�Ambition�, by Subway Sect isn�t a song that means something to me because I associate it with a specific moment or incident. I don�t remember the first time I heard it, although it was probably between ten and twelve at night as I sat in bed listening to John Peel on a crackling blue transistor radio.

It�s a song that�s stuck with me more than any other for nearly thirty years. Partly it�s the music, and its odd mix of the familiar and the peculiar. There�s punk�s trademark buzz saw guitar and over-excited drumming. But there�s also this hilarious weedy, parping keyboard all over it, and, in the background the arrhythmic beeping of what sounds like an arcade game. For years I assumed this was some crude early drum machine. In fact it really was the sound of an arcade game which the Sect�s manager had overdubbed without the band�s permission. And over the top of it all is Vic Godard�s voice. Later he developed into a bit of a crooner but on �Ambition� he sounds like someone really sarcastic singing along to Marc Bolan on a Walkman, in a noisy sawmill.

But what hooked me was the lyrics. Around then I�d discovered beer and temporarily decided books were boring, so my main access to ideas was through songs. 1978 wasn�t a bad time to take that approach. Listening to other post-punk bands like Scritti Politti I came across words like hegemony and aesthetics that I wouldn�t have otherwise encountered in a month of Sundays. And I remember poring over the lyrics to �Ambition� and needing to look up the word allay.

About half the words are so garbled that I�ve never deciphered them to this day. But in your teens you�re willing to meet songwriters more than halfway if they apparently demonstrate some insight into the crushing misery of your life. I heard Vic sing,

I�m a dried-up seed, can�t be restored,
I hope no one notices the sleep on me.
I�ve been walking on down this shallow slope
Looking for nothing particularly.

and it felt like he�d been inside my head. I clearly remember sitting in the office of a builders� merchants pricing cement invoices, with that verse constantly running through my mind.

I didn�t actually own the single until two years after its release. My mate Simon Hill gave me his copy. Touched, I asked if he was sure he wanted to part with it. He said, �Of course. It�s shit.�

The sleeve�s got Simon�s name on it, in his sister�s handwriting. I fancied her rotten. She once asked me out. Lacking charm at the best of times, that night I was almost catatonic with nerves. I rang her later that week. She said she was too busy revising for her �A� levels to see me. This was in October.

Eddie Willson was born in Yeovil, Somerset in 1962 and later moved to London. He has lived on the same street in Deptford, South London since 1986. He has played and sung in various bands over the years, but music currently takes second place to writing fiction. A few copies of his debut novel the black car leaving are still available via his website. His story Fifteen Minutes appeared in Plain Brown Wrapper June 2004, Bench and Punch appeared in the Greenwich Pirate issue 1, June 2004, Both Eyes Open appeared in Verbicide No 13 and Back From the Sea appeared in Spiked issue 16. To read Eddie�s story �The Power of Love� on the showcase section of this site, click here.

© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.