Guest Reviewer Maria Meli caught John Cooper Clarke’s recent show in Toronto…

John Cooper Clarke Review

Punk poet John Cooper Clarke at The Garrison, Toronto, September 10, 2015
(Rescheduled from the original May 15 & 16 dates at The Rivoli)

Self-styled “Dr.” John Cooper Clarke took the stage at The Garrison in Toronto after an audio intro hinting pomp and circumstance. Cocaine-thin, the lanky rhyme master looked even taller than he is, dressed in a tight-as-second-skin royal blue suit, white shirt, crochet blue tie and kid-smooth black shoe boots. How tight was his suit? One could see that the doctor dresses to the right. He sported black sun glasses, no doubt to ward off the blinding blue stage lights in the dark club. Indisputably, Dr Clarke has style!

He began by letting us know, due to the late hour of his arrival in the city, there was not enough time to submit a guest list in advance, so he was going to read it out, which he did – in verse – after first entertaining us with his wit and humour. The guest list was read from his dog-eared note book. All his verse is recorded there, regardless of later publishing or recordings.

His performance was a combination of older classics like “Beasley Street,” “Evidently Chickentown,” “Hire Car” and “Twat,” newer works like “I’ve Fallen in Love With My Wife,” and “Bed Blocker Blues” and his droll musings.

Clarke can poke fun at himself, and he shared a story about his old friends in Manchester commenting on how he’s gained weight since he stopped taking drugs. He’s downright obese now! He segued into a poem about this rotund, drug-free state – he’s still a skyscraper sliver – called “Get Back on Drugs You Fat Fuck.”

He shared his thoughts with the audience on many topics, for example, the temperature in Toronto.

“Who knew it went tropical in Canadia? [No typo, he said Canadia a few times.] Here down next to Mexico. Consequently, I’ve been sweating like a glass blower’s ass.”

“Did I ever get a wrong number,” he continued. “I even brought a parka. A snow parka!”

His tirade on relationships, definitely coloured by his acrimonious divorce with his first wife, included his thoughts on handling conflicts.

“If they really get upset with you, they give you the silent treatment … It’s worth putting in the extra effort.”

He was incompatible with his first wife. He shared that he’s an “Aquarian, while she’s an asshole.”

When asked if he’s a romantic, his reply is, “To a sadistic degree.”

Besides being blessed with humour and a quick wit, Clarke has a gift for impressions. He did channel, or perhaps “don,” the persona of an American mafioso (well, a mash of Bronxian and Brooklynese) several times during his performance.

He has matured and the topics he wants to comment on have expanded. In his preamble to “Bed Blocker Blues,” he opined how the health care system considers old people who have to be in hospital bed blockers. A seventy year-old with dementia is taking the spot that a 56 year-old father of four awaiting gender reassignment could be using. He tackled two current issues in one sentence and managed to inject humour into it.

After amusing the audience with a morbid limerick, which he didn’t write, but wished he had, he moved on to haiku.

He reviewed the basics: three lines, 17 syllables, structured in five, seven and five words. No deviation half a syllable either way.

“You know what the Japanese are like,“ he said. “There is no Japanese literal translation for the term ‘near enough.’”

Get it wrong, and it’s like spitting on your ancestors – then he would be obliged to eviscerate himself in a public place and he doesn’t want that to happen. He had to think carefully about it before attempting haiku. He thought if push came to shove, he could live with himself spitting on his ancestors, but he drew the line at eviscerating himself … however wavy.

He read six haikus in a random order, starting with Haiku #6 and ending with Haiku #1. Three of them follow:

Haiku #6
Smarter men than I
Have been total idiots
And I’ve met them all

Haiku #2
With patience and faith
You may catch your enemy’s
Funeral cortège

Haiku #4
With its golden pledge
of a pain-free existence
morphine makes me breathe

His penultimate poem was a more recent composition about his wedded bliss, called, “I’ve Fallen in Love With My Wife.” He then ended the set with “Evidently Chickentown.”

A short break and he was back for an encore and more storytelling.

Clarke divulged that he prefers the disabled bathroom as it is more “residential.” One can apply cosmetics. He used to have a Joan Jett hair style which needed maintenance. A man found him there and observed, “You don’t look disabled.” It was the best news Clarke had all week.
He liked him already. When the man asked what Clarke was doing in the disabled bathroom, he replied, “Keeping the dream alive.”

He ended the evening by reading “I Wanna be Yours,” the poem that Alex Turner liked so much, the Artic Monkeys recorded it.

After four decades, Clarke is still the scatological, original rebel he has always been, with a sharp wit and an “Up yours!” attitude. He has the timing of a comedic actor and the ability to spin a web that both captures and captivates the listener.

An anthology of his work titled Anthologia comprising both CDs and DVDs will be released on October 16th.

Over…

Words/Photos/Video: Maria Meli.

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