Punk Story

by Neil Rowland

  17. Fly-posting

  Mortal’s first gig under Star Materials management was, so to speak, just around the corner. The levers of Gorran’s slick PR and promotion machine were thrust into over-drive. The boss regularly sent Roy and I out fly-posting around the town centre, usually during the early morning hours. Marty designed and produced these posters, of several designs, using a flatbed three colour method. Day-Glo shades were much in favour during the punk period. Apart from essential gig information the posters, and flyers, showed a punk-pirate figure; a Captain Morgan in bondage pants and safety pins.

  The council and the police already regarded these garish artefacts as a public menace, litter and vandalism. There were dire warnings in the Chronicle, though thankfully Paulie didn’t shop us. I don’t know why they got so worked up about the issue, since Nulton was a ghost town in that period. Even the pigeons used to drop dead out of the railway bridges. The council was doing their best to catch the perpetrators and to eliminate the posters - with gangs of YOPs in bibs going around stripping them off afterwards. The cops were eager to get us, and to close down the printing shop as well.

  Roy and I were off on midnight sprees, as soon as the ink had dried on Marty’s fresh factory batch. We’d head out of the workshop with a fat roll of these bills under our arms, along with a bucket of wallpaper paste and brush. Empty or boarded-up shops presented the best surfaces. There was no shortage of vacant retail units during those times. Bus shelters, a boarded-up cinema, a network of concrete walkways, tunnels and low-level hoardings - the best pasting spaces.

  All our efforts went towards making Mortal’s first club gig a huge success. If that went down a storm the band could play a date at The Limit club in Sheffield; thanks to a recommendation from Gina to the owner. Gina went to see bands there at the weekend; she went clubbing and her cousin worked in the cloakroom for a student type job.

  Our fly posting technique was like this: Roy had to stretch up on the tips of his springy toes, to hold the poster high against a wall or surface, while I reached up and plastered the bill over with gluey paste. By next morning the paper would have dried, shrunk and stuck fast, so that it was hard to remove, even for those YOP degenerates with chemical aerosols, as well as buckets of soapy water and scrapers. It was their punishment for getting caught.

  It was in the small hours, while we were busy posting around the Sting Hotel, that Roy noticed a patrol vehicle creeping closer. Silently to avoid detection, the cop car was edging up the side street, suddenly intrigued by a sign of life in that urban desert. Bafflingly the car turned off and disappeared again. Ten minutes later it had come back, having done a circuit of one-way streets, picking up speed as it bore down on us. Then it arrested our senses with a blast of the siren, pulled up sharply into the curb, catching us in full headlight beams.

  Frozen into guilty postures, holding our materials, we had a ‘you will be prosecuted’ look. There was a roll of garish bills still under my arm, like a forger of Panamanian dollars. And if this wasn’t a roll of posters, it was the biggest spliff you’d seen in your life.

  Like a US highway patrolman, this solitary cop got out lazily from his Ford Cortina. Basking in the swishes of a revolving blue lamp, he straightened his cap, pulled up his trousers, strolled around the side of his car, making cautiously towards us; the unpredictable juvenile delinquents.

  ‘Orl roight! What are you lads up to? Why you ‘angin round these streets at this time’a noight?’

  ‘Away man, what do you think we’re doing? We’re just puttin’ up a few of these porsters here, mind. We’re only wanting to support our mates - playing in a band - who’ve gorra gig soon,’ Roy explained.

  The copper was unimpressed. ‘You can’t stick those up! What you doin?’

  ‘As my mate told you... it’s just for a gig,’ I added.

  ‘Gig? I’ll gi’ you a gig, lad. Where’s your permit? Where is it? You’re gonna need permission to do it?’ the cop challenged.

  ‘We don’t have one,’ I admitted.

  ‘What you’re doing is ille-gal. You got to hand all that stuff over to me. You’re in serious trouble, you lads.’

  ‘Awh now, away with you, man! What harm we doin? Trying to put on some music in the town like? Trying to get local youth to do something positive and go to a concert, man!’

  ‘Look, you can read for yourself,’ I said. ‘Go on, take one and have a read... if you want. They’re a great little band.’

  ‘I don’t wan’ one!’ the cop replied, irritably. ‘I don’t want to read your blasted post-ers. You’re coming with me. Back to the station.’

  ‘C’mon, man, gi’ us a break now. Don’t support this reactionary society. What side of the law you on, comrade? Just because they pay you a wage, the police don’t need to support this capitalist oppression. Doon’t be a wage slave officer. Come and join our revolutionary struggle in the party, man.’

  The policeman drew himself up. ‘You cheeky li’le Trot toe rag!’

  ‘Away officer, no need to be a slave to the Tory establishment!’

  ‘You’re one of these commies!’ declared the cop. ‘If you don’t like it ‘ere, get back to Russia.’

  Radical politics aside, The Smith wasn’t so daft as to confront the state security-apparatus by himself. Best to avoid arrest (and sack from the Inland Revenue) and to continue the struggle (with reinforcements) on a more progressive-feeling day.

  The police officer produced a notebook and pencil. And he began to take notes about the incident; as if he wanted to be a rock journalist too.

  The thing was, he took his eye off us. The cop assumed we were too scared to move, while he wandered back to his patrol car to report back to the station.

  Oscar Delta Bravo. Over. Can you send another car to me in Manchester Street? Over. I got a couple of herberts sticking up bill-posters here. Over. Yeah, you know, those disgusting pink things that are turning up all over the shop? With the blinkin Pirate? Yeah. Over. Well I’ve got the lads here. Got them with a bucket of paste and a roll on em. Over. Yeah, enough to decorate your bathroom with. Over. Yeah, if you can find a free car. Over. I’m across the street from the Sting Hotel. Over.

  By the time he looked up Roy and I - after swapping an informative look - had scarpered. We dropped our tools and the gunged glue and were out of there. Somehow I kept hold of the rolls of posters and flyers, as they’d taken Gorran so long to prepare. Roy scrambled away at full tilt, dodgy lungs or not. I wasn’t too far behind. We heard a siren start up in pursuit and, soon, a second one. I was afraid that we had incriminated Star Materials. What would Marty think if Roy and I had to stand up in the dock? Any copper with half a brain would follow the trail back to the pop guru’s workshop.

  Luckily for Gorran any prosecution would get stymied, as soon as Dave Crock got second-wind. Dave would be on his hot line to the Chief Inspector, who had a twenty percent stake in his pubs and shared a round of golf twice a week. That would end the ridiculous matter.

  Roy was in a bad condition and worse mood when we finally got back home. It wasn’t as if we were paid, or that it furthered the revolution. The good-hearted Trot needed a couple of bottles of ‘dog’ before bedtime, or was it breakfast, just to calm down.

  What would those cops have charged us with anyway? Disturbing the dead? Breaking the depression, or The Depression?

  18. Dancing Barefoot

  Mortal Wound’s long-anticipated first club date finally came around. There was a big excited queue of punks stretching around the block of the Mad Hatter club.

  The Smith and I were really smug and pleased, as we crossed out our names on the guest list.

  Dave Crock teetered at the summit of the entrance, delighted by the huge turnout (in and out of focus) before his eyes. The retired central defender was stuffed into a crushed velvet suit and a ruffled shirt. Estimating overall takings and br
andishing the rock-size coal of his cigar, he was well chuffed. The only fire regulations he respected were on the back of a box of Swan Vestas.

  ‘Great turnart. Very fuckin satisfyin’. More the merrier, I always said. If they got a fiver let em in. Let em enjoy em’selves. I ain’t never been no fuckin kill joy,’ Crock told his snooker men. At this point of the evening he held his thugs back in readiness for trouble. The snooker men could sweat out a long break before they got back to the table. There was plenty of time to clear up stray balls.

  Roy and I shouldered through to the saloon bar. We were already looking for Marty. Stan and the band should have been occupied with a sound-check. Hopefully they were practicing arrangements, not just trying out some arguments.

  Gina - or Sour Cat - should have been taking part. Unfortunately we got a jolt as we saw her hanging around the bar. She was in the right outfit and heavily made up, ready for a killing on stage, yet she was alone and broody at the counter. She was drinking as well, seriously drinking, chasing down cider with vodka. This behaviour wasn’t completely surprising for a punk maybe. We were shocked because she wasn’t meant to be there - she was supposed to be with the others, or even striding about doing those weird vocal exercises she went in for. What was she doing sticking to the counter like a hardened bar fly? Where had happened to her musical composure? We had to find out and do something, before this came to Marty’s attention.

  ‘What you lads bugging me for? Can’t I have nerves?’ she admitted. ‘What about it? Leave me alone. You have any problem with that? I had the same thing with Chopin.’ She was shouting at us, only because the saloon was so packed, being extra full with punks and miscreant youths of all types. The mood was very loud and enthusiastic, in readiness for Mortal’s big headline gig. There was a great sense of anticipation, now that the JWG debacle was behind them. Except that many local punks didn’t yet know Gina, and they didn’t associate her with us herberts.

  ‘Away man, you’ll be fine,’ Smith insisted.

  ‘You can’t be nervous now,’ I said.

  ‘What do you know about it?’

  ‘Well, it’s too late for nerves! You’re gonna be on stage soon.

  ‘I don’t give a shit about that.’

  ‘And you’ve got too much talent.’

  ‘Huh, “talent”,’ she scoffed, polishing off the cider in a single slide.

  I boggled at her throat, wondering what I’d said wrong. ‘So you’re not talented?’

  ‘Bottle! Don’t be so cheeky.’

  ‘This is a massive gig,’ I argued.

  ‘And you’re a massive pain in the bum. That’s why I joined this punk group in the first place. I don’t want to be a rock goddess, any more’n a classical diva.’

  ‘Even though you’ve got the potential.’ I pulled up my spiky hair.

  ‘No, Bottle. Don’t just gawp at me. You should listen.’

  ‘Away Gina man, are you getting the pre-gig jitters?’ Roy asked.

  ‘Well, I’ve haven’t played rock music to this many people,’ she admitted.

  Roy’s eyes widened behind his specs. ‘You haven’t? Oh, hell.’

  ‘No, don’t worry about it Gina. You’ll be fine, once you start playing.’

  ‘First I need to get smashed,’ she advised. ‘Can you stand me a couple?’

  ‘No, no, you don’t! You’re very talent... you’re very good.’

  ‘Not until I’m out of my head, I’m not. Otherwise I’m a failure. You don’t want to see a failure, do you?’

  ‘Away man, you’re going to be absolutely fantastic tonight, mind. Just don’t keep knocking back those bevies and spirits back, Gina man. It’s not goin to do yer nerves any good.’

  ‘Don’t call me a man, Roy. I’m a girl,’ she said curtly.

  ‘It’s just an expression of his,’ I offered.

  ‘Ai, we’re all equal in the class struggle, comrades.’

  She widened her eyes at us. ‘All right, ladies!’

  It was definitely the vodka. She’d got herself into a right state. Any more vodka encores and she’d be finished. Her beautiful blue-gray eyes resembled smashed pebbles, within those rings of kohl thick as crude oil. Despite this, even under lurid punk cosmetics, she seemed pinched and pale. Could it be Mortal’s unpredictable sound that made her anxious? Not to mention the group’s large raucous following.

  The Smith and I finally spotted Marty Gorran in the room. Naturally he was fully occupied in schlepping the room, for business and recreational reasons. Eventually he moved in our direction, because the bar area was crammed with local rock cognoscenti figures. The filaments of his candyfloss hair were infused with colourful light, which also splashed across his bumpy pasty features. Gorran was almost made for the disco arena like some type of counter culture cyborg. Following his expressions and gesticulations, his versatile grins and winning ways, I knew he’d eventually see Gina and have pop puppies.

  What was up with her nerves anyway? At band practice she was cool as refrigerated cucumber.

  ‘This is a different set up. I don’t think I can handle it. This helps though,’ she said, tossing back a fresh tumbler.

  ‘Hold on,’ I told her. ‘If you play half as good, it’s going to be a sensation.’

  ‘Won’t happen!’

  ‘This is just a punk gig,’ I argued. ‘It’s not The Rite of Spring.

  She was not impressed with the first classical music record I had borrowed from the local library that week.

  ‘Away Gina, listen to us, you’ll be fine man!’

  ‘Be quiet, will you, Roy woman? What does Stan want from me? I don’t know which instrument I’m supposed to play?’

  ‘How’s that? Which instrument?’

  The Smith was bemused. ‘What do you mean, comrade, that you don’t know which instrument?’

  ‘Anna-kissed and Herb had a big row. Right? You didn’t know about it? She wants to play for another group. Not only Mortal.’

  ‘We heard something,’ I told her.

  ‘If she joins them, Herb says he won’t play. I was on rhythm guitar, then I was playing bass in Herb’s place. How am I going to fit in?’

  ‘Away man, now I’m totally confused,’ Roy admitted. You’d think he’d grasp the ins and outs, if he could get Das Kapital.

  ‘This must be Paulie and his new group,’ I said.

  ‘Oh god he’s causin’ absolute mayhem with ‘em, comrade.’

  ‘Who’s in this group, Viscous Kittens? Why does Anna-kissed want to play with them for?’ Gina complained. She tilted back a pint pot and drained it.

  ‘Steady on, marra!’ Roy warned, touching her elbow.

  ‘Is Paulie even in the building yet? What’s the point of being support act tonight, if he can’t even get here?’

  ‘Ai, this def’nitley has Paulie written all over it,’ Smith agreed. It wasn’t one of Paulie’s trivial everyday absurdities at home or work to savour.

  Gina narrowed her sparkling, too sparkling eyes.

  ‘This lad, Paulie Wellington, is their singer,’ I told her.

  ‘Did I meet him yet?’ she wondered.

  ‘Soon enough,’ I remarked, gloomily.

  ‘Fit, is he?’

  I hoped and prayed that Gina would be one girl to resist his disarmingly magnetic angelic sex appeal. The thought of Paulie showing her his record collection was nauseating.

  ‘Still no sign,’ Roy confirmed, checking off his battered timepiece.

  ‘He’s got to turn up. He can’t let his group down!’

  Dennis had arrived early to set up his drum kit. Steve, the bass player was down there too, after completing a mundane job. Even a couple of the ‘sassy feminist’ girl singers were getting changed.

  ‘Ai, these lasses came and said they were
friends of Paulie like... here to provide backing vorcals. But def’nitely noo sign of that buffoon Wellington in the building, comrade,’ Roy grumbled. He shook his mop pessimistically.

  ‘Why isn’t Anna-kissed talking to me?’ Gina said.

  ‘So you reckon Paulie has blown it?’ I speculated.

  The subversive was shaking his head gloomily. ‘I doon’t know what’s going on with that idiot, comrade. Your guess is as good as mine like.’

  ‘They’ll have to cancel.’

  ‘Well, the rest of the band say they can play without him. They’ll go on and do their instrumen’als like, if Paulie doesn’t shoo.’

  ‘Terrible. Instrumentals? How’s that going to work?’

  ‘Away man, you haven’t heard Paulie sing yet,’ Roy warned.

  ‘No, I haven’t yet,’ I admitted.

  ‘Ai, he might be a pain in the arse, sometimes, marra. But Paulie always means well. He doesn’t want to cause people hassle, mind. I reckon he’s just tryin to be a decent soo-cialist like the rest of us, comrade.’

  I was more optimistic that there would be a workers’ revolution soon. ‘He’ll let his mates down! He’s gonna ruin the first gig for them.’

  ‘Ai, they’re none too happy at the moo-ment, marra,’ Roy admitted, with a full body tremble of dread and astonishment.

  Roy knew his way around the racks. He was into Siouxsie and the Banshees from the beginning, as well as Talking Heads, Television, and later The Gang of Four, the Comsat Angels, the Tom Robinson Band - that period of febrile musical energy, seeing the rebirth of rock, all starting from the punk movement.

  ‘Paulie’s been rehearsin’ all week, mind! Didn’t you notice? How he hasn’t been out sleepin’ with so many girls?’

  ‘No, yeah... I didn’t meet any girls at breakfast this week.’

  ‘It’s like a tell you marra. Paulie’s been cuttin’ doon on his sex life mind. After work he was busy practicin’ with his group.’

  ‘Then what’s keeping him tonight?’