At the moment there is a certain word collocation that is virtually guaranteed to grab headlines. The secret involves combining the name of an animal with a word associated with the cold. I know this because the media can’t get enough of bird flu or Arctic Monkeys. It makes you wonder if the much maligned music journo, Nevets Retrop, had a point when he said that mid-80’s indie pop outfit, 14 Iced Bears, were twenty years ahead of their time.

But getting back to these Arctic Monkeys, I’ve heard a couple of their songs, and although I like what I hear, I can’t understand why the UK has gone into such an AM frenzy. Sure, the music sounds young and refreshing. But then so did The Libertines first album, which was perhaps the most exciting thing I’ve heard by an emerging British guitar band in recent years. However, their follow up was just a shambles; without the Baby prefix. The other young British act of recent years that really do it for me is The Streets, who managed to keep their feet on the ground long enough to produce a fine second album. Let’s see if Arctic Monkeys can stay the course after their first winter in the limelight.

For more on the Arctic Monkeys and other music related articles including a soon to be featured exclusive entitled 14 Iced Bears (Where are they now?) see: http://www.thefolk.blogspot.com/

There was a guy at school called Morley who knew the lyrics and highest chart positions of all the Jam singles. I’ve never been much into learning things off by heart. Why bother when you can have more fun writing your own stuff? But I thought it was a pretty cool thing to copy out the lyrics to all these Jam songs and stick them on my bedroom wall. This was in 1984, two years after the Jam split up and punk was dead, although The Exploited claimed it wasn’t, and loads of gullible local kids believed them. News travels slowly to northern Scotland.
Morley and I took to wearing shirts and ties which didn’t go down too well with some of the young punks. There was this total psycho; I’ll call him ‘Ronnie’. I’m still a bit wary of using his real name in case he finds out about this. “Hey Porter, Sporter, Nevets, whatever you call yourself, I hear you’ve been writing about me!” It’s not a very likely scenario, but just in case,I have changed one vowel in his name for my own personal safety. I am quite certain that Ronnie and his friends don’t know their vowels from their consonants.
Ronnie sized me up one day when I was wearing a Parka, shirt, and Jam tie.
“Has nobody ever told you what happens to Mods around these parts?” he asked.
I could have taken a guess but I thought it better not to contribute to my own downfall.
“No,” I said.
“They get their fucking heads kicked in,” he enlightened me.
“Thanks for the warning,” I gulped.
Ronnie nodded seriously and walked off. This was a lucky break as Ronnie had shot a friend of mine a few weeks before. Fortunately the victim suffered nothing more serious than an air gun pellet wound to his a buttock.
Ronnie was aware that I owed him a favour for leaving my head on my shoulders so he decided it was not unreasonable to ask my girlfriend out on a date. At the local youth club, he leaned back on his chair with his hands behind his head and lit a cigarette. His chat up line to her was, “How about we meet up this weekend and drop some acid?” She did the wise thing and politely declined. As Mo was a girl Ronnie couldn’t really kick her head in.
In the following weeks I heard further rumours of other senior psychos that were out to get me. I decided I’d better bin the gear and confine The Jam fixation to the walls of my bedroom.
Jam lyrics still appear in my head from time to time. In the middle of the week, on the repetitive walk to work, I sometimes think of a verse from That’s Entertainment that goes “days of speed and slow time Mondays/pissing down with rain on a boring Wednesday”. Weller was my introduction to realism.
Out of the blue an old friend once phoned me up after midnight. “He’s in his bed, can I take a message?” my mother said. “Just tell him that Paul Weller phoned.” Morley was my introduction to surrealism.

Last year I was talking to a class of half a dozen Catalan students about David Bowie when I realised from the blank expressions that nobody had heard of him. I have to remind myself that it is twenty years since Bowie was a big international star.
The other day I was reading a text about the Rolling Stones with a sixteen year old student. It soon became clear he knew nothing about them. We might as well have been reading about Baking Scones. I explained that the Stones were a fine band before going on to say that I wouldn’t really want to see them live as they look like Muppets nowadays. Of course, the student had no idea who the Muppets were either. I need to update my cultural references. I’m no longer hanging around with my generation.