Manchester coming of age

Summer 2014.  I’m walking down Burton Road in West Didsbury, the street where I’ve lived for almost a year, and I see Vini Reilly standing in the doorway of one of the bars, wearing sandals and smoking a rollie. It’s Vini that you can hear playing guitar on ‘I Know Very Well How I Got My Name’, probably the most-purchased and least-listened-to Morrissey B-side (it’s on the other side of ‘Suedehead’). I must have played it a thousand times, on vinyl and then on my first guitar. (When I was thirteen years old, I really did dye my hair gold). At the bar on Burton Road, Vini looks like he doesn’t quite know if he’s arriving or leaving. We lock eyes for just a second. It’s eighteen years since the IRA bomb went off in town, and I got my A-level results and a place at Manchester University.

Yesterday. I am sitting in my Auntie Dee and Uncle John’s bedroom in Stretford and I can see the gasworks out the window and I’m struggling through the guitar chords for ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’ as I have done for twenty years. Outside, dozens of Man United fans file past the house, fresh from a four–nil victory over QPR. Downstairs I can hear Dee, a Dubliner, chatting away with my other half Oisín, whose story started in Australia and came to Manchester via Ireland. This is at once exactly where I think I’m meant to be, exactly where I most want to be, and exactly where I never thought I would end up. It’s eighteen years since I moved to Manchester, half my life ago. I have lived here longer now than I’ve lived anywhere. I did it.

John drives us past the end of King’s Road on the way home and when we get dropped off in West Didsbury we walk along Burton Road again and the sky is criss-crossed with jet trails. I want to write something to mark my coming of age in Manchester because I feel suddenly emotional about it, so at home I start listening to some songs to try and level out my thoughts a bit. Morrissey’s ‘Lost’ is first – ‘jet trails in the sky leave one thought behind…’ – followed by his epic Raymonde cover, ‘No One Can Hold A Candle To You’, which I always used to pester Dave Cottrill to play at the Star & Garter, and he always did. Billy Bragg doing ‘A New England’ at the Kirsty McColl memorial concert, Eddie Reader doing ‘Dear John’ the same night, and eventually back around to ‘I Know Very Well How I Got My Name’, with Vini on the guitar.

So far, nothing in my life, and by my life I mean Manchester, has gone the way I imagined it, and certainly not the way I planned it, since the plan from childhood was to live in Manhattan, hence the portmanteau of my blog. I thought by now I would have at least two novels published and would live off the proceeds and be an activist. Instead, this month I will pay the rent with my fee from being the theatre writer at the Manchester Evening News and with the money I made from the gay RnB night I run. If I was a character in a novel it would be something by Tama Janowitz and everyone would agree that it was interesting but the characters’ lives seemed a bit contrived. We haven’t starved yet.

How to celebrate my ‘birthday’? The same way you always should: have a party, look back a bit, and count your blessings. The party has been had, at Festival No. 6, aka ‘Manchester by the sea’. I DJ’d there, partied until my screws came loose with some of the best people who live in this town, heard Weatherall play my favourite Frankie Knuckles edit, and saw Pet Shop Boys perform ‘It’s A Sin’ under the night sky. As for looking back, this is my twelfth address in Manchester and I remember something good and bad about them all. I am very happy where I am. I work in this place all day long looking down Burton Road, and I never get tired of it. Oisín comes home and we make food and we make plans for a future that might or might not turn out a certain way.

Some things never seem to change. Manchester is a city in terrible poverty.  Morrissey has no record contract but he’s still out on tour. The Council’s assault on our architecture makes Manchester feel less like itself to me than ever before – and I arrived on a bomb site, remember. It will always be home here, but I’d move to Berlin or Brooklyn in the morning. I’m saving the blessings bit for when I count backwards from fifteen at Trafford General next week. I won’t run out before I get to zero.

Morrissey: Autobiography, the view from Manchester

The Smiths were a major part of the reason I moved to Manchester half my life ago, although I wasn’t expecting to find them still hanging round the Arndale Centre (or maybe I was…) In any case they were done and dusted by the time I arrived in September ‘96. The city centre was in shreds after the Corporation Street bomb in June, the Hacienda was a few months from shutting up shop for good, and even Morrissey’s solo career highlights were largely behind him.

I’ve always enjoyed the unique line Morrissey manages to tread between potential tabloid fodder and pop’s last enigma. The confessionals are there on the records if you want them, but in terms of the life lived behind the songs there was always a certain gravitas that came with not knowing too much. Someday soon we will no doubt be faced with Morrissey: The Movie made by a twenty-four year old Californian newly-besotted with The Smiths, and it will be monstrous, and Morrissey is wise to get his version of events in first. But, as Germaine Greer said of Michael Jackson’s never-to-be comeback tour, I for one was dreading it…

A great lyricist doesn’t necessarily make for a great prose writer of course, and when it emerged that Autobiography would be packaged in advance as a ‘Classic’ – a bit like those two-year old Disney films you’ve never heard of – I feared Morrissey’s literary aspirations might bury his story under pretension and hyperbole. The opening pages threaten to do just that. Where you might expect the standard biographical establishment of family line, or in this case perhaps a grisly flash-forward to the notorious Smiths’ royalties trial, the introduction is at least original and is given over to the city of Manchester itself, as Morrissey finds it and as it finds him, ‘where everything lies wherever it was left over one hundred years ago.’ There is added sentiment for me in his naming lesser-known Mancunian locations that I know well and could cycle to in minutes: Mayfield Road, Longford Park, The Three Legs O’ Man. But the city is hard, and is only the most brutal character in a brutal line up. At home the Dwyer/Morrissey family cossets, but school and the streets are a Darwinian assault course where the girls start the fights and the boys, including our hero, take it on the chin.

Morrissey’s prose style is verbose, riddled with adverbs, often rambling, and, like his later studio albums, you have to take the rough with the smooth. So for instance, while we might have coped with slightly fewer film plot synopses, these are offset by glorious descriptive passages on 1960s television, destined to be quoted in academia. But for the most part, what Morrissey has written is an accomplished, moving and occasionally hilarious present-tense narrative, which, when he can take control of his writing, rings with the bold veracity of a semi-ordinary boyhood and a truly extraordinary adult life. In one scene he is a child, mesmerised, watching David Bowie establish his extra-terrestrial magic on the television – in the very next moment he is back in school witnessing the needless abuse of a classmate for biting his nails. The sensation of yearning for something bigger, more exciting and more civilised is painfully tangible in the contrast.

Morrissey is at his inflamed best when discussing music. The New York Dolls are ‘the slum of all failures, had nothing to lose and could scarcely differentiate between night and day.’ Siouxsie Sioux is ‘a black-eyed shopgirl hidden somewhere in the whistling cathedral towers of Notre Dame’, the music she makes is ‘a strict ice-bath of nightmare and caution.’ Oddly then, when it comes to his own music, Morrissey’s powers run dry. Of that batch of immaculate early Smiths songs that seemed ready to burst, perfectly intact from a Stretford bedroom and drafty rehearsal space, the author is quiet to the point of frustration, and before you know it The Smiths are off on their first US tour. While we learn that the Algonquin Hotel is riddled with cockroaches, or that 80 per cent of global warming is attributable to the meat industry, That joke isn’t funny anymore has been written, and Shakespeare’s sister – described by Morrissey at the time as ‘the song of my life’ – with no mention of how, or why. Now is the time to say! Instead we receive a statistician’s dull smorgasbord of Billboard positions and venue capacities in American cities, and suddenly The Smiths are through.

There is plenty of humour along the way though. At a Roxy Music gig, singer Bryan Ferry ‘shuffles crab-style from stage left to stage right like someone who’s had his food dish removed.’ Of a flamboyant teenaged acquaintance Morrissey writes, ‘I am astounded at his survival in child-eating Collyhurst.’ Russell Mael of Sparks, ‘sings in French italics with the mad urgency of someone tied to a tree.’ These cultural snapshots suit Morrissey well – in his oblique way he suggests it might even have been the words of poets John Betjeman or W. H. Auden that persuade him to be a performer – anything more monumental (Thatcher, Nature, the justice system) and he resorts to histrionics. An uncharacteristically restrained summary of singer Sandie Shaw’s music is later explicated as a grudge held over Shaw visiting Germany with The Smiths and leaving Morrissey at home. Morrissey is the man, let’s recall, who knelt at Shaw’s feet clutching a rosary, and the antennae are thereafter poised for other personally-motivated revisions. Rough Trade Records emerge as a collection of the stupidest people ever to end up in the wrong profession. In particular Morrissey is able to recall verbatim the countless idiot statements that leave the unfortunate mouth of label owner Geoff Travis. Producer Stephen Street he admires, and Mick Ronson, and Angie Marr, and, for a long time, Johnny himself – until the trial.

When the trial arrives, in which Smiths drummer Mike Joyce sues Morrissey and Marr for a quarter of all Smiths royalties (despite there being no contract to that effect), down comes Johnny from his pedestal for the crime of collusion, and in Morrissey’s eyes The Smiths are irrevocably toppled too. It is a convoluted and bizarre miscarriage which you might be forgiven for thinking is happening in real time. Fifty pages are consumed by it (whereas a ground-breaking song like Asleep, for instance, about which whole essays have been written, warrants not a mention). Throughout the trial, the book, and his life, Morrissey is unaccountably unable to find a good manager, a viable lasting record deal, or any decent legal representation (while his penniless ex-drummer romps to victory on the strength of free Legal Aid). What this sad litany of underperforming individuals undeniably have in common is Morrissey himself. The greatest insights in Autobiography might exist between those lines – Morrissey simply cannot deal with other human beings – but then he did tell us that before, once or twice...

As in life, there are no chapters, barely any paragraphs and no index, therefore no skipping ahead to Jake Walters or Alan Bennett or the Finsbury Park debacle. It’s written in US spelling throughout, for whatever reason, and ‘The Smiths’ are apparently ‘the Smiths’.  These things count. As a special mention, the blurb is atrocious, obsessively listing chart positions and sales, name-checking Tel-Aviv and My Chemical Romance (!) but not Johnny Marr. For some reason Morrissey is horribly mean about fat people and occasionally denigrating about women's bodies. If you don’t like it, don’t look at it… And as for Mike Joyce – who was apparently able to galvanise all of the dislike towards Morrissey that had ever existed into crippling monetary fines and a public humiliation – there’s a tiny bar just a few doors down from my flat in South Manchester where Mike DJs every Thursday night. Whether he plays for love or money, I couldn’t say.




Listen: Morrissey: Autobiography, the music.

Morrissey, Autobiography: The Music

Here are all of the name-dropped songs and singles that furnish Morrissey’s Autobiography (excluding his own, of course) compiled as a playlist with all that Spotify will allow. Warning: it’s (predictably) quite brilliant…Here is the Spotify link: Morrissey: Autobiography playlist and the track listing is below. Treat yourself to my review of the Autobiography here. 

Track listing:

Millie – My Boy Lollipop

Roy Orbison – It's Over

Manfred Mann – Pretty Flamingo

New Vaudeville Band – Peek A Boo

Four Tops – Bernadette

Paul Jones – I've Been A Bad Bad Boy

Francoise Hardy – All Over The World - English Version of "Dans Le Monde Entier"

The Righteous Brothers – You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' - Single Version

Jimmy Jones – Good Timin'

Tony Orlando – Bless You

Marianne Faithfull – Come And Stay With Me

Love Affair – Rainbow Valley

The Foundations – Back On My Feet Again

Small Faces – Lazy Sunday

Sandie Shaw – You've Not Changed

Lulu – I'm a Tiger

Rita Pavone – Heart

Diana Ross & The Supremes – Reflections - Single Version

Diana Ross & The Supremes – I'm Livin' In Shame - Juke Box Single Version (Stereo)

Matt Monro – We're Gonna Change The World - 2010 Digital Remaster

Shirley Bassey – Let Me Sing and I'm Happy

Paper Dolls – Something Here In My Heart

David Bowie – Starman - 2002 Digital Remaster

Buffy Sainte-Marie – Soldier Blue

Buffy Sainte-Marie – Moratorium

The Pioneers – Let Your Yeah Be Yeah

Dave And Ansel Collins – Double Barrel

Bob & Marcia – Young, Gifted And Black

Springwater – I Will Return

Hurricane Smith – Don't Let It Die

Jo Jo Gunne – Run Run Run

The Elgins – Heaven Must Have Sent You

T. Rex – Jeepster

T. Rex – Metal Guru

T. Rex – Telegram Sam

Mr Bloe – Groovin' With Mr Bloe

Blue Mink – Melting Pot

Roxy Music – Virginia Plain

New York Dolls – Jet Boy

New York Dolls – Trash

Mott The Hoople – All The Young Dudes

Faron Young – It's Four In The Morning

Melanie Safka – I Don't Eat Animals

Iggy & The Stooges – Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell - Iggy Pop Mix

Sex Pistols – Anarchy In The UK

Sparks – This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us

New York Dolls – Frankenstein

New York Dolls – Personality Crisis

Nancy Sinatra – Happy

Dionne Warwick – Loneliness Remembers What Happiness Forget

Jobriath – Morning Star Ship

Pony Club – Single

Ewan MacColl – Morrissey and the Russian Sailor

Kirsty MacColl – You Know It's You

Nancy Sinatra – Let Me Kiss You

Patti Smith Group – Because the Night

Brigitte Bardot – Bubble Gum

Herman's Hermits – East West 

David Bowie – Drive In Saturday - 1999 Digital Remaster

‘Manchester: In Residents’ … #20: Sarah

'Manchester has a fascinating history, artistic integrity, an intellectual legacy, great diversity of people, a lovely self-deprecating sense of humour, it’s not pretentious, and we work hard...'

What’s your name?

Sarah Perks

What do you do?

I hold the super title of ‘Programme and Engagement Director, at Cornerhouse which means I’m in charge of all of the artistic programmes. This cuts across our exhibitions, films, engagement projects (young people for example), lots of events, and much more. As well as all the team management and strategy, I curate exhibitions, produce artists’ films and commissions, distribute artists’ film, programme film seasons, talk constantly and run around after artists. There’s a lot to do, I love it and I have a fab team.

Where do you live?

I live on one of the cheaper sides of Chorlton, opposite the cemetery, near the water park where I walk Benji (my dog) twice a day. I resisted Chorlton at first, then I gave in about a year ago. Some of the stereotypes are unfair, I’ve never even been to Unicorn. I’ve lived in Oldham, Urmston, Prestwich, the city centre, Clayton, and more recently on the Rusholme/Moss Side border where I was chair of the residents association.

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

I was born here, and without even a gap year, I have always lived in Manchester. My parents were born here. Further back leads to Ireland (of course) and the slums of Greengate, Salford. Lots of people don’t believe me because I have an accent that seems hard to pin down (I don’t know why, I sound Manc-ish to me). I’ve almost left and then didn’t, though nearly all of my family have left (for as far away as New Zealand). Anyway I’m still here with Benji, who’s also a Mancunian, he’s from the dogs’ home.

What’s great about this city?

I can gush forever about Manchester and often do, particularly if someone mentions Liverpool... Manchester has a fascinating history, artistic integrity, an intellectual legacy, great diversity of people, a lovely self-deprecating sense of humour, it’s not pretentious, and we work hard. Wherever you go people know Manchester and are positive about it (I don’t even mind if football comes up on occasion). This city has a different energy and attitude that’s not afraid to do something else, be brave and ambitious, and just get on with it. It’s small enough to be friendly and easy to get around, yet there’s great culture and lots to do. I’m not entirely sure a working class over-achiever like me would have got such amazing opportunities in London.  We need to keep an eye on the young talent though and make sure they keep up the spirit.

What’s not so great?

For a city of over two million people, there are not enough visible hot single straight men and those that disagree should make themselves known. Also, on occasion there’s a little too much sentiment for ‘Madchester’ and certain people from that era. I’m not saying it wasn’t important but it’s only a small part of the story and most kids don’t care about it now. I think The Smiths will endure beyond all that, and Take That probably.

Do you have a favourite Manchester building?

There are so many amazing buildings all over the city – visiting artists often want to research them and are continually impressed by wealth of architecture styles and influences – that’s what makes the city special. Chetham’s Library is a particular gem. I also love the view from Peel Tower (Ramsbottom). Recently, with an artist, we looked into the old Salford Cinema at the top of Chapel Street out of curiosity, and ended up attending an entire evangelist Christian service.

Do you have a favourite Mancunian?

I think Dr CP Lee is a city treasure. Some others are Emmeline Pankhurst, Morrissey, Davy Jones and everyone that makes Coronation Street so great. And Friedrich Engels, though he wasn’t born here. I would like Nick Grimshaw to smash the R1 breakfast show… Mark and Lard didn’t, although their afternoon show in the early noughties was genius, I still often think about Halon Menswear...

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

I’m always in Cornerhouse bar because I love it, not about promoting it at all, it would be weird if I didn’t like it and didn’t talk to people there! I like traditional pubs like Britons and the Peveril Of The Peak, and unless it’s cocktail time, I like more relaxed bars like The Gas Lamp and Common. Myself and Benji frequent many Chorlton bars including The Parlour and The Spoon Inn. A Chinese hotpot with a big group of friends at Red‘n’Hot on Faulkner Street is the best – I’m particularly crazy about the spam and frog legs bubbling in hot chilli.

What do you think is missing from Manchester?

See the first line of ‘What’s not so great’...

If I was Mayor for a day I would …

Give myself a full 4 year term. Seriously, I’d arrange a doggie day across the centre, bring your dog to shops, pubs, restaurants, galleries, museums, promoting both adoption from the dogs home and responsible ownership.

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

Dr CP Lee and Jason Singh.

Sarah is Programme and Engagement Director at Cornerhouse.

Manchester: In Residents … #15: Andy

‘I remember the punks that used to hang around the entrance to the underground Arndale Market, and I remember the Northern Quarter when it was just fabric shops and disused buildings…’

What’s your name?

Andy Speak

What do you do?

I’m a PhD student, studying how green roofs influence Manchester’s urban microclimate.

Where do you live?

Whalley Range / Old Trafford, just around the corner from Jam Street Cafe who save me from many a hangover with their veggie breakfasts. It’s nice and quiet and green, and the rent’s cheaper than Chorlton!

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

I’m from Greater Manchester originally, albeit a small village called Blackrod, out on the outer edge of the county on the border with Lancashire. I used to come to Manchester shopping with me mum in the ‘80s and I have some memories of what it was like then. I remember the punks that used to hang around the entrance to the underground Arndale Market, and I remember the Northern Quarter when it was just fabric shops and disused buildings. Then ‘Madchester’ hit and I was 16 so of course I had the whole bowl haircut, DMs and Stone Roses/Inspirals/James t-shirts and would wander around Afflecks on a Saturday. It was a very exciting place then and that excitement about the music scene has always stuck with me. I moved away to other parts of the country a couple of times but I always gravitate back. I have been living in the city proper for about ten years now.

What’s great about this city?

I’ve experienced a few UK cities but Manchester is always my favourite. There’s something really independent about the city that comes out through the music and the culture. A kind of ‘two fingers up’ to London. Plus it has an amazing history. I only recently learned about the whole Marx/Engels connection, and how it was the first industrial city, and how the new urban conditions created the first ever gang culture in the form of the Scuttlers. There’s always something new to discover…

 What’s not so great?

Manchester is losing its identity under a wave of neo-liberal corporate pressure. I mean all the identikit city centre flats and wanky bars and using nostalgia about Madchester as a marketing tool, and the whole tacky ‘I Y MCR’ campaign and letting market forces determine how the cityscape develops. Losing Legends to a German hotel chain is a case in point. If we’re not careful Manchester could end up like Birmingham! I guess this is just how a lot of urban development is happening in the UK in general, but it would be nice if Manchester could resist it.

If I’m honest I am getting a little bored of Manchester and after my PhD is finished I’m probably going to move abroad. It’s really only my friends and my allotment that are keeping me here! I think that’s more a subjective experience rather than anything wrong with Manchester though. I’ll probably be back in a few years when I realise the grass was greener here all along …

Do you have a favourite Manchester building?

It’s more of a favourite wall. It’s the wall next to the abandoned bit of land next to Company Bar and Molly House in the gay village. It’s a huge Victorian thing with the outlines of two houses that used to be there etched onto it in grime. A palimpsest of our smoggy industrial past. The number of bricks in the wall always boggles my mind, especially if I’m looking at it at 4am after numerous pints! My least favourite would be the ivory tower that is the Beetham Tower, howling its disapproval over lesser Mancunia every time a strong wind blows.

Do you have a favourite Mancunian?

I guess it has to be Morrissey. He’s a bit of a prat these days but in the ‘80s and ‘90s he was incredible, and really summed up what life was like in a post-industrial town.

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

The Molly House is my new ‘local’. Finally an actual decent pub for the gays! Bar Fringe on the edge of the Northern Quarter is also a bit of a gem. I love the huge ivy-covered hand statue in the beer garden, and anywhere that has both a life-size Buffy cut-out and a huge green man face is good with me. The Britons Protection is a great pub for cold winter nights – a few mates around a table in one of the warmly lit snugs and you can happily stay put all night getting wing-wang-wooed on ale. I also always love checking out the Okasional Kafe whenever and wherever that pops up …

What do you think is missing from Manchester?

Long, hot summers. But hey, with climate change you never know….

If I was Mayor for a day I would …

Get rid of the stranglehold of the corporates and the public-private Manchester City Centre Management Company who use public money to promote the interests of retailers and developers, and who just want Mancunians to be ‘users’ of the city who do nothing consume. The riots last year were a sign of how much this model isn’t working. Try and get Manchester back to its radical socialist roots. Not an easy job I admit. I’m actually not even that political a person but unbridled corporations make me mad!

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

Zsa Zsa Noir

Here’s a short film about Andy’s fascinating PhD research.

Leaf grief

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.

William, it was really nothing ...

No WAY have I not blogged since February? Really!? Ridiculous. Okay that ends NOW ...

So, The Smiths, like The Beatles if we're honest, and I guess The Prodigy too, are a band that there is just no point in trying to cover. But people still do of course, and the results vary from the ridiculous ...

... to the sublime ...

... and occasionally both.

So what the hell, for those occasional Scott Matthews moments it's worth a shot. Which is why I will be in excitable attendance this week at an evening of Smiths and Morrissey covers. Here's the blurb ...

DESIGNER MAGAZINE PRESENTS........ WILLIAM IT WAS REALLY NOTHING

MANCHESTER ROADHOUSE

THURSDAY APRIL 28TH

DOORS 7PM

Adv tickets £5 from We Got Tickets and See Tickets

We don't care for the Royal Family and we certainly don't have time for a Royal Wedding.

But we're sure as hell going to make the most of an extra day of work and what better way to do so than with a special evening with five of our favourite Manchester bands selecting 1 or 2 of their favourite Smiths / Morrissey songs to cover in their own unique interpretations as well as the highlights of their original material.

Inbetween bands we'll have quality tuneage from the bands that inspired the Smiths and the bands that were inspired by The Smiths so expect everything from Bowie, New York Dolls and T Rex to Gene, Belle & Sebastian, Echobelly

BANDS PERFORMING:

Decade Parade

Optional Wallace

Midnight Mafia

Jom Tones

The Spiels

BE THERE!

“Can you squeeze me into an empty page of your diary …?”

It’s Morrissey and The Smiths season here in Manchester. What fine fare the city has to offer to the discerning apostle over the coming weeks …

First up is the return of ‘Maladjusted’, the Morrissey/Smiths evening to be re-launched with alacrity and panache at that glorious drinking emporium, Gullivers of Oldham Street on Friday 19th of November.

As ever, the playlist will be primarily Morrissey/Smiths, supplemented with other Morrissey-endorsed music including …

The Courteeners - The Strokes - The Libertines - Angelic Upstarts - The Slits - David Bowie - T.Rex - Roxy Music - Siouxsie And The Banshees - Buzzcocks - The Marvelettes - The Crystals - Dusty Springfield - Shangri La's - X-Ray Spex - Sandie Shaw - Lou Reed - James - New York Dolls - Elvis Presley - The Ramones - Sparks - Magazine - Iggy Pop - The Stooges - The Velvet Underground - The Cookies - The Kinks - The Jam - Mott the Hoople - Eddie Cochran – Gene … and more.

That would be something of a dream do even without Steven Patrick.

Entry is an insultingly meagre £2 from 9pm till 2am. Facebook page right here. Come and dance your legs down to the knees ...

Next up it’s only the publishing event of the year. Remember I mentioned that very special book? Well we’re having a launch party and you’re all invited! The event is on Friday 26th of November at Waterstone’s Deansgate, and will be chaired by local DJ, author, musical luminary and all-round good egg Mr Dave Haslam, plus very special guest Simon Goddard, yes he of Songs That Saved Your Life and Mozipedia. And even I will say a little something too. 'Hello and welcome' mainly. (I’ll have it written on little cards, don’t worry …)

The evening will include:

• Drinks from 6.30 pm in Waterstone’s plush newly-refurbished bar

• Panel event to commence from 7 pm

• Readings from contributing authors

• Panel discussion on the book, pop culture, and all things Smiths and Morrissey

• Audience question and answer session

• Opportunity to meet authors and have books signed

• Post-panel drinks in Waterstone’s bar with Smiths-inspired soundtrack

• After party in TV21, basement bar, Thomas St

Entry to the event is a mere £3 + booking fee. Facebook page here. Tickets are essential and are available now right HERE.

Look forward to seeing you all there!

And there’s time for one more fix before Christmas. Viva Morrissey, the world’s only musical tribute to Morrissey as solo artist, will take the stage at Moho Live for one of their trademark emotionally enriching and exhaustive sets. A fantastically tight band with the dextrous and faithful vocal talents of singer Paul up front. The gig will be followed by dancing to Moz/Smiths music and the like till the early hours at no extra cost.

For musical links and fan page, go to Facebook, here.

Get your tickets for this rabble rouser here.

And remember ...

“Nothing is important, so people, realising that, should get on with their lives, go mad, take their clothes off, jump in the canal, jump into one of those supermarket trolleys, race around the supermarket and steal Mars bars and kiss kittens ...”