Tuesday 4 September 2018

A Half True Story (ninth letter to Lowri)

Friday night was time for a Beauty Witch gig put on by Sammy Powell who can always be relied on to pick a quality ear battering bill. Before Cattle stampeded through Soup Kitchen I met Penfold Kowalski outside who gave me a nice big hug then chatted with Miriam Ma Ve and Sam and his sister Amy inside, as another confusing game of reds vs yellows screened. It would be so much easier to understand football if one team always played nude. Said hello to Nick Georgieu, Karl Astbury and Al Wilson. Look at me name dropping in a pathetic attempt to get more people to hit my “like” button. This was the fourth time I’d let Leeds noise punks Cattle do battle with my hearing. Their double drummer dynamism always gets me moving, and they were my favourite band at this year’s Sounds from the Other City. Every time I’ve seen them the screamer has worn a black MC5 T-shirt. I wonder if he always wears it or if he has a wardrobe full of black MC5 T-shirts?

It was a gig of two halves where anything could happen. In the break between the first and second half of the Soup Kitchen gig, I headed over to the Peer Hat just in time to see Heather Glazzard’s short film about the “True Story” of a beautiful funny woman with pink hair buying a sea fish to carry around. The soundtrack was silly burps and grunts, and there was a surprise guest appearance from a cheeky naked lobster. The pink haired woman seemed a very charming and stylish person, and I predict this will be the high fashion statement of the season. By the end of the summer I expect to see Ely Grey, Heather Glazzard, Jen Wu, Simon Morris, Rachel Goodyear, Martin Warmwidow, Stuart Calton, the facebook free Kate Armitage and everyone else who watched stripping naked and carrying fish around. If England win the world cup all the fans will surely strip naked and carry fish all over Russia to show how much they care!

The second half of the gig had just kicked off when I made it back to Soup Kitchen basement and the Cosmic Dead were taking off on a heavy psychedelic trip to the extreme frontiers of loudness. They’d recently lost half the band, but had luckily found another half who seemed even noisier. Afterwards the prolific Vacuous Otiosus gave me a couple of CDRs he’d recently recorded, “Elitism for the Masses” and “The Burning Mountain” which has a drawing of a squid in a wheelbarrow on the cover. Sample lyric from Squid Treatise: “If I was 98 % chlorine I’d be less happy than I am. Fish identifies locust container. Could a squid in a wheelbarrow propel itself? If so, a staggering invention! Replace all professional footballers with squid in wheelbarrows: much cheaper and probably infinitely more entertaining!” The bouncer bounced everyone up the stairs and out before I could buy a Cattle or Cosmic Dead record. I hung around a while outside Soup Kitchen with Isadora Darke, Jamie Robinson, Sophie Bee and Al Wilson before heading back to the Peer Hat for more cider and chat. And more cider and chat. And more cider and chat and some dancing. I’d better also mention Michelle Woods, Anne Louise Kershaw and Maria Gutierez in a cynical attempt to increase the “like” factor as I definitely spoke with them on Friday night. I ended up heading upstairs to Aatma with Andrew Guest and a few other people where Dom Jam and Liam Farr kept going until 9am. I started to walk home, but instead found myself wandering aimlessly around Poundworld. I was very disappointed to find they had no worlds for sale in their sale. No wonder they are closing down. After buying a chocolate soya milk sugar fix and booking my face at the library I felt like strolling pointlessly around the city centre and eventually found myself in Vinyl Exchange where for a fiver I bought a CD from Rae Donaldson called “mmmr” by guitarists Loren Mazzacane Connors, Jean-Marc Montera, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo.

I walked home along Bridgewater Canal just after the England Sweden world cup game began. I wanted to get out of the city in case England lost and drunken fans turned nasty. People were crammed together in and around pubs straining to see the digitised match. “Get out of the way you prick,” shouted one drinker repeatedly at a possibly E’d up grinning guy who was prancing about in front of a screen at a pub near Castlefield Arena. I made sure I squeezed past behind the angry fan to avoid any unnecessary trouble on my way to the nearby bridge over the canal. As I headed towards Cornbrook the uproar of men in ball kicking ecstacy receded, replaced by the whooshing of trams. From a distance it sounded like a choir of intoxicated lads were singing, “She’s coming home! She’s coming home! Lowri’s coming home!”

A gang of kids had gathered under a bridge and were sitting on the towpath, completely blocking it, except for one girl who began repeatedly shouting, “Get up! There’s someone coming!” as I approached. As I reached the bridge she told me I’d have to jump over her friends as they wouldn’t get up, but then they all stood up to let me past, laughing. I told them they were lucky I didn’t try to jump over them as I might have landed on one of them and injured them. Perhaps they are sporting innovators who will grow up to introduce Kid Leaping to the Olympics. Just past Old Trafford football ground a dead fish about the size of a tennis racket was floating on its side slowly towards the city centre. Its head had almost been cut off and drifted at a right angle to its silvery glinting carcass, on which seven bright emerald green flies were feasting. I’d already stripped half naked for the first time this heatwave. You can probably guess which half. No, I was not carrying my black jeans. If I’d fished the fish out of the canal and carried it home, then I could have made my own “True Story,” but I’m just not stylish enough to carry it off. It was very hot and I didn’t want to smell of that damned fish! A relevant fish song:

The Damned – Fish

Lowri wrote that she was surprised but not surprised that I saw a dead fish in the canal. I replied:

Surprised but not surprised? A rational fish response dictates that I am choosing and editing experiences that relate to earlier experiences. If Lowri had carried a dead heron around for “True Story,” I would instead have mentioned the fish eating heron that landed on the opposite side of the canal when I sat down to cool my feet off. The rational response would also say that a dead fish in a canal is in itself not a particularly rare or special thing, but where’s the magic in that? Had Lowri never invited me to watch “True Story” I may well have still seen that dead fish and thought nothing of it. I’d never have described it, or counted the flies on it and would probably have quickly forgotten 

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