"If You Want To Put Yourself On The Map, Publish Your Own Map".

Pete Frame, you're a genius. the above quotation came form this evening's talk at the University of Glasgow, with Pete, Simon Frith and Dave Laing.
The talk was full of fascinating stories and observations; it was to celebrate the donation of Pete and Simon's archives to the University, and while the panel were talking, copies of Pete's magazine ZigZag, his Rock Family Trees, old letters from Dave to Simon, and an article that Simon wrote in Coventry about 2-Tone and The Specials, were passed round the audience.
So what did we find out?
Before Radio One started, the BBC totally disregarded rock'n'roll and you could only hear it on pirate stations like Radio Luxembourg, which Pete described as "legalised payola"; record labels bought half-hour slots to play their product in, thereby sponsoring the station. Never knew that.
Simon Frith declared a fascination with the ways the Mercury Music Panel (which he chairs) try to persuade each other to make choices, the way they describe what it is they like about their favourite music.
He is in favour of record companies because of their role in quality control; apparently the worst releases are by artists who have been signed and then dropped!
There was an anecdote about the three of them going to Graceland when Elvis (changed by autocorrect to Levi's, by the way) still live there and peeing over the wall.
Both men were asked of their stories about David Bowie and Simon observed that most of the obituaries were much more about how the journalists themselves felt, than Bowie. he talked about Coventry's Bowie Boys, who had their own fanzine and morphed into punks. And yes, I'd seen a whole pub full of David Bowies in Pontefract or Wakefield- girls and boys, with identical spiky red hair, braces and baggy trousers.
There were more stories and more insights. The final, and best, was Pete revealing that when Julie Burchill first went to work at NME, she was designated to type up articles written by Nick Kent and other men on the staff, who were submitting their articles and interviews written in longhand. Can you believe that?
Oh, the 1970s, I don't miss you one bit.

Thinking About David Bowie

I had no idea that David Bowie was so tightly woven into people's hearts. I feel really sorry for his family, and of course for him; these days 69 is quite young to die.
The stills from his last video are horrifying, especially if you have experienced the death of a relative or friend recently.
All his life, Bowie flirted with the idea of death (Please Mr Gravedigger) and a large proportion of his songs had mortality at their centre.
He seemed bent on control over his life and his persona; this worked positively for his family because he was able to become very private in the latter half of his life. The staging of his death, I find excruciatingly peculiar.
I loved his early material, and disengaged gradually after that because of a combination of a deep dislike of his politics, and the move away from Tony Visconti as a producer to Eno, whose work I find difficult to connect with.
The expressions of sorrow on social media I watch through a thick, obscured glass. Is it because he was a Londoner (us Geordie's couldn't grasp the appeal of the TV show Budgie, for instance)?
No, I don't think so: I loved the Kinks.
Is it because I had a completely rural upbringing and he was simply too sophisticated for my country-bred brain?
I don't think so, because I loved Frank Zappa.
There was something in his celebration of artificiality that I couldn't grasp, and that stiffness and control. Although he seemed to yearn for freedom from his body, everything about him seemed constructed to trap him. Even his voice seemed not to be able to escape, although it tried its damnedest.
I thought of Poly Styrene. I am glad Zillah is documenting her life; regrettably, my one audio recording of her, where she sings the first song that she ever wrote, is clogged up with terrible electronic interference. Poly will never have the global recognition that David Bowie has, but today I remember her, and of course, McMum.
Perhaps this is the significance of a global superstar passing away; in the wake of their trajectory, space is cleared to connect with our memories of our own close and significant people,.

An Unintentionally Productive Day

Well, it's 4.30 on a Sunday and this is the first prevarication of the day, so that in itself is a marvel.
I woke stupidly early for a weekend (at 5.55: what woke me at that time?).
There was no point in trying to go back to sleep, so I worked on my conference paper for an hour and it is now completely different to the one I was working on yesterday. I have such a huge volume of information that condensing it into a 20 minute paper, even though I thought I am usually quite good at focusing, seems impossible.

The Sunday papers arrived and I depressed myself by reading about the wonders of technology.
Yes! Yes! We'll be able to digitally archive tons of film and photographs of animals that we will make extinct by our use of the wonders of technology.
No! No! I don't care about Mars trips, Hadron Colliders, sooper dooper computer games or virtual reality glasses that make people look like twats. What about addressing global poverty and stopping wars, and looking after the beautiful planet that we are destroying ever more quickly? What the feck has got into the human race?

Furious, I stomped upstairs and removed 100 layers of wallpaper from the bedroom wall, and a lot of rotten plaster too. After more than two hours my energy was flagging, but there were four stubborn bits of paper that just wouldn't move. The bottom layer of paper looked as though it was rather beautiful: 1920s, possibly; then there was a tweedy grey layer (1930s austerity?), then some ferociously stubborn gloss paint, then ghastly wood chip and finally a layer of emulsion.
There is now a bin bag in the garden bursting with flaps of torn wallpaper and crumbs of plaster, and my back aches, but I bet my bingo wings are now fully under control.
It's too cold to check, though.

After a quick rush down the road to replace Offsprog One's Christmas present candle that I broke when I was shoving furniture around up there, I burned my dinner but still ate it, and then did a bit more work on the conference paper.
The prevarication and the writing of this boring and pointless post are because I've got some emails to write that I should have written on Friday, but I didn't.
They are not difficult emails but a little voice inside my head is saying 'It's Sunday, and you've done enough for what is supposed to be a day of rest'.
Shut up, little voice. If I write those letters it will be one less thing to do tomorrow, when I go back to work.

Curved Air

We had been asking people what their influences were, and we asked each other what our influences were.
Completely forgot about Curved Air.
In my Sixth Form at Walbottle Comprehensive, the lads used to commandeer the record player. We listened to Led Zeppelin mostly, with Yes, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Black Sabbath and Rod Stewart to add a bit of variety. All really pompous (with the exception of Rod).
At home, my brother liked Genesis and McDad listened to Melanie; my boy friends (not a joined together word) liked Frank Zappa. I liked pop, though not all of the singles McDad brought home- not Leapy Lee's Little Arrows, definitely, though I did like Sandie Shaw.
I saw Curved Air on Top of the Pops- Sonja Kristina  singing Back Street Luv. It has a mysterious melody, a very peculiar rhythm (quite sly and sexy) and Sonja Kristina's shivery vocal singing about a man's attachment to a prostitute (she sang quite a lot of songs about dark subjects like that until she became a pixie when Francis Monkman and Darryl Way left the band).
It was a really daring song, and a really daring subject. Of course the lads at school all fancied Sonja Kristina and talked about that all the time (what a great way to disarm the power of a woman performer), but to me she was a heroine.
She wasn't a twee Mary Hopkin type or a rock bellower like Janis Joplin. I loved the girl groups but they were American and they sang about dating, really. Back Street Luv was perverse and unnerving.
Sonja Kristina looked knowing and was quite obviously a really important contributor to the band.
She was really inspiring; I wrote to tell her that about five years ago but I don't think she was very impressed. Oddly, I found that inspiring too.

Writing a Conference Paper

I am writing a paper for the Musician's Union Conference next week, Working in Music: The Musicians’ Union, musical labour and employment.
It's always hard work doing something like this but it's also intellectually stimulating and completely absorbing. An hour has just vanished and the only indication of this factor is my frozen feet. I'll have to go out for a walk later to get my circulation going again.
What I'm enjoying about this one is the mining of information from the interviews themselves. For a year I've been working on the background essay (30,000 words and almost finished), and jus recently I've been editing the interviews (I don't know why I'm so surprised but it takes a really long time and I sometimes go back and un-edit some of them if I've cut out information that later becomes a theme).
I love interviewing people, it's one of life's greatest pleasures and this has been a very interesting project. By word of mouth I have found one or two female producers who work what can only be described as deep underground, but I am also happy to have a very brief interview with Sandie Shaw, who always produced her own records.
Like everything I've done academically, this is a complete labour of love. There are lots of parallels with the film that Gina and myself are working on. We have been reviewing our interviews this week and there will much to report about screenings of work-in-progress at some point over the next few weeks.
Back to the writing. See you soon.

Email Hacked

My email account has been hacked. Thanks to those who let me know. I never send links without my own message- don't click!

January In Paris

http://helenmccookerybook.bandcamp.com/track/january-in-paris

Why Oh Why

They cast the same people as baddies in every TV drama and cop show. This means you know who did it as soon as they appear on the screen.

What I Said Two Days Ago

https://medium.com/@andymboyle/what-i-learned-not-drinking-for-two-years-c94167ecd329#.2v866us0l

Yes, and the interesting one here is losing friends who you only meet in drinking situations. That's the only regret that I have, and a completely unexpected one; but I do remember being shocked myself when there wasn't booze at social gatherings, so it's understandable.
I also recall many years ago (during my own drinking years) speculating about the number of revolutions that would actually happen if people stopped taking about them in the pub over ten pints, and went out and did it. Strange to think we actually pay good money for the national anaesthetic that renders us helpless and stupid.

Man Flu

I've been living with Man Flu since Boxing Day, the illness defined by gender equality rather than a desire to compete with anyone for sympathy. No amount of Walnut Whips make a difference, neither do bracing walks or hot baths. I suspect patience and paracetamol to be the only options.

Dry January

I will be having a dry January (although the weather definitely won't be).
All the other eleven months of the year will also be dry; it's now nearly nine years since I gave up drinking alcohol and it was one of the best decisions that I have made in my life.
Very occasionally at party, I get bored as people ramble on about stuff, but I often forget that it's the booze talking. Parties are about talking and listening anyway, aren't they?
When I do buy a round in a pub (I'm not mean!) I never stop being shocked at the cost of drinks. There is no way I could survive financially if I was still a drinker.
All those pages in the Sunday supplements: wine-on-a-budget, craft beers, cocktail recipes ('You must try this one...'), mean nothing, because they are ways of dressing up an addictive poison so it looks charming and harmless.
All those TV soaps set in the pub- free advertising for the brewers!
Quite a few people that I knew have died because of alcohol, and many relationships and marriages have broken up (didn't know what they were doing, because they were pissed, apparently).
What a spoilsport I am! One of those drunkards who gave up, and now starts preaching about it; except that I don't most of the time.
I think it's everyone's own business what they do to their bodies, probably, although the hangovers are a nasty consequence that sometimes lead to violence and fear, and that's not so glamorous.
The best gift that stopping boozing has given me is time; the hangovers stole whole days from my life.
Quite possibly I would be fatter and less healthy as well, but how could I tell? It's the time that I welcome; time to write blog posts to explain how time is valuable, precious, and only noticeable when it's not there any more.

Kerb Garden

Space Lady

Here is Space Lady playing Strawberry Fields. We saw Space Man a few days ago down the South Bank, playing Yesterday with a little organ and with lots of stuffed animal toys arranged around him. He left out all the high singing bits; he probably couldn't reach them, but that's rather a lot of bits, and the bits that make the song The Song.
He tribbled the notes with his fingers on his small Casio instead; I thought that quite lazy, for a busker.

Thames Beach Buskers

Phil Spector had a wall of sound; these buskers had the South Embankment wall to amplify their trumpet and percussion. We watched them from above and threw coins down into their bucket. We missed.

National Grid

I am thinking of selling this powerful cough to the National Grid; it would power a street full of houses, even if they all put the kettle on at the same time.