Heart of a Punk Soul of a Rasta

The Lyceum Ballroom on the 27th July 1980

It was a classic trade off really. D wanted to go and see The Police & UB40 at the Milton Keynes Bowl and I wanted to see The Stranglers at the Lyceum. Down to London then. For a night at the legendary Lyceum and an all dayer in a field somewhere near Bletchley. What could be better? Sixteen years of age with six months Government Scheme money in our sky rockets - KA$H that desperately needed a place to go. All we needed to do now was get some tickets!

As far as The Stranglers were concerned that wasn't a problem. The Lyceum gig was a full stop at the end of a UK tour. A phone call to the box office and the job was done. The Police however was a different kettle of fish. In 1980 The Police were top banana, in demand, at their zenith, the biggest band on the planet - manager Miles Copeland III was basically printing his own money. Regatta de Blanc was everywhere, blaring out of every radio, blaring out of every open window across the land. It was in the album charts all year, in fact by the end of the 1980 Police had all three of their albums in the charts. To get tickets for the Milton Keynes gig would mean queuing on the streets of Wolverhampton, outside Sundown Records, on a Sunday morning of the concert promoters own choosing.

You see this is how it was before in those long gone distant days of sense. All you needed to do to get festival tickets was queue for them, on a day known universally as "a day of rest", back then we called it Sunday. Today in this brave new internet world "the age of the idiot" if you want tickets you have to do is mire yourself in a mindless free for all. 9.00 am Friday morning - aren't we supposed to be at work? 9.01 am - "you are in a queue if you click away now you're screwed". 9.02 am - box office website crashes. 9.03 am - computer hangs. 9.15 am - gig sold out. 9.30am - buy tickets off Ebay at twice the price. That's progress for you, five gears, all reverse.

With bleary eyes and beery breathe and with the overwhelming feeling that I'd got a metal band welded tight around my head, I made my way on foot to the town centre. No buses before eleven on a Sunday morning - that meant Shank's pony for me. A five mile stretch, across the park first. Not a soul anywhere to be seen, except for next doors dog. He must have got the scent of a bitch cos he was going full tilt across the playground. He was feral thing, most definitely canine but of a completely unclassifiable breed. I never saw him on a lead once. All that could be said of him was that he was a short haired brown and white medium sized dog. Come to think of it I did see him being carried a few times and wheeled round in a pram by some kids once, but never on a lead. I shouted him. "Hey Laddie!" He stopped dead in his tracks but didn't condescend to look my way, just sniffed at the green peeling paint at the base of the Witch's Hat and then pissed off. I did the same.

Across the road next, and down an alleyway over arched with trees that spilled over the spiked green wrought iron railings from inside Merridale Cemetery. They were always abundant, these trees. They made the alleyway seem more like a shadowy dank tunnel, stifling when warm, dripping when wet. A gang would come from the council twice a year to cut them back but their growth was veracious and they'd soon be covering everything again. My Auntie Eva, who lived in the flats nearby said that their prodigious growth was of no great surprise after all "they'd got two hundred of flesh and blood feeding their roots".

The final stretch of my jaunt into town was up Brick Kiln Street. Past the Brick Kiln Street Curry House and the Brick Kiln Street Chippy, here you had to be wary lest your monkey boots skid on a pat of Saturday night's fresh accumulation of sick. The pungent aroma of half masticated and hardly digested vegetables steeped in curry sauce and Bank's ale was not something you wanted to retain in your cleats. It was half eight by now and still there was not a bleeding soul to be seen down the straight and wide usually busy thoroughfare. Not a single British Leyland Princess or an Austin Allegro to bless yourself with. Not even the Alsatian tied by an oily rope to an oily kennel in the Tatters yard was remotely interested in being interested. He usually barked insanely if someone so much as farted as they flitted past. He seemed happy this morning simply to lie low on the sump infused soil next to the pale blue Ford Zephyr he was supposedly guarding. The incongruous Zephyr tittered awkwardly on bricks and blocks over oil filled inspection trench. One good kick would have brought it down. One well aimed boot and the dog would be barking and the sleepers awoken, but I hadn't the time or the inclination to be set upon and savaged I'd got something on, it wasn't much, but it was something.

The smoke and exhaust blacked Victorian School, with its separated entrances one for BOYS one for GIRLS - the GIRLS entrance long since blocked up; the hundred one back to back houses stretching on and on off every side road I crossed; the Lord Raglan pub with a group of plumped up pigeons huddled together in the top left had corner of its red tiled roof. All these dirty dead buildings were just here for me. I was Charlton Heston in the Omega Man. No one left, just me. I stopped on the quadrangle in the front of the Merridale High Rises to survey my dominion, a beer glass left on a ground floor window sill, scrunched up chip papers cascading from a completely inadequate yellow plastic bin, a collection of shoes on top of a bus shelter roof and what looked like a blokes entire worldly goods strewn across the grass. Up above the story of how they'd gotten there became apparent. The wife, girlfriend or lover, in a frenzy to evict all the bastards worldly possessions from out of a fourth floor window had robbed gravity of one item by shutting the window a little too soon. Now what looked like a grey coat, trapped by the end of one sleeve was left hanging there, hanging on like grim death. Was this how it was going o be for me. A life here in Wolverhampton, hanging on like grim death in this burnt out, fucked up industrial town?

There was nothing worth nicking, it was mainly clothes that made up the disparate jumble of belongings, I guess the geezer had been present at "the fall", and able to scoop up the good stuff before heading off to a mate's sofa to sleep things off. He'd wait there for the bloody woman's mood to change and for the storm clouds to pass and for things to return to normal again. Hopefully it would be before opening time cos he was strapped for cash and he'd need that grey coat cum Monday morning.

Expectation and anticipation are strange things. Almost sexual in terms of linkage - well it's always been like that for me. So there we were enthused with an unmanageable nervous tension, D and I waiting outside Sundown Records with no more than fifty or so people before us in the queue. Chain smoking, thank God he'd got some fags, and quiet. We were happy just to listen to the crack and the banter of the other expectant souls. These Sunday mornings queuing outside of Sundown Records had a communal "us against them" sort of energy about them, an energy that was invariable lacking when we got to the actual Festivals we were buying tickets for. Ten o'clock soon came around, our money came out and was counted in the sunlight, and Drongo Pete took the chair from behind the door to let folk in.

Sundown Records was the largest independent record shop in Wolverhampton straddling the corner of two large thoroughfares Lichfield Street and Princes Square, right slap bang in the centre of Wolverhampton. Its impressive shop front was set below a four story outrageously ornate Victorian building. Because of its position it had two entrances, and two distinct rooms, which were connected by a short flight of no more than three or four steps. One half of the shop was narrow, cramped and dark, the other with two large floor to ceiling widows was always bright and Spartan. On these Sunday mornings when ticket sales were the business of the day only the smaller darker half of the empire would be open. There was no need to open the rest of the shop, you see in Britain in 1980 we had Sunday trading laws. This basically meant you weren't allowed to buy jack shit on a Sunday. Unless it was the Sunday Mercury or a pint of Bank's Mild or a packet of Players No. 10, or concert tickets. If Sundown had opened the whole shop it may have looked like they were intending to sell RECORDS! On a Sunday! And this could have brought down both the Church of England and The British Government, which in hindsight wouldn't have been such a bad thing.

Once inside the smoke filled shop every sinew and mussel got a chance to relax, the tickets were in the bag. Drongo Pete was there dishing out the tickets right left and centre. Pete had the full range of faculties required for serving in a record shop circa 1980. Firstly he'd the ability to have a fag on, constantly, and never once come anywhere near singeing his shoulder length frizzy flowing locks. He had the ability to brew, and the capacity to drink his share of the 48 mugs of tea per nine hour shift. He knew exactly who had 6 sugars and who had only 4 and whose mug was whose. No mean feat bearing in mind there where four members of staff and a manager at Sundown. Pete had a "Watch out Watch out There's a Humphrey about" mug. He'd make a "hun" sound every time he looked at it prior to taking a sip. The sound wasn't a stifled laugh it was more like a sound of recognition. Like saying "there you are again you funny mug you" - but without the words. More importantly though, Pete knew that at 10.00am every day (without bleedin' exception) "24 Carat Purple" by Deep Purple had better bloody well be on the turntable and playing - loud! Cos this was when Dave Green the manager of Sundown rolled in, and if Purple wasn't banging out of every speaker when he arrived Dave would be pissy all day.

But these vicarious faculties were nought compared to revolutionary thinking Pete brought to Sundown Records. His main claim to fame came with his ground breaking work in the displaying of 45's. All new releases were pinned up on a large area of what would have been blank wall space. Clear plastic sleeves were pinned to the wall and recordless picture covers were inserted. The plastic sleeves were affixed using four drawing pins. This meant a lot of drawing pins were required, an incalculable amount - at least 400. Manager Dave had bought a box of five hundred drawing pins back in 1972 and had no bleeding intention of ever buying another box. An emergency back up supply could be built up on the heals of your Slates (Solatio Shoes) but even so there was never ever enough pins to go round.

Then one day, in what was probably the most audacious move ever attempted at Sundown Records, Pete decided that instead of using four drawing pins to pin up the plastic sleeves he'd only use two. He started at the far left hand corner of the display wall, where the Beatles Paralaphone re-releases were. He affixed the left hand side of the first "see thru" plastic sleeve to the wall using two drawing pins. Then he slid the next sleeve underneath the first and pierced them both with two drawing pins, basically conjoining them. He carried on in this way conjoining every single on display and pocketing two drawing pins with every move. A week and a half later Manager Dave Green noticed. "Who the fuck has been playing silly buggers with the cowing singles?" Luckily "Smoke on the Water" was playing at the time. But other than that no one dared make a sound. "I said, who the fucks been playing silly buggers with the cowing singles?" Pete sheepishly stepped forward from behind the counter brandishing a mug full of drawing pins looking like a Salvation Army tin rattler. Dave's visage was transformed at the wondrous sight. "Shit me Pete where d'you get all them pins from mate?" Then the penny dropped. "Oh right, less pins, it looks right fucking smart Pete. Err sorry madam yes this gentleman will serve you now. Pete don't just stand there tek the money off this woman will ya."

And so Drongo Pete's place in history was well and truly cemented. But celebrated as he was he remained humble, so humble in fact the next Friday whilst opening his pay packet in the Posada pub (across the road from Sundown) he admitted to Jim that his "road to Damascus" cum "eureka" moment had been cribbed off his mom. He'd been helping his Mom hang out the washing when she'd motioned with her head towards the washing line four doors away. "Look at that stupid mares washing - she's had no learnin'. Look at the amount of pegs she's using on her line, its bleedin' indecent. I suppose she's bought a load cheap uns off the Gypos that came round knocking last week. Buy once off them and they'll always be knocking you up thinking yam a saft touch. Look here our Peter this is how's yow pin up yower washing. One peg ere in the shoulder of yower dad's shirt and one in the waistband of yower dad's best trousers, see yower link um together". So Drongo Pete wasn't really a free thinker after all. It was his Mom. But that didn't matter to D and I, we had our tickets for The Stranglers and we had our tickets for The Police and we were off down the smoke, away from this burnt out fucked up, exhausted and wonderfully stupid town, for a weekend anyway. TBC