Early doors punk single reviewed in Sounds, 16 December, 1978 by Dave McCullough. The single was actually titled Touch My Beachcomber Baby.
The Gonads: ‘Be My Beachcomber Baby’ (Scrotum)
Interesting debut form Benny Goebbels and his boys. Bit too rough and ready for my ever growing bland tastes (that was a joke in case you didn’t know), but with airplay it could be a biggy. Why do I bother writing this rubbish? Whatever, The Lads are right behind The Gonads.
Poster for a gig from 1985 for Action Pact! with Porky the Poet. Kool Knotes comperes and the Price play too. These days, the Prices guitarist Leigh Heggarty is with the Ruts.
Charlie Mingus inspired by Pastor Martin Niemöller’s poem “First they came…” on a BBC documentary Mingus: Charlie Mingus 1968.
As ever supporting a good cause, Porky the Poet at the Camden Centre, home to many a decent gig through the 80s, with the majestic Alexei Sayle and the magnificent Frank Chickens.
Sham 69’s first single reviewed in Sounds, 165 October, 1977, by Tony Mitchell.
Sham 69: ‘I Don’t Wanna/Red London’ (Step Forward SF4).
Sham 69 seem to be cast in the true punk tradition and, with the help of John Cale who produced this 12 incher for them, they’ve come up with some solid street material. ‘I Don’t Wanna’ and ‘Red London’ add more voices to the no present/no future protest while the longer flipside ‘Ulster’, complete with gunfire and explosions, expresses what a lot of people feel about Northern Ireland – ‘You’re all losers’. Okay, it’s political expression at the most basic and simplistic level, but at least it’s a start.
Poem by Vivian Usherwood, the 12 year old poet, who lived in a Hackney children’s home, from his 1972 collection Poems.
The Silent Park
The park is silent!
There is no one about
The swings are not moving
The dogs are laying quiet
The birds are sleeping
And the park is dark
No one dares enter
They’re scared of nothing
Only the trees and wind in the distance
Grass is everywhere
Only me, no one else
I am scared
Trembling
I quicken my stride as I go home
The echoes make me cold
Cold as a doughnut.
Vivian Usherwood
even when the war was over you were still sweeping mines
& you taped my favourite cartoons for when I came to shelter & then shelved them disguised as books that you would never read & the soft redness of your cheeks from the mornings on the cart & the Lancashire air braced you & brushed you into an eternal glowing & the little map of veins that ran stories through your skin & your cotton shirt worn to silk & the buttons pulled tight across your belly & the hair pulled tight across your head & how you cracked jokes over the fold-out dining table & slid across drawings of horses like secrets & told me how hard the legs were & the way you cooked for her so we wouldn’t know & you grew venus fly traps on the window sill & they sat, red mouths open, expectant & you smiled despite it all & we went to the chippy beneath the bus station & ate pudding ‘n’ chips with your friends & they were crinkled men & their large hands held big histories & it was a tiny kingdom in that room & how you left us on a ‘silly bugger’ & when your chair was empty & the cushions began to forget your shape & the fridge filled up with victoria sponge & their baby blue boxes bricked in her diagnosis & how you silently did so much & still kept your hair perfectly combed
Lucy Bullivant
Agnes Bartholomew, a Scottish stage actress, singer, and “one of the leading elocutionists in Britain”, recites Barry Pain’s The Bus Conductor. She was born in 1885 and died on 10 September 1955 was a Scottish stage actress, singer, and “one of the leading elocutionists in Britain”
David Bowie, with Angry of Mayfair, on the Kenny Everett Video Cassette, Series 2 Episode 9, broadcast 23 April, 1979.
Porky the Poet on stage at Malcolm Hardee’s Tunnel Club on the 26 May, 1985.
standupandspit 