The image below is from, We Don’t Want the Peanuts We Want the Plantation, Dance Band‘s first cassette and booklet. The picture on the front was taken on 19th July 1982 (Joe had just turned 22) in Eldon Square Newcastle, at a rally in support of the Health Workers’ pay claim, 3 years into the Thatcher regime. The one on the back was taken at the ‘Back to Jarrow’ rally, organised by the Labour Party, on 1st November 1981. (The photographers were Pete Brabbam and Hugh Kelly).
It must be evident from these, how politically inspired, involved and motivated this, at the time, very original band was. We felt conscious of being part of a historical shift in the role of arts as political action, but on the other hand, the whole experience, playing gigs and ceilidhs both locally, around the UK and in the Netherlands also involved an anarchic spirit of fun, and silliness. No doubt The Old Rope String Band which Joe subsequently created, owed something to both elements.
In contrast, the precursor and inspiration for ‘WDWTPWWTPDB’, was an entirely hedonistic experience, ‘Pete & Joe’s Travelling Show’ in the summer of 1979 when we had only just met, aged 21 & 22 as students in Newcastle. We travelled, in Harlequin and Rapper Sword Dancer costumes respectively for three months through France Italy & Germany, busking and adventuring via tandem, unicycle, train, hitch-hiking and in a small fishing boat bought with busking money. Our ‘show’ consisted of songs, fire eating, juggling, clog-dancing, odd jokes & stories and various forms of music played on fiddles, mandolin, guitar, and clogs. We kept a journal in which we maintained a sort of playful delusion that we were medieval minstrels transported into the 20th Century, as one entry, penned by Joe, from the log book illustrates:
Friday 31st August 1979: “ Rose tardily and journeyed to the Great City of the Renaissance. We played to a good crowd outside La Catedral de Santa Maria del Fiore,- the main Piazza in Florence……This extract was penned when the full excitements of that strange land of Tuscanny were little known: methinks there are two Tuscannys – one of the people and one of the sheriff. We made music on the Ponte de Vecchio and were quickly stopped by the city guard. We made our way then to the cathedral where we again made joyous sound. A large band of people formed around: gold was coming forth and there was a happy clapping of hands. However just at this instant the armed militia again appeared and to the accompaniment of great booings chantings and hissings from the crowd, we were again ordered to stop. The vigilanti urbani then attempted to arrest one of our friends for sitting on the stone steps. Four of the sheriff’s horseless carriages then appeared along with a horseless horse. Amidst ravings from the crowd, two arrests were made quite brutally. We talked to a lad from Stoke and some young ladies from northern Germany and then, we most persecuted of troubadours, escaped by the back streets. “
Making music and just spending time with Joe was inspiring, musically and politically, but perhaps above all, for an unreasonable proportion of time was simply unforgettable fun!
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