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Zigzagging  on Deptford High Street

 Guns have always been fascinating tools of destruction- I suspect since their creation they’ve  offered the average Joe who cant fight for shit  an almost superhuman quality…death at the pull of a trigger. Go to any School playground in the world and I will bet youll find some kid  pointing an imaginary gun at his friend mock execution style-go online and youll even find girls posing with guns, in their underwear, oh and your more likely to find an item of clothing with a gun on it then a image of Christ. yep Guns have always been in Vogue and with each decade Western’s, The Godfather, Gangsta rap have been the scapegoats rather than the very simple reality! Now lets face it Guns Sell.. and even if you don’t have a licence or live in a state     ,a boy I knew pulled it on me after I had allegedly mouthed off to him …granted it was just an air rifle but still…my friend Alban mouthed off to this guy “Your chickenshit ! you wont fire”  and sure enough the kid didn’t, he just put it back in his bag- and had obviously wanted to  pull it out to gain a reputation and look tough. Fast forward eleven years and Im walking down Deptford High Street with my friend Chris one early afternoon, Deptford high street is vile most days…Full of stalls selling rotten fish, bad meat, stolen mobile phones and hairdressers where your more likely to buy Crack than hair products (Yes If you were wondering) it stretches for yards beginning with an Anchor attached to a concrete circle where the drunks and winos hang out and often who are scattered among the street depending on how drunk they are, girls of 16 who will not move out of your way and will kiss their teeth at you if you don’t, and disappointed chinamen who have invested in restaurauts  around the area who can be seen smoking their cigarettes in utter disbelief whilst staring at the ground. Twice a week stalls are set up selling electrical goods, mobiles , cheap clothes and tacky bedspreads and carpets with tigers on ,this isn’t kitsch good this is just bad taste in every way. And yet at night the Street  resembles a lost new York city backstreet in the 30’s complete with neon signs outside bars and imagine hard enough and you can imagine Burroughs or Ginsberg sampling the urban delights of the past,the true tragedy being that this was the road that had the very pub that Christopher Marlowe came to meet his end with a knife to the eye. And yet Im both in love with the place and utterly loathe it at the same time, after all it was the place where I earned my stripes as a teenager looking for meaning out in the streets and much inspiration would follow entering my diaries and eventually lyrics for the first Skuzzies album. This Day however such romantic notions of writers and scholars had been totally excised  from my mind for this was a day of vengeance. I was on the prowl  for a guy who had sold me a ten pound rock (it was exactly that, a ten pound rock made of stone… not crack cocaine)  and I was seething with furious anger utterly determined to catch this cretin. Usually I wouldn’t score from people I didn’t know in fact I was very lucky I had a steady supply of dealers a phone call away –but some reason that had defied logic made me curious (and stupid)  so with my last ten pounds I sampled the finest granite money could buy throughout the land.After entering two betting shops I spied this rip off merchant walking towards me like a chubby Jamaican Clint Eastwood ,It was slightly unnerving as this certainly wasn’t the coward who had legged it the previous night before I opened the wrap!, no this guy was unusually calm and looked incredibly confident. “You ripped me off!” I yelled  and began to advance towards him expecting his bravado to drop and for him to beg me for mercy, I noticed more people leaving the betting shop to watch this showdown along with Chris who had obviously sussed  the inevitable . “I gave you what you asked me! “ replied the fat splodge “If I Wanted to stare at rocks off the ground I would studied archaeology!-you know what I meant  and I want my money” , I ran straight up to him raised my fist and that’s when I noticed a bulge at the bottom of his tshirt. The cretin  looked deadly serious as he grabbed underneath his t-shirt and slowly  pulled out his gun….Its quite something to look into the eyes of someone who has NOTHING to lose…whose entire life has consisted of such occurences  day in day out and to realise reason isn’t  a word that can be applied in this kind of situation either!, “what you gonna do now?”  he asked as he loaded a bullet into the chamber and again slowly raised the gun  pointing  it directly at me….and right then I did what 99 per cent of vain men would do in a situation like this ………..I ran……..and…as I ran I imagined that any minute I was going to hear a very loud bang, right then logic told me  to lessen my chances of being shot I should  run in a zig zag motion and that is exactly what I did… much to the delight of the rasta’s standing outside the outside the betting shop “eh mon, this is just like ghetto benny hill!” yelled one and laughter erupted as antoerh began to sing the theme tune.That was proabably the only time I had heard that laughter and genuinely felt happy….late that evening I saw chris and asked him why he hadn’t run in fear …”well he wasn’t pointing it at me” he replied…..

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b

Jock Scot

 Peter once declared himself to be foremost a writer and that music was merely the vehicle by which he hoped his writing would reach the wider world. Peter’s submissions of poetry and short prose pieces in issues 3 to 14 of Ian Allisons brilliant and short-lived literary “zine” demonstrated that promise.Copies were snapped up quickly at the time of publication and will assuredly become highly prized collector’s items in the future for those with the time and income to track down and collect. The life-style of a prolific touring musician is evidently unsuited to the creation of lengthy literary prose so the prospect of a full-length novel or even short stories remains so far a tantalising project for a future. His writing to date would appear to be a preparation for the time when his working schedule allows that kind of commitment.

Nina is a good choice as editor she has status and respect in the music world, revered by her fans for the detailed and passionately loyal portrait of cult guitarist Johnny Thunders, she has been a fan, close friend and chronicler of some of the music world’s darker more troubled talents and she writes with humour, painstakingly researched biography with and obvious sympathy for her subject which is demonstrated by the care and integrity of her research. She has written about Nico, Peter Perrot and Leee Black Childers amongst others.

It took about a year and a half of  trips to Nina’s flat in Barnes before she was ready to to take on the task of removing this albatross from around my neck.  Firstly I had to assure both Nina and Peter that I was happy to forego my role as “self-styled literary agent” secondly  it was required to familiarise Nina with Peter’s idiosyncratic manner and style of business. Once those objectives had been achieved Nina made short work of picking out suitable passages and weaving them together into a cohesive whole. Peter’s subtle accolade to her on the back of this books reveals something of his skill as a writer as well as to hers. Its worthy of the Times crossword puzzle “Watch Nina write, she riots” 9 across: who riots? the STYLISH kid! In five words the bard of Albion slyly complements the doyenne of the gothic and of baroque and roll biography, assiduous researcher, painstaking recorder of crucial minutiae. If you read her biography of her teenage idol legend Johnny Thunders you will appreciate why she has been treated with rare reverence by the Hollywood film company who are currently in pre-production mode

Nina’s task in editing the journals demanded the same technique resorted to by Alan Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac when faced with a trunkful of closely written pages with no numbers or indication of intended order. Which is supposed to be page one and how does one collate the random sheets into some semblance of sequential order? You just assemble them in whatever way seems to work and hope for the best … if Gysin and Burroughs cut-up theory is correct this intuitive assemblage will be an improvement on the authors order of writing. That is how the classic Naked Lunch was put together and Nina’s task was similar, confronted with fragments of indecipherable scrawl in creating this elegant sequence from the random sequence has proved to be a remarkable achievement.

The books of Albion rewarded close scrutiny by the avid fan prepared to decipher the spidery hand-writing whereas for Albion to Shangri La reveals an open secret hidden in plain sight - that this guy can write I don’t know another to equal him in this generation - its a more mature hand,  poetry as prose by a writer of stature who is clearly developing his craft. within the covers of this book one finds the true individual; the expatriate lifestyle with its frequent journeys by Eurostar, domesticity, favourite television characters such as comedian Tony Hancock, Steptoe,  Peter Falk of U.S. cop show Columbo all hang together with  to create a remarkable gentle candidly intimate portrait of the prolific musician and artist.  The usual suspects amongst the now familiar circle of friends are lightly touched upon and there are some surprising revelations including a declaration of love and his intentions to take a life-long partner.

The final third of the book and tour diaries is equally personal but more rewarding for aficionados of Babyshambles and reveals the inside track of touring solo and with the band.

If you have any interest in the man or indeed contemporary culture this book is good value for your money. I recommend you read it.