Bad stuff can happen at any time

We often think we are bulletproof.  We think that bad stuff can happen to us.  We live comfortable lives in nice places.  Nobody shoots at us.  Most of the time we are safe.  We are still relatively young.  Plenty of time to just keep your head down and work.  Save money for the future.  Live for the future.

It sounds nice, doesn't it.

It's not always true.  August has in many ways been a month of bad stuff.  None of it, I hasten to add, has affected me personally, directly.  I've personally not had anything bad happen to me although some things have brought life into a greater clarity.

So this month one of my colleagues, who is a couple of years younger than me (early-mid-thirties) has been diagnosed with breast cancer.  She has two young daughters, her parents live on the other side of the world, her husband hasn't got a job right now.  It's not the worst possible scenario medically but it's not good.  The future is uncertain.  She's so young.  Her family is younger.

Earlier in the week I had attended the funeral of the mother of a close friend.  She was relatively young but she had lived a good, complete life.  She met 3 of her grandchildren and had many good things in life.  Her children and her husband were with her as she died at home.  That was good.

In addition to these two stories I was also saddened to hear of the death of the teenage son of two very nice colleagues.  The poor bloke, who I had met once, had been ill for some time.  Expected but still unspeakably sad.

This might all sound like a torrent of misery but it shouldn't be.  I guess the point of this bit of writing is to say that you should live for just now.  Live your life as fully as you can all the time.  Plan for the future but do not bet your life on the future.  Life is short and transient so it is important to have as good a time as possible while you are alive.  Take sensible chances and if you are in a situation you don't want to be in, change it.

I'm a lucky bloke.  I've got a great life.  I'm well paid, I enjoy my job (sort of), I have a decent flat and I get to do what I want to do most of the time.  I realise a lot of people are not as lucky as I am.  Sometimes it's good to just sit back and think about how good things are.

So, carpe diem everyone.  Just be nice to everyone else while you do it,

living in a science fiction present

My grandfather didn't have a television until 1980.  My father grew up in a house without electricity, heated by coal fires, in a remote costal area in Scotland.  They lived 200 metres from the sea and they saw seals every day.  They didn't always see other people on a daily basis.  A lot of time was spent reading books or out living a rural life.  And shooting stuff.

My grandfather died in 1987/1988.  I don't think he ever saw a computer (although I'm not entirely sure).  He was born in a croft in 1903.  I'm writing this on a fancy laptop.  I'm streaming music onto my iPad beside me.  Technology like this only existed on Star Trek and in the science fiction novels and comics my father read.

My grandfather left the UK twice (as far as I know).  In the late '70s/early '80s my parents brought him to Lanzarote and Malta with us for family holidays.  Until then he had never been in a plane.  He did live in London where he worked as a servant in the 1920's and 30's so I guess it is possible that he may have travelled abroad at that time.  I don't know and I guess I never will.

As a kid I never imagined that I would at some point own something like an iPad or a smartphone.  I could could conceptualise a mobile phone as I had seen walkie talkies.  Early chunky mobile phones were available in the '80s but only for the very rich.

Possibly the most amazing thing now is the internet.  Vast amounts of knowledge, science, music, media and art are available free, instantly at the touch of a button.  I did my first degree before scientific papers existed as PDFs.  I had not used the internet or sent an email before I went to university.  I spent years looking for books, comics and music.  Now it's all there.

Our ability to communicate has improved too.  I play scrabble and chat with someone in Hong Kong every day.  I know and care about someone in Hong Kong.  As a child in the West of Scotland I would never have imagined such a thing.  I dreamt of America in movies and comic books and later in records.  I was lucky enough to visit Europe and I knew about World War 2.  Beyond that I knew that other cultures existed but I didn't really believe that I would ever interact with these distant places in any meaningful way.

When I was a kid for a while I wanted to be a spaceman.  When I was very young I wanted to be a soldier but thankfully I got over that idea very early.  Most of the time I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to write comics and novels.  As a teenager I wanted to be a rock star or a journalist.  I had a vague childhood idea of being a scientist but only in a sort of very vague science fiction/spaceman way.

I never thought I would be a doctor.  Doctors were the people my mother worked for, a class apart. Twenty, twenty-five, thirty years later, here I am.  How the fuck did this happen?

I sit in a posh flat in Glasgow living in a science fiction present, parts of which echo the William Gibson books I read when I was 10.  Parts of this are so much better than I ever thought would be possible.  When I watch the television news and hear borderline racist, anti-immigration political beasts from UKIP talk, I hear echoes of Mosely and Enoch Powell and it's all gone a bit dystopian.

What would my grandad think if he was alive today?  His generation fought the nazi's and gave us the Scotland we have today.

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. 

Barbed Wire Kisses - The Jesus and Mary Chain story by Zoe Howe

I picked this book up in Monorail Records on Monday. I read it within 12 hours. It was great.

I grew up in East Kilbride in the 70s, 80s and early 90s and the Mary Chain just always seemed very big to me. I remember the summers in East Kilbride when I was at primary school in the eighties. I remember it being sunny and green. I remember playing in the parks and the bushes. It as pretty good in many ways.

As I grew older the problems with East Kilbride became more apparent to me. It was full of neds, it was a small town; a bit narrow minded and boring. I got out and moved on but the town is still with me.

The Mary Chain evolved in East Kilbride and soundtracked some of those eighties summers. They made music about underpasses and parks and rain and magic mushrooms. Music that resonates around the South Lanarkshire town.  Barbed Wire Kisses by Zoe Howe captures East Kilbride well. Parts of the book are laugh out loud. The Mary Chain were often cast as arch miserabilists but they come across as funny guys here.

Jim and William Reid conceptualised the band in a shared council house bedroom in the town. I've been in those houses. I've seen those walls. They emerged fully formed and made some bloody brilliant music.

I really enjoyed this book and I would encourage you to check it out. I was a bit let down by the unedited splurge of the Morrissey book and I got much more from this book.

The League TV series

Netflix is letting me watch loads of random TV programmes and films.  The quality is variable.  There are a few gems.

The League is pretty enjoyable.  It's a dark comedy based about a group of friends who have a fantasy football league.  Most of the humour comes from the insults that the friends throw at each other while competing in the league.

It's pretty offensive stuff but it's good for a laugh if you're not faint hearted. Again, I'm very glad that I have netflix.

Teaching

I regularly reflect on what a lucky bastard I am.  I spent the last week teaching a full year group of medical students about my speciality interest.  I had a great time.  Teaching is one of the most enjoyable parts of being a doctor.

Part of what you want to do is stop the students falling asleep.  A lot of medicine is boring.  It's difficult to just absorb a stream of facts.  It's also difficult to filter the massive amount of information that we deal with.  Hundreds of pages of medical data are published every day and the vast majority of it is bullshit.  You want the students to walk away with knowledge of the important stuff that will save a life and help patients get better.  You want the important stuff to stick.

By teaching, you learn.  I've learned some neuroanatomy myself this week and I've come to realise that my understanding of at least one condition was wrong.  I don't know if this is because I was taught badly myself 16 or 17 years ago or if I just misunderstood a concept.  The important thing is that I have corrected my knowledge now.

We were trying to make things fun for the students so we set up a text number on a mobile phone to let them ask us questions as well as a twitter account.  We got a lot of useful texts as well as a few abusive ones.  I used the twitter account to promote YouTube videos of examination skills, patient experiences and other useful websites.  If the students are interested they will check it out.

I'm a bit of an extrovert so I enjoy public speaking.  My problem is, that as a Glasweigan, I tend to swear or say inappropriate things.  The students did seem to like this.  I didn't say anything that was too out of order, especially when I compare myself to a surgical colleague who started to talk about shagging goats.

We got some decent feedback and hopefully it was a success.  With luck the students will pass their exams and some of them may even develop a greater interest in neurology as time goes on.  I have to get back to regular doctoring this week but I'm already looking forward to my next bit of teaching.

Mogwai live at the Glasgow Royal Concert hall

I'm not sure how many times I've seen Mogwai now.  The first time I saw them play was in Martin's bedroom at one of their early band practices.  After that maybe at the Key Youth centre in East Kilbride and at the Cathouse in Glasgow.  I have watched them grow over the past 18 years.

This weeks show at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall was brilliant.  A great live sound, a great light show.  They are on a high just now, on the back of Rave Tapes, which is a fucking good album.  They are tight live.  See them if you can.

Every time I see them now I can't believe how good they are.

RM Hubbert was damn good as a support too.

2014

A new year. In August I'll have been working as a doctor for 10 years. I started medical school 14 years ago. Time flies.  Ten years as a doctor and I'm still a trainee. 

In the past year I've finished a doctoral degree and been appointed to an academic training job at a decent University. I've been to a couple of excellent music festivals run by ATP and I've seen some great club gigs in Glasgow. I've been a bit lax about writing in the blog sadly. I've read a few good books, I've listened to a few good records and I've read some decent comics.  I've spent time with my family which is important.

I've met a few of my heroes. Most of them didn't disappoint me. 

I've discovered Netflix. I've managed to get the Internet in my flat. I've been lucky enough to afford an iPad and a MacBook.  I'm a lucky bastard and I live in a world that my grandfather could not have imagined.  I was looking at my grandparents wedding photograph today, from London in the 1930s. They lived through two world wars and saw stuff I can't imagine. The progression of time is quite a thing really.

I watched a film that had an emotional impact on me last month. Blackfish. It was a documentary about killer whales in captivity. It's heartbreaking, see it if you can. Whales are amazing. I'm reading a book about whales at the moment. Apparently the first footage of sperm whales underwater was only shot in 1984 nearly two decades after we walked on the moon. Man has a lot to learn and needs to respect the planet.

Enough rambling bullshit. I hope anyone who takes the time to read this blog has a great year.

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?

A thought...

Bloody hell, I've been writing and publishing this blog now for more than 8 years.

My activity has been intermittent but it is a sustained body of work.  I accept that most of it is shite and that few people read it but I've stuck with it for a long time.  I've now published 664 posts.  Wow.