Covers Week, Day 7

Let's go full circle and finish with another cover version of a classic Springsteen song which will be equally as frowned upon as the Airborne Toxic Event's verion of I'm On Fire.

The first time I heard Frankie Goes To Hollywood's version of Born To Run was on the bus down to Barrow In Furness in 1984. It was on somebody's Saturday morning show on fabulous Radio One and whoever it was had been given a promo copy of probably the most eagerly awaited record of the year and was playing a few of the tracks from the album. I thought that it was brilliant although the hippies  and the older folk on the bus thought that it was a travesty. For me it was an original take on the track,  full of energy, played at a hundred miles an hour and the bass was great.

Why was I on a bus going to Barrow you might ask? Well at that time in the Vickers yard they were building the most destructive ships that the world has ever seen, the Vanguard class submarine which is capable of deploying 192 independently targetable warheads. This was my first CND demo outside of Scotland and my parents thought that I had gone into the town to buy a pair of denims when they eventually found out where I went I was grounded for a considerable amount of time, but it was worth it. Not only did I hear Born To Run but I also heard Redemption Song for the first time that day and met quite a few cool anarchists.

Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Born To Run

No To Trident

I'm going to go on my first anti-trident march in years today.

It's quite depressing to think that the first time I marched against Trident was 25 years ago in Barrow in Furness where they were building the submarines which would launch the missiles. Since then there have been numerous visits to Faslane, Coulport and other places.

It has always seemed like lunacy to me that we posses a first strike weapon in the name of a deterrent and so we can keep our seat at the big table. It's about time that our government realised that having these weapons does not enhance our status in the world but actually encourages other nations in their attempts to get their own nuclear weapons.

In the current economic crisis when the reality is that public services will have to be cut then surely the first thing to go should be the replacement of a weapons system that we will never be able to use without the say so of the good old US of A and more to the point morally should not even entertain the notion of using?

Here are a couple of tracks that stick in my mind from that first anti-trident demo a long time ago.

Bob Marley & The Wailers - Redemption Song

Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Two Tribes (Carnage)