No, no, unfortunately I didn’t get away to Italy this year.  I was tempted.  But thought that for the sake of world peace it might be better to leave it for the moment.  Had to make do with having a bit of an Antonioni feast, which given the dismal weather we’ve been having was as good a way as any of passing the time. 

With the passing of time making it possible for us to have ready access to untold worlds of cinema in the seclusion of our living rooms, it’s perfectly permissible for us to methodically absorb things like Antonioni’s modernist trilogy where once it would have been so unattainable.  Indeed once I thought it the very height of sophistication to be able to talk with any degree of conviction on Antonioni and Blow –Up.  What did I know then?  I cringe to think how dumb I was.  I’d never even heard of this particular trilogy.  But all three are classic films.  L’Avventura.  La Notte.  And L’Eclisse.  And all three have classic performances from Monica Vitti.  I have to confess there was a time not that long ago when I only knew her star turn in Modesty Blaise.  But yeah I thought I knew it all. 

Watching L’Eclisse now even the opening credits stop me in my tracks.  Mina doing her Eclisse Twist.  Fantastic.  At a stroke opening up whole new vistas of Italian pop.  And once whew how I would have laughed at that idea.  In fact I did.  And thinking back what a prat I must have been.  There are some conversations in life you’d give anything to go back and have all over again.

It was ooh I guess around 1988.  I was at a boot sale.  And I was aware of two girls staring at me.  And whispering.  And giggling.  So I tried to act as cool and nonchalant as possible, though no doubt I was blushing as was my wont.  Anyway after a bit one of these girls actually came up to me, and very nicely asked me if I was a mod.  Now in those days, if there was one question that would throw, well that was it.  What the hell did you say?  So I ermed, and grimaced, and shrugged, and erred, and sort of bumbled on about old habits dying hard.  Which was a bit of a cop out.  But then again it wasn’t.

The funny thing was that I was trying not to be dismissive and arrogant, because as it happens this girl was quite clearly very much into the mod thing, with bob and bangs and capri pants and button down.  But she was young.  And cute.  Very young.  And very cute.  And I had seen her about.  And I liked her about an awful lot.  Anyway, my answer couldn’t have been too disastrous, as we agreed to meet up at some ‘60s soul night down in Greenwich, and one thing led to another.

Actually the mod relapse thing for me around then was a kind of deliberate reaction against the acid house smiley culture.  I was making a stand against sociability.  I really did not want to drive around the Kent countryside trying to find some forsaken farm where some public schoolboy entrepreneur was making a fortune out of some scam in the name of raving.  I hated all that.  Though funnily enough I had been very much into house music before everyone started using the acid word.  I used to listen a lot to the London pirate stations, and in particular Steve Jackson on I think TKO when he used to have live link ups with Chicago and say jack every other word.  It was very new and strange then.  But …

So I adopted this very puritanical mod approach to life.  Golf jackets and hush puppies and shaggy nero crops that would later be stolen by the acid jazz crowd and then everyone from Gazza to George Michael.  Musically I had this very specific sense that everything revolved around Nobody’s Scared by Subway Sect and ATV’s Action Time Vision and that everything flowed from that, with a very precise link to the earlier mod noise of The Eyes, Attack, Poets, Wimple Winch, John’s Children, Fleurs De Lys, and especially the Sorrows whose Take A Heart I was totally obsessed with.  I knew less about all that, what I suppose came to be known as freakbeat, which is a tag I hate, and anyway it was all punk rock to me.  The guitars just so.  The sneers even more so.

Anyway my sweet beat angel took me to meet the folks.  I cringe now.  But I must have been insufferably arrogant.  I was a handful of years older than her, and acted o so superior.  Her dad was a really nice bloke, and I would love to sit down with him now over a coffee and gossip, but then I wasn’t listening.  I had already been primed on how her dad had been an early mod, and was involved in the music scene, but I was dismissive of everything that everyone else had done.  Very wrong of me.  I really regret it now.

And he was a really nice bloke.  Then he worked in public relations for a film distribution company or something.  I wasn’t listening.  I was too worried about how involved I was getting in a real relationship.  I didn’t do real relationships.  And this all felt too formal and conventional suddenly, so I was sullen and surly to a really pleasant couple genuinely fond of their daughter and genuinely interested in this bloke she’d bought home and about whom they’d heard so much. 

He asked about the music I liked and so I was trying to be clever talking about some of my more obscure ‘60s favourites.  Sounds like that Nik Cohn story doesn’t it about Russian gangs being named after the more obscure ‘60s beat groups from the UK.  Anyway this guy says oh yes gosh he knows some of those names, and that he would have seen some of them, and indeed worked with some of them.  And I’m like oh yes how interesting, now when can I get away. 

Then he’s clicking his fingers, singing The Sorrows’ Take A Heart, saying that’s an amazing song, and if I hang on somewhere stowed away he’s got a white label of their LP.  Suddenly my interest was aroused, and sure enough he had a copy which he stuck on, and indeed taped for me.  I thought it was amazing, and was really getting into it.  Some wonderful nasty jagged beat noise.  It’s still one of my favourite records.  Shamefully I was too busy digging the record.  Clang clang clang.  Snarl sneer snipe.  Too busy getting into it to really take in the story I was being told about how he had been working with Pye Records on the press side, and had been sent out to Rome to work with RCA records and some of the English beat groups who were getting extended runs out in Italy on the live circuit, and how The Sorrows were one of the groups that were part of that scene, ripping it up in Rome. 

Oh my I would love to go back and learn more from him about his life out there in the latter part of the ‘60s.  One way or another my own knowledge is considerably broader than it was 20 odd years ago.  Now I know that The Sorrows really did spend a lot of time out in Italy, and the fantastic Sanctuary compilation features some of these.  Of course there’s the Primitives one as well, with the Blow Up LP they recorded for the Italian market.  Oh boy those guys must have had some fun.  Their version of Standing In The Shadows of Love.  L’Ombra Di Nessuno.  Caterina Casseli did that too.  Now we have the luxury of being able to log on to YouTube and watching her performing, shaking and shimmying her stuff at the Piper Club.  The same goes for Patti Pravo.  And The Rokes.

 I have this horrible feeling Poppa Beat Angel was telling me about the Piper Club.  Hey ho.  Still I suppose it might not have been entirely appropriate to press him too hard about exactly what went on with the go go dancers and the Piperine on those warm summer Rome nights.  He would have been aware that my interest in his daughter was not exactly paternal.  I did know that he met his own still very lovely wife in a nightclub out in Rome, where she was an English teacher, and that they’d moved back to London when they knew their gorgeous daughter was on the way.

And I did not treat his gorgeous daughter too well.  I was horribly entirely self-absorbed, completely wrapped up in my own imaginary musical revolution to think about anyone else that much, and naturally there were plenty of other fish in the sea prepared to be a lot more attentive than me.  Funnily enough that Antonioni trilogy really made me think about my behaviour back in those days.  There’s a line I think Marcello Mastroianni uses in La Notte about he no longer has inspirations only recollections.  I just hope that’s not true.  I have no idea about what became of my beat angel either.  I used to see her around in a beautifully cut Burberrys mac, but that was years ago.  When you hear those pounding tom toms in Take A Heart though, that’s how she used to get to me …

© 2007 John Carney