the revolutionary spirit

in response to olivia's request for three songs, that evoke a certain mood:
1. what is your saddest song: shipbuilding/robert wyatt
well, i could choose anything off the last few joe strummer and the mescaleros album, esp.silver and gold, the final song, where he yells "ok, that's a take!" in the closing moments of the track - his last ever recorded utterance.
most country and western music, is as depressing as any indie song i could ever think of... joy division could have easily fitted in to the nashville scene, with all those tales of loss and regret... when robert gordon who i am a big fan of  - got himself into faron young, that opened-up a whole new can of old sad songs:

revolutionary spirit by the wild swans - that has a certain sadness to it, but is also uplifting at times... sometimes melancholic thoughts return from when i first heard the song back in the 80s... along with out of season by icicle works - both take me back to my days as an outsider, when i used to sit by campfires in the woods with friends debating the meaning of life(which mostly revolved around avoiding gainful employment and wearing old raincoats)... we were starting to fracture from society and forge our own way, but it was sad to realise that things weren't going to just fall into our laps.
truly though, despite being depressed as hell every time i played bad town by BSA, as it reminded me of living well out of the loop, in a dead-end place in life, the one song i can remember repeatedly playing whilst actually looking out of a rain-soaked window at nothing-ness is shipbuilding by robert wyatt:
here you have the song that really spoke about what was going on in britain at that time, i was of conscription age then, i could see the falklands war was a complete sham, instigated by a horrendous old woman in power at the time, to bolster her vote in the forthcoming elections... and there was talk of signing-up teenagers to go out and kill other teenagers, in the name of a patch of land, very far away. it really seemed like there wasn't any point to starting-out on life, as we were all hanging in the balance waiting to see what would happen next... there was no optimism at all. this came to pass, obviously... and life went on, but for a certain period, it was like the 50's all over again, it takes me back to sitting in my mother's lounge, watching the rain come down outside, the week after i'd been off camping in the lake district, to come back to a family falling apart in a country that was falling apart.
obviously this was a blip in the scheme of things - Rota Fortunae and all that... life did fall apart, but i picked myself up from the torpor and started all over again..
automobile noise/the blue nile - another low point, spending a day-out in glasgow, seeing the possibilities of what i could be doing, listening to this song on my red walkman, as i waited in buchanan street bus station, watching a light snow coming down, feeling the chill, the soundtrack to my broken home.

2. which song turns you on: rollercoaster/the jesus and marychain
maybe the swagger of something by jesus and marychain, when they were in their heyday - they were channelling kenneth anger/the velvet underground/the stooges, wearing leather jackets like i did, and i even looked like i was in the band(most indie blokes did at that point to be honest), but i was so identified by them(even though i didn't listen to them all the time, contrary to popular belief), people would avoid/start relationships with me, based entirely on them.
there was more to it than that of course, i'd quit my hometown and was living a life away from parents and felt free for the first time, like i was truly being myself - i was also meeting girls who wanted to be with me(as opposed to most of the local girls back home, who avoided me like the plague), so i could say that the music was soundtracking my own awakening. despite all this, my own relationships were slightly lacking in the actual danger of a JAMC song, and more closely resembled a lloyd cole song:
- i was never going to hang out with a cool arty woman, shooting drugs in an NYC loft, i would have been more inclined to bump into a fellow outsider in a library or indie club, much more my style...

3. what song scares me: crossroads/robert johnson
well apart from the obvious mind-bender - which i experienced whilst at a techno clubnight, back in the early 00's, the first scary song i can recall hearing is devil's answer by atomic rooster, although most of their songs were fairly scary to my 12 year old ears... dealing with madness, demonic possession, desperation... it should come as no surprise that vincent crane, the main mover behind the band was treated for bipolar disorder.

as a child however, i recall being scared shitless of some dark wooden cottages that my grandad was visiting(they were just regular old folk homes), but they reminded me of hansel and gretel(surely that scariest story ever, by the aptly named brothers grimm), and i ran off screaming they were witches houses - this public information film, that used to be shown constantly on tv in the 70's would frighten the life out of me, and (which i suspect was the idea) put me off going near wooded areas with dark water:
was it really necessary to scare kids like that? all of this(coupled with watching too many hammer horror films), seemed to be encapsulated in the music of atomic rooster.
i didn't realise this until i started listening to them, back in '93 whilst on a road trip to cromer, and we passed thru some foggy landscapes and dark wooden farm houses - it all came flooding back to me...
this final track however, struck a chord with me, a few years back - i really did feel i'd reached the crossroads and all that would entail: the story of robert johnson going to the crossroads at midnight, on a deserted highway, and meeting a dark and foreboding stranger - who gave him a guitar that he could suddenly play without any effort, coming home days later - unrecognisable to anyone who knew him... that's a fear that i always have, that one day i'll return home and no one will know who i am anymore... not to mention my fear of selling-out to get what i want, making a pact with the unknown.
what is it that connects all three? awakening, i suppose... coming out of my sheltered existence and finding myself, being who i wanted to be, and ignoring the superstitions and fears of the past.

true stories of life

i used to watch this film about 3 or 4 times a week, back in the 80's... i somehow had it on video, and it was my breakfast viewing of choice, seeing as i was an unemployed musician, which meant of course i didn't have to get up early, or leave the house till after 12 most days.
says a lot about me, that i related to the film of a bunch of outsiders, who establish their own codes of behaviour and morales independently of mainstream society, whom they reject, and who rejected them in turn anyway.
at the time, i didn't pick-up on the fact that roger corman directed it(i'd be eating snap,crackle and pop during the titles anyway), and the name penelope spheeris was yet to be famous.
all the actors, save for jack, were unknown... although i'm sure i'd heard of flea by then(who knows).
as i was living at home, on my own anyway, it did kind of feel a bit like a teenage squat, despite the fact that i was paying rent and was soon to be out of my teens... although i never really embraced the drinking, fucked-up, unhealthy lifestyle of eating junkfood and smoking(until a few years ago, and when i saw what it did to me, i stopped!!!).
this was one of those nascent periods in my life, when i was coming out of being a good kid and having a local regular job, and turning into the rebel with ripped jeans, james dean raincoats and too much hair-gel(country born).
yeah, i got called a psychobilly in the street(i never was, although i had friends who were, and i never attempted to look like one anyway...), and people who didn't know i was a youth-worker, thought it terrible that such a cleancut boy like me, spent all his time hanging out with all the wierdos and druggies in town(my client-base in my job, actually)... although what they didn't know was, that when i wasn't being seen around town with all the local alternative types(actually most of whom, were fairly harmless kids like me.), i was cycling up and down the west coast... usually at night, avoiding the traffic and watching the sun come up somewhere...
haven't watched the film since those far off days, you can only watch something so often, no matter how good it is... until now, when i saw it again(this time on dvd, although a crummy transfer with all the video interference of the original)... and how did it stand-up, after 25 years of life inbetween... these days, i don't think i would have devoted so much time to watching one film - but it does feel quite seminal now, i've seen a lot of films since then, who have borrowed various ideas(possibly the last one being american history X, which in turn also borrowed heavily from the american skin novel by don degrazia, although romper stomper steals a lot of the ideas from suburbia too... and i might even venture the idea for the walk on, in reservoir dogs, looks uncannily like the shot of the punks walking down the street...).
i got into minutemen later on, and the whole DIY ethic they proposed was already in my mind though, thanks to watching suburbia...
most of the intellect comes across now as mere smart-ass humour, but i'm glad i got into that frame of mind, it did me a lot of good in giving me the courage to go out and find myself, instead of accepting my fate in a smalltown existence(which worked fine for a lot of the people i grew up with, but wasn't for me.).
after all, if you don't create your own reality, it creates you - i'm just glad i got to find the space to have the choice.

but, i wish i'd watched loveless over and over, then i would have been cooler.

now that is a motherfucker of a film...

paper roses

yeah i'm angry... you may or may not be familiar with the scheme.
it has become a massive hit, despite being shown late at night on bbc scotland... somehow the stories of the people on it have grabbed the national attention, and the bbc are planning to show it across the whole of this tiny little island we live on(with subtitles of course).
it got as far as two episodes, before being shelved temporarily for legal reasons, but now a local SNP politician has decided to try and ban this documentary for good.

first of all, i don't agree at all with the way the headline in local esteemed newspaper the standard reports this article... it all seems a bit too much like telling anyone who disagrees, that the battle has already been won.
so no points for unbiased reporting there, boys.
but the point of the article is what really got me mad... that SNP politician willie coffey should feel he speaks for most of kilmarnock, when he says that the town is "shocked and saddened" by what goes on in the programme.
i think that a little walk down the reality of living in kilmarnock is possibly in order, to gain some insight into what is really going on behind the headlines.
i grew up in kilmarnock, it's a neglected little town, that used to have industry/factories/commerce/trade/brewery... all of these are gone now.
i moved away to get work elsewhere, and every time i return, it seems a little more soul has left the town.
there is a town centre webcam, literally covered in cobwebs, where you watch nothing happen, except for locals drifting aimlessly around... i should know, i used to wander about dreaming of getting away from the place...
when a small town like this loses it's industrial usefullness, there will be a lot of blue collar workers out of a job, a lot of people who if they had a steady income/routine are quite happy... give them hard work and a regular income, all will be well, it's in the blood, generations of men and women who shouldered the industrial revolution, and carried scotland to the forefront of industry.
you get the picture, it's hard-wired into their dna to be busy and to celebrate.
take away the jobs and any hope of finding work locally, and you will have a lot of frustrated people with time on their hands.
successive councils have pissed away all of the great companies who helped fund those big white mansions on the hills, being fooled into thinking that a quick buck was better than pennies now and then.
ok, so far, so kilmarnock.
there are a few people in kilmarnock, who hold onto the town's wealth, and they couldn't give the slightest fuck about what happens to the people who live on the estates featured in the scheme.
i know, from growing up in the town, that these areas were mostly no-go, they were prowled by hard-bitten old men and snarling unrealistically angry young men with fists always ready.
rough housing, cars falling to ruin in the garden, wild dogs, wild kids... at one point the council tried to plaster over the cracks, taking down all the garden fences and turning swathes of back greens into one vast free-for-all.
i had relatives who lived in altonhill, i got mugged there aged 11, my american cousin got mugged there too, my mate had his chopper knicked, but i also grew up around those streets as i saw another side to life different to my cossetted existence on a shiny new estate...
the last time i visited, whole streets had been flattened(like i'd seen in toxteth), there was an air of desperate fin-de-siecle about the place, as if a bomb had gone off...
these estates are on the edge of town, are just like the one i grew up in, but they are mostly ignored by the councillors as well as the majority of people who live in kilmarnock... it's the familiar postcode apartheid - if you come from there, you are instantly stereotyped and doors close in your face.
i know someone who lives in the area: this has in itself become a "some of my best friends are" cliche... as most of the detractors of the documentary are quick to point out some spurious involvement in onthank, altonhill, knockinlaw.
but my own impression of the place, was that it was always a bit tatty, the local kids weren't too nice to soft little oiks like me, and that there were an awful lot of old people living there.
so there.
but what's bugging the good burgers of kilmarnock is that they are having to face up to something they have been ignoring for decades.

these are sink estates.

the most famous historically being townholm, where no one dared to walk as people would come out their houses if you were spotted strolling through the area, they had horses in the street, the locals would push visitors cars into the river for kicks... i went to school with some of the people from there, who were shunned by mostly everyone(they built the prison near where it used to be).
you can apply all the rhetoric you want to the situation, but this is where the council would dump people in order to forget about them.
and that's just what they have been doing up until now.

i've said from the very start of the scheme, the exposure will be good for the people there... and by that i mean the majority, not just the tv-friendly junkies and alcohol dependant residents.
there's a mindset in kilmarnock that likes to turn it's back on those of a lesser standing, to keep your own house in order, and bollocks to the neighbour who hasn't got the wherewithall to keep nice clean windows and a front door step with a weekly layer of paint on it.
but this documentary will highlight the level to which the deprived areas have been allowed to sink.
it's not damningly indicative of the assumed low morals of the maladjusted or vulnerable people who feature in the programme... it's a mirror being held up to a town that has let this happen in it's own midst.
kilmarnock grandees love to bask in whiskey-tinged past of industrial glories and landed lorded auld money, people with long proud sounding scottish names and immaculate wedding attire, living it up in big sandstone houses, sporrans the size of dinnerplates, throwing buns to the local serfs... but that's all history now.

one story on the scheme that doesn't get talked about so much, is of the family who blighted by ill-health, are campaigning to re-open a local community centre, where presumably(if it was organised) they could have medical advice, a social focal point to meet and put the world to rights(in order to maintain a sense of community), debt-advice, tax advice, local fund raising... all the sort of life-improving things the local council clearly want to put a stop to(i expect the land was quietly being gerrymandered for luxury flats, in the same way that the burns monument was allowed to fall to ruin, and was initially going to be replaced by luxury flats... until the local people stepped in with howls of indignation - that something so important to kilmarnock and the world of literature, was going to become another faceless yuppie development, which would exclude locals).
yes, the programme is poverty porn, just like the output on most satellite channels, showing round the clock images of the social underclass being chased by the police in one location or another.
yes, the people featured in it are entertainment fodder.
yes, there are young people with old heads on their shoulders.
yes, none of the content of the scheme will come as any revelation to the people of kilmarnock.
and yes it says a lot about the cognitive thinking skills of the subjects that none of them were actually paid to appear in something which is on the verge of becoming a national phenomenon... it says a lot for the film-makers who i felt were quite impartial, but obviously schooled in the louis theroux method of distancing themselves from the participants in a semi-ironic manner and it says a lot about the town that is suddenly going to have to deal with a problem that been ongoing for more than half a century.
is life really so grim, or are the needs of the people not being met, in favour of new money being drafted in to take up housing and to put up walls and fences to keep the local people out?
this time the red-faced local councillors have fumed and blustered in their ivory towers like never before.
maybe it's time to embrace the problem, and not ignore it any longer.



addendum
now, to be fair, to willie coffy, i contacted him with this blog, and he graciously agreed to talk to me in person about it, regarding some of the participants who felt they had been duped.
so welcome to the world of documentary filming then, personally - i've never really been a fan of photographers who take images of people in some form of discomfort or distress, for the very reason that i feel it is exploitative... and having had a camera pointed at me(by channel four, no less) in such situations without my permission, i roundly told them to f-off(which they did, as you cannot film someone once they have asked you to stop... sort-of).
and yes, there is a lot of criminal behaviour exhibited in the scheme: that's how some people live, what a surprise, would anyone want to watch a documentary about someone who doesn't live out of the norm... and i don't suppose for a minute that seeing the impoverished lifestyle of a heroin addict is going to appeal to anyone, except maybe someone with an existing self-harm problem.
if anything - watching the scheme is as probably a good a deterrent as it gets!

and of course, some political parties have a shortbreadtin view of scotland, which of course is far removed from the reality of life in a struggling country which is slowing slipping out of the view of the rest of europe, as seen in the scheme.

i'm pro-scotland y'know... love the place, love the people. i was born there, and it's in my blood.

visit the country, it really is a beautifull place.

but it has it's problems, just like everywhere else.

and it's time we all woke up to them, instead of trying to sweep them under an immaculately hoovered tartan carpet, in a council office reception area.

file under "filmed as is".

this programme is kilmarnock's wake-up call.
maybe i feel a touch sensitive, as i only recently found out that someone i used to hang out with and look up to, is now living the life of a heroin addict, just out of town.
what a waste.
and if you want to see the filmic equivalent of what happens when middle-class film-makers approach the residents of a deprived area, then have a look here... and decide if the scheme represents inescapable reality.

it's got to be now

the macphail drive shops, bordone's monte casino chicken bar on the far end, never looked so glamorous... oh how we used to laugh watching the champions on TV and thinking that the real monte carlo looked bigger and shinier.
this was the corner where i first stood after we moved to the estate in 1970... and looked around at my new kingdom.
i was barefoot as i recall, as it was summer and being new to the council estate habit of leaving broken glass everywhere... i had to tread warily around.
i'm sure that the concrete on the ground once provided a telephone box.

ours was one of the first houses in the street - we would have played in the other semi-built houses, until one-by-one they were all finished and new neighbours moved-in.

but being the shops for all the locals they witnessed a few dramas there in my time: the eight year old shoplifter aprehended right in front of me(she was stealing boxes of chocolates and SCREAMED the place down), the night i heard someone smash the big window of the post-office and called the police whcih meant walking around in the dark with the one copper who'd turned-up at four in the morning, the streetfights with local youths fighting with kids from outside the estate who had come to cause trouble(someone got chain whipped and put in a wheelchair), me - hanging out there with my scooter-mates, using the crap public phone on a pole(the box long since gone) to argue with a partner, me being a surly teenager and just being rude to staff in the shops, the weekly saturday morning walk to get my comics, then my magazines, then newspapers, the kids playpark behind the shops that was made up from discarded unused sewer pipes(gee thanks...) where we would congregate until someone fell off, working for a voluntary charity that raised funds for local disabled people - the woman behind the counter of the little post-office where i cashed my giro started to think i was working and claiming dole, as she would see me cycle past every morning...
it was never a rough place although i never went there much at night, but the shops had a certain reputation for being so, due to the odd rumble over the years.
our gangs were a bit crap... someone i went to school with sprayed "DONT F-CK WITH THE BAULDYS" all along the back of the wall at the rear of the supermarket, which was notable for two reasons, one: that he misspelt baldy and got the rwong grammar... and secondly, despite it's cinematic reference to the wanderers excellent film (i mean, c'mon, going to the pictures, is that really what gangs do..?), the baldies in the film are a fairly inept bunch of morons who accidentally get themselves drafted - this all provided denizens of the estate with much hilarity over the years, as opposed to the menace of a couple of blokes with cheapo haircuts who sneaked about in the dark with spraycans... a million miles away from the real baldy gangs... who weren't even bald.
but most of the time, the shops were our sustenance and my window to the world where i would learn about superheroes and musicians and fashion...(captain marvel, captain sensible, captain america).
i think i may have tried to have some streetcred, and snog some girl around the shops, but i was never very convincing(there were quieter places to go...).

the chipshop has been a never ending source of ready-to-eat food for nearly 40 years now.. that's a lifetime!
we used to admire the red sportscar driven by the owner's son, an alfa romeo as i recall... certainly more daring than anything our parents drove, and italian too!!!

and the famous men's barbers, where i spent my saturdays getting haircuts, listening to paul gambacini on radio 2 running down the weekly american top ten(at an early age i knew the works of dean freidman... oh lydia says!), inhaling the smell of bay rum and reading men's weeklies amongst the discarded hairballs... sort of like a rite of passage really - especially when you get big enough to not have to use the little wooden plank they make kids sit on.
times change though - and i was growing my hair into a particular style that the barber didn't really agree on, so depsite my instructions he cut it all off anyway... and i went to the unisex place above the castelli garden grill from then on...

the kids are alright

this is a set of my footprints, in concrete.
i was walking into town one day, around 1979 and found that the council had put new barriers, just outside the estate i lived on... the cement was still drying at that point, so i did some quick art-happening in the street with my desert-boots(there is a swirly sun in the image - that was inspired by the single cover artwork for this:

wierd to think it would still be there, set in stone 30 years later.
everytime i see it, i think it will be the last... as is the way of roadworks these days.
that's my 30 year older foot next to my 15 year old foot.