Everything I Didn’t Say (On the 25th of May)

https://www.facebook.com/events/140398839834486/

I was stood outside the place, on St Nicholas Street, trying to get a quick bit of singing practice in before sound check.  Something caught my eye to the left – a young man, striding hurriedly down the street.  With no shoes on.  It was a warm day, but I wouldn’t fancy walking barefoot down a street full of pubs at any time of day/year…after noticing this, I look again and see that it’s:
The Drummer!
The Drummer doesn’t drink, so I knew that wasn’t the issue.  He’s also not really a shoes-off type of dude, so I was momentarily perplexed.  And he was a bit late, which is also not like him (safe to say that The Drummer is not your typical drummer).
“There’s a bomb scare at Cabot”, he says, breathlessly.  “I got evacuated out the gym.  I’d just stepped out the shower and the security guard came in and said ‘grab a t-shirt and get out!’  I left my wallet, my keys, my shoes, everything else…”
And yet, Dear Reader, he made it to sound check.  My Hero.

And I didn’t say so on the mic, during our set.  Didn’t even give him the shout out.

Fifty years ago to the day of the benefit gig, eleven lads from Glasgow pulled off one of the most momentous sporting victories ever, by beating the mighty Inter Milan to become the first British team to win the European Cup (that’s football, for the uninitiated).  The winning goal-scorer in that match suffered from a common disease as a child and was given three weeks to live.  The survival rate in his city had previously been 0%.
My Dad was three days shy of his twenty-first birthday on the famous day, and he still remembers it well, like every other Glaswegian/Celtic fan/person who was alive.  He was watching the game, in full, at our local Celtic pub on the fiftieth anniversary.  And I would gladly have joined him, and we would have enjoyed it a lot.
But what better way to represent the club, and everything that is good about it, my family and my friends, than to try to help people in need?  (For those who don’t know, Celtic was founded as a charity for poor people in Glasgow, with a strong connection to the Irish immigrant/descendant population of the city.)  As they sing up there:  “Let the people sing their stories and their songs.”
So, I was at this gig to try to help my friends help people in need, to sing my/our stories and my/our songs. 

And I didn’t say that on the mic.

And I was reminded of an anecdote I heard recently about the Choctaw Nation (Native Americans) who, having endured The Trail Of Tears, raised money to send to Ireland when they heard about the potato famine.  This was a group of people who had been forcibly evicted from their land by legal means (These days, it would be called “ethnic cleansing”, or genocide, or something like that), on pain of violence, and facing starvation – many of whom died on the forced march – whose knowledge of Ireland, given the state of mass communication at the time (1840s) must have been limited.  And what did they do, when they heard about suffering starving people, thousands of miles away?  They had a whip round and sent some money to help.  (See here for more details: https://www.choctawnation.com/news-events/press-media/choctaw-irish-bond-lives)

And I didn’t tell that story on the mic.

I learned the above anecdote in New York.  I’d been there visiting (more on that later…) and only arrived back in Bristol just in time for the gig, jet-lagged and tired.  And I haven’t been playing gigs for a while.  And The Boys From Marketing and I haven’t played together at all since August last year.  And, as we were all away in the weeks before the show, didn’t have time to practice.
All of these were reasons I might have turned down the gig, had it been for another cause, or no particular cause.  (Or other people, or no particular people.)

I didn’t say that on the night.

Our pianist had made a powerful plea for unity and for continuing efforts to help each other, in the wake of a terrorist bombing of a big gig in Manchester a few days before our small one in Bristol – and I agreed with his idea that this is not a time to withdraw from each other, or be cowed, or reluctant to help.  I appreciated his passion and agreed with the sentiment.

I didn’t say that on the night.

I even had a poem about refugees that I could, maybe should, have read. 

But I didn’t say that either.

I also didn’t say that there is an election coming up, in case you didn’t notice, and it is one where a bunch of hubristic millionaires, who have made lucrative careers out of attacking vulnerable people in need of help and generally conducting a vicious class war, with the state and corporate media almost completely onside, are floundering against a traditionally working class party, which is proposing helping people who need help, which is the only political party in the country with a large – and rapidly growing – membership, a membership which defied its own leadership to elect one of their own, who then didn’t get everything in the party manifesto that he wanted, and then didn’t lie about that when asked on television. 
(All of which looks startlingly like Democracy…..)
I didn’t say that the current state of despairing, hand-wringing, ill-informed, bigoted, unsympathetic, gerrymandered, hateful, violent and fundamentally dishonest political culture suits the incumbent millionaires and the people for whom they manage the economy.  Suits them very nicely indeed. 

But I didn’t say anything about that on the night.

I did sing, though.  I sang:

“A rush and a push,

And the land

That we stand on

Is Ours

It has been before,

So why can’t it be NOW?”

I did rap as well.  I rapped another quote, to finish:

“Our past is not glorious –

But we are

Gloriously

PRESENT.”

Big Thanks to all who were there, and to all who help people in need, regardless of where they are, where they are from, and where they are going.

PEACE