BEATS OF LOVE 

170. Nuts in May VHS

MIKE LEIGH'S wonderfully improvised comedy shows when we're out in the open air, things can get absurd and Reformy.

Keith replete with dictatorial tendencies and his utterly infantile wife Candice Marie, although insular and odd, navigate the Dorset coastline as laid out in a strict itinerary. The camp-site proves harder to navigate, testing their endurance when, despite them pitching their tent first interloper Ray, with his annoying radio, invades their sense of idyll. In Reform party fashion, they move their tent. 

Utterly baffled that Ray has to endure something he dislikes getting a career as a PE teacher, Candice Marie sends her husband into a jealous rage. His real problems begin with working-class Brummies Finger and Honky. First, they want to shag despite being noisily pissed up, which angers Keith, who lies in a sexless state having just refused to kiss his wife's fluffy toy cat Prudence goodnight, then Finger wants to start a fire to make breakfast. Lighting open fires is against the rules. 

Rules dictate everything for Keith. Who in a state of gammon faced abandonment hurls in anger the would be firewood, a tree branch, in Finger's direction. The aftermath of which sees Keith and Candice Marie leaving the camp-site. Again, righteous anger without resolution is very Reform. 

Ironic then that Keith, in trying to impose the same conditions of his suburban life on his trip, blocked his rear-view mirror by overfilling his Morris Minor and attracted police attention. The police also discover his spare tyre was bald. Breaking the rules himself. Reflecting the hypocrisy of Reform, who much prefer the idea of imposing rules that don't apply to their voters. 

Doubly ironic is the fact that timeless characters like Keith and Candice Marie, no matter how unwittingly Reformy they behave, would never vote for such an unruly party. Finger and Honky probably would. 

BEATS OF LOVE

169. Pro>gen (Land Of Oz Mix) by The Shamen

I SORT of became hedonistic in my mid-twenties as the nineties raged on, but before that relatively short spell, I was surly and high-minded. 

Journos, like Jack Barron and Dele Fedele and musicians who spoke to them like the Shamen got me into dance music. Journos and musicians who painted deeper meaning to the rave experience. Summoning us to look for deeper meaning with sound waves and psychedelic drugs.

Despite seeing myself as more intrepid and enlightened, the only noticeable change was my taste in music. I was getting more eclectic as I widened my net. My clothes were full of holes and I wore tie dye shirts under fishing jumpers or I pilfered my sister's designer sweaters. I was unsurprisingly the scruffiest in the Hacienda when the Shamen's Synergy experience came to town.

And despite still buying an increasing amount of overlooked cheap bangers on major labels, I still have a sense of loyalty to acts like The Shamen. Whose  Land Of Oz mixes like this beauty made the band momentarily hip as clubbing took hold. It really annoyed the indie faithful, but it was a burst of jerky positive energy that I knew inside out. 

Whether it was tripping, pissed or just being conditioned to only dance to songs I both knew and liked, I spent my night in clubs hunched against walls. Until briefly springing onto the dancefloor in a pained but enthusiastic manner, moving my imaginary mountain. What I noticed in proper dance clubs was that nobody ever stood still or moved mountains. In fact, nobody ever played this after its wider release. 

In typical fashion, just as my scruff look became popular in places like the Herbal Tea Party, I began shopping for clothes, so was equally out of place there in my new clobber. My world has always really been my bedroom. A place free from the constraints of conversation or fashion. A place where I play music, read, dream, and worry. I sort of feel alien from folk who don't do these things as I imagine them to be floating in space.

Sure, I didn't evolve the way I'd hoped, but at least I've never had Ebeneezer Goode in my record collection. Hard to believe it's the same rapper. 

BEATS OF LOVE 

169. Act Normal: Joy and despair in Postcolonial Britain by Pete Kalu

I READ as a means of catharsis and to learn about myself and the wider world. 

I write for the same reasons despite feeling dwarfed by the many, many, many superior writers. Pete is one such writer whose vibrant and purposeful prose was in a different league from my strained observations when describing the work of Benji Reid. In person, he's self-effacing, neurotic but brimming with passion.

And in this memoir, he is too. Modesty creates a real life stutter, holding neurotic folk back, yet expressed differently, say on a written page, that same modesty creates a candour and wit which communicates an inner confidence. At best, only ever sensed in the flesh. A wholly unique life has become much more than the sum of its parts as told here.

Memory is fragmentary and abstract, so short-stories some only colourful vignettes, without chronology or design, make a sort of perfect sense. It prizes sensory sensations from the reader, and its only constant is the black experience. Not the clichéd black experience but a self-effacing, passionately honest one that, though making himself often the butt of his humour, also constructs observations of psychological genius. Either way, you're left in awe at his storytelling. 

I've found it cathartic whilst learning about myself (cringes) and, thankfully, the wider world engaging with it. 

BEATS OF LOVE 

168. Time Ain't Nothing by Green on Red 

REMINDED OF a good pal this week when discussing the likelihood of Marx having relevance in the future. 

My good pal, despite being advised by his doctor to take things easy, was out on a heavy session. His mother had sacrificed a lot so he could collapse on the floor in convulsions, whilst eminent members of our legal profession beat a hasty retreat, abandoning him. My mistake was to sort of agree with him and concur that these folks weren't his friends. 

Once in semi-recovery and cut off from these highly paid and highly entertaining professionals, he rethought his idea that they weren't his friends. Reasoning that they had much more to lose than the likes of me. Me, whose parents he accepted, were lower middle class like him, but I who wasn't so could easily be associated with someone convulsing during the early part of a heavy session. 

Expecting me to calculate that he was wrong whilst absorbing the information over a phone call. Unbeknownst, I cast the dye on our friendship from the moment I put the phone down, reaching no disagreement. Course, I should've said "it's very British to convolute a class system in a knee-jerk reaction to Marxism by sub labeling everything and creating such unfortunate incidents as these." Marx astutely kept it simple, pitting owners against all wage workers.

It's the sheer simplicity that's its genius and which still instils fear in every lying capitalist. Course Marx is going to have relevance in the future as far too many folks are being duped into thinking there're no class war. 

BEATS OF LOVE

167. Teardrops (Charlies Flat Dub Mix) by Crucial Rockers

FAMILY FEUDING is horrid. You get to know facts but no details. Just that mother's partner's son's nephew Lee took his own life.

However you read it, it's truly tragic. I know he was deeply cherished and loved. And know his parents don't deserve the trauma and guilt. His generation are victims of a type of older selfish voter who wants everything ring-fenced; their property, their pension and their healthcare. 

A bit like the philanthropists of old, they'll often take on some financial responsibility, but in a controlled way. Philanthropists who set the rules. Politicians fear them since, as they proved with Brexit, they can be unpredictable and self-harming. Reasons they shouldn't have everything ring-fenced.

His generation is further away from the property ladder and much more likely to be in debt. Making life choices appear far weightier than they should be. In the cold light of day, failure is a necessity of learning, but we're hearing very little mercy from a type of selfish voter, making the fear of it all too common. Adding more and more pressure on the younger folk.

Sometimes stark facts can be emotional, helping to envisage a world that isn't influenced by the older folk for once. I just pray our family feuding could stop with this most traumatic of endings. 

BEATS OF LOVE 

166. N'Né Menika by Kassiry

MY MOTHER always took great delight in labelling me a pseudo intellectual. 

She was damn right, of course, as I just read a lot and conjoined what I'd read with what folk told me in the pub or club. And coz I was drunk, I'd be loud about it too. Understandably, OU study was a bit of a shaming exercise as I comprehended less and less and went quieter and quieter the more I did learn. 

One of the last conversations I had with my mother ended with her announcing that the state had failed me. It was touching and explains the  massiv support and now feels poignant as what was an ordeal almost ended is possibly just beginning. I now read a lot and listen to what folk don't say, which is why my MP's office losing its tongue is concerning. Suggesting it supports moving the goalposts on people's lives. Lives that clearly meant more to them in opposition. 

The tragedy is that in Starmer we have a leader who thinks politics is a fucking Rubik's cube and that it will fascinate the public watching him solve it. Sadly, the state fails lots of people. People who, unlike me, are often at its mercy. Next year I will try to plan for a positive outcome whilst simultaneously readying myself for more venturous change.  

As I became smarter, my mother stopped labelling me a pseudo intellectual, preferring instead the term odd bod. 

SONGS THEY NEVER PLAY ON THE RADIO

24. My Bloody Valentine : Dare, somewhere 

PART 1

I WAS going to big up an over researched book, Andrew Perer's Turn My Head into Sound: A History of Kevin Shields and My Bloody Valentine. However, reading it reminded me of how big a part they've played in my life and how little studios interest me.

Encapsulated by what would've been a far more engrossing chapter about Colm O'Ciosoig's misfortunes during the Loveless sessions being reduced to a short paragraph. It omits the human to make a point about Shields being superhuman and is obsessed with his studio gadgetry and not the fact he answered the door with a hammer when Belinda got threatened by an ex. The folk who lent an ear to his project weren't the main players, but were studio staff. 

MBV seemed adult compared to all my other fixations. Adult, as in sex. It's why their pre-Bilinda incarnation didn't work for me. Shields may well be the genius, but the overall image the band cultivated after 1987 was captivating. Coupled with music unique in its sensuousness, it simulating my idea of sex even. Something truly felt.

An idea for over a decade until finally cocooned under the covers in my good mate Jeff's cold back bedroom with a lovely, full-lipped woman whose supple voluptuous curves I had never encountered before. Experiencing one of my best Sundays, period. Cliche'd for sure, but Isn't Anything enraptured us, I guess. She gave me her number, but I was flying over to Rome to meet what I assumed to be my girlfriend, Joss, so tossed it away. When I got to Rome, Joss met me, two days later than planned, informing me she'd met someone new. I was as sad about tossing away that number as I was about receiving the news. Imagining how enraptured by Loveless we could've been. 

Sometime later in the same room I was spinning (Please) Lose Yourself In Me, the hypnotic closer on their Ecstacy LP to get it aired at an upcoming Doves gig, but Jeff inexplicably called it dated. Absolute bollocks! Only Spector and the Reid brothers have created a comparable wall of sound with nowhere near as much unsettling fizzy warmth. Their last Lazy masterpiece, the Strawberry Wine EP, contains three tracks, all different but all brilliant. It almost eclipses early Mary Chain with its immediacy. It's that good. I first played these retrospectively in 1988 after they signed to Creation. When they became everyone's favourite band.

I only ever recall hearing You Made Me Realize out in the Hangout that year. The interplay between the ethereal and the concrete is much subtler on Isn't Anything. Voices and instrumentation mesh, de-tune, and crystallize, creating something transcendental and unheard before. The bulk of this bedroom bound pre-shoe-gaze brilliance shone with an aforementioned sensuousness bordering on the abstract and all done on budget. Sleep deprivation was key to achieving these distinctive sounds, or what Shields calls a hypnagogic state. I could only achieve walking into walls and crying to strangers on buses in the same state. Hats off!

PART 2

FUMBLING HIS way in tranced out states to test out the studio like a low budget Brian Wilson is how Shields sold his experimentation to Mike McGonigal, but Perer attests to him being much braver than that. Irreversibly erasing what Dave Anderson describes in Perer's book as "all the guitars, the dry elements- to leave only the processed reverse signal." A process that was unique. To pick a favourite from this period is nigh on impossible, as the records all play like dreams. Yes, occasionally even wet ones. 

Uni gig 

After catching them at the dimly lit Uni and being surprised by their power and volume and by my intolerance to micro-dots, it devastated me missing them at the Reading Festival when my head was more together. They were on Friday afternoon and my coach was late.

Loveless, the fruits of Shield's labour and a test of everyone else's patience were one of those rare triumphs in life when the game changes. Ed Simons was in awe of it, as were other less renowned clubland faces. It's so groundbreaking a book has been written about it. Albeit, a pocketbook. 

Jeff (again) nipped out at lunch to declare boldly upon his return he'd claimed my ordered copy from Musicworld, leading to a proper Basil moment in the work canteen. Course he hadn't. These excessive, embarrassing outbursts punctuate my life. Exerting no great effort and resembling a sleepy bear Shields pissed far more people off, creating his magnum opus than I've ever managed in a lifetime. 

Still under the illusion of the band dynamic in my head, I felt gutted to discover it was all Shields. He undertook all duties; his infamous glide guitar technique (google it), reverse reverb, fuzz and distortion, sampling and layering rendered everyone other than the most trusted studio staff superfluous. Again, it's impossible to pick a favourite. His groundbreaking effects, sounding much more textural and organic and woozy than anyone else's records, put MBV at the very top of the tree.  

Obviously, I was over expectant at the Ritz in 91, expecting Loveless's elements to be at the fore with a fancy Dan light show, but what I got was another sensory assault minus the microdot. Unbeknownst, the band had only learned how to play the songs after their completion. I had probably gone to wave about and shuffle in a constricted, baggy manner but found the burning intensity, volume and sheer energy unsettling. Had I left the house expecting something akin to the Uni gig, I would probably have loved it, but with all Shields talk of hip-hop and samplers I was expecting a club feeling, so I merely enjoyed it. 

They made more sense to me at Spike Island when Weatherall's remix sounded subversive as it wafted through the air in distorted anticipation of the Roses. Or in clubs surrendering to Soon with a trainee nurse from Crumpsall, who I was smitten with for traversing the line between goth and indie brilliantly. Then later, in mid-nineties shindigs, when the remix was perfect accompaniment for spilling drinks to in revelry. 

I'm enjoying super cheap analog represses of masterpieces, and fallen in love with m b v, an album that was a tad disappointing when it first surfaced after a gargantuan wait. Again I was over expectant. The missus just doesn't dig my guitar based superheroes so curled up in a foetal position is how I like to listen to these now. They mesh well with my mirtazapine medicine and remind me why music is my life support and not sex.  

Despite Perer trying to convince me otherwise, I still see MBV as a four-piece. And still see them at the very top of the tree.