Choose life part 1...

Nicked this off Irvine Welsh's un/official site. He wrote the classic "Trainspotting" which was made into a movie starring Obiwan Kenobi, at least the young version, Ewan McGregor. More of that in part 2. The novel reminded me of my JC days when I was studying the Canterbury Tales and I din understand a single shite of medival English. The novel was written in the Scottish accent. Still, it cracked me up. Apparently, he has a sequel of the original out called "Porno" I think. Not too sure about the title though.

Iggy Pop

When i was a kidngrowing up in Edinburgh's Muirhouse scheme, you needed two types of heroes. One was a footballer and the other a rock n' roll star. The footballer was no problem: There could only be Paddy Stanton of Hibernian F.C. and Scotland. Nobody else really fitted the bill. The rock star was more problematic.

Now, for middle-class wankers there was always Jim Morrison, who had 'the soul of a poet' even if, true to his people, it was nicked from the American Indian. The Shamen's spirit went into my body, Jimbo claimed, as hilariously illustrated by Oliver Stone in his film The Doors. Aye right. I can't imagine any self-respecting Shamen thinking. "Hmm, I must find a pampered spoiled white American middle class brat to infest with my years of culture and wisdom". No, I think we'll just leave that one. Anyone from the country (in Scotland that is anyone who lives outside Edinburgh or Glasgow) tended to like people who had long hair and leather jacket and did crap rock, as long as they had as many spots as they did.

But, if to paraphrase Ian Dury, you are a lawless brat from a council flat, you're not only looking for some sense of affirmation in your heroes, you want something or someone who can articulate you're anger. The urban working classes needed someone visible on Top of The Pops, someone who made your old man's knuckles go white as he gripped the chair in tense rage when our hero kissed his guitarist or whipped off his make-up and wig. So it was nice one Mr Bowie.

However, there was always the suggestion that Bowie was a wee bit more Beckenham than Brixton, a tad more suburban than schemie, more style than substance. For schemies in the know, the mainman needed that substance, but also a sense of humour, that while he took his rantings against authority figures and all that was shite in our society seriously enough, he never took himself too seriously. Arise Sir Iggy.

Iggy Pop, aka James Osterberg, out of Detroit and late of the Stooges just had to be the man. As in all these things it's impossible to seperate the man from the myth, but that never bothered anyone in the know. The clued-up have always known that only cool people who do worthwhile things are worth mythologising in the first place. So Iggy it was.

Being an Iggy fan is a lifetime affair. And it means doing things like hunting for silver gloves in boutiques to wear to school. Subsequently, this means being sent home and sabotaging the post from school full of complaints about your behaviour and apppearance and forging a bland non-commital reply in your parents name. It means being accused by neighbours of being drugged when you're standing around in your own smirking, inarticulate world vibing to Raw Power and Search and Destroy. It means scanning the paper for erratic news of gigs. It means having to put up with things like strange long-term dissapearances of your idol which are disconcerting for any follower. However, the good side is that Iggy always bounced back, better than ever.

I remember on the first day of our registration class in secondary school. The teacher, naive and fresh from college, told us all to shout our names out so that she could enter them in the class register. (This was how things were done at my factory school in those days.) A pal and I decide to shout out twice. So as well as our real names, those of Scottish International footballer Pat Stanton and one James Osterberg were added to the class roll. Every morning we heard; "Susan Neill..." "here" James Osterberg...James Osterberg? Where is that boy?...Brian Ormond..." "here". The answer to teach's question was five thousand miles west of here, but this kept going an amusingly long time.

It was back in 1979 that Edinburgh actor Tam Dean Burn spraypainted IGGY IS GOD on the church opposite the venue the mighty Pop was playing at during his New Values tour. When I finally got to meet Iggy, I was chuffed that he remembered that.

I hated Jim Morrison as much as I loved Iggy. In the late seventies and early eighties it was better to be into Jim Morrison in order to get a shag from the middle-class arty girls who used to adore him, but I always prefered the dangerous nasty birds who would fill you full of chemicals and then mock you for not being able to get it up. But at least you learn about life, glue and amyl nitrate that way, even if the lesson is only: you would be better off being into Jim Morrison and shagging nice, middle-class arty chicks. The main reward, of course is virtue: of knowing that you identify with real class rather than something phoney. If you don't believe me, try sitting through Oliver Stone's wanky film again, or better still, check out Iggy next time he's in your town.