Whatever happened to Napalm Shakedown? - In the beginning, there was nothing

Like a misguided intercontinental missile…

They shot across the Sussex night sky on the early evening of Thursday 27^th May 1982 only to immediately implode somewhere over Cross Levels. Napalm Shakedown were the ultimate one gig wonder!

No recordings, demos, ticket stubs or posters survive. A couple of murky images of young men in dark brown army shirts with severe Afrika Korps haircuts, taken at the infamous Archery rehearsal may survive somewhere in a closely guarded and faded WH Smith’s photo album. But certainly, no photo of the White Horses pre-gig run through ever existed, nor do any polaroids from Mr T’s garage. Napalm Shakedown were barely there before they disappeared.

Or so, everyone thought. The gig had lasted barely 40 minutes. From the truth, a story emerged, from the story a myth, from the myth a legend, a legend which grew and grew. By the middle of August barely 2 months after the event, a small but devoted following had evolved. Rumours of a whole rehearsal session recorded on a simple cassette player circulated – the legendary Archery Tapes. 

Within a year Napalm Shakedown were being quoted as a major influence on bands as far away as East Kilbride and Truro, Norwich & Shrewsbury. Imagine a post-punk, proto-funk Velvet Underground and you would be somewhere near the mark – all without a Warholesque Svengali pulling the strings or a Nicoesque chanteuse adding a hint of Nordic glamour to the proceedings.

The NapShack (as they had swiftly become known) saga continued to dilute and regenerate throughout the decade. Even as the former band members joined different outfits and forged new careers, the NS (as they later became barely known) virus mutated more and more…

By Jack Nash

(from the forthcoming book - Whatever happened to Napalm Shakedown? - 

Due out late 2023 on Soul Bay Press subsidiary 'Clandestino'

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.

Day in the life

A Moment in Meads (Part 1)

-- The Sussex Sun 

hovers over Rye,

beaming along 

the paradise coast,

illuminating a 

third floor room 

somewhere in Meads.

On the wooden table

-- A bowl of fresh 

chopped tomatoes,

spinach, cucumber

and onions, 

smothered in 

olive oil, lemon

and chopped garlic.

'King of America'

on repeat --

A white cotton dress

with red poppies

swishes in to the 

kitchen. 

A broad smile and 

hint of Chanel. 

-- Time to open

the Pinot Grigio.

Time to dance...

Day in the Life...

Long Island

-- We know the route.

Down the path, alongside

the empty house.

--- Footprints in the snow.

On top of the coal bunker.

On the garage roof. 

In, through 

the landing window.

The immersion heater

left on, ever since.

The smell of fresh 

radiator paint.

---- Radio 4 on 

in the kitchen.

Night broadcasts

silent bedrooms,

the Priory.

The inevitable,

hovering ---

A shadow over

Long Island.

* Langney is derived from the Anglo-Saxon words Lang and ey for 'Long Island'.

Day in the life of a Poet (September 2020)

One day Summer

-- Shingle shards
dig deep into 
tanned back.

Alone with the 
pages browned 
by age and 
the sea mist
that drifts 
along Seaside
into my
open window ----
Moonraker.
--- Time to swim
before the call
and clamour.

I miss the
solitary days
on the beach 
below the 
Holywell Beach Huts.

--- In the quiet days
at the end of 
the affair.

Life is timeless, days are long when you're young...

A long time ago, when young mods stalked the earth...

Hastings Pier ☀︎ 9th June 1979

(Smev, Me, Al, H)

- Picture recently discovered in the Museum of Youth Culture

The Dreams of Children

She was younger than me, by about a year or so. Corkscrew hair, funny, sharp and dangerous. We'd all get the bus to and from school, cramming about 400 kids into about 8 buses from outside the school gates. Got to get on the first bus!

The queue was always carnage: Bags, elbows, knees and heads - nothing was off limits. Got to get on the bus first!

Traveling via the Station and things could only get worse. Off one bus onto another. Got to get on the next  bus!

To be honest I can't even remember why I bothered to rush home. Nothing to do or eat when I got there, except play music - loud!

I suspect it was just about getting on the same bus as the girl with the corkscrew hair.

Lockdown - Day #26

There is a green-grey Morris Minor heading for a breakdown just outside Southampton, trundling from Stone Cross to Paradise Drive via the seafront. 

Two boys, two girls. The music fills the car. 

Behind the car, the School Bus. Upstairs, at the front. A Grammar School boy ponders The Jam/Ramones, Ramones/The Jam. A yellow and green Max Records back on his lap.

He looks beyond the immediate.

The English Channel stretches left to right (as it always has done), lapping softly against the bloodied shingle. 

Despite the best will in the world. This ain’t no Rockaway Beach.

Lockdown - Day #25

The flags on the pier are cowering from the horizon, bullied by the eternal sea fret. Marine Parade (an interloper in the Grand scheme of things), smothered by the worn rubber of a million tyres. The Corporation buses grinding full-on Leyland chug, from the Point to the Head and all stops in between.

A Deux Chevaux stutters and shudders from East Dean to Churchdale Road. It takes a boy and a girl to drive AND change gear. The cassette player chews the latest release by St Pancras Records.

"Hegemony, hegemony...

You are the fairest creature

You are the fairest creature that ever I have seen,

And it's all for Monopoly

On all those pretty sexibles/sensibles,

That rot and raise a nation the capacity for change

An honest day's pay for an honest day's work

You can't change human nature

Don't bite the hand that feeds you…"

Lockdown - Day #23

The taste of another Kronenbourg night reminds me where I am, not alone in a single bed. Dressed, out and up the steps back onto Marine Parade. Back over the rode giving the flying fists of The Crown & Anchor I wide berth.

The tide is inching back, the gulls are hopping from bin to KFC box. I can clearly make out the miles of anti-landing wire & wood rolling along the beach. All the way from the threat of Operation SeaLion to VE Day.

Six young men in two different bands, split into two teams and yet another rusted can of Pepsi is converted into an Adidas Mondial. A blur of tartan shirts, Levis and chukka boots. A brace of bikes stolen from outside the town centre Library are leaning gently against the dark blue railings. 

Final score: Hip Troop 13 v 12 Aztec Camera... 
(Based on time-honoured last goal stands tradition)

Lockdown - Day #22

It is tempting to leave the seafront and just pop into the Marine for a pint or two but we’ll leave that for Christmas Eve (or post cup-final lash ups). Equally tempting to pop into Fusciardi’s Ice Cream Parlour, all the while remembering Dayville’s ghastly but memorable Bubble Gum ice cream…

The rear of The Leaf Hall (never did know what it was for) looming over some rooftops, backrooms and bedrooms. The Seagulls starting to mass on the rooftops and railings. The humdrum, dead-drunk pubs become more plentiful.

Waking up in one of the back bedrooms, to the sound of gulls bending TV aerials and tapping against windows. Going to sleep in a damp basement flat, with the sound of taxi’s careening round the corner at club closing time, with the taste of Rico’s Special Burger on my lips.

Lockdown - Day #21

A young George Orwell escapes from his prep school (St Cyprian's) for an afternoon. He finds himself on the eastern side of the pier, he misses the tiny clutch of New Romantics edging their way home from Dixieland after another brush with the Soul Boys. He also fails to see Frederick Engels taking a lunchtime break from editing the Communist Manifesto.

Eric Arthur Blair (as he was then) is too busy looking at the fishermen selling their daily catch under the pier, meanwhile Douglas Bader and Tommy Cooper pass each other 45 years apart

Time strolls along the seafront. Sir Peter Blake's Butterfly Man barely visible in the distance. Roger Moore leaving his penthouse for a barely relaxing walk. The famous and notorious arm-in-arm, stretching the length and breadth of history...

All the while, the tide shuttles to the rhythm of the moon, relentlessly shimmying up and down the beach. Picking its way over the pebbles, seaweed and the daily decay...

Another day, another wedding ring lost at low tide.

Lockdown - Day #20

Meanwhile back on the other side of Royal Parade, the B&B’s and Guest Houses transform into Hotels (no motels or Holiday Inn’s). The number of potential party venues increase. Eighteenth and Twenty-first, Wedding receptions and cricket club dinner and dances. 

Inside the sound of Southern Freeze warps minds. I don’t know what this is but I have to dance to it… On the road itself, the itchy/scratchy sound of FS1E (Fizzy’s) ricochet between the parked Capris and Allegros. The Hailsham Boys are in town, all Saxon and Iron Maiden. 

Meanwhile, Claude Debussy takes his daily walk along the promenade with his inamorata the young Emma. His life in exile only enlightened by the memory of her delicate kisses in the morning and the music of the sea… the eternal music of the sea!

Lockdown - Day #17

Torn old copies of the Eastbourne Gazette and Herald, smudged newsprint and yellowing paper stuffed under the seat of THAT seafront shelter. The ripped clothes and the naked body of a girl on the beach. It is Christmas Day and the Sussex Constabulary swarm over the cold windswept pebbles. Still remembered and still try to say a prayer for her on Christmas Day. Poor Nicole (RIP).

Another winter and THAT shelter is home to a different kind of tragedy. An old homeless man, regular visitor to Seaside off-licence, wrapped in differing editions of the Gazette/Herald, moves along the bench to a cold teenage boy. Raised voices, a misunderstanding, shouting and the youth runs away towards Langney. It was just a misunderstanding.

The pace always quickens when walking by... So, time to move on from THAT shelter. Seagulls pirouette above, the sun silhouettes them high in the Sussex heavens and the (at first tinny) sounds of a ghetto-blaster reach out from above the shoulders of a group of golden souls… 

“Run for the shadows, run for the shadows

Run for the shadows in these golden years”

Lockdown - Day #16

Once the corner turns at 90º, the first thing that hits you is the Pier in the distance (a few days further along on this walk). The shingle shelf falls from stage right down to the gunmetal water. Ragged tooth groynes reach tentatively into the sea, whilst piles of imported stones weigh the land end down, making sure they don’t simply drift into oblivion. 

Inside the Redoubt, the remains of old wars and model villages are trampled in the rush to buy yet more ice-cream.

A film crew sets up in the catacombs. We are frozen in time. The sweetened scent of Country Fayre gel fills the whole room. “Lights, Camera, Action.” Her dark fringe gently caresses her eye-lashes. There is nothing more all-encompassing than love in the summertime on the Sussex Coast. 

No cannon fire today. Outside - The corporation railings, dark/light blue, broken by regular steps onto the shingle. Overhead the nightlights shimmer from here to Holywell. A sun lounge café squeezes itself onto the edge of a sliced and diced triangle of perfectly cut grass. We are spoilt for choice… More than we will ever knew!

Lockdown - Day #15

The English Channel, the tangerine sun and the Downs bounced wind often combine to create small rainbows that hover in the foreground when looking west towards Beachy Head. Meanwhile on the right, Treasure Island, a scene of late night raids and Smirnoff fuelled escapades. 100 paces on the bowling greens look in remarkably good condition as the Redoubt looms ahead. I never could remember when the Tank on the road side of the fortress actually arrived and why it ever did. There must be a plaque attached but I’m blowed if I can remember it.

The close packed fleet, avoiding the high-tide advances of La Manche, sit close together and the riggings clang in rasping harmony. Only an idiot would leave their oars in their boat – too many pubs and too many other idiots. The Lifeboat House behind me, with the beach winch, called out far too often and far too late to rescue members of the Harp Lager Appreciation Society (Marine Div). 

Turn left at the Redoubt towards the long glass and wooden fronted café. Stride by the discarded serviettes and the tomato shaped sauce bottles sitting next to the sugar shaker on the empty formica-topped tables behind the glass. I can hear a distant chikka-chikka from The Beech, a Friday night Ska band, drenched in Pernod and Black. The James Bond Theme skank-style saturates the sticky red carpet. One day my band will play in this pub, one day…

Lockdown - Day #13

The bank of swans in Princes Park, bloated on stale Sunblest, avoid the wayward shots being launched from the raised 10^th tee of the ‘Royal’ Princes Park pitch & putt. Underneath the overhang, a pair of discarded knickers that should never have made it out of the phone box. Every Christmas Eve they promised it would end this way. 

Back on the sea side of the road, a dull pat of tennis balls ricochet off the Lifeboat shed and the first of a million tawdry B&B’s waft fried bread, bacon and eggs back down Channel View Road. It is (nearly always) time to move on to the actual beach… 

The sea, ridding itself of ozone and seaweed, pushes up the past the Queen’s median high-tide line. Orange rope meshes with old fishing nets and the rust spreads like some kind of twisted cruel virus of the future. The wretched swell of decay takes a firm grip and the first sign of the path of the beaten army, signposted by the discarded trail of chip wrappers and cans of Top Deck and Colt 45 leads us beyond the Butterfly Centre and towards the Fisherman’s Club.

Over on the horizon, the Royal Sovereign Lightship is scuttled and the Royal Sovereign Light Platform rises from the sea. A portal to a new Atlantis… to be decommissioned in 2020!

Lockdown - Day #12

The ghost of trams skittering out of Princes Park on a one-way trip to back from whence they came… silently surfing the stone cuttings/crumbling carpet out as far as nowhere. The tramshed, distant and foreboding, garish holiday season adverts festoon the way. The melting ice cream dripping on to the back of the seat in front.

Housemartins and Swallows gather to fly south. Starlings will wait to form a Murmuration over the Pier a little later on my walk. Back on the tram a Lyons Maid block slips from the oblong cone onto the wooden floor. I walk by the Leisure Pool and am brushed by the group of teenagers from the Grammar & High School, smelling of chlorine, Blue Stratos and ulterior motives. “Somebody will get chucked tonight"…

The sound of The Isley Brothers fills the night and the hostess lets the corner of her blonde bob fall over one eye. Meanwhile, the heady anguish of a Friday night rolls on inexorably to a hastily snatched kiss and the promise of a visit to the Crumbles to follow.

One day, in the heart of a global lockdown, these nights will seem like Paradise made real!

Lockdown - Day #11

Over on the other side of the road, my old paper round, Middleton Road – Jervis Avenue and off-shoots in between. The suggestion of stolen (near frozen) diet Coke slides across my tongue. The taste of illicit daybreak transactions: Coca-Cola for copies of Silk & Whitehouse…. 

Marching on, in the distance the new yet now ancient leisure pool, back down the coast, the line of Martello Towers standing stubborn amongst the shingle – stout sentinels (a younger man once wrote) – reaching as far as the sea fret allows. The hint of a marina barely sketched out on a town-planner’s desk, the Crumbles retreating slowly.

Gun emplacements seemingly unoccupied, the concrete walls betraying the everyday conquests of rogues and lovers alike. Remnants of yet more paper-boy transactions litter the floor, empty cartons, crushed Embassy No.6 and torn silver foil that had once contained the ultimate contraband (courtesy of the London Rubber Company). Whilst couples amused each other on the way back from the fair at Seaside Rec, a thousand matches simultaneously play on the three football pitches at 5 Acres. The raw tang of Deep Heat and liniment scars the back of the throat as the changing rooms are finally unlocked (Nobby had the key – as we suspected).

Well played lads!

Lockdown - Day #10

Pull shut the glass door, head up the garden path, avoiding the rose bush thorns that twist out of number 12's greyish soil. Only one Strawberry left. Open/close the gate. Look back down the Bay Road towards Kings Caravan Park. Memories of the guy that the local kids called 'Honky Tonk' (after a Dick Emery character), gently flouncing his way to whatever job it was that he did in the nightclub.

Cross over Pevensey Bay Road and stroll past the four houses that originally earmarked the beginning of the track to Pevensey. As the Roman Catholic Church slides by one step at a time on my left. I look across the fields, beyond the orchard, up the hill to see if a bus is coming down from the Martello. I then double check to see whether the girl that lives/lived over the roundabout is in/out/running for a bus or striding over to see me. All and none of the above.

Not too far down Princes Road I pass Pete's house and the sound of a big amp being revved up to 11 greets the soundtrack of my past. The Admiral's Estate and the lure of the girls that haunt the phone box/bus stops and newsagents caress my lustful soul. The sound of Choppers and Raleigh's reverberate the length and breadth of Ramsey Way. Loose change rattles into the phone slot. The brick wall is occupied and our vantage point is secured...

It's going to be a nice day today.