review: The Story of Lovers Rock

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A good night out at the BFI on Tuesday for the world premier of The Story of Lovers Rock by Menelik Shabazz.

Clearly love is in the air right now, with King Midas Sound also citing lovers rock as an influence. And as I’ve said before it really is the “cinderella sub-genre” of reggae, hugely important for its audience, but strangely absent from the standard historical documentation by music nerds. In fact the BFI had clearly underestimated the importance of the film – they had to move the screening to a larger auditorium because of its popularity.

Menelik spoke briefly before the showing and explained that what we were about to see wasn’t the finished article because of funding issues. So I had visions of some amateurish stuff with timecodes running along the bottom of the screen, but I needn’t have worried. What we saw was great – a beautifully crafted film which was composed of interviews with virtually all of the key players, live footage from the Brixton Academy “lovers revue” show last year and some excellent comedy skits set in a dancehall.

The best “celebrity” interviewees for me were Dennis Bovell (who always gives good quote), John Kpiaye and Janet Kay who together explained the origins of the Lovers Rock label and the genre it spawned, as well as going into fascinating detail about the creation of “Silly Games” (and the huge response to it).

We also saw some brilliant recollections and live performances from Maxi Priest, Lorna Gee, Victor Romero and some white reggae specialists who may have included Fashion’s Chris Lane. Linton Kwesi Johnson, Mad Professor and especially Lez Lyrix were also great assets – providing the political and cultural backdrop but categorically NOT in a dry academic way.

And there are a host of other contributors I couldn’t identify – captions are promised for the final cut, resources allowing. The accounts from artists were almost eclipsed by some of the first person accounts from every day life from people who just loved the music and went to the dances: close dancing in dark basements. Their were howls of laughter from the women in the audience when someone on screen remembered the lights going on and finding she had been dancing with a man who wasn’t all that. And how embarrassing must it have been for everyone when someone’s MUM came in the dance and got on the mic, ordering her teenage son to come home?

My life in the early eighties was nothing like this of course, but I still loved the sense of emotional intensity, female empowerment, and fun that the film conjured up. There were many moments when the enormous affection people have for lovers rock shone through.

Victor Romero and Janet Kay spoke briefly about the film afterwards during the q&a.

Menelik Shabazz is currently trying to raise the extra 50k needed to finish the project off – most of this will go on funding archive footage to be cut into the film, which I think will make it even more essential viewing. In fact, writing this review makes me want to see it all over again, so if there are any culturally-minded millionaires checking out this blog, you know what to do…

the eleventh gig I can remember going to

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

Work work work work work.

I needed money to sustain my vinyl fetishism and fanzine habit, but I wasn’t after a career by any means. (In fact the only reason I have anything vaguely resembling a career today is because I’m lazy and just stick to doing what I know.)

There was an industrial temping agency about 20 minutes walk from my house so I signed on there. You had to turn up at 6 o’clock in the morning and they would dish out jobs to people they liked the look of. Then the lucky ones would pile in a couple of vans and head off to some grim industrial estate to sell their labour. If you were unlucky you’d got up at the crack of dawn for no reason at all, but at least you could go back to bed and doss about for the rest of the day.

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... for industrial people

The work was basically the same wherever you went – moving heavy objects around, sweeping up or production line repetition. The only real variation was how much of a wanker the supervisor was. Bosses aside, the people were usually OK and took you under their wing. The ladies of the cheese factory were impressed by my polite manner and the guy who taught me how to clean out lathes at “Components and Linkages” said I should give him a call if I ever needed a steady job.

Some people are just shits though. I got sacked from a supermarket warehouse because I kept turning down overtime (“you’re no good to me if you don’t want to do seven ’til five”) and a couple of us got sacked from another warehouse by a jobsworth spotty middle manager because we’d swept the place clean twice over but hadn’t paid him due respect.

The maddest job was tarmac-ing people’s driveways. Four of us in a van – the boss was an old hand at charming housewives with the old “I’ve got a bit of spare tarmac missus, do you want your drive doing?” con. If he got a “yes” we’d get to work while he fucked off somewhere else for a cuppa or to drum up more business. I never mentioned to any of the good householders that their driveways didn’t need tarmacing because they were alreadyconcreted, or that we’d never done anything like it before and so the craftmanship might be a bit lacking… The police turned up a few times and we fobbed them off by acting dumb and saying that the boss had asked us to do x, y and z, so we were. Fortunately that only lasted a few days.

Usually the work was just dull and repetitive. I became increasingly reliant on the kindness and humour of others, or being able to enjoy my own company. The shittest job was rinsing valve casings in parafin. Put on rubber gloves, pick up two inch-square components, rinse in vat of parafin, put in a bucket. Repeat. For two weeks. Without anybody else nearby. I picked up my wages at the end of the week, reeking of parafin and social isolation. I had already organised and re-organised the list of records I was going to buy that weekend about a hundred times.

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11. Big Black, Head of David,  A.C. Temple. Friday 24th July 1987, Hammersmith Clarendon.

Peter drove us down to the Rough Trade Shop  in Ladbroke Grove one sunny Saturday morning and we both picked up copies of Big Black’s limited edition “Headache” EP. It was rare, it came in a black vinyl sealed cover with brass embossing. It was on red vinyl. It had a really grim full colour photo of someone with their head caved in as the hidden inside cover. Essential purchase!

The music didn’t disappoint either – angular forceful bass guitar and thunderous drum machine, brittle screeching guitars. Brooding vocals. Tight as fuck. Oh, and they were playing live in a couple of weeks. Sorted.

Friday. Get wages, get home, get changed, get tea, get OUT.

Mmm the Clarendon. We zoomed down there in Peter’s knackered car – up and down the Westway, in and out the lights.

There was a nutter up the front shouting random stuff at Head of David, like “Jack Nicholson!”. (Actually it wasn’t that random, it turned out it was one of their songs). I met him two years later and we’ve been mates ever since. Head of David were good, but they were completely eclipsed by the headliners…

…”One, two, FUCK YOU!”

I hadn’t listened to much Big Black before the gig, just the EP and a Peel session. So the first time I heard tracks like “Kerosene” and “Fish Fry” was at the Clarendon, with sweat pouring of the ceiling and everyone in the place going mental. It was jaw-droppingly great, without question one of the most energetic gigs I have ever had the pleasure of attending.

Wire joined them for their cover of “Heartbeat” for the encore (which wasn’t all that, but I think everyone needed a breather anyway).

I added “Atomizer”, “Songs About Fucking” and everything else Big Black had ever done to my list of things to get at the earliest opportunity.

It turned out to be the group’s last ever gig. They just didn’t want to turn rubbish. Fair play.

It was recorded and released 5 years later as “Pig Pile”. Listening to the set again is great experience but it’s actually slightly tarnished my fuzzy memories of the event.

The melancholy of hope: interview with King Midas Sound

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FACT magazine: Interview: King Midas Sound

I recently spoke to Kevin Martin, Roger Robinson and Hitomi about the superb new King Midas Sound album “Waiting For You” which is about to come out on Hyperdub.

The interview is now up at FACT and is a great read, even if I say so myself. Topics covered include Lovers Rock, rapso, London and emotional intensity in music. Kevin also discusses his feelings about the reception of The Bug project: “In a way King Midas Sound is the opposite of The Bug.”

STEAL IT – on the pop theft epidemic

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NME 1987 STEAL IT issue: now available at uncarved.org

I’ve kept this part of the NME for 22 years because of the excitement I experienced when reading it at the time. The articles here show music journalism at its best – people who care about music getting swept away in the moment when they realise that everything is up for grabs – that there are infinite possibilities. The future looked bright.

Reading all this changed my mind about what music could be, and joined up the dots between hip hop, punk, avantgarde noise and everything in between. It made me want to make music.

But… a cursory browse of the classified ads in Melody Maker and Sounds told a slightly different story. I had just turned 18 and was still living at home with my parents. Certainly all this new technology meant that anyone could do it, it was just that the hundreds of pounds needed for computers, decks, sampler, drum machine etc was still way out of my reach. Years later, I still found grappling with cubase too much of a pain in the arse. The sounds in my head generally have to stay there until somebody else manages to make noises in the real world which sound a bit like them. I’ve stuck with words, for better or worse.

But… this issue of the NME still changed the way I thought about things – provided a way for me to appreciate a particular approach to creativity and art. And… the thrill of the illegal. Theft, on the front cover of a national music paper. Perhaps the issues are different but you would never get a publication in 2009 inciting people to download copyrighted music for free. In fact the only similar example I can think of is The Wire’s “Unofficial Channels” issue.

Back in 1987, Stuart Cosgrove got himself into some serious trouble for the NME’s “Censorship” issue. I also devoured this at the time, but don’t seem to have kept it. The proposed cover was going to feature the H.R. Giger’s “Penis Lansdcape” image, which had got the Dead Kennedys into hot water after including it as an insert to their “Frankenchrist” album. The cover was vetoed by IPC and so obscure indie band Motorcycle Boy appeared on news-stands across the nation instead. I’m not sure if that was retaliation from the staff or whether no other images were available at short notice, but Cosgrove apparently lost his job over it all.

Anyway – happy reading!