Bob Dylan - Live at the SEC Armadillo Halloween Night 2022

 The last time I saw Bob Dylan was in the SECC in 1998 when he was supported by Van Morrison (who was not great).  That night was almost a Dylan greatest hits show with fairly faithful versions of tracks like 'Blowing in the wind' and as a 20 year old I loved it.  For a variety of reasons it took me nearly 25 years to see him again.  My memory of that last show is ghostly faint but positive.  Tonight was crystal clear and very different.

Dylan played an upright piano all night.  His band was just brilliant.  A great drummer, great guitarists, a great bass player and a multi-instrumentalist on steel guitar and others.  Tone, sound and music was everything tonight with Dylan's voice, his vocal tone, another lead instrument.  He played some big songs from his past but the versions while musically excellent were almost a parody of the more familiar versions.  When I paint my masterpiece, gotta serve somebody, most likely you go your way and I'll go mine and I'll be your baby tonight were just tossed out, taken apart and rebuilt in very different.  This was not a pop hits night, this felt like an improvised jam band that was punching above it's weight.

The bulk of the set was from the excellent Rough and Rowdy Ways and I was glad to hear that album live.  Dylan is 81 and I'm not sure that he will play Glasgow again.  Surely the never-ending tour must pause with time.  I would love to see him again but I'm not hopeful.

Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise and Fall of SST Records by Jim Ruland

 I spent a lot of time as a teenager listening to music released on the SST label.  Black Flag, Minutemen, Husker Du, Descendents, Bad Brains and many more released music via SST in the halcyon days of the 1980s.  Then it all went wrong.  The good bands stopped releasing music or moved to another label and eventually SST ground to a halt.

This book highlights how successful SST actually were at their peak and documents the fall.  It's not totally clear what precipitated the fall but the departure of key team members such as Chuck Dukowski and Mugger seems to have played a part.  Greg Ginn is often cast as a pantomime villain in events although I'm  not sure how accurate this is.  Certainly, early on, he did a lot of good for these bands and gave them a step up to better things.

I was an American hardcore/alternative enthusiast when I was younger but this book contained viewpoints I was unfamiliar with and has introduced some music that I did not know.  I was left pining for a world where SST signed Nirvana and managed to keep Sonic Youth happy/release Daydream Nation.  That may have been an exciting world.

What does the future for the SST bands hold?  Will we see reissues and remasters with unreleased material?  Has it all been lost?  Do they even have decent tapes of the 1982 Black Flag demoes. 

Ian MacKaye took a very different, archivist approach with Dischord and we will have much of the DC scene for posterity.  The LA scene may just be degenerating, covered in some green mould.

Bruce Dickinson - What does this button do?

 I never liked Iron Maiden.  I just never for into them. I liked lots of other heavy metal stuff over the years but Iron Maiden just never floated my boat.  I think it's the way they dressed.  They just didn't do it for me.   I was never really a fan of Bruce Dickinson either.  I have vague memories of him messing about on the BBC Heavy Metal Heaven season in the eighties.  In retrospect he must have been channelling Spinal Tap.

I listen to audiobooks a lot.  When I'm commuting I like to use the time to do something and audiobooks seem efficient when I can't be bothered with music or the kindle. Using Audible you can often get an unexpected gem of a book for a couple of quid.

Which is how I found What does this button do?

Dickinson narrates his autobiography himself and he is funny.  He is very funny.  He doesn't take himself or anything else seriously.  Between his boarding school education, his adolescent interests and his general positive mental attitude this is a real feel good book.  He did very well with Iron Maiden and he became a pilot flying commercial airliners while on a break from music.  Eventually he was flying Iron Maiden around the world in 'Ed Force One',

He is, sadly, a 'Brexit wanker' although I do see that he has expressed dismay at the impact of Brexit on UK musicians which is good.  Thankfully we don't get any Brexit stuff in the book.  Just fencing, beer making and Spitfires.

He would be a better Prime Minister than the one we have.

we often forget how lucky we are

 on a Friday night I'm often knackered after a week at work.  A week at my well paid, comfortable job.  after putting the baby down to sleep I'm often sitting and, as always, I feel a bit brain dead.  sometimes I listen to music.

This evening I was listening to some jesus lizard music and remembering the great times when I saw them play live.  Then I realised that I was once lucky enough to see scratch acid play.  And then I remembered seeing the elephant 6 orchestra play enlightenment by sun ra. twice. and that was really fucking special.

and then i remember how fortunate I am.  how lucky I am.  I have a great wee family and a nice house and a good job and i've had amazing experiences over the years and nothing is perfect but it's important sometimes to just remember how good things actually are.

I hope all of you out there get to feel this good some times.

WANDAVISION

 I spent a lot of my childhood reading Marvel superhero comics.  I think the first one I read was the UK weekly Secret Wars comic although I also read Spiderman and Zoids.  Prior to that I read the Beano and Battle Action Force, Star Wars Weekly and Transformers Weekly.  I loved it all and it was all mind rotting garbage but in a good way.  Comic books and punk rock made me who I am today.

I was always a bit of an obsessive kid, always wanting to read more and know more and understand more. I'm still a bit like that which is good and bad.  I was into Marvel in a big way, I read the official handbook of the marvel universe cover to cover and I learned all about the crazy, colourful minor characters of the Marvel Universe including all of the B listers and the C listers, like the Vision and the Scarlet Witch.

Now the Vision and the Scarlet Witch had a couple of limited series published in America in the early '80s and the stories in those comics were very off the wall.  Some of the weirdest comics out there with a mind bending storyline.  Definitely not mainstream and probably the product of some serious drugs.  Bad hippy drugs.

And it seems that Disney have made that mad shit into a TV series.

And I think to myself what a wonderful world.....

Stan Lee - RIP

I never met Stan Lee.  I never had a chance.  He did come to Forbidden Planet in Glasgow but somehow I never knew.  Stan Lee did have an impact on my life in many ways.  I've spent a lot of time reading Marvel Comics in the last 40 or so years and Stan Lee was responsible for many of them.

The first american comic that I read/owned was issue number 3 of Super-villain Team Up featuring Namor, the Submariner and Dr Doom fighting some even more evil fish people.  It was a bit crap.  It came from a neighbours house and I read it from cover to cover many, many times.  I still have it somewhere.  I remember all the strange American adverts from the seventies and the slightly yellow paper.  It wasn't brilliant but it was my first comic presented by Stan Lee.

I had probably seen some Spiderman reprints by then.  I was certainly reading the Marvel UK weekly Star Wars comic as a very young child in the early 80s.  The old sixties Marvel cartoons were broadcast as part of Glen Michaels Cartoon Cavalcade in Scotland with Captain america, Fantastic Four, Iron Man and Spider-Man.  We also had the seventies Spiderman cartoon as well as Spiderman and his Amazing Friends and the Hulk.

Stan Lee infected every part of our culture.  He reached Scotland from New York and taught us about heroes and trying to be good.  His personality shone through in his Bullpen Bulletin. He had a heart and he tried to do the right thing.  He was cheesy and a bit of a self-promoter.  He didn't give his collaborators enough talent but he changed the dreams of lots of kids.  Like me, those kids are often successful adults and we live in a world that has seen both the Black Panther and Guardians of the Galaxy on the big screen.  Back in the early eighties this was unimaginable.

My fiancé's niece can name most of the marvel superheroes on a poster in our house and she is 3.  Stan continues to shape young minds.  His imagination lives on in all of us.

RIP

The land of your forefathers

I'm lucky in that I grew up with a strong sense of identity.  My parents told me about my family history, I knew my grandfather well and I spent time at the places that were important in the family history.  I spent time in the wilds of the west of Scotland enjoying the rain and the wildlife.

My partner has some non-Scottish heritage and she had never been able to visit the place in Italy where her family came from.  Sadly, her father never got the chance to take her and her mother had never been.  Last week we were, as a family, on holiday about 60 kilometres from the village and we decided to go there.  I'm really glad we did.  It was amazing.

We decided to club together and get a taxi to take us on the drive to the village and wait for us as we did some sightseeing.  Initially we went to the local tourist office and picked up a bunch of maps and leaflets.  We didn't know much about the area but it turns out that it's an alpine ski resort that is very busy in the winter.  We then managed to find the church where her grandparents were married.  It was a beautiful building in the middle of town and we were able to go in and look around.

We had an address for the building where her nona (gran) had lived as a child.  Thankfully the village was small so we managed to find it.  I also managed to find a bunch of really cool wee lizards which is always enough to keep me happy.  My partners' aunt had managed to give us the phone number for a second cousin, who as luck would have it, had the day off.  After a quick phone call distant cousins were introduced and we had a guide for the next hour or so.

The Italian cousin drove us to another, older church, decorated with a fresco of the danse macabre, that stood within the village graveyard.  It was beautiful, well kempt, with family gravestones adorning the walls of the graveyard.  We found one of the family stones and it had a photograph of nona, beside her siblings.  Sadly, the stone for nono's (grandad's) family had been moved and we couldn't find it.

Outside the graveyard was a war memorial.  On it was the name of my partners great uncle who had died during the first world war.  He was 21.  I was reading a kindle book on world war 2 history which has been driving home the insanity of war and this brought some life to it.  I was also reminded of my dads cousin who died during the second world war in Burma.  In the beautiful alpine surroundings of this village at the foot of the dolomites why would anyone want to leave and die for rich men?

Tourist season had just ended and we sat down to eat a late lunch in a local bar.  I had some cheese and cured beef with bread.  It was a hot day.  Unfortunately we had to get a taxi back to the resort but we were ecstatic with this brief look into family history.  We will go back at some point and stay for a week.

I know how I feel when I stand on a certain beach in Kintyre and watch the seals with the wind blowing so loud I can't hear.  I wish I could stay there, in that old house above the stables, beside the sea, but that is not my house and I cannot have that life.  The choices I have made have given me a different life.  I also know how I feel when I stand at the top of the hill at the croft on the island in argyll and I wish I could be there too but my life is in the city and the populated areas but I know where part of me came from and I know that it was not perfect.  I hope my partner felt that way when we were in the alpine village and we will go back and explore it more.

Migraine Aura

A visual migraine aura can be an intense experience.  Last night I was using my laptop and watching channel 4 news when my vision began to change on the left side.  Things started to blur and then an irregular oval shape appeared in the left side of my vision.  The rim of this shape was made up of small flashing triangles that were silver and multi-coloured.  This was clearly a migraine aura but much more intense than normal.

It had been a hot day and a thunder storm was forecast.  I tend to get headaches when atmospheric pressure changes and this was a big change.  I realised that half my vision was blurred behind the scintillating scotoma as I looked at myself in the mirror.  I tried to check my physiological blind spot but I couldn't find it.  I took some aspirin and some paracetamol and I put on my sunglasses which helped.

The aura peaked for about 10 to 15 minutes then gradually faded.  I only developed a mild headache, probably because of my early use of aspirin.  I was tired and I went to my bed early.  In my bed, the lightening storm intermittently illuminated the room.  With the overlay of the residual migraine everything felt a bit otherworldly, a bit like an episode of Twin Peaks.  Eventually I fell asleep and I felt a lot better when I woke up this morning.

Most migraines are boring, painful and annoying but this one was fascinating.  I can see how someone experiencing that, not knowing what it was, would be freaked out.  I enjoyed it although I did feel a bit 'disconnected'.  I'm glad I was in my own house and not travelling or working.

Recently, geneticists have suggested that the tendency to migraine may be associated with an ability to sense when the weather is becoming stronger.  That certainly could explain the trigger of some of my headaches.

Lying in bed afterwards I felt like my hearing was heightened and that I could hear all of the individual drops of rain falling.

Neil Young

Like many things Neil Young gets better with age and in many ways we do not appreciate him enough.  I've seen him play live twice I think, once in 1995 at the Reading festival with Pearl Jam and a second time, a year or so later, at the SECC.  As always, my memory of these things is a bit fuzzy.  The Reading Festival show is particularly hazy due to blood loss after breaking my nose and immature scepticism related to my adolescent dislike of Pearl Jam.  I have subsequently forgiven Pearl Jam a bit.

Young has made a lot of music in the last 50 or so years.  He's played with lots of bands and released a lot of albums.  He's also recorded many albums that have not seen the light of day.  Some of these albums only seem to be appearing now, often decades after they were created.

I find that there are Neil Young songs I am familiar with and amazing Neil Young songs that I have never heard or live interpretations of standards that bend exciting new shapes into my ears.  Often, when I have listened to Young I haven't really focused on the lyrics.  This is embarrassing when you think of a song like Ohio.  I've been listening to Ohio for more than 20 years, and while I know it's about the Kent State massacre it seems like I'm hearing the words for the first time.

His words are like stealth bombers, sneaking in with the fury of his music.  He can rearrange his songs and play them live in twisted new shapes.  The version of Tonight's The Night on the Bluenote Cafe set is stunning.

I listened to Chrome Dreams II for the first time last night.  It's a diverse set which pulls together songs from different periods in his career and finally gave a studio release to Ordinary People that was being played live 20 years earlier.  Ordinary People is a great song but it is typical of Young to leave good tracks sitting on the shelf for decades.  In terms of output and reinterpretation he is almost on a level with Dylan.

The original Chrome Dreams remains officially unreleased.

I have tended to focus on the 'classics' in his catalogue but I realise that this approach perhaps overlooks some of his better songs.  Young has followed his own path with his career and released the music he felt was right at the time.  He spent much of the eighties in a very public feud with his record label and I wonder what would have happened if he was given creative control back then.  We may have been given many of these great songs earlier if he had been allowed to do what he wanted.

The world is different now.  Music is no longer controlled by record conglomerates and the internet has levelled the playing field.  Websites like Bandcamp let musicians present as much music to the public as they choose, whenever they want.  Young may have had a very different career if this technology had existed in the eighties and he is embracing this now with the Neil Young archives.

The online archives probably represent a good opportunity for fans to truly explore the 70 or so releases he has put out since the sixties.  There is certainly a lot to explore.

Young has followed his own path for decades.  He has kept moving, innovating and evolving.  He has inspired other interesting artists such as Sonic Youth.  He is an acquired taste but certainly worth exploration.

Podcasts

Over the past few years I've started listening to a lot of Podcasts.  I always liked listening to the radio although I didn't always find the broadcast shows to be very exciting.  Podcasts are homemade radio shows that you can download and listen to at a time that suits you.  They also often cover more offbeat or esoteric subjects that appeal to me.

Mostly I listen to real life mystery podcasts, American political podcasts (mainly ones about Trump), Twin Peaks related podcasts and comic book podcasts.  And the Private Eye podcasts.

One of the first mystery style I started to listen to was Thinking Sideways - in this podcast three presenters take turns to present a mystery every week and discuss various theories on what went on.  The first episode that I listened to was on the 'Glasgow effect'.

Another slightly more fantastical podcast that I enjoy is Astonishing Legends - this podcast goes into strange tales in a great degree of detail.  They exude an X-Files type vibe and they are often rather credulous but the production values are good and I enjoy the shows.

From a comic book point of view Fatman on Batman produced by Clerks director Kevin Smith as part of his Smodcast empire is a good starting point (if you like Batman).  The early episodes in the archive are great, often focusing on individual comic book writers or artists and Batman related stuff. More recently the podcast has developed into a general forum for discussion of sic-fi, superheroes and anything Smith wants to talk about.

The Stuff You Should Know network has several good podcasts including Stuff They Don't Want You To Know and Stuff to Blow Your Mind (both of which have a sort of counterculture vibe) as well as the more mainstream, flagship Stuff You Should Know series.  All of these are fairly interesting.

In terms of Trump bashing Trumpcast is fairly funny and a good place to start.  The Pod Save America team have more White House connections and often have serious guests on to interview although they are often pretty funny too.

No Such Thing As A Fish  was one of the first podcasts I listened to, a spin off from the BBC QI series, where strange facts are discussed in an amusing manner every week.  It's good for a smile every now and again.

There are many more podcasts to check out - a few more are below
Page 94 - The Private Eye Podcast
The 2000AD Progcast - some great 2000AD chat
The Politico Nerdcast
A Twin Peaks Podcast

Enjoy

Jerusalem by Alan Moore

I've just finished listening to the audiobook of Jerusalem by Alan Moore and I'm a bit blown away.  I chose to listen to the audiobook because of the sheer size of the book.  The hardback is 1200 pages long and I think the word count is more than a quarter of a million.  The audiobook is 60 hours long but at least I could listen to it on the train, in the bath and while I was doing housework.  The audiobook narration also helped me get through some of the more challenging sections such as the bit about the daughter of James Joyce.

I will read bits of the book again.  I will dip in and out.  I really want someone to write a book about this book and I look forward to character guides and websites becoming available on the internet.  What a ride!

I wonder if Jerusalem is a reworking of Big Numbers, his abandoned collaboration with Bill Sienkiewicz.  That work was to be set in Northampton and the plot was intended to rotate around the building of a new shopping centre.  Even if the two works were not destined to tell similar stories I am sad that we don't have the complete Big Numbers to compare with Jerusalem.  I will need to dig out my old copies and have a look.

I was also reminded of Voice of the Fire.  This is not unreasonable as both books mythologise Northampton and are written by Alan Moore.

Moore deals with life, death, existence and time.  The book is funny and full of supernatural elements.  There are moments of horror and you worry about what fate will hold for the characters.  The narrative is also complicated by multiple viewpoints and multiple identities for some characters.  A few diagrams and annotations would add a lot to this book and I feel that multiple re-reading will pay off (although a kindle copy will probably be much more portable).

This book could be Moore's best work.  It's a different beast to Watchmen.  At times he appears to have thrown everything into the mix, possibly even the kitchen sink.  At one point the KLF even appear, burning a million pounds.

Much of the book is thinly veiled autobiography.  Alma Warren is a cypher for Moore, sharing the same year of birth, the same eye problems and much of the same style and characteristics of Moore.  Her brother Mick shares a name and a year of birth with Moore's younger sibling.  Melinda Debbie, artist and partner of Alan Moore is a character in the book.  I believe that other parallels with the reality of Alan Moore's family history in Northampton exist.

Should you read this book?  If you have the time and patience, yes.  It is rewarding.  I got a lot from it.  It resounded with me emotionally and it cheered me up a bit shortly after the death of my dad.  I wish he could have read it.  The audiobook is a good way to tackle the book.  People will pick this apart for years.  I know I will.

Old music that was lying about

So on Friday I randomly went to see the Pet Shops Boys at short notice.  It was a really good gig and it sparked a memory of an old recording that I had made with a friend of dodgy covers on a 4 track.  We had recorded 'always on my mind', 'it's a sin', 'never ever' by all saints and 'circle in the sand' by Belinda Carlisle.  We might have done another Belinda Carlisle track.  We did all of that in one afternoon using an early play station as a drum machine.

I'm not sure what happened to that tape.  I wish I had it.  I went looking for it and I failed to find it.  What I did find was a collection of slightly less cheery songs from 1999 when I was pretending to be Lou Reed.  They are all pretty shit but Bandcamp didm't exist back then and it does now so I had a 'what the fuck' moment and stuck them all up (well 6 of them anyway).



Now this music is not very good and it is not well played but I wrote it and spent time with it so why not just let it exist somewhere other than a rotting CD in a pile.  It was mainly written after the accidental death of a friend at a young age and the words are mainly about coming to terms with grief and death.  Cheery stuff.  Very angry.

All of that was about 15 or 16 years ago.  I really wanted to be a rock star until I was 21.  The only real problem was a lack of ability or good looks.  Most of these songs were played in a full band format with a few friends but we never got our shit together enough to properly record any of it.  There are probably some 2 track rehearsal tapes somewhere but I doubt I could ever be bothered to find them.

Additionally there is another track recorded for a laugh in 2007.  It sounds a bit better because a friend played some guitar on it and we used a computer.  We were listening to a lot of Violent Femmes stuff at the time so we just ran with it.



Other than this I have some recordings from a band called Punani that I played bass for.  I'm not going to put any of that on here as it's not all mine.  It's not fair to put anything that would embarrass other people out in the public domain.

The first band that I was in had a hundred names but was mainly called the Divers.  I have a large box of tapes but none of it was recorded properly (well maybe one song on an 8 track and a Nirvana cover for a tribute tape).  I would put that up if it was in a decent format and I could find it but I can't.

Anyway, this stuff is now in public.  The 1999 stuff is sad and angry and a bit rubbish.  The 2007 song is sad in a different way and a bit rubbish.

It exists.  That is all.

Neutral Milk Hotel - Live at the Glasgow Barrowlands

I've been neglecting this blog again.  Lots of work stuff has been keeping me busy recently.  However Neutral Milk Hotel at the Barrowlands has to be one of the most anticipated gigs I've been to in ages.

I'm not exactly a Neutral Milk novice, having seen Jeff Mangum play at the ATP festival but this is the first time that I've seen him play with the band that created his legend.  The tickets sold out within seconds and the Barras was packed with lucky fans.

Support was supplied by Francis McKee of the Vaselines who played a selection of new material before battering out 'Jesus doesn't want me for a sunbeam' with Eugene Kelly.

The main event kicked off at 915 with Mangum taking the stage alone and starting 'the king of carrot flowers' before being joined by the rest of the band.  They assaulted the songs with a loose punky fury that was a good bit louder than the recorded versions from 'in the aeroplane over the sea'.  'Holland, 1945' was deployed as a quick follow up.

The band played material from all of their recorded output.  This wasn't a strict reading of the classic album.  I've been listening to NMH for many years and they played a couple of songs that I'm not too familiar with.

The rough setlist was -

• 1. The King of Carrot Flowers, Part One 
  2. The King of Carrot Flowers, Parts Two & Three 
  3. Holland, 1945 
  4. A Baby for Pree / Glow Into You 
  5. On Avery Island / April 1st 
  6. Gardenhead / Leave Me Alone 
  7. Everything Is 
  8. Two-Headed Boy 
  9. The Fool 
  10. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea 
  11. Naomi 
  12. Ferris Wheel on Fire 
  13. Oh Comely 
  14. Song Against Sex 
  15. Ruby Bulbs 
  16. Snow Song, Part One 
  17. Encore:
  17. Ghost 
  18. [untitled] 
      (first released until this title, later became known as 'The Penny Arcade in California')
  19. Two-Headed Boy, Part Two 
  20. Engine 

The crowd seemed to really enjoy the show although there was a clear rush for the toilet/bar during less familiar songs.  It was a great night of psychedelic punk noise and I'm glad I was there.  I may have preferred the Mangum solo readings at ATP but this was very very good. 

sometimes it's nice to meet your heroes - End of an Era 2, the final ATP holiday camp festival and Mike Watt

The ATP festival concept was brilliant but sadly it has now run it's course.  This weekend I attended the ATP chalet festival at Camber Sands in Rye.  For work and financial reasons I never made it to the early festivals but I always looked at the line-ups with awe.  A good friend of mine plays in Mogwai and actually curated the first ATP festival but the first one I made it to was curated by Jeff Mangum in 2012.  I loved that experience and went back to the Deerhunter event this summer.

I was sad to hear that the festivals were ending.  I am not privy to the reasons for this but running a big festival has to be difficult in harsh financial climates.  Pontins certainly did not roll out the red carpet for guests this time, requiring us to bring our own linen.

The line-up for this festival was brilliant and contained many personal favourites. Slint, Shellac, Loop, Girls Against Boys, Michael Rother, Mike Watt and of course Mogwai.  Attendance was required despite my fears about the notoriously unpredictable late November weather.  In the end I made it to Camber Sands without any snow having made a stop at the British Museum on the way.

Pontins is not scenic and reminds me of my home town of East Kilbride.  I guess it provides an appropriate back drop for alternative rock but I wouldn't want to spend an actual holiday here.

On the first night I saw Thought Forms, a band I was unfamiliar with.  They made some cool Sonic Youth-y noises and jumped about.  I liked what I heard so I bought up their back catalogue.  I'll look out for them in the future.

Thought Forms

After Thought Forms I caught Om and the Fuck Buttons set.  Om were intense with a great Sabbath/stoner rock sound.  I have a few records by Sleep, the band that Om developed from and they were just as good.  After that the Fuck Buttons hit the stage.  They made some great noises.  I don't have any of their records but I enjoyed seeing them.  Finishing off Friday night was a one-two whammy of Shellac and Slint. 

I saw Shellac in Glasgow last weekend and this was the 5th time that I have seen them since 1994.  I bought the first Shellac singles as they came out back in 1993 and they have always been one of my favourite bands.  They played a great set although they were oddly quiet (dodgy PA).  They even played 'wingwalker'.

Shellac wearing their evening suits

Slint too had a quiet PA but it was great to see them again.  They played most of Spiderland as well as a track from Tweez and a track from their EP.  I had hoped that we might have seen more of the mythical Slint documentary film but there was no joy.  After the concert I ended up in the Mogwai party chalet and in a drunken haze I met David Pajo.  He seems like a nice guy, even when confronted with an intoxicated Scottish Danzig fan.

The next morning was a bit of a red wine haze.  I woke up early and went to Camber Sands beach to contemplate infinity.  Camber is probably fairly nice in the summer but it's a really small town.  I wouldn't want to live there.  The locals were nice but the holiday camp is certainly grim.  This time we brought food with us so we didn't have to buy overpriced rubbish in the Nisa store or toxic waste from the onsite food outlets.

The beach itself is beautiful.  I took a few photos before my hangover really kicked in.  I was able to watch the Dismemberment Plan play a set that drew heavily from 'emergency & I' but after that I had to lie down for a bit to prepare myself for the evenings festivities.  After my much needed beauty sleep I caught a bit of 23 Skidoo and the Pop Group.  Neither band really set my world on fire but it was nice to see 'we are all prostitutes' played live.

Comets on Fire were a different thing altogether.  They took to the smaller downstairs stage and tore the place apart.  I've been listening to a couple of their albums which are enjoyable enough.  The recordings did not prepare me for the rock fury of the band on stage.  Blending Mudhoney, the Stooges and Sabbath they sent an electric shock through the crowd.  Rocktastic.

Comets on Fire

I had been listening to Loop stuff in an attempt to prepare myself for this concert.  I sort of missed Loop as a teenager spending more time listening to Spacemen 3.  In recent months I have taken a bit of a crash course in their stuff but it didn't really click until I saw them live.  They managed to make an immense noise with the hitherto 'polite' upstairs PA system.  Their repetitive drones drove the crowd mad and a plague of crowd surfing spread though the room.  To ice the cake they encored with 'mother sky' by Can.  I was grinning from ear to ear.  Once more I retired to the Mogwai party chalet where I had a close encounter with some rather nice 15 year old Glenlivet.  I stumbled back to my chalet at around 3am with a smile on my face.

My hangover was a bit worse on Sunday.  I managed to reconstitute myself in time for the Michael Rother set at 3:30pm.  It was pretty good but I preferred the Neu heavy set that I caught in Primavera a few years before.  My recovery was complete in time for the Mike Watt set.  He was playing ll Sogno Del Marinaio, a sort of opera about sailors.  It was nice, instrumental passages with intermittent vocal flourishes. He finished his set with a cover of Funhouse by the Stooges (i think).  Watt is a great hero of mine but I'll return to this topic in due course.

Mike Watt

After Watt came Girls Against Boys.  I've been listening to Girls against Boys for many, many years. I saw them 2 or 3 times in the mid nineties but I haven't seen them for a long long time.  I was rather excited to see them again and I wasn't disappointed.  The sound was slightly ropey during the first song but they managed to shine anyway.  They kicked off with 'tucked in' before playing an action packed set.  The strength of the Girls Against Boys back catalogue was highlighted by the fact that they managed to play a great show despite missing out classics like 'I don't got a place' and 'sexy sam'.  The new songs that they played held their own against the old material.  It's a shame that GVSB never had the success they deserved.

Girls Against Boys

The next big discovery of the weekend was Goat.  Goat are a Swedish band that wear masks and play intoxicating rhythms.  They make you want to dance.  I suspect them to be the Knife in disguise but I am told that this is not the case.

Goat going bongo crazy

Finally the last ever ATP festival was closed by one of the best bands on earth. Mogwai.  I cannot write an objective word about mogwai, especially when they got me drunk all weekend and gave me a stage access pass for their set.  However, I will honestly say that they played a brilliant set.  The new material is amazing (especially 'remurdered' and 'blues hour').  I remember first hearing them play Helicon 1 about 18 years ago in a very small room and seeing them playing it again in a very big room in front of some very excited fans was great.  Mogwai curated the first ATP festival and it was fitting that they closed the last one.

Mogwai playing mexican grand prix

After they finished the DJ played 'Teenage Riot' by Sonic Youth and it was all over.  The crowd went mad.  I was able to nip on stage and take some photos of the departing crowd.  Somehow I had found the 'make everything look drunk' button on my camera.  I ended up in the surprise party for Barry Hogan at 2:30am.  I shouldn't really have been there (although I was again abducted by the 'gwai) but it was nice to hear his words on a series of events that have meant a lot to people with good taste.  I don't know what he'll do next but I'm sure it'll be good.

As a coda to an amazing festival I had an amazing experience on the train from Rye to Ashford.  I met Mike Watt on the platform and I spent about 30 minutes talking to him.  SST punk was a big thing for me and I remember first hearing the Minutemen after buying the Post-Mersh volume 3 CD from Tower Records one boxing day (maybe 1991?).  Watt is one of the nicest men alive and when he heard my accent he asked me if I knew Dep from Monorail Records.  When I told him that Dep had advised me on Minutemen records over the years he smiled.  I think he regards Dep as a sort of missionary.

Watt spoke about his need to constantly tour.  He sees life on the road as being like that of a sailor, like his father who was in the navy and served in Vietnam.  Watt told me that he saw little of his father growing up and that he feels he only got to know him in his thirties by which point he was dying of cancer.  Watt himself said that he had decided not to have children as he felt family life was incompatible with life on the road.

He suffers from arthritis and needs to have a knee operation next year.  He'll need to to take 6 months off from touring to do that.  He says that this will be difficult as he doesn't know what to do when he isn't touring.

He told me a bit about how he recorded some of his records, how they got free studio time to record one song but managed to record all of the first side of 'buzz or howl under the influence of heat' by pretending it was one song.  He told me that he originally wanted to use images from the magazine Scientific American for the cover (indeed the title came from Scientific American) but the photo cost too much so Joe Baiza drew a sketch of him and D Boon instead.

Watt is an inspirational musician and his life and words have meant a lot to me over the years.  After I finished talking to him, changing trains at Ashford International I listened to all 175 minutemen tracks on my iPod back to back.  They took me most of the way back to Glasgow.  I thought about the life of Mike Watt and how he has given so much to me.  I don't think he's a rich man but he is a good man.  Like most American musicians he won't have free health care and nobody buys records now so musicians have to tour to make money.  If anyone reads this think about buying a mike watt record (fIREHOSE/minutemen/anything) or go to a mike watt gig.  He's a good bloke.

With the ATP concept, Barry Hogan did a good thing and has given me some amazing experiences.  I hope he does something new, similar and brilliant again.  Maybe even in Scotland?

Fantagraphics Kickstarter Project

Fantagraphics are one of the best comic book publishers in the world.  They publish intelligent books by intelligent people.  They make comic books that are art.  Their books are often beautiful.

The first Fantagraphics comic that I remember buying was Hate number 1 by Pete Bagge.  I actually bought it from Bagge himself at the Glasgow Comic Convention in 1989 (or around then).  He signed it for me.  I was really too young for the comic at the time.  I must have been 12 or 13 but I became a massive fan.

Fantagraphics also publish Robert Crumb, Love & Rockets, Castle Waiting, The Comics Journal, beautiful reprint collections of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, English language translations of the works of Tardi, collections of Pogo by Walt Kelly.  All amazing comic art that fights for space on my cramped book shelves.  They don't really publish potboiler superhero rubbish.  I am glad that they exist and I hope they continue to exist.

So, I've pledged for a couple of things on their Kickstarter and I hope that some other people do the same.  They have had a bad year in 2013 with the death of Kim Thompson, Fantagraphics co-founder, and the subsequent disruption of their publishing schedule.  They are raising money to stay independent and stay afloat.  I'm happy to give them cash directly instead of buying from Amazon.  I see it as a donation to an art gallery or a museum. It's just that I get to have this art at home with me.

Anyway, check it out.

Scotland in November

On holiday in the west coast of Scotland. It's raining a fair bit but still some decent views.

James Le Fanu - how the mighty have fallen

So, after being disappointed by 'why us?', a book that I took to be essentially hocus-pocus I learn that James Le Fanu has been supporting homeopathy.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tomchivers/100044706/a-response-to-dr-james-le-fanu-on-homeopathy/

I really loved 'the rise and fall of modern medicine' but I guess I just have to accept that he got lucky and generally he's a bit 'mystical'.

Bummer

The Mars Volta live at the Carling Academy, Glasgow

Due to my current exile in a shit place I haven't been able to see many bands recently. This concert coincided with a week of annual leave so I picked up a ticket. I've been listening to The Mars Volta for a few years now. I loved their first album Deloused In the Comatorium (hope I got that right) although I found the later albums more difficult to get into. I was keen to see them live because I heard that they put on a good show. They do.

I was trying to describe The Mars Volta to my Dentist today. It's difficult. Their music is non-linear. Traditional song-stucture has gone out of the window. Miles Davis aound the time of Bitches Brew is a good reference point. Led Zepplin amd Santana are in the mix. The Fugazi sound of At the Drive in (their old band) is still present, nut only a little.

The Mars Volta make music you can't dance to. One female drug casualty did try some hippy freak out moves last night but it wasn't convincing. It was more the sort of show where tou stand and watch and think 'wow'. They played for nearly 3 hours with only a few recognisable songs. It was good but it was almost too much. I guess I need to expand my mind a bit more. One pint of beer is not enough.

So an impressive, athletic musical experience. Probably not for everyone but glad I was there.