Month: April 2019

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Car Boots, my mate Ian and Madchester on film

Crate Digging

Saturday mornings in the spring and summer are most definitely car boot mornings. Me and my awesome wife Nic struggle out of bed at the crack of dawn (why do they start so early? I’ve never been given a decent answer to this crucial question.), inhale a pint of coffee and walk across York to the car boot sale at the racecourse. It is a weird and wonderful place (read Nic’s own take on this here) and perfect for realising not only that there is cash to be made from strange old tat but also that the stuff itself, in its strangely jumbled piles, is the material of trippy fever dreams.

   

I go there for old records. I would like to claim that I am looking for elusive old jazz records or arcane field recordings à la Cecil Sharp. But, those would be lies. I like buying old indie records and I like buying old rave records. Anything from Madchester, Seattle, the Thames Valley shoegazers or the holy Stourbridge trinity (well not the Wonderstuff really – far too earnest) will do. I like the sleeves to tell a bit of a story. Old Our Price stickers, tony burns, property of John (aged 14) scrawled in biro. I also like it when old gig tickets tumble out along with the record itself. An Inspirals ticket from 1991 inside Fudge Tunnel’s Hate Songs in E Minor was a particularly dissonant example of this (the gig was four quid BTW – This is How it Feels to get a bargain).

So, this weekend was the first such event of the year and the vinyl itch was ready to be scratched. The problem is that it’s getting harder and harder to do this. The so-called ‘vinyl revolution’ has ruined everything. Crate digging at car boots used to mean searching through mounds of dross (mostly copes of No Parlez and No Jacket Required plus weirdly high numbers of Alan Parsons Project LPs) until you hit gold. I have found a copy of ‘LFO’ by LFO (in a tatty old Warp purple sleeve) for 50p, ‘Pac-Man’ by Power Pills (Aphex’s muckabout-but-still-great contribution to toy-town rave) for a quid, countless Neds, Charlatans, PWEI and Dinosaur Jr twelves for next to nothing. That’s changing now though. You can spot the traders clutching ipads logged in to Discogs and ready to charge maximum online value. You can spot the traders who think they are at a record fair. What these chancers forget is that they are in a field and that their records are not what you would describe as mint. The funny thing is that they are selling much better records (no need to sift through the crap) but charging way too much for them. I used to take 20 notes with me, buy a stack of maybe 10 records and still come away with enough for a post-boot sale jar. Not any more.

But this weekend was OK. I got two records that fit the bill and will add weight to my groaning shelves. Northside’s ‘Rising Star’ and Together’s ‘Hardcore Uproar’. Four quid each. Reasonable nick. These are two sides of the same coin. One baggy indie and one baggy rave. The sort of tunes that only ever appear in the middle of a regional scene that is at maximum hype velocity. Both sound, shall we say, of their time. This doesn’t matter though as I, to misquote Kurt Vonnegut, am an old fart with his records and unreliable memories.

Catching Up

Like lots of people, my oldest of old friendships are rooted in music. Getting together with childhood buddies usually involves spinning the old records until it’s far too late at night and the neighbours are getting narky. When it’s my mate Ian, the top three usually goes: ‘Words that Say’ by Mega City Four, the whole of God Fodder by Neds and ‘Shall We Take a Trip’ by Northside (yep, them again). So, newly emboldened by WhatsApp (only about five years after everybody else), I sent him photos of my car boot purchases. This sparked a day long natter about all things Madchester.

Let me set up our love for baggy. We grew up in the south and were basically too young to really get involved with raving. Manchester for us was entirely constructed by the NME, the Word and those infamous TOTP appearances where bands would mime badly and be wearing their outside coats. It was an illusion but one that we wholeheartedly believed in from the other end of the country. We also loved Shoegaze and the Stourbridge scene and it was these bands we saw when we were finally old enough to go into London (or brave enough to lie to our parents anyway). But Manchester, the Hacienda, Eastern Bloc Records and Afflecks Palace all remained out of reach.

Manchester was a mirage and an imaginary land. Its characters were exaggerated and mythic. Tony Wilson the besuited provocateur, the mumbling enigma that was Ian Brown, the legendary tales of noble inebriation that came out of the Mondays camp. All of this was perfect narrative. We didn’t really care about Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter was still only a flicker in JK’s imagination. This legion of indie groovers in their Joe Bloggs armour were our Quixotic heroes.

They still are.

‘They play the platter, I do the chatter’

The stories told are plural and multifarious. Like any process of mythogenesis, there are contradictions, liminalities and ambiguities. But, for me and Ian, all of this chaos is encapsulated in one hour of grainy VHS (although for this post I watched it on YouTube). Granada TV’s 1990 documentary Madchester: The Sound of the North is truly bonkers. We used to watch it round Ian’s house. Usually on a Sunday morning after a cider induced ‘sleepover’. We could quote it verbatim then and still can now.

It really is an odd beast. It is a celebration of Manc modernism, a rejection of easy stereotypes, a big old show off for genuine talent and a simultaneous and self-conscious rejection of all of these things. Witness the arch parody of travel-guide TV enacted by not-at-all-smug-or-self-important NME journalists Stuart Maconie (complete with hilarious wedge hair-do) and James Brown (yes, he of Loaded magazine fame and all the associated horrors of ‘new laddism’). They explore the steel and glass interiors of new nightspots and the enclaves of Afflecks Palace, show us around the NME offices during the front cover decision discussion (‘Shaun to be Wild’? really?!) and even accompany the Mondays to Amsterdam (can you spell j-o-l-l-y James?). Their stab at postmodern humour is, as well as grating in the extreme, an attempt at exposing the metanarrative at work and exposing the nuts and bolts of creating hype.

Much more fun (and much less irritating) are the features on the musicians and DJs themselves. Northside allow the cameras in to watch them rehearse their new ‘love song’ (and of course my new old car boot purchase) ‘Rising Star’ They seem totally in love with playing and can’t believe that their new hobby is now getting so much mileage. Signed to Factory after only 10 gigs, they reflect on the fact that two years previously Manchester had been ‘all about football hooligans’ but now everyone is more ‘relaxed’. Clint Boon and Tom Hingley of Inspiral Carpets fame explain the concepts for their ‘This is How it Feels’ video and seem happy that their parents are pretty pleased with their success.  808 State and MC ‘pump some lyrics’ Tunes are great company. As Tunes explains, they ‘play the platter and I do the chatter’. Their ‘machine sounds’ show the ways that US house and techno have infused Manchester’s punk and indie spirit and created something unique. This becomes even clearer when A Guy Called Gerald visits Detroit to remix his material with Derrick May, ‘taking the cream to the cat’, as he terms it. Amongst all of the self-aggrandising that always seems to exist alongside a scene like this, these sections of the documentary are an important reminder that the music has to be this good in the first place.

As a nostalgic sort (and in keeping with the themes of this blog and our research), it is the extramusical ephemera that particularly catches my eye. The Joe Bloggs man grabbing massive jeans off the rails in his shop (‘biggest flares in the world!), the team at Central Station Design (responsible for much of the Mondays aesthetic) making collages out of old photos and football stickers before going full Jackson Pollock with the paint tins, the creators of fanzine Freaky Dancing capturing the ‘summer of love’ in comic art form and DTP. All of these wonderful and eccentric cultural artefacts are the oxygen of the scene. They supply wit and genuine fandom. It is, of course, a scene where art and commerce collide, this was always central to Tony Wilson’s credo. But these fans and their superb creativity are an antidote to the short-termism of the record company execs from WEA who talk in terms of units and commercial potential. Yes, I know that this stuff has to be a product and without these men I would never have heard the music in the first place and blah, blah, blah. But I can still think they look and talk like wankers. I know that Joe Bloggs jeans look ridiculous now, but they are still better than fucking chinos.

The documentary is odd in that it knows its nostalgic value despite the fact that is made during the heat of the scene. It is laying down its narrative as if knowing that this will be a fleeting moment. The final sections show the huge Mondays gig at the G-Mex. The event is described as the band’s ‘coming of age’. Is this legitimacy for the music? For its commercial value? Is this official beginning also a sort of end? Well, the final word goes to the NME team who play with the idea of their power. They stop short of stroking a white cat and hovering a finger over a red button, but you do get the sense that they are intoxicated with their status as gatekeepers. They deny that they create scenes just to destroy them, but, we were all there right? We remember. I still feel sorry for Slowdive.

Now that all of this musical stuff exists in museums and the bands are on reunion tours, this documentary is a reminder of how great the music was and how active fans were in the pre-digital age. It is funny, weird and brilliant. Get your flares on and have a watch. It is, in the estimable words of MC Tunes,  a ‘banging’ way to spend your lunch hour.  

The older I get the more I realise that culture is both caught in a moment and eternal. Yes, buying records at a car boot is probably central to my ongoing mid-life crisis but it is also a way to see music and all that surrounds it as still physically and psychologically on-the-move. The stories are rooted in time and place but they are also open-ended and dialogic. I have the same conversations now as I did 20 odd years ago but the tone changes. Memory is both past and present. It roots your personal history but it shapes your present too. I don’t want time to stand still and I don’t want to buy pre-packaged versions of the past. I like that the car boot records wear their narrative on the tattered sleeves. I like to think that I do the same.

 

 

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The Beastie Boys made me do it

I started attending secondary school in 1987. It was a time of bad hair, NHS glasses and a general feeling of dread regarding the notorious antics of big boys at the big school. Tales of blue goldfish (untrue), peanut ties (very true) and sado-fascist games teachers (horrifyingly true) dominated conversation among my little group of friends. We were tiny little people entering an ocean of cruelty and really just wanted to emerge five years later with some shred of dignity intact. A lad who lived down the road from me was already at the school and about to enter his fourth year. His advice was to fit in no matter what. Find out what’s cool and go with that. Whatever music people are listening to, whatever way ties and blazers are being worn (it was the era of the little thin bit of tie being the only bit on show with the fat bit hidden away – very stylish), whatever the insult-du-jour is – just go with it. I know now that this type of conformity leads to no good and, when I was a bigger boy (never a real big boy), I grew my hair long and used Ned’s Atomic Dustbin and Shoegaze as markers of my contrariness. But then, for a terrified and podgy eleven year-old with rubbish eyes, fitting in seemed like it was good advice. I just never knew this would mean nicking car badges.

Beastie Boys mania actually started out as Run DMC mania. We were absolutely not allowed to wear trainers to school but the serious rebels did. Of course, trainers (I would claim that they were Adidas shell toes but, let’s be honest, there were mostly those awful fat Hi-Techs) look rubbish with smart trousers and teenage boys, with their weird, massive feet, look even more rubbish. But, the hard kids, the Embassy number 1 kids and the don’t-give-a-fuck kids wore trainers. One day, the laces were gone. A lad in my class with an older brother (always a conduit to the ever shifting rules of cool) told us that this was because Run DMC didn’t wear laces. They were too cool for laces. Laces were now uncool. Did this mean that I could wear slip-ons like my Dad’s friends? Sadly not.

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what Run DMC were (was?). I knew they were music. I had seen them on Top of the Pops on the video with people yelling at each other through a wall, some of whom were long haired and angry, some of whom were in tracksuits and shoes with no laces and looked a little more in control. This, apparently, was rap. No-one was calling it hip-hop then. The lad with the older brother had a tape called ‘Rap Attack’ (yes, he was really fucking annoying – like that kid on Johnny Briggs who always started their sentences with, ‘my mother, who’s a nurse’ but saying instead, ‘my brother, who’s a fourth year’) which we all had a listen to on our orange spongey earphones. It had what I now know are some stone cold classics and some utter dross. Not bad though. ‘Got anything else like this?’ I asked him. He shoved a blank C90 with ‘lissince to ill’ (sic) scratched on it in blue biro and said, ‘my brother says this is the best rap you can get’. It was very shouty and had loud guitars. I liked it. No real need to pretend.

And so, along with the rest of my school, I got into the Beastie Boys. Ad-Rock, MCA and Mike D acted like brats and shouted about cigarettes and porno mags. It was the height of sophistication. They wore cool clothes and seemed to be saying that rebellion was not only possible but also some sort of moral imperative.

Key to their look and their world of naughtiness were the VW badges they wore on the end of long chains. What sartorial genius was this? Way better than the no laces thing. We had to have a go and so began my brief flirtation with petty theft. We would hide in hedges and act lookout for each other as we wrenched badges away from their metallic homes. It was a thrill but also shit scary. I was not in any way a bad lad. I didn’t even try smoking until I was 15. But this seemed like just the type of fitting in I had been advised to do. 

The problem was that our school sat in amongst some seriously leafy middle class streets and, once we had run out of VW badges to pinch, we just went for anything. Ford, Merc, BMW, Renault. If it had a badge we would nick it. Soon, the badges were rivalling Panini stickers, Garbage Pail Kids and small bits of hash as swapsies. The school went into meltdown. Locker searches, a surprise visit from the head and a local copper to each class, letters home. Parents were exchanging outrage over garden fences and between car windows. This was a crime pandemic and ‘those fucking bestie brothers are to blame’! No more rap music! Down with rap music! God it was awesome. It turned out that fitting with the big boys was a lot of fun.

 
 

I’ve been revisiting this a lot over the last two weeks while I’ve been reading the Beastie Boys Book. The adult me always suspected that these marvellous mavericks were a carefully constructed package and that the teenage me had been sold a doozie of a product. The book partially confirms this and the brash sexism of Licence to Ill certainly turns out to be little more than an ironic swipe (but one that has not aged well at all) at MTV culture (although I love the fact the infamous hydraulic phallus gets a Christmas airing from the storage unit staff every year – tinsel that!) and the birth of their own celebrity. But, the book also sort of authenticates that they really were bratty and stupid. They went through the same sets of in-jokes that all of your friends did and could be as wonderfully kind or arbitrarily unpleasant as the rest of us.

This book, if I were inclined to do such a thing (and I am) could be categorised as a ‘mixtape memoir’. It is a polyphonic bricolage of voices, photography and artwork that jumble, tumble and clash. Ad-Rock will tell a story and Mike D will intervene and say, ‘that’s not quite what happened…’. The opposite will happen elsewhere. There are interventions from, among others Colson Whitehead, DJ Anita Sarko, Spike Jonze and Wes Anderson. The stories are weird, funny and banal. They are a checklist of alternative cool and New York kitsch. Butthole Surfers, Lee Scratch Perry, Bad Brains and Dolly Parton rub shoulders with 808 drum machines, cookie puss ice cream cake (it does sound amazing) and a litany of sugary treats and nasty booze from sketchy bodegas.

The book is a visual adventure. New York is what you would expect and what you would never imagine. Brooklyn pizza parlours, scuzzy clubs and beat up blocks but also hidden studios, old wooden buildings and fancy pants middle class art schools. The band themselves are hyper active. Never sitting still, faces perpetually pulled into sarcastic scowls. You can hear those glorious nasal whines tripping and spitting off every page. There is so much going on that you get a kind of literary ice-cream headache from it all. Your eyes ache and you know you need to call it a night but you want to explore one more photo and enjoy one more anecdote  ending up in a crazy getaway or a weak-ass PA system blowing up.

Reading this book is a tactile sensation. One of the early chapters sees Ad-Rock take us through the mechanics of making and carrying mixtapes themselves. Titled ‘Well, Back In My Day’, it is both nostalgic and a giant piss-take of nostalgia. It seems to say that, yes, mixtapes were a labour of love and an important part of young cultural and social capital building but, also, that they were a pain to carry around and you spent half your life taping them back together and finding a pen to wind the tape back after an inevitable jam up in your cheapo cassette player. The book itself is a whopper. It weighs far too much to carry around and read on the bus. This is a good thing. It means selecting your Beastie Boys LP of choice and getting comfy for a good session with it. You read great big chunks hungrily (breaking only to write blog posts of dubious quality) and ache for your youth.

All of the fun is, of course, undercut by the grief and melancholy that all involved feel for the awful loss of their friend and trouble-making partner MCA. His voice is a tangible absence. He is the centre of the world and haunts every page of this text. This is what elevates the book from being an exercise in merely celebrating the glories of youthful stupidity or the simplicity of the pre-digital era. It is an elegy and a tribute. It is a trauma text built around the unmoving solidity of friendship. Long live MCA.

After my young teenage flirtation with rap and petty crime, I sort of lost touch with the Beastie Boys. A certain Top of the Pops episode featuring certain naughty looking Mancs (and Kirsty MacColl) set me off down a path to indie obsessions, DIY pretensions and involvement in terrible bands with terrible names. It was only when I was about 17 and now worldly wise (well, I liked Aphex Twin and the Velvet Underground) that my friend played me Ill Communication. I couldn’t believe this was the same band. Yes, the nasal tones and humour were still there but the layers of sampling and lyrical complexity were now so sophisticated. He told me to watch the ‘Sabotage’ video and, to this day, I can’t think of a finer three minutes and two seconds. It really is genius.

Once I got to university, I was a fully fledged fan again. Indeed, the band were hugely popular. In my halls of residence, a call from home would be signalled with shouts of ‘the phone is ringing’ which in turn was met by shouts of ‘oh ma gawd’. I never told anyone there about the car badge theft pandemic. It seemed so stupid and childish. Funny now that in my 40s, stupid and childish is what I most long after. Even now, I find it hard to walk past a neighbour’s motor (any motor) without thinking about how cool the badge would look dangling around my neck. Please don’t tell my mum.