1978 was my first full year in Nottingham, the city where I’ve lived ever since. Most Tuesday nights, I’d head down to The Imperial, on St James St, to see Nottingham band, Gaffa. The place was always packed, even before they had a record out. Gaffa were a Nottingham band for Nottingham people. Listen to the download of ‘O.A.P. Sightings’ below to find the most authentic example of a Nottingham accent on record. In lyricist and vocalist Wayne Evans, they had a real original, perfectly complemented by guitarist John Maslen who wrote the music. Clive (“Myph”) Smith on second guitar and Mick Barratt on drums completed the picture (occasionally with Brendan Kidulis on keyboards). Their handful of records never really represented how good they were…
I’m between drafts of a new novel, so I’ve had time to work on a couple of short stories that lay, unfinished, in the ‘pending’ folder on my computer. This week I finished one called ‘The After Life’. This morning, when I saw a new song with the same name linked to on the whatevershebringswesing mailing list, I had to click through. This is the second song to be previewed from Paul Simon’s forthcoming album, So Beautiful or So What and it’s so good I just listened to it twice. Simon’s last album, Surprise, was a real return to form, as was the accompanying tour, and this sounds even more promising. Check out the song here. A former student of mine, novelist Chris Killen, published…
Next month sees the return of Five Leaves’ Crime Express series, which I edit. Those of you who have read earlier books in the series may notice that they have a new look. But most readers have never seen a Crime Express novelette, because we had great difficulty getting them into shops. The first eight books were beautiful, tiny A6 objects, with smart flaps, ideal for shoving into a pocket of almost any size. But hard to display. The authors loved them, but readers couldn’t find them. So, reluctantly, after much discussion, we’ve moved the series to normal size, where they will fit more easily onto bookstore shelves. Why should you buy then? Crime Express aims to present the best of Crime Writing today, from…
Teddy Thompson is single, and the songs on his new album ‘Bella’, released on Monday, let us know it. On each of his three visits to The Rescue Rooms the admiring throng of female followers has grown thicker. Hardly surprising, given his film star looks and rich, memorable singing voice. It’ll be interesting to see if ‘Bella’ emulates his last album, ‘A Piece Of What You Need’ by entering the album charts in the top ten. Reviews have been mixed. Unfairly, for it’s as good an album of country tinged pop-rock as you can hope to hear. It gets a good airing tonight, as does the last album and his second, ‘Separate Ways’, the title track of which takes on the air of a classic.…
It’s stating the obvious, for a writer, but I love libraries. My partner and I are the sort of people who visit libraries on holiday, as the photo above, of Vancouver’s fantastic public library last August, illustrates. The other day, after reading an article in the New Yorker, I was trying to work out an excuse to get into the Vatican library, which is about to reopen. There weren’t many books in our house when I was growing up, yet all of the world’s literature was available to me in West Kirby library, then Colne library and Burnley library. When I was on the dole, trying to become a novelist, I spent an awful lot of time in Nottingham City library and Radford library. These…