6 February 2012

Blondie

So Debbie’s is 66′, Chris is 61 and Clemens is 57, but they can still do the business and she’s still so fuckin’ cool. The were SO good in their prime, years go by and they can still rock. All singles because they were a great pop act, not a great punk act – hence no ‘Rip Her to Shreds’. And o hard o choose.

For no particular reasons apart from being a class act, 8 by Blondie:

Denis

Rapture

Call Me

Dreaming

Atomic

Union City Blue

All of the above, a matter of opinion

Maria

For a belting comeback

What I Heard

For still getting up there and doing it

____________________________________________________________

“Juliet. Lovely to hear from you.”

“Seriously Dad, we’ve been really worried about you. I’ve been calling you for ages.”

“Ages.”

“Yes, ages – since Wednesday.”

“That’s ages?”

“It is Dad. the idea of a mobile phone is that you can answer whenever.”

“And the idea of the ‘off button’ is so I can, erm, turn it off.”

“But we called the house and that was just ringing, and we called Mum and she wasn’t answering today”

“She’s at work Jules.”

“Well we’re all at work, I have to be contactable when I’m at work.”

“That’s a little different.”

“Why? I’m serious. We’ve been really worried about you and what if something had happened to Josh?”

“Well, I do appreciate your concern, honestly and I imagine Josh does too, but we just decided we needed some time away from all of that stuff.”

“Stuff? What stuff? Like your family?”

“No. Phones, and emails, and texts and all that madness – there’s nothing that won’t wait a few hours you know.”

“But it’s been days, Dad … and don’t sigh.”

“OK, well you’ve found me now. I’m fine, Mum’s fine. I assume you and Evan are fine?”

“Yes.”

“And the cat?”

“She has a name.”

“Yes, remind me what it is again?”

“Geraldine.”

“How is, Geraldine?”

“Oh, she’s gorgeous.”

“OK, my battery’s a bit low, so now we’ve established that everyone is fine, what can I do for you?”

Actually the battery was fine, but I wanted Juliet to get to the point.

“Well, we couldn’t get hold of you and we were worried, so we thought about it and we decided to drive over.”

“What?

“We’re driving over to see you.”

“When?”

“Now”

“Have you left?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“An hour ago.”

“So where are you now?”

“Where are we Evan?”

“Hello, Professor Madison, we are between St Neots and Bedford.”

“Hello, Evan, please, it’s Martin, and how are you?”

“I’m fine, Profess … I mean, Martin. I expect we’ll see you in around 90 minutes – the traffic might be heavy.”

“Oh … Well, right …”

“That’s good then Daddy, shall we get a take away or something?” Juliet asked.

“Oh no, let me sort something out with your Mum.”

“That’s fine then, we’ll be with you soon.”

“What a surprise. I look forward to it.”

“Yes, love you, see you soon.”

“I love you to Jules. bye.”

“Bye, oh and Daddy.”

“Yes.”

“Now stop worrying.”

“OK drive safely”

I cancelled the call.

“Fuck”.

I held down ’1′ to call Sue.

To be continued …

© Copyright.

Chapter 4

5 February 2012

Pre Punk Prog

Prog rock got what it deserved. It was swept away by the new guard of punk. Bands formerly lauded for their musicianship were now derided for their irrelevance. The audience that had worn flakes and Roger Dean t-shirts, stack heels, faded denim and cheesecloth shirts deserted the twenty minute symphonic movements for three minute riffs, lasers and dry ice were ditched for static sets and gobbling.

Actually it wasn’t like that at all. The world in which prog rock bands were eclipsed by punk certainly existed but largely in London and in the minds of the music critics. No more did everyone like punk that everyone in the 60s unreservedly loved the Beatles. Prog rock survived and transformed into new strands of music. Musicians re-emerged. There was an eclipse in 1977 – but eclipses by their nature pass.

I never liked musical tribe and I didn’t see why I couldn’t just like all of it. Prog wasn’t the same again, though – so my list of eight before the eclipse goes like this:

“Close to the Edge”
Yes

A sublime piece of music, utterly bonkers lyrics, classic line up, fantastic playing and totally uplifting.

“Circumstances”
Capability Brown from “Voice”

Little known opus from a little known outfit offering close vocal harmony and virtuoso performance.

“Fluid Druid”
Druid

Very much one for the aficionado, require work but a rich and rewarding record.

“The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway”
Genesis

Self-consciously intellectual but musically cohesive and not without humour, Genesis at their bests as Peter’s backing band.

“Lucky Leif and the Longships”
Robert Calvert

One from the vast Hawkwind diaspora telling tales of Vikings and transatlantic voyaging.

Mummy was an Asteroid, Daddy was a Small Non-stick Kitchen Utensil
Quiet Sun from “Mainstream”

I sometimes think I only like this because of its title, but I really like the work too. The whole album I’d very enjoyable as were Manzanera’s other side projects.

Echoes
Pink Floyd from “Meddle”

I still think Meddle is the best of Floyd and while ‘Fearless’ is my favourite track, Echoes is more of a Prog classic

Thick as a Brick
Jethro Tull

The critics hated it, but so what. I enjoyed Tull and they were, in their day, excellent live. Will also appear in the 8 greatest covers list, whenever that is.

_________________________________________________________

22 February 2013 

So I went back to work.

18 February, 44 days after Pete’s death. Everyone was very polite. Nobody particularly asked how I was, but that’s Dons for you – a bit awkward on the human front – Sue tells me I’m one of the better ones, but I’m in no position to tell.

Apart from nobody having dusted anything in my room everything was as I had left it. Perhaps that was why It hadn’t been dusted. I tidy my desk periodically, but most of the time it isn’t well organised. I know perfectly well where everything is – it’s on the desk.

Between my sessions with students I spent my time reading the things I’d not been keeping up with. I had a couple of lectures to deliver, but I wouldn’t get back to my normal work pattern until the following week, though the plan was to find time to take some days away during the weeks to come under the cover of catching up a research colleague at Imperial – easy enough to do that truthfully and for Sue to arrange similar commitments. It remained to be seen if we would stay over at the house.

I didn’t take Pete’s Playlist book into work. I had promised Sue a separation – distinct dividing lines between work, life and Pete. not to the extent of never referring to it or looking at it, of taking a read during a lunch break but a clear attempt to put it into a box and keep it there. To make it easier to keep things that way I thought it best to give myself a week; some ‘clear water’ where a change could be as good as a rest. So I re-arranged tutorials, booked meetings into my diary, set aside time to read and got back to the routine business of avoiding as much of the formal life of the college as I got possibly get away with. These days it seemed I could get away with quite a lot.

That week Sue and I spent the evenings watching programmes we had recorded and movies we had bought on DVD and not yet got round to viewing. The pact to take a step back turned into a pleasure. The phones went off as the first glasses of wine were poured during the cooking and they stayed off till we left the next morning. The land line was unplugged. Just the two us.

After dinner on Thursday we had sorted out the work diaries so we sat down to figure out when we would look at Pete’s stuff. Instead we made dates to catch up with friends, pencilling in nights out and dates for dinner, booking theatre trips and thinking about a holiday. Although Josh was now away most of the time we had never yet got round to the long break we had long since promised ourselves once both the children were off our hands. We had taken advantage of a different kind of freedom rediscovering the ability to be spontaneous that is lost when life is driven by the needs of the offspring. Instead we had just stopped planning. We were three years out of the habit of considering our holiday options, preferring the idea of just waking up one morning and ‘going’. I say we preferred the idea. In reality that was as far as it got. We woke up in the morning and didn’t ‘go’. This year we had agreed to plan ahead again but events stopped us in our tracks.

We talked it through and agreed that going to the house should wait until the Inquest was out of the way. it was due to ‘re-open’ the following Wednesday, which would mean going to London. The coming weekend would be a good time to work together reading through Pete’s stuff together. The forecast wasn’t great and staying home made sense.

The week had been OK. It had been easier than I expected to switch myself off from what had happened. Sue’s outburst last Sunday morning had burnt me, she’s normally so steady. My rock – a cliché but true, she really has been the sound foundation of my life. I wanted it to calm down, even if just until we had to go to the Inquest – nothing was going to change till then.

It was Friday afternoon. I was reaching a sensible point to break in the paper I was reading and thinking about gathering my things. I was meeting Sue in the Duke of Cambridge on Little Clarendon Street we had been home all week and it seemed like a good idea. My phone rang, I expected it to be Sue.

“Dad! Where the fuck have you been?”

To be continued …

© Copyright

4 February 2012

The Arcade Fire

Bands create their own mythologies and despite all the image of the discontented kids from the ‘burbs this lot were born museos from museo backgrounds. Does that make them fakes? Relatively, I suppose so, but no more so than all those Brit School brats I end up turning off. The fact remains that they are rather good, try different stuff and do a good live set. There also seem to be far too many for the act to be viable! My favourite eight:

Neighbourhood 1 (Tunnels)
Neighbourhood 2 (Laika)
Rebellion (Lies)
From “Funeral”

No Cars Go
My Body is a Cage
From “Neon Bible”

Modern Man
Half Light II (no celebration)
Sprawl II (mountains beyond mountains)
from “The Suburbs”

___________________________________________________________

“OK, so you had a point.”

Sue came into the bedroom bearing coffee and croissants as promised.

“This is rather lovely.”

“Well, it’s Sunday and I think we are about to make a decision of significance.”

“We are?”

“We are indeed. But that will wait for now. What about it?”

“What about what?”

“The amends dickbrain!”

“Oh. Yes. Much better than my effort.”

“Think ‘people’, Marty. It’s all very well digging through his scribblings, but if you are going to get to the bottom of what’s going on, sorry, I mean what went on, then you are going to need to find the people who knew Pete and who saw him in the years you didn’t.”

“What if they’re gangsters?”

“Oh come on, Pete?”

“I’m joking!”

“I suppose you are. … But then, why not? That’s one way to end up with half a million quid in brown envelopes.”

“Kalashnikovs in guitar cases.”

“Something like that.”

“Um …”

“But assuming, just for now that we aren’t in some far-fetched movie, you really have to follow the people and the only way you can follow the people is to find the people. But you can’t find the people right now because you don’t want to go to the house. And if you don’t go to the house you don’t get into the computer and if you don’t get into the computer you don’t get anything, nada, nowt, fuck all. So you have to wait till you are ready to go which means there are only two things you can do in the meantime. The first is to read that book of lists and … “

“But I don’t understand it.”

“Well stop fuckin’ moping and get some fuckin’ help.”

Sue wasn’t quick to anger, but her eyes were filling with tears and her voice spoke eloquently of her desperation. She turned from me, her face burrowing into the pillow as the sobs came and tremors took her shoulders. Grief is a selfish emotion. It is self- absorbing, an all-consuming indulgence that we have to allow itself. Grief is not for the dead, it is for the dying. That is, for all of us who live, but most specifically for our dying selves. Grief locks out the people around you to whom we are closest. The keys are our own fear and the guilt of living, of enjoying what our loved one can never again enjoy. The Godless knowledge that they have not gone to a better place. I had locked Sue out, I had locked everyone out, even myself.

“You’re mad at me. I’m so sorry.”

Sue didn’t reply.

“Come on Sue.”

“Come on what?”

It was a long time since Sue had been upset, we had cried together on the way back in the cop car from London, we had cried together before during and after the funeral, together, but since the day after then I had locked her out. There are days I can’t remember still. 

“Come on, please. I love you Suzanne.”

“And I love you, stupid. … And that’s the point.”

She talked between sobs and sniffs.

“But you’ve got to listen to me right now.”

“OK. I’m really listening.”

“No smartarse shit.”

“No.”

“It goes like this. You read his book. No, we read the book. We rediscover him though what he was doing. We look to see if there is anything in the book, or the lists, that gives a clue to where his head was at. Maybe we look at the back, or just look through, look at the handwriting, whatever, we just see. If we don’t understand it we’ll get some help. You’re a researcher – so research. Yes? Same rules as science. OK?

“OK.”

“And this is the other thing. You’re going back to work.”

“Oh.”

“No, ‘oh’ about it, you’re going. It’s time, and after a few weeks we are going away for a little while, don’t know when or what we are doing, but we’ll go somewhere.”

“When?”

“Oh, I’ve not thought that through as yet.”

“No, work, when?”

“Oh, sorry, tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yes, as in the day after today, one more sleep. Tomorrow.”

“OK.”

“Right. Settled then.”

“Good, now stop moping and fuck me.”

to be continued …

© Copyright

3 February 2012

The Day The Music Died

As unlikely looking a teenage idol as you could imagine. And we can only imagine what he could have done had he lived, but I guess the prodigious output of his short career to that point could have been it. Maybe he would have dried up and his work would not now be remembered in that same way. He would never become an old, fat performing seal in Vegas. He was what he was when he was and always will be, alongside Chuck Berry, the very finest thing about 1950s rock and roll. 

8 by the late great never to be forgotten Buddy Holly.

Rave On

Peggy Sue Got Married

Everyday

Maybe Baby

Love is Strange

Oh Boy!

It Doesn’t Matter Anymore

American Pie

(OK so it’s about him not by him, but without the plane crash we couldn’t have had one of the greatest sing-alongs of the 70s)

____________________________________________________________

I hadn’t slept well. I dozed for a while. Sue thought and scribbled intermittently.

“There you are. Oi. Wake up.”

“I’m awake.”

“And like many men you seem to be able to snore while you are awake.”

“I’m seriously talented in that respect.”

“OK, good, so you read through this and I’ll be back with coffee and croissants”.

Sue had added to and annotated my list:

Stuff I have to look into:

1. Notebook: lists of his favourite records and musicians. Anything useful so far?

2. iPod from Christmas. Listen to it perhaps?

3. House (and whatever is in there).*

4. Bank statements - was it the only account?

5. Old photographs

6. Lawyer’s number – talk to him/her?

7. Receipts – anything else from the box

* COMPUTER, messages, other bills, books, fridge contents,

Stuff I don’t have yet:

1. Inquest verdict

2. Cause of death

3. Death certificate

Phone

Keys

Diary (or phone/computer/whatever)

Stuff I know

Pete:

1. Had money

2. Didn’t want to talk to me – why? Superficial reasons too trivial.

3. Didn’t answer to unknown numbers

4. Was found in hotel room, but why was he there – who booked the room? How, when, with what, online, etc.

5. Took sleeping pills - allegedly, if so from where?

They say there are no suspicious circumstances, but why was he there?

Stuff I Don’t Know (and what I’m guessing)

1. Relationship? No, she (he?!?!?) would have found me? He! Naaar!

2. Children? Doubt it.

3. Money? From where/what?

4. Friends? Who/where?

5. Working? Where?

6. Trouble? What?

7. Ill? How seriously? Inquest will tell – Will it? doubt it.

8. What had he been doing for the past 5 years?

9. What the fuck? Indeed?

10. Facebook, Twitter and all that jazz?

So:

Read the notebook

Talk to the neighbours

Track down the friends

Look through the house – I’ll come with you

Look through the COMPUTER – I’ll be with you

Find the PHONE.

To be continued …

© Copyright

2 February 2012

From 2000

Stan
Eminem from “The Marshall Mathers LP”

Far from mindless observations on celebrity and fandom.

Fragments of Freedom
Morcheeba

the title track does nicely here – more mainstream than their earlier stuff and sold a few more as a result.

On a Night Like This
Kylie from “Light Years”

There are no guilty pleasures in music.

Big Exit
P.J.Harvey from “Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea”

Her best album and a deserved Mercury winner.

Pure Pleasure Seeker
Moloko from “Things to Make and Do”

Roisin in fine form as the band found a more effective backdrop for her talents.

Star 69
Fatboy Slim from “Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars”

The recorded work couldn’t capture the buzz of his live sets, but it didn’t try to. There’s a lot that’s  good here even if the album, doesn’t quite hang together as it should.

Pure Shores
All Saints from “The Beach” Soundtrack

Sublime harmonies despite their ‘musical differences’. At their most creative just before the split.

Taste in Men
Placebo from “Black Market Music”

Dark, cynical and self-loathing stuff. Good teen angst stuff with grinding guitars and a gay twist.

___________________________________________________________

17 February 2013

“Is that it?”

I had shown my list to Sue. She was not impressed.

“I’m open to suggestions if you can see something I’ve missed.”

“Well, I’m not sure I know where to start, there are so many things to add to that.”

“Like?”

“Well first and most obviously, speak to the neighbours. what do they know? Did they see him? Did he talk to them?”

“OK. not sure I’m getting it but, go on.”

“Martin, you are such a nerd sometimes.”

“I thought I was the ‘not nerdy nerd’?”

“You can be, which is the reasonably acceptable bit, but you’ve been in that place for so long that you are beginning to assimilate. In another few years you will be a fully signed up member of the other worldly race of nerds that circulate in their own orbit and very rarely touch the rest of us.”

“Am I?”

“A little.”

“Oh.”

“I’m sorry, I go too far and the Prof is being all human again. Come here.”

Sue pulled me towards her. I lay with her arm around my chest, my head resting beneath her shoulder.”

“Better?”

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re a mess.”

“I can’t go back to the house just yet. Even though that’s the obvious place to start looking for clues, it was just too much last time. Mind you, you should see what he’s done to it, it’s really nice. But the more I sit around here, the more I find myself drifting into negativity. There’s just all this stuff circulating in my head about when we were boys, what happened around Mum, Dad, other times with Josh and Jules, all the times he came up here the only thing that’s clear to me is that I didn’t really know him. That list is meant to be the start of a plan to find out.”

“I know that. Look, it’s fine as far as it goes, house, iPod, bank statements, but there is other stuff too that you’re missing, not least the large pile of cash. But he had a phone, did he not? We know he had a phone because you phoned it.”

“But he didn’t answer – so how do I know he didn’t change his number?”

“We don’t, but we do know he had a phone and there is a lot of stuff in phones these days.”

“Won’t the police still have it?”

“Perhaps, they didn’t say.

“They have the things they had when they found him.”

“What happens to them?”

“Sohal said they would hold his stuff till after the inquest and, assuming the verdict is suicide, then they release them to the family.”

“To us.”

“Unless somebody else shows up.”

“Do you think?”

“Not really. But I’m not ruling it out, stranger things are happening and who knows? Certainly not us? If we knew something about the past five years. A lot can happen in five years. It’s tantalising.”

“Tantalising?”

“That’s the word for it, I think. He just makes contact, it’s opening up again. Like one of his dark phases after he broke up with someone – except they lasted a week or two, not five years – but he was coming out of it,, that’s my point. Whatever ‘it’ was.”

“Which is what you really want to know.”

“Among other things.”

“Sure, I’m not saying you’re not curious, but you’re most bothered about the silence and why. And at the centre of that is convincing yourself that none of this is your fault.”

“It isn’t.”

“No, it isn’t. Now get me a pen.”

To be continued

© Copyright

I’m certainly not carrying a torch for Fred the Shred who may well spend the evening crying into his beer/tea/Château Cheval Blanc 1982 (delete as applicable) over this tragic loss of status. Oh, but, the shame of it! Not being able to walk around pretending you are in some way superior, not being called ‘sir’. Having (presumably) to hand back the tacky little medal. As far as I can see that’s what a knighthood gets one these days. After all it is not about donning the armour, sharpening the broadsword and getting on the trusty steed to ride around the countryside being chivalrous. I don’t see many of them turning up at jousts at the weekend. And one is unlikely to be summoned to defend anyone’s honour in the field of battle or to ride off looking for dubious chalice-like holy relics. Well at least not while Eastenders is on.

You see that’s the trouble with our class-ridden society where self-esteem rests on some mythical social status that is the continuation of medieval pomposity. It’s not what we do, not what we contribute, but who we are that matters. That little gong that so many of the rich seem to crave as the ‘finishing touch’, the ultimate reward in a life that has been generally full of rewards anyway. The only clowns who say that class doesn’t matter any more are the wealthy or their dupes in the Tory Party (oh and these days their Liberal lackeys).

This isn’t an argument against an honours system per-se, it is an argument against a system of gifted titles that set up the recipient as socially superior to the rest of us – whether as Lords, Knights, Dames or whatever. And to those who suggest that the absurd honours system we have rewards equally the lollipop man or the village post mistress should wake up and understand that the system is stratified. The ‘ever so ‘umble’ get their minor gongs, the rich and famous get their knighthoods and peerages. The system rewards the time serving and the mediocre as much as it rewards anything else. Even the handing out gongs to famous actors, musicians, sports people and so on carries implicit value judgements about the kind of entertainment (because my friends that’s what all art in fact is – just entertainment, some with a message, some not, but ultimately entertainment) they provide. An honours system we could all, including republicans such as myself, support would be one which recognises effort and achievement but does not carry with it a perpetuation of the illusions of class and status that hold our country back.

But back to Fred the Shred. Is this kind of thing really the way we deal with corporate failure and irresponsibility? Was Fred solely responsible for the failures of RBS? Did he personally and solely devise the systems and create the culture that brought down the bank? Somehow I think not – even Stalin had a Central Committee. This kind of symbolism is a poor substitute for acting on proper corporate governance structures. The fact that MPs saw fit to waste their time on it is entirely beside the point. And what is the logic for the future – do we start stripping any of the ‘gonged’ who screw up of their awards? Do we strip Branson of his knighthood when the Broadband screws up? Where do we start? Jeffrey Archer, perhaps? We’ll see.

1 February 2012

Ministry of Sound
10% of their XX Twenty Years compilation 

Ministry of Sound celebrated their 20th anniversary 2011 and put out, ready for the Christmas season, a four CD compilation from the period. 80 tracks in four categories on each of the discs representing trends in the world of dance, electronica and ‘urban’ music as seen from Ministry’s perspective. It’s not bad. Josh my nephew sent it for me for Christmas, but I just got round to listening last week. Nice of him. I sent him a text to say thanks.

So here are eight from eighty this fine thing.

Remember Me
Blue Boy

One of my dance music favorites

Missing
Everything But The Girl

Always loved her voice and it’s a decent tune too.

Sombre feat Damon Trueitt
I Refuse (What You Want) (Industry Standard Remix)

Interesting vocal styling

Roy David Jr Feat. Peven Everett
Gabriel (live Garage Remix)

Ditto

Robert Miles
Children

Love the hook line.

Darude
Sandstorm

Essential Euro cheese!

Example
Watch the Sun Come Up (live studio version)

There is a lot of this stuff about made in bedrooms, some of it stands out – usually because they make it into a studio – like this.

Wretch 32 feat Josh Kumra
Don’t Go

A decent poet Mr Wretch is.

_______________________________________________________________

Pete had never really moved out of the Fulham house. He lived largely out of a suitcase touring with bands and working as a musician. It seemed strange to me, but so long as he had a base to come back to he was happy enough. From time to time he stayed with friends, moved in to shared houses, sometimes with one of his bands or a girlfriend, even the occasional squat but while he went elsewhere it was never intended as permanent, maybe with one exception.

I asked him when we were coming up to 30 when he was going to get a place of his own. He told me that he still thought of the house and Fulham as home and he didn’t want home to be anywhere else – at least not while he didn’t have anybody he really wanted to share it with. There didn’t seem too much danger of that happening. Girlfriends followed the same pattern – a couple of months maximum during which Pete would disappear from the face of the earth, followed by a break up which saw him locking himself away for a week or so then to emerge blinking into the daylight as if nothing had happened. There was either something too intense going on or who knows what? You can be really close to someone but what goes on in their relationships remains a closed book. So it was with Pete, so much so that I didn’t feel inclined to ask anything beyond, ‘you OK?’. ‘Sound’, would be his reply without fail. Only once was it any different – that I knew of at least. That one had lasted a little longer, almost nine months, and had been on-off over the period. I even met her a couple of times. Carol she was called – seemed nice enough, but I think in this case Pete really fell. He more or less moved into the flat somewhere south of the river. After they broke up Mum told me he was in a bad way. After a couple of weeks of lying around in his room Mum more or less instructed him to come up to Oxford to stay with us. Sue spent a lot of time with him, but she never shared the conversations with me. I guess there are some things that don’t work even with your twin brother. After a six days Pete got back on the train to London. According to Mum he was still down off and on for the next few months. After that, relationships of any sort seemed few and far between and even shorter.

In the period after Mum died Pete was introverted and hard to reach. He had always been closer to her and her death hit him quite hard. I think he was also afraid of being forced to move on from Fulham and assumed that I would have half of the assets and want to sell up. He didn’t need to worry. Sue and myself were a rather surprised just how tidy Mum’s affairs were. Pete could live in the house for as long as he liked.

To be continued …

© Copyright

31 January 2011

Made in Manchester – From Factory Records

January 1978. A label is set up whose owners are entirely lacking in commercial judgement but who delivered bands to vinyl that transformed music and created new genre. A business that indulged and popularised a distinctive designer, once again flyng in the face any rational business calculations, but what would they have been without that element. A great story. A rich legacy and in many ways a model for the post-record label world we now live in.

8 FAC releases:

FAC 5 -All Night Party
A Certain Ratio

The first one. Spiky, raw and authentic.

FAC 6 – Electricity
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

Before they got a better offer they recorded for factory. As they walked you can imagine Wilson and Erasmus cursing Scousers.

FAC 10 – Unknown Pleasures
Joy Division

From the opening interlocking beats I was Hooked.

FAC 14 – Return of the Durutti Column
The Durutti Column

Vini Rilley, alias The Durutti Column, is still recording beautiful ambient instrumental guitar. It took a visionary like Tony Wilson to give such a resolutely non-commercial artist an open-ended contract. ‘Return’ remains a beautiful, haunting collection.

FAC 73 – Blue Monday
New Order

The biggest selling 12″ single of all time and they lost money on every copy sold. You couldn’t make it up.

FAC 108 – Looking from a Hilltop
Section 25

A neglected lot who should have done better.

FAC 257 – Getting Away With It
Electronic

Late factory from a Manchester ‘super group’.

FAC 260 – Hallelujah
Happy Mondays

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more ridiculous they discover this lot.

_________________________________________________________

Mum’s funeral was a small affair. Sue had agreed most of the arrangements with Mum, so there was nothing for Pete and I to disagree about.

Mum had known perfectly well that she was on the way out when she told Pete there was nothing for him to worry about. She wasn’t lying or even gently misleading Pete. The tumour was too far gone, in a bad place, terminal. Worry wasn’t going to cure it any more than faith healing or herbal remedies. She hadn’t put anything off, she hadn’t ignored any tell-tale signs, she hadn’t even felt ill. A couple of headaches, then they got worse, then she went to the doctor, then it was all over. Sometimes that’s the way it is.

She told Sue that there was no point in dragging me back from Australia, and she didn’t know where to find Pete – and even if she did, he was working too. As it was he had just turned up at home that day four weeks and a couple of days before she died. It had taken her by surprise and Mum knew that Pete realised something was wrong. After my drink with Pete in Sydney I got Sue to call in. Sue was fond of Mum, so she took the morning off and drove to Fulham. Sue just knew, she had seen it before. Mum made Sue promise to say nothing to me until I was due to leave. Maybe I should have been angry, but who with? Sue for doing what Mum wanted? Mum for wanting to be no trouble. There is little point in anger – raging against the dying of the light.

But we got back in time. She was in and out of consciousness, but she knew who we were and we each held a hand as we had when we were little. Me on my side, Pete on his. That way she knew it was us.

To be continued

© Copyright

30 January 2012 

The Beatles

We were just a bit too young for it all – seven when it all kicked off, but 14 by the time it all finished and kids my age were looking for something else. The Stones were more my band, and I also preferred the Who and The Kinks, but you had to like some of it. They played on the roof of the Apple building on 30 January in 1969. It was a great stunt, not that they needed it. It wasn’t the end, but it wasn’t long coming.

My eight favourite Beatles – mostly late.

I Want To Hold Your Hand

It’s not until you look at what else was around that you realise why early Beatles stuff was so different. Lennon said that the early words were almost irrelevant. No so here, it might be an expression of a simple emotion, but there is something else going on. Magic bass line.

Come Together

From that to this. Speculation on what it’s all about ignore the obvious – the band was in bits.

Get Back

Easy to play but hard to play well – true of so much of their stuff. The rooftop thing is still pretty cool.

The Long and Winding Road

Not fashionable, but I actually like Phil Spector’s lush production.

Norwegian Wood

Nicely dark cynical stuff.

Across the Universe

Essentially John Lennon and a minimal backing band but rather lovely.

A Day in the Life

I suppose Sergeant Pepper did change everything, even if others made that recording possible the sounds may never have become so influential without The Beatles endorsement.

I am the Walrus

Love the song, prefer the Oasis cover, though.

They weren’t bad really.

______________________________________________________________

They were home grown and not threatening. Four cheeky chappies from the north. Mum liked them. Dad thought they needed a haircut. It almost didn’t matter if the ‘older generation’ liked the music or not, they still had an opinion about The Beatles. I didn’t have one, or rather I didn’t at first. As Pete says, we were just a bit too young for the first wave of ‘Beatlemania’. It was something happening to the older kids and the younger grown-ups.

Mum’s reaction was really typical of the times. For her The Fab Four were “nice smart boys”, their hair was long but not too long. They made cheery, easy on the ear music that “had a good rhythm” but wasn’t “that rock and roll” and wasn’t “that jungle bunny stuff” either. Of course they were wrong – you don’t need to be an aficionado to see the influence of both rock and roll and the music of black America on The Beatles and you don’t have to be a Pete to hear it, but all Mum saw was the white faces and the cute suits. Her generation were unreconstructed, unthinkingly racially prejudiced and unashamed to say so. It’s hard to imagine now, but The Beatles and the ‘British Invasion’ were really a re-assertion of national pride that had been severely dented by post-war austerity, loss of Empire and the dominance of American culture. Now we Brits had something for the young ‘uns who since we were born had either American idols or pale Brit imitations to follow.

Of course we didn’t have any Beatles records, nor anyone else’s for that matter, but there was a radio in the house. Not a transistor – they were only just coming onto the market. This was a ‘wireless’ – an elaborate piece of art deco furniture in French polished walnut with a beige cloth grill over the speaker and an elaborate array of glowing valves beneath a grill at the top to let the hot air rise out of the machine. There was a large illuminated panel with a moving indicator line to indicate the frequency to which the contraption was tuned – exotic names like Luxemburg, Tirana, Paris, Hilversum, as well as the BBC Stations – the Light Programme, The Home Service and the Third Programme. I dare say it must have been state of the art whenever they bought it. It probably wasn’t anything like as big as it looked – we were small, but it was certainly grandiose. During the day it was on constantly – almost always turned to The Light Programme, ‘Music While You Work’, ‘Housewives Choice’ and ‘Woman’s Hour’. It was mostly background noise to me, but of course Pete would be glued to it.

When Dad came home he would complain loudly about “that terrible racket”, turn off the radio off and put the television on. The TV was also a grandiose item of glossy walnut furniture – it had doors that were opened and closed with reverence. If it was early in the day when all there was to see on TV was a test card Dad would re-tune the radio to the Home Service where he would listen to news and other serious stuff.

As we got older Mums attitude to the Beatles changed. I remember she was very put out at their song, ‘Michelle’, in which a few lines were written (or translated into) French.

“What do they want to sing in that for, what’s wrong with English, anyway. No respect, these young people today.”

Then John Lennon started to wear glasses.

“He’ll spoil his eyes with them glasses”.

She was quite insistent. Why Mum couldn’t countenance one of The Beatles having less than 20-20 vision remains a mystery. Then as the hair got longer and the clothes got louder the assertion came.

“Ah, they were such nice boys, now look what the drugs have done to them.”

By this time we must have been about ten years old – so it was still all something of a mystery. Within a couple of years while on the rare occasions when we were walked up King’s Road there were some people in what appeared even then to be fancy dress, there certainly weren’t many flower children in our part of Fulham.

Throughout the sixties the reputation of the four became, for Mum, steadily less fab.

“Look at the lot they are in with now, it’s all them drugs and that Maharishi. I ask you? What do they want to go to India for? Couldn’t get rid of us fast enough, that Ghandi.”

But the ultimate opprobrium was reserved for John Lennon’s romance with Yoko Ono.

“Look at her, a Jap. Shouldn’t be allowed. I ask you?”

“Bad lot”, Dad would add.

Now John Lennon was literally sleeping with the enemy. It was all very alarming to Mum. She and Dad had lived through the War. They regarded the Japanese as far worse than the Germans, despite the Luftwaffe’s bombs dropping on London. It was all about how the Japanese military had behaved toward British Prisoners of War and feeling ran deep. Mum now saw John Lennon, clearly her favourite Mop Top as a traitor. Someone it was no longer appropriate, decent or British to like. She wasn’t the only one and the newspapers reflected the disapproval of the older generations. No wonder he left the country.

By the time we became teenagers The Beatles were months from splitting up. It didn’t matter much to me, but I remember Pete thought it was a shame, even though he wasn’t a big fan.

“The Stones are making better records”, was what I remember him saying.

To be continued …

© Copyright

29 January 2012

John Martyn (d 29.1.09)

Of all the Guitarists, all the singers and all the songwriters of the 1970s John Martyn was in many ways the most original the most inspiring. Not a nice man, by some accounts, difficult and abusive by others, violent and drunk by others still and universally understood to be the definitively addled stoner, somewhat damaged by his own misadventure.

But so what? John Martyn, gone from this earth for two years this day, created in his golden period from 71-77, work of unparalleled beauty at the leading edge of musical innovation. Apparently, he did it without even the most rudimentary musical training, without any idea of keys and scales. He just knew, ” a bit of dum-dee-dum, a bit of dum-dee-dee”. If ever the much over used word ‘genius’ was appropriate it was for John Martyn. Was it folk, was it blues, was it jazz, was it new age funk or trip-hop – he didn’t know or care, so why should anyone else mind?

That someone who could be an aggressive drunk and at the same time be writing ‘Small Hours’ says everything we really need to know about our absurd species.

8 to remind us of the true meaning of genius.

Glistening Glyndbourne
From “Bless the Weather”

Go Down Easy
Solid Air
from “Solid Air”

One Day Without You
From “Sunday’s Child”

Outside In
From “Inside Out”

Couldn’t Love You More
Dealer
Small Hours
From “One World”

______________________________________________________________________

I read the list I had written over and over.

The house leapt at me as the obvious place to start.

I had only been back once and hadn’t wanted to go there then, but I needed to check that the place was OK and find the basic information to let people know of Pete’s death. I called my lawyer. He told me that if the police we treating the matter as not suspicious there was no reason why I shouldn’t go to the house as next of kin, if that’s what I believe I was. If, however, I found anything suspicious I should inform them immediately.

I didn’t imagine Pete had made a will. It took me long enough to get round to it and I had two children to think about. Sue, out of character for her, wouldn’t deal with it. Eventually we got our act together at a fairly basic level by the time Juliet was ten and Josh was seven. This was hopelessly irresponsible of us really, but fairly typical, as I understand it. Sue keeps muttering about needing better tax planning, but she doesn’t do anything about it. So why would Pete bother? I didn’t have a key, but I knew where the emergency key would be. There was a loose slab at the front under which the emergency key lived in a jam jar beneath some sand. You had to know where it was – it wouldn’t have been obvious to anyone else. I half expected it to be a duplicate of the old key but the locks had been changed, but Pete had kept the emergency key, or rather keys, as there were now three locks on the door, up to date.

I had looked round briefly that day, but as soon as I was through the door I could feel my chest tightening, the sweat starting to run down my back. I felt dizzy, I was going to fall, reaching out to the doorframe to steady myself. I breathed deeply but my chest seemed tighter still. I turned into what was now the ground floor space, walked the few feet to the sofa and sat down. The room was tidy but Pete had left out tools – wire, strippers, screwdrivers, Allen keys, pliers, cable of some sort and plug fittings. Stacked at one side of the room were a number of unopened boxes containing new hi-fi components. The job of wiring up his new audio gadgets had just started.

Pete had not gone to a hotel to die. He would have tidied up.

I recovered my breath, checked the back door was secure, checked the heating. It was set on a timer. I re-set the timer as I did when Sue and I went away, found the thermostat and turned it down to 10C. I found the stopcock for the water, the old tap beneath the new kitchen sink, and turned it off. The kitchen bin was empty – no liner, maybe Pete had put the rubbish out as he left that night, or day? The tightness was returning. I needed to leave. I went upstairs for the box.

I wasn’t ready to go back yet.

To be continued

© Copyright