Humour, music and literature; a mid autumnal cultural blog....
COMEDY:
On
Saturday October 15th, Shelley and I had a good day out. First up,
we braved wind and unseasonal hail showers to watch Percy Main win 2-1 away to
Ponteland, in the company of pals John (over from county Kildare for the
afternoon; I do not jest), Graham and, briefly, Phil. Following a helpful lift
from Graham and a Metro into town, we enjoyed some absolutely blinding Indian
street food from My Delhi on Clayton Street. Five stunning small plates and
assorted dips and breads for £40, but make sure you book on a weekend, as we
were exceptionally lucky to walk in and get a seat. From there, a quick beer in
the Alpha Delta lounge and then on to the main part of the day; a trip to The
Stand Comedy Club.
I’m really not sure why, but I’ve hardly ever seen live comedy. I really can’t believe I’ve never seen Stewart Lee live, but there you go. Hence, when Shelley expressed an interest in having a laugh on a night out, I readily concurred. Searching through the listings, I was delighted to see Dave Johns, of I Daniel Blake fame, headlining on this particular day. Tickets were bought instantly: mind, I have to say though, at £20 a pop for something that lasted for just over 90 minutes, it isn’t a cheap night out.
As regular readers know, I’m an ever expanding ball of neuroses and phobias, with a fear of crowds that gets worse by the year. The fact that The Stand is a subterranean cavern that was almost sold out on this occasion didn’t do my anxiety much good, but in the absence of a ready supply of Propranolol, I girded my loins, took plenty of liquids on board and grounded myself by taking my shoes and socks off. This relaxed both Shelley and I, allowing us to enjoy an excellent evening’s entertainment.
The Stand is a pretty regimented sort of place. They don’t allow big groups of lads, ban photography and seriously discourage heckling. Perhaps because of this, I didn’t make enough notes, so missed out on the names of the very funny compere, who lives in South Shields but comes from Jarrow (“I’ve moved up in the world to place with only 26% unemployment) or the two supporting acts; a woman from Kenton who riffed on her anxieties about having a posh boyfriend and a bloke from Manchester who was the epitome of a head-on collision between eccentricity and eclecticism. He steered just the right side of being blatantly offensive. As you’d expected, Dave Johns was great; bearded, bespectacled and sporting a woolly hat, he certainly wasn’t relying on his looks for laughter. I laughed out loud, almost continuously, at a seemingly random unconnected series of random observations that all hung together admirably. In short, a fab night out, though I don’t think I started breathing properly until I escaped the depths and stood sucking in lungfuls of High Bridge air.
MUSIC:
The main event that held my attention in the period since I last wrote about music was the long-delayed Godspeed You! Black Emperor gig at Glasgow Barras in the middle of September. Thanks to Dave, who did the driving, and Ben for being brilliant companions: in Mono for drinks and food as well as on the road and in the gig; not long until David Gedge in Gosforth eh? Unquestionably, this latest exposure to GY!BE was an incredible evening, as the venue’s decadent grandeur and ageing environs added to the atmosphere of surreal, anarchic degeneration, found in both the music and the visuals. As on every occasion I’ve seen the impossibly brilliant Quebecois post-rock nonet, the reassuring hum of Hope Drone hinted at the arrival of the wordless perfection ahead. There are no words with Godspeed You! Black Emperor because none are necessary to paint portraits in the air. I’d bought Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada from the merch stall in advance on the gig, having learned that neither Moya nor BBF3, the two stunning pieces contained therein, would be performed this time. I’ve really no idea how I’d not got round to purchasing this before. Instead, we had most of God’s Pee at State’s End, as well as a blistering Bosses Hang from Luciferian Towers and a deafeningly intense The Sad Mafioso to close proceedings. This was as immersive a gig as you could wish for: a sonic baptism in a magic, psychedelic river of ecstatic joy and unending pain. Godspeed You! Black Emperor make almost every other kind of music utterly superfluous.
Recently, I’ve done my best to support local venues and local acts as well, with some mixed results I must admit. The first Friday in September saw me at the Anarchy Brewery on Benfield Road, near Walkergate Metro with my pals Paul and Ale. Top of the bill were Leeds band Beige Palace, who apparently supported Shellac three years back, though I have no recollection of that happening. Instead, we were really there for a couple of local bands, tangentially part of the No Audience Underground scene. This seemed to be at variance with the other acts listed as forthcoming attractions at Anarchy. Aside from the usual Oasis tribute acts, there was a band dedicated to celebrating the work of Tony Hawkes, called The 900. Now I was at a complete loss why anyone would name their band after the Metro replacement bus and sing paeans to the bloke who wrote Travels Round Ireland with a Fridge and Playing the Moldovans at Tennis. However, unbeknownst to me, it seems there is another Tony Hawks, who is an adult skateboarder and the 900 is his signature move. Well, you live and learn, eh?
First up on the night were the excellent Lump Hammer, whose singer is part of Mobius. This was a very different kind of music and almost exactly what you’d expect from a band called Lump Hammer: brutal, destructive, visceral noise. They reminded me of Earth, and I enjoyed them tremendously. The other member of Mobius was the drummer in Penance Stare: a female duo who reincarnated the sound of 1979 with some aplomb. Close your eyes and it could have been John McGeoch on guitar. I sincerely hope to see both bands again. Sadly, we didn’t hang around for Beige Palace, whose interminable sound check melted any enthusiasm we had for them.
The
last Monday in September saw Shelley and I down at The Engine Rooms on the Fish
Quay, to see Jim McCulloch and his Snowgoose project, with stunning vocalist
Anna Shear. Both of their albums, Harmony Springs and The Making of
You (the latter of which I purchased on the night), feature the likes of
Raymond McGinley and Dave McGowan as guest musicians, showing that we’re
geographically and spiritually on Byers Road even when they tour as a duo.
Anna’s voice is comparable to, in terms of sound and quality, the likes of
Lavinia Blackwall and Jill O’Sullivan. I can give no higher praise than that.
It was an excellent, compelling evening of intelligent pop folk, with glorious
musicianship and stunning vocals. I’ve very glad I now have both albums in my
possession and can recommend then to you without hesitation. They are the kind
of sounds I love.
I’m not really sure anyone can love 4’33” by John Cage, but that period of silence gained a round of applause when Adam Johnson (no, not that one) “performed” it during a Friday lunchtime recital at the Lit and Phil as part of the Newcastle Festival of Jazz and Improvised Music (NFJIM) on the last day of September. I’d taken a half day holiday to see this, my only experience of NFJIM ever, as Johnson, blessed with enormous feet and attired in a Geisha style dressing gown, was performing excerpts from Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano. If I’m honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but hoped that it would be something a bit silly. It certainly wasn’t. It was piano turned into a percussion instrument, or even a set of gongs and bells, that would have been ideal as part of a gamelan orchestra and Johnson, who explained it took well over 2 hours to set up a prepared piano and has been playing this piece for over 15 years, gave an effortless, virtuoso performance that left this classical music neophyte stunned by the breadth of time sequences and impact of tonality on the audience. I thoroughly enjoyed this and would in the future to hear someone perform pieces by Cornelius Cardew, another of my modern classical heroes.
Finally, the No Audience Underground took a trip to the seaside on Friday 14th October, when Bound Books in Whitley Bay hosted a brace of duos. Firstly, Posset and Chlorine performed as Molar Crime and superb it was too. The live drumming added a compelling urgency and sense of reality to Joe’s Dictaphone tape skronk, taking it from the realms of somnolent fantasy to a hard hitting slab of the everyday life we tend to avoid. A proper collision of distinct methods produced something memorable. Top of the bill Culver and Rovalesca were more of a hand in glove pairing; a pair of synth drone manipulators taking us on a journey through euphoria to dissonance courtesy of swathes of bestial aural scree. A great night, with loads of people I knew coming out for it. I like this noise. I like this ambience. I want to be more involved in it.
BOOKS:
If I wanted to make a football analogy about the autumn’s big Scottish literary clash, I’d probably say something like a startlingly inventive Aidrie comprehensively outplayed a complacent, lacklustre Hibs, which is another way of saying David Keenan’s superb Industry of Magic and Light, the loose prequel to This is Memorial Device, is a far better read than Irvine Welsh’s formulaic The Long Knives, the latest unrealistic dysfunctional polis procedural to feature Ray Lennox, the sidekick from Filth who got his own vehicle in Crime. A key to the supposed worth of this latest Welsh tome is his injudicious comments in interviews that The Long Knives is a kind of necessary plot device linking Crime to next year’s concluding Lennox novel. In other words, I’ve lashed out £18 and ploughed through 400 pages just so a Lothian cop can hand in his notice and move south.
We get all the usual Welsh tropes here; the kind of racist and sexist bullshit his baddies have spouted by the yard for a quarter of a century, as well as dollops of sectarian football attitudes, though I am on his side when he insists that true evil is to be found among the environs of Tynecastle. His unhealthy obsession with anal sex is a persistent stain on the narrative, which features the usual battery of seedy characters from earlier works, as well as equal numbers of cartoon wrong’uns and unidimensional goodies appearing for the first, and sometimes last, time in his fiction. It isn’t a bad read, but it isn’t a great book. Then again, has he written anything memorable since Glue or, at a push, Skagboys?
Unlike Welsh, David Keenan never stays in his comfort zone, as has been demonstrated by the massive, eclectic jumps in subject matter from This is Memorial Device, to For the Good Times, Xstabeth and, most challenging of all, Monument Maker; 400 pages down with 350 still to go, it sits stubbornly on my bedside cabinet as the foundation stone of my yet-to-read pile. Thankfully, partly because of a return to the familiar territory of bleakest Lanarkshire and partly because of a return to narrative-based fiction, rather than recondite theosophical musings that have oft left me cold, I was able to race through this one in double quick time. I love the idea of Airdrie being a kind of low-rent Haight Astbury mixed with Greenwich Village, where Avant Garde creativity, hallucinogenic drugs and a strong seam of counter culture sensibility make the place a vital, if hidden, jewel in Scotland’s alternate history. When he’s on form, Keenan makes you believe the world he describes is real and not created. You devour the pages, looking for clues and explanations for madcap events from equally mad unreliable narrators trying to recall incidents half a century ago through the refracted lens of a drug-addled and broken memory. I love it.
Perhaps the only work I’ve read recently that is of equal merit as Keenan’s, is the impossibly talented Jim Gibson’s stunning debut collection, The Bygones. Having known Jim for a decade as an editor of and contributor to publications such as Hand Job and Low Life, as well as having the honour of publishing him in glove, I have long seen him as an especial, eccentric talent. Writing from a geographically precise blasted heath somewhere in the ex-minefields of the East Midlands, Jim does enough to assuage that area of the guilt of their conduct in the 1984 strike and the subsequent formation of the home for scabrous scabs, the UDM, by showing us the place is possessed; mad, deranged, bleeding with the running sores of evil that disfigure the landscape. The Bygones, from its disturbingly beautiful front cover onwards, tells tales of ordinary madness. Poverty, drink, drugs, mental and physical ill-health, bad housing and endless, grinding poverty are the touchstones of the madness in Jim’s area. In short, The Bygones comprises a stunning set of nightmarish slices of grim, gruesome reality that read like a terrifying docudrama about a real life dystopia. The stories hit home because of the credible and crushing mundanity depicted on every page. This is absolutely outstanding work. I can't recommend it highly enough.
Elsewhere, I quite enjoyed The Persistence of Memory by Martin Cooper, who I’ve met a couple of times through cricket. The book was given to me by our mutual friend Di Brown and it tells a compelling and credible love story of outsiders in Newcastle, from Germany and London, finding romance to replace the tragic emptiness in their souls. Set from 2005 general election day until the 7th of July bombings at Kings Cross and Tavistock Square, a seemingly improbable narrative is held together by excellent depiction of characters. I read on because I cared. Martin should be proud of this work, and I wish it was more readily available so more people could appreciate how much he has put into the book.
Finally, another one of my Lit & Phil bargain books was Sally Belfrage’s unintentionally nostalgic The Crack: A Belfast Year. The fact this year was 1985 to 1986, which was my final year as an undergraduate in County Derry, makes it all the more compelling for me as my idetic memory means I remembered all the salient details. Like most people of sound mind, Sally arrived in the Six Counties with an open mind, met people from both communities and left a raging Republican. I can fully understand where she was coming from. Of course, it is hopelessly out of date following the events of the intervening period, but a superbly written vignette of yet another shameful period under Thatcher’s police state.
There are a few music books to read before we’re next here: Gavin Butt’s history of the Leeds post-punk agitprop scene, No Machos or Pop Stars, Steve Pringle’s guide to every Fall album, You Must Get Them All, as well as a couple of trips north of the border in the shape of Stuart Braithwaite’s autobiographical account of Mogwai’s life and times, Spaceships over Glasgow as well as Douglas McIntyre and Grant McPhee’s encyclopaedia of Scottish punk and post punk, Hungry Beat. I can’t wait to get dug in to that lot. I might even finish Monument Maker while I’m at it…
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