All important music, songwriting, poetry and art isn't created in a Commercial vacuum. It reverberates with meaning, maybe with protest, towards a better way of living, often one that has tolerance for different creeds and cultures and respect for gender, race, the environment, peace and love, co-operation as opposed to exploitation,

The wider, international context of the 60's counter culture movement is well documented and here's a time line from 1960 to 1969 - HERE. There are a lot of stereotypes of what a Hippie was / is - the site linked tries to clarify that.

Much inspiration had been received from Gerrade Winstanley's Digger Movement in 1649 - influencing the formation of

In Coventry, in the late 60's / early 70's we had our own Diggers developing co-operative ventures and producing a magazine which was the first to give the Coventry music and counter culture a consciousness of itself - The Broadgate Gnome - represented here in it's new form.

The object of this post is to stimulate discussion / thought or research on how both the ideas of the 60's and growing up in post war Coventry helped to shape / characterise Coventry music, poetry and art. (Maybe somebody will rise to the challenge and study it - and there are plenty of primary sources and contacts on this site to facilitate it! If anybody does this - let us know - we'll help with sources). Here's some pointers -

During 50's and 60's, Coventry was in throes of a major regeneration programme as a result of the city centre being flattened in bombing raids during world war two. The regeneration programme wasn't just down to Hitler though, the process had begun in the 1930's - Trinity Street area had been redesign and plans for a new City Centre were on the drawing board. The bombing raids brought plans forward and widened their scope and significance. Musicians grew up in the a city that was at once highly industrialised with the Car factories and engineering and yet had brand new open-spaced city centre with the greenery of the Broadgate / Lady Godiva Island in the centre - a Phoenix city rising from the ashes! Many of the city's young musicians, writers and artists, growing up in the 60's balked at this bland 'Grey' industrial landscape, where all you could be, mostly, was someone who put bolts on cars on the Assembly lines. The symbolic image of this 'Grey' existence occurs in some of the songs that came out of the city -

The 'Grey' is mindless conformity, the 'default', the 'inevitable' - no one thinks for themselves in the land of 'Grey'. They get their opinions from the tabloids or the conventional opinion handed down to them.. They take the path of least resistance and not the one less trodden by. Their environment shapes them and they accept it (albeit begrudgingly sometimes).

The great thrust which came out in the music was to transcend the 'grey',  To escape the Rat Race, the Ghost Town, the Concrete Jungle - all images which have come out of Coventry songs. The Broadgate Gnome called it 'Throb City'' - in reference to the background throb of the car factories all through the night - I think!

ESCAPE FROM THE 'GREY'

In Whispering Ned (by top Coventry folk band - Dando Shaft) - 1971 they sing -

Well he came to a land
where heads were banned
and the land was grand
and the people were grey
and they worked all day
in a diligent way
trying to keep out heads
and Whispering Neds

In the Selecter hit Three Minute Hero - Neol Davis  wrote 

THREE MINUTE HERO (Neol Davies) The Selecter
They asked you if you’re alright,
You say yes,
But all the time you know, It’s a mess,
It’s 5 pm and you’re on your way home,
Just another day with that endless grey drone.

(Chorus): Three minute hero, I wanna be, a three minute hero, I wanna be,
a three minute hero, I wanna be, a three minute hero,

Drag yourself along the road, Sit on the bus,
Switch on your transistor, Cause a fuss,
It’s 11 pm and you’re on your way home,
Just another night with that endless grey drone.

(Chorus) I wanna be, I wanna be, I wanna be, A three minute hero, (Chorus): A three minute hero, I wanna be, A three minute hero, I wanna be, A three minute hero, I wanna be, A three minute hero,

It’s too early in the morning, Stupid job,
Don’t wanna eat, can’t think straight,
Same as yesterday, It’s 7 am and you’re leaving home,
Just another day with that endless grey drone, (Chorus):
A three minute hero, I wanna be, (Repeat to fade)

Escape from the ' Grey' Comes into some early poems by Dave Clarke (Printed in 1970 by a group of Diggers intheir magazine The Broadgate Gnome)

AN EXPERIMENT WITH TRADITIONAL RHYME AND STRONG STRESS METER

Dave Clarke

From  Broadgate Gnome 1971

City you cannot last

Nor must you think that time gone past

Will remember you and say

This is how it should be today.

You have no roots, only bricks and mortar.

Conceived in conflict, concerned with slaughter

And shall your offspring, sons and daughters

Pay homage, or plot your doom

Perhaps in the fields at

Their eyes will turn towards your

Shadowed graves and marvel how once

Men lived like slaves.

In the depths of your swollen womb

Perhaps in green grey gardens through

Mirrored moons

They will sit peacefully and reflect

Upon your ghost forms, cold and derelict

None here will mourn your mutilated form

Nor yet will fevered eyes still gaze

In tomorrow’s dawn.

Upon your profit priests in suited grey

Atheist children all robed in nature

They will laugh aloud to read your beasts

Yet see no traces

Of your golden age of your super race

No gods or ghosts will walk this

Wretched ruin of yours

No angry groans or tortured moans will

Pour molten shapes, mutilated forms

That writhe in fear

No super races here

Only the watchful glare of shapeless

Moon and the eternal gloom of your

Quick, unlit tomb.

ON MOVEMENT AND PURPOSE

Spilling from the city's noise they come,    

Slipping past evening's first opportune hour.

From the swollen abdomen of the factory some

Drone their weary way, through gate and tower,

Belched out at five.

They, faceless for a time, molten seep

Into human channels, consumed deep

In the irregular flood, at first a patterned tide

Split only by an aching, frenzied halt,

As, like tributaries unperceived, others join, match stride

-Ooze their thoughtless path, eager to assault

Drawn blank in an organic ritual.

Happy those who conjure imagination

Avoiding the fact that they bear no relation

To cloth arms and unknown feet

That move annoyingly close, almost familiar,

with their own purposeful, aimed retreat.

Many tread homeward with ideas similar

Hurrying towards some mystic meet.

                                      Others from college, peacock daubed, set apart,

                                      Flaunt homeward, promiscuously apparent for an early start.

                                      Outcasts but design these, yet not quite free

                                      from economies, or traditions or laws, or all that abstract oppose

                                      The natural instinct. Chained in society;

                                      Yet suspended for a time in freedom's awkward pose,

                                       They, warlike, gimmick a possible future.

                                       Condemned to learn, no tax form claims them or cares

                                        Subtle in her wooing, society hides her snares

                                        Challenging and extreme in her ultimate offering.

Parallel, roars man and machine

linked in dash-daring unison.

Revved hearts spurt mean

Grimaces, turned to defy, shun

Limits with limitless power.

Tailored for destruction, they combine in one

Machine, motor, mind and gun.

With fear streamlined in oiled silence

Watch how they move, slip gear, accelerate away

Substitute war or violence

with symbol. Linked thus, they may,

Fuse metal and power with hand and feet

Hide stature on cushion and seat,

'Till mover and moved blurr totally.

But more likely, they will use the thrill

of combining, creation and will,

To risk a future -

To answer in part the constant need

For measuring life, in space and speed

Seeking pleasure or praise or lust.

Watch though, how death rides too a wheelspin away

Rears at a junction, reducing move or stay

To mere instinct. Til machine and man

Lack purpose, unless the purpose be....

To eliminate the lapse between A and C

Between movement, pause and movement.

Dave Clarke - Coventry 1970

FLOWERS OF THE WAYSIDE

Song lyric By Trev Teasdel 1970 Coventry

As I pass the streets lined with tears of unexpressed souls

Rows of tins of compressed talents chained in their folds

Lines of ‘I could’ve been if I tried, but didn’t pursue my goals’

Chains of the ‘same as the day before and day before that’ plastic moulds

Boxes of ‘shun the new, it’ll be our ruin, stick to the beaten path’ holes

Chorus

I just put my face to my hands

My fear for to hide

That I might yet become just another

Flower of the Wayside.

Their bins are full of screwed up dreams from the morning of their youth

and yes they still have their dreams in the straight-jacket of their lives.

They follow convention down the steps, in his drunken waltz

To fall into the waters deep, to find they cannot swim, to find they cannot think.

They’re too busy not being busy trying to be themselves,

They’ve been hung up upon society allocated shelves.

They pay homage to the idle with numerals on his face

And as his arms rotate, they start their diurnal chase

Machines I once thought were extensions of men’s arms

But men have just become extensions of machines,

Turmoiling in their cogwheel confusion

While I stage my independence – the water bearer’s revolution.

r

RAT RACE - (Roddy Radiation) The Specials
You're working at your leisure to learn the things you'll need

The Specials - Rat Race

1 comment

The promises you make tomorrow carry no guarantee
I've seen your qualifications, you got a Ph.D.
I've got one art O-level, it did nothing for me

Working for the rat race
You know you're wasting your time
Working for the rat race
You're no friend of mine

You plan your conversation to impress the college bar
Just talking about your mother and daddy's Jaguar
Wear your political T-shirt and sacred college scarf
Discussing the world situation, but just for a laugh

You'll be working for the rat race
You know you're wasting your time
Working for the rat race
You're no friend of mine

Working for the rat race
You know you're wasting your time
Working for the rat race
You're no friend of mine

Just working at your leisure to learn the things you don't need
The promises you make tomorrow carry no guarantee
I've seen your qualifications, you got a Ph.D.
I've got one art O-level, it did nothing for me

Working for the rat race
You know you're wasting your time
You're working for the rat race
You're no friend of mine

By the time Two Tone hit the world - things had change both in Coventry and the outside world. The ideals of the

The Specials - Ghost Town

woodstock generation had been thwarted, jobs in the car industry had been moved abroad to exploit the cheaper labour and the boom town that had survived the depression and the war years was now an unemployment blackspot, cities had become violent places. The idealism and optimism of the 60's and early 70's, the hope of escaping the 'Grey' and that of the world evolving towards co-operation and peace etc seemed a million miles away - the city (like many others) had become a Ghost Town and violence and apathy had replaced the thrust for a better world.

To their great credit - the Two Tone bands reflected this change in their lyrics and music -