It can be good to take the occasional stroll down memory lane. Not least because you never know who you might meet coming the other way. More often than not it’s yourself. But it can be an opportunity to take stock, reflect and think…was that me? And it always was.

In April 1980 I was in Bridgwater’s popular ‘New Wave’ band The Dangerous Brothers and had just written the song ‘I’m a County Councillor’. We recorded it in the function room of the White Hart and mixed it down in a caravan parked in a garden on the Bridge estate. In true punk DIY spirit, we self-financed it, had it pressed independently and even glued the sleeves together ourselves. Released on Bridgwater’s ‘Sheep Worrying’ label -well, it was in fact ‘our’ Sheep Worrying label, we brought out a punk fanzine to promote it and did a series of tours around the country.

Punks

Of course, because we were punks ‘Sheep Worrying’ meant we were challenging the orthodoxy of people who just blindly followed fashion and administering the kind of kick up the eighties indie bands across the country were doing at the time. Nothing of course to do with the canine chase the mutton variety of sheep worrying. And I was reminded of this last week when I took Italian students to visit Brymore Agricultural College. I suddenly remembered that the last time I was there was in the early 1980’s as they’d genuinely mistaken us for a campaign against actual sheep worrying. When the teachers realised their mistake they slipped out the back door and left me to give a lecture on punk, anarchy and how to write new wave music to a group of enthusiastic 14 year old boarders.

When I wrote ‘I’m a county councillor’ it’s odd but I didn’t know what one was. I wrote it because a ‘Councillor’ had moved in next door to the Art Centre and then suddenly started complaining about the ‘noise’ and seemed to manage to pull the right strings to get the management to jump at her beck and call. She demanded the immediate banning of ‘discos’. Failing to understand the concept of a live band. The art centre banned discos. We organised a petition to get them restored. We won. Discos were very important back then for playing support to bands.

Hunks

The councillor in question wasn’t a county one at all, but a district one. But we didn’t know. Did we even care? Maybe not. It was just youth railing against the system. What are you rebelling against? What have you got!

But 1980 was a different world to today. Back then you had US President Reagan vs the Commies upping the ante in the arms race. There was a famous poster sending up the film ‘Gone with the Wind’ of Reagan holding Thatcher in his arms with the slogan “She promised to follow him to the end of the earth. He promised to organise it!”

These days of course we have much more stable and peaceful world politics with no hint anywhere on the horizon of global Armageddon, economic meltdown and the modern day equivalent of a Viking Berzerker at the helm..

Pineapple Chunks

In January 1980 I saw The Clash on stage at the refectory in Leeds University. Punk was 3 years old by this time and its inspiration was encouraging people to take risks , be creative, be self-confident and do what we wanted to do with the potential that’s inside all of us.

By 2002 Joe Strummer, the lead singer of the Clash had moved to Bridgwater and in November that year I played on stage with him at the Palace nightclub with other support bands raising money to launch Bridgwater’s Engine Room, one of many places in the town that is there for precisely that purpose. To bring out the creative potential that lurks in all of us.

However, philosophers, providers, venues, youth clubs, community centres, councils, institutions only interpret the world in which we live. The point is to change it.