by John King
One day this motorway will be lined with concrete, the Thames Valley a solid block of houses and trading estates, new housing estates fed by service-station mini-markets and warehouse superstores, a spread of car parks and shopping malls, multiplex cinemas and fast-food strips. In the old days there were city walls around the ruler’s towers, and now there’s the M25. We’re working to the American model, extending the highways and cutting down on public transport, spreading out, more and more people flushed out of London by the rich. There’s probably more white Londoners outside the M25 than there is in London proper, from Margate to Milton Keynes, Southend to Reading. Life is being stripped down to the bone, another sort of factory farming, but wherever there’s people life blooms. This is something the scum in control don’t understand. They pontificate from a distance, tell us we’ve got no culture, that we’re brain-dead, standing in line, hands on the shoulders of the person in front, tapping our feet to a mindless single note, out of our heads on E numbers. They don’t have a clue.
Big business runs the show more than ever these days, and the politics I was raised with are long gone. That dream of a job for life and a place in the greater scheme of things has been blitzed, the asset-stripping years leaving a stack of bones rotting in the gutter outside my flat. Job security is a thing of the past, those doing well mortgaged to the hilt, credit cards struggling to handle the debts of a catalogue life, clothes to buy and bills to pay, and these are the lucky ones, strugglers washed over the edge. There’s less difference between the parties than ever before, New Labour prancing around the gentrified areas of London with their Tory cousins, messing up the likes of Islington, Camden, Battersea, Clapham with their poxy theme bars and restaurants. Change is more cunning and manipulative, while the wahs running the show flash their wealth and power around same as ever.
The ordinary person is isolated, told they’ve never had it so good, and too many of us bend over and touch our toes as the Establishment’s best-dressed nonce applies lubricant and gently slips in, fucks us on the sly, moves on to the next starry-eyed punter. We get this inflated sense of our place in society, accept the state’s values, believe we’re better than our neighbour, that we’re a social class up the ladder with an extra tenner in our pockets and a house that belongs to a bank instead of the council. It’s classic divide-and-rule tactics. Britain is a post-industrial society, but the image of the common people is stuck in grainy black-and-white footage, a dusty column of Jarrow marchers and the coal-dust face of a Yorkshire miner, pre-war East London ragamuffins and shoeless Somerset peasants nailed to the back of a plough. Heavy industry has been and gone, the green fields of England soaked in insecticide. Protesters travel by coach and the pits have been flooded. The East End has moved out to Essex and the peasants are all tuning into digital TV. Scabs have been renamed strike-busters by the media, and the People’s House has passed a law that lets the judges control union funds.
Cities have spilt into the countryside, but the lecturers are stuck in the sixties, explaining how half the population is stuffed inside a single Birmingham high-rise. Your everyday man and woman is described in terms of failure, whether it’s the Left slagging off the boring conformity of the masses who want to improve their lot, love and be loved, or the Right busy highlighting the anti-social behaviour of a minority. Regional accents are presented as quirks, media whores dropping their Ts as they play at being cockneys when the cockneys are all speaking Bengali and the white boys are out in the shires listening to Underworld and Orbital. Society has changed and the pressures shifted. The Left and Right lecture us from their period homes, the same old professional class that has always controlled this country, without an original idea between them. Our masters wander around public parks sucking off strangers, hang from the rafters with plastic bags over their heads, lurk in slave dungeons with clips on their nipples, at the same time coining it Left, Right and Centre, telling us all about morality and thrift.
I slow down for the lorries taking up all three lanes, an old banger on the inside, middle-distance forty-footer in the centre, a refrigerator steaming down the outside. This National Express coach gets right up my arse, a cheap ride to Cardiff. Don’t know what he wants me to do. There’s nowhere to go except the central reservation, and the tape rolls through the Business album The Truth, The Whole Truth, And Nothing But The Truth, 18-Wheeler’s 12-inch ‘Crabs’ tagged on the end, good travel music, and the lorry in front takes its frozen chickens into the central lane while the coach stays wedged behind me as I overtake, so I bang the brakes for a laugh and he backs right off, cut inside and slow down in front of the lorry, give him a go as well. The coach moves forward and I indicate right, move over a foot to shit the bloke up, give the driver a wanker sign when he finally gets his nerve back and passes. He points to his head and frowns, moves on. Fucking tart. The lorry with the frozen meat is on the inside lane now, so I go over and slow down again, hit the brakes for the death-camp driver who flashes his lights. Then I accelerate away.
Funny thing is, the destruction of organised opposition has created a new problem for the authorities, something that’s a lot harder to police. The masses are more isolated and powerless, drugged and misled, but the flip side is a nation of lone rangers, freelancers following the US model, serial killers and one-off dissenters, nutters and idealists going about their business on their own. Organisations are easily policed and calm people down. Abide by the rules and everything is filtered through a structure that soaks up the original anger and gets rid of the power to change things. There’s strength in numbers, but a lone gunman is more dangerous, the sniper who picks off his targets and never gets caught. Every organisation, doesn’t matter what, ends up with the same professional clique in control, whether it’s quangos or elected committees. If someone gets through the wringer with their beliefs intact, they’re called a maverick and sidelined, an old-fashioned eccentric who’s crucified then patronised when they’re cut down, loved now they’re no longer a threat.
If I got sacked by Manors now, I wouldn’t go running to a union. It’s a waste of time. Information is controlled by business interests and the trendy Left fucked things up for all of us, gave the tabloids a free hand. If I was working for a firm these days, was promised a trade and let go, same as Manors did when I was younger, I’d go along early morning and hook up a hose, flood the warehouse and walk round the company fleet splashing anti-freeze over the bodywork of every single twenty-grand tax dodge. They used me for cheap labour and what they did affected my life. Then I’d go home to bed with the alarm bells ringing, thousands of pounds’ worth of damage nicking into their profits. It’s easy and there’s little risk getting caught. It’s personal, eases the tension so you don’t go round taking things out on some bloke down the pub who catches your eye, and that’s exactly what I did with Manors, went and set the record straight, it just took me a long time to work it all out. It wasn’t about revenge, more a question of justice.
Have to smile thinking back five years, climbing over the mesh fence done up in a plastic Mickey Mouse mask for the security cameras, a blue boiler suit, feeling like a twat but needing to sort something out that had been nagging away for ages. The managers there treated me like shit, tried to fuck up my life. I was lucky because things worked out, but a lot of people don’t get the breaks and never recover. They say it’s only business, being professional, nothing personal, but that’s bollocks. It was a calculated decision. Once I’d been on the rampage around Manors I never thought about the company or what they’d done again. It was sorted out once and for all. Before, I tried to pretend it didn’t matter, but it did, kept cropping up every few years, like I’d bottled out. Life is in there spinning around in your head, every little thing that happens, from cradle to grave.
Junction 15 is where I get off, go back under the motorway and follow the road into Swindon, do a couple of turns, and this bloke Barry lives on the outskirts on a quiet estate of twenty-year-old houses. There’s ancient stone circl
es and White Horse carvings nearby that have lasted thousands of years, but the slates on his house need mending and the pavements are all cracked. I spot the pub, turn into the right street, count down to number 23, park and go up the path. He opens the door just as I’m reaching to ring the door bell.
–You found it alright then?
I go in and he sits me down in the front room, goes in the kitchen to make a cup of tea, a woman in there fussing with a packet of biscuits. There’s a sign out front saying the house has been sold, and the only thing in the living room apart from the couch, chairs and electric fire are these plastic boxes loaded with vinyl. I always get excited at a time like this, a kid who’s rubbed the lamp and found a genie, been invited into Aladdin’s Cave but doesn’t know what he’s going to find.
–Here you go, he says, the woman closing the door behind him, the soft murmur of her voice in the background as she talks to herself, or more likely into a phone.
–They’ve been stacked under the stairs for years, but I want to unload them quickly. You can have the lot for two hundred quid, like I said on the phone. Have a look. They’re in good nick. I always looked after my records. It’s a bargain.
I have a flick through the albums, and he’s got loads of punk and 2 Tone, some older ska and British reggae, a bit of soul. It’s a good price, too good, and that’s without the singles. I pull a box over and flick through a parade of picture sleeves. Most will fetch four or five pounds each, some of them a lot more. The Cortinas single ‘Defiant Pose’ would be worth near enough a tenner, and that’s right next to Combat 84’s ‘Rapist’, which is worth a lot more. I take some of the 45s out of their sleeves and check the vinyl for scratches, do the same with the LPs. Most are near enough mint.
–I live in New York now and was renting this place out, but the tenants have moved out so I decided to sell up. I used to think I’d come back one day, but I won’t. I’ve been clearing everything out and thought about taking the records with me, but it was part of my youth and I don’t listen to much music these days. It would cost a fortune shipping them, and I prefer CDs anyway. They’re easier to handle. Two hundred’s a fair price. What do you think?
It’s not fair at all, and I tell him he could get a lot more if he sat down and drew up a list, put an advert in Record Collector. Suppose I’m a mug saying this, it’s not exactly good business, but it wouldn’t be right not to. The sleazy fuckers who go round clearing dead people’s houses, paying pennies for stuff they know is valuable, are cashing in on the dignity of a family who doesn’t want to argue over money. I’d rather be straight.
–Can’t be bothered with all that, mate, listing them and trying to sell each one off its own back, work out what they’re worth on their own, worrying if I’m going to get ripped off. It would take years and I’m flying out next week. That’s your job. Two hundred quid and they’re yours. Someone else phoned up, so if you don’t want them …
I’m not complaining, just want to be honest about things. Some of the Oi records are worth a bomb on vinyl, and it’s funny how the Oi bands got so much stick at the time, but now collectors are paying top dollar. I’ll have to check up on some of the albums, work out the prices. I pull out an envelope and open it up, count the twenties into his hand. We toast the deal with our mugs. I ask him how he ended up in New York.
–I went abroad ten years ago, when I lost my job, worked in a bar in Majorca for a bit, then signed up on a boat to Florida, worked my way up the East Coast and arrived in New York. I found a job and ended up marrying a local girl. I’m half-owner of a little pizza restaurant now, none of your fast-food shit either. I got divorced last year, but I’m an American citizen so I can stay. It’s a good life.
I tell him I worked in a bar in Hong Kong for a few years. It was alright, but I came home again and stayed.
–Couldn’t do it, he says, learning forward. Couldn’t come back to this place after being in New York. You can make good money over there and have a better standard of living. New York’s exciting, the original rock ’n’ roll town. This country’s all washed up, been taken over by queers and yuppies. It’s petty over here. Small-time thinking.
I bring him back to the records, wonder how he built up such a big record collection when he was young. I could never afford to buy half the records I wanted. I buy more new records today than when I was fifteen or sixteen, and music was my life then. He doesn’t sound like he comes from money, with a West Country twang, so he must have an angle.
–My brother worked in a record shop in town, and I used to go down there and help myself. He even ordered records in special and fiddled the books.
He’s laughing now as he remembers good times, and it’s one of those lucky breaks in life you just can’t beat. Everyone dreams of having a big brother or sister who works in a record shop. Money was always short in those days. It wasn’t till I was at work that I started seeing bands on a regular basis.
–I was well into it when I was younger, but I’m not bothered now. Used to go see loads of bands. I saw the Clash in Bristol and Millwall played Rovers that day, and Millwall turned up outside and chased us all over. They were great days. I come back now and wonder if it’s the same country. It’s lost its guts. You watch a band on telly and they’re either dancing around to disco or knobheads dressed up in sixties gear.
His eyes glaze over, and maybe he’s starting to regret moving. He’s wrong anyway. There’s some good music around, but these are drugged, sedated times, so it’s all to do with sound. There’s very few people writing socially-relevant lyrics these days. The Right won the political war in Britain and we ended up with acid house. Instead of writing about big business, war, the police, prison, jobs, violence, racism, education, health care, housing and all the rest of it, any words that do filter through focus on Es, love and the right to dance. When we were kids there were two sides. Now there’s just the one. The same things are happening, but now nothing much is said. Different times I suppose.
–You should get yourself over to New York.
Punk is big in the US right now, but I don’t suppose Barry’s noticed. I sit with him for a while, having a laugh, leave two hours after I arrive. I drive back feeling bad he’s sold the records, but glad he’s sold them to me. Must be a hundred albums and two hundred singles. I’ll have a good look when I get in. It’s a brilliant day’s work.
If things had turned out different I might have ended up the same as Barry, living the rest of my life abroad. If Smiles hadn’t died and I’d gone back to Hong Kong, maybe I’d have met a girl and got married, headed for the States and settled in New York, opened a bar, had Barry working in the kitchen. It’s like seeing another version of myself. I never believed all that bollocks about punk starting in New York, part of a cunning plan by that genius Malcolm McLaren, the view of your average kid a lot different to that of the establishment, the fashion victims and vested interests who see punk as nothing more than a safety pin and art-school bin liner. My punk was anti-fashion, boot-boy music with lyrics about everyday life. Dr Feelgood and Slade are more important to my view of punk than Iggy Pop and the New York Dolls.
Nobody’s going to deny the Ramones were right up there with the Pistols, Damned and Clash, and I can remember hearing ‘Sheena Is A Punk Rocker’ for the first time, standing on the edge of the dance floor waiting for my balls to drop, making a can of lager last three hours, and my skin tingles same as it did then, and I got to see the Ramones a few times over the years, the GABBA GABBA HEY sign summing things up, how punk was sussed but had a sense of humour, taking the piss out of itself. Punk is about my life, and there’s millions of stories, whether it’s someone from Finsbury Park, Ladbroke Grove, Hersham, Swindon, Slough, Leeds, a Midlands village or a Welsh valley, Belfast or a seaside town in Scotland. To me, American punk is the Ramones, Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, Minor Threat, Nirvana, Fugazi, Rancid, stuff like that. Hip hop is another line of punk, and the Beastie Boys saw it from the off, same as the Clash. And that’s the th
ing to remember, punk is just a label. Means everything and nothing.
I start thinking about Hong Kong, the spark in Barry’s eyes as he was talking about New York. It’s the freedom you get as an outsider, but at the same time you’re always scratching the surface, a passer-by looking in. There’s no perfect answer, life’s full of contradictions, and that’s why the party political system is fucked, because if you go with one brand name you have to accept everything they say. More important are the actual issues, and there’s no way the ordinary man and woman has a say in this country. Everyone knows it as well. Doesn’t mean you have to drop out and live off other working people, the trustafarians and student classes pretending they’re poor, living in squats for a few years before they set up in business. That’s the problem, the alternatives sewn up by another load of wahs, the same blood as the Tories and New Labour. So everyone’s given up.
The traffic slows down near Junction 10, and I’m crawling past the Woking turn-off, two girls in a Mini smiling as they pass. They’re not bad-looking and I nearly smash into the back of a Jag. That bloke from Swindon is stuck in my head, and he’s wrong what he was saying, because it’s just the fashion industry’s control of music that means decent bands are denied access to an audience. There’s new stuff coming through that can’t get played, and the originals are still producing. Nobody ignores what an author says because they’re over twenty-five, yet the best writers in this country have been doing it through music for years, it’s just business takes over and they’re marginalised. It’s this shit idea of fashion over content.