I’ll put
this here as most of the old links out there point people in this
direction.
As of November 2015 I
am no longer writing, reviewing, publishing or editing and as such I’m no longer affiliated
to Zelmer Pulp, Out of the Gutter or the Big Adios.
If you read
any of my stuff then you have my thanks. If you enjoyed it then my
work here is truly done.
The other day
I was standing outside my local tattoo shop, having a smoke with Chris, my
artist. We were half way through a 7 hour sitting on my new piece. I had my shirt
sleeve rolled back and my arm cling-wrapped to protect the unfinished tattoo. We
were minding our own business, just shooting the shit when a woman came up to
me, pointing angrily at my arm. She then proceeded to launch into a sermon of bigotry
and berate me for ‘defacing my body’. Telling me how awful she thought tattoos
were in general and mine were in particular.
My finished piece.
Red, swollen and awesome
I let her
finish and then I politely told her not to worry about it as I didn’t get my
tattoos for her, I got them for myself. She stormed off muttering something I
didn’t catch. Chris just smiled and shook his head. I guess he has seen it all
before, but I was kind of taken a-back. I am not what I would describe as heavily
tattooed and this was the first time I had personally experienced open
hostility towards my own ink. I have however from time to time seen the disapproving glances
and even overheard the odd judgemental comment aimed at my niece and her beautiful tattoos.
I find this kind of behaviour incredibly rude and obnoxious. So here’s a
quick heads up for anyone still living in another century. You really do need to get over your outdated prejudices. People with tattoos
are not all convicts or drug dealers or thugs. It is now estimated that one in
five people here in the UK have a tattoo. That number rises to one in three for
those under the age of 24, so perhaps you had better get used to the idea of seeing them around, or maybe you should just keep your dirty looks to yourself and try to understand that other people's art has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with you. Either way, accosting strangers in the street and voicing unsolicited opinions on their personal life choices is not acceptable. In fact, judging people by the colour of their skin has never been acceptable. Most of the world stopped doing that shit a very long time ago.
Last weekend
my buddy, Allan tagged me to post five black and white photographs over the
next five days. I rarely take up any of the challenges that do the rounds on
social media. Usually they involve having to posting snippets of a work in
progress. These unanchored passages of writing serve no purpose and make little
sense to anyone who reads them. This one was a little different and as such it intrigued
me. Lord knows I’m no photographer, I don’t even own a camera, which kind of
made me want to see what a rank amateur like me could achieve with nothing more than his phone.
Here are the
results, only one of these was shot specifically for the challenge, the rest were
found languishing on my memory card. I didn't use any filters or Photoshop trickery, just
the software on the phone to convert color shots into black and white.
Shelby Street Bridge, Nashville, TN
Day drinking on a Saturday afternoon
The OK Diner, Leominster, Wales
These people are my people, Alexandra Place, London
Midtown Manhattan
Those are
my efforts, but if you want to see some really awesome black and white photography
then check out the work of Jersey's finest, Mark Krajnak
Back in July
I was smoking a cigarette out on the fire escape of our vacation rental in downtown
Nashville. It was late, or maybe early depending on what hours you keep. The
heat of the day was radiating back at me from the old brickwork, the
rust streaked metal still warm under my bare feet as I stood out there nursing
my last can of Sam Adams and listening to the neon heartbeat of Lower Broad beating
two blocks over. I think that was when I realized I had kind of fallen in love
with the place. In an hour or so the sun would be up, the street cleaners hosing another rowdy night from the sidewalks outside the Honky-tonks and
I would be sleeping it off, but that thought would endure.
Music City
is just that. There must have been a dozen or more live bands playing within a
five minute walk of where I was standing that night. While the bars of Lower
Broadway and Second Avenue cater mainly for country-loving tourists, you can also
find Blues, Rock, Jazz and pretty much everything in between if you care to
look. There is a lot of history in Nashville, at least in musical terms. It might
have once been a city that lived on that past, but now increasingly it lives in
the moment.
Many who make the trip to the home of country music are on some kind of pilgrimage. That wasn’t
why I came, I’m not really a fan of conventional country. I
didn’t want to visit the hall of fame or the Opry, and I certainly didn't want to take a road trip out to Dollywood. My own personal
hajji consisted of nothing more than maybe having a beer in the Tin Roof, the bar where
Johnny Cash got loaded before famously kicking out the lights at the Ryman Auditorium
(JR was many things and conventional wasn’t one of them.) Okay, so I guess the history played its part for me too, but it;s the kind of country present-day Nashville offers that interests me more. I was well aware of 'In the round' sessions at venues like The Listening Room and Bluebird Café. These have launched numerous careers and continue to showcase the wealth of local singer / songwriter talent, but what really surprised me was the quality of the acts playing the bars. These are accomplished and professional musicians in every sense except perhaps the most important one. Slots at the Honky-tonks mostly only pay in tips, or worse the bane of aspiring artists existence, exposure.
Tom
Petty once described modern country as bad rock music with a fiddle and once I might
have been inclined to agree. It was Nashville based artists like Jason Isbell and Travis Meadows that changed my mind. I'm told that the city
itself has changed too. Take a walk across the Shelby
Street Bridge to the Eastside coffee shops and art galleries or wander around
the artisan shops in the old Marathon Automobile factory and you can see this
new vibrant Nashville for yourself. The town has a gravity all its own, which seems to be a draw
for all kinds of creative people. Poets, artists, writers, and of course musicians now come from across the globe to work on their dreams by the banks of the Cumberland River. It might be
the easy going nature of the place, or the need to be
surrounded by like-minded people, who knows maybe it’s just the great BBQ. I’m
not really sure what attracts them, but I know that whatever it is I felt it too.
They say you
should never meet your heroes, that you’ll only end up disappointed. They could
be right. For one thing I’m a little long in the tooth to have a hero in the first
place. I’m also too cynical to believe I could have my heart broken by a book,
but Willy Vlautin has done that at least twice. Last week I had the opportunity
to meet him after a Delines gig in Newcastle and I wasn’t about to pass that up
regardless of what ‘they’ might say. If you have landed
here by chance rather than design and don’t know who I’m talking about then
allow me to enlighten you. Willy Vlautin is an author and a musician and one of
the world’s best kept secrets. His band Richmond Fontaine have flown comfortably
under the radar for years, and now his latest project, The Delines are rapidly
becoming the best Alternative Country outfit you have never heard of. The
combination of Willy’s story-telling lyrics coupled with the glorious
world-weary vocal of Amy Boone produced one of the best albums of 2014 in
Colfax. Given the fact that I’m unlikely ever to see Bruce Springsteen play a
set at the Stone Pony then hearing those songs performed in a small, intimate venue
like Newcastle’s Cluny 2 is about as close to perfection as live music is ever
likely to get for me. But I
digress, as much as I enjoy Willy Vlautin’s music, it’s his words that I really
dig. I discovered his work by accident when looking for books set in my adopted
state of Nevada. His first novel, The Motel Life (recently made into a darn
good movie starring Emile Hirsch, Stephen Dorff & Dakota Fanning, which
again went largely unnoticed) had a pretty big influence on my own stuff. His second,
Northline is the novel I wish I could write. So when I noticed him hovering by
the mech table after the gig I had to go over and risk both making a dick of
myself and shattering my illusions of a guy I have admired for the best part of
10 years. I needn’t have worried, while I may have still been a dick, Willy was great.
You couldn’t wish to meet a nicer, more genuine guy. We talked books for a
while, discussed a mutual friend and to top things off I got a personally signed
copy of The Motel Life. I’m not sure
this story has a moral, but if it does then perhaps it’s that you shouldn’t believe
everything ‘they’ tell you, or maybe just that it is still okay to have the odd hero,
either way you should really go check out Willy Vlautin.
I don’t know
why it’s always the good people who seem to get dealt the worst hand, but they
do. Some of you
who read this may know Craig McNeely personally, others will know him only as
the man behind Double Life Press and of course most of you may not know him at
all. No matter, you can take it from me that the McNeelys are good people. They
are having a real tough time of it right now and they could really use your
help. I’d like to ask you as a friend (because we are all friends here, right?)
just to take a moment out of your day and read about Craig’s campaign and then consider
making a donation.
The Gaslight
Anthem, 02 Shepherds Bush, 29th August 2015.
The title of
this post is the second Smith’s reference I’ve made of late, which should
probably tell you something, but as Brian Fallon and the boys pull the plug for the foreseeable future on the best live band of the past decade I feel a certain amount
of melancholy is justified.
A capacity
crowd jammed into what is arguably London’s’ best and worst concert venue
(depending on which level you end up on) to see the final headline gig of New Jersey’s
finest export since some guy called Bruce Springsteen turned up at the Hammersmith
Odeon in ’75. I arrived fashionably late and on my own, rocking up halfway
through the set of the night’s only support act, Against Me. Neither my lateness nor my lack of company had
me in the best frame of mind to enjoy the evening, but 20 minutes or
so chain sawing riffs and reverb turned out to be just what I needed. To be honest Against Me are not really my thing. Their brand of punk is too hard
and heavy for me to enjoy in the comfort of my own home, but playing live they are a
glorious crowd surfing mess of feedback-ridden angst and while they didn’t
quite manage to convert me there is no denying the fact that they rock.
Next came a
protracted interval while the crew set up the stage for the main event. For me
this time was spent nursing an overpriced beer and joining the majority of the
other patrons in a period of phone staring. Having recently returned from America,
and Tennessee in particular I was struck once again by how insular and aloof we
Brits tend to be when shoved into a room with strangers. Had this gig been in
Nashville I don’t doubt that I would have known the entire life story of
the guy next to me and he mine by the time the house lights dimmed again. But
eventually they did dim and Gaslight Anthem took to the stage, kicking off with ‘Handwritten’,
which was quickly followed by two more crowd pleasers ‘Rollin & Tumblin’
and the superb ‘Old White Lincoln’.
The band were
undeniably tight, the sound superb and Brian’s vocals right on point as they
mined their back catalogue, uncovering gems like ‘She Loves You’ and ‘Diamonds
of The Church Street Choir’. Even so I couldn’t help thinking something was missing,
(not least my usual companion as that last track is her favorite) and even
a surprise appearance by Frank Turner on the slowed down version of ‘Great
Expectations’ that is preferred live these days couldn’t shake the feeling that
I was indeed witnessing the end of something. If the rest of the crowd sensed
it too they did their best not to show it as the set built inexorably towards its
climax with back-to-back classics in the shape of ‘American Slang’ and ‘45’
before the house was well and truly brought down by ’The '59 sound’.
There was
nothing you could describe as an encore, Gaslight Anthem don’t really go in for
that and before the raucous cheering had even begun to die down
they launched headlong into their final song of the night. The usual closer ‘Backseats’ was
replaced by ‘Diner,’ a standard at live shows for nearly 10
years now and a fitting way to end things. The audience joining in and their
chants perhaps sending a message, both to each other and the band themselves as they head
off on their uncertain hiatus.
“It’s alright man, I’m only bleeding man,
stay hungry, stay free and do the best you can.”
I very
nearly didn’t go to this gig, but if this is to be the end of the road for The
Gaslight Anthem then I’m glad I was there to see them go out on a high. If nothing else at
least I can now answer the question posed by the lyrics of ’59 sound’ and say that, yes
I did get to hear my favorite song one last time.