Soundtrack to my Life: "Antmusic" by Adam and the Ants

Artist: Adam and the Ants
Track: Prince Charming/Label: CBS A1408/Album: /Release: 12th September 1981/Highest Chart Position: 1

When I was five years old, I wanted to be Adam Ant.

It was my first real desire for pop stardom and the wonderful characters that represented fantastic noise that was coming from the box with the lights in the corner. I was fascinated with the TV. I knew it was a luxury, a temptation and in many ways, something that was illicit, especially when we hid from the TV licence man.

Compared to Dexys Midnight Runners, my love and sudden infatuation with wanting to be a dandy highwayman eclipsed what I had felt about music before this point and like many other kids my age, I yearned for a big, white stripe across my face.

Stand and Deliver was the first single to be lifted from the extremely successful Prince Charming album and after watching me sit through the video on TV for the first time in dumbstruck awe, my mother with har passion for music, knew she had to buy it for me.

Holding the 7” in my hand for the first time, my first record, felt like I was holding some sacred piece of looted treasure. I spent hours just staring at the cover and the fabulous, mythical characters that adorned it and read and re-read every last one of the liner notes, whilst playing the single to death. I daydreamed that I was a member of Adam’s band too, one of his merry band of men. They all had such fantastical names also, as was displayed on another track on the album, Ant Rap:

“Marco, Merrick, Terry Lee, Gary Tibbs and Yours Truly”

Whereas Adam and the Ants wore the military jackets, the leather trousers, the flowing, open collared shirts and the ribbons from their hair, my father returned one day with a Zorro costume to attempt to satisfy my desires further. The costume consisted of a black, plastic cape and eye mask. There was also a plastic sword with a piece of white chalk emdedded in the tip, which probably fails all modern health and safety laws today. I brattishly and probably unforgivably, protested.

“Awww Dad, this is all wrong...”

“What’s wrong with ya? I went to a lot of trouble to get that. It’s just like the guy in the music video you fancy.”

“I don’t fancy him, Dad.”

My mother jumped to my father’s defence and told me not to be so ungrateful. I tried to compromise with the logic available to any five year old. Cape, yes... Mask, okay... he wears a mask at the beginning of the video, but the comparisons stopped there though. After all, when you are that age, it’s a question of weaponry.

“Adam has pistols... this is a sword...”

“You already have a gun...”

He was right. Granted, I did have a gun but it was not a dandy pistol, it was an imitation M16 in desert colours that ran out bullets, or at least the sound of bullets firing six months previous when I used it in a swordfight with Peter Gibbon. It just wouldn’t have been the same jumping off a pretend horse and sticking up my imaginary victim with a machine gun. It lacked glamour somewhat.

“...and he has a white stripe.”

“Jane, get your make up...” he said towards my mum.

Luckily for me, the early eighties was a good time for cosmetics manufacturers with all of the flamboyance around. I wasn’t too sure though.

“Come with me, I have some white foundation...” she took my arm, which was suddenly reluctant to go anywhere. I hesitated. After all, this went against all the principles of a of a five year old boy in the north east of England. I mean, what would all the other kids say?

I turned to my dad and let out a whimper.

“Son, what do you think that pansy uses, flour and water?”

“But...”

“Get upstairs to your mother and put some make up on.”

I suspected that was the only time I’d ever hear my father say that phrase in my life. That day, my mother made me up like Adam Ant in the Stand and Deliver video and for a few days late in the Summer of 1981 and dependent on the weather at the time, the coastal town of Whitby, in North Yorkshire was covered in the markings of Adam ‘Zorro’ Ant.

I scratched the letter Z onto everything. Paving stones, walls, doors, my sister and every single one of the fabled 199 steps that lead to the abbey. The fashioned sword with the chalk tip was Adam ‘Zorro’ Ant’s weapon of choice in the end. I had to make do. The package actually encouraged you to don the mark of Zorro onto people as he would slice the shirts of the men he would be facing in battle but my mother told me that I was (under no circumstances) to ‘make like the movies’ and stick to walls and paving stones before I took my sisters eye out. She had a point though, it was a dangerous time to be playing as a child. This was a time when children were happily sold fireworks at the corner store.

But it wasn’t Zorro I wanted to be really. I wanted to be Adam. I wanted to be Adam Ant so much, this was a continuing desire that stayed with me for another twenty years, up until I found myself in a really rough pub in the centre of Middlesbrough with The Big Man and the girl I was living with at the time, her name was Michelle. We were together for about two years until I woke up in the middle of the night, pinned down with a kitchen knife to my throat.

My crime? I had laughed at the girls on Friends tell a joke earlier that evening and I moved away from her in my sleep, which meant in her logic that I was dreaming about sleeping with one of them, thus I was cheating on her and for that I needed to die. I wasn’t going argue with her, I had a knife shaving the hairs from my neck, after all. She didn’t have me in that position for that long anyway, put it that way.

This new pub chain in the town opened the month we went down there. It’s always a major event in Middlesbrough when something new opens. It’s a novelty and people get very excitable. It was also around the time high strength, super-filtered and cooled turbo beers became popular and of course, we celebrated with everyone else on a trip down shitfaced lane.

They had a karaoke going and the eigth group of lads had just sung the night’s eigth version of Vindaloo by Fat Les and while me and The Big Man were taking the piss, Michelle thought it would be funny to enter me in as Adam Ant. I had told her the dandy highwayman in Whitby story the night we met and she and I had wild sex on her futon while her abusive boyfriend was working nights.

When they called my name, both The Big Man and Michelle admitted they had conspired together and the next thing I know i’m being pushed towards the old bingo hall stage to sing Antmusic, a song I hadn’t heard in about 10 years. As well as having to more or less blag my way through the song in what was technically my first time at karaoke, the guy started the song even before I had climbed the steps and got onto the stage and by the time I grabbed a hold of the microphone and looked at the screen for the lyrics, we were at the first chorus.

The memories came flooding back though and I battled my way through it with considerable style. People were even dancing, but I suspect that was due to the burundi style drumming rather than my competent delivery. I looked around for my friends, expecting them to be cheering me on and/or worshipping me from the foot of the stage but instead The Big Man had his arm around Michelle making her giggle and reciprocate his flirtatious nature.

“Hey, that was great...” they both chimed when I returned.

“You weren’t even fucking watching, Rolf...” I growled, sardonically.

Not long after, I was at one of the men’s urinals having a piss and this huge guy came up behind and threw and arm around me. I expected that it was a fan, coming to applaud my rendition of his favourite songs. I really had forgotten where I was. His arm moved down to my groin and grabbed my flaccid penis and my crotch. Hard.

“My girlfriend thinks you’re pretty hot shit, motherfucker. Just because you sang her favourite song to her... I hope you and your friends are leaving soon... I’ll cut you if you even look at her, okay?”

He was one of the friendlier people I met while I lived in the town.

I bear no grudges with Michelle despite her inherent violence towards me. I realise that its a part of her life and the surrounding soceity. I have often thought about her and for a long time after I left worried.

I can’t remember how far it was into our relationship that she told me she often had sex with her sister.

I finally had realised she was borderline everything and held onto a level of intense jealousy that stemmed from her abusive past that I have never witnessed since. She often spoke about her on/off relationship with her own sister and her husband, who were both ten years her senior.

When I initially pushed her about this relationship, she confided in me that she lived with them both for a while, where they used her willingly as their sex slave upto a point where her and her husband would both gorge on her sex throughout the night and would not let her leave until their carnal desires were fulfilled. I thought that this was one of Michelle’s many stories but her sister was happy to confirm this story when she happily rubbed my crotch in her kichen within five minutes of meeting me. She was more than happy to invite me into their world and despite being as sexually free as I am as a rule, even I passed on the offer.

Not much shocks me, but even I was taken aback about her incestuous tendencies but couldn’t quite understand why her desires stopped with her own sister. When I suggested finding an alternative bisexual playmate for her, she balked and was offended at the suggestion that she had lesbian tendencies. I still haven’t gotten it, to be honest.

As the violence from Michelle continued in any respect, I decided to pack my bags from Brighton (for the second time) to start my new life once over.

Scary Times

One of my favourite Halloween's was about 93.

For some reason, myself and The Big Man and my friend Mark had my house to ourselves on the evening. My sister was probably at her boyfriend's and my folks would have been in the pub and we found ourselves just hanging out and watching MTV. I don't even think any of us had thought of what night it was until the first under-10 fist tapped on the front door. At first, as we hadn't prepared, I was polite and turned everyone away. Then, after the 20th knock... I started to ignore the door.

The constant knocking was beginning to bug us. They were really cutting into the coverage of the season final of The Real World and accompanying Guns N'Roses videos. Parents clearly were coming back with accompanying children to the houses on our street that showed signs of life but also ignorance like us and we decided to take matters into our own hands. I rigged up a taped recording of the following snippet of MTV footage featuring the band Faith No More and played it through my mother's precious high quality stereo system, which I also plugged in an external mike. We lay in wait with soft lights and eeire music on the stereo. The parents approached our drive in anticipation and humoured the children on their approach as they heard the spooky sounds. As they approached, expecting the unexpected and chuckling away, they tapped on the door and announced the traditional tag line,

"Trick or Treat!"

I pressed play on the video, the sound ran through the stereo. I channelled the spirit of Mike Patton and his etheral grunting and added special vocals and waited for the reaction from all outside.... There was only one answer...

"Trick..."



The following year was a lot quieter.

Monday Morning....

Acid Brass... Motorised Wheelchairs... Welsh Male Voice Choirs... Baiting Crowds... It's the Monday Morning Wake Up Call



2K "Fuck the Millenium"

Keane, You Ain't No PJ

Legit Bootlegs

There was a feature on Sky News about one bands efforts to curb bootleg CDs.

Now as much as I hate them, Keane are great for promotiong the instant live CD technology at their UK gigs, but the music industry are really behind the times when it comes to preserving the lost sales from the bootleggers. As early as the end of he last century, Pearl Jam have pioneered the self release of their gigs.

In the year 2000, I bought the 2 disc set of the set I had witnessed at the MEN Arena in Manchester, complete with clear audio of The Big Man shouting 'State of Love and Trust' seconds before kicking into the song, in a matter of weeks after the actual night.The band now have brought their bootlegs system upto date in the last couple of years by using this technology to its best advantage by setting up a java facility on their website enabling fans to download the gigs when they return to their homes. After Reading, I myself downloaded CD covers, professional pictures of the night and the audio recording a mere 48 hours, plus the one from Dublin I downloaded by mistake. Each gig cost about a fiver. Excellent value. I mean, what could be more of a perfect souvenir.

This is technology many of other bands have taken up, including a band I am going to see in a few weeks, Rancid. This is very much welcomed by long time bootleg fanatics and music fans like myself who crave more than just the albums and odd special snippet you get from the radio.I just wonder whether the industry have thought of another bootleg source though, local libraries.

I am saying this having spent some time today in my local library. Over the years I have downloaded so much more from libraries as my music taste has grown, the choice in libraries have gotten better and more importantly, more money has been spent to update local libraries. It's just a question of taking the CDs home and burning them with the technology we have at our fingertips these days.

I've been really bad this year with my favourite bands. I still do not have the new Chilis album or the Pearl Jam album, which if my 18year old self found out about, he would certainly kick my ass. It's lucky then that I have just hired out both CDs from the library, which will now get burned and copied onto blank CDs, where you can easily get now when you are buying milk from Tescos. These will also get burned for Rolf. I'm sorry, but they will. There is always a part of me that feels gulity for this, but I know that I have invested more than my fair share in the industry for the last 30 years. That's kinda what this new blog is all about and I have enough experience to keep it going for a while. I know that having copies on a blank CD and the real thing is no subsitute. As a collector and completist, I know this but my tastes are so varied these days, I can't afford to be that anymore.

There will always be bands that I will eventually buy everything for, Pearl Jam and Pearl Jam being two such bands that I already collect but for the time being I am going to have to make do with copies and eventually take back (before the 18th) the wonderful original products (both of which are beautiful, incidentally) back to their owners but the band should be safe in the knowledge (sat in their huge mansions) that I do appreciate them and have partly put their toes on those soft persian rugs and into their limited edition cadillacs. At the moment, I only listen to music as I type away on my many non-existant projects or on my ipod, so wonderful packaging is not nescessarily needed by me. Besides, I have far too many, like books.

It's going back in the favour of the bands though and that definately makes the fans happy, especially when their favourite bands are inspired by it to continue instead of collapse and disintegrate under the pressure of not making enough whilst their label clears up like so many smaller bands have before them.

So Keane, Bitsy salutes you. You're still shit though.

Soundtrack to my Life: "If You Leave Me Now" by Chicago

Artist: Chicago
Track: If You Leave Me Now/Label: CBS4603/Album: Chicago X/Release: 9th October 1976/Highest Chart Position: 1

I was born in the October of 1976 in a hospital 7 miles away from the town of Redcar, in the north East of England, where (for some reason) my parents had decided to call home. We lived on Southampton Street, number 16. Think Coronation, but without the cobbles, or maybe there were. It was a Saturday and I was my mother’s first offspring of a future three.

The Number One single in the charts was Dancing Queen by ABBA. This was succeeded (when I was a day old) by Mississippi by Pussycat but it was the next single to hit the “top spot” as it was inclined to be known back then, Chicago’s If You Leave Me Now on November 7th, when I was only a few weeks old that was destined to be the first important part of the Soundtrack to my Life.

While still in hospital in Guisborough, I had developed an eye infection which led us to be sent to the isolation ward at West Lane Hospital in nearby Middlesbrough. As my mother was breast-feeding, she expected to be with me in the same room. When we got there we were separated. She thought that they were taking me away for treatment and that I would be brought to her regularly even if it was just for feeding. She didn't see me again for days which was extremely distressing for her at the time. She kept asking why they weren't letting her see me and pressing on them that the reason she was there was to feed me and that was all. They had her isolated in a sterile environment in a room with a glass wall and anyone who came in had to wear a gown and a mask. She was told to express milk so they could give it to me in a bottle. I asked her about this.

“This was extremely hard as I had to use a breast pump which didn't work very well. My boobs were in agony. I remember being in tears, hugging myself and rocking backwards and forwards. Remember I was only eighteen.”

Looking back, she wished her dad or mine had the nerve to stand up for her but the attitude in those days were hospitals know best, so be quiet. Not like they are today and the patient is very much in charge, despite protestations to the contrary. The hospital eventually apologised and reunited me with my mother together in our own room. We stayed there for a couple of weeks and it was at this point that she sang to me a song that was all over the radio at the time as she rocked to me sleep in those first crucial weeks. I think subconsciously, the music helped me and her and gave us our earliest bond through music.

“If you leave me now, you’ll take away the biggest part of me...”

It was the first Number One for Chicago at a strange time for the band. The song pegged for Chicago X (their 10th album) nearly never made the cut at all and was something that was recorded at the last minute to make up space. They hadn’t previously been a ballad sort of band, preferring more of a jazz-rock stance and because of the song, the album went platinum, selling a million copies in three months.

Through her bosom and encouragement through the power of this tune that I now actually have grown to hate, my mother urged me to fight and keep going by my bedside. My father wanted her to come home but she never left me once. He wanted my to leave me in the care of the nurses. We don’t know to this day whether it was because he was feeling lonely or left out of the experience at home, but I know that he never chose to hang around the hospital and hum any Mowtown my way either.

The song is actually about a quarrelling couple who are deciding on whether to end their union for the better. It is believed that Peter Cetera wrote this song about his faltering marriage and was a plea to his wife at the time to stay. Unfortunately, she left him not long after.

The sudden success of If You Leave Me Now increasingly seemed to become the preferred style of Chicago's audience and radio listeners, which ended up putting a lot of strain on the band who drifted apart only to reform not long after with an almost new line up but nowhere near the success that album had given them. It was so popular at the time in America, it was known to be playing on a number of radio stations at the same time.

"That drove me crazy," says Keyboardist Robert Lamm. "I know it drove Terry (Kath, Original Guitarist and Singer) crazy, because that isn't what we set out to be and it isn't how we heard ourselves."

Incidentally, a few days before my sister was born at the end of January 1978, Kath, whilst inebriated, accidentally shot himself in the head at a party when he was joking around with a gun he was cleaning. He was quoted as saying, "Don't worry, it's not loaded" to friends who warned him of putting the gun to his temple. He was 31.

So, Arguement Number One ensued between my parents and as it turned out that it wasn’t to be the first I would cause, but there was no way they could convince my mother to leave me after they allowed her to start feeding me again and she was still getting conflicting advice from the different midwives rotating the shifts on the subject of my care. Whereas my mum was just happy whenever she felt I needed feeding, one of the midwive’s was insistant and aggressive with our new family unit that I had to be woken strictly every 4 hrs and weighed before feeding then after to see how much milk I was taking in, which my mother balked at.

After coming home in the middle of October we returned on Bonfire Night when my eyes flared up a second time. This time though, I also had a very bad nappy rash. I spent the next two weeks lying on my front with my sore, red arse pointing to the heavens.

The affect the song had on our early relationship is clearly evident but the bitter sweet and sad story of the song, unbeknown to my mother at the time, would seem to have been a succicent omen for the future.

Reading 2006 Highlights

“Pin”/”Gold Lion”/”Maps” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs (Friday)



“Nancy Boy” by Placebo (Sunday)

Last time I saw this band, I guess it was Leeds Festival 2000 and it fucking poured down for their set and they didn’t play this song so I feel a bit better. Their set included a 10minute break where they had a technical problem and they turned the camera on the girls in the crowd who felt it nescessary to lift their shirts. A bit boring and gratuitous but nobody was complaining, I guess. The band didn’t look too impressed though.



My Chemical Romance being bottled at the beginning of their set. I don’t care much for the band and neither did the Slayer fans who hung around and felt as if they should make their feelings clear about this rookie band being above them in the bill. Fair play to them for actually winning the crowd over but their music was a bit whiny for me. (Sunday)



“All My Best Friends are Metalheads” by Less Than Jake (Sunday)



“Baba O’Riley” by Pearl Jam (Sunday)

Also some pics from my other blog from the festival:

Placebo
Bodycount
Bouncing Souls
Gogol Bordello
Peaches
Pearl Jam
Lightyear
Dresden Dolls and Less Than Jake
The Fall
Be Your Own Pet

Soundtrack to my Life: "Only You" by The Flying Pickets

Artist: The Flying Pickets
Track: Only You/Label: Ten/Album: Lost Boys/Release: 26th November 1983/Highest Chart Position: 1


My father had crabs. Crabs from the sea, that is.

On a weekly basis, he used to venture out into the very early morning and make his way down to the sea front to meet the trawlers on the beach and enter into a bargaining war with the fishermen for their morning catches. He would then prepare these wares himself and sell onto the people of East Cleveland. From this source he used to produce many things but the main source of his work was from crabs. When he returned to Kent Close mid morning with the large bags of shellfish, he often took over the kitchen before readying his station at the living room table in preparation for his working day.

On Saturday Morning, the kitchen was my father’s domain and were were to keep out.

Now to some, The Flying Pickets’ now classic acapella christmas success of 1983, Only You was the first acapella song to reach number one with a timeless video full of despair and working class melancholy. To us, it was that but much more.

It was also the crab boiling song.

After the needle hit the vinyl of the record, he would lay out the free newspapers on the living room table as the crabs simmered away in a huge pot on the stove.

“Da Da... Da Da... Da Da Da Da...” he chanted tunelessly. Da Da Da Da... Only You...”

As the creatures boiled alive, a whistling cry echoed throughout the house before dying down to just the vast bubbling of the pot. All of this was often the early morning alarm call in the Farley household and when the silence of death arrived, this was when we all knew that the next part of the day was almost upon us.

The shells were poured into our sink and the cold water tap was run onto them in order for them to be prepared and then dressed for sale. When we were good or bugged him enough, he would let us join him at the table and pick at the crab meat he burrowed from the cooked shells, as he ensured he got every last sliver of sea flesh from the carcass. He would often tell us off if he discovered us eating too much as every last bit was a possible profit but secretly he didn't mind.

I have to admire the resiliance and passion in the man. He may not have wanted to work but he put his heart and soul into the one form of self employment/conning the state that he put his mind to. As he hunched over the crab shells to crack the legs open to forrage for the precious white meat, my job was usually the separation of the brown and pink meat from the main shells. To dress a crab, it is a careful skill that initially involves separating the different colours of meat and then rearranging them back into the upturned and hollowed shell in an attractive pattern or fashion. My father was a crab dressing machine often producing about 40-60 a day.

With his special mix of meat thinned out with pepper and salad cream (there was no such thing as mayonnaise in 1980’s North East England), he could easily produce a 20% increase in product and along with the prices he used to charge around the local pubs in Redcar and Middlesbrough, this is often what kept our family tied over for some weeks as well as the benefits we were receiving on top. I didn’t like the idea of this obvious dissention and cheating of the system even back then, but when you are poor, you have to be creative and trust that your parents knew what they were doing. Especially when those profits often never left the pubs they were made in the first place.

My father quickly learned the essential business skills to keep his venture afloat. Everytime a member of immediate or extended family came to our home, they left with a seafood salad item or if we (on a rare occasion) were invited to a relative’s for a traditional sunday, festive or seasonal meeting, my father would be there with his dressed crabs. Not as a gift like Mediterranean families would offer to you as a parting gesture for their effort in visiting them or similarily you to them for their hospitality, my father would instead always have to bring up the awkward question of payment after they had taken the crab into their hands. All of this only led to the eventual rows as when he wasn’t selling crabs to my family, he was borrowing money from them. I’m sure he learned all of his marketing techniques from Ronnie Barker in Open All Hours and I’m suspecting that Social Security put him on some sort of selling night course.

It got to the point where my relatives stopped coming round in fear of Arkwright, my father, who a lot of the time embarrassed my mother and her side of the family. She put it down to one of his initial eccentricities before they married but ended up avoiding my household for the most part of the time, in fear of leaving with a chilled seafood snack.

When times were hard and the locals were sick of my father’s award winning fayre, you can probably imagine what our diet consisted of. I was sick of crab and crab began to make me sick. There’s only so much you can do with a crab as well, ask Nigel Slater. With the basic food training my mother had from her parents and our budgets, there was no room for such things as bisques and souffles. They just didn’t exist back then. I began to resent the little sideways walking bastards and bits of white flesh after a time and the poverty they represented within our household. The mere mention of one of the shelled creatures at one point often brought a dark cloud over Redcar and the shouting from all members of the family resumed.

On top of this, my father didn’t appreciate the early comedy sarcasm I was picking up from the likes of The Young Ones and The Lenny Henry Show either, especially when I entered into the room and announced things like,

“What’s tonight then? Crab and....?”

There were times though like in the summer when demand for my father’s dressed crabs was at a high and he had no choice but to enlist myself and often my sister around the table armed with our forks and once again we found ourselves swaying along with my father and the Da Da Da’s.

When he got going, he would sell the crabs to anyone and often got so eager he was coaxed by my mother into doing the most mundane but essential jobs like picking me up from school as long as there might have been a marketing opportunity lying in wait for him and his wares, such as the other parents and even my teachers. There he was as I trudged up the path, waiting with his hands buried in his deep pockets attempting to charm his way into a sale, brandishing his decorative shells.

“Dad, put your crabs away...” I pleaded.

Along with the crabs, he often returned with Cod, which he filleted and sold to the chippy in the square on Lakes Estate. When our finances couldn’t stretch to Cod, he came back with Ling instead, which were also filleted but passed off as Cod or mixed with batches of the more superior fish. Being a cheaper fish, this reaped even more of a profit when he was successful. The chippy didn’t know the difference. It was a lot easier to hoodwink people in those days, I guess.

There were also whelks and winkles which went into a separate pot and were bagged up to sell alongside the crabs or in the pubs. I loved my father but he was a rogue, and he wasn’t even a good rogue at that either. Even I could tell that when I was six or seven. He always had some sort of scheme brewing or idea for self employment, but none of these ideas ever stretched to the success of his crab dressing business, which was the main focus over the other sea fayre he dealt in. He tried his hand at selling the usual knock offs from a bag. Jeans, trainers and perfumes, not to mention trying to make money off the horses which he didn’t quite seem to grasp, never works.

He got lucky the once and we celebrated like I never saw again. He won like a hundred pounds, we all went shopping and bought loads of groceries and got things we all liked. He even took my mother out for a Babycham that night. She made a big fuss and even went out and got her hair done.

We rented from the council and relied solely from the government in the times he wasn’t in and out of some menial job that he soon came to an end with his frustration or idleness.
The longest he came into contact with serious employment was when he was shipped over to the Falkland Islands to help rebuild the destroyed airport after the war. It seemed like he was gone for years. He returned like a conquoring hero brandishing gifts for his children and he acted like some sort of martyr when he returned at what he had gone through to provide money for his family.

Despite the Argentines having long gone from the area, he was talking like he was actually in the war to people, it was all a bit confusing when I was younger. I wondered for a time whether he actually was part of the action, or post-action as it were. He was back in a matter of weeks though and the only thing I’m sure he had to face were hundreds of bags of Tarmac.

My mum loved it, for the first time in a long time, she was left in charge of the finances. She got someone in to put curtains up in the house finally. Front and back. We had been there two years already and hadn’t had the opportunity to before.

You can imagine how well this went down with my father upon his grand return, he was pretty angry and she had made his position in the house that much more inferior. She proved a small point that day in how much he drained her and brought the family down in the process and my mother got her first taste of freedom, laying the groundwork and confidence in her heart for events in later years. She had managed without him and made the place look half decent. She had also made him look like a fool though and he never let her forget it.

Consequently, he never went away to work again and I haven’t eaten damn crab since either.

Your Monday Morning WakeUp call

Fucking Hostile by Pantera (Donington 94)

Soundtrack to my Life: "Shut Up" by Kelly Osbourne

Artist: Kelly Osbourne
Track: Shut Up/Label: Epic/Album: Shut Up/Release: 8th February 203/Highest Chart Position: 31

“Okay you might fucking well hate me, but I’m here for another half an hour so get used to it. The only thing I suck is your mums fat cock.”

Sunday June 22nd Snickers Game On at The Millenium Dome, Greenwich, London.

“Why are we going to see this again?” The Big Man asks me as we walk from the second stage to the main stage. He is referring to one Kelly Osbourne, daughter of Ozzy.

“Rolf, three years ago... the jokers at Mean Fiddler thought it would be a good idea to put on a pre-teen pop duo called Daphne and Celeste in some kind of cruel publicity stunt onto the Reading Festival main stage between... wait for it... two punk bands, ‘A’ and Blink 182, who were themselves followed by two of the heaviest acts on the planet, Rage Against the Machine and Slipknot.”

Reading has been known for traditionally showing their appreciation for the meagre line-ups of the past of throwing piss bottles towards the stage in the past but to be honest, that hasn’t happened for a while. The rock press have joked about it years and the tradition has filtered into live reviews of bands that have sucked for many years, but really thats where it has originated. My first major outdoor gig was in 1993 and that was the one and only thing I was worried about to be honest, being hit by a piss bottle.

“Anyway... you can imagine the sort of people that were milling around the festival site. Not fans of this genre of music and the organisers knew that.”

“What happened?” he asked me.

“It was referred to as the largest bottling off since Meatloaf in 1988... and he was one of the headliners...”

That was a good year for bottlings. The first night was a fucking stormer. Headliners were The Ramones and Iggy Pop. The second was the Loaf and fucking Starship... I wonder if the weekenders thought they were a bit cheated. Hothouse Flowers on the Sunday nearly never came on at all.

“He made it to the encore before storming off but for the pop duo from America, I think it may have been the chorus to their song that ‘Ugly’ that did it for them that day,”

“How’s that then?”

“Well, as well as the song repeating ‘you’re mama says your ugly...’ over again, the chorus goes, ‘U.G.L.Y’, you ain’t got no alibi, you’re ugly’... Yeah, pretty much downhill after that...”

What I didn’t admit to Rolf at the time was that the only other song they managed to get out that day, ‘Ooh, Stick You’ did just that. That Summer, I couldn’t get it out of my head. It was so damn catchy. It was purely awful, yankee euro-pop of the first degree, embraced by the bullies in the schools of America that the songs were written to parody. I guess it was some ironic brilliance on their part, reminiscant of Kurt Cobain’s feelings to his song, ‘In Bloom’, when he showed his antipathy for the jocks while they sang his songs.



To be fair to Kelly, I think she was totally set up. This equally forboding, publicity demising effort at putting her on the bill of a skateboard festival bill with such luminaries as The Vandals, Sick of it All and Cypress Hill was a total media circus. Granted, the stage on Kelly’s day were such bands as Reef and Electric Six, who were more chart-orientated and headliners INME, who were tipped to be great but then, weren’t but there was something not quite right with the whole day.

Firstly, compared to the band before Kelly, the sound had clearly been altered somehow. We were in the best sound vantage point where we were and we could hardly hear her vocals at all and the guitar and the drums were far too loud for the oddly shaped tent room. I would have put this down to inexperience as this was the first event of this kind to be staged here but then Electric Six and Reef earlier in the day had sounded fine.

I firmly believed someone had tampered with her sound. Then there were the unusual amount of water bottles that were hurled at the Osbourne daughter. I had commented to Rolf how great it was that they had free water handed out at the event, which we both took advantage of.

He said to me, “They’re always promoting something at these things, aren’t they?” but I had never seen people with rucksacks offering free bottles of branded water (I forget which kind it was now) at an event like this and they were giving away them by the handful. Plus, I hadn’t seen anything of them the rest of the day and they were nowhere to be seen on the second day when we were drenched with sweat, bouncing up and down to the dope fuelled tunes of Cypress Hill. They just appeared as the bands were changing, awaiting for one Kelly O.

As soon as she came on, the boos started. The band launched into their first song, fronted by Kelly in her new blonde spiky mop.

I noticed straight away the vocals and mentioned it to Rolf. He agreed. She was starting to sound more and more like Brody from The Distillers, but I still couldn’t hear her properly, even when she started hurling abuse back at the crowd, which she was initially cheered for. It seemed like she took the taunts a little personal though. Through her hit, “Shut Up” the crowd sang “Fuck Off” in place of designated title in the chorus, to which she uttered the previous comments about sucking a parental unit’s penis. Elegant. This was prompted though by the constant tirades of “You Suck” by the audience all the way through and between the first few songs.

I think it was when she was starting to taunt the crowd back that the crowd really turned on her. That and watching the posing, inexperienced band react badly from the stage, taking it upon themselves (as session noodlers) to berate the crowd too, much to Kelly’s delight. The over-reaction was quite silly and that was what clearly prompted the eventual early exit.

There was only one solution to this madness.

I looked at The Big Man and he looked at me. He positioned himself behind me and bent over to put his head between my legs, whisking me up, high above the heads of the rest of the crowd as I tried to balance myself upon his shoulders. He momentarily unbalanced himself and came back down, before vaulting me back up.

“You know what to do, Farls”

I had to take my moment. The crowd in the immediate area around me knew what I should do also. I straightened myself up while Kelly was in the middle of one of her taunts and I lifted up the middle fingers on both hands towards the direction of the stage. As I did this, I suddenly realised how close we were to the front of the stage. We wereat least 50 metres from the band, a position that was even bettered the night before during the Cypress Hill set. Rolf had this knack of grabbing me and marching his body weight forward through the crowd and here he had done us both proud without me even noticing. Kelly reacted rather badly. She stopped her obscenities for a moment and turned scarlet as the whole crowd saw me, a little fan flipping her two special birds, and broke out in a chorus of laughter. All she could manage was one in return, which was met with a barrage of plastic.

As Kelly launched into her next song, she dodged even more bottles, they rained down upon her, pelting the young female drummer and hitting Kelly a number of times. The people seemed to be fuelled by my taunting of the singer and didn’t relent until she stormed off stage, giving the mouthy, show off guitarist one last Evian in the face as he spouted of something about how small our cocks were.

Really, if you weren’t such a Motley Crue LA poseur in the first place, we wouldn’t have bottled you. They didn’t quite seem to grasp that over here, you gain respect. You have to earn it. You have to work your way up the ranks in this business and pay your dues and that doesn’t include a major recording artists daughter getting a multi album deal based on the premise of geneology. That’s not cricket. We don’t want to see you or your hired session musos strutting their peacock stuff around the stage at a major main stage billing when its like your third gig together when the likes of The Vandals and Sick of it All, whose integrities you should inspire to perhaps one day perhaps even come near to, are on the second stage (and to some respects drawing larger crowds than yours) and are tearing it a new one while they are there.

The rock press (not surprisingly with their allegiances to Ozzy and Sharon) neglected to even mention the bad reception and instead praised Kelly for her determination over “a few people trying to spoil things” but what they neglected to mention was that the half an hour that Kelly mentioned onstage in completing despite the poor reaction to her, was in fact only ten further minutes.

The Shut Up album didn’t do so well afther that, it failed to reach 150,000 copies in America and Kelly and her father left Sony for Sanctuary Records. Her second album, Sleeping in the Nothing despite being recorded with top producer, Linda Perry was released in June 2005 to luke warm response. It peaked in the UK chart at 57 and after one week disappeared and in the US, only sold 9,000 copies after entering the Billboard Top 200 at Number 117. Kelly has since moved into the world of acting and fashion and seems to have abandoned whatever hopes she had of becoming a credible music artist.

At least for the time being she has shut up.

Bitsy Champions... Koopa

Promising to champion new bands, here are some guys from Colchester, clearly influenced by Blink 182 and Green Day, but here they cover one of Scotland's finest bands, The Proclaimers!

I first came across these guys, supporting Tribryd's last gig at WestOneFour.... where they, like us, played to about four people.



Koopa play Storm, in Leicester Square next Saturday afternoon at 1pm in the afternoon (?!) and then at The Metro on 14th Nov. More gigs on the space below....

Koopa MySpace

Should I Stay?

Your Monday Morning WakeUp Call

Brazilian kids rock!!!



This Monday, we have a couple of kids from Brazil "fucking shit up" on behalf of their countrymen and heroes Sepultura. This is really cool, check them out.

For Brazilian thrash enthusiasts like me, here is what the real thing is supposed to sound like. Sepultura appeared on one of my favourite shows, The Word which was slagged off a lot for being crap and crude but at one point it was the only place to watch decent live music on terrestrial TV. Not one of their best moments, they came up with this belittling moment where they treated their fans like "wild animals" and caged them up before releasing them. It actually provided for a pretty cool TV moment as the opening chords of "Refuse/Resist" rang out. I for one, as a musically impressionable 16 year old thought it was fucking awesome at the time.

Soundtrack to my Life: "Camera Never Lies" by Bucks Fizz

Artist: Bucks Fizz
Track: Camera Never Lies/Label: RCA 202/Album: Are You Ready?/Release: 27th March 1982/Highest Chart Position: 1

“Count us in, Mark...”

I have the count ready in my head. A stick in each hand. On four, they will hit the symbol above each of my shoulders and the rest of the band will join on the beat, when I provide it. My right arm will swing over to the high hat on my left and my other arm will hover underneath, over the awaiting snare. The drumkit is not familiar to me. It does not belong to me.

Actually, I am still unsure about the position of the ride cymbal to my right and I wonder if I have time to fiddle with it a little. Having only had an hour’s practice and only ten minutes of that was with the Eighties superstar I am providing the accompanying backbone to and he is now peering over the toms at me to give me his signal to start.

I get a sudden rush of power, despite my rather inglorious position. It’s all down to me.

This is my one claim to fame.

That part of your life you cue up in surprise of all of those around you. The sort of unbelievable fact you produce when you are asked to perform an icebreaker task at the beginning of some work related course or seminar. The sort of funny story you bring up at a dinner party after you have emptied the third bottle of Merlot. It’s the kind of story that hushes a conference room or smoke filled dining table, normally reducing the people listening into sniggers and embarrasing guffawing at your expense.

“Hey, Mark.” Someone would always slur. “Tell us the Bucks Fizz story...”

Yes, I was the drummer in Bucks Fizz. For about an hour.

In March of 1981, the band’s first single, Making Your Mind Up entered the charts just before they represented the country with it in the Eurovision Song Contest. This particular year it was held in Dublin and we won, despite only two countries giving the United Kingdom entry the full 12 points, Israel and the Netherlands.

Our song narrowly beat the West German entrant, Lena Valaitis, by four points. The French and Swiss entries also performed well and it was close until the very end and even though most of the contest was between the French and the hosts, we nicked it at the end like theives in the night.

The UK have always been reasonable contenders in the competition. We had won the competition twice in the sixties and once in the seventies before the Bucks Fizz win. Lulu, Sandie Shaw and the mighty Brotherhood of Man. Ah, those were the days my friend, we thought they’d never end.

Oh, that was Mary Hopkin? Nevermind.

I remember that close contest of ’81 with some fond memory and some anxiety. I can picture my mum on the edge of her seat, both of my parents egging on The Fizz and especially the skirt ripping routine which made them famous and probably nicked the title for them.

In the excitement and enthusiasm you have when you are younger, I was eager to try out the routine with my slightly younger sister, just like the boy/girl foursome on TV in front of us.
In the absence of velcro in my house, I had Kerry to hold a bath towel around her and fasten it with a bulldog clip so we could play at being The Fizz. Having purchased the record and contributing to that first number one of theirs, the first of three in their career, we used to copy the routine in the living room along to the record player. The size of my sister matched with the size of the bath towel wrapped around her a few times turned her into, instead of a nimble dancer, a potential human spinning top and in the essential skirt ripping part of the song, her makeshift costume performed less of a revealing action and more of a lunge. Yes, we didn't have to worry about being influenced by violence on TV, we had light entertainment. This launched her across the room and she banged her head on the edge of the sideboard.

I got in big trouble for that but then, I got in trouble a lot. My backside felt my father’s belt as it did on many an occasion, but none more so than when I attempted the Bucks Fizz Eurovision routine. Actually, I tell a lie. My old man was a lot handier than that with the strap. It got to the point where he would only have to motion to the buckle and begin to undo it or have my mother threaten me with a beating “when my father got home.”

I lived in fear of this man and his clothing accessory for many years, but I probably deserved it. I acted up a lot, but it was mostly due to the emotional surroundings that constantly brewed inside our council-rented home. Most memories of him involve in some way him turning red faced with anger and scrambling to undo his trousers, which would always be loose around his backside while he swung his belt at us. I found places to hide though from him, although my favourite nook was soon discovered.

“Where’s Mark?”

“Have you tried the airing cupboard?”

I loved that airing cupboard. I spent a lot of time in there. I used to while away the hours in the airing cupboard when there was nothing else to do. That part of the house saved my bacon a couple of times and supplemented a growing desire for solitude, espcially away from my father. I used to read the Asterix books in there, wrapped in warm fluffy towels and and the hand me down, scratchy woollen sheets.
One thing we had in our house were lots of towels and scratchy woollen sheets. My parents really made out like bandits at the wedding on the haberdashery front.
It was so warm and inviting in there and I soon realised that as long as I could climb high enough away from my father, I could pretty much keep away from his grasp the majority of the time. He used to try and climb into the cupboard which was at a height that wasn't advisable at tackling without the aid of a stepladder after a few pints and I could always rely on him to soak himself in a lot more of that. So much so that he once tried and fell backwards flat on his ass and when he was filled with alcohol, it never took much effort to fend him off by barricading myself in my room by pushing against the door. The long hair carpets that were fashionable at the time probably did me a lot of favours come to think about it, as they aided in my struggle to keep him at bay. Then, as long as I could ignore the shouting and threats long enough he eventually gave up to often sleep off his drunken stupor or start a fight with my mother, who would be cowering downstairs.

I quite often woke to the beatings though. He soon sussed me and my hiding places out and took to biding his time till later in the evening, catching me unawares like you would in some sort of military operation. Often he would drag me from my bed and throw me against the wardrobe, in order to stun me while he started unbuckling away in the dark. He used to bait my younger sister in the bed next to me as he took his anger out on me, warning her that she would be next if she wasn’t quiet.

We were resigned to being at our most vunerable there, often waking in the middle of the night, bent over a grown man's knee, screaming with excruciating innocence. This didn’t help our sleep patterns or our moods any either. I told her not to worry, that he would concentrate his energies to me and to try and return to her sleep. I would make sure of that.

He was a wonderful man when he was sober, despite him always cheating on my mother. He loved his children and always had a lot of love for us. When he was in the house and bedtime came around, he made sure we went knowing that he loved us more than anything in his world.


It was never the same for me and The Fizz after that first album and by the end of 82, they seemed to have entered into some pre-Frankie goes to Hollywood style PVC phase. My mum bought me the single, If You Can’t Stand the Heat, probably remembering the fuss I made at their first two singles. She must have thought I was a mad Bucks Fizz fan by then. But I never played it. Not only did I not like the song, it reminded me of the Eurovision beating and the band looked silly on the cover, dressed in motorcycle uniforms. That may have been one of many times that James Dean (or the image of) was cool again. They appeared on Top of the Pops in full fetish club mode and despite appreciating that look in years to come, it was just wrong and they never reached the same dizzying heights of chart stardom they had previously enjoyed again. In fact, the UK wouldn't actually win Eurovision again for another 16 years.

In the nineties, with constant voting changes and a new breed of Eastern European entrants and Scandinavian winners, another drought for this country started until Katrina and the Waves came along in 1997 and by that time (a year earlier), I would actually have grown and ended up in a position where I could not only meet the previous winners but actually also end up performing with the band.

But how did this happen? How on earth did I (a failed redcoat and barman in a holiday camp on the south coast) end up being the backbone of one of the most successful english pop groups of the eighties? For one night only. How did a relative loser like me play with one of the greatest English pop acts?

Well, I make a great cappucino.

It was the summer of ’96, England hosted the European Football championships and it was Three Lions fever thanks to David Baddiel, Frank Skinner and a particular melodic anthem adapted from an old dockside workers protest song. Jules Rimet was still gleaming and Gareth Southgate missed THAT penalty against Germany in the semi finals. I was working at Butlins in Bognor Regis. After originally gone there to be a redcoat and lasting a matter of weeks, I ended up in the bars, or behind them should I say. But that’s another story.

Through a series of interesting misfortunes and madcap occurances, I ended up looking after the bar in the restaurant that overlooked the main showbar. That Summer, the pop group of my yesteryear, Bucks Fizz played on Sunday nights.
Bobby Gee was the only one left from the original Eurovision winning skirt ripping line up. Mike Nolan had just left and had been replaced by David Van Day, from Dollar. The two original girls, Cheryl Baker and Jay Aston had been replaced earlier by two leggy models, one of which Bobby eventually married.

Incidentally, the line-up has completely changed again since and alone Bobby holds the fizzing torch in the official Fizz. Mike Nolan actually reunited recently with Cheryl Baker and Shelley Preston (who replaced Aston) to form another Bucks Fizz. This was subject to a much publicised controversy over the name, and despite Shelley, Mike and Cheryl performing Making your Mind Up as Bucks Fizz at a 2005 Eurovision special, Bobby Gee’s group now own the legendary monkier.

Before every show, Bobby Gee sat at my bar and drank cappucino as it warmed up his vocal chords. Not very rock n’roll, I know. I’m sorry. I know I really have some scandalous tale of rock star excess at this point, but it really wasn’t like that. Bobby was curteous, polite and just sat and drank his cappucino and talked either to me or on his phone. Anyway, I didn’t need Bobby to be madcap and like some insane Axl Rose character as I got enough of that from the managers floating around the camp every night.
Towards the end of their weekly run through the Summer Season, myself and Bobby got on first name terms and I have to admit, I had gotten to quite enjoy the music. But by the 20th show, I didn’t really have much choice. I had even taken to humming the melodies and singing along to Bucks Fizz songs throughout the week, while I was stocktaking or washing glasses, which drove my colleagues nuts. But it was either that, Marilyn Manson or the favourite song of the club DJ around this time which was played at least twice nightly, Wonderwall by Oasis, so I think they got a better deal.

It was Camera Never Lies that seemed to stick in my head the most and embarrasingly had found myself being able to recite the lyrics to the songs along with the group as they performed.

The weeks had gotten so repetitive and my Sunday became so predictable, it had gotten to the point where Bobby’s cappucino was waiting for him, frothy and steaming on the bar top at exactly the same time every week, which Bobby had started to find really amusing. This took a few weeks and a few lukewarm cappucinos to perfect, but the look on his face was always worth it. The four members of of Bobby Gee’s Bucks Fizz toured alone and played their set every week and ran through those unforgettable routines with the house band from each camp.

Towards the end of that Summer, somebody thought it would be a good idea to erect a set of trampolines on Main Street. The queues for the new addition stretched down the street during the day and of course, being major purveyors of drunken lunacy that holiday camps are, people broke into the shoddy netting at night to have a bounce on their way back to their chalets.

The night before the final Bucks Fizz set, the drummer from the house band joined the other holidaymakers in an illicit bounce at 3am. He returned the next day with his arm in a cast and frantic calls were made around the South Coast to arrange a replacement for the errant sticksman. A rather perplexed and concerned Booby Gee had the news broken to him during his weekly italian beverage and chat to me. The verdict was not good. They will probably have to cancel the show due to lack of drummer. Bobby was not happy and the Entertainments Manager seemed more concerned about having to eat his words in front of me rather than solving the problem, before leaving him with a promise that he was awaiting to hear from someone suitable in nearby Brighton.

I think that had rather more to do with our previous run in with the Redcoat job. Long story short, he put a major spanner in the works that was my life when he informed me quite clearly that he didn’t want the likes of me representing his department.

“I’ll play for you, Bobby.” I joked, when the Entertainments Manager had left. I must admit, a small part of me was doing this to both seek revenge impress and make the Redcoat manager mad.

“You might have to.” He laughed. He sipped his coffee and paused.

“Can you play?”

“Yeah, I used to play in a blues band back home. My main influence drum wise is punk rock though”

Poor Bobby blinked very hard.

“We’re not exactly the blues or that punk, although I used to be.”

“True, but I have stood here for the last 25 weeks and watched your set. I know all of your cues and can probably remember the setlist, seeing as you have played the same one all Summer.”

Hours later, I was sat behind the drum stool and made my stage debut for an Eighties pop group. Eurovision Winners, no less. Camera Never Lies was the one song in the set I had been itching to play. I just warmed to the drum beat and the melody. They have this odd little off time break in the song I could really let loose on. So I did. All my friends from the restaurant broke the “No Staff in the Showbar without Permission” rule and jumped around at the front of the stage.

I milked the experience for everything I could. I wasn’t playing for the house band at some none descript holiday camp on the south coast. I was Keith Moon on Live at Leeds. Roger Taylor at Wembley. Charlie Watts in Hyde Park. Lars Ulrich at Donington. I didn’t care.

Boy, did I make those guys work.

I rocked and it was probably the fastest set they have ever played.

Sleeve Notes

Welcome to my literary mixtape. The Soundtrack to my Life.

The following songs have made me into who I am.

They explain to me and to some extent the people that have grown to know me, love me or hate me how I have become to be. How I think. How I feel. Why I react a certain way to good or bad situations. How I make Love. Why I am in Love. Why I am sad. Why I have a tendency to bounce around the room playing air guitar, air saxophone, air drums on a regular basis.

The following is not a music obsessive enthusing about his favourite music, although I am and always have been a music obsessive. Not at all. In fact, I cannot bear to hear a few of these songs. There are songs on this list, like Hot Chocolate and Aswad for example, that fall into this category and make me either cringe or invoke painful memories, remind me of bruises or emotional scars I have collected over the years or bring me to tears but they more than deserve to be on this list, just as much as The Clash or The Red Hot Chili Peppers and as an obsessive, it pains me to write such a thing.

Whereas some of the following songs make me feel on top of the world, remind me of the first time in fell in love or even the last, some of these songs also remind me of the countless broken hearts I have either had or caused. This is great to hear and then sometimes not. It’s a matter of mood. But the one thing they all have in common is that they have shaped me into who I am now by the significance and effect they have had on my life. It’s all about the music and the soundtrack that has been my life.

Music is important. It elates us, comforts us, heals us, excites us, makes us reminisce, makes us fall in love but most of all is always there when there is nobody else. Sure, bands we love split up but the documentation that we as human beings can leave behind is through the power of melody that has such a lasting effect on others is the one and only true art form that has influence that is unparalleled and human nature can do without. What I wanted to awknowledge with this project is what I believe to be great songwriting and musicianship. Sure, some of the following songs have not won awards or sold thousands of copies, but like books, that is unfortunately not a sign of quality. Just good marketing.

The beauty of the melody, the art of the lyric and how a simple three verse song can affect a young person’s life. There are plenty of songs that I love but all of the following stories are just that, songs that have had some sort of significance and stories behind why and how they have gained such a place in my life despite, in some cases my resentment for them.

Sometimes, I believe that I was born about 15 years too late. Kinda like that Sandi Thorn song,

I wish I was a punk rock girl with flowers in my hair.... but obviously not a girl and not necessarily flowers in my hair either, but you get my drift.

Essentially, I should have emerged around 1960 and in West London. I’d love to say that I had always been punk and chanced upon the 101ers at The Chippenham or the Pistols at The Union or one of the less than a hundred people at the 100 Club, but away from the mainlining Nick Kent and chain weilding Sid Vicious of course and away from all that spitting too. Actually, I’m not so sure on the ripped clothes either. Not after I was sixteen anyway.

Yes on reflection, I probably would have made a crap punk. Although, it would have been interesting to be on the Kings Road in the late 70’s with all that bizarre sexual energy and the anticipation of something that they didn’t quite know was simmering under the surface. To think, to be on nodding terms with the likes of those folks who ran Sex or Seditionaries or really any of the movers and shakers of the highly influential upcoming fashion and music scene of the future. The tortured, middle class souls who shocked an appaled the passing collective of High Society loafers. Pete Burns, Adam Ant, Mick Jones, Tony James, Boy George, John Lydon.

But like a lot of people in the seventies, it was more about the music for me. Ok, so let’s say that I should have been born in 1965 and hit the first series of music that I loved around 1979-81 full on, while I was bursting with hormones and energy and the spit, of course.

Well, again not the spit, but the style of New Wave was a lot easier to handle than the odd shades of punk fashion. It is a style and fashion that I have always loved and often beaten up in the street for adopting. Years before those same people adopted the same , of course. The skinny ties, the shirts and drainpipes and the glamorous world of dress up. But all of this was still fun when you are five years old, while everyone else was taking it a whole lot seriously.

Being the eldest of three, I had no older siblings to look to for my musical crushes and inspirations. I always wished I had a cooler, older brother that I could turn to for musical admiration and even though I found myself surrogates for this position in years to come, I didnt so I took a huge prompt from my parents, mostly my mother.

She was a total Marc Bolan devotee (hence my name) and had all of the T.Rex albums and singles, carefully catalogued and in chronological order in a black vinyl box that smelled like it was made from the records housed inside. She even had the ones from the late sixties, when it was just him, a guitar and a bongo player.

Back then, they were known as Tyrannosaurus Rex. She didn’t seem to have anything she loved, just this record collection that was lovingly stored next to the record player. She went to see him live amongst the screaming throng of girls and was a member of his fanclub and everything. We weren’t allowed to play the records, but we were able to look through them, but to be very careful of the order that they were in. I had to beg my mother to play them for me and she would make me promise to be good each day and let me pick one that she would play before I went to bed. I fell for it everytime.

It was the titles that intrigued me more than anything else. Metal Guru, Children of the Revoluton, Solid Gold Easy Action. As titles went, they did not invoke a great deal to me. I could tell (even at that early age) that there were some hippy drugtaking involved in the making of these records and I have to admit, he had a thing for album titles: Prophets, Seers and Sages The Angels of the Ages, Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders of Tommorrow and not forgetting the early classic, My People Were Fair and Had Sky in Their Hair But Now They’re Content to Wear Stars on Their Brows.

Yes, whatever he was taking, must have been good shit.

It was the earlier singles that were on Fly Records that intrigued me and I especially wanted to play. They were black with a white fly on them. I liked it when my mother played them best because I liked watching the Fly spin around on the turntable. Because of this, I really got to like the songs on them and watch the turning fly. Ride a White Swan, Jeepster, Hot Love and my favourite from that early era, Debora.




The song Debora perfectly sums up the sixties. It’s spacy, repetitive and folky and has very simple lyrics. It conjours up dancing barefoot in a field of daisies and free love in the forest.

My father had terrible taste in music, favouring Mowtown and disco. He loved Gladys Knight and Tina Turner and listen to Alan Freeman religiously on the radio. My mother was a full on glam rock fan. How these two met is anybody’s guess.

At times, he was loving and caring and others, he was not a nice man.

He bled our family dry, emotionally and financially but one thing that survived the fights, the arguements, the violence, out of all the things of ours he pawned or sold or lent and never to reappear again was that record collection. My mother left in the end, but she left kicking and screaming with her records. When I saw the fight she put up for that prized collection she kept close to her, I knew then that I would be as passionate, that I would grow up with that much passion and heart for a song, an artist, an album, a label and maybe one day I could keep my children quiet just by pulling out the right seven inch.

I knew that music would keep me going also through hard times, sad times, happy times. That no matter what, if I fell out with a partner, found myself hard up, homeless, without hope that I would always have my music and I would always leave with my records.

My best friend Rolf or The Big Man, will crop up once or twice in the following pages, has the tapes (and more recently CDs) I have ever done for him in a large box in his living room. There are a lot. Last count, about fifteen years worth and at one point I had a knack at one point at sending like four or five a week. This was when I was very bored though. His ex-girlfriend gave him unending grief in the past about the quantity of my small, plastic audio gifts and continued to every time the postman delivered yet another package from the other end of the country.
The Big Man (which I call him for reasons that will become evident), has kept every single one. I have to commend his resiliance. I am terrible at keeping things.

Through desperation to get a copy of something from someone or happening upon a live set on the radio, I have recorded over so many great things but you can always count on Rolf to have it still. I have even, through moving around a lot with life, found myself rummaging through his box on my annual or bi-annual visits home for some obscure live or demo version of something, often taking the majority of my visit away from my mother and instead upto my elbows in dust at his place. Compilations that have contained albums I have newly discovered with a backlist of other tracks, b-sides, out-takes and demos, carefully handpicked selections from different artists that I have come across that I too want him to discover and share my joy in finding because I knew he wouldn’t (with two newborns and no job) be able to afford them.

Through my friend’s equal passion for music and love for receiving the postal tresures, I grew with my love for him in my abscence and also a confidence with friendships I had sadly lacked when I had grew up. I treasured the rare similar tapes I got from him as I have done from others. It doesn’t happen very often but when an friend or partner has laid down their heartfelt passions for me on C-90, I think its the greatest gift in the world and fashioning a compilation to someones taste and which is tailored to perfection for someone’s personality is no easy task. It takes skill and patience and is not something that should be taken lightly.

My last girlfriend documented her whole Soundtrack to her Life for me on a matter of three tapes a few years ago. Documenting her childhood, college years and present day influences, she carefully picked out the tracks from her amazing and eclectic library of alternative and indie treasures and poured out her heart into the little explanations scribbled on the tape cover. That means the world to me and I’m not sure whether I told her that enough before our time came to (sadly for me) an end.

My other friend, a singer songwriter recorded me a tape a few years before that started with a song she wrote to a some song lyrics that had been lying around my flat. The tape contained her earliest stuff which I had never heard before and was filled up with songs by obscure female fronted bands, which my penchant for was and always has been a private joke between us. That effort, that gift, that nerdy quirk in people that are willing to share their musical desires with me means more to me than any materialistic offer or expensive keepsake.

I will keep that safe until I die. That’s the sort of thing you always make sure you have with you wherever you lay your hat and call your home and you don’t tape over just because there’s a Rancid gig you went to on the radio.

One thing I know is that until the day I die, I will be earnestly agonising over my Top 10 albums, where to place Troublegum and does Ritual del lo Habitual deserve to be Number One in my heart for this long. For the time being it still does.

Where do the new bands that I have discovered and I listen to more than any recently fit in there? Bands like Boston natives, The Dresden Dolls and The Dropkick Murphys or equally awe-inspiring homegrown talent like Lightyear and Mikabomb. Then there are the classics. Which Metallica album goes in there? Do the Guns N’Roses Illusion albums go in as one entry or seperately? Which Nirvana album? Is Nevermind too obvious a choice? You know you liked In Utero better? Then The Big Man is always there behind me nagging about how Bleach was their finest moment (something we will always argue about) or reminding me about how my favourite tracks are actually on Incesticide, their underrated B-Sides collection.

These things are important, even if you are trying to make important life decisions like, where to live, shall we have a child, shall we break up, shall we get engaged etc at the same time. One thing that I do know is that I will always continue to find excuses for making compilation CDs for new and existing friends, colleagues, lovers and past girlfriends because who or what you know or what political affiliation you take is not important, it’s what you like that defines you and what you appreciate collectively and can spark debate and conversation whlie respecting others interests, bonding through the power of music and all that. The passion you put out there through the power of a CD burner or in the past, CD’s to tapes can bind together friendships that last forever and in my case, have and I will always be safe in the knowledge that for as long as I live there will be music in my heart and a never ending soundtrack to my life that will always need adjusting.

Bitsy Ramone's What Not to Buy

I'm sure everyone has the same problem. After you have left home for a certain amount of time, your parents and yourself kinda drift apart and when it comes round to Christmases and birthdays you find yourself hard-pressed to find each other gifts.

My end of the bargain is easy, as I work in a bookstore, everyone gets books whether they like it or not. The great thing about books is that they are so much more different varieties of books (these days too many) to choose from, certainly more than socks, anyway.

Last year, I must have given away five personally dedicated copies of a gift book (nice, safe option) for close relatives I really know nothing about.

I have to admit, there wasn't a great deal of thought or effort that went into the gifts, especially as the author lived locally and attended a signing just before Christmas at my shop. My mum though pretty much scrapes by each year with HMV vouchers or underwear or clothes that I wouldn't wear or shockingly one year, a radio/toilet roll holder (which didn't leave the box if I recall). Seriously, anyone who spends longer than a radio airplay song on the toilet has a bowel problem. Maybe she knew something I didn't. I'm not one of these people who has everything and is therefore hard to buy for but still I get things like that.

So pretty scary times lately on the gift front but this year and this week, my mum came up trumps on the gift front. Itunes gift cards. Granted it echoed somewhat of previous gifts but this meant I could shop from the comfort of my own laptop, which is where I sadly spend most of my spare time anyway.

As I buy records a lot less these days, I used the opportunity of £50 to spend on itunes as a rare opportunity to stock up on things from the past I had either not got around to getting or a few rare tracks that were otherwise unavailable, apart from on collections or soundtracks I was too tight to buy the whole thing for.

Plus, I really need to update my record collection. I don't have a lot of vinyl, although what I do have is quite rare and from the early 90's or the odd single/album from the eighties that I cherish and really should be under lock and key one day and not cluttering up my mother's attic.

I was more of a taper. Either off friends or what I bought was on tape format and I figured a while back that these albums are the ones I should be replenishing to a more modern format. More than anything, I don't really have anything anymore to play tapes on. Perhaps I should rectify that before they stop making them. Things are different now and my CD collection literally outweighs the tape by about 5to1. But back then, is was less albums and more live music.

Back then, I just taped gigs off the radio and some of the ones I have probably never will make it to CD in my lifetime, unless the Beeb really raid their 1990s archive so for the time being, they are staying with me, much to the annoyance of Mrs. Ramone. I have compromised with a lot of the video collections I have made from over the years now I have the fantastic YouTube to fall back on but I still have so many. So what did I get?

The Albums:

"Life Won't Wait" and "Let's Go" by Rancid.
Just one of those things when you get into an artist for the first time when you are poor. In Rancid's case, I guess it was about '96 when I was at Butlins and I was paid a pittance but then again I only had records on beer to buy. I loved "...And Out Come The Wolves" when it came out and it has stood the test of time by remaining in my Top 10 List so you can pretty much imagine how much I drank around this time. Very much looking forward to seeing the band again in November.

"Smart" by Sleeper (Replenishing worn tape copy)
One of my favourite albums of the '90s and practically my collect soundtrack along with the first Elastica album. When we went to study in Spain in 95, this was my soundtrack and continuing my new found love for girls with guitars that still gets me today.

"The Spaghetti Incident?" by Guns N'Roses (Replenishing worn tape copy)
GNR's half assed album of punk covers from the 70's and 80's was met with critical derision and cries of rock star wankery and self obsession and for many reasons they were right, they only made the album to satisfy themselves and because they could at the time but I loved the album, personally. They were my favourite band at the time, despite the disappointing '93 live shows in Milton Keynes and they were playing all of these punk rock songs, songs with a lot of critical acclaim and kudos attached to the originals. The cynicism of the rock press saw past though, because its their job really.
The odd title for the album comes from an issue they had with their past drummer, who they were in the middle of a court case with at the time. It refers to either (depending on who you believe) a food fight involving said drummer, Steven Adler or a fight that stemmed from another band member eating his dinner before they were due to go onstage.
All very rock n'roll, I know.

"Live Through This" by Hole (Replenishing one of many extremely worn tape copies)
I didn't like Nirvana around the whole explosion of "Teen Spirit" and "Nevermind", I gave it the same amount of over-hype-based indifference I gave The Arctic Monkeys this year when people told me that I must must MUST buy the album. I actually got into Courtney's band first when I saw them on The Word and they played "Beautiful Son." It wasn't until Steve Lamacq was playing tracks from "In Utero" on his show in the summer of '93 that I really got into Nirvana. I much preferred the new wave sound of "In Utero" and "Incesticide." "Bleach" I never really got into, despite The Big Man's insistance that its their best moment.

Bit of trivia for you nerds like me: The last song on the album, "Rock Star" is actually titled "Olympia." Initially, "Rock Star" was slated to close the album. This song is completely different from "Olympia" and features the lyric, "How'd you like to be Nirvana? So much fun to be Nirvana. Barrel of laughs to be Nirvana. Said you'd rather die."

The song was removed from the final tracklist and was replaced with "Olympia," but not before the artwork had been printed, probably due to the overdose in Rome, the previous month.
The original "Rock Star" can be found on bootlegs. This was lucky for the band and for Courtney as the album came out three days after Kurt was actually then found dead.

"Scream, Dracula, Scream" by Rocket From the Crypt (replenishing tape copy)
This is just an awesome album. The first four tracks just floor you. I had bought the massive 3CD single collection for "On a Rope" years previous and got to see them in Brighton in 2001 around the time of "Group Sounds" at the Concorde, which they laid waste to. Amazing gig. I lost my phone in the crush and went back the next day and chatted with the cleaners who had found it. I also lost my camera (just a crappy disposable) but I hadn't bothered taking any pictures of the band because I was too busy chatting up this girl. She was really tall, covered in tattoos and had pillar box, long red hair. Just my type. She took me to her flat above this pub near the palace pier and continued drinking in the bar while it was closed, before she did nasty things to me in bed.

I also purchased a number of tracks that I have been too tight to buy the whole albums for. There were surprisingly a lot of music that I expected to be on iTunes but were not. There were sadly no Dance Hall Crashers or Save Ferris, not all of the Tiger Lillies albums were there.... alas, I settled on "Bam Thwok" by The Pixies, their only new recording since their recent reunion, bizarrely recorded for the "Shrek2" film but not on the soundtrack.

A Faith No More track from the "Angel Dust" days called "The Perfect Crime", only available on the soundtrack to "Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey".

"The King of RockNRoll" by Prefab Sprout, a song from my youth that I will be talking about in "Soundtrack" soon.

"E=MC2" by Big Audio Dynamite. I had a dream recently that I was in the video with Don Letts and Mick Jones and I was trapped in this industrial warehouse world that the band playes. Serves me right for eating cheese before bed time.

"Vasoline" by Stone Temple Pilots. Never got around to getting the album "Purple", can't think why, probably the same reason as the Rancid albums. Just a great song and on the par of anything from their first album also.

So there you go, the way to Bitsy's heart for future reference.... itunes gift certificate....

Your Monday Morning WakeUp Call

Faith No More “What A Day” (MtV Most Wanted)

The first MMWUC of this new music blog and the only way I could have started this is with Faith No More and an album track with my favourite album of theirs. MTV Most Wanted with Ray Cokes and his love for FNM was one of the major things that turned me back onto rock music in the early 90s. This was before the days of "Gonzo" with Zane Lowe and even his predecessor, Eddy Temple-Morris, who was an excellent replacement for Cokes. The "King for a Day, Fool for a Lifetime" album was an aggressive reply to a chart success that was "Angel Dust" and the split with guitarist, Jim Martin. It's fantastically new wave and brilliant. The critics hated the album but we all loved it.

For other Monday Morning WakeUp Calls, visit The Bookseller to the Stars

Soundtrack to My Life: "Geno" by Dexys Midnight Runners

Artist: Dexys Midnight Runners
Track: Geno/Label: Late Night Feelings R6033/Album: Searching for the Young Soul Rebels/Release: 26th July 1980/Highest Chart Position: 1

I thought for a long time that my father played the trumpet. In particular, the trumpet in Dexys Midnight Runners.

Stood next to the trombone player and just behind the singer, Kevin Rowland, there he was, my dad.

“Daddy, that’s you on the TV!” I pointed, jumping on the worn, corduroy couch my mother spent forever telling me not to bounce on.

“I can’t lie to you, Son. That’s me.”

He was lying though.

He was just humouring me, his five year old son, because thats what parents did for a semi-quiet life and I believed him because thats what five year old sons do when they were proud of their fathers. After all, there wasn’t much else for me to be proud of.

Looking back, he looked nothing like any of the band. He was a little older, a little fatter and had the facial hair of a Mexican bandit. Those of you who are familiar with the band, will know that they... don’t.

This is no joke. With his wisping black curls, he was very much akin to a pimp strolling down the streets of Brooklyn, it even earned him a nickname, “Pedro”.

In fact, I never even saw a trumpet or even thought to ask to see one. In my mind, I knew that he played one and who for. But to be fair, it was entirely plausible for a five year old to believe that his father was the trumpet player in Dexys Midnight Runners. As he spent a lot of time away from the house, I naturally thought he was on tour or appearing on other programmes around the world.

He wasn’t on tour though, he was never too far away at all. He was with one of his girlfriends or in the pub with the family credit in his pocket or more than often, in Ladbrokes on Redcar High Street with the other runners, at Epsom.

Like the proud marching working class vagabonds who I first saw on Top of the Pops that Thursday evening in 1980, this was just how my father dressed.

But my father wasn’t a working class vagabond though. The working class worked.

The woollen bobble hats, boots, braces and leather jackets were his every day uniform. After I saw them on TV and watched him in awe when he walked in, I did what five year olds who are proud of their fathers do, I wanted the same and would not let up until I got it. I begged my mother for Dexys Midnight Runners clothes. In the back of my mind I knew that they couldn’t afford to kit me out with the essential threads. All of the arguements in my house were about money and usually due to his reluctance to work. He was forever being sent out like some forraging pigeon to find (by whatever means possible) the next meal, so his two children could eat that day. He was inventive, I’ll give him that.

My father loved the idolising I gave him and so he should have. I made him feel like a rock star despite his shortcomings. In this, I strived to be like him and also adopt his dress. I already had the jeans and the hat, I just needed the boots and the jacket.

They eventually relented on the clothing front but I didn’t get my leather. Leather jackets were not cheap in 1980’s Cleveland but nevertheless I started begging and attempted to charm them out of my mother who seemed to be in charge of the bulk of all the finances.

This, I found out, wasn’t the case. I thought this because it was her that made the weekly trips with us to the local post office to cash the benefit cheques. That was, until he insisted on taking it all off her. It was my father who was very dominant with the finances and with this held her hostage with the money for many years, in fear that she would somehow get up and leave him. We were often dragged to a piss stained, public phone box late at night where my mum would call one of her parents in tears, begging for the opportunity to feed us. She wasn’t allowed any money of her own and was only given it to buy us what we desperately needed but never herself and this was only done under protest and arguement from my father. The rest he pissed away in the pub or in the bookies, which he was really bad at. He would often go out shopping for groceries on the first of the month and we would not see him for dust until he staggered in at 2am with nothing. The rows would then resume. He would be full of promises and apologies that the food was coming and would sort something out. He had spent all day buying lots of nice things for us and he left them on the bus or the train. She couldn’t believe that he could let his two children wait all day hungry, but it was the same more or less periodically.

Myself and my sister befriended the nice lady next door and she often fed us in her back yard. She was another that was subjected to giving away the odd loan never to hear of again but it probably broke her heart to see these two scruffy kids dressed in hand me downs moping out the back because they hadn’t been allowed to eat all day. The nice lady next door did more for us than we ever got to let her know.

We eventually came to a compromise over the clothes I wanted. My mother marched me and my sister’s pushchair (so really it was just myself doing the marching) to a charity shop on the seafront which stocked some army surplus, a good 45 minute jaunt.

Her mother ran a hardware store off the High Street and was usually the source of our finances when times were hard. Suffice to say, we did a lot of marching her way. My mum parted with funds to get me a second or thirty hand camoflage jacket and ankle high, lace up dress boots, making me promise that they would last me the rest of my life.

I had no doubt that they would and promised on her death that they would indeed last that long. I really meant it, although we both knew that I was still growing and they wouldn’t actually see the end of the decade, if not the end of the year. To be honest, I was more concerned about where the clothes had come from in the first place. But I wasn’t in the best position to become snobby about it. Still, I was grateful and I began to live in what I was given.

My new Dexys uniform stood me in good stead that winter when the annual nativity play came around. I went to a fairly religious school as primary schools go. Assembly in the morning and prayers twice a day, that sort of thing.

The school production allowed us to not only make our own costumes or wear whatever was suitable from home but also to choose the roles we were to perform. Naturally, the majority of the popular kids vied and debated their cases for the different roles. While they all rushed for the essential characters that make up the nativity scene, such as Jesus and the wise men, I was determined to choose the only role that would allow me to wear my imitation Dexys Midnight Army Runners clothes.

I chose to be... The Tree. My promising career in theatre casting ended there.

When it came to the day of the nativity and the parents and children filled the assembly hall where the teachers had carefully erected their tasteful set on the makeshift stage, we were all ordered into line outside the hall to be ready to take our position with bowel moving anticipation. The late starting of the play was down to just that. The nervous movements of the young cast. Including me.

I was feeling quite smug though as not only had I got out of rehearsals with my non-speaking role of what was essentially, foliage but I thought I would be the only one in this production that would keep his dignity and look relatively cool in the process. Looking down the corridor, I saw this was very much the case and the majority of my school chums looked very silly. Some of the parents had clearly gone to great lengths to humiliate their offspring with ridiculous attempts at costume design.

This was still before the age of the really competitive child rearing that we see today but they had definately still got the sewing machine out for the occasion, running up kaftans, head dresses, fake beards and togas. The richer, busier parents had clearly just hired something but they still looked as disconcerted as the others at what had been produced for them.

As I was readying myself to go onstage with my agreed tree costume, the wardrobe department (ie one of the teachers) thrust something into my chest. Looking down into my hands, I saw that I had been given two green and brown tissue paper pom poms.“

These aren’t for me...” I whined, handing them back. She glanced down at her clipboard.

“What are you playing?”

“I’m a tree...” I replied. She looked at me and sighed, annoyed.

“Guess what?”

She tossed the makeshift branches back to me and pushed me through the open door towards stage right. I had two choices. I could have thrown an almighty Celine Dion strop and marched off to my fictitious trailer where I would feast on the lavish catering and pet the Madagascan Swan I required to calm my nerves before each show or I could swallow my pride and climb onto the stage with my pom poms. In front of half of the school and all the children’s parents.

Being officially scenery, I had to go on first.

I shuffled my feet sheepishly across the stage, my head hanging in shame, tissue bushes in hand. On the Fonzie scale, even the pair of shades I chose to wear would not help me now. I took my place at the back of stage right followed by Gareth, one of my classmates and possibly one of the only kids less popular than I.

Gareth smelled of piss and soon adopted the name “Piss Boy” by everyone else, but he definately had earned the title. He once let go in the middle of class, before bolting for the door in tears and wet trousers, soaking the chair underneath him in the process. Poor Lisa on the table next to be vomited into her lap.

The day never really recovered from there.

When they eventually persuaded Piss Boy to face the giggles and return to the classroom, he was forced him to stand the rest of the period before lunch as there were no other seats available.

“Hows it going, Gareth?”

Poor Gareth look petrified. We both adopted the Jesus Christ pose to give our appearence of bark and leaves full effect. Gareth shook so much, it almost looked like his tree was blowing in a light breeze.

At least he would have done, if we actually looked like trees.

I could sense the ridiculing thoughts and gathering sniggers from the crowd behind the bright spotlight. My only consolation at this point was that my father, who I of course had told everyone was on tour, wasn’t there.

Even though there was a glaring beam in my eyes, I could make out my mother. The only person on her feet and camera in hand.

“Put the camera down...” I muttered to myself.

My mother was the most random photographer. Sometimes she would only be in the mood to take a few frames and others she would turn into a Japanese tourist in London. One thing she would never do is stop her snapping once she reached the end of a roll. When she was in the mood, she had to capture everything. She was notorious for leaving old photos awaiting to begin their lives in print for all to see left inside the camera. There were times when she would go through a particular non picture time and would perhaps only take one or two a month, either at a relatives or if we were caught doing something goofy in the garden with the dog.

Sometimes pictures from Christmas were developed in the summer or as late as October. Sometimes the camera would go completely untouched for almost year, especially in those periods towards the end of her marriage when she had gradually less events she wanted to capture for posterity.

She insisted on sending her pictures in the mail to one of those developing places which were so much cheaper. They were cheaper because it was a lottery sometimes as to whether you would get your photos back. If you did and they weren’t of some family from Slough skiing, they would still take around two months to return them to you. Added to the time spent hoarding the odd photos, it was like we were treated to moments from the distant past when they were eventually shown to us.

Stood in my camoflage jacket and bobble hat, a la Kevin Rowland I began to sweat. Water began to seep from my neck and between my thighs as Jesus and Mary began to make their crossing on the desert on the two young boys dressed as a donkey. The heat from the spotlight onto the stage gave the atmosphere a Sahara type heat as I saw the other kids were sweating in their makeshift kaftans also.

A cross teacher hushed me from nearby stage left as I took a pom pom to my brow, momentarily taking the emphasis from Jesus and Mary and their crucial scene by the crib.

Then, I managed to completely transcend my motionless role.

I awoke to the image of three wise men looking over me. I was face up from behind the stage.

“Am I in heaven?”

I knew that this was unlikely as I had already been asked politely to not come back to Sunday School that week. The pastor told my father that I was asking to many questions and seemed disrespectful to the gospel, so the chances of me getting into heaven were probably quite slim.

I haven’t made the odds much better since.

“Mark, you just collapsed...”

“Like a felled tree,” someone chuckled.

The wise men and my teacher helped me into the bathroom where I had a glass of water to regain my conciousness. At that point, a five year old Kelly-Ann, the girl who had signed up for the Mary role, burst into the boys toilets in a rage followed by an exasperated and angry teacher,

“Everything is always about you!!” she shreiked and dashed into the corridor hysterical, reacting like I had destroyed her audition and her chances for LAMDA had been dashed forever. Quite what she meant by everything, I have no idea.

Horrified and abashed, I refused to come out of the bathroom until everyone went home.

Everyone didn’t go home though. After the play and the chairs were cleared away, there was to be a disco. When my mother appeared, I begged her to take me away and never to come back.

In an ideal world, she would have been enrolled somewhere different. Somewhere without all the praying. Somewhere I hadn’t made a complete idiot of myself by collapsing in front of the whole school, taking someone called Piss Boy with me and ruining their nativity play.

She wouldn’t take me home though. She made me stay. Told me not to be silly and to have fun with my friends. She was lucky I wasn’t older. By the time, I hit my teenage years, I had developed an acute sense of being able to stomp off somewhere far away for a couple of hours. That was until I was hungry and had to come back home. That would have shown her.

Home from my primary school was a five minute walk but when you are five years old, it’s the other end of the earth. I had to stay put. No doubt by this point, Kelly-Ann (as popular as she was) would have made the other kids laugh at me if I came out.

I decided that I couldn’t face that sort of humiliation. I knew what I was going to do. I could live here, I thought. I was already at school so it really wouldn’t affect my lessons. The teachers would come into bathroom and teach me here. Y

es, that’s what I would do. I sat on the floor and wouldn’t budge.

The teacher left me to wallow in my self pity. Even Piss Boy left me. He actually received some kudos from the other kids while I was sat there, it was cool that he was dragged down instead of being so weak willed that he fell down like me.

Yeah, I’m okay by the way guys.

I sat on that bathroom floor for a good hour. The odd smart alec kid would come in to make a comment but I ignored them. A skill I developed rather quickly and would have to make use of in many years to come.

Each of them asked after me and each of them I sent away. I listened to the songs start up in the muffled distance through the corridor, bouncing off the walls of hand painted pictures and collages made from egg boxes and milk bottle tops.

I wanted my dad. I wanted him to come and save me. Pick me up off the bathroom floor and rescue me. Take me on tour with him. To the countries all over the world. With his trumpet. Playing for other young boys and their dads on other music television shows. Or have him take me over to the shopping square on the Lakes Estate and let me help him eat his bag of chips while sat on the concrete steps to the flats.

That’s who I wanted. Who I wanted to be.

“Geno... Geno... Geno...” began the chant. All the kids were singing along. They were playing my song. Mine and my dad’s song. Then the brass section began their intro and it sounded through the school grounds. The stomping had started.

That could only mean one thing. It was time for me to join the party.