MY NIGHT WITH THE RETURN OF DIPLOMAT

[23 December 2009]

"And so we gathered at the rather splendid Culloden Hotel to witness the return of Diplomat, the also-rans of the late 70s Belfast rock scene. Their first gig for 28 years, these are men who have neither played the guitar - nor peed standing up - for the best part of a decade. The occasion, the 50th birthday of the guitarist [name obviously withheld for legal reasons]; the audience, a select band of 150 invitees, friends and business acquaintances who simply hadn’t been quick enough off the mark with an excuse.

Diplomat’s hey day coincided with the worst privations of The Troubles – when they started it would be years before the security situation eased sufficiently to allow the inward flow of a sufficient supply of Eastern European gardeners, nannies, au pairs and street performers.

Back then of course we had to make our own entertainment; largely it has to be said by watching television – noses pressed to the screen trying to tell if Susan Stranks really wasn’t wearing a bra; thrilling to the homo-erotic subtext of Starsky & Hutch; and, later still, getting lost in the intricate weave of Kate O’Mara’s Triangle.

Thank God then for those few souls who blazed a trail … struggling to learn all three chords to 'Johnny B. Goode', so that the rest of us frankly didn’t have to bother. Men who had the vision to see that in those dark, dreary, fun-starved days people of Northern Ireland would turn out and pay good money to see almost anything.

Their career was brief, but for those few short years in Belfast they burned as brightly as a freshly hijacked Austin Princess. All we are left with now of course is a handful of demos, a few live recordings and the band members’ interminable anecdotes.

There are some moments when live music is a truly joyous and uplifting experience, and increasingly those moments are to be found in the company of jobbing musicians in small venues. It is however some years since Diplomat were jobbing musicians and, it has to be said, the Stuart Suite at the Culloden is a pretty big room.

Kicking off with a cover of Hawkwind’s seminal ‘Silver Machine’ we were in an instant transported back to the 1970s – spangles, space hoppers, and rubbish piled three foot high in the streets. This was a time when kiwi fruit was an antipodean insult, avocados were only a rumour, and olive oil could only be purchased from the chemist as a cure for ear-ache … which takes us back to the music.

The volume was a little on the low side, but fortunately the majority of the audience were in a position to discretely adjust their hearing aids.

An interesting medley lurched from ‘Get It On’ to ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ to Abba’s ‘Ring Ring’ and back to a Diplomat original ‘Let Me Out of My Cell Tonight’. To include an original composition in such exalted company, was some might say brave, others might say foolhardy. I on the other hand was always taught that if you can’t say something good, say nothing. The final segue gave us ‘No Particular Place To Go’ – which frankly explained why most of us were here in the first place.

The band then essayed a version of ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ introduced with express “apologies to The Beatles”. I have to say that if I were representing the Beatles, it was an apology I would not have been minded to accept, however the band threw itself into the song with almost as much gusto as the guests attacked the buffet.

A band original ‘Hanged’ followed at a brisk trot. It is apparently a story of Western betrayal and intrigue; although as no lyric sheets had been handed out I cannot confirm this.  We were treated - and here I use that word in entirely the wrong sense - to ‘Teenager In Love’, which if nothing else proves these guys have long memories. 

A 20 minute version of ‘Johnny Be Goode’ finished off the set and, quite frankly, most of the audience. Afterwards, with the threat of future gigs hanging ominously in the air, the band accepted the plaudits of their families and fan and called out for Sanatogen and rubbing alcohol. The rest of us hit the bar.

Happy Birthday Mate!"

FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH - MY NIGHT WITH STEPHEN STILLS

23 October 2008, 
Vicar Street,
Dublin

Last night I did something I’ve never done before – I walked out of a gig part way through. Stand up Stephen Stills.

The venue  is a small and fairly intimate club setting.  Tables, drinks and a clear view of the stage - a very civilised arrangement, and a genuine 'I was at Woodstock' star.

The opening number was 'Helplessly Hoping', with Stills on electric guitar backed by a three piece bass, drums and organ combo. No worse choice perhaps for exposing the fact that Stills’ voice is shot to hell. Stripped of any harmony vocal it was actually painful to listen to. It did not help that they appeared to have brought in the soundman from The Wheel Tappers and Shunters Club to mic up the drums – it made George Dawes sound like John Bonham etc.

The band then immediately left the stage and Stills ran through about 8 or 9 solo acoustic numbers.  These included a Dylan cover - 'Girl From The North Country' - and a very long rambling folk number to which he had written new words apparently. His guitar technique remains impressive, but again his voice was horribly exposed. I read an interview where he talked, in rather crass terms it has to be said, about a recent illness, and I can confirm that he does indeed sing like a man with erectile dysfunction.

After each song he stepped back from the mic and took a little bow, while a roadie brought on and plugged in a change of guitar. After every song! On occasion the roadie and guitar were shooed away to allow an extra bow. I should declare that I have always thought him more than a little smug, albeit that around 1968-1971 he had every reason to be; when he wasn't chilling in Laurel Canyon, he was hanging out at Apple with George Harrison, or recording with Jimi Hendrix.

Thoroughly bored I began to take notice of the sights & sounds around me. It was hard not to. Next to me was a man clapping loudly out of time, and yelling "Yee-haw!" at random, inappropriate moments. He was clearly a fan. You could feel his near hysteria as Stills launched into 'Suite: Judy Blue Eyes'. The tension built as my neighbour waited for the Latin-tinged coda to kick in - a coiled spring of B.O. and anorak.

After a 20 minute interval the band returned. I noticed that the bass player looked like John Sergeant, dressed for the pasa doble – all skin-tight, silver buttoned ski-pants and shape throwing. I also realised that the band had been chosen so as to ensure that each of their foreheads was larger than Stephen’s. I noticed that the sound was appalling. Needless to say the crowd loved it.

One Tom Petty cover later, and midway through something that sounded like it may once have been ‘Rocky Mountain Way’, I made my excuses and left.

HOW I ACQUIRED AN ENCYCLOPAEDIC KNOWLEDGE OF ROCK MUSIC

The first LP that I remember buying, or rather asking my mother to buy for me, was the Beatles’ "A Collection of Oldies".   I am fairly sure that  this was because I had seen ‘Help!’ on TV.  I have a very clear recollection of watching the chase down the beach at the end of the film on our black and white TV. Of course these may be two completely unrelated events.

I think I was about 12 or 13 years old.   There were two Jim Reeves LPs in our house and a Max Bygraves cartridge for the 8-track player in the car.  This remarkable device had been bolted on below the dashboard in the passenger's footwell, on one memorable occasion dislocating a knee cap of a particularly rangy cousin.  My musical foundations were laid on very shaky ground.

Having said that, years later I discovered a reel to reel of ‘With The Beatles’ in the attic.  So perhaps my parents were cooler in their 20s than I ever gave them credit for; although it is more likely simply testament to the ubiquity of the Fab Four in 1963.

I still have that "A Collection of Oldies" LP.  It went briefly to live at a friend's house.  By that time I had all the tracks on other LPs so I swapped it for a copy of "Disraeli Gears".  Then I realised I had to have it back.  I really, really had to have it back - not just any copy; MY copy.  As I recall money changed hands to secure its return.

The Beatles were central to my teenage years.   Everything I did, every waking thought involved the Beatles.  Looking back now I find it quite unsettling that I became quite so focused.   This reached a peak around 1978-1980, just in time for John Lennon's demise; of which more later, perhaps.

Of course I had form.  There was a period years when I was 7 or 8 when I would not eat any meal at home unless there were baked beans on the plate.  Aged 5, I would only eat from "the stripey plate".  But these are childish things that are outgrown.  The Beatles were different. 

In R.E. I chose to do a project on Transcendental Meditation; English essays featured quotations from ‘Eleanor Rigby’; my art project was a collage of album covers.  You get the gist.

The point is that the Beatles were my entry point into the music we call pop, and provided - and still provide - a fixed point from which all else radiates out.  To this day my CDs organised on the basis that the Beatles are always in the top shelf, left hand corner.  Everything flows from that point - solo Beatles, the Rolling Stones, The Who and onwards and outwards.  These CDs are not alphabetised you understand; they are just there, and I know where they all are.  When I moved house they each reassumed their fixed position on some nice new shelves.

Did I mention that the first track played in a new house or a new car has to be a Beatles track?  

No?  Well, take it as read.

Whilst all around me the punk wars raged, I was keeping my head down and buying LPs by The Beatles, The Who, The Stones, Cream and well, Wings.  In the days before the internet, and in the absence of older siblings or hipster parents, there was of course no easy way of finding out about the music of a previous decade.  A chance encounter with a Tommy ('TV on the Radio') Vance show featuring the music of 1967 lead me to The Doors, Jefferson Airplane and The Velvet Underground.  That show featured 'Heroin' and 'White Rabbit' but it was 'Light My Fire' that impacted most on the pretentious 14 year old grammar school nerd.

A nerd and at 15 a school librarian, which involved a lapel badge and more importantly a pass on the General Studies class.  This allowed us to loll about the library for several hours a week drinking coffee and speculating whether or not the actual librarian wore a bra.  It's nice to have a hobby, at any age.  She was in her late fifties so I suspect the answer was yes, but it was an all boys school and our experience of female corsetry was limited.

Then, one otherwise unremarkable day, this librarian of undetermined corsetry found a book that had seemingly been stolen from the public library and left in the school. I was told to return it on my way home.  It was 'The NME Encyclopaedia of Rock'.  Needless to say it never made it back to its rightful owners.

This book really was a revelation; a pre-punk A-Z of classic rock with biographies, discographies, and almost as important actual pictures of album sleeves and band members.  I read that book from cover to cover; actually eventually the back cover fell off.  I underlined in red the albums I wanted, and ticked them off as I slowly edged towards the perfect collection.  I wrote in details of new albums as they were released. Looking at that book now it is clear that there was some fairly sophisticated code being applied - different coloured lines; some straight, some wavy; asterixes; little dots and crosses - the meaning of which has long since been forgotten.

I took it with me to university.  I read sections of it out loud to my fellow students.  We compared record collections and quizzed each other by reading out the opening lines of reviews to see who could identify the band or album in question.    It goes without saying that, perhaps consequently, my experience of female undergarments remained fairly limited during this period.

Even forty years on I can still quote reviews and the sarcastic captions to the photographs - a picture of Wings'  "Red Rose Speedway" bore the legend 'Too bad these was only room for Paul on the cover'.

I never met anyone else who had this book, although recently David Hepworth tweeted a photograph of his.  If you ever come across a copy in a second hand book shop I highly recommend its purchase.  Of course it is essential that you get the edition that includes Gentle Giant, sadly absent from later editions, and that completely omits reference to anything that occurred after 1975.  Of course, I suspect David Hepworth's edition finishes in 1971.

This is a new blog.

'New' in the sense that I have just created it, or more correctly allowed some unfathomable algorithm to create it.  It will hopefully comprise some new, but also some old that has already appeared elsewhere; mostly music related, but random content may occur.