*Track 14
Give Me Time - 10th September 2018
Stuart had accepted the golliwogs on the back of Robertson’s jam jars unquestioningly.
You could even remove the labels and send them off, he remembered, to collect your own set of golly pin-badges. This seemed innocuous enough at the time, just another marketing ploy, no different to the oversized model of Fred (Homepride’s cartoon flour grader) his nan kept in her kitchen, or the small white plastic footballer busts (of Joe Mercer’s 1971 Great Britain squad) his dad had earned for him buying Cleveland petrol.
Context is everything though. It was unlikely a child of the early ‘70s, with the ‘Black and White Minstrel Show’ on Saturday night TV, would have noticed much wrong with his preserves coming partially packaged in prejudice. This was a time when Enid Blyton (whose ‘Secret Seven’ adventures Stuart had read avidly) was happily writing and selling books with titles like ‘Little Black Doll’, and Helen Bannerman’s overtly racist ‘Little Black Sambo’ could still be found on the bookshelves of schools and libraries.
It wasn’t just a problem restricted to children’s stories either, some of the era’s highly regarded literary works had been equally guilty. Having recently dipped back into John Fowles’ ‘The Magus’, a novel he had enjoyed reading in the mid ‘70s, Stuart found passages that today seemed astonishingly xenophobic.
Unfortunately such examples were simply indicative of a much wider, openly bigoted attitude. There had been plenty of Stuart’s contemporaries back then, including loved family members, he could recall being openly derogatory about black people. To be blunt, they had probably referred to them by the N-word. Through another happy accident of birth though, Stuart’s mum had, again, proven herself a woman ahead of her time, raising her sons to treat everybody equally, regardless of their colour or creed.
She still bought Robertson’s jam though, it tasted better than Hartley’s!
One of mankind’s biggest advances over the decades since, Stuart thought, alongside the incredible march of technology, had been the way society had steadily, but surely, moved away from such casually condoned racism. As a comfortable, middle-class white man this was maybe easy for him to say, and he didn’t kid himself things were yet perfect by any means, but having experienced such openly prejudicial times it was irrefutably true that we had since moved to a more equalitarian place.
There was patently room left for improvement but, given the vast majority of Joe’s peer group would now regard any hint of racism as being as passé as Twiggy or The Magic Roundabout, Stuart at least felt confident, despite regular, rightly highlighted incidents belying the underlying trend, that real progress had been made and, as importantly, that continued generational momentum now seemed assured.
Given this ‘state-of-play’ assessment, the currently raging debate around a ‘racist’ Serena Williams cartoon had become a fascinating litmus test of current attitudes.
Williams had been fairly and comprehensively beaten by Naomi Osaka in the recent US Open final and, becoming increasingly temperamental as the match slipped away, had unwisely engaged in a huge row with the match umpire. The official, correctly in the eyes of most pundits, had begun to penalise Serena as her behaviour worsened, docking her points for receiving on-court coaching and smashing a racket. Mentally defeated by this stage, it appeared, Serena chose to interpret these penalties as sexist, claiming she wouldn’t have been treated that way if she had been a male competitor.
Stuart had immense admiration for Serena Williams. Not just as a tennis player with few equals (in any era of the sport), but also as a fantastic role model for her generation (African American or otherwise). One who had always demonstrated how much success can be achieved through hard work and dedication.
On this occasion however, Stuart felt Serena’s actions had been like those of a spoilt child, allowing her frustration at the title eluding her to boil over unnecessarily. The spurious ‘fights’ she had chosen to pick with the umpire seemed both unseemly and unsportsmanlike (itself possibly a sexist phrase!) Even less defensibly, in doing so she had openly disrespected her opponent, denying Osaka any proper chance to fittingly celebrate what, for her, should have been a memorable first Grand Slam victory.
Already a media storm, this story had now been whipped up into a hurricane by a cartoon published in the Murdoch owned Melbourne Herald Sun. Their cartoonist, a suddenly infamous Mark Knight, had depicted a furious Serena spitting out a dummy and smashing her racket (both of which seemed largely supported by the facts), with the pictured umpire ironically enquiring of her opponent, “can’t you just let her win?”
On the face of the evidence alone, this would all seem to be fair satirical comment. Serena had indeed acted childishly. But it was precisely ‘the face’ of things, as drawn, that had ended up causing the subsequent brouhaha.
Knight had depicted Serena in caricature (as the rules of cartooning require), yet, according to the case for the prosecution, the picture he had drawn was doubly prejudicial. Critics claimed that the figure’s large lips, broad flat nose and wild afro-styled ponytail were, “racist and sexist images,” and resulted in Serena being, “positioned in an ape-like pose.” The most damning reaction had come from the National Association of Black Journalists, whose spokesperson termed the image, “unnecessarily sambo-like.” To add to the cartoonist’s growing woes, he had been simultaneously accused of ‘whitewashing’ Naomi Osaka on the other side of the net.
After initially attempting a sturdy defence, the paper’s Australian publishers now seemed to be moving rapidly towards damage limitation, faced with an ever growing threat of Press Council censure. The News Corp chairman had at first though claimed that the reaction, “shows the world has gone too PC,” while Knight himself put the storm down to, “a different understanding of cartooning in Australia to America.”
Stuart imagined there may be some truth in the latter. Attitudes he had encountered towards minority cultures (particularly Aboriginals) in a late ‘90s Sydney held more in common with a ‘70s UK than he had ever been entirely comfortable with, and he feared these may have been deep rooted enough to have survived another twenty years largely intact. Australians, he suspected, may still be a long way from going, “too PC.”
Stuart would have liked to get Anne’s take on this story, he often missed being able to consult her when she was out at work. Would she agree with Knight that, “the world’s gone crazy,” or side with JK Rowling (who for some reason had got involved) that the cartoon, “reduced one of the greatest sportswomen alive to racist and sexist tropes.”
Wherever the truth lay; almost certainly, as usual, somewhere in the middle, Stuart was confident Anne would at least have agreed with him that anyone that felt the need to appear on-message enough to invoke ‘tropes’ in support of their argument probably deserved to lose it on principle! He would just have to wait to find out later.
The inconvenience of Anne’s work pattern also had another unfortunate practical consequence. Today’s upcoming ‘Challenge’ would be a severe case of feast to famine. Despite last month’s winning nap-hand in Budapest, Stuart would need to revert to playing solo again. This felt like a heavy burden, an emotional ordeal he only hoped he could respond to with Naomi like grace, rather than suffering a Serena meltdown.
###
Always capable of spotting the positives though, Stuart had realised his enforced ‘Challenge’ isolation also came with advantages. Having completed all the tasks Anne had left him, with time to spare, he was now free to listen to today’s musical selection, Billy Mackenzie’s solo album, at a volume his wife would have deemed, “ridiculous.”
Even the voice of an angel, Stuart reasoned, can still benefit from some additional amplitude, helping adorn its ascendency.
He had always loved the whole Associates oeuvre, another of his offbeat tastes that seemed to elude most people. Even the minority that had heard of the band only really knew them for their brief, glorious spell spent storming the gates of Top of the Pops.
‘Party Fears Two’ must still have some of the unlikeliest, most oblique lyrics ever to have snuck inside the Top Ten. Stuart remained confused (thirty-six years later) just why Billy required a shower before phoning his brother up, and even more perplexed by the strict timetable given, (“within the hour,”) for needing to smash another cup!
The Associates had then followed this with a second massive hit; though there had surely never been two people less likely to be found at a Country Club (whether alive and kicking or not) than Billy Mackenzie and Alan Rankine!
What had most impressed Stuart at the time however, and endured since, was the sheer commitment the pair had demonstrated to extracting every single ounce of enjoyment from what they had already accepted would be their fleeting moment in the limelight.
But beyond these hits, well away from popular consciousness, there would always be two other recordings (bookmarking the beginning and end of Billy’s way too short career) that Stuart held up as the high-water marks of the singer’s undoubtable genius.
1980’s ‘The Affectionate Punch’ has a remarkably apt title, its songs being packed with lyrical aggression yet wrapped in musical velvet. The chorus of Stuart’s favourite track reveals this best, “even dogs in the wild,” Billy observes bitingly, would do better than humankind, by caring for and protecting, “whatever means most to them.” Above all else though, it was this record that had first introduced that extraordinary voice.
A four and a half octave range, yet capable of such expressive delivery. True vocal ability, bettering anything Stuart had ever heard in pop music, before or since.
An equally strong if much sadder affair, given its posthumous release, was today’s selection of pre-Challenge soundtrack, Mackenzie’s 1997 solo album ‘Beyond the Sun’. Billy may, by this time, have withdrawn a long way from the centre of any stage, with an obvious forlornness to his words, yet he had still managed to conjure up one last great record which, in Stuart’s eyes, was the very definition of a lost masterpiece.
The strident ‘Give Me Time’ kicks matters off, proving Mackenzie still had the knack for crafting a great pop song (even if everyone had stopped listening), but what follows is a far softer, more sombre affair. Songs with sparse, minimalist instrumentation, often just piano, that somehow allow those extraordinary vocals to soar even higher.
Billy’s ability to scale unusual vocalistic heights, and depths, was already a given, but the emotive, nuanced tones of ‘Beyond the Sun’s quieter moments added yet another level. ‘Winter Academy’s, “when I close my eyes, I see you for what you were,” was quite possibly the most heartbreakingly sung line Stuart had ever heard.
“You can forget your Sinatras,” Stuart thought, as the album moved on, “Billy Mackenzie has to be the ultimate torch singing maverick.” One nobody else could hold a candle to. Perhaps pop’s greatest voice. When it came to compiling a best male singer list, Stuart only ever needed to give thought to filling the remaining four places:
5) Ian McCulloch – A great voice, from ‘Crocodiles’ onwards, but deservedly earning his place on this rundown for the sheer chutzpah of having once described ‘Ocean Rain’ as, “the world’s best album, sung by the world’s best singer.”
4) Connor O’Brien – A vocalistic Villagers phenomenon, best witnessed live, where his uncanny ability to flex his voice (high, low, soft, loud, up to the mike, distant) captivates an audience in ways Stuart had never seen bettered.
3) Elvis – Bob Dylan said everything that needed saying here; “when I first heard Elvis's voice, I just knew I wasn’t going to work for anybody, nobody was going to be my boss. Hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail.”
2) Ian Curtis – A singing style often compared to Jim Morrison, yet deeper, more resonant, and utterly masterful at inhabiting his words with fragile emotion. What more could that voice have gone on to achieve?
1) Billy Mackenzie – If you need convincing, just take a listen as he holds the achingly beautiful note on the string laden ‘Breakfast’ for eleven full seconds, and then try (unsuccessfully) to name another pop singer who could ever have done that. Sublime.
As ‘Beyond the Sun’ approaches its end, the depressiveness within Mackenzie’s words grows more evident. Had he really felt, you had to ponder, as ‘Nocturne VII’s lyrics suggest, that the time had come for someone to, “take me by the hand,” to lead him to a place, “I will understand.” If only Billy could have found such peace in life, then how many more fabulous songs might he have gifted the world? Sadly, we will never know.
There is a brilliant Mackenzie biography by Tom Doyle, called ‘The Glamour Chase’, that reinforces the enigma. Stuart particularly liked Bjork’s heartfelt foreword, in which she describes Billy’s voice as “spontaneous and intuitive, raw and dangerous, pagan and primitive,” before revealing how his family lent her some old multi-track tape of Billy singing, which she considered using to create a new duet, until deciding she felt too intimidated to take on the task. Now that would have been worth hearing!
‘Beyond the Sun’ wasn’t an unremittingly sad listen though, and the more upbeat ‘Give me Time’, with its great line about travelling the world to find yourself had, again today, reminded Stuart of his Aussie homecoming and ‘finding’ Anne so soon after. The song’s repeated exhortation to, “come on and be mine,” completed the picture.
Stuart had never, he now realised, tried compiling a list of songs that reminded him of Anne, but if he ever did then ‘Give me Time’ would make a good candidate. Not high enough to dislodge ‘Into My Arms’ or ‘Back Together’ from their incontestable top slots though.
While he didn’t believe in any God, interventionist or otherwise, Stuart still shared Cave’s suspicion there had to be some sort of fateful path they had been destined to walk down together; and, while such ‘drama’ would be firmly out of character, were he ever to find himself falling apart, “every minute of every hour,” as Babybird suggested, then he knew Anne would be there to put him back together again!
Together for twenty years, still ploughing Nick’s fatalistic furrow, they might fall out over the smallest of things, with point scoring becoming a staple item on their relationship diet, but when it came to life’s big issues you would struggle get a cigarette paper between them. They were, Stuart concluded, true soulmates, “except when she bloody deserts me on a ‘Challenge’ day,” he sighed in summary.
###
With a little more (post-Billy) time still available before he needed to re-engage in solo competitive combat, Stuart decided it might prove useful to quickly reconsider the ultimately fruitless (if pleasantly hop-filled!) ‘Challenge’ review session he had undertaken with Ed and Charlie back in Budapest.
The day after Lana Del Rey they had all decided it was time to take a breather from their week-long Sziget marathon (unbothered by Mumford & Sons as headliners) and Stuart had persuaded his two new quizitorial conspirators to accompany him for a few beers at Szimpla Kert, the city’s oldest and still finest ruin bar, with the proviso they would help him take a fresh look at the competition’s two big unanswered questions:
- Why are the ‘Challenges’ so peculiarly numbered? and,
- What is the elusive link between its diverse list of solutions?
Once they had settled down, and argued about Lana for a while, Stuart, acting as invigilator, had presented both of his friends with a freshly prepared exam paper:
2 VOLTAIRE
4 ALPHA
7 PALATINE
12 PILLOW FIGHT
14 COLETTE
15 CHAMELEONS
17 BERLIN
24 DYSLEXIA
28 INCUBATION
31 DOLPHIN
40 THE SOUND OF MUSIC
43 DOMINION
45 BARDO
Two hours later, even oiled by a steady flow of Drehers, they had fallen well short of any pass mark. Stuart had been unsure whether this outcome left him disappointed, that even working together these codes had still proven uncrackable, or maybe a little relieved, that the guys hadn’t managed to spot anything obvious he had been missing.
Ed had applied his best methodical, mathematical mindset to the number sequence, ending up with a sheet of paper covered with workings which, to Stuart, simply looked like a mystifying string of equations, populated by an unintelligible series of Greek symbols (which, as it happened, was exactly what they were). None of Ed’s attempted calculi had resulted in a breakthrough though, and he had finally crumpled his page with a Euclidean exclamation of, “I give up, these are just fucking random,” before heading to the bar for another round.
On the diverse solutions, just as Stuart had found previously, Charlie and Ed had managed to propose several coherent links between a few different pairs of answers, even three of them at a push, but any such progress soon crashed against the rocks of a broader connection with the remaining items. Finding a way to convincingly unite all thirteen answers had remained as far out of reach as ever.
In the absence of any real progress, Stuart had even sounded them out on his musical theory. “Voltaire could be Cabaret Voltaire,” he started, “and then there’s The Sound of Music, that whole clue was based around musicians. The Chameleons were a Manchester band, and The Dominion’s obviously a famous concert venue.”
“All possibly true,” Ed had conceded, before shooting Stuart’s theory down in flames, “but that leaves nine others. You’re pissing in the wind with this. You could as easily argue that Julie Andrews once visited Berlin, and had a pillow fight with a dyslexic called Colette, but I don’t think that flies either!” Sarcastic but accurate.
Charlie had at least endeavoured to add a few suggestions of his own into the supposed musical mix, “well Incubation’s a Joy Division song, then there’s Lou Reed’s ‘Berlin’, and wasn’t there another Liverpool band, back in the day, Lori & the Chameleons, with Bill Drummond involved? I think we might have seen them supporting somebody once. I could check my list when I get home.”
“My God,” Ed had, less than supportively, responded, “sometimes you even outdo Stu the Obscure.”
Charlie soldiered on, ignoring Ed’s slur, but by then had chosen to cook his own goose (and Stuart’s with it) by adding, “but despite that, I’m afraid I have to agree with our erudite friend, with his fancy Greek equations. You’re clutching at straws on this. Pretty flimsy ones at that.”
###
Despite those knock backs Stuart still hadn’t been persuaded, a month later, to totally discard his ‘flimsy straws’. He felt they may yet prove recyclable, but for the time being, accepting a temporary retreat, had stored them back in their pack.
“Let’s see what a new month brings,” he declared, to a sadly empty room, as the clock finally ticked around to 10am:
###
(To be continued, at 10am tomorrow. Can you solve ‘Challenge 48’ in the meantime? If you think you have got the answer, then please reply direct to this email post, to help keep the ‘challenge’ open for other readers.)