New Reviews

This is what I've read & listened to so far in 2024... 

Music:

Thus far, not being in a position to lash out £40 on a single ticket to see Slowdive, the only gig I’ve seen in the opening 2 months of 2024  was the TQ Live event at The Globe back in mid-January. Even then, Shelley and I had to leave early to attend a retirement do. The sole live act we saw was Shunyata Improvisation Group, who produced their usual hypnotic, spellbinding, ethereal soundtrack to a philosophical dreamworld. As ever, I lost myself in their beguiling incantations of guitar, flute, cello and gentle percussion. I’m looking forward very much to hearing them next at Cullercoats Watch House on March 8^th.

Somewhat strangely, I’ve also been to the pictures this year. Considering I can’t shut up and sit still for 2 hours normally, it was quite an ask to go and see Poor Things at ODEON Silverlink. However, it was an absolutely brilliant, amusing and erotic slice of magic realism, which appealed to me after I’d heard it was based on an Alistair Gray novel. It was also great to see Matty Longstaff at the pictures at the same time, though he was escorting his lady friend to a screening of Wonka. Shelley and I also watched Saltburn on Netflix. What a bloody wonderful pisstake of Brideshead Revisited that was. It was like homoerotic Ealing Comedy. I’d recommend it unquestioningly.

As regards the music I’ve listened to this year, first I must remind you that there is the small matter of the earth is flat by a certain ian cusack. My first solo CD is a noise / experimental /avant garde piece that is available from my Bandcamp page for £3 plus postage; for £5 plus postage, I’ll also send you a copy of my chapbook, Violent Heterosexual Men. PayPal payments to iancusack@blueyonder.co.uk please!

Moving on to stuff by other people, I’ve so far accumulated a CD single, a pair of 7” singles, a brace of cassettes and a quartet of CDs. First up, I got myself a couple of good old fashioned Irish traditional singles; Dermot O’Brien’s 1974 take on Spancil Hill. Now, as everyone knows, the all-time greatest version of this classic ballad was the one Christy Moore and Shane MacGowan did on The Late, Late Show back in 1996. This version can’t hold a candle to that, though if Showband schmaltz is your thing, then you’ll probably appreciate the fact it has been turned into a waltz. I don’t. However, my other piece of Irish esoterica is of far greater importance; the still extant nonagenarian Sean O’Se’s brilliant interpretation of The Boys of Kilmichael will have you donning your balaclava and cursing the Saxon invader when in your cups. Well, that’s the affect it has on me, anyway.

We had a quiet New Year at home, but we did see Jools Holland’s programme. Bearing in mind Viz Comic’s legendary top tip; “persuade your friends you are Jools Holland by walking quickly round your house, listening to any old shit,” I did see a tremendous act on there. Donegal teenager Muireann Bradley is undoubtedly the contemporary queen of the Mississippi Delta Blues. Taught this music by her music obsessed father almost from birth, she eschewed an early interest in kickboxing in favour of an acoustic guitar and interpreting songs from a century ago. Drunk and astonished by her version of Candyman, I searched to see what was available online. Her debut CD, I Kept Those Old Blues, was sold out on Bandcamp and the vinyl far too expensive, so I bought the cassette. Frankly, I’m delighted I did, as versions of Vastapol, Stagolee, Green Rocky Road and Freight Train make this a wonderful experience. I do wonder where she goes from here? Further mining of a seam of old classics? I’d prefer that to her turning into another average singer songwriter or perish the thought, leading a dreary electric pick-up band.

One electric band I do love are Glaswegian trash post-punks, Dragged Up. They were kind enough to send me their new single, Missing Person. It’s another superb, slouching slice of screeching ennui and attitude. Even better is the remixed B-side, Machine Person, which reminds me so much of Y Records era Slits, such as Animal Space or Man Next Door with proper Prag Vec deadpan vocals.  A truly brilliant release and I’m desperate to see this band in the flesh. Apparently a new album is ready for release, which fills my heart with joy. If Dragged Up are the sound of the 70s turning into the 80s, then Peony are the soundtrack of a decade previous. Their first CD release, Live at TQ Live, was recorded in The Globe on a chilly Friday night last August and it is a marvellous document of a debut live performance that sounded like Cream meets Amon Duul II meets the Pink Fairies. This is hard and heavy music, but with zero pretension or histrionics. I’m agog for their next moves. These two bands are the only ones I’ve invested in who have released stuff in 2024 and I’m hungry for more.

Neil Young released his 45^th album last December. Shelley bought me Before & After for Valentine’s Day and I’m extremely grateful to her. It’s acoustic revisits to 13 items from his back catalogue; as you’d imagine, the likes of Heart of Gold or Helpless don’t get a look in and, though the choices aren’t always the road less travelled, the versions are. Solo readings of Buffalo Springfield classics Burned and Mr Soul are fascinating asides, though the two absolute standout tracks are Comes a Time, which is the nearest you get to a crowd pleaser on here and, denuded of any Pearl Jam influences, I’m the Ocean. This is a wonderful album, if you can stop from gagging during the saccharine Mother Earth, and so laidback I thought I’d started toking again. All in all, it’s amazing a bloke a kick in the arse from his 80^th birthday can still work so hard and produce valid, vital music like this.

I was delighted that Bandcamp provided a full release for The Mekons’s 2016 album, Existentialism. Despite not coming with the booklet that accompanied the original limited release, this is an absolutely stunning set and almost certainly their most eclectic since the criminally ignored F.U.N. 90. This is proper Mekons as well; everyone of them contributes wonderfully to the workload, with Jon Boy, Tom and Sally on top form. I’ve got the download first, which waiting for the CD and my laptop tells me this is the most played album I’ve got in a digital form, which tells me exactly how important Existentialism is to me. Really looking forward to seeing Jon and his band at The Central on May 18^th.

Along with the latest issue of TQ, I was delighted to be one of the lucky recipients of Any Love is Good Love. This is a compilation CD, raising money for teenage LGBT+ projects in Manchester, which was curated by Emma Reed, aka Pettaluck, and it contains some gems on there such as Sailors by Das Wanderlust. In fact, it’s a great listen from start to finish, providing you skip the Lovely Eggs contribution. 

Books:

Thus far in 2024, I’ve read 18 books, though I don’t propose to discuss 12 of them in this blog. The relevant titles to be ignored are: Let It Bleed, Black & Blue, Knots & Crosses, The Hanging Garden, Westwind, The Complaints, A Cool Head, Tooth & Nail, Standing in Another Man’s Grave Rebus’s Scotland,, The Flood and Watchman. All of them are by Ian Rankin, with 6 of them being constituent parts of the Inspector John Rebus series and the remainder an array of different works of fiction. Once I’ve worked my way through the remaining 14 Rebus novels and 9 miscellaneous books by Rankin, I intend to write a blog dedicated entirely to Rankin’s oeuvre, but not just yet.

This leaves 6 other books for me to discuss: the first of which is John King’s London Country. Once I’ve ticked Rankin off the list, and worked my way through new titles promised in 2024 by Roddy Doyle, Paul Hanley, Michael Houllebecq, David Peace and Irvine Welsh, I intend to complete my reading of John King’s collected works as, having religiously made my way through the first 6 of his novels, I somehow missed out on Slaughterhouse Prayer, The Liberal Politics of Adolf Hitler and The Prison House; a gap I am keen to plug. London Country seems to tie up the loose strands and characters from both Human Punk and Skinheads. Set in Slough, though a long way from the admin department of Wernham Hogg, it takes us through a demi monde populated by numerous radical, independent thinking punks, elderly soul boys and semi-retired ravers, whose adherence to their own code of morals and ethics, vehemently opposed to the accepted ideologies of left and right, means they really don’t give a fuck. In the past, some of King’s work has strayed perilously close to the kind of suspect thinking shown by the likes of the Football Lads Alliance but, though there is clear joy at Brexit coming to pass, it is from a Lexit, proletarian standpoint that eschews any suggestions of racism, crude nationalism or xenophobia. You like these blokes; they might be a bit keen to use their fists to get their point across, but we’ve come a long way from The Football Factory’s mantra of punch first and ask questions later. I enjoyed London Country a great deal and remain deeply grateful to John for publishing my work in his Verbal magazine.

I’ve previously blogged about the madcap world of the novels of Magnus Mills, and his 2023 self-published instalment, The Cure for Disgruntlement, is another fine slice of his surreal Weltanschauung. This is the story of a boatload of immigrants who arrive at an unnamed English seaside resort after a perilous journey by boat. They are met with rudeness, hostility and aggression, which it seems is caused by the miserable mindset of the indigenous population who are, by turns, lazy, cunning, exploitative and stupid. The narrator and his pals soon find work on the margins of society, making a huge killing, before settling in to do the kind of ordinary humdrum jobs the locals are either too lazy or lacking the skills to do. Unsurprisingly, this involves running the benefits system, which the locals ruthlessly exploit, and the incomers refuse to adhere to. Funny and deeply depressing; I love Magnus Mills.

I have to say I’m a little frightened of former Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon, on the basis of a single unpleasant encounter with her, when I conducted a telephone interview with a tetchy Ms Gordon about her Riot Grrrl project, Free Kitten, that she’d formed with ex-Pussy Galore guitarist Julia Cafritz. I thought at the time, and still do now, that the Free Kitten project, especially the debut album Nice Ass, was an ill-disciplined, self-indulgent mess. I wasn’t the only one to express that opinion, which Gordon was all too aware of. Presumably this is why she slammed down the phone on me after half an hour of small talk that studiously avoided reference to her new project, when I asked when Sonic Youth would be getting back together. Thankfully this incident doesn’t get a mention in Gordon’s excellent 2015 autobiography, Girl in a Band, though in its pages, she still bristles at the reception Free Kitten got. Good job I didn’t make mention of her Harry Crews outfit who released a steaming 12” pile of ordure in 1989.

Some important facts to consider: Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore married in 1984, had a daughter Coco in 1994 and precipitated Sonic Youth’s public disintegration in 2011 when their marriage ended in highly acrimonious circumstances after Moore left Gordon for Eva Prinz, who he is now married to. Last year, Moore published his autobiography, Sonic Life, which is a very different beast to the one his ex-wife released 8 years previously, both in terms of content, approach, and attitude. In some ways, you’d think the two books are talking about a completely different set of experiences, rather than a shared, if disputed, narrative.

It was always a nagging regret of mine that I’d not read Gordon’s book, which had been released to universal critical acclaim. That regret became an unquenchable thirst once I’d got about halfway through Moore’s tome. Her book is 273 pages long, concentrating on her childhood for about the opening quarter of the book, but focussing mainly on her and Moore’s partnership, both from a personal and a musical perspective, with considerable emphasis on their daughter and her impact on their life. I know the cliché that time is a great healer, but back in 2015 both Kim Gordon and her daughter were absolutely decimated by Moore’s desertion of the two of them. Girl in a Band features an unflinchingly honest account of the sudden disintegration of a previously happy, if not perhaps idyllic family circle, and how badly it affected both mother and daughter. In contrast, Sonic Life is 480 pages long, spends the first couple of hundred pages cataloguing all the records Moore loved in his early teenage years, then the gigs he and his best friend Harold drove to in New York City from their home in suburban Connecticut, before he found a place to live in the Big Apple and formed Sonic Youth. From that point, we get an exhaustive, though completely fascinating, account of every album and tour the band embarked upon. In only the last chapter, barely a dozen pages in length, does Moore give his guilt-free account of how he turned his life round 180 degrees, in a matter-of-fact way that is astonishing for its lack of both emotion and insight. Frankly, I simply can’t understand how such selfish, narcissistic actions can be validated by Sonic Life being awarded the accolade of Rough Trade’s Music Book of the Year for 2023.

I’m glad I read both books and I certainly won’t allow the revelations, or otherwise, gleaned from either publication to influence my attitude to Sonic Youth’s extensive back catalogue, though I’m certainly more interested in investigating Gordon’s soon come album, The Collective, than anything Moore may release in the future.

Once we get into March, my thoughts will turn to indoor nets before the start of the 2024 cricket season, which will probably be my last as I turn 60 in August. Indeed, I’m holding my 60^th birthday party at Tynemouth Cricket Club on Saturday 10^th August. Everyone is welcome, apart from supporters of Heaton Stannington FC, who will not be admitted. In a couple of weeks, I’ll publish the playlist for the night; one song from every year, 1964 to 2024 inclusive. Not all of them are by Teenage Fanclub either. Anyway, back to cricket and another book I must read is Beyond a Boundary by CLR James, who posed the famous question; “What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?" The contention of Duncan Stone, author of the impressive Different Class, is that James failed in his writing to effect any kind of change to the domestic, recreational game of cricket in England. Stone himself is a recreational cricketer, from the Workers Republic of Surrey, who may also refer to himself as a Marxist. His brilliantly argued thesis is that recreational cricket in England was hampered in the south by the refusal of many cricket clubs, run along the lines of the sort of golf club Jerry Leadbetter from The Good Life would feel at home in, to play anything other than friendlies until 1968. Consequently, the institutional bias south of The Wash is both class-based and racist. While Stone does not explicitly state this, I’d imagine the LGBT+ community have been made less than welcome in the leafy lanes of Home Counties South. Before the Northern fraternity can start looking smug, the racism scandal that continues to bedevil Yorkshire cricket is a clear sign of the distance still to be covered before the greatest game can be regarded as fully inclusive. With the ECB still in control of cricket at all levels, it may be a cold day in hell before that happens.

Also, on the subject of cricket, my dear pal Harry Pearson, passed on a couple of issues of The Nightwatchman, Wisden’s quarterly journal of long form cricket writing and bloody great they are too, especially Scott Oliver’s exhaustive account of sundry Minor Counties putting one over the big boys in the Gillette Cup and B&H Trophy back in the day. Once I’m retired, I can see myself collecting and devouring the first 42 issues of this fine publication.

Goodness, I hope I don’t go blind. Or deaf.

 

Working Your Notice

Newcastle United 2024; the first of an occasional series...

Sunday 11^th February 2024. I am exactly 59 and a half years old. As per the regulations, I email my pension provider, giving them six months’ notice that I intend to retire on my 60^th birthday, so they can do the necessary calculations and split my bit into a lumper and a modest monthly. This is presumably done to stop me squandering the coin intended to keep me solvent in my declining years on trips to Scottish lower league grounds, Cornelius Cardew CDs and Harry Crews first editions.

Rewind to Thursday 1^st February 2024. After an uncomfortable month on Tyneside, the Premier League transfer window draws to a close without any of the rumoured departures, supposedly necessitated by a requirement to comply with the Financial Fair Play rules that are set to relegate Everton and Forest (though not Man City; heaven forfend), of Miguel Almiron, Bruno Guimares, Alexander Isak, Joelinton or Callum Wilson from the already stretched, shattered and underperforming Newcastle United squad coming to pass. Pausing only to consider in passing the asinine mindset of innumerable Newcastle United fans who appear to regard the Profit and Sustainability Regulations, as we must now learn to call the FFP rules, as inherently “biased” as they seem set to prevent NUFC from buying their way to success in the way Chelsea and City have done so in the past, it should be noted that probably the best way to ensure the Magpies never win anything seems to be keeping Eddie Howe in situ for the foreseeable.

I think it more than coincidental that the only incoming signing round Gallowgate way in January was a former Man City academy graduate midfielder, by the name of Alfie Harrison, for less than peanuts. I know nothing of him and, rather like the mythical trio of Harrison Ashby, Garang Kuol and Yankuba Minteh, I don’t imagine that will change any time soon. In terms of players we were linked with, it was much ado about nothing at the end of the day. The Ruben Neves rumours were nothing other than press-inspired waffle; a whole lot of hot air that linked our Saudi overlords with a player currently playing his trade in their country, with considerably more professionalism than Jordan Henderson; a man who, in his vile and unseemly scramble to feather his own nest at Ajax, revealed himself to be as much of a supporter of the LGBTQ+ community as Graham Linehan. Meanwhile, as Kalvin Phillips continues his one man mission to get David Moyes his P45, it becomes ever more apparent that the reluctance of the House of Saud PIF to open the purse strings in that instance may just have been an astute decision, though I believe this to have been made for different reasons than parsimony, despite the fact that the Tonali ban has really come back to bite us up the arse. Our 2023 marquee signing’s absence, as well as that of Joe Willock and Joelinton, has left us desperately shorthanded in midfield, resulting in Lewis Miley doing the sort of backbreaking double shifts we’ve not seen bairns forced into since the 1842 Mines Act stopped kids grafting underground.

In the same way I’m mentally preparing myself for clearing my desk in the next few months, I can’t imagine Eddie Howe has any illusions that he’ll be the boss on Barrack Road much after the end of this season. Sad to say, but the main reason our owners haven’t given him any money to spend is that they simply don’t trust him to use it, or any resources he is presented with, in a wise or effective fashion. As the feeble cries of “look where we were two years ago” begin to die out, January and the first half of February have proved to be another baffling period in an already contradictory season, marked by tremendous highs and dreadful lows, where predicting what happens next has become an almost impossible task. The only thing we can take for certain is that Howe is allergic to both team rotation and tactical substitutions.

The statistics show that in 2024, our league record is: played 5, won 2, drawn 1, lost 2, goals scored 12, goals conceded 14. Despite two comfortable away wins in the FA Cup, these are not the kind of figures you’d expect from any team with any pretensions of European football. Many scapegoats have been identified by NUFC’s seething fanbase as being somehow to blame for the fact we’re not running away with the title. Firstly, Dubravka. Now he may no longer be the keeper we were once thrilled by when he made his rock solid debut at home to Man United, but he’s no Karl Darlow or Matz Sels. Admittedly that dart off his line for Forest’s opener may have been a rash decision, but he was superb at Anfield when conceding 4. That game seems an aeon ago, when we brought in the New Year by having a farcical penalty awarded against us. We didn’t deserve anything from the game as a whole, certainly not being punished for non-existent fouls. If there was no rub of the green that night, there was even less when Man City came to town. I only saw the highlights of this one, having been on a Scottish jaunt to Kelty Hearts 1 Annan Athletic 1, but again there was that awful feeling of despair at the concession of a late winner. This is one area where Howe and his coaching staff badly need to tighten up. Far too often the latter stages of games have seen us look out on our feet, ridiculously open and prone to errors caused by exhaustion rather than concentration lapses. We need to get the basic psychology of closing a game out instilled properly, otherwise we’ll be forced to accept the tag of gallant losers forevermore.

This is, sadly, where Howe has to take responsibility for hanging Dan Burn out to dry, though the fans who’ve turned on him in the ground should be ashamed of themselves. Crying on social media may be a way for them to work off their anxieties, but they need to keep it buttoned in sight of the pitch. As regards BDB, I love the lad, who is undoubtedly the greatest Northern Alliance player you’ll never see, but Tino Livramento can do his job with more pace and zero fuss. Hell, we could even see Dummett, Krafth or Ritchie doing their bit at the back when times are really tight. At this point I’m going to take the fifth when discussing Lewis Hall as I don’t have a clue what is going on with the kid, but I doubt he’d have suffered the kind of torture Burn endured at Villa when Leon Bailey came on. However, and let’s be clear about this, we were bloody sparkling for the opening 75 minutes of that game, but the warning signs about Burn’s lack of confidence were not learned after that night, which is a negative mark against Howe, as Luton repeatedly exposed his limitations, in that crazy game the Saturday after. Now you’d have to say, conceding 4 at home to the favourites for relegation should ordinarily be a reason for howls of derision among the support, but nobody in town that night (I’d been to Newcastle University 2 Billingham Synthonia 2 at Prudhoe Town) was complaining too much, as the game was an entertaining one, which perhaps gives me hope for the future.

The Forest victory was an important one; not only was it our second away win in a row, but it was also a thoroughly absorbing contest. Bearing in mind that we’ve got to the last 16 of the FA Cup after two comprehensive away wins and have a game we should win away to a lower mid-table Championship side in the shape of Blackburn Rovers, why don’t we all stop stressing about getting European football from our league position and just enjoy ourselves? There are 14 league games left. The Champions League has gone, which is a pity, but not the end of the world. If we repeat the pattern of the first encounters in this last trimester, we’ll accrue 26 more points, which would have us finishing the season on 62. Last year, that would have seen us in 6^th spot and qualifying for the Europa Conference League. I don’t know what that is, but it sounds alright doesn’t it?

Let’s cheer every win and brush off every defeat. The time for rebuilding and doing something about the physiotherapy arm of the club that seems to strike down half the squad with niggling muscular injuries week in, week out, is the summer. Postpone all inquests, savage recriminations and the search for reliable strikers with a decent fitness record until then. Who knows, with a favourable headwind, we might just fluke a win in the FA Cup that could save Nice Guy Eddie’s job. Mind, a good chasing at Ewood Park and the chances of him still being in post at Easter are slender to anorexic.