Small Town England

Jack Kerouac and the East Midlands

None of the readers of Small Town England so far have picked up on the fact that the book is to a small extent an East Midlands reworking of Kerouac's Maggie Cassidy, with the 10 inch deep River Rase standing in for the majestic Merrimack, the Market Rasen Festival Hall for the Rex Ballroom and 50cc motorbikes instead of Model-T Fords.

When I was seventeen and a frustrated want-away teenager in empty Lincolnshire, I felt a real connection with Jack Kerouac's work. I loved On the Road, with that wayward musical romantic prose energy (I even bought a Dexter Gordon live album to play while I re-read it). But it was the sublime read-it-in-an-hour-and-a-half Maggie Cassidy, with its heady mix of small town mysticism, indoor sprinting techniques, doomed love affairs and mammy's-boy sentimentality that really got me hooked. In later years I think I forgot why I'd liked him so much. Then about thirteen years ago I read Dharma Bums for the first time. No plot as such - blokes climb mountains, spout buddhist philosophy, act like arses after too much red wine - but this stuff really is sheer poetry and reading it I remembered the mad confused joy of being alive I'd had when I was a kid.

In the last few years I've also attempted heroically obscure non-fiction versions of On The Road (Is Shane MacGowan Still Alive?) and The Subterraneans (The Groundwater Diaries). Which means the next project might possibly be a reworking of Dharma Bums - in which I take off to a forest (Highgate Wood, perhaps, or maybe Finsbury Park) and get drunk for two or three months - OK, a couple of hours, tops, because I'd need to pick the kids up from school.

This pic is from a short series I did for the Guardian Review a few years ago called Writers' Workshop. It tries to get to the true essence of Jack-ness.

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! 

Down (local) memory lane

I read Small Town England at the weekend and thoroughly enjoyed it, I just wanted to give you my thanks for an eventful trip down memory lane with all the trials, tribulations and laughs of those teenage years. The cartoons were a really great addition too.

 

There’s a fair bit of common ground between us, I was born in ’62 and brought up in Grimsby;  yes, a metropolis compared to Market Rasen but we must have crossed paths at some point. I recall seeing Another Pretty Face at Meggies Winter Gardens - my skewed memory had them supporting the Skids, but I saw SLF there as well and since it was your first gig you are most likely to have the true account. The gardens were demolished a couple of years back and the last time I passed by the (surprising small) plot of land it remained barren. Shame, I saw many brilliant bands, played there myself and spent many drunken nights at the 6^thform discos.

 

Any tentative idea I had of putting pen to paper to recall that period has been rendered obsolete by proper writers like yourself who have done a fantastic job of it, (Stuart Maconie, Andy Blade and Mark Radcliffe included). Our musical and band history have also followed similar paths through punk, post punk and jazz. Of course nothing came before punk as the Stalinist view prevailed, my pop and rock stuff was confined to the cupboard until 1980 until it was ok to like ‘’other stuff’’. Back in the day being identified as a punk in Grimsby was a fairly risky affair, (I had my hair cut in a Billy Idol style in the Spring of ’78, how cool ha ha!). Although I’m still proud of the fact that I stopped the traffic on Laceby Road with my attire and food colour dyed hair.

 

 I was in many bands through the ‘80’s in Grimsby and Nottingham (a drummer). One of those bands aspired to sound like ACR/Rip, Rig and Panic/ Pigbag etc but was more like The Fall with a brass section, our singer was Bill Brewster who has worked for When Saturday Comes so you might be acquainted. Actually I think Bill could pen a fairly decent piece if so inspired, he writes and DJ’s now. We made an aborted attempt to start a left wing fanzine around the early ‘80’s called ‘’Young, gifted and red’’, ...well two out of three and all that, so I wasn’t surprised when he joined WSC, he could waffle on about Matt Tees’ tenure at GTFC ad nauseum.

 

I smiled when I saw your collection of rehearsal / album cassettes, there are a whole host of middle-aged blokes out there applying modern technology to ‘re-master’ these period pieces. I’ve been the recipient of CD’s  DVD’s and Jpegs documenting many events that had slipped from my memory. Much like your book some of it makes you feel like an energised 17 year old again, or wince with embarrassment or laugh out loud. If a similar amount of effort had been put into making the music as coming up with band and album titles who knows what could have been achieved?

 

Unfortunately, I don’t recall any of your bands but I think Grimsby was quite parochial in that respect, I remember seeing a Louth band in situ and travelling to Broughton near Scunny but otherwise any foray out of town was to see a ‘name’ band or play a gig. Lincoln was always dangerous territory for us GY lads, we returned from the Drill Hall (I think?) to see The Adverts in a  bricked windowless coach after encountering the Lincoln Scooter Boys – and that was prior to the mod revival!

 

It demonstrates your point about Lincolnshire being somewhat behind the times. Nowadays I live on the outskirts of Spalding (so I have a better idea of the cultural wilderness you endured in your youth).  I’ve spent most of my life living in Lincolnshire; half North, half South, so I shouldn’t be too critical really.

 

Well, thanks again, I really should turn my attention to some work now.

 

Cheers,

 

Richard (Charlie) Porter

Great holiday moments

The 1970s and early 1980s were filled with high-octane family holiday fun, as this short movie clip shows. As ever, no expense has been spared in the shooting and editing of this film.

Adapted from the illustration on p.209 of Small Town England (the bit just after the chapter on 50cc motorbikes).

What’s so great about the Great British Pub? ( Stoke Newington Literary Festival)

I'm doing a spot at the Stoke Newington Literary Festival next month, talking about one of my favourite subjects...

3:00 What’s so great about the Great British Pub? Pete Brown, Paul Ewen and Tim Bradford
The White Hart
£4 (with free beer)

Beer Writer of the Year Pete Brown hosts an event in his local, The White Hart, getting the beers in and talking to one-man ‘Campaign for Surreal Ale’ Paul Ewen, and local writer and chronicler of small town England Tim Bradford, about what makes the pub such a unique and enduring cornerstone of British culture.

••••••

Hope some of you can make it. The other speakers look really interesting and I would probably have been going anyway. - see http://www.stokenewingtonliteraryfestival.com/

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.

Castrated Conservative Councillors

This is a song by Heart Attack, the crap teen punk band formed by my friend Ian Plenderleith and me in late 1978. This track was from a recording session in early 1980 when I was 15. Even then, we knew there was something different about Tories. They were just a bit more cold, arrogant, selfish and, er, castrated than normal people.

Of course, these are the sentiments of point-and-shout 15 year olds coming to terms with a whole year of Thatcherism. We got much more left wing as we got older.

Ian on vocals, me on guitar and (I think) my brother Tobe playing drums on an upturned baby bath.

'Anticipation' (Delta 5)

The kids dance funky style then wiggle their hips, jerking their arms about like little robots. Then when the vocals start they both look at each other with pained expressions and start laughing.

10 year old: That was good until they started singing.

7 year old: Why are they singing like that?

They continue to look troubled as the jerky chorus comes in, then start laughing again. 10 year old starts to tell me about The Little Mermaid, the Disney film, and they both start to do some sort of fishy dance. It's the two bass sound that they like, though can't quite explain it. 10 year old starts a robobtic, hippy jive but looks concerned.

"What's up?"

“It’s pretty rubbish”.

“Why are you dancing, then?”

“Because it’s funky,”

The Allan 'Sniffer' Clarke/Mark E Smith Phenomenon

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that Allan 'Sniffer' Clarke was the only Leeds United forward of the 1970s to look like a member of The Fall. Or, more specifically, Mark E. Smith. (Scottish winger Arthur Graham did look a bit like Brix Smith. And, of course, Paul Madeley and Marc Riley look like twins)

My legendarily crap Bowie trousers

 In 1981 I bought these crap Bowie trousers through a mail order advert in NME. They were really bad for cycling - you had to double clip them to stop them getting caught in the bike chain. They also had strange powers. Whenever I wore them out - to a pub or a disco - certain older heavy rocker lads would become angry. I never worked out whether this was because I looked like a controversialist twat who they wanted to punch or that they thought I was compromising the memory of the Thin White Duke.

In 1982 I passed these on to my best mate to let him get hit and bought a pair of Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft black leather trousers from the same mail order company. Strangely, these caused far less of a stir with the rockers, possibly because Whitesnake's David Coverdale sometimes wore leather trousers.