Beats Surrender

I’m having second third fourth thoughts about The Beats

Daddy

O.

See: Kerouac. Well. I read him dry when I was 16. 17. 18.

and

thought

He and his crew were cool. They were not. They are

try

hards.

Burroughs? Murdering junkie dickhead rich kid idolised then

and

now;

Think they all went to see him. Cobain recorded with him

didn’t

he?

But it was all on paper, see. When it really, and it did, come down

to

it

They looked after number one first. Left trails of wives

and

kids -

Their own or others' - from coast to coast and wherever else

they

fled.

I suppose Howl is good and On the Road captures something of

their

essence,

And that they kinda smashed thru the 1950s to enable the 1960s,

but

then

The 1960s and their psychedelia inevitably dribbled into the 1970s

heroin/

coke;

One drug makes you a boring weasel and the other so full of shit that you won’t

shut

up.

Well, I suppose it depends on how closely, or how wide you decide to focus

your

lens,

And I suppose therefore and thus the fact we know to focus

our

lenses

Is a kind of testament to how the Beats did have an impact, even if

it’s

irritating,

And even if their morals and ethics and pseudo-Buddhist proclamations

are

moronic.

Cast No Shadow

‘Bittersweet Symphony’ 

I one hundred percent understand this now. I mean. Fuck. It’s about his dad dying isn’t it. I think most of his songs were around then.

-

I think you have to have lost someone. No, not lost. They have to have died, then you can really get the actual sentiment of this stuff. Not sentiment. That word seems weak. 

The song of it. The primality. The expression. The confession.

I used to write about music using words like that years ago too. But I only had the odd glimpse of the real significance. I wasn't equipped by life yet.

Now I understand it more it’s too big to even comprehend how someone can distil that into a four-minute pop song.

I suppose that string sample helped, but if you really listen to it at the start there’s some absolutely beautiful synthy keyboard work that is tuned and in tune but not really transcribable notes. It gives the song a breathless itchy forward motion.

-

That’s why that video of Richard Ashcroft walking down a street and people bouncing off him is so good too.

I always thought it was just him being a cokey New Lad Twat at the time and – well, it was, a bit. But also and underneath it was the sense that no matter what, then you are forced to be, or cursed with, ever walking forwards. The destination is not as important as the motion. 

People come in and out of your life; some bounce off. Some you shrug off. Some face you and sneer. Some turn away. Some even smile and challenge like the girl near the end. She is hope. She is the reason, if there was one, to travel from where you were to where you are.

At the end he’s joined by his band. Compadres. Cause friends can and do walk at least some of the way with you. They haven’t walked your entire path but there they are, and there you are.

We don’t know what will happen after the song ends, of course, and there the metaphors all break down. We’re back out of the track, the video, the conceit.

There’s a good case to be made that the conceit is life. 

A life.

-

Go back to the start of the video. Richard Ashcroft gets himself into position whilst the strings and the tuned non-notey synthy stuff begins.

He takes his first step when the drums and the band kick in.

But he’s ready, somehow.

So you can find agency, even if it’s not deviating from your forward motion-to-nowhere-in-particular.

NME And Me

NME used to be one of three music weeklies, if you can believe that, and there were also loads of music magazines knocking about. People were thirsty for music writing back then, and were happy to pay for it. Or, prepared to, anyway. The Internet has pretty much killed that way of thinking, particularly with news exclusives – even a daily paper couldn’t compete with social media’s unbelievable pace of scrolling new info. But back then we didn’t have broadband so there were no pics or music coming down the pipes.

NME and its ilk served as news aggregator, gatekeeper, trusted reviewer, and general touchstone for the current music scene. Because there was also Melody Maker, Record Mirror, and loads of mags to be had, you could find most of your bands across the various publications.

More than that, the only way to hear this new music was either by catching a song on the radio or by someone taping it for you. Someone with more money, or someone who knew someone who’d bought the original. You’d go ahead and buy the LP if you liked what you heard, most of the time. Originals were always better. You could double-check by going into a listening booth in the record shop and spinning the record to make sure. People with headphones, bopping away behind glass, every day of the week.

But you couldn’t do that with every band in the mag – you’d be there for days on end.

So NME and the rest would from time to time have cover-mounted compilations on cassette tape, then later on CD (and sometimes flexidisc, but that’s another matter for collectors to worry about). No extra charge: the paper, and a cassette of the music they were talking about – absolutely brilliant.

One week me and DD knocked up a load of cassette copies of our Dogshit on Toast EP Yamaha Potatoe, which had as its A-side a song called ‘Poppers Blues’, which was my mate on drums backing me on guitar doing a fairly dunderheaded 12-bar riff. DD’s job was to sing the lyrics and do a guitar solo.

Both takes – vocals, then the guitar - done whilst sniffing amyl nitrate constantly. DD can’t play the guitar at all anyway so it hardly made that much of a difference, although he was groaning for respite in the background. I think it’s got an authenticity to it that really does make the music quite extraordinary as a result.

We did the inlay cards, put stickers on the tapes, and whilst the Saturday staff were all busy in WH Smiths we stuck as many as we could to copies of that week’s NME.

So if you were wondering what the fuck that weirdo no-fi tape that you got free with the paper was that week, now you know.

Way before Banksy did that thing with Paris Hilton’s album. Way before. She might not even have been born yet.

Gloriously futile; but then, life is isn’t it?

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