Tree - Lined Avenues and Tiger Feet

You'll notice how insistently I get the word trees in the title, when there are none in the blog.
Actually there are, because I've been talking about my adventures in print - and paper comes from trees...tenuous link, I know, but times are hard.
Staying with the writing focus ; it was a rambling descriptive essay about not very much that helped me scrape into a posh school in Scotland , and is the reason why I still hold a grudge against authority, my parents, and ignorant people .
Because the school was so posh that we couldn't afford to go there, and besides it was time to uproot (once again) and relocate to sunny England where I found myself forced to re - sit a year at school, and was roundly mocked for my accent.
That which does not kill you makes you stronger, they say. I grew accustomed to the nickname 'Haggis', and quickly earned respect amongst my peers for misbehaviour in class - with a couple of friends I created a vile,distinctly un - p.c. obscenity called the Not Very Holy Bible which was passed furtively beneath desks in a variety of classes.
When Sid Vicious died, I wore a black armband - not particularly because I cared about him ( he couldn't play bass anyway), but I  wanted to annoy people.

You can feel the anger seeping...1981 I think.

With school chums Joe and Craig, I formed a band. We played one gig to an audience of 200 people in the Lecture Hall - we were supporting a band whose members hailed from nearby Castle Donnington, and many people had bought tickets assuming the bands were from the famous Heavy Metal festival ( Monsters Of Rock) there.
Why they assumed axe - wielding metal muthas would play a school hall was beyond me, but what they got was our trio dressed in lab coats with the legend 'The Diezels' spray painted on the backs, hollering our way through a punky set, with the aid of a fuzzbox  (in a nod to heavy metal, we included a harsh cover of Black Sabbath 'Paranoid'). To our amazement a scribe from a local newspaper had turned up in the confusion, thinking he was getting top names from Heavy Metal* playing a low key gig - in fairness he actually gave us a review, saying that we were a 'way - out punk band', which was nice, considering the ramshackle set devolved into feedback and fighting between the guitarist and the drummer.
 We went through a few changes of personnel (at one point briefly recruiting Showaddywaddy's drummers daughter , which led to members of said group barging into a rehearsal banging tea trays on their heads to take the piss.)
At one point we recruited a Sixth form arty type called Kevin, who wanted us to be called '35 Isolated Style'. He played proficient rhythm guitar, but had a strange obsession with female Russian gymnasts, and his 'artworks' were somewhat disturbing, to say the least.
As a group, we played one more gig under the name 'The Subway Zephyrs'(oddly enough, ending in another argument between Joe and Craig, and the sub-Keith Moon style destruction of the drum kit) before folding.

The world did not mourn our passing.
And so we entered the tender years of angst and existentialism, moving from punky anarchy to a more intellectual stance (i.e. poseurs). We took to smoking Sobranie cigarettes as the height of sophistication (although ultimately Gauloise and an Art school demeanour became derigeur). Personally I blame the influence of the Sixth form.
I shall draw a discreet veil at this point, as I notice that I've already strayed from my initial intent and focus, although I've very much enjoyed strolling down the nostalgic tree - lined avenues of the past.
It may be age, perhaps, but I swear it was always Summer then - endless lazy Summer days.
As the Seventies gave way to the Eighties, I became more politically concerned, seeking a focus for the angry energy. We had Feed The World and all this stuff galvanising people to take action and fight for a cause. Everyone seemed to be vegan, (or at least a Smiths fan) and being pale and interesting was a life - style choice...


* The band we supported were called 'Academy', and were perfectly okay in a middling sort of way - they did covers of The Police and stuff, and you could book them for weddings barmitzvahs etc...I also did a dreadful flyer for the gig, but can't find one for posterity - it was awful anyway

Forgive me for this side - step ramble, I didn't mean this to be so biographical, but I suppose it puts things in perspective. Next blog will be back on the beam! Sort of...

The Wood For The Trees - of Dub and such

 Where was I ? Oh yes, random creativity and such: Following our self - published 'Inkhead', and my re-location to Big Bad London, I continued dabbling in media with reviews etc for an obscure magazine called 'Outlook', the brain child of a dedicated man called Simon  before it went to the wall and the name was taken for  a  Guardian* thing, with a proper circulation.

We had reached about 6000 a month . Not much, but it was hardcore, without the usual commercial constraints.It had been good for me, as I got to do what I'd always wanted ; to vent my spleen at a variety of mainstream shlock. Music, video, comics. I always liked seeking out the underdog, giving column inches to non - commercial  zinesters. It was fun - no pay, but free review copies, and a chance to stick it to the MAN, man. I'd cut my teeth as a copywriter at Trident comics back in the Eighties, although that was strictly working for the MAN*.
Even alternative Outlook had its enclaves, there was a permafrost between the hip film guys and my lowly trailer trash video column, but I didn't care. I could write pseudo - intellectual with the best of 'em, so fuck 'em.

 So here we are in the brave new world, where almost everything is online - the new Alexandrian Library, or just a deposit box for cute cats and spam lol ? It has to be said that the sum of human knowledge must now be pretty much online, and that in itself is impressive, though you'd find it hard to believe wading through the endless selfies and 'clickbait' news fodder.
Nonetheless, from humble beginnings in Cern, and the vision of Tim Berners Lee, the World Wide Web  has become an all encompassing monster. Before going any further, I must stress that I understand the distinction between WWW and the Internet , but I reserve the right to blur the boundary between the two.
So nyar.
Its growth rate has been frightening, and I'm pleased to see people manning the freedom of speech barricades and all that as the corporate overseers bear down, trying to reduce it to the level of a global market stall - Stack 'em high and sell 'em cheap!
This of course is fuelled by the human desire for new, shinier, noisier, more pointless stuff, so the blame is partly laid at the door of human nature.
But I digress - I'm also glad to see that it really is a force for change and the breaking down of cultural / social mores, etc. It certainly levels the playing field, allowing greater access to a wider range of creative tools for everyone, which is great - for instance I make beat - driven music - well, some sort of music. If you are a glutton for punishment, you can follow the link below;
http://electricrhubarb.bandcamp.com.

If you do go there, then I thank you ....feel free to buy some sonic oddities, and do your bit for eccentricity!
By the way, the above image is one I did for a spoken - word track. It was supposed to look like a cruddy dub album cover from the Seventies, and infact was done before the actual track, which contains no dub at all, apart from a couple of echo/effects.
Of course, the downside to the democratic principles of creation on the internet is that there is no real 'quality control'. Anyone can post half - baked nonsense with no redeeming values and proclaim it as the best thing since sliced bread.
Hence my music.
Although I don't compare it to pre-sliced bread. Because that would be an allegory too far.
The point is, it's as much therapy for me , and an exercise as anything else; and in that sense its wider popularity doesn't really bother me -although it's always great to get feedback, of course.


Before leaving the subject, I should mention that my formative years in London were spent making  Punky Dubby music with my old colleague Piers. Many adventures were had in that strange twilight zone which we inhabited...adventures with a travelling circus, the seemingly endless soldering of wires into the monstrous console which committed Aural Dub Assault on allcomers -  the search for cassettes of ranting preachers and the editing of George Bush seniors ' speeches into fiery petroleum - hungry rhetoric being just a few of them.
We loosely termed ourselves The Whores Of Babylon, making good use of a sample from the classic film 'Night of the Hunter', and along with our cyber - head conspiracy - fiend Gwynne , we played low key raves in the Mile End road, and spent time in The Church, Crouch End; no salvation, but all night remixing ...
The Whores of Babylon , due to their unrelenting hardcore anger (and somewhat challenging name) were never going to be a commercial success, however, and the often - cited ' creative differences ' soon reared their ugly heads.  Piers went on to greater things as 'The Mountain Of Love'*, one of the founding members of the Alabama 3, and myself and Gwynne embarked on an experimental path fuelled by his love of computer technology**, and a mutual hankering for warped visuals.
The stills included here are taken directly from a VHS copy of 'Escape To Transcyberia' (in 1995 there was no DVD release), and the original high resolution images were lost in the mix ( last seen in the Berlin offices of Studio K7 ), so apologies - but here is our animation

'Chiphenge ' we dubbed it, was part of an anim we created

The warped image of the sun in the central altar -

- is what they are set on

Back then in the early nineties, the streets of South London seemed to rattle with an endless booming Sub - Bass Rhythm which seeped from the very pores of the Cooltan centre, the Fridge,  the Vox and any number of  raves - further afield, we loved the Megadog,  the Rocket in Holloway and the Slimelight.
The Brixton Academy and the Fridge were regular haunts - later to include Mass and the Dogstar.
Having it large was the order of the day, and so it was, from New Cross to Brixton to Holloway to Glastonbury, The Big Chill and The Enchanted Garden, all of which introduced us to a world of difference.

The Cooltan Arts centre 1994

In later years (I'd like to say calmer, more mature years, following the birth of my daughter Ruby, but I'd be wrong )...
I used to get a vicarious thrill from doing projections for a couple of venues (and the occasional after show party) in Sarf Lahndon, and apart from happy chatty banter with fellow production people (and the thrill of watching peoples reactions to the visuals ), I preferred the low key approach.
It was in the Mass club on one such night in the late nineties that I crossed paths with Piers and the Alabama 3, and briefly took to the stage to rant hellfire and damnation to the loved up peoples of  the club.
I projected a sleazy striptease film on the band as they played, but  ssh! don't tell...
On another note, I'll never forget the moment of dissonance I had when I saw a video I'd compiled (for a fairly robust nightclub) from strange and obscene offcuts playing unexpectedly above a bar I entered in broad daylight...on the one hand, I felt proud, but at the same time, uncomfortable and embarrased - it was a defining moment for me.

My dalliance with the world of projections was short lived - thanks to the installation of variable voltage lighting rigs, and my old school film / slide projectors which slowly gave up the ghost, defeated by advances in technology and unable to compete with gobos and lasers and the like.
All the paltry money I'd made was used for equipment repairs, and it became too much of a labour of love.
Also, being stone cold sober at six in the morning when the house lights came up on the human wreckage was never a terribly edifying experience...***

My interests in visuals peaked when I was fortunate enough to be tutored by Jon and Dino (and set dresser extraordinaire Mel ) in the art of video, and their inspiration carried me through one of the darkest pits of my life.
My video apprenticeship also encompassed many Exploding Cinema events (before they imploded) and a year studying film at degree level before my personal life became a car crash of Prozac and darkness.

This is where the chronology comes unstuck - I only remember the tail end of filming two documentaries and doing voice over for one. One of the documentaries (concerning vampire subculture in the uk ) showed at the witching hour on Channel 4 back in early 2000, and then like scotch mist was gone without a trace. Infact, if I didn't know better, I'd say it was all a dream...one day I'll track it down...the second film was based around a fetish club (Whiplash) in Manchester , and I can think of numerous reasons for its mysterious loss...

* please note the 'Outlook' for which I scrawled reviews and stuff was in no way connected to the Guardian .
** G still works at the cutting edge of computer graphics, and is a genius who knows his way around algorithms better than I know my way around ...well, something small and not too complex.
*** I fully accept that I myself have been human wreckage in a variety of places too numerous to mention, but I digress...
*The Mountain Of Love fronts his eponymous dub outfit to this day- best to catch 'em live, lovers of the dubtastic!

A sketch I did for a 'stalled' project...

* ' The Man' is an all purpose descriptive word for Authority, the Establishment, etc. Born in the 60s counter culture, probably, but still used occasionally by older, non-millenial gits like me....