Chicago Blues where you wouldn't expect it

This morning I visited my favourite local charity shop, and I found a Blues compilation CD that features Junior Wells and Buddy Guy. I bought it. Last Monday there was a programme on Radio 4 about the post war political situation in Sarawak, a country that is part of the island of Borneo. You would imagine that there could be no possible connection between the two.But there is.
In 1967 my parents went to live in Kuching, the capital of Sarawak. My sisters and I were sent to convent boarding school in Matlock, but we spent our Christmas and summer school holidays with them in the far east. It was really hard to explain to friends what it was like then. Now people go on gap years to look at the rainforest or rescue orang utans ( man of the forest in Malay). Back then it took a minimum of three days to fly there. The quickest route was via Copenhagen, Tashkent and Singapore, and then a local plane across to Kuching. There was a post colonial social scene for our parents , and a small group of teenagers, all released from their boarding school prisons would meet up in the holidays and write to one another in term time. I'm still in touch with some of them. My interest in music was encouraged there - the public school boys loved their prog rock, and Cream ( Disraeli Gears), Hendrix ( Are you experienced?) and the Stones ( Their Satanic Majesties). My dad, a civil engineer out there, was a big jazz and folk fan, with a particular passion for Bob Dylan. He had vinyl and reel to reel. I had a prototype portable record player, bought in Singapore. Imagine jungle at the bottom of the garden. On the other side of that strip of jungle lived my friend who was also a Pink Floyd fan. He would play Interstellar Overdrive very loud from his bedroom balcony so I could hear it in mine. It's never sounded so good. Also Steve Miller's Song for our Ancestors, with its strange foghorn intro. Many years later I arrived early for work one evening at the Hacienda, and was transported back to the jungle. Rob Gretton was playing it full volume on the club sound system! Not what you'd normally associate with Fac 51.
So, plenty of recorded music, but not much live going on. Until one Christmas my parents got tickets for Junior Wells Rhythm and Blues Band at the local school. Looking at the ticket, I imagine they had come out to SE Asia to entertain the troops, still in Vietnam. The United States Information Service sounds like some sort of PR/ cultural exchange exercise. I knew a bit about Chicago blues.I was into Electric Flag, and had even bought a copy of Long Time Comin', which I still have.
As you can see I also still have the ticket and their autographs - a miracle given how many times I have moved house, and how long ago it all was.

Friday on my Mind

Back in late 1966 I met my first proper boyfriend at a Small Faces concert in Manchester. My friend Wendy and I were huge Steve Marriott fans ( and he was such a tiny man!) They were on at the Odeon, on the edge of St Peter's Square. We had to walk back down Deansgate to get to Victoria bus station to catch our buses home. We were about 13. We soon realised that some lads who had been at the concert were following us, in a nice way, nothing creepy. We got talking, exchanged phone numbers and I arranged to meet 'mine' the following Saturday in town. I lived in Eccles, he lived in Dukinfield. This was long distance love. We had our first kiss ( my first snog ever!) in the alley that led to the Hollies' boutique, just near Albert Square and King St. He was very into music - we'd bonded over a love of the Small Faces, but he played guitar, sang, wrote songs and eventually became a pop star in Italy. His mother was Italian. We met up again at the Magic Village a few years later. But back then I remember we would have long phone conversations, and he would play me records down the phone - Cat Stevens' 'Matthew and Son' and the Easybeats 'Friday on my Mind'. Later we shared a passion for Love's Forever Changes. I can still recall the frantic call telling me to put the phone down and watch Hendrix on Top of the Pops! Now everyone can share most music from any era over the internet - it's amazing, but nothing can ever be the same as standing in the hall of my parents' house, with their red telephone, listening to Friday on my Mind down the wires.

These Days or Janitor of Lunacy

Sometimes I find the connections a bit too overwhelming. Six degrees of separation and all that. Back in the early 80s I had returned from working in Casablanca to Manchester, and I got involved in the music scene there again. I used to do the door at various venues for Alan Wise, a promoter and manager, and for Factory records. I was working on the door the night the Hacienda opened, though I don't appear in 24 Hour Party People. Alan Wise helped Nico rehabilitate her career whilst maintaining her habit, and I saw her play at Rafters on Oxford Rd. James Young documents the whole sad story in his book Songs They Never Play on the Radio. I am glad I saw her, even though she was a long way from her myth creating days with Velvet Underground.I identified with her deep and tuneless voice.I can do a Nico when I want to! Jackson Browne gave her These Days to record - 'don't confront me with my failures, I have not forgotten them.' He was about 17 when he wrote those lines. Even at my age, it's hard to utter them out loud - they are very powerful words. So I sing the song occasionally with my youngest son, a la Nico, for bit of fun, and only in the kitchen.
So when she played Rafters, with her portable harmonium and her Gothic gloom, we felt we were in the presence of a post-punk Valkyrie.
C P Lee describes a slightly more tragic, but ultimately amusing encounter in New York in 1980. Alberto y los Trios Paranoias were there rehearsing Sleak, and they were told that Nico and Anita Pallenberg were going to come and see them. Two sex goddesses by any standards, the stuff of dreams and fantasies. Two women they thought were bag ladies turned up, worn and haggard from the sex and drugs and rock n roll.You can read about this in C P Lee's brilliant memoir When We Were Thin.
Not long after I moved to Bakewell, I bought a copy of James Young's book for a knockdown price in the wonderful bookshop my friends Keith and Sue ran here. I hadn't really acknowledged my past life in Manchester. To all intents I was a single mother of three children living a quiet life in the Peak District. The book gave me a thread back to an old way of life - a view of events I'd half experienced and people I had once known. As my generation write their stories it has become more common for me to encounter my memories through the prism of another's .
Some years later, when my older son was about 16, he made a musical connection with Antony Hegarty, of Antony and the Johnsons. Quite an achievement for someone brought up in Bakewell! Antony had sung with Lou Reed. He was fascinated by Nico, who had been dead for some years of course. I saw him several times when he toured in England, and he very kindly put me and my family on the guest list. I wanted to give him my James Young book on Nico, but I was a bit reluctant to let it go. This was before the days of book buying on the internet. I really wanted to find another copy. On the outskirts of Bakewell was a big discount book shop, full of travel and cookery books. I parked there one day. I wasn't even planning to go in. Under the awning outside was a small book case, with just one book on it, priced at 99p. It was Songs They never Play on the Radio.
So Antony got his copy and I still have mine.

I'm a believer

I was really sad to hear of the death of Davy Jones, the Manchester Monkee. I never saw him or any of the Monkees live, but I did once have a conversation with his dad! The Monkees were at the height of their popularity with their TV show. Somehow my friend, Judy Stokoe, and I got hold of Davy Jones' home phone number in Manchester. It can't have been as simple as looking for a Jones in the Manchester phone book. We dared ourselves to make the call at her house one afternoon. The phone was answered, and one of us said 'Hello, is Davy in?' I think it must have been me, because I can recall the polite and patient response - 'No, I'm sorry. He's in America filming.' But if Judy wants to claim it was her, I'll believe her. No speaker phones in those days - maybe we were just very close to the earpiece!
And not only were phones different, but so was the whole TV experience - if you were a fan of the Monkees you had no choice but to be in front of your television early on a Saturday evening - no i player, no videos, no DVDs, no youtube - if you missed it, you missed it.You daren't miss it!
My sister told me a friend of the mother of her son's ex-fiancee ( nearly six degrees of separation there!) claimed to have been engaged to Davy before he left for the States. I'm sure she wasn't the only girl in Manchester to try and lay claim.

Starry starry night

Last night my son and his girlfriend saw the meteor that streaked across the sky. I am very envious. Several of their friends saw it too, but I had just got back from a long but inspiring day in London, visiting the Hockney exhibition and then the Courtauld Gallery. There I had seen Van Gogh's self portrait with bandaged ear - not the one where he is smoking his pipe, pretending everything is normal! I was settled in for the evening, with no plans to venture out again.So I missed the meteor.
Don McLean received a lifetime achievement award at this year's Radio 2 Folk Awards. Watching him perform, I was reminded of going to see him in concert in the heady days of Vincent and American Pie. He was on at the Odeon in Manchester, just off St Peter's Square. It seems an unlikely venue now, but I saw lots of groups there - many of them on package tours. The Herd, the Small Faces, Dave Dee etc etc, Roy Orbison, Gene Pitney, Helen Shapiro even - and the wonderful Walker Brothers. If I think back, I can sometimes remember where I was sitting, who I was with, and even what I was wearing. Is this a sign of getting older?
Don McLean was in concert - I still have the ticket stub somewhere. The audience were extremely enthusiastic - he was at the height of his commercial success. It was unthinkable to categorise him as a folk singer then! In one song, we started to clap to the beat. He stopped singing and sternly told us to stop - it was putting him off!
I never felt the same about him again.

Love and Temptations

The first LP I bought was the Temptations' 'Get Ready'. I was 13, and I bought it from a record stall at a youth club I went to in Manchester, the last summer before my parents moved to the far east and I went to boarding school. The DJ at the youth club was said to be moonlighting from the Twisted Wheel. It seems unlikely, but I do remember the brilliant soul records he played. Maybe he had aspirations.
The following year I went to see the Temptations at the CIS in Manchester - a huge venue owned by the Co-operative movement.It was an odd place to see a group - the Free Trade Hall would have been more usual. And I have never been sure if they were the real thing or one of those groups of talented impostors, sent out on the road in the hope that no-one would notice. Whoever they were, they were fantastic, with all the moves, harmonies and sharp suits. This must have been in 1968.
Many years later, 2007 to be precise, I did see Smokey Robinson at the Bridgewater Hall. One of the best live shows ever, and an experience in community singing when he did medleys of all the old hits.
The second LP I bought was Love's 'Forever Changes', especially ordered in for me by the record shop in Matlock, when I was at boarding school. In the late 70s I saw Arthur Lee at Leeds University. I know he continued to tour in later life, but I never felt I could take the risk of disappointment.

Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 2

I posted something quoting this Ian Dury song a couple of weeks ago, and it set me thinking about the man and his music.
Back in I think 1972, I became friends with the Edgar Broughton Band and their wives, girlfriends, roadies and families.
They had done a live on a lorry gig in Redcar, and had been arrested. A good friend and founder member of On the 8th Day in Manchester, Brian Livingstone, was their solicitor. He had a reputation as a sympathetic and radical man of law. At the turn of the year 1971 to 1972 he was invited to spend new year with the band and their friends and families at East Down Manor, just outside Barnstaple. The band were recording an album there. I'd had a bad time after leaving school. I had to take a gap year before I went to University (too young at 17), and I had found myself a very unsuitable drug dealing boyfriend. I needed a bit of rescuing, so Brian took me to Devon to meet the Broughtons, along with a couple of other friends from Manchester. It was a wonderful time. Gina Broughton and I became good friends, bonding over the coincidence of having gone to rival boarding schools in Matlock ( you thought this was going to be about rock 'n' roll didn't you?). There were other similarities in our respective fates at this stage of our lives, and we established a friendship which lasted over a number of years. I used to go and stay with them when they moved back to London. I took Captain Beefheart's tour manager round to meet them, taking a copy of their album back to Beefheart.
In the summer of 1972 they were appearing at the Rainbow, and as already mentioned, I had been part of a dance troupe in Manchester. I was asked to open the show as a broken down ballerina, and then myself and another dancer were at each side of the stage dancing for the rest of the set. I remember it being filmed, but have no idea if any footage still exists.
Backstage I was introduced to a friend of theirs, who had polio. It was Ian Dury.
Some years later I was at the funeral of the amazing Les Prior, star of 8th Day and Alberto y los Trios Paranoias. He had lost his battle with cancer. His funeral was held in Heptonstall, where he had lived. He is buried in the same churchyard as Syvia Plath. It was a snowy January day. And Ian Dury came to pay his respects.
The Albertos were on Stiff records, a family of extremely talented and rather eccentric artists. I saw Ian Dury and the Blockheads on the Stiff tour when it hit Rochdale, sometime between these two meetings. Wreckless Eric was on the bill too.
It all seemed so unremarkable at the time.Of course I don't mean that the characters and music were unremarkable, but that I took these adventures and opportunities for granted.