(0621) The essential problem with feeling part of people in different places is that they never completely see you as one of them. (0701)

 

Illustrating this is our Moosh … couldn’t get much more London than her, yet she’s not East End in herself … she’s from near Edmonton, more Spurs country:

Notice that lake by the way? And my own Londoninity is centred on Ammersmiff, Mill Hill and Blackheath, as laid out in my infamous poem Odeon to Ammersmiff. And Blackheath inevitably leads to suspicions that the denizen’s been dallying with rugger, Tranquil Vale and the Princess of Wales. Plus London Bridge and eventually Cannon Street.

Anyway, were you to want to sum up 70s London, you’d do worse than Stiff Records, Ian Dury and the Blockheads:

Which brings me to two of my hobbyhorses … first being the immortal expression “Local not local” which means someone far more local to an area than, say, a Tom Dick or Harry from Grantchester Meadows or maybe Dunfermline but not necessarily local to anywhere else … and the second hobbyhorse being a particular style of music.

This style takes a group of musos who can really play those instruments … key perfect and note perfect … yet they lack a focal point, a direction, a “thang”. Hence they cluster around an eccentric such as Ian Dury or Graham Parker or Willy de Ville or even Jon Fogerty and the result is greatness of a sort … his vision and their consummate playing.

The word I’m probably searching for here is “playful”.

Fitting that bill was Mark Knopfler … when all were on the same page, reading from the same hymn sheet … they were simply great … but once egos intruded, competing ambitions etc. … then just forget it. None are ever as good again out on their own. …/END.