Starting Point

[jude]

Hello Simon, delighted that you are nattering here

So....how did you get started in music?

(Yes I know a rotten question really   )

Jude

[Cocker Freeman]

He wanted to get laid, Jude. Why else?

[gower flower (Shirl)]

So that's where I went wrong...  

[jude]

He wanted to get laid, Jude. Why else?

I didn't ask why Cocker dear thing, I asked how...

I think there's a bit of a difference

[Cocker Freeman]

Same thing, eh, Simon.

[simon emmerson]

When/Why/How did I start?: it was 1977, Punk happened, I had just left college and I was an intense, highly political motivated young man and wanted to change society through music (and certainly not engage in such time wasting bourgeois activities as shagging and beer drinking). I changed my name back then to Simon Booth as an act of anger and defiance. How brave. I was living opposite Cecil Sharpe House in Regents Park Road, Camden Town in a housing association squat. VERY similar to the one in 'Withnal and I' which was filmed about 200 yards away. I KNEW Camberwell Dave. Anyway I noticed Martin Carthy was playing over the road at CS House so I went to the gig. Whilst sitting in the basement bar in my Clash trousers and spikey hair getting strange vibes from all the folkies another group of Punks walked in. Martin Carthy remembers it well. He thought a fight was going to break out. These people were Green, Tom and Neil from Scritti Pollitti, they were so amazed to see another punk at a Martin Carthy gig they asked me to join the band. Which I did for a bit. Bit of Pop trivia: When Green was at Leeds Art College he made Martin Carthy a huge plaster-of-paris fist with an index finger sticking out to hold up and put in his ear at gigs. Martin still has it. From that squat many bands emerged including my 1st 'proper' group "Weekend" and a band called "The Door and the Window", and "The 2 Johns" can't remember the rest, anyway they did a minimalist punk/electronica version of "When I was a Young Man" by Martin back in 1980. I seem to remember the Mykons staying, another punk band from Leeds. I think one of the 2 Johns was recently invloved in compiling the Lal Waterson tribute record "Migrating Birds". But I digress, were was I, oh yes..........and then I got shagged.

[Cocker Freeman]

Told you.

[Bridgwit (Bridget)]

What a great story.  


And a fairytale ending.