PUNCH, PROPELLERS, AND CITIES IN THE PARK
A stumble down Memory Lane
One of the delights of being an old music journalist is that I have seen a lot of things but I can’t remember where. Like some old git in a hardware shop who knows there are some 13 amp fuses in a box somewhere but doesn’t know where they are, I can remember all kinds of things but not in any order, like pieces of a jigsaw sent randomly by post to different addresses.
I can remember, for example, certain moments from the early 1990s in great detail – walking down a sunlit avenue in New York looking for a novelty goods shop, visiting an abandoned crazy golf course in New Jersey, being congratulated on my watch through a car window in Heaton Park – but until I started researching this post, I had no idea that they were all somehow connected.
PUNCH, PROPELLERS, AND CITIES IN THE PARK
It is July 1991 and I am walking through New York’s garment district on a mission in my spare time. I am on a mission because I have conceived an ambition and it is spare time because I am here to write a piece for the NME. The piece is an interview with up-and-coming Liverpool retro jangle band The La’s and the ambition is to buy a propeller hat.
For some reason I have been overcome with the desire to own a propeller hat aka a pinwheel hat aka a beanie with a plastic propeller on top. I do not know why this is – perhaps the influence of American kitsch, or maybe Matt Groening’s Life In Hell strips which have entered my life via the raging success of Groening’s other great creation The Simpsons. But I really want a propeller hat and you cannot get them in London so I think that while I am in Manhattan I will see if I can buy one. I mean, if you cannot buy a propeller hat in Manhattan then where can you buy one?
I find a shop that sells all manner of novelty items and amazingly not only do they sell propeller hats but they sell the right kind of propeller hat, the one without a brim. I also buy a fake Rolex from a street vendor and take them back to my hotel room to pack safely because the next few days will be busy: the La’s are going on the road to play shows in New York, Washington DC and New Jersey, and I am going with them. Also present are NME photographer Tim Jarvis, who is a lovely man, La’s manager Rob, and Go-Discs Records representative Cathal Smyth. Cathal is better known as Chas Smash, member of Madness, who danced, sang and wrote at least one of the band’s greatest songs (more of which later).
The La’s I have met before. I had lunch at the same table as them at some event in Liverpool: I did not take to their manners as they asked a waitress for “breast of chicken” in mock-salacious tones. And immediately I am introduced to them at their soundcheck they are in full piss-taking mode.
Possibly it was a mistake for me to wear a t-shirt promoting fellow Liverpool group Top. Guitarist John Power points out the similarity in tunes between Top’s single Number One Generator and Dusty Springfield’s Son Of A Preacher Man (to be fair, Top can dish it out, the singer once telling me that Andy McCluskey of OMD resembles “a teacher who can’t control his class”). The band then leave me alone and return to their favourite topic of baiting Cathal Smyth about his previous career. So far Lee Mavers has said two words to me: “How do.”
I sit a while with Cathal, who I’ve met before. We talk about his song Michael Caine, which I love, and he tells me that it’s about an informer and the mysterious spoken line “Getcha ra ra” was meant to be a reference to the IRA – the ‘Ra.
The next day we hit the road, driving four hours to Washington DC where, my original piece tells me, “we check into our hotel where, to our horror, we meet Ned’s Atomic Dustbin.” In the dressing room of the venue, some previous visitor has written the words “Lee Mavers is a lickspittle Scouse (word redacted for libel)”. Then it’s off to Asbury Park, New Jersey, where I have some salty water taffy, which is disgusting, and find myself walking by an abandoned crazy golf course, which sounds and looks like something imagined by a very tiny Bruce Springsteen. Lee Mavers still hasn’t spoken to me, although John Power has, and does, and is very friendly (he is also the only La’ ‘writing new songs at this point, most of which end up as hits for his next band, the brilliant Cast).
The show takes place, there is a lot of drinking and smoking after (I can’t get my contact lenses out of my eyes) and then it is time to go home. I point out to Cathal that after three days I still haven’t interviewed Lee, so he gets me fifteen minutes with him on the phone. Lee is chatty and pleasant and tells me “I like Happy Mondays. They’re very good. It’s attitude... Attitude’s where you are.”
I pack my bags, not forgetting the propeller hat, and head home, where almost at once I set out again to see a festival in Manchester. It is called Cities In The Park, and it features Happy Mondays, The Beautiful South, OMD, Electronic and, representing the rest of the world, De La Soul, who are currently and deservedly kings of everything. It is a great weekend and I wear my fake watch much to the appreciation of at least one Liverpudlian who exclaims “Jag Rolex” – and my propeller hat. I am very fond of the propeller hat and will later write an article about finding it for the humour magazine Punch.
It is toward the end of the afternoon when I am sitting with my friend Cath Carroll that I hear a voice behind me.
“My man!” says the voice.
I turn round to see standing there one of De La Soul. He is six feet high (and rising), he has his arms outstretched towards me - and he is wearing a propeller hat.
He hugs me.
It is the greatest moment of my pop life.
DAVID QUANTICK 2026
Loved that.