Five Miles Out

Expanding Horizons

Open Your Mind by UsURA

When I worked in Ipswich there was an independent music shop called Compact Music. It was really close to the office and there was quite community there of serious musos. Lunch time we would gather in there and chat about new releases and obscure groups. The owner, Stuart, had previously worked for a record company and had a lot of inside knowledge. Then when I was made redundant I was not near the shop anymore and I probably only went in half a dozen times more – when I started work in London I did not have time. I went back once around 2001 to see if Stuart was still there. Sadly, there was a sign in the window saying it had closed a few months earlier.

Starting in London at the start of 1993 I was looking for a good music shop. My commute home took me through Stratford (bus to Stratford, train to Wivenhoe or Colchester and then a drive home – well actually a drive to Ardleigh gym and an hour’s workout, rarely home before 8pm). Nowadays Stratford is very different. It was quite shocking to me – a kind of decaying market inside a dirty mall and a station that was actually cut into stone with damp dripping down the walls. Now it has the Stratford International station and Westfield. Just at the front of the mall was a music shop and I thought this looked like the place.

It wasn’t – surly, uncommunicative staff and no reservation services. This marked my drifting away from the cutting edge of the music scene. I didn’t buy much there; this was one of the few singles I got. The shop didn’t last long and I barely visited Stratford after I moved to London in 1994. Why would I? Thirty minutes on a bus to get there, it only took 45 to get to Oxford Street.

It is a shame as independent stores are where real music is promoted. Knowledgeable staff with proven taste sell more as customers trust them. It doesn’t matter what the business is. Rod’s comics in Barking was the same. They talked to the customers and when they recommended the Walking Dead I bought it – they ended up selling me loads of the collected editions.

Hopefully after lockdown ends people will support the independent retailers not the chains.

Drop That Ghetto Blaster

When I graduated I went to work as an auditor at Grant Thornton in Ipswich. I’ll talk about how that started in another entry. Training to be a chartered accountant is not easy. You have to be numerate and literate, with a logical brain, that is not the problem. It is the studying and working at the same time. The working was meant to be 37.5 hours, but in reality it was as many hours as Grant Thornton needed, plus jobs could be all over East Anglia. Then we were meant to do at least 15 hours of studying a week on top of that – particularly hard if you spent most of the weekend with ahangover.

At the time Grant Thornton, despite being the biggest firm nationally with an office in Ipswich, was an upstart in the town, overshadowed by a big local firm called Ensors. We were constantly trying to build up the client base – especially big clients that would provide weeks of work for several staff. When I started there was only one – Easter Counties Farmers. We all hated ECF – it was the kind of place where they actually put 5 of us in a stock cupboard to work, for weeks at a time. So we were ecstatic when we got a big new client – a haulage company called Russell Davies. Turns out that it was not as bad as ECF, but the staff were still pretty awful to us. The offices were very definitely still smoking and most of the buildings were full of dense clouds of nicotine – adding to the dry cleaning bills on our pitiful training salaries. Even though Felixstowe was further away than Ipswich, it was ok as you avoided all the traffic jams into Ipswich and could drive straight to their offices, plus parking was free (a constant issue in Ipswich where the trainees were constantly looking for roads to park for free).

Russell Davies was an amazing story. In the 1970s two truck drivers (the Davies brothers) decided to go it alone. With their brother in law as their base station and administrator they went into business. By 1988 it was turning over £50 million a year. That is amazing success and I am disappointed that I never met the two of them; by the time I was involved they were running the business at a board level and each company in the group had its own management team reporting to them. They remained ruthless with underperforming staff. In 1991 I was in charge of the fieldwork and two of the subsidiary company MDs were fired in the two months between the planning meetings and the audits – for not meeting profit targets.

After the rarefied atmosphere of university, and even the (almost) all graduate Grant Thornton, working in local business was a real eye opener. The women frankly discussing their sex lives, the casual sexual harassment from the men and a lunch time drinking culture that was shocking. Probably not different from most places at the time, you can’t use 2020 standards to judge it. Anyway my boss (and mentor) was very much old school rock music only. She hated house music that this was on all the time as we audited there for weeks. We must have heard this track four or five times a day on radio 1. I did not admit to liking it, but it is great. This was early on in a revolution that injected life into popular music, along with We Call It Acieed and Pump Up the Volume.

I was on the verge of working at Russell Davies in 1992 as Group Financial Accountant. Then I got made redundant from Grant Thornton in the recession and the opportunity vanished. Wonder why? The amount I could have saved them on Audit fees would have meant that I was almost free year for the work I could do in the first four months of the year. My life would have been incredibly different if I had gone to work there. Probably not for the better.

The Theme From S Express

It’s Not Quite a Jaguar

Cars by Gary Numan

This is the first time I heard syn drums quite this stark. When it was released I had no idea how much Gary Numan was ripping off David Bowie, his Berlin period in particular, as well as Kraftwerk. Numan’s time in the Sun was pretty short – he became obsessed with being a pilot and right-wing politics. He had other singles, but Cars and Are Friends Electric were his biggest hits. Three years later it was awful tracks like She’s Got Claws and We Take Mystery (to Bed) which only appealed to dedicated Numanoids.

I have never really cared about cars. My brother Michael is two years younger than me and passed his test first (I always point to the fact that I was in the upper sixth by the time I could start learning, whereas he was only a couple of months into the lower sixth when he hit 17, but really he was just more motivated). It was dumb, because living in Brightlingsea you need to be able to drive, it’s a dead end on the east coast, just one road in and 10 miles from the nearest town. There were 13 pubs in Brightlingsea in those days (and in the early 80s some of them would serve anyone from about 14 years old) and that was all it had to offer, if you did not like sailing (and I did not). Buses to Colchester were hourly, but not reliable and the service ended early in the evening, so driving gave you freedom. Luckily John H loved to drive and passed the test immediately he was 17. There were minor benefits to not driving, when you couldn’t drive you weren’t able to ferry your parents to social events….

I had to drive for work when I graduated and passed my test at the third attempt in the Easter holiday of 1987. I actually drove better on the second test and was gutted to fail. I was doing the test in Clacton where there were a significant pensioner population. On the third test an old lady stepped out in front of the car without looking. I did an unscheduled emergency stop; it was a dual control car and I reacted faster than the examiner – I think some of my other driving flaws may have been overlooked due to my speedy reactions.

Despite that I managed to crash my first car inside two months. My second car was the most basic Ford Fiesta imaginable – no radio or even a heated rear window – but it was reliable as it was new and that was what I needed for work. Oddly enough when the four lads went out we used Dave’s XR3i and not my bottom of the line Fiesta😊 John H is undoubtedly the best driver in our group, but at least I am better than Neil – who never learnt to drive….. On recent holidays we have gone Go Kart racing. Neil always likes to say what a great driver he is on the track. Luckily results proved him wrong and he keeps coming last.

Anyway, Michael wrote a book – Undoing a Bra, which refers to this from his point of view:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Undoing-Bra-Michael-Ball-ebook/dp/B07HHZYHJT/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=undoing+a+bra&qid=1586600646&sr=8-1 where my sole mention is how he passed quicker than me. I’m happy to concede not only did he pass first but he was, and remains, a better driver than me.

Fever times

I don’t really want to talk about viruses at the moment. But this song means I have to.

Only three songs send a sinister chill down my spine just by listening to them – Straight to Hell by the Clash, The Cutter by Echo & the Bunnymen and The Harder I Try by Brother Beyond. Yes. Brother Beyond. (I really think there is another that is much higher up the list – but the ones that do this were all released before I left university – I think I became more robust when I started work).

I first heard it on Top of the Pops when I had a ferocious temperature and was really feverish. It was the stuff of fever dreams for some reason. The video really freaked me out and Nathan Moore seemed to be struggling out of the TV screen (this was not the first time I had hallucinated with a fever – four years earlier I had been attacked by own curtains the night my fever broke). Anyway I got better.

Oddly afterwards I had an attachment to the track – as time went on it still sends a chill up my spine, but I also listened to it a lot after I was better and the fact that I wasn’t being attacked by Nathan Moore was reassuring.

Now I think Pete Waterman is a genius (I mean an evil genius like Doctor Doom or Lex Luthor, not like Reed Richards or Richard Feynman) but I think Stock, Aitken and Waterman were, on the whole, an incredibly baleful influence on late 80s music. Very samey music with a rotating roster of singers – it made money, but it was like eating cardboard – no satisfaction. It was only the arrival of Madchester and dance music that finally injected some energy into popular music after an appallingly fallow period.

On a musical level all I can say is that this track is way above the usual SAW rubbish. It almost sounds like Tamla Motown 20 years on. Or at least that is where they stole it from . The Harder I Try by Brother Beyond.

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

We’re Wide Awake!

How could the concept ever work? Michaela Strachan and Pete Waterman going round Midlands’ clubs on Saturday nights in a show called The Hitman and Her. Playing silly games, filming dancing and interviewing people – this was before glamour clubs like Gatecrasher, Cream or the Ministry of Sound. These were places like Raquels in Wakefield. This was an age where no trainers and no jeans still applied in clubs, when clubs still wanted to pretend they were a cut above pubs.

Two things made it work. It was on about 2am on a Sunday morning. Just after getting home from a long Saturday night out with plenty of lager this was about all the brain could handle. (Post booze drinking is a very special genre, The Word was unfairly castigated for being trash TV, but after a few pints it was perfect). After the Hitman and Her there was either American Gladiators (which led to the inferior British version of Gladiators) or WCW wrestling, either of which would induce sleep.

Then there was Michaela Strachan. An unlikely sex symbol who had come to fame via the children’s show the Wide Awake Club on Saturday mornings. After a Friday night out (we could easily manage Friday and Saturday on the beer in those days) waking up with a hangover on a Saturday there were limited choices on the four TV stations –it was assumed that Saturday morning was for children. Michaela Strachan was on with Timmy Mallett (beauty and the beast). Ostensibly a children’s show but, from the number of men who have told me that they watched it, I imagine the viewing demographic was not just children but also hungover teens and twenty something males. I think she was famous for her union jack shorts.

This was the theme tune to The Hitman and Her. Very 80s.

Doing It Right

The only other garage track on the list is by a member of So Solid Crew. The weird thing about this is it does not seem like a garage track, it seems like a rock track trying to pretend it is garage – the aggression and attitude area foreign concept to R&B now. My work team at the time did not understand me liking it. I like the mix of the different vocals and the aggression.

The video has not dated well, though compared to many rap videos of the time it is pretty mild. It is disappointing that a female artist would make a video that treated women like this. The misogyny in rap videos is generally appalling. Women are constantly treated as sexually available eye candy with little agency of their own. The problem with this is how affects the way young women think of themselves.

Read Invisible Women by Caroline Criado-Perez. It is brilliant and shows so many ways how society is biased against woman- and in some cases is actively much more dangerous.

I’m not being paid for these referrals. The book highlights the many ways in which, many unintentionally due to a lack of thinking, put women at risk. Cars being designed for the average man. Biological research almost all being based on men. The effect of drugs not being checked about how women’s body chemistry varies every month. It is not a book to read if you are prone to say “political correctness gone mad” or anything similar, but I think it is a book everyone should read.

Apart from that Caroline Criado-Perez is a liberal superstar who deserves kudos for what she does.

Which has nothing to do with Lisa Maffia. Now it’s All Over.

“Hey DJ Where’s the Fucking Bass?”

At least that is what the crowd yelled when the DJ cut the volume for that line in Heaven Night Club, Kos Town.

Summer of 1991, two weeks in Kos with Andy, Dave, John and Neil. All day out by the pool or exploring the island (but mainly the former). Couple of hours kip then out for dinner and a night drinking. After a couple of nights where we did not meet any British people Dave had found out where the Brits hung out – the majority of the tourists in Kos were Scandinavian and had their own Bar Street. So after that we spent most of our time at a bar called Club 69 in the British Bar Street (though to be honest it was pretty cosmopolitan) and some at a bar called Garage. Anyway we met up with some women from Barnet (who we had originally met at the pool, not our pool – we were staying in cheap apartments without a pool, we walked a couple of miles each day to use a hotel pool, we were there so often they thought we were residents and didn’t charge us) who suggested going on to a club. Well oiled by now (it was getting on for 2am) we agreed, apart from Neil who ducked out.

(John, Neil & Andy at Club 69).

Heaven was half outdoors, half indoors. The outdoor part including a fake ship in a lake. The toilets were not in a good condition. Every urinal, toilet and sink was in use – the next guy used the waste bin.

I don’t dance much but this holiday was an exception. We danced for a couple of hours with our new friends and this song played at least twice.

Of all the songs that I heard on the holiday this is the one I could not track down when we got home. My friend John knew what it was, but I could not find it – either as a single or on a compilation CD. Finally 15 years later I got a copy on Amazon. I found the fucking bass😊

Looking for a good time

Definitely one that is more loved by me for memory association that the quality of the song.

Lawrence Miles once wrote a blog entry that said about Eric Prydz’s Call On Me that said most of the boys who bought it would be disappointed that it did not come with a copy of the video. I can’t help thinking that the same applied to Boys (Summertime Love).

Back in the 80s overseas package holidays were less common for younger people. Usually some kind of europop song would be a massive hit in the second half of the summer as returning holiday makers bought it to remind themselves of the holiday. This came out in 1987, just a year before Ibiza and its clubs changed the nature of a Mediterranean beach holiday for people in their 20s. It was at least better than Agadoo or FR David’s Words (much liked by my sister Alison at the time). This proper Europop.

My mate Dave Francis was much taken with the song. Dave’s a great guy and will get mentioned quite a bit. He’s not the world’s greatest music fan but the man knows how to have fun (and taught me to let go and enjoy myself) and that is what this track is – fun. When we would drive down Clacton seafront on a summer’s day in the late 80s, in his XR3i this is one of the song’s that would be playing (some of the others will come up on this list but another that won’t was Push It by Salt ‘n’ Pepa). Great days. I mean, I know it was only Clacton, but there is something great about living near the sea and just being able to enjoy the attractions anytime.

The video is one of the most downloaded internet clips of all time. Guess why? Must have been even more shocking in a staunchly catholic country like Italy – on the other hand they elected La Ciccolina as an MP. Probably NSFW.

Lift me up

There will be quite a bit of trance on the list. Once I discovered dance music could be ok (more on that later) I gravitated from techno to trance. A lot of people say trance all sounds the same. Like they say all heavy metal sounds the same (listen to Babymetal and Iron Maiden, do they sound the same? Just admit there are genres you do not like, that is fine). It helps if you are on some kind of stimulant I guess, but I’m still enjoying and I am stimulant free, sadly even no alcohol. I have never taken any illicit drugs (I even hate the smell of weed). I always wonder what ecstasy would be like – especially given my love of this music. I’ve left it too late to try as my medical condition makes it highly inadvisable to do it now.

Trance was the first time I realised there was good music around Europe. Up until then Euro music was definitely looked down on. Trance is huge in the Netherlands – I always try and keep up with Armin Van Buren’s take on the scene, as well as Tiesto’s. Trance is joyful and ecstatic – listening to it cheers me up.

This track is uplifting trance, with atypical female vocal. It still has echoes of a mid 90s beat underneath it.

An positive song from a pretty grim time in my life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAAq0bn4h_Y

Talking’ Bout Revolutions

From 2004. With this I really just like the lyrics. It’s not my childhood but it is someone remembering theirs and it is really honest, clever and funny. This isn’t really my genre of music, which makes my love of it all the odder.

R&B. Rhythm and Blues – it came from the Mississippi delta and the deep south in America. Say R&B now and people think of slick (over produced I would say) descendent of soul. Music has descended into a bland culture of slick perfection – the music is different but it sounds like the muso perfection of 70s prog rock groups. That needed overturning to keep things fresh.

Popular music needs revolutions, but not only don’t they happen anymore (it needs revolution and evolution), and I am not sure whether they can. Music is consumed in such a different way. The world has gone from actively purchasing singles and albums to downloading tracks that are desired to a huge number of people using curated Spotify playlists. These play more tracks based on what they have already listened to. I can’t imagine not wanting to be in control of the music I choose to enjoy. As I go through this list of music I love there are many famous songs, but some really obscure ones. Spotify culture promotes homogeneity – you listen to Drake, there are a hundred artists producing music similar. There would be no jumping out of the comfort zone with this approach to music.

Interestingly this morning I was listening to a Guardian long read about Magic Radio. The thrust of Magic’s offer is that people like feeling part of a radio community. However I do not think it overturns my hypothesis as:

The channel is aimed at 35-55s, and
It is just like one giant playlist anyway – songs are playlisted for a certain number of times a week.

Changes to the current musical standard are never universally popular and for most people only appreciated in retrospect (e.g. punk). Where is the next revolution?

All that said I make an exception for 1980 by Estelle😊