If you’ve been waiting for a cheaper, mass market edition of the second Bone & Cane novel, What You Don’t Know, you’ll have had a long wait. Sadly, its publisher, Tindal St Press, went under 15 months ago. If you want a paper copy, I’d get a move on, as the book sold out its print run, but there are still a few around. In the meantime, the ebook edition has remained at an artificially high price, nearly eight quid. And there’s been nothing I could do about it. That’s the bad news. The good news is that, as of last week, I have the rights back to both Bone & Cane novels and they’re available again at bargain prices – for a limited…
I’ve been interested in the novels of BS Johnson since I was an undergraduate, living in the city that he wrote about in the classic ‘book-in-a-box’ The Unfortunates. I know three people who knew him, one of whom I wrote about extensively a few years ago. Every year I teach a session about Johnson to my second year creative writing undergrads. I’m not alone in this interest, of course, especially since Jonathan Coe’s fine biography of Johnson, Like A Fiery Elephant, sparked a load of reissues and revivals. Another big fan is my pal, the playwright Andy Barrett. Andy has a project he’s been discussing with me, one that might loosely fit into this years European theatre festival in Nottingham, NEAT, and I offered to tell people…
The legends of my youth are in their sixties or seventies now. Happily, I’ve seen most of them, often more than once. As regular readers of this blog will know, I go to a lot of gigs. But there are still a few soul giants I’ve never had the chance to see. According to our Scouse taxi driver this morning, Al Green’s voice is shot, so I’ve left that too late. I’ll probably never get to see Aretha Franklin either. Marvin Gaye died too young. Did get to see Millie Jackson twice in her hey day. Diana Ross. Tick. Smokey Robinson was an unexpected delight. After his recent bout of cancer and talk of Alzheimers, though, I thought there was no chance of seeing…
1978 was my first full year in Nottingham, where I was studying English Literature and American Studies at the old university and found myself editing the students’ union newspaper, Gongster. I often used to visit the Midland Group gallery on Carlton St in Hockley. Two exhibitions from that time stick in my mind: drawings by Kevin Coyne, who also gave a poetry reading/performance and a showcase for the Nottingham artist Paul Waplington, which I returned to more than once. Of course I couldn’t afford to buy anything at either one. A postcard of Waplongton’s Basford Hill Silver Prize Band (do have a look at the full slide show on this link) stood on my mantelpiece for years, until it became worn out, and I was delighted to…
Here are my top thirty albums of the year. Tracks from many of them are in the post below. 1 John Murry – The Graceless Age 2 Prefab Sprout – Crimson/Red 3 Vampire Weekend – Modern Vampires Of The City 4 Laura Marling – Once I Was An Eagle 5 Kanye West – Yeezus 6 Arctic Monkeys – AM 7 Daft Punk – Random Access Memories 8 Arcade Fire – Reflektor 9 Tamikrest – Chatma 10 David Bowie – The Next Day 11 Roy Harper – Man And Myth 12 Slaid Cleaves – Still Fighting The War 13 Kurt Vile – Wakin’ On A Sunny Day 14 Jason Isbell – South Eastern 15 Rod Stewart – Time…