The Day After

Every so often I have such a brilliant time that I forget all the convolutions and upsets that have happened in my life and feel like the luckiest person alive.
The Bristol musician Tim Rippington started up Pop! Not Hate several months ago and has put a massive amount of energy into organising gigs all over the place; there are different combinations of bands playing these gigs in different parts of England (there's even one coming up in Wales, but due to the size of Arrest! Charlie Tipper, not Scotland yet: finding places of seven people to sleep is not easy).
Johny Brown, the force behind The Band of Holy Joy, more or less donated his gig at The Star and Shadow in Newcastle, to Pop! Not Hate, and Saturday's gig had collection buckets which I gather were pretty full by the end of the evening.
The Oldfield Youth Club travelled up from London and so did I; the opening band was Hector Gannett, a group of predominantly guitarists who played slow and moving songs over hurdy-gurdy like sounds, accompanied by black and white archive footage of 1950s and 1960s shipbuilders, fish smokers and other dead industries that had previously thrived in the northeast. The show was a riveting storytelling experience that pulled you into the magical world of the past. The fact that we were experiencing this in a new co-op arts centre literally built by its users, underlined the survival of the human spirit against those who wish to control and destroy people's autonomy. It was an intense start to the evening but everyone was completely pulled in by the experience.
Next up were Oldfield Youth Club. They play tight, energetic and upbeat songs with a good deal of positive energy. It's great to see a female bass player up there (go Kim!!!) and they soon created  mood of celebration and a really good Saturday night vibe.
Bit difficult for a solo artists to follow that but big up the girls in the crowd- they came to the front and started dancing and made my job easy, Actually it was a real blast to have to rise to the challenge! We sang happy birthday to Margi who was waltzing with her mates down in the (dare I say it) mosh pit and it was REALLY GOOD FUN!
And of course the main attraction, Band of Holy Joy, were on fire. This was a homecoming gig for Johny, and you could feel the love in the room. There have been different versions of the band over the years: I went to some of their very early gigs, but always at the centre of it all is Johny and his vision: committed, spiritual, songs evolving out of deep emotional thought. Accompanied by Inge's visuals, this was a rowdy, boisterous, cathartic climax to the night with terrific songs. Johny is in fine voice and commands the room with authority: he holds the audience in the palm of his hands and they got two encores from their delighted fans.
It was just such a good night, it really was. It could not have been better. Huge thanks to the Star and Shadow for making us all dinner too; after the travelling, sitting and eating together, well that was lovely social experience.
And Pauline and Rob from Penetration came too!
The next day BOHJ picked me up from Newcastle Central Station and we drove to Leicester's The Musician. It couldn't have been more different, but oddly it was just as good. The sound at The Musician is as clear as a bell, and Andy, who drives the band around, made some recordings. This night was promoted by the musician Kevin Hewick, whose songs are acoustic and verging on the 'outsider' in their subject matter. One is about a racehorse with a skin condition that necessitated it wearing a cover at all times; this was hard to visualise. The horse could have been Jesus, Kevin said. They were good songs, with some very intricate guitar picking. Later, after my set, he came over and said to me 'You know all the secret chords!' I had felt the same about him, so that was rather flattering! I enjoyed the BOHJ's set even more on Sunday than I had the day before- I felt like I really knew the songs and I could work out how they fitted together (nerdy musician stuff) and the clarity of the sound made it like watching a CD come to life, or listening to a CD come to life, whichever and whatever.
Part of it all was the van bantz and listening to mellow songs on the radio on the way there and the way back. I had no idea I knew all the words to Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines! We listened to Doris Day, and Carol King's version of You've Got a Friend (another song I didn't realise I knew all the words to) which resonated with me very strongly, and all sort of other stuff.
I so appreciate all this, all this musical life, these people, and friendships from way back; three years ago, I felt like the most lonely and dejected person on the planet and I am hugely grateful to the people who helped me back then, and to the people that share their musical journey with each other. We are all so different from each other, but we share the desire to create and make social connections through that. What a lovely thing.
(I wonder whether I'll delete this post tomorrow on the grounds of post-tour emotional over-wroughtness!)