This posting is really just an excuse to publish a couple more mix tapes (or playlists as they are now, forty years on, known), following the success of the previous posting with Liza O’Connor’s mix tape.
There was a suggestion on the Forever Keele Facebook Group that I might have been responsible for disturbing the peace of revising finalists next door, in Barnes L53.
But my diary reminds me that I spent little time in my own flat in those vital revision weeks, early in the summer term of 1983, once Liza moved into a flat in Shelton – Ogblog will write up those events in good time.
It also occurred to me that I had two other cracking good mix tapes given to me around that time. One, “Singles Without A Cause”, was made for me by Veera Bachra in Barnes L52 across the corridor – the other, “Hamzah Varieties” by Hamzah Shawal who was one of my own flatmates in L54. His compilation only stretched to one side of a tape – he was more of an album dude I suppose.
Very distinct tastes in music, both tapes differently eclectic and both very interesting in their own way. Veera’s music tended to blare out from L52 while Hamzah’s music could be heard blaring out from L54. The discerning listener could surely tell which type of music was in play.
They’re great mix tapes, anyway. In particular Veera’s one still gets an airing in my household quite often. Here they are.
Singles Without A Cause – Collated By Veera
Jumping Jack Flash, The Rolling Stones
Twelve Thirty, The Mamas and the Papas
Teenager in Love, Dion (and the Bellmonts)
Pleasant Valley Sunday, The Monkees
The Locomotion, Little Eva
Tears of a Clown, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles
I collaborated with Dall-E to produce this picture.
I had made Liza O’Connor a mix tape which I modestly entitled “THE TAPE”. I don’t think I jotted down the contents anywhere, so unless Liza has kept the tape and wants to share its contents with me/the world, that one is lost for posterity.
Anyway, I still have hers, which she named “THE OTHER TAPE”, which is pretty darned good. I remember thinking it was seriously cool in the spring of 1983, when I played it a lot – no doubt letting a fair chunk of the Keele campus – at least the Barnes flats – hear my tape along with me…whether they wanted to hear it or not.
It’s a great mix tape on the whole. I still play it sometimes – digitised as a playlist. Heck, the cassette might still play but why risk it?
Here’s the track listing:
Ghosts, Japan
Flowers of Romance, Public Image Ltd
The Art of Falling Apart, Soft Cell
It’s Different For Girls, Joe Jackson
Everybody’s Happy Nowadays, Buzzcocks
Coloured Music, The Piranhas
Homosapien, Pete Shelly
No More Heroes, The Stranglers
Kilimanjaro, The Teardrop Explodes
Transmission, Joy Division
Loneliest Man in the World, Tourists
River, King Trigger
When I Dream, The Teardrop Explodes
Wake Up & Make Love With Me, Ian Dury and the Blockheads
Love Will Tear Us Apart, Joy Division
Golden Brown, The Stranglers
Will You, Hazel O’Connor
Jealousy, Queen
Vincent, Don McLean
My Funny Valentine, Elvis Costello
We All Fall In Love Sometimes, Elton John
I Don’t Know Why It Is, Pete Shelly
Easy, The Commodores
As Tears Go By, The Rolling Stones
Sex, Scritti Polliti
Below vids of all the above – hopefully most will still be there when you get to this page but they should all be findable somewhere:
It seems I spent the last full week of March 1983 trying to catch up with my class work (glandular fever had seriously disrupted that second term of my P2 year) and spending plenty of time with my girlfriend Liza. Also I signed on (as we had to do in those days if we wanted money to cover our holiday weeks) in Newcastle, as I was planning on spending most of the Easter break at Keele, not in London.
In addition to Liza, I mention Veera [Bachra] in my diary that week. Veera was a lovely lass who lived in the Barnes flat on the opposite side to ours (L52 I suppose – ours was L54).
It might have been on this occasion that I remember Veera discussing with me her very serious worry that her parents, who were traditionally Sikh, planned to arrange a marriage for her with the son of some family friends. As I recall it, she felt she was in a very difficult situation as it was not, culturally, in her gift to reject the proposal. The man could reject the woman but if the woman were to reject the man, that would bring shame on her family and a rift with the friends.
Too Much Too Young – picture produced in collaboration with Dall-E
I asked Veera about the “lad”, whom she thought was a nice enough fellow – very good at maths – but not for her. I suggested that Veera conspire with the lad, explain how she felt and suggest to him that it might be best for all concerned if he chose to reject her. I also recall Veera telling me with delight that the plan had worked when we returned from the break.
My own issues with parents (more specifically my mother) and relationships were, on the face of it, less serious. But I was spending a lot of time with Liza by then and could hardly disguise the fact that I was only going to spend a week or so in London that break – some of it with Liza. Let’s just say that mum did not react very well to the idea of me going steady with a non-Jewish girl.
A Week Or So In London For Passover & Easter
Anyway, after my return to London, I spent some time with my parents, Michael and Pam (Harris uncle and aunt) on the Sunday, then Seder night “just with the Aarons” [Lionel & Dinah] on the Monday.
By the Wednesday, I had toddled off again, to spend 24-36 hours with Liza in the company of her brother and sister-in-law, Shaun and Marlene, who lived in Stanmore. I recall that Shaun was a hairdresser and also that they lived next door to a former member of a punk band – I think it was The Vibrators – which I remember thinking at the time made Shaun and Marlene extremely cool. Only with the benefit of hindsight do I sense that the musician in question was, presumably, not particularly cool. Further, his proximity to Shaun and Marlene had no bearing on their coolness or lack thereof.
I’m not sure what “lunch at Marlene’s” comprised but I’m guessing that she worked in town and that Liza and I went to the flicks to see The Dark Crystal in central London somewhere before retreating to Stanmore. I recall little about The Dark Crystal other than not liking it very much. It will have been its muppetness that drew me in, whereas Liza did like fantasy epic stories.
I have no recollection of taking Liza to dad’s shop, nor to Anil [Biltoo]’s house, but if the diary says we did that, we did just that. What Liza made of the zombie business that was my dad’s shop by 1983 goodness only knows. It is possible that my purpose was, in part, to get dad on-side in the matter of calming my mother down about Liza!
Dad’s shop in the 1950s, but it looked little different in the 1980s
An evening with Paul [Deacon] will have been heavily music related and I do recall spending a large percentage of my short stay at my parents’ house that time recording mix tapes and scraping albums onto cassettes.
A blog piece on the music from those recording sessions (plus those of my friends and/or lovers made for me) will surely follow.
Good Friday visiting Grandma Jenny and Uncle Louis [Barst] – the latter being Jenny’s brother. Marie (Louis’s wife) must have died by then and Grandma Jenny will only very recently have moved from Brixton to Surbiton in order to live with her recently widowed brother.
Grandma Jenny a few years later
It was an arrangement that worked very well, both until Louis’s death and then afterwards as Grandma Jenny lived out her dotage as a superannuated trustafarian, thanks to the forethought of Louis and Marie. Mum was frantic about this new arrangement at the time, feeling that Jenny would be too far away and wondering what would happen to her if/when Louis passed away before Jenny.
On Easter Sunday I went to Makro in Charlton with my parents. I might write more about Makro some other time – our heyday of going there was in my schooldays. I wasn’t wild about the place (I never much liked shopping) but my dad liked it. I found it useful for getting some albums at low price and cheap stationery for my student life. The place encouraged you to over-purchase. Forty to fifty years later, I still stumble across some as yet unused stationery from there.
Easter Monday at Il Caretto in Streatham, about which I have waxed lyrical previously and no doubt will do so again. That would have been just me, mum and dad. I suspect the food was hot enough but the atmosphere with mum decidedly cold.
Liza was a bit poorly on my return to Keele, but she soon felt better and we did a fair few things together before the new term started.
I’m not sure which Sleeping Beauty we went to see – it might have been the Disney (which I still think is a great animated movie) or it might have been one of the Sleeping Beauty updates that were all the rage in the 1980s. Not sure I’d have tolerated a bum-numbing 160 minutes of ballet, though.
Keele film buff Tony Sullivan helpfully chipped in with listings, which prove, by dint of the show times, that Liza and I must have seen the Disney:
Tony admits that he went, not Sleeping Beauty, but to see Caligula. With the benefit of hindsight, I might have got more out of seeing the latter, as I had seen Sleeping Beauty before.
Tony also proves that Liza and I probably saw The Dark Crystal at The Plaza (although it might have been the Classic Oxford Street):
Many thanks for that top class web-sleuthing, on my behalf Tony. And now, back to the main story.
Back To The Main Story
I also recall enjoying some hospitality from Liza’s parents, who were, I think, keen to bond a bit with me (and Liza) ahead of Liza slipping away from their nest (The Sneyd Arms in Keele Village)…
…to a less salubrious welling in Shelton (more convenient for her third term at North Staffs Poly) to share with her friends Mike and Mandy.
Two events during that period stick in my mind.
One was going off early in the morning with Liza and Geoff (her dad) to collect some stocks of food from his wholesaler for the pub. At one of the roundabouts just outside Newcastle, we encountered a queue of perhaps four or five cars ahead of us. It took nearly a minute to get onto the roundabout. Geoff exclaimed:
…it’s traffic jams almost all the time around here now – it gets worse and worse!
I remember thinking that, in London, we wouldn’t even consider such a minor queue as traffic, let alone a jam.
My other memory was of a family meal upstairs at The Sneyd (presumably one of Geoff’s days off), where they had prepared a joint of venison for our dinner. I think it was the first time I ever tasted venison. Certainly the first time at a family table. It all felt very English and I did like the taste of it.
