Bagging Area Book Club

The first rule of Bagging Area Book Club is, uh, you can talk about it. It’s an irregular series of music and literature crossovers starting today and heading into the next few weeks, maybe beyond. Last Monday night I attended Richard Norris in conversation with Dave Haslam at Blackwell’s bookshop at Manchester University. Richard recently published his memoir, Strange Things Are Happening, an account of his life and musical journey written as he explained to us in the first person present, a technique that gives the entire book a real immediacy and presents every scene as happening in front of you (Richard says he learned this from Viv Albertine’s autobiography Clothes Clothes Clothes Music Music Music Boys Boys Boys. He also notes that that book opened the door for many others to write their memoirs and autobiographies, the generation who grew up with punk and its aftermath, including himself). 

Dave opens proceedings by noting that him and Richard have a number of parallels in their pasts- both ran club nights called The Hangout, Richard in Liverpool and Dave in Manchester, both lost parents at a young age, there were one or two others as well but they escape me now. Both also came to music with at least half an eye on writing about it as well as participating as musicians/ DJs, Dave writing his fanzine Debris and Richard writing one titled Strange Things Are Happening- there’s a literate side to both of them that informs everything they’ve done. Dave dives into the Q&A starting in the middle with The Grid on Top of The Pops firstly in 1993 with Crystal Clear and Mancunian door face Elton on vocals. 

Richard talks eloquently about their experiences on the show, later appearing four times to promote Swamp Thing, a song they wrote as a joke which ended up becoming a smash hit, one which took them all over the world playing to huge crowds, something they eventually became tired of especially when the record company stated to put the pressure on for a follow up. Dave and Richard then go backwards, to St Albans in the late 70s and the nascent punk scene Richard becomes a mover in and the older folk crowd in the town who not only tolerate a group of fifteen year olds but encourage them. Dave says Richard’s evocation of the St Albans scene is endearing and inspiring, something that struck me when reading the book- people crating scenes in small towns, across generations, finding places to play and making music. Not long after Richard’s band, The Innocent Vicars, make a 7″ single and Richard’s dad drives him to London where they sell the entire run of singles to Rough Trade and then turn up at Radio 1, ask to speak to John Peel, meet him on the doorstep of the BBC and give him a copy of the record which he plays the following night. From that point Richard is off on a lifelong journey in the music world. 

I won’t give to much away- you should read the book if you haven’t already. Richard Norris music runs through my record collection like the writing in a stick of rock- from the psych compilations on Bam Caruso to his adventures with Genesis P. Orridge and the acid house album they made in 1987despite not having heard any acid house records at that point- Jack The Tab- to his writing in the NME which switched me onto stuff and his records with Dave Ball as The Grid. In the mid- 90s he wrote and recorded several songs with Joe Strummer, songs which were instrumental in Joe getting a band back together again. Richard is asked from the audience how it ended with Joe- ‘badly’ is Richard’s short explanation, the circles around former members of The Clash not always easy places to navigate. Yalla Yalla is one of the results of that partnership, for my money one of Joe’s greatest solo songs. After that episode Richard spirals on making music with Erol Alkan as Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve, makes psychedelic acid house as The Time And Space Machine, forms The Long Now and The Order Of The 12 releasing albums both both and then from c2019 and into lockdown and beyond, his long running series of Music For Healing/ deep listening and ambient pieces, a project still arriving on a monthly basis at Bandcamp- Richard says that he sees Bandcamp as a new Rough Trade, the conduit between artist and listener.

Richard reads from his book for us, the chapter on meeting Strummer, the arrival of Joe and his entourage at Peter Gabriel’s Real World studio and the ensuing fun and madness which followed. As he reads he causally flings each completed page aside, a piece of stage craft he points out in a tongue in cheek way he learned from someone else doing a reading. 

Richard’s book is full of other stories- the time he spent with Sky Saxon, his adventures in New York at the NME’s expense in 1986 and his encounters with ecstasy, making a record in Amsterdam with Timothy Leary, a road trip to Mexico in Joe Strummer’s Cadillac with Shaun Ryder and Bez, and more, a life well lived with music at the centre of it. At the Q&A Richard does pause at one point to question what it’s all about, what the meaning of it all is. He recounts a trip fairly recently to Spain, hiking with Penny Rimbaud of Crass. Penny, Richard says, is a wise man, someone who surely knows what the meaning of life is. He asked him and was told sagely, ‘to serve’. 

Dave Haslam is a great host, asking the right questions, clearly interested and alert and who has also lived a life with music at the middle of it. Dave has just finished writing and publishing a series of mini- books through Manchester publishers Confingo. These are short, essay length books on very niche topics, each book small enough to fit in your pocket and short enough to read in one sitting. He had a list of topics to cover and felt a series of small books was the best way to do it, not for making a pot of money but for the joy of the writing them and then publishing them. The series tackles a variety of topics starting with Dave’s decision to sell his entire record collection (something Richard has done in recent years too), then exploring specific periods of people’s lives: Keith Haring and 80s New York; the semi- mythical months Courtney Love spent in Liverpool in 1982; Sylvia Plath’s sojourn in Paris; the Angry Brigade cell that existed in Moss Side in  the late 60s; the life and times of Cresser, Manc face, and Stone Roses dancer; Picasso’s time in early 20th century Paris; and the night Grace Jones almost recorded Houses In Motion with A Certain Ratio and Martin Hannett at Strawberry Studios in Stockport in 1980. All of these are tales worth telling and tales well told (ACR will almost certainly appear at this blog again later this week). You can get all eight here or buy them individually here.  

Back to Norro, as Joe Strummer christened him- in 2016 Beyond the Wizard’s Sleeve released this song,a gloriously melancholic piece of electronic pop, drums that patter away like Spacemen 3’s Big City, synths like mid- 80s New Order and Hannah Peel’s wistful vocals. For the full effect, go to the 12″ version. 

Sylvia

Lisa Moorish, singer with Kill City back in the early 2000s, has been out of the music industry for some time. She’s been drawn back in writing a solo album called Divine Chaos, out later on this year. It’s been led by a single released a couple of weeks ago, an electro- pop song about Sylvia Plath. Two decades ago Lisa was told she bore a strong resemblance to Sylvia Plath, something that sparked a dive into Plath’s books and life and the uncovering a number of parallels between Sylvia and Lisa. The song has been remixed by David Holmes, so frequent a visitor to these pages he’s practically resident, and the pair of remixes are a joy, David going full on acid house on the remix, the squelch and kick drum alongside Lisa’s vocal giving it massive dancefloor vibes. 

The Dub Mix strips the vocal away, concentrating solely on the mirror ball action, eight minutes of unfettered, strobe lit wonder. You can buy both remixes and the original version at Bandcamp.

Incidentally, if you’re interested in a small but beautifully packaged, meticulously researched and beautifully written account of Sylvia Plath’s time in Paris in 1956, Dave Haslam’s My Second Home is still available to purchase from Confingo Press. Dave’s series of books for Confingo are all worth collecting, small enough to fit in your pocket, an essay zooming in on a detail in pop culture from the past but with something to say about the present too. Dave’s books include Picasso in Paris in the early 20th century, All You Need Is Dynamite (the story of an early 70s terror cell the Angry Brigade based in Manchester’s Moss Side), Courtney Love’s sojourn in Liverpool in the early 80s, and the life of Cressa, a Mancunian face and former Stone Roses dancer/ associate. The next one in the series is out next month, the tale of the time Grace Jones turned up at Strawberry Studios in Stockport to sing with A Certain Ratio. 

ACR: MIF

Manchester International Festival opened on Friday night with a free performance by A Certain Ratio in a brand new outdoor space, Festival Square. The new arts centre, Factory International, has been under construction for several years (on the site of the old Granada TV studios) and has run wildly over budget. As a result they’ve had to go for naming rights sponsorship so what should have been Factory International is now The Aviva Factory International (and we could discuss whether Manchester needs to get over its constant referencing of the past, Factory Records, the black and yellow Hacienda stripes and all of that). As Tony Wilson probably never actually said, ‘This is Manchester. We do things differently here’. Well, maybe… 

The outdoor space, Festival Square, sensibly has a covered roof, is open at both sides and overlooks the River Irwell to the left and into the new arts centre to the right (a vast building with a warehouse size space and auditorium and is currently hosting what looks like a fantastic installation by Yayoi Kusama). Festival Square looks and feels like a good space, the sound was good, it’s small enough to feel fairly intimate and opened in the pouring rain on Friday night, the decision to build an outdoor gig venue with a roof paying off already. The free gigs at festival Square include The Orielles next Sunday  which I also intend to go to. Dave Haslam is heavily involved in the festival and he asked ACR to play. 

ACR play a blinder, a band about to celebrate forty five years of making music, who have been re- energised in recent years with the signing of a deal with Mute, new albums and EPs and the recruitment of a new young singer Ellen Beth Abdi and new young bassist Viv Griffin. They take the stage at 9pm with Martin on drums, drummer Don on bass and Jez centre stage on vox and whistle. Don published the setlist on Twitter (below), the group playing a mix of old and new songs, the new ones firmly established along side the older ones. By the time they get to Flight, their 1980 single and post- punk classic, they’re red hot and their back catalogue sounds like one continuous piece, a group with several signature sounds, ever moving forwards and better than ever. 

The final four songs are ACR at their best, the wayward jazz funk of Mickey Way, the Mancunian ecstasy pop of Won’t Stop Loving You (dedicated to Denise), the punk- funk noir of Shack Up and their latin percussion and drumfest of Si Firmir O Grido, everyone banging something, whistles being blown and Don and Martin swapping places at the drum stool and then back again. The gig was being filmed, a cameraman bobbing about on stage- hopefully the footage will surface sooner or later. 

The Big E

Afterwards Dave Haslam took over on stage, a DJ set of dance music old and new, joined periodically by a pair of very glamourous dancers and an MC. Dave’s set included Strings Of Life, a Manc classic going back to the Hacienda days. Dave built the tension, a breakdown and everyone waiting for the piano riff to come in like a dam bursting. Later on he played something much more modern, something I know I’ve got but can’t remember exactly what it was now, stretching it out and extending the electronic pleasure. Somehow, a largish crowd of middle aged and younger people, dancing as the rain fell only a few feet away, with dancers in drag on the stage, seemed a typically, brilliantly Mancunian way to start a hometown festival. 

Strings Of Life (Piano Mix)

Not All Roses

I’m interrupting the regular Saturday Theme series this week for an account of an event I went to on Thursday night, an event which started only two hours after the announcement of the death of the Queen (which had some strange parallels that occurred to me as I walked home). Dave Haslam- DJ, writer, journalist, man abut town- has been writing a series of mini- books over the last few years, published by Confingo, an independent publishing house based in West Didsbury. The books fit in your pocket and are a quick read, more an essay than a full length book and in Dave’s words ‘tell stories that haven’t been told’. All You Need Is Dynamite deals with a terrorist cell based in Moss Side in 1971 linked to the Angry Brigade. Another deals with Sylvia Plath and the few weeks she spent in Paris in 1956. We Are The Youth tells the story of Keith Haring’s adventures in New York’s nightclub world and Searching For Love deals the truths and rumours concerning the six month period Courtney Love spent in Liverpool in the early 80s. His latest book is called Not All Roses, the life and times of Stephen Cresser aka Cressa, the man who was the fifth Stone Rose, an ever present in their live performances and photo shoots in the 1989- 90 period, where the band went from being local heroes to a phenomenon. Dave has arranged a run of A Conversation With Cressa events, one being up the road from me in Stretford at head, a bar in a former bank on the Chester Road facing side of Stretford Arndale. 

Cressa has quite the story to tell and over a series of interviews and conversations Dave pulled it together. Cressa grew up in Firswood, a mile north of Stretford and became a member of the Happy Mondays road crew, a Hacienda face, the man who danced on stage with The Roses and operated John Squire’s FX pedals. In the mid 90s he tried to get his own group- Bad Man Wagon- off the ground and failed trying (Dave said in his intro this was almost what the book was about, the band that didn’t make it whose story is as interesting as the ones that did). More recently Cressa became homeless and addicted to heroin, begging on the streets of the city centre and this is where the public conversation begins, Cressa speaking openly, honestly and passionately about the situation he got himself into. Cressa is a livewire, Dave asking questions, being the butt of the jokes at times, steering Cressa back towards the story and keeping the freewheeling conversation on track. 

Cressa talks of his first musical experiences, albums by The Stranglers, and the time in the 80s when he first encounters and becomes friends with the people who would several years later become magazine front cover stories. On scooter club runs he meets Ian Brown and John Squire and they become firm friends. At the Hacienda, at a time when a crowd of two hundred people was considered a good turn out, he meets members of Happy Mondays and starts to go with them when they play gigs outside the city, the man in the back of the van who eventually gets paid to carry amps and instruments into and out of gig venues. He speaks warmly about Derek, Shaun and Paul Ryder’s dad, the man who was the band’s one man road crew. He talks about John Squire giving Cressa the job of operating his guitar pedals, a job that seems unnecessary in many ways as most guitarists operate their pedals themselves with their feet- he thanks John for doing this and says that when it came to it there was no choice between staying with the Mondays and joining the Roses, it was The Stone Roses every time. Cressa introduces them to some of the musical influences that would hone their sound, 60s psychedelia, Jimi Hendrix, The Nazz, The Rain Parade. The three way friendship between Ian, John and Cressa comes across as the glue that held the group together in the late 80s. He then talks about how after the gig at Glasgow Green, 9th June 1990, that was it- the band stopped functioning. No more gigs, no more records for five years and Cressa suddenly out of the set up. 

As well as the heavier serious stuff- heroin addiction, homelessness, generation defining guitar bands and the way that they blew it after having it all- Cressa, emotions always close to the surface, is also witty, sparky and warm, still able to talk affectionately about the good times. He appears with The Stone Roses on Tony Wilson’s late night, north west only music programme The Other Side Of Midnight, the band’s first TV appearance with the group in their cocky prime playing Waterfall, their dreamiest moment. Cressa by this point is wearing flares, a sartorial pioneer of the bell bottomed jeans in Manchester. In the clip the rest of the group are cool as you like, looking like a 60s/ late 80s street gang, but definitely not wearing flares. Cressa is dancing behind John’s amp, doing the loose limbed rolling shoulders shuffle, his wide legged trousers hidden from view. Six months later, as Cressa grins ruefully at Head, they were all wearing them, Ian in famously 22″ bell bottomed jeans. 

There was an interview in the NME around that time, when The Roses were making their seemingly effortless ascent. In ’89 they often came across as a political band, talking about lemons as protection against CS gas as sued by riot police, the Paris riots of Mai ’68, anti- monarchical and anti- establishment. They placed great store in being against the monarchy. In the interview they talked about the ravens at the Tower Of London and the myth that if the ravens leave the tower, England would fall. Ian (or John) mentions wanting to be at the Tower, shooting the ravens. The interview then goes onto the subject of trousers and their width- in the 80s flares were a big deal, they had been so unfashionable for so long that wearing them was a statement. ‘Flares’, one of them says in the interview, ‘are as important as England falling actually’. 

Their debut album came out in early May 1989 and they toured extensively to support it, Cressa there every night, part of the gang, the man who gave them a strong part of their look, dancing away behind John Squire. When you flipped the record over, side two opened with this.

Elizabeth My Dear

And here we are, several decades later. 

Scooters, flares, homelessness, heroin, cough medicine, the Festival of The Tenth Summer, albums by The Stranglers, the Hacienda, Bez, Joe Strummer… you can find it all in the book here priced only eight pounds. 

Another former Stone Rose present at Head was Andy Couzens, another man who suddenly and unexpectedly found himself an- ex Stone Rose. Andy took his guitar and went off to form The High. I had a brief chat with him, told him how much I liked his records and said I saw The High play at Liverpool Poly in 1990, a gig he said he remembered. Talking to Dave afterwards we both mentioned the Newcastle gig on the same tour where singer John Matthews was taken ill and Cressa, by this point touring with The High, was persuaded to go onstage and fill in on vocals. The gig ended in what the NME described as a riot. They never quite got the sales to match their still wonderful sounding 1990 debut album, Somewhere Soon, a record with three shimmering guitar pop singles in Box Set Go, Up And Down and Take Your Time. This song, chiming guitars and reverb soaked vocals, is one of the period’s lost gems. 

Take Your Time

The Way I Feel

In the days immediately following Isaac’s death we were overwhelmed with cards and flowers, so many that it became difficult to find space for them all in the front room. Among the hundreds of messages of love, condolences and support came a card from a friend with a quote from Raymond Carver on the front. It turns out that this little piece of poetry called Late Fragment is inscribed on Carver’s gravestone.

The poem had a big impact on me when it arrived in December, in the early stages of grief while also organising Isaac’s funeral and trying to pull together his eulogy. It hits me still reading it now. It’s beautiful, saying so much in so few words. 

Raymond Carver wrote short stories, usually about the quiet and sometimes sad and lonely lives of ordinary American men and women. His writing tends to lean towards brevity, realism and reflection. I remember reading a book of his short stories in the late 80s, probably because I read a review of it when he died in 1988. I hadn’t then thought of Raymond Carver’s work until three summers ago when I read Dave Haslam’s Sonic Youth Slept On My Floor and he mentioned Carver. I ordered a book of his short stories and read it while on holiday in France and found it a very different experience reading Carver and about the people in his stories in my late 40s compared to first reading them in my late teens. 

Yesterday while scrolling aimlessly through Twitter on my phone I was stopped in my tracks by a poem by Constantine Cavafy, written in 1904. Cavafy was Greek and wrote in Greek so are a few few slightly different translations but this one was the one I found and had a similar impact to Carver’s all those week’s ago. 

It doesn’t go away, it’s always there but sometimes I now find myself doing things- reading, writing for the blog, teaching, watching something on TV- where for a few minutes it has gone to the back of my mind, where it’s not immediately present and causing a ball of pain in my chest and stomach. It crashes back in suddenly, hitting me anew. Sometimes it’s triggered by something- a photo of him or being in a place where we used to go. Sometimes, like yesterday while out walking before it went dark, it was suddenly thinking about his hands, possibly because when we walked I’d hold his hand. Grief is a fucker, it sneaks up and crushes you and does it time and time again. Onward we go though, because there’s nothing else to do, is there?

Today’s music is more from James plus this blog’s patron Andrew Weatherall. James moved to Rough Trade after leaving Sire and put out two singles that again should have been hits but weren’t- Sit Down and Come Home. The latter was a November 1989 release, the Manchester scene well in the ascendancy, The Roses, Mondays and 808 State gatecrashing Top Of The Pops. Finally, leaving Rough Trade and washing up at Fontana, in June 1990 Come Home was re- released and made it through to radio and TV. According to Wiki it still only peaked at number 32- I thought it got much higher- but it slipped into indie disco and popular consciousness. It was remixed by Weatherall, a massive sounding summer of 90 indie- dance tune, a track that is all sirens and synths, a breakbeat and a huge bassline, a sample from Stutter, a lovely piano riff five minutes in, and that breathless Tim Booth refrain, ‘and the way I feel just makes me want to scream/ come home/ come home/ come home’. 

Come Home (Skunk Weed Skank Mix)

On some releases the remix is labelled the Andy Weatherall Remix, on some the Skunk Weed Skank Mix. It seems they are the same mix. I think Skunk Weed Skank seems more likely to be what Andrew would have titled it.