TELEVISION: Luke Alfred
ALTHOUGH former Radio Rat Jonathan Handley is on the=20 other end of a telephone, one can imagine his eyes=20 lighting up at the magical sound of “pop”. The word has=20 special connotations for the man who, years ago, penned=20 that eerie local classic, Z-X Dan.
For Handley, now in his 40s and employed by Anglo=20 American as an anaesthetist in an Orkney mine hospital,=20 “pop” is associated with “songwriter” and “hook”, words=20 of a bygone age which belong more to Elvis Costello,=20 Lou Reed and Joe Jackson than they do to the free- association of the grunge and Blur generation.
Not that this father of two would allow himself to=20 become mired in nostalgia. He prefers instead to be=20 awestruck when thinking about how easy it is to record=20 a song these days: “What I find amazing is that you can=20 actually record something on to magnetic tape, you can=20 strum your guitar, and then you can push play and there=20 it is, your song is coming out of the loudspeakers.”
Several years ago Handley decided to hook up with a=20 local publisher and complete all those unfinished songs=20 that had been lying around for years. The result was a=20 collection of five Glee Club compilations, home- recorded 90 minute cassettes with titles such as Pure=20 Pop and Country and Northwestern, featuring old Radio=20 Rats songs as well as songs written without the Rats in=20
“It’s almost like being dead now and singing from=20 beyond the grave,” Handley says wryly. “There are no=20 young people around now who know Radio Rats material,=20 so it’s not even like making a comeback.=20
“It makes me feel like a zombie because people of my=20 generation have put down their guitars and are now=20 doing other things like buying houses.”
Each Glee Club cassette has its gems, but one of the=20 best is Free State Rain, a moody, almost self-parodic=20 track off Pure Pop. Like much other Handley material,=20 the song is autobiographical. “That song was written=20 while we were having a dust storm here in Orkney and is=20 about this woman called Ashley Simpson, who I fell in=20 love with when I went to high school in Welkom — ‘a=20 narrow mining town’.=20
“She was a surgeon’s daughter and very pretty, and=20 throughout my whole high school career I had the same=20 feelings for her, although she always had other=20 boyfriends and I other girlfriends.”
Given that he writes songs about unrequited love and=20 the natural world, it comes as no surprise that Handley=20 describes himself as an “apolitical animal”. A trawl=20 through some Glee Club songtitles confirms that he is a=20 mining town eccentric, singing songs about Herbert the=20 Hubcap Collector and the Robot Lady.=20
There’s also a side to his songwriting persona that=20 appears as an innocent at large in a wicked world. How=20 do his children, aged eight and 12, respond to his=20
“Oh they just ignore it completely,” he replies. “It’s=20 like furniture for them. They know all the songs and=20 sometimes they complain; they never rave about a song=20 because I don’t think that kids are like that.=20 Sometimes they’re ashamed of certain songs, the songs=20 really bug them for whatever reason. But most of the=20 time the songs are just there, they don’t even notice=20
Handley says a new Radio Rats CD will be coming out=20 shortly. Perhaps it will be listened to by a new=20 generation, as well as a nostalgic one.
Handley and fellow Radio Rat Dave Davies are the=20 subject of NNTV’s Thursday night music documentary on=20 June 29