Small Town England

Entertainment

 It is a truth universally acknowledged that Gang of Four's first LP, Entertainment, is one of the greatest albums of all time.  Less well known is the fact that - for about 18 months in 1979/80 - Andy Gill of Gang of Four was the greatest guitarist of all time. Clang, cherrrinnggggg, spakkk takk, chiiing, tkk, tkk, tk tk tk tk, cheroouuuuaaanggg!! 

A few years back I went with a mate to a Raincoats reunion gig at the T&C2 and, late on, encountered a-little-the-worse-for-wear Andy Gill in the toilets.  My default position would be to never talk to your heroes because, apart from the odd West Indian cricketer  I have never really met any of my heroes  - but I too was a bit drunk and started wittering on about how as an earnest teen I’d learned to play the guitar just like him. He looked at me sadly as I said all this and just sighed “thanks” then carried on with his slash. Of course, I didn’t tell him that once you start to play the guitar like Andy bloody Gill you can’t play anything except Gang of Four type songs and you have to go back years later and learn some proper chords at some point. 

But, even now, the urge to put my hand over the strings to dampen them and go kliiing, sperkkka choonggg spakk takk tkk tk tkk cheroouuuaaanggg is too strong and many an Irish traditional singalong has been ruined by my Andy Gill style guitar accompaniment.

Chakk chakkkk chakkaaa chaaaannggg! 

On the absence of an exciting plot

This was originally in one of the opening pages of the book, but didn't make the final cut - possibly too self-referential. In case you don't know, that's me on the right - in my legendary Punk Doctors T-shirt - and the fictional reader on the left looks a bit like author Daniel Pinchbeck or an extra in a Kevin Smith film.

Might make an animation of it at some point with some nice synthy elevator music in the background.

Maier, Vogts, Schwarzenbeck, BMaier, Vogts, Schwarzenbeck, Beckenbauer, Breitner, Bonhof, Hoeness, Overath, Grabowski, Müller, Hölzenbein

Maier, Vogts, Schwarzenbeck, Beckenbauer, Breitner, Bonhof, Hoeness, Overath, Grabowski, Müller, Hölzenbein

Why is it that I can remember the West German team in the 1974 World Cup Final - even though I only watched the last fifteen or twenty minutes because we were all too nervous and so instead played the final outside on the front field and in this case Scotland had got to the final to play Holland so there would be no moral losers in this parallel universe.

And when we scored a goal we would do an impression of the player who scored, so Denis Law would stop to chat about his time in Italy with Turin and hanging out with Enzo Bearzot, or Peter Lorimer would mutter some garbled Yorskhire/Scottish “you knows” when faced with the invisible microphone – yet I can’t remember what happened last year, or last week? Or even yesterday?

For instance, what were the names of those people I met at that party? Actually, it wasn’t a party (see, I can’t even remember that properly) it was in the school playground and they were parents of my one of my son’s friends. I instinctively said “party” because this book is probably going to end up in the memoir section of the bookshop and I’m thinking that I might need to make my life more interesting than it actually is.