PLAY IT FASTER
Part 1: “Never Trust a Hippy (unless you have no other choice)”
This is the story of an ex-drummer being dragged out of his
peaceful 15 year old retirement by a horrible punk covers band
called “The Janitors”. It features all manner of musical
debauchery and sexual perversions of the sickest nature and if
you read all the way to the end some photos of naked young
ladies (or Heath Ledger wearing a hat if you’re a young lady
yourself). It begins with a ‘phone call from Mr. Andrew Davidson
who some of you may recognise as being the singer and all ‘round
driven dynamo who basically keeps the crazy punk rock circus
that is “The Janitors” on the road, (Actually Andrew now that
I’ve read that bit back I’ve decided it wasn’t really worth the
fiver you gave me to say it….)
I’d like to tell you that I was listening to something that
gives evidence to my hippy credentials when Andy ‘phoned me to
ask if I could help out. Something like, “Joni Mitchell’s Blue”
or “The Lovin’ Spoonful”. Of course I would have been reading R.
Crumb or Aldous Huxley and lying on my Afghan coat which I had
wistfully called George. All of this happening in a squat with
my “far out” friends painting a mural of, “The Grateful Dead” on
the wall of our doss.
I’d like to tell you that, but I can’t because when Andy called
me I was walking around B&Q looking for a new pair of mole grips
for my Dad after some total knob had stolen his from his
allotment shed. He’s 72 for Sid’s sake. Wouldn’t it be nice if
the type of people who prey on the weak and old and infirm would
just do everyone else a favour and throw themselves from a cliff
onto a spike? Sorry, I digress. So, I was in B&Q and as a result
was probably listening to something from Phil Collins played on
a penny whistle and a saw. It didn’t really matter because I had
never heard about 95% of the songs “The Janitors” wanted me to
play which sort of proves my whole hippy point.
It’s not that I haven’t heard ANY punk music, I WAS alive
between 1976 and 1980. My first concert at the Newcastle city
hall was “The Skids” but I have been reliably informed recently
that they are, “New Wave NOT Punk” and what’s more, “Have no
part to play in this band”. So there.
Still, during the late seventies I heard the Clash, the Jam, the
Pistols, the Ruts, the Damned, the Members, the Buzzcocks, the
Stranglers, the 999, the Stiff Little Fingers and the Siouxsie
and the Banshees along with a host of other long forgotten “the”
bands via my next door neighbour. I suppose I must have absorbed
some of it by osmosis but I can’t really understand how I missed
out on some of the truly beautiful music “The Janitors” have
unearthed. “I hate people”, “Somebody’s gonna get their head
kicked in tonight”, “Too drunk to Fuck”. How can such priceless
jewels of music exist and have been overlooked for general
public consumption?
B&Q for one are barking up the wrong tree with all that terrible
Phil Collins shite (and it is utter shite). “I hate people”
played on the dustpan and spinning wheel would, I’m convinced,
increase the sales of their kitchens exponentially.
I was also IN a punk band when I was a kid.
Alright, so it was one of those bands where you are way too
young, have no instruments, no transport, no amplification, and
no financial means to get any of the above, but by the great god
Strummer you can talk yourselves (and most of your mates) into
believing that you are the greatest band on the planet. But by
the time we had grown a little and did have instruments and amps
(and a skateboard on which to transport them. Seriously!) I was
into Rush, Deep Purple, and Led Zeppelin.
So anyway, I can feel you dozing off.
I had seen “The Janitors” do a half hour set at a friends party
and had enjoyed them as an observer. I caught them again in a
smaller venue (The Duke in Felling) about a month later and they
brought on my tinitus something awful. But they were (and are)
great players, had bags of energy, a great sense of fun, and
also loads of songs that I had never heard or had any interest
in ever hearing again.
So when Andy asked if I would help them out for a bit (remember
the phone call before I rambled?) I was eager to lend a hand
(just think of all those hippy good karma points) but also very
reluctant to hear again, let alone play, some of the songs I had
heard at the Duke. In a moment of madness that will take years
of psycho analysis to eradicate, I said, “yes”.
I met Andy for only the third time, in his car under the A1 at
the Chester le Street roundabout. (insert your very own drug
dealer/dogging joke here). He seemed a lot more friendly than on
the two previous occasions I had met him, but I suppose he was
clutching at straws even asking me to join the band and sort of
had his back to the wall. I can just imagine his mind racing
with the mantra, “don’t frighten the hippy, don’t frighten the
hippy…” He gave me a C.D. with most of what they did on it but
the plank hadn’t checked it before he left the house and they
were all in MP3 format. I had to use my old steam powered P.C.
when I got home and with the help of my 13 year old daughter
managed to extract most of what was on the disk. I thought, “Who
the hell IS this amateur?”
The music on the C.D. frightened me as much as it had at the
Duke. It was awful at best, laughable at worst and at some
points I actually thought they were taking the yellow water. It
also frightened me for a more crucial reason. I tried to play
along with it and…couldn’t. It was like a foreign language. I
started with “Babylon’s Burning” (which in hindsight may have
been a mistake) and I immediately developed a cold sweat and a
buzzing head as it dawned on me that I may be going to let the
band down and make a total arse of myself in the process. Things
progressed and I sort of got a handle on it and that same day
(the day after I got the C.D.) I was in a rehearsal studio with
the band. It was all so decadent. Air conditioning, lights, lots
of space. I was used to practising in either somebody’s bedroom
or, in even darker days, upstairs in a derelict building above a
motorbike shop.
It is at this point that three other characters who are critical
to this story appear. The first is Andy Clarke who was until
this point the drummer for “The Janitors”. Andy was my
connection to “The Janitors” as I knew him through another band
I had played with years ago. It was Andy who had suggested they
try me. Thanks Andy, thanks a bunch…. |
