In
September 2007 a Brighton mystery was finally solved. While rumours had
long been rife, few were sure if the shadowy musical project known as
The Brighton Port Authority really existed. Proof of their recorded
output was only confirmed when a cardboard box of dusty reel-to-reel
tapes was found during the development of a Brighton dockside
warehouse. The find was brought to the attention of East Sussex music
lecturer Dr Randolph Seal who immediately hoped these were the famed
lost BPA tapes. One listen told him that they were.
"I've
spent the last ten years trying to track down this elusive outfit," he
explains, "and I knew the BPA studio was supposedly down at the docks
but even insiders have proven shaky on the details. To me this find is
akin to locating Sly Stone's long lost Panther Funk sessions with the
MC5 - it's a goldmine." The
Brighton Port Authority were an outfit who built a huge word-of-mouth
reputation on England's south coast from the early 1970s onwards before
petering out in the mid-'90s. From what can be easily pieced together,
they were a loose-limbed jamming unit, originally known as the Brighton
Phonographic Association. At its core were local musicians Norman Cook
and Simon Thornton who gathered various singers and session men around
them, built the rather ramshackle BPA studio, and would occasionally
hold multi-day warehouse parties from which their semi-legendary
reputation stems.
Dr
Seal had long known that Brighton-based producer Simon Thornton had
affiliations with the BPA and tracked him down. Thornton then
approached the development firm and bought the reel-to-reel analogue
tapes for 700 Pounds. He started going through them and was so
surprised at the quality of what he found that he digitally remastered
the best material in full stereophonic sound. Simon had been in the BPA
from its beginning but left briefly after a 1977 studio drug bust. He
was back in the fold by the mid-1980s although since the tapes are
unmarked, it's unclear when each one dates from.
Norman
Cook, meanwhile, was certainly the driving force behind the BPA but
when confronted on the subject he usually becomes extremely cagey.
"This
is just a load of bollocks," he notoriously once replied when asked
about it by Sir Melvyn Bragg who was researching a potential South Bank
Show Special. However, approached more recently by a local newspaper he
took a very different tack, stating, "There was so much potential then.
From what little I can remember it was such an interesting time. Simon
played me some of the tapes and I'm amazed at the quality."
"The
BPA was a great lost era for Norman and numerous other musicians,"
explains Dr Seal, "They were experimenting with all kinds of concepts.
Iggy Pop was over in the mid-'70s, he was really out there. The BPA
were having some kind of warehouse party, testing synthesizers,
shooting fireworks across the bay, Iggy just had to get involved. He
recorded a version of The Monochrome Set's debut single 'He's Frank'
four years before The Monochrome Set wrote it. It was an incredible
time."
The
BPA's modus operandi appears to have been to convene for sessions at
times pre-agreed according to astrological principles laid out by their
guru Baba Ganoush, sadly now deceased. On auspicious dates they would
gather and jam. Some of these sessions, listened to in the cold light
of 2008, are classic, notably a song called 'Local Town' sung by Jamie
T some time in the late '70s. Lots of other artists crossed paths with
the BPA, although many now deny ever having had met them. The vocal on
a catchy number called 'Toe Jam' is patently David Byrne, despite his
reticence on the subject, and at some point during The BPA's 'mauve
spell', when Cook and Thornton both insisted they could only record on
equipment painted mauve, Martha Wainwright stopped by and laid down the
vocals for a dubbed out track called 'Spade'.
Most
of the material on the tapes dates from some time in the '70s but
there's the odd thing that has been recorded since. X-Press 2's Ashley
Beedle is one of the few who acknowledges his presence at BPA sessions,
the results being the rock-steady 'Should I Stay Or Should I Blow'
which, he says "speaks for itself". When questioned further he simply
gives a wry, wistful smile and ventures, "Good days, but that's all I
can remember."
The
names of many players in the long-running BPA saga have been lost to
history but local cornet player and roadie Charlie Stains was
occasionally asked to the studio.
"You
never knew what to expect from one day to the next," recalls Arthur, "I
remember they went through a stage when Simon insisted that television
sets, if tuned off channel, were receptors for alien messages. I went
into the studio one day and he had about twenty TVs, screens all snowed
up, speakers blaring white noise, and he was playing funk guitar over
it with his eyes closed. I asked if he wanted a nice cup of tea but I
don't think he heard me." Stains pauses for a moment then adds, "I
shouldn't really be telling you this. In the early '80s Norman swore us
all to omerta - silence - in a secret ceremony that reminded me of
those mafia movies. Now that the tapes are out there, though, it can't
do any harm, can it..."
When
told that the best songs from the tapes are to be released under the
title 'We're Gonna Need A Bigger Boat' Stains laughs heartily. "That
was what they all used to say," he recalls, "When things were getting
too much, as they so often did in those days, they'd all swear they
were going to head out to sea to escape it all. 'We're gonna need a
bigger boat,' that was what they'd shout. I can hear them now, the daft
ha'porths."
While
it's rumoured that some BPA minor players drifted off and set up a yoga
retreat in northern Portugal, the project's core duo simply lost
interest gradually over the years. A combination of lackadaisical
attitudes and overwrought hedonism meant that the studio eventually
fell into disuse. The tapes were left languishing in a box for decades
and might easily have simply been thrown out but for the foresight of
the canny on-site chartered surveyor who originally contacted Dr Seal.
"It
would have been a tragedy if this material had been lost," says Seal,
"It's been called Norman Cook's 'Smile' and it's certainly been hidden
from public eye about as long as Brian Wilson's masterpiece. The BPA
are a very different kettle of fish, though, and I can't wait to hear
these songs played at a modern disco. I want to see what the young
people think."
He
will very shortly have his chance and, given the stone cold grooves of
songs such as 'Dirty Sheets' and 'Jumps The Fence' it seems likely that
people, both young and old, will finally be able to wrap their ears
around a long lost treasure.
