There’s No Money In Being Yourself

I’ve talked a lot about connections in this blog. Rubbing shoulders with genuine talents, either directly or tangentially. If you look for them, the connections are everywhere. My mum used to teach at the same Basildon school as Alison Moyet’s mum and they were close friends for a brief period. When I worked in the tax office in Southend one of my co-workers was the sister of Cocteau Twins singer Liz Fraser. Chalk and cheese as individuals it seemed, although I obviously never met Liz Fraser (but I couldn’t ever picture her married to a man from Basildon and processing tax returns for a living).

At school I was in the same year (though not the same class) as Jake Shillingford. His band My Life Story had a minor chart hit during the Brit Pop era, ensuring him at least one appearance on Top of the Pops. Jake definitely gave off the air of someone destined for minor fame, although I mostly remember one of his coterie of friends and hangers on who used to permanently carry around a copy of The Clash's Give 'Em Enough Rope album under his arm, as though this was somehow a short cut to looking cool.

Before they became famous, grunge second-wavers Pearl Jam played their first ever UK gig at a tiny venue in Southend that faced out across to the pier. I turned up to that one out of curiosity, there being some minor hype for this event. In the end the place was already sold out (capacity would’ve been a couple of hundred tops), but the doorman did ask me if I was here from the record company. I maybe could’ve blagged my way in, but I didn’t bother.

No loss really. They seem like nice people, with their hearts in the right place, but I found their music dull. So dull I can’t even summon up a more vivid description to denigrate them with.

In Penzance I worked for several years in the planning department of the local council. One of my bosses during that time – Andy – was a fellow musical traveller. He had his own band and like me had once run his own small record label or mail order business. (As a child growing up in Yeovil, his family had been close friends of PJ Harvey's family, so he'd spent some time back then hanging out with her). I think at one point I’d intimidated him by mentioning my love for Cabaret Voltaire. This kind of ‘industrial’ music was too leftfield for his tastes – he liked the simpler pleasures of indie pop music (and to be fair, much of the time in later life so did I).

Andy was still gigging at that point. The band was him and his wife and other assorted floating members. I forget what name they went under. There was a period where he’d make contact with artists he liked and then arrange gigs for them in some of the remoter parts of West Cornwall, providing the support act himself.

One time we got to travel overnight for a planning conference in Bath and we spent much of the journey talking music. At the Travelodge we were staying at he showed me some videos of bands he liked (sound off, squinting at a small phone screen) to see if I could work out who they were. The first clip he chose was Blondie and of course I knew straight away who it was. It felt like everything was coming full circle, given the role that they and their song Heart of Glass had played in my previous life. That he later formed a Blondie tribute band and performed at local venues was just the final piece in the puzzle. He’d shrewdly worked out that there was no money in being yourself and was probably now playing in front of bigger and more receptive crowds.

He once mentioned one of these gigs in passing – not directly to me, but to the office as a whole – and then added in my direction words along the lines of ‘but you probably wouldn’t be interested in coming to something like that.’

He wasn’t wrong, I probably didn’t need to see another tribute band (I’d never seen any tribute bands, certainly not by choice). I loved Blondie though. Atomic is one of the greatest singles ever released. I was less a Heart of Glass fan, but that probably sounds disingenuous given my history with the song. I guess everything is relative.

After the local councils in Cornwall were replaced by a single countywide unitary authority, I lost not only my job but also my connection to Andy. Last I heard he was in Bournemouth, heading up their planning department, and probably repping his Blondie tribute act to the Dorset locals. During the years I knew Andy I was not really making music, I was deep in my writing phase, but when The Goodbye Look took off I thought these were the kind of songs he might enjoy.

I tried making contact via Facebook, but I never got a reply. Most likely he was as reluctant a subscriber to social media as I was, I don’t think he was deliberately ignoring me. Or maybe it was one of those occasions where you mean to write back to someone but never quite get around to it. I’ve done that more times than I care to mention. I’d apologise to all those people, but somehow I seem to have lost touch with them all.

That’s just how it goes when you’re a recluse.