to get away from the pits and the factories, all that cloth-capped bullshit

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When the scene was at its most vigorous there was this tremendous search for obscurities, and a lot of great records surfaced as a result. But after a while, the chances of discovering some old masterpiece diminish. I started Northern Soul but I actually found the music very limiting because in the early days I’d play a Charles Mingus record, then I’d play a bluebeat disc followed by a Booker T. tune, then a Muddy Waters or Bo Diddley record. Gradually there was this blanding out to one sort of sound. When I started DJing, I could play what I wanted. But after three years I had to keep to the same tempo.

‘God’s own gift to Shepherds Bush Market threads specialists’

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‘What I tried to put into the Kilburns was the secretive aspect of sartorial elegance,’ said Ian. ‘If you talk about it, you spoil it. As Oscar Wilde said, “The greatest stylist is the one that remains the most obscure.” Once it’s public knowledge, it’s not stylish any more. I knew the New York Dolls a little bit. We’d been to their gigs at Bibas. I read somewhere that their audience used to wear safety pins through their nipples. I thought, “Lighten Up!” So I unwound the safety pin and put it through my lughole. Sartorially, I’m not a claimer, but I would say that I must have worn the first razor blade.’

A lawless brat from a council flat, a little bit of this and a little bit of that

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“They must have been a bunch of toughs assembled from the rougher end of Kilburn, used to playing the sort of pub where women fight as well as the men. The singer, using the microphone as if it was some form of surgical apparatus, sported a curious Mohican haircut and a battered drape jacket. He looks like a greased back, squat Lou Reed, but Lou Reed never looked quite as oppressive and sinister as this. One side of his body is paralysed but this never seems too overt up on the small stage. His suit is probably from Brixton Market and his shirt and tie may just as easily have soup stains on them as not. He wears black leather gloves just like Gene Vincent used to, chews gum constantly and never opens his eyes. The other members of the band appeared to be wearing sacking. One hesitated to push through the crowd in case a group of enthusiasts were comparing flick knives in the stalls.”

mum was not a square, she bleached her hair & had massive knockers

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When I wasn’t conducting deviant sexual experiments with high-powered vacuum cleaners, the work with Benham’s usually involved servicing boiler rooms up in the West End. But the one job which stood out involved heading north into the wilds of Willesden. There was a Wall’s sausage factory up there, and I remember having to see them slaughtering the fucking pigs. These weird dudes with aprons covered in claret were doing the deed. The strange faces these guys had – they looked like lunatics. The pigs came in off a lorry and got shuffled into these little pens, then the geezer would put the big electric prong on them. Before there was time to see if they were dead or not, they’d get hooked up by their hooves and sent whizzing up this fucking conveyor belt with their back feet at the top and their heads hanging down. First they went through this furnace which would burn all the skin off, then they’d be washed clean with jets of water. The poor cunts didn’t stop on the conveyor belt till they were in a packet. I remember watching up to the point where the geezer with his big knife slit open the stomach and all the fucking claret came out the middle of it. That place was just a fucking hellhole and I’d never seen anything like it. Not even when Chelsea played Leeds.

this cult of electric guitars and ass shaking has replaced Christianity

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The manhood of England, immersed in pools of Swedish flesh, must be beholden to their cunning music press which has facilitated the myth of their interminable swinging modernity. They need only get a bowl hairdo or some fey contemporary equivalent and they're awash in nubile Nords, thanks to a savvy and deceitful media organ. The Beatles are ultimately responsible, for without them and their psychedelic phenomenon, the country would be revealed as a chilly version of Portugal - a conservative backwater left only with distant memories of imperial glory.Indeed, before the Fab Four, England was drab and bowler-hatted; their parliament wore wigs, the food was bad, and the morality stultifying. No Swedish girl would have set foot on its soil. In the innocent days preceding "Beatlemania," Anita Ekberg and Ingrid Bergman were in Italy, almost certainly making love to their respective directors.

a stark existential existence on the edge of society

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Baboon interviews Jello Biafra

I was arrested by the state for exposing the hypocrisy of the system.

Really? What did you do, demonstrate against nukes?

No.

Stop the executions in Texas?

No.

Help get food to feed the hungry?

No.

Keep greedy landlords from evicting old ladies?

No.

Pass petitions against apartheid?

No.

Save lab monkeys?

No.

I give up. What did they bust you for?

Selling pornography to children!

You are an inspiration to freedom loving peoples everywhere.