A loft full of yesteryear

I have spent a good part of the day in my loft disinterring old memories by sorting through carrier bags of paperwork, slightly damp books, and yellowing photo copies. This was a difficult exercise. A good deal of it I am putting aside to trash, give away, or in some cases to offer to specialist scholars with a penchant for copies of UK and US Government documents relating to Kuwait in the 1960s and early ‘70s. Sad. Aside from the Kuwait documents, this was a difficult and often emotional exercise.

I am a hoarder. Why else would I have found boxes quite literally containing nothing but newspapers from the 1990s? However when the items I find are Christmas cards from long lost friends, a receipt for studio time in 1985, and heavily annotated 20 year old articles about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they stir up memories difficult to simply dispose of in the waste pile. A box of photos from the 1980s and 1990s mostly brought me cheer, especially those of my wife and I. Thinking of her does not invoke pain. A copy of a Sunday supplement magazine with Dylan on the cover, and with “For Neil” in my mother’s hand-writing, does.

I found an old cigar box with letters and cards. Some were from a slightly eccentric Edinburgh Quaker who many years ago would send me clippings apparently affirming unmitigated Israeli evil. He himself would not set foot in the Holy Land…on principle. However many were from my now deceased mother and father. I had long forgotten that my father had actually expressed in writing his “pride” in what he thought I had “achieved”. I don’t recall him ever clearly saying such a thing mind you. Rereading a note from my mother expressing similar sentiments was difficult, not because I don’t recall her ever verbalising such sentiments, but because in the end isolation and the disappointment she felt with her life made her love of her sons insufficient to want to keep on living.

Another dimension to the afternoon of half-remembered enthusiasms and distant echoes of longings once felt, and often discarded, were the piles and piles of rock magazines and newspaper clippings. Musicians’ obituaries, gig and album reviews, band profiles. Even a copy of Paul Yates’ execrable “Rock Stars in Their Underpants”.  The Middle East somehow took over from, but never entirely replaced, my youthful love of pop. The latter had rendered Tommy Docherty’s Man Utd pretty irrelevant for me when I was a mere 12 or 13. Pop has been a constant. It is a profession that I vaguely flirted with once as a would-be manager (briefly) and periodically ever since as an amateur critic.

The stuff I was going through was overwhelming, partly by virtue of its sheer quantity as it began to merge with the piles and piles of old books and magazines that already clutter our landing. However it also began to make me feel hopeless. Of course your life isn’t defined by old newspaper articles you’ll never read again and notebooks filled with scrawl. However they can say something about what your life was about, and, by now being old, what your life has become. Memories, past enthusiasms, hand-written notes suggesting real concern for the conflicts of far-away places. My notes from the present will not later be discoverable in box files or cardboard boxes. They will be on hard drives and memory sticks. Some will be included here, at least for as long as this blog exists. Their concerns, aside from what I need to do to earn money, will often be personal, whether I am writing about myself or an old band I have seen.   

Right now I just want to cleanse myself in all senses of the dust of yesteryear, but the boxes surround me, awaiting collection or council recycling. I am going out tonight and perhaps the booze will wash away some of the cloying sense of the past. At least until the morning when I will sit at this screen again, switching awkwardly between sad musings and professional assignments. 

The sad demise of Barry's Bench

A Dubai source has given me the very sad news that “Barry’s Bench” is no more. The Mexican-style restaurant that sat inside the very pleasant Arabian Courtyard Hotel (located opposite the Dubai Museum) has closed. This was my favourite restaurant in the whole wide world. I once considered holding our anniversary party there (after we had already moved back to London). I am totally gutted. It has, I am told, become a pizzeria.

Now, my sense of what is good in the world has been circumscribed by too much time spent in the Middle East. When we lived in the UAE, finding any restaurant with character, aside from de facto male-only joints rejoicing in such names as “Pak Express”, was a difficult exercise. Barry’s managed to utilise the advantage of being within a hotel (booze was on the menu) without actually seeming like you were. In fact you could enter and exit directly from or onto the bustle of Bur Dubai in the old Creek area of town. Location was very much part of Barry’s charm.

Seating was mostly in spacious booths. This modest-sized restaurant was designed for comfort, not to cram as many punters in as possible.  An undoubted factor in the particular appeal of “Barry’s Bench” was the almost obligatory Margaritas. These we enjoyed whilst waiting for our mains, with our mains, and as desert. They were lovingly prepared at the enticing restaurant bar where the odd punter would sit. I, for one, have not tasted better.

The food? Oh yes…that was always superb (I did once eat there sober). The burritos and tacos tasted as authentically Mexican as anything I ever had on the west coast of the US, and I never (knowingly) saw a Mexican in Dubai. The staff who served you in the restaurant were south Asian men and a Filipino woman. They were friendly and attentive, but not overly so. Unlike most waiters in 4 or 5 star hotels in Dubai, they respected your space and your need to take your time. Perhaps that is why it closed. However it was always busy when we were there.

I never did find out who Barry was, and exactly what or where his bench was either.

“Time Out Dubai” lists a “Barry’s Bench Express” as located within the Times Square shopping centre on Sheikh Zayyed Road. It seems the legend continues. However a fast food version located in a mall without being able to savour Margarita Time would really not be the same. Not at all.   

Family duties

It’s a New Year and in a few months time it will be my 50^th. Yet I am not sure what will have changed by the time I reach that particular milestone. Too much time on my own to think, perhaps. For when I am not writing about the Gulf from the vantage point of Walthamstow, I am wondering what the point of any of it is. The book will provide something different for those who are so inclined. In the context of recent family events, and an inability to believe the future will be profoundly different, my enthusiasm sometimes wanes. If I don’t have a runner in the Mid-East race, and if I don’t feel a desperate desire or ability to reveal some hitherto unrevealed truth about it, then it is perhaps unsurprising if I am not always totally fired-up about my professional duties.  

Aside from that, the great escape (to where?) has been indefinitely postponed. I am childless, yet tied to family. Without family, yet performing family duties. What a strange state to be in. My mother died 15 months ago and I am still waiting for the headstone. Without parents I have no one to cry to. As a child I cried to my parents. As an adolescent I needed to cry to someone else about my parents… I found Jesus. As a young man I turned away from fathers, holy and unholy. As a middle aged man my parents began to need me to cry to…about themselves, about each other. In the last five years I have buried them both. I may never see my brother again. I am happily married to the woman who has been my closest friend for more than two decades. I am lucky. This is narcissistic, attention-seeking, nonsense.  

Cheesecloth rock in the New Year in the Stow

Cheesecloth are an East London/Essex band who specialise in highly competent covers of mildly obscure ‘70s songs. Fans of the band helped to fill out the Ye Olde Rose n’ Crown pub in Walthamstow this New Year’s Eve. However many of the revellers turned up before tickets were required for entry and were plainly content to just drink, regardless of what was going down on stage.

This band of middle aged males and a young female keyboardist are passionate and engaged, and some of the songs they covered were bold if not borderline ambitious. Bowie’s “Drive in Saturday” was a notably entry in the latter category. Even that did not faze them. More typical pub rock fodder were their faithful versions of the Stones’ “Dead Flowers”, McGuiness Flint’s “When I’m Dead and Gone” and Ronnie Lane’s “How Come?” 

The problem, at least for those who lacked the dedication of those, like me, who were dancing down the front, was that many of the numbers required a minimum age of at least 50, and a functioning memory, to mean very much. That, the fact that some of the songs are relatively laid-back, and the understandable desire of many to just booze on an occasion traditionally dedicated to the same, meant that, however hard Cheesecloth worked, they were often, inevitably perhaps, falling on deaf ears. However, as the pace and revelry built up toward midnight, the number of those dancing steadily increased. After the cheers for the New Year rang out, and the band took another well-earned break, “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting” was played over the PA. It’s never sounded so good…(hic)….

Consisting, on New Year's Eve at least, of Ian on lead vocals and guitar, Danny (bass), Holly (keyboards), Pete (drums), John (guitar), and Huw (harmonica), Cheesecloth are well worth checking out if this kind of music and pubs in the East and North East London area are your bag. Their manager, and such was the enthusiasm down the front, bouncer, is Ian Blowes. In the latter capacity he was working pretty hard, so much that he performed the only on-stage wardrobe change of the night.

If I have any criticism it is the of the band’s name, which used to make me imagine that they do covers of Brotherhood of Man songs. However it’s memorable and they’ve had it for a while, so, like their material, why bother changing a good thing?

Meet the new year, hopefully not like the old year

Good riddance to 2013. I could say my discontent with this fast fading year, and for that matter 2012, is all about the poor Middle East, but it isn’t. For the most part genuine popular grievances were expressed in 2011 and, quelle surprise, they met the fearsome resistance of authoritarian states ruled by unaccountable narrow cliques. In Egypt the state’s ruling backbone reasserted itself after the Muslim Brotherhood interregnum. In Syria the ruling clique and their allies are, quite literally, fighting for their lives. Frankly, what else was expected? Oh and Libya was an apparently “necessary” western intervention to prevent a massacre in one city that helped to destroy an already weak state and replace it with the anarchy of multifarious militias. Good decision, western and Gulf leaders. 

No, none of that makes me “hope for a better year” in 2014. If “all politics is local” then all of my preoccupations are personal. I don’t have a runner in the Mid-East race, but I do have some family left in England. Some of it has, tragically, gone belly up over the last 15 months, but a lot of it remains, and some of it is even renewed, revisited and meaningful. So here’s to them (they know who they are), and here’s also to that small, diminishing, but valued, group of friends I have actually seen this year. 

Wreckless Eric live at the Prince Albert, Brighton

When Wreckless Eric walked on to the tiny stage upstairs at the Prince Albert pub in Trafalgar Street on Monday night no one seemed to recognise him.  At first I wondered if he was an ageing roadie. As he stepped up to the microphone there was no audible acknowledgement from the half filled room. Seeing the smattering of chairs occupied in front of him, Eric observed that he had advised the pub not to put more out as his audience would be better off standing up in order to avoid getting haemorrhoids.

Storming into his first number, which was unknown to me, Eric thrashed his acoustic and sung with angst about a seemingly monotonous childhood. His voice was never technically brilliant, but it is still high up on the emotional register. Everything is intensely personal with Eric. As he explained to the Sussex audience, he is a local boy. He grew up in Newhaven and went to school in Lewes. Despite currently residing in New York where he paints and performs, after many years spent living in France, Eric’s youth obviously still resonates with him and with his writing. Droll humour runs through lyrics stuffed full of personal reminiscences, some of which he sparred about with members of the audience. The upstairs room at the Prince Albert pub is as intimate as a gig can get for both performer and audience. Several times Eric only part jokingly asked people to stop staring at him. 

Eric is best known for his Stiff Records material from the late 70s. Many numbers from that period were played on the night. These included “Reconnez Cherie”, and his biggest hit “Whole Wide World”. Always an intense experience, it lost little by being played solo. Not that Eric Goulden is the kind of performer who could have considered a cosy “Unplugged” groove. On the night many of his songs ended up as a thrashy, noise fest. Playing his acoustic through an array of effects peddles, Eric at times threatened to outbid “Metal Machine Music”, Lou Reed’s “pioneering” four sides of feedback released in the early 70s.

On “Joe Meek” Eric sung the praises of the man he called the inventor of British pop music. Meek is most famous for creating “Telstar” at a recording studio he constructed in his tiny Holloway Road flat in North London. That was just round the corner from a car boot sale where my wife experienced an epiphany after spending 50p on a CD copy of “12 o’clock Stereo” by The Hitsville House Band, Eric’s Americana-sounding, largely French, mid-90s combo. From that album, he performed a powerful version of “Can’t See the Woods (For the Trees)”. Sticking around for a chat afterwards, Eric told us that he is planning to record some songs from that period with The Len Bright Combo, a mid-80s garagey-sounding outfit that he has recently been gigging with again.

Eric’s lyrical references and banter suggest a man whose quest for love and happiness has been a rocky one. Yet he declared to his audience his happiness at being married to his sometime song-writing partner and co-performer, Amy Rigby. He ended his set with one of Amy’s songs somehow spliced together with one of his own, “33s and 45s”. This was largely comprised of lyrics based on classic song titles. It proved a suitable closer for a performer who obviously attracts the older fan keen to reconnect with a much earlier period in British music. Yet there is nothing nostalgic about Eric’s musical shtick, even if his between songs banter at one point found him talking about green double-decker buses.  

Mandela is dead and so is debate

Nelson Mandela is dead. I feel relieved for him and his family. Nauseated at the often absurd coverage of the event in the UK media. Sad at yet another confirmation that the era of great men has given way to the almost universal reign of the indifferent, the ordinary, the petty-minded administrators of tax revenue.

He was to come to prominence in a very different age. His cause, long before it was made fashionable by pop stars and simple-minded sloganisers, obliged both Conservative and Labour governments in Britain to look to what they thought was a higher national interest than majoritarian politics in Africa. The 1980s version of this debate was used by the left of centre Channel 4 News in Britain to settle party political scores with those, mostly dead or irrelevant, in the Conservative Party who did not worship at the shrine of Mandela. Smug, self-righteous, sanctimoniousness abounds, a chance for people to feel good about what records they bought, what stickers they wore, what demos they went on thirty years ago.

The sin of having equated him with terrorism is once again ritually trotted out, as if it is only a term of abuse and not ever a tactic of politics and of war. To target or threaten civilians or civilian life, to seek to wreck or undermine public stability in order to realise a political objective, this is the stuff of armed struggle. It is what the Royal Air Force did against German cities during World War Two and it is what the armed wing of the ANC began to undertake under Mr Mandela’s command before he was incarcerated. It may well be the action of freedom fighters too. The French Resistance killed not just for revenge but to achieve political goals by spreading fear. That is what terrorists do.

Nelson did not agree with the targeting of civilians. He was arrested before the shedding of civilian blood became more acceptable in ANC circles and before he would either have had to resign or accept responsibility for it. I have heard no debate in the last 24 hours about these issues nor any serious assessment of the wisdom of Mr Mandela in going as far as he did in reassuring business and, effectively, white interests that in office neither he or the ANC would rock the boat that much. The legacy of that “pact” continues to this day.

It is ironic perhaps that people all over the world are so ready to deify Nelson as a secular saint when in their own country they bemoan the fact that democracy is “merely” about one person one vote every 4 to 5 years. Twenty two years after his release South Africa struggles to be even that, given the lawlessness and violence that is the stuff of daily life in some cities and the treatment that can be meted out to striking trade unionists.

If Nelson has one simple and yet rare political legacy to be applauded it is his promotion of inclusion and reconciliation. This from a man who could so easily have pursued narrow, sectional and vindictive interests. He is still revered by regimes and militant groups who have every interest in the slogans of liberation but who usually fail to understand that inclusion is not achieved by the denial of the humanity of the other. Just as he did not dress his cause in a racial colour, so Mandela had no sympathy with the communal politics of many of his sympathisers in the Middle East. These are attributes worth remembering and worth revering.