I Blame Morrissey

by Jamie Jones

  A year later, Jo would fall head over heels in love with this shop and the whole new wave of crap hippy bands (Ozric Tentacles and the like) that rolled around in the early 90’s preaching a need for tie-dye tops, braids and acid in order to “find yourself”. But right then, I knew it was a shop that she wouldn’t be seen dead in. Purposefully going into a place that I knew my girlfriend would never enter didn’t seem like an odd thing to do, my mind was focussed on the prize. With the hippy’s gaze burning a hole into the back of my head, I slowly approached the small CD section. It was well known that the old hippy felt that the only true way to listen to recorded music was on a scratched, warped 12” slab of vinyl recorded in Mono. But as I didn’t get into music until 1990, I just wasn’t used to buying vinyl regularly.

  The only record player in our house was very clearly owned and operated by my dad. He didn’t play much music in the house but, when Mum had gone out to an Avon party or to her Keep-Fit class, he would occasionally shout upstairs “I’m putting some good music on if you want to come down and listen, Jay?” In practice what this meant was him playing “Dark Side of the Moon” so loudly that all the windows in the house would rattle.

  I would often seek refuge in the shed at such times of attempted musical education but he would always make me come into the house for what he saw as a musical education. I would listen to the racket for 30 seconds, scrunch up my nose and tell him “The words don’t make any sense”, at which point he would shut the front room door in disgust and I would escape upstairs. I was part of the CD generation. The first stereo that Mum and Dad bought me from Tandy’s didn’t even have a turntable for vinyl, just a CD and tape deck. As I’d already seen a Billy Bragg tape destroyed by over-playing I wasn’t going down that route again, this purchase had to be a CD album.

  The CD’s in HOTB weren’t in racks; they were just piled up in swaying towers on the floor in no particular order. Your first task when looking through them was to avoid knocking the tower over and thus incurring the wrath of the Hippy.

  I was sure that he wouldn’t have a Billy Bragg album amongst the Status Quo, Dire Straits and Michael Jackson CD’s but, as every good 2nd hand music buyer knows, you have to look through every single pile/rack of CD’s in a shop just in case you find a gem. That day I got very lucky. That day I found an album that was to quickly become a three times a day musical companion. That day, I found Billy Bragg’s “Workers Playtime” for only 2 quid.

  “Workers Playtime” is, in many ways, Billy’s most personal album. It was written during the break up of an intense relationship and his thoughts and feelings are at times all too openly depicted in the songs. It had the social and political tracks that I was desperate to mainline into my brain, with the old soldier ballad of “Tender Comrade” and the life of the remand prisoner, as depicted in “Rotting On Remand”. It also had the Braggist political manifesto set to music in the form of the life affirming “Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards”, which was a song I’d decided by the 3rd listen would be played at my funeral.

  I skived off school the following Monday in order to continue my love affair with this amazing album, sneaking home after Mum and Dad had gone to work. It was the love songs on that album that had grabbed me. I had been having the occasional moments of emotional clarity where I realised that I was a crap boyfriend, so tracks like ‘The Short Answer’ found a welcome home inside my chest. It was as I was howling along in my room to that song that I realised that someone was throwing stones at the window. I pulled open the curtains to see Jo preparing another handful of grenades, so quickly opened the window.

  Me – ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  Jo – ‘Oh finally! I’ve been banging on the front door for the last 10 minutes. You do realise that you can hear that music halfway down the street don’t you?’

  Me – ‘Alright Mum, give it a rest.’

  Jo – ‘When you didn’t come into school, I wondered if you were ill or skiving, and now I know. So rather than come in and sit with me in French and have our usual Monday night date you decide to sit at home and listen to… What is it anyway?

  Me – ‘It’s Billy Bragg and it’s amazing. Come round the back, the door’s open’.

  Fortunately Jo also fell under the spell of “Workers Playtime”. It became the album that we would listen to together whenever we had the chance. It was also the album that was the soundtrack to me taking the first faltering steps towards manhood in Jo’s bedroom later that week. Jo was there as well, I should add. I had read in magazines that people set the mood for these fumbled sexual encounters with songs such as Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” but our momentous occasion was soundtracked by Billy Bragg’s “She’s Got a New Spell”, a tune that lasted an impressive 3 minutes and 26 seconds.

  Jo and I were discovering life together and were having fun. I was though, unintentionally developing a masochistic edge when it came to music and our relationship. When we were having one of our happy periods, I would sometimes use ‘Workers Playtime’ as a blueprint to romance, decide that I was too comfortable and bring a little sabotage into our lives. This would take the form of little annoying things like not ringing her or ignoring her at school, just so songs like “Little Timebomb” and “The Price I Pay” would mean more to me when sat under my desk listening in the dark.

  ‘Workers Playtime’ introduced me to the extra special gift that was the duet. I had been a fan of the man/woman sing-along thanks to my exposure to Deacon Blue, but this was a different way of putting across lyrics and emotions. In the form of “Must I Paint You a Picture”, “Workers Playtime” had a sublime duet. In the song, Cara Tivey and Billy dissect their relationship and their inability to understand each other’s feelings. Jo and I would sit on the end of her bed, me resplendent in my new “Commercialism Is Killing Music” t-shirt (I didn’t have a bloody clue what that slogan meant), and would sing the girl/boy words of the song back to each other. Sometimes it would be sung with smiles on our faces, full of adolescent spirit; at others it would be used as a way of letting the other know that they were bloody annoying without having to formulate our own words. My love for Billy Bragg had forced its way into every area of my life.

  1991

  Scratch My Name On Your Arm…

  PEER pressure was all consuming at our school, a suburban secondary, the name of which could strike fear into other kids in the city. In early 1991, a self-mutilation craze spread amongst the pupils, which involved carving your girl/boyfriend’s initials into your arm with the point of a compass. Later that year, Richie Edwards from the Manic Street Preachers would carve “4 REAL” into his arm in an attempt to horrify and impress Steve Lamacq. If he’d been a pupil at our school, Richie would most likely have been covered in teenage girls’ initials.

  I’m not sure if it was peer pressure or love for me that did it but, one cold February morning, Jo came bounding up to me in the corridor and proudly showed me her bloodied arm. There, scrawled into the skin of her left forearm, were my initials. At this point, I should probably have made a public show of saying “Wow, that’s amazing” or a simple, functional “Thanks”. Instead the conversation went like this:

  Me: ‘That looks painful.’

  Jo: ‘It really stings, but I wanted to have your initials on my arm, to show you how I feel about you.’

  Me: ‘Errrrr…..ok….’

  Jo: ‘Anyway I heard from Lisa that you’d carved my initials on your arm during Maths yesterday.’

  Me: ‘Errrrr…..not exactly…..’

  Jo: ‘What? You didn’t carve anything onto your arm?’

  Me: ‘Errrr… No, well I mean yes I did, but….’

  Jo: ‘JAY…. (her shouting grabs the attention of our classmates, who are waiting in the corridor for their Humanities lesson to start)… what HAVE you got carved into your arm?’

  With a proud smile, I pulled up my shirt sleeve to reveal my carving, and on my forearm proudly sat the bloodied initials:

 
BB

  I looked from my arm up to Jo’s face and my smile quickly faded. She didn’t say anything, she didn’t need to. She just burst into tears and ran off down the corridor, leaving me surrounded by my class-mates. One of the girls present decided to break the silence by simply saying; ‘Wanker’. I didn’t bother to find out who’d said it; they had summed up the situation superbly.

  Throughout 1991, Jo and I would split up every couple of months. She would get bored of me ‘being miserable’ and would launch into tear-streaked diatribes about being able to ‘find someone much better’ than me. Or I would pack her in because I wanted to spend more time with my Billy Bragg albums. Unlike many of our peers relationships though, we did have a lot in common. Whether that be football, music or our ever more occasional ability to make each other laugh. After 2 or 3 weeks of being split up and having both vowed that this was ‘the end for us’, a conversation along these lines would take place in a corner of the school playground:

  Me: ‘Look, shall we just get back together or what?’

  Jo: ‘Ok, but things will need to change Jay. You need to be happier about life for one. I’m 16 now, I want to do exciting things, not just sit in your room listening to Billy Bragg or going for a fumble in the evenings behind the Science block.’

  Me: ‘Oh I’m sorry, I thought you enjoyed those things, my mistake. Christ, I tell you what, don’t bother going back out with me. Go and find someone that is far more fun and can do these ‘exciting things’ you’re after. No, actually let’s get back together because being a mature 16 to my childlike 15, you can teach me how to be a grown-up.’

  Jo: ‘You really are a dick sometimes.’

  Me: ‘Tell me something I don’t know….’

  Jo: ‘Fine, I can’t be bothered to discuss it anymore, let’s just get back together. Meet you behind the Science block tonight?’

  Me: Sure, see you there at the normal time.’

  I went back to listening to The Mock Turtles ‘Can You Dig It?’ on my Walkman and she went back to her gaggle of mates, no doubt to tell them how I had begged her to go back out with me.

  The best night of our relationship was undoubtedly 29th December 1991. On that cold, post-Christmas night, as kids who were growing up too quickly, we went to a Billy Bragg gig at the legendary Hackney Empire in London.

  Our local Way Ahead Box Office, was running a ticket and travel package from Peterborough. Many months before the gig, Jo and I had agreed that we should buy the tickets as Christmas presents to each other. She had wanted a 2nd hand Nintendo Gameboy as a gift, so had a deflated air of desperation and defeat in her voice when I finally got her to agree to go to the gig instead.

  Come the morning of the 29th, I was bouncing off the walls of our house with excitement and changed my gig clothes at least 5 times before I set off to the coach pick-up point. I settled on black DM boots, black jeans and my black SexYOUality t-shirt. As I left the house, Dad asked if I was “Going to see Johnny Cash, dressed like that?” As always, when faced with one of his questions that I presumed was meant to be funny but didn’t understand, I just said ‘What?’ and quickly wandered off before he could explain further.

  I was convinced that the good people of Peterborough would be chomping at the bit to sit on a coach for 3 hours each way and head to east London to see Billy play. When I arrived at the designated meeting point, I was expecting to see a gleaming 52 seater coach and hordes of expectant fans. Instead, I was greeted by a clapped-out 16 seater mini bus and nobody else but the driver in attendance.

  Jo turned up 15 minutes later, mildly annoyed that I hadn’t been sat on my usual seat on the bus into town. The bus from her house had passed my stop, so we could have, in theory, arrived at the meeting point together. I had been far too excited to wait though so had caught the earlier bus. Where Jo found that ‘weird’ it seemed entirely reasonable to me. She was clad all in black, proudly displaying her ‘Faith No More’ t-shirt despite the freezing cold day.

  Me: ‘Oh…..’

  Jo: ‘Well that’s a lovely hello isn’t it! What’s wrong with you now?’

  Me: ‘No, nothing, it’s not important.’

  Jo: ‘Jay, I’m not spending the day with you having a face like that. What is it?’

  Me: ‘It’s just; I thought you’d wear the Billy Bragg t-shirt that I got you for your birthday?’

  Jo: ‘Well I thought we would look a bit sad both wearing Billy Bragg t-shirts. Plus you know that Faith No More are my favourite band now.’

  I waited until she had turned to get onto the bus, shook my head and got on board.

  Eventually a handful of other gig-goers turned up and they piled onto the mini-bus. As we settled into the journey and watched the joys of the A1 roll by, I had ‘that feeling’, the one you get when you know beyond all doubt that you are going to have a special night. By this time, Jo had started to find my Billy Bragg obsession annoying and had worked out my “sabotage our relationship to make the lyrics more meaningful” stance. However, powered by nothing more than Cherry 7 Up and Smiths Square Crisps, which were both staple elements of my diet, we buzzed our way through the journey to Hackney.

  I had been to a few gigs before our trip to east London but Peterborough only had two venues of note: A large hotel which had hosted the likes of Chris Rea and an over-sized YMCA Centre called The Cresset which had recently featured The Soup Dragons. Hackney Empire was quite different to either of those suburban halls. It was an atmospheric theatre that wore its working class roots proudly on its sleeve. We had seats in the upper circle but, like the rest of the crowd, spent the 90 minutes of Billy’s performance stood up, swaying and singing along. He was on top form that night, playing lots of old favourites and songs from his recent album “Don’t Try This At Home”. It was a party atmosphere and we were totally caught up in it. I was desperate to soak up every second, every jagged rattle of the guitar and every word he sang had to be committed to memory. We didn’t do anything crazily romantic like holding hands but, looking at Jo that night, I felt happy to be there with her, howling along to a man who had made a big impact on our lives. We left the theatre arm in arm, drenched in sweat from dancing, still singing the words to ‘Accident Waiting To Happen’.

  We should have had a quiet chat on the journey home and maturely concluded that the gig had been the high point of our relationship, that it would all be downhill from here, that we should just be friends from now on and get on with living our young lives. Of course we didn’t do anything like that. We gazed in fearful wonder at the mean streets of east London, before falling asleep and dreaming of Billy Bragg. Soon we would be blundering blindly into 1992.

  Not The Specs’ Again … Please

  AS 1991 drew to a close I was a fully fledged music and football fixated adolescent. Despite these twin obsessions and having a girlfriend and a loving family, the most important people in my life were my mates. Doody, Jacko, Mark, Shin and I had become a gang of lads that did almost everything together. Whether it was going to the football, sitting in Doody’s bedroom listening to music or finding city centre pubs that would serve us alcohol despite us all being underage, we were all in it together. I knew that they were the only mates that I would ever need.

  Through the 2nd half of the year, the boys and I had embraced a new wave of indie bands with loud, jangly guitars and often shouted vocals that were loosely tied together under the term “fraggle”. Not that fraggle was a phrase that anyone outside of the offices of the NME ever used. The big 3 bands that we got into from that scene were Carter USM, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin and Mega City Four. Musically they all sounded vaguely similar, and visually they had what was almost a uniform of long hair, long-sleeved band t-shirts, baggy shorts and DM boots (black or cherry red). Like all good teenagers we were desperate to copy our heroes dress sense. We didn’t care that to any non-indie folks we looked bloody stupid. Like any youth trend worthy of the term, it was one that my parents absolutely despised. The fact that I was letting my hair grow d
own to my shoulders was of particular concern. To stop Mum from constantly moaning at me, we reached an uneasy truce which involved me keeping my long hair but on the understanding that I washed it every day. My hair, washed and conditioned looked more like a model’s than the hairy arsed indie rock gods that I was trying to emulate. Mum would periodically try to smarten me up by buying me new clothes, but eventually gave up when she got me a Levi denim jacket and I promptly wrote “MEGA CITY FOUR” across the back of it in black marker pen.

  It was a male dominated scene in terms of the bands and their fans. Ned’s were 5 long haired lads from the West Midlands, whilst Carter were two shouty blokes with strange haircuts and cycling hats. Carter were the first band to introduce me to what seemed a magical but downtrodden land known as ‘Sarf Landan’. Tales of Tulse Hill, Peckham and the lives of the folk that loved there instantly intrigued me and were another long drag on the political cigarette that Billy Bragg had lit and handed to me.

  This wasn’t a scene that Jo cared anything for. She would regularly agree with my mum that I looked, ‘Stupid in those long Ned’s shorts in the middle of winter’. She was getting ever more into the American rock, with her new friends, the likes of Faith No More and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers being her new loves, and that was music that I despised. We were becoming a couple held together by sticky tape and a mutual love for The Posh and Billy Bragg. By November, my hair was longer than hers, which she hated and got us some funny looks whenever we were out together.

  In December, thanks to a miracle sent down by the indie gods, a kind promoter put on a Ned’s gig at The Cresset. The boys and I all got tickets the day they went on sale by taking the day off school and getting 2 buses to be outside the venue when the ticket office opened at 9am. I thought that showed my dedication to the band. My girlfriend informed me in her developing New York/Peterborough accent that it was ‘Lame’.