Totterdown Rising - Kate Pollard

TOTTERDOWN RISING - KATE POLLARD

When approaching Bristol by train there are two sights to look out for that tell you you're there. The first is the Clifton Suspension Bridge in the distance on the left, spanning the Avon Gorge like a veritable Eighth Wonder of the World. The second, on the right, is a row of differently-coloured houses sitting at the top of the hill just before you get to Temple Meads Station. Those multi-coloured houses are in Totterdown, and in their not so subtle way are near-iconic. A recognizable yet unspoken feature of the landscape depicting Bristol in all its off-centre, polymorphic peculiarity. Unlike the Clifton Suspension Bridge which is a tourist go-to, far more people have seen Totterdown or at least a part of it if only from a distance than have actually been there. Moreover, far fewer people know much if anything about Totterdown's history and that includes a good many Bristolians themselves which is why Kate Pollard's book, Totterdown Rising, is an important  one.

Published by Totterdown Press, an imprint of Bristol's ever impressive Tangent Books, Totterdown Rising is the story of a depressingly shameful episode from Bristol's more recent past when a community was needlessly bulldozed to make way for what city planners saw at the time as the future. That future being to all intent and purpose the motor car.

During the post-war period of the 1950s, car ownership was being viewed as intrinsic to economic growth and by the 1960s car production figures had become a prime index for measuring that growth. Encouraged by car manufacturers, car ownership was presented as a symbol of affluence, convenience and freedom with urban renewal being shaped around that ownership. Public transport and environmental impact came a poor second whilst the impact upon communities wasn't even a consideration. Subsequently, when plans for a £30 million Outer Circuit Road for Bristol was devised in 1966, the fact that large parts of the Easton and Totterdown areas of the city would need to be demolished was an inconvenient but unavoidable necessity. The required displacement of local communities mere collateral damage.

Like homes and businesses built from bricks and mortar, bold visions come with a price but what price the lives, the love, the memories, hopes and dreams of people? Under compulsory purchase orders the properties of Totterdown standing in the way of progress were bought up and the occupants uprooted and moved away in what can only be described as an exercise in mismanagement. Chaotic, shambolic and ill-conceived mismanagement.

With bold visions, however, come caveats and the bolder the vision the larger the caveat. Unfortunately, no-one mentioned this to the residents of Totterdown, in particular the caveat that said 'we will uproot your families and destroy your community but to no actual avail if the road in the end isn't built'. And that's exactly what happened. The money ran out, the vision faltered, and the enthusiasm waned, resulting in the road in the end not actually being built and leaving Totterdown bereft. One of the oldest communities in Bristol had been vandalised, devastated, ripped apart and near-destroyed for no reason at all.

It's all water under the bridge now, of course, so let bygones be bygones and let's all just move on, some might say? And that's fine because things have moved on but it's still important to ask what lessons have been learned because some might also say 'those who fail to remember the past are condemned to repeat it'.

There was a time when Bristol's city planners thought it might be a good idea to fill in the city docks, concrete it all over and sell it all off to the right bidder as highly desirable real estate. There was a time when the Council had actually sold the iconic industrial cranes down at the city docks for scrap, before being saved by local people incensed at the very idea. There was a time when it was thought to be a good idea to demolish Eastville Stadium, the former home to Bristol Rovers, to make way for the building of a huge, blue Ikea store in the middle of the housing estate there. There was a time when it was thought to be a good idea to turn buildings in the centre of Bristol over to developers to be turned into student-only accommodation. There was a time when the gentrification of Bristol was thought to be a good thing even when it meant the pricing out of locals from ever being able to afford a home there. There was a time when it was deemed the right thing that the statue of slave trader Edward Colston remain in place because apparently removing it would be 'denying our history'.

There was a time that in order to save Bristol it was thought it necessary to destroy Bristol. Totterdown being a case in point.

John Serpico

Another Green World - Geeta Dayal

 ANOTHER GREEN WORLD - GEETA DAYAL

The thing about the Brian Eno solo albums from the 1970s, as in Here Comes The Warm Jets, Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy, and Another Green World is that they all demand repeat listens. Their complexity and peculiarity make them impossible to immediately take in, soak up and understand. Every new listen is almost a fresh listen as if you're hearing them for the first time or at least for the first time from a different angle. There are seemingly constant new things to be heard in them and it's this that makes them of constant interest.

Another Green World was recorded in 1975 and from its very feel it's obvious that it's a studio album, as in having been concocted entirely within the confines of a recording studio as opposed to being incubated over a period of time from notebooks and ruminations in the bedroom. The recording studio being used as a musical instrument in its own right.

Geeta Dayal's treatise on the album, entitled - what else? - Another Green World, is from the series of booklets published by Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing. The word 'academic' rather gives the game away as to its seriousness of intent, forwarding the notion that these books are of an academic nature rather than fan-boy stuff.

In the preface, Dayal informs us that this short work of just 105 pages has been written and re-written over and over again, draft upon draft and unfortunately, it shows. The clumsiness of some of the sentences is at times almost jarring as are some of the geographical details about England. It's a casebook example of something being over-written, where you end up not being able to see the wood for the trees. On top of this, it comes as no surprise to see the author is based in San Francisco, which explains the geographical misconceptions in regard to the English cities and Universities that are mentioned.

Writing about music is like dancing to architecture, as they say. Writing to a deadline induces panic, and Dayal's book comes across as an example of that.

At the end of the day it's always down to personal choice of course, but Another Green World isn't actually Eno's best solo album though that's not to deny its classic status. The collaboration between the different musicians on the album such as Robert Fripp, John Cale and even a young Phil Collins make it an interesting proposition from the start though it's the inclusion of the track I'll Come Running that tips the whole thing into the realm of beauty.

I'll Come Running first appeared the year previously in 1974 on a John Peel session during the time when Eno after having left Roxy Music was playing with a band called The Winkies. The Peel session version had been called Totalled and was an upbeat, almost proto pop punk song. The version on Another Green World, however, is a lament. A contemplative daydream juxtaposing both resignation and enthusiasm. A perfect balance, a perfect moment, capturing the first tiny speck of light from the sun rising alongside the final, fading last glow from the sun setting. As a pure, fully-realised song it stands proudly, bursting with life yet possessed with sadness. A genuine work of beauty.

Of the fourteen tracks on the album only five of them actually have lyrics, the rest of them being instrumentals. As Geeta Dayat correctly points out, the album is the link to Eno's future. It's the bridge between Eno of old and new Eno, between rock'n'roll and Ambient, between the guitar and the synthesizer. It's near-equivalent is David Bowie's Low album, though where on Low one side of the album is composed of songs with lyrics and the other side is sprawling ambient pieces, the tracks on Another Green World are more evenly distributed, the ones with lyrics acting almost as segues.

Because of this 'crossover' status, Dayal is able to explore some of Eno's influences which led to the creation of Another Green World and it's here that the book proves to be most interesting. Steve Reich, Gavin Bryars, Harold Budd, Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music album are all given mention, acting as a sort of road map to a musical education that if paid proper attention to is actually life-enhancing.

Nowadays when you think of Eno, you associate him with being a superb record producer and the perpetrator of, if not the well from which Ambient music sprang. You visualise him as either the alien person in feathers and leopard-print, twiddling away on an analog synth in Roxy Music times, or as the balding University lecturer polymath applying an intelligence to music and the arts whenever he pops up on YouTube. In Roxy Music days, however, Eno was apparently a veritable shag monster, cutting a picaresque swathe through the heartland of student virginity whenever out on tour. It's a sobering thought, betraying his past-life 'alien' persona and his subsequent studied yet relaxed seriousness, and revealing him to be as human as the rest of us. Though with added genius.

John Serpico