John Cooper Clarke, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, July 9th 2010

So was this a gig or not? There was no music, no band and John Cooper Clarke doesn’t sing. It was also part of the Southbank’s London Literature Festival. This included a Brazilian film-maker discussing her documentary, a smattering of Brazilian jazz and two events with truly horrible names: the ‘Litweeter Festival’ and the ‘Story Slam’. God forbid a literature festival should confine itself to, well, literature.

From the literary perspective, yes, JCC’s a poet, but he’s also a bit of a stand-up and he used to be backed by a band, the Invisible Girls (including Martin Hannett on bass and guest appearances from Bill Nelson and Pete Shelley) – I remember back in the 70s enjoying my brother’s copy of Disguise In Love, with the immortal tracks Readers Wives, Psycle Sluts and (I Married A) Monster From Outer Space. So, yes, it’s a gig.

Mr P was keen to come along, as JCC’s acerbic poem Evidently Chickentown appears in the first pages of Mr P’s now burgeoning commonplace book (and thanks to Mr P for the ethereal photo – left). The two of us took our seats and enjoyed a good hour-and-a-half of gags, daft observations, ranting verse and more from ‘the bard of Salford’. The gags are mostly crap – not that the audience minds – and the observations are those of a man who spends much of the day watching TV (‘GMTV? Stands for “Give Me The Valium!”‘). Actually, not all of the gags are crap. He spieled about ‘health and safety’, before observing, ‘Those ancient Greeks didn’t care for health and safety – a cyclops and a unicorn? That’s a f***ing accident waiting to happen…’

It’s the poems that form the heart of the show, though, and what I like about his material is how he delights in words and phrases – unusual ones, ordinary ones and everything in between. In this he reminds me very much of Mark E Smith (indeed JCC’s often supported The Fall in concert) in his appetite for a certain richness of language. There’s a lot in both of them of the auto-didact’s verbal peculiarities that nevertheless hit the mark. And there’s no better display of JCC’s talents than perennial favourite Beasley Street:

Vince the ageing savage
Betrays no kind of life,
But the smell of yesterday’s cabbage
and the ghost of last year’s wife,
Through a constant haze
of deodorant sprays,
He says… retreat,
Alsatians dog the dirty days
Down the middle of Beasley Street…
People turn to poison,
Quick as lager turns to piss,
Sweethearts are physically sick
Every time they kiss,
It’s a sociologist’s paradise,
Each day repeats,
Uneasy, cheasy, greasy, queasy
… beastly, Beasley Street.

Not content with resting on his laureate’s laurels, JCC has updated the poem to reflect the upward mobility of modern Manchester (and possibly Salford) but, with his eye, he’s not fooled by appearances – here’s a bit of Beasley Boulevard:

The Hoxton fin
With a nervous trim
And a fragrant disregard,
It’s an urban splash-art ghetto gym
Beasley Boulevard…
Anything could happen
But it hardly ever does,
There’s a pub but the regulars are barred,
Nobody there to harsh your buzz
On Beasley Boulevard…

He’s a unique talent, but not getting any younger. A sad note of the evening was his mention of the passing of Chris Sievey aka Frank Sidebottom, his long-time pal and collaborator. But old age holds no fear for JCC. He alluded to the famous Dylan resemblance, but said instead, ‘These days, my rock star looks make me perfect as Ron Wood’s decoy – and believe me, that Jo packs a hell of a punch…’ And as for his new passport photo, he commented, ‘My face looks like that of a man whose obituary ends with the words, “… before turning the gun on himself.”‘ Brilliant stuff.

Here’s a clip of Evidently Chickentown used as a Sopranos ending: