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

A perfect day in the perfect pub - #6

"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..."

It is 2:35pm and the post-lunchtime lull is precious in the perfect pub. She's gone back to work and 'Lions after Slumber' by Scritti Politti invades the airspace. A song that heralds a slideshow of the past... late nights in Meads... daybreak at Birling Gap... a bottle of vodka and white chocolate on a balcony in Brighton. 

Serendipity swings through the door, sunshine trailing in it's wake...

The cricket is going well. Time for me to do some serious watching, accompanied by a cheeky Sancerre (the other half of Tattinger had seemingly gone the way of the first) and The Guardian's sports quiz of the year (held over from December for the purpose of fictional construct). Joined by Slim, breezing in all Hawaian 40's shirt and dangerous wit. He sits at the table and a pint appears (they know him here). We dash through the hundred questions and score a very passable 92 (we were never going to get the equestrian sports but I should have remembered that David Wilkie won the 200m breastroke, not 100m). 

Another flurry of Aussie wickets means we'll be batting before tea! Not quite Trent Bridge but certainly reminiscent of Melbourne 2010. The Sancerre evaporates, as does Slim's Stella Artois. We cover off key topics: the new book about Samuel Beckett, the potential British Lions starting XV against RSA and uncovering the truth behind what happened to the girl we used to go to school with who became a stripper and glamour model. 

I get more drinks and manage to place a bet with David Jenkins & Sons "traditional bookmakers to gentlemen of a literary persuasion". Fingers crossed for 'Bottle of Smoke'... 

A nice 10 minute interview with Michael Holding fills the break between innings. I remember, in the nick of time, that we (Slim & I) always have Cheesy Wotsits when watching England bat together (it's a luck thing). Thankfully the barman was two steps ahead of me. 

A bowl appears along with an ashtray, a selection of Gitanes, Gauloises, Marlboro (soft-pack), Camel and Lucky Strike, as well as a 1965 Zippo that had seen action at La Drang. They know Slim here...

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…"

The pathology of love...

All the parallels of love with addiction on White Bread, Black Beer suggest that Green the writer still knows that love is essentially both pathology and cure, so Scritti's sweetness remains sick, their sickness sweet....
Mark Fisher - Scritti's sweet sickness on K-Punk

The benefit of Green Gartside's magnificent prevarication (or is it sublime perfectionism?) that has lead him to produce a total of 5 albums since 1982 (37 years and counting). Means that we have had ample time to absorb every hook, line and to (over) think about the familiar parallel world of love that his songs (he?) inhabits. 

From the first hearing of Skank Bloc Bologna via Confidence, Lions after slumber on to Snow in Sun off of his most recent album White Bread, Black Beer there is a distinct yearn that doesn't permeate the broad 'pop' landscape. Certainly not now, even back in the wild 80's when the new pop hegemony took hold, Green's voice and vision stood out from others crowding the darker edges of the dancefloor/charts. 

In this day and age, intellectual rigour no longer has a presence on Spotify playlists or indeed in life in general it has no place - certainly political discourse/scientific debate is no longer encumbered by intellectual rigour of any significant substance. It seems ironic that the only obvious place that advancement is truly being intellectual explored is in Sports science - but then there is money in goals!

So, Green and the Scritti Politti project stands out as a beacon of beauty and brilliance  yet at the same time the melancholy celebration of love continues to be anchored by the aforementioned yearn. The question must be is does the yearn need to be real or is it simply because it is unreal that we are more attracted to it?

Slip inside the soul of a song - choose any one - Faithless, Oh Patti, Bam Salute, Ummh!, The Boom Boom Bap and what do we find? Who do we find? The flicker of addiction, rejection, escape and redemption. 

Tears of sorrow, tears of joy
Oh come at once for the sweetest boy
(Nobody knows)
That's the price that the boy has paid
To choose not to be afraid

- Faithless

You know that barroom belles, well, they're calling
You know their perfume smells like blood
If looks could kill singing dollar, dollar bill
Well, that's the beat of my life

- The Boom Boom Bap

Oh first and foremost - ooh you gotta get close
To the money and the madness that are mine - at any time
And last but not least -- in the heart of the beast
There's a beauty that was once upon a time - and long ago

- Bam Salute

I'm cuttin' down on the stuff I'm thinking
Too much 'umm' drives a man insane
Promised my world to a girl forever
Now she can't take the blame
I should have gone where the sun was shining
Green can't come to the 'phone right now (my baby)
I could have shone like a dark star, baby

- Umm


The promise of new music is dangled before us every 12-18 months. The story goes that the album is all ready and good to go. Apparently it sounds brilliant but... nothing appears. His last album was a series of demo's, handed over to Geoff Travis of Rough Trade  for approval prior to going into the studio to complete. Fortunately Travis decided to accelerate the process by 5 years and simply released the demos - which still sound magnificent. 

Goodness knows the number of almost completed masterpieces that Green has locked away on a hard drive somewhere. All we can hope is that somebody can persuade him to share them with us before it all gets too late in the day.

In the meantime, we have the 5 albums, assorted EP's/singles, a couple of compilations and the hope that someday Green will share another snapshot or two. Until then all we can do is yearn...

Snow in Sun - Scritti Politti

Correspondence or coherence
I am calling, I am calling you.

I was getting me down, took a train into town
And the sun was shining brightly
Though the snow was falling lightly too.
Made me think of brave you are 
and how come I have strayed so far
and why everything came apart
in my head and heart now love
You will never be without me
You will never need to doubt me
There'll be something good about me soon
Like sun in the city snow
Like snow in the city sun

I was watching you sleep
I've been watching you dream
Should we be beset with trouble?
I would never let you come to harm

Looks like maybe we'll lose our home
Out of pocket and all alone
I should have worked and I should have known,
Seen the dark clouds coming in
But you will never be without me
I'm beside you never doubt me
There'll be something good about me soon
Like sun on the London snow
Like snow in the London sun

Undetermined, inessential
I am calling, I am calling you.
You...

Lyrics - Green Gartside