Helen Reddington at Louder Than Words festival

Today I went to see Helen Reddington (neé McCookerybook) being interviewed by the excellent Roisin Dwyer about her new book, She's At The Controls, at Louder Than Words festival. She was on fine form: Articulate, intelligent, funny and self-depreciating. After the Q&A she played a few songs on her guitar ('A Good Life With A Bad Apple', 'Mad Bicycle Song' and one about Barcelona I'm not 100% sure of the title of), which seemed to go down well. It wasn't a huge crowd but, given that she was scheduled against a bloke from Dire Straits and his memoir, it was a respectable number of attendees and the audience seemed to be a nice variety of people who listened and asked intelligent questions. Helen was considerate enough to ask the audience to applaud Roisin and the sound engineer at the end too, which doesn't happen enough.

Normally I'd pay to attend all three days of Louder Than Words but the ticket price has gone up this year and my finances haven't sufficiently recovered from last year to take the hit. Similarly, I couldn't find enough events on the schedule that I wanted to attend to justify paying the ticket price. 

Last year Louder Than Words did go ahead, but as an online only event that attempted to make the best of things during the second Covid lockdown. I didn't attend because I was even poorer then than I am now, plus I doubted that the event would go ahead given that it was announced either just before or during the Greater Manchester local lockdown. 

It was odd being in Manchester for the first time in a year. I haven't needed to go into the city since last November when I was doing exam invigilation work for Manchester College and you forget how enclosed and claustrophobic the ever increasing density of really tall buildings makes you feel. We don't have that in Stockport because we have less tall buildings and those that we do have tend to be both shorter and more generously spaced, meaning the sky gets more of a chance and you don't feel hemmed in in the same way.

After Helen's event a gentleman called Darren from Bolton, who Helen knows through an online art club they both attend, and I adjourned with Helen to HOME next door where we had hot drinks and pizza and talked about music, art, Louder Than Words, work and lots of other things. It was nice though I do feel guilty that I didn't get a round of hot drinks in. 

It was a bit of a day for old friends actually as I'm sure I saw Pascale from Better Buses For Greater Manchester sitting outside Trove with a friend as I went past on the bus into Manchester. On the way home one of my sixth formers from last year said hello to me before heading for the back of the top deck where he proceeded to do the gangster thing with one of his mates.

I was a little apprehensive about travelling into Manchester on the 192 but, if anything, more people are wearing masks at weekends and keeping the bus windows open than they are during the rush hour to work in Stockport during the week. I suspect that weekend bus users may not be commuting to work by bus during the week whereas many weekday bus commuters have quite probably been commuting in large numbers into Stockport throughout all the lockdowns and have become fatalistic and nihilistic re Covid, hence over 90% of them not wearing masks on every bus I catch during the week.

Today was also a day for arsey bus drivers: There was the driver of the 201 outside Piccadilly train station, who shouted at the man who asked him if the bus was going to Stockport 'DOES IT SAY STOCKPORT ON THE FRONT OF THE BUS? NO IT SAYS HATTERSLEY!'. I think he must have felt guilty afterwards because when he had to re-open the door to let someone else on, he did at least shout that the hapless gentleman who'd made this mildly voice enquiry should be getting on the 203 though, in the end, he got on the 192 with me instead. The driver on that bus nearly missed my stop on the basis that he felt I was taking too long to come down the stairs, conveniently forgetting how close the bus stops are together on that part of the route and that it takes a finite amount of time to get from nearly the back of the top deck and down the stairs. I see that the recent pay rise after threat of strike action hasn't improved the temperament of Stagecoach Manchester drivers. Mind you, the driver shortage seems to be getting worse so I expect the remaining drivers are probably wishing they were on strike, increased pay offer or not.

Thank God It's Bandcamp Friday!

The pandemic has laid bare the extent to which artists have become dependent on touring and merchandise deals for income. It's also assisted in highlighting the pitiful royalties artists receive from streaming. It was perhaps with this in mind that the "online record store and community" Bandcamp, which provides streaming, downloading and physical sales services direct from artists to fans, decided to launch Bandcamp Friday in March 2020.

As they say on their website, every sale on Bandcamp generates "an average of 82% of the money" for the artist in question. Which compares very favourably to streaming services, and to the average royalty payment received via record companies for physical sales of music. With Bandcamp Fridays, the idea was to have one day of the month where Bandcamp would waive their "revenue share" of sales on the site, meaning "an average of 93% of the money" would go to artists on sales made on Bandcamp Friday.

Originally only intended as a short term aid to help musicians during the pandemic, Bandcamp extended the scheme a number of times during 2020 and, in August, announced that they would be continuing Bandcamp Fridays until the end of 2021.

Today is Bandcamp Friday, and it's very reassuring for me to know that by buying downloads on Bandcamp today I will be directly contributing in a meaningful way to the incomes of artists. What's also nice is that the availability on Bandcamp of tracks I wish to buy has increased over the past year, meaning I can buy a wider range of music from a greater number of artists than I could in 2020.

For those of you in the UK, it's worth bearing in mind that Bandcamp Friday runs from midnight to midnight, Pacific Time, and that the UK is 7 hours ahead of the US (I've allowed for the clocks going back at the end of October in this calculation) but, even if you do miscalculate by a couple of hours, the artists you buy from will still see a good return on the sale.

Today I intend to purchase downloads by Lydmor (two tracks in her case), Jacknife Lee, Blue Hawaii, Jess Williamson, Cults, Molchat Doma, Noga Erez and Lucky Iris. 

Photo by FPVmat A on Unsplash

Bring back live music but don't bring back sexual harassment at gigs - Revisited

When I began researching the topic of sexual harassment at gigs back in 2018, I couldn't have known that there was going to be a pandemic in 2020, or that it would turn the once thriving and lucrative world of live music into a smoking ruin. 

For a long time in 2020, when I was ready to actually write the piece, I held off because I knew it wasn't the right time. There was a moment in late summer/early autumn when it looked like it might be a good moment, but that moment suddenly passed and I was forced to put it back on the shelf again.

The piece was eventually finished in March 2021, and it was published at the beginning of April in the wake of the Sarah Everard murder and revelations about rampant sexual harassment and abuse in UK schools. Ideally I'd rather these events hadn't happened and that my piece had felt less timely as a result of that, but, given the sense of rage and injustice both events inspired, it really did feel like the best moment to publish it. 

I'm still really proud of this piece, and it has been reasonably well read, generating a small amount of positive feedback. But it was hard work, and it was emotionally draining, so I was pleased when I could eventually hit publish and Let It Go. 

Photo by Hanny Naibaho on Unsplash

New piece, three years in the making: Bring back live music but don't bring back sexual harassment at gigs

 Sometimes you start a piece and it becomes an odyssey...

I first began researching and talking to people about the issue of sexual harassment and sexual violence at live music venues and music festivals back in 2018, not long before I left my job at the University of Manchester. It was not a happy time so, in retrospect, choosing to research a topic as dark as sexual harassment and sexual violence at gigs wasn't the wisest decision I could have made.

What made me want to investigate these issues initially was that, having written the previous summer about a lack of women headliners at music festivals, I was beginning to appreciate the ways in which the two issues related to each other, both directly and indirectly.

Life got in the way in 2018 but I didn't entirely let the issue go, in fact events in 2018 and 2019 conspired to make me believe that it was just as vital a time to be writing about the issue of sexual harassment and sexual violence at gigs. Artists were tweeting about it, journalists were writing about it, YouGov were publishing findings on it, and there were activists and academics working in that area who would be interesting to speak to and, when I did speak to them, had a lot of really good stuff to say.

By late 2019, I had a new day job and my writing time was being increasingly squeezed by it, meaning I had to - reluctantly - put the research to one side again.

Then, Covid happened.

Like a lot of people, I was suddenly left with a lot of time on my hands.

Unfortunately, it wasn't a particularly great time to be talking to people about sexual harassment and violence at gigs, what with live music being on indefinite hold and everything.

By Autumn 2020, things were looking a little bit more positive and the issue was being talked about again by activists. Time to jump in again.

The article I have just published over on Medium was pitched to a number of newspapers and music publications in the summer of 2019, albeit in a very different form and with a different focus to the one it now has. No one was interested, which I don't take personally as this is often the case and I'm really crap at pitching. In 2021, it has been re-angled and re-focused to reflect the current times we are living in, but I feel it's all the better for that. I didn't re-pitch those publications I'd sent it to in 2019, mainly because I felt like I wanted to write a no holds barred piece and it's not always possible to do that if you're working with publications, but I am hoping people manage to find and read the piece all the same. 

If you'd like to read it, you can do so here. 

Photo by Hanny Naibaho on Unsplash

In which I write a love letter to a film I have yet to see

 I have yet to see Michael Caton-Jones' 2020 film Our Ladies, but I already suspect that it's going to be fantastic. 

It is an adaptation of Alan Warner's third novel, 1998's The Sopranos, which has nothing to do with US crime families and everything to do with five schoolgirls from Oban going on a sesh in Edinburgh when they're meant to be preparing to compete in an inter schools choir competition.

I have long been a fan of the book, and the 2015 theatre adaptation Our Ladies Of Perpetual Succour, which was created by Lee Hall. Some of you might remember me mentioning the shows infamous disclaimer in 2017...

With this in mind, I was really looking forward to the cinema release of Our Ladies in April 2020 but, alas, the pandemic had other plans and the film has now fallen off the UK release schedules.

Hence the love letter, in which I argue that to let this film die on the shelf in some vault at Sony would be an absolute tragedy. You can read my piece here. 

Podcast recommendations this week

This week, I've decided to bite the bullet and talk about current affairs podcasts focusing either entirely on coronavirus or else focusing specific episodes on coronavirus.

Wait, don't leave!

I know a lot of people have had it up to here with the news and are finding that a lot of bulletins, broadcasts, newspapers, radio and internet journalism is not massively helpful at the moment, but my take has always been to focus on the aspects of the pandemic that I find interesting and search out coverage of those aspects.

For example, I've found the whole debate around food sustainability and the impact of coronavirus on global and national food chains, as well as the restaurant industry, to be fascinating. Two ongoing BBC food series - The Food Programme and The Food Chain - have covered this whole area from multiple angles in recent weeks, and the results have made for compulsive and riveting listening.

Another facet of the pandemic I've found interesting has been the public health aspect, which is well covered by the BBC's Inside Health and Health Check.

The BBC has also recently completed a series recorded by doctors inside Bradford Royal Infirmary, which is specifically a fly on the wall account of primary care at a time of Covid-19. They've also recently run a podcast formatted series, Viral Exposure, which looked at five different countries affected by Covid-19 and zoomed in on a specific flaw in that country that may have led to greater exposure.

If you find, like me, that you can no longer listen to the UK government daily briefings without mentally zoning out about a minute and a half in, you might find BBC World Service's Coronavirus Global Update to be more helpful. It provides a daily global breakdown of all the coronavirus headlines that day, and comes in at just under ten minutes. In a related note, if you want a calm, accessible fact checking take on statistics, More or Less is well worth a listen.

More or Less, The Food Programme, The Food Chain, Inside Health and Health Check are all ongoing BBC programmes that were not set up to specifically cover coronavirus but which have found themselves increasingly focusing on it.

Examples of ongoing current affairs podcasts that have recently had to re-orientate their programming increasingly towards Covid-19, and have risen to the occasion in various magnificent ways, would include Skyline: The CityMetric podcast, which is coming towards the end of its run as Jonn Elledge moves on to pastures new. Recent episodes have included an interview with a journalist locked down in Italy, and a delightful two hander in which Jonn interviews his partner and housemate Agnes Frimston, who co-presents the Chatham House podcast Undercurrents. They talk about what it's like to be locked down together in a one bedroom flat in London.

BBC youth and current affairs podcast The Next Episode also recently released a very moving episode about young people and grief.

In a classic case of saving the best for last, may I draw your attention to the most recent episode of the Private Eye podcast, Page 94, which is all about Covid-19. Page 94 has a simple but effective format: Andrew Hunter Murrey, the podcast host, provides an introduction to a story in the news that The Eye has been covering, and talks to the journalists on the paper who've been covering it. In the case of Covid, pretty much every section of the magazine has been impacted by it in some way but, as in recent issues of the magazine, the lead is given to Dr Phil Hammond, aka MD, who talks about medical journalism and the things he got wrong and got right about Covid-19. It is a very stimulating and thought provoking listen.

Image of desk with headphones by Sigmund on Unsplash