Adge - King Of The Wurzels - John Hudson

 ADGE - KING OF THE WURZELS - JOHN HUDSON

There's an anecdote in John Hudson's Adge - King Of The Wurzels about the time Adge Cutler went to London with his friends to watch a football match at Wembley Stadium and whilst in the foyer of the hotel they were staying at he was approached by a girl who, curious about his and his friends' accents asked Adge what nationality he was? "Nailsea." Adge replied, and this one anecdote speaks volumes in regard to who Adge Cutler was and what he was about. 

Nailsea, a town near Bristol, was where he was from and like all places in the West Country it has its own specific peculiarities and foibles as distinct, unique and as separate from any other town or place. Just as distinct, even within the confines of Bristol itself, there are huge differences between areas within a town or city as for example between Bristol's Clifton area and the Southmead or Easton areas. With this in mind, it's always been problematic to talk of something like 'the Bristol Sound', which is what Massive Attack's style of music is referred to as.

The only meaning this term 'the Bristol Sound' has is when referring to a specific time, a specific period. Therefore, if Massive Attack's style of music is 'the Bristol Sound' then it's only applicable to when they were active during the Nineties and then only for a few years. In this light, 'the Bristol Sound' of the Noughties was arguably Drum 'n' Bass along with its undertow of violence, for a period during the Eighties it was hardcore punk rock in the form of Disorder and Chaos UK, and for a few years during the Seventies it was the cider-fueled songs and lyrics of Adge Cutler and The Wurzels. From these it's easy to see which one would make for the best soundtrack to gentrification.

"If Chuck Berry can write about Memphis, Tennessee," Adge is quoted as saying "then why can't I write about Easton-in-Gordano, Somerset?" And there you have it. The impetus for him singing the songs that he did was the manor to which he was born, and with such rich material to inspire him, the sky was the limit.

Adge Cutler's influence upon the culture of Bristol and the West Country as a whole is immeasurable though if you were to ask people in Bristol nowadays about it a lot of them would probably be perplexed but only because a lot of them wouldn't be Bristolian born and bred, with 'Virtue et Industria' meaning nothing to them. If you were to question the members of Massive Attack and their fellow travelers about it they would probably guffaw and deny it wholeheartedly. On the other hand, if you were to ask members of Chaos UK they would without any doubt nor hesitation say 'yes, absolutely' and then probably raise a glass to him. Or a tankard.

Could Massive Attack ever have existed were it not for Adge Cutler? Of course. Could Chaos UK? Of course. These bands, however, didn't just appear out of nowhere and if Massive Attack haven't been directly influenced musically by them, The Wurzels were still a stepping stone toward their formation however subtle. 

An obvious characteristic of Adge Cutler was his sense of humour, one that is also shared by the likes of Chaos UK and with any luck if you dig deep enough Massive Attack have the same even if it doesn't show in their music or lyrics. Again, it's a very distinct sense of humour very local to Bristol and the West Country. As one of his friends relays about a time when Adge was in a pub in Clevedon and he ordered a pork pie: "Mustard?" asked the barmaid. "No, I'll have it straight," Adge replied.

John Hudson's book tells the story of Adge Cutler and in a way it's an attempt to re-raise the Cutler flag and have it flying again high and proud over Bristol's cultural history. Does it succeed? Only in as much as a book published by a not-for-profit book publishing house with a small print run might be expected. What it does very successfully however is to remove Adge Cutler away from only being associated with places like Nempnett Thrubwell and going to Barrow Gurney (to see his brother Ernie), and events like the World Cider Drinking Championships or the World Muck Spreading Championships and puts him right at the heart of Bristol.

There's a whole slew of Bristol pubs and street names that are mentioned, even at one point the 'world-famous' Dug Out Club on Park Row where Adge met his wife. There's Tyndall's Park Road and Pembroke Road where Adge used to live, the pawnbroker's on Old Market where Adge first bought the corduroy trousers that the band wore, the bench on the edge of Clifton Downs just across from Christ Church that's dedicated to the memory of Adge's wife, Yvonne; and even South Bristol Crematorium at Bedminster Down where Adge's funeral service was held.

Were you aware that The Wurzels were named after Wurzel Gummmidge? Were you aware that Adge was very interested in the Spanish Civil War and for a time actually lived in Guernica? Did you know Adge spoke Spanish fluently? Did you know that when Adge's Wurzel stick went missing it was on the television crime reporting programme Police 5? Did you know that by their manager simply phoning up promoters and clubs and telling them he's got a band that sings about "cider and manure and stuff" that it got them a load of gigs? It's the stuff of legend. You couldn't make it up. 

And Adge Cutler was the man. The man, the myth, and the legend.

John Serpico

Tales From The Punkside - An Anthology

 TALES FROM THE PUNKSIDE - AN ANTHOLOGY

There was a time when the story of punk and its whole narrative was structured and presented within extremely strict parameters, starting with the Sex Pistols and more often than not ending with their demise in Texas and the words 'Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?' Back then there was always an almost holy trinity composed of just three groups: the Pistols, The Damned, and The Clash, acting as an axis around which all other bands orbited. 

Since from around the mid-1990s, however, with the growth of access to the Internet the narrative has shifted so that rather than a top-down perspective as narrated by a very limited number of talking heads, the net has been cast wide and far so as to nowadays include practically anyone who has ever been touched by punk who might now care to comment. The history of punk and its rich tapestry can now be told from the bottom-up. Rather than a bird's-eye view going from A to B we now have a worm's-eye view going from A to Z and back again - and that's no bad thing.

Tales From The Punkside is a collection of anecdotes, academic articles and personal recollections by those who were a million light years away from the original punk inner-circle but who were actually the very lifeblood of it all. At the time, punk was meant to have been the last hurrah, the full stop at the end of awopbopaloomopalopbamboom! As Johnny Rotten once posited in one of his earliest interviews "We've got to destroy the entire superstar band system." The idea being that anyone can be a Sex Pistol, summed up neatly by the slogan 'No more heroes anymore'.

The truth of the matter, however, was that there was always two versions of punk sitting alongside each other and very comfortably it should be added. One version was the lived reality. The shared, everyday experience of the euphoria elicited from the punk rock rush accompanied by the danger and the potential for violence from simply wearing your heart on your sleeve. The other version was a media construct, placing all attention upon bands, individuals and records in a hierarchical system where everything and everyone was product to be bought and consumed. Bought up, beat up and souped-up, just another cheap product for the consumer's head.

The difference between punk and any other so-called 'youth movement' was that by the mid to late 1970s there was an accumulated cultural history behind it, acting not so much as baggage to be jettisoned ala the Year Zero idea but as a propellent. Punk came loaded not only with a musical heritage stretching back to Elvis but also with the societal and political fallout from the impact of past generations and their wrestling with the world they'd found themselves in.

Punk had been born in the aftermath of the hippy dream or rather to put it more bluntly, the hippy dream-induced hangover of the late 1960s with its attendant nightmare of a headache. It's for this reason that the events of something like May '68 in Paris and the impact of Situationism upon that period is significant as evidenced by a lot of the early punk slogans. Moreover, the significance of those early slogans and the subliminal messages garnered from them are the stuff of punk dreams that took on a life of their own and which could not be accommodated, recuperated or co-opted by the profit motive via the music business - though the music business certainly tried.

The messages, hints, signals, slogans, suggestions and ideas being emitted by punk were myriad and their meanings manifold but the beauty of punk was in how it was all open to interpretation. In this light for example, Johnny Rotten's simple use of the word 'destroy' at the end of Anarchy In The UK could either be interpreted as a byword to Sid Vicious-style self-destruction or as Bakunin's idea of the urge to destroy being a creative urge. The 'Anarchy for the UK coming some time' line from the same song could be taken as a promise or a threat. 'Got no time to mess around, got a brand new rose in town' as sung by The Damned could be interpreted as meaning either a new girl or as the arrival in London of punk rock itself. The Ramones singing about how they wanna sniff some glue and Mark Perry naming his fanzine after the habit could easily be interpreted as mere comic book provocation but at the same time also be interpreted as endorsement, leading to glue being viewed almost as a 'punk drug'. And so on and so forth.

In Steve Jones' memoir Lonely Boy, the ex-Pistol at one point wonders how and when punk became associated with squatting, and it's an interesting question. It wasn't until the early 1980s that songs about squatting began to be written as in Dirty Squatters by Zounds and Psycho Squat by Rudimentary Peni, so if it wasn't originally from lyrics that squatting became linked with punk, then where was it? From Joe Strummer, possibly, and his early days with the 101ers and their squat in Maida Vale? The answer is academic, of course, as is also the question of whether the association has been a good or a bad thing? According to writers Justine Butler and Rebecca Binns in Tales From The Punkside it's a mixture of both, though the subject certainly makes for two of the best chapters in the book.

Other chapters that stand out are those written by Francis Stewart about punk in Northern Ireland during the time of The Troubles, Lucy Robinson and her casting of a beady eye over punk and its relationship to academic studies, Ted Curtis and his rummaging through his memory box of his time as an anarcho punk in Bath, and Alistair Livingstone whose voice in the book is probably the most clearest and brightest.

Alistair draws together a number of strands from the punk tapestry and weaves them into a flurry of material endeavours to fulfill a vision of a better world, that world being one in opposition to the machinations of the music business and even to capitalism generally. A world, as Alistair puts it, where everyone is an anarchist. Alistair gives mention to Crass, the Kill Your Pet Puppy fanzine collective, the Autonomy Centre in Wapping, and the Stop The City protests of the early 80s; all essential and important off-shoots and extensions of the original punk idea.

Alistair Livingstone passed away in 2018 and his inclusion in Tales From The Punkside is a nod to his legacy as a pioneer in working out what all this punk stuff meant. The same can also be said of Tales From The Punkside as a whole in that if not quite blazing a trail, shines a light upon punk, opens the door on it that little bit wider, and discusses its meaning and its place in the world so that others might follow and discuss, examine and perhaps take it further? And in the same vein as the Crass Records releases of old, all for just 'Pay no more than 5 pounds'.

John Serpico

Original Rockers - Richard King

 ORIGINAL ROCKERS - RICHARD KING

First things first: Original Rockers by Richard King is a joy to read. If you're a Bristolian and worth your salt then you will know of Revolver Records and you will know of its standing and importance in the secret history of Bristol. You will know this. If you're not of Bristol and unaware of Revolver Records but if you've ever entered a record shop and compulsively returned again (and again) then you will know the importance of such shops in the fabric of life. You will know this.

Revolver Records was situated at the top of Park Street, in Bristol, and during the mid-1990s Richard King worked there. When starting he probably didn't fully realise what it would entail, not least of all what it would entail working with Roger, the proprietor, a brisk and very boisterous person who when not behind the counter of the shop could often be seen speeding around Bristol on his bicycle.

Roger was energised, enthused and happy-go-lucky, possessed of an encyclopedic knowledge of music but with an apparent lack of awareness of when he was being intimidating if not outright rude. He could probably in many ways be compared to another legendary record shop manger, Pete Stennett, of Small Wonder Records, based in Leytonstone, London, whose attitude toward some of his customers could at times also be somewhat 'challenging'.

King gives examples of Roger's customer service skills by citing times when he would advise a customer the record they were after would more likely to be found in a skip than in Revolver. Or when he would berate a customer's taste in music and lack of music knowledge to all within earshot, causing that customer to leave under a cloud of humiliation and for them to never return again. 

Students from the near-by university in Clifton were always sitting ducks for this. When King tries it himself, however, and criticises a customer's taste in music  he immediately discovers it's not quite as easy as it looks. Rather than a student, the customer King criticises is a biker who runs a local tattoo parlour, who in response quietly tells King he'll take his head off with an axe. Turning to Roger for some help, with what could easily be like a scene from Withnail And I, Roger simply says "Don't look at me. You're on your own."

On other occasions, Roger would talk a customer out of completing the purchase of the record they wanted and tell them to spend their money on something different. Other times he would just tell a customer flat out that he can't sell them the record they'd brought to the counter because it was a complete rip-off of another record. If a customer entered the shop holding a bag containing records purchased from a rival record shop, Roger would either ask the customer to leave or place them on a final warning not to bring such bags in again. Such antics, of course, are the stuff of legend and the kind of things that gave Revolver its character. 

Alongside these tales of belittled undergraduates and murderous bikers, King regales us with ruminations on various Jamaican dub meisters, Captain Beefheart, Can, Virginia Astley, Sun Ra, The Pop Group, Richard Long, David Crosby, John Peel, and even Rod Stewart. All irrelevant stuff to some people but to others the stuff of life where God is in the details.

I only knew Roger from talking to him in the shop. I used to know his partner better but only because she would go to the same pub as me. I never saw Roger socially at all, not in pubs or at gigs, only ever on his bike as he sped by. He knew I had a penchant for punk rock but I'd sometimes throw him off his stride by purchasing albums such as Arriving And Caught Up by Anna Palm, or the Snare 12" EP by D&V. Records that he wasn't overly familiar with. 

I remember buying Bongwater's album The Power Of Pussy once and Roger looking at it as though for the first time. I asked him if he'd listened to it and he said no he hadn't, so I said it's the kind of record that if it was to be played in the shop would almost certainly cause customers to enquire about it and almost certainly lead to a sell. I knew, however, that it was something he'd never do, it being another hint at his lack of business acumen.

Revolver it seemed, to Roger, was a labour of love and a way of life rather than a way to turn a profit. This, however, was what made Roger such a special record shop manager and what made Revolver Records such a special record shop.

Original Rockers makes special mention of Revolver being an important outlet for Reggae and Dub, where local black DJs and sound-system operators would go to pick up the latest imports as delivered on a weekly basis by a van delivery service driver by the name of Adrian Sherwood, in his pre-On-U sound system/record label days.

Among those who would visit the shop on these delivery days was a local schoolboy called Mark Stewart, who would go on to form the hugely influential band The Pop Group. A few years later through working at Revolver, a staff member called Grant Marshall had first dibs on newly-delivered imports and played them in his night time role of DJ at the nearby Dug Out Club. Grant Marshall would later be known as Daddy G and be a founding member of The Wild Bunch who would, of course, go on to become Massive Attack.

The importance of the role of Revolver in the genesis of Bristol's cultural impact upon the world cannot be overstated and so too Revolver's role in forging a Bristolian-centered self-confidence that made London no longer the centre of relevance. 

Original Rockers is a joy to read.

John Serpico