Has it really been this long since I was in the underground?
I forgot how freaky London can get. Maybe it's something about the heat.
But any city can get funky like that. From Madrid to New York. Here we have all kinds of folks.
When I first came to London, I was fascinated by "The Underground". The whole concept of an unseen esoteric thriving culture was so attractive to me. And to have a transport system with that same suggestive name just beckoned my imagination, when I read NME articles about all those Post-Punk bands.
So when I arrived in London from LA via NY (via Napoli, via Dusseldorf, via Paris, but that's a different blog) in 1983, I couldn't resist making The Underground my second home.
I was squatting on The Front Line in Brixton at the time, and The Underground seemed like space travel to me. We had nothing like it in LA. and it was free! In those days, none of the stations had barriers. You could just walk thru, cause they rarely checked your ticket.
Eventually I collaborated, and did sessions in London with many of the Post-Punkers whose stories and music had inspired me.
But still when I hear Iggy say "Things get too straight, I can't bear it", I hear Russell Thompkins Jr whisper discreetly in my ear, "Go underground young man".
