Manhattanchester

Manchester: In Residents ... #2: Oisín

2012-02-02T08:45:00.000Z

‘I love the support that independent businesses get from the city’s residents, and just the general vigour in the streets at all times of the year…’

What’s your name?

My name is Oisín Share, or Oisín Francis Frederick Share, to share some lesser-known facts. Friends call me Ois, but it doesn’t sound quite the way it looks. If you know how the Irish language goes about itself, or the works of Róisín Murphy, you’ll probably know your way around my name.

What do you do?

Overall I’m a graphic designer but through college I became more interested in what it means to be a visual communicator. These days I’m working more with photography but I still get to illustrate and drag things around the screen a lot. I’m lucky to be quite freelance with this! You can also find me occasionally working at a very lovely cake shop in West Didsbury.

Where do you live?

I’ve lived in Withington since I first got off the airport bus (it drives right on through). It’s the craziest, most unpredictable place I’ve ever lived. Not as gross as Fallowfield and not as up itself as Didsbury.

Tell us the story of how you ended up in Manchester.

I fell in love with a boy who visited me whilst I was doing an internship in Paris in 2008. We irresponsibly decided to become a couple, despite living in separate countries. All throughout my final year at college in Limerick (in the south-west of Ireland) I would nip over to Manchester whenever I could, to visit Colin (the boy in question).

Interestingly, it was my first time visiting a city proper in the UK, so for many, many months it was my only real impression of England at all. Each time I came here it seemed so great and I built on memories from my previous visits. I really took to it. I liked that there was still so much I hadn’t explored by the time I moved here in the summer of 2009. I planned to stay for a year and save up for some ‘further education’ while Colin was finishing his last year at university, but that never happened. So much more did though. It’s not at all a dashed dream – every month just gets more and more interesting.

What’s great about this city?

There’s so much! It’s small enough to walk across in a short space of time but it’s still known worldwide. Every band and musician I’ve ever loved seems to not be able to stay away from the place, which is the complete opposite of my experience of gigs in Ireland (four hour train journeys to Dublin…) The food is amazingly global, not overpriced, and fantastic quality. There are great vegetarian options everywhere and you don’t feel as if you’re getting ripped off at every opportunity. I love beer, wine, coffee and beards; this city has great places to find all of them.

I love the support that independent businesses get from the city’s residents, and just the general vigour in the streets at all times of the year. It’s also great that even though it’s such a famous sporting city, it doesn’t really smack you in the face that often. There are also enough Irish people in the city for me to not feel homesick, at any moment, ever.

What’s not so great?

As a cyclist I wish the roads were a bit smoother and that it wasn’t such an extreme sport getting into the city centre from the suburbs. I’m also a big campaigner for late night takeaways that aren’t just fast food. It’d be great to be able to grab some noodles or couscous at 2 am (though maybe I just need to look harder…)

Do you have a favourite Manchester building?

I love the former HSBC at the top of King Street [100 King Street by Edwin Lutyens]. If you look up it feels as if you’re in Gotham City. It isn’t a very friendly building though. The worst structure in the city is probably the escalator going up to the Arndale Centre Food Hall. It dissects the street in a really bad way. We once saw Chloe Sevigny standing underneath it. I thought the world was going to end.

Do you have a favourite Mancunian?

As fellow adopted Mancunians, I love Wayne and Jane from North Tea Power. Every time I go in and they’re there, they fill my day with smiles and joy, and amazing coffee, and I doubt I’m the only one!

What’s your favourite pub/bar/club/restaurant/park/venue?

When people visit here they mostly spend their time following me from café to café or from pub to bar! I spend most pre-flight evenings in the Cornerhouse restaurant/bar; it really is one of the best places in the city, and with quite a fantastic view.

This is a great city for beer and ale, so Port Street Beer House, Marble, the Temple Of Convenience, The Molly House, the Vic in Withington and Sandbar are places I have difficulty leaving. The Spice Kitchens in Rusholme do the best spinach and paneer kebabs, and probably other stuff too, I just never try anything else. My favourite pizza is from The Art of Tea in Didsbury. Aladdin’s in Withington is like going on a very unexpected (but great) holiday. Frankie’s in West Didsbury does chips and will even serve them with deep fried halloumi and a bottle of beer if you think your body can take it. And finally, if I could spend a whole day in the Barbakan in Chorlton, I certainly would! There are lots of hidden gems, really this answer could go on for ever…

What do you think is missing from Manchester?

I wish the Arndale Market was more of a market, rather than a collection of nice places to eat in a shopping centre. Sometimes all I want is a thriving city centre market that isn’t behind glass and metal. There’s also nowhere to eat in the open air in the Northern Quarter, even though it’s full of so many nice places to eat that do takeaway food! A lot of large spaces seem to only be suited to car parks. So a regular, food-centred market in an area that’s a bit softer around the edges than Piccadilly Gardens would really complete the picture.

If I was Mayor for a day I would …

Rush the paperwork through to have the gardens built above Rice and Nero in Piccadilly Gardens! I read that was the initial plan and it’s sad it didn’t go through. I’d also start an initiative to get more contemporary art galleries opening in the city centre and give the Manchester School of Art more of a presence amongst those who aren’t directly connected to it. And, of course, more bike lanes!

Who else would you like to nominate to answer this questionnaire?

I would love to hear responses from musician Jesca Hoop, who I believe has made the city her stomping ground. I’d also love to know what Chloe Sevigny thought of the time she spent here, though I might be afraid to know the answers…

Drunk At Vogue

2012-02-01T14:07:00.005Z

Drunk At Vogue

The House Of Popular Disco

Party Number II

24.2.12

Kraak

Northern Quarter

Mcr

10.30pm till late

Come.

Manchester: In Residents ... #1: Katie

2012-01-26T18:56:00.016Z

It’s here. It’s arrived. It's a brand new series for Manhattanchester...

After a couple of years slogging away to keep the developed world abreast of ‘What I am listening to…’ or ‘What I’m eating in Berlin…’, I’ve decided to promote myself from Staff Writer to Editor-in-Chief. The fruit of this timely promotion is Manchester: In Residents. It's a more-than-occasional series in which I submit a gruelling questionnaire to a host of happening Mancunians and invite each of them to spill their guts about the pretty gritty city.

So let’s have it...

‘They say you can take the girl out of Manchester, but I rather suspect that to be false…’

What’s your name?

Katie Popperwell

What do you do?

I write the Manchester weekend feature for the Emerald Street style and culture guide, plus a handful of arty pieces for Creative Times. I also work in Events and Marketing for the Confucius Institute at Manchester University. It’s sort of the Chinese equivalent of the overseas British Council. I started there a year ago and since then I’ve learned so much about Chinese culture that otherwise I might never have known. The Chinese community is huge in Manchester yet it’s still seen as ‘other’ in lots of ways. My colleagues regularly present me with brilliantly unpredictable snacks like ‘moon cake’ or sweets made from dried beef. We celebrate festivals I didn’t know existed and now I’m trying to learn Mandarin.

Where do you live?

WEST DIDSBURY (...ahem, Withington).

Tell us the story of how you ended up in Manchester

I’m only nearly from Manchester. I’m actually from Stockport, a condition of adjacency that I’ve spent much of my life trying to compensate for by putting myself squarely in the middle of things. I have a Stockport complex. As a young teenager I rarely ventured to Manchester, favouring the relative safety of a piss-soaked M60 underpass at Junction 1 where my friends and I could smoke stolen Lambert and Butlers and play our Shine compilation CDs in peace.

In later adolescence my mum would take us to Laser Quest on a Wednesday from which we would return insensible, having spent the evening snogging boys and taking acid in the sticky-carpeted rabbit-warren of basement corridors at the Ritz. It’s where I discovered how much fun you can have at night. I’ve still never been to Laser Quest. Whitworth Street was the place for us then and it still thrills me now. (I am thirty).

After university I left the UK altogether, living firstly in Montpellier and then in Amsterdam, only to end up forty-five minutes down the road studying in Stoke on Trent. It was only after my son was born that I stopped my hesitant orbit of Manchester and actually started to take root here. Now I feel part of the city.

What’s great about this city?

For me the answer is ‘everything’. To walk the streets of the city you grew up in sometimes means suppressing an almost debilitating litany of Proustian moments. Everywhere I look I’m assaulted by memories tumbling over one another: places I’ve worked, places I’ve fallen over, places I’ve cried or been kissed; they’re all here somewhere. Places only really take on meaning through the convergence of thousands of these kinds of memories, but the city in your head is one that only belongs to you. The topography of memory is distorting; it’s like one of those maps that depicts countries of the world in proportion to their ownership of global capital. So the shabbier bits of the Oxford Road corridor are, for me, fat and over-determined with meaning, while ‘slick’ places like Deansgate and Castlefield seem faint and puny by comparison.

Then there are corners and alleyways that designate a space in which I feel a memory ought to be; places I know are important because something once happened there, even though I might not be quite certain it happened to me, or even what it was, but still the place feels important (though this might be something to do with the rain, or Joy Division…).

The point is, once you’ve lived somewhere long enough, it’s not just part of you, you’re part of it. They say you can take the girl out of Manchester, but I rather suspect that to be false.

What’s not so great?

The same thing that’s not so great about any city; filth, crime, douchebags, traffic... I wish the 42 went all the way to my front door. I wish the Apollo was in some place you were less likely to get beaten up and robbed on the way home from.

Do you have a favourite Manchester building?

I love libraries. For sheer magnificence the John Rylands has to take it. You can’t argue with that much Victorian Gothic splendour. The way it looms defiantly over Deansgate with all that dusty red sandstone reflected in the glass and chrome of Spinningfields makes me happy. It feels like a call to arms.

My favourite has to be The Portico though, a magical place introduced to me by my friend Emma. It opened in 1806 as a private library and newsroom housed in an otherwise unremarkable neo-classical building on Charlotte Street. Elizabeth Gaskell and Charlotte Bronte both wrote there. It’s where Roget began writing his Thesaurus. It’s quite discreet from the outside but inside is a huge ornate glass-domed ceiling that takes your breath away. It smells of history and leather and the light streams in as if it owns the place.

I love the Granada building too. Even though it’s aesthetically foul, when I was little it felt like Disneyland. Until I was eleven I was in St Winifred’s school choir (of ‘Grandma We Love You’ fame) which meant I got to go on special trips. One of our teachers, Eamonn O’Neill, used to moonlight as a TV producer so we would sometimes go and review films. The first time I really remember going to Manchester city centre was to watch Fievel Goes West before heading off to Granada to look into a camera and inform the viewing public that it was, ‘Dead good and dead interestin’...’. I later realised I wasn’t actually in Manchester, I was in Salford, but nonetheless the experience left a huge impression on me.

My least favourite Manchester building is the ungodly temple to low-end retail experiences that is the Triangle Shopping Centre. It’s hideous. I still yearn for the patchouli-infused fustiness of the old Corn Exchange whenever I’m forced to go in there. It makes me sad for all sorts of reasons.

Do you have a favourite Mancunian?

My friends are the best Mancunians I know and I can’t very well go choosing favourites (obvs it’s Greg *winks*). I like quasi-mythical city centre characters like the super-camp Freddie Mercury lookalike with fabulous posture who parades down Market Street, the disco taxi driver, and the Magic Bus lady. Also Anthony Burgess. And Tony Wilson. And Emmeline Pankhurst.

What’s your favourite pub/bar/club/restaurant/park/venue?

Fletcher Moss Park for walks, the Whitworth Art Gallery and the Cornerhouse for contemporary culture, the Great Kathmandu on Burton Road for Nepalese food, San Carlo for upmarket eats (if you’re buying), pints and chasers at the Briton’s Protection, gigs at the Deaf Institute, maybe a quick one in Common depending on who’s in there, some sort of filthy disco at Legends then maybe Big Hands for a nightcap and snooze on a sofa.

What do you think is missing from Manchester?

A tram service that runs south to Didsbury...oh hang on a sec.....

If I was Mayor for a day I would …

That’s a hard one. To be honest I’ve never been much seduced by the prospect of being a municipal figurehead and I suspect the answer is ‘...do a lot of admin’. However, in the spirit of the interview, I would get the Manchester Bee tattooed on myself, insist on a cameo in Corrie and make every member of the City Council work at Wood Street Mission for a day.

Who else would you like to nominate to answer this questionnaire?

The Magic Bus lady.

New Year’s Resolutions 2012

2011-12-31T16:46:00.003Z

DO NOT SMOKE CIGARETTES (I quit in September …)

DO NOT EAT MEAT (I haven’t eaten meat in almost ten years…)

I know I’m cheating with these two. I’m still ticking them off though. Here are some ACTUAL resolutions…

Start listening to the radio again, possibly even Radio 4. I have a lovely DAB radio that I barely use but I’m a bit of a control freak about what music I listen to so I need to open my mind and ears (to Woman’s Hour at least).

Try to get my credit card debt under control. Seriously, it’s destroying me. Not just financially but mentally. I dream about it at night. It’s becoming like the bloody knight of carnage in The Fisher King, all in vibrant HSBC red of course.

Get more involved with Amnesty International. I’ve been a member for thirteen years and have been intermittently lazy about what I do, but I’ve been thinking a lot about North Korea lately and about Troy Davis who was executed this year in Atlanta on an insubstantial charge; the world in general needs a voice like Amnesty more than ever. I’m going to see what I can do.

This is the year I will read Tristram Shandy and Ulysses. I will. How dare I set about writing novels otherwise.

I will get a distinction in my MA in Creative Writing. I won’t actually complete my MA this year but the bulk of the coursework towards the final grade will be done this year so I’m knuckling down.

Commit to the gym until I look like this …

If you are very beautiful then everybody loves you, in case you didn’t know. Men in their thirties are at their best too, they flourish, I need to flourish damn it.

Be a good uncle.

Happy 2012 everyone.

2011 In Pictures

2011-12-26T00:40:00.039Z

End Of Year Review: 2011

2011-12-23T14:32:00.018Z

2011: I turned 33. It looks like I will outlive Jesus after all (touch wood). This little blog turned 3 years old. Look what I was doing back then; not much eh? This year I had my tenth anniversary working for Manchester University Press and my fifteenth anniversary of living in Manchester. I moved here in September 1996, three months after the IRA bomb. Mum wasn’t happy. Also this year I showed up in the Manchester Evening News and Attitude magazine with a load of Manchester chums. Click click flash flash darling.

I quit smoking in September, this time for good. I’m doing really well and enjoying life without cigarettes. *clicks heels* It was the right time. You should all try and quit this year. Apart from anything else it does wonders for your hangovers.

Our amazing dog Sam died this year. ‘Sammy Lammy Lambkin’ to those who loved him, and we really did love him. We had him from a puppy and he was ours for seventeen years. When I would pack up my bags to go back to University at the start of term he would sit on them to try and make me stay. He was a big dumb sweet thing and our family isn’t the same without him. Good bye Sammy…

In capital ‘P’ Politics, ‘Occupy’ and the ‘99%’ movement may have deftly solved a problem that Socialists have been mulling over for decades: how to make the middle class realise they are part of the working class, and how to make the working class feel enfranchised by middle class dissent. More power to it. The 1% can be dismantled, I feel sure of it. They got the guns but we got the numbers.

In music, Morrissey ends the year without a record deal and I wonder/worry that we might have heard the last of him once again. In related news, Bon Iver overtook not just Elliott Smith but Morrissey himself as my most played artist this year. Times they are a-changin’…

Amy Winehouse died in July. Not long afterwards we went to Camden Square bearing gifts to say goodbye in the slightly flimsy but well-intentioned way that you might when somebody’s music has been in your heart through some important things. I’m so sad about it still. ‘Love Is A Losing Game’ always stopped me in my tracks but these days it sounds too sad to bear. It was a hot day in Camden and I’ll always remember the shadows on the High Street and the lovely friends I was with, and writing out lyrics with a silver pen on the train down to London like a teenager.

Here’s what the rest of 2011 looked like from here. This write-up has been brought to you by THESE SONGS RIGHT HERE…

The family…

I became an uncle this year, not once but twice. After a somewhat agonising pregnancy for my poor little sister Clare, baby Jack arrived in January, complete with personality and appetite and sass from the off. He is the spit of Clare, ergo beautiful, but I sense a degree of forthcoming naughtiness previously pioneered by my brother Sean. Fun times ahead! Then in June little Stanley James followed for my big sister Emma and to start with he was just the opposite of Jack. He arrived a bit early and we had to worry and fuss over his weight, there was barely anything of him, he was like a little Victorian baby, all swaddled and passive. Then he just bloomed. I heard him giggle for the first time last week and, well, it’s just the reason you get out of bed in the morning isn’t it? Our two beautiful boys. There’s so much to show them, I can’t wait… *makes pile of books, records and travel guides*

The trips...

New York in March. Glastonbury in June. Berlin in September. Festival in Murcia. Loads of London and Stratford and Liverpool and Sheffield. And Salford...

The parties...

In the summer I DJ’d to help raise money for my friend Amber’s boob-job. In Liverpool I played at the Alternative Miss Liverpool pageant for a gorgeous crowd of gender terrorists in taffeta. Off The Hook had its first birthday party. Our new wayward disco baby Drunk At Vogue had her first outing after two years of daydreaming about it and several months of me and my friends working like disco dogs to make it happen. (Eyes peeled for more parties in the New Year). I’ve played at a gay wedding, a photography exhibition, on a boat on the Irwell, in a warehouse, a disused office, at Dalston Boys Club, Clique, Bollox, the Contact Theatre, the Northern Quarter Loves U Festival (before Mr Scruff!), in full Halloween make up and in my underwear at a fetish party. Good year.

The starfucking...

This year I met Jarvis Cocker backstage at the Town Hall after his wonderful interview with Dave Haslam. I ate some of his Pringles. I chatted to Victoria Wood at the International Festival. I slept in Elbow’s tipi at Glastonbury with Radiohead and The Chemical Brothers drinking on the grass outside. I saw the lovely Kirsten Dunst and the awful Lily Allen backstage. I drank and DJ’d with Joel Gibb in Berlin, swapped messages with John Grant about his Glastonbury appearance and the Weekend movie (more of which later), got invited to Spain by Jonsi, met Tim Burgess on Halloween, and had a full drunken body hug with Alan Hollinghurst. I think I’m done…

The movies...

‘I’ve been a lot to the movies lately; the last one ruined my heart...’ sang Jonas Alaska on one of my favourite songs of the year. He wasn’t wrong; a couple of real heartbreakers left their mark on me this year.

‘There was a mother who came to the [AIDS ward] and one... two... three times she lost her boys there...’

‘We really had a great time. We would go out dancing and then I would come home and sleep. Unfortunately none of those men are alive today...’

‘All of the guys in that office got infected. And they all died except one...’

‘Everybody in that study died but me...’

We Were Here was the documentary we were all waiting for. A handful of articulate and erudite voices talk us through their personal accounts of life in San Francisco at the time the AIDS epidemic hit the city. It was a time of weekly funerals and young gay men walking around ‘like concentration camp victims’ and of scarcely believable quantities of fortitude and love. Make it a duty to watch this film and pay your respects.

Like We Were Here, Weekend managed to be both life-affirming and terribly painful. Understated performances, incredibly sexy, and shot with the cinematic quality (and guidance) of a Quinnford and Scout photograph, this got under my skin in a way I hadn’t expected. As an almost-love-story it made a few people take a good hard look at themselves, myself included. I was supposed to go for post-movie drinks the night I watched it but I couldn’t; instead I walked around the city by myself for an hour in a cinematic and dreadfully upsetting fashion listening to ‘What’s In It For Me?’ by Avi Buffalo on endless repeat. But really, what’s in it for me? Maybe I should find out…

The boys…

Come off it, I’ve got to save something for the autobiography haven’t I?

The future...

Next year it will be ten years since I came out of the closet at the tender age of 24 (on my Mum’s birthday). To coin a 2011 phrase, It Gets Better. I’m making a list of resolutions as always; let’s see how life intervenes. I’m working on Novel Number 2 and maybe re-hashing Novel Number 1, or maybe not. DJing as much as I can, trying to make the world a better place, having a spring clean, the usual. As for the blog, I have an exciting project beginning in January. It’s called ‘Manchester: In Residents’ and every week or so I will hand the reins of Manhattanchester to a different fascinating individual to let them tell their own particular Manchester story; how they got here and where they’re at. Let’s see the city from the inside. I’ve already had some brilliant responses. Tune in…

To follow: 2011 in pictures …

My 50 Favourite Songs Of 2011

2011-12-16T17:16:00.011Z

Is there ever a bad year for music? I doubt it. This year seemed particularly difficult in the choosing. There was so much to love. I shed some genuinely beloved tracks to get to this utterly arbitrary fifty. I just love lists and I love all these songs like wayward and beautiful children. But first off…

Cover versions

I fell pretty hard for James Vincent McMorrow’s cover of Steve Winwood’s ‘Higher Love’ (from the lovefilm advert). Once you hear it you sort of can’t credit that it wasn’t done before. Then tucked at the end of Ane Brun’s astonishing album I found a tinsel and ice version of Cyndi Lauper’s ‘True Colors’. I thought this would not be beaten, and then I heard Glen Campbell singing ‘Hold On Hope’. It’s my very favourite Guided By Voices song and it’s there like a little pearl on the last album that Glen will ever record, because he has Alzheimer’s. ‘Everbody’s gotta hold on hope. It’s the last thing that’s holding me…’ Are you crying a bit? I did. Listen here.

Remixes

A nice warm boot up the arse was given to Corona’s ‘Rhythm Of The Night’ by Manolo. Likewise, RAC turned Foster The People’s otherwise humble ‘Houdini’ into a rollicking digital handraiser. In a nice bit of synchronicity I played the latter at Clique this year and then the Clique boys themselves delivered my third favourite remix of the year: ‘Wooden Heart’ by the Kill Van Kulls. If only the Hurts album had been as good as this track is. Magic.

And here are my songs proper. I hope you find something here that you love, it’s the only reason I do this. The Spotify list is right HERE...

50. Jonathan Johansson – Stockholm

49. Holestar – The Insider

48. Björk – Crystalline

47. Fingersnap – I Wanna Rise

46. Statement Haircut – Barely Legal Lover

45. Florence + The Machine – Breaking Down

44. The Sound of Arrows – My Shadow

43. Jay Z – That's My Bitch

42. Help Stamp Out Loneliness – Angelyne

41. Jonas Alaska – In The Backseat

40. Ford & Lopatin – World Of Regret

39. Little Dragon – Summertearz

38. Anna Calvi – Blackout

37. Quiet Company – The Confessor (You Could Exist Without It)

36. Washed Out – A Dedication

35. Those Dancing Days – I'll Be Yours

34. St Lucia – All Eyes On You

33. M83 – Midnight City

32. Low – Especially Me

31. Summer Camp – Brian Krakow

30. Dum Dum Girls – Bedroom Eyes

29. EMA – California

28. Justice – Civilization

27. In Flagranti – Hollow Discourse

26. Tennis – Marathon

25. Radiohead – Codex

24. Beirut – East Harlem

23. The Vaccines – Wetsuit

22. Will Young – Come On

21. Frank Ocean – Nature Feels

20. The Antlers – Putting The Dog To Sleep

19. Sbtrkt – Wildfire (feat. Little Dragon)

18. Bright Eyes – Ladder Song

17. Azari & III – Manic

16. Lykke Li – Sadness Is A Blessing

15. Discodeine – Synchronize

14. Jens Lekman – Waiting for Kirsten

13. Beyoncé – Run The World (Girls)

12. Hercules & Love Affair Featuring Shaun J. Wright – My House

11. Lana Del Rey – Video Games

And my top ten …

10. Azealia Banks – 212

Hands down the dirtiest thing I heard all year, in every sense of the word. It’s hip-hop, it’s a bit grimy, it’s a total skank-fest and she’s utterly adorable. It’s like being excited about the first M.I.A record all over again. Dancefloor it to death.

9. Junior Boys – Banana Ripple

I think this is the best thing they’ve ever done, and I’m including the epic ‘Parallel Lines’. It’s almost ten minutes long and that’s not long enough. As simple as the simplest pop can be, that first ascending bassline manages to carry your pulse with it. The Field remixed it and it was a bit dull really, there’s nothing you can do to polish something so perfect.

8. PJ Harvey – On Battleship Hill

It’s probably everyone’s album of the year even if they haven’t heard it, and it’s a fair cop. Only Stories From The City… held so completely and cohesively as Let England Shake and here is that latter album’s finest moment. After a minute or so of skiffling the song grinds to a halt and Polly pulls some kind of falsetto medieval madrigal from the air. It’s audacious. ‘Cruel nature has won again…’ But it hasn’t, art has won again. I feel like the whole record is a call to arms for something passionate and brutal that I can’t quite put my finger on.

7. Joe Goddard – Gabriel

I went to a Hot Chip gig this year. It was pretty dull. Who called it ‘coffee table House’? Yeah that. I wasn’t massively interested to hear Joe Goddard had put out one of his rare solo singles. But this is unbelievably good. It was actually written by John Beck of It Bites! which is so unlikely I can barely believe it. I haven’t been able to find the original anywhere. I guess this might count as a cover except that the epically tribal production number Goddard has done here is all his own work. That weird tremor on vocalist Valentina’s vowels is an actual knee-trembler. Magnificent.

6. Foster The People – Pumped Up Kicks

It’s advert music I know, but I loved it first. This makes a great pair with the next track on this list, they are like little dancing sisters, I always play them together. There are oodles of great and not-so-great remixes of this, it’s completely infectious. Do they still have Number Ones? Well this should have been Number One.

5. Metronomy – Corinne

I nearly chose ‘The Look’ and that would also make the top ten if not for my stupid ‘one band, one song’ rule. But ‘she just wants to dance all the time’ is the best line in a song probably ever isn’t it, and anybody named ‘Corinne’ should telephone me because I love you and I would like to be your boyfriend.

4. Nicola Roberts – Beat Of My Drum

Before this record I wouldn’t have known Nicola Roberts if she stood up in my dinner, and truthfully it’s not that important who’s singing this (Annie could’ve done an admirable job). But it’s brilliant. The shave-and-a-haircut intro, the military drums, the dramatic pause, the Daphne and Celeste shouting, the childish deep breaths she takes between lines, the amazing spelling-out-the-words dance; it’s just unavoidably and chronically brilliant.

3. James Blake – The Wilhelm Scream

Based on a song that his Dad wrote which is kind of touching, this is the track that I crave to hear when I crave to hear James Blake. I heard it live before the recorded version and it stuck with me like a weird virus. It’s a bulging sonic mantra, it almost suffocates you after a while, I keep taking my headphones off when I’m playing it because I think I can hear something else. It’s majestic. It’s technology and soul.

2. Elbow – lippy kids

Elbow previewed the track before Christmas last year in a live video session from Blueprint Studios and it was remarkable on first listen, all woozy and hypnotic with that lilting metronomic piano. Nothing can ready you for the swell a minute and a half in though. ‘Do they know those days are golden?’ When you go back to it, the swell is always there waiting, like when you meet someone who’s so beautiful you can’t quite summon them to mind afterwards, then you meet again and blush from the neck up. That’s what it’s like.

Cut to Glastonbury and we’re drinking beers in the sunshine with the Elbow boys on the morning of their first ever performance on the Pyramid Stage. Katie has found a snazzy pair of discarded sunglasses which in true Glastonbury spirit she donates to Guy. The boys are a little nervous. We talk about Polly Harvey and Glastonburys past and we agree to try and stay relatively sober for the performance that evening.

When showtime comes the sun is beginning to dip and everything and everyone is glowing and we’re all so happy to be there. The band take the stage and the camera immediately cuts to Guy wearing Katie’s shades, projected across giant screens. ‘Those are my shades!’ says Katie. No doubt somebody else in the crowd is saying the exact same thing. About halfway through a magical set the piano refrain begins and when the line comes, ‘Do they know those days are golden?’ with the light just so and everyone together, I have a little cry.

A couple of weeks later Simon Pegg Tweets: ‘The more I listen to the song 'Lippy Kids' by Elbow, the more I'm convinced it's one of the most gorgeous songs ever written.’ He’s right of course. By then the song is like an old friend. One day I’ll be all alone, remembering that beautiful weekend, and the colour of the light, and that line will come back to me: ‘Do they know those days are golden?’ Can you imagine it?

1. Bon Iver – Beth/Rest

There’s a very real danger that Bon Iver is the album of Justin Vernon’s career. It’s certainly the best album I heard this year. I mean hands down. I think he knew how good it was going to be, I think that’s why he called this album Bon Iver, and not his first one. How do you go about closing such an album? An album where tracks are named after American states and geological epochs such is the scope and feeling of their huge sonic reach. Basically you close it by writing ‘Beth/Rest’. The opening seconds are a steal from REO Speedwagon’s ‘Can’t Fight This Feeling’ and there’s a distinctly John Hughes soundtrack feel to the rest of it, but actually I’ve never heard anything quite like it. It dissolves into something so poignant it’s almost too much. The lyrics have a weird tumbling occasionally meaningless, and therefore terribly potent, feel, like a Melville poem: ‘I know that you'd offer, would reveal it, though it's soft and flat, won't repeat it, cull and coffers that for the soffit, hang this homeward, pry it open with your love…’ Did you hear that? Pry it open with your love… After three minutes it almost goes away entirely and then it comes back…. with soft rock guitars. Pry it open with your love… Beautiful. So so beautiful. Words fail me.

It’s An Off The Hook Christmas

2011-12-08T10:45:00.000Z

Off The Hook is in its second year. We’re toddling! Or is it bogling? Either way it’s hard to believe we’ve been sweating it on the dancefloor all that time with our amazing posse of hipsters and drag queens and bears (oh my).

Our formula is dead simple: African-American pop for North of England homos and their homies. That basically means if it’s got a good beat then we’ll chuck it in: hip-hop, RnB, disco, reggae, daisy age, dance energy, guilty pleasures, you name it.

Our heroes are Michael Jackson and OutKast and Prince and Flava Flav and Stevie Wonder and Eric B and Rakim and Jay Z and Wu Tang and Billy Ocean. Our Soul Mammas are Neneh Cherry and Queen Latifah and Janet and Salt N Pepa and Beyonce and Roxanne Shante and Aaliyah and Mariah and Amerie and Cookie Crew and Jamelia and Rihanna (we like our girls…)

We encourage: dressing up, bringing it, copping off.

We discourage: being cool, laying low, pale imitations.

So Christmas music is basically toilet, yes? WRONG. Everyone plays the same Yuletide crap year after year while the gems lie forgotten like broken Christmas lights at the bottom of the box. Well here's a bunch of sparkly Christmas tunes to restore your faith in that end of year groove. We couldn’t let the end of year slip by without a good list could we?

Get your full firm festive asses down to our Off The Hook Xmas Party and you can shake it to all of these and more. Our spesh guests star DJs this time are Matt Rothery and Dave Dobson, aka Wasp Nest. Check out the amazing mix they made for us right here.

... and then there's this....

The Imogen Styles

2011-11-29T22:33:00.005Z

‘It’s Johnny Depp Pop, Dark Pop, English Pop, Perfect Pop, it’s Lit Pop, Clit Pop, Dick Pop, Electro Pop, it’s New Wave, Nu Rave, Short Wave, Dance Phase …’

If I were doing promo (look, I am!) I would signpost this band for you thusly:

Black Box Recorder / Ladytron / Pet Shop Boys / (We Are) Performance / Stock, Aitken & Waterman

Electro never died, it just turned into POP. Come celebrate this healthy transition with The Imogen Styles live and in the flesh at Dry Bar this Friday. The beautiful people are using it as their pre-Homoelectric party, and you should too. The Imogen Styles will get you in the digital disco mood good and proper.

This is my current favourite track…

… and here is THAT darkly genius Stock, Aitken & Waterman cover version you might have heard about...

The Imogen Styles, Live at Dry Bar

Oldham St, Northern Quarter, Mcr, Friday 2^nd December, 9.30 pm

Speed Reading: Part 1

2011-11-27T22:49:00.008Z

I’m devouring novels for my MA in Creative Writing. I’ve been on a heady journey from a post-War US college to the foggy streets of 1950s Dublin, from Trinidadian streets to harsh South African farmland, from genteel Edinburgh to tempestuous Malaya. I’m going to do some microblogs about the novels I’ve been reading, starting with …

The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (1961)

‘This is nineteen thirty six. The age of chivalry is past…’

So says Jean Brodie, progressive schoolmistress of Edinburgh, trapped between the romance of a Renaissance past and a brave new Continental future. The novel dramatizes a dilemma: when you foster independent thought, how are you to cope when those minds independently begin to disagree with you?

‘You will get used to our ways. What religions are you?’

Not even Maggie Smith’s note perfect rendering of the on-screen Brodie can overshadow the powerful eccentric charge of the book. I quote it endlessly. Brodie is no heroine but the novel in its cruel way makes you yearn to turn her into one.

‘It is seven years, thought Sandy, since I betrayed this tiresome woman …’

The style is classic Spark: droll, precise, bathetic. Fay Weldon adopted a similar style for the duration of her career proving its endless, wondrous durability.

Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov (1953)

‘In the beginning Pnin was greatly embarrassed by the ease with which first names were bandied about in America…’

Pnin is a towering comic creation. Pnin himself does not tower, he is ham-fisted, wonkily self-translated, a klutz. But under the blissfully comic veneer of the character lies the sadness inherent in exile literature. Pnin’s Russia is far away and perhaps no longer existent. When he is among exiled countrymen he flourishes, his language asserts itself, it’s a joy to witness.

‘Now a secret must be imparted. Professor Pnin was on the wrong train…’

The narration is a lesson in control, the narrator attempts to coerce the reader into a mockery of Pnin but the writing gives you the space to resist, and you do. The narrator too relents eventually. An evening spent witnessing a drunk colleague unkindly aping Pnin leaves him with ‘the mental counterpart of a bad taste in the mouth.’

Sometimes the writing is so lyrical that it’s a sorrow when the line ends:

‘There are some beloved women whose eyes, by a chance blend of brilliancy and shape, affect us not directly, not at the moment of shy perception, but in a delayed and cumulative burst of light when the heartless person is absent, and the magic agony abides, and its lenses and lamps are installed in the dark…’

It is also a campus novel, and a good one. Pnin’s University department is to be phased out, the coming of Cold War hostilities places a Russian professor in something of a new and unsettling light. The image of Pnin driving away from the town and off the page, befuddled and alone, is a unique modern tragedy. If you love John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy Of Dunces, you might find its spiritual parent in this novel.

The Millstone by Margaret Drabble (1965)

‘The thought of marrying Roger was pleasantly exciting and most unattractive…’

The fact this is an ‘issues’ novel alone can explain its presence in the repackaged ‘Penguin Decades’ series. Thin writing can’t evoke the sympathy sufficient to bear the narrator Rosamund, who charts a largely sexless and uncommitted single life, followed by her pregnancy and the birth of her child as a single academic living in her wealthy and absent parents’ flat in mid-sixties London.

‘I felt ashamed of an emotion as irrational as dislike…’

If you’re not sure what kind of feminist you are, read the novel. If you find yourself shouting a great deal, you’re probably a socialist feminist. The novel is not completely without merit. Lydia, the protagonist’s best friend and lodger, breathes fiery energy into the passages in which she appears. Her life runs parallel to Rosamund’s but free of the sour mixture of self-pity and self-importance that makes the latter more or less unbearable and appears to function little in the story.

‘I could not rid myself of the notion that if Octavia were to die, this would be a vengeance upon my sin…’

Even Elaine Showalter’s introduction seems unsure of the novel’s merits. Given that ‘A Taste Of Honey’ had played twice in London in the years prior to this novel's publication it seems as if working class versions of these stories are of only prurient and not literary interest if Drabble’s work is to be considered innovative (Drabble’s version conflates the gay man and the black man from Delaney’s play into one white gay man who fathers Rosamund’s child). Some time capsules are best left in the ground where they can be better built upon. Two short years after The Millstone saw the light of day, Fay Weldon (her second mention in this blog, I realise) publishes The Fat Woman’s Joke, rendering Drabble’s type of novel mercifully unnecessary for the foreseeable future.

Dance dance dance till you're dead ...

2011-10-28T21:10:00.012+01:00

Two KILLER parties for this Halloween, with a whole day in between to recover!

First up is the annual ZOMBIE PRIDE party. This year it’s bigger and bloodier than ever. Traipse your rotting self up and down the cobbles of Canal Street first beforeoff to Legends where all your favourite nights are assembled under one dripping mausoleum roof. Here’s the lowdown …

Zombie Vogue Off - Dress to DISTRESS and take your look to the catwalk!

Blige Sisters Chapel of Death - Death is hell but you look fabulous!

The Blige Sisters will be reading you your last rites at your own fabulous open casket funeral!

Pisscotheque … Lurking in the toilets enter a dark room of horrors and dance the night away!

Tranarchy's CREEPSHOW with Zsa Zsa Noir, Kurt Dirt, Sahara Dolce and more TBA!

DJ's Off The Hook, Chew Disco, The Niallist, Trash-O-Rama, Pumping Iron and Raw Like Sissy!

I’ll be representing Off The Hook with my homie Anthony Crank down in the bowels of the club, with the gorgeous Chew Disco in between and the Pisscotheque massive next door.

HEADS UP: that vogue trophy is MINE ....

Zombie Pride, Saturday 29th October, Legends, Whitworth Street, 10.30pm, £6. Zombie Walk on Canal Street at Taurus from 9.30pm

Then on Halloween proper, get out there for the real spirits of the night. The House Party massive are hosting their annual Haunted House Party, this time at Mint Lounge, smack bang in the heart of the Northern Quarter. Yours truyl will be hitting the decks at some point, warming up as best I can for, oh my god only Tim Burgess and Dave Haslam. Plus Zvook! Dance Party, Nik Void (Factory Floor), Good Vibrations, The Power Ballad Salad, Jamie El Muerto and Ron Negro AND MORE ...!

Facebook jargon here …

Tickets available here… BE QUICK!

The Haunted House Party, Monday 31st October, Mint Lounge, Oldham Street, 9pm, £8.

Remember, bad requests will earn you a stake in the heart …

HAPPY HALLOWEEN …

Holestar: The Queen Of Fucking Everything …

2011-10-20T23:45:00.009+01:00

If you haven’t heard of Holestar yet, exactly WHERE … HAVE …. YOU … BEEN …?

Holestar is a gender bender with a liberation agenda you can dance to. The First Lady of the East London drag scene extends her beautifully lacquered fingers back into the world of music with a well overdue follow up to last year’s ‘NyLon Woman’ (‘You can see me in the East End, and catch me on the West Side …’) The Piers Remix was my number one WORK IT! track at the gym for a while.

This time round we have a whole EP, nattily named ‘The Queen Of Fucking Everything’ and it’s all wall to wall synth classique baby. Gimme …

The title track is curt, catchy and comic and sees our tranny with a fanny tearing strips of some uppity scene queen. Oh please, she had it coming. And it ends with laughing. I seriously love songs that do that.

‘Another Heartbeat’ is John Foxx bagging off with the lasses from Human League. It’s pocket calculator /asymmetric hair music and even has a little talky bit. YES!

‘The Insider’ is a wee shady gem of a track, like Bananarama in the interesting dark middle period they never had but really should’ve, and it’s a stand out for me.

Remember, electro drag disco is the new punk rock so support your DIY drag queens ...

Belated Berlin Photo Blog ...

2011-10-18T23:13:00.007+01:00

The Manchester Weekender 2011: All Done For This Year ... Or Is It?

2011-10-17T17:38:00.014+01:00

I love city festivals. I love that feeling of being on holiday in the place you live. I love disparate events with a collective purpose. I love tearing all over town and Tweeting about it. I love free wine and cheap tickets and good conversation with motivated people. A hectic calendar of Manchester festivals (International, Pride, Jazz, Science, Food and Drink, Literature, Asia Triennial, Comedy, and of course the Weekender) provides this in spades.

The savvy thing about the Manchester Weekender is that it mingles events that might already be happening with new and specially-commissioned work to create mutual enthusiasm and mass encouragement to get out there and see what your city has to offer.

At Castlefield Gallery, Istanbul artists blend ideas of vacation and immigration, utilising everything from suitcases to IKEA-style stills of visa application offices. Entry is through a metal-detecting airport security gate. On the inside, voices of authority are aired through video interviews with visa office employees while the voices of the disappointed and rejected literally envelop the entire gallery on the outside; the walls and windows are papered with correspondence from people denied entry into various countries. The exhibition forms part of the ongoing Asia Triennial Manchester.

Against this backdrop Beating Wing Orchestra give a musical performance with a global and mesmerising blend of influences; old European, pan-Asian, Congolese, hip-hop, Bhangra, all with astonishing vocal dexterity. ‘World music’, explains one of the singers simply. A terrific feeling of camaraderie between band members, and eventually between band and audience too, make this a special event.

Down at the Whitworth Gallery, After Hours present ‘BlackLab’, an amalgam of set pieces that complement the existing ‘Dark Matters’ exhibit. Both play with light, film, delay, transparency, print, music and motion. The slow-mo movie of burning oilfields is weirdly touching while next door live guitar and cello soundtrack short films of traditional paper silhouette stop-motion. Whether the man shouting ‘MARGARET THATCHER! KARL MARX!’ is an installation himself or someone with political Tourettes I’m still not sure. ‘Cosmodrome’, screened in the auditorium, pays melancholic testimony to the heroes of Soviet space travel.

‘Primitive Streak’ is fashion meets life science. Divided between the Royal Exchange mezzanine gallery and the windows of Debenhams, the clothes shown in photograph, sketches or their final stitched form are inspired by the cellular development of living humans, so we get designs for spinal couture, a ‘sperm’ dress and, my favourite, the ‘Anaphase Dress’ which surely should belong to Bjork by rights?

Time to hit the shoe leather for two Mancunian walks. The first sees Ed Glinert from New Manchester Walks take a group of booted and be-torched urban explorers through Manchester’s concealed subterranean history and its fascinating links with Nazi invasion, state secrecy and ambitious canal endeavours. It’s thrilling and unnerving to be metres beneath Deansgate and not hear a sound. Memories of people enduring uncomfortable, diseased hours in the expansive bomb shelters feel all-too tangible in that dank air.

Then it’s back into sunshine and air for a tour of Ancoats, incorporating old and new, alluring decrepitude and ambitious renovation. The ‘Ancoats Peeps’ are discrete viewing portals, historical fragments placed in oblique locations that preserve images of Anocats’ past even as the district develops around them. Beginning and ending at the beautifully designed Cutting Room Square, the tour brought us into renovated cotton mills and the breathtaking interior of St Peter’s Church, soon to provide rehearsal space to the Halle Orchestra no less. A book is available to chronicle and complement the ‘Ancoats Peeps’.

The weekend ends on a high with Dave Haslam’s ‘Close Up with Jarvis Cocker’ in the intricate Gothic majesty of the Town Hall’s Great Hall. Surrounded by Ford Madox Brown’s vivid and edifying murals, Jarvis and Dave talk music, lyrics, sex, Michael Jackson and recession Britain before a rapt audience. Wonderful fun.

Though the Manchester Weekender is officially over, it is in fact a gateway to an autumn/winter schedule packed with events like the ones above. Festival season continues across the city. Check links, get on mailers and Twitter feeds, see what’s afoot. After 48 hours of cultural input it becomes apparent you can make a Manchester Weekender for yourself whenever you like. Get going ...

(Big thanks to Holly Jennison at All Points North)

The Manchester Weekender 2011

2011-10-12T23:43:00.007+01:00

The leaves are dying a death but the city’s alive and kicking. Music, art, theatre, politics, underground, overground, lots of it free! That’s what Creative Tourist have magically/manically pulled together for the imminent Manchester Weekender, running from this Friday (14th) to the far end of Sunday evening.

‘It’s all about engaging conversations, big questions, daring performances, secret places and cool spaces,’ says the spiel. Perfect.

The good folk at All Points North have asked me to delve in and report back from the artistic front over this frantic three-dayer, and I’ve accepted the challenge.

A full guide for the three days can be obtained right here, and a more compact version, a clash-finder if you will, is here. Best get planning. Here’s what’s currently taking my fancy …

Primitive Streak … couture meets evolutionary science in these free exhibits at the Royal Exchange and Debenhams

Sounds Like A Gallery … tributes to Manchester Art Gallery and its collection told through the medium of the banjo (!) and other instrumentation

Beating Wing Orchestra … part of Asia Triennial, migrant and refugee musicians make up this collective performing at Castlefield Gallery

After Hours presents BlackLab … a blend of prose, film and still photography, soundtracked live by artist and musician Otto Smart

Gothic Splendour … embrace Manchester’s Victorian roots by visiting Ford Madox Brown’s dozen murals housed in our beautiful imposing Town Hall

Underground Manchester with New Manchester Walks … torch, boots and backbone required for this subterranean exploration beneath the city streets

Ancoats Peeps … the endlessly rich story of the Ancoats streets is the subject of this walk, taking in historical buildings and new installations

Jarvis Cocker: Close Up with Dave Haslam … Round off your epic weekend in the company of a contender for the title of ‘Greatest Living Englishman’ inside the Town Hall’s wondrous Great Hall. Jarvis Cocker will be there too …

If you’re out Tweeting during the Weekender the hashtag is simply #McrWeekender so let’s get trending while we’re trekking.

See you out there…

Berlin Part 6: Our last auf wiedersehen …

2011-10-12T00:17:00.010+01:00

A late healthy breakfast at Hilde’s where we meet Matthew’s friend, the lovely Anita. Anita is an ex-Mancunian resident and a delight so we decide to fall in love with her over croissants and fruit and Geordie’s fragrant peppermint tea which is simply fistfuls of shredded mint leaves in piping hot water and which smells of HEALTH. Delish. Anita hasn’t been in Berlin long but she already has a fascinating job working for this talented lady. Jealous.

The sun is blazing down. I have to donate my hat to Matthew. It’s a parks and ice-cream day for sure. I have pistachio and one other flavour which runs down to my elbow in the heat and makes me feel about eight. Mauerpark is our destination. It runs along the site of the old wall (‘mauer’) and the deathly no man’s land that lay there. Today it’s a bustling park with performance spaces, wild undergrowth, and best of all a huge flea market where you can and must buy everything from knives and forks and dresses to ice cold beer and records. Matthew tries on a lovely lavender panama hat with some sort of floral print on it and the couple running the stall fall about laughing.

After a nice lazy wander and some beers we retire to a bar across the road for Mai Tais in the shade. Our good intentions of visiting the gay museum fall apart as the cocktails work their magic. It’s simply too hot and too hilarious to do anything but sit and smoke and laugh like drains. Stomachs begin to rumble so we head out for Vietnamese food in the slowly cooling streets of Prenzlberg.

Soon it’s time to say goodbye to Anita. The boys and I begin to amble home. Soon the sky bruises and my skin starts to prickle. We’re not very far from the flat when the first ice-white flash of lightning booms its way across the sky. It’s the beginning of the biggest, loudest thunderstorm I’ve ever seen in my life. This was our view of it from our balcony (careful, it’s pretty loud…)

After watching in the hot rain and drinking some or other amazing wine with the lightning coming from all directions round the Fernsehturm I am filled with a weird kind of energy. It needs to be danced off. I leave the boys at home and go to meet Craig for nocturnal revelry. I don’t know if I have a reputation for getting lost or something but this is what is placed inside my wallet before I head out …

Pork at Fechen 3000 is exactly as upmarket and glamorous as it sounds. Tonnes of beary boys and fit art gays pinballing around the place to a mush of indie and dance and electro guff. The lovely Joel Gibb from The Hidden Cameras is DJing when we arrive and lets me take over the decks for a bit. The ‘decks’ being someone’s woefully undernourished iTunes from which I salvage some Ladytron or something. It’s all severely hazy by this point. I’m seriously entertaining missing my flight on purpose but the administrative nightmare of this threatens to sober me up (fat chance) and there’s still plenty of time to party yet.

There is more than one area in this nightclub establishment. I lose my brand new jackplug necklace in the other area of this nightclub establishment. That’s all I have to say about that.

I am limping for a cab home at 8 am. Every single item of my clothing is drenched with beer. The get-me-home Polaroid proves itself priceless. I still have it with me now. Everywhere I go.

Objects of desire: Part 2

2011-10-10T10:51:00.019+01:00

The delights gathered below are all lovingly bookmarked with a view to potential future perusal and possible eventual acquisition. By me. Within reason. The Manhattan helicopter ride might have to wait till next year at the very least. Anyway, feast your eyes on these consumable beauties. By the way, this list in no way constitutes a series of enormous hints about things that you might like to buy me for Christmas. No no no …

Peruvian Organic Fairtrade Coffee

£19.79

Muppets Movies Boxset

£19.99

Chromeo, Terminal 5, New York

£30 (plus cost of getting to New York and staying there of course …)

Dinner at Terre A Terre in Brighton

£100

Manhattan Helicopter Ride

£100 (plus blah blah …)

Doc Marten Shoes

£110

Giorgio Armani Sunglasses

£165.90

Dualit Espressivo 79000 Coffee Machine, Polished Steel with Frothing Jug

£179

Paul Smith Black Colyer Spectacles

£196

Pioneer HDJ2000 Professional Headphones

£229

The Smiths Complete Deluxe Collector’s Box Set

£249.99

Vintage Narnia Chronicles

£320

Armani Coat

£375

Leaf grief

2011-10-08T00:05:00.011+01:00

I do this every year so just bear with me. I actually didn’t mean for it to become a tradition. But here it is. I hate the autumn. I don’t know what it is. Except maybe I do. It’s because September smells funny. And the light is awkward. And my music sounds … off. Is that it? I think I have synaesthesia when September comes around. It’s the weird moon and the weather that changes minute to minute and the sweat and shiver because your clothes are all wrong. The beloved portholes that are the windows of my flat in HMS Lancaster start to look inwards at this time of year and I refuse to look back. My curtains are drawn until March.

More specifically tonight it’s poverty and fomo and all this recycling that I simply can’t face. And Morrissey.

I went to the launch of a book about Morrissey earlier. I’ve organised and introduced an identical event myself so I know it’s not easy. But this was a bit of an ordeal if I’m honest. A mixture of introverted and possibly unenthused academics saying oblique things to an audience who knew better and whose enthusiasm wained in under forty five minutes such that there were barely any questions and in fact one open and lengthy criticism.

Proceedings were lightened considerably by These Charming Men who bookended the discussion with quite lovely acoustic renditions from The Canon. But I went there alone and my questions sounded confrontational in my head (they weren’t) so I didn’t ask them. The people in front of me sniggered and rolled their eyes and left.

Then again, maybe it was me. I’m starting to think pop music might have ruined my life. I’m pretty sure I would have written more than one unpublished novel if not for pop music. I might have written two unpublished novels. Boom-tish. ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’ instigated two enormously pivotal moments in my life and I’m a bit annoyed about it now. Although it will sound just right in the autobiography I suppose.

I left the book launch and turned on my iPod and it went straight to ‘Meat Is Murder’. I skipped. It was Robyn, ‘Dancing On My Own’. I could do without the signs and symbols at the moment. I’m pained by the single unbroken martini glass that survived the party here on Saturday night, a party that was terrific fun but that more or less went completely wrong.

I have quit smoking though. For good this time. The last time I quit was on the roof of the Hawley Arms in the sweltering heat of last summer, with cider, when Amy was alive. I don’t miss cigarettes but it seems the world and his husband have taken it up again. I was definitely ready to let it go though. It’s twenty years since I smoked my first one. It was love at first puff. He hit me and it felt like a kiss. But even a kiss shouldn’t last two decades.

Chin up though. September didn’t break me. I managed to skip it with a healthy degree of denial, plus a trip to Berlin which I am going to do every September from now until forever, just to take the edge off. I shall tell all about the final day and night of my German urlaub anon. It will be heavily edited so that we can remain friends.

Anyway, now that I’m a student again September means the start of term. I’m into the second year of a part time MA in Novel Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. I’m actually doing this, and not just talking about doing this. So it’s back to a novel a week until Christmas. What could be lovelier? The reading list looks like this:

Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin

Margaret Drabble, The Millstone

Anthony Burgess, The Malayan Trilogy

V.S. Naipaul, Miguel Street

Doris Lessing, The Fifth Child

J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace

Benjamin Black, Elegy for April

Nicola Barker, Small Holdings

Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question

Beryl Bainbridge, Master Georgie

See? We’re fine.

Coming up shortly: more Berlin, how to stay positive this autumn through retail therapy, and forthcoming exciting cultural events across Manchester.

I think I will buy pyjamas.

This on repeat please.

Berlin Part 5 …

2011-09-21T21:25:00.016+01:00

Amy Winehouse made from toast at the Art Village, Berlin Festival.

I remain in bed twitching until 4.30 pm. Berocca, dehydration sachet, rye bread with cheese, two coffees, apple juice, fixed. Back down at Tempelhof the atmosphere is noticeably more party than Friday. The first booze/drug casualties of the weekend are visible at last. Oddly for us, our line-up today is pretty much the opposite of party. Beirut, Deus, Mogwai. Folk and post-rock do not require dancing shoes. We haven’t brought them with us today anyway.

It is my very first Beirut gig, but not my last. I get so emotional about Zach Condon’s voice. Plus I might never listen to ukuleles and mandolins if not for him. I always think of him as a character from Garden State or something. I smiled at this from his Wiki: ‘On his return from Europe, Condon enrolled at the University of New Mexico, where he studied Portuguese and photography.’ Do you know what I mean? Anyway, ‘Nantes’ and ‘Postcards From Italy’ are important songs, and they sound it tonight, drenched in that indefinable sadness of yore. The crowd seem to love this music, the air is cool, the moon is just so.

Video for ‘Postcards From Italy’ by Beirut. WARNING: You may cry. Also, this contains a whale.

If you are in proper party mood Boys Noize is just it. The music makes up in sheer eyelid-quivering volume what it lacks in finesse. You just can’t say no to vertical flame-throwers, can you? You can feel the heat off the stage pyrotechnics from 150 people away. Shirtless casualties of all genders periodically burst from the periphery of the crowd like bits of popcorn, gasping for air. Exciting. Drugs not jobs, yeah!

Watch from 2 minutes for a total chair-dancing pyro moment …

Bang bang bang, what a lot of noise. We slope off with the shmindie kids to watch Deus. I have to say, after more than ten years of periodically listening to this band I only recognise a couple of the songs. I prefer their psychedelic dirges which I guess don’t translate so well live. Mogwai on the other hand are kings of the psychedelic dirge. Why aren’t I following them on tour? Why don’t I have a Mogwai tattoo? Why? I could probably go and see this band once a week. As it is I last saw them in Brooklyn on One Of The Best Days Of My Life ™ I am ONLY going to watch them in amazing places that begin with B from now on. Watch out Baltimore and Birmingham. I vow that I will play ‘I’m Jim Morrison, I’m Dead’ every time I DJ for the rest of my life, including at my RnB night and at my nephew’s christening.

At some point I eat a vegan hotdog and a tofu burger. There’s loads of nice veggie food around. I simply can’t drink any more beer. Matthew buys me a necklace made from the jackplug off a pair of headphones which I adore and later lose under the most debauched of circumstances. I haven’t told him about this yet. I guess we’ll soon discover whether he reads my blog or not won’t we …?

Home, wine, cigs, balcony, TV tower, sleep sleep …

Berlin Part 4 …

2011-09-18T14:07:00.013+01:00

It has been noted that the three of us have had neon Berocca wee all week. Vitamin fortification is required though, especially as today is festival day! BerlinFestival is held at the deserted airport at Tempelhof, it’s one of the biggest buildings on the planet, a vast arc of a place, all concrete and corrugations and sans serif typeface. The stages are positioned inside old hangars with the crowds spilling out across the disused runways. The atmosphere is ghostly at first but as it warms up, and especially later when it gets dark, it feels inspired and utterly Berlin.

James Blake is the first act of the weekend, a 2pm slot which is odd for someone who’s a Mercury nominee back home, great for us though, we get to the front with just a short amble. My ideal venue for James Blake would be a very tiny musical theatre or concert hall but he’s still wonderful outdoors, him and his two geeky sidekicks. They don’t move much. ‘They make Kraftwerk look like Bucks Fizz,’ says Geordie. It doesn’t matter, the magical space station soul comes out of the speakers like radiation. Honestly, it makes your hair move. It might sound a bit obvious, but wouldn’t it be amazing if he covered Imogen Heap’s ‘Hide and Seek’? ‘The Wilhelm Scream’ is riding high on my songs of the year and he finishes his set with it. The lump in my throat is partly the song and partly the crippling bass which makes me sneeze at one point and also makes my Adam’s apple feel compressed. Turn it down just a notch James.

There’s time for a wander as the site begins to fill up. It’s easy as pie to spot English hipsters, they're the ones dressed like German tourists. Irony. There are no queues, food and drink isn’t ludicrously overpriced, there are no police on site and nobody telling you where to sit or smoke or anything. In the crowd I see the man I'm going to marry. And his girlfriend. We watch a bit of Yelle, manic and shrieking in a cat suit. The Rapture play a decent set but mostly we’re in it for the ‘hits’. They put us in proper dancing mode though. The drinks flow a little faster. My on-the-night review for the next couple of hours reads: ‘The Drums: Meh. CSS: Yeh!’

At some point we decide to start a band called Flamingo Cheese. This is later changed to Post Modern Cow. Then Hercules and Love Affair play an amazing set. ‘Dance Energy’ vibes all the way. I think the reason I don’t get on with the albums so much at home is I just want to be on the dancefloor when I hear them. Vogueing in Hangar 5 is just as good tonight.

After a couple of mango margaritas, Primal Scream performing the whole of ‘Screamadelica’ suddenly seems like the greatest idea ever. On our way to the main stage a crazy hippie asks for a light. He more or less says, ‘I had that Primal Scream in the back of my cab last night,’ in broken English. He seems to think the Primals are Mancunian and since he’s so excited that we are too we don’t bother to correct him. By the sounds of it he picked up the band at the side of the road in the small hours and was ordered to drive them to Hitler’s bunker. In gratitude they put the cabbie on the guest list for the festival. He’s the most exuberant man on site.

The main stage is predictably rammed, though many people don’t seem to know the album all that well. It’s a set text, surely? We have to dance like crazies so we hang back, and this is where the sound system comes into its own. You must be able to hear this in Hamburg. Amazing. Typical me I’m at the bar when ‘Higher Than The Sun’ kicks in but I have a little barfly dance anyway.

Matthew trundles off to see Wire while Geordie and I barrel down the front for my (I think) sixteenth Suede gig, which is now a polished and wordless affair but still utterly exhilarating. They play ‘To The Birds’ and I am fourteen again, and forever, playing my two Suede 12” singles over and over and over again on a cul-de-sac in Lancashire. The last four tracks go like this: ‘So Young’, ‘Metal Mickey’, ‘New Generation, ‘Beautiful Ones’. Tell me they’re not the greatest live band in the world.

Then it’s all over and the fun bus drives across the tarmac and delivers us to Arena Berlin for the after party. My friend Craig, occasional resident in Berlin, comes to meet us and we sneak a drink at Barbie’s first. The next few hours at Arena are a mess of chain smoking, ex-pats from Leeds, drinks in the Glashaus, a DJ set from Boy George, and dancing; dancing on sand and concrete and cobbles. Techno techno techno techno.

It’s impossible to stop of course so Craig and I see in the dawn and beyond at Roses Bar, which is basically an explosion in your little sister’s jewellery box. Craig lights a fag at the wrong end, and persists with it. It’s that kind of night. I fall in love with Eleazar from Cologne. I get on the U-Bahn somewhere and get off somewhere else and I finish Friday, or rather begin Saturday, by walking in circles and thinking what a great name for a film ‘Lost In Alexanderplatz’ would be …

Berlin Part 3 …

2011-09-17T16:35:00.010+01:00

Back at the flat, Geordie reads me the opening chapter of Max Schaefer’s Children Of The Sun. It’s a magnificent piece of writing. The novel explores the history of connections between gay men and right-wing skinhead culture in Britain. Folsom is on the week we are there and over the next few days I see gay men wearing fetish gear that very occasionally borders on Gestapo style. The thin line frightens me, it might frighten me even more were I Jewish, as Larry Mass points out in Confessions of a Jewish Wagnerite. But these men are free to do as they wish. They are at least free.

I’m starving. Schwarzwaldstuben is a cute bar/restaurant where I consume the largest goat’s cheese salad on the continent followed by some kind of fried pasta arrangement and Rothaus beer which is the nicest thing I drink on the whole trip apart from the lovely wine which I will never remember the name of. The waiter is a 9 out of 10. We see lots of these. Really, it’s not worth calling anything less than an 8. Especially in a city with trams, it’s just dangerous.

My friend Kostya was in Berlin the week before us and has concealed a postcard of Marlene Dietrich behind one of the litter bins on a corner near the restaurant in an act of psychogeographical treasure hunting. Alas it is nowhere to be found. I expect it was sluiced away by the rains. Oh well.

Next it’s off to the Philharmonie where Marek Janowksi conducts the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester through two Brahms followed by Busoni’s Piano Concerto. There is a mixed choir followed by an all male choir. Any kind of vocal harmonising floors me at the best of times so I’m damp about the eyes when the first note hits.

'What can you do with it? It's like a lot of yaks jumping about,' said Sir Thomas Beecham on Beethoven's Seventh. This kind of applies to the Busoni, which at times, I kid you not, is like Rachmaninoff meets John Williams. But it's so vibrant and unruly it eventually endears itself to you.

I have gone a pretty full arc of emotion by the time we leave, which of course means only one thing, that a drink is in order. In fact we have very nearly made it to the front door of the apartment when I hear music and see a shaft of red light spill onto the kerb from a bar with no name so we dive in on impulse. At the back of the room is a crucifix emblazoned with the legend ‘CLOSER TO GOD IN HEELS’. There is no beer and due to a linguistic breakdown with the bar tender Geordie emerges from a fug of cigarette smoke carrying €44 worth of spirits instead. Oh well, we are on holiday. Chin chin.