I Dig Everything

"Ain't had a job for a year or more. And I don't own a thing. Everything's fine and I dig everything. I feed the lions in Trafalgar Square and I dig everything ..." You could make up a nice little mix of David Bowie's London songs from the 1960s if you were that way inclined. Certainly our Dave's London Boys has been one of the most frequently suggested songs for this project. Rather brilliantly right at the offset Andy Hitchcock of the Socialist Leisure Party nominated I Dig Everything. Rob Symmons of the magnificent Fallen Leaves proposed London Bye Ta Ta. Bob Stanley has made a case for Can't Help Thinking About Me. And soul spinner supreme Jo Wallace trumped us all with Did You Ever Have A Dream? with its mention of Penge out there in deepest Shena Mackay territory. Oddly no one suggested Memories of a Free Festival . Stranger still none of Bowie's London songs seemed to feature in the fantastic Ken Pitt film, but you do get a nice shot of Mr Fish in Clifford Street here ...

I Live in Trafalgar Square

“My last ‘digs’ were on the Embankment. The third seat from Waterloo Bridge! But the cooking and, oh!, the attendance, didn’t happen to suit me so well. So I ordered my man to pack up and look out for another hotel ...” sings the splendid Ian Whitcomb on his interpretation of the old Music Hall classic I Live In Trafalgar Square which has the lovely subtitle of The Optimistic Outcast. It comes from Ian’s CD/Songbook Titanic Tunes where he recreates an impromptu ‘knees-up’ that took place in the steerage lounge of the doomed ship on the evening before the disaster. An American vaudeville act returning home, the Musical Murrays, was playing a mix of ragtime and music hall numbers they’d fallen in love with while in the UK. The audience would have been largely Eastern European immigrants whirling around the dancefloor. Ian takes on the role of Mr Mortimer St John of Mornington Crescent, “a delineator of high-class ballads, tragedian and dramatic monologist”, who may just have helped out with a spot of singing on the night, displaying an unexpectedly authentic Cockney tone at times. It’s great stuff, and a treasure chest of London songs. Proceedings end with Ian performing Albert Chevalier’s A Fallen Star which includes the lines: “I do not wish to gas. I merely state in self-defence the denizens of New Cut thought my Hamlet was immense”. Of course US audiences thought Ian was immense too ...

This Is Charing Cross

"This is Charing Cross; It is midnight; There is a great crowd. And no light— A great crowd, all black, that hardly whispers aloud. Surely, that is a dead woman—a dead mother! She has a dead face; She is dressed all in black; She wanders to the book-stall and back, At the back of the crowd; And back again and again back, She sways and wanders. This is Charing Cross; It is one o’clock. There is still a great cloud, and very little light; Immense shafts of shadows over the black crowd That hardly whispers aloud…. And now!… That is another dead mother, And there is another and another and another…. And little children, all in black, All with dead faces, waiting in all the waiting-places, Wandering from the doors of the waiting-room In the dim gloom. These are the women of Flanders: They await the lost. They await the lost that shall never leave the dock; They await the lost that shall never again come by the train To the embraces of all these women with dead faces; They await the lost who lie dead in trench and barrier and fosse, In the dark of the night. This is Charing Cross; it is past one of the clock; There is very little light. There is so much pain." This is the fifth part of the poem Antwerp by Ford Madox Hueffer (Ford), which The Wraiths have set to music as This Is Charing Cross. It is a haunting poem about (Ford's) WW1 experiences which T.S. Eliot famously described as “the only good poem I have met with on the subject of the war.” Pretty daft quote that actually. The Valleys by Electrelane which uses words from Siegfried Sassoon's A Letter Home disproves that for starters. The Wraiths specialise in setting poetry to music, exceptionally beautiful music for which the words chamber folk seem ridiculously inadequate, and I am eternally grateful (yet again) to Daniel for suggesting this number be included, thus triggering a love of The Wraiths' work. Serves me right for not taking notice of him earlier. Interestingly Daniel has geographical links to both The Wraiths (Bristol) and Ford Madox Ford (Merton). The Wraiths have a fantastic new (second) collection out, Welcome, Stranger, To This Place, which continues the challenge of combining poems and music in a way that is exquisite and very moving. Coincidentally Ford Madox Ford's The Soul of London, which some argue is the best book about the Capital and I wouldn't necessarily diagree, is now available as a print-on-demand paperback. I'm not sure I like what that says about publishing today no matter how much I love the book ...

Rose Ann of Charing Cross

"There by my lonely bed, a lovely angel stopped and said: 'That's only thunder overhead' And that's how we met. Rose Ann of Charing Cross, the rose you gave me never died. Rose Ann of Charing Cross, it knows one day you'll be my bride. And it will live till then, until that happy moment when I know our paths will cross at Charing Cross again, Rose Ann ..." sing the Four Vagabonds in exquisite harmony on their 1943 hit Rose Ann of Charing Cross. It's an interesting one this, as most of the popular songs of WW2 on the face of it have nothing to do with the war itself. But this is a number seemingly about a wounded soldier who falls in love with a nurse while laid up in Charing Cross Hospital. The Four Vagabonds had the hit, but plenty of others have sung it including Frank Sinatra. It was written by the American team of Kermit Goell and Mabel Wayne, which perhaps is why the location is a little eyebrow-raising and doesn't bear too close an analysis. Mind you, this was well before the hospital moved way out west. The Four Vagabonds have been cited as pioneers of r 'n' b vocal stylings, and it's easy to make the link to the doo wop boom. Listening to the group's wartime tribute to Rosie the Riveter it's easy to make links to Billy Stewart and General Johnson ...

Rosemary McLaren of the Strand

"Miss Rosemary McLaren is a lady of renown. Like a piano she is upright and grand. She spends her daily hours selling flowers by the bunch at a pitch situated on the Strand ..." In which Richard Digance declares his love for the flower seller Rosemary McLaren of the Strand during one of his lovely early sentimental folk/vaudeville numbers. London, of course, has its famous flower sellers, from Eliza Doolittle to the Great Train Robber Buster Edwards who had a stall for years outside Waterloo station. The Strand also has its place in pop history, from Let's All Go Down The Strand to Do The Strand. And then there's Bob Dylan and Don't Look Back where he's filming the infamous promo for Subterranean Homesick Blues behind the Savoy. But this particular Richard Digance number makes me think of one of Bob's old comrades, namely one of my all-time favourite fighters Phil Ochs and his own Flower Lady. Here's a toast to those that are gone ...

We All Went To Leicester Square

"One night as I strolled up the West I met this millionaire Smith beside myself. Smith said 'where are you going to?' I said 'I'll go anywhere along with you'. 'Where shall we go?' said Baron Rothschild. Then as I pulled me fourpence ha'penny out. 'Then' I shouted out with glee 'if you're leaving it to me let's go somewhere where there are no girls about' ..." So We All Went To Leicester Square sings George Formby Snr. Oh yes before there was the cheeky chappie with the ukelele his father was a great star on London's Music Hall stages. Sometimes he'd play the provincial fool for the partisan Cockneys. In our favourite book, Sweet Saturday Night, Colin MacInnes describes how "George wore a miniscule bowler, a jacket too tight, pants too baggy, large unlaced boots, a scarf that dangled between his legs, and gloves whose fingers were larger than his own. One of his comic effects, as he ambled about the stage, was the hacking cough that doubled him up in paroxysms of anguish - and his audience in paroxysms of mirth. He was in fact tubercular, and the cough was genuine and killed him after surviving World War 1." The cough can be heard to great effect on his recording of Looking For Mugs In The Strand where he turns the tables and gets one over on Londoners ...

Jeffrey Goes To Leicester Square

"Bright city woman, walking down Leicester Square everyday. Gonna get a piece of my mind. You think you're not a piece of my kind. Ev'rywhere the people looking. Why don't you get up and sing?" suggests Ian Anderson in the early Jethro Tull number Jeffrey Goes To Leicester Square. It's odd. For a long time the Tull was a bit of a guilty pleasure. I was really fond of some of their early works and thought they were lovely movers. Then I began to notice some of the hip hop headz were coming out as fans and I read a piece where Nick Cave was enthusing about the group and I thought hmmm well it's not just me then. And I really am a soft touch for a bit of flute in my pop music. Anyway, Mr Anderson seemed to like writing about the character Jeffrey in his songs. Like this one which they got to perform on the Rolling Stones' Rock 'n' Roll Circus in 1968 which has a real Beefheart and the Magic Band feel to it. Fantastic stuff ...

Undercover Anarchist

"Leicester Square under siege ..." What a line. You can just see that on an apocalyptic Evening Standard headline. Any cultural commentator that gets all snooty about UK hip hop should be forced to listen to Undercover Anarchist, a single by Silver Bullet at the end of the ‘80s. Silver Bullet was a particular favourite of John Peel, a big champion of UK hip hop in his way. The Silver Bullet tracks he played would explode out of the radio like Suspect Device or Oh Bondage Up Yours had once blasted the listener out of slumbering comfortableness. Unlike oh so many many performers that appeared often enough on the John Peel radio show the transition from small independent to major recording conglomerate in the case of Silver Bullet resulted in a record that was even more ridiculously raw. In the case of UK hip hop as in the days of post-punk this would be nothing short of a miracle. The one and only Silver Bullet LP, Bring Down The Walls – No Limit Squad Returns, came out on Parlophone in 1991. It now goes for silly money as befits its status as a bona fide ferocious UK hip hop masterpiece, which nevertheless far too few folks are fervent about. Silver Bullet’s performance throughout Bring Down The Walls is astonishingly angry, and convincingly so. 20 Seconds To Comply. Undercover Anarchist. Bring Forth The Guillotine. Legions of the Damned. Silver Bullet’s songs still strike like situationist slogans. If the lyrics themselves are like rapid fire accusations, apocalyptic attacks and cut-up manifestos then the rage itself seems scattergun too. I hate everything ...

The Soul of England

"Moonhop! Come to London town. Skinhead, beware, beware. Then all their friend say a black man hell is a white man heaven, and a white man hell is a black man heaven. PEACE on Earth, goodwill to all mankind. Reggae, bring unity, between black and white ..." This is a slight deviation, but as it follows on from a B.A.D. track I hope Mick Jones and Don Letts will approve. One of the few delights of the modern world is being to fish around on YouTube and enjoy the treasures shared by people who have taken the time and trouble to share their loves. Combining the search for London related songs with a passion for old ska, rocksteady and reggae tunes I often came across the name of OldWah, a gentleman and a scholar who has posted many ridiculously rare and wonderful old reggae recordings. Well, I'm delighted to say he has put together a lovely mix for The London Nobody Sings of skinhead era sounds with a Capital conection. It is going to be hard to resist drawing comparisions between ye olde cockney knees-up and the moonstomping knees up by the hip one time ... "Do it mate ..."

Dragon Town

"At this corner we must part. Say goodnight where Soho starts. In the Lido people stare. Pretending I don`t care. Thrown a menu I can`t read. What number do you need?
Fortunes told and fire crack ..." In which it's Friday night and our hero Mick Jones and the B.A.D. boys venture out to Dragon Town or if you like Chinatown in Soho for something to eat. I like the passing reference to the Lido, the Chinese restaurant in Gerrard Street which is like Mick Jones a bit of a London institution. Of course our hero has a bit of previous when it comes to this part of London. The old Clash number The Prisoner mentions the Charing Cross Road, and a rather earlier B.A.D. song Sightsee M.C! with the familiar credits of Strummer-Jones also refers to Chinatown. All together now:"We got plenty of '60s slums. They say she jumped from floor 21. It's empty now but it blocks out the sun. Used to be the shape of things to come ..."