Clapham Juniors

Clapham Juniors started in the music room of a Clapham comprehensive in the autumn of 1982, when Mr Brathwaite — Mr B to everyone, a Bajan piano teacher with a tweed jacket and a pipe he never lit indoors — heard four of his pupils playing reggae on the school instruments during a wet lunch break and decided the talent show wasn't big enough for them. Tyrone Beale was fifteen and his voice was halfway to breaking; he sang anyway. Dwayne Mattis was fourteen and already the best drummer in the building, big brother Glenroy's records from Tottenham in his ears. Kerry Ann Lucas played a Casio balanced on an ironing board. Marlon Pinnock borrowed a bass that was too big for him. Jason Frimpong played skank chords on a catalogue guitar.

Mr B recorded them after school on a borrowed four-track with the classroom door taped shut against the caretaker. The songs were about what they knew: Saturday jobs on Northcote Road, dinner money, the bandstand on the Common, Platform Nine at Clapham Junction, somebody's crush on the 137. The pirates played them on Saturday mornings because nothing else sounded that happy. The band lasted two school years — exams came, and Marlon left for college — but Dwayne kept drumming, and five years later he was keeping time for the rare-groove revival in Acton. Saturday Job on Northcote Road is the one everybody remembers; Bandstand on the Common is the one they played at every school fête.