Five Miles Out

I’m Wide Awake and I can See

That 1997 holiday in Majorca. A week of it was totally marred by a virus.

Given that alcohol abuse was totally off the table I went to Parma by bus – not something I would ever want to repeat (yet 4 years later I did it from Alcudia which is lot further away). Parma is ok – but it is not somewhere I would recommend going on anyone’s bucket list.

Exploring I found a large music shop away from the centre. It was under a long wide staircase and it was total luck to find it. I thought there may be some Spanish rarities I could take home. I didn’t find any Spanish items, but I did find some pirate CDs.

(Me in Palma 1997)

Now I am a big U2 fan and had everything I could buy they officially released. The band had made it clear to fans that they were fine with pirate CDs if you had all the official material. I splashed out on four: a live album, a collection of early singles and B sides, a collection of remixes (that had been a fan club only release) and an unofficial collection of remixes.

I wished I had had enough money to buy more, but at the time that was not an option. Back in London one of the security guards at the college had a sideline as a DJ and I asked him where to get pirates in London. He was cagey and just said that I should scout backstreets. (Dell trained in IT and left to found his own training company)

It was a that this time that the College got internet, but it was not like the internet today (google did not exist – Dogpile was the best search engine out there). It was five years later I found someone who was selling U2 gigs on CD. He was really honest about the quality – some were soundboard recordings and sounded brilliant (like a live album, but without the overdubs some groups use), some were audience recordings) and some were terrible – like the group’s first radio performance which sounded like it had been recorded in a waterfall. There were also collections of odd performances and collaborations.

I was only interested in pirates of stuff that was not available officially (and it is not just U2 that do not mind their fans getting this stuff). I got annoyed on ebay when I bought CDs and it turned out it was a pirate. I always got my money back. The only other pirates I bough were some mash up CDs from a stall on Barking market. This was just before it became a thing in the charts and were the actual songs mixed together, rather than being rerecorded to save on royalties.

Now the internet is awash with everything that you could want. You do not need to pay anything for official releases and you can find pirate material if you look. Most people are too lazy and subscribe to spotify. I think lazy rather than honest is the point here.

Finding those CDs was one of the few good points of the holiday. I couldn’t actually listen to them until I got home though. Anyone who says music was better with vinyl and cassettes has never been in a position like this.

Natalie Imbruglia was yet another star of Neighbours that became a pop star. This track is sublime.

Torn

‘Cause Man Must Be His Own Saviour

In sixth form our teachers constantly told us that A levels would be the hardest bit of our lives. University would be a doddle compared to this (total lies of course). In the first year it hardly seemed like that as we only had a timetable of 11 hours a week and there was little pressure. The second year started with UCCA forms (UCAS’ predecessor) and the realisation that we had one more year before having to do something. Our careers advice was laughable. A couple of minutes with Mr Nott, usually recommending something in an office.

The school had never had someone go to Oxbridge – Duncan Benson and I were pushed to apply and had extra lessons for S levels (higher than an A levels).

Dad took me to several universities to look round, including an interview at St Catherines. Catz was chosen for a tenuous link to the school. Links between schools, families and colleges are far more important than outsiders think. You had to apply to a college – if they did not offer you a place you went into a pool for other colleges to consider. Within Cambridge there was distinct hierarchy with the older colleges like Trinity and St Johns at the top and new colleges like Robinson and Churchill at the bottom. I was not optimistic and as time went by I assumed that the best I could hope for was that I was in the pool.

Early in December 1983 an offer came through and the pressure from the school went up to 11. The school could scent their first success and really wanted it. John’s 18^th birthday in March 1984 was my last social activity before exams. That was three months of studying, where I felt guilty if I did anything else.

The exams started after half term. Week one was a three-hour pure maths paper and a short physics paper. Week two was the bulk of it a three-hour paper for pure maths and the same for applied, plus a couple of physics papers. The final week had a three-hour applied maths paper and a final, short, physics exam.

Week one went reasonably well, though the pure maths paper format had changed a bit. Week two was the big one. On the Saturday I felt unwell. Feverish with a headache and a sore throat. It got worse and the books were abandoned, and I was in bed until Monday when I was taken to the Doctors. I was diagnosed with a virus and a letter provided for the exam board asking this to be considered.

(Page from a week 1 paper)

I did the exams that week – the first on the Tuesday. In the height of June swaddled in scarf and coat. I don’t remember it much. The virus retreated and I was about 80% in the last week. After that I went off for two weeks to stay with my grandparents in Newmarket to recuperate.

(Page from an applied paper)

How much had the pressure and relentless studying contributed to compromising my immune system? Who can say? Revision guidance was in its infancy – the school just told us to do it. These days we tell students to manage time – use rewards and breaks to improve performance. I finally learned this by accident in 1990. Maybe the flip side was that this constant preparation made me able to get something done despite the illness.

I got AAB rather than the AAA I was predicted. Physics was the B, the only subject when the vast majority of the marks were in that second week. Unofficially I was told that my performance on the first pure maths and second applied maths papers were far better than on the two in the middle week. The pure maths paper was so good that my half marks on paper two still was enough to get an A. The boards give little credibility to sick notes – you may go up a grade if you miss by 1 or 2%, but are hardly reflective of what illness can do.

Obviously St Catherines were more sympathetic (my parents sent them the doctors letter too) so I went to Cambridge despite missing the grade requirements.

Silver

So Where Is Your God?

As I have said before the London Borough of Newham had an appalling academic record in the late 80s. One part of their solution was to close all the school sixth forms (years 12 and 13) and open a dedicated sixth form college. (Even though the term sixth form has been gone for nearly 30 years the colleges are still known as that).

They needed a leader for a transformational project and it was not an assignment that appeared to have much chance of success. It had to be built (well partially rebuilt and partially new build),, funding agreed with the Local Authority, Department for Education and the London Docklands Development Corporation, plus all the staff had to be recruited and a curriculum designed and put in place. On top of that it became clear during the project that the College would be part of a sector that would come out of local authority control and be independent, so it would need its own finance, estates, IT and HR teams.

The man they chose was Sid Hughes. He had been a senior manager at the innovative Sheffield Further Education College (I found this out many years after I started from his former colleague Beej Karamazyk) and relocated his family to London for this challenge over a year before the opening date.

The college was based on a school site and the council had kept the caretaker, Angus Law, on keep the site safe. He was paid for two years just to be there. On Sid’s first visit to the site he found Angus working (and being paid by the construction company) and he had the power and gas to his house run off the College’s supply. Everything was a challenge.

The College opened in 1992, only partly finished, and dealt with the impact of recruiting over 100 people in four months – some were not right. The racist PA who worked for a person of colour being one on the most egregious examples.

The College was an amazing success. Under Sid it garnered three top inspection grades and was in the top financial health category. It expanded from 750 students to over 2,000.

Sid trusted young staff (I later found out that outside in the wider sector we were called the Martini set). If you were good enough you were old enough. The college was full of department (only he hated the title department manager – they were delivery team a managers) managers in their 20s. Failure to progress in three of four years by these managers would lead to them being sidelined and phased out. Quality was rigorous – the annual reviews for teaching teams were legendary and could last 12 hours as he delved into the reasons for any weakness.

A phenomenal number of people who worked for him went on to become Principals – if you include me doing the job on an interim basis, there were at least nine. Plus a Mayor of a London Borough and uncountable people who went onto other senior jobs.

The most important thing was the students – tens of thousands of successful students who have gone on to distinguished careers. Their lives were changed by the College. Doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants, business leaders and dentists.

This was a promotional video – Sid is the one on the bridge in the Japanese garden.

(These videos always seem to feature a few people who were barely at the organisation who thrust themselves forward – but there is something of the spirit of the College there).

This still does not get to the heart of the man. He is inspirational. At the start of each year all the staff would assemble to listen to his pep talk. Despite it being an incredibly busy time for and I resented going I always came out inspired and ready to go to war for this guy. Students felt the same when he spoke to them. He had the power to inspire and get the best out of people. Imagine Tony Blair in 1997 – he had that charisma and personality – except he used his power for good and never invaded Iraq.

He was human too. In 1999 three of us were discussing Queer as Folk in the reception area and he joined in discussing the issues. Not batting an eyelid as I called it Queer as Fuck, while Diane and Jaz creased up laughing.

He retired in 2008, a year after I left – I don’t think my loss was what drove him to it😊 They made a tribute video on his retirement.

There was a retirement party at Stratford Circus that I was lucky enough to be invited back for. A truly wonderful evening. He was only 60. He had worked so hard he had missed time with his family and intended to spend more time with his grandchildren. The education bug was still there though and he worked consulting with colleges, including a spell as Principal at Croydon.

I saw him at NewVIc’s 20^th anniversary party in 2012, as well as a lot of other old friends. I assumed that would be the last time we would meet. As it turned out it was not, and we spent 8 months working together in 2015/16.

In any sane honours system he would have been knighted. I really cannot say how much I admire him. He is a hero.

Spaceman

I’m Adaptable and I Like My New Role

Groups bind over time. Our sixth form was split between arts and science (I had wanted to do double maths, physics and history, one extra A level, but I was told the timetabling was impossible – at Monoux we run over 25 A levels and almost any combination is possible). On the science side there were six who did pure maths, physics and chemistry, the remaining eleven of us did pure maths, applied maths and physics (I found out at university that pure and applied maths were unusual – most schools do maths and further maths).

The group of eleven – David Francis, John Hawkins, Neil Wigley, Richard Wigley, Michaela Briggs, Amanda Peck, Tristram Hughes, Darren Keeble, Andy Bradbury and Ross Woodley. No pictures exist of us together – I don’t have pictures five of them and I still hang out with three and one is a brother of one of the three.

You couldn’t say that we were all friends. Ross stood apart from us and barely spoke. Andy Bradbury was definitely tougher than the rest of us. At one stage Michaela and Amanda fell out, but on the whole it was a fun group and we had a good time.

In the upper sixth there was an occasional day holiday at the start of December (a teacher training day) so a group of us went into Colchester together (Ross and Neil did not come). We went round the shops and bought alcohol.

Neil and Richard’s parents were out so we went round there in the afternoon. Richard Wigley cleaned cars for pocket money and one of them was owned by the owner of a sex shop in Colchester. Richard had been loaned an under the counter hardcore 8mm film in lieu of payment (and let’s not get into the fact that it was illegal to have this in the UK and Richard was only 17).

Neil had not been out with us – he had been at home making mince pies (Neil is wonderfully strong willed and will never do things he does not want to). By the time we got there some of us were very drunk. It took a lot of work to get the cinema show going – no one could work the cine projector and we had limited time before we all had to get home. In the end someone managed but the film quality was terrible and the best part was the humorous commentary from Michaela and her sister. I fell asleep from the amount of alcohol I had consumed – cheap cider.

When I got home I had to spend the evening pretending to be sober.

This was not as drunk as I got at our sixth form disco at Christmas. I started on lager, but could not take more than five pints. I switched to snakebite (half lager, half cider, splash of blackcurrant) until I was told that it made you sick when you had it first time, finally I had five vodkas. We danced drunkenly to Merry Christmas Everybody. I bought ten packets of crisps and shared them (because the bar had stopped serving alcohol). At midnight we went outside and found Neil lying down in the mud.

When I got home the room was spinning. Dad checked in on me, though he had been out too and was merry too. After a few minutes I was violently ill in the bathroom several times over, all with a purple colour from the snakebite.

We met up after A level results day (still without Ross) and had a last goodbye. We were never all together again and some I only ever saw once or twice since. Still it is a time in your life that burns bright.

This Is Not A Love Song

And I’m a Million Different People

Going on holiday to the Mediterranean is all the same isn’t it? I mean in the 90s. It is all hot and caters to a fun time?

How wrong I was. Having been to various Greek islands and Cyprus (kind of Greek, but they drive on the left and had Woolworths) I assumed that there would be some differences but that it would basically be the same thing, but with Spanish instead of Greek. Choosing Magalouf was a bad idea, even then it was known as Shagalouf – but then I had been to Faliraki two years earlier and Ayia Napa the year before and they were both real party towns.

The first noticeable thing was that it was always noisy. In Greece and Cyprus come a certain time (1am or 2am) bars had to either shut or go indoors and have sound proofing. That was why in Kos there were still Night Clubs further out of town as the bars actually shut. Now some of them were elastic with their closing time, stretching it to whenever they saw the police coming after 2am, but the night went quiet. A couple of times trying to get back to the apartment very late we found this out – they even switched off the streetlights. Totally drunk, at 4am, trying to find your apartment when you have only spent ten minutes there before going out and it has been dark the whole time is interesting.

Majorca had no rules about noise. By the time the bars and fast food shops closed down and the noise died away the dust carts were coming around – there was a lot of rubbish from every bar, so they came every day.

The bars only closed for a couple of hours. They would reopen about 9am serving English breakfasts and advertising that they had the previous day’s episodes of Eastenders and Coronation Street (flown out on video tape in those days). Later on in the day they would show pirate movies or Roy Chubby Brown videos. Even in 1997 his combination of misogyny, racism and disparagement of political correctness was seen as outside acceptable behaviour.

The restaurants were like something out of Carry on Abroad. Egg and chips. Sausage and chips. Beans and chips. Proudly advertising that they had real English sausages and baked beans. You literally could not find Spanish food there in Magalouf.

It was like going to East Ham on sea, with sunshine. To be fair to the residents of East Ham there were far more people there from the North of England than we had seen in Greece, plus far less people from other areas of Europe like Scandinavia. Maybe Burnley on Sea (with apologies to Burnley). It was felt like the worst of underclass Britain was being catered to.

In the second week of the holiday we were out in the daytime. We went past a bar which was showing the funeral of Gianni Versace. It was showing Princess Diana being seated with Elton John and others. I had the most weird feeling and said that there was the stench of death over the group. It is a funeral I was told. I was feeling so odd and just said that one of that group would die soon. Princess Diana was dead five weeks later. My grandmother always said that she was a witch. Is this paranormal? More likely a funeral and a virus. Yes. To top off a shit holiday I spent a week of it with a virus.

Bitter Sweet Symphony

We Almost Made It…..

Some bands never make it. They get so close, after all the slog on the live circuit they finally get a record contract, they may even get a single in the lower reaches of the top 75, but it never quite happens. They maybe championed by a DJ or two, but they don’t connect with enough of the public – who remembers the Bloomsbury Set?. It must be so frustrating, to be almost there. Others might get one hit single but never make another – Classix Nouveau or Strawberry Switchblade.

The same thing happens everywhere in life. Sports people who throughout their lives are the best people in their age category. At middle school we had a guy called Carlo St Clair who played for North Hertfordshire. At upper school one boy payed on the wing for North Hertfordshire. We thought they were destined for professional status – they weren’t.

The most famous British sports case was Gus Caesar (mainly because Nick Hornby uses the story in Fever Pitch). A star all through his young life he signed for Arsenal. Their manager, George Graham, loved a centre back though his experience with Caesar meant that at one stage he stockpiled eight of them in case of injury. It was the 1988 League Cup final and Caesar played because David O’Leary (a highly accomplished centre half) was injured. With minutes to go he made an error that let Luton equalise, they went on to win 3-2 (for George Graham conceding goals was anathema, his ideal win was one nil). Caesar’s career spiralled down. O’Leary fell out of favour due his poise on the ball playing out of defence – Graham preferred his centra halves to boot the ball down the field.

Henry Paul played Rugby League to international level and then switched codes to Rugby Union (the merits of Rugby codes will be debated by devotees forever, but there is far more money in Union). He played a few times for England but then was brutally substituted just over halfway through the first half of his last international match. He ended up going back to Rugby League.

On a personal level my progress seemed unstoppable. Despite not being a teacher, I was viewed as a more than viable candidate by recruitment agencies to be a college Principal, following a period where I had to step in and cover for Paolo. Developing fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome brutally cut short that possibility.

This band were touted as a huge prospect. Yet, until a compilation in 2008, their only album release was in the USA. They had five singles, only two of which made any mark. This was their most successful, missing the Top 40 by two places.

Paris Is One Day Away

I Couldn’t Get Away

I really like A Flock of Seagulls. They did 1.5 good albums (the first one and four tracks on the second). In the early 80s some groups were New Romantic and some were Futurist – history remembers the former movement and not the latter, it is now all remembered as New Romantic. You could tell A Flock of Seagulls (AFOS) were futurists by their hairstyles.

AFOS were more successful in the USA than in the UK (these days they are primarily remembered for Wishing (If I Has a Photograph of You) in the UK). They were part of the second British invasion of the US music charts and more revered overseas than home, like the Fixx and Wang Chung. AFOS were so famous that 15 years later it was a recognisable gag when Chandler Bing arrived for Thanksgiving in the flashback episode The One With All the Thanksgivings.

Everyone knows Friends – it is part of the cultural furniture. The next generation of our family have watched the show. Some of them were barely born when it ended.

In its day it was genuinely revolutionary. American mainstream sitcoms before this stayed in a status quo, so they could be shown in any order in syndication. Friends started with Ross’s unrequited love for Rachel and it was assumed that this would continue forever.

At the end of the first season Rachel finds out that Ross loves her, only for Ross to return with a new girlfriend from an archaeological dig in China. Yet in the second season Ross found out (The One Where Ross Finds Out); messes it up (The One With the List) and they finally get together (The One With the Prom Video). In the third season their relationship breaks down and after The One Where Ross and Rachel Take a Break and the traumatic One With the Morning After (a hard edged episode about infidelity for a sitcom). Yet nine episodes later it looks like it will all be better – the season ends with Ross having to choose between Rachel and Bonnie. Hell of a cliffhanger.

Luckily Sky had bought first run rights. Channel 4 was showing Friends months behind the USA (as was normal at the time). They continued with showing it six months later than Sky, but Sky subscribers saw it just weeks later. People at work were giddy with anticipation.

And it was a pile of crap. Ross and Rachel got back together and then split up as Rachel revealed a level of pettiness not seen before. That was the mark of the series after that. Characters were deformed and stretched into comedy plots, rather than the characters driving the stories. This reached its nadir in episodes like The One With Ross’s Sandwich, The One Where Paul’s the Man and the whole Joey and Rachel romance in seasons 9 & 10.

Friends after season 3 is not a bad sitcom, but it is not the show that smashes the mould early on. Jonn Elledge, great writer that he is, said the show should have ended after season 4 with Chandler and Monica taking over Central Perk. He was right. Obviously the cast made a fortune and the show was worth £120 million a year to Netflix. So artistic integrity means sod all compared to that.

For the record my favourite Friends episodes, in broadcast order (and all from the first three seasons), are:

The One with the East German Laundry Detergent

The One with the Boobies

The One where the Monkey Gets Away

The One with the Ick Factor

The One with Five Steaks and an Eggplant

The One Where Ross Finds Out

The One with The Prom Video

The One where Ross and Rachel …. You Know

The One with Two Parties

The One with The Princess Leia Fantasy

The One with the Football

The One Without the Ski Trip

Early on In Friends it is clear that Ross, Chandler and Monica make good money and the other three are barely getting by in New York (The One with Five Steaks and an Eggplant). Yet by the end of the series Rachel is a high-powered executive in fashion, Joey is a famous actor and Phoebe has married into a filthy rich family.

The Big Bang Theory (TBBT) was the next mega American series and actually ran 12 seasons. At the end of season 3 the status quo is upset when Sheldon meets Amy Fowler. The setup of four geeks who could not women turned into three out of four of them being married. Several female friends of mine have commented that Kaley Cuoco is “not all that”, but she is way out of Leonard’s league in terms of looks, ditto Bernadette and Howard. The only one of the boys not to be happily married is Raj – the only person of colour and, at the start of the series the only one who has any success with women. He does get Sarah Michelle Gellar as a date in the series finale.

(Bernadette, Howard, Raj, Penny, Sheldon, Leonard and Amy).

TBBT actually had three more good seasons after Amy arrived. I think the decline was marked in season 7, though fans tend to date it from Penny’s pixie haircut in season 8 (in real life Kaley Cuoco had divorced and had, stereotypically, changed her image). Just to add to the Friends comparison Bernadette becomes a very high paid executive at a drug company (which she had been studying for and working as a waitress to support herself). Penny does not become an actress, but becomes a hugely successful sales manager at the same firm. Is this the American Dream? US audiences cannot bear to see unsuccessful people? Raj’s failure to find love is the only sad note in a finale that finds Penny and Leonard expecting a baby and Amy and Sheldon winning a Nobel prize.

I first saw AFOS on the TV show The Tube doing Messages, Telecommunication and this one.

I Ran.

Just a Foreign Town With a Foreign Mind

I am not qualified to write about Japan. At least not compared with Michael. I like some of their stuff, but Mike is a devoted fan of the group and their solo work.

Japan were way ahead of their time. The way they looked and sounded in the late 70s were mainstream in 1981. When their previous record company took advantage of New Romanticism to rerelease their old material in 1981 they seemed like Duran Duran wannabees performing Quite Life on Top of the Pops. If nothing else this venal record company manoeuvre, via their song called European Son, led me to the Velvet Underground.

By this time Japan had recorded my favourite of their albums – Gentlemen Take Polaroids. Their sound was still evolving and their guitarist quit the band as they were not using him. The result of this was Tin Drum. The album is heavily influenced by music from the Far East. It included the minimalist Ghosts which was, quite bizarrely, their most successful single. Not really my thing.

It does raise the issue of cultural appropriation. A white, Western band took the musical styles of another culture and used them to make money. The same issues were raised about Paul Simon later in the decade when he released Graceland, using South African music as his inspiration. Even with Paul Simon the issues were more complex at the time as South Africa was boycotted for its apartheid regime and the artists who worked with Simon (who were people of colour) were getting exposure on a world stage.

For Tin Drum the situation is even more difficult. The lead singer, David Sylvian, had already worked with Ryuichi Sakamoto of the Yellow Magic Orchestra and obviously had a genuine interest in the musical culture (Sakamoto had co-written the Japan track Taking Islands in Africa). Add to that the Far East was much more powerful economically than Africa and it is difficult to criticise Japan for this. Cultural mixing is inevitable but is controversial when a dominant culture takes ideas from one that has less power and agency.

Cultural Appropriation is important to consider in music. A lot of the time in music history there is a strand of white Americans taking Black American music and making money off it. Blues music from the Mississippi Delta is one half of rock and roll. Elvis was a reaction to Black artist like Chuck Berry and Little Richard – black music could be sold to America if it was sung by a white boy. The Osmonds were the white Jackson 5, New Kids on the Block were the white New Edition. I do not know enough about the subject to talk at length, but Japan seem to be ok.

You should check out Japan – their influence appears to be mostly forgotten.

I hope Mike is happy that they are on my list.

Gentlemen Take Polaroids

The Only Thing I’ve Seen

How should you treat entertainers who turn out to be abusers? I have said how hard it is when you love someone’s music to ditch them. So many Michael Jackson fans ignore the information about him or discount it as lies.

Gary Glitter was a famous figure in 70s British music with several number ones. After punk emerged he vanished (though his music was used as the basis for the Timelord number 1 Doctorin’ the TARDIS) in the late 80s.

In 1996 the Spice Girls burst to fame and seemed to be following the Beatles model by making a film. Now Spiceworld is a terrible piece of crap (admittedly I was not its target market). In advance I saw Glitter was appearing. Glitter was then unmasked as a paedophile, abusing underage girls in South East Asia. At the cinema (not from choice) it reached the scene in Italy where the Spice Girls are singing I’m the Leader of the Gang (I Am), a very famous Glitter track. Suddenly there is a cut that could not be sharper if an intern had done the edit with a pair of shears.

(Gary Glitter in Spiceworld).

Last year Joker was released and in a famous scene from the film he dances down the steps to…. Rock and Roll part 2. No appearance from Glitter but he got the performance royalties. The reason was that Glitter was hardly known in the USA and the people who chose the track were not aware of his history. A case of cultural differences again.

(Joaquin Phoenix dances to success)

It works the other way too. In the Doctor Who episode The Last of the Timelords the Master has taken over Earth and imprisoned the Doctor. Martha Jones, the Doctor’s companion, had escaped, but her family were held by the Master and used as servants. In particular her mother was a maid. (This was only a few episodes after Martha had been dressed as a maid in the two part Human Nature/ Family of Blood).

In the UK this passed almost without comment. The Master is a villain and was violently abusing his wife as well as unleashing psychopathic homicidal beings called the Toclafane across Earth. In the USA the depiction of women of colour dressed as maids has a far more sinister resonance due to the slave owning south and the post Civil War period up to much more recent times. In the story Martha is the hero that walks the Earth for a year to beat the Master and her family’s humiliation is punishing the Doctor. I genuinely believe Russell T Davies missed the imagery but that says something in itself.

What does this mean? It is hard to make entertainment that does not offend a foreign market. Both of these were avoidable but in a world where Netflix now cherry picks the best TV from across the world it is likely that something will offend people elsewhere in the world. The stunning South Korean series Crash Landing On You shows two societies very different from our own and the lead characters have far more westernised features than the supporting characters. The Spanish series Money Heist was specifically made to be Spanish and not concede anything to foreign sensibilities.

My run in with the issue, in a professional capacity, was reviewing student videos. We had installed screens across Monoux and the creative team wanted to show student videos on a loop. We were wary, as a senior team, of what may be in them, so we decided that someone should vet them. I volunteered, because I was stupid. I spent a day watching videos and making notes. I had to nix some as they showed violence and shooting (not because I want to censor but it was not an image the College wanted).

One really good video, showing an angsty story of teenage alienation (believe me there were loads of those) had a Chris Brown soundtrack. Chris Brown has a history of violent behaviour against Rihanna and Karueche Tran. I did think about rejecting it, but it was one of the best films and I was rejecting loads. I passed it. I think I was wrong, but it is a great song – even if he is a bastard.

Beautiful People.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHxlzcAPbBE

Ma You’re Just Jealous – We’re the Dumper Boys

There was quite a pub band scene in Essex in the early 90s – mainly covers bands at the rock/ metal end of the spectrum. The most famous were Tattered and Torn, who could deliver two hours of rock to a very high standard. Some of our friends in the Rotoract group formed the King Cut Groovers who played less heavy rock, as well as ska and did a great version of the Stone Roses’ I am the Resurrection.

Dumper’s first gig, as a three piece, was at New Year’s 1991 in Neil’s garage. Jason Sainty, Paul Connell and Andy Sadler did three songs – two self-penned instrumentals and House of the Rising Sun, with Andy (uncomfortably) singing – though he was actually pretty good.

(three piece – Jason Sainty, Andy Sadler and Paul Connell)

Neil’s parents would often go to visit family in Australia and when they did he, and this three brothers, would have a massive party. Dumper’s second gig was as a five piece in the back garden – (Jason Cook was there as a second guitarist and the original lead singer Ian). It was fun and it was loud. The vocalist was good but not rock/ metal enough for them. Johnny Marshall joined as the band’s long-term lead singer.

(Gig in a tent – Jason Cook, Jason Sainty, Paul Connell, Ian)

(Debut as a five piece – Jason loves it)

The first gig of the main incarnation of the band was at the Swan pub in Brightlingsea. All the band’s family and friends were there and we were seriously drinking (the landlord loved it). The set was in two halves. At the mid-set break Dave and I went to another pub to get beers, as the queue was so long at the Swan.

(top left – John Hawkins, Dick Wigley, me and Graham Wigley; top right – Andy Marshall and Jason Sainty; Bottom left – Johnny M, Jason S; bottom right – Johnny M and Jason C).

I am not really plugged into the live music gestalt, I prefer to listen to a studio album and do not see the joy of listening with other people screaming around me, but this was undoubtedly the most fun I have ever had at a gig. They did an array of rock covers including smoking versions of Thunderstruck and Enter Sandman. They did (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party!), replacing the “Ma you’re just jealous we’re the Beastie Boys” with the Dumper Boys.

Dumper had their own merch, which we all wore for quite a while. The band even played a set at Andy’s wedding reception.

Eventually the band stopped – less musical differences than life as adults. Three of them formed a band called Night Owl in 2016 with two new people. Sadly, they have split up too.

You can hear Dumper live here (it says Nightowl, but it is mostly the Dumper Boys) https://soundcloud.com/nightowl-15/tracks

They were not the greatest band ever, but they enjoyed themselves and so did their audience. I miss Dumper – they were wonderful group of guys and a guaranteed good night out.

Thanks to Jason S who took some of the pictures.

I like the Beastie Boys version as well. (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party!)