BEATS OF LOVE

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

FAMILY FEUDING cuts like a jagged knife of greed. Tears that reveal nothing except that Lee took his own life.

I know he was deeply woven into hearts, and I know his parents shouldn't bear the trauma and guilt. Folk of his age are the victims of a generational tragedy. Selfish older voters want everything protected; their property, their pension, and their healthcare. 

Essentially hoarding their own security while building instability for the younger folk. Cutting and cutting into smaller pieces the slice of the pie with that same jagged knife of greed. Politicians fear them since, as they proved with Brexit, they can be unpredictable and self-harming. A reason in itself why they shouldn't be protected.  

Lee's generation is further away from the property ladder and much more likely to be in debt. Student loans are a financial albatross, while company pension pots are now pitifully small. This constant cutting means life choices are now far heavier. In the cold light of day, failure is necessary for learning, but we're hearing very little mercy from these selfish older voters, making the fear of failure 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 shaped by the greed of selfish older voters for once. One of good-will that provides shields. I just pray our family feuding stops with this most traumatic of endings. 

BEATS OF LOVE 

166. N'Né Menika by Kassiry

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

She was damn right, of course, as I just read a lot and combined 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. Of course there's a pattern to this self-deception as I only ever finished solving my Rubik's cube by peeling away the stickers. 

Understandably then, OU study was a bit of a shaming exercise as I comprehended less and less. Going quieter and quieter the more I learned. 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 could now be just beginning. Since studying I read a lot and listen to what folk don't say. It's 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 a problem of state is a Rubik's cube and that it will fascinate the public watching him solve it. Sadly, it isn't, the problems he faces are infinite by comparison and require political conviction, not logic. As he tediously solves one problem; he creates another which betrays folks' trust. Folk, who, like us, are often at its mercy. Next year I will try to plan for a positive outcome in the UK whilst simultaneously readying myself for more venturous change overseas.

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' 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 Ecstasy 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 Realise 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, detune, and crystallise, 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 an endless 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, and a loss of libido, I still see MBV as a four-piece. And still see them at the very top of the tree.

BEATS OF LOVE

165. Make No Mistake by Keith Richards 

MY MATE, Jeff proclaimed after a few weeks of me moving in that he expected Keith Richards and got John Major. My persona met with reality.

I concur that I'm risk averse and I'm paying a heavy price for it. I met the missus in the first week in January in 2012 and had we married prior to August that year, we would've fallen outside hostile environment policies. Granting us settlement. As it was despite marrying in 2013, once I was sure a marriage could last, it subjected us to the full force of law changes in 2014. By full force, I mean full force. 

Finally, our MP helped resolve matters in 2016 and they placed the missus in writing on a ten-year partner route to settlement, not until I was three hours away from flying her out of the country. In 2018, she had one chance to switch routes to save time but was told the rules would have to be met in full on subsequent visas or face a reset. Brow-beaten, we decided it was safer to pay extra and wait longer for peace of mind. Now, knowing we met the rules to settle earlier, we're devastated to learn that the political party we supported and who supported us now proposes to overhaul our settlement terms. Placing us once again in limbo.

Shabana Mahmood is going too far for many, but not far enough for others. Effectively making nobody happy. Me and the missus were in our local when some unhappy soul was in Nazi saluting after sighting us both. Mahmood's sorry blue labour rhetoric apologises for it. She understands why mixed race couples can make people feel so incensed; I guess. 

I now recognise myself in the fictional comedy character and his alter-ego, brought to life in John Sullivan's brilliant Dear John. Beginning this ordeal like Kirk St Moritz, an online lothario and ending it as Eric Morris, a neurotic letter writer. Jeff was dead right about me.

BEATS OF LOVE 

164. Up the Youth Club: Illuminating a Hidden History by Emma Warren

I APPRECIATE Emma's optimistic viewpoint as she provides a definitive account of this subject. Ending her subtly groundbreaking book abruptly before the 70% cut to youth services took effect. 

I only ever recall going to youth club discos aged 11, where I learned that my musical snobbery sat well with my more generalised snobbery. Too immune to the sounds of 2-Tone, which seemed to attract kids from the council houses and uniform dancing, the only records me and my mate Dave made any effort to dance to were New Romantic. 

We perfected a sneering disdain for most things because of this, even forming a nameless band. Inserting the lyrics 'Dance with the intercom, Speak into a plane' over a Landscape B side and some Casio keyboard action, intending to play it at the youth club channelling the full Blitz Kid aesthetic via our mother's wardrobes. We never found the bravery to leave our houses.

As with the brilliant Dance your Way Home, sparingly but brilliantly, she extracts history from a personal footprint. You learn lots about our societal loss without a cerebral approach, which again feels refreshing. It's by exploring these deeper connections with fertile ideas the book comes alive and you realise the importance of what was simply tossed away in the name of austerity.

Understanding that for many youth clubs were a lifeline and not simply some place to form an identity. 

BEATS OF LOVE 

163. Biko by Robert Wyatt

AFTER WATCHING in awe and wonder, Beverly Glenn-Copeland spellbinding his audience, by splashing colour and hope, it inspired me to reflect on politics and the personal. 

Then I heard this while exploring some Afrobeat online. The prolific Man Power turned me onto Robert Wyatt a few years ago. A voice I was once resistant to suddenly mesmerised me by its rough fragility. Paradoxically abrasive and tender at the same time. 

Whether it is simply the voice or the subtly penetrative Adrian Sherwood production that makes the stripped down anti-apartheid anthem sound less tiring here than on Peter Gabriel's longer, more intense original, I can't say. Maybe it's not hearing bagpipes but a haunting, austere minimalism. Another case of less is more.  

The effect is more disarming as we get slowly hypnotised by the warmth of the simple electric organ before having to face some harsh truth about reality. Steve Biko's brutal torture and murder was brazen and harrowing, with many arguing that South Africa's collective consciousness still hasn't recovered from. It explains why the system of injustice and brutality survives at the end of apartheid.

That Wyatt can splash some colour, and hope is possibly down to his musical genius. Or just maybe Biko's spirit is still alive and well. A symbol of resistance.

BEATS OF LOVE 

162. This Is What She's Like by Dexys Midnight Runners

THE CONFERENCE season finished with Theos think tank's annual lecture, delivered in compromising tones by Andy Burnham. Who lacked the conviction necessary to fully explain his Third Way of doing politics. 

Prophetically concluding his post lecture Q and A by saying we should 'prepare for a very dark road ahead.' Very defeatist, from someone with more than a modicum of political power. Akin to losing at musical chairs by sitting down before the music even starts.

Luckily, as an antidote to such resigned political pessimism, here, the optimistic music never stops. I'm reading Kevin Rowland's disturbingly candid autobiography and spinning Don't Stand Me Down a lot. Starting with a song of greatness. The Occasional Flicker exuding the uncompromising confidence that comes with having a great but muted dress style and the musical talent to reach beyond oneself. That this exhilarating even more original effort eclipses it epitomises the valiance at its heart.  

To start the greatest ever twelve minute song with a rich accented conversation about the elusive topic of love is absolute genius. To then weave said voices into a musically uncompromising vocally harmonic Pièce de résistance, whilst not forgetting the violinist or to mock the English upper classes, is as insane as inspired. It's both as catchy as hell and utterly opaque. Fully expressing a third way of doing popular music. 

If any song proclaims 'we should prepare for a very sunny road ahead', it is this.