Been a while since I added a Johnny’s Diary entry to the RBP blog so here’s a little something I scribbled on April 30, 1978. What interests me most about it is the lack of anti-racist content in the entry. I suspect we all just took it for granted that we despised racists, so it wasn’t worth mentioning. Reading the entry now, it sounds more like a social occasion than a political demo. Me and my chums on a day out in the park.
This is the picture from page 107, referred to above. That’s me in the middle with the long red scarf. The geezer second from the left is my old chum Tom Ferguson, then a member of a punk band called Sanity Clause, and now a bastion of Billboard magazine. Tom wrote the comment at the bottom of the previous page of diary entry. Check those flares. Check my natty red trainers.)
You might notice mention of my friend Nic Dartnell in the entry. I went to school with Nic in Scotland, played in a band with him, and he came south, just as i did. He was then, and is now, a superb artist. See his stuff at http://www.nicdartnell.com/ You might know his work from several album covers.
The little clipping at the top of page two of the entry is just something we have always done in the diaries. We cut stuff out and stick it in along with the entries. I say ‘we’ because I am not the only person who writes in the diaries. they’re open for anyone to read and/or contribute to.
I wasn’t impressed by The Clash that day. To be honest, I was never impressed by The Clash. I saw them many times and never got it. I got to know Strummer a bit while I was working at CBS in the Press Office and he was a lovely bloke, but their music never really got to me.
I like the final observation that ‘Lara was also there but I never saw her’. I now have no memory of who Lara was. I can only speculate that I fancied her madly for a couple of weeks.
That’s it. More when I get the chance.
3 Responses to JOHNNY’S DIARY – ROCK AGAINST RACISM 1978, APRIL 30
Torture me like a heretic, but I was never much impressed by the Clash beyond the (very good) first album. I still contend that London Calling is the most overrated rock album of all time…
Nonsense, Barney. The most over-rated rock album of all time is the first Stone Roses album.
Now there’s a ongoing topic for an RBP blog…
Look chaps, I agree with both of you, though I would say that Sgt. Pepper’s etc. etc. was THE most overrated album in rock history. But anyway… I was there! Victoria fucking Park. Loved X-Ray Spex, thought Steel Pulse were dull as all hell, the Clash postured like the rock-star-wannabies that they always were, and I can’t remember much else. Were Stiff Little Fingers on the bill? And then some c*** stole my girlfriend’s and my front wheels off our bikes, so we had to walk the fuckers home all the way to Battersea.