Pop Curious? The Aftermath

Did I go out last night ...?


Despite a couple of technical drunken hitches which I like to think of as being an endearing part of my 'Wedding DJ' style, last night was great fun. Lovely punters and first-rate POP in the familiar comforting dinge of the Retro Bar. You really should find time to check it out. The next one will include a live appearance from The Imogen Styles and an airing of their new video.

It was I who got the punters dancing eventually, though this may have been to do with the 11.30 pm slot which meant an adequate skinful had been acquired, nevertheless ... The track that broke the dancefloor? 'I'm A Cuckoo' by Belle & Sebastian. Good work. Here's what I played:

West End Girls (Shep Pettibone Mix) - Pet Shop Boys
1 Thing - Amerie
Leave - VV Brown feat. Little Boots
I’m A Cuckoo - Belle and Sebastian
Rock Your Body - Justin Timberlake
Sandcastle Disco - Solange
Clean Apart - thecocknbullkid
Lovefool - The Cardigans
Love To Hate You - Erasure
Take It Like A Man - Dragonette
A New England - Kirsty McColl
Cruel Summer - Bananarama
Two Of Hearts - Annie
Pink Sunshine - Fuzzbox
(Hey You) The Rock Steady Crew - Rock Steady Crew
This Charming Man (New York Vocal Mix) - The Smiths
Call Me - Spagna
Bonkers - Dizzee Rascal
Downtown - Dolly Parton

Pop Curious?

Roll up, roll up ...

New night Pop Curious? kicks off this Thursday at Sackville Sreet's glorious dive, the Retro Bar. All things pop - past, present and future, cheap in, cheap thrills, probably cheap punters too and me taking a turn on the decks to boot.

PLAYING POP MUSIC BY:

LA ROUX
MORRISSEY
LITTLE BOOTS
KYLIE
LADY GAGA
GRACE JONES
MINI VIVA
GIRLS ALOUD
BRITNEY SPEARS
GOLDFRAPP
THE GO! TEAM
VV BROWN
FRANZ FERDINAND
PET SHOP BOYS
MUSE
ANNIE
SUEDE
FRYARS
THE REAL HEAT
MEL AND KIM
MADONNA
KATE BUSH
BLONDIE
ROBYN
DAVID BOWIE
ST. ETIENNE

...AND MORE.

Check it out here:

http://www.myspace.com/popcurious

AND an accompanying popzine to boot:

http://www.popcurious.com/index.htm

Mine is the cover versions piece, arguments most welcome.

Get involved!

Hope to see you there.

We Built This City On Rock And Roll

A flurry of diary-like entries presented here, named, for mysterious reasons, after classic Soft Rock anthems. I thought I should get something about Manchester and my old life down before I get to New York and cannot be bothered with this old place and the boring old me a moment longer. Things of the following nature have happened in the last couple of months (caution: I name-drop like never before so prepare for hideous CLANG! of minor celeb names hitting blog-shaped buckets) …

… Watched Milk at the Cornerhouse, quite beautiful I thought, fairly sexless which upset Mark Simpson, but to be honest when you’re gay there’s often barely another way to make yourself heard other than bleating about sex, so a good thing I thought. Ruined as ever by heterosexual/ist audience sniggering of course (see also Brokeback). Can’t we have our own cinemas? …

… Drinks at new bars Apotheca (good music if slightly officey crowd and downright mental bouncers checking underneath stall doors for drug users even though it was barely dark out!) and NoHo (cool, East Villagey vibe but big space in the middle with no dancing and no furniture that made we want to FIGHT) …

… Attended my friend Reena’s marvellous R-Themed Fancy Dress 30th Birthday Party upstairs at Revolution dressed as James Dean (‘Rebel Without a Cause’). Managed to sculpt two inch forelock into world’s smallest quiff. Bought gorgeous American Apparel jacket specially (it’s a dear do there isn't it?). Smoked copiously. Finished the night at Kirsty and Keith’s now sadly defunct Are Friends Eclectic? night over at Retro Bar. Oh wait, I actually finished the night in Company Bar where I misplaced my friend’s Trilby then had a prolonged and plastered conversation with the lovely David Hoyle (clang!) all about motherhood and Blackpool and Longsight …

… A right good ‘boogie’ at Underachievers Please Try Harder at Saki Bar, Rusholme, excellent music on both floors but upstairs better, PROPER piss-up, lovely crowd, danced to The Cure with my sister, not done that for ages. Abiding memory is James dropping the same bottle of beer, round about six times. Funny. Oh and bonded with lovely Ruth …

John Peel Night

Roll up, roll up … This month’s Are Friends Eclectic? pays tribute to the wonderful and sadly-missed Mr John Peel and the brilliant music he gave to us all. Tracks will be dusted off and aired from Peel’s very favourite bands, the groups he got you all listening to via his show, classic highlights from Peel sessions through the years, and general Peel-inspired Peel-approved indie punk alternative lo-fi messiness that you can dance to. PLUS my very own DJ booth debut with a very special setlist of cracking indie tunes, forgotten gems and modern killers. Cheap in, cheap at the bar, lovely people, and the spirit of Peel in the air. DON’T STAY HOME!!

Speed Diary 1

Here’s how I spend my time and your money …

To Odder with Matthew for a gottle o’ geer and a GORGEOUS pizza (better than Cornerhouse even), all for a crisp fiver, how good is that? Quick pint at Cord, very empty, then on to Nexus for a night of music and album launching. Nexus is a nifty little basement café cum gallery and performance space at the corner of Oldham and Dale Street. It started life as a safe-space-late-night-café affiliated with the local church so that mashed clubbers could wait for cabs out of the way of danger. How sweet. It explains the incongruity between wall graffiti (‘I hope your kids explode!’) and overheard conversations (’I haven’t seen you since your baptism!’).

The main event is the launch of third album, The Kansas Sessions, from Kirsty McGee and her Hobopop collective. First up however is The Bee’s Niece, pseudonym of singer-songwriter Ragnhild Zeigler, and very lovely she is too, delicate, plucky songs with a wry and funny underside. Alas she couldn’t compete for long with the noise from the percolator and smoothie maker so we retire somewhere with a license to wait for something a bit louder. Matt and Phred’s was a melancholy scene, two bored and beautiful barmaids, us three supping Guinness by the open window looking onto the rainy back street, and a lone pianist practising his sad jazz down the back. I am so going back there for a proper night soon, haven’t been for far too long.

Back to Nexus then to hear Kirsty MCgee’s up-beat, foot-stomping, rockabilly ‘n’ country tunes. All good fun and some fantastic lyrics but not my cup of Earl Grey especially. Excellent musicians though and any live music is better than a night in front of the telly. And all for free!

Later in the week and Are Friends Eclectic? comes around again at Retro. This usually studenty pub had THE most amazing clientele upstairs out of term time, I was transfixed. A gaggle of old-school seventies clone queens manhandling the jukebox in one corner, a slab of gorgeous Manc rough trade in the other, metal hair freaks round the bar, rough diamond Gorton sports dyke serving, and right in the window a straight couple gettin’ it on in the most spectacularly public fashion. Get a room people! Love it.

Guinness and black for me please. Drank it all night and woke up feeling like a cough sweet. This month’s AFE was Manchester themed, with a particular bent towards Moz/Smiths. Sparsely populated though, which was a shame. Where else can you hear Slaughter and the Dogs and The Wedding Present of a Thursday? The lovely Phil Gatenby did a turn on the decks and we persuaded him to whip out his new Smiths tattoo (and his very hairy arms also).

Next day it’s off down Whalley Range to celebrate the lovely Maria’s tenth year in Manchester. I had a similar idea to celebrate my own anniversary a while back (I think I went on holiday instead) where everybody would have to dress as themselves ten years ago. I still might do it. Depressingly though, I might only look slightly different. I bet I even have my old glasses. Utterly wrecked and up till 5 am, relocating to Chorlton along the way. My attempt to force everyone to listen to this at 4 in the morning went down like the proverbial, but I still believe!

Party again the next night, this time to celebrate Emma and James shacking up. Hooray! Feeling very fragile by this point but lovely to see friendly faces from Charlotte, Kate, Pete, Dee, John, my brudder and his lovely g-friend Charlie. All next day is spent on the couch at Dee’s watching The Green Wing which I have come to regard as semi-genius.

I take a spontaneous half-day off later in the week and eat my favourite thing in the world which is the falafel burger with spicy fries at the Deaf Institute then me and Char go off to the Great Northern Warehouse to watch The Dark Knight, about which nothing more needs to be said, other than 1) Christian Bale isn’t trying, and 2) it’s a fitting swan song for poor Heath. A framed picture of Heath adorns my CD tower and makes me think daily about the irresistible tragedy of somebody so beautiful that dies young. I still miss River Phoenix. God love ‘em both.

Thursday 5th June

Worked like a dog all day long, a dog that’s maybe fallen asleep on the porch, dreaming about chasing rabbits, that kind of dog. Then home for more work, this time The Novel. I’m in the middle of writing a complete and utter bitch at the moment who I adore but who’s on her way to a dose of life-changing comeuppance. I want the bitching to continue for a little while longer though. What a cow she is, I shall miss her.

Shower, change, hit the streets, lookin’ for soul food and a place to eat. Or just a cash machine with tenners left in it would be nice, one that isn’t surrounded by the living dead, i.e. paralytic post-exam students and heroin addicts. NatWest in Chinatown fails to meet either criteria but I use it anyway. The drunkest woman ever stands guard by it, she stinks bless her, points at me and shrieks, ‘You cheeky man!’ I am afraid but escape unscathed. By the way, does anybody else sing ‘NatWest Barclays Midlands Lloyds’ whenever they see a NatWest? I still do it! ‘NatWest! NatWest Barclays Midlands Lloyds! Black horse apocalypse! Death sanitised through credit!’ Love it.

I’m headed for the first night of Are Friends Eclectic?, a new monthly hosted by my dearest buddies Kirsty and Keith, late of Danse Macabre fame and general night owls and misfits about town. The venue is the basement of Retro Bar on Sackville Street and as I walk the full length of this queer street that bisects Canal Street I watch it change from tinted-window sleaze at The Thompsons Arms, which always strikes me as chicken-hawk central (could be the young rent sitting on the car park stairs outside), past the tang of chlorine at the sauna, past a gaggle of bears and beards outside The Rembrandt mingling with the drag queens traipsing up and down carrying signs for The View (is that what it’s called? - that nothing bar that used to Prague 5), plus all the other Village uniforms and the endless upfront, funky and uplifting house (gag) …

Down the far end though, in Retro, a genuine little queer event comes together over the course of a sweaty, cidery, punky night in this brilliant little spit and sawdust dive. It’s the same street but a world away and it feels magic and bad and sexy hiding down here getting pissed on a Thursday night with my mates. Vile Vile Creatures play a terrific set with their shit-hot new drummer Julia giving them a new lease of life while Jenny spits love and bile down her megaphone. Rod from Bollox shows up, plus we meet an ace face crowd of people of all sexualities here for the music the shits and the giggles.

The nights will all be themed and tonight’s opening event is Femme Night. Kirsty spins a fantastic mix of stuff. ‘Lazy Line Painter Jane’, a gorgeous track by The Cookies which I’d never heard called ‘Girls Grow Up faster Than Boys’, ‘Gutless’ by Hole, The Slits, The Go-Gos, The Breeders, KD Lang, ‘Bette Davis Eyes’, Althea and Donna, Le Tigre, … More lager, more cider, new friends, love it. Can’t wait for the next one.


Soundtrack: The first Super Furry Animals album which still sounds brilliant as ever to me, plus Morrissey b-sides and 'Eiseger Wind' by LiLiPUT