|
Post by dem bones on Oct 23, 2007 15:29:47 GMT
Richard Allen - Boot Boys (NEL 1971) Was thinking about Allen yesterday (as you do when you've had a few), and decided that he'd jacked in his teen hooligan series a few decade or more too early for my liking. Think of the potential for "Goth Girls" and "Industrial Poster Boy." That was before I made a start on "Boot Boys" and, the horror, the horror ... Blimey. Only 110 pages and still it requires considerable fortitude on the part of the reader to see this one through. As mentioned before, the casual racism of these books is pretty damned hard to read around, and the gang-rape of a Jewish woman - made all the more appalling by having her confess her guilty enjoyment of same to a crusading journalist - doesn't make this an easy book to like. Anyway, the first seventy-five pages are devoted to the misadventures of The Crackers, a teeny gang from privileged backgrounds who follow Arsenal F. C. (not much has changed in thirty-odd years then). When they're not bashing men and molesting women, the gang devote their free time to drinking Haig in their clubhouse and a variety of pubs on Hampstead Heath ( The Spaniards, Jack Straw's Castle and The Bull & Bush are all name-checked. We even learn that Tom smokes Consulate). There's a power-struggle between head Cracker, Tom Walsh, and would-be usurper, Benjy, and their attempts to sort out who's the hardest become increasingly desperate. Just as things are getting a bit monotonous, Tom remembers that he's been interested in Aleister Crowley for years and decides that Black Magic is the answer to all the Crackers' problems, otherwise they're just a bunch of skinheads with hair. I perked up a bit at this development, and it does get a little livelier as the boys dig up a corpse, orgy in the grave, desecrate the church and chant weird spells. But then you realise that all the violence has done awful things to Tom's brain because he's having an instant breakdown, and Allen seems keen to wrap everything up and churn out the next one. Still, if they were selling a million a time, he'd not be much of a hack if he didn't rattle off as many as he could. That's what I wrote two years ago but, y'know, this novel has stayed in my memory far longer than some others I actually enjoyed, most specifically the stupendously incongruous orgy in the cemetery. Maybe a rematch is on the cards once I've caught up with some from the sprawling 'to read' pile.
|
|
|
Post by ripper on Jan 18, 2013 13:19:27 GMT
Boot Boys was the first of Richard Allen's books that I read, bought secondhand from a classmate when I was 12 years old, and it must have been doing the rounds in the 2years or so after its publication as it was well creased even then. It did rather shock me when I read it, due to its casual violence both on and off the terraces. There's a scene where the gang are indulging in some violence at a football match and they use coshes smuggled into the ground inside the bras of girl gang members, and Tom and his rival try to bash as many rival fans' heads as possible to sort out who will be gang leader. What really shocked me was the girls egging them on and seemingly getting rather ahem excited at the violence. I found the re-telling of the rape to be very disturbing and its a scene that I have generally skipped past during re-reads. As well as the black magic, I seem to remember that Tom had a thing about old George Raft films, and tried to style himself after the gangsters in those films, though I don't think too much was made of it.
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Jan 18, 2013 22:35:30 GMT
It sure is one ugly novel. Without the name, I doubt any established small press would touch it if it was submitted for publication today, never mind the majors, but of the Moffat's hooligan novels I've read, its the one that's stayed with me, so I guess that qualifies it as my "favourite". The cemetery desecration and black magic stuff was almost certainly tagged on when he read of similar goings on in a certain N. London cemetery, quite likely via an Eric Maples article on same in an issue of Man, Myth & Magic.
|
|
|
Post by ripper on Jan 19, 2013 18:29:30 GMT
The black magic and cemetery goings on do seem to just come out of nowhere, so you could well be right, Dem :-).
|
|
glampunk
Crab On The Rampage
gloompunk; glitter goth: disciple of Rikki Nadir: demonik in disguise, etc.
Posts: 61
|
Post by glampunk on May 15, 2013 18:09:10 GMT
The GLAM-Bootboy crossover Shaun Tordoff - City Psychos (Milo 2002) Too much real life crap to contend with of recent weeks so little chance to get in much reading, but finally managed to complete this hooligan memoir from a Hull City fan. It comes as little surprise that Mr. Tordoff was an avid reader of NEL's bootboy output. Chapter 3, Golden bootboys, concerning the 1972-1973 and 1973-74 seasons, reads like a Richard Allen nightmare made flesh. " .... a lot of the older lads had told us about West Ham's reputation, and I, like thousands of others, had read all the Skinhead books. We were all giving it "Where's your Joe Hawkins now?' "There's a fair amount on the bootboy-glam rock crossover, including a report on a Slade gig and a lengthy account of Hull's visit to Stockport. MONTIE: And so it continued throughout the seventies, big games, not so big crowds and better and better policing of matches. Every time we played a club from West Yorkshire or Lancashire, the local paper ran a report on the arrests on the Monday night. Custodial sentences started to be given out for most trivial of offenses, and this put a lid on some of the spontaneous trouble. You had people thinking, Now, do I want spend three months in North Sea Camp?
By early 1973 football hooliganism peaked in Hull. We drew Stockport away in the FA cup third round. Influenced by glam rock and the film A Clockwork Orange, City fans turned out in their hundreds dressed as butchers in long white coats and with Dr. Martens sprayed silver. We ran riot in Stockport, dancing on car bonnets, smashing shop windows and terrorising the locals. Greater Manchester Police had never seen anything like it. City fought with the police inside the ground while Stockport fans took cover. It was mayhem, absolute mayhem.
[Shaun Tordoff continues] The Stockport game is one of perhaps half a dozen matches that have gone down in folk legend among the followers of Hull City, and perfectly encapsulates the mindset of the early-seventies hooligan. We wanted to be different. We wanted to shock, as well as frighten, our opponents. Some lads were seen at games wearing bandages, bandana-style, emblazoned with the term 'MAD' copied from the popular American magazine of the same name. New names appeared such as Kempton Axemen and Kempton Mentalmen. But none of these ideas took a mass hold.
Then a few lads bought some glitter, spray-painted their Docs silver or gold, and soon everyone looked like roadies at a Sweet concert. The look was finished off with silkscarves tied to their heads, Indian-style, and a few even went to the extremes of of painting their faces, inspired I suppose by Stanley Kubrick.
This hybrid of the bootboy was unleashed on an unsuspecting public at Stockport County ..... Richard Allen turns up again in Jeremy Novick & Mick Middles fab Wham Bam Thank You Glam: A Celebration of The '70's (Aurum, 1998) where he lays claim to the letter 'R' in the 'Glam A-Z' "R is for Richard Allen, author of all those Skinhead and Suedehead books who took on Glam, and, as ever, got it right royally wrong - especially in Teeny Bopper Idol: "Bobby Sharp is the newest star in a growth of youthful worship ... But showbusiness expertise and talent are not enough - a star like Bobby needs a manager who doesn't know the meaning of ethics and when it comes to exploitation the Teenyboppers are a gift of the kind he knows how to manipulate." Huh?"
- dem
|
|
|
Post by helrunar on Jun 11, 2020 13:09:07 GMT
Shocking.
H
|
|