I’m a big believer in coincidences.  They’re meant to be.  So when I started thinking about meditation.  And getting myself sorted out.  Thinking about taking up qigong again.  Ridding myself of all the negative energy that seemed to be consuming me.  Well, it seemed only natural to discover that the very great Michelle Mae was now a yoga teacher, specialising in meditation and the wisdom of inner awareness.  It seemed only natural because I’d been thinking a lot about the Make-Up. 

And I’d been thinking about the Make-Up because of the bizarre request from that group of young kids who wanted to re-enact the shot from La Chinoise where Jean-Pierre Leaud, Juliet Berto and Anne Wiazemsky I think are holding up copies of Mao’s Little Red Book.  And they wanted to recreate the shot using Ian Svenonius’ Psychic Soviet.  The Little Pink Book.  The Shocking Pink Book.  Except there was one slight problem.  Where were you going to get a table full of Psychic Soviets? 

I envied those youngsters.  Envied their contempt of everything around.  To these youngsters the Make-Up was all new.  The Untouchable Sound CD.  The Psychic Soviet book.  The In Film/On Video DVD.  Soul and socialism.  Very new.  Very now.  The romantic appeal of the new.  I knew what they meant.  I’d felt like that about Godard and his films.  Arthur Lee and his records.  They were all new to me.  A revelation when I first came across them.  Didn’t matter they’d been around years.  And the Make-Up were new to me too once.  And they knew that.  Knew my links to the Make-Up.  Which is why they’d asked me to take the shot.  They’d done their homework.  They knew my history.  Or did they?

They knew about the photos at least.  The ones I took.  Michelle Mae and Ian dancing to Northern Soul.  Michelle Mae and Ian hunched inside pea coats, peacocks walking alongside the seafront.  Michelle Mae and Ian on the ferry wind blowing through their hair.  Michelle Mae and Ian sifting through crates of old soul 7”s.  Michelle Mae and Ian sitting in a coffee bar reading their books.  Michelle Mae and Ian throwing bread to the geese by the Serpentine.  Michelle Mae and Ian on the inter-city train surrounded by businessmen.  A story told in photos.  Add your own words and meanings and sounds.  The kids had seen those.  Loved those.

But they didn’t know about the club.  They weren’t supposed to know about the club.  We didn’t want people to know about the club.  Unless they were people we wanted to know about the club.  The club just off Oxford Street.  For conspirators only.  Only occasionally.  Special occasions.  Soul and socialism.  Say yes to international socialism.  Or something.  Word of mouth.  Need to know basis.  By invitation only.  Entertainment in 3D we said.  Where as the saying went D could be whatever you wanted it to be.  Dancing, discussion, discord.  Some would have it.  Debauchery, decadence, depravity.  Some would rather have it.  Depends which way up you want it. 

A big back drop with the words upon it: ‘A minority with the right ideas is not a minority’.  Or some such thing.  Over the record decks.  Music and language.  A music policy that was based on soul, with garage thrown in, and some ‘60s french pop, and punk rock. Marxism and Leninism.  Rock and roll etcetera.  Stir it up.  You can see where I’m coming from.  You can see where the Make-Up comes in.  Remember Val Wilmer referred to soul and rhythm & blues as gospel music, and French intellectuals of the ‘60s like Edgar Morin dismissed pop music as the yeh-yeh sound.

Good times.  Good friends.  Great clothes.  Great memories.  Away from the numbers.  Practicing my steps.  The Shirelles’ The March.  The Litter’s Action Woman.  France Gall’s Bloody Jack.  The Radiators From Space’s Enemies.  But remember it was about music and language.  And that’s where I think the club came into its own.  There we developed a policy of playing Northern Soul instrumentals.  The likes of Sam Ambrose’s They’ll Be Coming.  And people would get up and start reciting their favourite texts.  Over the top of the music.  And there was a real mixture of stuff offered up.  For instance I remember someone reading from Lenin’s Will The Bolsheviks Maintain Power, while someone else jumped up and read X Moore’s Take Inspiration! words on The Jam’s Dig The New Breed!  I can recall hearing words by Dave Godin and Bertolt Brecht.  Eric Hobsbawn and David Nobbs.  The words to The Red Flag and the sleevenotes from the Style Council’s Shout To The Top. 

That’s the sort of thing that set us apart.  For remember these were strange times.  New Labour and Brit Pop.  Loaded and Big Beat.  False dawns.  A lack of ideas.  New lads and old lags.  Socialism and soul were not fashionable words.  But we were something else.  We declared independence.  Self-empowerment.  Revolutionaries and rebels.  But nothing lasts forever.  And it wasn’t too long before the inevitable cracks began to appear.  Nihilism and nastiness.  Schisms.  Factions.  Some fought against our exclusivity.  Some wanted to extend invitations to possible kindred spirits like Comet Gain or Lung Leg.  Some wanted to get involved in direct action.  Some wanted to take the revolution to the people.

It was probably just as well we didn’t.  We couldn’t even agree on a music policy.  Increasingly we were torn apart by divisions.  One group devoted themselves exclusively to the deepest of soul.  For this was the time of the Sam Dees compilations on Kent.  And those guys were serious.  Didn’t speak.  Just sat there lost in the music.  Then there were the detractors of the Crystal Blue Persuasion who opted solely for bubblegum and blue-eyed sounds claiming artifice only is authentic.  Another sect went deep underground in search of the most manic and savage of garage sounds declaring distortion is truth.  They were mad.  Seriously mad.  You could see it in their eyes.  Inevitably they were opposed by some fellas in black polo necks who listened only to folk ways, and fought for the right to play Mimi Farina and Odetta.  Quietly. Hilarious now looking back, because everyone was right, but it was heartbreaking to see something so special torn asunder.  But unromantically we had to stop because the landlord said we weren’t buying enough over the bar.  And people were after our spot. 

I really hadn’t thought about those times for years, but hearing these kids talk about the Make-Up brought it all back.  Particularly the way when I got to their place and they were all sat around flicking through their copies of The Psychic Soviet, reading aloud Svenonius’ words on the Style Council, while listening to Brenda Holloway and the Castaways.  I had to smile.  Or I might have cried.  It was distinctly unnerving when they asked me if I had ever seen the Redskins.  I thought, oh my, where do you start?  But I guess if you’re going to start somewhere, then kicking over the statues is no bad thing.

© 2007 John Carney