Tuesday 5 April 2022

BLUE NOTES: Blue Notes For Mongezi

The Ogun Collection: Amazon.co.uk: CDs & Vinyl
 
The most of many salutary things about the Ogun Collection, the new and much awaited 5CD box set retrospective of the Blue Notes, is the accentuation that the accompanying booklet gives to the celebratory nature of their music and the celebratory music of their nature. Previously the accent has tended to be mournful, which, given their story, and also the fact that three of these five CDs are effectively tributes – threnodies - is to be expected (not to mention the fact that another of the CDs features music literally recorded on pain of death).
 
And yet – as survivor Louis Moholo-Moholo movingly and eloquently states in the poem that he contributed to the sleevenotes of the Legacy – Live In South Afrika (the “k” is deliberate) 1964 album, their song turned out not to be in vain; their song contributed directly to the conditions which allowed Mandela’s reborn SA to flourish, and the memories collected in the excellent booklet from a cross-section of key figures put the emphasis on how utterly joyous their musical rebellion sounded, and still sounds; recasting the Blue Notes as the living, active, eager musicians that they were rather than ciphers.
 
My relationship with this music is indirect. I was too young and in the wrong place to witness the occurrences of the sixties; by the time I became aware of the Blue Notes and the after-effects of their diaspora – for me it really started with Robert Wyatt’s Rock Bottom, and wondering who that trumpeter flooding the canvas of “Little Red Riding Hood Hit The Road” was. Then I heard (and once, in Bologna , saw) the Brotherhood of Breath, and then Dudu Pukwana’s Spear, and then yet others, and it all gradually became clear and enticing. I think I may have seen the Blue Notes with my father at the Third Eye Centre in Glasgow in 1977. I certainly saw Pukwana’s Zila in a Sunday open air concert in a rather cloudy and cool Jubilee Gardens on the South Bank in late 1989 about six months before he died.
 
But in late seventies Glasgow I was pretty much on my own in my love for this music, and for post-Ornette jazz and improvised music in general; the jazz sections of Glasgow record shops were the least visited and most unloved of all the sections, faintly embarrassing to most, particularly the counter clerks who usually made no attempt to hide their disgust at the records I purchased, busily pretending to like punk when secretly worshipping Rod Stewart and Led Zeppelin – and there wasn’t that much call for post-punk in my area either, come to think of it; Bloggs in St Vincent Street wasn’t exactly bursting at the seams with customers of a Saturday lunchtime. As for reggae, or dub, or funk – you guessed it; it seemed that no one in Glasgow was buying this stuff except me (clearly others must have been, but I never came across them in the course of my regular travels). Releases on labels like Ogun or Incus trickled up in minute quantities but usually if I wanted anything remotely interesting or new I had to send away for it to Mole Jazz or Honest Jon’s or the labels’ own mail order services; this was a major factor in my early decision to move to London (there was the James Kerr shop up in Woodlands Road, near Charing Cross, which specialised in jazz, but that seemed to draw an aesthetic line at around 1955).
 
The Blue Notes were not entirely alone when they settled in London – as Evan Parker’s memoir in particular demonstrates, very far from alone – but they too trod a relatively solitary path and probably paid for it. Nevertheless it would appear that finally, in 2008, this music is getting its proper due; it has been reissued and received warmly, and in the post-Mandela light is at last being seen for the extraordinary thing that it was, and is – angry but never raging, hardcore but mischievous, free but intrinsically swinging, and indomitably passionate.
 
Possibly the most euphoric and heartrending of these five CDs is the first one; the aforementioned Legacy, recorded in an illegal club in Durban under virtual samizdat conditions (see the very telling note by Tony McGregor, Chris’ brother, in the sleevenote wherein he details the long list of relevant apartheid laws) in 1964, just before the group fled SA. The tension is palpable but the ecstatic reaction is electric. Essentially hard bop/soul jazz with a good deal of township roughage, and accompanied by vibrant whoops zinging between musicians and audience (so that they all fuse into one brotherhood of breath, as such), Legacy plays like a realer deal variant on Cannonball Adderley’s contemporaneous Live At The Club and I’m sure would have found an equally big crossover audience had this music been allowed to travel beyond Jo’burg. McGregor, Dyani and Moholo-Moholo provide the rhythm; Pukwana, Feza and tenorman Nick Moyake form the frontline, but such boundaries quickly dissolve. No one plays “out” as such but it’s clear where they’re heading; in the astonishing, climactic “Two For Sandi” we hear Mongezi’s triple tongue quiver and Dudu’s overblowing, straining at the borders, and Moholo-Moholo is already busy subdividing the beat into a near-free rush (and the audience cheering all of them on, to climax after climax). Moyake, the man who taught Dudu the saxophone and the one who did return home (where he died of cancer in 1969), is a fascinating player; his tenor is sturdy and robust, somewhere between Coleman Hawkins and Gene Ammons, and his feature on “I Cover The Waterfront” demonstrates just how strong an improviser he was (though it remains unclear whether he would have joined the rest of them in their subsequent free zone). This “B My Dear” is one of the loveliest of all recorded interpretations of Pukwana’s ballad; Mingus would have bowed if he’d heard it.
 
It’s tough to move from the good natured rave-up of “Dorkay House” to the genuine, unhinged rage and sorrow of the music which opens the second CD, music recorded over a decade later, with people missing and Mongezi Feza in particular newly gone. Many neophytes may be right to be puzzled by the passage between what they’ve heard in a remote room in Durban in 1964 and what they’re hearing in a remote room somewhere in north London in 1975, and to wonder what happened in the intervening span of time.
 
For the answer to that it will be necessary to listen to the parallel series of reissues that the Fledgl’ng label has been putting out over the last year or so; 1968’s transitional and transformational Very Urgent (with Ronnie Beer coming in for Moyake on tenor, and controversially credited to the Chris McGregor Group rather than the Blue Notes) which marks the definitive recorded move from post-bop to free; 1969’s very free (but surprisingly also very light) Up To Earth septet session (Evan Parker and John Surman both coming in for Beer, the absent Dyani depped for by Barre Phillips on one session and a surprisingly effective Danny Thompson on the other); the two RCA Brotherhood of Breath studio albums; the historic 1971 Berlin Eclipse At Dawn live set on Cuneiform; the explosive 1972 Live At Willisau; Pukwana’s 1975 album Freedom Express, one of the last studio sessions on which Feza appeared and crucially proving that both retained a keen ear for bop; and the dozens of other records on which various Blue Notes appeared in various roles.
 
But the Ogun box necessarily cuts straight to Blue Notes For Mongezi, and as the redux version now occupies two full CDs this will be the main attraction for many buyers. Although the Blue Notes had not played together as the Blue Notes for some years, they nevertheless reunited at Feza’s memorial service and without saying much of anything went straight to a rehearsal room directly afterwards, set up their instruments, and played and played and sang and played for something like three and a half hours without a break. Due to the limitations of vinyl, the original double album was necessarily a set of highlights but still made for one of the most harrowing listening experiences I can recall; the passion, the grief, the words, above all Johnny Dyani’s words, seemed almost too painful for public consumption, but as an act of catharsis and reconciliation it was surely needed, and over the course of its four sides the music did seem to reach a point of acknowledgement and resolution. Over two CDs, however, the playing time has effectively doubled in length, and we now have the complete record, or as complete a record as we’re going to get, of everything that was played and taped on that day; according to engineer Keith Beal, the musicians started playing practically the moment they came into the room, while the recording equipment was still being set up, and there is an abrupt but small break in the music between the two CDs which marked the point where the tape reels had to be changed, but otherwise the performance is complete.
 
The completeness also alters the listener’s perspective on the music radically, such that one is effectively listening to a new extended piece of music altogether; the grief is immediately apparent as the music fades in, Dudu’s alto squealing, Dyani’s bowed bass scribbling, McGregor’s piano an abstracted ghost on the far left, Moholo’s drums busy but strangely subdued. The pace is necessarily slower and more organic than on the original vinyl release but the overall picture is critically more detailed; we have Dyani’s urgent ostinatos and parched Xhosa (and occasional English) cries but they are now set in a more complex landscape where there are long periods of straight swing or Coltrane-type waltz passages. In the “Second Movement” Dyani’s bass solo remains poignant to the point of unlistenable (in terms of unalloyed, bereaved sorrow), though clearly influenced by Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra recording of “Song For Che” with rattling percussion from all direction accompanying his playing and Dudu’s solemn alto succeeding him in the foreground with an eventual martial feel of defiance in the group’s rhythm. This is then succeeded by Dyani and Dudu’s vocal harmonies and chants, again accompanied only by free percussion. From this point of prayer-filled stasis, the music gradually picks up again on the third CD; Pukwana picks up on “Yellow Rose Of Texas” from nowhere in particular (though in the English vocal sections I notice lots of “We love you”s but also Dyani’s ominous “We know your enemies”) and turns that too into an ANC-worthy anthem of hopeful triumph, while the band as a whole suddenly swing through a whole series of Blue Notes/Brotherhood standards, most notably a spirited run through Feza’s “Sonia” with a terrific McGregor/Dyani duet section. Ultimately we arrive, after a lengthy and patient set-up, at the lilting major key tribute to Feza which concluded the original album, where the Blue Notes appear to will their own rebirth and “live” once more. Blue Notes For Mongezi is their “Everything’s Gone Green” and just as devastating a listening experience.
 
The fourth CD contains Blue Notes In Concert, an expanded version of the album recorded at the 100 Club in April 1977. It is difficult for me not to type the word “1977” and instinctively follow it with the phrase “at the height of punk” but to me it seems increasingly relevant (particularly as it was the 100 Club); this was British jazz’s own punk rock and its equally passionate adherents are easily audible on this fine recording. By now the Blue Notes’ freedom is more readily reconcilable with the roots of their music; freed by the 1975 threnody, they move back and forth between bop, township and free with instinctive ease, and “Manje” (a modification of the tune “Now” which opens Legacy) has a delightful yet forceful decisiveness to its swing, though the album still ends with chants and mass percussion, still yearning for home. There is an ineluctable lightness in this music but also immense depth; everyone is concentrating on the music as well as enjoying it.
 
The box concludes with Blue Notes For Johnny, recorded a decade later. The approach of the surviving members to this record differed radically from the Mongezi tribute; the recording took place in August 1987, some ten months after Dyani OD’d in Copenhagen , and is largely structured as a series of interpretations of tunes by Dyani and others. As McGregor’s brief note makes clear, Dyani’s place in the group could not be filled; there is no bass on this album, and consequently the trio have to work harder to complete the musical picture. In doing so, though, they appear to complete the circle; much of the music here harks back to their early Jo’burg days, with blues, bop and balladry much in evidence and played relatively straight. Still, Dudu’s grief is especially apparent; he double tracks himself on “Funk Dem Dudu” but his alto cuts to wounds still raw and still explodes regularly. Once more, there are vocal invocations, to Feza as well as to Dyani, and nine or so minutes of cautiously free improvisation in the McGregor/Moholo-Moholo duet “Monks & Mbizo”; I’ve never quite been sure of the meaning of the brief conversation which links this to the closing “Ithi-gqi” except that it’s possible that the improvisation was being recorded before, or as, Pukwana arrived at the studio; Pukwana queries the key and everyone launches into Dyani’s tune, which in turn resolves itself into “Nkosi Sikelele L’Afrika,” the ANC anthem, played plaintively and passionately, framing the story and providing what eventually turned out – even if only Moholo-Moholo would live to see it – to be a happy ending. And it is especially pleasing that despite the sorrow, the Blue Notes’ tale has now been accepted as a cornerstone, not only in the development of jazz and improvised music in Africa and Europe , but also in the reformation of a sick country. This tale takes some telling, but every second is worthwhile and true.

Friday 17 December 2010

2009: A Club Odyssey: CODA




It was now the early afternoon; the sun glowed golden on everything, lending a grandeur to even the shabbiest of their possessions. He had already mentioned leaving upon their first discussion, but now it was clear that he would, for now at least, stay. What once was had come back again; it was like any drought or lack being relieved, a pleasure that was quiet, fulfilling, without being necessarily obvious to any outsiders. Of course there were no outsiders now, beyond a few loyal friends. They gathered to celebrate his return, to celebrate their once again being together, her safe from...them, and him safe after many longueurs and escapes and the ultimate fight, one where he sped through what he had to do as if it was nearly - nearly - just another chore, so close he felt to her, to what they perhaps once could be again...

...but of course after a while he was restless; he longed for the sea, a crew, new things to see; but she wanted to go with him too. It was their own conflict and not one that could be easily solved. He had to go on, he said; why, she would say, quite reasonably. But she knew he loved tests, and that this one, the next one, might be even greater. And that no matter what she was with him anyway; his chaste time on the island, after the wedding, here and there, proved that. Ultimately there was no difference between them, save for the physical, the geographical. He moved on, but not before promising that he would change things forever, without violence, that those radicals he met at the club would not always be defeated...

She smiled and took up weaving again, this time letting it stand every night, and they waited for spring and the next adventure to begin.

2009: A Club Odyssey Pt. 17




"The scene was a mess; the girl gang that attacked, not caring who noticed or who cared, started it all, those delirious women threw spiked orange juice and went for the big man, though they were all targets. The insurgents had it easier after that, mocking those that ran away, helping the girls find weapons, lending their own...your guy and his helper were there but I think they were too shocked at first to know what on earth to do. But the helper - who must have some special powers I'm sure - opened the way to the big man, and your guy just wailed on him like a blacksmith with an anvil. There was no escape." He looked at her with a kind of calm sternness and said, "He did what he had to do. That man tried to hurt you and that is what any man would have done in return. I'm going now." And so he left, and her own familiar found her soon enough, walking the wending paths and wondering about how Orion was a hunter in the sky, her guy wasn't a hunter but forced into killing. She felt sad for him but felt nothing, numbness, for those who had hung around. They were dead to her, whether they were or were not.


******************

"The DJ kept playing songs all through it, barricaded as he was in his booth. The first one sounded kind of desperate, to tell the truth, but it wasn't like he was going to play anything hardcore. Then he got a bit ironic and I knew everything was going to work out. Once that was over it was all calls for ambulances and people who survived limping off. Your guy had seen enough and went off with his pal, I heard his pal saying "Well that settles that, windypants" and then she gave a look of total contempt to those who had lost, saying that if only they had listened to her and not just themselves, they would have survived. But they didn't."

******************

They had reached the house, at last, after walking a long way; she had gotten home already and was resting, talking with her companion amiably and expecting...him, not quite knowing if he would bother to show up. It would be a long time before he would get home, shouldn't it...

He paused and looked up at the house that for so long had been just the idea, not the thing; the dream and not the vision. Despite the warnings of his friend he paused a bit more, no longer afraid of anyone or anything. There was the bed, the windows, the door, the roof, the garden which was wild and yet still beautiful, all of it a bit run down but lovely still...he walked and remembered their awkward courtship, him winning her as a prize but this not making them what they were to become, their inner and outer lives having to adjust this way and that...they said yes and yes, but then he had to go, despite his feigning madness...she thought of the same things, saw a few hangers-on leaving quickly and her heart brightened, even though she still wasn't exactly sure what to think or expect.

*********************

A knock on the door; his knock. She got up, straightened her dress and calmly walked to the door. A pause; no, I'm not looking out the window again. Enough. Really, enough. Not the tiny window eyehole in the door either. It's him or it's not and if it is...her stomach rumbled. She opened the latch and the door swung open...

...and there he was, a little abashed. They didn't really look at each other at first; suddenly officially knowing was almost too much. Their eyes met at last, however, and the truth, complex and yet boiling down to something simple, was there. Now for him to act this way and her that, the old rituals, ancient even at this stage, for her to be skeptical and him mostly quiet...

...but it was there; it flooded the room; when she said "How do you know I can't move the bed for a guest?" it was pretty much obvious what was going on and how he knew. She began to cry and he moved to her and held her, and his pal, who was there but invisible now, just the voice in his head, was happy. They got up and danced with joy, once she had stopped crying, dancing from room to room, eventually collapsing and then all was well, or as well as it would ever be.

Could they ever really be parted again? Her view was that he was still free to roam, because that is what he did; that if they were meant to be together then they would be. It is written, as he said, it has always and will always be written. Our story will last, long after us. It is one of the story of stories and we can do what we like.

Friday 22 October 2010

2009 A Club Odyssey: Part 16




It was the end - that could be in no doubt. Him just sitting there made her feel as if she was still running down, down, the wind shaking in her, her tongue and voice gone, because if he was not a god then he was certainly more than a man; she was just able to hear him talk. Fire, or at least some heat, caught in her blood, as if her heart expanded to her lungs, her arms and legs. It was a good thing she was already sitting down, or else she would have to sit down.

"Are you all right? Say something, please. Who were those women? I mean, bacchantes at this time of day?" He was genuinely puzzled, kind, which of course made the whole thing worse. She shook her head, glad for some neutral territory. "Bacchantes don't really care about the time of day, normally." A bird hooed and hooed, hooted once definitively, as if in agreement. "Long night?" he said, and then stopped. She looked at him as if to say that this night was the last, there wasn't going to be another one. Not away from home, at this rate. Looking at him, which she could barely do that last time, was something she could do now. His eyes drank her in - small, frightened, very much alone. It was why he ran after her in the first place; not to confront her, but to let her know that, while he didn't want her any more, he was still very much concerned about her. "I think I know what's going on, in case you don't."

"It's on, it's on, you know they're fighting. I mean, it was going to happen. You were right to get out. The fight is a good one but I didn't want to get involved; I am a prize coward." "And he would have thought of you as the enemy, which you aren't." "Well, no, I needed your help, they didn't." She began to cool off, a little. She was getting used to his voice, like hot water. "They thought they could pull it off, and I led them to the club and..." He shook his head at the simplicity of it all. "God, they really are sheep, aren't they? Did they really think that you were going to do something for them? To say, take it all, who cares?" I got to know them and what they were like and just how far I could go." She watched a squirrel hop past, then paused. "I saw the hunter in the early morning. Did you see him, in the sky? A good sign." "Yes." "I think that hunter was a woman, you know." She looked at him with some puzzlement now. "There was a girl there who just wanted to kill one man. That's how it started, then all hell proverbially broke loose. He started in then, aided by his friend, and the bodies piled up..." How do you know all this? "Gut instinct. Let's just say I know, but really it was all foretold anyway. And yes, he knew full well it was you, you know." She felt the heat blanket her again; he seemed closer than he was, she found it hard to breathe and turned away. His brown eyes were too big; he wasn't Pan, exactly, but she began to see why the bacchantes would run towards him, similarly big-eyed and breathless. It's on, it's on, she thought, I have to get going home, to get there before he does. She got up abruptly and began to walk. "Can I come with you? Part of the way? I know I can't, aah..." "Yes, but we must hurry. He's in pain and I have to think of a way to trick him, to give him pause. I have to forget. Tell me about the hunter."

Sunday 6 June 2010

2009: A Club Odyssey, part 15





It was early, quite early, as she caught the little local bus - one of several she'd had to take over hill and through dale, dipping and sloping here and there. The sun was over the horizon by now, slanting and glittering through the trees, the sky a clear blue. She was tired; she didn't want anything more than to go home.

But she didn't have to go home in this way. She had a growing fear that she would come across someone and that he - the last suitor, the one she could not shake off - would appear. There was no way to know but to confront (possibly, possibly not) him; and so she was on this bus, going up, uphill, then veering along a residential street. She felt like the eagle that could look at the sun; the sun on the horizon that dazzled and stunned in equal turns...

...the bus crossed the bridge, yes that one, the view giving her a glimpse of so much she had just experienced, the dome, the tall buildings, the river; then it was gone and the bus went between the pavements and cars and all the greenness and freshness and vividness of the day began to oppress; this was too much like something else to bear up being itself, just itself, for too long. She saw a figure that looked like him - almost, but not quite - ahead, and knew as she looked that he in turn would look back.

She buzzed to be let out and the bus stopped at the corner. She had no idea where to turn, whether to confront him or no; the pull towards him was as strong as the push. She could not look at him; she knew he was most definitely looking at her. In her guts she knew one thing, that she had to go home, and so she began to run down hill, and sure enough he followed, yelling "Hey! Stop! Please stop! Don't go away!" But she could not stop.

And the hell of it was that the beauty of the day was in her face non-stop. The flowers, the light on the grass, the birds singing, but she was again breathless and finding her way down through the path to the field below, hoping she would not somehow be stopped, that she would not stop herself. "Please please stop, I didn't mean to hurt you!" he cried out. She could hear him closer now, calling her name as well and clearly, clearly not giving up. She had no allies, no friends here, in the dense intensity, the twigs and flying seeds in her hair, but all of a sudden some girls, some rather excited girls, loomed ahead. Their eyes were wide in ecstasy, honey and cream were their clothes and their hands were sweet. "HELLLLP!!" she cried out, and they saw him grimacing trying to keep up and in their madness they thought he was someone else, and set upon him like a pack of wolves. They shrieked, they chased, they did not let up--

--she could not pause as the path turned sharply to a side, the ground flattened at last, pavement reappeared, and the girls had caught him, she heard his shrieks and covered her ears. This is what it was like, and half of her wanted to go back, to help him, but she was simply too damn tired, from the night.

Somehow - perhaps because he looked like a woodland creature himself? Because he was stronger than he thought? - he did escape them, just barely, to run down to her, improbably; the pull for him was too much, and the girls, when they did reach him, could not agree, quite, on what to do to or with him. He was bruised and roughened up, but no more...

...he reached her, as she was still gasping for breath and sitting, more like lying on her side, looking at a flower. Those girls were not her. He sat down and looked at her, the only one who survived and who would survive. He had no special gift, and this is what saved him in the end. The sun shone on the grass, turning into gold, the birds trilled in the silence. They soberly looked at each other again.

Friday 9 April 2010

UN PO' PER CELIA E UN PO' PER NON MORIRE


I feel his lontano everywhere I go around here, my patch, my home.

Some Londoners go East, others go firmly West. He was everywhere and nowhere in London but it’s the West, always the West, that calls both him and me back.

I don’t know when he was last here. I saw him, standing outside the shop, doing a photocall in 1996 for twenty years of the thing he started. He seemed happy to be out of it.

He was always in everything and absent when he was most needed.

But he was always London, via Scotland and the dapper Golders/Stamford run of things.

The respectful tributes were to be expected, just as though he had been called to the Bar after all like the good Jewish son so many wished him to be.

You were expecting soured rosettes, the helpful stench of retrospective hypocrisy?

They hated him then and they love him as of yesterday. Just like Oscar Wilde.

Oh, so like Oscar, if only he’d had a better grasp of London (and I think he probably had a better hold on Paris towards the end).

Well, of course. Who would have expected anything different?

He formed things, like Cyril Connolly. He never really invented things and maybe Seymour Stein or Kool Herc were there first – there’s no maybe about it, you know and he knew that – but like the Beatles he knew how to draw things to our attention in both ways, the second being (as an artist – why, of course!) to draw things in pictures he’d just made up and looked outrageously attractive.

There at Selfridge's with King Mob, Xmas ’68, handing out the goodies to startled but joyful kids and how many of those grew up to be part of a different, successive story?

No one quite got Oxford Street like he did.

Hovis loaves outside the baker’s in Clapham Common. Walk-on roles at Grosvenor Square.

He easily got rid of his previous unwanted, spent lives. Get shot of the names, enrol in a different art school as somebody else, spend all his grant money on records off the stalls on Goldhawk, go and run a shop, go to New York, come back, think of marketing wheezes for Sexfests, why not?

He taught us, like Welles but happier, that you could stop being somebody inconvenient at any time, come back as somebody else, though still recognisably the same. But different. Free of dead weights.

He said you can send the system to fuck so easily.

The T-shirt. Two sides of the bed. Dewey Redman and Archie Shepp there alongside Kutie Jones. I never forgot that. That was my way in.

The first big bend in the road. Next to the Conservative Club.

He said I can change whatever and whenever I want to and if you’re not ready then it’s hardly my fault.

The missing link between Jonathan King and Guy Debord.

He said, keep up.

He asked, why are there so many of you yet so few of me?

He made everything I sensed possible.

Most things, anyway.

The Pistols spluttered to a Tesco’s end and he went to the laundrette but his old Croydon College/Grosvenor Square comrade Robin Scott came through with a different way and would any of that have happened without his precedent, without what he suggested?

He, who knew the absolute importance of Max Bygraves and Lionel Bart in the scheme of things.

Where did you think the Small Faces came from?

Wormholt no-goodniks who wanted to be the Faces and that sulky Aquarian from Finsbury who fancied himself as some kind of punctum.

The other guy from north London, and he subcontracted his entire band and Adam came back at him better and stronger.

Not that he was bothered.

Was he that bothered about the boy he never quite got himself together to look after properly? The Royal Courts in 1986 – bustling, surrendering, that’s what you get for not being a dad.

Nick Kent didn’t see him as a father figure.

As far as you can trust Nick Kent.

As far as you can trust any One.

“Oh, Gawd, is that his latest scam?”

The end of 1982. New Pop on the ropes. He whisked it back to life.

And Trevor, who had to choose between a quiet Spandau life and a Noisy, Arty one and never liked punk in the first place, went with him. Effortlessly.

Yes, Wheels of Freaking Steel.

But this was telling everybody else about it.

Tony Wilson. A parallel general in the North. It is what both would have wanted.

The strategies, the scones, the fire, the failures, the concepts, the cons.

He was a meretricious conman and a captivating magician.

Smartarse and visionary.

The two overlap so much it’s surprising they don’t form a new river. With its own bends.

Poet and prat.

He wanted something like the Bay City Rollers and in the end the Bay City Rollers wanted to be something like him.

Number one. Of course it was number one. Would anyone still be lauding it, talking about it, arguing about it, if it actually HAD been listed as number one?

“Does the presence of Number Two require the existence of Number One?”

Pound, Parker, Kane, Prisoner, Pistols.

In 1977 Larkin, in part-parody of Hughes, wrote a Silver Jubilee quatrain which ended: “Crow shat on Buckingham Palace/God pissed Himself.”

The A&M signing, outside Buckingham Palace, and Christ they had to do it quick.

Herb Alpert dropped the Pistols and signed Ornette. Now THAT’S punk.

Some say Ornette dropped by the studio while PiL were recording Metal Box.

On “Double Dutch” doesn’t he sound like Harry Corbett?

You listen to the right “wrong” radio and everything changes forever.

His radio travelogues; endlessly circuitous, always re-running the same round of memories.

Pete Waterman of course so close to this but then what’s wrong with just printing the legend?

His totality, swirling like reproachful swallows, as I walk through the World’s End.

His contraptions, his beginnings, and they do not end.

Invent the future and then talk about sin.

And remember to lick those lips pure pink.

Friday 19 March 2010

2009: A Club Odyssey pt. 14




She thought...do I know him? Is this ecstasy real? Knowledge seemed to come not from her mind, as such, nor even her heart, but her entire body. It was enough to make her sit down, hard, as if she had fallen, rather than sat. And it was, to a certain extent, the same for him.

Unity: it was hard to believe this was what was about to be achieved, though it wasn't really the end point. She felt him and someone else pick her up, even though she was not moving. The two sides were going to clash, that much was more than evident, and she wasn't going to be part of it. She knew and she didn't know; she was separated from them before she could really see what was happening, though she had dreamt of it enough times.

Those dreams: of them in a tree, her in the treetop already, imitating a bird, calling out in the night. The one where she was with him at home but he could not see her; and yet he knew she was there. The one with them safe behind the broken glass, the melee begun elsewhere, not touching them, because they would be safe. "A waif and a great man are prisoners. Safe in peril - " said the oracle. Well, yes. Luck was turning their way, at long last. The others were wrong because they had been in the wrong, really, all along, but no one could confront them. They were the despoilers, the exploiters of her grief, her patience, her hospitality, even. That was what was the worst: that she had to be nice to them.

Now she turned her back on them and when they called, did not look back. She washed them off herself, dusted herself, shook them off. It felt radical, revolutionary, even. Yes, she could do it. How liberating it was, just to leave and go home. The morning air was sweet; birds circled and flew together in formation, the sun's rays bleached everything clean. The beauty of the world hit her, and even if he wasn't...him (she was yet to really believe), then at least something, at long last, was happening.

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