What I Did Last Night - Lankum at the Boiler Shop

I'm becoming a creature of habit. I find it suits me. I need it in order to be content come the end of the day. I'm facing an enormous set of new challenges and in order to be able to rise to them I find I need to adopt and adhere to a certain discipline,

I rise while it's still dark. Go downstairs make some tea and start a long breakfast. I like to stretch my breakfast out as long as I can see days. I put my headphones on, listen to the Tapir! album and write my review which I posted on here yesterday.

I'm slow in terms of dressing and heading out. I notice on social media it's Sam's 25th birthday. Sam is my Rock & Roll friend. Lead singer of local deadbeats and Magic Band impressionists and part time floppy doll scarecrow..Sam's great. 

I enter the shop and let him know I know it's his birthday. 'Sam, have you got Happy Birthday by Altered Images? Have you got Happy Birthday by The Beatles. It's on The White Album. Have you got Happy Birthday To You by Stevie Wonder.' 'No Bruce. I don't have any records called Happy Birthday.' 'Well Happy Bithday Can I have a tab?' He's playing Devo. Sam's always playing something good. Devo are always one of the interesting ones. Their myth of origins. Their mission statement. How right they were about so many things.

Sam gives me a cigarette. A real one. I don't smoke any more. Except one of someone else's every few days. Other people's always taste better. It's hardly the worst crime in the world. It's highly addictive you know. Not good for you. This one doesn't really work.That's not Sam's fault. It's mine.

I wander down to The Royal Station Hotel into the full fathom gale that seems to have been blowing right full on into all of our faces all  the way through January. Sometimes it's bracing if the sky is clear, other times you suspect you might be decapitated by dislodged slates, crushed by uprooted trees or collapsing walls. It's slightly unnerving frankly. Haven't we got enough to contend with. What with politicians and people in our lives. Work. Thinking the sky is about to fall on our heads too is just too much to cope with on top of all that.

Dave is behind the desk in the Fitness Centre crouching in the doorway almost  wincing because the fire alarm is bleeping at full volume which it seems to have been doing unrelentingly for days. I feel for him and comisserate. It's bad enough that they're all on minimum wage, are treated with contempt by management and this seems like it must be possibly the most boring job in the world . They're all very friendly, approachable and have excellent banter considering. I like chatting to people behind the desk.

I'm increasingly adhering to routine as a guiding prunciple for organising my day. A few months in the Fitness Centre has taught me a bit. The value health wise of doing the circuit. Half an hour in the roasting sauna in two shifts. The plunge pool because even though I dread it, it pays dividends. Ten lengths in the small pool. Plenty of showers.

I also hope I'll get a good chat while I'm here. It's something I expect from my couple of hours here. Today it's with a tattoed bike courier I've met before. Nice guy. His surname is Champion and his descendents he tells me, if you go back some were Hugenouts. We talk about governments, surveillance, groups and clubs and and not really wanting to be controlled by them. 

It's a great chat. Not as miserable as it sounds by any means. It's the real deal, The kind of thing that makes me know that I'm going in the right direction. Not sitting in a staff room with people around me whinging about how they hate their jobs rather than comparing notes about what they're doing in their lessons, swapping activities and aproaches or talking about what they love about their lives. What makes them happy. Best practice. I wonder if they're good teachers sometimes.

From there I go home. Call mum. Always great to chat to mum. Then off into town. To Grey Street Opticians the designer place by the Monument. I'm being exceptionally frugal this year, my belt tightened to the last notch. It's the new me. Sometimes it pays to think to the future. But I'm going to treat myself to glasses with cool frames at the end of the month when money goes into my account. 

Cool framed spectacles seems to be almost a niche consumer pursuit in itself now. Every niche interest it appears has a tribe of obsessives and it's all focussed upon to an exhaustive degree. All of the young assistants in the Grey Street Opticians today are sporting a particular pair which stops you in your tracks. I should know about this tendency to obsess on objects. Recently I've joined interest groups on West German Pottery, Liminal Spaces, Art Deco, Surrealism and share images on Social Media at every opportunity. It passes the time.

Back in the flat I put on Lankum's False Lankum to set the mood for the evening ahead of me. I've got a ticket for the gig of the month and possibly the year. Lankum, Contemporary Irish Folk band swept all before them last year. It was an interesting phenomena. Like a wave that gathered, mounted and refused to crash. It's still mounting now. 

False Lankum, the phenomenal album they released early in the year swept all before it by the end of it. It won virtually every music rundown that was going at the end of the year. Mojo, Uncut, Guardian. They pretty much all bowed before it. Why this happened exactly is slightly harder to comprehend and interpret but I guess it's something that should just be appreciated and enjoyed. Something so good capturing the zeitgeist for a change. Generally it's things that I don't understand, say nothing to me and leave me cold.

I've had a relaxed, happy day. Time to head out, I grab my hat, though I'm aware that I'll clutch the top of my head as soon as I'm outdoors to stop it being carried off by the relentless gale and head off for The Telegraph. 

Amy, the gorgeous barmaid and my friend and confidant for a couple of years now is holding court behind the bar at The Telegraph. She has the finest beehive in Newcastle, a cool Bet Lynch. She serves me a fruit cider, hands me a pint with ice to pour it into and I watch the first half of the match.

It's Newcastle, away at Fulham in the cup. I've been a Newcastle supporter since I was six. Living and working in Newcastle for fifteen years. All my friends from here support them. But for some reason I've become oddly emotionally detached of late. I can't explain it. Like other things I'm distrustful of at the minute. People, institutions, media constructs, I won't give you a list. I distrust it somehow. Find it manipulative.

That doesn't mean I don't want Newcastle to win. We're talking over fifty years here. When they take the lead a few minutes before half time I punch the air, like the rest of The Telegraph. It's a dubious goal. In fact it's not a goal, Bruno handballs knocking down for Longstaff to sweep the ball into the bottom corner of the net. 

The goal is given. Newcastle are the bigger side in this case so that makes sense as the best way to resolve disputes. It happens all the time in football now. It wouldn't be stretching a point too much to imply that it happens virtually every time. It's a three card trick. Like I say I'm pleased when Newcastle score and win. I'm just not willing to invest much. Football's gone down my list.

I'll invest in music though. It's time to decamp to the Boiler Shop. I do so. I get frisked at the venue as if I'm getting on a plane or visiting a detention centre with a file in a cake for one of the inmates. Boiler Shop is an odd place. One part entertainment facility but with the air of a high security prison. I'm sorry, I know things have to be organised this way but it's odd. And not relaxing frankly. Some bands know how to work the place but not everyone.

I get myself a beer. Then I'm pleased to bump into Richard, with Lars another nice and thoughtful guy I've met before. Two academics who work at Newcastle University. I'm pleased to see them. I've reconnected with Richard in the last few months and it's been great to do so. He writes music related pieces and posts them on social media and they're a joy. Erudite but written as a fan. 

We chat about music, work and life in general. One particular thing Richard mentioned at one point was about social media narratives. About attaching yourself to narratives of celebration rather than ones of anxiety. It's been a helpful idea since. There's so much anxiety around these days, fear of everything, and I'm doing everything I can to remove myself from it all. Be with family and friends from now on.

Time for Lankum. The venue is thronging. It's a sell out. More than a 1,000 people. An atmosphere and anticipation that's tangible. Lankum gather onstage and seat themselves at the front of the stage with their unweildy traditional instruments. I'm close to the front but not as close as I'd like to be. This music is intimate and it would be best if you could see the whites of the musician's eyes. The crowd are friendly but packed like pichards at the front of the stage. It would be rude to force through any further. I've been well brought up.

Anyway I get my moneys worth and more. The atmosphere is  'uncanny,' a word I've increasingly turned to to exlain how I've been feeling recently. What Lankum deal with first and foremost is atmosphere as I've said, and an awareness and understanding of what's gone before. An embrace of the past. If they're going to be written about it probably pays to take an academic slant, Collective unconsciousness and memory. Those who have lived and died. Their hopes and dreams. Passions and woes. To quote another Irishman, or at least one with Irish blood.

'With loves and hates and passions just like mine.Seems so unfair I want to cry.'

.The last thing I feel like doing is crying. It makes a change from what generally holds court in the mainstream. It's an odd phenomenon. But certainly one to be celebrated. Lankum are chatty and garrulous from the off. They're having the times of their lives as are we, The last thing they want is respectful silence.. They know their music is best if their audience responds and gradually we do. A few songs in and we get the measure of the occasion. It takes a while. We're not all used to events, celebrations of being alive like this. Chants go up in the crowd, You feel like you're giddy, swaying like you're in a football crowd and your team is three goals up and everyone's hungry and expectant of more. You're aware of the undertow, the wave you're being carried on. You don't want this moment to end.

But for me it needs to. My spirit is more than willing but my flesh is weakening. My legs are aching, my early morning exercise regime coming back to me as it's tending to do these days. I make my way home. But I've had a ball. The gig of the year in January. I didn't experience it all perhaps. But it was fantastic. Lankum have set the bar incredibly high from the off. I won't forget this.