The Outside Of Everything

Chapter 24
The White Rose Movement

Too much information. That’s a pretty common cry nowadays isn’t it? Too much information. You hear it all the time. And indeed there can be too much information. Oh perhaps too much of a good thing. Perhaps too much, too readily available? And what you need to know, that information gets buried or drowned? Hmm you could debate all of this endlessly. What is not up for debate though is the fact that our information used to come through different channels. And for us, one of the big ways of gleaning information we needed to know was through fanzines, the underground press.

Ah yes fanzines. There was quite a network, and we hated most of the fanzines and the ambitious prigs putting them together. But occasionally, just occasionally there were important publications, lovingly put together, fuelled by hate and fun, and with a sense destiny, of having to do what they had to do. And those ones were to be treasured, and read with incredible thoroughness time and time and time again. There was one I was thinking about the other day, and desperately wish that I’d kept. I have been struggling to recall the name, but all I can remember is that it was from Scotland and was wonderfully anarchic. I don’t anarchic in the usual old circle-a leather jacket Crass way, or free festivals and beards sense. This was serious fun. Lots of stuff about nightclubs and the soundtracks for dancing. And The White Rose Movement.

That was a revelation for us, reading about The White Rose Movement, in the early 1980s. And seeing the pictures. Grainy fifth generation photocopies, but incredibly inspiring pictures. There wasn’t much known about The White Rose Movement. I think information was only beginning to emerge about the campaign waged briefly and bravely against the Nazis by a group of young idealists. Now there’s plenty of information available about the extraordinary exploits of those young students. What the great Studs Terkel called: ‘The Gallantry. The Humanity’. That’s one thing in favour of the ‘net. You can learn a lot about The White Rose Movement now. But back then, well, what we could learn about The White Rose really inspired us. I think we saw photos of Sophie Scholl or Hans Scholl, Christoph Probst or Willi Graf. We saw the haircuts. The Certain Ratio look we loved. We chose to latch onto that as a bulwark against accusations of the flirting with fascism the Factory folk were perhaps understandably tainted with. Look at The White Rose. Those haircuts. It’s all ok.

One of the things that really appealed to us about The White Rose was that their campaign consisted chiefly of leafleting. A belief in the written word changing minds. That’s where we thought we were at too. That’s what fanzines were meant to be all about wasn’t it? And I cringe now to even think we could even consider comparing our clandestine campaigns with that of The White Rose, but ... Well, what’s done is done. And what we did while taking the name of The White Rose in vain was wage a war on the people we saw were trampling underfoot any seeds of growth coming from the musical underground. This was all to do with our utter horror at the homogenisation of the music world, the lumping together of anything and everything under a generic umbrella which we thought was lazy and harmful. We didn’t like the fact people were making a living out of this homogenisation and sterilisation. The promoters, publicists, press, parasites. You know? And so, shamefully invoking the White Rose, we started a leafleting campaign.

This would have been around the time that the whole thing kicked off with people thrusting leaflets and flyers into your sticky mitts every time you left a nightspot, urging you to go again another night to some unwholesome cellar or pub back room to see a bunch of half-wits and no-hopers lumped together on a bill without rhyme or reason. It was all quite depressing. So we got our contacts among the old contemptible to print up some leaflets which we too thrust into sticky mitts. Oh, the intentions were good. The aim was high. The sentiments were strong. The words were highflying. We condemned the ignoble and the ig-NME. We cursed the mediocre and the careerists. We highlighted how rare wild flowers were strangled by common or garden weeds. We urged people to boycott these freak shows. We said they should stay at home and listen to Nina Simone. We suggested they should read a book as it would be so much more worthwhile.

I guess we sort of sensed the futility and absurdity of what we were doing when we’d been to a show down the local Poly. Not a great place to go, oh no, but just occasionally a great group would get to play there. Anyway there we were, taking up position outside, ready to hand out our flyers, when a gang of stupid skinheads hove into view, creating pointless mayhem. That just summed things up. It was a riven town. Students doing their thing here. Squaddies theirs there. Soul boys somewhere. And skinheads on the outside roaming the streets like jackals. Everyone else stayed home. And heaven help them if they didn’t. It wasn’t right, but it would take more than a leaflet to change things.

What could we do? It was something that preoccupied us. The town was becoming worse than a ghost town. This bothered us. So much so that when we went to a school friend’s wedding we hardly noticed that even there things were on the verge of turning nasty, with family factions fluffing feathers ready to rumble. Until, that is, until. And this is where we looked up from our huddle and noticed what was going on. Until the good natured disc jockey, the classic comical weddings, parties and anything mobile jock, put on Mud’s Tiger Feet, or was it Come On Eileen, or Never Can Say Goodbye, or Rescue Me, or Billy Ocean, or Maxine Nightingale, or anyone or all of these. To wit, the dancefloor was suddenly packed, the cockfighters thwarted, the party started, and bedlam averted. And this was where Frankie Fab the Mobile DJ, as we came to call him, had it right, and Joe Strummer had it wrong. Chicory Tip, or if you like The Four Tops all night, that’s the way to save the world.

We got talking to Frankie Fab, shielding our eyes from the glare of his sweat shirt, and suggested it wasn’t coincidence that he did what he did when he did. Well, no, of course not lads, he said, studying his sovereign rings, in mock modesty. When you’ve been around as long as I have, well, trade secrets boys, trade secrets, do you know what I mean? We hoped that indeed we did know what he meant, because we had an idea forming down, down, deeper on down. A drink Frankie, we asked? Tell us Frankie, have you ever had a residency? We chatted thus. And a couple of days later we were having a similar conversation with the landlord of a pub downtown, which shall we say was called The Castle. Dear landlord, we said, you need something to bring the punters in. You’ve got squaddies to the right of you, students to the left, and the soul boys heading Up West. You need the salt of the earth to leave the telly behind and get used to going out again. You need a selling point. You need a plan, and we’ve got just the man. He’ll help you reclaim the town, and bring back the good times. What do you think? Worth a try? The dear landlord shrugged.

Well, there was nothing to lose was there? Even on a Friday night the pub was deserted, so Frankie came in and did his thing. We got some very different flyers printed up, thanks to Our Friend Stan’s network of old contemptible, and bribed all our acquaintances to give it a go. Give what a go? Well, Frankie came in and each Friday played his Freda Payne and Harold Melvin stuff, he made the O’Jays’ I Love Music his theme tune, and reminded anyone who would listen how to do the Bump and The Hustle. He prattled on, played his records. Word got round. People turned up, bought drinks, danced a bit, had a good time, and slowly but surely word got further round. Pretty soon even students, squaddies and soul boys came along too. The skinheads still roamed around outside but somehow no one really noticed. They weren’t so brave in a crowd. And as for us? Well we stayed on the outside of everything, and took our own advice, staying in with Nina Simone and a good book. Leave the rest of ‘em to it, we said. No one much noticed that we weren’t there.