Easter.

Another Easter weekend. Doesn't seem a year since the last one frankly...and here I am in the same old same old...staring at a now empty coffee mug in Cafe Crem in a rainy and wind swept Newcastle...pretty much what I did last year if memory serves me. As I write the (hardly very original) tilte to this I was thinking of the Patti Smith album of the same name...it's cover sticks in my mind from when I first clocked it in what was then Woolworths in Banbridge circa 1978  or thereabouts. It was summer and Because the Night had gotten to number 5 in the charts at the time... I was unaware that the song was Bruce Springsteens at the time and I had never heard of the Patti Smith Group as it then was but there was something about it that grabbed me and still does...her version that is. I was a teenager and there was something about the picture of her on the album cover that also gripped me...no doubt some of it was down to teenage hormones but there was a rawness and a wildness in that picture that went beyond mere titilation..even then. Nor was it a conventionally "sexy" pic...whatever that would have meant to me at the time...but it has stayed with me ever since even though I've not seen the cover again more than once or twice in over thirty years. I remember thinking she was beautiful...as I stood there that Saturday afternoon all those years ago. Of course such things are in the eye of the beholder and she would not be regarded as a conventional beauty...a term I will pass over quickly as it is pretty much meaningless. I was a geeky nerdy type who would have run a mile  from any "conventionally attractive" female so it is perhaps not that strange that I found this dark haired and somewhat gothic looking woman attractive  ...at the time I was only vaguely aware of the punk rock scene though I spent a lot of that summer poking about in the local independent record store (the late lamented Itrecords) learning what I could. It was a dingy little box of a place but it had some of the more obscure stuff that Woolys would not have touched...I used to scan hungrily through the masses of vinyl album covers packed closely together, a bit nervous as the shop tended to be a gathering point for a mix of bikers, goths and punks  (not to say some punk goth bikers no doubt). They would congregate up at the little counter and chat to the bearded owner...harmless enough no doubt but to an awkward thirteen year old their presence was a bit intimidating...usually I would walk past a few times before going in to make sure the coast was clear. It wasn't the "safe" environment of Woolworths but then maybe that was the point ...you weren't going to find Richard Hell and the Void Oids, Wayne County and the Electric Chairs or Devo in Woolys. So many album covers ...so many bands...I was fascinated by the whole culture...not that that is how I understood it at the time. Without wishing to sound like a perve I could say that my sexual awakening...such as it was...occurred in that little shop with the fusty carpet and the rows and rows of vinyl...i would always find my way to the covers of Down in the Bunker by Steve Gibbons or Roxy Music's Country Life...to name but two.  But more importantly there was another sort of awakening...an interest in music and in the culture surrounding it...a vivid panoply of images both photographic and graphic that laid the ground work for my continuing obsession for all things pop culture related...and many things artistic from street art through to body art...indeed all forms of art. Yes it probably all started in that little record shack amongst the intimidating goths and bikers...walking past it the other day ..or rather where it used to be ...there was a pang of nostalgia for a time that I only truly appreciate now that it is long gone. Around the same time and feeding into that particular zeitgeist was a growing interest in comics...especially those hard to find American imports that only seemed to be available in ...again...small and dingy little newsagents off the beaten track. One such up in Portrush, down past where Troggs Surf Shop now is comes to mind...so small that you could not really stand more than two deep but packed with wonders from Marvel, DC and others...it was from there (I think) that I purchased the Conan the Barbarian "Song of Red Sonja" sometime around 1975 that introduced me to the art of Barry Windsor Smith...another milestone as for the first time I became aware of the sheer beauty of art...I can still see those panels in my mind (sadly the comic is long since gone...though it is now eminently collectible). I can't remember the exact point in time when that little shop closed but it must have been in the early eighties...I still can see it in my minds eye when I pass the spot where it was...now the side wall of a building.  Sometimes in dafter moments I day dream that it is still there...hidden somehow behind that wall like something out of Dr Who...shielded from view in another dimension...if only you could find a way through...or back to a time and a place that throbbed with possibility and that feeling of invincible and unimpeachable optimism that comes with being an eleven year old in a comic shop uncovering wonders. I suppose that is the essence of nostalgia...whether it is the sweep of Patti Smiths dark tresses or the immersive beauty of a BWS tableau ....it will differ for everyone. And it is hard to pin down as are most things of value and meaning...the things that stir the senses in the moment  and that we would go back and reclaim if only we could ...and yet deep down we would not because somehow we know it would not be the same and it is better left in the relative security of untouchable memory. And so that is that...funny the way things come to mind as they do. It will doubtless make little sense to anyone but myself but I mainly write this stuff for myself so it's of no matter. 

Happy Easter.