End Notes

 Another year comes to an end and with it, my personal lists of favourites. Record music was available all year long, but live stuff only came back to life in August. These lists are of recorded music I purchased this year and live performances I witnessed. The enormous volume of free CDs and downloads from the saintly TQ magazine haven’t been included, as I hope to return to a discussion of them at a later date.

2021 Albums:

1        Mogwai – As the Love Continues

2    Godspeed You! Black Emperor – God’s Pee at State’s End

3= Alex Rex – Paradise

3= Alex Rex – Memory, Speak

3= Wyndow – Wyndow

6   Teenage Fanclub – Endless Arcade

7   Arab Strap – As Days Get Dark

8   The Wedding Present – Locked Down & Stripped Back

1974-2020 Albums:

1    Green Ribbons – Green Ribbons (2020)

2        Mo Tucker – Playin’ Possum (1983)

3        Victor Herrero – Hermana (2018)

4        Mogwai - Zero Zero Zero (2019)

5        10CC – Sheet Music (1974)

Singles etc:

1 Hamilton Bohannon – Disco Stomp (1974)

2 Suicide – Cheree (1977)

3 Teenage Fanclub – Home (2021)

4 Wigan’s Chosen Few – Footsee (1975)

6        Eric Bell Band – Lonely Man (1980)

Live performances:

1.      Alex Rex – The Cumberland (October)

2.      Green Ribbons – The Cumberland (November)

3.      Band of Holy Joy – 3 Tanners Bank (August)

4.      Arab Strap – Boiler Shop (September)

5.      The Burning Hell – The Cumberland (November)

6.      Parastatic – Bobik’s (August)

7.      Emergency Librarian- Cobalt Studios (October)

However, it must be acknowledged that there are a few entries above that haven’t been discussed in previous 2021 cultural blogs which I’ll deal with now.

Books:

There are only two texts to mention here. Firstly, the astonishing anthology of the first five years of Falkirk’s fabulous Razur Cuts fanzine. Entitled Finest Cuts, it contains 300 pages of top quality outsider short fiction and poetry, only partially ruined by the inclusion of my piece Normally, which originally featured in issue #9. Next week’s blog will be an account of my most recent Scotch adventures.

I was pleased to be involved in the crowd-funding of Life’s A Ball, a lavishly laid out photobook by Zak Waters, with text by Ivor Baddiel and Mike Amos, concentrating on dozens of photos of lower league grounds in the early to mid-1990s, with many shots of glorious old Northern League clubs at the Easter groundhops of 1995 and 1996. No words needed; just check out the atmospheric images.

Music:

My mate Sam Whyte lost her dad earlier this year and has been disposing of his record collection in a piecemeal fashion. I’d already snaffled Footsee by Wigan’s Chosen Few when I spotted Hamilton Bohannon’s stellar Disco Stomp on her Discogs page.  One of the most downright dirty ass grooves of the whole decade, Disco Stomp is the go to bass and drum heavy funk workouts that Bootsy, Sly and JB weren’t involved in. There are more pheromones on this track than in a Spanish fly bottling plant. Adorable. I also bought 10CC’s Sheet Music, but sadly apart from the seminal Wall Street Shuffle, it’s a load of smug proto yacht rock.

North Shields Fish Quay has long been the go to destination of choice for discerning Coastal sorts. To expand its reach and appeal, 3 Tanners Bank and The Engine Room came together to host a record fair on Sunday December 5^th.  What a combination; rare vinyl, craft ales and fantastic visiting street food. It was enough to persuade me to las out on a super rare copy of Mo Tucker’s debut solo album, Playin’ Possum.  Recorded years before she became a bizarre mouthpiece for Pizzagate and Q-Anon conspiracy theorists, it isn’t lo-fi in the style of her excellent 1989 Life in Exile after Wartime album; this is no fi. Amateurism turned up to 9, at which point the dial fell off. Mo plays all instruments and clatters brilliantly through cuts by Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and Lou Reed among others. A tremendous, noisy treat.

 And finally, released in a limited run of 50 cassettes, Memory Speak is a live album by the full Alex Rex band recorded in summer 2019 at Cleeve House in Wiltshire. As Alex’s preoccupation moved from Vermillion to Otterburn, we get a set stuffed full of the finest Dylanophilic, Bobcatian superior folk rock outside of The Basement Tapes. From the opener Every Wall is a Wailing Wall to the closing Pass the Mask, it’s a performance of the highest quality. The absolute highlights are obviously the enduring macabre cynicism of I am Happy and simply unparalleled genius of Night Visiting Song. As ever, the emotion on listening to a new Alex Rex release is utter bafflement that this man is not selling out Wembley Stadium.

 

TQ 50

 The superb outsider / underground / no audience music magazine TQ has just published its 50th edition. It's brilliant & I am honoured to be included. Here's an interview I've done with them. After you've read it, head to http://tqzine.blogspot.com/ to find out more -:

What was the motivation for the magazine?  And why the name glove?

In short, my enduring adoration of marginal and outsider art, combined with a desire to provide an outlet for writerly voices that wouldn’t ordinarily be heard, provided the impetus. However, the devil remains in the detail and I’d best tell you a little bit about myself, to put everything in context and explain how I arrived at this point, as I turn 57.

Without question, my cultural life changed on December 24^th 1976 when I heard John Peel play two particular songs on his Christmas Eve programme; Richard Hell’s (I Belong to the) Blank Generation and Roy Harper’s When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease. I do realise Peel also gave Anarchy in the UK its first spin on radio during the same programme, but I’ve never been a fan of glam rock, so we’ll move on. Instead, that night I fell in love with music that seeks not commercial success, but artistic integrity and I remain happily besotted, by all genres of slightly off-kilter eccentricity, though not by whimsy or punishing extremes. Yes, I like commercial music, such as British Sea Power or Teenage Fanclub, but even there I detect a dedication to art and an uncompromising seam of creativity. As I get older, I find that increasingly I like my gigs to be intimate, my pubs to be cosy and my sporting adventures (both cricket and football) to be at a grassroots level and part of a defined community.

One irony is that while there are plenty of outlets for cheerful obscurity in terms of bands, pints and team games, it is the authored, tangible printed word, as opposed to the plethora of personally created blogs and peer compiled on-line journals, that struggles to find an outlet in this country. For the creative amateur and artistic outsider, hammering away at keyboards in a literary vacuum, far from the rarefied climes of agents, editors and publishing houses, including even the likes of Rough Trade Books, where is the printed showcase for their endeavours? We, as a species, need the continual replenishment of the pool of written endeavour. Don’t get me wrong, as someone who lectured in English Language, Literature and Creative Writing to adult learners for 30 years, I have an intimate knowledge of the canonical greats of English Literature. Most of them I love, but they are respected mainly for their iconic status than any sense of enduring relevance. Even recent (post WW2 in academic terms) fiction is starting to ossify. As someone who studied the American Novel at postgrad level, I recognise that Kerouac, Burroughs, Miller, Vonnegut, Bukowski and a thousand other brilliant, semi-outsider writers aren’t saying much new these days as their work starts to be categorised as being of a particular time and cultural subset. Obviously, it is a million to one chance that I’ll have a contributor whose work will be discussed amid such storied circles one day, but that isn’t really the point of glove; I’m more concerned with samizdat and zeitgeist. That said, P. J. Smith from Liverpool first had something published by me and he has just had his first collection of stories published, by Rough Trade, ironically enough.

Having spent three decades encouraging young and not so young learners to express their thoughts in the best word order possible, I became aware that those of my creative writing students who were developing an individual voice had few options when it came to getting their stuff in print.  Personally, I’ve written for an enormous range of publications about music, football, politics and cricket since the late 70s, so I was aware of the scarcity of literary zines, as opposed to scholarly poetry magazines (which absolutely have the right to exist and cater for a specific audience). Basically all we have these days is: the brilliant Razur Cuts from Falkirk, in London, the novelist John King edits Verbal and Sean Preston from Ninjatune compiles Open Pen, while Jim Gibson in Nottingham, runs Low Life Press and a round of applause must go to the Farnborough Fante, Joe England, who created the ground breaking Push. His encouragement and support for my writing ended a decade-long hiatus from about 2002 when I didn’t write anything literary at all. In Newcastle, it’s a long time since Basil Bunting, Allen Ginsberg and Gordon Burn performed at Morden Tower (the first place I ever saw Whitehouse incidentally) and there was nothing up here, not that I had any interest in narrowing creative parameters by being a regional magazine. I just wanted to provide a vehicle for outsider writers, both thematically and culturally, to get their stuff read.

Hence, after I stopped doing a Newcastle United fanzine The Popular Side in 2017, I wanted to stretch myself administratively and creatively and so I introduced glove to the world. I did the whole thing entirely by myself, as I had an uncompromising vision of an A5 photocopied magazine, of about 40 or so pages, with no adverts or editorial. I found a printer who did a run of 150 for a quid a copy. Postage in the UK is about another quid, so with envelopes on top, selling it for £2 a copy including P&P means I lose 15p a pop, not to mention costing me about £60 for contributor copies, but so what? The enjoyment I get from it makes up for being a few quid in the hole twice a year. The contributors are listed on the inside cover, with only brief social media contact details instead of thumbnail biogs, partly to save on space, but mainly because I wanted the words to speak for themselves. Being candid, I also worked solo on glove as I’m a frankly cantankerous old sod who can start an argument in an empty room.

The name glove came from an art project I undertook from 2015 onwards, whereby I collected every lost or stray glove I saw on the street, or on a bus, or tied to park railings. I never went out without a spare carrier bag to transport them home, where they’d go through the wash, be scented by Comfort or Lenor and then, after a gentle spell in the tumble drier, they’d stop being hand warmers and become vital parts of an organic piece of art. I placed all the coloured gloves in one transparent Perspex cube, calling that piece glove box, and all the black ones in another Perspex cube, calling the other piece black box. They were exhibited at Sotheby’s London in Summer 2019, though both remain unsold. The front and back covers of every issue has been one of my discoveries in the wild, as it were. Incidentally, I no longer collect gloves.

How has the zine evolved and do you have plans for the future?

From the very outset, I was adamant that I wouldn’t have a website. I am not a designer. I am a writer. If I tried to build a specific on-line presence, it would look shit, because that isn’t my skill set. It’s the same with TQ I would imagine; our readerships are happy to consume a physical document, but would baulk at the idea of scrolling through a PDF on a smart phone, as it would be headache inducing. In that sense, the magazine has remained true to its roots.  Being judgementally subjective, I feel issue 7# from January 2021 was the best one yet, because of the strength of contributions. Sadly #8 is, for me, the worst. This is partly because of issues with the layout, as the printer transposed the two halves of the booklet; what should have been pages 3-18 are now 19-36, and vice versa, which has spoiled it for me. I still paid the printer as he needs to eat and apologised to all my contributors whose work has been mangled but, in all conscience, I couldn’t charge anyone for it. If anyone reading this wants a copy, send me an email or a message to @GloveLitZine and remember to include a postal address.

As regards plans for the future, it is all in the hands of the current and future contributors. If they send stuff in that I like, or even dislike if I sense it is good quality writing, there will be further issues. All contributions are welcome; simply send your stuff by email (Word document attachment preferably) to iancusack@blueyonder.co.uk

On a personal level, I would love to do a 3-track CD single of certain bits of my writing, with an unmusical backing. I’ve got some bass riffs I’d like to record as unchanging, repetitive loops, over which I’d intone my words. Some really clattering Mick Harvey Birthday Party style drumming, Laura Logic atonal wailing sax and discordant, feedback and fuzz guitars would be nice as well. All recorded independently of course. Anybody interested in collaborating? Get in touch. I’d also like to do live spoken word stuff, but I’ve never been asked. Also, I suppose I should write a novel at some point.

You have a strong roster of contributors. How have you built that up?

Rewind 10 years. Joe England had just produced the debut issue of PUSH.  I was alerted to its existence by my mate from University, Raymond Gorman, who was the guitarist in That Petrol Emotion incidentally, as he had a couple of poems included. I bought a copy and came across a whole galaxy of underground literary stars I’d never even heard of. I submitted a few poems, more in hope than expectation, then began to tentatively rediscover a love and a compulsion for writing short fiction, inspired by what and who I was reading.

Without doubt, the greatest contemporary, underground talent is Michael Keenaghan, a north London Irish James Ellroy. Read anything and everything you can by him. He is a genius. Other fantastic talents came to my attention; TJ Corless, Fee Johnstone, Ford Dagenham, Holly Watson, Dickson Telfer and about a hundred others. We used and still use social media, mainly Twitter in my case, to publicise each other’s work and to support other talented writers or new publications. As time has gone on, this has started to include many writers from abroad, so it’s a global grouping of not for profit prose specialists and poets. Through Twitter and email, we correspond and swap ideas. From this growing, nebulous community, new voices emerge and older ones are regenerated. By no means is it a closed shop, as nothing makes my heart sing more than a quality contribution from someone whose name is new to me. Even better, some of them have just started to write and are searching for their own style of expression.

I suppose the whole process is one of serendipity; I don’t know who is going to send stuff in. I’ve often tried to put it out there that I’d like to a female only edition, or a Scottish one, but it doesn’t happen like that. Contributions are the great unknown. I’ve directly asked people to submit, but with limited success; writers need to be loved, but many recoil from pressure. Therefore, the words I’m sent always guide me, not the author or even the form. If something has that vital spark of creative genius, I need to publish it. Sadly, I’ve not had many lengthy stories (we’re talking 5k words plus) submitted, but I wouldn’t rule them out, even if the length is prohibitive to other magazines. I try to lay glove out so it consists of a prose piece is followed by poetry and so on. I do occasionally include several pieces of flash fiction or poems by the same writer, but that approach is not applicable for those who submit substantial pieces. Of course, these guidelines are not unbreakable.

One way in which I’ve been very lucky is that I’ve not had to reject pieces from people who actually get what glove is about. Stuff that goes in the deleted items folder tends to be from the equivalent of poetic Twitter bots, who send in screeds of banal tripe about God or their grandkids, all in rhyming couplets, to about 30 publications at the same time. All I say in reply is, sorry but this doesn’t fit with our ethos. They don’t tend to get arsey or even reply, because they won’t have read glove or probably any of our writers elsewhere. I have to admit that people who submit and haven’t seen a previous copy do get on my nerves. It just seems arrogant to assume your work will fit in, without bothering to check what has gone before. Same goes for those I publish who accept a contributor copy but throw up their hands in horror if you ask them to buy an extra copy to help support the magazine.

 Without going into detail, some of the subject matter covered in glove could be seen as fairly controversial and some readers (not me) could be offended. As editor, is there a line you will not cross?

Brilliant question, and one I could throw straight back to you. Who do you find more offensive: Sutcliffe Jugend or Coldplay? Undoubtedly the latter for me. Similarly, Barbara Cartland’s world view disgusts me in a way that Cormac McCarthy doesn’t; and if you’ve read his A Child of God, you’ll know he writes about taboo subjects in quite an unadorned, visceral style.

Needless to say, I won’t countenance anything racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic or otherwise hateful. Taking that stance as a given, then if you don’t count rejecting pieces I find banal as censorship, then I have never knocked anything back on the basis I found it too extreme. In fact, I’ve only really worried about two stories I’ve published; in issue #5 Derek Steel contributed a piece about a domestic murder / suicide that troubled me, until I talked to him about it and he explained the point of the piece. This is the crux of the censorship debate in my eyes. As his motivation was entirely honourable and artistically impeccable, I had no reason to think that the writing could be interpreted as in any way immoral, whatever than means, or gratuitous. In the current edition, Michael Keenaghan’s Ring describes the activities of a fictional paedophile gang of rich and powerful London politicians, ending with the central character’s execution. The worry I have is that some people, mendaciously seeking a reason to affect outrage, are too stupid to read to the end of Michael’s piece and will abandon the story halfway through, completely missing the moral purpose revealed in the denouement.

This leads me to say that I would happily publish pieces that include graphic violence, explicit sex and other subjects some people may be offended by, though with a proviso. I would need to be 100% certain that the motivation of the writer in straying into such territory was justified at an artistic level and was not for the purposes of self-gratification, as I’m not a pornographer and have no interest in what arouses other people, or worst of all, gratuitous and exploitative. Playing to the gallery for likes or financial reward by engaging with the lowest common denominators in terms of style, plot or characterisation, is truly a sin in my eyes. Similarly, anyone who sets out to write a smash hit or a best seller is truly an enemy of art and creativity. I’d like to think I’m a defender of them both.

 

Unacceptable Conduct

 Indoors. Outdoors. Gosforth, UAE, Australia. Yorkshire. Especially Yorkshire. There are many things to be said about Cricket in the current era.

Northumberland CCC Indoor 6-A-Side Competition:

Perhaps the main benefit of having two hemispheres on Earth, is that cricket can be played all year round. While we digest the T20 World Cup and ponder exactly England conceded the first Ashes test before a ball was bowled, there have recently been T20 internationals and test matches between India and New Zealand, Bangladesh and Pakistan and the West Indies versus Sri Lanka to enjoy. Sadly, COVID fears put paid to South Africa v the Netherlands in the 50 over format, which could have been the first instance of Dutch being the lingua franca for a List A game of cricket. Also, the Abu Dhabi T10 tournament provided a safe haven for Chris Jordan to hide out after that over against New Zealand. Sadly, climactic conditions north of the equator preclude outdoor cricket, though the local indoor version continues to thrive. I speak from experience, having comprised 50% of the crowd for Tynemouth’s glorious return to the indoor game in the Northumberland CCC semi-final of the National Indoor 6-A-Side competition at South North, where we were pitted against Cowgate and Stocksfield on October 31^st.

Back in March 2020, when the world was young and the Government hadn’t quite got the handle it has now on the COVID pandemic (I’m joking of course), I journeyed to Horwich Sports’ Centre, across a romantically deserted car park from what was formerly known as the Reebok Arena, the home of Bolton Wanderers, to see Tynemouth fall to defeat for the third successive year in the Northern Area Finals of the ECB National Indoor 6-A-Side Cup. This was the week before lockdown, and it proved to be the last organised game of its type for over 18 months as the competition has gone into abeyance. Now, it is back and TCC are giving the tournament another shot. Of course, the results of Martin Pollard’s medical issues preclude our very own Mike Brearley of the indoor game from taking part; instead he is the tactical Svengali passing on sage words of advice to new captain Andrew Smith, the man once described as “the MVP of the indoor game” by the legendary Eddie Collins. The umpire, not the former lead singer of Orange Juice, in case you were wondering.

Captain Smith had assembled a team comprising: himself (obviously), Owen Gourley, David Mansfield, Joe Snowdon and the McGee brothers, Ben and Dan. Here are the young men, as Ian Curtis once said. First game in the triangular tournament was Cowgate easing past Stocksfield, who we then played. Batting first, Mansfield and McGee senior excelled, allowing us to compile a par for the course 123/4. Good tight bowling meant the result was never in doubt as Stocksfield were restricted to 97/5, enabling them to head back to the Tyne Valley before the deciding game had even started. Cowgate won the toss, put us in and we struggled to score, with only Dan McGee, contributing a scarcely believable unbeaten 40, making a significant contribution as we crawled to a disappointing 94/5 from our 12 overs. All credit to the lads though; they bowled immaculately as Cowgate subsided to 64 all out, meaning we’d booked a slot in the Northumberland final on December 12^th, where we’d need to play much better to get through that contest.

They didn’t in the first game against Tynedale in the finals, losing by 32 runs after being dismissed for 84. At that point qualification looked impossible, so I headed off to the pub as I was off on the Monday. Surprisingly I made an error, as South North beat Tynedale and Tynemouth then beat South North. Sadly, after the slide rules and log tables were consulted, Tynedale went through on net run rate and Tynemouth finished runners-up. Unlucky lads.

T20 World Cup:

Like so many sporting competitions in this world, the 2020 T20 Cricket World Cup took place in 2021. I’m not even sure where. I think it was originally supposed to happen in Australia, and then it got switched to India, but ended up taking place in the UAE and Oman because of COVID. Probably. Anyway, it was definitely the seventh occurrence of this tournament and, with the top 8 ICC ranked countries qualifying by right, or more properly the top 7 countries and India as hosts (yeah, I know…), there had to be a kind of preparatory repechage to ensure Bangladesh and Sri Lanka got through to the Super 12s, to avoid making a show of the concept of test playing nations. It was at this early stage we saw a bit of giant killing; Namibia beat Ireland to send the boys in green home in disgrace. Still, now Ireland are a test playing nation they can get on with the real business of conducting a “no holds barred inquiry” that doesn’t come up with any tangible insights into their failure, like a proper cricketing nation with proper cricketing administrators. The other qualification group saw Bangladesh finish second after losing to Scotland who finished top with a 100% record. It was really quite touching to see blokes you know from the NEPL, like Mark Watt (ex-Tynemouth) and skipper Kyle Coetzer (Benwell Hill) on the world stage.

Sadly, Scotland had peaked too soon and lost all their subsequent group games, including against Namibia, who they would have expected to beat. Indeed, most of the super 12 games produced fairly predictable outcomes; as expected West Indies were too old and India too complacent, with South Africa, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Afghanistan just not good enough to make a significant impression. Post-tournament analysis of the competition has been largely negative, but I enjoyed it, even if the script became clear once we got to the semi-final stage; bat first and you win, because of climactic conditions as much as tactics and teamwork. In the qualifiers, Pakistan swatted aside all-comers and seemed to be the only team capable of halting England, despite the latter’s stumble against South Africa. England eviscerated the West Indies, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Australia in the group stages. Putting Australia to the sword was, in retrospect the worst thing England could have done, as the Aussies awoke from indifferent slumbers, got their act together and deservedly thumped both Pakistan in the semi and New Zealand, who beat England with all good wishes because of their superb sporting ethos, in the final.

For England, injuries to Archer, Roy, Mills and the continuing absence of Ben Stokes stacked up and they ran out of steam at the crucial point, which coincided with the arrival of Steve Algarve-Bruce as a spectator, interestingly enough. The question about whether it is time to move on and refresh the England squad is a moot one. With the next T20 World Cup taking place next year in Australia, it seems sensible to tinker slightly with the squad (surely Willey should have been in there ahead of Wood?), to give many, if not most, of them a last shot at glory. However, events off the pitch seem to have rendered any discussion of the art of playing the game irrelevant, in the light of the terrible institutional racism described by Azeem Rafiq and confirmed by Adil Rashid.

 

Racism and Yorkshire CCC:

At the highest level of the game in this country, it is utterly inconceivable that players or administrators could participate in or turn a deaf ear to racism in any of its despicable forms, but only if the game we’re talking about is football. Without question, football is the game of multi-ethnic, working class urban areas. Any city or large town you care to mention that’s within a significant conurbation, is an inclusive, tolerant sporting microcosm of what an ideal society would look like; different cultures, languages, nationalities, regardless of gender or sexuality, play the game from age 7 to 70 without race being an issue. Alright, so the seething hate-filled open sewer of Twitter gives voice to morons, but their numbers are minimal even if their effect is destructive. Football, it must be said, has learned from the past and is evolving rapidly following the child abuse scandals involving the likes of Barry Bennell and George Ormond.

Is cricket like this? Well, at club level in the north east, once you get beyond Asian pros in the NEPL, it seems that race divides. I don’t want to seem to embrace tokenism, but Tynemouth were in the happy position of playing Ricky Handa and Rashid Hassan for the whole of last season, unlike many other clubs in the NTCL and the North East Midweek League.  On August 12^th, the day after my birthday, we beat Ashington Rugby CC to win the NTCL Midweek League. In celebration of both events, I brought along a slab of Punk IPA and another of Strongbow Cloudy Apple to share among the lads. On the way to the checkout in Morrison’s, I saw a large bag of sausage rolls reduced, so took them along in lieu of a buffet. Ignorantly, I thought nothing of it until the end of the game when I doled out the goodies. What about poor Rashid? I’d brough alcohol and pork; two decidedly haram items, but nothing for him. The biting guilt of enabling exclusion still troubles me now.

There is, and I don’t know the historical reasons for it, a kind of segregation in recreational cricket around Tyneside and North Durham that means, for instance, Whitley Bay 1s are entirely Asian and Whitley Bay 2s are entirely white, while Blue Flames, Civil Service,  Clara Vale, Cowgate, GEMS, Kimblesworth, Newcastle City and several others are Asian clubs. As I say, I don’t know why this was the case; in the past, were Asian players excluded from white teams, or did they prefer to remain in their own community? I have no idea. Over in County Mayo, Ballaghderreen Cricket Club was formed by workers from a halal meat factory in the town, with the idea of playing games against anyone as the game was non-existent in the town. That’s a happy instance of organic growth, looking for community cohesion not separate development.

However, in the professional game, news of the scandal enveloping the ECB, Yorkshire and Essex has been met with shock and revulsion, but do I detect a lack of surprise at the revelations about the prevailing culture at Headingley and in Chelmsford?  While Yorkshire is the cradle of this filth, there can be little surprise that Essex, the home county of Thatcherite arrivistes and small-minded 4x4 driving Brexit bores, harbours a streak of prejudice central to its DNA like poison running through a stick of minty Clacton rock.  In 1992 during an episode of the current affairs discussion programme Devil’s Advocate, a fiery and voluble Darcus Howe questioned the complacent Trevor Bailey about the latter’s racist comments regarding the touring Pakistan side at the conclusion of the Oval test on Test Match Special. Bailey’s refusal to apologise as he felt he’d done nothing wrong is the kind of bigotry I thought had died out years ago, until I discovered this is the sort of thing Martyn Moxon could probably get on board with.

Meanwhile Yorkshire, for so long the sporting eugenicists of the County Championship, have never dismantled that humourless front, comprising stereotypical intolerance and a curmudgeonly rejection of anything foreign. Loudmouth Tory bullshitter Michael Vaughan has lost his BBC gig for the Ashes; good. His unconvincing denial of a nasty racist sneer at his clubmates in 2009 should, if proven, see him removed from the public eye. Matthew Hoggard should have known better, though his apology to Azim Raziq for the vile slurs he issued in ignorance, seems genuinely contrite. It still cost him a booking as keynote speaker at the NEPL dinner though. Fair play to them for this stance.

And now Yorkshire have engaged that most erudite of Talk Sport pundits, Darren Gough, the sort out the fetid miasma of the three Ridings; he’s more likely to be a useless idiot than a useful one. First thing up, he has to clamp down on the various miscreants. Gary Balance should serve a retrospective punishment for his hideous conduct, while his erstwhile flatmate and fellow opener Joe Root has some examining of his conscience to do. I’m not suggesting England ought to follow Australia in dispensing with their captain, but the Ashes series has considerably less significance than English domestic cricket getting its house in order.

 

Hyper Critical Hypocrite

 Newcastle United 1 Norwich City 1; I was there, surprisingly enough...

The last time I wrote about Newcastle United, I voiced the opinion that if the club were to have a realistic chance of staying up this season, then maximum points needed to be harvested from the trio of successive home games against: Brentford, Norwich and Burnley. As I write this, only the Burnley game remains and the other two games resulted in zero wins. Indeed, as the first date on the Advent Calendar is revealed, Newcastle United have not, as yet, recorded a win of any kind in the opening 14 league games, plus a limp League Cup loss on penalties to Burnley. Unsurprisingly, with a record of 7 draws and 7 losses and the unforgiving prospect of fixtures against Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Everton before the turn of the year, Newcastle United are languishing in last place in the Premier League, a mere 6 points from safety. How’s the takeover did you say?

It is a moot point whether the infuriating, unending series of individual blunders that have seen vast swathes of unnecessary goals conceded, or the alarming incompetence of the fawning lickspittles acting as the sanitised face of the theocratic Saudi despots who now own the club, is the more malign influence on the future direction of Newcastle United. Without a doubt, the former will get the club relegated, unless Nice Guy Eddie proves himself a miracle worker, while the latter will be liable to the kind of summary injustices meted out round Riyadh way when the whole takeover unravels in an explosion of recriminations and bilious invective. Ever felt you’ve been cheated?

It must have been around 7pm on Friday November 19^th when news of Nice Guy Eddie’s positive PCR test. Despite the swivel eyed lunacy spewed across social media about the Scamdemic by the likes of Jamie Tinfoil and TMWNFHJOP, the vast majority of NUFC fans accepted the news with a kind of stoic resignation that hinted at a hitherto undiscovered maturity in the face of adversity. You simply had to make the best of a bad job. If the bloke who relegated Bournemouth wasn’t available, his successor who got the boot after 7 months in the big chair, assisted by someone fella relieved of his duties at Luton when it looked like they were going down, would have to make do and mend.  The eventual outcome wasn’t a surprise; Ivan Toney, a player that the sainted El Fraudio Benitez contemptuously tossed to one side in order to fritter away the best part of £12m on the dubious talents of the indescribably awful Muto, showed exactly why he’s one of the hottest attacking properties outside the top 6. Admittedly a draw was an improvement on the Algarve-Bruce days which would have seen a 4-0 tanking after the players collectively chucked it once they’d gone behind, rather than the decent team effort we saw.

However, we all know why we didn’t win that game; one of Karl Darlow’s all too frequent bouts of nerves did for him, with a pair of terrible misjudgements. While Herr Tinfoil and pals may disagree, I suspect Darlow’s symptoms of long COVID manifest themselves in an inability to keep the ball out the net when someone shoots at him. Like Woodman at the start of the season, Darlow’s fragile sense of self-worth means he just isn’t up to the mark when it comes to playing in the top flight. Of course all that pales into insignificance when the story of a female Asian Newcastle fan being racially abused by some numbskull knuckle dragger in the Gallowgate. This, along with the vile image of someone making a Nazi salute to the Spurs support, is probably even more of an indictment of our club than the murderous regime who currently own us. How can such behaviour be allowed to happen? Scum like this don’t just need to be kicked out of the ground, they need to be eradicated from the gene pool.

Meanwhile, what of the club at a corporate level I hear you ask. How are Amanda and pals getting on with transforming the careworn husk of a club that was devoid of all sense of direction and purpose under the previous ownership? Well, they’ve got shot of Lee Charnley, which I suppose is a bit of a step forward, but that really is it. No Director of Football has been appointed and no other outward signs of any forward momentum can be discerned at all. Perhaps they’re trying to pretend that they’re still digesting Tracy Crouch’s uncontentious and sensible report following her fan-led review of the English game. I’d imagine that such a document will rank below even the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the must read pile at the House of Saud. In all seriousness, the lack of a Director of Football and the associated utter absence of direction or strategy will be the undoing of this takeover and, quite possibly, this club. We won’t sign anyone in January because there’s nobody in charge who has the remotest idea what is going on. Are you still singing “we’ve got our club back?”

The sorry second half disintegration at Arsenal put the tin hat on a weekend wrecked by wintry weather. Storms and gales put paid to the entire local grassroots programme while, probably uniquely, Newcastle, Middlesbrough, sunderland, Hartlepool, Gateshead, South Shields and Blyth were all away. Carlisle United and Carlisle City both got their games on, but there was no public transport to speak of, so I couldn’t get there. Instead, I was stuck indoors with the Arsenal v Newcastle game. As is always the case, the plucky underdog gained a ripple of patronising applause for their tenacity in holding on for almost an hour, but as soon as Arsenal scored, that was game over. As my mate Cola tweeted afterwards; the main positives to take from the game were that Lascelles and Ritchie were both suspended for the Norwich game.  Bearing that in mind, never for one second did I believe Clark would get the nod for the vacant centre back position.

 

And so, for the first time since a 4-1 win over Rochdale in an FA Cup third round replay on January 14^th 2020, I entered St James’ Park. Partly out of curiosity, but mainly because of the fact my mate John was over from County Kildare for the first time since January 18^th 2020, when we beat Chelsea 1-0 with a Hayden goal in the 95^th minute. Imagine that; beating Chelsea… Imagine beating anyone; I stopped doing so on 10 minutes when Clark’s incompetence followed by idiocy saw us a man down and facing a hell of a struggle. Thankfully, Norwich are as bad as us and didn’t really threaten, partly because of an immaculate performance by Fernandez. It was nice of VAR to offer up a penalty for something I couldn’t see, perched in Leazes East Corner as I was. What I did see was a team who worked hard and obeyed the manager’s sensible tactics to the letter in the last 80 minutes. I didn’t see any blame for Dubravka for the goal; just a decent save and an unstoppable finish from Pukki.  And so, after a brilliant block in injury time by Dubravka, we gained a valuable point from a must-win game that we’d looked likely to lose.

For me, the plus points, other than some determined defensive work, included an utter absence of fancy dress Arabs, songs in support of the regime or another bloody flag display. Precisely where we go from here will partly be decided by Saturday’s result, but more crucially by any sense of urgency or, perish the thought, signs of progress from within the boardroom.

Terrace Anthems

 Issue #7 of Ireland's only football periodical Póg Mo Goal is out now. You should buy a copy from   https://pogmogoal.com and not just because I've got this article about Adrian Sherwood, Tackhead, Barmy Army and other On-U Sounds musical legends in there...

The late, lamented genius that was Mark E Smith never made any secret of his affection for Manchester City, though one suspects the great contrarian was more at home with the Peter Swales era than the unimagined success of his last years. Back in 1983, The Fall released the menacing, fractured terrace tirade that was Kicker Conspiracy. Written from an unapologetic and uncompromising fan’s perspective, with a video filmed at Turf Moor, it takes the authorities to task for assuming criminality is rife among ordinary football supporters. Later MES returned to the subject, addressing the asset stripping that caused the demise of Halifax Town in The Chisellers and, most notably in Theme from Sparta FC that the BBC used as backing music on Final Score, resulting in Smith once reading the full time results, while simultaneously humiliating the oleaginous Ray Stubbs. The Fall were the main inspiration for obscure outsiders I Ludicrous, whose Three English Football Grounds is a nostalgic tribute to Burnden Park, Craven Cottage and The Den, for all you completists out there.

Of course, angular guitars, sparse drumming and declamatory singing don’t have sole ownership of football as a totem for underground music, as dub, electronica and repetitive beats have long been at the heart of some of the finest songs about the game. Witness the eclectic Colourbox, whose 1986 single The Official Colourbox World Cup Theme was one of the standout tracks of that year, though it was eclipsed by the work that would be released soon after by a fierce studio amalgam of the legendary Sugar Hill Records house rhythm section, a polymath dub mixologist and the occasional presence of a slightly deranged toaster and sound system MC. The fact that the work of Tackhead and related projects on the impeccable On-U Sounds label has fallen into obscurity is a crying shame, especially as their football-themed output is some of the strongest material they ever made.

In the early 80s, second only to the stellar duo of Chic’s Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, the go-to session musicians in the funk, soul and disco arena, were the backing band of Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel; Skip McDonald (guitar), Doug Wimbish (bass) and Keith LeBlanc (drums). Such was their ubiquity, only the reggae superpowers Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare could possibly have produced such a mammoth body of work. The thing with the Sugar Hill blokes was that they were always experimenting, always changing and always producing their own sounds. Wimbish formed Living Color, an African American heavy rock band, while McDonald moved on to production duties at Tommy Boy Records and LeBlanc created stunning slabs of  his own studio wizardry 

LeBlanc’s groundbreaking Malcolm X: No Sell Out 12” in late 1983 combined thudding beats with sampled speech from Malcolm X to make a profound political statement of uncompromising opposition to state terrorism and institutional racism. It was a seminal moment in the history of dance music, as it caused On-U Sounds founder Adrian Sherwood to make contact and then music with LeBlanc. Their first notable public pronouncement was the shuddering power of the empowering, agitational Support The Miners, released under the moniker The Enemy Within, which sampled Arthur Scargill’s uncompromising rhetoric, welded to earth shattering funk beats and basslines; almost 40 years on, it remains part of the Holy Trinity of early collaborations that climaxed with Hard Left, where Bristolian MC Gary Clail took over the mic, though the cut includes voice samples from characteristically brutal speeches by the Great Satan herself, Thatcher.

One of the key elements of the On-U Sounds modus operandi is the use of a baffling array of names for the various projects releasing music. In 1987, the Tackhead brand was used for the one and only time, as Tackhead Sound System, for the Sherwood, LeBlanc, McDonald and Wimbish debut football release, The Game; an anthemic, slow paced amalgam of dub, funk, crowd samples and football specific lyrics. Brushing the top 40, it didn’t include Clail on MC duties but, almost incredibly, ITV commentator Brian Moore, who gave permission for pieces of his previous game chat to be looped, spliced and generally manipulated by Sherwood. The song is a classic, though typical of the On-U philosophy, it would be the last time the Tackhead moniker would be used in such circumstances, being reserved for Gary Clail’s Tackhead Sound System’s Mind at the End of the Tether album in 1989.  By 1991’s Human Nature set, which provided him with a top 20 hit, Clail was going by his own name.

 

There was no way Adrian Sherwood was going to use his own name; instead, he adopted the moniker Barmy Army for all his subsequent football related music. Sherwood is a West Ham United fan and two of the cuts he made under the Barmy Army name, namely Billy Bonds MBE and Leroy’s Boots (a tribute to Rosenior senior) were given away as single sided flexis with the Irons fanzine, On the Terraces. Obviously, such releases are as rare as hen’s teeth these days, but they were vital in establishing a link between underground sounds and terrace culture, especially at a club more infamous for alleged musical supporters such as the vile Cockney Rejects and cartoon metallers Iron Maiden. Somewhat surprisingly, Sherwood also cut a version of Blue Moon for the Manchester City fanzine Blue Print, though it was a track about a Liverpool legend that is probably the most famous piece of Sherwood sporting genius.

Unsurprisingly, Sherwood and John Peel were a mutual appreciation society and so the mixologist’s tribute to Kenny Dalglish, Sharp as a Needle, was warmly received by the DJ and lifelong Liverpool fan, who described the cut as one of his all-time favourite pieces of music, commenting in 2002; It doesn’t really get much better than this classic Barmy Army track. Incongruously, there is a West Ham reference – Sherwood is a Hammers fan – but the music relates otherwise to Kenny Dalglish, with a sideways nod to Ian Rush… Years after its release, I still can’t hear it without a lump in my throat.

Truly it is a deeply uplifting and emotional track, which deserves the praise Peel gave it and a place on Sherwood’s 1989 football agglomeration, The English Disease, along with Leroy’s Boots and several other tracks, utilising terrace chants from the Boleyn Ground, as well as Ewood Park, Old Trafford and, strangely, St Johnstone’s former home of Muirton Park. As well as LeBlanc, McDonald and Wimbish, other musicians include Al Jorgensen, who I’d never figured as a football fan, and fellow Hammer Jah Wobble, who no doubt approved of the Italian house style piano-driven anthem Devo, dedicated to Alan Devonshire.

Obviously, the subjects for each track on the album are very much of their time, so the long, forgotten travails of the late Bobby Robson when England manager are a surprising memory on Bobby Just Can’t Win, while downright dirty bass driven drudge of Psycho pays tribute to Vinny Jones, Sam Hamman and all those other members of the Plough Lane Crazy Gang. Skip McDonald’s ironic FM poodle rock stylings on Stadium Rock make it an amusing instrumental, followed by the bitter, frustrated words of then Blackburn Rovers manager Don Mackay, decrying his bad luck in a post-match press conference on Mind the Gap.

The album was released in 1989, the year of Hillsborough and the Thatcher government’s kneejerk ID card scheme. After a season when Man United and Chelsea fans proved supporter resistance to the European Super League will be listened to, Civil Liberties is a strong rejection of the proposed, and subsequently dropped, legislation of 1989.  My favourite number is Brian Clout, a hilarious examination of Cloughy biffing a load of Forest fans round the lugs when they invaded the pitch after a 4-1 win over QPR in the League Cup. Combining Old Big ‘Ead’s ambiguously contrite interview with adverts and other snatches of dialogue, the repeated chorus of Clough declaring I don’t want to get physically involved with you is both surreal and hilarious. The English Disease is a certified lost classic.

What needs to be remembered about this album is that, in common with all of On-U Sounds’ output, the musicianship and mixology make these tracks not simply one-trick curios, but vital slices of late 80s dub and funk; Clail and other sound systems would often mix Barmy Army tracks alongside cuts by Lee “Scratch” Perry and Augustus Pablo in dense and smoky basements at late night sessions. Serious fun; music with a purpose.

 

 

What A Mess!!

 As predicted, the PIF takeover of Newcastle United is proving to be a disaster...

It may sound alarmist, but Newcastle United’s next three home games, namely: Brentford 20/11, Norwich 30/11 and Burnley 4/12, could go a long way towards framing the medium-term destiny of the club. Premature talk by young hotheads of European glory may be overtaken by sullen greybeards bemoaning a third relegation in less than a decade and a half. With the club sitting one off the bottom of the Premier League, courtesy of a slightly less terrible negative goal difference than Norwich, six points from safety and looking at a Christmas period offering gloomier prospects than new born boys had in King Herod’s time, the mettle of the newly installed head coach and ownership is about to be tested. Thus far, the theocratic psychopaths and their running dog lackeys in the boardroom have made a complete and utter arse of things. Whether it be appointing a manager, where the Unai Emery fiasco will long be used as a stick to beat them with, dispensing with discredited coaching staff or issuing an agreed statement about the idiots in cod Arab fancy dress on match days, there is never an unequivocal straight answer issued first time. However, I will concede that at least they do communicate with the general public, even if the messages are convoluted, muddled and inadequate.

With potentially the most important transfer window in history on the horizon, I have little or no faith that the Saudi Arabian Royal Family, or whoever will write the cheques, is ready to allow Eddie Howe to get on with the vital job of coaching the team, while they have someone of greater competence than Lee Charnley in place to drive the recruitment process that is so obviously needed. Frankly, it’s a fairly safe bet that Newcastle United will be the most hated club in the Championship next season, unless the crippling inaction that has been the hallmark of PIF so far, is conquered. For those of us with long memories, the appointment of Howe reminded me of the pitiful and painful transition from McFaul to Smith back in 88, and we all know how that turned out.  Still, at least if we do go down, we still won’t be playing the Mackems.

In their defence, if the butchers from Riyadh held off from giving the gig to someone (anyone?) until the international break, so only the sensible and articulate Jones copped the flak for the Chelsea defeat and first half shit show at Brighton, even if their penalty was a terrible stain upon the integrity of the VAR system and how it is used, regardless of whether Clark fouled him or not, then fair play to them. They may be learning the art of public relations at last, which is certainly a step up from hacking dissidents to pieces at least.

It was good to see Howe watching our triumphant escape from the foot of the table at Brighton, as well as hearing he felt the squad was collectively underachieving, poorly coached, lacking fitness and tactically shambolic. Then again, if such analysis was a prerequisite for getting the job, there would have been 50,000 other suitable candidates in the ground every home game. It is probably important to note the last time we played Bournemouth, in June 2020, Algarve-Bruce and Howe were in their respective dugouts and Newcastle battered the Cherries out of sight that day. Of most pressing concern, now we’ve appointed someone who I expect to be able to competently coach the majority of our existing players, is the appointment of a Director of Football who is prepared to do what is necessary to recruit appropriately. This will not be someone called Lee Charnley. I hope.

 

As you all know, I am completely against this takeover, as I have serious objections to a bloodthirsty theocracy owning my club. However, I am not against the Ruben Brothers expanding their property portfolio in Newcastle; for a start the city centre is looking decidedly shabby post pandemic and for another thing, any new builds or refurbs will provide thousands of jobs for construction workers initially and leisure sector employees eventually. I am, of course, available for nuanced, philosophical and practical debate regarding the future of cities in the post-Covid, post-industrial era, but that’s probably something best kept for another day.

Can it really only be a month since the patently unprepared PIF were presented with a fait accompli takeover of Newcastle United for the small matter of £305 million? Was it a mere 5 weeks ago that fans dispensed with their consciences to get unironically bladdered on Barrack Road, leaving the Milburn Stand forecourt and environs looking like Glastonbury after the festival? How can any of us forget the touching sight of a completely wasted Sam Fender babbling and drooling on breakfast telly, yet still making more sense than his climate change denying, anti vaxxer, Covid conspiracy espousing uncle, Jamie Tinfoil? Did we really see oafs in tea towel headdresses belting out endless choruses of we’ve got our club back, oblivious to the new reality of NUFC’s situation? Are any of us likely to forget those deluded superfans accepting congratulations on social media from cretinous simpletons with Saudi flag avatars, for being the real movers and shakers behind the scenes who got the deal done?

How well I remember that first game under the new regime, when Steve Algarve-Bruce selected a side with a suicidally high back 4, meaning Harry Kane’s farcical goal will act as the forever epitaph for the ill-remembered administration of our man in the queue outside Gorman’s at half eleven every morning. Already there were those whining, even in advance of kick-off, that PIF had “let the fans down” by not bulleting Algarve-Bruce before a ball was kicked. Was that more idiotic than the swathes of buffoons in faux Arab dress? Or previously intelligent fans becoming brainwashed saps for their new overlords? I’ve no time for mendacious hypocrisy by members of the Fourth Estate or ill-informed followers of other clubs, nor do I appreciate the endless, defensive whataboutery so many of our fans fall back upon. However, we’d all better get used to this.

Consider, please, the probable effects of a rabid national media in full-on self-righteous assault mode, intent on blaming Jimmy from Prudhoe or Stu from Blyth for the human rights abuses of the Saudi regime. You know, I know, everyone knows that if you continue to aggressively prod a bad-tempered dog, it will eventually attack. Newcastle fans, regardless of what they really think, though many of them may not be capable of complex cognitive activity, are fiercely loyal to their club; if someone attacks the Magpies, they’ll defend the team and the institution to the death. Any attacks on the ownership, regardless of source, will be furiously rebuffed; some with articulacy and others with profanity or fists. Those of us denouncing the deal from the inside are probably most at risk, but I’m used to it. This bunker mentality will win the supporters few friends, but it may be inevitable. Then again, when NUFC.com seem insistent on disparaging Graeme Jones at every given opportunity, and true faith has run a hateful, misogynistic series of attacks on Amanda Staveley, who knows what to expect from the Barrack Road Brains Trust. Certainly, it was a surprise to me that the best written and most nuanced response to the whole affair was a press release by the FSA the day after the takeover.

Incidentally, I would point out that attacks upon Staveley because of how she looks are particularly distasteful when one considers her diagnosis, and the eventual prognosis, of Huntington’s Disease. Yet it must be recognised that it isn’t just journalists or other fans having a go (Everton supporters digging at Geordies, minutes after losing 5-2 at home to Watford; Man United followers focusing their ire on Tyneside in the run up to their ritual disembowelling by Liverpool; Boro, I ask you, Boro’s banner in a deserted Riverside on the day Warnock got the shove or Crystal Palace’s righteous words of wisdom in the Holmesdale Road end on the day we got a welcome point after riding our luck), but the big hitters in the boardrooms at other clubs as well.  We’ll have to wait a while until we get the unexpurgated Tales from Hoffman after the latest PL chief exec has cleared his desk, but if the other 18 clubs (City are our pals now, it seems) think that stopping PIF from sponsoring Newcastle, when the House of Saud, or Kate Stewart as they’re more commonly known, managed to get the takeover through, then they’ve a nasty surprise coming. Money talks and there’s nothing that will guarantee servile devotion from the vast majority of the unsophisticated ranks of NUFC’s support more than endless, vulgar and scattergun spending of billions of petrodollars.

And they need to do that very thing the second the final chorus of Auld Lang Syne has been sung, as the opening 10 games have shown, where only 5 points have been collected and only Watford, where the finishing was rank, and Southampton, where the defending stank, should have seen victories. Newcastle United need several new players, because some of the decent ones we’ve got are shot to shit; the last couple of years has seen their confidence and tactical acumen disappear, perhaps forever.

The key indicator of this, once Algarve-Bruce had decided to spend more time with his Just Eat app, was the Chelsea game. After a valiant hour of desperate defending, Newcastle were swamped by the current Champions’ League holders and front runners for the title. It was a hopeless mismatch, with our ill-prepared, inadequate squad steamrolled once the first one had gone in. This is the real legacy of the Ashley’s refusal to adequately finance the running of the club and further condemnation of Algarve-Bruce’s lazy, hands-off approach; inadequate players terrified to make a mistake and the adequate ones, bar a couple of notable exceptions, lacking in commitment, with a cut price coaching set-up devoid of ideas and inspiration.

Nice Guy Eddie is in charge now. I’ll let you know how he’s getting on after the Norwich game as I’m actually going.