On Tour with Attila the Stockbroker
Having only previously seen Attila the Stockbroker on youtube, and observing that he does ranty, rhyming political stuff, I wasn’t sure if he was exactly my cup of tea. But in exchange for driving the promoter, Mab Jones, support act, Sue Hamblen, and Jack Pascoe, who was taking the door money, to 3 of Attila the Stockbroker’s Welsh dates, I was offered a stall selling the magazine, so by the time we reached the third of these gigs, in Swansea, I had become quite used to the notorious performer, and had grown to like him very much, both as a poet, and a person.
The first gig in Cardiff Arts Institute attracted a few old school punks, a couple of whom I must admit, I did think were a little sad, dressed in the same clothes they might well have worn 30 years ago. I was quite far back from the stage at this gig, so didn’t hear all of Attila’s act, but I found myself thinking that all the references to the punk era sounded a bit stale, but I realise that as this was a 30th anniversary tour, this sort of material would be expected. Perhaps it was something to do with this being my home turf, but I did find myself feeling quite cynical about the whole thing.
By the time we got to Brecon the next day, my attitude began to change considerably. This was a slightly miserable gig in terms of attendance, and in fact, if the show of hands was accurate, just 2 of the 20-odd crowd at this gig were even from Brecon, with some hardcore Attila fans having travelled a long way. However, it was at this gig that I got to properly speak with Attila first, and he turned out to be a really decent geezer, with a good knowledge of football – he is after all the announcer and official poet at Brighton FC – and also of the Welsh language music scene.
And also at this gig, although it was really not a venue suited to Attila’s style, I was able to pay proper attention to his poetry, and found that in fact, in the main, I liked it. His poems range from entertaining narrative pieces such as “Punk Night at the Duck’s Nuts” to touching poems about his family, including one about his mother – who frequently followed him around on tour, but sadly died of Alzheimer’s recently – which had female members of the audience in both Brecon and Swansea crying, but mostly the poems are, as mentioned, rhyming, political pieces, and you need to see these read live for the full effect really. If there’s one word that sums up Attila the most, it’s uncompromising. He completely refuses to play ball, and will not back down from rallying against the far right for example, and he has several tales of where he has encountered them, and in some cases had to fight them. It was in fact a political piece that almost had me in tears at the Brecon gig, so powerfully was it put across, and I almost envisaged Attila not as a stockbroker, but as a saint!
Having said that, the only slightly unfortunate thing that occurred on the tour was that Mab did not receive a single penny for all her hard work, and at the Swansea gig – which was by far the best venue of the three, and had a good turnout – I wasn’t sure if Attila was exactly taking Marx’s “from each according to….” motto into account by not allowing Mab to keep any of the door money here. However left wing you are though, certain traits are decided by other things of course, and being a typical real ale drinker probably dictates that you will also be the sort of person who will appear quite relieved to find last orders already having been called when making a token offer to buy the promoter a drink.
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