Finchley Central

"Finchley Central is two and sixpence from Golders Green on the Northern Line. And on the platform, by the kiosk that's where you said you'd be mine. There we made a date. For hours I waited. But I'm blowed, you never showed. At Finchley Central, ten long stations from Golders Green. Change at Camden Town. I thought I'd made you, but I'm afraid you really let me down ..." Not a song for London transport pedants but nevertheless one of the most frequently suggested for this project, Finchley Central by the New Vaudeville Band is a great excuse to talk about the genius of Geoff Stephens, one of the great London songwriters and one of the great people associated with the Southgate area, along with soul ambassador Randy Cozens and mod legends Back To Zero. The New Vaudeville Band is regarded as a bit of a novelty act for its nostalgic stylings, and of course Winchester Cathedral is known worldwide, but there was a lot more to mainman Geoff Stephens. Among the other songs he wrote or had a hand in composing are The Crying Game, Semi-Detached Suburban Mr Jones, There's A Kind of Hush, David Soul's Silver Lady, Carol Douglas' Doctor's Orders, the New Seekers' You Won't Find Another Fool Like Me, the Hollies' Sorry Suzanne, Scott Walker's Lights of Cincinnati. The New Vaudeville Band itself did have other entries in the great London songbook, including I Was Lord Kitchener's Valet and Green Street Green. It's stretching a point to call Green Street Green a London song but it is technically part of the London Borough of Bromley. To locals the joke is that Green Street Green can be found just below Pratt's Bottom, but we won't go into that. If you took Geoff Stephens' advice and took a trip to Green Street Green you might not recognise the place Peter Noone sings about here. I still like to think he sings about onomatopoeic evenings but suspect I'm wrong ...

Eight Miles High

"Nowhere is there warmth to be found among those afraid of losing their ground. Rain gray town known for its sound. In places, Small Faces unbound ..." I wouldn't like to think how many times I've played The Byrds' Eight Miles High. And it's still that guitar sound that grabs me. So much so that it's easy to overlook the London references in the lyrics. Though even there people prefer to look for other meanings. I was just thinking about how I first came across The Byrds, I guess, via the Flamin' Groovies, Orange Juice, and even perhaps the TVPs' King & Country. In the early 1980s we really weren't overwhelmed with Byrds product. There was really only the Original Singles compilation which was a revelation. I think Chestnut Mare was available on an Old Gold 7", and I bought that because in Sounds Dave McCullough said each of Hurrah!'s songs was like a mini-Chestnut Mare. There were idiots in 1985 criticising Primal Scream for being obsessed with The Byrds and Love. Idiots. We were hearing all that stuff for the first time and it was liberating. I remember going to see Roger McGuinn at Dingwalls in 1984 which perhaps wasn't the wisest idea but hey ho ... On the Byrds' second visit to the UK Roger was getting into using cameras and in recent years footage of the group's arrival into London has emerged ...

Next Plane to London

"Maybe over there I'll get a start. Only hope by leavin' I don't break his heart. The more important part than any record on the chart. I'm on the next plane to London. Leavin' on runway number five ..." The Rose Garden's glorious Next Plane To London deals with the dilemmas of fame. Should the ambitious singer move to another city to make their mark? And is that more important than the loves they'd leave behind? Bit of an old dilemma that one. The song itself was written by Kenny O'Dell, who recorded it for an LP on a White Whale subsidiary. The song made its way to folk rockers The Rose Garden who had a hit with it. Kenny would write another great entry in the American country songbook, namely Behind Closed Doors which was a huge hit for the great Charlie Rich when I was knee-high. And as was the way at the time Next Plane To London winged its way around the world, and there is a particularly lovely interpretation by Renee Martel, a French Canadian who ironically also became a country singer later on ...

Last Train to London

"Last train to London just heading out. Last train to London just leaving town. But I really want tonight to last forever. I really wanna be with you. Let the music play on down the line tonight ..." Oh this is glorious stuff. ELO's Last Train To London. Absolutely irresistible. From their 1979 disco masterpiece Discovery. Odd isn't looking back. In that strange breathing space between glitter and punk the Electric Light Orchestra was one of my very favourite things, and I adored A New World Record and Out Of The Blue. But by 1979 post-punk and the mod resurgence were everything, and Discovery probably passed me by. And ironically getting excited about the punk/disco crossover I missed ELO's Disco-very! I'm not sure the lyrics bear too close an analysis, but what the heck. I mean something like Joe Jackson's Down To London has clever lyrics but it just leaves me cold. Anyway, it's all wrong. It's always up to London. As in Jeff Lynne's Last Train To London would be up to London pretty much regardless of where it was running from ...

Dettwork SouthEast

"Laying down facts like British rail tracks. Cockney rhyming slang, and black conundrums dem pun the dungeon. This is how we function in London, from New Cross to Piccadilly Circus, from tower blocks across the circuit. No surplus no deficit. No more no less. If it's Southeast or Northwest or Shredded Wheat or East. From Old Kent Road to Ladbroke Grove, I lay low. Handle most of my biz on my cellular dog and bone. We pass through Elephant and Castle. Take the back streets to save the hassle when delivering a parcel. Over the bridge and through the tunnel, beyond the horizon, where the sky scrapers meet the sky lining. My eyes on the prize seen, not the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow ..." Perfectly put that at the start of Blak Twang's Dettwork SouthEast. Blak Twang or Tony Rotton is one of the great presences on the UK hip hop scene, and his 1996 LP Dettwork South East set could lay claim to being the scene's Smile. In other words it's never really officially appeared, but has taken on a mythical status and has been heard by so many people shall we say informally one way and another. It's a ridiculously great record, including gems like Real Estate which make even more ludicrous the claims of people who insist there's been no great UK hip hop. I guess it needs pointing out that the lost LP's title is a black slang play on words referencing Network SouthEast, which in 1986 was the new name for British Rail's old London & the South East region. Soon after its arrival Network SouthEast bought in the Network Card which gave a third off rail travel in the region and was a real boon. An early advertising campaign used the O'Jays' Love Train. While the name disappeared officially with the Tory privatisation in 1994 the branding would be seen for amy years to come on trains passing through Black Twang's SE8.

In Transit

"Next stop check out the dumb advertising. Swan around Greater London for just £2.50. Duck and dive 'round Dartford for only £1.60. But you can chicken out at home for the small sum of nothing ..." sings Callahan on the Wolfhounds' In Transit, an everyday tale of the pains and pleasures of travelling around the Capital by public transport from their 1987ish Unseen Ripples LP. You only have to look at these few lines to understand the genius of Dave's songwriting. The detail perhaps passes many by. Shortly before this song appeared British Rail and London Transport introduced the Capitalcard which allowed unlimited off-peak travel on buses, trains and tubes. It was very welcome, but a bit of a sop for those of us still chaffing about the judicial decision that took away our cheap fares (Bananarama wrote a protest song about this but forgot to write the words if I remember). A swan really was used extensively in an advertising campaign to promote the new Capitalcard with Johnny Morris doing the voiceovers. The Capitalcard would of course become the Travelcard, still a partnership between London Transport and British Rail's Network SouthEast division.

Sweet Georgie Fame

"London Bridge is falling down. Pop songs I hear with suspicion. But now at last I'm glad to meet a sweet lovin' real good musician. Oh, from Broadway to Festival Hall I have listened and I've heard them all. And they say I'm a real swingin' dame yet I'm impressed, my ears are blessed with Georgie Fame. So stay a while, you'll see 'em smile, you won't complain. His hands and feet make music sweet, you'll miss your train. My goose is cooked, I'm gettin' hooked on Georgie Fame ..." sings Blossom Dearie on her tribute to Sweet Georgie Fame from her wonderful 1970 LP That's Just The Way I Want To Be. The LP she recorded with some of the greats of British jazz, and the set which gave us the irresistible I Like London In The Rain. As well as her tribute to the great Georgie, the record features songs for Dusty Springfield ("London flowers fair blooming in her hair") and John Lennon. I love the one for Georgie the best. Particularly the line that suggests getting so engrossed in the music you miss your train. A real dilemma at times that. Do you bail out and get the last train? Or stay awhile and have to seek alternative forms of transport? Two questions spring to mind. Who is the Sandra Harris co-credited, and does anyone have a copy of Tony Bennett's version? I assume the lyrics were subtly changed. And wouldn't it have been great if he performed that song at the Festival Hall when he played there in '74? In the meantime here's Georgie in wonderful form ...

The Nine Road

"Through the heart of the British metropolis. Moving smartly down a thin red line. London Transport's respectable warrior. The number nine. Picks up the City business man, tourists from the Serpentine. French, Arabs, Polish and Finnish men. The number nine ..." A while back I stumbled, as you do, across a clip of The Nine Road, a film made for London Transport by the British Transport Films team in 1976 about the bus route number nine, and was enchanted by the title song which featured at the start and the end of the footage. I figured it would be easy to find out more, but the internet wasn't much help and even when I tracked down a copy of the film the music wasn't mentioned in the credits. Grrr. Thankfully I stumbled across some splendid chaps at the BTF forum, who suggested it was Norman Beaton singing. What a splendid suggestion. It would fit perfectly. I know Norman had written musicals while in the UK and had sung calypso back in Guyana before leaving for England at the start of the '60s, and fans of Desmond's will remember his character's combo, the Georgetown Dreamers, featuring our friend Ram John Holder, Sol Raye, and Count Prince Miller (Jimmy James' sidekick at one time). This film then I guess would have been made just before Norman appeared on our TV screens in the sit-com The Fosters, set on a south London estate, and starring a teenage Lenny Henry just after his massive success on the TV talent show New Faces. This was Norman's first breakthrough role. So the British Transport Films team needs to be commended if they used Norman. You cannot imagine that happening now. The detailed documentary/real life feel would be replaced by glossy marketing puff dictated by some agency team with no feel for or interest in its subject matter but which charges so much for its services ignorant accountants think they must be adding value. Aww don't get me started. Let's just enjoy The Nine Road and for now we'll have to wonder whether this really is Norman Beaton . We're working on it ...

The Star

"Trudging home to Fulham, having missed the last bus. Watch my car slick by. 'Can that be the boy we knew?' ..." sings Ian Whitcomb in his wonderful number The Star, a tale of sweet revenge recorded in 1967 where our hero fantasises about getting his own back on Perkins and settling old scores with all those other enemies from schooldays and beyond by becoming a movie idol in Lawrence of Australia and having the world worship him with his name up in lights ... ha ha. Ian Whitcomb may never have quite become that household name, but he's a true star 'round these parts. Has been ever since Rev-ola in its early days put out the excellent This Sporting Life compilation. A genuine character, and a pop person who knows his Bakunin and Marx but is more interested in vaudeville and variety. Anyone who calls a record Mod, Mod Music Hall is bound to be one of our heroes. Ian retreated from the flower power '60s nonsense into a world of pre-WW2 songsmithery with a touch of proper rock 'n' roll, and a liking for Britain and its "confederacy of recalcitrant, cantankerous, eccentric curmudgeons". That's a phrase from Ian's book Rock Odyssey, which is the best chronicle of the '60s you'll find. The account of Ian's first encounter with Mick Jagger, for example, is priceless. The same session that gave us The Star also gave us The Notable Yacht Club of Staines, another tale of revenge and a performance that tells us what Ian thought of Bob Dylan. And if you're wondering what goes on in the Mod Mod Music Hall ... "reach your own conclusions".

Nightbus

"Drunks and the tourists. The tarts and old men. Wheelers and dealers are at it again ..." sings the wonderful Bishi on her Nightbus, a canny depiction of the weird cross-section of life you can find (or hopefully avoid) on London's night bus network. Bishi is one of the best things about modern pop music, and anyone's who has fallen under the spell of her One Nation (Under CCTV) promo video will have delighted in the central London settings. Ooh look Roupell Street, and so on. Pop music needs more Bishi. I guess I should confess Bishi first made my ears prick up with her references to Angela Carter's Nights At The Circus, which is part of London's literary tradition and a particular favourite. As is this ...

Who's Fooling Who?

"She knows all about Murphy's law on a Monday night. Charlotte Street's always jumping ... it's an all night bus that you've missed again. It's a walk home late in the pouring rain ..." sings Julie Roberts on Working Week's Who's Fooling Who? Ah the age old problem of how to get home late at night. In the mid-'80s when this was recorded London was anything but a 24/7 city. Night buses were few and far between. The song with its references to the soul jazz groove, to jazz dance DJ Paul Murphy and the Sol y Sombra where he used to play, perhaps fell into the hands of critics who had their own agendas and prejudices. But what the heck. After Weekend Simon Booth's new outfit kicked off with an adaptation of the Allende's administration anthem Venceremos (released on Paul Murphy's label) with a video by Julien Temple, featuring the legendary IDJ dancers. The song itself featured Robert Wyatt, Tracey Thorn and Claudia Figueroa on vocals. Wyatt's involvement always made me smile because the group's detractors ordinarily fawn over anything involving the great man. I seem to remember Robert Elms claiming Venceremos as one of THEE London songs. Why not? The follow-up single Storm Of Light featured Julie Tippetts on vocals, and this genuinely is a London song. Now let's get this straight ... Robert Wyatt's on your first single. Julie's on the second. The cream of London's jazz musicians are contributing, including the great Harry Beckett. Fantastic ...

Nowhere Square

"Time to rush to the stop. Catch my bus. I know. Time to stamp on a foot. Excuse me. I know. Wish I'd been born in a different time. Standing close to my seat is a girl seen before on a thousand dark mornings. And the perfume she wears follows her through the doors. Leaves me with no song to sing ..." muses Louis Philippe during his enchanting Nowhere Square number. Louis Phillippe, London songs and buses seem to be a bit of a recurring theme here. And why not? Except that while he was singing about London's buses the official dictum was that only losers take the bus. That of course completely misses what may be from a distance something somewhat romantic. Why else would the Count Five sing about the Double Decker Bus? And there's no overlooking the fact that TV shows like On The Buses were ingrained in our psyche. Then of course there was Here Come The Double Deckers, a transatlantic success, which in terms of kids' TV was wonderfully subversive, anarchic, communistic and we would dream of hanging out in a scrap yard with our gang messing around on an old London double decker. The Double Deckers' gang of course featured someone who has already appeared as part of this project. Now don't all shout at once. In this episode, in keeping with our proclivities, the gang get mixed up in the murky world of pop, with mixed results ...

London's Brilliant Parade

"She's one of those girls that you just can't place. You feel guilty desiring such an innocent face. But of course they knew that when they cast her. Along with the red Routemaster. And the film takes place in an MGB. And a perfect re-creation of The Speakeasy. Everybody looks happy and twisted. Though she probably never existed. For old times' sake. Don't let me awake. I wouldn't want you to walk across Hungerford Bridge. Especially at twilight. Looking through the bolts and the girders. Into the water below. You'll never find your answer there. They sounded the all-clear in the occidental bazaar they used to call Oxford Street. Now the bankrupt souls in the city are finally tasting defeat ..." London's Brilliant Parade is Elvis Costello at his best. He says so much so impressively, working in so much detail, but you're never quite sure exactly what ... If there is one phrase I hate it's 'iconic image'. It's become so overused. As in a Routemaster bus as 'iconic image' for London. Like we are all meant to be mawkishly sentimental about Routemasters, forgetting that to some they were the devil incarnate usurping the trams. So if we are all so attached to Routemasters how come so few songs mention them? "And a trolley bus in Fulham Broadway. The lions and the tigers in Regents Park couldn't pay their way. And now they're not the only ones. At the Hammersmith Palais, in Kensington and Camden Town, there's a part that I used to play. The lovely Diorama is really part of the drama, I'd say ..."

Trams of Old London

"Through Electric Avenue, Brixton, down in SW2, Teddington and Kennington, Twickenham and Paddington. Uh huh. In the Blitz they never closed. Though they blew up half the roads. Oh, it hurts me just to see 'em going dead in a museum ..." sings Robyn Hitchcock in his stunningly beautiful elegy for the Trams of Old London. There's two interesting things here. One is the enormous affection people feel for the transports of the past. In this case Robyn mourns the passing of London's trams, which stopped running in 1952. This song was recorded many years before the introduction of the Croydon Tramlink, by the way. The other thing is the feature of London songs where the writer works in an impressive number of place names in a somewhat haphazard manner which scans rather neatly and sounds positively poetic ...

Days of Fire

"There's no more trains going that way. There's no more trains coming this way. You better make your way home, son. There's something going down in London. Well that ain't gonna stop me. So I step out the station and what do I see? Traffic for days. Let me walk a bit and I'll see where it get me. Then it all went slow motion, everything slow motion. First came the flash of lights then the sound of explosion . And we're still in slow motion, we're still in slow motion ..." sings Natty on Days of Fire, his collaboration with Nitin Sawhney which deals with his experiences in July 2005. It's intriguing. So many London songs but some subjects seem to be shied away from. How many songs can you name about the IRA's campaign in London? How many songs about the 2005 bombings? One other that does spring to mind is Dem A Bomb We by Ladybug ft Warrior Queen, which Kevin Martin is behind. Kevin in the guise of The Bug had an LP called London Zoo, appropriately. The funny thing is I may have missed Nitin's London Undersound set without a tip from David Arnold of The Claim fame. Medway loyalties and all that. London Undersound features another lovely sort of tube related tune, where Roxanne Tataei sings of Distant Dreams ...

Improperly Dressed

"Stared at from the minute that I leave a place. My eyes straight ahead of me, cutting into space. You don't make eye contact standing on the street. 'Cause that's an invitation to everyone you meet. And things can get uncomfortable on tube trains late at night ..." sings Ari Up on The Slits' Improperly Dressed. And she would have known. God bless The Slits and all who sailed with them. What on earth happened to the Cut promo film that was in all the cinemas as a b-feature? Have I dreamt that existed? The clip of the girls performing on the Regents Park bandstand is one of the great pieces of London pop film. So for a change here's another Instant Hit, with some suitable London transport footage and a lot of the fun which sometimes gets forgotten about when the group is talked about or when they had to answer endless questions about being untypical girls as in this invaluable piece of film ...

Man On The Tube

"Man on the tube. Don't catch his eye. He's looking over at you. Got his eye on your thigh ... " sings Barbara Gogan on The Passions' Man On The Tube from their excellent Michael and Miranda LP of 1980, touching on the theme of feeling frightened travelling alone on the tube late at night. Interestingly another track from the LP, Pedal Fury, deals with the dangers of cycling in the capital. The Passions were part of the early Chris Parry stable at Fiction Records along with The Cure, Purple Hearts and Back To Zero, which was a fantastic modern pop line-up. In other words, around the time of this ... Sing it Billy: "It's too late to take the underground ..."

The Underground Train

"I took the train to Lancaster Gate and the trouble that I met I am going to relate ..." sings Lord Kitchener on his tale of The Underground Train, one of the first calypso numbers he recorded in the UK. It's funny isn't it how some people have a real thing about the Underground and get totally intimidated, agitated or lost, while others among us seem to be immune to its pressures and terrors. Still I suppose the strangest thing that's happened to me on the tube is being stung by a wasp. I have a favourite Underground joke which I can't resist sharing ... about some guy from up North who came to London and headed for the tube but saw a notice saying dogs must be carried. Took him four hours to find a dog he was able to carry down the escalator ... This Lord Kitchener track appeared on the first of the essential London Is The Place For Me sets put together by the excellent Honest Jons team, which are exquisitely presented with invaluable photos from the Val Wilmer archives. Val herself is a London legend who is criminally under-represented on the 'net. Track down a copy of her memoirs Mama Told Me There'd Be Days Like These ...

Life in London

"Life in London is bittersweet. Spray can slogans along the street. Some kind of revolution in the town. Razor blades and safety pins make you look like a clown. What's goin' down is just the same old sound. You know that energy has always been my drug for me. And I came across a lot of water just to see if it could be the place to go, the life for me. I changed my dollars into pounds. And now that drink is gonna cost me 50p. But the District Line just doesn't seem to be running as far as I'd like to go today ..." sings Canadian hard rocker Pat Travers on his 1977 track Life In London. He seems to equate the punk rock explosion with the District Line in that neither goes as far he'd like. Cor! Controversial eh? Pat I remember from tuning in to Nicky Horne's Your Mother Wouldn't Like It rock show on Capital while waiting for Peel to come on. Nicky would play a mixture of new wave and old school rock, and I seem to recall Pat Travers as one of the few of the long hair brigade to rise to the punk challenge by saying I'm as tough and as hard rockin' as you young punks. Interestingly Pat was probably younger than a lot of the punk stars of '77, and maybe a lot more honest. Let's rock!

Day by day

"Stranded in the jungle. Locked inside a tube. Hate your next door neighbour. He's got more than you. Going round and round. Day by day. On the Circle Line ..." sings Billy Idol on Day By Day, the flip of Generation X's debut 45. The use of the Circle Line as a metaphor for the treadmill, going nowhere, no tomorrow, is a bit of a Cockney cliche. Though I guess it's less relevant now with changes to running patterns. Anyway that Generation X first 45 was a real pop blast, and I was totally in love with the group, the ripped pop art t-shirts and all that. Early appearances on Marc Bolan's TV show and Top Of The Pops with the single's a-side were electrifying ...