The Afterword

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Bearded Theory 2026

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Warning, one big old wall of text incoming….

It’s Bearded time again. We are onsite and tent up by 12pm on Wednesday, ready for five solid days of music and somewhat ruing the effort and weight involved in packing all those warm clothes and wet weather gear, because my word does it turn out to be a hot one.

Wednesday is a small kick off, a few bands in the woodland. The first up was Cara Means Friend, a bedreaded (white) woman with a guitar singing about the system while stage left a soporific chap sat down and plonked out some simple basslines. Unfortunately all I could think of was Hannah’s Field, although I could not share this insight with my mate as he is normal and doesn’t go on internet deep dives for terrible music. Meryl Streek up next was much better, much more convincingly angry and political. First time I’ve seen him with a live drummer, and all the better for it. I was quite looking forward to Jools, as Hassle Records can usually spot a decent band, but that excitement wore off pretty quickly. Next up was Lucia And The Best Boys, who need » Continue Reading.

Good long music articles

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This is a fantastic piece by Will Sheff about a Dr Hook live DVD. It’s an astonishing piece of writing, full of love and humour and showing how one man’s treasure can be found in the most ephemeral fluff (a couple of band members show up in the comments and essentially say that they had forgotten all about this show).

Until I came here to post this, I had no idea that Dennis Locorriere had died this week. Perhaps that’s what prompted it to surface, perhaps it’s just a cosmic coincidence. I did toy with adding it to the RIP thread, but I was hoping to use it to provoke some links and reminiscences of some other great music writing that’s buried away somewhere on the internet. Any offers?

https://web.archive.org/web/20160106053231/http://www.willsheff.com/we-never-have-to-be-alone-dr-hook-and-the-medicine-show-live-1974/

ATM: what’s good in Berlin?

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I’m going to Berlin next week, a spontaneous solo trip I only arranged a couple of weeks ago. I have some holiday to use up, my wife works in a school and can’t have the same time off plus she has no interest in spies or techno, so I’ve booked a cheap flight to a city I’ve long wanted to visit. What shouldn’t I miss?

Joe Hill – King Sorrow

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Author:Joe Hill

Since the recent Never Flinch review has outed a few Stephen King fans here, I thought it was worth drawing attention to the new one by his son. It’s been a long time coming, but this is Joe Hill’s best novel by a long way. It’s a beast of a book – I read an eARC, but I’d guess the print version isn’t going to be far short of a thousand pages – but nothing is bloated or wasted. It’s a genuine epic that spans decades and continents as the story of how a group of friends make a deal with something they really shouldn’t have plays out down the years. It feels lazy to make comparison with Hill’s dad (although to be fair he does kind of invite it with direct references to The Dead Zone and The Dark Tower here, let alone the first word of the title), but this is up there with any of King Sr’s biiiig books, and possibly even better. It has lots to say about social class, about friendship, our emergent billionaire class, folklore and mythic archetypes and their relevance to the 21st century, plus there’s a bloody enormous dragon that » Continue Reading.

Saturday at ArcTanGent

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Venue:

a farm, somewhere near Bristol

Date: 17/08/2024

ArcTanGent is a festival pretty much exclusively devoted to, ahem, difficult music. Lots of post-rock and post-metal and post-everything inbetween. It’s been on my radar for years, but always clashes with Beautiful Days, which has traditionally been our family festival outing. The line up there this year was so catastrophically bad however that I found myself with a free weekend, and then won a ticket to ATG in a competition. The stars are aligning I thought, it’s meant to be, and then a whole pile of dog related shenanigans meant Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were wiped out for me. Very disappointed to miss Explosions In The Sky and a few others, but Saturday had always looked to be the strongest day, and so, not to be deterred, I figured I’d get a day out at least. Mrs Dynamite (not that one) kindly offered to drop me off and pick me up, but drew the line at actually watching any of the bands, so away I went on my tod.

I arrived on site at 11am and was watching my first band within half an hour. Codex Serafini came on stage in » Continue Reading.

The 100 Greatest Albums Of All Time, According To Kid Dynamite

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This was something I’ve been doing elsewhere, and I thought it might get some interest here, especially in light of the recent discussions about what is Afterword music and what isn’t. Plus, the very nature of the format means I’m guaranteed a hanger even if I’m the only one posting in the thread, and they are in short supply around here, so not to be sneezed at. One or two posts a day, should see out the summer nicely…oh, and because I’m hardcore I’ve deliberately limited myself to one album by each artist. Which is going to be a bugger when it’s Neil Young’s turn, but that’s not for ages yet.

Death Pill & The Blunders

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Venue:

The Louisiana, Bristol

Date: 12/06/2023

A lovely sunny night in Bristol, so why not wander down near the waterfront and enjoy some delicious punk rock in a tiny venue?

First up was The Blunders. Last time I saw these they were performing ACAB – The Musical at a festival, it was late at night and I was a bit drunk and there was a man dressed as a cat onstage and it was all very confusing. No such shenanigans tonight, a straight ahead three piece gig. They look like old squatters, but the music is more post punk with a vague dancey feel. They probably wouldn’t thank me for saying this, but they put me in mind of a crustier and angrier Franz Ferdinand. They were brilliant, and they’re on the bill for the Culture Shock / RDF gig I’m going to in October so looking forward to that even more now.

Death Pill play next. The headline here is that they’re a Ukrainian riot grrl band who started this tour in Kyiv. Not sure I’ve ever seen so much goodwill directed towards a relatively unknown act before they’d even played a note. The show was about » Continue Reading.

(no)CD Swap 2023 – It’s review time!

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okay, it’s time to commit your applause and your eviscerations to virtual paper. I’ll do a series of posts recapping the groups, and please add your thoughts on the mixes you’ve received as replies to the relevant post. We’ll leave this open for a couple of weeks, and then it’s the great revealathon.

Remember, be nice, and if you can’t be nice, at least be entertainingly nasty.

CD (noCD) Swap 2023 – the groups!

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Here we go. I’ll post the group as separate replies here and then you can all chat amongst yourselves underneath. As I said before, my old spreadsheet is long gone so there may well be repeated matches here, so apologies if so. On the upside, at least all but two of you can console yourself with the thought that you won’t be receiving any of my tuneless rubbish.

instructions in the original thread:

The swallows are back. time for a CD Swapfest I reckon?

ATM – buying glasses online

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I had an eye test this morning, and Specsavers are suggesting that a new pair of glasses for my marginally changed prescription are going to cost in the region of £350.

I have a vague idea that there are online opticians who will knock up some spectacles to a prescription you provide for much more reasonable sums. Does anyone here have any experience of doing so? Was it a good or a bad idea? My eyesight is extremely bad, and I need varifocals plus lens thinning, I presume these outfits can handle this as well as regular specs?

I’d be very appreciative of anyone sharing their stories. I’m always a bit cautious of cutting corners with my glasses because they are fundamental to my daily life, but still, three hundred and fifty quid…

Fire Rush

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Author:Jacqueline Crooks

This debut novel, set in the Caribbean community in London, Bristol and ultimately Jamaica as the seventies turn into the eighties, is the story of Yamaye, a young Black woman who lives for dancing at all night reggae sessions. She loses herself in the dark and the dub, finding an escape from a mundane and difficult life outside. And then she meets Moose, falls in love, and seizes the chance for contentment and satisfaction. But Babylon has other plans…

I’m a huge fan of Jamaican-inspired music, and this book is soaked in it. It’s some of the best writing about music I’ve ever read, the words thrum and sing with horn stabs and skittering cymbals, and pulse with a deep slow bass throb. It’s alive to music in a way so many books about the subject aren’t (compare and contrast to Marlon James’ …Seven Killings, for instance, which for all its many other virtues is almost completely tone deaf, in a novel about Bob Marley of all people). There’s a terrific rhythm to the language, as though it’s being told to you in person. I don’t usually do audiobooks but i’d love to hear this as one (with » Continue Reading.

Post-War British Jazz Bargain Alert

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This is currently name your price on Bandcamp. Sounds pretty interesting, think I will chuck them a few quid but you can pay nothing if you want

A survey of the modern jazz & hard-bop scenes that emerged in the new cultural melting pot of post war London, with recordings from the end of the 1940s through to the early 1960s.

Featuring representations from players whose roots lay in the East-End’s jewish community, such as Ronnie Scott, Vic Ash & Harry Klein, alongside a wealth of talent of Caribbean and African descent playing and recording in post war London during this period, incl. Dizzy Reece, Wilton Gaynair, Joe Harriott, Shake Keane & Ginger Johnson.

Made in partnership with the Barbican to coincide with the exhibition Postwar Modern: New Art in Britain 1945-1965.

https://deathisnot.bandcamp.com/album/i-had-the-craziest-dream-modern-jazz-and-hard-bop-in-post-war-london-vol-1

Zen School Of Motoring

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I was turned on to this during the first lockdown (ah, remember that endless spring?). It’s a series of YouTube clips that are essentially dash cam footage of someone (a not especially well-known rapper called Ogmios) driving round London and describing what he sees. Might not sound all that intriguing, but the trick is that he is so good-natured and chilled that you will feel roughly twenty-four times better about the world after watching it. It’s so very simple, yet also completely marvellous. A simple thank you to a driver who allows him to pull out feels incredibly profound and helps you realise how interconnected our community is, which is a just fancy way of saying it’s nice to be nice.

And I mention it now, because as of tomorrow, it is on proper telly (well, BBC Three), and will be on the iPlayer. Honestly. even if it turns out to be only half as good as the YouTube clips, watch it. It will calm you right down, and improve your well-being like you wouldn’t believe.

Cassandra Jenkins

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Venue:

The Louisiana, Bristol

Date: 10/11/2021

Well, this was terrific. Long term KD watchers will know that her album from the beginning of the year bowled me over, and it’s still the best ambient indie folk jazz record of the year by a mile, but I did wonder how such a finely produced, intimate, record would translate live. Very well it turns out. She has five people in her backing band (the photo over there was quickly taken during a (seemingly) spontaneous solo encore) on second guitar, keys, drums, and bass plus a saxophonist, who also doubled up on flute, and was undoubtedly the MVP of the night. The whole soundscape was mesmerising, an enthralling mesh of ambience, texture and melody. None of the intricacies of the album were lost, and the constant build of the album’s cornerstone Hard Drive worked so well, with a brilliantly synchronised abrupt ending. I even did the cliche thing of standing there with my eyes shut for a minute, letting it all wash over me and take the day away.

13/10, would go again.

The audience:

Fabulous, to be honest. Probably about 75% masked, and amazingly quiet throughout the performances. I didn’t » Continue Reading.

2021 CD Swap – the reviews

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seemed to be about time to put this one up. There’s still a bit to go on the deadline, but enough discs have been out in the wild now that some of us may be ready to publish our reviews. Hopefully everybody enjoyed what they received, but if you didn’t, please be entertainingly disappointed! I’ll put the groups in as they were in the original thread, and please post beneath the relevant set of people.

It’s only the groups for the CD swap!

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Here we go. I have tried to avoid repetiton, but it is becoming increasing difficult…anyway, have at it!

For the sake of having it all in one place, here are the rules again, courtesy of MM

THOSE RULES IN FULL… 1 Sign up by the closing date by just letting us know in the comments to this post. Sign up for CDswap New closes next Friday (20th May), then the Kid will get grouping. 2 We will then pair everyone up with two or three other people – you compile a CD (more later) and post it to two others. So post two out, get two back. You swap your IRL addresses via DMs so no-one except your pairs need know you live at 221 Faker Street. 3.Your CD: one CD only. 12 tracks only. Theme: New. Please rip your files without track or artist names so your partners can listen without prejudice. Artwork is up to you. MP3 tag is a free PC programme that allows you to strip all the artwork and info from your MP3 file. 5 CDs to get to your partners in the mail by the end of June (we will give you a » Continue Reading.