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Fred Perry 70 years old

The first Fred Perry Shirt was worn in 1952 – an all-white shirt with a Laurel Wreath on the left side. A simple shirt with a lot of meaning. In a matter of years, the shirt had become a uniform for British youth and a highly treasured piece of clothing. “A heritage British style. Smart, but functional. If someone is wearing one you know they’ve spent a bit of money on themselves.” (Peyvand Sadeghian).

For many, getting their first shirt was a moment to remember. Some had to wait and save weekend after weekend of pocket money for a shirt that would become a closet staple, “It wasn’t until I was about 21 I think. I got bought one for my birthday and we made a thing of it by going to the Covent Garden shop to pick one out. To be honest it was the first and only one I had for a long time!” (Peyvand Sadeghian).

The pilgrimage to a central London shop or market with the freshest stock is as memorable for many as trying on the shirt for the first time. “I bought my first Fred Perry polo shirt in 1978, from a sports clothing store in Oxford street. At the time relatively exclusive and difficult to obtain, and a treasured item of clothing.” (Ed Silvester).

That first shirt would be worn over and over, an effortless cool ready to take on anything and look good while doing it. “I wore my Fred Perry’s until they were so worn that I pulled the entire collar off while taking it off the last time I wore it. It was only then that I really understood how much it had meant and what it had done for me. What adventures we had been on.” (Barrymore George)

Over a decade on from the original white shirt Fred Perry introduced ‘Twin Tipping’ around the collar along with new colourways. These additions allowed for more self-expression across scenes and ages. “During the mod revival years we religiously wore different coloured Fred Perry polo shirts and V-neck jumpers. I still love wearing Fred Perry polo shirts to this day, updating them every few years.” (Ed Silvester)

“Wearing my Fred Perry lifted me everytime I put them on. Like a cloth coat of armour they gave me security and a sense of belonging. They felt close and snug and warm and safe.” (Barrymore George)

Mods, Skinheads, Rude Boys and Ravers had their differences, but all were connected by being made up of working-class youths. Fashion has always been a presentation of our class place in society and the kids of the later 20th century were ready to rebel against classical ideas of clothing through subverting classic shirts like the smart polo to their own more rough and ready styles. “It’s a uniform that unites the working class and music scenes of these periods. It’s sharp and comfortable at the same time. It’s also the opposite of fast fashion and fads. It embodies strong and traditional values that are here to stay. It’s legendary.” (Catherine Laz)

Youth culture fashion has become synonymous with ripping clothes up, bleach splatters and patches, matching all of this with a crisp and clean shirt makes a statement about how deliberate your choices are, that you know you can be smart or scruffy and you know how to demand attention either way. “We used to wear them with Sta-press trousers and thin braces and DMs. Bleached jeans were fashionable at one point with skinheads, where you bleached patches on your jeans yourself. We would also wear them with pencil skirts and a jacket, with fishnet tights and brogues.” (Catherine Laz)

A Fred Perry Shirt is an iconic piece of British clothing and heritage. It has a cultural significance that young people have found fitting to represent their own journeys for status and respect, while finding unionship in those that wear it. “Fred Perry represents a long standing British and much-loved subculture clothing brand, being a constant thread winding its way through my sporting and cultural life.” (Ed Silvester).

Barrymore George

I got my first Fred Perry in 1980. In fact, I got two that day along with my first set of nice Sta Press trousers in navy blue and a red Harington jacket. One shirt was black with a yellow trim and the other was burgundy with blue trim – both had three buttons.

I got home and immediately changed into everything and the 12-year-old me set off and glided proudly up my estate road to see my mates all kicking ball in a dusty grassless field.

The game stopped for a tiny second while they gazed open mouthed and said ‘wow.’ It was just for a second but that was enough, it truly was, because my boys never ever interrupted a game of football but for me that day they did. I never looked or felt the same again.

Catherine Laz

It was the summer of 1982 on the balcony of our bedsit in Swiss Cottage. My sister is on the left and I am on the right, wearing a blue Fred Perry shirt with sky blue stripes. I had the classic bleached blond crop hair and feathers skinhead girls used to have.

We spent our days hanging around Carnaby Street and Leicester Square, the King’s Road on Saturdays, shopping at The Last Resort on Sundays (where the polo was from), and our nights going to punk/mod/skinhead gigs all over London.

We had a great time because we believed we were the centre of the world. And that is what wearing a Fred Perry shirt meant, people instantly knew you were an important part of youth culture.

Peyvand Sadeghian

This was taken in Archway, North London, at I think a Punk/Oi all dayer upstairs at the Boston Arms in the early 2000s. I can’t remember what bands were playing that day.

The photo was snapped on a lil digital camera by Chris Low who I didn’t actually know at the time although we crossed paths again years later and became mates. In trying to figure out if we’d met before he realised he had this photo!

Ed Silvester

This photo was taken in the summer of 1979, in my friend Alan Smith’s bedroom in Epping. We used to hang out there, to catch up, listen to music and talk about the next bands to see.

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Pyramids Symarip

The Pyramids aka Symarip are a ska and reggae band from the United Kingdom, originating in the early 1960s, when Frank Pitter and Michael Thomas founded the band as The Bees. The band’s name was originally spelled Simaryp, which is an approximate reversal of the word pyramids. Consisting of members of West Indian Jamaican immigrants to London, Simaryp is widely marked as the first skinhead reggae bands, to target skinheads as an audience, after playing backing band with Laurel Aitkin started to witness a growing Skinhead following. Their hits included “Skinhead Girl”, “Skinhead Jamboree” and “Skinhead Moonstomp”, the latter of which was based on the Derrick Morgan song, “Moon Hop”. After the release of Skinhead Moonstomp album in 1970 and a sell out gig at wembley marred with teenage violence. Reggae was deemed too dangerous for the Conservative Britain of the time, so the band were sent to Europe to spread the Ska and Reggae music on the mainland. The band officially split in 1985 after releasing the album Drunk & Disorderly as The Pyramids. In April 2008, they headlined the Ska Splash Festival in Lincolnshire as Symarip, and later performed at the Endorse-It and Fordham Festivals. Since 2019 they are back and playing as The Pyramids across the world to mark 50+ years of Trojan records.

https://www.facebook.com/Pyramidsskaband/

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Harrington Jacket an icon of British Fashion design

Harrington decades of cool

The Harrington Jacket, and The Roll Call Of The Cool

When, it comes to the Harrington Jacket, I feel a sense of pride. I am from the North West of England. I was born in Salford and was brought up in Greater Manchester. For those that don’t know – the versatile and simply smart casual jacket originated in the form as we know it, in Manchester, the metropolis that was at the centre of England’s textile industry and had been, since the industrial revolution.

I mean, if you look at the Twentieth century, and if you had to pick out one British-designed garment that has transcended numerous decades, and had earned its right as a favourite amongst sportsmen and Hollywood greats alike, and infiltrated its way into the wardrobe of fringe subcultures, the Harrington jacket, simply stands taller than any other.

harrington jacket a222

It is impossible not to talk about the Harrington jacket and not begin by paying homage to its originators of the style of this classic and extremely wearable garment, Baracuta.

Baracuta was founded in 1937 by James and Isaac Miller in Manchester, they “designed the G9 (The G stands for Golf) when they set out to create a functional rainproof jacket for the English modern working man,”

The company is inextricably linked to the Harrington jacket. In the same year, it was founded, the brand released the iconic G9, which then only became known as the ‘Harrington’ after the rise of US TV soap opera Peyton Place, in which a character – Rodney Harrington played by Ryan O’Neal – would often wear the style.

peyton place mia farrow ryan oneal

John Simons, the purveyor of American classic styles is considered to be the most influential man in Britain with regards to Ivy Style, and quality garments plays a part in this tale of the Harrington jacket. As aforementioned, there was a character in Peyton Place played by Ryan O’Neal called Rodney Harrington. Legend has it, that Simons would handwrite cards to go in the window next to the garments on show. He would write for example “The Rodney Harrington Jacket” when displaying a Baracuta G9 in his shop window. After doing this a few times the writing of the name was shortened simply to “The Harrington”

My first Harrington i got in 1979 whilst collecting for a Scouts charity sale, it had a hole in the arm so i sewed a ska patch over it, i was the proudest skinhead on Earth”. Symond Lawes
Picture by Gavin Watson

The Harrington jacket’s original purpose was to be worn in the great outdoors. Traditionally, its shell is a water-repellent poly-cotton blend with an umbrella-inspired vent on the back to aid the run-off of rainwater so one’s trousers don’t get wet. There are also two slanted flap pockets with concealed buttons and an elasticated waistband and cuffs to keep you dry. The collar is a double-button, stand-up, Mandarin-esque collar which can be snapped shut to stop the incoming rain. There is also a central fastening zip. Overall, it’s incredibly lightweight, yet its signature element is the tartan lining of Lord Lovat, a British commando and chief of the Fraser Clan, who gave Baracuta’s founding brothers permission to use his family’s colours in 1938. Since then, this has remained an unchanged feature on Baracuta Harringtons. Why? Because according to Paul Harvey, a designer at Baracuta, “firstly it must be simple and not follow fashion. Secondly, proportions and balance are vital to such a simple design. Thirdly, it has to feel right. The simplicity of the jacket asks nothing of you and that means you feel totally comfortable wearing it.”

harrington jacket advert

It’s a simple design and the look has been worn by many that have become style icons. Movie and music legends alike have been known to wear Harrington jackets. It’s no surprise that stylists from many different backgrounds have gravitated towards wearing a G9, or more recently Harrington jackets that have been manufactured by other manufacturers. For it is a testament to this garment that it has been copied widely, as its influence is such that it is the epitome of cool. When you see James Dean, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, and the King of Cool Steve McQueen wearing a Baracuta, it makes you want to buy into that coolness. When you see the Mods, Skinheads, Britpoppers and indie artists looking cool in Harrington’s you acknowledge that sense of style for an easy to wear, sharp and understated look.

From cheaper ones to ones that are much more expensive. They are in various different fabrics. I have three Baracuta’s. One is in the traditional water repellent fabric, one that is in Chambray cotton, and another is a rare lightweight summer one, that is in red polyester and has a mesh Fraser tartan lining. I also have a Harrington style jacket by Two Stoned, that has the legend “The Two Stoned Rodney Harrington Style Jacket” on the label, and had been purposefully aged to look vintage and has several “Northern Soul” patches on it. I have a vintage US college version of a Harrington made by Haband of Patterson, New Jersey which is more like the Baracuta G4, and a black Leather G9 style Harrington I wear in the autumn and winter that is made by Charles Caine.

Rebel Without a Cause natalie wood james dean harrington g9 coat

Harrington’s are functional, comfortable, and timeless. The functionality is what appeals to most men, and the knowledge that when you slip one on, you instantly join that roll call of the cool. Of course – Harrington’s look great on women also. As when the fairer sex chooses to wear masculine clothing to subvert style norms, so they choose items that men have looked up to and admired. In affect reaffirming that they too can join that roll call, and show that they also like the functionality, comfort, and design that has a history that is broad, long and full of cultural identity.

Harrington’s are here to stay for it is the jacket that is made for both work and play.

harrington jacket female
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PYMC British Subculture fashion

Chuka and Dubem, twins wearing Mod / Ska, Rude Boy style, London, 1979

Fashion

THE STYLE HERITAGE OF YOUTH CULTURE > PYMCA

By Fused · On October 14, 2014

Quietly simmering gently for over a decade Jon Swinstead of PYMCA has skillfully collected together work by the best of national and international photographers with a passion for street and club culture.

Swinstead’s paced strategy has been to save potentially sinking cultural treasure that deserves global recognition. Year-by-year staff such as Jamie Brett reach their white-gloved tentacles into the most unexpected sections of society in search of insightful visual documentation by all manner of photographers and writers, delivering style heritage with substance. Such work is then swooped upon by curators, making a ‘street’ to V&A step look so easy.

The PYMCA site is a visual beehive, swarming with picture editors in search of images from the dawn of Photography to now. Alongside industry insiders from the world of Advertising to Music, there are students of Fashion Design, Photography and Fashion-related areas such as Styling and PR, clicking through the vast Education section; style stalking in amongst every youth tribe that I will not list here as it is so extensive. From Teds to… you get the picture.

Swinstead and his team seek out the most seductive aspect of style: the unexpected. It is the originators and innovators that form the solid backbone to the archive, with the focus extending to early adopters that makes fashion forecasting companies appear to be somewhat lagging along with early mainstreamers.

Sure, in amongst sections that explore and reflect everything from forty years of PUNK to strutting peacocks on the cobbles of Somerset House during the feeding frenzy of Fashion Week, there’ll be the inclusion of normcore, but such images are always selected with a certain eye.

It is the resourcefulness of youth that excites Swinstead, from one style cycle to the one that quickly emerges as a consequence, or angry reaction to. The meticulous archiving of youth culture is vital, essential, as such momentary history is vulnerable, at risk of being lost.

No gallery, as yet, exists for the collecting of such material anywhere in the world. No gallery, as yet, regularly hosts work by photographers such as Ray Stevenson, Janette Beckman, Derek Ridgers, Caroline Coon, Gavin Watson, Sheila Rock or the new wave of photographers, such as Molly Macindoe and Dean Davies of TRIP magazine.

PYMCA is of value and global importance in terms of the vast strata of social and fashion history that it holds. Whilst digital files are of immediate commercial use to television networks and publishers such as Phaidon, Laurence King and Harper Collins, it is the Fine Art work of printers such as Bob Wiskin (Grade One Photographic), Debbie Sears (Debbie Sears In Black & White) and Peter Guest (The Image) that collectors are now excitedly investing in and knocking on the door of PYMCA’s office to get their white gloves upon.

PYMCA, a mix of ingredients… simmering away quietly for over a decade… now ready to serve.

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This is England. Shane Meadows

Under my skin

Forget shoulder pads and Rick Astley – growing up in the 1980s was a riot of great music, fashion and subcultures, as new film This Is England shows. Here, director Shane Meadows recalls a youth of ska music, scrapping and a time when people ‘still cared’ about politics

Shane Meadows

Sat 21 Apr 2007 00.32 BSTFirst published on Sat 21 Apr 2007 

This is England
 Shane Meadows’ This is England has been one of the biggest British independent films of 2007

It’s easy to laugh at the 1980s. Many people base their memories on the stuff they see in those I Love The 80s TV shows: massive VHS recorders, Atari consoles and rubbish digital watches, all shown against a backing of Now That’s What I Call Music Vol 2. Then there was the way that people dressed: your mum with a deranged perm, your dad in a pair of grey leather slip-ons and your sister with a “Frankie Says Relax” T-shirt and a stack of love bites round her neck.

But my memories have more meaning than that. As a kid growing up in Uttoxeter, Staffs, it was a time of great music, brilliant fashion and a vibrant youth culture that makes today’s kids look dull and unimaginative by comparison. It was also a time of massive unrest when British people were still prepared to fight for the stuff they believed in. My new film, This Is England, is about all of these things.

Set in 1983, this is the first period film I have made. A great deal of it is based on my own childhood and I tried to recreate my memoirs of being an 11-year-old kid trying to fit in. It was a time when Uttoxeter, like the rest of the country, was awash with endless different youth tribes. There were new romantics, heavy rockers, smoothies, punks, goths, skins and mod revivalists who were into the Specials and 2 Tone. Then there were those pop culture kids who came into school wearing one green sock, one pink sock and some deely boppers on their head. People often looked daft, but were genuinely committed to their chosen denomination and would wear their identities on their sleeves with immense pride. In a town as small as Uttoxeter, though, there weren’t enough people for each sub culture to fill their own parties or clubs, so most weekends everyone would turn up at the same village hall disco and end up fighting.

Like most 11-year-old kids who wore jumpers with animals on, I got bullied by the older kids at school. So I looked for my own tribe to join. It was the skinhead movement that enamoured me the most. I remember seeing 10 or 15 of them at the bus shelter on my way home from school one summer night and thinking they were the most fearsome thing I had ever seen. Even though I was terrified of them, I was instantly attracted to them. To be a part of most of the other factions you had to be a little rich kid. But to be a skinhead, all you needed was a pair of jeans, some work boots, a white shirt and a shaved head. You could be transformed from a twerp into a fearsome warrior in 15 minutes. Skins appealed to me because they were like soldiers: they wore their outfits like suits of armour and demanded respect. There were playground myths that surrounded them and especially their Dr Martens boots. It was feared that a single kick from a DM boot would kill you or at the very least give you brain damage. I can remember kids refusing to fight unless the skinhead agreed to remove his fearsome boots first.

My older sister was going out with a skinhead who took me under his wing and taught me about the roots of the whole culture. He was a nice bloke who bore no relation to the stereotypical racist yob that people now associate with that time. It was him that I based the character of Woody on in the film. I learned from him that skinheads had grown out of working class English lads working side by side with west Indians in factories and shipyards in the late-60s. The black lads would take the whites to blues parties where they were exposed to ska music for the first time. Soon, Jamaican artists like Desmond Dekker, the Upsetters and Toots And The Maytals were making a living out of songs aimed directly at English white kids. This was where the whole skinhead thing came from – it was inherently multicultural. But nowadays when I tell people that I used to be a skinhead, they think I’m saying I used to be racist. My film shows how rightwing politics started to creep into skinhead culture in the 1980s and change people’s perception of it. This was a time when there were three and a half million people unemployed and we were involved in a pointless war in the Falklands. When people are frustrated and disillusioned that’s when you get extremist groups moving in and trying to exploit the situation. That’s what the National Front did in the early-80s. Skinheads had always taken pride in being working class and English so they were easy targets for the NF who said that their identities were under threat. They cultivated a real hatred of the Asian community. In the film, Combo represents the sort of charismatic leader the NF used to turn skinheads into violent street enforcers. Suddenly, all skinheads were branded the same way. But most of the real old skins who were into the music and the clothes went on to be scooter boys to separate themselves from the racism. I always wanted This Is England to tell the truth about skinheads.

As I started to make the film, other themes started to interest me. We had a relatively small budget so we couldn’t afford to recreate every last detail of the Uttoxeter of 1983. Instead, I set the scene by using archive news footage at the start and end of the film. Going though footage of the Falklands war really made me think again about the whole thing. As kids, we thought it was like going into a World Cup campaign. It was exciting and we were cheering on our lads to go and do the Argies. But the scenes of soldiers’ coffins shocked and appalled me.

In many ways the country was a mess. The miners’ strike was massive – they were killing scabs by throwing paving slabs from bridges onto cars. You had all the protesters and unrest at Greenham Common. But remembering all of these things made me nostalgic for a time when people were ready to stand up and say something. People cared about where the country was going. As the 1980s ended we had the poll tax riots which turned out to be the end of an era. Afterwards, it was like the nation lost its backbone. People were bought off. They were given a little bit of land, the right to buy their council house and put a little satellite dish on the front of it. They became content and lost their will to rock the boat.

The big difference between now and the period in which my film is set is our level of isolation. In 1983, people still cared about society as a whole but now they’ll keep their mouth shut as long as they’ve got the house, the job and the car they want. If you were a kid in 1983, you wouldn’t have a PlayStation to sit indoors alone with. You got your entertainment from mixing with a variety of different people. While making the film, I realised that all of my fondest childhood memories surrounded human contact: mucking about with mates or going camping. In 2007, people put less emphasis on that sort of thing and more on planning their careers and their TV viewing. As far as I’m concerned, if you’re working from nine to five then coming home to watch shows that your Sky box has recorded for you while you were out, you might as well be on a fucking drip.

This Is England is a snapshot of an era and a life that seems very dated now. It’s about sticking up for mates and beliefs.

The gang

This Is England’s tight group of mates are stranded in a drab, east Midlands town in 1983. Devoted to sharp dressing, ska music and each other, the warmth and harmony of their gang is threatened by the arrival of Combo – an older skinhead with an angry, racist agenda.

Smell

The gang’s token Boy George-alike becomes the object of young Shaun’s affections. Kindly, she gives him his first kiss.

Lol

Firm but fair leader of the girl-skins and girlfriend of Woody. Also the subject of unwanted advances from the sociopathic Combo.

Shaun

An isolated 12-year-old whose dad has been killed in the Falklands War. His transformation into a skinhead offers him a whole new life of friendship, DMs and braces.

Milky

The gang’s only black member becomes a target of abuse as certain members start to embrace the National Front.

Woody

A warm hearted leader who nurtures Shaun into a fully-fledged skin. He splits from the gang when Combo shows.

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Great Skinhead Reunion Brighton, Big 6. 2016

Tickets for 2016 are available HERE

CONFIRMED ACTS

INFA RIOT Punk – Oi! 1982 Legends   

ROUGH KUTZ

FECKIN EJITS

THE HACKLERS – SKA

GRADE 2

CROWN COURT

TEAR UP from Watford, A brand new young oi! act

Dekkertones a leading British Ska Tribute act, to get the party started

PISTONES  (Finland)

SPECIAL GUESTS WILL BE ANNOUNCED AT THE EVENT

Facebook Event page

Bands and DJ’s wishing to perform, all info and enquiries, contact Symond at subcultz@gmail.com

Video made in 2013

The Great Skinhead Reunion, Brighton, www.subcultz.com

The Great Skinhead Reunion Brighton Every Year, the first weekend of June, Skinheads come from across the globe to Brighton seafront. for full event details go to www.subcultz.com

Posted by Skinhead Reunion Brighton on Saturday, 2 April 2016

FULL 3 DAYS EVENT, YOUR WRISTBAND IS VALID THROUGH OUT, YOU CAN USE IT FOR AS LITTLE, OR AS MUCH AS YOU WANT. THE EVENT WILL SELL OUT, AND THERE WILL BE NO ADVANCE DAY TICKETS AT A REDUCED DAILY RATE , IN ADVANCE.

The line-up maybe subject to change, as so many band members and dj’s are involved. Babies coming along, alcohol, world wars and famine can be unforeseen, but the Great Skinhead Reunion, is more about coming to Brighton to see all your friends and making some more, for 3 full days of mayhem.

SKINHEAD ONLY HOTELS .

Add to your experience, by getting a room in our Skinhead only hotels. Conveniently located, with a short walk to the venue, and no moaning neighbours to worry about. The rooms vary in size and cost, to fit your needs. all within an easy walk to the skinhead reunion venue. We have hotels exclusive to the Great Skinhead Reunion guests and bands.  Party party !! please email subcultz@gmail.com with your requirements, to be booked into the Skinhead Hotels

For those on a low budget, its worth checking Hostels and campsites, but my advice, is to get in the reserved hotels, for a nice stress free, clean and comfortable holiday in Brighton.

TRAVEL INFORMATION

Brighton is situated on the south coast of England, approximately one hour from London. London Gatwick is the nearest airport. There are regular direct trains and National Express buses. The next nearest is Heathrow,  There are also direct trains from Luton Airport . Its advised not to fly to Stansted, as this is a long way, and you risk losing valuable drinking time

The nearest ferry port serving mainland Europe is Newhaven -Dieppe . Newhaven is about 20 min drive to Brighton. Dover is about 2 hours to Brighton

PARKING ZONES – one of the worst aspects of Brighton, is a lack of affordable parking. my advice is to use street parking on the suburbs of Brighton, its a reasonably safe place. a good bus service will take you into brighton centre (churchill square) and a short walk from there to the sea front. worth allowing the extra hours work, to save yourself serious parking charges

All Event Enquiries email Symond at subcultz@gmail.com. phone (uk) 07733096571

The Facebook community group Facebook group

Facebook page

Continue reading Great Skinhead Reunion Brighton, Big 6. 2016
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Dissension in the Ska Camp

Dissension in the Ska Camp

From April 26, 1964–”Something had to come after the Twist and it appears to be the ‘Jamaica Ska,’ just imported from the Caribbean island by dance lovers of New York’s jet set. Here, at Shepheard’s night spot, where the infectious new dance made its U.S. debut, lovely Carol Joan Crawford (left), Miss World of 1964, pays close attention to the dancers. The ‘Ska’ may be simply described as ‘up-beat blues with a shuffle rhythm.’ Its name evolved out of the sound of the guitar’s up-beat stroke. Miss Crawford, who also hails from Jamaica, is currently touring the U.S. for the first time.”

The premiere of the ska in America was controversial then, as it is now. I recently found an article from 1964 called “Dissension in the Ska Camp” that shows even when musicians were in the thick of it, it was a contested issue of who was included and who was excluded, who created it first and who was following suit. So I today I share this article that appeared in the Sunday Gleaner, April 26, 1964 that shows these topics were just as relevant and talked about then as they are now, even more so. The article has no byline so it is not evident who wrote the piece, but Ronnie Nasralla and Prince Buster chime in with their opinions.

First, let’s set the scene. Referenced in this article is the event at Shepheard’s Club, seen above in the photo. This nightclub was located in the Drake Hotel on Park Avenue in Manhattan. It was a hotspot. It was hip and posh and cool. Big stars stayed at the Drake, including Frank Sinatra and Muhammad Ali and later Led Zeppelin and Slade. But Shepheard’s was also swanky and the hot dances of the day, like the Frug, were not only danced here, but unveiled here. So too was the Ska. Shepheard’s even produced a flyer called, “How to Do the Newest Discotheque Dances at Shepheard’s in New York’s Drake Hotel” with step-by-step instructions to dance the Jerk, Watusi, Frug and the Monkey.

The event at Shepheard’s Club was prior to the World’s Fair. This event was held in April, whereas the World’s Fair wasn’t until August of 1964. However, Jamaica’s tourism efforts began before the World’s Fair in anticipation of creating a buzz and capitalizing on the dance craze trend. You may remember the photo I posted with Arthur Murray’s wife and Ronnie Nasralla from this evening at the Shepheard’s Club, and above is another rare gem.

Without further ado, the article:

National sound hits New York but now the argument flares as to what it is and who started it!

DISSENSION IN THE SKA CAMP

LIKE a raging fire, the promotional tour of the Jamaican National Sound, the Ska, has started a smoldering in the underbrush of the Kingston music world from which this distinctive brand of music was born.

Everyone wants to prove who is the true exponent of the Ska and who originated it? What is the authentic style of the Ska dancing? Successful though the promotional tour to the U.S. was, enthusiastic though the reports which came back treat the appearance of a Jamaican troupe of dancers and artistes at the Shepheard’s Club, there is dissension in the camp.

Some artistes who made the trip say their sound was not promoted as much as certain other sounds. Some of the artistes say that some of the other artistes didn’t have a clue about Ska dancing and in fact did the Monkey, the Wobble, the Twist . . . anything but true Ska.

Reports from the other side say that the moves done at Shepheard’s were moves decided on and rehearsed for several nights, together, before the team left the island.

To the accusation that other records were promoted over others, we discover from Mr. Winston Stona of the Jamaican Tourist Board, a co-sponsor of the promotional venture that:

The junket to the Shepheard’s Ska dancing, backed up over recorded music. Shepheard’s is one of a current crop of New York Clubs called discotheques. In this night spot feature entertainment comes from records played on a large turntable, from an amplification booth much like the Jamaican sound system of the dance halls.

According to the Tourist Board spokesman, the promotional venture for the Ska, as suggested by Henri Paul Marshall and Roland Rennie, the music promotion experts who came to the island last month on the invitation of the Ministry of Development and Welfare, was that Ska records and not personal performances by the artistes, would be projected.

The records which were taken to Shepheard’s therefore, were a selection made on the suggestion of the experts who, on their visit to the island, listened to the work of various Ska exponents. The records chosen for promotion were the ones which the experts deemed most likely to catch on with the American public.

These records included the works of Prince Buster, Derryck Morgan, Eric Morris, and others known to the local Ska followers.

Why should there be dissension? Among the tunes featured at Shepheard’s was “Sammy Dead,” the old Jamaican folk tune restyled as Ska by Byron Lee and the Dragonaires, featuring the voice of Eric Morris. Certain members of the troupe to Shepheard’s say “Sammy Dead” was promoted over other tunes.

According to Mr. Stona, “Sammy Dead” was actually played twice at the beginning and at the end of the programme of Ska records which he presented to the Shepheard’s audience.

It was also revealed that “Sammy Dead” which is to be released on a Capitol label in the States was specifically promoted on the request of Capitol records.

Prince Buster and the other early devotees of the Ska say this should not be so. And they throw in the argument that in their opinion “Sammy Dead” is not a true Ska tune and why should it be played even one more time than any of the others, which are reorganized as real Ska by the real Ska fans?

Prince Buster, who took the Ska to England where it is known now as the Blue Beat, was very expressive about this. He says he is one of the originators of the Ska and sees no reason why he and others, who worked together on the National Sound, should not have got as big billing.

But who really originated the Ska? As Buster tells it, it was back in 1958 that he, Derryck Morgan, Eric Morris and others used to meet on top of an old house situated on Charles Street near Orange Street. The meetings were inspired because “as boys together, we were looking at making a brand.”

He points out that a number of Jamaican musicians had tried adopting American shuffle sounds to their own style, but it didn’t really work. There was need for “our own sound.” So those meetings on top of the house was to find out just how to make things work, how to find a Jamaican sound which the fans would go for.

Down on the ground you might say the big sound system operators Duke Reid and Coxson were evolving their own sound. It was an adaptation of certain American shuffle tunes re-recorded for the sound system dance audiences. It is said that when the experimenters offered Duke Reid and Coxson the new Jamaican sound they would have nothing to do with it.

According to Buster, the new sound when it was evolved was referred to with great disdain by other musicians and by the public as the Boop-Boop. He even earned the name Boop. And when he and Derryck Morgan, for a promotional stunt, launched Boop-Boop songs deriding each other the public really went for their skins.

But out West, the thump of the Boop, later is to be called Sca, then Ska, was catching on. Musicians who had “boxed around” in various musical combos began to be reorganized as “Ska beaters.” Out west and on the east, they could tell you and still tell you about Drumbago who played the drums and Ja Jerry, Theophilus Beckford, and Raymond Harper, Rupert “Blues” Miller, and Stanley Notice.

These according to the fans and on Orange Street and (unreadable) where sound boxes thump through the Saturday night of every week were the original ska men.

As the craze progressed, getting popularity most of all on JBC’s Teenage Dance Party, other musicians joined the parade, cut dies, met for sessions, helped the sound to grow.

The fans began to acclaim Baba Brooks, Roland Alphonso, Lloyd Brevet, Lloyd Tate, Don Drummond, Lester Sterling, Johnny Moore, Lloyd Knibb and the men whose full names nobody remembers but rather a name like Jackie, Charlie, and Campbell. Later they were joined by the acclaimed pure jazz, tenor man, Tommy McCook.

The Ska caught on, spread and grew, most of all in the Saturday night sound system headquarters such as Forrester’s Hall, Jubilee Tile Gardens, Carnival and Gold Coast on Sundays.

Sound system operators worked feverishly to get the latest biscuits on disc. Early on release, they bore no labels, but the dance hall spies got the names eventually and the sound system which didn’t have the new biscuit last week, acquired it this week, to draw the fans.

It is interesting to find a parallel in the discotheques which began in Paris and spread to London and New York.

In the process of finding who should get credit for what, it is eye opening to hear Prince Buster saying that Louise Bennett played her part in the promotion of this peculiarly Jamaican sound and dance. He says that Louise’s life work of keeping alive the folk songs and rhythms of Jamaica is responsible for many of them coming back into popularity, set against the Ska beat.

Many of the musicians and artistes associated with the Ska movement are fairly young men. However, one of the acknowledged originators and Dean of the Sound has been playing music in Kingston for 46 years.

He is Drumbago the drummer who also plays a flute. His real name is Arkland Parks and (unreadable) Mapletoft Poulle and Frankie Bonnitto.

Drumbago, a mild mannered gentleman, says he and Rupert Miller, a bass player for 36 years, were in on the original search to find the sound which came to be called Ska. He explains their best arrangement of the sound as being basically four beats to the bar in eight or twelve measures.

“You get the sound according to how you invert the beats,” says Drumbago.

Another exponent of Ska and its various offshoots feel that the dance called Wash Wash has every claim to being truly Jamaican, for it is inspired by one of the basic Jamaican show dances … the wash day scene. This is a standard with many nightclub rhumba dancers, with many folk lore troupes.

So what constitutes Ska dancing?  According to the fanatics, true Ska motions are the wash wash, the peculiar washing motion of either clothes or the body, the press along, in which the  dancer thumps out the rhythm with his arms at shoulder level, the move (for which we found no

name) of spiraling down to floor level and back up, the one in which you moved the hips and pumped the arms in the opposite direction to the press along.

The fans say that while the extempore movements are allowed dancing the Ska, these are the definite basic movements which one must know to be IN.

Dissenters from the troupe which performed at Shepheard’s say these movements were not used fully or enough and that at one stage they heard a critic saying that what was being done was nothing new, it looked like a first cousin to the Twist. And that the Monkey and the Pony movements which were done were recognized as old hat immediately.

Mr. Stona says this accusation is not true. He found nothing but satisfaction for the presentation at Shepheard’s and is optimistic for the future of Ska promotion in the United States.

We contacted a spokesman for the Byron Lee and the Dragonaires outfit who made “Sammy Dead.”

He told of having heard the feeling expressed by some of the original Ska sound makers that certain orchestras now playing the sound were only cashing in and didn’t know how the sound began.

The Byron Lee spokesman—Mr. Ronnie Nasralla—says:

“For Byron Lee and the Dragonaires it’s not just cashing in. I know Byron feels that it is full time Ska was organized and promoted so that the best can be got out of it for the benefit of the artistes and Jamaica.”

According to Mr. Nasralla:

“Many Ska artistes were not properly protected or organized before Byron Lee has signed up several artistes for recordings and appearances and we’re taking all steps to see that they’re properly presented.”

“I’ve heard that some people say that Byron Lee is just promoting his orchestra. It’s not true. Sure, as a businessman he will look out for his investments, but let us stop quarrelling among ourselves and promote the sound not only for the good of one band but for all Jamaica.”

Whatever comes of it, Ska is going to be a talking point for many more months. Ironically, like most things, it was an art without honour in its own country until it was discovered somewhere else.

Stay tuned for next week’s blog when I will post a response to this article that appeared in the Daily Gleaner the following Sunday. Apparently the comments made by Ronnie Nasralla and Prince Buster struck a chord and a number of musicians responded with their thoughts, including Eric Monty Morris, Roy Panton, Ronnie Nasralla again, Alphanso Castro, Sir Lord Comic, and Roy Willis who respond with comments of their own.

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Stanley Motta

Stanley Motta is always mentioned as an early pioneer in the ska industry since he had the first recording studio on the island, although they were not pressed there–Motta sent the acetates to the U.K. for duplication. But Motta began the recording industry in Jamaica. His recording studio was opened in 1951 on Hanover Street and his label, M.R.S. (Motta’s Recording Studio), recorded mostly calypso and mento. Motta’s first recorded in 1952 with Lord Fly whose birth name was Rupert Lyon. It is to be noted that in his band on these recordings were Bertie King on clarinet, an Alpha Boys School alumnus who would go on to have a successful jazz career in Europe, as well as Mapletoft Poule who had a big band that employed many early ska musicians and Alpha alumni. Motta also recorded artists like Count Lasher, Monty Reynolds, Eddie Brown, Alerth Bedasse, Jellicoe Barker, Lord Composer, Lord Lebby, Lord Messam, Lord Power, and Lord Melody (good Lord!). There is a strong ska connection too. While I originally thought and posted that Baba Motta was Stanley Motta’s little brother and got that misinformation from Brian Keyo (here: www.soulvendors.com/rolandalphonso.html), I have been corrected by mento scholar Daniel Neely, as you will see from his fantastic and helpful comments below. They, in fact, are not related. Baba Motta was a pianist and trumpeter who also played bongos at times. Roland Alphonso performed with Baba Motta and Stanley then employed Roland to play as a studio musician for many of his calypsonians. Baba Motta had his own orchestra based at the Myrtle Bank Hotel. Baba Motta also recorded for his brother Stanley Motta with Ernest Ranglin. And other ska artists who recorded for Stanley Motta include Laurel Aitken and Lord Tanamo. Rico Rodriguez also says he recorded for Stanley Motta. Theophilus Beckford also performed for other calypsonians that Motta recorded, playing piano before he cut his vital tune “Easy Snapping” for Coxsone, the first recognized ska recording. So who was this Stanley Motta character and what was his interest in Jamaican music? Well as most Jamaican residents know, Motta was the owner of his eponymous business that sold electronics, camera equipment, recording equipment, and appliances. They also processed film, if you remember that! Motta started his business in 1932 with just two employees. Motta’s grew to hundreds of employees over the years and they sold products from Radio Shack, Poloroid, Hoover, Nokia, and Nintendo, to name a few. Stanley Motta was born in Kingston on October 5, 1915. He was educated at Munro College and St. George’s College. He was married twice and has four sons, Brian, David, Philip, and Robert. Motta chose to get into recording perhaps because it was a new industry for the island. And as a businessman, he saw that there were tourists who flocked to Jamaica with spending money, and in an effort to capture some of that money, he began recording to send them home with a souvenir. Many of these calypso and mento recordings for MRS were intended to be souvenirs, a take home example of the sounds enjoyed while on the north coast beaches. In fact, later Motta would serve on the board of the Jamaica Tourist Board from 1955 to 1962, so this was a focus for Motta. He recorded 78s, 45s, but also 10 full-length LPs including “Authentic Jamaican Calypsos,” a four volume series targeted at tourists upon which Roland Alphonso is a featured soloist on the song “Reincarnation.” In short, Motta was an entrepreneur, so his interest in recording came from a vision to fill a need, and he quickly moved on into more enterprising endeavors when he saw that need was being met better by others, like Federal Records, a physical pressing plant, and he chose to focus on his retail stores instead, stores which are still in business today. Motta was also involved in broadcast, but not as you might think. In 1941, after viewing a program that was broadcast on NBC, Motta was so moved by the content of the program titled “Highlights of 1941,” that he wrote to NBC to obtain a recording of this broadcast. He secured the one-hour program which he then showed for audiences at the Glass Bucket Club and he used donations from the screening to support war funds. The program dramatized many of the events of the year interspersed with real footage of Pearl Harbor and the milestones leading up to World War II. Motta was likely also a supplier for many sound system operators, as you can see from the advertisement above. He sold amplifiers, speakers, and all types of recording equipment so without his influence, the face of Jamaican music would not be the same, in many ways. Share your stories, memories, and research on Stanley Motta here and keep the dialogue going! Here are a number of links to more information on Stanley Motta and his recording legacy: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1842828http://www.mentomusic.com/1scans.htmhttp://bigmikeydread.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/stanley-motta-mottas-recording-studio-kingston-mrs/

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Skinhead Reggae Legend, Harry J (Johnson) dies

Jamaican producer and musician Harry Zephaniah Johnson, 67, credited with producing what is widely considered the first reggae single “No More Heartaches” by the vocal harmony trio The Beltones, passed away on Wednesday, April 3 in his Westmoreland, Jamaica birthplace, succumbing to complications from diabetes; Johnson leaves four children and three grandchildren.

Born on July 6th, 1945, Johnson, better known as Harry J, initially entered the music business as a bass player with The Virtues prior to becoming the group’s manager. Shortly thereafter, he took a job as an insurance salesman but his love for music continually beckoned. He booked time at producer/sound system owner Coxsone Dodd’s Studio One in 1968 and recorded The Beltones. The resultant debut release on Johnson’s Harry J label, “No More Heartaches,” is considered a defining record heralding the emergence of the reggae beat as distinctive from its rock steady predecessor. (“Nanny Goat”, a 1968 song produced by the better-known Coxsone Dodd and sung by the duo Larry and Alvin is also cited as a transformative record, moving the rock steady tempo into a reggae rhythm).

“At the time we were under contract with Coxsone Dodd but he wasn’t doing anything for us so a member of a popular group The Cables took us to Harry J; Harry was new to the business and happy to record us so we broke away from Coxsone and went with him,” recalled The Beltones’ former lead singer Trevor Shields told Billboard.biz. “The driving sound on “No More Heartache” was totally different; we were like outsiders starting something new but didn’t know it at the time. The song was No. 1 on the Jamaican charts for about four weeks, which was no easy feat in those days.”

Harry J’s next big hit “Cuss Cuss” by Lloyd Robinson, released in 1969, boasts one of the most recycled reggae rhythms in the voluminous Jamaican music canon. The same year Harry J released a succession of reggae instrumentals credited to the Harry J All Stars, a revolving cast of musicians that included pianist Gladstone “Gladdy” Anderson, keyboardist Winston Wright, bassist Jackie Jackson, drummer Winston Grennan and guitarist Hux Brown. “Smashville,” “Je T’Aime” and “Srpyone” an assortment of Jamaican originals and reggae adaptations of international hits, are just three of the Harry J All Stars’ instrumentals that garnered steady play from Kingston’s sound system selectors.

Their most successful was “Liquidator,” led by Winston Wright’s spirited keyboard solos, which peaked at no. 9 on the UK Singles chart and became an unlikely skinhead anthem there. The song’s opening bassline was subsequently featured on the introduction to The Staple Singers’ 1972 Hot 100 chart topper “Ill Take You There” (Stax Records). According to an April 7 report in the Jamaica Observer newspaper by Howard Campbell, based on a 2000 Observer interview with Johnson, drummer Al Jackson (of Booker T and the MGs, Stax’s in-house band) visited Kingston in 1969 and met Harry J who gave him a copy of “Liquidator”; Johnson was shocked to hear the song used in the Staple Singers’ hit and took aggressive steps to collect royalties from Stax but made little progress.

Following “Liquidator’s” UK success, British reggae label Trojan gave Johnson his own Harry J imprint; his instrumental productions never again reaped the popularity of “Liquidator” but Johnson triumphed working with several of the island’s vocalists commencing with Marcia Griffiths and Bob Andy: their 1970 duets covering Nina Simone’s “Young Gifted and Black” and Crispian St. Peters’ “The Pied Piper” reached the upper tiers of the UK singles charts.

In 1972 Johnson opened a sixteen-track studio at 10 Roosevelt Avenue, Kingston, which revolutionized the reggae capital’s recording industry. “Back then, we were recording two-track and four-track sessions so it took great foresight for someone to go all the way to 16-tracks, which brought us on par with the rest of the world,” engineer/musician/producer Stephen Stewart told Billboard.biz at Harry J studios; there Stewart learned audio engineering in the 1970s while still a teenager, working alongside the late Sylvan Morris. “Because he had the latest in technology Harry J attracted the best artists of the day,” Stewart noted.

A sampling of the classic 1970s roots reggae recordings done at Harry J studios includes: The Heptones’ “Book of Rules,” The Melodians’ “Sweet Sensation,” Toots and the Maytals’ “Reggae Got Soul,” Burning Spear’s “Days of Slavery” and Dennis Brown’s “So Long Rastafari.” Bob Marley and The Wailers also recorded their first four albums for Island Records at Harry J (“Catch a Fire,” “Burnin,” featuring Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh, “Natty Dread,” and “Rastaman Vibration” with the I-Threes); presently, framed gold copies of those Wailers albums adorn the walls of the studio’s main room.

Harry J Studios are featured in the 1978 film “Rockers” (directed by Theodoros Bafaloukos and starring Leroy “Horsemouth” Wallace, Gregory Isaacs and Jacob Miller) in a scene that spotlights singer Kiddus I recording “Graduation In Zion” there.

Although the 1970s were Harry J’s production heyday he continued to produce and release hit singles throughout the 1980s including Sheila Hylton’s cover of The Police’s “The Bed’s Too Big Without You”, which reached no. 38 on the UK singles chart. Harry J responded to the massive “Sleng Teng” rhythm released by the King Jammys label in 1984, which jumpstarted Jamaican music’s digital revolution, with his aptly titled “Computer Rule” rhythm that spawned numerous hits for various singers and toasters including Daddy Freddy, Charlie Chaplin, Uglyman, and Little John.

Following a seven-year dormancy during the 1990s, Harry J studios reopened in 2000, under the management of Stephen Stewart who refurbished and re-equipped the facility, with Johnson retaining ownership of the premises. “Harry J pushed the business aspect of the industry, putting deals together and cataloguing his songs (including releases on the Jaywax, Roosevelt, 10 Roosevelt Avenue and Sunset subsidiaries), which were separate from the studio operations,” Stewart offered.

Countless reggae veterans including Toots Hibbert, Burning Spear, Sly and Robbie and Luciano have recorded at Harry J studios in recent years while upstart Jamaican groups Raging Fyah and Di Blueprint Band and an abundance of European reggae acts have each sought out its authentic roots reggae sound. “People come here to capture that live session chemistry where recording is more than just one person using a computer program,” observes Stewart. “The legacy of the musicianship that has come through here makes Harry J studios really special, it’s part of the vision Harry brought to Jamaican music.”

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Soul Radics

We announced ourselves for the first time as Soul Radics at an Atlanta ska fest in the summer of 2011. That’s the easiest way to say it I suppose.

As a band we’re unanimously fans of the Jamaican classics of ska, reggae, and rocksteady… Though I’m very favorable to Dekker, Toots, and Derrick Morgan, it is a endless list of inspiration. Opinions obviously differ for the whole band, but I’m a fan of a ridiculous amount of music that mostly came before I was born. It’s hard to break it down without yammering on forever, but it starts somewhere around Django Reinhardt, Charles Mingus, Otis Redding, The Beatles, The Animals, Chuck Berry and ends somewhere around Early punk, Devo, The Stray Cats, and The Squirrel Nut Zippers. But above all my heart lies in ska, reggae and soul. I like music with feeling… That’s my thing.

I moved to Nashville, Tennessee from a smaller town in Northwest Indiana that bordered Chicago. I have collectively spent most of my life there after moving young from my home state of Florida, but also lived in New York and oddly enough some obscure places in Nebraska.

I met Jay back in ’09 soon after I’d moved to Nashville. I was looking to play guitar in some kind of punk group, as it’s what I had messed around with prior to, and he said “how about sing in a ska/reggae band?” I immediately got more excited about the idea since the concept of ska thriving in Nashville didn’t even occur to me as a new resident. Jay was from Canada and moved to Nashville specifically for music…. I had never worked with anyone so passionate about it before; it was refreshing. Long story short, and trust me, it’s long…. Jay and I have reformed this group 3 times to get what we have now. We’ve had a great writing relationship since day 1. We picked up our bassist Jamie early on and he’s been with us the longest. Jamie was from Michigan and had played much heavier music before joining up with us, but beyond him it had seemed like a revolving door before we actually became Soul Radics last summer. I think what ailed us the most was our constant drummer situation…. I’m sure most musicians can relate. We had always had a hard time keeping horns on but Nels (Nebraska) came along on sax and held it down for a long time on his own… Rob Hoskins (from Murfreesboro) was in a.k.a: Rudie which is a flawless, long running rocksteady band in Nashville. I had collaborated with them a little bit and was a huge fan, even though in almost 20 years they had never gotten far out of Nashville. Rob and Kevin (also from a.k.a.) came to our show one night, at which point we were basically all leaning to play traditional ska. We played a song for the first time live that night called “Down to the Hall,” which is a more upbeat ska tune, and they wanted to help us track it. Rob then began producing what quickly went from an E.P. to a full album, and also playing organ for us. He opened the floodgate for seasoned musicians. We finally got a professional drummer (Dave from Nashville), and second guitar (Shane from Pittsburgh) that we kinda smuggled in from a.k.a: Rudie. Most recent is Chuck from Cali on trombone, and that’s our current line up. Sorry if that was long winded… big bands are high maintenance, ha.

i read you are in nashville, obviously world famous for music, but how does the soul/ skinhead reggae sound fit in there. i thought the town was very much based around country and western.

Nashville is one of those towns where everyone you bump into is a musician. There’s usually a good show every night but truth be told it’s a small demographic in comparison for what we do. There’s not a lot of pats on the back here for carrying the torch in our town. The people that love us at home base support us dearly… that’s our crew.

listening to ‘hey skavoovie’ it had good production on it. are you signed to a major label.

Cheers! We’ve been recording in a.k.a: Rudie’s studio (which actually happens to be the 2nd floor to their guitar player Kevin’s house). Kevin has engineered the album and the wonderfully talented Brett Tubin is mixing it. As of now and we’re set to release it on both vinyl and cd through Jump Up Records, and our record release show will be with Stranger Cole in Chicago on November 17th. I’m very excited for it! We’ve all poured a lot of blood and sweat into it and I can’t wait for the finished product.

how is the skinhead scene where you are?

Small in Nashville, but they represent. Our buddy Matt Gray DJ’s ‘Sunday Moonstomps’ and the scene brings in some good bands as often as possible. We do a free monthly Nashville gig in the summer and that’s where I see most the crew. Sometimes we’ll get an iconic band through and it’ll draw everyone out of the woodwork.how are your live shows, are you starting to pick up a following?

While Nashville shows are always personal and fun, I live for playing out of town shows. Hell, liveshows in general are my thing, but I love an adventure. I feel like we convert so many people when they see us live… that’s how we’ve gotten our biggest fans up until this point. A good Radics show leaves me high for days. It seems like every time we go back to Atlanta there’s more supporters, and I have to admit I feel a buzz around us right now which makes the record release all the more anticipated. I’m grateful for the shows we’ve been invited to play this year, supporting bands like the Aggrolites and The Toasters as well as a plethora of amazing regional bands. We’ve been fortunate with the opportunities and fans we’ve gotten without yet having an album out.  Dani Radic

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Plan B Wears Skrewdriver T Shirt

Plan B Photographed In Skrewdriver T Shirt The Quietus , July 22nd, 2012 05:18

Has Ill Manors rapper had an attack of the Morrisseys? 

As reported on Brian Whelan’s excellent blog recently, UK rapper/neo-soul star Plan B was photographed last week wearing a T shirt bearing the band name Skrewdriver.

The picture was taken from the front cover of popular free title, Shortlist which has a circulation of over half a million copies a week. The The Defamation Of Strickland Banks star was giving an interview to promote his new album and film (both called Ill Manors). The photoshoot took place immediately on his arrival at the studio, but it isn’t made clear if the clothes belong to the rapper or were given to him by a stylist.  

The T shirt appears to bear a picture of Nicky Crane, a violent Nazi skin who provided security for Skrewdriver and served several jail terms for racist assaults. Donaldson and Crane both fell out when the latter came out as gay towards the end of his life. For many, the white power, bonehead band Skrewdriver represented the absolute nadir of popular music’s interaction with the Fascist movement, given that their message was evangelical, unironic, violent, radical and, to a certain degree, popular. That singer Ian Stuart Donaldson died in a car crash in 1992, did nothing to hurt their standing worldwide among neo-Nazis. The band however started as a non-politically aligned punk group in 1976 signed to Chiswick, and this incarnation of the group still has many fans internationally including J Mascis and Pink Eyes from Fucked Up. (Pink Eyes, aka Damian from Fucked Up, delivered a righteous screed on the subject of being a fan of the band’s early recordings on the Guardian which is worth checking out.) The interview with Benjamin Paul Ballance-Drew aka Plan B is still viewable on the Shortlist website where you can clearly see he is wearing the neo-Nazi band top. It seems highly unlikely that Plan B has accidentally revealed himself to be – or indeed is – a Nazi especially given his recent, left leaning and nuanced ‘Ill Manors’ single but it is ironic and doesn’t help him any that during the interview he praises Tim Roth’s acting in Made In Britain, Alan Clarke’s 1982 film about racist skinheads. He was asked: “Do you look at actors such as Winstone, Gary Oldman and Tim Roth and think, ‘I’d like to be at that level in 20 years’?” And replied: “Oh mate, Tim Roth in Made In Britain – f*cking amazing. In 20 years, I’d love to be at the level they’re at, but it depends how I look. Some people don’t age well for films. They lose that spark. Oldman’s still got it, Ray’s still got it. It all depends on what fate’s got in store for me.”Yet another example of a complete lack of knowledge or investigation by the media, but printed as fact.Well here’s the real story of the ‘T shirt’ the facts are Gavin Watson has done a bit of work with Plan B, and he loved Gavins skinhead photographs, he asked Gav could he use some, and Gavin gave him a whole box of images to choose from, which he then printed a few to t shirts, as a way of using genuine British street images, and also supporting Gavins photography. 

But the picture in question, printed on the T shirt is one that Gavin Watson took of his younger brother Neville, who at the time was about 14 years old. Taken in the mid 1980’s on a council estate in High Wycombe at the height of the Skinhead Subculture. Posing against a garage, which has the word Skrewdriver graffitied on it. At that time it was very common for punk bands names to be graffitied all over the country. Gavins photographs have been printed worldwide and have come to represent Margaret Thatchers Britain. Gavin was given a camera as a kid and went about photographing his  environment, family and friends, in a complete innocent love of photography. It just so happens that the time was when the British youth culture of Skinheads was at its height, of which Gavin was an active part. Films like ‘ This is England’ and many fashion designers and marketting people have used Gavins images as inspiration, but due to 21st Century political correctness, the actual era that the photos represent is something the British establishment would rather bury under a carpet. and even today, 30 years later the media are still spewing out their lies about the time and the young people involved. This obsession with  belittling  council estate kids, and anyone that tries to inspire them. i think its extremely brave and sincere of Plan B to take genuine images of real kids from the council estates that he now represents with his music. In the USA people like Biggy Smalls did that, with his own environment, to huge worldwide success. Yesterdays Skinheads who listened to Oi music, are no different than todays youth, listening to Grime . The more young people feel attacked and written off, outcast, the more chance they will take to the streets, as was seen last year in British cities and in 1981, with the previous generation.   July 22, 2012 13:34

Plan B responds to NME ‘neo-Nazi’ t-shirt criticism

Rapper apologises, says he was unaware of the existence of Skrewdriver

Plan B has responded to criticism for a photograph which shows him wearing what appears to be a Skrewdriver t-shirt. The most recent issue of Shortlist shows the rapper sporting a top with the band’s name written on it. This prompted some commentators to question his motive. The New Statesman asked why the rapper had worn the T-shirt and quoted journalist Brian Whelan, who wrote on his blog: ” It is very unusual that Plan B would knowingly wear this t-shirt and that Shortlist would stick it on the front of their publication. Make no mistake about it Skrewdriver were a nasty bunch, [founding member] Ian Stuart became a martyr for the far-right when he died in a car crash almost 20 years ago.” The rapper has now released a statement, which has been posted on The Quietus, explaining that the garment was not an official Skrewdriver t-shirt. He also apologised for not knowing who the band were, or what they represented. He said: “I was ignorant to the existence of the band Skrewdriver. I don’t listen to music like that so I wouldn’t know the names of bands that make that music. I was wearing a T-shirt I created using a photograph from the photographer Gavin Watson’s book Skins. “I asked him if I could print shots from his book on to T-shirts. I made a number of these T-shirts. Gavin’s photos are relevant to me because they represent the demonised youth of the past. Just like my generation of young people are demonised in the media to all be hoodie wearing thugs and chavs so were the skinheads in the 80’s.” Speaking about the person on the T-shirt, who some thought to be former Skrewdriver associate Nicky Crane, Plan B explained: “Most of the T-shirts I had made were of his brother. The boy on the image is Neville Watson. Neville is Gavin Watson’s brother. The graffiti behind him is graffiti. Neither Gavin or Neville put it there; it was already there when Gavin took the photo. Gavin did not know I had printed that image on a T-shirt and I was not aware of the significance of it.” He concluded: “The minute I found out what the words on the T-shirt meant I was angry with myself for not questioning them. The T-shirt is not official nor is it on sale anywhere. It was of my own doing and therefore it is my mistake, but that is all it is.” Skrewdriver were a notorious neo-Nazi “white power” group with links to the National Front. Founding member Ian Stuart Donaldson died in a car crash in 1993 and his death is celebrated every year by the far-right movement. Shortlist’s interview with Plan B can still be viewed on their website, where he talks about his favourite actors and movies as well as his own film, and accompanying album, Ill Manors.

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Plan B Talks 'ill Manors'
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Concrete Jungle Festival to X-ray Spex

From Concrete Jungle Festival to X-ray Spex live at the Roundhouse

Dress rehearsal one week before the gigwhat was I thinking, the day I decided to get involved with punk rock. my youth was way behind me, long gone were the days when I thought we were going to change the world. call it a mid life crisis, or just plain madness., but I would like to think it was more the desire to preserve and celebrate a time in British culture and music.

 Poly and Saxby live on the roundhouse stageI had been away, become a father, worked for many years as a television actor, seen the world, discovered foreign cultures and philosophy. I didn’t need a pair of doc martins to define myself.Whether it was because I had often played skinhead roles on television shows, the bond I had with my friends, the memories of punks queuing up outside the town hall when I was a kid to see our local band the Xtraverts. The Clash at Brixton, Madness in Hammersmith Odeon, The fact Gavin Watson had made a living from photographs of my friends and me, or the TV documentaries I took part in on the subject. whatever it was, inside me was a belief which I discovered in my teenage years, which had kept me safe throughout my life. that said whoever you are, from where ever you come, you can get up there and do it. Punk Rock was a lot more than fashion and clothes, records and rock stars. It was a belief system, shared and loved by thousands.

 Flash on saxAfter my time working with the Mean Fiddler came to an end, I was at a lose end. throughout my time doing large festivals, such as Leeds and Glastonbury, working behind the scenes, I had witnessed hundreds of bands come and go. The large American corporate labels selling the new generations, their version of Punk Rock, never booking the real thing. I often felt it such a shame that the kids of today or the Bands of real Punk had never had the chance of such exposure to each other, so when I bumped into an old friend, who was guitarist in the biggest band on the punk underground, Cock Sparrer, I agreed to work with him to produce a punk festival. I had experience with production, he was well in with the scene and all the bands, so the agreement was that I would sort the venue out, he would book the acts.

The crowd loving poly

All ages for an icon

 Poly styrene

a job well done

Straight from signing the contract with the venue and paying the deposit of £10.000 I was in too deep, and alarm bells started ringing. Bands contacted me to ask who I was and why was I advertising that they were playing at my show. I was just going on what my booker was informing me, but apparently it had been discussions in bar rooms, and not official agreements made. “Oh well that’s how its done in Punk” He told me.Things were quickly ironed out with most bands, but a few had to drop out because of other commitments. The tickets went on sale through a punk website, at first all was OK, but after months of promotion it became apparent that tickets weren’t selling at anywhere near the amount we needed to break even. I then noticed even headline acts hadn’t put on websites etc. that they were even playing. I didn’t have the money or time to go to every small gig in Europe to give out flyers, I was hoping the punk scene would rally behind a great new event. but what I got was the polar opposite.

When I asked a headline band from Scotland called the Exploited, if we could renegotiate their fee, which was four times higher than their usual gig fee, they refused and threatened the website selling tickets, which then panicked and returned everyone’s money that had ordered tickets. The money I had taken directly had all gone to pay the monthly deposits ordered by the venue, which was non refundable. Rumours became loud about cancellation, other punk promoters sent texts out to tell people it was cancelled. Political extremists started to spread personal insults and commit purgery about me. Even one disgruntled ex Punk singer Jimmy Percey, who incidentally was the singer of a song which changed my life called the kids are united, put on his website that the event was some sort of Nazi rally, because his previous band had decided to play without him. Who was this stranger, who had come from nowhere and decided to put on a Punk festival. Is he a Nazi or communist. The truth didn’t seem to matter on the internet world, where the Troll and Internet warrior rules.Concrete Jungle Festival 2007, featured over 60 bandsThen the next head-liner started causing trouble because the logo used mentioned a band he was once a member of, again one of my all time favourite acts from Coventry, and ex members of the Coventry Ska band The Specials accused us of trying to cash in on the name, or give people false hope that it was in fact the original act playing, which was completely untrue, but he also had to pull off of the event.The stress levels were effecting my personal life beyond belief. I had invested my life savings. I naively thought that the scene would get behind a great new event. 60 bands were booked. but sales we lower than band members. with no sleep for three months my mental health was suffering, I had no energy left to fight an internet war, I had no idea about what bands had been involved with in the last 30 years politically, had no idea about how many loyal fans they had, I took the word of people I thought knew. a very bad business decision. as the stress became higher and higher, I cut away from people, found myself lost in the internet world of make believe, just looking for positives. it cost me the relationship with the girl I loved.Two weeks before the event the website/ production manager demanded full payment then ran away, refusing to work any moreMy girlfriend and helper abandoned ship and left the country. taking what she thought should be her wages, but was in fact ticket money to be paid to bands. but worst of all my emotions.An hour away from the show, I knew I was financially ruined, my crew had left, the money gone, I preyed for a walk up which never came. but I had found some friends who had come in to at least help on the day, my kids ran the merchandise stall with my sister, some real angels helped to make the show go on. In terms of entertainment it was highly successful. many people told me later that it was the best punk show they had ever attended, but emotionally. financially and mentally I was broken. One guest came that day, who was to turn the whole tide, and if there is a god on Earth it was her. Poly Styrene is her stage name. to me she is Marianne.She offered me the hand of friendship, showed me a way forward, gave me support and mental help, the courage to go on.She also offered to perform an X-Ray Spex show with me. With my last bit of energy, I agreed and booked the Roundhouse in London, for a show the next year. I was finished financially, so what did I have to lose, it was not like Concrete Jungle festival,this was a standard venue, with a band which were icons of my youth. one of my all time favourite acts, and true punk rock, in attitude and action.The Roundhouse holds 3000 people, and by new years day we had sold enough tickets to break even,but there was a lot of work to be done, find musicians, work on the set, organise all the promotions,the radio, press.Three thousand people came

Poly suffers with serious mental health issues, which had to be considered everyday. until she actually got on the stage we never knew if it would go ahead. we had the usual people trying to sabotage the event, but we also had an army of loyal fans that made X-Ray Spex live at the Roundhouse the best day of my life.

for the year running up to the event, we booked the venue, put our money where our mouth was, poly was constantly worrying about her mortgage payments, she had a little house in st leonards by her mother, any money she had made years before had been taken from her by bad management and sharks. we were in the same boat, it was us against the world. but the word spread, the love which was attracted to poly from across the world was unbelievable, with no big business, no big corporate promotion we did it. people said it wasnt punk rock, because we put the show in a big venue, but the roundhouse is a charity which helps deprived kids, poly and me decided its the only place we could possibly hold it, she didnt like the drinking festivals which most punk gigs were, neither of us liked the corporate events. we wanted to do the show for the real fans, from all walks of life, all ages groups and backgrounds. 

the night before the gig my friend fiona was cutting the logo out to stick on a drum kit on her lounge carpet, for the kit we had got from ebay, the drummer didnt have his own kit. pete heywood had his circle of plyboard from his old band pink fraud, to be used for the stage projection. 

on the day we didnt have any catering or food for the band, but no one complained, poly got on the stage and took the house down. halway through the gig my son asked me to go upstairs. we looked over the balcony, the place was full from wall to wall, back to front, people of all ages, from many different countries, the atmosphere was beyond words. my son said to me ‘ Dad did you do this’ the pride i felt at that moment will live with me forever.

later i stood on the side of the stage with my  nephew alfie, watching the crowd going crazy, poly was alive and so young, her natural charisma shining like a star, my nephew asked me why was a crying. i said well. ‘its the happiest day of my life’Thank you Poly, Saxby, Flash, Paul, Pete Heywood, Oonagh. Luke

My son Jack, Sally, Alfie and Steve Reeve 

daryl, ian, daz and guss, Oonagh and LukeAnd everyone that bought a ticket or helped out with promotion and spreading the word

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Lloyd Brevett, The Skatalites RIP

Skatalites Lloyd Brevett Is Dead

Published: Thursday May 3, 2012 | 9:05 am15 Comments

Lloyd Brevett (2nd left) in the company of his friends and fellow musicians.

Lloyd Brevett (2nd left) in the company of his friends and fellow musicians.

Barbara Gayle, Staff Reporter

One of the founding members of The Skatalites Band, Lloyd Brevett is dead.

Brevett died at the Andrews Memorial Hospital in St. Andrew this morning at the age of 80.

In October 2001, he was conferred with Jamaica’s fifth highest honour, the Order of Distinction and in October 2010, he was awarded the Silver Musgrave Medal for his contribution to music.

The musician’s son Okine Brevett was killed in February after collecting an award on his father’s behalf at the Jamaica Reggae Industry Association Awards at Emancipation Park.

At that time, the former upright bass player of The Skatalites was said to be too ill to collect the award.

barbara.gayle@gleanerjm.com

Lloyd Brevett, the upright bass player for the legendary Skatalites, has passed away at the age of 80 in St. Andrew’s Parish, Jamaica. Brevett had been hospitalized a few weeks earlier due to a series of seizures and a stroke. While he was already in poor health, Lloyd’s health began to decline following the tragic murder of his son, Okine, in February of 2012. Okine had just accepted an award on behalf of his father earlier that night, but the celebration was cut short after he was accosted not far from the Brevett home.

Lloyd Brevett’s musical legacy cannot be understated, although his name sometimes does not get as much mention as other Skatalites members. Lloyd was introduced to the bass at a young age, as his father was one of Jamaica’s first jazz bass players. His father taught a young Lloyd not only how to play bass, but also how to make his own upright bass. As a young bass prodigy, Lloyd would be exposed to many local bands and players through his father’s work, meeting other up-and-comers like future Skatalites drummer Lloyd Knibb, who was learning how to play drums from Esmond Jarrett, who was playing with Eric Dean’s band at that time. Both Knibb and Brevett would eventually go on to play with Eric Dean’s band (as well as many other club and hotel bands), and from there, both became highly sought-after musicians in Jamaica.

As the recording industry began to take off in Jamaica in the late 1950’s, Brevett found plenty of session work, where the best of the local musicians would find themselves doing many sessions together for various producers. It was at Studio One, however, where the core group of musicians that would eventually become the Skatalites recorded some of the most popular tunes of the early 60s. Sir Coxsone would play his Studio One productions at his Downbeat sound system dances, and as the local demand for buying these records grew, Coxsone figured that the people would want to know the name of the band that everyone was dancing to. Coxsone then assembled his finest group of session players, and attracted the talents of other in-demand players like Tommy McCooke (who was working in Nassau), Lloyd Knibb (who was working in Montego Bay) and Lynn Taitt (who was working with Byron Lee and Count Lasher, as well as his own groups), and thus the Skatalites were born.

Lloyd Brevett’s bass work was quintessential to the Skatalites’ sound, even though his bass lines may not always be all that easy to define. That was really his genius coming through, though. Although he learned the instrument from his father, Lloyd had been developing his own style based on all of the styles he played in his earlier career, as well as his understanding of drumming styles like burru and mento, which were uniquely Jamaican. Listening to certain Skatalites tunes, it can be quite difficult to pick out just what Brevett is playing; at times he seems to be all over the place, but it becomes apparent that every note is exactly in its place.

Brevett was also crucial in the transition from ska to rocksteady, as he was the bass player for the Soul Vendors, the studio band that rose from the ashes of the Skatalites and the Soul Brothers.

This is Lloyd Brevett’s legacy; the sublime beauty of his musicianship, a crucial foundation of the ska beat, and a true Jamaican legend. His music will live on in his numerous recordings, from ska and rocksteady to roots and dub, and his memory will endure as one of Jamaica’s best known and most-beloved bass players.

If you would like to donate money to the fund for both Okine and Lloyd Brevett (for funeral arrangements and hospital bills), please see the information listed below. Even though Lloyd was a US citizen, he was unable to receive any health or social security benefits while being hospitalized in Jamaica. His wife (Ruth Brevett) and family would appreciate any assistance during this tragic time. Rest In Peace, Lloyd Brevett.

c/o Lloyd Brevett
National Commercial Bank, Hagley Park Branch –
Hagley Park Road

Acct # 174274584

Western Union –
Ruth Brevett, Kingston Jamaica
876-850-4403
originaljamaicaskatalites@gmail.com

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Jimmy Pursey, The End of An Ego ?

THE GUARDIAN BREVARDA PROGRAM SERVICE OF PROTECT OUR CHILDREN, INC.

Punks Planned Performance Prompts Protest

March 29, 2012 by Protect Our Children

James Timothy Pursey (AKA: Jimmy Pursey)

Protect Our Children has challenged the planned visit of a British sex offender scheduled to perform at a concert in May.  Jimmy Pursey, a member of the Punk group “Sham 69″, is slated to appear May 25th, at a music festival called “Punk Rock Bowling 2012″, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

In 2002, Pursey received a “Caution” from police in Weybridge, U.K., for committing an Indecent Assault on a teenaged girl.  The British “Caution”, which has no corollary in the U.S., allows offenders to avoid trial if they agree to admit guilt and register with the police.  They are also listed on the United Kingdom’s “Registry of Sexual and Violent Offenders”.

Correspondence sent to John Morton, Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.), renewed the group’s objection to the practice of granting visas to foreign nationals who have been registered as Sex Offenders in their homelands.  The March 14th letter calls the practice “a slap in the face” to victims of sexual abuse.

In a response dated March 26, Deputy Director Peter T. Edge, said the Department of Homeland Security takes the allegations seriously, and has forwarded the information to the D.H.S. field office.

In 2010, the Brevard County charity joined other child-advocacy organizations in protesting Pete Townshend’s performance at the SuperBowl in Miami.  The group, which informs local citizens about convicted child molesters, mailed a sex offender advisory to residents living in the vicinity of the stadium in Miami Gardens.

Immigration officials were also notified that permitting foreign sex offenders to enter the U.S., is in conflict, with the “Moral Turpitude” clause, found in American immigration law.  Townshend, a member of the British rock band: The WHO, received a Caution in 1983 after his arrest for paying to access child pornography.

SHAM 69

15 hours agoOFFICIAL SHAM 69 STATEMENTA DISCLAIMERWE, THE OFFICIAL SHAM 69, WISH TO MAKE THE FOLLOWING DISCLAIMER STATEMENT:THIS IS DUE TO THE PERSISTENT EMAILS FROM BOTH FANS, MEMBERS OF THE UK/INTERNATIONAL PRESS, AND STATEMENTS MADE VIA SOCIAL NETWORK SITES REGARDING AN INCIDENT THAT TOOK PLACE INVOLVING JAMES TIMOTHY PURSEY (AKA JIMMY PURSEY) BEING ARRESTED FOR INDECENTLY ASSAULTING AN UNDER AGE GIRL.
THIS INCIDENT DID TAKE PLACE, THE GIRL WAS UNDERAGE, THEREFORE LEGALLY A MINOR, AND SUFFERED TRAUMA AS A RESULT WITH LIFE LONG CONSEQUENCES NO DOUBT.
THIS BAND FULLY AND UTTERLY CONDEMNS SUCH BEHAVIOUR AND WISHES TO MAKE IT KNOWN THAT JIMMY PURSEY IS NOT PART OF THE OFFICIAL SHAM 69 LINEUP IN ANY WAY. WE ALSO WISH TO MAKE IT KNOWN THAT HE IS NOT PART OF THE STAFF OR ANY SUBSIDIARY OF THIS BAND.
ALONG WITH MANY FANS, BE THEY PUNKS, SKINS OR WHATEVER, WE TOO HAVE KIDS OF OUR OWN AND SOME HAVE GRAND KIDS TOO. AS SUCH WE DO NOT TREAT THIS AS A LIGHT HEARTED MISTAKE AND NEITHER DID THE GIRL’S PARENTS, ADDITIONALLY NEITHER WOULD YOU IF IT WAS YOUR CHILD OR FAMILY MEMBER.
THIS GIRL WAS A MINOR, AND THOUGH SOME PEOPLE MAY BRUSH THIS OFF WITH A BLIND VIEW IN SUPPORT OF THIS MAN, WE WONT.
SEEING AS WE DO HAVE SOME LYRICAL CONNECTIONS HOWEVER, WE, THE OFFICIAL SHAM 69, HAVE DECIDED THAT IN RESPECT OF OUR MORAL BELIEF AND SUPPORT WE WILL MAKE A DONATION FROM EVERY SHOW WE PERFORM, BE IT UK OR WORLDWIDE, TO THE NSPCC’S CAMPAIGN AGAINST CHILD ABUSE, AND WILL DO SO UNTIL WE RETIRE AS A BAND.
SO STAY TRUE AND STRONG AND WE’LL SEE YOU DOWN THE FRONT.
SHAM 69however……

Hurry up Harry, get that Sham 69 plaque erected

1:46pm Saturday 23rd September 2006

By Yvonne Gordon

A plaque has finally been erected at The Watermans Arms in Hersham to seminal 1970s punk rockers Sham 69.

The band which which was formed in 1975 had several hits, including Hersham Boys, Hurry Up Harry and If the Kids are United.

Hersham residents association chairman, Andy Pinnick said the plaque was put up outside the pub, on Hersham Green, as a tribute to the band’s role in putting Hersham on the map. He said: “The band played there regularly when it was starting out in the mid-1970s, because all its members came from Hersham village.

“We originally wanted a blue plaque but found out from English Heritage that you had to be dead for at least 20 years! We thought green was the best colour.”

The plaque, which was funded by £200 from community donations and £100 from the residents’ association, is made of enamelled steel and is oval-shaped, 20ins by 14ins.

Pub landlord, Tony Blenkinsop, who went to school with the band’s frontman Jimmy Pursey, said although he didn’t live in the village any more, the group had made a big impact.

He said: “The cover of the band’s first album, Hersham Boys, was photographed outside The George Pub in Hersham Road, opposite our old school, Rydens. All the Hersham boys were in the picture.”

The residents’ association began discussions about the plaque in November but there was a delay after controversy caused by Pursey admitting he accepted a police caution in 2002 after forcibly kissing a 16-year-old girl in a Weybridge newsagents.

Pursey said the incident was “exaggerated”. 

  • It’s no Sham: Hersham Boys honoured despite assault2:07pm Thursday 4th May 2006 inLocals will erect a plaque in tribute to Hersham punk rockers Sham 69 despite its controversial lead singer admitting to a caution for indecent assault.The work of frontman Jimmy Pursey will be honoured along with band members Dave Parsons, Rick Goldstein, Dave Tregenna, Albie Slider and Mark Cain.Their 70s hit Hersham Boys which contained memorable refrain “Hersham Boys, Hersham Boys, laced-up boots and corduroys” is credited with putting the town on the map.Plans by Hersham Residents’ Association (HRA) to erect the plaque were put on hold last month after it emerged police cautioned Pursey in 2002 after he admitted he was involved in an incident in a Weybridge newsagents with a 16-year-old girl when he forcibly kissed her on the mouth an incident which left her so traumatised she left her job.Pursey said the incident was exaggerated and added the plaque should be more about the music than the person behind it.Since a meeting of HRA last week, members and locals have come up with the cash to fund the £300 plaque.The plaque will go outside the Waterman’s Arms in Hersham Green and will be in place in the next three months.Andy Pinnick, chairman of Hersham Residents’ Association, said: “Some of the people in Hersham have known Jimmy throughout his life. “He is a little bit impulsive and over the top but he is not malicious.”His behaviour was inappropriate and we are not condoning it but there needs to be an element of understanding.”There is more to him than the negative headlines.” Pursey recently beat more than 600 entrants to win Virgin Radio’s competition to write the unofficial song for the England football team for the World Cup finals in Germany.His single, which will raise cash for the Teenage Cancer Trust, will be recorded later this month and released to coincide with the start of the tournament in June.More about the Walton Hop peodaphiles September 10, 2001. The Old Bailey trial of the pop mogul and former pop star Jonathan King, in which he is accused of a series of child sex offences dating back to the 1970s and 1980s, begins this morning. Back in July, Judge Paget decided, for the purposes of case management, to have three trials instead of one. So the jury will hear only the charges that relate to the years between 1982 and 1987. There are six within this time frame – one buggery, one attempted buggery, and four indecent assaults on boys aged 14 and 15.I have been having an email correspondence with Jonathan King for the past nine months, and last night he emailed me to say, “I think you know, young Ronson, that whichever way it goes for me you could have an award-winning story here, if you’re brave. You can change the face of Great Britain if you do it well. Good luck! JK”I have just returned from New York, and in the canteen on the third floor of the Old Bailey – in the minutes before the trial is due to begin – Jonathan King comes over to make small talk about my trip. “Did you bring me any presents back?” he asks. “Any small boys? Just kidding! Don’t you think it is amazing that I have retained my sense of humour?”He smiles across the canteen at his arresting officers. They smile faintly back. Jonathan has always told me about his good relationship with the police, how kind they were to him during his arrest, and he looks a little crestfallen at their evident withdrawal of affection. “The police are far less friendly than they were,” he says. “Quite boot-faced, in fact.” He pauses. “And there doesn’t even seem to be a senior officer around. I’m getting quite insulted that I’m so unimportant that only constables are allowed anywhere near the case.”He looks at me for a response. What should I say? Yes, his crimes are so significant and he is so famous that it would seem appropriate for a more senior officer to be in attendance? In the end, I just shrug.There are half-a-dozen journalists here today covering the case. In the lobby outside the court, Jonathan approaches some to shake their hands. “Who’s the gorgeous blonde with a TV cameraman?” he whispers to me. “Sorry if this ruins my image.””I felt terrible about shaking his hand,” one reporter says a little later. “I felt disgusting. I was standing there thinking, ‘What’s he done with that hand?’ I should have refused to shake it.””I just asked my solicitor if it’s unusual for the accused to make a point of shaking the hands of the press and the prosecution barrister,” Jonathan says as we walk into court. “He said it was absolutely unheard of!” Jonathan laughs, and adds, “You know, I fully intend to change the legal system just like I changed the pop industry.”And, at that, we take our seats. The jury is selected, and the trial begins.On November 24, 2000, Jonathan King was charged with three child sex offences, dating back 32 years. In the light of the publicity surrounding his arrest, a dozen other boys (now men) came forward to tell police that King had abused them too, during the 1970s and 1980s. Some said he picked them up at the Walton Hop, a disco in Walton-on-Thames run by his friend Deniz Corday. Others said he cruised them in his Rolls-Royce in London. He’d pull over and ask why they were out so late and did they know who he was. He was Jonathan King! Did they want a lift?He told the boys he was conducting market research into the tastes of young people. Did they like his music? His TV shows? Were they fans of Entertainment USA, his BBC2 series? He asked them to complete a questionnaire – written by him – to list their hobbies in order of preference. Cars? Music? Family and friends? Sex?”Oh, really?” Jonathan would say to them. “You’ve only put sex at number two?”And so they would get talking about sex. He sometimes took them to his Bayswater mews house, with its mirrored toilet and casually scattered photos of naked women on the coffee table. Sometimes, he took them to car parks, or to the forests near the Walton Hop. He showed them photographs of naked Colombian air hostesses and Sam Fox. He could, he said, arrange for them to have sex with the women in the photos. (Sam Fox knew nothing about this).Sometimes, within the bundle of photographs of naked women he would hand the boys, there would be a picture of himself naked. “Oh!” he’d say, blushing a little. “Sorry. You weren’t supposed to see that one of me!” (When the police raided King’s house, they say they found 10 overnight bags, each stuffed with his seduction kit – his questionnaires and photos of Sam Fox and photos of himself naked – all packed and ready for when the urge took him to get into his Rolls-Royce and start driving around.)He told the boys that it was fine if they wanted to masturbate. And then things would progress from there. Some of the boys reported that his whole body would start to shake as he sat next to them in the Rolls-Royce. And then he “went for it”, in the words of one victim. None of the boys say that he forced himself on to them. They all say they just sat there, awed into submission by his celebrity. The boys all say that Jonathan King has emotionally scarred them for life, although almost all of them returned, on many occasions, and became the victims of more assaults.Later, Jonathan King will spend his last weekend of freedom – the weekend before the guilty verdicts – recording for me a video diary of his feelings about the charges. At one point, midway through this 20-minute tape, he hollers into his camera about this perplexing aspect of the case. “They kept coming back to me again and again and again, although this vile behaviour was supposed to be taking place!” He laughs, as if he’s delivering a funny monologue on some entertainment TV show. “Why on earth would anybody do that? I’d be out of that house as fast as I possibly could! I’d make damned sure I was never alone with that person again. Mad!”When the police asked Jonathan why all these boys – who have never met or even spoken to each other – had almost identical stories to tell, he replied that he didn’t know. I am determined to ask at least one victim why he continually went back for more.The defence argues that the police actively encouraged claims of emotional scarring when they interviewed the victims, because, without it, what else was there? Just some sex, long ago. The danger, says the defence team, is that if Jonathan is found guilty, the judge will sentence him not only for the acts themselves, but also for the quantity of emotional scarring the victims claim to have. And how can that be quantified, especially in this age of the self, when the whole world seems to be forever looking to their childhoods for clues as to why they turned out so badly.”Jonathan King,” says David Jeremy, the prosecution barrister, in his opening remarks to the jury, “was exploiting the young by his celebrity.”When I first heard about King’s arrest, I looked back at his press interviews for clues, and found a quote he gave Music Week magazine in 1997: “I am a 15-year-old trapped inside a 52-year-old body.”I talked to some of his friends from the pop industry, and one of them said, “Poor Jonathan. We were all doing that sort of thing back then.”I attended an early hearing at Staines Magistrates’ Court. Jonathan King arrived in a chauffeured car. The windows were blacked out. Two builders watched him from a distance. As he walked past them and into the court, one of them yelled, “Fucking nonce!”He kept walking. Inside, he noticed me on the press benches. We had appeared together on Talk Radio a few years ago and he recognised me. On his way out, he gave me a lavish bow, as if I had just witnessed a theatrical event, starring him. Outside, the builders were still there. They shouted “Fucking nonce!” again.My email correspondence with Jonathan began soon after this hearing. In one email, he asked me if I would consider it fair if, say, Mick Jagger was arrested today for having sex with a 15-year-old girl in 1970. I agreed that it wouldn’t be. He told me that he was being charged with the same crime that destroyed Oscar Wilde – the buggering of teenage boys – and we perceive Wilde to have been unjustly treated by a puritanical society from long ago. I wonder if the reason why we look less kindly upon Jonathan King is because he sang Jump Up And Down And Wave Your Knickers In The Air , while Oscar Wilde wrote De Profundis.In another email, he wrote about Neil and Christine Hamilton, falsely accused of rape while being filmed by Louis Theroux, whom Jonathan sees as my great competitor in the humorous journalism market. He wrote, “Louis EVERYWHERE . . . but who on earth would want to cover the Hamiltons, famous for doing NOTHING. Still, I do hope The Real Jon Ronson will have the balls, courage and integrity to take up the crusade (whatever the outcome) that it is GROSSLY unfair for the accused person/people to be smeared all over the media. Over to you, Ronson (we don’t just want a Theroux treatment, do we?)”Later, in court, some of the victims say that Jonathan had a trick of making them feel special, as if they could do anything, as if they could make it big in showbusiness, just so long as they stuck with him (and didn’t tell anyone what had happened). Has King got legitimate grievances against the legal system, or is he simply trying to seduce me in the same way he seduced the boys?His Jagger analogy, I presume, was alluding to some covert homophobia at the heart of the case. But perhaps the real contrast lies somewhere else. Mick Jagger (or, indeed, Bill Wyman) wouldn’t have needed to pretend he was conducting market research into the tastes of young people. He wouldn’t have needed to have promised them sex with Colombian air hostesses. But Jonathan did not, intrinsically, have much pulling power, so he did need those extra little touches. Perhaps the real contrast, then, is one of aesthetics.The Walton Hop closed down in 1990. There were complaints of noise from the neighbours. But the Hop’s home, the Walton Playhouse, still stands. Jimmy Pursey, the lead singer of Sham 69, was one of the Hop’s most regular teenage attendees. He went dancing there every Tuesday, Friday and Saturday night throughout the 1970s. One day, shortly before the trial began, Jimmy gave me a guided tour of the Playhouse. “It’s so hard to explain to people who see in black and white the colour that existed in this club,” he said. “The Playhouse was a theatre for fringe plays and amateur dramatics. But on Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays it would become paradise.” Jimmy took me through the hall, and towards the stage.”It was inspirational,” said Jimmy. “This wasn’t table tennis. This was dancing. This was testing out your own sexuality. Normal people would become very unnormal. It was Welcome to the Pleasure Dome. It was everything.”He leapt up on to the stage, and took me to the wings, stage right. We stood behind the curtains. “This is where the inner sanctum was,” said Jimmy. “From here, Deniz Corday [the manager of the Walton Hop] would have the best view of the teenagers who were a little bit bolder, a little bit more interesting.””Bolder and interesting in what way?” I asked.”People like me,” said Jimmy. “If Deniz liked you, you’d be invited backstage and get a little bit of whisky added to your Coca-Cola. Backstage, you see. And you’d go, ‘Oh, I’m in with the big crowd now’. That’s all there was to it with Deniz.””And Jonathan?” I asked.”He’d drive into the Hop car park, and come backstage from the side,” he said. “And we’d all be going, ‘God! There’s a Rolls-Royce outside with a TV aerial coming from it! Ooh, it’s got a TV in the back and it’s a white Rolls-Royce!’ Because you’d never know if it was the Beatles.””But it wasn’t the Beatles,” I said.”No,” said Jimmy. “It was Jonathan King.” He laughed. “A very big difference there!”The Beatles lived on St George’s Hill, in nearby Weybridge, and were often seen driving around Walton in their Rolls-Royces. The Walton area, in the 1970s, was London’s playpen, full of pop moguls and pop stars, letting their hair down, doing just what Jimmy said the teenagers at the Walton Hop did – being “unnormal”. In fact, a disproportionate number of celebrities who are now convicted paedophiles hung around backstage at the Walton Hop, this popular youth club, during the 1970s and 1980s. There was Jonathan King’s friend, Tam Paton, for instance, the manager of the Bay City Rollers who was convicted of child sex offences in the early 1980s. (It was Paton who first introduced Jonathan King to the Hop – they met when Jonathan was invited to produce the Rollers’ debut single, Keep On Dancing.) Chris Denning, the former Radio 1 DJ, was another Hop regular – he has a string of child sex convictions, is currently in jail in Prague, and was friendly with King and Paton.For Jimmy Pursey, the trick was to pick up the girls who were drawn to the Hop to see the Bay City Rollers, while avoiding the attentions of the impresarios who orchestrated the night. “It was fun with Deniz Corday,” said Jimmy. “Deniz would say, ‘Oh Jimmy! Come here! I’d love to suck your fucking cock!’ Deniz was a silly, fluffy man. Then there was Tam Paton.I remember being back here having one of my whisky and Coca-Colas one night, and Tam turned to me and he said, ‘I like fucking lorry drivers’. Chris Denning was more reckless. One time he placed his penis within the pages of a gay centrefold and showed it to my ex-bass player, who proceeded to kick the magazine, and Denning’s dick, and yell, ‘Come on, Jimmy, we’re fucking out of here!’ But Jonathan King was more like a Victorian doctor. It wasn’t an eerie vibe . . . but Jonathan had this highbrow, Cambridge, sophisticated thing about him. The Jekyll and Hyde thing. There wasn’t much conversation with Jonathan. And with Jonathan, you’d always had these rumours. ‘Oh, he got so and so into the white Rolls-Royce’. And they’d always be the David Cassidy lookalike competition winners. Very beautiful.””Would he make a grand entrance?” I asked.”Oh no,” said Jimmy. “It was never, ‘Look at me!’ He never went out on to the dancefloor at all. He was much happier hiding backstage up here, behind the curtains, in the inner sanctum.” Jimmy paused. “The same way he hid behind all those pseudonyms, see? He’s always hiding. I think that’s the whole thing of his life. He always says, ‘That was me behind Genesis! That was me behind 10cc! That was me behind all those pseudonyms.’ But what do you do then, Jonathan? Who are you then, Jonathan?”Jimmy was referring to the countless pseudonymous novelty hits Jonathan had in the late 1960s and 1970s – The Piglets’ Johnny Reggae, for instance, and Shag’s Loop Di Love. These came after his hugely successful 1965 debut, Everyone’s Gone To The Moon, which was recorded while he was still a student at Cambridge. (Before that, he was a pupil at Charterhouse). It was a remarkable career path: a lovely, plaintive debut, followed by a string of silly, deliberately irritating hits.One of King’s friends later suggests to me that it was his look – the big nose, the glasses, the weird lop-sided grin – that determined this career path, as if he somehow came to realise that it was his aesthetic destiny to play the clown. But one cannot categorise his career as a downward spiral from Everyone’s Gone To The Moon onwards. In fact, he has sold 40 million records. He’s had a hand in almost every musical movement since the mid-1960s – psychedelic, novelty bubblegum pop, alternative pop, Eurovision, the Bay City Rollers, 10CC, the Rocky Horror Show, Genesis, Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine, the Brit awards, and so on.Within two years of leaving Cambridge, he was running Decca Records for Sir Edward Lewis, with his own West End offices and a Rolls-Royce parked outside. “Genesis,” he once said, “would have become accountants and lawyers if I hadn’t heard their concealed and budding musical talent when they were 15 years old.”He is at once seen to be the quintessential Broadway Danny Rose – the buffoonish loser who was forever nearly making it – and also a powerful multi-millionaire whose influence is as incalculable as it is overlooked. He’s hosted radio shows in New York and London, presented the successful and long-running Entertainment USA TV series for the BBC, written two novels, created a political party – the Royalists – and published The Tip Sheet, an influential online industry magazine that, he claims, is responsible for bringing the Spice Girls, Oasis, Blur, Prodigy, R Kelly, and others “exploding on to musical success. We find and help break new stars around the world.”In 1997, he was honoured with a lifetime achievement award by the Music Industry Trust. In a letter read out at the ceremony, Tony Blair acknowledged King’s “important contribution to one of this country’s great success stories”. A galaxy of stars – Peter Gabriel, Ozzy Osbourne, Simon Bates – came out to praise him, although no galaxy of stars is willing to do the same now that he’s been accused of paedophilia.Nonetheless, he seems to delight in being the man we love to hate (theatrically speaking: he is mortified when he thinks his arresting officers really do hate him). “I love to infuriate,” Jonathan told me over coffee in his office, shortly before the trial began. “I deliberately set out to irritate.””Of course,” I said, “should you be convicted, people will hate you in a very different way. This is not a good climate in which to be accused of paedophilia.””Well,” he shrugged, “it’s not as though I’m sitting here thinking, ‘Oh I’m such a nice person. Will everybody please be nice to me.’I know I tend to provoke extreme reactions, so I’m not at all surprised when they arrive.”There was a short silence.”So you see what’s happening now as a continuation of your public image?” I asked him.”Absolutely,” said Jonathan. “And it is so. And it would be absurd not to regard it as so.””But there’s a difference between bringing out a novelty record that nobody likes and being accused of buggering an underage boy,” I said.There was another silence. “Let’s not discuss it further,” he said.September 11, day two of the trial, and things are already looking hopeless for Jonathan King. The first victim – now a painter and decorator from the suburbs of north London – takes the stand. I’ll call him David. Jonathan approached David in Leicester Square when David was 14 or 15. Although David had no idea who Jonathan was, he quickly told him he was famous. “It was exciting,” says David.Jonathan gave David the questionnaire, the one that ranked boys’ hobbies in order of preference. He filled it out. Jonathan invited him back to his house and asked him if he and his friends masturbated together. Jonathan showed him pornographic movies on a cine projector. “We were talking about masturbation,” says David. “He told me to relax. He undid my trousers. He tried to masturbate me, which didn’t arouse me at all. He told me to do it myself, which I proceeded to do. I felt very awkward.”David returned to King’s house on three occasions. Similar indecent assaults occurred each time. Later, Jonathan wrote David a series of letters. “He made it sound like I would be famous,” says David. The prosecuting barristor asks David to read one of these letters to the jury. “‘Maybe you will go on to be a megastar. Now I am in New York. I will call you when I next hit town. In the meantime, keep tuning in on Wednesday at 9pm for Entertainment USA, the greatest TV show in the world.'”David says that Jonathan King has emotionally scarred him for life. He says he cannot hold children. He says it makes him scared and uncomfortable to hold and play with his girlfriend’s little boy.After lunch Ron Thwaites, Jonathan’s defence barrister, begins his cross examination of David. His tone is breathtakingly abrasive. “We are going back 16 years because you decided not to make the complaint until nine months ago,” he says. “You’re not asking for sympathy for that, are you?””I was the one that was assaulted,” David replies, shakily.”Do you think it’s easy for a man to be accused of a crime after 20 years,” says Thwaites. And then: “Are you interested in money?””I am nervous up here,” says David. “You are putting me under pressure. I was sexually assaulted by that man over there.””You must have been fairly grown up to go to London on your own,” says Ron Thwaites. “You can’t have been a boy in short trousers, crying for your mother.”And so on.We are unaware that, during this cross examination, New York and Washington DC are under attack. That night, I receive an email from Jonathan: “Makes whether or not I put my hand on a teenager’s knee 15 years ago seem rather trivial, doesn’t it? Are you dropping KING for the World Trade Centre? Boo hoo!”What do you think of the jury? A lot of ethnic variation which,I think, is probably a good thing. Not Ron’s best day, but not terminal! See you tomorrow. Love JK.”A week later, Jonathan posts an extraordinary message on his website, kingofhits.com: “Well, it’s been a fascinating couple of weeks. Not many people are fortunate to discover first hand exactly what Oscar Wilde went through! This week is the crucial one for me – keep praying. And just one oblique thought . . . when you look at the teenagers from 15 years ago who grew up to be terrorists who killed thousands in America, wonder what changed them into mass murderers. Then wonder what turns other decent teenagers into mass liars.” Of course, they didn’t turn out to have been lying.King’s demeanour remains cheerful throughout our time together. “I am living in clouds and happy flowers and love and beauty,” he tells me one day. “And if I go to prison, I shall enjoy myself.”Even on the one occasion that Jonathan all but confesses to me – “I’m sure you’ve got skeletons in your own closet, Jon. ‘Honest guv! I thought she was 16!'” – he says it with a spirited laugh.When the Guardian’s photographer takes Jonathan’s portrait early one morning before a day in court, he is frustrated to report that during almost every shot Jonathan stuck his thumbs up – as if he was doing a Radio 1 publicity session – or grinned his famous, funny, lop-sided grin into the camera. This was not the image anyone wanted. We were hoping for something more revealing, sadder, perhaps, or even something that said “child sex”, or “guilty”. But Jonathan wouldn’t oblige.One day during the trial, I hear a story about Larry Parnes, Britain’s first pop mogul. He discovered Tommy Steele and Marty Wilde. Like many of the great British impresarios back then, he based his business judgements on his sexual tastes. “If I am attracted to Tommy Steele,” he would tell his associates, “teenage girls will be, too.” Parnes’s West End flat was often full of teenage boys hoping to be chosen as his next stars. If he liked the look of them, he’d give them a clean white T-shirt. Once he’d had sex with them, he’d make them take off the white T-shirt and put on a black one.Wham!’s manager Simon Napier-Bell – who was once invited by Parnes to put on a white T-shirt – has said that the great difference between the British and American pop industries is this: the American impresarios are traditionally driven by money, while their British counterparts were historically driven by gay sex, usually with younger boys – and that British pop was conceived as a canvas upon which older gay svengalis could paint their sexual fantasies, knowing their tastes would be shared by the teenage girls who bought the records. I wonder if the pop impresarios who seduced young teenage boys at the Walton Hop saw themselves not as a paedophile ring, but as the continuance of a venerable tradition.Deniz Corday is desperately worried that the Walton Hop, his life’s work, is about to become famous for something terrible. “Jonathan didn’t want me to talk to you,” he says, “but I must defend the Hop with all my life.” Deniz is immensely proud of the Hop. There is Hop memorabilia all over his flat, including a poster from a Weybridge Museum exhibition, “The Happy Hop Years 1958 – 1990. An Exhibition About Britain’s First Disco: The Walton Hop”.”Every day, someone comes up to me in the supermarket,” says Deniz, “and says, ‘Thank you, Deniz, for making my childhood special.’ Some say the Hop was the first disco in Great Britain. It was terribly influential. Oh dear . . .” Deniz sighs. “This kind of thing can happen in any disco. The manager can’t control everything.”Deniz says that he knows it looks bad. Yes, an unusually large number of convicted celebrity paedophiles used to hang around backstage at the Walton Hop. But, he says, they weren’t there to pick up boys. They were there to conduct market research. “Tam Paton would play all the latest Roller acetates and say, ‘Clap for the one you like the best’. Same as Jonathan and Chris Denning. It helped them in their work.”Deniz turns out the lights and gets out the super-8 films he shot over the years at his club. Here’s the Hop in 1958. Billy Fury played there. The teenagers are all in suits, dancing the hokey-cokey. “Suits!” laughs Deniz, sadly.The years tumble by on the super-8 films. Now it’s the mid-1970s. Here’s Jonathan at the turntables. He’s playing disco records, announcing the raffle winners and grinning his lop-sided grin into Deniz’s super-8 camera. He’s wearing his famous multi-coloured afro wig.Now, on the super-8, two young girls are on stage at the Hop, miming to King’s song, Johnny Reggae. “These were the days before karaoke,” explains Deniz.For a while, we watch the girls on the stage mime to Johnny Reggae. It turns out that Jonathan wrote it about a boy called John he met at the Walton Hop who was locally famous for his reggae obsession. David Jeremy – the prosecutor at the Old Bailey – says that Jonathan’s “market research” was simply a ploy, his real motive being to engage the boys in conversations about sex. But I imagine that the two endeavours were, in Jonathan’s mind, indistinguishable. I picture Jonathan in the shadows, backstage at the Hop, taking all he could from the teenagers he scrutinised – consuming their ideas, their energy, their tastes, and then everything else.The super-8s continue in Deniz’s living room. Here’s Jonathan again, in 1983, backstage at the Hop. He’s put on weight. He doesn’t know the camera is on him. He’s holding court to a group of young boys and girls on a sofa. You can just make out little snippets of conversation over the noise of the disco. He chews on a toothpick, looks down at a piece of paper, turns to a boy and says, “Who’s phone number is this?”He spots the camera. “It’s Deniz Corday!” he yells. “Look who it is! Deniz Corday! Smile at the camera!” He lifts up his T-shirt and Deniz zooms in on his chest.”In 32 years,” says Deniz, “we never had one complaint about Jona-than and young boys, and suddenly, after 32 years, all these old men, grandfathers some of them, come forward and say they’ve been sexually abused and it’s been bothering them all their lives. I think there’s something deeply suspicious about it. Jonathan’s a really nice guy and definitely not a paedophile. Anyway, I think it should be reworded. I think a paedophile should be someone who goes with someone under 13.”The clothes and hairstyles change as the decades roll past on the super-8s, but the faces of the 13- to 18-year-olds remain the same. They are young and happy. Deniz says that, nowadays, we have an absurdly halcyon image of childhood. He says that the youngsters at the Walton Hop were not fragile little flowers. They were big and tough and they could look after themselves. He rifles through his drawer and produces some of the police evidence statements. He reads me some excerpts. “‘There was a crate of Coca-Cola kept backstage, and it was people like Jonathan King and Corday who hung around there. If you were invited back there you would get a free coke with a shot of whiskey.'”Deniz pauses. “Now how ridiculous can you get? I’m going to give the kids of the Hop a shot of whiskey with a coke?” There is a silence. “Well,” he says quietly. “If I gave them a little bit of whisky once in a while, they’re not going to put me in jail for it. I used to call it ‘coke with a kick’. Anyway, we’re not talking about me. We’re talking about Jonathan. Have you heard of any charges against me?””No,” I say.”Exactly,” says Deniz. “This is about Jonathan. Not about me.”Deniz continues to read. The victim making the statement describes life at the Walton Hop and how Jonathan – a regular visitor – once went out of his way to talk to him. “‘I was obviously excited to be talking to Jonathan King. He offered to give me a lift home, which I accepted. This was the first of many lifts King gave me, and I recall that he always drove me home in a white convertible Rolls-Royce. It was an automatic car and the number plate was JK9000. We talked about music, and he often told me that he needed a young person’s point of view. King drove me home on a couple of occasions before he eventually assaulted me. The first assault occurred at a car park, which was situated on the left-hand side of the Old Woking Road. Next to the car park was a field and a wooded area. King seemed familiar with the location. I believe he had been there before. I was sat in the front passenger seat and King was in the driver seat. I noticed that King had started shaking, and I presumed that he needed the toilet.'”Jon Ronson
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Another Chance (Czech Republic)

Another Chance is Czech street-ska-punk since 2010. Home town of Another Chance is Bruntál. Bruntál is at northeast of Czech republic – at Silesia. Band is four members: Tommy – sing, lyrics, music and lead guitar, Jakub – bass guitar, Petr – trumpet and second vocals and Pavel – drums. Band is formed in part on former members of no idle ska band Náhradní Program. We play fusion between classic punk-rock and ska. Lyrics are primarily about entertainment, us, our future, and last but not least, about drinking. There is no politics as in other Czech bands. We are behind about 20 concerts in Silesia. We have a young, cheerful band always head upwards. We are not pure skinhead band, but we are punks and skinheads in one. Bands Perkele and Stomper 98 are our largest models, but we do not copy anyone, our style is ours and it is different than any other band.

Here is a link to our music profile at Czech music server Bandzone.cz and profile at Facebook: http://bandzone.cz/anotherchance http://www.facebook.com/dalsisance Here is our Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/tmazal At this sites you can find our music, pictures, movies and lyrics. We are Czech band, so our lyrics are in Czech language. We would like to greet all the listeners oi! and ska around the world. Oi! to the World. Be happy and proud, thanks, Tommy, Another Chance

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Tear Up, Playground Politics Album release Now Available on Subcultz

The first album by Tear up will be the first official release from Subcultz records. One of the UK best new Oi! bands that have literally been tearing up the British scene over the last year. And now its been recorded. Please support the band and the scene by placing your order now. Official release gig will be part of the Great Skinhead Reunion Brighton weekend, where the band will be performing the album, meeting and greeting. Its your support that keeps the scene alive! ORDER HERE

Playground politics

King of the car park

Fuck boy

Dead beat dad

Jimmy Saville’s greenhouse

Bollocks to the smoking ban

Not big not clever

This is england

Dodgy dave

One of the faces

Binge drink britain