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A very long time ago in my youth, I worked a baloon machine for part of the summer on Blackpool Pleasure Beach. It was shaped like a circus clown, and had a red dot in the middle of its garish yellow conical hat. It also had a wand attached to the side with a magnet at its tip and a valve in the clown’s mouth. So when a customer came along to buy a balloon for their little one, I would place the neck of the balloon over the valve and tap the magnetic wand on the red dot to release a 3 second burst of helium to inflate the balloon, tie off the neck, and present it to the delighted child. At least, that was the theory.
The theory all fell apart in Glasgow fortnight, famed for its nightly fighting in the Foxhall pub near to the Pleasure Beach. The number of children in the park reduced and the number of adults pouring out of the Foxhall at lunchtime proportionately increased for a few hours of playground fun before resuming their belligerent pub activities after 6pm. Originally there were two of us manning the machine, but after just a few days Chris was taken to hospital to have his appendix removed, and I was left in sole charge.
Much of the time it was quiet, with just the occasional deliriously happy child being attached to a balloon. In those days the pubs closed their doors between 3 and 6pm, so around 3:30pm I was generally inundated with drunken Glaswegians each buying a 3 second burst of helium for direct into their mouths, creating yet another hilarious high pitched voice sound until it eventually wore off. Then just occasionally one of them would attach a condom to the valve. That got boring too, even when a hole was found. Dull.
Most of the time it wasn’t very warm and I didn’t have any customers, unless you count that summer’s ladybird plague. They bite you know. So I would have to listen to a diet of unspeakably dull pop records being blurted forth from a radio on an adjacent stall with its volume stuck on ‘only high’. It was 1975 and popular music had really lost its way after a few years where Glam Rock had breathed a bit of life into proceedings. My kind of music was never played on the main radio stations, so I had to tolerate this appalling racket daily. In the end, with just a few weeks left of the holiday before my final year at school, the clown machine owner asked if I would dress as a clown, so that rapidly became my last day! Anyone who knows me well knows I only do fancy dress parties as a gatecrasher.
Mainstream music is currently repeating that awful history. There are some terrific new bands and singer songwriters who never receive mainstream radio play. The airwaves are once more dominated by cheesy feel good songs or a diet of bland that can only be compared to those desperate days of 1975. Back then it took bands like Dr. Feelgood to break us out of the malaise, and my sense is that it’s about to happen again. Not before time.
The music awards generally signal when things have reached crisis point. I caught a few seconds of the BBC News the other night when a few of the awards were announced. “Oh shit. That’s not at all good” was my audible reflex reaction. There was nothing remotely new, nothing to inspire. And yesterday I was back in the studio chatting away to Ali Karim, and he has independently sensed something similar. A revolution is afoot. It won’t be punk, because I doubt anyone could fabricate a repeat of that spontaneous outpouring of rebellion, but something will happen, and very likely this year.
When times are as challenging as they are right now, just as in the mid-70s, most people don’t want challenging further, preferring instead to lighten their lives with safe, unchallenging sounds. However there comes a point where even ‘safe’ stops doing it for people and the genie is well and truly let out of the bottle. There is, thankfully, an increasing trend towards songs of protest or songs that carry political themes. It doesn’t mean that the writers are always campaigners, just that a trend is underway. From that trend the next Dylan, Marley or Joe Strummer may yet emerge. It’s a growing undercurrent that will certainly gather pace this year, but whether it hits the mainstream just yet remains to be seen.
I’m currently on the look out for a secondhand clown machine, some cheap balloons, and a supply of helium. There was magic in that wand.