Short post this week, as the sun is shining and I have a huge pile of dissertations to mark, while I wait to Skype my partner in New Zealand. For her, it’ll be bedtime, while I’ll be heading out for a friend’s birthday lunch. We shall be discussing how I use her proxy vote on Thursday, in particular, on the AV referendum. I’m going to vote yes, because it’s fairer, and a small step towards more proportional representation. All of the arguments against aren’t about fairness but about results, and, in particular, punishing the Lib Dems. But if, as seems likely, the ‘no’s prevail, the surest winners will be the Tories, who’ve already gerrymandered boundary changes to ensure it’ll be much easier for them…
I first saw The Fiery Furnaces on an NME tour with Franz Ferdinand. I’d gone for the latter but the Furnaces blew them away, with their thrilling, mash-up songs, reminiscent of the Who’s A Quick One but utterly original. I’ve seen them two or three times since, including one time at on a tiny stage in a club where they played all new material to a small late show crowd and were equally good. Martin Stannard and I bumped into Eleanor Friedberger (the band consists of her and her brother, Matthew) on our way out and I told her how much we liked her music. It could have felt strange, shaking the hand of this petite woman twenty years my junior but, hey, when it…
I trooped into town earlier for Record Store Day, the great independent shops celebration taking place all over the world. I was just too late to get one of the two Ryan Adams double 7″s that Nottingham’s Music Exchange had received, but am hopeful that my friend Mike has picked me up a copy of the expensive REM 7″ pack at Sheffield’s Record Collector. I treated myself to a 7″ of Lambchop doing two covers, one of them the fine Emitt Rhodes song ‘Time Will Show The Wiser’, which I know from Fairport Convention’s first album. On the way home, I stopped in at FOPP and couldn’t resist paying three quid (half the price of the 7″!) they were asking for a reissue of Hatfield…
My friend Paul Violi died the Sunday before last. I knew that he was deathly ill, with cancer of the pancreas and liver, but only heard last night. Paul’s illness was diagnosed just three months ago and he kept it quiet until near the end, but at least there was time to write and say goodbye. I first met Paul eighteen years ago, when he was on tour here with Kenneth Koch. Martin Stannard was organising the tour and set up a Radio Nottingham reading for Paul, which is where we met. As I recall, they came to dinner afterwards. Later, Paul and his wife, Ann, stayed with us in our new home in Sherwood. Paul visited the UK solo once or twice as well.…
For those of you who don’t do Twitter, or follow the links to my Twitter feed on the lower left hand side of this home page, here are a few links to recent goings on in Belbin world. Erik Petersen interviewed me in yesterday’s Nottingham Post, illustrated by the photo above (thanks, Duncan) which is made to look like a gritty urban setting, but was actually taken on our allotment (we have a full size table tennis table in the garage on the right, if anyone fancies a game). Today, Al Guthrie interviews me about Bone & Cane & my favourite reading over at the excellent Criminal-E blog. Tomorrow, at 4pm, I’ll be speaking at Birmingham Book Festival’s ‘The Spring Thing‘ with fellow Tindal St…