I’ve never been the worlds hugest death metal fan, in fact I’ve always thought it was all a bit silly, all that face paint and posturing seems a bit pantomime to me;
CROWD – “He’s behind you,”
LAD IN LEATHER AND SPIKES – “Oh no he isn’t,”
CROWD – “Oh yes he is,”
LAD IN LEATHER AND SPIKES – “So he is, and he’s soaked in the blood of a virgin, which is why his matches are damp and he can’t get a decent flame going on the corner of that Carpathian Church.”
So when a friend was idly skipping through their two million cable channels and stumbled across an episode of Metalocalypse I was filled with literally micrograms of excitement.
I’ve never had anything against death metal - in fact some of my best friends have been in black metal bands – but have always reviewed the black metal albums I’ve been sent as being part of a great joke nobody has let me in on. Well thanks to Metalocalypse now I get the joke. Apart from the truly deranged disciples of death metal (who actually take it seriously) I’m now of the firm belief that all fans adore the grunting vocals and obscenely fast guitar solos in a slightly ironic way. Metalocalypse has captured this perfectly.
Metalocalypse is an animated show vaguely in the visual style of Hanna-Barbera; imagine Captain Caveman but with a death metal soundtrack and surprisingly graphic and with bloody cartoon violence. The show centres around a band called ‘Dethklok’ who just happen to be the biggest band in the world, by an unfathomably wide margin. Dethklok aren’t just big enough to fill arenas, they’re so huge they play entire Islands, own a fleet of space helicopters and record albums in giant submarines a mile under the surface of the ocean! The band have an army of black hooded roadies as big as, well, as big as an army. In fact Dethklok are so super massive they rank as the seventh largest economy on earth.
Wherever Dethklok play legions of their fans die, whole swathes of their roadie army are wiped out (it’s okay, they have many spares) and an alarming amount of apocalyptic devastation ensues. Of course you might assume that as this is a cartoon we’re talking about there are no consequences to deal with. Were you to make such an assumption you’d be totally wrong. In one episode bassist ‘William Murderface’ nearly kills a fan by head butting him for interrupting his penis bass solo, and that victim of dark death metal brutality turns out to be a prince, and returns with his royal family to demand Murderface signs his plaster-cast. Now how’s that for cause and effect, totally lifelike I’d say.
None of the members of Dethklok (William Murderface, Skwisgaar Skwigelf, Nathan Explosion, Pickles, and Toki Wartooth) are particularly likable - although the childlike Scandinavian guitarists certainly have their endearing moments – but just like when passing a motorway accident one cannot look away.
One of the aspects of Metalocalypse that surprised me the most was the music – rather than being a tired necessity to augment proceedings it’s actually pretty damned good. Most of the lyrics are unintelligible to me, but the few that shine through stick in my head with all the staying power of a kebab stain. After watching one episode (much to the delight of those who dwell around me) I spent the next few days mimicking Floridian Nathan Explosion’s gruff vocals from a coffee advert Dethklok perform;
"Do you folks like coffee?
Real coffee, from the hills of Columbia?
The Duncan Hills will wake you
From a thousand depths
A cup of blackened blood
Die, die
You're dying for a cup."
So does Metalocalypse offer insightful comment on this crazy modern world we live in? Does it offer up cruel (but right on) satire in the vein of South Park? Nah, to paraphrase Homer Simpson ‘it’s just about a bunch of stuff that happens.’
I’m still unsure as to whether Metalocalypse has mass appeal in the same way as the Simpsons, but it certainly steps beyond the necessity to needlessly shock in a Family Guy style, but much like ‘This is Spinal Tap’ it does depend on a certain level of existing knowledge on the theme.
I couldn’t possibly condone the use of Bit Torrents or anything illegal like that, but if you were a naughty sort who uses such badness I would recommend finding the episode ‘Murderface’s Birthday,’ it’s a great starting point for your black adventure.
When your life is a swirl of transience, new families and ever changing homes some of the details that trouble others fade away – Malcolm gives no thought to how old he is, or how tired he feels.
Were he a person Malcolm would be embarrassed if you made a fuss of his longevity and probed him for the exciting ins and outs of his many hosts, he’s content to lay, to dream and to graciously accept the occasional bit of coaxing.
Looking into Malcolm’s eyes won’t tell us how many people have adopted him over the years, nor how many times the adoption was the other way round. We’ll never know how many excited toddlers have pulled at his fur or trailed string across the floor for his entertainment; it’s perhaps a relief that we’ll also never know how many feet have kicked Malcolm and how often he suffered unearned unkindness. We’re saved details of who shot Malcolm with an air-rifle and gave him his characteristic limp; we only know Malcolm carried on regardless with a sigh and another move to another home.
What we do know is that this was Malcolm’s final home, his place of warmth and security, the home where he could take his final rest. We’ll leave him in peace now, comforting himself with his cracked and gurgling purr. Rest in peace Malcolm, you dear old man.
There are two things in life that I’ve never understood, and until a couple of weeks ago they were football and machismo. I’ve travelled the world, I had a successful career with the bank, I’ve loved, lost and seen the sun rise and set on three continents, but I’ve never understood why blokes derive such pleasure from kicking a ball about. I guess the fact I don’t have a very sporting outlook on life contributes. As for machismo (and manliness in general) I guess it’s more the case that male bravado has managed to evade me all my long life; I’ve chased it, but it has always remained just out of my grasp.
Ah, but you’ll have noticed the caveat, that bit at the start where I said ‘until a couple of weeks ago’, I know you will only have read that a few seconds ago but I just don’t trust short term memory any more: my own has somewhat atrophied since I retired and I’ve never been too sure of yours.
Anyway I digress, where was I? Oh yes, I was talking about water wasn’t I? No, football and manliness wasn’t it? Ah yes! Actually the three are linked, and that’s what I wanted to tell you – last night (just for a few moments) I found a way to enjoy football, and quite remarkably it’s precisely because of the machismo and not in spite of it!
I have recently followed the current downsizing trend by moving from that nice place I had in Monewden to a bungalow in Woodbridge. My new ‘castle’ is in a cul-de-sac about one hundred yards from The Seal (handy for lunch I can tell you) and if I tell you my garden backs onto the football ground then you should have a clear idea of where I now live. There’s a public footpath that runs down the side of my house, and that’s where what was a problem became quite the entertaining boon for me.
A few months after I moved in I noticed that a patch of dahlias along my border was looking a bit sickly; the petals looked a trifle rain battered and the stems were turning a horrid brown. The plants that I rather tastefully companion planted either side (I won’t trouble you with details) were still thriving; I’m pleased to report that years of working in an office hasn’t diminished my green fingers. Oh, and another thing, these poor dahlias stunk! Not much else to do these days, so I went through every RHS manual I could lay my hands on and even took a cutting down to the garden centre (Notcutts) but this blight looked like it was going to remain a mystery.
About six weeks ago I was feeling a little under the weather so took myself to bed early. Now this is where things get a little complicated – despite the fact I live in a bungalow the bedroom is in fact upstairs in the loft space, something to do with planning permission when the place was built is my guess. Anyway, it was a Wednesday night which means that there was a football match on at the club behind my garden, and they have awful floodlights so I was at the window drawing the curtains when I spotted something that damn near took the biscuit: Each time there’s a football match a feckless horde of lager swilling morons spew out of the The Seal and use the public footpath beside my property as a short cut to the football club. Now naturally I have no objection to the public using this presumably ancient right of way to reach their destination, but what I do object to is any of the great unwashed using my hedge as a latrine.
I decided to bide my time and make observations from my window each night there was a football match for the next few weeks. Much to my surprise the same horrid little oik was urinating through my hedge every damned night Woodbridge FC played! Can the lager they’re serving at The Seal be so rank that this fellow can’t make it from pint to pitch without emptying his excess on my dahlias?
As curious as I was about the medical peculiarities of this chap’s peanut size bladder I decided to forgo any investigative interview and proceeded directly toward a plan to save my garden border. In preparation for the exodus that would invariably pass my garden before last night’s match I stuck a fork into the edge of the lawn and jury-rigged a well aimed hosepipe to the handle. I sat in one of the cushioned garden chairs by the tap and waited for my prey.
Regular as Swiss time I heard the rambunctious rabble of the crowd of football fans passing on the footpath, and then as expected I saw one of their number fall back slightly and approach my hedge. I strained my ears and the very second I heard him unleash his stream I turned on the tap, but just for a second or two. As I hoped my aim on the hose was straight and true, and the time I spent in careful preparation was rewarded with a desperate yelp from the other side of the hedge. A zip went zip and two feet stepped hastily away.
My plan didn’t end with a bit of light crotch soaking, oh no. In fact the final part of the plan was played out by others unknown to me, just the way I hoped it would be. The reaction of this fellows peers upon seeing him return from a mission (that they were all to aware of the details of ) with a soaked crotch will hopefully be enough to persuade him not to make his usual stop the next time his team plays.
So there you go, football and machismo turned to my advantage, finally!
Ah coffee! The eyes may be the windows of the soul, but coffee shop frontages are the windows of society. Or should that be windows onto society? I guess nobody will know for sure, not anyone born in the last sixty years anyway, not anyone who was churned through the public schools system after it was privatised.
As soon as the corporations took over education the cutbacks started: Latin was already long gone and it didn’t take long for other severe cuts to follow. By the time I started high school (some forty years after ‘the cuts’) Starbucks owned every good school in my sector, and lessons like home economics were a distant memory. I guess it didn’t make sense to the CEO of my school (all those years ago) to teach kids how to feed themselves; the shareholders would see that as commercially damaging.
Nobody really minded by then anyway – my granddad sometimes goes all misty eyed and mumbles on about how every house in his quadrant used to have a kitchen, and how people used to prepare their own food at home, but it all sounds like a real chore and terribly unhygienic to me. Since all chain food became tax deductable and the taxes on seeds and tools went sky high I don’t see why anyone would be willing to bankrupt themselves just to chow down on some horribly dirt caked wonky vegetables.
The link between brand loyalty and longevity is well established now, it’s the reason I’m sat in Starbucks right now, speaking to you. You’re born a brand, you live branded and you die a brand. It’s how we tell each other apart. Granddad told me that his friends used to joke about the type of people that used shops like Aldi, but since the Stock Exchange brought in brand aware social separation I’m sure everyone is happier. It’s certainly cheaper for society to be separated this way.
The next subject to be dropped by the investment group who owned Starbucks (and most of the other schools ‘investors’) was history. This all happened way before my time, and it’s somewhat ironic that even although history was dropped to stifle the developing minds of children – so they wouldn’t grow into questioning meddling adults – I seem to know so much, well I have a dark secret. I’ve been reading. I know we’re not supposed to read anything outside of our brand demographic but I can’t be the only one who dares to deviate? I’m risking being declared unclean if I’m ever caught. I know being Starbucks decides what literature I read, but I’ve rebelled – I’ve been reading at Waitrose level, and I know a few things about the history of ‘the cuts’ that would chill your blood to the bone implants.
I guess without risking everything by defying my demographic (unlikely, Starbucks FTW) and continuing my research I’ll never know for sure, but I’ve got an inkling that the ‘cut-backs’ were something to do with banks. The legend is that when my Granddad was a boy the banks nearly destroyed the world, and instead of letting them become extinct something called ‘Government’ rescued them, and using non-corporation money they rescued the banks a total of seven times.
The symptoms of the first rescue were subtle; pot plants disappeared from public service offices, a few road sweepers were set free. By the time of the third rescue a not for profit organisation (yeah, weird huh?) that existed purely for putting out fires was closed.
The fifth rescue was when birth control was taken out of the hands of individuals.
It wasn’t until the sixth rescue that C.R.L.O (compulsory random life obsolescence) was introduced. Hell, that was so long ago now that I doubt many people can comprehend a world where everyone was allowed to grow old and die naturally. In fact I can barely comprehend the fact that some people still try and resist it even now. Even as I look out of this Starbucks window I can see a couple of C.R.L.O operatives pulling some old duffer out of a branch of Halifax Pharmaceutical Delicatessen and into one of their cheery bright green vans. There’s a couple of idiot Tesco kids pointing and laughing, I guess they’re too young to know that C.R.L.O comes early for their brand.
Me, well I don’t let these things trouble me – I live life to the full, that’s why I’m going to order another Ultra-Grande and sit back and enjoy the show. I love C.R.L.O’s chaser Tuesdays.
Originally published by altsounds.com January 23rd 2010
Finding a path in life is a challenge that greets us all during our teens. Some people at high school already have their entire career mapped out before them, be that through parental pressure to perform or the unstoppable driving force of a passion. I was one of the lucky kids that always knew what he wanted to after leaving school – I wanted to be in a band. Actually I was already in a band, but I wanted to be in a band that people liked, a band that would pay the bills.
I was disinterested in school and treated it as an opportunity to amuse myself with foolish pranks and pushing the boundaries of polite behaviour. I was never violent or abusive, but my god I was a cheeky little beggar. I spent so much time in the headmaster’s office I could still describe it to you in great detail, but I won’t because, well, what do you care? By the time I had reached fifteen those that must be obeyed at my school grew tired of writing letters home to my parents and took to ringing my dad at work each time I committed what they saw as an outage against the establishment. I’m not going to labour the point, but I was in trouble so often that the school printed up a special version of the homework diary for me and my friends that contained five times as much space for teachers comments as any other kid’s homework diary.
Why did I need GCSEs? I knew where my life was heading [for the stage] and audiences at concerts are not known for caring about how academically advanced performers are. Nobody ever minced out of a Led Zeppelin show because they found out Jimmy Page failed Geography. There was nobody in any of the bands I loved who were propelled to rock and roll stardom by a healthy set of exam results when they were sixteen years old. It could be said that Toni Iommi’s failings in metal work directly led to him becoming a guitar legend.
My parents didn’t exactly have faith in my career plan; my dad photocopied a few of the more choice comments from my school reports and blew up them up to poster size and decorated my room with them. As a sort of compromise I agreed I’d do the right thing with regards to a career and went to see one of the most curious creatures to be found lurking (usually at the back of the library) in any high school – the careers teacher. I had dealings with this chap before when he came to speak to us in a P.S.E lesson (personal and social education, what were they thinking) and started his presentation by drawing a big sad face on the blackboard and telling the class that there was no such thing as a perfect job. I think that may have been the moment I tuned out and started picking album covers in my head, for imaginary records that I was yet to record. The appointment I had with the careers teacher didn’t start much better - the first question I was asked was what I wanted to do for a living. The answer was simple, so I told him I wanted to be in a band.
“No really, what do you want to do?”
“I want to be in a band.”
“No really, what do you want to do?”
“I want to be in a band.”
“Okay, enough of the jokes, what do you want to do as a career, to put a roof over your head and food on the table?”
“I want to be in a band.”
I’ll cease the dialogue there, but as I’m sure you can imagine this went on for a good while. As an outcome of this meeting and for reasons I’ll never fully understand a year later I found myself at Suffolk College studying to be a nurse. Something I need to make clear at this point is that I was studying to be a nurse, I wasn’t on a nursing course; they don’t let you join a nursing course if you leave school with no grades. I was on a course before the course you do to become a nurse, that’s how uncool this course was. And there were no music modules.
My old band (Nice) were still rumbling along but I was getting increasingly frustrated at their lack of interest in getting a proper recording done in a real studio (as apposed to recording ourselves live through the church PA system). The childlike magic of the early years of this band was gone; I was starting to come to terms with the fact that this probably wasn’t the band that would propel me to stardom. The basslines given to me to play were getting needlessly complex and gradually the entire band was turning into a sort of Led Zeppelin homage. I love Led Zeppelin but I was under no illusion that we were lacking somewhat in ability compared to Robert Plant et all. To summarise the situation I was ‘looking for other opportunities’.
The bus journey to college was over an hour long despite the fact Ipswich (location of Suffolk College) was just fifteen miles away from my parent’s house in Wickham Market. I was accompanied on this epic journey by my mate Hester who was attending college to study terrorism, or possibly tourism. Time between lessons was spent on a large and wide flight of steps underneath the college library called the ‘smoking steps’. As was appropriate behaviour for the location I would spend my time there smoking. Smokers were nearly as unpopular back then in 1993 as they are now, and when large groups of smokers come together some social barriers that normally form obstacles between people are broken down. Smokers will always chat with other smokers; it’s a sort of siege mentality. Hester didn’t smoke but some of the friends on her course did so she was often on the smoking steps.
I soon struck up a friendship with a couple of her friends, a young punk called Jonny and a young metaller called Barry. For the first few weeks I knew them, Jonny and Barry always seemed to be drunk, even at 10am they’d be giggling and saying ridiculous things and falling over. My lessons were dull and despite the fact college suited me better than school I was still studying for a course I had no interest in actually passing, so Barry and Jonny provided much needed light relief. By this time my disinterest was less to do with a surety that I would make my money through music, and more to do with the wistful melancholy that affects almost all teenagers. You know the kind of thing I mean; you have no rent to pay, your parents still buy your food and clothes and you have more disposable income than you’ll have for the next ten years and yet the world still seems a dark place.
Barry and Jonny also made the dull drudge of the daily bus journey far more entertaining as they would forever either be too drunk to carry a conversation or engaged in trying to set fire to each others trousers. On one memorable occasion Barry branded Jonny with a super heated safety pin. Jonny started seeing a young punk girl called Penny, who was a good friend of mine on my course and it was on visits to Penny’s student flat that I met my future wife Emma. One day Jonny told me he’d started a punk band with a bloke called Graham. Jonny told me had a drum kit and bragged that Graham knew three ‘para cords’. Being curious about what a para cord was I agreed to meet Graham.
Graham was older than Jonny and I, and at the time the fact he was twenty six years old made him seem ancient to us, like some sort of safety pinned old punk sage. Graham spent his days as a gentleman of leisure, hanging out with a large group of punks in the central square in Ipswich Town Centre, an area known as Cornhill. This quite terrifying group of scruffy punks sat, laid and stood on the benches drinking cider smoking cigarettes and generally terrifying the hell out of the god fearing grey masses that were the Ipswich shoppers. Considering I was a tall, skinny, fluffy haired, indie kid from the sticks who hadn’t even really heard any punk let alone actually met a punk - I was terrified.
Jonny confidently marched into the midst of the throng but I held back, to me the scene looked like someone was trying to remake Mad Max with a budget of a tenner and a two litre cider bottle. Jonny introduced me to Graham who complimented me on the copy of ‘Marquee Moon’ by Television that I was clutching under my arm. I sat chatting with Graham and Jonny about music as the drunken punks wheeled around us, to a passer by it probably looked like I was being held hostage. Most of the punks I met on that day are dead now, mostly through what could euphemistically be called "misadventure". These weren’t the type of punks I would come to know and love – and indeed include myself in their number – in the years that followed. These were not folk led by ethics and a passion for self expression and boundless creativity. These were self destructive alcoholics hell bent on annihilation through any means possible. Graham and Jonny stood out from this crowd nearly as sorely as I did. When one of the annihilated pissed on my college bag in full view of an astonished public I nearly gave up on Graham and Jonny and bailed. By ‘annihilated I mean drunk/ drugged, not that the pisser was a member of the thrash metal band ‘The Annihilated’ (who are also from Ipswich).
A week later I was stood in the garage of Jonny’s parent’s house in Woodbridge watching Jonny play drums in a truly unique way while Graham attacked his guitar like it had wronged him in some way. The musical upbringing being in Nice had taught me to follow a guitarist playing deliberately difficult chord shapes but after watching Graham play for a few minutes I noticed that his hand was locked in one position, I assumed this was his "para cord". Strangely it looked exactly the same as a power chord. In Nice I was always under pressure to play the most technical and complex basslines possible otherwise I’d likely get yelled at. I’ve got a recording somewhere of guitarist Matt yelling at me for dropping a note in a riff so complex it may have contained the answer to life the universe and everything. With this in mind I watched what Graham was playing for a moment then let rip with a bass line that swung up and down the fret board so fast it looked like my fingers were trying to escape. I watched Graham and Jonny for a reaction but they were too busy glancing sacred and wide eyed at each to offer me any verdict on my playing. I would say the song ended, but it would be more accurate to say it fell to its knees and collapsed forward breaking its nose on the garage floor; the kindest thing was to put it out of its misery and stop playing. Graham was the first to speak,
“You can join the band, just don’t play any more of that jazzy shit.”
And I didn’t, not for years. It was a strange feeling being admitted into Junk Culture, it was clear that neither Graham or Jonny could actually play, but for the first time ever I felt I was in a band with true peers, a band where I could play what I wanted without being criticised, belittled and shouted down.
When Jonny said he had a drum kit I never thought to enquire as to whether he could actually play it. In a band biography Graham referred to Jonny’s drumming as ‘biscuit tin banging’ and claimed the only reason they had let me join the band was that I had access to a car. I didn’t care, I had a new band. My old band was less impressed and singer Dan rang me one evening to formally "sack" me. I was surprised but not entirely disappointed. In a snap of cold spite I told my new girlfriend (Emma) that Nice would never do anything without me in the band to organise them. I was right; they limped on for a while longer but never played live or recorded ever again. I felt like the universe was clearly leading me in a new direction, it was the death of one band but the conception of another. Ladies and gentlemen, this was the birth of Junk Culture.
Originally published by altsounds.com November 19th 2009
In previous episodes of this historical tale we’ve talked about Junk Culture the ‘early days,’ in fact the days were so early they were before Junk Culture formed. We examined the motivation behind a young lad with the world ahead of him, a head of fluffy blonde hair and a keen interest in female anatomy (studied in mail order catalogues) throwing his life away playing in bands. So now we’re going to look into why I made it further than 99% of bedroom dreamers and actually played a show, and why I made it further than 80% of the 1% remainder from the above statistic and actually went on to play a second show, and ultimately we shall get an insight into why I am still dumb enough to still be one of the 0.1% of the aforementioned 1% still playing shows so many summers later. That is it for the math in this part, you can put down your pens and pencils; there will be no test afterwards (although the prose may be testing in itself).
Having spent what was probably more than a year practising several times a week in the vicarage, a first gig still eluded the members of NICE. Matt, Dan, Tom and I had tried everything we could to step up to the musical mantel, step onto the first rung of the ladder of fame and step out into the wide world of rock and roll. Our metaphors were getting thin and our desperation for stardom only grew stronger, along with a growing fascination with steps. I was buoyed up by the fact I now knew the fat string at the top of the guitar was referred to as the bottom string, and the recent purchase of an electronic tuner and a plectrum brought a certain professionalism to my performances during practices in the dinning room of the vicarage. But baring the chance a world famous record producer walking his dog down the muddy footpath behind our ‘rehearsal rooms’ would discover us we knew we had little chance of bothering the charts unless we got proactive, and maybe bought a step ladder.
We considered ourselves musically ready; we had a collection of ten or 11 songs together. Titles were taken from the contents of a book case in the dinning room where we rehearsed, themes were inspired by burgeoning teenage crushes. With song titles like ‘Making clothes for children’ and ‘Journey’ (probably more a homage to Jules Verne than an ode to psychedelic drugs) we felt sure we were on the right tracks. We even had a lament to languid lustful longings and teenage temptresses called ‘Caroline’ (bare in mind we were teenagers ourselves at the time and you will realise that is nowhere as creepy as it sounds). We were EMO before EMO existed, but with some loose fitting trousers and without the lank hair. I have no idea where our lyrical inspiration came from; none of us had so much as snogged a girl, let alone suffered the hellish machinations of a heart crushed by the disinterest of the opposite sex. We hadn’t even playfully cupped a breast in jest. Tom had bought the aforementioned Caroline an Easter egg and with no concept of the true meaning of the record had played her ‘Come Together’ by Primal Scream down the telephone line. Possibly slightly confused and concerned by a 13 year old (Tom was Matt’s younger brother) being so suggestive she hung up the phone and Tom decided to eat the egg himself. Such is the complexity of the heart and soul - we all yearn and suffer the torments of desire; the surety that the only way our burning soul can be saved is by the tender affections of those we try to assert our ardour on, but more often than not said fevered feelings can be quelled by eating half of a kilo of reasonably priced chocolate. Watching that delightful 80’s slice of Antipodean oddness ‘Round the Twist’ also helps, although results may vary according to the age of the viewer, and the decade in which the heart is wounded.
After several more aimless crushes the distractions of trying to ‘get off’ with girls appeared to abate briefly, and as if revealed through a clearing in patchy fog we reset our sights on our goal. We decided that if promoters refused to ring and offer us a support slot at Wembley Stadium we would have to take matters into our own hands. Being south of 16 years old - and not having the first idea of the complexities of live music promotion - we went with the only idea our intuition offered us and cobbled together a series of hand made felt tip decorated posters declaring our imminent appearance at Otley village hall.
If you’re reading this and haven’t enjoyed an upbringing in rural England then I’d best briefly explain what a village hall is. It’s a hall in a village. To be more precise it’s a small (usually wooden) hut built around one or other of the Queen’s jubilees, or at the time of her coronation. Often the construction involves a more than advisable amount of asbestos (I.E. ‘some’). For some reasons I’ve never figured out they almost always seem to be perched perilously on many small piles of bricks, giving them the appearance that they used to be great land ships until some bugger nicked their wheels, forever stranding them by a B road. Village Halls are usually used as the village crèche for young mums and as a meeting place for the old folk of the village to congregate, play cards and complain about the young mums of today. These two disparate user groups give each village hall a unique smell that you can’t find anywhere else - and heaven only knows why you would seek to – of nappies and stale baked goods, augmented with the tang of fusty air and rotting woodwork. They are truly unique and wonderful places and should be celebrated by all, albeit with a raised eyebrow and a peg to the nose.
I still don’t know why Matt chose a village about ten miles from our own homes in Wickham Market. I have no idea why he chose a parish where we knew nobody and had no way of getting ourselves to, but he seemed sure of his choice in a sort of ‘build it and they will come’ way. We didn’t include a date on the poster, or details of door charges and concession rates. The poster featured as its focal point just our band name and the location of the happening. Underneath we made the bold claim that we were ‘as good as they say they are,’ and offered the opening time for the event as ‘dusk’ (an obscure homage to the recent Stone Roses gig at Spike Island). None of us thought to actually contact the caretakers of Otley Village Hall, book a PA system or even tell our parents about the gig. It wasn’t that we considered these mere details below the radar of our rock god status; we just didn’t consider them at all. We felt much the same way I did when I tried to find a doorway to Narnia in the back of my wardrobe a few years previously; we had a goal in our sights and were more blinkered than a pervert at a peep show.
With exuberant enthusiasm and an unshakeable belief that a life of stadium rock and solid gold toilets would be ours if we just put in a little graft we filled out pockets with drawing pins, hopped on our bikes and set forth to decorate the church notice boards and telegraph poles of the surrounding villages. By the time we reached Ufford (about a mile away) we realised what a mistake we had made in trying to cycle burdened with home made bill posters and pockets full of drawing pins. Wishing to avoid further perforations to our still developing genitalia we elected to put all the posters up outside Ufford Church and headed home confident in the knowledge we had done a good job.
You may have guessed already, but having decided on a gig miles from home, neglecting to actually book the venue and running a poster campaign within the confines of a single church notice board in a village with less than a hundred residents didn’t result in instant stardom. I’d love to be able to give you a fairytale ending to this part of the story whereby a kindly well wisher took us under their wing and pulled a few strings here and there but it just didn’t happen. Damned cruel world this can be sometimes, a boy makes misguided minimal effort and what happens? Nothing. Cruel and bastard-harsh world.
The non existent gig at Otley Village Hall didn’t so much pass by as drift from our collective consciousness, a bit like when you try not to think of a drunken mistake you’ve made, or try to ignore a large crack appearing in your bedroom ceiling above your pillow. Sure the plaster might come crashing down on your face while you sleep permanently scarring you so badly even your mother would struggle to love you, but on the other hand it might not.
Our dreams of world tours were replaced with a simple desire just to play anywhere, to anyone anyway we could. We wanted exposure with a greater swiftness and intensity than a flasher in a black leather raincoat outside a fast food restaurant during an unbearably hot day in August. A brief performance sonically violating the bemused local Christian youth group in the church hall realigned our desires, and we aimed just a little higher. I took it upon myself to book us a proper gig, with a crowd that actually wanted to be present rather than one that (based purely on the sounds they were being exposed to) were starting to question their faith.
With linear logic and an attention to detail that has probably never graced me since I took it on myself to organise our first concert. I chose Hatcheston Village Hall as the venue; it had the advantage of being about a mile away from our home Village and was therefore less likely to attract the local undesirables. These undesirables being the large gang of youths that spent their time outside the men’s public conveniences in the centre of the village yelling homophobic abuse at passers by. Many years later one of these delightful fellows gave me the opportunity to use the best comeback I have ever offered up to such abuse; when one particularly low fore headed boz-eyed specimen bellowed the accusation that I enjoyed partaking in fellatio in front of a large group of onlookers I retorted that he still owed me a tenner for performance of said pole polishing duties!
I contacted the caretaker of Hatcheston Village Hall who seemed to have no problem with a child hiring a building she was responsible for, it was either that or she was trying to get fired or get revenge on a fellow member of the parish council. The cost of hire was ten pounds a night and however many fifty pence pieces we needed for the electric meter.
I chose a date, photocopied some tickets and posters, and began the hard sell. As it turned out a great number of kids at my comprehensive school in Framlingham and the private school my band mates attended in Woodbridge were more than willing to part with a quid in exchange for a badly drawn paper ticket that promised them a night of entertainment from a band that were ‘as good as they say they are.’ At the time I was amazed that our fame had spread so fast. In retrospect I assume these kids relished the idea of spending a night without adult supervision at an event that looked just about passable as a properly organised concert. By the night of the gig we had sold a staggering one hundred tickets and about another fifty kids would show up on the door chancing their arm that they’d get into what was looking like the social event of the decade, and at that age we only had one and a half decades worth of experience to go on.
I was feeling like quite the successful business man, I had even booked a support band in the shape of our friend’s punk band ‘Ken Liver’ to kick off proceedings and to offer the punters more bang for their buck. Ken Liver told me they were a punk band, a phrase that meant nothing to me at all; I think I assumed it was some sort of dance routine.
For reasons I still don’t understand, a music shop in Ipswich called Sounds Plus offered me the use of a rudimentary PA rig for free, and in exchange we offered them advertising in the form of a plastic bag pinned to the wall of the small foyer of the venue. On the morning of the gig we fetched the PA from Ipswich (over an hour away on the bus) and somehow talked a parent into helping us lug it to Hatcheston.
Ever the voice of reason and calm logic my dad pointed out the night before the big gig that we could probably do with some insurance in the shape of someone who had already passed through puberty wandering around to make sure the place didn’t get destroyed. While my dad may have boyish looks he also has an enormous soup strainer moustache that makes it clear to all he finished his ‘special journey’ several decades ago. His concerns weren’t as mad as they may sound, my dad has been heavily involved in youth work for as long as I’ve been alive and was all to aware of what unruly teenagers are capable of. Unconvinced that my burly school friend Leighton (who offered to work the door in exchange for a box of penny chews) would be the only necessary muscle ying to my dad’s security yang. He roped in the Terry the Loss Adjustor (who lived next door) to help out, probably hoping his skills as a Insurance Loss Adjustor wouldn’t become a large part of his role for the night. Kindly Terry’s daughter Clare-Marie and her mate Lucy offered to run the merchandise stall, the merchandise consisting entirely of peppermint crèmes with our band name NICE etched onto the surface. Naturally they sold out in minutes, I had deliberately chosen a village with no pub so the kids had nowhere else to go, and those not old or wise enough to bring booze needed some kid of mild altering hit.
By the time we were putting this gig on we had been to a few ‘proper’ gigs at the students union at the UEA (the University in Norwich) and at Colchester Uni (where I saw Damon Albarn throwing up behind a bus) and felt sure we knew how to create a realistic and electrifying rock concert. Our plan was a simple one; we shut all the curtains and borrowed a four bulb row of disco lights and a strobe light large enough to take down light aircraft. The rest of the stage effects would be covered by our mate Tim blowing cigar smoke into an empty pop bottle and squeezing it back out from stage left in the vague direction of our feet. The University gigs we had been to were stiflingly hot and sweaty, to mirror this at our own concert we turned all the blow heaters on full blast for the entire afternoon before the doors opened. Everyone must have been wilting as they crammed into the hall around PM, not that we could see them, we had turned the lights off because gigs are always, yer know, kinda dark and hot.
We felt a little deflated by the fact the stage at Hatcheston Village Hall was only ten centimetres high so we formed a barricade in front of the stage by placing the huge fold out trestle tables (of the type you only find in Village Halls) on their sides with the tops facing the audience. The drum riser was made by piling up folded up tables and precariously placing Tom’s drum kit on the top.
As Ken Liver played through a set of what in retrospect were pretty decent punk covers – augmented only by my dad yelling at them for swearing on stage – and we hid away in the kitchen waiting for our big moment. The kitchen was behind the stage and a heavy red velvet curtain gave us the perfect opportunity to make a grand entrance when Tim played the intro music that would signal that our time had come. There were two other doors leading from the kitchen; one led to the outside world where (and I kid you not) screaming girls banged their fists on the door, wanting a piece of our singer Dan. This not entirely unwanted attention forced him to use the cupboard behind the other door as a makeshift toilet and he was forced to use a gossamer thin plastic cup as a makeshift urinal. His emergence from the aforementioned call of nature avec cup is quite wonderfully captured on the video Dan’s dad made of the evening. Nothing would make those baying girls go away; we tried everything, by which I mean we tried opening the door and frisbeeing a surprising number of plastic trays at them.
Ken Liver finished their set and our roadie/ stage manager/ provider of teenage smoke Tim prepared the stage by walking around it and pretending to play Matt’s guitar, we know he did this because not only were we peeping through the curtain but it’s also captured on the video of the night. We went on to bewilderingly rapturous applause considering nobody in the room had ever seen or heard us before, and most of those present had quite probably never even been to a gig before. Maybe we created such a magnificent scene of pure throbbing sexiness on that stage the girls just lost control? Perhaps everyone in the room was dangerously dehydrated from the sweltering heat? Just maybe they screamed due to the fact that half the fuse board had blown out when we took to the stage, meaning the only light in the room was a pulsating strobe light so piercing in its brightness you could see the thoughts of the person in front of you each time it flashed? I’m pretty sure it was the sexy thing though.
We hammered through our set and much to my hormonal joy my performance had the complete attention of a very attractive girl in the front row. I learnt an important lesson on stage that night in Hatcheston; it’s always more important to look like you know what you’re doing with a bass guitar then it is to actually know what you’re doing with a bass guitar. Considering I hadn’t gone to the trouble of actually learning a couple of the songs we played that night and played the remainder with a cavalier attitude to key, tempo and putting the notes in the right places I still managed to earn the fluttering eyelids of a handful of girls. I peered out from behind my stupid floppy fringe (it looked like a comb-over that had been turned ninety degrees and blown dried in a candyfloss machine) at the swooning girls as they turned their attention equally to each band member and I knew with a grave certainty that this lark of being in a band was something I wanted to do a whole lot more of.
It wasn’t like we knew nothing about girls, I had a plethora of girls who claimed taking things further would ‘ruin our friendship’ and we had a particularly special friend called Hester who demystified the opposite sex in the most innocent ways possible. I greatly preferred her explanations of the ways birds and bees have sex with each other than I did the wolf skull diagrams employed by our school RE teacher during sex education. Like most internal organs the ovaries look pretty terrifying out of context, and ‘out of context’ is a way of viewing our organs none of us wish to experience – preferring them to remain safely tucked away actually inside our bodies.
So while the fleeting affections of several girls was great and all, it was the focussed attention of one particular girl called Laura (who had made her way to stand right in front of me) that really caught my attention. In fact on the video of the night you can see me trying to wave to her whilst playing; I may have found out that playing in a band can go some way to attracting female attention, I was yet to figure out how to make the next romantic move. As it turns out Laura took care of that aspect a week later when she kicked shut her bedroom door, pinned me to it and proceeded to carefully examine every aspect of my dental hygiene with her talented tongue. Oh yes, being in a band had got me my first proper snog, and it was with a groupie. There are certain things in life you only get to do once, and the memory and anecdotal armoury of such events stay with you for life. I will always be eternally grateful to Laura for giving me the coolest first kiss of anyone I know. It’s just a shame I made a noise like a pantomime dame when she surprised me with her affections in the way she did. She dumped me a few weeks later because I told her I thought Guns and Roses were shit.
Musically my first ever gig ended in the coolest way possible – we were back stage (by which I mean the kitchen) when my dad bounded through the curtain holding a smashed vodka bottle as evidence that the crowd wanted more. I don’t think anything I’ll experience for as long as I live will be as rock and roll as that moment right there.
NICE continued to play the occasional gig, make the occasional short film (seriously) and build an underground base (no kidding) for the next few years. We changed our name periodically (Morris 1000, The Benaults, The Listeners and probably more) and sadly it would be many years before I played another show to so many people. My cut of the profit that night was £15, it would also be many more years before I would make as much money as that from playing a gig. As my bandmates started to take school seriously and knuckled down to the prospect of having "careers," band practices (or ‘bandies’ as we called them) became less frequent and musical directions more bizarre and challenging. Had it not been for a chance meeting with an extremely drunk young punk in the smoking area of Suffolk College around the same time I dare say NICE may have been my last musical adventure.
Originally published by altsounds.com October 26th 2009
Looking back I knew in my heart of hearts that I was making a shoddy stab at an important task. Sometimes even if you know more attention should be paid to the task in hand it’s hard to invest ones self in it entirely if you’re riding the arc of ambivalence. I knew I should have sanded down and applied an undercoat before using gloss paint; a fact made quite clear by the Readers Digest guide I had chosen to consult, and decided to ignore. Why should some snooty author that I’ve never met know better than I when it comes to painting my own front door? Why should his years of experience dictate with such grave gravity that I should sacrifice a large chuck of my day to putting on a layer of undercoat paint that would be invisible to the eye when the job was complete? Did Rembrandt paint a ‘practice painting’ on his canvas before slapping on the oils of his masterpiece? Actually he may have done, I’m getting a little out of my depth here and wandering from the path, stumbling like a toddler full of party punch into the herbaceous border of obscurity and confusing metaphor.
It would be cruel after encouraging you to invest your interest in the tale of my front door not to give you some closure on it. No, that pun was not intended, although is not wholly unwelcome. Were I not the kind of man that approaches each DIY task with only two goals in mind – getting the job done in the quickest possible time, and using power tools that are slightly too powerful for me to handle – I would have taken the advice of the editors and staff of the ‘Readers Digest guide to destroying ones home (in a rustic and artistic fashion)’ and set the foundations of a long lasting coat of gloss by rallying my lacksidasical nature into a frenzy of undercoating activity. But I didn’t. To give you an idea of how poor in quality the completed article was I need only impart one further related fact; when someone took it upon themselves to write on my front door using a permanent marker it greatly improved its appearance.
Hopefully by now you will be as convinced as a certain Mr William Walker was in 1906 of the importance of good foundations to a well done task and an enduring legacy. Or in Mr William Walker’s case the importance of foundations to the structural stability of a Cathedral. I wouldn’t expect you to appreciate that obscure light comic reference so risking the loss of your attention once again I shall furnish you with the enlightening details. Mr Walker was a daring and experimental diver who spent his working hours between 1906 and 1911 submersed in the water logged bowels of Winchester Cathedral repairing the foundations. Should this mention of the fascinating work of William Walker pique your interest might I suggest you acquire a copy of ‘The Winchester Diver’ by Ian T. Henderson and John Crook. However, if you are still interested in the history of Junk Culture I suggest you stay right where you are and struggle on with my pondering, wandering prose.
At this point in the tale you are either convinced of the importance of foundations, or you have wandered off to find out if there’s anything more distracting or entertaining to be found on television. As I hear no echoes while I speak I’ll assume the room hasn’t emptied, and I shall continue.
To give you the complete picture regarding the history of Junk Culture I think it’s important to travel back farther than the formation of the band and take a peek at my musical past, the foundations of the story of Junk Culture if you will (now do you see where I was going with that introduction?)
My musical career started in much the same vein as everyone else’s; in my bedroom. Too young to be distracted by the underwear section in the Littlewoods catalogue and too old to be amused by forcing household objects down the toilet to ascertain their flushabiltiy I dwelled in the first of the many hundreds of awkward margins that define ‘growing up.’ I was born in 1976 which made me the perfect age to be captivated and inspired by Live Aid in 1985, and to be excited in a confused and bewildered way by Freddie Mercury’s costumes during the ‘Queen Live at Wembley’ a year later. Mr Mercury (real name Farrokh Bulsara) also taught me that is was okay to swear in front of your parents on two conditions; firstly that they were Queen fans, and secondly that you timed the swear (the word shitty if you must know) to coincide in perfect union with the moment Mr Bulsara was explaining why he felt his guitar was only capable of playing three chords. Once the initial heady excitement of finding a way to swear in front of the olds had past, and the communication contained within the profanity was revealed, I would be confused for years by Freddie’s claim that his shitty guitar could only play three chords. It instilled a general bewilderment in the ways of guitar playing that still dogs me today. Thanks Mr. Mercury, if it wasn’t for you I could have been the next Brian Adams or Chesney Hawkes!
Some guitarists are born to be great, but most are born to be passable. It was the ‘that’ll do’ end of the scale that I aspired to as I stood in front of the full length mirror (that formed the most solid part of my MFI flat pack wardrobe) and shredded my heart out to such hits as ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ by Bonnie Tyler.
This was before the days of tape to tape systems so copying this pompous ode to heart disease from my dad’s tape required sitting inside my wardrobe with the aforementioned master tape playing from a tape deck on one side of the wardrobe, and recording what spewed forth on the tiny microphone of a second tape deck the other side of my polyester/ corduroy mix trousers at the other side of the wardrobe. Any recordings undertaken in this fashion were augmented by the ‘vrip vrip’ of a dozen pairs of corduroy trousers coming into contact with each other as I danced to Mrs Tyler’s bouffanted lament.
As an aside, at the same time that I was nurturing the start of a life long passion for below par musical expression I was already an avid reader. Having consumed the entire Narnia series in the proceeding weeks I quivered with excitement when during a tape bootlegging session in my wardrobe I felt the rear panel give way to the weight of my tiny pre-teen body. I shouldn’t have been surprised as the back of the wardrobe consisted only of wafer thin hardboard, and was only attached to the rest of the wardrobe by a handful of tiny staples. When a young gentleman is disorientated in the dark confines of a closet by man made fibres and Bonnie Tyler we shouldn’t judge too harshly if he starts to believe he has discovered the portal to another world. Imagine my excitement as I gently pushed at the back wall of my wardrobe, anticipating a world of snow, Turkish delight and Centaurs. Kids under ten are not known for being in command of a great knowledge of engineering, so I had no way of knowing the importance of that hardboard and it’s somewhat optimistically employed use for the purpose of structural integrity. I didn’t discover a brave new world, but I did learn (a few moments after the collapse of my ‘studio’) that my parents might not always appreciate my more creative and explorative side, especially if while I indulged in it chucks of plaster were hewn from my bedroom wall and reasonably priced furniture was destroyed.
Like most kids my age I didn’t have a budget for musical instruments, and no amount of creative accounting could stretch my ten pence a week pocket money to afford a real guitar. In fact most weeks had I ‘put my parts on’ (been a dick) funds would be considerably lower. So a badminton racket was my mighty axe, and I tell thee, I could play that badminton racket with phenomenal musical dexterity and found it a most versatile instrument. It was certainly better as a pretend guitar than it was as a tennis racket. And sadly yes, I did mean to write ‘as a tennis racket’. After agreeing to a gentlemanly tennis match with some neighbourhood peers we each retired to our homes to collect equipment. Upon returning to our agreed arena (and after a set or two) I made the discovery that using a badminton racket for the repelling of heavy tennis balls has the tendency to mess about with the form and shape of the thing. Always being one to look for the best in every situation subsequent fantasy guitar sessions focussed on my lofty status in the world of stadium rock, a level and fame and wealth buoyed by the fact I was the only guitarist in the world with a bendy guitar. It was my signature, proof of my unique ability and led to me inventing a handful of new notes.
I continued in much the same vein for the next few years, although things did improve. I eventually upgraded my imaginary guitar - after the head fell off my trusty badminton racket I commandeered my sister’s discarded hockey stick. Thinking back I’m wondering if the superior weight and balance of the new instrument eventually led to me playing bass?
Oddly this was taken just before my art teacher at school told me to give up on art.
By the age of thirteen or fourteen - and with the musical dissuasion of the aural nightmare of compulsory recorder lessons at primary school a fading memory - my interest in music was growing at a similar speed to my interest in female breasts, both alarmingly fast and all consuming. For many years I had been friends with the sons of the village vicar begat, even at that tender age Matt and Tom were both classically trained musicians, and both fancied roughing it for a bit by forming a band. Admittedly this wasn’t the first band they had formed, that was a Pet Shop Boys inspired duo utilising the little 30cm wide monophonic keyboards they had each received for Christmas. This first incarnation was never destined for greatness and at what may have been their only concert (with me and their dog Charlie forming the audience) within seconds of the introduction the dog howled briefly before turning his attention to making sure his testicles were as clean as they should be. Before long the dog had wandered off in search of relief from the high pitched bleating of the mini-keyboards, and I was making excuses to leave, eager as I was to continue my scientific investigation of the Littlewoods Catalogue. The band split due to musical indifference leaving both brothers to explore solo projects.
A few months passed and Tom acquired the rudimentary basics of a drum kit, and Matt had started taking guitar lessons, it was time to form a band and take over the world. For want of anything better to do one Saturday I was drafted in on vocal duties and so ‘The Remedial Class’ was formed.
My Sunn Mustang, a balsa wood guitar with what I assume was a lump of lead inside.
After just one and a half practices we decided to ask our friend Joe to make a music video for us as he had a state of the art camcorder, state of the art at the time meaning it was of a sufficient size and weight to carry on ones shoulder with only minimal contortion of the spine. The half band practice happened when play had to be abandoned early on in proceedings after a band member nearly choked following an attempt to fit one hundred fizzy cola bottle chews in my, err, I mean somebody’s mouth. The concept for the video was not a radical one, but had one element that many years later would be paid homage to by Irish ponce rock pioneers U2. Matt and Tom stood on the vicarage driveway playing our ‘hit’ while I sung into a microphone that was attached directly to the camcorder on Joe’s shoulder. Each time Joe moved around (possibly to try and free up the nerves in his neck that were trapped by the weight of his equipment) the microphone would be nearly jerked out of my hand. Keen as I was to cease the sin against nature that was my singing I was also reluctant to let the microphone fall to its demise on the tarmac, so each time Joe pulled the lead tight I would give it a stern tug back in my direction, this created the same affect that U2 used in one of their allegedly ground breaking videos about ten years later. After a few takes it became painfully clear that my talents lay somewhere other than in singing - somewhere far far away - and we called it a day and pooled our funds in order to buy another hundred cola bottles.
During the brief band meeting that followed, an ill advised second experiment in oral capacity, cola bottles and cherryade, Matt informed me that if I wished to stay in the band I needed to buy a bass; in order to fill a musical hole I had been utterly ignorant of in the band. Without stopping to think for a moment on the gravity of this decision - not pausing to consider how it might ruin the rest of my life - I readily agreed to become the bassist. In a surprisingly short amount of time I was the proud and slightly confused owner of a Sunn Mustang precision copy bass. It was phenomenally heavy, and the fact I had to use a camera strap to support it (I couldn’t afford a real strap) my face wore the same appearance of the victim of a mild stroke that Joe’s did when he was creating his visual masterpieces.
My Sunn Mustang, a balsa wood guitar with what I assume was a lump of lead inside.
The months passed and we practiced several times a week, and eventually I realised if I played with my fingers instead of my thumb I could avoid earning a painful blister each time I made a valiant attempt to play bass. I asked my school for bass lessons, but apparently being the first person in the history of the music department to actually start on bass (rather than try guitar, shrug at the intricacies and demote to bass) they couldn’t help me.
Eventually with the A-team being cancelled and MacGyver becoming all too predictable Saturday television no long held its dark spell over us and we asked our friend Dan Foden to be our singer so that we could conquer the world as a real, fully fledged, proper band. We even decided on a new name, we could be called ‘Nice’ on account of the fact that one of Matt and Tom’s sisters had a tee shirt with a drawing of a Nice biscuit on it. Of course only one of us could wear the band tee shirt at a time, but impressively for such a young band we proved we had an understanding of merchandise. With a singer maybe we could shift some ‘units’?
With much the same level of bewilderment (and for want of any solid excuses) Dan joined the band and we prepared for our first gig. A gig that would change our young lives forever, a gig with cider, a gig with sweat and violence and most importantly for the teenager in me, a gig with groupies.
I was a lot taller than other boys my age, I'm probably stood a good metre back from everyone else. Note obvious Stone Roses influences in the Reni hat and the Spike Island tee shirt. Two of these people are now doctors, while the other two still play in bands, can you guess who?
It can’t have escaped your notice that once a band achieves some sort of recognition everyone forever more wants to read about them. We all relish the dirt that band biographies unearth; we adore tales of excellent excess and languidly licentious lows. These biographies offer us a voyeur’s glimpse into a world we will never know, a glimmer of glamour far beyond our reach.
To me these insalubrious incitements to imagine the hedonistic highs of heroes often seem vapid and lacking in what I consider a crucial ingredient; the meat behind the meteoric rise to fame. Upon completing the absorption of a rock biography I find myself casting down the book both physically and in my opinions. I want to know how these eagles of excess rose to mount their cultural pedestals; a mere detail glossed over by all band biographies. The authors and editors of such books assume us content and grateful to be placated with a paragraph detailing the salient facts, they hold back their arsenal of salacious details, only allowing us to gorge upon them later in their tall told tales.
But how? Answering the school careers officer’s career questioning with the firm and unyielding reply that I wished to make my way in the world through the pursuit of loudly performed rock perfection earned me only raised eyebrows and slow sighs that told tales of the considered fruitless feckless nature of such a path. When I was at school there was no pamphlet prescribed for the pursuit of a place in the Pantheon of rock godliness. Sure, if you were a classical (aka real) musician there was a sliver of hope in your aspirations to pay the bills with a life of concerts and creativity, but if you desired to develop as a professional electrical musician the advice of the careers officer was entirely absent. And so after my perennial persistence of being in a band I found myself on what my careers officer considered a comparable compromise; I was enrolled on a nursing course. I was destined to forgo the baying of the hungry crowd for the bedpan of strangers aching bowels.
So you’ll perhaps understand that in finding regular sources absent in their knowledge of how I might climb the ladder of rock I turned to these band biographies. I was in search of tangible titbits of advice that might launch me toward where I wished to be. Time after time my search was in vain; no advice was gifted to me from these pages. There was no three step plan to greatness, there were no hints at how to crack the scene, there was no practical pointers to aid me in my quest.
As I mentioned earlier most books on bands cover the early days as if they were an unfortunate ailment that should not be discussed in polite company. They will briefly mention that after three years of gigging the band was spotted and propelled skyward towards their place in the rock and roll hall of fame. Surely that seems simplistic, even to those of us who don’t indulge in the fruitlessly damaging drug that is dreaming of stardom? Would the biography of a great political leader mention only briefly a day or two of the subject’s youth before leaping forward to the day their achievements were rewarded in the Queen’s new years honours?
The early careers of all those who achieve greatness have a remarkable and definite bearing on making them who they are at the moment they achieve said greatness. For a chap like Winston Churchill it was the grotesque failure of campaigns in his charge (like the bloodbath that was Gallipoli in World War One) that became a jigsaw piece in the complex puzzle that formed the man that helped steer allied victory in World War Two. Should an eager young history degree student gloss over Churchill’s pre-WW2 life in a dissertation then I’m sure he’d achieve something less than worthy of his time in the hallowed halls of academia.
The hard lessons learned before a band breaks through entirely dictate the type of band they will be, it also cements or sullies the relationships between band members that develop during these awkward early years. During their first few years bands develop the awesome siege spirit that protects and envelops them both creatively and practically.
Not all bands make it past awkward obscurity; in fact the vast majority of bands never make it. Succeeding in a band is less likely than succeeding in a lottery, and at least playing the lottery is considerably cheaper and undeniably less hassle than playing in a band. For every million selling band there are a million bands that will never sell. I believe the torrid tales of the terminally tenebrous are no less fascinating and entertaining than those of their breakthrough brethren. Here I will tell you the tale of a band that never made it, a band that never troubled the charts or nibbled the elbow of awesomeness. I will divulge the details of a band that existed for over a decade and utterly consumed the lives of those involved; both the players and the supporting cast. What follows is the tale of Junk Culture – a band that owned my soul for most of my adult young life. A band that I left my job for, a job I faced brutal violence for, a true band of brothers. Junk Culture was a band untroubled by the pressures and expectations of fans (for we had none). We were unhindered by the obstacle of creativity that is the symbiant of success. A band with a cavalier attitude to talent, and only a nodding familiarity with striving for success. You’ll laugh, you’ll pity us, but most of all hopefully you’ll empathise and enjoy this tale, whether you are involved in a band of your own or not. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, a tale of Junk Culture.
Early in 2010 we (meaning Corndog Publishing) published an anthology of one of our favourite zines 'Now then Gadgie'. This anthology has been very well received, and here are some of the reviews.
Mass Movement Zine Highly amusing collection of anecdotes and autobiographical accounts from self confessed football loving punk and creator of ‘Gadgie’ zine. Chronicling Marv’s formative years in the 80s, touching on all the usual cultural references from that decade (Grange Hill, ZX Spectrums, The ‘punk’ episode of Quincy, The Young Ones, Fred Perry shirts and V neck jumpers and curly perms), through his forays into Europe, dislike of AC/DC, experiencing the worst toilet in the world (next to the harbour in Boston, Lincs in case you are wondering) and of course numerous tales of Footie matches and culture; I found Gadgie’s barbed comments regarding glory chasing premiership fans who support teams totally unconnected with their hometown particularly entertaining and just. If this sounds like an enjoyable read to you then seek professional help. But seriously folks this is an enjoyable stroll down memory lane for anyone over the age of 30 and an entertaining glimpse into the life of Gadgie. Ian Pickens
Suspect Device Zine “Dear Jim, could you fix it for me to read a book by one of my favourite fanzine writers?” What we have here is a book by everyone’s favourite PE teacher, Marv Gadgie; I think I’m right in saying that this is a collection of Marv’s written work that have appeared in his own zine, Gadgie, as well as other zines. It’s almost an autobiography in that the book starts with tails of the young Marv’s childhood misdemeanours, and follows him as he grows up to become the respectable member of society he is now, or something like that. As you might expect by now, this is full of funny anecdotes and all written in Marv’s inimitable style; his use of childish, and local slang made me fondly remember the colloquialisms that we used where I grew up, and although I was much less of a tearaway than Marv seems to have been in his early years, some of his experiences are very similar to my own. Even the pieces I remember reading before still thrilled me, and made me laugh out loud; you don’t need to know Marv to enjoy this book, but I do know Marv and I think you get a real sense of who he is from reading this. I guess the mark of a good book, and a good writer is if you get inspired to write yourself, and this made me want to write the way Dan O’Mahony’s books did several years ago. Wonderful stuff. Oh, and I did get a Jim’ll Fix It badge too! (Tony)
Broken Pencil WebsiteNow Then Gadgie breaks the zine anthology mould By Luke You 'Gadgie' is a classic UK zine put out by Marv Gadgie from the town of Boston in Lincolnshire, UK. I have been aware of the zine since the turn of the century and the sight of a new issue in my PO Box always brings a smile to my face. The wonderful Andrew Culture and Corndog Publishing/zine distro in the UK have put out a book, a zine anthology dedicated to the wonderful world of 'Gadgie'. The unusual thing about the anthology is that the zine 'Gadgie' is usually 95% dedicated to brutal hardcore, brutal hardcore record reviews, brutal hardcore show reviews, brutal hardcore zine reviews, but the zine anthology is made up only of the other 5% of the zine content. This 5% of the zine takes the form of Marv reminising about growing up in the north of England in the 1980's and the mind blowingly outrageous adventures that the eight year old yet-to-be zine-maker got up to. It is a surprising approach to a zine anthology and one which makes a successful transition from zine to book. You can get a copy of the book from the Corndog website and check out a stack of other fine UK zines while you are there http://www.corndog.co.uk/zine-distro/ Buried Alive Website Long running master of the humorous anecdote, Marv ‘Gadgie’, has finally put together his work into book format. What follows is endless short tales of the trouble Marv has landed himself in over the years, written in such a down to earth, genuine tone, it feels like I’m sat in the pub with him. Well influential in the likes of UK personal zines, Gadgie is the one to start with, with this book being the perfect way to make up for any original issues of the zine you might have missed out on. Not to mention the free Jim’ll fix it keyring I got with it, can’t go wrong!
Mild Peril Zine Yep, Gadgie of Gadgie zine fame (strange that) has just released a collection of his best columns all in one lovely book that the superb Corndog has put out. Now Gadgie is well known in zine circles for writing some of the most hilarious tales of his life, the collection here literally made me laugh harder than I have done for a long, long time. You get a total of 150 pages, mainly anecdotes from his childhood, punk rock, travelling and playing in non league football teams. My personal favourite ones were from his childhood though, getting in to mischief and generally doing what boys will do. It’s the way he words things which gets me though, regular Gadgie readers know what I’m on about, those who haven’t read anything Gadgie based before, do so asap. On t’ Road Zine It is finally here, the long awaited book from popular zine writer Marv Gadgie. This is essentially an edited compilation of all of Marv’s best work over the years (taken from Gadgie fanzine) covering four decades and spread over 150 pages. It is full of hilarious anecdotes from Marv’s youth and recent times in Boston. Fans and non-fans of Gadgie should definitely pick this up – go on son, he’s a good writer and it’s ony a fiver. Highly recommended.
