When I was quite small I would sometimes dream of a city – which was
Strange because it began before I even knew what a city was.1
When I was quite small I would often dream of Labrador, before I knew where Labrador was. It wasn’t the real Labrador, of course, but that of John Wyndham’s 1955 novel, The Chrysalids, and even that was tempered by my own experience around the village in which I grew up. I suspect that The Chrysalids may have been the most influential piece of fiction that I have ever read.
I had been ill. I spent about three months in hospital aged 4-5 with tuberculosis, and some more time convalescing afterwards. As a result of this I was a little behind the other kids in terms of physical development, and didn’t join in the playground games of soccer and catch so much. On the other hand, I was taught to read in hospital, and was quickly ahead of my peers in that respect. And I was hooked. I exhausted the Milnthorpe Primary School
Library’s selections at around one a day. The names I’m sure will be familiar to any of that generation: not just the Enid Blyton’s and her ilk, but Henry Treece, Ian Seraillier, Andre Norton, etc. Then there was Narnia, that magical land that was probably my earliest taste of fantasy. (I remember the dying world of The Magician’s Nephew frightened me, and I don’t think I ever re-read that volume as I did the others.)
At home I began to search my father’s bookshelf, which to this day is an eclectic mix of Jack Higgins and Henry Williamson, Agatha Christie and John Steinbeck. And there I found a small handful of books I could read even at age 7 or 8. The Chrysalids was one, another was Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, and something called Romany’s Caravan Returns. Each was devoured as quickly as the rest. Unlike the others though, I returned to Wyndham, perhaps because it was at home and hence always available. I think there were stronger reasons, however. The cover, Brian Kneale’s simple, effective six-fingered inky hand print, purple against the orange Penguin livery, was a part of it. The times I was reprimanded by my mother for trying to replicate that! And those dreams were important, too. I had made a friend, Timothy, who shared my new love of sf. This was the era of classic TV sf like UFO, The Tomorrow People and Jon Pertwee’s Dr Who; and British Marvel comics featuring Spiderman, The Avengers and The Fantastic Four. Tim and I roamed the fields and woods around Milnthorpe walking his dog, Paddy, and playing games. His elder brother had a fair collection of sf, and the mobile library came each week, so I was not stuck for material. For a month or more we were Lensmen, later X-men, and so on. At night I would fall asleep reading, and in the morning half-wake to a dream of what I had left off the night before, only with me involved somehow.
Perhaps because of that opening line, quoted above, this seemed to work even more with The
Chrysalids. Perhaps I felt an affinity with David Strorm through that common dreaming of wondrous faraway places. It was also easy to visualise the places David explored, they were similar to the places Tim and I played. There is an old railway embankment which runs by the village, half-wooded and overgrown now. I always assumed that the high bank that David plays on when he first meets Sophie must have been some kind of old road or railway too. Like Waknuk, Milnthorpe is a centre for a community of farms, broken up by streams and woodland. It was easy to pretend that Hazelslack woods were Labrador when I was a child,
And the limestone bluffs beyond were Wild Country.
The Chrysalids, then, was a romantic adventure: a bunch of slightly different kids escaping the restrictions of home life. And in my dreams I joined them; helping Sophie flee through the Fringes, travelling back with Michael to rescue Rachel, or other such scenarios. Later, I learned the term ‘cosy catastrophe’ and began to view things differently.
When I was 15 my O-Level English class was set The Chrysalids as our text for the exam. At first I was thrilled, I already knew the book well though I probably hadn’t reread it in a couple of years at that point. It may well have been that familiarity which helped me scrape a pass in that exam, because my English teacher and I did not get on. I recall him stressing that Wyndham had written ‘an allegory’ with the implication that that raised it above ‘sci-fi’ somehow. The accepted reading, and this extends beyond my English class, is that The Chrysalids is Wyndham’s response to post-war conservatism and the fear of new ideas, and that it is, in part, balanced by his succeeding novel, The Midwich Cuckoos, wherein the new breed are a threat. I believed that.
In a letter to Vector 211, I argued that The Chrysalids was a socialist novel of its time, and specifically placed him in a tradition that included H.G.Wells and Ken Macleod. I stated that whilst the scenario was ‘cosy’ it was also more than that. In response, a letter from Cy Chauvin pointed out some not-so-cosy elements of the book. Although not stated, hindsight tells me I was thinking of cosiness in terms of a sense of complacency in the views of
Waknuk’s society, and that this was a target of Wyndham’s allegory.
Chauvin also commented that ‘the evocative dreams of New Zealand and the coming rescue had an equally strong appeal when I was a boy’, which brings me back to that romantic adventure story again. This, clearly, was important to Cy Chauvin and to myself.
The Chrysalids is an allegory on intolerance; it is a ‘cosy’ catastrophe, albeit with dark moments – although the collective mind of The Chrysalids is generally a tolerant, open and democratic viewpoint when contrasted with the brutal, totalitarian collective of The Midwich
Cuckoos, there is a disturbingly Fascist overtone to Michael’s comment after Anne’s death: ‘One of us Has been found not strong enough.’ (p103) Equally dark, though in a different way, is the passage where Sally describes Katherine’s torture, and the line: ‘Her feet, Michael – oh, her poor, poor feet…’ (p131) remains for me one of the most moving, sad and unforgettable passages in sf. Its lasting influence on readers such as myself lie there, in part, but mainly in this: The Chrysalids is a classic tale of growing up, a coming-of-age story.
All the elements are there: the span of the novel takes David from 9 years old to about twenty,
Through a series of archetypal events that shape him, with guidance from his worldly-wise uncle Axel. David’s relationship with Sophie is a kind of puppy love until the encounter with Alan Ervin when Sophie’s secret is discovered. Consider this exchange:
‘Ho!’ said Alan, and there was a gleam in his eye that I did not like. ‘Who is she?’ he demanded again.
‘She’s a friend of mine,’ I told him.
‘What’s her name?’
I did not answer that.
‘Huh, I’ll soon find out, anyway,’ he said with a grin. (p44)
Could that not easily be the initial sparrings of two boys with an eye for the same girl? David is protective of Sophie because he cares for her; to him, the extra toe is a detail rather than the whole.
Subsequent chapters see repeated lectures from Uncle Axel to David which, in several cases, I have considered to be direct lectures from Wyndham to the reader. In particular a long passage quoting an explorer, Marther, in Chapter 6, is concluded by Axel asking ‘Do you understand why I’m telling you this?’ more than once. It is clearly the reader who is targeted.
At the same time, this occurs when David is around 12 years old, early puberty, and one of the questions Axel asks is ‘What do you think it is that makes a man a man?’ (p79) and although Axel is talking in terms of the mind, this is effectively a ‘facts of life’ talk.
David goes on to learn about death (his mother’s sister’s suicide); family secrets (his father’s mutant brother); sex and forbidden love (with Rosalind); and collective responsibility (when Anne marries). Finally, when their secrecy is broken, he has to escape, leave the family home and enter the world.
Although the events leading up to The Chrysalids’ flight from Waknuk and arrival in the Fringes take up over two-thirds of the novel, it may be that one event which happens there holds the key. After capture by the people of the Fringes, David comes face to face with his first love, Sophie. It is a scene which Wyndham uses to make several points explicit. Sophie’s man, coincidentally the mutant brother of David’s father, wants Rosalind because she is not sterile. Sophie is jealous, but there also remains a bond between her and David. A few pages earlier (pp149-150) David had expounded lyrically on his love for Rosalind, and on how she has hidden her real self behind an armour of aloof practicality that only he has seen beneath. Now, that love faces its first real challenge. Sophie now is an adult, and one less restricted by upbringing than Rosalind. Her clothing does not bear the stitched cross that all the other women David has known have borne; she is, in that respect, a ‘loose’ woman. In another scene she casually undresses in front of David and Rosalind to bathe. This alien attitude shocks David, but he still has feelings for the little girl he knew, and he is forced to reconsider.
As she explains about Gordon to David, Sophie says, ‘You’ve got to have as little as I have to know what that means.’ (p167) She is referring to emotions, but later David recalls these words in the light of Sophie’s material poverty (p169), allowing Wyndham to make explicit the existence of a secondary meaning in some of his speeches and lectures. And in recognising this, David is recognising a new view of the world, an adult world out side the emotional cocoon of Waknuk.
So for the adolescent I was, The Chrysalids is a useful guide to growing up; a credible adventure and a lesson told with subtle skill. In that letter to Vector I made a further point:
Wyndham goes to great lengths in the early chapters to identify the Strorm family with society as a whole. Their village grew around their house, both are named Waknuk; Joseph Strorm is not just David’s father, he is the magistrate, preacher and major landowner, and explicitly the most powerful man around. Defying him is defying society. (V213, p3)
The obvious corollary to this is that if The Chrysalids is the story of David’s coming-of-age, and David, as scion of the Strorm family, is representative of society’s future, then the novel itself is a story of societal maturing. Joseph’s hidebound views are rejected, literally destroyed in the end, in order that the new tolerant, loving generation may flourish. The UK title, Wyndham’s preferred version, is clear on this: Rather than the Re-Birth of the US edition, the
Chrysalid is the next stage of a life-form, a progression all must go through. And perhaps, for the ugly duckling teenager, that too was a part of the appeal, and a part of the dream.
Originally published in Steam-Engine Time 3
1 page numbers from Penguin edition
Wednesday 28 April 2010
Monday 26 April 2010
Richard Paul Russo's The Dread & Fear Of Kings
Under the direction of a decaying king an army progresses across a continent, city by city, entering, occupying and wilfully destroying all that is good therein. The narrator of Richard Paul Russo's "The Dread & Fear of Kings" (1) is a scribe, assistant to the First Minister, a man with growing doubts as to the right of this war. The scribe is charged with recording both the official history and, secretly, the Minister's personal alternative account questioning the king's designs.
The French symbolist poet Rimbaud wrote "At dawn, armed with a burning patience, we shall enter the splendid cities." (2) The first line of Russo's story is "We enter the splendid cities at dawn." The army he writes of burns, but not with patience. They serve a king who has no patience left. He is dying, but he believes in the "prophecy of the end of times" and that not only is he to fulfil destiny but that he is effecting the prophecy's completion. Stories say this world was colonised centuries past by starfarers who then moved on with their technology. Prophecy says they will return one day, bringing wonders, miracles and eternal life. This is the king's desperate design.
For the scribe an encounter with a woman, Kiyoko, in one of the captured cities causes him a shift in attitude from concern at the king's acts to active opposition. When he moves from passive to active the story takes on a positive note and ends on a note of optimism."
The Dread and Fear of Kings" is an interesting story. At face value, Russo has set up individual motivations which make sense on their own terms, such that his characters act convincingly and are realistic. The old king may be despicable in his wanton vandalism, but in his own belief he is justified. The Minister remains loyal to his position, whilst simultaneously guilty at the betrayal he enacts and angry at the king for forcing this upon him.
I believe, however, that Richard Paul Russo is writing of events closer to home. Published in 2001, "The Dread and Fear of Kings" can be read as a commentary on the US-led invasions of Iraq and beyond. The names of the cities echo fantasy perhaps, but Kazakh-Ir, Isengol, Marrakkeen and Kutsk also ring with echoes of the Arab world, of the Silk Road and of ancient Persia. The king follows the prophecy of Ishiaua writing in the Levancian chronicles:
"The day will come when the great cities wither. The land will become barren, art and spirit and hope will lie fallow, and the skies themselves will burn day and night with unholy fire. In that time we will return. The blood of the land shall be washed clean, and the profane purified. We shall resurrect the dead, and bring life eternal to the living."
This is biblical language, and it is easy to see Ishiaua as Isaiah of the Old Testament, or Joshua who fought the battles of Jericho and Gibeon and other mighty cities, and then Levancian referring us to the Levant, the lands at the Eastern end of the Mediterranean, including Israel, Palestine, Syria etc. From there, I would argue, it is but a short step from a mad king obsessed with prophecy and destiny, to a president who justifies his actions with his fundamentalist, apocalyptic brand of Christianity.
Russo wrote before the fall of Saddam Hussein, but in one scene here he is prophetic:When Kazakh-Ir is entered by the army "there were no people out on the streets . . . the residents watched silently from open windows." Just as they mostly did in Baghdad.
Let us go back to Rimbaud, whose lines not only open this story, but according to Russo (3) were the starting point for his writing it. Taken from the "Farewell" section of "A Season In Hell" the poet talks of how "the vision of justice is God's delight" compared to "the brutal warfare of men" and asks "forgiveness for nourishing myself with lies . . . and where to find help?" Words which might fall into the conversation the scribe has with the Minister as they delicately broach the issue of assisting the opposition without saying so in so many words.
Pablo Neruda cites these same lines of Rimbaud to assert that the splendid city "will bring light, justice and dignity to all mankind." (4) Russo too views the splendid cities as emblematic of culture, freedom and civilization. Isengol is described as a city of "great pride and community" whilst Kazakh-Ir is famed for its stained glass. It is this glass which the king orders to be preserved at all costs during the invasion, until when occupation is complete he demands its total, malicious destruction. "Perhaps that will bring them back" he says of the starfarers, demonstrating a lack of understanding of the nature of his faith or of humanity. It is this which forces the Minister to conclude: "I believe the king is destroying this world . . . and all for nothing. For nothing."
Russo offers up more than observation, but no easy answers. When the scribe is challenged by Kiyoko to act he says:
"But I can't help you. I am only a scribe."
Kiyoko shook her head. "Oh no, that won't do."
"I only record."
"You would have me believe . . . that you don't consider what you hear and see, that you don't assess and evaluate and make judgements?"
As Rimbaud wrote of "sweet glory as an artist and story teller swept away . . . I'm returned to the soil with a task to pursue": so Russo's scribe will lose his exalted position within the King's inner circle to achieve a greater glory. Neruda too took on this theme: "conscious of our duty as fulfillers . . . faced with the unavoidable task of critical communication." I believe therefore that in "The Dread and Fear of Kings" Richard Paul Russo has called upon the author and the reader alike to do what must be done so that, in a final line bringing us back to Rimbaud, "If the starfarers ever return, they will find not a world of ruins and death, but a world of courage and hope, of wonder and desire . . . a world of splendour and life."
If all this seems to be exaggerating the significance of a single line, take the story's title; "The Dread and Fear of Kings" is a line from Shakespeare. It comes in the middle of Portia's "the quality of mercy speech" from The Merchant of Venice.
His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings
But mercy is above this sceptred sway
This king has shown the force of his temporal power, but no mercy. Russo highlights this with descriptions of the needless poisoning of the abundant fish stocks of Salterno, the deliberate destruction of Kazakh-Ir's beautiful glass; he emphasises mercy with an encounter the scribe has with Kiyoko amongst the dead of Marrakkeen. He sees the body of a woman and fears it is Kiyoko, when he discovers she is alive he is relieved but Kiyoko tells him: "It's not better that she died rather than me. You should feel just as sick about her needless death as you would feel if it were mine."Reminded of this need for universal compassion the scribe's thoughts at the end are for the Minister who has taken his own life. "I felt a vague and distant sense of accomplishment, but that was overwhelmed by thoughts of the First Minister." Offered the chance to join the rebels the scribe returns to prevent discovery.
In his closing lines Russo returns to Rimbaud, but this time the scribe has changed allegiance: "They enter the splendid cities at dawn . . . Someday, somewhere, they will be stopped." Just before this, however, comes a line that I read as Richard Paul Russo's most personal statement in the story:
"I have been a scribe all my adult years--a man of words, not action. I have watched and listened, and recorded the decisions and deeds of other men. I have always stood somewhat apart from the world, and now I was being asked to participate fully in it. Terrifying, but exciting and liberating at the same time."
This then is "The Dread and Fear of Kings" a story of conscience, of mercy and of the time to act. It is a very timely story.
Notes:
Quotes taken from these sources:
1. "The Dread & Fear Of Kings" – Richard Paul Russo, SCIFICTION 10.24.2001
http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/originals/originals_archive/russo/
2. "A Season In Hell" – Arthur Rimbaud 1873
3. Kiyoko is also a character in the graphic novel "Akira" with the ability to influence people.
4. Richard Paul Russo in correspondence with myself towards an interview as yet unpublished.
5. Pablo Neruda's Nobel Prize For Literature acceptance speech 1973
6. The Merchant Of Venice - William Shakespeare.
The French symbolist poet Rimbaud wrote "At dawn, armed with a burning patience, we shall enter the splendid cities." (2) The first line of Russo's story is "We enter the splendid cities at dawn." The army he writes of burns, but not with patience. They serve a king who has no patience left. He is dying, but he believes in the "prophecy of the end of times" and that not only is he to fulfil destiny but that he is effecting the prophecy's completion. Stories say this world was colonised centuries past by starfarers who then moved on with their technology. Prophecy says they will return one day, bringing wonders, miracles and eternal life. This is the king's desperate design.
For the scribe an encounter with a woman, Kiyoko, in one of the captured cities causes him a shift in attitude from concern at the king's acts to active opposition. When he moves from passive to active the story takes on a positive note and ends on a note of optimism."
The Dread and Fear of Kings" is an interesting story. At face value, Russo has set up individual motivations which make sense on their own terms, such that his characters act convincingly and are realistic. The old king may be despicable in his wanton vandalism, but in his own belief he is justified. The Minister remains loyal to his position, whilst simultaneously guilty at the betrayal he enacts and angry at the king for forcing this upon him.
I believe, however, that Richard Paul Russo is writing of events closer to home. Published in 2001, "The Dread and Fear of Kings" can be read as a commentary on the US-led invasions of Iraq and beyond. The names of the cities echo fantasy perhaps, but Kazakh-Ir, Isengol, Marrakkeen and Kutsk also ring with echoes of the Arab world, of the Silk Road and of ancient Persia. The king follows the prophecy of Ishiaua writing in the Levancian chronicles:
"The day will come when the great cities wither. The land will become barren, art and spirit and hope will lie fallow, and the skies themselves will burn day and night with unholy fire. In that time we will return. The blood of the land shall be washed clean, and the profane purified. We shall resurrect the dead, and bring life eternal to the living."
This is biblical language, and it is easy to see Ishiaua as Isaiah of the Old Testament, or Joshua who fought the battles of Jericho and Gibeon and other mighty cities, and then Levancian referring us to the Levant, the lands at the Eastern end of the Mediterranean, including Israel, Palestine, Syria etc. From there, I would argue, it is but a short step from a mad king obsessed with prophecy and destiny, to a president who justifies his actions with his fundamentalist, apocalyptic brand of Christianity.
Russo wrote before the fall of Saddam Hussein, but in one scene here he is prophetic:When Kazakh-Ir is entered by the army "there were no people out on the streets . . . the residents watched silently from open windows." Just as they mostly did in Baghdad.
Let us go back to Rimbaud, whose lines not only open this story, but according to Russo (3) were the starting point for his writing it. Taken from the "Farewell" section of "A Season In Hell" the poet talks of how "the vision of justice is God's delight" compared to "the brutal warfare of men" and asks "forgiveness for nourishing myself with lies . . . and where to find help?" Words which might fall into the conversation the scribe has with the Minister as they delicately broach the issue of assisting the opposition without saying so in so many words.
Pablo Neruda cites these same lines of Rimbaud to assert that the splendid city "will bring light, justice and dignity to all mankind." (4) Russo too views the splendid cities as emblematic of culture, freedom and civilization. Isengol is described as a city of "great pride and community" whilst Kazakh-Ir is famed for its stained glass. It is this glass which the king orders to be preserved at all costs during the invasion, until when occupation is complete he demands its total, malicious destruction. "Perhaps that will bring them back" he says of the starfarers, demonstrating a lack of understanding of the nature of his faith or of humanity. It is this which forces the Minister to conclude: "I believe the king is destroying this world . . . and all for nothing. For nothing."
Russo offers up more than observation, but no easy answers. When the scribe is challenged by Kiyoko to act he says:
"But I can't help you. I am only a scribe."
Kiyoko shook her head. "Oh no, that won't do."
"I only record."
"You would have me believe . . . that you don't consider what you hear and see, that you don't assess and evaluate and make judgements?"
As Rimbaud wrote of "sweet glory as an artist and story teller swept away . . . I'm returned to the soil with a task to pursue": so Russo's scribe will lose his exalted position within the King's inner circle to achieve a greater glory. Neruda too took on this theme: "conscious of our duty as fulfillers . . . faced with the unavoidable task of critical communication." I believe therefore that in "The Dread and Fear of Kings" Richard Paul Russo has called upon the author and the reader alike to do what must be done so that, in a final line bringing us back to Rimbaud, "If the starfarers ever return, they will find not a world of ruins and death, but a world of courage and hope, of wonder and desire . . . a world of splendour and life."
If all this seems to be exaggerating the significance of a single line, take the story's title; "The Dread and Fear of Kings" is a line from Shakespeare. It comes in the middle of Portia's "the quality of mercy speech" from The Merchant of Venice.
His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings
But mercy is above this sceptred sway
This king has shown the force of his temporal power, but no mercy. Russo highlights this with descriptions of the needless poisoning of the abundant fish stocks of Salterno, the deliberate destruction of Kazakh-Ir's beautiful glass; he emphasises mercy with an encounter the scribe has with Kiyoko amongst the dead of Marrakkeen. He sees the body of a woman and fears it is Kiyoko, when he discovers she is alive he is relieved but Kiyoko tells him: "It's not better that she died rather than me. You should feel just as sick about her needless death as you would feel if it were mine."Reminded of this need for universal compassion the scribe's thoughts at the end are for the Minister who has taken his own life. "I felt a vague and distant sense of accomplishment, but that was overwhelmed by thoughts of the First Minister." Offered the chance to join the rebels the scribe returns to prevent discovery.
In his closing lines Russo returns to Rimbaud, but this time the scribe has changed allegiance: "They enter the splendid cities at dawn . . . Someday, somewhere, they will be stopped." Just before this, however, comes a line that I read as Richard Paul Russo's most personal statement in the story:
"I have been a scribe all my adult years--a man of words, not action. I have watched and listened, and recorded the decisions and deeds of other men. I have always stood somewhat apart from the world, and now I was being asked to participate fully in it. Terrifying, but exciting and liberating at the same time."
This then is "The Dread and Fear of Kings" a story of conscience, of mercy and of the time to act. It is a very timely story.
Notes:
Quotes taken from these sources:
1. "The Dread & Fear Of Kings" – Richard Paul Russo, SCIFICTION 10.24.2001
http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/originals/originals_archive/russo/
2. "A Season In Hell" – Arthur Rimbaud 1873
3. Kiyoko is also a character in the graphic novel "Akira" with the ability to influence people.
4. Richard Paul Russo in correspondence with myself towards an interview as yet unpublished.
5. Pablo Neruda's Nobel Prize For Literature acceptance speech 1973
6. The Merchant Of Venice - William Shakespeare.
Tuesday 20 April 2010
Nowhere Bound pt 3
In a song I've only heard the once, and whose title I didn't get, Willie Nelson sings a great opening line:
"She's gone... but she was here," His weary voice offers optimism in that line. Great music is like that, frequently it's long gone but its fleeting existence was what counted, and still counts. That is what makes it romantic, and we who follow are, in a multitude of ways, romantic.
In a lecture on John Keats I made an unattributed note, or perhaps the source was my own latent genius? Less than a dozen words, but they've stuck with me and seem appropriate: "The tragic essence of Romanticism is the relentless clutching at epiphanies." On that definition The Walkabouts play Romantic music and I'm a Romantic hero: flawed, perpetually questing, seeking that moment when the spiritual meets the rational, when music and lyrics meet. Ex-Melody Maker writer Jim Arundel encapsulated it in his review of a Buffalo Tom show I attended in Manchester in '92 "That moment in 'Taillights Fade' when your skin turns stripy and your heart inverts." It's a line, maybe a half-line, a guitar solo ('Stargazer' by Rainbow is rather dated late 70s hard rock now, but Ritchie Blackmore's solo still makes the hairs stand up;) even just a brief chord progression, like the aforementioned 'Taillights Fade.' Sometimes it's in a voice: Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Janis Joplin's dirty laugh, Jane Siberry's soaring and swooping, Guy Kyser's desert howl, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith's mantras, Max Cavalera's growl described by one reviewer as "like a dinosaur belching" and some whose names I don't yet know -the female singer on The Shivers' 'Gentle' whose voice on lines like 'on a dusty road... in East Tennessee...things ain't simple... like you think they might be' drawls and paints a picture of tumbleweed and dust devils and a creaky sign in the wind.
The first thing I did when I hit Glasgow, about 10 a.m., was find a record store, Tower Records where I saw Chuck Prophet play a couple of years ago. I always carry a mental list of wants, ever-changing but always there. I once tried writing it down in an alphabetical notepad, it got too unwieldy real quickly. So I forget things, then I get inspired by new things, and freaks happen -- like finding a single by Dymaxion, never heard of them but the label, Hemiola of Leeds, puts out some interesting stuff by The Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 and their ilk, so have a closer look: a track called 'Cognitive Dissonance Penitentiary'? I'll have to have that. Just for the title!
In Glasgow I was on a mission, inspired by a new band in a live setting like I hadn't been for a long time. The Dear Janes had more than countered my advance dismay, their show in Birmingham was simply breathtaking. They are, nominally, a female folk duo, but there is a force behind them, a bittersweet anger, a rejection of their pains, that drives songs about suicide, self-pity, abuse, masturbation and anti-depressants right into you. In The Jug Of Ale stood in a thickening crowd in desperate oppressive heat, seeing Carla Torgerson of The Walkabouts watching too, and I was disappointed that The Dear Janes set ended so soon.
I also got lucky. Melody Maker reviewer Jennifer Nine described The Renderers as a cross between The Walkabouts and Palace Brothers, that was intriguing as I like both :hose acts. Palace Brothers/Music/Songs (the name changes) is bleak, bitter, Faulkneresque Southern Country Blues like Leonard Cohen at his bitterest. That appeals to me, but so do The Spice Girls. Unfortunately all I could find was one single by The Renderers, a wonderfully haunting lament called 'A Touch Of Evil' on New Zealand's Flying Nun Records (and that's a fair recommendation in itself, by the way.) Nobody could find a listing for any other release by this band. In Tower Records I found a CD whilst looking for something totally different. The excitement was only tempered by the frustration that it would be at least 48 hours before I could actually play the thing -- I must have studied the sleeve notes, minimal as they are, a dozen times in that span.
Getting out of Birmingham was much harder than getting in, and there's a prison metaphor lurking in there somewhere that might upset a few Brummies I know, so I'll by-pass it for now. I walked the three or four miles from Moseley into Digbeth Coach Station and tried to blag a bus ride out to the motorway. No deal, said the supervisor. Ask the driver of the Manchester coach, said another driver. All I wanted was to be dropped ten miles up the road at Hilton Park services so I had a chance hitching, and I offered to pay as far as the next town, Stoke say. So I asked the driver of the Manchester coach, who said he wasn't allowed to do it, "but if you get on whilst my back's turned I won't know will I?" And so two hours, and around a hundred miles further North I was dropped off at Knutsford Services. Now normally I detest Knutsford, but not today, not so much after a free ride from National Express. I almost felt like Woody Guthrie, if I hadn't been so tired and cold.
I was fifteen when, perhaps sensing total alienation from my peers if I didn't know anything about pop music, decided to tape the Top 40 one Sunday. I don't recall any great flashes of revelation, it may not have been the most inspiring list ever, but the end result must have been like Lou Reed's Jenny who "couldn't believe what she heard at all." So I was there again the next week and for many weeks after, until I eventually found myself disillusioned with the charts and somehow found John Peel. (For several weeks I thought I was listening to Brian Matthew because I couldn't get my head around Radio One & Two sharing late night frequencies, but Peel it was. If it had been Matthew things would have been very different, his was a mellow, easy-listening and chat programme, Peel happily mixes Punk and Reggae and Dance and Folk and whatever. Which, largely, is what I listen to today.)
I was Eighteen when I first hitched. I've done it most of the time since. Stopped when one girlfriend objected, and spent a fortune on train fares to see her until she saved me the money by leaving me. Then I bought a car, and drove around looking for hitchers to pick up -- on motorway trips I made a point of passing through the service areas in case anybody needed a lift. Eventually I crashed the car, and didn't get another. I like hitching, I like the way it enables me to travel places I couldn't otherwise. I did around 6,000 miles in 96, and it would probably have been much. more but for illness. It's got to the point where I feel that using public transport is cheating, at least beyond the city centres.
I know it wasn't Rhinestone Cowboy or Weile Waile or Chanson D'Amour but maybe it was 'Geno' by Dexy's Midnight Runners or 'Going Underground' by The Jam chat kickstarted something, that set me off on this endless, nameless quest. Just as likely is that it was 'Feels Like I'm In Love' by Teena Marie or maybe it was The Detroit Spinners' 'Working My way Back to You' or something equally uncool in the 90s by UB40 or The Korgis or The Lambrettas' version of 'Poison Ivy' (none of which I'm ashamed of, but which have not stood up to the subsequent competition of broader listening.)
Blame Paul Kincaid for me writing this, if you must blame anyone. It was at some gathering or other down in Folkestone that I accidentally made some disparaging remark about R.E.M. within Paul's earshot. Now for those of you who don't know Paul, this is akin to whistling 'The Star Spangled Banner' in Baghdad. Or possibly more heretical. The room went silent. Those around probably expected me to be expelled via the broken conservatory window, but Paul just said: 'Kev doesn't like anything if anybody else has heard of it.'
Elitist? Me? Such a charge could not go unanswered. I would have challenged Paul to a duel but for two reasons: I don't like getting up early in the mornings; and, I didn't think Maureen had any appropriate earrings for such circumstances.
So I think Green On Red and Lone Justice and Dream Syndicate and Long Ryders and The Walkabouts should have had a share of R.E.M.'s success, but eventually I did get into R.E.M. too. Paul Kincaid knows this, that it isn't obscurantist, and that it wasn't his favourite band I was attacking just one mediocre album and a couple of godawful songs. I actually played R.E.M. for Paul and Maureen at their wedding. So it was 'It's the End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine.)' So what? I also played the vitriolic, noisy squall that is Fatima Mansions version of 'Shiny Happy People' the aforementioned godawful song. R.E.M. are good enough to condemn for the trite and the weak songs that became anthems for the irony-deficient. (I also know I shouldn't reject a band on the failings of their audience, but do I want to be part of that herd? No way sis.) Hell, you've probably heard of more of my record collection than Paul's. I bet he hasn't got Thriller though he does have a whole load of things I'd love to 'borrow'. You probably all have.
So I've told Chris I wish they could play 'Train To Mercy' but its too long, he says. Other favourites of mine they haven't rehearsed for this tour. Over a curry in Manchester I tell him I think my favourite of all his songs might be 'Inauguration Day' which is actually a rare single B-side, and he tells me that the boss of their former record label has said the same thing. When I leave the band in Glasgow I say I'm looking for the road out of town to hitch, "somewhere out of these woods" I quote from an early song.
"Hey-y-y, 'Whiskey'" says Michael, "You do go way back."
Favourite songs change all the time though. I reinvestigate 'Comfort Of A Stranger' after hearing it as a set opener three nights in a row, and realise I've missed a nice song. Live, in Manchester Terri's drumming takes Jack Candy up in my estimation, where I was slightly jaded with the album version. In Birmingham, Neil Young's 'Like A Hurricane' and their own 'Grand Theft Auto' provide a driving, hard rocking climax, two years ago it was Townes Van Zandt's 'Snake Mountain Blues' at a tempo Townes never took, and in Glasgow, Patti Smith's 'Free Money' is taken on, its swirling guitars pushing the mantra-like chorus higher. I'm a fan, but I can be converted still.
I cheated with Glasgow. It's a mess of motorways and ringroads, so I found my way to Buchanan St Bus Station after my night in the bushes. (It was warm, and I figured nobody could see me if I pushed into the middle so I slept out rough in my sleeping bag. It was nice, and I was tired enough to sleep anywhere by then.) I intended to find the bus which could take me as close as possible to Hamilton Services, but on an impulse I asked about the fare to Manchester. The coach left in ten minutes, and I was on, officially this time.
So Luc is behind his sound desk, making adjustments. I've got a film, and taken a light reading. Everyone but Carla has gone to the bar. Food is being organised.
"Can you sing for me, please." Luc asks Carla. She adjusts the mike stand.
"Sing, or sing and play?"
"Yes, play and sing."
I look up and realise that this is the beautiful acoustic guitar Carla told me about. A Seattle music store loaned this expensive guitar to a rock band for an MTV Unplugged session, and it came back chipped and scratched, so Carla got it for $900 or something like that. I like music, but know very little about the mechanics, the technical aspects, but some instruments just look the part. As Carla begins to strum, this glossy black bodied guitar is perfect.
And the song, I realise, is not one I remembered to ask for, but one of my favourites all the same:
"If you want good times I know where to look, And if you want good times I will."
Isn't that close to perfect? The halting phrasing of her voice and the gentle strumming of the guitar meet and I watch, stunned.
"And heaven's a backroom where the gambling don't finish and you keep making the... same mistakes."
My mistake is being too awestruck to take pictures, and even though Carla loses the tune at the end, and it falters and collapses, this song is why I am here. A quiet, personal epiphany. That quest has reached an ending, one of many, more satisfying than many, but the nature of the quest is that such moments drive me on further. Like an addict needing a fresh hit.
I did fall in love on the Saturday, by the way, to a beautiful, intelligent and determined woman, who ultimately decided she had more pressing commitments than me. I sat beside her on the coach, the only free seat, and before she alighted in Preston we'd swapped addresses and numbers. We were together for the next four months. She left me some great music though. Call that a major plus.
How important is that? Oh more important than I could say. I met somebody recently, I told a friend. That friend asked what attracted me, I couldn't lie and deny it was her looks, and her wit and intelligence, but I couldn't rule out the way she could naturally mention The Tragically Hip or Maceo Parker in conversation. Of such things is love made, perhaps? (I refer the reader once more, this time to Nick Hornby's novel High Fidelity which could have been my life but isn't.)
There was time for one more brief adventure. It's a long walk out through Salford to find the road out of Manchester, but when I got there, and after I'd waited two long, frustrating, cold and weary hours, I got some luck again. A DJ on his way home from a club, going right by my junction. Dropped me four miles from home as dawn broke. A little different from my previous lift out of Manchester, after a Rocket From The Crypt show at the Hop & Grape in January. On the same road through Salford a car stopped, a woman said she was going out to the MG, which suited me fine. It's not that common to be picked up by women, especially at night so as she drove I tried casual conversation:
"Have you been working tonight?" She was in her forties, as far as I could guess in the dark.
"Yes, but it was quiet."
"Is that in a pub or something?" I asked, and she laughed.
"Oh no, love, I'm on the streets." I must have looked blank because she clarified this.
"I'm a prostitute, love."
So I told her I had no money and she laughed again and told me she picked me up because I needed a lift. There was only one question I could ask next though.
"It's ten pounds for a fumble, fifteen for oral, and twenty for sex."
I was too surprised by her matter of factness about all this to ask what constituted a fumble, and perhaps I could have talked my way into a bed for the night, but I didn't. Maybe next time I'm in Manchester?
I walked that four miles past streams with trout rising, and fields with rabbits gambolling, and the sun rose hot and red behind my left shoulder, and though I was very very tired I felt good. When, finally I let myself in the front door, I slipped a Walkabouts CD onto the deck and lay down on my bed with a smile. All for this, I have travelled, all for this. Carla sang.
Birmingham, The Jug Of Ale -- Thursday June 6th 1996
Comfort Of A Stranger
Rebecca Wild
The Light Will Stay On
All For This Fairground Blues
When Fortune Smiles
Buffalo Ballet (John Cale)
The River People (Robert Forster)
Blue Head Flame Grand Theft Auto
Like A Hurricane (Neil Young)
Encore: Christmas Valley
Glasgow, King Tut's Wah Wah Hut -- Friday June 7th 1996
As Birmingham until the end when an apparently impromptu Finlay's Motel replaced Like A Hurricane, and Patti Smith's Free Money was the encore.
Manchester, Hop & Grape -- Saturday June 8th 1996
Again the same opening numbers but after Blue Head Flame a request from the crowd for Jack Candy was acceded to, followed by a closing Grand Theft Auto, and again, Free Money was the encore.
At the Glasgow soundcheck, aside from Carla's gorgeous solo rendition of Long Time Here, the band rehearsed Old Crow with Carla singing (Chris takes the lead on the album) but decided it wasn't tight enough to go with.
`How does it feel...?'
If you don't know who all these bands are, ask me, ask me ask me, if you don't know what they sound like don't worry -- I'll tell you how they feel: Like falling in love the most recent time of coo many, like waking up on the kerbside of a motorway service area in the cold bright sunshine, like the unfulfilled ambition of every hitcher I know -- to get a ride in a Norbert Dentressangle truck, and no, I wouldn't settle for Eddie Stobart -- like riding too fast on a horse you think you can probably control, like a Raymond Carver story, a Dexter Gordon ballad, a Roberto Di Matteo goal, the second bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon/Shiraz after midnight, like the knowledge that Picasso wouldn't allow his Guernica to be used in an advertising campaign, like the cheer that rippled up the country as Michael Portillo lost his seat, like Johnny Cash's voice, Jodie Foster's eyes, like haven't stopped grinning for a week, like Jimmy Smits in the title sequence for NYPD Blue, like the desire to leap from the Cliffs of Moher not for suicide but a desperate curiosity to see what it feels like. Like anything that ever moved you enough to smile and cry simultaneously. Alan Vega of Suicide once sang: 'Rock'n'Roll Is Killing My Life' well, there are worse ways to go, and certainly that rather than vice versa.
I heard the news today, oh boy, via The Walkabouts homepage (www.thewalkabouts.com), that bassist Michael Wells has left the band. The good news is that his new band, Pluto Boy, have a tape available. Gotta go, gotta write off for a copy.
nb: this was written in 1997 following a road trip a year earlier. Much has changed since then, but The Walkabouts are still a great band.
"She's gone... but she was here," His weary voice offers optimism in that line. Great music is like that, frequently it's long gone but its fleeting existence was what counted, and still counts. That is what makes it romantic, and we who follow are, in a multitude of ways, romantic.
In a lecture on John Keats I made an unattributed note, or perhaps the source was my own latent genius? Less than a dozen words, but they've stuck with me and seem appropriate: "The tragic essence of Romanticism is the relentless clutching at epiphanies." On that definition The Walkabouts play Romantic music and I'm a Romantic hero: flawed, perpetually questing, seeking that moment when the spiritual meets the rational, when music and lyrics meet. Ex-Melody Maker writer Jim Arundel encapsulated it in his review of a Buffalo Tom show I attended in Manchester in '92 "That moment in 'Taillights Fade' when your skin turns stripy and your heart inverts." It's a line, maybe a half-line, a guitar solo ('Stargazer' by Rainbow is rather dated late 70s hard rock now, but Ritchie Blackmore's solo still makes the hairs stand up;) even just a brief chord progression, like the aforementioned 'Taillights Fade.' Sometimes it's in a voice: Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Janis Joplin's dirty laugh, Jane Siberry's soaring and swooping, Guy Kyser's desert howl, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith's mantras, Max Cavalera's growl described by one reviewer as "like a dinosaur belching" and some whose names I don't yet know -the female singer on The Shivers' 'Gentle' whose voice on lines like 'on a dusty road... in East Tennessee...things ain't simple... like you think they might be' drawls and paints a picture of tumbleweed and dust devils and a creaky sign in the wind.
The first thing I did when I hit Glasgow, about 10 a.m., was find a record store, Tower Records where I saw Chuck Prophet play a couple of years ago. I always carry a mental list of wants, ever-changing but always there. I once tried writing it down in an alphabetical notepad, it got too unwieldy real quickly. So I forget things, then I get inspired by new things, and freaks happen -- like finding a single by Dymaxion, never heard of them but the label, Hemiola of Leeds, puts out some interesting stuff by The Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 and their ilk, so have a closer look: a track called 'Cognitive Dissonance Penitentiary'? I'll have to have that. Just for the title!
In Glasgow I was on a mission, inspired by a new band in a live setting like I hadn't been for a long time. The Dear Janes had more than countered my advance dismay, their show in Birmingham was simply breathtaking. They are, nominally, a female folk duo, but there is a force behind them, a bittersweet anger, a rejection of their pains, that drives songs about suicide, self-pity, abuse, masturbation and anti-depressants right into you. In The Jug Of Ale stood in a thickening crowd in desperate oppressive heat, seeing Carla Torgerson of The Walkabouts watching too, and I was disappointed that The Dear Janes set ended so soon.
I also got lucky. Melody Maker reviewer Jennifer Nine described The Renderers as a cross between The Walkabouts and Palace Brothers, that was intriguing as I like both :hose acts. Palace Brothers/Music/Songs (the name changes) is bleak, bitter, Faulkneresque Southern Country Blues like Leonard Cohen at his bitterest. That appeals to me, but so do The Spice Girls. Unfortunately all I could find was one single by The Renderers, a wonderfully haunting lament called 'A Touch Of Evil' on New Zealand's Flying Nun Records (and that's a fair recommendation in itself, by the way.) Nobody could find a listing for any other release by this band. In Tower Records I found a CD whilst looking for something totally different. The excitement was only tempered by the frustration that it would be at least 48 hours before I could actually play the thing -- I must have studied the sleeve notes, minimal as they are, a dozen times in that span.
Getting out of Birmingham was much harder than getting in, and there's a prison metaphor lurking in there somewhere that might upset a few Brummies I know, so I'll by-pass it for now. I walked the three or four miles from Moseley into Digbeth Coach Station and tried to blag a bus ride out to the motorway. No deal, said the supervisor. Ask the driver of the Manchester coach, said another driver. All I wanted was to be dropped ten miles up the road at Hilton Park services so I had a chance hitching, and I offered to pay as far as the next town, Stoke say. So I asked the driver of the Manchester coach, who said he wasn't allowed to do it, "but if you get on whilst my back's turned I won't know will I?" And so two hours, and around a hundred miles further North I was dropped off at Knutsford Services. Now normally I detest Knutsford, but not today, not so much after a free ride from National Express. I almost felt like Woody Guthrie, if I hadn't been so tired and cold.
I was fifteen when, perhaps sensing total alienation from my peers if I didn't know anything about pop music, decided to tape the Top 40 one Sunday. I don't recall any great flashes of revelation, it may not have been the most inspiring list ever, but the end result must have been like Lou Reed's Jenny who "couldn't believe what she heard at all." So I was there again the next week and for many weeks after, until I eventually found myself disillusioned with the charts and somehow found John Peel. (For several weeks I thought I was listening to Brian Matthew because I couldn't get my head around Radio One & Two sharing late night frequencies, but Peel it was. If it had been Matthew things would have been very different, his was a mellow, easy-listening and chat programme, Peel happily mixes Punk and Reggae and Dance and Folk and whatever. Which, largely, is what I listen to today.)
I was Eighteen when I first hitched. I've done it most of the time since. Stopped when one girlfriend objected, and spent a fortune on train fares to see her until she saved me the money by leaving me. Then I bought a car, and drove around looking for hitchers to pick up -- on motorway trips I made a point of passing through the service areas in case anybody needed a lift. Eventually I crashed the car, and didn't get another. I like hitching, I like the way it enables me to travel places I couldn't otherwise. I did around 6,000 miles in 96, and it would probably have been much. more but for illness. It's got to the point where I feel that using public transport is cheating, at least beyond the city centres.
I know it wasn't Rhinestone Cowboy or Weile Waile or Chanson D'Amour but maybe it was 'Geno' by Dexy's Midnight Runners or 'Going Underground' by The Jam chat kickstarted something, that set me off on this endless, nameless quest. Just as likely is that it was 'Feels Like I'm In Love' by Teena Marie or maybe it was The Detroit Spinners' 'Working My way Back to You' or something equally uncool in the 90s by UB40 or The Korgis or The Lambrettas' version of 'Poison Ivy' (none of which I'm ashamed of, but which have not stood up to the subsequent competition of broader listening.)
Blame Paul Kincaid for me writing this, if you must blame anyone. It was at some gathering or other down in Folkestone that I accidentally made some disparaging remark about R.E.M. within Paul's earshot. Now for those of you who don't know Paul, this is akin to whistling 'The Star Spangled Banner' in Baghdad. Or possibly more heretical. The room went silent. Those around probably expected me to be expelled via the broken conservatory window, but Paul just said: 'Kev doesn't like anything if anybody else has heard of it.'
Elitist? Me? Such a charge could not go unanswered. I would have challenged Paul to a duel but for two reasons: I don't like getting up early in the mornings; and, I didn't think Maureen had any appropriate earrings for such circumstances.
So I think Green On Red and Lone Justice and Dream Syndicate and Long Ryders and The Walkabouts should have had a share of R.E.M.'s success, but eventually I did get into R.E.M. too. Paul Kincaid knows this, that it isn't obscurantist, and that it wasn't his favourite band I was attacking just one mediocre album and a couple of godawful songs. I actually played R.E.M. for Paul and Maureen at their wedding. So it was 'It's the End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine.)' So what? I also played the vitriolic, noisy squall that is Fatima Mansions version of 'Shiny Happy People' the aforementioned godawful song. R.E.M. are good enough to condemn for the trite and the weak songs that became anthems for the irony-deficient. (I also know I shouldn't reject a band on the failings of their audience, but do I want to be part of that herd? No way sis.) Hell, you've probably heard of more of my record collection than Paul's. I bet he hasn't got Thriller though he does have a whole load of things I'd love to 'borrow'. You probably all have.
So I've told Chris I wish they could play 'Train To Mercy' but its too long, he says. Other favourites of mine they haven't rehearsed for this tour. Over a curry in Manchester I tell him I think my favourite of all his songs might be 'Inauguration Day' which is actually a rare single B-side, and he tells me that the boss of their former record label has said the same thing. When I leave the band in Glasgow I say I'm looking for the road out of town to hitch, "somewhere out of these woods" I quote from an early song.
"Hey-y-y, 'Whiskey'" says Michael, "You do go way back."
Favourite songs change all the time though. I reinvestigate 'Comfort Of A Stranger' after hearing it as a set opener three nights in a row, and realise I've missed a nice song. Live, in Manchester Terri's drumming takes Jack Candy up in my estimation, where I was slightly jaded with the album version. In Birmingham, Neil Young's 'Like A Hurricane' and their own 'Grand Theft Auto' provide a driving, hard rocking climax, two years ago it was Townes Van Zandt's 'Snake Mountain Blues' at a tempo Townes never took, and in Glasgow, Patti Smith's 'Free Money' is taken on, its swirling guitars pushing the mantra-like chorus higher. I'm a fan, but I can be converted still.
I cheated with Glasgow. It's a mess of motorways and ringroads, so I found my way to Buchanan St Bus Station after my night in the bushes. (It was warm, and I figured nobody could see me if I pushed into the middle so I slept out rough in my sleeping bag. It was nice, and I was tired enough to sleep anywhere by then.) I intended to find the bus which could take me as close as possible to Hamilton Services, but on an impulse I asked about the fare to Manchester. The coach left in ten minutes, and I was on, officially this time.
So Luc is behind his sound desk, making adjustments. I've got a film, and taken a light reading. Everyone but Carla has gone to the bar. Food is being organised.
"Can you sing for me, please." Luc asks Carla. She adjusts the mike stand.
"Sing, or sing and play?"
"Yes, play and sing."
I look up and realise that this is the beautiful acoustic guitar Carla told me about. A Seattle music store loaned this expensive guitar to a rock band for an MTV Unplugged session, and it came back chipped and scratched, so Carla got it for $900 or something like that. I like music, but know very little about the mechanics, the technical aspects, but some instruments just look the part. As Carla begins to strum, this glossy black bodied guitar is perfect.
And the song, I realise, is not one I remembered to ask for, but one of my favourites all the same:
"If you want good times I know where to look, And if you want good times I will."
Isn't that close to perfect? The halting phrasing of her voice and the gentle strumming of the guitar meet and I watch, stunned.
"And heaven's a backroom where the gambling don't finish and you keep making the... same mistakes."
My mistake is being too awestruck to take pictures, and even though Carla loses the tune at the end, and it falters and collapses, this song is why I am here. A quiet, personal epiphany. That quest has reached an ending, one of many, more satisfying than many, but the nature of the quest is that such moments drive me on further. Like an addict needing a fresh hit.
I did fall in love on the Saturday, by the way, to a beautiful, intelligent and determined woman, who ultimately decided she had more pressing commitments than me. I sat beside her on the coach, the only free seat, and before she alighted in Preston we'd swapped addresses and numbers. We were together for the next four months. She left me some great music though. Call that a major plus.
How important is that? Oh more important than I could say. I met somebody recently, I told a friend. That friend asked what attracted me, I couldn't lie and deny it was her looks, and her wit and intelligence, but I couldn't rule out the way she could naturally mention The Tragically Hip or Maceo Parker in conversation. Of such things is love made, perhaps? (I refer the reader once more, this time to Nick Hornby's novel High Fidelity which could have been my life but isn't.)
There was time for one more brief adventure. It's a long walk out through Salford to find the road out of Manchester, but when I got there, and after I'd waited two long, frustrating, cold and weary hours, I got some luck again. A DJ on his way home from a club, going right by my junction. Dropped me four miles from home as dawn broke. A little different from my previous lift out of Manchester, after a Rocket From The Crypt show at the Hop & Grape in January. On the same road through Salford a car stopped, a woman said she was going out to the MG, which suited me fine. It's not that common to be picked up by women, especially at night so as she drove I tried casual conversation:
"Have you been working tonight?" She was in her forties, as far as I could guess in the dark.
"Yes, but it was quiet."
"Is that in a pub or something?" I asked, and she laughed.
"Oh no, love, I'm on the streets." I must have looked blank because she clarified this.
"I'm a prostitute, love."
So I told her I had no money and she laughed again and told me she picked me up because I needed a lift. There was only one question I could ask next though.
"It's ten pounds for a fumble, fifteen for oral, and twenty for sex."
I was too surprised by her matter of factness about all this to ask what constituted a fumble, and perhaps I could have talked my way into a bed for the night, but I didn't. Maybe next time I'm in Manchester?
I walked that four miles past streams with trout rising, and fields with rabbits gambolling, and the sun rose hot and red behind my left shoulder, and though I was very very tired I felt good. When, finally I let myself in the front door, I slipped a Walkabouts CD onto the deck and lay down on my bed with a smile. All for this, I have travelled, all for this. Carla sang.
Birmingham, The Jug Of Ale -- Thursday June 6th 1996
Comfort Of A Stranger
Rebecca Wild
The Light Will Stay On
All For This Fairground Blues
When Fortune Smiles
Buffalo Ballet (John Cale)
The River People (Robert Forster)
Blue Head Flame Grand Theft Auto
Like A Hurricane (Neil Young)
Encore: Christmas Valley
Glasgow, King Tut's Wah Wah Hut -- Friday June 7th 1996
As Birmingham until the end when an apparently impromptu Finlay's Motel replaced Like A Hurricane, and Patti Smith's Free Money was the encore.
Manchester, Hop & Grape -- Saturday June 8th 1996
Again the same opening numbers but after Blue Head Flame a request from the crowd for Jack Candy was acceded to, followed by a closing Grand Theft Auto, and again, Free Money was the encore.
At the Glasgow soundcheck, aside from Carla's gorgeous solo rendition of Long Time Here, the band rehearsed Old Crow with Carla singing (Chris takes the lead on the album) but decided it wasn't tight enough to go with.
`How does it feel...?'
If you don't know who all these bands are, ask me, ask me ask me, if you don't know what they sound like don't worry -- I'll tell you how they feel: Like falling in love the most recent time of coo many, like waking up on the kerbside of a motorway service area in the cold bright sunshine, like the unfulfilled ambition of every hitcher I know -- to get a ride in a Norbert Dentressangle truck, and no, I wouldn't settle for Eddie Stobart -- like riding too fast on a horse you think you can probably control, like a Raymond Carver story, a Dexter Gordon ballad, a Roberto Di Matteo goal, the second bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon/Shiraz after midnight, like the knowledge that Picasso wouldn't allow his Guernica to be used in an advertising campaign, like the cheer that rippled up the country as Michael Portillo lost his seat, like Johnny Cash's voice, Jodie Foster's eyes, like haven't stopped grinning for a week, like Jimmy Smits in the title sequence for NYPD Blue, like the desire to leap from the Cliffs of Moher not for suicide but a desperate curiosity to see what it feels like. Like anything that ever moved you enough to smile and cry simultaneously. Alan Vega of Suicide once sang: 'Rock'n'Roll Is Killing My Life' well, there are worse ways to go, and certainly that rather than vice versa.
I heard the news today, oh boy, via The Walkabouts homepage (www.thewalkabouts.com), that bassist Michael Wells has left the band. The good news is that his new band, Pluto Boy, have a tape available. Gotta go, gotta write off for a copy.
nb: this was written in 1997 following a road trip a year earlier. Much has changed since then, but The Walkabouts are still a great band.
Nowhere Bound pt 2
June 1994, The Garage, Highbury, London. At last the chance to see The Walkabouts play live. They're in the unusual position of having two albums to promote: Satisfied Mind -- a predominantly acoustic collection of covers of songs by everyone from The Carter Family to Patti Smith via Charlie Rich and Mary Margaret O'Hara; and Setting The Woods On Fire a powerful, rocking album that comes on like The Band doing Exile On Main Street (Early descriptions of The Walkabouts called them 'The Velvets at Big Pink' but I'd throw Love in as an equally valid reference point.) So there's no support act, but two sets, semi-acoustic and `something more juvenile' as Chris puts it. See the live CD and Video To Hell & Back for selected highlights of this show -- I'm just in front of Chris for most of the second set, if you're looking. I'm the guy dancing madly to 'Good Luck Morning' and especially to Terri's thumping drumming on `Jack Candy.'
I read a lot of reviews. It's one way of keeping up with what's new from hands I already know about. And after a while, via a few gambles maybe, you learn to know which reviewers you trust. A band I really like are Violent Femmes, the band that should have played a prestigious support show at Alton Towers a few years ago, but apparently the name upset the park's management who felt it wasn't in keeping with their family image. That in itself would have been reason for me to enquire about them, perhaps, but I'd already run across them through an excellent book about being music fan: Paul Williams' Map:Rediscovering Rock'n'Roll, which I picked up after meeting Paul at a convention a few years back.
I couldn't get a shot of Terri at all in Birmingham, the stage was so small her kit was set up behind the amps! I didn't have the right film anyway, but it wasn't a total waste. Friday night in Glasgow I used better film, got some decent shots of The Dear Janes, one of Barbara looking like the sexiest woman in the known universe (it's in her lips, and her eyes) and one of Ginny's red hair flying across her face (she said to get her good side, and later told me I had.) As for The Walkabouts they were a mixed batch, a whole set of Christine, hair, bow and cello flying that I've mounted together, and a handful of decent shots of Chris & Carla, but still nothing much of Terri, though I could see her. So Saturday, getting the previous shots printed I take advice and buy the film I couldn't find in Glasgow -- Fuji 1600 and went to Black & White too HP4 pushed to 1600. Great colour saturation on the Fuji, but I wasn't so happy with my camera work -- a couple of cropped heads, and some just out of focus shots. The B&W were better, despite a couple of bleached out faces but I guess I'm no Herman Leonard. I do set that sort of standard for myself though, and I do have some shots I really do like. One from Manchester that has Chris, Carla & Terri swathed in purples and turquoises from the lights is a favourite, even though I caught Chris flicking sweat from his face.
The Walkabouts were formed by singer/guitarist and principal songwriter Chris Eckmann in the early 80s in Seattle along with his two brothers Kurt and Grant and his partner Carla Torgerson and bassist Michael Wells. By the time I got to hear them Terri Moeller was drumming and Glenn Slater played keyboards. On the 84 tour singer/songwriter Larry Barrett guested on steel guitar, this time around the live shows are augmented by Christine Gunn's Cello.
All I knew of The Dear Janes was one track on a sampler CD somebody gave me a couple of years ago. I liked it, but their presence here meant about 73 minutes of The Walkabouts instead of nearly twice that. Two years ago Chris told me they'd had to leave certain songs out of the set for England because venues wouldn't allow the three hour plus shows they did in Europe, presumably for licensing reasons. So I'm disappointed in advance.
I don't know if Guy ever followed up on The Walkabouts, I haven't seen so much of him since I left ET. I almost didn't myself. It took a piece by Everett True in Melody Maker extolling the virtues of an epic track on a new 1p, Scavenger, the 9-minute lament that is 'Train To Mercy.' I pulled out that older tape, played it again, and called my dealer.
When I was about 8 years old I knew all the words to Rhinestone Cowboy, and probably still do. (Stops, hums a few bars, yeah, it's still there.) Until recently I never owned a copy in any form, but from the radio I had heard and learned this song. I didn't know what a 'rind stone' was, but the song had hooked me, caught my imagination.
I wasn't particularly interested in pop music at that time. My schoolmates argued about The Bay City Rollers and Marc Bolan, whilst I quite liked The Wombles. Dad played Jim Reeves and The Carpenters in the car, at home there were a handful of Irish records played on Sunday lunchtime, some of those songs stuck.
I got my own first record one Christmas in the late 70s, it was The Manhattan Transfer Live requested because I'd been hooked again, by their hit single 'Chanson D'Amour' (and even now I mentally follow that title with the subsequent line "rat-a-tat-a-tat, play encore.") That was a present, the first record I bought myself was not, as I like to tell people, the infinitely cool 'Dreaming' by Blondie, but probably The Charlie Daniels Band record 'The Devil Went Down To Georgia' a novelty hit from 1979 with a tune and a story I liked. Glen Campbell -- Jim Reeves -- Charlie Daniels, there's that country connection coming through.
My first gig was The Dubliners, with my parents. Checking with dad reveals that this was in Waterford (not Wexford as I'd thought) and probably 1974 or 5. The Dubliners influence was subtle, perhaps even subliminal. Take one song, 'Weile Waile', which I only have the vaguest of memories of from those Sundays, but one Saturday night in Leeds I got very, very drunk and walked down the street with Steve Glover and Tara Dowling-Hussey singing all the words to that most vicious song, It's in my blood.
But I digress. I do that when I'm in a record shop, skip from section to section, see something I might like, then something in the 2's reminds me of something that might be in the R's, and I have to go look right away. (I refer the reader to Paul DiFilippo's neat and perceptive SF Eye article on bookstore customers at this point.) Violent Femmes were mentioned in Paul Williams' book. He'd also expressed his admiration for Green On Red, Lone Justice, Husker Du and R.E.M. so I went looking for Violent Femmes. I think it was The Blind Leading The Naked that I found, and it was weird. I wasn't sure of it. I didn't hate it, but I put it to one side for a while. When I did try it again I found a song that felt right for me, at the start of the second side. 'I held her in my arms' and so I listened closer. Now, several years on, it's not my favourite Femmes album -- most often I'll pull out the compilation Add It Up -- but they're a group I do like a lot.
So that's a connection. I can take it loads further. Into Dream Syndicate, Opal, Mazzy Star, and hundreds more. The cowpunk thing, Glasgow band Thrum because the singer sounds like Maria McKee (almost) and because Thrum is a great name for a band, and onwards, ever onwards.
And people say to me, 'Where do they come from, these bands?' The flippant answer is 'Toronto' usually, sometimes `Boston' -- it's a stupid question, really, I like artists from Montreal, North Dakota, Preston and Brazil. To the best of my knowledge I don't like anybody from Tamworth, but time will tell there. So I have a core of favourites from Toronto: Cowboy Junkies, Jane Siberry, Mary Margaret O'Hara and Courage Of Lassie. I used to listen to Rush too. It's a fluke, Leonard Cohen is a Montrealer, Jale are from Nova Scotia -- and I met them at The Garage, hanging out with their labelmates on Sub Pop.
About an hour ago I was listening to the radio (I fixed that aerial) and Radio One's Evening Session featured a record so good that midway through I phoned Alison Freebairn and told her to tune in. I want that song! Okay put this one down to sheer perversity, like Fatima Mansions version of 'Shiny Happy People', this is a massively popular song that I dislike for its triteness, but rendered in a palatable form not by a spoonful of sugar but a bucketful of raw energy and, perhaps, bile. Babybird's 'You're Gorgeous' in a driving punk stylee a la Stiff Little Fingers and credited to Oizone. Hell yeah.
I read a lot of reviews. It's one way of keeping up with what's new from hands I already know about. And after a while, via a few gambles maybe, you learn to know which reviewers you trust. A band I really like are Violent Femmes, the band that should have played a prestigious support show at Alton Towers a few years ago, but apparently the name upset the park's management who felt it wasn't in keeping with their family image. That in itself would have been reason for me to enquire about them, perhaps, but I'd already run across them through an excellent book about being music fan: Paul Williams' Map:Rediscovering Rock'n'Roll, which I picked up after meeting Paul at a convention a few years back.
I couldn't get a shot of Terri at all in Birmingham, the stage was so small her kit was set up behind the amps! I didn't have the right film anyway, but it wasn't a total waste. Friday night in Glasgow I used better film, got some decent shots of The Dear Janes, one of Barbara looking like the sexiest woman in the known universe (it's in her lips, and her eyes) and one of Ginny's red hair flying across her face (she said to get her good side, and later told me I had.) As for The Walkabouts they were a mixed batch, a whole set of Christine, hair, bow and cello flying that I've mounted together, and a handful of decent shots of Chris & Carla, but still nothing much of Terri, though I could see her. So Saturday, getting the previous shots printed I take advice and buy the film I couldn't find in Glasgow -- Fuji 1600 and went to Black & White too HP4 pushed to 1600. Great colour saturation on the Fuji, but I wasn't so happy with my camera work -- a couple of cropped heads, and some just out of focus shots. The B&W were better, despite a couple of bleached out faces but I guess I'm no Herman Leonard. I do set that sort of standard for myself though, and I do have some shots I really do like. One from Manchester that has Chris, Carla & Terri swathed in purples and turquoises from the lights is a favourite, even though I caught Chris flicking sweat from his face.
The Walkabouts were formed by singer/guitarist and principal songwriter Chris Eckmann in the early 80s in Seattle along with his two brothers Kurt and Grant and his partner Carla Torgerson and bassist Michael Wells. By the time I got to hear them Terri Moeller was drumming and Glenn Slater played keyboards. On the 84 tour singer/songwriter Larry Barrett guested on steel guitar, this time around the live shows are augmented by Christine Gunn's Cello.
All I knew of The Dear Janes was one track on a sampler CD somebody gave me a couple of years ago. I liked it, but their presence here meant about 73 minutes of The Walkabouts instead of nearly twice that. Two years ago Chris told me they'd had to leave certain songs out of the set for England because venues wouldn't allow the three hour plus shows they did in Europe, presumably for licensing reasons. So I'm disappointed in advance.
I don't know if Guy ever followed up on The Walkabouts, I haven't seen so much of him since I left ET. I almost didn't myself. It took a piece by Everett True in Melody Maker extolling the virtues of an epic track on a new 1p, Scavenger, the 9-minute lament that is 'Train To Mercy.' I pulled out that older tape, played it again, and called my dealer.
When I was about 8 years old I knew all the words to Rhinestone Cowboy, and probably still do. (Stops, hums a few bars, yeah, it's still there.) Until recently I never owned a copy in any form, but from the radio I had heard and learned this song. I didn't know what a 'rind stone' was, but the song had hooked me, caught my imagination.
I wasn't particularly interested in pop music at that time. My schoolmates argued about The Bay City Rollers and Marc Bolan, whilst I quite liked The Wombles. Dad played Jim Reeves and The Carpenters in the car, at home there were a handful of Irish records played on Sunday lunchtime, some of those songs stuck.
I got my own first record one Christmas in the late 70s, it was The Manhattan Transfer Live requested because I'd been hooked again, by their hit single 'Chanson D'Amour' (and even now I mentally follow that title with the subsequent line "rat-a-tat-a-tat, play encore.") That was a present, the first record I bought myself was not, as I like to tell people, the infinitely cool 'Dreaming' by Blondie, but probably The Charlie Daniels Band record 'The Devil Went Down To Georgia' a novelty hit from 1979 with a tune and a story I liked. Glen Campbell -- Jim Reeves -- Charlie Daniels, there's that country connection coming through.
My first gig was The Dubliners, with my parents. Checking with dad reveals that this was in Waterford (not Wexford as I'd thought) and probably 1974 or 5. The Dubliners influence was subtle, perhaps even subliminal. Take one song, 'Weile Waile', which I only have the vaguest of memories of from those Sundays, but one Saturday night in Leeds I got very, very drunk and walked down the street with Steve Glover and Tara Dowling-Hussey singing all the words to that most vicious song, It's in my blood.
But I digress. I do that when I'm in a record shop, skip from section to section, see something I might like, then something in the 2's reminds me of something that might be in the R's, and I have to go look right away. (I refer the reader to Paul DiFilippo's neat and perceptive SF Eye article on bookstore customers at this point.) Violent Femmes were mentioned in Paul Williams' book. He'd also expressed his admiration for Green On Red, Lone Justice, Husker Du and R.E.M. so I went looking for Violent Femmes. I think it was The Blind Leading The Naked that I found, and it was weird. I wasn't sure of it. I didn't hate it, but I put it to one side for a while. When I did try it again I found a song that felt right for me, at the start of the second side. 'I held her in my arms' and so I listened closer. Now, several years on, it's not my favourite Femmes album -- most often I'll pull out the compilation Add It Up -- but they're a group I do like a lot.
So that's a connection. I can take it loads further. Into Dream Syndicate, Opal, Mazzy Star, and hundreds more. The cowpunk thing, Glasgow band Thrum because the singer sounds like Maria McKee (almost) and because Thrum is a great name for a band, and onwards, ever onwards.
And people say to me, 'Where do they come from, these bands?' The flippant answer is 'Toronto' usually, sometimes `Boston' -- it's a stupid question, really, I like artists from Montreal, North Dakota, Preston and Brazil. To the best of my knowledge I don't like anybody from Tamworth, but time will tell there. So I have a core of favourites from Toronto: Cowboy Junkies, Jane Siberry, Mary Margaret O'Hara and Courage Of Lassie. I used to listen to Rush too. It's a fluke, Leonard Cohen is a Montrealer, Jale are from Nova Scotia -- and I met them at The Garage, hanging out with their labelmates on Sub Pop.
About an hour ago I was listening to the radio (I fixed that aerial) and Radio One's Evening Session featured a record so good that midway through I phoned Alison Freebairn and told her to tune in. I want that song! Okay put this one down to sheer perversity, like Fatima Mansions version of 'Shiny Happy People', this is a massively popular song that I dislike for its triteness, but rendered in a palatable form not by a spoonful of sugar but a bucketful of raw energy and, perhaps, bile. Babybird's 'You're Gorgeous' in a driving punk stylee a la Stiff Little Fingers and credited to Oizone. Hell yeah.
Nowhere Bound part 1
Put the needle on the record...
Carla's wearing black, of course. It must be rock'n'roll. Head bowed as she adjusts the tuning of her guitar. Or so I imagine, I'm not really looking, barely paying attention. Imagination is based on prior knowledge, just as prior knowledge inspires complacency. Michael has just suggested that I leave my pack in the dressing room, so I'm busily loading a fresh roll of film into my camera. The film I just bought down the street from the club.
I'm tired, I barely slept last night. Another near dawn experience hitching from Birmingham to Glasgow. Half an hour's nap on a kerbside at one of the service stations, can't remember which one. Another half hour nursing a coke downstairs before Terri walked in. The barman asked me if I was alright, probably thought I was drunk. So I haven't decided if it's safe for me to start drinking again yet. At least I've eaten. Sat alone in a Pizza franchise with a book, killing an hour.
If rock'n'roll is an adventure, then it should be lived as such, at least once in a while. Three days on the road and I'm going to make it home tomorrow night. Maybe. Just travelling, hanging out in city centres, watching a band you never heard. And who knows, Maybe I'll fall in love tomorrow.
'Hey, Key's here!'
'Hi, Kev!' Four more voices chorus through the PA. I grin and sling my pack to one side. This is cool, this is a good day, this is Saturday. All for this, I have travelled. And this is what happened, some of the time.
It began on a Thursday lunchtime. Or maybe two Thursday lunchtimes, just depends how far you want to go back. Really it's only fifty-two hours earlier, though it could have been six years. Six years from the time my colleague on Employment Training, Guy Sherrocks, came back from a weekend in London with a CD he'd picked up, by a band called The Walkabouts. Never heard of them? No, neither had I, but the CD was on Sub Pop Records, who were putting out a lot of the best music of that summer, bands like Mudhoney and L7 and Soundgarden, and you might have heard of Nirvana?
It's soundcheck time in The Hop & Grape venue of Manchester University SU. The Walkabouts are on the stage calling out to me as I walk in, so I tip my cap, and say 'Hi.' They're playing bits and pieces, the intro to one song, the last chorus and end of another, as a whole and as individuals, adjusting levels and tuning instruments. Nothing unusual tonight so far, but I'm still hoping tor a surprise or two in tonight's set.
'So you made it then?' Terri Moeller drops off the front of the stage and grabs a bottle of water. The past three days have been incredibly hot, and we've all been suffering. 'Did you get some sleep yet?'
'Oh yeah.' Last night I left the Glasgow show with a promise to be here tonight only if I managed to catch up on some sleep. 'I found some bushes to sleep under, beside the ring road.'
'Hey, you are having an adventurous time aren't you?'
'That's the way I am, sometimes.'
'Sometimes?' We laugh.
Three days off work? Yes and no. I had to work Thursday morning until 1.00pm, and I had to be back at work in time for a 3.00pm start on Sunday. So a little over 72 hours isn't quite the same as three days, but I had plans to make the best of it.
Hit the road about 4, running late as ever. What the hell, I should easy make Birmingham in 4 hours. And the sun was out. It went well, three or four hitches to Sandbach, the junction rather than the M6 Services but it turned out right there too. I think she told me her name, but I can't remember it. Sorry, but thanks for the ice lolly.
The Jug Of Ale is a venue I'd never been to before, but my final lift took a minor detour and dropped me at the door. Thanks, once more. Is it just luck, or are people naturally generous? In some ways I wouldn't like to think it was just for me that these people take such trouble. I was grateful though, that I didn't have to walk too tar with my pack in that heat, just up a flight of stairs. At the top I paid my entry, just a fiver, and discovered the identity of the tour support act, The Dear Janes.
Martin, my dealer, runs a small record shop in Kendal, competing with the likes of Dire Price and Woolworth's. To survive he has a fairly good folk section, a good jazz and blues section, and the right attitude. Unlike the bigger chains, he knows at least a little bit about his stock. For me, at least, he's not afraid to say that he thinks the new REM album is not their best by a long way. To prove his point he plays it to me, and I don't buy it. It's actually no loss to Martin because I buy a Tortoise CD instead, and some other sheep will buy the REM next week or next month. In fact Martin frequently hasn't stocked the things I want, but neither have Dire Price, and Martin doesn't go blank when I ask. He'll look it up and he'll try to get it for me, even to the extent of phoning one of his German mail-order customers and arranging a swap deal to get me a single from the continent. He's also cheaper on many items, but that's besides the point.
It frequently comes down to connections. I can't remember discovering Green On Red or Husker Du. I do recall being bought a copy of Kate Bush's The Hounds Of Love for my 21st birthday. This is an excellent album, still a favourite of mine a decade later, but I already had it. So I took the new copy back to Woolworth's in Kendal to exchange it. Perhaps it was because it was a gift, and thus costing me nothing, maybe I felt it ought to be something surprising, or possibly I was just more receptive inspiration that day? I came across a Long Ryders album in the rack and it reminded me of a review I'd read, of R.E.M.'s Reconstruction Of The Fables which concluded by saying that 'The Long Ryders are better.' So I bought that album, The State of Our Union, and loved it. Out of the blue I had discovered a country music that I could get to grips with.
I'm a little rough around the edges, scruffy but passionate, I think. Glossy, glitzy, Nashville/Vegas rarely fits well with me. (And for all that I love Jimmy Webb's songs, but that's so different I could never tell you why.) So I got into The Long Ryders, and somewhere I saw Lone Justice on TV and read some reviewer comparing Maria to Janis, which was good enough for me. Add in Green On Red too, and eventually I did get into R.E.M. too. So I have a certain fondness dating back to formative years for some of John Denver's songs, so at the same time I love Jason & The Scorchers' driving raw spiky romp through 'Take Me Home Country Roads.'
Another connection lies in lust. Ain't it always so? True confessions of all the bands I've bought records by because some woman I fancied had let her liking for them slip out, the list would be horrendous: Meat Loaf for Nikki, Prince for Rowena, and Machine Head for Anne; and those are -just the successful ones. Bands I liked rather than women got off with, of course. There are others I probably won't admit to, especially somewhere that Alison Freebairn might see. I'm talking far worse than Take That at this point in time. There was the night the sexiest woman I know played me one of the sexiest records ever made over some iced vodka, then showed me to her spare bedroom. A personal moment that makes that a personal record, for me, and who knows, maybe for her? And maybe there's still a chance with one of these women...
It is serious, really. I like music, and I'm always looking for new things. Do you want to know about this month's purchases? About how many records I bought this week? Yes, I said records. Good old vinyl, black discs, and other colours, 7 inches across. As substantial as they are vulnerable, like the songs themselves. Of course, I don't expect anybody out there to know who any of these bands are. (Okay Alison, you can put your hand down now. And you, Tim.) No matter, why should you. You probably don't go out looking for these things the way I do, and even I hadn't heard of one of them.
And for me the looking is part of the fun. The adventure, as Paul Williams calls it, and sometimes I don't have a map. Sometimes there are just a few cryptic clues.
I don't currently have a working radio. When I moved rooms I didn't get around to re-fitting the aerial. Tomorrow, definitely. I have a portable but reception is variable, so I don7t listen so often. And the hours I work don't help that. So I don't get to hear much great new music on the radio. No matter, nor does anybody else. Not to the extent that daytime Radio One FM is ever going to play Jon Spencer, Jane Siberry, Dymaxion or The KY Jelly Babies or (c) or The Walkabouts. All fine acts unheard of by the mass of Woolworth's shopping CD buying public.
The theory is that what's popular is what's best. Radio plays what's in the charts, people like what they hear, buy it, and that puts it into the charts. Then there's another factor, reinforcing all of this. People buy what is in the charts, allowing their tastes to be dictated by the charts. Dumb sheep they maybe, but that's just why charts work.
Carla's wearing black, of course. It must be rock'n'roll. Head bowed as she adjusts the tuning of her guitar. Or so I imagine, I'm not really looking, barely paying attention. Imagination is based on prior knowledge, just as prior knowledge inspires complacency. Michael has just suggested that I leave my pack in the dressing room, so I'm busily loading a fresh roll of film into my camera. The film I just bought down the street from the club.
I'm tired, I barely slept last night. Another near dawn experience hitching from Birmingham to Glasgow. Half an hour's nap on a kerbside at one of the service stations, can't remember which one. Another half hour nursing a coke downstairs before Terri walked in. The barman asked me if I was alright, probably thought I was drunk. So I haven't decided if it's safe for me to start drinking again yet. At least I've eaten. Sat alone in a Pizza franchise with a book, killing an hour.
If rock'n'roll is an adventure, then it should be lived as such, at least once in a while. Three days on the road and I'm going to make it home tomorrow night. Maybe. Just travelling, hanging out in city centres, watching a band you never heard. And who knows, Maybe I'll fall in love tomorrow.
'Hey, Key's here!'
'Hi, Kev!' Four more voices chorus through the PA. I grin and sling my pack to one side. This is cool, this is a good day, this is Saturday. All for this, I have travelled. And this is what happened, some of the time.
It began on a Thursday lunchtime. Or maybe two Thursday lunchtimes, just depends how far you want to go back. Really it's only fifty-two hours earlier, though it could have been six years. Six years from the time my colleague on Employment Training, Guy Sherrocks, came back from a weekend in London with a CD he'd picked up, by a band called The Walkabouts. Never heard of them? No, neither had I, but the CD was on Sub Pop Records, who were putting out a lot of the best music of that summer, bands like Mudhoney and L7 and Soundgarden, and you might have heard of Nirvana?
It's soundcheck time in The Hop & Grape venue of Manchester University SU. The Walkabouts are on the stage calling out to me as I walk in, so I tip my cap, and say 'Hi.' They're playing bits and pieces, the intro to one song, the last chorus and end of another, as a whole and as individuals, adjusting levels and tuning instruments. Nothing unusual tonight so far, but I'm still hoping tor a surprise or two in tonight's set.
'So you made it then?' Terri Moeller drops off the front of the stage and grabs a bottle of water. The past three days have been incredibly hot, and we've all been suffering. 'Did you get some sleep yet?'
'Oh yeah.' Last night I left the Glasgow show with a promise to be here tonight only if I managed to catch up on some sleep. 'I found some bushes to sleep under, beside the ring road.'
'Hey, you are having an adventurous time aren't you?'
'That's the way I am, sometimes.'
'Sometimes?' We laugh.
Three days off work? Yes and no. I had to work Thursday morning until 1.00pm, and I had to be back at work in time for a 3.00pm start on Sunday. So a little over 72 hours isn't quite the same as three days, but I had plans to make the best of it.
Hit the road about 4, running late as ever. What the hell, I should easy make Birmingham in 4 hours. And the sun was out. It went well, three or four hitches to Sandbach, the junction rather than the M6 Services but it turned out right there too. I think she told me her name, but I can't remember it. Sorry, but thanks for the ice lolly.
The Jug Of Ale is a venue I'd never been to before, but my final lift took a minor detour and dropped me at the door. Thanks, once more. Is it just luck, or are people naturally generous? In some ways I wouldn't like to think it was just for me that these people take such trouble. I was grateful though, that I didn't have to walk too tar with my pack in that heat, just up a flight of stairs. At the top I paid my entry, just a fiver, and discovered the identity of the tour support act, The Dear Janes.
Martin, my dealer, runs a small record shop in Kendal, competing with the likes of Dire Price and Woolworth's. To survive he has a fairly good folk section, a good jazz and blues section, and the right attitude. Unlike the bigger chains, he knows at least a little bit about his stock. For me, at least, he's not afraid to say that he thinks the new REM album is not their best by a long way. To prove his point he plays it to me, and I don't buy it. It's actually no loss to Martin because I buy a Tortoise CD instead, and some other sheep will buy the REM next week or next month. In fact Martin frequently hasn't stocked the things I want, but neither have Dire Price, and Martin doesn't go blank when I ask. He'll look it up and he'll try to get it for me, even to the extent of phoning one of his German mail-order customers and arranging a swap deal to get me a single from the continent. He's also cheaper on many items, but that's besides the point.
It frequently comes down to connections. I can't remember discovering Green On Red or Husker Du. I do recall being bought a copy of Kate Bush's The Hounds Of Love for my 21st birthday. This is an excellent album, still a favourite of mine a decade later, but I already had it. So I took the new copy back to Woolworth's in Kendal to exchange it. Perhaps it was because it was a gift, and thus costing me nothing, maybe I felt it ought to be something surprising, or possibly I was just more receptive inspiration that day? I came across a Long Ryders album in the rack and it reminded me of a review I'd read, of R.E.M.'s Reconstruction Of The Fables which concluded by saying that 'The Long Ryders are better.' So I bought that album, The State of Our Union, and loved it. Out of the blue I had discovered a country music that I could get to grips with.
I'm a little rough around the edges, scruffy but passionate, I think. Glossy, glitzy, Nashville/Vegas rarely fits well with me. (And for all that I love Jimmy Webb's songs, but that's so different I could never tell you why.) So I got into The Long Ryders, and somewhere I saw Lone Justice on TV and read some reviewer comparing Maria to Janis, which was good enough for me. Add in Green On Red too, and eventually I did get into R.E.M. too. So I have a certain fondness dating back to formative years for some of John Denver's songs, so at the same time I love Jason & The Scorchers' driving raw spiky romp through 'Take Me Home Country Roads.'
Another connection lies in lust. Ain't it always so? True confessions of all the bands I've bought records by because some woman I fancied had let her liking for them slip out, the list would be horrendous: Meat Loaf for Nikki, Prince for Rowena, and Machine Head for Anne; and those are -just the successful ones. Bands I liked rather than women got off with, of course. There are others I probably won't admit to, especially somewhere that Alison Freebairn might see. I'm talking far worse than Take That at this point in time. There was the night the sexiest woman I know played me one of the sexiest records ever made over some iced vodka, then showed me to her spare bedroom. A personal moment that makes that a personal record, for me, and who knows, maybe for her? And maybe there's still a chance with one of these women...
It is serious, really. I like music, and I'm always looking for new things. Do you want to know about this month's purchases? About how many records I bought this week? Yes, I said records. Good old vinyl, black discs, and other colours, 7 inches across. As substantial as they are vulnerable, like the songs themselves. Of course, I don't expect anybody out there to know who any of these bands are. (Okay Alison, you can put your hand down now. And you, Tim.) No matter, why should you. You probably don't go out looking for these things the way I do, and even I hadn't heard of one of them.
And for me the looking is part of the fun. The adventure, as Paul Williams calls it, and sometimes I don't have a map. Sometimes there are just a few cryptic clues.
I don't currently have a working radio. When I moved rooms I didn't get around to re-fitting the aerial. Tomorrow, definitely. I have a portable but reception is variable, so I don7t listen so often. And the hours I work don't help that. So I don't get to hear much great new music on the radio. No matter, nor does anybody else. Not to the extent that daytime Radio One FM is ever going to play Jon Spencer, Jane Siberry, Dymaxion or The KY Jelly Babies or (c) or The Walkabouts. All fine acts unheard of by the mass of Woolworth's shopping CD buying public.
The theory is that what's popular is what's best. Radio plays what's in the charts, people like what they hear, buy it, and that puts it into the charts. Then there's another factor, reinforcing all of this. People buy what is in the charts, allowing their tastes to be dictated by the charts. Dumb sheep they maybe, but that's just why charts work.
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