“Never cross a picket line Roger. Don’t be a scab.”

I’ve been on strike for eight weeks now. Something had been in the air back in the first days of March. Just up the road from here, on hearing their pit was to be closed sooner than anticipated, some Barnsley miners walked out. Soon after, walking down Queen Street on Monday the 12th, past the ominously named Scargill Croft, I’d seen a sizeable crowd gathered outside the NCB office in Sheffield city centre. My Dad’s words of warning immediately came to mind. This little red apple hasn’t fallen far from the Marxist tree. 

Since that initial giddy buzz of going on strike, joining the picketers and feeling like part of a movement, the mood has somewhat sobered. Initially there were nearly thirty of us, not bad for the very moderate, white-collar branch of the National Union of Mineworkers. However, as the weeks have passed and individual ideologies were sacrificed at the altar of expediency, we’ve been whittled down to half a dozen hardcore renegades. 

While there have been skirmishes with the law around the corner at the main NUM offices next to the cathedral, it’s all been very peaceful down here. No barricades or braziers, no “THATCHER OUT” signs.

“Good morning Gladys, will you be joining us on the line today?”

Gladys, Glen or Glenda keep their eyes fixed to the ground and scurry past us as if our bolshiness is contagious, trotting up the marble steps into the safety of the office.

One day our cause is enlivened when we are joined by three actual miners from Manvers Main Colliery. Huge lads, built like pit props, laughing and smiling as they try to chat up the pretty girls going into work. 

“Aye up luv, would you like to help me sink a shaft later?”

One of the young women going past everyday is Ava. We’ve gone from engaged to disengaged in a matter of weeks. Wedding invitations have been cancelled, that Billy Idol record can stay on the shelf, my intended has other intentions. Admirably detached from the whole sorry scenario, she wafts past in a protective cloud of Nina Ricci. She’s Sade, I’m just sad.

Thank goodness then for a gig to lift the spirits. And one featuring not just any band, but the mighty Art Ensemble of Chicago - on a rare visit to Sheffield. Being on strike means being skint, and I’ve now got a mortgage to pay, so a night out in town is currently something of a rarity for me. Hard times mean tough choices, and that means selling my record collection. 

Out go all the Be Bop Deluxe and Bill Nelson albums, the Pink Floyd and Yes, all the proggy stuff. It’s bye bye to Bowie and Bruce Springsteen too. Farewell also to beautifully packaged collections by Anthony Braxton and Max Roach on the Hat Hut label from Switzerland, and my ECM albums by Don Cherry, Nana Vasconcelos. And yes, even the Art Ensemble of Chicago. 

The guys at Rare and Racy on Devonshire Street give me a good price and I still have visiting rights, flicking through my old, much-loved vinyl in the browser racks before one-by-one they disappear off into new homes. Down the road, Amrik Rai at FON Records opposite the fire station takes my old punk and new wave 45s off my hands for a few extra quids. 

I’m out on the town tonight with bandmates Pete Hope and Charlie Collins. Our band, The Box played here last summer, just one of more than two hundred shows that The Leadmill has hosted in 1983. With The Limit club becoming snakebite central for the city’s ever-growing young Goth clan, and the Top Rank mostly a disco with the odd local talent night in the mix, it feels increasingly as if this is the venue to play in Sheffield. Particularly for anyone whose music might be described as left-of-centre, alternative or just plain jazzy. A Kitchenware Records package of Prefab Sprout and Hurrah! was here two nights ago, while Liverpool’s Lotus Eaters are due next week. 

Charlie, the brilliant saxophonist and percussionist I’ve been playing with in both DVA and The Box for the best part of five years now, is the reason I’m here tonight. He’s the teacher imbued with great knowledge and passion, who has introduced me to jazz giants such as John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, and then led me further afield to discover the singular talents of Archie Shepp, Arthur Blythe and James ‘Blood’ Ulmer, to name but a few. Ever ebullient, Charlie has saved some of his greatest praise for The Art Ensemble of Chicago:

“Fuckin’ hell, Rog, you’ve got to go see ‘em! It’ll blow your mind.”

He’s nothing if not consistent, he’s been raving about this band for as long as I’ve known him. They’ve been playing together since the late Sixties, and have so far released over twenty albums. How could I not love a band with exciting, intriguing album titles like “Full Force”, “Fanfare for the Warriors”, “A Jackson in Your House” and “Reese and the Smooth Ones”? If The Box ever breaks up I’m gonna call my next band Reese and The Smooth Ones and I’m gonna be Reese. 

In the bar at The Leadmill, Pete, Charlie and I are comparing notes on the recently wrapped new album by The Box, which we recorded in London last month. Being on strike, getting time off work is no longer an issue for me, and it was good to get away from the monotony of the picket line and stay in the famous Columbia Hotel on Lancaster Gate - at the record company's expense.  

The recording sessions were produced by Dick O’Dell, best known for his work with Pigbag and The Slits, at the jazz-orientated Wave Studios in faraway Hoxton, an unloved corner of East London. Every night, back at the hotel, we would see the three lads from Frankie Goes To Hollywood, pints on the go, playing cards and trying desperately to chat up anything in a skirt. Archetypal Scousers, they happily inform us that they are hard at work on their debut album; leaving us to wonder when, if ever, they actually go to the recording studio. 

Cheery distractions aside, we’re feeling good about the new album, which is due out in the summer. The year started brightly for The Box, with a headline gig on New Year's Day in London as part of the ICA’s prestigious Rock Week festival. 

Unfortunately for us, and indeed anyone else playing that week, German industrial titans Einstürzende Neubauten stole the whole event when they attempted, on January 3rd, to excavate their way down through the floor of the venue on The Mall, aiming to reach the underground tunnels which apparently run down the road to nearby Buckingham Palace. Their billed ‘Concerto for Voice and Machinery’ quickly dissolved into an anarchic theatre of sinewy Berliners brandishing pneumatic drills and chainsaws, roared on by baying fans. The repercussions echoed in the music press for weeks.

A sudden clash of bells and cymbals tells us the Art Ensemble is now onstage. We shuffle in from the bar to see the Leadmill platform draped with the flags of unknown nations. There are five black guys in their forties, three of them thickly daubed with tribal face paint and wearing ethnic clothing. The fourth band member wears a scientist’s white lab coat, while the remaining one looks like a hip school teacher. They have flown in directly from Italy. 

On our trips down to London over the years, Charlie has introduced me to a wonderful music shop on Shaftesbury Avenue called Ray Man. Mr. Man, originally from Hong Kong, specialises in percussion. From finger cymbals to giant gongs, tiny tabors to kettle drums, if it can be shaken, rattled or hit, Man’s will have it. Tonight, on the boards in Sheffield, it looks as if the Art Ensemble of Chicago has bought his entire inventory and covered the stage with it. Each of the quintet is playing some kind of chime, metal plate or singing bowl. Apparently this is a sound bath, an immersive experience designed to transport participants, both the band and audience presumably, to a meditative state.

I can’t be the only one here who thinks it sounds a bit like the intro to ‘Time’ by Pink Floyd, but I decide to keep my mouth shut. After all, I’ve just sold my Pink Floyd albums. 

After about a quarter of an hour of clanging and ringing, I’m pleased to see them disperse around the stage and start to play the instruments they are mostly associated with. 

I’m thrilled to see Famoudou Don Moye, one of my favourite jazz drummers, live in the flesh in my home town. To his left, and also dressed in tribal robes, is his brother-in-rhythm Malachi Favors, caressing and cajoling rich honeyed tones from his double bass. In front of Favors, and the final member paying homage to his African heritage with his wardrobe choices, is saxophonist Joseph Jarman. The Art Ensemble’s other lead reedman, Roscoe Mitchell, is on the opposite side of the stage. 

The then eponymously-named Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble first played together way back in 1967, and while all the members are keen to emphasise the collaborative nature of the equal contributions they make to the sound of the band, it’s probably Mitchell, the hip looking school teacher with a name like an American football running back, who leads the group. Which leaves the guy with the goatee beard and white lab coat. Standing front and centre, this is trumpeter Lester Bowie, my new favourite Bowie. He’s also been there since the beginning. The lab coat signifies that he’s serious about the research into the nature of sound that they are involved in. 

It's been six months since I had my molecular structure re-mixed by Sun Ra and his Arkestra at their phenomenal Sheffield University concert. And while both Sun Ra and the AEC are rightly considered to be heroes in the field of free jazz and avant garde music, to my ears they come at it from different angles. 

The older Sun Ra, having his roots in the post-war big band jazz era, might take your head on a trip to Saturn, but his irresistible dance rhythms ensure your feet stay in The Cotton Club. For me, tonight’s sonic adventurers are more about exploring inner space; they sing the body electric. 

Which is not to say that AEC’s interior soundscape is relentlessly deep and heavy on exploring the consciousness, as there are sections of fun and playfulness involving the band playing toys and car horns, duck calls and walkie-talkies. But they can flip from frivolity to fire with a nod and a wink. This might be the first band I’ve seen that can deploy centrifugal force as a weapon. There’s a famous scene in Disney’s ‘20,000 Leagues Under The Sea’, which seems to be shown on telly every Christmas. In it, James Mason, Kirk Douglas and the crew of the Nautilus submarine do battle in a storm with a many-tentacled giant squid. For long periods this evening, the Art Ensemble of Chicago are the mighty mollusc, and we are the crew of the Nautilus, getting flung around, battered and flailed from every conceivable angle.  

After two hours onstage, and having moved up through the moods from tranquil to terrifying via mischievous and sophisticated, the band signs off with ‘Odwalla’, an irresistible slice of party funk composed by Roscoe Mitchell, which has been part of their set for over a decade. The Art Ensemble of Chicago has a motto: Great Black Music: Ancient to The Future. 

Their sound eddies and flows like the ocean tides and currents, from Lake Victoria in the heart of ancient Africa to their home on the shores of Lake Michigan. Tonight, the Windy City warriors have smelted the hearts of the steel city faithful. 

Afterwards there is a real buzz in The Leadmill bar, dedicated fans having travelled from as far away as Leeds to be here to witness this. After everything that has happened with the break-up with Ava and the miner’s strike, I’m just happy to be out with friends, being seduced then crushed by torrents of primal sound. I feel liberated. 

It’s late now. If I was still working, I’d jump in a cab. But like The Valentine Brothers’ song says, ‘Money’s Too Tight To Mention’;  so I decide to walk home, all seven miles. I’m still buzzing and a bit drunk when I crest the hill that leads down to my new home. That new sense of freedom surges again, and I strip down to my blue suede wedding shoes and run to my front door naked. 

With thanks to my editor Nigel Floyd.

Special thanks to Charlie Collins.

If you are interested, there is a good quality concert recording of the Art Ensemble of Chicago live in Italy, just two days before this Sheffield gig.

Here is the link: