THE SARTORIAL ELEGANCE OF SERIE A: HELLAS VERONA, 1992-95 [UHLSPORT]

Associazione Calcio Hellas was named in honour of the Hellenic Republic at the suggestion of Professor Decio Corubolo, who taught Greek at the Liceo ginnasio statale Scipione Maffei. Rather than wearing the colours that this association implied, the club opted for black and white halved shirts. The year this happened – 1903 – football was only played professionally within the regions of Piedmont, Lombardy and Liguria, and so A.C. Hellas had to content itself with friendly games against local sides. By the time they found themselves competing in the Prima Categoria (Emilia-Veneto division) in 1910, they were sporting the colours of the city of Verona, derived from the municipality’s coat of arms – a yellow cross against a blue background.

In 1919 A.C. Hellas merged with F.C. Verona to become Football Club Hellas Verona. Ten years later, at the behest of the fascist regime, two more teams were assimilated: Bentegodi and Scaligera. The resulting enterprise was retitled Associazione Calcio Verona, which may or may not have been intended as an anti-Greco gesture (by 1940 Italy and Greece would be at war with each other). Unfortunately, Hellas Verona had just finished Group B of the Divisione Nazionale in 13th place, thus failing to qualify for Serie A’s inaugural season.

World War II saw A.C. Verona relegated to Serie C, although they were back in Serie B by the end of it. In the meantime they experimented with a number of configurations – such as grey shirts with a horizontal blue and yellow band around the middle in 1946-47 – before settling for yellow shirts and blue shorts.

After coming close in 1948, Verona were promoted to Serie A in 1956. To celebrate they adopted to a kit resembling that of Boca Juniors, but were subsequently relegated. The following year Verona absorbed yet another local team, by the name of A.S. Hellas. Sensing an opportunity to connect with its past, the club rechristened itself Associazione Calcio Hellas Verona. Another change or colours: blue shorts, white jerseys with blue sleeves, and hint of yellow adorning the neckline. It’s uncertain how long they persisted with this arrangement but it appears that by the end of the decade their shirts were once again yellow.

Hellas Verona returned to Serie A in 1968 wearing blue and yellow vertically striped jerseys paired with black shorts – had been since 1964. The team’s second spell in Italy’s top flight was relatively successful, lasting six consecutive seasons. In 1970 they reverted to yellow shirts with blue trim, before switching to blue shirts with yellow trim the following year. Shorts were by now generally white.

1984-85

The strip Verona wore during their title winning campaign of 1984-85 is considered to be one of their best. Manufactured by Adidas and sponsored by Canon, it differed slightly from previous kits in that the shorts were also blue while the shirts incorporated yellow pinstripes. Ricoh replaced Canon in 1986, then Hummel took over from Adidas in 1987. The partnership with Hummel lasted three years, culminating in relegation. Adidas stepped back into the fold, the club were immediately promoted, whereafter Verona hooked up with German firm Uhlsport.

Verona’s kit for 1991-92 was mediocre. All blue with a yellow collar and yellow rectangles running down the outside edge of the arms, the sponsor, Rana, printed in a white, rounded uppercase font, it looked cheap. Predictably, the away kit was a mere inversion of the home. However, there existed a superfluous third shirt comprising the same yellow and blue stripes that had been worn during the second half of the 1960s. Relegation ensued, but the jersey was reappropriated for home use the following season.

The shirt itself adhered to the same template Uhlsport were using for U.S. Cremonese. The stripes were of roughly the same gauge, the fabric was micropatterned in the same manner, both had collars, and the manufacturer’s logo and club’s badge were sewn on, except the sponsor’s name was black. The badge is of particular interest. In 1984, club president Ferdinando Chiampan had commissioned the advertising agency Orti Manara to come up with a new insignia. The chosen design included two mastiffs facing away from each other, joined in the middle by a staircase/ladder – symbols relating to the local heraldry – to form a stylised V, encapsulated within a sort of rhombus. The first iteration had the mastiffs and the edging rendered in yellow. Uhlsport inverted the colour scheme and added the colours of the Italian flag within the top-left border and ‘Verona F.C.’ in the one diametrically opposite.

The Uhlsport years were ineffectual. The reason the word ‘Hellas’ had been omitted from the revamped badge was because in February 1991 the club had to re-register under a different name to avoid bankruptcy. In 1995 they got their old name back, swapped Uhlsport for Errea, were promoted and then relegated again. It would get worse before it got better, and Hellas Verona are currently enjoying a second consecutive season in Serie A, their kit supplied by Macron. 

THE SARTORIAL ELEGANCE OF SERIE A: U.S. CREMONESE, 1992-95 [UHLSPORT]

 

As is often the case, Cremonese haven’t always worn their current colours. In 1903, the year the club came together, they wore white shirts adorned with a lilac collar, paired with black shorts and socks. Cremonese was a mere sporting association back then, and it’s not even certain they played any football. This changed in 1910, around the time they changed their name to Unione Sportiva Cremonese. Football was catching on, and the following year the team appointed a coach by the name of Nino Gandelli, with aim of playing the sport competitively. It seems he took the role seriously enough, recruiting the best local talent he could find, and by 1912 they'd signed up with the Federazione Italiana Giuoco Calcio (FICG).

Ahead of the 1913-14 Promozione, U.S. Cremonese merged with the recently formed Associazione Calcio Cremona. A new strip was in order, and it was towards the city’s heraldry that they looked for inspiration. Cremona’s coat of arms consists of a shield split down the middle, with silver and red horizontal stripes on one side and on the other a depiction of an arm holding aloft a golden ball. For now, the colours would do: grey shirts with red trim, to be worn with white shorts.

Cremonese’s first season was a success, winning promotion into the Prima Categoria at the first attempt. The following year’s campaign was mediocre, and when Italy joined The Great War in 1915 so did many of their players (most notably goalkeeper Giovanni Zini, who served as a stretcher-bearer but died in Cividale del Friuli in 1915 after contracting typhus).

In 1919, Cremonese assimilated another local team by the name of Football Club Aurora. Despite bolstering their ranks the club finished bottom of their six-team group, which ordinarily would have resulted in relegation back to the Promozione. The Prima Categoria was in effect a qualifying round whereby teams competed in regional divisions to gain entry into the national semi-finals. The regional committees operated with complete autonomy, determining how many teams over however many leagues were allowed to take part. Ahead of the 1920-21 season, rather than reduce the number of entrants, as the FICG and a few of the bigger clubs were keen to do, Lombardia elected to move from three groups of six to six groups of four, making room for Cremonese.

The next five years were spent playing in a restructured Prima Divisione. Then in 1926 tensions between the FICG and Confederazione Calcistica Italiana (CCI) finally gave way to the establishment of a national league, under the auspices of the (Fascist) Direttorio Divisioni Superiori (DDS). At the same time Cremonese embellished their grey shirts with a red cross, only to finish their group in ninth place. Once more, this should have been low enough to see them relegated, but an enforced merger between Sampierdarenese and Andrea Doria (albeit a temporary one) freed up and extra space.

In 1928 Cremonese tinkered with their strip for a third time, exchanging the cross for a horizontal stripe wrapped around the chest. Seventh place was enough to qualify for the preceding season’s inaugural single-group format – in other words, Serie A – from which they were immediately relegated. They continued to play in Serie B up until 1938, whereupon they dropped down into Serie C. In 1942 Cremonese returned to Serie B but were again relegated in 1951. For their 50th anniversary, they wore grey and red quartered shirts before finally settling for the stripes worn to this day.

 

The 1960s were spent playing in Serie C with the occasional foray into Serie D. The 1970s saw some improvement, culminating in promotion to Serie B in 1977 – the same season that saw Cremonese decked out in red shirts with a single grey stripe descending vertically from left shoulder. Relegation swiftly followed, but by 1981 they were back playing in Serie B.

In 1984 Cremonese finally made a return to Serie A after a 54 year absence. Unfortunately, the man who scored most of the goals that got them there – a certain Gianluca Vialli – was subsequently sold to Sampdoria. His replacement, the Brazilian forward Juary, made little impact and the club finished bottom of the table. But Cremonese appeared to have turned a corner and over the course of the next decade were promoted to Serie A on four separate occasions, oscillating between the top two tiers of Italian football. In the first instance their gear had been supplied by Puma. The second time around it was ABM (1988-89) and then Patrick (1990-91). For 1992-93’s successful push for promotion the kit was supplied by German sports manufacturer Uhlsport.

Uhlsport made shirts for a number of Italian football teams in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, most notably Inter and Bologna, as well as Verona and Brescia. They all came with collars, as did most shirts tailored towards the Italian market at that time. In truth, the jersey Uhlsport came up with was not so different to the ones that ABM and Patrick had provided before them. There were, however, a few compelling disparities.

First off, ABM and Patrick never bothered with appending the club’s crest. In ABM’s case, this may have come down to financial expediency, given that ABM were attaching crests to the shirts of Fiorentina, Torino, Pescara, Palermo. In any case, the absence of a badge cheapened the jersey. Moreover, Cremonese had redesigned their crest in 1985, and it was worthy of attachment: a simplified rendering of a golden ball held aloft, as depicted in the city’s coat of arms, with a diagonal red and grey bend (sinister) behind it. (When Uhlsport handed over to Puma in 1997, the club reverted to its traditional emblem.)

Second, the team’s sponsors during Patrick and ABM’s tenures did not present as nicely as the one that adorned the Uhlsport shirts – local retailer Moncart. It’s not that the company name was written in a particularly distinctive font, just that the simplicity of Moncart’s sans-serif, uppercase lettering worked well in this instance.

Finally, Uhlsport had recently discovered the art of micro-patterning. To be fair, this was a relatively recent phenomenon, and it’s debatable whether Inter’s shirt would have benefitted from it, but in the case of Cremonese it combined well with the colours, muting them slightly.
 

In 1995-96 cured-meat specialist Negroni took over sponsorship from Moncart, Enrico Chiesa returned to his parent-club, Sampdoria, and U.S. Cremonese were relegated. But I Grigiorossi had survived three consecutive seasons in Serie A, a feat not bettered by them before or since, and they did it wearing a shirt of some distinction.
 

LINER NOTES: THE LOCKDOWN TAPES [2020]

 

    1.     Side Street Walker – Dolly Mixture
    2.     Splashing Along – Jesse Garon & The Desperadoes
    3.     Bad Night at The Whiskey – The Byrds
    4.     I am So Blue – The Poets
    5.     Four Women – Nina Simone
    6.     George Hamilton’s Dead – The Golden Dawn
    7.     The Helicopter Spies – Swell Maps
    8.     No (Personal) Connection – Soft Walls
    9.     Stepping Stones – Johnny Harris
    10.   A Ra – Joao Donato
    11.   Nonstop Disco Powerpack – Beastie Boys
    12.   McFlurry – Sleaford Mods
    13.   Dry the Rain – The Beta Band
    14.   French Press – Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever
    15.   Televised Mind – Fontaines D.C.
    16.   In Dreams – Peggy Sue
    17.   Black and Brown Blues – Silver Jews
    18.   Plastic Bird – Galaxie 500
    19.   Sand – Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood
    20.   Old World – The Modern Lovers
    21.   Broadway Jungle – The Maytals
    22.   Glue – Bicep
    23.   Leave the Planet – Galaxie 500

 
 
It happened quickly. On Tuesday, 17 March, I was advised that my place of work was likely to close within a week, by the afternoon this became a certainty, then on Wednesday it did. At the same time the Government was advocating that the public avoid communal spaces. The pubs around my way were noticeably quieter, although in central London they were reportedly as busy as ever. Come Friday, pubs, bars, restaurants, cafes and gyms were ordered to shut up shop. You could still walk the streets freely, but then that changed too. On the 23rd it was announced that you could only leave the house for the purpose of buying victuals or for daily exercise. In other words, lockdown. Airplanes continued to offload passengers unchecked.

In December, before COVID-19 officially became a thing, Dolly Mixture reissued the album Demonstration Tapes and also put out Other Music, a collection of alternative takes and unreleased demos. By the end of the month these limited pressings had sold out, but not before I got my hands on a pair. They are splendid records and it was hard to choose just one song for inclusion on my annual compilation. 'Side Street Walker' is as good a choice as any and functions well as a lead-off track.

Lockdown coincided with a bout of unseasonably warm weather. This was something of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, being out of doors in the sunshine kept people's spirits up, on the other it meant that parks and greens were mobbed, which defeated the object. The roads, though, were clear and I cycled into town regularly on a single-speed bike I'd purchased in February. I also found myself going to the supermarket on an almost daily basis, savouring the reduced capacity. By night the streets were deserted and the air smelt fresh. In these respects, lockdown was a rather pleasant experience.

There’s only so much cycling and shopping you can do in a day, under any circumstances, so when my partner was summoned back to school in late April, to supervise the children of key-workers and provide online lesson plans for everyone else’s, I had to contrive alternative ways to while away the days. One idea was re-watch My Secret World: The Story of Sarah Records, which was a more satisfying experience the second time around. This precipitated a series of email exchanges between myself and the chap who introduced me to Sarah Records, who then passed on a link to a website screening Teenage Superstars. This documentary focuses on the independent music scene in Glasgow from 1982 to ’92 and features the likes of Teenage Fanclub, The Pastels, The Vaselines, BMX Bandits. A group called The Shop Assistants are mentioned along the way, and I asked the chap who introduced me to Sarah Records whether they were worth bothering with. He thought not, which surprised me, and instead pointed me in the direction of Jesse Garon & The Desperadoes, an Edinburgh band from the same era. I was indifferent to the song he provided as an example but found another that I liked a lot: 'Splashing Along', the group’s debut single, dating back to October 1986.

I uncovered 'Bad Night at the Whiskey' by The Byrds in April. I was trying to track down one of Roger McGuinn’s better haircuts and found it on a programme called Playboy After Dark, hosted by Hugh Hefner. The Byrds play 'You Ain't Goin' Nowhere' and 'This Wheel's On Fire', the latter taken from the 1969 album Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde, a record I’d previously ignored; Chris Hillman and Gram Parsons had recently left The Byrds to form The Flying Burrito Brothers and only McGuinn remained from the original line-up, so I doubted its quality. The band’s performance on Hefner’s show corrected my mistake. Clarence White, who had worked as a session musician on The Byrds’ previous three albums, was by now a fully paid-up member, while John York replaced Hillman on bass and Gene Parsons took over from Kevin Kelly on drums. The Whiskey in question is a club called Whisky a Go Go in West Hollywood, California, where The Byrds once performed badly. We don’t know what was so bad about it because the lyrics pertain to something else entirely.

I’d been furloughed and made the decision to sell some of my lesser played records, effectively so I could purchase others. One of the discs I elected to get shot of was a compilation entitled The Clouds Have Groovy Faces, released via the Bam-Caruso imprint in 1986. As the title suggests, it’s a compendium of 1960s psychedelia, and fairly obscure psychedelia at that, but not the best. 'I Am So Blue' by The Poets is the standout track, so I added it to this playlist for posterity. (Readers of my liner notes may recall that The Poets kicked off my 2005 anthology with 'That’s the Way It’s Got to Be'.)

The Nina Simone tune came later after listening to BBC Radio 6 in the company of my Cornish friend on a Sunday afternoon, drinking cans of lager and a parting shot of Drambuie, which became a kind of (socially distanced) lockdown ritual. I’d always found Nina Simone intriguing but never came across anything by her that especially appealed. In June I did. 'Four Women' is the only song on the 1966 album Wild is the Wind that she wrote herself – a perfectly normal state of affairs within genre. It’s an emotive tune but delicately rendered, until Nina lets rip with the last line: 'MY NAME IS PEACHES!'

 
Early May, and there is cautious cause for optimism. Despite the Government’s manipulation of the statistics (in which direction remains unclear) reported deaths ‘with’ COVID-19 have been on a downward trend getting on for three weeks. In other news, the gormless article we call our Prime Minister is back at work having spent a week in intensive care, and another two recuperating, after an attack of the covoids.

There are generally two schools of thought concerning the efficacy of lockdown. The first – and it seems to be where most people stand – is that we were a good two weeks late in shutting things down but have managed to contain the virus and less people are dying. The other is that COVID-19 has been doing the rounds since the turn of the year, many of us have already had it asymptomatically, that the whole thing is a waste of time and we’re going to be worse off for it in the long run; we will be poorer and more people are going to die as an indirect result of lockdown than would’ve otherwise perished from the disease itself.

I’ve just been into Richmond to post my sold copy of Stevie Wonder’s Music of My Mind and to pick up groceries, and it looked like an awful lot of people had the same idea. Yet we’re only in what I’m calling the second phase of lockdown and we’re told there’s still a very real threat lurking out there. Is everybody bored of staying in, or has there been a shift in their thinking?

Placing 'George Hamilton’s Dead' by The Golden Dawn directly after 'Four Woman' works surprisingly well. It’s one of a number of tracks that grabbed me when re-watching My Secret World: The Story of Sarah Records. I cannot understand why the chap who introduced me to Sarah Records never made me aware of it, for it amuses in a way that satisfies the both of us. The song also dispels the myth that Sarah was all about jangly guitars and heightened sensitivity. (The same goes for 'Dirty Mags' by Blueboy, another new find that I came very close to including on this compilation.)

I’d been meaning to look into Swell Maps for ages, so when Stephen Pastel alluded to them in Teenage Superstars I got on the case. They only recorded two albums, the second being 1980’s …In “Jane from Occupied Europe”, which I’d like to buy on the strength of the title alone. I can’t find a copy on-line, so for now I’ve downloaded 'The Helicopter Spies', the fifth track from its first side. Sounds like Magazine, but better.

In 2020 Soft Walls released Not as Bad as it Seems on vinyl (it was available on cassette in 2019). I pre-ordered the record in December and it arrived late January. This was supposed to tally with seeing them in April but the gig was cancelled outright. Perhaps when all this is over I’ll try and get down to Brighton and see them, because they don’t come to London very often.

 

June: the weather has become unsettled, and it seems that lockdown is entering its third phase. Pubs and cafes are still shut, although some are offering take-outs. Non-essential shops have yet to open but are preparing for it. Museums, galleries, cinemas, theatres, hairdressers and sports and leisure facilities remain resolutely closed. On the streets, however, life appears to have returned to how it once was. A number of factors have contributed to this: a declining infection/death rate; a relaxing of the rules regarding meeting up with other households in an external setting; Dominic Cummings showing a disregard for  the regulations and the Government sticking by him, the social contract broken.

Richmond Green is proving to be a particularly pleasing environment. Despite the heavy clouds and occasional rain, it is fairly warm and there’s a pent-up energy about the place. The Cricketers is selling takeaway draught, although financially it makes sense to bring your own. Towards the end of the month the heat begins to build again. While I cycle to Parsons Green to meet up with a couple of my bouldering buddies, half a million people travel down to Dorset to hang around on beaches. That’s the price the Conservatives pay for letting their PR man keep his job.

I don’t really get the point of Twitter, but I’m on there nonetheless. If I wasn’t then I may never have found out about the Scottish composer/arranger/producer Johnny Harris. Someone had been playing the album Movements in their car and tweeted a link to Harris’s impressive cover of 'Paint it Black' by the Stones; further investigation proved another track, the self-penned 'Stepping Stones', to be more so. It's hard to know what to call this sort of music but there are elements of jazz, rock, and even funk, with a psychedelic undertone. You can imagine it appearing on the soundtrack to a film set in the swinging sixties.

The guy who used to own a pager now owns a boat. Prior to lockdown we saw Das Boot on it and the other day we watched Jaws. After watching Jaws we put on music. The guy who used to own a pager was under the impression that he introduced me to Joao Donato around the period we were listening to the Blue Brazil series (Blue Note in a Latin Groove). That was approximately 20 years ago so it’s possible he did, although of the two of us I have the stronger memory. I don’t recall having heard 'A Ra' so it can go on this compilation.

In between watching films documenting obscure indie-pop and hanging out on boats, I’ve been reading the Beastie Boys Book, its hard-backed 570 pages having remained undisturbed on my shelf since December 2018. The parts that reference the trio’s final record, Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, made me realise how little I’ve listened to it, which is something else I’ve put right. The album's concept was to use invented samples that were subsequently credited to fictional songs by imagined artistes. 'Nonstop Disco Powerpack' is the exception, which is a shame because it’s the best track on the album.

It was my birthday the other week so I’ve got the Sleaford Mods’ compilation All That Glue to listen to, personally delivered by one of the chaps from Eel Pie Records. I’m familiar with about half the double-album's content. I know and like 'Fizzy', and contemplate including it on this compendium, but decide that the novelty of either 'Snake It' or 'McFlurry' would be more appropriate, and opt for the latter.
 

Das Boot

Pubs have been permitted to re-open as of the 4th of July. Some will but others won’t, perhaps because they’ve not been given enough notice to sufficiently prepare, or maybe because they want to see if it’s worth the hassle. Many people are against it. Others – myself included – are enjoying drinking in parks, on greens, in gardens, and feel ambivalent. Moreover, this latest liberty comes with terms and conditions: table service, no standing, strict social distancing and prodigious amounts of hand sanitizer.

A few weeks before lockdown, Mr Wilkinson and I were climbing at Urban Ascent near Parsons Green when a song played we both recognised but couldn't name. It came to me later: 'Dry the Rain' by The Beta Band. Smashing tune and the way it starts off allows it to follow on from Sleaford Mods quite freely.

'French Press' by Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever sounds like Shaun Ryder singing over War on Drugs if Shaun Ryder could actually sing a bit. They’re an Australian 5-piece incorporating three guitarists, not counting bass, and 'French Press' is the title track of an EP they issued in 2017. I discovered them at the beginning of April by way of another track of theirs called 'Cars in Space'. I preferred 'French Press' and decided early on that I wanted this tune to appear further down the running order, due to its uplifting nature (musically at least; the lyrics concern estranged siblings).

Since the release of their debut LP a little more than a year ago, Fontaines D.C. have told us they’ve been kicking back to the sounds of the Beach Boys. You wouldn’t know it from the single 'Televised Mind', nor from the two singles that preceded it. 'Televised Mind' is a ridiculously simple ditty, but I kept hearing it on the radio throughout the summer and was slowly won over by its sheer doggedness.

I happened upon 'In Dreams' by Peggy Sue listening to the radio with my Cornish friend just days before lockdown. Peggy Sue are in fact two ladies from Brighton, and their music sounds a bit like Dolly Mixture as if produced by Phil Spector. As with 'French Press', it occurred to me that this tune would be better placed towards the end of this compilation, marking the point at which I begin to wind things down.

The actor and musician John Henry Westhead – best known for playing Olaf the Russian Metalhead in the art-house comedy film Clerks – lives somewhere around my way. I know this because he’s posted songs relating to Isleworth on YouTube, and I’ve seen him drinking in the Red Lion. He's also part of a two-man band called The Shed Dwellers and there’s footage on YouTube of them paying tribute to the late David Berman at the Cross Lances in Hounslow. This is how I came by the song 'Black and Brown Blues' by Berman’s old band, Silver Jews.
 
Dissatisfied with my Levi’s denim jacket I started looking on eBay for another. I searched specifically for the slimmer fitting 70500, identified one that was 'new with tags', made an offer, was counter offered, paid for it and then sold my 72334 to someone in Aberdeen for the same price – a neat piece of business. For some reason I associate denim jackets with a certain type of indie music, and I ended up mulling over the gaps in my knowledge regarding the group Galaxie 500 and then buying their second album, On Fire. An ostensibly dull turn of events, but it's worth pondering how one seemingly innocuous thing can lead to another. Consider also the possibility that anyone reading this might go about acquiring On Fire and be equally affected by the song 'Plastic Bird' as I am, all because I fussed over my wardrobe while on furlough.

Actually, by the time I received the denim jacket I was back at work. This coincided with the Government postponing a number of lockdown-easing measures scheduled to start at the beginning of August and simultaneously introducing this thing called Eat Out to Help Out. I didn’t think anything of it back then, but as the rate of infection slowly began to rise, and quarantine measures were introduced for people returning from selected foreign territories, the absurdity of the scheme became retrospectively apparent.

Apropos of nothing, I decided to put on a CD my partner gave to me some years ago: These Boots Are Made For Walkin' - The Complete MGM Recordings by Lee Hazlewood. The songs therein predate Hazlewood’s partnership with Nancy Sinatra but include some that were later re-recorded with her. 'Sand' is one such tune, appearing first on 1966’s The Very Special World of Lee Hazlewood, featuring the vocal of Suzi Jane Hokum, and in 1968 on Nancy & Lee. The collaboration with Nancy Sinatra edges it, not so much because of her intonation but more the song’s bizarre arrangement and orchestration. Producer and guitarist Billy Strange was responsible for this, and I assume it's his deranged guitar playing backwards during the instrumental breakout.

In August I resolved to sell my copy of The Original Modern Lovers and replace it with The Modern Lovers, the version released in 1976 five years prior to the so-called original. It’s generally accepted that the ’76 iteration is the definitive article, and I wouldn’t disagree with that. 'Someone I Care About', 'Pablo Picasso' and 'Old World' are all missing from the Kim Fowley produced record, although he does give us 'I Wanna Sleep in Your Arms', but it’s John Cale’s superior production that makes the real difference.

Frederick 'Toots' Hibbert passed away on 11 September 2020, the same day as stage 13 of what turned out to be an enthralling edition of the Tour de France. At some point in the stage Stefan Kung, wearing number 54, was out front, which got ITV presenter Gary Imlach thinking: if Kung finished first and Dries Devenyns, sporting number 46, came in second, it would present the perfect opportunity to play out with '54-46 Was My Number'. In the event, Daniel Martinez won the stage and so 'Broadway Jungle' was used instead – or 'Dog War' as it was originally known when The Maytals cut the tune in 1964. Unbeknown to them, the track was leased to Island Records who retitled it 'Broadway Jungle', credited it to The Flames and put it out in the UK. The new name stuck but has been re-attributed to (Toots &) The Maytals whenever it's appeared since on any ska and reggae anthology.
 

The summer ended abruptly: temperatures pushing 30 degrees one weekend, scraping 15 the next. Nights drawing in, falling leaves, jumpers on. If that wasn't bad enough the Government imposed a ten o'clock curfew on all pubs and restaurants and made it a requirement that customers wear masks until they sat down at their table. Such measures made little sense. If public houses were that dangerous then they shouldn't have been open at all, and the curfew merely encouraged people to head out an hour or so earlier. What's more, because pub owners were overly mindful of the new arrangements, everybody was forced to leave at exactly the same moment, whereupon they loitered in streets and maybe accepted an invitation to continue drinking back at someone's house – the night was young, after all.

On the 24th of September – the date these restrictions came into effect – I tried to have a drink with my partner in the pub over the road. Twenty minutes after our arrival we were still trying, and so departed. As we waited, 'Glue' by Bicep came on. My Cornish friend introduced me to this tune in early March and it took a while to decide how much I really liked it. I understood that this was dance music, but was it too repetitive? In the end it grew on me, and there’s a wistful quality to it that feels pertinent to the current situation.

And I was going to leave it at that, but I like odd numbers and fancied more Galaxie 500 – undoubtedly the discovery of the year. A lot of this has to do with the rhythm section: Damon Krukowski’s irregular drum patterns and Naomi Yang’s counter-melodies on bass. I’ve heard On Fire described as an ‘ambient’ rock record, and it’s not a bad way of putting it – certainly more indicative than terms like slowcore or dreampop. You need to factor in Dean Wareham’s reedy vocals, which aren’t to everybody’s taste but are to mine. 'Leave the Planet' is mellower than 'Plastic Bird', and shorter too, which is a good note to end on before we're all locked down again.

[Listen to here.]

THE SARTORIAL ELEGANCE OF SERIE A: BOLOGNA FC, 1988-91 [UHLSPORT]

Bologna Football Club was founded in 1909 and from the start played in red and blue. The reason for this is fortuitous and involves an Austro-Hungarian by the name of Emilio Arnstein and Italian called Arrigo Gradi. Arnstein was born in Votice, in what is now the Czech Republic, and studied in Prague and Vienna before moving to Trieste, where he formed Black Star Football Club along with his brother and a handful of English ex-pats. In 1908 he moved to Bologna and immediately set about finding the local football club. Legend has that a taxi took him straight to Prati di Caprara, a military training facility hired out to any local teams that needed it. There Arnstein met Gradi, wearing the red and blue halved shirt of the college he had previously attended in Switzerland.

Gradi, along with his brothers, a Swiss dentist by the name of Louis Rauch, and a number of students from the local Spanish College (including Antonio Bernabéu, brother of Santiago, who would later play for and preside over Real Madrid) had set up a team of sorts by the name of Felsineo. It was Armstein who provided the impetus to establish a proper club, and in 1909 a patron was found willing to support the venture in the shape of Carlo Sandoni, president of the Circolo Turistico Bolognese. Louis Rauch was subsequently appointed as president, Emilio Arnstein was named as a director and Arrigo Gradi club captain.

By 1910 Bologna Football Club was no longer under Sandoni’s patronage and Arnstein was president. The jersey they'd initially come up with was modelled on the one Gradi had been wearing on that fateful day in 1908. Perhaps in an attempt to define their own image – or to differentiate themselves from the Genoa Cricket & Football Club –  the shirts were now modified to form vertical stripes of the same colour, which is the template the club uses to this day.

There has been an exception: in 1925, the year Bologna won their first scudetto, they played in green at the behest of their then manager Enrico Sabattini, in tribute to the Austrian club Rapid Vienna. You could imagine a precedent such as that sticking, but Bologna soon reverted to their traditional colours and over the course of the next 16 years added another five championships to their palmarès. In fact, for a while Bologna – alongside Juventus – were considered the preeminent force in Italian football, and with seven championships to their name are historically the sixth most successful team to play in Serie A.

Bologna were last crowned champions in 1964, were runners up in ’66 and finished third in ’67. In the early 1970s came two Coppa Italia victories. In 1982 Bologna were relegated for the first time in the club's history, and within a year found themselves playing in Serie C1. Bologna won promotion straight back into Serie B, but struggled. Luigi Corioni assumed the club’s presidency in 1985 and in ‘87 brought in a young manager called Luigi Maifredi, who he’d worked with previously while at Ospitaletto. The appointment paid immediate dividends with Bologna finishing the season in first place.
 

1970-71 [Courtesy Bologna FC 1909.]

From 1982 though to 1988, Bologna’s kit was made by Ennerre/NR. For their return to Serie A, Uhlsport became the club's technical supplier. Whereas Ennere had utilised four broad-gauge stripes, Uhlsport opted for five with a dark blue one down the middle. (Bologna may be known as the Rossoblù, but the blue is more often than not navy blue.) The shirt was V-necked, fitted with a collar, and was sponsored by Italian coffee roaster Segafredo Zanetti. Shorts and socks were also blue. Whereas Ennerre’s shirts had been made from their trademark heavyweight fabric Lanetta, Uhlsport’s were polyester. Bologna ended their first season back in Serie A in 14th place.

The next year, against the backdrop of a stadium that was being renovated ahead of the 1990 World Cup, Bologna fared better. Having added the Brazilian midfielder Geovani Silva, German striker Herbert Waas, Hungarian defender Nikolaj Iliev and ex-Juventus and San Marino midfielder Massimo Bonini to their ranks, Bologna finished the season in a very respectable 8th place – high enough to gain entry into next year's UEFA Cup. The shirts in which they achieved this feat were identical to those they'd worn the season before, save for the sponsor's name printed upon them: Mercatone Uno in place Segafredo Zanetti. Away from home, the previous all-white strip was embellished to include a blue and red horizontal stripe flicking diagonally upward towards the left shoulder, which made it more interesting.

Bologna’s success came at a price, attracting the attention of Juventus who promptly installed Luigi Maifredi as Dino Zoff’s successor. In 1991 Bologna were relegated, wearing the same shirt, although not before making it to the quarter finals of both the Coppa Italia and the UEFA Cup, losing out to Napoli and Sporting Lisbon respectively.

Uhlsport stood by Bologna but Mercatone Uno didn’t. The electronics manufacturer Sinudyne  took over as the club’s sponsor, whose typeface wasn’t nearly as eye-catching as Segafredo’s or Mercatone’s. Perhaps for this reason Uhlsport employed micropatterning, and also came up with their best away shirt yet: white as before, but with alternating dark blue and red inverted triangles running down the side of sleeves, and ascending from right to left under the sponsor’s name.
 

1989-91

Things didn’t work out. Luigi Maifredi was re-instated as coach after his unsuccessful stint at Juventus, but could only secure 13th place. He then left again ten games into the next season to join Genoa, Bologna were relegated to Serie C, and bankruptcy followed. The club quickly re-registered as Bologna Football Club 1909 and clawed their way back to Serie A, where they’ve been playing since 2015.

THE SARTORIAL ELEGANCE OF SERIE A: PESCARA CALCIO, 1992-93 [PIENNE]

Pescara Calcio’s roots can be traced back to 1926 when two teams, Aternum Castellamare and Ursus Pescara, merged to form Tito Acerbo. After just one season Tito Acerbo, who wore blue and yellow, were kicked out of the Second Southern Division for irregular activities and quickly reformed as Unione Sportiva Adriatico, wearing black and blue. After finishing 3rd in the regional Third (Abruzzi) Division, Unione Sportiva Adriatico then split up and reinvented itself as the Società Sportiva Abruzzo, reverting to the blue and yellow colours of its forebear.

After taking a brief sabbatical, the club was re-admitted to the Third Division, winning promotion to the Second in 1931 and the First the year after, whereupon they became known as Associazione Calcio Pescara. This iteration lasted an unprecedented four years before again dissolving, possibly in reaction to the restructuring of the leagues that was taking place at the time; the formation of Series A, B and C.

In 1936 the Società Sportiva Pescara was established, sporting the pale-blue and white stripes worn to this day. Perhaps for this reason, this date is recognised as the formal beginning of the club and what preceded it a mere footnote. At any rate, Pescara appeared to be on a surer footing, gaining promotion to Serie C in 1938, Serie B in 1940, and winning something called the Torneo Misto Abruzzese in 1945, a tournament designed to keep footballers active during the final years of the Second World War. Unfortunately, they were unable to capitalise on their regional success and by 1950 had dropped down into the newly formed Serie IV.

Discounting the club’s move into the Stadio Adriatico-Giovanni Cornacchia in 1955, the following twenty years were fairly uneventful, spent in and around Serie C before finally making it back into Serie B in 1974. Società Sportiva Pescara duly registered as a public limited company, becoming Pescara Calcio SpA in the process. This economic restructuring served them well and in 1976-77 Pescara were promoted to Serie A for the first time in their history. They only lasted one season there but bounced straight back after defeating Monza in a play-off. Relegated again the next season, by 1982 Pescara were back in Serie C, were promoted again the following year, and then languished in Serie B for the following three seasons.

Pescara won Serie B in 1986-87, and so the most successful period in their history began. At the time their shirts were manufactured by N2 (Ennedue), a sort of subsidiary of the more recognisable NR (Ennerre), and sponsored by Cassa di Risparmio Pescara. They stuck with NR until being relegated in 1988-89, although were by now sponsored by Gelati Gis. Pescara spent the next two years wearing kit manufactured by ABM Sport before switching to Pienne in 1991-92, the same year they were promoted back into Serie A.

The Pienne shirt wasn’t substantially different to ABM's effort. Both had collars, the width of the pale-blue and white vertical stripes were about the same, and both companies incorporated their emblem into the fabric of the shirt. Whereas ABM’s logo was/is a geometric representation of the letter S, Pienne’s was/is a cartoon snake, or maybe even a worm. It looked more like a worm but a snake seems more credible. This embroidered serpent, its shadow repeated in the texture of the shirt, made for a distinctive and attractive motif. Gelati Gis was printed in navy blue ink, except the dot of the second ‘I’ which was red. The away kit was arguably more interesting but wasn’t really much of an away kit. The top half was white, the lower dark blue, with light blue quadrilaterals horizontally bisecting the two. Shorts were also dark blue, as opposed to the home versions, which were white. Socks were white in both instances. (A third option, predominantly red, was also utilised.)

Pescara acquired some decent players ahead of their return to Serie A. The Brazilian midfielder Dunga and Italian striker Stefano Borgonovo joined from Fiorentina, Senegalese defender Roger Mendy and Danish defender John Sivebæk signed from Monaco, while Ottavio Palladini proved an adequate replacement in midfield for fans’ favourite Michele Gelsi, who had left for Perugia but would ultimately return to Pescara in 1994.

It wasn’t enough. Despite defeating Roma in their opening game, and then narrowly losing to reigning champions AC Milan 4-5 in their next, Pescara finished the season in 18th place and were relegated. Gradual decline followed before bankruptcy befell them in 2009. They soon reformed as Delfino Pescara 1936 Srl and gained entry into the Lega Pro Prima Divisione – Serie C1 in old money – and immediately won promotion into Serie B. Since then they’ve spent two seasons in Serie A and have improved upon their stadium. Shirts are currently made by Errea.

THE SARTORIAL ELEGANCE OF SERIE A: TERNANA, 1991-92 [ABM]

Ternana Calcio has its roots in two separate entities: Unione Calcistica Ternana, formed 1918, and Terni Foot-Ball Club, formed in 1920. Terni Foot-Ball Club wore red and green stripes, a nod towards the city’s coat of arms: the Viverna – a mythological, winged dragon with one pair of legs – set against a red shield. In 1925 the two teams merged to establish the Unione Sportiva Terni and participated in the dead-end Umbrian pool of the Southern League of the Second Division wearing the colours of Terni Foot-Ball Club, who had been the more successful.

The following year Unione Sportiva Terni became Unione Sportiva della Società Terni. With the change of name came a change of strip – yellow shirts, blue trim – in homage to the newly created region of Terni, of which Terni the municipality is the capital. In this guise the team won Group B of the southern finals of the Second Division, gaining promotion to the First (a forerunner to today’s Serie B). Come 1928, U.S.S. Ternana found itself playing in a restructured Southern League under the name Polisportiva Fascista Ternana. The season started off well but the club ended up waiving its right to compete in the semi-finals due to insolvency. They regrouped as L’Associazione Calcistica Ternana and reverted to wearing red and green stripes.

In 1933, another change of name – Società Sportiva Ternana – swiftly followed by financial ruin. The players offered their services to Juventus Terni, who would subsequently merge with the remnants of Società Sportiva Ternana ahead of the 1934-35 campaign to form Polisportiva Fascista Mario Umberto Borzacchini. A number of seasons languishing in ‘Prima Divisione Lazio’ followed before the team were promoted to Serie C in 1937-38.

The next change in name came as a result of the war – or rather, the outcome of the war. As in all of Italy, references to Fascism were eschewed and so Terni’s football team defaulted to their previous incarnation of Società Sportiva Ternana. They remained as such for the next 20 years, flitting between the regional leagues and Series C and D before gaining promotion to Serie B in 1968. Coincidentally (or not) the same year the suffix SpA was added to their name, which stands for Società per azioni and denotes the formation of a public limited company. Ternana’s first season in Serie B was unspectacular, although by the end of it they had moved in to the newly constructed Libero Liberati, a strange stadium that resembles a colonial cricket ground.

In 1970, pumped up on the success of surviving two consecutive seasons in Serie B, another change of name: Associazione Calcio Ternana SpA. Within a year the club were promoted to Serie A for the first time in their history; unfortunately, they were relegated the very next. Perhaps believing that the previous name change had contributed to their success, the club ditched the ‘Associazione’ and were reborn as simply Ternana Calcio SpA. In 1973-74 they were promoted to Serie A for a second time but were again demoted back to Serie B the following year. After knocking about in Serie B for a few more seasons, Ternana were relegated to Serie C in 1980, although they did also make it to the semi-final of the Coppa Italia, losing respectably to eventual winners AS Roma 1-3 on aggregate.

The 1980s saw a general decline culminating in bankruptcy. In 1988 the club re-registered itself as Polisportiva Calcio Ternana Srl (Società a responsabilità limitata) and were admitted to Serie C2, finished in second place and won the play-off for promotion into Serie C1. In 1991, presumably after getting their finances in order, the club became Polisportiva Calcio Ternana SpA. At around the same time they switched their kit supplier from Umbro to ABM. 

[Courtesy M. Barcarotti]

ABM adopted the same template they provided for Fiorentina and Pescara: a collared shirt with the ABM logo micropatterned into the polyester/cotton mixed fabric. The red and green stripes were maintained but the sportswear firm broke with Ternana tradition and liberated the Viverna from its shield. Shorts were black, which is normally the case, and socks green. The Viverna, the club’s name and the sponsors – ‘interpan’ (lower case) – were flocked, whereas ABM’s red logo was stitched. The white away-shirt was smarter still: black lettering, green trim and a green length of fabric, adorned with ABM’s motif, running from the shoulders and down over the sleeves.

In 1993 the club went bankrupt again, set up the Associazione Sportiva Ternana Calcio and re-listed itself as Ternana Calcio Srl in 1994, modified to Ternana Calcio SpA in the year 2000. It would be nice if it ended there, but in 2017 the club rechristened itself Ternana Unicusano Calcio SpA after being bought out by the president of the Niccolò Cusano Telematic University of Human Sciences – Unicusano for short – before settling on Ternana Calcio SpA as recently as 2018. They are currently plying their trade in Serie C.

LINER NOTES: THE GOLDEN AGE OF HIP HOP - BONUS BEATS [1986-92]

1.     The New Style – Beastie Boys

2.     Public Enemy No. 1 – Public Enemy

3.     I’m Not Going Out Like That – Run-DMC

4.     Doomsday of Rap – Hijack

5.     Stylin' Lyrics – J.V.C.F.O.R.C.E.

6.     The Way We Swing – Digital Underground

7.     Pollywanacraka – Public Enemy

8.     Just Kickin’ Lyrics – Above the Law

9.     Wondrous Dream – L.A. Star

10.   Youthful Expression – A Tribe Called Quest

11.   Let the Rhythm Hit ‘Em (45 King Club Mix) – Eric B & Rakim

12.   Portrait of a Masterpiece (CJ's Ed-Did-It Mix) – The D.O.C.

13.   No Words (Pump ‘N’ Hip Hop - No Rif Raf Mix) – Three Times Dope

14.   Money Mad – London Posse

15.   Movin' On – Masta Ace

16.   Ebony – Paris

17.   Wake Up (Reprise in the Sunshine) – Brand Nubian

18.   Take a Rest – Gang Starr

19.   Guns of Mind Alone – Silver Bullet

20.   Humrush – KMD

21.   The Funky Cypress Hill Shit – Cypress Hill

22.   The Badman is Robin – Hijack

23.   Morals – UMC’s

24.   3rd Bass Theme A.K.A. Portrait Of The Artist As A Hood – 3rd Bass

25.   For Pete's Sake – Pete Rock and CL Smooth

26.   No Shame in My Game – Gang Starr

27.   Theme From Marxman – Marxman

28.   Stand Together – Beastie Boys

In 1987 my father took me and my brother to Thornbury, where I was born, to see his old friend, Andy. Said friend had a son called Richard, who I’d been mates with prior to my family leaving Thornbury and moving to Plymouth in 1982. We’d met sporadically in the intervening years but this was the first time I’d seen him since starting secondary school.

We still got on; played football in the garden until it got too dark, whereupon Richard took me and my brother to his bedroom to listen to music. I would have been into Prince back then, but not much else. I liked music but not to the extent that I’d devote myself to a particular artist, let alone want to look like them – I didn’t want to be Prince. All that changed when Richard put on Licensed to Ill by the Beastie Boys.

I was aware of the Beastie Boys but hadn't liked their singles '(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party!)' and 'No Sleep till Brooklyn'. I didn't like 'Walk this Way' by Run-DMC either, released a year earlier. Loud guitars were not my thing. The minimalism of tracks such as 'Posse in Effect', 'Slow Ride', 'Paul Revere' and 'Slow and Low' evidently were. On returning to Plymouth it materialised that my friend Ed possessed the same album. I cannot say whether he’d owned it since its release or if it had been recently acquired. In any case, he made a copy for me and it wasn’t long before a poster of the Beastie Boys together (forever) with Run-DMC adorned my wall, possibly to my father’s horror. In 1988 I purchased the Run-DMC album Tougher than Leather.

The Beastie Boys and Run-DMC were gateway bands. There were people who liked them who weren’t especially into rap/hip hop and others who got into rap/hip hop precisely through listening to them. With Public Enemy it was different. You couldn't really be into them and ambivalent about hip hop; they were too earnest and musically more complex. (The same might be said of Eric B & Rakim.) I went through all of 1987 oblivious to this and Public Enemy’s debut album, Yo! Bum Rush the Show, escaped my attention, which is why my original four-part anthology begins in 1988 and 'Public Enemy No. 1' appears here. Moreover, the music I played didn’t necessarily direct me towards the people I wanted to hang out with. For illustration, my three closest pals were into Queen (Mike), Level 42 (Neil) and Eurythmics (Dan), and in 1987-88 I wasn’t adverse to any of these three groups either. I remember other people in my class liking INXS, U2 and Bon Jovi. Who knows what else kids were listening to in private.

These Bonus Beats are a collection of tracks that I have gathered together retrospectively, some of which I owned at the time and others I came across later. Because of this, my fifth volume in the Golden Age of Hip Hop series cannot be ascribed to singular phases of my life. Individual tracks can but not the compilation as a whole.

I don’t remember who it was but somebody acquired a very bad copy of J.V.C.F.O.R.C.E.’s album Doin’ Damage. It sounds old school, but 'Stylin’ Lyrics' – as with 'Strong Island' – contains the type of samples that would come to typify hip hop’s golden age: a crescendo of horns and a lilting piano lifted from 'Ike’s Mood 1' by Isaac Hayes. [When I moved to London in 1993, I found a copy of Doin’ Damage on vinyl in Camden Market, and snapped it up.]

I never had a job while at school. This might not seem so unusual now but back then it was. Mike had a paper-round before picking up an evening gig behind the fish counter at his local supermarket. Ed also had a paper-round, and Dan ended up working at Burger King. Neil did not have a job, probably because his parents had a bit more money than the rest of us and he could afford not to. Really, I did need one but couldn’t be bothered. Time is scarce enough when you’re a teenager without having to give up your Saturdays or get up early to deliver newspapers. I’d get by on birthday money and the fivers slipped to me by various relatives, and preferred to play football above all else, which cost nothing. The downside to this was that I couldn't afford to buy as much music as I would've liked. The only album I remember purchasing throughout the whole of 1989 was Club Classics Vol. One by Soul II Soul. The next cassette I bought was Sex Packets by Digital Underground in 1990. In between I relied heavily on the radio – Jeff Young’s National Fresh – and the generosity of friends. (I say generosity but so long as you provided a blank tape nobody thought twice about recording stuff for each other.) So Sex Packets was probably the fifth actual album I owned and only the second that fell under the umbrella of hip hop/rap, and I'd already turned 15.

Sex Packets is raunchy stuff, but 'The Way We Swing' is more a straight-up rap tune. It’s also quite long, so when I was putting together my anthology I went for 'Underwater Rimes' instead (see The Golden Age of Hip Hop Volume 1). (Both tunes evoke the build up to the 1990 World Cup in Italy – as does 'Pollywanacraka' by Public Enemy.)

When I found out about Above the Law and A Tribe Called Quest in 1990, hip hop’s popularity had already peaked. (Released in October, the Tribe's 'Can You Kick It?' was a mere aberration, albeit a successful one.) I included tracks from both these groups’ 1990 albums on The Golden Age of Hip Hop Volume 2, but when it came to putting together this additional compendium I couldn’t resist dipping back into them. On the other hand, 'No Words (Pump ‘N’ Hip Hop)' by Three Times Dope is a recent discovery. In trying to establish the chronology, I uncovered a few of Jeff Young’s National Fresh sessions on the internet that inadvertently led me to archive recordings of Tim Westwood’s show on Capital, which is where I discovered this specific mix of 'No Words'.

The single 'Money Mad' by London Posse was doing the rounds on National Fresh long before the release of Gangster Chronicle in 1990. The album version differed slightly, but not significantly, so either will do. As with 'No Words', I never owned a copy of 'Daydreaming' by Massive Attack. I came close to buying Blue Lines but something else must have taken precedence – possibly the Cash Crew.

I recorded Paris's debut single 'The Devil Made Me Do It' off of radio and included it on a mixtape I entitled National Fresh Volume 4. When Ed bought the album of the same name I then added the tune 'Ebony' onto Hip Hop Volume 5. The Golden Age of Hip Hop Volume 3 is cobbled together from the fragmented memories I have of these original compilations, but I couldn't include both so opted for the former. The same goes for Brand Nubian. 'Wake Up' was the first single from their pending album, followed by 'Slow Down'. 'All for One' was the third, and is more well-known. One way or another, I've incorporated them all.

'Take a Rest' was the second single to be taken from Gang Starr’s Step in the Arena, but I don’t recall hearing it on the radio. It’s now one of my favourite tunes on the album, which is saying something because I loved that record from the off.

In my liner notes to The Golden Age of Hip Hop Vol. 3, I write that Silver Bullet’s album Bring Down the Walls No Limit Squad Returns is a highly sophisticated piece of work and that any one of 'Raw Deal', 'Attitude Academy', 'Undercover Anarchist', 'Guns Of Mind Alone' and 'Legions Of The Damned' could have made it onto my compilation. 'Legions of the Damned' did and so here you’ll find 'Guns of Mind Alone'.

Cypress Hill is a very different proposition to the group’s second album, the bass-heavy and overrated Black Sunday. The first 10 seconds of 'The Funky Cypress Hill Shit' is a case in point. It’s as if they’ve sought to use the most poorly recorded sounds – or to re-record them poorly – to create a mise-en-scène that evokes the sounds of 1960s/70s Los Angeles. The samples flow thick and fast before settling on the funk of 'Fencewalk' by Mandrill and the Latin-jazz of 'Hector' by The Village Callers. Cypress Hill were part of a surge in the genre’s popularity that would establish itself in 1992, by way of Ice Cube, Dr Dre, Eazy-E, Da Lench Mob, Redman, Naughty by Nature, The Goats. In other words, the signs were there that hip hop was getting harder, rougher and, ironically, more popular.

I have found an old diary from 1992, and it shows me buying an album by Ice Cube on 16 January – presumably Death Certificate – and then returning it on the 21st. I recall doing this sort of thing when an album didn’t quite live up to my expectation. I’d make a copy in between, and would then normally receive a credit note – I wasn’t claiming that the goods were faulty in any way, just that I’d changed my mind. The next entry in my diary (it wasn’t a ‘dear diary’ sort of diary, just full of random notes and essay deadlines) tells me I’d acquired something by the Ruthless Rap Assassins, which must have been their second album, Think, It Ain't Illegal Yet. I wasn’t overly enamoured with this record either but the whole buying and returning scam was by no means guaranteed to work, so I kept hold of it.

The diary offers up other intriguing vignettes: a trip to Torquay; pitch-and-put in Central Park; haircut appointments; the Conservatives winning yet another general election; items of clothing bought in Bristol; scores from the European Championships in Sweden; the opening of Virgin Records in Plymouth Centre and going there on the first day with Mike; seeing Ecuadorian folk group Huellas play at Plymouth Arts Centre with Neil; the Olympic Games in Barcelona; turning out for Moses, a 5-a-side team some guys at school put together and for whom I provided the name; Argyle games attended, and numerous visits to some club called Fliks, as well as Ritzy and Expose. Clubbing at this point was nothing more than a rites of passage. The music these places played didn't interest me, which was generally house. The situation would improve significantly in 1993 when I discovered 'Jelly Jazz' at the Quay Club, but in the meantime I’d have to go along with it and do my best to avoid getting punched by anyone looking for a fight, which seemed to me almost everyone male outside of my extended social circle.

Cobi welcomes you to Barcelona.

I can remember reading about the Beastie Boys’ new album, Check Your Head, in Hip Hop Connection. This would have been early 1992, but I didn’t then buy the album and nor did I record it off of anyone. It wasn’t until 1994 that I finally got hold of it, off the back of Ill Communication, which the lead-single 'Sabotage' had propelled to the fore. An exploration of Paul’s Boutique ensued.

Brother J from X Clan once said he could stand the Beastie Boys muscling in on hip hop because they never posed as black men and behaved as who they were: white guys getting drunk. The Beastie Boys dropped the getting drunk thing very quickly, but they never adopted a persona that was outside of their own, which might explain their longevity. It’s a shame that I didn’t return to them sooner, but I’ve kept up with them ever since, conscious that it was the Beastie Boys who introduced me to rap music, even if it was Public Enemy that sealed the deal.

[Listen to here.]