Everyone claims that the times are a changing as theirs pass them by
And everyones’s right
Filthy and Fried – Drive-By Truckers
IT has been a bit nostalgic wandering through the latest batch of tracks on the A-Z trawl through my i Pod.
Wish that nostalgia had been for something historically or at least culturally significant, like the hip-hop wars which raged throughout the 1980s (at least they did if you spent the decade washing the ink off your fingers from reading the NME).
The warring factions in the weekly music paper’s office drew battle lines between their traditional white boys with guitars and the upstarts from the streets of some American conurbation with their new-fangled rapping et al.
No, can’t spend too much time reminiscing about all of that as was far too ensconced in my indie guitar ghetto to consider listening to any of that stuff. Was definitely on the jingly jangly guitar side of the argument.
It took a while for the message to get through and make it in to the collection. Public Enemy popped up twice in this section. Although pretty sure Fight The Power was not written to soundtrack a walk to Sainsbury’s.
Some hip-hop did get through back then, mainly because it had some guitars in it (and it didn’t hurt they were going on about porn, parties and parental disapproval of haircuts).
But Fight For Your Right by The Beastie Boys mainly brings back memories of it being on the video jukebox while we were playing pool in the pub at lunchtimes when we should really have been in school, helped by knowing how to get at the button to keep playing for free.
Nope, the main memory from those teenage years of the 1980s was a green, rubber alien puppet with a penchant for slightly subversive comments in celebrity interviews and snot dribbling from his nose (once, infamously, in to a pop star of the day’s cleavage).
Actually had to check with Wikipedia and friends of a similar vintage that it was not a product of too many drinks during those pool session and, no, it was not my imagination.
Gilbert the Alien did exist and is fondly remembered by all those who have any recollection of him.
Gilbert first appeared on our screens on a Saturday morning TV show (Get Fresh, Wikipedia reliably informs me – bar Gilbert, have no other memory of it other than it was co-presented by perma-irritant Gaz Top).
At an age when Saturday mornings were first bearing the effects of the night before, the irreverent green thing on our screens was just what sixth formers lapped up amid the rest of the customary primetime fare for children.
Voiced with pretty much free rein by comedian Phil Cornwell, we didn’t always understand what he was going on about (particularly in the background like when he, allegedly, asked the drummer from Aswad to skin up) but he became must-see TV .
And then he was given his own series.
Gilbert’s Fridge had no right to be on children’s TV (there was, evidently, a later, adult version which nobody seems to remember) and lasted just one series, but we lapped it.
If we’d had water coolers in our school, we’d have gathered around it to discuss the previous evening’s programme.
If featured special guests (for some reason, Gilbert became Kim Wilde’s agent and worked in a typing pool with Wendy James from Transvision Vamp – another reason for teenage boys to watch) and regular sections such as the black and white World War II PoW camp series How Far To Hitchin? and Sunny Jolly Hols.
It is this bit – in which Gilbert heads off to Benidorm on his holidays with Get Fresh co-presenter Charlotte Hindle and a suitcase full of dead fish, who spent the entire time in the bath – which came rushing back as it used Fiesta by The Pogues as its theme tune.
Joyous music for joyous memories.
There has been more nostalgia in the last couple of weeks with a trip to London to meet up with a couple of old friends. Two people from different chunks of my life with little, maybe nothing, in common bar spending many years living in the capital. And knowing me.
Right up until they met in a Walthamstow pub and discovered one of them had spent the week working on an upgrade for the computer system at the company where the other worked (or something like that, went straight over my head).
Mind you, he knows a few things about techie stuff – he was the man who set up this site on the back of a late-night conversation and it all sits on his work server.
Back when we were at school, however, he was not known for his musical taste. Yes we shared a penchant for Billy Bragg – who we once ambushed round the back of some benefit gig on Hackney Town Hall steps and made another of his regular appearances on the latest section from Kevin Morby to Mark Kozelek with The Few – but he needed some music therapy. Paul Young anyone?
So when he moved to London and got married (providing my first shot at a best man’s speech, totally improvised), the cost of me popping up to stay on a regular basis was a C90 compilation each trip designed to entertain and educate.
What became known as The Bollocks Tapes (the first one, ever so wittily, was title Never Mind The Sex Pistol’s, Here’s Rob’s Bollocks…) built in to a catalogue of early-90s indie, although visiting too regularly meant they became filled with less than glorious album tracks.
And stirring somewhere in the house were some musical genes.
His eldest son played bass in indie wannabes Let’s Wrestle – still going, although with a new man in the rhythm section – and his youngest is the guitarist/singer/songwriter of the rapidly-emerging Girl Ray.
They are getting a fair amount of deserved attention, regular airplay on 6Music and have released a video which features my mate’s ex-wife. Which was a slightly odd watch.
We’ll get to both Let’s Wrestle and, hopefully, a lot more Girl Ray as the A-Z heads on, but there was more nostalgia from the latest batch – Fields of Athenry by The Dropkick Murphys who have the ability to remind me of any number of Irish, American, even African moments, and Final Day by Young Marble Giants.
Fighting In A Sack by The Shins bridges a fair few years and serves as reminder that their new album sits newly installed on the iPod and in need of a listen.
And, almost, right up to date there’s Fill In The Blank by Car Seat Headrest (one of the discoveries this whole project was designed to find) and the wonderful Filthy And Fried by The Drive-By Truckers (‘Feeling lucky that 27’s the hardest thing she’ll have to survive’), my most recent obsession – particularly after an awesome two-hour set in Bristol.
And with that we’ll say adios until we see Almeria once again.
