- Scott King

14 & 15 December 2013: Alone in Blackpool, Waiting for Sleaford Mods / Scott King
Imagine an accent rougher than your own, shouting over a looped guitar riff
from the Sex Pistols’ version of Jonathan Richman’s Roadrunner:
Chop Chop Chop ... fucking bummers ... She insists I go meet her family for
Christmas ... at some crap 21st. in some shit club ... so I went ... it was terrible.
Bunch of thick bastards eating cheap party food ... she’s bouncing around flirting with everybody, jiggling her knobbly knees to Jay-Z and Beyoncé.
I laughed out loud when I first heard it. I was immediately transported back to
Goole in the late-eighties, back to any working man’s club, back to any stiffegg-sandwich-birthday-party and a world of orange-skinned-back-combedhairspray-lasses. I identified. But as the song goes on, deeper into the realms
of bad breath junkie drug dealers and their screaming kids, everything becomes
darker and more desperate. It’s still funny, really funny, but I’m painfully aware
of laughing at someone else’s sink-estate, piss-hole misery: by the end of the
song, I no longer identify. In fact, I’m not even that sure I should be laughing.
***
It wasn’t Chop, Chop, Chop that got me hooked on Sleaford Mods, but that was
the song that swung it for me - the song that sealed my faith in them: an eight
minute mini-drama, an update on the classic BBC sitcom formula where - like
so many of Sleaford Mods’ lyrics - the tragedy and humour both spring from the
same source: entrapment.
I play YouTube clips of the band over and over throughout early September. I
am transfixed - as much by the grim world the band describe, by these other
lives, as by the gurning, hooligan-looking singer and the wobbly legged, junkie-looking computer player. Like Chop Chop Chop, all of their songs are a window into lives that are much more desperate than mine. I mean, sitting hear in
leafy Highbury, what would I write my white-rap about? The middle-aged IVF
lawyer new mums, latte-jogging their twins around the park - or - New-MediaMatt and his mates, still in training kit, watching football in the local pub over
an orange juice and a ‘locally sourced’ Sunday Roast?
***
Nobody asks me to, nor probably even wants me to, but I appoint myself as
this band’s unofficial marketing wing. I work tirelessly and for free. My Twitter
campaign begins on 19th. September 2013. “Sleaford Mods are the best band in
Britain” - that’s the message. I’m not the first person to realise this of course, I’m
just very vocal about it. Everyday, sometimes three or four times a day, I Tweet a
variation on this message and support the sentiment with a YouTube link of the
band playing live. I am relentless.
In the coming weeks, realising the limitations of Twitter - that it is personal but
not that personal - I step up my campaign to include e-mails. I send e-mails to
almost everyone I know and repeat the message; some people even reply. I then
expand my e-mail campaign to include people that I don’t know - I apologise
for ‘cold-calling’ but explain that it is worth it, and essential that they look at the
link below: “Sleaford Mods Track 1” I say. “Amazing. Fucking brilliant. The
best band in Britain”.
Looking back now, I can see why I sent out dozens of e-mails to well-known
journalists like Miranda Sawyer (who I don’t know) or Alexis Petridis (who
I know a bit). I hoped that they, like me, would be instantly converted - and they’re influential, so it made sense. I was hoping that they’d write about the
band, introduce them to a national audience, give them a leg-up. That said, I
have no idea why I sent the same e-mail to Alain de Botton; or why I should
have his email address. Did I really believe that this bald-pated, patterned knitwear fanatic would really understand the JD Sports, ram-raiding, three for a
fiver, discount supermarket poetry of Sleaford Mods? Well, I must have done.
As I look back now, I can see that certain madness had taken hold. Something
strange had happened to me - something that I thought would never happen
again - I had become a fan.
***
Gripped, at least in part, by a need to understand my own behaviour, I begin
making notes on the band: “Anyone can be a Sex Pistol”, “Our greatest weapon
against the Mumfordisation of Britain”, “The X Factor gone disastrously and
brilliantly fucking wrong”, “Sleaford Mods: the Sex Pistols meets X Factor.
The X-Pistols”.
My need to categorise the group is pathetic, really. Why can’t I just enjoy them?
Obviously, it’s because I am a male fan of rock and pop; I can’t just enjoy any
band. I need to label groups, put it them in boxes, then file them away - and I’m
not alone. Previous reviewers have attempted to do the same, the general consensus being that Sleaford Mods are ‘the bastard children of The Fall’, or ‘extras from a Shane Meadows film’. Inevitably someone describes them as ‘John
Cooper Clarke on steroids’ (this ‘on steroids’ or ‘on acid’ affix always riles me:
‘like Timothy Leary on acid’). More imaginative reviewers will have you believe that Sleaford Mods are Half Man Half Biscuit ‘meets’ Wu-Tang Clan. Interesting, funny, but also untrue. Two notebooks already full of supposition; I’m
determined that it’s now my turn at to commit some Sleaford-theories to print.
I pitch my idea to this magazine. It’s never easy. The publisher makes me meet
him several times, forcing me to explain why he should give a dozen potentially
high revenue advertising pages over to a little known band from Nottingham. I
bang my fist on the table in the organic coffee shop: “BECAUSE THIS IS ART”,
I tell him, and eventually he agrees. I can have as many pages as I like for my
feature. “There is a condition though” he says, “We want you to speak to the
singer - Jason is it? - artist to artist. That is the story - and we want to know why
you, a grown man, are behaving like a teenage girl. Can you write about that?”
***
Sleaford Mods love Twitter. Jason, uses it like a public note-pad. Half thoughts,
proto-lyrics and bad feelings all go straight on to Twitter: no editing, no deleting
and no apologies. ‘Am fucked’, ‘Tied up in Nottz’, ‘Fuck off’. Twitter is part
of the very idea of Sleaford Mods - it provides immediate one-to-one communication with an audience - and it’s through Twitter that I establish a friendship
of sorts with the Jason. It’s not difficult - they don’t keep their distance from me
or any other fan. There’s an endless two-way communication between band and
audience and this - it seems - is the backbone of Sleaford Mods. The recordings
are the same: maximum truth with minimum beats. It all makes sense - in a
way - no barrier between the band and the audience. I dwell on this fact a lot - I
ruminate on it - the pros and the cons.
Late one night, via email, I offer Jason some advice - I suggest that he might
want stand back a bit: not let everyone in, not be seen to be too accessible - unintentionally, unwittingly, but undeniably - I am, of course, suggesting that he
starts to act a bit more like a rock’n’roll star.
***
In mid-December, Sleaford Mods are playing a short tour of the north. I make
up my mind to go to one of these gigs. The 16th December is Blackpool. I can’t
get the thought out of my head. Sleaford Mods make songs about the minimum
wage and crap discos. Blackpool is officially Britain’s second poorest town. I’ll
go up to there. I’ll write about the long boozy neon nights and even longer dull
grey days. It’s perfect.
I arrive in Blackpool the night before the band are due to play. I’ve convinced
myself that this is essential: if I travel up on the Saturday night, I’ll have the
whole of Sunday to take photographs in daylight. I have a vision of sorts.
Blackpool is the working class death disco of the north. A safety valve invented by Victorian industrialists to pacify the workforces of Lancashire’s cotton
mills. Blackpool is where Norman Tebbit made his infamous ‘get on yer bike
and look for work’ speech in the aftermath of widespread urban rioting in 1981:
it’s where the Tories used go to publicly fuck and kick the working classes and
where the working classes still go to publicly fuck and kick each other.
It’s only five minutes walk from Blackpool North station to the Metropole Hotel. Five long minutes of near-naked hen nights and muscle-bound, plucked
eyebrowed puking gangs of lads. I thought I’d love all this, but I’m completely
sober, so the mass-drunkenness makes me very nervous. I feel like Squadron
Leader Bunty Smythe on a successful home run from Colditz when I finally
open the door to my comfy double room. I would love to go for a drink somewhere, but I’m put off as much by the cabaret grannies that fill the hotel bar
downstairs as I am by the teenage gangs outside. I’m torn - to drink or to stay
in? I decide to stay in; that it’s the right thing to do. I fiddle with the portable
TV long enough to realise that it doesn’t have BBC 4 ... long enough to realise
that I’m going to miss the last episodes of Borgen. As I lay on the bed, I am
acutely aware of how much I must have changed since I last came here in
1991. Go to Blackpool on a Saturday night and shout at the telly because it
refuses to let me watch a subtitled Danish political drama? Fucking hell. I’m
sort of ashamed of myself. But - the truth is - I really do want to get up early, I
really do want to study Blackpool in the cold light of day: the Saturday night’s
Sunday morning.
***
I had planned to get up early, but not this early. I’ve been pacing my room,
smoking, since 4am - all the best hotels here advertise ‘smoking rooms’ - some
even boast ‘smoking throughout’. By the time I go down for breakfast four
hours later, I feel like I’ve been out all night; but it’s a beautiful winter’s morning. As I sit amongst my friendly - if largely obese, ancient or disabled fellow
diners - I couldn’t be happier. I fiddle with my camera and make a list of today’s goals: photograph B&Bs, backstreet misery, Blackpool Tower, Winter
Gardens, dog shit etc.
So, with this as my agenda, I set out. First, a two-mile hike down the seafront, just for pleasure. It’s fantastic - the gale force fresh air sweeping over
the Irish Sea and straight down my throat - a stark contrast to this morning’s
chain-smoking in my overheated room. I love the British seaside, all of it, at
anytime of year. It’s the sense of communal nostalgia perhaps, shared memories in towns that never really change - or maybe its the teenage scooter rallies slow adventures to Yarmouth, Morecambe or Skegness and that very first sense
of freedom. Whatever it is, I’m never happier than when in a seaside town and
I just walk and walk, immediately forgetting about my misery-agenda. As I
walk, I also remember how much I enjoy being alone in strange places - how
much it’s part of the job of being an artist. If you’re lucky enough to have a
show in New York, Zurich or Berlin it’s almost impossible not to meet someone that you know, not to arrange a drink in a bar - but should you find yourself
exhibiting in Breda, Friborg, Dunkirk or Dundee, the opposite applies: there’s
no chance at all of bumping into someone you know and anyone you do meet,
you’ll most likely never see again. I’m excited to be all alone - it’s alone in
these strange towns, sat in a bar over a notebook - with hours if not days to kill,
that I find myself to be at my most creative - separated from real life and with
no one to talk to - I become an endless font of ideas, and I love it.
After two hours I am absolutely bored shitless. Its only just gone ten o’clock
and the band don’t get here till four. I’ve already been to the tower and the
Winter Gardens (both closed). I’ve wandered up and down the back-streets
photographing the lunatic B&Bs; I’ve photographed the dog shit, the spew and
the semi-defunct rock shops. Now what do I do? Time has almost stood still
and every ten minutes seems to take an hour. I’ve even contemplated all-day
drinking, but was put off by a non-legged man parked outside Wetherspoons.
I sit on a bench high up in the town and flick back through my photographs
- they’re all terrible - predictable clichés of Northern misery - they look like
Morrissey’s holiday snaps. I seriously consider giving up and just going back
to bed. But then, then, I notice that at least half of my pictures have Blackpool
Tower in the background - and this gives me an idea.
For the next three hours, I am the happiest man in Lancashire. I’ve decided
to photograph Blackpool Tower from every point that it becomes visible in
a half mile, half radius as I walk up through the town: the tower always the
same size and in the same place in every shot. I know exactly what I’m doing.
My idea is a composite of many influences (John Baldessari, Guy Debord and
Victor Burgin to name three), but ultimately, absolutely, it is mine: I am making original ART. Not only that, I’ve found an objective way to document the
daylight misery of Blackpool without having to seek it out: the redbrick chip
shop terraces are all essential but ultimately incidental. I’ve applied the essence
of Conceptual art’s objectivity to a grotty social-realism, and I’m very pleased
with myself. I even have a title “Majestic Karaoke Nihilism”.
I finish the Blackpool Tower photographs at a quarter past one. I’ve eaten nothing but a few tinned tomatoes, I’ve been awake for nine hours and have walked
a dozen miles, I really should go to sleep or at least eat something - but now on
a high and excited about the band’s arrival - I decide that I’ve earned a drink.
***
I visit several pubs around the market square - mainly because I’m being pursued by an gigantic pensioner from Salford who calls himself Rockin’ Pete - he
attached himself to me in The Cedar Tavern after I kindly bought him a packet
of peanuts. I keep making my excuses and trying to say goodbye to Rockin’
Pete - hoping to shake off his pint poncing and cigarette scrounging - but every
time I turn around, I realise that he’s followed me into the next pub. It’s partly
because of this game of cat‘n’mouse with Rockin’ Pete that I end up drinking
so much so quickly. As soon as he launches into another long-winded joke or
spontaneously bursts into more a cappela versions of Motorhead and Black
Sabbath’s greatest hits, I immediately guzzle down my pint and slip off to the
next pub. Eventually, and only through a series of cunning and complex toilet/
cash-machine manoeuvres, do I finally manage to give Rockin’ Pete the slip.
By three o’clock, after two hours of drinking, I find myself sitting alone near
the toilets in a town-centre karaoke bar. I can’t say that I wish Rockin’ Pete was
here, but I definitely wish that someone was here. The novelty of solo-boozing
has worn off and I am - by about thirty years - the youngest person in this pub.
An endless queue of pensioners take it in turns to murder classic Christmas
songs. One of these songs will haunt me for weeks: Arthur, in trilby, carrier
bags in hand, steps up on to the carpeted stage and in a mid-pitched, yet murderous monotone, warbles “Giddy up, giddy up, giddy up, Let’s go, let’s look
at the show ... Come on, it’s lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with
yoooooo”. The OAP talent show is fucking torture and it goes on and on.
Because I have nobody to talk to - because I have nothing else to do - I make
notes into my phone: ‘In the Industrial Revolution’s Graveyard everyone insists on entertaining you ALL of the time. They refuse NOT to entertain you.
Blackpool is an X Factor death camp, its aged karaoke comedians, the pounda-pint Sonderkommando’.
At four o’clock Jason sends me a text. Thank God! They should be here by now
- I immediately perk up - I can’t wait to see him. The text reads: “Sorry. Running
late. There by 7pm”. I am beside myself with misery.
What am I going to do for the next three hours? Too drunk and listless to bother
going back to the hotel, I elect instead to stay in the geriatric karaoke pub. If I
stop drinking bitter and start drinking double vodkas with Red Bull, that’ll lift
my mood - I’ll be chemically energised - ready to interview the band and enjoy
the gig. I drink and fill a notebook with increasingly fantastical yet illegible
ideas. I don’t remember telling Jason which pub I was in - but I must have done because when he finally appears, hovering over me a few hours later, I’ve never
been so grateful to see anyone ever.
I’m completely pissed by now. We need to find a quiet pub to do the interview
- but there’s no such thing around here - instead we find a table at the back of
a horrible sports bar - all big screens and booming football commentary - still,
it’s much quieter that the Christmas karaoke place. The interview is a wobbly
effort at first - I ask Jason a few ‘starter questions’ - like John Humphrys does on
Mastermind. Jason is polite. He tells me that Friday night’s gig in Glasgow was
pretty quiet - but how he was pleased with their performance, and that’s always
the main thing. I tell him that I have mates who were at he Glasgow gig and
how much they enjoyed it - and how I’ve even got friends in Berlin who are still
talking about the show Sleaford Mods played there in August.
“That’s great” I can see that he’s trying to think of the correct way to phrase
this “It’s brilliant - but I’d like to make an impression in my own country. All
the people I’ve been brought up with, the bands that I’ve loved, have always
been big in their own country ... I’m not a fucking patriot by any means but, it’s
important to me”. I know what he means - he’s talking about The Jam maybe,
or the Sex Pistols - or - I’m presuming that he is - he might be talking about
Wu-Tang Clan, I don’t ask him. Then he adds, “But Europe’s done me and Andrew a lot of favours. People take us seriously there - they don’t just think I’m
some mad twat shouting in a club”. Sleaford Mods are playing dozens of dates
throughout Europe in 2014 - but, I ask him - is it likely that people know what
he’s talking about, the slang words and his pronounced accent “I think they just
like the energy” he tells me “and, some of its melodic and people will always
respond to a succession of fucking melodies ... a tune ... if it’s arranged right.
That‘s international isn’t it?”
I try and steer the conversation a bit - it is my job, after all - “Are you two different people then? One on stage and one off?” I’m referring to how polite he is
in person, how this is a marked contrast to the lyrics or his performance. “No.
It’s just me!” He laughs “Well, on stage - it’s just me, but with the blood boiling
anger. If I behaved like that off-stage, I wouldn’t get away with it would I? I’d
be fucking locked-up”.
That’s an interesting update on The Punk Rock Notion of Authenticity. Johnny
Rotten’s whole non-act was always about being the same on stage as he was off
it - that’s what we all believed, that is why we believed. I put this to Jason and
he agrees - but says he will just be himself whatever “Even if that makes me a
two-faced bastard when I go on stage, slagging everyone off ”. We talk at length
about if this is ‘acting’ or not, about if a performance can ever really end. Even
Shaun Ryder, in recent years, has said that he played-up to his image, that he let
the press believe what they wanted to believe.
I remind Jason about the e-mail that I sent him a few weeks ago - the one where
I’d suggested that he might become a little less accessible, a bit more aloof. He’s
obviously thought about this quite a lot and he’s ready for me this time: “With
respect” he says “That’s complete bollocks”. He says it’d be wrong for him to do
anything that feels contrived, that doesn’t feel ‘natural’. He’s referring of course,
to not ‘playing the game’ or not ‘playing a game’. If it seems right for the singer
to book his own gigs or to reply to almost everyone who contacts him via Facebook or Twitter - then that’s what he’ll do - he’s not prepared to ‘act the star’, not
prepared to pretend to be someone else. “Fuck it”, he says in conclusion “People
seem to be picking up on what we do now, because of the state of the country,
the state of the world. But what we do is not worthy of mythologising ... its crap
in some ways and just not worthy - in a few years time people might start laughing at us. But I don’t care, this is what I do. It’s what we do”.
He’s right of course. I got it all wrong by suggesting they should change their
ways - the beauty of this band is their honesty: their very point is furious, cruel
and hilarious truth.
Andrew joins us briefly and I have a question for him. “What are you hoping to
achieve with Sleaford Mods?” - “Just to keep going really. That’s the main thing.
Keep doing what we’re doing”. It’s a good answer, and really, the only ‘artist to
artist’ answer that I need. Isn’t that all any artist wants - just to be able to keep
doing what they’re doing?
Before we leave for the gig, I remember that I have one last point to make - I
can’t resist - I might slur it, but it seems very clear to me: “Are Sleaford Mods
a form of Karaoke then?” Jason looks at me suspiciously - thinks for a moment,
then answers “No”. Unperturbed, I say “Not even Majestic Karaoke Nihilism?”
He tells me to ‘fuck off’.
***
The gig venue - Scrooges - is a Dickens-themed discount disco above a sauna
on a street that’s lined with brothels. It’s perfect: horrible artexed walls, fake
Tudor beams, stained carpets and Christmas tat everywhere. I love it, it’s a total
shit-hole and best of all there is NO STAGE. There’s only about thirty people
in the place, but the band are fantastic. Face to face with the audience in this
nasty club, in this sad-fun-town, they make absolute sense. There is something
thrilling about seeing a band with no stage - a band on a carpet - a band with
who you’re face to face. You’re forced to recognise the bravery of what they’re
doing - in Blackpool, in Nottingham, in Newcastle - Jason is shouting about the
misery of low-pay and cultural disappointment - he’s offering you or me - not a
mirror - but a portrait of his own life - couple it with Andrew’s now original (no
samples) and increasingly heavy music and well - it’s just beautiful. I only wish
I wasn’t so drunk, because all the details are just a blur ... just a feeling.
I don’t remember leaving Scrooges. But I do remember talking into my recording device as I walked along the seafront, back to my hotel - past the staring
gangs of lads and the scantily clad, pissed-up lasses. According to my spoken
notes: “Jason is - as they used to say - 4 REAL. He works in a call-centre - his
fury is fucking righteous - HE IS AN ARTIST - I AM ALSO 4 REAL ... and
not a cunt. He is just being. I love Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard and Nick
Sanderson and ... I don’t fucking know - maybe he is domesticated or frustrated
by day - BUT - like all great rock’n’roll singers: by night, he howls at the Moon
... Super-size Funghi, please mate”.
***
I do remember eating a scalding, spongy pizza as I leant on a dustbin outside
my hotel. I don’t remember going to bed. I wake up at ten the next morning,
fully clothed and on the floor. My pizza box is my pillow. I find my phone and
flick through the pictures I took last night. Every single one is out of focus. It
doesn’t matter. I got the feeling. I then send an e-mail to a man that I shall never
meet: “You should have been here last night Alain. You’d have loved it. Sleaford
Mods: The Best Band in Britain”.
Study of Blackpool Tower, Scott King, 2014. Courtesy Herald St. London.