by Tim Bradford
ps: And if you need any articles for your magazine by people who haven’t heard the music, I’m your man.
No jobs
Nothing seems like it’s going
anywhere these days
nothing stays forever
and everything must go.
Young man trying to be true
to what’s inside
wanna know what’s keeping you down
take a look around.
No jobs
grey city
it gets me down.
Class war in the schools
the lesson they’re teaching us
is give nothing away
unless you’re sure to make it pay.
You have made it for the few
the shit is left behind
control my temper while I wait
democracy is gone.
The generation’s doing hard time
they took away our pride
we’re signed up and thrown away
will there be better days.
No jobs
grey city
it gets me down.
Hi Tim,
That might be close to the truth, but then again – however cool the idea may sound, we don’t have that many great Danish punk bands. Only a few. That’s why we don’t review ’em, and that’s why quite a few of them are pissed at us.
If you want good and innouatiue punk rock, look out for Sweden, or even better Finland … So maybe the record floated euen further away?
But anyway, what are you interested in writing about?
And thanks for your interest!!
cheers
Morten Gerdsen
chief-editor
The Tremolo Beer Gut: The Sleaz-e-nator4
‘Copenhagen’s Tremolo Beer Gut draw inspiration from the ultra-cool rough twangy guitar sound of fifties and sixties surf as well as the great film music of Mancini, Barry and Moricone.’
The Ultra Bimbos5
PMS 666 (No Man’s No Good!?)
from: Jukka Perkele! 7”
available at: Bad Afro Records
label: Bad Afro Records
‘If The Ultra Bimbos were not from Finland they would be a huge hit; the record mega-moguls would be scratching and clawing to sign them.’
Toybomb6
Peter Rasmussen, drums, vocals
Ulrich Basler, guitar, vocals
Johannes Pedersen, bass
Jonas Jakobsen, guitar
‘We have played since 1995 with different drummers and bass players. In 1996 we met Peter and he started to play with us. We played for some time, but in 1998 our bass player Vinnie, left the band and we continued with me on bass, Jones on guitar and Peter on drums. Then in 1999 we met Johannes and he joined the band … and that’s the short version of our story.’
Did I mention that I have formed a Danish punk band? They’re called the Stigmen. The members of the Stigmen are me and Danish ex-Liverpool midfielder Jan Molby. Jan plays synths and looks cool and translates our lyrics into Danish, although it’s intentionally written as if badly translated from Danish into English. Of course, Jan’s not really in the Stigmen. He coaches at a lower division English football team. But having an ex-footballer in the band might generate a bit of music press interest. Does that make sense?
At the moment the Stigmen only have one song, about the Tyburn, called ‘Mr No Socks’.
The women in Belsize Park don’t seem to wear bras.
Everyone seems to drive very smart cars.
There aren’t many old blokes’ pubs
Just trendy bars.
It’s a popular place for actors and rock stars.
Yeah it really rocks
yeah it really rocks
yeah it really rocks
Look, here he comes, Mr No Socks.
Dear Morten,
After your comments about Danish punk music being shite I’ve decided to form my own Danish punk band which corresponds to the high quality Danish music myths I’ve created. Would you be interested in running a feature about my band, the Stigmen? We are a cross between the Swell Maps and Karl-Heinz Stockhausen.
Cheers,
Tim
London Stories 8: Suspicious Mind
* * *
A couple of summers back I was sauntering through Leicester Square, enjoying the aroma of warm mayonnaise from the nearby sandwich bars, when I was collared by a beefy woman who looked just like the boxer Jake La Motta, except she was wearing a floral-print dress and had long grey hair tied up in a bun on top of her head.
‘Lucky heather, love?’
‘I, er, well, er, I, er, haa ha … ’
‘It’ll bring you good luck.’
What she meant was, it’ll bring you bad luck if you don’t buy it. We did the deal and I walked quickly away, ashamed at my weakness. I’d like to throw the heather away, but each time I try it I see the gypsy woman standing next to me saying, ‘Just you try it, sonny.’ I’m not superstitious or anything. Far from it. But every time a gypsy woman stops me in the street and offers me some lucky heather, I am paralysed with fear at the thought of saying no.
Around that time Leeds United were embarking on their first foray into the UEFA Champions League. I arranged to meet up at a sports bar in Covent Garden called Evergreens to watch their first qualifier against the German side Munich 1860 (‘Ha ha – sounds like a beer, dunnit?’ said the landlord) with my old friend Andy. Our evening went something like this. Andy got there first and got the beers in, I turned up a couple of minutes after kick-off. We stood and stared at the screen for an hour and three quarters clutching beer to our mouths, occasionally going to the bar or the bog. At half time we’d have a quick conversation about work and family then it was back to business. Leeds won the game, then we retired to the nearby Freemasons Arms to discuss the game. For the return leg we did exactly the same thing and Leeds won again.
Now through to the Champions League proper, Leeds’ first game was against Barcelona. I couldn’t make it so watched the game on TV. Leeds got tonked 4–0. Next game I met up with Andy again and we went through the same ritual. Leeds won. We retired to the nearby Freemasons Arms to discuss the game.
Although both reasonably rational people (well, Andy is) we now realized that we were in a Magical Luck Ritual. In fact, we were pretty much locked into it. Any deviation from our tried and trusted formula meant that Leeds would lose. As if to prove our thesis, every time we didn’t meet up, the team always lost.
I’m a firm believer in the lucky pub theory of football success. I’ve travelled all over London searching for the perfect venue. Certain boozers have stood out over the last few years – the Winchester Hall Tavern, the London Spa, the Green Man In Riding House Street, the Boston Arms and the Birdcage in Stamford Hill. Of course, they always let you down in the end, but on the way it’s good fun trying.
Others began to cotton on to Evergreens’ mystical powers. Namely, the London Leeds United Supporters Club. The London Leeds United Supporters Club seemed to be made up of about twenty thick-necked lads with skinhead haircuts, twenty tall blokes with specs and suits, a couple of well-built blonde lasses, a curly-haired former magazine editor plus Andy and me.
Leeds got through the first group into the second stage of the Champions League, with an even harder group. But we were confident that if our system held, so would the team’s luck. Leeds doggedly progressed. Then at the end of this stage, disaster struck. Evergreens closed down. Panic-stricken, we all moved 50 yards up the road to a bar called Rampage. The atmosphere changed. People started bickering because they couldn’t see the TVs. And the Guinness was expensive. But the luck seemed to hold. Leeds won the first leg of the quarter final against Deportivo La Coruna 3–0.
Then – mini disaster. I arranged a holiday in Ireland with my family that coincided with the second leg, and didn’t have the heart to pull out. I had to listen to a bad Talk Radio reception in the west of County Clare as Leeds went down 2–
0. In the semi they were held to a 0–0 draw at home, but I was quietly confident of them progressing. An even bigger set-back was to follow. Andy and his wife had arranged to go on holiday for the second leg. He’d forgotten all about the football when he’d booked it. And neglected to tell me, the bastard – if I’d had time I could have arranged to go on holiday at the same place (Jersey) to meet up with him.
However, I arranged to get a photo of Andy and carry it about in my pocket, buy it beer, chat to it about tactics afterwards. But the only pic I’d got was of Andy at the Notting Hill Carnival with a couple of Jamaican grannies on his arm. It didn’t have the necessary gravitas. I roped in a couple of other friends in the hope that providence wouldn’t notice Andy’s absence. But when I got to the bar I saw that it was completely full of Johnny and Jemima-come-latelys. My mates were standing outside, with a crowd of others, unable to get in. Crestfallen, we wandered around for a while to a couple of Australian bars, then sat in an Irish pub that was showing a Liverpool game.
Leeds got stuffed. Andy and his wife moved to Guildford. Heartbroken, I stopped watching Leeds on TV
1 http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Stadium/1141/
2 www.worldwidepunk.com
3 http://knotne.freeyellow.com/
4 http://stage.vitaminic.dk/the_tremolo_beer_gut/
5 http://www.earpollution.com/vol3/jan01/album/album2.htm#theeultrabimbos
6 http://www.toybomb.dk/
10. Big Sky Over Norton Folgate
• The Walbrook, Hoxton to Southwark Bridge
TV – Val Singleton – Saxon shit – Temple of Mithras – Caecilius – Mayday protests – Shoreditch – Internet – global capitalism – Broadgate – Bank – police search – Christian security guard
Media Event No. 1
I met up with a high-powered Person from a TV company who’d heard on the media grapevine that I was going to attempt to be the first person to walk the courses of London’s rivers while giving a shoulder high to Norris McWhirter and singing Danish punk songs. After all, reality TV is all the rage at the moment. I told her my idea was for a public-information-type film narrated by ex-Blue Peter star Valerie Singleton, with lots of old illustrations. I’d meet Val in a pub and say ‘Val, want to be in my film?’ Then Peter Purves comes over and threatens me – says ‘Oi, are you chatting up my bird?’ Then there’d be a scene of me necking lots of cans of Special Brew followed by a dream/dowsing sequence done in a Terry Gilliam cartoon style. Then some clips of Scandinavian punk bands. After this I’d recreate the past using an illustrator but pretending it’s my ‘Go Back In Time’ headgear machine. Then meet different river groups and discover their manifestos for world domination. I’d finish building my boat, then cut to The New River Story – snatches of film overdubbed with the river history in Flashing Blade style. Maybe with Scaramouche starring Stewart Granger. Some montages of maps and diagrams, then a trance record called Free the Rivers played outside the mayor’s headquarters. At the end Peter Purves (who’s been stalking me throughout the film) attacks me and we have a fight, falling to our deaths through an open man hole into an icy underground river.
The High-powered TV Person nodded politely and smiled. ‘Sounds like fun!’ she said then rushed out of the room saying she’d be in touch soon. I hope the filming schedule doesn’t interfere with my summer holidays.
The Walbrook was the first of London’s rivers to disappear, originally in Roman times, when it became choked up with old pottery, bits of mosaic, floor tiles, Latin textbooks and the like. The Romans left in 410 when the legions went scurrying away to protect Rome from the invading central European gloom mongers the Visigoths, and as London slowly began to fall to pieces it wasn’t long before the Walbrook (if it wasn’t already filled with rubble) was getting clogged up with Saxon shit. The Germanic invaders objected to the idea that the previous inhabitants had high-tech lavatories and bathrooms. Saxon lives were so high octane – what with their farms and stuff – they didn’t have time to waste on going to the bog, so just did it at the side of the road or in each others’ houses or, most often, in the river. The Walbrook was finally filled in in the mid to late fifteenth century when the fast expansion of the population led to a building boom – plus, houses needed to be bigger because of the billowing pantaloons and huge ruffs that were all the rage at the time, so land within the city walls became extremely valuable.
To lose a river once … careless, to lose it twice … bloody useless. As a result no one is exactly sure where the Walbrook runs, although various people have done excavations and builders to this day have problems. In the twenties, as Alan Ivimey notes in Some Lost Rivers of London, City buildings almost had to float, built up on piles up to 40 feet deep, to clear the soft mud and water. We do know that the Romans used the Walbrook to get to the Temple of Mithras. This shrine was built on the banks of the river around what is now Walbrook, a street near Monument. It was moved by the Corporation of London after it was excavated in the fifties because some director of an insurance company mentioned at a Round Table meeting that he’d like it in front of his office.
The Mithraic cult was popular among legionaries – in a way it was similar to present day squaddies’ worship of Page 3 models. At the temple they cut off bulls’ heads and (of course) bathed in the blood, while chanting stuff to a supernatural deity who shagged cows.
Caecilius is in the temple. Here comes the bull. Clemens hands the sword to Caecilius. Chop goes the sword. Thud goes the bull’s head against the floor. Spurt goes the bull’s blood. Now they all swim in blood. ‘All hail to Mithras, weird bull-like deity of the crazy Romans!’ shout Caecilius and his friends.
Q1. How does Caecilius chop off the bull’s head?
Q2. Who is holding down the bull?
Q3. Did you see Caligula starring Malcolm ‘Mad Eyes’ McDowell? Helen Mirren was pretty damn impressive.
In a way, the Romans still roam the City of London. Their helmets have changed slightly – they’re more penis shaped now – and their uniforms are black. They do have the same shields, though now they’re made of Perspex. They patrol the streets and look down on anyone with long straggly hair. They’ve dispensed with the stumpy swords and instead use terrifying batons. Look at a London policeman and it makes you realize how the past, present and future exist all together – overlapping, like the pieces in an old fuzzy felt set. Ever since I can remember I have always tried (John Coltrane record playing in background) to imagine the past in the present, with me in between things, straddling time and space, between cultures.
‘Now put on this poloneck and say that in French,’ said my wife. We both thought about time for a while and divided our lives up into little segments. (Is that how much I’ve got left? As a kid you see the world from your own point of view, then at twenty-two you understand, with a thud, you’re going to die.)
‘What’s the point of anything?’ we said to each other, in despair.
‘Shall we get a video?’ I said.
‘Mmm, yes, as long as it’s a romantic comedy. Fancy a Chinese?’
And then we forgot all about time.
Media Event No. 2
It’s Mayday. Which means revolution is in the air. Originally a Celtic festival known as Beltane, the Day of Fire (Bel was the sun god) celebrated the spring planting of crops. During the Middle Ages the event became a time for carnival, fertility rites and dancing round a maypole, with characters such as the Green Man poking fun at authority. These events were looked down on by the church and state. Eventually it became an international workers’ day – it used to be our public holiday, until the dunderheaded Thatcherites decided it was too socialist and scrapped it.
But now, it seems, the old traditions have returned and on 1 May mass anti-global capitalism protests take place in cities across the industrialized world, much to the annoyance of heavy-handed and paranoid governments – like our own. On this particular Mayday, while all self-respecting anti-globalists are in the West End getting their nuts wh
acked (Beltane?) by Red-Bull-addicted thick-necked Home Counties coppers, I’m making my own silent protest about something or other by walking the route of the silent Walbrook through the City of London while singing, at regular intervals, the lyrics to ‘Do They Owe Us a Living’ by Crass from the Bullshit Detector LP. I’m recording it for posterity on my crappy old Dictaphone and will try and splice some of the excerpts into a hardcore dance anthem later in the summer. Or maybe I won’t.
I start at the source of the main branch of the river, on Waterson Street in northern Shoreditch, which runs between the Hackney and Kingsland Roads. North Shoreditch/South Hoxton is now famous for the Internet Revolution, when the bars around the area throbbed with the excitement of big-specced skinheads with public-school accents banging on about venture capital to impress the birds. The same public-school types who would have been something in the City before but had now swapped their suits for combat trousers.
Nearby is a collection of workshops and studios, one of which is home to When Saturday Comes magazine, a cult left-wing football magazine. It’s been my (only) regular source of income over the last decade. One day every month I get an email from WSC, explaining that they need a cartoon of a footballer with very short legs, and I duly oblige. I’ve spent most of my time in London working for the magazine in one capacity or another (drawing players with very short legs, drawing players with big noses and very short legs) and it’s still got pretty much the same crowd running (and reading) it. All around are trendy designers and photographers who are mostly fifteen years younger than us. We give them useful advice, like how to do a Harold Wilson impression and how to skin a rabbit.
