Last Orders Half Past Ten

Between meeting Martin in 1980 and taking my 'O' levels in 1983 several lucky things happened to me. Lucky in the respect of acquiring more music and fleshing out my knowledge of music.

My elder sister had started Sixth Form College in 1980 and, before long had embarked upon a relationship with a boy from a nearby town who had more new music for me. His name was Chris. He wore old jackets and overcoats from charity shops. He was like no one I had ever met and his record collection nicely complemented my growing array of tape cassettes of Martin's punk and new wave records. Chris brought around albums and singles from bands from the North West who were gathering press interest. I gladly accepted copies of Dragnet, Grotesque, Totale's Turn and Slates by The Fall and Unknown Pleasures and Closer by Joy Division (their singer just committed suicide, you know).

I purchased Crocodiles by Echo & The Bunnymen and Kilimanjaro by The Teardrop Explodes. I was about 14 years old. Everyone at school thought I was a twat.

Top of the Pops and the weekly Sunday evening Top 40 radio show kept me in touch with what the kids at school liked: The Specials, The Beat, Adam & The Ants, Madness, Ultravox, Blondie, Visage, etc. But my extra-curricular activities set me aside from everyone else. I was able to make connections.

Me: "You do know that Visage is made up from members of Magazine and Ultravox?"
Kids at school: "Who are Magazine?"
Me: "And of course, Rusty Egan and Midge Ure were in The Rich Kids with Glen Matlock from The Sex Pistols."
Kids at school: "Yeah, but isn't Sting cool?"

Like I say, everyone at school thought I was a tedious twat. I didn't really care, I'd given up trying to be popular. Anyway, other things had started to happen. I had started to venture further afield on Saturday afternoons, on the Merseyrail train into Liverpool and specialist record shops like Probe and Penny Lane.

Silence is Golden

When I was growing up in the 1970s, getting hold of music was really hard. My Dad, who was a teenager in the 1950s, had a record collection that I plundered. Of course, I had Top of the Pops with Gary Glitter (yes him), The Sweet, David Bowie, T Rex, Mud, David Essex, Wizzard, Windsor Davies & Don Estelle and The Simon Park Orchestra to keep me going once a week. But the only on-demand music I had was Buddy Holly, Ricky Nelson, Elvis Presley, Jackie Wilson, Emile Ford & The Checkmates, The Beatles, Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas. Whatever was in the dusty box of vinyl in the loft of our three-bedroom semi. In that respect I was lucky in that my musical education sort of started at the beginning.

By the time 1980 arrived, I had a paper round and pocket money to allow me to purchase singles and the occasional album. But I had to be very careful and selective. What to buy? Luckily I made friends with a boy called Martin around the corner whose uncle was in his late teens. Martin had a collection of punk and new wave singles and albums bought under the tutelage of said uncle, which included: Suspect Device by Stiff Little Fingers, Complete Control by The Clash, In To The Valley by The Skids, Public Image by Public Image Limited, the Where's Bill Grundy Now EP by The Television Personalities, Silly Thing by The Sex Pistols and Summer Fun by The Barracudas; along with the first album by The Clash and the Never Mind The Bollocks. Martin had diabetes and was an only child, so I guess he was indulged by his parents. I had no complaints: I took his records home and taped them.

Doing it for the kids

I recently, quite mischievously, dug into a work colleague because he didn't know who Flavor Flav was. This guy is about 25, in a band (album recorded, pop-rock, available on lastFM) and quite opinionated, cocky even.

When I explained, rather patronisingly, that Mr Flav was an American rapper with a scary clock in the seminal 80s Long Island outfit Public Enemy; the boy looked back at me nonplussed.

I said to him, "You don't really know much about popular culture, especially for someone in a band", he replied, "Well what I call culture is like, Shakespeare, Mozart. Really."

It was the knock-out punch. I called to my corner, flailing around, "The towel, throw in the towel."