Joseph Morpurgo: Soothing Sounds for Baby

Stand up comedy isn’t what it used to be. The 1970’s scene was populated by tight joke technicians who knew there way round the mechanics of a joke but were hamstrung by boorish subject matter: their material operating in a tabloid world of thwarted men, stupid women and dumb-casual racism. Also, the telling of the tale was more important than the tale itself: in some instances, such was the scarcity of brain cells, jokes were put on a chalkboard backstage and comics selected the ones they would tell. To use a dismissive analogy, these comedians were drummers to today’s songwriters: they could keep time and cue laughs; however, what they couldn’t do was create a unique sound and vision.

Then in 1979 Don Ward opened a comedy club, The Comedy Store, above a strip club in Soho. With a young audience thirsty for social change, the comedy of the status quo was no longer welcomed. Spearheading this revolution was Alexei Sayle, a young socialist comic from Liverpool. Appointed MC, his job was to create a club in his image: rebellious, inventive and original. Before long comedy had turned on its head, embracing the surreal and ridiculous, Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson – and that rare species woman in the form of Dawn French and Jo Brand. The stand up of the 80's had broken free from its straitjacket and was now revelling in its newfound freedom of creativity and enterprise. This was a new dawn; the old days would never come again.

Sayle at the original Comedy Store.

Fast-forward to today. A landfill Indie tune has welcomed a man to the stage. He strides confidently to the microphone, projecting vim and vigour. He has something to get off his chest. Up until now, he can’t believe this issue hasn’t been confronted. His suit may have been designed on Saville Row, but don’t let that fool you: under the sharp tailoring lies the creases of misrule. Like a Medieval court jester, his occupation allows him to say the unsayable. He will use his moment to prick the powerful, to puncture the orthodoxy, to tear a hole in conventional wisdom. “So have you noticed that men have a separate draw for tools?” The camera zooms to a laughing face from The Only Way is Essex. This is what comedy has become.

Comedy finds itself yet again complacent in a coma of bland homogeneity. Admonished over Sachsgate and fearing further Tory cuts, the BBC’s aversion to risk is being mirrored by its stars on screen. So many of the Live at Mock Michael McIntyre’s Week are from the same management company, leading to a narrow carousel of voices that don’t reflect the diversity of the nation. And The Comedy Store? Its popularity has come at a cost: to protect its brand reliability - not risk - is now its watchword.

"The horror! The horror!"

So, we find ourselves yet again in need of a Don Ward: dependent on a club to re-awaken The Comedy Store’s ghost, to re-house the idiots in need of an asylum.

The Invisible Dot is the first custom-built comedy club to open in London for twenty years. Over the past three years it has been a champion for experimentation, favouring acts that push comedy’s parameters. This year in Edinburgh they promoted stunt provocateur, Luke McQueen; multi-racial sketch act, Daphne; and character comedian, Lolly Adefope. With their diverse stable of acts and idiosyncratic poster design, The Dot is stand up’s answer to Factory Records: a label that you can trust. I’ve been to four Invisible Dot productions over two years: the first was a storytelling show presented by Edinburgh award nominee, Liam Williams; the second was their monthly Live at the Chapel, where the best alternative comedians in the country perform in the hallowed environs of London’s Union Chapel; last year, it was perennial Edinburgh nominee, James Acaster’s ‘Work-in-Progress’ show; and on Saturday it was innovator extraordinaire, Joseph Morpurgo.

The man himself.

Morpurgo has been receiving rave reviews for a number of years now. Originally, he gained favour for his role in Austentatious, an improv group that performs a Jane Austen novel from audience suggestion. Further, his 2014 solo hour Odessa was acclaimed for its original format: the show was centred on a twenty-second local news bulletin depicting a chemical plant fire; the characters from the feature were then inhabited over the hour to create a riveting piece of comedy theatre.

His new show Soothing Sounds for Baby is his most ambitious to date. The title is irregular; it’s hardly Joseph Morpurgo: Live and Unloaded. In fact, it’s perfectly apt for a comic that exults in the esoteric and makes a home of the hinterland. His new show is about the old art of record buying. Over the past year, Morpurgo has visited charity bins around the country and picked out the most ridiculous vinyl sleeves he can find. Using the perverse cover art and batshit inlay as inspiration, he has made heroes out of these forgotten artists by mining their strangeness for laughs.

Morpurgo's stage.

Morpurgo’s dedication to finding appropriate records is admirable but it isn’t the most painstaking thing he does. In moving between the artists Morpurgo needed a narrative structure he could sequence the albums to: being a fan of Desert Island Discs, the Radio 4 castaway show seemed the most apposite way of doing it. Morpurgo then makes himself the star of Desert Island Discs with actual presenter Kirsty Young interviewing him. Does he have Young record an actual interview with him? No, that would be too easy and less funny. Instead he performs a gruelling Cassetteboy feat of splicing together hundreds of episodes of Discs to have Young’s questions fit his narrative. Clearly, this comedy is a world away from the 70’s backstage game of bagsy-a-joke.

Fans of the Radio 4 show will know that the interviewee intersperses their life story with music selections significant to them. Morpurgo does the same by intercutting his love story with record choices. However, whilst the Radio 4 subjects choose A-Ha, Elbow and Abba, Morpurgo chooses The World of Joseph Cooper, Winnie the Pooh read by Norman Shelly and 90’s RnB outfit Y?N-VEE.

What Desert Island Discs should look like.

These bizarre titles are the launch pads for the comic’s surreal flights of fancy. He re-imagines Joseph Cooper as a drunk piano teacher, whom uses Google route planner to teach musical pitch. He treats Y?N-VEE’s unpronounceable band name with hilarious incredulity by putting the group leader in a skit with a record boss. Most inspired though is his observation of Stanley Clarke’s vinyl cover: clad in white suit, the hirsute matador has his elbow propped on a burnished skull – Morpurgo channels the soul lothario to explain why.

Comedy doesn't have to be bland observations about the world we live in; it can be fantastical imaginings that open up new worlds of strange vistas and curious landscapes. In a small studio in Kings Cross stand-up has remembered this and invoked its 80's tradition.

The Comedy Store is dead. Long live, The Invisible Dot.

Joseph Morpurgo’s Soothing Sounds for Baby residency ends on Saturday.

The Murder of Sophie Lancaster: Black Roses

On 11^th August 2007, Sophie Lancaster and boyfriend Rob were set upon. Their crime: being different. On the night of the attack, the pair were in a petrol station. Ostensibly fascinated by their appearance, a group of boys approached them. Rob and Sophie were Goths. Sophie’s 5ft1 frame was elongated by huge platform shoes; her hair dreadlocked and dyed a matted red; her piercings studied and studded into tongue and skull. Rob was her muse: the man that inspired these choices. Juxtaposed against his slender body, his hair and trousers cascaded to a towering flow. In an age of conformity, the local pair seemed foreign, other, unnatural.

The boys said they had a group of friends that they would love to introduce them to. They were in the park; they should come meet them. Seduced by the lure of celebrity, Sophie and Rob walked to their doom. There in the park, Rob was set upon. A Manchester rain of punches fell upon him; a shower of kicks cursed his skull. Sophie magnetised by love came to his aid. These boys cared no jot for gallantry; they gave her the same treatment as Rob. Thirteen days later she died in hospital. Her mother who brought her onto earth was tasked with the task of burying her in it.

Sophie and Rob

Since then, Sophie’s mother Sylvia has been a vanguard for change: setting up the Sophie Lancaster Foundation, she has raked her tragedy to raise awareness on the need to protect difference. Her efforts were rewarded with the law re-classifying any attack on a subculture as a hate crime. Last year she was rightly rewarded an OBE for her efforts to ensure these crimes aren't repeated.

The Murder of Sophie Lancaster: Black Roses is part of BBC’s poetry season. Poetry is often criticised for being too elitist, too unconcerned with the experiences of normal people, a little too in love with itself. Seconded to Afghanistan to write war poetry; commissioned by Channel 4 to versify the experience of female prisoners, Armitage’s social commentary doesn’t deal in such naval gazing. A few years ago, he wrote Black Roses; its success garnered a radio commission; its power necessitated it be re-packaged for TV.

Simon Armitage

The piece begins with Sophie’s mother, played by former soap star Julie Hesmondhalgh, telling us the reason for Sophie’s moniker, black roses. Often Goths are dismissed as suicides-in-waiting, death obsessives that have one foot in the grave; more interested in dark hate than light love. Dress can contrast personality though: although the uniform shouts Satan, their outsider status aligns them with the underdog, making them more likely to show compassion to the downtrodden and dispossessed. Sophie, a vegetarian and pacifist, was an angel in black robes; a girl that cared for the plight of others. She was her mother’s black rose.

Hesmondhalgh inhabits Sylvia’s actual words to recount the story of Sophie’s life. Interspersed between this verbatim testimony is Armitage’s verse, told from Sophie's perspective. What we get therefore is a powerful coalescence of experience: the real of Sophie’s mother and the imagined of Sophie. This howl of planet Earth combined with the cry of the afterlife makes for a truly sublime brew.

Julie Hesmondhalgh as Sylvia

Armitage’s words are channeled via actress Rachel Austin, who as Sophie stalks the gothic landscape of isolated woods and moonlit parks. Her gentle Manchester burr inflects the words with a melancholic beauty, elevating the writing of the page. Explaining her teenage alienation and subdued quietness, she argues there wasn’t ‘an ounce of fat on my thoughts, on my limbs. I read, I wrote. I painted. I drew. Where it came from no one knew but it flowed, it flew. Armitage beautifully characterises what it means to be dismissed as introverted: how within a trapped mouth can lie a garrulous imagination. Paradoxically, maybe people occupy an alternative black universe because the actual one appears too drab and colourless for them.

Rachel Austin as Sophie

After the petals on the black rose have been pulled, Sophie’s voice is shown from her hospital bed: Mum can’t you see that somewhere inside this swollen bloodshot, abstract mess is my heart shaped face, my swan like neck. These black bruises, the black roses of my self-defence. The delicacy of these words ‘heart,’ ‘swan’ and ‘rose’ demonstrate that in spite of the harrowing attack Sophie’s black beauty cannot go undimmed. Armitage is demonstrating that within thin frames exists the incredible capacity for courage: Sophie’s bruises are roses, badges worn to show love's self-sacrifice.

The piece ends with Rob emerging towards renewal and Sophie slipping towards expiry. From her deathbed, Sophie apologises to her mum for her unresponsiveness: Mother, mum. Don’t think me rude if my eyes don’t light up at my favourite things, my clean pyjamas, my new toiletry bag … As you did then, do now. Mop my brow as you mopped my brow. Climb into my bed as you climbed into my bed. Lay at my side as you laid at my side. Lying as helpless as a baby, Sophie bids her mother re-enact her former duties: as comforting as these gestures may be, they shouldn’t have to be performed for a girl in her twenties.

This love song to maternalism, and what is left when it's snatched away, needs to be heard.

Watch it, share it, spread it. Don’t let these voices go unheard.  

The Murder of Sophie Lancaster: Black Roses  is available on iPlayer.

Music for Misfits: The Story of Indie

The year is 2003. I’m sitting in the backseat whilst my mum and dad ride up ahead. Behind me stowed in the boot of the car is a collection of boxes. These boxes contain clothes, books, memorabilia and my record collection. At the tail end of school, I had just got into music. Whilst everyone else in the 6^th form was a wannabe Garage MC, I was different. I wasn’t the same as them. I walked a different path. I took the road not taken. I was into Coldplay. And in my school to be into any kind of guitar music made you counter-culture. So in the boot of the car are my Coldplay LP’s and a rare bootleg copy of their complete B-sides. I was aware that every self-respecting music fan would have a copy of Parachutes and Rush of Blood to the Head, but I knew no one would be so fortunate as to own the illegal rarities album. In possessing this sought after piece of music history, I was confident it wouldn't be long before women were at my door requesting to be part of an intimate listening experience.

GIRL: Are you the man who has an album of Coldplay B-sides?

ME (affecting Bogart cool): I might be baby doll. It depends who's asking?

GIRL (purring sensuality in my ear): I’m asking.

ME (no longer affecting Bogart cool, but being Bogart cool): I might know such a man.

GIRL (biting lip in a way that connotes ‘I want you’ rather than ‘Get me a tissue, I didn’t mean to do that): I don't suppose you know where I could meet such a man?

BOGART (I’ve morphed into him now): He’s standing here, looking at you kid.

GIRL: (swoons)

Fade Out

I taught Bogart what he knew.

I arrive at university wearing my blue Coldplay t-shirt. The t-shirt design is très cool with the band’s name spelt with a periodic table motif. Ingeniously I knew the t-shirt would be a conversation starter: I wouldn’t have to regale people with anecdotes to confirm my status as arbiter of cultural taste, the apparel would do it for me. Entering the flat, I was greeted by another lad wearing the cover art to a band I had never heard of. “Coldplay, eh. Nice one. I'm Jim.” Looking under the landfill of slogans that adorned his top, I read the band’s name: “Radiohead, eh. Nice one. I'm Ryan.” Who were Radiohead? I thought I had the whole catalogue of Indie music in my plastic crate: David Gray’s White Ladder, Turin Brakes’ The Optimist LP and the complete works of Chris Martin. I wasn't overly concerned though; they were obviously a new band; it was nice anyway to meet someone into guitar music.
 
After I had unpacked I knocked on Jim’s door and he welcomed me in to look at his room. What I saw changed my life. All over the walls were posters. Posters of musicians I had never heard of. Bowie in one corner. Morrissey in the other. Next to him, Jarvis Cocker. Beside him, Nicky Wire. Under him, Bjork. To the side of her, Suede. Across from them, Robert Smith of The Cure. All of these pull-outs had come from magazines I'd never heard of, entitled Melody Maker and NME. Seeing those images was my Road to Damascus moment: the point where I stopped persecuting my ears and started embracing the word of Morrissey. Every journey begins with a single step, walking into that room and seeing those eccentrics was mine.

Jarvis can't get away from chipped wood.

 
For months after, what played out between Jim and me was the Indie music equivalent of Educating Rita. Instead of Frank using his study to educate Rita, Jim would soundtrack our games of Pro Evolution Soccer to the albums of Indie past. During those afternoons I was acquainted with strangers that would go on to be my best friends: The Queen Is Dead, The Stone Roses, The Bends and Screamadelica. Like Rita, I had found what I'd been missing, and I was going to make it my mission to catch up on everything I'd missed. I bought Q, NME, Uncut, The Word; listened to Steve Lamacq; read online fanzines and used friends as lending libraries to educate myself on this music that truly spoke to me.  

I was blind, now I can see. You made a believer out of me. I'm movin' on up now. Getting out of the darkness. My light shines on. My light shines on.

Over the past two weeks I’ve been watching Music for Misfits: The Story of Indie, following a recommendation from Jim. (Educating me on music is his vocation; just because I’m not next door to him anymore isn’t going to stop him.) The documentary presented by Mark Radcliffe, broadcaster and former producer on the John Peel show, tracks Indie music’s growth from the bedroom business record labels to the genre's burgeoning sales and increasing marketability.

Mark Radcliffe

 The first episode introduced me to labels I had never heard of: Postcard, Mute and Industrial; along with labels I had: 2 Tone, Rough Trade and Factory. Initially at least, all of these were run on a shoestring budget with the emphasis being on art over commerce. Tony Wilson, Factory Record’s impresario, famously lost money from the multi-million selling single, Blue Monday – the reason? the cover sleeve cut to resemble a floppy disc cost so much that they lost money on every record sold. These were businesses that weren’t run solely for profit but for love. Hilariously, Pete Waterman of Stock, Aitken and Waterman (SAW) also features: despite representing platinum selling artists, Kylie and Jason, they were still technically an independent label; consequently, the bizarre juxtaposition of seeing Jason Donovan sit alongside Jesus and the Mary Chain on the Indie Music Charts was an all too common feature.

Mark Radcliffe begins the retrospective by asking what is Indie: is it music independent of a major record company? is it a mindset? is it an aspiration? For me, it was a lifeline. I was a shy outsider at school unable to relate to the laddish culture around me; how I wish then I had Jarvis and Morrissey to guide me through those years, to make the social estrangement I felt feel normal, to make my decision to reject machismo and embrace books feel like the right one. But hey, what difference does it make? Non, je ne regret rien. I have them now. And I ain't ever going to let them go. 

The final episode of Music for Misfits: The Story of Indie concludes next Friday, BBC 4 at 10pm.