Tag Archives: Music

2020 Vision

31 Thursday Dec 2020

Posted by in writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

2020 is a year many of us would gladly forget. A year of upheaval, confusion and loss. People have lost their livelihood, their education, way of life, and far too many have lost their lives. I, like countless others, feel tempted to scrub this from my memory and start afresh in 2021. The pessimist in me needs little encouragement, and he’s had a wealth of stuff to feed on this year, but I’ve left him watching the BBC News Channel so that I can focus on the things that reminded me of who I was and why I do what I do. In short, this post is about the things that made me smile in 2020.

Getting stuff out there. I had three stories published this year. My mediocre average is around two a year, and I have another due out in January next year! Having said that, writing has been difficult under Covid. I’ve been working a lot from home – that’s the work I have to do to pay the bills, not the work I want to do, writing – and using the same space to do both has been difficult. But I’m lucky, many writers have nowhere to write.

One of my biggest pleasures of 2020 was discovering Junoire and playing their Une Deux Trois LP to death. It’s such a gorgeous album full of infectious choruses, subtle hooks, sublime vocals, cool French style and a clever nod to the pop of the 60’s – the great stuff, not the shite. Live music took a hell of a hammering this year, but when it’s safe to do so, I’ll be off to see these guys.

Galileo 7’s Decayed LP was a joyous surprise. I have some of their stuff which I enjoyed, but not to the extent that I’d rant on to others about how great it was – it was okay, and I liked it. That all changed with this album. An album of covers.

Covering other people’s work can be hit and miss. For every All Along the Watchtower, there’s a hundred reality TV morons and manufactured pop stars murdering Leonard Cohen etc. This was different. Very different. Their version of X-Ray Specs’ The Day the World Turned Dayglow aside, every track is an energetic revelation of how much you can cram your soul with joy using only guitars, drums and keyboards. The only reason I’ve excluded Dayglow from that is that it sounds so much like the original, but, between you and me, I prefer it. If you buy one album recommended by someone you don’t really know then it should be this one if only for their version of Julian Cope’s Reynard The Fox which is an invigorating crash of energy and conviction that surpasses the original.

A cracking live version of Reynard The Fox.

Kevin Barry’s That Old Country Music was a delight to read. Barry is one of the writers that I hugely admire, and this collection sees him at the top of his game. His use of language, form and his ability to tell a tale is unsurpassed. I attended the online book launch for this, and Mr Barry is just as rich and giving in real life. I’m not going to review the book – I think I’ve done that elsewhere – just buy the bloody thing.

Kevin Barry’s The Night Boat to Tangiers. I’m not sure when this was published but I read it this year and loved it from the first page till the last. For all the reasons above, you need to buy this too.

Digging a pond. Yep, iron bar, spade, buckets, skip and lots of sweat – from me, not to fill it. We’d talked about having a pond for the wildlife it attracts and when there was nothing else to do there were no other reasons not to. This was hard physical work, something I’ve not done since working briefly with my dad as a builder, but immensely satisfying. The pond is well established now. I spent the summer watching frogs go bonkers in the heat while reading Lisa Blower’s Pond Weed which was a pleasurable coincidence.

Wendy Erskine was a new voice to me, and I can’t remember who recommended her, but her short story collection, Sweet Home, is a real treasure. Why is it that most of my favourite writers are Irish?

Creating a podcast was something I fell into by mistake. My short story, Raven, was selected for the Dostoyevsky Wannabe Birmingham anthology, but due to Covid, we were unable to physically launch it. Emails went back and forth regarding what we could do and before I knew it, I was producing a series of seven podcasts to promote the book. This was slightly daunting and very exciting. Everything was recorded remotely then edited together by me – I even wrote a short piece of music for the introduction and end. Talking to the other writers about their stories and methods was enlightening and inspiring, and I’m always up for acquiring new skills.

https://fletcherski.podbean.com

I’ve read a lot of great books this year, but this is another one that stands out. Cage of Souls by Adrian Tchaikovsky is science fiction/fantasy and takes place at the end of the world. Tchaikovsky’s world-building is second to none. The world he creates is compelling and completely immersive. The level of detail coupled with his succinct descriptions creates a believable and gripping setting that his finely drawn characters must traverse. The writing throughout is very literary and not at all trashy. At 602 pages this isn’t a quick read, but I was reluctant to finish it as I didn’t want it to end. You either like genre stuff or you don’t. I do, and if you do too…

Gigs of the live variety were rarer than rocking-horse dung this year. There were a plethora of acts doing special online events. I only attended two. The first was an intimate performance from Billy Bragg’s lounge and the second the huge world-wide, live-stream, bonanza that was the Gorillaz Song Book tour, two very different events.

Bragg’s gig was very much like the man, honest, low-key and positive. It was him against a blank wall in his house playing to an iPhone and I loved it. The Gorillaz’s gig couldn’t have been more different. A scary Robert Smith in the flesh, holograms, Peter Hook with his knee-cap bass and an animated Elton John along with a kick-ass band and retina-burning light show. Between the gaps in songs, you could faintly hear the crew cheering like the ghosts of gigs past. I enjoyed both of these, but both left me hankering to be there for real – although I’m in no rush to get Covid.

Sticking with music I need to mention the massive grin that was on my face the first time I heard Valleys by Working Men’s Club – the best New Order song I’ve heard in years.

2020 has ended with me hosting meetings on Skype, running training from Teams, catching up with friends on Zoom and delivering lessons on Blackboard, things I wouldn’t have had a clue about this time last year.

Friends have been really important throughout this. I’m not the most touchy-feely of people. Maybe that’s because I’m a working-class male or just the way I am, but it’s something I need to work on. An old friend of mine died this year from a heroin overdose. He was a year younger than me, a funny, cheeky bastard, an amazing bass player, and a father. I think the last thing I said to him was how ridiculous contemplating buying a six-string bass was – they’re for wankers. I wish it had been something positive. A friend who lives in the States told me about his death and said that it had brought home the fact we need to tell people that we love them before it’s too late and signed off by saying I love you, man. Due to Covid we never got to say goodbye to Daryl, I’m not even sure if his family did, but I love you man – keep slapping that bass.

My son bought me an LP for Christmas and it wasn’t shit! My kids are bonkers and have helped keep me sane through all of this madness. I was genuinely surprised when my son handed me an LP-sized gift. 7 by Beach House is rather wonderful especially as it was so unexpected.

And if you haven’t heard Must I Evolve? from Jarvis Cocker’s Jarvis is…Beyond the Pale, you really should. You won’t hear a finer summing up of Darwin’s theory in under four minutes with such an infectious refrain.

Obviously, 2020 was a lot more than just these snapshots, but these are the moments I want to remember. It could’ve been a hell of a lot better, but here in the UK, we decided to vote in the worst government in living memory and play Russian roulette with people’s lives. Stay healthy, stay positive and never vote Tory. Here’s to a better one in 2021

Waiting For The Great Leap Forward.

06 Friday Dec 2019

Posted by in Billy Bragg, Birmingham, NHS, Poetry, Politics, Special Needs, teaching, The Arts, writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Don’t switch off. This blog is about education and arts funding – something that enriches all our lives. Please, read on.

I went to a political rally last night. There, it’s out the bag. Shush, I hear you hiss. This blog is meant for writing and creativity, don’t sully it with the dirty world of politics! I understand that some people feel that way. Hell, I even have friends that, after years of arguing, have decided that we should avoid that distasteful area altogether. However, here in the UK, we are on the cusp of something truly horrific, the handing over of absolute power to serial liar, racist and adulterer, Boris Johnson, or the implementation of a radical new state that will nurture and develop creativity, culture and ultimately happiness through placing a Labour government in power. This, of course, is an oversimplification, but not by much.

Have you guessed which way I’m voting yet?

It was a bitter-cold, blustery night in Digbeth, in what used to be Birmingham’s industrial heart. Digbeth, in recent years, has been transformed into a creative oasis of small digital companies, arts organisations, entrepreneurs and entertainment that has been embraced by Brummies, Midlanders and beyond – Stephen Spielburg has shot a film here has have many other established filmmakers. My son and I queued with many others to hear Jeremy Corbyn speak. What! Corbyn, chief antisemite and all-round devil’s spawn? Yes, and no. I’ve seen Corbyn speak on several occasions and he’s always struck me as a caring, vibrant man who is genuinely interested in others, and someone who wants to change the UK for the better. The way he’s been presented in the media is wholly at odds with the man you meet in person, but that’s a whole blog post in itself, probably a series of blogs. However, just to touch on that briefly, this summer I was walking around a museum in Prague and I heard some Americans talking to a European about how biased the media is in the States. They said, for impartiality, they got their news from the BBC. I failed to fight back a laugh and received a strange look or two. I didn’t attempt to ‘correct’ their view, I was on holiday, but it wasn’t that long ago that I also felt that the BBC were impartial. Not any more. In this election campaign, we have seen the Tory bias of the BBC cranked up to previously unimagined heights with edited interviews and news footage that show Boris Johnson in a positive light being passed off as mistakes. With that toxic atmosphere in mind, it was wonderful to see so many young people, and people from diverse backgrounds last night.

Jamelia

We got in early, too bloody early as a friend had told me he’d been turned away from events before, so best to get there early – my legs were killing me by the end. However, our punctuality meant that we got a very good spot down the front. Angela Rayner, Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary, compared the evening with aplomb and passion. We were treated to first hand accounts of years of Tory cuts from union reps and support staff in education as well as the music from Kioko, an up and coming local band, poetry from three local poets, and the general secretaries of the NEU teachers union – the largest in the UK, and Brum’s very own Jamelia.

Jamelia wasn’t there to talk about her impressive pop career, but about the support, she’d received from the state when she was growing up in Birmingham. She wanted others to take note that she had been supported, and her mother, by our incredible NHS and state education, and that she wants others to have the same opportunities that she has had. It was a very passionate and honest speech where she admitted that she’d never voted before and that it would be her and her eighteen year old daughter’s first time on December the 12th.

Finally, Jeremy Corbyn took to the stage and laid out clearly how a Labour government will transform education by increasing funding levels to above 2010 rates, creating a National Education Service, rebuilding Ofsted to support teaching rather than condemn it, funding a pupil arts passport that ring-fences arts spending, creating fully funded nursery places for all, promoting a love of learning via whichever route best suits, and much, much more.

The reason I felt the need to write this here was because of Labour’s stance regarding the arts. Corbyn came on after the poets and he was genuinely moved by their performance and spoke of the power of all the arts to transform lives. This is something he is passionate about, not something, like Johnson, that he believes is there for those who can afford it. Up until three years ago, I was an art teacher in a busy special needs school. I started in education when funding for the arts was in place and I saw the positive effect it had upon the challenging children that I worked with. That has now gone. The arts have been cut from many school’s curriculums with some schools even dropping to four and a half days a week because they can not afford to pay staff. Labour will not only reverse cuts to school funding, but they will also increase funding. If it hadn’t have been for arts lessons in school I would have dropped out of education, no doubt about it. For some pupils, creativity in lessons like art, music, dance etc. is the only thing that keeps them going. Our current Tory government does not care one jot about this – they can afford to pay for the arts.

I took a lot of hope away from last night. Hope, because we have an opposition that is fighting for the things that are important to me and so many other. Hope, because Digbeth was full of young people ready to fight for what is theirs, and hope because, despite what the mainstream media are telling us, people want change. Talk to people who are out there knocking on doors. People want change and it’s up to all of us to ensure that on December 12th that’s what they get.

I went to see Billy Bragg on Tuesday, also in Digbeth, and he spoke about the power of talking to people. He told us about his activism to halt the fascists taking over Barking and Dagenham Council. A handful of BNP candidates had been elected to the council and there was a real fear that at the upcoming local elections in 2010 that they could take control of the council. Labour members took to the streets and campaigned. They knocked on doors and spoke to people. They waited for the result and hoped that they’d pegged them back. They hoped that the BNP majority would not increase. The result came in. Every single member of the BNP lost their seat. Change can come, but we have to get out there and make it happen. Don’t sentence the UK to another five years of Tory lies and cuts. Save our education, fund our arts, vote Labour.

Graham.

18 Tuesday Sep 2018

Posted by in Art, Drawing, Sketchtember

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

I missed yesterday’s sketch because I was at a gig in Newcastle-under-Lyme. Swoon, how exotic. I went to see the incredibly talented Graham Coxon. It was one of those gigs that you know will stay with you a long time. Coxon is moving, evocative, at ease, awkward, brave, nervous, challenging, innovative and most of all mesmerising. His guitar playing leaves me speechless. Such a huge talent.

Anyway, after all that build up, here’s my average sketch of the great man in action.

GC

This is Staedtler pigment liner straight onto paper – that’s fibre-tip pen to you and me. It’s not too bad considering – guitars are always a bastard to draw. There’s lots wrong with this, shush, but I think the hair’s okay.

Splinter Magazine

02 Monday Jul 2018

Posted by in Music, writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

I feel very honoured to have played a small part in the short but dazzling life of Splinter Magazine.

FC833D3E-2167-49DC-8D6A-1DD9D071A753

Andy Winter, as part of his new site, lays out the fun, sweat and tears that were integral to its inception and subsequent issues. Andy and the backroom team worked their sweaty little balls off every month to get a rather wonderful, scathing, joyous, flawed magazine out most months. I fear that the majority of poor spelling and grammar was down to yours truly, but by Lemmy’s mole it was a wonderful, terrifying, possibly illegal, crazy time.

Huge thanks to Andy for taking me on and putting in the hours and mentioning me in such glowing terms in this piece. God, I miss those days. Hopefully, those that I offended have since received the medical support that they so desperately needed.

Check out Andy’s retelling of those heady days in the 90’s on his new site that covers comics, film, podcasts and a whole host of stuff. Just click here.

The Brum Radio Lives!

31 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by in Arts, Birmingham, Culture, Live Music, Music, News, Radio, Reading, Writers, writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , ,

At last, Birmingham has its very own alternative radio station, Brum Radio. The station covers local bands, including an interview with Ocean Colour Scene’s Steve Craddock, and events as well as a Book Club programme that looks at the work of local authors. Their first guest was Johnathan Coe talking about his new book, Number Eleven. The show has teamed up with Waterstones to give you a £6 discount on the book when you say…….Well, to find out what the code is read the full article here on Mazzy Snape’s blog.

  

If you missed the first show you can grab it at MixCloud.
 

There’s stuff to do…

11 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by in Art, creativity, Culture, Inspirational, Music

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

There’s stuff to do. There’s always stuff to do. I’m supposed to be finalising my application for the Word factory apprenticeship scheme and to be fair I’ve done a bit, but my mind is elsewhere. Early this morning I’d just got out of the shower and was about to do some press ups when my wife came in and told me that David Bowie had died. I looked at her as if she was mad. ‘I’ve just heard it on the radio,’ she said, ‘they just announced it on 6 Music.’ I grabbed my phone and sat on the bed. Sure enough, the BBC News confirmed it, David Bowie had died at the age of 69 from cancer. All my enthusiasm for the day ahead sagged away. I went through the motions of my morning exercises with one word bouncing around, ‘fuck.’

These last few weeks have seen some musical greats depart. First there was Lemmy, the infamous front man and bass player from Motorhead a man known for his partying and ‘fuck you attitude.’ Many were surprised that he was still alive. Then there was the death of John Bradbury, the drummer and backbone of The Specials, a band that created the soundtrack to my teens and now…now this.

I got into Bowie late. Lots of people loved him, but they weren’t my people. They were old or dyed their hair and wore ridiculous jackets with padded shoulders. ‘Let’s Dance’ may have catapulted him into world-wide stardom but it wasn’t for me. ‘Ashes to Ashes’ had a bleak melancholy that was loved by Goths and New Romantics alike, but once again they weren’t my people. When I was at Art College a friend of mine went to see Tin Machine (Bowie’s short-lived rock project) and I couldn’t understand why – why would you go and see the guy who sang ‘China Girl?’ Then in the mid 90’s I listened to Hunky Dory and nothing was ever the same again.

I wouldn’t say I was an obsessive Bowie fan; I haven’t listened to all of his work, yet, but I know what I like. What got me from the off was his lyrical playfulness, the way the words were just as important as the music. He could weave history, heartache and literature all within a song that you couldn’t get out of your head and he never stood still. Many musicians will find their niche and stick with it ploughing the same furrow over and over. Bowie was always moving, always growing and never afraid to take risks. In 2009, Vanity Fair published their Proust Questionaire that included answers from David Bowie. It’s well worth reading through the whole thing -which is here– but the question that stayed with me was this:

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Living in fear.

David Bowie showed us what it was like not to live in fear, to be daring, to take risks and to have fun and he did it all with an innate sense of style.

I haven’t received my copy of his latest album, Blackstar, yet, but I know it’ll be good. It’ll be something I take time to listen to and digest, something that I cherish, something beautiful made by a man who changed music and art for so many and who wrote some of the best songs ever.

There was a post today from Gaz Coombes, musician and former front man of Supergrass, that I found incredibly helpful. A friend had texted it to him, when he heard of Bowie’s death and he posted it on:

If you’re sad, just remember the world is 4.543 billion years old and you somehow managed to exist at the same time as David Bowie.

Yeah, that.

Something to lighten the mood…

Naked Lungs

24 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by in Event, Music, Poetry, Reading, Short Stories, writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

This evening I’ll be reading selected poems or possibly a short story, if only I could decide, damn this indecision!

Anyway, whatever it is it’ll be fun -blush- not because me but because of the other wonderfully talented people that’ll be there and because it’s hosted in the rather wonderful Cherry Reds on John Bright Street, Birmingham.

Hmm, looks good.

Hmm, looks good.

30 years of Life’s A Riot

25 Friday Oct 2013

Posted by in Music, Vinyl

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , ,

Billy Bragg has played a big part in my life. He was there, when, as a teenager I struggled with the images of striking miners and Exocet Missiles, he was there in my twenties when I wrestled with an uncaring Tory government and Poll Tax riots, he was there through my thirties as I came to terms with yet more wars and New Labour, and now, in my forties, he’s more relevant than ever.

Billy Bragg didn’t turn me into a socialist, he didn’t make me a left wing agitator or communist sympathiser, he didn’t make me go out and attack policemen or set fire to images of she-devils, none of these things, he just made me realise that I wasn’t alone.

Signed album

Signed album

Lyric sheet and pictures.

Lyric sheet and pictures.

The other side of the lyric sheet.

The other side of the lyric sheet.

 

Growing up in the eighties, despite what current nostalgia will have you believe, was grim. The working class were encouraged to hate their neighbours, to look down on people in need and to worship at the altar of avarice. We were all encouraged to become middle-class, to own our own homes and to own our own utility companies, even if it meant buying something that already belonged to us. The north of the UK all but closed down, whilst Yuppies paraded around the South so pumped up with greed that they didn’t even bother to hide it. The fallout from such doctrines can be seen everywhere today, the world teeters upon the brink of financial collapse and the media blames everyone bar the bankers that brought this down upon us.

As a fourteen year old boy I looked upon this with confusion and a great amount of shock. There was no guidance from my parents, who bought into this ‘new dawn’ wholeheartedly, buying the tiny council house that they lived in and quoting the Sun’s headlines as if they were the words of God. I was alone. And then I saw Billy Bragg.

However, it may have been the resonant and powerful lyrics of To Have And Have Not that first drew me to Billy Bragg, a brilliant call to arms for the millions of kids chucked on the scrap heap by the then Tory government, but it was the love songs that kept me. Yes, love songs.

For many, Billy Bragg is seen as a loud mouth lefty who’s spark was dampened as soon as New Labour came to power; they couldn’t be more wrong. Over the years he has given us some of the finest love songs ever committed to vinyl. Bitter sweet tales of unrequited love, of tormented anguish and of course the truth about pain. In fact my first encounter with the word unrequited was when I played Saturday Boy off of the Brewing Up album, heartache can be educational.

So why this sudden outpouring of man-love for Mr Bragg? Well yesterday I received my 30th anniversary reissue of that first Bragg album Life’s A Riot With Spy VS Spy on glorious vinyl and Mr Bragg’s signature on the front cover. This was the album that so electrified me as a young man, this was the album that told me I wasn’t alone and, most importantly, the album that let me know it was ok to be in love and to feel shit.

I’ve got all of Bragg’s albums, up to Don’t Try This At Home, on vinyl, so why buy the reissue? The reissue comes with the remastered album on side one, still played at 45rpm and a live version of the album on side two recorded at Union Chapel in London on June 5th 2013. You also get a free download of the album so that you can listen to it on the go. But I haven’t really answered my own question. If I’m honest I think I bought it to say thank you and also to be a bit of a completist. If you’ve got the original do you really need this, well no. The live tracks are good, very good, as Mr Bragg always is, but not essential. If you haven’t got the original, or have since decluttered and let it go, well now’s the time to put that right and to grab a copy of this excellent debut album.

As many young men before me, and since, I was excited by the idea of picking up a guitar and making music, of forming a band and changing the world. Naive? Yes. Bloody good fun? Oh yes! I struggled with tuning and chord formation, posed in the mirror and scribbled down substandard sixth-form poetry and got to the point of giving up until I heard Billy. Here was one man, armed with nothing more than a guitar that looked like it’d been built from the junk you’d find in a skip, and a gob full of the most wondrous words. The music was angry, jagged, aggressive and the words powerful, precise, beautiful. I continued with the guitar, formed a few bands, played a few gigs, wrote some songs, had a lot of fun. I’d like to think that he inspired others too, the obvious one being Frank Turner but what about people like Simple Kid, Badly Drawn Boy, Jim Noir and the stratospheric Jake Bugg? All these guys have started out on their own with nothing more than a guitar and a headful of songs.

So, I’d like to say thank you for the songs Billy and where the bloody hell did those thirty years go?