John Cooper Clarke @ Birmingham HMV Institute, 4th December 2010
‘A Clerk, there was.’
‘He looked hollow and went soberly/Right threadbare was his overcoat/ Yet, and for all he was philosopher/ He had but little gold within his coffer/ Of study took he utmost care and heed.
Not one word spoke he more than was his need/ And that was said in fullest reverence/ And short and quick and full of high good sense/ Pregnant of moral virtue was his speech/ And gladly would he learn and gladly teach.’
Seems Chaucer was well ahead of us in describing our very own Everyman poet; the master of patois, Punk/New Wave, troublesome troubadour, the slash and burn balladeer.
Introducing John Cooper Clarke. Aka The Bard of Salford, the guerilla Gonzo, iconoclass-war motormouth, declamatory muse abuser or simply, Johnny Clarke as he owns to be on stage. In ubiquitous black, sixty years plus young, the beanpole lank Manc with Huggy Bear shades blitzed the Temple Room twelve years after his debut Birmingham ‘98 gig.
He was labelled with the ‘80s alliterative sobriquet, Peoples’ Punk poet; his tantrums for a doomed youth spawned in the dying furnaces of the North’s industrial meltdown whilst the Masters of the Universe in London’s City mile sucked on Thatcher’s teat. Bankrupt business as usual, then!
Some might have it he’s a contemporary coarser Chaucer with some Larkin about; teasing and gnawing at the vulnerable, fraying edges of everyday ephemera and Life’s inexplicable annoying bollocks. Whatever: Clarke’s a hi-velocity rap-auteur, who’s anvil stamped Lancs flat-vowel delivery slaughters punctuation for the sheer pleasure of annoying those RP southern jessies.
Thing is, he also delivers a blunderbuss of stand-up patter and good old fashion jokes. He’d have the PC brigade weeping Evian tears down their Nigella branded Aga aprons. A bit of a softy none the less, viz, ‘I’ve Fallen In Love With My Wife’. But, the beast rears its ugly head with the venomous ‘Twat’.
‘Like a Night Club in the morning, you’re the bitter end.
Like a recently disinfected shit-house, you’re clean round the bend.’
And it goes on: clearly some issues needed to be addressed! A domestos row, perhaps?
Clarke’s set-list is a studied craft of dis-intergration. The favorites were there bristling with acerbic intensity such as the original and revisited ‘Beasley Street’, ‘Hire Car’ and the machine-punning, dystopian despair of ‘Chicken Town’. Some poems might be throw-away doodles but most are ferociously incisive, passionate and perceptive. So why did several punters decide that their pissed-up prattling at the bar, causing unpleasantness and a brief flurry of handbags at five paces, was preferable listening?
Courtesy Club reprised last year’s JCC support with their unique take on spoken/bellowed/asphixiated music/poetry of sorts with avant-garde anger and disinterred Beefheart homage. Opening solo act was guitar/poet Humdrum Express, aka Ian Passey, whose wry, observational vignettes were engagingly witty and in places had a touching, bitter/sweet John Betjeman melancholia.
Set list included; Lydia, List, Chicken Town, In Love With My Wife, Crossing The Floor, Beasley Street, Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman (numerous jokes that even Wikileaks wouldn’t touch).
Review – John Kennedy
Photos – Ian Dunn
Nice piece mate! John Cooper Clarke rocks!
Hi
We attended this great gig and Johnny as always was on top form!! However, a Birmingham band with 2 Bass players an Asian Guitarist and a “manic” singer supported him? It’s driving me crazy to remember their name? Can anyone help?