What the Hell Is Punk, Anyway?
The three unavoidables for musicians: death, taxes, and the van–the less than sumptuous facilities from which I am reporting to you now as the Damned hurtle at breakneck speed from Thessalonica to Athens on our latest Euro jaunt.
At least we had a reasonable hotel last night–but is it “punk rock” to be afforded the luxury of a bathrobe, room service and a vanity kit and all that? It takes a lot to get my chum Charlie Harper, singer of the UK Subs, to complain (”sleep on the DJ’s floor Charlie?”…”Yeah yeah yeah, but where’s the beer?”). The Subs will play any gig, anywhere, anytime–the bloke’s a legend.
Now I’m not saying that dossing on the floor’s beneath me–I just think at this late state in my dubious career I deserve a bit of comfort after a hard day’s flitting about in my quest to spread a little joy and happiness (plus a dollop of subversion) around the planet. Oh, and I’m not sure my dodgy old back would stand sleeping on the DJ’s floor these days, either.
A few years ago the Damned participated in the Warped Tour, a traveling punk circus with the bands journeying from town to town through the night in their various tour buses. We did notice then that some of the buses were a lot posher than others. And how about the bands that have private planes with an anarchy logo on the tail–as the owner of our last label had (although that didn’t stop us borrowing it on occasion…cough, ahem!).
I remember when we flew in for what was the first US show by a UK punk band. At CBGB’s it was, in 1976 and we were met by this limo to take us into Manhattan…which we promptly sent off in disgust taking the shuttle bus instead. Who did they think we were–rock stars? But it wasn’t long before we started selling reasonable amounts of records and the inverted snobbery went down the jolly old toilet pan!
So, what exactly is punk rock? Is it just about kick ass songs, spiky hair and tattoos, or is there more to it? The Damned’s motto was “THE FIRST RULE IS–THERE’S NO RULES”–but I’m not sure you can front a punk group wearing bright orange loon pants and get away with it.
Maybe punk’s job is to tell it like it is: naming names, challenging the lunatic policies of government and pointing out the failures of a society that works just fine and dandy if you’re stinking rich but is a nightmare for the poor–in a way that journalists used to do before the likes of Rupert Murdoch changed all that nonsense! And whatever you think of Green Day–”American Idiot” did hit the nail firmly on the head lyrically (even if the tune does reminded us of Kim Wilde’s “Kids In America” somewhat).
But is it not the DIY attitude that is the crowning glory of punk? Buy a guitar and do it yourself. You only need to learn a few chords and you’re away. And for me that philosophy should go for sport, TV, religion, art, whatever…don’t sit on the couch watching some arrogant overpaid asshole do it for you–use your own brain and see what you can create. That’s punk if you like.
But I’d better wrap up now as our van is finally approaching Athens after 6 hours of hell–sweltering heat with no AC to speak of–and regardless of my preceding waffle about punk all I can say is if they don’t have any decent beer at the venue tonight the gigs off!
Pip pip,
Captain S.
The worst joke I’ve heard this week…
A 6 year old and a 4 year old are talking. The 6 year old says, “I think it’s time we started swearing”. The 4 year old agrees.
They go down to breakfast and Mum asks what they want. The 6 year old says, “Oh shit Mum, I think I’ll have some Cocoa Pops”. WHALLOP… he flies out of the chair and across the room and runs out crying.
Mum looks sternly at the 4 year old and asks what he wants.
“I don’t know,” he cries–”but it won’t be fucking Cocoa Pops!”
Where Are All the Weirdos?
I first met Monty the Moron at “performance night” at a dingy club in the UK’s bohemian (i.e. sleazy) Brighton–a place where literally anything goes…and that’s the way we like it down here. The place is rammed to the rafters with winos, weirdos, junkies and poets, all of whom are welcome in my book, as they each play their part in keeping Brighton well and truly off the straight and narrow.
Anyway, the first glimpse I had of my future band-mate Monty was as he was called to the stage to give it his all for the alloted five minutes that the participants were rationed to–not enough in some cases and rather more than truly necessary for others! Boy did he go for it, getting some pretty impressive noises out of a cheap and battered Casio keyboard. A quick flurry of Bach was followed by a smidge of jazz. Then, most impressively he suddenly freaked out–something had gone untoward with the equipment which instigated a cacophony of loud cursing and swearing from the stage–and a stunned silence from the audience. This was my kind of musician I thought, but on purchasing him a pint later I was surprised to find that he was actually quite shy and unassuming, the demented stage persona being reserved solely for performances.
Basically, if anything goes wrong with his keyboards he loses it big time. It’s a nightmare for the roadies but hilarious for the fans as the air rapidly turns blue with a dazzling array of foul-mouthed invectives (I could also mention that the onstage air has turned brown over on Monty’s side of the stage on occasion, but that might have more to do with his love of all things curry…if you get my drift).
Anyway, you should have heard him the night we arrived at our extremely dodgy San Francisco motel after a harrowing 24 hour drive across country from God knows where. Some dubious fellow residents of the drug dealer persuasion made the mistake of attempting to sell our keyboardist some of their produce and it didn’t seem like they were willing to accept no for an answer. Well, they got a whole lot more than they bargained for, and deservedly so. The fact that he woke the whole place up at 3am-ish didn’t bother our manic hero as he fired off a choice selection of w***ers, f**k offs, and b***cks in the general direction of these hoodlums, convincing them that they were potentially dealing with a dangerous psycho. An assumption not 100% away from the truth.
In this day and age of slickly coached TV talent show contestants and punk band clones with nary a spiky hair out of place, might it not be the weirdos and flawed genii who could be the saviors of a music business that doesn’t seem to know talent when it hears it? So what if a performer is good looking and can put over a tune to a standard that might appeal to the likes of Simon Cowell. How much longer will it be before even the fans of his turgid shows start hankering for a bit of spontaneity and madness in their entertainment?
Frank Zappa wouldn’t get through the first audition on American Idol (or whatever it’s called these days) let alone be offered a record contract. I can hear them now, “Not commercial enough…too controversial…where’s the hit?”
The quote he came out with about the ubiquitous nature of mainstream pap went something like this: “95% of all music, from whatever genre you care to mention, is garbage. But after a little investigation it’s easy enough to find the real stuff, you just won’t get to hear it on radio that often.”
When young punk bands ask me for advice I tell them to do something different…like find themselves a bassoon player, or paint themselves green or whatever.
Is there any likelihood of a resurgence in the experimentation of the ’70s that brought us Krautrock, punk and psychedelia? Well, if the likes of the UK’s determinedly left field Colour Out of Space and All Tomorrow’s Parties festivals are anything to go by, things look promising.
And at the end of the day, wouldn’t you rather witness some lunatic muso losing their cool onstage, tangled up in cables and broken equipment screaming “C**TS!” into the microphone than some tediously normal act well versed in their stagecraft, doing everything by numbers–and thereby boring everyone to death? The likes of James Blunt spring to mind–do you have him in the USA? I can only apologise on behalf of the British nation–we’re not all like that.
Oh, and to any of the many labels currently churning out the same old dross that might be listening–do us all a favor and sign the occasional unpredictable genius type…a future Syd Barrett, Brian Wilson or Frank Zappa. You never know, you might even start selling some records you’d be proud to actually listen to!
Pip pip,
Captain S.
PS - Here’s the worst joke I’ve heard this week
I went to see the nurse this morning for my annual check-up,
She said I have to stop w**king
I said “Why?”
She said, “Because I’m trying to examine you.”
Captain Sensible is the guitarist of rabble rousers the Damned who kick started the UK punk scene of 1977 along with the Clash and the Sex Pistols, with whom they shared many a stage. Highly rated examples of the Damned on vinyl are “Damned Damned Damned” and “Machine Gun Etiquette”, the latter of which combined their rifftastic version of punk rock with a generous dollop of pysychedelia–a common theme in Mr. Sensible’s work. Mr. S also had a successful (if unlikely) solo career in the ’80s and toured the USA as a rap artist (I kid you not…) when his single “Wot” found itself high in the Billboard Dance Charts. He recently formed his own political organisation, The Blah! Party, as a direct result of Tony Blair’s warmongering. Captain is still touring with the Damned who are planning some recording soon–so if there’s any labels out there……
www.captainsensible.com
Will Someone Please Turn That Bloody Rubbish Off!
At the risk of coming over as a tad pompous and holier than thou I have to admit that I cannot find it within myself to enjoy the music of any band or artist that I consider to be in any way, shape or form of the asshole persuasion…and hearing the first couple of bars of any said musicians rancid output generally has me careening across the room (regardless of whoever might be in the way) in search of the dump switch.
For example, I accept that Ol’ Blue Eyes might very well have been the greatest crooner of his generation but are there not a whole stack of biographies literally brimming over with tales that suggest he was not exactly the nicest person that ever walked the face of the planet? Indeed there are, and I have to admit therefore that I try to avoid his music whenever possible.
Likewise the Fall, whose Mark E. Smith can apparently “smell a vegetarian a mile off”…and who, in Uncut magazine recently boasted about exterminating some squirrels in his back garden. Needless to say he is very much off the Sensible playlist also–anyway us vegetarians smell just fine than you very much…apart from maybe the occasional time when we might have overdone it on the cabbage…which reminds me of a joke I heard this week:
Old lady in a department store lift, doors open and two rich women walk in. One says to the other “Smell that? Christian Dior! $100/oz.” The other says “Smell that? Chanel No.5! $120/oz.” Old lady farts and says “Smell THAT? Brussel Sprouts! .50/lb.”
But enough of that–where was I? Oh yes…records by people I would rather not have my ears defiled by–and the reason I am harping on about it here is that while out for a soiree with some chums the other day, and just after the waiter had delivered a fancy selection of drinks, my ears detected a sound that was most definitely NOT welcome–Phil Collins. Whichever song of his it was I do not recall but it was followed by another…and another. We were commencing a greatest hits tirade…my heart sank.
I’m sure you’ve all been through that one–out with friends in a nice little bar or whatever and you’re just getting settled in and they start playing your least favorite muso–you know, the one that gives you feelings of nausea and the commencement of a foul mood. I hope you bloody well complain–I always do!
You see it’s all very well suggesting (as has been done many a time over the years) that I just ignore the muzak and get on with the task in hand–i.e., enjoying oneself, but as any musician will tell you–for us that would be an impossibility as we register every key change, analyze every drum fill, etc…even at background music volumes. And there are plenty of drum fills in Phil’s work. Boy does he love his paradiddles…or whatever it is they call them in the drummer fraternity.
But it’s not his skin bashing that pisses me off but more important stuff, like when he described punk as being “worthless”…which is a bit rich coming from a bloke in a band famous for nonsensical lyrics…like this Genesis classic “six saintly shrouded men walk across the lawn slowly…a seventh walks in front, cross held high in hand.” Not particularly relevant to a working class youngster in a council estate–in fact I’d go as far as saying that it was the likes of Genesis and Yes that more or less inspired punk, seeing as we had buggerall to identify with there–the only option being to do it yourself…which was pretty much the battle cry of the class of ‘77!
There is ONE thing I like about Collins though…he did put his money where his mouth is when he quit the UK–like he’d promised to do if the Conservatives got booted out of power in the 1997 election. Britain’s loss is Switzerland’s gain…a nice country where the people dress smartly and the trains run on time. Oh, and the taxes are low too…do you think that might have occurred to Phil and any of the other multi-millionaires who relocated to their mountainous retreat?
Of course nobody likes paying bloody taxes, and our scurrilous politicians seem to think there’s no limit to how much of our cash can be grabbed, whether through the IRS or via the cash registers. But this is not the case in Switzerland that leaves its citizens a far larger chunk of their earnings to spend as they see fit. Could the reason be that the Swiss government spends an absolute pittance each year on defense having long ago declared itself a neutral (i.e., peaceful) country–thus negating the purchase of any of the prohibitively costly military equipment required for warfare these days. Give everybody a Swiss Army Knife and a bicycle and tell them to cause havoc if anyone invades was the general idea–and the payoff is the low tax regime which seems to be rather popular with the celebrity tax exile set.
Contrast this to certain other Western governments who are currently in the process of further increasing the already vast amounts they are squandering on their disastrous follies in the Middle East…no wonder all the Fat Cats are stashing their cash abroad where it can’t be confiscated and turned into F-22 Raptors at $300 million a pop.
I sincerely hope that as the wine waiter uncorks a celebratory bottle of bubbly at the Collins local that Phil’s ears prick up…after someone with a sense of humor changes the piped music…and put on possibly his least favorite. THE DAMNED!
Captain Sensible is the guitarist of rabble rousers the Damned who kick started the UK punk scene of 1977 along with the Clash and the Sex Pistols, with whom they shared many a stage. Highly rated examples of the Damned on vinyl are “Damned Damned Damned” and “Machine Gun Etiquette”, the latter of which combined their rifftastic version of punk rock with a generous dollop of pysychedelia–a common theme in Mr. Sensible’s work. Mr. S also had a successful (if unlikely) solo career in the ’80s and toured the USA as a rap artist (I kid you not…) when his single “Wot” found itself high in the Billboard Dance Charts. He recently formed his own political organisation, The Blah! Party, as a direct result of Tony Blair’s warmongering. Captain is still touring with the Damned who are planning some recording soon–so if there’s any labels out there……
www.captainsensible.com
So, just where DID you get your stage name, Captain Sensible?
I got an invite through the post this morning. Very nice and all that…it turns out that my musician chum Tony McPhee, guitarist of the Groundhogs is getting married and has invited Yours Truly to the inevitable ale fest that that day is bound to degenerate into (if I know him). I’m proud to count Tony as one of my mates; his band (who took their name from John Lee Hooker’s “Groundhog Blues”) were great heroes of mine when I was a teen, producing some wonderfully tripped out blues albums–my favorite being “Thank Christ for the Bomb”. And you’d be right in thinking that with a title like that, the record’s not exactly brimming over with love songs!
Anyway, I had to laugh when I looked at the envelope, as he had addressed it to me using my “professional” name. I wonder sometimes if our local postman wonders, “What sort of person IS this Captain Sensible that I’m delivering mail to?” I mean…it has been a few years since I topped the old pop charts over here–and the bloke delivering the letters is barely in his twenties, so he’d be excused if he’d never bloomin’ well heard of me. Maybe he imagines there’s some incognito superhero living in the neighborhood…or perhaps a nutcase. In fact there would be an element of truth in both these theories…but it has to be said that if I had known that I’d be using that name during a 30 year “career” in showbiz I would CERTAINLY have chosen something a little less ridiculous. Mind you, the daft moniker HAS opened some doors for me–in fact I doubt very much if you would be reading this blog now if I were still known merely as Raymond!
So, that started me wondering if Elton John’s life might have been a little different if he had stuck to his original name, Reg Dwight…and not nicked (just after playing with him in a band called Bluesology) the real name of sax player Elton DEAN. That’s definitely a bit naughty isn’t it…and who remembers poor old Elton Dean now, you wonder?
Well, I do. The bloke was unstoppable onstage…improv, melody, weird noises, a “sax maniac” if you like…though mostly for a small but select crowd, so I doubt very much if he made a fortune blowing his saxophone. Jazz proggers Soft Machine were his biggest band…and they nicked THEIR name from the title of William Burrows book.
But, I hear you ask, where did the inspiration for “Captain Sensible” come from? Well, to tell the truth–I EARNED the name by being a bit of a liability (to say the least) in the mid ’70s when the Damned was just starting. There was pretty much nothing I wouldn’t do for a “laugh” back then (as various tour managers and colleagues in the band would attest), and it was during one particularly mad bus trip through France that I was first referred to–ironically of course–as “Sensible”.
So just WHAT sort of jolly japes had I been involved in to have deserved this accursed handle? Well…I do seem to remember at one point being at the back of the bus while a sleeping and hungover Elvis Costello was set on fire…
Hmm…and I wonder where he got HIS stage name from?
Captain Sensible is the guitarist of rabble rousers the Damned who kick started the UK punk scene of 1977 along with the Clash and the Sex Pistols, with whom they shared many a stage. Highly rated examples of the Damned on vinyl are “Damned Damned Damned” and “Machine Gun Etiquette”, the latter of which combined their rifftastic version of punk rock with a generous dollop of pysychedelia–a common theme in Mr. Sensible’s work. Mr. S also had a successful (if unlikely) solo career in the ’80s and toured the USA as a rap artist (I kid you not…) when his single “Wot” found itself high in the Billboard Dance Charts. He recently formed his own political organisation, The Blah! Party, as a direct result of Tony Blair’s warmongering. Captain is still touring with the Damned who are planning some recording soon–so if there’s any labels out there……
www.captainsensible.com
Cap’s Heavy Metal Nightmare
OK, I admit it: I am a hoarder. I find it difficult to throw anything away, still having all these boxes of old junk that go right back to my childhood. And it’s all pretty randomly packed too–which makes finding anything specific a nightmare to say the least.
So anyway, there I was the other day, ploughing through the disaster zone searching for a needle in the haystack when I made the mistake of opening one of my old diaries–and it was at this point that all hope of finding the elusive object went out of the window, as this one contained my account of a Damned tour across America in the 80s (and pretty funny stuff it is, too).
Yes, I remember those strenuous 2 month jaunts well, as they combined the good sized venues we played in the larger cities with some pretty rough and ready bars in hick towns, where it was evident that punk rock was still not exactly “flavor of the month”. So while we would be giving it our all in a seedy club sparsely populated by disgruntled potential lynch mob candidates, up the road there would invariably be some heavy metal band or other playing the local stadium in front of an audience of tens of thousands (none of whom’s day would be complete without the purchase of the tour t-shirt featuring a bloodstained dagger…yawn).
When we’d get back to the hotel after our evening’s exertions, there on the TV would be the reason for these bands’ popularity–a seemingly endless procession of clips featuring metal bands on MTV (which unfortunately for us is what puts bums in seats, as our tour manager would remind us annoyingly). Slayer, Ratt, Poison, Wasp and the unfortunately named Manowar…I mean really, have we not had rather more than enough men marching off to war in recent times?
But what is it about heavy metal that makes it such an enduring musical force…or should that be farce, as the whole thing is a dumbed down, testosterone fueled, leather clad joke to be taken seriously by nobody over the age of 10, surely?
“Gaze in awe at our scary skull backdrop and fake blood makeup…gasp at our video clip where a Harley roars over the drum kit as the fireworks explode…drool at the chained up scantily clad females as they wait for the beast to make his appearance…”
You can imagine how pissed off that made a UK punk band who had just slogged their way across the States for not a lot of reason. So I had to laugh when I opened an invite to an album launch party which was sitting on my doormat upon my return to the UK: it was from the label promoting Iron Maiden, a particularly turgid and clichéd heavy metal band without an original idea in their heads.
Of course I went…I wanted to see what made them tick. But I have to report that it wasn’t a meeting of the minds, and that they could even have been named after their hero Mrs. Thatcher for all I know, as they were indeed “the right dressed as the left”.
Call me old fashioned, but I think lyrics should say a little more than “Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter”. So when I hear people criticizing hip-hop and rap I think to myself, sure, there is a sexist, homophobic element to these genres–but it pales in comparison with heavy metal, which is in my view unmitigated garbage from start to finish…and the proponents of this moronic leather clad tosh should bog off and leave the rest of us to get on with our lives with some semblance of dignity.
Er…apart from Motorhead’s Lemmy of course, as he’s my mate!
Hello everybody.
Have I got itchy feet. I mean part of the reason I play in a band (rather than doing a job where you AREN’T financially embarrassed on a near permanent basis) is that you get to travel a fair bit… and I DO like to travel. Yes, and while the rest of the entourage is sleeping off their hangovers, you can often catch me out and about with my camera at some ungodly hour–taking snaps down at the local railway station for I am a self confessed “trainspotter”. Do you have those in the USA?
Anyway, the aforementioned foot problem is mainly due to the fact that I find myself between tours currently–and the humdrum routine of home life coupled with the increasingly moronic output on TV these days is sending your old chum a little “stir crazy” (which has resulted in my attention hovering over the flight offers in the newspapers on more than one occasion recently).
And why not? I could bugger off and catch some sun… or maybe nip over to Berlin to see my muso cronies–there IS some marvelous beer to be sampled in Germany after all.
But what’s this I see on the front page as I close the paper? It’s an article urging the government to slap a heavy tax on air travel whilst ticking off the users thereof for their role in the Global Warming of this planet.
Now the science blaming recent temperature rises on greenhouse gases such as CO2 and methane seems to be pretty unimpeachable but hold on a minute here… air travel at 3% does NOT appear to be the major culprit. So you’d probably guess from the press that it must be road traffic - but once again you’d be wrong because ALL forms of transport put together can only produce 14% of all carbon emissions. So where the hell is all that mystery gas coming from… and why are we not being told about it???
Well, dear reader–I’ve done some research and it seems that there’s an enormous amount of greenhouse emissions directly resulting from deforestation (25%) and animal agriculture (18%)–but these, as far as western governments and their lackeys in the media are concerned, are (no pun intended) fairly sacred cows and above criticism. No… the people to blame of course are YOU AND ME… and we should be made to PAY for our sins in the form of punitive new taxes if we buy a plane ticket anytime soon. Mind you, I don’t see the likes of Condaleeza Rice and Tony Blair cutting back on their flying activities while gallivanting about on a quest to spread their own particular brand of “joy and happiness” around the planet–do you?
No, if you ask your old mate Sensible we are being hoodwinked into accepting these proposed new “stealth taxes” on air travel and we should demand an end to the mass destruction of the rain forests at the hands of agribusiness and the cattle industry instead.
I’ll end with this little little snippet of info: a recent report over here says that one day’s deforestation is equivalent to the carbon footprint of eight million people flying to New York… which makes old Bush’s hack down the trees to grow ‘Bio Fuel’ crops idea the rather large bucket of hogwash that it is.
And so it is with a guilt free heart that I bid you farewell… for I have a ticket to book. I’m told the Canary Islands are nice this time of the year!
Pip Pip,
Captain Sensible
The Damned are one of those perfect bands that are at once underground and iconic. Study up here. The Damned have a sound that is wholly their own and yet they admit was cribbed from some of their favorite acts. They successfully mixed punk rock with a Hammond organ and came up with a garage-goth hybrid that no one else has been able to match. And 30 years later, founding member and punk icon himself Captain Sensible is happy to be doing what he’s always done–playing music and touring the world. He throws down the gauntlet, challenging anyone with a good ear to steal from his songbook and re-make it into a banger for the aughts. Below is an interview with the Captain himself (née Raymond Burns) so you, Fuzz reader, may start to salivate for his upcoming columns right here on these virtual pages. Enjoy.
Fuzz: Can you answer for me, Captain, where you’ve been, and where you’re going?
Captain Sensible: Well, as a self confessed slacker and all round lazy git I was lucky enough to join a band that would have a 30 year ‘career’ of doing just enough work to pay the bills–taking the rest of the year off! We do a tour every six months or so and jolly good fun it is too. The Damned managed to be instrumental in two genres–punk and goth… so that makes writing the set lists interesting, but I thank my lucky stars I wasn’t born five years earlier or I’d have been dressed up in tinfoil and makeup with 6-inch heeled boots in some glam band or other. Mind you, a couple of years later and I might have been in Spandau Ballet…
What’s your favorite bass line or guitar riff? How about one you wrote?
Eddie Cochran’s C’mon Everybody” has such an infectious twangy riff–we liked it so much so that we gave it the Damned treatment, and with a bit of knocking about it came out the other end as our ‘Neat Neat Neat’ single. In those days, what with ‘My Sweet Lord’ and all that, plagiarism was quite frowned on but since the sampling boom it’s considered cool to take someone else’s music and recycle it. I wish someone would re-hash something of mine and get me back in the charts where I belong…
Are you a guitarist who plays bass, or do you think they’re both part of the same thing?
I didn’t want to be either–it was the Hammond organ that I had heard on Small Faces and Jimmy Smith records that I wanted to play when I was a teenager but these massive organs were too darned expensive for a working class lad from Croydon so the guitar it was. But I still get pretty excited when I hear a Hammond player in full flow, as I did the other day when Brian Auger was gigging in the neighbourhood. What a performance–and I found myself blundering backstage afterwards to meet him but as soon as I did so I was suddenly struck dumb having played his ‘Befour’ album a million times and feeling a little awestruck to be standing next to my hero.
What is your favorite part about being in a band?
Every job has it’s perks… when I worked on the railways it was free train travel… and the job I had at the pet supplies merchant meant my cat was never short of kitty litter. When you’re in a band all the beer is free. You may not always get paid but there’s always plenty of booze backstage. Oh, and for some reason or other that you won’t hear me complaining about–if you are up onstage with a guitar slung around your neck for some strange reason ladies find you more attractive… regardless of how handsome or not you may be. Perks of the job…
If you said “playing music,” what else do you enjoy? Travel, meeting people, seeing how you rub off on people who admire your work?
Public transportation systems of the world - that’s my hobby. The next morning after the gig I get up early and explore the local metro/tram/rail system of whatever town I’m in, taking plenty of photos. I am an evangelist for the re-introduction of tram and light rail systems in our towns and cities, I mean… how many people sit in their gridlocked cars every morning cursing the traffic and wishing there was some other way of getting to work every morning? Well there IS another, cleaner way, I have seen it and it is the future. Don’t tell Ford or General Motors though… they still have a stack of Hummers and the like to sell.
What are you working on now?
Apart from trying to negotiate my way through level 14 of Mario Vs Donkey Kong on the GBA you mean? I’ve just finished recording an album with Dead Men Walking, a punk rock ’super group’ if you wanna call it that, featuring Slim Jim from the Stray Cats, Mike Peters (The Alarm) and Kirk Brandon (Spear Of Destiny). It has a nice bluesy punk vibe but the lyrics still have teeth… it’s not as though there’s nothing to write protest songs about any more these days.
What do you like to do when you aren’t playing or holed up in a studio?
Did I mention trains? I’m booked on the Orient Express in a few weeks. The only problem is I’m not generally known for my smart appearance and I’ve been told it’s all a bit ‘posh’.
One of my friends always votes for you as a write-in candidate for everything - president, mayor, city council. Do you track your votes? How active are you politically? How do you recommend a young person first get into politics? Do you have any advice for a jaded older person who still votes?
What’s that old cliché? “If voting changed anything they’d outlaw it!” For me, when that whole fraudulent build up to the Iraq was being played out on our TVs (get brainwashed in the comfort of your own home) it was either put a brick through the screen or get off my arse and do my bit to oppose the warmongers and their supporters in the media. Along with the many marches and demos I was involved in I decided to start the ‘Blah! Party’, which gets it’s name from the utterance one makes when the vile sound of a politicians voice defiles the ears. As it was a semi joke we were all surprised at how many members the Blah! Party has attracted in such a short period of time… there is obviously a healthy skepticism out there towards our glorious rulers and their crap policies, and I am in the process of organizing our first conference as we speak.
Any thoughts or endorsements on the upcoming presidential election in the U.S.?
Like you Americans, I am filled with hope for a new direction courtesy of Mr. Obama. But I am reminded that that was the same emotion we had on the election of Tony Blair…
Was Stiff one of your favorite labels to be on, and are you a fan of (m)any of your Stiff labelmates (to name a new, Wreckless Eric, Nick Lowe, Adverts, Elvis Costello, The Pogues and Kirsty McColl?)
Stiff was a laugh…. talk about making it up as they went along. The management seemed to thrive on the chaos of it all and it has to be said that some wonderful tunes were being churned out at the time. One of the label mottos was ‘play it today and throw it away’, which was a way of saying - you like that one? There’s plenty more where that came from.
It was the home of the short, snappy get your point over in 2 minutes or preferably less 7″ single… out of all of them my favourites have to be Whole Wide World by Wreckless Eric and Lucky Number by Lena Lovitch. And what a pair of characters those two are as well…
And it WAS fun hobnobbing with Wreckless, Elvis and the like in that run down shop that was Stiff HQ, but you’d get roped into boxing up the records or getting asked to conjour up a stage name for the new signing if you hung around too long.
Blimey, I’m starting to get all nostalgic!
If Morrissey is the most famous vegetarian musician, would you like to be the second? How important is being vegetarian to you?
I don’t bang on about it, but now that you asked I have to say that if the animals were treated a bit better in their short and pathetic lives - I’m thinking about chickens in particular here - then things wouldn’t be quite so bad, but they suffer dreadfully in the process of ending up on your dinner plate and if the likes of KFC and McDonald’s changed their buying policies to a more humanely reared bird then these obscene chicken producing factories might become a thing of the past.
Personally, if there was nothing else around and I was hungry I would eat meat - chicken, cow… dog even. Thankfully there is an alternative - and it’s a whole bunch healthier too. When’s the last time anybody saw an obese vegetarian?
Oh, and good luck to old Morrissey too… another in a long line of great British eccentrics (ie, nutcases!)
I’m really looking forward to reading your columns. What can we expect from you?
Well, if I am allowed to I’m going to spout off on whatever gets my goat at the time… maybe another daft expedition to the arctic ends in tears, or the papers inform us that there’s some more mad religious parents demanding that their kids school teaches creationism… or even that some new fangled band releases a good record (hold the front page…).
Whatever I write in my articles from over here in the cold and rainy UK, you can be sure dear reader that it will be (cue groans…) a very SENSIBLE column. Pleased to make your acquaintance… see you soon!