Driving me Crazy

Pulp “Common People”

I love this track, it has everything going for it. A great tune, funny and at the same time interesting lyrics and no one can mug a video better than Jarvis Cocker. Jarvis was born  in Sheffield in 1963, he and his sister were abandoned by their father when he emigrated to Australia, leaving his Mother to bring them up alone. The realism of working class life in the song doesn’t come from a book but from hard experience. Jarvis now works as a DJ on BBC Radio 6 Music.

The song tells the story of a posh girl who wants to experience what it is like to be working class.

Laugh along with the common people,
Laugh along even though they’re laughing at you,
And the stupid things that you do.
Because you think that poor is cool.

Have a read of the full lyrics here.

I think this is a brilliant song and also a story of our times. Working class people seen as a curiosity by those who have privileged lives. What became Poverty Tourism or Poverty Porn in those dreadful reality shows like “Benefit Street”.

Jarvis said himself about the song “I’d met the girl from the song many years before, when I was at St Martin’s College. I’d met her on a sculpture course… I was studying film, and she might’ve been doing painting, but we both decided to do sculpture for two weeks… It would’ve been around 1988, so it was already ancient history when I wrote about her.”

Although never confirmed by Jarvis it is widely believed that the woman who inspired the song is Danae Stratou, wife of Yanis Varoufakis, a former Greek Finance minister. Stratou studied at St. Martins between 1983 and 1988 and is the eldest daughter of a wealthy Greek businessman.

Having read this week’s poem several times, I am struggling to find a connection between the song and the poem I wrote but that’s how it works sometimes. I listen to the song, I make notes, I write and sometimes the muse mocks me. 

Driving me Crazy

 

I want to cook like a poet

Seeking out the unusual ingredient

Combinations no one else has thought of before

letting each one compliment the other

The flame for just the right amount of time

Seasoned so that every note sings to perfection

 

I want to drive like a poet

Cocooned inside the cab alone with road

Thoughts wandering further than the car can ever go

Following different routes to the same place

Sometimes stopping to admire the view

The journey just as important as the destination

 

I want to write like a poet

Sure of each verse, every dot and comma

Picking the perfect word and placing it in the perfect place

Using a metaphor that young people will write on walls 

With a rhythm that vibrates across continents

And a last line that makes the reader

Cry

Laugh

Angry

Want to make the world a better place

 

© Jeff Price June 2018

 

 

 

 

Dreamtime

Lindisfarne “Meet me on the Corner”

If ever there was an iconic Newcastle band it would have to be Lindisfarne. They are best known for their hit song “Fog on the Tyne” which is seen by many as an anthem for Newcastle (Along with “Blaydon Races”) It is also the only song I have ever sung on a stage.

The band has been through many line up changes over the years and has disbanded and rebanded (just made up that word) a couple of times and is also famous on Tyneside for their Christmas concerts at the City Hall which are always popular and always sell out. For me the band peaked during the years when their main song writer was Alan Hull who sadly died suddenly of a heart thrombosis in 1995 aged 50. 

I picked this song rather than “Fog on the Tyne” just because I like it more. I imagine it is about drugs but there could be another meaning. Let me know what you think.

Hey mister dream seller
Where have you been.
Tell me have you dreams I can see?
I came along, just to bring you this song,
Can you spare one dream for me?

My dreams slip quickly away from me in the morning. I imagine they have some urgent business and need to be off as soon as possible. I am left with only fragments and sometimes feelings of joy or sadness. They never make much sense and feature things like looking for a lost car in a car park or finding new rooms in my house that I didn’t know I had. 

My poem this week is about my dreams and therefore makes little sense.

Dreamtime

 

I walk down streets of sullen staircases which spiral upwards

Entering hidden rooms I watch the walls wheeze and stretch

Straining to hear muffled voices I look around

A ghostly figure stands silent by the window ledge

I try to speak but my mouth is stuffed with straw

Above me swimmers flap their frozen wings

My car hides behind a lamppost sniggering and snuffling

I try to find the keys but they are just beyond my reach

Scolded by my boss for being ten years late for work

I retreat to the rooftop and look down on a unfamiliar city

 

©Jeff Price June 2018

 

Third Time Around

Scouting for Girls “She’s so Lovely”

I can not listen to this track without remembering the day I went to a friend’s wedding which took place in St Mary’s lighthouse in Whitley Bay and as Kate walked down the aisle my friend Simma sang this song.

 

Kate Fox

I like a good wedding. It is at this point I can hear my Brother say something sarcastic like “Is that why you’ve been married so many times?” It does sound bad to say you have been married three times but in reality, the first time was a brief mistake of a teenager.
The second marriage lasted a long time and I am still with and very much in love with the third Mrs Price. We have been together now for nearly twenty years. I have two daughters from my second marriage and Lynda has three daughters. Our five daughters consider each other as sisters and Lynda’s daughters call me Dad.
We are a slightly dysfunctional but happy family.

Third time Around

Love for us was autumnal
A late flowering
We were retrospective lovers
Caught up in new beginnings
Scarred but not cynical
Scared and a little cautious
At times like excited teenagers
Rediscovering our emotions
Learning how to trust again

© Jeff Price June 2018

The Unexpected Chime

James Taylor “You’ve got a friend”

This is a track of its time. I have sometimes thought James is a little too “middle of the Road” for my taste but this track means a lot. Like me James Taylor is in his 70th year and is one of the best selling

folk singers of all time selling over 100 million records. He is a prolific songwriter but I have chosen this track which was written by Carole King. King said the song was inspired by James Taylor song “Fire and Rain” which contains the line “I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend” 
The track reminds me of all the good friends I have made over the years and also of those I have lost, some because they died or those friends who drifted away because their lives changed or mine did.
Yesterday I went to a hospital to collect a friend whose husband is terminally ill. She cannot drive and relies on others to give her lifts. She says she has been cheered by those who have stepped up and supported her and saddened by those who did not.
There have been times in my life when friends have stepped up for me. When the first Mrs Price left I was devastated but also amazed at the small acts of kindness that meant so much. The friend who came around with some food and a bottle of wine and listened while I wittered on about how sorry I was for myself.
On another occasion, after my second marriage broke up, a random woman in a pub chatted me up and although it came to nothing and was no more than a flirtatious few moments, I remember even today how I felt as I walked home with a smile on my face for the first time in ages. She will have no memory of it and doesn’t know that all those years ago she gave back hope to a broken-hearted stranger.
There are friends who you don’t see too often but when you do the years just seem to fall away. There are those who, although they are gone, you still remember with love and affection and one in particular who still visits me in my dreams.

My poem this week is about the spaces left by absent friends.

The Unexpected Chime

 

They’re are shared secrets in my house
Talk of things that have passed
and of things that are to come

They’re are empty wine bottles in my house
Crushed cans of Bavarian Beer
and discarded pieces of chocolate wrappers

They’re is music in my house
From bands who broke up years ago
and singers who sing no more

They’re are empty places in my house
Stacked with silent dining table chairs
and food strewn plates and stained coffee cups

They’re is poetry in my house
In books that line a bedroom wall
Signed by poets who write no more

They’re is hope in my house
From half forgotten small acts of kindness
and the unexpected chime of a doorbell

 

This Poem

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five: The Message

This song is from 1982 and is widely acknowledge as the first Hip Hop song to make it into the charts (or the first Hip Hop song). This video is a bit dated but worth a watch. The lyrics are amazing:
Rats in the front room, roaches in the back
Junkies in the alley with the baseball bat
I tried to get away but I couldn’t get far
Cause a man with a tow truck repossessed my car

Despite the fact this record was released thirty five years ago nothing much seemed to have changed for people of colour in the USA. The Black Lives Matter campaign has highlighted the fact that police seemed to have a shoot first ask questions later policy for black people.

A disproportionate number of young black men end up in prison and the number of black homeless people is now estimated at 500,000. African Americans are only 12.6 percent of the country’s population and yet account for more than 40 percent of its homeless population.

My poem this week is about a teenager called Napoleon Beazley a young black man who

was involved in a car jacking during which a man called John Luttig died. It happened when he was 17 years old and although convicted as a minor he was still executed by lethal injection after spending eight years on death row. Napoleon said at his appeal.
“It’s my fault,” Beazley said at a court hearing , at which a judge set his execution date. “I violated the law . . . and I violated a family — all to satisfy my own misguided emotions. I’m sorry. I wish I had a second chance to make up for it, but I don’t.
Although Beazley had no final words, he left a written statement in which he accepted responsibility for the crime but opposed capital punishment. “No one wins tonight,” he wrote. “No one gets closure. No one walks victorious.”

The quotes are taken from an article in the Washington Post by Paul Duggan. For the full article click here

This is not to say that Napoleon Beazley should not have been punished or in any way to mitigate what he did but to execute someone is not the answer. I have always opposed the death penalty, it does not make people safer or deter those who would kill. The law rightly acknowledges that murder is a dreadful crime and that it deserves a severe sentence but to kill someone because you believe killing is wrong is nonsensical.

Eight countries in the world allow the execution of young people who have committed a crime when they were age 18 years of less Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, China, Yemen, Iraq and USA.
Since the USA Supreme Court allowed executions to resume in 1990 over 1,500 people have been executed.

This Poem

This poem shot John Luttig during the theft of his car on April 19th 1994
This poem was one of three men involved in the attack
This poem admitted that in the instant after it killed Mr Luttig
This poem was full of regret at the stupid and pointless waste of a life
This poem was seventeen and wasn’t old enough to buy alcohol or cigarettes
This poem was old enough for The State of Texas to sentence to death
This poem took only a few seconds to kill John Luttig
This poem was kept for eight years on death row in a cell 6 x 9 feet
This poem admits the killing of John Luttig was a senseless and heinous crime
The killing of this poem by the State of Texas was premeditated and in cold blood
The State of Texas executed this poem for a crime committed by a child

© Jeff Price March 2018