TRACK LIST

1 Rossmore Road

2 Win a Night Out

(with a well-known paranoiac)

3 Freak

4 Me and My Mate Can Sing

5 Mousetrap

6 Bring On The Alligators

7 Sargasso Bar

8 Feeding Time

9 Muscle & Movement

10 Opposite Way in the Rush Hour

11 Taking Over ICI

12 Vampyr Skinhead

13 Big Soft Safe Family







MUSICIANS

1-3 clarinet: Frank Abrams, trombone: Ian Bateman, guitar: Rob Hendry, Robert Fripp, Bruce Mcrae, bass: Dave Marx, drums: Richard Wernham, engineer: John Strudwick,

backing vocals: Bruce Mcrae, Patti Palladin, Clara Harris, Steve New, Marion Fudger.

Recorded at Rockstar Studios, Fitzrovia, Mixed at Regent’s Park Studios, St Johns Wood.

4-7 guitars and bass: Dave Marx, drums: Rob Wilford, engineer: Hugh Padgham, Producer: Martin Rushent. Recorded at Townhouse Studio 2, Goldhawk Road.

8-10 guitar: Jon Ellis, bass: Dave Marx, drums: Richard Wernham, engineer: John Strudwick, recorded at Pathway Studios, Islington

11-13 bass: Marion Fudger, guitar: Rob Hendry, drums: Richard Wernham,

engineer: Eric Radcliffe, recorded at Blackwing Studios, Borough.





The songs on this album have been lying about for a looong time, as you see. The reasons for this are twofold: 1- it’s juvenelia, really - undeveloped, derivative. Trying stuff on for size. An artist not in complete control of his medium, if you like. So I was not in a hurry to expose it, I guess, for its flaws are obvious.

2 it’s precious, unrepeatable, unvarnished. Truly an account of Process as someone’s aesthetic develops. It’s fascinating to me, of course (‘each man loves the smell of his own farts’) and, I have to assume, as an article of faith, that it may be to others. So, as a one-time-for-all-time thing, I was hesitant to release it.

Anyway, here they…are, these songs which are inextricably bound both to a critical time in my life and the interstitial flavour of the historical moment: the end of the 70’s in good old (post-war, now post-60’s) UK. The dingy, dark, money-strapped days of Callaghan and Heath on the cusp of the New (fake) Gold Thatcherite Dawn.

London still grubby, edgy and un-Developed in a lot of places (squats still available - for instance) and Punk, which had roared for a couple of years - having redefined pop culture, via getting Pissed and Destroying - was about to stagger off into the wings, fresh out of ideas.

the Roxy Club, Covent Garden in 77 (it’s a shop selling Speedos now. Out with the Bin Bags in with the New Shiny Pants!)



The Clash and Pistols albums of 77 had permeated, by 79, everywhere they were likely to go (surprisingly far) but their offspring - the ninety-to-the-dozen, political, permanently furious form of *Punk was on the wane. ‘New Wave’ as a catch-all term for anything that was neither hardcore (with a little ‘h’) Punk nor Old School Rock was becoming the mot du jour. Another strange little sub-genre was Power Pop (which my old firm XTC could be described as, although to be fair, we were doing it well before the term was coined). Blondie, The Rich Kids, the Rezillos: all were attempts to make ideologically (yes!) acceptable the idea of melody and upbeat themes in a landscape where (Iove this term) *Ramalamadolequeue was rapidly wearing out its welcome.

(the Rich Kids - ft. Steve New, the baby deer. They’re not signing on are they? They’re Rich.)



Personally, these tunes cover, as historians say, ‘the long 78-80’. Roughly from the end of my time with XTC to the beginning of Restaurant for Dogs which was (sort-of) the R&D for Shriekback, although definitely with its own sovereignty and aesthetic.

Rossmore Road source: 1/4″ tape This came to light in a box of old tapes (Lordy I wish I had more tapes). It’s the first mix John Strudwick and I did for the single but I wasn’t happy and, rather sportingly, Virgin let us remix it. This version, though, not only has the ‘son trouveé - ‘asking for directions’ elements at the beginning and end (hilariously furious posh guy who - you can hear - I have managed to wind up even in the few seconds it takes to ask where Rossmore Road was. How? I really was an annoying, chippy bastard in those days - you can see why I felt paranoid (see below).

I was playing with Robert Fripp’s League of Gentlemen at the time and Robert kindly offered to come down and bestow his guitar benediction upon my humble pop tune (skills which were to be deployed, rather more usefully, on Bowie’s ‘Scary Monsters’ later that year - which Robert had taken a break from rehearsals with us to do (‘I have redefined the parameters of modern guitar playing’, he self-deprecatingly declared, on his return).

We got off to a bad start and never got beyond it: we plugged Fripp in and played the tune - John the engineer had assumed, totally reasonably, that this was a ‘get familiar’ go-through before we started recording.

As producer I should have been clearer - very much so, as it turned out because Fripp threw a total hissy fit when told we hadn’t recorded his 1st take. He gave us a rant about Heroes etc - how all his most genius work had been 1st or second takes. I apologised. He made a somewhat passive/aggressive show of graciousness in spite of this clear affront and the atmosphere was kinda tense after that. Someone else who hated me. Just great.

And anyway, what we would have got (and, on the 2nd take, did get) was - Fripp fans forgive me - 70’s prog-hero solo guitar noodling (very good guitar noodling, but still) - which loftily ignored the song’s structure so entirely that you had to choose between either just showcasing Robert or actually crafting the song. On the remix we ended up using one note (at the top). I honestly couldn’t find anything else that properly fitted. On the present mix, however, if you listen carefully, you can hear Fripp doing his flash, busy thing - it’s mixed as loud as I dared but you can hear it doesn’t really work and, if it hadn’t been him playing it, it wouldn’t have been there.

An inappropriate and inelegant use of resources, as he might have said. Interesting to hear though, perhaps, in a vestigial tail/snake legs sort of a way.

conceptual stuff about RRd.

ROSSMORE ROAD (NW1)

The 159 runs along it

Round the corner from Baker Street

There’s a dolls house shop on the corner

Of Lisson Grove and

Rossmore Road

Rossmore Road

Turn left at the DHSS in Lisson Grove

You find yourself in Rossmore Road

And there’s a number of public buildings

And a safety barrier down the middle of the road

In Rossmore Road

In Rossmore Road

In Rossmore Road

White and yellow lines and street signs

And public phones and traffic cones

And belisia beacons on the central reservation

All humming now, all humming now, all humming now

To the north

The Grand Canal

Round the corner

Regent’s Park

Next stop on the tube

Marylebone Road

And you can see

Balcombe Street from Rossmore Road

The 159 runs along it

Round the corner from Baker Street

There’s a dolls house shop on the corner

Of Lisson Grove and

Rossmore Road

Rossmore Road

Rossmore Road

Rossmore Road

In Rossmore Road

White and yellow lines and street signs

North of the river

South of the circular

Under the road

Above the railway

All humming now, all humming now, all humming now

All humming now, all humming now, all humming now

All humming now, all humming now, all humming now

All humming now, all humming now, all humming now

All humming now, all humming now, all humming now

All humming now…

Win a Night Out (with a well-known paranoiac) sound source: 1/4″ tape

Very pleased with this, I am still. Sui generis as they come. Blur before Blur said somebody. OK I’ll take it. I was (I think) actually thinking about Patti Smith’s Piss Factory - and Land and Wave, those half-poem, half-song tunes of hers. This, though, suffused with the provincial UK, late 70’s consciousness you get when you perhaps smoke too much grim hash and take too much speed. Interesting sexual punishment element to it also. Because it’s two dates: one rustic and one urban, then an extreme post coital reverse followed by a horrific denouement (Nazi Vivisection! The worst kind) which shows that, as they say: ’just cos you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you’.

This is, obviously, autobiographical (apart from the vivisection). This arsy, scruffy little bloke, oppressed by the forces of reaction and class, who seems to attract humiliation and brutality wherever he goes, even though his intentions are just to have fun and get laid. It’s a little poem about fear and self doubt which, around ’79 there seemed to be lots of. So I made a record. More expensive than a therapist but it has a trombone player..

WIN A NIGHT OUT (WITH A WELL-KNOWN PARANOIAC)

We could rendezvous in a country pub I know in the heart of rural England where the landlord sports moustaches just like Jimmy Edwards and the crisps and pickled onions on the bar are numberless as the stars at night

We’re just about to order scampi in an Elizabethan basket when two neckless men in blazers and cravats approach our table and say - “sorry - this bar is exclusively for the use of Nobel prize winners, latter day saints, people who have seen God and selected relatives of our dear Queen, and furthermore, you worm, there is mud upon your plimsolls”. I reply that I am a member of most elitist cliques you care to name and the blood which courses (at an ever increasing speed as it happens) through my veins belonged once to the Cuban royal family, but, they don’t listen and they just pour my drink down the sink and say “this is not what we mean. In this life, one is either U or non-U and if I were you I’d make myself bloody scarce.” I even try to show them my credit cards but unmoved they say "OK sonny, it’s time you were taught a lesson and there’s only one thing that your sort understand”

Win a night out with a well known paranoiac

Win a night out with a famous paranoid

Win a night out with a well known paranoiac

Win a night out with a famous paranoid

At an Iberian eatery in the west end, we could gaze at each other across saucers of yoghurt and bits of crusty foreign bread - and then - I could order a carraffe of Asti - we could have so much fun. We could discuss things like communism and chart positions with the lack of inhibitions that separate the truly liberated from the herd - but - I should mention that I talk quite loud as a casualty of inexpensive foreign wine and neither am I unaware of the restive noises from the party sitting close by. But as I’m in the middle of my funny story about the Arab and the underwater toilet, I can’t stop now ‘cause I’m in too deep, as I’m coming to the part where I say (in my best joke telling voice), “so the Arab says to the attendant, right…

‘Of course as we know five thousand pounds of pressure can suck out almost anything,’ and it all goes quiet and a little girl is saying: "Daddy, what a horrible man” and Daddy replies, “don’t worry darling 'cause I’ve just made a phone call to your crypto-fascist Uncle Roger and he’ll be here quite soon, and make quite sure he doesn’t upset any little girls… little girls any more”

Win a night out with a famous paranoiac

Win a night out with a well known paranoid

Win a night out with a well known paranoiac

Win a night out with a famous paranoid

Lying in your crumpled bed on Sunday morning, you said your Mum and Dad had gone away to a conference in Bath and I believed you like a fool. Now you get up, go to the window and you turn a pot plant round. I study your naked bottom with a twinge of lust but I’m not twigging that something’s going down. There is a sound of the heavy boots upon the stairs and the door crashes open and in comes your Dad with some faithful retainers and some ex-Army mates from the Conservative Club. And I figure they must have been waiting all night because your Dad is clutching two reels of infra-red film and he’s looking dangerously pale as he shows me the microphone under the bed, and I’m just about getting the message: all is not too groovy

As you stand there in your dressing gown laughing at me, then in comes your Mum in her nylon house coat with her hair hanging loose like a suburban Harpy and she advances towards me with an army surplus bush knife, clearly bent on wreaking havoc down below the navel and she’s just about to get stuck in when I wake up… and yeah, it was all a dream

I’m really in a hospital bed. There is a smell of formaldehyde in the air, and a couple of doctors with swastikas on their arm are doing something to the brain of a sheep and in the corner is a huge zinc bath containing some sort of reptile and the nurse is saying “be a brave boy and drink it all up”. And I realise I can’t feel me legs and the shape in the bed isn’t my shape at all and I wanna cry out but I can only bleat

Win a night out with a well known paranoiac

Win a night out with a famous paranoid

Win a night out with a well known paranoiac

Win a night out with a famous paranoid



FREAK

source: cassette

So Funk was the thing - but let’s take it and fuck it up with our English voices and anti-slick playing. Let’s actually take the funk/fun out of it. Disco hatred was the tip, kinda. I recall saying in an interview that it was like scratching up a big lairy american limousine with the nasty, rusty keys of your squat (there’s also an unreleased Restaurant for Dogs version we recorded for Warners with Nick Launay which takes this approach to its theoretical limit: it’s pretty hard to listen to). We are, in fact, so alienated from the subject matter that I sing ‘just come on down to the fifth floor’ instead of ’54’ - the iconic New York club, me not having heard of it (though - quirky historical note - Shriekback did actually play there in the place’s last week - on the Sacred City tour).

Dave’s ‘confused Dutch person’ on the end is a nice random element. Like he’s wandered in off another session.





4 Songs from Town & Country EP (Virgin 79)

Me and My Mate, Mousetrap, Bring on the Alligators, Sargasso Bar

sound source: vinyl

Ah T&C - I sort-of despise thee. No-one was taking care of my career development - especially not me - after XTC so I got stuck in a posh recording studio with the Strangler’s producer way before I should have been. This you can hear from the ‘apprentice piece’ nature of this EP. All influences fully on show and sellotaped together. A ‘band’ which, you can tell, has only so much in common and which was kinda thrown together. An adolescent ferocity in the delivery not masking very well a slew of insecurities. ‘Calm Down’ I want to tell this snarling young herbert, ‘nobody thinks you’re cool anyway. It’s fine: do an album about a fish, why dontcha?’

As it is, we get a variety pack of New Wave/Post Punk styles and lyrical tropes: Me & My Mate (the Clash obvs: stage democracy, anti-rockist groupy exploitation, DIY fanzine-esque self-expression for the working classes, Patti Smith reference).

Mousetrap

A classically-trained-but-recently-listened-to-Elvis Costello/Joe Jackson Bitter Relationship song. I like the spoken word bit that deconstructs a Well Made Play in 4 lines though (for those who don’t know, The Mousetrap is the longest running show in the West End - since ‘52!).

The ‘Darlings’ repeated hookline was a reference to my lovely Aunty Rene who worked many years in the box office of various West End theatres (the Adelphi and the Prince of Wales I think - and since you ask) and had adopted a fabulously camp way of speaking through long exposure to gay theatrical men. Her poodle Chico was ‘my little Treasure Island’ and everyone else was ‘Darling’.

Aunty Rene (2nd left) with her theatrical crew and actress Anna Neagle at the Coalhole on the Strand 1968)

MOUSETRAP

Been playing Shaftesbury Avenue

For a thousand years or maybe two - darlings

Done plenty bum gigs in my time

But everything’s alright now

In the mousetrap

In the mousetrap

We fall in love most every night

We’re quite ridiculously tight - darlings

And yeah I feel some kind of freak

Getting killed six times a week

In the mousetrap

In the mousetrap

It’s nearly half past three

Gotta do a matinee

I don’t understand this game

Why everything’s the same

But as the show go on and on

And on and on

And on and on and on and on and on

And on

I know the punters mustn’t see

How mundane it seems to me - darlings

But sometimes I wish I could screw

Someone else in Shaftsbury Avenue

In the mousetrap

In the mousetrap

Curtain up - exposition

Development of character

Plot - unravelling slow

Sustaining interest, gathering momentum

Till they unmask the killer

Then a twist right at the end

And it’s all over till tomorrow night

In the mousetrap

In the mousetrap

Sargasso Bar

definitely the best of this bunch. Although the Small Town Observational style is a little irritating (alright, Bazzer, you’re a Poet of the Everyday and you are so very alienated) it is here for the first time that a certain mock heroic, magical-realist aspect started to appear in my writing. ‘they raise their glasses in 2/4 time and they study the latecomers as they slither in beneath the door’. XTC did a version of this which failed to get onto GO2. Not too much different I think but I recall Andy Partridge’s objection to the line: ‘we’re surrounded by the Eels of Death’. He felt it was the sort of hippy, trippy kinda image which XTC Stood Against. I felt it was - well - mock heroic and magical realist. This conversation went nowhere, obviously, but it was instrumental in making my decision to leave the band. These people just didn’t get my shit…

SARGASSO BAR

Couple in the corner

Now she’s crying on his shoulder

Well they’re a couple of Modern Lovers

Sort of Kevin and Isolde

She’s embarrassed by his footwear

He’s embarrassed by her hair

But he doesn’t really care

He says it’s murder staying emotionally aware

He’s another Lost Soul

But he’s only come here to die

And get high

In the sargasso bar, the sargasso bar, the sargasso bar

In the sargasso bar, the sargasso bar, the sargasso bar

Big John in the wooly

Football training in the evening

Well he got married married married

Now he only thinks of leaving

And he’s surrounded by the blubber

Watch the terylene stretching

As he makes a point about his car

When you’re on miles to the gallon

You know where you are

And he’s here every night, he’s such a regular guy

He gets high

In the sargasso bar, the sargasso bar, the sargasso bar

In the sargasso bar, the sargasso bar, the sargasso bar

We came in from the rain

Now we’re surrounded by the Eels of Death

Everyone nervous and everybody couldn’t care less

We raise our glasses in 2/4 time

We study the latecomers as they slither in beneath the door

About this time of the night

There’s more and more and more and more

Well, give them ten minutes then they all go home to die

Cos they’re so high

In the sargasso bar, the sargasso bar, the sargasso bar



Bring on the Alligators

yeah, dunno about this one really.

Clearly I’m really working the magic realist tip again but to what end? It’s clearly meant to be funny, what with the Polish ‘1234’ in the middle and the ‘cocktail bar’ quiet section at the end and all but it’s all trying a bit hard for my liking. The awfully Lahndun working class accent I have on all these tunes is also a bit abrasive. My estuarine whine is of course part of me but it is underlining, unecessarily and stridently I feel, the ‘prolier than thou’ ethic which I had bought into wholesale during Punk. Let it go, dude…

2 LOTS OF DEMOS

source: cassette

Well, now we were getting somewhere..

Listening back now, 40-odd years on it really does seem to me that the year (ish) between the EP and this first set of demos represented a huge leap in my - er - self development. The life in XTC - still living with Ma & Pa or on the road within the Mothership of the band - record company, management, everything being done for you (at the expense, as it turned out, of knowing what was actually going on..hem hem). It’s cosiness and material sufficiency came at a price I could no longer put up with. Time to go, clearly.

I remember leaving the last outpost of that world - the nice flat above the Townhouse, paid for by Virgin while we were recording the EP but now, since recording had just finished, off limits. So…I could go back to Swindon - or step out into the scary metropolis, where all the safety nets have been packed away, and see what can be made to happen. Me and a girlfriend (who had signed up when I was a (sort-of) pop star - she was in for a taste of the real musician’s girlfriend’s lot now alright) went over to my old schoolmate’s flat in the East End (he was at college in London) - it was pouring down of rain as we walked across Tower Bridge. No money for a cab - the XTC wages had long been cut off.



Youth seeks a Rite of Passage, does it not? This seemed to be mine. I felt noble and scared and reckless and Hungry for Experience.

So, these tunes were written after a year of London, of squatting, signing on, meeting loads of new people, getting sick, getting well, hanging round the ink well - no, actually, after a particularly avid speed binge and a dreadful mini-tour with the T&C band I developed serious chickenpox (more virulent in adulthood, it turns out). I was the Elephant Man for a while. The body was having its unignorable say about all this new input.

But the tunes were definitely better. More individual. Not trying so hard and, sometimes, there was a Showing Forth of something really quite juicy and new (and I don’t just mean the pustules, har har).



Feeding Time I submitted this to Shriekback’s publisher when he asked if we had anything that might do for the Eurovision Contest. He never quite looked at me the same way again, I thought (nil points pour moi).

I had been working at London Zoo (west gate and Reptile House: taking money on the door) that year and eating in various Camden/Kilburn greasy spoons. These two experiences were to produce this little gem. A Meditation on Eating. I think it needed doing.

Points of interest: Dave Marx’s great bassline which is really the hook and the armature. Jon Ellis’s glistening ‘egg’ chord. The ‘Taking Your Order’ on the fade (Prawn Cocktail! The 70′s are strong in this one…)

I had earlier recorded this with some ‘opera’ singers (from the BBC West of England Chorus - including Mrs Evenett (contralto) my old French teacher) singing the ‘Feeding Time’s’ in fine bel canto stylee. Which I may release at some point.

FEEDING TIME

Putting things into my body

at Feeding Time

White wine

and little damaged bodies from the bottom of the sea inside me

still feel hungry when I reach the end

and I won’t feel good when it’s Feeding Time again.

I watch him from the corner

at Feeding Time

sometimes he is hideous to watch

as he shovels his chops inside him

and his belly is beginning to distend

and I know he’ll feel great when it’s Feeding Time again

but in the meantime

Eat - don’t stop

Eat - don’t stop

Eat - don’t stop

Biting Viscera and gristle

at Feeding Time

listen to the lobsters whistle

crack their legs open

suck out what you find inside

The spaghetti as it glistens

at Feeding Time

like spirogyra on your wet lips

munching masticated chips in your mouth

with lots of wine

Eggs! Eggs!

Soft and warm

romantically slipping down inside

and I wish it could always be

Feeding Time

and I wish it could always be

Feeding Time

(let’s see what’s on menu..

I’ll get an onion bhaji..

…prawn cocktail

…three more pappadums…)

Opposite Way In The Rush Hour

You know, it’s a bit cheesy and self serving but I still dig this. Our hero is heading off to some gig (some horrible, low paid, nightclub-type gig - let’s say in Edgbaston. Or Stoke). He’s hitching his way up there to meet the band at the soundcheck and it’s just getting dark. He looks at all the Regular Folk coming home from work: old geezers on pushbikes, factory workers - UK manufacturing has still a few years in it at this point - young girls (that might have been mating/marriage material in his former life) wait at bus stops and the cosy tea (the evening meal not the drink - important class-related point) on the tables, visible through the shortly to be curtained windows and our man gets all Springsteeny-sentimental about his self-ordained High and Lonely Destiny.

Noble chords, I think, and very clever drumming by Rich Wernham (he was bloody good, I must say - as Nick Lowe said - ‘you can get away with murder if you’ve got a good drummer’). The absence of traditional last chorus repeats, instead dissolving into a babble of voices was indicative of some creative, envelope-pushing Thort, I would say. The boy’s finding his feet..

OPPOSITE WAY IN THE RUSH HOUR

Going the opposite way in the rush hour

watching the cars going past in the night.

Factory gates let out the day shift -

they escape on their bikes.

Daughters go home on the bus,

see you’re not one of us.

The sensation is sweet and it’s sour.

Going the opposite way, opposite way, in the rush hour.

Closer to being a part of the big system:

so near and far from all that you seek.

Closer to where the big heart beats

you into submission then rocks you to sleep.

Curtains still open

The news on the telly

they’re making their tea

and I want all they’ve got but somehow..

keep on going this way: opposite way in the rush hour.

Street lamps come on now,

those front rooms look so warm now.

Old men with empty lunch bags pedal homewards

and the girls wait at bus stops as the weekend unfolds.

Once it would have felt so right

heading into the hot sticky heat of the night

…it’s not a question of honour

or a question at all

Just the way that we choose to live now

Going our opposite way… opposite way… opposite way…

Muscle and Movement

Painfully sincere (and unintentionally camp) credo from the Squat years. Fucking grim, mate. It was cold, self-flagellating and unecessarily unpleasant. Here is the mantra behind that lifestyle experiment ‘pain is knowledge and knowledge is wealth.’ Jeez, give this guy a cuddle…

MUSCLE & MOVEMENT

Fed up of sitting around with my legs crossed

Pretending and smiling

and saying ‘yeah, cheers then’

avoiding the whites of their eyes.

(and another thing)

And another thing- don’t try and tell me

you’re gonna get something together

when everything’s going your way

then the limit’s the sky.

You can’t always hide on the side

watching people who do things bigger than you.

You can’t have a permanent stop

to the things that displease you

or give you unease.

‘Cos all that matters is

Muscle and Movement

flesh out all your fantasies

with

Muscle and Movement

(ain’t no such thing as security, just

Muscle and Movement

Muscle and Movement

as you relax at the end of the day

there’s another tomorrow

staring at you as it stands at the top of the stairs

time is a swine it just keeps coming at you

battering you to the floor

as you try and stand up yelling you’ve had enough

save it for somebody free - don’t talk to me I got no symapthy

pour out some more of that wine

everything’ll be fine

just stay drunk all the time

but remember that

Muscle and Movement

is all that makes you what you are

Muscle and Movement

standing still don’t get you too far

it’s

Muscle and Movement

Muscle and Movement

it’s hard but it’s true that there’s nothing to cling to

nothing to belong to

and nowhere is more important than where you are now

and there is no rest for the wicked, no rest for the wicked

or peace for the innocent or the don’t knows

(this lines indecipherable)

cos there ain’t nobody got the things they need

(same)

cos the things that you lack are what you never get back

cs the only secret weapon is

Muscle and Movement

Muscle and Movement

nothing happens by itself

Muscle and Movement

pain is knowledge and knowledge is wealth





Vampyr Skinhead & Taking Over ICI

Well, it’s here that I claim total responsibility for the Two-Tone/Ska Revival that was to occur later that year. No, honest - no-one else was doing this stuff at the time (or they were but no-one had heard of them yet). These two tunes were, moreover, direct descendants of my song ‘Super Tuff’ from the XTC album (btw, that title came from the strapline of a Bruce Lee movie ‘Bruce Lee - Super Tough - but also Tender,’ so I was also anticipating Tarantino and all that kitsch martial arts movie stuff from the 90’s - could I be any more prescient?)

Actually, exciting self delusion aside, I claim only to have had my finger on an historical pulse which had been throbbing away since the 70’s and which obviously many others had also been party to. As I say somewhere else ‘it’s ok to have a great idea but you have to get off your chuff if you’re going to start a cultural movement’. I wasn’t dedicated enough, clearly, but I was quietly and briefly, a canary in that particular coalmine.

The idea of reggae as this parallel exotic, possibly dangerous sub-track to Pop/Rock had been around for quite a while and kept bubbling up out of the Zeitgeisty swamp to varying amounts of mainstream attention.

Bob Marley (pretty much just him) had Broken Through to become the reggae artist that unitiated white people liked and played at parties to show Cool. U Roy, Big Youth, Scratch et al remained the province of hip white people (as we liked to think of ourselves).

But, under the audacious banner of ‘Fuck Art, Let’s Dance’ the Ska revival, the Two Tone label, Madness etc were to mine the accelerated beats, fruity grooves and edgy vibes of Jamaica (along the lines of Desmond Dekker and Toots and the Maytals) to international chart success. Of which more in a minute..

Since Punk there had been this strange symbiosis (which is easy to forget, it’s so non-intuitive) of reggae with Punk which had continued, unabated since the days of the Roxy Club. This, eventually, had permeated the wider scene. So, when XTC would play, in 78, gigs in Birmingham or Leeds, the disco would always be alternating, say, the Drones, Chelsea or the Pistols with Althia and Donna, Steel Pulse or Culture. It was a tacit admission, I would say, that the Punk formula was a limited one and, while its brutal austerity had been bracing (and a welcome antididote to Old Fart music), people still needed melody and sensuality and Actual Dancing.



But, there had been, in my late schooldays (early to late 70’s) an earlier, more schismatic appearance of Reggae (in its proto form of Ska) which I had observed firsthand in my Comprehensive provincial schooldays with all its codes and brutalities (kinda charming and nostalgic now; fairly scary and intense at the time).

There was a 2 tribes battle going on at my school and in the UK generally: the Skinheads and the Greboes/Hairies (vestigial, usually non-ideological Hippies, really, sometimes with a component of Biker).

It was a pretty one-sided battle: the Skins were an embodiment of working class, unsmiling rage and violence (’Aggro’ and ‘Bovver’ were their coinages (graffitti in my town read: ‘S.T.A.B (= Swindon Town Aggro Boys) Kick to Kill’). It was a culture of fighting and machismo which picked on pretty much anyone (it became a white racist movement eventually of course: ‘Paki Bashing’ being one defining activity but, as is documented in ‘This Is England’ TV series, the Skins didn’t start out that way: look at all that ska and blubeat. Also, in Swindon in the 70’s there wasn’t much opportunity to get the ol’ racism going - there wasn’t a single black or Asian kid in my year at school; only one or two in the entire school - so the Hairies/Greebs would have to do as a Victim Class, I guess.

The mostly docile, pacifist, great-coat/tie-die-wearing, patchouli-smelling, Topographic Oceans-carrying quasi-hippy was always good for a bit of a kicking (though I suspect, the lack of physical challenge made them a bit uninspiring - football hooliganism probably gave the Skins more of a work-out). At any rate, the hirsute, messy look and, (NB!) the usually university-bound, middle class nature of the Hairies was a walking provocation to the neatly groomed, fashion-conscious, mostly working class (went to work instead of Sixth Form: fuck school and Uni, let’s make some short-term money - therefore doomed for life to the factory or site) Skinheads.



This schism was enacted in the music, as it often is: the long-winded, effete, sexually inert tropes of Prog, the self-indulgent, solo-wanking, adolescent-boy mirror-gazing of hard rock versus the clipped, disciplined, concise sexy beats of Ska and pop reggae (showcased particularly in the ‘Tighten Up’ series of compilations). It really was chalk and cheese.

There was, btw, a whole genre of dirty ska songs, epitomised by Prince Buster’s Big Five single (‘funky spunky man in Big Five, screaming steaming night in Big Five…there will be water all over the bed…water all over her head..’ (!)

One night after a Manfred Mann’s Earthband show at Swindon College (deep Hairy territory, obviously) when the crowd were reluctant to go home, the promoter stuck a Ska tune on the PA which cleared the room like tear gas. Hard to imagine now. Like I say, Tribal.

So, when I started writing songs (Pop Songs! For Bands!) I felt I had struck a fruitful vein in observing the horrified yet strangely fascinated viewpoint of the oppressed Other (Hairy/Greeb/insert Ethnic Group) as he is subdued and brutalised by his natural predator, the Skinhead.

Form following subject matter, this would, of course, be couched in a mutated form of reggae which, though, as a fledgling Hairy (with already insufficient hair, aIas!) I was forbidden to like - I must say it did exert a fascination. It was so alien. Alien is interesting.



Thus, in Vampyr Skinhead we have, again, a randomly predatory hardnut - this time he’s going door to door terrorising people (‘no compunction as he hammers down your door - or elects to clamber in the window - he is swift and he is sure..’). The image really did come to me in a dream: this ferocious little fucker doing his rounds of the estate, like a Clockwork Orange version of the Man from the Pru. Definitely a Viz magazine character there, I reckon…

The sound of a Ska beat still had, for me, the menace it did when the Skins at school danced their clipped, butch, slightly-ridiculous-but-I-fucking-dare-you-to-laugh, scary little dance to it.

Non Cultural Studies note: the riff is played on a WASP synth - I guess the 1st affordable synthesiser. Fairly horrible but it had one good sound so hey… No actual keyboard - a flat plate which was murder to play and ‘explains’ the really obvious cock-up on the intro which we didn’t have time to repair. It wasn’t mine btw (the WASP not the cock up).

VAMPYR SKINHEAD

Vampyr Skinhead knock at your door

Don’t sell brushes or Brittanica no more

He no check for pushing leaflets through the door

or collecting money for the football

he lives outside the law.

He’s just out on the street

with his boots on his feet

and I would give a lot to know what he’s got

Vampyr Skinhead..

Vampyr Skinhead

Vampyr Skinhead

strikes again

Vampyr Skinhead feel no pain

gonna do it again and again and again

Vampyr Skinhead come down your way

and he’s not from anywhere silly in the USA.

Not religion that he’s peddling door to door

he’s not looking for the meter

(he wouldn’t know what it’s for).

He’s just out on the street

with his boots on his feet

and your little sister’s crying

but he’s not.

Vampyr Skinhead

Vampyr Skinhead

Vampyr Skinhead

Somebody’s gonna get uptight, gonna get hot and they’re gonna make mincemeat of him

someday…

Somebody like Peter Cushing gonna wreck the curtains while he’s sleeping

then they’ll be nothing left but a pair of Marten’s and a pile of dust…

Vampyr Skinhead

come down your street

he’s a monster

and he’s got sharp litle teeth.

No compunction

as he hammers down your door

Or elects to clamber in the window -

he is swift and he is sure.

Out

and I would give a lot to know what he’s got

Vampyr Skinhead….

Vampyr Skinhead….

Vampyr Skinhead……



V.S.’s Nemesis…









Taking Over ICI

was an attempt at a pure pop reggae tune - with a socialist/punky spin. Lovely playing by Rob (gtr) and Marion Fudger (ex wife of Dave Fudger, charming chap who used to write for Sounds and now worked for Virgin Publishing - he got me the gig with Iggy Pop). Rich Wernham (also of the Motors). Cracking organ solo dontcha think? I had chops in those days - before Quantise fucked me up.

TAKING OVER ICI

Alone I just didn’t dare

make my move to trash organised laissez-faire

but since you nibbled my ear

Cadbury-Schweppes and Lever Brothers quiver in fear.

All the multiples are whining.

All the big nobs are resigning.

Since I found out you loved me, I’m taking over ICI

Taking over ICI

Alone I couldn’t handle myself

let alone the redistribution of wealth.

But, since I found out you care,

I could trash the System single-handed I swear.

Can’t handle all their wheeler-dealing -

prefer to hear rich people squealing…

Since I found out you loved me, I’m taking over ICI

Taking over ICI…

Taking over ICI..

Big Soft Safe Family

Rather as ‘Paranoiac’ was: a one-off, never to be repeated thing.

Deeply and nakedly autobiographical. Musically quite original, I venture. Shmershy chords the like of which I hadn’t used before and a confidently slow groove.

Vignettes of my respectable working class, late 60′s, Mike Leigh previous life suffused with the cheap cynicism of a young sprat who didn’t realise how lucky he was. They’re all gone now.. and - spoiler - I actually never had an aunt from Torquay (but she rhymed).

BIG SOFT SAFE FAMILY

The relatives are all on their fifth cup of tea.

Their rapid eye movements are something to see -

all lying to each other and smiling

alternately.

Your mum and your dad and your aunt from Torquay

they are none of the same as they once used to be

but they’re all of them, gloriously

in the Big Soft Safe Family

We all of us have a particular smell

I know their’s and they know mine

habitually well.

They worry about me and I worry about them

I’m surprised you can’t tell.

We use the same toilet and eat the same food

and we savage each other when we’re not feeling so good

but blood is thicker than water and

ultimately

we’re a Big Soft Safe Family

We’re slowly aquiring the things that we need

they’re very pleased with our progress indeed.

They were saying we looked very happy

and of course we agreed.

Respect due to father and love due to mum

and the daughter is lovely and so is the son.

Illusions die

obstinately

in the Big Soft Safe Family