Mine's Is The Last Voice You Will Ever Hear!

A couple of weeks ago JC and I were talking about nothing in particular between bands at the Spector gig at the Wah Wah hut, when he mentioned the Dorian Linksey book, 33 Revolutions Per Minute and in particular the Frankie Goes To Hollywood chapter and we were both in agreement that it was a very unsettling time with a lot of scary shit going on.

I really don't want to sound like some old codger with the "you had to be there at the time" kind of shit but I'm not sure that anybody under the age of thirty can really grasp how close we came. Not as close as in October 1962 when it really can down to the wire. But a couple of times during the 70s/80s  not least when the USSR invaded Afghanistan it looked as though we could be heading for a nuclear showdown.

I remember asking my uncle Jimmy if he remembered where he was when Kennedy was killed to which he replied, " Aye and I also remember where I was when he nearly bloody killed us all!" referring to the Cuban missile crisis. I can't say that I could pin point a time in the 80s that was just as serious as that.

I 'm not sure if I became obsessed with nuclear annihilation but I spent a lot of my youth with a  pessimistic outlook which made me think that the world didn't have a  a cat in hell's chance of reaching the year 2000. That may sound over dramatic but you watch The War Game and Threads and see if you can keep up your sunny disposition.

At the time we had an American President that thought of the USSR as the "evil empire" and himself as the good guy in some Western who was going to save the world. Over here a Prime Minister that would bend over backwards to do Ronnie's bidding and in Russia, christ we didn't even know if the President we saw on the news footage was even alive. These factors did not lead to a rosy world overview.

Being involved in the Youth CND movement didn't help either all those figures about how many times over we could blow up the planet, facts about nuclear winters and EMPs. Finding out that just outside Lanark there was a Royal Observer Corps Bunker, that the race course which had fallen into disrepair was the location of the mass burial ground after an attack and also reading the Government's Protect and Survive pamphlet didn't give much hope for the future.

Living in Lanark, at the time we had a part time fire service and also the State Mental Hospital seven miles away from town. What the hell has that got to do with any of this, I here you asking? Well it's simple, any time there was a fire within the jurisdiction of the local fire station or every second Thursday at one o'clock the siren would go off, the same siren that would go off in the case of a nuclear strike. Not many, if any of my peer group realised this fact and if in the same class as me first thing after lunch on every second Thursday looked at me rather strangely as I would stiffen in my seat as soon as I heard that horrible sound. I used to try and rationalise it to myself, saying that it was just the test for the Penni siren but there was always that, "what if it isn't, what if it's just a coincidence that it's going off at 1 o'clock on a Thursday?"

I spent the early to mid eighties going to demos in Barrow In Furness, Coulport, Greenham Common and RAF Mildenhall amongst many other lovely locations surrounded by razor wire and patrolled by men with guns with live ammunition and nothing I had seen at any of these places gave me a great hope for the future. It seemed to be inevitable that we were going to come to a sticky end before we even got a chance to get into the nineties.

Which brings me to the main point of this ramble, at this time we had loads of bringing the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction to the masses. Who can forget Duran Duran with their hard hitting protest diatribe Rio. or Spandau Ballet with their critique of the sheer stupidity of the arms race "True".  Bands as diverse as Gillan with M.A.D and Timezone's frightening World Destruction took up the cause but it took Paul Morley, Trevor Horn and the demo from a band from Liverpool to produce the ultimate anti war track of the 80's which in equal measures scared the shit out of you but also made you want to dance.

With it's myriad of remixes and formats it is also responsible for the rise in bands having the sole intent of bankrupting their fans by releasing their singles and albums in multiple formats and mixes. Which in turn would lead to the chart authorities putting limitations on the amount of different formats which would be counted  when calculating your chart position.

Here are a couple of the mixes

Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Two Tribes (Annihilation)

Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Two Tribes (Hibakusha)

Guitars, We Don't Need No Stinkin' Guitars

I have decreed that it is 80's weekend, well in my little world anyway.

By the 80's I don't mean the usual take on it, the nonsense that was New Romantic, Duran Duran and all that pish. Nor do I mean the alternative 80's of The Smiths, C86, The Jesus and Mary Chain and the like, all of which I love. No I mean the dance music of the late 80's, House music. Those of you who either never got it or just plain couldn't stand the lack of guitars, I apologize and maybe you should come back next week, as the next few days ain't for you. I know that it wasn't everybody's cup of tea and it took some innovative remixers and the funky drummer drum beat for a lot of the people I knew to stick their toe in the murky waters of "dance music" and only then if it were preceded with the word indie.

For the next few days this site will resound with the sounds of 303s, samples, scratches and drum machines.

In 1987, I was getting kind of bored with the music I was listening to, it had been 2 years since Psychocandy and I felt that indie music was in a kind of a rut. I know that there will be people out there horrified by that statement and will be able to cite dozens of great innovative singles that came out that year but it just wasn't doing it for me. Apart from at Scooter Club dances where you would hear soul music, going for a dance was nigh on impossible. With the exception of New Order I can't think of anything contemporary that could get me onto the dance floor.

Then I went to Aberdeen and found what I was looking for. As I have mentioned before I embraced whole heartedly the electronic revolution that was going on in music, the use of samples etc. I had heard and liked the early House and Hip-Hop tunes that had been kicking about the previous year or so but it took the move up north and frequenting the early days of the Pelican Club to get me totally immersed in the music, much to the dismay of my friends at home when I tried, unsuccessfully, mostly, to get them just to listen to never mind get in to it. I really could not understand the hostility to what I saw as a natural progression from soul and disco.

1987 saw House hit these shores in a big way and irrevocably change the way in which music was made. No need for guitars and drums, all you needed was a Korg or a Roland and you could make your own music. For the next few years kids didn't want or need guitars all they needed were a set of decks or a keyboard.

Here are a couple of my favourites from the year, that if 1977 were year zero, then this would be 1917.

First up is It's Alright by Sterling Void, a completely uplifting, classic house tune which came out on the DJ International label and was co-produced by Marshall Jefferson. The Pet Shop Boys had a number 2 hit with a not too shabby cover of this a couple of years later.

Sterling Void & Paris Brightledge - It's Alright

Joe Smooth's Promised Land is another uplifting House tune with the message that everything is going to be alright, there must have been something in the water around this time which put everybody into such an optimistic mood, not only did the music have these positive lyrics but every where you looked people were grinning and hugging each other. Paul Weller loved this song so much that he attempted to cover it, Council House, if you will.

Joe Smooth feat Anthony Thomas- Promised Land

Mixing Pop and Politics

The mid to late 80's were a good time if you were an earnest young man with lofty ideals and a rudimentary knowledge of politics and class struggle. Not so good if you were a miner, shipyard employee, steel worker or any of the other "traditional industries" that were decimated during that decade.

By about 1983/84 I had become quite politicized after being introduced to Crass via my best mate's older brother's record collection (when he was out). I had avidly sought out music on Crass's label and bands with the same anarcho punk leanings, however there were a couple of problems for me in most of this otherwise worthy output. Most of the music was rudimentary at best with lyrics spat out at 100 miles an hour. Lyrics that made me think and question my own beliefs. But was it music? Possibly. Could you listen to it on a daily basis? No. Did I really believe that we could live in "anarchy, peace and freedom"? Not a chance in my neck of the woods, Strathclyde or any where else in the UK for that matter. For me there was a gap waiting to be filled. Yes I could listen to Dylan but it said nothing to me about Britain under Thatcher and although I loved all the political punk/new wave stuff such as TRB, SLF, The Angelic Upstarts etc, they belonged to the guys a few years older.

Then one Friday night I was sitting in the living room as usual watching the Tube and it happened, this guy with a big nose and a guitar was singing" just because your better than me doesn't mean I'm lazy, just because your going forwards doesn't mean I'm going backwards". I had found my protest singer, who was saying what I was thinking and with the bonus of being reasonably tuneful.

Through the 80's I got involved with a few political/protest movements, Red Wedge, although I was not yet age to vote, the Anti Apartheid movement, Amnesty International and CND. I remember this time as being thoroughly fucking grim but with a great soundtrack of protest songs by the likes of Bragg, the Beat, the Redskins, the Communards, Chumbawamba etc and up here Dick Gaughan.

The first track up is the track that first put me on to Billy Bragg, from the 6 track mini lp Life is A Riot with Spy vs Spy.

Billy Bragg - To Have And To Have Not

Secondly, a track from the first Chumbawamba lp "Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records". This was long before they signed to EMI, released Tub Thumping and were involved with the debacle at the Brits with John Prescott.

Chumbawamba - Whitewash

Lastly possibly my favourite of Bragg's own political tunes recorded live for KEXP.

Billy Bragg - Waiting For The Great Leap Forward.