Punk Funk Dust
Reading the recent book on the history of 2 Tone by Daniel Rachel, there was a mention of the Higsons – a band that crossed my path a few times. Daniel’s book is comprehensive and recommended. It leaves no stone unturned, and the writer robustly navigates the unrelenting varying strands of “this is what happened”, and “no, you are lying, this is what happened”. 2 Tone burst onto the scene in mid-79 when I was just exploring live music with punk gigs, so I tended to file it alongside the Quadrophenia mod revival stuff, and give it a wide berth. Maybe with 2 Tone a cautious berth. There was a sense of energy and style, and later tracks like ‘International Jet Set’ have stood the test of time. I never got to see the scene in its live element apart from a Specials gig in 1981, the anti-racist event at Leeds Potternewton Park. There was a legacy of aggro at many events connected to the label, much to the musicians’ valiant attempts to create a cultural harmony. Never mind. The Higsons pop up at the end, long after Terry Hall and co. have departed to form Fun Boy Three, and the other 2 Tone bands have self-destructed.
Of course, the Higsons are something now because of their founder and frontman and evident polymath Charlie Higson, later to be a major comedian, and novelist. At the time of signing to 2 Tone they were seen as a possible revitalisation of the ailing label which was struggling with a direction after the ska sound had quickly run its course and was attracting an apparently irresolvable core of violent and/or racist fans. The Higsons were, perhaps, a bit ska in their madcap and full-on approach. Jittery, jerky songs full of Madness-type humour. I was still at school when their self-released debut singles ‘I Don’t Want to Live With Monkeys’ (July 1981) and then ‘Conspiracy’ (March 1982) came out. They rode high in the independent chart but had a one-dimensional jokey, novelty character to me… a bit like a speeded-up version of the Wurzels.
So I’d pretty much forgot about the Higsons in this grander scheme of going back over my interests in music and style. The band signed up to 2 Tone for an October 1982 release: ‘Tear the Whole Thing Down’. This was a barnstorming track. No quirky jokes and student japes – just pile-driving energy, loose-limbed funk and a bit of nihilistic anger. The 2 Tone book brought this back, mainly through a photograph of the band. At times it seems it’s the only photograph of the band, as it gets reproduced everywhere. Including here (twice).
It’s a stylised photograph (of course) and it triggered a sequence of memories in me (of course). Quasi-mnemonic chains buried deep in the psyche, waiting to be activated like a subcultural sleeper cell. That rushing feeling when a photograph or sleeve or frame-grab from a video dredges something from the past.
The band – a quintet – are crouched against a white (airbrushed? studio?) background, slightly ill-at-ease, touching but not homosocial (in that Dexys way) or ‘tight’ (in that Theatre of Hate way). For the photograph used in Daniel’s book they all look at the camera. It must be from a studio session, as there’s another classic image with the band slightly more at ease – there is a minor rearrangement of places and saxophone player Terry Edwards is now mid-honk. The foreground sitters do their best to not look at the camera. I guess for me, it’s the shirts and hair – the tropical holiday print, worn with buttons open and a white tee underneath, a kind of grown-out flat-top cut.
Let’s backtrack through 1982 and try to understand what’s happening. We can actually go a bit further, to late 1981, and the stirrings of a ‘funk’ thing melding with post-punk. There’s an inroad into this with a heads-up feature in The Face November 1981 showcasing new talent in 23 Skidoo, Haircut 100, ABC and Stimulin. Plus Spandau Ballet were pushing this, switching from a teutonic new romantic and linking up with Beggar and Co. As is common to the magazine, it is driven by photographs, and I’m going to cover it in greater detail in a much longer feature on 23 Skidoo. But it was a prescient moment. Through 1982 there seems to be in The Face an onslaught of post-punk-funk outfits. This reaches peak hour with a quartet of front covers for April, May, June and July.
Opening proceedings, Fun Boy Three languish in a school gym with a solitary Bananarama. It was part of many image changes by the band, but by this time Terry’s hair resembles the mushroom cloud that formed the backdrop to their doomy apocalyptic musings. They are followed by a pair of Pigbags, barefoot on the beach, grappling with retro instruments (a stand-up bass and trombone) that signify a potentially eclectic funky sound. There’s a car door as prop, and a hatched arrow pointing presumably to the rest of the band. A big band with a crazy tempo and just-holding-it-together scrapyard mentality. Plus, the trombone player (Simon Underwood?) has a more managed version of the Terry Hall mushroom cut, something I always wanted. Two great covers, for sure.
Into summer and it’s Nick Heyward representing Haircut 100. Not so good for me, a bit cheesy. A similar vibe of vintage travel, pristine white dungarees, a (designer) seaman sweater, a captain’s hat – like there’s a fey fishing expedition going on somewhere upon a gently rolling ocean with jelly and ice cream. There’s the token thick-knit white hiking socks (all the bands had these) and an early sighting of Converse low-tops. Finally, to complete the funk quartet, we have Kid Creole, who spearheaded a US ‘no-wave’ affiliation to funk by acting as a more palatable and commercial outlet.
Not all great music, but very much a part of the dressing-up band culture of new-pop and a search for a funky riff or blast of brass to tick that post-punk-funk box. There were a slew of bands like Funkapolitan and the post-Bow Wow Wow acts like King Trigger (who had a single hit in August 1982) and Wide Boy Awake with their nascent take on electro. Other artists would follow the funk groove like Youth and his Brilliant project, and later Mick Jones and Big Audio Dynamite. But the 1982 sound and look was very much rooted in this beach style.
The Higsons, in their photographs, seemed to be cashing in on this. A punk funk thing, with a post-rockabilly ‘beachcomber’ look. I think it was Boy George who coined that phrase, and the Susan Clowes / Foundry designs had a beachcomber feel. Seeing the photograph reminded me of how I tried to (briefly) perfect this look. The nearest beach we had was Skegness which was dirty and flyblown. It was where we went, sporting our striped sailor pumps and rolled-up pastel-hued trouser hems - seemingly in search of art students who would look like extras from Bananarama but mainly encountering football casuals beered up and looking for a scrap. Summer 1982.
I’ve got the shirt – the photograph brings back memories. I bought it from a shop called Jive in Leicester’s Silver Arcade. It was pale pink with fossil type motifs on. The lower half is not so good – stonewash jeans (not rolled up) and I thought it was my Terry Hall tasselled moccasins bought from Derby Eagle Centre market, but I think it’s actually my slippers. Fashion fail. The look didn’t last long, so that shirt was never seen again. Circumstantial details leak out – the wonky wooden shed built on poor foundations (a metaphor surely), my dad’s attempt at crazy paving that was haphazard but in a not-quite-cool way (another metaphor).
What about me and the Higsons? My diary records that on Sunday 10 October 1982 I travelled to London’s Lyceum for something called Touchdown. I even have the ticket stub, pasted on a page with other events that showcased a multitude of bands. The Lyceum specialised in these interminable events; you enter in daylight, emerge in night, temporally discombobulated by luminal incongruence. Touchdown featured Out Last Night, Popular Voice, Design For Living, Dislocation Dance, Animal Magic, Higsons, and Farmers Boys – possibly more (note - I never wrote down ‘The Higsons’ in the list above, but I assumed they played this event?). It was loosely based around an album, that had a Norwich-vs-Bristol theme. Different takes on funk - a rural bumpkin version versus a grimy Bristol version. At least I think that’s how it worked in theory. I had the album, fleetingly, but it never stayed with me. I can’t remember anything about it.
What I can remember is on Monday 6 December I was round at my friends, early evening, prior to heading to Leicester to see psychobilly band The Meteors at the Horsefair. I was intrigued by the Meteors and briefly thought it was a look to go with – a kind of decadent horror-rockabilly style with exaggerated quiffs and bleached-up baggy jeans. I’d seen them a few times through 1981 and early 1982, but it was slowly dawning on me that the crowd was more into violence than style, and the look settled down to something close to early-80s skinhead. Time to move on. Anyway, before we caught the bus in to Derby we watched Riverside (the music and arts programme) on BBC2. The Higsons must have just signed to 2 Tone as they were featured doing ‘Tear the Whole Thing Down’. I’ve struggled to find recorded footage, but I recall it being a driving performance, and the band looked like a tight-knit tribe. Again, according to my diary, we sought them out a few times in early 1983 – seeing them at Sheffield Dingwalls in January, then at Derby Blue Note at the end of March, and finally at Nottingham Rock City in June where they lined up with more Norwich bands. It never really took off for them. They had another 2 Tone single in late 1983, and then moved back to an independent label to do an album that seemed a bit too late.
The Higsons and their post-punk-funk is back in fashion with sprawling compilations issued by Cherry Red, excavating the Bristol-Norwich axis alongside earlier sources such as the more obscure Dining Out records. Skegness is still flyblown, I’m now wearing slippers most of the time, but still enjoy some beachcombing.
Put the Punk back into Funk! I still have that Touchdown album - It includes Maximum Joy, who were probably in the top 3 of the bands included (Higsons and Farmers Boys being the other main bands on it). They did a cover of Timmy Thomas' "Why Can't we Live Together" (which I also have a copy of somewhere), which was also covered by Sade. I think they filled the Lower Refec at Sheffield Uni, whereas I think Higsons and Farmers Boys were both put on in Bar One, a much smaller room. All three were played quite a lot on Peel at the time.