John Cooper Clarke, Don Letts and Me

One of the many best things about John Cooper Clarke is the fact that he laughs at his own jokes. I find this hugely endearing, because I do too and I always thought it was wrong, but now I know it is right, because John Cooper Clarke does it.

The journey down to Hereford would have been gruesome if I hadn't been looking forward to the gig so much.
I got stuck behind every farm vehicle from every farm from the Cotswolds to Herefordshire, and it was muggy; but when I got there the hotel, the Green Dragon, was mercifully easy to find, and mercifully still stuck in the 1980s as far as decor was concerned. The promoter, Richard Page, who runs the Wild Hare Club, was there with his partner; both were in high spirits so I couldn't sulk.
We wandered round the corner to the Blue Rooms where I did a sound check, and I went off the the Pizza Express to be ignored for more than 15 minutes before I was served, yet it took less than a second to have the money I put down to pay the bill whipped away by an eagle-eyed waiter!
Richard had done loads of publicity; there were posters everywhere.
The Blue Rooms is a big, low-ceilinged club that also has a bit of a 1980s feel to it, but that seemed to suit this billing down to the ground, and the audience too. His iPod mix of 1970s alternative and punk music summed the evening up perfectly.
They were a good crowd in general, and there was a great atmosphere sweeping on to the stage from them: they reminded me of the Scottish audience way back who had come out to have a good time, and you found yourself playing to a sea of smiles.
There were some fellow customers from the pizza restaurant and they told me the wine had been off, too!
I played for about 40 minutes, my summer set, the happy songs which seemed to go down well ( I am not used to playing encores because of time-pressures at the normal clubs I play but I think I could have done one here) and then I went into the dressing room, and there was John, looking exactly the same as he had more than 20 years ago when Helen and the Horns played Ronnie Scott's with him. He is a lovely bloke; the only sign of weathering (you see, he was well-weathered even back then) is a trio of snazzy gold teeth which make him look more piratical than Johnny Depp.
I walked in on him opening my Gretsch case for a peek (why is my Gretsch always the star of the show? if I was a lesser person I would be jealous!) and we had a good yak about Lover's Rock, which he is a big fan of too. He sang this song to me which is a real gem and I wish I could remember who he said it was by but I don't suppose I'll find out now.
Then it was stage time and he strode out with his white plastic supermarket bag full of poems. Within seconds, the audience was his.
"I have always wondered how deep the sea would be if there weren't any sponges down there".
So many of the things seems so obvious: but then that's his genius, isn't it? He mingled in the surreal too.
"Anyone here from the Isle of Man? Got your passport here?", as he picked up the mike stand and offered to stamp it with its three-pronged feet. "No man is an island, but that one is!"
He got the audience to say "Knock, knock".
"Who's there?", he asked.
Silence.
It is so nice to laugh!
Sometimes I forget this, as most of my life seems serious and difficult in spite of the joy of doing gigs. I stood there and laughed myself stupid, in unison with the audience. It was like being a child again.
The man who drank too many Martinis after work: "Home honey, I'm high".
There was a very funny riff on Mark E. Smith (whose name I am often tempted to preface with 'What's the point of...') saying "Helen Mirren".
But maybe you had to be there to get that one!
Just before the end, the long journey kicked in and I retreated to the dressing room and listened to the speech-rhythms of the rest of the performance with Phil, his manager, who was talking along with him in places.
I asked if he knew the routine off by heart. "Yes", he said, but he hadn't heard the Isle of Man jokes. He struck me as a very good manager; everything seemed to happen with the minimum of fuss.
Actually, the same about the promoter, Richard. He was the exact opposite of some promoters who gush about how fantastic you are for ten minutes and then spend the rest of the night trying to put you down. He was respectful and if there were any panics, he hid them very well.
If you get the chance to see John Cooper Clarke on this tour, you must go and see him.
He will restore your faith in humanity, poetry, rock'n'roll and a good deal else besides.
He has influenced so many people, and it's too easy to forget that.
He also just has a sort of open charm that puts so many of the clever-dick type comedians to shame.
He is the real deal.
Then Don Letts appeared in the green room; I was chuffed that he had seen me play and liked my set. He is a very quiet and unpretentious man and it was really nice to meet him.
The drummer from The Pretenders came in (they originated in Hereford, apart, obviously, from Chrissie) and backstage rockchat ensued.
John remembered playing with Martin a few years ago and sent him a big kiss; he stood in the green-room gloom in his Chelsea boots on a pile of poems, forbidden cigarette between forefingers and a drink in his hand.
The Don got his CDs out and went out to play. It was impossible not to dance. I danced with a girl called Becky who books actors for medical students to practice their bedside manner upon.
The floor was full; we danced to Toots and the Maytals and a track where someone sang over Al Capone by Dave and Ansel Collins, and loads more great stuff. I witnessed the most gentle stage-ejection I have ever seen, where an over-enthusiastic young woman jumped on stage and started dancing inches from Don's nose. He kept his head down, concentrating, and the sound guy walked over, put out both hands, and helped the over-enthusiastic young woman back on the the dance floor, where she continued dancing, free from being a nuisance.
Eventually, I had to retreat. the whole experience more than lived up to expectations and I hope to be invited back; Richard mentioned booking Martin there at some point and it's the sort of gig he'd go down a storm at.
On the way home, I mused about the oddity of three quite urban-based artists popping up in Hereford, such a rural town; as a night is really worked, though.
On the way back I noticed the vertical meadows by the sides of the motorways where they slice through hills in cuttings, and where poppies, grasses and ox-eye daisies have decided to seed themselves regardless of the traffic and tarmac, and blossom in joyous spring display.
And the shooting school (gift vouchers available). Just try transplanting that to Peckham!

Snaps from the Other Night

I will do a review tomorrow: it was brilliant. The top pic shows John Cooper Clarke standing on his poems while chatting to the chap who is chatting to Don in the bottom pic- he's the Pretenders' drummer. How rock'n'roll is that?

Another Photograph

That little bass there is a Jedson, Phil, and it's the one I had before I bought the Hofner I used in The Chefs.
It had a short scale neck which made it easy to play and Steve had a matching guitar- cream with a while scratchplate. I used to write the set list out on a strip of masking tape and stick it along the top of the bass where no-one could see it. And yes, it's at The Buccanneer and must have been taken quite late in the band's short life as I got that boiler suit later on. I wish I still had it!
I have been trying to guess which song I was playing.
Here's another pic taken at Martin's a few weeks ago.
Even though I am wearing a dress with flowers on it I imagine I would be quite pleased back then at the thought of starting playing gigs again after having kids, although would not have believed I was going to go on to be a professional musician for seven years after being a punk- I was not at all ambitious, which has probably been my downfall in life.

I

Playing Bass in Joby and the Hooligans (photo by Dave)

Radium

When McMum was a baby she had a little birthmark in the middle of her forehead. She lived in America at the time and was taken to the Mayo Clinic, who burned it off using radium.
She met a doctor this week who was an expert in radioactivity and medicine, and asked him if this could have been the cause of the thyroid cancer that necessitated the removal of her thyroid gland about 20 years ago, and her subsequent dependency on medication ever since.
'Absolutely definitely', said the doctor.

The Spice Girls

Someone has nicked my little box of plastic Spice Girls with big heads and little bodies from my office at the University of the East.
I wonder if it was one of the cleaners and they thought I wouldn't notice?
I HAVE, I HAVE!
They are the first things I look at when I get to work; I admire their little Spice-personalities, Sporty kicking, Scary scaring...
Their heads are so huge they fall over if you get them out of the box, perilously close to what actually happens in real life.
GIVE THEM BACK, CLEANER!

Friday 11th June at the Blue Rooms in Hereford

This is going to be possibly one of the most exciting gigs I have played for a long time- supporting John Cooper Clarke and Don Letts at the Wild Hare Club's night.
Years ago (for I am a funky-ancient, am I not?) my band Helen and the Horns supported John at Ronnie Scott's; it was a wild night. Molly Parkin was there, in her cups, and took an obvious interest in John.
And Don Letts? What can I say. I thought my bones had given up on dancing until I went to see The Slits play their first reunion gig underneath Selfridges a few years ago and could not stop dancing for a second. He also Deejayed at the We Love '77 art exhibition. I have a compilation that he made; he just has fantastic taste in music.
I have been rehearsing this morning, battling through hayfever, and I'll do the same after work this afternoon.

As an aside: my fury at being dumped by the University of the West is beginning to grow. I have worked there for more than 15 years. And they weren't going to even tell me! Grrr.

Flowers

A few bunches of wilted magenta Sweet Williams at the supermarket till reminded me of Harvest Festival at church; we sat in the car on the way there, holding bunches of flowers picked from McDad's garden.
Woe betide the bearer of Sweet Williams!
Earwigs would tumble out of the dark green beards that ringed the florets, scuttling up sleeves, down socks and into crevices in the car seat; shuddering, we'd scream and jump about. McDad would have to slow the car and threaten to drop us at the side of the road.
AAARRRGH!!!!

Charlotte's Kittens

Charlotte's Kittens were sweet and fluffy.
They liked to sit on my tatty wicker shopping basket (which was very Ladybird Book) on top of my collection of vinyl singles, which slotted inside it perfectly.
Months later, I realised that they had been tucking their little paws into the picture sleeves to keep them warm and their tiny, spiny claws had scratched myriad crackles and jumps into the songs.
By then, of course, they had left home to go to University, beyond punishment or retribution.

Adventures in Gigland

I went to Ayr for two days to do some work at the University of Scotland; the guys up there are really nice but the work was hard and the weather was hot and the wheelie suitcase (tripper-up for the frail and vulnerable) lost its charm as I got buffeted by backpacks and tripped-up in turn. I'd spent the train journey transcribing part of Viv Albertine's interview, which is fascinating, and reading Matthew Bannister's book, White Boys, White Noise.
I had my guitar, too, and was relieved to get to my friend Carol's in Seaton Delaval and sleep.

Friday night's gig was at the Gosforth Hotel. We set up the P.A. and said hello to Mike and June (they gave me a lovely BSA badge to go with my motorbike, thank you!) and they set up the CDs.
Giovanni's disco arrived and set up- they have the most fantastic rare vinyls of 1950s and 1960s soul and rhythm'n'blue. All the singles were in neat white card sleeves and once they got going, the evening started with a bang. There was a real air of excitement and anticipation!
Here come the Kentucky Cow-Tippers (www.myspace.com/tkct), and here come double-bassist John Cavener and his family of musicians: his son is 15 and plays a mean sax solo (he earned the title 'One-Take Johnny' when we did some recording in Embleton village hall a while back) and his daughter, who is a bit younger, plays trumpet.
It was boiling hot and the windows didn't open, and as people started arriving it got hotter still. Taff (from Hurrah!) and his partner Sylvia were there to cheer on their son Rupert, who mandolins/vocalises/harmonicas for the Cow-Tippers. I had met them in Shipley two years ago and really enjoyed their band (myspace.com/thegirlwiththerepleceablehead)
I played a set to begin with (snapped by Juan: I'm worried because I look like an elderly fish when I sing) and then the Cow-Tippers did a fantastic almost acoustic set.
Their line up is double-bass, banjo (nimble-fingered lad with long tumbling curls), guitar (nimble fingered lad with long silky-straight hair, because he's worth it), Hannah on vocals and fiddle (she's a brilliant musician) and Rupert who holds them all together with charm and vitality (later, when he and Martin were standing next to each other singing, I though that he must be very like Martin when he was young). They went down a storm, playing everything from straight bluegrass to a beautiful rendition of The Willow Tree.
Bit more disco, then Martin and Fin McCardle got up and played a couple of songs before adding to the duo bit by bit; double bass, electric guitar and then horns, joined by a grown-up on sax too (sorry, I don't know anyone's names, it was a mad night). There was a moment when the horn section and the double bass were conferring on something that seemed to sum up the whole night: they were close, father, son and daughter, swaying in time with each other, in that little magic land of total lack of self-consciousness that musicians have sometimes. Beautiful.
The Skifflecats stormed through the evening, joined by all the others in turn.
I went up and did Sweet Saviour with Martin; I'd brought the horn parts for Freight Train as well but we were a guitar lead short. And I did Loverman with the double bass and electric guitar, Fin percussing behind me, and I really enjoyed that.
All of the Kentucky Cow-Tippers went up for a couple of songs and they did a walkabout for Will the Circle be Unbroken until the miserable manageress sent them back upstairs again.
It was a hoot, a scream and a roaring success, bringing out even 'Round-eyes' Ray who used to sing with Martin years ago, and the manager of The Band of Holy Joy (bandofholyjoy.co.uk), whose flat in Wallsend we'd recorded in with Joe Guillan earlier this year (it was his son Nick playing the electric guitar tonight).
Mike and June dropped us off at out hotel before heading back to Goole. They are Martin-fans extraordinaire and I was glad they were there at such a good night!

Next Night


Of course, I was knackered when I got home but I'd promised to go to see Gina Birch play at a night called Girls Girls Girls at the Old Blue Last in Great Eastern Street. Earlier in the morning she'd called to ask if I would play guitar with her, and surfing the energy of the night before I hoiked the Telecaster out from under the bed where it had been buried in the year's future birthday presents (I'm fearing poverty and have started stockpiling) and drove down there, arriving just in time to see the end of a very good all-female support band playing.
I can't remember how to play the songs we played at the Stella Vine exhibition in Oxford, but she wrote out some chords for me and although the projector was playing up, I reckon she held it all together really well.
It was boiling but it was still fun and I loved playing in a different style and shouting 'I WILL NEVER WEAR STILETTOS' at the top of my voice with her!
I'm Glad I'm Me Today is my favourite Gina song and she did a really moving version of that and we actually managed to do quite a slick version of the last song with duo guitars.
There were lots of Raincoats fans there and they all came up and told her how much they had enjoyed it.
I am going to learn the guitar parts for her set properly; in the morning I'd thought of learning to play snare'n'brushes to accompany her and maybe even play some rockabilly but I honestly haven't got a spare centimetre in  my house for any more musical instruments so that's a no-no.
Gina had a really good gig, in spite of the heat and humidity. As I left, the skies opened and I splashed through the absolute downpour back to my car, feeling bloody glad I'd gone and done it.

Today? Achey body from dragging the wheelie-case through Glasgow from Glasgow Central to Queen Street and back again (a common mistake, I believe); happy heart though!
Great few days.

Photo Love

I knew a girl who used to be in those photo love stories in girls' comics, you know: 'Don't you love me any more, Alan?' in a speech bubble pasted on to a black and white photo of a girl with her mouth open looking as though she is talking, her face looking sad and her hands outspread in a gesture of despair.

Her revelation was that she actually had to say the scripted words when they were taking the photographs!
I bet she felt silly.

Fun for a Friday

Off to Ayr with a suitcase full of books to read on the train.
Look out for the gig in Newcastle on Friday. Gosforth rather, the Gosforth Hotel.
The Kentucky Cowtippers, Skifflecats (Martin and everyone), and I am playing too.
It's Martin's club, Club Tornado, and you can get tickets from his Myspace site, www.myspace.com/martinstephenson
It's going to be FUN!

Cowboy Cowgirl Song

Martin has made some changes to my art website, including putting up a song he produced for me while I was there two weeks ago, which is going to go on his Scullyville album, due out later this year
www.helenmccookerybookart.com

Punk

Punk was the best thing in the world and the worst thing in the world at the same time.
It was totally exciting, completely absorbing, started the second you woke up and was with you in your dreams too.

It was about making plans and really doing what you said, and feeling that you were worth something and that you could affect your world, like suddenly being given a screwdriver to lever off the top of a can of paint you hadn't been able to open before, so you could paint everything a new colour.
It was about volume- lots of new friends and acquaintances all talking at once, a University of Life if ever there was one.
No Future meant lots of Now: everything in technicolour, senses heightened, fizzy blood going round your veins, running, shouting, taking part.

But it was also about violence and darkness; the police were our enemies and if something went wrong it was tried in a punk court with a punk punishment.
Girls had their faces kicked in; people slit their wrists in public. Some people stole from the rich to give to the poor: themselves. There was rivalry between bands that became vicious at times. You felt vulnerable at the same time as being empowered.
My most vulnerable moment was almost funny in a horrible way: standing at the top of the stairs in a pair of old men's pyjamas as a knife-wielding drug-addled Geordie called Padger whacked the downstairs door of a girl who lived there, and who was sheltering his girlfriend within, with a clawhammer. He wanted to beat her up yet again.

What a thing to live through!
I couldn't talk about it for years and eventually had little bits of information prised out of me by curious students as they noticed that I was studying for the PHD.
Gradually, the good parts of it came to the forefront and the violence, some of which I experienced myself, stopped strangling the memories I had of the mad joy of playing in a band for the first time, something I never in a million years expected to do.
It's impossible to explain what it was really like unless you lived it, which is why it's so fantastic interviewing people again, and especially people who are not used to giving interviews.
They get a sort of curious and shocked expression as they start to remember the extraordinary lifestyle they used to lead, (often accidentally) offending the public just by existing.

I would never want to go through it again, but I am glad to have been through it nevertheless.

Thank You

Thank you for the comments and emails, that's a big help!
The next stage will be to actually read my book. I am making a train journey later this week and I'll take it with me along with Matthew Bannister's White Boys, White Noise which will probably be a very interesting bit of reading alongside it. This sort of book needs to have a framework to hold it in.

I am mourning the end of my lovely Songbook module which has been written out of the course at the University of the West.
It nurtured Jamie McDermott of the Irrepressibles, Emmy the Great, and Rob Diament of Temposhark (who used some of the songs he wrote for their first album) amongst others, and gave the University a runner-up in the Peter Whittingham Song Writing Competition two years ago (Alex Lipinsky); this year The University of West won with Sherika Sherrard who had won an internal competition run by yours truly.
I think there was always a problem in that the course it ran within had a focus on people making money within the music business system, whereas my sole concern was that everybody who did the module wrote the best songs they possibly could, no matter how weird that was.
It embraced students with aspirations to write musicals, electronica artists, rappers, producers, folkies, soul, R'n'B, gospel, comedy and even poetry.
I am hugely proud of the guests that I invited to talk to them over the years: Pete Waterman, Billy Bragg, Linton Kwesi Johnson, JC001, Martin Stephenson, John Hegley, Billy Childish (three times), Michelle Escoffery, Enid Williams (Girlschool), Carroll Thompson, Edwyn Collins, Gina Birch, Paul Laventhol (King Kurt), Dubulah and Neil Sparkes from Temple of Sound, Katy Carr, Jamie McDermott, Bid (Monochrome Set), Pete Sinfield who writes hits for Celine Dion. And lots of industry types too.
I am sure I will think of more in the middle of the night!

Speaking of the Monochrome Set, I gather they are re-forming for a tour of Japan in the Autumn. They are just so absolutely brilliant (volume, tone, brilliance, they got the lot) that you must go to see them if you can. Lester Square put me on the guest list for the Cherry Red Records 40th birthday party and I saw them play a couple of years ago. I danced like a demented flea and came away feeling 18 again!