#notmurdered - the beautiful and The Damned

Breakfast of champions

So Saturday morning does not bring the hangover I was dreading. The drinking was steady, I only had a couple of what I have heard recently described as 'cooking lagers' during the Buzzcocks show and after so the head's pretty good.

There is no possible way I could have consumed everything in @JelloPuss and @CardinalPhink's gift basket so I cram as many of the packets of goodies into my rucksack as I can. You never know when you'll need to get your face around some hairy pork fat, right?

Breakfast includes a bloody mary. It's a fine start to another exciting day. The sun is splitting the stones, another rock n roll adventure awaits. We even get to watch a bit of the qualifying for the Monaco Grand Prix. I'm a happy boy.

The run to Liverpool airport is trouble-free. Almost. Note to airport car park operators: your car parks are confusing. Get it sorted.

Liverpool to Belfast, well you're no sooner up than you're down again. While my companions are getting their baggage, I go to pay for my parking. This is where disaster strikes. When I try to get some money, computer says 'no'. The car park ticket machine wants thirty-odd quid, I have to get petrol to get us out to our hosts on the other side of Belfast and back up to the North Coast the following day. And there's the small matter of socialising. My cards only get me enough to pay for the parking with a bit left over. Something's gone wrong again. Ah well. I genuinely don't know what to do or what has gone wrong.

We're on a tight schedule. We have to get to East Belfast to our hosts and then back into town to see The Damned at QUB. All the excitement that had been building all day has been sucked out of me. Time slips away. There's a burned-out bus on the M2 and the traffic is backed up. We also go awry in a certain estate. It's navigation device finger error, postcode digits transposed. Schoolboy error. We eventually arrive at @DeadbeatMum and @dirt_bird's sumptuous dwelling (helpfully picked out with  black goth flag accessory). A calming drink with a pomegranate seed in it helps get me on an even keel.

All my excitement for The Damned gig has been sucked out of me. While the gang (@CardinalPhink, @JelloPuss, @DeadbeatMum, @dirt_bird and @IsGrandmaThere [resplendent with a dashing purple streak]) are in Boojum having a delicious burrito, I'm pacing Botanic Avenue trying cash machines. Same deal, not a local error. I'm definitely out of funds. This was not in the script. Resolution? Generous friends. I'm humbled.


Just for you, here's a love song ...

So, on to QUB. There is a lot of black going on. And who's this? Maxine and Steve from Buzzcocksworld*, whom we also saw the night before in Manchester. Us aside, it's an odd crowd, actually quite unlike Buzzcocks the night before. It's nothing to do with provinciality either, The Damned have a quite unique following. Not so many middle-aged punk-curious here, it's a lot more alternative, grimly Gothy. Yes, there are the 77ers. Maybe they're here for The Defects who, from what I can hear, are living the punk rock dream still. Everything in their world that has happened since 1978 has happened to other people.

I've never seen The Damned. I have no reference points. Even so, I can say with conviction that this is one of the top five shows I have ever witnessed. It's the last night of the tour, maybe there's some additional playfulness in the delivery. The sound mix is clear and perfect, the band look upbeat. We get it all - theatre, banter, fun, hits ... everything a performance should offer. Dave Vanian is in fine voice and, despite his dark and serious persona, you get the feeling that he's having a ball. Captain Sensible cannot fail to make you feel happy. He's a paradox, a pantomime creation with divine guitar skills that kill stone dead the idea that punks can't play. That's a nonsense. And what songs! It's just a sensory battering of the most glorious kind. And for me, another piece slotted into my personal punk jigsaw. I'd have been happy if they had performed the whole set again. And again.

And then it's over. We're corralled into the bar for a Goth Disco. It begins promisingly with 'A Forest' but soon industrial music takes over. I already know how Goths dance, I've seen it in Germany. Seems it's the same here. Feet still, a lot of gloomy arm waving ...

We roll home to East Belfast. I'm feeling battle fatigue, I'm looking forward to my own bed on up the road. But that's tomorrow night. The craic and company are first class. The next day brings sausages, more sun, a Grand Prix al fresco and a leisurely run up the Antrim Coast behind the world's slowest driver. And then home. I'm shattered.

And that's where we leave this odyssey. To return to the central theme in this thread of blogs - #notmurdered. It might seem foolish to entrust yourself to the mercies of strangers.

"I can't think of many other circumstances in which you would blindly put yourself in the care of people you had never met."

Well, I did. My life has been enriched because of it. You can find good people via social media. New friends that feel like old friends. And for the record, I didn't murder anyone either.

*was nice also to meet (albeit briefly) @marshwigglegoth @5Lighters. Apologies if I have missed anyone else.

Read parts one, two, three and four of this punk rock odyssey.
If you like my writing, please consider giving my novel a go - thanks!

#notmurdered - I'm So Excited

It's a holiday in Mancunia, where the people dress in black - part IV

So you rejoin us outside the Manchester Apollo where punks and the punk-curious from far and wide are gathering to attend Buzzcocks' landmark Back to Front show. Back to Front is Buzzcocks from three eras: the current line-up perform a set of songs drawn from the 1996 - present catalogue; the 'classic' line-up (1977-81) do a set drawn from the first three albums and associated singles; and finally the original 'original' line-up with Howard Devoto will perform the songs from the self-financed and seminal Spiral Scratch EP. This is unparalleled. It has taken a long time to set up. Bassist Steve Garvey has flown over from the US for these two shows (more about him later). I'm excited.

Manchester Apollo is a cavernous ex-cinema. It's filling nicely, there's a goodnatured buzz of anticipation. I spot Buzzcocks' manager Raf at the desk. There is the aftershow business yet to be arranged, I might as well grasp the nettle. Apollo security are not letting anyone near the desk but I have a go anyway and explain that I know Raf and that he knows me. I ask Raf what the plan is for joining the aftershow. He's bemused. He assumes this is all sorted out. He tells me to go to a particular door at the side of the stage after the performance. Hmmm ...


Torpor! Enervation!

The three sets are superb. There are plenty of reviews of this show you can read, and this is not my task here. Let's just say that it's chaotic, the sound is fucking awful and it is thrilling and brilliant. We surge forward to the pit for the second set. We're just in front of Steve Garvey. I love him. It's hell down there though. Pissed-up and very determined man mountains are not to be denied their place at the barrier. Poor @JelloPuss, crushed at the front. @CardinalPhink and I are trying to be gallant AND enjoy the experience but it's pretty hairy down there. A raging sea of drunken, bellowing bonhomie. It's not for the fainthearted.

At the end of the show we gather at the appointed place. This is where things take a turn for the worse. The notoriously intolerant Apollo security are herding us out. That we were told to wait side of stage makes no difference. Our resistance is spirited but useless. We are pushed back to the lobby, where we mill about, pretending to look at merchandise. I make a few calls to the 'inner sanctum'. While we're waiting, I hear my name being called. It's @JelloPuss and she has Steve Garvey in tow.

You have to understand what a profound effect this man has had on my life. My Buzzcocks epiphany was based on borrowing an album and then playing it incessantly for about three months. On the cover of that album were four moody young men in black. One of them was Steve Garvey - mean, moody, so New Wave ... he was (is) also a superlative bassist. I wanted to be Steve Garvey. Ideally, I wanted to be Steve Garvey IN Buzzcocks, but hey ho. Anyway, he was my role model. I learned to play bass because of him and I've had a few adventures of my own because of it. Thanks to him. So when I was introduced, all the things I wanted to say flew out of my tiny head. I was the starstruck teenager waiting outside the back door of Oxford New Theatre thirty-odd years ago. I could have gone home happy then.

Apollo security get their wish and chuck us all out. So we loiter outside, about fifteen diehard Secret Publicans unaccustomed to being outside after a 'Cocks show. My 'phone rings. It's Pete Shelley*. Well, it's Pete Shelley's 'phone. Someone will be down with passes shortly.

The legendary Steve Garvey and a fat bloke.

So, armed with the privileged green wristbands, we get up to the bar where the party is in full swing. There are lots of family members, the Secret Public family, everybody's happy nowadays. And I get my chat with Steve G. I tell him all the stuff I have been carrying all these years and he seems happy to hear it. I'm totally made up now.

There is also business to transact. We're gathering items to auction to support the running costs of secretpublic.com. Pete Shelley has something special for us - bespoke underwear hand-stencilled by Lou who makes his stagewear. If you want to win this stuff by the way, stay tuned and I'll post the link to the auction when it happens. We also have a Back to Front poster signed by all iterations of the band. This is cool, desirable stuff.

The venue win again. they want everyone out of the building. We get to chat to the people we want to chat to - in many ways this is my extended family. We meet at gigs all over the place. Oddly enough two of them - Maxine and Steve - are going to be at a Damned gig in Belfast the following night. About which more next time ;-)

A great night, made better for turning out all right. Good friends, new and old, a few beers ... you know what? I Don't Mind.

In the next instalment, I find myself financially embarrassed, go on a tweet-up and mingle with Goths.

*It's not smart or funny to drop names. Kenneth Branagh told me that.

Read parts one, two and three of this NW punk rock odyssey.

If you like my writing, please consider giving my novel a go - thanks!

No Cowell Bitch, Me

While the nation decided, without any sense of irony (see below), which forgettable Cowell cash cow to promote over the other, I was ramping up some enthusiasm for playing a few songs myself. Not to millions of slavering, television-fixated fuckwits, but to a bar full of real people. Yes, here is the news - music is alive and well, despite the best efforts of The High-Trousered One. And let's not have any post-X Factor whines of 'I only watched ironically' - the viewers and voters are complicit in the misery now to be unleashed on our unprotected ears. Mercifully it'll all be over by Xmas + 10. Oh, and here's a prediction. X-Factor Matt's second album, around this time next year, will be a forgettable mish mash of self-penned ditties, written from the sanctuary of rehab.

No, what my little foray into open mic territory has proved is that you could throw a net over any group of 50 people and get one X Factor final-quality performer. This means that all of this bullshit is just a big musical lottery show. Imagine going through all that only to find the public like you less than a cuddly painter and decorator. The 'it could be you' strapline is more appropriate for X Factor than it is for the Lotto.

You might think that as a middle-aged man still playing at playing, this might be sour grapes, a lament for my never-started music career. I have always been around much better musicians than myself. My own brother, for one - a prodigious talent who, it would appear, can play anything with a keyboard or strings and compose orchestral works or play concert grade piano. He teaches music. He IS music. That has cast a long shadow over my own noodlings which I have never really escaped. But he's just one. I have a lot of friends who are simply excellent musos. Some play, some don't. As for myself, I have no illusions. I'm a mid-table, second division bass player and a Vauxhall Conference (or whatever the lower divisions are called now) guitarist. I know it, my friends know it. I don't let it hold me back.

Tonight, however, I finally felt validated. I got to play with 'Doc' Doherty of the mighty Xdreamysts. That's proper NI New Wave royalty right there. I have his records, and I told him so. And tonight he joined us, on a stage, to jam some songs to real people.

So Mr Cowell - while you're selling your anodyne, vanilla-flavoured pap as some kind of significant cultural moment, I have been down with the resistance. We'll be back.