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The Railway Children

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F**kin top story, I could sit and read stories from the 'golden era' of graff all day long....brings back memories of my early days in graff and day trips to the capital riding the underground camera in one hand and posterman or posca in the other!

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guess what kids its story time again courtesy of jano cd the original one...

 

 

 

 

By the middle months of 1987 I had taken my position mid way up the graffiti hierarchy and was duly pissing on those below from the parapets of my own self worth, like the cunt I was.

I'd spent the last couple of years trying to affirm a semi-respected position amongst the graffiti writers on the Metropolitan Line, through hard work and artwork, but I'd made mine a hard route up though. It took a while for the other writers on the line to get what I was about see. I had a tendency to joke and fuck around non-stop, so for while wasn't taken really taken seriously, not until I started to get my name up on the trains with people like Set 3. My wall pieces and mural work were always contemporary, competent and clean, but anyone can do this with enough time and practice. Trains took more commitment and mettle and I showed I had it, but I still carried on with that trademark fucking around of mine though.

A lot of technically good, trailblazing artists from the 85-87 period , fell to the wayside when graffiti in London became more about the whole train painting scene, with writers only doing wall pieces to showcase their new styles, technique and new original work. It's not that graff became less about art, it just it became more about trains and being the best within set time scales and parameters that you have when it's a train graffiti environment. You could be a brilliant artist with spray-paint, but if you didn't paint the trains and the tracksides you were just all mouth, a cunt. You had to be social cat, involved and amongst it, out in the jungle as it were. In other words, exactly the opposite of how the graffiti scene is today. Now it's all, Internet 'talk about more than do' writers, bumpkins, talentless wankers with stencils that can't paint free-hand and cowardly pussy-holes with stickers. Seriously, take a look how shit a lot graffiti magazines have become, it's all ads for shit graphic design companies run by prick ex-writers cashing-in and selling-out. The only graff you see in mags nowadays, is that shit stuff we get on trains now, that 'Euro' style crap that looks like colour 'bubble' throw-ups, the kind of rubbish graff that would've got you laughed off the line in 1986. (The only good writers from continental Europe, do US style 'proper graff'. Though every writer I've met from Europe has been a right fucking dork. It's an English language thing ya see. It's fucking hilarious when continental writers write something they think is thought provoking, political or 'street' next to their pieces in English. It's always something woefully out of date, misinformed, corny, or really poofy sounding. Aaahh bless 'em! They try their best. When I think of European writers I can't help thinking of MC Mika G and 'Holiday Rap' for some reason. Backward baseball caps, mullets and big sneaker tongues sticking out, please.)

I haven't really seen any real hardcore proper train-graff with any kind of integrity to it since the heydays of Fume, Teach, Zomby and them cats in the 1990s. They were probably the last bunch to do anything worth talking about on the trains, at least they had proper letters and knew how to paint. They also had the right attitude to graff.

The only other graff you get in magazines is at the other extreme, that sort of photographic looking stuff that looks like it should've been air-brushed on the gas tank of a custom motorcycle, or painted by an artistic carni on the outside of a fun fair ride. Not exactly graff, not exactly airbrush, crap. If you want something to look like a photograph, take a fucking picture. What you've done is you've confused stuff painted with an airbrush, with art. It's got about as much class and artistic integrity as horse brasses. Graff is essentially more abstract than that.

The best new graffiti is 'trad' graff that has organically evolved over the last 20 years or so, from the old NYC parameters. There has been a natural development in perspective, with more outstanding 3D effect letters, without the loss of the traditional graffiti letter structure traits, a progression from it's original form, without losing the original root or vibe. You need to have a good repertoire of 2D letter styles first before you can do 3D perspective well, and it's usually only old writers that have this.

I've seen a whole bunch of new 3D graff, that is spot on with perspective and light, where it actually looks like there's something leant against the wall, but the letters are crap, like a bunch of awkward shaped blocks, rather than the flowing shapes you should have. There are no kinks, curves and flourished serifs on most of the new 3D letter styles, they just don't cut it.

The best graff today is usually done by writers from either NYC, London or Brasil (and yes, the odd fella from Nottingham as well) by guys in their 30s and 40s that were involved in their own local graffiti scenes at their inception . Real old war-horses you could say. When I say BEST graffiti, I mean 'Graffiti' graffiti, not Euro crap, stencils, stickers, graphic art, airbrushing done with spray-paint and anything ever done in Brighton. In other words not 'Graphotism' graffiti, the REAL stuff.

So, by mid '87 I was one of the regular faces at Harrow Met, out and about on the line, stealing and painting everyday, leading as near as you can to a full time graffiti life as is possible. Then, in May '87 it got even more intense for me.

My 'outlaw' biker Dad had, suddenly and without warning, fucked off and started a new life in East Anglia, after an armed robbery he was involved in went tits-up. He just left one morning, robbed a gas station, crashed the getaway car, went on the run and never came back home. My poor Mum went mad and went off to search for him, followed closely by the Police 'Flying-Squad'. My kid brother then went and stayed with my aunt in Portugal, after the family house we had all shared till then, was compulsory purchased by the local authority to make way for a new dual carriageway, then boarded up. All that shit in less than three weeks !

I was sixteen, temporarily homeless, penniless and I had no fucking idea where my parents or my next meal were. So, as a lot of others do in similar circumstances, I found a surrogate family, mine was the Metropolitan Line. I buried my head deep into my graffiti, like some kind of bad, ostrich metaphor and tried to block out the reality of my shattered family life. To tell you the truth though, my family had kinda been getting in the way of my graff life anyway, and being homeless for a while didn't bother me that much either. Now I could spend nights burgling shops for paint instead of all that shoplifting crap. I could now get bigger hauls of better paint without having to tip toe round the house, trying not to wake my parents. I could do as I liked now, I was on the loose in London. I was like a kid locked in a candy shop, but a diabetic kid locked in a candy shop, with Fred West.

I also knew enough places on the Underground system, hidden away, where I could bed down for the night, all nice and snug. So the homeless bit didn't bother me. The signal cabin at the then disused train depot in Highgate Woods, in the Piccadilly Line trains at S.Harrow yard, at the back of Old Oak Common depot in the old wagons and various disused stations in central London. I've stayed in all of these places without a hitch, nice and toasty. It's always puzzled me that the Jock and Northern tramps that seem to make up the majority of crumb-bearded bums in London, choose to sleep in piss ridden doorways rather than somewhere nice and warm as I chose. Then again I've never drunk Brasso, or been in the Armed Services.

I eventually got an emergency flat in Hammersmith after about six weeks living as a 'deluxe edition', hobo, which I ended up only using for emergencies. I had no income or ready-cash, but I never went without. I could pretty much steal everything that I needed day to day. I wouldn't call myself a master shoplifter or anything, but necessity made me a better thief and it became easier to me, both physically and morally. Plus, I was a thieving bastard anyway.

After a while when the gravity of my home and family situation finally kicked-in, I started to believe that, with all the shit that'd happened to me, the world owed me a cunting living. I was gonna go on a sort of semi-restrained rampage to get my own back. Basically, I had a 'fuck-you' death wish during that time. I went to the train yards almost every night, whether I was painting or not. The nights that I didn't go to the trains I was breaking into shops like 'W***s' in Chiswick or '** Graphics' in Farringdon for Buntlack paint, or I was pulling designer clothing through the letter boxes of West End boutiques with an extended litter-grabber claw. I didn't have a penny In my pocket, but I had about £1000 worth of clothes on and I looked slick. I wasn't Public Enemy No.1, but I was a one man petty-crimewave in Puma Clyde's. I mean, every single thing I did from when I got up in the afternoon, to when I went to sleep in the morning was against the law, even the way I had sex with girls back then was illegal in the UK until recently.

I wouldn't blame my family break-up 100% for my anti-authority lawlessness during that period, I had it instilled from an early age, it was maybe even genetic. My Mother was a left-wing radical in the 60s & 70s, who felled a copper at the Anti-Vietnam War riot, in Grosvenor Sq. in '68 and my father was a giant outlaw biker. My Dad once ran over a copper in his van while I was sitting in the passenger seat. (During the Southall riots in April 1979, The Police had cordoned off our street and wouldn't let anyone in. There was a copper standing at the top of St.Joseph's Drive with his palm held out, forbidding my father entrance to our street. My Dad backed up, and then ran the cunt over. He then parked up, and we got out and went inside our house . ) My father had 'Fuck The World' tattooed on one arm and "All or Nothing" and "'1%'er " on the other. That's the type of fella he was, a non-conformist, hairy giant, with hands like bunches of pink bananas.

Once, when my dad was out walking his Doberman in a field in Cambridgeshire , the farmer whose field it was, shot and killed my Dad's dog for alleged 'sheep worrying'. But, it was basically a country type being territorial and cuntish for the sake of it. My dad went back on a later date and burned the farmhouse down, with the farmer in it. If you've seen Raising Arizona, I think you'll know exactly the type of fella my dad was.

Yep, nobody told my Mum & Dad what to do and it kinda rubbed off on me a bit too. Being brought up in an Asian ghetto area like Southall, didn't help with a respect for authority figures like the police either. The only time you saw the lawmen in Southall, was when they were beating on the wrong guy (R.I.P. Blair Peach), and the only time I saw the English, was when they were stirring up racial hatred. Southall used to be a predominantly Irish/Welsh town before the Indians arrived here to work in the late 1940s. The Celts had turned up in the mid 19th century with Izzy B, to do all the back-breaking work on the railways, canals and brickfields in the area, so it makes me laugh when people say 'Pakis' took Southall from the English. Bollocks mate, there were never English here and we don't fucking want any either. Fucking snakes, they smell of chips and fizz-bombs.

So, add my anti-authoritarian up-bringing to my world-class arrogance, mix in some fury and self-pity from the shattered family situation, and simmer in the head for a couple of weeks.

Yep, what was baked up was a 'complete fucking cunt' pie, with icing on the top. That is what I became, until at least April in 1989. I have no excuses and no apologies for my behaviour at the time, so fuck you. But now, as a typical middle-aged hypocrite, if I see similar behaviour displayed in youth today, I go mad. I've lost count of the amount of hooded. loitering, cheeky little cunts I've wanted to stab recently. When I was their age my neighbourhood was the whole of the fucking Metropolitan Line, not just the corner near my house. I was in different areas every day, doing a multitude of stuff with different people, not standing on the same fucking corner everyday, with the sort of squalid human specimens that make people want to lobby parliament for a UK eugenics and sterilisation program. Kill kill kill kill, kill the poor ! (Biafra,1980)

In mid-July 1987 whilst passing through the Met in Harrow I received a piece of gossip from one of the local writers. Rumour had it, a freelance film director wanted to make a documentary about graffiti on the Metropolitan Line ( a la Style Wars). Apparently the graffiti writer Ache, had met this director guy somewhere, the guy had asked Ache whether he could meet some graffiti writers, see 'em in action. Ache said he could organise this. Ache wasn't really a train writer, but he was from the Harrow area and quite well known, he was once in HC(HardCore) with Realm from Chalkhill Estate and little Deino from the Rayner's Lane. Ache was one of those writers that fell to the wayside a bit when graff started getting 'hardcore', which was quite ironic considering he was in HC. Bringing this director guy to meet us was Ache's way of getting back in with us lot .

So one balmy July night, Ache turned up at Harrow Met at about 8pm with this 'director' fella in tow.

The guy's name was A****w G****n, he had directed a few animated shorts and he was also creator of 'D**k S****er' a stop-frame animation short shown on the N****rk 7 TV show. He was a prick, one of those culture-vulture, exploitative 'lets get down with the kids' type media pansies.

When a sufficiently large number of writers turned up on the platform, we boarded a Baker St. bound train with G****n. On that train that night were; Me, G****n, Huz, Nice1, Ryt 1 USM, Reme, Coma, Ache, Dizi, Diode, Tore, and King Tilt. Only Reme and Coma were from the same crew (Divine Lordz, DLZ) ,the rest of us were just various 'Harrow Bench' regulars who happened to be about that night.

G****n started taking photos and he was goading us into tagging inside the train for some 'action shots', we didn't need too much persuasion though. He then started to interview us. I noticed a Mic pinned to the bottom of his jacket , one of the other guys grabbed him and frisked him. He had a wire running from the Mic to a Walkman. I told him in no uncertain terms that I didn't want to be on tape, he reassured me, he said that he'd tell us when he was recording. I then started telling the tale of my recent electrocution at Triangle Sidings 'G' (q.v.) in all it's gory detail, including the bit about me knocking BTP officer R*y 'Fat Sweaty Pig' G***n in the chops. Nearly all the guys told G****n a self-incriminating graffiti tale or two during those several little journeys that we made up and down the line with G****n.

We all alighted the train at Preston Rd. Tilt pulled out a can of Rubber Duck spray-paint from his jacket (or 'Stop That Fucking Leak' as Tilt liked to call it), Tilt then sprayed a big silver dot on the Preston Rd 'Bullseye' for no particular reason. Then about three seconds later the station manager came running out of his office shouting, so we all had to Scapa Flow out of the station exit. We pretty much went our separate ways after that. I went back to the Met with my old mucker Huz, fuck knows where that cunt G****n and the others went.

During the next couple of days, things started getting weird. First, Tilt and Nice 1 got arrested (Not an unusual occurrence that), then it was Dizi and Diode. A couple of days later Huz, Ryt 1 and Coma were arrested.

Huz rang me up after he got bail. Huz said that G****n had taken the film from his camera into Super Snaps in Harrow. When the shop workers developed the photos saw graffiti writers tagging the inside of a train carriages, they promptly phoned the BTP. ( I had assumed 'G****n would have developed the film himself, as he reckoned he was such a fucking bigshot.) All the people in the photos were now being rounded up by the 'Happy Shopper Coppers' the BTP. Huz told me to go and hide out in the sticks for a while, as they were looking for me in and around Harrow. I later found out off one of my insiders at LT that there were photographs of all the 'Harrow 8', stuck to the inside of all the ticket collector's booths on the Met. If any of us were seen by LT staff, the BTP were informed straight away. Proper Richard Kimble times they was.

G****n was arrested at his home, R****** Crt. Harrow. The Police searched his flat and found an audio tape that was recorded on that night with us. The tape had all of us confessing our crimes, and revealing graffiti's secretist secrets. It was gold dust to the BTP, they'd always assumed that most of the train graff was done at Neasden Depot till then, not Rickmansworth and Wembley as it was 95% of the time. So all that "I'll let you know if I tape you." from G****n was a fucking lie. Even today, if I was to see that G****n in the street I'd have to cut the cunt open and rub dog shit in the wound just on principal. (When my dad heard about all this, he came down from his hideout in Cambridgeshire and paid Mr. G****n a little 'visit' with his friend Bucky.)

A week after G****n took that train ride with us, nearly all the writers he had photographed had been rounded up. The only people who hadn't been nicked were Reme, Tore and myself. Reme and Tore were never caught . I went and hid out in Amersham. I had been out there thieving with Huz a couple of times, I knew a few friendly faces up there.

Amersham was a sleepy commuter town in Buckinghamshire, at the arse end of the Met Line, all stockbrokers and TV weatherman types. As I was a known writer from London end of the Big Met, I was treated like a Lord in Amersham. Writers from Amersham were usually robbed and beaten when they ventured down to Harrow for being rich ,white and socially awkward, so they felt honoured having a visiting dignitary like me out there. Everybody wanted to be my friend and I was quite happy to oblige. It meant they now knew someone from the 'Bench' in Harrow, this would give them a name to drop out while on the Met. If they got any grief from London writers while out and about for being bumpkin, they could say that they were down with me, or that they were helping me hide out from the Police and this would cut 'em some slack. I am personally responsible for the 'bringing in' of the Amersham Boys to the Met, this was for all the help people like Tac, Stunny G, Hesa and Fudit and others gave me when I was out there. They became honorary urbanites. Saying that, they still had some pretty odd fucking tag names.

When I was on the lamb, out in Amersham, I'd give the rich kids outlines and lessons in spray-can control and styles, in exchange for bed and board. I showed them how to dress like proper writers and how to carry themselves when in an urban environment, so as not to be constantly robbed. I also had to train them how to speak properly. Up until I arrived, they said 'BOIK' instead of 'BIKE', proper farmer accents that'd get 'em stabbed-up in the city. If you go to Amersham now, they all speak like Ali G, and that's all my fault. I was like Professor Henry Higgins in reverse;

"Da trainz in Spain, are mainly canezed wiv paint !"

During the three months I was on the run, I stayed at 26 different peoples houses in the Amersham area. Some of the newer writers coming up on the 'city' end of the Met, thought I was from actually from Amersham. I had to put them straight, I liked Amersham and that, but................well, you know.

Amersham was a shoplifters paradise, unless you were black. Black people were arrested if they got off the train in Amersham back then. But for me, it was like all the shops were mine. I also got an unbelievable amount of cunt when I was out there. You see, when you live in a shitty ghetto area, all the good-looking local girls want fellas with money and cars, they don't want a local 'hood rat' with no prospects, they want to get up and get out. The only girls that would go out with you, were ginger or FUGLY. Whereas good looking, middle-class country girls love a bit of rough. Country girls are fucking filthy whores, especially the horsey ones, their cunts were used to getting a good pounding from all the riding out on hacks, absolute filth I kid you not. I'm sure a few of 'em were more than a bit friendly with their nags. Sluts, big flattened arses.

The Police had quite a job tracking me down, as seeing as nobody has ever known what my real name is. I've known Huz CD/H'n'R since we were little kids, we go way back , and way before graff days, and he only knows my nickname. The only thing I'll say about the name on my birth-certificate, is it has 'JANO' in it somewhere. For some reason, when I received all my Tax info and NI credentials when I was 16, they came with my school nickname on them. I guess the government got all my details from my school. The teachers couldn't pronounce my name at school (It's one of those lispy and schh-shy foreign ones), so I had them call me by a similar sounding nickname. This then obviously got into the government computer system and onto my Tax, NI and stuff. I have two legitimate passports with two different names on them, work that one out. it's legal and very handy.

The guy who was top-dog writer in Amersham before I turned up, had his nose put right out of joint.

The other writers from Amersham stopped taking shit off him, now that I was around. They soon realised what a fucking no-mark bully toy he was, and they turned on him. He reacted by saying something very disrespectful about my good friend Kis 42. I got hold of him later, in the park in Amersham and fucking battered him for that, and to my surprise all the other Amersham writers joined in as well. We beat him half to death. Jesus these boys had some pent up frustration in 'em, they were jumping on him and everything for fucks sake. He left town. We all cheered. He called the Police and told them where I was. CUNT.

One Sunday evening in Oct '87, I was coming out of the Met in Amersham after travelling from Tac's house in Little Chalfont. I'd only travel on the end part of the Met Line, as I knew the BTP was after me in the city. Me and Stun were walking out of the station entrance when I noticed BTP officers E***e Th****on and S***e C****e sitting in an unmarked cop car, outside on the forecourt. They looked at me, looked at the photograph they had, looked back at me. They both went to open their car doors to get out. I just started running like a fucking gazelle, up the road toward the swimming pool and recreation ground complex. The cops abandoned the idea of chasing me on foot almost straight away, as E***e was a right fat cunt and S***e ran like a bitch. S***e'd chased me before on foot at Wembley and he knew he weren't gonna catch me. They slammed shut the doors of their red Astra GTE and took off up the road after me, driving at break-neck speeds. I was now tearing up the road at a fair rate of knots myself, I could here tyre squealing, engine revving and all manner of Starsky and Hutchness coming from S***e's maniac driving behind me. Fuck me, you'd think I'd stolen the Crown Jewels, or revealed the real truth about Freemasonry or something, a real Jack Baur incident. I ran up the road and into the park to get off the street, out of the way, only for T*****on and C****e to come smashing through the park gates in their car and across the grass, skid-arseing about all over the place like joyriders on coke. What the fuck was wrong with these pricks ? Oh yeah, I'd punched a couple of their comrades recently, but it's still no reason to fucking murder me is it ? I ran as fast as loosely laced Pumas would permit . I ran towards the North exit of the park, where there was a network of alleys that lead to a cul-de-sac. Those crazy fuckers were still on my tail though. I exited the park, ran across the road and towards the alleys. I looked round just in time to see S***e and E***e's car come flying out of the park exit, landing and skidding sideways into the main road. All four fucking wheels were off the ground. Fucking hell, did S***e watch Bullit the night before or summat, he was driving like a fucking Scotsman. I'd slowed a bit when I hit the alleys, but T+C were now driving over and into the alley. I hit top gear again, running forwards and looking backwards over my shoulder. Then I got a peace of that devil's luck that I'm known for. Halfway down the alley there was a 1 metre high concrete bollard . I was now running down a narrow alley with a car that just about fits in it chasing after me. The car was only about 30 ft behind me, I thought I was gonna die. I was running in the middle of the alley, so I guess I was blocking S***e and E***e's view of the bollard. When I got to the bollard I star-jumped over it, like a freak jumping off a caravan roof. I then heard the loudest tyre screech ever, as S***e realised he was about to hit a 3ft concrete bollard and slammed on his anchors. I turned round to see billows of bluish smoke, I could smell the acrid stench of burnt rubber and fucked engine wafting up the passageway. I carried on running at top speed up the alley, and when I got to the top and looked back to see the defeated cops call it a day. I mooned them, then made my way the 3 miles down the hill to Stunny G's flat in White Hill, Chesham. I had to leave the Amersham area for a while after that, it became far too hot. I'd nearly shit all over m'self that night.

Round about the time of that chase, my Mum came back down to London after her fruitless search for my Dad and settled back in Horrible Hayes. I'd lost my flat in Hammersmith as I never paid penny one of the rent, and besides I was never there, so Mum invited me to stay at her place.

Then at 6am in the morning on **th Oct 1987 I was woken up in my bed by the Police shaking me about, I say Police, it was the BTP, so not really 'proper' Police. My Mum had answered the door to the cops thinking it was the Flying Squad with some news about Dad. She wouldn't have let them in if she knew they were for me. So, my room was turned over and I was bundled into a blue Astra car and taken to South Harrow Police station. Oh yeah, guess who it was that arrested me then. Yep, T+C. I guess that red car of theirs was fucked then.

"We always get our man", they squawked at me in unison in the car.

I was thinking. BFD, they arrested a child for vandalism, ooh crime of the century. You'd think they were Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso the way they were gloating about it. Well, you take glory where you can when you're in the BTP. Little battles, little battles, it's all about the little battles isn't it ?

We arrived at South Harrow Police station and I was lead in through the back.(That's not a gay custody euphemism by the way.)I was taken up to the duty officer. "We're here to interview and charge this young man. "E***e told the duty officer.

"I'm technically a child,actually.", I chirped in, like some poncey, duffel-coated student.

"Look, you just can't keep turning up here with prisoners and expect to process them using our facilities, why don't you fuck off to back to Baker St. and do it in your own stupid little station there ?" said the real Policeman sitting at his desk.

"Hang on a minute ! It says here he was arrested in Hayes, you can't bring him here, what's your game you idiots.", he added.

"Look there's nine of these kids up on a joint enterprise charge. He's gotta be charged within the jurisdiction of Harrow Magistrates Court, so they can go on trial together." said T****on.

"Nah mate, that ain't legal is it ? I'm gonna have to see the chief about this one." with that, the desk sergeant went off to find The Chief Inspector.

I was now stood at the desk, pissing myself laughing . The local Metropolitan Police officers from the station were whistling the 'Laurel and Hardy' theme tune everytime they walked past, T*****on and C****e. T+C seemed to get angered by this. The desk sergeant then came back into the room.

"Right you can use Interview Room 2, hurry up, then fuck off. Next time you ring first, GOT THAT ? Don't just turn up here, this is a REAL Police station!" ,snarled the sarg.

The sergeant then looked over at me and smiled," Do you wanna cuppa tea mate?" he asked. He didn't ask T+C though. I accepted his offer, and I shot T+C the kind of smug grin that, when you see it on other people, it makes you want to stab them.

I admitted all my crimes straight away, seeing as I had willingly grassed myself up on G****n's fucking tape. The two cops played the tape back to me. There I was, sounding like a right cunt, bragging and incriminating myself like an idiot, slagging off the BTP. I wanted to slice that sneaky cunt G****n right up, fucking schneid, this is all his fault.

When the local authority boarded up our old family house in Hayes, I'd written 'Jano lived here 85-87' and done a 'JO' throw-up next to it, the Police had a photo of that as well. What a twat.

T+C tried to get me to inform on Kis 42, Foam and Ryt 1, saying that they knew they were there that night at Triangle Sidings. They actually called Foam and Kis 42 by their full, real names. It seemed that someone had been telling tales out school. The BTP had a bit too much info about people who weren't present, but were mentioned in the tapes. These were people that were only referred to by their tag name in the tapes. I told them all the graff on the train that night at Triangle Sidings was done by me and me alone. I told them I had put the other guys names up on the train as a dedication. They didn't believe me, but what could they do. I coughed, and they increased their clear-up rate, that's how it works. I'd never grass on my friends and crewmates, I'm JANO CD, not XXXX NT.

So, I was charged with about a million counts of criminal damage and bailed to appear at Harrow Magistrate Court in December '87 with the others. I also had some bail conditions attached to me, the same ones as my co-defendants, the 'Harrow 8', had. We were not allowed to travel on any railway system in the British Isles, including narrow gauge, trams, monorails and trolley buses. I wasn't even sure if we were allowed to go on fucking roller coasters or do railslides on skateboards. Tilt ignored this and was caught riding on the Met. He was sent to prison to await his trail on remand. Tilt's dad then put up a £3000 bond to get him out of jail.

Tilt was caught painting on trains in Edgware train yard a week later and sent back to the clink. His dad lost all the bond money he posted to get him out. Tilt WAS brilliant, Tilt IS brilliant, and Tilt will ALWAYS be brilliant. He was addicted to graffiti, he couldn't help himself, it was a medical condition with him, you ask anyone from back then, he was possessed .

My bail conditions were starting to really fuck up my social life. It's not that I didn't travel on the Tube, it's that I couldn't really travel on my beloved Met. I'd got really comfortable living the high-life in Amersham, with its friendly backward folk, hot and cold running cunt and opportunities for theft. You try getting from Hayes to Amersham without using the Met Line, you can't. I left Hayes soon after my arrest to share a house with the Lipscombe brothers, on the 'Tin Town' Estate in Northolt. I'd decided to move out of my Mum's and start a new life two miles away under my true birth name, thus avoiding the upcoming court case. The person who was arrested and charged by the BTP for my crimes, only existed on paper because of a bureaucratic error. I have two sets of NI and Tax numbers, dual nationality, and two identities, a get out of jail free card if you like. But I was told to go through with my court case. I was advised the graff charge wasn't worth dropping one of my identities for. It was always best to have two just in case I ever had to leave the country. I thought I might as well, it'll be a laugh, all us lot in the dock together. If it did look like they were gonna send me down, I could just disappear anyway. So, I was told to have one 'hot' ID to use for crime and day to day shit, one I could be hap-hazard with, and another, my real one when it 's time to fuck-off in the middle of the night.

I had already missed two court appearances in the 'Harrow 8' case as I was arrested in late October, all the other guys were arrested in late July early Aug 1987. I turned up to Harrow Magistrates for the first time on my own and went into waiting area by the courtrooms. It was 10am in the morning and everyone was there apart from Tilt. Coma, Huz, Nice 1, Ryt 1, Diode, and Dizi were all loafing on the bench seating with various lawyers hovering about whispering to them. Across the corridor was stood G****n, he was accused of coercing and encouraging us to commit criminal damage etc.

There was a lot of press attention because of G****'s involvement in all this. You'd think it was all about him. The BTP were trying to make an example of us, the graffiti artists, and G****n and his shyster lawyer were hijacking it, using the whole thing as a business oppertunity, acting like a poor martyr suffering for his art blah, blah, blah.

Then, in with two Policeman walked Ache, the man who brought G****n to the Met in the first place.

So, it was Ache who told the BTP everything about everybody, it was in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Hang on a minute, HE bought G****n down to Met. The guy that Ache bought to the Met with him, incites us to commit crime, then Ache turns round and turns super-grass on the others. That is not the done thing is it ?. That's why he had to be separated from us in the court building. That's why he is still in hiding till this day. He is a d**d man if anyone sees him. Ache is probably the most notorious informer in UK graff history.

Our names were now being called one by one by the court officials. Tilt still hadn't arrived, a warrant was now being drawn up in the clerk's office for Tilt's arrest. Fuck me, Tilt was only released from prison so he could attend court. Just then, Tilt came swanning into the building drinking a can of Tenant's Super. Wehhh heehh hey !! He was singing. Well, I could see this was gonna be a fun, I was glad I'd decided to bite the bullet and join the proceedings. We were all ushered into the court room and all squeezed into one tiny dock and told to sit down, we did. We started piss-balling about straight away. Huz was farting, I was giggling and Ryt 1 was trying to get his massive 7ft frame comfy and was fidgeting about . Poor little Diode just looked bemused, Dizi was still stoned from the night before and falling asleep at the back, Coma was sat behaving himself and Tilt and Nice 1 were giving each other dead-legs and pulling mong faces at each other. G****n was shivering in the corner of the dock, shitting his pants. I was occasionally looking over and giving G****n a ,'You're fucking dead, you!' look.

We had to attend a further four committal hearings at Harrow Magistrates Court , going over boring little legal technicalities, before it was obviously sent up the road to Crown Court. I didn't even bother with a brief for the first couple of hearings at Magistrates . I was sent to the cells during one of those proceedings for fucking around in the dock. Me and Huz had playing-cards and we were having a deliberately audible game of snap, while G****n's shyster lawyer was doing one of his over the top, Atticus Finch speeches. I was charged with contempt and thrown in the cells. G****n's lawyer got a BAFTA.

By the time of my last committal hearing, I had managed to get myself a hotshot N.Y. based lawyer. He was a senior partner in the law firm I had hired to represent me. He was based at their N.Y. office, he took on my case for free when he heard about from the London office, and he came over especially for it. He looked like John DeLorean and he was shit hot, he got mine and all the other guys bail conditions dropped. He pulled out a load of files and statute books and started to eloquently argue that not being permitted to travel by rail, infringed my/our civil liberties. He went to town, it was like a show !

He outclassed the LRT and BTP lawyers . They were shysters, he was Johnny Cochran. Simple as dat.

The night the bail restrictions were lifted, all the co-defendants (excluding G****n'), went out and celebrated by going to the trains and bombing the fuck out of 'em. It was now April 1988.

We were all bailed to appear at Acton Crown Court in Feb 1989 for the main event. We had about a year to stew before the court case, in some kind of graff limbo. We had to be very careful if we wanted to graff. If we got caught we'd end up awaiting trail on remand like Tilt. He'd got caught in the yards yet again and was back in the Scrubs. I just mainly bombed the pull-in, pull-out lay-up in Amersham.

My N.Y. lawyer went back to the US, so my good friend and lawyer D**a R****son, set out to find me a decent barrister for the big trail. Of course, he got me the best.

I have a female barrister, I won't name her, but she is a devious minx and she doesn't miss a trick.

Crown Court was not a barrel of laughs at all, even with all my mates in the dock with me. It all took fucking ages, there was nine people to get through. Dizi, Diode and that G****n prick opted for a jury trail, so we had to sit through all that shit before it got to us guys that were caught 'bang to rights'.

My barrister got a whole bunch of my charges dismissed. The BTP said the 'M****ces' top to bottom I'd done with Ryt 1 at 'G' cost £2500 to clean off, they produced a receipt from LRT cleaning services to prove this. My barrister then pointed out, that if it cost £2500 to clean how come she had ridden the train to court and it hadn't been cleaned ? LRT's lawyers got flustered by this, they started shuffling through papers and running in and out of the courtroom to make phone calls. LRT were arguing that I should have a custodial sentence, because they said I'd caused over £25,000 worth of damage, to their property. The thing was, they had falsified figures and they'd been caught out . All the costs relating to the cleaning of trains and walls, were now in dispute. The most they could do me for, is what I'd admitted to on tape. The case was adjourned again for two months to await reports . The case was being covered by London TV stations and the national press. Most of the press coverage was about that cocksucker G****n, though. The press said that we were the most notorious graffiti gang in London. That was bollocks. Like I said, it was just a mix of writers who happened to be around that night. There were a couple of people present that night I wouldn't piss on if they were on fire. If G****n had come on another night, he might have 10 completely different writers there. So, 'Gang' was a bit sensational really

G****n was acquitted of what ever the little nobody was charged with, and he gave some sissy, teary-eyed speech to the press, like the case was about him. Rather then HIM being in our case .Silly little cunt. He was just the conduit to get to us.

He went on to do very well out of MY court case. It got him work. I'll get my pound of flesh out of him yet, don't you worry.

Little Diode also got acquitted. He WAS completely innocent. He WAS there on that night, but he didn't tag and he didn't say anything on tape, nothing. He was just in the background of the photographs. He was just one of those nice, keep 'em self to 'em self black kids that used to hang with the Met scene. When they raided Diode's house, all they found was ONE spraycan nozzle. So on the basis of a photograph and a nozzle, a poor 14 year old had to endure a two year court case. Shameful. ACAB

The rest of us were sentenced on Cheltenham Gold Cup day 1989 at Willesden Crown Court.

 

Tilt , received a 2 year sentence. One year of that was suspended, and he'd already spent over a year on remand, so he only had to serve one more week for the Queen.(I don't know if they still do that.)

Coma, was given 6 months, for train graff. (But he was mostly being punished for being Tilt's writing partner.)

Nice 1, got four months (Again mostly for being Tilt's friend.)

Huz, got four months. Ditto (This was made doubly bad for Huz, as he was/is a Bookie and it was 'Gold Cup' day, one of his busiest most lucrative days.)

Jano (Me), got 200hrs Community service and a £1000 fine.(Would've got jail if I'd had any other barrister than my own.)

Ryt ,1 got 100hrs community service and a £500 fine.(Would've got the same as me if I'd told the BTP he was with me at 'G' and Neasden.)

Dizi, got a conditional discharge and a £60 fine. (He was another poor fella who just got caught up in the case for just being there on that night, like Diode. He was a father of two, he didn't really need all the hassle. Dizi was one of those fellas that were so fertile that, if he had a wet-dream in the night, he'd wake up next to a fully-formed baby in the morning, girls got pregnant if they sat next to him on the bus.)

That court case was Britain's first media reported graffiti show trail, with excessive and disproportionate sentencing. It wasn't that case in Sheffield 6 years or so later with Fista , it was us, the original graffiti martyrs. Nobody was rallying around , trying to get Coma out of prison.

A couple of months later, the same Judge that presided over our case ,(He**y Pa**er) set free a child rapist. This man had raped a 6 year old girl in a party dress. The Judge said that the girl's skirt was short and therefore she was asking for it. This was the same man that sent Coma to prison for 6 months for writing his name on the outside of a train. Perhaps it was because Coma wasn't a Freemason. Who knows ?

I, having been tried and successfully convicted of being the graffiti vandal 'JANO', can safely say that JANO is MY name and MY name to use only, anyone else that uses it in the UK is a fraud. I've paid for this name in blood and I was there, right at the start in the thick of it, building a good reputation. I've always been a pretty good writer and I still paint now, better than ever before. I've been doing this shit for too long and gone through too much shit for this name to have people mistake me for some fucking talentless prick xxxx xx.

JANO CD. Still here & a cunt. Still the original.

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The Railway Children

The Railway Children

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Couple of newspaper clippings from that trial. G*****n fucked up the big met big there for a while by taking out some of the biggest names.

tiltcaseedit21hu.jpg

 

grafcase20oe.jpg

 

Sorry there a bit big bit you can't read them if I shrink them & I can't be arsed to dig them out again to rescan them at a smaller size.

 

Remember hearing about that Amersham writer getting a kicking. Can't remember who it was though, Edit maybe. There was a regular little writers bench up at that station & occasionally people like Set 3 would turn up, but most of that lots idea of getting up was to travel to Moor Park once an evening and do some insides. Think I remember Stun (I recall he had a red Kangol hat) Tac, LSD, Edit from that area. Used to go there to do the Amersham lay up.

 

I like the statement about the met line community being a surrogate family. During those days of the late 80s so many people used to hang around that line and not just writers.

Moves, do you remember that kid with a mental disability who used to hang out around Northwood, Northwood hills and we used to take him bombing with us (was it Jimmy?). Loads of dodgy ICJ members (Mark Brown?) and homeless people who just wanted people to hang around and rack with, there was even some guy who said he was a train cleaner at Neasdon depot. one summer there was some guy who used to follow us all around trying to to take photos of us tagging only i don't think he was a copper he was just some guy who would send his pics to the BTP. Don't think he lasted long before someone mugged him for his camera and told him he would get a kiccking if he turned up again. Another summer some NF halfwit must of started working in a depot or as a driver as all the insides tags had rascist

comments written next to them such as "Mongol halfwit" or "N****r Scum", the guy started to have more insides than me at one point.

 

Any more Jano stories to come Moves?

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BrOkEnBoNeS

BrOkEnBoNeS

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:king: got to be one of the best things ever to appear on the internet, loving the whole thing,

'not a grass like **** nt' hahahaha go on son, wouldve loved to be around for all of that, jano if youve got any more stories then fuck it ill even pay for a secretary to take it all down for you, respect to the originals, nice one moves and railwaychildren and rest :king:

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moves

moves

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ha ha jimmy remember him well in fact i see him last year he still recognised me i swear he knew every writer from the whole of london whatever line you went on as soon as peeps knew you was from the big met they would ask if you knew that jimmy nutcase... quality paper cuttings too remember reading the tilt one when it was in the paper.. i think he has got more stories will have to ask him for em they are the only 2 that i have got...

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Earotronic

Earotronic

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Yes! I remember tags like Regret & umm Fiasko with an arrow to them with 'mongerel jibberish' written next to it. We really couldn't work out who was writting it as he was so up...

 

Also the guy with the baseball cap on who took photos of us on the lines whilst we were supposed to be at college.

 

Anyone remember the first clays that put the grafitti proof paint over everything(1991?) There was one who was know to us as 'ratface'. He really took it personally that he was painting over stuff we'd done then we'd just go back over it when they'd finished for the day...he chased us out of Ricky 2 alley a couple of time too.

 

Move, I had a look for old newspaper/mag clippings but couldn't find any apart from one from maybe 1989 about a train jam, mentions Jut...

 

Think i was one of the 26 people that put up Jano when he was staying in Amersham!

 

This thread has brought back lots of good memories! Keep it going.

 

Ear

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Chewie

Chewie

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Just out of interest, how big do you think the BTP's collection of flicks is?! If u say it must be 16-17 years worth, id guess at maybe 12000 photos of their own, and how much confiscated property they must have...? Jeez, id love to get my mitts on that!

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shadowman

shadowman

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Originally posted by Chewie@Aug 15 2005, 03:24 PM

Just out of interest, how big do you think the BTP's collection of flicks is?! If u say it must be 16-17 years worth, id guess at maybe 12000 photos of their own, and how much confiscated property they must have...? Jeez, id love to get my mitts on that!

i was recently caught and i can say that they had no fliks of steel that i had done. and no im not a internet graffer, i did my fare share and they knew what my tag was but still no fliks

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The Railway Children

The Railway Children

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Originally posted by Earotronic@Aug 15 2005, 06:04 PM

Yes! I remember tags like Regret & umm Fiasko with an arrow to them with 'mongerel jibberish' written next to it. We really couldn't work out who was writting it as he was so up...

 

Also the guy with the baseball cap on who took photos of us on the lines whilst we were supposed to be at college.

 

 

I think we considered putting up "Mongerel Jibberish" as a crew name just to piss him off. He must of been a cleaner or driver to have been that up.

 

Yeah, the baseball hat guy, I think someone knew his name actually. Can't remember if he was actually working for LRT or BTP to take photos of us or just some Charles Bronson type.

 

I met Jut once up at Croxley when that became a popular place for writers to hang out. He was a right nutter and told me some mad story about doing an armed robbery and one of his mates sticking the sawn off shot gun down the back of Juts trousers as they were running away from the old bill.

 

Chewie, I would imagine once a court case is over & theres no chance of an appeal they probably destroy all the evidence & the same with stuff taken from peoples houses ( provided it won't be needed for evidence in other cases).

Kast had photos of stuff that BTP had taken. I think he took a camera into his interview and just sat there taking photos of what the old bill were showing him as evidence against him. Either that or his soliciter took them in the interview. I've got a few copies somewhere, theres one of the Foam Kast wholecar sitting in Neasdon before being buffed.

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BLUD

BLUD

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I also had to train them how to speak properly. Up until I arrived, they said 'BOIK' instead of 'BIKE', proper farmer accents that'd get 'em stabbed-up in the city. If you go to Amersham now, they all speak like Ali G, and that's all my fault. I was like Professor Henry Higgins in reverse;

"Da trainz in Spain, are mainly canezed wiv paint !"

 

:haha:

 

Jano, that bit was class mate, HENRY HIGGINZ GETME BLUD.. :haha:

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Earotronic

Earotronic

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This piece was written in 1989 by Lois Lane for Soul Underground magazine…

 

STOP THAT TRAIN!

 

Last month (2nd July) saw the rarity of the infamous train party on the circle line. Meeting first at a predestined location the majority of people were made up of graffiti artists, some carrying stylishly coloured ghetto blasters, others held bags containing an assortment of pens. Unfortunately uninvited thieves were amongst the true party goers. It seems like anything nowadays is worth taxing as an assortment of namebelts, personal stereos and even coats were just few of the items obtained. I approached one guy holding a newly acquired name belt.

“We don’t come down to start trouble, but if we see something we like, we take it” Moving swifty away before I could be fleeced as they call it in the trade, I waited while the rest of the ravers turned up. An hour or so later the massive crowd of people swarmed into the underground to start the mixture of music and graffiti writing.

With the large amount of people present in the carriages I began to wonder how they get together. Who better to ask than the guy next to me, a writer by the name Jut.

“It’s all planned weeks before and the word is spread writer to writer.”

About 7 stops later it was time to change lines, this was where the real trouble started. A passenger whilst being stung let loose a canister of what appeared to be tear gas (judging from the affect it had on people in the carriage) in self defence.

After spilling out onto the platform of the next station the victim was promptly found and knocked to the floor which would have made even Mike Tyson cringe.

It was at this point, as I quickly left the scene, I could not help but agree with one of America’s ‘Guardian Angels’ who was on the scene earlier.

“You lot over here don’t know how to jam properly. There’s no need to act violently when you’re out to have fun.

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