Nine out of ten

"Walking down Portobello Road to the sound of reggae. I'm alive ..." What a fantastic piece of imagery that is by Caetano Veloso at the start of Nine Out Of Ten. It's such a lovely song. Transa is a special LP too. Caetano lived for a while around the Notting Hill area during the time he and Gilberto Gil were in London, in exile from the military dictatorship in Brazil at the end of the '60s. It's a time well documented in Caetano's remarkable book Tropical Truth. I think there's even a shot of Gilberto on the steps of Notting Hill tube station. Caetano in the book admits to feeling particularly vulnerable during his time in London, and it's a feeling he captures perfectly in his famous number London London, which has been one of the most frequently suggested contributions for this project. Our comrade PC wisely recommended Gal Costa's exquisite rendition. But it is Caetano's song, and even after nearly 40 years his delivery brings a tear to the eye ... "Green grass, blue eyes, grey sky, God bless".

Don't Be Mean

"I saw you out walking down Westbourne Grove. You caught my eye and your arm it rose. It rose in the sky oh everso high. But it wasn't my dear to wave to me. It was simply to hail a big black taxi. Which you jumped in as fast as you possibly could. Well you know my dear I'm not made of wood. And my name may be Birch dear but I'm not a tree. And I can see you ignoring me ..." sings Gina on Don't Be Mean, the shop window for the Raincoats' undervalued '90s return. If there is one group that evokes the adventuresomeness of the whole Rough Trade London W10/W11 beat boho cool it is the Raincoats and the way they turned pop inside out. While Rough Trade's history may have been over-sentimentalised (there's a lot to hate!) the Raincoats' work still surprises, and the Gina Birch documentary is a treat in store.

Carnival Song

“Tabasco sauce, Worcester sauce, Prince Buster, draught Guinness, Roy Orbison, Huddy Leadbetter, Chuck Berry, Woody Guthrie, Converse All Stars, Sta Prest, our founder, Elvis Presley, midnight movies at the Electric, Joe Orton, medical text books, William Faulkner, Allen Ginsberg, Francis Bacon (painter), William Burroughs’ Junkie (hate everything else by him), Dostoyevsky, Sylvia Plath, Diane Arbus, Burning Spear, early Stones, early Keith Hudson”. Another London list song? Nope. It's a list of influences cited by the Vincent Units in Zigzag May ’79. The Vincent Units, and splinter group the Tesco Bombers, were legends of the London W10/W11 scene in the post punk era, and were led by well connected wide boy and clown prince Neal Brown. The infamous Robin Banks in Zigzag turned them into cult heroes without anyone really hearing them. It would be a couple of years later that the Notting Hill (ex)centric classic Carnival Song appeared as a single on Y Records. Neal would become more involved with the art world as the years went by. You might recognise his name from the foreword to Bill Drummond's 45. More recently he has written a short study of Billy Childish. Among the groups associated with the Vincent Units back in the day would be the Raincoats and the Mo-Dettes (who played their first show supporting the Vincent Units at the Acklam Hall) ...

Teddy Boy Calypso

"Every night they walking about in a band attacking woman and man ..." Some enlightened thoughts on apt punishments are shared by Lord Invader in his Teddy Boy Calypso. Bring back the cat o'nine tails! That'll learn 'em. Sadly it wasn't all getting down to Vince Taylor and Terry Dene. And teddy boys did have a bit of a name for getting involved in racist attacks, becoming fascist pawns, and such actions ignited the 1958 race riots in Notting Hill. The following year in the same area Kelso Cochrane, an immigrant from Antigua, was killed by a gang of white men. No one was ever convicted but it was claimed Oswald Mosley's British Union Movement were responsible. Here modern day calypsonian Alexander D. Great pays tribute to Kelso.

Three Babylon

"Three babylon try to make I&I run ..." sings Aswad on Three Babylon, casting a wary eye around their Ladbroke Grove locale. Brinsley Forde's words eerily echo the ending of Babylon, the great Franco Rosso film, where he defiantly chants over the uplifting Aswad track Warrior Charge while the police break down the doors of the dancehall. Aswad unlike a lot of the musicians who took up residence in the W10/W11 areas were really local lads, but they did reach out and interact and the Aswad sound reflects a wide mix of influences in a way others are said to but rarely do. It wasn't just a punky reggae party, either. There was a lot of jazz, funk and all sorts in there. That's the way it should be. For example, the cover of The Face in April 1981 featured Adam Ant, The Beat, Polecats, Gang of Four, Selecter, Delta 5, Lounge Lizards, Aswad, PiL, juju, afrobeat and highlife. Now that's what I call pop music.

London Hooligan Soul

"Fila, Lacoste, Tacchini, Armani, Lois, Nike and Kappa. Taxing the rich and famous and rushing the Burberry door. Scoring a draw down the Saints. A pick up from the SPG. Blair Peach a crying shame. The NF and unmarked police vans. Who is to blame? Clash city rockers and white men in Hammersmith Palais. Road trips to Caister, Soul Tribes ..." Thus goes the elegy for lost youth that is London Hooligan Soul by the Ballistic Brothers. It's part of a grand tradition that is the art of the list song. Personally, I'm a sucker for 'em. And they are bloomin' hard to get right. The Ballistics (London club land faces Ashley Beadle, Rocky & Diesel, Dave Hill) evoke their own youth on this title track of their Junior Boy's Own debut LP. Any one else's youth is just as valid, and there will be others featured here. But there are some lovely touches included nevertheless. The reggae record shop Peckings, the Jay brothers' sound system at Carnival, The Jam at Wembley ... "A poll tax riot going on. They have sold my country..."

The Battle of All Saints Road

"A couple of years ago down Ladbroke Grove. The dreads uptight sitting on a treasure trove. A skinny white dude came in and took a chair. He had a black leather jacket and greased back hair. Well they ain't seen nothing like it down the Mangrove. Plugged his guitar into a flat iron stove Now all the brothers they began to stare. Hillybilly cat blew 'em on their derriere ..." Oh those London derrieres. The Battle of All Saints Road is Mick Jones mythography at its very best. Rastas and rockabilly kids outlaws together. The Harder They Come meets The Loveless. Rebels united against the cops and yuppies. The Paul Simenon cover painting for the Tighten Up 88 LP this track comes from captures the mood just right ...

London's Brilliant

"Elvis C you shouldn't have written her solo elpee. It should have been me ..." claims Lawrence during his hymn to Wendy James from Go-Kart Mozart's Instant Wigwam and Igloo Mixture. He suggests she's second only to "the very, the very great Joan Jett". It's a point of view Tom Vague in his Notting Hill timeline seems not to agree with. I mean the Wendy James being great thing, rather than the Elvis C part. Interestingly Elvis Costello has contributed quite a few London songs to our collection. Some may be too obvious to use, and some will, ahem, be on parade here, while some others are less than obviously London related like the great Man Out Of Time and Fish And Chip Papers. One of Elvis' songs for Wendy was The Clash mythography referencing London's Brilliant ...

One Man Band

"Well everbody knows down Ladbroke Grove you have to leap across the street. You can lose your life under a taxi cab. You gotta have eyes in your feet. You find a nice soft corner. And you sit right down. Take up your guitar and play. But then the law man comes says move along ..." I very much doubt I would have made the connection between Leo Sayer's One Man Band and the wider Notting Hill area without a prompt from Tom Vague's timeline. The funny thing is how I must have heard this song goodness knows how many times but it never really registered as a London song. Odd as I loved the first few Leo Sayer hits, and as a pre-teen adored Leo's early pierrot image. I can remember feeling desperately let down when he abandoned that look and went for the grown-out curls. As for songs about busking? Well, the great Orson Welles made a remarkable piece of film with a London theme where he plays nearly all the parts. And it's called One Man Band, which I believe is the title he wanted for his autobiography. It was a lost piece of film which resurfaced in a documentary after his death but it will haunt you now ...

Notting Hill Gate

"Things look great in Notting Hill Gate" claims Quintessence with the optimism that comes from meditation and mysticism. Getting it straight in Notting Hill Gate at the end of the '60s freak scene, this was the quintessential hippy outfit, jamming and searching, with amusingly direct connections to Factory Records. At this point, with the focus on the environs of Notting Hill it is only appropriate to pay tribute to the pioneering pop-situ work of wordaholic Tom Vague and his remarkable Notting Hill timeline. There is a whole raft of writers on the fringes of popular culture and the serious art world like Tom Vague, Stewart Home, and so on whose industriousness amazes me. Anyway, this Quintessence track dates from just after I Was Lord Kitchener's Valet and all that ...