NEW CROSS GATE

GLORIOUS MORNING IN ORTON STREET

I cursed the children all mocking me

I'm something indecent in their eyes

A glorious morning in Orton Street

I cherish the empty streets before people awake

Dirty habits picked up from the gutter

Clean knees scrape the pavement

Again and again

Sores that maybe will never heal

A mother dies to save her child

There's only today here on Orton Street

Wrote this after an acid trip with Max, sat on the swings in some Surrey Docks park, all of a sudden the sun emerged and lit the backstreets in sharp illumination, a cool moment. Then felt so out of place all of a sudden when the workers started emerging and giving us the dirty looks. Was reading lots of Orton and other sixties kitchen sink material and thinking about Chess back home in North Shields, how when we were eight years old he'd pick cigarette butts out of the kerb and smoke them, and knees were perpetually grazed, arms in slings, fingers broken. Brett I'm sure wrote the music for this, perpetrating that great John Barry sound, reaching out towards some kind of Scott Walkerness but ending up more punk. Our Paul made the sirens that feature on this song.

SNOW WHITE

Wankings a sin

Dirty Hands won't clean

Catholic by night

Coward without light

Always say your prayers

Look so pure

I'm not so sure

Keep faith burning

St Cuthberts church North Shields bitter cold damp to bone early morning latin mass followed by confession circa 1969

CONSUMPTION

And I can't find a clean spoon

The bases are all burnt

Never bother with a toilet

When I'm in my room

I just piss through the hole in the window

Down to the garden below

That's the shame of this road

Wilful neglect of kitchen and self

Wilful destruction of morals and pride

Twenty-two you look thirty-five

Face white as chalk black around the eyes

Twenty-two you look thirty-five

Shallow when you talk no ring to your lies

Times of stress reach out your hand

You don't believe you'll ever be like that

Consumption

Is an especially hateful kind of illness

Twenty-two

Twenty-two

Twenty-two you're not the boy I once knew

Twenty-two I can't believe that it's you

Can't believe it's you

Can't believe it's you

Can't believe it's you

Oh what the hell did you do?

'Oh why after all you'd said

Did you leave your life to some other?

And why, after every shot

Did there always have to be, another?'

New Cross Gate kitchen sink dramatics played out daily in various Nettleton Road house numbers with Nico's Song for Lenny Bruce providing a soundtrack of sorts...

ILL GOTTEN GAIN

ill gotten gain

Coming down

Next train

Ill gotten gain

hanging round trying to look

dull, plain

just like anyone

Smith, Brown, anyone

Kings Cross

Platform Eight

Three Thirty

It's late

and all around here

fussy boarding preparations

bound for useless destinations

'well it's a brand new life i'm starting'

farewell my love sad partings

that mean nothing to me

just the ill gotten gain, the ill gotten gain

coming down

ill gotten gain

on the next train

King Cross station circa 1983 got involved in some dubious criminal enterprise, whose illicit financial reward brought some much needed breathing space for a week or two. Good times followed. Chris Gray and Tony Knaggs around at this time, Jim Sarup and Pete Hammond too, rumbustious behaviour around the bedsits of Earls Court, robbing and running a lot, an Irish kid called Fuller rubbing up against psycho's down from the former steelworks town of Consett with redundancy money to burn. Went to the Mudd club a lot and the Dirtbox and Batcave too. Fly living basically.

A SHABBY AFFAIR

Such a shabby affair

The girls lank greasy hair

On a bench in the square

The girls lank greasy hair

Could the priest not look away

At what we saw today

On a bench in the square

The girls lank greasy hair

Giving service to a turk

To pay for her works

Green mould raincoated Turk

He paid

She smiled

We shouted jerk

And off he stumbled

Fumbling now with the belt of his trousers

Which fall around his ankles

As she walks away laughing

Sniggering from a bench in the square

Such a shabby affair

Remembering still

The girls lank greasy hair

Soho Square circa 1983 - summers day met up with Max's pal Lucy and sat on the grass with a couple of bottles of wine. Lucy ran the Batcave, real beauty, mass of pre-raphaelite red hair, and around us this drab scenario being played out, Soho, and the square, was a bit sleazier, and a better place to be in those days, plenty good characters and enough shebeens and back room bars. We used to go to a place on Wardour Street, some room above the St Moritz, may or may not have been called the Candy Box, the likes of Leah Bowery and Boy George hung out and deejayed there, you knocked on a door to get in, paid three pounds, this would be around eleven, you would stay until about six or seven, a whole range of Soho people would pass through in varying stages. Red Stripe was a pound a can and poppers flowed freely. The sounds were from the likes of Bohannon, mixed with glam stompers. An amazing space to be for a few hours on a thursday night.

DISGUST

I used to be a nice boy

Respectable, dependable

Had a mother who was proud and look at me now

HAD A MOTHER WHO WAS PROUD AND LOOK AT ME NOW...

DISGUST...

No turning back my heart's stained black

NO TURNING BACK MY HEART STAINED BLACK

No way out beyond shadow of doubt

BEYOND SHADOW OF DOUBT DISGUST...

Cross my heart

And hope to die

I've given up

You wonder why

CROSS MY HEART

AND HOPE TO DIE

I'VE GIVEN UP

YOU WONDER WHY

DISGUST...

DISGUST...

Brett had come up with this fuck off dirty electro bassline and topped it with dark cinematic sweeps and crumbling blocks of noise. The aim was to match it with something suitably neo-gothick came up with this slice of kitsch squat life angst. Pure sulphate howl recorded at all night session in Cold Storage in Brixton. Ben Young produced.

A GREAT BINGE

Billington Road New X Gate september 1982 and you thought summer was fun? Well this one is scum.

And now some hippy is knocking on the door just as I open it to leave. The one who thinks he's from Mars, total casualty. Away, go on, fuck off out!

Be hard with these creeps, by God you've tried the fair and good approach, people just take advantage, so what's new?

Last week saw plod at the door, it was the two kids from Walsall they were after, and concerned the guitars they had stolen from Massimo the mad macho Italian. Giro's had been going missing too and there are so many flaky people staying here you just don't know who to blame. Me I've spent the whole summer getting up early and catching the damn thing as it floated through the letter box.

The two lads had been another two who were dossing on the front room floor but the pair of them had done a runner back to Wolverhampton or wherever...

Ian Pigg came round yesterday and told us the news.

One of the lads had fallen, or jumped, from a towerblock, the one who had the crush on Max in fact. Ah man, glue and smack and drink and the whole bad scene.

Anyway, it was Ian Pigg who answered the door to the filth. They asked for his name and when he answered they told him not to be insolent, threatened to arrest him, and that would be his luck.

Poorly romantic Ian Pigg who wanted so much to be a terminal junkie but had terrible needle aversion. I think he did make the grade in the end. In a squat off the Portobello Road with Manic Keith, and man, Manic Keith... the only Indian i've ever known to join the National Front, told them he was Spanish, ah bollocks, I'm sidetracking, on with it...

Enter Jesus Child Molestor, book in hand, hand unseen, talking down to Pete the Skin, the retard supreme, the perils of the joys of butane.

Walking disasters, stumbling nightmares, hapless barbituates, hippy bores.

One hand round me neck, one hand in me purse and another hand, God knows where.

Look... here comes Fat Ethel clutching her prescription, if ever there was a reason for conscription, ah, shoot the lot of them!

Yeah, you thought summer was fun, it's not, it's scum.

And now Fairy Ringnose is lying on my floor, outside it's the drug squad knocking on my door.

But I'm up on the roof, the sewers down below, two eyes in my face like pissholes in the snow.

And there's one thought in my mind 'GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE'

So exit Nick the Greek, good riddance Phil the Freak, by time autumn leaves are falling out of this place i'll be crawling, but first i'll drink til i drop, yes, the devil i'll be drunk...

and as if to mirror this sentiment someone over the way is blasting out a popular song from their bedroom, window wide open, broadcasting to the world...

'DRINK, DRINK, DRINK

WE MUST HAVE ANOTHER DRINK

DRINK DOWN LIKE IT'S YOUR LAST

AND THINK OF SUMMERS PASSED

FOR TIME IS RUNNING OUT NOW

A CITY GONE TO SEED

A ROTTING GERM THAT'S FREED'

YO (A Fancy Tale)

Yo Ho Ho

And a bottle of rum

I swear by the scar on my left thumb

I swear by the scar on my neck

I swear on my mother's life

I spit on my mother's grave...

Cold murky and dank

Green slimy mank

Cold the day it stank

Of fishscale, limescale, it stank

And so slow the day it sank

Slid down by Tanners Bank

Black and bare the branches on the tree

Dark and dense shadows trailing me

As I walked home all alone through the park

A beast of a thing followed me in the dark

Breathing...

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum

i smell wicked fun

Little child come

And it's all a long way

From a council house in Chirton Grange...

Now the Sawney Beane of New Cross Gate

Was last seen lurking on the Woodpecker Estate

I was stuck in the lift of the Orpheus Tower

On Magic Mushrooms for more than an hour

I saw the bodies fly from the fifteenth floor

Then I cracked up at what was written on my door

'IF THE GHETTO DOESN'T GET YOU THE GUTTERPRESS WILL'

So ships will sail

Through dark and pale

They'll wrap you up in lino and throw you overboard

You'll be fed to the fishes

You'll be dead to the world

Life will go on

No one will care

They'll tear off the tattoo that's carved on your back

And sell it for lampshade in some foreign land

You'll be lost in a world that you don't understand

and boy you'll be prey to every demand

as for your gold or your silver well they'll chop off your hand

Singing yo ho ho and it's all a long way from a council house in...

New Cross Gate winter 83 trying to articulate tabloid hysteria's childhood vulnerabilities and superstitious council estate mindsets through hard drinking and extreme living. Try toset a scene once again for the sound. could lay claim, without a shadow of a doubt, ermm, for what it's worth, to this being the first ever example of cheap casio keyboard post modern type pop as perfected by the band Florida a few years back. The casio that drove the sound belonged to Big John. Can't remember the make or model only that it was white, had brown nicotine burns and similair shaded stains where the batteries leaked.

Chris Gray had proposed an idea for a band using only casio's. He wanted to call it Casio Pop. For Chris though women drinking fighting and shoplifting took precedence over art trivia always and his casio pop concept was never to be realised.

We got the rhythm and the idea one night, drunk and stoned, messing about on said casio with Stephen Elwell round at Billington Road after a Brain of Morbius gig. it was Elwell who started riffing on drum machine, someone else playing that weird eastern mystery thing over the top next day we took the principle and added the words and other instruments, the Rolands and Boss drum machines we'd been using suddenly sounded very staid and pedestrian. This cheap tinny junk shop bossa nova sound was it! Elwell aka 'Ratcatcher' is one of the great unsung heroe's of British Post Punk sound, a genius.

LIQUID LUNCH

On the strand on me back

It's four a.m.

What a lad

What a slag

I'm drunk again

I turned up delirious

You were fucking furious

You slob

She shrieked

You'll have to change

The marriage is off

Until you change your ways

Well I'm caught between the devil and the deep blue sea

Another monsterish suicide DAF electro bass line from Brett with the most basic disco bum whack bum whack bum whack beat. Big John if I recall correctly used to smash one of Brett's film cans over his head in percussive time for this one. The lyric came from an afternoon in Soho that stretched out a bit with Manchester Rick, a great drinking buddy, he was getting married to Nan at the time, and she wasn't best pleased when we rolled home a few days later... and fuck, Big John and myself put some drink away in those days, used to head up the Kings Road on a saturday afternoon a lot, John was enamoured of the punk scene, i was enamoured of a girl who lived in John's house. We were both chasing ghosts. Cider and Sainsbury's own brand spirits was the drink of choice. The pair of us once got battered at a party by a gang of rockabillies, teeth missing, noses broken, eyes blackened the lot. And I remember too Rick and myself falling asleep on the all night bus waking up in Bromley or somewhere equally Godforsaken. Rick very smartly put his fist through the glass pane of a phone box and we rang the ambulance service pleading injury and requesting that we be brought back to New Cross. Needless to say they let us down and we had to wait hours for the next bus. Again Nan was not too pleased at all.

Rick and Nan are still happily married, in fact went to Torquay for their twenty fifth anniversary recently. Big John is Rick's accountant. The drinking still happens, occasionally... different kind of hangover to this though...

FIRST HOUR OF THE DAY

The curtain's still drawn

The light's fading fast

The clock's long ticked on

Past afternoon

From way within my skull

I fix my eye upon the wall

Not sure who's bed I'm in

Or what to make of it all

Force down both my hands

Every knuckle will crack

Every bone creaks inside

From too many cold floors

And the nights I've collapsed

Just inside the front door

Lick the poison in my mouth

Scars of the previous night

As my schemes turn to dreams

My dreams are sad little streams

Always sound the same old themes

That turn from whispers to screams

All these voices in my head

I'm only safe in this bed

Will things ever be the same?

Now get up and take the blame

For all the drunken things I've said

And all the damage I've done

Well I say no regrets

But I'm shit, I'm ashamed

As I cough to clear my chest

The phlegm dribbles down my vest

Scratch these bites on my legs

But I'm scratching in vain

So I scratch once again

And I'm going insane

First hour of the day

Oh maybe if I pray

Something better come my way

I can't get up today

Delirious trembling drunken Deptford dealings, used to drink days without eating and at the end of the sessions you'd be holed up in a room puking liquid, head plagued by recriminations and guilts and all that...

PRAMS, PIERS, BITTER TEARS

It was one of my earliest memories, a bunch of flowers, daffodils or whatever clutched tight in her hand, long gone, wilted, ragged, broken, thrashed in the wind, waves coming up over the wall. Oblivious, she didn't seem to notice but held back the tears and passed me a grubby white handkerchief to wave as the big ship slid past the pier and choked she had us stand there in the rain and the bitter biting cold. We stood there until that ship was nothing, not even a speck, gone you'd have thought forever, leaving nothing but oaths curses recriminations. Bastard she choked, heartless bastard...

Memories of the Esso Northumbria leaving the River Tyne, watched it from Knotts Flats overlooking the Black Middens if I remember right. Was aged about ten years old then and it felt like Maggie May had been top of the charts forever. Memories too of my Uncle Bill who was in the Merchant Navy and used to bring back curios from all over the world. My Uncle Bill died very much an alcoholic and i think spent time in sanatoriums. He gave me my first drink and i liked him a great deal, I felt i was tuned into him even at that early age. Ghosts of wonder and sadness prevail.

The sound on this is the purest Holy Joy have ever delivered. Brett mainly, but Max and Big John too, the harmonium sound just resonates desolation and sadness and loss, and once again is sulphate and Red Stripe driven and executed probably around four in the morning on a bitter freezing night in Cold Storage.

ROSEMARY SMITH

Black plastic bin bags

Strewn amongst the bluebells

In the shade of the glade

Oh for the shade of the glade

And the look on her face

As she stared into space

All the things they say aren't real

Are the things that you can feel

All the things that you can feel

Sang Rosemary Smith

Poor Rosemary Smith

Does scavenge in the bins

For discarded useless things

It's a sin to tell a lie

Or to wish, oh to want

A better world

Poorly dressed in crumpled clothes

She just pushed a pram all day

She just pushed a pram they say

Touch a baby's head in silver

Outside the metro station

Outside North Shields metro station

Stands Rosemary Smith

Poor Rosemary Smith

And my bonnie lies over the ocean

Yet the bastard lies over and over

But one day my own ship

Will sail into the harbour

And my troubles they will be over

I know things they will change

I know things they must change

All the things they say aren't real

I know they're the things you can feel

And she stares into space

With that magic, tragic look on her face

Rosemary Smith

Rosemary Smith

Northern visionaries pound shop mysticism. Max wrote the music to this, an amazing lilting waltz. We used to play it for days in the basement, over and over, this and the Tide of Life, and another one called The Quarry, which namechecked the Red Backed Shrike, for some obscure reason. Adrian once brought us some Largactyl from the Maudsley where he worked. We dropped a tablet each and kept on playing, stripped the songs of all emotion and played for hours without any feeling, a weird fucked up sensation from a weird fuck you up government drug..

Wanted to write something about where I was from to go with Max's melody and remembered a murder that had happened just outside North Shields, and this at a time when murders were so rare, we drove by, as a family, I remember the police combing the field, and black bin liners were strewn everywhere. There was a girl in my class called Rosemary Smith. The song is not about her but i recall she did get a hard time for being a bit poorer than everyone else. Scrut, i think was the local terminology of that time for someone who was breadline derivative.

My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean, and Bobby Shaftoe, are two folk songs native to the area, Bobby Shaftoe in particular. A bit of theft, appropriation and general bastardization here.. Touching a babies head in silver is an ancient North Shields custom relating to baptism and luck etc. The Metro system was pretty new at the time of writing mind, looks ancient now.

Hopefully one day i will give this song a decent go of singing it right.

THE BOY SAILOR

Today I won't be home for tea

In fact never will I return

All the things in this world to learn

All the things in this world i want to learn

From port to port

The day is long

The world is my oyster

You said so

The world is my oyster

You said go

Oh how I long to go

Oh how I long to go

I don't think I will return

No I don't think I will return

I don't think I will return

From port to port

The day is long

All the things in this world to learn

All the things in this world I've got to learn

The world is my oyster you said so

The world is my oyster you said go

So I'll drink til I sink

I'll be a wreck on this deck

I'll taste every delight

I'll take all of the night

And I don't think I will return

No I don't think i will return

I know now I'll never return

Hail Rimbaud hauled, holed up in New Cross and hoping for the new season in hell to break loose. Mission statement this. This is how we felt, this is what we wanted, as if the bricks and the shillings, the vinyl and the medals could ever be enough, fuck that, we were heading out there to the far shores. Bo Diddley meets Baudelaire gouging out on Brel except Max once again perpetrated an amazing waltz melody, both John and Brett on Banjo's and every junk instrument we had thrown into the mix of this. There was a purity here i think.

LIVING LEGENDS

It's even sprayed on the main road

Old ladies think it's a strange cult

Holy Joy the council's pain

Remove the paint that is their bane

From Somers Town to New X Gate

On every block and every estate

On every subway and train station

That old legend 'desecration'

And every morning on the train

All the commuters see our work

Go to work and be a jerk

Be a jerk and never shirk

bunking trains there's never snags

To the south of France like Tony Knaggs

And in one place we never stay

Every game it's home or away

Our growing name

Our spreading fame

On every wall sprayed ten feet tall

LIVING LEGENDS!

LIVING LEGENDS!

LIVING LEGENDS!

Tribute to Jim Moir's Lumpen Proletariat Posse. Jim, aka 'Chin' used to spray this on walls everywhere, along with the enigmatic legend 'Kestrel' Clattering words for the clatter of sound in celebration of all the great aimless pursuits that make life bearable.

MAYBE ONE DAY

The lily shone brightly as I left that morn

The lily shone brightly as I left alone

Flowers will bloom and the leaves will fall

I can't promise a thing one day I'll call

Seasons will come and the seasons will go

I can't promise a thing one day you'll know

Trust in me, trust in me please show some faith

Maybe one day I'll be around here again

Caspar David Friedrich painting radio masts on top of tower blocks in council estates across Britain as the Band of Holy Joy take the tour bus to the hinterland hoping, searching looking to find the cross in the mountain and the hall of stars and all that waits beyond...

WHO SNATCHED THE BABY

Ah the bairn looks drunk

Though the day's hardly sunk

I saw you walking down Santley Street

Where the windows are dirty

And houses stand empty

With your bag full of pills

Those nasty little things

Oh I don't understand you anymore

And the future of our child looks very poor

Now,

Flowers push through cracks

Peace is all this place lacks

People peep from net curtains

And tongues start to wag

And the tap water is foul

I own one dirty towel

I'm bereft of a wife, and a child, and it's life

Oh I don't understand this town anymore

And the future of our child looks very poor

It was there last night

When I put it to bed

But now it is gone

I am going off my head

And something is wrong

I can feel it in my bones

And it's not just the debt

That you left with your loans

You say the TV is broken

I'll miss Eastender's you're joking

Can't cry over what's been spilt

Boy don't drink the milk

And hey all you protest kiddies might just have the answer

Still you'll all get to heaven when you die of cancer

I don't understand this world anymore

And the future of our child looks very poor

I'm bringing up a child in this glorious land

Where monsters roam streets sweeties in hand

And I don't understand this world anymore

And the future of our child looks very poor...

Who snatched the baby?

Who snatched the baby?

Who snatched the baby, our bonny little bairn

Brixton no-romantics strike up immorality tale as they wait in queue in dole house off Coldharbour Lane sometime back then...

MAD DOT

Dot! You're hanging round with scooterists

You've been a hippy once a futurist

I cannot keep up with these fads

Everyone calls you mad

But I don't think you're that bad

I get the madness in my head

When I lie for days in bed

or when i walk up the New X Road

When I'm starved and haven't been fed

When you say I've lied and purposely misled

Dot for you I swear I'd lie

I'd buy an Italian Vespa

Would you put your life in my hands

Dot, the cigarette burns stubbed out on your arm

You who've never done another soul any harm

Twenty two you say you've never been kissed

Pissed perhaps, but never really kissed

Dot I swear I'd never abuse you

Dot you tell me straight if I ever abuse you

I know you haven't seen your father in ooh five years

As a child he messed you up and now you don't care

And God knows where your mother went

Your bastard brother slightly bent

He gave you acne and cystitis with worry

And you're not going back there in a hurry

And you say you feel inferior

And just not right

but by God your no begrudging ego gobshite

And Dot I know what these acquaintances say

That you're a terror of a toerag who should be locked away

But theirs girls I know who cheat and flirt

Girls of the sort who treat me and you like dirt

And boys of the type who are patent fakes

Sanctimonious creeps who never make mistakes

You say you'd like to straighten out and maybe even settle down

But you know you'd only wake in some other boring town

and there is a longing that is hope born of pain

I said there is a longing that is hope born of pain

I still get the madness in my head

I still get the madness in my head

I still get the madness in my head

Dot!

The squat parties were full of the lost tribes who bought their identities out of the back pages of the NME but all of them felt it and most of them were running away from something, me especially. And on the other side of the room were the Goldsmiths students and others who were just passing through, especially me.

WHEN STARS COME OUT TO PLAY

It rained for days on end and when it stopped

There was not a leaf on the tree

Just one sad woman to shout

'They've taken him away'

What kind of day is this to be out

In Angell Town

Now the sun is going down

Casts shadows round corners

Late afternoon they're already howling at the moon

I've got to get out soon

What kind of fool stays on

In Angell Town

And as sure as the puddles under my feet

I might see Leslie in the street

And round the corner might come Mark

We can sit and drink the cider in the park

I refuse to believe that those days are gone

That there was a time that was once upon

And when stars come out to play

To mock another lonely day

Courting couples walk with nothing much to say

Except...

See the moon doth shine maybe tomorrow will be fine'

What kind of morning ever comes

To Angell Town

Used to walk all over South London with Max going through junk shops, record shops, dipping in and out of shabby pubs and greasy spoons. And sometimes with John too, he had a camera and was as good a photographer as he was a songwriter, one day he just put the camera away. Angell Town was where Jenny Shepherd lived, Jenny was a good mate of Max's for a while, I liked, loved her a great deal. Leslie is still a good mate but I haven't seen Mark in years. Note to his son Pete though, the winner of Big Brother, thanks for the namecheck in the autobiography but must say Band of Holy Joy were NEVER a goth band. Pete's mother Anne is the best, and Mark, if you read this would love to resume contact...

THE ASPIDISTRA HOUSE

The faces in the flowers of the pattern on the paper

All stare at me

And silently mouth

Get out

Of this house

In the drawer some DF118's

Kept special for that rainy day

And every day seems to be a rainy day

In the Aspidistra House

And how the faded patterns

Mark the passing years

Alone I lie abandoned here

Alone I lie abandoned dear

There's something stinking in the fridge

There's something rotting under the bed

Something creeping up the wall

Something crawling down the hall

And if there's a God he doesn't live here

It's a sick green fella the devil that's queer

In this Aspidistra House

In the drawer some DF118's

Kept special for a rainy day

But God how I need some now

Oh my God how I need some, any, any how

Cos they're coming to take me away

They're coming to take me away

They're coming to take me away

Cha Cha Cha

There was always a feeling of madness lurking behind the curtains on certain roads around Brockley, Sydenham, Forest Hill. A lingering malaise in Lewisham shopping centre, an air of unhingedness in Deprford Market. DF118's were a classic low rent junkie prescription pill that caused a bit of a tremble to the hand and lent the face an ashtray pallor, best enjoyed with a can of brew and a David Bowie cassette mix from the Berlin period.

LEAVES THAT FALL IN SPRING

'Baby sitter girl stabbed to death'

Well, what would you whisper on your last breath?

Maybe that people reap what they sow

And there's good in everything?

I wouldn't know

Now there's things I've done which weren't ethical

By God, they were certainly profitable

I once knew a man had a good faithful heart

Until thugs got in and tore it apart

Leaves that fall in spring

Every little town has its uncrowned king

Amongst faces gargolic, and souls simply chronic

One man's misfortune is another's tonic

Some sorts don't care, or do as they please

Other's play leper like a dog attracts fleas

Some people aren't happy until they're sad

Boy the times I've been bitten, really bad

Some get along

Others always get it wrong

And they say, providence looks after fools and drunks and maybe me too

Let them take the main road

We'll take the low road

And not care when we get there or how

Truth be told

I'd rather catch my death

In some out of season seaside resort

A bar, with a window

I could sit and watch the rain

Wash the years, the cares, the cares and the years

Let them wash

Wash them away

Wash them away

Yes

Wash them all away

Fly by night

Sly by nature

Surrounded by trash

Spend all my cash

Something pure walk this way

Something honest would make my day

I've been here

I've been there

Bumming round

Never really cared

Tried every drug

Drunken bet eaten slug

Tried football violence

Locked myself up in silence

Looking for something in my life

For once the right thing in my life

Something pure walk this way

Something honest would make my day

I once had a vision

I stood up to meet it

I was shot down

I was shot down

I was shot down

Leaves that fall in spring

Every little town has its uncrowned king

We're like clouds that break the sky

And the flowers that bloom

Just to die

To die

To die

To die

The youth perpetually doomed beatifically perplexed, drifting from one West Country seaside town to the next, Bournemouth, Plymouth, Torquay, Newquay, St Ives, Penzance and beyond...

THE TIDE OF LIFE

Oh rue the day that you met me

Different backgrounds

All your sorrows

Many hateful hours

I'm fatefully yours

Moths around a flame

It's always the same

Always want what you can't have

But this time you got the lot

A lot much more

Than you bargained for

You prayed you'd find yourself

Or find true love

You found me instead

And look what i've done to your life

Dragging you down

To my level

The tide of life

You thought you could change me

Even thought you could save me

How many affairs, how many fucks, this month?

Of course where there's dirt there's disease

You called me a whore

But let's face it

You're not exactly

A white temple of virtue

Anymore

No, not, anymore

The tide of life...

I'm going to let it wash all over me

I will sink in it, drown in it, dive in it, sink in it, come wash, wash, wash over me, the tide, of, life...

The first year just in town freshers at Goldsmiths College did indeed look so fresh faced as they sat in the Rosemary Branch on Lewisham Way, grant and other monies to burn. You could always tell the ones who wouldn't make it to the end of the three year stint intact, and would be sinking down on to the Woodpecker Estate with habits or babies or abusive partners after overdosing big time on all New Cross gate had to offer. The likes of Bill Lewington were generally instrumental in said downfalls, myself too I must admit. Good people to know though, spirited, adventorous, game. Much preferable to the wankers in the rugby shirts at the students union who wanted you to know they were going somewhere...

CITIES

Never really heard churchbells before

Until now a slam of the door

Guess I've never really heard church bells before

Never really noticed

Anything in this town

Not that I'd want to do it down

But there's not much for me going on in this town

Still all streets are the same

Five minutes joy a lifetime of shame

I've seen this place gloomy tender and violent

Watched it seething screaming and silent

We sat all night and talked of our pasts

How people come then they go

Just as fast

Still all streets are the same

Five minutes joy

A lifetime of shame

Wrote this in Northampton, sat on Tony's doorstep one friday night, bunked the train up there on a drunken whim and ended up sat waiting for him to come home. Got to thinking about some of the European cities we had been to recently, and what we had got up to, Bill and myself specifically, and where our adventuring, posturing and general scheming had lead... and what we had come away with... and where we could go to next

FISHWIVES

- He threw me out in the rain!

- Of course you came back... again?

- Men... aren't they all the bloody same!

- You beast

- You sow

- You bastard

- Cow

- You've got a mouth like a sewer

- Who are you to call me a whore

- Wash your mouth out with soap

- You haven't got a hope

- Well, I'll tell you this... the bread is stale, the dock run dry, the larder is bare and the baby it just cries... and I love you, but do you, love me?

- Beggars

- Thieves

- Fairies

- Whores

- Flesh to the bone all day, scrubbing floors, to buy you the promised ring...

- Of course you pawned everything

- Wash your mouth out with soap

- Can't you bloody well cope?

- You've got me trapped in this pit

- Oh yeah, a diamond amongst shit, and if it's all such a bore...

- Don't worry I'm already out the door

- I love you...You hate me

- I need you...do you need me?

- Beggars

- Thieves

- Fairies

- Whores

- Flesh to the bone all day scrubbing floors to buy you the promised ring

- Of course you pawned everything.

The crude attraction of North Shields manners melting down on New Cross Gate morals in rusty knife broken glass melodrama of an abusive relationship that should never exist but will always be, and finally, this one is, was, is, for Su, with total regard, the flame...

GOODNIGHT GODBLESS GOODBYE

In the car park

By the flats

Where you used to live

Up all night once

You tripped, slipped

And tore your knee on broken glass

And I laughed

We used to tear each othe apart

Body thought and heart

Unadorned

Your blood on my wall

And that's about all

One picture of you

Shivery and small

In a world that you hated

You were always appalled

Sad, but in a way, I'm glad

What we had we swore was forever

Nothing's changed, or will it ever

So goodnight, godbless and goodbye

There's not a star that's left in the sky

Who will stay to say its alright

Who will stay to put out the light

Tonight

There's nothing but sorrow

People like me, can't wait til tomorrow

You said, just you wait and see

Just you wait and see

But

That's not really me

So goodnight, Godbless and Goodbye...

The girl on the right is Martine, an amazing film maker, real influence on the early sound of the band.

The Bat Cave was in Meard Street Soho, in the old Gargoyle Club. Every Wednesday night. A great mix of pop stars Goths drug addicts prostitutes and fashion victims. Everyone used to muck in, there was always lots of sex going on in the toilet, and up on the roof, and in the bar. Max and myself often used to deejay there, we used to mix Bohannon and Iggy, but often our records would stick in the groove causing much consternation, especially amongst some of the other deejays, who used to really treasure the vinyl. Ours would be scooped up off the floor of Nettleton Road, into an Adidas bag, and then poured out at the other end. Once deejayed there in full drag on magic mushrooms following an afternoon party that got a bit fruity. Played the Blenders a lot too, 'Don't fuck around with love'.

This poster was for a gig in Ravensburg in Bavaria. We loved it there and stayed a few days. I think we went there twice, maybe three times in about 85 - 86 kind of time. There was a bar called the Rathaus or Rubberhouse that sold the strongest wheat beer. The supermarkets were remarkably open, Steve Elwell was with us, we drank a lot of champagne. An amazing goth king promoted the gig. He was called Johnny Sturmm and was later involved in the Berlin techno scene. We stayed in his house and probably ovestayed our welcome. Beautiful people though, great town.

The photo was taken by Ronnie Randall, a great guy to go drinking with, i got to know his cousin quite well, she went out with my good mate Foster for a while. The photo was shot in Billington Road New X when we were starting to get a bit press. It looks like i'm about to self medicate but no, i'm holding Ronnie's camera gadget for making arty looking electro squiggles around the subject of said photo. Big John looks great here.

this photo was taken last song last night of residency at 50 Frith Street, still a late drink, in the summer of 86. Flim Flam had bought the champagne. Adrian is in the background, Su just back from Greece, mad moment.

The Players Theatre was an old Victorian gaffe under the arches of Charing X Station opposite Heaven. Caroline Gaskin produced an amazing stage set for this, dirty grey alleys and shabby doorways under a vivid blue-black skyline. I think we may have done three nights here. Flim Flam found the place and set it up. Everyone was on a high. Can't remember nothing else about it.

Flim Flam postcard for more tales from the city inspired by Caroline's backdrop. Len Brown was a great guy from Newcastle who wrote for the NME. He came to interview us when we were on tour. Set the dictaphone out in the Seamans Mission cafe down on North Shields quayside, a haunt reputedly of Peter Sutcliffe and numerous other ne'er do wells. Chess did most of the talking. 'Bertol Brecht my arse' was one of the gems he came out with. It was 1987 and Chess was far more interested in the effects geordie ramraiders were having on his antique shop window, for Chess market forces and label clobber were palpably alive, the writers we were being bracketed with irrelevent and dead. The cafe that we sat in was dead too, the surrounding area dying. Think about that quote now and go over to the bookshelf. Pull down a selection of Brecht's poems. There is a poem about the city from Of Poor BB these are the last two verses...

Towards evening it's men that I gather round me, And then we address each other as 'gentlemen', their resting their feet on my table tops, and say, things will get better for us. And I don't ask when

In the grey light before morning the pine trees piss, and their vermin, the birds, raise their twitter and cheep. At that hour in the city I drain my glass, then throw the cigar butt away and worriedly go to sleep.

IDon't know where Len is now, he was proper Northern down to earth, socialist, appalled by Thatcher and everything he saw around him.One of the good guys. The fish quay is thriving now, alive, not with trawlers but apartments and restaraunts and what have you. Played the Riverside that night. Lots of old faces popped out of the woodwork. It felt good.

Photo of Max taken by Sarah Leigh Lewis in Brixton sometime, the backround props were neo-roman classica,l the whisky Sainsbury's own brand. We drank it all the time, whole giro's were spent on it.

Momus recorded a great interpretation of a Jacques Brel song, 'See a Friend in Tears' pretty fragile and all too heartrending. It was quite something to be on the same bill as him. All I remember otherwise about this gig is Peter Sutcliffe stubbing a cigarette out on some guys cock in the toilets of the venue. From the sublime to the savage. And even though Momus had a flat at the Sloane Square end, the Kings Road was in its death throes at this point, a proliferation of proflierole chain stores already and all the great pubs disapearing, we didn't hang around afterwards but got back to the Alanya, a late night kebab house kind of opposite the Five Bells on the New X Road, that was the local haunt of the Brain of Morbius. Used to sit in there for hours, with Gwynnie and Heyward.

Bill and myself once got picked up by a couple of American girls at the ICA, they took us to this flat they had bang on the Kings Road, we were all very drunk, they were both very rich, and ultra blonde, in a black leather jacket, less than zero, noo wave kind of way. The grandfather of one had invented the bendy straw 'Millers bendy straw' making the Chelsea gig feasible. We came to in a heap in the morning and the girls were intent on polaroiding us. We protested but they insisted, said they took photos of everyone they had stay over in their bed, they pointed to the wall, and their were the mugshots of a whole diaspora of the London indie fraternity, lots of guys we knew at that time, John Moore, Jim Reid etc. Spirited. Where this poster came from I just don't know, hated it at the time, love it now, it's like the design you used to get on the seventies bootlegs that were always much better and more interesting than the official releases.

Photo from German magazine Spex. Adrian Bailey stood behind, Caroline Gaskin to the right. Max's tattoo, a curved sword cutting through a green serpent, is, I believe, a Lal Hardy. Lal operated out of Muswell Hill and was one of the first of the alternative tattooists to operate in London. Tattoo's were not the housewives choice that they are today... it was still only scummers, idiots, sailors and members of the various subcultured tribes who went in for them. The only other alternative practioners I can think of were the mythical Mr Sebastien, who used white ink and did genital piercing by appointment and Marc Saint on the Portobello Road. Marc was ex president of the Sid Vicious fan club and was reputed to be a bit hit and miss in his markings. His shop is still there to this day though, so he can't have been that bad. Lal Hardy had an excellent reputation though. He may or may not have moved to Reading, where he may or may not still practice. My own enduring designs were perpetrated by the legendary 'Mick of Shields' who still operates on Lower Bedford Street.