Here’s some projects (I have fond feelings for)
Wonders of West Bromwich & Warley 2002 - 2006
Random Historical Reference 003
Owen Kelly, once of Lambeth town. Owen Kelly was the author of the classic history of the community arts movement in the UK, ‘Community Art and the State, Storming the Citadels’ (Comedia, 1984). This book ends with the line ‘The haciendas must be built.’
Owen was, at that time, a community artist working at Mediumwave, in a cramped building at the back of the Oval cricket ground, and had chaired the Greater London Arts Association’s Community Arts Panel. He seemed to dabble in print and music a lot of the time. He also enjoyed going head to head with the former General Secretary of Arts Council, Roy Shaw, on the subject of culture and democracy.
Owen had written a piece (in a magazine called Arts Express) in response to Roy Shaw’s essay on ‘Arts for All.’ Shaw argued for the ‘democratisation of culture.’ Owen argued that debate actually lay with an alternative idea, and his article struck a chord with many community artists across the country. (You can read it online here.)
The first time I saw him he was messing with a guitar, jamming with a bunch of musicians and non-musicians in a church at the first community arts conference I ever attended in Salisbury.
I found him immensely likeable, an entertaining purveyor of strange obscure facts and information. He was the first person who mentioned sampling to me, and could pull out ‘The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu’ album and play it to you (the one withdrawn because of legal threats by Abba). Or he’d give you a tape of his ‘systems music’ – I told him it was great music to wallpaper to. I think he was offended. It was difficult to tell, he always had a little twinkle in his eye. He seemed to have a million ideas, far too many than he could ever realise. His ideas came out like notes from a jazz musician, a freeflowing bebop master of extemporaneous speaking. You’d walk into a pub south of the River Thames with him and he’d casually say something like, ‘Oh, look, there’s Test Department, do you know them…’
We worked together on the 1986 conference in Sheffield, ‘Another Standard: Culture and Democracy.’ The organising group had produced a manifesto for this, which strongly divided opinion amongst conference delegates. It made me realise that your friends and allies may not necessarily be other artists and the Chinese proverb, “Without first starting, you will never go anywhere” holds true.
Owen was also the author of ‘Digital Creativity’ (Gulbenkian, 1997) and became a wizard dabbling in lingo programming. He is currently living and working in Helsinki, doing amazing things in the virtual world. Once upon a time, he had a web site at one time called ‘Golgonooza.’ Another delightful obscure reference, for me at least…
If you look carefully, he may be found at several points in cyberspace. But start with www.owenkelly.net
Image: Owen, in focus in the background in a pub in Brixton, about 1985 (and yeah, that’s me with the crop).
Random Historical Reference 002
Break dancing started in the Windmill Lane Community centre in Smethwick in late 1982. Well, at least that was my first exposure to it. We’d been doing a project called Kids Film Co-op and were persuaded to help organise a festival to launch a newly built community centre – it was classic old school community arts, with processions, dressing up in all manner of home made costumes, puppets, a few fireworks and smoke bombs, an abundance of balloons and silver foil, fine African drummers, pantomime horses, a kazoo band and so on. There were some young lads hanging around, a little too cool to join in. At the end of the festival they came up and said, ‘Ok, we seen what you can do. This is what we can do.’ And in a tiny backroom demonstrated their headspins, handglides and windmills. Wow.
They called themselves The Crazy Spades, or Smethwick Spades. We talked about how we might work together. At first they wanted to film their moves, to playback and critique. Then they wanted help in getting access to a proper dance studio with floor to floor mirrors. They joined in with music workshops and a magnificent May Day fireshow project (er, yes, a 20 foot high breaking puppet was involved) and finally we worked on a beautiful 50 minute breakdance ballet, which involved choreographing up to forty dancers of varying skills and motivation. Community arts was always about some skill sharing, so they taught me some moves. I was not so impressive a break dancer, but they were good and patient teachers. It probably helped that I had the original 12 inch singles by Afrika Bambaataa and the Soul Sonic Force.
Oh, it didn’t do my dodgy knee much good, but it was fun while it lasted, with some bizarre adventures in Covent Garden, at Castefield Festival and at the long gone all-dayers and all-nighters at the Hummingbird Club.
Thanks to my daughter, we have recovered from the vault some amusing pictures of these breakdance days.
Background: check out http://www.jam2dis.com/j2dbreakdancehist1.htm
Random Historical Reference 001
The Fall were playing at The Mayflower Club in Gorton, headlining the Stuff the Superstars Special. After the soundcheck, we went for a walk around Belle Vue - an empty greyhound stadium nearby - and shot some pictures. I met Mark (and everyone else) through Robert Lloyd of The Prefects. Robert was an enduring networker, usually managing to blag his band into third support slot in some pub in Leeds or Altrincham. I saw Robert with his band The Nightingales recently at The Jug of Ale in Moseley. They sounded powerfully like Captain Beefheart and His Magic band, live circa 1973.
The Fall sounded like nothing on earth. I liked them immensely. During one recording session in Rochdale, we went to this pub at lunchtime, a rockabilly and teddy boy place. “They hate students in here,” said Mark. “They like to beat up student types…” I knew a similar pub in Brum. Mark was wearing brothel creepers. I wasn’t. “So, what are you having then?” he asked. Then he added, with a perfect pause for comic timing and a little louder, with the kind of huge smile in the photograph: “How’s the studies at university coming along?”
Happy birthday, Mark. 50 in the year 2007.
For further information about the mighty Fall go to:
http://www.thefall.info
Excuse me, weren’t you in the Fall?
A great article from Dave Simpson, January 5th, 2006.
A northern soul
Paul Morley recalls the now mythic Manchester of his youth, May 21, 2006
