JoJo Smith...The Ligger Years Part 2

So yesterday I posted about my meeting with Ian Dury and the feedback has been amazing! Not to mention to huge amount of hits to my site!

As a result, I've decided to stop hanging onto all my little rock and roll stories for the mythical autobiography, and start recounting them here. Let's face it, I'm not famous enough for the 'big budget in the shops for Christmas' type book deal, and thank god my life hasn't been tragic enough to make a bomb on one of those "misery books".

In yesterday's blog I explained that in order to legitimize my meeting with Mr Dury I said that me and my mates had a fanzine called The Ligger. At that point it was nothing more than words, but as we sat on the train back to Preston, it dawned on me that actually doing a fanzine would be a great idea.

Kosmo had given us tips on being real liggers, useful tips such as:

1. Never pay for a gig ticket, always ring the record company press offices and blag them

2. Never pay for records, always ring the record company press offices and blag them.

3. Never pay for anything much at all if you can help it, blag, blag, blag!

Those words resonated in my head and have stood me in good stead for almost all of my adult life!

As you might imagine, Preston wasn't exactly Punk Rock Central, so we had to travel for our ligging. One trip we took was to Blackpool. Glen Matlock - the Sex Pistol who was sacked for 'liking The Beatles' had formed another group called The Rich Kids and they were doing a gig in what I recall was the function room of a hotel somewhere in the seaside town.

This time it was just Peggy and I that went. By now we had proper Punk Rock pseudonyms - just like Poly Styrene and Sid Vicious - Peggy was Anne R Key and I was Gaye Abandon! I'd contacted the record company - EMI ironically given Glen's previous band's troubles with the label - and got us on the guest list, and we were off!

Guest List - two of the most incredibly wonderful words in the world ever put together!

Now strictly speaking of course the Rich Kids weren't punk rock, dear god they had an ex-member of the teeny-bop group Slik in them! I speak of course of Midge Ure. At the time we went to see them, they'd had one record out, also called Rich Kids (I got a free copy!). We were more interested in seeing the ex-Sex Pistol on bass then what he was today.

The gig itself has faded from my memory, but I do remember it was great! Exciting, so different to the Blockheads one in that the room was tiny and we were really close to the band. Up until then we'd only ever seen bands in massive venues like the Guildhall, and the Manchester Apollo and the Liverpool Empire, so to be in somewhere about the same size as one of those venue's toilet was enthralling.

After the show we sat down with Glen and did the interview. He was happy to talk about the Pistols tho of course preferred to talk about his new band, but he was happy to talk. So much so that we missed the last train back to Preston! Bless him, he gave us £20 which in those days was plenty to get us a taxi home. Luckily, he'd also given us an address for his management offices and I'm proud to say we did actually send him a £20 postal order when we got back!

As a footnote to this tale, I actually saw Glen on the tube a couple of weeks ago. I thought it'd be way to weird to try and remind him about this incident from 32 years ago. I have to say that of almost all the people from those days he's worn the best, he was looking hawt for a man in his 50's!