Punk is dead....but we're still dying

My sister reminded recently that I used to have this slogan on my bedroom door when I was a kid. It's taken from the label on Stiff Little Finger's Alternative Ulster 7" single.

I went to see Stiff little Fingers last night. Not the first time. I think its probably the third or fourth time. I didn't get to see them back in the day, though.

My friend is mate's with the bass player Ali McMordie, who is one of the two original members in the current line-up (the other being lead singer and guitarist Jake Burns), so he kindly gets me on the guest list when they're in town.

I was 11 in 1978 when I got into new wave and punk music. I remember buying the first edition of Smash Hits whilst still at Primary School. That year it featured bands like Blondie, Elvis Costello & the Attractions, the Jam, and the Police, as well as some of the punk bands like Sham 69 and the Buzzcocks.

I remember around that time being played X-Ray Spex's Oh Bondage! Up Yours at a family friend's house, and knowing immediately that it was anti-something, maybe anti-everything, and that I liked it.

I must have expressed my interest in this music to my older cousin Richard, 'cos for the next year or so he proceeded to regularly and generously feed me lovingly-made compilation tapes containing a wide range of punk and Oi bands. These 13 or so tapes, unfortunately long-gone, formed the basis of my love of punk and inspired me to independently explore those bands that I particularly liked, such as the Adverts, The Outcasts and The Stranglers.

I was too young and not hard enough to be a punk. But that didn't stop me trying. I could upset and convince adults with my attempts at punkness - I remember not being allowed into my mate's house 'cos his mum was so offended by my spikey hair, my DMs, skin-tight jeans with turn-ups, and God Save The Queen t-shirt - but my punk-peers were less convinced - I was once spat at in Woolworths in Guildford, and often jeered at by other more punk-by-nature boys at school for my attempts to be one of them.

Okay, I didn't know much about Crass, but I knew I genuinely liked some pretty crass stuff (with a small 'c') like Cockney Rejects and the Angelic Upstarts, so I lived with it.

I had to wait until I was 15, to see my first punk band though. The Stranglers, had nearly topped the charts with Golden Brown, and were basically mainstream by the time I saw them at the Civic Hall, Guildford in 1982. But they still played with the contempt and vileness that you would expect of any proper punk band.

Stiff Little Fingers were another one of my favourite punk bands. I was gutted 'cos my parents wouldn't let me go to the Civic Hall the year they played there to promote the Nobody's Heroes album. My cousin went and bought me the tour poster though, so I proudly blue-tacked over my bed.

Last night they played the Forum and they sounded as punk rock as ever. The audience as you'd expect comprised mostly of 40-50 year old males; boys slightly older than me, that probably would have spit at me back in the day. But tonight I am here and I belong here. I have the punk record collection and knowledge of the genre to easily qualify. I am as passionate and savvy about punk and S.L.F. as the best of them, basically, finally, as punk rock as them. Even as hard as them. Or rather as soft as most of them. A parent too, like most of them.

There were spine-tingling moments all the way through the set, and Jake Burns's voice sounds stronger than ever. Tin Soldiers sounded bigger and more anthemic than ever. Barbed Wire Love, which had a Forumful of old punks singing the 50s doo-wop middle-8, demonstrated why Inflammable Material stood out as such a punk classic. They encored with both Johnny Was, and Alternative Ulster, the former as drawn-out, dynamic, passionate and uplifting as I could ever hope for.

I still listen to this stuff, see. So hearing Wasted Life and Suspect Device doesn't feel nostalgic. It feels like the present to me.

I've been blogging about the blues and how I don't get it. Well, this is why. I get this. I get this energy. This passion. The immediacy of this. There was nothing 'Blues' about tonight. Or about the people present. Sure, we can all admit to liking Led Zeppelin now, but we will always be punk at heart. There's some argy-bargy at the front but the aggression and anger has long gone. The spitting, too. Good performance, musicianship and competence is now appreciated, admittedly. Virtuosity, however, is not an issue. Jake Burns's succint solos were artful in their brevity and beautifully adequate. To the point, like most of their songs.

I get introduced to Ali at the after-show party and while I could have said "I used to have a poster of you and Stiff Little Fingers on my bedroom wall", and asked loads of interesting questions about being a 'mature' musician and stuff; instead I just said "excellent gig, man" and stood listening to his conversation with my mate and examining his now mature facial features like he was an old school friend that I hadn't seen in 27 years.

By 12 o'clock I'd had enough crap lager - just a couple of pints of that stuff is enough. So I called it a night. A great night.

Mr Pound

So, a few weeks ago I was talking about my frustration at not writing songs as much as I used to. I signed off informing you that I was off to try and write a song about Woolies closing down to get the songwriting juices flowing again. Well, I just finished it. It's been a while in the making but that's how I like it. It's called 'Mr Pound' and comes with verse, bridge and and a very catchy chorus. I toiled over the arrangement for about a week. Singing it this way. Singing it that way. V-B-C, V-B-C, Mid-8, B-C or V-B, V-B-C, V-B-C, Mid-8, B-C. the latter is a favourite of mine.

It talks about the last days of Woolworths, the stalwarts 'gathering to pay their last respects' and 'the children arriving to scoop their last pick n mix'. It mentions 'Sheila' who 'worked the record counter' of the Woolies in my home town and mentions the chequered vinyl floors of 'the Woolies that time forgot'. The chorus is me coming to terms with weekends now spent browsing the aisles of the likes of Mr Pound, Poundland and Poundstretchers.

It's been a labour of love over the last couple of weeks. I will miss it. This is how I used to feel. The song now has to be released into it's natural habitat, the public domain. I don't like the pain of letting it go, I love it. But first, the band will play their part and add their flourishes and further hooks and refrains. I look forward to this too.

We have three gigs lined up for the first half of 2009, which is great. In February, March and May. February is another 'Wunderstock' gig, this time at Tommy Flynns. March is the Rock-Til-You-Drop night at the Dublin Castle and in May were playing outdoors at a mini-festival, which sounds like fun.

Right. To work on the next song...

I want my habit back

"Songs don't tend to come to you if there's no outlet for them. Because I couldn't get any records out, songs would occasionally come but I knew as soon as we had a contract the floodgates would open". Here, here Joe. Joe Strummer that is, on the voice over for Julian Temple's bio-pic 'The Future is Unwritten'

This sums up how I feel about songwriting. I miss the compulsion I had for it immensely. I want it back. But there is not the 'outlet' so the habit, in thrall to the necessity, is broken.

I wrote songs compulsively from about 15 years of age until my early 30s. I have an archive box full of A6 size note books and hundreds of songs to show for those years. But as soon as the gigs became fewer and further between and the sets of no more than 40 minutes in length, so the need for new material greatly decreased.

I am lucky because I was able to turn my creativity to making paintings. I have done this for the last 5 years, but it is not the same. Not for me. To be honest, I'd rather be under contract to deliver a series of albums. Then I could rekindle the compulsion.

But would I have anything interesting to say? (Of course I would!) Is my best work behind me? Should I continue to play the best of my back-catalogue 'cos no bugger (apart from a few friends) would know? And who'd care if they found out that at 41, I was singing a song I had written at 21? Noel gets away with it.

Noel Gallagher (41), in his Guardian Magazine interview with Simon Hattenstone, this weekend, talks about writing songs post-Wonderwall and Don't Look Back in Anger and how this was a time when he was simply "putting out records for the sake of it". This must be a creatively challenging time for successful musicans. You get your 3-5 years at the top and then, apart from the die-hards, people stop caring about what you have to say. You are now rich and out of touch with the people that you touched on the way up. If you are Noel Gallagher, you are also 41. You are married. You are a father. You want to be a responsible one. So there goes your edge. Right?

Well, not necessarily. Because there are mature singers and musicians that creatively appear to make a seamless transition into maturity and settling down. They do this, I think, by dealing with it in their lyrics. And with a less-fickle audience, who continue to be interested in what they have to say. They aren't attempting to sing to the youth. Instead their audience can relate to their songs about the challenges of middle-age. Because there is, of course, still an angst, some anger and fear associated with middle age. I'm thinking of someone like Julian Cope. He managed the transition. I don't know about his latest stuff but in the mid-90s he was singing about his wife and children. He and his music never lost their edge.

Unlike, Julian Cope I'm not making a living from my music. Music slipped a few places from the number one slot it was at for so many years. Like most married men with children, my time is more precious than ever. I do miss the days when all I did, all I wanted or needed to do with a passion was write songs. But writing and thinking about all this has got me to thinking that I'd like to attempt ot focus my creative attention on some songwriting again for a while. In the evenings, when I'm not painting. Regardless of the lack of outlet for new material. Besides, that's just making excuses, right? I could always go and play new songs at open-mic nights, anyway, couldn't I?

So, I'm off to write a song about the fall an institution close to my heart, Woolworths.