New Cures For Old Ailments

New Cures For Old Ailments

LETTER FROM BRITAIN

by

Penny Valentine

There's been no new trend for a month. Funk, o years on, seems to be settling down for a comfortable middle age. Clash have put out (again) "I Fought The Law", which is as OK as it was the first time around but seems to reflect the current inertia pretty well. Jimmy Pursey denies he s thinking of getting together with ex-Pistols Cook and Jones but the rumour is, at least, about the only thing keepingthe rock press even slightly active this summer. This week's thing are The Undertones, part of the pocket of punk energy in Ireland. Derry based, they are pretty vehement about being non-political (interesting) and not to be compared to Belfast's Stiff Little Fingers, who were mentioned in this column a couple of months back. The Undertones' single is "Jimmy Jimmy", aninnocuous melodic track that's in the charts here. Originally 1 thought the lyrics were to do with revolutionary fervour and being interned, so I believed there was an interesting sense of irony in what the band were doing with their work. Now it appears I mis-read the whole thing.

• The charts are busy—mainjy with disco and lightweight stuff. There's a number1 by Anita Ward called "Ring My Bell" which, along with the Debbie Harry single, continues to show audiences' preference for Lolita images instead of women. Considering Patti Smith's protestations over the magnificent pop record "Because The Night", the recording of "Frederick" does not bode well. A hit of course, since it owes much to the precursor without Springsteen's sense of dramatic tension, and 1 don't really object to the fact that she seems to have opted for singe success with straight romantic popular music. But it puts her credibility under a bit of a strain I suppose. And it's interesting that the Siouxsie and The Banshees track "Overground" is so much—with its inverted lyrics and intense voice working against the backing—what you'd originally have thought Patti would be doing by now.

It's the time open air concerts start jostling for audiences: the Who and Zeppelin still draw more reliably than Clash as far as the promoters go. It may not be true, since the others are part of the rock establishment, it may be in Clash's favour that they're not doing a big summer stunt (there's an argument in this house that Clash at an open air gig, with all the well-established discomfort, would probably be the only band worth queuing for a portable lavatory for). The trade papers have shrunk to half their normal size and Nick Lowe's new album has got mixed reviews, although on the whole favourable. I keep my sneaking admiration for Lowe. He's got a strong grasp on recording technique and uses all his (and all our) influences so slyly and bare-faced it's hard not to grin just listening to him. The Ehon John concerts in Russia were reviewed all over the national press here, which proves he's as newsworthy as the Stones to the millions over breakfast, despite his lay-off, and his place in pop hierarchy is secure. Everyone is surprised that the shows went, down so well. Strange. Think about it: Ray Cooper may have caused a bit of disquiet considering he looks like Ivan Denisovich on parole from labour camp, but since the way EJ moves bear no resemblance to the normal r&b influence .. . somewhere, in the back of all those young Russian minds, must have been evoked the sound of vodkcf glasses smashed against walls and the "hup, hup, hup" (as opposed to "holler") erf Cossack dancers.

Word has reached us of the latest Lennon and Ono shenanigans about ads and angels and only wishing good things to happen. It seems everyone could take this now if j,t was truly part of a counter-culture a£ the "sack-ins" and "bed-ins" were in the 60's. But for perhaps the original punk to have turned into a non-productive, spiritual harbinger . . . everyone's got very cross about that. Including the man from the Sunday Observer diary who made it pretty clear he thought Yoko was to blame (again?) for Lennon's peace-out. I think it's pretty stupid, but harmless, and can't quite understand how—even with/ McCartney now a bland millionaire, Harrison a brown rice bore and Ringo a furniture designer (a fate suited to them all on reflection) people seem so personally hurt and let down by Lennon. v Such stories gain greater impact at a time when there appears to be a lull in the proceedings. Ian Dury's Do It Yourself—in the chajct straight at *2 after a few days—seems to signify the maturing of punk. Interesting to see if it will break Dury in America finally, although he doesn't seem concerned to follow Costello's success—quite genuinely if the recent interview with him in the NME1 is anything to go by. It was a melancholic piece, I thought, that captured a side of Dury's personality I'd never seen in print before. I'm not sure if reading it swayed me, but Do It Yourself is quite a change from the New Boots And Panties Dury. Both with Kilburn and The High Roads and on that first album I recoiled from Dury's vocal dirty-bloke-in-a-raincoat approach. I found it threatening, crude, I suppose in anon-puritanical sense. Even knowing his art school background and his affection for the tradition of British working class comedians for the 40's didn't help me put it in perspective. I don't know whether it's The Blockheads' more overt allegiances to jazz and soul (even though the "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick" bass line keeps re-emerging as a kind of Dury signature), or a general smoothing out of sound, or Dury's more mellow, almost gentle, vocal style that's made me change my mind. But there it is. There's some odd childlike quality now. The way he says "bum" for instance. It comes over on track with the same bright-eyed quality children have when they say something they want to shock you with. A kind of calculated innocence. Even when he goes into a musically dark passage on "Waiting For Your Taxi" the lyrics are funny and so work against the music in exactly the right way. New Boots was probably one of the rttost successful British albums of the past decade: in the chart for two years on and off and, the very week the new album came out, movpd back up into 40.

In the NME Dury carne over, not as the lovable rogue he's always seemed before in print, but a kind of confused puppy with a lot of guilt. The NME reporter cried himself to sleep in a German hotel after the first part of the interview where Dury talked about his polio. He put that in the copy. What emerged was the "reporter and artist as soul mates",/less an observation of Dury but a report of an emotional conversation. I don't know, maybe that's what finally made the piece effective, but it's part of a writing syndrome that's become prevalent over the years. It's where the writer becomes as important as the person she/he's writing about, and the reporter's feelings during the course of the work also as important. Lately there's been a slight switch from that. It still involves the way a reporter reacts to things but in a more observational style. The reporter takes a stance, the event as seen through the reporter's eyes, makes the reporter more interesting than what's actually taking place. Someone l know who occasionally writes up live gig reviews said they always And it an odd business. They see their role as simply to say what happens at the gig. What the band did, what the audience did, how the band responded to the audience and back again. He never puts in how he feels. This, of course, raises die whole argument about how truly objective any piece of writing—like any photograph—can really be once an individual is involved. Rock journalism has always changed, though perhaps less abruptly than the music it feeds on. I admire writers (few) who truly grasp what certain records stand for, how, say, a set of lyrics co-exist with or contradict the music they're set to. What the meaning is. But most I think I admire the even fewer who can directly convey a sense of place and time. In the late 60's a writer called David Widgery did it here. Now only Melody Maker's Allen Jones really cuts it and crafts it with what must surely be a typewriter with arrows instead of letters.

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LETTER FROM BRITAIN

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From being a sharp, bitchy, pretty superficial writer Jones has become the only reliable dramatic wiiter in British rock journalism. In a way his style is not much removed from the New Journalism and there's always been the secret thought that he might just exaggerate some of his quotes, so like a film scenario are they. But he's the only writer who makes ipe feel I've been 1 somewhere I haven't and seen something I missed. When he went on tour with Clash in America his opening description of Cleveland was so clever I got fooled into thinking, not only that I'd been there (I never have) but that I was reading a good novel. The most intriguing thing "about Jones'work 1 think is not just that miracle of . a retentive memory (especially to someone whose mind hardly holds the water needed to keep it alive) for what people say, but for The way they say it. Of course he can't avoid making himself a main character in the plot, but at least he's fairly cynical about himself. It's hard not to romanticize your role as a writer, even when you're busy ae-romanticising the process you're writing about, but just as you begin to suspect Jones is about'to fall into that trap he pulls back.

Chauvinist, boozer, not beyond making himself look an idiot (and remarking how many people tell him to go away—the polite version), he just avoids glamourising those qualities about himself by letting people put them down in his copy. He never'emerges a hero. On the other hand some have considered his bantam weight appearance as a ready excuse for pugilism over some past criticism of their work (again reported) .' He comes close to mythologising himself constantly—then manages a sharp bend in his cornering and emerges more of a sneering weedy one. 1 oft?n wonder how he makes out with Costello, though—for sure—he has a better sense of humour then El. I laughed out loud at his best piece yet: touring With tedious Mike Oldfield in Germany. Vie perfectly captured the mounting hysteria of the trip, relayed it to his audience and hence had at least one reader—literally—hysterical with laughter by the end. The thing about Jones is that he gets into the middle of the fray while pretending to observe, wandering round the periphery he seems—accidentally—to get the right people to say the right things to make the .most entertaining copy. While he's busy debunking all the did myths about rock 'n' roll he's taking his audience in there with him, slap in the middle of a freezing coach ride, a drunken backstage brawl, a terminally boring open air concert. Like a war photographer he'd be less happy with a peaceful situation (and probably start a minor war just to be on the safe side). Jones is the honest reporter who will happily down the free booze, eat on the free meal ticket (and moan if the food is lousy) then "tell it like it is" to show he's incorruptible. It's honest total dishonesty and it isn't really as subversive as it seems. Record companies invite him everywhere (although sometimes he's braved it by being dispatched to far flung comers of the world without the security of a press officer alongside). Mainly, I suspect, because everyone reads his stuff and his stories normally get a front page in Melody Maker. Probably the old "any publicity's good publicity" still works today, punk or not, and so Jones is taken into the mainstream even if he seems to be fighting all the way.

The other weekend the reconstituted Mods took themselves from London to Brighton in an attempt to restage the holiday battle^ 15 years agovwhen Mods bashed Rockers on the seafront and created a moral panic amongst the readers of the national press. It was cold and wet and a teenage girl I know of went along. She slept on the beach and stayed up on speed for 48 hours. In the end it was sad. Nothing happened. Except that she caught flu and stayed off work on Monday.