'SLINGSHOT' by THE SENIOR SERVICE (2018)

If, like me, you still get a frisson of excitement seeing the new year on a single for the first time, then the Senior Service’s groovelaiden new 45 should fulfil that for 2018.

Available to pre-order now, and out on Damaged Goods Records on 26 January, ‘Slingshot’ is backed with a version of the old Prisoners number ‘Hide and Seek’. New album, King Cobra, is released in the spring.

BILLY CHILDISH & CTMF - A GLIMPSE OF ANOTHER TIME EP and THE BALLAD OF THE ST. JOHN'S TAVERN

Billy Childish last week released his 983^rd record in the shape of a new four-track EP on Damaged Goods under his current band name, CTMF. What makes this particularly waxing interesting to me is how the title track, ‘A Glimpse of Another Time’, pays tribute to a little piece of unsung London gigging history; that of the Wild Western Room at the St. John’s Tavern in Archway, North London.

“Friday nights, we would play, under the gaze of the IRA. A wagon wheel and a cowboy scene, the JCB man smiling at me. It was a glimpse of another time.”

The cover photograph by Paul Slattery shows Billy fronting Thee Headcoats in their deerstalking glory at the Tavern in 1991. It was an odd little place containing two very different scenes. The main pub was a smoky, tatty, weather-beaten old boozer which a few smoky, tatty, weather-beaten old Irishmen rattled around in. The back room, the Wild Western Room, with its wagon wheel on the ceiling, badly painted cowboy scene on the wall and a giant pair of bull’s horns stuck above the tiny tiered stage built into the corner was the domain, during the week, of a character who operated under the name Slim Chance.

“Slim’s hammer was under the table, […] the PA was on top of the table, some drunken idiot just pulled out the cable. It was a glimpse of another time.”

I never knew Slim’s background and thought it best not to ask too many questions but he put on hundreds of gigs in that place. He was quite a bit older than us, and a lot more lived in: he had faded homemade tattoos on his skinny arms and scraggly curly hair which made him look like a wirier Ian Hunter. The rougher and readier, the more garagey, the more punk, the more outsiderish, the better for Slim. He championed bands other promoters wouldn’t touch and was content to repeatedly book bands who didn’t have a hope in hell of bringing in many punters. Quite how much acts got paid, if at all, was subject to a baffling collection of variables that only Slim could calculate.

“The Armitage Shanks, they were there, the Riot Gurls with boy-cut hair, the Guaranteed Ugly were smiling through, the Fire Department and the audience few. It was a glimpse of another time.”

He’d put on mod type bands, and the 60’s pop-pysch stuff but Thee Headcoats epitomized Slim’s ethos and were the venue’s “star” attraction. It was no bullshit rock & roll, where spirit and attitude counted and musicianship was largely irrelevant. Thee Headcoats were one of only a few bands who drew decent attendances despite nights which featured three or four bands of roughly similar ilk.

My mates and I saw a lot of gigs there in the early to mid-90s and it was a definite influence on starting our own band. If these groups can get away with it so can we, was the thought. And that turned out to be the case with The Electric Fayre. I wasn’t a big fan of Thee Headcoats or Armitage Shanks (did like the Guaranteed Ugly though who we played with) but seeing crudely minimalist bands like that did provide inspiration, or rather courage, to learn three chords and stand there in public and loosely play them repeatedly.  

Almost the only time we played gigs out of Uxbridge was for Slim who was unfazed by our incompetence and was always encouraging. We played there every few weeks for a while; I think on one occasion to five people. Slim didn’t mind and still booked us. We were cheap I suppose. “Give it six months and you lot will be really good” he said once. A prophesy that remained unfulfilled. For reasons never explained one day Slim did a bunk. He dumped his contact book on Paul ‘PJ’ Crittenden, who was helping with the gigs now the nights had moved down the road to a bigger location at the Boston Arms under the Dirty Water banner, and vanished into the night, never to be seen or heard of again. All very mysterious.

Those nights at the St John’s Tavern didn’t feel like anything particularly earth-shattering and were taken for granted but can now - with the benefit of hindsight, and nostrils free from the stench of those concrete, freezing toilets - be looked back on fondly. London’s venues for bands starting out with little or no audience are disappearing week by week. It was, indeed, another time.

“Cee Bee Beaumont!”

I walked past the Tavern a couple of months ago and was pleased it’s still a pub but the IRA, the JCB man and fans of Cee Bee Beaumont would not have recognised the place which now serves “Trout fillet with Crayfish Sauce and White Chocolate Brûlé” instead of garage punk at such distorted volume. As for Billy Childish, his records don’t date; they exist in their own time zone. I’m not one to suggest they all sound the same but his latest EP isn’t a million miles away from the sound he made in the Wild Western Room; in fact it doesn’t even stylistically travel as far as Archway tube station. And that is bloody remarkable in so many ways.

A Glimpse of Another Time EP by CTMF is out now on Damaged Goods Records.

Lyrics quoted above by Billy Childish.

Typical Western Room gig list, 1995.

The Electric Fayre at the St John's Tavern, Photo by Sonia Cazzaniga

THE SENIOR SERVICE - DEBUT 45 - DEPTH CHARGE

The debut single by The Senior Service is released today on Damaged Goods Records. ‘Depth Charge’ b/w ‘Hall of Mirrors’ is the work of the instrumental quartet Graham Day (guitar), Jon Barker (organ), Darryl Hartley (bass) and Wolf Howard (drums).

Looking at that line-up of Medway magnificence it doesn’t require me to say much more than they sound exactly how you would hope and expect: bespectacled spy walks into a nightclub as a swingin’ 60s go-go soundtrack is played by musicians with a long streaks of ash hanging from their Players No.6 as half-drunk jugs of Watney’s Red Barrel sit on their amps. If that doesn’t sell it, nothing will. 

The single is available from Damaged Goods and the combo have a special launch show at the Half Moon in Putney on Saturday 30^th January, presented by the Retro Man Blog.  

BILLY CHILDISH at ROUGH TRADE EAST

Unbeknownst to him, Billy Childish has been advertised as giving a poetry reading followed by a live set with the Musicians of the British Empire. He’s not best pleased. “I don’t like to mix it with my rock ‘n’ roll”, he says. “This young lady over here wanted to ask me what poets wear. All poets are vermin, that’s all you need to know”. But ever the honourable gentleman, if that’s what people have come for, that’s what they’ll get. Unprepared he only has his latest book of poems with him that he’d bought along to sell – not read. He doesn’t know them off by heart and doesn’t much fancy reading them, explaining that due to his dyslexia unless he’s read something hundreds of times he never knows the next line. “I can remember other people’s words; just not my own”. Not that it matters, Childish is such a charismatic raconteur that the poems read are in fact less entertaining than the chit-chat surrounding them, railing – comically - against everything from the Guardian, the Edinburgh Festival, promoters and audiences to poets.

One poem mentions a Walkman which Billy notes “really should be one of those, whatyoucallits, iPods. See, I know all the gear” he says with a grin and mischievous twinkle in his eye. He plays the role of man out of time wonderfully well and discloses that although he doesn’t own a mobile phone nor iPod, his wife Nurse Julie does and on Sundays whilst painting he has Beethoven playing from one. “Anyone listen to Ludwig van Beethoven?” Stony silence. “You should. One of the advantages of Beethoven is there’s no words to learn yet plenty of banging about”.

Along with Julie on bass and Wolf on drums it’s the banging about of MBEs that comes next. Being a relaxed afternoon session the band are in civvies rather than their normal battle dress with Childish sporting a 1940’s docker spruced up for an evening on the town look. With the safety net of his lyrics on the floor they set about crashing through a short, sweet yet predictable set. For someone with a back catalogue of over a 100 albums he repeatly draws from a small pool of songs and there’s inevitability about the set: “Misty Water”, “Joe Strummer’s Grave”, “A Quick One”, “Troubled Mind”, “Punk Rock Ist Nicht Tot” and “Fire”. Nurse Julie gets a ribbing for forgetting how to play “Troubled Mind”. “She’s got her pregnancy brain on. I might not remember words but I can remember chord sequences”. Such slap dash musicianship is part of the charm as the songs crudely crackle along fueled by their pure, honest and determined punk rock spirit.

Archive from 1959: the Billy Childish Story, a double CD set of 51 tracks spanning over thirty years is out now on Damaged Goods.