Tag: Radio Thamesmead

Mister Soul Of Jamaica … and Thamesmead : 1938-2008 : reggae artist Alton Ellis

 The first record played on the first week’s show of the first reggae music programme on British radio was a single by Alton Ellis, a magnificent singer/songwriter too often overlooked when reggae legends are named. I immediately fell in love with his soulful voice, his perfect pitch and his beautifully clear enunciation, rushing out to buy ‘La La Means I Love You’ [Nu Beat NB014], unaware it was recorded two years earlier. Like many of Ellis’ recordings, this was a cover version of an American soul hit (despite the label’s songwriter credit), though Ellis distinguished himself from contemporaries by also writing his own ‘message’ songs with striking lyrics and memorable hooks. My next single purchases were noteworthy Ellis originals:

‘Lord Deliver Us’ [Gas 161] included an unusual staccato repeated bridge and lines that demonstrated Ellis’ humanitarian pre-occupations, including “Let the naked be clothed, let the blind be led, let the hungry be fed” and “Children, go on to school! Be smarter than your fathers, don’t be a fool!” Its wonderful B-side instrumental starts with a shouted declaration “Well, I am the originator, so you’ve come to copy my tune?” that predates similar statements on many DJ records.

‘Sunday’s Coming’ [Banana BA318] has imaginative chord progressions, a huge choir on its chorus and lyrics “Better get your rice’n’peas, better get your fresh fresh beans’’ that locate it firmly as a Jamaican original rather than an American cover version. Why does it last a mere two minutes thirty seconds? The B-side’s saxophone version demonstrates how ethereal the rhythm track is and shows off the dominant rhythm guitar riff beautifully. It’s a masterclass in music production.

It was only after Ellis had emigrated to Britain in 1973 that a virtual ‘greatest hits’ album of his classic singles produced by Duke Reid was finally released the following year, entitled ‘Mr Soul Of Jamaica’ [Treasure Isle 013]. I recall buying this import LP in Daddy Peckings’ newly opened reggae record shop at 142 Askew Road and loved every track on one of reggae’s most consistently high-quality albums (akin to Marley’s ‘Legend’). It bookended Ellis’ most creative studio partnership in Jamaica when Reid had to retire through ill health.

What was it that made Ellis’ recordings so significant? Primarily, as the album title confirms, it was that his voice uniquely sounded more ‘soul’ than ‘reggae’, occupying the same territory as Jamaica’s ‘Sam & Dave’-like duo ‘The Blues Busters’. I have always harboured the sentiment that, if he had been able to record in America during the 1960’s, Ellis could have been a hugely popular soul singer there. Maybe label owner Duke Reid shared this thought, having recorded ‘soul’ versions of some of Ellis’ biggest songs for inclusion in a 1968 compilation album ‘Soul Music For Sale’ [Treasure Isle LP101/5]. However, at the time, reggae was a completely unknown genre in mainstream America, so Reid’s soul recordings remained obscure there. [The sadly deleted 2003 compilation ‘Work Your Soul’ [Trojan TJDCD069] collected some fascinating soul versions by Reid and other producers.]

Secondly, Ellis’ superb Duke Reid recordings were backed by Treasure Isle studio house band ‘Tommy McCook & the Supersonics’ whose multitude of recordings during the ska, rocksteady and reggae eras on their own and backing so many singers/groups demonstrated a tightness and professionalism that is breathtaking. Using only basic equipment in the studio above Reid’s Bond Street liquor store, engineer Errol Brown produced phenomenal results for the time, operating a ‘quality control’ that belied the release of dozens of recordings every month.

Finally, Ellis’ recordings displayed a microphone technique that was unique in reggae and demonstrated his astute knowledge of studio production techniques. At the end of lines, he would sometimes turn his head away from the microphone whilst singing a note. Because Jamaican studios were not built acoustically ‘dead’, Ellis’ head movement not only translated into his voice trailing off into the distance (like a train pulling away) but also allowed the listener to hear his voice bouncing off the studio walls. ‘Reverberation’ equipment to create this effect technically was used minimally in studios until the 1970’s ‘dub’ era, so Ellis seemed to have improvised manually. Perhaps he had heard this effect on American soul records of the time?

On one of his biggest songs from 1969, ‘Breaking Up Is Hard To Do’ [Treasure Isle 220], you can hear Ellis use this effect during the chorus when he sings the words “everybody knows”, particularly just prior to the fade-out. It is similarly evident on Ellis’ vocal contribution to the brilliant DJ version of the same song, ‘Melinda’ by I-Roy [on album Trojan TRLS63] recorded in 1972.

The same vocal technique is audible on other songs including ‘Girl I’ve Got A Date’ [Treasure Isle DSR1691] in which Ellis elongates the word “tree” into “treeeeee”, as well as “breeze” into “breeeeeeze”, whilst moving his head away from the microphone.

I had always been intrigued by Ellis’ recording technique but had not thought anything more of it until, entirely by accident half a century later, I found startling 1960’s footage recorded at the Sombrero Club on Molynes Road up from Half Way Tree, Jamaica. Backed by Byron Lee’s Dragonaires, an uncredited vocal group I presume to be ‘The Blues Busters’ performed their 1964 recording “I Don’t Know” [Island album ILP923] during which one of the duo (Lloyd Campbell or Phillip James) moves his head away from the microphone at the end of lines, similar to what can be heard on Ellis’ recordings.

This started me searching for 1960’s footage of Ellis performing live. Sadly, I found nothing (either solo or in his previous duo with Eddie Parkins as ‘Alton & Eddy’ [sic], similar to ‘The Blues Busters’) to see if he emulated this vocal technique on stage too. For me, it remains amazing that the smallest characteristics audible in a studio recording (particularly from analogue times) can offer so much insight into the ad hoc techniques adopted to overcome the limitations of available technology. The ingenuity of music production in Jamaica during this period was truly remarkable.

Prior to emigration, Ellis had toured Britain in 1967, performing with singer Ken Boothe. Whilst in London, he recorded a single ‘The Message’ [Pama PM707] in which he raps freestyle rather than sings, fifteen years prior to Grandmaster Flash’s hit rap track of the same name, and declares truthfully “I’m the rocksteady king, sir”. Its B-side pokes fun at ‘English Talk’ that he must have heard during his visit. The backing music is the clunky Brit reggae of the time, but Ellis’ subject matter is fascinating for its innovation.

1971’s ‘Arise Black Man’ [Aquarius JA single] includes the lyric “From Kingston to Montego, black brothers and sisters, arise black man, take a little step, show them that you can, ‘coz you’ve got the right to show it, you’ve got the right to know it”. The verses and chorus “We don’t need no evidence now” are backed by a big choir. It’s a phenomenal tune despite not even having received a UK release at the time. (Was the chorus a reference to Britain’s 1971 Immigration Act in which a Commonwealth applicant was “required to present […] forms of evidence” to “prove that they have the right of abode” in the UK?)

The same year, ‘Back To Africa’ [Gas GAS164] has the chorus “Goin’ to back to Africa, ‘coz I’m black, goin’ back to Africa, and it’s a fact’ backed by a choir once again. There’s an adlibbed interjection “Gonna stay there, 1999, I gotta get there” that predates Hugh Mundell’s seminal song ‘Africans Must Be Free By 1983’.

Again in 1971, Ellis re-recorded his song ‘Black Man’s Pride’ [Bullet BU466], previously made for producer Coxson Dodd [Coxson JA single], with it’s shocking (at the time) chorus “I was born a loser, because I’m a black man”. The verses are a history lesson in slavery: “We have suffered our whole lives through, doing things that they’re supposed to do, we were beaten ‘til our backs were black and blue” and “I was living in my own land, I was moved because of white men’s plans, now I’m living in a white man’s land”. I consider this phenomenal song the direct antecedent of similarly themed, outspoken recordings by Joe Higgs (‘More Slavery’ [Grounation GROL2021]) and Burning Spear (‘Slavery Days’ [Fox JA pre]) in 1975. If only this Ellis song was as well-known as Winston Rodney’s! [In initial recorded versions, “loser” was replaced by “winner” and the song retitled ‘Born A Winner’.]

I first discovered Ellis’ song ‘Good Good Loving’ [FAB 165] as the vocal produced by Prince Buster for a DJ track by teenager Little Youth on the 1972 compilation album ‘Chi Chi Run’ [FAB MS8, apologies for the language] called ‘Youth Rock’. At the time, I was crazy about this recording, combining a high-pitched youthful talkover with a solid rhythm and Ellis’ trademark voice in the mix. I will be forever mystified as to why the DJ (sounding like Hugh Mundell/Jah Levi) seems to refer to “Cool Version by The Gallows [sic]” in his lyrics!

In 1973, Ellis released the song I never tire of hearing, ‘Truly’ [Pyramid PYR7003], that benefits from such a laid-back rhythm that it feels it could come to an abrupt stop at times. It is one of Ellis’ simplest but most effective songs and has become a staple of reggae ‘lovers’ singers since, employing wonderfully unanticipated chord changes. It sounds like a self-production, even though UK sound system man Lloyd Coxsone’s name is on the label. This should have been a huge hit record!

There are so many more Ellis tracks from this fertile early 1970’s period that make interesting listening, recorded for many different producers and released on different labels. Sadly, no CD or digital compilation has managed to embrace them all. I still live in hope.

After Ellis moved permanently to Britain during his late thirties, he must have struggled in the same way as some of his contemporaries, trying to sustain their careers in the ‘motherland’. Despite UK chart successes, Desmond Dekker, Nicky Thomas, Bob Andy and Jimmy Cliff were very much viewed as one-off ‘novelty’ hitmakers by the mainstream media rather than developing artists. Worse, Ellis had never touched the British charts. Neither did the majority of reggae tracks produced then in British studios sound particularly ‘authentic’ to the music’s audience, let alone the wider ‘pop’ market. Ellis performed at the many reggae clubs around Britain but the rewards must have been limited.

Ellis’ British commercial success came unexpectedly when another ‘novelty’ reggae single shot to number one in the UK charts in 1977. Its story is complicated! The previous year, Ellis’ 1967 song ‘I’m Still In Love With You’ had been covered in Jamaica by singer Marcia Aitken [Joe Gibbs JA pre]. A DJ version by Trinity over the identical rhythm followed called ‘Three Piece Suit’ [Belmont JA pre]. Then two young girls, Althia & Donna, recorded their debut as an ‘answer’ record to Trinity on the same rhythm and named it ‘Uptown Top Ranking’ [Joe Gibbs JA pre]. Other producers released their own ‘answer’ records, rerecording the identical rhythm, all of which could be heard one after the other blaring from minibuses’ sound systems in Jamaica at the time. Unfortunately for Ellis, Jamaica had no songwriting royalty payment system in those days.

I remember first hearing ‘Uptown Top Ranking’ as an import single on John Peel’s ‘BBC Radio One’ evening show. Even once it had been given a UK release [Lightning LIG506], Ellis was still omitted from the songwriting credit by producer Gibbs. Legal action followed and eventually Ellis was rewarded with half of the record’s songwriting royalties (for the music but not the lyrics), a considerable sum for a UK number one hit then. The same track (re-recorded due to producer Joe Gibbs’ intransigence) was then included on an album that Althia & Donna made for Virgin Records the following year [Front Line FL1012] that had global distribution, earning Ellis additional royalties.

Also in 1977, Ellis produced twenty-year-old London singer Janet Kay’s first record, a version of hit soul ballad ‘Lovin’ You’, released on his ‘All Tone’ label [AT006] that, prior to emigration, he had created in Jamaica to release his own productions. Ellis’ soul sensibilities and music production experience inputted directly into the creation of what became known (accidentally) as ‘lovers rock’, a uniquely British sub-genre that perfectly blended soul and reggae into love songs recorded mostly by teenage girls. This ‘underground’ music went on to dominate British reggae clubs and pirate radio stations for the next decade, even pushing Kay’s ‘Silly Games’ [Arawak ARK DD 003] to number two in the UK pop singles chart two years later.

Into the 1980’s and 1990’s, Ellis continued to release more UK productions on his label, including a ‘25th Silver Jubilee’ album [All Tone ALT001] in 1984 that revisited nineteen of his biggest hits, celebrating a career that had started in Jamaica as half of the duo in 1959. I recall Ellis visiting ‘Radio Thamesmead’ in 1986, the community cable station where I was employed at the time. He was living on London’s Thamesmead council estate and was interviewed about his label’s latest releases.

On 10 October 2008 at the age of seventy, Ellis died of cancer in Hammersmith Hospital. He had been awarded the Order of Distinction by the Jamaica government in 1994 for his contributions to the island’s music industry. I continue to derive a huge amount of satisfaction from listening to his many recordings dating back to the beginning of the 1960’s and wish he was acknowledged more widely for his outstanding contributions to reggae music.

Now, when I think of Alton Ellis, I fondly recall my daily car commute into work at KISS FM radio, Holloway Road in 1990/1991 with colleague Debbi McNally, us both singing along at the top of our voices to my homemade cassette compilation playing Alton Ellis’ beautiful 1968 rocksteady version of Chuck Jackson’s 1961 song ‘Willow Tree’ [Treasure Isle TI7044].

“Cry not for me, my willow tree … ‘coz I have found the love I’ve searched for.”

[Click each record label/sleeve to hear the tune. I have curated an Alton Ellis playlist on Spotify though many significant recordings are unavailable.]

[Originally published at https://peoplelikeyoudontworkinradio.blogspot.com/2024/03/mister-soul-of-jamaica-and-thamesmead.html ]

Land of a thousand cockroaches : 1986-1987 : Deptford Housing Co-operative, London

 “Gimme your money!” he shouted, pointing a pistol at me. He had jumped out from behind some bushes. It was a dark winter evening. I was alone. Nobody was about. I was ten metres from the entrance to New Cross railway station, about to return home, having walked my girlfriend to her train after an evening together. Street lighting beyond the railway was abysmal. I jumped with surprise. It was my first mugging. It was my first year living in London. I was aware of the advice: hand over your wallet and do not argue. I knew the fate of Thomas Wayne.

Except that I had no wallet to give. I had a five-pound note in the left pocket of my black Levi 501’s and some loose change. That was it. No credit cards. In London, I knew to carry as little as possible. I had not carried a wallet since an embarrassing incident in 1978 when I had parked my little yellow Datsun at the end of Upper Gordon Road, opposite Elmhurst Ballet school, and walked into the town centre. Within the hour, I returned to the car and drove home, only to receive a phone call from Camberley police station. Somebody had picked up my wallet from the gutter and handed it in. It must have fallen from the side pocket of my jacket as I stooped to enter the car. I had no idea it was missing. I collected the wallet and found it intact. I have never forgotten that anonymous ‘good Samaritan’. After that, I gave up carrying a wallet.

Later that same year, I had robbed myself through carelessness as a twenty-year old student union vice-president. Following an extensive survey of the photocopier market, having used such machines since the 1960’s, I decided that the Rank Xerox 3600 was the most modern and robust to rent and install on the mezzanine level of the student building in Durham. Once the company’s technicians had set it up and departed, I was so keen to test it that I wanted to make the first copy. However, I had not been carrying any papers so I reached into my pocket and pulled out the only banknote I had. It was £50 because, in the pre-debit card era, I would withdraw £100 monthly from Lloyds Bank’s cash machine opposite Dunelm House. I put the note on the platen, pressed the button and out came a perfect monochrome copy which I then rushed off to let my peers admire. Minutes later, I realised I had left the £50 note in the machine and returned to find it … gone. The copier’s first student user must have been delighted!

Now, accosted in the shadow of South London 24-storey high-rises, within seconds I had to decide how to react. I had no wallet. If I were to offer my meagre five-pound note, this highwayman might become angry and violent. It was never a good idea to argue with a man pointing a gun at you. I stared at my mugger, his face mostly hidden by a blue bandana. He was barely five feet tall. Was he even an adult? 1981’s ‘Stand and Deliver’ music video flickered in my head (no relation). I recalled childhood streets that encompassed Gibbet Lane where, times past, robbers like him on the main road to London had been hanged. I took the rash decision to simply turn and walk away … briskly. I might be shot in the back. I might be attacked from behind. My heart was beating so fast but I knew not to break into a run. And, incredibly luckily, nothing at all happened.

Home was five minutes’ walk away. On the payphone inside the front door, I immediately called 999 to report the incident. While I was sat waiting in the kitchen for a police officer to arrive and take my statement, one of my female co-tenants arrived. I explained breathlessly what had just happened. She quietly recounted that she had suffered the same experience in precisely the same place, a few days previously, and had been relieved of her handbag. Had she reported the robbery? No. I was aghast. Why not? I waited several hours, no police arrived. In the weeks and months that followed, my crime report was never followed up. I lost my faith in ‘the Met’ that night.

What the hell was I doing living in this rundown, sometime scary part of London? It was desperation. In January 1986, I had taken my first job in London, managing a job creation scheme at ‘Radio Thamesmead’. The daily commute by coach and multiple trains from my mother’s home in west Surrey to southeast London was hellish, consuming four to six hours per day. My government pay was too low to afford private rented accommodation in London. Neither could I register for council housing because I was not already dwelling in a London borough. I consulted ‘Yellow Pages’ directories in Camberley library and typed individual letters to every housing co-operative in London, enquiring whether I could rent a room. There was only one encouraging reply, from ‘Deptford Housing Cooperative’, telling me it would contact me when a place became available.

Months passed without a word. I wrote again. I was invited to a meeting. I was eventually offered a three-metre by three-metre room in a ten-person house at a reasonable rent. I took it. My travel-to-work time was cut from hours to minutes and my cost to very little as I was journeying the opposite direction to suburban commuters. The morning trains I was now taking to work were almost empty, whereas I would never forget my first day at Radio Thamesmead when, changing trains at London Bridge station, I had been knocked down the staircase of platform six by a hard briefcase wielded like a battering ram by a descending bowler-hatted gentleman. It had been my first lesson in commuter rage.

Some of my nine new housemates were lovely, some not quite so. Before my arrival, they had jointly decided at a ‘house meeting’ to rent a colour television from ‘Radio Rentals’ but, within weeks, it had disappeared one night from the living room, allegedly stolen and fenced by housemate Knollys. There were characters. One young bearded dropout seemed to model himself on ‘Citizen Smith’, railing against capitalism whilst living on benefits, wearing a denim jacket covered in badges and smoking roll-your-owns. One young woman attended a friend’s Berber wedding in the mountains of Algeria and returned with amazing photos and stories.

My room in the house was thankfully dry and secure, though somewhat noisy as it was adjacent to the railway line. However, I quickly learned never to use the ground-floor kitchen. Switching on the kitchen light triggered a loud sound like the noise of a receding wave washing pebbles down a beach. I learned it was made by cockroaches scuttling to hide from the light, a phenomenon new to me. Not dozens of them. Hundreds! We contacted the housing manager who ordered a pest control specialist to come and fumigate the kitchen. Days later, the noise was still occurring. If you opened any kitchen drawer, you could watch them scatter.

A further visit by pest control was organised. This time, the kitchen and adjoining living room were fumigated simultaneously and cordoned off-limits for a whole day. We were more hopeful. But hope proved not enough to kill the vermin. Within days, the expert had to be recalled to examine our evidence that bugs were still present in massive numbers. He looked. He saw. He told us: “the only way to get rid of so many of them would be to demolish the building”.

Demolition was not going to happen. Our house was in the middle of a terrace of eight three-story units on Rochdale Way that had only been constructed in 1978. Yet already our unit should have been condemned as unsanitary. But notification to health inspectors would have made all ten of us homeless. Instead, we suffered the bugs and I saw some housemates continue to use the kitchen for preparing meals, despite the evident health risk.

Filth and crime quickly became my initial impressions of London living. When my cassette deck developed a fault, I returned it to the closest branch of ‘Comet’ in nearby Lewisham which agreed to repair it under guarantee and return it within a fortnight. A month later, I was still waiting. The shop stonewalled me for a few weeks more before admitting that its lorry, with my equipment inside, had been stolen. Would I accept a brand-new replacement? Yes, I would and selected a top-of-the-range model that would substitute perfectly for my vanished bottom-of-the-range purchase.

After having started work in Thamesmead in January 1986, it had taken until September for me to be offered this room in Deptford, six miles away. However, my one-year work contract there ended in December, after which I took a seasonal job at ‘Capital Radio’ in central London. Then, in the new year, I started a long commute three days a week to work at ‘Ace Records’ in Harlesden, twice as far away on the opposite side of the city. Once again, most of my earnings were being spent on travelling to work. I would have saved more money if I could have used my house’s kitchen, rather than having to buy takeaway meals every evening.

It was time to find somewhere to live nearer my new workplace, hopefully a self-contained flat rather than another house share. My one year in Deptford had proven interesting – Deptford High Street market, Pearlie kings and queens, Jamaican patties, second-hand record shops, pirate radio, nearby Greenwich Sunday market – but it would be nice to sleep soundly without worrying whether thousands of cockroaches could climb the staircase overnight to invade my bedroom. I started buying the weekly ‘Willesden Chronicle’ local newspaper from the stand outside Harlesden station to scan the small ads. Presently, my house was not a home.

[Originally published at https://peoplelikeyoudontworkinradio.blogspot.com/2024/02/land-of-thousand-cockroaches-1986-1987.html ]

Sit-in here in limbo : 1986 : Community Service Volunteers & Radio Thamesmead

 “It’s just like the multinational pharmaceutical businesses deliberately designing toothpaste tubes so that you cannot squeeze out the last bit of toothpaste,” I blurted.

There was stunned silence while my colleagues seated on a circle of chairs in the middle of a low-ceiling conference room stared at me blankly. Was this young man mad? Perhaps I was. I cannot recall to which discussion topic my poorly chosen conspiracy theory analogy was intended to refer, but I clearly remember the reaction. I was present because a letter from Ric, our manager, had instructed me to attend. I had no comprehension what this meeting was intended to achieve. By the time I opened my mouth, the gathering had seemed somewhat pointless.

I had already been employed for several months of a one-year contract by the two-decade old charity Community Service Volunteers [‘CSV’], but this half-day event was the first time I had visited its sprawling offices in King’s Cross. Like me, each of the dozen people present was supervising a job creation scheme within a local radio station. Their ‘Action Desks’ were funded by government and sponsored by CSV, each employing a couple of low-wage staff to answer phone enquiries from the public about lost dogs, community events and volunteering opportunities. Unlike me, every invitee present was female because, in the pre-desktop-computer dark ages, scripts had to be prepared by Action Desk staff on a typewriter in order to be read on-air by professional radio presenters. In essence, CSV offered broadcasters its staff at zero cost to generate the ‘community’ content required by their stations’ broadcast regulations.

I was different, not just because I was male and talked crazy ideas, but because it quickly emerged that I was the only person present with prior radio experience, and I was not operating one of these ancillary Action Desks. Instead, I was supervising a larger team of paid CSV staff who worked alongside non-professional volunteers managing London’s only legal community radio station, ‘Radio Thamesmead’. Although ‘history’ (a.k.a. Wikipedia) records Britain’s ‘first’ community radio station as not having launched until 2002, significant but little-known antecedents did exist. In 1976, many of Britain’s 28 post-war ‘new towns’ had been resourced with a community radio station, initially funded by each location’s New Town Development Corporation to broadcast on a then state-of-the-art analogue cable system.

However, by 1986, only two of those pioneering radio stations had survived. Why? Having myself lived/worked in these new towns, I witnessed first-hand the grand objectives of the 1946 New Towns Plan having never been completed, leaving residents without the promised shopping centres, community facilities and sportsgrounds. Their local cable systems suffered poor maintenance and many households now subscribed to satellite TV delivery instead. In the 1980’s, Development Corporations were wound up by government and their funded projects, including community radio, were abandoned. Did the Cable Authority, which inherited regulation of the remaining community radio stations, publish an evaluation of the evident failure of the 1970’s ‘cable radio experiment’? If so, I never saw one. Its sole statement on the subject was that “community cable radio stations tended to be longer-lived than the [cable] television stations, and two still survive”.

Radio Thamesmead had endured only as a result of its job creation staff and partial funding of overheads provided by CSV. A government agency named Manpower Services Commission operated the station’s ‘Community Enterprise Programme’ for which staff were recruited from the ranks of the unemployed and contracted to CSV, whose expenses it then reimbursed monthly. In this way, money flowed from government to the Commission, then to CSV which then paid me and my team’s monthly salaries in arrears. However, there was one month when our pay failed to arrive on time. I phoned CSV which explained there had been a temporary problem and it would come soon. One week later, still none of us had been paid. This created a practical problem because our low pay was barely sufficient to cover our work expenses. I had to endure a daily commute of more than two hours each direction by coach and train which ate up the majority of my salary. I phoned CSV again and was offered only more excuses.

The following Monday morning, instead of commuting to Thamesmead, I arrived unannounced at the CSV office and demanded to meet its finance director. How could I manage a team of staff who were essential for keeping this little community radio station on-air if they were not being paid for their work? After initially being offered further excuses, it was eventually confided in me that the CSV staff member responsible for managing the finances of these job creation schemes had disappeared from its headquarters along with the funds received from government to pay our wages. I was angry. I had a responsibility to ensure my team was paid. CSV had a responsibility to fulfil its employment contracts by paying me and my team. Otherwise, it would breach those contracts and open itself to legal action.

I told the finance director that I intended to stay in his office until a solution was organised in order for us to be paid. Mine was a one-man sit-in protest. I made myself comfortable in the low chair for guests in his office, listening to my Walkman and reading a book I had brought along. Due to my long daily commutes, I was familiar with sitting for hours alone, entertaining myself with cassette recordings of the ‘John Peel Show’ from ‘BBC Radio One‘. That day, as every weekday, at daybreak I had caught the first scheduled coach into London from the London Road bus stop in Camberley. After a further two hours having sat in this office, which had been unoccupied after my tirade, I needed to use the toilet. I rose from the chair …

The next thing I remembered was opening my eyes, feeling the carpet beside my face and realising I was laid out on the floor of the office. I had no idea what had happened. My head was hurting like crazy. I felt very dizzy. I managed to crawl along the floor on all fours into the corridor where I could hear voices talking. I headed in their direction and crawled through the doorway of an office where my sudden appearance at floor level must have shocked the two women sat inside at their desks. Something catastrophic must have happened, but what exactly?

It transpired that, when I had risen from my chair in the finance office, my head had hit a bookshelf drilled into the wall directly above me which, in my initial anger, I had not noticed when starting my sit-in several hours earlier. I must have suffered concussion, though it was unknown how long I had been unconscious because nobody seemed to have entered or passed the office despite its open door. All I could recall was a vision in my head of my spirit travelling through space with bright lights passing rapidly to left and right, similar to a sequence in the film ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. I could now feel a large bump on the top of my head and I remained dizzy and incoherent. An ambulance was called and I was whisked away for tests in a London hospital. Following several hours under observation, I was released in late afternoon.

CSV had offered to pay for a taxi to take me home from the hospital. When I told them my destination would be my mother’s house thirty miles away in Surrey, they initially told me they could only deliver me to “my home”, not to a relative’s. I had to insist that I was commuting that distance daily as a result of having failed to find an affordable home to rent in London. They were putting up resistance but finally paid for my long £50 black cab ride all the way to Camberley. I rested the next day and took the painkillers prescribed by the hospital. When I phoned my workplace to explain my absence, my team were somewhat shocked and surprised to learn the bizarre outcome of my sit-in.

A few days later I felt well enough to return to work and, by Friday that week, my team were belatedly paid our overdue salaries by CSV. The problem never repeated. I never revisited the CSV office.

[Originally published at https://peoplelikeyoudontworkinradio.blogspot.com/2023/05/sit-in-here-in-limbo-1986-community.html]

Whoah, I'm going to Guyana : 1986 : Mary Strong, Radio Thamesmead

 

People don’t just disappear, do they? I don’t mean a clothes-on-beach John Stonehouse sort of disappearance. Nor a dead-nanny-on-floor Lord Lucan type of crime. Those were elaborate, doing-a-runner schemes. As was my father disappearing for good with the teenage bride of a neighbour. That had simply been middle-aged madness, but I digress. No, I mean a person who achieves a vanish-into-thin-air disappearance, leaves no trace whatsoever and is never heard from again. Sometimes it does happen.

There were only a few of us who lived as far away from our school as a thirty-minute train journey. We would gather on the train platform in our bottle-green blazers, kids surrounded by bowler-hatted grey men with briefcases who had been passing their entire grey lives riding the 8:10 train to grey jobs in The City. Being children, we always boarded the eighth carriage, the last that fitted onto our station’s platform, and walked through the long connecting corridor to the empty twelfth carriage which served as our pre-school playground. Spending an hour each day travelling back and forwards on trains meant we got to know each other well.

Then, one day, one of us was not on the platform. Maybe a doctor’s appointment? But the next day it was the same. If a family holiday had been imminent, surely he would have told us? A week passed. No sign of our friend. Another in our group phoned his home and learned that he had been killed in a car accident. It was a huge shock. Aged twelve, we always imagined we would live forever. Until then, the most tragic incident witnessed at school had been Marina Hirons’ screams on breaking her arm in a playground fall during netball. The school failed to acknowledge our friend’s death. His name was hurriedly deleted from the morning class register. No announcement was made at morning assembly. Counselling? What was that? We were expected to demonstrate stiff upper lips. But I never forget our young schoolfriend and the way he suddenly disappeared from our lives.

After that loss, I witnessed further disappearances. Did I mention my father walking out the following year, taking with him everything he had ever bought for his family? Or my girlfriend fifteen years later who, after admitting to sex with a teenage work colleague, then disappeared while I was away with half the contents of the flat we had jointly furnished. (Maybe a pattern here?) Or the female tenant who disappeared in 1986 from my ten-person Deptford Housing Co-operative house. After several months’ absence, I requested the key to her top-floor bedroom which I coveted as less noisy than mine on the first floor. I opened her door with trepidation and the scene uncannily resembled a TV detective entering the bedroom of a missing person. All her possessions had been left in situ, except that she had gone. It took me a week to clear it all out in black bin bags before I could move in. Sorting through her personal stuff, I began to feel I knew her life, even though she might possibly be dead.

The most memorable disappearance happened that same year in my workplace. Mary Strong was an affable middle-aged woman employed as full-time secretary at Radio Thamesmead community station. She lived locally, was very outgoing and chatty with everyone who worked in or visited our office. It seemed as if she had worked at the station forever because she knew everyone who had passed through its doors. We saw her as a reliable, responsible fixture in the building, someone who was adept at solving problems and making things happen. Then, one day, she did not come to work. She would always phone if there was a problem. Now her home phone remained unanswered. Nothing was heard from her. A week passed. Someone at the station visited her Thamesmead flat. There was no answer and no sign of her.

Mary’s boss at Radio Thamesmead was the station’s formidable volunteer chairwoman, Lesley Pullar, whom I respected immensely. She took me aside at work and confided how extremely worried she had become about the sudden disappearance of her previously reliable, right-hand woman. She explained that Mary had long been entrusted with administration of the station’s finances and had held the organisation’s cheque book to pay its bills. Then Lesley suddenly and uncharacteristically became sombre and tears started to well up in her eyes.

“Last week,” she admitted, “Mary asked me unusually to sign a blank cheque to pay a bill because she knew I was going to be away … and I have to admit that I did what she asked.”

The gravity of her words hung in the air. I looked at her in shock. Surely the disappearance of such a reliable mainstay of our tiny radio station could not be connected to this blank cheque. We had to consider all possibilities. Lesley regularly came to the radio station but, as I worked there full-time, she requested my input to understand what might have happened. We attempted to figure out what events might have led up to the day of Mary’s disappearance. I consulted my diary and subtly asked my team if they had observed anything untoward in recent weeks.

At that time, only four local radio stations had been licensed in London, of which Radio Thamesmead was the smallest and the only one to broadcast solely on a local cable system, rather than on the FM or AM wavebands. Despite the station’s audience probably never having exceeded a hundred listeners, in the minds of people seeking publicity we were worth a visit. It was a relatively simple task for Mary Strong to arrange their on-air interview. As a result, whilst I was there, politicians such as former British prime minister Edward Heath were happy to visit Radio Thamesmead for an interview, as were musicians such as legendary reggae singer Alton Ellis who lived locally.

One such visitor was musician Rudolph Grant, younger brother of superstar Eddy Grant who was probably the most successful black singer/songwriter/producer in Britain during that time. Rudolph had recorded a popular reggae song ‘Move Up Starsky’ in 1977 under the name The Mexicano (which I had bought as a single), despite him having been born in Guyana and having no apparent connection with Mexico. By the early 1980’s, he was recording under the name Rudy Grant, had secured a contract with renowned producer Mickie Most’s RAK Records but, having failed to find commercial success, was no longer with the label. Rudy had visited Radio Thamesmead recently to promote his music and had been a big hit with Mary Strong, who then talked about him regularly to station staff. It was apparent to those of us working in the office that the two had struck up a friendship that had extended beyond his promotional visit.

Mary had a desk in the Radio Thamesmead office, where Lesley told me the station’s cheque book was kept locked in its top drawer. Problem was that only Mary had the key. We searched for a duplicate in the office but found none. I asked Lesley if I should break open the desk. She reluctantly agreed. I took a letter opener to the top drawer and broke the lock. Inside we found the station’s cheque book. Lesley was too terrified to open it. I picked it up. Inside there was no blank cheque. It had been torn out. With Mary’s usual efficiency, every cheque stub had been inscribed with the date, the payee and its amount … except for the final cheque stub which had been left blank. Our worst suspicions had now been confirmed.

Lesley contacted the bank and was told that the entire balance of the account had been withdrawn with that one cheque she had signed. This would be as much a disaster for Lesley as for the radio station. She contacted the police. They explained that there was little they could do because Lesley had signed the blank cheque and given it to Mary, but they would investigate. I felt immense sympathy for Lesley. She had trusted a long-time salaried employee and this is how her confidence had been repaid. Now she had the difficult task of explaining to the station’s management committee that its funds had suddenly disappeared, along with its most trusted member of staff.

Eventually Lesley heard back from the police that it was believed Mary Strong had taken a flight to the Caribbean immediately after her disappearance from Radio Thamesmead. There was nothing we could do. I do not recall reading anything about Mary’s disappearance in the press. Understandably, the incident was too embarrassing for the radio station, and for Lesley Pullar, to court public attention. By the end of 1986, when I moved on from working at Radio Thamesmead, Mary had not reappeared.

Now, whenever I recall colleagues I knew at Radio Thamesmead, I imagine Mary Strong could have been lounging on a deserted sandy beach drinking iced cocktails in the shade of palm trees by the sunny Caribbean Sea … leaving the rest of the station’s team volunteering for free or working for peanuts in two cramped, terraced houses on one of the most deprived council estates in London. As Hughie Green would say: Opportunity Knocks!

According to Wikipedia, Rudy Grant’s “single [record] ‘Mash in Guyana’ proved a major success in his country of birth” and “he wrote the song on a visit to Guyana in 1986,” only his second return trip since his family had emigrated to Britain in 1960.

[Originally published at https://peoplelikeyoudontworkinradio.blogspot.com/2023/02/whoah-im-going-to-guyana-1986-mary.html]

The year of living namelessly : 1986 : Grant Pearson, Radio Thamesmead

[pic: Lorraine Holloway, The Radio Thamesmead Survivors’ Forum]

 What’s in a name? Well, first impressions are lasting impressions (as The Impressions’ song goes). When our names are usually the first thing that strangers know about us, we are judged solely on the basis of two words. So many people have met me and said “I thought you were American”, a belief based on nothing other than my name. I recall a colleague at The Radio Authority, Janet Lee, confiding that when some people met her for the first time, they would admit “I thought you would be Asian”. All our prejudices and preconceptions are poured into imagining who someone is, even before we know anything about them beyond their name. If you have an unusual or foreign-sounding name, in Britain you are much less likely to be selected for a job interview and your career will be considerably more difficult to pursue in many professions.

In radio broadcasting, your name takes on even more importance. Most radio presenters do not use their real name on-air because it is either too boring, too common or, conversely, too difficult to enunciate easily. Sometimes, like former Metro Radio colleague ‘Giles Squire’, they might choose their on-air name to match a voice that is supposed to convey authority and superiority. So many radio presenters I have worked with have asked me “What is your real name?”, anticipating that I must really be called something quite plain. They are surprised when I respond that ‘Grant Goddard’ is my real name and always has been. The only exception was, as a fourteen-year-old, I had used the name ‘Kid Grant’ when presenting shows on London pirate radio stations, mainly because I thought it would avoid the Post Office tracking me down and prosecuting me. It was also a childish homage to Kid Jensen on Radio Luxembourg, one of my favourite presenters on one of my favourite radio stations of the time.

I have always had difficulty making people understand my name. Grant was an unknown first name in the 1960’s and 1970’s. I never discovered anyone who shared my name until I was amazed to meet another Grant in Durham in 1977, a fellow student with whom I instantly shared a bond of name difficulty. Names I have mistakenly been called include Graham, Grunt, Gram, Gran, Great, Green and Greet. As an adult, I have given up correcting people who call me ‘Mister Grant’ in their belief that it must be my surname. I thought that this identity problem was going to be my life forever. Then, unexpectedly, the landscape changed after February 1990 when Grant Mitchell was introduced as a character on popular British TV soap ‘Eastenders’. The power of television suddenly created an avalanche of people named Grant. I have always wondered why the show’s writers chose this particular name. Was it connected to me having just appeared as the subject of the lead story on the front page of Broadcast magazine, the weekly trade paper for the TV and radio industries?

So why was I named Grant? Once my father had returned from National Service in the Suez, my parents decided they would emigrate to Canada. Had they visited Canada? No. Did they know anyone who had emigrated or visited Canada? No. But, in the 1960’s, no paperwork was required by Canadian authorities. You just booked a flight to Canada and there you were, ready to start a ‘new life’. In preparation for this family adventure, my younger brother and I were both given what my parents believed to be common North American names, thinking it would help their children integrate. However, by 1966, my parents had changed their minds and, instead of emigrating, they decided to buy a plot of land in Britain and build their own Frank Lloyd Wright-style house. Do I mean they contracted builders to construct their house? No. They built their house literally with their own hands. It took years … but that is a story for another day. Anyway, the outcome was that my brother and I were saddled with ‘foreign’ names that would forever elicit “Can you spell that?” in phone calls to customer service staff.

After a lifetime of name difficulties, I was totally resigned to owning a name which had been designed for an existence elsewhere that my parents believed would somehow resemble lifestyles seen in ‘Bewitched’ (our dog had been named Samantha), ‘I Dream of Jeannie’ and ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’. It was now January 1986. I desperately wanted a job working in radio. My applications to the BBC and commercial radio stations had all been rejected. I took a job as programme manager at a tiny community station called Radio Thamesmead. The pay was so low that I barely broke even. I was living at my mother’s house 30 miles west of London and spent four hours per day commuting to and from its location 10 miles east of London. It was crazy … but it was work.

I arrived for the first day in my new job and was greeted by Radio Thamesmead’s station manager, Grant Pearson. He was only the second person I had ever met with my name. Quite a coincidence, I had thought. Sat behind his desk, this older man explained the basics of my work and then suddenly said something that I could never have anticipated in a million years.

“It would be too confusing to have two Grant’s working here. You will have to choose a different name,” he said. There was a gap of silence. I thought I must have misheard him.

“Sorry?”, I said eventually.

“Your name,” he repeated. “We cannot have two people working here with the same name. Do you have a middle name you can use instead?”

“I have no middle name,” I replied truthfully. I was still baffled. Never in all my years had anyone told me I could not be called by my real name. I stared at him, sitting behind his desk in the former living room of a converted flat on a council estate in one of the most deprived areas of London, managing one of Britain’s smallest radio stations. He was strangely wearing a suit in a community project where everyone else I had seen (including myself) was dressed casually. He resembled a salesman in a Bexley hi-fi shop. I later learnt that this had in fact been his previous job. He apparently had no prior experience in radio. Whereas my resume had shown that my career in radio had started more than a decade earlier, during which time I had worked at stations with audiences measured in millions.

“Do you have a nickname that you can use instead of Grant?” he asked, continuing to press his point.

“No, I have never had a nickname,” I replied. “Everyone has always called me Grant.” In the bafflement of the moment, I believed this to be completely true. I was momentarily too floored to delve so far back as to recall that Mrs Keep, the very elderly lady who lived next door when I was a toddler, insisted on calling me Little Jo. She had heard my father calling “Jo” in our garden and had assumed it must be the baby’s name, whereas it was my mother’s pet name (but not her given name). To this one neighbour, I remained Little Jo until we moved house when I was aged ten. But, now sat opposite this seemingly bizarre man in his smart suit, I was too preoccupied with the here and now to access memories from almost thirty years earlier.

“You will have to choose a name you want to be called,” said the man who evidently enjoyed flexing his powers in this miniscule community project. My new role did not even report to him. My salary was to be paid from a job creation scheme funded by a national charity commissioned by the government, not from the project’s own resources. My line manager, who I had never met, apparently worked in an office located miles away in central London. I reflected that it would not be a good start to this new job to argue with someone in my workplace with whom I would have to work so closely. I could judge in my mind that this was not the day to start a name war.

“I have always been called Grant. How can I choose another name?” I asked him, sounding somewhat desperate but accepting of my fate. I was wondering what other craziness I would have to endure in this job, beyond this jumped-up man in a suit. Should I leave now? No. I knew I needed a job, any job right now, and I would have to suffer the humiliation that he seemed eager to direct my way.

“You need to choose a name right away,” he insisted. “I am about to write a press release to post on our noticeboards. In a few minutes, I will introduce you to each of the team working here and I need to know how I should introduce you.” I considered what name to choose. It was a task I had never imagined I would be required to do in the first hour of my first day. His insistence was so illogical that I decided I would substitute one of the most uncommon first names with the one that was the most common in Britain.

“If I have to change my name,” I replied, “then I will be called John.” My logic was that there must be someone else in this workplace who was named John. Would that prove to be an equally problematic choice in the mind of this evidently crazed man? Would he reject John too? Or was this just a case of him flaunting his egoistic power over his own name?

“Okay,” he said. “Here you will be called John Goddard.” Question answered. It was apparently all about his inflated ego. That day, he went on to introduce me as John to everyone at the radio station. He put my new name on the noticeboard. For that entire year of 1986, I was known at Radio Thamesmead as John Goddard. Nobody else and nowhere else knew me by that name. It was confusing for me. At first, when one of the staff I was managing called “John”, I thought they were addressing someone else. The madness continued until, by December, my one-year contract ended and I left to join what I thought might be a less bizarre employer, London’s Capital Radio. Grant Pearson was still working at Radio Thamesmead when I left. I had moved on, he had not. Did I ever run in to him again in subsequent decades? No, I did not.

During the following three years, I never gave another thought to this strange episode in my career. By 1989, I was involved in London black music pirate radio station KISS FM with whom I was preparing a licence application. I was attending a radio industry conference in Birmingham with some of my new colleagues. After one seminar in a lecture theatre had ended, our group got up and joined the crowd in the aisle headed towards the exit. I noticed that someone who looked familiar was rushing up to us.

“John, it’s good to see you again,” said this person. Close up I recognised him as Cemal Hussein, the chief engineer (and much more) of Radio Thamesmead. He was one of the cleverest people and also one of the friendliest of the wonderful team I had worked with there. We hugged and chatted a little. It was great to see him again. After he left, my colleagues from KISS FM looked at me quizzically.

“John?” one of them asked.

“It’s a long story,” I responded.

This is that story.

[Originally published at https://peoplelikeyoudontworkinradio.blogspot.com/2023/01/the-year-of-living-namelessly-1986.html]