Song For The Tribes

Song For The Tribes

“Blair and Gordon Brown made their careers from opposing Margaret
Thatcher but as soon as they got in power they ruled as Thatcherites
and celebrated it’s author. They professed to a concern for the poor
but enriched the wealthy. They joined George Bush and his
administration in imposing their will on foreign states by force of
arms. In a nutshell, politics is way too often the profession of not
practicing what it preaches.”
So says journalist Simon Jenkins.

 

Anyway!

 

One of the most pleasurable experiences for me while walking through
Glasgow city centre is coming across the groups of Goth teenagers that
congregate daily in Royal Exchange Square.

 

Envious of their youth, I thrill at seeing them in their style. And
all power to them as well, as within my experience of having visited
the nearby coffee shops and book stores for as long as I remember, I
have yet to witness any troublesome behaviour whatsoever from this
gathering tribe of outsider kids – uniformally dressed in black.

 

Neither have I for the record sensed any hostility of any sort coming
from them, and as much as they could possibly startle the odd four
year old, they are let’s face it hardly a threat to anybody.

 

In fact, if the experience I have had with my own visiting offspring
is anything to go by, these teens are inadvertently somewhat of a
tourist attraction. Just as in similar cases all over the world, from
Tokyo to London, and even Mexico City, anywhere really where the
Goths, Punks, Emo’s and Rockabilly types gather usually becomes quite
the tourist spot!

 

This being the case I was interested in some Glasgow news recently
stating that the presence of this Gothic congregation was a threat in
someways, with the upshot being that measures had been taken to
discourage and even displace the Goths from their longtime established
city centre haunt.

 

I howled with laughter to find that in order to dissuade the teens
from gathering, that some bright spark has decided to play non stop
classical music from some hung loudspeakers in proximity.

 

An act that was futile as the Goths absolutely unmoved by Vivaldi etc,
hung about regardless. (Surely everybody knows that you don’t clear
spaces by merely playing classical music and that Lou Reed’s masterly
“Metal Machine Music” was probably devised just for that!)
Did they also not realise the irony in that many of those very
classical composers were the outsiders of their days. The Goths and
Punks of their times most probably!

 

In all seriousness though there has been some dispute and without
knowing all the facts it would be wrong for me to judge right from
wrong. However speaking as someone who for more than three decades has used the odd eye liner pencil on occasion and intends to do so for
some time yet, then of course the chances are that if I had to choose
in most any debate, then most certainly I would come down on the side
of the Goths.

 

And why so? Well firstly, I am very fond of them with their usually
distinctive passive non aggressive vibe. More so I admire so much
about their exaggerated style and above all their musical culture.
(Especially the originals eg. Siouxie, Bauhaus, Robert Smith, Southern
Death Cult, as well as the then latter saints such as Marilyn Manson
and Nine Inch Nails.)

 

As such I was inspired to write a song about them and all others who
felt like I did when I was eighteen, self obsessed, felt victimised,
and hung about the very same Royal Exchange Square, dressed entirely
in death mass black,and  feeling that I belonged to a ‘lost
generation’ that was entirely misunderstood by all who came before.

 

The song is called ‘Song For The Tribes’ and was written ironically on
the eve of Tony Blair’s first election win when I felt wholeheartedly
sure that a new, more open, and honest kind of politics was emerging
in the UK for the first time in my life.

 

And how do I feel about that notion now?
I think I will leave that to the likes of Mr Jenkins, who in one or
two sentences say’s it all!

 

Jim Kerr

http://alterophobia.blogspot.com/2007/12/glasgow-alternative-teens-banned-from.html