40 years before 1979

40 years before 1979 Neville Chamberlain was clutching a piece of paper.

40 years after 1979 I feel I'm clutching at straws.

As we head towards the winter solstice in the longest night it seems quite apt that we should be facing the Armageddon that is a head of us.

Allegedly in aristocratic circles that it takes many generations to make a fortune and only one to blow it.

The UK is equipped with better commentators than I but we are heading into shark infested waters and I'm not sure we have the skills to navigate them. It's alright lying to get somebody to support you but if you don't have the skills to deliver in any job you get found out eventually, unfortunately usually after a lot of damage has been done.

On May 3rd 1979 my brother was away so I took his polling card down and bloated and I'm pleased to say on May 4th the Tory was removed. I also received £12 in wages and went to the pub.

I thought voting was quite easy I thought you voted and you got the answer you were hoping for little did I know so how country has this ridiculous tactical voting requirement. It's basically like playing poker
 You have to guess what's in the other hand and then NZ act accordingly. It's possibly more like bridge where you bid 3 trumps or four trumps or no trumps, I know what I prefer.

How are we supposed to guess how to tactically vote when the parties don't know and stupidly put up candidates to confuse us.

In Scotland we are very lucky in so far as we usually have a broad left wing to choose from, failing which the SNP are   a fairly left of centre coalition.

It isn't quite so easy in England so they make it simpler in message terms. This usually involves lying, politicians throughout the ages have always excelled at lying. Some people think that lying is bad and yet history shows us it's a prerequisite of politicians.

The problem we have with the politicians nowadays is they are lying to get a position of power with no idea what to do with that power, the game is only to acquire it, the thrill of The Chase. As we know The Chase is now on a break from our tv tv screens but will return.

There used to be a bedrock of values driving them, guiding principles, but that's long gone. It's what has made socialist Scotland slide more towards the SNP. We genuinely do want to educate our young, look after our sick and protect our elderly.

We are happy to work hard, pay taxes and enjoy our lives.

Well that's my take on it.

On this day in 1983

I had my hands full with the Deadbeat tape, a compilation of 8 bands, all unsigned and as we thought, surely on their way to greater audiences. Rough demo tapes sometimes just live but a raw taste of ingredients that would get polished in a studio.

It was well received in all the local record shops throughout Scotland and less so the A & R guys in London.

It was my 21st birthday and someone had thrown away the key!

36 years on and I'm walking in Spain with the sound of Burlesque "long Shadows" or the powerful strawberry tarts "walking in a straight line" exceptionally good for getting you up hills. There's a straight line from Sparks through the Jeremy Thomas classic jaw jutting guitar to Franz Ferdinand and it always makes me chuckle when I listen to the strawberry tarts tracks.

The first tape and the third one are loaded or have links on the site and well worth a listen.

At 21 my life felt over, while at 57 I'm still making new memories to chuckle over.

I still listen to all the Deadbeat tapes and they bring back great memories of the bands and that thing we all just called the scene.

Getting ready for a gig whether you were playing or watching, reviewing or interviewing after. The craic was the two hours before as well as the six hours after. Chuntering about adding or ditching the keyboards, the sax. Stripping back the sound, building more depth.

It was a blank canvas and that's what life is. One of our songs "the penny drops...as the mushroom rises" was always viewed as a CND apocolyptic anti war song, but it's really just a love song with a nuclear bomb back drop.

You listen to the words and it's all about how the penny drops as the mushroom rises.

A euphemism for you have really fucked it big time fat boy!

There is no bettere way to describe teenage angst and unrequited love than to put it in a song.

Master Craftsman Roddy Frame was for me, the champion songwriter of our day, "just like June, the curtains are closed"....

I still don't know why "walk out to Winter" went out in May. When did Slade release merry Xmas?

Just as we learnt loads of stuff doing the fanzine, tapes and the single, we also learned most people aren't as creative as you feel they should be in the industry.

It's quite simply a numbers game and the beautifully naive "need control over the whole creative process" is why many of the Deadbeat bands never "made it" to larger audiences.

The industry insists on it and it gets what it wants. Bands like fanzines would box themselves into a corner. For us we refused to move from 10p as if we were ripping people off to charge 25p. We were really lucky with Regular Music and Dance Factory, who took ads out which were listings we would have done anyway.

I love watching dramas where the art versus commercial get played out. We all know great artists that died penniless but does it really have to be that way.

In Deadbeat's case there is clearly competency in the music produced by the bands but my drawers for 1984 are full of good even great bands, so perhaps handing over their baby to the studio masters always caused  them needless concern.

With so many excellent bands about the public only has enough cash to support a few, but why Kajagoogoo!

The north south divide was at it's height when the two pairs of twins so comically divided a nation. Deadbeat had taken a career break.

In London, driving a car that I kicked, as it nearly ran me down outside dirty dicks, were Bros, quite simply vomit.

In Edinburgh, the Proclaimers, quite simply Hibees!