Behind the Scenes in the Museum

Before I get on to what I’ve been reading and listening to over the last couple of months, I’d just like to make a brief comment about what I’ve been watching. If I had the time and requisite critical vocabulary, I might have attempted a critical take on some of the latest telly I’ve seen, but feeling inadequate to such a task, I’ll just say that both Baby Reindeer and The Responder have been utterly outstanding. Gripping doesn’t come near it.

Music:

Readers of this blog will remember my review of Kim Gordon’s memoir Girl in a Band in my last bulletin. I read that book partly because I’d found her ex-husband Thurston Moore’s Sonic Life autobiography so shallow and vapid that I wanted to know of the true story behind the disintegration of Sonic Youth. Curiosity sated, I bought Gordon’s new album The Collective, out of a more virtuous sense of curiosity at what she was doing creatively, and I have to say I’m pretty pleased by the results.

A dark, chaotic batch of compositions, the album is a jarring critique of a world Gordon views as confusedly addicted to consumption, skewed by dysfunctional masculinity and the endless pursuit of fame and wealth. Its 11 songs are disjointed but together intensify and further the evolution of sounds that can be traced to her earliest leading efforts as a founding vocalist, bassist and guitarist for Sonic Youth.

On the opener, BYE BYE, Gordon maintains her well-known dismal tone. With lyrics aimed to provoke, tracks such as Trophies, It's Dark Inside and Shelf Warmer make for a bold endeavour even in these strange times. In the grinding automation of my favourite track, I'm a Man, she assumes the perspective of a fool admitting his own faults, fumbling with excuses across a defensive, feeble monologue before settling for mediocrity: "It's not my fault. I'm a man ... It's good enough for Nancy."

The Collective's tracks are decidedly incongruous, but Gordon demonstrates expertise in crafting the unexpected groove out of the frightful funk of I Don't Miss My Mind and the clang of The Believers. On the expansive Psychedelic Orgasm, the accomplished noise trailblazer reminds listeners that she has no bounds. At 70 years of age, she has served up what may be her most compelling, most ominous, work to date.

Courtesy of Raoul Galloway, editor of Spinners lit zine, I finally managed to get hold of Big Noise from the Jungle by the Tiller Boys. Released on New Hormones records back in 1979, it’s a wonderful slice of repetitious garage Krautrock, with a shrill, insistent guitar (courtesy of a certain Pete Shelley) that rumbles and shrieks its way through 7 unchanging minutes. It’s an absolute delight and I’m so pleased to finally have it in my collection.

As well as accumulating recorded music, I’ve been to a disparate set of gigs at various locations over these last 3 months. On a foul and filthy Friday night, Shelley and I struck out for Cullercoats Watch House, where those legendary rock and roll outlaws, Shunyata Improvisation Group were playing a fundraiser for this venerable building. With a gale blowing outside and the North Sea crashing against the adjacent coastal defences, the creaking timbers of the Watch House played a role almost as a living instrument itself. The nature of Shunyata shows is that you have to listen carefully to pick up on what they are saying and the nuanced nature of their practise, so on this occasion the Watch House began an integral part of the evening, which was fitting. I’m glad I got to this as Shunyata seem inordinately keen on playing Saturdays, which is not too helpful with all my cricket and football commitments.

At the other end of the spectrum, volume and venue wise, was the sonic maelstrom of BRB Voicecoil and Depletion at the Lubber Fiend at the end of March. This was one hell of a great night out, where just about everyone you’d expected to show up did so (with the added bonus of meeting some pals who’d been to Echo & The Bunnymen at the City Hall on the last bus home). It was loud and affecting. Kev Wilkinson, for over 35 years now, has had the ability to wrest almost diabolical incantations out of a simple synthesiser. Despite revealing he’d spent the afternoon warming up for the gig by taking his grand daughter swimming, he still summoned up a fearsome, fiery squall that is his signature scent. Depletion, younger and fairly diffident, were equally impressive, with a comparable level of intensity. All in all, one of the best nights out of 2024.

I ran into Richard Dunn that night and was pleased when he gifted me a copy of his latest release: The Rock, The Watcher, The Stranger by Isolated Community. It isn’t ambient, but it’s almost pastoral. A brooding, contemplative set of pieces, seemingly inspired by the rugged Northumberland countryside, it is visual as well as auditory experience, if you allow you mind to flow and imagine the destruction Border Reivers could have wrought if they’d been introduced to sound collage, field recordings and electronica. A very worthwhile release and one I highly recommend.

It was Shelley who recommended we go to see L Devine at the Wylam Brewery and I’m more than pleased we did. Previously unknown to me, this Whitley Bay native is out, proud and ready to rock. After an earlier semi successful alliance with a major label, she’s cut the ties, cut free and cut a storming album. Actually named Olivia Rebecca Devine and born 21 June 1997, she signed a contract with Warner Brothers, releasing 3 EPs on the label: Growing Pains, Pressure and Near Life Experience. After parting from Warners, she became an independent artist and released her debut studio album, Digital Heartifacts, in April. Rather than seeking to be a cutesy electro pop star, this talented musician and songwriter, has assembled a strong backing band and is happily going down the route of alternative rock. Hell, and I’m not making this up, some of her numbers could have been Nirvana with a female vocalist. The crowd, predominantly posh young things (well she did go to Central High after all), lapped it all up, as did her beaming parents, stood near us stage right, positively glowing with pride at her superb performance. They’ve every right to feel like that. I’m predicting L Devine becomes a mainstream success, but on her own terms, not those of her former corporate overmasters.

The two big events for me over the last couple of months were Milk Weed supporting Shovel Dance Collective at the Lubber Fiend and Dragged Up with Toronto Blessing, who I didn’t get to see (but more of that later) at the Museum Vaults in sunderland. By coincidence, but also by necessity, these were two events I attended by myself and, quite frankly, I’m of the opinion that I’m too old to be doing that sort of thing, as it almost feels to me like I need a carer or support worker on such occasions, to keep me company as I either get anxious and paranoid, or I drink too heavily as I’m on my own. Sometimes both of these things happen simultaneously, which really isn’t a good thing. The next solo trip is to see Jon Langford on May 18^th and I’m getting a tad anxious already.

Anyway, Milk Weed played on a Friday night, the day before the cricket season didn’t start. I had half hoped Ben would be able to accompany me, but he was at his mate’s dad’s funeral, so I was on my own. Milk Weed, describing themselves uniquely as “slacker trad” are a mysterious duo of an American female singer and guitarist, with a banjo player who looks like a 1970s Open University sociology lecturer moonlighting as a Steeleye Span roadie: dungarees and lumber shirt. You get the picture. Having listened to their first pair of cassettes, Myths & Legends of Wales and The Mound People, where found factual, academic texts are pared down to song lyrics that accompany no-fi acoustic backing and Appalachian style howled vocals, interspersed with found sound collages and random electric bleeps and buzzes, I was first in line for this year’s release, Folklore 1979. Again, it was cassette only, adding to their elusive aura, though I was astonished to see they were playing live, supporting Shovel Dance Collective, who are kind of like a good version of Bellowhead.

Milk Weed played first, doing the Myths & Legends of Wales set in chronological order. This is their most accessible and orthodox set, consisting of 8 Welsh folk tales set to banjo and guitar backing. They didn’t do The Mound People, which meant I didn’t get to hear their most famous number, Eel Grass, but instead finished with the brand-new Folklore 1979, an achingly elusive set of wildly pretentious legends, where the standout track is My Father’s Sheep is Dead, which must be about the most dismal title I’ve head since the old Rotherham United fanzine Mi Whippet’s Dead. All in all, this was more Lydia Lunch than Laura Nyro, but I found them beguiling and addictive to watch. I was delighted to be able to pick up copies of the earlier cassettes, Myths & Legends of Wales and The Mound People, especially repackaged for this tour. Unfortunately, it meant I couldn’t afford a Shovel Dance Collective CD that night, but I’ve subsequently ordered one and await its arrival with interest.

The problem with the Lubber Fiend for me is that it is miles from Haymarket bus station. On a Friday night I was disinclined to walk through town on my own, stone cold sober and a kick in the arse off 60 years old, so I took the 22.35 number 1 up to John Dobson Street and caught the 307 outside the Civic Centre. You see, I just find lairy, coked up youngsters a bit intimidating, even if 99% of them mean no harm. Sadly, my timorous nature meant I cleared off before Shovel Dance Collective finished their set. I’ve mentioned Bellowhead as a reference point, but that’s a lazy one as Shovel Dance are politically committed, rather just a diddly dee showband. There’s also 9 of them, same as Godspeed You! Black Emperor, which is a bonus in my book. They did a glorious, grindcore version of the Northumbrian coal mining song, Jowl, Jowl and Listen Lad, which I remember the Auld Fella singing along with on the Topic album Canny Newcassel, which I’m pleased to say I inherited. Even better was the last number I heard, The Bold Fisherman, which I swear could have been Peter Bellamy singing, so on point was the delivery. I found them to be a delightful, positive live experience and I wish I could have heard their whole set, but alas, I’m old and fearful.

And so, to Dragged Up. I’ve already referred to them in previous blogs, talking about their stupendous 2023 EP Hex Domestic and Missing Person single from earlier this year. Well, to add to that canon of superb garagey, post punk, trash thrash comes the flawless High on Ripple LP. It features 7 slices of louche, prime cheese steak punk attitude and sweet, spikey vocals, telling disinterested tales of crazy lives and events. Utterly excellent from start to finish and things got even better when they announced a gig at the Museum Vaults, possibly the only sunderland pub I feel comfortable in, on the 51^st anniversary of the Mackems winning the cup. It was also a weekend that the Tyne Tunnel was closed for repairs, causing Stagecoach to cancel buses from Shields to Jarrow, which meant I had to make an onerous trek by Metro. In the end it mattered little, as the laissez faire approach by the promoters was in keeping with it being a matinee gig.

Proceedings eventually kicked off with the reasonably impressive Pixies / Fugazi influenced House Proud, who managed to stay just the right side of metal and thrash, courtesy of spiky, angular rhythms and yowling vocals. I enjoyed them and bought their debut EP which, after one listen, certainly deserves another. I had hoped to see Toronto Blessing, of whom I’ve heard good things, but it’s a long way home when you’ve had half a dozen pints, so I called it a day after Dragged Up’s set and the chance for a chat with them, including the always gracious Simon Shaw, of Trembling Bells and Youth of America fame. I also completed my collection by picking up their long unavailable debut cassette, D/U.

Live, Dragged Up are even better than on record; when it’s fast, they’re telepathic in the understanding and when it’s slow, the sound hangs in the air like slow dissolving smoke. I like this band tremendously and can’t wait to see them again at The Cumberland on Friday 27 July.

Books:

As you’re no doubt aware, my primary 2024 reading task has been to read Ian Rankin’s complete published output and I’m now down to my last 4 Inspector Rebus novels before I can claim success in this endeavour. Obviously, there’ll be a lengthy blog about the old curmudgeon’s adventures in print when I reach that point. Equally obviously, I’ve still been reading other books. Having endured a start to the season that involved 4 successive cancellations, I could at least read about cricket if I couldn’t play the game. First off was a big book of nostalgic photos that came in a crate of dusty hardbacks, bequeathed to Tynemouth CC. Cricket’s Golden Age, selected by Duncan Steer, is a large format series of black and white plates from the likes of Hulton Picture Library and the Picture Post, mainly monochrome, of players and fans from the era of Gentlemen and Players. It’s inconsequential and utterly without commentary, but it’s an enjoyable wade through sepia-tinted nostalgia. Of rather more merit and showing considerably greater social comment, as a product of detailed research, is Start of Play, by the late Yale historian David Underdown, who examines the social conditions that helped the formation of the game in its early days in Hambledon and other rural villages in the Hampshire and Sussex areas, before the great migration to London based games, as the patronage of the aristocracy helped to make the game more than just idle relaxation for rural tyros. More contemporaneously, The Nightwatchman #45 contains its usual melange of themes and topics. Of particular interest were Ben Bloom’s lengthy piece on the development of cricket in Rwanda and Patrick Ferriday’s account of the perils and pleasures of running a small press, dedicated entirely to books about cricket.

Moby is a dick. That’s the only possible takeaway from his memoir Then It Fell Apart, which details his early upbringing with his dysfunctional, flaky hippie mother, following his drunken dad’s stupid suicide, intercut with stories of the fabulously wealthy drug addict cutting a swathe through New York privileged slacker society, before he got clean about a decade back. His alcohol intake is alarming, his drug use is genuinely staggering, but his repeated insistence on treating the women he beds then discards, like used Kleenex, is truly reprehensible. As regards his music, I’m only really familiar with Go and Play, and this book doesn’t encourage me to investigate his oeuvre and further enrich this entitled, self-indulgent, morally reprehensible narcissist.

Rory Waterman is a lecturer in English and Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University, as well as a very talented poet. I went to see Dirty 3 with him in November 2005 at the old Academy on Westgate Road. We also intend to take in a game at Ossett United, David Peace’s hometown team, at some point. How did our universes collide? Well, his late father Andrew Waterman, was my personal tutor at Ulster University. Waterman senior was a man to whose intellectual capacity I stood in awe. He was also, quite possibly, the most destructive, self-abasing man I’ve ever met. A bitter and incorrigible alcoholic, he was married 5 times, none of which lasted more than a few years, while he burned bridges, personally and professionally, with a kind of chronic lack of self-awareness and inability to accept responsibility for his actions, that was as predictable as it was wearying. Thankfully, Rory has inherited only the good qualities of his father and is carving out a writing career that extends now to 4 volumes of poetry, of which the latest, Come Here to this Gate, has just been published. The book is in three parts, the first a sequence about the death of his father, who succumbed to alcoholic dementia, examining the love, loss and sense of recrimination that such a difficult father provoked. It is truly a moving set of poems that judge and reflect without vengeance or sentimentality. I found it profoundly moving. I also enjoyed the second part of the book, consisting of poems that open various gates, or are forcibly restrained behind them, from the literal North and South Korean border to the borders between friends, and those imposed by photographs, memories, and paths taken and not taken. The third part is rather less taxing. A set of folk tales and ballads from Rory’s home county of Lincolnshire, rewritten in the modern argot. As part of my completist tendency, I also picked up Rory’s second collection, Sarajevo Roses, which is almost a contemplative travelogue as Rory takes us to Parma, Venice, Krujë, the Italian ghost-town Craco, the Vatican City and Sarajevo, which is twinned with Lincoln. Surrounded by the war-shaped, memorial landscapes of Europe, Rory considers those smaller wars and memorials one carries within, marks left by lovers, friends, relations, and past selves. It’s a genuinely thought-provoking collection and I’m delighted to see his poetry develop, in an almost proprietorial manner.

So, that’s it for now. We’ve got albums by Shellac, Dirty 3 and Shovel Dance Collective arriving soon, as well as the Stephen Pastel penned soundtrack to the play of This is Memorial Device. Books by Paul Hanley and several others also need to be read. See you in a couple of months.