Concrete Island Discs (or, The Safety Zone)

In which The Author is making a list and checking it twice

In order to set the scene here, I need to take you back to 1974. In that year, J. G. Ballard's novel Concrete Island was published, giving me the inspiration for today's title.

It's the terrifying story of a motorist somewhere near London, whose car ends up some distance from the tarmac after a near-collision. Our hero lies in the bushes on the hard shoulder, with high-speed traffic shooting past on both sides. He's badly injured and waiting for help to arrive.

But help doesn't arrive.

After some time, our hero realises that he isn't alone. The 'concrete island' of the title is home to several other people who have got there in similar circumstances. With no hope of rescue, they've resigned themselves to living off roadkill and making shanties out of the rusting vehicles which litter the place. It's a typically bleak Ballard vision of mankind's defeat at the hands of technology. I probably wouldn't lend it to someone who enjoys Catherine Cookson, put it that way.

Another strand which has contributed to this entry is Radio 4's music and interview show Desert Island Discs, created in 1942 by its first presenter, Roy Plomley. It's a simple enough premise: each 'castaway' is invited to choose eight pieces of music which they couldn't live without if they were washed up on a desert island. (Or, as Kenneth Horne once put it, '… our only companions eight dreary gramophone records and an inexhaustible supply of Roy Plomley'.) They talk about their lives, and explain why the music would remind them of key people and events. They're also asked to choose a book and a luxury – and, finally, to select the one record they'd save from the waves.

Currently presented by Kirsty Young, Desert Island Discs is always an entertaining listen, regardless of whether or not you know anything about the castaway. If the guest is someone whose work you admire, it's a revealing insight into what makes him or her tick. I think I'm right in saying that almost the entire archive is available at the BBC website. Why not check it out for yourself? (Having said that, DRM and IP issues mean that you don't actually get to hear the music. It seems a bit like being invited to someone's house for dinner, and then being banished from the table for the main course.)

Anyway, on Xmas morning the castaway was Gareth Malone, choirmaster-turned-broadcaster and all-round good egg. I hadn't known he was the guest, as I hadn't looked at the radio listings, but I knew of Mr Malone's work getting Britain singing, so I stayed tuned.

And I found myself punching the air. I'll quote a couple of brief extracts. (I've downloaded the podcast, so I've transcribed them from that.)

KIRSTY YOUNG: This is a time of year, at Xmas time, when most people might be singing for the one and only time of the year, whether it's at school, or whether they go to a midnight service—

GARETH MALONE: I feel so sorry for those people.

KY: Do you?

GM: Yes, because people who limit their singing because of an idea of not being good enough … If you only get the car out of the garage once a year it's not going to do well; if you don't spin your hard drive often enough it's gonna crash. So you need to use the instrument, you need to know to breathe properly. Actually, we instinctively know how to make a noise – if there's a fire, you know how to shout 'fire', you know how to do it loudly enough to be heard, and singing is part of that, part of that very visceral communication. It's not something to fear, it's something to embrace … Fundamentally, I'm passionate about music and I'm about passionate about encouraging other people to be passionate about music.

KY: Samuel Barber's 'Agnes Dei' … was the piece you chose to introduce to a bunch of – I mean, to call them novices is overstating the case, these were people who'd never picked up a song sheet in their lives before, and you decided in one of your television programmes— Just to be clear, it's a six-minute piece of choral music with eight-part harmonies and it's in Latin.

GM: Yeah, yeah.

KY: Why did you do that?

GM: Because I think if you always do something that's safe and easy, I think people smell that. Y'know, if you say, 'Right, we're gonna do this thing, it might not be possible, it might be dangerous, it might be exciting,' I think there's a real imperative that people want to be involved …

The reason I became so excited when Mr Malone said these things is that he'd totally summed up my approach to karaoke. I do it purely because I enjoy it, and not because I'm ever going to try out for a Reality TV show. My friends Keith and Danelle do the same thing in the Lighthouse; so does Deano, who comes to the Cambrian on Friday nights; so do a fair number of the girls (and a few of the guys) who've turned up in the pubs since the first Black Friday this year and had a knock.

On the other hand, a fair number of my friends do take it incredibly seriously. If you watch Phillip, Clare, Chazza, or Tina and Bethan (mother and daughter neighbours of mine) strutting their stuff, you'd swear that, instead of facing a bunch of pissheads who can't work out why the jukebox has been switched off, they're staking their reputations in front of Messrs Cowell, Walsh et al.

Phillip has his handful of Elvis classics and one or two more recent songs. He certainly has the voice for it; unfortunately, his learning disability means that most of the time he's just singing his own idea of the words. (It's happened to us all, of course. Several times, I've attempted something which I thought I knew reasonably well, only to find that – according to the on-screen lyrics, anyway – I'd been singing a mondegreen for years.) Half the time, though, it just sounds as if Philvis has had one over the eight, like most pissed 'pub singers' who haunt the Valleys at weekends.

Clare also has a cracking voice, but seems to do the exact opposite from her brother. Even though she's been singing 'Cool Rider' (from Grease 2) for as long as I've known her, she continues to read from the screen as though she's coming to the material for the first time.

In fact, a few of the older guys commented on this last week, so I challenged her about it. While I don't have any acting or performing experience myself, I spent enough time sitting in on YES rehearsals to know some of the basic techniques required for stage work.

The next time we got together, I told Clare to face the audience and not the laptop, and only glance at the words if she needed a prompt. As I reminded her, if she's on stage in Merthyr College in the middle of a show, she won't have the lyrics available. The difference was obvious – not only did she look more confident, but she sounded much more polished as well. Instead of being hunched over a laptop, cuddling her mic, she was standing upright and belting out the words. A few other people remarked on the transformation, too.

On Tuesday night, my folk-rock friends Parcel of Rogues were doing a gig in the Cambrian. At one point they played 'Proud Mary', another of Clare's tried and trusted songs. I texted her and told her they should jam it at the Open Mic some time soon.

She texted back and said, 'Might do.'

I replied, 'It's time to lose the water wings, honey, you can manage the deep end now.'

In reality, of course, two or three pretty competent songs – plus backing vocals on a couple of Elvis songs, and a duet with me (in character) on 'Fairytale of New York' – isn't even the deep water. To alter the metaphor slightly, Clare's happy to hold hands with bigger boys who want her to start paddling properly, but constantly runs back to the beach whenever a big wave comes along.

The same is true for most of the gang who come to the Lighthouse on Thursdays, in fact. The vast majority already have their 'set list' in both senses of the term: it's not only a list of their set; it's also set in stone. Tina does her Cilla Black and Shirley Bassey standards; Bethan and Chazz do their modern pop stuff; Huntley does his Lionel Richie ballads … There are only a handful of us, like me and a couple of younger lads – both named Joe, oddly enough – who ever go off-piste and try something in the true spirit of the amateur game.

For example, when David Bowie died in January, I sang only four songs in the next karaoke: 'Changes', 'Ziggy Stardust', 'Heroes' and 'Modern Love'. I hadn't rehearsed any of them. I knew I could make a reasonable attempt at 'Ziggy Stardust', because I've jammed it a couple of times with guitarist friends. The other three were pretty much 'play it by ear and see what happens'. My usual material went on to the back burner for the night.

I did the same on Boxing Day (the day after George Michael passed away). I threw everything out in favour of 'Faith' and 'Wake Me Up Before You Go Go'.

Maybe it's something to do with the fact that the two Joes and I imbibed the Spirit of Punk very deeply, even if we never got into the music. Or maybe it's to do with the fact that we know we're never going to appear on TV – or even on the Coliseum stage – and so we haven't got anything to prove to anyone.

As well as those regulars who stay within the Safety Zone, we have guys like Adrian T., Martin, and Anthony S., who are actually already working the pub and club circuit. However, none of them play an instrument. Thirty years ago, when I first became a spectator, they'd have been been sitting on the bench beside me. They'd never have been able to get a booking in those days, regardless of how talented they are, because the backing tapes and portable equipment simply weren't available.

When they come along on a Thursday or Friday night, they're basically professionals playing the amateur game. Perhaps unkindly – and I know Adrian disagrees with my assessment of what they do – I call this sort of thing 'Professional Karaoke'. After all, you're just singing other people's songs over a backing track put together by a third party (usually a commercial company), and thus you're totally constrained by the limited nature of the beast. At least if you're playing a guitar or (more rarely) a keyboard, you have the flexibility to play about with the timing, or repeat a chorus, or add a little bit to the middle eight, or whatever takes your fancy. When you're at the mercy of the machines, they call the shots from start to finish.

And when you're not at the mercy of the machines, you're at the mercy of the audience who are scared of hearing anything outside the Great Valleys Songbook.

As a matter of fact, there are three editions of the Great Valleys Songbook currently in print: one for bands (in the black cover), and one each for male singers (blue cover) and female singers (pink cover). Like those loose-leaf legal textbooks we occasionally had to decline to order for customers, they take the form of 'continuous product'. This means that about four times a year the list gets updated to take account of the latest hits from the Simon Cowell and/or Diane Warren production lines.

If anyone dares to stray outside the narrow guidelines of the Great Valleys Songbook, they can look forward to being paid off and never booked again in that venue. In fact, the sheer predictability of the menu inspired me to create a game called Bar Band Bingo, which we used to play live on Dapper FM, our community radio station. I'd be in the pub on a Sunday evening, texting the latest cover version from the on-stage 'entertainment' to my mates in the studio, along with the number which I'd allocated to each song in my definitive list. The lads would read out the numbers, and it became a jolly jape to play each week.

Then I wondered if it would be possible to do it with Professional Karaoke as well, as I outlined in House Music.

In fact, on 1 August 2015, I took my notebook in one hand, my pen in the other, and my courage in both, and spent a fair chunk of the evening in the Lighthouse, road-testing the idea for myself. I've no idea who the bint in question was – simply that she was using the latest edition of the Pink Book. Transcribed verbatim, here are the results of that first (failed) experiment:

SNDCHK: Don't Stop fucking Believing
I COULDA LIVED THE REST OF MY LIFE WITHOUT EVER HEARING THIS SONG AGAIN IF IT HADN'T BEEN FOR YOU FUCKING KIDS!

1 I'M ALIVE (not the Hollies – some 20th century shit)

2 BE MY BABY

3 Even after she's introduced it I'm still none the wiser!
ALESSANDRO – LADY GAGA (eventually!)

4 VALERIE ACTUALLY BY The Zutons!

5 WTF? SOME MODERN SHITE I'VE NEVER HEARD BEFORE

6 MAMMA MIA – souped-up ABBA cover

POOR BINT DOESN'T KNOW NO ONE'S LISTENING

7 Even though she introduced it I'm still none the wiser. Some recent chart shit.

8 BUILD ME UP BUTTERCUP

9 STARFISH – NICKI MINGE

10 POKER FACE

11 HERO (M. CAREY)

INTERLUDE

12 SUMMER OF 69

13 NO IDEA!

14 PROUD MARY

15 SEX ON FUCKING FIRE

16 SOME MORE MODERN SHITE

17 MAN! I FEEL LIKE A WOMAN

18 TOTALLY LOST TRACK NOW

19 DA DOO RON RON

20 HEAVEN IS A PLACE ON EARTH

21 FUCKING KIDS [presumably the aforementioned Journey song]

At which point I went on a journey of my own – possibly to the Glosters.

As you can tell, for the experiment to succeed I would have needed someone like Chazza or Clare simply to fill in the blanks. I abandoned the idea as 'Good in theory, but needs further refinement', and never went back to it.

However, on Xmas Eve Clare and Philvis dragged me up to the Bonki on the grounds that there was 'a guitarist' there. It sounded promising. We caught the last bus from Aberdare, got there at about 7.15, and staked out a table at the far end. The 'guitarist' in question arrived about an hour later, set up his gear, and did a quick soundcheck before launching into his set. As before, I decided to make notes:

1 REM – Losing my Religion

2 Rod Stewart – Maggie May

3 Oliver's Army

4 Suspicious Bloody Minds

5 American Pie

Although, as no self-respecting music fan will be surprised to learn, he only played the first part of 'American Pie'. That's because this 'guitarist' was using backing tracks and a drum machine.

It meant that his set was precisely as constrained and inflexible as the sets performed by Professional Karaoke singers in pubs and clubs the length and breadth of the country. With no possibility of stepping outside this very limited field of play, he was just as robotic and uninspired as the rest of the weekend entertainers whom landlords insist on inflicting on their customers. In fact, I'd go as far as describing his set as Professional Guitar Hero – only with a real instrument, not some toy lookalike.

You'll be shocked to learn that, five songs in, we made our excuses and left.

And that's the standard of 'live entertainment' we can expect in most places at the arse-end of 2016, it seems. Even many musicians I know rarely stray from the Great Valleys Songbook (black cover) – the Spectrums and Parcel of Rogues are notable exceptions. Everybody else, it seems, is trousering good money for simply pretending to be a jukebox with a very limited database.

So, with all this in mind, I've compiled the first edition of my Concrete Island Discs – all the records which deserve to be chucked into the bushes at the side of a busy road, never to be heard again by man or beast. It's an incomplete list, because companies are releasing new shit every week, but as a rule of thumb, if your act includes at least one of them, you can expect to see me pull my own vanishing act within the first few bars. Have fun working out a set list without any of these …

• 'A Thousand Trees'
• 'Local Boy in the Photograph'
• 'More Life in a Tramp's Vest'
• 'Don't Stop Believing'
• 'Sweet Child o' Mine'
• 'Someone Like You'
• 'Quando Quando Quando'
• Where Do You Go To, My Lovely?'
• The entire Oasis backlist except for 'Don't Look Back in Anger'
• All of AC/DC's recorded output
• 'Proud Mary'
• 'Sax' by Fleur East
• 'Sweet Home Alabama'
• 'Freebird'
• 'Sweet Caroline'
• 'Chasing Cars'
• 'Run'
• 'Sex on Fire'
• 'Human'
• 'Mr Brightside'
• 'Hotel California'
• 'Simply the Best'
• 'Penny Arcade'
• 'American Trilogy'
• 'Crazy Train'
• 'Sledgehammer'
• 'I Wanna Dance With Somebody'
• 'All I Want for Xmas Is You'
• 'Uptown Funk'
• 'Dance With My Father'
• Everything involving Paul Carrack apart from his Roxy Music input

To be continued …