Brighton Beach Scumbag

“This could be the saddest dusk I’ve ever seen
Turn to a miracle, high-alive
My mind is racing, as it always will
My hands are tired, my heart aches
I’m half a world away.”

— Half a World Away - REM, 'Out of Time'

Memories of early 90's Brighton

Out of Time

Michael Stipe, singer in REM, once noted that a fan's favourite REM album tended to be the one that came out straight after that fan graduated from college.

My fav REM album is 'Out of Time' - as near a perfect album as ever made. And yes, it came out the year after I graduated. REM have just reissued and repackaged a 25 year anniversary edition of Out of Time. I played it again today. Still sounds good. But I've never drifted away from it. It's one of those very few albums that form the core of my musical taste. I probably consciously play the whole album through once a year - every track (apart from the instrumental Endgame).

When Out of Time originally came out I lived in small flat in the Kemptown area of Brighton*. On the way home from my job, job, I used to stop off at The Hand in Hand pub, and - in my memory anyway - Out of Time was always playing.

Awkward Pivot and Segue

Brighton's changed pretty drastically between then and now. Whilst it still maintains the old Regency squares and buildings, the pier and the pebbly beach, it has been infilled, taken over, gentrified, redeveloped, stuffed full of wanky coffee shops and i360's. It always had a certain kind of Bohemian hipness - a jazz age Berlin vibe where anything goes within the bubble. Well not anymore - it's corporately trendy. And that isn't the same thing at all. 

Yeah, I know this sounds like a things-were-better-in-my-day drone. Let me carry that burden, readers, for the road is long. With many a winding turn.**

The Brighton of the early 90's was still seedy, much more parochial than now, bathing in the afterglow of Graham Greene, with wide open derelict spaces right in the centre of town (it wasn't yet a city). There were loads of uneven car parks where buildings had been demolished (or bombed) but there was no money to redevelop. Shops were closing down. Even the main shopping centre was falling apart. The UK was in the middle of a recession. Our 'now' culture forgets that stuff happened before Brexit. Yeah - we've had recessions even before 2008. The shock, eh?

Brighton still returned two Tory MPs at the 1992 election, as did Hove.

The pubs in town pretty much still had their original names and weren't the marketing confections they'd later become but real boozers. I remember one - The Bath Arms - still there right in the middle of the Lanes. The furniture was all shabby - I remember always sitting on the same saggy and ripped sofa. Now add to this faded glory the ever present waft of cigarette, pipe, cigar smoke which fugged the air, and clung to your clothes and hair. Yes, pubs had a real atmosphere in those days!

In my mind's eye, Brighton in the early 90’s was either a dreary wet winter's evening or a fabulous summer day. No in between. And I was forever shuffling around in a black denim jacket, through the rain, taking shelter in derelict shop fronts, maybe accompanied home by some girl I'd just met in either The Basement or The Gloucester down on The Steine. Well, the clubs are gone and I never saw the girl again. She was called, er, Anna? Maria? Don't worry she won't mind my confusion; I told her my name was Bryan.*** 

Hove Lawns and the (near) complete West Pier December 1993 from my balcony.

For a couple of years I lived in a fabulous - landmark -  four bedroom flat at the bottom of Grand Avenue in Hove. Private car park, internal lift, brass fittings, front and side stone balconies overlooking the seafront, two bathrooms, cricket pitch sized internal hall. I paid £137 a month and the landlord - trying to sell the flat -  just couldn't give it away. The price was around the £130,000 mark, I seem to remember. 

I enrolled in night school and got myself an A level in Theatre Studies. If I have a fault - it never takes much for me to fall into pretentiousness. Now imagine me doing a Theatre Studies course - pursuing a theme through Strindberg, Stanislavsky, and finally Steven Berkoff.  I seem to remember being at the premier of Berkoff's Brighton Beach Scumbags at the Sallis Benney Theatre October 1991... I suspect back then I was tumbling up my own arse at a furious pace.

(My girlfriend at the time complained I was often 'theatrical'. I acted all upset about this and stormed away to write a song about our conversation. What an absolute, horrific nob!)

I formed a band. We played the usual venues - The King and Queen, The Hare and Hounds, The Freebutt - for no money. I named us Charlotte's Treat (after Charlotte Street in Kemptown) before changing the name to Tempting Alice.  When the band broke up I started - and ended - my solo career on one night in The Great Eastern pub, Trafalgar Street, autumn 1992. As it was next to Brighton college I managed to get quite a few of my drama classmates to attend. Unfortunately for my self esteem, one of the few other blokes on the course chose this exact evening to come out. Selfish bastard; I played on oblivious. No one listened. Or clapped. And I broke a string. Afterwards, I pocketed the £20 and never played a solo gig again.

Tempting Alice with Tim Robson centre (stage)

Out of Time?

“There is still a city with the same name, and there are streets with the same name too, in the same locations, but what happens there is so transformed, in thought, word and deed, that it is not the same place. Is it better, or worse? I cannot not really tell. It is certainly different.”

— Peter Hitchens - Sunday Express 11/11/16

Interesting that Hitchens was writing (beautifully as ever) about Oxford in the context of Leonard Cohen whereas I chose Brighton in context of REM and Out of Time. And my conclusion?

The music still plays. The buildings are (mostly) still there but the streets beat to a different set of people. Who I knew, the relationships I had, gone, absolutely. Failed domesticities. The friends, dispersed, mostly not lamented. The work, ignored at the time, forgotten now completely. Occasionally, turning a corner in Brighton I encounter the shiver of yesteryear's ghost. Just faintly - 'like an ill-remembered character from a novel read years ago, or the strains of a once familiar melody playing softly in another room'.**** But mostly, the past is a different country and, more than that, half a world away.

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NOTES

* When I say Brighton, I mean both Brighton and Hove. Although their characters are quite different, I moved seamlessly between the two. Of course, they are now joined as one city.  

** Fun fact - Elton John played piano on The Hollies - He Ain't Heavy He's My Brother. Why I sledgehammered that reference in, who knows. How unsearchable are my judgements.

*** Bryan Robson. Geddit!!! Oh, I was a hoot in those days. For youngsters - he was a footballer and captain of England when I cared about this.

**** @Tim Robson - The Song of Vivian. I apologise for quoting myself but sometimes - not enough - I am a fucking great writer.

**** Originally published in 2016 but revised 2019

Brighton Beach Scumbag

“This could be the saddest dusk I’ve ever seen
Turn to a miracle, high-alive
My mind is racing, as it always will
My hands are tired, my heart aches
I’m half a world away.”

— Half a World Away - REM, 'Out of Time'

Memories of early 90's Brighton

Out of Time

Michael Stipe of REM noticed that any given fan's favourite REM album tended to be the one that came out straight after that fan graduated from college.

My fav REM album is 'Out of Time' - as near a perfect album as ever made. And yes, it came out the year after I graduated. REM have just reissued and repackaged a 25 year anniversary edition of Out of Time. I played it again today. Still sounds good. But I've never drifted away from it. It's one of those very few albums that form the core of my musical taste. I probably consciously play the whole album through once a year - every track.

When Out of Time originally came out I lived in small flat in the Kemptown area of Brighton*. On the way home from my job, job, I used to stop off at The Hand in Hand pub, and - in my memory anyway - Out of Time was always playing.

Awkward Pivot and Segue

Brighton's changed pretty drastically between then and now. Whilst it still maintains the old Regency squares and buildings, the pier and the pebbly beach, it has been infilled, taken over, gentrified, redeveloped, stuffed full of wanky coffee shops and i360's. It always had a certain kind of Bohemian hipness - a post-war Berlin vibe where anything goes within the bubble. Well not anymore - it's corporately trendy. And that isn't the same thing at all. 

Yeah, I know I sound like a things-were-better-in-my-day drone. Let me carry that burden, readers, for the road is long. With many a winding turn.**

The Brighton of the early 90's was still seedy, much more parochial than now, bathing in the afterglow of Graham Greene, with wide open derelict spaces right in the centre of town (it wasn't yet a city). There were loads of uneven car parks where buildings had been demolished (or bombed) but there was no money to redevelop. Shops were closing down. Even the main shopping centre was falling apart. The UK was in the middle of a recession. Our 'now' culture forgets that stuff happened before Brexit. Yeah - we've had recessions even before 2008. The shock, eh?

Brighton still returned two Tory MPs at the 1992 election, as did Hove.

The pubs in town pretty much still had their original names and weren't the marketing confections they'd later become but real boozers. I remember one - The Bath Arms - still there right in the middle of the Lanes. The furniture was all shabby - I remember always sitting on the same saggy and ripped sofa. Now add to this faded glory the ever present waft of cigarette, pipe, cigar smoke which fugged the air, and clung to your clothes and hair. Yes, pubs had a real atmosphere in those days!

In my mind's eye, it was either a dreary wet winter's evening or a fabulous summer day. No in between. Shuffling around in a black denim jacket, through the rain, taking shelter in a derelict shop front, maybe accompanied home by some girl I'd just met in The Basement nightclub down on The Steine. Well, the club's all gone and I never saw the girl again. She was called, er, Anna? Maria? Don't worry she won't mind my confusion; I told her my name was Bryan.***  (Yeah - see my October 18th blogpost about this girl. So I turn my life into stories? Sue me!)

Hove Lawns and the (near) complete West Pier December 1993 from my balcony.

For a couple of years I lived in a fabulous - landmark -  four bedroom flat at the bottom of Grand Avenue in Hove. Private car park, internal lift, brass fittings, front and side stone balconies overlooking the seafront, two bathrooms, cricket pitch sized internal hall. I paid £137 a month and the landlord - trying to sell the flat -  just couldn't give it away. The price was around the £130,000 mark, I seem to remember. 

I enrolled in night school and got myself an A level in Theatre Studies. If I have a fault - it never takes much for me to fall into pretentiousness. Now imagine me doing a Theatre Studies course - pursuing a theme through Strindberg, Stanislavsky, and finally Steven Berkoff.  I seem to remember being at the premier of Berkoff's Brighton Beach Scumbags at the Sallis Benney Theatre October 1991... I suspect I was tumbling up my own arse at a furious pace.

(My girlfriend at the time complained I was often 'theatrical'. I acted all upset about this and stormed away to write a song about that very conversation. What an absolute, horrific nob!)

I formed a band. We played in all the shitty Brighton pub venues for no money. I named us Charlotte's Treat (after Charlotte Street in Kemptown) before changing the name to Tempting Alice.  When the band broke up I started - and ended - my solo career in The Great Eastern pub, Trafalgar Street, autumn 1992. As it was next to Brighton college I managed to get quite a few of my drama classmates to attend. Unfortunately for my self esteem, one of the few other blokes on the course chose this exact moment to announce he was coming out. Selfish bastard; I played on oblivious. No one listened. Or clapped. And I broke a string. Afterwards, I pocketed the £20 and never played a solo gig again.

Tempting Alice with Tim Robson centre (stage)

Out of Time?

“There is still a city with the same name, and there are streets with the same name too, in the same locations, but what happens there is so transformed, in thought, word and deed, that it is not the same place. Is it better, or worse? I cannot not really tell. It is certainly different.”

— Peter Hitchens - Sunday Express 11/11/16

Interesting that Hitchens was writing (beautifully as ever) last week about Oxford in the context of Leonard Cohen whereas I chose Brighton in context of REM and Out of Time. I started writing this piece back in August but because I thought it was a solipsism, a vinegar stroke of an article, I never published it. I've attended to it, edited it, changed parts, deleted much in the last three months however. And my conclusion?

The music still plays. The buildings are (mostly) still there but the streets beat to a different set of people. Who I knew, the relationships I had, gone, absolutely. Failed domesticities. The friends, dispersed, mostly not lamented. The work, ignored at the time, forgotten now completely. Occasionally, turning a corner in Brighton I encounter the shiver of yesteryear's ghost. Just faintly - 'like an ill-remembered character from a novel read years ago, or the strains of a once familiar melody playing softly in another room'.**** But mostly, the past is a different country and, more than that, half a world away.

Tim's Blog RSS

NOTES

* When I say Brighton, I mean both Brighton and Hove. Although their characters are quite different, I moved seamlessly between the two. Of course, they are now joined as one city.  

** Fun fact - Elton John played piano on The Hollies - He Ain't Heavy He's My Brother. Why I sledgehammered that reference in, who knows. How unsearchable are my judgements.

*** Bryan Robson. Geddit!!! Oh, I was a hoot in those days. For youngsters - he was a footballer and captain of England when I cared about this.

**** @Tim Robson - The Song of Vivian. I apologise for quoting myself but sometimes - not enough - I am a fucking great writer.

The Echo Chamber?

Close readers of this blog will discern some sort of overarching pattern to my views. If you suspect that I'm not a Jeremy Corbyn supporter, you'd probably be right (except perversely to keep Steptoe where he is to mess up Labour good and proper 2020).

Anyway, I digress. Today I want to mention a few blogs that I follow and help me to form, reinforce, challenge my world view. I suppose there's an algorithm out there where you enter the blogs you read and out pops a designation of your character. Well, I'll save some time and skip to the conclusion:-

Broadly of the right / libertarian / low taxes / isolationist / Austrian economics / history / humour 

So who do I read:-

Peter Hitchens, of course.  Erudite, well-read, impeccably sourced, not afraid to point out the emperor's new clothes. Broadly a traditional Conservative - Anglican, sceptical of change and fashions, serious.  Good travel writer. One of the few brave souls in the media. Loved by many on the right as John the Baptist type figure.

Rod Liddle. In The Spectator's Coffee House website. Rod is that rare species, a libertarian leftie. But, his readership is mainly right-wing and we all know, shhhhh, that Rod secretly votes UKIP. What you might call the old working class patriotic left - the antithesis to the metrosexual UK hating wankers that scratch their beards and just love cultural relativism and are apologists for all the world's nasty bastards out there. But two main things about Rod that appeal - firstly he's libertarian - mistrustful of attacks on free speech and secondly, he writes brave - did he really say that? - columns that wind up exactly the right people. But mostly he's fucking funny. 

For a sense of balance I troll The Guardian's Comment is Free (CIF) and The Independent websites. It's like outreach work, missionary activity, preaching the gospel of capitalism and libertarianism to the big state / magic money tree lefties within their natural home. The Guardian is notorious in it's biased moderator policy (Komment Macht Frei) - deleting anything it deems offensive, sexist, Islamophobic, racist (except against Jews, of course) or just against the paper's dreadful editorial policy. The trick is to get your trolling in subtly and wind those beardies up to a state of de haut en bas, foul mouthed hissy fits. In return, I do read some of the articles. 99% bollocks of course but at least I escape my echo chamber. The Independent is the brattish, more left-wing, crazier younger sibling of The Guardian. Better for trolling but with a smaller audience for your bon mots.

Guido Fawkes - Order Order blog, is good for breaking political stories, muck raking on politicians. Of the right but lately his voice is muffled due to the constant fellating of the Conservative Party. 

The Conservative Woman is good website for a traditional Conservative viewpoint on most issues.

Breitbart is a good place to hang out, pick up some of the whackier US and UK stories and indulge in the decent BTL non-policed comments. The occasional sound of tinfoil rustling can be heard. Anti-global warming trollmeister, James Delingpole writes here. Always worth the read.

WIiliam M Briggs - mixes up statistics, probability, science, religion and politics. Also does a good podcast.

Well that will do for now - and should keep you busy for a while.

Laters

Tim

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"I had that Emile Zola in my cab, last week."

“It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.” *
 

I think, like Sleeping Beauty, I must have pricked my finger towards the end of the 1990's and slept for nearly two decades. It was a strange sleep - I can remember where I was and what I did and events that happened. Outwardly I was the same - eating, drinking, working - but something key, something vital was missing. A spark had gone out.

I think I lost my natural curiosity. The ability to take an oblique view, to check - like some tosser French existentialist - all my assumptions, all my biases. But more than that, to grow inside, to nourish - yes I'll say it - the soul. Yes, I agree I sound like a nob. I'll bear that burden.

And it is only lately that I've rediscovered a sense of wonder, discovering how very little I know, that my knowledge is parochial and patchy. There's nothing brave about admitting ignorance but I do so. Which reminds me of one of my favourite Charles Bukowski quotes I've been saving up, waiting to use on this blog:-

“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.” 

So, what to do? Well, me being me, I won't be dyeing my hair green, putting on a dress and joining The Labour Party or any other crazy type of thing. Neither will I (probably.. dunno) get a leather jacket, a motorbike and drive too fast down Sussex country lanes. No, my moment of clarity comes in very Tim like ways:-

Read More

- Fiction. There' so many authors I've never read. You have to make time for this. Commuting helps. Much more 19th Century French literature. Probably not Zola who - on my brief acquaintance with him - is unremittingly dour. Too dour. Much more Balzac. But also more Great American novelists. More Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Wolfe, Roth...

- History. I have a history degree. But that's a piece of paper (lost, I think). I've always kept an eye on my favourites - Rome, 20th Century American politics, Tudors but there's so many gaps in my knowledge. So, expect me to bore you about the Dark Ages following 476, Eastern European history, The English Civil War, Marlborough, The Seven Years War etc etc. As Silent Bob says to Jay in Chasing Amy:

Bitch, what you don't know about me I can just about squeeze in the Grand fucking Canyon.

In this instance I guess I'm 'Bitch' and Silent Bob is my lack of knowledge on history.

- Thought. Management speak bollox, self-help books, fads and contemporaneous SHOUTING mean nothing to me. There's a whole world of thought out there and we pretty much know what it is from Plato, to The Bible, to St Augustine of Hippo, to Luther, Shakespeare, Adam Smith, Goethe, the Enlightenment, blah, blah. From my (limited) reading I conclude, like Harold MacMillan, "Events, dear boy, events" tend to distract us from underlying issues. The state of the human condition / behaviour has always been the same, IPads and Facebook or no. I'm curious as to what the great thinkers of the past observed. I don't expect it to make me happy but like Marcus Aurelius counselled, disenchantment is a desirable - and stable - state.

Poetry

Apart from Hardy, my knowledge of poetry is shocking. I could blame my state schooling for this. Oh okay, I will. See the video below of Peter Hitchens shaming a panel of leftie Neanderthals on Question Time. Watch it all as it tees up Hitchens nicely. It almost makes you weep the way his erudite knowledge, respected finally, is gradually slipping away from us all. Well no more around this parish! Also - I want to start committing some to memory because a) you carry it around with you b) it gives my ageing brain a workout!

Music

- Classical and more classical! Playing lots of Beethoven right now. Just downloaded his 7th. There was a programme (on the radio on the TV, dunno) which had the third movement as its theme music in the 70's. I did think it was the Galloping Gourmet (remember that!) but now I think it's just the Horse of the Year Show. So like Alex in The Clockwork Orange, plenty of Ludwig van. But also Handel, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Bach. I've no desire for dissonance. I work with the grain of my tastes.

I'll leave you with Prince Hal's soliloquy from Henry IV (Part 1). My O Level play. I always liked this speech. It speaks to me now more so than it did when I was a 15 year old.

I know you all, and will awhile uphold
The unyok'd humour of your idleness. 
Yet herein will I imitate the Sun, 
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world, 
That, when he please again to be himself, 
Being wanted, he may be more wonder'd at, 
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him. 
If all the year were playing holidays, 
To sport would be as tedious as to work; 
But, when they seldom come, they wish'd-for come, 
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents. 
So when this loose behaviour I throw off, 
And pay the debt I never promised, 
By how much better than my word I am, 
By so much shall I falsify men's hopes; 
And, like bright metal on a sullen ground, 
My reformation, glitt'ring o'er my fault, 
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off. 
I'll so offend to make offense a skill, 
Redeeming time when men think least I will. 

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* Luke 15:32 KJV

Word of the day : Bloviate

I came across this lovely word today in Peter Hitchens' blog in The Sunday Express. To quote:

“On the day that mass immigration reached levels not seen since the Blair era, the Prime Minister appeared amid a clearly staged ‘raid’ by immigration officials, bloviating about a ‘crackdown’ that will of course never take place.”

— Peter Hitchens Blog, 25 May 2015

Now agree or not with Hitchens - I'm a fan as I like someone who will speak truth even if it is unpopular (so rare these days) - I love the use of the word which, to my shame, I'd never heard before. Bloviate. To bloviate. It's kind of a semi intellectual version of 'to bullshit'. Checking my Wikipedia, I notice that it comes from Ohio politics of the late 19th and early 20th century and means empty or vapid political speeches that essentially say nothing of substance.

How very apt in these shallow days! I shall endeavour to use this marvellous word from now on and if you think this is another example of Robson bloviation, then re-read my sentence!

Cheers

Tim