77 Sulphate Strip

2008-05-23T10:49:00.000+01:00

B*Witched, bothered and B*Wildered

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cathy’s clown...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2008-04-11T10:43:00.002+01:00

For Claudia.

The filthiest night of my life

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

Odd, I thought.

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

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

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

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

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

You ain’t got no mum

Forget Grease, Mum’s the word.

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

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

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

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

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

What a twat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway, where was I?

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

READING: Page 17

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

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

I’d died and gone to heaven…

READING: Page 71 and Page 44

Isn’t life grand.

Encore! Ferocious clapping.

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

READING: Page 129

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

To continue…

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

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

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

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

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

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

McLaren Extract

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

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

Isn’t life grand…

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

That’s rock ‘n’ roll for you.

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

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

2008-03-20T16:12:00.001Z

'77 Sulphate Strip, Ovolo Publishing's flagship music title about the year of 'punk' is 'Book of the Week' in all Zavvi stores (formerly Virgin Megastores) week commencing 31st March 2008.

Zavvi is the UK's largest independent entertainment retailer on the high street and their focus is purely on the great products they offer.

If you were reading about punk in 1977 the chances are you read some of Barry Cain's words. As a young writer on Record Mirror he was perfectly placed to take part in, and report on, the punk scene. What makes this book truly great and stands out from the rest is how it connects the past to the present. In the words of Phil Singleton, sex-pistols.net 'The Punk Rock book of the year is yours, Mr Cain, and ours to share.'

"When I wrote '77 Sulphate Strip I honestly never expected it would receive such wonderful reviews and comments. For some, it seems to have touched a guitar string of a nerve that hasn't been plucked for three decades; for others, it has simply confirmed that 1977 was the most dynamic and groundbreaking year in rock 'n' roll history. I'm particularly thrilled that so many people who were just twinkles in roving eyes thirty years ago have derived such satisfaction from wandering through the Sulphate land of the damned and the desperate, alien yet strangely familiar, like a virulent dose of déjà vu.

The fact that Zavvi have made it one of their Books of the Week is a tremendous honour. It really is a dream come true and I'd like to thank The Sex Pistols, The Stranglers, The Clash, The Damned and The Jam for helping me realise it, not to mention Johnnny Thunder and his fabulous Heartbreakers. Oh, and that innate Zavvi savvy!" Says author Barry Cain.

'77 Sulphate Strip is his eyewitness account of the year and features behind-the-scenes stories of how the year unfolded – by a player at the centre of the vortex. It started for Cain when he interviewed the Sex Pistols at EMI the day before the Bill Grundy appearance on Thames TV. The book also features interviews with The Stranglers, The Clash, The Damned, The Ramones, The Vibrators, The Tubes, The Jam, Blondie, X-Ray Spex, Buzzcocks, The Boys, Sham 69, The Drones, XTC, Television, Generation X, The Heartbreakers, Alternative TV, Ian Dury, Radiators From Space.

The book doesn't end with the eyewitness account of 1977. Thirty years on, Cain re-interviewed John Lydon, Hugh Cornwell and Rat Scabies exclusively for the book. These extended interviews run for more than 100 pages and rise above being mere nostalgia. By asking Lydon, Cornwell and Scabies to comment on the original interviews Cain manages to coax unique insights from each of them.

"To be 'Book of the Week' in all Zavvi stores for our first music title is fantastic news. We have had some great reader reviews, which have led to the media and book/music shops supporting Barry in making sure the book gets out there. Alongside Zavvi's 'Book of the Week', Barry Cain will be holding a book reading at the 'Punk Poster Exhibition' at Filthy Macnasty's bar in London on 3rd April 2008. It will be a great event with live music and will be a chance to get everyone together to say thanks for supporting '77 Sulphate Strip." Says Ovolo Publishing Ltd Marketing Manager, Michelle Thorn.

'77 Sulphate Strip is packed with insights, anecdotes and great stories. Open it at any page and start reading and we guarantee you'll be hooked!

For more information 77 Sulphate Strip check out www.myspace.com/77sulphatestrip

For more information on the Punk Poster Exhibition at Filthy MacNastys check out www.myspace.com/filthymacnastysofficial

For more information on books at Zavvi stores log on to
www.zavvi.co.uk/books

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

2008-02-29T11:47:00.002Z

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

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

veronica@filthymacnastys.com OR paul@sterlingfp.com

FILTHY'S PUNK POSTER EXHIBITION PART II

MARCH 13th-APRIL 30th ADMISSION FREE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gary Loveridge.

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

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

with SPIZZ ENERGI

SPIZZENERGI's status as the world's most undiscovered natural resource is coming to an end as Spizz approaches a series of anniversaries.
Last year he chalked up 30 years as a performer and is edging closer to the 30th anniversary of his first John Peel Session and release of '6000 Crazy' the first of many record releases on the pioneering indie label Rough Trade in 1978. By 1979 the NME and Melody Maker were throwing 'Single of The Week' awards to their every release. Finally the leading Indie labels along with the BMRB established an official Indie chart and at the launch in January 1980 SPIZZENERGI's delirious Sci-fi classic 'Where's Captain Kirk?' was No.1.
Demand for the authentic and original Mr. Spizz outside the UK and at mainstream music festivals is growing and just before the band head off to Italy SPIZZENERGI launches this Filthy festival.
www.spizzenergi.com
www.myspace.com/spizzenergi

The book reading for this evening wil be provided by former Lurker
“Esso” Pete Haynes
Pete formed early Punk legends the Lurkers in 1977 being inspired by the New York scene of the Dolls and Ramones.
He has published 5 novels and written several plays.
http://www.petehaynes.co.uk/

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

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

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

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

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

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

THURSDAY 27th MARCH 2008
GARRY LAMMIN AND CHARLES SHAAR MURRAY

GARY LAMMIN

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

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

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

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

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

CHARLES SHAAR MURRAY

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

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

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

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

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

MARK PERRY aka Mark P

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

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

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

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

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

'77 Sulphate Strip - By Barry Cain

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

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

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

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

All events are free and start 6.30pm til midnight.

Veronica on 0795 2901569

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

FILTHY MACNASTY’S

68 AMWELL STREET LONDON EC1

Nearest trains and stuff Angel * Kings Cross * Farringdon

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

Downbeat Blues

2008-02-28T15:47:00.000Z

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Who is the guy?” I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marty Frasier’s chair

2008-02-18T09:15:00.000Z

These blogs are like drugs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friends -

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks

Lots of love

Philip C

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

Baby I’m for real.

2008-02-11T11:21:00.000Z

The Tapes of Wrath

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

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

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

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

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

“London.”

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

“Yes,”

“Where?”

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

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

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

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

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

“No bathrooms?”

“No bathrooms.”

“Amazing.”

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

My driver laughed. This guy was cool.

“Where did you go?”

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

“Arsenal eh?”

“Absolutely.”

Cue football chat…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s all too absurd.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Such a culture clash will enrich us all, eventually.

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

My driver disagreed. He was a Spurs man.

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

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

I figured 50, give or take 40.

Until then, we’ll always have Paris.

The other man’s grass

2008-02-05T15:14:00.000Z

Green was the colour of my youth.

Bethnal Green, Stepney Green, Islington Green. Green Shield stamps, the Green Lantern, Green Acres and ‘eat your bloody greens’. Green was the colour John Taylor went on the top deck of a number 43 after drinking a giant bottle of cherryade and stuffing six Milky Ways on the way back to school. Green was the colour I went after drinking a dozen whiskies with undiluted orange squash at a party – my first – in Newington Green. It was the era of the little green man, Hughie Green and Richard ‘Robin Hood’ Greene not to mention Dixon of fucking Dock Green.

But for a snowflake moment back then one Green stood out from the crowd – Mr. Green, Mr. Al Green and the wondrous ‘Let’s Stay Together’, which I first heard in the Green Gate pub in, yes, Bethnal Green Road when I was 16. His voice, his sweet, sweet voice, wrapped me in its arms and held me like the lover I would never know, a glimpse of perfection. For the first time in my life I finally got soul music. It was music for the soul. And it made you dance.

Paul McKenzie believes that Paul Weller has the one true British white soul voice. He told me that in The Florist pub on Globe Road in Bethnal Green. I hadn’t ventured that far East in London for more years than I dare to remember, but when I stepped down from the train, the old home town looked the same and there to greet me was Paul, my heterosexual blind date.

See, Paul is the editor of Britain’s urban music bible Touch magazine, a snazzy, sassy publication as sharp as a Stanley and cool to touch. He’s a remarkable man who grew up in heavy duty Hackney and ended up writing for The Face, The Independent, The Guardian, you name it. That’s equivalent to, say, Spurs winning the Premiership this season (actually, I nearly said ever but I saw the game against Man Utd and, much as it pains me to say it, they played Utd off the park). He’s been editor of the prestigious Touch for two years and his Note From The Editor column is an absolute must read. Paul tells it like it is – like it has to be – and he tells it in an erudite, welcome mat way that invites you to come in, kick off your shoes and sit back in the soft leather sofa before ramming a thunderbolt up your arse. His prose makes you think about yourself and your place on the map. He makes you remember what words were for.

It really was a pleasure to meet him and explore the worlds behind our painted smiles over several pints and a pub quiz (incidentally Paul, you do realise that we’re probably the only people reading this, if you’re there that is. But I’ll continue for a little longer in the third person, just in case).

I invited myself down to Bethnal Green after Paul mentioned something about beer and him buying, in an email. He contacted the 77 Sulphate Strip My Space blog and wrote some really nice things about the book which is very much appreciated. I was excited at the prospect of meeting him. He liked the book enough to want to maybe share a pint with its author and chew the fat about music and youth culture and football and movies and memories. He wanted to tell me what the book meant to him and his words wrapped me in their arms and held me like the lover I would never know. It was an Al Green moment, and writing this book was worth it for that alone.

Thanks mate. You’ve made my year. In fact, you’ve quite possibly made my last 28 years when words of praise have been thin on the ground and life keeps me awake every night.

I got married in 1980. In 2035 we’ll be celebrating our emerald wedding and green will be the colour of my old age, along with my teeth and fingernails.

Wonder if a corpse turns green…

Then I awake and look around me, at four grey walls that surround me
and I realize that I was only dreaming.
For there's a guard and there's a sad old padre -
arm in arm we'll walk at daybreak.
Again I touch the green, green grass of home.

Yes, they'll all come to see me in the shade of that old oak tree
as they lay me neath the green, green grass of home.

Title deeds

2008-01-14T15:24:00.000Z

Alone again.

Naturally.

I recently gave an interview – that’s right, gave – to Gary Kent from Burning Times (part of the ever-excellent Strangled set-up) on the back of 77 Sulphate Strip. Gary was such a genuine bloke and I took to him from the moment we met in a pub in Muswell Hill. I liked his style and I liked his smile and that’s a two goal home win.

It was a fucking weird sensation. I’ve never really been interviewed before but I’ve done a shitload of interviews and I know what I prefer. Gary even took pictures of me in my snazzy black duffle coat, dodgy jeans and white Reebok Classics. I loathe having my photo taken – these days I’m appalled by the face in the freeze. Luckily, Gary also did a nude photo session with me and I’m still mighty proud of my penis. I’ll let you know when it hits the www.strangled.co.uk site honey.

Gary was a kid when The Stranglers came to town and you tend to forget there’s a host of young, hot-blooded Lotharios out there who love them yet were too busy shitting their nappies when Peaches caressed the airwaves. When I left the Pistols gig the other night I got to talking to four young bucks in their mid twenties as we walked to the tube station. I asked then why go see the Pistols when they weren’t even born the first time around?

“It’s like The Beatles or The Stones,” said a bespectacled guy with a smooth chin and a winsome grin, “simply to say that you’ve actually seen them. They’re a fucking legend.”

A fucking legend that produced just one album and burned brightly for a year. Sharpshooter comets with long tails.

The Stranglers are a legendary band as are The Jam and The Clash and The Damned. Legends based on fact are often reborn. Let us pray. I wonder if all those bands would still sparkle like The Pistols if they’d broken up after their debut albums. Let’s face it, each album was an absolute classic. The squalid sublimity of Rattus Norvegicus: IV, the power and the glory of The Clash, the robust romanticism of In The City, the eerie menagerie of Damned Damned Damned, they all deserve their plinths in the pantheon of timeless pop. Alas, they all have one thing in common – crap titles. Rattus is a bit of a mouthful, In The City kinda playfully twee and Damned Damned Damned is, frankly, repetitious. Don’t even mention The Clash. That’s just plain lazy.

Never Mind The Bollocks Here’s The Sex Pistols is, without a shadow of a doubt, the greatest album title in history. It’s the champagne supernova bossnova of album titles. Everybody has heard of it, and I mean world over everybody. As I sat with Mr. Lydon in the sushi-bar sunshine of Marina Del Ray interviewing him for Sulphate, I was amazed at the number of people who recognised him as they strolled past the restaurant. Sure they remember Anarchy and Queen, but Bollocks covered the songs in cream.

Bollock cream, there’s none sweeter.

I was going to end here but I found out something today that kinda hits hard. Phil Chevron, the elfin extravaganza that fronted Radiators From Space and has played lead guitar for The Pogues since the relief of Mafeking, has been diagnosed with “advanced” throat cancer (does that mean it’s cleverer than ordinary throat cancer?). What compounds the sadness for me – I love being selfish – is that Phil just happened to write a quite wonderful review of Sulphate on The Pogues website ??????? which I discovered moments before I read of his illness. Cheers mate; heap some more worry on me why doncha.

Cliché time again – I haven’t seen Phil Chevron for 30 years. Our paths simply didn’t cross and The Pogues were a mystery to me. Some things you regret and not seeing Philip for a lifetime is one of them. The Radiators produced a punk classic in TV Screen and were shit hot live. It was a privilege watching them play. I remember a gig they did at the Music Machine in Camden Town on their first UK tour. They were particularly good that night and were joined on stage by Johnny Thunders who wore a mac and looked drop dead cool as he played guitar during the encore. You could see the look of excitement on Phil’s face when Thunders strolled on stage – he was a fan actually playing alongside one of his heroes and boy did it show. Thank you Phil, for the memories.

Shit, sounds like I’m writing an epitaph for the pair of us.

Anyway, if I may be so bold, I’d like to reproduce Mr. Chevron’s eloquent and tender review of the book. Thank you Phil, for the new memory.

Barry Cain was a journalist on Record Mirror in 1977, a year which, in his own estimation, the future course of his life was set. He was a talented writer, noted as such not just by myself and Joe Strummer, but also people like Rat Scabies and John Lydon. Because he was not an NME or Creem scribe, and because the humorous rather than the intellectual tickled his fancy, he never "made it" to the inner sanctum of posy rock journalists, most of whom did not deserve their lofty reputation anyway. This book is a bitter-sweet reflection on how 1977 - that year – loomed over the decisions, the values, the choices he made for the rest of his life. It is sprinkled with some of his writing for Record Mirror that year. It does not include the hilarious review of Thin Lizzy and The Radiators from Space at the Hammersmith Odeon in which Cain reversed the pre-eminence of the bands (I think Thin Lizzy went on second only because the Radiators fancied an early night or something), but it does include his touching eye-witness account of the show earlier that year in Dublin - the "saddest gig in the world" he rightly calls it - at which an 18 year old kid, Patrick Coultry, was murdered at a show headlined by The Radiators and also featuring the Undertones. While the NME sensationalised this the following week, putting grainy photos of the Radiators on the cover along with a gloomy, loaded, strapline - "At this punk gig a kid was stabbed to death" (my italics), Barry's wiser counsel prevailed in a more human, more factual account buried inside the same week's Record Mirror.

Also here is Barry's "shock horror" pseudo-expose of the Radiators painting the town red in Kassel, Germany, in October 1977, destroyed by the mangling of an uncaring sub-ed, an error which is, deliberately and entertainingly carried over into its re-appearance here.

But the book is not just an exercise in navel-gazing and nostalgia. What makes this book truly great is how it connects the past to the present, through the perspective of anyone who he knew in 1977 who'll still talk to him in 2007, to wit, Rat Scabies, Hugh Cornwell and, amazingly enough, John Lydon. And yes, I'd have happily talked to Barry if he'd gotten in touch - I liked him - but I'm pretty sure my interview would be comparatively redundant when set alongside the saki-drenched 40-page chat with John Lydon at Marina Del Rey which comes at the end of the book. I doubt you'll ever read a better John Lydon interview or a more open and honest one. Without ever losing sight of his role as an entertainer, Lydon discusses his disabling childhood meningitis, his father's "Gyppo" background ("Not many people know that about the Paddies - their class structure is even worse than the English") and, well, just about anything that's important in this world. Cain chronicles the conversation with wit and empathy and insight and you get a strong sense of a real bond being forged - Lydon only agrees to talk to Cain because his lifelong football pal Rambo approves of him, which is good enough for John Lydon - and this is where the book comes into its own. The punks have grown up, they're all 50 plus, the writers, the publicists and the bands, and behind all the many acres of print spouting sanctimonious bullshit about them and their times, this is how they really are. They kept the life-lessons the punk experience helped them express, in a way that makes most of the Hippy baby-boomers look like envious children with their noses pressed up against the window.

This book made me laugh and cry for my own errors and follies as well as my own small triumphs and, above all, for the fact that I was right back in 1977 and I still am.

"What's this book called, anyway?" asks Lydon, as Cain starts to drive away from the encounter.

"77 Sulphate Strip,” Cain tells him.

"What the fuck? Are you joking me? Is my life reduced to a dumb-arse cliché like that?"

"Fucking hell", he says, "I wish I'd thought of that."

Epilogue (how many of you remember The Epilogue that rounded off the TV transmission every night? Some cleric would give a two-minute sermon before the Test Card took you through the rest of the night and most of the following day. What a God-fearing nation we were, not so very long ago).

I dropped Phil a line through The Pogues website thanking him for the review and skirting over the cancer – although I did invite him out for a pint or a shitload of morphine the next time he was in London. He responded the next day with a very funny e-mail in which he said the cancer had been, “blasted into Kingdom Come by radiotherapy and chemo. We're not inviting it back unless it gatecrashes.” Best news I’ve had since winning the lottery… and I’ve never won the lottery.

Incidentally, did you know that ‘Television Screen’ was rated by Rolling Stone as a punk classic. Mind you, that shouldn’t really be a surprise. It is.

And so’s Phil.

A Strip tease

2007-12-29T00:10:00.000Z

Hi again. I see nobody has made any comment about my last blog so I would assume that nobody read it. I guess if talking to yourself is the first sign of madness then I must be Aladdin Sane.

’77 Sulphate Strip, as far as I know, has had three ‘hard’ press hits – the Muswell Hill Journal (I made the front page – big colour pic of me holding up the book against a backdrop of ’77 album covers that I managed to dig out), the County Times in Welshpool (the chief reporter, Barry Jones, is an old mate and we used to sit next to each other at journalist college in Cardiff) and Uncut (thanks Mr. Jones) It’s also had several, dare I say, cracking reviews on the web including the Pistols’ website www.philjens.plus.com/pistols/pistols/pistols_reviews_books.html#sulphate and John Lydon’s official website http://www.johnlydon.com/archive/jlnews14.htm. You (that’s me, apparently) can see some of the reviews on the Sulphate myspace site.

Sulphate is my first book so I really don’t know how these things work, but I must say my publisher, Mark Neeter, is a very supportive guy and I’m so pleased that he’s managed to recycle all the pages from the unsold copies to enable The Sun to come out tomorrow. I first met Mark in 1990 when he published a music magazine I’d sold to Robert Maxwell called Pop Shop. I knew right away he was one of life’s good guys. His interest was genuine and his laugh infectious and that’s more than enough for me. He was also meticulous at his job and handled the mag’s relaunch with due care and attention.

Alas, things didn’t work out and we both left the company for pastures new. We kept in touch for awhile but ex-work colleagues fade away like old soldiers and he disappeared off the radar. Out of the blue, Mark phoned me in 2006 and said he’d just seen my name mentioned in Hugh Cornwell’s autobiography A Multitude of Sins. As a result of that call we met up a week later at my house in Muswell Hill (coincidentally, Mark was born and bred in the next street) and the rest is Sulphate history. Turned out he had his own book publishing company specialising in all things building and was looking for a bestselling title in the commercial sector. In the meantime, he would publish ’77 Sulphate Strip!

I loved writing it. I loved revisiting a past kept on ice by the British Library and I loved Hugh Cornwell suggesting I call the book Hope I Die When I Get Old as we sat in the sunshine on a bench by the Serpentine. I haven’t written about music since, oh, Hanson and B**Witched I guess. I used to publish pop magazines, mainly of the single-act poster variety, although I did start some general ones like Flexipop and the aforementioned Pop Shop. In fact, the first poster mag I ever published was on Adam and the Ants in 1981 and it sold over 60,000 copies. My company boomed in the eighties on the back of little belters like Wham, Culture Club, Aha, Madonna, Kylie, Jason and Bros but the lights went out in the nineties. Apart from Take That and a late entry from the Spice Girls, I fumbled in the darkness, finally giving pop up as a bad job in 1998. Forget what Don McLean says, that was the year the music died. Pop magazine circulations reflect record sales – back in 1990 Smash Hits sold nearly a million copies a fortnight. When it closed a few years back it was selling barely 60,000. Kids don’t care about pop stars enough anymore to put posters of them on their bedroom walls. Now, happiness is a warm gun and a Vodka Red Bull.

We had forty years of pure pop for precious people devoid of alternatives. The antique roadshows currently doing the rounds from Zeppelin to The Police serve as a reminder of a bygone age when men were men and women were hard to get (for me anyway); when you used to listen to albums without moving a muscle; when pop stars were gods and celebrities weren’t spawned by reality TV.

Punk was the last true white pop music movement, bouncing in on the back of rock ‘n roll, the popbeat sixties, the hippie hat hedonism of flower-power and glitter – the five ages of British pop-man. They all helped to amalgamate disparate factions and alleviate the pain of adolescence. Forget the terrors of acne and wet dreams; get pissed and destroy instead. Now our generation’s terrors are cancer and no dreams; getting pissed and destroying passers-by is the domain of the lunatic on early release. Pop music is for the young, but the chartless young don’t seem to want it. They’re more interested in who’s top of the Premiership than The Pops. Ronaldo may have tiger feet but can he alter your mind?

Electric Avenue

2007-12-01T22:34:00.000Z

http://www.blogger.com/i.g?inviteID=1748214143657598365&blogID=555188458520174027

Went to the last night of The Pistols at Brixton.
On my own, as usual. I’m married, three kids at home, but I seem to be on my own a lot these days. I think I’m regressing ‘cos I’m constantly searching for Shangri-La, constantly trekking through cold mountains in search of that distant glow where my heart resides, where my soul soaks in a bath of asses milk, where heaven is missing an angel. I reluctantly walked out on them all a long time ago like Ronald Coleman without the moustache, and I’ve been working my way back to you, babe, ever since. Love don’t live here anymore, that’s for fucking sure.
Tell you when I get there.
Meanwhile, I thought I might share some thoughts with you, which will probably be me because nobody knows about this blog.
If any of you actually managed to wade through ’77 Sulphate Strip’ you might recall how fond I’d become of Rambo, John Lydon’s ex-schoolmate and now US-based advisor. Alas, I never got to meet him while he was here, nor did I get re-acquainted with John Lydon (he wouldn’t have remembered me anyway!) or Steve Jones or Paul Cook. Glen Matlock I never really knew. I only ever saw the Pistols with Sid so Glen was a mystery. I once went to Steve and Paul’s flat in, Bell Street, Marylebone, in the summer of '78 and they were like kids with a new toy. They were living the high life, two of the most famous men in Britain with a world of pussy at their feet.
After the Brixton show I didn't fancy a repeat of my Paul Weller stage door Johnny experience and I didn’t want to come across as a cunt and tell the backstage doorman, ‘Tell Rambo or Johnny that Barry Cain is here.’
‘Who?’ was the answer I didn’t want to hear, so rather than tempt fate, I decided to go straight home after the gig. The Victoria Line was closed so I had to walk to Stockwell tube in the company of some young guns. I asked one if he enjoyed the show. He was 23, born seven years after the ’77 explosion.
‘Fucking great.’
Why did you go?
‘So I can say I’ve seen them. They’re like The Beatles and The Stones, immortal.’
Wow! Who would’ve thought it? Immortal. Hands up any of you who thought those other great ’77 bands like Heatwave or Tavares or, indeed, the Dead End Kids would wear the cloak of immortality ahead of the fey, one album combo from north London. Hats off to megamick Mr. Lydon, hats off to the ghost of Christmas past, hats off to McClaren – and I don’t mean that tosser of a football manager. In fact, hats off to Larry.

The concert?

There was a regimented order to the madness.

As the Sex Pistols rampaged through The Bollocks in Brixton, the knees-up brigade in the audience up front pulverised each song into submission. They were the under thirty-fives with barnets of every shape and size, splish splashin’ in a sea of sweat, drawn by the enigma.

Behind them the thirty-five to fifty year-olds, shaven heads to hide receding hairlines, blossoming guts, occasional mad bouts of dancing to the more established songs like God Save The Queen and the hideously exciting Bodies.

And behind them, far away from the numbers and the massive speakers, the naturally bald granddad section, snappin’ their fingers and shufflin’ their arthritic feet as the wave generated from the front finally petered out on a hairless beach.

Britain’s going bald, it’s official. But The Pistols remain remarkably hirsute. And John Lydon remains remarkably versatile.

It was the fifth time I’d seen the band – the last being 30 years ago in Memphis on their ill-fated US tour when Sid Vicious, his neck heavily bandaged after he stabbed himself with a broken bottle in Atlanta the night before, called the Hicksville audience a ‘bunch of cunts’, as you do. They split up a couple of gigs later and El Sid rode off into legend, a corpse on a horse with a murder rap in his dead lap.

It was the way I would always want to remember them, boyz to nearly men. As I approached Brixton Academy, I began to luxuriate in the fact that I’d seen the band when they were the dogs and secretly laughed at those fresh-faced punks around me who would only ever know middle-aged men with guitars hanging tough. Age has its advantages sometimes.

I really didn’t want to see them live again. The Pistols were more about youth than any other band but now they were all 50-plus. It would be nothing more than a cynical cheap holiday in other people’s misery, a gold-coated slab of hypocrisy – they would be metamorphisising into the very bloated rock star personas they so roundly condemned in 1977.

But the moment they opened with Pretty Vacant, I started to get it. It wasn’t about anarchy anymore, how could it be? It was about nostalgia. English nostalgia perpetrated by an Irish lad with the voice range of a god. The Pistols were the soundtrack to a generation, and that generation, now numbed by mortgages and broken marriages and kids and unfulfilled ambition, don’t want to relive their memories at home via a cd and a few cans of beer. They want to be with their heroes, to celebrate the moments, to get juiced up and multiply, to revel in their Englishness for an hour or so. They’d rather spend thirty quid on a concert than £10.99 for a cd.

The Pistols were paying their dues, it was as simple as that. And it’s about time the class of ’77 took a leaf out of their dog-eared book. Stand up The Jam. Surely it’s your duty to go back in the city with Weller at the helm. It’s verging on the criminal to continue to deny your fans the chance of ripping it up to Town Called Malice and Going Underground.

The Stranglers too ought to be ashamed of themselves. Acolytes of the golden brownies deserve more, like a full blown reunion tour garnished with Peaches and that swirling keyboard whirligig sound.

Likewise The Damned, whose new rose has all but withered. They could fill out barns across the country, such was their notoriety.

Alas, The Clash are out of the loop. Mick Jones and Paul Simonon are diminished without the late Joe Strummer, as he was without them, and that’s the biggest tragedy of all.

So get your ya ya’s out lads and do the right thing. You’ll all make fortunes but, better still, you’ll put smiles on the faces of those who adored you. With every year that passes you’re denying them the magic that coursed through that Brixton Pistols gig from beginning to end.

In the face of dwindling record sales, live and dangerous is what it’s all about. It’s going back to the roots, the ones in your soul and not on your head. With the odd exception, pop music as a vibrant, pertinent force is dead on its feet, its cutting edge blunted by the excessive eighties, Spice Girl nineties and the I-pod overkill of the new millennium. It’s duty now is to massage the memory, to be a chute for all the shit we’ve managed to collect over the last thirty years. To be live, just to prove we’re not dead.

On the packed tube home I overheard a guy say to his mate. ‘I was really choked they didn’t sing Who Killed Bambi.’

Like the song says that introduced the Sex Pistols to Brixton – They’ll always be an England.

Catch you later.