The Ned Wood Archive

She’s a queen and such are queens

It’s early March and I’ve just got back. Whenever I come back from being away, I have to catch up with the music. First I have to listen to the stuff I’ve missed. The stuff I was bingeing on before I left, in this case Joy Division and the Human League. And then, secondly, I have to catch up on what’s new. What’s come out while I was away. And also, admittedly secondly, or even thirdly, after listening to a couple of my favourite albums, catch up with the folk I haven’t seen. One of the things I wanted to do was go over and see Nessie in her place on the mile. I didn’t tell you, did I? Late the previous year, she moved out of the Doric onto a place just above Deacon Brodie’s.

I went over on the Monday. I went up to the department first, just to spend an hour or two to get accustomed to the place again. Up Marchmont, the grey sentinels forming a guard of honour on each side of the road to welcome me home, parting and stepping back as I approached to let me pass. Then on past the tall, sharp, point of St Giles, over the crest of the hill and down between the mysterious tall stone walls of the cemetery and the forbidden stone walls of the mansion opposite. If Gav and I wanted to go explore this necropolis, or even the mansion, we’d need to do some serious scaling of the battlements. A dog leg past some newer, much less attractive houses and then down Blackford Avenue, recognising the homes, good, bad, and ugly, that I was getting used to from my daily walks to and from work.

Over the railway by the wee shop, always checking to see whether the track was ever used, cos I never saw any trains on it. Across the lights next to the big square church, then up the hill, past the allotments and the trees waiting for better weather to blossom, looking out at Arthur’s Seat on my left, it having turned its back to ignore me. Past the new Institute of Geological Sciences building which I feel an affinity with, but which I’ll never visit in all my time up here. Strangely, I never asked why no-one in the department has any contact with any one there either. Maybe it’s like the Church of England and the Church of Scotland. Musical differences.

Then I walk through the random collection of bricks, concrete, steel, and glass that make up the daily refuge of the random collection of scientists, engineers, and technicians that are my colleagues and peers and arrive. JCMB. It was empty, as usual. All my stuff had been moved, so I found the prof’s secretary and spoke to her. She was the only one in. It must be rough having to work nine till five on a job when everyone else is a part timer or is swanning around the world finding new places to get rocks from. So we chatted for a while. She asked about the trip. I’d better get used to people asking and, anyway, she needed to know enough to tell the prof when he turned up, so I filled her in on the important stuff.

The prof had wangled me on a scientific cruise round the South Atlantic drilling out sediment cores. Like the stuff we did at Loch Arthur only on a much grander scale. And international, too. I was only a technician which meant the night shift in the on-board lab, but it meant we got access to samples from the cores. Not that it did me much good cos I didn’t find anything that I could use in my thesis. Not that I’m complaining. It was the trip of a lifetime. We did find oil though – that isn’t a secret.

Up at JCMB, they’d put me in a new office along with Morag, another research student, but researching something totally different. Gravity or sommat, I think. She was dead quiet and absolutely no bother, which suited both of us. We could come and go when we wanted, work in peace, and not worry about having to talk about anything. And she didn’t smoke.

I grabbed a sandwich at the Union and gave myself the afternoon off. Best to ease myself back into this work lark gently. I headed down towards town, but I went the long way round. Truth is, I wasn’t just after seeing Nessie. I was after seeing someone else, too. So it’s down the busy roads towards Cameron Toll and under the railway – no trains here, either – and, up on the left, through the railings, into the Necropolis.

I wasn’t expecting to find anything. It was a punt. A throw of the dice. You never know. I spent 20, 30 minutes wandering around, recognising some of the stones and crosses, but not seeing the old statue I was looking for. So I left and strolled up the hill towards town, the tall tenements on the right crowding in on me wanting to ask where I’d been, what I’d seen. A few of the more polite ones getting an answer. Like I said: I have to get used to it.

I cut across back onto Mayfield Gardens, thinking I’ll pay my respects to the Doric, for old times sake, but I’ve overshot. It’s not that important, the angel won’t be at the hotel, so I trek up the hill, the route I’d taken almost every evening after I’d arrived the previous autumn. Past the shops and the pubs and the carry outs. The landmarks like the Queen’s Hall and the Brattisani. Past the characters. The people of Edinburgh.

Here’s a young wifey with two kids, one on each arm, pulling her in different directions. They’ve both seen something that interests them, maybe something in a window they want, but being the same age and in the same family, they’ve never agreed on anything in their lives, so they tug at her limbs and cajole her in turn to favour their own particular desires over their sibling’s. Frequently and at random, their attention switches to some other sight and they pull in another direction, sometimes dragging their mother back, sometimes jogging ahead to pull her onwards, never moving at her speed, never moving in sync with each other.

Here’s an old geezer, his right hand tightly gripping the waist of his ragged trousers as he rocks his way from side to side along the pavement. He stops as he spies something precious on the ground and slowly bends over so he can pick it up, letting go of his clothing with his right hand. In the moment he treasures the fag end more than what he is wearing and he examines it as he pulls himself upright. As he does so, his trousers sink to the ground exposing two cloud-white cheeks to the crowds of St Patrick’s Square. One old butt for another.

Here are two old duffers in dull grey overcoats outside the Classic cinema. They have so much in common, these two, but they never say a word to each other. They both look in the opposite direction or stare at the ground to make sure they don’t even make eye contact. They’re waiting to see “Tis Pity She’s a Whore”, not realising it isn’t quite the genre they think it is.

Down past Old College is a student, long hair, full beard, baggy ill-fitting sweater, baggy ill-fitting jeans, rushing across the road, pad of paper and beat-up old folder in his arms until he stumbles on the curbstone and drops his load, lecture notes flying everywhere.

And here’s that chap I see quite a lot around town, book in hand, reading aloud. Always in an old olive green anorak, half zipped up over a black suit, the legs of his trousers a little too short, his black tie crooked at his neck, catching the collar of his cream shirt and making it ruck up under his neck. He crops up here and there, sometimes with an audience of one or two, sometimes with no-one listening. In fact, I didn’t listen the first three or four times I saw him until Cat suggested I lend him an ear. As she told me, sometimes it’s Dickens, sometimes Scott. Always a classic. Today it’s Burns¹.

Thus ev’ry kind their pleasure find,
The savage and the tender;
Some social join, and leagues combine,
Some solitary wander.

I read a story once². This lass has loads of books. Classic stuff like Jane Austen and Jean Paul Sartre. Modern stuff. Poetry. The lot. And she tours round Britain with some of her books ripping pages out of them and throwing them around: in shops, in fields, all over the place. In fact, I think she goes all over the world. I thought that was wonderful. Here’s this woman, spreading the world’s wisdom and beauty everywhere. I think they should do that on the side of buildings and places. Put up random quotes so that you stumble across them. Or have meaningful romantic quotes somewhere that you could take your girl and show her. Or maybe have some sort of random quote generator like the I Ching or Oblique Strategies. You could go up to it and it’d be like asking the oracle. Anyway, when I read that story, it reminded me of that bloke in the anorak.

Anyway, that’s me. I solitary wander. And here I am at Nessie’s new place. After all that running around, I hope she’s in. I don’t know whether she’s got a practical this afternoon. At Southampton, we had labs every afternoon. One every day of the week. But that was Geology. Nessie’s Geography so maybe they don’t do as many. Maybe cartography once a week.

Yes, she’s in. After a couple of false starts where I go up a stair but get lost and have to go back to the road to reorient myself, I manage to find her flat. And she’s listening to John Foxx. And she’s got all of her krautrock tapes up from home. Copied off her brother’s albums. She’s got her Dignity of Human Labour, her Robert Rental, and her Dalek I Love You. And she’s got the new John Foxx album. Well I knew she’d be a fan cos she’s also got all of the Ultravox stuff, even the punky stuff like Young Savage. So that was an opportunity to have a listen.

Well, I wanted to talk about the new album, but she wanted to talk about my trip. She asked whether I’d noticed the sun going the wrong way round. Yup. It still rises in the east and sets in the west, but at midday it’s to the north not the south, so you’d be sitting somewhere looking at the sun, expecting it to go to your right and it goes round to your left. And had I noticed the water in the sink going the wrong way down the plughole? Yes, but you had to be a bit of a geek to even look at it to check.

And she was interested in the place we went in Chile – Torres del Paine. These are massive granite towers rising above the Patagonian steppes. A perfect illustration of how hard granite resists weathering much more than soft sandstone. I should show Gav. And I also told her about this bloke we met there – well, not so much “met” as “forced ourselves on”. I’d ended up with a geochemist from the Rhine and a palaeontologist from Georgia. The palaeontologist spoke Spanish and was a bit of an expert on these parts, and it was his idea for us to go trekking through the park. He wanted to show off, so he managed to talk us onto an old bus that was travelling from village to village and managed to get us dropped off where we could take a really good look at those granite peaks I was telling you about and he managed to get a promise from the driver to pick us up on the way back. So we just walked for a few hours along this old dirt track with no one else around but with these incredible, weird, spiky towers of rock watching our every move.

There was an old shack along that track and a bloke was stood outside. I have no idea what he did there. I could see no sign of a farm or of any business. He probably had no idea what we were doing there either, the three of us ambling along, staring up at the towers in front of us. Anyway, our Spanish-speaking mate went up and had a quick chat, the result of which was the three of us getting invited inside for a drink. A strange thick brew of green leaves – bigger than tea leaves – in a deep narrow bowl-like mug. We drank this stuff, which was pretty strong, through a straw, all four of us sharing the one mug. And our host never stopped asking questions and talking to us through the only one of us who could interpret. Here we were, three foreigners, invading this chap’s home and yet all he wanted to do was give us a cuppa and quiz us (really, just one of us) all day.

So, yes, Nessie, it was a grand trip. But let’s have a listen to your new album. That’s what I’m here for. In fact, I’ve also got something to listen to. Something I picked up on South Bridge on the way over. The new Orchestral Manoeuvres album which could be a bit contentious as she wasn’t convinced about them last time we talked about it.

So, eventually, I managed to steer her away from South America and onto synthesisers. It was a conversation we often had. The synthesisers conversation, that is. So, today, sharing our time between the first John Foxx solo album and the first Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark album, we debate the merits and deficiencies of the albums, the musicians, and the entire history of music in the twentieth century (at least as far as we know it).

Start with the sleeves. Foxx dull monochrome: grey and olive which is duller than just shades of grey. Orchestral Manoeuvres a cut out bright blue outer and a bright orange inner giving it a more physical, 3D presence (only slightly ruined by the tacky sticker randomly thrown on as a last minute thought – they should at least have had the courage to release the album with no name on the front).

So, the covers mean you’re already getting into the mood before you listen to the platter. This confirms my prejudice that John Foxx can sometimes be a little too cold and cynical, even though he no longer wants to be a machine. It also confirms Nessie’s prejudice that Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark can sometimes be just a little too warm and sweet.

Both albums are based on similar instrumentation: synthesized keyboards, synthesized drums and bass guitars, so they both should press Nessie’s buttons.

“Why have you got so many synth albums?” I’d ask her. “Why so few guitar bands?”

And she’d respond with: “Systems of Romance is all guitars.”

Which is true. Up to a point. There are many loud, in your face, punk rock guitars on Systems of Romance. Some of them are Manzanera style Roxy Music sounds rather than Eno style electronic tracks. But there are also synth drums, synth keyboards, and weird noises. Dislocation is “Taking Tiger Mountain” era Eno. “Just for a Moment” is Kraftwerk-like. In fact, as Nessie points out Gary Numan based his whole career on “Dislocation” and “Maximum Acceleration”. (“And his lyrics are just rewrites of ‘Listen to the music the machines make’,” she reminds me.)

Or she’d say: “All that guitar stuff is just so mainstream. Led Zeppelin, Judas Priest, AC/DC. Even punk rock is getting mainstream. Don’t you ever want to go off-piste?”

That was Nessie. Different. I guess I was somewhat similar – looking for something a little out of the way, or even something totally bizarre, but not as extreme. She’d got her kosmische musik tapes, most of which had an element of the unusual, but some of which were just too industrial, too bizarre, too experimental for me. I can dig Kraftwerk and the melodic end of the spectrum like Harmonia’s Delight and Sowiesoso era Cluster and I can get into the groove of Neu and Sowiesoso era Cluster and I can chill out to the ambient stuff that Eno picked up on, but I struggle with the random noise bursts on Cluster’s first album. And all that German stuff was punk five years before we were punk. A way of rejecting all of the stuff coming over from the US and the UK. Taking the spirit of the 60s and using it to reject anything and everything that went before, especially important if you were of the post war generation in Germany. A way of doing things your own way. Finding your own path.

“You never feel that way, then?” is what Nessie asks me, rhetorically, when I tell her what I think about that album. “And you do know that Cluster, Harmonia, and Neu are just the same three blokes just changing the band name to reflect the mood of the music they’re making.”

I guess it’s true. Sometimes you listen to music because it makes you feel a certain way and sometimes you listen to music because you already feel a certain way. And I do sometimes feel out of sync with the rest of humanity, but not to the same extent as some folk I know. I never wanted to be a machine. Mary, Annie, Dusty: they all felt disconnected in some way. And I’m realising that Nessie feels disconnected, too. And sometimes in a harsh, random, arhythmic, idiosyncratic, freakish sort of way.

Metamatic is a little harsh in places. A little random. A little idiosyncratic. But it is basically a set of attractive, melodic songs. You’ll remember these tunes even though they are played on what are still strange, outsider instruments. There’s funk, albeit robotic funk on 030 and Metal Beat. You can dance to it, maybe a machine-like dance, but a dance nevertheless. There’s a great groove on Touch and Go. There’s some Another Green World Eno on Blurred Girl. There’s some wonderful self-deprecating humour in the “Click Click Drone” lyric of Underpass. And there’s the great Pop of No One Driving.

“This isn’t pop,” says Nessie in contradiction. “That,” pointing to Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, “is pop.”

It is. Not just pop in the high quality popular music sense of “Waterloo Sunset”, “Reach Out I’ll Be There”, and “Prettiest Star”. But also pop as in fizzy pop like the fizzy lemonade you dranks as a kid and which got up your nose. And also pop as in the short sharp sound the synths on the album make like little bubbles rising up from the vinyl and bursting above the deck.

Yeah, some of it is light and inconsequential. But some of it does appeal. Nessie admits to hearing the positive echoes of Kraftwerk/Harmonia/Sowiesoso in Messerschmidt Twins and Red Frame/White Light and Pretending to See the Future. But we disagree most strongly about the throw away B-Side experimentation of Dancing which I think should be thrown into the same bin as John Lennon’s 9th revolution and she thinks is the best track on the album.

Or is she winding me up?

1. Song, composed in August ↩︎
2. Ali Smith “Text for the Day” ↩︎