Next month I’ll be reading, with novelist Thomas Legendre, at the Flying Goose Cafe in Chilwell Rd, Beeston. It’s the first time the Shoestring Press readings series has had two prose writers, so I hope we’ll get an audience (7,30-9, only £3). I’ll be previewing my new novel ‘Bone and Cane’, which Tindal Street publish in March. To give you a taste of the venue, here’s a short film I made last week, with the permission of Lawrence Sail. I rate Lawrence as one of the very best poets writing in this country at the moment. He was launching his New & Selected Poems, ‘Waking Dreams’, which I can’t recommend highly enough. ‘Feeding The Dolls’, first published in ‘Eye-Baby’, is followed by ‘The Musical Box’…
Hard to believe that Michael Chapman turns 70 tomorrow. Although he’s a kind of elder statesman for the generation of singer/songwriters that I’ve been following since my teens (Nick Drake, John Martyn, Richard Thompson, Bridget St John, Kevin Ayers et al), I didn’t discover his music at the time. I first met him a few years ago at a Cosmic American Music anniversary party. Or was it after a Steve Earle gig? Lovely guy, with no airs about him at all. Michael remains a big music fan, as well as a compelling live performer, with a superb blues style. For years, he seemed to only play Nottingham on nights when I was teaching, but I’ve managed to see him three times lately, once on his…
This is an extended version of the interview that appears in today’s Nottingham Post. You can read the shorter version here. Richard Thompson is in Manchester, about to embark on three days of band rehearsals for his new tour, which comes to Nottingham next Thursday. He doesn’t like rehearsals generally, but this time should be more straightforward than usual. For his new album Dream Attic was recorded on the road, in the USA last year (quote about advantages/disadvantages). ‘People often come up to me after shows and say the studio versions are great but we prefer the live versions of songs. So this one’s looser. There’s the odd mistake on there. I hadn’t realised that it would involve so much work for the band. In…
No time for a long post about this week’s song of the week, as I’ve spent my weekend blogging time writing up an interview I did with one of my musical heroes on Thursday. An extended version of the interview will appear next weekend, after it’s been in Friday’s Nottingham Post. But, in the meantime, here’s a clue as to who it’s with. This is from a stone cold classic album that was, for a long time, the worst selling LP in the Island label catalogue, ‘Henry The Human Fly.’ Richard Thompson – Shaky Nancy
So, it’s over. I make no apologies for blogging a third time about Christian Marclay’s incredible video installation ‘The Clock’ at Nottingham Art Exchange, which closes in two hours’ time. I’ve visited twenty times, taking in over 15 hours of this epic masterpiece. And, while it kept getting fuller, I’ve never failed to get a place on one of the two sofas (admittedly, on Thursday, when we went for our last big 50 minute chunk, I had to wait half an hour). It’s been a great place to meet people too. Today, when we went to take in six minutes we’d missed from 1.36-1.42 (yes, we kept a careful record, using the wallchart above) I bumped into two couples who I hadn’t seen in ages.…