billy be childish

some time ago i mentioned a cassette that stuart mctell had sent me with all sorts of exciting things on it - from swell maps to happy flowers, cult figures to sexton ming.

as you'll know if you've been paying attention, i still have this cassette and occasionally i still listen to it - even though i have most fo the songs on record nowadays.

in 1990 i started a new band. it was called pimp. we needed a second guitar player and the drummer worked with a guy he thought would fit in.
the chap in question did indeed fit in.
he was a third generation mod - he got it off his dad.
he loved the milkshakes, prisoners, all those medway bands.



apart from buying a couple of LPs by the james taylor quartet in the mid eighties, the medway scene was something i'd never really delved into.
just never seemed to get round to it.



i knew thee mighty caesars from stuart mctells cassette, but little else.
after visiting my guitarist's place and listening to a bunch of records i decided i should investigate.



i ordered a headcoats LP from hangman records and when it arrived there was a list of other things i could buy.
included in the list was a bunch of LPs by sexton ming.



i'd loved the 3 or 4 songs by him that were on that compilation cassette and so i ordered a couple of records.
i guess sexton is probably an acquired taste. i know people that love him and i know people that loathe him.
for me he's just a really funny, surreal and very clever writer who happens to make the occasional record.
he came out of the medway poetry/punk scene along with billy childish.

i started to correspond with the girl who ran hangman records' mailorder.
her name was kyra.
at the time i had no idea that she was billy childish's girlfriend and a member of thee headcoatees.
she had some of my cassettes to listen to and a couple of the short stories i'd published.
she suggested hangman stuff i might be interested in.
i bought one of sexton's books, "the man who created himself", thought it was terrific and so ordered one or two more along with one by billy childish.

when they arrived the book by billy had been signed, "to crayola, love billy" along with the date.
i wrote to him directly and thanked him and he sent me an invitation to the opening night of an exhibition he was holding in north london. sorry, the date and location escape me, but thee headcoats played too.
he gave me the same feeling that john robb had given me a few years before - here was a man who was totally pro-active, energetic and enthusiastic about other people making art and music.

a year or two later i was putting together a cassette compilation called "disasterous zoological experiments" for release on my label and sexton gave me a handful of songs to use.
there was a note with it, "bill says that you are OK and i can trust you. here's some songs" - that's basically what it said.
the note's been lost in the mists of time so i can't quote it word for word.



i never bought a huge amount of records by billy or any of his bands.
when the press picked up on his stuckism movement they never really got to grips with the fact that he'd been doing the same thing for 20 odd years.
and that's why i didn't buy a great deal of his records.
you only need five.
any five will do.
my favourite childish band is actually the blackhands.
kinda deep south blues with a hint of, dare i say, lo-fi calypso.
something like that.
i think i like them best because they don't quite sound like all the other childish groups.



i also really dug and still LOVE chris broderick's the singing loins - i'd bought their collaboration LP with billy and liked it so much i bought their two LPs proper.
both records are terrific modern english folk poetry.

i've kept in touch with bill on and off over the years and he's always genuinely interested in what i was doing.
and then in 2001, when i left the UK for a year, he kindly played a live set at my leaving party.

most of the people there were strangers.
most of them were japanese girls.

which made me very happy.