Monday 8 November 2021

Falling out of love with professional football...

Now, don't get me wrong, I love football. I have since my first memories of the game. The emotions that it can bring still shred and jangle the nerves. But, I am falling out of love so very rapidly with the professional game, for these reasons (and a 100 more).

The lack of joy - the self-importance - the money - the lies - the suits - the kits - the boots - the sponsors - the throw-in coaches - the agents - the transfer deadline day - the journalists - the pundits - the bloody pundits - the lego stadia - the fixtures - the relentless fixtures - the pointless tournaments - the international breaks - the re-writing of history - the hyper-legacy culture - FIFA - UEFA - the backhanders - the TV rights - the ex-players harping on about when they were playing they could stab the opposition centre forward with a stiletto knife, bury his body in a trench behind the away dug-out and marry his bereaved wife and still have a pint with him in the players bar afterwards - the contrived commentary convincingly concocted by an alliterative allegory addict - the perfect pitches - the crisis club in complete chaos - the conmen - the chairmen - the ever changing kick-off times - the club ambassadors - the corporate hostility - The...... etc etc you get the picture...

Wednesday 27 October 2021

Did I ever mention...

...That I host a radio show every Wednesday evening on Sydney's 2RRR Station on 88.5FM 

You can catch it live on the previous link or simply by heading over to Mixcloud by clicking on this link here...

London Calling Mixcloud!




Tuesday 26 October 2021

The Language of Pop - #1

Scritti Politti - Lions after slumber

My diplomacy, my security, my hope and my ice-cream

My tomorrow and my temperature, my lips and my selfishness
My cigarette, my uncertainty, my penetration
My notebook and my limit, my importance and my glycerine
My customer, my function, my lawlessness, my charm
My hunger, my refusal, my tissue and my vodka
My ommission, my ability, my telephone and my holler
My relaxing, my distress, my bedroom, my cassette
My dictation and my pulse, my fortune and my death
My flake and my restlessness, my headache and my dirt
My paper and my charity, my rose and my pallor
My guess and my closet, my light 'n my time
My worry, my perversity, my transgression
My temptation and my polythene, my gunshot [click]
My jealousy and my water
My demands 'n my angels 'n my waiting 'n my distance
My death, my curtness, my insulin, my memory
My partner 'n my sadness, my story, my wantoness
My wish, my despair, my erasure, my plantation
My white chocolate, my thoughtlessness, my gracelessness
My courage and my crying, my pockets 'n my mistakes
My body and my sex, my gaze and my helplessness
My letter, my sugar, my homework, my walk
My records, my smile and my struggle
My reflection, my eyelid, my fragility, my discretion
My hair, my austerity, my tattoo, my demise
My fooling and my terror, my problem and my judgement
Oh my disguise, my tongue
My ownership, my formula, my property, my thought, my razor
My blessing and my silence, my lust and my practice
My sincerity, my penicillin, my window and my androgyny
My mother, my recorder, my pity and my posing
My light, my carelessness, my drummer, my drummer, my drummer, my drummer
My tenderness 'n my car, my undoing and my history
My bottle and my drugs, my drugs, my drugs
Tomorrow, my temperature, my lips and my selfishness
My cigarette, my uncertainty, my penetration, my notebook
My limit, my importance, my glycerine, my customer, my function
My lawlessness, my charm and my hunger
My refusal, my tissue, my vodka, my admission
My ability and my telephone, my holler, my relaxing
My distress and my bedroom, my restlessness, my headache
My dirt, my paper, charity, my rose
My pallor, my guess and my closet, 
My light 'n my time, my worry, my perversity
My transgression honey, my temptation honey
My polythene, my jealousy
My water, my demands, my angels
My waiting, my distance, my death, my curtness, my insulin
My memory, my partner, my refrigerator
My sadness, my story, my wantoness, my skipping
My wish and my despair, my erasure, my plantation, my chocolate
My thoughtlessness, my gracelessness, my courage and my crying
My pockets, my homework
Like lions after slumber in unvanquishable number
Oh yeah

© Green Gartside

Thursday 21 October 2021

This lockdown, that lockdown...

Last time around this website was a flurry of activity. Memories of meandering alone along Marine Parade coupled with Soho drinking sessions and perfect days (still to be completed). 

This time, I've spent more time playing guitar and less time hovering over this keyboard (complete with sticky G). Anyway, the purpose of this post is to remind myself to write, write, write. 

In the meantime, the anniversary of Jack Kerouac's passing lead me to seek out some words on writing:

“My story is endless. I put in a teletype roll, you know, you know what they are, you have them in newspapers, and run it through there and fix the margins and just go, go – just go, go, go.”

“I really hate to write.”

So until tomorrow...



Monday 12 July 2021

Football coming home - #2

England's failure to qualify for the 1974 & 1978 World Cups helped to ease them to the back of the countries collective consciousness. Whilst we had a rubbish national team or club teams started to assert themselves on the European stage. With Liverpool, Nottingham Forest (I know) & Aston Villa (I know) all helped themselves to the European Cup, whilst England bumbled along until 1982 in Spain when for a brief while things looked to be heading in the right direction unlike Kevin Keegan's misplaced header, that saw us crash out in the over complicated second group stage. Mind you the progress to the finals themselves had been fairly harrowing... How can anyone forget Bjørge Lillelien? 

"We are the best in the world! We are the best in the world! We have beaten England 2-1 in football!! It is completely unbelievable! We have beaten England! England, birthplace of giants. Lord Nelson, Lord Beaverbrook, Sir Winston Churchill, Sir Anthony Eden, Clement Attlee, Henry Cooper, Lady Diana--we have beaten them all. We have beaten them all.
"Maggie Thatcher can you hear me? Maggie Thatcher, I have a message for you in the middle of the election campaign. I have a message for you: We have knocked England out of the football World Cup. Maggie Thatcher, as they say in your language in the boxing bars around Madison Square Garden in New York: Your boys took a hell of a beating! Your boys took a hell of a beating!" 
Bjørge Lillelien - Norway v England Oslo 9th September 1981 

The 82 World Cup was mostly memorable for the celebrations of the numerous Italian students who used to spend their summer holidays learning English on the snoozy Sussex coast. They went Tonto! 

Whilst Chelsea bounced around between the top two divisions barely threatening to win anything, England had plumped for mediocrity: Ron Greenwood replaced the despicable Revie and Brian Clough was left to rot in a bottle at the City Ground. Greenwood in turn was replaced by the affable Bobby Robson (who like Sir Alf Ramsey had had the misfortune to manage Ipswich Town prior to the England job). I on the other hand had missed the formative months of punk rock, embraced a Modernist lifestyle, swerved the New Romantic scene and settled on a Mod/Post-Punk/Funk/Jazz vision of the future!

Occasional trips to The Shed were accompanied by visits to Kensington Market & Carnaby Street. Fred Perry & a Chelsea pin badge - nice! 

Thankfully, England managed to qualify for Mexico 1986. We even had a decent couple of players, the mercurial John Barnes and the clinical Gary Lineker. We managed to escape the group stage in no part due to Lineker (Line-acre according to Mick Channon). "It's finally happened in Monterey..." courtesy of the magnificent Barry Davies. Next stop Argentina in the quarter-finals, what could possibly go wrong? 


Sunday 11 July 2021

Football coming home - #1

I have been a fully fledged football fan since 22nd February 1970 around about 2:30pm. The trigger for what became a lifelong affliction was the transmission on ITV of 'The Big Match' featuring QPR v Chelsea in the FA Cup quarter final. The specific incident that then changed my life was the decision of the referee Mr K.Howley to demand that a QPR penalty be retaken. The reason being that Chelsea keeper Peter Bonetti had supposedly moved before the kick was taken and smothered the shot by Rangers skipper Terry Venables. So incensed was I, by this blatant anti-Chelsea bias, I immediately and irrevocably threw my support behind The Mighty Blues. Although to be honest I didn't know they were blue at the time, not least because we were wearing our yellow away shirts but because our family only got a colour tv in 1975!

The reason I mention this is simply because, it was my choice, my decision alone and all these years later the fact that I am a season ticket holder (East Upper), despite living in Sydney, Australia is a direct result of that decision. The fact that I put on 'Three Lions' an hour ago and immediately dissolved into tears is something else all together. I did not choose my country of birth. I am English, despite myself. Therefore, I support the England team, I have to, not necessarily because I want to, just simply because.

I had been aware of the England team prior to my Loftuscene conversion in 1970. Any kid growing up in England knew of the holy trinity of Moore, Hurst & Peters - in fact I'd even flirted with becoming a West Ham fan but it didn't feel quite right. In a perfect storm of falling in love with Chelsea, them subsequently beating 'Dirty Leeds' in the FA Cup Final and the World Cup being played in Mexico that summer, I was being groomed for a lifetime of success and... failure. 

England crashed out against the dreaded West Germans and what's more, one of my Chelsea heroes Peter Bonetti (aka The Cat) was widely blamed (though not by me) for his part in the defeat - although Gerd Muller's shot from about 4 years out also had something to do with it. The heartbreak that particular defeat inflicted is still surprisingly raw. Surely, the reason to like football is because my team would always win. This losing malarkey was not what I signed up for. 

The tale of Chelsea's travails and subsequent redemption will no doubt be covered at another date (the joy of lockdown). This article however, is about my relationship with the England team. After Mexico, things got steadily worse for Sir Alf & his boys. Gunter Netzer demolished our Euro 1972 hopes and Poland had made qualification for the 1974 World Cup a little harder than anticipated. However, all we had to do was beat them at Wembley - easy!

Expectations both at school and home were ridiculously high. Special plans had been made and I could even watch the game: A) live and B) in colour - thanks to the next door neighbour. Anyway, history shows that England only managed to draw 1-1 and that Norman Hunter should have smashed the ball into row Z before Shilton had the chance to dive over Domarski's shot. We were out and not going to the World Cup. The upside was being able to revel in the joy of Holland's total football and that bloody Muller again. Perhaps England were not the team I'd been led to believe...

Surely the appointment of Don Revie from 'Dirty Leeds' would change our fortunes. In hindsight, it was as misguided as appointing Sam Allardyce decades later. Revie's Leeds team were a talented bunch of players, managed by a negative and dubious individual (to say the least). Brian Clough was right: 

"Well, I might as well tell you now. You lot may all be internationals and have won all the domestic honours there are to win under Don Revie. But as far as I'm concerned, the first thing you can do for me is to chuck all your medals and all your caps and all your pots and all your pans into the biggest f***ing dustbin you can find, because you've never won any of them fairly. You've done it all by bloody cheating." 
Brian Clough - To Leeds players on first day of training.

Revie failed to get any decent results (or even bribe any opponents) and he ended up bunking off to the UAE for a sackful of cash (always his ultimate motive). World Cup 1978 was off the cards and by now I was firmly of the opinion that we were bloody useless. I'd find myself going to Stamford Bridge every week and quietly tolerating the rubbish on the windswept and distant pitch from the confines of the hotbed of congeniality and ready wit that was The Shed End. However, the thought of watching England, despite their swanky new fancy pants Admiral kits (courtesy of Don Revie?), was not so appealing. I'd much rather spend my money on going to gigs or on the brand new 7" single 'In the city'from a little known trio from Woking who I subsequently realised were called The Jam.


Monday 22 March 2021

Rain

The rain hasn't stopped, the rain will never stop.



Sydney - March 2021

Tuesday 2 March 2021

Day in the life...

 The Beach Generation

Nobody
else
is
awake 
-
Atlantis
is 
closed
for 
another
two
hours 
-
We
glide
barefoot
to
the
beach 
-
We
are
the
Beach
Generation
...
sprawled
on
the
sand
once
again.



Monday 1 March 2021

For Lawrence Ferlinghetti

A picture of a long gone world
 
                           
 Stood at the top of the long world
lighthouse at my feet
            chalk cliffs plummeting into the grasp of the relentless
                                    
Aspidochelone in the depths
                        the gorse leaning towards life at 45°
                                    rainbows plucked from other hemispheres
   words shimmer in the refracted/reflected light
                    the steam rises from the Cappuccino machine
 plumes of Marlboro smoke emerge and merge
                            a huddle of young poets sit
        amazed and deranged in the hurly-burly hours of a weekday morning
                                    the haunted shadows of deep night erased by the golden cacophony of sunrise
            the book is held open and the words are shared...

... there are others out there, we are not alone.





                                  
                                

Wednesday 20 January 2021

Day in the life...

A Moment in Meads 
(Part 2)

--The storm raged
black sky, silver
lightning, strobing
out over the Channel.

The silhouette of 
The Grand Hotel
flickering.

-- In Meads,
on the third floor,
a window was open.
Her back, bare and
tanned. Her hair
tied in a ponytail.

--The wine was finished.

He would always 
remember this night.

Tuesday 19 January 2021

What is the point of music? - Part 1

Stagewear

I remember when I suppose I was about 10 and beginning to take note of the music and the charts. This burgeoning interest was fuelled in part by an awakening driven by two things: Top of the Pops & Girls. Girls liked music, I liked girls; ergo I like music. Simple. 

Things were complicated by the fact that the chart stars of the day were androgynous and confusing chaps(?) like Marc Bolan & David Bowie. Even grown up bovver boys Slade dressed a bit bloody weird. Anyway, girls liked musicians more than they liked footballers. So, whilst not turning my back on 'the beautiful game', I needed to become a musician. No problem. 

All you need is a tennis racket, some cardboard, sellotape, marker pen and some string. Within an hour I had knocked up a 'Fender Slazengercaster' - it was mint! Of course, it didn't make a sound, at least nothing like Bolan's riff to 20th Century Boy. More of a dull pfft - but hey I'm only interested in miming, like they do on 'Top of the Pops'. 

Guitar - done!

What to wear next? And this is where the wheels started to come off. I enlisted my mum in this tricky transformation from 10 year-old sporty schoolboy to POPSTAR. Unfortunately, I chose to style myself on the front man out of 'Wizzard', Roy Wood. Even now I cringe at the ham-fisted attempts to make myself look like Mr Wood - who much later I came to realise was a very talented musician (especially in The Move). A combination of make-up, back combing, assorted dressing gowns and other odd bits and pieces and the look was complete. I took one look in the upstairs full length mirror and was horrified! 

What is the point of music?

I flung the Slazengercaster down, scraped the make-up off and put my Chelsea kit back on. If dressing up like a right berk was what being a popstar was all about, then count me out. I think it took a full three and a half years for me to even listen to music again....

And then The Jam came to town!

Monday 18 January 2021

Day in the life...

The End of Days

-- An Empire built
on a shifting tide.

Intimacy swamped
by the dark waves
of imminent night.

Fog horns sound.
-- The South Goodwin
Lightship released
from Poseidon's 
relentless grip.

No more
no more
no more.