uncarved.org blog

I realise I’ve been a bit heavy on the spoken word and theorising and teenage nostaliga recently so here is another post about celebs and t-shirts for you, what with it being London Fashion Week and all.

Click here for a complete list of entries in the series  ”the first 23 gigs I can remember going to”.

2) Midge Ure Wembley Arena 23/12/85

Back to the Arena, two days before Xmas. I had another school friend who was a big Ultravox fan. He used to regularly curse Joe Dolce whose accordion-bothering “Shaddap You Face” had kept “Vienna” off the number 1 spot in the UK charts.

I thought Ultravox were alright – all those moody synths, overcoats and big words. More on them anon, though. I vaguely recall the queue being flyered by young women in skimpy Santa Claus outfits. Stuff like that makes an impression on you when you’re 16.

The support act was Belouis Some – the great wannabe pop star of the era who never really made it. His one big hit “Imagination” has the classic first line “she lit a cigarette, both hands behind her back” which sounds either glamorous or like a fire hazard depending on your cynicism. It’s here on youtube, but any info on what he is doing now has eluded me. His set was alright but I remember being quite down on his attempts to get everyone to put their hands in the air.

This gig was part of Midge Ure’s post-Live Aid solo career and wasn’t really all that. The place was half full and lacked the atmosphere of the Howard Jones gig. We were sitting up in a balcony miles away from the stage, so we had a better view of the gaps in the audience than the, uh, “action”.

I couldn’t remember what was played, but a quick google turned up “Sleepwalk” (Ultravox), “Fade To Grey” (Visage, which Midge was also in) and “No Regrets” (Scott Walker, which he had released as a solo single many years earlier). I remember quite liking “The Gift” (the album Midge was promoting), but the setlist looks like a bit of a crisis of confidence in retrospect.

The graphic for the hit single off the album (“If I Was”, Number One for a week) was one of those desk toys where you have a load of shiny silver nails in a frame that you can put your hand in and “wooh!” it leaves an impression of a hand in there. That probably sums up a lot of the stadium pop of the time – executive desk toys. Youtube link.

A dodgy download of the album confirms my worst suspicions – dangerously portentious wordy business. There are a lot of cringeworthy lyrics about teenage alienation though:

“She tries to understand what her father preaches / She wants to live a life that a new world teaches”
(She Cried)

“The boy is listening to those records from the past / he wants to make them last / for they make him feel alive / they are the voices of the faces on the wall / he listens to them all / hangs on every little tale they tell [...] one day he even cut their names upon his skin / they mean that much to him / his bedroom window opens to the evening air / the fox is in his lair”
(Wasteland)

I even bought a Midge Ure t-shirt. I managed to drop it a few months later whilst walking somewhere or other and by the time I’d retraced my steps someone had ripped it to shreds. (Or maybe it was “the fox out of his lair, walking in the evening air” eh?). I don’t remember being particularly upset by this.

I didn’t know it at the time but somewhere else somebody else was skanking to untold versions of King Jammy’s “sleng teng”. I had a long way to go…

3) Marillion, Milton Keynes Bowl 28/06/86

Yes, yes, what were we thinking, eh? I spent my 17th birthday here. There was a coach from St Albans to Milton Keynes and four of us from my school got on it.

My main memory is that there were loads of blokes with long hair and denim. In fact I have a horrifiying suspicion that my own barnet had moved beyond Howard Jones spikey into a mullety type affair by this point.

Jethro Tull played “Living In The Past” which I suddenly realised Midge Ure had also covered at the previous gig. I remember someone referring to them as “The Tull” in a Brummie accent.

But I can’t remember anything about the Mama’s Boys, which either means they were middle of the road nonsense, or were so dire I have blanked them from my mind in an act of psychic self defence. Things improved slightly when we struck up the courage to try and get some cider. In retrospect it’s pretty obvious that nobody at these events really gives a toss who they are selling alcohol to as long as you can physically see over the counter. At the time it seemed very daring, ha ha.

Magnum were OK, my rockier mates liked them and they’d even played St Albans Civic Centre I think. (Other fixtures including Hawkwind and Dumpy’s Rusty Nuts – all these rockers would come out of the woodwork from surrounding villages…)

Six years after the great secondary school two tone / heavy metal wars, we were a lot more tolerant of musical diversity. I was never that into “rock” and I’m sure some of our crew were never convinced by Marc Almond. Everything was a negotiation, alliances shifted. But a day out was a day out, always riddled with exciting possibilities.

Having said that, Gary Moore was fucking bollocks, obviously. Wanking about with a guitar and big hair. Parisian Walkways and all that. I liked to think of myself as open-minded back then, but I was 100% certain about that not being my bag.

I liked Marillion though.

Perhaps it was that faux sophistication thing again – lots of wordy lyrics and worldly songs about the horrors of war and bad women and messed up situations. And weird proggy little musical freakouts. Oh and those dark bits of sleeve art with jesters lurking in dark bedsits looking abject.

Marillion was the first thing I ever heard on a Sony Walkman. Some kid smuggled his onto the school sports field and we sat around waiting patiently for our turn. It sounded pretty amazing – properly inside your head, loud and majestic and all that. Another dodgy download confirms that it was in fact a load of boshing drums, senselessly tweaky keyboard solos and sixth form poetry.

Marillion were the antithesis of punk (apart from the odd “fuck” in the lyrics), but you forget how popular this stuff was (and is) when you spend your time on more tasteful pursuits – Milton Keynes Bowl has a capacity of 65,000 and it was pretty rammed.

I bought a t-shirt, yes sirree. It had a little drummer boy on it and big yellow Marillion logo. Somewhere there is probably photographic evidence of me with a mullet, wire-framed specs and a Marillion t-shirt. I’ve always had that kind of effortlessly stylish glamour about me, I can tell you.

I think I knew all the words to the songs as well. In fact I can still recall something like “gracefully polluting satellite infested heavens” right now, 23 years later.

We were half cut by the time they came on. I’m sure everyone over 18 was ripped to the gills. We were all outside, under clear skies as the sun was setting – watching one of our favourite bands. Fish was a great frontman.

So we all sang along to all the wordy words in every song. Except “Kayleigh” – even Marillion fans refused to stand for that.

Click here for a complete list of entries in the series  ”the first 23 gigs I can remember going to”.

So (deep breath) here is the first installment as promised…

1) Howard Jones, Wembley Arena, 17/4/85

My first ever gig, at the tender age of 15. Me and some mates from school. We were all very excited.

Howard Jones, though? Well, I’d been obsessed with “synth pop” since seeing Soft Cell and The Human League on Top of The Pops, but hadn’t been of the age to go to their gigs, right? And to the teen me, Howard Jones seemed like a continuation of that.

For those who don’t know him, Howard was a solo artist from Aylesbury (another London commuter-belt town) who experienced quite a bit of chart success in the mid 80s alongside similar artists like Nik Kershaw. I hated Nik Kershaw, though, obviously, because he wasn’t as good as (i.e. was too similar to) Howard Jones.

I even spiked my hair up like him and took to wearing an overcoat (no blonde for me though, that seemed like a step too far). It was to be the first of many unfortunate hair choices in my life, more about which in due course.

Anyway, the video for his first single “New Song” is on youtube. It features some nice footage of Holborn tube station and some digs at grown ups in suits, ha ha.

It was pop, it was of the moment. It has of course aged particularly badly. You can see with these early gigs, how the teenage me was into stuff that seemed sophisticated but was actually really trite. Howard had a load of songs about the injustices of the world and how everyone should just get along or see through their petty materialist illusions.

The first album, Human’s Lib, had been on rotation on the family cassette radio when I was washing up. Except I had to turn it off when one of the tracks on side two came on because it started “sometimes I’d like to go to bed with a hundred women and men”. I also used to own all his singles on 12″ and as previously confessed, this picture disc:

This gig was part of the tour to support the second album Dream Into Action, which included tunes like “Like To Get To Know You Well” and “Things Can Only Get Better” that in retrospect are a bit more “stadium synthpop” than his debut.

The gig itself was the loudest thing I’d ever heard at the time and there were loads of girls there. I was well happy. I bought a shit load of merchandise including a t-shirt, a metallic badge and a tour programme. I shudder to think how much money I’ve put in Howard’s pockets over the years, come to think of it.

I really enjoyed myself, we all did – finally seeing someone you’d listened to on a daily basis in the flesh… Our idol dedicated one song to all of us in the crowd who had fallen for our mate’s girlfriend/boyfriend. We all cheered, even though we hadn’t.

I love how this crap photo of the gig has now come into its own because it clearly shows the dodgy haircuts everyone had in the audience. It says here on the envelope that it was taken by my friend Tom.

As you can see, we were in the fourth row at Wembley Arena. How come? Well, because a mate and me were both in the Howard Jones fan club. Christ, how bad is that?

I guess that was the beginning of my musical nerdery and thoroughness – it wasn’t like you could just get on Howard’s myspace in 1985. Smash Hits only came out fortnightly in them days! You’d end up sending away a lot of stamped addressed envelopes and hassling your parents to write cheques for you just so you could be sent the odd badly photocopied newsletter. Which, without belabouring the point, you were chuffed to receive. There was no information overload, so the gaps in our knowledge were filled with speculations, fantasies. That gap is pre-filled these days with all the usual trainspottery dross on tap, with added celebrity culture if you are especially unlucky.

Anyway, for the sake of a few quid we got some fantastic seats.

We walked back to the tube station very happy, amongst a throng of people singing songs we’d all just heard. Somehow we managed to balls up reading the timetable and missed a few trains back to Hertfordshire. We didn’t care. My ears were ringing for a couple of days afterwards.

Howard and me slowly drifted apart, but my parents still receive the occasional postcard from his agents about what he is up to, two decades later. Listening to some of his tunes today is quite jarring – I still know many of them inside out, but they are remarkably shrill and preachy, even by mid 80s standards. Perhaps the most lasting legacy was that one of his instrumental b-sides was called “Tao Te Ching” and got me interested in the works of Lao Tzu…

Obviously part of me would rather that my first gig was something like Paul Meme sneaking into The Clash, but I’m too old to worry about my past. Writing this has brought back all sorts of memories – you forget how intense everything is when you’re 15. Howard Jones wasn’t cool even at the time – and neither was I.

And yes, the gig did feature rather literal performance artist Jed “throwing off” his “mental chains” woo woo woo.

Roughly a decade ago the seminal breakcore and experimental label Praxis produced some t-shirts. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary there, you might think. Except Praxis were committed to creating a counter-culture (or “sub-net” network) of people who didn’t wish to become celebrity DJs or producers.

Instead people were encouraged to adopt pseudonyms and to find new ways or working collectively. To not play the “business” game. The use of the “DJ Jackal” multiple name was one example of this. Inspired by the Luther Blissett and Karen Eliot phenomena, DJs were invited to adopt the same name for flyers, records, projects.

The t-shirts themselves were not designed to promote the Praxis label. They had the label logo printed on them, for sure. But printed on the inside of the t-shirt where nobody would see it. Printed on the outside of the black t-shirt, in black ink, was the slogan “Visibility Is A Trap”:

“It’s actually a quote from Foucault, from ‘Discipline and Punish’. It refers to surveillance, ie. being controlled through being visible to the authorities. So it has that meaning from the original quote but it also has what I think is important, that what I do is part of a collective and there is a certain degree of anonymity, so that it’s an invisible situation.”
Interview from Deadly Type zine

Burial photographed by Georgina Cook / drumzofthesouth

I was thinking about this earlier today when ruminating on last week’s chicanery regarding Burial’s identity. Burial (for those who don’t know) is a producer operating at the more atmospheric, less “dancey” end of dubstep. He’s released two albums on Kode9′s Hyperdub label to much acclaim.

Burial has gone some way to refuse the role of being a “star” by not revealing his name or being photographed. He is interviewed rarely, and then only by trusted journalists. This has lead to some speculation about his identity, with most agreeing that the lack of a face or name to pin the sounds on makes a refreshing change in the days of flickr, facebook, Hello, DJ Magazine, myspace, and all the other DIY-surveillance which is now all-pervasive.

But then Hyperdub put Burial’s “Untrue” album forward for the 2008 Mercury Music Prize. Whilst this was a courageous move, potentially catapulting the music to a vast audience (and creating some interesting opportunities for collaborations…) it was obvious to everyone that this drift towards mainstream conventions would necessitate a compromise about Burial’s anonymity.

Sure enough The Sun, in the form of tedious knob-end Gordon Smart and his “Bizarre” column began sniffing around:

“Help me dig up the real Burial

A MYSTERY is rumbling through the music world which could threaten one of the biggest nights in the showbiz calendar. Mercury Music Prize nominee BURIAL is the chart equivalent of graffitti artist BANKSY.

Hardly anyone knows the true identity of the producer, widely tipped for the gong in September. [...]

Conspiracy theories are rife as to who is behind the tunes, with producers NORMAN COOK and APHEX TWIN in the frame. [...]

Know who he is? Get in touch by calling…. email …. or text BIZ (space then message) to …”

Burial responded to this by posting a photo of himself and stating his real name on his myspace.

Kode9 seemed as sanguine as ever, posting this entry on his blog.

This, you would think, would be the end of the matter. But it’s easy to forget the frenzy the media gets into over identity. Smart managed to pad out the Burial non-story into a further four episodes.

Gordon Smart considers his next earth-shattering expose. Photo by Stuart MacKenzie.

William Burroughs pointed out that in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the only way you can progress through the afterlife is by knowing the names of the correct spirits. Smart’s obsession with uncovering Burial’s name (and promoting his own by association) shows us that the world of tabloid journalism stinks of death. It is a very real form of Zombie Culture. Subsequent writing by Smart has even latched onto the names of people who emailed him to criticise his first piece, such is his mania to traverse the underworld.

Whilst we should pity Smart for being trapped in such a barren landscape, a more pressing issue is the need to build an arsenal of techniques to resist Zombie Culture. My colleague Boris Karloff has made some suggestions here, but in these days of instensified speculation about our private lives, there is a great need for more.

Footnote 1: Comrade Joe Muggs has written a fuller account of the debacle here. It includes details of Smart’s advanced state of zombified degradation – with the full symptoms of pissyness, plagiarism and pique. By now he will have latched onto some other “story”, but be careful not to reveal your name should you have any dealings with him.

Footnote 2: In the late 80s I had cause to visit the legendary London body-piercer and tattooist Mr Sebastian on a few occasions. He was a lovely man, entirely unaffected by his towering status in that world as far as I could tell. Seb unfortunately (and through no fault of his own) became embroiled in the Spanner Trial, in which various consenting adult S&M practitioners were had up for assaulting each other. Essentially he was charged with assault for conducting a piercing on a paying customer who was entirely happy with the results (more info on this at the wiki link above).

The case came to trial at the Old Bailey in December 1990 and I got a call from someone I didn’t know asking if I could help. I was delighted to be able to do so and managed to rally a few friends to turn out. Watching the trial was a completely bizarre experience, but that is for another time. Our most important contribution came at the end of each day when the judge (Judge Rant, he was called!) had retired.

Our aim, through a variety of tactics, was to get Mr Sebastian home safely and without being photographed by the paparazzi who were lieing in wait. I use the word “safely” advisedly. One of the other defendants in the trial was knocked to the ground by a mob of photographers and suffered a broken arm. It became a bit “cat and mouse”, but we succeded in our objective and no recognisable contemporary photo of Mr Sebastian appeared in any of the newspaper coverage of the trial.

Whilst Mr Sebastian ended up with a suspended sentence on those bullshit charges, he was really happy with the support and solidarity he’d been shown.

I think the main lesson I have learned from this is that you need to surround yourself with people you can trust – you can’t battle Zombie Culture on your own.

So, I really like all those old school JA dancehall flyers and posters from the 80s – they capture a certain era and music as much as the actual sounds, or record sleeves or whatever do.

Fergie obviously likes them too, which means I will never be able to wear that stuff on a t-shirt now. Clarendon are quite interesting – they have loads of stuff on their site about which celebrities have worn their gear. And it’s not entirely clear whether or not they actually pay the original designers of the images for their work…

And whilst we’re on the subject of reggae artwork… R.I.P. Jamaal Pete.  (1) & (2)

…in a series which commenced here.

Paris Hilton says her upcoming album will be a mix of reggae, pop and hip-hop.