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  1. Been a very quiet month as we were expecting to move house and nothing has happened yet. So……

    Concerts/ gigs Nil.

    Theatre: The Railway Children at the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway. The right place to see this as I loved the film. Just after the engine enters the ‘station’ before the interval one young chap said “that was AMAZING” and I think that sums up the whole production. Lucky to get tickets as the whole thing was sold out.

    Cinema: Nowt

    Read: Kevin Rowland’s and Baxter Dury’s autobiographies, I always like to read about people I’ve heard of but have little knowledge. The Rowland appeared to be a book of apologies for past behaviour. Dury had a most unusual upbringing unsurprisingly.

    Watched: bingewatched Bookish (loved that the shop was called Book’s, time to irk the purists) very enjoyable and beautifully filmed with the look of 40s/50s cinema. The quizzes are back on Mondays hurrah. Brokenwood is back which means I have to check online for NZ slang and Maori words. We bingewatched another NZ programme this weekend which necessitated further exploring the vernacular.

    Coming up Arthur Brown tonight, R J McCarty next week and Roy Harper at the end of the month, and possibly seeing Rob Heron and the Tea Pad Orchestra too. Maybe a house move?

  2. Heard: the reissue of Stars of the Lid’s debut masterpiece, Music for Nitrous Oxide — a transportive montage of tape hiss, found sounds and guitar drone. Also been listening to The Who’s 1971 Oval concert, and, by way of contrast, Galaxie 500’s live album Copenhagen, in anticipation of getting my mits on their recently issued new archival set from CBGBs in 1988.

    Read: Hang Kang’s Nobel prize winning novel, We Do Not Part. Bit underwhelmed, TBH. Have now moved onto JG Ballard’s somewhat baffling Atrocity Exhibition.

    Seen: Did a mammoth double bill of the last two Mission Impossible films last weekend — basically 6 hours of my life! Entertaining enough but with typically incoherent plotting. Also enjoying the Alien Earth series on Disney+ — far superior to any of the recent Alien franchise movie reboots. As an antidote to this mainstream diet, I’ve been caning our Mubi subscription.

    • It’s not a Nobel Prize winning novel – you win for your complete authorship, not just one book.
      But I’m shocked that you found it underwhelming – I thought it was near perfect and it’s my favourite novel of hers (and I’ve liked almost all of them…The Vegetarian is the closest I’ve come to be underwhelmed by anything by her). Then again, there are people in this world who loves Neil Young, and I very much don’t, so not so shocking after all.
      😀

  3. Well, I have to admit I have been reading – YES, I read a book! The Fallen by Dave Simpson, loved it, even my wife loved it, she said, and I quote, “I can pick that up at anytime and at any page and it’s interesting, funny and really well written”. This is true, it’s an excellent book and the first for ages as I always seem to be too busy with stuff to sit about reading when there’s music & films on.
    Doing more mixes, a new one of Bricolage Records – a Glasgow based label who put out mostly weirdy lush, electronica and I was pleased with how it turned out, also the 1988 mix which I posted here a week or so ago. I started prepping for another 80’s mix but decided I would skip straight into the 90’s as I prefer that era.
    Seen and enjoyed lots of old & new movies & TV, including Foundation, Poker Face, Escape Into Night, She Rides Shotgun, Three Billboards, Alien Earth, Together, and plenty of football.
    Other highlights include driving around Wales with the family for a week, bidding and winning a lot of records and in one lot a large amount of original 60’s songbooks, Dylan, Ochs, Clapton etc but will probably either pass onto friends who play music or sell a couple on eBay. There was a lot of sheet music, some lovely rock ‘n’ roll ones, Cochran, Vincent, Kidd etc which look so lovely I may have framed.
    I also bid on a NAIM stereo sytem at the auction but stopped at my limit of 2.5k, just as well it finished at 6.2k!!
    Sorting out boxes in the garage so I can do a couple of record fairs in Dundee and London, I really need to get rid of DVD’s, records & stuff – I will be at Jonny Trunk’s 5th Groovy Record Fayre in November btw if anyone wants to flick through my under priced goodies.

  4. HEARD: The Who – ‘Live at the Oval 1971’ – magnificent! Exciting, cliff-edge rock’n’roll from the glory days – a world away from the rather sad spectacle of the current tour, which seems to involve a level of performance below even the last tour, which seemed to have reduced the two to plodding through songs with an orchestra and no possibility of much or any spontaneity outside of the scores. This single-disc 70-minute live set from a time when ‘Who’s Next’ was so new that ‘Baba O’Reilly’ hasn’t entered the set list yet is a fabulous companion to ‘Live at Leeds’ from the previous year – four songs in common but a very different feel to them, and so much new music – new at that time. I’m glad they didn’t stick this in a box set or append it as an extra disc to something – it really does feel like a bona fide stand-alone live album.

    READ: Currently reading Dominic Sandbrook’s fantastic and entertaining ‘State of Emergency’ about Britain 1970-74. The place really was falling apart at the seams… an era when miners could say ‘no’ to a 16% pay rise offer and know they could bring the country to its knees and get more. Reading about Edward Heath has rarely been so much fun. I’ve also been listening to Dominic & Tom Holland’s ‘The Rest is History’ podcast series – the pair are very entertaining and their knowledge/preparation for each episode or mini-series on as subject is extraordinary. The mini-series on Britain in 1974 and on the origins of World War I are especially good.

    WATCHED: Probably a few crime dramas that I can’t bring to mind, plus a fine series on PBS called Grand Tour of the Scottish Islands – fronted by one Paul Murton, bumbling around the western and northern isles in breezy half-hour instalments.

    LIVE MUSIC: Looking forward to seeing Paul Archer (ex Burning Codes) tomorrow at a Belfast bar – a few weeks after a fantastic show at Bangor’s Court House with his new trio. Low-volume songs and stories with an electric trio in support of his new solo album ‘Art’ – his first in six years – a terrific comeback.

    AOB: I have a new book out this month, ‘Northumbrian Blues: The Lost World of Big Pete Deuchar Vol.1 (1933-60)’, and the various Dick Gaughan projects I’ve been working on are all coming to a boil – three releases are off for manufacture as of this week and the main item, the 7CD+DVD box set, is reaching advanced stages – more film restoration going on, a late-arrival unreleased 1983 studio track and 1977 John Peel intros being added to the CDs, and two sumptuous booklets being designed…

    Paul Archer video by the amazing Marry Waterson:

    • Agreed on all points re Live at the Oval 1971 Colin — Chris Charlesworth points out on his blog how they played with a “reckless spirit of adventure”, willing to go where the music took them on the night. It compares favourably with the 2 live discs from San Francisco later in that year, from the Who’s Next Super Deluxe box — it feels more concise and impactful I think (apart from “Bargain” maybe, where I think the San Francisco performance might be definitive).

      • My copy of “Live at the Oval 1971” has just arrived in the post, and I’ve already listened to the first four tracks. I can tell already that it’s a really exciting live album. There’s something about the Who in 1970-71, isn’t there? What a powerful unit they were.

    • I’m looking forward to the Dick Gaughan box Colin

      Which other items are being released? I ordered one with the box set but would be interested in the other 2 also

      Re: the Miners Strikes in the first half of the 70’s – a 16% rise may seem huge but on the wages we were earning at the time it wasn’t very much because we were being paid peanuts

      “And know they could bring the country to its knees” Where did you got that statement from, the book? Because it is b#ll#cks. We attempted nothing of the kind and only took action to earn a decent wage for our labours

      Statements such as that need to be fact checked before being used

      Heath forced us into that situation and it was he and his government who were responsible for the 3 day week, power usage restrictions, shutting TV down at 10:30 pm all of which it has been proven were unnecessary and simply a political tool to get the population behind him (he’d have loved that 😂)

      Anyhow his plans backfired and was last seen captaining his yacht into the sunset

      Colin please don’t take this as an attack on yourself I respect the work you do especially for the N.I. music scene and for artists such as Dick Gaughan

      • I’d urge you to read Dominic’s book, Pyramid – the situation was much more layered and nuanced than you probably experienced. Heath and the union leaders all got on famously, personally – he had many, many meetings with them and they were all impressed with him. But those leaders – all different, intriguing characters with differing values and quirks and ‘left’ness (for wont of a better word) – could not necessarily ‘deliver’ their members on this or that proposal.

        From memory of that section of the book, the miners were indeed far behind other workers – and that was recognised by a commission Heath set up, which recommended a huge pay rise, which was given. But they came back a year later and wanted more. To an extent, Heath realised they were ‘a special case’ but he was hidebound by a general incomes policy at that point, which he didn’t want to break… but one of the union leaders (Gormley, I think) gave him a cunning way to get around this, which Heath was interested in pondering… but Harold Wilson then torpedoed the idea by mentioning it in parliament the next day (Gormley to his regret had told Harold) and asking for it to apply to ALL workers.

        Anyway, there lots of intrigue and detail and behind the scenes stuff that I think you’d find fascinating. Heath had strangely socialist leanings in some ways – but his key fault, vis a vis union negotiations (which Dominic identifies), is that he simply didn’t understand things like community, nostalgia, brotherhood etc. To him, a curious loner – even within the Con Party – it was all about spreadsheets. He meant well, it seems, but he had no ‘feel’ for the lives of working class people.

        Dominic ascribes a great quote to Heath, who is believed to have told an associate: ‘The Conservative Party consists of people who are either sh*ts, bl**dy sh*ts or f**king shits’. Which has of course turned out to be the one thing he got completely right.

        Various things coalesced to make the early 70s a series of crises for Britain – the NI situation, the oil crisis, major strikes etc. Heath made some very bad calls but he was dealt an appallingly bad hand of circumstances, to be fair.

        On a personal level, he was a grumpy oddball but you might come away from reading Dominic’s book with a begrudging admiration for some things that he really tried to get right – including trying to find a settlement that miners could live with – but somehow couldn’t.

        • Colin, I was there and I do understand “the intrigue and detail” because I was at some of those meetings, some which I attended in the Houses Of Parliament

          How can Dominic Sandbrook who wasn’t was he even born during both Miner’s strikes understand the feelings, conditions, frustrations of the working classes at the time? Only through second hand blatherings of the upper classes who knew nothing of the conditions which brought about the strikes of 1972 and 1974

          Sandbrook was even born at the time and no I won’t be reading any of his drivel

          Here are some facts for you – we were led by an idiot in Gormley who was well known in his home town for being a thief who only cared about his own welfare

          The real leader of the miners in the 70’s was Scottish Miner’s leader Mick McGahey and it was he who lad the negotiations, I was there

          • I can only bow to your knowledge, Pyramid. I mean that genuinely – I wasn’t ‘there’ at the time either, but as a writer of history it seems to me that Sandbrook has referenced a huge number of written sources (primary and secondary) in creating his books. What he doesn’t do – for any of his ‘history of Britain books – is first-hand interviewing. He’s writing a synthesis of many areas of history – social, cultural, political – so interviewing, for instance, people now looking back at things that happened then isn’t his remit.

            I don’t believe he pretends to understand the feelings of the working classes – his books aren’t polemical, in my view. From what I gather, his instincts are centre-right – but there’s plenty of pro working-class material in his history of Britain books. I find his style entertaining and full of interesting pure information – his book on the 1950s, for instance, put flesh on the bones of lots of things I was only vaguely familiar with. His 60s book is tremendous on Wilson’s government and the characters in it.

            I’ve no interest in football, for instance, but his chapter in ‘State of Emergency’ on early 70s sport in Britain (mostly football related) is compelling. He sets out lots of information on Don Revie – the rumours about his supposed corruption etc – but leaves it for the reader to come to any conclusion.

            But, look, I’m sorry to have caused this upset with a throwaway line – I meant it not pejoratively but as pure description: miners DID know they held a lot of power through direct action in the early 70s, the public was very largely sympathetic to their cause and they used their power.

            I definitely didn’t wish to disrespect you or anyone else here!

            Really, all I was trying to say was that, personally, I’m learning a lot about Britain in the 50s, 60s, early 70s from Sandbrook’s books (I was 2 in 1970).

            I’m also reading David Kynaston’s series of books on British social and political history – I’ve read the volumes on 1962 & 1962-65 so far. His sources are much wider than Dominic’s – for instance, he has sourced a number of ‘ordinary people’ diaries, mostly from outside London, which can give a brilliant ‘view from the street’ on great matters of the day – or much lesser matters that were of great importance, and just as valid, for those people.

            I’ve no idea if David is right, left or in between but whatever he may be, it doesn’t reveal itself in his books!

    • Dominic Sandbrook – his first “Never Had It So Good” felt too much like a lecture, it was quite dry. The second “White Heat” was better. “State of Emergency” had the detail, pace and energy.
      If you enjoyed that one, move on to “Seasons In The Sun” – moves the story in with much the same rigour

    • Agree on ‘The Rest is History’ podcasts. I’ve known of them for some time but only began listening this summer.

      The Great Northern War. I knew nothing of it until now. What an astonishing conflict. Stay curious, everyone.

  5. Yes, that SF ‘Bargain’ is fabulous – first heard on the ‘Who’s Missing’ comp decades ago – leaving us all thinking ‘Why don’t you guys just get on with it and release THE WHO THING!’ Likewise, the SF ‘Baby Don’t You Do It’, first heard (edited) on a single B-side in 1972.

    I was annoyed that the SF show didn’t get a standalone release. I couldn’t afford the box set. I’ve heard that the mix irritates some people – with the same loop of crowd noises added in several times. Jon Astley is a menace.

  6. Another funny old month was August, long periods of doing nowt, interspersed with the mad rush of festivals x 2. So I’ll mention them first. Cropredy I scribbled about here, on return, Shrewsbury I didn’t, at least not here. By far the better of the two, and possibly the best of the 4 or 5 Shrewsbury’s I have attended since 2015. Meeting up with @thecheshirecat is always part the fun, but we actually seldom crossed paths, given our different drugs of choice. His are dancing and singing, whereas I like to hoover up as much live music as I can. My highlights were the fabulous Malin Lewis Trio, Natalie McMaster and her celto-cuban fusions and the three headliners, Skerryvore, Oysterband and the Levellers, al of whom played at the top of their game. The Oysterband set was all the more poignant for being their last ever in the UK, their last ever ever having since taken place in Tønder. The weather was glorious and it was the best Shrews yet, they having really upped their game, in the wake of Cambridge’s absence.
    Recorded music: August is always a quiet month, but there was one humdinger, a real contender for the higher reaches of the end of year poll. This is Eve Adams and her 2nd release, American Dust, the sound of a mirage in Death Valley. Imagine Lana Del Rey, transplanted to New Mexico from California, dry throated through sand, with a touch of Hope Sandoval & Mazzy Star about the arrangements. Tip top.
    Only 1 swim the whole month; Mrs P is still under the clouds of quasi-bereavement and that casts a pall over such pleasures, certainly in her abilities to find pleasure in what was her greatest outdoor pursuit.
    No books and precious little telly; Mrs P’s current attention span is shot and she gets irritated by any shortfall in delivery, or overshot of credulity. Lots of series ditched part way. So refuge sought in old favourites: Orange Is the New Black, The Messiah, Homeland, stuff like that. I watched the Led Zepp early years docs, finding it most entertaining. It seems that Plant was really the bad boy in the band, forever leading his faithful chum, Bonzo, into bad, if ultimately very successful, ways. Page and Jones seem more the hard nosed pros., in charge from the front and the back, respectively.

  7. I binge-watched Twin Peaks: The Return for the first time in a while this month. You either appreciate it in all its weird glory or you don’t – I’m a longtime Lynch fan – but it led me back to the two soundtrack albums that accompanied the TV series. Both are pretty good; one the score written by Angelo Badalamenti and others, the other the songs played by various bands in the Roadhouse at the end of each episode. At the time, it seemed like a gratuitous excuse by David Lynch to elbow in performances by his favourite acts, which to some extent it probably was, but now that some time has passed the music feels as integral to the whole experience as anything else. Standout tracks include a ‘Roadhouse mix’ of Lissie’s ‘Wild Wild West’, Chromatics, the obligatory Julee Cruise and ‘No Stars’ by Rebekah Del Rio.

    I don’t watch a lot of broadcast TV any more, but I do find Masterchef one of the few good reasons that reality TV was invented. This final series with Gregg Wallace and John Torode has an element of voyeurism to it, spotting the trickery involved with editing out the contestants who no longer wished for their participation to be aired. It all seems a bit of a shame; without touching on the controversy with which the show has consumed itself, Wallace and Torode both come across as eminently likeable blokes, and it’s hard not to conclude that Torode at least has been somewhat harshly treated.

    There’s a new Midlake album out in November, which spurred me on to catching up with their most recent, For the Sake of Bethel Woods. It’s not as immediate, if that’s a word that can be used to describe their other material, but it’s a grower, pop pickers. Kathleen Edwards’s new album Billionaire, which I reviewed last week, is my album of the year so far. Frustratingly it’s been plagued with distribution issues, and despite being released a couple of weeks ago is still not available on CD. Also out this month is Airline Highway, a new album by Rodney Crowell. He’s been on a purple songwriting patch for around 9 or 10 albums now, not bad for a 75 year old, and Airline Highway is another fine addition to his catalogue. Great tunes, astute lyrics from a canny wordsmith. To my mind he’s unfairly lumped in with Nashville hat-acts, but is so much better than that. We are lucky to still have him.

    Lastly, a new album from Nigel Stonier, the former Mr Thea Gilmore, came out in May. Nigel is best known as a talented producer who has worked with a whole myriad of artists, but his songwriting has perhaps languished in the shadow of his former spouse. Like Thea Gilmore, his lyrics are wordy and clever; Wolf Notes is his 6th or 7th album of resolutely English folk-rock. It’s worth a listen if you’ve not heard his stuff before.

  8. Another month of “not a lot going on”

    Heard:
    Jim Bob did a Guns n Roses and released 2 single albums on one day – Automatic and Stick.
    Both very good – I’m leaning towards Automatic as the pick of the 2, but Stick contains the best track “A Song By Me”.
    Found a CD called The Best Of Zodiac Mindwarp – this is not a Best Of, it’s basically Tattooed Beat Messiah plus a cover of Born To Be Wild. I bought it and listened to irt anyway.

    Seen:
    Loads of unmemorable stuff, but have found Series 2 & 3 of Berlin Station on ITVx.
    Thursday Murder Club on Netflix had huge write-ups, but I though it “OK” at best

    Read:
    Stuart Maconie – The Nanny State Made Me.
    I may not agree with SMs political leftie stance, but he makes a strong case for public ownership of essential services, and the fact that the “Nanny State” being used as a default put-down (a bit like “political correctness gone mad”) is quite wrong. The Welfare State should be celebrated for what it did (and still in places tries to do)

    AoB:
    Tentative steps into the world of podcasting. Me and a mate discovered that our first attempt needs some serious re-thinking as we tried to cover too many topics in too short a time.

    • We watched ‘The Thursday Murder Club’, too. Cliched as all get out. Remarkably, the cast is filled with actors from ‘Mob Land’

      None of them called each other c***s in this one.

  9. I seem to have lost the attention span for movies, but I did re-watch Goodfellas, after it came up in several different conversations. A dark, wonderful, multi-faceted film, which set the scene for The Sopranos, too.

    I have been re-reading Chandler, and thoroughly enjoying the change in temp between the books. The first – The Big Sleep – is a slow burn. The second – Farewell, My Lovely – is much funnier, while still dark. He has started to have fun with it, the wild similes, the colourful language and characters. I have also been enjoying The Rest Is History audiobook – lovely snippets of history, packed with intriguing facts about things like why Nelson won at Trafalgar.

    [The British Navy had a great tradition of bring people up through the ranks, they “knew the ropes” (unlike the opposing navies who let rich people buy commissions), they were well-fed (very challenging back then), and the ships were very well maintained, including equipment developed and standardised by Marc Kingdom Brunel, (Isambard’s dad), which was in use from then up until the Falklands War. ]

    Listening has been all over the place, but 80s Miles Davis (Bootleg Series Volume 7) has been on heavy rotation, and I bought a few Culture CDs which were on sale at Cherry Red, including the sublime Children of Zion collection. The other amazing find was A Love Supreme Live In Seattle – John Coltrane moving through the planes, with a killer band including Pharaoh Sanders. This was an impulse buy in Fopp – £2.99 with any other purchase – and as I was already buying a Ray Bradbury book, it seemed sensible to pick it up. I love the original album, of course, but this is the next level – free, and wild, and glorious

  10. Not a lot going on popular culture wise. Listening to a lot of music but not really blown away by anything. That King of Zydeco tribute album has some good energetic toons. Enjoying the Alien series on Disney. I’m not a huge fan of the films but this is interesting. Got back into reading a bit and currently enjoying Michael Palin’s Erebus.
    Big news 1. The eponymous hound has left the building. Departed this Vale of Tears. I am somewhat bereft.
    Big news 2. Middle daughter has secured an interesting position in London Town and will be flying out of Shannon tomorrow. Exciting time for her. New job, new accommodation and hopefully soon, new friends. Also a reason for me to travel to London again – it’s been a while.

  11. Read:

    Not much, and all Swedish… First an ambitious biography of a Swedish actor of legendary status, then a less ambitious biography of a Swedish film director of the silent era (not perhaps less ambitious, but this man left so few traces of his life behind that I’m impressed it became a book at all). Then a short book of essays on “the biological nature of humans” as seen through the ages. All of these books were interesting but not quite scratching their respective itches.
    I also started the book I’m currently reading, a book about how we’ve viewed love through history, by another Swede…so nothing I can recommend to the English speaking citizens of The Afterword.
    It’s OK, but the author has written much better books before so still disappointing.

    But I just received a sweet haul of anticipated reads, so next month should be a lot better!

    Heard:

    Next month will be more interesting here as well, I’ve just received a stack of new albums (and reissues) and have more on order, but I didn’t buy a whole lot of albums in August.

    The latest album by (Swedish pop artist) Laleh is mildly disappointing, although I didn’t have high expectations to begin with. I was never a huge fan, but her first albums had a spark and originality that has turned into dullness and predictability at this point. Hopefully it’s just a temporary dip.

    I ordered the reissued albums by Mickey Newbury and the first one arrived in August; Looks Like Rain. I bought them because I only have a few tracks by him on an old iPod, and some of his lyrics can really stop me in my tracks – the flip side is that I don’t really enjoy the sentimentality that he displays just as often. So I’m coming to these albums one part sceptical, one part hopeful to find more music to love. So far, the sceptic is winning, but there is some gold in them hills…if buried mostly underneath a saccharine production.

    Then I got the latest by Ezra Furman – Goodbye Small Head, which I’ve really enjoyed on the first (two) listens, but haven’t had time to get into properly yet. My first impression is that it’s a really good album with strong narratives and their trademark melodic but aggressive and energetic rock. It loses some of the energy and tempo for a few tracks towards the end, but then ends strong.

    I also bought Galactic & Irma Thomas – Audience With The Queen, a New Orleans collaboration between the band of great musicians and the still powerful voice of Irma. Funk, blues and gospel inspire the soulful all-new tracks, it’s retro but contemporary and ultimately timeless. Uplifting and joyous!

    And I finally got a compilation I’ve needed for a while…Average White Band – The Essential Selection, full of brilliant funky tracks.

    AOB:

    I’ve started work again at 50% – third time’s the charm…hopefully!
    I’m feeling good about it this time, as the inflammation finally seems to have cleared up completely, and the other problems with my knee are stuff I can live with, and work despite. I’m just worried if the inflammation could come back, but during the past two weeks of work I’ve been doing fine (granted, the first week I was taking anti-inflammatory drugs, so that doesn’t count).
    Getting back to full time work feels daunting, but I have two more weeks at 50% to get in shape and stabilize.

    Warm temperatures and not a lot of rain so far in the beginning of this autumn, which is lovely.
    In preparation for the colder months to come I’ve taken up another new hobby (as if I needed one more…); making miniatures. Fiddly, but fun! Apart from designing and building furniture, my favourite part so far is painting miniature art – oddly satisfying.

    Prompted by the live gig questionnaire – which I found difficult to answer because I haven’t kept a record of which artists I’ve seen, and my memory wasn’t cooperating at first – I’ve tried to put together a list of every gig I’ve been to. Some festivals etc I’ve been able to get information about online, but others are shrouded in mystery. I’ll need to go through my stuff, I know I’ve never thrown away any programs or tickets – I just need to find them, which is easier said than done.
    I find it difficult to rely on my memory in some cases; I’ll come up with another name to write down and then stop to ask myself: “did I really see them live in person, or am I remembering a recording of a live gig I’ve seen on TV or YouTube?” Lots of festival acts are very forgettable, if they’re not the reason why you went there, or a new act that manages to really surprise you.

  12. The second month of school holidays, so there hasn’t been so much time for cultural feasting, but there’s still some new things on my radar.
    Music
    The polyglot threads and a week in Paris stirred my interest in Serge Gainsbourg, but the album of the month for me has been Bole 2 Harlem, a 2006 album that had a track on the Jan 2007 Word cover CD – my first time hearing it , a group from Ethiopia based in Harlem, and I wanted to hear more. It’s great, so lively – the sort of happy songs I need to hear…

    Books
    Knowing I was off to Paris, I started reading Afropean, a 2019 travelogue by a black Brit from Sheffield, visiting African/black communities across European cities. An interesting and revealing anecdotal take on the history, legacy and present status of immigrant communities, the overall perspective I am left with so far is how sadly peripheral and marginal they remain, despites years,decades and centuries of presence.

    Podcasts
    Alongside my regulat podcasts, I discovered two new ones this month
    Postwar – a 20 part series on the ‘Politically’ podcast by historian David Runciman – each episode taking a different slant on the 1945 election that saw Atlee beat Churchill. Fascinating 15 minute slices of intrigue and revelation, quite poignant in the current context of a weak Labour government.
    A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs – prompted by Clive’s post towards the end of August, I have now listened to the first 20 episodes – up to Bill Hailey, Rock Around the Clock. Binge listening tends to give a sense of the overall apporach of a creator, and I have come to like his no-nonsense straightforward delivery. It isn’t jokey or comedic, but that adds to the genuine sense of sincerity in his approach and the clarity with which he painstakingly reveals the injustices meted out in a racially segregated and gendered society, the implications of which are still with us today.

  13. Read: Finished a re-read of V by Pynchon which started before we went to Malta in May and finished this month. Currently read a History of the Bible (for light relief) before starting Nick Harkaway’s Sleeper Beach – the second Titanium Noir book. Which is a pretty Ronseal description – Crime/SF cross over. Excellent.

    Listened: the 2nd and 3rd audiobooks in William Gibson’s Spawl trilogy. First time in decades I’ve not just done Neuromancer.

    Music: no gigs. The pain in the backside which is Apple Music has lead to me spending ages re-sorting my music, and spurred me to finally digitise a whole bunch of CDs. So a bit nostalgia tripply. But vaguely new, really enjoying Warrington Runcorn New Town Development Plan (I admit it was the name that sucked me in), Professor Elemental made me laugh with his Fighting Trousers, first listens to the David Byrne and St Etienne mark them down as very enjoyable. i’m beginning to worry about being shown up (as usual) in the end of year polls….

    Podcasts: not usually much of my thing but Derailed about HS2 got me increadibly frustrated, and At your own Peril made me think (Both BBC Sounds).

  14. TV
    The Thursday Murder Club.
    Hmm, it’s the cult of celebrity really. I mean, if this hadn’t been written by a ‘sleb’ would it have got anywhere near a TV screen, or even have been published in the first place?

    Only Murders in the Building.
    Enjoyable enough at the time, but I’ve almost entirely forgotten everything about it!

    The Bear.
    Seen the first three episodes of Series 3, and, yep, I still rather like this.

    Cinema
    In the Mood for Love.
    Never heard of it before. From 2000, this had a reissue at the flicks and there’s no doubt it was sumptuous. Not sure it was quite as good as its reputation implied.

    Singin’ in the Rain.
    Pitched up again on the big screen. Well, you have to go, don’t you? Still as wonderful as it always was, and they even laid on rain for us back to the bus station.

    The Ballad of Wallis Island.
    I decided to see this again after all the Fromage of the last few weeks and I have to say that, as much I enjoyed it two months ago, I thought it even better this time. An absolute classic.

    Music
    “We have a record shop, we have a record shop, you ain’t, you ain’t!” Oh yeah, been going to lots of football and, as can be seen from the above, have bought some music. No way!

    1. The Davy Graham box set on Cherry Red. I love these albums. They are throwaway and genius at the same time, the great man seeing nothing in following up some exotic concoction with a cover of a Beatles song (always written by Paul!!!). If he’d just done the former all on one LP, it would be heralded a gem. Of course, the contrarian didn’t, and they are all the better for it. Eight CDs for £42, that’s £5..25 each.

    2. Harlem River Drive.
    Never heard of it. Checked it wasn’t from something daft like 1978 or 1984, it’s from 1971, and took an £8 punt. Think: ‘What’s Going On’ merged with the Puerto Rican bit in ‘Summer of Soul’. The FBI and the CIA wanted it banned because it preached love and understand or something. Absolutely, completely, utterly brilliant and has quickly nestled between Marva Whitney (1) and ‘Rubber Soul’ (3) in my favourite albums.

  15. Read
    Year of the Locust by Terry Hayes
    The very definition of a holiday read, this is a rollicking spy/adventure/sci-fi thriller that in its final stages goes utterly batshit crazy and morphs from spy thriller into a demented version of the Philadelphia experiment.

    Gabriel’s Moon by William Boyd
    Low key adventures of an anti-Bond set in post- war England. Great fun and, as ever, Boyd writes like a dream.

    City of Dreams / City in Ruins by Don Winslow
    The final 2 books in the Danny Ryan trilogy, these signal the end of the road for Winslow, who has retired. Decent books, these, but they pale somewhat alongside his outstanding Cartel trilogy.

    Seen
    Fantastic Four – First Steps
    So, the good bit first. There’s a nice aesthetic. It’s set in an alternate reality 1960s New York where there are flying cars but men wear suits and ties. The big bad, Galactus, is played by Ralph Ineson. Finchy from The Office. What a journey the actor’s been on! The film skips lightly over the origin story – often the most tedious part of these sorts of films.

    But. Once again in a superhero flick, there’s no real peril or drama. Given it’s set in an alternate reality I was hoping that the good guys might get battered. But nope. There’s a moment when things look bad for them, but a deus ex machina makes everything all right.

    Wednesday
    Quite enjoyed series one. But the second series just hasn’t got going. This time around more screen time has been given to Morticia and Gomez – which has highlighted the fact that neither actor can hold a candle to either Angelica Huston or Raul Julia.

    Jaws
    1975. The image – the huge shark rising from the depths towards the swimmer is adorned on movie posters, a book cover and, crucially, merch – like t shirts and lunch boxes. And I’m desperate to go see this film. But my parents ignore me – possibly because Dad had read the book, which features lots of grim watery nastiness and a lurid extra marital affair. And so, 50 years later, I settle down to watch Jaws at the cinema for the first time. It’s nigh on perfect – with the naturalistic 70s acting from weather beaten actors, and a less -is-more attitude sadly lacking in almost all subsequent blockbusters. And it’s brutally ruthless, too The first 3 victims are: a young woman, a little boy and a dog. Such taboo breaking is unheard nowadays – certainly in a big summer movie. That we watched it 3d / 4DX only added to the general mayhem.

    Nobody 2
    Bob Odenkirk returns as the everyman assassin, this time taking the family for a vacation at a run-down theme park. Felt like the sort of set up that Joe Lansdale would create for one of his Hap & Leonard books. A rambunctious movie filled with lots of crunchy fight scenes and eye watering (but cartoonish) violence

  16. A bit of July left over at Warwick Folk Festival, with an excellent line up. I haven’t seen Thommo in years, and the buzz was all there, despite a couple of false starts and uncertainties. Chris Wood and Andy Cutting gigs are a rare pleasure to be treasured, never to disappoint. What with Melrose Quartet, Banter and a stomping return from Glorystrokes, I will confess I didn’t make space for much new to me, though Enda Kenny, over from Oz, was a pleasant surprise. The great and the good gathered together in the English Fiddle Ensemble for what was most definitely chamber folk (threads passim)!

    A couple of days later, I was in Sidmouth. Ah, let me count the ways.
    What is Sidmouth about? A town taken over by people with their own angle on whatever folk music is; some probably don’t even think of it specifically as folk – it’s just their thing. So, wherever you go, there are people carrying instruments, or dressed up to dance, or maybe storytelling. Compared to other festivals, there’s far more people actively participating and their/our own little worlds occasionally overlap in multiple Venn diagrams, that make up one glorious multifaceted technicolour starburst. Like nowhere else, everyone seems to have something to bring to the party. I recall my first Sidmouth, going to the gents on the prom (wait! wait! hear me out!) and there I was standing in whichever kilt I had chosen for the day; on one side, there’s a morrisman jingling away, with a hat covered in fruit; on the other, there’s a bloke in a full suit of armour. No-one batted an eyelid.
    There’s something like a hundred programmed events each day, so one can hardly describe the whole thing, but here’s my highlights:
    Wakefire as flagged to blog by @Vulpes-Vulpes , and very fine too. Lady Maisery plus Jimmy & Sid really put the effort in to produce something eclectic, considered and polished, and what a joy it was to hear Jimmy Aldridge singing again after so many years off the circuit. Of course, next day, The Rheingans Sisters are never going to disappoint me.
    Talisk do the Celtic raising-the-roof thing like few others at the moment, and certainly hadn’t heard that Sidmouth is supposedly full of the superannuated. I was stood with Simon Care at the time, and even he was looking at Mohsen Amani’s concertina, gawping at quite how he does some of this.
    Simon also has association with Jennifer Reid, through her collaboration with Edward II. Bloody hell! The expression ‘force of nature’ came into being, waiting for her to come along. The folk version of a three minute hero – more like two, in fact – belting ‘em out, but with an inter-song patter to match – rat-tat-tat! Brilliant, hilarious, and actually very much in favour with the Sidmouth traditionalists.
    Also, flying the flag for the younger generation, Patakas are the only support act I’ve seen earn an encore in years, carrying the torch forward for their late father, Paul Sartin, in the company of their ‘folk uncles’, Saul Rose and Benji Kirkpatrick.
    Dancing into the morning is a thing at Sidmouth, and they always get the best ceilidh bands and callers – Whapweasel and Relentless led the hedonistic rout.
    The week was bookended by two uncommonly good guitarists with distinctive voices – Kris Drever and John Smith. And of course, every day, I spent two and a half hours singing in a pub – my hearts’ delight.

    Immediately after Sidmouth, Dartmoor is a time for chilling, with a widescreen view of the moor out the tailgate of the Landrover, with long siestas before the long drive back up the M5/M6. I actually do very little that requires a wristband at Dartmoor, but I support the festival for its own sake. It is definitely a local festival for local people; you wouldn’t have got a Punch & Judy show or ferret racing at Cambridge International. The village of South Zeal is as picturesque as it gets, so it’s a lovely way to decompress after Sidmouth. Best of all, there is an absolutely bonkers singing session in The Kings Arms, where I get to trade choruses with complete strangers for hours and hours. I love it.

    Shrewsbury always cheers. As @retropath2 rightly observes, I am spending most of my time either dancing or singing in the bar, but not to exclusion. You’re on a hiding to nothing covering Joni Mitchell songs in front of a folk audience. This Flight Tonight were (adopts deliberately drawn out voice) OK, and their time passed pleasantly and quickly. They were undoubtedly good musicians, and we all know that we’re not expecting them to be as good as Joni, but they didn’t quite convince. The singer breathed in some very odd places, even in the middle of words and, like I say, I’m sure I wasn’t the only audience member thinking ‘I think you’ll find that you sang those verses of Amelia in the wrong order, and missed one out.’ The band Hejira, seen earlier in the year, are a much greater prospect. There was the familiar – Bryony Griffith & Alice Jones – and the newly discovered, in the form of the Firelight Trio, who were absolutely my find of the summer, plying the continental-dance-influenced instrumentals that I love. Not that I am hammering a point or anything, but someone commented to me ‘It was like listening to chamber music.’ Indeed.
    Rosie Butler-Hall, Director of Dance, always does us Europhiles proud, and she knows her stuff, bringing together Ross Grant and Hartwin Dhoore, as well as Emily and The Simons.
    To confound any tendency toward beard-stroking seriousness, the festival had brought back last year’s favourites from Barcelona, El Pony Pisador. It’s hedonism time again! There really is a folk moshpit at Shrewsbury, and it was writhing, but then again, so were the band on stage. It was time to leave your Child Ballad numbers at the door again for a crazed David Eagle Folk Disco DJ set, last thing on Sunday night. David, he of The Young ‘Uns, also does stand up, and is straight out of the knife draw. You want to dance to Britney soundtracked by The Treacherous Orchestra? Check. Mike Waterson accelerated to sound like Scooter? You got it. Sea shanties Gangnam style? Of course you do! Even I didn’t realise I had inhibitions to leave behind. It was a riot.

    After spending so much of the summer at festivals, I do sometimes have to remind myself that not every day can bring ecstasy and transcendence. Just shutting your eyes and enjoying something that’s quite good is entirely acceptable. Then Shrewsbury Sunday came along and lifted me sky high. Flemish Naragonia had already done a concert set the previous day. But they are a band for dancing to, and dance we did, for what felt like hours and hours, like we were in some continental festival or a town square in the Low Countries. Exhilarating. That, combined with David Eagle and a belting sing in the bar until three in the morning, crowned the weekend.

    After ten days at Sidmouth and ten days at Shrewsbury, you realise that the seasons have shifted subtly just while you’ve been there. The birds have started to sing for autumn again, and the leaves rustle for the first time, waiting to fall. I could get slightly maudlin. Thank god it’s Bromyard tomorrow.

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