by Paolo Hewitt
I pulled it out, mixed it in and within thirty seconds of the tune finishing, there was sweet Sandra standing beside me, saying, ‘I thought you said it was at home.’
‘It was,’ I replied, ‘but I ran home to get it for you.’
‘Fetch me a bucket,’ she said with a laugh that lit up her face.
‘Eddie Bo,’ I replied.
‘What?’
‘Eddie Bo. He cut a tune called “Check The Bucket.” I forget which label.’
‘How absolutely fascinating. And I suppose that record is at home as well.’
‘Third shelf, on the left hand side. Where do you live?’ Sandra hesitated for a moment. ‘North.’
‘Well, if you want to share a cab after, you can pop m and meet the great Eddie Bo.’
‘I think I can live without that dubious privilege,’ she replied.
‘But we can share a cab if you like.’
This we did but if you’re wondering what came next, let me tell you straight away, people, that nothing happened that first night except for some pleasant chit chat in the back of the cab.
It was the following night when it all went off. Sandra unexpectedly called round, (‘the friend I went to see was out...’) and, after a couple of brews and a few smokes, I picked up the courage to pull the following stunt, taught to me, myself and I by the first number at our school, an Italian number called Enzo, to lose his cherry, much to our great consternation and extreme astonishment.
Now, believe me, I know the following yarn sounds a bit silly in the cold light of day but it does work so I’ll put it down and you can make of it what you will.
‘What you do,’ Enzo explained to a group of us hanging onto his every word as if he was the Messiah just descended, which to many of us he was as he’d just pulled off something that the rest of us could only think about, ‘is you sit on the sofa with her and about half way through the evening pick up her hand and say, that’s a nice ring you’re wearing. Keep holding her hand. After she’s said, yes, so and so gave it to me, either she’ll pull her hand away, in which case forget it, or she will let you hold on, which means you’re in.’
Sandra let me hold her hand but the nerves between the both of us could have kept this town’s electricity supply alive for a 100 years until, unable to stand the tension anymore, I made a move and we began kissing.
Sad to say but my first romp with Sandra was not the starry eyed experience that you always hope for when you couple up for the first time, but then how could it be when you consider that sex, nine times out of ten, only fires up after a real familiarity has been established, and you get to know each other and what is required, which is why I have to laugh everytime I go cinema and there, on the silver screen, the two leads fly at each other to a sound track of deafening moaning and groaning.
It’s not the depiction that upsets me and far from it, because I’d much rather watch people loving it up than kicking ten shades out of each other any day of the year, but it’s the obvious dishonesty of it all that bugs me, so much so, in fact, that if the keeper’s of the nation’s morals, Mrs. Mary W. and her army of knitting needles, were to campaign on this ticket, namely persuading the film numbers to depict how things really go down between people about to dip their feet in some of the deepest and strangest waters there are, why she’d have my vote each and every time.
As it was Sandra and I were fumbling and awkward with each other, failing badly to reach the fireworks stage and it struck me after, as I tried to drift off into dreamland and put behind me what had just passed, that the idea of sex with someone was sometimes far more of a kick than the act itself, and when you also considered the grief you saved both yourself and your partner, then may be that would be the best course for me to charter over the next few months.
The problemo, of course, stemmed from that vital piece of man known as John Thomas. That incorrigible organ tends to direct a man’s outlook a lot of the time and if every boy and girl was wised up to his ways and manners at a very early age, then you’d have the smartest, not to mention the happiest nation on earth. True thing, people.
Contemplating these thoughts I slipped into darkness and when I came to the next morning Sandra had flown the yard to get to work, leaving behind a name and number which I used the next night to invite her down to The Unity.
Indeed, the romping started to gear up between us but if truth be told it never hit full swing and that was down to me and the fact that I was still carrying a torch for the First Lady of my life, a state of being that I have only just come to terms with, although Sandra sussed it almost straight away.
On our third night together, she said, ‘There’s someone else isn’t there?’
‘No, there isn’t,’ I said, taken aback a little. ‘There is, I can tell.’
‘I promise you Sandra, I’m not checking anyone else.’
‘Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there,’ she said cryptically, and not, I have to add, a little sadly.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I quickly said and then reached for her. She just sighed and now as I muse on it all I am left wondering if that was the night we created human life.
I •shook the notion out of my head and glanced at the clock.
10.53 a.m. Time to get busy.
I moved into my small bedroom and perused my gears which hang on a rail that takes up one side of the room. I should explain here that gears, the art of acquiring an item and then presenting yourself to the world in an eye balling fashion, is a lifelong habit of mine and although the choosing of how best to dress for the day is one of my morning’s better moments, that consideration for today, at least, was out of the window. Within two minutes I was dressed, gathering up my essentials for the day, which means cigarettes, keys, walk ma n, tapes, all of which are placed in a small bowling bag, and heading out of the door.
My yard is in North London, above a newsagents in fact, on the Stroud Green Road, a stretch of tar and pavement with a rambling selection of shops and dwellings on either side. As you might expect for someone of my limited means, my yard is small as there are but three small rooms to which I can keep myself and my belongings, the biggest space being taken up by the countless tunes I have gathered up over the years.
You will no doubt have sussed by now that for me, myself and I, music is one of the few reasons why I find existence on this earth so enjoyable, the simple reason being that not only is music capable of placing a lot of folk in a very cool mood, and that applies to each and everyone whether it be the sound of a church bell in the early morning mist or Miss Nina Simone testifying, but it can actually transcend normal life and take you out of yourself to a place that is unbelievably wondrous and inspiring.
Music can give you such a boost that from where I’m standing no drug has yet been invented to match it and that’s why every day I go in search of a fix. It is also the reason why the walls of my yard are filled with pictorial tributes to those God given talents, Marvin Gaye, Al Green, Stevie Wonder, Donald Byrd, Donny Hathaway, The Isley Brothers, and many more, whose work will always ring down the decades, touching every guy and gal for as long as the world keeps turning.
In fact, after Sandra’s call I had toyed with the idea of placing Miss Nina Simone’s heartaching ‘Little Boy Blue’ on the turntable to push me down so I could rise up higher, but instead, anxious not to be late, I rushed out of the yard and onto the concrete just as the Stroud Green Road was coming to life.
Saturday morning shoppers filled the pavement and buses, packed to the gills slowly manoeuvered between the parked cars, carrying some of the locals to the tube and a day in the West End. An array of colourful plastic shopping bags flashed in front of my eyes like a surreal painting as the street started to stretch itself for the long day ahead, announcing its waking amidst much noise and bustle.
I have to say that this is a really cool area to be plotted up in. Uno, most of the street is really wide, such as you see in pies of cities
like Rome or New York, and I likes the breathing space that gives you. Due, there’s all kinds of shop business happening here to suit all tastes and fancies. Record shops, books, bakeries, car showrooms, supermarkets, newsagents, florists, electrical goods, and even an old Gentleman’s outfitters where, when you buy something, they write you out a receipt, ring up the price on an old wooden cash till and generally behave towards you as if you were Top Boy in a Noel Coward play.
Walk ten yards either side of this quaint bastion of a Britain Forgotten and you will come across a Chinese supermarket to the South and a Mauritian fish shop to the North, whilst if hunger should strike on your journey, you can, if funds are of a sufficient nature, mangare on Italian, Polish, Chinese or West Indian grub of the highest quality.
Throw in the different snippets of language that fly like birds up and down the road, mix in the assortment of tantalising smells that emanate from all corners and which must whisk up so many memories for the people living and working around the way, and consider the undisputed truth that within this area there is rarely trouble or tension in the air, just a shared sense of living on the balance, and you’ll understand my goodwill to the area and the fervent wish I harbour that such streets should be duplicated all over this green and pleasant land.
It was getting warmer as I headed towards the tube and as I slipped off my white Levi’s jacket, Digger suddenly loomed into view from out of a doorway that is set back from the betting shop, this being the local drunk who spends his days walking up and down, up and down, the Stroud with a constant runny nose and a can of Special Brew that his long skinny fingers clutch tightly.
His cheeks are hollowed out and his hair has turned white. You can see he is still relatively young but streetlife survival has aged him twenty years at least. Shabby clothes cover his skinny body and he slurs his words into an indecipherable accent, a linguistic style which proved totally troublesome to moi on my very first encounter with him when he blasted, ‘SLIVEUS SLOME MONEY,’ directly into my face one rainy morning.
It took me 60 seconds in the pouring rain to translate his demand as, ‘give us some money,’ a fair enough request given the burden he has to bear, and I handed him some coinage over, as I have been doing ever since I took up residence in this part of the world.
Since we are on this tip, I must explain that several acquaintances of mine often reprimand me for such actions, telling me, ‘that kind will only drink it,’ as if someone like Digger can beg up enough cashola which will one day enable him to walk into an estate agent’s, spread it all out on a table and grab a nice little semi out in the suburbs with the rest of the mortgage brigade.
Extreme I know but such attitudes often make me wonder about my fellow countryfolk for when it comes to feeding people who live thousands of miles away in a Godforsaken desert, living a life that you and I can’t even begin to imagine, the British prove themselves each and every time.
No doubt about it, as soon as the call comes through and the TV screen is full of starving children and desperate mothers, they’re up and away, raiding their hard earnt bank balances to give over to people they probably didn’t even know existed the day before. You have to tip your hat to them because that kind of spirit speaks volumes and should always be celebrated.
Yet ask them to do the same for someone living on the street but 200 yards away from their doorstep and you suddenly start walking into remarks like, ‘well, it’s their own fault,’ as if the folk in question had chosen that life as a kind of perverse career move and had now triumphantly achieved their ambitions in life.
When the stench of another’s nightmare gets too close, we smell ourselves and run away in horror, but that is no solution and so before Digger had to ask, I reached into my pocket and handed over the loose change. Thank God, I thought for the perverse warm weather for it might just make today a little easier for Digger and his compadres and, passing that thought, I soon found myself at the tube station.
Walking down the long snaking tunnel to the grey dirty platforms, I passed numerous people out and about on their business and somehow the scene livelied me up somewhat, especially as the busker on the morning shift was a young, dude coming on strong with a nice selection of Bob Marley tunes. I went to give him a coin as I do anyone who is not playing the obvious songs for my rule on buskers is a fair one. Nothing at all against The Beatles or Bob Dylan or Simon and Garfunkel, because they’ve all done their bit, but if I hear one more crooner singing ‘Yesterday’ or ‘Knocking On Heaven’s Door’ then I will have no option but to immediately report them to the nearest authorities for gross public misconduct, and that especially applies to ‘Theme From The Deer Hunter.’
This morning’s musical selection featured Marley’s ‘One Love/ People Get Ready,’ and was sung with such conviction that you couldn’t help but be moved by both singer and song.
Yet despite my good mood I soon found it to be temporary. Boarding the train to take me Westward Ho, the Sandra business reared up in my HQ and immediately took me right down. What hi t me first, as I struggled to make sense of this morning’s unexpected and unbelievable events, was that, without a doubt, all future missions, such as a stay in New York to crib off those DJ masters, were going to have to be put on ice until this crisis was sorted, one way or another.
That was for sure but there was something else starting to bug me out and that was a growing feeling that suddenly, I had no control whatsoever over my life. It was as if, like a terrible dream you have to wake yourself up from, I had become a lead character in a film I had no desire to be in and the director hadn’t even told me the plot and dialogue and I was left to improvise like John Coltrane to make sense of it all.
Perhaps, I mused, that was precisely what life was, a huge mega budget epic with God directing us all purely for His own amusement, the biggest joke being that all us poor souls have been led to believe that we are somehow in charge of how the film starts and finishes.
No doubt about it, as the great Sam Cooke knew, a change was going to come and I would have to bend with it or lose badly and that was the truth, Ruth.
Only I didn’t want to make that move and not when my runnings had finally started to come together. I had living quarters, cashola, a job which I could use as a springboard to the next level if I was sharp enough, but above all I had a certain kind of freedom which allowed me space in my life, a space that far too many are forced to give up the day they walk out of school and start taking orders from the bosses.
From an early age I had determined that I wanted no part of that nine to five scam and so, on the day I dumped my blazer where it belonged, I had put my all in to becoming a DJ, dedicating all my spare hours to acquiring equipment and learning how best to use it, sharpening my skills so that I was not answerable to some greyer of a boss who would take delight in making your life a misery because his was so utterly sad.
To achieve that end I devised a routine that involves constantly tuning in to the pirate radio stations scattered all over town, cluing up on various magazines for tip offs, visiting record shops at least three times a week, (except on Sundays when I head for record fairs or car boot sales) and forever using my HQ to put together various mixes in my head which I then try out at my yard where no one is looking.
Consequently, I am on first name terms with a lot of shop owners and fellow DJ’s and many hours are spent talking over music, artists, name producers, record labels, new releases, old tunes discovered, clubs, musicians and anything else connected to this vast and rich world that I so delight in being a part of.
If others can’t check for these lengthy conversations then they are deemed irrelevant although it must be stated that, on the whole, women are the exception to the rule. Gals like music a lot but the majority of them use it differently, and without the obsession.
It is of little interest or juice to them how a record came to be. If, for example, you tell them how Berry Gordy didn’t want to release ‘What’s Going On’ by Marvin Gaye, or that Sl
y Stone covered ‘Que Sera Sera’ because the papers thought he was loving Doris Day up, their eyes tend to glaze over and their minds wander of as if they had somewhere better to be.
Gals never check for such details but they certainly move in other mysterious ways which is why I was now bound Westward Ho, to seek urgent advice on the latest development in Sandra’s life.
To be sure, I much prefer tube travel to any other and the reasons for my preference are many. It is easily the quickest way, barring delays and the like, to scoot around town, allowing you to travel to all points with relative ease.
On the tube you have time to get up to all kinds of things that you put off at home, such as reading or thinking or even listening to tunes on your walkman, and before you know it, there, you’ve arrived at your destination.
I know that most prefer cars but I have seen so many of my links go from happy to mad within five minutes of driving in this city, with its crumbling roads, huge traffic jams and Mad Max drivers, that I wish to steer clear of such distress.
Of course, the tube is not perfect by any stretch of the HQ and it’s even worse come the rush hour p.m. and the people cram in, just as they had to that morning, their exhausted pissed off faces as eloquent a testimony to the cruel nature of work as anything else.
Yet come the weekend it’s slightly different because then most of them are travelling for pleasure and so I wasn’t too surprised, as I pulled out Sam Selvon’s ‘The Lonely Londoners,’ to hear a loud West Country accent assail me with an, ‘Easy Mr. DJ man, how’s your percentage of life?’ and realised that it was none other than Sammy The Foot who was addressing me.
This is a character who I am on speaking terms with, such as I am with The Sheriff, Stinga or Jasmine, through my position at The Unity Club, and whose yard is in close proximity to mine.
Sammy The Foot frequents The Unity but the location of most of our meetings has been at clubs where jazz is the only music played and which always attracts a small but dedicated crowd who are normally some of the best movers in town.