Sock Free Hideaway

BEATS OF LOVE

35. Spirit Dance by A Certain Ratio

WHEN YOU fall out with a good friend for well over a year, you have time to reflect. I was embarrassed when my mum told my school mates my father was a fully qualified accountant. Not least coz the ones whose mothers just said accountant were smarter than me. And mechanic, much smarter.

I decided Iggy Pop would make a far better mentor but my good friend unfathomably declared he was decidedly lower-middle-class so was mentored instead by somebody decidedly middle-class. Not just somebody, anybody. 

Consequently, I ask him to be my best man, and then he tells me, after accepting, despite not even having a woman in his life at the time, that his then mate, and then, Nick Clegg's speech writer, will be his. Yes, it's true. Clegg's speech writer. Instantly, I wished I'd asked my mum's partner instead. Before I met my good friend, I was already taking music very seriously. I bought records in Musicworld, my local town's wonderful vinyl emporium, that I would never have bought in E-Bloc. ACR had been on the scene for a decade and this, their latest effort at the time, had been in their bargain crates for an age.

This record is enigmatic. I had no clue who ACR were back then, but they provided the basis for my journey towards something more ritualistic and communal. Something that was only beginning to happen in my head that magical summer. I was in between nightclubs at the time and transitioning from indie-dance to house variants, so I was taking lots of LSD and moving my body about far less lumpenly. The abstracted voices and shifting keys completely play with musical texture and blow my fucking head off. It's a blurred marriage between a pulsating Sheffield electro rhythm and Africa that still sounds as distorted and invincible. And still makes me putty in its God touched hands.   

I was standing with Chris, protesting Johnson, proguing parliament, as you do, and Martin Moscrop came over chatting to him. Despite owning a fair few of his records, I still had no idea who he was until Chris told me after he'd departed. If I'd known, I would've said 'thanks' at the very least. Upon reflection, Iggy and anybody decidedly middle-class, aren't the best mentors. Life is short, and, with misfortune, sadly, even good friendships can run their course. 

However, happily, the positive effects of great records can last a lifetime. Thanks Martin.