RECORD COLLECTION

This Is Jinsy creator Justin Chubb reveals how prog has influenced his record collection and career.

If you saw Sky TV comedy series This Is Jinsy you might wonder where the inspiration for the strange fictional island and its excellent absurdist folk pop soundtrack came from. Co-creator Justin Chubb maps a journey from Guernsey to Middle Earth, via Vangelis’ studios…

“I HAD ROBIN OF

SHERWOOD HAIR AND WORE LOTS OF CAPES. VANGELIS’ MANAGER THOUGHT I COULD REPLACE JON ANDERSON.”

IIn the 80s, Guernsey, where I grew up, had a very strong music scene. I was in a band with my brother, my Jinsy partner Chris [Bran] was in a rival band with his brother. Number 19 was where everyone got their vinyl and my dad had a shop called Fuzzey’s which sold televisions, but it also had a record department. My mum came to work in the singles department and met my dad there. By the time I’d grown up it was no longer a record shop, but he’d employed identical twin girls, one of which, Betty, started her own vinyl shop and that’s where I went with my pocket money.

listened to lots of music because of my brother. We’d go to see a friend of his who he was working with and he’d always say, ‘Do you wanna watch The Wall?’ I’d be about 13. I found it scary, but really interesting because of that – and it’s such a boys’ album. I’ve always loved stories and this was quite deep with amazing animation. When I saw the actual record where the art and everything had so carefully cohered, it just seemed like, ‘Oh wow, that’s what music can do.’ What’s also great is that Roger Waters is so hard on himself. It has misogyny, racism and homophobia, but he’s not condoning it, it’s a journey into the dark side of the soul.

When I first heard Wuthering Heights I found Kate Bush spooky, witchy and disturbing. A few years later, my brother’s friend put a cassette of The Dreaming on while we were driving. I said, ‘Stop the car, I want to hear this properly!’ To me, it was exactly what music should be. It was great storytelling, each track layered with sounds and ideas – and the best ending to an album ever, where the artist turns into a mule. She was breaking the image of this twee girl that people made fun of on comedy shows. She said,

‘I want to be up there with my male peers.’ It’s a work of genius.

I would listen to lots of radio and tape it. The Lord Of The Rings was broadcast [on BBC Radio 4], and I loved that, and the music [by Stephen Oliver].

I was part of a youth theatre and we put on our own version. I directed it and wrote the music. It was great but it nearly killed me – directing 30 people, telling the story in three hours. I was also reading Gormenghast and similar classics. This was all about immersing yourself in other worlds.

I’d begun playing music on our piano at home. Me and my brother worked our way through my dad’s Beatles Complete without knowing what the

songs sounded like; when we first heard I Am The Walrus, it was so dark that it freaked us out. But those lyrics were pure Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear.

Which leads to Procol Harum and Stackridge, who had the influences of very British surrealist nonsense writers. These people are very exciting to me and I celebrate eccentricity. My grandparents lived in Gloucestershire in this quite magical house and my grandfather was very into whimsy. These albums remind me of that. I like A Salty Dog because of the orchestration. I think it was Procol’s first foray into string music, and you’ve got this concept of doomed sailors with a Lewis Carroll style. Not many people know about Stackridge, in spite of them working with George Martin at Abbey Road. I really like Mr Mick because of the weird story. An old man wanders off one day, letting his walking stick direct him. He ends up at a rubbish dump, falls asleep and the objects round him come to life and tell him stories. I love listening to this on headphones.

In the 80s I was in a Guernsey group with my brother called The Following and we came to England to ‘make it’. We were folkyrocky-poppy types with long [fantasy-historical TV show] Robin Of Sherwood hair. I wore lots of capes. I’d really gotten into

Steeleye Span, and before I left Guernsey someone lent me the three Nick Drake albums. I’d always been in love with England, and maybe living in England, and getting more into the folk genre. We recorded at Vangelis’ studio [Nemo] with his engineer Raphael Preston. Vangelis’ manager got very interested in me as a singer to replace Jon Anderson, who was about to leave. I had two meetings, then Vangelis decided to have no more singers. I was only 16, young and naïve. My brother decided to go back to Guernsey so I stayed and went to Ravensbourne College, Chislehurst, where I studied graphic design. I was still on my musical journey; Bowie had studied at Ravensbourne, Siouxsie Sioux had lived above Hong Kong Garden restaurant nearby and I had a miserable flat-share in Eltham, but it was Kate Bush territory. Five Leaves Left was my soundtrack to walking around the nearby park, and I got into Trees. Like Steeleye and Renaissance, Celia Humphries had this lovely pure female sound above a rocky-folky weirdness. I was into this idea of finding earthy, English roots beneath pop music. I wanted to connect with something older and richer, in sound and history.

At college, I listened to Sandy Denny and The Incredible

String Band. ISB are so expansive in their ideas and lyrics and there are elements of comedy and playfulness. You felt you were entering their commune, a fading world of the psychedelic flowerpower era, with all the pioneering world music ideas that Robin Williamson had brought back from places like Morocco.

I love Fairport Covention – when we did Jinsy, Ric Sanders from Fairport was a huge fan and wrote about us – but The North Star Grassman And The Ravens is the album where Sandy Denny found her voice. Late November is such an incredible track and I thought, ‘I have to have more of this.’ The cover draws you in, as well.

I absolutely adore Lal and Mike Waterson’s Bright Phoebus. Lal’s voice is something of the earth; you can hear roots and stones and a connection to something timeless. They wrote these songs but they sound like they’ve been around forever. The material is so strong, singing about the difficulties of motherhood, or nuclear war, or the comic stuff like Winifer Odd. Mike Waterson was a roofer at this time, he’d think of a song while working up top, come down the ladder and hum it into a tape recorder. They were people with real lives and it’s a sort of Wicker Man part two for me.

I found String Driven Thing quite late. The Machine That Cried is slightly folky with very innovative guitar and Pauline Adams has also got a great voice. They’re somewhere in the prog psychedelic scene, somewhat forgotten with songs about time and memory.

I love female vocals. There’s something about the resonance of it sitting above deeper sounds. The dark side of the music industry is misogyny and its backwards-looking nature and politics. But female vocal, personality and songwriting can be so compelling, and when music comes from somewhere very deep within a person it can’t be suppressed; it’s not going to go away.”