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My Billy Childish Intrigue By Daren Garratt.

My Billy Childish Intrigue

Part Two: Art or Arse? (You Be the Judge)

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By Daren Garratt.

“You know the one thing that pisses me off about Billy Childish? He releases far too much stuff ... I can’t keep up ...”; “You know the other thing that pisses me off? He only releases like ten copies of stuff ... I’ve got no chance of getting everything ...”; “You know the OTHER one thing? I lose track of all the group names ... I don’t know what he’s doing on what, where, when and who with ...”; “.... And at the end of the day, he only ever does the sa-“ W.O.A.H.!!!! HOLD IT RIGHT THERE! ...

Now, don’t get me wrong, there are certainly arguments to be made for the first three of those sentiments, and at various times and to varying degrees, I have undoubtedly concurred, but I have steadily learned that the fourth thing is just lazy bollocks. It fuels an empty complaint and feeds into a commonly held misconception that the ‘trouble’ with Billy Childish is that once you’ve heard one Billy Childish combo, you’ve heard them all, the various names are interchangeable and he’s effectively a one-trick pony who has spent forty-odd years milking a single solitary idea over a thousand-odd records.

Yes, he is a man who constantly has, does, and will always “love playing in a Punk Rock band playing Bo Diddley guitar”, so can I just say to those cloth-eared dolts, “At least it was a fuckin good idea” before muttering, “And I suppose you say the same thing about Bo Diddley?”

Hand on heart, there were long periods when I loved what I knew of Billy Childish, but was undeniably overwhelmed by the confusing vastness of his catalogue. I assumed it was largely indistinguishable and impossible to track down, and I still have to concede some objective truth in this, which certainly adds to my Billy Childish intrigue.

It’s not enough to just realise and accept he’s the ultimate example of a ‘Renaissance man’, because he is actually the living antithesis of the cosetted musician who dabbles in abstract landscapes or tries his hand at cut-up writings.

He is Billy Childish. Poet. Painter. Singer. Dreamer ... his art lies at the heart of everything he does. He is a creator that is constantly compelled to create, hence the ungovernable plethora of ludicrously limited editions that frustrate collectors but reflect his unrelenting creativity.

The volume, constancy and range of his outpourings are certainly part of my Billy Childish intrigue, but probably the first thing to acknowledge here is that the multitude of group names and cavalcades of regular record releases are as far from cashing in on fickle passing trends or wider, crass, consumer exploitation that it is possible

to get.

There is no grand plan for a career path to pave, or a cynical marketing strategy to rinse in the way he operates. As he himself says in the excellent 2002 documentary ‘Billy Childish: Confessions of a Sunday Painter’, “In many ways I like to look on myself as an amateur in everything I do. The amateur does things for love and belief, not for a mortgage. I don’t do things I don’t want to do.”

His isn’t a discography padded out by paying Norman Cook to turn up the kick drum, or by doing ‘a Kevin Rowland’ by making your fanbase wait years for a new release only to mastermind a massive reissue campaign to simply appease your own paranoid delusions by tweaking your perfectly agreeable vocals a bit. No superfluous strings are added to dead artists’ meisterwerks without their knowledge ‘round here, and he will never pathetically ‘change direction’ in the hope of remaining relevant. Do you remember The Cramps making a dance record? No? Me neither. I remember Tin Machine though ...

Most notably the variety of issues accompanying different releases is not equivalent to the 1980s ‘Madness Multi-Format Machine’ of lifting three or four LP tracks and churning out mass produced singles in a variety of sleeves, colours, shapes, sizes and pictures every couple of months knowing that idiot kids like me will spend all our pocket money having to get every one.

And even when he does release something like the ‘Joseph Beuys Flies Again’ 7” (Wild Billy Chyldish (sic) and CTMF, 2013) in a range of colours, the total combined run isn’t more than 500 anyway, so just getting one is a victory in itself. The difference is that unlike Stiff Records, the onus is not on maximising profits by multi-marketing the same commercial product ad infinitum. Childish, on the other hand, produces individual, interesting pieces of art (usually a handmade, wood cut sleeve that comes with a lathe-cut vinyl record) so the accompanying price tag reflects that; if you want the art you’ve got to expect to pay for it. I can’t afford to collect the ultra-scarce visual aspects and am only really interested in the music anyway which, after being initially presented in issues of only thirteen totally unaffordable, impossible to find 7”s will thankfully be handily bundled together, combined and released later on a standard 500 edition album for less than £20 for us grateful luddites ... if we’re still lucky enough to get in quick and snag a copy.

To continue this art and music metaphor, a Billy Childish pencil sketch is to one of his collages as it is to one of his woodcuts or his oil paintings. They may be inarguably his, and they may share common conceits and wear certain influences on their

sleeves, but the materials differ, therefore the means of expression differ, therefore the resultant creation differs.

It’s the same with the songs. They share a voice, but what that voice expresses differs from alias to alias, group to group, recording to recording, much like a self-portrait or a landscape will differ from painting to painting. If you can write something as perfect as ‘You Make Me Die’ (first released with Thee Mighty Caesars on the 1986 album ‘Acropolis Now’), then why not present it in five different ways over five different decades every time you find a new way to express that emotion? If you can’t understand and accept that, then can you please explain to me why people still pay good money to go and see a ‘new’ Shakespeare interpretation? That lazy cunt’s not written anything new for yonks!

To my ears, his ingrained approach to music making means Billy’s stock doesn’t go down. It’s never diluted. I’m not saying everything’s always brilliant, but I’ve certainly never heard an absolute stinker. He’s almost like the anti-Dr. Who in that, the face stays the same whilst the name and means of operation constantly morph and shift and evolve without pause. He’s never ‘retired’ or disappeared for a bit, only to return decades later with the old, reliable name masking new, unknown faces behind him either and after forty-five years, who else can say that? Dr. Who can’t. Mark Smith couldn’t. Not even Robert Lloyd can.

It’s like trying to explain to people that the “they’re all the same” gag is the equivalent to telling a mother of octuplets that, to all intents and purposes, she only ever had one kid; YOU may not be able to tell the difference between ‘Dave A’ and ‘Dave H’, but she can not only instantly tell them apart, she also knows their idiosyncratic mannerisms, particular quirks, dazzling strengths and lazy, frustrating weaknesses intuitively. YOU see no further than their obvious similarities and lazily misinterpret the shared DNA that courses through this genealogical brood as sameness when it’s actually just ignorant and offensive. They may all wear a matching smirk, but it’s a singular beating heart that drives each abiding passion.

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