Following my CD of the year marathon, and complaints about the terrible sound on the new Bruce Springsteen album, here’s an article that explains what’s going on with the bad sound on a lot of new recordings. Thanks to Mike for the link.
I’ve had some problems with ftp servers recently or I’d have written about graphic novels, my friend Brick (John Clark) and today’s Nottingham visit by Posy Simmonds (as lovely a person as expected) and Bryan Talbot (whose ‘Alice In Sunderland’ is fantastic). Above are a couple of panels from the second page of a two page spread that John and I have done for the third issue of Tripod Magazine, just out, a literary mag that covers Derby, Leicester and Nottingham. You can hear the Tripod podcast and get info on how to obtain the magazine here. The story is called ‘If Shakespeare were alive today’ and the plot concerns Shakespeare and Da Vinci being transported to the near future where they’re forced to work…
For the second time this year, a four hour plus journey to a gig with my brother, Paul (for Prince, the delay was motorway traffic, this time it was overcrowded, delayed Friday evening trains), but with a much happier result at the end. My pal Henry and his son George had saved us good seats in the small Greenfield Station folk club (a big room upstairs in the pub) for Bridget St John’s first tour in more than thirty years. I helped out at Bridget’s penultimate UK gig in 1976, when I was an 18 year old in his first month at university. Bridget played a benefit for Liquorice Magazine at Nottingham’s Victoria Centre, where she was second on the bill, followed by Kevin Coyne…
I was meant to be on gardening duty until the Liverpool game this Sunday afternoon but foul weather has intervened, which means I’m about to curl up with the second half of John Lucas’s 92 Acharnon St, a beautifully written, hugely entertaining account of the author’s love affair with Greece. From finding that his new flat is on a street full of brothels, to ludicrous encounters with bureaucracy (especially in Greek universities) and numerous encounters with Greek poets, this is a terrific, often very funny read. I’ve been rationing myself, so haven’t got to the sections about the island of Aegina, where we’ve been lucky enough to stay a couple of times. But soon. While I hope that Liverpool give a good account of themselves…
In the late 90’s, when I was researching a never published piece on writers in Nottingham, Stanley Middleton suggested I read his friend Philip Callow’s first novel, ‘The Hosanna Man’. I’d never heard of it, which is hardly surprising, since most copies were pulped shortly after it was published in 1956. Stanley had a copy because Philip had given him his mother’s copy after her death. It’s a remarkable novel about working class bohemians in a part of Nottingham I know well. Stanley introduced me to Philip on his next visit to Nottingham. I told him how much I liked his first novel, but he wasn’t inclined to discuss it in any detail. I went on to read a lot more of his work, including…