Brooding music for brooding times

Ben Chatwin is a Scottish composer, based in Edinburgh, whose album Heat & Entropy, has just been released on Ba Da Bing records.

A mixture of organic, acoustic composition and electronica, it has a distinctly filmic quality to it, and a brooding undertone of menace at certain points.

Taster track 'Euclidean Plane' is a lighter listen, and none the worse for that, gliding along with a delicacy that belies its intricacies.

I freely confess to ignorance so far as composition processes and techniques are achieved, but I am enjoying listening to this album, and to trying to understand it's mysteries.

The album is currently streaming on Soundcloud if you would like a listen.

Poignancy

On Friday 8th July, Nils Frahm and Woodkid released the score to French artist JR's film Ellis. A hymn to Ellis Island and its role in the story of migration to the US throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the film tales the story through the eyes of one migrant, voiced by Robert De Niro.

The soundtrack itself is a haunting melange of delicate piano, strings and harmonium that combine into something that is both sad and beautiful.

In creating the work, Frahm and Woodkid were haunted and preoccupied not just by Ellis Island and it's history, but by current events in Europe. 

As Nils Frahm says in the press release to promote the release of this mini album:

The opportunity to work on JR´s fantastic short film ELLIS came through my good friend Yoann aka Woodkid. We agreed on recording the piano parts in my studio in Berlin and so it happened that JR and Woodkid were guests at Durton studio on a wonderful late summers day in 2015. We managed to record all the crucial elements that day. The music fell into our laps and melted with the images: a wonderful experience. The film has stuck in my head ever since; it moved my heart and changed my soul. A couple of weeks later I had to cancel a trip to Brussels because of a terror warning; all events got cancelled and I stayed home, having an unexpected day off. I felt rather depressed that day, thinking that the Europe I knew was already gone. I sat down at the harmonium, listened to Robert De Niro’s voice and played for the rest of the day. The result is ‘Winter Morning II,’ the B-side of the ELLIS soundtrack release. Robert says it all in 17 minutes. We are not facing a refugee crisis. We are facing a crisis because we do not embrace, we do not sympathise and we cannot give up fear. Art can encourage so I hope this project will help fight the fear in all of us.

You can listen to the soundtrack on Soundcloud, and I highly recommend you do. 

Not only does this feel like a very timely, oddly contemporary, release, I have also found it to be an oddly cathartic listen, post Brexit. 

All proceeds go to the Sea Watch Initiative, a non profit charity dedicated to the protection and rescue of civilian refugees

Psychic Pop Moment

A funny thing happened in the staffroom...

Towards the tail end of a music based conversation, one of my friends turned to me and asked 'Do you watch Graham Norton?'

'No' I said, thinking this was going to be a conversation about TV, 'I don't have a telly, but I've seen it before, I get the gist of it'

'There's this French band that was on it...'

'Christine and The Queens?'

'And this song...'

'Tilted?'

'Yes! How did you know that?!!'

But I knew because I'd been dancing around the kitchen to it on Spotify last night while doing the washing up...

I've now YouTubed the clip from Graham Norton and, you are right Bethany, it is so good... And it's nice to see dance coming back into pop performance in a cool, imaginative way. Recently with Florence at Hyde Park, now with Christine And The Queens.

Other great French bands are available, of course, and I myself have been enjoying Owlle's album France this past year or two. That's definitely worth a listen. I shall most definitely be checking out the Christine and the Queens album very, very soon....

These girls lives

Tomboy, Madeline second from left, looking mean...

This post needs to start with an apology...

I received a lovely email from Madeline Burrows of top US punk pop band Tomboy back in mid June, alerting me to an unusual, intriguing, and exciting commission of theirs: Creating the soundtrack to the US premier of Amelia Bullmore's critically acclaimed play Di and Viv and Rose.

But... the UK had been completely taken over by EU Referendum madness * and, as such, the email stayed in my inbox, un-followed up until I had time to breathe again... By which time, the run of the play had finished.

The good news is, you can still hear the soundtrack, and the play has traditionally been very well received, so it will be on somewhere, sometime at a theatre near you.

Di and Viv and Rose begins it's tale with three very different girls sharing a student house in the UK in the mid 1980s, and follows them through the ensuing years and decades, observing their changing lives and careers, and their developing characters, not to mention their evolving relationships with each other.

The band have provided exuberant, joyful, intelligent, sympathetic, and very listenable musical interludes that perfectly capture the spirit of youthful energy and poignancy of the play.

While the play's run has now finished, you can still hear the soundtrack over on Le Sigh (alongside a really good thoughtful piece about soundtracks) and Bandcamp.

Badly Drawn Boy famously got to soundtrack the film adaptation of Nick Hornby's About A Boy, it seems apt that Tomboy should have created such a wonderfully evocative score for a play so firmly About The Girls.

* - I have blogged about the EU Referendum, Brexit and related stuff over on Too Late For Cake, but the past three episodes of Dead Ringers and the past two issues of Private Eye nailed it much, much better (obviously...). Thus proving that satire isn't dead, it's just having to run like hell to keep up with reality...

Sumer is icumen in

British Summertime Festival, Hyde Park, Saturday 2nd July 2016


Disclaimer: The time listed on each of these photos is an hour behind when it was taken. Blame the clocks going forward for summer...

I headed out at just after 10am from my hotel in Victoria to walk to Hyde Park for my first ever festival.

Please don't get the wrong impression: It's not that I'm squeamish about being outdoors, getting muddy and sunburned, it's purely that I spent my formative years of gig going pogoing to Bis and Kenickie and dancing around my handbag to the Yummy Fur. I come from an all dayers tradition of gig going, and without exception, all of the bands I've ever liked enough to see live have either split up before they got to the festival headlining level of success, or else continued but didn't achieve that level of fame. Hence, no festivals.

That is one thing with being a Florence + The Machine fan: They have taken me out of my comfort zone, gigs wise. When I saw them at Manchester Arena last year on the British leg of the How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful tour, it was my first arena show. The biggest gig I'd been to prior to that had been Siouxsie and the Banshees at Manchester Academy on my 16th Birthday in 1995.

Friends find all of this very amusing when I try to explain it, and because I am such a festival novice, I sought the advice of my own festival guru and expert before attending British Summer Time: My friend Paul, who has attended just about every UK festival going I think, and has gained a wealth of experience and wisdom along the way.

Being a novice, I paid extra for a Priority Entry ticket to British Summer Time as I thought getting on site an hour before most people do would help me get used to the site. This kind of worked, up to a point, but I'm getting ahead of myself now...

I wasn't the first to get to the Priority Entry gate, there were about 15 or so other people there by the time I arrived at half 10, all looking a bit higgledy piggledy, with lots of people sitting on the grass, others standing. The area was divided into runs, for want of a better description, and you just picked a run and queued in it. I think the number of early birds took the security, and organisers, by surprise: It sounded as though that hadn't really happened on the Friday when Massive Attack had headlined. Either that or they simply hadn't encountered a large bunch of quietly earnest floral crowned and glitter faced people in one place before, that is, the Florence + The Machine Army. We were very patient, and that probably just made it all the more unnerving.

After a little while we heard a ghostly wordless lamenting wail on the breeze and sighed happily: Florence was doing her sound test. There followed three goes at 'Queen of Peace', a song I never tire of, and the crowd by the gate was growing, attracting the attention of all sorts of interested and concerned parties. When we were eventually let in, there was a funny moment when the newly released Florence fans pelted across the field, hell for leather, like gambolling lambs as security called, forlornly, after them 'Walk, don't run!'

The festival didn't open for anyone else until 1pm, so, having visited one of the remarkably sophisticated loos I meandered around the site, taking in what was where. I had worked out my schedule prior to coming down to London, using a website we won't mention, and had discovered that I wanted to see a cluster of four acts very early on, and that after that I had a bit of a yawning chasm, schedule wise, until Florence was on. Well, that's not quite fair... I did want to see some of the later bands, I just wasn't as bothered about missing them.

At 1pm I adjourned to the Great Oak Stage to watch a showing of Florence + The Machine's The Odyssey, the film made to complement and accompany the How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful album. I do like The Odyssey, but it excites a series of very complex emotions and responses in me. I've seen it in it's entirety about four times now (it is available to watch online), and I find it very hard to write about because I'm still not sure how I feel about it.

What I will say is that it is a beautifully shot film, with a central theme of self discovery and exploration. Florence Welch worked on it with Vincent Haycock, the director, and they devised a narrative based around the themes she was exploring when she wrote the How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful album, which has its roots in a central sadness of lost love and scary independence coupled with self discovery. There are a number of re-occurring motifs throughout the film: Dopplegangers, pressure, loving someone but being unable to be with them, immersion in water... It is a very powerful film, but because of its searingly personal roots and imagery, it's actually quite painful viewing in some ways.

At the same time, it also feels very truthful and luminous. The choreography makes more sense if you know that the inspiration came from paintings by Caravaggio (amongst others) and that this was then worked on and developed with interpretive dance (I'm not explaining this very well, but trust me: There is an interview with Florence and Vincent Haycock over on Facebook that explains it much better) and that this forms the language of the piece, along with the songs from the album. Once you start watching The Odyssey you're in for the long haul, and you are rewarded with a sense of catharsis at the end. I thought it would work really well on the big screen but, unfortunately, the ever changing light levels didn't go so well with the different light levels in the film, so some bits were hard to see.

Due to watching The Odyssey, I missed most of Kelsey Lu, who was doing a short set on the Barclaycard stage. I saw enough to know that I preferred her mournful, stark pieces with cello more than I did the songs with guitar, but she has a beautiful, pure, sweet and mournful voice. The songs weren't there for me yet I don't think, but that might just be me.

Blood Orange, from afar...

I watched a bit of Blood Orange from the field behind the enclosed area, then headed back to the Barclaycard Stage in search of a vegan food stall I thought I'd seen en route to Kelsey Lu, but in fact, never actually found again. I enjoyed Blood Orange, who were sort of soully with an edge, but a bit too cheerful for me at that moment as I was feeling a bit restless, and a bit hungry.

Georgia was bloody amazing though, as I knew she would be. She was on my 'Must Watch' list from the get go, and delighted in screaming at intervals during the first song, which shocked those lounging in the grass: Clearly this is not a girl you can lounge too.

It was just her on drums and vocals and her friend H, a girl whose calm smileyness belied Georgia's intensity, on keyboards and backing. They made enough noise for six people, and it's hard to describe what she sounds like musically, but she has an air of post grime about her: Very glitchy and aggressive sounding, sort of angry and slightly vulnerable at the same time.  She made reference to the pro EU march going on next door at Green Park and some anti Boris comments, both of which went down well. It seemed wholly appropriate, in the circumstances, that she finished her set with the storming 'Move Systems', making it sound harder and angrier than it does on her album. A storming set. The sound of Angry Young London.

Georgia (left) and H (right)

Poliça were on the Barclaycard stage next, and I took the opportunity to get some food before their set. They were a very cool band, there was a sense of ennui to them somehow, coupled with a polished and crisp sounding left of centre electro pop. It tipped towards industrial sometimes, probably on account of them having two drummers, but this only enhanced their sound in my view.  The singer/synth player was wearing a black hoodie with a McDonalds logo crossed through on the back and huge mirrored sunglasses. When she took the shades off, I was disconcerted by her uncanny resemblance to Gina McKee.

Jamie XX was doing good stuff on the Great Oak Stage, but I decided to watch from afar and retreated to a corner by one of the coffee shops to observe the way that entrance to the pit in front of the stage was being handled. It was so full that the security were operating a one in, one out policy, and people leaving couldn't be guaranteed to get back in. Not everyone took this well, and some people tried to get back in via the out route and were unceremoniously hauled out.

Then, part way through the set, it began to absolutely bucket down for about 10-15 minutes, before stopping as abruptly as it had begun. At this point I silently but fervently thanked Paul, over and over again, as I stood in my newly purchased waterproof cape and dubbin'd boots. Actually, the dubbin was my idea: I was fucked if I was wearing wellies.

Kendrick Lamar was up next, marking a time of recurrent queueing for me: The women's loos, the queue to which was so long that entire subcultures were good naturedly forming as we waited, then the fish and chip stall. I had in mind Paul's advice re how to ensure I got in near the front for Florence + The Machine, which was basically to get in two songs before the end of Kendrick's set and move forward as people leave. This was sound advice in theory but, alas, Paul had underestimated the tenacity and determination of the average Florence + The Machine fan.

I'd been keeping an eye on the queue for the pit for a while, and it was getting longer and longer and longer, much to the despair of security and despite the sign being held up by one of their crew, informing all and sundry that the pit was full. As such, having done two queues consecutively, I joined a third one and calmly ate my fish and chips as security tried to reason with us. I got in about two or three songs to the end of Kendrick's set, and the point at which his fans began to leave and the Florence fans began to surge into the pit represents one of the most frightening gig going moments in my life: A maddened horde of people pushing in different directions, each side getting ever more frantic because they couldn't get to where they wanted to be and were just being swept along - quite literally - on a human tide. One girl voiced her fear of falling and being trampled on to me, and I daresay she was not alone in that thought.

Eventually it subsided, and I ended up about five rows from the stage but, alas, at such an odd angle that it might as well have been 15 rows back. Well, you can't win them all... Of course, those who have seen Florence before know that she likes to venture into the crowd, hence the fevered push to get to the area in front of the centre of the stage. The pushing and negotiation of space (some people were nicer about it than others, it has to be said) continued for quite some time. Meanwhile, the security staff at the barriers were handing over cups of water to anyone who needed one, and instructing us to hand the ones we didn't want backwards to other folk in the crowd.

At about twenty to nine, the band began to slowly filter out onto the stage: Well, there is a lot of them. Florence emerged last, clad in a turquoise diaphanous dress that flowed around her in ruffles in the breeze. She had her hair hanging loose down her back and glided elegantly across the stage in a distinctly otherworldly manner, like a psychedelic dryad or fairy from a Maxfield Parrish painting.

The band began with 'What the water gave me', which only enhanced this thought. While the songs are the same songs, more or less, that the band have been playing throughout the How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful tour, there was a sense of the set having been worked on extensively and honed to within in an inch of it's life, so that it was both confident and vibrant, enhanced rather than tired.

Audience members following Florence's urging to 'Get high with us' during 'Rabbit Heart (Raise it up)'

Florence went to great pains to connect with the audience, whether by slipping over to our corner of the stage to wave and smile, by having the audience act as the bands choir during 'Shake It Out', by descending into the crowd during 'Rabbit Heart', or by delivering an eloquent plea for the audience to let off the filming and photography during 'How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful'. She explained that she'd realised while travelling just how much time she spent looking at her phone rather than her surroundings, and added that she wanted to connect with us, the audience, on that particular song because it was a song that meant a lot to her personally, that it was a song she wrote while falling in love, the kind of falling in love that transfers itself to everything around you; places, moments, everything. And she wanted to share that with us. She asked us very nicely, and we were happy to comply, for which she thanked us enthusiastically at the songs end.

Following this Florence introduced 'Various Storms & Saints' by confessing that it was a song that she had campaigned to have taken off the album last year "Because I felt it was too sad". The band hadn't performed it at all on the English leg of the tour, so this would be the first time they'd played it at home. She wanted to do it because, she said, hearing the song sung back to her gave her a sort of strength to draw on, which was a sentiment I liked a lot. It is an incredibly sad song, but it's also very atmospheric and I'd been secretly hoping that they would do it live at some point, so it's inclusion here pleased me a great deal.

The surging 'Queen of Peace' took an unexpected turn towards the end of the song when about ten dancers slowly emerged on stage and, along with Florence, who had done singing at that point, performed a staggeringly good choreography sequence to an extended version of the song.

OK, my photography skills could do with some work... I gave up taking pictures after this one because it was distracting me from the gig and that was making me unhappy. Think Florence has a point re all the phones/cameras... Leave it to the professionals. There are some nice pix in this article

Just prior to 'Spectrum' she suddenly departed for backstage and the harpist had the limelight for a minute or two until she returned, now clad in a red version of the same dress she'd had on earlier, carrying a a rainbow flag. 'Repeat after me' she said 'Love is love is love is love...' The band then launched into 'Spectrum', and the crowd went berserk. It was exhilarating, and this sense of performer and crowd as one was enhanced when Florence pre-empted 'You Got The Love' with a very heartfelt speech on the theme of love and geographical variation: She said that she knew how far some people had travelled to be at Hyde Park, and quipped "some of us came all the way from South London", and asked that we take the love were were sharing and expressing tonight back out into the world afterwards, and share it with the world. Mid song, she made a peace sign. She didn't mention the EU referendum, or xenophobia any more than she'd mentioned the Orlando shootings before 'Spectrum', but in both cases, there was an unspoken understanding: She's not an overtly political performer, and I don't think we the fans really expect her to be. She makes her own statements in her own ways.

Just as we were still taking this in, the band launched into 'Dog Days Are Over', and we went berserk again, a blissful end to a blissful set.

The band left the stage, and the audience cried 'FLORENCE, FLORENCE, FLORENCE' until they came back on again, minus Florence who, in a nod to The Odyssey, was carried back on by one of the dancers from earlier, hanging limply in his arms. She was set down and began to intone the beginning to 'What Kind Of Man', a particularly electifying performance of which then followed, during which she made another foray into the crowd. At this point, a girl somewhere behind me in the audience lost her head completely and started shoving and charging her way through the crowd. Me and another girl let her through, but she didn't make it through to the front. Her sense of hysterical frustration was palpable.

The second encore was 'Drumming Song', which always goes down well and represented a suitably charged ending to an absolute blinder of a set.

Earlier, Florence had seemed a little startled and overwhelmed by the size and passion of the crowd, which only highlighted her incredible politeness on stage when we applauded and screamed. The set ended with her taking Rob the guitarist by the hand and dragging him forward, along with the rest of the band, so that they were all in a row, getting the applause together.

Getting back out of the pen wasn't quite as bad as getting in, though it wasn't fun. I was able to leave Hyde Park the same way as I'd come in, along with everyone else it seemed as we tottered blinking out into the bright lights of Hyde Park corner.

I can honestly say that I have never attended a gig as mindblowingly brilliant as that Florence gig, and I've been to some fantastic gigs in my time. Maybe not big, famous ones, but little brilliant ones that will always be a source of dewy eyed nostalgia nonetheless. But Florence + The Machine at Hyde Park has taken it to another level entirely: This was performance as Art.

Punk Women in London: A lengthy essay in two chapters

Chapter One:

On Sunday 5th June I got up at quarter past six on what, I would guess, would have been one of the hottest days of the year thus far in order to head out to Stockport at quarter to eight to get the 8:28 train to London Euston.

Across London throughout this year there are a whole raft of events celebrating 40 Years Of Punk, a lot of which I'm not very interested in, but Sundays event was a Punk Women panel discussion at Stoke Newington Literary Festival, thus more worthwhile attending.

I did consider going down by coach and staying overnight but London hotels are so expensive that it worked out cheaper to go down by train and come back the same day.

That said, it was about £50 for the train, about £10 for a zones 1&2 travel card and another £9.80 for a return between Highbury and Seven Sisters, to account for the inconvenient fact that Seven Sisters is in in zone 3, not zone 2. I didn't realise that until I'd got on the tube at Euston then, after umming and arring, bit the bullet and paid up at Highbury. The only other way round it would have been to go from Highbury to Stoke Newington by bus, and I could have done that more easily from Euston but chose not to because it would be harder to figure out where to get off. As it was, I was ten minutes late to the event in the end, so missed most of Jude Rogers introductions of the panel, who were:

Liz Naylor

Helen McCookerybook

Gina Birch

Pauline Murray

Shanne Bradley

I didn't make any notes or record any of the event, but it was very inspiring. Here are some highlights, from memory:

• Liz Naylor introducing the town of Hyde by explaining it's dubious bad luck in having housed, at different times, Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, also Harold Shipman. Something that tickled me, but probably not anyone else.
• Pauline Murray's fantastic take down of London's 40 Years of Punk by saying she didn't want to be involved in any of it, but felt as a woman and a northerner that she should do, given the Londoncentric nature of events.
• Shanne Bradley's more concise, but equally eloquent, dismissal of 40 Years of Punk as "bollocks".
• Liz mentioning identity politics, queer issues, Patti Smith and riot grrrl alongside reference to a clip on YouTube of Pauline Murray performing with Penetration amidst a "tsunami of gob"
• Pauline saying she didn't think of herself as being A Woman In A Band at the time, explaining "I was spat at as much as anyone else"
• Helen McCookerybook, when talking about the current generation, saying that "they don't understand how hard we had to fight for the things that are now being taken away from them"
• Gina Birch's excitement at opening the door to a young person selling  newspaper called Revolution the previous week, and her excited cry to the family of "Quick, there's a revolutionary at the door!"
• Shanne's recounting of a Nips reformation gig when Shane MacGowan failed to show and Shanne's daughter sang for them in her lycra sportswear. She was fifteen at the time.
• Liz's dismissal of modern fanzines as fetishising the production methods of the past: "Use a computer!"
• Pauline pondering that 'Don't Dictate' was probably written about "me parents or something"
• Gina and Helen's frank dismissal of 1970s art schools as revolutionary training grounds, with Helen describing Brighton as "A finishing school for rich girls" complete with lairy lecturers and predatory male third years. Gina, meanwhile, acknowledged Nottingham as an interesting art school, but found Hornsey "dull".

Afterwards I was torn between making an effort to be uncharacteristically extrovert and introduce myself to people, or trying to sell some copies of Ablaze! 11 for Karren. In the end, I opted for the latter. I asked the girl at the back of the room, who was running the book stall, if she would be interested in selling them for me, she said she couldn't but that I could always use the empty table next to hers to sell them myself. So I did. I tore a page out of my notebook and fanned out the four copies of Ablaze! I'd brought with me (all eight would have been too heavy) and put my hastily scribbled explanatory note next to them.

A few people seemed interested, but either didn't have money or didn't want to spend it, so didn't buy. But I caught Helen McCookerybook's eye when she was free, and we had a nice chat, and she bought one, as did the lovely Katy Carr, who Helen introduced me to.

Outside, a gentleman connected to July's punk weekender at the Roundhouse also bought a copy, at Katy's instigation, and we had a nice chat. He was coming at punk from the point of view of having been a Jewish skinhead who liked reggae at the time. He now writes poetry, and has a sideline interest in the Vimto statue in Manchester. Which was a nice surprise. He has his picture taken with it whenever he's in Manchester. After a bit, he and his friends left for the pub, Helen left, and I walked back to Stoke Newington and got an overground train to Seven Sisters, then the Victoria line. My train wasn't until just before six, so I stayed on the train instead of getting off at Euston and switched to the Bakerloo line at Oxford Circus to go to Regent's Park, where I had my sandwiches in the sunshine.

Then I got the tube back to Oxford Circus and walked it from Oxford Circus down Tottenham Court Road and Euston Road to Euston station.

A note on trains: They are very nice looking these days, even in Standard, and you get slightly more leg room than you would on the coach, plus the air con is better (seems to work better, is less noisy) and it's a lot faster (Two and a half hours Vs Four hours forty five, minimum) but is it worth the ticket price? No. It should be a flat rate of £40, max. This is based on coaches being about £20, usually.

Chapter Two: 

I'm going to have to do Friday 10th June in stages, as it was a long day with a lot going on.

All week at work the temperature and humidity has been rising, and the rain has made very little difference: It's been thirty degrees, or higher, in large chunks of the building thanks to the air circulation conking out at least twice. Shelving conditions upstairs were unbearable so the staff doing the shelving have been heading out en masse for extra breaks. On Friday morning I watched them from our desk (which is handily located by the entrance doors, which we had left open to the outside) as they stood by the bike sheds in the rain in their jeans and vest tops. Some had brought umbrellas, but most of them hadn't and were making the most of the organic sprinkler system it represented before heading back to the sweat pits upstairs.

I finished at 2pm on Friday in order to walk to Piccadilly to get the 14:55 to Euston for the She Punks film event at the British Library. I did originally try and get Friday and Saturday off as annual leave but couldn't because we're banned from taking annual leave in the first two weeks of June this year, on account of what happened last year at that time when our entire department had a sort of collective nervous breakdown due to the unbearable and impossible workload. You can see a picture from this period if you go to one of my earlier blog posts.  Some leave did get granted, but you had to argue your case, and my line manager couldn't give me more than 3 hours on Friday because Friday was books return day, which is a sort of library armageddon day, and much needed extra staff would be coming in on Saturday to assist with the continuing fallout from it so I couldn't have that either. I don't feel bitter about this, but it did put me in the awkward position of having to inhabit two very different professional worlds in one day, in the same set of clothes, which probably didn't quite come off. Still, couldn't be helped...

It didn't feel too hot when I left work, but I felt very warm but the time I got to Piccadilly. There are so many roadworks, road closures and diversions at the moment in central Manchester and around Oxford Road that it's quicker to walk it than it is to get the bus.

Got into Euston just after 5pm and headed over to the British Library, which is about ten minutes walk away. I wandered in and had a very half hearted look at the punk exhibition, but quickly felt bored with it, having already looked it over on Sunday. So I headed next door to the 'Treasures of the British Library' exhibition, and became engrossed in original literary manuscripts and elaborate bindings. I was looking at the original of Shelley's Masque of Anarchy while still being able to hear X Ray Spex from next door: Very apt, probably.

They start clearing people out at about half five on a Friday, so I headed back out to the piazza and had a snack while waiting for the event, which was due to start at 18:30 in the conference centre. They started to clear the piazza around six ish, so I headed into the conference centre at that point, where a soiree was forming in the foyer that I felt to shy to try and penetrate.

Not long after, they let us into the auditorium, and I sat fairly near the back for optimum view of the screen. It also made a good people watching position.

There were three introductions to the She Punks film. Firstly, a gentleman from the British Library, who made some very good points about the nature of the British Library and its collections, specifically that BL have been collecting, storing and cataloguing punk right from the 1970s onwards. Hence all the fanzines, 7"'s and LP's, and why it was all in such good condition. It hadn't been borrowed, or shipped in, they'd had it all the time. And that that was the whole point of being the people's library, that you collect and reflect the people's history. I also enjoyed his comment along the lines of loud music, stroppiness etc as "Just another day at the British Library"

Next up was Zoe Howe, the chair of the Q&A, then Helen McCookerybook and Gina Birch did a more irreverent and slightly nervous seeming introduction to the film, in which they seemed a bit worried that the audience wouldn't like it. They were at great pains to stress the imperfect nature of it.

It is an unfinished piece of work, and it has a starkness to it that it wouldn't have perhaps if it had been finished, but the starkness is part of its charm. It's a quality that works really well with the content of the interviews, and the narrative structure of the film. The interviews are so powerful in themselves, and so refreshing, that it didn't really need more to be utterly absorbing. That said, I am coming at it from a point of view of someone who has been working on a women and punk project for seven years now, and who has interviewed some of the people in the film, but that didn't matter because it still felt really fresh, and very inspiring. Some of it was quite harrowing, but there were also some very funny bits, and the film overall had an energy to it that made it feel very uplifting and inspiring, but in an honest and truthful way rather than in a mawkish and contrived way.

Quite simply, it is a film that should, and must, be seen by as many people as possible. It has so much to say, about punk, about hidden histories... and much more.

Afterwards, Zoe chaired a Q&A with Gina Birch, Helen McCookerybook, Tessa Pollitt, and Jane Woodgate, which was riveting. Someone asked about what the kids thought about their careers as punk musicians, and when Gina said her daughters weren't as into it as her daughters friends, there came an indignant cry from the back of the auditorium of "THAT'S NOT TRUE!" followed by "I JUST CAN'T TELL YOU THAT I DO BECAUSE YOU'RE MY MOTHER!" Helen decided she wouldn't bring her daughters into it on the basis that they were both in the audience too. I don't remember all the Q&A, but I do remember a lengthy discussion themed around punk and feminism which took a number of twists and turns.

After the Q&A, there was a performance of 'Oh Bondage! Up Yours!', and the audience were meant to sing along, using the lyric sheets that had been left on the chairs. We weren't good or loud enough though. I think people were a bit inhibited. It was good fun though, sort of punk performance art imbued with a sort of Rocky Horror Picture Show audience participation dynamic.

Afterwards, we were gently but firmly ushered out into the adjoining room, where I started to think about how I should be introducing myself to people and that but, as usual, stood awkwardly in a corner hesitating instead. I saw Katy Carr again, and chatted to her friend Alex for a while, and Helen introduced me to a very nice pair of fanzine aficionados, who were probably in their early twenties. I tried to sell them a copy of Ablaze! 11 but they were put off by how professional it looked. We had a lovely chat though. The girl went over to talk to Jane Woodgate, and the boy and I sadly commiserated on our lack of ability to do likewise. Not long after that I left because I was feeling paranoid about missing my train home.

I got to Euston at about quarter past nine. They hadn't announced the platform for the Manchester train so I ate my cheese sandwiches while gazing fixedly at the announcements screen. There was some delay in getting the train prepared after it's previous journey in, which automatically made me think that someone must have been sick on one or more of the seats. We didn't get very long to get onto the train at all in the end, less than five minutes I reckon. And, of course, first class is always the end of the train nearest the station end of the platform, and standard is always the furthest away. Carriage B was so far away that I hopped on at E and walked through the remaining carriages in the end.

The train home was full of students, or, student aged folk. On the way down I'd been sitting across the aisle from some slightly noisy business folk, who drank wine all the way to Euston, so students on laptops and phone, or sleeping slumped across each other, was a massive improvement. Much quieter.  
That said, I had my mp3 player on both ways.

I'd decided not to get off at Stockport because the area around Stockport train station is such a building site it would be too hairy to navigate in the dark. So I got off at Piccadilly, still with my headphones in because I was just finishing off an episode of Undone (appropriately), went down the escalators to the taxi rank, walked past the taxis and a very loud couple having a proper violent row. I still had my headphones in, but I could hear them over the top of it, as well as the bloke at the bus stop, who was watching them, and quite clearly said 'Dick' (or was it 'Twat'?) in a very disgusted voice. I figured I'd see how long I had to wait for a 192 and take it from there: Thirty seconds, somewhat unusually. The bus wasn't crowded, but a group of really loud blokes, who looked vaguely Spanish but who were possibly Hungarian (it was France V Hungary in Euro 2016  that day) got on so I kept my headphones in. Someone started smoking a fag but I was too weary to react or get off the bus, so I just put up with it. It was about midnight by this point.

I got home at 00:15, rang my mum, took my makeup off, did my teeth, and went to bed. I was too excited to sleep for ages, but I eventually nodded off.

Very reluctantly got up at 7:00 again to go to work. Felt very tired and muggy headed, but somehow got through the day.

Afterword: #1

There will be second showing of the She Punks film as part of the Punk Weekender at the Roundhouse in July.  I urge you to see it if you possibly can.

Afterward: #2

Some of you may be wondering what UK cities outside of London are doing to mark 40 Years Of Punk. I haven't checked everywhere, but Manchester has an annual punk festival which happened in April, and has sod all to do with the 40 Years Of Punk thing. On 6music earlier this month, Radcliffe and Maconie, both lads whose formative years coincided with punk and who can be seen to have grown up in the loosely defined area of Greater Manchester, did a broadcast from the Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester to mark the 40th Anniversary of the legendary Pistols gig there.

Because 2106 marks the 20th anniversary of the IRA bombing of Manchester City Centre, much of the cultural output this year is focused on that. Including a very innovative series of events at Manchester Histories Festival and HOME.

Carl Stanley's Kiss & Make Up

I purchased my copy of Carl Stanley's memoir, an artful blend of comedy and tragedy telling not just Carl's story but also a substantial chunk of his mums, at last years Louder Than Words festival in Manchester. I felt a bit out of my league amidst the music journalists so I mainly lurked around the publishers as I seemed to be less tongue tied and intimidated around them.

Anyway, Steve Pottinger was there as Ignite Books, and I bought both Ross Lomas' book City Baby, his tale of life in and out of the legendary punk band GBH, and also Kiss & Make Up by the previously unknown to me Carl Stanley.

Both books were excellent, and hysterically funny at times, and there was the added advantage that, once I'd finished reading them both, I knew other people who would love to read them too.

Kiss & Make Up tells the story of Carl's growing up in Birmingham, and coming of age in the post punk 1980s. A precocious young man, with a rapidly burgeoning sexuality, Carl's tentative worshipping of Toyah leads on to him dipping his toe into the new romantic scene, before falling headlong into a world of clubbing, gay pubs, increasingly elaborate dress up, and sexual encounters. The young Carl makes mistakes, of course, and his relationship with his mum becomes increasingly fraught, which leads to one of the most surprising aspects of the book: the flashbacks to, and interweaving of, his mothers story with his own.

In some respects (but by no means all as both books are structured very differently) the story inhabits similar ground to Bertie Marshall's memoir, Berlin Bromley, which begins its story just before Carl's. The two books would make good companion reads, and transcend both the memoir and gay coming of age tags.

That said, Kiss & Make Up has just been long listed for this years Polari Prize, the shortlist for which will be announced in July.

Looking at the long list, it's interesting to note how many of the titles were published by small, independent publishers, to the extent that a title published by Verso starts to look huge in comparison. The world of independent publishing is certainly alive and well but its thriving success does rather underline a lack of variety of experience, story, and interest at the largest of our publishing houses. Phrases about popes, catholic, bears, woods spring to mind...