UTB versus the Oxford

In Fight Club Tyler Duerden asks “How much can you know about yourself, if you’ve never been in a fight?” By that logic everybody in Burnley must know a lot about themselves, we must be spiritual athletes with self awareness the likes of which Buddhists the world over can only dream of. The truth is, you learn one more thing about yourself and that’s all, you learn what you’re like in a fight. It can be alarming, more often than you’d think it’s quite funny. Most often it’s quite disappointing. You learn that you’re shit in fights, that you can’t think straight, that your legs turn to jelly and you’re a pushover. Let me ask Tyler this one though, “How much can you know about your family, if you’ve never been in a fight with your family, alongside your family?” Have you ever been in a fight with your family? Or your band?

I got in trouble for fighting as a teenager, proper trouble where the police told me off. Good on them too, I was made to feel stupid and irresponsible. I was made to feel my parents’ shame and disappointment and it stained me and stayed with me. I was grounded for months on end and after that I was to stay out of central Burnley where everything could and did go so wrong. Whilst I was grounded I bought a Hammond organ with money made on my milk round, I sat in the conservatory and slowly but steadily built a skill that was all my own. I got really into music. When I was allowed back out of the house I wanted to watch bands, I didn’t want to get in fights. Fighting got me in trouble, music was getting me out of it.

Whatever happened I couldn’t get in another fight.

I did pretty well at staying out of trouble until the Uptown Band played at the Oxford, on Temple Street up Burnley Wood, sometime around April or May of 1995. We used to play there for an astonishing 80 quid a gig. That’s 80 quid between us. Usually about eight quid each although sometimes if someone didn’t show you might be looking at a tasty tenner each. It was a shithole but it normally went off without a hitch. There’d be a sparse audience and we’d play in the back corner, I’d sit on the built in benches on the back wall with my keyboard pulled as far up to me and the wall as it could go. The PA speakers and the mixer amp were on top of the pool table. When we were playing we were walled into this corner together, no way out.

On this particular night in 1995 we’d brought friends along, the Redfearns were there as were Nathan’s Mum and Stepdad. The atmosphere was a bit different because there were a good couple of tables full of Burnley fans in. We were all Burnley fans too and still are, it’s just that these were Burnley fans we didn’t know. There’s nothing worse than a Burnley fan you don’t know and these were the worst sort you could imagine- singing, sweaty, sweary, Suicide Squadders full of tattoos and bad manners. There was one big oaf who was stripped, he started the procedure himself before his friends finished the job and removed every last stitch of his clothing. He was bollock naked lurching around the pub with his pipe swinging. I was playing at this point, cover after cover. My Girl, Green Onions, River Deep Mountain High… one after another. It doesn’t matter what the songs are or how engrossed you are in the gig, when there’s someone in the room with their junk out you know about it. Your peripheral vision is all dick whether you like it or not.

Naked guy started dancing around the room sidling up to women, rubbing his clatter on them. I looked up and he was trying to dance up to Nathan’s Mum Lynne, her partner Gary was shoving the guy away despite being a foot and a half shorter. I think by this point we were playing Gimme Some Lovin.’ Gary started arguing with naked guy, naked guy was giving a lot of “Well what are you gonna do about it?” style retorts. I looked up and saw Gary taking off his glasses, popping them in his top pocket and then taking a swing at the big naked unit. My Dad carried on playing so I carried on playing. Hold it down, we’re in G… Gimme Gimme Some Lovin’…

I mustn’t get involved. Whatever happened I couldn’t get in another fight.

What followed was classic barroom brawl stuff, one person swings at another then bangs into a third who throws a punch and hits a fourth who was hitherto uninvolved. The violence spread out through the audience like fire ravishing a 1970’s apartment, everybody was involved in a matter of minutes except the band. The Suicide Squadders loved it, it was their dream Saturday evening, throwing punches around at hapless music fans with no natural aptitude for violence. The only real obstacle they ran into was Dave Redfearn who was knocking them on their arses with relative ease. I saw him hoist one up by the trousers and collar and throw him into a pile of barrels in the store room. He later told me he “would’ve got more involved” if he hadn’t been wearing his suit.

The band were only immune from the waves of violence for so long. I got to a point in the third verse where I realised I was the only person playing. The bass stopped and the drums stopped and the PA started screeching with feedback. At first I thought this was because our gear was under attack but then I saw that Dad and Ken the Dog had thrown their microphones on the floor and were swinging their heavy 1960s microphone stands at the marauding hooligans to keep them back from the corner of the pub that constituted our stage.

I mustn’t get involved. Whatever happened I couldn’t get in another fight.

I looked up and the 13 year old Nicky was swinging his saxophone stand at some knuckledragger. It was only an alto sax stand but still, he was involved and doing his bit. I looked across the pub and Mum was kicking naked guy in the arse as he rolled around fighting on the floor with someone. I was starting to think maybe I would get involved after all. Then there was a big shaven headed oaf face to face with my Dad screaming at him saying “Who the fuck do you think you are swinging that around?” He punched my Dad in the face and dropped him to the floor and I reacted before I could even think about it.

I leapt over my keyboard and threw the best punch I’ll ever throw in my life.

I know how to throw a punch nowadays and this wasn’t a proper one, I didn’t turn my body into it properly, twisting the power of the legs and hips through it in a corkscrew of force. This was all teenage, un-muscled arm flailing through the air. It was like the one that George McFly hits Biff with at the end of Back to the Future, except less telegraphed and without the accompanying Alan Silvestri score. I don’t think I even used my knuckles, it was the heel of the hand landing like a hammer powered by love and family and loyalty and everything good that can be put into a punch. It landed squarely on the guy’s nose and spread it across his face like a dropped egg. It felt wonderful.

The triumph was short-lived, the guy started swinging at me and grabbing me by the hair. His mate joined in, they were absolutely incensed. I remember Nathan’s Mum screaming at them “He’s only fifteen!” Not strictly true but you can’t fault her for trying to find some deeply buried seam of shame or pity in them. As there were two of them and they were both trying to do me in they were a bit clumsy and I somehow managed to crawl under the pool table. They were kicking at me and they were grabbing and pulling to try and get me back out. I really thought I was about to get the worst beating of my life and then suddenly it stopped.

I looked out from under the pool table and the room was full of police, I unfurled myself and crawled out to see the guy I’d just punched sat on the floor with his hands handcuffed behind his back. His face was absolutely ruined and he was blubbering “I’ve just been assaulted by a long haired bloke, does nobody care about that?” Naked guy was outside in handcuffs, he tried to say he hadn’t been in the pub and that he wasn’t anything to do with it. Unfortunately for him, everybody had been telling the police that the fight had been started by a naked guy and here he was, stood outside a Burnley Wood pub with his pots and pans dangling in the cold spring drizzle. His defence crumbled and he was handcuffed and thrown in the back of the van. Naked.

Dad had to go to hospital for some stitches but was fine, I was virtually unscathed by some miracle. Nicky said his eyebrow was bruised but I couldn’t see anything. Mum was fine, energised if anything. I went straight out to party at Springer’s in Nelson. All the following week when I was doing my college revision in the evening Dad would bring me a pint of lager and say “There you go, son,” bursting with parental pride for the best punch I’d ever throw.

Do you want to know what the happy ending of this story is? It went to court and Naked guy agreed to plead guilty to absolutely everything that was thrown at him if we would just drop the charges of public nudity and indecency. He didn’t want to be sent to the nonce wing and was more than happy to do his time in a normal prison.

The Uptown Band never played the Oxford again but we thrived and were soon commanding fees of up to £150. Between ten.

Release Week is Finished

I write this newsletter every week and I try to just enjoy it without “focusing on metrics” and “increasing engagement,” I’m just an aging musician sat in my jogging bottoms in Clitheroe after all. That said, I couldn’t help noticing just now that only 33% of last week’s emails were opened, what happened guys? It’s always above 60%, usually about 65%. This is literally the only time this has ever happened, it must have been the sun and the bank holiday weekend. I can’t possibly hold it against any of you. It would be ridiculous to feel in any way aggrieved that on the one weekend I’m releasing an album nobody opens the email. What would be the point of droning on about the fact that my new album Shinbone's Revenge came out last week, on gorgeous translucent orange vinyl with spectacular artwork by Pete Fowler? There’d be no point in forcing those of you who failed to open the email feel guilty and I would run the risk of seeming repetitive to those of you who did. So let’s not talk about that album, available at Friendly Records or here on Bandcamp. It’s obviously still available for anybody who feels ashamed about not having bought it yet, but really what would be the point of any further discussion?

Obviously I could embed the album yet again, like this….

…but again, what would be the point? It would be like I was entirely recreating last week’s email simply to encourage people to buy it. That’s something I simply wouldn’t do.

Some Japanese Music

I’m a Japanophile. Is that a word? Substack doesn’t seem to think so, there’s a wavy red line under the word and when I click on it for suggested other spellings the only one it suggests is “Anglophile.” I’m not an Anglophile, as far as I know being English disqualifies me from that. I love Japan anyway though, I always have and the feeling intensified after I finally got to visit the place. What’s not to like? It’s an ancient culture of patience, politeness and devotion and it gets under your skin. I’ve always been drawn to music, films, TV and literature from Japan and I’ve enjoyed a few Bandcamp releases in recent weeks that I feel compelled to share with you. So here you go.

This compilation of Japanese acid folk was just lurking in my Bandcamp wishlist, I can’t remember sticking it in there. It’s gorgeous though, and I’d nearly forgotten about it. Listen to that first Beach Boys style harmony piece! I’d like to think the Beach Boys were an influence on it but who can say? There’s a whole host of strings to pull on in this album, let’s see where we go in the coming weeks.

This DD Records compilation was an impulse purchase the other week and it might be the maddest thing I’ve ever bought. The label released exactly 222 cassettes which (according to the bandcamp write-up) encompassed “avant-punk, Cubist ambient music, sound collage, pop concréte, jazz-prog, early computer music, and anything else their roster cared to throw at them.” I wonder what the dog-walkers of Clitheroe have made of this one as they’ve come down Pimlico Road this week. I was drawn in by a chance hearing of Egg by the Young Hormones, as catchy a piece of atonal pop music as you could wish to hear.

The Rossendale Male Voice Choir

Would you check this out that Maz sent me last night from the Bridge, what could be better? The men of the Rossendale Male Voice Choir generously spreading joy wherever they go for a pint. This style of music making is so selfless and community spirited, the kind of thing my German family used to do wherever they wandered. It beats a room full of people staring blankly at Sky Sports News doesn’t it?

More choirs in pubs please.