My Pop Life #53 : My Girls – Animal Collective

My Girls   –   Animal Collective

…I don’t mean to seem like I care about material things

like my social status

I just want four walls and adobe slabs for my girls…

Just a beautiful song – from Animal Collective’s 8th LP Merriweather Post Pavilion (named after a real place in Maryland) which has many fine moments, and was for me, the best album of 2009, although looking back at my music, it wasn’t a vintage year by any means.  Funny how that happens.  We had Cesaria Evora (see my pop life #14), Drake, Laura Marling and Duckworth Lewis Method, we had Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’ ‘Empire State Of Mind’ and Dizzy Rascal’s ‘Bonkers’, we had Fever Ray, Dirty Projectors, Tinariwen and critical darlings the XX who did nothing for me.  I have got other stuff from 2009 to post, but it was thin stuff on the whole, or to be diplomatic…it was a transitional period shall we say…

Animal Collective in 2008-9 comprised of Panda Bear (Noah Lennox), Avey Tare (David Portner), and Geologist (Brian Weitz), all on keyboards and eletronica.  Guitarist Deakin (Josh Dibb) had taken a sabbatical from the band at this point, and there is no guitar on the LP.

This song would have stood out in any year –  the strange time signature, soulful vocals, unusual melody and honest lyrics – about the reasonable ambition of providing your family with a home .   The way the economies of America and Europe are at the moment, the way the music business has shrunk since the internet stole the music, musicians can no longer earn enough money to pay a mortgage sadly.  I’m talking about established musicians like Animal Collective or Everything Everything, people who’ve been doing it for years, been in magazines, on TV, released LPs.  They can’t afford to buy a house.

I was a part-time musician while I lived in Brighton and all the musicians I know there work really hard for very little financial reward.  I’ve sat in a pub and played piano for £40, belting out your favourite songs while the hubbub vibrates around you.  Background music for midweek drinkers.  It’s one of the best things about Brighton, the amount of free live music there, reminding me of Boulder, Colorado or Austin, Texas, live music pouring from every bar door.  Even when my band, the mighty Brighton Beach Boys, played a “proper gig”, eg Shoreham Ropetackle or Worthing Pier, we’d get £100 each max.  That’s just how it is.  When I saw the Mingus Big Band in New York the other week and got chatting to the alto player, they were on the same money too.  A hit single used to be a way to supplement all the live income, but not any more.  It’s just not enough.  3 hit singles, 4 and 5 and an album – well maybe.   Even David Bowie’s last album only sold 700,000 copies, apparently.  The record companies ripped us off for so long though.  The CD era was the worst, they only cost $2 to make maximum, they were charging £17 at one point.  There’s a guy in the North Laine selling CDs for £5 each, clearly he’s making a profit, why were we paying so much in the 1990s?

But plus ca change.  People don’t decide to play music, or become actors for the huge earnings.  But think twice before you rip that next song?

2009 was also the year I started to participate in Readers Recommend, part of the GuardianMusic online community.  This has been running since 2005 and was initiated by journalist and writer Dorian Lynskey.  There is a new topic every week – the first week was Songs About Change.  The idea is that readers of the column suggest songs they like for a final playlist to be compiled and printed a week later.   Dorian’s first playlist included Sam Cooke, Notorious BIG, The Who and Muse.  The column has now been running for over 14 years.  I joined in that January in 2009 when I stumbled across it online, as I guess most people do.  Songs about Anti-Love was the topic and I suggested Bessie Smith’s version of Careless Love.  By that point Maddy Costa had taken the chair and she chose Bessie for her playlist.  I was hooked.

I’ve been playing it off and on for the last six years.  The playlist compiler has become known as the “Guru” and I have taken the chair myself on a number of occasions, now that the community is democratic and volunteers from the readership are encouraged to put their names forward.  It’s quite a task, to listen to everyone’s songs, and choose a dozen that will illuminate the topic.  I have begun to prefer the more musical topics (such as songs with great middle eights, or songs with falsetto singing), over the plainly lyrical topics.  The game isn’t just about scoring A-listers, although it is competitive.  It’s about discovering new music, and being diplomatic about other people’s taste in music.  Very rare on the internet!  Which is why we keep coming back I guess.  All the information is available at The Marconium, a compendium of all of the Readers Recommend columns and playlists in handy format, compiled by one of our brethren Marconius7, who resides in British Columbia.  It’s pretty addictive, people flounce off every now and again, sometimes with no fanfare, I’ve done it myself quite a few times, but I’ve always come back, because, well I’m addicted to music, and it’s generally good fun.

This last weekend I have been the Guru again – for the seventh time I think – the topic set by Peter Kimpton, our current Guru of Gurus (ie a paid writer at The Guardian!) was Songs About Ambition.  Many many great songs were suggested, and as ever, I had to whittle them down to 12 A-listers.   My Girls made it, naturally.  The final column can be found here : Ambition Playlist!

*

January 2009 was also when Barack Obama was elected President Of The USA for the first time.   A true landmark moment.    Why?   Because white Americans had voted for a black American, that’s why.   It was the start of a healing process which is going to take longer than two terms.  As I write Baltimore is going up in flames for all the usual reasons – neglect, loss of jobs, marginalisation, leave the cops to sort it out.

*

And now I find, sitting in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn on Wednesday April 29th 2015 with my two cats Boy and Roxy, that I am missing My Girls.  My #1 girl is in Dublin tonight.  My wife has gone to see our dear friend Catherine Walker in Hedda Gabler at the Abbey Theatre before celebrating her sister Lucy’s birthday and seeing her parents.  My #2 girl Skye, daughter of Tom and Scarlett has just turned 9 months old, Jenny will get to see her on this trip but I’m missing her baby year.  My #3 girl Delilah-Rose, daughter of Millie is my god-daughter and aged 7, also lives in Brighton and I miss baby-sitting her, picking her up from school, taking her to school and everything else.  Here I am in Denver, sipping California wine, and I’ve got all night to remember them, I’m in a Lone Star state of mind.  Kind of thing.

My Girls  –  Animal Collective:

My Pop Life #52 : Complete Control – The Clash

Complete Control   –   The Clash

…They said we’d be artistically free
When we signed that bit of paper
They meant let’s make a lotsa mon-ee
An’ worry about it later…

In 1976 I was a cowboy, wandering around Bloomsbury and the LSE  in a poncho and cowboy boots, a Lee Van Cleef hat and jeans.   With a belt.  I was 19 and just back from a 5-month hitch-hike around North America with my best friend Simon Korner.   He was now at Cambridge reading English, where I maybe should or could have been and where my dad would have preferred me to be, but that’s another story.   This is how I became a punk.  It took a while.  In the autumn of 1976 I was all New Riders Of The Purple Sage and Spirit, Wings and Joe Walsh.   Not until 1977 and the release of The Clash LP did the trend really impact on me – and my recollection of this era is blurred.   The Sex Pistols had sworn on telly, we’d heard New Rose by the Damned and Anarchy In The UK  but I never really cared about being trendy.  (Said the dedicated follower of fashion victim).  But the energy around central London that winter and spring of 77 was palpable.

Just back from North America, Autumn 1976, London W1

Various venues, many within walking distance of my Halls of Residence in Fitzroy St W1 were now hosting punk or proto-punk bands.   The Vortex in Soho, the 100 Club on Oxford St, the Roxy in Covent Garden, the Hope & Anchor in Highbury and the Nashville Rooms in Hammersmith became my new stomping grounds.  Songs became shorter, hair became shorter, vocals more shouted, cut-up newspaper lettering, spikes, attitude was everywhere.  I didn’t like the spitting.  Neither did the bands, but they encouraged it.   Anyone could be a punk, but the real ones were working class.  Yeah right.  Like Joe Strummer, leader of The Clash whose dad was a diplomat.  A number of us at LSE embraced the new school and safety pinned our jeans and leathers, I stapled and paperclipped one entire jacket, little badges were back, hair gel and colour.  My first hair bleachout became purple.  God knows when but late ’77 I think. God Save The Queen had been number one during the Queen’s Jubilee in June despite being banned by the BBC.  The whole two fingers up to the establishment was a wonderful burst of energy, a breath of fresh air, and that first LP The Clash was absolutely brilliant.

It was rock, it was reggae, it was anti-police, anti-racist, anti-dead-end jobs, anti Amerikka, I’m a rebel, what are you against?, well what have you got??  Every band in Britain suddenly cut their hair and their drum solos and it became immediately hard to tell who was who.  It was the New Orthodoxy within a year, hippies were the problem, flares and guitar noodling were out, politics was back.   Of course looking back it was nothing like that – plenty of noodly LPs came out in 77,78,79.   Plenty of longhairs at gigs – including me at the beginning.   But it was a new wave of energy – The Ramones, the quickly-established legend of The Sex Pistols, signing then leaving record labels, upsetting a nation, the DIY ethic of Sniffin’ Glue the fanzine produced by Alternative TV geezer Mark Perry, the startling image of safety pins in faces, shaved and coloured hair, torn clothes – it was a street revolution by the kids.

Complete Control came out in September 1977 in a picture sleeve – another new trend – and immediately became the Clash’s best song.   It still is.   Probably.   They had a new drummer, Topper Headon, who joined Joe Strummer, Mick Jones and bass player Paul Simenon for the classic line up.  A picture postcard from the front line of rebel-band-meets-music-business, the first line is straight in there :

“They Said release Remote Control, we didn’t want it on the label…

THEY SAID fly to Amsterdam, people laughed! the press went mad…”

Remote Control was on the LP and then had been the 2nd Clash single, released by CBS without conferring with the band.  The title of the song comes from a meeting the band had with manager Bernard Rhodes in a pub.  “I want complete control” he’d said and Strummer and Mick Jones fell onto the pavement laughing at his cartoon audacity.

The song also documents the trouble they’d had on the White Riot Tour of that year, getting their mates in the back door before they were ejected again, and the police showing up to any punk event expecting trouble, thanks to the tabloid coverage of the new youth movement –

“All over the news spread fast – They’re dirty, they’re filthy They ain’t gonna last!”

Complete Control isn’t just an angry blast against The Man though – The Clash were always better than that.  They had the musical chops.  As Mick Jones fingers a deadly riff in the centre of the song, Strummer shouts “You’re my guitar hero!” ironically at him, before asking The Man, as a rough beast that slouches towards Bethlehem :

“I don’t trust you !  Why should you trust me ??   Huh ?!”

“This is Joe Public speaking.  I’m controlled in the body, I’m controlled in the mind.“

It’s astoundingly fantastic, trust me.   Why should you trust me ?  Huh ??  Well you shouldn’t.  Keep an open mind kids, most of what you know is blindingly obvious, just cos it’s not in the papers don’t mean it ain’t true right ??  We knew the Royal Family was a total joke, but never really saw it in the media with such passion and rage before God Save The Queen.  All these songs and gigs captured a frustrated young angry nihilism and bottled it.   Speed fags and beer helped too at gigs.  The singles kept you going between gigs, kept the flame burning.  Walking around looking punk was thrilling, the sense of power and sneer on the streets of London and elsewhere was fun, which is partly why lots of kids did it.  Posing down the King’s Road, Kensington Market or Camden Town.   Later in the 70s tourists would pay money to take your picture.  But that’s another story.  This is how I became a punk.   Actually got the hair cut and fucked myself up and started wearing eyeliner and  Doctor Martens from Kentish Town Road.  What was that shop called ?

Student punk : picture by flatmate Norman Wilson – Fitzroy St Flats early 1977

I didn’t actually see The Clash until 1978 on Hastings Pier – or was that 1977 too?   That’s another story too.   They were completely brilliant.    But no – I’ve misremembered – of course – I saw them first at Victoria Park Rock Against Racism in spring 1978 with Jimmy Pursey and Steel Pulse and Tom Robinson. What a day that was.  We marched from Trafalgar Square to Hackney against the National Front.  80,000 people.  All kinds.

This song is the cry of the artist against the system.  Within two short years punk had been co-opted into the mainstream and eaten by the culture, mimicked, nullified, de-fanged and major-labelled.  They bottled punk and sold it back to us – and America.  Other groups would come and kick it.   Other youth movements would rise up.  This was mine really.  I was nearly too old be to be a punk, having dedicated the majority of my teen years to glam rock with a hippy fringe, Ben Sherman meets platform shoes meets loons, but I was 19 and happy to go drainpipe, day-glo and angry again.  Although of course I was doing a law degree at the LSE.  Hahaha.   I never called myself Ralph Rebel or Ben Bollocks or anything.  But brother Paul and I had some fun in London Town for a couple of years.   We were both “dragged up on a council estate by a single parent on social security” (only kidding Mum).  We could be punks if we wanted to be.   It was a laugh.  It was a thrill.  It wasn’t exactly Anarchy in the UK, but it felt bloody great.

“This is the Punk Rockers !”

My Pop Life #51 : Tom Hark – Elias & His Zig Zag Jive Flutes

Tom Hark   –  Elias & His Zig Zag Jive Flutes

…your team is shit

I don’t know why

but after the match

you’re going to die…

That’s me singing nonsense aged too old in 1980-something in the North Stand of the Goldstone Ground – to the tune of Tom Hark.  After 1980 when The Piranhas did their cover of this much-covered song.   It is still sung today at football grounds around the nation, with differing violent and scatalogical lyrics depending on the team being supported.   I really enjoyed singing violent songs at football when I was a teenager.  “You’re going home in a fucking ambulance” followed by a rhythmical clapping pattern, thousands of hands in unison.   It was funny.   I know it doesn’t sound funny but it was.   We sang to Bread Of Heaven (“referee, referee – you’re not fit to wipe my arse” which I misheard, rather brilliantly, as “you’re the features of my arse“!), we sang to Land Of Hope and Glory (“we hate Nottingham Forest, we hate Liverpool too, we hate Westham United but Brighton we love you… ALL TOGETHER NOW…”) and we sang to The Quartermaster’s Song (“he shot, he scored, it must be Peter Ward, Peter Ward ! Peter Ward…”).  And many many more.   Football fans like to sing.  They like to change the words of popular songs to fit around their team, the current squad of players.  I know some musicians whose sole aim and ambition is to write a song which gets sung at football matches.   The Pet Shop Boys spring to mind as a recent addition – Go West has many different versions but the no-diocese “You’re shit and you know you are” is my personal favourite ;  the existentially acerbic wit of “you know you are” being the most humiliating insult in the lexicon.

The Piranhas were a Brighton punk band led by Bob Grover who added lyrics to the tune of Tom Hark, and had a top 10 hit with it in 1980.  Previous covers were by Millie Smalls (1964) Georgie Fame (1964) Mickey Finn (1964) and the Ted Heath Band (1958).  The first three of these are all, like the Piranhas version, ska, or bluebeat, which is to say 1960s Jamaican music which became popular in the UK and elsewhere.   Which is odd because the original is from Johannesburg in South Africa.  It’s a nice story…

Jack Lerole would play the pennywhistle or kwela on the streets of Jo’burg and Alexandria township for money with his fellow musicians David Ramosa, Zeph Nkabinde and his brother Elias Lerole in the 1950s.  They would carry hatchets or tomahawks with them to deter thieves and gangs.     One day, talent scout and producer Rupert Bopape heard them and invited them to record at EMI South Africa’s newly-formed black division.   The resulting tune was called “Tom Hark“  which may have been a mis-hearing of Tomahawk, or may have been changed to make the song less violently-flavoured.   It struck gold – the single was a huge international hit, and the success of Tom Hark in the UK charts (where it reached number 2 in 1958), and the orchestration by Ted Heath in the US (see below) hugely boosted the popularity of kwela music in South Africa itself, leaving behind many of the street urchin associations that pennywhistle had picked up (but which perhaps returned when we sang it on the terraces?).

   

Pennywhistle music (or ‘jive flute’) was considered very lower class in the earlier part of the century, being the favourite employ of street gangs and urchins who would masquerade as buskers.  After it became “kwela” music it emerged as a genuine home-grown South African music, perhaps echoing the reed flutes of the Tswana and others.   The term kwela is also interesting.    In Zulu it means “climb on, get up” and is often shouted in these types of songs, encouraging people to join in.   However, on the record itself, listen: it  begins with a short scene (spoken in flytaal the Afrikaans-based urban African dialect) of men playing dice on the street, then packing up the gambling and pulling out the penny whistles as one shouts ‘dar kom die khwela khwela‘ – or the police van.  Who knows?  It certainly became kwela after this single was released.

Either way it had been the dominant musical style of the townships throughout the 1950s and made huge stars of Spokes Mashiyane, Aaron Lerole, and Jack Lerole himself, forming a local style that could compete commercially with imported music.   It wouldn’t last too much longer though – by the early 1960s the saxophone had replaced the pennywhistle and the bands had electrified their guitars and added a bass guitar creating a brand new sound that would dominate the airwaves for over 40 years – Township Jive or”mbaqanga“.    But that’s for another post.    This was a commercial fact of life, to pick up the saxophone in order to keep making money from music, but many of the kwela players claimed to prefer playing the penny whistle because as Aaron Lerole noted later “I could master it. I could make it talk any sound I wanted“.  The saxophone is more rigid.

Rupert Bopape in 1958

The record is credited to “R. Bopape” who took all of the publishing.  Elias and Jack never received a penny beyond that which they made for the day’s recording.  Jack Lerole went on to become one of the first “groaners” affecting an extremely deep voice like township star Mahlathini, but would die of throat cancer in Soweto in 2003.  Rupert Bopape would go on become a hugely influential Berry-Gordy-esque figure in the South African music scene, running Gallo records and creating many many hit acts, including The Mahotella Queens and the Funk Brothers of the South African scene, The Makgona Tsohle Band.   I came across all this music in 1985 via one LP released in the UK on Earthworks called The Indestructible Beat Of Soweto, featuring both of the above-named bands.   It was a doorway into a thrilling new collection of sounds.

As for Tom Hark, it reappeared into my football life – c’mon, it had never gone away only the words had changed – when my beloved Brighton & Hove Albion became homeless in 1997, and the only viable site for a new stadium in Brighton was Falmer, opposite Sussex University.   We’d been playing at temporary athletics stadium at Withdean for years when the Falmer campaign really kicked in.   John Prescott was the target as his department would ultimately be the judge and jury, and so a long imaginative campaign by Albion fans commenced.  My own small part in it was to play the saxophone on a new version of Tom Hark called We Want Falmer with Attila The Stockbroker and The Fish Brothers, and Too Many Crooks – a Brighton supergroup called Seagulls Ska.

Recorded in Sayers Common one afternoon and rush-released in January 2005 with an instrumental version of our anthem “Sussex By The Sea” on the B-side, the mass-purchase of this single by Albion fans pushed the campaign song to number 17 on the national charts, and Number 1 on the independent charts.  Not bad.  Falmer Stadium eventually opened for business in July 2011. Of course I was there !

My Pop Life #50 : Breakin’ Down (Sugar Samba) – Julia & Company

Breakin’ Down  (Sugar Samba)   –   Julia & Company

…I’m telling you this, you can’t resist you gotta get up and dance, breakin’ it down…

It’s hard to remember just how dominant dance music was in 1984 – punk and new wave had been and gone, leaving Elvis Costello and Paul Weller to re-invent themselves with each LP (they both did dance LPs around this time) 2-tone had sealed the deal, and the disco underground of the 1970s was now mainstream chart music.  Bestriding the world like a colossus was Michael Jackson, who was burned filming a Pepsi Commercial in January just before the release of his ground-breaking and game-changing video film for Thriller, the final single from that record-breaking album.   Number one in Britain for weeks were Frankie Goes To Hollywood with “Relax“, a genuine british dance hit record which the BBC refused to play presumably because it references orgasm.   Their 2nd single Two Tribes would also reach number 1 in April.  In the previous year, when I’d been at the Donmar Warehouse for five months (!) in Steven Berkoff’s WEST, even David Bowie had gone disco with Nile Rogers and Let’s Dance.

And this surge of popularity gave many smaller acts their chance in the spotlight: Sharon Redd, The Pointer Sisters, and Washington D.C. resident Julia Nixon who produced a stunning 45rpm 7-inch single called Breakin’ Down (Sugar Samba) first on a local label District of Columbia then later on London Records – the one which I bought in a picture sleeve.  It is a major groove and will, under almost any conditions, make people dance…

    Knowing nothing about this group until recently when I learned that Julia Nixon had replaced Jennifer Holiday in Dreamgirls on Broadway, and that after this cracking single in 1984 and the follow-up I’m So Happy, she finally released her first solo LP in 2007 some 23 years later.

Now, I’ve been an actor for some 33 years myself, and I consider myself lucky to have lived for the bulk of my working life doing what I am capable of, and what I enjoy.  To be precise : what I enjoy is the actual act of acting.  The business of show less so, because of revelations like this : a clearly great singer (listen to the song) with a hit single who has had to wait for over 30 years to get one miserable solo LP released.  She is clearly a better singer than the majority of chart acts, but pop music is merciless with talent, as is the TV and Film industry.  I’ve thought about this many times, why does person a) get work and person b) doesn’t ?

I’m not pretending to know the answers to this but certain things are clear.  Talent isn’t enough to succeed.  There are other elements at work :  luck, connections, and the greasing of the wheels.  Whether someone wants to have sex with you or not.  Whether they think that you’ll make them some money.   In the acting industry the disappointment of rejection becomes your regular companion;  if you took every defeat on the chin you’d never get up.  Some don’t.  In the music industry again the rejections may or may not fuel the fires of creativity, or someone younger and sexier might just jump into the gap.  Good actors often decide that the lack of control they feel doing screen work can only be balanced by regular stage work, where the actor is king.  Screen work generally is paid 10 times stage work.  Good musicians will often be happier with regular paid session work, playing on other people’s hit songs, or writing other people’s hit songs (secret corn!) than sitting at home trying to plot an assault on the charts under their own name.   And in both industries there are filters at work;  gatekeepers, paid to streamline the flow of artists into the hallowed name positions.

Julia Nixon has carried on acting and singing, and still earns her living from doing it.  She was recently nominated for a Helen Hayes Award in ‘Caroline, or Change‘ in Washington D.C.

I was at the beginning of my working life when I heard this song, which I still love today, if I ever DJ for a brief nostalgic hour at a party or some such this record is Always In The Box along with Kid Creole & The Coconuts and TLC.   I didn’t really have a plan in 1984, no strategy, no idea what I was doing frankly.   Following my nose.  No one ever sat me down and explained the industry to me.   People just don’t do that.   I wouldn’t have listened anyway.   Young people don’t listen – they surge, they feel, they deal with it.   The endless thought process dealing with “how it all works” is like trying to understand the dawn of time, or how dogs can smell cancer, or the endless mystery of why people are racist.   Why does the river flow into the sea?  Why is the sky blue ? (oxygen molecules)  Why can’t I bend my left leg in the same way as my right?  Does it matter?

We all get our moment in the sun.  This is a superb song.  Smooth, funky, sexy.  I give you the seven-inch :

London Records re-mixed the 12-inch version :

the original District Of Columbia 12-inch single :

My Pop Life #49 : This Guy’s In Love With You – Herb Alpert

This Guy’s In Love With You   –   Herb Alpert

…who looks at you the way I do?  

When you smile

I can tell 

we know each other very well… 

It certainly helps that the first thing you hear is a soft-tone electric keyboard before the brushes on the snare and the vocal arrive for this is a lounge groove par excellence, from deep in my memory.   Herb Alpert had been running Tijuana Brass since 1962 with huge success, the extremely popular albums outselling even The Beatles in 1966.   Tijuana Brass were a faux-Latin brass pop outfit which Alpert described as “Four lasagnas, two bagels, and an American cheese”.  Alpert himself is Ukrainian Jewish from Boyle Heights and went to Fairfax High in Los Angeles.   He is also the “A” in “A&M Records” which he formed with Jerry Moss in 1962 and was home to The Carpenters, Sergio Mendes and Burt Bacharach who wrote and arranged “This Guy…“.   It wasn’t all easy-listening central, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Cat Stevens, Joe Cocker and Procul Harum (My Pop Life #37) all signed with A&M in the late 60s and by 1972 they were the largest independent record label in the world.  Herb Alpert has many Grammys, millions of sales and the distinction of being the only artist to top the charts as a singer (This Guy…1968) and an instrumentalist (Rise, 1989).

He’s not the greatest singer as he would himself admit – Herb first sang this to his wife on a TV special (see below) but the phone lines went ballistic and within two days it was released on his own label.  Somehow it is one of the most romantic records ever recorded.  Perhaps the guys listening to it feel they can join in given that the lead vocal is so ordinary, perhaps the languid backbeat just makes them wanna slow dance with their wives…either way it is a potent and irresistible slice of conceptual conception music for adults.   Cheesy you say?  Only in the best possible way.

It reminds me strongly of my grandfather’s funeral in Portsmouth.  My mum’s dad.  I remember Horace as a kind man, balding with remaining hair greased flat onto his head, slight air-lip, dark suit, sleeveless maroon pullover and a navy tie over a white patterned shirt.   We used to play jacks together – he taught me how to play it with five dice : 9, 10, Jack, Queen, King.  Kept in a nice red leather pouch in the sideboard.  He had a mysterious genesis as we believe his mother returned from Shanghai pregnant and gave birth in Portsmouth.   My brother Paul lives in Shanghai.   There is a Laming mentioned as a government official in China but not much more information, and it could be unrelated of course, but anyway murky family histories sometimes have to be pieced together with the clues available from reticent relatives.  He met Ruby my nan in Portsmouth and they married and had two daughters, Heather, my mum, and her sister Valerie.  I do know that Horace, my grandad, was a policeman during World War Two and had to climb onto the roof of the Guildhall in air-raids to defuse unexploded bombs, which is impressive to say the least.  He then became a shoe shop manager/owner (vagueness again) and a Mason.  The funeral I was attending, along with the other males in the family but none of the females, was Masonic.

Portsmouth 1968

It was a pretty weird day.  I don’t even remember if my Dad was there, but I think he was.  I was eleven.   Aunty Valerie was married to Uncle Keith by now and he had a daughter Annette who was about my age. Uncle Keith was a dark-voiced stern-looking smooth operator.  Over-familiar yet unfriendly.  The ‘men” all trooped off to some impersonal chapel of rest where other masons sat in silence and a vicar read a funeral service, inserting the word “Horace” where a blank was left for a name.  There was no personality to it.  No eulogy detailing what he had done, who he was, and I was tremendously disappointed.  The priest seemed not to have known Horace at all.   It made me wonder whether there had been another Masonic funeral service to which Uncle Keith, Dad, Paul and myself would not have been invited.   The glum little ceremony done, we were driven back to 6 Moneyfields Avenue in Copnor where Nan and Mum and Valerie, Annette and cousin Wendy were gathered.  Triangular sandwiches appeared.  Tea.  Paul was there aged nine, and Andrew was four.   Perhaps he’d stayed behind with Mum.  Some music went on the gramaphone, Uncle Keith no doubt.  For some unspoken reason the men congregated at the back of the room, and the women near the bay window.

Then this song came on.  Me being a veteran of the radio and TOTP I knew it, but Uncle Keith wanted to instruct us in the ways of righteousness.  Our conversations were suddenly interrupted as he announced “Listen to this – suddenly there’s a complete silence”.

“Say you’re in love, in love with this guy.  If not I’ll just die….“

We dutifully listened to the silence.

And the mournful trumpets returned, Bacharach-style, and that laid-back groove from heaven resumed, and Uncle Keith made a hand gesture as if to say “See – what did I tell you?“.   We all nodded in solemn appreciation of this moment and then after a respectful pause carried on chatting, ignoring the actual song itself, it was the silence we had come to see.  Uncle Keith had slip-on shoes and he wasn’t to be trifled with.

About two years earlier he and Aunty Valerie had been looking after Andrew and offered to adopt him if Mum “couldn’t cope” after her first major breakdown.  They were childless, and Andrew had spent a lot of time down there.  But he’d stayed with Mum in the end.   He’d be back in Portsmouth a a couple of years time when we lost the house in Selmeston, but for now we were all together.   Later on, Aunty Valerie would divorce Uncle Keith and he would disappear from our lives.   Aunty Val would go on to live with the true love of her life in Norfolk, a woman whom I never met, also called Wendy.

This Guy’s In Love With You was written by Burt Bacharach & Hal David at some point in the 1960s when Herb Alpert asked Burt if he had any old songs lying around.  It has been covered numerous times by other artists such as The Supremes, Donny Osmond, Booker T and Bacharach himself.  It reminds us that while the Beatles broke the charts, and the Stones brought the blues to suburban England, there was always a strain of seriously laid-back music with its adherents and practitioners happy to croon away on Sunday evening radio, any evening radio, Andy Williams, Percy Faith, Barbra Streisand, Val Doonican and even Elvis himself supported the cause, the chunky sweater, the easy warm smile, the undemanding seductive tune, your gran liking it, your Uncle Keith liking it;  secretly, you’re loving it too;  you know you are.

From “The Beat Of The Brass” TV Special 1968

My Pop Life #48 : Photoshop Handsome – Everything Everything

Photoshop Handsome   –   Everything Everything

My teeth dazzle like an igloo wall, I inhabit, I inhibit y’all!
Can you operate alone?
Chest pumped elegantly elephantine, southern hemisphere by Calvin Klein…

A bejewelled musical box of a song I first heard on the radio in 2009, its hyperkinetic cartoon energy, mouthfuls of words and ideas sung in choirboy falsetto, proper pop chorus and hooks, thrilling drum patterns : an extraordinary construction that made my ears sit up and beg.   Here was a band who didn’t give a shit about what everyone else sounded like, who had decided forge their own independent arrogant bloody-minded path through the pop world.…I will gain an extra life when I get the high score…you can respawn anywhere…

I bought the LP immediately it came out a few months later in 2010 and wasn’t disappointed by my own high hopes – Man Alive is, for me the single greatest record of the 21st century so far, a record that is so breathtakingly original that to compare it with Amy Winehouse’s Back To Black – great though that is – is a pointless comparison.  The LP that comes close is Kanye West’s Yeezus for musical boldness and pointers to the future, and of course there’s been interesting electronica from Jon Hopkins and Burial, Four Tet, J. Dilla and Flying Lotus, some beautiful music from Sigur Ros, Arcade Fire, John Legend & Vampire Weekend and many more indeed, insert your favourite here, but Man Alive is head and shoulders more inventive more original and more exciting a piece of work than any of the above.  Apart from maybe Yeezus….

In early 2010 I lived in Brighton and had a comfortable, settled and engaged life.  Happily married, working regularly as an actor on TV and in films, in a great band, season-ticket holder at The Albion (my local football team), good friends nearby to have a pint of beer with, cycling across the Downs on summer’s days to stay healthy and find secret butterfly sanctuaries.  I felt connected, satisfied, but as ever, needed a challenge.   I’d joined the Green Party 18 months earlier and spent every Saturday since on Caroline Lucas‘ campaign to be elected as the first Green MP in the UK for Brighton Pavilion, the centre of the town’s three constituencies.   It was a major challenge.    It was a place I felt like putting my energy.   And the energy of my ironic LPG-converted 4-wheel drive Grand Cherokee Jeep, which carried volunteers all over Withdean, Patcham, Bevendean and Hollingbury.   People came down to Brighton from all over the UK every Saturday morning for a year.

It was a great collective effort which culminated in election day – I spent time outside three different polling booths, then knocked people up, getting our vote out, then once the polls closed fielding some calls as local Press Officer – one from ITN News –  and I was at home.  I said “we’re quietly confident”  – I just made it up – and that became the tag-line for the night on the TV.   We had no idea if we’d won.  I went down to the count at The Brighton Centre at around midnight, place was buzzing, I had a Press Pass and talked to all the journalists there about IF Caroline wins, who she will talk to and for how long, then a Press Conference on the top floor, then we waited and watched.  It took forever – til dawn, but then, the count, the result, the release of tension, victory at 7am in the morning.   I ran down to meet Caroline at the door of the counting room and three of us with passes escorted her up the stairs, through the throng of media, cameras in our faces, flashbulbs popping, it was the most rock-star moment I’ve ever had frankly and it was a political victory.   Extraordinary.  Upstairs the press interviews, the TV excitement, then afterwards the Green gang on the pavement outside, the celebration and then the real work began.

The end of 2009 was also when I first visited Galway on the west coast of Ireland, filming a show called The Guards with old sparring partners Stuart Orme and Iain Glen and Irish beauty Tara Breathnach.   What a town though.   I was staying in the swish elegance of the G Hotel.   A 15-minute walk took me into the pubs, the pubs the pubs of Galway.   Are there better pubs than these?   Can it be true?   One after another they suck you in with their brightly coloured exteriors, their fiddle music and soft southern voices, their velvety pints of Guinness and piles of triangular cut sandwiches, free for drinkers.   Dear Frank O Sullivan gave me the guided tour.  More than once Galway reminded me of Brighton – the music scene is thriving, the people are laid-back and friendly, it’s artistically alive, racially and sexually mixed and international yet small and manageable.  Brighton has more pubs per square mile than anywhere in the UK and more than once I heard it said that “Galway is the graveyard of ambition, the place is full of dreamers and drinkers…”

I think it’s good to listen to the universe if possible and hear what it is saying to you.   Perhaps I should mention too, that Brighton and Galway are places where people actually choose to live because they are great places, and The Graveyard Of Ambition is always said in Galway with an undercurrent of pride – they don’t want to be anywhere else.   Balls to ambition.    This is of course hugely tempting, but perhaps not quite yet.    I did hear the universe nattering away eventually, for here I am in New York City having decided to shake things up a bit and escape from the satisfied life for a new experience.   To seek out new life, new civilisations. To boldly go to where people are allowed to split an infinitive.   Everything Everything spoke to that part of me that is always agitating, looking for change both without and within. They still speak to me.

I was on Twitter in 2012 and being a Follower of the band I read a tweet one day which said “watching Wayne’s World 2 on the tour bus…”   Hey guys – I answered (though they weren’t following me) “you made my favourite LP of the century so far !!”

This led to a Mcflurry of DMs and a date four days later in the Waggon & Horses, Brighton, by the Dome…

where Everything Everything were due to play in The Great Escape Music Festival.  We had pints, we chatted music, TV, ideas, mutual likes and dislikes, as you do.  Then I went to see them play a set, their new LP “Arc” was just out, and is also a fantastic listen.  They were, of course, tremendous.   I’d seen them before at Concorde 2 in 2010.   They’re a fairly ridiculous band live, unfeasibly brilliant.   The 3rd LP is about to be released as I speak here in April 2015, trademark crossword puzzle falsetto art pop that forges its own eclectic inspired path I’m happy to report.  The moral of the story?     Don’t settle.   Not yet.

I have to just add me and the boys outside the pub –

Alex (guitar), Michael (drums), Me (fanboy), Jeremy (bass), Jonathan (vocals, everything)

well c’mon it is my blog.   And that as well as all the hype I’ve heaped onto the chaps, I’ll have to add that this is perhaps the best pop video of the 21st century too….a ridiculous level of detail and fun therein, both alarming and hilarious.   Enjoy!

This has been a three-pub posting.

My Pop Life #47 : The Great Gig In The Sky – Pink Floyd

The Great Gig In The Sky   –   Pink Floyd

A version of this blog will be appearing in my forthcoming book Camberwell Carrot Juice. Check back for more details. RB

From Kingston Ridge towards Waterlilies, Juggs Lane, and Lewes

My Pop Life #46 : Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos) – Dolly Parton

Deportee  (Plane Wreck At Los Gatos)   –   Dolly Parton

The airplane caught fire over los gatos canyon
A fireball of lightning that shook all our hills
Who are these dear friends all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio said they were just deportees

A song that was passed to me by fellow actor Kenneth Cranham when we were working together on the 1st of three shows we would make together in the space of two years in the late 80s.  He’d caught me listening to a cassette which came free with the NME that week containing what it called “New Country” – k.d. lang, Lyle Lovett, Dwight Yoakum, Nanci Griffith.   Ken is a huge country fan, in fact he’s a huge music fan and we exchanged tapes for a while, although I had to work hard to find a song that he didn’t already know about (I eventually did ; Oleta Adams version of Everything Must Change – My Pop Life #20).  But mainly it was one-way traffic from the older guy to the younger fella – Elvis tapes, country, and more recently a songwriter’s selection from Harold Arlen and Hoagy Carmichael – brilliant).

Kenneth Cranham

The first C90 Ken gave me was called simply “Country”.  I was living in Archway Road with my girlfriend Rita Wolf at that point in late 1987.  I’d just shot “The Black & Blue Lamp” at the BBC, a satirical and savage lampoon of TV policemen which took particular aim at Dixon of Dock Green and was written by the slightly touched and rather brilliant Arthur Ellis, who was to crop up again later in my career.  Karl Johnson and Kenneth Cranham took me up to the BBC Canteen at North Acton where we bumped into Patrick Malahide, of their generation, a legend to me for his appearances in Minder as DS Chisholm.  “Hello Patrick” said Ken, “what are you doing here?”  Patrick looked morose : “Oh, just some television” he said without enthusiasm.  It was an early taste of cynicism for me, still young and fresh, in my first decade in the business, still thrilled to be in the BBC Canteen and actually acting for a living.

Deportee was written by Woody Guthrie in 1948 detailing the true story of a plane crash in Los Gatos Canyon, Fresno County California, which resulted in the deaths of 32 people, 28 of whom were Mexican migrant workers being taken back to Mexico.  The music was scored some ten years later by Martin Hoffman.  The song is a lament for the shoddy racist treatment of the foreigners, the deportees treated as outlaws and thieves by the American Press and public, named in the song as Juan, Rosalita, Jesus and Maria.

Dolly Parton was born into a large family in Tennessee whom she describes as ‘dirt poor’, moved to Nashville the day after she graduated aged 18 and rose to become the most-decorated female country singer of all time.  She has always presented a healthy sense of self-parody (eg 2008 LP Backwoods Barbie) alongside her own songwriting talent.

Elvis Presley wanted to sing her song “I Will Always Love You” but insisted on half of the publishing, as he (and manager Tom Parker) did with every song he covered.   Dolly refused and some years later Whitney Houston famously took the song to the top of the charts and into the film “The Bodyguard”.    Dolly Parton’s best selling pop-country single was, in fact, “9 to 5” which she wrote, followed by 1983’s duet with Kenny Rogers “Islands In The Stream” which was written by The Bee Gees.    The fact that she was at the peak of her popularity when she recorded “Deportee” in 1980 is a tribute to her humanity and her well-documented philanthropical side.   It appears on the soundtrack LP for the film ‘9 To 5′ which she also starred in with Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda, and also on Dolly’s 1981 LP “9 to 5 and Odd Jobs“.

Although the song has been covered by many artists, including Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Christy Moore and Bruce Springsteen, this is my favourite version – the haunting piano phrases, the emotional singing from Dolly herself, and the production, all make this a classic protest song, a classic country song,  quite simply a classic song.

I’ll dedicate the song today to all those poor souls drowned in the Mediterranean Sea after attempting the crossing from North Africa to Italy.   Dangerous overcrowded boats run by people-traffickers take hundreds of people every single day, and thousands have drowned.    The news reports refer to them as refugees.  Migrants.  Child migrants.  Or, as I prefer to call them, people.

My Pop Life #45 : If You Love Me – Brownstone

 If You Love Me   –   Brownstone

…but if you want my heart then it’s time that you start
To act like you’re mine in the light and the dark…

We finally moved into our new house in Brighton in March 1996, after Eamonn Walker (brother from another mother) and I had sanded and varnished the floors of three rooms, and Tony Roose (expert!) had helped me lag beneath the floorboards.   Lovely wooden floors in place, Jenny was welcomed down, previously restricted from visits due to her asthma.   The dust now settled, we brought the cats down and moved into the top room with views of the Palace Pier and across to Worthing and Chanctonbury Ring on the Downs.   It was a great move.   A new life.

Brighton was local newspapers, slower pace, less happening, and trains to London.   After a few months we wondered if we’d made a Terrible Mistake.    Then people started to come down – the first visitors were Paulette and Beverley Randall, and we moved the kitchen table out into the garden and ate alfresco whilst drinking quantities of wine.   Summer arrived and we started to really fall in love with being in Sussex, taking trips out to my childhood haunts, finding lovely country pubs and walks and butterfly sanctuaries, lying on the beach with the tourists, becoming deeply involved in the Brighton & Hove Albion story as chairman Bill Archer announced that my beloved Goldstone Ground was to be sold “to pay debts” – and there were no plans in place for an alternative home ground.   1996-7 was a dreadful season to follow the Seagulls, but the fans were amazing, letting the board know their feelings about having our home sold from under our feet.   We were rooted to the bottom of the entire league for weeks that autumn, manager Jimmy Case was sacked and it felt like the people running the club would be happy for it to fold.   The fans and players eventually saved Albion in dramatic fashion – but this is not the place for that reminiscence.

I turned 40 in the summer of ’97 and held a legendary party in our new house to celebrate and mark the passage of time.   It was attended by neighbours from across the street, new friends from Brighton, and many old mates and new who had travelled down.   It was billed as running from midday June 21st to midday June 22nd – a proper midsummer night’s dream.    I finally crashed out at lunchtime on the Sunday.  It was a big old-fashioned dirty young people’s party and I kissed goodbye to my 30s in defiance.  Dancing went on literally all night, guests such as Chiwetel Ejiofor (with whom I’d just shot “Amistad“) slept on the bouncy castle erected in the garage, people went down for a swim in the sea at dawn, I became 40 high on ecstasy, drink, marijuana and dancing.

Brownstone’s If You Love Me was a key song for Jenny and I.   I can’t remember where we first heard it (Trevor Nelson? or maybe before we left Los Angeles…) but the tune, the lyrics, the voices, the swing of it became our sound in the party years 1996-2000.   Jenny enjoyed DJ-ing too, and she always targets her DJ set at the women on the dancefloor.  Once the women are dancing, the guys will tend to follow…  So there’s a bit of Whitney, some Bee Gees, Abba, TLC, Prince, Ghetto Heaven, Aretha…and Brownstone.  Turn the lights down low, turn up the bass, and grab the nearest honey…

and here is an acapella version :

My Pop Life #44 : Autumn Almanac – The Kinks

Autumn Almanac   –   The Kinks

From the dew-soaked hedge creeps a crawly caterpillar
When the dawn begins to crack, it’s all part of my autumn almanac…

This is one of those quintessentially English songs which represents, along with a handful of other tunes, the peak of the 45rpm single format.   Ray Davies, the songwriter, formed The Kinks with his brother Dave Davies, Mick Avory and Pete Quaife in Muswell Hill, North London in 1963 and went on to grace the radio airwaves and the pop charts with stunning regularity throughout the 1960s. The Kinks occupy a special position in my museum of recollections for their mini-dramas of life as it was lived in 1960s Britain.  Ray Davies’ unerring eye for detail and the times gave him a palette of realism which, laced with a few poetic grace notes, makes the run of singles from You Really Got Me through to Lola pretty much unequalled in British songwriting.

As our narrator sweeps leaves into the sack he ruminates on his life and particularly toasted buttered currant buns, which “help to compensate for lack of sun, cos the sun has all gone”.   Ray sings the last word in Cockney as “gawn” which pokes fun at and yet celebrates the music hall roots of his genius.   As he talks about football and roast beef, and Blackpool holidays and sitting in the sunlight Ray’s voice becomes like a character, a trick he would use on a regular basis (Dedicated Follower Of Fashion, Apeman) but just when you think he’s taking the mickey, wham,  here comes his real voice and a brass band, getting properly wistful as we reach the third middle eight which evokes the glory of community, of the simple connected life we all desire :

…this is my street, and I’m never gonna leave it 

and I’m always gonna stay, if I live to be ninety nine

It is a major achievement in popular song, inspired apparently by a hunchbacked old gardener Ray had seen in a local churchyard.   Romantic with a capital R – yes, file alongside Penny Lane and Lazy Sunday as slices of pop life in Britain in the late 60s, beautifully realised.

Autumn Almanac was released in October 1967 on the Pye label and reached Number 5 on the charts.   I was ten years old, in my final year at Selmeston Village School.   The television had been moved into the main living room.  We’d bought another corgi (Bessie) after Raq, the previous corgi, had bitten Andrew when he was 18 months old.   Raq had been given away.  Then, when it was too late, I found a long white dog whisker in the corner where the bite had taken place!  Andrew had pulled Raq’s whisker out and got a bite for his trouble.  This shocking revelation inspired the purchase of Bessie who was a very sweet dog.   We watched Top Of The Pops religiously, waiting for our favourites, patiently sitting through Engelbert Humperdinck  – or maybe not  –  no indeed, at ten years old I wouldn’t have had favourites particularly, or people (like Cliff Richard) whom I didn’t like.  They would all have been fine.   I’m projecting back from the mid-70s when I was a “discerning teenager” with plenty of attitude and only three bands I liked.  No at ten I would sit and enjoy all music.  All TV.  Crackerjack.  Star Trek.  Thunderbirds.  Do Not Adjust Your Set.   The Magic Roundabout.  Tin-Tin.   Vision On.  Johnny Morris.

And conkers.  There was a large horse-chestnut tree near the village churchyard and another one further up the road.  We harvested bags of conkers and selected the biggest, the best to skewer, string up and take to school.  Deadly serious competitions would ensue – one hit each – knuckles would get banged, a winner would splatter the weak conker into pieces leaving a pathetic piece of string dangling, and your winner would become a One-er.  One of my conkers got up to be a fourteen-er before the effects of constant combat weakened its sinews and it was shattered – the victorious conker would of course inherit all 14 wins – plus one.   Did some kids vinegar their conkers?  Other tactics were discussed for hardening, and techniques for the hit, from the side, from the top…

Sometimes these competitions would end in a fight.  David Bristow liked to fight.  So did I.  We fought a lot, David and I.   David got nosebleeds easily, and the fight would normally end with his knees straddling my upper arms, pinning  me down on the grass, and dripping blood into my face.   There would always be a gang of boys & girls watching, the usual suspects.   And sometimes a teacher would intervene – but not often.   There were only two teachers at the school, Miss Cox for the young ‘uns and Miss Lamb for the older ones.  So break times were football and fights, or sometimes Graham Sutton would somehow have enough money for a bag of crisps and he would stand there nonchalantly eating them, one at a time, until you were forced to beg with futility “Can I have a crisp please Sut?”  His shoes were polished and his jumper was olive green and knitted.   “People who ask don’t get” he said, lifting another crisp into his mouth.    He was popular at primary school.   The football pitch had a sand pit bang in the middle of it – a perfect square.   We just played round it.   One day we thought we saw The Beatles walking past the school fence, in the field, with Jane Asher, not all of them, just Paul and John and Jane and someone else.   Excitement shuddered through the school.   I’ve often thought about that moment.   It can’t have been them though.

But it was.