Ted Curtis

I really enjoyed reading this, and, at just over 100 pages, read it in one sitting. I can't speak for people who weren't involved in the subculture that this story occurs within or are not at least interested in some of what has evolved from it since, but I could imagine it would be a good read for anyone who likes stories about real people searching for meaning within the complex ambiguities of real life, which generally is what any good literature is. This is a nice little gritty, simple, lightly gripping yet gradually 'darkening' story, and it's all the more interesting if you're interested in subculture in general, especially those stemming generally from the impulses of less enfranchised areas of society, full of the conflict of an impulse to freedom and pro-activity meeting both internal and external limitations, and it's particularly interesting if you have a thing about punk rock, especially its less music-business based manifestations.

I know some of the places, the venue, the bands and even a couple of individuals discussed here, but I don't know Swindon and its inhabitants, these specific central characters, this van, or these specific roads and houses, but the general situation of cheap vans, smokey living rooms and kitchens of shared houses, squats, moshpits, city streets, motorway services, lay-bys and country roads on pale-faced and red-eyed mornings is all too familiar to me. It all evokes many memories as I read the story, some amusing, some merging with the inevitable kind of feeling of grim, dull banality and waste that was inevitable in the resource-stripped circumstances of the time and situation and maybe even in the background of many of the people involved. This vibe is evoked throughout the story, helped along by a style that keeps every moment firmly in the present, conjuring an image with almost constant use of present continuous tense and repetition of aspects and qualities of each situation so that they're burned in heavily contrasted tones and feelings and probably even 'smellovision' into our internal movie of the story. Not that I'm suggesting any intentionality, but it reminded me of a stream of consciousness in the manner of Kerouac combined with the heavy use of repetition employed by Stewart Lee, though with not quite the same level of comedic intent.

There is room for debate about the writer's perceptions of specific events, people and places, but then it can only be subjective, and also people seen at a distance and via a prism of the reputation that proceeds them will inevitably become larger or at least a different shape to their own life, and the writer can only be subjective and is clear about that from the start, stating that 'this is fiction' but I could imagine all the same that this 24 hours of the author's life happened exactly as described here, although of course exclusively as seen from inside his head and no-one else's, or at the least that stories very much like everything related here happened at the very least very closely nearby.

I've witnessed how people distanced from the UK anarcho/hardcore scene of the 80s see it through a mist of selected anecdotes and romantic wishful thinking, but also how that perception leads to people creating something real in the present day that pays homage to the positive elements and motivations that all the same were always behind it and ever present, even if sometimes drowned out by booze, ritualistic noisemaking and other distractions and manifestations of whatever contradictions were present, physically or psychically.

I guess that points at the core value of any similar lifestyle choice: that it's about 'getting it out there' and being in the world and living it for real, warts and all, with at least less pretense, if never perfect. Maybe that was a key aspect in where things went wrong, expecting too much of oneself and never being able to be good enough, and finally maybe kind of giving up, or rebelling against ones new 'parent', this moralistic subculture of freedom in the form of lofty ethical values and also of values expressed too explicitly, too linguistically and uncompromisingly, without enough respect for all that bubbles under that we can never find words for.

Thus perhaps why I can listen to jazz too these days, or be interested in religious philosophy (though not in dogma), while some old anarchos might call me a 'wanker' and really not understand.

80s anarcho punks experience the full spectrum of impulses, positive, negative, ambiguous or contradictory, that make them what they are, seeking out what they do, succeeding and failing in the ways they must, in a liberatingly cheap and cheerful but sometimes dangerously cheap and nasty situation of their own diy making.… (meer)