Tuesday 21 July 2009

The thick brick I couldn't swallow

Today is the 31st anniversary of the release of Kinnell Tommy, by Ed Banger, on Rabid Records – a punk-related, jokey football song. It reminds us that there was a strong relationship between the working class punk ethos and everyday aspects of life, such as football. And that, very quickly, something like Punk would break down into various elements that people were comfortable with. The same week a year earlier at the height of Punk in 1977 had seen the release of Ain’t Been To No Music School by the same band, then called Ed Banger and the Nosebleeds. Look at the pic sleeve (http://www.punk77.co.uk/groups/nosebleeds.htm or watch it on YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WzW246mKy8). This is how most provincial Punks dressed in 1976 and 1977. People have an image of leather-clad Punks with brightly coloured cockatoo head-dresses (but this came later and is largely down to the Kenny Everett piss-take, Gizzard Puke, and those postcards you can still buy on London tourist shop stands). Early Punk in the provinces was naïve and innocent. It may have been leather, chains and razor blades at the London Roxy scene, but, elsewhere, it was about wearing what clothes you had in a different way. You didn’t have leather. You couldn’t afford leather. Besides, leather was what bikers wore. Or it belonged to the S&M scene that Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood toyed with in Seditionaries, their clothes shop that kitted out these early Punks. For the rest of us, following on, there was Millett’s hardware store. It was the only place you could get drainpipe jeans that only blokes who worked in cardboard box factories would wear (thanks, Johnny Moped). You borrowed your dad’s pointed suede shoes from the 50s. And wore a sullen expression all of your own. You didn’t spike your hair, you just cut it shorter – very unusual at the time. In school, you pulled your tie into such a tight knot it wouldn’t undo. The trouble with adopting this semi-styled, dishevelled look was that the kids at school who looked naturally like this didn’t appreciate it because they were (a) thick (b) bullies and (c) in and out of Borstal. And this was one of the credibility issues of early Punk. Were you hard enough to adopt what was essentially a rebellious image? Punk was street-wise music for kids wiv no futchah. In order to gain this credibility themselves, some of the bands produced songs aimed at this audience. Band members in their early 20s were shouting about how crap it was to be at school. It may have rung true for the thickos, but, for the likes of me, a certain dumbing down was required. You could see it in certain bands, too. Howard Devoto left Buzzcocks before this happened to him. Another aspect of the credibility factor was the need to have two separate record collections: first and foremost, the collection you’d be happy to show – your growing set of Punk singles; then, hidden away at the back of the cupboard, would be all your pre-Punk, the stuff you really cherished and played on the sly. You’d have to deny this past, yet it was part of what had influenced Punk and brought it into being. For such a liberating sword, Punk didn’t half have some rigid rules. But I always found this school obsession laughable. My experience of school was about getting on so that I could get out, escape this life. You felt that some of the early Punk bands were from the B stream, the lads who played football and did a bit of bullying on the side. There was no intelligence in it. Some bands, like Eater, were still at school themselves. Or, should I say, of school age, because they never attended. Dee Generate was a 14 year-old drummer. The Damned actually supported them at London’s Roxy Club in January 1977, as did Johnny Moped in February, followed by The Lurkers and Sham 69 in March. Some Punk elements never really escaped from this association with school and yoof culture. You wouldn’t want to bump into any of them in a school alleyway. Slaughter and the Dogs, Sham 69. The Jam actually made something of it and helped to generate an anti-Punk mod revival. While post-punk was metamorphosing into miserable raincoats or multi-coloured New Romanticism, the Ska-beat bands, including Madness and The Specials, also had that lads-next-door, I-hate-school, anti-intelligence feel about them. Which is why it always feels ridiculous to me to see these two groups performing songs about teen life live at the age of 50. Andy Blade, Eater’s leader, finally published a book in 2005 called The Secret Life Of A Teenage Punk Rocker: schoolboy by day and low-rent punk rock star by night. This tells us more about what the Punk scene was actually like than any number of weightier, more erudite tomes. It’s the best book on the era I’ve ever read. OK, it’s London-centric and full of contradictions, but it doesn’t attempt to dumb it all down. It has the ring of truth about it. It feels like it’s describing the period I experienced. It remembers it as it was – The Damned came out of glam, The Clash came out of pub rock, The Sex Pistols came out of hell and went back there. The Heartbreakers were junkies. Sid Vicious was a thug but also a little boy lost. Johnny Rotten was an arrogant arsehole surrounded by sycophants. Malcolm McLaren even worse. So much of that scene is blatant lies that it’s refreshing to read a book like this. At times, Blade says strange things like he couldn’t understand why there was such a violent reaction to Punk and Punks. A bunch of London ne’er-do-wells who stole to fund a habit, ran around in gangs and sold their grannies for five minutes of fame (an image that we innocent provincials then had to live up to or live down). But at least he’s honest and tells it with humility. It sounds and feels right. From a Muslim background himself, he makes a great analogy between Punk and Islam. “The West, largely, sees Islam as an angry, confrontational religion and I can understand that. If punk rock had a corresponding religious belief to match its aesthetics, it would have been Islam. The raging, the rallying, the cliquey-ness of different sects, the refusal to compromise and the lack of tolerance for other movements would have been a perfect match….At Muslim meetings, sermons or whatever, the overriding theme appears to be the laying down of some kind of threat, that God is very angry, getting angrier by the minute and wants you to do something about it before it’s too late. There are no such things as hymns in Muslim ceremonies or services, but if there were, they’d probably sound something like the most ferocious punk-rock anthems ever written.” Near the end of the book, there’s an amazing paragraph where he’s glad to see the back of the 80s. “As the 1980s made way for the 1990s, I felt a tangible sense of relief, a wind of change drifting inexorably towards me. I felt no fear or trepidation, just a calm, welcoming acceptance. I was only too happy to shrug off a whole decade, like the discarding of an ill-fitting jacket I’d never wanted in the first place. For me, it had been a decade of misery.” I felt exactly the same. My appreciation of Punk and experience of post-Punk life was similar to yours, Andy. Except that you took the drugs and I took the education. I never pretended I was thick or hard. My big problem with Punk was that this was a credibility requirement. Nevertheless, we can both ask ourselves the question you left us with at the end of your book: “I sometimes wonder how my life would have unfolded had it not been hijacked by punk rock.” Kinnell, Tommy!!

markgriffiths@idealconsulting.co.uk

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