolute gent and the broadcast was a rollercoaster. We had to re-record some of it again and I couldn’t bring myself to repeat most of the neat little phrases that I’d said the first time around like, ‘pop music in the mid-seventies was rainy days and Mondays and then punk brought sunshine and Saturday nights’. But the broadcast was a frantic joy, laced with lugubrious laughter, Bushellisms and mean music from lean bands, and I got to sit next to a gorgeous ex-Fuzzboxer, the ravishing, flame-haired Vix from Vix n The Kix. Sweets for my sweet, sugar for my honey.

       Garry and I shared a few pints in a Denmark Street bar after the show and talked of love and hope and the old days when our paths, oddly, never crossed despite the fact that he joined Sounds in 1978 when I frequented the same Covent Garden offices but one floor below in Record Mirror. He was Oi and I was coy, maybe. Garry was (and is!) a very talented writer with a wit as sharp as Shaft and as frisky as a sexed up Cocker Spaniel. Check out his website – www.garry-bushell.co.uk – and you’ll see what I mean. Oh and you can catch the FM Podcast on www.TotalRock.com

      Talking of interviews, there’s one by Gary (look ma, no r) Kent with moi on in the latest issue of Burning Up Times on the Strangled.co.uk website which happened to be my first ever. And can I let you into a little secret? I haven’t read it yet even though it’s been live for over a week. I just can’t bring myself to look at the photos and guarded words and fear of flying. I will eventually Gary. I promise, when I pluck up enough courage. Give me just a little more time, and our love will surely grow. Check it out on www.strangled.co.uk 

For Claudia.

The filthiest night of my life

I was sitting in a pub a week or so back in the company of five other blokes for whom middle-age is a fond memory. During a conversation about being parents - it’s an old chestnut but still hot - one of the guys suddenly produced his mobile phone and showed us a photo of his mum, taken recently.

Odd, I thought.

Then another guy did the same thing. Then a third.

As the phones passed from hand to hand I thought, wankers.

Then I realized. I had a photo of my mum on my phone. Shit. Parents are the new kids. It’s like saying, “I’ve still got a mum even though I’m past it. Her existence keeps me young, keeps me a son.”

I never want to stop being a son because the rest is infinity, and I suffer from agorafuckingphobia.

Mind you, I thought it was bizarre when the other two guys produced photos of their mums’ skeletons, each one with its arm raised in a jaunty wave. Old bastards. Their mums are crumbling slowly under the ground, ours are still flying the flag. We’re gonna live longer than you ‘cos

You ain’t got no mum

You ain’t got no mum

Forget Grease, Mum’s the word.

I would’ve loved my mum to take the Chattanooga Choo Choo down to Filthy MacNasty’s last week to see her son shed the tears of a clown (deep inside I’m blue) at Garry Loveridge’s Punk Poster Exhibition.

And my dad – yep, I’ve got a dad as well and that just about makes me immortal. But they’re old and tired and in pain. Hold on, so am I. Lazy buggers. That’s the last time I get their shopping in the Haringey branch of Sainsbury’s. My mum asked me to get desiccated coconut last Saturday. Desiccated coconut! And the tins of fruit have to be the ring pull kind ‘cos they haven’t got the strength to operate a tin opener and they really like mandarin segments but you can’t get mandarin segments in ring pull cans in the Haringey Sainsbury’s yet they still put them down on the shopping list so god knows how they open them. And don’t get me on the fucking flaked almonds.

Anyway, they never made it down to Filthy’s - probably still trying to open the fucking mandarins. Shame, ‘cos this was truly, to quote ex-Poet Laureate Perry Como, a ‘magic moment’ in my life and one that I never dreamed possible just a few weeks ago.  

I was surrounded by people from my past, my present and my future - it doesn’t get any better than that, especially when spiced with strangers. And do I like spicy strangers.

The very wonderful Paul Hallam who runs what is rapidly becoming my favourite pub, originally asked me to do two 20 minute sets. I had to change my pants just reading the email. The last time I ‘performed’ was dressing up as Megan Davies - the unique girl bassist in The Applejacks - in my first year at secondary school (all boys’) during a miming contest. Bad, bad move. I raided my mum’s wardrobe for a suitable outfit thinking it would be cool enough to win, and me and three mates mimed to ‘Tell Me When’.

What a twat. 

The Four Pennies won with ‘Juliet’ and I was slaughtered for the next four years of my life.

But, I wanna sell some books, so I agreed and prepared accordingly. Thankfully, my ‘spot’ came to an end after the first reading from ‘Sulphate’. My mouth was as rough and dry as a mum skeleton’s arse and I was gasping for a Guinness. Where on earth did all those people come from?

So, for those of you who turned up but couldn’t get in, here’s the bit you missed. For those of you who turned up and did get in, here’s the bit you missed. And please, feel free to read along to the readings. It’s like karaoke without the music. And the lyrics…

It’s wonderful to see so many familiar faces here tonight, ravaged by time. It’s particularly wonderful to see the original Record Mirror line-up – take a bow Alf Martin, Dave Brown, Mary Ann Ellis, Jim Evans, Tim Lott, Seamus Potter, Sheila Prophet, Ros Russell, the legendary Robin Smith and Daniella Soave to whom I’ve owed an apology for 28 years. They were there when the world was really spinning but you didn’t want to get off and that’s what made knowing them so special. The fun we shared was immeasurable and it was just about the most exciting year of my life. Now I get excited when David pushes Gail down the stairs in Corrie.

We haven’t kept in touch. It happens. The lives of twenty-somethings change dramatically. In the space of two very short years I went from staff writer at RM to PR to freelance writer to running a music news agency to publishing pop magazines to getting married. It was a rollercoaster ride that took me away from my roots and I often regret buying the ticket. But fuck it, ‘cos mama we’re ALL crazee now!

Great to see the Ovolo posse in tonight and special thanks go my publisher Mark Neeter whose unshakeable faith has been inspiring and my editor Hazel Orme whose unshakeable faith has been inspiring. Thank you both.  

The pop music mag now belongs to all our yesterdays. From the sixties to the nineties it was our companion, compounding our excitement, inspiring us, providing wallpaper for our bedrooms. Now, there’s only one music weekly left; Smash Hits has gone because Smash Hits have gone, and there’s Heat on the street. Pop music ain’t really that important anymore. Our generation caught the falling stars and put them in our pockets, this generation is letting them fade away. Facebook is their Beatles – they are the centres of their universes, pop stars were the centre of ours. Does music mean as much to them as it did to us? I kinda doubt it, but I hope I’m wrong because music is still the ultimate salvation.

And I got the chance to write about it. On Record Mirror. In 1977; the greatest year in pop history.

Writing about a thirty year-old year has aged me. Memories I never knew I had escaped from their Shangrila and turned to dust in the glow of a lamp and the rhythm of a computer keyboard. They’re not memories anymore, they’re now words in a book, words that belonged to a 24 year-old bloke who loved, not wisely but oh well; a bloke who couldn’t believe his luck and a bloke who could piss for England.

1977 was the year of living dangerously with 100 punk bands and a portable typewriter, non-electric. It was the year of living next door to malice…

77 Sulphate Strip is punk idols and pop history. It’s love and affection and sweet soul music and my generation who now hope we die when we get old. It’s sex, pistols, penetration, jam, scabies, stranglers, dead boys, heartbreakers and Demis Roussos. It’s key albums, classic gigs, exclusive interviews and all the hot shit from 365 days of wh-i-i-ne and poses. It’s got my past and it’s got yours and you really ought to pay the ransom. Only a tenner and it all goes to Charity. Sweet Charity. She’s at the back by the way and will attend to your every need, although she does draw the line at blow jobs. I don’t.

Anyway, where was I?

1977. It was a taste of heaven. A criminal taste.  Read all about it…

READING: Page 17 

In 1977 I believe that Record Mirror was actually the coolest paper on the weekly block. It was the only one that could possibly feature a Berni Flint interview alongside a Sid Vicious one; how cool’s that? And, it was the only weekly IN COLOUR! Pop is all about colour and, even though it was distinctly dodgy at times, the colour in RM put a lot of 15ps into a lot of newsagent tills.

Editor Alf Martin knew the times they were a changin’ and encouraged us to paint the town red. I didn’t take much persuading, why should I? I was young, healthy, good at my job and loved music. I also loved a party, a drink, a smoke, great food and a line. And I could get them all, free of charge. And I got to meet pop stars; big, fucking super duper pop stars. And I got to fly the world.

I’d died and gone to heaven…

READING: Page 71 and Page 44

Isn’t life grand.

Encore! Ferocious clapping.

A quick tribute to the visionary that is Mark P. I never got to know him terribly well, but on the few occasions we spoke he came across as honest and passionate, if a tad pessimistic, as all great artists should be. ATV have seen off a gazillion bands and I don’t doubt that they’ll see off gazillion more. It’s brilliant that they’re playing tonight. Here is an excerpt from an interview I did with Mark for Record Mirror in July 1977. Hope he doesn’t mind…

READING: Page 129

My wife and most of my kids are in tonight. For any of you who may have read the book, that’s Dina. For those of who haven’t read the book, that’s Dina. We were never really suited, but, in the immortal words of Captain & Tenille, Love Will Keep Us Together. Well, it has done for 28 years ‘cos it can’t be anything else. My handsome beast sons Paul and Andrew are probably outside somewhere, cringing with embarrassment. I’m their worst nightmare, I make the dad who fancies he can dance in public look like John fucking Travolta - another product of ’77. Mind you, I’m introducing them to my past tonight, in 3D – this is like Barry’s Excellent Adventure, dude.          

To continue…

I frequently get asked, ‘Who was the best interview; who was the sharpest, the slickest, the most passionate and articulate purveyor of honesty and earthiness? Who provided the drains for the boulevard of broken dreams?’

And I frequently reply there are only two people who really fit that description – John Lydon and Malcolm McLaren. When I sat down to interview them I felt like I was taking my seat in a theatre, waiting for the play to start, ready to be entertained, to be amazed. I had the great privilege of ghost-writing Malcolm’s autobiography – working title The Great Jewish Bastard –  back in 1980 and it’s a BowWowWow of a story which, hopefully, will eventually see the light of day. He came to my flat in Hampstead Road for a 1001 nights in white satin and I felt like his psychiatrist as he reclined on the sofa and told me the story of his life while drinking an ocean of vodka and smoking pack after pack of Marlborough. What tales! What swagger! What devilment! What a carry on!

Malcolm is the cream-of-a-dream interview.

And so is John ‘Mr. 57 Varieties of Talk Soup’ Rotten…

READING: Page 362-365 (Segue into John Lydon’s voice from the Marina Del Ray interview through pub speakers)

And if you thought that was good here is a world exclusive, an extract from The Great Jewish Bastard, never before heard in public. It’s a voice from across the years, the voice of a man in his thirties, a man clearly on a mission from God, but a man who, shortly after, loaded up his truck and moved to Beverley, Hills that is, swimming pools, movie stars. The stars in is eyes were replaced by the face of Lauren Hutton and the anaesthetic that is LA. Jammy bastard…

McLaren Extract

I’d like to finish by thanking all those people who’ve been instrumental in making ’77 Sulphate Strip the number one bestseller in my wardrobe including Paul McKenzie from Touch Magazine, Gary Kent from Strangled and Vic Gilmore from Punk FM. And the Ovulate girls Michelle, Jill and Karena. Sorry, Ovolo. 

Finally, my heart goes out to Claudia who’s words are now the tracks of my tears. Her Muswell Hill impulse buy built the bridge that spanned my life tonight. I am forever in her debt.

Isn’t life grand…

That’s where it was going to end. I envisaged me coming offstage into the arms of a dozen groupies before being sheperded through the crowds into a waiting limo. Instead my son Andrew took me home in the family Yaris.

That’s rock ‘n’ roll for you.

Thanks to everyone who made last Thursday night at Filthy MacNasty’s one of the best of my life.

 

Zavvi’s ’BOOK OF THE WEEK’ - ’77 Sulphate Strip

'77 Sulphate Strip, Ovolo Publishing's flagship music title about the year of 'punk' is 'Book of the Week' in all Zavvi stores (formerly Virgin Megastores) week commencing 31st March 2008. Zavvi is the UK's largest independent entertainment retailer on the high street and their focus is purely on the great products they offer. If you were reading about punk in 1977 the chances are you read some of Barry Cain's words. As a young writer on Record Mirror he was perfectly placed to take part in, and report on, the punk scene. What makes this book truly great and stands out from the rest is how it connects the past to the present. In the words of Phil Singleton, sex-pistols.net 'The Punk Rock book of the year is yours, Mr Cain, and ours to share.'  "When I wrote '77 Sulphate Strip I honestly never expected it would receive such wonderful reviews and comments. For some, it seems to have touched a guitar string of a nerve that hasn't been plucked for three decades; for others, it has simply confirmed that 1977 was the most dynamic and groundbreaking year in rock 'n' roll history. I'm particularly thrilled that so many people who were just twinkles in roving eyes thirty years ago have derived such satisfaction from wandering through the Sulphate land of the damned and the desperate, alien yet strangely familiar, like a virulent dose of déjà vu. The fact that Zavvi have made it one of their Books of the Week is a tremendous honour. It really is a dream come true and I'd like to thank The Sex Pistols, The Stranglers, The Clash, The Damned and The Jam for helping me realise it, not to mention Johnnny Thunder and his fabulous Heartbreakers. Oh, and that innate Zavvi savvy!" Says author Barry Cain. '77 Sulphate Strip is his eyewitness account of the year and features behind-the-scenes stories of how the year unfolded – by a player at the centre of the vortex. It started for Cain when he interviewed the Sex Pistols at EMI the day before the Bill Grundy appearance on Thames TV. The book also features interviews with The Stranglers, The Clash, The Damned, The Ramones, The Vibrators, The Tubes, The Jam, Blondie, X-Ray Spex, Buzzcocks, The Boys, Sham 69, The Drones, XTC, Television, Generation X, The Heartbreakers, Alternative TV, Ian Dury, Radiators From Space. The book doesn't end with the eyewitness account of 1977. Thirty years on, Cain re-interviewed John Lydon, Hugh Cornwell and Rat Scabies exclusively for the book. These extended interviews run for more than 100 pages and rise above being mere nostalgia. By asking Lydon, Cornwell and Scabies to comment on the original interviews Cain manages to coax unique insights from each of them. "To be 'Book of the Week' in all Zavvi stores for our first music title is fantastic news. We have had some great reader reviews, which have led to the media and book/music shops supporting Barry in making sure the book gets out there. Alongside Zavvi's 'Book of the Week', Barry Cain will be holding a book reading at the 'Punk Poster Exhibition' at Filthy Macnasty's bar in London on 3rd April 2008. It will be a great event with live music and will be a chance to get everyone together to say thanks for supporting '77 Sulphate Strip." Says Ovolo Publishing Ltd Marketing Manager, Michelle Thorn. '77 Sulphate Strip is packed with insights, anecdotes and great stories. Open it at any page and start reading and we guarantee you'll be hooked! For more information 77 Sulphate Strip check out www.myspace.com/77sulphatestrip For more information on the Punk Poster Exhibition at Filthy MacNastys check out www.myspace.com/filthymacnastysofficial  For more information on books at Zavvi stores log on to www.zavvi.co.uk/books

BARRY CAIN BOOK SIGNING AT FILTHY MACNASTYS PUNK POSTER EXHIBITION PART II

FILTHY MACNASTYS WISHES TO INVITE YOU TO THIS MEMORABLE IF NOT LIFE
CHANGING EVENT.....

FOR IMMEDIATE PRESS RELEASE. FOR INVITES AND MORE INFORMATION PLEASE
CONTACT

veronica@filthymacnastys.com OR paul@sterlingfp.com

FILTHY'S PUNK POSTER EXHIBITION PART II

MARCH 13th-APRIL 30th     ADMISSION FREE


GARRY LOVERIDGE - MUSIC POSTER COLLECTOR AND PUNK HISTORIAN DISPLAYS
100 OF HIS ORIGINAL PUNK POSTERS AT ROCK'N'ROLL MECCA FILTHY MACNASTYS.

LAST YEAR PUNK POSTER COLLECTOR GARRY LOVERIDGE DISPLAYED 100 OF HIS PROUDEST ORIGINAL PUNK POSTERS CIRCA 77-79
Well....

12 MONTHS ON AND WHAT DID GARRY DO WITH THE TAKINGS OF 
LAST YEARS POSTER SALES?
Surpise he went out and bought another collection of Punk Posters.

To recap last years press read like this....

I was an adolescent in Western Super Mare when the punk revolution
burst into my personal orbit. When I was 14, my mate and I nicked a
Damned poster from the local record shop's sound proof listening booth.

Then I started going to gigs in Bristol and I would take down the
record company display advertising the band's latest releases. Not many
survived two hours of pogoing intact. On the way home I would then rip
down the fly posters and anything else I could get my hands on. This
led to a fragmented punk collage creeping over my bedroom wall, which
in reality was the start of my collecting habit.

I moved to London in 1987 and discovered markets such as Bermondsey,
Portobello Road and Camden. These proved to be - and still are - a good
hunting ground for posters and other memorabilia for my collection.

As all collections do, mine has changed over the years. Some have been
lost, others destroyed, traded or sold. I hope that my personal
collection at this point reflects not only 30 years of great music and
its associated art, but also an on-going punk movement.

Aside from my punk posters, I have also collected Britpop and Libertines material. The ones from '77-'78 hold a special place forme.I am looking forward to seeing these on display in my all time favourite pub.

Gary Loveridge.

Filthy's will be holding a series of events to compliment the exhibition.

 

THURSDAY 13th MARCH 2008
OFFICIAL LAUNCH PARTY TO THE EXHIBITION FROM 6.30PM ONWARDS 

with SPIZZ ENERGI 

SPIZZENERGI's status as the world's most undiscovered natural resource is coming to an end as Spizz approaches a series of anniversaries.
Last year he chalked up 30 years as a performer and is edging closer to the 30th anniversary of his first John Peel Session and release of '6000 Crazy' the first of many record releases on the pioneering indie label Rough Trade in 1978. By 1979 the NME and Melody Maker were throwing 'Single of The Week' awards to their every release. Finally the leading Indie labels along with the BMRB established an official Indie chart and at the launch in January 1980 SPIZZENERGI's delirious Sci-fi classic 'Where's Captain Kirk?' was No.1.
Demand for the authentic and original Mr. Spizz outside the UK and at mainstream music festivals is growing and just before the band head off to Italy SPIZZENERGI launches this Filthy festival.
www.spizzenergi.com
www.myspace.com/spizzenergi
 
The book reading for this evening wil be provided by former Lurker 
“Esso” Pete Haynes
Pete formed early Punk legends the Lurkers in 1977 being inspired by the New York scene of the Dolls and Ramones.
He has published 5 novels and written several plays.
http://www.petehaynes.co.uk/

 

THURSDAY  20th MARCH 2008
 A NIGHT  DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF JOE STRUMMER STARRING
TYMON DOGG
Long term friend and collaborator of the late great Joe Strummer, Tymon Dogg is still going strong with his own idiosyncratic and upbeat blend of folk/punk/political songs and music'. 
Tymon will be playing a selection of songs that he wrote with Joe. 
www.tymondogg.net

The book readings for this evening wil be provided by
former Clash Roadie Johnny Green
Spizz describes Johnny and his contribution to Punk below.

As a Clash fan I got to go to more than my fair share of Clash gigs. I became a peripheral part of the organisation that supported the Clash machine and as such I got to be a back stage regular. I was always struck by Johnny Green's glasses the frames were Green! He commanded respect and if you got on the wrong side of him you weren't welcome.
He wrote a great book with Garry Barker: 
A Riot of Our Own: Night and Day with the Clash. 
It puts you right in the road crew's van and in the band. For me the book fills in the gaps between gigs where I would go home and make my way to the next gig... now I know what I missed.
Fast forward to 2004 and Patti Smith's Meltdown: Mick Jones's brilliant new band Carbon/Silicon are playing I don't know how I'm going to get backstage for the aftershow party. Johnny Green to the rescue
"Ere y'are Spizz, you have it - I gotta train to catch" 
He gives me his backstage pass.
Thanks Johnny see him on You Tube from the Rude Boy
DVD Extras menu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLq-fjl7CyU
Spizz

 

PLUS author of what is considered the ultimate Clash Book - Pashion is Fashion
Pat Gilbert
Pat Gilbert was a schoolboy punk in Portsmouth, playing in a band called Emergency Exit, the finest (and only) punk band to form at Cowplain Comprehensive School. Their career highlight was having a brick thrown at them by a friend of the bloke who went on to play D.C. Carver in The Bill. 

After years in the ‘80s wilderness, Pat worked at Record Collector magazine and later became editor of MOJO. His critically acclaimed Clash biography, Passion Is A Fashion, was published in 2004. 

He’s recently made radio documentaries about mercenaries, and is working on a screenplay of Who manager Kit Lambert’s life.

THURSDAY  27th MARCH 2008
 GARRY LAMMIN AND CHARLES SHAAR MURRAY

GARY LAMMIN

 

The year is 1976, and Gary Lammin is playing guitar for the scorching, no holds barred boot boy punk band........Cock Sparrer

 

Whilst recording at Decca Recording Studios in Hampstead, Lammin hit on the idea of covering the Rolling Stones spaced out drug dirge "We Love You". However, Lammin has a vision of "We Love You" played in the style of the New York Dolls "Jet Boy" via Slades "Mamma We're All Crazy Now".

Lammin enthusiastically sets out to convince everyone that seeing as the Stones were once on Decca, as were now Cock Sparrer, and the Stones were the original anti-establishment band, that to turn "We Love You" into a loud, raucous football terrace rocker would be a dramatic and paradoxical artistic statement........

 

30 plus years on and Gary is ready to do it all over again (but acoustically) at his favourite Watering Hole Filthy Macnasty’s. Once described as a cross between Ron Wood and Steve Jones with a slide guitar.  

 

 Support for the evening is by an all time Music Industry Legend........

 

 

CHARLES SHAAR MURRAY

 

His first experience came 1970 when he was asked to contribute to the satirical magazine Oz. In particular, he contributed to the notorious Schoolkids OZ issue, and was involved in the consequent obscenity trial.

He then wrote for IT (International Times) before decamping to the New Musical Express in 1972 for which he wrote until around 1986. After that he worked for a number of publications including Q magazine, Mojo, MacUser and The Independent.

Charles was one of the first (if not the FIRST) journalists ever to comment on Bowie and the Sex Pistols. He has written a number of books including Dancing In the Streets - which was made into a much acclaimed BBC TV series.

He is English by birth and plays a bloody good harmonica.

 

 

THURSDAY 3^rd April 2008
PUNK LEGEND (AND WE DON'T USE THAT TERM LIGHTLY)

MARK PERRY aka Mark P

Mark started the original Punk Fanzine "Sniffin Glue" in the bedroom of
his parents Deptford Flat in the summer of 1976. 1 year and 12 issues
later he closed the publication for fear that it was becoming too
successful and going against all punk ethics.

His band ATV became part of punk history with songs such as Action Time
and Vision, Love Lies Limp and How Much Longer forming part of the
soundtrack for the generation.

Mark plays the final night of events for us again this year. This time with a full band. 

 Words for the evening are from '77 Sulphate Strip author Barry Cain 

Barry Cain grew up in North London. He worked on Record Mirror and others music mags before dabling in PR (for Blondie amongst others). But he was quickly drawn back into music publishing and launched the cult-classic magazines Flexipop and X-Rated as well as a string of poster journals and finally PS (Popshop) which he sold to Robert Maxwell. He now works as a writer and publisher and still lives in North London with his wife and family

'77 Sulphate Strip - By Barry Cain 

“An eye witness account of 1977 by one of the only journalists allowed full access to the bands. This is the true story of how it felt and what really happened then…

… and how John Lyndon, Hugh Cornwell & Rat Scabies feel now about what they said and did back then.”

www.77sulphatestrip.co.uk  www.myspace.com/77sulphatestrip

 

FOR ANY FURTHER INFORMATION, INVITES OR TO ORGANISE INTERVIEWS OR
REQUEST FURTHER INFORMATION ON THE EXHIBITION CONTACT

All events are free and start 6.30pm til midnight.

Veronica on 0795 2901569

veronica@filthymacnastys.com
 or
Paul Hallam on
 07778 770039
Paul@sterlingfp.com 


FILTHY MACNASTY’S

68 AMWELL STREET LONDON EC1

Nearest trains and stuff Angel * Kings Cross * Farringdon
 

 
www.filthymacnastys.com *  www.myspace.com/filthymacnastysofficial

 

Downbeat Blues

This ended up on the cutting-room floor in the Strip office.  

 

My own personal song of death and kisses is Try A Little Tenderness by Otis.

        It’s the one I remember most from that hot summer Saturday night in 1968 when I was 15 and women were goddesses.

        There was a schizophrenic club above the Manor House pub at the junction of Green Lanes and Seven Sisters Road. On Friday it was called the Bluesville and showcased some of the hottest blues-rock bands in town like John Mayall, Chicken Shack, Fleetwood Mac and, best of all, Ten Years After.

       The punters were hippies and local dudes like me who loved a fast guitar and a puckered lip. I always wore jeans and a tee shirt and succumbed to the slick chords and heavy duty fourplay.

        On Saturday nights the Bluesville slapped on a suit and became the tie-only Downbeat, a juicy soul searcher packed out with skins in mohair and girls you could occasionally dance with when you got a little pissed and Brenton Wood was waiting for the sign.

        There were also a lot of black guys, mainly from nearby Tottenham, who also hit the Royal dancehall on a Thursday like drugstore truck driving men where they sometimes met the wound-up, woolly bully white boys head on. Black guys never got drunk. They didn’t need booze to fuel their domain. They took the women and song away from the wine – it was their secret. Oh, and the fact that most of them could dance the hind legs off of Nureyev.

        The Downbeat was a place for a 15 year-old boy to grow up in and that night I shot up like fucking Godzilla.

        There were three of us, Terry was a 16 year-old printing apprentice. Being a printer – especially on Fleet Street – in 1968 was a licence to print money and some of them even found time to do the knowledge and become black cab drivers. Ray was 20 and the son of the caretaker on our estate. He worked for Robert Dyas and was handy for getting the drinks in.

       These were the light and bitter days at two bob a throw. I had an after school job cleaning a nearby office block every night after school. I was flush. My semi-hippy clobber was replaced by a blue mohair three piece suit hand made by Alfie Myers in Old Street. It cost 25 quid and looked the bomb. Terry wore a greeny/grey mohair three piece and Ray, not a fashion god by any stretch of the imagination, had the suit he wore to work.

       As Otis was juicing up Tenderness, I kissed a girl for the first time that night. Her name was Mary and she was sweet and pretty and when her tongue searched for mine I nearly fainted. I knew nothing of kissing. That was the moment I realised I was tongue-tied; the membrane that attached the tongue to the mouth was at the front instead of the back and although I could welcome visitors I couldn’t make any house calls. Within a year I had it snipped during a week long stay at the Royal Free.

       I assumed Mary was the only girl to have a slut tongue and I adored her for it. I thought of marriage and kids and a little house on the prairie before realising I was 15 and in blue. I never saw her again.

       As I walked out at closing time, down the long, wide flight of stairs that led from the club onto the Seven Sisters Road, I noticed that on either side of each step was a line of white dudes in suits – members of a notorious local mob – each one brandishing a cutthroat razor, each one checking the punters, each one desirous of seeing twisted flesh and internal organs made external. Stairs with stares. I was shitting myself.

       When I reached the bottom with my bollocks still intact, I asked a guy what was going on. The ruck involved strangers and women. Don’t they all. Apparently, someone asked someone he shouldn’t have to dance. When she refused he got stroppy. It was time to die.

       “Who is the guy?” I asked.

       “No fucking idea,” he shrugged. “He’s with a couple of mates. I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes for all the money in the world.”

        I looked back up the stairs at the gamut of flashing blades and I knew what he meant. Suddenly, a guy came hurtling down the stairs and ran out of the door pursued by an army of razors, but he managed to jump on the luckiest bus in the world as it sped down the Seven Sisters Road into infinity. The number 19 saved his life that night.

       The boys from the black stuff returned, disconsolately, to the club and waited, like clay pigeon shooters, for the next target. Sure enough, another guy came bounding down the stairs. Alas, there was no bus. Just a warm breeze and a heartful of soul.

       He turned right. Wrong move. He turned right again into a quiet, residential street. Really wrong move. About twenty or thirty guys were on his tail. Terry, Ray and me stayed outside the club. I was inquisitive; it was the latent journo in me.

       A few minutes later most of the guys strolled back to the club. They looked elated. Their work here was done.

       The three of us decided to see what had happened. The guy was laying face-up in the gutter and a small crowd began to form as an ambulance pulled up. We stood just a few feet away when two ambulance men lifted him up onto a stretcher. Splashes from the impact of brains spilling out of the back of his head onto the pavement danced upon my blue mohair turn-ups and Terry fainted and I nearly spewed. I’ve never seen someone so dead.

       From that moment on I knew it was unwise to argue with strange guys in sharp suits with lipstick on their collars. Especially on a Saturday night.

       A few years after that Diana Dors took over the club but I seldom went again. Couldn’t get the splashes out.  

             

     

 

      

        

 

 

Marty Frasier’s chair

These blogs are like drugs.

       I’ve got a shitload of things to do – words to write, parents to tend, decisions to make, emails to send, people to ring, kids to mend. I don’t need to shoot these blogs up after midnight when the lights are low and the only heartbeat is mine.

       But, sugar pie honey bunch, I can’t help myself. I’m turning into Joe Blogs and there’s nothing I can do about it. Hey Joe, where you going with that gun in your hand?

       Like, I’ve got a busy life, y’know – although my family would disagree. They see me sitting in the same room at the same table with the same computer every day, without realising that’s my office.

      They see me playing the same card games – an online version of Hearts and the usual Solitaire/Minesweeper malarkey although, thankfully, the Pinball has terminally tilted – without realising they’ve simply replaced my fag and tea breaks.

      They see me growing old, shivering under a shawl of indolence, without realising, for goodness sakes, I’ve got the hippy, hippy shakes.

      I write for a bi-monthly magazine about the cruise-ship industry called Cruise Trade News and that involves thousands of words shaped into interviews with managing directors and general travel agent features and news and cruise reviews. It doesn’t keep me in ermine and pearls but it has its moments and, frankly, has been a joy to work for over the past, shit, eight years. I’ve travelled the world again and surfed all the way.

     I’ve got a wife, Dina (those of you who are familiar with 77 Sulphate Strip may, perchance, remember the name) and three sons, Paul and Andrew who are 23 (how can that be?) and Elliot who’s now twelve. They certainly don’t keep me in ermine and pearls but they have their moments and frankly, have been a joy to work for over the past, shit, quarter of a century. Actually, joy isn’t quiet the right word I’m looking for. It’s something more than that. Pain. That’s it.

     I’ve got elderly, sick, parents who also don’t keep me in ermine and pearls but they have their moments. And I make them laugh. I’ve spent my entire life making them laugh. It’s the least I could do.

     The only person who’s gonna keep me in ermine and pearls is me and I’m too fucked to care anymore.

     So I’ll continue to write the cruise mag and I’ll continue with the soul scrawling and I’ll continue being the same, sad shithead who never knew what was going on until it was too late. Together they make up my Marty Frasier chair, y’know, the one that destroyed the delicate ambience of Frasier’s Seattle apartment. In fact, I am Marty Frasier’s chair – green, stained and full of holes, its tawdriness a sad epitaph to happier days.

     That’ll do it for me until the real thing comes along.

     See, I’ve hit that writer’s blog again without realising it. I’m in dangerous territory. Somebody help me.

     Enter Gary Kent, a messenger from the Gods, or was it Woodford?

     Gary works for Burning Times, part of the Strangled group of companies, and I recently lost my interviewee virginity to him – check out Title deeds on this site. The other night he ventured down the North Circular once again for a Muswell Hill dhansak and a chat.

 

     Gary is a Stranglers fan par excellence and has written about them for a number of years.

     He loved Strip and brought a tear to my eye (or was that the glaucoma? Sorry, praise is an awkward substance to be handled with kid gloves and crocodile shoes) when he told me. I loved him for loving Strip but I loved him more for letting me in on his dreams and dilemmas and for also sharing mine. 

     And if you check out www.strangled.com you can love him for the way he writes.

     Condolences to John Lydon whose father John checked out of Hotel Life a few weeks back. John spoke fondly of his dad when I met up with him for the book and his passing will be a great sadness. Dads die with alarming regularity these days. They were the cushion for our mortality. When they go we become the cushions. Marty Frasier cushions.

     On a more upbeat note, I just received the following from Radiator From Space and Pogue Phil Chevron. Wonderful stuff.

 

Friends -

Many of you - most of you - will have received the whingeing mass mailouts I sent out twice last year to y'all, when I was struck down with Cancer of the Throat and Neck and in no position to keep in touch with you all individually. As I made no bones about the fact then that the treatment - 7 doses of Chemotherapy and 35 of Radiotherapy - was a living hell of sorts, I will not attempt to disguise my joy that I have recently been declared "disease-free". There are follow-up biopsies in progress to assess risks in other parts of my body, and I have yet to fully reclaim the art of swallowing and eating, and I do still get tired easily but, in the overall context, this has to be considered very good news.

I never did actually make it to the full Seven Chemos. After the Sixth, I lost 90% of hearing in my left ear (the right ear is already, of course, deaf, as most of you know), at which point, the Chemo was abruptly withdrawn. "New thinking in the USA", my oncologist's registrar explained, “indicates that Five Chemo sessions are sufficient for your condition." Gee, thanks, Doc! Deafen me first, why dontcha? About the worst thing that can happen to a Musician is to lose his or her hearing and this development was devastating. Nobody offered me any hope whatsoever that my hearing would return, least of all the Oncology Team and its attendant Eye Nose Ear Throat specialists. I underwent intensive audiology tests in both Dublin and Nottingham and in both cases was told to put recovery out of my mind. And so it was, after a month of exceptional unhappiness, I spent 4000 Euros (£3000/$6000) on a state-of-the-art Digital Hearing Aid and embarked upon a period in which I struggled to lead as regular a life as the twin handicaps of deafness and the after-effects of Chemo and Radio therapies allowed.

But one day, about three months in, just as I was beginning to accept that the rest of my life as a musician, as a man, would be compromised by this, and started in on the inspirational Evelyn Glennie autobiography, the hearing just returned. Gradually at first, and then almost fully, which is where it has stayed ever since. None of my doctors sought the reason for this reversal and neither, to be honest, did I. We were all so relieved that we just didn't bother looking the gift horse in the mouth.

And so, thanks in great part to the TLC ministrations of my dear mother, who is still supervising my convalescence back home in Dublin, I have been slowly but certainly coming out of the fog. Although I have not worked with either The Pogues or The Radiators From Space since March 2007, I did actually manage to put together a 5-CD Pogues box set (rarities, demos, outtakes, that kinda thing) which will be released in April and which, I am convinced, is the hardest work I ever did with The Pogues; and I also oversaw the release in Europe/UK of the Radiators' third album Trouble Pilgrim which, I now realise, I had somehow managed to make (in 2006) when I was already sick. Now, as 2008 kicks off, I am determined to work again with both bands this year. In addition, I have had at least two serious theatrical/musical commissions which I am very much looking forward to.

You folks have been universally kind and helpful and understanding all this time and I love you for it. I will always remember the support, moral and practical, I received from so many of you.

Thanks

Lots of love

Philip C

    

This is Joe Blogs for 77 Sulphate Strip in Muswell Hill, London.

 

Baby I’m for real.

   

 

    

   

The Tapes of Wrath

The other night, outside a cab office near Crouch End, I climbed into the front seat of a minicab driven by a Somalian.

 I like talking to minicab drivers. They’re exotic denizens of the night, armed with harrowing tales of killing fields and families ripped apart by war and promising careers lost forever. Amazing what you can find out in three-and-a-half London miles, if you ask.

Turned out this driver had a simpler story to tell. He’d lived in Holland for nearly ten years after leaving Somalia and worked with his brother in an export company before coming to London, falling in love, marrying and working marathon mini-cab shifts to provide a home for his wife and two children. He was a supremely intelligent guy who spoke perfect English and had a degree in engineering.

After getting my minicab driver fix for the night I thought we were through. That’s when the conversation invariably turns to football.

“What about you?” he suddenly asked. “Where are you from?” It was the first time a driver had ducked out of the spotlight just to drag me into it. He looked genuinely interested.

“London.”

“London!” He looked genuinely shocked. “What, you were actually born in London?”

“Yes,”

“Where?”

“Halfway between Kings Cross and The Angel, just off Pentonville Road. I was born in the same house as my dad and his dad before him.”

Now he looked genuinely stunned. I honestly believe this man had never before spoken to a native Londoner of my age. These days the majority of native Londoners are under 25. My eleven-year old son has just left primary school and nearly all the parents from his class were either born and raised in the provinces or abroad while all their offspring were born and raised in London.

Everyone I was brought up with quit the city years ago, turning their backs on Babylon in search of hanging gardens and peace in Essex and Herts. I guess I would’ve been part of that mass exodus of the seventies and eighties if I’d married a local girl. But because my wife is Greek Cypriot we stayed. If she had to live in this country, it was London or nothing. The Greeks like cities. I capitulated. As always.

“No? The same house? What sort of house?” This guy was a Somalian version of me.

“It had five-stories – including the basement – and was one of a number of similar brown, terraced slums that made up Affleck Street, sadly no longer with us. A block of council flats is now its headstone. On each floor there was a different family who had to share the only toilet in the backyard. There were no bathrooms.”

“No bathrooms?”

“No bathrooms.”

“Amazing.”

“My mum and dad moved out two years after they moved in. Thankfully they took me with them.”

My driver laughed. This guy was cool.

“Where did you go?”

“We moved into an estate just around the corner. Two moves later we ended up in a council house in Highbury. My mum and dad still live there.”

“Arsenal eh?”

“Absolutely.”

Cue football chat…

 

 I’ve lived in north London for over half a century. My dad has lived here for ninety years. He’s never set foot on foreign soil, although he flew to Edinburgh once, in 1967, to see his aunt, but got the train back.

He’s dying of cancer – an inoperable but slow moving rodent tumour that’s eaten away his ear as it burrows ever deeper into his face like a miner on skunk. Every so often the pickaxe lands and that’s when he screams. One of these days, when the cancer hits a main blood vessel, he will bleed to death.

But his marbles haven’t cracked – he retains the mind of a middle-aged man and his wrath stokes the engines.

My mum was born in Busago Street, directly at the end of Affleck Street, but blazed the trail west and was brought up in one of those two-storey cottage-style houses that flank the Westway.

She’s 81 and racked with back pain, crying out in agony at least twenty times a day. The doctors say they can do nothing for her except increase the strength of the painkillers which, hopefully, won’t react with the Warfarin she’s been taking for thirty years. She’s lost over two stones in the last year but manages to look much younger than she is and she can still answer the odd question on University Challenge. She, too, has never been abroad and now never will.

If one goes the other will follow. I’m an only child; life without mum and dad is unthinkable. A mother’s love beats them all, hands down. And if my old man hadn’t lost so much on the horses over the years I’m sure he’d have given me more money.

I hope he’s left enough for the fucking funerals.

I planned on having them around forever. How could I want the only people who ever brought me an egg and bacon sandwich and a cup of tea in bed to perish? How could I want the only people who actually sympathised with my hangovers to pack up their molecules in an old kit bag and take the last train to Clarksville?

It’s all too absurd.

Suddenly, I need their memories. I want to know everything about them – how they lived, the secrets they kept, the London they saw. I recently started to commit their memories to tape and their words reveal a sparkling but poverty-stricken nurseryland sandwiched between the wars, before making way for the flim-flam fifties. The words lose their smile when they get into the bizarre, bouncy-tit MFI sixties and seventies when London was spiralling out of their control. Events of the last twenty years have only served to fuel their wrath. It’s an old person’s acrimony – colostomy bags bulging with reproach and disappointment hurled like Molotov cocktails into a mob of rampaging years.

My dad, Patrick, was born one year before the end of the First World War and spent his long bachelorhood inhabiting those mean streets that ducked and dived between King’s Cross and The Angel, scratching for money on building sites, street markets, betting shops and pubs where he played the piano.

After he suffered an horrific road accident whilst hop-picking in Kent, he wasn’t considered suitable for military service and spent the entire war in London. The house opposite his in Affleck Street was demolished by a doodlebug in 1944 – that was as close as it got.

My mum, Betty, was evacuated to Cambridge during the war but was only there for a week before her mum took her back to dodge the bombs and drink tea from a flask in the Anderson shelter at the end of the garden on Westway.

They first met outside Lyon’s Corner House in Coventry Street – they each worked locally as night club receptionists – and I like to think it was love at first sight. When they discovered they were born within a fifty yards of each other wedding bells chimed. It was the start of a new decade, the fifties, and things were changing fast. They would only get faster.

London lost its virginity to the thousands of GIs that converged here during the war. Before that it was a city of islands, people weren’t so mobile and many worked locally. The Yanks and the bombs opened it up and a combination of war-induced technology and large-scale immigration rammed it home.

London became a city, the city, full of Eastern promise and Turkish delight, princes and thieves, Rastas and gospels, mice and men. Affleck Street, where my grandparents still lived, turned into Nicosia almost overnight in 1960 and on hot summer Sundays bouzouki music from old gramophones crept out of open windows and strange, sweet aromas plundered my senses, transporting me to faraway places with strange sounding names. I was fated to marry a Greek.

            This mighty influx of people into London over the last fifty years has almost single-handedly shaped the city but horrified many people of my parents’ generation who had only ever seen a black face in Gone With The Wind until the Americans      came to town. My mum and dad are amongst the last of the monochrome Mohicans, raised in an austere Pleasantville and opposed to colour of any kind.  How strange it must be to them that the second most common Christian name for a boy born in the UK last year – after Jack – was Mohamed in all its variations. It’ll probably knock Jack off next year.

When I interviewed self-confessed immigrant John Lydon, who grew up in Finsbury Park and Holloway, for 77 Sulphate Strip I asked him how the clash of cultures affected his upbringing.

“What I like about the British is no matter who goes to live there, they’re gonna end up British and I don’t think that’s a bad thing,” he said, sake in one hand, Marlborough in the other. “Coping with different nationalities is something the working-classes have had to do. It’s been ordained by the powers above, and we’re presumed to get on living together in one slum. ‘Here’s a new load, go on, you deal with them. It’ll all come good in the end.’

          “Oh, it’s very nice for the middle-class social-working types to say, ‘Ooh, you’re all racist.’ But people wouldn’t be if they had a decision in the process. The immigrants – and I’m one myself – are in the same melting-pot and we’re expected to fight it out for the amusement and judgement of those same middle-classes. 

           “Immigrants don’t move straight from Serbia to suburbia, but the powers-that-be ask, ‘Why can’t you all just get along?’ Er, excuse me, you can’t ‘all get along’ just like that. It takes time.

           “They are human beings for Chrissake. I come from Finsbury Park; I come from Hebrew, Greek, kebab, up the wazoo. I know it. I know it’s true. You learn to get on with your mates and you fight the fucking Nazis, right.’

           “My old man would always go on about ‘the bloody darkies’, but his best mate was a Jamaican and they got on like a house on fire.

         “We‘re a mixed breed. Are we dogs? No. We’re the future. Your future, no future for you. I’m part of a glorious, incredible, wonderful culture called the working-class. We don’t have heroes. We don’t have victims. Fucking important that.”

        Such a culture clash will enrich us all, eventually.

      

“Arsenal have been written off too early and I think they’ll spring a few surprises this season. Watch this space.”

      My driver disagreed. He was a Spurs man. 

      The cab pulled up outside a pub in East Finchley. We shook hands. Despite the fact he supported Spurs, I gave him a two quid tip. He deserved it. I felt good. I felt nostalgic. I hadn’t thought of Affleck Street in a long time.

      I waved to the driver as he drove off, back to his wife and London-born kids, and wondered how many years it will take to deliver that total harmony this country so richly deserves, as you do.

      I figured 50, give or take 40.

      Until then, we’ll always have Paris.