What I Did on Friday Night - The Girl With The Replaceable Head at The Cumberland Arms.

             'and now my life has changed in oh so many ways..'

I woke up with a jolt just after midnight on Friday morning. To the realisation that The Girl With The Replaceable Head were playing that evening at The Cumberland Arms and that I needed to go. I'm going through a very strange phase in my life right now. Undergoing an odd  mental transition and processes, Shifting through thoughts of the past, trying to live in the present and plan for the future. 

 I made my way downstairs in my flat in the darkness. Made myself a cup of tea and listened to Dreamers On The Run the splendid new album from BMX Bandits reviewed on Friday on  It Starts. It was an apt record to set off my Friday morning with. I've just come back from Glasgow which is the city the band are most readily associated with. I was feeling slightly anxious for one reason or another. Aware that I've got lessons to plan and teach when the sun rises. But I have loyalty to the ritual of letting a record run its course. You can't interrupt a good record.

I went back to bed and managed the three hours sleep that made all the difference and set me up to function for the rest of the day. I'm my mother's son and I suppose always will be. Like she does I worry in the darkness. Founded and unfounded anxieties. I live alone and it's probably for the best. I imagine I would drive anyone I cohabited with slightly mad and I wouldn't wish to do that. I like being in relationships. It's exciting and challenging. But I'm not involved or engaged with anyone else at the minute and quite happy and content with that. 

I wake again at five and write my BMX Bandits review and prepare mentally for the couple of lessons I have to teach later in the morning. I like this part of the day, Listening to records for the ascending and descending lists I catalogue on here. Reading if I'm making my way through a book. I like and appreciate the routine. It gives me time to organise and document my thoughts. I like the process of writing. This blog is an ongoing journey of discovery and I'm determined to enjoy it and keep going. Unfinished business.

I bathe and put a record on my player. I've had to endure six months without access to a record player. It's not the best state of affairs. Given the  records which cover almost the entire floorspace of my living room I probably have a couple of thousand albums. I bought them in order to listen to them and it's frustrating not to be able to for an extended period of time. I don't feel like counting, but I have enough frankly for a lifetime now and I probably have a record somewhere which you would enjoy listening to with me.

I've had some week. My life is good right now. Last Sunday I embarked on a working holiday. Actually the first real holiday I've had for years. I caught a train from Newcastle, changed at Edinburgh for Glasgow and stayed in a hotel in the heart of that great Post Industrial city. Taught classes to German business people on Monday and Tuesday morning and explored the city in the afternoon and evening.

It was the first time I'd been to Glasgow and I fell completely in love with the place. I like exploring cities, I'm essentially urban in terms of my tastes. But this was a rare event for me to fall so immediately and become so deeply  smitten as soon as I became acquainted with a space. Falling in love remains one of the best experiences there is. This happened as soon as the initial four hour deluge that greeted my arrival finally lifted..

Rennie Mackintosh and Argyle Street. Gritty architecture and Glaswegian accents that you have to cling onto as best you can and do your best to decipher. Bath Street and the Howlin' Wolf basement Blues Bar where I met and chatted to a cool young female woolyback Liverpudlian barmaid who had been drawn to Glasgow by Skunk Anansie. A splendid way to spend a couple of hours on a Monday afternoon. 

I warmed to the place so much and at one point, wandering up Buchanan Street, my head spinning, I wondered if I could move here. And I'm perfectly happy in Newcastle. But I've lived in Prague and Budapest. And Barcelona. And Catania. I know when a place has the magic that inspires me. I soaked up the essence and will come back for the detail at some point soon. 

I arrived back in Newcastle on Wednesday at just after midday. Marek my record player guy showed up almost immediately and fixed my record player, drove me down to the station in his battered Volvo so I could nip out to the cashpoint in the foyer and recompense him.

Marek is my sort of person. In his mid to late sixties but still doing the job he clearly loves but is too oddball to ever admit it. Running RPM, the best record shop in Newastle. Dealing with antique record  players of various descriptions. Helping punters like me dream their dreams.

I muddled by without it for six months. Listened to Spotify on my headphones and on my TV. It's only when you have the whole vinyl experience restored and your flat is filled with colour and light by your reconnection with your records of  a lifetime you realise that you've been deprived of your soul for too long.

On Friday morning I listen to The Go Betweens Liberty Belle & The Black Diamond Express. I'm planning to go to The Cumberland Arms to see the album launch of the latest record from The Girl With The Replaceable Head. This is the band that Lindy Morrison is drumming with now. 

Anyhow, I never need an excuse to listen to The Go Betweens. They're one of my first and important discoveries and enduring loves. Later on in the morning I grab the chance to play Astral Weeks again. It has to be done as soon as I'm reunited with my player. I'll come back to this later. 

In the meantime I have a couple of online lessons to teach. I realise I have time for an hour in the fitness centre first. I meet Dave the cool guy with the racist uncle that mans the counter desk on a minimum wage. The counter people at my Fitness Centre are invariably cool. University students generally. I tell Dave about Glasgow. He says he'll put it on his bucket list.

I get back just in time for my 9.30 cover. Two pretty and smart young professionals but first and foremost great people who It's very easy to spend 90 minutes with. A cool young Proficiency Polish woman and a cool young Proficiency Russian woman. Working for Boston Scientist in Dussledorf. 

We chat about the Germans. About their English and where they want to go next and what they want to do with their lives. About what it's like to be Polish. What it's like to be Russian.We solve the problems of the world. I'm sad when the ninety minutes comes to an end 

Then Astral Weeks and my second lesson. Deichmann, the shoe people. Another couple of bright, attractive and able young women. There are worse ways to make a living. I chat to Lisa a young single mother in her mid twenties who I'm' meeting for the first time. She's immediately my kind of person. Bubbly, vivacious and funny.

Then Jasmin who I've taught a few times and is also my kind of person. More grounded and less potentially dippy than Lisa I suspect. We occupy ourself with trying to work out how to find a decent bloke for Lisa. I love the way you can seriously occupy yourself in this way and global corporations will pay you for your time.

When I'm done I call mum and then wander into University where I've until recently worked. I have arranged a meeting with Stephen, a Library Manager. I've never really spoken to him though I've always liked him. We have a great chat.

I've recently left the teaching and management related post I occupied for fifteen years. I'd hated my job for over ten years but issues had escalated dramatically in recent years and a company culture which had once resembled Groundhog Day came to more closely put one in mind of Shawshank Redemption, LA Confidential or a busy episode of I Claudius. I kid you not. Lets put it this way. I'm glad I'm out. I still wake blinking from my sleep sometimes and wait a few moments before I tell myself that it's all over now and I can relax..

Anyway, it's time to prepare myself for my night out. It's a lovely Spring evening. Perhaps Spring is here.. I make my way to The Bridge Hotel. Perched on the edge of The High Level Bridge in the shadow of the New Castle itself. It's one of Newcastle's finest pubs.

I get out my books and start reading in the  sunlight of the early evening. I always like it when they don't have intrusive music playing on the in house system at The Bridge. You can lose yourself in the chatter instead. It's one of the features that makes the place so treasurable.

I read the chapter from Hit Factories - A Journey Through The Industrial Cities of British Pop about Belfast. It mostly focuses on a pilgrimage from the author in the steps of Van Morrison and the genesis of Astral Weeks. So much has been written about this record in an attempt to locate, itemise and in some respects make sense and contain a record that has inspired so many.

Personally, having listened to it again myself during the day I think it's a record that defies interpretation and I simply appreciate the fact that it's there. 'It breathes in and breathes out.' It captures the magical and essentially mysterious journey amd passage of life. 

I finish my pint and make my way down the Quayside. Up the hill and down the slope to the Ousebourne. Pause for a bowl of meatballs in the  company of the evening revellers at The Cluny and then up the steep staircase to The Cumberland Arms another of Newcastle legendary, and to my mind increasingly mythical venues.

I might have fallen for Glasgow's charms earlier in the week but Newcastle is my home now and will be until I eventually move on to what comes next. It's a special city and one that makes you feel at home and part of a community. Even if you venture out alone.

Tonight in the backroom, the fiddlers are playing. In the frontroom punters are sampling the fine range of ales The Arms offers. Lindy Morrison and her band are gathered at a sunlit table n the Terrace. I don't like to bother people when they're reparing for their set. But this is Lindy and The Go Betweens and I'm determined to pay my dues. 

The Go Betweens and their legacy means more to me than pretty much any other band. Others measure out their lives in coffee spoons. I've measured out mine in Go Betweens records, gigs and moments among other things. This blog takes its name from a Go Betweens line. I'll never stop playing their records. 

I approach the table where she's stood with members of her band. I catch her eye and introduce myself as one of those Go Betweens fans. She grabs my hand, it's an immediately touching gesture and she  holds her soft hand on top of mine and asks me my name. I tell her and recount a memory of seeing The Go Betweens in 1986 at The Kingston Poly in 1986 with tickets for £1. The band did their soundcheck in a fully lit room before their actual set. It's one of the fundamental musical memories of my youth, I know I'm babbling.

I tell her I love Tracy Thorn's memoirs of her friendship with her, In some ways a settling of scores. . Female solidarity. Her response is typically Lindy. 'I don't like that book.'  The moment couldn't be bettered. It's the Lindy I know and expect and I don't wish to intrude on her any longer. I've had my moment. I tell her I don't have a ticket for the gig. It's sold out. She says, 'Oh hang around. I'll get you in.' I retreat to another table with my beer.

Twenty minutes later the band make their way into the venue and I latch myself onto Lindy again as she's my entry ticket. We make out way into the venue and she gets momentarily confused as to her way to the top room bar where the bands play. She is her age. A woman in her early seventies. Someone who's lived the life. Reportedly shared a spoon, and not one intended for stirring coffee with Nick Cave, but one that went with a needle. Back in the London bedsit days. I direct her and we ascend.

It's the kind of Indie evening that I love and relish at The Cumberland Arms. Friendly, approachable people of a similar age and sensibility to myself. You imagine with similar tastes, sensibilities and approaches to life. Pauline Murray from Penetration pushes past me in a neat beret. Pauline is always at events like this. Always immaculately dressed.  The evening is a celebration of a certain strand of cultural taste.. The records play Aztec Camera's Back on Board. Nick's Red Right Hand. Then the Girl Wth The Repaceable Head ascend the low stage and begin to get their gear tigether. Lindy assembles her kit. 

The Girl have a new album out. Sometimes She Lives in the Dark. Sometimes She Lives in the Light. She's playing with a couple of members of Hurrah! A band from this part of the world who were on the Kitchenware label. David 'Taffy' Hughes, the bands guitarist fronts the group and gabbles between songs in broad Geordie. He's a Seventies refugee with corkscrew hair a cap and a leather jacket, He never stops gabbling. Its what you want. They have an elfin female vocalist  who reminds me of Sandy Denny and Judy Dyble. 

The band start to play and I love their sound. Lindy's only had a few rehearsals after a long flight but she's razor sharp now she's behind her kit. They're a gritty melodic band. Punky but also casting their net wider. Garage Psychedelia as well as Seventies Punk and Indie Eighties. They take their name from a Richard Hell song but they're distinctively English.

I can't keep my eyes off Lindy. She may have seemed slightly confused when we tried to find our way to the venue but now she's in her element. She's still  a completely fantastic drummer, a mould of her own. Kinetic, sharp as nails. A joy to behold. 

At the end of the set which is sharp, varied and alogether rather great, they play a Hurrah! song and to close, one of Go Between's Apology Accepted. One of the bands most nakedly honest and emotive moments. It's all beautifully wrought. Thoughts of departed Grant and bygone days and we're done. I'm off into the night to catch my bus.