Five Miles Out

Can you hear them crying?

This is a serious one.

I am not sure you could even release this today. The Specials were famous for Too Much Too Young and other ska-based tracks that were part of the 2 Tone movement. Then they released Ghost Town – a haunting view of inner-city desolation in the inner cities of 1981. The Specials were always Jerry Dammers’ band but no one realised that Ghost Town was the end. The three singers formed the Fun Boy Three, leaving the instrumental section of the band.

Dammers changed the name of the group to the Special AKA and kept going with rotating vocalists. They had less commercial success. There was the powerful The Boiler about rape and their most successful song – the joyful sounding Free Nelson Mandela – the theme of the anti-apartheid movement.

Then there was War Crimes.

When I was a small boy there seemed to be three insoluble geopolitical problems in the news. The Vietnam War, The “Troubles” in Northern Ireland and the plight of the Palestinians. The first was resolved while I was still young; the second took the best part of 25 years, but there is a fragile peace in Ireland. The third seems to be as insoluble as ever, if not getting worse.

I have never understood antisemitism. I have known many Jewish people and most I had no idea about their ethnicity until they chose to share it. Then again, I all think racism is stupid and disgusting anyway.

International Definition of Anti-Semitism.

“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/ or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

It adds the following examples to serve as illustrations:

Manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic. Antisemitism frequently charges Jews with conspiring to harm humanity, and it is often used to blame Jews for “why things go wrong.” It is expressed in speech, writing, visual forms and action, and employs sinister stereotypes and negative character traits.

Contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere could, taking into account the overall context, include, but are not limited to:

Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.
Making mendacious, dehumanising, demonising, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.
Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews.
Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust).
Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.
Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.
Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination (e.g. by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour).
Applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g. claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterise Israel or Israelis.
Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.

The CAA commissioned a legal opinion from a QC on this, it states:

“Criticising the policies of a particular Israeli government, for example in relation to settlements, protesting the actions of the State of Israel or its treatment of Palestinians, are lawful expressions of political opinion and are unlikely to be anti-Semitic without further factors.” (their emphasis).

There is significant criticism of the examples used (as opposed to the definition itself), particularly those that refer to Israel, the perception being that it is being used to close down criticism of Israel rather than tackle antisemitism.

I find point 11 especially interesting, not that it is in anyway wrong, but organisations exist that chase and hound people who criticise Israel stating that the criticism is in itself antisemitic. Basically arguing against point 11, these are Jewish organisations. Criticising the State of Israel is not antisemitism (as the very many people of Jewish ethnicity who disagree with Israel would agree).

I reserve the right to criticise the state of Israel for its actions that are illegal under international law and its continued defiance of United Nations resolutions. In the same way that I criticise Myanmar, Hungary, Modi’s India and other countries that stamp on the human rights of various sections of the population.

This website shows a map of how the state borders of Israel have expanded through military action at the expense of the Palestinians since its modern establishment. It has got even worse since then.

Map of Israel and Palestine

With the Trump administration’s approval Israel keeps annexing parts of the country that are meant to be Palestinian.

My concern is for the Palestinians – they were forced out of their country over 70 years ago and now live is appalling conditions under military siege. To those who say they are violent I would point out that if your country was occupied, what would you do? Also. there were acts of violence in Palestine by those wanting to establish the State of Israel.

The Jewish people have been treated terribly. Not just in the Holocaust, but throughout history. Even now there is a strong streak of antisemitism in the world that seeks to blame Jewish people for all our woes. Not only is that is that wrong, it is just plain stupid. That does not mean that the Palestinian people should have their territory taken away and be treated like second class citizens. There needs to be a proper two state solution. The only way that Israel will be safe is for there to be peace.

The Conservative party would like to ban the movement to boycott goods form the illegally occupied territories. I cannot see how that is democratic, but the Conservative government have as Home Secretary a person who had to resign over inappropriate links with Israel. Johnson thought it was fine to bring her back.

To make it absolutely clear in case someone from one of those organisations I mentioned reads this, antisemitism is unreservedly evil. So is what is happening to the Palestinians. The only way to peace in the region is an equitable settlement for both sides.

I cannot even include the lyrics of War Crimes – they breach one of points above.

I no longer expect to live to see an equitable solution to the plight of the Palestinian people.

Bosnia, Myanmar, Rwanda, Gaza humanity keeps committing War Crimes

Have You Ever Had It Blue?

The mid 80s turned into a pretty barren period musically. After the regular injections of innovation from Punk, New Wave and New Romanticism mainstream popular music moved towards a fairly middle of the road approach. Do not even mention Jazz/Funk dance music – no one ever does because it is like muzak. The Style Council were Paul Weller’s post Jam group and would probably be remembered more fondly if the Jam had never existed.

I was at university from 1984-87. There is a perception about Cambridge that is based on TV portrayals of Hooray Henrys with loads of money and academic excellence. There are a lot of rich people about. One student at our College solved the problem of second year accommodation by buying her own house. Academic excellence exists – but not in lectures. The Dons are more interested in research than teaching students.

Rooming was an issue at my College, St Catherines. First years all got rooms and then there was a room ballot in the second year, names were randomly drawn out and that was the order the rooms were picked (final year students picked before second years, but the order of the second year room ballot was reversed).

This process was complicated by the fact that most of the accommodation for second years was offsite at St Chads. A development of 20 four person flats. These were popular as they had proper kitchens and were away from the baleful eyes of the College porters. If you had two scholars in a group of four they automatically went to the top of the ballot (so they drew the groups of four with scholars first), there were 18 groups with scholars in them in our year, so if you were not in that lucky band there were only two flats left, then there were around 20 rooms on the main site and 20 people who would have to find their own accommodation.

The top person in our group drew 21. So that was not good. Even worse I drew 111, the lowest in our group. I got lucky Gary elected to have a double room in College, meaning he could pick his room mate and saved me form living out. (I returned a much smaller favour the next year as he was away from College, due to the sad death of his father, so was not there to sign up for a room. It was unusual for third years to pick doubles, but I did so he would get a decent place for his last year).

(Second year room on the first floor).

(Me, John Lunt, Fai Au Yeung, Alex Burton and Dave Carter, graduation day 1987 – Gary did not attend).

Our group all managed to get places on College property. They were the worst rooms though. Gary and I had a huge living room – probably 4m by 10m. It was great. We had desks at one end, a sitting room layout at the other plus a darts board in the middle (Gary was College captain). Our bedrooms were not connected to the living room. They barely had room for a bed and were more like cupboards. Gary got the better one, just across the corridor from our living area. It had the luxury of a plug socket. Mine was further away and had no heating or a power socket. By the end of the winter I didn’t feel the cold. I really didn’t feel properly cold again until I got glandular fever in 2014, that marked the end of that “superpower”.

Our final year rooms were over Kings Passage and far nicer, though lacked the large living space (luckily other members of the group had got a better large room). Tourist companies regularly brough tourists through that way into the city. Many an entertaining break from revision was spent dropping water balloons on loud Americans.

Gary Hibbard, Alex Burton, John Lunt, Fai Au Yeung and Dave Carter. We drifted apart a few years after graduation, though I did see Alex occasionally, but at Christmas 2019 I met Alex and John again. Then, just before lockdown, we met again and Gary was there, I hadn’t seen him for over 20 years. It is great because it is like the intervening period never happened. Dave we last saw in 1993 and Fai never since we graduated – we assume he went to Hong Kong as he said he would, but no one knows. I’m sure if we met them again we would all still be friends, like we had barely been apart.

A Solid Bond In Your Heart

School’s In

I never really thought about having a good memory. I knew that exam revision was pretty easy for me and once I had studied a subject at school I could remember most of it and only have to polish up on details. What made me realise that it was not normal it was that my mate, Neil, said that he remembered “bugger all” about holidays we had been on twenty years ago. I remembered huge amounts of detail.

I also remember details of my early life that other people find surprising. My first memory is Apollo 11 in 1969. We lived in Luton until I was 4 years old, then moved to Royston in Hertfordshire. We lived in a three-bedroom semi about15 minute walk from the town centre.

I was enrolled at a local Catholic convent pre-school (we were not Catholics, I guess it was the only one around). I was offered the choice of going 3 or 5 days a week. I wanted four for a long weekend! I was told by the nuns it was 3 or 5 so I opted for 5. They were not allowed to teach us to read (by order of the local primary schools, though I was making progress on that at home), otherwise I remember it being a lot of fun. Contrary to the stereotype of nuns these ladies were lovely and, apparently, I was very popular with them. I remember Sister Agnes with great affection.

I had a fall there on the gravel drive. At the time I thought it was just another cut, though it was quite deep. Despite children healing better than adults that scar is still on my knee nearly 50 years later.

I was only there for two terms. Then, when I was five years old. I was taken to Icknield Walk Primary School. This was only just down the road from our house. I was a bit shocked not to be offered a choice on the number of days that I could go in, even worse it was a non-negotiable five days. I was the youngest in my year and the last to start school in Miss Clarke’s reception class. Some of the children in the class had already been there a term or more, depending on their date of birth. Work has been done to show that children born earlier in the academic year do better than those born later as they get one or two terms more education. At the time boys and girls mixed freely and my best friend was Diane Burgess that year.

Icknield Walk was really strict, even by the standards of the time. It was run by the imposing Constance Mary Bull, known only as Miss Bull to pupils and staff. No staff members were allowed to use their first names in school! Miss Bull led the school from its opening in 1966 to her retirement in 1980.

Reading was my passion. You got a school hymnbook when you completed a reading program and were able to read a book called I Know A Story out loud to the teacher with no mistakes. I was determined to be first in my class to do this, despite my late start. There was a sticky moment with one word when I was reading to Miss Clarke that took a minute to work out (failure would mean starting again and certainly losing to my rival). I got the word and beat Debra Graves to the hymn book by one day.

As the song says… You Can Get It If You Really Want It.

Poor Man’s Moody Blues

“Home taping is killing music”.

Except it didn’t. Neither did Napster, of course that was on an industrial scale compared to home taping. Home taping was a gateway to music when you were young. I taped from the radio (for about a month and came to loathe DJs who talked over tracks) and then from friends. When I started work I was able to afford to buy music and I bought loads.

At university our College had a record library. In the second year one of my friends, Dave Carter, got a stereo that he kept at College. This started a systematic taping program of things we liked. It was great as you could try lots of groups that you had never heard of at a cost of about £5 a term. Being students we split the cost so it was even cheaper.

I had heard of Barclay James Harvest. They had released an album that was a minor hit called Berlin – A Concert for the People a couple of years earlier. They never really made it in the UK but they were massive in Germany. The vinyl Gone To Earth had the central section with the owl and rural image on the interior sleeve, with a cut out shape on the main sleeve.

Very much a soft prog rock kind of feel with a massive debt to the Moody Blues (so much so that Gone to Earth features a track called Poor Man’s Moody Blues).

If you listen to one BJH album Ring of Changes is the best overall. When we put on Gone To Earth at university the first track was stunning, the problem was it is by far and away their best track. If you can only manage one track this is the one.

Hymn.

The Hut of Baba Yaga

I have said that Brightlingsea was a couple of years behind Royston musically. There were few people into older 70s rock. I was quite happy to listen to punk, prog rock, heavy metal and New Romantic. So, it was great to connect with Steve.

He had an older brother and had really been infected with the prog rock genre. Prog rock had a very bad rep in the early 80s. It had been washed away by punk. Over grandiose, more interested in technical precision and indulgent. I mean a lot of it is true but that does not mean it is without merit. The best prog rock did not just concentrate on instrumental virtuosity but tried to do something different with a nascent medium. Prog emerged in the early 70s following the Beatles decision to give up touring and be more experimental. There was a tendency to focus on fey lyrics and extended drum solos are not a good idea. Every genre has good stuff and bad stuff.

Yes were probably the most prog of prog rock bands but Emerson , Lake and Palmer were right up there. They are the group who feel like the “coldest” of the prog superstars. Their music feels like it is recorded in a freezer. There is little warmth to the feel.

I listened to a lot of their LPs at university as they were borrowed from libraries. Ultimately I think ELP are worth having a Best Of LP in your collection, but not their whole discography. (Though their recording of the classical Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition is worth a listen just to get that prog/ classical crossover vibe).

They are most famous for Fanfare for the Common Man, another classical piece that was big in the 70s. This is my favourite. Lucky Man.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89g1P_J40JA

There’s a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis

Kirsty MacColl is now most famous as one half of the vocals on Fairytale of New York. She had a solo career too, at least she did until she died in 2000 in a powerboat accident. The circumstances of her death were murky. The powerboat should not have been in the area and was owned by a multimillionaire, who was on board. One of his employees took the blame and paid less than $3,000 in lieu of jail time and damages. Who says the law applies to all? It is alleged that the employee who took the blame was paid for it by his millionaire boss.

I first heard her in 1981 when she released the totally mad There’s A Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis. In that Summer, my mother (Sue) and Stepfather (Richard) took their extended nuclear family on a Broads cruise in the summer. There was my brother Mike, our maternal grandparents and Richard’s children from his first marriage, Tony and Tracey. I’ve been really lucky with my step relations in life – all of them are/ were great people. The fairytale trope of evil stepparents particularly did not apply as Richard and Anne are/ were wonderful people to have in my life.

My Mum and Richard were incredibly brave to take a group of us on a trip in a Broads cruiser. There is not a lot of space (like a canal barge) and having four teenagers on board would fill me with dread. I basically slept in a space by a window in the corridor running down the boat. The alternative would have been to share bunks with either Michael or Tony, both two years younger than me and far better suited to room together.

It was a great holiday – the Norfolk Broads are beautiful, yet I have no photos of it. Pictures were much rarer then. My grandfather, John Wood, loved it so much – he loved East Anglia and the Broads are littered with pubs.

Kirsty did some wonderful covers. This Billy Bragg track is the best, changing the words so they applied to a female singer. Strawberry Switchblade made a career out of being like 1983 Kirsty MacColl.

Rest in Paradise Kirsty MacColl. Gone far too soon.

A New England.

I Wish For My World of Make Believe

It is really hard to pick a favourite Toyah track. I love Thunder in the Mountains and it would be easy to write about Toyah’s reinvention of herself as a cross between Boudicca and Mad Max. Toyah was the punk princess who had been in the movie Jubilee. Her music was more New Wave than punk, until 1981 when she released Four from Toyah (an EP in an era when EPs had largely disappeared) fronted by It’s a Mystery, possibly an unfortunate choice for someone with a slight lisp, and it had a much poppier feel than her earlier material.

This track is the best Toyah track. It’s long and had the mystical lyrics that appealed to a 15 year old science fiction and fantasy fan, including references to HP Lovecraft’s Necronomicon. Heaven knows what it meant, but it sounded like it should mean something. Toyah said: “Ieya is about mankind believing in ourselves so much that we believe we are immortal and can become our own gods, therefore challenging God as the Devil, in the form of the Devil; man being the beast”. Well she said it.

My friends in Royston and I discovered this and played it in the times I revisited them in 1981-84, mainly to play Dungeons and Dragons. I am forever in debt to Graham’s parents for allowing me to stay with them, having one teenage male in a house is bad (even when was as well behaved as Graham) – two? She fed me and looked after me. Sadly Graham’s mother died of Covid-19 in 2020, I hadn’t seen her since the early 90s but I am really sorry she has gone. Rest in Paradise.

Toyah ended up marrying Robert Fripp of prog rockers King Crimson – the punk princess ending up with a prog rocker, in 1980 no bigger betrayal could have been imagined.

Ieya.

Then it all went black

One of the most modern tracks and groups here. My boss at work is a really big music fan.

When he started at Monoux I had been acting Principal for nearly a year, which may have made it difficult for him. It shouldn’t have, as I was suffering from ME and desperate to go back to doing my proper job, rather than two jobs. The time doing both jobs had a serious impact on my long-term health. Anyway my boss, Dave (sorry David was a really popular name in the 60s) found out I loved music too; he was a vinyl enthusiast and gave me some of the download vouchers that came with the vinyl albums to share his choices. This was incredibly nice.

Trouble was I found it really hard to appreciate new music. Now I think this is something that happens to all of us as we get older. New styles and forms require work to appreciate and adults have less time than teenagers. I do I think my difficulty was exacerbated by my condition. It was hard to focus on the music, I could no longer work, or write, with music in the background, I had to limit my sensory input otherwise I was overloaded. Even when I just played the music I had to really concentrate on it to get the input that I used to get just from having it on as a background. I tried – I’m a people pleaser, I really wanted to be able to be able to talk to him about the music.

In the end I tried but not much succeeded. This is one of the two groups I liked though. Up All Night. The War on Drugs.

But you know that there’s a fever

There was a show in the early 80s called Entertainment USA. It was fronted by Jonathan King, who was Radio One’s man in America and had been reporting on Top of the Pops. Neil and I both watched it and it was a good way of being ahead of the trend. In those days, if TV programs made it across the Atlantic, it was months or years after they had debuted there. King hyped Cheers over The A Team, the latter was a big but short term hit in the UK; the former an ongoing hit.

Entertainment USA was co-presented by newcomers to TV, for which there were on screen auditions. Jenny Powell was the most famous of them.

This particular track was one of two on the same show that were never hits in the UK (the other one will feature later). It is American soft rock, by the lead singer of Journey. It was on the show while I was in the Upper Sixth at school (year 13 now), this was the time when we were getting ready for A levels. I had gone into lockdown after John’s 18^th birthday party in March and was not going out again until after the exams. This is a ridiculously imbalanced approach to studying; it was a habit that I only broke when doing my accountancy exams. I was under tremendous pressure to succeed at exams, as Colne High had never had anyone go to Oxbridge. Duncan Benson and I had been groomed for this (Neil would have been in the group too, except that you needed to have an O level language to apply and Neil had not done French). Duncan did not get an offer, so there was a lot of pressure put on me by staff to do well. I’m not denying that I wanted to go to Cambridge, but I am prone to put myself under too much pressure at the best of times.

Any way I got to Cambridge, more on that another time. And more about Jonathan King too.

Oh Sherrie

In the State of Ecstasy

This song is odd. It was a hit years after it was made and if you listen carefully you can tell. One minute and four seconds in there is an instrumental break that is so 1991 that it might as well be flashing up a neon sign flashing – “We are ripping off the Prodigy’s first singles!”.

My interest in Rhodes was first triggered by the great TV series The Dark Side of the Sun from the 1980s. Well worth watching, even if it has dated a bit. Rhodes is much busier than that now. Rhodes was home to the Knights Templar, one of the great crusading military orders of the Middle Ages – they all got obliterated for heresy, as they wanted the money returned that they had lent to the French King.

(The Street of the Knights of Rhodes in Rhodes Town, 2016).

This is the sound of Rhodes1995. Neil, John, Dave, Neil’s twin Richard and Pete had gone to Faliraki in 1989. I had been doing my second-year accountancy exams and could not go. In the six years it had gone from a small resort to full on party central. Dave was now married and did not come, John came for the second week with his partner, Tammy. So, it was just Neil and me for the first week, staying in a hotel high above the town. We had an overnight flight that got us to our hotel about 5am. Our first night out was after little sleep during the day and we ended up in a Nightclub called Sheila’s. I was so exhausted that I actually fell asleep despite the pounding dance music.

(Me in Rhodes Old Town 1995).

Faliraki was a party town by then – very different, I was told, from 1989. It got a terrible reputation in the ensuing years. From my experience it was far milder than Aya Napa or even Malia.

The hotel we stayed in was typical of the time. No air con, clean and friendly. What it did have was the most amazing breakfasts cooked by a British chef. Two eggs, two sausages, two bacon, two friend slice, mushrooms, beans, fried tomatoes tea and toast all for 900 drachma (maybe £2). After that mid morning you did not need to eat until about 8pm.

In 2016 the four of us were 50 and decided we would go to Rhodes again – Dave, Neil, John and me. It had been 1991 since the four of us had spent more than a day together – it was incredible that we had a great time and if you can be with a group for a week you know you are proper mates. I’ve said it before but these guys are the best. We decided to go Lindos as it was quieter. In fact it turned out to be a bit too quiet and we went over to Faliraki in the evening – well three of us did, Neil opted not to. It was much livelier than Lindos and we had an amazing meal at the Acropolis Taverna. It was not as wild as in 1995, but then neither were we.

The next night there was European championship game on and the three of us went back there and had an amazing night. It was so good we decided to go to Faliraki in 2018.

(John, Dave, Neil and me at the Acropolis Taverna, 2018. Matching parrot shirts in honour of the Jamaica Bar).

Faliraki in 2018 was even more family friendly. The resort that, in the 90s, had been a capital of European hedonism was now a family friendly resort for the former Eastern bloc. Still we enjoyed ourselves and Rhodes Old Town is still a magnificent place to visit (despite the huge number of cruise ships that push prices near the harbour ridiculously high – choose a taverna in the backstreets for a great meal). It also includes the third best ice cream shop in Europe – and it was stunning ice cream.

Set You Free