Fate, Feist and the Northern Quarter

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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^th 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.

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? 

‘We deal with big things in a small way’: An interview with Martin from Stanier from The Anaesthetics

Manchester-Home of pimp rolling, chest beating rock and roll and that strange mix of musical passion and arrogance. Home, also, to Martin from local band the Anaesthetics. I meet him in the Night and Day café to discuss his band’s forthcoming single ‘Slow Trains’. “We’ll start in a sec” he tells me “I’ve just got to nip for a pee”

Martin’s introduction to music, like many others, was via those lovable mop-tops.

“When I was about 8 or 9 years old, my mum and dad always used to out drinking on a Friday and Saturday night and when they got back my mum would put on all these really old Beatles records. And I remember we used have the table in the lounge and used to make my sister and brother, who were very young, pretend to be the Beatles. One would be the drummer, the other a guitarist and I would be at the front and sing ‘A hard days night’ to my mum and dad, who where leathered and though it was great. Music touches me in a way that you can’t really put your finger on it. It just talks, it just says things. I don’t know if you put on a record, and it just transports you somewhere? You identify with it so perfectly, it just expresses it such a way I just can’t put my finger on it. You just can’t argue with its greatness. It’s really obvious thing to say, but on Panic there’s a line that says ‘it says nothing to me about my life’ and I always think back to that, because music never loses that for me. And it always touches me so deeply it will always be my first love. I feel quite emotional just talking about it. For me it’s just such a special thing. For example I’m a real sucker for sad pop songs. Before I came out I thought I was going to be late, I put on Rent by the Pet shop boys and I couldn’t leave it until the last notes had rung out because I love melody and hitting the nail so squarely on the head, that speaks to me so deeply that I think ‘I just want to do that’.”

Wanting to do the expressing himself, he started making music. He also learnt a few lesson from one of rocks more dubious characters

“We used to be in a band signed to Fire Records called Atomic 16. I mean, it was a little subsidiary called Doolittle, and we did an album with them that never came out”
Did he meet the notorious Clive Solomon?
“I’ve met Clive Solomon; I’ve had a lot to do with Clive Solomon.”
He said, bitterly!
“(laughs) No, I mean his reputation preceded him before we signed anything, and I kind of went in there knowing what I was prepared to give and what I wasn’t prepared to give. So we did have lots of conversations, particularly about the business side of things. Fortunately I just stuck to my guns and didn’t get into it despite his prolonged attempts to get me to…basically; he wanted our publishing for a small amount of money. He spent a lot of effort trying to convince us to give him our publishing. Fortunately, we had the good sense just to say no.”

Moving on, he formed a new band. But the band needed a name.

“I had to go and have an operation, I had to go and have my gallbladder out and I’d been looking for a band name. I’ve been doing music for many, many years and when I was putting this band together I wanted something that was really, really unique and it’s really hard to set and try and find that you know? You can look in all the obvious places, you know all you favourite albums and favourite lyrics, you favourite this that and the other. And it was just as I was about to put out for the operation this guy came in, and you know how they all wear those little badges? It just said on the top ‘Anaesthetics’, and I though, ‘I like the look of that, that’s AMAZING!”

“That was a long time ago that band (Atomic 16). That’s how me Martin and Matt met. Laura came in…I’ve been writing songs for many years and after that band split up, I was the main writer and I wasn’t really sure what I was doing.
I used to play guitar and go ‘that notes good, that notes good’ and put them together, but in terms of wanting to learn about what changes to do and what the rules are so you can break them, I decided to learn the piano. I did that and just decided to write. I’d been through quite a few bands in Manchester and one was a string quartet that played with me with just a piano and enjoyed that but always felt that there was something missing. My voice has always lent itself to guitars and drums rather than doing the more intimate stuff; I’d say Laura’s voice was better for that kind of thing. I kind of had all these songs and thought ‘I can’t find anybody that works as well as playing with Matt again. Martin had gone off and done his thing, and it was just like ‘I’ve got all these songs just sitting here, I really like them’, I just felt I wanted to get back on the horse again.”

“ I did the demo of Slow Trains in my bedroom and when we came to do it I thought ‘I think this needs two vocals’ and thought it would be lovely to get a boy and a girl to sing it because I wrote the song about the train journey between Manchester and Sheffield with a bit of artistic license. I just kind of changed it a little but that’s what I envisioned and I always thought there should be a girl singing it with me and in walked Laura really.”

Slow Trains is gentle, melodic song, with a tiny hint of the Cure running through it.
“I’ll tell you how I wrote that song, it was really different to how I normally write. I’m a bit anal ‘these are the words; these are the chords, la la la’. But with that I had the chords and I had the little distorted piano line and I though ‘you know what, I’m just going to let it roll. I haven’t got any words, set the microphone up, put my headphones on and made them up like a stream of consciousness.”

That’s how John Lennon wrote a lot of his later stuff.

“Really? I did not know that. I didn’t have the chorus at that point; the chorus came out after that. It was very much a flow of consciousness and I wanted to capture that beauty and simplicity, that almost innocence, you know? I didn’t deliberately do this but I wanted to create something that was bit more like ‘Close to me’ by the Cure and Belle and Sebastian but with my own slant on it. It was very laid back and just sort of happened.”

I asked Martin what the song is about.

“It’s just a love song to be honest with you.”

Autobiographical?

“Yes, partly. My dad used to work for the railways and we used to do a lot of travelling when I was kid. We used to go around Europe and I have really fond memories of catching the train to Dover then getting aboard a sleeper train Calais and waking up in Switzerland the next morning. These days the world moves so much faster than that. I’ve always found train journeys really make you slow down and make you take in what’s around you. I always used to do the journey from Manchester to Sheffield and I love that journey and that’s really what that songs about. It’s a love song about a couple getting out of the city and into the country and nothing more glorious than that. I wanted to retain that intimacy. It’s about leaving Manchester Piccadilly and going into the country and that simplicity”

There is a certain romance in that though isn’t there?

“Yeah, I completely agree. And the ironic thing is where we filmed the video is exactly the same route which I wrote the song about.”
No? Really!
“Absolutely”

The video sounds like very interesting project.

“When we did the video for the single, we played acoustically on the Manchester folk train at the weekend. It was absolutely packed, and it was really joyous to be playing the song on the journey I wrote the song about. And we did that, we did Strawberry kisses and a song called Homesick. The response from people was just amazing. I never expected it, it was quite a folky thing, and we’re not very folky but people really liked it. It was amazing. There was a guy there who was getting really drunk and getting a bit aggressive and abusive, and we wanted to get some shots of the folk train and then some on the way back when it was getting a bit quieter, shot out the window, things like that. Once he left we got some shots of us, but it was really spontaneous and I love spontaneous things.

Obviously when you do a gig all your gear is already there, but I would love to able to just turn up and play on a train station or something like that. There was just a bunch a people on a train to Manchester for the afternoon, and we just got on and said ‘we’re going to play a song, is that alright?’ No-one objected, so we did it and people loved it. I was lovely to do that. Because I spend so much time song writing, and us rehearsing, this time round I wanted us to have a bunch of songs that we love that reach the highest standard we could possibly produce, so we could be as excited and we want people to be about our music. It was just really special to do that. We just got on the train and said ‘we’re going to play you a song’. I was playing glockenspiel and singing and Matt had got these little egg shakers and Martin was on acoustic and Laura was just singing and stuff and was just really nice to get that response from people.

As a songwriter you spend so long having these ideas and going away and thinking ‘how this going to work’ and messing around with vocal arrangement and arrangements of the song and all the piss boring things people don’t care about. They just put a song on and go ‘that sounds amazing’ but to get to that point, there’s quite a lot of work involved. We never played Strawberry Kisses to anyone and people were like ‘woh’ and we did Slow Trains at the end, and the way we do it is completely different. What you hear on Sound Cloud is just a very simple melody on guitar, and I play keys on it, and we’re really conscious of wanting to write really beautiful, nail-on-the-head songs but making them interesting without making them sound big, thought he sentiments are quite big and not getting carried away. I don’t want to go down the big thing anymore, which is why I put it back to just acoustically which was so nice.
We played Slow Trains and by the time the second chorus came in the carriage was silent and it was rammed and it was just like ‘shit!’. I guess I’m a romantic at heart. It’s a big theme dealt with in a small musical way, which is what I do really.”


Due to a re-shoot of the Slow Trains video, the release date has been delayed. Hear Slow Trains and other songs, and look out for the release date here- http://soundcloud.com/anaestheticstheband

On Smithsons by Cyprien Gaillard

I’m in a tiny darkened room in Manchester’s art gallery. In front of me is a small screen counting down seconds until a short film starts. In front of the screen are two leather benches occupied by three middles aged people. The two are obviously a couple and the other a stranger. The awkwardness of silently watching a screen counting down, rather like being in a lift together, starts some uncomfortable conversation.
“I must say, I don’t really understand modern art” whispers the woman with an air of conspiracy to the lone stranger.
“I don’t even know why I’m here really” shrugged her partner.

Why am I here? For years now I have been coming to Manchester. I fell in love with a girl who lived in Didsbury in 2003. Though, as it sometimes does, the love for the girl faded away, my love for the city still remains strong. Being a fan of Indie music and from a small town, Manchester promised an almost impossible glamour and allure. Take a walk around the city centre, the shops fronts will be exactly the same as any other town or city in the country, but look above them at the red brick that is somehow uniquely Manchester. Look at the bridges and archways, the proud majesty of the statues, the buildings that mix new neon and chrome with the antiquity and gorgeous stability of the old. How the iron bridges and Victorian grey skies of the Smiths mix with the artistically day dreamy café’s and cellars of the Factory era and the glass and the continental chic circa the Hacienda.

This is the Manchester I fell for. With respect for its proud history of industry, its tradition of supporting workers and unions, despite Peterloo, the glorious revolution, Richard Arkwright, John E Blakeley, Alan Turing, LS Lowry, the Pankhursts, etc etc it was the Manchester of the Smiths, Joy Division, the Fall, The Buzzcocks, and Tony Wilson that stole my heart and opened my eyes.

I started, like every provincial tyke exploring the big city, in the records shops. To smell the musty bouquet of dusty cellars mixed with the PVC of the record sleeve holders is to smell heaven. But I recall the moment I properly fell in love with the city. I was having a post record shopping cup of tea in Night and Day café. The girl who served me was wearing a stripy top, a neckerchief, peddle pushers and ballet shoes. She looked like something out of a Kerouac book. You didn’t, I ruminated dunking my biscuit, get girls who looked like that in Shrewsbury. I sat people-watching with the premise of reading a book of poems by Edith Sitwell when it struck me-you could be whoever you wanted to be in Manchester. I noted the mix of couples chatting over a glass of wine, a lone office worker reading the Manchester Evening News, and a silly sausage from Shrewsbury pretentiously reading poetry. There was (hopefully still is) a bloke who used to get to the Northern Soul nights in the Thirsty Scholar. He’d be there every Friday night dressed up as Joe Strummer circa Combat Rock. He wouldn’t dance or anything. I’m not sure I saw him even speak, he’d just sit there dressed up as his hero, having a pint with his missus and watch the world go by.
In Manchester, whoever you where and whatever you enjoyed, you were accepted.

Of course, it’s the people of Manchester that make it what it is, the friendliness and bohemian eccentricity of its inhabitants. The wit of its bar staff and shop workers, the stranger in the queue to the club asking how your nights going. This is the heart and soul of the city. Once, again post record shop, I was having a pint with a mate in Dry having a look at my purchases. There were decks right by the stair case to the toilets in those days. The guy running the bar (I’m sure the gaffer was having a day off) was spinning a couple of records. It was about four o’clock, and we had had a couple. Gingerly, we asked him if he fancied playing a new remix I had just bought, to see how it sounded in a big room.
“Put it on” he said “There’s a bag of records there, help your self”
I didn’t need asking twice. I had never DJ’d before in my life but after a quick schooling in how the faders worked and how to get the sound into the headphones but not out of the speakers, I was away. Minutes ago I was punter enjoying a Red Stripe and here I now was playing records in a legendry venue. I was there for about an hour and half, playing to the post work drinkers, and I loved every second. I got two office girls dancing to Stoned Love and after playing Bring the Noise a bloke came up to shake my hand. “No-one plays Public Enemy around here” he bellowed in my ear “Nice one!” A man approached the decks and bollocked me for not having any Kraftwork, and another asked very politely if I had anything “a bit more, you know, banging”. A woman came and asked if I had any drugs followed by bloke in a cagoule asking if I WANTED any drugs. It was a perfect schooling in what to expect when playing records and somehow very Manchester. When the time for the train home approached, I put the last record on (There is a Light that Never Goes Out) and went to thank the guy who let me play. He was pretty drunk, chatting up one of the girls who danced to the Supremes. He thanked me, put a fiver in my hand and told me he’d see me again “with your own records, cock”. I felt like a bloody king. It was the first time I had ever DJ’d and, despite once opening up for one of my most treasured bands, still my favourite.

One of my other favourite places is Manchester art gallery. I come to Manchester quite regularly, when ever I’m a bit run down or devoid of inspiration or just need some new records and always stop by the gallery. My favourite painting is Hylas and the Nymphs by John William Waterhouse. No matter what’s going on my life, freezing time for a moment and gazing at that painting with its lush aquatic greens always makes me feel better. I remember being in there once when a builder (hard hat and fluorescent safety jacket and all) spent his dinner break wondering around lost in all the art. I’ve never seen that in London. I left a message on one of those suit case tags in the kids section to my ex-girlfriend back on 2003. It’s still there, but I doubt you’ll find it. I love this building. That’s why I’m here now, waiting for the short film to start, my friends have gone clothes shopping, I’ve got an hour to kill so I came in here.

The seconds finally count down and the film starts. The opening strains of Asleep by the Smiths begin and the thoughts you have read above flood my head. The music accompanies shots of high rise tower blocks against green trees and what you might call classic buildings. I will later learn that the shots where filmed in New Jersey, but somehow, with its haunting music and late autumnal feel, with its juxtaposition with the old and the new it seems very Manchester. The film is called the Smithsons, a nod to both the Smiths and American artist Robert Smithson who predicted ‘architectural chaos’ in New Jersey. He was proved right when the tower blocks were erected after his death. Maybe Mr.Smithson would disagree, but I think the blocks seem somehow right amongst the forestry. The short recalls a film called Finisterre, which documents the changing face of London. The feel of Gaillard’s film is subtle and affecting. Note the way the wind sweeps through the trees echoing the chilly sweep of the Smiths song.

The film finishes, I turn away from the dark quietness back to the bright lights and noise of a Manchester on its half term holidays.
“Well that was boring” opines the middle aged man to his wife “Yes” she replies “But the music was quite nice.