Belgo Geordie's A Very Musical Education: Part One: The Early Years

Belgo Geordie discovers a singing nun

In 2016 Australia Fairfax, our local media robber barons, did a feature on yon pollies favourite spins. It were mainly crap, middle of the road and notable for that there was bugger all of our indigenous music included. (Although Warmupi Band did make it on one list). It were not that diverse, making yer think being in parliament, when ear phones are plugged in, moost be a bland sort of place. Aye, I know, I know-being obvious like boot...

The Belgo circa 1973 bass days

Now Belgo Geordie has always tapped his foot, boot is as musical as a pea without its whistle in a wind tunnel. Joost outta nipper hood I played bass in a band in Takapuna, Auckland doing' Creedence Clearwater Revival covers. I had the pose like, lemon sucked mouth, a pimple spotted, pasty face lost under a tangle of dreadlocked hair. Skinny as a pipe cleaner with bell bottomed jeans an' white cotton embroidered shirt with the consistency of cheese cloth. Skin soo white it were like blue cheese without the veins. Nowt like an English sun to make a lad stand out in Godzowne (aka NZ). Boot tha bass chords I played were nowt to do with "Proud Mary" more thrash and distort going with a mind of their own where no self respecting bass chords shoudda gone. Aye, punk would have saved me but by the time tha' un lurched inta existence, I'd long sold me bass and gone on stage an sold me soul to alt-politics.

But it got me thinking' music shapes yer. An' I owe a lot to the function of the inner Belgo Geordie to the shite I've shovelled in to me ears over the years. So I have thought about it and tried to pick what moved me and if any songs then still make me gonnads rattle now like. The ones most influential for shaping me inta the Belgo Geordie of now-awld. YOU KNOW WHAT YA COULD PLAY AT ME WAKE LIKE! AN NOT HAVING ME ROTATE LIKE A MACKEREL IN A FISHING NET! An impossible task because of what gets left out. I have tried to leave out ten years of the late nineties (in Part Two) where I were forced ta listen to ambient lift/shopping mall muzak. That were like being' a social democrat-closet liberal on prozac an drinkin' coke being asked to shake Nigel Farage's hand. In rackin' me memory vaults it came as a shock that the first music I registered - and I don't count the Belgian acoustic guitar playing singing nun from 1964, the year I lived in Belgium- or me dad's cowboy tunes whistled and spat out on his mouth organ - Strangled Flemish version of "Yellow Rose Of Texas" an all - pleeeesssseee - was not until I were ten years inta me innings*.

Paint it Black - Rolling Stones
Kerfunk! Kerfump, Krefump!!!! The early sixties in working class England, the heyday of the Beatles, The Animals, Dusty of the scary beehive, barefooted Sandie Shaw and a scrap of wee Scottish lass called Lulu with lungs the size of ten-ton trucks braking in reverse. The moment fur me then was not me dad muttering sarcastically in response to summat on the transistor radio: "She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah" but with a Belgian accent so dense it made blackbirds fly into the side of the house. The Beatles consigned to the Flemish bin of "Turn off that Blurry Rubbish!" That his foot tapped to the beat were neither one thing or another. Course there was "Summer Holiday"- "We're all going on" - fat chance! Too blurry expensive and too far to seaside. We quickly saw thru Cliff, more sugar than a tin of condensed milk - the small, boiled down size. Now the Shadows were something else with FBI and Apache. Me bruver preferred the American Ventures boot fer me Hank was the first guitarist I took stock off. Na, boot me first musical gotcha moment was after that siting' atop a climbing frame (British Steel and so friggin' culd in winta-yer stuck to it as yer were pushed of it by bigger lads and lasses). This were circa 1965 in a school playground at the back of Edgware in North London. I were hollering' and in those grand days I could sing and hold a tune " I Sees a Back dower an' I wanna paint et red!" Yeah, well it were the start of a lifetime of not hearing lyrics proper. Boot in fairness even then I was out heckling the tories and did me bit for electing Harold Wilson by telling Ted Heath to fook off out of a Edgware Conservative Party meeting. Although, it were me that was ejected by a nana in pearls who scolded me for me foul tongue. Boot I believe it battered yon man to be addressed in his own meeting by a scrawny northern scrap (then ahh still had me Geordie accent) with the elocution of a parrot with tonsillitis and who was, if anyun understood it, potty mouthed. Boot "Paint It Black" it were much messier and closer to the nine year old male heart than any of the two ta three  minute, carefully crafted pop tunes of yon Beatles. The Rolling Stones? Eee, wurking class lads, sinister, dangerous-not lads ter take yer sister off for a walk in the long grass like, compared to that posh fab four! Oh the irony, later finding out the Rolling Stones were by-products of middle class London art school wankerage, not the more real northern Scouser art school of the Beatles.

I think the proverbial penny dropped a few years later when simultaneously hearing/seeing Mick Jagger ponce his way through "Street Flouncing Man" and copping an earful of John Lennon's first solo album and realising he (Lennon) was a spiteful working class male prick with bile in his pen but also a scowl of pure genius. Boot back to "Paint it Black" and the whack, whack of the drums kicking off that even as an oldie still gets the ticker racin'. Aye, when seated atop of the world there were nowt from the Beatles that was sooch a grand anthem for a purely belter kid with skinned knees in exile in Edgware!

"Its ma life and I'll eat white bread and condensed milk if I like" - The Animals, Albatross and the Supreme Supremes in skirts shorter than a flannel and yer still couldn't spot their knickers

Guess who-na...

Existential musical influences

1965 was a rich year for developing me nascent musical buds. Me brother, a merchant seaman, dressed in his leather jacket, drainpipe trousers and cuban heeled boots would come back from another visit stateside and while on shore he would DJ. Tamla Motown. An' Soul stayed with me. Marvin Gaye, The Four Tops, the Supremes, The Shirelles, Ike and Tina, Smokey Robinson, Otis and later the great Aretha. Songs like "Standing in the Shadows of Love". "Tears of a Clown" and "Stop in the Name of Love". In the front room (downstairs parlour as it were) in the hoose where I shared a bed-in a bed sit room with me dad. Him smoking like a chimney and me coughing like a ferret. We (not me dad) would line up and try out all the moves in synch. Me bruther, cigarette clenched in his fist, showed us the moves from America and I would go to school and bust the class with me latest steps-surrounded by West Indian and Jewish kids. One lot would piss 'emselves the other looked puzzled. But the Jamaican kids already had the likes of Desmond Decker "Shanty Town" and Millie Small "My Boy Lollipop" and they would dance by swivelling on the spot in a loose languid extension of arm, bum, rubber knee cap and leg while I did me pelican swallowing' a fish while shaggin a frog in a blender routine. I were deadly like! At ten and ready to take on the world.

Then we (me dad and me) moved to Hemel Hempstead through a succession of council flats and then inta a council house. Peascroft Road, Bennets End and me own room. In 1966, England wore red shirts and won the World Cup, made a crap pop song and a dog called Pickles found the stolen Jules Rimmer trophy. The biggest injustice was not havin' the now fit sublime maestro Jimmy Greaves in the team. But it were still grand to win at Wembley. I was doing solitary confinement with me dad (musical tastes Mario Lanza, classical and country and western but mostly chain smoking fags, reading Readers Digest and the Daily Mirror, drinkin' instant coffee and creating improvised, Coltrane like moody silences).

Me brother, still at sea, but heading out to Middle East and South East Asia on Tankers, were big on the English pop explosion with his backstop of the Animals, The Who (stuttering through "I hope I die before I get Old - or make fifteen and a deeper voice at least"), Small Faces, The Kinks, Rolling Stones, Troggs, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, Tremeloes, Cilla, Lulu and Hermans Hermits (I know, I know) yeah and every Beatles and Rolling Stones track ever released, not to mention the early Bee Gees, Gene Pitney and the Big O. It were a time of navigating his record collection when he were home and learning to find me own taste when I knew nowt. "Johnny Remember Me" EEEE, now that were Soulful. Fell over backwards to find Eric Burden was from me home town singing Americana like "House of the Rising Sun". But amongst his EPs I found the lads from Walker still had Geordie accents an' coal dust, steel rust and Tyne water in their veins. Finger in me elasticised snake clasp belt holding' up me scrappy shorts, gyratin' on spot an' growlin' "Girl, (fat chance!) there's a better life for you 'n me-soo fetch oos a cuppa hennie!"

Then instead of me voice breakin' me hair started to sprout south of me collar. Nowt on me chest boot promisin' down past me belly button. Turning up at Adeyfield Comprehensive sayin' to a boy's own heart throb, a sixties still mini skirted beatle booted chick trainee teacher, "Giss a kiss miss and ya can play me copy of Albatross". Me first proper 45 bought outta me paper delivery money and tips. B side "Jigsaw Blues." She played "Albatross" on a turntable the size of a paperback with attached speaker and broke her side of the bargain when her lips niver came anywhere near mine. Boot music then, it were grand, in me memory it were a long summer soundtracked by a "Whiter Shade of Pale" and 'Good Vibrations'. Aye, there were even a love-in nearby. Me dad: "Gut fer dummer! For Pete's sake, I said NO! Yer not going!" Followed by the crack of his hand against back of me noggin. It were at Woburn Abbey, nearby as the crow could fly. Both me brothers went. What a waste, although I had me suspicions they smoked some of that whacky backy and admired the unbra-ed chests lightly decorated in muslin with love beads and body paint. Neither of them had much to say about the music. Blurry Nora the worse that would have happened ter me is I meet have lost me virginity befor' I turned thirteen. I knew then wat the Who meant -"Hope I don't explode before I get too old!"

Its all over baby blue...
Then me bruther left the navy, got married to someone who looked like a blonde Nordic Nana Mouskouri and turned square. Me, with only a scrap of a transistor radio, size of an ice block without stick, and a bent arial to pick oop radio pirate ships like London and Caroline. There were the Monkees-none who could play that well but we were sucked in ta the American controlled view of what being young were about looking forward to Davey Jone's next adventure. "Daydream Believer" was about soom total of that. These were days of Bubblegum pop an' Top of the Pops. "Sugar, Sugar" Fook Off! I have three in me tea-that's enough. Almost wetting yerself in anticipation of what would get to number one. Knowing it were a con. Nowt much that was ever good, or even sweaty and a lot of variations on MOR lightweight pop jingles. Falling in lust with most of Pan's People was the best a lad could hope for. But Watching TOTPs in me household were complicated by there not being a television. Another Flemish decree against youthful enjoyment. So watching Toppers meant getting an invite to a mates house. Not easy as fur some parents TOTPs were only one step away from satanism; depraved corruption that did not compete with 'Come Dancing' or 'Panorama'. But in  imbibing TOTP's with Tony Blackburn and his unnaturally white teeth; I quietly chewed on the bathmat that is the stale eternity of male adolescence.

Aye, farewell Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac who were summat else boot already they and the last bits of the sixties were losing sparkle. I had taken to going and watch Watford play in Division 3, Ken Furphy and his merry band of troubadours; like twisting and turning short arsed Scots winger Stuart Scullion, brief cameos by Dennis Bond (off to Spurs-where he faded) and the sleek, magnificent, languid, pedigreed and oh so cool, Tony Currie. The immovable and great keeper of the sticks, Bert Slater. Supported by Watford Skins, there was not a lot of music amongst the sharpened coins, fist fighting and damp atmosphere of Vicarage Road. Then me dad dropped a bombshell-joost when it looked like I might get to spend more than two years at the one school he decided he was shiftin' to St Albans, movin' from council house to middle class two storied and garage pile of bricks in a 'nice' suburb and cul de sac or grove. It even had trees in the backyard. For me the choice were move with him or back to me last orphanage in Mill Hill. It was a close call as we barely spoke anymore and he was dying. I was ready to give oop, starting again, the fights, havin' class differences rubbed in yer face by snooty young Hertfordshire county chicks with shampooed hair, who had things like parents and siblings under same roof, white linen shirts outlining the formation of tantalising breasts and matching their long gleaming hair...Afghan dogs. An' me first term in a new school (where I was treated with suspicion and were crap at everything but being a big mouth with skinny legs), were shite. Boot a musical weapon of adolescent destruction was gathering forces. It called itself progressive and were stirring even in the Hertfordshire undergrowth, summat foul breathed and nasty but so much fun and ours! Kernufflespunk (aka the local boy scouts hut rented out for musical nights) here we come! Light machines with oil psychedelic filters, free condoms and underground comics, wild chicks, long hair, loud music, more mucky sweat than a sauna. What was there not ta love about it all!

"Keep 'A Knockin'" Mott the Hoople Live in Watford late 1970, Stan Webb belting out "The Thrill Has Gone" and other post puberty angst

Mr Mott morphing live

It was 1969 and after a term of misery I was rescued from my growing unpopularity by one Adam Dale. A short, long curly ginger headed scrap of encyclopaedic knowledge of music. With the looks of a choir boy and an attitude bruising enough to annoy the hell outta of older folk. He'd seen Cream live and no-one was allowed to forget it! Friday and Saturday nights, he in his monkey boots, parka and flares, me in stupid St Albans attire including roll neck sweater and slip on loafers, we would trot off to small bus shelter sized clubs to be scoured aurally, turned inside out and spat up in great gouts of progressive rockage and psychedelia. After watching the film "Woodstock", I was getting oop ta speed. There were the brilliant Santana, the inspiring Richie Havens, the wired Joe Cocker and Jimi Hendrix in white buckskin playing "Star Strangled Banner" lost on me, couldn't see what all the fuss was. We watched Woodstock through three sessions in a row - in those days the Gaumont or Odeon didn't turf you out between showings. It led to hearing "Abraxas" for the first time on stereo in someone's older brother's collection and sound system. It had been all mono up ta then. We marvelled at the cover but it took a bit longer to appreciate Carlos and his lads. There were aberrations! "Boot Adam man, I quite like John Sebastien!" "Oh do fuck off Belgo, don't be such a big wet johnny bag (condom)! he's a tie-dyed Val Doonican for hippies - come on lets go grind our ears out to Groundhogs." And for almost two years we did. Not just Tony McPhee's spitting, squalling ragged blues guitar virtuosity, boot also Stray, Chicken Shack, Quintessence, Caravan, Kevin Ayers (and that lunatic Lol bloody Coxhill and some quiet piano playing future Tublar Bells composer), Mott the Hoople, Softs, Osibisa, Assagai, Burning Red Ivanhoe, Nucleus, The Alan Bown, Black Widow, Atomic Rooster, Comus, Gentle Giant, Medicine Head, the anarchic Pink Fairies and Hawkwind and if that weren't suffice Pinkwind! Lads and lasses playing with no clothes on. Look the other way? Did we bollocks! We were up for every sweaty moment we could wrestle away from home, school and rapidly approaching adulthood. "Do It!" We done it from Potters Bar to Welwyn Garden City and all places in-between. Live music up and down the shire and then all the way down to London. Anywhere we could get on bike, bus or train. And we poggoed long before it was a fashion. School? Wot school?

Chicken Shack and the glorious, funny Mr Webb

There was even Elton John, quietly subdued and soberly dressed like a geek with big glasses at the piano at Hemel Hempstead. Then one night at Watford, Mott the Hoople. Ian Hunter cutting loose standing' atop his vox organ, cracking a bullwhip above seething crowds of young long hairs. Hunter in his dark sun glasses; the encore putting to shame his support act Arthur "Fire" Brown- even with Mr Brown's costumed theatrics and burning flower pot pitched precariously on his bonce. Mott played with vicarious joy and menace. "Adam der ya think Hunter wears them dark glasses in dark like cos his eyes are frazzled from all the droogs he takes?"  "Naw, its cos he left his guide dog at home, see he's got its collar around his neck." We were also saved by maximum exposure to Monty Python's Flying Circus. Then somewhere amongst all of this he (Adam) made me listen to the whole first side of Atom Heart Mother-I blew milk thru the gaps in me front teeth. He was having' a laugh! 46 years later....

Wha's that coo lookin' at?

Pink Fairies "Tomorrow Never Knows" And it was a time when me own record collection rather than me brother's, began. Me bruther were not impressed, he had gone down the long tunnel of middle of the road pop as respectability and having their first sprog took hold. One listen was enough for him to pronounce it were crap. I was sold, I was on the right track. There was the scurry up the stairs to listen to the John Peel show on the radio and a reel to reel tape deck made from bastardised parts to tape the latest Mr Peel offering an' keep oss oop to date with what was new in the weird alternative world of contemporary music. It were how the magnificent Pink Fairies tearing the guts out of the Beatles"Tomorrow Never Knows" came into my collection (if only on thick almost unplayable brown tape) in a slow rumble of tectonic guitar and drums. It were helped by a year of living dangerously by the inevitable electrocution of getting the tape deck to record by fiddling with exposed wires, matchsticks, glue and making sure the tape was threaded on the right spool. Once it threw me across room, shorted the house lights-but I niver gave up. There were the many gems to be found in the record bins in the mushrooming stores. We realised the huge gap between live and recorded music.  Yer had to listen harder to albums, particularly for the raw power that was the mainstay of the live performance of most bands we saw live. Some like Warm Dust and Warhorse never made it in either. The Fairies and Hawkwind were always unpredictable but satisfyingly messy live. Grand, ear splitting shambles that got yer high on music...

Fairies in Flight nicked from album cover

There were also the dissection of the likes of mainstream releases. Some bit of fluff called 'Sergeant Peppers' tha had been released in 67 but was still touted as bench mark - but me, ah couldn't see what all the fuss were about other than "Day in the Life". How many holes Adam lad? "One - Blackburn is a hole mate!" Unlike St Albans, the posh tottie capital of the home counties. I were severely outta ma league. The Rolling Stones seemed caught up in some tit for tat album release with the scouser lads. Interesting but not riveting. Particularly with "Let it Be" vs "Let it Bleed" signalling an end point. "Ram" you gotta ta be joking! Only Lennon came out with owt that was in yer face. "God is a concept by which we measure our pain". That an physics like. The bigger progressive bands were heading to pomp, like Emerson, Lake and Palmer and King Crimson. Pink Floyd were gestating some big change post Syd Barrett - dark side of summat floating oop ahead. The Softs were moving into some sort of jazz industrial noise throat clearing that required considerable aural effort to follow. English blues was heading stateside. Fleetwood Mac turning into something other East Coast USA rock with a small r and too mooch fluff. There were also other created duds. Blind Faith almost worked live. The fury of Ginger Baker and the guitar colossus of Clapton. More like a rock church than live gig. Spontaneous Combustion took longer to set up than they played-a dull but loud whimper. Grand Funk Railroad-the loudest band on the planet-Bah! They'd never seen the fairies, two drum kits and exposing amps in a matchbox sized room. What they (GFR) played were like a poor cousin ta Zepplin's pump and grind driving adolescent rock.

There was also folk-last visited in the skiffle of Lonnie Donnigan. The Fairports...not bad. Loudon Wainright III and "Schooldays and Muse" - "In Delaware, when I was younger. I would live the life obscene" and "I went to the library, you know, the big one way down town.." -and intensity from there on, more like it, all nasal whine and spit. Tir Na Nog a bit trippy-hippy but good live. The deep voiced Bridget St John. East of Eden, a bit wild with yon Arbus sawing like a clapper on a demented bell. Boot, The Incredible String Underwear Bland! Adam liked them, but me, they sent me running from the room with the screaming la, la, la shits and throwing off all me clothes and setting fire to me pubes - well the two I had by then. Still does, ISB. An the two pubes thankfully grew oop an turned inta thatch of brillo pad. Bit like Stan Webb's hair used to look like. Then all of this musical adventure turned to custard.

In April 1970 me dad died and I went under guardianship.  I read Bobby Seale's "Seize the Time" and one James Marshall released a 45 that turned me already addled mind to custard the consistency of mushy peas. Then I got it! Of course Adam bloody Dale had every album the "Experience" had released. Boot for me, I was properly introduced to a virtuoso guitar king that knocked the bollocks out of me grey matter, poured lighter fuel inta mix and set me imagination on fire. Course Dale I said, always liked the man since seeing Woodstock...There was no way back...

"Voodoo Chile" B-side "Hey Joe and All Along the Watchtower" Jimi Hendrix

Jimi live in Nowra 2017

It helped tha' me guardian did not like Voodoo Chile. I'd tell her "I stand oop next ta mountain and chop it down with the edge of me hand..." She'd tell me, if I had soo mooch energy I could pick oop a tea towel and dry dishes. Then we'd both be buried in a squall of liquid notes that made any conversation redundant. She'd spoil the moment by screeching "And turn off that horrible noise before I go Insane!" Aye there were no room in her tidy big hoose for the likes of Mr Hendrix, I'm telling' yer that. He might have left a nasty stain on shagpile carpet or blistered the nice paintwork as he crash landed. Boot ta ma ears it were a new world! Improvised, distorted, gloriously loud, squealing, gouts of ballistic sound. Like being whipped with barbed wire and fried in engine oil. Adam, of course, had already seen him live and the experience took him over to the likes of Captain Beefheart, the Mothers of Invention, Matching Mole (the stunningly talented Robert Wyatt with a voice I could relate to-an ongoing drone attached to the underside of a fractured 747) and the Isle of Wight to watch Dylan and Hendrix - again. For me, now with guardian imposed travel constraints; I had to settle for Rod Stewart, CSNY, Neil Young and John Lennon on vinyl. And Mungo Jerry and "In The Summertime" in a park. An anthem, but not an inspiring set. No compensation for missing out on the last great free music English festivals - well once the fences were pushed down. Ta make sure I did not stray, I were sent ta Belgium for three months penance in the summer of 1970 - festival season. To stay with an ooncle, music style-anything lounge lizard or that was MOR in the mid fifties. He was a desk soldier. I gave him "Bridge Over Troubled Waters". He liked it. No guessing some folk. So I missed the Isle of Wight and the last hope of a completing a reasonable musical education. Instead I was in Ostend playing pin ball machines and being made to listen to Johnny Belmondo and clones and more of that rupa pum bum bloody nun! Yeah, she was still going strong! Me Belgian uncle committing the original sin in giving me a Ringo Starr solo album as he knew I liked the Beatles. Like when I was in shorts mabbe. And Ringo? No offence...

Back in England and school I still indulged in my love of Ska and Tamala Motown by goin' to parties with a skinhead friend. High risk given me hair was starting to straggle past me collar and there was a loathing of hippies and their prog music played by soft long hair man-girls bands with wanky 'we love you' lyrics. "Tiptoe on the Highest Hill"!!!? "Fook off-or I'll kick yer balls in." Having' seen Hells Angels go off at a Pinkwind concert, all soft and happy one minute, then a whirlwind of oil streaked fists and bike chains the next - having a poke at the anarchists of which I thought I was one. Calm restored by cymbals being hurled like discuses at angel-heads and enough blood spilled to satisfy bikers honour. I think the 1970s bover boys crowd knew nowt if they thought the average Fairies crowd were joost a bunch of peace loving hippies. Boot the new generation skinheads (and suedes) were the original boots and braces line dancers - girls on one side - boys on t'other and not a smile cracked anywhere boot plenty sudden eruptions of violence if you tried to make eye contact with one of their girls. And the girls were right sexy in that don't look, don't gawk and don't touch and their hair cut as short as the lads. And the slit oop the back of their pencil skirts showing net nylons-not to mention the big, laced up boots. And they could give yer lugs a good crack if yer stepped out of line or tried it on. And I did, not one to learn, more than the once. Ah, but it were worth the bruises for the attempt like!

It took me a lot longer to get to appreciate Adam's shift into more complex prog or alternative music. We had many deep and meaningful conversations of why me being stook in "Deja Vu" were one step closer to suburban life, a permanent job and the same girlfriend for life or wife and inevitable before you could count how many children you had-listening to Andy Williams. While Mr Dale would be driving Route 66 with a car full of free loving chicks etc. At a newly minted fifteen I were not yet ready to commit. We agreed Neil Young were alright boot.  It took me much longer  to get Gingernuts drift-maybe another ten ta forty years. Towards end of school year 1971, after staying out all night (with John Peel, Doug Walters and four hundred others) at a 24 hour Uriah Heep headliner at the London Lyceum Ballroom; Hertfordshire's finest were called out to find two missing lads. (Lads? we were fifteen oop there getting on with life.) Me sentence? Finish the last weeks of fourth form, sit a GCE in English Literature (Bobby Seale - Seize the Time) then Transportation ta sum place called New Zealand. Uriah Heep were definitely not worth the ticket out boot The Alan Bown on the same bill were. Tony Catchpole on guitar - genius. Alan Bown on flugelhorn. Flugelhorn? What the blurry hell was I doin' listen to that bit of bent brass? Dead canny and all. The ghost of colliery bands I'd long forgotten. Mind some vocalist called Robert Palmer was a bit suspect. Good voice but a poseur.

I may of been fifteen boot I acted like I were twenty. A cock of the walk and then some. I said I was staying with Adam, he said he was staying with me, we were sprung, banged up to rights and so my guardian (musical tastes second world war, Vera Lynn, big band Glen Miller stuff and crooners like Bing Crosby, the Andrew Sisters and for the contemporary the very sad glass of pale white  milk, golden voiced but infinitely bland- Andy Williams) gave up on me. It were the embarrassment of calling oot the polis and that I was going to hell in a handcart led by my ears and fibs. I can't blame her, I was on me own course and school and work had no part to play in where I wanted to be. Then it were one last hurrah, the Faces at a small pub in Croydon, where Rod Stewart knocked out Kenny Jones by swinging a mike stand around and clunking the Jone's noggin. Eee Rod didn't miss a beat he cut across shorty as one of the lads revived Mr Jones by dousing him with a pint of lukewarm ale. Of course I had to be chaperoned by Nana Mouskouri, in case I took off boot a good time was had by all! And it was farewell to grey drab wet summer's England on a Boeing for the long drift south as far as the world would go, or so it felt. Inta winter.

INTO THE MATCHSTICK....

Auckland as she were circa 1971

"Ballad of a Thin Man" - Bob Dylan
Clutching a small satchel of 20 vinyl mostly progressive LPs, including "Gasoline Alley" with fold out cover of Rod the Mod, the first Hawkwind, Quintessence, me Jimi Hendrix singles, John Lennon and "After the Goldrush" and Groundhogs "Split"; I arrived in the tin roofed barn, or as it was then Auckland International Airport. Flying in was "What the fook were all those cardboard box houses clutching the sides of hills like grannies in a gale on their way ta Bingo?" It were like an endless plain of a constructed film set for a Spaghetti and Baked Beans Western. But that were not afore havin' spent an entire lifetime getting in and out of an aeroplane that had crossed the world as fast as one of me aunties on her way to church-stopping at every place for a pee. Most memorable? Watching men for four hours in the stultifying heat at Delhi Airport (well it were a lot hotter than Whitby on bank holiday) move bricks from one pile and then back as the plane refuelled. And buying an elephant from the gift shop that turned out to be stuffed with bandages. Or Perth, early morning like an episode from Dallas-cattle barons with John Wayne walks and sort of cowboy hats and their fat, self-satisfied bejewelled wives. Arriving in Auckland with me eyes feeling that they were stuck full of rivets to be greeted by two blokes getting on the plane dressed in polyester white shirts, blue shorts, mutton chops  and white socks-and who looked like they might be Tom Jones fans - which as it would turn out was way out there for 1971 New Zealand. Holding two of the largest aerosols known to the planet and then briskly roonin down gangway, spraying' us all with DDT. I never did finish me bottle of Coke, the sophisticated drink of the international traveller.

At first I stayed with me elder brother - the intellectual. (Music: Iron Butterfly, Vanilla Fudge, Simon and Garfunkel (early albums), Rod McKuen and the Moody Bloody Awful Blues.) Of course, he sneered at me collection. I lasted six weeks under his roof, ditching him and school in the same week. Boot I owe him for having a deep and long lasting loathing for the Moody Blues. He had every one of their albums and probably then some. Torture. Nights in white satin? I still feel me teeth edge up to the side of a tin plate when I hear that inane "But  eye lurrve yewwww" I'd rather sleep in a field of used bog rolls thank you very mooch than oonder roof of folk who think that is good music.

Then there was New Zealand. Auckland then for the serious Geordie progressive music fan, was a 'garden city' without the personality or excitement. I just didn't get it. Everything closed down on a Friday evening and stayed that way until Monday - except for the corner shops called dairies. Sundays were huge loaves of pulpy fresh white bread and strawberry jam, followed later by a roast of lamb. It were a shadow of England without being England. Pubs were where the live music seemed to happen. Clubs were elusive and expensive. No Kneruflsplunk or small music venues. The Saturday night dance was just that. A hop with big band and singers with Elvis pretensions (Ok Prince Tui Teka did carry it off) and fights. Boys and men wanted to bash me for just being a Pom (and maybe a pretentious wee twat). Pub bands did covers of second rate English but mainly American pop songs a la Perry Comotose. Bad, bad, bad (did I mention bad?) covers. Occasionally in a cringe of culture "Oh and we want to play you a song we wrote ourselves." Out would trundle a bastard child of another bad cover song tugging its forelock to Amerika or the long gone, once swinging England. Bubble gum with the flavour long sucked out. Then there were the television version of top of the pops -"Happen In"; syrupy bland pop with nowt to threaten a pulse; backed with dancers gyrating in dance steps that were seriously neutered. That had as much to with sex as a scrotum does with thinking. (Although I met one of the dancers later in life who told me they bonked like rabbits off the set of that show. Well I never!) It was like drinkin' 'Cold Duck (ersatz sparkles)' with 'Blackberry Nip' (thick, over - sweet cough medicine) chasers and being stuck in a lift with  a cloned Neil Sedaka, Gene Pitney, Frank "Ive long ago sold out" Sinatra and thirty million sheep.

John Dix in his excellent book "Stranded in Paradise- NZ Rock n Roll 1955 to 1988" described this time of the early seventies as "The Age of Banality". He were right, being a teenager and living among it, it were horrible! Endless exposure to Craig Scott, Bunny Walters (a decent voice singing crap), the lounge lizard like Ray Woolf and the sweet but hardly Lulu, Suzanne-all syrupped over by the gormless toupee wearing Pete Sinclair- a less hip version of Tony Blackburn with a smile as genuine as bri-nylon. I mean a shampoo produced the annual greatest hits vinyl from this bubble fest! Then there was a middle of the road ensemble called Hogsnort Rupert-the name more interesting than the music.

Going to see bands the locals said were progressive. Like Lutha, In-Betweens, Ticket and Headband, men preening on stage in small clubs (named things like Granny's) to teeny boppers. Billy Kramer clones with poplin shirts and carefully groomed long hair, middle of the road flowery pop jingles - neither jazz or rock but some strangled and trodden upon hybrid. AND NO PERSONALITY - even Tommy Adderley, a scouser by birth,  came across like a London cabbie drinking milk stout through a straw (although it was alleged he was a junkie). I missed out on the Underdogs but up against the Yardbirds, Peter Green, the Shack and Savoy Brown, I'm not sure if I would have given them the appreciation they had earned playing in the UK but not breaking through. But there was one night stumbling across guitar colossus Billy TK, billed as the Maori Hendrix - but really the very Maori Billy TK and summat close to blues/progressive improvisation with no prisoners taken. At least live-the transition to record of this man were never the same as live. "Play some Hendrix Billy!" " Fuck off - play it yourself!" Of course I was an arrogant twat starting all over again, different terms of reference still twelve thousand miles away; not knowing where to look to see what was going on. I didn't want ta be in New Zealand and did na want ta return to England. I looked like I was full of confidence, boot that covered misery. I was not happy in me own skin. Music was a balm that soothed the troubles but sometimes it could not. I tried to get a passage working a berth to Sydney - then I discovered the South Island, Queenstown before it became a tourist town and the Alps. I let the boat sail without me and decided to try harder but I was and would remain an odd fit.

I found the one decent record shop in Auckland where the owner brought in some releases from England but mostly from the States. Vinyl no one wanted ended in bargain bin (it's where I found Twink's "Think Pink" and USA-Stooges with "I Wanna Be Yower Dog", Zappa's "Burnt Weeny Sandwich". The strange Welsh band Man's delightful "2 Ozs of Plastic With a Hole in the Middle" ). SOS's to England pleading for new releases met with one UFO record being sent. Someone moost have sent me Pink Fairies "Never Never Land" with the plastic cover, pink vinyl and great fold out as the vinyl was bent from where it had travelled parcel post from Hertfordshire. Adam, the runt, ignored me. Boot the caravan of pink and grey had moved on without us and more precise, me. Shifts and cracks in the musical facade were evident. The Fairies imploded with Paul Rudolph kicked out of England for being subversive or Canadian or his visa had run out - take your pick. Hawkwind found Lemmy. There were only the slow drip of expensive sea freighted, so delayed vinyl imports like; Hawkwind's "Lost in Space", Quintessences "Dive Deep", Motts "Wildlife" and later Osibisa that kept my England dreaming alive. Boot in truth Progressive was dying from its own limitations; moving from its grass roots of small venues, great live gigs and wooden appearances on TOTPs to morph into pomp rock, heavy metal, or Status Quo pile driver rock. Video was becoming the thing - Tyrannosaurus Rex had become Marc Bolan. Glam and disco started to put on the slap and eye liner, brush its hair into boufs to emerge glistening like  a polluted sea of cane toads in the headlights. If you could pose and dance like Travolta it meet be ok. Mott and Bowie? What had happened to the Hunter testicles I wondered. Even I could see from far away that progressive had fizzled out not with a whimper but a long, wet and dreary, over indulgent fart smelling of patchooli and stale spunk.

Ponsonby from top of College Hill-early daub by famous pisse artiste Belgo Le Geordie

It were for me an introspective period. Spending a lot of time hitching oop and down New Zealand. On the communes the post hippies played...you guessed it Kiwi versions of The Incredible String Underwear! There was some joy with two friends duelling guitars (acoustic) went through every root blues song they could remember. A respite from the extended dirge of lentils and mung beans. Then there were an infatuation with Laughing Lenny driving through the early morning in Auckland after finishing a night shift at a restaurant singing "Queen Victoria", one deadly album "Live Songs" under appreciated. Then there were Lenny Bruce and the celebration of the potty mouth. The Poetry of The Beats, Adrian Henri and Hone Tuwhare. There was a brief infatuation with Cat Stevens "Teaser and the Firecat" as I tried to mine for the inner wisp of the romantic. Then I found a mint copy of "Highway 61 Revisited" in a bargain bin and I was back to me snarlin', scowlin', sarcastic best.

The Mr Zimmerman going electric sell out album. I know it was released in 1967 and bloody Adam Dale loved it but I made it a mission to ignore Mr Tambourine Man- he was so old school and whiney. Christ, In England we even had to sing some of his songs at school assembly-how straight was that? The times are a changing. Not Fast enough Roberto! But Ballad of a Thin Man spoke to me. There had been a lot of people throwing bones at me for being vegetarian in meat scoffing New Zealand...and complicated, obscure lyrics were a comfort to the poetry writing fluff that drove my brain at this time. Then there was hitching 400 miles to a party where the sound track was "It's Only Rock and Roll" and dancing my way into the bed of a gorgeous girl, that like the music sparkled for one night and did not lead anywhere. She went on to much better things and a better man than I. Droogs turned from whacky backy and lysergic to cocaine and heroin and it showed in the music and the ways people appreciated it. Zappa was for junkies. Not to mention the meaness of alcohol. Mixed with pills, valium, and mandrax, Pubs and parties were more likely to end in drunken binges, in fights or destruction. In 1974 Big Norm Kirk died. Then Muldoon was elected.

Mammal 

Boot meanwhile, from out of the boiling mud pools slowly, but oh so slowly I stumbled across Kiwi bands that I liked to watch and listen too. Like Mammal (blues rock-jam improvisations with ace blues guitarist Robert Taylor) and Blerta - Activist performers - New Zilds Ken Kesey like pranksters where pantomime and psychedelic drugs wove strange tales of theatre/music and political activism. It introduced me to a drummer, the seriously warped Bruno Lawrence and comic actor in the making (Ian Watkin). Blerta played the university circuit and had a bizarre hit record about dancing all around the world - what were they on when they wrote and recorded that? Mammal combining with local poet Sam Hunt toured and produced a rare bit of vinyl that never re-surfaced "Like the Sky High Seagulls..." intoned Mr Hunt. The backing were grand! Boot it gave me hope as I moved or stumbled slowly towards me twenties that there were music in New Zealand that was unique. There were summat I didn't need English cloth ears to listen to. Although sometimes it were a hard road still. Variations on Human Instinct-guitar driven hard rock-morphing into Space Farm with their style of 'spiritual' guitar pyrotechnics and drawn out solos but lacked the intensity or ragged blues joys of the likes of Stan Webb, Tony McPhee, the Fairies axe smith Paul Rudolph and Stray's Del Bromham (listen to their album "Suicide" it still blisters). Stan Webb was and still is a great blues guitarist.

Did I say Muldoon was in power?

But in seventies New Zealand you were still reliant on those overseas bands that toured. Such as the great John Lee Hooker, Ottis Span, Sonny and Terry, Chuck Berry, Led Zeppelin, Santana at the Civic, the Stones, Eric Clapton, Joe Cocker, Leon Russell, Elton John, Rod Stewart-but most of the latter were all established fill stadiums superstars; mostly past their hey day and 'cashing in' bands). New Zealand was all too often the dog end on world tours. Cocker booed for not playing out "Mad Dogs and Englishman" boot playing some decent soul blues while most of the audience drifted out of Western Springs Stadium wanting their brass back. In particular 'St James Infirmary Blues'. There was the disgustingly over rated Neil Diamond that a friend made me go and watch and when he took his shirt a collective Kiwi women sigh sent the humidity around Western Springs into the swamplands of the American deep south. I was unable to persuade the girl I was with that Mr Diamond was already old enuff to be her granddad.  It was joost wrong!!! As was Three Dog Night and a whole drivel of American saccharine rock ending in the Doobies and the Eagles. Chuck Berry with a local backing band, telling them to play behind him or he would walk off stage. A 35 minute set, great guitarist with disdain for the punters (and his back up band of young blues players) he didn't bother to hide. The Stones at Western Springs was a weird disconnect - sitting up on the hillside above the stage as Jagger went through the motions. Wymann a block of wood with fingers. Taylor hiding beneath his hair. Junkies shooting smack and passing out as the music was just a soundtrack to an audience too strung out on anticipation to care they were being short changed. Only Keith Richards and Charlie Watts seemed to be actually playing that day. Although hats off to Led Zeppelin - for three hours they blew Western Springs Stadium apart. Jimmy Page mind numbingly good. But only the very subversive Jethro Tull appeared original, still challenging their audience with a truly weird rendition of "Thick as a Brick" at the Auckland Town Hall. They wandered from all parts dressed in beige macs like a strange version of a flock of Clouseaus and then played note perfect "Thick as a Brick' better live than the vinyl.

The faith was kept by a range of underground magazines like "Cock" and in Auckland, Resistance Bookshop, Ponsonby's People's Union, the Polynesian Panthers and Nga Tamatoa. The last lot  giving Auckland University engineer school students a hiding during orientation week for taking the piss out of the haka and then offering them lessons on how to do it properly. And the musical show HAIR where the whole cast took their kit off and the religious right filled the theatre toilet bowls with cement to try and get the show closed down. They didn't and we all shone on despite the housewife activism of one Patricia Bartlett...NZs answer to Mary Whitehouse and in Australia, one Fred Nile.

The Bacon Factory Ponsonby

"Tel Aviv" Herbie Mann and Bobby "Belgo" Jasper from "Flute Souffle"
I had a friend big on jazz. I thought that was nice for her - must be like a disease I thought. I made her listen to "Gasoline Alley" and she made me listen to Miles friggin Davis and then go to the Auckland jazz club and listen to visiting musos - some in bands supporting the likes of Herb Alpert and James Last - were jobbing musicians with a passion for improvisation and I found myself hooked. Of course there were the Maori show bands also hanging out in the club and there were evenings where the music would get seriously weird or the weed would get you seriously stoned. In fact being stoned seemed to be the best way to get jazz. I probably saw jazz greats but all I recall were nights when jams went on till the early morning with people drifting in and out and the occasional sucking in of breath as someone removing their coat was recognised as a great gracing our small stage. Or mabbe it were a butcher from Morrinsville comin' ta big smoke for a blow. And yes the locals, mostly amateurs, book-keepers, restauranteurs and plumbers by day stepped up, horns and instruments of all sorts aglow, for the love of it. Max Bailey drumming like he was trying to drive his kit uphill. Millie Bradfield singing like a smoking, drinking brown angel. Upright double basses and tinkling fret charged guitar riffs so laid back as to seem to slumber. Rich Maori baritones crooning into the smoke filled room. What was there not to love? Somewhere ahead lay the mysteries of one John Coltrane. But for the moment the tight bass, drum and piano nailing down the rhythm so the haunting interplay of saxes and flutes could bounce and soar across "Tel Aviv". Today it is still has all the magic of washed out early mornings where the light has barely broken out of the night.

Its how we lived in 70s New Zealand

"Plea Before the Storm" Sam Hunt and Mammal and Ball and Chain-Big Brother but the incomparable voice and lungs and sass of one Janis Joplin
But by 1976 English music had gone the way of either heavy metal, stadium rock or glam. Motts "All the Young Dudes" - please. Steeleye Span playing Auckland YMCA in make up and frilly shirts and the wonderfully voiced Maddy Prior being second fiddle to set pieces and poses. There were festivals, one in mud in a field outside Hamilton had Caravan, Lindisfarne and Status Quo. At one party an arts student, who would end up a celebrity chef ripped my Hawkwind "Lost In Space" album off my turntable and put on his Reggie Dwight's "Yellow Brick Road". I told him, I'd seen Elton when he was only a piano player. Hemel Hempstead 1970. Yellow Brick Road were joost over ripe musical mush for shallow twats. He told me to fook off. And I moved out and on, my living on the land period of bugger all music. While "Dark Side of the Moon" was being thrashed by those who were oblivious to its core message around mental health and crash and burn. Mainstreaming was becoming frightening in ripping the balls out of the sound.

Finally demolished to make way for a supermarket and car park

In England it led to punk. But in New Zealand the mid to late seventies, all free spirit beaten into a pulp by the Muldoon government, remained fixated with American rock (and Californian, laid back Tom Pretty tunes) on endless play by commercial radio. (Hauraki - pirates! Like calling Maggie Thatcher a socialist). Commercial radio also had a self opinionated elf by the name of Paul Holmes starting out with the musical taste of a traffic light. Constant exposure to the bloody awful Chicago, Blood Sweat and Drearys, the stale whimpering Bread, the aptly named Average White Band as "progressive". On the fringes, student parties still thrashed Santana, Grateful Dead, Jefferson (variations), Quicksilver, Van Morrison (Irish? Get out of here man!) Spirit, Love, Sly Stone, and the moody Doors. Aye Sly's "Its a Family Affair" is one great political track. I toyed with Zappa but I can't say I got past the almost jazz free flow of "Burnt Weeny Sandwich" until much later in life. Chicks got fierce about Joni Mitchell and Emmy-Lou. But I had a great new year's night on me own and a large bag of weed in the Titirangi bush - west Auckland and miles from anywhere bellowing out to "Ball and Chain"- Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company. It took me a lot longer to appreciate the deeply satisfying solo work of "Pearl" and what a great blues voice Ms Joplin had (and a wicked sense of humour and adventure). But you got the sense of a wave ending and in New Zealand being far away from where music that mattered might be headed. I was seriously marooned with it felt like nowhere to go.

Two budding guitar heroes (flat mates) gave me a piece of vinyl by one Roy Buchanan called Roy Buchanan. And the rip, shit and bust guitar of Mr Buchanan exposed the Krishna driven spiritual music of New Zilds latest guitar virtuosos Living Force as a pale condom wearing lipstick compared to the Big Roy. A born again god bothering guitarist who couldn't help selling his soul to the devil. Comparisons to the dead Hendrix were inevitable given how many Hendrix tunes Roy made his own. Living Force were good, but with no lasting impression despite ripping shit out of the night at a gig in the Piha Surf Club. Mabbe it were the cloying, sanctimonious spirituality; the prism through which they played all dressed in white, with wooden sandlewood beads and Krishnad to the eyeballs. Listening to Roy's wild guitar licks, religion was not yer first thought - despite titles like "The Messiah Will Come Again." Just soaring guitar breaks that lifted you up "Like the Sky High Seagulls Tossed From Those Chundering Black Boulders of the Clouds" of Mr Hunt.

An' he did courtesy of John Mosedale

On the heels of glam in New Zealand came Dragon and songs of Ponsonby although they went quickly over the Tasman to conquer Oz. And Alistair Riddell's dire 'protest song' "Out on the Streets" limp as a biscuit soaked in rose water tea. Ragnarok were not bad live with their fiery female lead singer - no earth mother, just confident and strong in her ability to belt out songs more sci-fi than glam. But then to signal the end of an age of mediocre pseudo hippy cover bands trying to be new glam; out of Taumaranui emerged the gothically avant garde Split Enz. They were then more performance art with obscure, arty lyrics and bizarre cubist costumes and make-up. Not feeble poorly applied make up but deranged, full throttle art spook.

In the last. warm summer days of 76-77 as I prepared to leave Auckland, at Ponsonby street parties a new form of music was capturing the mood. Nestor Marley's "Natty Dread". Liberation lyrics and reggae with guitar described as a chicken scratching underpinning lyrics that stung. I'd hit a roadblock. A trained vegetarian chef, I had started to eat meat again. There were ghosts in my past calling out. With not the best reasons and without a definite plan, I called it a day. Six years had saved me but not made me.

In 1977, I chopped off my dreads, had a good wash to get the sea salt outta me lugs, gave up the herb stalk and went back to England. Punk had been and gone leaving a rubble of good live music. Sexual Pistols? I thought the were sneering snot pickers with bad taste in clothes and make up.  Hippies were dead. The stadium gods under attack. There was something called new wave picking up speed on streets of London, the Clash, Jam and Tom Robinson was in London town. Steel Pulse were prowling out of Handsworth with English reggae. Auckland, as I sailed back north there was a last hurrah in a pub on the North Shore: Hello Sailor - oh dear! Time to ditch the muslin shirts and put on some drain pipes, cherry red docs and hooped t-shirts.

(Part Two to come)
*Actually the ageing BG vault has shaken out another memory from bairns school in West Denton. Being in a class roaring out "What Al we Do Like Wid The Drunken Sailor" and "My Johnny was a Sailor" and all the bollocks of cumin home from sea and marryin' her. When everyone knew first stop was the pub and getting roaring drunk on wads of cash before being sprung by the missus and bairns. Of course there was "Blaydon Races" - not that any of oos knew where we were gannen. The nuns would make you sing "Michael Rowed the Boat inta Other Blurry Bank and Sank!"

Sam Hunt : words about clouds and seagulls from "Plea Before A Storm" recorded with Mammal.