Dom's Rambles

This song has a curious history. Strictly speaking it was the last ever Lovechild composition and although we played it at a couple of rehearsals it was never performed live. I wrote the thing in late 1987 partly to make my ex-girlfriend realise what a monster she'd turned me into by finishing with me in the way she did, but mainly it was to annoy our guitarist’s lunatic fringe feminist girlfriend (sorry, I mean 'partner'). When I temporarily joined another Lincoln combo in 1991 I presented it to the guys in the band and it became a mainstay of the set for all the time I was with them.
I always thought the song was one of my best but as the heavy metal light faded to insignificance as that decade progressed it languished on a back burner.
In mid 2001 I resurrected it when I began working with a female singer called Gemma Greensmith. It occurred to me that if I changed the lyrical emphasis in a few areas then it would make a pretty stomping techno-rocker a la Republica, who were one of my favourite bands of the era.
You can download an mp3 of the more modern version here.

Victim

I don’t wanna meet your mum and dad I don’t wanna know your name.
You’re not the best I’ve ever had but then you’re all the same.
They tell you that I’m bad news you wanna leave me well alone.
But that’s just tough, I like ‘em rough so let’s go home.

I got no use for morals I got no use for shame.
Your just another number it’s all a stupid game.
And you’re nobody special you’re not the guy I’ve been dreaming of.
But you can come with me if you wanna be another victim of my love.

I won’t sing you love songs so don’t you buy me flowers.
I made my right from two wrongs from tears that fall in showers.
I’ll tell you what you wanna hear just till I’ve had my way.
Another beer and we’re out of here, now what do you say?

I got no use for morals I got no use for shame.
Your just another number it’s all a stupid game.
And you’re nobody special you’re no angel from above.
Can’t you see something’s wrong with me to need a victim of my love.

Shut your mouth and get undressed.
Shut your mouth and get undressed.
Shut your mouth and get undressed.
Shut your mouth and get undressed.

I got no use for morals I got no use for shame.
Your just another number it’s all a stupid game.
And you’re nobody special but there’s one I can’t stop dreaming of.
So come and join the wrecks who live for empty sex and be a victim of my love.

© 2001 Words & Music by Dom Bescoby

So where exactly is Lincoln's 'Cultural Quarter' then? It's a fucking mystery to me and I've lived here most of my life.

A lolly from the lollipop tree to anyone who can send me a picture of it.

Anyone reading the host website could be forgiven for thinking that I am, and always have been a complete metal head. Not so. Between 1995 and the end of the millennium I enjoyed a temporary dalliance with the house/club scene (and that was well before it went all chavified). And I wasn’t the only one. There were maybe a dozen or so of us Lincoln rockers who, as the 1990s progressed, found ourselves secretly buying mix CDs and tuning in to the Danny Rampling show on Radio 1. For a long time we kept our activities a guilty secret, a bit like a Catholic priest with a well thumbed copy of Razzle under his mattress and a penchant for 0909 sex lines.
In the autumn of 1995 I found myself sharing a flat with a guy we’ll call Ali (chiefly because he looked, dressed and talked like a toned down version of Sacha Baron Cohen’s famous creation) who was one of the more memorable characters I encountered on my 20 year journey through the twilit netherworld of bedsit bohemia.
Ali was a resident DJ at one of the big house clubs in Sheffield and also worked for the venue where it was held. This meant that he was incredibly well connected, both with the club owner/promoter set and also with the lower echelon gangsters who were an integral part of the scenery in those days. You got the distinct impression that Ali could, if he so desired, take you to where more than a few of the bodies were buried. Although given the benefit of hindsight and a somewhat clearer head I'm sure that most of it was just an act – albeit a very convincing one.
Such connections meant Ali was able to secure guest listing for his friends and acquaintances at practically any club in the country. In all the time I lived with the guy I don’t think I paid to get in a nightclub more than half a dozen times – and we were out at least three times a week back then.
Ali would phone up promoters and tell them I was ‘a journalist friend researching an article on the northern club scene’ and could they put me and my photographer (i.e. whoever I was going out with that night) on the guest list. Most of the time this worked a treat and we would swagger to the front of gargantuan queues, skip the body search and save anything from £5 to £20 each in admission fees.
What I didn’t know was that at the same time there actually was a journalist researching the northern club scene – or rather he was researching who was supplying the drugs that fuelled it. His findings, complete with plenty of secretly shot and brutally candid footage went out on a network TV documentary that October. Watching this documentary (and having something of an insiders knowledge of the subject matter) it struck me that the guy who made it either had a death wish or balls the size of planets.
Ali had one of the most impressive collections of 12” singles I’ve ever seen – and we’re talking absolutely awe-inspiring. He could scarcely get them all in the flat and was paranoid as hell about any harm coming to them. One day I came home to discover an enormous padlock on Ali’s bedroom door. He called me into his room to tell me,
“I don’t want you to think that I’ve put that padlock on the door because I don’t trust you or Simon (the other guy we lived with), it’s because there are people in Sheffield who’d love to get their hands on my records and a lot of then know where I live.
I must admit I found this candid show of faith quite touching. I found it touching right up until the moment Ali announced - and with an entirely straight face,
“I’m gonna show you where I'll be hiding the key because if there’s a fire and I’m not here then you’ll need to get my records out”.
I think it was his deadpan delivery that made me collapse in uncontrollable hysterics.
I fell out with Ali shortly before the lease expired and we all went our separate ways (something to do with an £800 discrepancy in the profits from a club we promoted together). I haven’t spoken to him since and now that I live back in Lincoln I can’t realistically see a situation where I ever will.
One legacy of my foray into clubland and consequent association with Ali was that I treated myself to a pair of expensive direct drive turntables and amassed a collection of 12” singles which, although nothing like as colossal as Ali’s, is impressive by anyone’s standards.
Now that the dance/house scene is in terminal decline I can’t figure out what to do with this stuff; should I unload it ASAP and while there are still a few people around who’d be interested in buying it or should I bung everything in the loft for the next two decades and cash in when the inevitable 20 year revival comes around?
I can’t help thinking of my skateboard. In the late 1970s I was quite the teenage wizard of the half-pipe and counted a certain Lee Bryan among my acquaintances (if you know anything at all about the sport then that name should ring plenty of bells). I had some pretty groovy kit too; a set of Bel-Air Lipbomb wheels, Tracker Fulltrack trucks and a Sims Lonnie Toft deck. In early 1979, when the craze petered out and the few remaining skateparks closed down, I flogged the lot for £15 which I then gave to my parents towards the cost of my first electric guitar.
A few days ago a Lonnie Toft deck, exactly the same as the one I had, was withdrawn from sale on the US eBay site. At the time of withdrawal bidding had topped $600.
Hmm, it’s not like that loft space is being used for anything.