The Principal hotel on Oxford Road was observing it's annual ritual of office workers in black tie and evening dress on a festive works night out when I arrived. This can be quite unnerving to walk into if you're new to Louder Than Words but, thankfully, event volunteers are on hand in the foyer, ready to steer attendees through this bewilderingly posh hotel, and up to the Directors Suite on the 2nd floor for the evenings events.
Friday night:
Gemma Cairney from Radio One was our opening speaker. She was interviewed by two teams of 3rd year Journalism students from Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) working in pairs. MMU and Louder Than Words having formed a partnership of sorts, which is helpful in terms of seeing that students get some industry experience as part of their degrees. The students were a little stiff, but that was probably due to nerves. They were certainly all very professional and clearly well prepared and, overall, they did a good job. Cairney came across as someone who's grown up in public, which might account in part for the sense I got of her being a bit of a wise old soul. It does seem as though millennials are doing their 30's well, and she is no exception to that, though her role as an agony aunt who's written a series of wellbeing related books might account for that as well. I found her to be very likeable.
Afterwards I got talking to two young women who'd been at the event. One of them had asked me to take a picture on her phone of them with Cairney, which I did quite badly unfortunately. They were sweet about it and we got talking by the lift in the corridor afterwards. They'd been to a poetry workshop and the tutor had given them tickets for the Cairney event. They were planning to attend the Slam poetry session on Sunday morning.
While waiting for Guy Pratt to come on I got speaking to Amy, one of the students who had interviewed Gemma Cairney, who was staying on to review the Pratt event. We'd both come along not really knowing much about him or what to expect, and we both ended up enjoying it. I'm not surprised that he was recommended to Louder Than Words after someone saw him performing in Edinburgh because his show (and it was very much A Show) felt a bit Edinburgh Fringe. It's quite an experimental concept in some ways in that he's telling rock'n'roll anecdotes, using guitar to demonstrate certain riffs and points, but he's doing it on his own as stand up essentially.
The show, and it's cultural references, are rooted very much in the Classic Rock oevre, which tends to attract a very particular demographic. It tends to be quite chin stroking and inclined to take itself very seriously. To have a wildly energetic, slightly manic, bass player running about doing impressions of David Coverdale and telling funny stories about Pink Floyd gigs is something of a surprise in that context. It was a marathon, high energy, two hour performance, with an impromptu interval we weren't expecting. Declaring ourselves tired afterwards, Amy and I went our separate ways for home, and bed.
Saturday:
I didn't fancy either of the 10am events on the Saturday but I had some errands to run before heading over to the Principal so stayed on the bus until Piccadilly then headed towards Market Street to finish my Christmas shopping, walking past the Piccadilly Rats in the process. They seemed to be on fine form, with a healthy crowd watching, and very much in rockabilly mode. I couldn't see how the Bez dancers were taking to that as I couldn't see them amidst the crowd watching.
I had two books to return to Central Library in St Peter's Square after that and decided to check out the Manchester music photo exhibition next to the music library while I was there. It is well worth a visit. I liked the punk and post punk images, though I had seen some of the Joy Division ones before, but the bit I liked the best was the montage of Manchester 2018 artists, a series of snapshots that really showcased the diversity of the current scene here. The closing images in the exhibition are two massive enlarged photos from 2017. The first is the One Love concert at Old Trafford in May 2017 and the final one is of the We Love Manchester concert at the re-opening of Manchester Arena in September 2017. Very powerful.
My MMU student pal, Amy, from Friday night was there covering it and MMU's journalism department in general were well represented in the audience. It was a wide ranging discussion that took in many facets, including the craft of music journalism versus the perception of music journalism within journalism itself, how music journalism isn't taken seriously, the oppositional working environment of musician's vs journalists, the decline of rigorous, critical journalism*, whether music journalism can be taught at degree level, the blurring of the lines between PR and journalism... Some of these issues are industry wide in terms of journalism, some are specific to the music industry, but they're all important. Initially the discussion felt quite nervy, like everyone was holding their guard a bit, then people relaxed and it became a lot franker and the conversations flowed naturally.
A comment I found very interesting was the assertion that you can't be a music journalist unless you're out there at gigs several nights a week. It made me ask myself a question I've been pondering for a while now: Is what I'm doing music journalism? Increasingly I find myself writing about the stuff that goes on around the music as much as, or sometimes more than, the music itself. I do ingest a lot of new music, but my gig going declined sharply with the rise of the smartphone (and associated dickish behaviour at gigs) and is only really starting to recover in the past year or so. As such, I can go for weeks, or even months in a dry period of inspiration, without going to a single gig.
Even when I was a gig going fanzine writer in the 1990's I tended to prefer no more than two gigs a week and I think that's because I like to pick and savour my gigs, which possibly isn't that helpful an approach as a music journalist, even if it has some logic as a fan. Maybe it's because my access to gigs was slightly delayed and very hard won and, as such, I still tend to view a gig as an event. There is also the financial aspect, it has to be admitted.
My second event of the day was the Madonna: Like A Gay Icon panel discussion next door with Lucy O'Brien (Madonna: Like An Icon), Matt Cain (The Madonna of Bolton) and Darryl W. Bullock (David Bowie Made Me Gay: 100 years of LGBT music). It felt very unusual to be attending a panel discussion that had, at it's heart, an unashamedly pop icon as opposed to an icon of rock or electronic music, let alone a panel discussing LGBT artists and allies.
I really liked this panel, not only because all three panellists were very well informed, likeable and funny, but also because while they may have started with Madonna, they didn't talk entirely about her. Darryl W. Bullock's book seems to be building on John Gill's Queer Noises book of many years ago, and I was interested to hear how far back he'd been able to trace the LGBT trail of influence and representation in music. I also loved Matt Cain's anecdote about the customary opening conversation gambit at Attitude magazine when meeting new starters: 'Which Diva are you?' There was a Mariah camp, a Britney camp... This related to a discussion about gay men and diva's and the long term symbiotic relationship of.
I was flagging a bit after this so I went to 8th Day for a very late dinner and returned to the Principal with a vegan brownie in a box and a bottle of rose lemonade, feeling much, much better. It did mean that I ended up missing Jeanette Lee and Geoff Travis in conversation, but at least I got to people watch some of the attendees of the annual Doki Doki Fest (also in it's sixth year) as they made their way, in full lolita fashion and cosplay attire, to and from Sugden Sports Hall.
My next event was the excellent Jordan and Cathi Unsworth in conversation with John Robb upstairs in the Directors Suite. I was late to arrive to this event and, as such, got a crap view which I tried not to let spoil my enjoyment. Jordan and Cathi Unsworth are two very intelligent, independent, likeable women, each with their own unique look and personality. Jordan's memoir, which she wrote with Unsworth, is due out in April 2019, and it sounds like it's going to be really, really good. Jordan has only recently re-engaged with punk, but she has a lot to say, and not just about punk. Both of them talked a lot about the pre-punk world and I liked the idea of overlapping worlds and scenes. It sounds as though the book will be quite analytical, but in a good way.
I could have gone to see the Arena: Punk And The Pistols film afterwards, which featured Jordan in it's cast, but I didn't in the end because I had it on video for years and have watched it so often that there's bits I can quote verbatim, even now. I also really, really dislike the ending, for reasons too long to discuss here. Instead I went to the annual club culture's panel: Do Ravers Dream of Electric Beats?
Although this panel discussion took me way outside my musical comfort zone, I really enjoyed it. The idea this year was to take a snapshot/health check of where the UK dance scene is in 2018, 30 years on from the UK's 'Second summer of love'. As the panellists were discussing where they had been in 1988, and what they were doing at the time, I had a flashback to 1990 and my 4th year juniors leaving do at primary school. Said do being an acid house homage done as badly as only well meaning teachers and eleven year old kids can do. We only had one acid house record anyway and, after we'd played it, it was back to Kylie and the 'Lambada'. Needless to say, the panel had far more interesting memories to import.
One of the panellists was Dr Beate Peter, an academic from Germany who now lives in Manchester, and it was really interesting to hear her talk about the cultural differences between Berlin techno and Manchester techno. There was also a guy who'd been DJing in Manchester in the 80s who talked of the three tiers of exposure that had once existed for DJ's whereas now you're either massive or minuscule, no in-between.
I didn't understand everything, but I broadened my understanding a bit.
Sunday:
I ended up going to bed very late on Saturday night/Sunday morning and, as such, was glad of a lie in. Clearly a veggie fried breakfast and a shower were called for.
As such, I only just made it to the Principal in time for Stuart Cosgrove, who was talking about the third of his soul trilogy, Harlem 69: The Future of Soul, with Daryl Easlea. Easlea proved to be an adept interviewer who had a good rapport with Cosgrove, and being the master storyteller that he is, Cosgrove was on great form. He mentioned the significant club heritage on Manchester's Whitworth Street, and ventured to suggest that the whole history of club culture is on that street (Twisted Wheel, The Ritz, Hacienda...) and that a book could be written about it. His knowledge of soul is absolutely forensic, but it's his passion for his subject and his storytelling capacity and interest in characters that's able to sweep an audience along, and hold them.
I went to part of Sheila Rock's conversation with Rudi Esch but left part way through because I wasn't feeling great and wasn't sure about the event itself. Not long after that I decided a sandwich and fresh air were both required.
As such, my final event of the weekend was punk fanzine editor Tony Drayton (Tony D of Ripped and Torn), who was being interviewed by John Robb. Tony D provided an introduction to a book of punk essays I contributed to earlier this year, so I felt inclined to go out of a sense of loyalty, but I also wanted to go because it was a fanzine related event and there haven't been so many of them at Louder Than Words this year. I enjoyed Tony D as much as I'd enjoyed Stuart Cosgrove earlier, albeit for very different reasons. Drayton is a good interviewee, candid and slightly self effacing, and he has really good stories, not just about punk but about the stuff going on around punk, such as squat culture in London.
When I did my British Library punk fanzine research a few years ago now, Ripped and Torn wasn't one of the fanzines that I felt a lot of affection for, but I would say that it served as a good document of the times. I think I like him (as a person) more now than I would have done at the time. It was certainly an absorbing conversation, giving a take on punk that felt fresh. Because John Robb is from a fanzine background as well, he knew to ask about production and distribution/sales, which I liked.
There was a real end of the event feel to things when I emerged from the room. Not as many people were about and there was a definite sense of post event fatigue and tidying going on. I headed back to Piccadilly and caught the bus home.
* - I am guilty of this: Because I don't get paid for most of my work I am considerably un-inclined to waste precious time on the chore of reviewing and writing about artists I don't like, especially when there is so much good stuff out there that I don't have time to write about.
Thanks Cazz, great reporting of the event and I'm glad you liked my spot.
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