Dimitra recently tagged me with the ‘8 things people don’t know about you’ meme and I figured that was as good a reason as any to start something new. So here it is. And here are the eight things that some people may not know about me.
1. The first record I remember buying was a 7” single by The Rubettes. I’m sure it was ‘Sugar Baby Love’ which would make it 1974. The record may well still be in the suitcase of old vinyl in my parents’ attic. I have no great desire to hear it again…
2. The first fanzine I wrote was called ‘Been Teen’ after a Dolly Mixture song, and was put together in my bedroom using ballpoint pens and Prittstick by my friend Scott and I. It was all hand written, and the photos were cut from Smash Hits and Record Mirror. We could not afford to photocopy it and so just passed around the pasted together original at Jon’s parties. People laughed at my writing (in a good way, I think), which was in the smart-arse ‘I’m a teenage Art School Student’ voice. Ah, my first forays into the world of music journalism…
3. In 1984 I wrote a book called ‘Careers In Modern Love’. Buoyed by the ‘success’ of ‘Been Teen’, I started to write about the summers I was living through with my friends. This was the first time I was ever really aware of having a gang of friends, and it was a rather strange and pleasant experience. Our lives revolved around bicycles, alcohol, parties and music. Not always in that order, but you get the idea. So the book was about all of those things; a fictionalised account of our shared experience growing up. It has long since been consigned to the trash heap of history, but as I recall it was a post-modern classic. Or not.
4. I’m sure he’s forgotten this, but Bob Stanley once called me ‘Alistair Angst’. It was a fair description. I was a terribly serious and anxious individual and yes, my fanzines of that time were crammed full of angry tirades against all manner of perceived injustices… I was obsessed at that time with Rimbaud and Sylvia Plath, as I recall, which perhaps explains a lot.
I’m sure there are plenty of people who would suggest it’s still an accurate nickname. I’m not sure I could disagree with them.
5. I only became a teacher to get the DSS (Dept of Social Security) off my back. I had been signing on for benefits for well over a year, and they had started hassling me to do something about getting a job. Any job. I stalled them for a while by going to the Enterprise Allowance training days. I said I wanted to start a record label, and that kept them off my back for several months… It quickly became clear that I was not serious about that though, so they started getting me to go to Restart interviews. These scared me enough to start thinking seriously about what I really DID want to do. I thought about it a lot, but beyond the vague notion of being some kind of artist or writer, I still had no idea. Then I saw an advert in the paper that suggested that if I did a Postgraduate Certificate in Education I would get a ‘mature student’ grant of several thousand pounds. So I figured ‘what the hell’ and applied to Reading university.
I had an interview there at the end of November so made a week of it and went to visit the Bristol gang at the same time. Hellfire Sermons and Hope were playing a show that week, so it all fitted perfectly. Two weeks after that I was back in Scotland and attending an Employment Training meeting in Ayr. I sat back and said that I was going back to University, and that was that… eight months more dole life but without any more hassle. I thought I had it made.
Looking back I’m a bit embarrassed now about how little I did in that two years of unemployment, but that’s how life goes I guess. Of course I soon realised that I actually loved teaching, and twenty five years after that Enterprise Allowance meeting I finally did start a record label, but those are other stories…
6. John Darnielle of the group The Mountain Goats once woke me up in the middle of the night with a phone call from the USA to talk about Stockholm Monsters. I had just written issue one of my Fantastique! fanzine and there was a piece in there about the underrated Manchester Factory band. I’d sent a copy to John because I had also just discovered The Mountain Goats via their Beautiful Rat Sunset 10” record and had played a song in a school assembly. I’ve forgotten what the context of the assembly was, but it was surely something about looking out for the unexpected and loving the naturally strange and not being afraid to be different. All my assemblies were about that in some way. Well, isn’t that what Art teachers are meant to talk about? Anyway, John was really thrilled that someone would play his songs to a high school assembly, but even more so that someone was acknowledging Stockholm Monsters. He told me in that phone call that Alma Mater was his favourite album of all time, which I thought was so cool. He’s said it in public since too, which is even cooler.
Anyway, that’s my John Darnielle story. My ‘pop star’ story. Ha ha.
7. I am at least partly responsible for the cover of Rodney Allen’s 1988 ‘Circle Line’ EP, which features a photo of
him sitting on his guitar case, smoking a cigarette and reading the
paper. It was taken in Bristol bus station and is clearly in homage to
Phil Ochs’ ‘All The News That’s Fit To Sing’ album, a copy of which I
had given Rodney in the summer of 1987 during my Grand Tour of the
South West. I remember his loving the Ochs sleeve so much and saying how
he was going to have a photo like it on his next record…
The Ochs album is still one of my favourite records, and certainly one
of my favourite covers. And of course I have a soft spot for the
‘Circle Line’ sleeve too.
8. I actually don’t like ice-cream very much.
Am I supposed to tag someone else now? How about Stephen, Mark, Ylwa, Chris and the Jumped Up Pantry Boy?
ok, i'll get to it soon! what is it about icecream that makes you dislike it?
Posted by: chris | August 12, 2007 at 00:07