Partners in Crime

Not so much a gig, more a very enjoyable Audience With, as The Portable Club presented 'an evening of conversation and music starring Vic Godard with Johnny Britton' amidst the crushed velvet drapes of The Nightingale Room, upstairs at the Grand Central pub next to Brighton station, last night.

Vic needs no introduction but Johnny perhaps does: a Bristolian who was guitarist in the second line-up of Subway Sect that toured with Buzzcocks in 1978, he later had his own band poached by Vic and The Clash's manager, Bernie "call me Bernard" Rhodes, for Vic's 1982 loungecore incarnation at the time of his Songs For Sale LP (that band, with Dig Wayne as singer, went on to become JoBoxers of Boxer Beat and Just Got Lucky chart fame); he then became a protégé of Rhodes, who thought Johnny's matinee idol good looks gave him star quality and, when his time with Rhodes fizzled out, he joined the final incarnation of Orange Juice - perhaps because when Edwyn looked at him it would have been like seeing his own reflection. Now reunited years later, ("I was in need of friendship" - Vic) there is no animosity on Johnny's part for losing his band to Vic and the two have an easy and affectionate rapport.

The evening began with the duo both on guitars and vocals and a couple of songs, starting with Vic's 1999 single, Place We Used To Live. An onstage interview then followed, which teased out some excellent stories about the pair's lives. Vic was on a £200 a week retainer from Bernie (who they both spoke of warmly, contrary to Rhodes' popular Svengali reputation) to write songs with the word 'girl' in them for Johnny, which he had to deliver at the rate of ten a week every Friday. Leaving it until the last minute, he stayed up all night on Thursdays recording them onto cassette very quietly, so as not to wake up his mum and dad; the result was Johnny could barely make out the hushed songs. The Portable Club's host, Algy, reminded us that Vic was arrested on the day of the Sex Pistols' infamous Silver Jubilee riverboat trip; but it turns out he was not on the boat but on Tower Bridge with The Slits, throwing stones at the pleasure cruiser as it passed below - I would have paid handsomely to have seen that.

Further brushes with the law followed in Vic's heroin years: forging cheques, scamming bookies and - a particular favourite - nicking Marks & Sparks carriage clocks were regular necessities to fund his habit. Later, Vic continued to release music regularly - but not exactly prolifically - against the backdrop of day jobs at Ladbrokes and the Post Office, while Johnny had an award-winning career as a costume designer for high-profile horror films.

When they returned to the music, we got covers of T.Rex's New York City and the Velvet Underground's Heroin and a song about Johnny's cat. There were then two of those songs with the word 'girl' in the title: firstly, Girl From Trincomalee (it's in Sri Lanka, in case you're wondering - we were asked but none of us knew) and, the final number of the night, Stop That Girl, from T.R.O.U.B.L.E., Vic's 1986 Rough Trade album. Listening to the beauty and craft of that song, and to Johnny's effortless harmonising, it made me wish that the partnership that Rhodes tried to foster all those years ago, had resulted in more.

The Last Post

At a New Year’s Eve gathering in 2009 I was asked by one of the other guests what my top five personal highlights of the year had been. Feeling put on the spot and under pressure to come up with some things that made me seem like an interesting and well-rounded person, I said: a good harvest at the allotment; my middle child starting school; witnessing Gary Alexander's wondergoal at Wembley; seeing Richard Hawley play live; standing at the Hardy Monument on the top of Black Down Heath in Dorset. My questioner smiled and reeled off her own (which, I then realised, had been the real reason for asking me): getting an HD TV; getting a new car, getting new double glazing; getting a smartphone; going on holiday abroad. As the general conversation then centred around holidays and cars, I sat there feeling stupid: I had come across as earnest and worthy and entirely out of step with everyone else’s mood. It was at that moment that I decided to start a fanzine.

Reflecting on my humiliation, I thought that there was much to be said for celebrating the simple things in life and, with two friends, launched Sussex Sedition. The ‘sedition’ of the title was to go against the prevailing materialistic thinking and the ethos was to be positive - there were enough bitter words out there already. Drawing inspiration from writers such as Kathleen Jamie, Tom Hodgkinson, Roger Deakin and Iain Sinclair, we wrote in praise of the pleasures to be derived from the world just outside our windows. Early articles covered vegetable growing, walking on the Sussex Downs, and British Sea Power. It was a desktop production - printed cheaply by a local firm - and distribution was something of a guerrilla operation. It was available free from those tables of leaflets and magazines that pubs always have - sometimes with permission, sometimes without.

After a few quarterly issues the, albeit small, cost of production became prohibitive for a bunch of cash-strapped public sector workers and Sussex Sedition ceased to be a physical fanzine. Wishing to continue paying tribute to the revolution of everyday life, I kept the name going as a blog with a few posts each month. Using the natural and man-made landscape of East Sussex as the mainstay, the blog also strayed into politics and music. What I found incredible was how many more people would read an article on popular music than, say, buttercups – who knew? Pieces I have written on Sleaford Mods, Vic Godard and Augustines have been the most-read by a long way. In fact, the review of Sleaford Mods’ Brighton gig in 2015 is the piece the frustrated NME journalist in me is most proud of – writing it took me right back to my punk fanzine days.

It has been a joy to write this blog for the past six years and I have received some lovely comments from people in response; but today I am writing the last post. I have embarked on a more substantial project and I need to focus all of my writing attention on that. I had thought about trying to collect the pieces together in some sort of bumper retrospective issue of the printed fanzine but instead I think I will simply leave them here in cyberspace - floating like defunct satellites in real space, blinking as they orbit the earth – just in case anyone picks up their signal.

Finally, most things make me think about music and, talking of satellites, three of my favourite songs have that word in the title. Therefore, apropos of nothing in particular:

Satellite of Love by Lou Reed – I was probably about thirteen when someone told me that David Bowie and Mick Ronson played on an LP by Lou Reed. When you are obsessed with a singer, you tend to explore anything associated with them and I went out and bought Transformer. It is an album I have been playing ever since and one that sent me down the back-doubles of discovery to the Velvet Underground. Satellite of Love is my favourite track: often in the shadow of the hit single Walk On The Wild Side or the beautiful Perfect Day or the pre-punk Vicious, it is the most tender paean to love and jealousy. And if you ever heard it sung by the late, great Kitty Lux of the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, you are lucky too.

Satellite by Sex Pistols – the B side of Holidays in the Sun, the sheer racket and sense of everything being on the verge of collapsing into chaos make this my favourite Pistols’ track. Lydon is at his most demented: he spits out his feelings towards people the band met at those early gigs in London’s satellite towns over Steve Jones’ fantastic reverb-drenched guitar and Paul Cook's phenomenal drums. Recorded in the capital in June 1977 at the height of the bands’ justified paranoia over Jubilee fascist thugs, you can hear Lydon’s frustration in the outro as he repeatedly smashes the microphone on the Wessex Studios’ floor. It leaves me exhausted each time I hear it.

Satellites by Bill Ryder-Jones – 2015’s West Kirkby County Primary is probably my favourite album of recent years. Its combination of hushed ballads and fuzzy rock was a revelation to me; with an honesty bordering on confessional, its songs are both painful and liberating. Satellites, the album’s penultimate song, slowly builds its tale of regret – “I'm stranded in the dark/ of everything I've loved and went and tore apart/ I got lost in myself and time got lost as well” – to a stunning slacker crescendo.

So, it ends with music; and, for me, everything does. In truth, I do not think I have encountered any problem that could not be made even a little bit better by listening to the songs that saved your life. See you on the other side.

Kicking Out at the World

It seems to be the current and popular view that John Lydon, the one-time anti-Christ and Sex Pistol, has undergone a rehabilitation, that he is now a reformed and respectable character. His recent interview with Piers Morgan on primetime, mainstream television saw a cuddly, joking John willing to play the game: he was happy to field the obligatory sentimental questions and be led to the brink of tears over the loss of his mum and his friend, Sid Vicious. It ended with Morgan playfully accusing Lydon of being a nice bloke, these days.

The probable truth is that he was always an affable character - his abrasiveness simply a defence mechanism. He was a teenager when he joined the Sex Pistols in 1975 and, within a couple of years, he found himself to be a public enemy, an immoral influence on the nation’s young. The words of a Libertines' song - “the boy kicked out at the world/the world kicked back a lot fucking harder” - come to mind. It is little wonder that he quickly developed a hard, spiky shell and a reluctance to engage with the media or any authority.

The irony of being condemned by those moral guardians of the 1970s, Parliament and the BBC, is surely not lost on Lydon. Recent revelations about the sexual practices of senior politicians and television personalities tell us that it was the likes of Johnny Rotten who were the ones with a strong moral compass. His railing against power and institutions, informed by his working-class Catholic upbringing, and his oft-expressed distaste for hypocrites and liars, make a lot more sense now.

Lydon is, of course, a survivor and his second band, the sublime Public Image Limited, arguably invented post-punk: the first three LPs the band made are still quite extraordinary to listen to for their experimentation and originality. With different line-ups into the 1980s and 90s, they settled for a more accomplished rock sound that brought success but less musical plaudits. The band then underwent a twenty-year hiatus – which Lydon filled with an autobiography, Sex Pistols’ reunions, reality television and butter advertisements - before re-emerging in 2012 with earlier members Bruce Smith and Lu Edmonds and new addition, jazz bassist, Scott Firth. Their LP, This Is PiL, was enthusiastically received for its post-punk, prog and reggae leanings.

Since then, the band have been gigging regularly and Lydon has written a second autobiography, Anger Is An Energy. Last year, I saw him promoting that book at the De La Warr Pavilion and, much as I enjoyed the evening, it seemed wrong to be in such a great venue listening to his life story rather than his music. Last night, he returned to Bexhill with PiL to put that right and commented that the book we purchased a year ago has probably make a good doorstop in the interim. I am sure it was a joke, like his comment that he had lived down the road in “far-superior” Pevensey Bay for a while as a kid.

Where Lydon seems happiest is on stage making music. It is easy to forget how remarkable his voice is, ranging from his familiar North London nasal whine to the deep bellow of a demented preacher and often both within one line of a song. The first two tracks on new album What The World Needs Now, Double Trouble and Know Now, were the set openers last night and they perfectly displayed his peculiar talent for hysterical, accusatory ranting. If the opening was frantic, it soon settled to a more thoughtful pace with a terrific version of one of their best songs, Poptones –“I can’t forget the impression you made/you left a hole in the back of my head” - from the ground-breaking Metal Box album, underpinned brilliantly by Scott Firth’s looping and spiralling bass. Lu Edmonds guitar work was inspired throughout and its piercing discordance illuminated the centrepiece of the set, an epic version of 1979’s Death Disco. There were also mid-period PiL treats with versions of Disappointed, The Body and This Is Not A Love Song.

A friend who had seen PiL a couple of years ago said that it was one of the loudest gigs he had been to and, as the evening wore on last night, the volume seemed to be increasing. By the time the set concluded with Religion, a savage attack on the world's faiths, I could feel Firth’s electric stand-up bass in my sternum and, as the song climaxed with Lydon chanting “turn up the bass!”, I could sense my scalp starting to tingle. The band’s two most iconic songs were saved for the encore: they returned to the stage with the rumble of first single, Public Image, and finished with the closest they get to a terrace anthem – “anger is an energy!” – the 1986 hit, Rise. The band seemed to have genuinely enjoyed the evening and lingered on stage as Lydon introduced them – pushing drummer Bruce Smith upstage - to the crowd’s appreciation.

People's Pier

When Hastings Pier burnt down in 2010 it had already been closed to the public for four years. If the deserted structure was a harsh reminder that it had seen better days, its blackened and twisted wreckage rendered it a metaphor for the irreversible decline of seaside towns.

Built in 1872, its twin peaks of popularity were between the twentieth century wars, and again in the 1960s and 70s when the end of pier pavilion played host to gigs by a number of high-profile acts. The final Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd performance took place there and the Rolling Stones, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, the Sex Pistols and The Clash all played the pier. After that time, a rapidly changing succession of owners ensured that the pier fell into a spiral of disrepair before closing in 2006.

However, a local campaign to resurrect the pier that had begun after its closure, was given fresh impetus by the fire; now the pier is in local community ownership and on the verge of renovation. With the help of volunteers, fundraisers and local authorities, the Hastings Pier Charity (HCP) has raised £11.4m from the Heritage Lottery Fund and over £2m from other public and institutional sources. But with a funding gap still to fill, a community share scheme has been launched to enable real local involvement in the new Hastings Pier.

HCP is trying to attract 3,000 ordinary people – be they residents of Hastings, St. Leonards, East Sussex or just lovers of Hastings Pier – to become community shareholders in the People’s Pier. It is hoped the community share scheme will raise £500,000 to develop additional facilities on the pier, such as a children’s play area and a microbrewery.

All community shareholders will be members of HCP and, effectively, owners of the pier. Able to attend the AGM and vote and stand for the Board of Directors, all owners will have one vote, irrespective of the number of community shares they have bought. But these are not shares to make a profit - they cannot be sold on. However, if the pier is making a profit in the future, community shareholders could apply to get their investment back. More importantly, though, it is about having a long term stake in a community asset.

Community shares are available at £1 each for a minimum stake of £100 from Hastings Pier Charity. The offer is open until 5th April 2014.

There's No Future...

...in England's dreaming.