Why We Need The KLF.

A Twitter conversation last night about the shitefest that is Glastonbury provoked an idea so wonderful I can't sleep properly. That Glastonbury has made the journey from counter-cultural peace movement mung bean folk rock oddity to corporate staple of the musical calendar is hardly an original announcement but something is wrong with music and, as with most things, I'm pinning the blame on the Tories  (and by default New Labour).

Music needs to be overhauled every now and then. Beatlemania, Punk, Acid House all lit the fuse under a tired culture at the time. Now, in an age of Spotify and YouTube, where musical discovery is no longer the art of time consuming investigation and risk taking that it was in my day (IN MY DAY), everything seems to be heading towards some kind of homogenous sludge.

I want to be excited by music again. As a kid, there would be a new song every month or so on Top of the Pops that would make me feel something akin to delirium, a fever only soothed by that moment when I was finally able to see the stylus of the family record player hit the first groove of the vinyl I'd spunked my paper round money on. Occasionally I would fuck up and buy something like Toto's enduringly crass Africa but purchases like Eurythmics electro take on the Shangri-La's psychodrama , Frankie Goes to Hollywood's ballistic Cold War funk and this thrilling voyage into the brave new world of sampling made me feel that pop music would forever mutate into new exciting streams and sub streams, that despite the British public's fondness for novelty shit, sentimental shit and Euro holiday shit - there was still the very realistic hope that next week's edition of Top of the Pops would deliver something wonderful for me to feel that strange anticipation of the new.

When the coalition formed a government in 2010, some wise heads consoled themselves with the thought that music would improve as it had under the last Tory regime. Though industries closed and millions of dreams fell by the wayside, the Thatcher era was ushered in by the post punk sound of Joy Division (led ironically by a Tory voter) and over the next decade or so bands as disparate as The Smiths, Culture Club and Happy Mondays made debuts on Top of the Pops that made a nation gawp - an ever evolving national soundtrack providing sweet relief from the miseries of Margaret.

But it hasn't happened. Top of the Pops finally died in the face of public indifference and the technological marvel of unending libaries of downloadable portable music. Indie became a marketing term for guitar pop as groups of identikit middle class kids from the Home Counties formed the "The" bands - Vaccines, Kooks, Fratellis and decided that vaguely hummable choruses were all that was needed to sustain some sort of career in the music industry. The jaw dropping global success of Mumford and Sons, tonight's headliners at Glastonbury, is the last straw. A band whose schtick is dressing like 18th century mill workers whilst playing mildly anthemic dross have sold 2 billion copies of their records. The nation that gave the world Slade, the Specials and Pulp are repackaging the Tolpuddle Martyrs as life-affirming rock and it wont do.


What we need is a band that understand the true fuel of pop music isn't ambition but an understanding that it should be escapist, absurd and thrilling all at once. That bands dont need stories or journeys that the public must be drip fed in the tabloids, that mystery is the currency of pop genius. What we need is revolution. What we need is the KLF.

The KLF took the entrepeneurial can-do mantra of Thatcherism and subverted it via the technological advances of sampling, hijacked an emerging dance culture and invented something called Stadium House. Epic, thrilling nonsense. What Time is Love - a hybrid of acid house, hip hop, illuminati references and air raid sirens was everything pop should be - a shock of the new containing references to the old. 3AM Eternal topped the charts and was banned from a war-sensitive charts due to its machine gun sample. These were gargantuan slices of lunacy that had no right sharing chart space with Beverley Craven and Simply Red but there they were persuading country queen Tammy Wynette to join them in a song about acid house ice cream vans nonetheless. They ended up burning a milllion quid and dragging sheep carcasses to the Brits - now that's rock and roll - irresponsible, irreverent and irritating all at once.

Watching the likes of Mumfords top Glastonbury with the grim prospect of tomorrow evening being headlined by the Dignitas advert that is the Rolling Stones, it's clear that pop music needs an injection of thrilling irrelevance. Dizzee Rascal won't provide it. There's an embryonic campaign kicking off on Twitter - KLF to headline Glastonbury 2014. The nation needs them, your ears need them. There's a generation of kids right now that think paying £150 to camp for three days in a Somerset puddle to watch some old rich men playing tired old songs half a mile away is a rite of passage. Let's save them.

Josh Ruins Christmas

Another piece of autobiographical writing about my son.

Part Time Dad

It’s the Saturday before Christmas and I’m on a packed Tube train headed for Oxford Circus. I hate Christmas. I hate the Tube. Shopping and people – I hate them too. I am devoid of the Christmas spirit but I have promised all year to take my son, Josh, who is nine, to Hamleys. We probably won’t buy anything there because it’ll be ridiculously overpriced because most of their customers are tourists who won’t realise there are other toy retailers within half an hour’s walk. Josh and I are standing – the train is packed and we’re up against a door.

                My son looks like the Milky Bar Kid. Little thatch of blond hair, spectacles that keep falling down his slightly freckled nose.  So far, so cute. Add to this the fact that he has somehow managed to cultivate an accent which combines the cut glass Sarf Lahndn voice of his father and the sing song soft Welsh lilt of his bitch mother and he has quite a sweet little voice too.

                A voice which, sadly for me, he is about to shatter the traditional silence of the packed Tube train with.

                “Daddy?”

                “Yes.”

                “What does homosexual mean?”

                Now, at this point, I ought to point out that I am wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the legend “GAY DAD” in big letters. They’re a band I went to see the weekend before. I liked the T-shirt and I knew that wearing it when I went to pick my son up would upset his evil cow mother.

                I look at the rest of the people in our carriage who have turned their heads to me as one, like some Christmas shopping Hydra. They’re all clearly keen on hearing me answer this question and, having clocked the T-shirt I’m wearing, have agreed between themselves on the events that have led me to this moment.

                I reckon they think that I’m gay and that my son was the result of a doomed relationship with a woman in which I lived in denial of my true sexuality until I could stand it no more. Perhaps they’ve added a boyfriend. A job too. Perhaps I live in Muswell Hill with a set designer called Piers.

                Their eyes haven’t moved. The Hydra, like my son, wants to know what a homosexual is.

                “Daddy? What does homosexual mean?”

                “Well, it’s a very long word for a small boy to be using. I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

                “Billy called me one.”

                “Well, Billy shouldn’t use words he doesn’t understand. It’s not an insult, ignore Billy, he’s being very childish.”

                Even my stupid hateful and ugly piece of shit of an ex would have to agree that I had displayed something approaching maturity here. The rest of the carriage, I feel, are about to break into polite applause at my thoughtful parenting skills. We’re all bonding together in the warm glow of my magnificent answer. I feel Christmassy. Come on Hydra, let’s go to the pub and drink some mulled wine and crack open a walnut.

                Josh ruins it though. Josh ruins Christmas.

                “It’s OK though Dad. I called him a cunt.”

 

A Moment Of Madness

I like really short fiction.

Many are the ways in which this tale will be written. I want to recall it perfectly, write it purely as I see it from the distance of the sole hour that has passed since the occurrence. For, despite the warnings, already I imagine the varying interpretations taking place, the calculated Chinese whisper passing from powerful ears to weaker ones.

      At three minutes past noon today I went to a cash machine a few yards from my office. In error, I asked for a receipt. There was a queue behind me but I waited till it was printed lest others discover the extent of my poverty.

     I bought a cheese and onion roll.

     Opposite the baker’s there is a pub that sells cheap beer all day and cheap beer all night. Outside it there were the usual crowd of refugees from the world of work. There’s a bench a few yards up from there where I like to sit with my lunch if the weather’s not too bad. I took a seat and opened up the bag.  A pigeon heard the tiny crackle of paper and landed close to my feet.

     The pigeon looked at me. I thought about shooing him.

     And then it happened.

I knew it wasn’t just happening in my head because of all the spilt cars around me, the stumbling beers and crashing women, the way that people clutched their heads to listen closer to the voice, to blot it out, to protect themselves from the sudden madness.

     A voice, a voice like none heard yet in the sane world, spoke in all the heads on Earth.

     I am the Creator.

     I made you and I can unmake you.  Abandon your churches, your mosques and temples. Destroy your banks, burn your things. Eden exists. It is all around you. Your beliefs are confirmed but do not become complacent for your rituals disappoint me. Put down your weapons and feed each other. Abandon your wealth as you would your worries for the two are one. The next time I speak will be the last.

     I heard the church on the hill at the top of the town smash, saw the smoke rise from here and turned again as the town’s mosques, temples and banks fell into dust. I felt the coins in my pocket burn through the lining, fall and melt into nothingness.

As I speak, the televisions are beginning to crackle back into life silent. I can hear sirens and gunfire. The sky has emptied of clouds and the streets are filled with wondrous, upturned heads. A man on the radio is crying. There is talk of rioting.

     A pigeon nibbles at the dropped roll by my feet.  I think about shooing him.

     And then it happens.

...and when did you first see your son?

I wanted to write something about being a dad. I'm stealing a title, of course, from the wonderful Blake Morrison.

And when did you first see your son?

I won’t mention the first time I saw you physically because in truth all I remember about that day was the crushing realisation that all of this was really happening after all. A little black and white monitor and some bizarre computer game being played upon it. And the nurse pointing out this beating heart.  I couldn’t see it myself. I just nodded, not wanting to look stupid. I remember your mum looking at me and the pair of us realising we would be seeing this game through to the end. 

            So that wasn’t the first time I saw you.

            Four minutes after you were born, sometime after two in the morning, I held you for the first time. I remember the surprising warmth and weight of the bundle. I remember the smell of the efforts of labour and the sight of your mother angry with exhaustion. A father can feel like a fraud at such moments, I did. The only thing I saw was the next sixteen years of my life spread out like a dull, sufocating blanket. I knew I loved you but I loved myself more.  That wasn’t the first time I saw you.

            Taxi home from the hospital; you in the Moses basket on my lap. In the thirty-six hours since you were born I have sterilised the house or near as dammit. I have vacuumed, polished, scrubbed, aired, fumigated, cleansed. It is a museum not a home. My parents are there to greet us all, excited at the new generation of our family getting under way. They coo and they aah at the appropriate junctures. My dad’s brought flowers and champagne. I coo and I aah at the appropriate junctures.

            Over the next 18 months your eyes opened more, you crawled, took your first steps. Our days were adventures in growing up for the pair of us. Nappies and inoculations for you; responsibility and domesticity for me. However, my evenings were mine. I couldn’t wait to say goodnight. I could have read to you. I rarely did.

            A few days before your first birthday you were rushed to hospital with suspected meningitis in an ambulance with a police escort. Meningitis is big news round here right now. Some tiny lad round the corner died only the week before. And now we’re in a hospital drama, being wheeled at high speed to some special room where I have to bend you and somehow ignore your screams whilst they drain fluid from your tiny spine.

            Anxiously we wait for some guy in a lab upstairs to call down. No news is bad news. You didn’t have meningitis. You would live.

            I cried that night because I was angry at you for making me cry.

            The rest of that time is textbook. Parents too young. Unplanned child. Thwarted dreams. Poverty and rows. The inevitable split. Your mother getting custody.

            Before that, not long before that, maybe a week or two earlier, I saw you for the first time.

            A miniature village green that acted as an excuse for the cul-de-sac we lived in. A February morning, short on sunshine. What light there is is watered down from months of winter, the birch trees stripped and thin against it like angry veins, tired fingers. The pair of us padded up in thick coats on the wet grass. An impossibly red football in front of your little fat corduroy legs. You are running towards the ball, running, properly running for the first time in your life. You kick at the ball and pleasingly, it shoots away from you a few yards. You chase it. We chase it together. Kicking and running and chasing the rest of the morning. These are the greatest minutes of my life and I don’t yet know it. This is the first time I see you.

Digging

It's a story. I never knew quite where I was going with this. The idea, or at least what passed for an idea back then, was to write about the idea of family trees, roots etc.  But it's still better than Dan Brown, right? Right?

Digging

My dad’s been digging all day. And not just today, he’s been at it for weeks now apparently. A huge hole at the bottom of the garden with the discarded earth behind him rising, becoming quite the little mountain. My mum just takes him out tea and sandwiches. She walks out with the tray and the torch and hollers down into the deep that there is refreshment. Then she starts with the pulley.

            All hours he’s out there, digging.

            When she called me over for lunch I knew that there was something wrong. My parents don’t phone me; apparently it’s my job to phone them. If I don’t call at least once a week then I can expect to be on the receiving end of several doses of low-level emotional blackmail.

            “Just ring her up once or twice a week, mate. It’s not hard.”

            “Well, I know you’re busy but I worry. Five minutes is all.”

            I didn’t know about the hole till today.

My brothers are both there when I arrive. I’m the youngest of three and I’m thirty five in a month. This, I sometimes joke, is better than being the youngest of thirty five and being three in a month. Ben’s a year older than me, runs a garage about ten miles from here. It’s called Ben’s Garage. There’s a huge neon B in the kind of font they have on American vaudeville posters. A big B hanging out above the road off the roof of the garage. A little part of me dies each time I see it.

            My older brother is called William and I have no idea what he does but it earns him enough money to live out by the sea and drive a car that will cost more money to insure than I’ll ever see in my bank account.

            I am an obituarist. I write obituaries to order for national papers. Someone famous dies, the phone rings. That’s how I make a living.

            Ben and William, of course, ring my mother every day. They seem oblivious to the great crater our dad is making at the end of the garden. They sit there and drink their coffee and read the sports pages.

            “How long has he been doing this?”

            “Couple of months,” says William without looking up.

            “Why? What is he doing?”

            “He’s just digging a hole, he’s happy enough.”

            Ben starts humming La Cucaracha. My mum joins in whilst she peels potatoes at the sink.

            I leave the three of them to it and make my way into the garden.

I hear the echo of my own voice before I see how deep the hole is. One syllable, the second I ever learnt, dropping deep beneath the earth and repeating itself. At the lip of the hole there is the first of what appears to be several improvised ladders. I turn my gaze to the flanks of the garden and notice that the trees are all stumps, amputated limbs from the garden war.

            I start to climb down the first ladder.

            “Dad,” I call again.

It was around the time of the third or fourth ladder that I started to really worry. Christmas lights stretched down from the extension lead from the shed. Rather than getting thinner, the tunnel started to widen the further I descended. The ladders became stronger, the lights brighter. Further and further down I climbed, calling my Dad’s name all the time until I reached a well-lit platform.

            A few yards in front of me there was a door. Behind I could hear voices, one of them my father’s clearly. Several male voices, all familiar to me somehow. A lot of laughter and the clinking of glasses, somewhere beneath those voices I could hear distinctly strains of music.

            Swallowing hard and trying to keep my breath at a polite volume, I knocked the door.

            It was a wonderful few hours we spent sitting round that table. My great-grandfather was a hoot; he had us in stitches about his time at sea. His own father was also present; several generations of my family were there. Just the fathers mind. We talked about raising children, politics and women. One of my really old ancestors told us about the time he slept with one of the Brontes. I can’t remember which one now but it was a good story.  My dad just sat there laughing, turning to me and smiling occasionally as he poured another round of drinks. Every now and then I would feel myself starting to panic; my dad would reassure me with a hand on my shoulder.

            A guy with exactly the same jaw as my dad was halfway through a story about hiding from Oliver Cromwell when my dad looked at his watch and said it was time for us to go.

            “Nice to meet you all,” I said.

            They all smiled politely, raised glasses, and wished me the best.

My dad held out a hand as I negotiated the last few rungs to the surface. I brushed a little dirt off myself and made my way into the kitchen. Will and Ben were sat there eating sandwiches. I made my excuses, kissed my mum goodbye and got into my car.

Tomorrow I will plant a tree in my garden. Maybe after that, as long as nobody I’ve heard of dies, I’ll phone home.

Stickers

So this is the first of a bunch of bits of writing I did at some point in the past, I'm not going to get it together to do anything else with it. This is a piece of semi-autobiographical writing. I was seven when I discovered death was real and actually happened to ones you loved. I've patched together that and a few random memories from the same time to try and make something bigger than is probably there. But feel free to tell me it's shit and you hate my guts or you loved it and now want to build shrines to my memory.

Stickers

We were on the back seat of my uncle’s Ford Cortina. Outside there was a storm and my Dad had run inside the hospital to see if Nanny Cuckoo was awake. It was a strange hospital, very quiet. No flashing ambulances, no orderlies running about like they did on the telly.  Nanny Cuckoo had been awake when we’d seen her the week before and I’d sat on her bed and asked about her eye and when she was coming home and we talked about school. We ate loads of grapes and my Granddad insisted on driving us back. It was a quiet journey.

Now I was telling my Mum about my day at school. She’d asked me but she was worried about something else. I could tell that much. 

“Here’s your Dad”.

I glanced outside and saw my Dad and his brother running towards us. They clambered breathlessly into the front of the car.

“Nana’s not up to visitors today mate. We’re just, you know, going to drive home and we’ll sort something out. Ok?”

My Dad was turned towards us from the front seat and trying to address each of us at the same time. I was upset; I wanted to see my nana. We drove home, the windscreen wipers struggling all the way with the weather. 

Dad was gone all the next day. He’d left pretty early even though he didn’t work Saturdays. Mum didn’t seem to know where he was, just out. But he’d left a present for me and one for my sister. My sister had a doll and I had a sticker book.

I didn’t know anything about football except it was what my friends now did at playtime. We didn’t play superheroes or Top Trumps anymore, all my mates played with a bright orange ball initialled GB that belonged to Graham Broad who hated losing. I used to read comics in the corner instead. I liked Hulk and The Fantastic Four best because they were on telly and I could read the speech bubbles in the voices I knew they had.

Occasionally the ball would ping its way towards me and I’d try to join in but I was rubbish.

If it was raining and we had to stay inside then football still dominated proceedings – all the boys bar me had a sticker book and spoke dementedly of swapsies and gots and needs.

Now I had a sticker book with loads of teams in it and ten packets of stickers to start me off. When I’d finished putting all the stickers in, my Mum sat us down on the sofa and said she had something to tell us. I knew what she was going to say because she was crying. It was the first time I’d ever seen her upset. People only cried on telly when people died.

It was my first dead person and it was Nanny Cuckoo. She was called Alice really and had gained this nickname because of a ritual conducted between us when I was a toddler. We'd visit her flat and I'd knock on the door and she'd call out Cuckoo. I'd call Cuckoo back before being let in.  My Nan who looked after me at weekends and gave me 10p to spend on sweets every time she came to visit. My Nan who said “Presently” instead of “In a minute” and who had a plastic chair in her bath. I cried for as long as it takes a seven year old to cry themselves to sleep.

We didn’t see my Dad till the next day and we didn’t get the chance to say goodbye. We had a couple of days after the weekend off school and then when we went to school on the Wednesday my mum spoke to my teacher, Miss Hope.

I’d been quiet, quieter than normal. I could see the teacher and my mum looking at me in that way that parents sometimes look at children when they’re ill.

I had my sticker book and my swapsies in my little Gola bag ready for playtime. Graham Broad had forgotten to bring his football and so the two of us and some other boys formed a circle like Chinese gamblers did in films. The names being read in solemn incantation as the swapsies were announced.

Joe Jordan. Ray Wilkins. Bristol City. John Wile.

A mumbling chorus of declarations from the marketplace. 

Got. Got. Need. Need.

My eyes stung as I looked down at my stickers and realised I was speaking the mantra too.

Got. Got. Need. Need. Need.