William Blake - William Vaughan

WILLIAM BLAKE - WILLIAM VAUGHAN

There's William Blake... and all the rest is propaganda.

John Serpico

All Saints - East Budleigh

ALL SAINTS - EAST BUDLEIGH

Am I a geek? Sure, we all like to throw bricks at coppers and burn down the suburbs with a half-closed eye but even a stopped clock is right twice a day. As they say. So, in my more contemplative moments I sometimes like to stroll down to the beach and just sit and watch the waves roll in as the ships go by on the horizon. On other occasions I like to take a look at the local churches, not to pray or any such reckless if not ridiculous thing as that but to simply have a mooch around. They're beautiful, ancient, old buildings and I appreciate them – it's as simple as that. If you ask politely and there isn't a health and safety issue, it's surprising how easy it is to even get up to the top of the steeple and look out at the view. It's always worth it.

The church in the village of East Budleigh, in Devon, goes back to before 1420, so it's an old one. Developed and built up a bit since then, of course, there's a lot of history to it not least it being where Walter Raleigh used to go as a child due to his father being the churchwarden. Another famous churchwarden there was Ambrose Stapleton who during his tenure involved almost the whole of the village in smuggling, an activity that was once rife along the nearby coastline and which he apparently organised with great skill.

Within a secret drawer of a communion table, a collection of ancient books were once discovered including bibles dating back to 1634 and a Book of Martyrs describing trials and hideous punishments meted out in that same century to local parishioners.

On all of the bench ends there are wood carvings of various past residents of the village dating back again to the early sixteenth century, along with carvings of coats of arms and angels. There is also a carving of a native American Indian in full headdress. Why? What's he doing there?

Meanwhile out in the churchyard, for such an old church there are surprisingly very few tombstones there. This is simply due, however, to burying past graves under ten feet of mud and starting anew with fresh graves being dug into the newly created mound. Like a high-rise cemetery.

How do I know all this stuff, you might wonder? Well, I've just read the booklet entitled All Saints – East Budleigh, written by Lilian Sheppard, which is basically a guide to the church. Published in 1978, it's probably now long out of print and only available from the dusty bookshelves of second hand shops along the East Coast of Devon. Ignored and not given a second glance apart from people like me.

Am I a geek?

John Serpico

Being There - Jerzy Kosinski

BEING THERE – JERZY KOSINSKI

On the surface, Being There by Jerzy Kosinski seems to be a fairly straightforward story of an idiot savant whose utterings are taken as pearls of wisdom but beneath the surface – like fish seen under the ice – there's something else going on. The story centres upon a gardener by the name of Chance who has spent his whole life living in seclusion, tending the garden of his employer and living in a room in the home of that same employer. Never having ventured beyond the garden's walls he has instead spent his time when not working just watching television, the only people him having any contact with being 'the Old Man' who employs him and the maid. When the Old Man suddenly dies at the start of the book, Chance leaves the house and for the very first time steps out into the wider world.

The house where he has spent his life is in New York and as soon as he walks into the city he is driven into by a chauffeur-driven car. The passenger in the car turns out to be the young wife of an elderly gentleman called Rand, who turns out to be the chairman of the board of the First American Financial Corporation, an elite group of businessmen whose mission is to 'assist American businesses that have been harassed by inflation, excessive taxation, riots, and other indecencies'.

They take Chance into their home so that he may recover from the car accident and it is there that Rand becomes immediately enthralled by Chance's simple, homespun observations wrought from his knowledge of gardening that Rand interprets as uniquely expressed insights into economics and business.

So impressed is he with Chance that Rand introduces him to 'a good friend' who just happens to be the President of the United States of America who subsequently quotes Chance during a speech at a TV press conference. The President name-checks Chance causing immediate interest in this hitherto unknown economics adviser and overnight he becomes a media sensation feted by news pundits, ambassadors of foreign nations and members of the American political and business class.

It quickly becomes apparent, however, particularly to the security services that Chance is a man with no history and no traceable background. There are simply no records at all of him having ever existed before, which then leads them to question as to whether this is a good or a bad thing?

Chance is an innocent abroad, sucked in and swept up by events and circumstances he has little understanding of. But if that's him then who is everyone else? Are all the people Chance encounters simply clutching at straws and searching for meaning when there really isn't any? Including even the President? Is Chance just a blank slate on which everyone hangs their own meaning upon? Their own hopes? Their own needs? Interpreting what Chance says to fit their own personal salvation? Has Jerzy Kosinski written his main character in such a way as to suggest that Chance is indeed a messiah figure?

At the start of the book there is a prominent disclaimer that states 'Any similarity to past or present characters or events is purely accidental, and no identification with any character or event is intended'. The copyright date of the book is 1970 so clearly the President though unnamed is going to be Richard Nixon. The chairman of the First American Financial Corporation is named Rand which is clearly an allusion to Ayn Rand – it's too much of a coincidence for it not to be. The TV talk show host with his audience of millions could well be William F Buckley? Who, however, is Jerzy Kosinski? Well, there's been some debate about that.

At the end of Being There there's an anonymously written synopsis entitled 'On Kosinski' that outlines the author's life and it reads like a piece of magical realism. If only half of it is true then Kosinski has led a charmed and picaresque life through 'some of the strongest direct experience that this century has had to offer'. From poverty in Eastern Europe, war and oppression to wealth, fame and the American liberal elite, he's been through it all apparently. Or has he?

'As I have no children, no family, no relatives, no business or estate to speak of, my books are my only spiritual accomplishment,' he's quoted as saying. Rather like his Chance character in Being There? If Chance is a blank slate, is Kosinski a construct? Which then begs the question, is Being There itself a blank slate without any actual meaning upon which the reader hangs their own meaning? Much like the Chance character himself? Is Being There a very clever book or can cleverness be hung upon it to make it appear clever when it actually isn't clever at all? Is there more to Being There than meets the eye?

I would say 'yes' but like fish seen under the ice it's unclear what it is exactly that's swimming about there beneath its surface. Which all makes for an enjoyable, multi-layered, multi-faceted and very interesting book, to say the least.

John Serpico

Guilty Pleasures (Part 19)

GUILTY PLEASURES (Part 19)

I wonder what a Roxy Music audience looks like? Would it include anyone under the age of forty or might it be solely an over-fifties thing? Might a proportion be lisping, middle-aged homosexuals or balding, pot-bellied ex-lotharios? Would it be a men only thing or would women be equally represented? Who might the men be as in what kind of work might they do as a living? Brick layers, carpenters and navvies or office middle-management and shopkeepers? Who might the women be? Housewives, divorcees, and the kind who work behind the perfume counters at John Lewis and Debenhams? Who knows?

A few of the early Sex Pistols followers were Roxy Music fans – Siouxsie Sioux and the Bromley contingent et al, so there's obviously pedigree there. David Bowie was a fan. Roxy Music always straddled the lines between glam rock kitsch and art school weird with a layer of sexual ambiguity slapped all over them. Brian Eno was always an alien, Andy Mackay was a porn film extra and Bryan Ferry was a lounge lizard. The other two were just Sixties throwbacks painted with a sprinkle of glitter. Though what kind of name is 'Brian' for a pop star? What kind of name is 'Bryan' for an oily, sexually perverted, cocktail bar crooner?

Is it fair to suggest Roxy Music were one of the most interesting yet largely unacknowledged bands of that whole 1970s Top Of The Pops era? Is it fair to suggest that not Virginia Plain, not Street Life, or not any of their hits but a song called If There Was Something from their debut album is one of the greatest songs ever?

There's only one way to find out, I suppose. So see you at the Exmouth Pavilion in January, windowlickers, where an approximation of Roxy Music will be trying to seduce, bugger and abandon a selection of sexually ambivalent farmers and fishermen (along with their fishwives?) from various towns and villages dotted along the East Devon coast. It's going to be the first gig of the year and probably the best gig of the year also...

The Ocean Fell Into The Drop - Terence Stamp

THE OCEAN FELL INTO THE DROP –

TERENCE STAMP

'Terry meets Julie, Waterloo Station, every Friday night,' as The Kinks once informed us in Waterloo Sunset. Terry being Terence Stamp and Julie being his girlfriend at that time, Julie Christie. And of course he does and will do so forever more through being immortalised in song. Stuck in a moment forever. In perpetuity. No matter that Ray Davies has since denied the song is about them for if anything this serves only to make it all the more strangely frozen in time. Cast in stone.

Terence Stamp is someone who came to define the Sixties and Swinging London in the same way as did others from a similar background such as David Bailey and Michael Caine. Working class chancers all, from impoverishment to the world at their feet in almost a single bound. The Ocean Fell Into The Drop is his memoir and the immediately refreshing thing about it is how you can tell by the quirkiness of the writing that it was actually written by himself rather than it being ghost written. Unlike a lot of books of this type as well, it's not bloated and full of its own self-importance but comes in at only a modest 176 pages.

It's a parody almost of his 1979 film Meetings With Remarkable Men where he played Prince Lubovedsky in the film adaptation of the book of the same name by philosopher and mystic G I Gurdjieff. It's written with good humour and much respect, and like Gurdjieff's book tells the story of his encounters with various remarkable and enchanting people.

As might be expected, during his heyday Terence met them all and dated a fair few of them also: Peter Ustinov, Laurence Olivier, Sarah Miles, Samantha Eggar, John Lennon, Francis Bacon, Ken Loach, Jimi Hendrix, Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth, Brigitte Bardot, Vidal Sassoon, etc, etc. It's a veritable panoply of stars that he waltzes us through, all dearly loved in one way or another. Clearly, he liked his ladies and clearly they liked him back. And why not? Terence was talented, cool, good looking, had beautiful eyes and was a bit of a cheeky chappie. Or as his father is quoted as describing him in full Cockney twang: “Ee's a very lucky boy”.

Of all the people he met and worked with, however, the one who touched him most deeply and had the most impact upon him was Indian philosopher J Krishnamurti, whom Terence met seemingly quite by accident. It was whilst filming in Italy with Federico Fellini that he was invited to a dinner party at which Krishnamurti was also in attendance. It was only years later that Terence discovered that Krishnamurti had specifically requested Terence be invited after seeing film footage of him whilst being entertained previously by Fellini. “I'd like to meet that boy,” Krishnamurti had said to Fellini, and so Terence ended up sitting opposite him at dinner, not quite knowing exactly who Krishnamurti was.

After the dinner, out of all the guests there, it was Terence who was invited for an after-dinner walk with the great sage. Whilst not having spoken during the dinner, strolling along together outside Terence babbled away about general subjects of chit-chat, still not fully understanding who Krishnamurti was.

“Look at that tree,” said Krishnamurti to him, as he touched Terence upon the arm. Terence acknowledged it and continued chatting away. “Look at that cloud,” said Krishnamurti, again touching Terence upon the arm. Again Terence acknowledged it and continued chatting, slightly confused as to why Krishnamurti's main engagement in conversation with him was to highlight a tree and a cloud. The effect upon Terence from this meeting and this apparently one-way conversation would prove, however, to be profound.

All other encounters with remarkable people over the course of his career are almost superfluous to this initial encounter with Krishnamurti and it sets him on a path that he has remained on ever since, even during the periods when his film career had ground to a near halt.

With the end of the Sixties came the end of film offers, due apparently to Terence being so closely associated with that decade and the world having moved on. Subsequently, Terence spent much of the Seventies in India searching - for want of a better word - for enlightenment. For a time he even became a sannyasen under the tutorship of 'controversial' Indian guru Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh. Throughout this whole time, from afar Krishnamurti continued to keep an eye on him.

Throughout the book, Terence offers up anecdotes about all the people he gets to meet, the most amusing concerning Marlon Brando on the set of Superman where Brando has arrived with an entourage of two sisters. “See those two girls over there,” Brando says to Terence “They want your dick”.

At one point in the book he tells us of the time when he asked Krishnamurti what it was like when Krishnamurti first experienced total consciousness, or illumination. Krishnamurti considered the question for a moment and then replied “The ocean fell into the drop”. Hence the title of the book. It's a good, almost perfect Krishnamurti quote and as it's been used as the title for Terence's memoir, it's worth considering.

'The ocean fell into the drop' is a simple but at the same time very clever statement, the reverse of course, of 'the drop fell into the ocean', and very easy to grasp the meaning of. Is it, however, what might be called an 'absolute truth'? Almost, I would say, but not quite.

If there is an ocean and if there is a drop it implies an imbalance, the greater weight and the greater capacity being with the ocean. Both the ocean and the drop, however, are of equal importance and of equal measure in the meaning to each other. One is not complete without the other. The vessel holding both the ocean and the drop – whether that be the Universe or the singular person – is not completely full or not whole without being full to the last drop. Without the ocean, the drop is not complete and without the drop, the ocean is not complete. Understanding the importance of the ocean to the drop and the drop to the ocean leads to wholeness and balance – and perfect balance at that.

Krishnamurti never declared himself to be The Light, he did the complete opposite, in fact. All he did was to point the way to The Light. With this in mind, it's easy to see why Krisnamurti gently admonished Terence on learning of his travels in India seeking out various gurus and his association with the sannyasens: “You don't find this in a supermarket” he tells Terence.

Why Krishnamurti took an interest in this young actor by the name of Terence Stamp rather than anyone else at the dinner party where they met (and remember this party included such luminaries as one of the greatest film directors of all time, Federico Fellini) remains unclear even to Terence. Perhaps he saw in Terence a kindred soul? Whatever the reason, to have had Krishnamurti keeping an eye on you throughout life is one of the most blessed gifts. Summed up, indeed, by what Terence's father – an ordinary, uneducated, working class tugboat man from East London – had deduced very early on at the start of his son's film career and without any need to travel to India to seek out gurus: “Ee's a very lucky boy”....

John Serpico

Pan - Knut Hamsun

PAN – KNUT HAMSUN

If ever a book can be said to be heavy with symbolism then it is Pan by Knut Hamsun. On the surface it's the story of a love affair conducted over a summer between a hunter who lives alone in a hut in the woods and the daughter of a local merchant in a coastal village in northern Norway. All well and good and all very Scandinavian but it's only once you come to the end of it that you think: 'Hang on, what is this I've just read?'.

Pan is indeed the story of a love affair but it is also about the chasm and even the clash between nature and civil society. It's about perception and interpretation. It's about sex and love and the joining of the two but also about separation. It's a bee dance but with people rather than insects moving and circling around each other. It's about not knowing what to do with love when it happens. It's about the beauty of love but how it also causes pain and damage. It's about being touched by love and never being able to recover. It's about the flitting in a blink of an eye between objectivity and subjectivity, reality and dream, and truth and illusion. It's about messages communicated by actions. It's about communication via objects. It's about life in all its glory and all its knotted, bound-up frustration. It's about the beauty of the world and the ugliness within it. It's about free will. It's about contradiction, suspicion, confusion, despair, jealousy, worthiness, nature, the seasons, attrition, fragmentation, self-destruction, lust, obsession, exultation, paranoia, rivalry, pride, and sorrow.

That's all.

Whilst on the subject of Knut Hamsun, there's a conversation to be had here regarding artists, their work, their personal lives and their politics, and whether the three can or even should be separated? It's a very old debate that crops up every year or so and has just recently surfaced again.

There's a scene in The Joker where Joaquin Phoenix dances down a flight of steps to the tune of Gary Glitter's old song, Rock'n'Roll Part 2. It's well choreographed and the music fits the scene perfectly. The question being, however, that should a song by a convicted paedophile have been used at all? The answer was that Gary Glitter holds no publishing rights to the song so he wouldn't make any money from it, and that also in America the same song is often played at football matches so is viewed in a different context to how it's viewed in England.

In a recent essay, Nick Cave wrote disparagingly about anti-fascists, suggesting they are in a mutually self-sustaining marriage with the Far Right. Cave's political naivety was embarrassing and displayed a complete lack of understanding of the danger presented by the Far Right if not challenged. Could his lack of political insight be kept apart from his art or did it represent a shadow now cast upon it?

In regards to Knut Hamsun, it turns out that this towering figure in Norwegian literacy and according to Charles Bukowski “the greatest writer who has ever lived” was a supporter of Hitler, though there's no indication of this in any of his books. For Norwegians, this has apparently been the cause of endless grief for them that they've wrestled with ever since, trying to separate their world-famous writer from his political beliefs.

Does now knowing this about Hamsun colour his books? Yes, of course it does. In the same way that if Hamsun had been a vocal or even physical opponent of the Nazis it would surely enhance his books - or the reception of them at least. In the same way that you can blind taste wine you can also read books, hear music or watch films with one eye closed. Once the blind-fold is lifted, however, there is no escape from the truth which then leads to the dilemma. The saving grace is that the decision made as to whether you continue reading, listening or viewing or whether the art has been spoilt forever is a personal one. These questions are the stuff of being human. The stuff, in a way, of Knut Hamsun's writings

John Serpico

Empire Of The Senseless - Kathy Acker

EMPIRE OF THE SENSELESS – KATHY ACKER

There is a scene in Lars von Trier's film Anti-Christ where Willem Dafoe is in the woods and he pulls back some undergrowth to reveal a fox disembowelling itself. In slow motion the fox then lifts its head and in a guttural voice says to Dafoe “Chaos reigns”. This one scene, essentially, sums up Kathy Acker's Empire Of The Senseless.

Kathy Acker ended up living in England and being the partner of writer Charles Sharr Murray before passing away in 1997 from cancer. Before this she had gained the reputation of being the enfant terrible of the New York art set and being feted by various critics for pushing the envelope of post-modern experimental writing. Kathy Acker's books were – and remain to be – shocking in terms of explicit sex and violence. The sex she wrote about being perverse and taboo, often concerning father/daughter incest and sadomasochism. The twist and consequently the turn of the screw was that it was all written by a woman and from a woman's point of view, though not in the voice of woman as victim but of a woman who enjoys and is even empowered by such things.

Empire Of The Senseless is – as it says in the title – senseless. It's a whirlpool of extreme thoughts that have no apparent connection to each other. It's a picture of delirium captured in words and flung down onto the page where those words refuse to sit still and instead wriggle and squirm around almost as if in a bid to break free from that same page. Or even as something trying to break free from the words. There is no discernible narrative, no normal grammar, and no lineage. It's an alphabet collage. A riot of words.

The obvious influence, of course, is William Burroughs, of whom Acker was once a self-confessed acolyte, and that's all well and good but it must be said that Burroughs did it better. At least in his books there was sometimes a semblance of a storyline and from his cut-ups there would often appear beautiful and even poetic descriptions and phrases. Empire Of The Senseless has none of these things though that's not to dismiss it out of hand because the best art often initially repels and confuses and often takes time for it to be understood.

There is something obviously going on within these pages that Acker was trying to capture and reveal. Something beyond words and beyond language. Whether or not she fully succeeded, however, is the question. Her words are like brambles that need to be cut through to see what lies behind. Burroughs on the other hand was of such genius that he revealed the hidden meaning of language to the reader without them even realising. In Lars von Trier's Anti-Christ, Willem Dafoe simply pulled back the undergrowth. Perhaps all that Acker was trying to reveal was the chaos? To show that behind everything is nothing but chaos? That everything indeed is chaos? An empire of the senseless? Perhaps it's all really that simple?

I don't know. I'm just curious of mind and just because I read Kathy Acker it doesn't mean I understand her. But at least I try.

John Serpico

What We Say Goes - Noam Chomsky

WHAT WE SAY GOES – NOAM CHOMSKY

Does anybody still read Chomsky nowadays, or are we all meant to have moved on? Have the neo-conservatives finally wiped the board of everything and now totally own common sense values as once highlighted by Gramsci as being of necessity if social change is ever to occur?

What We Say Goes is another one of those books comprised of interviews with Noam Chomsky conducted by David Barsamian, this time published by Penguin rather than AK Books. It's from 2006 which means a fair bit of it is now out of date due to the world having moved on – arguably for the worse. We now, of course, have a shitbag, fucking scumbag, lying, narcissistic fucking bastard in the White House. ISIS have superseded Al-Queda, Brexit has happened, and climate destruction is fully on the agenda.

So what has Chomsky got to say this time round? Well, right from the start I'm reprimanded and put to rights for heaping abuse upon an American President. “If you want to contribute to the success of the ultra-right, then you should make fun of George Bush's accent and engage in other forms of ridicule,” he says “But that rhetoric is destructive and childish. And the same holds true of everyone else's rhetoric. What's important is the content.”

I appreciate this and I acknowledge it. Rhetoric is what nowadays makes the world go round. 90% of the news these days is rhetoric. The Daily Mail front page headlines being an obvious example. Those headlines and accompanying articles aren't news – it's rhetoric. Social media – rhetoric. Trump's midnight tweets that gets everyone hot under the collar – just rhetoric. Calling Trump a shitbag, fucking scumbag, lying, narcissistic fucking bastard – just rhetoric.

I should know better, I know, but I'm only human of flesh and blood am I. What's their excuse, I wonder? All those who are better educated and more privileged than me? Those who are paid to know better? Are they just being extremely clever, I wonder, and simply using rhetoric to disguise the content? Is Trump really an intellectual? He'd probably say so. Is Paul Dacre an intellectual? Nigel Farage? Boris Johnson?

Well, Chomsky has something to say about this as well: “People are called intellectuals because they're privileged. It's not because they're smart or they know a lot. There are plenty of people who know more and are smarter but aren't intellectuals because they don't have the privilege. The people called intellectuals are privileged. They have resources and opportunities.”

Privilege, of course, means power and you're either subordinate to it or not but according to Chomsky, in the West there's really no excuse and anyone displaying subordination to power is essentially displaying cowardice. “Why do we want to get behind the President if he's carrying out murderous, violent criminal acts?” Indeed, the great are only great because we are on our knees, as Irish republican James Larkin once said. Let us rise.

There's very little to disagree with when it comes to Noam Chomsky. Rather than the senile old pervert who wets himself all the time, Chomsky is like your ideal granddad sitting in the corner of the room at Christmas time, a pointy party hat on his head and sipping from a glass of Old Malt but declining to join in the party games. He's the wisest old bird in the family with an encyclopedic knowledge of everything and when asked a question he'll tell you straight. Everybody loves him and it's to him everyone will turn to for advice.

When 9/11 happened, everyone wanted to know what Chomsky had to say about it. The same for when Trump was elected. In his typical fashion, Chomsky responded very calmly and methodically, not resorting to knee-jerk reaction but using only the facts that were at hand.

“The Afghan war was a major war crime,” Chomsky tell David Barsamian, and this is as good a litmus test as any to gauge whether you agree with Chomsky or not. If you agree with this statement then it suggests you might just have a mind of your own and there is hope for you and the world yet. If you take umbrage and profoundly so then there's nothing for you here and we can bid you farewell as you skip merrily into your future of – as Orwell put it – a boot stamping on a human face - forever.

John Serpico

Songs They Never Play On The Radio - James Young

SONGS THEY NEVER PLAY ON THE RADIO – 

JAMES YOUNG

As you go through life and the more books that you read, the more you will find that the plaudits and the quotes from reviewers as displayed on the covers are more often than not mere hype, baloney and product endorsement dressed up as literary criticism. You will find that though they may well be genuine quotes, they are mostly written by either acquaintances of the author or by critics with a vested interest in delivering positive feedback be it from simply following 'guidance' as laid down by their employers (their editor), or to simply ensure they remain on book publishers lists of favoured reviewers so as to continue being sent free books. You will even find more often than not that the reviewer whose quote adorns the cover seems to have read a completely different book to the one you're holding in your hands – as if they've not actually read it at all?

This may come as no great revelation to those employed within the book selling/publishing industry but to many others it might well be something they've never really considered. No matter how passionate you might feel about books, at the end of the day the publishing and the selling of them is a business just like any other particularly when you get to the Waterstones mass retail level. There, a book is a product just like a tin of baked beans, nothing more and nothing less than just another unit to shift.

It comes, therefore, as something of a surprise when the plaudits and the quotes on the cover of Songs They Never Play On The Radio by James Young for once ring absolutely true because it is indeed an incredibly well-written book. It may even possibly be one of the best music books ever written? Possibly.

'A coolly literary masterpiece' – Greil Marcus. 'The greatest rock and roll book' – Tony Wilson. 'Sad, funny, brilliant' – Tony Parsons. 'Anyone who reads this book will be moved by the lyrical poignancy, intimate detail and near mythic quality the author captures' – Danny Sugarman. 'A work of comic ingenuity' – David Sinclair.

Praise indeed.

James Young was the piano player in Nico's backing band during the 1980s and Songs They Never Play On The Radio is his memoir of those years. There are so many anecdotes within its pages that it's nigh on impossible to pick out any particular ones as highlights or as examples of the quality of the writing. It is quite simply a funny, rollicking, rolling train of quips, quotes, anecdotes, vignettes, observations and asides that capture Nico and the world around her during her Manchester heroin years in all its debauched, sordid and comic glory.

Nico's personality and the array of characters who gravitate toward her is a gift that keeps on giving, so much so that the story could almost have written itself but it's the fact that it's been captured by someone who actually knows how to write that takes it to a whole other level.

Nico, of course, once sang with the Velvet Underground before being unceremoniously thrown out, and that in itself grants her legendary status. By the time of the 1980s, however, she had washed up in Manchester of all places, virtually penniless and alone apart from a healthy heroin habit to support. Though she had suffered tragedies in her life, Nico was never a tragic figure as such and isn't depicted as one in the book. She was too singular, too selfish, too Germanic for that.

Throughout the book she instead comes across at times like a German version of Margot (as played by Penelope Keith) from the BBC comedy series The Good Life but without the etiquette and without the snobbery. Rather than floral skirts she is dressed instead in leather jacket and biker boots, armed with a foghorn voice – and on heroin. Stuffing packages of it up her backside every time she approaches the border of a new country when on tour and has to go through customs. Declaring very loudly to one and all that it wasn't the only thing she put up there: "My father was Turkish... you know what that means, don't you? I like it the Turkish way..."

Nico might well have been gullible and at the mercy of being used by those around her but one thing all her hangers-on knew was that she was their meal ticket, and without her they didn't really have a hope. Her heroin dependency was obviously a major issue to continuously contend with but it was also the thin spider's web that they all hung by and the fuel that kept everything going.

Into the book James Young weaves appearances by such characters as John Cooper Clarke, linking up with Nico purely through their shared special interest. Gregory Corso shares the same interest but whilst John Cooper Clarke is likeable, Corso comes across as a diminutive junky hoodlum. Then there's John Cale, brought in to produce Nico's new album and introducing a level of professionalism only matched by his paranoia but eclipsed by his utter, complete and total meanness. Allen Ginsberg disappoints Nico by failing to get naked though his own personal special interest in anything anal remains undiminished. Towering over all of them, however, is Nico's erstwhile manager, Dr Demetrius, otherwise known as Alan Wise, the legendary mover and shaker in the Manchester music scene. Dr Demetrius' behaviour is often shocking yet other times touching, his love for Nico remaining forever unrequited apart from an incident involving a sleeping Nico on the bunk of an Intercity train. 'Naturally, I wiped it off afterwards.' he's quoted as saying 'Wouldn't wish to leave a stain on her character.'

Whether or not Nico was likeable as a person is besides the point - because she was a legend, a muse of both Federico Fellini and Andy Warhol who had fallen from grace and ended up as a drug addict in Manchester. As James Young puts it in his preface: 'She influenced us all. It may sound absurd but, despite the monstrous egotism and the sordid scenes, there was something almost pure about her. A kind of concentrated will. Not pretty, sweet or socially acceptable, certainly, but intense, uncompromising and disarmingly frank.'

There is indeed a lot in Young's book that is sordid, not pretty, not sweet and certainly not socially acceptable but there are also moments of genuine loveliness such as when Nico's paddling along the shoreline on a beach in Australia, singing 'Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do,' swishing her feet in the water, happy in the sunset.

Yes, Nico was indeed a legend. And this is indeed a very good book.

John Serpico

The Bristol Strike Wave Of 1889-1890 - Mike Richardson

THE BRISTOL STRIKE WAVE OF 1889-1890 – 

MIKE RICHARDSON

I wonder why it is that local history is never taught in schools? Or at least it wasn't in my day and I've always wished that it had because quite simply – it's empowering. I grew up on a council estate in Bristol called Southmead and the only thing we were ever taught about our local area was to be ashamed of it and to keep quiet about the fact that we live there. On job applications, for example, on leaving school it was always better to put Westbury-on-Trym as your address rather than Southmead to avoid prejudicing yourself; Westbury-on-Trym being the middle class neighbouring area.

It wasn't until I began reading up on what little recorded history there was on Southmead that I discovered the name derived from what the area used to be known as in the past – South Meadow. I liked that. It had a sunny, fresh feel about it as opposed to the 'poor' and 'violent' connotations that the name Southmead was now associated with. I didn't want to feel ashamed of where I came from and I objected to being forced into feeling ashamed. I wanted to be proud and not have to show it only by fighting with gangs from other estates, which is what a lot of my peer group did. Discovering that Southmead was once known as South Meadow was a tiny, first step towards that pride.

There's a history to Southmead that I suspect has now largely been lost to the sands of time. A history not ever recorded in books but passed on through word of mouth and council estate folk tales. With the passing away of generations these tales and these memories dim and eventually pass away too. Even in my lifetime there is a history to Southmead that I know will also one day be forgotten. Events that though not on the same scale are no less significant than other historical national events.

The great fires of Southmead, the riots, the culture, the heroin wars, the characters – Joyce, the Queen of the Mead – the Southmead Boot Boys, the Pen Park hole, Concorde and its relationship to Southmead, the central Bristol slum clearance and the reconvening to Southmead, and so on and so forth. Even such things as the coach trips to Weston-super-Mare that were really just glorified mass shoplifting sprees, on one such outing the day trippers even returning with a whole juke box they'd stolen from a pub.

This obviously isn't the kind of stuff that would be taught in schools if only for the fact that teachers wouldn't even know about any of these things. It is, however, the stuff that makes us and helps to bring us to where we are now, much more so than the so-called great events and characters we are taught about in school due to it being deemed 'real' history.

Which brings us to the Bristol Radical History Group and the pamphlets they publish recording history from below as opposed to the history of great wars, kings, queens and noblemen as recorded in the history books. And so to The Bristol Strike Wave Of 1889-1890 (Parts 1 and 2) by Mike Richardson, wherein the author charts the events in Bristol during those two years.

The subtitle of Part 1 is 'Days Of Hope' and reflects the optimism as engendered by various workforces throughout Bristol as they unionised and took strike action over working conditions, working hours and pay. What Richardson highlights about these strikes, however, is the involvement of women workers and in particular the role that two middle class women from the Clifton area of Bristol played in them.

Among the number of strikes during this period was one conducted by 1700 mainly women workers of the Great Western Cotton Mill in the Barton Hill area of the city in 1889. Do people even remember there was once a cotton mill in Barton Hill let alone that all the workers there went on a strike that caused fall-out throughout the whole of the city? As an example of that fall-out, Richardson quotes from a letter published in two of the local newspapers at that time from the headmaster of Clifton College that is brazen in its defense of elitism, entitlement and class privilege:

'You employees must leave the judgement of all such matters in the hands of the directors, and when, with full knowledge, with large experience, such men tell you that it is of necessity a choice between the present rate of wages or none you must accept their word.

Believe me, it is safer to trust the word of responsible and honourable men of the stamp of your directors than it is to any one else who is busying himself, or herself, in this matter. And you know it is so. You cannot really believe all that is put before you in speeches , even though you may applaud it at the time. You must know that the directors are trusted for the money which has been entrusted to them, and they have no right to defraud the shareholders of their just claims for interest.

These are foolish people (the strike leaders) with warm hearts and weak heads who tell you that if you only hold out you will win. You have been misled, as all Bristol knows, not wilfully but in ignorance.'

By all accounts the working conditions of the cotton workers were atrocious and the pay abysmal, their demands for improvement being absolutely fair and justified. Ranged against them, however, was not only the directors of the cotton mill but also the Bristol Establishment and Bristol Church leaders all of whom were telling the women workers that there was no chance of change and that their suffering must remain. In response, the striking workers were insisting they would rather go to the workhouse, or to prison, or starve than go back under the same conditions. Moreover, the idea that the shareholders must get a continuous dividend and that this was sacrosanct was also beginning to be challenged. The strikers were now rising against that idea, or as Richardson puts it, the strike was beginning to go beyond protest against immediate conditions and shifting towards a rejection of the profit system.

The cotton workers strike ended not in a pay rise but in vast improvements in working conditions and so as the women returned to work it was seen as a victory for them and a defeat for the Establishment. One of the outcomes of the strike was also the introduction of the need for arbitration, an idea that whilst viewed by some as another advance in workers' struggles was viewed by others as a retreat from effective militant unionism.

Part 2 of the pamphlets, subtitled 'Days Of Doubt' records a series of other strikes that took place the following year in 1890, and the way in which they were approached and dealt with by workers, union committees and bosses alike. Richardson charts a downturn in militancy and the entrance of more moderate voices speaking on behalf of the working class as bosses adapted and learnt from the lessons of the previous year in how to deal with discontented workforces.

The two middle class women from Clifton whom Richardson highlighted in Part 1, who were so active during the cotton workers strike become burnt out and lose their faith in the workers attaining emancipation. Interestingly, having moved from their well-to-do homes and lifestyles in Clifton to the slums of the St Phillips area of Bristol, they eventually up-sticks and move away from Bristol entirely, emigrating to America, in fact. A choice that the workers who they had spent the last year agitating for and representing would never have been able to even dream of.

There are all kinds of lessons to be gleaned from these two pamphlets – as there are from all the pamphlets published by the Bristol Radical History Group – regarding struggle, revolution, social change and ideology. There are also, of course, the lessons in how history is recorded as in from below and above, and subsequently the interpretation of that history. Why is it indeed that very few Bristolians know about the cotton workers of Barton Hill yet everything about Isambard Kingdom Brunel – who wasn't even a Bristolian? These pamphlets are a step towards addressing all these things and are worthy of attention.

John Serpico

Under Exmouth Skies (part 51)

UNDER EXMOUTH SKIES (Part 51)

"Raise the sky, we got to fly. Over the land over the sea. Fate unwinds and if we die souls arise. God, do not seize me please. Till victory." - Patti Smith

Doctor Who And The Genesis Of The Daleks - Terrance Dicks

DOCTOR WHO 

AND THE GENESIS OF THE DALEKS –

TERRANCE DICKS

Terrance Dicks – Dr Who screenplay writer and author of a plethora of books based upon the BBC television series – passed away recently and in amongst the many accolades that were paid to him one in particular stood out. It was from author Jenny Colgan who said Dicks had 'helped more children (especially boys) develop a lifelong love of reading than almost anyone else who's ever lived'. Whether that's strictly true or not doesn't really matter because at the end of the day even if it's only half true it's a wonderful tribute to him.

That same week, by chance I saw a copy of a Dr Who book being sold for 10p in a box outside of a second-hand shop. It's a sign, I thought! Like the feather floating on the breeze at the end of Forrest Gump. As did most people I imagine, I used to watch Dr Who as a child – my personal favourite being the Jon Pertwee version – but I was never a huge fan and I've never read a Dr Who book in my life. Now, it would appear, was the time to start.

Doctor Who And The Genesis Of The Daleks involves the Tom Baker version of the Doctor being sent back in time by the Time Lords to the planet Skaro to intervene in the birth of the Daleks and thus prevent them from becoming the dominant creatures in the Universe. And that's all you need to know about it, really. The point of interest about the story is its clear allusions to Nazism, with the supreme leader/scientist Davros representing Hitler, the Daleks being his stormtroopers, and his vision of a Dalek-dominated Universe a kind of thousand year Reich.

Then just as the Doctor's in a position to blow the proto-Daleks up and destroy them forever he has an existential moral crisis: 'Suppose somebody who knew the future told you a certain child would grow up to be an evil dictator,' the Doctor asks 'could you then destroy that child?'

There's an obvious knack to writing these kind of books and Terrance Dicks had it. Every second page there is a life-threatening situation that the Doctor and his companions must thwart. It's a bit like being continuously in the final moments of an episode of Batman from the 1960s television series where you have to tune in next week to see what happens, 'same Bat time, same Bat channel', except you just have to turn to the next page.

I've no idea what the modern day equivalent of these Terrance Dicks Dr Who books might be nowadays, if indeed there even is one? But if it's true that through his writing Terrance Dicks instigated a life long love of reading in children then his writing and a book such as this one is invaluable. But if, as I fear, there is no-one of his like that has replaced him then not only is it a sad thing for children but it's a sad thing for us all.

John Serpico

The Primal Screamer - Nick Blinko

THE PRIMAL SCREAMER – NICK BLINKO

Anyone with even a passing interest or regard for seminal Anarcho Punk legends Rudimentary Peni is almost duty bound to want to read this book, written as it is by Nick Blinko, the lead vocalist, lead guitarist and lead artist behind that same band. Written in the form of diary entries from the point of view of a psychiatrist by the name of Dr Dweller, The Primal Screamer tells the story of his encounter with Nathaniel Snoxell who has been brought to him by his parents following a suicide attempt.

In a bid to get to the bottom of the reason for Nathaniel's death wish, Dr Dweller puts him through a course of primal scream therapy during which the world of Nathaniel Snoxell slowly but surely opens up to him. The world revealed is strange, demented, macabre, gothic and bizarre, echoed in the pictures that Nathaniel draws of frightful, disfigured creatures with no control over their existences, leading nakedly horrific sub-lives.

It's an interesting premise, you might think? A clever idea? Particularly as it's coming from the vocalist of such a highly regarded band as Rudimentary Peni. Indeed, rather than being written as a straight narrative it's a wholly unexpected angle to be coming from. The big question, however, is does it actually work? The answer – unfortunately – is 'No, not really'...

One of the reasons why it doesn't work may well be down to Primal Screamer being Nick Blinko's first book where he's just being too ambitious and trying to be a little too clever for his own good. It's an interesting book, let that not be denied, but it's the weaving of fact and fiction (along with the inconsistently drawn character of Dr Dweller) that let's it down when it should be – and was probably intended to be – it's strength.

Much of Nathaniel Snoxell's life as described by Dr Dweller is obviously fiction or even horror fantasy. For example, the stone door hidden beneath the stairwell-cupboard in his family's home that leads to a cellar that no-one else knows about but him, wherein sits a television that hasn't been switched off in thirty years even though there's no cable coming from it. Or the attic of the house that contains vicious hooks from which hang skeletons of human children.

Alongside this, Dr Dweller also describes and records in his diary a running commentary of Nathaniel's new band that he's formed which is never specifically named but is obviously Rudimentary Peni. He notes how Nathaniel has started to frequent an 'Anarchy Centre' 'in Wapping of all places' and has made contact with 'some anarchist group which has a large distribution network of its own, records, financing the Anarchy Centre, pamphlets, etc'. Though never named, this is Crass, of course.

This obviously means that Nathaniel Snoxell is Nick Blinko – but not quite. Nathaniel is a character based upon Nick Blinko - and there's the big difference. The Primal Screamer, therefore, is a work of fiction based upon real life events that without doubt is an interesting premise as a means to tell the story of Nick Blinko and Rudimentary Peni – if that indeed was its aim? But this is where the book falls down. It's neither quite one or the other.

Anyone with any knowledge of Rudimentary Peni will immediately recognise all the sign posts, the characters, and the sequence of events. The timeline of the release of Nathaniel's band's records - from the first two EPs to the album on the anarchist label - matches perfectly with Rudimentary Peni's history. Even the little things such as them not really liking playing live is a reflection of how Peni were.

Other things, however, are a distortion. The bassist of Nathaniel's band whom Nathaniel calls 'Freak' is described as having a hare lip, cleft palate and other malformations. In the end he even dies of cancer and anarchists try to dig his body up. The drummer is referred to as 'Imbecile' and is described as liking to spend his time consuming alcohol and meat pies down the pub. It's a bit like the cartoon version of the Sex Pistols in The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle film where Sid Vicious is called 'The Gimmick', Steve Jones is called 'The Crook', and Johnny Rotten is called 'The Collaborator'.

And then there's such things as Nathaniel's description of 'the corpse of punk' as having no life in it whatsoever, it being this decayed grandeur of a fallen subculture which has so attracted him. He despises, however, the audience at the Anarchy Centre, describing them as being degenerate. Is this Nick Blinko's thoughts or the fictitious thoughts of Nathaniel Snoxell?

Distorting it further is the fact that it's all spoken through the voice of Dr Dweller via his diary, it being a very inconsistent voice at that and one that often doesn't ring true in the slightest. As just one example, would an eminent doctor on being told that in America the music as played by Nathaniel's band is known as 'hardcore', really say 'Sounds rather rude to me'?

Come the end of the book, Nathaniel is depicted as having regressed to a sub-human bestial state, last seen fleeing from a butcher's shop with a dead piglet under his arm whilst biting the head off an unplucked game bird. Has anyone actually seen Nick Blinko lately, I wonder?

Dr Dweller in the meantime has disappeared from his cell in a Tibetan Monastery in Scotland to which he's retired, leaving behind stacks of manuscripts and diaries some of which have been published in book form going under the title The Primal Screamer...

If Nick Blinko's intention was to forge reality and dream, truth and fiction, into one seamless dream state then it's an ambitious and laudable idea. Whether he succeeded in doing this with The Primal Screamer is debatable, the judgement probably being influenced by how much the reader knows about Rudimentary Peni. Perhaps the book would work better if approached with virgin eyes and no prior knowledge of Nick Blinko and his musical past?

None of this should diminish, however, the legacy of Rudimentary Peni who were and still stand as an absolutely unique, seminal and important band in the annals of punk rock history. Their music being so sublimely twisted so as to be rendered into something almost unprecedented. Accompanied and somewhat enhanced of course by Nick Blinko's art work that to this day stands alone and apart from all other artists working within the same and often misunderstood 'outsider art' scene.

John Serpico

Cranked Up Really High - Stewart Home

CRANKED UP REALLY HIGH –
STEWART HOME

The advantage in re-reading Stewart Home's Cranked Up Really High almost 25 years after it first being published is that all the songs that he writes about are now available on YouTube. Whereas before, when Home wrote for example about a song entitled King Of Punk by former yippie David Peel and declared it to be one of the greatest New York punk songs of the seventies, you just had to take his word for it – or take his words with a pinch of salt. Now, however, at a click you can give it a listen and decide for yourself whether Home is correct, and on this occasion I'm happy to report that he's right and it is indeed a very good song.

He does, however, sometimes get it wrong especially when he's talking about things other than specific songs. In his postscript, for example, he declares that Cranked Up Really High is the best theoretical account of the punk rock phenomenon to date and the only work on punk rock that is worth reading. Well, it's not a bad book at all but then so too is Lipstick Traces by Greil Marcus which makes for a bit of a problem because Home seems to have written his book essentially as a riposte to Marcus, particularly regarding Marcus's linking of punk and the Sex Pistols with Situationism.

Rather than linking the Pistols to the Situationists or even to the Velvet Underground, Home makes instead a very good case of linking them more to the 1970s London hippy Underground/Notting Hill scene clustered around such bands as the Deviants, the Pink Fairies, the Edgar Broughton Band, and Hawkwind. Viv Albertine of The Slits made the same connection in her memoir Clothes Music Boys when she described the Sex Pistols on her first encounter with them as being 'loud and raucous but not bad musicians. I'd seen bands that had this anarchic quality before: the Pink Fairies, the Pretty Things, the Edgar Broughton Band...'

Before he joined the Pistols wasn't Johnny Rotten once an old Hawkwind fan himself? Didn't Lemmy even once try and teach Sid Vicious how to play bass? And then there were the record labels. Stiff Records famously released New Rose by The Damned but at the same time they also released Between The Lines by the Pink Faries. Chiswick Records released singles by punk bands such as Radio Stars and Radiators From Space but they also released the débuts from Motorhead and the 101'ers. So yes, Home’s argument is a convincing one.

Cranked Up Really High is essentially a discourse on genres within the punk rock realm with Home plotting a path between various forms of the medium. From the Fugs and the MC5 in America to the Notting Hill scene in London, to the Pistols and '77 punk to American punk to British Oi! To white power rock of the Skrewdriver kind to Riot Grrrl to Vegan Reich. A lot of it is waffle, of course, and comes across at times as being merely a way for Home to wax lyrical about some of his favourite records. Not that this is a bad thing, however, because the strength of the book lies in the way that bands not normally discussed or even ever mentioned are written about: John The Postman, the Depressions, early Adam And The Antz, Crisis, Condemned 84, Close Shave, and even somewhat controversially, Skrewdriver, to name but a few.

Along the way many valid points are made such as when Home says that punk began as music and punks themselves began as music fans and performers, which is kind of obvious but something that's often overlooked. There's a few clangers in there as well though the amusing thing is that it's unclear if they're intentional or not. For example, at one point he writes 'some readers may feel that I come across as suspiciously anti-Bergsonian, holding to the position that time is not real, that all events are merely the unfolding of a reality already existent in the world'. He's making a joke here, right?

At other times straight out of the blue he lurches into Richard Allen territory which comes at odds with the general tenor of the book, for example when he mentions a fight at a Crisis gig and writes 'the chick booted the bastard in the bollocks, severely crippling the cunt'. Is this Home in his 'demolish serious culture' mode with him intentionally trying to sabotage the 'seriousness' of his discourse, or is it just the auto mode that he falls into as soon as he begins writing about violence? Who knows?

For all this, Cranked Up Really High is a good book though I wouldn't go so far as to say it's the only work on punk rock that is worth reading. That honour, in my opinion, still belongs to England's Dreaming by Jon Savage though of course the crown is still open for the stealing...

John Serpico