Converse Used To Be Good

Another update and another toilet.

July 14^th 2011. The 100 Club. Oxford Street. London.

I note the above was scrawled on the wall adjacent as I took a leak. It made me smile. On and off, I have lived in Converse for over half my life. I like them so much, I have been known to sleep in them but remain otherwise naked. Used to be good? Nah. They still are!

To understand why I was standing in the Gents at the 100 Club, I need to step back a few years. To a summer day in 2008.

In my last post, I spoke of the cyclical music loops at Topshop that the staff became conditioned to ignore.

I recall a day when I strolled across the shop floor toward some dull but vital meeting with a department manager. As I noted last time, you only really took in the music when it warmed your heart and cockles or spat in the face of all that is musically pure and holy. On this day, my ears pricked up at the sound of an angular bass line setting off at a relentless pace, accompanied by feedback, jarring guitar riffs and an obtuse and challenging chord structure. I couldn’t make out the lyrics but the vocals were delivered at the same break necked speed as the bass. It was all underpinned by a swirling, fairground like organ.

I was smitten. It was utterly magical.

I slowed my walk to make sure I took the whole track in. With no phone on me, I couldn’t Shazam it. Other than realising that it was “greatness” incarnate, I had no idea who or what it was. I felt like Tim Smith (Cardiacs) and JJ Burnell (The Stranglers) had had a car crash and the resulting sound was being broadcast to me.

I knew it was on a loop, so over the following days, I kept returning to the shop floor to hear it again. Over the course of the next week, I made up more and more spurious reasons to eschew the safety and comfort of my ivory tower office and step onto the shop floor into the firing line of the stores demanding staff and pesky customers. All because I was determined to hear this beautiful masterpiece one more time, to maybe get a lyric that I could google.

Despite my best efforts, I never heard it again.

Plan B was to resume my normal working patterns in my office but get a copy of the recent store playlist and work through it in my spare time.

A regular complaint of Topshop from its customers was that they never posted or published the playlists in store making it difficult to ID a song that was played. And I was in the same boat, except I had an advantage of Joe or Joanne Public; I could just go and borrow the various discs from the team responsible for updating/uploading them into the system. So I did.

There were dozens of discs. All with about 20-25 tracks. The team responsible filed them in an unhelpful pile in a drawer. Few had content lists, fewer still had dates or anything that may indicate when they had been issued. What I thought would be a ten minute job seemed to stretch into forever. I was left with the formidable task of sitting through all the discs to explore all the music designed to be ignored and find it.

For over a week, I dedicated a couple of hours each night to the search. My Colliers Wood flat rang out to the sounds of the appalling and anodyne gush that passes as “Alternative”, these days. I’ve said before. I love and hate music in equal measure. At times it was a pretty tough task.

Most tracks were skipped after thirty seconds. They clearly were not what I had heard and they left me cold. Forgettable.

Many tracks that I played through resulted from acts of involuntary masochism. I would sit open mouthed and stunned as the tepid and insipid numbed me to the point of oblivion. Coldplay. Kings of Leon. Foo Fighters. Tragic.

There was some pretty shite stuff being ignored at Topshop in 2008.

But some demanded my total attention. They seemed beautiful. Smitten, I became distracted while I wallowed in aural delight, exploring back catalogues of bands that I had never previously heard. A fair few times, I fell head over heels in love.

After two weeks, I had reviewed each and every disc available. And my song wasn’t included on any of them.

Did I imagine it?

I began to question myself. Had I, created an epic soundtrack in my own mind to take me away from the moment?

It began to convince myself that it was conceivable.

Thinking back to the day I heard it, I was probably on my way to have a conversation with a shoe concession who had lost a pair of shoes sometime in the previous 18 months and wanted someone to look at CCTV images to see who had been near them, or some such nonsense. I would have been walking through the store with leaden shoes, a leaden head and a heavy heart. The meeting was probably offset against a background of dealing with one of my staff who had managed to get another two weeks signed off work by their doctor because they had a slightly sore throat or felt “an ickle bit funny”.

It was entirely possible that my little, fizzy brain had given up on the bollocks that was weighing me down and I had created something that would make me feel momentarily happy… If only I was able to have transcribed what I had imagined; I could have made some money.

Step forwards to a night out in late 2008 or early 2009.

Somewhere in London.

I meet up with my brother, who produces a small CD sized bag and offers me a Birthday or Christmas present. I doubt that it was around either my birthday or Christmas when this happened. My brother and I have a habit of presenting and receiving gifts early or late. Year’s merge into one.

Unsurprisingly, as usual, the bag contained a CD.

Silvery. Thunderer and Excelsior.

My brother enthused – he had heard them on the Gideon Coe show on radio 6 – and kept using the words like, “Cardiacs” and “Sparks” and “Incredible” and “Best Album of the Year” and “Whhhhaaaahhhhhhooooowwwwwwww” all the while grinning like the type of demented cat only Lewis Carroll could imagine. 

I had already latched onto two key words. Sparks and Cardiacs.

These two words were enough to make me need to hear the album. But Alex went on to explain that one of the tracks appeared to have Sparks lyrics being spoken across a solo (still haven’t found that, yet), another detailed the demise of a class of UK diesel locomotive and a third listed off a series of London’s Lost Rivers as a near chant during a fade out.

My brother had clearly thought through his sales pitch well. He sold me three irresistible ideas and concepts. What more could I want from an album?... See notes, below.

But he missed out a few more surprises…

>> Allusions to ghosts and flying saucers above cemeteries.

>> And a muse about the demise of a ship which was crewed entirely by mice, bar the ships cat.

But I think that it still took a couple of days to find the time to give it a listen. I was probably locked in the rota-cokey shift patterns I wrote about last year.

You can guess the rest?

Track two. Devil in the Detail.

The sound of an angular bass line setting off at a relentless pace, accompanied by feedback, jarring guitar riffs and an obtuse and challenging chord structure. I couldn’t make out the lyrics but the vocals were delivered at the same break necked speed as the bass. It was all underpinned by a swirling, fairground like organ.

Sitting in my Colliers Wood living room, I was immediately taken back to that solitary walk across the sales floor at Topshop. Although the album turned out to sound like the inside of my head, I realised that I hadn’t imagined it to make myself feel calm and free of daemons. It was real. Very real. Almost flesh and blood. And it became more beautiful as I listened to it over and over and over.

It’s late 2015 and I still feel warm each time I hear the album.

By the time I got to see Silvery live, for the first time at The 100 Club on July 14^th 2011, I’d found a live bootleg from the Bull & Gate (RIP) and waited at the edge of my seat for the second of three official album releases – Railway Architecture. Back catalogue entirely absorbed, I’d read a million words about them and become lost in their old world videos. I’d had a moment where, back on the shop floor, on the receiving end of an earnest whinge, for something I or someone else had done or hadn’t done… who cares? I’d bitten my tongue to the point of bleeding to stop myself shouting at them:

“Blah Blah Fuckity Blah. Don’t trouble me with your bollocks! I’m listening to Nishikado!”

And that night in 2011, alongside my brother and about another twenty fair souls they were as good and great as I imagined that they would be. Like the best gigs, I was pulled into a vortex where my brain could relax and swirl around and around like something out of The Wizard of Oz leaving me giddy and wound up like a clock-work toy by the end. But – for all my passion for the moment - I sensed that James Orman wasn’t feeling it that night. He seemed disengaged and remote… the rest of the band had to persuade him to play “You Give A Little Love”.

But it mattered not, to me. I was lost. But found.

Now, I’m not going to encourage you to visit Topshop. I doubt they play Silvery anymore.

And I’m not going to say that you should all go out and buy everything that Silvery have ever released. That would be senseless.

But, I will say that, if you don’t go out and buy everything that they have ever released, I consider you an idiot.

For Reference:

Christ On A Bike

The Charge of the Light Brigade

                                      

NOTES

I suppose that the album could include Sarah Nixey making a fake BBC public announcement regarding an imminent nuclear threat to London. I would have to wait until 2015 to have that appear on an album, thanks to Luke Haines.

Echoes From A Shopping Centre

I’m standing at a urinal at Heathrow Airport. Terminal 4.

It’s early June. 6am. I have just been “deplaned” rather than disembarked the plane from Bahrain. My ears are yet to adjust. Sounds are muting, amplifying and echoing at their own pace and own rhythm, no matter how much I fuss with and rattle them.

From a cubicle, I hear a voice singing along to a tune playing over the airport PA. I'd been ignoring it but become aware that it is something ghastly by Michael Jackson. Something from his post “OK” phase and eons away from his “good” phase. A phase that ended in 1982, if I am feeling generous.

The occupant of the toilet cubicle sounds happy. But he is murdering the song. Murdering it slowly. No quick bullet to the temple for this one. This evil, sadistic fucker is killing it by the death of a thousand cuts.

I find it a truly unpleasant thing to hear.

But, it got me thinking. It was the first music I had heard in a public space in months.

This is a difference between life in Saudi Arabia and the UK. Silence in public spaces.

In the UK, music is everywhere. You can’t avoid it. Even when you think you are out of harm’s way, it creeps up on you. TV jingles, advertising, ring tones, computer games… some little bastard on the back seat of the bus playing with his bastard phone. It is always there, replacing the dull throb of the humdrum. And you become so used to it, by and large, your subconscious deploys its own mixing desk and fades it down so low that it may as well not be there. All though you are largely tuned into it, you are simultaneously tuned out; grabbed into the moment, only when you hear something that you either love or hate.

Back in my Topshop days, it could be quite startling and unsettling when the PA system stopped. Not just because it meant that it may be a precursor to a fire alarm and – as an employee – I'd wait to establish whether it was a male or female voice cutting in to politely reassure me that the incident unfolding was being investigated. The gender of voice determined the level of blind panic you were required to deploy (see notes below). It wasn't that. Without music, the store just lost something.

Topshop was a barn, so everything echoed. Music filled the void. Without music, it became cold. Time stood still. It became utterly dispiriting. Lonely. Somehow – I have no idea why – it seemed to die. 

But, to counter that, and to hark back to a previous point, the staff simply ignored the cyclical music soundtrack that was pumped out hour after hour, day after day and week after week to fill the gap. No one praised it. When it was mentioned, it was always criticism. Staff pushed to breaking point by music that they didn't like. But mostly, it was ignored and unnoticed by all and sundry. I lost count of the times, while talking to a colleague, I would refer to a track I had heard on the shop floor that I liked - a track that had somehow passed the Bruno Brookes taste test (see notes) to be included on the playlist – only to have them stare at me as if I were an imbecile. 

There was usually a blank look in their eyes:

“Music?"

"Music played on the shop floor. Is there?" 

"What song? Who?" 

“No Pussy Blues?" 

“No Pussy Blues” was the very first song I heard being played while I walked across the shop floor as a Topshop employee. Thinking back to a couple of horrific, cringe worthy conversations in pubs that stepped right to the sheer cliff face of personal humiliation, perhaps it was prophetic. I mean, I was about 100 years older than most of "the young and the beautiful" that I was working with. 

But, hell, the track still gets to me every time. Magic!

But, back on topic.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a fan of music being so ubiquitous and unrelenting. 

I love music. But, by default, I hate music in equal measure. I do not understand people choosing to use it as background noise. Music is there to be heard. As an experience, it should be immersive. You should swim in it and you should be prepared to drown in it. 

The best music is life itself.

So I have always been confused by and often plain offended by music being used in the background. 

But I wasn’t ready for Saudi and it's silence.

Picture a shopping centre where the only sounds are the low throb of air con and distant traffic, the sound of feet walking on tiled floors, the click click of metal hangers on metal display arms, the muted sounds of a thousand disassociated conversations endlessly echoing around a soulless glass and concrete space.

Cold. Emotionally dead.

But it steps beyond the shared space, over into the thresholds of the individual stores. 

No music. No muzak.

Not even Richard Clayderman being piped in. "Live from hell".

This is how I find Mall of Dhahran, Venicia Mall and Al Rashid Mall. Musically silent.

I’m going to pause. I typed “Al Rashid Mall” into Google to check my spelling and immediately linked to the following YouTube clip. Take a look… it is NOT a fair representation of the real experience. The only tiny temper that you are likely to hear in there is from an irate child/husband being denied some sweets.

I spoke with an Arab colleague about it the other day. He agreed. But he couldn’t explain the logic or reason why music is not played. There are radio stations out here. Western, Arab and Indian music is not difficult to find. It’s intrudes in advertising and jingles as much as in the west, so it isn’t music per se. Music may not be encouraged but it is not outlawed. My colleague highlighted that it is probably driven by the proximity of mosques and prayer spaces in the shopping centres… which I understand, but I am surprised that music isn’t piped and faded for prayer times. The technology is there. But – hey - who am I and what do I know?

But I cannot help being troubled. A year on, I still find it slightly unnerving. shopping centres feel as if they are closed. I walk round feeling as if I've been locked in or am trespassing. Almost as if I will be approached imminently and escorted to the exit for to be fed some wise words by a Security Guard before being thrown on my arse into the street.

Restaurants are the same.

Think what it is like at a chain restaurant. Take away the music and all you are left with are echoes, the sound of extractor fans, cooking, scraping cutlery and furniture and mastication. Everyone talking in whispers to avoid being overheard three tables away. 

There is a void.

A void of mild discomfort.

Many restaurants get around the issue by turning the volume up on the TV. So you eat with the sound track to the news in Arabic, or to round the clock sports coverage or – as in my case, in a Thai restaurant – a documentary about abattoirs. I don’t watch TV anymore (see notes, below), so I find this even more distracting, intrusive and unnecessary than loud music.

TGI Friday can be found all across the Kingdom. I’m not a fan of their food. It’s frozen. It is heated, rather than cooked. It has nothing vibrant or fresh associated with it to offer. It is as plastic and fake as the presentation.

But, in the UK, I get that it offers something beyond a McDonalds meal deal. 

Like it or loathe it, it is a destination based on the atmosphere that it chooses to create. It aims to be the party of all parties. Whatever the day or time it may be, it wants you to buy into the idea that it is the night before the biggest weekend of your life.

OK. I’ve started something… I guess I ought to finish.

In Saudi, the weekend runs Friday through Saturday, so the chain should really be renamed TGI Thursday.

And realistically, I am not sure that they should keep the “G” in the name, given the religious connotation. It doesn’t mean “Golly” because that could be deemed racist. If it means “Gosh”, then that is because of the stupid, vacuous, wet morals of Christians choosing to play fast and loose with the word “God” to get around the whole, apparent, blasphemy issue.

The “G” stands for “God”. We all know it. No good hiding. No good pretending. Move on. (See Notes)

Now, I am not suggesting they replace the “G” with an “A”. Ignoring the fact that it would be commercial suicide, it would just be silly. Perhaps they should go with an “F”, instead. After all, it was one of Chris Evans’ two ideas and it worked for him in the UK; it’s wild and rebellious streak really put punk to shame.

OK. Back on track.

What TGI Friday in the UK does to create an atmosphere, is pump up the volume. For all the dark lighting, all the big personalities among the waiting staff, it is reliant on the musical backdrop to set the scene of unparalleled fun.

Back off track. 

In KSA, TGI Friday have also done away with employing staff who are wannabe actors or natural extroverts. TGI, over here, is staffed by average blokes taking orders, delivering food, hanging around, waiting for you to finish to claim a wage at the end of the day. In silence.

TGI provides an eye wateringly loud and bass driven soundtrack to your night out. It gives you all the latest homogenised, viciously calculated and "sales demographic" driven pop hits alongside hateful, classic party anthems that you could wish for. In my case, it gives me 100% more of this type of music than I could ever actually wish for. And so it goes. You have to shout to be heard like you are at a nightclub. Conversation is retarded. You eat the overpriced food and think about what you will do when you've been set free.

It’s fun. Honest. I love it. 

At home and in KSA. It's my favourite.

So, in Saudi, I have reached a point where going out I wouldn't care if I heard “Earth Song” or some other abomination that Wacko left us as a parting shot to the World. A point where I wish for almost anything to fill the void.

It’s mid September. London.

I’ve, again, been “deplaned” by Gulf Air. Again, I am in the toilets.

Washing my hands, I note the music playing. It’s something ghastly by Culture Club. Something released after their “Not the best” phase. It’s sweet and sugary. My teeth are immediately set on edge.

I am immediately brought back down to earth with a crash. And it makes me think: "Heathrow Airport really knows how to test me".

NOTES

Topshop Fire Alarms - A female voice meant that it was probable that it was a false alarm or drill. A male voice meant that the incident was urgent, ominous and very real. With a male voice, your life expectancy had just been shortened and it was now every man, woman and child for themselves. Even the mice would head for the exits. The chaos, panic, paranoia and senseless drama it caused was only surpassed at opening time on Boxing Day.

Bruno Brookes - Sorry to ruin any dreams you may hold that a bunch of fashionista in Shoreditch dream up what is played in Topshop and Topman stores. It is a bunch of accountant types in an office in Kingston working for former Radio One DJ and alleged domestic abuser, Bruno Brookes. I don’t think he has ever been cool or "on trend". Note; even when he played an uncensored version of “Killing in the Name Of” with it's 17 "fucks" on prime time radio, it was an accident.

Television - About three years ago, my TV broke. I decided not to replace it, as its primary use was as background noise. I used to waste days channel surfing without knowingly watching anything. I have a TV in my apartment in Saudi. I’ve been here over twelve months and am yet to switch it on. Recently, I got a message from a colleague telling me that one of the Saudi channels was showing a decent film that I should make an effort to watch. Relenting, I decided to watch it… After five minutes, I could neither find the remote control nor figure out how to switch the TV or cable box on. I read it as an omen. I don’t watch TV.

The "G" Word - When I worked at Topshop, there was a period where the staff T-shirt had a front print reading “OMG Topshop” in bright yellow print on black. The design was the winner of an in house competition among the staff who were going to have to wear it. There was a fuss in the management team because one staff member (maybe more) refused to wear said shirt based on his/her faith. Many of my colleagues were annoyed and vocally stated that they should just “get on with it” because it was just a generic phrase that everyone uses. The staff concerned considered it inappropriate and a betrayal of their beliefs. Now, I do not share said beliefs and the slogan didn't impact me at all, but I had sympathy for them. If you believe in something to the core, you should never compromise. I was on their side. It got sorted out, they were allowed to wear a plain tee instead, from memory. Obvious. Common sense.

What amazed me about the situation, though, was that after the resolution was reached, we were told that the “G” in question did not and never did to refer to or mean “God” but “Gosh”. And it struck me that senior management appeared were trying to claim some ridiculous moral high ground. It seemed that they were trying to convince me that they were showing benevolence to the foolish rather than just accepting that they hadn't considered that some people get touchy about glib blasphemy (actual or not). As always, I just let the arrogance wash over me... Worse still, within the management team, even after the compromise was reached, the conversations/gossip/bullshitting/general backstabbing/political positioning went on for an eternity and I recall one person – remaining nameless to protect the fucking stupid – who would correct you if you dared to refer to the word “God”. And it left me stunned. Did she really believe the utter and total bollocks that Topshop fed her? Worryingly, I think that she did.

Finally

I'm posting this on 21st October, Lux Interior's birthday... Had he lived, he would have been 69 years old today.

So let yourself be immersed. Feel free to drown.

RIP Lux. Stay Sick.

Happiness & A Dulled Brain

The clocks have gone back. 

The UK loses an hour.

I was really aware of it earlier in the week. I was in Dubai. Four hours ahead of the UK. But even back in Saudi, the difference is still three hours.

Of course, any issue I have is nothing compared to the issue I have had back in the UK where my sleep pattern is always knocked out of kilter at the end of March and October when changes kick in. Today, rather than stumble through in mild confusion, all I have to do is make sure that calls back to folk back home are not conducted too early in the morning.

But it had me thinking.

I am now working pretty structured hours. Sundays through Thursday between 8am and 4pm. I am loving the routine. I leave when it is light, I get home before dusk. If I time it right, I can easily make it to the sea, listen to the waves and watch the Terns and Indians fishing before dusk at around 5:15.

Track back to my time at TS where – for the final four years – I was locked into a dull shift pattern that at first glance ensured that all staff in the team had adequate splits between early and late shifts with a mash of mids chucked in to blur the lines. Fair is fair; it all made sense to share the good with the bad and we muddled along. 

But, in reality, with hindsight, the patterns were ill planned/implemented, cruel, soul destroying and unhealthy. At seemingly regular intervals I was lumbered with the most ridiculous shifts that did nothing but tire the body and break my soul.

Some examples:

Rota-Cokey

You get one shift in

One shift out

In. Out. In. Out.

Fuck you all about…

They do the rota cokey and they fuck you off!

I would have a day off, a day in and then another off. The shift times would be all over the place. Early, late, mid… the day off was used as an excuse to make you fit into whatever gap was easiest. You were locked into the constant cycle of work, sleep, work, sleep, work.

I made no plans. I didn’t see friends. Excitement would be a stroll into South Harrow for a coffee.

Descending Shifts of Doom

Mid

Mid

Day Off

Late Late

Mid

Early

After a reasonable/sensible start to the week, your sleep patterns would be eroded. After the late late, I would not sleep. By the end of the following mid shift I would be broken. Shattered and knackered, dead to the world, but unable to properly rest.

Ascending Shifts of Hell

Early

Early

Early

Mid

Late Late

FFS. That just got more hopeless as the week went on...

In each case, you never hit a pattern or routine. Just when you thought you were or had, the crap would hit in and you would be thrown in the air. Any and all good intentions to get out and “use” the long mornings to go off and do stuff, lunch with friends or just “go for a walk” ended up being lost to the snooze button as your body tried to cope with the irregularity. Weekends were a blur of tasks and jobs interspersed with sleep and rush socialising. Often, I would end up too dead, knackered to be bothered to do anything beyond stare out at the view (albeit, a pretty good view) and lounge on the sofa.

It was draining and had a massive impact on my health. I knew it at the time. I recall a conversation with my GP about perpetual lethargy where – after a discussion of my patterns – he noted that my symptoms were akin to mild jet lag.

Every new job I sought, I strived to find a routine… Even those that highlighted potential unsocial hours demonstrated rota’s and patterns to me that intended to mute or mitigate the impact by allowing weekly set patterns. This allows the body – to some degree – to react and adapt to the pressure.

Yesterday, I read the following link on the BBC News website, below:

SHIFT WORK DULLS YOUR BRAIN

It highlights research demonstrating links between shift work and premature ageing of the brain. The research focus’ on night vs day work but gives more than a passing nod toward many of the effects that I noted at my previous employer.

The piece made me realise how much more controlled and secure I am feeling, today.

OK, I accept, that in trying to keep in contact and my feet rooted in the UK, I can struggle with the time difference and years and years of conditioning means that the Friday/Saturday weekends mean that I lose track of individual days, but I am feeling more energetic, more proactive, more engaged, better able to problem solve and – dare I say – happier and more confident in myself.

Earlier today, I saw a link to an article in The Guardian on Facebook measuring happiness.

Here it is... 

Look... 

HERE!:

Oxford Happiness Test

I came in with a safe, average score. Which is good for a couple of reasons. Firstly – as my friend Giles noted – it is better to be average in such exercises rather than sit at an extreme. Second, given my current treatment programme for depression and how demotivated, direction-less, miserable and vacant I have been feeling for the past 12-18 months, an average “happiness” score is worthy of celebration.

A few weeks ago, another friend - Alex - asked me whether my move to the Middle East was the right idea. I acknowledged that leaving TS was the best thing – the most essential thing – that I had done but that the jury was out on the move to Saudi. It still is. I don’t think that I really know until years down the line but what I can say is that I am happier in myself today than I have been in many years. I am feeling able to look forwards and am enjoying the experience of learning something through the many challenges I face in both my work and “life” life.

Long may it continue…