Queue at Tea Hut, Barnet Football Ground, Barnet Chesterfield Match, Wintertime

 

Hastings Coming Up!

 

Laura Whitfield's Poetry Book

This is Laura's book of poetry, which I was honoured to provide the cover illustration for!

Ullapool, Saturday 17th August

Thanks to Ruth Tidmarsh for the photo, Sot Otter for the poster, and Bernie Harrison for the collage.

 

Wylam Institute Gig: More

I've had to post the photos (thanks Cathy!) separately because this platform is really glitchy this morning.

Anyway- Saturday's gig was unbelievable. I hadn't realised how nervous I'd been until I got there, but Phil Ogg and his crew were setting up and already buzzing. I've known Phil for millions of years: he is one of the thousands of friends that my youngest brother has/had in Wylam, who all still know each other, and who all (it seemed) turned out for the gig later that night. After a quick sound check I met with my brothers and sister in The Ship, where I used to go to Wylam Folk Club when I was about 16 years old, and we sat and chatted for a while. 

Back at the Institute, the seats were filling up. Phil told everyone that the bar would only serve between acts, which meant there was no chat, clinking, smashing glasses, rattling of ice cubes or any of that lark going on while people played.

Osaka Jo played first. She is a singer/songwriter with an absolutely lovely voice that set the tone for a listening evening that carried on all night. The audience was entranced by her music, and she was well-appreciated by everyone in the room.

The second act, Floppy Posture, could not have been more different. A six-piece, they are fronted by Simon Brough (who I used to bell-ring with when we were about 14 and 15 respectively), and lovely accordion player Keren Banning. They played a set of gentle, good-time songs that were really catchy and got a few people dancing. Their bass player Alex was familiar- he was part of a group pf people that Simon's brother Andy used to know. Andy died a couple of years ago, and was a very good school friend. We used to go round his house and listen to a group of his friends jamming on guitars in the hallway of the house.

Musically, Floppy Posture are excellent: there are trumpet lines that harmonise with accordion lines, vocal harmonies that fill out the sound, some unusual cover versions (Just Can't get Enough), and lots of memorable melodies. Simon had told me about them rehearsing in a  quarry beside his house, and it was a complete delight to be able to hear them in real life. They scored a well-deserved encore.

I was last on, and was relieved to see that everyone was still there. Honestly, as a musician it's incredible to see a sea of faces who are ready to listen to an unfamiliar set because they have come to have a good night out, and are ready to appreciate whatever's on offer. You could feel the warmth radiating from the audience, and it was an absolute privilege to play to the village crowd of all ages (children, Anne who is 92, everything between and even a well-behaved dog). I pushed aside the sea of Institute memories that came flooding in (jumble sales, dancing in The Pied Piper of Hamelin, the village show, Girl Guides), and thoroughly enjoyed singing and playing. Thanks to my siblings for making the journey, it was lovely to see a friend who I went to school with when I was six and who came over from Stocksfield, lovely to see Jane and Anne, and Cathy who came from Amble, Andy's rowdy friends (hooray!) and thanks to the sound guy who did a brilliant job, but most of all thanks to Phil Ogg who hit on the idea during a phone conversation and put it all into action, every little detail: selling tickets in the greengrocer's, hiring the Institute, and all of those really important things that make a night really work. His helper friends also deserve a big mention, especially for smiling a lot and just generally adding to the good atmosphere. 

These gigs in small places really matter. It's a big bad world out there, and every effort people make to swim against that tide is an essential element in turning it in the opposite direction. 

End of post by happy Helen, apart from a little video of the church bells at St Oswin's being rung up on Sunday morning, ready for the formal sequence that calls the congregation to the morning service.

Wylam Institute Gig

 

Old Times: So Long Elon

 

Man Plays Grand Piano In Charity Shop

 

Back Of Album Cover

It's gradually materialising, and the idea is there for the front.

Man At Dry Cleaners

 

From 2017

 

Ullapool Saturday 17th August

 

Blackpool Rebellion Festival: A Random Narrative

These photographs have uploaded in a completely random way; the first two are from the beginning of my journey home. But if you have patience, I will talk you through it all, from the personal perspective this year as an interviewer on the Literary Stage.

The 'hotel' that I stayed in last year was terrifying; I suspect it was a smack dealership. This year I checked in to the Imperial, an imposing hotel about half a mile from the town centre on the seafront. My room had it's weirdnesses (a volume control for the TV by the bathroom mirror, and a huge window that opened on to a flat roof that was too anxiety-inducing to leave open at night. But it was comfortable and the walk to and from the Winter Gardens along the deserted front was spectacular at any time of day: just sea and sky and the sound of (I think) skylarks over the sand.

Checking in, I met Herman de Tollinare (who archives Dutch women punk band activity) and his colleague from The Netherlands, and Michelle from Brigandage. It took a while, but as soon as I had my wristband I went to look for Herman. He'd disappeared into a non-Rebellion pub full of awful baying, screaming white men and I simply couldn't face it and went to get a pizza. Palmolive and her family were there and invited me to join them, but I wanted a bit of thinking time and sat by myself- until Del Strangefish, who was at the next table with his son, struck up a conversation. He had been at the Woodingdean pop-up Chefs gig with his wife, and reminded me that he was  the guitarist with Peter and the Test-Tube Babies, one of the best known Brighton punk bands. He's now a solo artist and author (see later) and gave me a copy of his album. He's now given up touring and turned down a tour of Australia recently, having taught a friend how to play all the songs. The service in the caff was slow, but it was a sunny evening and it was really relaxing to sit there and chat with assorted punks drifting past on the way to the festival.

"Look mam, there's a punk!', piped up a little voice. Well yes, rather a lot of them actually.

On Thursday I did two interviews on the Literary Stage, the first and last of the day. The first one was Paul Eccentric, he of the Rrrants Poetry Collective then, now the author of The Periwinkle Perspective series of steampunk books, and still a performer. The books are hilarious romps through plot and parody and despite a leg in a cast, Paul was on a roll. I went to see them later in the florid environment of the Spanish Room where the acoustic stage is situated. As always, their smutty humour attracted a nipper and their dad, but the nipper had ear protectors that appeared to filter out the smut as well as the volume. This was Paul as a member of The Antipoet duo, and they had their posse with them cheering them on. 

I bumped into Palmolive and her sister Esperanza again, and we went to get a chickpea curry in the artist and crew area. Through the wall we could hear a great punky band with a saxophone but we had no idea who they were. On another walk, I saw a gaggle of black St Bernards dressed in bondage gear. They were rather aromatic (thick coats in hot weather, probably), and collecting for a charity. 

Just before Palmolive on the Literary stage, Roadent (ex-roadie to The Clash and The Sex Pistols) was being interviewed. He was quite nervous, but his anecdotes and life story were really engaging. I particularly liked the story about wages (The Clash, £5 a week; The Sex Pistols £10 a week) and his eventual source of additional income, which was selling original Who Killed Bambi scripts from a box he found in the rehearsal studio for £50 a pop!

The interview with Palmolive went really well, mainly because I didn't have to interview her because she is a natural raconteur. Just beforehand we whizzed down to see a bit of Essential Logic. Even that tiny fragment of the gig was wonderful, and made my hair stand on end. I wished we could have heard more, but we had a job to do ourselves. Paloma is very funny and very frank, and I really relate to her decisions just to get out of situations that made her feel dispirited or uncomfortable. She did accidentally call Bernie Rhodes Bernie Sanders a couple of times, but this only endeared her to the audience. This was the first time (third time lucky!) that her Powerpoint had worked, and the photographs tied in perfectly to her life story as an early punk. Afterwards she retired to the Art Market, which had stayed open late specially, and did a thriving trade in signed posters and artworks.

Speaking of which, John Robb was there signing books, and Gaye Black was also selling her artwork. I really love her work because it is such a fine balance between the delicate and the macabre. Here's her website: https://www.gayeblack.co.uk/

The walk back to the hotel was spectacular; the sea was glowing with a greenish hue and the sky was a weird colour. It was still quite hot, and it felt like walking through a deserted Miami. There are a lot of cream-painted thirties-built architectural sproutings between the road and the beach along that north Blackpool promenade, and they loomed out of the gloom like the set of a film waiting for its stars to turn up. The whole time, Blackpool tries to upstage the drama of floods of punks in all their finery. I'm not sure which one wins; it's a very exciting combo, anyway.

In the morning, I went for breakfast and looked on while a couple of rufty-tufty punk chaps helped some older women out of their mobility vehicles into chairs outside the café. I don't think I've ever known a bunch of people with such perfect manners. 

At the Literary Stage, I listened to Paul Raggity's funny stories with a bunch of regular lunch break story-time fans; Zoe Howe was next, and she spotted Palmolive in the audience while she was talking about her book on The Slits. One of her comments later in the interview, about songs being magical in the way they can affect feelings and emotions in a very short space of time rang very true: I have always felt that they are like spells and incantations. It was a real pleasure to see her again and I had a quick chat with her and her husband Dylan afterwards.

Later, John Robb interviewed Dale Vince from Ecotricity. I had mixed feelings about him; there was an undercurrent of him magicking money out of somewhere to manufacture windmills, an electric car and various other things despite his insistence that he'd scavenged everything from dumps and other places where people discard things. Maybe I have an innate distrust for the stories of entrepreneurs, especially when they insist they have been really poor.

Dominic Warwick, one of the festival organisers, plays bass in the band MDM, and I whizzed down to see them play their dynamic punk in the Club Casbah before looking for Jennie (the other organiser) with Gaye and Eric. We had either missed her or got there too early, and I wanted to find Pauline Murray, who was the third person I would be speaking to. Luckily, I bumped into her and her family outside the building, and we arranged to talk through her questions later on. 

Michelle was in the Green Room, and so was Carl who was in the Chefs, and we talked a bit about the compilation; Ian Damaged was around with the Damaged Goods staff, and I'm hoping we manage to do some press interviews together with James when the album comes out. Cassie Fox was there too, and we had a very quick chat: I Doris were on the next day, which meant I'd miss them, but we will meet up for a coffee soon.

After watching some of Michelle's interview, I slipped out to talk to Pauline before her interview and go over the questions. Once on stage she was really on form, and the hall was packed. Later, she signed copies of her book and I was able to introduce her very quickly to Palmolive even though she had a large queue to get through.

I'd hoped to nab another Mr Whippy on the seafront before I got the train home (what a punk name for an ice cream), but it had started raining. At the station, a distraught young woman was queueing for the train with her very glamorous mum. The mum asked me to help her daughter to change trains at Preston, so we sat together for that leg of the journey. The young woman was Russian and had been at a Star Trek convention in Blackpool, along with a whole load of other trekkies. She was a Vaporwave fan, an illustrator (she showed me a beautifully coloured Manga-inspired character from a comic she is planning to create), and a fluent speaker of Klingon. A member of the Klingon Language Academy, she told me all about the significance of the glottal stop in the language, which she speaks at a weekly Zoom get-together with speakers form other nations. I told her that it is rather like International Sign Language, because it's a language-in-common used to communicate between people with different mother tongues. She's also obtained a Klingon's autograph.

What an exhausting but wonderful couple fo days. I was asked to take my guitar just in case, but the opportunity didn't arise. I was quite happy to concentrate on interviewing this year, especially because the people I spoke to were so interesting and inspiring.

It was very pleasing to see photographs of the punks (the German ones, mainly) clearing up after the thugs had been. People at the festival knew on Friday what was on its way, and were concerned about their security team, in particular. It's hard to say anything about the violent fools who followed social media orders and showed up in various places yesterday and today. What a waste of time and energy, and how weak to follow instructions from emotionally illiterate millionaires to trash their own communities. No more about that. My two-day dip into Rebellion was thrilling, as I'd expected. Roll on next year, and top marks to Dom, Jenny, and Paul and Jo in the Green Room for smiling through it all! Thanks also to Herman for the Patty Pin comic and the Cheap'n'Nasty t-shirt, which I'll wear with pride.

 

Wylam Next Saturday

 

Here's the link! 

https://www.gigantic.com/helen-mccookerybook-tickets/wylam-wylam-institute/2024-08-10-19-00

Look Mam, There's a Punk!

 Photos and blah coming later from my two days at the Rebellion festival, Blackpool.