Greetings, bonjour, what’s happening?
Welcome to Lager Time, legions of lager-lites, grab your tins, your bottles and your pints. My name is Paul Cree and this is my little podcast and blog where I share bits of my writing, stories, poems, thoughts, sometimes music; I don’t get out that much these days, outside of my work, so this is my little outlet for the creative things I like to do.
So welcome! As mentioned on the last episode, I didn’t put one out last week; as I’ve been a busy boy. Started teaching some sessions at a drama school up in North London, twice a week, as well as all the extra rehearsals for this show called Love Scripted that I’ve been working on, meant I’ve barely been at home; but it’s been worth it.
Love Scripted is a devised piece of theatre and is the first part of a show we’re developing with a group I co-lead alongside a director called Catherine Palmer, for a Westminster-based charity called Dream Arts. Once the devising is done, I write the script and most of the music; so there’s a lot of rapping in it, with a bit of help from the group themselves. They’re all young guys - mostly of unaccompanied asylum-seekers form various different places, some have been with us for a couple of years, some have not long arrived in the country; they’re a great bunch of lads and a pleasure to work with. This is the third show we’ve made with this group and we’ve stepped it up this year, by expanding the project out of London - starting with last weekend, where we took them down to Paignton, in Devon and performed alongside two other youth theatre companies at the Palace Theatre. They did really, really well. A couple of the guys this was there first ever performance on a stage, but give or take a few mistakes, they banged it out and the piece was really well received, and they held their own amongst other established youth theatre companies – not that it was a competition – but it was good because that got to see other young people doing a similar thing and have different people watch them - usually our audiences are made-up of social workers and key-workers etc – people that know them. Next stop for the project is Bristol in early June, Birmingham in July, then back to London for the grand finale in August.
Next Monday, I step into rehearsals for Romeo and Julliet at the Polka Theatre in Wimbledon. It’s a modern retelling of the story, set in Merton, and they’ll be lots of rapping and beats; I’m the understudy for the role of Mercutio – so I’m very excited to get into a rehearsal room again, it’s been a while. It’s also nice to be back in the Merton Borough, I lived in Morden for a few years and was very fond of my time there – funnily enough it’s where the name Lager Time came from, as it was something silly I used to say to my mate Dean just as I was getting ready to go to the pub.
And so onto this week’s piece itself, continuing with the Meditations theme, this week’s piece is based on a quote from Book 4 where I talk about why I didn’t like Grime.
As ever, if you like this odd little niche thing that I’m doing over here, please recommend it to a mate, and if you fancy whipping the wallet out, you can make a donation on my Ko-Fi account, Buy-Me-A-Lager – there’s a few copies left of my first book the Suburban, which you can grab on my website alongside a couple of other bits – then of course there’s music on Spotify, Apple, and videos on You Tube and all that caper.
That’ll do for now, it’ll probably be another two weeks before I drop the next, though I highly doubt anyone is that bothered
Keep it Larger Than Life
Peas and taters
Paul
LINKS
Dream Arts -
https://www.dreamarts.org.uk
Pictures from Devon show - https://doorsteparts.co.uk/scratch-share-night/
Romeo & Julliet @ Polka Theatre Tickets - https://polkatheatre.com/event/romeo-and-juliet/
BUY-ME-A-LAGER - https://ko-fi.com/paulcree
The Suburban Book: - https://paulcree.co.uk/shop/thesuburban
On Music Enjoyment Denial
Always have these two principles in readiness. First, to do only what the reason inherent in kingly and judicial power prescribes for the benefit of mankind. Second, to change your ground, if in fact there is someone to correct and guide you away from some notion. But this transference must always spring from a conviction of justice or the common good: and your preferred course must be likewise, not simply for apparent pleasure or popularity.
BOOK 4 – 12
The more I work my way through these pieces, the more I think I’d like to revisit this as an exercise in the future. With each one I’ve put out so far, when I listen back to it, there’s nearly always a thought arises, that there was a more interesting, and less self-absorbed direction I could’ve taken it; or a big bit of information I missed out. But that’s just it isn’t it? It’s the game I’m playing. I could sit on this stuff forever and not put it out, for fear that I’m always going to miss something, or worse, get it wrong; whatever wrong is. Saying that, though, I think, and hope, the more I do it, the better I’m going to get at it. Better, in this case, being more nuanced writing, or something like that. What I can say is, that I’m enjoying doing it. What else am I going to do? It came all came out of a desire to get more out of the books I was reading – and that’s certainly happening. I’ve been wondering if this process would work for all those football hooligan books I read when I was younger.
As far I’m concerned, there’s little in the way of rules here. I read through the quotes I highlighted and typed up in each chapter, then see which one evokes anything – it’s normally quite a few – I then pick one quote, read it again, and I see what comes to mind; that’s when I start banging-out some words on the keyboard.
Perhaps some would say this way of doing things is trite or just plain crap. Thoughts like that certainly pop up in my head, quite a lot. As if what I’m doing is wrong or something; like it’s school. As if anyone actually cares. Truth is, with any form of writing I’ve tried, from rapping, to poetry, to play-scripts, I’ve never really known what I’m doing and just gone off a mixture of instinct and a faint sense of adventure – I don’t know where any of this is going – and then picking up little skills and the like along the way; like some sort of satellite-town Bilbo Baggins, but with none of those grandiose pre-plans for exploring mountains, dragons and that, and then writing a book about it – but definitely with a bag of that puff that Gandolph sorts him out with.
Inevitably, the stuff that’s going to come out first is the more anecdotical-autobiographical stuff. The self-absorbed stuff. Is it interesting? I don’t know, not for me to say, that’s for you, I suppose, but like I say, I’m enjoying doing it, and perhaps the Marcus Aurelius quotes invoke something in some of you. I read bits from it almost every day now; it’s a great resource, and I’m really glad it’s in my life now.
So all that is to say, it’s gonna be another trivial one. Sorry not sorry. I’m going to talk about music, again – and the tribal aspect to it.
For something so universal, across the globe, so many of us still seem to dive into the safety of our tribes when it comes to choosing what music you listen to it. Now, I’m not necessarily talking about ‘scenes’ here – as I think that’s something related, but slightly different.
As a side-note, I think it’s great when people get into scenes (as long as they don’t entirely restrict themselves to it.) I was once walking into some studios, where different musicians, bands, DJ’s etc were rehearsing. Just as I was stepping-in the main door, a couple of kids came out, who looked about twelve, in what I would describe as heavy-metal-wear - they had long hair, denim with patches, and metal bands on their t-shirts, knackered skate-board trainers – shortly followed by a few older metalers’, maybe in their fifties, who came from a different room, from a different group. A scene like that, which spans generations, but has a common uniform, and a common cause; yea I like that, and I respect it, and why not? I think that’s great.
So anyway, as I’ve probably mentioned many times before, music was a big thing for me growing up. I’ve got five older siblings, who were all into different music, as well as two parents, each into their own thing, and a younger sister – most of my family played instruments, sung or made music to some degree as well. So, luckily for me, I had all of that musical education almost by default – and I pretty much liked all of it, to varying degrees, from the Blues my Dad would play, to the Indie, heavy-Metal, hip hop and Big Beat my older brothers would play.
Music speaks to me in a way that’s very difficult to describe in words. Perhaps, because music, and dance, is probably a lot older than language itself – so maybe we lack the words to talk about it; only really the language of metaphors and similes, even then; it’s pretty hard to describe.
When I was heavily into Drum and Bass, back in the late 90’s / early 2000’s, I’d sometimes read the reviews of new releases in the various dance-music magazines - and often cringe, when the journalist was trying to describe a bassline, or drum pattern, using grandiose science metaphors or , or something else equally ridiculous – I quite often had no idea what on earth they were talking about – maybe they just get bored or have to reinvent the wheel every time they review a record– I don’t care about your flowery words mate, just tell me if you think it’s sick or not - so I stopped reading them. Like I say, music is hard to write about. But it matters.
Marcus Aurelius’ talks a lot about the directing mind, taking control of all other aspects of being human. Trouble with that is, music, is really something that you feel, first and foremost, and accepting that and then thinking about it, is really how the order should be – but being human, we end up projecting other crap onto it – like identity and tribal association – often to the detriment of our listening pleasure. I was once at a concert of some Jazz musician, playing very abstract, and long pieces of music in some impossible to comprehend time-signature, and I was thinking Apart from the geezer jazzing-out on the sax, who, really, is enjoying this? But in terms of that identity and projecting stuff, the case in point for me, is Grime music.
I started MCing at the end of the 90’s. My main thing was Drum and Bass with a little bit of Hip Hop – as there was cross-overs with the tempos of the different music – hip hop being roughly half the speed of Drum and bass - but around that time, certainly in London and the surrounding countries – Drum and Bass’s street popularity had been supplanted by Speed Garage and then UK Garage. Most of my mates who were DJ’s, were playing Garage and not Drum and Bass, so I wound up jumping on Garage and MCing over that – and it’s a slightly different kettle of fish – due to the difference in tempos and general vibe of the music. Drum and Bass, in that era, tended to be a lot darker and techy. Techy, shit, what does that even mean? I sound like one of those journalists.
I resented Garage, for taking Drum and Bass’s place as the king of the underground – however, I did like some of the tunes, like Roy Davis Jnr - Gabriel, and when that darker Garage sound started to emerge from the likes of El-B, Ghost recordings, Jameson etc – I got really into it. That darker-sound laid the blueprint for what went on to become both Dubstep and Grime. All of that, along with the popularity of the crews: So-Solid Crew, Pay As You Go, and Heartless – gave rise to the popularity of MC’s. UK Hip Hop – minus a few exceptions like Roots Manuva - was a footnote compared to these guys. And then Grime came along, in a big way - an MC / rapper led club-sound. And there was nothing like it; but at first, I hated it.
Despite coming round to the darker garage sound – I couldn’t allow myself to like Grime – at first. I thought it was a mess. Badly produced, shit rappers who were just shouting or repeating the same lines over and over – and of course, it was liked by rudeboys – the type of which that would come to the events I was putting on, by this point, and cause trouble – starting fights, robbing people etc. Or at the very least, just standing on the side, not taking their jackets off and not spending any money at the bar; thus pissing off the manager of this little club we were running gigs at - and scaring the girls off. Not that Drum and Bass was much different – just that it had been around long enough for nerds to get in to it and chin-stoke over different drum edits etc – so at least there was a bit diversity in that sense, amongst its fanbase.
Drum and Bass was my thing – so therefore I couldn’t like Grime, because Grime was their thing. Their being a groups of kids I didn’t much like, and I probably thought I was better than; as if listening to Drum and Bass made me more intelligent or cultured or some other bollox.
At some point, one of my mates must’ve implored me to actually listen to it properly – so there I was one night, on the door of this little pokey club in Horley where we running gigs, I was taking the money and it was quiet. We had the Garage and Grime guys on earlier, of course - that was my preference, get it out the way – Drum and Bass got the best sets - when one of the DJ’s dropped the instrumental to I Luv U by Dizzee Rascal and at some point, Pulse X and Saved Soul. Now if you know those tunes – you’ll know there not an easy listen – but legendary in Grime circles. However, they moved me. I poked my head round the door, to a largely empty club, minus my mates and a few random rubeboys leaning against the bar (with their jackets still on, not buying any drinks) – and that’s when it hit me. This is sick. I was feeling it. I’d been in denial. I’d block myself form liking it, I’d heard all these tunes – but it’s like I’d put a cork in my belly and blocked anything from escaping - And then again, I’m in a mates car and he’s playing all these DJ sets he’s got off pirate radio – the various MC clashes, like Wiley vs Dirty Doogs (now Goodz) – and I dunno what it was – the energy of this whole thing – but I was going nuts, I realised I loved it I was in, mate, fully in – I’d been lying to myself, this whole time. All because I had some silly pretensions about who listened to it, or whether the music was technically as good as Drum and Bass. Who even cares, mate?! If it’s sick, it’s sick. I was just lucky, that I had some mates who done the litmus test on me and bought all my own bollox to the surface.
Around the same time, my mate Dean had got me a job working at HMV in Gatwick Airport. We’d get a lot of regular business flyers coming through, who’d be in every month or so. There was this one guy, who was probably in his forties or fifties maybe. He was this podgy, hair-thinning, mild-mannered shy-guy, always in a shirt, tie and trousers, who wouldn’t look out of place in the Games Workshop, or managing a branch of WH-Smiths. However, he loved Trance music, and would buy every new compilation that came out. He seemed slightly embarrassed about it, but at the same time, it’s like he couldn’t hold it in, he loved it. We had this little stereo in the corner where we’d let people listen to CD’s, if they were nice enough, and he was a nice guy – we’d load him up in the corner, he’d stick the headphones on and you could see his face light up if he was feeling it. He seemed very aware of who he was, his image, his station in life and how that was probably the total opposite of the type of person that would’ve been associated with Trance music. He said once it was his dream to go to one of the big-Ibiza foam-parties. I don’t know if he ever made it out there, but I remember thinking, fair-play, mate, and found him quite inspiring. I hope he did make it out there, and it was everything he imagined it to be.
I don’t think I ever got into Grime for popularity, or even rapping for that matter. I like beats, rhythms, and writing of course. All of that excites me, no, more than that, it moves me. And whilst my head is certainly prone to pretentious wanky behaviour, I like to think I’ve gotton a bit better at being allowed to be proved wrong, I’ve been proven wrong many times. When I slagged Garage off, and then Grime off to my mates, there was always that undeniable feeling that I probably just came across as a prick, but I stuffed it down. Like that time I was at this Drum and Bass night, in Herbal, and some nerd was in the toilet arguing about drum breaks that Photek used in his early music and how he’d sold-out or whatever – I remember thinking back then, despite sailing dangerously close to the gassy-wind of a bellend myself – I don’t ever want to be like this prick.
On Music Enjoyment Denial