I've taken something of a break from gigs in this extraordinary year of mine which seems in many ways quite unlike any I've ever lived in my life thus far. Every year of your life really should be different from the one that precedes itself and the one which lies ahead. But sometimes, inevitably, we lose track of the overall picture and weeks and months even years become something of a blur. We can be said to have lost the plot.
I think it happens to us all although I can only speak with any authority about myself. It certainly happened to me. Anyhow I've managed somehow to readjust my gears and horizons and seem set for a period of clear driving on an open road where I know where I'm heading. At least for the time being.
So Do Nothing. A Nottingham band that are generally labelled Post Punk. They're not alone. Almost every band that comes out of the traps is labelled a Post Punk band these days. Every single one. They often seem to label themselves this. It seems to offer advantageous career paths being a Post Punk band. Slots on good stages at Glastonbury, favourable articles and reviews in Mojo. I find something slightly depressing and repetitive about this state of affairs. Anyhow, I'm getting ahead of myself. I'll tell you about my day which had much to recommend it then come back and whinge some more. If you're still with me,
I'm having a quiet week this week which allows me to surface at a reasonable hour and breakfast at leisure in my dressing gown as if I were actually Noel Coward and I'd chosen being a general man about town rather than teaching English for Academic Purposes to earn my living. Anyhow it allowed me the luxury of listening through to a couple of records in their entirety as I like to given the chance most mornings.
My flat is full of vinyl records, probably the best part of 1,000 or maybe more. I'm sorry, I'm sad but not sufficiently sad to actually count them, just so I can tell you. So every morning I choose something to listen to which suits my mood, then photograph it and share a few photos of its sleeves and related artwork on social media. There I told you I was sad, but this I'd maintain is a mild form of sadness.
Today I choose Radiohead' In Rainbows and Naima Bock's Giant Palm. They put me in a mellow mood and then I go for a swim and sauna which made me increasingly mellow and then I wander into my workplace. Best to show my face. In my workplace there are currently waves of terror flowing. It's something akin to Soviet Russia in the thirties if you're interested in a cultural analogy. Anyway that's all you need to know on that front for the time being. I'll save the rest for my memoirs.
I thought I'd head down to Rosie's, one of my old haunts and probably the pub I'd choose to die in, if I had to die in a pub. Given the amount of time I've spent in pubs in my adult lifetime it's probably a good place for me to pop my clogs as anywhere when that time eventually comes.
I've gone off Rosie's in recent years. It has a regular barman, Urry Up 'Arry who I actively despise and many of my favourite people don't go much anymore. But Amy was there today and I like Amy and it was free Jukebox Tuesday, so I could hope for no more. I chose a few New Wave classics, Stranglers, Only Ones and settled into chat with her.
Not unnaturally we talked about Decca, one of the true regulars and true characters of Rosie's. Decca is Derek, everybody has a nickname if they're working class and Geordie, they wouldn't allow them into the place otherwise.
Decca is in his mid Seventies and an ex-servicemen. He'll happily regale you to bawdy tales of one legged whores on South Sea islands who entertained the lads on shore leave if that's the kind of bar chat that lights your pipe.
He's a very funny guy. Particularly when accompanied by his best mate Davy Green. At their best they can drive me to tears of uncontrollable laughter with their unbelievable blue and deeply profane banter..
On Sunday Decca went for a bit of fresh air twenty minutes into the match. The rest of us were sitting at our tables with our drinks. He collapsed suddenly as if poleaxed by sniper fire from the open window of the third floor flat above the bookies across the road.
Cue general disorder inside the bar. Urry Up 'Arry stampeding gracelessly like a rhino shot with a poisoned dart. Other friends rushing to the scene which soon resembled Turner's Death of Nelson.
Decca was not given smelling salts but he was revitalised and returned to a stool at the bar and fed sugar. Amy says he's OK. Another bar room drama to change the subject from football for a moment. A few days later I have heard that Decca has recovered and is currently beginning his training for the Steeplechase at the next Olympics. So you can relax. Watch this space.
A couple of hours later I leave my flat and take the short walk from there to the Quayside. Past the bearded and paunchy beggar outside the Royal Station who always greets me with 'Could you spare me some change...' and 'Have a nice evening...' when it's generally two o'clock in the afternoon or 'Where's your hat?' when I'm not wearing a hat.
Then to the actual New Castle and opposite it The Bridge Hotel. One of the greatest bars in Europe, never mind Newcastle. If you disagree, you haven't been there long enough or entered its doorways. It has everything that makes a pub great. You'll have to take my word for it. I'm not listing them now. I'm not even going in.
Instead I descend the slope to the Quayside. I'm hungry and fancy something filling. As I come down a different slope to my 58th birthday, and I'll get there tomorrow morning when I wake, I like to eat out whenever I can. I like it more with company but its fine when the bowl of risotto is quite as good as the risotto I eat at Babucho, a classy Italian diner I visit for the first time this evening. It's opposite The Crown Posada if the picture of my risotto above whets your appetite.
Now the walk down the Quayside. I always enjoy that, if the weather's fair. Anyhow I'm in a good mood..The weather is great and I'm thinking things like 'This moment will never ever happen quite this way ever again' and stuff like that. Maybe I should give Jonathan Livingston Seagull a go. I'm at the end of the worthwhile bit of the Quayside now . Up the stone staircase to The Free Trade, another of Newcastle's finest bars, with the best view of the Quayside and Newcastle's signature bridges in Toon.
I always hope that Billy and Chris are here and often Billy is. But not tonight. Never mind. I'm in such a good mood that I'm not to be discouraged. It's my favourite time of year, the setting sun is casting great shadows across the walls. My evening is coming to its reason for being.
I see a middle aged guy sitting on a table against the wall opposite me. I don't know him but he's wearing a great Velvet Underground t shirt. The front cover of the Loaded album cover. I wish I was wearing it. I go across and tell him and there's a look of recognition between us. Like a secret handshake. Words are unnecessary. In a way the Velvet Underground sum up a lot of the best things about life if you're a music lover. A culture to live by.
Anther pleasant stroll. The descent to The Ouseburn Valley and The Cluny. I've managed my time well today. I still have forty five minutes before support band Humour are due. Plenty of time for another beer at The Cumberland Arms.
So I'm off again like a duracell bunny. Up another stone staircase, this time an overgrown one and in darkness and I watch my step because I don't want to stumble, I get my beer from a guy in Trotsky glasses the kind of spectacles I started wearing when I was 18, and turn into the backroom bar.
The ukelele orchestra of the backroom bar of The Cumberland Arms is in full flow. The ukelele orchestra of the backroom bar of The Cumberland Arms seem to play this place every time, every single time, I ever come here. A set of beaming radiant fifty, sixty and seventy faces strumming ukeleles or close variations on them, sometimes vaguely in tune.
I thank them and leave. Time to drain the rest of the beer before Humour are due onstage down in the valley . I sit in the garden enjoying the rest of my pint. Turning back to the pub I see a highly recognisable silhouette. I'm straining my eyes, they're not what they once were. But it's him. It's Steve. Mr Steve Drayton. With his partner Helen.
I go and greet them. I love Steve, and Helen is equally great. There are some people you just like bumping into. Steve is a local celebrity of sorts, A man around town who always spreads good vibes. He set up and hosted the wonderful Record Player nights which started soon after I arrived here and which made me feel a part of the local community. In turn this led to be reaffirming the importance of my record collection and primarily my vinyl collection to me, just as I was reunited with it. It introduced me to great local characters like Chris and Billy. Eventually it led me to start writing this blog. For better or worse.
Five minutes in Steve and Helen's company is great. But my time running out and anyway we've agreed to meet in a week or so. Back down the slope. I arrive to a reasonably full but hardly heaving venue just as Scots Humour shamble onstage.
The rest of the evening is not as purely enjoyable as my day has been. You can't win them all. It's still memorable in its way. It's a Post Punk Evening. Of the sort happening up and down the country every night of the week these days.
Humour hail from Glasgow. There are five of them. They come across as characters. Characters, a band indeed, from the pages of This is Memorial Device, the fabulous novel about the original Post Punk years by David Keenan.
They favour jittering, paranoid rhythms and baying disturbed football chanting, if football chanting was Daddaist, which the four front players on stage join in with in impressive abandon. I enjoy it but long for a chorus and choruses are clearly not a currency they deal in. The currency they deal in is rather too commonplace these days. Wherever you go.
I had higher hopes for Do Nothing. Their debut album Snake Sideways has been one of the more intriguing debuts from a young guitar band that I've heard in recent years, It reminded me of the mostly forgotten but singular Furniture and the lead singer made me think of the early Kevin Rowland. They're Midlanders themselves, from Nottingham and have some of that part of the world's sullen down to earth resignation about them.
But once they appear onstage they sound like the mass of bands plying their trade these days. Onstage they lose the nuance of their recorded output and produce noise. A lot of it. They're ordinary. Those around me seem mightily enthused but I'm left cold.
Meanwhile the singer, who on record reminded me of Kevin and was capable of beguiling narrative now makes me think of .... Mark E. Smith. Smith's Fall and Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds seem to be the gospel chapters these days. The New Canon. Along with Gang of Four and Joy Division. I love the originals. But this is no longer original. I dread the prospect of years of nights out of this sort to come. I think I'll need to be more selective.
Anyhow.it's all part of my ongoing education. I'll be back for more. Once I've turned 58. I'll be back for more on Tuesday to be precise. French Motorik Groovers En Attendant Ana. At the Cumberland Arms again. One thing I'm fairly sure if. They will not sound anything like The Fall or The Gang of Four. I look forward to hearing what they do sound like.
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