By The Landlord
Howay the Lads and Lasses! This week we're heading to the land of the aal reet, the canny, the dafty, the hacky, fettle, tabs ’n snout, marras, maartal nappas, workie tickets, gannin oot on the toon, pitmatic, yakka, Geordies and Mackems. It's the unmistakable accent and character of the North East of England, an area officially including Newcastle upon Tyne and Gateshead, Sunderland, Middlesbrough, Durham, Darlington, Northumberland, Hartlepool, Stockton-on-Tees, Redcar and Cleveland and many a smaller town and village, variously within the conurbations of Tyneside, Wearside and Teesside.
It's famous for its castles, coastline, bridges, ships, coal, football, nightlife, humour, brown ale and banter. But it has also produced many great bands and many genres of songs, and this week the aim is to capture its charisma, vernacular, people, history, geography and special storytelling all through music.
This is an area that borders Scotland and so includes the eastern part of Hadrian's Wall, so it was originally a frontier of the Roman Empire. To the west sits Cumbria and to the south is Yorkshire. Humberside is officially being part of East Yorkshire, and while it's tempting to include Hull also this week, perhaps that's really perhaps better included in a separate Yorkshire theme.
Colour map for your guidance
So as usual with these topics, such as previously done with songs from and about Birmingham and the Black Country or Liverpool and Merseyside, it's not essential that every song nominated be by a north-east artist, that is, as long it refers to the area. Equally if they are from the north east, then not every one song might be relevant. But the aim is that anything suggested captures something about the north east, and, for greater style and authenticity, ideally the artist also comes from there too.
So who might they be? My current favourite contemporary artists coming from the north east include the Brewis brothers' Field Music from Sunderland, Nadine Shah and Du Blonde (formerly Beth Jeans Hougton and the Hooves of Destiny) both originally from Newcastle, but there are many more obvious and also less so. Some of course have made major mainstream success - The Animals, Sting, Dire Straits, Bryan Ferry and Chris Rea and Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys, for example, but when considering their work, how much of it reflects the region? What also of Futureheads, Maxïmo Park, Toy Dolls, Brian Johnson of AC/DC and Geordie, Trevor Horn of Buggles and further production fame, Prefab Sprout who hail from the Durham village of Witton Gilbert, current star Sam Fender from North Shields, or contrasting artists from Lindisfarne to Dubstar to Whitesnake? Perhaps also the 18th-century Newcastle composer Charles Avison? All of these, and no doubt far more, are for your learned deliberation.
Perhaps your song suggestions will contain a north-east flavour in delivery or phrase, or in turn, mention landmarks, people, or its history. There’s something unique about the area’s spoken accent – it almost sings. The area is rich in culture, industry, but also social deprivation, from the Jarrow March to London against unemployment poverty in which 200 men walked to the capital from 5–31 October in 1936, all the way to the closure of coal mines in the 1980s and other industrial decline. Only recently hundreds of thousands of homes were without electricity after Storm Arwen, and remained so for up to two weeks. There is a strong, and justifiable argument that had the same damage occurred in Surrey, for example, power would have been restored within a couple of days.
Jarrow March of 1936
Perhaps the greatest TV drama depiction of the area is Peter Flannery's Our Friends In The North, spanning the period 1964 to 1995, with a young main cast who all became stars, including Daniel Craig, Christopher Eccleston, Mark Strong and Gina McKee, the latter the only one from the area (Durham), but all of whom brilliantly played Newcastle friends experiencing various careers, hair lengths, and ups and downs in Britain during this period.
Our Friends In The North
The north-east, in my experience, is a place of the hardy, the warm-hearted, the humorous and down-to-earth. The cliched experience of visiting Newcastle on a Saturday night is to see hundreds of lads and lasses walking around dolled up but exposed to the elements, usually rain or snow, in T-shirts and boob tubes. When I was last there I got talking to a guy in the pub about this. He explained that the main reason is that, while they are hardy, and perhaps some are filled with Viking blood, and might not feel the cold so much, the main reason is that people don't like to carry coats, as there is conventionally nowhere to put them when they go dancing. Current star Sam Fender from North Shields describes the regular scene as "Poundshop Kardashians is Newcastle on a Saturday night. Nobody wears coats - it's all muscles and V-necks and fake tan."
Football, as well as beer, is a huge part of the local culture, the rivalries between Newcastle, Sunderland and Middlesbrough as fierce but as friendly and loyal as the winning of trophies is rare. The area's most famous son, apart from Alan Shearer, and probably the best British footballer since George Best and Bobby Charlton, is Paul 'Gazza' Gascoigne, a flawed genius later affected by alcoholism, but possessed of extraordinary skill and mischief, and seen here in a famous photo in 1988 when he was still playing for Newcastle against Wimbledon, where the fearsome Vinnie Jones made to grab him by the bollocks when waiting for a high ball.
Paul Gascoigne, playing for Newcastle in 1988, famously reacts to Vinnie Jones’s hands-on technique
The north-east is the product of great, inventive, anarchic comedians such as Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer, prolific comedy writer Ian Le Frenais from Monkseaton, Northumberland, who among many other successes co-wrote Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, about a bunch of unemployed Geordie and other builders who go to Germany to seek work, and The Likely Lads, two down-on-their-luck Newcastle blokes, who famously in one episode spend the entire trying to to find out the football result so they can watch it on Match of the Day.
Auf Wiedersehen, Pet cast, including three core Geordie characters, Oz, Neville and Dennis (top right)
The Likely Lads - James Bolam and Rodney Bewes
And that fabulously filthy, superbly sweary team behind the longstanding adult comic, Viz, chiefly set up by brothers Chris and Simon Donald in 1979, inspired as a combination of MAD and The Beano with a particularly local and dirty twist. It is filled with caricatures of Newcastle types, but of course stereotypes are often based on reality, even if hugely exaggerated, from Buster Gonad (& His Unfeasibly Large Testicles) to Sid the Sexist, Terry Fuckwitt, Johnny Fartpants, Sweary Mary, Rude Kid, Roger Mellie, The Fat Slags, Roger Irrelevant and many more, including thousands of fabulously absurd, fictional adverts, all brought together also in hard-backed annuals variously titled The Big Pink Stiff One and so one, as well as the brilliantly filthy and ever-expanding dictionary, the Profanosaurus.
An early Rude Kid utterance
Apparently David Bowie was a regular reader and fan, seen here chuckling with an issue on the train:
David Bowie: Viz fan
There area is also home to many beautiful and striking natural and manmade landmarks, which might crop up in your song suggestions, such as Durham Cathedral, Bamburgh Castle, Alnwick Castle, Holy Island and Lindisfarne Castle, Tynemouth Priory, The Angel of the North, and Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle, venues from the Sage to the Baltic, as well as huge areas of beautiful countryside and coastline. Let’s have a look at some for inspiration. Do any of these come up in song?
Holy Island and Lindisfarne Castle
Angel of the North
Durham Cathedral
Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer
So then, it's time to unleash the fierce but warm embrace of the north east. And opening his musical arms and perhaps having a glass of the brown stuff, let's also welcome back, after his debut on the area of Merseyside, the ever energetic and excellently informed Alaricmc, who will put your suggestions into playlists next week. Deadline? This coming Monday at 11pm UK time. Will it be geet walla? Which devil knows all the best Toons? Howay, man!
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