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Linda A | all galleries >> Galleries >> it's my life - 2005 diary > 25th February 2005 - Black
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25-FEB-2005

25th February 2005 - Black

I heard an article on Radio 4 this morning about ‘black being the new black’. Apparently if you have been wearing black for the last twenty years or so then you are some kind of sad old git with no sense of style because it has been totally UN-fashionable.

The woman who was reporting the story had become hugely excited by the fact that the Prada fashion show in Paris this week saw all of the models clad in black. She said ‘something hugely important has happened here, Prada is saying that black is back’. She then went on to say that the whole of the rest of the fashion world must take note and that black clothes require better tailoring and better fitting than any other colour.

What a load of old tosh. I doubt I’ve ever heard such nonsense – black being back is hugely important? Well surely only if you are the shallowest type of human being. Surely the things that are important are things like the state of our political landscape, the appalling poverty here in our own back yard, the disgrace of the treatment of Iraqi prisoners – they are important things. Frankly whether or not Prada says I can wear black is both immaterial and irrelevant. I don’t give a damn.

I have worn black with pride throughout the eighties, nineties and the new(?!) millennium and will continue to do so for the rest of my life. I make an odd foray into pillar box or cherry red and fuchsia pink and an even rarer one these days into fake animal print and that’s as far as I’ll go.

Tonight we saw a band that had a much more relevant observation on ‘black’ which is the indisputable lyric….

‘stick him in the living room and turn out the light, bet you wouldn’t know if he was black or white’

The photo is the clue – it’s a tee-shirt drenched in the sweat of a very young and rather beautiful young man called ‘Rankin Junior’ who is the son of the very lush ‘Rankin Roger’, one of the two front men of the Beat. The logo has been one of their symbols for as long as I can remember. It was like a scene from the bible – you know – the one where the Red (or was it Dead, I dunno because I have spent the last thirty five or so years making sure I never go near a bible) Sea parted and let the people walk through to a better land. While he was getting a ribbing by his Dad for getting naked (Roger already had his tee shirt off) he flung it out and the people in front of me parted and it landed right on my chest. Now as many will already know, I’m a bit star-struck with the bands I love and this was no exception. I grabbed it and held on for all I was worth.

We saw the Beat at the 100 Club in Oxford Street, a tiny venue in the centre of London. Not surprisingly it was sold out. It was hot, sticky and heaving with people having the time of their lives. I love going to this type of gig – no pretentions, no phoney coolness, just a bunch of people just like me dancing and singing and having a great time.

When they came on stage and there was no Dave Wakeling and no Saxa (both of whom played last time I saw the band early last year), I thought to myself ‘this is going to be crap’ but it was far from crap, it was brilliant fun. Rankin Junior was a great foil for his Dad and the two of them bounced their way through a fab set of classic Beat tracks and, would you believe, Rock the Casbah, as a tribute to our lost hero, Joe Strummer.

So I went from a completely pretentious article on how important ‘black’ should be to every stick insect fashion victim in 2005, which still makes me see red!! I ended up in a place where the mix of black and white music that is ska was really saying something about the mix of two cultures and the challenges of growing up in the somewhat less than racially tolerant Birmingham in the 70s/80s.

So, from ‘stick him in the living room and turn out the light, bet you wouldn’t know if he was black or white’ to ‘Stand Down Margaret’ the Beat still have it and this is an observation about black and white that is REALLY important.

Strangely last year I was also musing on our multi-cultural society


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Em 03-Apr-2005 18:13
Wow Linda, you love the Beat as well as Paul Young, King and Elvis Costello. What a woman of taste you are. (I was SO sure I was going to marry Dave W when I was younger). Great picture.
Stu26-Feb-2005 18:32
Absolutely love Ska - well, the Two Tone stuff of the late-1970s. The Specials were awesome (I sneaked into a licensed venue in Edinburgh to watch them when I was just sweet 16).
David Mingay26-Feb-2005 10:40
Hmmm - I heard on the radio that rock 'n' roll is the new rock 'n' roll...