A new Manchester review

I have missed fly posters. Like graffiti, there isn't much of it where I live.In the past I had friends who were fly by night poster boys, dodging the police presence, risking moving in on someone else's patch. Some iconic posters have disintegrated in cellars and garages, the stock in trade of the flyposter. Bill Posters will be prosecuted - hard on old Bill. I like the way they decorate boarded up sites and buildings. I like the information they share. I remember a time when I would plan a night out based on a poster seen from the top deck of the bus, on my way to work. Recently I have been able to go through back copies of a fortnightly magazine from the late 1970s, New Manchester Review. I was actually looking for articles I wrote about food and food politics whilst I was working at On the 8th Day. I had never kept a copy of them. I found them, which was exciting in itself, but I was amazed by the wealth of articles and adverts about Manchester's music scene in those heady days from around 1977 to 1979. Bands I had forgotten about, gigs I had gone to,clubs where I had worked on the door. No wonder it all seemed so intense - it really was! Hoping to share some of those days through this blog in weeks to come, but if you want to know where to find them, they're in the Manchester Collection at the City Library on Deansgate!

Remembrance and reverberation

In the last days of October 2012 we went to see Efterklang play their album Piramida at the Bridgewater Hall. I believe 'Efterklang' means remembrance and reverberation in Danish. It was a hauntingly beautiful performance with all sorts of resonances. Their drummer for that part of their tour was Budgie from the Banshees. The music for Piramida was created with sounds and inspiration from an abandoned Russian coal mining community near Spitzbergen. The town had to be abandoned in the late 90s, partly in response to the lack of funds and the opening up of the USSR and its economy. They made a film with Andreas Koefoed at Piramida, called The Ghost of Piramida. You can apply to show the film, for free, and Sheffield group Death by Shoes arranged to present it at the Showroom bar last week. The film shows just how inspirational the place was for the musicians, but it is beautifully intertwined with with a film made by someone who lived and worked there as a young man.He was a photographer and cine film recorder of the community. He was married and brought up his young family there. The poignancy of family footage and the echoes of the past are very powerful. It's a beautiful use of archive film. The use of archives is very much to the forefront of my mind at the moment, as I look forward to becoming an archive trainee with the National Archives. If you get a chance to see the film, look out for the polar bear, and the way the gulls have made their nests on window ledges. It's magical. Back in October last year Casper Clausen, the vocalist, referred to the winter months looming up - ' see you on the other side'. We are nearly there as I write this, with snow flurries at my window.

Peaches en Regalia over Buxton tonight

Tonight I came out of hibernation to go and see the Zappatistas in Buxton. Booked for the Four Four Time festival, the band features some amazing musicians, led by John Etheridge. Any concert that starts with Peaches en Regalia is guaranteed to please.I want it played at my funeral, because at some point in my existence - I nearly wrote life - I have to go down an aisle to that triumphant sound. Watching such amazing musicians perform Frank Zappa's music was a real treat. I remember watching Robyn Hitchcock cover Captain Beefheart songs.There was a moment of doubt - can he do them justice? And then I relaxed into hearing my favourite songs played live. Tonight was a similar experience. Music I had forgotten I knew came back to me in all its glory. Memories of French friends in Casablanca, who were desperate to have me explain the lyrics of Moving to Montana Soon - raising my lonely dental floss, riding a pygmy pony, zircon encrusted tweezers. I did wonder if, as a musician playing Zappa or Beefheart, you have to resist channelling the artist, or actively try to be possessed by their spirit. They were both such individual and powerful performers, composers,musical mavericks, stage presences, artists in every sense. I enjoyed every minute of tonight's concert. The music of Frank Zappa shouldn't be trapped in digital downloads, vinyl grooves, or even sheet music. It needs to be played live and released back into the wild where it belongs.

Missed opportunity

I listened to Arlene Philips on Radio 4 this morning. She was talking about her Manchester roots, and her struggle to study dance. A few years ago a good friend invited me to go and watch the recording of Andrew Marr's Sunday morning television programme.Richard Thompson was booked to appear on it and he knew I was a fan. My good friend has a good friend who produces the programme.It was an interesting weekend in many ways, because it was also a time for me to reconnect with people I had been close to in Sarawak in my teens.Early Sunday morning we made our way to the BBC studios in Shepherds Bush, and found our way to the Andrew Marr Show set. There was an outside broadcast, an interview with David Cameron at home, before he was Prime Minister.Arlene Philips was one of the guests. Richard Thompson sang a couple of songs. It was interesting to watch the process of recording. It was much slicker than pre-recorded programmes I have had the opportunity to observe. When it was all over, we went for a BBC breakfast, guests and production team and hangers on.I was disappointed that Richard Thompson had to leave, and therefore couldn't join us, and in my disappointment I failed to make the most of the fact that I was sitting next to Arlene Philips. Listening to her on the radio this morning I thought of all the things I could have chatted to her about. Shared geography, a love of dance, escape. I wondered if she was aware of the dance troupe I danced with in my teens. It was an informal group of hippy dancers, led by Allan Prior an early computer wizard.All mentioned in dispatches on the Manchesterbeat website, especially featured at the Magic Village. It made me realise how important dance was to me in my teens.When I studied homeopathy I learnt about a remedy, Sepia, made from the ink of a cuttlefish. It won't surprise you to hear that patients who suit Sepia often express their mood as being like living under a black cloud.The other main indication for this remedy is that the patient loves to dance. dancing energises them, lifts their spirits, transforms their state of mind.I spent most of my teens feeling like that! The dark misery of boarding school was exorcised by the joy of hippy dancing. I was a shy and retiring teenager, a typical self effacing Catholic schoolgirl who avoided any hint of showing off. But I had no self consciousness or fear when it came to dancing. It still lifts my spirit and shifts my mood now.

Bish Bosch

Yesterday I wrote that Bowie's new single reminded me of Scott Walker. Late Junction have been playing some of his music this week, and tonight they included a snippet from Jarvis Cocker's recent interview with him.There are some interesting reviews of Bish Bosch online, and from what I have heard, it follows themes from The Drift. I don't expect Scott Walker to sound like the pop star I screamed for at the Odeon in Manchester back in the days when I was barely a teenager. I remember the surge of fans pouring out of the main doors and holding up the traffic on Oxford St while we longed for the Walker Brothers to show their handsome faces. I still love those early songs - No Regrets, My Ship is Coming In. I loved his Jaques Brel songs. I remember a few of us singing along to Next in the 5th form common room at school, hoping the nuns would hear how subversive we were.I'm the same as I was then, but also different. So is he - still exploring his creative boundaries and abilities.

Where are we now

It has been interesting to hear David Bowie's new single, released to coincide with his birthday. Radio 4's Today programme reported the news early yesterday morning and seemed to think that it was released at 5 am so they could. I am not sure what to make of the video and the song. There's a Scott Walker melancholy about it. The lyrics seem to be about places he remembers - a new method of exploring psychogeography . The video is disturbing in its imagery - those strange little faces. But Bowie has traditionally been ahead of the game, and his influences have been far reaching over decades. I was lucky enough to see him three times in a few weeks back in 1972, twice in one week in Manchester, and then again during my short stay at Exeter University. Much as I have loved his music and his changes, that was enough. The Today programme followed up their Bowie news item with an interview this morning. Sir John Oldham, described as a senior clinician, and Nicholas Coleridge, MD of Conde Nast, were interviewed as obsessive fans. It was all very light hearted and good natured, but the interviewer seemed taken aback that men of such standing in society were also Bowie fans. I think people forget that there's a generation who grew up with musical heroes who are now pillars of the community, and that the two things aren't mutually exclusive. One of them had seen Bowie Preston in 1973 and life changed for him.There are some great anecdotes about David Bowie on the Manchesterbeat website, concerning his early visits to the Magic Village.With his Arts Lab approach, his love of mime, his cross dressing theatricality and stage presence he would have been a starman even if he hadn't got involved in music.Where are we now, he asks. We are here listening to what you have to tell us. Thank you.

In My Life

There are places I remember. As time goes by I discover that this blog is as much about geography as music. The setting can stir my memory just as effectively. My walk through Manchester to the Michael Chabon talk back in October seems to have started something. Last Sunday there was a reunion to celebrate the Russell Club. I was sorry I couldn’t go, but I did find myself in Manchester on both the Saturday and the Monday for different events. Saturday’s plan was to meet up with an old friend for lunch and a poetry and jazz event at the Whitworth Art Gallery. Simon Armitage was one of the performing poets. He’s a favourite of mine, and I have seen him interviewed and reading his poetry before. He also filmed part of his fantastic version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in the historic house where I work. There’s a bus that runs direct from Bakewell to the centre of Manchester and a couple of times a year I am tempted to catch it, because it seems to make sense at the time. I still find public transport a bit of an adventure, and the journey into Manchester included a fantastic cast of characters that may get written about one day, truth being stranger than fiction. The bus came to a sudden halt in the middle of the road in the centre of Longsight. It was completely immobilised and the driver struggled to find the magic button to make it work again. After ten minutes I made a decision. I knew I could walk down Dickenson Rd and would then be close to the Whitworth Gallery. I asked myself when, if ever, would I get the chance to retrace the journey I made on a daily basis back in the late 70s. So turning the corner I walked past Longsight market, as vibrant and multicultural as ever. On past Wise Chemists, the family business of Manchester promoter Alan Wise, still there on the corner of Hamilton Rd. I used to live on Reynell Rd, on the right at the far end. I clearly remembered walking this route in good weather and bad, slipping on ice in my pearlised pink leather ankle boots, admiring my new haircut in a shop window reflection. There were more unpleasant memories too. I worked at the Asian Women’s refuge as a language teacher and if I walked children from the refuge to school I would run the gauntlet of abuse, shouted from passing cars, and even to my face. Last Monday I took the train from Buxton to Manchester with my son Charlie and my friend Keith. We had tickets for Shearwater. They were playing at a venue that was new to us, St Philip’s Church in Salford. Except it wasn’t really new to me. From the age of ten until I was thirteen I went to school just round the corner. Adelphi House Grammar School for Girls. I believe the building is now part of Salford University. And when I left boarding school I spent a year working at Salford Central Library, just a short walk away on The Crescent. Like Dickenson Rd, this area seems to held in a suspended state of partial renewal. It hasn’t been transformed in a way that makes it unrecognisable like many areas of Manchester. The Catholic cathedral was still there. Roads and junctions had been widened. Pavements had strange blue neon strip lights set into them. The bus stops were in the same place – we used to walk one bus stop closer to Manchester to avoid the chaos of getting on the bus outside school. A man with no nose used to ride past on his bike every afternoon. The Education Offices, where I went to plead my case after I had left Exeter University after only a term (I missed the north ) are now unoccupied. Salford Education Committee gave me a full three years worth of grants when I started afresh at Leeds the following year. There was the Dickensian corner shop where I once had to buy two ounces of cheese, wrapped in a scrap of greaseproof paper. It was for domestic science – cheese scones, and my mother who worked full time didn’t have any cheese in the house. No late night mini supermarkets in those days. I had to catch an early bus and go searching. The building was still there, but it was no longer a shop. Pubs with familiar names were boarded up, including the Peel Park on Chapel St. Peel Park was the view from the art room window, a real life Lowry landscape. In fact Lowry drew St Philip’s church, and the architect of the British Museum designed it. We discovered a great pub, The New Oxford, that was still going strong, with a friendly clientele and a huge range of Belgian fruit beers. The band were amazing, and hopefully they will put a video made during the sound check up on their website. Their sound engineer is from Manchester, and his father had filmed them with a camera attached to a remote control model helicopter. It was a strange and multi-layered evening. I loved the music. I loved the neo-classical Church. I loved being back in Salford. Even the tension of wondering would we make it to Piccadilly in time to catch the last train back to Buxton added something – a reminder of those days of dashing for the last bus home. And I haven’t even touched on the concerts at Salford University, when I was one of Allan Prior’s dance troupe. Another day.