[	mood	|	content	]
[	music	|	Glissando	]

In a clearing in the woods above the southern end of Windermere a band plays to a select crowd.  This is Forest Of Sound, Saturday night at Fell Foot Woods.  A mini-festival in the Lake District that looked to be good fun.

When I arrive the post-rock drone of Mato & The Deep Blue Sea greets me, filling the natural bowl of the stage area yet not spreading too far beyond it.  Our host Barry, who runs the campsite here, sees me and introduces himself, pointing out suitable camping areas, and takes my money. 

There’s nothing actually wrong with Mato’s sound, being crisp, heavy and well-played, but it lacks a spark for me.  Perhaps if it was dark, accompanied by lights or visuals?  So I wander up the track to pitch my tent.  The woods are cleared in little patches, some large enough for half a dozen tents, or a tipi, others just single spots.  I only have a small tent so find a spot beneath the trees.

By the time I wander back to the stage area the next band are just tuning up.  People from a neighbouring tent helped me set mine up and now invite me over to join them.  I don’t know anything about any of the bands on tonight, and nor do they but that’s not stopping anybody.

Stark piano chords and delicate violin strokes introduce Glissando.  The Elly May Irving starts to sing and people start to listen.  I’m hooked, drawn in to a sound echoing 4AD acts and a voice that flits between Sinead O’Connor, Bjork and most fabulously Mary Margaret O’Hara in quality and soars like This Mortal Coil above and through everything else.  At the end of the epic 15-minute ‘Always The Storm’ a chorus of sussurated ‘wow’s and released breath leads into applause.  The last voice to hit me like that in a live setting was Jonssi Birgisson and there is a valid comparison there too.  The darkly elemental lyrics (references to fire, water and storms abound,) subtle, spacious instrumentation and that voice should make Glissando a Sigur Ros-sized success.  Sitting under the trees with a 100 others watching them was a genuine delight.

After which, an anti-climax.  A shame for The Declining Winter who had some technical problems.  There mellow guitar sounds were nice enough.  Sat with a bottle of Hobgoblin and some sandwiches I quite enjoyed them, but I remember little of them now. 

Several people around me had obviously come from Leeds to see Wintermute, the first actually energetic band of the evening.  Jerky guitar riffs and catch melodic –shouty songs got a few people moving, dancing and responding enthusiastically.  Thoughts of Interpol and Arctic Monkeys guitar sound crossed my mind, and then dramatically structured songs owing something to post-hardcore as well.    I think if I’d driven from Leeds I’d think it was worth the trip.

By now the sun had set and Barry lit fires around the site in modest braziers.  The beer and food tent offered a reasonable choice but I had come prepared and above, through the canopy of trees a few stars began to be visible.  The rain had stayed away.

Finally, randomNumber took to the stage.  One man with two lap-tops and a projector.  ‘Let me tell you what’s going to happen’ he said, ‘there will be some tricky bits and some quiet bits, so don’t expect a drum and bass disco.’  What happened was a lively well-paced and blended forty minutes or so of electronica that kept my interest remarkably well and even had me dancing for most of the set.   Result, I’d say.

And then as the sound guy cleared the stage somebody plugged her iPod into the PA and we danced some more until everything else was clear and it was time to shut down.  Strangely nobody seemed to have brought a guitar but never mind. 

In the morning I woke, packed my tent and headed away just as a few spots of rain came.  £11 for a night camping, five bands, two of whom were very good and one outstanding is not a band deal if you ask me.  You should go along yourself next time.  (Deep In The Woods in a few weeks time, find Fell Foot Woods on MySpace and have a look.)

Hard Core Logo is a book by esteemed Canadian poet/novelist and erstwhile punk musician Michael Turner.  It was later made into a film starring Callum Keith Rennie by Bruce McDonald with remarkable fidelity until the final shocking scene.

The book tells of the fractious reunion tour across Canada undertaken by punk legends Hard Core Logo.  Turner’s technique is to sketch the story out in peripherals: he begins with a letter to HCL lead singer Joe Dick inviting him to reform the band for a charity show.  Subsequent details, such as they are, appear in the form of bassist John’s journal, scrawled set lists, graffiti on dressing room walls, contracts, answerphone messages etc.  Photos of graffiti, of venue doors, of views from the van intersperse the text fragments.

Early on Joe introduces himself and the band (guitarist Billy Talent, bassist John Oxenberger and drummer Pipefitter) but is quickly identifiable as unreliable as a narrator and as a band leader.  Despite Turner’s sparse text Joe’s ego and desperate need for this to work out are clear, and clash with his old friend/antagonist Billy who wants more out of his music.  It becomes hard to take sides, both have pride and ego forefront, both have valid reasons in their minds for how they act.  Meanwhile Pipefitter is seeing the payday he was lured back with diminish beyond what he would have made staying at home, and John seems to become the casualty of the band’s earlier incarnations and his neuroses grow steadily over the five day tour.  The band is imploding once more. 

Turner’s poetic background is most obvious in the long section ‘Bucky Haight got drunk, told stories’ and there is a feeling that in here he is also laying out some more specific frustrations from his own musical career with Hard Rock Miners.  The poet’s acute awareness of the potential of a few words to paint a picture is behind much of this book though.  Song lyrics also crop up regularly through the book, though without accompanying music.

Hard Core Logo is not Turner’s best work, that would probably be American Whiskey Bar, and it contrasts sharply with the deep and lengthy The Pornographer’s Poem on the surface, but it is an intriguing and clever book.  Michael Turner should be more widely read, whichever of his books you try.

Rumour has it that McDonald is planning a sequel (or sequels) to his film, but Turner’s name has not been mentioned at all.  His original film would seem to have ruled out an sequel, and Turner’s book seems thematically opposed to ‘going back’ as well.  Not that such considerations ever stopped anybody before.

Saturday night, a northern town.  You aren’t part of the trendy scene, want something different.  Where do you go?  The library.

WTF?  Yes, the library.  There’s a band playing and they’re loud.  ‘Nobody’s shushing me’ says a slightly bemused singer.

The Death Set hail from in their words ‘Worldwide’ (Australia via Baltimore, Brooklyn and beyond) and play a raucous, wonderful, exuberant form of hardcore punk.  And they’re damn good at it.  Eschewing a stage, they play amongst the crowd, the guitarist in the midst of a circle of moshing, hoodied singer Johnny Siera climbing the shelves and screaming the words to ‘MFDS’ from a window ledge above us. 

The girl on the door says she looked them up on the internet and found The Death Set described as some new genre of ‘indie transgressive crossover something.’  Well we all know the internet never lies, don’t we my friends, but let me tell you now.  The Death Set are not radically new, this is no new genre.  They sound like Minor Threat and Black Flag and Gorilla Biscuits.  (This is a Good Thing.)   Wait, that sounds like The Beastie Boys*.  There’s a hip-hop thing in the noise somewhere, the recurrent use of their name as a chant (mother fucking death set!  Motherfucking death set! Motherfucking Death Set!)  Most of all they’re just great fun.   I jump around, punch the air, shout along.   The security are shitting themselves at Johnny’s antics.   Everyone else is loving it.  Including if not especially, The Death Set. 

They play Reading the day after Lancaster.  Reading Festival after Lancaster Library.  ‘Thanks for letting us practise’ says Johnny, and they’re gone.  How many songs in how many minutes?  I don’t know.  (The CD has 18 in 26)  I know people are buzzing, sweaty and exhilarated.  Its not yet 10 o’clock.  Way to start a night.  

*Johnny tells me he lives on the edge of West Baltimore (The Wire territory), the hyper-energetic drummer’s from Brooklyn, so a Dischord/B=Boys influence is hardly surprising.  That they do it so well might be more so. 

[Get It Loud In Libraries is an award-winning project set up about three years ago to put on regular gigs in Lancaster library.  Previously the likes of Bat For Lashes, Adele, The Wombats, Black Kids, Field Music, The Thrills and (of course) Mr Hudson & The Library have played here.   Next month they’ve booked a genuine legend: Robert Forster is playing Lancaster.  I don’t suppose he’ll climb the bookshelves.]

Yes, Team GB are to get a parade in London on their triumphant return from Beijing.  Such an honour, and a chance for friends of Chris Hoy, Rebecca Adlington, Ben Ainslie, Nicole Cooke etc to get the Tube in from London suburbs such as Edinburgh, Mansfield, Macclesfield and Swansea.

Tonight I was mistaken for a man named Marvin.  This has never happened to me before.  If it ever happens again, if it happens recurringly, I might get annoyed.  Paranoid.

Later, when I found out just who this Marvin is, I was flattered.  I don’t know if Marvin felt the same, I doubt anybody thought to tell him.

Actually, he sort of looks like me, or I like him, I suppose, in a certain light at a certain angle from a certain distance.

He’s a poet, and I’m not, but once at a fancy dress, silly hat party I wore a big yellow foam rubber cheese on my head and was known, for one night only, as ‘The Cheeseman.’

According to this report http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7509968.stm a think tank has called the word 'chav' offensive to working class people.  Bollocks, its patronising in the extreme to suggest that all working class people are 'chavs'  but most laughable was the description of chavs as 'largely voiceless' -- as far as I can tell they have a voice, a loud and annoying one.

My boss was talking about a wedding she is due to attend soon.  In the evening there is to be a ‘traditional Iranian buffet.’

Colleague K asked ‘Is she marrying a rag head then?’

I had to say something, but what exactly?  I worry if I object too strongly my views will just be dismissed as cranky, ‘political correctness’ and ignored.  Create too big an issue and cause a divide to open that prevents any dialogue on the issue?  Maybe speak to my boss later, asking her to act?  Then she would have the same problem.  Of course she has a different authority over K, but I am the one who has been trained as Equality and Diversity Champion.  It’s feasible that a similar incident might be referred back to me for ‘guidance’ anyway.

It is complicated for me, by what I know of K.  He’s blunt, doesn’t suffer fools, and would reject any suggestion of what he couldn’t say.  But I don’t believe he meant ‘rag head’ in a racist way.  Maybe that sounds strange, but I think for him at that moment it was just equivalent to ‘scouser’ or ‘geordie’ or ‘jock.’  In his mind it was just a label, mildly pejorative perhaps, but little more than that.

Now I’m not saying K is not racist, any more than I would claim not to be racist.  It’s cultural, ingrained, and though I try not to be I make mistakes or simply don’t realise sometimes.  So it wasn’t a slur as such.  This doesn’t excuse it, but I think it is important to distinguish such remarks from the active BNP-like racism of abuse, of hatred and prejudice.  I can fight those with logic and fact.  This is a different problem and requires a different solution.  One I’m afraid I don’t have.

So what did I say?  In a light tone:

“Com on K, don’t forget your Equality & Diversity training, you can’t use words like that.”

And that was that, for now.

( By the way, I know that the objectionable little scumbag William Sanders recently used a similar term (again) but the context of his remark was altogether nastier and full of hate and not the near neutral use K adopted.  Last time I criticised Sanders he threatened to publicise the mistake I made in a relationship that ended in 1989.  I am not proud of what i did, it was perhaps the worst thing I ever did, but if thats how he gets his thrills then go ahead.  Publish and be damned.)

Black & White is Lewis Shiner’s sixth novel, and as with its predecessors is both radically different and essentially similar to what went before.  This time his setting is the predominantly black neighbourhood of Hayti in Durham, North Carolina in the 60s and the same now gentrified part of town in the current age. 

Michael Cooper is a mid-30s comics artist, his father Richard was once a civil engineer responsible for the demolition of much of Hayti to build an expressway.  Now Richard is dying of cancer and has insisted on coming back to Durham for treatment, though neither Michael nor his mother initially realise why.   Hints made by his father lead Michael to track down some family history and the discovery of a previously unknown murder of Civil Rights activist Barrett Howard.

Moving mainly between Richard’s story in the 60s and Michael’s researches now, Shiner frames a classic suspense story with sufficient false leads to keep anyone intrigued to the end, but his real story is, as the title suggests, of race and racism.  Grand themes but by focussing on sympathetic individuals he is able to show the invidious effects of cultural racism on even those who think themselves unprejudiced.  In particular, Richard’s wife Ruth is a remarkable depiction of a woman whose upbringing creates a devotion to her racist father that is unshakeable and a love for her husband against all odds.  Ruth is the solid immovable object around which Richard and Michael orbit, tying them in when circumstances would collapse the system.  Her black counterpart in the early years is Mercy, Barrett’s mistress and seemingly that other archetype of Southern womanhood, erotic, spiritual and quietly powerful.  Typically Shiner is his honest and perceptive representation of how men view women and respond to their strengths and weaknesses.  In fact most of the women here are strong and confident in their roles, even Denise, the love interest for Michael, actually guides their relationship.

The story of how a thriving and vibrant black neighborhood was wilfully destroyed in the name of progress and how visionary individuals in the twenty-first century are reclaiming it was clearly Shiner’s motivation for Black & White, and whilst this is occasionally drawn in rather broad strokes, he balances it with humour and tenderness.  As with his peers, George Pelecanos and perhaps David Simon (though Black & White is less violent than either of those writers works), Shiner’s political anger is based in a genuine love for ordinary people trying to live good lives.  Ultimately he lays down a challenge though: do something, anything, however small to make things better.

It is in this challenge that the obvious connection with Shiner’s earlier novels comes out.  By the end of Black & White Michael has broken off his professional relationship with the manipulative writer Roger to spend more time on work he enjoys.  It is a new life to go with his newly discovered heritage, and it echoes the new identity taken by Dave in Slam, the joy in his work re-discovered by Ray in Glimpses and the coming to terms with life shown throughout Shiner’s novels.

The difference here is not simply that it is a suspense novel rather than SF, Fantasy, Rock’n’roll story or whatever but partly in its prose and partly something more significant.  In the past Shiner has tended towards a stripped down, rareified prose.  Black & White is in no way flowery but it is a richer brew.  The major difference seems to me to be in terms of autobiography.  Shiner has said on his website that most of his fiction is autobiographical in parts, there are scenes in Glimpses directly lifted from the author’s relationship with his late father.  Conflicted Father-son relationships are central to much of Shiner’s longer work, but in Black & White for the first time it seems that just as Richard came back to Durham to make peace with himself, so Shiner has done this with his writing the novel. 

Having written the best rock music SF or Fantasy novel ever, in Glimpses, a cyberpunk classic (Frontera), and an 80s counterculture personal utopia (Slam) as well as a slew of provocative short stories Shiner has taken on a new challenge and not only mastered the suspense genre but possibly created his finest work yet.  What’s more he has put it out on his ‘Fiction Liberation Front’ website for free.