I am Power!

Listen to this week’s playlist on Spotify

I had a look at a venue the other day; an old school gym,latterly a car wash that’s been sitting empty for years.  Essentially derelict, but there’s a lot of potential; sprung floors, plenty of space, and most importantly, going for buttons.

There is one major downside to it, which is the close proximity to Cessnock underground.  Because the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that Cessnock underground is actually the Hellmouth.

Let’s look at this for a moment.  It isn’t a place: there is nowhere called Cessnock.  It’s just a station.  For a place that doesn’t exist.  You can’t get to it by car.  There seem to be no roads that lead directly to it.  There are no working cash machines within the radius of a mile or so – clearly due to some kind of demonic interference. 

It also doesn’t look like any other subway station; no bright orange livery or bathroom tiled exterior.  Almost as if it came from somewhere else.  And it always seems to take that bit longer between stops to get there.  All those fleeting shadows and tunnels careening off into the distance.

What there is though is an unusually high concentration of religious institutions.  Churches of all denominations, a mosque, a Sikh temple, and more than a few Masonic Halls and Orange Lodges.   I’m sure if you draw a line connecting them all you’d get a pyramid, or a pentagram, or a line drawing of Jeremy Spake’s fucking face. 

If all this wasn’t enough to convince the unsuspecting traveller, then it can be compounded by the sheer mentalness of the place.  That handful of streets has one of the highest concentrations of pure mainline lunacy available without a private education.  It’s one of the few places left where you’ll see nine year old girls in school uniform buying a half bottle ‘for their stepdad’ or Kappa-clad warriors openly comparing weapons.  Grown men leading a stereo by the flex like a dog.   The hardware store seems to have been fashioned from the same material as the TARDIS and there’s a shop called Mister Sandwich that doesn’t sell sandwiches. 

The other day I was passing on the bus when a tiny African woman in traditional costume got on.  Settled herself near the front without too much fuss, until the next stop where she leapt out of her seat and pointed an accusatory finger at the people getting on.

“I AM POWER!  WHERE IS YOUR CAR?!”

And back down again as if nothing had happened.

This happened at every single stop, until she got off at Tradeston yelling at the driver to remember to buy his teeth.  She seemed  happy, right enough.  I suppose it must be  good,being Power and all.

I’m definitely going to go back and look at that gym again; it’s a great space and an absolute steal.  But if I see Anthony Head lurking about I’ll be out of  there like a shot.

Depending on Circular Motion

Listen to this week’s Spotify Playlist.

The Glasgow North by-election is on the horizon; wherein various political schills and the blind guy off of Big Brother pretend to give a tuppeny fuck about an area that has been largely ground into the dirt by the well-shod heels of a couple of centuries worth of capitalist oppression.

An inevitable side effect of the nation’s television cameras being pointed at the denizens of Shettleston and Springburn is that journalists convinced of the truth of Glaswegian stereotypes will doubtless drag the toothless and insane in front of their microphones in the hope of an amusing soundbite.  Now admittedly this particular corner of the city won’t be winning any Unesco grants anytime soon; its only claims to culture being Red Road – Andrea Arnold’s rape, revenge and CCTV laugh-riot – and sundry snatches of James Kelman, but to paint the whole place as a whirling vortex of pissed-lift high-rises and heroin dealers claiming disability is unfair.  New York in the late seventies and early eighties was probably one of the most derelict and dangerous cities at the time, yet it’s where Woody Allen produced his gentlest works – Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters.  Glasgow has those stories too, not just the smack’n’stab of popular mythology, although it jangles to The Pastels and Teenage Fanclub rather than grooving to Gershwin.

 

It’s not an obviously pretty place – not iconic like Edinburgh or quaint like Inverness but there’s a beauty here.  It’s in the faded grandeur, the merchant’s halls reclaimed as galleries and nightclubs, the metropolis broken by the bright scar of the motorway, Caryatids and Telamon over chip shops and taxi ranks.  Mostly though, it’s at night.

By the way: for what it’s worth, my money’s on Smeaton…

Pffffffffft.

Today was not a good day.

Yesterday’s creative optimism brought crashing back to reality.  A combination of professional disapointment, exitstential malaise and living in the only city where ‘glass’ is a verb.   I can’t even be bothered going into it to be honest, except to say that I’m now even more determined to make this Zodiak thing work.  Fuck having bosses.

Sometimes the only thing that can cheer you up is some good old nostalgic gansta rap:

And this handy flow chart.

Don’t worry, I’ll snap out of it; Kurt Vonnegut, a glass of Rioja and a haircut should do it.  That and a phone call to the letting agent for that place I was on about yesterday.  I saw another venue today actually; an old gym out in Ibrox.  Almost totally derelict, but it put me in mind of the fire station from Ghostbusters.  Lots of potential, and a nice wee nostalgic quality.  It would be a whole lot of work, obviously, but all it would take would be a decent montage…

See, I feel better already.

Oh, here’s this week’s mix.  Enjoy! 

A New Zodiak.

Listen to my Kosmisches Musik playlist on Spotify

I’ve had something of an epiphany.

So, after a very lovely dinner on Sunday – a crisp, peachy Gruner Veltliner from Laurenz V, and entirely forgettable Macon-Villages and a lovely fresh raisin scented Manzanilla, since you asked – I settled down with the laptop on, well, my lap to watch Krautrock: The Rebirth of Germany.

Whilst it wasn’t without it’s faults – an overreliance on the ‘greatest hits’ of the genre; Can, Neu!, Faust, nary a mention of Guru Guru or Agitation Free, a tendency to lapse into ‘look at the funny Germans’ and an attempt to legitamise the whole thing to Q Magazine readers by concluding with Bowie and Eno rather than Einsturtzende Neubauten and Detroit Techno – it was still a pretty inspiring piece of television.  It’s always good to see Kosmiche Musik taken seriously; it always seems to be treated as a bit of a niche market, which I find a little incongrous considering the iconic status of Kraftwerk and Can.  Last time I saw Holger Czukay was in an audience of a couple of thousand people at the Tramway. 

There were even actual girls there.  Dancing and a’thing.

Incidentally, if you’ve had your curiousity piqued by this, you could do worse than read Julian Cope’s excellent Krautrocksampler, or Ed Pinsett’s very thorough if slightly obsessive Krautrock Kompendium (Free to download here).

But I digress. 

So, somewhat predictably a couple of glasses of wine and an hour of teutonic drone take their toll and I spend the rest of the evening banging arythmically on various household appliances and wondering if Faust are looking for any new members.  It’s not until the next morning that the logical side of the brain kicks in to do something constructive with all of this.

See, inasmuch as any kind of ’scene’ existed in this wave of late sixties German experimentation, it seemed to be centered on Zodak Institut, a West Berlin cafe where Rodelius, Cluster and various other luminaries would meet and expiriment infront of an audience of polo-necked beatnik types.  It occurred to me, in the shower as these things often do, that most revolutionary movements in art have had a similar epicentre.  That there isn’t really one at the moment.  That all it would really take to create one would be someone with some premises, a basic knowledge of the running of hospitality business, a welcoming attitude to experimental nonsense and a willingness to turn a blind eye to the stricter elements of Glasgow’s somewhat draconian licensing law.

Hold on.  That sounds like someone I know…

The more I think about it – and I have been for a couple of days now – the better an idea this seems.  It wouldn’t need to be anywhere glamorous – in fact a little bit of deprivation seems to stand these kind of places in good stead; think of the Factory at The Russel Club or CBGB’S.   There’s a lot of premises lying derelict at the moment, all advertising substantial incentives to fill them.  A couple of units in Tradeston that I pass on a daily basis have been sitting empty for almost a year; I’m fairly sure there would be Arts Council or Lottery money about to fill them in the name of urban regeneration. 

So, that’s that bit taken care of.

What we need is people to fill it  – artists, musicians, people who’ll DJ with sandpaper and jelly, standups and performance poets and anyone with something to say who needs a venue in which to say it. 

Which is where you lot come in.  I reckon we can throw together a couple of nights in the 13th Note or Mono, see what kind of response that gets and take it from there.  Anyone interested?

A Blog About Not Blogging: or, Anything Ste Can Do…

Anyone who spends as much time online as I do (that’s enough for it to be considered a Thing You Do, without it being What You Do), will be familiar with the amount of blogs beginning; “Well, I’ve not updated this in a while, but I’ve been super busy.”

I have no such excuse.  I’ve not been saving the world, or tragically confined to a treehouse.  I’m not conducting a journalistic foray into life without the internet.  I just didn’t.  For a while.  And a while longer.  And then the little blue ‘W’ in the favorites bar becomes a niggle, and a probing guilt, and a reminder of enterprises half-baked and unfulfilled until like homework not done or a looming deadline it all becomes too much and you scream, ‘No more! I give up!’

So I didn’t blog. 

I didn’t blog about personal things; about fatherhood, because I don’t want to end up on STFU Parents, and I figured that it would only really be of interest to two other people and one of them can’t use Firefox.  Incidentally, I’ve come up with some easy to use set responses to the well-intentioned but disinterested ‘how is she’ questioner:

For male friends: “Great, thanks.  Have you heard the new Fall album?”

Female friends, childless: “Great ,thanks. (wistful smile). She [insert cute happening].”

Female friends, with child: “Great, thanks. She [insert developmental stage].”

Enough to feel like an adequate response without overwhelming the conversation.  I didn’t  blog about getting engaged either, though I did.  Or about becoming an Uncle, in some ways stranger than having your own.

I haven’t written about work, largely because after what shall hereafter be known as The Sarah Harding Incident, I had to sign a confidentiality clause.  Which means I can’t tell you about ‘accidentally’ tripping up Papparazo, or who phoned their own press leaks, or about Echo and The Bunnymen’s entourage, or why Duncan James is funny and Evan Dando isn’t, or why JLS definitely aren’t gay and someone else definitely is.  I can’t tell you who did what to Stevie Nicks AND Lily Allen, or which supposedly reformed alcoholic drank three bottles of Grand Cru Chablis and I certainly can’t tell you about The Sarah Harding Incident or I’ll get sued in the face. 

Which is a bit of a shame really.

I, ridiculously, haven’t written about wine; my current obsession with all things Austrian, Riesling and Pittnauers and Gruner Veltliner and crisp herby weissbeers.   Or about the ten-year old Lirac Rouge found forgotten at the back of the cellar, the most gloriously, decadently French thing I’ve put in my mouth; all earth and straw and animal like a face full of farmyard.  I didn’t write about the crazy Spanish whites; almost-fashionable Albarino, Macabeo that smells exactly like Frazzles.  (It really does.)  I’ll write about the two weeks in Plumpton and the little bit of land on a Champanoise chalk fault when I can feel it in my grasp.

I was going to write about procrastination, but I kept putting it off.

I didn’t write anything about music; my own hideously unlistenable RPM album which we shall never speak of again.  Too many ideas, too many instruments, not enough time.  Next year, simplify.  And make sure the software works first.  I did, elsewhere, write about building my Cigar Box Guitar, but I’ll almost certainly revisit that one.  The next one is going to be electric…

I’ve written elsewhere, too, about the ongoing unsuccessful attempts to form a skiffle band and the cesspool of desperation that is gumtree music.

I didn’t write about anyone else’s music either; Terry Riley or Alvin Lucier or the mysterious absence of LaMonte Young, Dubstep and Reggaeton and Old-School Nose-Bleed Techno.  I didn’t write about The Phantom Band or The Ex-Wives or Divorce or Miley Cyrus.  I didn’t write about the soul-achingly gorgeous three a.m. noises of  Mitten [State] Transmissions, although I will do later and at length.

I figured no one would be interested in my new-found love of the semi-colon.

Completely ignored were my other cockamamie schemes; The Imaginary Bands Project, Polished Turds, or the Ur-Playlist.  I haven’t mentioned the similarly neglected Omnomnomnom, or 3ph, or the all new and exciting romanticorcreepydotcom, coming soon to a browser near you.

We will never speak of the complete loss of perspective, or the behaving like a character in a Tom Waits song, mostly because of illegality, immorality and indecency, although I’m sure a suitably fictionalised version will emerge.  Therein lie some really great and truly untellable stories.  Save them for the memoir.

We’ll also avoid sensibility; soft-drinks and savings, parsimony and pension schemes, but only because it’s really fucking dull.

I haven’t written about writing, because I haven’t.  Written, that is.  So I haven’t written about the Reg MacKay and the Glaswegian Wire, or about magical realism in Maryhill or my plans to film a West-Coast Woody Allen film on phone cameras.  I really should have discussed my loss of faith in theatre here, rather than in the manner I chose to; a protracted, acrimonious and overwhelmingly drunken argument with the director of the play that provoked it.

So, enough navel gazing.  We shall update, yes we shall.   I’ve decided a few things today, mainly inspired by the Shane Meadows ’something is better than nothing’ school of thought.  We will update, weekly at least.  I’m going to start making a weekly mixtape on Spotify, which I’ll link to here and on twitter: here’s the first one.

And if I don’t, dear reader?  Cajole.  Bully.  Nag.  I won’t fail you again. Although I’ve really been super busy…

Dark Night of The Soul

Danger Mouse, Mark Linkous and David Lynch?  Ooooo.

The Horrors | Primary Colours

As promised, here’s a preview of the new album:

Ramadanman/Untold

Really rather good.

Maybe even better.

Download a mottled mix by Untold here.

The Horrors.

They’re an easy band to dislike, The Horrors.  Where do you start – the NME imposed scenester status, the twat-by-association friendships, the ‘controversial’ video and ‘dangerous’ live shows?  Or just the fact that they’re so terribly posh.

But here’s the thing.  While all of that is true, they have one overwhelming redeeming feature.  They’re really, really good.

Forced into a tiny tent by the wrath of God at Glastonbury a couple of years ago I ended up seeing them by accident.  I went from ‘Oh Christ, it’s this lot’ to dancing like a loon in the space of two and a half songs, and have been drawing the contempt of record shop staff ever since.  (Seriously, a guy in Fopp tutted at me for buying Strange House.)

New single Sea Within A Sea is eight minutes of Neu! influenced synth drone to alight the dance floor of your local hipster disco, and is free to download from their official site.  The album is out on the fourth of May and will be stealable from the usual sources anytime now.  They’re touring now.  Go see, make your own mind up.

They’ve still got stupid hair, mind.

Maskinen

Sorry it’s been a while, dear readers.  Busy month.  In order to make up for my prolonged absence, I’ve got a new find to share with you.   Maskinen – a Swedish band who describe themselves as Techno/Hip-Hop/Showtunes. 

They’re currently in Sao Paolo recording their debut, with some high profile collaborations promised.  More as I know it. 

Official website (in Swedish).