Black & Free - Tom Skinner

BLACK & FREE - TOM SKINNER

Well, to say I'm disappointed is an understatement. I'm underwhelmed, and it all started off so promisingly. From the title 'Black & Free' and the front cover picture in almost dayglo pink and blue of black men facing off gun-toting National Guardsmen. From the introductory first few pages describing a rumble in Harlem between rival gangs wielding bicycle chains, bottles, knuckledusters, and lead balls in socks. All good stuff but by page 26, however, the author is talking about Jesus and Christianity and it's suddenly one of those Talking Heads moments where you might ask yourself 'How did I get here?'

It turns out that author Tom Skinner is a Baptist minister and Black & Free is his memoir. Doh! as Homer Simpson would say. I've nothing against the author personally, of course - how could I, he's probably been dead for years - but the story of how he came to accept Jesus Christ into his life is not what I'm after. In fact, I couldn't give a flying fucking fuck, to be frank.

Written in 1968 at a time when the barricades were going up in Paris, when Vietnam was a slaughterhouse, and revolution and emancipation was on the agenda along had come Tom Skinner - self-proclaimed peoples' prophet - declaring that all the problems of the world, all the social injustice, prejudice and oppression was all down to the sin in the hearts of men. Live and let live and each to one's own but as Patti Smith once advised, Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine so you can stuff such ideas as 'original sin' where they belong in the dustbin of history or better still up your arse.

'Forgive them, for they know not what they do' is the reply. So the crusaders, the ministers and all the soldiers of Christ are right and I'm wrong. Which is a bit presumptuous, is it not? A bit arrogant? A bit overbold? To believe and then exclaim that you're right and everyone else is wrong isn't 'faith'. It's self-idolatry and it's the seed of prejudice that when pronounced as a sin in others goes unrecognized in the self because it also serves as a blacked-out mirror. 

'Love does not come naturally. Love is not part of human nature. It is not in the nature and desire of man to love instead of to hate. That type of life can only be produced by the person of Jesus Christ,' the author says. But I beg to differ. And actually, this is a fundamental building block of a person's worldview that dictates their course through life. Personally, I'm with Kropotkin and the idea that man is a naturally social creature and the key to his welfare and survival is through co-operation, mutual aid and altruism. It's obvious. If it wasn't then we'd all be out in the streets killing each other, or at least absolutely despising each other. 

What a horrible life it must be to believe that man is naturally hateful? No wonder anyone thinking this might turn to Jesus for salvation. For sanctuary. For a crutch.

I bought Black & Free on the strength of its cover and the series of photos enclosed within its pages showing the ghettoes of America in flames during the race riots of the Sixties but on reading it found myself caught-up in the tortured fantasies of a Baptist minister. I wanted revolution and the Black Panthers but found myself being told it's better to suck it up and to turn the other cheek. 

Well, thank you for the advice. But no thanks.

John Serpico

Wayward - Vashti Bunyan

WAYWARD - JUST ANOTHER LIFE TO LIVE -

VASHTI BUNYAN

Like a lot of other people I was quite late in coming to Vashti Bunyan, perhaps even later than most? It was on YouTube where her name first popped up and a picture of her standing in a fur coat next to a brick wall that was used for the cover of her Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind compilation LP. The black-and-white photograph was reminiscent of Rita Tushingham in A Taste Of Honey, or football pools winner Viv Nicholson even, and it immediately caught my eye. Algorithms can be a curse but every once in a while they might also be a blessing?

Vashti Bunyan is an English singer, often labelled as a folk singer but actually having more in common with Nick Drake though it's a comparison she would immediately shy away from just as she would vehemently deny the folk singer label.

During the 1960s, Bunyan was heard singing at a private party and her name then mentioned to Andrew Loog Oldham, the twenty-one year old manager of the Rolling Stones and ex-manager of Marianne Faithfull, who subsequently invited her to his Mayfair office to meet and for her to sing him some of her songs. Oldham immediately offered to make a record with her but insisted it had to be a Richards/Jagger composition called Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind.

To a lot of singers back then, this would have been a dream come true but Bunyan wasn't best pleased because what she really wanted was to record and release her own songs. Oldham advised that one of her compositions could be the B-side, and on the advice of her father to "compromise, dear girl", Bunyan went ahead with the deal.

Despite various appearances up and down the country for local TV stations the record failed to capture the public's imagination and so sunk without trace though to listen to it nowadays, in hindsight it's a veritable pop gem - a veritable pearl before swine.

Bunyan was sucked into the machinations of the music business of the 1960s where it became clear to her that all Oldham wanted was for her to become a replacement for Marianne Faithfull, a role she was eminently unsuitable for and that went against all her instincts and desires to be a songwriter and musician in her own right.

Come 1968 she'd just about had enough of it. Tired and broken by the constant male chauvinism of the music industry, tired of being pushed every which way by those who thought they knew best and all to a distinct lack of any sort of success, Vashti Bunyan walked away from it all. Not to take up another career or to marry and have children or any of that stuff but to simply walk away. To escape. So, Bunyan went off to live in a bush in a wood.

It's too easy to say that Bunyan had a mental breakdown ala Peter Green or Syd Barrett. She admits to not being well at that time and had been diagnosed by her family doctor as being hypoglycaemic though how accurate that diagnosis was is impossible to tell. The bottom line of it is that after an accumulation of events, something snapped inside of her and Bunyan turned her back on everything, including not least the promise of pop stardom and Andrew Loog Oldham's plan to sell her as the next Marianne Faithfull.

Into the wilderness she went. To live in a bush. In a wood. In Bromley. To join a student boyfriend who was living likewise in a bid to save money. It didn't last as they were soon discovered and evicted by the landowner whereupon they then had the bright idea to purchase a horse and wagon and head to the Outer Hebrides to live there.

Into the wilderness. Like Christopher McCandless heading off into Alaska for a new life, as depicted in the film Into The Wild. Potentially like Lawrence Oates on Scott's expedition to the Antarctic, leaving the tent one night with the words 'I am just going outside and may be some time'.

This strange, long trip by horse and cart from London to the Outer Hebrides is what the bulk of Vashti Bunyan's book Wayward - Just Another Life To Live is about, bookended by tales from her childhood (at one point describing a backstage encounter with a young, unsmiling and angry Cliff Richard looking at her with hatred) and from 1997 onwards which is when Bunyan went on to the Internet for the first time and discovered that not only was her debut album she'd recorded in 1970 (of her own songs) now a collectors item but even that a cult audience had developed around it.

Vashti Bunyan's story is ultimately one of triumph over adversity, of how talent will always out, and of the importance of being true to oneself. Being 'wayward' is simply another way of describing being singular of vision. A way of describing the importance of keeping safe the flame inside even when it's but a flicker. A way of describing the importance of when having a dream to hold onto it forever even if it's but a memory of a dream thought long dead. Being 'wayward' is just another way to live your life but on your own terms. And Wayward is a good book and a joy to read.

John Serpico

Kid - Simon Armitage

 KID - SIMON ARMITAGE

"I know beauty and I know a good thing when I see it," as Howard Devoto once declared in Magazine's outrageously good A Song From Under The Floorboards, and it's something we would all probably nod sagely along to and agree with. Beauty, however, is subjective and in the eye of the beholder, and when it comes to something like poetry I'm never too sure whether it's a good thing or not?

What makes for a good poem? Does it need to be stained with the blood from failed suicide attempts? Stained with the sweat poured forth at night whilst under the duvet in fear of all the children who won't know how to cope (with a world in rack and ruin from their technocratic dope)? Stained with the tears shed for the poor unfortunates of America?

What is a poem anyway? Is it making play with your native language and in Simon Armitage's case, making fun and games with the English tongue? Displays of dry wit? Observations made?

And how to read poems by the likes of Simon Armitage? One at a time with ten minute interludes so as to savour the flavour of each one? At your own pace or like having a deadline to catch? Who knows? These are things never taught in schools. What would Simon Armitage himself advise? Perhaps not to even bother because who would even be a poet nowadays let alone read poetry? Shouldn't you instead be more inclined to be a singer/songwriter? A lyricist? A rapper? A pop star with an almost guaranteed audience of some kind or another to cling on to your every word?

And apart from fragile youths chasing butterflies with big nets in open fields during long summers, truculent old professors in dusty chambers under the gleaming spires of Cambridge, and politically redundant malcontents on the East Devon coast, who exactly reads this kind of stuff nowadays? That's what I want to know.

John Serpico

Crash - J G Ballard

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Under Exmouth Skies (Part 55)

 UNDER EXMOUTH SKIES (Part 55)

New day rising 2024...

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