OFF the road for a bit now: I’ve been far and wide in the past two weeks.  Cornwall was lovely, the north-west as welcoming as ever. Thoughts turn to June, as I plan our Glastonwick festival and my Bollocks To Brexit solo tour of mainland Europe: that’s all I have left now over there, nearly 30 years of band gigs are at an end, killed by a pinched-faced referendum vote. 

But enough of my travels:  I’m devoting the majority of this week’s column to an unexpectedly good review of an unexpected album from an unexpected source. 
 
 It’s been 41 years in the making, beating Abba in the “longest wait for a comeback album” stakes, as Paul Wellings, aka Anti Social Worker, the irritatingly persistent creator of Militant Business and Grime Poetry has informed me over and over again in a series of self-penned “press releases” over the last couple of weeks. 
 
He’s also endlessly informed me how much “critics” love his album and how much “national airplay” it’s getting. I neither know nor care if that’s true. (Paul is a former music journalist who also used to work in PR, and by fuck it shows. Get out of my FACE!)

Fortunately this independent-minded contrarian, accustomed to react in a diametrically opposite way to that intended by nagging music industry PR types, has managed to bypass all that bollocks — and Paul’s endless 1980s “working-class-East-End-street-cred-prolier-than-thou” stylings. Against all the aforementioned odds and once you’ve ditched the baggage, Militant Business and Grime Poetry is a skilful, diverse, original and thought-provoking piece of work. 

I have known Paul for over 40 years. Energised by our early ’80s ranting poetry scene, he first emerged as the loudest mouth in the Anti-Social Workers, a stroppy, shouty, creatively confrontational and highly original bunch of (white) reggae toasters backed by the groundbreakingly brilliant producer Mad Professor. 

Their album Punky Reggae Party broke down all the right barriers with some panache, uniting the culture, raising eyebrows and irking the purists, as Half Man Half Biscuit put it. I loved its obvious challenge:  the essence of Rock Against Racism on vinyl. 
 
A singular Anti-Social Worker now, Paul has done the business again, four decades later and completely out of the blue, with Militant Business and Grime Poetry. 

First things first: take it from me, if you’re an old white bloke and you’re going to do rap, talkover and spoken word, the music has to be brilliant. Le Magnifiq makes this album possible with some wonderfully diverse backing tracks, reminiscent in their variety if not always their form to those on Ice-T’s seminal Home Invasion album. 

Twelve-tone oud samples, scatty Caribbean seascapes, Laibachesque Happy Mondays dancealongs, looptape thumpers. Great stuff.

And Paul does the music proud with an assured and easy delivery. “You fall for everything if you stand for nothing.” He hits good targets: corrupt, incompetent Tory pandemic profiteers, thick old Essex bungalow bigots, boastful multimillionaire rappers lighting cigarettes with dollar bills while claiming to be “real,” dull racist morons who take the “Es and the sex out of Essex.” 

On Militant Soundclash he chats about his musical influences, which are many, on Time Flies of his musical guises, which are as diverse as they should be when you’ve been on the planet 60 years. True News is a socialist journalist’s revenge on decades of tabloid bigotry. And there’s a lovely rhyme for his partner. I’d have liked more of that kind of stuff.
 
On Rebels he quotes Shelley, Guevara and Martin Luther King. On East is East he tells the story of his time in East London — I’ve no idea if the stories are true, but they are succinctly and skilfully told. Favourite track:  The Masked Spitter. 

The opposite of Covid denial: his parner’s a nurse, he knows the score. “As I get older, I get more radical.” Me too. 
 
Forget the sly digs at old bandmates and colleagues, the constant need for “street cred” validation, the selection of the long-ago “working-class” bits of background: we all did that 40 years ago, to do it in your sixties is odd.  

It’s not where you come from, or want us to think you come from, that matters Paul, it’s what you do, and what you do here is great.  All in all a real surprise, a really worthwhile album, thoroughly recommended and available from https://m1music.com/