Five Miles Out

And Then I’m Happy For The Rest of the Day

Essex is not famous for its bands. It is not Manchester, Liverpool or even Sheffield. I can only think of three Essex bands that have been huge successes – Depeche Mode, The Prodigy and the only one from Colchester – Blur.

Their first album was a baggy album and derivative of that scene from the every early 90s, very Madchester, very shoegazing. Their second album was less successful commercially and it looked like the band had reached the end.

Blur incorporated a far more “English” sound – The Beatles, the Kinks and XTC were obvious influences and their third album, Parklife, is a classic. Girls and Boys talks about the herd going down to Greece, which had become the chosen destination for teens and twenty somethings.

John, Neil and Dave had gone to Corfu in 1988 and Rhodes in 1989 (with Andy, Richard and Pete) – my exams had stopped me. Rhodes in 1989 sounded great in the telling. It invented the term Tickner flick for out group – drop your boxers to the foot and flick them into your hand when undressing.

So in 1991 we were going to Kos. One night in the Swan pub after a Rotoract meeting Dave saw that they had Swan polo shirts. We agreed that we would get them as a holiday uniform. Bear in mind that this was not a thing at the time, in 1991 and 1992 we saw no other groups in matching shirts. We made the mistake of wearing them on the way out – they were not wearable again, so missed out the impact they would have made on holiday.

(John, Neil, Me, Andy – Dave taking the photo).

So, the next year (without Dave) we decided to do our own shirts. Andy knew an artist and our Moosehunter T shirts were designed (an in joke). The mistake we made was paying £20 for the art and £2 for the shirts. They did not survive one wash in shape though that probably was for the best given their non-PC design. The first night out in Kos we returned to Club 69 – one of the liveliest bars on the island the previous year. Now it was like a morgue. We got drunk and ended up dancing on the high tables outside waving the shirts around. Given how drunk we were there were a few falls and some bruises, but the place was banging.

(Back John and Neil, front Andy and me – Kos 1992)

There were certain shirts that were expected – Ocean Pacific were really big at the time and Global hypercolour had taken off. Global Hypercolour shorts were a step too far for me – way too little left to the imagination.

(Global hypercolour was de rigeur, but it was so hot you can only see tiny patches of the darker colour).

We all bought Club 69’s T-shirts – again best that the design is unclear. Andy paired most of his T-shirts with cycling shorts on that holiday. Here he is being accosted by Stav (real name or not that is what he told us to call him) the owner of Club 69. He was a real character, challenging arm wrestlers who were semi pros and riding scooters when off his head. He spent his winters in North London.

(Stav and Andy in Club 69)

We played for the Club 69 football team against a group of Danes (who regularly played together) on that holiday. Despite being well behind at half time in the afternoon heat. We came back to win. Not sure how it happened as I was our lone defender (possibly why we leaked goals so badly). I think our attack could be characterised as “direct” and “physical”. I suspect John had a great deal to do with our success as he actually played for a team at home.

Blur followed Parklife with The Great Escape, which is a really great album, but after that mid 90s feud with Oasis (seemingly to see who could rip The Beatles off most) Blur were not that big a force anymore. Song 2 was one of those songs that crossed over for use in lots of TV and adverts, weird as it is so unyielding. Then it was time for Gorillaz and cheese-making.

Parklife

I’m So Tired of Trying

David Coverdale was the second lead singer in Deep Purple in the band’s third line up. Generally considered less impressive than the Ian Gillan era it is still much better than what followed it and Coverdale is an impressive vocalist. He formed Whitesnake and they were a solid metal band, though with a taste for misogyny that ran through the genre in the 80s. They recorded Fool For Your Loving twice – but the band believe (correctly) the 1980 version is much better.

The West Indies toured England in that year. That team were one of the two great international cricket dynasties I have ever seen. Australia from the early/ mid 90s took over from them for about 14 years but the West Indies were the best team in the world from 1976 to around 1993. Yet they do not get the kudos they deserve – in part due to it being the pre-Sky sport era (Sky do not think anything counts before 1993) and partially because of a controversy over their tactics.

Novelty of bowling is devastating in cricket. Leg spin almost disappeared in the 70s and 80s, so when Shane Warne and others emerged they were bowling to a generation of batsman who had not played it. Pace bowling had gone out of fashion to an extent in the 60s due to slow pitches. It had dominated post war cricket – Australia with Lindwall and Miller, then England’s revenge with Typhoon Frank Tyson.

On the 1970/71 tour of Australia Ray Illingworth deployed John Snow’s pace to great effect – they regained the Ashes in Australia, a rare feat. When England arrived in 1974/75 they faced Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson – one of the most hostile attacks in history, before helmets and other safety equipment. England lost 4-1 (the one was when the two bowlers were injured).

The following year the West Indies toured Australia and lost 5-1. Their skipper Clive Lloyd, a man whose cricket thinking has been under acknowledged, realised pace was the way forward. Playing India on a spinning pitch in Guyana the West Indies Board picked three spinners, who could not stop India scoring over 400 to win the match. After that Lloyd had his way in selection.

England were beaten 3-0 in 1976. In the final match, on a dead Oval pitch at the height of the driest summer in a generation, the West Indies score 869 losing just 8 wickets. In 53 overs Michael Holding took 14 English wickets for 149 runs.

World Series Cricket interrupted the West Indian dominance, but the need to use different players meant that they brought on a crop of fast bowlers earlier than they may have done without that intervention.

A group of the fast bowlers, all of whom would have been spearheading the attacks for other countries, chose to take the money for a rebel tour of South Africa – Wayne Daniel, Sylvester Clarke, Colin Croft and Ezra Moseley were a devastating strike force, except compared to the first choice one the West Indies had.

It did not matter. In 1980 they beat England 1-0, in 1980-81 they won 2-0 (and it would have been three except for incredible knocks from Gooch and Gower). In 1984 they toured facing an England team without their South African rebels. Malcolm Marshall now led the attack with Holding, Joel Garner, Eldine Baptiste and Milton Small. England lost 5-0 – blackwashed as the signs said. Marshall was by now the best bowler in the world and took 7 for 23 at Headingley, despite a thumb broken in two places.

(The sign that invented the term Blackwash)

England, with their rebels back toured the Caribbean in 1985-6. The hope of English fans had been that as this superb crop of bowlers aged they would not be replaced. It had been expected that Courtney Walsh, who was the most successful bowler in the English County Championship would join the quartet with Marshall, Garner and Holding. He did not get a game – Patrick Patterson played and was devastating, just with extreme pace. Walsh soon got his chance when Holding retired – he ended up as the highest wicket taking fast bowler, the record lasting until 2020. England lost 5-0 again.

In 1988 England lost 4-0 at home, saving the first test thanks to a Graham Gooch century. Yet this team did not get the kudos they deserved. They were attacked for their pace bowling being dangerous – too many bouncers and for their slow over rate. As they played four quicks the rate was slow – but other teams were deliberately slowing over rates as well (India bowled as slow as the West Indies in 1981/2, but with an all spin attack). Bouncers had been an issue with any team that had genuine pace bowlers since 1974/75.

All teams were stretching the norms of the game in the 80s. Eventually over rates would be mandated and bouncers limited. Yet the West Indies steamed on with Curtley Ambrose and Ian Bishop joining the attack.

Their fall from grace was really due to the urge to produce pace bowlers. Domestic pitches were prepared for pace bowlers to ensure they came through, but it inhibited the development of great batsmen (Brian Lara made it because he was so awesomely talented) and it made pace bowling too easy. Ian Bishop was injured and had to retire very early.

They soldiered on as a powerhouse due to Ambrose, Walsh and Lara but the Australian team went past them and after the retirement of that trio West Indian cricket declined.

I have not even mentioned Viv Richards. Sky always say Sachin Tendulkar was the greatest batsman of modern times. If Sir Viv had played in the Sky era I think they would have run out of praise for him. Not just his runs, or when he scored them. It was how he scored them – imperious and dominating. No doubt about it, Sachin is only the second-best batsman of the last 50 years.

(Sir Isaac Vivian Alexander Richards – the Master Blaster)

It would be remiss not to also point out the team had one of the best opening partnerships of all time, Greenidge and Haynes, plus Larry Gomes whose willingness to play the foil to all the great strokemakers gave the team a solidity and strength.

There is a great film about the team – Fire in Babylon – even if you do not like cricket it is a good documentary. The saddest thing was when they talked about all the great fast bowlers, they all agreed that the greatest was Malcolm Marshall. He took 396 wickets at an average of under 21, then died at the age of just 41. I find it hard to believe that there was ever a better fast bowler than Marshall.

(Malcolm Denzil Marshall – the best pace bowler I have ever seen)

I hated how England constantly lost to them, but you have to admire greatness when you see it. They were a team of giants.

Fool For Your Loving

Working For the Black Gas

The Tube was Channel 4’s music show. Much more of a music show than Top of the Pops it was presented by Jules Holland and Paula Yates. It was anarchic, coming live from Tyne Tees, it featured a magazine section, bands that were not famous and bands that were, all doing a set of songs rather than just one hit. It also featured the infamous Tube cameraman who felt the urge to film bands from the floor, “inadvertently” filming up the skirts of the audience.

In early 1993 they showed a taped section of new Liverpudlian band called Frankie Goes To Hollywood. The song was lyrically filthy and the band dressed like leathermen. I remember saying (it must have been to Mike) – good song but it will never, ever get airplay.

Fast forward and a very different version of the song is released late in 1983. The music was changed but the words had definitely not been altered and it still referred to orgasming, Trevor Horn had sprinkled his production magic on it. Breakfast Show DJ Mike Read played the new entries, high climbers and the number 1 on one of his weekday shows. Obviously he had not listened to it as a new entry (and you could tell the DJs that listened to music rather than just played it) as when it climbed rapidly he decided not to play it.

Bad move – it went to number 1 and, whilst Relax, was never officially banned, it was not played in the daytime.

It was still in the charts when its follow up was released – Two Tribes. Riffing on the heightened Cold War tension that the Reagan era had produced it was about the US/ Soviet confrontation. The video explicitly shows it. It was released in several different 12-inch versions, which helped maintain it at number 1 for nine weeks – almost unheard of in that era. Meanwhile Relax reclimbed the charts to the number 2 position.

All time best seller lists have been distorted by downloads in recent years, but they were the second and third bestselling songs ever at the time (since then rereleases have pushed Bohemian Rhapsody and others past Two Tribes). To have two of the best-selling singles of all time as your first two singles was almost impossible to live up to.

Their third single was number 1 for just one week. The Power of Love had a Christmas themed video and was very different from their other material. It did make them only the second band ever to have their first three singles go to the top. There was masses of Frankie merchandise and they were huge.

Their second album was not a success. Liverpool is a much rockier album and contains a couple of great tracks like Warriors of the Wasteland. It was not produced by Trevor Horn and Frankie were yesterday’s band by 1986. They split up.

1984 was the year I did A levels and went to university. Like them or not Frankie Goes to Hollywood tower over that year musically and left a mark on popular music that endures until today.

Don’t go to war.

Two Tribes

John Hawkins

t is not surprising that the re-release of Relax sounded different musically. For “Trevor Horn had sprinkled his production magic on it” read: “had the song re-recorded by a different band”

IIRC Horn listened to the track and then had the music completely re-recorded by the Blockheads (Ian Dury’s backing band). I don’t think any of the FGTH band played on the single that charted

According to Horn, some serious work was needed on Holly Johnson’s voice to make it sound like he could sing as well. He went on record, when Johnson left the band to go solo (anyone remember Americanos??), to say that now the world would see how bad his voice really was (and therefore what a great producer Horn was).

But then Horn was always a master of self-promotion in his production tracks. He even got himself in Godley & Creme’s brilliant Cry video (a video copied at the end of MJ’s Black or White). His is the final face morphed into

Graham Wright writes

INXS played, Hutchence met Yates and a trail of multi generational death by misadventure and suicide followed. All the Tube’s fault…

So Let’s Dance Through All Our Fears

I am not a big fan of Kylie Minogue. She was the scruffy tomboy mechanic in Neighbours who turned up and fell in love with ethe fake Scott Robinson (Jason Donovan was not the original, the role was recast when it moved channels). My knowledge of Neighbours is pretty much limited to my student days, with the exceptions of the stars who broke out to be internationally famous, like Natalie Imbruglia or Holly Vallance.

When she left the show for a music career, I was doubtful. More so when it was with Stock, Aitken and Waterman. Now as a writing, producing promotion team they enjoyed huge success in the late 80s – a wasteland in the pop music years. After the New Romantics and before the birth of House music. They started in the Hi-NRG market (quaintly labelled Boystown by the music press, when they meant gay club scene music) and then moved onto to doing numbers for groups like Bananarama.

They found their level when they started using interchangeable lead singers. They would write and record a track. The singer would just come in and record a vocal. The songs all had a very distinctive sound, very thin and tinny, in my opinion of course. Famously Kylie’s first single for them, I Should Be So Lucky, was done in less than an hour they forgot she was coming in.

PWL tried to brand themselves as the Hit Factory, harkening back to Motown as Hitsville USA. The difference was Motown had Smoke Robinson, Lamont/ Dozier/ Holland, Marvin Gaye and a house band that vied with The Wrecking Crew for musical brilliance,

Diana Ross, Marvin Gaye, the Temptation or Rick Astley, Sonia and the Reynolds Girls? The proof is in the length of the careers.

Kylie left PWL and roughened up her image, becoming much more sexual, dating Michael Hutchence (that guy got around). She recorded Where the Wild Roses grow with Nick Cave.

She recorded some good tracks around 2000, like Spinning Around and I Can’t Get You Out of My Head. Like Madonna she chose her writing and production teams well, but she is a singer of other people’s songs. Not, in of itself a problem – if you gave the voice of Aretha or Whitney, Kylie doesn’t.

This song was a flop in that on release but was remixed. Russell T Davies used it in the first episode of Cucumber as part of a brilliant scene of people getting ready to go out while an urgent phone call was being made – the song adds an energy to the scene that is already tense, the uplifting music counterpointing the bad news on the phone. The remix is so far above the original it really should not be credited to Kylie, more to the remixers. I know people love Kylie, but I think she is lucky, lucky, lucky in her career.

Your Disco Needs You (Casino Radio and Club Mix)

Suddenly the Rain Came Down

How to qualify as a chartered accountant keeps changing. When I did it the emphasis was on exams – a system that did not reflect what you had to do at work. The format was tweaked on many occasions after I passed. You were also required to complete a training file, showing that you had a range of experience over accounting, audit and tax – the latter was a nightmare due to Caroline Cadbury monopolising it (see https://fivemilesout.home.blog/2020/08/20/the-world-turns-around/).

There were two ways to qualify. If you had a done a non-accountancy degree there was a first year Graduate Conversion Course (which was not official) and then the two professional exams, PE1 and PE2 (professional Examination). There was just six years from registering as a student to pass – otherwise you were time barred and would never qualify. The other kicker was the system worked on pass, marginal pass, marginal fail and fail (marginal meant within 5% of the pass mark). A single fail meant all papers had to be retaken, two marginal fails meant all papers had to be retaken. A single marginal fail meant you had one chance to do that paper on its own – if you did not pass it was all the papers again.

The older trainees said getting passes, rather than marginal passes, was a sign that you had overworked.

If you had done an accountancy degree you skip the conversion course and take the professional exams 18 months rather than a year apart. If was a double-edged sword though – all degrees were different and there was material that would be needed later that was studied at GCC that you may not have covered. Also degrees were very theoretical, the training was very much focused on doing the work.

It was possible for people on GCC to claim exemptions from individual papers if they could show they had covered that material.

We had four three-hour exams:

Financial Accounting – double entry bookkeeping
Quantitative Techniques (maths – I thought about claiming an exemption, but there was a lot of statistics that my A levels had not covered, in the end the job never required statistics)
Law – contracts and torts
Economics – basics, never, ever seen again in future exams or at work

Plus 2 two-hour papers:

Management Accounts – basics
Computing – so out of date it was a joke, it was still about mainframes and punch cards.

Each week during the year we had to study certain chapters and then do a test. To start with we had to go back to the office on Friday afternoons for this, but after a few weeks it was abandoned as the actual work the firm was doing was deemed more important. Then we had to do them at home and hand them in on Monday, finally they gave up caring at all if we did them or not.

We had four weeks of revision in Cambridge (they usually used one of the Colleges, though we also experienced some cold church halls) with lecturers – our law lecturer was hilarious and made a dull subject come alive (believe me contract law is ass dull as it gets). There was a week of tests and then three days of exams. This was done in the University Arms Hotel, a place I had last visited as part of a drunken film society dinner (https://fivemilesout.home.blog/2020/07/10/blackness-blackness-draggin-me-down/ ).

The first day was two three-hour papers, the other two days had a three-hour paper in the morning and a two-hour paper in the afternoon.

At the end of the first day it finished at 4pm and we all rushed across Parker’s Piece to the multi-story car park. We wanted to get home and revise for the next day, but Cambridge was gridlocked. It took over an hour to get out of the car park and another to get out of the mess. At least I was staying locally, poor Lesley and Dawn had to get back to Felixstowe. The fact that all six exams were in three days was unlike O levels, A levels (8 papers in 3 week) or university exams)

At the end of it all four of us passed, as well as the two trainees from the Bury St Edmunds office that we knew. I actually got a placed nationally in the computing exam, somewhere in the top 10 – so if punch cards come back I’ m the man.

This song is so beautiful and the only one Danny Wilson are remembered for (they wanted to call themselves Spencer Tracy, but the actor objected).

Mary’s Prayer

There’s Anger In My Heart

In Royston a lot of the same people were involved in the church (St Johns for the record) and the drama group. One family was the Lynch’s. Gill and Bernard plus their three daughters – Felicity, Stephanie and Rachel (plenty of people wondered why Rachel was not named Melanie to fit the pattern).

Undoubtedly the coolest of the three was Felicity. She was two years above me at Meridian but was so incredibly cool that she would actually talk to me. Meridian had cross year tutor groups while I was there, so it was not quite as year divided as most schools but it was still unusual to talk to younger pupils outside tutor time (or home room for any American readers). Felicity would talk to me whenever she saw me without seeming to care what her friends thought.

One time, standing with my friends behind her in the lunch queue, (lunch queuing at Meridian was anarchy at lunch break – first come, first served, leading to sprinting in the corridors when the bell went to end morning classes) she told me the nun in the bath joke:

Two nuns are in the bath.

Nun 1: Where’s the soap?

Nun 2: Yes, it does rather.

I claimed to understand it, but didn’t at the time. My friends were just impressed that a very attractive fifth former was telling me dirty jokes.

Far more useful was a conversation that I had at the end of the third form. Felicity had done her O level French paper and I asked how it had gone. She told me all about how bad it was – it had a bank robbery scenario that called for a lot of unusual verbs and nouns.

The Lynch’s moved early in the fourth form, but I remembered that conversation. In our fourth form end of year exams they used that paper from the previous year. Despite my foreknowledge and studying of the specialist words I still only got a C grade – it was my worst subject. Still without Felicity it would have been worse.

The following year at Colne I did my French O level – without the safety net that Felicity had provided the previous year. I went in for the oral exam wearing a Dungeons and Dragons badge that I had got at Games Fair (see post https://fivemilesout.home.blog/2020/09/16/find-a-place-to-go/ ). This should have been curtains…… except I had also spoken to a French Dungeons and Dragons fan at Games Fair. So I knew what D&D was in French, plus the names of monsters and character classes so I was able to maintain a several minute conversation about it. I think this impressed the examiner and it severely curtailed the time available for other discussions.

I got a C in French. I do not think I deserved a C in French. I got lucky twice. I would probably not have been in an O level class without Felicity and I would have failed without meeting that French guy in Reading.

I never found out where Felicity ended up in life, but I’m tagging her so if she ever searches for her name she may find her way here. Long time later to thank her for being that cool, but it would be great to do so.

Judas Priest are an unusual metal band, in that their lead singer is openly gay. He wasn’t back in the 80s when their defining single came out. One of the bands that come out of the New Wave of Heavy Metal this is their most famous track.

Breaking the Law

Across the Midnight Sky

Flip and Fill are one of those dance acts, with varying singers, who did a cover of a famous song in a dance mode – in their case I Wanna Dance With Somebody (other groups did Bryan Adams’ Heaven and Duran Duran’s Ordinary World). Shooting Star was their best track.

There are six television auteurs whose work I love. I have already talked about Russell T Davies; later there will probably be entries about David Simon, Joss Whedon, Steve Bochco and Jenji Kohan. This is about Steven Moffatt.

My sister, Frances, told me that I should watch Press Gang. It was a children’s show but it was being repeated on Sunday evenings. This was Moffatt’s first writing gig and is about a junior newspaper at a secondary school. It was Julia Sawalha’s big break and was also the debut of Gabrielle Anwar, who went on to major fame. Its starts slowly and some of the acting is a bit painful. It addresses a lot of painful issues like suicide, drug abuse and glue sniffing. It was funny and yet packed more dramatic punch than most adult shows of the time. It shows signs of Moffatt’s talent with connections between episodes seasons apart, as well as flashbacks and clever wordplay.

(Cast of Press Gang)

He wrote three episodes of the sadly overlooked Murder Most Horrid (with the interminable repeats of Only Fools and Horses and Last of the Summer Wine on UK Gold I do not see why this does not get a run out). Lack of repeats also applies to Joking Apart and Chalk, both autobiographical sitcoms, neither of which is seen much. I liked, Chalk, drawing on Moffatt’s days as a teacher but it was panned and consigned to history.

Joking Apart and Coupling were about his marriage breakdown and meeting his second wife (the Jack Davenport character is him). Coupling is one of the best sitcoms ever, using Moffatt’s tricks of telling a story from multiple viewpoints and time shifts to good effect. It is not a simple sitcom and requires thinking to watch it – I binged it in two days (and I hardly ever binge) to get through a miserable time one Christmas. It cheered me up a lot, but a four, series British sitcom, after all that labour is just 12 hours.

His next major project was an adaption of a classic horror story. He strayed further from the source material with Jekyll than with the later Dracula and was, in my opinion, more successful. Having James Nesbitt as the lead will always lead to a bit of a marmite response but I thought that he really nailed it.

His biggest body of work is his huge run on Doctor Who. He had written the short story Continuity Errors in the 90s – which is almost like a manifesto for his TV run and a lot of it is reused in A Christmas Carol, as the Doctor repeatedly changes the timeline to get what he needs in the present. He wrote one story a year in the Russel T Davies’ era – including Blink that barely features the Doctor and introduces The Weeping Angels and a two parter that features River Song for the first time from our point of view, where she dies. In a time travel show this is not a problem. He won three Hugo awards for his work in this period, covering four of the six episodes that he wrote.

His run covered Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi’s in the lead role and, for me, is the best run in the show’s history. There are so many great stories like The Time of Angels, The Pandorica Opens, The Big Bang, The impossible Astronaut, The Day of the Moon, The Name of the Doctor, The Day of the Doctor from the Smith era alone. He also wrote a regeneration story for Paul McGann and managed to get John Hurt in as an extra Doctor. My only disappointment was that the Time War just seemed like an ordinary war – a war fought by transtemporal powers would not just be shooting and explosions(Kate Orman describes it well in the novel Walking to Babylon and multiple writers in The Book of the War).

Capaldi’s era was less popular but still had an array of stories like Dark Water, Death In Heaven, The Magician’s Apprentice, The Witch’s Familiar and the acclaimed Heaven Sent (widely considered to be one of the best episodes of the show). He also recast the Master as a woman and explicitly showed a male Time Lord regenerating to a female body in Hell Bent, paving the way for Jodie Whitaker to be cast in the lead role and make my brother a very happy man.

At the same time as this he created the modern incarnation of Sherlock. It is hard to believe than when it started Benedict Cumberbatch was not a superstar. It was massively draining – the pilot was shot twice and each story looked like it was a feature film. It disrupted the production of Doctor Who but was a phenomenal ratings success. Critically acclaimed too – The Abominable Bride winning awards, though it was too esoteric for many (Mum I ‘m looking at you here).

Moffatt is inventive and creative. I’m looking forward to what he does next. If you haven’t seen all his work treat yourself and watch what you have missed. Even if you hate Doctor Who watch Blink and Heaven Sent.

Shooting Star

John Hawkins I do like the re-imagining of Sherlock by Moffatt and Gatiss and generally the work of both those writers. However, I’d have to say the connections between episodes seasons apart, flashbacks and clever wordplay are learned. They are strikingly similar to the ones used by John Sullivan (co-incidentally the writer of the mentioned OFAH) in almost all the work he did. Look past (the undoubtedly great) Horses and search out the cleverer Dear John, sadly lost along with it’s star too early to have become a loved classic en-masse. I would go so far as to say Moffatt’s use of these devices appears to be a homage to Sullivan.

As for the tune: this leads me to an exasperated moan at a bug bear of mine. We in the UK are “treated” to the best of UK music but that from the wider world almost always passes us by. Songs not in English are next-to unheard of in the charts here. Clubs tend to fare a little better but still not well. A great example and a pretty direct comparison is Russian dance / DJ duo Filatov & Karas. Whilst their version of Don’t Be So Shy was a smash hit (and I mean smash hit – look it up on Wiki if you don’t know how wide a smash it was) all over Europe and the rest of the world, I have never heard it played in the UK. Sad and probably a reflection of our rampant (especially European-pointing) xenophobia 😦 It is better than anything Flip and Fill (or DnA etc.) have done for UK audiences.

The Filatov & Karas Remix:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYhxaZXXwsg

By the original singer/songwriter Imany, sung raw:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgI0oExkl20Delete or hide this

YOUTUBE.COM♛♛♛ Imany – Don’t be so shy (Filatov & Karas Remix) ♛♛♛

We Are All Just Prisoners Here of Our Own Device

They were yacht rock. Not that anyone called it that at the time, it was named that retrospectively and I only found out when I watched a Katie Puckrik documentary about the soft rock/ country crossover music of that period. The Eagles were the sound of the summer for several years in the mid-1970s. That made them part of the music scene, along with the progressive rockers, like Genesis and Yes, that punk existed to overthrow.

The Eagles are more than one track and some of them are more rock than you would think – like Life in the Fast Lane. The story of the tensions in the Eagles are in many ways as interesting than the music – lots of groups have fights but the Eagles set some kind of record for mutual loathing.

Of course, I could not like The Eagles. My stepfather, Richard, had an Eagles album. On the weekends we stayed in Newmarket with him and Mum we would put records on as we waited for Sunday lunch (records were in short supply in those days and we were limited to our parents’ choice of albums).

I am not sure that I could have been luckier with step parents. In fact I am sure that I could not have been luckier.

Very soon after he met Mum he took me to a shooting club. He was a member and I had expressed an interest in trying shooting for my birthday. He took me a long and help me shoot – it was a lot harder and less fun than I thought. Only time I shot a gun in my life.

When I was doing my Graduate Conversion Accountancy course my car would not start. I got a jump to get there but it would not start again on the way home and I had to get the RAC out. Richard diagnosed it as the alternator (this after a test drive on Saturday morning to see if it would charge; I was petrified of stalling the car and having to walk miles to phone someone – mobile phones are a force for good). Richard got the old alternator off and put the new one on – a level of mechanical skill that is foreign to me.

He is the calmest man I know. If Richard gets angry it must be pretty bad. Once or twice as kids Mike, Tony and I had chores to do when we stayed at Stretton Avenue in the summer and we repeatedly did not do them. We deservedly got told off and made sure we did them promptly after that.

He is a really measured, nice person. Always gives good advice, without being flashy. It sounds like damning with faint praise, but it isn’t at all. Richard is a rock of stability and is always a source of sensible, useful advice.

The best thing is that he make Mum happy. Something that makes me so happy too. At their wedding Michael, Tony and I got pretty drunk (and were all under the legal age for drinking by several years), but then I was drunk when Dad and Anne married and I was even younger then. Richard and Mum showed a great deal of forbearance on that day.

(Mum, Richard, Sophie Ball, Dad, me, front – Karen Ball, Saxon and Harriet Robinson-Smith, Cerys Ball in 2018)

This is the sound of childhood Sunday lunch at Stanley Road and Stretton Avenue in Newmarket in the late 1970s, with Mum, Richard, Mike, my step siblings Tracy and Tony plus my grandparents. Happy times.

Hotel California

Straight Out of Zenn-La

This another artist and album I ignored when people were telling me who great it was. It wasn’t just one person either, it was Neil, all of Dumper and various Dumper fans. They all said that Joe Satriani was a genius guitarist. I even missed the chance to see him locally.

The album cover features the Silver Surfer (from the planet Zenn-La). He was Stan Lee’s favourite creation of all the characters that he came up with for Marvel. There is a lot of controversy about how much creative input Stan had into the conception and creation of the Marvel characters he is credited with. Jack Kirby had a huge creative input (as well as other artists like Steve Ditko), which is not surprising as Kirby is one of the most important comics creators of the twentieth century. Not only did his art style set the trend for decades, but he continued creating concepts and ideas up until his sad death at the age of 76. Stan was the writer/editor and had the clout to get his name everywhere. Kirby and Ditko left to work elsewhere, though King Kirby did return to Marvel in the late 1970s.

When the Silver Surfer got his own title Stan Lee wrote it, but had it drawn by John Buscema. Galling to Kirby who, by all accounts, created the Surfer, and was his favourite character too. Kirby was treated abominably by Marvel, given no creator credit and having to fight for the return of his original artwork (which belonged to him). Originally Marvel offered just 88 pages of the circa 13,000 pages he had drawn (each page had a value in that it could be sold to fans). Eventually he got around 2,000 back, the others having “disappeared”, in all likelihood stolen over the years.

Whoever created them, in whatever proportion, the Marvel team of the 1960s created a group of characters and concepts that first changed the American comics industry and then, in the 21^st century, the whole media landscape as Marvel’s films dominate the cinema.

Stan Lee, partly through his own hype, and partly through the difficulty of getting back issues in the 1970s was this master whose work was no longer available. Even the British reprints were largely not only past the time Lee was writing, but also past his successor, Roy Thomas. I was reading Steve Englehart, Marv Wolfman, Len Wein and Doug Moench.

When a series of reprints of early stories were launched I was horrified at how basic they were. The plots, the dialogue, the story logic – they were all far worse than what I was used to. One particularly egregious example was where The Avengers were worried that if the villainous Swordsman managed to become their leader they would have to obey him, whatever he ordered. It was so ridiculous to believe that Captain America would turn to crime just because he was told to.

It was several years later why I realised why Stan Lee was that revered. I got some DC comic reprints from that period. They made Stan’s comics look like Shakespeare. The plots and characterisation were wafer thin. The art looked like it was being done by a child compared to Kirby or Ditko (there was a lot of hype in the 80s about Mike Sekowsky coming back do an issue of Justice League – it was totally underwhelming).

Stan Lee got the parts in Marvel films and the credit. He deserved some of it, but so does the King – Jack Kirby.

Surfing With the Alien

Exploding out of a tunnel

Julian Cope makes it onto the list as part of the Teardrop Explodes and solo. (His first group was the Crucial Three with Ian McCulloch and Pete Wylie – Echo and the Bunnymen and The Mighty Wah! Make the list too, in one way they may be the most influential band of that period).

Julian Cope made three albums as The Teardrop Explodes – Kilimanjaro and Wilder were released in the early 80s and 8 years later everything left was put together as Everybody Wants To Shag….. The Teardrop Explodes. Meanwhile Cope went through a period of heavy drug use and a couple of alright albums before making a trilogy of albums in the early 90s that are of staggering brilliance and prescience.

First was Peggy Suicide, about how we are destroying the world. Then there was an album about the pernicious effect of religion – Jehovahkill (and try playing that in the office with Christians and Jehovah’s Witnesses) and finally Autogeddon about over reliance on the car.

All three have several candidates for my favourite track – Don’t Call Me Mark Chapman, S.T.A.R.C.A.R., Fear Loves This Place, Julian H. Cope, Pristeen and Double Vegetation. These aren’t albums of pop songs but they do repay repeated listening. I once had some colleagues from my work in the car and Autogeddon was playing, by halfway through S.T.A.R.C.A.R. they were demanding to have the radio on.

My favourite track is Safesurfer from Peggy Suicide.

Safesurfer was very much of the time. It is about the guy at the party telling women people that sex him without a condom is fine, he’s clean, they have nothing to worry about.

This was the AIDs period when the government was putting out the message that everyone was in danger from unprotected sex. Now this was not entirely accurate as exchange of fluids was much lower risk than types of sex where there was the risk of bleeding. It tied in with the aims of the Tory government of the time to try and turn back the changes in society’s morals that had started in the 1960s.

The invention of the female contraceptive pill and the rise of the hippie movement in the 1960s had led to a much more relaxed attitude to sex, especially sex before marriage. Thatcher hated this (and the Major government did too). They explicitly wanted to wind the clock back to before the 1960s societal changes. The Tories constantly claim to occupy the moral high ground, yet their governments are riddled with immorality. Now politicians appear to be no better, and possibly worse, than most of society. The problem is that the Tories are the ones trying to claim they are moral. In 2020 they have not even withdrawn the whip from an MP accused of rape. Of course he is innocent until proved guilty and his identity has not been disclosed to protect the victim. Yet, in any other work environment, he would have been suspended pending the outcome.

If you want to claim the moral high ground get your own house in order. John Major was committing adultery with another MP in the 90s – they denied it at the time. The Tories had Jeffrey Archer as an important party official – a man who perjured himself and went to prison. So did other MPs from that government. I am not saying other parties are blameless, but they do not try and exert the same moral authority.

In the late 80s and early 90s anyone who wanted to go without protection was not someone to sleep with – if they would do it with you then they would do it with anyone.

I’m a Safesurfer darling……..