Alan Coleman

It was after I read an article somewhere a few years ago that I began to think that things were going wrong for British Pubs. I can’t remember what it was in or when, but it was about John Illsley, former Bass player from Dire Straits taking over a pub in Hampshire, which turns out to be called the East End Arms. He made a comment about the kind of clientele he’d like to attract, something along the lines of replacing the lagers with real ales in an attempt discourage the “Lager crowd”.

The reason I’m talking about this now is on the back of some reading I did yesterday about the Government and Local Authorities trying to regulate how and where we use our local pubs. Typical New Labour stuff, no standing at the bar, no swearing, children welcome, you know. I put two and two together and came to the conclusion that New Labour and John Illsley are actually after the same things. Gentrification and profit.

When John Illsley spoke of the “Lager crowd” what he meant was people like you and me. People that use pubs in the way that they we’re always intended, rather than his idea of them as restaurants for his own kind of people.  No more faded pictures of the 1979 pub football team, no more fruit machines, no more carpet complete with engrained filth, no more coloured curved glass hiding drinkers from prying eyes, no more raucous laughter, no more waiting for years to finally be let in. That’s all been replaced by inclusive entertainment for all the family. A restaurant, and a profitable one too.

I guess that’s what happened. The locals at the East End Arms were made to feel unwelcome, the place was stripped of any individuality and transformed into a hearty gastropub full of occasional diners and ‘hand cooked’ crisps. You could argue that it’s been voted one of the top 50 pubs in Britain, but by whom? The Guardian? What would anyone that writes or has ever read The Guardian know about local pubs? Nothing apart from the fact that the Sunday Roast can be ‘very pleasant’ when mum comes to stay and that the double buggy can fit through the doors that where widened for disabled access.

So John Illsley finally got the kind of gentrified clientele he wanted after installing “The Guest Ales”, an ordered and pleasant slice of New Labour’s soulless and boring middle classes.

I’m learning how to play guitar, Mandy brought me one as a present for my birthday and I’m properly getting in to it. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do as it’s been my favourite sound for as long as I can remember.

I used to play the Saxophone, grade 8, although that means nothing really as I was never actually any good. It was enjoyable from a technical perspective, playing in a band and keeping the thing in tune and playing the notes in the right place. It’s just that I’m not a natural musician so was only going to go far. Also I was playing in an Army Band, and in that environment unless you’re exceptional at your chosen instrument you’re treated like something scraped off the shoe. Men can be very bitchy.

Who wants to play the Sax anyway? As an instrument it’s always going to be associated with greasy pony tails rather than Stan Getz and John Coltrane. Anything on the sax post 1970 will always sound smug.

A guitar on the other hand is the embodiment of Rock ‘n Roll music. It’s what it’s all about, from 1950s America to the Mersey and from Zappa to Sonic Youth. Stuff marching around in a red uniform, that was a waste of everybody’s time.

I used to play guitar when I was younger, at primary school. The head teacher, Mr Atkins, would spend the best part of Friday afternoon teaching chords and songs to anyone that came along with a guitar. I used to ask myself why anyone would want to sit in a classroom learning arithmetic when you could be sat in the sunshine learning E minor, G and D7. The shoving parents of today would have had none of it. My child, the targets, push to the front. Judging children by sneering at league tables in grubby Sunday newspapers. Nice.

Mr Atkins was notable for another reason, he had a strange infatuation with the Parachute Regiment. If any child dared break rules the resulting lecture would probably involve a comparison with one of the British Army’s finest fighting units. “Do you think that’s acceptable behaviour do you? Eh?! Wouldn’t get away with that in the Parachute Regiment would you? No!! So why in Gods name do you think it’s okay to forget your sports kit here then?!!” There’s nothing more comical than an unintentionally funny person.

Mr Atkins, guitar player, great bloke and comic genius.

All my favourite writers are American, as is most of the music I listen too, in fact it’s difficult to think of a culture outside of our own that has given my life so much pleasure. I re-read Steinbeck’s work over and over in the same way that I’ll be listening to Sonic Youth in thirty years time. I love the place, even though at the age of thirty five I’ve never been further west than the Gower Peninsula.

In terms of culture, technology and history they’ve given us so much to be grateful for. Yet when it comes to the task of government they have always failed to live up to expectation, now we’ve reached a point where even the idea hope has about it an air of failure.

Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Obama. These names have never been capable of anything more than the repellent self interest of their own celebrity. But after everything, even after the Bush family and giving up hope of the Whitehouse ever being able to live up to Jed Bartlett, I still refuse to believe that America can’t produce a set of individuals capable of government.

I was going to write about ‘Brave Prince Harry’, the ‘Homecoming Hero’. But I’ll just end up getting angry and spoiling what would have been a perfectly good March Monday afternoon, albeit a wet and windy one.

I find that one of the main problems of playlisting in apps like WinAmp or iTunes is that the same set of songs tends to get listened to over and over again. Eventually the above mentioned playlist ends up like a huge comfort zone, a predictable and somewhat tedious musical backdrop to a Saturday afternoon. This defeats the object of embracing the technology in the first place, it also means that we’ll spend the rest of our lives listening to Six By Seven.

After searching for music like At The Drive In online the first band it threw up was The Fall of Troy, a three-piece experimental post-hardcore band from Mukilteo, Washington in the USA. The site also describes them as having Mathcore tendencies, Mathcore?

The Fall of Troy are a great band. Complete with wailing metal guitars, howling vocals and sexy chords. Mathcore.

“Me? Yeah…….I’m kinda into the whole Mathccore thing at the moment, it’s like, a US post-hardcore scene. There’s some really cool stuff going on.”

And that’s just the kind of bullshit I’ll be spinning by end of the week.

Anyway, they’ve been around for a while, have three albums out and they’re all great. You should ‘Check them out’.

I have a new job in the West End, which means I’m great, but also means no more walking through Whitechappel on the way to work. Not that Oxford Circus is anything to rave about but it beats running the gauntlet of Brick Lane at 8.30 every morning.

I don’t know why everyone goes on about it so much, I used to dread those slightly peaky mornings after a bit of a bender, the pavements smeared with the debris of stinking fast food and puddles of gob. Mmm, piles of human phlegm flopping around like uncooked omelette, some of it even spilling out of overflowing wheelie bins. grotesque.

It’s not as if it’s got any particular charm about either, just moody blokes in bad clothes pestering bored tourists into distinctly average restaurants. Apart from that boozer up the side street near where the Seven Stars used to be, it’s a shithole and won’t be missed.

On a more positive note, The B52s. Highly underrated, especially a track called Roam which I think is better than Love Shack, but Mand doesn’t agree. Also, I listened to The Police this evening for the first time in what must be twenty years, and strangely remembered all the words to Everything She Does Is Magic, a fantastic track.

Without meaning to be all nostalgic I recorded it off the old mans vinyl onto a grey TDK C60, I used to listen to it under the covers at night on a pair of massive white ear phones with a curly lead. The steel drums brought it all back, the soundtrack to Industrial unrest, Pershing Missiles and Insignia deodorant.

Great days. It only started to go wrong when I began watching the Nine O’clock news whilst listening to Dark Side Of The Moon on earphones. Then as if from nowhere we discovered the Tour De France on Channel 4, saved if you like, a welcome respite from apartied, Thatcher and the Soviet Union. The Tour has remained a little bit special to me since then – Hainault , Lemond, Roche and the sheer bloody romance of it all.

On Saturday The Tour De France starts in London, and with near on a million people due to turn up, hopefully it’ll be one big European celebration in the worlds best city.