"Shit-Stopper Drains And Crocodile Skis" - John Cooper Clarke

Three Or Four Guy© Nobby pops his IoF© cherry with this timely and provocative screed about a skinny twat from up north, where it's grim. Take it away, th' Nobster!

I wouldn't say [sez Nobby - Ed.] I'm big on poetry, but according to my gig diary (does anyone else keep one?), I have seen Ivor Cutler, Linton Kwesi Johnston and Alex O'Connor (who?) once apiece and JCC three times, so I guess he qualifies as my favourite poet, and definitely the funniest.

I first encountered him on the John Peel Show (where else) in late 1977. It was his debut ep on Rabid Records “Suspended Sentence”, just another diverse act that was on the go in the "Punk Years". If you listened regularly to Peel, like I did, you’d realise that there was a lot more going on than just bash it out 1234 punk, and JCC is a good example. Someone that had been around for a while but was then brought to prominence by the scene that developed around it. Here's a clip from Tony Wilson's Granada TV show from a pre punk 1976 featuring JCC  being interviewed whilst working in the stores at Salford Tech including some live performances:

My memory of  JCC is seeing him sauntering on to the stage in his black suit, looking like a 1966 Bob Dylan with his piled up hair and dark glasses on the thinnest pair of legs you’d ever seen, carrying his plastic carrier bag stuffed full of notebooks. He would get his rhythm going by chomping on chewing gum, and then he'd be off at a rate of knots, with his broad mancunian accent " As I was walking down Oxford Road, dressed in what they called the mode...." or .."Outside the takeaway, Saturday night, a bald adolescent asked me out for a fight, he was no bigger than a twopenny fart, a deft exponent of the martial arts." The danger of laughing at one line was that you would miss the next.

Here [left - Ed.] is a flyer where he was supported by Joy Division, fellow mancs that he was linked with a lot, from their early days as Warsaw and later with New Order, but he also did many gigs with The Clash, Sex Pistols and Buzzcocks.

Reading his autobiography "I Wanna Be Yours" it was apparent that most of his well known poems were written well before the punk era, “I Married A Monster from Outerspace” being written in the mid sixties. I was also amazed to find that his first paid gig was at Bernard Manning's cabaret club, where he auditioned with Salome Malone, the Queen of the Ritz, who, memorably ".. fell off her stiletto heels, and broke her fucking neck" which  got him the gig because it appealed to Mr Manning's memories of that club.

His influences  seem to have come from essentially the same places as the pop art brigade, i.e. commercial mass culture, TV and films of the '50s and '60s, although he makes special reference to Edgar Allan Poe and Mad Comics. His English teacher gets a chapter to himself, and it was he who taught him the importance of reading poetry out loud “if it doesn’t sound any good it’s because it isn’t any good”. Another influence he acknowledges is the poetry of Cassius Clay.

During his heyday in the late 70's everyone thought that his fast delivery came from speed but if was in fact heroin which led to him sharing a flat with Nico and disappearing from the scene in the 80’s. Looking for drugs on a visit to Holland, Nico rang up her supplier over there who came up with the goods. Years later JCC was watching a film about Chet Baker and recognised him as the dealer!

His recorded output aint that extensive - three proper lps, a live semi official lp, a 10" live lp and a couple of singles and even those include many duplications. The work is a mixture of live solo performances and studio recordings with  The Invisible Girls, featuring Martin Zero Hannet and Vinni Reilly, with guest appearances from Bill Nelson and Pete Shelley. I'm always torn between the two different treatments. The live stuff is how I remember him best, but the musical backing does provide some variety and the best of it is excellent e.g. Beasley Street.

Does his stuff translate to an international audience? You'll have to tell me. There's a lot of dialogue that relates to Manchester alone, never mind England. Beasley Street in particular evokes the English 1970's urban environment full of parochial references such as the title of this screed, which (I think) refers to narrow drainpipe trousers and winklepicker shoes, but how many of you would recognise that? And who now remembers Keith Joseph?

So to the downloads: After a great deal of arguing amongst myself (I've got a split personality and I hate both of them) I've taken the live 10" lp "Walking Back To Happiness" added some more live tracks and then  compiled a separate album with a few of the music ones. Each track has retained it's original album sleeve so you can tell where they came from. Also included is a BBC Radio 4 documentary, which probably gives you better coverage of his career than I've managed here.

Nobby earns not only the grudging respect of his confreres with this swell screed and sumptuous blister-pack of deliverables, but also his own Trading Card, soon to appear in the sidebar! Oboy!