Punk Footnotes #8 The Homosexuals

I should have gone to the shop myself. It was probably a bit unfair making my Brother go to Virgin in Croydon in 1984 and buys an album called ‘The Homosexuals Record’ for my Christmas present.

Most footnotes deserve their status, a single great song produced on the monkey and type writer principle, or being there at a key moment or somehow for a moment capturing a mood. The closer inspection of these bands work normally explains why they remained on the margins. However exhilarating ‘Cranked up Really High’ was Slaughter and the Dogs other material tapered off pretty sharply. Few bands, with the benefit of hindsight hint at a greater talent.

One of the few that do was The Homosexuals. The arrival of iTunes has made this band's work accessible in a way it never was when they appeared in the late 70’s. They gigged infrequently, released a couple of singles on tiny labels and broke up. They did leave a body of unreleased recorded work, often rough and unfinished. These recordings flashed briefly into public view in the mid 80’s with the release of ‘The Homosexuals’ record. This is where I encountered them following John Peel playing the thrilling ‘Neutron Lover’, a song that featured the wonderful line ‘like robots falling over, in their hungry search for love.’

The line-up revolved around Bruno Wizard. His original band ‘The Rejects’ were amongst the first wave Punks that played at The Roxy. This band mutated into The Homosexuals when he felt constrained by how punk was changing. I recently read a rather convoluted explanation for why they chose the name, but I suspect that is all bollocks. Wizard was known for his confrontational approach, and I guess the name was chosen to provoke and annoy.

But unlike many of the early punk bands the provocation was backed by a genuine musical gift. If I had to categorise them they fit best alongside the arty arch punk of Wire and Magazine. But it’s not a perfect fit. Their musical palate was much broader and more adventurous. Many of the recordings feel like the unfinished rough mixes but The Homosexuals Record was packed with great songs. Hearts in Exile, Technique Street, Vociferous Slam, False Sentiments and the above mentioned Neutron Lover are strange, beautiful and exhilarating. Sometimes there is a sudden unexpected change, but you always feel they know what they are doing.

At the time The Homosexuals record came out they were dormant, and apart some staggeringly opaque liner notes there was nothing to help the listener to learn more. There is more info out there now. Wikipedia suggests that maybe Bruno wasn’t the easiest person to work with and very much at odds with the mainstream music industry.  They do appear to have enjoyed a level of rediscovery with a more widely available ‘The Homosexuals CD’ coming out in the early 2000’s. There does appear to be a version of the group that has reformed, and they seem to have an audience in the States.

What is clearly visible from the songs they recorded over thirty years ago is a band that had a musical vision way beyond the miniscule recognition they received. So, thanks Bro, I appreciate it.

 

Twerking, oh ok thats what it's called.

What does it remind me of? Yes that’s it. If they ever they remake The Office with a female David Brent, a red nose day re-enactment of Miley Cyrus’ VMA performance would be ideal.

 The world will have moved on from such things, but all the twittering about Miley’s ‘twerking’ made me a curious enough to view the performance on YouTube. I quickly realised that I do know what ‘twerking’ is, and it is nothing new. About twenty years ago MTV liked to make itself look edgy by playing lots of 2LiveCrew videos. These featured significant portions of rump shaking.

Back to Miley. She appears looking like a PG rated version on Keith Flint from The Prodigy. Horns of hair, staring eyes, teeth bared and tongue lolling from brightly painted lips. The performance clearly has big production values. But while somebody like Lady Gaga can lead such proceedings as a Master Ceremonies, Cyrus seems a bewildered child at the carnival, like Pinocchio lost.

From the anally fixated nature of the proceedings I presume it is about trying to portray Cyrus as a more edgy adult performer. It would have been nice if she had been given a song to match. I am no expert on R&B/Hip-hop but the tune seems like generic stuff, produced using a process similar to injection moulding. I have read people suggesting that Cyrus asked for ‘blacker’ style. I not going to engage with this because my toes have curled so tight I’ve got cramp in my earlobes.

The arrival of Robin Thicke perks things up.(How do you pronounce ‘Thicke’? As in trick or as in tricky). I am unaware of his other work but he has a more interesting voice and a nice bit of swagger. His arrival also provides an opportunity to crank up the arse/crutch factor still higher. The camera pans to faces in the audience who I presume are famous people. They don’t look that impressed.

The overall impression is a little bit unsettling. I somehow come away feeling poorer for the experience.

Bedroom Tax - Shit Happens

We are now a good few months since the bedroom tax was launched. Research in my organisation was inconclusive about the impact on our residents facing cuts in housing benefit for their extra bedrooms.
Of those affected the total debt they owed has stayed steady, but there is also evidence of individuals not paying the shortfall and the debt beginning to rise. But we are a London based organisation. We have a large number of one and two bed properties and have due to massive demand consistently filled our stock to capacity over many years.
The impact of the bedroom tax was never going to even across the country. The North West is already experiencing major problems both with rising arrears debt and the political fall out of their attempts to manage this. In Liverpool some Housing Associations are seen as being party to the policy and facing considerable pressure to reduce the impact.
The problem for many Housing organisations outside London is that they do not have large amounts of small properties and they have been forced to under occupy 3 bed properties rather than leave them standing empty. It is not that the families who live in them wanted to create this situation. What we see is a vice tightening of benefits being cut without there being smaller accommodation for these families to move to.
Of all the welfare reforms this has always appeared to be the most ill considered. Yes, it seems logical over a cappuccino in London to suggest that as there is such huge demand for affordable housing those that wish to under occupy should face some kind of sanction. But it just does not work as a national policy, because the picture is not the same nationally. This has been a slow burn but I sense the mercury is rising.

A weekend at The Edge of Darkness

Over the bank holiday weekend  I enjoyed watching in full the six episodes of Edge of Darkness. It stars Bob Peck (who later played rugged raptor food in Jurassic Park) as Ronnie Craven, a widowed Police officer dealing with the murder of his daughter played by Joanne Whalley.

When broadcast in 1985 this brooding story of murder and plutonium, corruption and dirty deals fitted with the cold war paranoia and the post Falkland political landscape. For a BBC production it was very high end, staggering locations, a quality cast and a sound track from Eric Clapton. 

In the early episodes Craven faces the reality of the woman his daughter was becoming, both as a political and sexual being. His own mental health is precarious. Who the enemy is remains elusive. Characters like Harcourt and Pendleton appear like riddles. But what made it remarkable were the strong environmentalist themes. The threat wasn’t the Russians; we were the threat against the planet. These kinds of ideas are familiar now but very much less so then.

What was it like seeing it today? Overall it still stands up. Peck’s performance remains incredibly powerful. The paranoia is still a strong as ever. It is funny seeing a show made in the mid 80’s rather than an ‘Ashes to Ashes’ recreation. It is not littered with sexism and racism. Even the smoking by then was subdued. They did shift a fair bit of whiskey while on duty mind.

Also it was a world where computers we still things housed in special buildings. The scenes of offices with piled files and no screens, and of where the only phones were in buildings attached to cables looked strange now.Some bits creek. Some of the characters are two dimensional cartoons. Godbolt the corrupt Union Boss and Darius Jedburgh as the Texan CIA man are painted crudely. Zoe Wannamaker’s character is barely filled in which is a shame. These rather jar with the downbeat tone of what is going on around them. There are nice touches even with these characters. The Scottish landlady insisting on pronouncing Jedburgh as in ‘Edinburgh’ not as in ‘Pittsburgh’ to the American’s rising annoyance while he suffers from radiation poisoning.

The ending is appropriately gloomy, with so much unanswered and unresolved.  

Looking for contemporary equivalents, its spirit is closer to the Scandinavian noir of The Killing than much home grown. It certainly has little in common with the Mel Gibson big screen version. In terms of what the influences were on it, being written by Troy Kennedy Martin of Z Cars fame the police procedural was going to be there. Also though intentional or not with Peck’s melancholy internal search for his daughter, the sparse blues of the soundtrack, and the lingering pace brought to mind Paris Texas. Maybe it is the pacing that is so different from today. Six hours is a long time, much of it is spent in close up on Pecks face. It is hard to imagine an audience of millions sticking with it today. Parts are self-indulgent and it’s up to viewer whether these can be forgiven.

I am going to make some unfair comparisons. Watch this, then watch a more conventional thriller, say an early episode of Morse. Morse is cosy, slow and predictable. It does not seek to reflect the real world, even of the Oxford in which it was made. Watch Smiley’s People. Brilliantly acted and complex yes, but also about a world that had gone. It raises few questions about the future, let alone direct challenges. We know the commies are the bad guys.  Edge of Darkness does both. It is hard not to admire he courage of those who made what is generally accepted as a landmark series. It was deliberately political and provocative. It is complex and challenging for its audience. It is hard to imagine the current cowed BBC putting its resources and heart into such a project.

If you have the time do watch it.

Trivia

A couple of years before Edge of Darkness there was another psychological thriller, this time focusing on computers and the internet called Bird of Prey. It starred Richard Griffiths who plays a Civil Servant being drawn into conflict with a shadowing power. Both this and Edge of Darkness were produced by Michael Wearing. A fairly impressive CV for the man.

Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim and Me

In my mid 20’s I read a good few Campus novels, satirical stories about academic life.  This was the late 1980’s when that campus world they described was disappearing, and they felt like nostalgia even then.

My Girlfriend’s dad was a Northern Grammar School educated academic who raged against the British class system that he believed had held him back. He longed to be free to make a career in the more meritocratic United States. Reading these books made me feel connected with the world he was talking about.  As my BTec in Building at Vauxhall College moved seamlessly into a Surveying Degree as Southbank Poly, the kind of academic world they portrayed  in these books was so much more fun than the pragmatic reality.  

The book often considered the original campus novel is Lucky Jim. But though I read Malcolm Bradbury, Tom Sharpe, Howard Jacobson and David Lodge, I never got round to Kingsley Amis’ most famous work.  A large part of the reason for this is to do with its Author.

 My views on Kingsley Amis were framed early and not very favourably. I paid a pound for a well-worn copy of Penthouse from one of my Classmates in the CSE electronics class. It was from the era when porn mags aspired to be gentlemen’s publications.  Basically they were like a British Airways inflight magazines some dirty pictures thrown in. For the 14 year old me the features on sports cars and films were the skin on the banana, there to be discarded.  My eyes fell on a cartoon of a smug looking middle-aged man in glasses holding a pen, perched at the top of his column. This column was (possibly) titled ‘Kingsley on Drink’. I read the opening couple of sentences and from then on Kingsley Amis was the bloke that wrote the unsexy bits for jazz mags.

This prejudice was reinforced by Wendy Cope’s ‘Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis’. The opening poem was ‘Engineers Corner’, the sentiment of which, as a would be surveyor, I resented bitterly. A resentment that was  in retrospect  quite complex and multi layered, but owed nothing to Kingsley Amis himself.

But more than this, whenever I encountered Kingsley Amis he seemed to be the literary equivalent of a right wing shock jock. Making offensive comments about Jews and reaping the predictable ‘controversy’ did nothing provoke an interest in his books.

When Sebastian Faulks did his excellent series on fiction I was surprised to see ‘Jim Dixon’ amongst the ‘heroes’. By now I did appreciate that Kingsley Amis had significance beyond being a Penthouse columnist so was both curious and sceptical. So I was glad that the Waterstones Croydon Book Group chose Lucky Jim. It has forced me to get on with it and judge the book on its merits not what I might have thought about its author.

Looking back my view of Amis was so generational. The mid 20’s me saw a right wing racist old roué. He seemed much like the bitter old surveyors I was working for. The ones that bemoaned how badly they were being treated, groped the secretaries and came back pissed and abusive from lunch.  I did not see the younger man, the new exciting voice, the writer that my girlfriend’s dad had admired.

Whether or not I actually like Lucky Jim will be for another day.

 

Punk Footnotes #7 I, Shithead

It is probably unfair to describe Vancouver's DOA as a punk footnote. They are seen as amongst the founding fathers of Hardcore Punk in North America, along with the likes of Black Flag and Minor Threat. I first heard them in 1984 when the Bloodied but Unbowed compilation came out in the UK. Musically they bore the hallmarks of their classic punk influences more visibly then their Hardcore contemporaries. With the band members carrying names like Dimwit, Stubby Pecker and Randy Rampage they also had a sense of humour that few of their competitors could have been accused of.

But the person I am interested in here is their leader, and the only member who has seen them from 1979 to today. The wonderfully named Joey ‘Shithead’ Kiethley. He is a man who in many ways has overcome some fairly obvious limitations to keep his band alive. As a physical presence he had none of Henry Rollins’ menace or Jello Biafra’s theatrical charisma. Instead we have a man going at it like an excited Jack Russell in a sleeveless tee shirt. And boy this man has a serious long term commitment to the sleeveless tee.

Hugely committed to various causes for the start, ideologically he fits in with Biafra and the likes of Billy Bragg. But as a lyricist he is some way short of those two. Even when making a serious point he will normally reach for the obvious and literal, lacing in with ‘Smash the State’ and ‘Fucked up Ronnie.’ He also a man that gets a buzz out of belching into the microphone. Songs with titles like ‘I don’t give a shit’ and ‘Fuck You’ don’t place him obviously amongst the deep thinkers of the genre. But what always comes across has been a massive drive and energy. DOA’s slogan Talk – Action = 0 does some him up.

Maybe surprisingly he is a pretty good talker, and writer.  He is articulate and charming as a speaker, and a vivid, humorous writer.  The contradictions in the man are nice brought together in a story about a gig in San Francisco. He tells of ‘the night I pissed on the crowd’ explaining how the audience parted like the red sea before Moses. The story is delivered with such good natured self-deprecation that is defuses the extreme unpleasantness of the act itself. His autobiography ‘I, Shithead’ tells this and many other tales of his 30 odd years doing what he does. If one is going to read a punk biography this isn't a bad one to choose.

England Scotland and familiar feelings

So England win with a few shocks and bruises. Scotland get to claim an honourable defeat. It was (nearly) always thus. Jacobites 2-3 Hanovarians

Pleased for Rickie Lambert. But looking at the personnel in the Scottish defence they are the kind of outfit a player from the bottom third of the Premiership should be capable of scoring against. Harsh but fair?

The Call of the Beard - Standing by Paxo

The two hundredth posting has come round and faced with the challenge of thinking of something worthy to say I have chickened out. Instead I will engage with the Paxo beard debate 24 hours too late.

So Jeremy Paxman rocks up on Newnight with a rather fetching grey beard and lots of people say it looks shit.  The man himself implies that he is resisting a BBC led oppression of facial hair. As somebody who has recently ventured in the land of beard I feel the need to come to the mans defence.

For a man to yield to the beard is a liberating experience, but not necessarily a permanent change. Yes it makes one look old and the bristles are not always a vote winner with ones partner. And people will think that it denotes a shifty untrustworthy desire to conceal possibly linked to a desire to interfere with the young. This may all be true but getting to a stage in life when one can give the proverbial bird to the tyranny of shaving is a small victory against the crappy stuff that makes us behave.

To echo the sentiments expressed by Mr P, the beard is for me, not for you. I goes when I am ready. My choice.

Punk Footnotes #6 Osaka Ramones

While I am on the theme, here are another band that imitate both sincerely and wildly inaccurately the work of one of the Punk originators. However that is where any connection between this lot and the Bollock Brothers ends.

Osaka Ramones are the alter egos of the Japanese pop punk Shonen Knife. It is this connection that actually reassures one that they are not in fact a racist joke cooked up by some cynic in London. Even clad in leather jackets as a tribute act the Osaka Ramones do not do a vary convincing imitation of the originals. There are three of them not four, they are very obviously not men, and they are well very Japanese. And unlike the Ramones they go about their work with a cheery sense of fun, rather than the feeling  that every 1-2-3-4 is an act of vengeance against a malign world.

But while I am sure it is lots of fun live I cannot imagine why anyone would want to possess this band on record. It does not take long before the helium voiced 'bwitskweeg bop' starts to grate, and the cultural significance of 'KKK took my baby away' to a Japanese audience is boggling. It just does seem a little bit too much effort barking up a slightly inappropriate tree. That said they seem to be having lots of fun and importantly seem very much alive, which in the grand scheme of things gives them the edge.

 

Punk Footnotes #5 Never Mind the Brothers

Band names can be a tricky thing. Kurt Cobain famously once considered the name 'Poopoo Box' before opting for the more commercial 'Nirvana' for his band. Shane McGowan twice adapted his band names to secure radio acceptance, with the Nipple Erectors becoming the Nips and more famously Pogue Mahone becoming the Pogues.

Less successfully there was a band in Reading in the early 90's who did a nice line in Costello/Squeeze type new wave. But saddled with the closing time joke name of 'My Wife Drinks Pints' they were never about to escape that far. But the subject of this footnote is a band saddled with frankly the most rubbish name of all, the Bollock Brothers.   Ok, this is really about a footnote, almost a footnote to a footnote. If there are people today who are still cherishing the recorded output of the Bollock Brothers, who are not members of the bands immediate family, I will be staggered. But they are a interesting case all the same.

The name, linked to the Sex Pistols 'Never Mind the Bollocks' album nailed their reference points pretty clearly. The Pistols had John(ny Rotten)  Lydon, the BB's recruited his brother Jimmy. The Pistols got Ronnie Biggs to sing for them, the BB's tried the same trick with Michael Fagan. Michael who? Well in 1982 Mr Fagan, a man of uncertain mental health, succeeded in breaking into the Queens bedchamber where he came face to face with our monarch. The BB's sought to exploit his notoriety by letting him atonally front the band.

In 1983 they went the whole hog their own version of the 'Never Mind the Bollocks' album. An act of truly astounding pointlessness. And that maybe was the point. But what was particularly strange about the BB's was that despite their limpet like attachment to the ethos of the Pistols their favoured musical medium was electronica. So where original  Anarchy in the UK and Holidays in the Sun were driven by Steve Jones incendiary guitars and Paul Cook's thudding drums the BB's played them on what sounds now that a Casio organ. But within that remarkably faithfully.

I recall at the time nobody in the music press seemed to know what to do with them and generally they would get slagged off. Wikipedia suggest that the aforementioned 'Never Mind..' was well received but I don't recall much of that. But they do remain an engaging footnote.

In a couple of years Acid House would  take hold, and if they had been able to fuse the energy and mischief to punk to the exponential possibilities of that electronic music they could have been an awful lot more. But the didn't.

Sky Pro Cycling - We Support Our Local Team

Even in this money talks media age teams like Chelsea and Man U still go through the old ritual of the open topped bus ride through their City streets to celebrate famous wins. This showing off the spoils, the town turning out to celebrate their success feels linked to something quite ancient.

For the domestic market at least Team Sky has been at pains to stress its Britishness, not only seeking to have a Tour Winner, but a British winner. Victorious British Cycling teams on an international stage are somewhat few and far between and cycling as a massed spectator sport is still a new phenomenon here. So I was surprised the Sky passed up the opportunity presented by last Sunday's Prudential Classic. It could have been, with the presence of Froome, Porte, Kennaugh et al been the cycling equivalent of that open bus tour. a chance for a grateful nation to acknowledge their champions. Or maybe giving us another chance to remember Wiggo's golden 2012. Instead Sky sent, well not meaning to be harsh but to describe them ad the B team is probably about right. Now I know that traditionally the Tour riders go and milk their tour success in Criteriums around Europe. But Sky choosing not to acknowledge the home fans was a mistake. 

Tonto vs Little Big Man

In reviewing (more kindly than most) the new Lone Ranger film in today's Observer Phillip French evoked the memory of one of my favourite films. Simply the casting of Dustin Hoffman in a Western tells you that Little Big Man was going to be different. My Dad loved a good Western, the kind tha starred Gary Cooper, Alan Ladd or Randolphe Scott. But Little Big Man both embraced and mocked the 'mans gotta do what a mans gotta do' ethos. Hoffman plays a wide eyed innocent, Jack Crabb is kidnapped and raised by Indians before stumbling unsuspecting into the world. Crabb is more in the vein of Candide than Shane.

It's a comedy Western but one that has some punch. As French points out it names the treatment of Native Americans for what it was, Genocide. I saw it at an age when reassuring certainties were giving way to questioning doubt. I had seen plenty of films with brave Cavalry men in blue fought the savages. The scene when the troopers massacre the tribe in the snow had a huge impact. One detail that stayed with me was the image of a woman with a baby on her back is shot down. To obliterate any hope it is made clear in blood that both mother and child are dead. But the film retains an appetite for life as Crabb stumbles on through the history of the Wild West.

Punk(ish) Footnotes #4- Hazel O'Connor, burgers and Stephen

Stephen always seemed to be in trouble. I could never quite work out why the teachers found so much to object to about him. He was a bit of berk but never seemed like a bad kid. There must have been things not quite right at home. Sutton was well off enough for Stephen to standout on the first day at Senior School. He was still wearing the grey shirt and jumper we wore to Junior School. He was minus a blazer and the only piece of the new uniform he had was the blue and gold tie.

Stephen came to mind yesterday when I was browsing YouTube. I was struck by how many old bands seem be enjoying some strange afterlife. Angelic Upstarts made their one Top of the Pops appearance in I guess 1979. I had presumed they had thrown in the towel by 1984. But no, YouTube reveals a band that has put on a lot of weight but is still playing to appreciative audiences. These gigs are not just in some mate’s pub in Wallsend but locations as exotic as Sao Paulo, Bologna and Lodz. How these guys music found an audience in these places, and how they wound up playing there is profoundly odd.

But Stephen came to mind because of a more commercial New Wavish artist. The last time I gave Hazel O’Connor a thought was in Burgermeister, opposite Sutton Station, late one Tuesday night in 1985. There bouncing around behind the counter in an apron holding a big burger flipper was Stephen.

‘I don’t work here, I am hiding from somebody.’ Was his explanation. Unless he was fleeing a group of enraged vegans I could not think of a less effective hiding place. Burgermeister was a grim spot strategically located near The Whistle Stop Pub and the cab shop. A good place to be if you wanted to be involved in a fight.

We started chatting about music. ‘I still like a lot of punk stuff.’ My ears pricked up. He pointed toward s a battered cassette player. ‘I was listening to Hazel O’Connor earlier.’ I stifled the urge to make a sour remark. O’Connor appeared in that space when New Wave gave way to synth pop. I was a bit snooty about her; she broke through starring in the film ‘Breaking Glass’ which was not very 4 Real in my book.  But when I got home I dug out the cassette, and a couple of nights later enjoyed listening to ‘Will You’ with my girlfriend.

Browsing YouTube that evening came to mind and l did a search. But what appeared was not the face of a spikey haired young singer but a rather formidable looking woman in her 50’s belting out the tune. And there was more from 2010, 11, 12. Loads of footage of O’Connor performing at all manner of events. In fact it proved a struggle to find the stuff from what I imagine even she would describe as her heyday. There was stuff from a Punk festival a couple of years ago, and footage from a 30^th anniversary gig. I did not realise that the film ‘Breaking Glass’ was remembered with that kind of fondness.

It is kind of appealing that below the surface of public consciousness there are a whole batch of bands long presumed dead still playing to those that love them. And what they play is sealed in amber, the songs from when the love affair began. The fans are loyal and in return the artists don’t shatter the mirror of nostalgia.

Strava Virus

In +The Guardian today an article highlights a case from San Fransico where the family of a dead cyclist tried to sue Strava. Basically the case was the using the app made him ride recklessly. They lost but their argue ent has a superficial allure. You create urban courses (segments) where people can  compete to set a record time. People may then risk life and limb to break these records QED Strava is a menace.
The Court, accepted Strava's case the each rider takes responsibility for their own safety. But there is another dimension. Strava is simply providing a fun platform to do something I would guess every rider has done. Since the moment a victorian decided to bring together the pocket watch and the bicycle riders have tried to beat their best times. It is what we as human animals do. If somebody falls off in the process it is wrong headed to blame the watch.