MOST OF MY HEROES STILL DON'T APPEAR ON NO STAMP: THE NIGHT I MET PUBLIC ENEMY

There can’t be many better record shops in the world than Rough Trade East in Bethnal Green. Every couple of weeks I come away with something unexpected. The other day I went to hear Public Enemy’s Minister of Prophecy, Chuck D,  “in conversation” but as usual came away with a lot more.

Twenty minutes before his scheduled appearance Chuck was there, browsing around the shop. I whipped out It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back from my bag and gently pounced as he idly thumbed the counter display. “Hey Chuck, how ya doin’ man?” That, you notice, was my street voice. “Hey,” he said, a bit like a sleepy Fonz, and offered his hand. “Would you mind signing this please?” “Sure.”  He did his thing. “What you talking about today Chuck?” He shrugged. “I don’t know. Whatever people ask me.” “Off the cuff yeah?” I began to sound like an idiot, and then added “In London long?” which confirmed it in his mind. “Excuse me?” “Are you in London long?” “Yeah,” and picks up a copy of the Creation Records DVD Upside Down and studied the contents intently. I took that as my cue. “Cheers mate.” Mates see, me and Chuck D. Not as close as me and James Dean Bradfield but mates all the same.

When he took the low stage he wasn’t alone. In tow were Public Enemy’s turntablist DJ Lord and none other than every clock repairer’s favourite customer, Flavor Flav. Chuck didn’t have anything planned to say; it was whatever came into his head and the first thing was to generously praise Rough Trade, both for the label and the store. “I don’t give accolades lightly, just for bullshit,” he said before noting the difference in this part of the East End from when he came years ago. “Back then you would’ve got slashed,” to which Flav took offence saying that he would’ve fitted in anywhere. “I’m not saying I would’ve either,” Chuck continued, “but some of you would have.” A satchel of Brick Lane hipsters shuffled awkwardly in their chinos.

When Chuck D holds forth on a Public Enemy record or in person, it leaves little room for manoeuvre or opposition. Everything is delivered with such conviction it must be The Truth. It was funny though to see how the thoughtful and serious Chuck and the World’s Oldest Teenager Flav worked off each other; like an old school comedy duo. They call themselves the Rolling Stones of Rap; they are almost the Cannon and Ball of Rap too. Chuck remained seated and spoke in a steady tone earnestly recounting facts and figures whilst Flav leap to his feet and outstretched his arms with every loud heart-on-sleeve outpouring. Their publicist mentioned Flav had slept and eaten, which I took as an unusual occurrence. The clock around his neck said 4 o’clock. It was quarter past six, so don’t ever ask him what time it is. The bespectacled DJ Lord sat stage right looking quietly amused by it all.   

For around an hour they covered a lot of ground. Chuck embraced mobile phone technology as a form of communication and how it enabled people to make music and films cheaply and easily but worried “some folk are closer to their phones than their own families.” Flav was more concerned about people secretly filming him when he was eating (or worse). Chuck couldn’t understand how name DJs got paid so much money “for twiddling a few knobs” and railed against acts performed for 20 minutes. Public Enemy are all about their live shows where they “never give less than a hundred and ninety percent.”  That’s a lot of percent but when he said the group had toured 84 times and visited 83 countries there was no reason to doubt his figures. “That’s why when people ask “Have you been in London long?” I’m like, we’re always here.” Okay man, I hear ya now.

A question from the audience made them recall their performance at the Reading Festival in 1992. I was there and they were incredible. Remember the ballyhoo when Jay-Z headlined Glastonbury in 2008 and ignorant numpties were flapping how a hip-hop act wouldn’t work at a huge festival, as if people only appreciate one style of music? When PE headlined that Saturday night in ’92, coming on directly after Ride and the Manic Street Preachers they were incredible and I’m no fan of big gigs. Everyone in that muddy field was jumping so hard pints of beer were knocked over in Reading pubs. I’ve never seen an act so completely control a gigantic crowd the way PE did that evening.    

Chuck acknowledged that twice during their 25 year career they’ve been buoyed by their music being used in other contexts, namely “Fight The Power” in Spike Lee’s film and now 2007’s “Harder Than You Think” being used for the Paralympics television coverage, giving them their highest ever chart placing in the UK. We still have an official chart? Come back Top of the Pops all is forgiven. He made a distinction between writing songs and making records, and also added “it’s not the artist’s job to sell records, it’s the sales people’s job to sell records. I just make them”. When asked which of his lyrics he was most proud of he said all of them but picked, as a sports aficionado, “He Got Game” for the way it mixed basketball themes with music. Not a winning combination for the Great British public. I like that song mostly for the Buffalo Springfield sample which rather proves his point about song writing and record making. Public Enemy’s strength is how they combine powerful lyrics to interesting samples – like a social, political and music history lesson in one. If people only got their education from Public Enemy records they'd do all right in life.

There was plenty more, including heartfelt tributes to Adam "MCA" Yauch from the Beastie Boys (“they were fighting for their right to party; we were partying for our right to fight”), all of which was a great but the real highlight was the live performance that followed. The lights were low, it was hot, and it felt like a private PE gig in my front room. Amazing to see and hear Chuck and Flav trade raps through a set including “Prophets of Rage”, “911 Is A Joke”, “Harder Than You Think”, latest single “I Shall Not Be Moved” and more, even if Chuck did attempt to text Mrs D mid-song. The performance of the “Fight The Power” was something else altogether.  They hadn’t even got to branding Elvis and John Wayne racists when Flav left the stage. Chuck called him back. Flavor wasn’t having it, “What you doing man? Trying to fight the power with your shit? Ah Jesus man. Fighting the power with your smell?” Yep, Chuck D had dropped his guts and an outraged Flavor Flav wasn’t going anywhere near him. A few minutes of fart gags followed – when in Britain – before the whiff cleared enough to continue. Poor DJ Lord felt the full force trapped behind his decks. I’ve seen some things in my time but Public Enemy being halted by a silent but deadly was a new one. After a couple of giggly false starts they finally nailed it.   

Afterwards they posed for photographs (me and Chuck looking like couple of homies) and signed records. I thanked Flavor Flav. “No, thank you” he said and signed It Takes A Nation. “Cheers mate,” I said. “Cheers mate,” mimicked Flav in a ridiculous over-the-top Cockney accent; half way between Dick Van Dyke and Paul Hogan. We shook hands and he cackled his famous cartoon laugh.

Public Enemy’s latest album Most Of My Heroes Still Don’t Appear On No Stamp is out now and rather good it is too.

MONKEY USA PART 5: SUN RECORDS, MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE

Some people are nuts for the Sun sound. I listen to it, like it, respect it, but it lags a long way behind in my affections when compared to Chess, Motown and Stax. Having already visited the sites of those three meccas Sun had its work cut out to compete, yet a combination of me being less pernickety/knowledgeable about the subject and having the best guided tour of the four meant - bar the shivers of walking into Studio A at Motown – this was possibly the best of the bunch.

I knew Sun Records was at 706 Union Avenue but its surrounding area, a fifteen minute walk from Beale Street, still took me a bit by surprise. Once again my London brain assumed it would be the corner of narrow busy street but it stood alone on the corner of wide road facing what the locals, I believe, call a gas station. With the surrounding buildings knocked down, its uneven brown brick construction like a building left standing after the Blitz; albeit one with a giant golden guitar hanging outside.

Walking through the door we were immediately into a room that operates as the reception, a souvenir shop and a cosy diner; mainly a diner/café. There were a couple of booths by the window and five red leather stools at the bar emblazed with the names Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison and Elvis Presley across them. I nabbed Johnny’s. Despite the stocks of t-shirts and stacks of gift items it didn’t feel especially touristy; just a cool place to order a bottle of coke and sit listening to the boom-chicka-booming in the background. The big geezer with the big quiff behind the counter was nuts for the Sun sound, it was obvious enough without the need for him to pull up his yellow Sun t-shirt to reveal a huge yellow Sun tattoo across his ample chest. All the people that worked there were undoubtedly Sun freaks first, employees second.

Jason was our tour guide and owner of a fine head of hair and bushy beard. Lord knows how many times he’d conducted this tour but he still sounded so passionate and excited his enthusiasm rubbed off instantly. He led us (a dozen yanks and us two limeys) upstairs to the tiny museum stuffed with old Ampex recording equipment, posters, records, stage outfits, all the usual stuff.

Sam Phillips set up shop here in 1950 as the Memphis Recording Service - he hadn’t yet started Sun as a label - so when Ike Turner and his Kings of Rhythm drove through the rain in March 1951 to record “Rocket 88” (credited to Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats, a decision that must’ve irked Ike for the rest of his life) it was released on Chess, giving Chess in the North and Sun in the South join claims on what is broadly accepted as “the first rock and roll record”. Jason liked talking about firsts, or to be more accurate, “very” firsts, which is before your bog-standard first. He told us about “Rocket 88” and after giving it a big build-up as “the very first rock and roll record, made in this very building” hit a remote control in his hand and bang, Ike’s tinkling the ivories and Jackie’s honking his sax and bellowing about his jalopy. It was a simple idea yet bought the music and the place together perfectly in a way other studios (and I’m especially looking at you Motown with your singing flunkies) failed to do.

Howlin’ Wolf also recorded here during ’51 and as the unsuspecting punters stood before a cardboard Wolfman they got a blast of “Moanin’ At Midnight”. The look on their faces, eyes widening, as the Wolf’s guttural moans came booming out of nowhere was a sight to behold. Most of these people had never heard such a noise. The kid in front of me looked terrified. Hot on Wolf’s heels was the mighty “Bear Cat” by Rufus Thomas. The gathering had little difficulty in recognising the blatant rip from “Hound Dog” (so blatant the resulting lawsuit almost bankrupt Sun with its first hit), which finally led us to Elvis Aaron Presley.

Public Enemy spat out “Elvis was a hero to most but he never meant shit to me” on “Fight The Power” which is broadly how I feel (although Chuck D followed that with “straight up racist” which I don’t believe) but its churlish to come to Memphis and be snooty about Elvis. Jason told us about the very first time Elvis came to Sun; he played us his very first recording; we hear him played on the radio for the very first time; and we see his very first television appearance. He was all right though that Elvis. Nice voice, good looking lad.

We then shuffled downstairs into the studio. It felt like a studio because it still is. Vintage equipment was pushed to the sides of the small white pegboard walled room and folk were in the control booth looking like they were working. Amazingly when the premises had other uses (including life as a fishing tackle shop) before reopening as Sun in 1987, it stayed relatively untouched (even down to the light fittings), and if you believe Jason the marks and dents and grooves in the original linoleum floor show where the musicians stood and played. He hit his remote again and led us through a succession of classic cuts. They sounded bloody good too, although Mrs Monk and I disagree on whether Roy Orbison’s “Ooby Dooby” is a good record or not. I say yes but know she’s probably right.

The money shot when it came to the photo opportunity was the chance to pose with a vocal microphone used on recordings here in the 50s, in the shadow of an Elvis picture using a similar one. Jason urged people to have a go and recreate the curled lip. Despite feeling a wally I did quickly attempt to channel Johnny Cash recording “Get Rhythm” and due to the mic being used Johnny Rotten in the “God Save The Queen” video. I got it spot on too. Unfortunately Mrs Monk’s trigger finger was far too slow and snapped me looking like an embarrassed girl instead.

If anyone goes to Memphis they have to brace themselves to be asked on their return, “Did you go to Graceland?” We caught the shuttle bus from Sun and had a nose around “The King’s” gaff. I’d love to live there in its mid-70s time capsule: to chill in his TV/record room; to shoot pool in the pool room; to get smashed with my mates in the jungle room; and to have my cook knock up a few burgers in the tiny kitchen. None of the rooms were big and the main building was a lot smaller than expected. I bet Chuck D lives in a bigger house.




Click on the Monkey USA label below for further adventures: Motown, Stax, Chess and Buddy Guy.

BABY, I'M READY TO GO by MELISSA MANN

Public Enemy’s last album was How You Sell Soul To A Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul? A good question. Another question Chuck D might ponder is how you sell poetry to an uninterested public who don’t even buy books let alone poems by some northern bird they’ve never heard of.

I tell you what you don’t do: you don’t house said poems in an unattractive cover; with a badly staged, ham-fisted photograph; with ugly lettering and font; and a title with the unfortunate side effect of causing involuntary outbreaks of that ghastly song by Republica. Yes, there’s the old cliché about books and covers but come on.

Of course there are thousands of shitty book designs and I couldn’t give a rat’s arse about most of them, I’m only grumbling because whilst screwing my nose up I nearly missed out, and that was despite being familiar with Melissa from her Beat The Dust site. I only succumbed during a rare moment of fumbling around for something to read. And thank goodness, because it’s an engaging, entertaining and often very funny read. As you may have gathered by now, I don’t like to work too hard with poetry. I want it to say what it has to say in a few simple, straight forward, easy to understand words and bugger off. No nonsense. And I want to relate to them; nothing about blackbirds or rocks or whatnot. Mann’s poems are witty and wily and have a ring and a rhythm to them. Her words tumble out and some of the snappy staccato bursts sound like lyrics awaiting music. From tales of Yorkshire youth to London letdowns, from broken hearts to Jimmy Saville, from bus stops to public conveniences, these are our everyday trials and tribulations told without exaggeration or braggado.

The cover isn’t that bad and I’m being especially mean to a small independent publisher without an expensive art department, so for the price of a couple of pints chuck a copy in someone’s Christmas stocking - after you’ve read it yourself of course. And that Public Enemy album is better than you probably think too, so stick that in as well.

Baby, I’m Ready To Go by Melissa Mann is published by Grievous Jones Press, priced £7.
www.beatthedust.com
www.grievousjonespress.com