tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40121303145806010662024-03-17T18:31:32.027-07:00Brilldreamshaun brilldreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105406234645321012noreply@blogger.comBlogger214125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4012130314580601066.post-41367169578401818812024-03-09T09:51:00.000-08:002024-03-09T09:54:06.012-08:00A Bitter Sweet Ecstasy: On In the Jingle Jangle Jungle by Joel Gion (White Rabbit books)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidWy8kMNBL3GCEBj0KJD6KNvieTZAC_VHnJ-rXVqv1ysvyX0FefCsvS8bDD5jfbev-7IxEAvQPnEQdEs2ZuVjlJJk2SrwP8WwY1GDkFpKuza7AIJ39VvHEYQYGqoVFgL_Pe_Vm0wbvK4AHEUNy0AYlWtg7h1Vpmsy_yhDxYSNwPCUiE1_9c7xWGVk9ZYI/s650/JG.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="650" height="197" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidWy8kMNBL3GCEBj0KJD6KNvieTZAC_VHnJ-rXVqv1ysvyX0FefCsvS8bDD5jfbev-7IxEAvQPnEQdEs2ZuVjlJJk2SrwP8WwY1GDkFpKuza7AIJ39VvHEYQYGqoVFgL_Pe_Vm0wbvK4AHEUNy0AYlWtg7h1Vpmsy_yhDxYSNwPCUiE1_9c7xWGVk9ZYI/s320/JG.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">You would be forgiven, after reading In
the Jingle Jangle Jungle by Joel Gion, to never ever want to even
entertain the idea of being in a band. In a book that makes James
Young's Nico:Songs They Never Play on the Radio seem like a jolly
boys outing, the Brian Jonestown Massacre percussionist reveals the
dark side of the entertainment business, the dark side of drugs and
the dark side of the dream.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">First of all, I think it's important to
state early on that this is an incredibly well written memoir and
brimming with the potential to be a cult classic. The book skips in a
distinctly Kerouacian rhythm (if Jack was into Slowdive) and is chock
full of down to earth/up in the sky anecdotes that land somewhere
between the gutter and the stars. It's all hip wordplay and raw
honesty delivered in shoulder shrugging innocence and has the air of
a daydream just starting to crystallise and solidify, only as a
reader you're never sure if the dream will ever come true.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Most of us (except the uber-hip) will
first have known Gion from Dig!, a documentary by Ondi and David
Timoner recording the then up and coming West Coast bands The Brian
Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. Both starting up (Gion's
writing on their initial kinship is genuinely touching) as an
influence to each other as co-conspirators in the revolution, the
inter band relationship sours however, as head Dandy Courtney Taylor
accidentally steers his band into being the next big thing in Europe
via a mobile phone advert whilst chief BJM Anton Newcombe steers his
band into heroin addiction and almost accidentally makes five of the
most interesting and brilliant records of a generation.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The film production is hell bent in
beaming out in fifty letters that Taylor is the pretentious middle
class art school wanker (in fairness a situation he really doesn't
help in some of his quotes and mannerisms. Even the way he runs is
laudable) while talking heads trip over themselves to tell us what a
genius Newcombe is as the footage tries it's best to display what a
smacked up dangerous violent clown he is (one of the many fights
captured is described by producer Muddy Dutton as 'a three ring
circus' and, really he's not wrong) and in honesty the footage is
both wrong and right. But imagine a film crew following you for four
years. How many examples of you being a prick could it fit into 120
minutes?</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
***</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">So the question many punters will be
faced with is, is the book worth reading if you've not seen Dig! Or
heard of BJM, and in my opinion the book has enough to stand on it's
own two feet. Gion skips the usual memoir 'I was born and raised
in..' blah blah blah (and lets be honest, that's usually the bit we
speed read) and takes us almost instantly to San Francisco and a
world of drugs, sleeping on floors and working in record shops. The
latter provides our hero with wizard scheme of dropping a card into
the record bag of any passing British (and the band are massive
Anglophiles. Listen to the relish as they say the words 'pub' or
'fish and chips' in interviews. Gion was just as massively into the
UK shoegaze scene as we were, only wearing hip 60's gear instead of a
the standard issue long sleeve t-shirt and floppy fringe) touring
musicians with the promise of a drug hook up, thus ensuring free gig
entry and back stage passes. Ironically this is probably the most
wide eyed and innocent portion of the book and provides us with it's
two funniest anecdotes, one involving The Mary Chains Jim Reid and
the other about accidentally permanently nobbling the career of young
Manchester hopefuls Oasis.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">That said, there is a lot for the BJM
and/or Dig! fan to feast on here. It's a delight to see Gion coming
across and real person and not just a one dimensional character in a
documentary. All of the band members are beautifully fleshed out in
print. Matt Hollywood, for example, slides from being an even bigger
dick than the film suggests into being a genuine comrade and
confidante. Newcombe is both represented both as a cool guy trying to
make great art and as a human fucking horror show. And really it's to
credit that he's not glossed over Newcombe's terrible traits and let
us make up our own minds based on the evidence. Dean and manager Dave
D come across as decent guys and you'll want to take Jeff home and
wrap him in a blanket.
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">But for all of my 'hey the literature's
great man' there is a definite rush when on page 111 you recognise
the opening scene of Dig! and it's a kin to walking into a TV set and
it's fun recognising that he's describing some of the incidents that
you have seen in the film. And despite the knowing winks to the
Dig!fan, (“he pulls out the unbroken of the two sitars from the
van”) it's the humble yet raw honesty that is the star of the show
here. People who think have seen him hitting a tambourine wearing
Bruce Lee shades and concluded he has the coolest job in the world
should read this book.
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The dark parts are genuinely and at
times disturbingly dark. From FBI drug bust near misses to being
homeless, penniless and starving, it does not paint a pretty portrait
of band life. You question (and this is very possibly the point of
the book) whether it's worth all this pain and suffering just to make
great art. It's amazing how all of the bad things, the dumpster
diving, the Christmas day spent drunk angry and alone, the
claustrophobia of the tour van and the petty fucking squabbles are
forgotten once he gets the call to pick up your tambourine because we
are making a record. But your heart breaks at Gion's realisation that
he's wasted three years of his life. Or has he?</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Ultimately I think, both Taylor and
Newcombe got their wish. Taylor got to be a huge pop start whilst
clinging onto a bohemian facade and Newcombe got to be the great
outsider artist still releasing BJM records on an independent label,
still touring globally to preach the good word, and occasionally,
still getting into an onstage fist fight.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">As for Gion, it's ironic that for all
of Courtney Taylor's literary pretensions, name dropping of Harper
Lee and Umberto Eco and naming an album after a Kurt Vonnegut novel,
it's Joel, the gutter boy, the tambourine man, who has written an
indisputably brilliant and evocative page turner of a memoir and a
bible for the new Beats.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Potential book of the year? Yeah baby!
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>shaun brilldreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105406234645321012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4012130314580601066.post-5814680628450276862024-02-15T10:54:00.000-08:002024-02-15T10:54:38.754-08:00This Crush is Crushing: My Maudlin Career by Camera Obscura<p></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">My memory, as I advance in years, is
slowly becoming more and more unreliable and scattily sieve like but
I can tell you exactly what I was doing on April the 20<sup>th</sup>
2009. I was on the train to Manchester to purchase My Maudlin Career,
the forth LP from Camera Obscura, from Piccadilly Records. I was
almost certainly wearing corduroy trousers.
</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br />
</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">I had in fact effected a similar ritual
for the bands predecessing record, Lets Get Out of This Country. I
was idly pissing about on the internet one day in 2006, scrolling
through the Teenage Fanclub message board, when I saw a thread
someone had put up basically saying he was bored of music and could
anyone recommend something? The very first reply was the sleeve for
LGOOTC. No further recommendation or explanation, just a jpeg of a
young lady looking slightly forlorn in front of some very impressive
wall paper. In an incredibly and unusually impulsive action, I went
to the train station that very afternoon to set off to buy it. It was
pretty obvious that nowhere in Shrewsbury would stock it, so off I
went. I'm not really one for kismet or fate or any of that but I knew
this was one of the records that would change, or at the very least
save, my life.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br />
</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">And so we find ourselves some three
years later in 2009 and on the train once again, though now things a
are little different. About a year and a half previous my Dad had
quite unexpectedly and very tragically died a week before the
Christmas of 2007. To say I found this devastating would be something
of an understatement. I had started, rather understandably in my
opinion, to drink quite heavily and quite often. It wasn't until I
found myself drinking my thirteenth pint of Guinness on night whilst
(and this but will always sum up this period for me) trying to read a
paperback book under the garish lights of an awful nightclub that I
realised how far I was slipping. This was the wake up call I had so
desperately required, and after a sharp reduction of alcohol and a
course of grief counselling I started to slowly and Bambi like get
myself back on my feet.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br />
</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">I was living on a house share at the
time of My Maudlin Careers' release, with my mate Titch, in a
Victorian terraced house in leafy-ish area of Shrewsbury called Belle
Vue. It was, and is, a lovely area with an odd mix of house shares,
young families and retired couples. It was small (our street was so
narrow the fire brigade used to drive their engines down it as a
training exercise) and quiet, the perfect place to get a head back
together. There was a little pub, the Prince of Wales, just around
the corner which did the best pint of Tribute I have ever tasted and,
if you got there early enough, a lock in with old men who seemed
genuinely glad of your company and always had a packet of crisps to
take back to the wife.
</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br />
</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">It was all very idyllic except for our
next door neighbour who was, in old parlance, built like a brick
shithouse but paradoxically spoke a but like Joe Pasquale. He was a
gym addict who we secretly suspected of partaking in steroids, which
would explain his temper. He was mostly always fairly nice to our
face (“Not bad? You?”) but would react to anything he deemed too
loud, walking up the stairs say, but smacking the daylights out of
the wall. If you really pissed him off, he would play his dance
music (always always the episode of the 'Dangerous' Dave Pearce Radio
One show which he must have taped directly off the radio) at a volume
so loud you would swear it was coming form your room. I was spared
the real horror though. Every Sunday at exactly one in the afternoon,
poor Titch had endure the sound of steroid man having sex with his
girlfriend. The noise he made, according to Titch, was similar to man
attempting to destroy a car with his bare hands. It would sometimes
last up to twenty minutes where post grunt it would become suddenly
and eerily silent. Then in celebration the Dave Pearce tape would
start.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br />
</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">In the January of
that year I had gingerly started to write a blog about music. It was
Marilyn, my grief counsellor's, idea to write. (So you want to be a
writer?/fantastic idea). Not as an outpouring of emotion or anything
but as a way of decluttering and easing a full and frantic mind. This
was a little after the time I had started to watch Camera Obscura
play live up and down the country as a sort of coping mechanism
against the grief. It was nice being around people bit not having to
interact with them unless I wanted too. Ever since I was a teenager I
found gigs a great place to defragment a mind and I found myself
gently being absorbed back into real life.
</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br />
</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">In search of CO live
dates I had stumbled across yet another message board called Anorak,
where I discovered something called 'indiepop'. It was a place where
I was not only discovering new and amazing music by the armful, I
also found people who needed and appreciated music just as much as I
did and clutched records to their bosoms as of their lives depended
on it, which in some cases it did. Indiepop and Anorak seemed like a
cosy scene, but with a razor sharp political edge. We could make
cupcakes but we could also print our own t-shirts and fanzines, put
on our own shows and tours and release our own records entirely by
our own endeavour and industry and entirely on our own terms. I found
myself writing about the bands that kept popping up and stealing my
heart not only because I knew the music press wouldn't cover them,
but because I totally and absolutely needed people to see how
incredible and precious these bands were. I genuinely adored them.
People baulked at the word 'twee', but we were precious and we were
cute and we were nice. The best comment I've read about indiepop and
indiepop people (and I wish I could remember who said it) was someone
baffled to how they got cast as dull bookish virgins because in this
persons experience indiepoppers gave the filthiest and most depraved
phone sex. There is definitely something in that.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br />
</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">I was quite enjoying my little life,
surviving on a diet of pasta, Josie Long DVD's, 'Allo Darlin'
records,Pall Mall reds, long, long walks, strong Yorkshire Tea and
writing about whatever band or label had popped into my life to make
it infinitely better. I was playing the living shit out of the first
Pains of Being Pure at Heart LP (released a month before My Maudlin
Career and signifying that indiepop was an internationalist movement)
when the news of a brand new Camera Obscura record broke out. I
erroneously reported in my blog that the record was called My
Modelling Career, which got me a polite but firm bollocking from
Carey and advice how I should wait for the band official
announcements in the future. It was a fair cop. What I didn't tell
Carey was, by some incredibly good fortune, I had a friend whose
flatmate worked for the NME, and subsequently received in the post a
CDR of the new album with a note wishing me well and begging me to
not to share the content and his mate could get sacked. This was the
bands first album for 4AD, a major leap from uber indie Elefant. With
a deep breath I put in the disc and pressed play.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br />
</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">Where Let's Get Out of This Country was
about escape and new things (though paradoxically with the best
homesick song ever released in the form of Country Mile) My Maudlin
Career was about self reflection and soothing calm and putting ones
self back together. It's perfect pop. Listen to the tinkles opening
the title track. It could be Abba. 'My maudlin career has come to an
end/I don't want to be sad again' for gods sake. It could have been
written for me. How easy it was to get lost in it's shimmering
cinematic sweep of strings, it's confiding and heart melting lyrics,
it's brass and sass. How easy to drift away into it's world of dusty
libraries and heartbreakers. You can almost hear the whir of the
cinema projector. My Maudlin Career is a balm for those who loved and
got their heart burnt, a road map for the sad and lost and people
simultaneously lonely and in love. A swooning cuddle of a record with
a knowing nod.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br />
</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: times;">And now years and tears later, I find
myself a father myself, still an admirer and lover of pop music but
less dependent on it's ability to rescue. I spend my days rooted
firmly in real life with the occasional excursion to the world of
pop, instead of vica-versa like I used to. But sometimes when all is
dark and quiet I put on headphones and put the needle on the record
and I remember. I remember.</span></p><br /><p></p>shaun brilldreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105406234645321012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4012130314580601066.post-29772053736723805292022-08-28T18:48:00.003-07:002022-08-28T18:48:46.010-07:00Mr.Eddis<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguwTqDLN6YF3JzFErfMSAYMiWMA4dolFczgx2NwNXyZicD0xhIKDHOoTl1QGUMJ8hm9Gil9XMDB7SBhzaBvafLDEjAL8uzr1H52FMZv5Bh0hYMba16EnTeaG2bTMAQ7ZtY4smgROunIcObfbddhsQEmyaqBB6Ymf3zh-o7HFdkadpBtMahY2hWlGBG/s800/eddis2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="536" data-original-width="800" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguwTqDLN6YF3JzFErfMSAYMiWMA4dolFczgx2NwNXyZicD0xhIKDHOoTl1QGUMJ8hm9Gil9XMDB7SBhzaBvafLDEjAL8uzr1H52FMZv5Bh0hYMba16EnTeaG2bTMAQ7ZtY4smgROunIcObfbddhsQEmyaqBB6Ymf3zh-o7HFdkadpBtMahY2hWlGBG/s320/eddis2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p> <span style="font-family: Calibri;">Most people knew him as Eddis, a single name like Madonna or Pele. But to me he was always Mr.Eddis. A name brought on from respect because he was older than me, because knew more about music than me and because he ran the gauntlet of getting a kicking from Teds, Skins and Mods so that we could freely listen to weird music and dress strangely.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">He had a unique dress sense. Clothes would be purchased not for the colour or fit, but because of the vibe they gave off, a vibe that only he could see or sense. “Feel the quality of that” he would say beaming, offering a sleeve of an old jacket that had a huge hole in the armpit and smelled vaguely of sheds. “Fucking beautiful”.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">He’s the only man I’ve ever seen wearing a cravat and a cagoule at the same time. And of course he pulled it off. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">He was a gentle soul. After an admirably forthright doctor had told him if he didn’t sort his shit out he would be dead in six months, he was happy to nurse half a lime and soda and tell old punk war stories, tales I was happy to lap up. He never ever talked to me about work or where I was living or anything the straights talk about, It was never ever how I made or spent my money. It was always about what I was putting my heart into, and I loved him for that. “Who have Town got this weekend?” “Bournemouth Mr.Eddis” “I saw Penetration there once” and away would go.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Not that he wasn’t principled mind. He was a punk, a vegetarian, a socialist, firmly anti fascist and a feminist. He adored women in the same way the Egyptians worshipped cats, with a mixture of awe and love. He had a massive respect for female punk and ska singers, though Polly Styrene out of X Ray Specs was his favourite. He would talk of her in the hushed reverent tones normally reserved to discussing God. He loved hearing about my daughter and delighted in hearing how much she loved school. He wallowed in hearing the minutiae of bringing up a baby. “Tell me about changing her nappy, that must feel fucking brilliant”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">He was a funny man with a arid dry sense of humour. His black/white right/wrong almost childlike sense of the world would have me in stitches. On Eric Clapton (“It shouldn’t have been his lad who fell out of the window, it should have been him. And I don’t want it to be instant, I want him to lie there thinking about what a racist cunt he is”). On a member of notorious fascist Oi! Punks Skrewdriver. (“He got brain cancer didn’t he? Let’s hope he didn’t die to quickly”) all delivered in that slow monotone. One of the last times I saw him was a baking hot day and I was racing home for an ice cream and a lie down. I passed him eating lunch in his pink shades. “Alright Mr.Eddis? Hot one innit?”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">“Well” he said slowly sipping on a can of Lilt “depends on how quickly you’re moving don’t it?”</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">He was evangelical about music to the point of Stalinism. I remember him stopping mid sentence, putting his drink down and walking out of the pub because someone had the audacity to put Fleetwood Mac on the jukebox. He got punk in a way I can only dream of understanding. It made and defined him. Not in the mohican and gob sense of pub, but the DIY and community sense, the principles and the politics, the submergence in art.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">When I heard of Mr.Eddis’s passing my initial reaction was selfish, I thought of how sad I was and how much I would miss him and how Shrewsbury, the Nags and life wouldn’t be the same without him, but the real actual tragedy is we are lost in this world full of shit and horror, and we need more men like Eddis, not less. How cruel it is to take him away from us, this gentle, caring, wise and funny man. That’s what I find unfathomably cruel and unforgivable. </span></p>shaun brilldreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105406234645321012noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4012130314580601066.post-69424565022921912052022-01-23T03:28:00.015-08:002022-01-24T14:15:21.231-08:00But Enough About Tw*e<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjQQX2JMRBrw7wY99Htnj6JLdPykua05bdLraXsrd9SA_9ST5IQdMI62lsCJwE-IeckXvubVmUFfIQA2uXDqWNFM1P3PIR3FNAVmijb2jTvJneZBq8NqpNquMGKg7BlGTmLJSs_Qy_2VHtKqHe7supJ1LFCsNqmel99pHe2ERYk-BHN_jO7RMQVd4io=s1280" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="760" data-original-width="1280" height="286" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjQQX2JMRBrw7wY99Htnj6JLdPykua05bdLraXsrd9SA_9ST5IQdMI62lsCJwE-IeckXvubVmUFfIQA2uXDqWNFM1P3PIR3FNAVmijb2jTvJneZBq8NqpNquMGKg7BlGTmLJSs_Qy_2VHtKqHe7supJ1LFCsNqmel99pHe2ERYk-BHN_jO7RMQVd4io=w482-h286" width="482" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Deptford Soul Club</td></tr></tbody></table><p>There is currently a 'twee' revival in America. You can tell because twenty something girls are dressing like Zooey Deschanel in their Tik-Toks and forty something men are writing about Sarah records.</p><p>The latest piece, by Ian Wang, <a href="https://tribunemag.co.uk/2022/01/twee-fashion-indie-music-industry-sarah-records">https://tribunemag.co.uk/2022/01/twee-fashion-indie-music-industry-sarah-records</a> (despite a header photo so inappropriate it almost runs as a paradox against the actual text. You won't sell political pop with a photo of Stuart Murdoch's masturbation fantasy) is very, very good. If the brief was 'describe Sarah records to someone who has never heard of the Field Mice' then it more than succeeded. It's a great read. It's fresh twist, brilliantly, was to give props to Decolonise fest and to Sandy Gill, someone who for the past decade or so has been a wonderful talisman into the calling out of the good, the bad and the ugly in the indiepop scene. </p><p>I remember vividly the blog post by the owner of a particularly cuddly indiepop label in America, about how much hip hop disgusted him. Now, we have surely learned enough about Morrissey to hear alarm bells about someone publicly airing their views about their hatred towards black music and black culture. Not only does such an article exclude people who are non-white from their Utopian little scene, it also shows a frankly bananas narrow mindedness towards music. You think Blueboy were political mate? Go and play a Public Enemy record.</p><p>I also a remember a piece from Sheffield, England. The gist was that their lovely little indiepop night* was ruined because a 'townie' man dressed in casual wear asked for an Arctic Monkeys record. I'll admit I took this rather personally. Despite of having a musical taste similar to the indiepop DJ, I have much more in common with guy asking for Arctic Monkeys. We came from the same estates, stood on the same football terraces, He could very easily been my brother. I had never seen class as an issue in the indiepop scene before, but this was pretty clear, if you are from a council estate then you'll be viewed with suspicion, and I suddenly felt pretty unwelcome. So if I attended your night in a Postcard t-shirt I would be OK, but if asked for the Stone Roses I was clearly an oik and beneath contempt?</p><p>Fuck that, listen, despite Ian Brown coming unhinged recently I will always hold the Roses dearly to my heart for two reasons, One, they made being mad keen about music in a rough state secondary school acceptable, not being ashamed of really, really loving a record was a big deal to me at 14 and I'll never forget that. Two, from Roses interviews I learned about Situationism, the Clash, Jackson Pollock, James Brown, Sylvia Plath, Derrick May and the Parisian May '68 riots. I learned about politics from Sarah records of course, but that was when I was in the 6th form faintly well read, but the Roses got to me when I was 14, when it mattered. I can hold my head above water in a discussion about culture or ethics or values. That's not thanks to school or university, but records and books. The education of the working class.</p><p>The end of Wang's piece discusses the future of the indiepop scene. To save the soil covering indiepop's coffin completely is not down to the elders sitting in rocking chairs telling the same old grandad stories about the past. Yes, fucking yes, of COURSE Sarah were and are important and vital, but not as important as the future.</p><p> At the moment in England there is a club night called The Deptford Soul Club, and basically it's 19 year old kids getting into Northern Soul music. Instead of following, the talc and baggy trousers rules and cliches of people reliving their past in the current Soul scene, it's a fresh, inclusive, anything-goes exciting night out, were the youth go and get drunk and dance to incredible music. And this, essentially, is what chin stroking articles like this and Ian's are forgetting. How much fun the music was. Obviously, it's only fun if it's fun for absolutely everyone, but I hope against hope this is the future. Young politically and well read kids ignoring our old duffering and putting on nights where they can dance to Atta Girl and Sensitive with big huge grins on their faces, whatever their colour, gender, sexuality or upbringing may be, in happiness, togetherness and safety. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.</p><p>Public Enemy t-shirts, Sarah t-shirts, and Stone Roses t-shirts on the same dance floor. Imagine that. </p><p><br /></p><p>* The indiepop night in question was not, for the record, Offbeat, which is a very cool Sheffield institution and run by a man I have a lot of love and respect for. </p>shaun brilldreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105406234645321012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4012130314580601066.post-34089728804807176892021-11-16T12:04:00.000-08:002021-11-16T12:04:21.496-08:00Indietracks: This is the final stop. All change please, all change.<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifxCpZPNDfi6BjeKIr8sK22lX13Q8bzlUW1wdDybU76B5o-np8sE6gtyXLMB4uzgJU49VU7jqYcc5QvfcYb0865TEcBJGRmhM18MVCVkMwBCnVdn-XwgaezgVCWN32kd4GiLuu429bPYM/s474/trk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="316" data-original-width="474" height="273" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifxCpZPNDfi6BjeKIr8sK22lX13Q8bzlUW1wdDybU76B5o-np8sE6gtyXLMB4uzgJU49VU7jqYcc5QvfcYb0865TEcBJGRmhM18MVCVkMwBCnVdn-XwgaezgVCWN32kd4GiLuu429bPYM/w583-h273/trk.jpg" width="583" /></a></div><br /><br />A fair few years ago, despite repeated attempts at ducking out of it, I went with a girlfriend to her friends wedding. At the 'do, the only three people I knew were busy dancing to Whitney Houston and I got stuck with a nice but dull man called Greg who worked in insurance and tried quite desperately and heroically to get a conversation going. All avenues fell flat. "The football? Ah, more of a rugger man myself". In desperation to find some common ground he chatted excitedly about his holiday, two weeks in southern Italy, about how much it cost, what he would do and what he would see. He finished his little speech and looked at me in hope of a reply. How could I tell a man like Greg that I like to spend my hard earned holiday time at railway heritage site, sleeping in a tent, drinking cloudy ale and listening to bands he'd never heard of? I smiled weakly and got a round in.<p></p><p>All things end of course, and the loss is sad, but I feel particularly devastated about the demise of Indietracks. There were other festivals of course, and enjoyed them all immensely, but Butterly provided something else entirely. I'm not sure I've been anywhere that made so unequivocally and unashamedly happy. It had it's own magic. By it's nature magic is explainable and undefinable, and for years I've been trying to pinpoint exactly what made it different, and the closest I can get is it provided a teasing glimpse of a world where Pink Floyd and the Conservative party had never existed. What made going home and back to work again so brain mashingly difficult was that after 51 weeks of being the minority weirdo who liked books and bizarre music, we got one weekend to be in the majority. And bloody hell it felt good. Every years on the bus home I would have the same day dream that all the Indietracks people moved on to a remote islnd together and live out the rest of our lives in perfect harmony. Why wasn't my town full of funny, clever, intelligent and beautiful people with an amazing taste in music? Why can't everyone else in the country be so lovely and so sound? Why was this perfect society flashed in front of us and taken so cruely away?</p><p>I'll miss the owls and the beer and the people and can crush and the little sets in the train, the church and the merch tent. I'll miss being deliriously happy to buy pizza and curry and records. I'll miss the drunken smiley haze and the feeling of beatific calm as the sun set slowly behind the big speakers. I'll miss the dust and the little train set and the daft and pointless drug dog. I'll miss the drinking going on way after the campsite disco had finished, in the hut, outside the cafe by the vending machines and in the whisky fort. I'll miss the greatest bar staff in the universe, the lovely women in the campsite cafe and wolfing down a pale breakfast with a huge grin. I'll miss the walk back to the campsite in the dark, the excited chatter, the torch lights dancing over everyone's trainers. I'll miss seeing my favourite bands in the world and falling in love with a dozen others. I'll miss the BEST INDIETRACKS EVER posts on Anorak, and I'll even miss the joy and hurrumphs as the latest line up is announced. I'll miss the people and the camadre and making new friends and catching up with old ones. I'll miss having the very very best time and never wanting to go back to work ever again.</p><p>What I should have said to Greg, while grabbing on to his lapels, is look here mush, Look how long and hard Nat and Andy et all work so we can have our weekend of utopia. Look how bloody happy it makes us. Shove your fortnight in Italy up your arse Greg lad. Give me a weekend listening to pop with my pals any day. But of course I didn't. He's never been. How could he possibly understand?</p>shaun brilldreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105406234645321012noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4012130314580601066.post-44465482716585533222021-02-03T07:37:00.002-08:002021-02-03T07:37:27.098-08:00Death at One's Elbow-On Mayflies by Andrew O'Hagan<p> <span style="font-family: Calibri;">A few years ago, I went to see The Jesus and Mary Chain in Manchester. In between the support and the brother Reed coming on I got talking to a group of five Glaswegian lads. ‘Alright big man? Youse like Mary Chain aye?’. They were all about 20, drunk, excited and wide eyed at the wonder of pop. We got talking about our favourite bands, favourite beers, football (Shrewsbury Town had a couple loanees from the Scottish leagues at the time. Their knowledge of these very minor players was intimidating), books and politics. The very stuff of life. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">On the way out after, one of them grabbed me by the arm. ‘You coming to 42’s big man? Come on! COME ON!’. I was coming up forty at that point, way too old for the 42</span><sup><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes'; vertical-align: super;">nd</span></sup><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> Street nightclub, but got very rapidly swept up in their lust for the craic, their absolute determination to rinse the evening of every possibility and moment and their youthful joy and gang like bonhomie. It was agreed we would have a drink at their hotel while a couple of them changed shirts. I was expecting a pint at a bar, but we ended in their room, a small twin between the five of them full of rucksacks, socks and empty crisp packets. The ‘drink’ turned put to be two big bottles of vodka and one of those small bottles of Coke you get with a meal deal. We were all, to put it mildly, slaughtered afterwards and failed to get in the the club (‘Come on man! We’ve come from Scotland special’). We did end of one of those Manc clubs that pumps out the usual Madchester/Factory fodder, however. The lads knew every word to every song, and despite their failure to impress the local girls, a good time was had by all.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The level of debauchery was so intense I think it would be unlikely I’d recognise these lads again if I saw them, and vice versa. But what always comes to mind when I think of them was their youthful passion for music and companionship. I asked them why they came all the to Manchester when they played Glasgow the night before, but it turned out whilst four of them got a Glasgow ticket, one didn’t. So instead they cancelled them and got five for Manchester instead.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">These five lads came almost instantly to mind whilst reading Andrew O’Hagan’s breathtaking novel Mayflies. Act one is set in Scotland in the summer of 1986. Two friends, Jimmy (or Noodles) and Tully decide to leave their boring lives full of angry fathers, the dole and and small town ennui by escaping to Manchester for the weekend, the weekend of the The Festival of the Tenth Summer, a gig at the G Mex curated by Tony Wilson. They are dreamers, Jimmy and Tully. Their world full of records, booze, film quotes and football. Their whole existence a determined and direct reaction of absolute disgust to what Thatcher had turned working class Scotland into.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">O’Hagan captures not only youthful friendship but the period where it was OK to like Morrissey note perfectly. I was not only impressed the detail of the records and venues of the period but deft little touches of juvenilia. Mentions of Merrydown cider and Victoria Wines sent me reeling back to my own boyhood, a time where illicit booze and swapped records were the very epicentre of my existence, a time when serious thought was put into wearing the right t-shirt. It was a badge of honour, a key to identity and a vain hope of attracting like minded souls. It evokes not the time period as such, but the period of young manhood exquisitely, and nails it down with craftsman like precision. The dialogue between the group of lads is pitch perfect, and very cleverly and subtly brilliant. In between the piss taking, the top three’s the arguments and the genuine love are lines so wonderful you want to tattoo them on your arm.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Act two is a much more sombre affair. Set in Autumn of 2017, Jimmy is now James and unsurprisingly a revered writer living in London, and Tully an English teacher at a local comp in Glasgow. At a dinner party celebrating his novelist friend, James gets a phone call from Tully. It’s bad news.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I don’t want to give too much away, so if you’re thinking of reading the book leave us now and come back when it’s read. OK?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">So</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The second act is a perfectly written acknowledgement of the banality and quiet brutality of death. The perverse push me-pull you of wanting a loved one at peace and not wanting to say goodbye. The piss taking and mischief between Jimmy and Tully is still there, but underneath is cruel inevitability rather than hope. We think death as something powerful and poetic, but when it’s all said and done, underneath the harsh brightness of the lights and silence of hospital corridors it’s something harsh, unjust and maddeningly untriumphant. A sobering and startling reminder that all we have, all we really ever have, is love and the now. This book is a testament to the joy and importance of love and companionship and the fragility and conciseness of life. I implore you to read it. </span></p>shaun brilldreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105406234645321012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4012130314580601066.post-17275738641359935532020-05-16T08:59:00.004-07:002020-05-24T01:39:28.036-07:00Astrid and Stu<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Klaus Voorman buried his fists in the pockets of his duffle coat ,bowed his head and kept walking. He was stomping the streets of Hamburg after a debate with his friend Jurgan Vollmer and his girlfriend Astrid Kirchherr got a little too heated and flamed into an argument. It was not uncommon for the 20 year olds to get into very long, very serious debates, they all identified as an Existentialist. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The gateway in Existentialism was a feeling of “Existential dread”, a baseless loose feeling of disorientation in an apparently meaningless and absurd world. For the three young German’s, the subconscious guilt of the horrors of the second world war had, on surface at least, robbed them of the folly of youth and turned them into ultra serious, contemplative young people. The Exis’s uniform was to dress head head to toe in black clothes and look incredibly serious. Guilt was still rife, young fun and excitement a taboo. What could change to interject these kids with vitality, with lust, with verve, with life? Klaus turned left, and his feet carried him into St Pauli. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Stuart Sutcliffe sat on the red leather seat backstage at the Kaiserkeller club and ran his calloused fingers over the strings of his Hofner President 500/5 bass guitar and let out a yawn so loud it temporally drowned out the the muffled thudding of the band round the corner. The young Scotsman was knackered. P<span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">laying from 8:30-9:30, 10 until 11, 11:30-12:30, and finishing the evening playing from one until two o'clock in the mornin</span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">g</span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;"> was taking its toll. </span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">He could feel Paul's eyes burning into him. There had been another row last night, about Stuart’s inability to play his bass properly. He was right of course. Stuart had started to play with his back to the crowd in to disguise his fumbled bass playing from any proper musicians watching. </span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">“Maybe if he took those bloody sunglasses off he could see what he was doing”he had heard Paul moaning to John. But he was no fool. He knew the the girls loved the sunglasses and tight leather trousers. He noticed them gather closer to the stage when he did his solo spot of‘Love Me Tender’. It had not escaped Paul's attention either. But John always, much to Paul's bile, take Stu ‘s side. </span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">Bruno Koschmider enters the room and starts screaming‘Mach Schau! Mach Schau!’through his moustache.</span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">John squeezed Stuart’s shoulder and they made their way through the gloom and noise , past the stripper, and on to the stage. Klaus lifted his face from his glass and looked up.</span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">Astrid was dressed in a black polo neck and squeezed into a tight, tight leather skirt and fishnets. In front of Jurgan and behind Klaus she descended the steps of the Kaiserkeller into the loud, dark furnace below. She was nervous, the Reeperbhan was dangerous place, full of </span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">prostitution</span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">, drunks and fighting. It was no place for young Existentialists. But she was curious. Klaus had returned from his sulk practically foaming at the mouth about this English band playing rock and roll. Rock and roll? But Klaus was trained in classical piano! He was </span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">insistent</span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;"> though. You have to see them! You must! And not wishing to look scared she agreed. She paid her money and walked into the dark, packed, smelly room. </span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">On stage, John Lennon wearing black leather trousers, a black t-shirt and a toilet seat draped around his neck, stuck his left index finger under his nose and stretched out his right arm. “Hiel Hitler!”he screamed into the mic. The war had also deeply effected John, he was born during an air raid, but it was the death of his mother two years earlier that cut him deepest. Not for John were the guilt or sadness the Existentialists found solace in, his was more of a blind and violent fury with a bitter, sarcastic and cruel chip on his shoulder. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; letter-spacing: 0pt;">“</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; letter-spacing: 0pt;">Maybe we should go</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; letter-spacing: 0pt;">”</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; letter-spacing: 0pt;">she whispered in Jurgans ear. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; letter-spacing: 0pt;">“</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; letter-spacing: 0pt;">What? I can</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; letter-spacing: 0pt;">’</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; letter-spacing: 0pt;">t hear you!</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; letter-spacing: 0pt;">”</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; letter-spacing: 0pt;">.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;"> Just as furiously as the song started it finished and the boy with the bass guitar who had his back to the audience for the whole song turned around to share a joke in Johns ear. Astrid looked at his sunglasses and smile and knew. She just knew.</span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">Astrid goes to bed that night and thinks of a way of getting closer to the band. She bought them all a beer after their set and blushed as they all chatted her up. John distant and sarcastic, loud and funny but oddly isolated. Pete the drummer, the girls favourite back in Liverpool is out of his depth here and he knows it. Paul is polite and curious and charming and George boyish and shy. But it’s Stu who takes her fancy though. </span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">He’s honest enough to admit he’s no musician but he is an artist. A very good one John tells her. Stuart is just along for the ride, to have a laugh with his mates. He doesn’t want to be in the biggest band in the world. That’s more John’s thing. Pipe dreams. He does, he tells her, want to be the best painter.</span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">Then suddenly it hits her. She silently thanks Reinhard Wolf, her old her tutor who persuaded her to drop her fashion design course and take up photography. She has an eye and gift for black and white photography, all of her friends tell her so. </span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">The next day she takes her Rolliecord 24.2 camera and the band to a fairground at the Hamburger Dom muncipal park. It was a master stroke. The lads loved the idea of having a free session for promo photo’s, with the added bonus of getting to flirt with that arty German girl. </span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">Up to that point, all pictures of the Beatles were snaps shots taken by mates. All of them fail to capture the magic on stage. The boys always look a little nervous and overly showy, as if dropping their guard for a second would make all these dreams disappear into a puff of smoke. Astrid’s photographs not only capture the period in incredible clarity, but she also manages to hold up a mirror the group. Until then all the daydreams of their image are in their head. Look, say Astrid’s pictures, look how cool you are, look how sexy.</span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">Two years later on the plane to </span><span style="color: #2f3b4d; letter-spacing: 0pt;">Flughafen Hamburg</span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">, John takes out an rereads his letters from Stuart. He can</span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">'</span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">t wait to see his pal and there’s lots to catch up on.</span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">The Beatles run in the Reeperbahn came to a sticky end when George was busted for being under age and the group is deported. Back in Blighty the Beatles, having their craft honed after playing hour after hour in Germany, are the best group in Liverpool and attract the attention of local </span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">entrepreneur Brian Epstein. As John sits on the plane, plans are afoot to record. Their first single, Love Me Do, will be released in six months time.</span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">The record will, however, not have the playing of Stuart Sutcliffe on it. When George turned eighteen and the Beatles returned to Hamburg last year, Stu decided to leave the band to concentrate on painting, sportingly lending Paul McCartney his bass. Before the </span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">deportation</span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;"> </span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">Astrid and Stuart fell deeply in love, and though Astrid felt guilty (what is it about Existentialism and guilt?) about doing so whilst still in a </span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">relationship</span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;"> with Klaus. She moves Stu in with her and her mum. Klaus, sportingly, takes the break up on the chin. They were too beautiful not to be together.</span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">Stu had chosen wisely. He is </span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">awarded a postgraduate scholarship</span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;"> </span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">and</span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;"> enroll</span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">s</span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;"> at Hochshule Fur bildende Kunste Hamburg</span><span style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); letter-spacing: 0pt;">,</span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;"> where he studie</span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">s</span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;"> under the tutelage of Eduardo Paolozzi</span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">. Though his moody and dark art sold for serious money back in Liverpool, his Hamburg paintings are influenced by </span><span style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); letter-spacing: 0pt;">British and European abstract artists </span><span style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); letter-spacing: 0pt;">contem</span><span style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); letter-spacing: 0pt;">porary with </span><span style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); letter-spacing: 0pt;">the Abstract Impressionist</span><span style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); letter-spacing: 0pt;"> movement in the United States</span><span style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); letter-spacing: 0pt;">. </span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">His work from this period will later hang in the Liverpool Walker Gallery as well as the homes of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. </span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">Astrid and Stuart continue to live with Astrid’s mum, they exchange rings and become engaged. H</span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;">e paints and she works part time to support him. She knows how good his work is, how important it can be. He complains of headaches but keeps working working working in his studio in Astrid’s loft. The paintings improve daily. The future is fascinating and bright. He misses his friend John, and can’t wait to hear what the band are up to.</span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; letter-spacing: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The safety belt lights flashes and John folds Stuart’s letter and put’s it in his pocket. When the plane finally lands in Hamburg he races off it in search of his mate Stu. He doesn’t see him, but he does see Astrid wearing Stu’s leather jacket. He see’s she is alone and that she is crying.</span></span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #202122; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 10pt; letter-spacing: 0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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shaun brilldreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105406234645321012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4012130314580601066.post-1535810843376818912020-02-18T08:34:00.000-08:002020-05-24T01:40:33.630-07:00Andrew Weatherall 1963-2020<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">The last time I saw Primal Scream live was in Sheffield when Rachel was about three weeks pregnant (Primal Scream, not bad for a first gig Martha) and it was a bit of a disaster. Rachel’s mate had failed to read the ticket properly and we ended going in just as the encores started. I spent the evening feeling paranoid that some pisshead would barge into Rach and the Scream were a bit lumpy and static compared to previous gigs going back three decades. </span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Afterwards, over a pint (or orange juice depending on your present state of propagation) I felt a bit bad and conceded that it was possibly my reception of the music that was floored rather than what was coming off the stage. Except the tepid version of Loaded. That was unforgivable.</span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #1c1e21; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0pt;">One my most treasured memories of JLH was playing Loaded back to back with I'm Losing More.. at the very first night and the whole flo</span><span style="background: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: #1c1e21; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0pt;">or just totally got into it. I remember looking at John Kertland, both of us grinning and thinking 'fucking hell, we got this'. As a result we played it at every night we did. Not the coolest record at the time, but we never cared about cool, we cared about fucking genius.</span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">How can anyone recreate a record as perfect as Loaded? It still sounds like it was made tomorrow. It still sounds fresh, sexy and vital. Deadly serious and devilishly fun. It’s still sounds like teenage car journeys and Anita Cash dancing in slow motion in dry ice in 1992. It’s still Just Want to Dance the Night Away by the Mavericks for perpetually cool and the seekers of thrills. It still makes me get up and dance. If Loaded was Andrew Weatherall’s only artistic contribution he’d always be an icon. But he was so much more. </span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Like all indie kids, the first time I heard the name Andrew Weatherall it was in the credits of Screamadelica. I thought he was a producer, someone who added a bit of shine and radio friendly-ness to a record. I had no idea he actually created the music himself. The second time I heard his name he was being described as DJing at an Acid House party wearing a Wonder Stuff t-shirt. This was something I could relate too and this was the secret of Andrew Weatherall’s genius.</span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">I remember reading a magazine, probably the NME, with Norman Cook, Pete Tong and Paul Oakenfold on the cover and in the article they were basically saying dance music was the future, guitar music was shit and anyone who listened to it was an idiot. Andrew Weatherall came from a club culture but had an incredible ear and adoration for music. Not dance music, not indie music, music full stop. It was an incredible gift. His ability to blend genres, blend ideas, to take little bits and make something beautiful and new was talismanic and inspiring as fuck. </span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 12pt;">It was Weatherall who reviewed the second Primal Scream LP and banged on and on about how great the ballads where when everyone else had written them off. It was him who made the remix of Soon by MBV, and a record that by rights shouldn't even exist. The idea you could create a club banger from a shoegaze band on the same label as The Jazz Butcher and The Loft? Incredible.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">But this was Andrew Weatherall. Constantly and consistently (he never stopped, he recently reworked a single by indie band The Orielles) pushing boundaries, reaching for the stars and seeing how far he could go and what he could get away with. He will, of course, be remembered for making music that made clubs full of people go mental and his impeccable taste. I’ll always remember him for making dance music you can actually sit down and listen to and inviting skinny awkward indie kids to the party. </span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Come together as one, I cant think of a more perfect epitaph. </span></div>
shaun brilldreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105406234645321012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4012130314580601066.post-45103076610286191482020-01-31T14:15:00.001-08:002020-05-24T01:40:53.624-07:00The Private Memoirs and Confessions of the Just Joans<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj35AmSaCZtzLod6v1pnLPGdpvpQO4cGVnAx8UoQGiOe1dgfeFbG3GOiLK3evPANugZd-G_lUOzrDnY1NO8XPi0FVJI0ve-ec4qHyR1QzWE6qxF_IHF71b1qr0-Dgij746jGc84IrXLy6Y/s1600/jj.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="900" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj35AmSaCZtzLod6v1pnLPGdpvpQO4cGVnAx8UoQGiOe1dgfeFbG3GOiLK3evPANugZd-G_lUOzrDnY1NO8XPi0FVJI0ve-ec4qHyR1QzWE6qxF_IHF71b1qr0-Dgij746jGc84IrXLy6Y/s320/jj.jpg" width="180" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 11.0000pt;">For those of you who don’t know (or own an Arctic Monkeys record) Motherwell’s Just Joan’s are indiepop royalty. Named after the Daily Record agony Aunt, they write tender, razor sharp songs about actual real life, often incorrectly called Miserablist when they are in fact Realist. They are lead by brother and sister Katie and David Pope (kind of a White Lightening Stripes) and their shows are funny and true and as a punter you feel part of the Just Joans family. People look to their music to get a feel of what’s going on in Scotland the same way people looked to Public Enemy to see what was happening in Detroit. It’s thanks to them a whole generation proudly drinks Buckfast from a bottle and knows what an ‘empty’ is. Their songs are delivered with tongues placed so steadfastly in cheek and with great fists full of salt, its easy to forget what talented songwriters they actually are. Indeed, in If You Don’t Pull and What Do We Do Now? they have two bona fide, 24ct anthems. Underestimate them at your peril.</span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 11.0000pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 11.0000pt;">It was somewhat jarring to realise that last time the postman delivered a Just Joans LP, it was realised on Wee Pop! records. To me. Wee Pop was a talisman, an icon, of the high tide mark, the very peak of indiepop when it seemed there was a new record, band or label to get excited about every week, life revolved around getting drunk with your pop heroes in tiny rooms above pubs and the summers were as endless as the possibilities. Nostalgia? Most certainly, but its hard not to hark back to a time before brexit and Morrissey turning out to be an absolute prick. As MJ Hibbett but it so succinctly recently, we really are ten years older and the band we loved really are dead. Do we actually need the Just Joans?</span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 11.0000pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 11.0000pt;">Well on evidence of this LP, the answer is a resounding yes. ‘Confessions’ is the record they have been aching to make. I despise the word ‘mature’ (it makes me think of moldy cellars) but it really does fit like a glove. Everything has gone up around ten notches since the last record. The singing is confident rather than bashful, the songwriting bristles with verve and ability. Take the chorus of Wee Guys (Bobby’s got a punctured lung) which absolutely soars and is so strong I had to check they hadn’t nicked it. See also the beauty of the strings on Dear Diary, I Died Again Today which shine the song up like a diamond. The lyrics are incredible too. When Nietzche Calls is an arty goth 101 but no less beautiful for it. The heart wrenching The Older I Get, The More I Don’t Know is the song M*rriss*y wishes he wrote. The swooning The One I Loathe The Least is gorgeous as it is wise (The record stores have closed their doors/the cinema shut down/and every bus is calling us/to pack up and leave town).</span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 11.0000pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 11.0000pt;">The Private Memoirs and Confessions of Just Joans will hopefully make the band realise just how talented they are. Just Joans have produced a proper grown up record that bares repeated listening and should find it’s place amongst the annals of Caledonian pop music. If Stuart Murdoch isn't jealous of this record, he really should be.</span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 11.0000pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
shaun brilldreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105406234645321012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4012130314580601066.post-18478602330233148832019-11-13T06:39:00.002-08:002020-05-24T01:41:28.120-07:00Martha, Manchester Gorilla 10/11/19<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbQTV63FXhB9OM5ar5fp7JOGdfauJm2SrX7g2YAotMmH59CHiVZf8wN3cwrQsHJQZgxeeKDuXgR4RJ7fnbPQsnHvLXY3MzLWxejumVfVfCSJLGg4PWgNkpcluzvU0BAHMp8O8yVYsCeGc/s1600/martmcr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbQTV63FXhB9OM5ar5fp7JOGdfauJm2SrX7g2YAotMmH59CHiVZf8wN3cwrQsHJQZgxeeKDuXgR4RJ7fnbPQsnHvLXY3MzLWxejumVfVfCSJLGg4PWgNkpcluzvU0BAHMp8O8yVYsCeGc/s320/martmcr.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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“<span style="font-family: "vani" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This
is a very, very, very old song” says JC introducing Standing Where
It All Began, and in the terms of tonight’s crowd I am a very,
very, very old man.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "vani" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Martha
could have been made for me. Their soft, oddly comforting Durham
accents are the same as my nan's, they share my dad's politics and my
mum's level headedness. I first heard the name on the lips of Ace
Bushy Striptease, a localish and rather wonderful noise pop band who
struggled to describe just how wonderful they were. I had crush on
them after the first play of their EP (self released on Discount
<span style="color: #252525;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Horse
records) and by the time I found out that 1978, Smilin</span></span></span>g
Politely and Gretna Green were about poet/activist Audre Lorde and
the 1915 <span style="color: #252525;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Quintinshill
rail disaster, respectively, it was a full blown love affair. I
started to notice Mart</span></span></span>ha stickers on guitars and
flight cases. Every band seemed to adore them. Not just because their
music is incredible but because they are genuinely warm, funny,
unassuming people. It wasn't long before they were my favourites too.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "vani" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Gorilla
in Manchester is big, and cavernous and it's possible to keep you’re
coat on and not be cold. Not quite as big as Heaven in London, a 1200
capacity venue Martha filled the night before, but certainly big
enough. For someone who once witnessed Martha entertain 20 citizens
of Leamington Spa in a matinee show, it's nothing short of a thrill
so them in such a lofty position. Bloody hell, they deserve it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "vani" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">After
wonderfully entertaining sets from Wormboys (a winning mix of
Throwing Muses and early PJ Harvey. Halt That Rattle is song worthy
of your attention) and Orchards (a No Doubt-esque troupe of good
vibes that I confidently predict will be flooring them on the main
stage at Indietracks very soon) Martha slink on stage to a heroes
welcome. And really it's the crowd that make tonight so special. </span></span>
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<span style="font-family: "vani" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Tonight
is a celebration of the misfit and the marginalised. Beside me
someone wearing a full beard, full make up, flashing plastic animal
horns and a massive smile is having the best time ever. Two girls at
the end of the crush barrier kissing. All around me people leap
around smiling and singing the words as if their life depended it on
it. I've not seen a bands audience so dedicated to fun since the
Flaming Lips in the late 90's. It's an occasion this. A jubilee of
what makes us unique and what we have in common. To a generation,
Martha are their Smiths or Manics. A band to love and believe in. If
you go on Insta you'll see an array of tattoo's in Martha's honour.
They mean it. And what's warming is they treat following Martha like
following a local football team away, anyone is invited and the
bigger the following the better.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "vani" , sans-serif;">Not
so long ago people at pop shows felt very woke and weirdly worthy in
welcoming </span><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: "vani" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">LGBT</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "vani" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
amongst their numbers but tonight all that is ,wonderfully, turned on it's head and
I feel oddly proud that this middle aged dad has been accepted as a
fellow Martha fan. In a time of division, political awfulness and
nervous unrest, Martha and Martha fans shine like a beacon. It's
truly a joy to go out and have such a fun time and a testament to the
tired yet ultimately true adage that we are stronger together</span></span><span style="font-weight: normal;">.
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<br />shaun brilldreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105406234645321012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4012130314580601066.post-42990338657219636772019-08-04T08:20:00.001-07:002020-05-24T01:41:47.836-07:00The Understudies-If Destroyed True<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj5sqqRYb06f6t18CVqJyz9LonC2A6YtX_UrghN-jzF8ADYDd-DxR2-8_XxaxPcbBidKp-9YKJTuXdWD3FsVbuTWcvxVAJl98K-wP-tSKzoaBbstmv4xQcEj6ufnCmg13bkIt6go74gDg/s1600/und.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="700" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj5sqqRYb06f6t18CVqJyz9LonC2A6YtX_UrghN-jzF8ADYDd-DxR2-8_XxaxPcbBidKp-9YKJTuXdWD3FsVbuTWcvxVAJl98K-wP-tSKzoaBbstmv4xQcEj6ufnCmg13bkIt6go74gDg/s320/und.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<strong>“</strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "open sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b>When
I was singing and writing this and workin’ with her, I was
visualizing all the people of my age group; I’m singing to </b></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "open sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><i>them</i></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "open sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b>.
I’m saying, ‘Here I am now, how are you? How’s </b></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "open sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><i>your</i></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "open sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b> relationship
going — did you get through it all? Wasn’t the ’70’s a drag
(</b></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "open sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><i>laughter</i></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "open sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b>)?
Here we are, let’s try to make the ’80s good, y’know?’ It’s
not out of our control. I still believe in love, I still believe in
peace, I still believe in positive thinking. Where there’s life,
there’s hope.”</b></span></span></span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "open sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">And
suddenly, just like Lennon recording Just Like Starting Over, it's
ten years later. The people who found each other on Myspace have
grown up. Hair a little thinner, waist a little thicker, we've moved
from crumbling flats to crumbling houses with a little garden. Our
jobs and commutes grow more stressful. The indiepop songs about
librarians are now DIY pop songs about identity politics. We have
cats and kids to look after and our heroes have revealed themselves
as racists and sex pests.The daily horror show of politics, which
grows more ludicrous and utterly hopeless by the minute, has taken
over the social media which was once full of book and record
recommendations. Our self deprecating bonhomie has become polite
panic. Modern life brings us closer to our nearest but further away
from each other. These are nervous times.</span></span></span></span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "open sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">So
what to believe in? Well, love of course. And music. Our desire for
new music may dim, but our need for good music does not. And friends,
our patient wait for a record dedicated to those too old for The
Courteeners and too proud for the Shinnne On festival is finally
over.</span></span></span></span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "open sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">If
Destroyed True, the Understudies second LP is a perfectly times
masterpiece. An indiepop Unknown Pleasures that instead of following
obvious paths carves it's own way, leaving the listener mapless and
optionless but to listen to and try to pursue. It's a proper album
this, a record not to chuck on whilst doing the ironing but to sit
down and absorb with the attention afforded a subtitled film.</span></span></span></span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "open sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Millennial
Generational tension is covered calmly and deftly in Sweet Tea (</span></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "open sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Dance
halls fall into the sea/I feel it coming/make a pot of sweet tea/and
watch the city capsize</span></i></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "open sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">)
and Helsinki (</span></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "open sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Please
don't make me take another selfie</span></i></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "open sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">),
the latter coming across like Radiohead's Planet Telex for the forty
something, and in the dark and satisfying Grousebeat (</span></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "open sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">It's
like Phil Collins writing songs about the homeless/I'm not a rich pop
star/just a casual observer</span></i></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "open sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">).</span></span></span></span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "open sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">But
where there is darkness there is light. Precious Heart and the almost
startlingly intimate New Dress are no messing about straight up love
songs, giving lie to the Motown notion that songs about love must be
about the rush of new romance or the lows of a relationship coming
apart. These songs, cleverly and correctly, offer the view that the
calm of the centre of a relationship given time to blossom and bloom
is to be to be cherished. You can't write songs like this without
living them first.</span></span></span></span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "open sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">And
it's not only Brian Bryden's songs that have matured into something
wonderful. The band (fairly recently and hurriedly assembled on début
LP Let Desire Guide Your Hand) seem to have finally, FINALLY,
realised how good they are and absolutely reek of verve and
confidence. Thom Allott's songs </span></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "open sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">are
also a welcome addition and fit in effortlessly. Past Addresses is as
calm as the ocean and as troubled as a storm, and if you squint a bit
sounds like a Tindersticks song. Slow Train is a beautiful and
fitting closer but it's the tensely wired Wolves which really pushes
the band to new boundaries, it sounds like Delicatessen and The Veils
and I almost guarantee you it's their favourite to play live.</span></span></span></span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "open sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">I
once predicted this LP (then unrecorded) would be album of the year.
I was wrong. It turns out it's an LP of a generation. With melodies
to die for and lyrics to tattoo on your arm, it's a masterpiece and
proof (if needed) that faith in hope in music is seldom misplaced. If
Destroyed True makes the Understudies the most mis-monikered band
since Extreme and Eternal. They've lit the torch of quality which
others must follow. Clutch this record to your heart. </span></span></span></span></strong>
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<h4 style="margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
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<h4 style="margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<a href="https://theunderstudiesuk.bandcamp.com/" target="_blank">://theunderstudiesuk.bandcamp.com/</a></h4>
shaun brilldreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105406234645321012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4012130314580601066.post-24651180573421020702019-06-20T08:22:00.000-07:002020-05-24T01:42:29.706-07:00Secret Histories Revealed<br />
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span>
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I first came in contact with Donna Tartt's novel The Secret History in
my early twenties when a woman I had had an exotic, turbulent and
ultimately doomed (aren't they all?) affair with came bounding, years
after speaking to each other, up to me in the middle of town and
excitedly and passionately recommended Tartt's book. Our fling
consisted of little more than discussing literature and music, and
kissing. </span></span></span>
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span>
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">It's
clear, in retrospect, we were two lonely people and used each other
to cement some form some sort of identity; it was exciting to find
someone who shared the same ideals and intellectual leanings. It
wasn't love, but a bond of mutual aspiration and common interest. I
wrote down the title in my journal, we pecked cheeks, and parted. I
didn't see her again for five years. </span></span></span></span></span>
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span>
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">She
was correct of course, The Secret History almost instantly became my
favourite novel. A book about a group of rich college kids who study
Greek under the inspiring and beguiling Julian Marrow and murder a
class mate is maybe an odd favourite. The fact it contains no
likeable characters and no female ones of any kind of depth makes it
an even more curious choice. But I knew it was special when started
to have dreams, not in the aesthetic or timbre, but in the </span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">mood
</span></i></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">of
the book. I reread it at least once a year, an intellectual comfort
blanket.</span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">It's
human nature that when we fall so baldy for a work of art that we
want to know more about it, but The Secret History left slim and
scarce pickings. Tartt, easily as gifted as Salinger, yet just as
reclusive and interview prone left little clues. Then as if a gift
from the gods for Tarttophiles came an Esquire article by author Lili
Anolik about Bennington college in the 80's. It's incredibly well
researched and it's parallels chime like a bell.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Bennington
itself is eerily similar to Tartt's fictional Hampden college, based
in Vermont it's a geographical match, even to the detail of both
having a graveyard running to it's side. Brix Smith, a Bennington
drop out who would later go on to play in The Fall describes it as
</span></span></span><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">like
something out of a child’s fairy tale. It was so isolated and so
beautiful, and it was green and surrounded by mountains. At the
center of campus was a building—tall, white, very grand, with
columns and a bell clock—called Commons. If you stood in front of
Commons, you’d see, if you looked to one side, an old graveyard,
and to the other side, a meadow. And then, if you looked straight
ahead, a long, lush, rolling lawn lined by lovely, New England-y
clapboard houses, creating this visual corridor so that your eye was
drawn to the end of it, where the earth suddenly fell away,
just—</span></i></span></span></span></strong><em><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><i>poof</i></span></span></span></em><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><i><b>—</b></i></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">vanished.
Not really, of course, but it looked as if it did. We called it “the
End of the World.” Mists would roll in there at night, these
swirling mists so thick you couldn’t see your hand when you held it
up to your face. The rumor was that the campus was the site of an
ancient Native American burial ground. Supposedly it was one of the
few spots on earth where all four winds met at the same time. And
there </span></i></span></span></span></strong><em><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><i>was </i></span></span></span></em><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">something
sacred about it, something haunted.</span></i></span></span></span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></strong>
<strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Even
the winter break where Richard lives in a warehouse and almost dies
is taken from Bennington (</span></span></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Bennington
had something called NRT, Non-Resident Term. The school couldn’t
afford to heat itself during the winter and so it shut down. You went
out into the world and got an internship or job).</span></i></span></span></span></strong><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">What's perhaps most jarring</span><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">
</span></i></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">are
the parallels between the novels characters and actual Bennington
people. From the privileged party animals (</span></span></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">You’d
be shocked that this Neanderthal-looking dude sunbathing by a keg was
actually, one day, going to inherit the Benson & Hedges fortune</span></i></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">)
to the most learned.</span></span></span></span></span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></strong>
<strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Julian
Marrow is quite heavily based on classics professor Claude Fredericks
(</span></span></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">When
I went to interview with Claude, his first question was “Have you
ever had a job?” I said, “No.” And he said, “Good.” And
then he said, “Have you ever been to a football game?” And I
said, “No.” And he said, “Good.”</span></i></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">)</span></span></span></span></span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></strong>
<strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">The
detail is incredible, Julian's classroom is difficult to locate
(</span></span></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Claude’s
office...was hard to find. It was in Commons, at the top of this sort
of secret staircase that was outside the building and led only to his
office</span></i></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">.)
and bedecked with flowers (</span></span></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">There’d
be these exquisite flowers, Japanese flowers—I don’t know how or
where he got them—in a vase, and everything was polished,
beautiful. You’d sit across from him, and he’d serve you tea, and
you really felt like you were in the inner sanctum.) , </span></i></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">the
anteroom where Julian was 'miraculously able to convey four-course
meals' out of (</span></span></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">You
went to Claude’s office for lunch, and out would come this
incredible food, and you didn’t know how he’d prepared it. You
didn’t see it, you didn’t smell it, and then there it was—a
perfect soup, a perfect quiche. He was a bit magical).</span></i></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
</span></span></span></span></span></strong>
<br />
<strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Even
the Mont-blanc pen of Bunny and </span></span></span></span></span></strong><em><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">H</span></span></span></span></span></em><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">enry's
argument pops up</span></span></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">
(The idea of Claude having a big nouveau-riche pile of Montblancs was
really too much.) (No, the Montblancs were true. But it was a piece
of accidentalia that Donna seized on and used in a pointed way.)</span></i></span></span></span></strong><br />
<br />
<strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Fredericks'
words are quoted and used as Julian's. 'Julian took both </span></span></span></span></strong><em><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-style: normal;">H</span></span></span></span></em><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">enry's
hands into his own 'You should only, ever, do w</span></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">hat
is necessary' (</span></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Claude
was my advisor when I was a student at Bennington. I had an
appointment with him, and I was waiting outside his office. The door
opened and out stepped this beautiful young man with curly blond
hair. And the first thing I heard Claude say was “Not, do </span></i></span></span></span></strong><em><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><i>only </i></span></span></span></em><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">what
is necessary. Only </span></i></span></span></span></strong><em><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><i>do </i></span></span></span></em><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">what
is necessary.”)</span></i></span></span></span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">(what
Henry said about Julian—“I loved him more than anyone in the
world”—was true of how I felt about Claude. He was the single
greatest influence on my life.)</span></i></span></span></span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></span></span></strong>
<strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Other
characters crop up too. (</span></span></span></span></strong><em><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><i>The
Secret History </i></span></span></span></em><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">isn’t
so much a work of fiction. It’s a work of thinly veiled reality—a
roman à clef. When it came out, Claude and Matt and I got endless
calls. Everybody was saying, “Oh, did you know Donna just wrote a
book about Claude and you all? And Claude is Julian and Matt is Bunny
and you’re Henry.</span></i></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">”)</span></span></span></span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></strong>
<strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Bunny
is based on Matt Jacobsen (</span></span></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">I
called my mother and said, “I’ve been caricatured in a book, and
my character gets killed.” And she said, “No, no. No one would
ever kill you, not even in print, no.” Then she read the book and
said, “That’s you all right.” I wore wire-rimmed glasses like
Bunny. I had dyslexia—that’s what they called it in the 70s,
anyway—like Bunny. And, like Bunny, I was an extremely affected
young man. I’d make broad, questionable statements. One day in the
dining hall I was gawking at some girl and said, “Reminds me of the
way Diana’s painted on the ceiling of my father’s club,” and
that line found its way into Donna’s book. And I’d invite people
to lunch and then realize I didn’t have any money, something dear
old Bunny does. I was kind of a horrible bounder, though in my case
it was never intentional. A funny thing. Bunny was actually what
everyone called Margaret, Paul’s first girlfriend—the girlfriend
before Donna, a cranberry heiress. Some folks thought it odd that my
character’s name should’ve been taken from Paul’s old flame.
But I always thought the name came from the critic Edmund Wilson.
Bunny was his nickname, too.) </span></i></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">and
</span></span></span></span></span></strong><em><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Henry
on Todd O'Neal (</span></span></span></span></span></em><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
</span></span></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Henry’s
apartment was like my apartment. His eye problems, the chip in his
tooth. I smoked Lucky Strikes. I wore suspenders and glasses. I’d
gone to a Benedictine monastery for high school, where I learned
Latin, and I taught myself Greek, French, Italian, Spanish, Sanskrit.
I was very deep into the study of Plato and Plotinus, as Henry is
described as being. I did go on a trip with Matt, and I did end up
having to pay for it because his father didn’t give him much money
and he was a bit of a sponge, though he and I always had fun
together.)</span></i></span></span></span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></strong>
<strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">And
what about Donna Tartt, the most illusive of all characters? Well, we
learn like Richard her parents were both gas station attendants
(father) and secretary (mother). We learn she quoted herself: 'I
suppose there is a certain crucial interval in everyone’s life when
character is fixed forever; for me, it was that first fall term I
spent at </span></span></span></span></span></strong><em><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Hampden'
Tartt writes in T</span></span></span></span></span></em><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">he
Secret </span></span></span></span></span></strong><em><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">History.
And in </span></span></span></span></span></em><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">her
commencement speech: '</span></span></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">There
is a time in everyone’s youth when character is fixed forever; for
me, and I believe for most of us here, our Bennington years were that
time.'</span></i></span></span></span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></strong>
<strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">What
I find most fascinating about t</span></span></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">he
piece is Tartt's reinvention of herself. There is a picture from </span></span></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">her
school year book, long hair, cute dress, shy smile and one in
Bennington in man's waistcoat and tie (</span></span></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Donna
started wearing those mannish-cut blazers. She looked like a Mini-Me
when she was hanging out with us. Black loafers, khaki pants—boys’
pants, not girls’—J. Press–type button-down, necktie, blue
blazer with brass buttons, and hair in this funky little asexual bob.
She looked like she came straight out of an English university. She
and Paul were like Oxonian homosexuals or something. I once asked
him, “What kind of relationship do you have?” And he said, “Well,
that’s very funny, because she wants me to call her ‘my lad.’ ”)
</span></i></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">a
cigarette burns in her fingers and she stares through the camera
lens. </span></span></span></span></span></strong>
<br />
<strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></strong>
<strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">College
is where self discovery and self image are cemented. It's where you
decide what and who you are. You can play a few chords? You are a
musician. You do a fanzine? You are a writer. It's where ideas
germinate and plans blossom. Sometimes, sometimes, they bloom into
the best novel of a generation. </span></span></span></span></span></strong>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Now,
who wants to tell me who Judy Poovey is based on?</span></span></span></span></span></strong><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<h4>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">All
quotes in italics are taken from Lili Anolik's incredible article for
Esquire</span></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a27434009/bennington-college-oral-history-bret-easton-ellis">https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a27434009/bennington-college-oral-history-bret-easton-ellis</a></span></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "charter" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">I
thank Ms.Anolik and apologise for pilfering her work so liberally.</span></span></span></span></strong></span></h4>
<br />shaun brilldreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105406234645321012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4012130314580601066.post-32997139084882604922019-01-09T17:17:00.000-08:002020-05-24T01:43:53.588-07:00Do you believe in magic?<br />
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/u/1/null" name="slgn"></a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;">A few weeks a<span style="color: #292929; font-family: "open sans" , sans-serif;">go
I was having a few pints with some friends when I got into a bit of
an argument. In my defence, it was exactly a week before Xmas, the
anniversary of my fathers death, so Yule is always a bad time for me
mental health wise. Not that its much of an excuse. The row centred
on the </span></span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">H</span></span></span><span style="color: #292929; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "open sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">arry
Potter books. I made some drunk old man arsehole comment along the
lines of its wrong to read kids books when you’ve not read all the
grown up ones. My pal Paloma, quite rightly, shot me down to ribbons.
There is, Paloma told me, magic in the books. And what’s wrong </span></span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">with</span></span></span><span style="color: #292929; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "open sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">
a bit of magic in a world where magic is in such scant supply? I
agreed and went home feeling a bit of a tit, but it got me thinking. </span></span></span></span>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #292929;"><span style="font-family: "open sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The
magic for me in art is its relatablity. It needs to be sourced from
the real. The first book I really fell for was a Gumbles Yard by John
Rowe Townsend. I must have been all of nine years old. It was read
out by our teacher, Mrs. Watson, who I had a walloping crush on. Mr.
Watson was an archaeologist like Indiana Jones. He unearthed a load
of woolly mammoth bones not far from school, so I knew I had no
chance bit it didn’t stop me daydreaming. The book left a stamp on
younger me. I remember little of the characters of the book and
little of the plot, but I can still recall the sense of dark broody
panic and sense of loss in the abandoned kids. I really loved the
heaviness of it all. It wasn’t wizards or pirates or even
footballers in books that got nine year old me going, it was two
scared kids and the sense of dread hanging over them like dirty great
cloud. I could never really relate to wizards as a kid, but to kids
scared of coming home and finding their lost ones gone? Certainly.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #292929;"><span style="font-family: "open sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The
next big book was probably Catcher in the Rye, read out in class by a
wonderful woman called Miss Herbert when I was about fourteen. She
insisted on reading it a New Yoik accent ('it was real swaaaanky')
and Salingers words buried themselves in to the very core of my mind
and bones. I loved it. I took it home and read it all over the
weekend. Next class Miss Herbert took me to one side afterwards and
inquired to why I looked bored when in the last one I was sat open
mouthed in rapture. I confessed I had finished the book under my own
steam and asked if there were any more books like it I could read. I
saw a little light turn on behind her eyes. Finally she had inspired
one of the little sods. She wrote me a list of books (one of them was
To Esme with Love and Squalor, still my favourite) with a barely
concealed grin. It was, to put it lightly, an interesting time in my
life. Around the same time I discovered Salinger I found girls no
longer annoying but incredible and a source of deep fascination. The
period took intellectualism and sexiness in females and entwined them
as tight as stitches in a woollen jumper. From then on I would find
intelligent and well read women almost unbearably sexy. Its a feeling
I'm yet to lose.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #292929; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "open sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Looking
back, my tastes in art have barely wavered from Gumbles Yard. The art
I like has a dark underbelly, a sense of sadness. An arm waiting to
grab me from reality and plunge me somewhere deeper, somewhere
scarier. Its there in the books of Donna Tartt and Richard Yates, in
the music of Joy Division, The Smiths and the sixties girl group
sound. In the paintings of John Waterhouse and photography of
Francesca Woodman. Art to me is reality and reality is often sad. But
magic? Yes I’ve seen magic. But not in tales of boy wizards but in
the days on a cusp a seasons change. In the pint that turns the night
into an adventure. In the last hungry kiss before the walk home. In
holding hands with someone who really understands you. In drunk
arguments that lead you to write. Magic seems an all encompassing
word, but its not, its beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.
Finding someone to share the magic with is unfeignedly fantastic and
beautiful. </span></span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Ho</span></span></span><span style="color: #292929;"><span style="font-family: "open sans" , sans-serif;">gwarts
and all.</span></span></span></div>
<br />shaun brilldreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105406234645321012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4012130314580601066.post-32886039359346493602018-10-08T06:30:00.000-07:002020-05-24T01:44:26.161-07:00Bellshill to Brum:TFC and me<br />
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When I was 14 year old trainee indie
kid, my favourite thing to do was go to Birmingham to record shop
with my mate Trig. I say record shopping, our paper round money only
stretched as far as the train ticket and a lowly lunch (always, I
seem to remember, a can of fizzy Vimto and a packet of salt and
vinegar Disco's crisps), but we did like to look at the records and
the cute girls in stripy tights and Mega City Four t-shirts. Though
we didn't discuss it, we both hoped to run in to a pop star whilst in
the big city, one of Ned's Atomic Dustbin perhaps, or the holy of
holies Miles Hunt out of the Wonder Stuff.*
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One day,
in Birmingham's Virgin Megastore, I was flicking through the 7”
singles while Trig rifled through the CD's downstairs. Across from me,
on the other side of the rack was Norman from Teenage Fanclub. I knew
it was him from reading the NME with religious zeal. He had the
trademark long centre parting and Lennon specs and was wearing a
dufflecoat and singing along loudly to the Neil Young track blaring
out of the PA.**I stood awestruck. It was if George Best or Ghandi
was in your local Co Op. I stood and watched him for a while,
desperately trying to find something to say to him, but my bottle
went so I joined Trig to look at the PWEI shorts upstairs. Later while
drinking pop and eating crisps in Victoria Square, freezing in our
long sleeve t-shirts (much to the chagrin of our mothers but vital to
show off our indie loyalties) I didn't mention the sighting to Trig.
It was a little because I knew he would be annoyed I didn't grab him
immediately (he would have certainly had the courage to say hello), a
little because I thought he wouldn't believe me but mostly because I
wanted the moment, the little bit of magic, to be my own.
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At that point the only Teenage Fanclub music I
actually owned was a cassette compilation which included What You Do
To Me. I decided this situation needed rectifying post-haste. I felt
I owed it to my new pal Norman to listen to his records properly. So,
I consulted a lad in the year above called Kev Walder. As well as
being Shropshire's premier expert on Depeche Mode, he was very
friendly and happy to assist and advise aspiring indie kids. He told
my I needed to get a copy of Bandwagonesque, which had a pink cover
and and money bag on the front. I saved my paper round money and
bought the cassette from Rainbow Records. It was love at first
listen.
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Cut to a few later, it's a deliciously
hot day at the Phoenix festival. Teenage Fanclub are on-stage and my
pal Sam and me are sat towards the back being gamely chatted up by
two girls from Newcastle. “You know what I do if I'm enjoying a
band?” asks Norman “I like to wave my shoe at them. Can you wave
shoes at me?” With that the view to the stage is blocked by
hundreds of items of footwear being held aloft. Norman lets go a
cheeky grin and tunes up. It's around this time it occurs to me I'm
doing one of my favourite bands an injustice by sitting down at the
back and need to experience them from the front. I make my excuses to
the girls and Sam (who look at me like I've lost leave of my senses)
and slalom my way through the people sat crossed legged, avoiding
knocking paper cupped pints over, to go to the front. As walk, the
sun pops up above the stage and the opening chords of Alcoholiday
ring out. This is, by far, is my favourite Fannies song by a mile at
this stage and it's the only time I've seen them do it live. There's
something magical about it, being young, a little drunk, the mix of
sunshine and those lazy, woozy chords. It's some kind of magic and
remains one of my all time favourite live music moments.</div>
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Meanwhile, the Fannies release
increasingly wonderful records and something called 'the internet'
gets invented. I'm quite lucky, my dad is the secretary of his union
and as such is responsible for sending 'emails' and before we know it
we have a brand spanking new computer and a dial up modem. Whilst
having all the information in the world at our finger tips is cool, it's
actually more fun downloading music by the armful. Soon I'm looking
up bands 'websites' and stumble across fans forums or message boards.
Interestingly, Teenage Fanclub have their own message board. I decide
to enquire within.</div>
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This was the
period when message boards were at their absolute pomp. The TFC board was
crammed with knowledgeable, friendly, funny people from all across
the world. It's impossible to gauge how many bands and records I got
into through the recommendations of this little on-line gang,
everyone of them just as childishly daft about music as me. What I
really loved was the sense of community, discussions went outside
music and about everything from the mighty to the mundane. It seems
daft now but I really felt amongst friends. When one of my favourite
posters, a guy called TomTom died it really did effect me. I felt
like I had lost a pal and in many ways I had. He was a great man, a
total hardcore TFC fan who was funny and daft and lovely. I knew more
about him, his loves, his politics, who he and his wife supported in
the football and sometimes what he was having for his tea. The shock
of has passing was real, as real as it could be for someone you had
never met, and the place never really felt the same again.</div>
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Sadly, the
place went a bit Lord of the Flies. The was (probably still is) Guest
setting where people could post anonymously which started off fine,
some of the funniest posts were by 'Guesty' but soon it started
getting a bit nasty and went out of control. Arguments would rage
about football and, being Celtic and Rangers fans, religion and
things started to get pretty horrible, with bullying and long ranting drunk abusive
arguments being the norm. After a young man we shall call Milla took
his own life due to on-line bullying*** is seemed prudent to join the
real world again. I'd still pop in occasionally. There was a new LP
called Man-Made out and I joined the discussion about how great it
was. Someone had asked why the CD came with a card slip case.
“Simple” replied Siobhan's Dad “It's for taking to the gig and
getting signed”</div>
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When the Man-Made tour hit Birmingham I
knew I was going to get the card signed. There was that kind of magic
in the air. The train was full of excited people off to different
shows. My gig was at the Academy 2, and almost comically small venue
for such a great band. They didn't let us down though. The gig was
incredible, all the favourites off all the albums (no Alcoholiday
mind) and the crowd was small (Birmingham can be funny like that) but
loyal and everyone had a great time. Afterwards I spotted Norman and
marched up with my slip case and Sharpie and even managed a quick
conversation while he signed, some gibberish about loving how 'dry'
the new record sounded. “Oh” he said raising an eyebrow “thanks”
and at that moment Gerry Love walked past and despite clearly wanting
to be somewhere else was a darling and signed it too. I practically
floated back to New Street Station.
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The are bands we listen to when we are
happy, those we listen to when we are sad and those we reach out for
when something in life goes horribly wrong. There are bands we listen
to that make us feel young, bands we miss and bands we hope make
another record. To me, Teenage Fanclub are unique in so much they are
band I've grown up and grown old with. Whatever has happened in my
life, good and bad, big and small, they have been quietly in the back
ground sound tracking it all. When it was announced Gerry Love was
leaving the group I was quite saddened. Teenage Fanclub are like the
sun and the lamp posts outside your front door. They are something
you take for granted will always be there. </div>
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Happily, the bands aren’t
splitting entirely and Gerry did leave us with some wonderful goodbye
gifts in the form of the Creation era records being lavishly and
wonderfully remastered. When I went to buy the first two (I could
only afford to buy two a month , not because I was on paper round
money but because I'm a dad now) it was at the end of the first
proper summer in decades. I was still deciding which two to get on
the way to the record shop when I bump into Kev Walder, demob happy
from being let off work early and heading for the nearest beer
garden. I tell him I'm off into town to get the new Teenage Fanclub
record. “bloody hell” he says shaking his head with grin “nothing
changes does it?” And he's right. It really doesn't.
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">*We
never did meet Miles Hunt Birmingham but bizarrely bumped into him
Shrewsbury when I was old enough to know better. In a weird twist,
Mile's brother (the guy doing the Spinal Tap story in the Welcome to
the Cheap Seats video) owns a local record shop. </span>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">**Baring
in mind I didn't know Neil Young from Neil from the Young Ones at the
time, I may have embellished that bit. But it was definitely
something male and late 60's/early70's</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">***It
should be pointed out that it was mainly bullying on another site
though it a) certainly didn't help and b) makes it no less tragic</span></div>
<br />shaun brilldreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105406234645321012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4012130314580601066.post-77424269150227552482018-06-19T04:13:00.003-07:002018-06-19T04:13:51.578-07:00Keep It Clean-14/07/18<br />
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Every now and then Facebook will throw
up a new trend that everyone simply has to get involved in. There
were some horrors, the one where everyone started a cartoon version
of themselves, the ice bucket challenge, where what started as a fun
way of raising money and awareness lead to teenagers literally
breaking their necks (if there's a better metaphor for social media
I'd like to hear it). The latest one is people posting a photo of one
of their favourite albums with 'no reason to explain' and then one
was supposed to 'nominate' someone else and the loop would go on and
on.
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This rubbed me up the wrong way for two
reasons. One, what's wrong with, you know, writing about art that
means something to you and two, how do you pick? Records and songs
are like kisses to me. Some are better than others but they all mean
something and equally special for different reasons.
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Some records to stick with you forever,
however. Whilst The Smiths dominated my twenties, Let's Get Out Of
This Country by Camera Obscura was and is, by country mile, the most
important LP of my thirties. I discovered it in 2006, I was on a
Teenage Fanclub message board (remember those?), and asked the board
elders to recommend some new music. Someone posted a JPEG of the
sleeve, no further information. My curiosity must have been piqued,
as the very next day I found myself on a train back from Manchester
cradling the record. It was well worth the investment, it's an
astonishing album. It was also like a gateway drug, a gateway to
other message boards, other bands and other people. Indiepop was just
about to hit it's absolute peak, and I just about found myself in the
right place and the right time. Everything was exciting all of a
sudden, there seemed to be a new gig or a new band or a new records
to excited about on a weekly basis. It was a thrilling time. Then my
dad died.</div>
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I'll not dwell on here about his death
as I've already written about it on this blog, I've also written
about the personal aftermath, but some of that, for context, bears
repeating. I'll keep it to a minimum, not through shame (it's our
duty normalise anxiety and issues of mental well being) but because I
don't really want to re-tar roads already covered (I once got
politely but firmly bollocked for writing too personally on the
internet by Tjinder Singh. True Story).</div>
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SO: My dad died and for about six
months I was a bit of a mess. Confused, isolated, withdrawn, angry
and with a worrying dependency on the drink. Things came to head when
I found myself on my own reading a book in the dim light of an awful
nightclub. It was around my thirteenth pint of Guinness when it
dawned on me this had to stop. I found myself talking every week to a
lovely grief counsellor called Marilyn who got me off the drink and
back to communicating. “What do you enjoy? What makes you happy?”
she asked. “Music and writing I replied” “Well do that then”
she said. This seemed like good advice.</div>
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So I started writing this here blog,
which started as three line posts about what excited me then grew and
grew (you're reading my 200<sup>th</sup> post) and started me
communicating with the outside world. I started to finally leave my
bedroom to got to gigs. Like a talisman, Camera Obscura were touring
a fair bit and I went to see them in pretty much every city in the
country. These were great day, possibly the band and their peak. The
familiarity and comfort in clapping in time to Come Back Margaret,
knowing the band had a good gig because they had refrain of Call Me
Al in Lets Get Out Of This Country and the melting heartache of the
fade of Razzle Dazzle Rose which meant it was time to go home.
</div>
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<br />
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It was a world of support bands, merch
tables, set lists and pints of coke in plastic pint glasses but it
still seemed like I was slowly getting back in touch with the real
world and starting to feel like me again. Music has the power and
ability to that. I even started talking to other human beings. One
guy recommended a night called Kissing Just For Practise, a Belle and
Sebastian disco run by a lad called Jamie in Manchester. I went and
it was that night, talking to strangers from Leeds about Comet Gain
and The Clientèle, dancing and laughing, that I felt like my old
self again. I even, inspired by the evening, daydreamed about
starting a club night myself. There was always a gig, always new
friends to meet. I went to a Tender Trap gig in Manchester which was
great, but what really caught my imagination was the DJ playing
Sensitive by the Field Mice and people actually dancing. Wow. The
thoughts of club night started to solidify from liquid form to
something more tangible and touchable. I went to thank the DJ's, Kev
and Linda for their amazing set and they in turn thanked me for
coming and we must have stood for twenty minutes smiling, chatting
and shaking hands. Them were good days.
</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Eventually I started to go to less and
less Camera Obscura gigs, not because I went off them but because my
life had slowly returned to normal (for which I owe them a great
debt) and other things and other people became important again. They
still stayed in my life obviously. Someone who knew someone who
worked at the NME sent me a hooky promo copy of My Maudlin Career,
which excited me to the degree that on release I bought it on vinyl
and CD so I could play it on the decrepit CD player at work. I went
to see them at the occasional gig, much much bigger gigs now, but no
less wonderful. I even got to start a club night with my pal John
Kertland. Just Like Honey ran for five amazing years, leading to
playing at the Indietracks festival (playing Hey Lloyd and the intro
causing people to stampede into the tent sending arms, legs, smiles
and dust flying is one my favourite memories ever), a festival where
I saw Camera Obscura head line the year before. It would be the last
time I would see them play.</div>
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<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The news of Carey Landers passing was
devastating. Carey had succumbed to Sarcoma, a very rare and to my
mind very cruel type of bone cancer. It has taken the brightest, most
beautiful and most caring person away from us. Right to the end,
Carey was raising awareness and money for research into Sarcoma.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
On the 14<sup>th</sup> of July at the
Star and Garter in Manchester we will be holding a Camera Obscura
disco, playing between the best CO tunes the greatest Scottish pop.
DJ's for the evening will be myself, Kev and Linda and Jamie. All
money raised will go to Sarcoma research. It's going to be an amazing
evening and we hope to see you there. Xxx</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/196735844258476/?active_tab=discussion">https://www.facebook.com/events/196735844258476/?active_tab=discussion</a></div>
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<br />shaun brilldreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105406234645321012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4012130314580601066.post-27931335540221224232018-04-21T08:33:00.002-07:002020-05-24T01:44:57.623-07:00Morrissey-From Prophet to The Prince Phillip of Pop<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9LWGzE7difWPf5EyHwHgfakNFUsiFrgrxo8sbEy67BYXBjHSsXO3erHu5HQwma2QXRAJbtYDGFdc-HzRgBE9JWVR3aRvfWEbxn3wsAijO1IQDFgtqo2zht6Q1FNyl_fm_TSCb9EYQeYw/s1600/mozpol.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="429" data-original-width="640" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9LWGzE7difWPf5EyHwHgfakNFUsiFrgrxo8sbEy67BYXBjHSsXO3erHu5HQwma2QXRAJbtYDGFdc-HzRgBE9JWVR3aRvfWEbxn3wsAijO1IQDFgtqo2zht6Q1FNyl_fm_TSCb9EYQeYw/s320/mozpol.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I was having a sneaky post work
afternoon pint a few weeks back adjacent to a table of full of
refreshed old boys. Their topic of conversation was the celebrities
of the seventies who ended up embroiled in charges of sexual
misconduct. Bizarrely, this turned into a debate about who was the
'worst' offender. “Well” said one of the old timers “It has to
be Stuart Hall”. “Stuart Hall??” chorused his pals in unison
“Why Stuart Hall?” “Well” he said, supping his pint “I
liked Stuart Hall”.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The British have a tendency to assume
that the people they admire, particularly artistically, will have the
same views and beliefs as themselves. When it turns out that they in
fact do not, it hurts. It was especially galling to discover that
Morrissey is in fact a massive twat. I wont bother revising why The
Smiths meant (and mean) so much to me, I've wrote about it
extensively on this very website. Suffice to say, in my teens and
twenties they got me through some pretty dark and difficult times.
What hurts is the fact that once upon a time Morrissey spoke for and
about the unspoken and unmentioned. He spoke up for the marginalised
people of society, the ugly, the shy, the lonely and the afraid. For
the non binary. The non CIS. For the poor and the down trodden. For
me and for you. How can someone who wrote 'It takes guts by gentle
and shy' stumble so far into self flagellating and self fellation
that he ends up a mouth piece for UKIP?
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In his book, Saint Morrissey, Mark
Simpson makes the case that Morrissey's bitterness, self worship and
refusal to be wrong stems from years of staying to long in the
closet. I think it's simpler than that. Morrissey has no-one to tell
him 'look, you're talking bollocks there mate'. In his head, whatever
he says is a statement of fact. When you have arenas full of fans
baying at your every utterance it probably feels that way. When
anyone disagrees with him they are 'out to get him'. He really is a
daft old sod.
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
My respect for Morrissey grew thin
around 2007 when, as a millionaire ex pat living in a mansion in LA,
he deemed it necessary to pontificate to the British how shit their lives are and how as he never voted, we shouldn't either. Really
mate? This was followed by some very dubious comments about
immigration, which really sent the alarm bells ringing. These
missives were totally misguided and, as he is a child of two Irish
immigrants himself, incredibly hard to swallow. He was chatting shit,
and deep down we knew it. Then in 2014, around the time of the
release of the patchy if not totally shit World Peace Is None of Your
Business, it was revealed that the Mozfather was suffering with cancer. Seemingly, all was
forgiven due to the fear that he might go and die on us. This
acceptance was short lived as he really went bat shit crazy. The
pinnacle of his offensive prattishness was his comments after the
bombing of Manchester Arena. Now, Manchester is my favourite city in
the world, we have a lot of history, and everyone in my immediate
family (bar my daughter) have attended concerts at the arena. This
all felt very personal and eerily close to home. On the 23<sup>rd</sup>
of May last year, the evening Johnny Marr took to the stage with
Canadian band Broken Social Scene in an act of defiance and
solidarity, Morrissey released a statement as offensive as it was
bananas. Blaming immigration and Andy Burnham for the bombing was the
final straw for me. I loved Morrissey but I couldn’t buy his
records or go to his shows after this. Not any more.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I have been lucky, and I mean lucky, to
have released myself from his grip. Hero worship is the enemy of
common sense, and others remain shipwrecked on Mozzers bullshit
island. The self styled 'Moz Army' are the worst offenders. These lot
are little too far along the spectrum for my liking. A bit too
obsessed. I'm a dad in my forties. I don't <i>need </i><span style="font-style: normal;">Morrissey
anymore, he hasn't been a talisman or a moral compass to me since my
early twenties. But these lot are cursed, believing that saying
anything negative about the quiffed Christ means they are somehow not
true disciples. Ringleader of the titmice, Julie Hamill (who I
actual feel a genuine sympathy for, she has some how ended up
defending her hero, who is to cowardly to do it himself) has gone on
record stating he is 'untitled to his opinion'. By attacking 'non
whites' he is attacking my friends. This is not OK. Is it so scary to say 'actually,
he's talking bollocks here'. Would you really be kicked out the gang?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Morrissey
has become the darling of the right wing tweeting brigade (happily,
easily identifiable by having a union jack by their username. Not
quite going the full hog and having a swastika or 'TWAT' tattooed on
their forehead but near enough) championing him for saying 'what
everyone's really thinking but afraid to say'. Well lads, you are
welcome to him. I'm not going to stop listening to The Smiths. Ever.
Maybe that's the wrong choice, maybe we should stop listening to the
Stooges because Iggy once said 'paki' in an interview or stop
listening to Ian Curtis or Kate Bush because they voted Tory. I
dunno. But I believe, maybe naively, that this is a vast difference
between the Morrissey in his early twenties and the monster pushing
sixty. So here is the compromise. We keep the kitten hugging cardigan
wearing Wilde wannabe Morrissey and the right wing and the Moz Army
and all the other lunatics take the husk of hate that he has become.
Deal?</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">One
final thought. The right wing-nuts have rallied around Morrissey
because he's 'not afraid to tell it like it really is'. But I'm not
sure that is totally correct. This barrage of hate is maybe just him testing the
water, and maybe his private thoughts are actually full on
horrifically racist. And the more people agree with his campaign of
hate, the dirtier and more hateful views will rise to the top like
shiny scum. Food for thought.</span></div>
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<br />shaun brilldreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105406234645321012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4012130314580601066.post-71698558102481302082018-02-03T09:07:00.001-08:002020-05-24T01:45:28.936-07:00Review-Travelling Companion by The Understudies<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqOOe9bIoyrMLiX-OcCQ9b3oGl3sTxC9fMOT074xD7g52x0PBtdoMwuZkXw94mf-4DIL-3aNbUCVOcjOVpfoPIIhwo5j5MKX7Ejdd457R2N0XdESA6JR_JZJ_sMRIBWydSYhH498Q2bPg/s1600/und.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="700" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqOOe9bIoyrMLiX-OcCQ9b3oGl3sTxC9fMOT074xD7g52x0PBtdoMwuZkXw94mf-4DIL-3aNbUCVOcjOVpfoPIIhwo5j5MKX7Ejdd457R2N0XdESA6JR_JZJ_sMRIBWydSYhH498Q2bPg/s320/und.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Travelling Companion is the first
material from The Understudies since 2014's landmark LP Let Desire
Guide Your Hand.. I should hold <i>my</i> hand up here and state that
I have been an admirer of their work since the very early days of the
band (how can you not love a band that has a song called Chip Pan
Glam?). Brian Bryden is easily, easily, in my top ten of songwriters.
He somehow managed to write songs that are an amalgamation of hints
(but never lifts) of everything I love about popular culture. There
are suggestions of all my favourite bands in his song writing,
suggestions I can never quite lay a hand on. The bands' songs bring
of sense of <span style="color: #212121;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">cinéma
français</span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">
and kitchen sink drama, but with no obvious links or sources.</span>
So the news of a new single was a very pleasant surprise. But was it
worth the wait? Well...<br />
<br />
This record is fucking incredible, not
incredible for a third division indie band (or as my partner Rachel
sagely puts it 'three fans bands from Scotland no-ones ever heard
of') but genuinely and inescapably brilliant. Travelling Companion
is as elegant and as fragile as a swans neck. Imagine The
Tindersticks covering Asleep by The Smiths with lyrics by Norman
Collins. A haunting, cinematic, knowingly bookish piano led song
that coldly and darkly twinkles like London frost. The piano riff is
instant hookworm material, exquisitely warmed through by strings and
guitar that echo Marr at his most poignant and retentive in detail.
This is the work of writers who have honed and French polished their
craft to a very, very fine buff. The flip side (well, not really a
flip side as it's a download, it remains nothing short of a travesty
it's not a 45. Something this beautiful deserves vinyl permanence)
Everybody's Got To Go is a postcard from the gallows. Slightly less
pretty than the A-side but with much more of a hook. It even throws
in a T Rex reference at the end. I repeat, how can you not love this
band?<br />
<br />
If Clint from Pop Will Eat Itself and
Alex Turner can make money from writing scores, it's a sad, pitiful
world the doesn't see The Understudies writing the soundtrack to your
favourite movies for the next ten years. If the rest of the material
on the upcoming LP is half as strong as this showing, we have an
absolute shoe-in for album of the year. I'm genuinely excited.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBKGZMXzNQMtHiNI0enLCVUt5jrwjLNVmlRMmMbQi3XmVlX-wnVu2WFgI0NQxE40COuEN_zLR30U5sAbI6G413s3icS6Fti2FBw0Wc_e59mjqXLYFnDi3zSi6nbTuhpjM5lS-4Lkv9d2A/s1600/und2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="180" data-original-width="120" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBKGZMXzNQMtHiNI0enLCVUt5jrwjLNVmlRMmMbQi3XmVlX-wnVu2WFgI0NQxE40COuEN_zLR30U5sAbI6G413s3icS6Fti2FBw0Wc_e59mjqXLYFnDi3zSi6nbTuhpjM5lS-4Lkv9d2A/s1600/und2.jpg" /></a></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i>The single, Travelling Companion is
available for download now from
<a href="https://theunderstudiesuk.bandcamp.com/">https://theunderstudiesuk.bandcamp.com/</a>.
The band will play a set of new songs at Saint Pancras Old Church,
London, on February 19th http://www.wegottickets.com/event/420960</i></div>
shaun brilldreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105406234645321012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4012130314580601066.post-46994788480354891752018-01-25T08:31:00.002-08:002020-05-24T01:46:19.235-07:00Do I Love You? Why I'm a rubbish at Collecting Records<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<i><b>My theory was that my copy of
Strawberry Fields Forever by the Beatles which had cost me seven and
sixpence was no better or no worse than the copy Andy Warhol had”</b></i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><b>Bill Drummond</b></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I was a very young lad, 5 or 6 maybe,
when my mum first told me about Elvis Presley. She told me about this
kid who wore his hair like the truck drivers and made records to make
his mum happy. About how he was a white kid, but sounded black on the
radio, but everyone loved him anyway and what colour you were didn't
matter but how much you loved your mother did. I was quite taken with
him, he sounded pretty cool, but the image that cemented itself in my
head was the original record, the first one off pressing of That's
Alright Mama that he made as gift for his mother. I wanted to know
where that record was. My mum said she didn't know, that she thought
maybe it was buried with her. I thought about that record, worms
crawling all over the shiny black vinyl inside the rotting coffin. I
remember thinking that it belonged with her, but at the same time it
should be in a museum. It was quite the conundrum.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I thought about this recently after
reading about the discovery of one of the rarest records ever. It's a
long story, but I’ll shave it down as not to bore you. Young Frank
Wilson from Houston, Texas fancied himself as a singer. He cut a
couple of discs under various aliases which did nothing, and decided
he wanted to sign to Motown because that's where the money was. Berry
Gordy, Motown's boss and lest we forget a disciple to money rather
than art, recorded a Wilson single called Do I Love You (indeed I do)
but decided that he had enough artists in his arsenal and wanted
Wilson as writer and producer instead. The single wasn't released,
and that's where the story should have ended. Cut to Northern England
in the 1970's. A new scene has emerged of kids dancing to rare and
obscure black American soul music. A kid called Simon Soussan, who
had an enviable job of ransacking Motown's vaults and discovers a
copy of Do I Love You. He promptly bootlegs it and sells it on to
Northern Soul DJ's in Britain. The record, a dizzyingly joyful fizzy
pop release of a song (which almost hits the same aural euphoria as
Happy Together by the Turtles but not quite) is an instant hit on the
dance floors. The original copies (two known to be in existence) are
now the most sought after records on the Northern scene. The second
copy sells for £25000.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Cut forward to England late 2017. It
emerges there are not two copies, but three. But this one is even
rarer. An original test pressing no less. Everything is scrutinised.
The matrix numbers down to the handwriting on the label are put under
the microscope. It's true, it's real, the golden egg of vinyl
collecting. Estimates are so bold to state that the record could sell
for £50000.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I watched on in amazement. I was
raptured at the discovery when a terrible feeling come over me. I had
absolutely no desire to own this record. What would I do with a
record worth so much money? I certainly wouldn't play it (I'd be
scared to pick it up). Where would I put it? I've also have a policy
of not selling records on (I had to sell some Smiths import 12”s as
a teenager to fund that years Christmas shopping. I still wince at
the memory) so even though £50000 would come in very handy, I'd have
to sell a piece of my soul too.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There is an assumption that if you buy
a lot of records that makes you a record collector. This is not the
case. I do buy a lot of vinyl, but have no completest urges.
Collectors of Beatles have it the hardest. A slight variance of font
on the label can increase the records by hundreds of pounds. Do I
need two copies of the same album because the lettering is a bit
different? No. I own lots of collectible records but not many rare
ones. I have two test pressings of Sarah Records 7” singles. One is
a white label and the other a Mayking Records factory test pressing.
I rarely play them. Half the fun of playing a Sarah record is looking
at the sleeve as it spins. This is what makes me a non-collector in
essence. I don't buy them to file away like a stamp collection or pin
them like butterflies in glass cases. I buy them to play them and
enjoy them. I don't like and don't understand the one-upmanship of
that world and I don't need it in my life.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Another reason I don't want to own that
Frank Wilson record is I already have a copy. It's not an original
obviously, not even a reissue. It's a third generation bootleg I
bought off Ebay for a tenner. It still goes round and round though,
and still sounds incredible. I played regularly whilst Djing at Just
Like Honey and would have the pleasure of looking out at a dance
floor packed with smiley sweaty people having the times of their
lives. There was the girl who came to the booth and said it was her
birthday, and we probably wouldn’t have it but she would love to
hear Do I Love You by Frank Wilson. I still remember her smile as I
got it out of the box. This one? Yes, she beamed. That's the one . It
was also the last record we ever played at JLH and still has beer
stains and possibly tear stains of the sleeve from that night.. I'm
not sure you get these kind of memories from an MP3. But maybe you do
and I'm just a snobbish old man. Either way, I hope the eventual
owner of the test pressing enjoys his copy of Do I Love You 5000
times as much as I enjoy mine. But somehow I doubt it. </div>
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(Written with gratitude and respect to the fine people at the incredible Soulsource website)</div>
shaun brilldreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105406234645321012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4012130314580601066.post-3569818354018138822018-01-22T13:41:00.000-08:002018-01-22T13:41:27.146-08:00This Is My Street (Daytrip Records)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEcKoue77D6pn4ByqLCAL1o6HPfrAMHARrIe96k5yer0asmOLzKc3BsOk_6ymGgSx3RExUvU3rkn0nzFzmCZhIBmQehLCGLT7lyOezDKzS27yOvYhW8E-m6g8LWK-fi9W9v-F2rc5y0is/s1600/cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1597" data-original-width="1600" height="319" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEcKoue77D6pn4ByqLCAL1o6HPfrAMHARrIe96k5yer0asmOLzKc3BsOk_6ymGgSx3RExUvU3rkn0nzFzmCZhIBmQehLCGLT7lyOezDKzS27yOvYhW8E-m6g8LWK-fi9W9v-F2rc5y0is/s320/cover.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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No music scene has pilfered the British
Swinging Sixties songbook quite as shamelessly as the one crudely
dubbed Britpop. Guitar bands decided to stop making singles that
sounded indie and wanted to write classic pop again. The movement of
wanting to write songs that sounded great coming out of the caff
radio and whistled by the postman was triggered by the twin polls of the
release of the Beatles' Anthology series and Ian MacDonald’s
faultless Fabs almanac Revolution in the Head. It's perhaps then
unsurprising that it's the Beatles that were most pastiched. Not just
the riffs and the lyrics, but everything from the drum loops to the
haircuts and interview sound bites. When Britpop relocated to London,
suddenly swinging again and a hub of creativity, it was the Kinks
turn to have their back catalogue ransacked.</div>
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And of course what a back catalogue it
is. The run of singles on Pye from 1964 to 1970 is an incredible body
of work. Each record slightly better than the last and each bringing
something new, unique and exciting to the party. 1964's All Day and
All of the Night manages to sound drum tight and marvellously
unhinged all the same time. It was the the first punk single, ripped
off wholesale on the Doors' Hello, I Love You and covered faithfully
by the Stranglers. It was the blueprint for the pre-Tommy career of
the Who. Ray Davies seemed to ooze confidence and verve and each
record sounded more sophisticated and interesting than the last.
Tired of Waiting For You sounded slightly sulky and utterly terrific.
See My Friends sounds like the party described by the kid who had
smoked too much pot. The arguable high point coming in '67's Waterloo
Sunset. It's not so much the sound of the record but the feeling it
evokes. It's so ridiculously evocative ('<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">chilly,
chilly is the evening time') </span></span></span>that
it's like stepping into a painting. It <i>sounds
</i>like
London in the same way The Drifters' On Broadway sounds like New York
and Ghost Town sounds like the Thatcher era in the Midlands.
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Still
Britpop almost steadfastly refused to doth their collective caps to
the Davies song writing cannon save for furtively ripping it off.
Only Blur's Damon Albarn seemed to want pay homage, with a slightly
too sleepy reading of Waterloo Sunset (a post breakdown Davies plays
guitar and looks on bemused) on TV's The White Room. Luckily,
Indiepop is not so shy to give credit where it's due, as displayed
on Daytrip Records' compilation of Kinks covers This is My Street.
And what lovingly wonderful record it is.</div>
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Cosines kick off with a sleek,
confident version of Someone Stole My Car from 93's Phobia album.
It's very bold and slightly glam and drags the song from the red neck
saloon to the urban wine bar. It's instantly infectious and
beautifully executed.</div>
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Slightly more out there is Los Bonsais
take on All Day and All of the Night. It sounds like fuzzed up cross
between the Mary Chain and Velvet Underground. It's slightly stoned,
very cool and sexy as fuck.</div>
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Equally thrilling is Picture Book by
The Just Joans which sounds all the world like The Fall at their most
unhinged with a shade of Talking Heads thrown in. It's really
brilliant, slightly piss takey in the best possible way, a tad
bonkers and totally ace. Imagine Mark E Smith bouncing on Buckfast.</div>
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The School's Animal Farm is a delight,
like a Sylvie Vartan cover version-slightly bashful but lovely, all
tambourines, harmonies, and fringes. Gorgeous.</div>
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I'm Not Like Everybody Else by Sweet
Nothings is a proper belter. A twitchy, angry version that captures
the claustrophobia of the original whilst bringing it's own earthy
slightly grimy twist.</div>
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Darren Hayman's weighs with a lovely
piano led wistful reading of Come Dancing. It's just on the right
side of woozy and impossibly pretty. It ends with a Ronnie Lane-esque
jam and would sound perfect in an old boozer after five pints of Best Bitter.</div>
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Eux Autres deliver a driving take on A
Long Way From Home. It's proper road trip material this, managing to
make Ray Davies reflective original sound like Bruce Springsteen.</div>
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Stephen Todd's Bontempi version of No
Return sounds like Smog at their most reflective. A brave and oddly
moving reading.</div>
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Little My slightly fey but faithful
take on Autumn Almanac is impossibly pretty. It's lovingly delivered
with warmth and is delightfully twinkly.
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Wendy Darlings trashy Spector-ish take
on Stop Your Sobbing is like a gritty girl group, bubblegum picked
off and chewed from the pub floor. Wonderful stuff.</div>
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Simon Love's pastoral reading of Till
Death Us Do Part is a stunner, aching and very very beautiful. It
sounds like a what a Noel Gallagher record sounds like in Noel
Gallagher's head.
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Laura K's breathy and poptastic version
of Victoria is a breezy treat. Airy, sweet and rather lovely, it's
faithful treatment recorded with real love and affection and will
steal your heart.</div>
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It takes balls of steel to cover a
standard like Waterloo Sunset, but happily Catenary Wires are more
than capable and their version is very very beautiful. The vocal
ping-pongs from sweet to sour, from darkness to light, from the
dirtiness of the river to the brightness of the taxi light. The
harmonies are exquisite and and the lend the song a confidence and
verve. It's shimmery and lovely and would make old Ray dead proud.</div>
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<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Interstate, Lucida Grande, Lucida Sans Unicode, Lucida Sans, Garuda, Verdana, Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">'THIS
IS MY STREET' - a compilation of Kinks songs performed by indiepop
artists, released by Daytrip Records on the 16th of February 2018 9AM
GMT.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.26cm;">
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Interstate, Lucida Grande, Lucida Sans Unicode, Lucida Sans, Garuda, Verdana, Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">12"
VINYL AND DIGITAL DOWNLOAD AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER FROM THE 22ND OF
JANUARY 2018 AT </span></span></span><a href="https://exit.sc/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdaytriprecords.bandcamp.com" target="_blank"><span style="color: #3388dd;"><span style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="font-family: Interstate, Lucida Grande, Lucida Sans Unicode, Lucida Sans, Garuda, Verdana, Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">daytriprecords.bandcamp.com</span></span></span></span></a></div>
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shaun brilldreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105406234645321012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4012130314580601066.post-62996811442407173442017-11-25T16:55:00.000-08:002020-05-24T01:46:40.394-07:00Live review: Onsind @ Partisan, Manchester 24/11/17<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihtNpYHUC9Hhov6GVDjYwyjuZ7q7dypYEIMSjU2Y0R4bf4vWiyHAjDXGezA1uE9ldvEOmBCRJQ1Ga00ndtTMrQcpm7pOtL-IZ8CsMcfkupoOjzWmJUZOkKpNWL9ouqOwJgIK-AjaoRUhY/s1600/onsind1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="510" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihtNpYHUC9Hhov6GVDjYwyjuZ7q7dypYEIMSjU2Y0R4bf4vWiyHAjDXGezA1uE9ldvEOmBCRJQ1Ga00ndtTMrQcpm7pOtL-IZ8CsMcfkupoOjzWmJUZOkKpNWL9ouqOwJgIK-AjaoRUhY/s320/onsind1.jpg" width="226" /></a></div>
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Fears that my first outing to gig since
becoming a dad would see me somewhat ring rusty turned out to be well
founded. Finding the venue, Manchester's Partisan, proved something
of a mission. After tens of minutes wandering round in circles with a
decidedly unhelpful Google map, I finally followed two people who
looked vaguely punk and found it that way (it's to the right of the
faintly terrifying snooker hall then right again).</div>
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I've been, quite understandably
slightly wary of 'safe spaces' after being in one in Leeds and seeing
a pissed middle aged man call the lead singer and songwriter of the
headline band a 'blonde girl cunt' and proceed to kick seven shades
of shit out her tour van. Partisan, however, is everything it claims
to be. The space is excellent, the sound brilliant and everyone from
the bar tenders to the doormen (not quite to the world weary
cheerfulness of the Star and Garter bouncers but not far off) are
super friendly and happy. The whole audience seemed relaxed and at
home. Job done Partisan, job done.</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I arrived just in time to catch the
last two songs by Zaplain, who sounded brilliant. I quietly berated
myself for my poor orienteering skills that prevented me catching the
rest of the set. Brighton's Just Blankets cheered me up again,
however. Their gloriously noisy set was infectious with melody and
good cheer. Set highlight, Short Walks ('How many short walks/to make
this place feel like home?/I don't know') can be found on their Like
Velcro EP out now on Everything Sucks. Go buy it. It's class.</div>
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Onto the tonight's main attraction, the
much missed Onsind. Blooming from a punka troubadour two piece to a
newly established five piece, they bound on stage with an odd mix of
nervous energy and extreme confidence. The set explodes into
Magnolia, taken from their incredible new LP We Wilt, We Bloom on
Specialist Subject Records. It's immediately and abundantly clear
that the band are skin tight, they sound absurdly confident and
absolutely terrific. New cuts are proudly unveiled. Immature, the
classic in waiting Sectioned and a poignant Loyalty Festers,
introduced by a long and heartbreaking monologue by Nathan about a
school friend of his being swept away by the dark icy waves of the
far right. (Shamefully, a small gang about the back continued
laughing and chatting away through out this speech. It got to the
point where the sound man had to go and tell them to be quiet. I've
never ever understood this; why go and see a band and talk to your
mates all the way through?).</div>
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New babies proudly shown off, the band
went into a section of what Nathan called, tongue firmly in cheek,
'the hits'. And what beauties there are in their cannon. The still
furious BA77, the moving Dissatisfactions, poignant Suicide is
Painful and the personal highlight of the evening God Hates Facts.
Now, this song is so powerful and emotive it would sound good played
on the spoons, but this line up absolutely smacked it out the park.
There's a tiny bit of my stomach only the 'Meet me at the reservoir'
bit can reach. Heterosexuality Is a Construct has turned into an
absolute monster. Delivered at break neck speed (“We are gonna do
it faster and faster it last, like, a minute” jokes Nathan), so
fast it's a challenge to sing along. Class.</div>
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Just before the encore, the promoter
comes up to the stage with a cake celebrating Onsind's 11 years as a
band. The band are quite visibly touched. “It's vegan too!” adds
the promoter, getting one of the biggest cheers of the night. Then
onto the promised encore, the greatly anticipated Pokemon City
Limits. “Lets get rid of some Tory's” spits Nathan “Seriously,
I want to see some fucking heads on spikes”. It doesn’t really
get more comforting or cathartic than Manchester screaming never
trust a Tory in unison.
</div>
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This is the key to Onsind I think.
Anyone buying their new LP hoping for a map through political
swamplands or a cure for mental illness will be left wanting. What
the band offer is a hand to hold in the darkness. There's nothing
like mental illness, anxiety and disgust at a political climate to
make you feel alone. Onsind are not the antidote, but sometimes
finding someone or something just as fucked up and fucked off as you
are is a comfort. Here's to the next eleven years. </div>
shaun brilldreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105406234645321012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4012130314580601066.post-52070704454722928992017-10-27T09:25:00.000-07:002020-05-24T01:47:21.545-07:00Fate, Feist and the Northern Quarter<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
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Back in 2003 I had an affair with a
girl from Manchester which went quite predictably and quite
disastrously wrong. I ended up going back to Shrewsbury with a broken
heart and my tail placed pretty firmly between my legs. The scars
from the relationship, as they tend to do, healed up with time. I
found myself getting over the girl, but my love for the city of
Manchester stayed unabashed and undimmed. Usually, during this time
in my life I would get over a break up by getting myself as drunk as
possible but I found this wasn’t quite the ticket.</div>
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This was my busy music period. I was
attending as many gigs as humanly possible. If there wasn’t a show
to go to, I would catch the train, as painful as it was, back to
Manchester and spend a day record shopping. I used to enjoy a post
shop drink in Dry bar, but one day descended the stairs to the toilet
to witness two huge men passing over (and I've ransacked my memory of
this but it always gives the same results) a yellow balloon full of
what I can only imagine to be cocaine. After that (a most
embarrassing encounter, they were clearly waiting for me to finish my
business but the shock of seeing my first ever proper drug deal had
left my penis unable to piss) the port of call for a post record
shop drink was next door at the Night and Day café. I fell in love
with the place a couple of years previous, during a hopelessly
romantic and stupidly and pretentiously dim poetic stage. When I
walked in the girl behind the bar wore a stripy top, peddle pushers
and ballet shoes. She looked like something from a Kerouac novel, and
I found myself quite smitten with the place.</div>
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I found myself going there more and
more. It's great place to sit and think, the perfect point of
communication (or lack of) for a heat broken berk from Shropshire. It
was at this time that that things got a little weird between the café
and I. I had found a 7” single in the bargain bin in Vinyl Exchange
which I had, in truth, only bought because I liked the sleeve. It was
a black and white shot of girl framed by a circle. She had a perfect
fringe and white tights with arrows drawn on in thick marker pointing
down. It was sexy; a bit sixties, a bit mod. The record was One
Evening by Feist. The A side was really good, an organ led half
pissed on wine ditty to new and unexpected love (which as you can
imagine was quite the tonic) but the B-side was better, a piano led
woozy ballad called Lovers Spit, a song about relationships being a
curse, which as you can imagine suited me even better. It's about now
that strangeness kicks in. I strutted into Night and Day with the 7”
in a cute little plastic bag to find Feist playing over the PA.
Strange, I thought as I ordered my cup of tea. But this would go on
happening. Over the next few trips I found (and I swear I'm not
making this up) which ever record I bought would be playing when I
walked into Night and Day. This happened maybe four or five times
until it got to the point where I was almost expecting it. This is
where things turn really strange.
</div>
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I had finished my record shop at Vinyl
Revival and walked out to head to Night and Day fully expecting to
here my purchases played when I got there. As exited the door, there
was two teenagers, a girl and a boy, looking at the stock in the shop
window. The girl had caught sight of something exciting, possibly the
mugs and yelled at her friend with great animation 'Hey! Joe!' whilst
pointing at whatever took her fancy. Of course my mental jukebox
started playing Hey Joe by Jimi Hendrix. I took the minute walk to
Night and Day and, mind blowingly, the said tune was belting out of
the speakers. Spooky, no? I tried to rationalise all this. Told
myself that the people behind the bar at N&D probably picked up
the same bargains at nearby Vinyl Exchange, but then I thought about
the amount of people shuffling the thousands upon thousands of cards
in the CD racks and thought no. I read somewhere that it would be,
statistically speaking, odder not to hear the tune you were humming
come on the radio seconds later than to hear it. But five times on
the spin? Was my insomnia making my brain make weird connections?
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A few months later, after playing her
debut LP to death, I found out Feist was doing a gig at the Night and
Day. I took this as some sort of sign and booked myself a ticket. I'm
not sure what I was expecting. The heavens to open and some sort of
light to pour down on me through the Manchester sky. To meet the love
of my life maybe? I don't know, but I was expecting something. As it
turned out, the gig was uneventful. So uneventful that I can't find
any record of it even taking place. There's nothing on the internet,
but it happened. I was there. So were maybe thirty other people and
place seemed sadly empty for such a great performance. She was
brilliant (as was her band), a total star. Speaking in French between
songs and belting out her songs like her life depended on it. She
even wore the outfit she donned on the 7” sleeve. The support that
night was a young lad called Sam Hammond and he was brilliant too. He
was a good looking lad with a strong jaw of wispy beard and dressed
(almost certainly by Pop Boutique) like an old blues man. He looked
like he travelled with nothing but a small suitcase and a guitar and
sang like someone who had lived a thousand lives. His songs were
peppered with Dylan, but with an urban coffee shop twist. I thought
his set was brilliant. I went home, though slightly disappointed that
Dionysus didn't appear or anything, happy; trying to put such daft
thoughts about coincidence and fate out of my head.</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A couple of months after that, I went
to a gig a lot closer (ten minutes from my house in fact) to home at
the Buttermarket in Shrewsbury. It was by a Manchester band called
Longview who had released a few singles on the 14<sup>th</sup> Floor
label that had bothered the indie charts a bit. I usually, or at
least did, get to gigs nice and early but being so close to my house
I had left pretty late and when I climbed the steps to the hall the
lights were already out signifying the support had started, I made my
way through the dark the the bar when I heard a familiar voice
singing. “I'm just a pawwwwn in her gaaayme'. It was Sam Hammond.
He played another blinder, though weirdly to few more people than the
Feist gig and had gone down well. I saw him at the bar after his set
and bought him a pint. Told him I thought his said was great and how
weird it was that I saw him randomly a few weeks back and even
weirder here. He gave it the old 'Oh thanks man' with that slow head
nod pop stars do when they are being flattered. 'So what music to you
like?' he asked. I told him I was stuck on a song called Dark of my
Moon. 'They Gene Clark song!' he shouted suddenly animated, spilling
his Guinness over his suit 'I bloody love that song!'. He wrote down
the chords for me, we shook hands. He most likely went his way, and I
went mine.</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I hadn't thought about any of this, the
N&D coincidence, the Feist gig or any of it for well over a
decade. There was a post recently, a pretty funny meme, on twitter
about Bob Dylan that had gone 'viral'. The poster was someone called
Sam Hammond. Was it the same guy? It was, of course, and the memories
came flooding back. I tried to find Sam's CD, unplayed for a good
twelve years, but searching the house high and low couldn’t find
it. I tried searching Ebay to buy another copy but found that I
couldn't remember the title. I half remembered it being named after
the date it was recorded. And there it was. Sam Hammond. 171203. It
was cut exactly four years before the death of my father. Spooky, no? </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUWyRO58mVA4IlTLDAchSCHVwUQdo6vZT9bg2354BlKFA5pzBfnPCbm9SBS_caG06gNAc4DHtG7WX8rX5NPWFdO7UPrmo03EZ8sHPtfUVSC9kVACGS3QibzseDTtfcQtmPmUZfobmjOzo/s1600/sam3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="200" data-original-width="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUWyRO58mVA4IlTLDAchSCHVwUQdo6vZT9bg2354BlKFA5pzBfnPCbm9SBS_caG06gNAc4DHtG7WX8rX5NPWFdO7UPrmo03EZ8sHPtfUVSC9kVACGS3QibzseDTtfcQtmPmUZfobmjOzo/s1600/sam3.jpg" /></a></div>
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shaun brilldreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105406234645321012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4012130314580601066.post-88607878133183158052017-10-06T11:22:00.001-07:002020-05-24T01:48:00.293-07:00Oh, Maybe: On sadness in pop<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiAP83qH5bsLQYWSllwscdbx52wIp5j0x_H-RR800FRDmNRM47PyEU0E3P_nDcypposoT3Frc6XLQdsU9pCVwG2EJLR5JNzCfESae8bxm5fZJxyuay1HwEJZnjG0-zqfBLfCwLgOOy5-I/s1600/maybe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="697" data-original-width="700" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiAP83qH5bsLQYWSllwscdbx52wIp5j0x_H-RR800FRDmNRM47PyEU0E3P_nDcypposoT3Frc6XLQdsU9pCVwG2EJLR5JNzCfESae8bxm5fZJxyuay1HwEJZnjG0-zqfBLfCwLgOOy5-I/s320/maybe.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: sans-serif;">I
was having a pint with my mate Kendo recently as and as usual the
topic turned to music. One of life's little pleasures for Kendo is
going to Sainsbury's after work on a Friday and buying a four bottles
of beer and a freshly released CD. It's his way of keeping a hand in.
Last weeks purchase was the new album by The National. “It's
alright” he mused, supping a pint “but how many albums can you
get out singing about heartbreak? Christ knows what his wife makes of
it all”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: sans-serif;">Everyone
has a personal source of sad songs to sooth in times of distress. My
own port of call is End records. After seeing the success of
Heartbreak Hotel, label owner George Goldner wisely started to fuse
Doo Wop with early rock and roll and started recording and releasing
teenage paeans to heartbreak. This was the late fifties, just before
Elvis and lust cornered the teenage record buying market. If the kids
were still too puritanical to scream blue murder and throw knickers
at a stage, they could still express themselves through their post
pubescent sadness in the privacy of their bedroom or slow dancing
with beau. Jerry Leiber described Goldner as having the taste of a
fourteen year old girl. It was meant as a compliment, Goldner's ear
for talent and production earning him after hit after hit. It was
music for teenagers by teenagers. </span><span style="font-family: sans-serif;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">
Crossover smash</span></span><span style="font-family: sans-serif;">
Frankie Lymon and the Teenager's Why do fools f<span style="background-color: white;">all in love </span></span><span style="font-family: sans-serif;">was one of his, as was Tears on my Pillow by Little Anthony and the
Imperials (later unmemorably covered by Kylie Minogue and shmaltzed
up on the Grease soundtrack). But by some distance the jewel in his
and End's crown is Maybe by the Chantels. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: sans-serif;">Two
minutes and fifty four seconds of absolute wonder, Maybe is a
phenomenal piece of work. From the melody (not dissimilar to future
weeper Unchained Melody, released eight years later) to the leather
lunged, hand wringing plea of vocal by Arlene Smith to the simple yet
completely emotionally devastating lyric (the line Maybe/If I held
your hand/You would understand never fails, however times I hear it,
to cut me to the quick). Smith was reportedly an uncredited co-writer
of the song (Goldner, an <span style="color: #222222;">inveterate
gambler, had, co-writing credit on the record, later taken off. It's
plausible he needed the royalty money to pay off debt), aged sixteen
at the time, her authorship would explain the pain of the lyrics.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222;">It
wasn't just teens cashing in on the heartbreak, mind. Released a few
months before Maybe and written by a twenty five year old (young
obviously, but ancient in the world of pre-Beatles pop) Conway
Twitty, Only Make Believe hit the number one spot in the UK and the
US and arguably kick started the career of Roy Orbison. It's a
terrific record, slowly but steadily ascending to the heart wrenching
crescendo of the chorus. How Elvis must have heard it and wept. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222;">The
tear jerkers slowly crept their way into R&B and soul too.
Released on Wand in 1962, Getting Ready for the Heartbreak by Chuck
Jackson (a long overdue reissue of his hits and rarities has just
been released on Ace Records) is a truly devastating 45. If the vocal
(It's almost like he's just been dragged to the mic after falling
asleep whisky drunk in a bus shelter, he constantly sounds on the
verge of breaking down and crying) doesn't do the damage, the lyrics
will. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222;">Closed
up all my windows/so no-one could see</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222;">Even
told the mailman to pass by me/</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222;">Cos'
my love is coming today/</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222;">And
I know what she's going to say.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222;">It's
an incredible piece of work. Rarely has being in the shit with the
other half sounded so wonderful.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222;">The
sadness even came, if stealthily, by more commercial soul. Tucked
away on the flip of her 1964 number one smash My Guy, Mary Wells' Oh
Little Boy is one of Motown's (and Stateside's) hidden gems. Sad yet
sassy, with a gut buster of a vocal, it could have been an Aretha
hit. Saucer eyed and bordering on demented, the lyric is almost spat
out. When she sing No! No! No! You can almost see her hands go up
palms front. If you don't own this record, do your self a favour and
splash out a fiver on Ebay. Tell 'em I sent you.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: sans-serif;">*********************</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222;">Modern
pop has struggled to match the sadness and madness of these records.
I'm not sure if it's the production of the early singles or the
simplicity of the lyric, but writing a sophisticated modern sad pop
hit has proven hard. There are examples of obviously, and when the
formula works, be it Unfinished Sympathy, Nothing Compares 2U or
Missing by Everything But the Girl, the bonding theme is that you
feel the song is written about you, that heartbreak is a universal
theme. Where songwriters get it wrong, particularly with indie bands,
is the songs are written over egged in angst and lacking in
sincerity. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222;">Worst
offender is Creep by Radiohead. Now, in his mind, you can see Thom
Yorke thinking he is the poet laureate of the dispossessed, but in
reality he comes across like a stalker sniffing his ex's tights. Like
Lennon's Jealous Guy it's the worst kind of record, self obsessed
rather than self assessing. A self love song. See also the Manic
Street Preachers. Their quote lead assault of pop nihilism has not
dated well (Black Horse apocalypse if you please) and listening to
the Manics these days is rather like masturbating. It's perfectly
acceptable in your teens abut a bit desperate in your thirties. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222;">One
of the only sad indie records to remain unscathed by public and
critic alike is Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division. From the sleeve to
it's pioneering production it's a classic. For all the myths and
legends, it's Factory's finest hour. If they had only released this
it would still be in the top ten labels. Ever. It's beauty is it's
ability to suck you into it's world from the very first drop of the
needle. Lyrically it takes punks ability to document the chaos around
it into documenting the chaos inside Ian Curtis' mind. I love Tony
Wilson, his chutzpah, his talent of praising talent and raising pop
music to the level of fine art. But his biggest crime (other than not
signing the Smiths) was trying to propel the myth of Curtis into Jim
Morrison levels. When he hung himself, we not only lost a musical
pioneer, but a young girl lost her 24 year old dad. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222;">The
recent biopics and documentaries about Curtis love to tell us about
Hooky's Sunday dinner. We love to watch Peter Saville's pained
anguish when he tells the anecdote about telling Wilson there was a
tomb on the sleeve for the thousandth time, and Paul Morley quip
about going to see the Great Rock and Roll Swindle instead of
attending the funeral, but what the film makers have conveniently
left out his Ian's mother, Doreen's account of her reaction to
finding out that her son was dead. Punk it is not, but sincere,
honest, down to earth and brutally sobering it is. No art, however
beautiful, is worth dying for.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: sans-serif;">******************************************</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222;">So
then, the saddest song ever? Easy. Hands down, by a country furlong
it's Diana by Paul Anka. Not so much the song itself, which actually
rather jaunty, but the story behind it. A 16 year old Anka had cocked
his hat at young girl at his local church, Diana Ayoub, and in an
attempt to woo her wrote her a song. His advances were spurned, but
the song became a world wide hit. Every time I hear the song, I
picture a young Anka waiting in the wings at another gig in another
county having to sing, for the four hundredth time, about a girl who
broke his heart. Now that's tragic.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
shaun brilldreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105406234645321012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4012130314580601066.post-74495869202041627822017-09-25T10:45:00.001-07:002020-05-24T01:49:28.180-07:00Laughter in the Dark-On Laughing Man by Rain<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuVEYy-E_LPUJ2GPTuh_-wNuSOdq6F8yDM1oIPX3MCBQG5g83DPNDOGR7ScCrqPX5pFb4p5uVToSoY9N4JYZX35h-3tSllhkHEOM3WmhTaELAGoKDTD4gUzEMt0WYZkJbNvJfc_kwwMWo/s1600/laugh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuVEYy-E_LPUJ2GPTuh_-wNuSOdq6F8yDM1oIPX3MCBQG5g83DPNDOGR7ScCrqPX5pFb4p5uVToSoY9N4JYZX35h-3tSllhkHEOM3WmhTaELAGoKDTD4gUzEMt0WYZkJbNvJfc_kwwMWo/s1600/laugh.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
When I was 14, I was skiving out of
doing my homework one night by watching Brookside with my mum. It was
a pretty average episode until Mike Dixon, leather jacketed heart
throb and rebel with a chin, came on the screen wearing a black
T-shirt with the legend Rain printed on it in white writing. At this
point I was steadily building my encyclopedic knowledge of indie
music, and remember feeling somewhat miffed that a band could slip
stealthily under my radar on to prime time television.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
As well as building an internal
database of indie artists, I was steadily puting together the
foundations of my record collection. It was no small thrill when I
found in the local advertisement paper coupon entitling the holder to
purchase cheap records, namely 12” for £1 and 7”for 50p. I
didn't know it at the time, but the shop dropping the discounts,
Rainbow Records, was closing down. I had bought my cassettes from
there, and found myself daydreaming about the small rack of 45s. No
sleeves, just the paper die cut sleeve with the artist and title
written in biro. This I found unbearably exciting. No pictures, no
labels, no clues.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I was even more giddy when I rocked up
one Sunday morning brandishing my voucher,and was told to go
upstairs. When I reached the top I found a room containing the shops
whole vinyl stock laid out on the floor, either randomly put together
in plastic boxes or propped unsteadily on the floor. I've never found
a better place to burn my paper round money.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I bought as much as my money would
stretch to and my arms could carry (I could have bought the lot for a
few of hundred quid) but the pick was a 10” called Lemonstone
Desired and 7” on clear vinyl in a gatefold sleeve called Taste of
Rain. Both records where by an artist called Rain.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The music was good. Guitar lead, with
hints of blues and psychedelia. The music was driven, seemingly honed
by years of hard touring, tight but with dirt under the fingernails.
I flipped the 45 over to play the B-side. I've never stopped playing
it.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
* * *</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "new times roman";">In his
lecture, Has
the iPod changed our relationship with music?, <span style="font-size: small;">Bill
Drummond describes the downside of having a whole library of music
inside a tiny box. The problem, as he sees it, is one finds
themselves skipping tracks, whole albums worth, in a bid to find
something satisfying. I had the same problem, but came up with my own
solution. I split songs into two category's-Ipod friendly and not.
The former contain songs with a bit of oomph about them,unfussy and
uncomplicated. Good walking music. The latter contains more delicate
songs designed for listening to in ones bedroom. When I say that, I
don't mean songs to play in the car or do the washing up to. I mean
songs to listen to. It's dying art, just listening to a record. Just
watching the vinyl of round and inhaling nothing but oxygen and the
sounds coming out the speakers. Laughing Man, the B-side of Taste of
Rain, is the perfect song for this. It's beautiful, one of my top
five. An acoustic balled peppered with slightly Spanish flecks of
chiming guitar. Seemingly about someone trying to look after someone
else (I see you/You see me/Take my hand/and we'll be free/Just as
darkness turns to light/I will help you through the night) but
tentatively holding on themselves (The laughing man/Came beating down
my door/I'm laughing man/But I can't take no more). It's real
4am,whisky in hand stuff.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "new times roman";">I
was obsessed by the song, playing it in the dark through headphones,
trying to make sense of it. The words, the emotion of the track.
Clues were thin on the ground. The band were signed to Sony,
something I figured was due to the track Lemonstone Desired,a
slightly 60's sounding record which echo's the Byrds.(you can hear the influence of Rain to a certain degree in The Coral but quite majorly in the Stands</span><span style="font-family: "new times roman";">).</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "new times roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "new times roman";"> I could
picture some A&R man trying to coin in the Stone Roses buck, down
to it's Sally Cinnamon vibes . The sleeves bore witness to this,
painted nude women, a mouth exhaling smoke. Who was the Laughing Man?
For a while I though it may be based on the JD Salinger story of the
same name, then after reading a dedication on the sleeve (“To all
women everywhere, we would!”) and changed my mind. I sent an SAE to
a mysterious 'Diane' via a Liverpool PO Box written in small print on
the sleeve begging for information (and cheekily, some hand written
lyrics to the song which gives you some understanding of my
obsession) but received nothing back. The band had just vanished in
to thin air. The song is possibly the only one I've played regularly
since my teens. I love that song.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "new times roman";"> ***
***</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "new times roman";">So
I contacted the band, and one of the songwriter for contribution to
this piece, and both , in a reaction eerily similar to Diane's, have
been ignored. I was initially a bit pissed off, but once I got over
taking it personally, I was actually pretty chuffed. Maybe it's
better that it's not possible to find out a song meaning with a quick
click on Google, maybe I will paint my own picture of what the writer
is trying to tell us. Mystique is wonderful thing. If you read this
far, you are probably itching to hear the record. Well, tough. There
are no MP3's on Google, no tracks on Youtube. If you want to hear it,
then just like me you will have to hunt down the record. With ipod , we are trying to find a track to rescue us, but the best songs are the ones trying to find us. As we get
older, I think, we find less and less music that defines us, but it
never stops being able to console and heal. A 7” record can change
your whole body chemistry in seconds. Long may it run.</span></div>
shaun brilldreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105406234645321012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4012130314580601066.post-66032372027502337592017-09-07T13:34:00.003-07:002017-09-07T15:29:47.345-07:00Six Feet Under Milk Wood-Goodbye Evans the Death<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCjeS3iLDQrSm4qWestStJT0IGzq6TNjhnKq2n4mCY8PUuyLnZOMTmULUQ2OUe8aFt997CXW7g3aoo-R6-tslI9o9mrmztjcChFOMl7ntAiw7-zbIpQ3tQeMTD7h8IU4G31WaFW3vWLEk/s1600/etd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCjeS3iLDQrSm4qWestStJT0IGzq6TNjhnKq2n4mCY8PUuyLnZOMTmULUQ2OUe8aFt997CXW7g3aoo-R6-tslI9o9mrmztjcChFOMl7ntAiw7-zbIpQ3tQeMTD7h8IU4G31WaFW3vWLEk/s320/etd.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I didn’t know it at the time, but as
the car sped it's way through the breath taking Welsh countryside,
the planets were aligning above me. The motor contained me and my pal
John (specialist skills-Charisma, Ex-Gothness) and the plan was to
head away from meeting mutual friends just off the coast of Llandudno
to London where we would attend a gig headlined by the Garlands. There
I would leave John to head to Bristol to attend the rest of the Big
Pink Cake curated weekender. At the time, I had joined an online
forum called Anorak, and was beyond inspired by it. Sat in the
passenger seat, head heavy with plans to write about music, start a
club night and put on gigs for myself, the world seemed suddenly open. The club night would
eventually manifest itself as the Salopian shindig Just Like Honey
and, as we shall see, I finally got to promote pop shows, but I had already started to write a blog called Brilldream (originally called I Had an
Excellent Dream after the Dentists song, which proved a bit too much
of a mouthful). It was pretty basic stuff at the time, like a
songwriter learning the chords before finding it's own muse and own
voice but it was SOMETHING.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The plan was going quite wonderfully
until we hit the traffic coming into London and any bonhomie slowly
turned into fatigue as the boredom of the stationary traffic started
to gnaw at our souls. John was keen on sacking off the gig and just
going for a curry instead, and stated the plan quite plainly. I
however, persisted on going, and eventually won out. It was a very
fortunate victory.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The gig was amazing. I got to meet a
few of the inspirational people of Anorak. It was odd meeting them in
the flesh, like the characters of your favourite novel popping out
the pages and offering to buy you a pint. I was dizzily trying to
take this all in, admiring the signed BMX Bandits poster on the
Betsey Trotwood wall when out of nowhere a stunningly pretty girl
bounded up to me, said she loved my T-shirt and insisted I attended
her club night before slapping a flyer in my hand and bounding off
again. As it happened, I wouldn't be able to attend the night
(distance, real life, that sort of thing) but I was intrigued by the
flyer. The night was called Librarians Wanted and the flyer was
shaped as a bookmark, most wonderfully of all (due to all consuming
passion to find new bands to write about) was a list of bands, three
of them I had not heard of. One these bands was called Evans the
Death.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I listened to all the bands on the
bill, but it was the tracks off the Evans the Death Myspace (oh yes)
that sent me a bit giddy. In particular the demo versions of So
Unclean and Sleeping Song. I listened again and again,as my tea grew
ever colder, in rapture. Everything was there, the songs, the lyrics
that mixed genuine teen angst/ennui with Smithsonian whimsy, the
voice. That voice! Like an instrument in itself, a voice to be
trusted. Admired even. I abandoned my tea and set about writing down
how brilliant it all was, how odd people so young could create
something so perfect. I got a thanks off them via email for the write
up and I somewhat cheekily asked them for an interview, which they
accepted. It was, I think, their first ever and sparkled with wit and
genuine inspiration. It was brilliant.
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A little while later they sent out
requests for promoters to fill in gaps in their tour, and it's around
here where things get a little cosmic. Now, I was no promoter (far
from it) but I knew I had to put them on. And we duly did, the second
ever event under the Just Like Honey banner. The gig was wonderful,
if sparsely attended (it was a Monday night in March, complete with
snow blizzard) and was everything I hoped it would be. The band
played a blinder, and later they got drunk on the free Red Stripe
(one band member in particular who loudly claimed to have snorted
cocaine off a dog with a member of indiepop royalty who will for
reasons of libel remain nameless. We had to carry him back to my
house, bless him) and we even managed to break even. Now, the reason
I'm so fond of this gig is it in a very roundabout way lead me to
meeting my partner, Rachel. The story is I got friendly with a lad
called Dave who was mainly there to see the local-ish support band
Bad Grammar, and in a few years time I would lend him a bass guitar
and he would introduce me to the woman who would go on to be the
mother of my baby. A pretty unremarkable story until you tick off the
myriad of variables that could have put pay to the meeting. What if
we had gone for that curry? What if I had not been at the bar when
Silja gave me that flyer? What if we had set up Just Like Honey a
month later and missed out? What if Evans had been shit? What of they
had said no the interview? It goes on and on. The two weirdest ones
for me was the fact that the original support band had pulled out a
week before the gig, leaving us slightly in the shit (but still
lending us loads of amps. Thank you Chris! I've not forgotten you!)
and Bad Grammar had got in touch THE NEXT DAY practically begging for
a slot. Even weirder was the fact that at work, we had a full drum
kit just laying around, which had (and I swear I'm not making this
up) been donated as a raffle prize three weeks before the gig and
remained unclaimed. I'm not much one for fate, but bloody hell.</div>
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So, it's with sadness that I learned
that Evans the Death are to be no more. It's obviously upsetting that
we will get no more albums (which got more weird, more wonderful and
more ambitious with every release), that the radio wasn't saturated
with Moss Bros tunes and they never got to headline the range of
festivals that their ambition heralded. What really irks me (quite
personally actually) is that Katherine Whitaker never got to be a
major influence on young women around the world. Her empathy, wit,
and political intelligence should make her the pin up of choice over
the new crop of singers and it reamains no short of a travesty she's
not a global identity as big as Beyonce. When Martha, my daughter, is
old enough to form a band, I will play her the EtD albums and tell
her how Katherine (who will no doubt by then by the first MP with a
Turner prize) and the boys once stayed at daddies house and how I met
her mother.</div>
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The final Evans the Death show will be
at the Windmill in Brixton on 23<sup>rd</sup> September. I won't be
there (distance, real life, that sort of thing) but you should go.
Maybe, just maybe, the planets will align for you.
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shaun brilldreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105406234645321012noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4012130314580601066.post-69144409239288900372017-03-13T07:28:00.000-07:002017-03-13T08:07:41.070-07:00Honeys Dead: JLH 2013-2017<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1XyaYy6YYYxwpC_Dr4HIL4f70R64T5Hp22fG9hDQgsoiURsqLzpxu1cGUk3psuQ74XdqzIslmfBFkti4P5zVH-9qaPIUzMKurJ5RL7PRwLdyIbqxl7g2Rghj8R2QlXl8EWbaHQNzgddc/s1600/tears.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1XyaYy6YYYxwpC_Dr4HIL4f70R64T5Hp22fG9hDQgsoiURsqLzpxu1cGUk3psuQ74XdqzIslmfBFkti4P5zVH-9qaPIUzMKurJ5RL7PRwLdyIbqxl7g2Rghj8R2QlXl8EWbaHQNzgddc/s320/tears.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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It is with sadness that we announce the
termination of the Salopian club night Just Like Honey.
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The main reason is for half of JLH
moving to France. We could barely organise the night when we lived in
the same end of town, so to keep it going would be folly. We,of
course, wish John and Daphne all the luck in the world.</div>
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We are incredibly proud of what we have
achieved with JLH. We've gone from playing in the pub opposite Al
Piccolino's to festivals supporting Saint Etienne. It's been quite
the ride.</div>
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When I first germed the idea of
starting the club night, I had a handful of ambitions. I wanted to
play Felt, Teenage Fanclub and Orange Juice, I wanted to bring people
from the big cities to Shrewsbury, I wanted to play a big city when
that was achieved, I wanted to play Indietracks and wanted a couple
to meet at our night and fall in love.</div>
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We've played those bands at every gig
(You've not heard Primitive Painters until it's boomed out of a huge
PA) plus being the only place for miles and miles that played the
likes of Martha, The Spook School and Evans the Death. One punter was
so excited about finding out what song we were playing that he
skidded on the dance floor with pace. That, I think, is the sign of
a good record. It was Everybody Deserves at Least One Summer of Love
by The Understudies, and it is indeed a tune.</div>
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We've been very lucky insomuch that for
a tiny night we've attracted people from Manchester, Cardiff, Leeds, Sheffield, Bristol and London to our nights (it's still a thrill thinking that
when someone hears the word Shrewsbury, the first thing they think of
is our night), even attracting some Italian Joy Division fans. We've
played a gig in London and supported BOB The Spook School and the June Brides. We've
played a set at Indietracks which was not only a highlight in my
'career' but my life too. We have met and worked with some of the most amazing and inspiring people in the world. We've been very lucky.</div>
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What I'm most proud of is the fact we
kept going really. It was a mental idea to do a night playing obscure
records, battling it out with super clubs playing you the same old
shit. There's a great quote by Dave Haslam about the eclecticism of
the Hacienda which goes
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“No-one had the ambition or the
madness or the genius to say lets be different to everywhere else and
lets open our minds”</div>
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And that's what I'm most proud of at
JLH, we did play anything and everything, we did play records that
challenged. We treated our audience as grown up intelligent people
rather that idiots expecting to be spoon fed the usual shit and we
always made sure everyone had a good night. We are and always will
be different to the point of unique. There's no night in the world
quite like Just Like Honey.</div>
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One message we really want to get across is if you really wanted to something, write a book, form a band, write a song, put on a a night/shows then GO FOR IT. JLH is probably the first time in my life I actually stopped worrying and just put my guts into it. It really is amazing where a daydream can take you.</div>
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There will be a few a farewell nights,
next one being 18 of March, look out for further night and a rather
special night in May.</div>
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Oh, and no-one to my knowledge ever did
meet and fall in love at a JLH night, but I met a lad called Dave
when we put on Evans the Death (our second event under the banner
Just Like Honey) who I got on with very well. Years later I leant him
a bass guitar, and on the evening I handed the axe over he was with a
very pretty girl. The pretty girl was called Rachel and we got on
very well. It turned out we were both DJ's and we spent the night
discussing politics, Pulp and Dolly Parton. We are expecting our
first child in July. It is a fool who underestimates the power of
pop.</div>
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Pour les enfants, toujours</div>
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Shaun and John xx</div>
shaun brilldreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105406234645321012noreply@blogger.com1