Hand Job Zine is a
UK literary mag run by Jim Gibson and Sophie Pitchford with contributions from
a range of writers, poets and artists from the margins. With six issues already
to its name it's uncompromising in content whilst its design harks back to the
punk DIY aesthetic of scissors and glue and a borrowed photocopier. Unlike
fellow zines PUSH and Paper & Ink which focus almost exclusively on the
physical page, Hand Job compliment their mag with (in contrast to its print
form) a neatly presented web version featuring different content.
Jim contacted me
recently to see if I'd be up for writing something about my "music
philosophy", how important music was to me and my general attitude to it.
I'm not usually keen on writing stuff to order but gave it a bash and the
result was posted on the Hand Job Zine site last week. It generated a considerable amount
of comment over the next few days, far more than my usual offerings, so I'll
reprint it here. Details of how to get hold of a Hand Job can be found at the foot of the page. Take a look.
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What type of music
are you into? On the face of it a simple enough question but the answer is
inevitably more complicated.
Back when I hit my
teenage years in the early to mid 80s it was easier. We had clear lines of
demarcation: mod, punk, psychobilly, goth, heavy metal, soul, new romantic,
etc. The lines were so clear, the battle dress immediately evident, the
question rarely needed to be asked. You could see the answer. Today, with the
noticeable absence of defined "tribes", a common response is
"oh, I like a bit of everything" which, when you get down to it,
really means most people aren't passionate about any of it. Music is there in
the background, stuck on in the car, added to an iTunes account. For me though,
it's dead centre of my existence. It's an obsession, definitely. An addiction,
most likely. It occupies nearly every spare moment I have. Outside of the drab,
dead-end, un-music related job that gets in the way for 41 hours a week, it's
music, music, music: not as a creator, but as a consumer.
It's partly
hereditary. Like most young girls at the time my mum took an interest in pop
music and loved going out dancing but my dad was hooked on modern jazz, on
be-bop, after his parents took him shopping as a kid in Hounslow and he came
home with the Sonny Stitt Quartet album Personal
Appearance in 1957 because something about the sleeve - a sharp looking
Stitt fixing a slightly menacing stare into middle distance with his sax poised
near his lips - connected with him. My mum hates jazz. That she married a man
who could, and still does, merrily listen to the most out-there, way-out jazz
he can find every waking hour is one of those mysteries of young romance. Dad's
attempts at playing Charlie Parker, Ornette Coleman or Sun Ra in the family
home - to this day - are futile attempts which only last long enough for mum to
cotton on and make him put his headphones on. As kids, me and my sister would
scream, "Daaaad, they're just making this up as they go along!" To
which he'd answer, "And what's wrong with that?" Of course, in the
way we all become our parents, I now drink real ale and recently bought a 1969
album by the Art Ensemble of Chicago, which is the epitome of making stuff up
as four men run around a recording studio crashing, bashing, blowing and
plucking as many disparate instruments as they could lay their hands on. And
what's wrong with that?
My Sonny Stitt
moment, the record that everything leads back to is the Jam's single
"Absolute Beginners". Purchased from WH Smith's in Uxbridge, Saturday
afternoon, October 1981, a couple of hours after they'd performed both sides of
the record on Swop Swap on BBC1. I wouldn't claim it's a brilliant record, it's
not even one of the Jam's best, but although I'd bought a few records already
this was when it became serious. I'm fairly confident I can trace a line from
almost everything I've bought or enjoyed since back to that record. That's one
of the fascinating and rewarding things about music: how one song leads to
another and how the tree grows branches and twigs.
The Jam gave me an
initial interest in all things "Mod". I was twelve years old and via
them there were new off-shoots to gradually explore: the obvious 60's
Mod-related groups; well known 60's hitmakers; no-hit beat combos; US
psychedelia and garage punk; UK pop-pysch; the catalogues of
Motown/Stax/Atlantic; northern soul; rhythm and blues; blues; jazz; gospel;
folk; as well as punk, new wave and small independent guitar-totting bands.
That's building on a strong foundation. And for every artist thrown up in this
haul it begs the question, who were they influenced by and who subsequently
carried the flame?
Quite how I was ever
going to discover all this music, frustratingly out of reach, was a big
problem. It still is, but the internet and the ability to hear almost anything
immediately is a blessing. After leaving school I started work around the
corner from the big HMV by Bond Street tube. Most days I'd go in there and
marvel at the records and buy as much as I could. Flicking through the albums,
if I wanted to know what The Doors' Morrison
Hotel or James Brown's Live At The
Apollo sounded like, I'd have to buy them. There was no other way. I
remember thinking if I could have one wish it would be to have every record in
the shop. In some ways the internet has provided that. Mum soon spotted me
coming home regularly with something new. "You should be saving, not
wasting all your money on records". Wasting? I resorted to stuffing them
inside my coat when entering the house and quickly making a dash to my bedroom
to unload the loot. One advantage of paying for music is it encourages repeated
listens. Clicking around the internet today if a song doesn't connect within
the first 20 seconds it's missed its chance. That's a terrible thing really,
especially as the more immediate a song is, the less longevity I find it has.
It's revealed its hand too quickly.
Songs and records
were practically one and the same thing then. Although less the case now it's
still my preferred way to experience music: in the format they were made for.
To root around a record shop or market stall and travel back on the tube - in
the same way I did with "Absolute Beginners" - with albums or singles
in a carrier bag is a massive buzz. There's no real need to buy things without
hearing them anymore but I still enjoy that leap into the unknown, that
anticipation, that ritual of carefully removing it from the sleeve, of the
smell, of the pop and crackle of old records. What's this going to sound like?
There's a name of a previous owner neatly written on the cover or record label.
What was their story? They must've loved this when they took it to that party
in 1966 or 1976 or 1986.
Old records have a
history. Each copy has had a life of its own, quite separate from any life of
those involved in its creation may have had. Of all the records in my
collection, it's the obscure R&B records that contain the most magic. Made
by individuals I know nothing about. I could look them up these days, do a bit
of research. Sometimes I do but mostly I like the mystery. Pulling a few
randomly off the shelf now: "Rudy's Monkey" by Rudy and the Reno
Bops; "Hey L. Roy" by L. Roy Baimes; "When Things Get A Little
Better" by Oscar Boyd; "Son-In-Law" by Louise Brown; "Who's
Over Yonder" by the Garden State Choir. Who were these people that made
these 45s 50-60 years ago for small American labels? Doubtful many of the
people responsible are here now but they've left something for us to discover.
They've made their mark. Achieved something. Make a record and you live
forever.
Each
day is a fresh search to discover something brilliant I've not heard before and
as time marches on there's that acceptance I'm never going to be able to
capture it all. Ain't that fantastic? If I only liked mod or punk or country or
soul, I'd have had this licked long ago. There's plenty of okay stuff out there
but it's the big what-if-I'd-never-heard-this-in-my-life fish that's I'm always
looking to catch. And what are those songs? I've been trying to think if
there's a common thread between all my favourite records. They've got to have
soul, I guess. By that I mean truth. They've got to be believable. In Bob
Dylan's MusiCare's Person of The Year acceptance speech last week he quoted Sam
Cooke as saying "Voices ought not to be measured
by how pretty they are. Instead they matter only if they convince you that they
are telling the truth." That's the key. It's only possible to have a true
emotional connection if one believes what they're being told. Three chords, or
more, and the truth.
When Gram Parsons
recounts the death of his bride-to-be in "$1000 Wedding", I believe
him. When Jerry Butler, after one more heartache, moans he's "Giving Up On
Love", I believe him. When the Action sing about crying all night and the
sun feeling cold in "Since I Lost My Baby", I believe them. When
Howlin' Wolf growls knowingly about little girls understanding in "Back
Door Man", I believe him. When Big Daddy Rogers insists he's got a lot of
meat and is hard to beat in "I'm A Big Man", I believe him. When The
Byrds "Feel A Whole Lot Better" when you're gone, I believe them.
When Manic Street Preachers fire a barely decipherable assault throughout
"Motown Junk" I don't quite know what they're saying but I believe
they mean it. When Bob Dylan, Mavis Staples, Curtis Mayfield, Chuck D sing, I
believe them.
So, tell me, what
music are you into?
