Eyes & Ears IV

It seems appropriate for several reasons that I end September on the blog in the same way as I started it, with a cultural consumption blog as, somewhat unexpectedly; it has turned into a month of great acquisition, quantitatively as much as qualitatively.

Books:

Last time, I eulogised over Eamonn Sweeney’s The Road to Croker, which told of his experiences watching the 2003 football and hurling All Ireland Championships from start to finish, which I enjoyed as much as his two novels from the turn of the millennium, Waiting for the Healer and The Photograph. By the power of Amazon, I tracked down his first book; a celebration of his support for Sligo Rovers and, in many ways, I wish I hadn’t. What is clear from this book is that Sweeney was an early master of the cutting phrase and exact description that so enhances his later works. What he hadn’t learned was how to structure a book; There’s Only One Red Army is not meant to be a chronological account, but a thematic one. Sadly it seems poorly edited and repetitive, with certain anecdotes appearing in consecutive sections. A cursory glance on the Bit o’ Red’s homepage shows that there are errors in the history of the club as well but, as an account of an unapologetically heavy drinking early 20s League of Ireland fan touring the 27 counties (including Derry of course) on the batter, with the odd game to watch, it is a diverting, anachronistic account of the late 80s to early 90s pre Tiger Ireland, though quite how Sweeney reconciles his current role as a hurling expert for De Payper with the coruscating anti GAA bile this tome is suffused with, is another matter. One for completists only.

Another book out of Ireland, this time from the nice bit of Da Nortsoide, is Roddy Doyle’s latest collection of weekly duologues set in a Dublin pub between two world weary, cynical middle-aged men, who set the world to rights over a few jars. Another Two Pints is short, charming, funny, precise, accurate and abusive where it needs to be; setting the world to rights in the length of time it takes to sink a brace of black porter, Doyle has managed the art of finding an innovative way of communicating his paternalist, Socialist world view without didactic preaching to the converted. It also helps to remind the reader of how much happens in a short period of time in the world; death, loss, gain, politics, culture and sport. Nowhere can the death of Nelson Mandela and the failure of David Moyes be better discussed than in the pub; Roddy Doyle has done just that in this sparkling volume. A great, great read.

The final book I’ve read this month, which I did at a belt on account of how intriguing, nay beguiling, I found it, was Neil Young’s sort of autobiography, Waging Heavy Peace. Not for Neil is the simple structure of the conventional autobiography; instead we get stories of his early life in Canada, his time on first arriving in California with Buffalo Springfield, several of his major records and their genesis, as well as labyrinthine arguments with unsympathetic record company executives, interspersed with his family life. Young, at the time of writing, repeatedly mentions his deep and abiding love for his wife of 37 years; shame he’s recently filed for divorce from Pegi, but no matter. His love for his quadriplegic son Ben shines through every page and is a testament to what a good man Young, who gave up smoking weed after 45 years to write this book, can be. Also, his obsessions with big, classic cars and a desire to make them environmentally friendly, which has accounted for a huge portion of his earnings over the years, as well as his desire to produce a rival to MP3s and CDs that will produce the level of sound quality of final records, is laboriously detailed. Part family man, part geek, full time musical genius; Neil Young is as fine a man as he is a musician and this eccentric, digressive, almost rambling and painfully honest account of most of his life, is well worth a read.

Music:

No doubt influenced by Young’s book, my latest purchases at Tynemouth market saw me in a deeply nostalgic mood. While I’d never owned it in the past, I remember it being a staple of the collections of many friends in Sixth Form and University, so I knew most of the contents inside out; the triple album, double CD set Decade by Neil Young was a must have for the grand total of £2. It does everything the most recent Greatest Hits collection does, for the first ten years of Young’s career, and far more beside: Down by the River, Cinnamon Girl, Heart of Gold, Helpless, Powderfinger, Like a Hurricane and more. What else could a cyclist wish for as he ploughs up and down the Coast Road in semi darkness? A simply sublime collection and wonderful to get Long May You Run at last.

The same day, I spent another £3 on artefacts I had previously owned in the past, but whose disappearance from my life has been a source of regret for many years. Back in the summer of 1977, I don’t recall ever having heard The Velvet Underground or any other 60s American garage bands; however, I must have shown a propensity for this kind of musical heritage as the first time I heard Roadrunner by Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, it made immediate sense, bridging the gap between Television’s Marquee Moon and (I Belong to the) Blank Generation by Richard Hell & The Voidoids. Amazingly, Pop-Inn records in Felling Square had it in stock, so I bought a copy, adoring both versions and playing it repeatedly. Sadly, somehow, I lost or sold or loaned it to someone and it never appeared in my possession again. Of course, I could easily have picked it up on an album or compilation over the years but, same as I.R.T. by Snatch that I acquired earlier this year, I only wanted the vinyl 7”. Seeing it in the market for a quid, I had to buy it. Happily, my memory wasn’t playing tricks and the song is as eccentric, adorable and life affirming today as it ever was. While I’ve no real love for much of Richman’s studied naiveté, this record assures his place among the greatest tracks of all time. Yes, it would have made it into my 50^th birthday top 100 songs.

Ever gone from elation to depression in 5 seconds? I did when I saw a stall selling Dylan’s John Wesley Harding album for £5 on original 60s vinyl; the torn and battered cover was no barrier to my purchase. However, checking the quality of the actual record, I was crestfallen to find a copy of Nashville Skyline inside; a record I already had and don’t like that much. Sadly, I moved on, remembering how I’d bought a semi-legal Spanish bootleg cassette of the album for 190 Pesetas, about a quid at the time, while on holiday in Benidorm at Easter 1976, aged 11. The questions of copyright infringement didn’t bother me as I found myself utterly knocked out by 12 songs of astonishing vitality; The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest stunned me in its simplicity and lyrical imagination. Of course, this was a cassette and by the time I reached 16, it had been played to death and was almost unlistenable. The album is seen as minor treasure among Dylan’s 60s body of work, often overshadowed by the later release of The Basement Tapes. Luckily my disappointment was temporary, as the same stall that sold Decade and Roadrunner also had a CBS Nice Price CD of John Wesley Harding for £2. I bought it immediately and found, to my delight, the album to be as enjoyable as back in the day; certainly the title track is as fantastically constructed as I remember it, with some of my favourite drumming of all time. A true, joyful find.

Returning a week later to the same stall, I found a copy of the rare and much maligned final album by Lindisfarne’s second line up, Happy Daze. Unsurprisingly I suppose, since Ray Laidlaw and Rod Clements still live in the village, Tynemouth market is a fertile source of Lindisfarne material; I’ve picked up a couple of live albums from here in the past, but this one was a real curiosity and I had to part with £5 for it. After the acrimonious parting of the ways following the lukewarm reception of Dingly Dell, the Tynemouth trio (including Canada’s number 1 craft brewer Si Cowe) put Jack the Lad together, while Ray Jackson and Alan Hull regrouped in Lindisfarne II with a few other north east musicians. The resulting Roll on Ruby album, containing a litany of excellent pre written but previously unrecorded material, is as great as Nicely Out of Tune or Fog on the Tyne, with North Country Boy, Goodbye and Taking Care of Business among the band’s best ever songs. Sadly, it didn’t sell, so the band returned hastily to the studio to cut Happy Daze, which bombed and the group split early 1975, reforming almost 2 years later for the December 1976 Christmas Shows at the City Hall. And the rest is history... Laura, Ben and I are looking forward to Tuesday 23^rd December and this year’s Christmas gig… But what of Happy Daze? Well, it isn’t terrible, but it isn’t really Lindisfarne; it’s more straight ahead, soft rock. More Eagles than Dylan meets Fairport over a few beers and all the poorer for it. Tommy Duffy’s Tonight is a strong opener and Hull’s Dealer’s Choice is a highlight, but the set as a whole lacks coherence. A bit dull, but worthy and useful to plug a gap in my collection would be my verdict.

Back in August during my trip to Glasgow, I made a fruitless trip to a closed Volcanic Tongue records; a situation explained by an email sent a day later to tell me the shop was now shut and they were mail order only. Having used them for arcane, experimental product in the past, I kept this tradition up by purchasing a rather pleasing Velvet Underground oddity; a 1968 live recording from Boston, where the recording engineer had focussed almost exclusively on Lou Reed’s guitar. The resulting Legendary Guitar Amp Tape is the loudest ambient record I’ve ever heard and great it is too. There’s five effectively instrumental tracks on it, including cuts of two of my least favourite Velvets numbers, Jesus and Run Run Run, both of which sparkle on here, as do the ever fabulous Beginning to See the Light and Foggy Notion. It’s a fine addition to my collection and a superb curio, with a volume 2 promised including What Goes On, which will ensure I purchase that release. It wasn’t cheap at £21, but I like to support Volcanic Tongue as I approve of what they do.

I did buy one new album this month and it is an absolute beast. Shellac’s Dude Incredible is the best release of 2014, without question. I regret bitterly buying the CD and not the vinyl as the depth and power of the usual less than intricate post hardcore, post rock, post everything ultimate power trio Albini inspired in your face charge. From the opening notes of the title track, to the closing seconds of Surveyor, we are in the presence of genius. Uncompromising, difficult and deeply intolerant, Shellac are true originals; Dude Incredible is musically no different to 1997’s At Action Park (any other bands have albums named after Shankhouse’s ground?), but why should it be? The purity of sound, the strength of vision and accuracy of their venomous, bile-spitting lyrics, especially on the breath-taking Riding Bikes, mean that this is the most truly indispensable album of 2014.  Adorable, but in a very bad way.

This month I’ve managed 1 gig; Vic Godard on his annual visit to the Star and Shadow, possibly for the last time as the venue is closing in December. Vic has played up north about 10 times in recent years and I’ve been at every one. There have been 6 at the Star and Shadow, 2 at The Cluny and before that, a free gig on the Quayside on May Day 2005 as part of the Evolution Festival, which was the first time I’d seen him since 1978 supporting The Buzzcocks. The Quayside gig was also the very first live music Ben saw, aged 9 going on 10, so it was with great pride, I took him along to this gig on his last night in Newcastle before moving on to Leeds and the next part of his life as a History student.

As ever, the usual crowd were in attendance; Raga, Bill, Mala, Carl, Ant, Richard and Tony; blokes who I don’t think have missed a Vic gig in the last decade. As ever, it was the Star and Shadow so things were running a bit late, on account of traffic problems holding the bands up. Support The Fallen Leaves, including Bill from Band of Holy Joy on drums and Rob from the original Subway Sect, were damn good, in a kind of 60s garage, Billy Childish way and I’d be happy to see them again. However Vic, with the usual band, took it to another level. Having previously toured with 1978 Now, We Come as Aliens and his Northern Soul influenced crooning sets, available on the newly released 1979 Now which I failed to buy on the night but will get on line very soon, this was a glorious combination. Is there a more uproarious song than Holiday Hymn?  Sadly, the late running of show times meant Ben and I had to head at midnight after 14 numbers; we missed out on Chainsmoking, but the last song we heard, fittingly and wonderfully enough, was the simply unsurpassable Ambition. There could be no finer final number to draw the curtains on this part of Ben’s youth. I feel honoured to have been there.

So, what’s next? Well, The Pop Group in Leeds on Friday October 24^th looks likely, then British Sea Power at the Sage on October 26^th, The Wedding Present at The Cluny on November 10^th and the aforementioned Lindisfarne Christmas gig on December 23^rd. I’ll try and read a few books as well. Not to mention cocking an ear for the album from The Everlasting Yeah.

Fraternal Greetings

Issue #2 of Newcastle United's only fanzine, "The Popular Side," is out now. Price £2 (inc P&P) via PayPal to iancusack@blueyonder.co.uk it is a 40 page, A5, old school, not for profit publication with no adverts, no website, no merchandise & no inflexible dogmatic ideology. I'm delighted to say that this piece about Jack Colback's borther Callum is in the latest issue. Check it out; more details from @PopularSideZine -:

If I were asked to nominate the one thing that makes me most angry about the conduct of our support, I would opt for the blanket negativity towards any player who doesn’t play like Messi every game. Without even touching on the opprobrium visited on Yoan Gouffran from the corridor of hate, the contempt that Sissoko suffers among a gaudy sun-hatted section of our self-appointed “super fans” is caused by his inability to replicate his explosive debut performances against Villa and Chelsea in every game, while the abuse endured by Sami Ameobi and Paul Dummett, is simply unacceptable and yet another reason why I opt to watch their respective brothers Tomi and Marc turning out for Whitley Bay and West Allotment Celtic. Frankly, there’s a greater chance of me seeing Samuel Perez at Croft Park than his hermano Ayoze at SJP. It isn’t a new phenomenon to see the siblings of pro players plying their trade in the grassroots game; for example, the recently deceased Ronnie Beardsley had a distinguished career in the Northern Alliance, as did the penalty box predator, Callum Colback, who top scored at Percy Main Amateurs in the 2009/2010 season.

Having joined the Percy Main committee in July 2009, I was a zealous convert, regularly proselytising one of the finest non-league clubs in the region to all who’d listen, as The Villagers successfully gained promotion to the Northern Alliance Premier division and won the Pin Point Recruitment Combination Cup in my first season on board. These wonderful successes were helped along in no small measure by the goals of our top scorer Callum Colback, who’d arrived from Whitley Bay, by way of his hometown club Killingworth YPC. Those who know about Northern Alliance football in the first decade of the 21st century will tell you that while Ponteland United’s Harry Tulip was the best target man in the league, the most intelligent, incisive and lethal finisher was Callum Colback. Scoring goals was both instinctive and effortless for the lad and his signing was the first, major hint that Jason Ritchie was assembling a squad at Purvis Park that was likely to gain promotion.

It would be almost impossible to place a defined start point and finishing line on my journey of disenchantment with professional football, though the nearest I can find to a eureka moment to prove I’d breasted an imaginary tape would have been around 4.45 on Saturday 5^th February 2011. That was the day when Newcastle United recovered from 4-0 down at half time to Arsenal to claim a point in the supposed greatest comeback in Premier league history. More importantly, Tony Browell’s goal saw Percy Main Amateurs through to the final of the Northumberland FA Senior Benevolent Bowl after a 1-0 victory over Ponteland United at a packed Purvis Park. In the bar post match, as we watched events unfold at SJP on Final Score with mild interest, a mate of mine, paying his first visit to Purvis Park since our promotion noticed the absence of Callum from that day’s team and asked “who does Colback’s brother play for now?” My reply was “the Mackems.” I wasn’t trying to be funny or disingenuous. This response simply demonstrated my process of disengagement from the professional game was complete.

To be honest, I do love the Northern Alliance; it is the quintessential Geordie league as the 45 constituent clubs, apart from half a dozen up in Northumberland, are from the greater Tyneside area. Games kick off at 2.00 or 2.30, so getting into the bar at full time coincides with the business part of Saturday afternoon, as the scores start to come in. While a load of lads are concerned about their bets coming up, almost without exception, the players, officials and spectators involved in the 3 divisions follow Newcastle United. Any NUFC goal is loudly cheered and a win celebrated almost as much as their own side’s successes. It isn’t like that in the Northern League, for several reasons; geography, but also money. At that elevated level, players get paid, while in the Alliance, lads do it for a love of the game. That means sometimes they have to miss a game to work overtime or because of their shifts. However Callum, having done his A Levels at Tynemouth College, had a good job with regular hours and was always available to play, if we ignore the small matter of the 3 game ban imposed after a red card for foul and abusive language in a 3-0 away over Amble in the quarter final of the Minor Cup.

Callum made his debut for the Main with a praiseworthy shift in a 2-0 victory over Hebburn Reyrolle on 15^th August 2009, grabbing the opening goal and Man of the Match award. This game put down a marker for the standard of performance he would turn in on a regular basis throughout a season that was a personal triumph for him, during which he scored 21 goals from 26 appearances. The best of these was a free kick in the dying minutes of a home game against Wallington at the end of August. With the light fading, he placed the ball on the top left hand angle of the box, ran up and laced an unstoppable shot into the roof of the net, sealing a 2-0 home win. A magical moment. The only other league game Callum missed was a comfortable 2-0 home win over Northbank Carlisle on 26^th September, on account of the fact he’d gone to watch his brother play. At that time, Jack was on loan to Ipswich Town and the game, beamed live on BBC on Saturday team time, acted as a kind of final memorial for Sir Bobby Robson. Ipswich were managed at the time by an increasingly bizarre and unpredictable Roy Keane who, seeking to find a fresh challenge after his stint with the Mackems went down the pan, was rendered speechless as Newcastle ran out 4-0 winners. As devoted black and whites, the whole Colback family would have been delighted at the score, if sympathetic to Jack’s feelings. To be honest, Callum didn’t talk much about his brother, or the professional game in general. Indeed on Easter Monday 2010, as I sat in the Milburn Paddock enjoying our promotion party over Sheffield United, Callum texted me to say I’d made a mistake in my match report for Percy Main’s 4-4 versus Peterlee the previous Saturday, by failing to attribute the first goal to him.

Callum’s last game for Percy Main, and indeed final competitive Saturday fixture, was on May 29^th 2010 against Hebburn Reyrolle, the same opponents as his debut. Fresh off the plane from a foreign holiday with his brother, he played in a 1-0 victory in the Combination Cup Final. The week later we had our end of season do, which coincided with his engagement party. With impending nuptials and parenthood on the horizon, Callum made a brief visit to our do, but only long enough to collect his Goal of the Season trophy and announce his immediate retirement, explaining he had sensibly decided to put his family ahead of his playing career, though he still turns out now for Burradon on a Sunday morning and is banging in the goals by all accounts. Callum Colback was a truly great finisher in the Northern Alliance and I’ll remember his contribution to that special season with enormous fondness. I’d love to think his brother, who I rate very highly on the basis of his entire career, can provide equally happy memories in the future.

Read it in Books....

Those regular readers of my blog will no doubt remember my birthday post of my 50 favourite songs of the past 50 years, which ended up being a list of 100 songs as I couldn’t narrow them down enough. Well, in a similar vein, a request from my mate Paddy Robinson to list my 10 favourite books provoked a lengthy period of furrowed brows and intense contemplation. Unlike last time, I’ve decided to stick with 10 books, but with certain provisos; all of them are novels, 1 per author and they are listed in alphabetical author order. I’ve sought to contextualise each one, but not provide any kind of literary analysis.

Albert Camus – L’Etranger: not the first Camus book I read; that distinction goes to La Peste, but this tale of an individual who struggles to fit in with the world around him, captivated me immediately I read the first page. It was in late 1978 and I’d been made aware of The Cure’s Killing An Arab, but I read this before I heard the song. To this day I love the style of Mersault’s asides and his philosophical musings on an absurd word.

Roddy Doyle – The Van: All my life I’ve been a lover of books driven by characters rather than plots. I prefer people to stories and this superbly written account of two middle-aged, working class Dubs from da Nortsoide running a mobile chipper van during the 1990 World Cup is an absolute classic. In all seriousness, it has so much to say about the nature of friendship and masculinity as well.

James Ellroy – The Cold Six Thousand: I was first introduced to Ellroy in 1998, when I saw L.A. Confidential, which I found to be brilliantly plotted, if labyrinthine and peopled by incredible, amoral characters. Delving into Ellroy’s oeuvre, I found that the film was a simplified version and the massive books a fascinating, addictive insight into the seediest parts of American life. Of more importance than his gore fest police procedurals were the Underworld USA Trilogy that told of incredible malfeasance and astonishing conspiracies in the heart of the American state. The Cold Six Thousand, starting minutes after “Dallas” or “the hit,” as it’s known, is the most brutal, hard boiled and addictive of all Ellroy’s novel. An absolute masterpiece of crime faction.

Franz Kafka – The Trial: Moving on from Camus to Sartre, by way of Hesse, I came across Kafka in the early days of the hot summer of 1979. In my airless bedroom, I read with terror the story of Gregor Samsa in Metamorphosis, with utter incomprehension the events of The Castle and eventually found myself addicted to the gripping story of Josef K’s investigation and execution in The Trial, which remains my favourite Kafka book.

Cormac McCarthy – Suttree: I’d never read a word of McCarthy until 2007, when The Road became the novel everyone was talking about. I read it in a sitting and No Country For Old Men, both a brilliant book and a magnificent film, in the next few days. After that, I began to work my way through McCarthy’s collected works and in summer 2012, I read what I consider his finest work, the semi-autobiographical Suttree. In terms of character, place and time, it is unsurpassable in contemporary literature; perhaps one of the few books I’ve thought, around the halfway mark, that I simply didn’t want it to end. A glorious read and highly recommended.

David Peace – GB84: The greatest book of all time, in my opinion. An absolutely heart-breaking account of the doomed Miners’ Strike of 1984/1985 from an unapologetically left wing perspective, which avoids the sermonic, censorious pitfalls of the Liverpudlian Leninist tendency. Peace tells the story of the men involved, their families and communities and contrasts the noble struggle in which they are engaged with the evil machinations of the murderous state apparatus. It is an astonishing read and the book that has made me the angriest in my entire life. Utter genius.

Jean Paul Sartre – Nausea: I’d never understood what it meant to be bored, alienated or isolated, until I read this fascinating account of existential crisis, in the summer of 1980, only weeks after Sartre had died. A book that made me realise that not fitting in with the real world was a pretty good thing.

Eamonn Sweeney – Waiting for the Healer: I read this in the summer of 1998 when staying in an isolated cottage in Bonniconlon, County Mayo, musing over my own writing career. It is ostensibly a murder investigation meets buddy book set in the Irish midlands, but Sweeney’s excellent ear for dialogue and flair for description make it a stunning read. His later book The Photograph is also a brilliant read, but since then he has abandoned fiction for sports journalism and hurling in particular. A shame, as he displayed a rare and precocious talent. He also liked my work as well.

Alan Warner – Morvern Callar:  I read this in 1997, around the time I began to try and write fiction, finding it incredibly instructive. A male narrator writes in the first person as a female character, in a weird, dream like narrative based on the drug and drink sub culture of the isolated Scottish Highlands and the Balearic Islands. A fascinating bildungsroman that convinces and enthrals; unlike the dreadful follow-up These Demented Lands. I also adored The Sopranos, Warner’s tale of a teenage choir down from Oban for a competition in Edinburgh, which flopped because of an injudiciously chosen title.

Irvine Welsh – Glue: He has to be in here somewhere. It was a toss-up which of the novels got in, but in the end I plumped for the least famous of his Edinburgh male bonding books. It has the fewest comedic touches and an almost total absence of trademark grossness, but is all the better for it. A convincing and affectionate portrayal of the nature of Welsh’s major preoccupation; male concepts of friendship.

Of course, having completed this list, which doesn’t contain a single book I studied at university for either my BA or MA, another list jumped out at me of books I simply had to include. So here goes -:

Kingsley Amis – Lucky Jim: Hilarious from start to finish.

Iain Banks – The Wasp Factory: Bought it because of an interview in the NME in 1986 and loved it and every other one of his I’ve read.

Samuel Beckett – Murphy: Finally; a book I studied at university! A simply crazy and hilarious account of some of the most oddball characters ever created, with some truly memorable, side-splitting lines.

Charles Bukowski – Ham on Rye: While I much prefer his short stories, this fictionalised account of his early life with his psychopathic father (a cruel, shiny-faced bastard with bad breath) is, in my eyes, far preferable to the episodic Post Office and the misogynistic Women. Bukowski is, of course, more important for what he allowed writers to say than for the way he himself said those things.

James Kelman – A Disaffection: The novel begins Patrick Doyle was a teacher. Gradually he became sickened by it. That, and the fact he takes in Yoker Athletic v Glasgow Perthshire during the game, is more than enough to make it one of my favourite contemporary Scottish novels.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez – One Hundred Years of Solitude: I read this over a scorching Easter weekend in Bratislava in 2000 and was captivated by the incredible flights of narrative fancy Marquez concocts in this most magical of magical realist novels. The events relating to the history of Macondo touched a part of me that few books manage to do at such an elemental level. A joy to read.

Magnus Mills – The Restraint of Beasts: The only one on this list I don’t own. Loaned to me by my mate Paul Webb in Bratislava, this is the greatest example of the Marxist concept of a worker’s alienation from the means of production I could imagine. It is also incredibly funny and ridiculous in an absurd way. I love all his books. I wish he’d write another one.

Flann O’Brien – At Swim-Two Birds:  Another book from my university era and a glorious, uproarious read. Perhaps the best book about drinking I’ve ever read. Hilarious from start to finish and superbly intertwined with legends from Irish mythology. I love everything O’Nolan wrote, in all his guises.

Jeff Torrington – Swing Hammer Swing!: Another magnificent Scottish novel. The Gorbals is being pulled down for slum clearance and a whole litany of oddballs, drunks and eccentrics are going to be made homeless. What can they do to save their local area? I adored this novel when first coming across it in 1995.

Kurt Vonnegut – Slaughterhouse 5:  All of Vonnegut’s novels are a joy to read, but the madness of the imagination, and the real life tragedy behind this one, make it a simply stunning read. Deeply affecting.

Eyes & Ears III

Here we are again with another of my infrequent cultural round-ups, relating to what I’ve been reading, hearing and very occasionally, watching during the last while. As this bulletin includes the time I’ve been off work, I have understandably read more than in previous blogs, though one surprising innovation for this summer is that live music really took centre stage (pardon the pun), not particularly in a Festival setting either, with some superbly important gigs in the last few weeks. However, purchases of recorded music are at a very low level; indeed I think I’ve only availed myself of 6 new albums in 2014, though the new Shellac release is on the horizon.

Firstly though; television. Now as I’m fond of saying, other than news, football and the occasional police procedural I’m not a great watcher of the idiot box. An exception I made was Utopia in 2013; a taut, dystopian fantasy that combined excellent characterisation, superb dialogue and innovative filming. Just when I’d forgotten about it, series 2 came on our screens in July. I saw episode 1 and 2 on consecutive nights, and then promptly went on holiday and forgot about the remainder. Luckily Laura recorded them for me and I watched the last 4 together, including the closing episode in real time. The superb script continued, with historic conspiracy theories about Airey Neave, interwoven with unvarnished gore and a real sense of character development. The final episode that saw Wilson accepting the role of Mr Rabbit and the others seeing their fate resting on his subsequent actions was genuinely shocking and paves the way for a third series that I’m anticipating already. The sheer ordinariness of the characters’ previous lives and the humdrum reality of the settings are what make Utopia both creepy and memorable.

Books:

Years ago, I used to buy books on spec, regardless of my reading habits and stockpile them, reading them when I had the time, or inclination. Eventually, after finally clearing my bedside table of the to-do pile, five years after I moved into my house, I decided I would only buy or accept books when there was a reasonable prospect of reading them in the next few months. I’ve pretty much stuck to that, though Neil Young’s autobiography Waging Heavy Peace has sat on the night stand since Ben bought me it last Christmas. It’ll be tackled soon, I promise. To be fair, I didn’t buy the crime thriller Melting by Anna Davis, I simply picked it up from the IT suite at work on the last day of term, as it had lain there, presumably abandoned, for about 2 months. I can understand why.

It’s the story of professional con artists Jason and Fran, who induct Eileen to their clan and move from London to Manchester to Cardiff, running high end scams that always succeed. The risible plot premise becomes a minor detail as they move to Cardiff and Eileen becomes embroiled in a love affair with the trustafarian restaurateur they are trying to bleed dry. For a while you actually feel for Eileen as she wrestles with her conscience but, long before she escapes unscathed with a huge bag of foreign currency and a false passport, the mundane dialogue, implausible events, poorly drawn characters and leaden descriptions squeeze the life out the book. Ironically Anna Davis has packed in fiction to become a literary agent. I hope she can spot talent better than she could ever construct books.

Another person who abandoned fiction is the Irish writer Eamonn Sweeney, whose debut novel Waiting for the Healer caused me to write him a fan letter in 1998. I told him that never before had Longford, Edgeworthstown and Athlone been so memorably depicted in a tremendous account of family ties and mental disintegration in the drink-sodden Irish midlands.  He responded with gratitude and we exchanged correspondence and several of my stories, which he was most complimentary about. A couple of years later, I read his fictionalised account of post Treaty Irish politics, The Photograph, which I felt to be a more ambitious and less successful work, then he dropped under the publishing radar. Until I discovered he had reinvented himself as a GAA journalist, specialising in hurling. As he comes from Sligo any GAA devotee will find this amusing, but as his dad was from Kilkenny and Sweeney now resides in Cork, things do make sense.

Having seen the GAA round 4A football qualifiers in Tullamore in July and still holding fervent hope that my beloved Cork hurlers would win the Liam McCarthy this year, I began Sweeney’s The Road to Croker just in time for Tipp to smash the Rebels out of sight in the semi-final. I still read the book though and loved every page of his account of the 2003 season. His father dies, but Kilkenny win the hurling just days before his death and Tyrone beat Armagh in the first all Ulster (9 counties!!) final, making it both tragic and uplifting as Eamonn boozes and muses his way from Dungarvan to Newry and west Cork to Donegal, watching games and meeting the people who make the GAA what it is; the social and sporting glue that holds the country together in good times and in bad. This was a tremendous read and I’d recommend it without hesitation.

If you’ve got £2, Up Craig Dobson’s exhaustive account of West Allotment Celtic’s promotion to Northern League Division 1 in 2013/2014 is well worth a read. Written with both flair and balance, it is lavishly illustrated and innovatively designed, though I’d imagine the subject matter makes it a niche read. However Craig is now editing a football magazine about all NE teams, Northern Promise, that I’m writing for, which will hopefully bring his enthusiastic work to a wider audience.

Another niche read for me was Comrades; Inside the War of Independence by Annie Ryan, that I picked up from a newsagents for a couple of quid in Dalkey on a blisteringly hot afternoon when I’d only gone in for a Cornetto. Comrades is a series of first-hand accounts of the War of Independence told by the protagonists, often many years after the events. Ryan’s book draws on official witness statements taken in the late 1940s and only released to the public by the Irish Government in 2002, so divisive and contentious were many of the oral accounts. The events are described in a series of geographically distinct chapters and include a section on the significant role played by women throughout the conflict. The flying columns, the ambushes, the activities of the Black and Tans and the reprisals are all vividly outlined through the voices of the protagonists, who recollect their roles, great and small, in the struggle that ultimately led to the Treaty negotiations and the establishment of the Irish Free State. 95 years on from the Soloheadbeg Ambush, the legacy of the bitter struggle to establish the state is evocatively brought to life by the actual words those long dead men and women who were brave enough to take part.

Bravery and the importance of standing up for what one believes in are the absolute cornerstones of Mohsin Hamid’s wonderful novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist. The book, which reminded me so much of La Chute by Albert Camus, is the story of a young Muslim man's loves and losses, daubed against the backdrop of September 11^th. The narrator Changez is a young Pakistani graduate of Princeton who secures a top job on Wall Street and falls in love with a beautiful American woman. Events following the attack on the Twin Towers send Changez spiralling to the depths of a paranoid crisis of identity.

During the course of the novel, set during a return visit to Lahore, Changez tells this story to a mysterious American. He explains how he has struggled against the suspicions cast on him where, despite his achievements and ostensible 'Americanness', the colour of his skin is a veil implying 'terrorist.' As afternoon turns to evening on a busy Lahore street, Hamid cleverly brews an air of simmering distrust between Changez and his listener, subtly juxtaposing light and dark. The novel succeeds in wrapping an exploration of the straining relationship between East and West in a story which remains taut until the final pages. The roles of speaker and listener remain unnervingly elusive as the narrative ends with a strident note of unease.

There’s a similarly unhappy ending in The Big Midweek: Life Inside The Fallby Steve Hanley, which catalogues his 16 year career in my once favourite band with meticulous, chronological detail. Hanley, the reserved family man who always demurred to Mark E Smith’s violent, arrogant posturing tells the story of the band and not just of the frontman. It is a great read, by turns fascinating, amusing, uplifting and eventually, thoroughly depressing. Fall fans know the band were never the same after signing to Beggars Banquet after 1983’s Perverted By Language bar the occasional spike above the mediocre in Extricate, Infotainment Scan or Shiftwork. However, if the band creatively began to decline, as an entity The Fall ought to have died when Hanley followed enigmatic Craig Scanlon, irrepressible Marc Riley, the irascible Karl Burns and his studious younger brother Paul Hanley out the band. That said, the book did make me nostalgic and I had a great evening rediscovering such classics as Iceland, Garden and Paintwork. Whisper it quietly, I’m off visiting Ben in Leeds at the end of November at The Fall are playing Brudenell Social Club that night.

Music:

Obviously I’ve already blogged about Teenage Fanclub in Glasgow, so staying with the theme of outdoor music, the place to start is the north east summer festival season. Well, there’s not a lot for me to say; I didn’t get to the Ouseburn weekend as I’d not heard of any of the bands, then the Mouth of Tyne Festival was headed by Paul Weller so I wasn’t going anywhere near that, which only left the Americana weekend at The Sage. That clashed with Northumberland v Sussex on the Sunday and Benfield v Darlington on the Saturday, so I was only able to make it there for the opening afternoon, as I wasn’t prepared to lash out £30 to see the scarcely credible Steven Siegal Blues Band. First up were Shipcote & Friends who did their usual down home, folksy kitsch thing with washboards and banjos. Pleasant and diverting as ever, if not exactly creative. However, the great thing about Americana, or Summertyne Home Fries Stage, to use the proper name, is the chance to catch up with people, whether that’s John and the lasses over from Euskal Herria, Raga popping in on an extended lunch break or Ray from Lindisfarne wandering past, it doesn’t really matter. This year I had a really good chat with Alan the photographer, who I’ve known for almost 25 years but rarely get to see.

Friendly chat was a good diversion when former Hurrah frontman Paul Handyside took the stage; a Lyle Lovatt thin singer songwriter with dreams of being John Hiatt on Tyne, his serious tone was almost too sombre for the occasion. A small indoor venue in winter would suit his furrowed brow better than the wide open spaces of the lee of the Sage. Rosie & the Hips were a blessed relief, playing some obvious covers and derivative originals that gave the event a village fete in Georgia type feel. Tony Bengtsson was altogether more original, in terms of the composition of the songs played, and with his band they finally took the music played beyond the level of incidental music with a strong set of Irish influenced folk rock that I’d be happy to hear again, as I would Lesley Roley. A talented and engaging singer songwriter, she went up in my estimation by including 2 Joni Mitchell covers and was the only artist I took the time to congratulate when she’d finished her set. In fact, hers was the last set I saw in its entirety. I knew I’d be heading off before Archie Brown’s dated blues rock bluster ended proceedings, but the bluegrass by numbers of the curiously passionless Kentucky Cow Tippers had me heading home just after 5pm.  Despite the damp squib of an ending, it was an enjoyable day and I’m glad this free festival still takes place, but I can’t say I heard much, bar Lesley Roley, that really moved me.

So far 2014 has not been a vintage one in terms of collecting huge amounts of new releases. Thus far I’ve now got 6 new albums and 3 singles to speak of. I’ve also got 1 brilliant old single. As a secondary birthday present, Ben got me the Jamaican 7” of War in a Babylon by Max Romeo and the Upsetters, a song I’ve loved since I first heard it in 1977. The absolute lack of reggae on my 100 songs for my 50^th birthday would have been resolved if I’d had this slice of genius a couple of weeks earlier.  Next stop must be to finally plug that gap in my collection by getting King Tubby meets The Rockers Uptown.

The only new release I’ve purchased since I last blogged has been Crabs by Death Shanties, the “balls to the wall” free jazz combo lead by Alex Neilson of Trembling Bells on drums, aided by Sybren Renema on baritone saxophone and Lucy Stein on visuals. Admittedly this latter third of the outfit doesn’t come across as much on record as it does live, which I found out for myself during a tremendous show at The Bridge Hotel on August 5^th. Live Neilson and Renema combine to produce a dense, throbbing soup of wailing, primal aggression, while Stein utilises an OHP to display visceral slabs of colour that illustrate the sound for all synesthetics present. In the most part, the tracks are short, punching and utterly uncompromising. Live there are a few seconds rest between each piece, but on vinyl it all combines in one throbbing, breathless complaint of sheer brutal anger, which for some unaccountable reason I find both heartening and hilarious. One track they didn’t do live is the astonishing take on the old English folk song, O Where is St George, which includes Trembling Bells guitarist Mike Hastings, as well as Lucy Stein reading from D M Thomas’s chilling novel The White hotel. This is really special experimental stuff and evidence of the importance of the eclectic Mr Neilson in so much of what is good in contemporary music. Roll on 2015 and the promised Trembling Bells album.

This takes us to a trio of absolutely superb gigs over the summer; Midlake in Whitley Bay on July 10^th, British Sea Power with the NASUWT Brass Band in Durham on July 17^th and The Mekons at Cluny 2 on August 7^th. I first came across Midlake in 2007 at the time of Van Occupanther which I still love. Laura and I were lucky enough to see them at The Sage 2 back then, but missed out on The Courage of Others tour in 2010, when they played the smaller Cluny as the 250 tickets went in a day or so. This latter album was hailed as a masterpiece and I assented to this view at the time, but in retrospect I don’t feel it has lasted as well as Van Occupanther, sounding a little worthy and precious in comparison. Line-up changes meant their latest Antiphon hints at a slight change of direction, but only slight. Midlake remain the most skilled and authentic contemporary exponents of the varying sounds of 1968 to 1974, covering folk rock, country rock and now psychedelic prog rock with great gusto and guile.

Having only previously been to Whitley Bay Playhouse to see Charlie Chuck (it was empty) or for work events (always dull), I wasn’t sure how the place would play out as a rock venue. Well, I’m glad we took some surreptitious cans of ready mixed G&T as the bar shut at 8.30, at the very moment when the band took the stage, on account of the staff there looking as terrified as previous generations of suburban venue staff had when Rock Around the Clock in 1954 or the 1976 Anarchy in the UK tour hit town. Needless to say, Midlake drew an audience far removed from the slavering hell hounds North Tyneside Council had feared. Thankfully there was a crowd as I had worried, on account of the minimal publicity, that there wouldn’t be much of a turn out, but the place was 90% full and it was a superb show.

Drawing mainly on Antiphon and Van Occupanther the band gave an intense and accomplished account of themselves, barring an anti-climactic Young Bride. The highlights came towards the end when Roscoe gained a massive response, before the pretend encore (they seem at one with David Gedge on this) consisted, obviously, of an anthemic Head Home, but was prefaced by a version of I Shall Be Released that was better than the one from The Last Waltz. Midlake set the bar gloriously high in terms of summer gigs and I’m delighted that each successive band raised it.

The week after, British Sea Power’s gig at Durham Gala Theatre for the start of the International Brass Festival was an immediate sell out. Thankfully, I managed to secure a pair of tickets for Ben and I through Bill at work. A pleasant afternoon wander through the land of the Prince Bishops via a few beers and a meal in the Head of Steam saw us arriving at the venue in good time, as we’d been warned it would be a prompt start. That is putting it mildly as BSP, with no support, took the stage at 7.35 and the whole event was over by 9.10, with Ben and I catching the slightly delayed 9.22 train back to the Central. This made Whitley Bay Playhouse seem like a Haight Astbury happening in terms of event management, but the gig was even better.

I’ve never seen BSP in the same venue twice; Middlesbrough Empire, Newcastle University, The Tyne Theatre, Northumbria University and now here, the last 3 times with Ben. Every show has been different and every one a triumph. This run through their back catalogue with the NASUWT Brass Band was another classic evening, despite the band’s unaccountable and perverse need to end some gigs with When a Warm Wind Blows through the Grass immediately after Waving Flags had got energy levels up to the stratosphere. To be fair, this is only a minor quibble as the 15 songs benefitted from the beefing up provided by the authentic Durham pit band. Quite what the fellas in their neat uniforms thought of the usual 15 minute orgy of sound that was Lately, which is always my BSP highlight, though Lights out for Darker Skies and The Great Skua came close, was not reported. I’m really looking forward to seeing this lot again at The Sage on October 25^th, to discover if the brass section is even more vital after a few months gigging experience. It did make me wonder why rock bands don’t adopt a conductor, waving a baton and coaxing out ever greater performances from the musicians. Perhaps one day we’ll see that and I’d imagine BSP are one of the bands most likely to incorporate such a potential innovation.  Also, the Durham stage was too small for the bears and I want to see Ursos Actos treading the boards during Lately again before I die.

If British Sea Power had gone for extra recruits for their band, The Mekons had gone the opposite way and pared the whole thing down to essentials. In the absence of the unwilling Tom Greenhalgh, the most enduring band to come out of Headingley (are the Gang of Four the greatest? Possibly; certainly the most important) stripped themselves down to an acoustic outfit and brought along Chicago pal Robbie Fulks to play in front of a healthy gathering at The Cluny 2 on August 7^th. This was to have been my 50^th birthday lads night out celebration, but with Raga opting to see Penetration at the Three Tuns and Ben off to Boomtown Festival, the theme for the evening was I’ll have to Dance Then on my Own, which they didn’t play of course, but we did get a storming set drawn from the entire history of the band.

There was an understandable emphasis on much of the post reformation era C&W tinged material,  on account of their acoustic  set-up, but that was fine as it is some of their strongest material, with Ghosts of American Astronauts, (Sometimes I Feel Like) Fletcher Christian and Big Zombie being particular highlights. That said, the old timer in me was elated to hear The Building, which Jon did while Robbie Fulks changed a string for him, and a final encore of Where Were You? No Corporal Chalkie alas, but a hug from Jon Langford at the end made the whole evening, which was really well attended, a total triumph. Thanks to the Jumpin’ Hot Club for putting it on. I really hope Tom’s absence from the band isn’t the sign of a final fissure and that The Mekons get back together recording soon.

Well, that’s it for now. The autumn offers the prospect of gigs by Vic Godard (Star & Shadow final event on September 19th, as well as Ben and I’s last dad and lad gig before he heads off to Leeds Met to study History), British Sea Power at The Sage on October 26^th, The Wedding Present doing Watusi and Mini at The Cluny on November 10^th and Ray Jackson’s Lindisfarne at the City Hall on December 23^rd. In terms of recorded music, there’s the new Shellac album at last, as well as a special Velvet Underground Live 68 semi-official bootleg that I’ve got on order from Volcanic Tongue, which I’ve discovered is now mail order only (wish I’d learned that before my 4 mile hungover hike in Glasgow the other week). In terms of books, I’ve just banged in orders for  Roddy Doyle’s latest collection of his Two Pints duologes and Eamonn Sweeney’s book about Sligo Rovers. Then I’ll get round to Neil Young’s Waging Heavy Peace. Is it any wonder I don’t have time to watch television?