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Where Are 'The Specials' Of Today?

6/29/2013

   There are no bands today - with the notable exception of Cymru's Future Of The Left (more cynical commentators than protesters) - actually doing what groups like The Specials did in the late 70s and Special AKA in the 80s.   Perhaps Muse achieve it in a few songs and Radiohead raise ecological issues, yet it's very much down to singer-songwriters ,both young and old, from the Anti-Capitalist Roadshow ( such as Grace Petrie and Robb Johnson) to lead the way in confronting the Coalition and questioning the ethics and efficacy of divisive capitalism.
   Indeed The Specials and Special AKA were at the forefront of a whole movement (ska and New Wave in particular) which went on to challenge the gross injustices of the system before and during the Thatcher era.
   From Elvis Costello's subtle and moving anti-Falklands War song 'Shipbuilding', exposing the way our whole society had been manoeuvred from creation to destruction, to the more experimental and sadly-neglected
music of Working Week, whose song 'Venceremos' (with vocals from the incredible Robert Wyatt) linked the struggles of oppressed people across the world, without ever preaching. (Their high-energy jazz finds its modern equivalent in Melt Yourself Down incidentally).
   The Specials were the band which did for ska what Bob Marley did for reggae; bringing it to a mass audience who'd never really encountered it before.
   Recently, they've been back on tour and it's both disturbing and revealing just how relevant their songs are to our present predicament.
   Red Poet Mike Church captures this in his poem 'Ghost Town Retro', the irony being that it isn't 'retro' at all!
   'The Specials' Ghost Town is back on tour
    Summer rioting, middle class dieting
    A massive sea change
    Climate's deranged......'
   What ska did in this country with bands like these and The Beat, was to celebrate Jamaican music, while giving it a very down-to-earth street consciousness. It was an up-tempo sound mostly matched by hard-hitting, gritty lyrics. It took the essence of Marley's reggae, but dispensed with the religious burden.
   'Ghost Town' itself is an extraordinary song, from the spooky atmospheric opening to the bleak scenario, it could quite easily depict our high streets nowadays.
'Too Much Too Young' is just as apt today as it was then : the tale of a single mother tied down by her child and full of regret. Jamaica and Coventry are joined musically, with dead-pan vocals from Halls and the dub style of Staples and Golding.
   Observations of gang culture in 'Gangsters', of personally encountered racism in 'Racist Friend' (from Special AKA) and, above all, of callous capitalism in 'Rat Race' speak to us equally strongly now.
   I recall two things related to this vividly from my days teaching at Pen-y-dre in Merthyr. One was a supply teacher called Dom who had been a mate of Jerry Dammers ( the main songwriting force behind both bands).
   Dom was from Coventry, played the guitar well and refused to take any shit from the management, which meant that they soon got rid of him. He summed up the spirit of the age.
   Secondly, I remember a disco at the school where about a 100 pupils all danced to the then hit single of Special AKA 'Nelson Mandela'. I'm not sure how many appreciated this rallying cry for the great man's release, but everyone sang along to the chorus.
   At this time more than ever we desperately need bands willing to write about the lives of people suffering just as they did under Thatcher, or even raise voices of dissent.
   Far too many don't want to take any risks and offend. Far too many come from the same kind of background as Cameron and Osbourne. Far too many simply don't listen to the likes of Springsteen, Ry Cooder and Loudon Wainwright who, in America, are actually railing (often with telling humour) against the dire effects of the New Depression.

                  THATCHER'S DEAD, YET STILL ALIVE

Thatcher is dead
yet she's still alive -
that pomp and ceremony
through London streets,
leaders of all the parties
Royalty and world figures
and she can't be buried
despite the burning of her effigy
somewhere up North
where coal used to be.

Thatcher is dead
yet she still speaks
through so many,
Boris and Cameron and Osbourne,
Balls and even Milli -
the weapon of unemployment,
Royalty to worship in their luxury
like Ceausescu's palace, Hussein's opulence
our media exposed so boldly.

Thatcher is dead
yet we live by her philosophy,
a house is an investment
and not a home
and we know that everyone's to blame
except those gamblers in the City -
the scroungers and immigrants
the weak in our abandoned valleys
where nothing's changed and nobody can hide
because Thatcher lives on inside.

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A WEE BIT OF MIKE CHURCH

6/23/2013

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   'Who's the best performance poet in Wales not to have won the John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry?'
   It's almost like one of his poems which asks a series of questions ( such as 'what does J.C.B. stand for?').
   The answer is one Mike Church, whose first book 'A Wee Bit of Trouble' (Pont, £4.99) is just out.
   It's aimed purely at children who are ten and three quarter years old,not a day either side, as he jokes in 'Age Appropriate'.
   Actually, although it's for children, adults could easily read and enjoy it thoroughly, as long as they've got a sense of humour and are prepared to meet the dreaded Mrs. Grimwood of the title poem, who picked on the poet when he wet himself in school.
   Hence the pool of piss on the cover, which someone mistook for custard according to Mike.
   Mike has been on the poetry scene for a long time and I've had the pleasure of knowing him for most of it.
   When I won the John Tripp a good while back, his fan club cheered when the winner was announced as 'Mike.....', then groaned when my surname was read out!
   He's a performance poet without comparison, who often uses his juggling skills to illustrate a point, or humiliate teachers like me in front of the class.
   I have been saved from an egg landing on my face at the last moment, but been hit by an admittedly blunt sword.
   Mike has been an actor (with Everyman and other groups) and he uses this skill to great effect in his performances : his readings are full of drama and his intros often like stand-up comedy.
   He has been a Red Poets regular for many years and although he has only appeared in a couple of issues, he is someone whose work is imbued with his pacifism, socialism and republicanism.
   After doing so many workshops in schools, prisons, stadiums, shopping centres and anywhere they'll have him, it's a cause for real celebration that his first collection's out and soon-departing Pont editor Viv Sayer has obviously lavished great care on it.
   'A Wee Bit of Trouble' is truly one of the best ever poetry books for children, witty and pertinent from start to finish.
I love his odd tales, narrated in such a dead-pan way, like an encounter with God while waiting for a train to Merthyr , in 'Another Strange Meeting'.
   He has an uncanny ability to send up people without being cruel, but in a gently mocking manner, as in 'Colin' about a very boastful boy.
   Also, he identifies with the underdog and those who find poetry and reading a real challenge, especially in poems like 'Reading Aloud ' and 'Boys Don't Read'.
   Many of his poems are set in classrooms and both teachers and pupils can identify with the hilarious situations he describes, where a wasp causes widespread panic or a teacher farts while putting up a display.
   The apt illustrations were done by Louise Richards, better-known for her tremendous work in the Valleys with LitWales.
   My only quibble is that the names of the children are universally Welsh, which is untypical of most schools in Wales today.

   We are definitely living at a time when there are many excellent writers of both poetry and prose for young people in Cymru : from Jon Blake in Cardiff, to Jenny Sullivan ( now living in France) and Catherine Fisher of Newport. These, together with Mike Church and others, should be read and enjoyed in every single school in our country.
   The Welsh Assembly Government simply do not do enough to ensure that Welsh Lit. in English is the staple reading diet of our children.
   And, you never know, some of these schools might even invite the authors in.
   Teachers beware! One of Churchy's swords could drop on you from mid-air!

CLASS K
                             (for Mike Church)

In that class in Ysgol Pen-y-bryn
the names were quite amazing.

The nearest to a Welsh one was Kaitlin,
spelt with a 'K' like the other ones.

There was a Kyle and two Kians
and three versions of Keiron, Kiaran and Kieron.

There was a Kayleigh and a Kayla
which I'd never come across before.

There was even one boy called Kayak
(at least it sounded like that).

And a girl they just called K.,
because her name was Polish and difficult.

I wondered if the Klu Klux Klan
had infiltrated the local estate;

had their parents OD'd on Kentucky Fried Chicken
or, more likely, were fans of Kim Kardashian.

I asked the teacher what was behind it,
'Afraid I couldn't say,' he admitted,

'my name's Karl, by the way......
and they call me Special K.'

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LOBSTER-POT MEMORIES

6/17/2013

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   Into the lobster pot of memories, sometimes with the feeling of being boiled alive after being caught ; to scream out.
   But sometimes taken on a tide, a boat floating out to sea.

   Last week, sitting in the dentist's chair ; too regular a visitor there of late.
   'It's like Groundhog Day!' I declare, wishing I could dictate events.
   'What shall we do with it?' he asks.
   'How about reinforced concrete?'
   It's too late! The word 'extraction' is enough to bring prickly sweat to my brow and ,despite trusting my dentist, the process brings back all those childhood memories on the flow of the tide like sticky, tarry wood clinging to palms.
   And despite the injections (I counted at least three) I could still feel the pull at the roots, as my whole body - every single nerve - resisted it.
   Before the novocaine takes hold I tell him of childhood visits and how they gave us gas and we'd come round bent over a sink and spewing blood.
   'Is it the smell of rubber brings it back?' he asks.
   It might be. Or the taste of blood. Or that forceful wrench, like a clamp on my heart!
   Such experiences can take you straight back...... to a six year-old self in a converted hotel by the front in Aberystwyth.
   That lift-shaft with its echoes of drills screeching and whining. The many different dentists with their weapons of torture lined up ; some who gave up when I refused to open my mouth and one who just yelled at me.
   Smells, sights and sounds conspire to yank me into a past I want to avoid : a mazy trap no claws or cunning can escape.

   Some of the most vivid memories I possess probably aren't memories at all , but stories my mother told so often they became engrained into my consciousness : the stuff of family myth.
   My mother would narrate these with relish, no matter how badly I had behaved.
   Biting the girl next door's finger when she poked it through the fence was one. Trying to hold up a cinema manager with a toy gun after we'd been to see a Western together.
   Best of all, was the time I picked our neighbour's flowers and proceeded to knock their door, asking if they'd like to buy a bunch.
   Or the day when she was away in Swansea on one of her regular 'shopping trips' (I found out were euphemisms) and I got out all my best toys and put them on a small table outside our house. I managed to sell the lot for a pittance : a five year-old who would never end up as an Alan Sugar, for sure.
There was one which really troubled me and which no-one ever talked about, but I convinced myself had happened. I even felt the scar along my skull.
   I dreamt about it often, so it must have occurred. I was certain I'd had a plate of glass dropped on my head and that it had been badly cut. My parents denied this had ever happened, when I asked them years later.
   Tales and dreams jostle and merge and become connected even when they are separated by years.
   My dream of journeying away from Aber on a boat definitely comes from walking by the harbour and seeing the small boats moored there, yet the islands which myself and my mother drew as a fugitive dream came much later, at a time when she was no doubt planning her own escape from the impossible relationship with my father.
   Those drawings stand out for me now because they were so rare.
   Despite all his many problems and psychotic tendencies, I was far more likely to go to the cinema with my father than share anything with my mother (even though I lived with her when she left him).
   In truth , I wasn't on that island of hers, thousands of miles away in another ocean.

THERE WAS AN ISLAND

In the harbour
I discovered
a string orchestra
of masts and ropes,
those high notes
played by the wind's
supple fingers.

By the harbour
a stacked pyramid
of lobster pots,
I could be caught
and not get out
of memory's subtle trap.

There was a boat
I never travelled on
called The Dolphin
and there was an island
I drew as a child,
a cottage uninhabited
and fire-wood unlit.

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'I Can Clean Too!' : poem for Father's Day

6/16/2013

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I CAN CLEAN TOO!

I hoovered the whole house
mopped the tile floors
dusted and polished surfaces
watered then pruned the plants
shook out rugs and mats
sprayed the shower and sink

I hoovered all my mouth
mopped under my armpits
sprayed my toes for athlete's foot
scrubbed and polished my pate
pruned nails on fingers and feet
washed and shook my few silver hairs

I hoovered the lawn for stray leaves
scrubbed and brushed the patio
washed and sprayed the outdoor chairs
pruned the dangerous berberis
pulled up many weeds from cracks
swept up the straggly catkins

I hoovered my brain for wayward thoughts
soaked my imagination in soda crystals
cleared the drains of my subconscious
painted over grout of memory gaps
polished my reason till it shone ,
but tidied excuses into a box, just in case.

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SKY COMING CLOSER

6/11/2013

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SKY COMING CLOSER

The sky is coming closer :
they have cut down the trees,
the disease has been spreading ;
innocent walkers' boots and shoes.

Larches still awaiting leaves,
gaps between them are blue
as bells of flowers ringing
out for rarely passing bees.

We have heard the motorbike
drone of many chainsaws.
Plastic wreath placed by the stream,
they are taking trunks for burying.

Despite all the barbed fences
the sky is leaping towards us
and lying under canopies of oaks,
leaving behind the growling blades.

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SHEEPNAPPIN

6/7/2013

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   A look back on the 'BARKIN! tour, plus a new poem in dialect.

   My Wales-wide tour of 'Barkin!' ends at the same time as the footie season.
   A cause for both sadness and joy.
   Sadness because now I'll have to wait till I take the book to Outer Space and goodness knows what the Martians will make of it. Maybe I'll tell them it's 'Merthyr dalek', as in one of Phil Knight's funniest poems.
   Joy because there have been many high points and I'd like to thank all those who attended and especially those who bought the book (all three of you.....LOL*).
   The beginning and end of the mini-tour were particularly wonderful occasions.
   I thoroughly enjoyed the first launch at The Imp on home ground and even my friend Bernard Harrington is writing in the vernacular now (though he describes it as 'taking the piss out of Mike').
   The last reading was also an absolute pleasure, at the Hen 'n' Chicks pub in Abergavenny.
   This regular Open Mic. has been running for over 20 years, organised by Ric Hool and the Collective, and it was just like ol' times to share the bill with Ifor Thomas, who even did a cling-film classic.
   To read at Aber Arts Centre bookshop was special, there among all those memories of superb gigs in the Great Hall, from Bowie to Genesis and the late, great Kevin Coyne.
Simon at Aber, Jo at the Dylan Thomas Centre, Matt at Lampeter and Marc in Wrecsam were all the best of hosts, even if I never got to sup that real ale promised at Saith Seren ( though Wrexham Lager was a good substitute).
   So Merthyrtalk does travel beyond Cefn Coed in the north and Treharris in the south, even if they no longer have Fish Foot Clinics in Wrecsam (' so last year!' they insisted).
   I'm thinking of getting it translated into Klingon ( John Redwood could do the job), but that's a future project.
   For now, I'm amazed I'm still writing in dialect. After all, Gove has decreed that it's not 'proper English' and Leighton Andrews is like a pink-tied version of that obnoxious Education Minister.
   Like writing haiku directly onto my mobile and tweeting them after, I just can't stop latching onto local tales.
   For instance, the well-known youth worker who rescued swimmers from a shark in Australia , only to be spotted on telly by his employers (he was supposed to be off on sick). He returned home only to be immediately dismissed - 'There's no call for shark-wrestlers in Merthyr!' was his legendary quip.
   Like Bernard Harrington, I also responded to the equally bizarre headline 'Thieves Steal Bridge!' Though, unfortunately, the reality wasn't quite as spectacular as it sounds.
   I hope there will be more such strange tales in future and, in case I don't get accepted onto the Poetry in Space programme, I might just take 'Barkin!' to the States instead.

* This is the first and last time I'll ever use 'LOL'.

                                     SHEEPNAPPIN

I woz doin an Apprentice,
Dragon in-a field not Den.

Bein one o them onterpreners,
cuttin out a middle man.

It woz Fair Trade mun,
got fuckall like-a tea-growers.

So I nabbed myself a lamb,
not as easy as it seems.

I adto rugby tackle im,
ee kicked out, strugglin.

Thought them ewes woz 'bout
t gang up on me even.

Bound is legs with tape......
a case o sheepnappin!

Phoned my butty Welly f advice,
'Where's-a bes place f lamb?'

'Ow about Nandos but?'
So tha's where I took im;

round the back o the restaurant.
They call-a cops an I get done.

Got a plan t train an eron,
get im t catch me some salmon.

Reckon I'll get a grant f'r it
when I get outa prison?

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Where Are 'The Specials' Of Today?

A WEE BIT OF MIKE CHURCH

LOBSTER-POT MEMORIES

'I Can Clean Too!' : poem for Father's Day

SKY COMING CLOSER

SHEEPNAPPIN

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