History

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Always, my Friend

Always, my friend

The warm muffler of friendship

The kind you put on

Without thinking

before going out into the cold air

of mere acquaintance

the scent of many walks, many talks

The Swallows and Amazons hide-out

Safe from stalkers

Camouflaged from the inquisitive

 A place for after the apocalypse

The tenderness amongst the elements

The uncrazy point in the kaleidoscope

Where nothing changes except the seasons

And a word given is never ungiven

Where there is nothing unforgiven

That special seat in your favourite bar

The thoughts

who know who you are

The words that don’t need to be spoken

Because there are no cracks in the pavement

No promises broken

No potholes in the road

The one-eyed teddy

The veteran of childhood

The record with your past scratched into it

The tree house safe from the for-sale sign

The car that always starts

And drives without question

Even after the crash

The arm on the shoulder

When the shoulder is shaking

Time given

Rather than taken.

This is the nest without cuckoos

The place of rest

The church door that is never closed

A friendship that is never tested

Because there is no cross examination.

Where the beginning

Is also the end.

Always, my friend.

For Howard, and friends everywhere.

Words and Voice Roy Stannard / Music Matt Staples (‘One and Only’) 1.2.20

April Showers – Abandon Ship (Chrysalis ‎– chs 2787 12″ 1984)
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April Showers – Abandon Ship (Chrysalis ‎– chs 2787 12″ 1984)

April Showers - Abandon Ship (best)

April Showers – Abandon Ship 12″ 1984

It was 1984. I was a secondary school teacher living in Brighton, unmarried and draining most of my spare cash into Rounder Records in the Lanes where, until he joined the Housemartins, my pal Norman Cook would put a stack of 12″ singles on the counter every Saturday morning ready for me to collect.

Anne Dudley

Anne Dudley

Anne Dudley had make something of a name for herself scoring the orchestral parts on ABC’s Lexicon of Love and was planning something exciting in pop-electronic-chamber crossover called the Art of Noise.

April Showers were a Glaswegian band  – a duo consisting of Jonathan Bernstein and Beatrice Colin (who was previously in Operation Twilight label band the French Impressionists and nowadays an author) and were subsequently signed to the major offshoot Big Star.

‘Abandon Ship’ emerged from all the stars colliding in 1984. Jonathan and Beatrice writing a romantic, panoramically lush pop song and asking Anne Dudley before she was famous to score and orchestrate it. Chrysalis records put it out on its Big Star offshoot as a 12″ with the vocal A side, instrumental B side and the third track ‘Everytime we say goodbye’ to complete this perfect pop confection.

Beatrice Colin

Beatrice Colin

Nowadays you will know Beatrice Colin as the author of four novels for adults including The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite (published as The Glimmer Palace in the US) and The Songwriter. She has been shortlisted for a British Book Award, a Saltire Award and a Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award. She also writes short stories, screen and radio plays and for children.

One of her children’s novels, My Invisible Sister (with Sara Pinto) has been optioned by Disney in the US. Her novel for children, Pyrate’s Boy is written under the name E.B. Colin and is published by Floris Books.

She can be found plying her trade as a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Strathclyde University in Glasgow.

April Showers

April Showers

April Showers started life as  3 piece in 1981 – with Jonathan Bernstein, Hubble, and Bobby Caldwell – who worked with a variety of instrumentalists and singers and submitted demo songs for the Operation Twilight Record Label on which they had an unreleased 7″ single entitled “While The City Sleeps”. Most of their demos didn’t get released. Beatrice joined after The French Impressionists let her go.

In the meantime, in a bemused fog of Indie vinyl acquisition in Brighton I bought the 12″ took it home and thought at the time that it was a bit fairycake for my taste. Later, however, as Anne Dudley star rose and she became an essential soundtracker to the Eighties I found myself playing the record more often.

Three years ago I sold my entire record collection and this record was amongst the treasures and gems doubtless making van loads of money for dealers. I included it in a Blog post a few years ago and this track has been more commented on and requested than other.

I thought it was time to devote a blog to this one record and to upload all three tracks together for the first time.

Why it has not been reissued I don’t know. Sometimes the greatest treasures are the ones that remain undiscovered

Track Line Up: Chrysalis ‎– chs 2787 12″ 1984

A1: Abandon Ship

B1: Abandon Ship (Instrumental)

B2: Everytime We Say Goodbye

http://www.mediafire.com/download/dkeoaa1xao27dd4/April_Showers_-_Abandon_Ship.rar

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Farewell, Old Long Since

Image

Farewell, Old Long Since

The final minutes of the year

kiss furtively in a back alley of good intentions

The clocks call it a day

before winding up the night, the fireworks

wrote my name in the sky, briefly

And if you weren’t in a party you were no-one.

But Auld Lang Syne marched in time with the times

and carried our new found best friends

into our best remembered memories

even if the memories were left crying outside

before their cue at midnight

when the legends of the dancefloor

  become legless and the wallflowers wilt,

the high resolutions become low

and the turntable revolutions spin more slowly.

The herd of words that were heard all year spill to the floor

The Châteauneuf-du-Pape language jars and refills

as shapes and sizes and faces and guises

threaten comebacks in the new year

that haunt rather than revive

Like televised fireworks

and 70% proof good intentions

that slur sloth-like across the mouths

of the carelessly happy

tripping over the light fandangos

showing off their moves in slow motion

as fast as they can remember them

like Pinkerton remembered his Butterfly

as the knife fell

and the night began, all over again.

So farewell to the old, we were uncomfortable

with its long since lines and wisdom

and the way it shuffle-danced

and kissed everyone tremulously

like a tipsy iron maiden aunt.

It was a year that started with can’t and ended up in the can

It was a year of just missing the bus

and falling in love

In the queue for the next one

It was a year that didn’t stop for anyone

but there will be another one along in a minute.

Roy Stannard 1.1.14

Listen to a live recording of Roy performing this on The Whole Nine Yards 2.1.14

https://soundcloud.com/roystannard/roy-stannard-farewell-old-long

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The Poppies

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At peace with the poppies..

The Poppies

 And in the distance the cannon fire

of our old lives fell silent

The searing artillery melted into brushstroked art

And our legion of long service cares

emerged blinking from behind the worry lines

to fraternise with hope.

That Sunday afternoon after the armistice of knowing

that love could be part of the sunrise

we left the bondfires of Lewes

to explore the smoke that smoulders within.

We were at peace with the poppies

whispering like moths wings on a perfect Sussex hillside

Feeling the fairy stems caress our legs

like a repeated yes, yes.

And amongst the dragonflies and chalklines

we could hear echoes in the landscape

A Copper Family chorus, a shepherd’s whistle

Trickling down the folds in the chalk, Beacon to meadow,

bloodspot poppies dabbed amongst the Marjoram and Thyme,

tiny chips of time preserved in fleeting chalk

as we moulded the moment

like diligent and gentle flintwall makers

Uncorking time profligately like post war refugees

Allowing it to pour as a navigation trickle,

a bead from a furrowed forehead to a burnished amber estuary

buzzing with insect chatter over balmy dew ponds

here in the green dough folds of life after conflict

slumbering in the afternoon haze on the hottest day of the year

when the poppies silkily kissed our skin

pressing their smell on us like fine opium

And we paused to inhale the moment

taking it deep inside

marking the stamen heartbeat

remembering the Cenotaph paths and the McCrae words

that didn’t dampen pneumonia or cure a war

as his poppies bled in Flanders a century ago

where wholesale death

was bartered for peace at any price.

So we stood to attention in the sun

In deference to the millions of could have been lives

the wraith-like regiments walking towards us

wishing they were us

watching us scythe despair down in warm blood

so that the poppies could become flowers again.

 

Roy Stannard 17th July 2013

Hear it on Soundcloud here: https://soundcloud.com/roystannard/the-poppies

Hear the live version originally broadcast on The Whole Nine Yards 18.7.13 here:

http://roystannard.tumblr.com/post/144797792186/roy-stannard-the-poppies

https://secure.assets.tumblr.com/post.js

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It Was Darker Then

Theatre, Minsk

The National Opera & Ballet Theatre, Minsk – creating the building before creating the art

It was darker then

It was darker then

The day dulled before the dawn

As I pulled up the flap of the future

memories crawled like maggots towards my heart

abandoned like fresh roadkill

in the path of the emotional bulldozers

clearing the way ahead, blinding the traffic

in the glare of the new Glasnost.

We were all party members in the old days

Card carrying pessimists, romance politicals,

Intolerant love Bolsheviks in a red mist of fury

Our angry love demanding manifesto pledges

Ahead of marriage vows as protest marched on.

It was darker then

In the no men and women’s land

Between the trenches of the past and future

When the red seeped into the white

Like an embolism of emotion

Bruising the perfect untouched ideas of a generation

Used to pumping blood in vain.

And as today’s clarion speeches are left in toilets

And whistle blowers purse their lips in dismay

We wonder why the great barricades

Look designer-made, as the would-be heros

audition on reality TV

and the everyday Watergates burst open

with tiny pustular pops and the dogs of headlines

whimper and eye the storybones with suspicion

 wondering what teeth are for when we are all vegetarian now.

It was darker then

When I brokered my first love deal

And gingerly felt the mutual bumps of our ambition

Debating great men and their place in dialectical materialism

Writing rapier essays that hurt to read

Because the words we used were the clubs we belonged to

And the blows we clubbed with

We were the boys of the Brigade

Part of the loose, easy movement, falling like the Berlin Wall

And the statue of Stalin fleeing St Petersburg.

It was darker then

With love blocked by Communism

And the father of future Milibands altering his salutation from Adolf

leaving Warsaw for the West End watering holes

While the State in Capitalist Society plays Polo by Ralph Lauren

And Tariq the Street Fighting Man

Plays Glastonbury in an ash and chestnut yurt

Whilst the reluctant fans of austerity hurt

and blurt out their pain in little red books

From Redchurch Street, E2.

It was darker then

Before the revolution of the revolving doors

And the advent of the insurrection chic

Standing in front of the tank tops in Trafalgar Square

Not backing down until the petition is signed

100,000 times online

we operate behind the lines

we are the subversives, submerged with guilt about coming out on top

we leak quietly like a million twitch-eyed whistle blowers

in a silent movie by Dali and Bunuel.

I screamed in silence for years

exploring the blade-edge in avant-garde suffering,

an impressionist pavement preacher in Paris

painting love in angles and tears, until I met you,

until the sunlight floodlines filtered into a new Perestroika

in the smallest empire in the world

called you and me.

Roy Stannard 4th July 2013

Live on air reading TW9Y 4.7.13 here:

https://soundcloud.com/roystannard/it-was-darker-then

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Moment

Leigh

Who knows when that moment will occur?

Moment

 

There was a New York moment
An ice-splinter in a sheet of sunlight
When without the aid of smart devices
Using dumb mind trails and heartstrings
We managed to connect
Like two sparrowhawks circling the Downs
Two wayfaring strangers caught in eye contact
A brother and a sister separated at the orphanage
The tramrails of recognition in a train carriage
Two carvings divided by centuries on an ancient Ashdown Forest oak
Together but alone, two flights scribbled together, trails in the sky
Lattice-work moments that we didn’t recognise then
But now in our Hadleigh twitchers hide they start to form letters
on the Estuary horizon as we look across the marshes of Foulness
And in the distance the iron-toothed refineries and the Essex tides
wash dreams from the tarnished golden mile to Thorpe Bay.
Do you remember being scared by thunder in the same storm?
Before grammar schools dressed us in new ambitions
That hung off us like extravagant hand-me-downs
And we didn’t know each other then
And yet we did, somehow.
We heard the strains of the same songs
drifting through our different worlds
echoes in adjacent rooms then
but hearing them again now,
as our eyes dance in the same places.
And as the shadows lengthen
The midges rise and the fairy-tale forest draws in
We let the thought hang in the air
There is a new Wealden moment
An iceblink as the glacier shifts
And the sun traces our faces,
our shadows merge, becoming one
as all of the things we always meant to do
collide here like carriages of a train
in its silent Beeching siding
but there in the car reserved for lovers
two people who have not known each other
all their lives
finally have their moment.
 
Roy Stannard 6th June 2013
(the 50th anniversary of the Beeching cuts)
 
Listen to a live recording on Soundcloud
https://soundcloud.com/roystannard/roy-stannard-moment-final-mix
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2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 12,000 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 20 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

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God Speed

Gary Speed 8th September 1969 – 27th November 2011

God Speed

God speed you. Black and white Emperor.

Pure breath of granite hewed from the ground of Flintshire

where dragons fly and the hills sigh for the business of dreaming.

You were already formed as a warrior

As the Merlin alchemists mixed your being together

In the days before the men of Harlech began to sing your name

when your promise whirled and eddied from the valleys,

tendrils of smoke from the miners’ fires gathered

and formed on the terraces of Leeds, Everton, Newcastle and Bolton

where working men admired the chiselled stare, the rapier pass and the Aquila dribble

A club man that darted, never clubbed.

You served in the football trenches with McAllister, Batty and Strachan,

going over the top with them,

comrades in no man’s land, where even the enemy ceased firing to admire you.

You were the midfield General, the Captain and Sergeant of armbands

You played them at your own game

You did not go gently into the night

You were the black on the white, the raven hair and pithead eyes burning coals on the turf.

 You saw the whites of their eyes and flayed them with black and white stripes.

And yet, the gentle cleft of your jaw, the downhill saunter of your nose,

 were a softer frame for the imperial neck, a pedestal, a clenched life raised in victory,

the full motion slide on grass, cutting your legend into the soil,

a fighter blooding his territory with over 500 battle cries.

Many were victories, but you couldn’t win them all.

Your fame will grow with your passing.

When your foe faced you, you vanquished him.

But when he came to live within, you vanished.

God Speed you. The Emperor who did not fade to grey.

Roy Stannard. 30th November 2011 (for Gary Speed 8.9.69 – 27.11.11)

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Southend Pier – still standing, but not standing still.

When I was a boy I spent hours upon hours on Southend Pier, walking its length, feeling its girth, teasing its claim to be the longest in the world at 1.25 miles.  Its slot machine alleys whispered to me alluringly. Cheap, trashy items like tin rings and shoddy pen knives (that I would have left on the ground if had I found them) became irresistible treasure if found on a moving tray of pennies or laying prostrate below a mechanical crane. I would lose myself for hours in these glittering, garishly painted palaces, emerging into the light and air feeling poorer and coppers lighter to lean against the walkway rails.

Southend Pier. The daddy of all piers has been rebuilt more times than the six million dollar man, made up and repainted more times than a Soho harlot and yet it still receives its lovers, supplicants and one-day tripper stands.

In 1959, three years after I was born, a fire destroyed the Pier Pavilion at the shore-end, replaced by a ten-pin bowling alley. Eighteen years later another fire swallowed up the 1908 Pier Head which remained derelict until a £1.3m grant from the Historic Buildings Committee in 1986 made good and also financed new rolling stock so that the tiny railway recommenced  the traditional ride back for the outward bound walkers. Almost immediately afterwards the MV Kingsabbey sliced through the pier between the old and new pier heads leaving an ugly, yawning 70 foot hole. It was patched up reluctantly, like an old lady at a modern dentist in 1989. Six years later the bowling alley was destroyed by fire, repaired in 1998, followed by a brand new Pier entrance in 2003 – only to play with fire again in 2005 which swallowed and spat out the station, cafe, restaurant, toilets and the pavilion. In 2007 Southend Pier was awarded Pier of the Year and two years later its brand new station platform and office was officially opened by Southend’s Mayor.

The result of all this wear, tear and repair is that the end of the pier is now pristine, clean and virtually clear of buildings. The RNLI building stands alone, proud of its heroic status, poised for action, imperiously dismissive of the simple tourists that climb its stairs for a prurient look.

No end of pier theatre, no varieties, not even a stick of rock in sight. Length isn’t everything. As a young man, I felt that there must be a better pier. The kiss me quick hats would always be faster and racier elsewhere. In 1977 I left Southend in search of  true seaside seediness in Brighton.

Before that, in the faraway fifties and sixties, a boy played on the longest pier in the world, a pier with no beginning or end, a pier that stretched as far as the imagination would stretch. Beyond that, there was always Kent.

Like the pier, I have had fires, objects that sailed straight through me, numerous repairs, modifications and people walking all over me.

We are both still standing.

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The tracks that changed my life

Memories on CD stored safely

I recently took part in a pilot with Patrick Woodward called Memory Box that my sister-in-law Lynne (Angel) Kerr  is initiating in which you pick your nine most influential tracks from childhood to the present day and talk about what they mean to you – which is then recorded as a kind of podcast and copied onto CD. Patrick has done a wonderful job of editing the 40 minute programme. It reveals quite a lot and explains why music is so important to me. It is meant to act as a kind of demo for anyone else wanting to record their memories and favourite tracks onto a CD. If you would like to do it yourself – and have something to pass onto your children then please contact me – and I will pass your details on.

Roy Stannard’s Life Tracks

  1. Ricky Nelson – Hello Mary Lou (Father’s favourite)
  2. Bob Lind – Remember the Rain (played it all the time when I was ten)
  3. America – A Horse with no Name (first consciously adult record purchase, still love it today)
  4. Marvin Gaye – What’s Going on (first record that told me that you could actually change things with a song)
  5. Geneva – Tranquillizer (Lyric ‘We will be happy while we are still young’ nuff said)
  6. Mike Scott (Waterboys) – What do you want me to do (don’t believe in God, you will after listening to this)
  7. Tom Baxter – My Declaration (My philosophy of life captured in a beautiful song, perfect)
  8. Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues ( a classic song from the present – they do still write songs like that!)
  9. Neil Young – Like a Hurricane (Best guitar ever, recorded live in one take in Toronto before a gig in 1975, first track I ever played on radio, my favourite song of all time)

Listen to my all-time nine Podcast on Mixcloud here:

http://i.mixcloud.com/CC0ErW