Issue 42 AUG / SEPT 2011 Jean Genet
Act 1: Act 2: Marc Camille Prisoners of Love André Acquart Chaimowicz Emory Douglas Jean Genet... Latifa Echakhch Mona Hatoum The Courtesy of Objects Glenn Ligon featuring Abdul Hay Mosallam Alberto Giacometti The Otolith Group Tariq Alvi Lili Reynaud-Dewar Lukas Duwenhögger Carole Roussopoulos Mathilde Rachet Gil J Wolman Wolfgang Tillmans Akram Zaatari
16 July – 2 October 2011 nottinghamcontemporary.org
Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Jean Genet...The Courtesy of Objects, installation view 2011. Photo by Andy Keate Courtesy of The Gallery at NUCA The Money at Splendour, 24 July 2011. Photo: Dom Henry
LeftLion Magazine Issue 42 contents August - September 2011 editorial Welcome to the latest edition of the most graphic thing to read in Nottingham since they pulled down them bogs at the bottom end of the Square. I loved them bogs. Why they didn’t knock ‘em together and turn ‘em into a club, with the caretaker’s offices as DJ booths, I’ll never know. Ooh ahh yeah, I remember now – because it stank of wazz.
I’m not lying yer; it’s been a mental couple of months in LeftLionLand. For starters, we got massively involved with our new bestest mates, Nusic.org.uk and their Future Sound of Nottingham contest. Eeh, it did my scabby Nottingham heart good to see so many salt-of-the-earth Notts sorts fill out Rock City to see the local talent geein’ it 06 08 18 some on the main stage – and it’s a pleasure to give over a page to The Money, who – as I write – are opening up proceedings in front of thousands of bods at Spendour. May Contain Notts Some People Think He’s Bonkers Art Works 04 The local news diary that responds 10 An exclusive interview with the 18 Featuring Maxrock and Gillian Lee The even bigger development this bi-month is that our old to stag do tossers asking where County gaffer Smith website – who’d served us well for nearly eight years – ‘Whoretown’ is by pointing towards practically snuffed it a few weeks ago, meaning our plans St Anns and saying; “Don’t forget Write Lion to completely revamp the site from top to toe were brought Truly, Madly, Crossley 21 the secret password, lads: NG2” 11 The latest missives from the forward a month sooner than we expected. If you’ve not The legendary Norm on life after Notterati seen it yet, you need to get over to leftlion.co.uk right now LeftEyeOn Brian and prepare to be knocked bandy by our wicked def fresh 05 More photography-related japery, Back To Mine stylings. And that’s only the beginning; wait until we drop starring the good folk of Nottingham Venneh, Viddeh, Vicceh 22 The return of Headstock the full package… 12 Mark Patterson on the shameful lack A Canadian in New Basford of Roman remains in Notts Nottingham Event Listings Anyway, hope you like the latest issue, and rejoice in 06 Rob takes a good look at British print 23 Read this and do summat, you the knowledge that, unbelievably, LeftLion outlived the media, particularly the ones on the 13 Whoaaaahhhh! Bodyline! miserable get News of the World. Yes, they sold thousands of times top shelf Notts playwright Michael Pinchbeck more copies than we give away – but then again, we adjusts his box in preparation for Noshingham never tapped dead kids’ phones, lobbed money over to Cha-Ching! The Ashes 29 We hoover up the wares of the Cross bent coppers, or had David Cameron snuffling round our 07 The Money: your Future Sound of Keys, Gurkha Kitchen and Tropiero trousers. Up your arse, Rupert Murdoch, you laundry Nottingham champs 15 Are You Having A Laugh? basket-sniffing, soon-to-be-sizzling-in-Satan’s-chip-pan The Nottingham Comedy Festival: Rocky Horrorscopes get. Trentformers: Teams In Total it’s a serious job trying to organise it 30 Plus LeftLion Abroad, The Arthole 08 Transition and Notts Trumps Word to your Nana, Forest and County, broken down to 16 What Shall We Do With The Al Needham, their very last compound Drunken Tailor? [email protected] The Roxy Rob interview
James Huyton Our cover artist Screen Editor Contributors Remeber that mint image of Debbie Alison Emm ([email protected]) Mike Atkinson Harry on top of Wollaton Hall in the credits Ashley Clivery last issue? That was this man. When Sport Editor Rich Crouch he’s not turning out quality work Editor-in-chief Scott Oliver ([email protected]) Rob Cutforth for the ‘Lion, James is a freelance Jared Wilson ([email protected]) Jacob Daniel illustrator and graphic designer. Stage Editor Ian Douglas He’s worked on a wide variety of Editor Adrian Bhagat ([email protected]) Jeremy Duffield commercial and personal projects (he’d tell us who, but if Al Needham ([email protected]) Kristi Genovese he did someone would break his legs or sue him. Possibly Administrator Mark Goodwin both). One thing he can tell us, however, is that his work We’re Not Being Funny, But We Wish Duncan Heath ([email protected]) Rebecca Gove-Humphries is currently featured as part of Bantum Clothing’s latest He Was Our Boyfriend Darren Howard season of quality, cheeky rabbit-festooned gear, and it’s Alan Gilby ([email protected]) Cover Shariff Ibrahim dead mint. Currently making plans to collaborate with James Huyton Katie Half-Price more design studios, James is also preparing to have a go Marketing and Sales Manager Roger Mean at screen-printing, and hopefully doing more stuff for us. Ben Hacking ([email protected]) Illustrators Gareth Morgan jameshuyton.com Rikki Marr Beane Noodler Designer Adam Poole Nick Parkhouse Becca Hibberd ([email protected]) Rob White Tom Quickfall Di Slaney Milena Kowalska Literature Editor Photographers Matthew Spence James Walker ([email protected]) She’s been in Roxy Rob’s house David Baird Tim Sorrell Hailing from Poland, Milena is a Russ Hamer multimedia artist who specialises in Music Editor Adam Humpreys Paul Klotschkow ([email protected]) animation and graphic design. She Carla Mundy also has an uncanny knack of getting Laura Patterson facebook.com/leftlion involved with madly creative sorts, Photography Editor Tom Quigley Dominic Henry ([email protected]) as borne out by her shots of Roxy Stephen Wright twitter.com/leftlion Rob’s old house which can be found Andrew Wells Poetry Editor in the middle of this mag. We’ll definitely be keeping tabs Aly Stoneman ([email protected]) on her latest find; a bloke who makes hats out of junk mail leaflets and promotional material from the Council. Currently studying at Nottingham Trent, Milena has also LeftLion.co.uk received twelve million page views during the last year. This magazine has an estimated readership of 40,000 people and done her time at Nottingham’s version of the Mos Eisley is distributed to over 300 venues across the city of Nottingham. If your venue isn’t one of them, please contact Ben on 07984 275453 or Cantina, the immortal Turf Tavern. email [email protected]. visuallartist.jimdo.com Want to advertise in our pages? Email [email protected] or phone Ben on 07984 275453 or visit leftlion.co.uk/advertise leftlion.co.uk/issue42 3 MAY CONTAIN with Nottingham’s Nottingham’s Scariest Bus Routes ‘Mr. Sex’ Al Needham Whenever I get on the 88/89 from Parliament Street there’s always the threat of violence hanging heavily in the air at the bus stop. Although to be fair, this could just be the stench from Burger King. NOTTS Daysleeper June - July 2011 The Dirty-Five (aka the 35) is possibly the worst. I’m not a snob, but this bus is for scummers. If you 26 May have ever been on this bus, or even mention it on Genealogists work out that Barack Obama’s an internet forum, you are a scummer and deserve great-great grandfather ten times removed to rot in jail. came from Sutton in Ashfield. This is the first Seamus Flannery time ever that a black man has had anything to do with that place. There are women now, There’s a bloke on the Brown Line (15,16,17) buses even as we speak, leaning on the garden wall, who sings/shouts really loudly. I presume he’s subtly pointing to other women across the listening to music at the time. It seems to make street and muttering; “Eeh, you want to watch everyone feel uncomfortable because he’s clearly her - her great-great-great-great-great-great- not all there. I was also on the bus once when great-great-great-great-grandpa’s great-great- someone got on with a dog the size of a horse. great-great-great-great-great-great-great- It stood in the pram area with its legs hanging granddaughter ended up getting married to over the seat staring at people really hungrily and a...”, and then pursing their lips and tutting looking like it might attack (though actually I think like Les Dawson used to. it was probably a perfectly nice dog). Adrian 27 May It’s been a long time since I’ve been on a city bus, A burglar in Beeston has his sentence cut but the late night bus service springs too mind. when he points out that he needs to be with Like the old Jasper Carrot sketch; I was sitting his five children. Of course he does; how else there, praying that the nutter/weirdo didn’t sit next is he going to get those fiddly little windows to me. But even when there are loads of empty open? seats they will still find you. that wasn’t riddled with broken glass, needles and spent johnnies. Rebel Rhymes 6 June They were then chased off by fat, wheezing middle-aged County The bus fares go up. Again. Bad enough that you’ve got to fart- fans who possibly warned the encroachers that they ‘knew where Often on the bus I get to Beeston in the mornings arse about looking for multiples of £1.70 because they don’t give their Dads lived.’ there is a man who gets on and proceeds to play on change, but they’ve also abolished the £1 short hop – meaning his flute/penny whistle thing very quietly, but still that if you live in Carrington, you have to pay as much to get into 18 June audible to the rest of the bus. I think it’s telling that town as someone who lives in Rise Park, which is an absolute Reflex and Flares, the twin swastika tattoos upon the face of he always gets off at the QMC. skank. If you live in the former, and you’re going into town with a Nottingham nightlife, rebrand themselves – presumably because Daysleeper mate, you might as well get a taxi now. Hmph. the people who still want to go to a seventies night need the aid of a Stannah Stairlift to get in. Instead, it’s now a 90s and 00s theme Every time I board the 78 I’m convinced I can hear, bar. Hang on, though; isn’t a ‘00’s theme bar’ just a pub that hasn’t somewhere in the distance, a single staccato banjo. 7 June The new Evening Post website launches, and oh dear – haven’t done itself up for over two years? Khongor they done a rammell job, readers? It’s as if they’ve force-fed a five year-old with the contents of a bin liner full of Rowntrees Fruit 21 June Pastilles, made the poor sod jump up and down on a trampoline to A fire breaks out in Crazy Coffins in Bulwell, destroying the whole of Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), and then pointed thousands of pounds worth of mad corpse-boxes. Check their his vomiting head at a laptop screen. Editorially, they’ve jumped website; people spend thousands of pounds to be lobbed into on that Web 2.0 bandwagon that was in vogue at some point caskets shaped like mobile phones, guitars, skips and all sorts. during 2004, meaning that it’s now very hard to find out any news I dunno about you, but if I had laid out some proper money for a in Nottingham, but very easy to find out what a racist troll thinks coffin shaped like the Left Lion and heard the place was burning about Britain’s Got Talent. down, I’d push my way past the fire brigade and get into the bastard there and then. 8 June Roy Skelton, who provided the voices of George and Zippy in 11 July Rainbow as well as the Daleks, dies. Someone turns up an article It is announced that the Forest Rec is to get a £5m grant. I know he wrote the mid-90s, in the guise of Zippy, revealing himself to exactly what they should spend the cash on; you know how all be a hardcore Forest supporter. “Like me, Cloughie would always these ponces go on about locally-sourced produce? Well, you Nottingham’s most opinionated say exactly what he thought,” said Zippy. “The club’s not been turn half the Forest into a big allotment that grows peas, ‘nuggit’, grocers, on... the same since he left. I reckon if Forest want to be champions brandy snap, and the like. Yeah, and have a tuffeh apple orchard. of Europe again they should make me their manager!” Bungle Then they can charge twice as much for everything. Norway! probably supports Derby. “I don’t know what it’s all about, do you? Why 10 July Norway? Norway is a talking nation. They’re 10 June The News of the World shuts down. My all-time favourite local obsessed with it. They’re never at war because It is confirmed that Wollaton Hall is to be used as the setting news story that they ever published? The one in 1982 when Jam they’re too busy talking. They just chat away about for Wayne Manor in the next Batman movie, provisionally titled fans (described in the Screws as ‘POP-CRAZED YOUTHS’) were humanitarian issues and living peacefully. We heard Coke-Addled American Film Executives Have Another Squeeze going to the bowling alley in town, paying for a go, and legging about it from George who works here. Of The Batman Teabag Because There Are Enough Bell-Ends it in their bowling shoes and leaving their manky Gola trainers He was a Christian Fundamentalist, I believe, which Knocking About Who Will Pay To Watch The Same Film Over And behind. If only they had concentrated on real news stories like shows they’re all as mad as each other. I don’t know Over Again. Sorry, but I’ve never forgiven the Batman films ever this, eh readers? why so many people are obsessed with going on a since I queued up for hours in 1989 to see the premiere midnight frenzy. What’s wrong with them? Can’t they have screening of the first film at the ABC across the road from The 16 July medical help before they get to these ridiculous Dragon. Batman was poncing about in his new plane that they’d Dear that woman who runs the knitting shop on Mansfield outbursts? Or just talk to someone. Do they get the been banging on about for months and The Joker pulled out that Road; when you close at night, tip a load of kittens into the Samaritans in Norway?” tiny gun and brought it down with one shot. Then someone spilled premises, and charge sucky women who spend all day at work Fanta down my Public Enemy t-shirt. looking at cat porn on YouTube a tenner each to look through your The News of the World! window. “Hacking is against the law. It’s as simple as that. 12 June What I find difficult to understand is why they think Nottingham Forest nob off Billy Davies and immediately start it’s OK to hack the Royal Family and politicians 21 July going out with Steve McClaren, like a big slag. So this means that Some bell-end from Hucknall in the EDL gets done for putting a and celebrities, but when they do it to a murder Forest have gone from having the best manager England never victim there’s an outcry. It’s all breaking the law. pig’s head on a stick on the proposed site of a mosque in West had to the worst manager they did, in less than twenty years. Bridgford. Forgive May Contain Notts for being spiritually naive, And anyway, how does Murdoch get to own four newspapers in Great Britain? Even in America he’s but if I was an Islamic fundamentalist and I saw a pig’s head on a not allowed to. It’s ridiculous. Good riddance.” 13 June stick, I’d think; “Ooh, a dead pig. Bleddy good. I hate pigs.” Surely, Some bloke accused of indulging in ‘sexual activity’ in the Square if the EDL want to get a rise out people, they want to dress the pig Forest v County in the League Cup! is cleared when he points out that he’s actually an epileptic who up in some unfashionable gear, and get it to hold up a sign that “It’s bad news, terrible. We all want the best of has up to thirty fits a day. I’m not convinced. I defy anybody to says “I ar yor BOYFRIEND – you want to tak me to PICTURS and Nottingham to get through, no matter which club. stand in our Market Square, look around at the hunks who disport hav a SNOGG” But you never know what will happen. Notts County themselves outside Wetherspoons and the not-at-all-lardy-arsed- do play well on the odd occasion, and it is the odd ladies lumbering out of the Greggs and not feel a tingle in the 22 July occasion. It’s a big shame though, a great pity.” loinage. Ooh. And I’m sorry, but a mosque in Bread and Lard Island? “Please take your shoes off before praying – not so much that it’s respectful The Space Shuttle ends! 16 June to Allah, but more because we’ve got new carpets. Now let’s all “That’s sad as well. It should keep going. We know Forest and County get drawn against each other in the League bow towards M&S.” that it costs billions of dollars, but so what? It’s no Cup. The last time the two met, a load of chatty-arsed Forest worse than bailing out the Greeks.” youths in sportswear ran onto the pitch at Meadow Lane - leftlion.co.uk/mcn possibly in excitement at seeing an area of grass in Nottingham 4 leftlion.co.uk/issue42 LeftEyeOn A selection of hot Notts shots from the local photo talent over the last two months...
Left to Right from the top: Orange Domes - Strange glowing orbs seen at Colston Bassett churchyard. No Photoshop trickery here - the photographer literally painted the domes with a beam of light over a long exposure. (Andrew Wells) Parkour Freefall - In the air and no place to land, captured by LeftLion’s favourite street photographer. (Stephen Wright) Battle of the Bay - Nottingham’s skate scene got together for a monster tricks battle at the Lady Bay Skatepark. The park has recently been painted by the Oxygen Thievez: if you like your graf, worth a look. (Tom Quigley) Storm Brewing - It’s been a summer of storms and this is a big one rolling in over Clipstone. The sort of thing Notts farmers have nightmares about; bone dry wheat awaits the combines. (♫ Russ Hamer)
leftlion.co.uk/issue42 5 Rob Cutforth tries to make sense of British media. Yeah, good luck with that mate...
I am officially bored of news. Times and the Telegraph all unabashedly declared their party support. I’d never seen anything like it. Even Murdoch’s deranged tabloid news channel on the other side of the pond pretends it’s When I turn on the TV, news. On the radio, more news. It’s around the corner, it’s under my bed, impartial. it’s in my ice cube trays and in between my toes. Having said that, I still didn’t think British news was as low-rent as Fox News. Fox News darlings When I started writing this column on the phone-hacking scandal, it was just going to be a little Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck have made gaybashing xenophobia the must-have personality trait piss-take about how the sight of Rupert Murdoch in the back of a limo in short pants, legs akimbo for the discerning American conservative. No amount of tits or celebrity goss would out-evil that. made my physically choke on my left lung and how Rebekah Brooks looks a bit like a pasty, pissed But then the News of the World/Milly Dowler thing was revealed. Not even wacky old Bill O’Reilly off ginger she-squirrel. But news just kept on happening. They’re hacking dead soldiers phones! would hack a dead girl’s phone. The dead girl could have been a lesbian, Obama-supporting They’re hacking 9/11 families phones! They’re paying off cops! Whistleblowers are dying! They Greenpeace hippy and Bill would’ve probably left her alone for the most part. Andy Coulson makes hacked a dead girl’s phone? I mean...come on. It stopped being funny pretty quick. This is not Bill O’Reilly look like a little fluffy bunny who blows candy kisses and farts rainbows. a political column; my articles are puff pieces, cutesy pie pokes at British life through the eyes of a whinging expat. How am I supposed to write with all this news hanging What exactly is Rupert Murdoch’s modus operandi? What goes on in a News Corp about? meeting? Is “Destroying Every Living Human Being’s Life On Planet Earth” part of the agenda? I’ve never been to a News Corp meeting, but I think I can I always knew news in this country was nuts. One of my very first experiences say with certainty that it involves beating children to death with bats and with British “newspapers” happened just before my first visit to ol’ Blighty. I drowning kittens. was working my last day before setting off to visit my English girlfriend (now wife) when a co-worker said, “Dude, make sure you pick up a copy of Now anyone with half a brain already hated News of the World because, the Daily Sport while you’re over there.” He didn’t say “Make sure you see frankly, it was crap. I don’t like to judge, but if you were a regular News of Big Ben” or “Westminster Abbey is pretty cool” - no, his one the World reader, you are a moron. I hate to break piece of British travel advice was to pick up a newspaper it to you, but your parents are your brother and on British sport. We’d known each other for years and sister. Or at least first cousins. The only people he knew I cared as much about British sport as I do who miss the News of the World are the ones about the eating habits of the Australian brush- who you see around town in velour tracksuits turkey (I care about sport slightly more now, but eating chips for breakfast and chewing gum even as a half-Brit, the thought of thumbing through with open mouths. I’m surprised these people an entire paper devoted to cricket and snooker could turn the pages without taking their literally makes my balls whimper, but anyway). He eye out. answered my perplexed look with a laugh. “Just buy one. It’s amazing”. But it’s not just the crap Murdoch papers that have screwed up royally; Wandering around Nottingham in a haze of jetlag and culture no, the lefty papers are junk as well. shock (their potatoes wear jackets over here?), my girlfriend The Guardian, drunk on the blood of its (now wife) and I passed a newsagents and I told her that I now defunct rivals, published a story had to pick up some sports magazine thing for my buddy stating that the The Sun had obtained back home. Scanning the racks full of news, the first information that Gordon Brown’s kid thing I noticed was the tits. Tits everywhere. Tits had cystic fibrosis illegally when on the front covers, tits on the back covers, tits in fact it didn’t. Even my favourite in the middle, tits, tits, tits. And that was just the paper, The Independent, was proved newspapers. There was another shelf above it with to be bent when it was discovered magazines (more tits) and another shelf above that with that their preachy little doughball magazines wrapped in foil so you couldn’t see the covers. columnist Johann Hari was madly If they were displaying all these tits so frivolously on the plagiarising quotes in his interviews. But that fronts of newspapers, how freaky did something have to be kind of just went away, didn’t it? I bet little to get wrapped in foil? Llamas in bondage peeing on each Johann is sitting in a quiet London suburb other? somewhere drinking milkshakes and thanking his dark lord Satan that the whole NOTW Moving past the tits, I spotted the sport magazine schmozzle happened when it did. section. Ah yes, it must be over here; the covers . of these ones have football guys on; FourFourTwo, The British media are like a pack of hyperactive goldfish When Saturday Comes, World Soccer...ah yes, here Jimmy Swaggarts (Google him, youngsters). Zero short it is! The Daily Sport. I picked it up triumphantly and declared term memory, banging their heads against the bowl, to my girlfriend (now wife), Aha! This is the one! pointing their fins angrily one minute, crying and asking for forgiveness the next. “I didn’t mean Guess what? Tits on the front cover, tits on the back cover, it baby, really I didn’t. Hey look over there! tits in the middle and tits on every page. Tits, tits, tits. I think Someone else is doing something dodgy, and there were some footy scores in there somewhere near the THEY’VE GOT THEIR TITS OUT.” back, but I could be mistaken. This can’t be it, I said nervously, my buddy’s laughter ringing in my ears. This is just full of tits. Flick flick, look Forget it, I’ve had it with the lot of ‘em. I’m throwing my TV in the bin, chucking my radio in a here, more tits. And here! Flick flick. My girlfriend watched me with a look that skip and burning down my local CostCutter. From now on, I’m getting my news strictly from one would give a dog who’d just dragged his shitting dog-bum across the carpet; Twitter. It’s so free and untainted. It helped Wikileaks break their stories and was first to show one part disappointment and two parts pity. us Wayne Rooney’s hair plugs. That’s all I need really, why, according to the Twitter news today #whitepeoplehobbies include “Falling down running in horror movies” and “Walking they kids My second clue that perhaps the British media wasn’t brilliant was in the last election when The with leashes”. Hahaha, it’s so true. Sun declared its support for the Tories on its front page. I thought, “Hang on - can they actually do that?” All newspapers have their political slant, but I’d never seen one declare its party affiliation leftlion.co.uk/cinb so blatantly. It wasn’t just the crazy papers like The Sun and The Mail, either; The Guardian, The
6 leftlion.co.uk/issue42 interview: Paul Klotschkow photo: David Baird
CHA-CHING! They’re in The Money, the sky is sunny, and - with the noise from their opening slot on the main stage at Splendour still ringing in their ears, after winning this year’s Future Sound of Nottingham – they’ve got a lot of what it takes to get along. One of the few bands in town to actually make a living out of it, due to a side- project of playing covers gigs on the side across the continent, frontman Stav Mylonas and guitarist Jake Buckley spell out their plans to cash in on their recent success…
So, Splendour: how was it for you? What’s it like making the leap to being effectively a full-time look at the likes of us and think ‘tossers’. But we want to make Jake: It was wicked - very surreal, but we got used to it band? our money from making original music. incredibly quickly. We put a lot of energy into it; a few moments Well, we’re not exactly full-time. Stav is, but I work in Homemade did go wrong, but we made up for it with energy. The sound guy three days a week making brownies and lasagne. I don’t have Why should we go out and buy your new EP Sparks? helped us loads. to, but I like it - it gets me up in the mornings. But if I could just Stav: It’s finely crafted, that’s why. A lot of effort and passion make all of my money from music, I would. went it to that... Stav: It felt really good, just looking out and seeing a lot of people, it’s a nice day so it’s just perfect. Very English. There Stav: We spend five days a week doing this - we rehearse Jake: ...and Dragon Stout. was a lot of friends and family, and then a load of other people Monday, Wednesday and Friday and Saturday and Sunday too. we are gigging. I packed in my job because I’ve got the more Stav: We went in to a studio in Northampton that you live in, like logistical brain in the band. I was working in a vintage clothing a commune. You sleep there, wake up, have your breakfast, grab Jake: It was very nice. It was tender. shop and couldn’t do certain things, like take calls for gigs. You’d a few coffees, and straight into the studio until four or five in the leave work and go straight to a gig, get back and then wake up morning. Every day it was Dragon Stout, Red Stripe… it gets to How did it feel to win the Future Sound of Nottingham? for work the next day. the middle of the night and you feel like you are going through Splendid! It’s nice having a big fat ‘yes’ after plenty of years of cold turkey. ‘no’. Have you got any advice for bands who are just starting out? Jake: If I was seventeen and wanted to make a living out of it off Jake: It’s a really nicely put together piece of music, there’s no Stav: We always try to get more gigs outside of Nottingham, the bat, I would get together two 45-minute sets of covers, get fat on it. We are a real live band, but when we get to the studio spending a lot of time emailing people who get back to us and it tight, and go around pubs and bars getting gigs. Once you’ve we like to keep it all proper. say; ‘you’re not local’ or; ‘you’re not big enough yet.’ So having a done that for a couple of years, start harassing agencies and try festival main stage slot under our belts won’t hurt at all. and get yourself on a showcase. How are you finding the local scene at the moment? Stav: Because we’ve been dabbling our toe in and out, we’ve not What do you think of these Battle of the Bands-type A showcase? been in the scene, but we’ve been coming back for gigs again competitions - don’t they usually boil down to a popularity Yeah. Getting on a showcase was the beginning of the rest of our recently. I think the Nottingham scene is in good nick; as FSN contest? musical lives. showed, there are some properly good bands out there. Jake: I usually hate them for that reason, because they’re not fair, but when Mark Del explained the reasons behind the voting Stav: We piled in a crappy old van, ploughed through the snow Jake: Like the Austin Francis Connection - they didn’t play my for FSN - and that it was 50/50 audience and judging panel - I to Sheffield, and turned up all excited. There were ten other favourite song on the night, but their recordings just make me understood it. bands in the room, Jools Holland-style. We didn’t have any crease. lights, so we swapped some drumsticks for some - those yellow Stav: It’s out of Nottingham that we’ve been aiming at, but when lights that builders have at the side of the road. And that was What other Notts acts are you feeling? we found out about the competition it encouraged us to get our our audition for our agency, and it landed us a residency in a club Stav: Chris Reeve and his banjo, and Atticus Anthem. name out there locally again. in Israel. Jake: Gallery 47 for me. My dad’s dentist is his dad - I went Jake: Although having said that, Battle of the Bands You’re one of the few bands around who aren’t afraid of the home one time, and he was like; ‘listen to this’, and I absolutely competitions are bloody great if you win them. cover version. adored it. I did a gig at The Golden Fleece where I was Jake: What landed us the agency slot was that they liked the headlining above Gallery 47 and I was like, ‘Nooo!’ And then So what is the state of play with The Money, circa 2011? fact that our covers were originals. We played them our way. Freaky River Styx - who very rarely rehearse, but when they play We feel that we are now at the level where we’re ready for a live they are just the most explosive dirty bluesy rock quartet bigger stage. We’ve got everything together - the press kit, a Stav: It’s a lot easier to get somewhere in the covers world than that I have ever heard in my entire life. And who’s that Nina…? wicked live show, the songs - so we want to do gigs that matter. it is in the originals world. If we put our minds to it, we could And we’ve got a nationwide fanbase. make a proper career out of the covers. Nina Smith? Yeah. Oh my God. Stav: A lot of our fans on Facebook are from when we were in Jake: There is a ongoing battle between the originals and the Greece a few years ago for the whole summer. It was literally, covers. It’s a constant compromise between both, and it drives Stav: We saw her with The Petebox the other night, and it was move out your house, quit your job, go away for months, and us all insane sometimes when we have to skip original stuff to amazing. come back with big smiles on your faces. do the covers. I think we do find a balance, though. So now you’ve got Splendour under your belt, what next? Jake: We gigged three times a night, five times a week, drank a Don’t you worry that it stunts your growth as a band, though, Jake: Hard work. Playing to crowds like this, but out of town. lot, made a lot of friends, and got very good at playing covers. and that people would sooner hear you cover something they This is the biggest thing we’ve done, but we’d love to go out and know than listen to something they don’t? conquer the world and come back. Stav: We got very tight as a band because we lived together as Stav: In my old band, I used to think that doing a cover wasn’t well as played together. More importantly, we are also recorded being true to our own music. But once you play other people’s Stav: Imagine coming back and headlining this festival with our own original music and sold our own CDs, collected email songs, you start to learn how songs are put together. everyone knowing the songs, see people singing along. That’s addresses, and got people to tag photos of us on Facebook. We what we want really PR’ed ourselves. Jake: It’s never been a problem for me, because I’m constantly writing my own songs. If people think, ‘There’s Jake and that Sparks by The Money is out now, and available online. Jake: It was such a great way to get fans. You become part of covers band’, I don’t care. We’ve got over a hundred covers in their holiday, the most memorable week of their year, and they the tank that we don’t rehearse - we spend our time writing and showmethemoneymusic.com buy your album and support you and remember you. We’re still learning the craft of songwriting. I can see why some guy who reaping the benefits of it. works at B&Q and is in some experimental electro thing would leftlion.co.uk/issue42 7 Trentf ormers Forest Failed to get out of the playoffs. Again. Old manager dumped, new manager promises better. Again. Initial foot-dragging over new signings. Again. Can Forest break the cycle this season?
Rich Crouch, Lost That Lovin’ Feeling
If your team’s performance last year was a shop in town, which one would it be? The entire Broadmarsh Centre. Loads of talk year after year about upgrading and expanding to get into the upper echelons, but just when you think they’re going to sign up John Lewis or M&S, they end up unveiling three more Poundlands.
What was the absolute highpoint of last season? The period bookended by the Derby victories. It felt like we were walking on air - the scramble to get the DVD of the 5-2 victory, then the anguish of a tight one-nil at their place. Beating Leicester 3-2 was also great; we seemed to properly turn around our slide and head into the playoffs.
And the lowpoint? Not the playoffs; I’d say a mixture of losing our home record to Hull, and losing away at Scunthorpe and Sheff Utd. Terrible times, really. The playoffs were sad, but ultimately it’s got to the point where Forest fans see them as two friendlies at the end of the season that do nothing but cost extra cash and build false hopes.
Last year’s star player… I’ve been saying it for years, and finally people agree with me – that Chambo (Luke Chambers, for the uninitiated) is too good for this league. He’s been a tower at the back, a goalscoring machine at the front, and one of the few players who seems to care about the team as much as the fans. He loves to win and it pains him to lose. He’s a ‘body on the line’ defender, but has a bit of class about him. A motivator, a winner and a future captain.
Last year’s donkey… Unfortunately, this accolade has to go to Robert Earnshaw. He still provided some moments of class, but they were few and far between. Still, he scored against Derby - in both games - and Leicester, so at least there’s some half-decent memories of him now that he’s buggered off to Cardiff. He will, inevitably, score against us this season.
If your manager ran a takeaway in town, what would it be like? If it was Billy Davies, it’d probably be a new takeaway shop that didn’t have a menu but a list of foodstuffs he recommends and advises you buy - an ‘Advise and Recommenu’, if you will. If Steve McClaren were to open a takeaway it would probably be a lukewarmly-received Dutch coffee shop; people would criticise it whilst ignoring the handful of Michelin Stars the place had won.
Apart from your manager, who else is new at the club this season? The summer has gone from bad to great. We brough Andy Reid home, and have also brought in Jonathan Greening and George Boateng. We’re also close, apparently, to signing Wayne Routledge and some highly rated Dutch players. We still need a left back though.
And who’s been lobbed? We’ve lost a lot of bit-part players such as McKenna and Adebola to Hull, Bennett to Sheff Wed, Wilson to Celtic, Tyson to Derby and Nialle Rodney to Bradford. It’s a shame he didn’t go to Hull (and back) to link up with Adebola again, as having Dele and Rodney upfront was proper cushty. Loanees Kris Boyd and Paul Konchesky aren’t coming permanently, especially as Konch has signed for Sven’s expensive Leicester revolution. Let’s hope the Foxes remember to pay their bills this time...
Any other pre-season goings-on worth noting? There was a trip to Portugal to play Spurs, and a couple of high-profile friendlies (PSV Eindhoven at home, Stuttgart away). Stevie Mac is bringing us some good football so far - let’s just hope he brings us some good footballers too.
What are your kits like this season? Delightful. The home kit is cut from a new material, and looks more like a polo shirt. The socks are hooped too, which is lovely. Not so keen on the away top, which is black and has green shoulders, though I do like the obvious Clough reference.
What do you dislike most about your club? The procrastination with transfers. It seems other clubs are able to do their business much quicker than us. It’s also a touch difficult to get excited about our chances when we have had our hopes dashed so many times. The club just seems to fall at the last hurdle time and again, and it’s frustrating not to see the effort being put in. What I really dislike - actually, despise - about the club is that they seem to have decided not to sell steak and kidney pies any more. The choices are purely chicken balti or meat and potato. ‘Meat’? Sorry, I need more description than that in my food. Bring back steak and kidney pies; we had ‘em when we were in the Premiership, and we had chicken balti in League One. Coincidence? I think not.
How bothered are you about the League Cup derby? Well, it’s hardly Derby, but it will be nice to beat County in a competitive game. They’re the slightly annoying little brother who always wants to beat you on FIFA and pretends that he’s the first kid in the world to ever get in to Rock City on a Thursday night at fifteen when we’ve all done that. For years you’ve bought him decent Christmas presents and he’s spat in your tea - but he’s your little brother so you can’t properly hate him. He properly hates you, though.
Call your shot: what will Forest do in 2011-12? We need to win the league. Sacking Davies and bringing in Stevie Mac means we must improve on what Billy did here. Worst case scenario for us would be relegation. Mid-table obscurity would be rubbish, but having been in a worse position I can’t see it being too horrible to not have anything to play for at the end of the season.
And if you could send a personal message of advice to your club’s manager in haiku form, what would it be? Welcome to Forest Please bring us promotion, Steve And please call us ‘duck’
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8 leftlion.co.uk/issue42 stadium illustrations: Rikki Marr shirt illustrations: Adam Poole
Trentf ormersTEAMS IN TOTAL TRANSITION County The good news: the Pies reached some kind of stability in 2011. The bad news: it was in the shape of a record-breaking losing streak. Can Martin Allen keep them up, or is it back to the basement?
Jacob Daniel, Notts County Mad
If your team’s performance last year was a shop in town, which one would it be? TK Maxx - a glorified jumble sale, with most of the showings and stock being unpleasant and bordering on offensive. Performances like those that comprised a record breaking nine-game losing run would be a bright orange and purple jumper, and most of the emergency loanees - such as Ivan Sproule and Kevin McDonald - would be rude and slightly ugly till operators. Look hard enough though, and you might find a bargain - Krystian Pearce would be a ridiculously under-priced and incredibly dapper suit and the superb Neal Bishop a rugged and dependable leather jacket.
What was the absolute highpoint of last season? Only one real answer that can be given here - Bishop’s header at the start of the second half against Manchester City in the FA Cup. Absolute pandemonium at Meadow Lane and, for fifteen minutes or so afterwards, we had Mancini, Silva, Dzeko and their ilk on the ropes. It was the kind of performance that made our subsequent capitulation in the league all the more bemusing.
And the lowpoint? Probably full time against Oldham Athletic at Meadow Lane. We’d just lost 2-0 to the only team in the league in worse form than ourselves and it didn’t look like we could find a goal from anywhere, let alone a point. It was our seventh consecutive defeat and, although two more were to follow under Martin Allen, we at least showed a bit of fight in those games - we even scored in one of them.
Last year’s star player... Krystian Pearce. His freak training ground injury was the catalyst for our disastrous run, and his return the catalyst for the ending of it. A ridiculously composed central defender who’s good in the air, on the ball, strong and quick, he will go on to play at a higher level than League One.
And last year’s donkey... A whole host of candidates for this – Liam Chilvers, Jon Harley, Ivan Sproule and Kevin McDonald. The award has to go to Ben Burgess, though; his underwhelming performances (one goal all season) and lack of athletic ability had earned him the name ‘Burger Van’. He’s currently sat on the transfer list. Let’s hope he doesn’t break it.
If your manager ran a takeaway in town, what would it be like? Some kind of slightly insane takeaway food that only he could think of. ‘Notts Fried Hamster’ or something. His dog - who joins him at training - could help with food preparation, whilst the transfer-listed trio of Burgess, Harley and Chilvers could seek alternative employment in hamster flipping.
Apart from your manager, who else is new at the club this season? So far, a new physio, chief scout and a tactical analyst. Player-wise, plenty - including Julian Kelly (an attacking right-back from Reading who flattered to deceive on loan at Lincoln last season), and Jude Stirling, Allen’s best mate and best man at his wedding (you know a signing is underwhelming when Allen himself makes it clear he won’t play him unless absolutely necessary and his best quality is being a ‘good DJ’). Alan Sheehan - a left back from Swindon - appears to be a more exciting addition, as does beastly midfielder Hamza Bencherif, a former Forest trainee with a thunderous right foot. Wingers Jeff Hughes (a Northern Ireland international), and all-round headcase Ishmel Demontagnac have joined the ‘Pies, as has Allen’s son Charlie. Perhaps as a token gesture.
And who’s been lobbed? All of the players at the end of their deals were released - including club captain John Thompson, who could possibly feel slightly hard done by. Graeme Lee, David Grof, Kevin Smith, Febian Brandy, Njogu Demba-Nyren and Lewis Gobern probably saw it coming.
Any other pre-season goings-on worth noting? We offered a deal to former Forest striker and professional alien imitator Marlon Harewood, but he headed to China instead. Pre- season friendlies saw us taking a magical mystery tour of non-league grounds, including Ilkeston, Hucknall, Kettering, Mansfield, Corby, Hinckley and Maidenhead. League opposition was provided by a trip to Macclesfield and home games against Peterborough and Wolves.
What are your kits like this season? Different. The home kit has been reverted away from the traditional thick black and white stripes for one season to a pinstripe number made by Fila. The away kit is light blue, whilst a white third kit will feature the names of every single Notts season ticket holder.
What do you dislike the most about your club? The chaos. I feel for any Magpies with heart issues; the constant upheaval at Meadow Lane can’t be good for the blood pressure. It’d be nice to settle down for a couple of years with one manager and a young side on the up, but it just wouldn’t be the Notts way.
How bothered are you about the League Cup derby? Very bothered. It’s a game that means a lot to us after so long without a chance to play them and being swatted aside as Nottingham’s failing club. They will - of course - claim they don’t care, and get the 4,000 or so they always get at home to lower league clubs in the first round, and won’t do any singing, goading or even acknowledge the game’s existence. They might even get outnumbered on their own ground because it means that little to them.
Call your shot: what will County do in 2011-12? Land a safer mid-table position, but I fully expect the unexpected. We’re a striker away from a side capable of flirting with the play-offs, but equally, without the right forward we could well be in a relegation battle again.
And if you could send a personal message of advice to your club’s manager in haiku form, what would it be? Just let Jude DJ Sign a striker who can score But don’t let Jude play nottscounty-mad.co.uk
leftlion.co.uk/issue42 9 interview: Jared Wilson
Some people think He's bonkers Some see Martin ‘Mad Dog’ Allen as the epitome of the eccentric, geezerish football manager. But Notts County fans will testify that there is method in the madness, after he saved them from relegation last season. We caught up with him for a chat about Nottingham, posh hotels and a certain League Cup tie...
You’re made out in the media to be an ‘eccentric’ manager. Are you? is drastically rubbish. It just shows people a different side to me and what goes through my head I don’t know, you’d have to ask the people that write those things. Sometimes people say that I’m when I go on my long journeys. It always surprises me how many people seem to actually read it. ‘mad’ but a lot of it is press talk and when you scratch the surface you see that there’s more to what I do than meets the eye. Papers don’t always tell you the full story when they tell you a story How will you be celebrating your birthday in August? A night out in town? about me. More likely a night in with my sons, my sister and my family. Birthdays don’t really mean a lot to me, but I’m still full of energy and life. I love to have a laugh and mess about. I went to a wedding Can you give us an example? in the summer and at the end of the night it was me that was in a dance-off with a four year-old. There was a piece about me taking a team training session on a roundabout. But the truth was that our team bus broke down on a journey up north and we couldn’t get to the training pitch. It was You spent a week in Botswana with Coaching for Hope doing soccer classes with kids this either that or not train at all before the game. But the journalist left out the fact that the bus had summer. How was that? broken down, as it made a better story. It was an awesome experience. The people are so friendly and grateful for a bit of help and just the little things, like food and clothes. It was very humbling, but I was there to teach them how to Did you always know you wanted to be a manager after playing? coach football and I felt very privileged to have the opportunity. I hope that through my work, sport Oh yeah. My dad was a football manager when I was young and he was one of the top coaches in will help to spread through the villages and I feel lucky to have had the chance to do it. the country. He used to teach other coaches how to coach and take me along with him. Then when I was twenty-one I set up a soccer school, so I’ve been managing staff, players and logistics since What was the last thing that made you laugh? then, knowing that it would stand me in good stead for football management. I laugh at myself every day. I have plenty of jokes in my locker. People might get this idea that managers are like headmasters, taking a stick to everyone, but I have a good laugh and joke with When you took over at Notts, they were all over the place, losing nine games in a row. What did the players every day in training. you do to turn it around? I started with very basic things. I asked the players to tell me what they didn’t like about the What was the last thing that made you cry? football club. I got a load of black pens and flipcharts and got them to write it all down Three months ago I had some lumps removed from my chest whilst I was managing at Barnet. One anonymously. They could write what they wanted about anything or anybody. I promised them that of them was particularly big and it hurt when it came out. Afterwards I was given the all clear and I would never reveal what they wrote and that I’d try and change those things – which I started to told that I didn’t have cancer, just a few days before I joined Notts County. I cried when I heard the do. In return I said I wanted to see commitment, honesty and respect between them - and to see if news. No-one knew that until now; you’ve got an exclusive there. we could make ourselves and the supporters happy. What was your reaction when Notts drew Forest in the League Cup? When you first came to Notts you asked on the website if any fans had a spare room you could I was in Botswana when I got the news on a text message. I just smiled a lot, I was grinning like a kip in because you “don’t like these posh hotels.” Did you get that sorted? child. My chest filled out and my fists clenched. I filled up with passion and I tried to explain why I stayed out with people a couple of times, but in the end it was too much. It’s true that I don’t to the people around me in this poor village in the middle of nowhere. I cannot wait for that game like hotels – they’re no good for the dog for starters, but the people in them looked after me of football! It’s fourteen years since one of these games has taken place. I actually asked Forest if fantastically. I’m in my own house in Nottingham now and I’m settled. There are still a few things they’d play a friendly against us in pre-season, but they couldn’t. It’s much better to do it in a good to sort, but it’s going nicely. I’ve got someone who looks after my black Labrador when I go to competition though. It will be a big occasion for our fans and, for me, it will great to go up against a away games and on long scouting trips, so I’m pleased about that. great manager like Steve McClaren.
What do you think to Nottingham as a city? Any favourite haunts where you go outside of Is there anything particularly unique about Notts fans? A few years ago they were dubbed the football? most depressed supporters in the country... I don’t really go out anywhere. I get up at 7.30am and I don’t usually get home until late. I work I heard that too, but all I can say is that the fans are great. The highlight of my time so far was at very hard and in the small bits of downtime I have I usually sit on the sofa and watch the TV like the end of the game against Bournemouth. We were losing 2-0 after conceding in the 87th minute, anyone else. whilst pushing forward to try and get a draw. I was stood in the dug-out knowing the game was lost, but all the Notts fans started to sing and get behind the players for the performance they’d You write a weekly blog, which is surprisingly good if you don’t mind us saying. What made put in. I turned to John Schofield and said “Schoey, listen to this. We will stay up.” You can’t you start blogging? overestimate how important it is in situations like that to have the supporters behind you. I started blogging through Pro FC, a company I set up with my friend DJ Campbell to give young footballers a break. But I enjoy writing, which is something I started doing when I was boss at martinallenssundaysermon.wordpress.com Brentford. I write all the entries myself and I don’t allow anything to be changed unless something nottscountyfc.co.uk
10 leftlion.co.uk/issue42 interview: Al Needham photo: Dom Henry
Mark Crossley - known as ‘Norm’ during his thirteen years as Forest’s goalkeeper, due to a resemblance to Norman Whiteside - started his career being hated by his own supporters. Then he nearly became the hero of the 1991 FA Cup final and a club legend. Nowadays he’s a player-coach at Chesterfield, an after-dinner speaker, and - as of this month - his own publisher...
So, your autobiography’s coming out and you’ve taken the One time, the day before Mother’s Day, we saw him in someone’s You could see it coming, couldn’t you? People say the gaffer had self-publishing route... front garden ripping roses off a bush. Then he went up to the lost it by then, but he was still as wise as ever. I think it was just Yeah. It’s a bit more than “I’ve won this, I’ve won that” - to be letterbox, pushed a load of cash through it, got on the bus, gave probably a year too long for him, God bless him. His health had honest, I didn’t really win a lot of trophies anyway. It’s more every player a red rose, and told us to give it to our mum or deteriorated and the players weren’t performing for him either. about the person I am, what happens in the dressing room, the wife or girlfriend. We were told to say; “Brian says thank you for characters I’ve played with and the managers I’ve played under - letting him have me on Mothering Sunday weekend.” What was Frank Clark like? all twenty one of them. I’m funding it all myself and if I make any I thought he was different class and the best appointment we money at the end of it, I intend to make a donation to a grass- Were people scared of him? could have made. I didn’t know anything about the bloke, but roots football or children’s charity. I wasn’t; I was in awe of him. I once signed a blank contract as soon as I met him at pre-season training I had a feeling that because he asked me to. I wanted to play for Nottingham Forest this was the start of a new era. And it was. To get us promoted, Your career with Forest and their supporters didn’t exactly and Brian Clough. I trusted that he would fill in the contract and finish third in the Premier League, and to the quarter finals of start on the right foot. What was it like in town after you’d I wanted him to trust me. UEFA Cup was a brilliant achievement. had an off-game? I didn’t go out in town after an off-game, put it that way. I came You’re the only goalie to have ever denied Matt Le Tissier from So how did it end with you and Forest? into the team really young and you’re always going to make the spot… Basically, it was when David Platt took over in 1999. I had mistakes at that age. Someone told me I’ve got the best record of saving penalties nothing against him, personally, but I just couldn’t get over his in the Premier League in one season - 57% - which I didn’t arrogance. I read a piece in the paper saying his first job was to The Trent End really got on your back at first. even know about. But I also scored for Sheffield get rid of the dead wood. I felt like we were judged before we’d Yes they did, but I stuck at it and I tried to build a relationship Wednesday when I went up for a last minute even been given the chance to impress. with the supporters. I’d go into the Meadows pubs and have corner. I’ve always wished that it had been for a drink with them. I think they appreciated that and the Forest. But scoring a goal as a goalkeeper - the Forest-Derby games: how seriously did the players take relationship got better and better. I’ve always been someone feeling is unexplainable. I didn’t know what to it? that’s gone into the community - if anybody’s ever asked me to do, or how to celebrate, or anything. Cor…it’s massive. It’s the biggest game of the season. do anything, to help anybody, I’ve always done it. If you did well against them, it was never forgotten. I got Was saving Gary Lineker’s penno in the 1991 some right stick playing there, but I used to love it and So where were you living when you started at Forest? FA Cup Final the highlight of your career? give as much back. I probably can’t say this... nah, sod it; In my home town, Barnsley, and that’s when I had a lot of trouble It’s definitely up there. It would have you’ve got the Derby support behind the goal, you with the law. I’d signed for Forest in ‘87, which wasn’t too long been better if we would have won - go to retrieve the ball, you’re getting spat after the miners strike so I was getting called a scab for working then it would be been the highlight on and everything. So obviously I’m giving in Nottingham. I was young and in the public eye - I loved it, but of my career. It’s in the record it all that back and “Fookin’ sheep- I couldn’t handle it. If someone had a go, then I had a go back. books as one of only three shaggers” and all that. I was looking at going away on a long jail sentence when the penalty saves in the Cup gaffer said; “You’ve got a week to buy a house. In Nottingham.” Final. Afterwards the gaffer Really? So I bought Steve Chettle’s house off him. said, “You’ve given your all, Of course! When I saw Nathan Tyson that’s all I can ask for, but running along with the flag, that We’ve heard a lot about the drinking culture of Forest, with it wasn’t to be.” Then brought proper memories back to Cloughie getting the team battered before cup finals and that. we sat there in complete me. I should have been saying; Was it really like that? silence for at least half “Ooh, that’s out of order” but I’m Not really. They used to let you have a beer because they an hour. We had a party like “Go on! Go for it!” I wish I’d thought you’d sleep better. As far as a drinking went - every arranged, but it didn’t have done summat like that. Saturday night after the game there’d be four or five of us out. really happen. When Then on a Sunday I’d nip into the Meadows and have a couple in you get beaten, what is Big Norm: the Mark Crossley Story The Crown, and then straight out on the Monday night. But on there to party about? will be officially launched at the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, you were preparing City Ground on 28 August before for the game on Saturday. Two years later, and the Forest-West Ham game, and Forest are getting is currently available to order from Virtually every book about Forest comes up with new relegated. What was Mark’s website anecdotes about Cloughie. What are you bringing to the table? it like being a part of On match days we used to pick him up from a hotel in Sandiacre. that? bignorm.co.uk
leftlion.co.uk/issue42 11 Venneh, Viddeh, Vicceh (“I came, I saw, I went shopping”) Whilst other places in the UK wear their Roman origins like a badge of honour, there’s virtually nothing to look at in Notts – so much so that we’ve been described as an ‘archaeological blackspot’. Mark Patterson’s book, Roman Nottinghamshire, is the first step towards reclaiming our Roman heritage… interview: James Walker photo: Laura Patterson
What is it about the Romans that fascinates you? So who lived where? What was the posh bit? Who wouldn’t be interested in the Romans, with their strange eating habits and invincible legions They would have lived in villas and in and around the bigger towns such as Margidunum. clad in shiny armour? I’m keen on exploring how the cultural heritage we’ve inherited from them Estimates for villa numbers in Nottinghamshire have varied widely, but I reckon there’s sound continues to affect the modern landscape and our lifestyles, and how the ancient Romano-British evidence for around twenty. Some of them would have been simple farmhouses; but others, such landscape lies just under the contemporary landscape. Take our roads; A46 Fosse Way, the road as those at Southwell and Mansfield Woodhouse, were evidently large, luxurious buildings with from Derby to Long Eaton, or from Littleborough to Bawtry, or the A614 north of Bawtry – they baths, central heating, wall frescoes and rich mosaic patterns on the floors. The occupants may largely follow the routes of the Roman roads, as do the villages that developed along them. Our have been wealthy Roman landowners, possibly absent for most of the year, or native Britons who lives are still being shaped by the ghosts of Rome. were doing well from the Roman establishment.
So what’s all this about us being an ‘archaeological blackspot’? And the scabbier areas? That’s down to something R.W. Butler, who was a member of the Thoroton Society of According to certain archaeologists, Besthorpe is believed to have contained what’s known as the Nottinghamshire, wrote in the fifties. The point he was making was that there was little awareness ‘Roman working class’, who may have been employed at the estate of the villa at Cromwell, on of Nottinghamshire’s ancient past among the general public. Why? There was very little to actually the other side of the Trent. Of course there was a ‘class’ below them – slaves. It’s been deduced see above ground, partly because there were so few museums to show artefacts, and partly from artefacts found at Leicester that some wealthy households seem to have had dozens of slaves because, well, the county has just always been relatively awful at showcasing its ancient past. working for them. But I’m not sure how contemporary concepts of class transfer to a pre-capitalist society such as that of Roman Britain. Why’s that? It’s a mystery, but only the other day one contemporary archaeologist quietly confided to me that Are all archaeologists a bit batchy, or is it just the ones on Time Team? Nottinghamshire was a “catastrophe” when it comes to people and organisations who should Many can come across as a bit odd, but that seems to be a side product of the devotion and know better preserving and showcasing its ancient heritage. The result is that now there is barely passion you need to do the job properly. There was George Campion, for example, who lost all a Roman brick above ground and even the stuff we know is there continues to be either threatened sense of taste and smell after sticking his face into a medieval plague pit in Broxtowe in the with development, or is hemmed in by new concrete. Nobody can expect the structures of the thirties. Then there was T.C. Smith Woolley, from Collingham, who excavated at Brough on the ancient past to put a total stop to development, but equally it is quite amazing – disgraceful, even Fosse Way in the early 20th century and who was tragically killed when cycling on a February - how you can travel from one end of Nottinghamshire to the other without seeing a sign that the night. The only words he uttered after the collision and before his death the next day were; ‘Oh mighty Roman Empire even had a presence here. You could be forgiven for believing the Roman dear.’ Empire had a day off between Leicester and Lincoln. Roman Nottinghamshire is published by Five Leaves, £11.99 Felix Oswald, a Roman pottery specialist and founder of The University of Nottingham fiveleaves.co.uk Museum, is the big hero of your book… Oswald merits lengthy mention because of his single-handed devotion to the excavation of Margidunum, the Roman town near East Bridgford now mostly flattened by the A46 roundabout. Oswald excavated the place between 1910 and 1936, mostly by himself. He wasn’t even stopped when a farmer said he couldn’t continue to work in his field - some of his supporters simply bought the field for him. He revealed what seems to have been the largest Roman town in the county, and then went on to effectively found the museum by donating his vast collection of pottery and artefacts from it to the university. The museum’s a bit of a hidden gem, and should be better known - as should Felix Oswald.
Tell us about the current campaign in Southwell to save a Roman site… There was once a huge, luxurious villa in Southwell - perhaps the largest in the Midlands. Ongoing work around the site near the Minster just seems to emphasise that the place was the centre of a large, productive estate, with workshops and all sorts. Despite that, a local builder wants to put 29 houses on top of part of the site that isn’t protected and - much to the frustration of local campaigners - this is being supported by English Heritage. The campaigners want the site to be carefully remodelled as a ‘Roman Heritage Park’ to showcase Southwell’s history, which would have tourist and educational value. Given the lack of anything similar in the county, and Nottinghamshire’s dreadful record on this kind of issue, it’s difficult not to see virtue in their campaign.
Any Dan Brown moments in your research? One of my favourite stories concerns the remains of a villa at Oldcotes, in north Notts, which was last seen in 1870 when a new Catholic church was being built. The architect saw a labyrinth floor mosaic with an image of Theseus at its centre. There aren’t many mosaics like this in Britain as they’ve been destroyed or lost - if it’s still there, under the church, then we would have a Roman treasure worth showing off to the world. But I noted that the official historic record for the villa mentioned that the Catholic priest had ordered no excavation of the church for fifty years. Why? What were they hiding? The dioceses said the previous priest had made that order because he simply didn’t want his church being disrupted by archaeologists. What really amazed me was that they said that nobody had even asked him about the villa in the previous five years. Has nobody else been interested in a picture of Theseus slaying the Minotaur, all under a Nottinghamshire church? If the mosaic is still there, then I think some effort should be made to see if it’s still intact.
Why did the Romans bother to invade an island so far from Rome? Mad Emperor Caligula had considered invading Britain, to the point of actually lining his troops up on the Channel shore, before suddenly telling them to fill their helmets with seashells. After they got rid of him, his doddering uncle Claudius came to power, and it seems that he thought he could score a quick military victory in Britain. So over he came in 43AD with four legions and some war elephants.
And what would they have been after in Notts? The East Midlands was on the invasion path as the legions moved north, so it was inevitable the Roman military machine would march in. Once here they would have got stuck into the region’s plentiful supply of ironstone, plus the lead in the Derbyshire Peak District.
Did our local boys, the Corieltauvi, put up a fight? The classical texts are silent on the issue, which has led some to conclude that the local Iron Age tribesfolk simply rolled over and surrendered. To be fair, though, the absence of references can’t really be interpreted as evidence for anything much. The point I make in the book is that it is highly unlikely that a warrior tribe like the Corieltauvi would have failed to make some resistance. There was a serious rebellion against the Romans to the east and south of Corieltauvi territory in 60 or 61 led by Queen Boudicca, which almost threw the Romans out of the country. Hearing news of dramatic events like this, wouldn’t you or one of your friends in ancient Nottinghamshire be encouraged to take up sword and shield to fight against invasion?
12 leftlion.co.uk/issue42 interview: Gareth Morgan WHOAAAAHHHH! photo: Carla Mundy BODYLINE! Michael Pinchbeck is a writer, live artist, performance-maker, and one half of the creative team behind Hatch. His latest project is The Ashes, the story of the infamous ‘Bodyline’ England cricket tour to Australia in 1932-33 that left the game’s reputation tarnished. On the verge of its debut performance at the Playhouse, we aimed a few questions at him - which he batted away with consummate ease…
What’s the story so far? with artists from all over Europe, and taken Hatch on the road to nerves he had before going out to bat was like an actor before I had a very distant relationship with drama to start off with; Skegness and Leicester. he went on stage. I was tentative about this meta-theatricality apart from a couple of amateur dramatics plays, I never really as it’s something that I have used in my other works, but it studied it until I went to Lancaster University. I co-founded a What’s been your favourite Hatch moment? did get me thinking about this dressing room mentality – the theatre company called Metro-Boulot-Dodo at university; they’re The very first night, not knowing who would come -and superstitions of players, of having their peg and so on. It was based in Leicester now, and we toured extensively for about ten suddenly, loads of people turning up - that was brilliant. In this that started me on the idea of seeing cricket from the wings years, winning a Total Theatre Best Newcomer Award in 1999. I terms of performances, Megan Tait playing Oh I Do Like To Be – one thing I really want to have in the production is lowering left the company in 2004 and came back to Nottingham. Beside The Seaside on a Casio keyboard using a fork attached down the nets from the flies and having the bowlers running to her head. It was only thirty seconds long, which meant some up to deliver the ball but them being off-stage for the release You’re heavily tied in to the Playhouse these days… people missed it, so we made her do it twice. or watching the batting but only seeing the reaction in the slip I met Giles Croft, the Playhouse’s Artistic Director, when I had cordon. just started an MA at Nottingham Trent and was interviewing The Ashes, then; how did that come about? for the Arts Council and a couple of magazines. I spoke to him It was another conversation between me and Giles around 2005 Telegrams are an important part of the play, aren’t they? about what I was doing, where I’d come from; The Beatles when England had won the Ashes for the first time in a long- Telegrams are used to structure the piece, and are the cropped up and The White Album sort of came from there. time. I said I’d wanted to write something about the Bodyline correspondence between the Australian Cricket Board and the Nottingham Playhouse has been very supportive since; they series, and Giles was interested. It’s been developing for four or MCC (the Marylebone Cricket Club, who ran the English game have my show, The Post Show Party Show, which I perform five years now. in the 1930s). Although very short, clipped exchanges, they tell with my parents, as a mid-week matinee, and they also support much more than just the results – they are ‘the story of the play’ Hatch. Why did you use Larwood as your focus for the story? which is what used to be the sub-title on newspaper reports of Both him and Bill Voce came from North Notts and worked in the time. We use them as a framework, but they are useful as an You wanted to use Beatles tunes in The White Album, before Annesley Pit, but I wanted to look at that story through a wider artefact too. Communication is important in cricket as so much discovering they couldn’t be licensed. Did the play suffer? lens, especially at a time when we’d just won again. I thought of it is relayed through radio and print, which is where much of In a way it didn’t, but it made the intention of the play less that cricket could be something we can be proud of and re-ignite its language has evolved. I really liked playing with the lexicon visible. I had written the piece to the duration of the album our imaginations. I spent a great deal of time looking through of cricket and other period details. Peter Wynne-Thomas, Notts’ with each scene to the length of that track. Whilst that was the archive at Notts and found some photographs of Larwood archivist, has been a great help - and explained the etymology of lost, the mood remained. Sexy Sadie, for example, was an angry with Gracie Fields looking star-struck, or sitting on the deck of the phrase ‘put a sock in it’ too… break-up in a restaurant and John Lennon’s LA stuff was where the ship sailing over to Australia writing a letter assumedly to I introduced the Manson Family element. It made it more a his wife, Lois. We explore the way Larwood was treated after So what’s next? question of the interpolation of the music. The issue was not Bodyline – being asked to apologise by the MCC. There are I am currently pursuing a PhD at Loughborough University that we were denied rights, as we could play the music from photographs of him in his sweetshop after he retired and moved which explores the role I play as a dramaturg, or outside eye, the control box and did. The issue was that I couldn’t have a to Blackpool. It isn’t just about the man and the cricket match, on other people’s work such as Reckless Sleepers, Hetain Patel man put the needle down on the record in preparation of him it’s about the diplomacy and what happens after the dust has and Gabriella Reuter. I’m also taking my show, The End, up to committing suicide. Sometimes people got the wrong idea of settled. Edinburgh, plus I’m working on a Hatch project called Hatching what the show was about - it certainly wasn’t a tribute show. Plans which will be on in unusual locations in Leicester on the We had a hen party one night; I don’t think a show about suicide Do you think there’s much similarity between the stage and 16 October. We’ve commissioned Frank Abbott to do some work and the Manson Family was what they had expected... the crease? with us and have Action Hero coming again after their great Yes. I responded to something Douglas Jardine – the England performance of A Western at The Malt Cross last year. There are You’re one half of the creative team behind Hatch... captain at the time – said; “Cricket is battle and service and going to be ten other commissions which we’ll be looking for Nathan Miller and I met through the Notts arts scene and sport and art”. This got me thinking, this was part of Jardine’s closer to the date and my old company, Metro-Boulot-Dodo, will began talking about performance culture in the region. We were call to arms like a director giving notes to his actors. Equally, be performing too. worried that things could start to slip with the loss of the Now it reminded me that the artistry of cricket is still applauded: a Festival and Expo. We didn’t feel, at that point, that there was balletic catch in the slips, the shaping away from the batsman The Ashes, Nottingham Playhouse, Friday 2 – Saturday 17 a space for artists to try things and be brave, so we wanted by a seamer, a well-executed cover drive, they are all things a September to make a space where artists could try things and take risks crowd appreciates much like a performer on stage. I also spoke michaelpinchbeck.co.uk that wasn’t a theatre. I’ve made projects in cars, on benches, in depth with former Notts batsman John Clay, who sadly in front of Roman walls – there’s something about me that likes passed away in February, about what it was like playing on the working outside of theatres. Now we’ve evolved: we’ve worked county circuit in the fifties. He said that he imagined that the leftlion.co.uk/issue42 13 Get out and ARE YOU about this summer!
Don’t sit around inside whilst the summer gets underway without you - get out and enjoy the flora and fauna on your doorstep. Why not have a go at exploring the Big Track, our 10 mile car free cycling and walking route along Nottingham’s waterways. The canal side stroll is just minutes away from the City Centre and it’s surrounded by places to visit, eat in and enjoy. For more information visit www.thebigwheel.org.uk/bigtrack The Nottingham Comedy Festival returns for its third year this September, offering a chance to see some of the greats perform their post-Edinburgh shows - as well as workshops and try-out gigs for aspiring performers. So we collared festival directors Helen Stead and Elliott Bower and asked... ARE YOU HAVING A
interview: Adrian Bhagat LAUGH photo: Adam Humpreys
Where did the idea for the festival come from? Which local comedians do you think have potential? Helen: I started the festival with Rachel Greensmith in 2009. We used to go to the Comedy Store in Elliott: We saw a guy called Adam Lausi do his first gig in May and he went on to do a Gong Show London, and wondered why there was nothing like it in Nottingham. There’s a huge comedy scene at the Glee Club. I think he’s got the potential to go a long way. He’s already got around a thousand here, and somebody needed to come along and bring it all together. We talked to a few comedians views on YouTube and he could be playing Live At The Apollo in five years time. Scott Bennett is and promoters and it happened from there. doing well and getting regular paid work. Also a friend of mine, Dominic Eliot Spencer, is getting regular gig work on the circuit and he’s really going places. How has it grown over the last couple of years? We’re starting to get our name known in the business. We’ve got to know all the clubs and Helen: Dom’s fantastic. He’s doing storming gigs all the time. We organise a comedy competition promoters and local comedians. We have our own regular gigs through the year with a show every which is sponsored by Castle Rock. The first one was last year and was won by Carl Jones who month and we’re attracting more established acts. We had fifteen venues of various sizes last year, had only started that June. He is now a regular on the comedy circuit and he’s won quite a few maybe more this year. As well as clubs like Glee, Funhouse and Jongleurs, we have both small awards already. pubs and the big theatres taking part. Just The Tonic aren’t involved at the moment, but we hope they will be in the future. The comedy scene in Nottingham seems to have grown enormously - there are a lot of venues at the moment… What can we expect to see at the festival? Helen: All the venues have got their own audiences and their own style. Jongleurs has got the stag You’ll get to see a wide variety of comedy at cheap prices. There will be types of comedy you may and hen audience, while Just The Tonic is more cabaret. There are smaller intimate venues too. For not have seen before, like musical comedy, sketch comedy and improvisation which isn’t well example, we put on events at The Canalhouse which has a perfect comedy room and acts love it known. So there’s a chance to explore something new. The festival is just after Edinburgh so if a there. A lot of comedians really like to come to Nottingham now - it’s a really vibrant and growing show goes well, comedians may perform their shows one more time or they can start work on their scene here. We’re not far from London or Manchester, so it’s easy for acts to get here. next show, which is what Patrick Monahan did last year. Elliott: It is starting to get a bit saturated, though. I don’t know whether they are losing money, but Elliott: We try to cater for everyone. At last year’s festival we had How To Survive A Zombie I don’t think there will be any more new venues in the city centre. The Bell were interesting in us Apocalypse which was a comedy seminar. It was very different and very entertaining. It completely running an event there on Tuesday nights, but that’s when Just The Tonic have their free nights, so sold out and most of the audience seemed to be rock music types. Then again, we also had Stand it was never going to work Up Shakespeare with comic characters and scenes from Shakespeare’s plays and that attracted an audience of over-50s. Tell us a little about the comedy you do yourselves. Helen: We’re both members of the MissImp improvisation group. I joined in September 2008 and What’s new at the festival this year? started doing workshops and playing games like they do in Whose Line Is It Anyway? and I really Helen: We’re hoping to take comedy into the schools and bring children to gigs in theatres. We’re caught the bug. Now we do regular improvisation shows at the Glee Club and it’s going from also trying to find funding or sponsorship to give children with learning difficulties a chance to try strength to strength. out comedy because we think it will be great for their confidence and give them a laugh. We’re in talks with a school who are interested. Elliott: I’ve been on the circuit for a few years, I’m a bit of a failed stand-up. You get a lot of ‘typical’ students who think they’re funny, and I was just the same. I think to hit the big time you’ve got to How can someone get started in comedy? write and write and write and try out stuff all the time, and after a few years of stand-up I found I Elliott: Doing a competition first is good because you only have to do two or three minutes to dip couldn’t really laugh at anything any more. Once I stopped I got to laugh again, so now I’m more your toe in. I’ve seen people do their first ever gig with completely untried material for ten minutes, of a fan than a performer. When I got bored of stand-up I created a character called Harmonica and they really struggle. If you’re at a gong show and you’re off in two minutes, it won’t hurt. If I Monocle Man. The first Gong Show I did as him I won and I thought I was onto a winner, but it just see someone with potential I’ll offer them a slot at one of our small shows. died everywhere else. I tried him out at Britain’s Got Talent and got roundly booed off the stage.
Those things can be brutal. Do you have big plans for the future? The scary thing about gong shows is that it puts the audience in control. I did the Comedy Store a Helen: Yes! It would be fantastic to get to the size of Leicester Comedy Festival, so that people couple of years ago and I lasted ten seconds. All I said was, “Hello.” But it was a good laugh; you know about us and come to spend a weekend in the city to see the festival. I’m happy for it to grow get a free pint and you get to go on the Comedy Store stage. slowly and gradually include more people. We’re also hoping to get some acts together and take them up to Edinburgh next year. We love what we do, and that makes the whole thing more fun. Helen: There is so much talent out there, but many people are scared to give it a go - so we give them the opportunity to try it in a friendly atmosphere in a small club. You can enter our comedy The Nottingham Comedy Festival, various locations around the city, competition which is open to anyone who has done no more than five gigs. If you like it, we will Friday 23 September - Saturday 1 October help you develop your skills with workshops in aspects of comedy such as writing, improv and stand-up. The community is a big part of the festival. nottscomedyfestival.co.uk
leftlion.co.uk/issue42 15 And this was while everyone else was doing a three-day regret if for the rest of me life. I got fifteen replies back; the best way, there’s a band going about called El Gecko who’s got a week. one I got was from the local MP, Alan Simpson. He said; “Thank song about me, called The Best-Dressed Drunk In Town. That’s Exactly. We were supposed to have the electricity off four days you for the letter you wrote to me, and the rest of the world. It quite sweet of ‘em, in’t it? WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THE a week. So luckily, what with being up an alley, and as long as reminded me of something my mother used to say; ‘you’ve got a I didn’t have the music on too loud, I got away with it. I was mind like a schoolboy’s pocket – you never know what’s going So what’s an average day for you? faster than owt on that machine – I’d set meself a deadline to to come out next’”! Isn’t that brilliant? I wake up. Get out of bed. Drag a cooommb across my head. do as much as I could, and get so far ahead that I’d have a walk So you actually just walked away. Ha ha! I fill my day. Talk to people. At the moment, I’m trying to DRUNKEN TAILOR? round town and look at the fanneh for a bit, have a drink and Look, by the end of it the rent on my shops trebled, at a time leave it until the afternoon before I start drinking, but I’ve had then go back to work and either sleep on the bench or put in a when the interest rate was 15%. And when that happens again a couple of Magners today, and some Special Brew, so that’s… few more hours. – and it will - entire streets will go out of business. The rent was (quick bit of calculation) about 21 units. Look, people see that I rocketing up, the interest rate was rocketing up, sales were have one of these cans in me pocket, but it’s like a hip flask to You were huge with the Northern Soul crowd. dropping, and I’d had enough. People would come up to me and me. I don’t drink to get drunk. I used to get people coming from all over to get their trousers say; “Why have you stopped?” and I would just point at all the made. Oxford Bags, they were called; huge flared trousers. lads knocking about in shell suits. But what do you do? Interview: Al Needham Thing was, I knew absolutely nothing about Northern – I was I observe people. I’ll sit in a bus shelter and look at people going You might know Robert Ivars photo: David Baird into me Zappa and Beefheart. I said to one of these kids, what We’ve got to ask; are you an alcoholic? home from work, and I can see it on their faces; “Awr, look at the bleddy ‘ell do you do wi’ these trousers? And he said; I’m alcohol-dependent – that’s what the doctors call me. I’m not that poor sod sat there on his own, with a can in his hand.” But Michailovs-Mètra as that bloke who “Come down the Palais this afternoon and see.” Went down, a chronic alcoholic. I used to like drinking and writing – or was I’m looking at them and thinking; But I’m looking at them and Northern Soul all-dayer…Jesus. They were spinning round, it writing and drinking? People see me drinking, but they rarely thinking; Jesus, look at that poor cow. She’s done a hard day’s walks up Mansfield Road as if he owns doing backflips…all sorts. And they’d go out on the Friday night, see me arseholed. Once I had a pen in me hand, all me troubles graft, and now she’s got to go home and the kids are gonna be do an all-nighter, then an all-dayer and an all-nighter on the went away instead of them being stuck in your head, driving all; “Mam, gi’ us some munneh for skunk! Press me cloes! Ah’m the place. You might think of him as a Saturday, maybe even another all-dayer on the Sunday, and then you insane. I’ve always been a drinker. When they asked me norreatin’ that! Some friggin’ mam yo’are!” Bollocks to that. straight into work on the Monday morning. And they’d need at what I wanted to be at school, I’d say; “An educated tramp.” local fashion mogul who actually could least two changes of clothing because they were sweating cobs, What are your favourite spots? they’d be ordering new gear all the time. I was doing a mail- I’ve been spending a lot of time here (the War Memorial in the have owned it, were it not for the drink. order service, because loads of the squaddies overseas were graveyard), for personal reasons. For my lady, who died last year into their Northern. At the time, I was making as much money of cancer – my lady, my girlfriend, my best friend, my trouble…I You almost definitely know him as Roxy as the Prime Minister. miss her so much. I’ll put me can down here, and she’ll knock it over. Just to let me know she’s watching over me. Rob, and after you’ve read this, you’ll What were the widest flares you ever cut? One lad from Clipstone came in and asked for seventy-inch So who do you know on Mansfield Road? know a little bit more... Oxford Bags. Seven-bastard-Oh! That’s nearly four metres of Who doesn’t know me? fabric! God knows why, it would have been like wearing a dress on each leg, but if he wanted ‘em, he could have ‘em. If he took OK, let’s throw some names at you: ‘Denis’. ‘em back to have ‘em took in, it wasn’t to me! Denis? Denise? Dennis? With the tits? Yeah, he used to come in the shop to have his elasticated bottoms took in. He’d whip ‘em We look back on the seventies as the decade that style forgot. off and stand behind me when I was on the sewing machine. Are you going to defend it? And I always let him tell me how much he was going to pay. People had a different diet then, so everyone was slimmer, He’s alright, he is. Me and him used to talk all the time on meaning that most of the clothes on sale were tighter, and fitted Mansfield Road - me with a beard down to me waist, him with – and the kids could carry off more outrageous gear. You can’t But you’re hardly a tramp, Robert. You’ve got somewhere to his tits – we must have looked a right couple… wear that kind of stuff when you’re on the McDonalds and all live, and you always look dapper… that shit. Kids had more imagination then, an’all; they’d come I’ve been going to this thing called Last Orders, an NHS service Whycliffe. into the shop after school with technical drawing paper, and for alcohol-dependent sorts. The fact is, I’m after a period of Donovan? Jesus, he used to buy clothes from me years ago. I see they’d worked out the style they wanted. All I’d do is sit wi’ ‘em abstinence, so I can sort out my living arrangements – and I him often, and I say to him; “You done two albums…don’t lie to and say, well, that’s not going to work, but if we did it like this... fancy getting a couple of machines and doing some sewing for me, because I know you’re working on the third one. I know you and I’d go off an make it. They were the designers. All I’d do is me daughter, she runs Frock, on Forest Road. If I’m clean, I could are”. Look, do you think someone like James Brown would have help ‘em fulfil their dreams. Anyway, The Northern gear kept fill in for her so she could take me grandson on holiday. And if I some pussyclaat supporting him? When he started up, with his going right into the early eighties, but the fashion had changed fancied a couple of beers, I could wait until half six. first band, you couldn’t even smoke in Donovan’s presence. But to pegs – really baggy at the top, so you could still do the drops his label got rid of his band, they get in a new band, and the without ripping your arse, and tapered in, so you still looked What pubs do you frequent nowadays? next thing you know, he’s walking the streets. He actually asked First things first; you actually don’t like being called ‘Roxy Rob’, do kid, so I had to fiddle about with whatever I bought to make it fit me. But it didn’t matter, because everyone had long hair, so I never good in a spin. Which was something the jazz-funk lads picked None – I’m barred out of ‘em all. My being-kicked-out record? me to be his manager once. I said; “Donovan…I can’t even you? I used to sell Wrangler jeans seconds on Sneinton Market when I was bothered with ‘em. And I got away with it! The three of us went our up on. We also did these box jackets, single-button – looked Two seconds. I defy any man to get asked to leave quicker than manage meself” but what I did was tell him instead of asking I’m tired of it. Because most people don’t even know what it means. twelve – I spent most of my time under the tables, watching women separate ways, and I realised that I really liked working for meself, good on anyone. that. The Lancashire Hotpot, or whatever it’s called. I walked people for change, he should ask if he can sing for ‘em. There’s kids who weren’t even born when I was running shops calling pulling the jeans on under their mini-skirts, seeing all sorts. Then I because I didn’t have to cut me hair. By this time I was nineteen, in, stood in the doorway, the landlord pointed at the door…two me ‘Roxy’. The thing that really annoys me is that people shorten it moved on to Douglas and Robert on Bridlesmith Gate, who were two married, with two kids. And I was handsome. The prettiest kid in What’s the favourite item of clothing that you’ve made – the seconds. I don’t care anymore. When’s the last time a pub in Pound Woman. down to ‘Roxx’, which has dodgy connotations these days. I’m not a of the finest tailors Nottingham ever had. I was one of the last two town. My hair shone. And then I started Roxy Threads, in 1972, and one that you’d love to pull out, throw on the table and say; town had a decent pinball table? How often do you find a pool Pound Woman? drug abuser. apprentices they took on, the other was called Douggie. So they took opened up Roxanne – the ladies shop – later. that’s how good I am? table in town, even? on a Robert and a Douglas. It’d be a jacket I made for meself for New Years Eve once. It The one who sticks her hand out and goes; “PAAHND!” The first thing people automatically assume about you is that that Which is where the name comes from. Were you into Roxy Music? was silk, but it looked like a rug. And the colours changed along Erm, yes. We’ve heard a lot of the stories about you getting Oh! Sue! She drives you mad, she does! you worked with Paul Smith. What made you strike out on your own? Yeah, but that’s not the main reason why. Roxy…it’s quite a classy the roll, so if you cut one from one end and one from the other, naked around pool tables... Load o’ bollocks. Can I say that again? Load of bollocks. By the late sixties, loon pants came in; dead tight up here, flared out name, in’t it? You could have Roxy Taters, or Roxy Gravestones. It they’d be completely different. Oooh…it was me coat of many I’ve played pool naked all over the place. Jaycee’s, the Old Nottingham’s supposed to be heaving with clothes designers down there. Anyway, me and Jimmy Redman and a chap called Dar had that thirties feel that was big at the time. My first shop was at colours. I used to knock about with Vivian Mackerrell – the Angel, you name it, I’ve done it. Thing was, I’d wear them nowadays. What advice would you give to them? So what was the relationship between you and Paul Smith? Ali were in a pub in Canning Circus. And I said, “Hang on – you’ve Excise Chambers and there were no windows, up a scratty old alley original Withnail – at the time, and he used to go on about it denim shirts with the big cuffs. And some twat’d go; “Hey, your Learn to SEW! Don’t just draw the pictures and pretend. SEW Me and Paul Smith? Ha ha! None. The first shop he ever opened was done a bit o’ tailoring, and so have I. If we can’t mek some o’ these that everyone used to have a slash up. I got the place designed by a all the time. ”Ooh, I love that jacket” And one night we were sleeve’s touching the ball”, so off it’d come. Go on, two shots, IT! And put it on your friend. That is the beginning and that is on Byard Lane, and was underneath the workroom where I started in loon pants, we want bleddy shooting.” So we all chucked in a few bloke called Ron Atkinson, it was all brown and cream and Habitat walking round the bottom of Hockley in the rain, and he’s carry on. Then when I’m battering them and I’m on the black, the end. . 1968, on the day before my 16th birthday. He worked at Birdcage, one quid each and we cranked out loons in an attic above Dar’s dad’s wallpaper. And then the shop burned down. banging on about the jacket, and I’d had enough. So I take it off and they’ve got five balls left, off comes everything. of the first boutiques in Notts, and his job was to get stuff made in shop on Woodborough Road - the first Asian supermarket in town. We and go; “Look, just have the bastard” and I throw it on a traffic You’ve stayed in Notts all your life; what changes have you London for the shop – but sometimes it was in his interests to slip one were pooling our knowledge together and learning so much from each No way. light, miss, and watch it fall into a massive puddle. So I get it We don’t know how true this is, but we were told that some seen? of his own designs in there now and then, and he got found out. I met other. Dar had eleven in his family, so we’d already got customers. We I’d just done the upstairs up lovely – I’d got all me fabrics in, a proper properly muddied up and chuck it him. And he says; “No, what I shoegazey band in The Maze got really upset at the sight of There’s a lot more narrow-minded, selfish, self-obsessed twats him once. That’s it. were knocking ‘em out at two and a half quid a pair. workspace, and it looked beautiful. I was talked into getting new mean is I like to see you in it!” He was a lovely bloke, Vivian. you dancing naked to them not so long ago. knocking about. You know why some people are scared of me? storage heaters in, but they kept the old wiring in. And I had to work What? Me? I don’t remember that. Because I talk to them like normal people used to back in the How did you discover your flair for tailoring? So you were big in the trouser department. non-stop – seven days a bastard week – for a year to get back on So what made you pack it in? day. When I was a lad, I used to love clothes – but I was a skinny, petite Yeah. I started doing jackets, but I could never get the hang of collars. track. It was me 40th birthday, and I wrote a big long letter to John Apparently, they begged you to leave, because they were Major, John Smith, Prince Charles…all sorts of people. About hoping to attract some girls with their shimmering sonic What’s the one thing that you’d like people who see you in my life, and how I was being taxed out of my business, and how cathedral, and they ended up with you with your kit off, town to know about you? expensive the rents were, and everything. I sent this to sixty giving it some. I am me. Who lives in a house like this? different people, all recorded delivery. People would say to me, No, I can’t imagine that. You know what Nottingham’s like. The what you doing that for? And I said, I dunno what’s mekkin’ Whispering Village. Tell ‘em that if I did, II must have had an Is there anything else you’d like to say to LeftLion readers? We go through the keyhole with Rob at his old place on the corner of Forest Road. me do this, but I’ve got a feeling that if I don’t do this now, I’ll acid flashback, and they started to look like a pool table. By the Be you. photos: Milena Kowalska
“Look at that for design. The words read; ‘I cut “That was the most beautiful mannequin I ever “I used to have all sorts in me shops. Look at mesen shaving, blood on the dancefloor’ Why “This is the first sewing machine I ever had” had in me whole life. I wrote poetry on every inch “This was from Vietnam, along with the this – how many inner city kids have even seen a “This is a copy of the letter I sent to 60 MPs. The “Roxx and Anne ” do I drink Special Brew? Because it’s twice the of her body.” instruments at the back.” badger? I once had 100 stuffed hummingbirds in baby is my grandson, Billy” volume; I used to drink 20 pints of Shipstones before that.” a cage” Worlds Collide Maxrock This was born from several ideas, and characters new and old that I’d been developing throughout April. Initially I had no intention of creating three panels in one painting - but as is often the case, more and more ideas spring to mind once the ink is flowing, so I chose to incorporate a lot of these in one image. Plus, I’m a huge fan of comics.
After vacantly starring at the paper which lay amidst a pile of sketches on my desk, I pencilled outlines of all the major shapes to get a balanced composition. Once I was happy, I began painting with watered down black ink building up layers of shadows to create the illusion of three dimensions. Next I added layers of diluted acrylic over the shadows remembering to leave space for other colours. I’d already decided on several of the colours I’d be using but still wasn’t quite sure which colour would be dominant in each panel, so I turned to my computer - something I use less and less for creating artwork - scanned my sketches and did some mock-ups in Photoshop.
Excluding all the sketch work, it must have taken me about two to three weeks of evenings to paint as I also work full time. I began to lose the initial creative energy with this piece and so was becoming more and more precious with it, not wanting to ruin it at the final hurdle - something that plagues me on long painting sessions. I find that people will always see hidden meanings and I like my work to provoke questions within the viewer so I didn’t want to overload this one with too much meaning. That being said, there is a storyline, or loosely-connected events, submerged within the chaos. The moon in the top panel being observed by one of the little doll-like creatures; the circle is repeated in the middle panel, but we are now close enough to see what is happening inside. Could the foetus-like creature in the centre of the moon be the doll from the first image that was enticed by its pay well, if at all, but the satisfaction and pleasure from seeing the finished product is a hard thing glow and is undergoing some sort of transformation? to come by. I wouldn’t trade it for anything else. It’s very much a mix of light and dark characters/styles, which goes some way to explaining the Maxrock shows and sells his work at Art on the Square - a monthly event held in the Old Market title. The dolls are taken from a series of cute but goofy things I created about six years ago, as is Square put on by the Raw Collective the large head with tentacles coming out of its mouth that is also based on these characters. Most maxrockart.blogspot.com other creatures are straight out of my dark place. For as long as I can remember I’ve been addicted to creating images through various mediums. It’s frustrating, time consuming and mostly doesn’t Art Works Tomas Gillian Lee Smith
“Tomas likes nothing better than to walk for miles and miles through river and forest, over hills and stone walls, making new discoveries every day. There are ghostly moth wings and ancient fossilized branches that twist and turn into human like forms and his home is filled with treasures found on these adventures. On each journey, he leaves a trail of scattered acorns as a temporary reminder of the hours spent walking over unfamiliar paths”.
Tomas is one of the most recent characters to appear from my home studio where I spend most of my working days. He’s hand-sculpted out of air-drying clay with jointed limbs and is happiest sitting quietly on a stack of vintage books where he is safest. He is part of a collection that I have been making for The Art of Childsplay, an exhibition at New Brewery Arts in Cirencester. Each character is hand-sculpted and painted and aged to look like an old toy, and has a unique story - they all have the look of something from a time gone by. They’re curious tiny jointed characters with dwelling places, long-limbed marionettes and melancholy souls with rabbit ears and wildflower gardens illustrated over their hearts. I love the creation process, the way a face appears from clay that is completely unique.
Since graduating from Edinburgh College of Art in 2006 with a degree in Performance Costume, I’ve been working as an almost full-time mixed media artist creating in paint, textiles and sculpture. I’m very much inspired by storytelling, characters, folk tales and childhood imaginations and memories, and my most recent characters have gradually developed from my drawings and paintings. As the characters and stories began to take shape, I wanted to bring them to life in a sculptural way.
Alongside my studio work, I also spend a couple of days a week co-coordinating a reminiscence project called Memories are made of this… where I visit care homes, day centres and community groups with older people. This has been an inspiration to my present work through the stories of childhood and play and because throughout our lives we have memories of places, people, objects and spaces that become such a strong part of our character. This is central to my artwork and each character - a dwelling place or an image of nature that is a symbol of what is precious to them.
I would love to look at ways of bringing my costume design skills into creating larger scale works that continue to explore the themes that are present in my current work. I also have an ambition to be a resident artist somewhere/somehow. Although I can be a bit of a hermit working away in my own wee world, it’s always interesting to go out into the world on occasion and chat to people and see their response to my work.
Gillian Lee Smith will be exhibiting Lustre at the Djanogly Gallery, 5-6 November
gillianleesmith.com
18 leftlion.co.uk/issue42 summer CrossKeys_Upstairs Adverts_AW.pdf 1 05/07/2011 15:03
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K WriteThis issue we’ve been blessed with an extract from Shod byLion Mark ‘the Shoe Messiah’ Goodwin, winner of the East Midlands Book Award 2011. And just to make this hairy, lovable poet happy, we’ve decided to review two poetry collections as well - a first on this page. Also, we welcome sofa-surfing newcomer Matthew Spence to Write Lion, along with Jeremy Duffield from Nottingham Poetry Society and Di Slaney - our most recent guest poet at Shindig! Remember: for spoken word, contact [email protected], for literature, [email protected]. It’s not difficult, is it? A City Campsite, Berlin The Blacksmith Pecking Order Extract from Shod by Matthew Spence by Jeremy Duffield by Di Slaney by Mark Goodwin
Then to show off Japhy started a wood fire and said “Here’s what we do Yesterday, Before, I was the one in charge, ... So, homelessly alone up in that real country up North,” and dumped too much Kerosene into in a small park in Nottingham, or at least allowed to think so. but strangely not lonely, the fire but ran away from the stove and waited like a mischievous boy I saw a man shoeing a hobby-horse. None as fast, as smart, as large and broom! The stove let out a deep rumbling explosion way inside that I and honest as the day could feel the shock of clear across the room. He’d almost done it that time. Leaves were falling with an early frost as me, prepared to tackle low relates to the night, Then he said to her poor fiancé “well, you know any good positions for as he worked, bare to the waist, yet aiming high, fixated on the prize. honeymoon night?” with a rubber hammer. But now the only thing to show to begin my feet’s From The Dharma Bums, leathery journey, by Jack Kerouac Afterwards, for glory days and chartless rise as the horse leaned against the bench, is thumping in my head. I put my best foot forward The flat bit around the pool is drained, pegged to sand with tents. a bright expression in its painted eye, In this new world of slipshod lies followed by my worst Picks and boots trudge in past the gate clinks shut every minute or so. I watched the man It’s freezing right now, smoking darn an imaginary hole and scrapping over crumbs, I’m dead but equally loved, Drum beating shouting city night, and we won’t sleep. in an imaginary shirt, if one more bashing comes my way. But you should see it in the morning at his feet a bolt of silver cloth I’m grateful just to sleep, be fed, I put one foot in front of the other about 7; across the grass. and then the other in front of that the travellers trudging to piss their bodies sprawl twisted together, stay safe to fight another day. still shackled breathing A crowd had gathered; I’ll wait. No rush. I plan to have my say. and kept barely clothed, happily lying in the grass, some with cameras, some with notebooks, repeating this simple with enough sun to warm their naked backs, some with quizzical grins, “Living in a large communal group repeating this simple with their bags as pillows. and as the man darned termed a flock, a strict hierarchy exists to repeating this simple the cameras clicked and flashed promote social harmony. There is a strict physical mantra. I trod while the hobby-horse rested. ‘pecking order’, with a dominant male on & on. I tramped around and female having access to the best Later, returning feeding and nesting areas ... the highest ground - green, brown, as darkness was settling, ranking bird will peck all those beneath or grey, rural, urban, or rurban. all that remained was a long coat her, while the lowest ranking bird is on a low branch, pecked by all”. This just for the just sake an imaginary shirt, From Haynes Chicken Manual of new secreted footwear a dispersed crowd, by L Beeken and the great free need to spread and hoof prints in silver. The Good Shoes ...
1110: One Photograph One Story The Truth About Celia Frost Poems The Lord Smacked Into Me Ten Poems Paula Rawsthorne Tom Hathaway Eireann Lorsung (Ed) Usborne, £6.99 Lulu, £9.99 Subscription (2 issues) £18.00 / £10 per issue Celia has spent her entire 14 years of LeftLion contributor and Full Bacon This new international journal features existence suffering from a rare blood Jacket author Tom Hathaway (aka the one photograph, one short story and disorder. The slightest of cuts could prove Shedfixman), spent the best part of the ten poems - hence the title - in a simple fatal. But the book opens with a knife eighties drunk and wreaking havoc across and beautifully-produced format which attack that shakes Celia’s isolated life to the Nottingham music scene with his band is published bi-annually in March and the core. Her mother, motivated by a dark The Chimneys. The expected musings September. Designed and edited by Eireann secret, forces reluctant Celia on the run, about boozing are present, from the Lorsung (who also runs Nottingham Poetry and a private detective is hired to hunt twelve-word Dutch ditty Alcoolism to the Series), great care has been taken to produce a magazine that, them down. Celia, struggling to grow up, defies her obsessive comparatively polite Just A Splash More, Mr Ashmore. There is in their words, ‘showcases the work of writers and artists mother and befriends an Ethiopian immigrant. Can the two evidence of Hathaway’s time as an ex-pat in The Homesick Leper we admire with grace, simplicity and dignity, and introduces of them solve the mystery of Celia’s past and escape the and the uncharacteristically tender Every Road. The requisite readers to something new’. Issue 1 (March 2011) included impending danger? This is a young adult thriller with a steady amount of delighting in bad language in the likes of The Nicest Shana Youngdahl and Laressa Dickey - familiar names from the stream of twists. The characters are well drawn, convincing and Turd, Symbolic Shambollocks and The Fouling of St. Just. Like a ‘I Am An American Poet’ conference held in Nottingham last appealing; the Frosts hide away in the council flats from Hell, a vicar who has spent too much time alone with the communion year - and the inventive, high-quality writing embraces multiple violent neighbourhood sharply evoked by Rawsthorne. The story wine, Hathaway is full of righteous - and sometimes incoherent styles and worlds of experience. Issue 2 will be available from is as much a coming-of-age as it is suspenseful. Celia’s faltering, - indignation. But when the words do register, they seem even September, featuring Stephanie N Johnson, Sharon Bryan and painful journey to independence is beautifully captured, backing more tender than ever - like on the beautifully rhythmic In The George Szirtes. 1110 accepts submissions on a rolling basis up the thrills with honesty and depth. Ian Douglas Event of My Untimely Death. Jared Wilson throughout the year, with guidelines available on their website. usborne.com Available from amazon.co.uk Aly Stoneman 111oh.com Katie Half-Price “AYUP MEH DUCKS! Fost the Sunday Sport and nah the NOTW - wor is it with qualiteh Sunday papers? Meanwhile, a woman named after meh nana’s favourite tipple won the Orange Prize...” Great House The Tiger’s Wife News of the World Nicole Krauss Téa Obreht Rupert Mudoch Penguin Viking, £8.99 Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £12.99 Newscorp, $7.6 billion
Orange Prize shortlister Nicole Krauss is This book won the Orange Prize, which must After 168 years the Screws has finalleh married ter Jonathan Safran Foer – which mean this twenty-five year old aufer has folded, and it in’t cuz of digical media. It’s meks ‘em litracha’s version of the Beckhams won unlimited text messages forever. Wor cuz some hacks tapped in some phones and (but wi’out the cash). Her first book, The a wicked prize! But it’s a bit hard for meh ta read private messages. But let’s be honest History of Love, wor abaht a lost manuscript, tell yer worrit’s all abaht, cuz I’m not too sure here - who ant nicked their knock-off’s phone and Nazis. This one is abaht a lost desk, mesen. It’s another one of them smart-arse an’ read their txts before? How else do ya and Nazis. So she’s gorrabaht as much books that’s all ovver the shop. There’s two find out the lyin’ get has been nobbin’ yer imagination as Damien Hirst and a jar of main characters; the deathless man who can half-sister in the bogs in Yates’? I just dun’t formaldehyde. The novel is set across four cities, past and predict when folk are going to snuff it and likes drinking water get why everyone’s acting all surprised. present, wi’ five narrators – most of whom are miserable gets, (he in’t even bovered if it in’t bottled or fizzeh; he sometime Hello, how else do yer get the goss? Do ya think politician’s just cuz of their link ter this desk. But really it’s abaht how we furnish drinks it aht the tap), and this girl in a village who shacks up ring yer up and say; “Ayup, I’m your local MP and I like suckin’ memories to mek sense of us crappy lives. She harps on abaht wi’ a tiger (which just goes ter show yer how mingin’ all the a prozzies toes?” Course not yer daft gets. Everyone is mekin’ the burden of inheritance, but at least she wor left summat. men must be). It’s set ovver sixty year, during the various wars aht it’s bad. But the implications for democraceh are massive When me mam popped ‘er clogs I wor left with her credit card in Yugoslavia (more friggin’ Nazis, then) and is abaht how we - as massive as you know what, LOL! How else will we get ter bill! Wor I hate abaht books like this is they dun’t offer a simple embellish stories ter try and come to terms wi’ death, which, if read abaht the really important stuff in life, like fake sheiks, that resolution, so the reader has to do extra thinkin’ ta decide things ya ask meh, is no different ter them boy racers on our street who Geordie famileh who had Tizer pumped through their water owt for themsen. The title has obvious religious connotations, baz up their Nissan Micras ta mek out they’re loaded, wen we all mains, and where all the evil paediatricians live. They think it’s but my advice is turn ta yer filth rabbi instead: Babestation. This know they wok at Lidl. Worrever helps ya sleep at night, though, all over, it is NOW. At least until the Sun on Sundeh. connects ppl together and yer guaranteed a happy endin’ LOL! in’t it? scabbyaussiemingebag.com penguin.com orionbooks.co.uk leftlion.couk/issue42 21 LEFTLION featured listings... LISTINGS August – September 2011 BACK TO MINE TICKETS ON-LION Headstock is a three-day music festival that takes place at the Newstead Buying tickets for events in Notts? From the latest DJs at Stealth to the latest bands at & Annesley Country Park, but if you think it’s another opportunity to venues like Spanky Van Dykes and The Rescue listen to landfill indie whilst being bombarded with mobile phone adverts, Rooms, you can get them all through our website, at no extra cost. Even better, thanks think again; this event is geared towards getting an ex-mining community to our partnership with gigantic.com, every time you buy one through us some of the funds back on its feet and turning it back into a self-sustainable community. will go towards LeftLion and a bit more goes to Headstock MD Mick Leivers tells us about this prime example of Notts folk those nice folks at Oxfam. leftlion.co.uk/tickets mekkin’ their own entertainment…
Bigger and bolder than ever before, the annual celebration of being able to fancy whoever you like runs from the Forest to the Square and back again. New features include a comedy tent, an acoustic stage, a family area and a youth tent – with the likes of Fat Digester, Nina Smith, Gallery 47. Captain Dangerous, Ruth Lorenzo and Booty Luv playing in the evening, hosted by someone off The Only Way Is Essex. How did this all start? We look at who’s been coming to the festival, and who we want to The Forest Recreational Ground, About twelve years ago a fellow community officer and I started put on. We try to get a good spread of music and involve as many Saturday July 30, all day Newstead Treefest. We were both interested in trying to engage bands as we can. Last year we made the mistake of bringing in nottinghamshirepride.co.uk people and creating a sense of community, and music is a really people who run another event professionally, and it was a clash good way of trying to do that. We both came from a free festival of cultures. We should have realised that we have the confidence background and wanted to create something with a free festival and ability to run the event ourselves. As it was a paying event, atmosphere, but one that would bring in the wider community we kidded ourselves that it need to be more ‘professional’, but we rather than the usual suspects. So along with the music stage and actually do a pretty good job. Quite a few of us have worked at dance tents, we also had big workshop areas for local groups like other festivals just to gain experience. the WI – the day was about people getting involved and at night it was a music event. People bought into the idea and wanted to be What do you do during the festival? a part of it; bands and sound systems came along for nothing and Mainly walk around making sure that things aren’t getting out of local people got involved as it became a source of pride. After ten hand. Behind the scenes there will be twelve of us managing the years, virtually everyone in the village was going to it. Headstock site on the day. came out of that. Do you have a festival survival kit? How did you raise the money at first? Yes, the back of my Land Rover for napping. You’ve also got to Nottingham’s Riverside Festival runs from We were quite good at grant applications. Also, I did a lot of land- make sure that you are eating well and drinking enough water Friday 5 to Sunday 7 August. As well as more scaping jobs with young people, and they donated the money we throughout the weekend. stalls, fairground rides and family activities made. We hope next year to go back to do another Treefest; we’ll than you can throw a small child at, there will do Headstock as the bigger paying event with national What’s the future of Headstock? attractions, and Treefest in May as a more local underground Because we have a big site, we’d like to become something like be nuff local bands is a fair old smattering of festival. Shambala or Secret Garden Party eventually, but it’ll be a slow Notts bands and musicians on offer too. Hhymn process - unless we sell out to a big sponsor. We’d like it to be will be there as part of their tour of festivals, How involved in Headstock is the local community? known as much for the art, street theatre and performance as the Manière des Bohémiens will be bringing their What we try to do is to help people learn, develop self-confidence music. brand of fiddly-folky-gypsy roots, Seven Little and to move on and set up things themselves. We’ve got a Sisters will offer up bluegrass, Cajun, Irish committee of thirty five people, and about twenty are locals. The Help out us townies: is the name ‘Headstock’ a mining thing? and in-yer-face punk, whilst the Mat Andasun teenagers in the village have always been involved; they’re in Yes, the headstocks were the winding wheels. It just came about Band have a distinctly more latin flavour. charge of putting up the marquees, emptying the bins, because someone dropped it out at a meeting and we all agreed maintaining the site. There’s are a few people who have come in it was a good name. We’re actually going to dress up the BBC Future Sound of Nottingham semi-finalists the past and gone; ‘There are a lot of chavvy-looking lads around.’ Introducing… stage as a Miners Welfare this year. MuHa will showcasing their Eastern European Well, that’s how they dress, and they put this festival on for you, rootsy sound, Pesky Alligators are a triumph of so respect them. Headstock Festival, Newstead & Annesley Country Park, powerpop and Wholesome Fish are one of the Nottinghamshire, 9-11 September founding fathers of the local folk scene. How do you decided the music policy and book the acts? headstockfestival.com
This year also sees Nottingham Mela incorporated into the festival for the first time, with Transglobal Underground and Desi Masti taking the stage. There’s also a Dragon Boat challenge and - obviously - a massive fireworks display at 10.30pm on the Saturday. Victoria Embankment, Friday 5 - Sunday 7 August nottinghamcity.gov.uk/riverside
CHECK OUR WEBSITE No, really, you must - it’s all new and optimised to within an inch of its life. For starters, that day’s listings are right on the front page, there’s an all-new Directory section that features the goings-on of every venue in town, and if you need to add your events to our site (and you should), it’s easier than ever before. Go on, have a fiddle. You know you want to... leftlion.co.uk/listings
22 leftlion.couk/issue42leftlion.couk/issue42 music event listings... for more: leftlion.co.uk/listings
Monday 01/08 Friday 05/08 IT’S A FRINGE BINGE Acoustickle presents… Wonky Wax Headz Glee capitalises on the post-Edinburgh bonanza this Autumn The Maze Moog £3, 7pm Free, 9:30pm - 2.30am It’s August, and it seems like the entire world of comedy has decamped to Fun Of The Pier, Jake Buckley, Edinburgh for a month in order to be gawped at by some uncomprehending American tourists in bad shorts and the usual London media arseholes. Fear not, as Matt Humphries, Finlay Shaun Solstice they’ll be coming back down South very shortly, and a lot of them will be trotting Thorpe and Richard Snow The Old Angel out their bullet-proofed, triple-tested, sharp-as-a-tack routines at the Glee Club this £5, 8pm Autumn. Tuesday 02/08 The Money For starters, legendary Irish comic Tommy Tiernan will be performing on Thursday Notts In A Nutshell presents… Southbank Bar 13 October with his new show, Poot. Described as an Irish Billy Connolly, he believes very strongly that no subject is The Maze out of bounds for comedy, and consequently his shows are not for the easily offended. Meanwhile Greg Davies (Mr. Notts Collective Presents... Gilbert in The Inbetweeners and a stalwart of comedy panel shows) will be pitching up on Thursday 8 December £3, 7:30pm The Maze with his first solo stand-up show, Firing Cheeseballs At A Dog, which was nominated for an award at last year’s Arst and Crafts, Magic Mountain, £3, 9pm Fringe. The show is full of weird and hilarious anecdotes from Davies’ youth and his career as a teacher, including Paradise Killers and Laceration Of said occasion when he tried to move a recalcitrant pooch with the aforementioned corn-based comestibles. Fate Girls Go Free Stealth Howard Marks, the UK’s most amiable drug overlord, has turned his autobiography Mr. Nice, into a comedy show. Old Nick Trading Co Blues Jam £4, 10pm His story is incredible, taking him from a small Welsh mining village to a nuclear physics course at Oxford University The Lion Inn to becoming ‘the most sophisticated drugs baron of all time’ (Daily Mail) to a stint in an American penitentiary, Farmyard Records Presents... before settling down to a life of musician-cum-legalisation campaigner-cum-performance artist. Hear his amazing story on Wednesday 28 September. Nightworks Jamcafé
The Hand and Heart Free, 8pm There’s also a chance to hear Craig Campbell and his whimsical traveller’s tales on Wednesday 19 October, Timothy J Simpson and the followed the next day by the clever observational comedy of Seann Walsh. An unmissable gem comes in the form Let Me Die A Young Man’s Death Monsterous Dread Tims, The of Paul Foot on Sunday 23 October - not the deceased left-wing journalist but an original and surreal comedian who Spanky Van Dykes Listeners and Damp Magic deserves far more attention than he currently receives. And don’t forget the stream of musical entertainment that Free, 8pm - 12am Glee is renowned for; check the website for full details Cult Fridays glee.co.uk Thursday 04/08 Spanky Van Dykes Free, 9pm - 1am The Dogbones, The Smears and Saturday 06/08 Monday 08/08 Friday 12/08 Plaque of Ares Saturday 06/08 Devils Advocate Notts In A Nutshell presents… Jono The Maze The Robin Hood The Maze Jamcafé £4 / £5, 8pm Acoustickle Bodega Summer Free, 9pm - 1am £3, 7:30pm Basheroo Free The Robots, Neon Jung, The Roy Stone The Bodega Shake and Bake Hidden Orchestra The Maze £4, 8pm Tuesday 09/08 Jamcafé Nottingham Contemporary £10, 7.30pm A Day Overdue and The Famous D-Reflection and Trancemicsoul Tempo The Small Disco Class Moog Moog Spanky Van Dykes Rock City £3 / £5, 7pm - 3am Saturday 13/08 Free, 9pm - 2am £6, 6.30pm Lust for Life
Kreepers Spanky Van Dykes DJ Rick Donohue Charles Washington Quintet Open Mic Night The Old Angel Free, 9pm - 1am The Malt Cross Cafe Bar Contemporary The Lion Inn £12, 8:30pm Free, 8pm PSYCLE Jason Hart Wednesday 10/08 DJ Pablo The Maze The Approach The Malt Cross Sunday 07/08 Vignette
The Bodega Strike Team Sounds on the Verge of Folk Sticky Morales The Acme Jazz Band £3, 7pm Rock City The Hand and Heart Southbank Bar Deux £2, 9pm 8:30pm - 12am Free, 7:30pm - 9pm Notts In A Nutshell presents…
That Sunday Feeling The Maze Fabulous Hoochie Coochie Club Lust for Life Rock City Mofo Promo Presents £3, 7:30pm Spanky Van Dykes Spanky Van Dykes £5, 7pm The Maze £10, 9pm - 3am Free, 9pm - 1am £2.50 / £3, 2pm Cornish Rob’s Birthday Bash Thursday 11/08 The Last Pedestrians The Johnson Arms Cult Fridays Cafe Bar Contemporary Spanky Van Dykes Daylight Robbery Free, 8pm Southbank Bar
DIY Poets Present... Sunday 14/08 The Maze THE THURLAND HALL £2, 8pm UK Underground Collective The Maze It’s not for meatheads and prostitutes anymore ASSS Bone Empire, Garton, Crisis, The Chameleon Cafe Bar Lacky C, Twister and Amai Not so long ago, when people in Nottingham gathered together to talk of horrible pubs, the Thurland Hall – like cold sores in January – was never far Organik Trio +1 Skeletonwitch from the lips. The kind of place that what it lacked in ambiance it more than Rock City made up for in ambulance. The type of venue that held pub quizzes where The Hand and Heart £9, 7.30pm the first question was always; ‘Do yer want pannin’?’ The sort of pub that you looked at and thought; “God, that building is so nice. If only someone would Friday 12/08 Divorce / Guilty Parents / Diet do it up and- oh my God, someone’s with their postcode on the neck is looking Pills through the window at us! Leg it!” Wasteland The Chameleon Cafe Bar The Old Angel Well, somebody did just that. The Old Angel Pub Company – owners of the Old £3, 8pm Angel, for the thicker readers out there – have teamed up with Enterprise Inns £5, 8pm and English Heritage to give the place a £300,000 facelift, and restored the place Urban Vision Monday 15/08 to its former glory, when it was part of a massive hotel owned by a Tory MP – one that can trace its roots all the way back to a time where King Charles I used The Maze £3 / £4, 9pm Brontide to crash there when he was in town, and not being decapitated. The Bodega Blake, DK, Joyce, Kingpin and L$D £5, 7pm Boasting the only open fire amongst city centre publand, the refurb job goes all the way up to the ceiling and
beyond; the upstairs has transformed itself into a beautiful dining area that can handle everything from canapé Hidden Orchestra and Neon receptions to full sit-down dinners to a good old knees-up. The menu goes far beyond the knuckle sandwich of yore, Jung Live Second Glace Promotions too; the kitchen is now run by Gilly (formerly of the Queen Adelaide in Sneinton and the Johnsons Arms in Lenton) Rock City Presents with a focus on freshly-made food; there’s an ever-rotating selection of daily specials and a cornucopia of wraps, £8, 12pm – 4pm The Maze salads and vegetarian/vegan dishes, and a beer selection that takes in local ales from the one and only Castle Rock. Hey! Alaska, Who’s Driving? Bear’s Driving!, Violet, Nitrox, Your We’ve already been in – on a Saturday night, no less – and were taken aback by the décor (it’s lovely – a modern Friday 12/08 Weapons Are Useless and Rules of twist on the ornate Victorian pub) the clientele (it’s definitely being favoured by the ladies-who-lunch crowd), and Romance the fact that our heads remained unstoven. Give it a chance and you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Basslaced Stealth The Thurland Hall. 8 Thurland Street, NG1 3DR £8, 10pm Hatcha and Crazy D, Jakes, Gemini, Dismantle and more tbc. leftlion.couk/issue42leftlion.couk/issue42leftlion.couk/issue42 23 23 music event listings... for more: leftlion.co.uk/listings
Tuesday 16/08 Saturday 20/08 NATTY HEADSTOCK Maniere des Bohemiens DJ Fluff The Alley Café and the Highness Sound System prepare to nice up Newstead The Hand and Heart The Malt Cross Festival season is still going strong, and the Alley Café – that vegetarian bistro of no little repute – is getting ready Let Me Die A Young Man’s Death Blue Yonder to pack its tent and represent at Headstock this year (and if you don’t know what that is, have the pages stuck Spanky Van Dykes The Robin Hood together in this mag? Go back to page 22, sucky youth).
Free, 8pm - 12am Free, 9pm If you’re now worried about the threat of your view of Echo and the Bunnymen or Harleighblu being blocked by an entire café-bar dancing like a mentalist, fret not – they’re actually running the bars at Headstock, and what a pair of Wednesday 17/08 Yeah I’ll Play It Later bars they promise to be. The first one – which will sit next to the BBC Introducing… stage, will be modelled on your Spanky Van Dykes traditional Miner’s Welfare décor. The second, which will be more in keeping with the typical festival vibe, will be Kappa Gamma Free, 8pm - 2am run by the mighty Highness Sound System. The Bodega £3, 7pm Maniere des Bohemiens Naturally, to celebrate this rare weekend out for your favourite veggieterranean outlet, they’ll be throwing a Cafe Bar Contemporary Headstock pre-launch party on the Bank Holiday Sunday in August, giving you the chance to see some of the local Alright the Captain bands and DJs that will be performing at the Festival. So far Aistaguca, Mark Nichols, Anna Haigh, and Alberteen have confirmed (with more to follow) with DJs from Highness and Muzika! periodically placing flat circles of vinyl The Chameleon Cafe Bar Monday 22/08 onto a turntable, and then lowering a needle on the outer edges of them.
Thursday 18/08 Dolly Parton Because they’re such nice people, the Alley Café are keen to give us townie sorts the opportunity to experience that Nottingham Arena festival vibe before they go. No, they’re not going to leave dead Tory MPs in the toilets; rather, they’ll be serving the Kris Ward £50 - £67.50, 8pm specially-prepared cocktails that will be available at the festival, like the Headstocker. Not only that, but they’ve Southbank Bar also got a pair of Headstock tickets to give away in a special competition; get over to Facebook, sign up to the Tuesday 23/08 ‘Headstock Launch Party’ group, and you’ll be automatically entered in a competition to win two tix, a tent, a free Origins camping spot and a case of beer. Make sure you’re over eighteen though, or we’re telling your Dad on yer. The Maze Teenage Bottlerocket Headstock pre-launch party Sunday August 28, the Alley Café. Cannon Court, Plus Day Of Unrest, Devil Down, Rock City Smithy Row, NG1 6JE. 5pm – late, £4 entry Our Shattered Skies and Becoming £8, 7.30pm alleycafe.co.uk Apollo. Me and Mr Jones Take the A-Tram The Hand and Heart Friday 26/08 Saturday 27/08 Saturday 03/09 The Hand and Heart Wednesday 24/08 DJ Joff Blues Jam DJ Mr Shotta Lust for Life The Malt Cross Jamcafé The Malt Cross Spanky Van Dykes Apache Rose Free, 9pm - 1am The Bodega Make Do And Mend The Rescue Rooms Sunday 28/08 Sunday 04/09 £3, 7pm £6, 7pm Friday 19/08 Headstock Pre-Launch Party Dr Comfort and The Lurid Mofo Promo Presents Alley Café Revelations Transmission Fresh Produce The Maze £4, 5pm - late Southbank Bar The Cookie Club The Maze In Search of Sunrise, Sulu Babylon, £2 - £5, 10:30pm - 2am Halloe Away, Iyus, Our Famous Soul Buggin’ Bank Holiday Macmillan Fest 2011
Up-C Down-C Left-C Right-C Dead and Rise Above. Moog The Maze Cult Fridays ABC + Start £3 / £5, 4pm-3am £6, 1pm Spanky Van Dykes The Chameleon Cafe Bar Thursday 25/08 Free, 9pm - 1am Plus Junior Fencing Club and Open Mic Night Monday 05/09 Apparatus of Sleep. Baron Lewis Duo Deux
Southbank Bar Saturday 27/08 Treefight For Sunlight Farmyard Records Presents... Audacious Face Presents The Bodega Jamcafé Ancient Ascendent Notts In A Nutshell presents… The Maze £6, 8pm The Old Angel The Maze £3.50, 8pm Origamibiro £5, 7:30pm £3, 7:30pm Notts In A Nutshell presents… Nottingham Contemporary Capiche The Maze DJ Ripe Friday 26/08 Spanky Van Dykes £3, 8pm Cult Fridays The Malt Cross £2 / £4, 8pm - 4am
Spanky Van Dykes Revolution Sounds Present Free, 9pm - 1am Soultown Six Tuesday 06/09 The Maze The Robin Hood Wednesday 31/08 Leftover Crack, Chewing On Free, 9pm One Sixth of Tommy Tinfoil and Firing Blanks. Break The Silence Presents The Malt Cross The Maze £3.50, 7:30pm Ron Sexsmith The Rescue Rooms BRING YOUR DAUGHTER TO THE WATER Thursday 01/09 £20, 7.30pm
The Waterfront Festival: forty bands and artists deep Notts In A Nutshell presents… Wednesday 07/09 The Maze Saturday 20 August sees the return of The Waterfront Festival, and we £3, 7:30pm Ocean Bottom Nightmare cannot bleddy wait. The formula is simple; take one sizably mint pub (in this case, the Canalhouse). Divide into three stages. Populate said The Maze Po’Girl Plus Legacies, Arsonists, The stages with forty of Nottingham’s premier live acts. Shake liberally. The Glee Club Uncork one hell of a party. Inside Is Live and LECARLA. £12, 6.45pm Put together by a collective consisting of I’m Not From London, Audacious Face Music, The Maze and RG Arts – who have more Thursday 08/09 Friday 02/09 toppermost bands in Nottingham in their phonebooks than Rebekah Brooks has dead kids’ parents in hers - The Waterfront Festival is one Spycatcher The Stop, Drop, Rock Tour Rock City of the absolute pinnacles of the local gig-going calendar, and a vital Rock City barometer as to the state of play in the world of NottsRock. Obviously, this isn’t going to be a mingy showcase; £3, 10pm £5, 6pm kicking off at midday, it goes straight through to the early hours of the next morning; that’s over twelve hours of amazing Nottingham music, for a mere fiver. Old Nick Trading Co Blues Jam Saturday 03/09 The Lion Inn It’s a bit of a cliché, we know, but there really is something for everyone; the line-up takes in and spits out the full spectrum of NG musicianship, from tinnitus inducing noise-rock (Baby Godzilla, The Wickets, etc) to balls-out Sophie Barker John Grant dance-machines (Royal Gala, Rebel Soul Collective, etc). Meanwhile, Pilgrim Fathers will be channelling their inner The Bodega The Glee Club Sabbath and casting their pomp metal spell over the canal, whilst the sultry and sassy sounds of Harleighblu and £8, 7pm £16, 7.30pm Nina Smith will see them crowned as the day’s indisputable soul sisters. Back To Basics Friday 09/09 If you think that’s it, you are gravely mistaken; DJ sets from Kev Kahlua, Beatmasta Bill and Adam Pickering will The Maze kick things up yet another notch, whilst the good people of MUZIKA with be supplying lighting and decor to jazz £4, 10pm Kiss Corona the place up. The festival rammed the place out last year, with well over 1,300 people in attendance, all of whom and raised some serious cash for P.A.S.I.C (Parents Association of Seriously Ill Children). Obviously, this is going to Rock City Damaged Stock 2011 - Charity happen again this year, so if you don’t want to be that prat be left outside (when there’s even a barge inside), you’d £6, 6pm Metal All Dayer better step lively in the direction of the Canalhouse or The Maze (or the website) and lay your money down sharpish. Rock City Big Deal The Waterfront Festival, The Canalhouse, 48-52 Canal Street, NG1 7EH, Saturday 20 August, noon-midnight. £5, 2pm The Rescue Rooms tinyurl.com/waterfrontnotts £6, 7pm
24 leftlion.couk/issue42 Rather listen to the tunes on this page than read about ‘em? Better wrap your tabs round Sound Of The Lion, our dedicated music podcast, available at leftlion.co.uk/SOTL. If you want your own tunes reviewed and you’re from Notts, hit up leftlion.co.uk/sendusmusic
Navajo Youth Jody Betts Fixit Kid The Realist’s Enchantment with the Circles Three Affectations of Affection EP (Self Release) Album (Fight Me) EP (Self Release) A veteran of many local bands Fixit Kid first got together in 2000, Whilst the charts might have been including Royal Gala, Jimmy the but after two albums, a few sessions filled with talented female electro- Squirrel and Hey Zeus, local lad and numerous line-up changes, pop singer songwriters in recent Jody Betts has certainly served his it seemed as though things were times – Ellie Goulding, La Roux, apprenticeship on the local music never quite going to happen for Little Boots et al – the fellas haven’t scene. Somewhat remarkably, this them. They’re back though and had much of a look in. Well, based on the debut EP from EP marks the first time that Betts has recorded and released Fixit Kid today are probably as noisy and in-your-face as they local singer songwriter Navajo Youth, that could be about to any of his own material. There may only be three songs, but ever were, but there is a real sense of purpose and intent change. Combining great vocals, lyrical storytelling and some such is the quality that it is surely only a matter of time until about these songs. When opening track Release the Dogs superb arrangements, this is an extremely promising debut. we will be hearing more. Betts is a singer-songwriter in the really kicks in after a deceptively gentle intro, it is clear that Sounding somewhere between Frankmusik, Scissor Sisters classic style, and the songs here are very simple: the voice this band mean business. The band cites influences from a and Erasure, it’s clear that there is more to Navajo Youth accompanied by nothing much more than a simple acoustic cross-section of classic rock bands like Sabbath and Maiden than strange North American Indian imagery and an over- guitar, together with the odd backing vocal and occasional as well as noiseniks like the Jesus & Mary Chain and Sonic pretentious EP title. Breeze is a great pop single whilst closing keyboard flourish; it is sparse, but it works. The track Circles in Youth. Both sets of influences are apparent with the end song Mixtape tells a tale familiar to every gauche teenager particular is beautiful meditation on the existence of God and result being hardcore punk with a distinctly metallic edge. (“I’m not that good with words/so I made you a mixtape”). of love. It is a naggingly addictive song too, with an effective Too many bands in this genre sound as though they’re fronted There’s plenty of high energy pop here – opener Mystery is a melody that seems to have taken up residence inside my by an angry town crier, but here the screaming has both fast paced disco stomper – Navajo Youth is at his best when he head as my earworm of choice. As a singer, Betts is no Jeff fury and a purpose, as singer Mat spits out his black tales relies more on his melodies and stories. Stars and Little Heart Buckley, but his voice is warm and encouraging and his lyrics of horror, murder, perversion and violence. It’s hard to pick are superb mid-paced chillout songs. With a maturity belying are thoughtful. The two other songs, Let Me In and Scissors, out a standout track, as the album works well as an intense his tender years, these two songs alone are proof that there is aren’t quite in the same class as Circles, but they are still more 35-minute hit. Special mention should however be given to a real talent at work here. The title may sound like it should than good enough to show that this is one local artist worth Dredge the Lake. Perhaps that (brilliant) title is a deliberate be a seventies prog-rock epic, but don’t let it put you off. If keeping an ear out for. Tim Sorrell Elvis Costello reference, but the song’s ominous bass line, you like high quality, well-crafted pop music, Navajo Youth is Available online and at gigs screaming guitar and anguished vocals soon leave the ghost of certainly one to watch. Nick Parkhouse soundcloud.com/jodybettsmusic Watching the Detectives far behind. Tim Sorrell Available online Available online navajoyouth.co.uk myspace.com/fixitkid Lois Gallery 47 Velvet Mornings Fate Is The Law EP (Self Release) Medium Death Kick Album (Farmyard Records) 100 Hand Slap It’s been a long time since I’ve heard Album (Self Release) Gallery 47 is the alter ego of a band hit the rich vein that lies Jack Peachey, who wrote these between vintage and contemporary A collaboration between Andy songs while studying English at as deftly as Lois do their first EP. Gibson and Siobhan Lynch along Nottingham University. Newly Opening track Monkey Girl could with drummer Lee Woodyer, this graduated, Jack is already gaining have been Supergrass’ debut single album bleeps, beeps and spews some distance on his compositions, had they worshipped at the altar of vintage tone. Selby’s its dirge all over you. The result is recognising them as the work of a Lennonesque voice and the rolling drums are spot on, with incredibly dynamic, organic laptop young man in varying stages of emotional turmoil. They are perfectly satisfying production from Grammy-winner Guy driven music mixed with idiosyncratic, haunting peculiarity “a lot more about feeling a particular way at a certain time”, Massey of Beatles/Manics fame. Massey was clearly the and supernatural tension. Lynch’s vocals/story tellings are a he explains, rather than being “about finding or explaining perfect choice to bring out the punchy sixties time-capsule splicing of the indelible flat-lining of Karin Dreijer Andersson something which is ‘right’ or ‘true’ about life or society”. groove of singer Johnny Selby’s lead song, and the partnership (The Knife’s vocalist) and the distinct charisma of Stevie Instead, the material has been ordered “precisely to show has produced a great sound - you could get lost in this vintage Nicks. Detach is a highlight; dynamic, fast paced and throwing how wrong I’ve been at certain moments; call it delusion or crunch for days. Pay attention - this is how you make a single. everything at the wall in the name of gothic beauty, murmuring naivety, or just being young.” A case in point is House At The Another highlight is title track Velvet Mornings. Full of suitably “unless you’re blind, and you don’t see.” A note to its audience End Of The Road, written whilst wrapped up in the aftermath esoteric imagery, it’s a mature piece of song writing. Tremolo perhaps? Biabbi bleeps and rolls better than Crystal Castles, of “a particularly horrible break-up”, he failed to spot a guitar and subtle organs mix dreamily with soft bossa nova Do the Right Thing is Trent Reznor on the piano -not literally- nearby short-stay home for child cancer patients. The guilt drums and groovy bass lines, then fall into another beautifully with swirling synths that make you feel like you’ve landed in a rears up again in Critic, which traces the singer’s confused delivered chorus that you’ll be singing without realising for 16-bit digital utopia, and Say It’s Your Money is Fever Ray but reactions to a city centre beggar. Wary of being pinned to weeks; it’s pure ambrosia and another potential hit. Walking even spookier with those vocals making you want to melt into specific interpretations, Peachey keeps some of his lyrical the line between sounds old and new is very difficult to your own nightmare. Listening to the album chronologically, meanings private and hidden. Coupled with the austerity of get right, but here Lois nail it with a swagger and a raft of the tracks seem to affect each other and get more and more his production – for this is essentially a solo acoustic album, great tunes. It works because Lois really mean it: it’s not moodier. Let’s be clear, this album’s a huge piece of work; lightly augmented with occasional overdubs – this can present retrospective, it’s vintage, and very tasty vintage it is too. melody where there shouldn’t be melody and rhythm where certain challenges for the listener. On the other hand, there is Darren Howard you can’t but help but nod your head in accordance. The nothing but pleasure to be mined from Jack’s sweetly piercing Available online prospect of seeing this band live is pant-wettingly exciting as vocals, and the dextrous fluidity of his playing. Mike Atkinson loistheband.com dynamically they’re virtuosic, and musically they’re just down Available online right freaky. Ashley Clivery gallery47official.com Available online Alana myspace.com/mediumdeathkick Doom Wop Kirk Spencer EP (Self Release) Enter the Void Red Shoe Diaries Formed as a studio-based project EP (Quantum Physics) When I Find My Heart by members of local favourites EP (Fika Recordings) Searching the web for “Enter the Amusement Parks on Fire, Swimming and We Show up on Radar, Alana Void” will either bring up Gaspar Red Shoe Diaries latest EP confirms have presented us with a dark and Noe’s hallucinogenic 2009 movie or their ranking as one of the best local poignant EP as their debut offering. Kirk Spencer’s new EP. Definitely indie bands and it’s one they should The four track collection opens with choose the latter. While the film be proud of. When I Find My Heart is a gentle, strummed cover of A Taste of Honey’s 1981 classic leaves a slightly nauseating a concept EP about heartache; with Sukiyaki - itself an adaptation of Kyu Sakamoto’s original Ue o feeling, the young Nottingham producer’s Indian-inspired, lyrics full of haunting memories and Muite Arukō, which literally translates as ‘I Shall Walk Looking instrumental EP has a pleasing aftertaste of modern dubstep uplifting melodies that will charm any Belle and Sebastian fan. Up’ - a positive message juxtaposed by the achingly haunting mixed with that classic sound of the subcontinent. Influenced This is not a one dimensional listen, though. The fifties style manner in which it is delivered here by vocalist Mami Kim. The by acts like Chase and Status, Kirk references similar bass-y guitar grabs the listener instantly on the opening track with song is accompanied by a touching animated video, in which Indian territory, but leaves the Nero-style vocal tracks by the angular solos that dissolve much of the saccharine. Frontman an edamame bean sings along as it makes its way through wayside. Flying Through India, Hota Hai and Phantom - the Thomas William pours his heart out in a soft, fragile voice with empty streets. The band are donating all proceeds from sales standout tunes - smack of journeying through exotic spice harmonising vocals from Leanne Narewski - her sweet vocals of Sukiyaki and Doom Wop EP to the Japanese Red Cross markets, with their hot blend of tabla, Bollywood-like samples are best demonstrated on Ice and Snow and certainly add Tsunami Appeal, a still very much worthy and relevant cause. and an ounce of added bassline. So authentic is that feeling depth to the songs. Bursts of various and unexpected sounds Doom Wop is an almost perfect onomatopoeic description of that the BBC Asian Network, as well as Radio 1 and 1Xtra, add texture, such as the wooing and clapping in Snow Bird, the band’s style of harmony-filled, majestic dirge. Slow - and have been peppering their playlists with a bit of Kirk. The EP the brass instruments in The Love That You Read About, and slower still - are the drifting arrangements, with tracks such takes a different turn with It Don’t Mean a Thing, an Irving the piano outro in Ice and Snow. Essentially, the EP is about as Another Birthday and Dusk from the Island layering distant Mills-sampling, out and out guitar and breaks party banger, love not being what you thought it was and it’s almost like the piano phrases and reverb-laden harmonies into gentle-yet- but this is just testament to Kirk’s wide range of abilities as a female-male duo are telling both sides of the story. With lyrics unnerving ambient arrangements. The doom really hits home live and session guitarist. Raah’s sweet little blips, excellent such as, “We had too much fear and loathing for just the two with closing track Skulls on the Market Square, a threatening as they are, are at odds with the more affronting bass and of us”, we are given a peek into the heartbreak of two people plod of almost dissonant, Link Wray-esque guitar chords and guitars that precede it. This EP works best as an electronic without knowing what happens next. The music will make you bleak imagery. Fascinating stuff. Tom Quickfall and energetic taste of the Orient, to be enjoyed with a hot cup feel good and the lyrics will open your heart. Kristi Genovese Available online of chai and a manic head nod. Shariff Ibrahim Available online alanamusic.bandcamp.com Available online myspace.com/redshoediariesmusic kirkspencer.tumblr.com leftlion.couk/issue42 25 music event listings... for more: leftlion.co.uk/listings
Friday 09/09 Monday 12/09 DOLEMITE DOES DAYBROOK Martin Carthy and Dave Shout Out! Presents A night of pure Nottsploitation at Spanky’s Swarbrick The Maze The Glee Club £4, 7pm Indomitable promoters I’m Not From London and fearlessly forward Violent Movie £14, 6.45pm Association proudly present White Dolemite’s Are You Cumming? A team-up to end all team-ups, they’re bringing Nottingham an X-rated night not suitable for the easily Tuesday 13/09 offended. Expect your aural and visual senses to be sent into overdrive with an endless “Are You Cumming?” barrage of bands, beats and blaxploitation. Spanky Van Dykes Ivan Campo £5 adv, 8pm - 11:30pm The Malt Cross The night’s features include Pleased To Tease You, Nottingham’s premiere dance troupe, who promise to delight, amaze and thrill you (think Pan’s People, but choreographed Cult Fridays Miles Hunt and Erica Nockalls by Russ Meyer). Hot Japanese Girl – a garage band with no regard for your eardrums Spanky Van Dykes The Glee Club or your personal space - will be in attandance, along with Dick Venom And The Free, 9pm - 1am £10, 7.30pm Terrortones, purveyors of rock and roll leather-clad sleaze with an unhealthy love of all bodily fluids. Clay Davis, a funked-up and souled-out DJ guarantees to keep the dancefloor locked and loaded, while Mr Benny Ramone will Headstock Festival Maniere des Bohemiens be your master of ceremonies. Special guest appearances will be in the sensuous form of White Dolemite co-stars, including Kimmy Rose Gardner, Hanako Beeson, Natnat Hales and Victoria Amao. The Newstead and Annesley The Hand and Heart
Country Park From £50 The brainchild of Video Mat, this will be a night reviving the sleazy, sultry seventies through the imagery of Runs until: 11/09 Wednesday 14/09 forgotten movie icon, White Dolemite - The ‘X’ Rated Man. A star of the ‘Whitexploitation’ movement, he’s a self- styled gentleman, singer, professional singer and truly ‘X’ rated man. The night is in honour of the man himself Dry The River and the upcoming White Dolemite movie poster and artwork exhibition, with the chance to win some exclusive Saturday 10/09 The Bodega White Dolemite merchandise in the evening’s raffle. Apparently, even the tickets themselves are a bit special. All £7, 7pm will become clear in the haze of the night. And for the cooler cats in the litter tray, details of a secret afterparty will Shonen Knife be revealed on the night. Bottom line: expect the unexpected. With a healthy dollop of confusion thrown in... The Bodega Laura Stevenson and The Cans Are You Cumming?, Friday 9 September. 8pm – late, Spanky Van Dykes, 17 Goldsmith Street, NG1 5JT. Tickets £5 £10, 7pm The Maze £5, 7:30pm facebook.com/videomat English Dogs Plus Emily And The Martens, The Old Angel Tokyo Green, Union Station Saturday 17/09 Tuesday 20/09 Friday 23/09
Massacre, Shankland and Jody DJ Rick Donohue Betts. Higher on Maiden and Hayseed Dixie Love Inks The Malt Cross Blizzard of Ozz The Rescue Rooms The Rescue Rooms Rock City £15, 7pm £6, 7pm PSYCLE Thursday 15/09 £10, 6.30pm The Maze Gary Numan - Dead Son Rising Carleen Anderson Girls Go Free Tesseract The Glee Club Stealth Annabelle Chvostek Tour The Rescue Rooms £14, 7.30pm £4, 10pm The Glee Club Rock City £9, 6.30pm With Dark Sky and Girls Go Free £10, 6.45pm £25, 6.30pm Plus Chimp Spanner and Uneven DJs. Wednesday 21/09 Structure. Shades of Blue Friday 16/09 Cult Fridays The Robin Hood The Subways Spanky Van Dykes Free, 9pm Sunday 18/09 The Rescue Rooms BLAST OFF! Festival Weekender Free, 9pm - 1am £10.50, 6.30pm 2011 Spanky Van Dykes Open Mic Night Sunday 11/09 Deux The Old Dance School Saturday 24/09 £16 / £48 Lakeside Arts Centre Daylight Robbery Runs until: 18/9 Jody Has a Hit List £9 / £12 / £15, 8pm Ronnie Londons Groove Lounge Southbank Bar Rock City Grosvenor
Saturday 17/09 £6, 7pm Josh T Pearson £3, 8pm - 1am Southern Tenant Folk Union Plus LYU and Adelaide. The Glee Club The Maze Garveysk8 £10, 7pm Soul Buggin’ 7th Birthday Party £12, 7.30pm Marcus Garvey Ballroom Emmy The Great with Horse Meat Disco £10, 12pm - 4am The Glee Club Moog Thursday 22/09 Monday 12/09 £12.50, 7.30pm £3 / £5, 9pm - 3am Smokescreen Soundsystem The Wombats Wrighty, Beane and Mark A. Slow Club Presents Monday 19/09 Rock City The Bodega The Maze £16, 6.30pm Skewered £10, 7pm £5, 10pm Morning Parade Plus The Good Natured and Team The Old Angel The Rescue Rooms Me £5, 7:30pm
£7.50, 7pm David Ford Dino Baptiste interview: Shariff Ibrahim The Rescue Rooms Southbank Bar photo: Dom Henry £12, 7pm IN POD WE TRUST Kerblammo! Presents
Poddingham is been LeftLion’s dedicated magazine podcast for the past three years, teaming blinding new music Jason Hart The Maze with reportage, interviews, and general Notts-related banter, and the man responsible for it is Paul Abbott. Come The Approach £3.50, 7:30pm and say hello to him… Scott Matthews Feed The Rhino How do you put together ideas for Have you tried turning the central What’s on the horizon for Rock City Poddingham? heating up? Poddingham? The Glee Club £12.50, 7.30pm £6.50, 6.30pm It’s about whatever’s going on, Actually, in the summer months We’ve got an amazing live recording who’s playing and whatever vibes when we were based at Stone Soup of Breadchasers, and we’ll get them Fink I can pick up from local promoters. studios, we had this wonderful black in for an interview too. I’m really Friday 23/09 The Rescue Rooms Last year I saw Gallery 47 play and studio that would get so hot that all looking forward to Maniere des thought; “I’ve got to get this guy in”. the interviews were really sexy and Bohemienes - I spoke to them and £11, 7pm Is Tropical Everyone’s willing to help each other flirty. It didn’t really matter who the they’re really excited about coming The Bodega along. God knows how long that will people were. in and doing a live session for us. Teeth last - probably until Nottingham gets £5, 7pm Stealth its own No. 1 record - but right now Where’s Poddingham HQ now? If you could choose any Notts £5, 10pm it’s amazing. We’re at Confetti, which is brilliant person, past or present, for an David Olney and Sergio Webb because I get to provide practical interview…? The Maze Onslaught Who’ve been your favourite work for the students, and in return It would have to be Brian Clough. I £10, 7.15pm Marcus Garvey Ballroom guests? the bands and I get the benefit of love vivid people, and he’s about as David and Sergio will be on stage £12, 2pm One of my favourite interviews was their quality – so everyone gets vivid as they come. That bit when at 8pm / no support Plus Gama Bomb, Fallen Fate and with The Smears, because they something out of it. he clipped those fans round the ears more tbc. came in, brought their attitude and then demanded they give him a kiss The Eyes of a Traitor really represented themselves. Other Been to any good festivals this on live TV... genius. Rock City Eleanor McEvoy people like Natalie Duncan or Jack year? £7, 6.30pm The Glee Club Peachey might be more reserved, I’m actually agoraphobic, so don’t And if there was a zombie Plus Heart in Hand and Martyr £10, 7pm but when you give them more of really cope with crowds at all. apocalypse, what one album would Defiled. their own space you get something Poddingham is my little window on help you cope? more intimate - it’s that variety that the world, and the thing that gets William Shatner - Has Been. The Sunday 25/09 I like. I want Poddingham to be a me out and about. It also means that greatest album of all time. It’s proper space where you can really hear who I get all these great bands to come genius, as unlikely as it sounds. Richmond Fontaine the person is behind the music. to me! The Glee Club leftlion.co.uk/poddingham £14, 7pm
26 leftlion.couk/issue42 LAKESIDE AUTUMN SEASON Bookings open 1 August 1938 © The Lowry Collection, Salford Head of a Man LS Lowry
LAKESIDE ARTS CENTRE UNIVERSITY PARK, NOTTINGHAM BOOK ONLINE: WWW.LAKESIDEARTS.ORG.UK BOX OFFICE: 0115 846 7777 music event listings... for more: leftlion.co.uk/listings
Monday 26/09 Wednesday 14/09 Image: Emory Douglas, Soldier Poem. A MAN OF FRENCH LETTERS © Emory Douglas. DACS London, 2011 Cosmo Jarvis Batman Live Live on your back? Love chimney stacks? You’d better The Bodega Nottingham Arena come to Tempreh and pay homage to the original Jean Genie, then... £6, 7pm £20 - £45, Various times Runs until: 18/09 As an inspiration for many modern and contemporary artists, musicians and thinkers, the influence Jean Genet wrought upon the world as a writer spans entire continents and decades - all the way to the spacious and Tuesday 27/09 EXHIBITIONS gorgeously-lit confines of Nottingham Contemporary, as the keystone of its latest season features an exhibition which explores Genet’s relationship with the lauded modernist artist Alberto Giacometti. Featuring in the show Tom Stade Monday 01/08 are major new commissions by Marc Camille Chaimowicz and Lili Reynaud-Dewar, as well as an opportunity to see The Glee Club three political murals that were originally created in the sixties by Emory Douglas, Culture Minister of the Black £14, 7.15pm Patrin Panther Party. New Art Exchange Runs until: 06/08 The exhibition is in two ‘Acts’ that reflect the early and late phases of Jean Genet’s life and his role as a playwright. Wednesday 28/09 Galleries 3 and 4 host Act One - a solo installation by Chaimowicz, with art from guests including Turner Prize The Zone winner Wolfgang Tillmans, and seven Alberto Giacometti’s paintings and sculptures. The installation also includes Danny and the Champions of the New Art Exchange a portrait of Genet by Giacometti, as well as furniture designed in the thirties by his brother, Diego Giacometti. World Runs until: 06/08 The Bodega Act Two reflects on Genet’s later life – particularly as an advocate for the Black Panther Party and the Palestinian £8, 7pm Madeleine Burt Featured Artist cause. This politically-charged collection includes a commission by Lili Reynaud-Dewar, a film set in a Palestinian Beetroot Tree Gallery refugee camp by the Otolith Group, the political graphics of Douglas, and artefacts relating to Genet himself. Lili Free Reynaud-Dewar’s major installation in Gallery 2 has four ‘walls’ made from blankets, reminiscent of nights under Thursday 29/09 Runs until: 19/08 the stars in the desert. Latifa Echakhch has covered the galleries with numbers drawn in charcoal directly on the wall that refer to the unrealised UN resolutions on Israel and Palestine. Mona Hatoum’s artworks are glass Rise To Remain Exploring Ethiopia Photographic and ceramic hand-grenades in various colours and a keffiah - a traditional Arab scarf - made of human hair. The Rock City exhibition exhibition also has three large murals made from posters by Douglas, as well as an extensive collection of Panther £7, 6.30pm D H Lawrence Heritage Party newspapers. £3, 10am until 5pm Friday 30/09 Runs until: 28/08 To gain further insight into this often controversial writer’s life and work, there will be a monthly reading group running alongside the exhibition. Led by writer-in-residence Wayne Burrows, these groups will provide an
Jean Genet opportunity for in-depth discussions of Genet’s writing. Sessions are free, but pre-booking is necessary. Revolution Sounds Present Nottingham Contemporary The Maze Runs until: 02/10 Jean Genet, 16 July to 2 October, Nottingham Contemporary, Weekday Cross, NG1 2GB. £6 / £8, 8pm nottinghamcontemporary.org Making Sense: Sensing Place Skip ‘Little Axe’ McDonald Harley Gallery and Foundation The Glee Club Runs until: 07/08 Tuesday 23/08 Wednesday 14/09 Every Fri and Sat £10, 6.45pm Maps from the Historic Collections Long Gallery Intervention Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Performance Jongleurs Comedy Club MiMM of the University of Nottingham Nottingham Castle Nottingham Contemporary Jongleurs Nottingham Contemporary Lakeside Arts Centre Runs until: 25/09 Free, 8pm - 10pm £12 - £15 Runs until: 29/08 THEATRE Tuesday 30/08 Tuesday 20/09 Sunday 04/09 Friday 12/08 Monday 16/08 Madeleine Burt Solo Exhibition The Balcony Upfront Comedy
Love Sex Death and Alchemy Crocus Gallery Nottingham Contemporary Forum Mr Stink Live on Stage Nottingham Society of Artists Runs until: 14/09 Free, 8pm - 10pm £15, 6:45pm Nottingham Playhouse Free, 10am- 6pm £11 / £16, 7pm. Matinees 2.30pm Runs until: 25/08 Runs until: 28/08 Thursday 01/09 Thursday 22/09 Thursday 08/09
Saturday 13/08 The Battle of Algiers Waltz with Bashir Lee Evans - Roadrunner UK Tour Tuesday 13/09 Nottingham Contemporary Nottingham Contemporary Nottingham Arena
Salon des Refuses Free, 7pm - 8.30 pm £30, 8pm The Ashes by Michael Pinchbeck Surface Gallery Runs until: 12/09 Gala Performance Thursday 08/09 Runs until: 27/08 Nottingham Playhouse Thursday 29/09
£40 - £45, 7pm Creative Lace Market Saturday 24/09 See page 13 for full details. Saturday 20/08 Debbie Bryan Studio & Shop Symposium 2 Runs until: 11/09 Nottingham Contemporary Shazia Mirza Precious Free, 3pm - 6pm Bunkers Hill Inn Wednesday 14/09 Harley Gallery and Foundation £7, 7:30pm Monday 12/09 Plus Stephen O’Neill, Matt Rees, Runs until: 16/10 Speaking in Tongues Thursday 13/10 Jordan Brookes and Compere Spiky Lace Market Theatre Solo Show Winner Dr Sketchy’s Anti Art Show Mike. £6 / £7, 7:30pm Surface Gallery architecture and immorality Glee Club Runs until: 17/09 Runs until: 16/09 568 Gallery £8, 11:30am Runs until: 19/10 Sunday 25/09
Comedy Festival All-Dayer image: The Miker - Stuart Akroyd Tuesday 18/10 Bunkers Hill Inn
£7, 1:30pm The Doll’s House MEK SUMMAT! With Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Nash Interiors Gallery Theatre, Kevin Precious, Geoff Lustre at Lakeside: Crafty little boggers Free, 10am - 5pm Norcott, Mundo Jazz, Nathon Caton Runs until: 22/10 and Christian Reilly. Lakeside’s annual contemporary craft fair par Whimsical Textile Creatures excellence, Lustre, will be hitting Nottingham with a If you fancy a go at creating a three-dimensional gloriously colourful and unique bang at the start of character all of your own, with its own story and COMEDY Monday 26/09 November. If you can’t wait that long, and are currenty background, here’s your chance. Artist Gillian Lee Every Monday driving your loved ones and peers insane by making Smith (who can be seen in this issue’s Art Works, on Should I Stay or Should I Go? curtains out of bus tickets and God knows what else, page 18) will be leading the session, which will help Malt Cross Pub Quiz Maze calm yoursen down; as a pre-runner to the big weekend, you explore folk tales and stories from your childhood (or Malt Cross £4 / £5, 8pm Lakeside have put together a series of tasty workshops help you delve into your imagination) in order to create a £2 per team, 8pm across September. Catering to all skill levels and ages, creature from textiles, paint and transfer techniques. Howard Marks Is Mr Nice these workshops are a rare opportunity to unleash your Sunday 18 September, 10am – 4pm, £40/£30 concessions Every Wednesday The Glee Club inner artist in ways you may have never imagined... £15, 6.45pm Paperwork Silver Rings Jewellery No, it’s not an accountancy class - with a technique that The LeftLion Pub Quiz Ever wanted to make your own jewellery? Did you turns paper into a solid wood-like material, this course Golden Fleece Thursday 29/09 even think it would be possible? This workshop with run by artist Hannah Lobley will guide you through the £2 per team, 9pm - 11pm Kate Bajic introduces you to techniques involved in process to create an interior object. She’ll be deploying a Thursday Food & Comedy Special ring-making, including soldering, forming, sawing and unique recycling technique that uses the printed pages The Lion Quiz Night Glee Club hammering. Suitable for beginners and improvers, you’ll of unwanted books and paper. Pages are layered and Lion Inn £4 / £8.50 / £11.50, 7:30pm have the chance to make up to three different, unique transformed, so that traditional woodworking methods silver rings. can be used on them. In other words, wood that became Every Fri and Sat WANT TO GET YOUR Sunday 11 September, 10am – 4pm, £50/£40 concessions paper becomes wood again. Clever, eh? EVENTS LISTED? Sunday 25 September, 10am – 4pm, £40/£30 concessions The Best In Live Stand-Up Comedy Glee Club You can now add and edit your £3.50 - £9, 7:15pm events; sign up to our new website So, if you’re looking to improve on some already enabled skills or want to get into a new hobby, these events could and visiting leftlion.co.uk/add. be right up your street. Just think where your imagination and hands could take you, but in a nice way... Friday Night Comedy Lakeside Visual Arts Studios, University Boulevard, NG7 2RD Forum lakesidearts.org.uk £6 - £10, 6:45pm
28 leftlion.couk/issue42 Gurkha Kitchen Tropeiro The Cross Keys Shangri-La, in Bilbo-Ra Take your Nana for a Brazilian Buffet, The Nyam-pyre Slayer
Colourful prayer flags fluttering against a stormy sky confirmed I went on travelling in Brazil earlier this year and fell in love with We’ve been here before; issue 37, where we said it was dead we’d arrived at Nottingham’s only Nepalese restaurant - Gurkha their amazing beaches, football, women and cuisine. It was one plush and the snap was properly, properly decent. All these facts Kitchen in Bilborough. Formerly a typical estate pub, inside it’s of the few times I’ve been on holiday and seriously thought: “I’d still hold true, but there’s two new developments: a) a complete Shangri-La; lofty wooden-beamed ceilings and reclaimed-brick like to move here.” refurb job upstairs, and b) a brand-new buffet menu. The new chimneys are festooned with statues, candles, Nepalese musical room – which can double up as a dining or meeting area – is bee- instruments (which they use during festivals) and weapons Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to sneak a bonita mulher into my yoo-tiful. A definite Alice in Wonderland theme runs through it; (which they presumably use when someone tries to do a runner), suitcase home. But it did feel like a bit of the culture came back clocks all over the shop, top hats doubling up as lampshades, whilst the immaculate furnishings are brightened with lustrous with me as, on my next trip into town, I noticed that the old solid dark floorboards, and seating apparently furnished from the shadings of red - Nepal’s lucky colour. Hard Rock Café, most recently Vienna, had become a churrasco skins of dead Muppets. restaurant. If you’re after a curry-in-a-hurry, they also run a takeaway out If your concept of the word ‘buffet’ is scarred by memories of the back, which is presided over by chef (and owner) Andeep, The tradition of the Brazilian churrasco (barbecue) goes back to whatever left-over rammell was in the fridge last Boxing Day, or but we were happy to take a seat and nibble on complementary the seventeenth century when large parts of the country were having to dodge the meaty forearm of Fat Janice from Marketing poppadums and chutneys whilst sipping imported Gurkha Beer covered by the flat lands of the Pampas. The vegetation favoured over a tray of already curling butties during an office meeting (660ml, £4.50). With both Indian and Nepalese dishes on offer, cattle farming and produced some of the best meat in the world. conveniently held during your dinner hour, come to the Keys and the menu includes Andeep’s traditional family recipes as well as Fast forward four hundred years and their love affair with meat get properly feducated. This is what a true buffet should be; a his own culinary inventions. The place is so authentic that the continues. broader-than-broad palette of textures and tastes to be sampled spices are sent over on a regular basis from the home country by at leisure. Andeep’s own mother. Tropeiro (named after the first Brazilian cowboys who rounded up the cattle) is the brainchild of Nei Borger, who left his The first round of snappage that came our way were the My starter - sekuwa chicken (£3.95) - was a delicious homeland for Manchester in the mid-nineties. He earned his sandwiches. The beef and horseradish ones were toppermost combination of succulent meat and complex spices accompanied spurs cooking at the likes of La Tasca, Reform and Panacea, drawer – thick cuts of cow slathered with a sauce that was by a homemade sweet and sour coriander sauce and side salad. before setting up on his own. This is the fourth in his chain (the punchy yet not overpowering. The cheese and tomato sarnies Being new to Nepalese food, we asked the restaurant staff to others can be found in Aberdeen, Glasgow and Chester) and the were a bit bland by comparison (they still got decked, though, recommend dishes for one vegetarian who likes things hot and cuisine remains faithful to his country’s tradition. so they weren’t that bad). one meat eater who does not. So my friend dug into Kathmandu vegetables (a festival dish with a kick, cooked with masala The place uses the rodizio (continuous) service concept, where The next entrant to the arena – the pork hotpot – was a little spices and cream - £7.85), paungo chamri (£3.75), vegetable you pay a fixed price (£9.95 for lunch on weekdays, £19.95 at ramekin stuffed with potatoes, apple, carrots, and bite-sized pakoras (£3.25) and vegetable rice (£2.65). Paungo chamri is a other times) and get to sample whatever you want from the chunks of succulent pork. This was followed by hyper-tasty fish home-made cheese and spinach dish and can only be described menu. Skewers of beef, lamb, pork and chicken are carried by balls and some of the best chips I’ve ever tasted in town. You as sensational! Nepalese curries tend to be milder than their waiters around the restaurant and the meat is carved tableside don’t automatically equate buffets with hot food: The Cross Keys Indian counterparts, and Himalayan chicken (£7.95) - I assumed at your request. On each table is a beer mat with a red and a proves that you should, if there’s a hotplate handy. it is the sauce that was Himalayan, rather than the beast (for green side: red side up says you have enough on your plate, competitive types, there is also Everest chicken). Himalayan is green side says you’re ready and waiting for more. More fishiness followed (delightfully fatty scallops – some on a creamy mild curry with a hit of ginger, and a good match with a pedestal of black pudding, some not – and densely packed the Nepali rice – a traditional dish cooked with chicken tikka, Among the dishes there are several to get excited about: alcatra smoked salmon roulade shot through with sharp lemony cashew nuts and sultanas. is a cut of top sirloin which oozes flavour, cordeiro is a crunchy goodness), then hunks of huntman’s pie rammed with chicken, joint of tender lamb sliced straight off the bone and coração da ham and stuffing, with a moreish crust and just the right amount If I had a spare stomach just for dessert, I’d have been tempted galinha is an established Brazilian delicacy: a chicken heart. of jelly. Personal fave? The chipolata sausages split open and by punky or vacky (£3.25) – chocolate and vanilla ice cream There is also a well-stocked salad bar to help yourself to. Their stuffed with a piping of mashed potato, like a meaty éclair. served in a penguin or cow-shaped toy. What’s not to like? With wine menu is also decent and, needless to say, they serve a Sunday buffets, and celebrations to mark Nepali festivals they great capirinha (£6) in eight fruity flavours. Upshot: The Cross Keys has outdone itself once again with have a huge function room (with much of the original pub décor imaginative yet substantial snap (all sourced from Viccy Market, still intact) for hire, and a really unique menu. This is an one- A word of warning: vegetarians, avoid this place as there’s don’t you know). If you’re looking to sort out a moderately-sized off place run by friendly people who are passionate about food. nothing for you here. Serious carnivores: welcome to your new gathering with something to eat without having to argue the What impressed me the most was that Gurkha Kitchen achieves favourite all-you-can-eaterie. Jared Wilson toss about who had what when the bill comes round, booking that rare combination – individuality and quality. Someone really a buffet upstairs is the perfect solution. I left with a ton of should give Joanna Lumley a call - she’d love it here. 11 King Street, NG1 2AY. Tel: 0115 947 0124 sandwiches wrapped up in tin foil – rather like Sammy, the Aly Stoneman tropeiro.co.uk vagrant kiddies’ entertainer in Hi De Hi! – and gave this much of a toss who noticed. Al Needham Glaisdale Drive West, NG8 4GY. Tel: 0115 929 0194 gurkhakitchen.org 15 Byard Lane, NG1 2GJ. Tel: 015 941 7898 crosskeysnottingham.co. Our resident fast food expert Beane continues his quest to eat at every takeaway in Nottingham… Spicy Nights Papa Johns
The never-ending quest for the perfect curry: it’s consumed the mind of the British late-night What the bejesus has happened to the good old pizza? Sometimes, in more reflective moments, I explorer ever since he realised that supper could be so much more than left-over chips slopping feel sorry for the much-maligned tomato and cheese-based bread frisbee. Over the years it’s been about in a sea of gravy in a polystyrene tub. The abundance of choice available has not quenched somewhat neglected; the only outlets for the late night reveller seeking a bit of Italian are either our thirst for spice, rather it’s made us more resolute to seek out the best on offer. Spicy Nights the truly diabolical and perverted kebab shop concoctions (even I wouldn’t put it on a pizza) or had expertly dodged the long and probing tentacles of the Beane - but after hearing countless venturing to the dark side of corporate chains, like Pizza Hut or Domino’s. So when I first stumbled favourable tales it was obvious a visit was needed. Or being the hungover Sunday it was, a upon Papa John’s, it slapped me ‘round the chops like that man in those old tango ads. Yes, it’s a delivery to be more precise. My spice tolerance has climbed to monumental levels over the years, chain – the third-biggest in America - but it certainly didn’t feel like it. Maybe I was caught up in so I opted for the chicken pathia with pilau rice, peshwari nan and Bombay potatoes, and I undid those first nervous flushes of pizza romance, but I took it to my hairy bosom with vigour. The menu the belt buckle in preparation. It was one of the most scrumptious curries I’ve had in a while; a nice is refreshingly different; sure, there’s the usual pizza toppings, but there’s also new shizzle thrown amount of spice - and flavour to boot - with big lumps of meat, which can be a rarity these days. into the mix, such as goats cheese, Ventricina salami, applewood smoked bacon and pulled pork. Spicy Nights is well worthy of your hard-earned and its takeaway menu should proudly sit atop the Their pizza sizes go up to a colossal XXL, meaning the floodgates stopping your incoming obesity collection which you have shoved in your kitchen drawer. can be flung open wide with gusto. Highly recommended. 91 Haydn Road, Sherwood, NG5 2LA. Tel: 0115 985 6515 6 Croft Road, Arnold, NG5 7DX. Tel: 0115 967 3388 spicynightsonline.co.uk papajohns.co.uk leftlion.couk/issue42 29 Leo (July 24 - August 23) They say home is where your heart is. It’s also where your brain, lungs, legs, liver and eyes are. www.rescuerooms.com But despite a prolonged search for DNA evidence after the explosion, they’re going to struggle to find all of it.
Virgo (August 24 - September 23) You feel like you have entered a brave new world and are having to learn a foreign language which could even be business, technical or medically based. Recent changes in your emotional state are because someone close to you has been drugging your food. Trust no-one. www.rock-city.co.uk The Revival Tour Funeral For A Friend w/ Brian Fallon, Dan Andriano Thursday 27th October Libra (September 24 - October 23) Eddie Spaghetti Chuck Ragan & Dave Hause Sunday 31st July You say you wanna kiss my face? Well, I wanna kiss your face too. But if we get all facey kissy Sunday 2nd October Hit The Deck Reunion Club Sylosis The Rifles Feat. Royal Republic + Hospitals Macmillan Fest 2011 Saturday 29th October together then people will talk and our girlfriends will leave us. So let’s make sure we only do it Sunday 4th September Thursday 6th October That Sunday Feeling The Feeling Saturday 29th October when there is no-one else around. Ya get me bloodclart? Saturday 6th August Wednesday 5th October 36Crazyfists Anna Calvi Ron Sexsmith Saturday 5th November Noah And The Whale Rise Against Tuesday 6th September Sunday 9th October Scorpio (October 24 - November 22) The Hidden Orchestra + Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman Girls Friday 12th August Thursday 6th October Wednesday 2nd November Big Deal Ghost Brigade When parallel parking in front of a shop, look in the reflection of the store window to see how Friday 9th September Thursday 13th October Saturday 12th November much room is left between your car and the one behind you. Then reverse the car as quickly as Kiss Corona Imperial Leisure Friendly Fires Shangri-la Lounge 2011 Herman Dune Yuck possible, ram raid the shop and take anything you want from there. LEFTLION ABROAD Friday 9th September Friday 7th October + Chad Valley + SBTRKT Sunday 11th September Friday 14th October Monday 14th November Brooklyn Bridge, New York City, USA Monday 14th November Gary Numan Black Veil Brides TesseracT The Doors Alive Turin Brakes Sagittarius (November 23 - December 22) Thursday 15th September + Yashin + My Passion Saturday 17th September Saturday 15th October Perform their classic album The Optimist Saturday 8th October The Damned Tuesday 15th November Wednesday 16th November When caterpillars create their cocoons they don’t start fretting - or worrying about the future. Co Headline Show The Answer Ed Sheeran Blast Off! Festival 3rd Day Acting on an impulse, they just plough ahead and prepare for their process of transformation. White Wizzard Alabama 3 Sunday 18th September Monday 17th October Portico Quartet So too you shouldn’t plan to hard. But don’t just try and be yourself – instead be a hairy hairy Monday 10thSOLD October OUT Thursday 17th November Jettblack Monday 21st November Morning Parade It Bites + Mostly Autumn caterpillar. Thursday 15th September Kids In Glass Houses Monday 19th September Tuesday 18th October Wild Beasts Wednesday 12th October The Darkness Sunday 20th November The Wombats Tuesday 22nd November Hayseed Dixie Sharon Shannon Capricorn (December 23 - January 19) Tuesday 20th September Wednesday 19th October Textures + The Ocean You often wonder what your purpose on this earth is, but what you fail to appreciate is that you Thursday 22ndSOLD September OUT Bombay Bicycle Club Monday 17th October Flogging Molly The Subways Wu Lyf Saturday 26th November are already influencing the lives of everyone people around you. You inspire them to be better Monday 28th November The Eyes Of A Traitor Wednesday 21st September Friday 21st October Jesse Malin & the St. Marks Social people and move themselves on to greater things. Mainly because they dread the idea of ever Friday 23rd September Katy B Sunday 27th November ending up like you. Tuesday 18th October Aloe Blacc David Ford Miss May I Feed The Rhino Monday 5th December Thursday 22nd September Monday 24th October The Lemonheads Saturday 24th September Firefest 2011 3 day event Performing "It's a Shame About Ray" 21st, 22nd & 23rd October Shed Seven Fink Tribes Thursday 1st December Aquarius (January 20 - February 19) Sunday 11th December Saturday 24th September Tuesday 25th October In the words of Mick Jagger “you can’t always get what you want.” But it does become easier to Rise To Remain Professor Green The Magic Band Thursday 29th September Example Fenech-Soler The Horrors get what you want when you are a global rock star. After all that chap from Led Zeppelin got a Monday 24th October ThursdaySOLD 15th OUTDecember Saturday 1st October Wednesday 26th October Friday 7th December girl to insert a baby shark into her. I’d like to see that too, but let’s face it women like that are hard Y&T Enter Shikari Dog Is Dead Wilko Johnson Zion Train Glenn Tilbrook to meet in this town. Saturday 1st October Tuesday 25th October Saturday 17th December Sunday 2nd October Thursday 27th October Thursday 8th December
Pisces (February 20 - March 20) Wearing your heart of your sleeve is an admirable quality. It can put you on the path to luck and lead to those who admire your emotional honesty to lay their troubles at your feet. But you’ve taken the idiom a tad too literally and now you need to see a doctor or you will die.
Aries (March 21 - April 20) You have big plans and you may at times struggle to achieve them. However you have so much drive in you that you will continue to persevere through to the end. You may look like a junkie www.stealthattack.co.uk | facebook.com/stealthnottingham jesus, but as a wise man almost said it’s not where you’re not from, it’s where you’re at. www.thebodegasocialclub.co.uk Built in 1883 to connect the island of Manhattan to the aforementioned borough, the Brooklyn Taurus (April 21 - May 21) Bridge is one of the most iconic structures in America - thanks to that even more iconic Woody Brontide David Dondero Allen film poster. It’s appeared in Godzilla, The Fifth Element, I Am Legend and Once Upon A Time Monday 15th August L Ron Hubbard is locked in a cupboard. He’s trying to give a lecture about dianetics, but the coats Sunday 9th October Summer Special In America, been the title of a Frank Sinatra song, and featured in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. When Zed Bias and shirts handing up all around him are muffling the sound. So all you can hear is a mad man Saturday 6th August (Locked On/Swamp81) rumours that the bridge was unsafe spread through New York after it was built, PT Barnum himself Sophie Barker Cave Painting sounding off; below the rail, but above his station. This has happened before in another galaxy. Saturday 3rd September Friday 5th August led a parade of 21 elephants across it, and on 9/11 it was the main escape route for thousands of Tuesday 11th October Monki (Grizzly) people after the attacks on the World Trade Center. Vandalism by Jared Wilson. Treefight For (Rinse FM) Melé Ben Howard Friday 2nd September Gemini (May 22 - June 22) Still not had your summer holiday yet? Take a copy of LeftLion (or a sticker, or a t-shirt, or an Monday 24th October Saturday 13th August Work may at times seem like something of a labyrinthine task. It’s easy to lose yourself amongst Sunlight anything with our logo on it) and stand somewhere impressive. Then send a photo to us at Monday 5th September the endless nights and sleepy days. However you made an astute business decision recently and Dark Sky [email protected], and we might just publish it... David Giles Hackman (Ninja Tune/50 Weapons) the end of the year spells great things as a result. Shonen Knife Tuesday 25th October (Greco Roman) Friday 23rd September Saturday 10th September + ∆ Emily Barker Saturday 20th August Cancer (June 23 - July 23) Slow Club & The Red Clay Halo Monday 12th September Friday 28th October You celebrated your recent birthday staring while a naked man sang an ode to you. Whilst you’ve Marco Del Horno Goldie always been more into the ladies, deep down you found it strangely arousing. Twenty years from (Rinse FM) + Skism + Basher Ugly Duckling Friday 26th August now you will remember this as a major turning point. Dry The River Saturday 27th August Wednesday 14th September Wednesday 2nd November LINE UP TBC Summer Special Friday 30th September Danny & The Acid Mothers Saturday 3rd September Champions Of Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O Two Inch Punch Hatcha + Crazy D County home, 1993/4 The World + The Jezabels (Live) Forest away, 1995/6 Wednesday 28th September Sunday 6th November + Jakes + Gemini + Dismantle Saturday 10th September Friday 12th August Marcus Foster Airship LINE UP TBC Saturday 1st October Tuesday 8th November Summer Special Friday 2nd September Saturday 17th September Teeth (Live) Shackleton Saturday 24th September Friday 16th September Folks 5th Birthday (Live) Friday 21st October Saturday 1st October Looks like: Looks like: The floor of the gents in A Matalan teenage Jackmaster Yates at 2am boy’s quilt (Numbers) Ghostpoet (Live) + Loefah (Swamp81/DMZ) If you don’t go out and pick up LeftLion #43 on Friday 30 Rubbish Canadian Sponsored by: Long-lamented Saturday 15th October Sponsored by: local brewery + Oneman (Rinse FM) September, Su Pollard will strangle this child. lager merchants Burns Friday 7th October Special mention for: Hooped sleeves She really will. Do not test her. Special mention for: Horrible badge- Saturday 5th November within-a-badge rammell Finished that year: Just missed out Mosca This magazine is printed on paper sourced from sustainable forests. Our printers are ISO 14001 certified by the (Numbers) British Accreditation Bureau for their environmental management. Are yours? Yeah, thought so. 9th in the Premiership on the Division One playoffs Maya Jane Coles Finished that year: Saturday 26th November Friday 18th November
30 leftlion.couk/issue42 www.rescuerooms.com
www.rock-city.co.uk The Revival Tour Funeral For A Friend w/ Brian Fallon, Dan Andriano Eddie Spaghetti Chuck Ragan & Dave Hause Thursday 27th October Sunday 31st July Sunday 2nd October Hit The Deck Reunion Club Sylosis The Rifles Feat. Royal Republic + Hospitals Macmillan Fest 2011 Saturday 29th October Sunday 4th September Thursday 6th October That Sunday Feeling The Feeling Saturday 29th October Saturday 6th August Wednesday 5th October 36Crazyfists Anna Calvi Ron Sexsmith Saturday 5th November Noah And The Whale Rise Against Tuesday 6th September Sunday 9th October The Hidden Orchestra + Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman Girls Friday 12th August Thursday 6th October Wednesday 2nd November Big Deal Ghost Brigade Friday 9th September Thursday 13th October Saturday 12th November Kiss Corona Imperial Leisure Friendly Fires Herman Dune Yuck Friday 9th September Friday 7th October Shangri-la Lounge 2011 + Chad Valley + SBTRKT Sunday 11th September Friday 14th October Monday 14th November Monday 14th November Gary Numan Black Veil Brides TesseracT The Doors Alive Turin Brakes Thursday 15th September + Yashin + My Passion Saturday 17th September Saturday 15th October Perform their classic album The Optimist Saturday 8th October The Damned Tuesday 15th November Wednesday 16th November Co Headline Show The Answer Ed Sheeran Blast Off! Festival 3rd Day White Wizzard Alabama 3 Sunday 18th September Monday 17th October Portico Quartet Monday 10thSOLD October OUT Thursday 17th November Jettblack Monday 21st November Morning Parade It Bites + Mostly Autumn Thursday 15th September Kids In Glass Houses Monday 19th September Tuesday 18th October Wild Beasts Wednesday 12th October The Darkness Sunday 20th November The Wombats Tuesday 22nd November Hayseed Dixie Sharon Shannon Tuesday 20th September Wednesday 19th October Textures + The Ocean Thursday 22ndSOLD September OUT Bombay Bicycle Club Monday 17th October Flogging Molly The Subways Wu Lyf Saturday 26th November Monday 28th November The Eyes Of A Traitor Wednesday 21st September Friday 21st October Jesse Malin & the St. Marks Social Friday 23rd September Katy B Sunday 27th November Tuesday 18th October Aloe Blacc David Ford Miss May I Feed The Rhino Monday 5th December Thursday 22nd September Monday 24th October The Lemonheads Saturday 24th September Firefest 2011 3 day event Performing "It's a Shame About Ray" 21st, 22nd & 23rd October Shed Seven Fink Tribes Thursday 1st December Sunday 11th December Saturday 24th September Tuesday 25th October Rise To Remain Professor Green The Magic Band Thursday 29th September Example Fenech-Soler The Horrors Monday 24th October ThursdaySOLD 15th OUTDecember Saturday 1st October Wednesday 26th October Friday 7th December Y&T Enter Shikari Dog Is Dead Wilko Johnson Zion Train Glenn Tilbrook Saturday 1st October Tuesday 25th October Saturday 17th December Sunday 2nd October Thursday 27th October Thursday 8th December
www.thebodegasocialclub.co.uk www.stealthattack.co.uk | facebook.com/stealthnottingham Brontide David Dondero Monday 15th August Sunday 9th October Summer Special Zed Bias Sophie Barker Cave Painting Saturday 6th August (Locked On/Swamp81) Saturday 3rd September Tuesday 11th October Friday 5th August
Monki (Grizzly) Treefight For (Rinse FM) Melé Ben Howard Friday 2nd September Sunlight Monday 24th October Saturday 13th August Monday 5th September Dark Sky David Giles Hackman (Ninja Tune/50 Weapons) Shonen Knife Tuesday 25th October (Greco Roman) Friday 23rd September Saturday 10th September + ∆ Emily Barker Saturday 20th August Slow Club & The Red Clay Halo Monday 12th September Friday 28th October Marco Del Horno Goldie (Rinse FM) + Skism + Basher Dry The River Ugly Duckling Saturday 27th August Friday 26th August Wednesday 14th September Wednesday 2nd November LINE UP TBC Summer Special Friday 30th September Danny & The Acid Mothers Saturday 3rd September Champions Of Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O Two Inch Punch + Crazy D The World + The Jezabels (Live) Hatcha Wednesday 28th September Sunday 6th November + Jakes + Gemini + Dismantle Saturday 10th September Friday 12th August Marcus Foster Airship LINE UP TBC Saturday 1st October Tuesday 8th November Summer Special Friday 2nd September Saturday 17th September Teeth (Live) Shackleton Saturday 24th September Friday 16th September Folks 5th Birthday (Live) Friday 21st October Saturday 1st October Jackmaster (Numbers) Ghostpoet (Live) Saturday 15th October + Loefah (Swamp81/DMZ) + Oneman (Rinse FM) Burns Friday 7th October Saturday 5th November Mosca (Numbers) Maya Jane Coles Saturday 26th November Friday 18th November