issue29,issue29, june-july2009june-july2009

TWENTY20 VISION THE WORLD OF CRICKET COMES TO QUESTIONMARC / GRAEME PARK XYLOPHONE MAN / JOHN HARVEY FULL NOTTINGHAM EVENTS LISTINGS GNP LEFTLION AD 08:Layout 1 12/5/09 11:59 Page 1 July 4th sees the fifth anniversary of the passing of the one and only Frank Robinson. Al Needham attempts to pin down the reason he was so beloved in Notts … illustration: Hayley Donna Clarke · scored by: Michael Wetherburn · original composition: Frank Robinson

Five years. Is it really that long? Half a decade since we heard that sound? The magnificent cacophony of randomness that went; “Bing Bong Bing Bang Bong”?

If you weren’t here when Nottingham was under the rule of Xylophone Man, you missed out. Town hasn’t really been the same since. LeftLion Magazine Issue 29 Here’s the story: at some point in the 1980s, a contents June - July 2009 editorial man in his late fifties from Cotgrave came to Youths and ducks, boggaz and boggarettez, town armed with a child’s metallophone and a crate, which he plonked down outside the C&A Whenever people ask us why LeftLion has managed to keep going for so long (it’ll be the mag’s fifth birthday next on Lister Gate, and banged away on. At the issue, so get the jelly and ice cream ready) while other free same tune. Over and over again. First time you mags are shutting up shop and even the professional ones heard it, you swore blind that you knew it. You are looking a bit nervous, I can give ‘em a long answer and a short one. The former explanation would take up the never did; it remained on the tip of your brain entire mag, so I’ll give you the latter: Xylophone Man. He’s forever. Like the obsessed artist returning to been almost like a guardian angel to us, and not because the same canvas for one more splash until the we all write our articles by bashing at a keyboard with wooden mallets and shouting “WAYYYY!” at the end of paint was three inches thick, he chiselled away each sentence. He was the first indication that we were on at his magnum opus until his dying day. the right track.

Let me explain: back in the day, when LeftLion first Nottingham being the big city with the small started, in a conversation between three people in a town attitude it is, it wasn’t long before he got pub (none of whom were me), it was a reaction to the a nickname (Xylophone Man, naturally – we’re general rubbishness of media in Notts. The local so-called 07 12 15 independent TV station was pulling out of town, and not interested in poncy wordplay round here) eventually started broadcasting news from and the rumours spread. He was a millionaire . The newsdesk of another local radio station was based in , and the local rag…well, it didn’t who had gone a bit mad. He was a musical seem to like Nottingham at all, and couldn’t be bothered to extortionist who would target shops in town, work out what people really wanted to read about. banging away until the manager came out with 04 May Contain Notts 11 A Billion Eyes on Nottingham 21 Nottingham Events Listings By the time C&A had changed into H&M,Nottingham’s he ‘MrAxeman, Sex’ stripes who the used to hangThe Twenty20 about Worldthe rack Cup comes of to made youIf it’s smile.happening How in Notts, many it’s in other here. people can a tenner. He was an undercover Fed. He was Case in point; there was a bloke in town mashing a was already a civic treasure. I spent muchcity of across its barebadges buttocks at with Pendulum the Recordstown, so in for ViccyGod’s sake Market look busy. you sayAnd that if it’s about? not in Notts, we care not a xylophone who’d been at it for over a decade, that everyone suspected of being everything but the thing buckle of his Newsy Belt. jot. knew about, and who was far more well-known than any this time away from Nottingham, and whenever and brag on to twelve year-old Mods about he actually was; a genial old chap bonging the chapter of Hells Angels Park Drive,he commandeered Unfiltered local politician or captain of industry - and it did our heads I got into conversations about where I came 12 Now all that’s left is a memorial in the spotin that no-one had even thought about talking to him. So we away on a metallophone and yelping along to 05 LeftEyeOn (even though no-one hasNottingham’s ever seen greatest him onDJ talks a to the 26 Write Lion from, 100% of people who had been thereWarning: would explicit images of morris ‘Lion. where heBook regularly reviews and played.a Lowdham In Festival a perfect did.world, And it not only got us noticed in the city, but elsewhere himself with undisguised glee because, well, he - the website was hit up all over the globe by expats, and say “Loved it – great shops, load of pubs,dancers. and motorbike). Cross-dressing ‘Denis’ still treats every fourthspecial. of July should be commemorated wanted to. And he carried on doing the same Mansfield Road as his own personal catwalk, the curious. When he died, we were bombarded with that bloke on the xylophone”. Whenever you Punktuation with us all gathering round it, armed withrequests from professional media organisations to run the thing for almost two decades. 15 came back to see your family, the first07 thing King you Bong and Whycliffe is still Whycliffe.Questionmarc breaks his (or her) kiddie28 xylophones, Reviews and starting a minute-longinterview, as they couldn’t believe the reaction in Notts. The of Frank Robinson, the silence and explains all. Another all-Notts serving of dolphin- We could. We felt the same way. We also knew that we did was seek out the tinkly cacophony of mallet clatter of noise at noon. And here’s a thought; Which leads to the obvious question: was he one and only Xylophone Man. friendly tunage. were filling a gap that other local media didn’t even realise None of them have ever come close to the was there. Spending so much of our free time hunched over on metal to remind you that you were home. Artist Profiles there’s a reasonable chance that he will be mad? Well, you can’t hit the same bit of metal level of affection we had for Xylophone Man, keyboards for no financial remuneration whatsoever was, A Canadian In New Basford 18 Joe Hardy, Vicki Lawson, Cassie the only Notts person Trumps who lived in Notts during this for that long without not being a little bit 08 30 and continues to be, actually worth it So how come Frank Robinson hammered Our Rob becomesprobably a just a little because bit he didn’tThompson hassle and Anthonyus for Peskine. decade Plus that Rocky will Horrorscopes, be commemorated The Arthole for future batchy, but on certain days, after coming out of more British. and LeftLion Abroad. his way so deeply into our hearts? After all, money (he seemed to be quite happy to do it centuries, and after all of us have long gone,Obviously, now we’re on the cusp of the fifth anniversary your rammell job on a rammell day after a row Nottingham has never been short of ‘local for nothing), he didn’t20 tell Splendour us we were going to the time we spent on this particular partof theof death of Xylophone Man, we’ve taken the time to tip with your rammell boss over some meaningless John Harvey sizzle in Satan’s chip pan,The and return he of thedidn’t Wollation pretend all-dayer. the hat to him one more time (as well as getting in first on characters’. There was Mr Pope, the 10gentleman the planet – and all our travails, achievements,the Questionmarc enigma; having a chat with Graeme Park, rammell, you’d see Xylo bashing away with a The Resnick authorhe wason his somethingPolish he wasn’t. In a city that, of the road who was allowed to sit in thedetective’s last stand. hopes, dreams and fears - will be representedthe man who put Notts firmly on the map; and smile on his face for some baccy money, and doorway of Selectadisc out of the rain (and like everywhere else, is becoming more and by an old man who never finished a tuneall the usual rammell you pick us up for). We dedicate this wonder who the really mad people in town issue not only to Frank, but to all local media types feeling the stench from whom caused people to avoid more anonymous and unfriendly by the year, properly, whilst sitting on a crate outside C&A. were. the pinch and mithering about their jobs, whether they’re entire letters in the record racks). There’s Xylo was someone that everyone knew, and How mint would that be? in competition with us or not. We’d also like to thank Tasha everyone liked. You saw him in town, and he Chowdhury, who is stepping down from the role of Music been a million Bible-bashers. There’s been Ed after many years of holding it down and keeping it Park Drive, Unfiltered locked. Ta, duckeh. words: Mike Atkinson photos: David Blenkey credits Word to your Nana, Two years ahead of the fabled 1988 Summer Of Love, The Garage on St Mary’s Gate became one of the first Editor Photography Editor Podcast Overlords Al Needham Al clubsNeedham -([email protected]) hell, perhaps even the firstDominic club Henry -([email protected]) in the country to specialiseWill Forrest in house music, (almost) all [email protected] long. Simon Tew EditorAnd In Chief its introduction had nothingTheatre to Editor do with smiley faces, bandanas, MDMA-drenched Ibizan epiphanies, Jared Wilson ([email protected]) Adrian Bhagat ([email protected]) “Ah me seh cricket, lovely cricket Michael Abbott or any of that distracting flim-flam - and everything to do withGot to lick the de baal knowledge before it reach de andwicket” enthusiasm of one Artparticular Director music obsessive... Cover Image Jah Thomas, Cricket Lovely Cricket, 1979 Pulsing Brain of Nottinghamia David Blenkey ([email protected]) David Blenkey Mad on ‘ISTREH ever since he If you would like to reach our readers by clocked ‘Whore Lane’ on an old DeputyFrom Editors late 1983 until the end of the decade, Last Issue’sOne Cover day when Image I was in there, they said, “Somebody’sadvertising ill, can youyour companyto the fact in that these people pages would please come in, a bit down on their luck, map next to the Castle, when not help out? It’s dead simple.” I knew it was dead simple, because and get rid of classic rock and pop . Stuff like The Doors, CharlotteGraeme Kingsbury Park was ([email protected]) Nottingham’s most pioneering,Rikki Marr (soz, Rikkeh) contact Ben on 07984 275453 or email cramming his head with all things Nathan Miller ([email protected]) I used to work a Saturday job at a record shop in ,[email protected] so Love and all that late Sixties stuff that had gone out of fashion. most influential and best-loved club DJ, whose I started working there part-time, and when Mel left, I was I’d play them in the shop and go; “Wow, I actually get this band; Nottsular and antiquated he’s rollin’ Contributors residency at The Garage took a generation of put in charge of upstairs, which was brilliant. That was about I can understand why this is a classic .” deep with the Dealmaker Records Technicalclubbers Director on a journey from early Eighties style-Michael Abbott1982-1983. Brian Selby - the original owner - had his office at Alan Gilby ([email protected]) Mike Atkinson LeftLion has an estimated readership of 40,000 in kliq and striving towards his goal of Jared Wilsonpop recalls to late Eighties an garage early and techno, coup via forBridlesmith the Gate ‘Lion, and would often and pop out to makea bemuseda cup of tea The other greatold thing manwas that they whohad a massive stock of cut- Rob Cutforthand ask what we were playing, so I got to know thehim cityreally of well. Nottingham. outs, which LeftLion.co.uk used to be receivedthe name for cheap imports from . being a cross between Arthur Seaton Marketingelectro, andhip-hop, Sales Managerrare groove, DC go-go, ChicagoSneinton DaleBrian used to have his own Northern Soul label. Heover was eight just million pageWe could views sell inthose the for last a lottwelve less than the proper British releases. and Bendigo. never realisedBenjack Hacking howtracks, ([email protected]) and important all points in between. Andhe itManchurian allwas. really intoillustration: music, you know? He dabbled withChris restaurantsmonths. asSummerlin Brian had access to all these warehouses thatRoger stocked Mean all this began in one little shop on Bridlesmith Gate… well. He had some sort of diner called Zuckermans at the top of stuff; Jim (Cooke, last manager of Selectadisc) and Brian used to Sarah Morrison Resident Astrologist and Psychic Designer Joe O’LearyHockley. drive around in this Transit van to get stock. One minute you’d be serving people in the shop, the next minute Brian would be Tom Wingrove ([email protected]) Aly Stoneman LeftLion is distributed to over 300 venues across Roger was born in ancient Greece If it wasn’t for Selectadisc, I’d have never have been a DJ. running up the stairs: “Come on, we need you to help us unload As far as I know, I’m the only journalist that ever interviewedNik Storey into his busking basket.Nottingham. Again If your he venue looked isn’t one confused, of them, but thisand knowntime as a major drinker among I ended up in Nottingham more by luck than design, to be )F ITWASNTFOR3ELECTADISC the van.” You’d go downstairs, and he’d have got boxes and Frank Robinson - whichArthonest; Editor still I was seems playing in bands,bizarre signing to on, me, and used as to he frequentAnt was Whitton so rather pleased too. please contact Benboxes on 07984 of the 275453new Big orCountry email album that hadcontemporaries just come out and such as Socrates and Frances Ashton ([email protected]) [email protected] well known around theSelectadisc: city. bothTo stores,this onday Market I wonderStreet and the why smaller no-oneone )DHAVENEVERHAVEBEENA was flying off the shelves. Xenophone. After an argument with his on Bridlesmith Gate. Apart from the fact that it was slightlyIllustrators h elders he was banished and frozen for thought of speakingLiterature tomore him friendly, Editor before. Bridlesmith Gate used to have the second handJenny Webber After he$* died, the bigger local mediaI vividly remember picked the dayup that on Brian both walked thethousands in and said “Guessof years. Fished out the Trent Jamesdepartment Walker upstairs, ([email protected]) so I used to spend more time there. Rob In the White This magazine is printedwhat I’ve on just paper bought? sourced The Ad from Lib club.” And I’m like “that five years ago by members of the LeftLion singles department was a guy called Mel, and then there was story and the serioussustainable outpouring forests.seedy, Our of darkprintersgrief place, arefrom where ISO you14001locals. can smell I thegave weed BBCcoming out of it Jeff downstairs in the albums part, and they were both very I loved the fact that I was in chargev of buying in the singles, on nights? Why?” He says, “Becauseteam I think and Nottingham bought back to life with HP Music Editors Photographers certified by the British Accreditation Bureau for The interview we didknowledgeable. pre-dated And the like most magazine, 19- or 20-year-olds back who inare reallythe because I had Nottinghamquite eclectic taste. I rememberaccess for to example republish needs the a reallyinterview cool little club, and just likehis the death Wag Club in London.” Natasha Chowdhury ([email protected]) Lewis Stainer their environmental management system. sauce, he writes for us now. He is very into music, I kind of knew my stuff. I used to buy what I thought Madonna’s first single Holiday. There was a great offer on it I said, “Brilliant, but what are you gonna do - close it and do it days when LeftLionPaul waswere Klotschkow quite web-only. cool records,([email protected]) and I approached what they thought were him quite outsidePete cool Zabulis from the rep: buymade one, get the one free. front I bought page shitloads of ofthe them, Evening up?” “No Post no no. Asand of tonight” countless - because itother washairy. a Friday night the Tourist Informationrecords. Centre in the Council House on a lunchbecause I knewmedia it was going too. to be Many massive. otherWe sold them journalists all or something rang -me “I’m renamingup to itget The Garage,quotes and Ifor want you all www.leftlion.co.uk/issue29 3 and made lots of money on them. I also liked being in charge of to come down”. “So what about all the regulars?” “Well, they’re break in late 2003. At first he seemed confused but he agreedbuying in the second-handarticles stuff. about My eclectic him collection and weowes evena lot not tried getting to in, it’sget gonna NCT be a newto thing.”name “So a who’s tram gonna be to answer a few questions,12 www.leftlion.co.uk/issue29 though he mumbled throughout and after him. They didn’t – but when the next lot come out we’ll try never stopped playing his instrument. Eventually, after about again. five minutes, he was tired of talking and so I left him alone. That was pretty much that - or so I thought... I was even invited to his funeral, which was a strange occasion. I was glad to be able to pay my last respects, but I felt a bit out To our amazement, the interview was picked up by bigger of place to be honest, as I didn’t know his family or friends who websites like b3ta and Popbitch. We suddenly had thousands of obviously had more to grieve about than I did. visitors to Leftlion.co.uk, and through this viral chain we started to realise just how well known he was across the whole country To me, Frank Robinson stands as a major symbol of Nottingham - mainly by people who had lived here and moved away. Within culture. We come across a lot of local bands and musicians at a month of first publishing the article, we’d received literally LeftLion and pretty much all of them have more talent than our hundreds of comments about him on our website. The last time Frank. But as he’s proved, if you practice hard enough people will I saw him, I put a printout of them (alongside with a sandwich) notice eventually.

www.leftlion.co.uk/issue29 7 MAY CONTAIN LeftEyeOn Brian Clough statue vandalised with Nottingham’s What’s been goin off raand Notts of late, through the lenses of uz local camera folk... It’s got to be an outside job, surely? Nobody from ‘Mr. Sex’, Al Needham the city would do such a thing. Stillman NOTTS I ain’t a fan of Clough or the statue but it’s out of April 2009-May 2009 order to muck about like that, The CCTV will get ‘um! Barnze April 1 Nottingham is still in the thrall of As much as football and anything to do with it Google Maps, the application that sends me numb with boredom, this is disgusting allows us to gaze anywhere in the and offensive to anyone from our fair city. A world and brings home the fragility shameful act that will plague them for the rest of and all-oneness of humanity as it their lives. clings to the planet. Except that we 44ton use it to gawp at prostitutes on Forest Road and check which houses in the It was bound to happen. I’m sure lots of people posh bits leave their back windows in Notts could think of better ways of spending open. Have you seen ‘Denis’, the £70,000 of taxpayers money... matriarch of Mansfield Road, flicking a Samyouwell V-sign at the Google car? Lovely.

Taxpayers money? Are you sure? I was under the April 9 impression that the money for the statue was A devastating blow to Nottingham raised through the ‘Brian Clough Statue Fund’ aka Culture, as it is announced that FHP – donations. the magazine that contained nothing Daysleeper but photos of Cheese Managers from Asda standing next to their wives The statue was funded by charitable donations. No and grinning like electrocuted chimps taxpayers money involved as far as I’m aware. at the opening of a crisp packet as if Jared their pointlessly meaningless husks of lives actually counted for anything If Cloughie was here he’d given them a good slap, – has folded. Right about now, there They wouldn’t do it again. are hairdressers standing stock still in Purple Jim Tantra, their faces set in a wild-eyed holidays. Mint idea. And here’s a suggestion to make it even more rictus, waiting to be photographed at the VIP launch of a new authentic: why not surround it with a crust of horribly depressing That’s the worst attempt at Kiss make up i’ve ever condom machine in the gents. Waiting there for a photo that will pubs, with gangs of lobstery meatheads shambling around outside seen. never be taken. Breaks your heart, doesn’t it? in sweat-ringed football shirts, grunting at each other and making ROB you ashamed to be British? Nah. Way too ambitious. April 15 Beach planned for the Market Square The two-minute silence for the victims of Hillsborough takes May 19 place in the Square, and it’s eerie as owt. I swear the sky darkened A couple of banjo-twangers from Kimberley go on trial for Upstairs in Wetherspoons is the perfect place to when it started, and all you could hear was the flapping of the flag beating up some poor sod on the bus after a heated discussion keep an eye on the kids while they’re paddling in at half mast and the beating of pigeons wings overhead. It was over the latest book by Richard Dawkins, particularly the claim the water. like Bizarro New Years Eve. that atheists should not be apologetic for or timid about their Ed beliefs, because atheism is evidence of a healthy, independent April 19 mind, uncowed by traditional though. Ha, not really – it was over It does seem pretty pointless to be fair. Yay sand in The world record for abject, non wind-assisted window-lickery a pink jumper someone else was wearing. I’d love to be around a city centre, that’s both original and exciting. Well is smashed on Forest Road when a Dad from Bulwell – obviously when they realise that they actually live at a girl’s name. I suppose it would be quite exciting of I was 10 worried that his 14 year-old son might be falling behind at school, years old, and I’d never been to another city centre or he might be Gay, because he’s made noises about being a May 20 in my life. vegetarian or starting to look a bit Emo – decides to sort him out The Brian Clough statue gets defaced. Surprise, surprise, the Alan by treating him to a slap-up prostitute virginity-losing session. culprit turns out to be everyone’s favourite mouth-breathing tag- Unfortunately, said prossie turns out to be an undercover police bitch, the contemptible Smokey. Here’s a suggestion – let’s put The more mad stuff in the Square, the better, I say. I officer, and Dad gets rightfully slapped on the Sex Offenders the statue on a pivot, so the God-Like Brian can headbutt the reckon we should all dress us as Mods and Rockers Register. And before any of your lot start braying that you wished worthless dangling of clag from the bumhole of futility into the and have a big pretend fight. you had a dad like that, imagine yourself trapped in a Ford Cortina ground, over and over again, until nothing remains but a puddle of Lord of the Nish at the age of 14, with your own father leaning over and saying congealed Mong. things like “Just gerrit up ‘er, youth” and “This is where I go when I’d love to be portfolio holder for culture, leisure your Mam gets on me wick”. Shudder. May 21 and communities! It seems all the job involves is The BNP, those cheeky scamps, are up to their usual japery. This brainstorming mad things to put in the middle of April 26 time they’ve sneaked flyers, containing the usual yitneyesque town. “Right, we’ve had an ice rink, ferris wheel, Carl Froch gives an American lad a tumpin’ in his own back yard bleating about Eastern Europeans wanting to take your jobs, only yoghurt village, zombies and Germans... how about in an amazing fight that keeps everyone watching TV at home in pausing on their dinner hours to gnaw at chopped hunks of your Captions - left to right from the top a beach?” Notts on the edge of their seats. Except it doesn’t, because nobody kiddies before giving your daughters a bit of what-for, into Pizza Seamus Flannery running a TV station in Britain thinks to screen it, preferring to Hut menus. Unfortunately, they rather spoil the effect by using an Hillsborough remembered show Kerry Katona: When Fat Kaylide Mams Attack The Drinks illustration of a Spitfire with Polish markings. Y’know, when they Old Marker Square MS - April 15 We should turn the square into the surface of the Cabinet, or suchlike. were helping us to fight the Nazis. (Lewis Stainer / Flickr: lewisphotography86) moon or something mildly original. South American Jungle? Egyptian themed? April 29 May 22 Parliamentary expense advisor visits Nottingham Alan No sooner do we start to slowly recover from the death of A young friend of May Contain Notts is informed by someone Day of the Dance - March 28 Selectadisc (and we devote a cover to it, which was the last thing at their local job centre that 1,400 people have applied for a (Pete Zabulis / Flickr: PeteZab) Are people visiting the city going to think that us that was left hanging in the window – pause to breathe on fingers manager’s job. At Greggs. Nottinghamers love our city so much that instead and buff them against lapel of school blazer) than two London 1940s Knees up of merely getting in our cars or booking flights, businessmen announce that they’ve taken over the name and May 24 Brewhouse Yard Museum - May 4 we decided to bring the innocent pleasures of the are reopening it. General rejoicing all round, but hang on – it’s not Notts is represented in Britain’s Got Nothing Better To Do on A (Pete Zabulis / Flickr: PeteZab) coastline to us? I sure hope so. going to really be proper Selectadisc, is it? That’s like me going Saturday Night Than Watch This Load Of Rammely Toss by a 73 Cookpassbabtridge around town with a carrier bag of blood vomit and calling myself year-old breakdancer from Sutton Bonington. Alright, so he’s not Hatch One Yates. Couldn’t they call it ‘Tekatune’ or summat? really busting wicked bad fresh moves in his chilly duds, but he Frame 186 of 365 frame animation by Annie Parry, Matt Watkins According to the organisers, when they did this in can do a forward roll, which is more than most people reading this and the audience. Part of Hatch Nottingham’s Hatch One event the nineties they used 50 tonnes of sand each time. May 6 piece can do... at the ropewalk - 5 May This year they’ll be using 300 tonnes. So it’s bound Once again, it’s Nottingham Two, London Nil Day – that annual See it at hatchnottingham.co.uk to be six times better than ever before! event when occurs when the last London team gets knocked out May 25 (Dom Henry / Flickr: domhenry) Mean of the Not Really For Champions League. All those teams, all that But, oh dear, it turns out that said superannuated B-Boy is money, all those players, all that tedious peacockery, and they still immediately exposed as being on the and claiming £70 a Morris Men Apparently Skeg are spending £8million tarmac-ing can’t come close to us. Ha. Ha. week for a badly leg. By the way, when I go on there and Amanda Some of the legions of real ale suppin, handkercheif waving folk their beach in a show of solidarity. Holden asks me what I’m going to do, I’ll say “I’m going to knock who converged on Nottingham for the Day of the Dance - March Christmasatthezoo May 8 off Les Dennis to get me face in the papers and then totally destroy 28 What a beautiful day, missus, what a beautiful day for the Royal him by slagging it with Rocky out of Boon. After all, that’s what (Pete Zabulis / Flickr: PeteZab) Concert Hall to tell Ken Dodd not to bother doing his Christmas you did to get on, duck.” show this year because his act is ‘repetitive’. Because everything you see, listen to and experience at Christmas is completely In his proper job, ‘Mr Sex’ tells you how to do thingy whatsit different year after year, in’t it? properly in his award-winning blog, www.todgertalk.co.uk, while his book about how to give someone a proper, er, wash, The Going May 13 Down Guide, is published in July. Only in America, though. The council announce that the idea of making the Market Square look like a beach resort is to be reactivated over the summer

4 www.leftlion.co.uk/issue29 www.leftlion.co.uk/issue29 5 LeftLeftEyeEyeOnOn What’sWhat’s been been going goin off raandaround Notts Notts of of late, late, through through the the lenseslenses of uzlocal local camera camera folk... folk...

FromCaptions top - left leftto right to from bottom the top right... Hillsborough remembered Old Marker Square MS - April 15 Hillsborough(Lewis Stainer remembered / Flickr: lewisphotography86) at the Old Market Square, April 15 Lewis Stainer (Flickr: lewisphotography86) Parliamentary expense advisor visits Nottingham Day of the Dance - March 28 A(Pete parliamentary Zabulis / Flickr: expense PeteZab) advisor visits Nottingham for Day of the Dance, March 28 Pete1940s Zabulis Knees (Flickr: up PeteZab) Brewhouse Yard Museum - May 4 (Pete Zabulis / Flickr: PeteZab) A proper 1940s knees-up at the Brewhouse Yard Museum, May 4 PeteHatch Zabulis One (Flickr: PeteZab) Frame 186 of 365 frame animation by Annie Parry, Matt Watkins and the audience. Part of Hatch Nottingham’s Hatch One event Frameat the 186ropewalk of a 365 - 5 frame May ‘live’ animation by Annie Parry, Matt WatkinsSee it at and hatchnottingham.co.uk the audience. Part of Hatch’s One event at the Ropewalk,(Dom Henry May / Flickr: 5 domhenry) Dom Henry (Flickr: domhenry) Morris Men Some of the legions of real ale suppin, handkercheif waving folk Realwho ale-supping, converged on handkerchief-waving Nottingham for the Dayfolk prepareof the Dance to shake - March it like28 a Polaroid, erm, tapestry. Day of the Dance, March 28 Pete(Pete Zabulis Zabulis (Flickr: / Flickr: PeteZab) PeteZab)

www.leftlion.co.uk/issue29www.leftlion.co.uk/issue29 55 Admit One dhp concerts No. 12345

19th July 2009 Wollaton Park

THE

IMELDA MAY THE RIFLES DOG IS DEAD 3 MUSIC STAGES COMEDY STAGE STALLS FUNFAIR BARS KIDS’ AREA City resident Non City resident Standard entry All kids £10 £15 £15 £30 Free 11-17yrs Adult 11-17yrs with NG postcode 10 years and under Available from Available from Royal Centre box office Available from www.alt-tickets.co.uk Rock City box office Royal Centre box office Royal Centre box office City Council leisure centres Rock City box office & Rock City box office Discount tickets available with proof of City of Nottingham residency or with Citycard. Citycard application to be completed at point of sale.

For more information TEXT: SPLENDOUR to 80800 or visit www.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/splendour July 4th sees the fifth anniversary of the passing of the one and only Frank Robinson. Al Needham attempts to pin down the reason he was so beloved in Notts … illustration: Hayley Donna Clarke · scored by: Michael Wetherburn · original composition: Frank Robinson

Five years. Is it really that long? Half a decade since we heard that sound? The magnificent cacophony of randomness that went; “Bing Bong Bing Bang Bong”?

If you weren’t here when Nottingham was under the rule of Xylophone Man, you missed out. Town hasn’t really been the same since. Here’s the story: at some point in the 1980s, a man in his late fifties from Cotgrave came to town armed with a child’s metallophone and a crate, which he plonked down outside the C&A on Lister Gate, and banged away on. At the same tune. Over and over again. First time you heard it, you swore blind that you knew it. You never did; it remained on the tip of your brain forever. Like the obsessed artist returning to the same canvas for one more splash until the paint was three inches thick, he chiselled away at his magnum opus until his dying day.

Nottingham being the big city with the small town attitude it is, it wasn’t long before he got a nickname (Xylophone Man, naturally – we’re not interested in poncy wordplay round here) and the rumours spread. He was a millionaire who had gone a bit mad. He was a musical extortionist who would target shops in town, banging away until the manager came out with By the time C&A had changed into H&M, he Axeman, who used to hang about the rack of made you smile. How many other people can a tenner. He was an undercover Fed. He was was already a civic treasure. I spent much of badges at Pendulum Records in Viccy Market you say that about? suspected of being everything but the thing this time away from Nottingham, and whenever and brag on to twelve year-old Mods about he actually was; a genial old chap bonging I got into conversations about where I came the chapter of Hells Angels he commandeered Now all that’s left is a memorial in the spot away on a metallophone and yelping along to from, 100% of people who had been there would (even though no-one has ever seen him on a where he regularly played. In a perfect world, himself with undisguised glee because, well, he say “Loved it – great shops, load of pubs, and motorbike). Cross-dressing ‘Denis’ still treats every fourth of July should be commemorated wanted to. And he carried on doing the same that bloke on the xylophone”. Whenever you Mansfield Road as his own personal catwalk, with us all gathering round it, armed with thing for almost two decades. came back to see your family, the first thing you and Whycliffe is still Whycliffe. kiddie xylophones, and starting a minute-long did was seek out the tinkly cacophony of mallet clatter of noise at noon. And here’s a thought; Which leads to the obvious question: was he on metal to remind you that you were home. None of them have ever come close to the there’s a reasonable chance that he will be mad? Well, you can’t hit the same bit of metal level of affection we had for Xylophone Man, the only person who lived in Notts during this for that long without not being a little bit So how come Frank Robinson hammered probably because he didn’t hassle us for decade that will be commemorated for future batchy, but on certain days, after coming out of his way so deeply into our hearts? After all, money (he seemed to be quite happy to do it centuries, and after all of us have long gone, your rammell job on a rammell day after a row Nottingham has never been short of ‘local for nothing), he didn’t tell us we were going to the time we spent on this particular part of with your rammell boss over some meaningless characters’. There was Mr Pope, the gentleman sizzle in Satan’s chip pan, and he didn’t pretend the planet – and all our travails, achievements, rammell, you’d see Xylo bashing away with a of the road who was allowed to sit in the he was something he wasn’t. In a city that, hopes, dreams and fears - will be represented smile on his face for some baccy money, and doorway of Selectadisc out of the rain (and like everywhere else, is becoming more and by an old man who never finished a tune wonder who the really mad people in town the stench from whom caused people to avoid more anonymous and unfriendly by the year, properly, whilst sitting on a crate outside C&A. were. entire letters in the record racks). There’s Xylo was someone that everyone knew, and How mint would that be? been a million Bible-bashers. There’s been everyone liked. You saw him in town, and he

Jared Wilson recalls an early coup for the ‘Lion, and a bemused old man who never realised how important he was. illustration: Chris Summerlin

As far as I know, I’m the only journalist that ever interviewed into his busking basket. Again he looked confused, but this time Frank Robinson - which still seems bizarre to me, as he was so rather pleased too. well known around the city. To this day I wonder why no-one thought of speaking to him before. After he died, the bigger local media picked up on both the story and the serious outpouring of grief from locals. I gave BBC The interview we did pre-dated the magazine, back in the Nottingham access to republish the interview and his death days when LeftLion was web-only. I approached him outside made the front page of the Evening Post and countless other the Tourist Information Centre in the Council House on a lunch media too. Many other journalists rang me up to get quotes for break in late 2003. At first he seemed confused but he agreed articles about him and we even tried to get NCT to name a tram to answer a few questions, though he mumbled throughout and after him. They didn’t – but when the next lot come out we’ll try never stopped playing his instrument. Eventually, after about again. five minutes, he was tired of talking and so I left him alone. That was pretty much that - or so I thought... I was even invited to his funeral, which was a strange occasion. I was glad to be able to pay my last respects, but I felt a bit out To our amazement, the interview was picked up by bigger of place to be honest, as I didn’t know his family or friends who websites like b3ta and Popbitch. We suddenly had thousands of obviously had more to grieve about than I did. visitors to Leftlion.co.uk, and through this viral chain we started to realise just how well known he was across the whole country To me, Frank Robinson stands as a major symbol of Nottingham - mainly by people who had lived here and moved away. Within culture. We come across a lot of local bands and musicians at a month of first publishing the article, we’d received literally LeftLion and pretty much all of them have more talent than our hundreds of comments about him on our website. The last time Frank. But as he’s proved, if you practice hard enough people will I saw him, I put a printout of them (alongside with a sandwich) notice eventually.

www.leftlion.co.uk/issue29 7 Rob Cutforth is now a British citizen, which now completely knackers up the title of his column, the selfish get

Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves! Dum dum something something hey gabba hey! Pip pip, tally ho, cor blimey, anorak, pass the spotted dick. Yes, it’s true, I am now a half-Brit. It’s a weird feeling to become a citizen of this country… erm, collection of states… kingdom… uh, whatever it is.

Maybe us half-Brits aren’t British enough to know exactly what ‘Great Britain’ is. Maybe it becomes clearer after a couple pints of Landlord, a sausage roll and a kiss. This certainly couldn’t be less helpful than the citizenship test. Don’t get me wrong, it has some great questions, but surely a question or two on what Great Britain actually is might be as important as the significance of April Fools Day or the make-up of a Christmas pudding.

I quickly learned that being a half-Brit has its own unique challenges. I had unintentionally sentenced myself to a life of inner conflict. I may have been a dirty, no-good foreigner before my citizenship ceremony, but at least I had known where I stood. I could rip into everything British without an ounce of guilt. It’s all changed now; as a half-Brit, I don’t know what to think anymore. Bloody foreigners, stealing our jobs… Oh wait, that’s me. Football is the greatest sport there is - if it weren’t played by the biggest bunch of blouse-wearing pansies on the planet. Walking through farmers’ fields is trespassing… no it isn’t, it’s my God-given right! Chas and Dave are talentless dicks. No, they’re simply misunderstood! Morris dancing is not an outlet for old, repressed gay men, it’s perfectly rational! Puns are funny! Marmite end of a couple bouts of Limey-shouting and on the site. Quite frankly, it lived up to my immigrant bashing. In fact, as I went back to tastes good! THE BEST BRITISH BEACHES ARE someone had stolen my bike. I’d even had a expectations. My favourite comments included the other comments on the site I’d read earlier, IN ALBERTA! ‘Why don’t you fook off back home?’ myself. I ones blaming the Hillsborough disaster on I noticed that for every racist chucklehead that hadn’t had one of those in ages. Needless to the Scousers, and pretty much every crime spouted ignorant crap on the site, there were Like everyone’s favourite schizo comic book say, I wasn’t feeling particularly British; in fact, committed in the city on immigrants. That ten people who condemned him. hero, Batman, I confronted my duality head-on. I was pretty disinterested with the country as latest stream of racist cack coupled with my I got in touch with my new-found Britishness a whole. recent experiences had brought me to the After about the twentieth comment chastising by venturing out amongst the British public conclusion that the average Nottinghamian was me, I explained that I was being facetious, I on St George’s (AKA ‘It’s okay To Be Racist’) It was with this attitude that I attended my nothing more than a witless, foreigner-hating apologised and reminded them that I couldn’t Day. I had barely stepped off the bus when I citizenship ceremony. I slouched, I looked at chav who made even the most backwoods be racist against Brits as I was in fact British overheard a bunch of yobs in shirts my watch and I didn’t sing the anthem. I took Alabaman hick look liberal. I’d had enough. myself. It might sound silly saying that it took dissing Canadian geese. Not because the birds the mick out of the other immigrants from a forum on a Nottingham news website to give are horrible hissing guano-machines (which Africa, India and China who were dressed In an article about a woman who was attacked me my first feeling of pride at being a half-Brit, they are) but because they’re foreign. Exact in their Sunday best. People who stood and on the tram (an article that didn’t mention but it’s true. It reminded me of the good things quote: ‘Fookin Canadian geese, why don’t they sung the anthem proudly, who immortalised the nationality or race of the perp at all), a about the people in this country; like the self fook off back home?’ The Canadian in me was every second by snapping pictures like meth- dude called ‘Dave’ wrote: ‘If Labour had not deprecating question I always get when I meet hurt. The Brit in me peed himself laughing. addicted paparazzi following Madonna’s latest of opened our borders to the world’s criminals a new Nottinghamian, ‘You’re from ? How many different races of people did they Malawian babynapping escapade. People who and misfits, and encouraged them to swamp Why did you come here?’ or the good natured have to go through before they got to hating were positively beside themselves with joy. The us, most of the attacks would never have raggings or the simple fact that despite the foreign geese? idiots. What are they so excited about? It’s only happened, including the one above.’ To which I whinging about this city and this country I do England, I thought to myself. It won’t be long replied: ‘I think Britain would be better off if we in this column, you still read it. God bless ya. The wild-eyed Canadian in me told me to punch until they get their very own ‘Why don’t you shipped 90% of the Brits out and replaced them his ignorant limey lights out, but the sensible fook off back home?’ all with Poles.’ I expected a number of racist It’s easy to forget how good the people here Brit in me (who sounds just like Brian Blessed) replies and had intended on outing them all in can be because (like any place) the dickheads said, ‘No no, dear boy. Confrontation with his This month I was really going to let you people the very column you’re reading. are always loudest. I felt like a jerk for ripping type will end poorly. Why lower yourself to have it. I was going to rant about how crap into my fellow half-Brits in the citizenship his level? It’s only a bloody goose after all’. I this country is in my column and I was going What I got was a major smackdown by a guy ceremony; they had the right idea. I should’ve figured, being that it was St George’s Day (and to go on the Nottingham Evening Post website called ‘Macca’ and a number of other posters been grinning like an idiot and snapping photos that the guy was massive), I would listen to and give you people a piece of my mind who pointed out how offensive my post was, myself. Brian. I’d had a particularly bad month with the directly. Before I wrote anything on the NEP as well as a number of posts slating Dave and www.canuckistani.com English public at large. In addition to my new site, I wanted to do some research so I lurked a bunch more expressing their frustration that goose-bashing friends, I’d been on the business for a while to see what people were saying many of the threads ended up in some kind of

8 www.leftlion.co.uk/issue29 Copper_LeftLion_AD.indd 1 18/5/09 14:40:17 JOHN HARVEY CRIME 101 He was one of the first people to publish Simon Armitage and Sue Dymoke when he formed Slow Dancer Press in 1977. His 101st publication comes out in June. He is a former University of Notting- ham lecturer and a devout Notts County fan. But most of all we love him for immortal- ising Nottingham through the -loving Polish detective Charlie Resnick. With Cold in Hand bringing a close to the series we caught up with the seventy-year-old author who has won more awards than his beloved County. words: James Walker illustration: Jenny Webber

You are predominantly known for writing the TV series and Lonely Hearts, with Resnick are far more important things to be concerned son as Resnick. As far as I was concerned, he crime, yet started out writing westerns... as a middle-management police officer along with. Nottingham’s reputation is much more was a pretty perfect incarnation of my character It was what the publishers were buying. It the lines of Hill Street ’ Frank Furillo. seriously damaged by the poor results of its and has helped when writing about him since, helped that my dad had taken me to every As the Resnick series developed I realised I schools or teenage pregnancy rates than by my because in my mind, he now has Tom’s face. western that ever played in north London when wanted to show something about inner city life books. I was growing up - and bought me the Buffalo at a certain time of change. Why did you decide to end the Resnick series? Bill Wild West Annual. Elmore Leonard said the How do you go about researching a After ten books I felt I was getting into a rut. reason he started writing crime fiction was that Violence is a big feature of inner city life in detective novel? Then, ten years on from Last Rites I felt ready the market for westerns dried up; if the market Cold in Hand. As it is based in Nottingham do My research is pretty minimal and mostly to write about Resnick again, mainly as I had a for crime dries up, maybe I’ll go back to you see it as a local or national problem? consists of reading the newspapers, local and story that was right for him, and the result was writing westerns. Amidst the spate of fatal stabbings that beset national, and, nowadays, doing a little rolling Cold in Hand. London last year, one was less than 150m from around the net. I do have a police contact, a se- Who has been an influence on your style? where I now live. The immediate area was re- nior CID officer from the Nottingham force, now You and Resnick share a love of jazz. How, My style probably - and hopefully - owes more cently designated an anti-social dispersal zone, retired, and it’s to him that I go with my queries why, when? to Hemingway than any other single writer, giving the police powers to move on groups of about procedure and he will read through all or There was a jazz club at school - just a bunch though I’ve tried hard to crib the art of dialogue more than three or four and return any under- part of a manuscript, trying to stop me straying of us sitting round listening to records - and from Elmore Leonard. William McIlvanney’s 16s to their home. Most afternoons, in addi- too far from the probable. then when I was about 16 we started going to Laidlaw, a police novel set in Glasgow, gave me tion to the normal community support officers, jazz clubs to dance and listen to the music and, a sort of green light, as did the Swedish crime there’s a transit full of regular officers parked Do you have a favourite literary detective? hopefully, meet girls. In those days, the mid- to novels by Sjowall & Wahloo. But really, all writ- outside the local mixed comprehensive - and a The American writer K C Constantine has writ- late-fifties, it was what you did. I played tea- ing - good writing - to a greater or lesser extent few weeks back someone chased a youth into ten a number of novels about Mario Balzic, a chest bass in a group at around that time affects what you do. the school playground with a sawn-off shotgun. police chief in a small industrial town, who is a and then started playing drums. Still scarcely So it’s not just a Nottingham problem at all. fully-realised character beset with personal and a day goes by without me listening to some The Resnick novels favour simplicity over, professional problems. He attempts to solve Thelonious Monk. say, the inner workings of someone’s mind... Is there a solution? these with honesty and dignity and ‘nous’, I don’t think using a simple style means you Some of the police activities described above and occasionally succeeds. Jamie Harrison’s You can invite any four people to dinner... can’t go into the inner workings of someone’s keep the lid on trouble and/or move it else- books about Jules Clement, the Sheriff of Blue Hard! The writer Thomas McGuane, whose mind, you just wouldn’t do it in the manner where. None of them touch the root causes. Deer, Montana, are funny and perceptive and as books I love and admire; the pianist and com- of Virginia Woolf. You might show it through Youths go around angrily demanding respect much about relationships and cooking as they poser Joanna MacGregor. The British abstract dialogue or external observation, for instance. because the society they’re growing up in are about solving crime. expressionist painter, Albert Irvin, whose work Nor do I think that a simple style means you affords them precious little, but, by the same I love and who has remained lively and open can’t have a complex narrative; I think, for token, some of them do little enough to earn it. What about on screen? into his eighties, finally another writer, Geoff instance, that the narrative of the new book, By and large, we’ve become a society that lives I love the character of Sgt. Valnikov as played Dyer, because his interests are so diverse and Far Cry, which moves between locations and by false values, whether you think those values by Robert Foxworth in Harold Becker’s 1980 film because he makes me laugh like no one else. time zones, is fairly complex. But I use a style are best epitomised by Jade Goody or Sir Fred from the Joseph Wambaugh novel, The Black that, on the surface at least, is relatively simple Goodwin or both. Despite Labour Party prom- Marble. With his eastern European background, Any advice to budding writers on our forum? because I think it’s most suitable for the kinds ises, the gap between rich and poor continues though Russian not Polish, he was quite influen- To paraphrase : read a lot, write a of stories I’m telling. Why use two words when to grow. tial in the development of Resnick’s character. lot, read some more. one will do? As you deal with crime, I was wondering how So why Polish for Resnick? Lonely Hearts kickstarted the Resnick novels; Nottingham City Council perceive your work? I wanted to find a reason for Resnick, though Minor Key is published in June where and when did you decide to write The last few times I’ve done readings in the brought up in Nottingham, being something by Five Leaves £9.99 about this character? city someone associated with the Council in of an outsider; the obvious presence of a large I’d just finished writing a series for Central TV some way has come along and asked if I didn’t Polish community in the city gave me a way of called Hard Cases, which was filmed in Not- feel some sense of responsibility towards the doing this. Far Cry was published in May tingham and dealt with a fictional probation city and the picture of it I was giving. If I have by William Heinemann £8.99 service team. It gave me the idea of doing an a responsibility it’s towards getting it right - as Were you involved in the screen casting of ensemble piece based in the city. Hill Street right as I can. But I’m writing crime fiction, not Resnick in nineties? John will be appearing at the Lowdham Blues was something of an inspiration behind sanitised brochures, and anyway, I think there Yes, I was involved in the choice of Tom Wilkin- Book Festival on Saturday 20th June.

10 www.leftlion.co.uk/issue29 Words: Michael Abbott a BILLION eyes Photo: David Blenkey On nottingham The world comes to town this June when Trent Bridge Cricket Ground hosts the 2009 ICC Twenty20 World Cup, bringing with it some of the world’s best cricketers. Michael Abbott checks his box in anticipation of the London toissue29,issue29, host matches for the Worldjune-july2009june-july2009 Cup, bringing with it more than £10m in revenue. biggest sporting event to hit Notts since Thirteen matches will be played at Trent Bridge throughout the tournament, including four Super Eights and a semi-final expected to have a mind-boggling 500,000,000 people staring Euro 96... into the former beer garden of the TBI through their tellies – a billion eyes on Nottingham.

There are also four warm-up matches starting 1 June, including England vs Scotland on 2 Trent Bridge has been synonymous with international cricket for more than 170 years, making June. Other top teams in action during the warm-up include Australia, Pakistan and South it the world’s third oldest test ground, and it is widely regarded as one of the finest cricket Africa. The group stages start on Saturday 6 June with India taking on Bangladesh at venues on the world stage – ask anyone not from round here about Nottingham and they’ll 5.30pm. There are two back-to-back matches on Monday 8 June and Wednesday 10 June invariably mention Robin Hood, Brian Clough and Trent Bridge. and four Super Eight matches (11 June and 16 June). The men’s semi-final will take place on Thursday 18 June. The main tournament is now sold out, but there should still be tickets left Looking around the new 17,000 seater stadium today, with its iconic floodlights and state- for the warm-up matches if you’re quick... of-the-art scoreboard, it’s a far cry from its humble beginnings when a cricket-mental chap called William Clarke married the landlady of the Trent20/20 Bridge Inn in 1838. Back then a VISION charming little meadow backed onto the grounds of the TBI and Clarke saw this as an oppor- Twenty20 explained in twenty plus 20 words tunity he couldn’t let go – within a year he was hosting matches in his all new purpose-built field, cunningly fenced off in order to charge admission.The THEfirst international CRICKET match to be It’sWORLD like one-day cricket, butCUP each team bats for a maximum of twenty overs each, with a few new played at Trent Bridge was in 1899 and, true to recent form, it ended in a draw between Eng- fielding and no-ball rules and penalties for timewasting. If the teams are tied, there’s a tie-break land and Australia. A few months later, Trent Bridge had the honourCOMES of hosting the TOfirst match NOTTINGHAM over. So it’s slogging a-plenty. of the inaugural five-match series between England and Australia, later known as The Ashes. This was the last test that W G Grace played in, just before his 51st birthday. Strangely, the The Groups only player ever to play at a greater age, Wilfred Rhodes, made his debut during this match. Group A Group B Group C Group D Over the best part of two centuries and almost 3,000 matches, the Bridge has treated fans India Pakistan Australia New Zealand to some right good action from some of the sport’s best players. The most famous local player was probablyQUESTIONMARC? Harold Larwood, the hard-nut fast bowler from Kirkby-In-Ashfield. He, Bangladesh/ GRAEME England SriPARK Lanka South Africa along with Woodhouse miner Bill Voce, scandalised the world of cricket during the Ireland Holland West Indies Scotland infamous ‘Bodyline’ tour of Australia whenXYLOPHONE they were instructed to bowl at the batsman, MAN not / JOHN HARVEY the wicket. This was a terrifying prospect for the batsmen who had never yet seen a cricket Groups E & F ball travel at over 90mphSPLENDOUR in the direction of their face. SHAKEDOWN Good lad. Although they were ANDdropped NOTTINGHAMTop two teams in each of the previous EVENTS groups in two groupsLISTINGS of four from the England team afterwards, they now have a nice pub named after them behind the ground. Group Matches Nottingham’s greatest player was – of course – West Indies master Sir Garfield St Aubryn Saturday June 6 Monday June 8 Wednesday 10 June Sobers (Gary to his mates), widely regarded as the best all rounder ever to take to the India v Bangladesh (6pm) Ireland v Bangladesh (1.30pm) Sri Lank v West Indies (1.30pm) crease. His list of honours is longer than Cloughie’s and includes the Wisden Cricketer of the Century, putting him on a par with Pelé and Ali. Everyone knows he was the first player to Australia v Sri Lanka (5.30pm) India v Ireland (5.20pm) whack six sixes in one over in a competitive game - he also held the highest ever test match score for thirty six years, with a 365 not out performance against Pakistan in 1958. Strangely Super Eights he was also born with an extra finger on each hand, which were removed as a child with Thursday 11 June Tuesday 16 June catgut and a knife. 1st Group S v 2nd Group A (1.30pm) 1st Group D v 2nd Group C (1.30pm) Only two years ago, Trent Bridge was facing a stark future when it lost out on The Ashes to 2nd Group B v 2nd Group D (5.20pm) 2nd Group D v 1st Group A (5.30pm) the new SWALEC arena in Swansea due to capacity issues. So, with help from Nottingham City and County Councils, Rushcliffe Borough Council and EMDA, more than £8 million was Semi-finals: raised to increase capacity with a new stand, floodlights, admin suite, press box and state of the art scoreboard. Now the future’s bright, with Trent Bridge being the only venue outside Thursday 18 June Winner Group E v Runner-up Group F (5.30pm)

www.leftlion.co.uk/issue29 11 Park Drive, Unfiltered words: Mike Atkinson photos: David Blenkey

Two years ahead of the fabled 1988 Summer Of Love, The Garage on St Mary’s Gate became one of the first clubs - hell, perhaps even the first club - in the country to specialise in house music, (almost) all night long. And its introduction had nothing to do with smiley faces, bandanas, MDMA-drenched Ibizan epiphanies, or any of that distracting flim-flam - and everything to do with the knowledge and enthusiasm of one particular music obsessive...

From late 1983 until the end of the decade, One day when I was in there, they said, “Somebody’s ill, can you to the fact that people would come in, a bit down on their luck, Graeme Park was Nottingham’s most pioneering, help out? It’s dead simple.” I knew it was dead simple, because and get rid of classic rock and pop albums. Stuff like The Doors, I used to work a Saturday job at a record shop in Scotland, so Love and all that late Sixties stuff that had gone out of fashion. most influential and best-loved club DJ, whose I started working there part-time, and when Mel left, I was I’d play them in the shop and go; “Wow, I actually get this band; residency at The Garage took a generation of put in charge of upstairs, which was brilliant. That was about I can understand why this is a classic album.” clubbers on a journey from early Eighties style- 1982-1983. Brian Selby - the original owner - had his office at pop to late Eighties garage and techno, via Bridlesmith Gate and would often pop out to make a cup of tea The other great thing was that they had a massive stock of cut- and ask what we were playing, so I got to know him really well. outs, which used to be the name for cheap imports from Europe. electro, hip-hop, rare groove, DC go-go, Chicago Brian used to have his own Northern Soul label. He was just We could sell those for a lot less than the proper British releases. jack tracks, and all points in between. And it all really into music, you know? He dabbled with restaurants as Brian had access to all these warehouses that stocked all this began in one little shop on Bridlesmith Gate… well. He had some sort of diner called Zuckermans at the top of stuff; Jim (Cooke, last manager of Selectadisc) and Brian used to Hockley. drive around in this Transit van to get stock. One minute you’d be serving people in the shop, the next minute Brian would be If it wasn’t for Selectadisc, I’d have never have been a DJ. running up the stairs: “Come on, we need you to help us unload I ended up in Nottingham more by luck than design, to be If it wasn’t for Selectadisc, the van.” You’d go downstairs, and he’d have got boxes and honest; I was playing in bands, signing on, and used to frequent boxes of the new Big Country album that had just come out and Selectadisc: both stores, on Market Street and the smaller one I’d have never have been a was flying off the shelves. on Bridlesmith Gate. Apart from the fact that it was slightly “ more friendly, Bridlesmith Gate used to have the second hand DJ I vividly remember the day that Brian walked in and said “Guess department upstairs, so I used to spend more time there. In the what I’ve just bought? The Ad Lib club.” And I’m like “that singles department was a guy called Mel, and then there was seedy, dark place, where you can smell the weed coming out of it Jeff downstairs in the albums part, and they were both very I loved the fact that I was in charge” of buying in the singles, on reggae nights? Why?” He says, “Because I think Nottingham knowledgeable. And like most 19- or 20-year-olds who are really because I had quite eclectic taste. I remember for example needs a really cool little club, just like the Wag Club in London.” into music, I kind of knew my stuff. I used to buy what I thought Madonna’s first single Holiday. There was a great offer on it I said, “Brilliant, but what are you gonna do - close it and do it were quite cool records, and what they thought were quite cool from the rep: buy one, get one free. I bought shitloads of them, up?” “No no no. As of tonight” - because it was a Friday night records. because I knew it was going to be massive. We sold them all or something - “I’m renaming it The Garage, and I want you all and made lots of money on them. I also liked being in charge of to come down”. “So what about all the regulars?” “Well, they’re buying in the second-hand stuff. My eclectic collection owes a lot not getting in, it’s gonna be a new thing.” “So who’s gonna be

12 www.leftlion.co.uk/issue29 Ours Was A Nice House, Ours Was Nottingham latched onto the house boom long before most cities but was too cool for smiley T-shirts, as Mike Atkinson recalls...

For me, it all began at The Asylum, in the opened up in the Lace Market: the legendary accordingly. One Friday night, a group of us sucking on bottles of Sol with wedges of lime autumn of 1982. Tucked round the back of Garage. showed up in less than cutting-edge apparel, stuck in the necks. Zhivagos in the Viccy Woolworths on Stanford Street, the basement only to be turned away at the door. ‘But we’re Centre tried a one-off acid night, but it didn’t venue had previously been a gay club called Back in the day, The Garage’s clientèle split interesting, creative, exotic people!’ I pleaded really work. The usual crowd turned up, aloof Whispers. As a hangover from those times, right down the middle, mingling only in the - not entirely seriously, but giving it a last- as ever, but obediently stuck their hands in it continued to sell little brown bottles of ground floor bars. Upstairs was for the togged- ditch shot none the less - ‘Oh, okay, you’d the air - because that was what you were poppers from behind the bar. ‘Avoid direct up trendies, downstairs was for the crimped better come in then,’ muttered the doorman, supposed to do, right? contact with the nose’, said the label - and so, and buckled Goths. Our gang liked it better remembering his brief. A couple of months knowing no better, we would hold the bottles upstairs, where Graeme Park mixed style- later, faced with the problem of sneaking Meanwhile, James Baillie had opened The at chin height, making vague wafting motions pop with funkier stuff, gradually nudging the in a mate-of-a-mate with a streaked mullet Barracuda on Hurts Yard, where Michael and wondering why nothing was happening. music policy towards the latter. By the middle and stone-washed jeans, I tried the same Murphy’s anything-goes ‘Queen Vic’ nights Ah, such innocent times. of 1985, the conversion was complete, with line again, with equal success. It was like became the stuff of legend (Abba’s Dancing the harder, tougher sounds of early Def Jam uncovering a magic password. Queen, in a cool club? It felt radical at the The Asylum wasn’t Nottingham’s first poser’s (Beastie Boys, LL Cool J) and Washington time). In the spring of 1988, Baillie and Murphy paradise - that honour would probably go to DC go-go now dominating Park’s dance floor. 1988’s fabled Summer Of Love might have upgraded to Eden on Greyhound Street, and the Saturday ‘futurist’ nights at Rock City Twelve months later, Chicago house hit The revolutionised the scene in London and in late 1989 Ballie’s Venus - housed in the - but it was perhaps the first club in town to Garage - and clubbing was never the same , but the acid house explosion same venue as the old Asylum club - brought adopt the ethos of London venues like The again. largely passed us by. Down at The Garage, clubbers of my generation full circle. Next Mud Club and The Wag. The music didn’t now re-branded as the Kool Kat, Graeme Park came the hazy hedonism of the nineties, but change much from week to week, but we were Entry was never guaranteed, though - for continued to ride the entire spectrum of BPMs: that’s a whole new chapter... happy with the familiarity of Blue Monday, this was also the age of style fascism, led by half an hour of hip-hop, half an hour of house, Buffalo Gals, Planet Claire by The B52s, The the fashion pages of The Face, Blitz and i-D. and back again. It wasn’t druggy, either - the Cure’s Let’s Go To Bed, Blancmange’s Feel Me ‘Dress up, dress down, dress sideways - but eccies didn’t make their empathy-inducing www.troubled-diva.com and Lies by the Thompson Twins. A year later, above all, dress’, ordered one of The Garage’s presence felt until the early nineties, and so as its allure began to dwindle, a new place posters, and the door staff had been instructed we continued to sulk in designer threads,

the DJ?” “Well, tonight, opening night, you’re gonna do it.” to Arcade to get the house, hip-hop and dance stuff. I had - and And I’m like, “Whoa, hang on a minute - I’m not DJ-ing!” And People were saying still have - eclectic tastes, even though I’ve become known for he says, “Come on - one of the reasons you work here is that you “Oh yeah, you’re really good”. mainly being a house DJ. Virtually all the records I played at the know your stuff, and you play in bands, so it can’t be that hard to “ Hacienda came from Selectadisc; I was DJing in Manchester, DJ.” Then he pretty much said that if I didn’t agree to do it then and had moved to London, but I was still doing The Garage and I wouldn’t be working in Selectadisc! I’d only DJed once before. They’d come in the shop I would always pop into the shop, where I’d obviously still get At school. For a laugh. My mate did a disco, and all he played and go “Ah, you’re the DJ at staff discount. In the late Eighties you still had bands like the was - Deep Purple, Richie Blackmore’s Rainbow, Blow Monkeys, who I used to love - they embraced club culture Rush, all that stuff. Nobody was liking it. So I went home, got The Garage”. It was then that and dance music. And let’s not forget New Order, who carried on all my new wave and punk records, and played them. Everyone working with club people and making 12-inch mixes. loved it, but I didn’t think: “oh, this DJ-ing lark’s great”. I just did I decided that I was really it because I knew that this guy was just not happening at the Unlike many DJs, I haven’t got rid of my vinyl at all. I’m 45-years- decks. gonna concentrate on it. old, I’ve been buying records since I was five or six, and the bulk of that collection is from Bridlesmith Gate. But the landscape’s So there I was, at The Garage, upstairs in this room where the changed now. I lecture part-time at a university in Wrexham on DJ box was behind the bar. Downstairs they had a guy called Round about that time, I was introduced to electro: Afrika” a music production degree: my students are in their late teens, Martin Nesbitt [the one and only Reverend Car Bootleg], who Bambaataa and The Jonzun Crew and all the early Arthur early twenties, and none of them buy physical product. They all played gothic, punk, dark stuff. Upstairs there was me playing Baker stuff. I’d play it in the shop, and think: this is great, this is buy their music online, and they all make music on their own. anything and everything. I was playing current stuff; there was fantastic. But Brian would say, “What’s this stuff you’re playing? They all just sit with their laptops, beavering away, whereas a lot of really great dancey pop stuff around like Orange Juice, I don’t like it. I don’t think we should be selling it.” He just didn’t at Selectadisc, people would go in there to buy something, get The Associates, and of course New Order, Talking Heads and get it. But I played it in The Garage, and it was just brilliant. into a conversation and end up being in a band. That stuff just Blondie. I was also playing lots of old Motown, Atlantic and Stax, Electro did irritate some people, but for every one person who doesn’t happen anymore. I suppose it’s all through , a bit of old disco, and it worked really well. This was long before didn’t like it you’d get three or four new people who did. And isn’t it? house music. Before I knew it, I was working there Wednesdays, then in ‘85, all the early Def Jam stuff was coming in, but again Fridays and Saturdays. I took to it like a duck to water. People Brian wasn’t keen on us stocking it. I had to keep working in the I still come to Nottingham from time to time. I still do gigs, and were saying “Oh yeah, you’re really good”. They’d come in the shop, and I wanted to play this stuff, but he wouldn’t let me buy my bank account is still in Nottingham. It was a big part of my shop and go “Ah, you’re the DJ at The Garage”. It was then that it in. So in my lunch hour, I had to go to Arcade Records. Then life. In your early twenties, you’re working out what you’re going I decided that I was really gonna concentrate on it. In a band came Roxanne Shanté, Big Daddy Kane, all the early hip-hop to do - and it was Brian Selby, Selectadisc, and The Garage that you have to lug all your equipment in your rented van, set it up, stuff. carved my path out. It was great, great times and it was a great do a soundcheck, play, take it all down, lug it back, and you were city, as well. lucky to end up with a fiver. By DJing three nights a week, I was In 1986, all the early house stuff started coming in from Chicago getting 75 quid a week extra, which I didn’t have to split with and Detroit: J.M. Silk, Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley, Farley Jackmaster anyone. Then Brian opened a place in called The Fan Funk, Derrick May, Rhythim Is Rhythim, all that stuff. I thought: Club, so we used to do a night over there as well. Obviously, my God, this is incredible! I had to give up working at the shop, working in Selectadisc meant I had access to all the new stuff because by then word had spread about what I was doing www.trustthedj.com/graemepark that came out, while Martin played lots of reggae and things like at The Garage and The Fan Club and I was doing nights in Sisters Of Mercy and The Cult, which of course Selectadisc sold. and Birmingham. It was impossible to do both. But the So it worked really well. shop was still important to me, even though I had to pop down

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- FRIDAY - THE STREETS MYSTERY JETS IDLEWILD - SATURDAY - THE CHARLATANS SAINT ETIENNE NOISETTES - SUNDAY - THE ZUTONS BON IVER JENNY LEWIS NEW BEAUTIFUL SOUTH THE AIRBORNE TOXIC EVENT ASH GRUNWALD BADDIES BEARDYMAN BROKEN RECORDS CHAIRLIFT DAN BLACK DANANANANAYKROYD DAVID THOMAS BROUGHTON DEVON SPROULE THE DYKEENIES EASY STAR ALL STARS EMMY THE GREAT FANFARLO FILTHY DUKES FIRST AID KIT FLASHGUNS FUTURE OF THE LEFT GOLDEN ANIMALS HORACE ANDY & ASHLEY BEEDLE HUGH CORNWELL IMELDA MAY JAMES YUILL JIM JONES REVUE JOHN SMITH THE CHEEK THE KABEEDIES KARIMA FRANCIS KID BRITISH MICACHU & THE SHAPES MR HUDSON MY LATEST NOVEL OI VA VOI OU EST LA SWIMMING POOL PORT O’BRIEN QEMISTS TEITUR WOODPIGEON YELLOW MOON BAND AND MORE ‘AN UNFAILINGLY HIP FESTIVAL’

DE MONTFORT HALL & GARDENS, LEICESTER TICKETS 0116 233 3111 OR SUMMERSUNDAE.COM words: Jared Wilson images: Questionmarc Punktuation Keeping their true identity under wraps is a priority for Questionmarc. Ever since he/she first came to public attention last Christmas by pasting up ‘urinate here’ signs all around the city centre, they have been wanted for questioning by Notts police. So before you ask… no, we don’t know who it is. However, unlike the Feds, we managed to fire some questions to them over via email… Are you originally from Notts, then? Does the relatively recent development of graffiti towards Do you want to change people’s behaviour or just get their I was born here, yes. street logos, stickering and stencils signify that it is becom- attention? ing more premeditated, subtle, artistic and design-led? Well, the attention always leads to discussion which I’d like to Your work deals with a lot of issues and negative messages I think a lot is already very design-orientated and I personally think in turn contributes to change in some way. Even if it’s just relating to Nottingham. Would we be right to assume this is love the thought and subtleties that lie within them. I believe it a change in the way someone thinks about a particular subject born out of a love for the city in the first place? is this that makes them successful. After all, anyone can throw matter. Absolutely. Nottingham is my home, it’s a great place and I paint up onto a wall. love it here. I want visitors to the city to share my opinion, but There are thousands of pranksters and street artists in the there are a lot of strange restrictions that prevent this from What do you think to legal graffiti sites? Do you use them? world, yet only a small few who are incredibly famous - happening. For example, I went to the Castle grounds a few I think the walls by themselves are nothing. It’s the fantastic Banksy, Shepard Fairey in the US, etc. Do you think you’ve weekends back and had to pay to get in. My council tax goes to community projects that surround them in which their success actually got anything in common with those? the upkeep of the place and I’m not even allowed to see it! lies. They are great for nurturing talent and helping to point The general public have only ever heard of Banksy, which is kids in the right direction in life. I have never used one - which why people draw comparisons. He has done some amazing So what made you want to do street art? probably now makes me sound like a hypocrite - but when it work and is a very talented artist. Shepard Fairey is also very I do it because I believe art in all its forms should be freely comes to street art, the location is often as important as the cool - my Mother Goody piece was loosely inspired by his style available for all to enjoy. Most art is restricted to galleries piece itself. - so it would be right to see similarities along the way. However or museums and many of these cost money to get into. This there are plenty more artists out there that you should check immediately deprives a huge number of people the chance to “Smashing a window or kicking out too. I’m constantly blown away by works from all over the enjoy the work inside. Street art is a way of knocking down world which can be seen daily on a great website called The those walls for people that wouldn’t normally have the chance down a fence is vandalism. Wooster Collective (www.woostercollective.com). to experience it first hand. Raising a smile or a good point What do you get up to when you’re not running around Not- How close have you been to getting caught while doing a tingham in the early hours? piece? through an imaginative use of I enjoy ice skating - it’s fantastic having the National Ice Centre I’ve had a few close shaves, but all in all I have been pretty practically on my doorstep. But I recently buggered my knee lucky. It never fails to amaze me how most people don’t even public space is creativity” which has left me out of action for a while. bat an eyelid when you’re sticking a six foot high painting to a wall. What one piece would you love to do, if you had the money, How does Nottingham look at 3am in the morning? opportunity and diplomatic immunity? Pretty awful, to be honest. If it’s a weekend, the roads are usu- Would you agree that most of your pieces are fish-in-a-barrel I’d like to modify the clock in Big Ben to go backwards like in ally filled with kebab leftovers, bottles, urine and vomit. Credit targets - parking fees are bad, Jade Goody being deified, etc? Benjamin Button. I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of where it’s due though - the council do a good job of clearing it I don’t know of a single person that doesn’t get irritated by time control, even if only as a metaphor. It would have to be up before the sun rises. But no, it’s not a pleasant place to be at parking tickets, therefore the concept was likely to get the done illegally, although if I had enough money I could probably such an hour. appreciation of the majority. But I think most of my other work get granted permission to do it. But where’s the fun in that? is less so - even the Mother Goody piece was a far more taboo How significant might it be for you to be a woman - if, as subject at the time. What would you say to people who complain that you’re a some have suggested, you are - working with street art? vandal costing the taxpayer money? Gender shouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference and it Are there any pieces around in Nottingham that haven’t Smashing a window or kicking down a fence is vandalism. actually annoys me to think that it might. been discovered yet? Raising a smile or a good point through an imaginative use of Not at the time of answering these questions, unfortunately. public space is creativity. Besides, most of my work is simply What’s your fancy dress costume of choice? put up with paste, so leaves no lasting damage. There have of Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. What’s the difference between you and someone like course been a few incidents where the council have scrubbed Smokey, the local tagger who got sent down recently? off my spray paint which in turn has been at a cost to the tax Anything else to say to LeftLion readers? I have never really been into the whole tagging thing. That’s payer. But why isn’t this money being used to remove all graf- Buy local produce and support local shops. Finally, I’d love to not to say I don’t appreciate it. There’s a guy called Tox in Lon- fiti? Those Smokey tags we mentioned earlier are still littered see more artwork on the streets of Nottingham as it can be a don who has managed to get his name in some unbelievably around the city - including one right outside my house. If I very dull place at times. Join me! impossible places, which I find pretty impressive. make a valid point it gets removed, yet other people’s graffiti is allowed to stay for some reason.

15 www.leftlion.co.uk/issue29 Driven Up The Wall The verdict on Questionmarc, from assorted Notts arty types

My initial reaction to the Mother Goody posters was one of slight ennui at the familiar ‘one-liner’ approach that perpetuates in street art of this nature. Most people will recognise the ‘pop’ references to Warhol in Jade’s Marilyn Monroe-esque hot pink lips (which leap out from her demure disguise) and the temporal nature of the screen-printed flyposter: here today, gone tomorrow, just like the latest media- nominated celebrity. There is nothing particularly original in this brand of satire - there are obvious comparisons to be drawn between an earlier Questionmarc artwork involving ‘legal to pee’ signs (which earned the Once You Pop… artist the nickname ‘The Phantom Piddler’) and the famous Banksy spoof ‘It’s generally believed that once you start carrying weapons, it’s very hard to put them down. Nottingham seems of National Highways Agency ‘designated graffiti area’ signs spray- to have a reputation in the media for gun crime, so what better place to display this image?’ painted onto walls in various hotspots around London, complete with Castle College, Maid Marian Way NG1 6GE - lasted four days Parking Fines ‘An artistic representation of the modern city landscape. Parking tickets are a form of legalised littering and Nottingham is convincing ‘official’ crest. practically yellow with them. Fortunately mine wasn’t at the expense of a poor single mum who was late by twenty seconds.’ High Pavement, NG1 1HN - lasted five days Questionmarc does, however, seem genuinely motivated by frustration with media-hype and the perceived injustices she (allegedly a female) identifies in her home town and this makes her a genuine public-spirited renegade. The campaign to increase public toilets in the city centre is normally one led by pensioners with weak bladders and a concern for public dignity, so the fact that the issue was highlighted by a media- savvy street artist is a surprising, sincere and generous act. Questionmarc’s humorous attempts to stimulate debate and opinion- forming amongst a normally apathetic public are applaudable.

Abi Spinks Public Urination Assistant Curator, Nottingham Contemporary ‘These fake signs were put up to remind Nottingham that there are so many pubs in our I have been lucky to see a few bits of her work. They are well rendered city, but nowhere to urinate at chucking-out and show good choice of locations, although sadly, due to the high time.’ visibility, spots don’t last very long. The subjects chosen provoke debate, Various places in Nottingham city show a good sense of humour and make some nice social comments; my centre - lasted up to seven days favourite bit of work so far being the ‘Twitter’ paste-up. For me street art is about doing something without limitations, adding something to the street, making people smile and think, causing a reaction. Even if people hate it, at least it’s causing a reaction and giving them a break from the usual corporate advertising we see everywhere. Look forward to seeing more!

Neighbourhood Nuisances Kid30 ‘It annoys me to see the council spending Graffiti Artist, Smallkid Design money on crap advertising campaigns that are supposed to make you feel safe. They do not. If What do I think of Questionmarc? It’s all in the name really. As an artist somewhere is safe, you don’t need to be told this they obviously aim to question and to leave their mark. This kind of work, by a sign. This was both a stab at the signs and whether you want to describe it as street art, has a sense of humour that a stab at the fact that community protection will hit a chord with some and rub others up the wrong way – especially officers don’t really seem to do a lot. I was re- the authorities. So like all art, it’s subjective. cently moved on by a CPO for quietly sitting on the Market Square steps next to the left lion as I I find art like this - sometimes subtle, sometimes overlooked waited for a friend. “You’re not allowed to sit on appearances into everyday life that can in some way change the way we the steps any more.” “Why?” “You’re just not”.’ look at things – exciting. I like the fact that people can walk past things Bus stop, Ilkeston Road, NG7 3GD - still exists and not notice them (I have never seen a Questionmarc artwork ‘in the flesh’) but others may notice something different on a journey they take every day. For me the real genius in Questionmarc’s work comes through the website. This adds the cult value where followers can sign up to Mother Goody email alerts, blog their comments online, learn how long an artwork ‘Jade’s funeral plans had the same feel as Princess Diana’s, which I think is kind of scary considering she didn’t lasted and even go and seek out locations where they were. The thing really do much. The piece depicted her as a Mother Teresa figure - which is exactly what she had seemed to that makes Questionmarc’s art work is people’s reactions to it, and in become in the eyes of the public thanks to the PR company that managed her.’ Where’s Robin? that way they are no different to any other artist. So what does St Mary’s Church, 12 High Pavement, NG1 1HN - lasted up to eight days ‘I did this after the local headline that Nottingham was falling off the ‘tourist map’.’ Questionmarc’s art represent? It gives us something to think about, if Lace Centre, Castle Gate NG1 7AS - lasted five days only for a few moments, and something for the Council to clean up.

Frances Ashton, Arts Editor, LeftLion

LeftLion would like to remind you all that graffiti is against the law, apart from in designated areas, etc etc. For more information, contact Working Men’s Club Twitter [email protected]. ‘This either represents sexual discrimination or a sign of changing times depending on how you want to perceive it.’ ‘I thought I’d try and grasp the whole Twitter concept by sharing with the world exactly what I was doing at that particular Arnold Working Mens’ Club, 151 Front Street NG5 7ED - lasted 15 minutes time. I still don’t get it.’ Bromley Place, NG1 6HL - still exists www.questionmarc.co.uk More interviews with artists at www.leftlion./co.uk/art 16 www.leftlion.co.uk/issue29 17 www.leftlion.co.uk/issue29 www.anthonypeskine.com www.tether.org.uk

What is the underlying theme of your work? What kind of art do you make? My work is about trying to live through promises and being disillusioned by having to I endeavour to make beautiful, exciting, abstract paintings. My work exhibits an em- live through broken promises. The fact there is so much disappointment in the work is phasis on surface texture, layering and visual depth, where colours and that it’s based on promises, the promises in adverts, and in religion and pretty much amalgamated forms jostle and surge in competition. My paintings borrow from a wide everywhere. The promises that surround us, I’m just trying to fulfil them and by making range of sources for inspiration and focus loosely upon my experiences of city living, in these artworks I realise it’s just not possible, so from the promises comes terms of form and colour. disillusionment. What are the advantages of being a Nottingham artist? What’s your favorite colour? There is a lot of support available in Nottingham for emerging artists. Not being from Orange. the city originally, it’s been vital for me to find people with whom I can network, and belonging to Tether studios has been instrumental in this. Being part of a thriving arts What’s the best exhibition you’ve ever been to? community is one of the most important things that an artist can do, as it not only In The Darkest Hour May There Be Light, curated by Damien Hirst at the Serpentine opens doors, it creates a sense of belonging and can be extremely rewarding. Apart Gallery in Hyde Park. from that, Nottingham is a vibrant city, with loads going on, and this in itself can be very inspiring. If you could be any other artist, alive or dead, who would you be? The Gorrilaz, all at once, because they don’t exist and are quite successful. What’s your favourite colour? My favourite colour has been purple for as long as I can remember. Favourite subject other than art? Pop music and supermarkets.

www.tether.org.uk www.egb7.com

What kind of art do you make? Ladybird book science projects, geeky electronics, short films, 2D animation, mu- sic, photography, LP sleeves, posters and sketchbooks.

What’s the best exhibition you have ever been to? Janet ’s Forty-Part Motet at the Millennium Gallery in Sheffield in 2004. The What kind of art do you make? piece was a forty-channel playback on individual speakers of a choir performing I make drawings and paper sculptures through which I try to articulate my fear of the Spem in alium by Thomas Tallis. The arrangement of the gallery allowed for you to mysterious internal workings of my body. wander freely, hearing individual voices from each speaker close up, or to stand in the centre of it all in awe of the huge polyphonic sound being created. Every part What’s the best exhibition you have ever been to? of the work served a functional purpose as well as possessing a stark sculptural Aberdeen University has an amazing historical anatomical model collection – with some presence in the space. It was an incredibly successful piece of contemporary art. incredible objects up there, such as giant Victorian papier maché snails and fleas which you can take apart and look inside. Biology was the one science subject I enjoyed at What’s your favourite subject other than art? school, but I was too squeamish to take part in dissections. They also have a collection Definitely film. I love the experience of the cinema, I find the format so alluring. My of beautiful glass jellyfish made by Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka, who made costume favourite director is Kenji Mizoguchi – The Life Of Oharu is genius. jewellery and glass eyes for wealthy clients in the 1880s. I love that crossover between www.egb7.com slightly squeamish and highly decorative. I think they’re amazing both as learning tools and as fantastical objects.

Tell us about a recent project … This issue’s Artist Profiles has been curated by Liam Aitken of the Tether studio I’ve got a group show coming up at the old Angel Row Gallery in Nottingham (9-23 July). Finishing the work for this is my main priority at the moment and is giving me many group. A collective started by Nottingham Trent graduates in July 2007, Tether is sleepless nights! I am making a series of large paintings on paper which imagine what a creative hub for Nottingham artists to convene within the city centre. The artists would happen if my insides suddenly made themselves visible on the outside. selected are either studio members, artists who have exhibited at Tether’s Wasp Room gallery or are otherwise affiliated with the group.

18 www.leftlion.co.uk/issue29 Rachel26 June - 19 July Reupke 2009 Preview 25 June 6 8pm

Forthcoming Gallery Projects: East International Showreel 23 July 6 9pm Dan Ford 7 30 August

1 Thoresby Street +44 (0)7786257213 www.mootgallery.org Nottingham NG1 1AJ +44 (0)7771866822 [email protected] LEFTLION featured listing LISTINGS JUNE-JULY 2009. SPLENDID! TICKETS ON-LION

Buying tickets for events in Notts? From the latest DJs at Stealth to the latest bands at venues like Seven and The Rescue Rooms, you can get them all through our website, at no extra cost. Even better, thanks to our partnership with gigantic. co.uk, every time you buy one through us some of the funds will go towards LeftLion and a bit more goes to those nice folks at Oxfam. www.leftlion.co.uk/tickets

FESTIVAL SEASON

From local faves like Splendour and Download at Donington (featuring the immortal Faith No More) to the further away greats like Latitude, Bestival, Beatherder and Glastonbury. We didn’t have space to fit all our summer festie recommendations into the mag, but for a full round-up check out www.leftlion.co.uk/festivals photo: Dom Henry, Splendour 2008 The summer festival scene finally kicks off, but you don’t have to travel to another city, TOURING BANDS spend hundreds of pounds on tickets and hours pitching a tent, only to go to the toilet in As always there’s a great selection of live a small plastic box that stinks like Jeff Capes’ jockstrap, says Glen Parver… music to be found nearer home - Athlete, Jarvis Cocker, Jamie T, UFO, Thin Lizzy, Instead you can get your festie fix by simply catching a bus and Bombin’ The L. From there they released four more Therapy?, Aqualung, Neil Young, Taskforce, to Wollaton Park. For the measly price of £30 per adult (or the studio albums and a Greatest Hits compilation. They still love Boyzone, De La Soul, LA Guns and even more bargainous £15 if you have an NG postcode), you can touring and are always a fun band to see live. spend a day out in the sun, watch some great acts and then go Thunder. Favourite mad band names this home to your creature comforts afterwards. Splendour is the Imelda May month include Ghouls Garden, Turbowolf, brainchild of Nottingham City Council and - in our opinion - a An Irish female vocalist who has shared the stage with the 12 Gauge Facelift, Kid Harpoon, We Were fantastic use of our council tax (and they also make a bit of likes of , Elton John, Elvis Costello and Scissor Promised Jet Packs, Napoleon 3rd and The money back, too). This year’s line-up includes… Sisters. Imelda has released two studio albums (No Turning Age of Stupid. Back and Love Tattoo) and was voted best Irish female at this Madness years Meteor Music Awards. Madness first formed in 1976 as The North London Invaders, and went on to dominate the eighties with songs like One Step The Rifles Beyond, Baggy Trousers and It Must Be Love. During the first Straight outta Chingford, The Rifles were inspired to form a six years of that decade alone they spent a record 214 weeks in band at an Oasis concert in Knebworth. So far they’ve released the UK singles charts. After a long break, they reformed in the two albums - No Love Lost (produced by Lightning Seeds’ Ian LOCAL VOCALS nineties with a series of festival-sized gigs known as Madstock Broudie) and Great Escape. to more than 75,000 people per time in Finsbury Park, London. As well as our appearance at Splendour, Apparently during the stomp frenzy of One Step Beyond, several Kid British LeftLion continues its residency at local residents reported an earthquake to the police. Let’s hope According to , these guys are ‘the best new band Brownes for the next two months with Wollaton residents keep a watchful eye over any ornaments... in Manchester’. Varying between and indie in style, their Fists (see page 21) and Swimming (page debut album It Was This Or Football was released on Mercury The Pogues Records earlier this year. 22) performing in June, and Nottingham Nottingham’s first chance to see Shane MacGowan’s new School of Samba and Karizma (TBC) lined gnashers! Yes, everyone’s favourite Irishman of many words Dog Is Dead up for July. After that we’re having a break and few teeth has actually gone and got himself a whole new The hot young things on the Nottingham music scene - and from the monthly nights for a while, so get set of dentures. Of course, there’s more to The Pogues than just when we say young we mean young. They’re barely old enough yourself down to one of them while you their wreckhead of a frontman. The rest of the band include to legally buy a drink in a pub, yet their mix of pop and nu jazz still can - free entry to all. tin whistle player Spider Stacy, guitarist Phillip Chevron and has brightened up many a live venue. bass player Darryl Hunt, who spent over a decade living in Nottingham after studying fine art here in the seventies. With In addition to all this there will be a comedy stage at the We’d also like to give a shout out to venues hits such as Fiesta, A Pair of Brown Eyes and Fairytale Of New festival (line-up to be confirmed, but expect some fresh local like Seven, The Old Angel and The Maze York under their belt, The Pogues’ gigs are known for their hard- and national acts), a funfair, stalls and a kids’ area. Plus, it goes for consistently giving local bands a playing, hard-drinking and hard-jigging shows. Q Magazine without saying that LeftLion will be heavily involved in the chance to impress - look out for the Notts listed them as one of the fifty bands you have to see before you festival again this year, representing in the Courtyard with a In A Nutshell nights at the latter during die. Now’s your chance. selection of the finest local talent you’ll have seen since, well, when we did it last year. the next two months... Fun Lovin’ Criminals In the early nineties Hugh Morgan (aka Huey), Brian Leiser (aka Discounted tickets for city residents (£10 for 11-17 year olds and Fast) and Steve Borgovini (aka Steve-O) all worked together at £15 for 18+) can be purchased from Rock City, the Royal Centre For even more listings, check our a club in New York and decided to form a band, covering for any and City Council Leisure services. Just bring some identification regularly updated online section acts that didn’t show up. On one of these nights, an executive confirming your NG postcode. Standard entry tickets (£30 for from EMI was in the crowd and offered them a record deal. Fast adults, £15 for 11-17 year olds) can be purchased at the same at leftlion.co.uk/listings. forward a couple of years and they released their debut album venues and through LeftLion at www.leftlion.co.uk/splendour. Come Find Yourself – a mix of rock, hip-hop and lounge music. It Kids under 10 get in free. And if your event is still not in there, flopped drastically in their home country and they were about spread the word by aiming your to be dropped from the label when suddenly and surprisingly it Splendour Festival, Wollaton Park, Sunday 19 July 2009. took off over here due to hits like Scooby Snacks, King Of New www.splendourfestival.com browser at leftlion.co.uk/add. 20 www.leftlion.co.uk/issue27www.leftlion.co.uk/issue29 nottingham event listings... for more: leftlion.co.uk/listings

Monday 01/06 Friday 05/06

Band Of Heathens Human Beatbox Championships The Maze The Rescue Rooms The Moot Gallery £12, 7.30pm £8 adv, 8pm Taskforce live, Stig of The Dump. Back open for business this summer Metronomy The Rescue Rooms Diplo If you’ve been wondering why the listings section has been a £10, 7pm Stealth bit Moot-light of late, there’s a very good reason - for the past £10, 10pm few months they’ve been moving lock, stock and canvas to Wonky Pop Tour With Jack Beats and Riva Starr. an old four storey mill and former Boots warehouse located Stealth on the corner of Pennyfoot and Manvers St on the fringes £7, 7.30pm GBH of town. It’s already shaping up to be a vast improvement Example and Flamboyant Bella. Seven over the old space – there’s a brand-new and much improved £8, 9pm studio facility for Stand Assembly and an extra gallery on the

Tuesday 02/06 NOISE* presents ground floor. Jamcafe Djangology Live Free, 8pm The paint won’t be fully dried on the new place until early The Hand and Heart 2010, but that’s not getting in the way of its 2009 programme, Free, 8pm DJ Arkeye Presents which kicks off in late June with a solo exhibition by London- Rachel Reupke. Now Wait for Last Year. 2007 9’ 20”, The Maze based artist Rachel Reupke. Building on her previous col, sound, digital video. Courtesy the artist. Notts In A Nutshell £tbc, 8pm involvement in Moot projects last year (Digital Broadway, The Long Take, Zoo art fair), Moot will be commissioning The Maze With Spam Chop and Arkeye. entirely new work for the show, marking a change in direction for the artist - her current practice is video-based and £3, 8pm typically features meticulously crafted video work created through layers of still images and film, but this the artist will General Public Chemistry Set, The Wholesome Fish Murdocks, Angryman, Twisted Kite be using the space to the max with an ambitious large-scale sculptural installation that should catapult Moot back to Deux the forefront of the local arts scene. and Curtis Whitefinger Ordeal. £5, 9pm

The Shanklin Freak Show Rachel Reupke, June 26 - July 19. Preview June 25, 6-8pm Seven Saturday 06/06 Moot Gallery, Unit 3, The Factory, Dakeyne street, Sneinton, NG3 2AR. £4 / £5, 8pm http://www.mootgallery.org Plus The Whores. Tyketto The Rescue Rooms £15, 7pm Wednesday 03/06 Saturday 06/06 Sunday 07/06 Thursday 11/06 Cult DnB Sessions - Kasra The Age Of Stupid Muse Back to Basics Tasty Morsels Mechanical Evolution album The Maze £5, 10pm - 3am The Maze The Maze launch day 1 Free, 7.30pm £tbc, 9pm £3, 8pm Maze

Arse Full of Chips Plus The Limits. Free, 7.30pm Thursday 04/06 Rock City Breakage Dead Soul Nightmare and The £3, 10pm The Bodega Boyzone Little Imp, Bonus Beyond, No Po’Girl £6, 10pm Nottingham Arena Sheep in Mongolia, Benji, Bonus The Maze The Old Nick Trading Company with support from Geiom. £32.50, 7.30pm Beyond, Fury Kuri and Autonomy. £12, 7.30pm The Hubb Plus The Carrivick Sisters. Free, 9pm Dan Britton Buster The Drones and Snowman Phil Jackson, Dave Deux Southbank Bar The Bodega Radar with live guests Ou Est Sidebottom and Tim Disney. £3, 9pm Free, 7pm £7, 7.30pm The Bodega Plus Andy Griffiths and David Wyatt. £3, 10pm Dogs D’Amour The Acme Jazz Band Middle Class Rut Seven Deux Rock City

Chris Ward £11, 8pm Sunday 07/06 Free, 7pm - 9pm £6.50, 7.30pm

Southbank Bar The Northwestern Free, 7pm Djangology Roth Notman The Bodega The Malt Cross Monday 08/06 Nottingham Playhouse £6, 8pm Martyr Defiled £3, 8pm £10 / £12, 8pm De La Soul Seven Mela 21 Rock City £4 adv, 8pm The Smears album launch Roy Stone Old Market Square £18.50, 7.30pm Plus Save The Last, I Call Shotgun The Chameleon Cafe Bar Southbank Bar Free, All day and Twisted Whistle. £tbc, 6pm Free, 7pm White Belt Yellow Tag The Bodega £6, 7pm Friday 12/06

Acoustickle Rigbee Deep The Maze Alley Cafe £2 / £3, 7.30pm Free, 8:30pm - 1am A RightHandful Beswick and Lance, Louis Cypher, With Minister Hill, Nowhere Ill Citizen, Liam O’Kane, Jody Common and Jah Bunndy. Fists are playing alongside Swimming at the LeftLion Presents night on 19 June. Frontman James Betts, Sam Wilson, Dave Anderson, Conway had a natter with Paul Klotschkow about this and that… Solomon Smith, David Apple, Gaz Chester French and James playing a chair.. The Bodega What was your first gig like? £6, 7pm

It was a rock all-dayer in Corby. A metal band called New England headlined. I headbanged for 12 hours solid Tuesday 09/06 because I didn’t know what else I was supposed to do. I went to school Farmyard Presents Moog the next day with my neck muscles so ruined that I couldn’t lift my head House of Brothers and Jonquil Free, 8pm - 1am up. The school thugs pinched my neck all day. The Bodega Stiff Kittens DJs and live bands tbc. £5, 8pm What has been Fists’ favourite live experience? Hoodoo 2nd Birthday - Adam The chaotic ones, where we still manage to play decently. Friends of ours Wednesday 10/06 Freeland and Miles Dyson got married recently in this stately home - we spent ten hours beforehand Stealth getting on the free booze and then played Proclaimers and Johnny Cash John Wesley Harding £10, 10pm The Rescue Rooms songs whilst a gang of businessmen charged around in a conga line for Kap Bambino and Radiant the rest of the night. Oxjam last year at the Broadway was great. There £10, 7.30pm Dragon was a palpable sense of anticipation which we’d never really had before. Greg Attonito The Chameleon Cafe Bar Rock City £6, 9pm And the worst? £8, 7.30pm A gig in Birmingham. The sound guy was clueless. He didn’t know how to work a DI box so criss-crossed wires The Shakes all over the stage a foot in the air instead. It was like a Crystal Maze challenge. We ended up kicking water Ravetrent and Tektonik Jamcafe over the headlining bands’ gear. Everyone in the room hated us because they were there for them. A few days Stealth Free entry, 8pm – late

later we got an e-mail from their drummer filled with all this nonsensical legalese about drumming for Roni £4, 10pm Oeuvre Presents... Size and professional practice, which somehow qualified him as a lawyer. The Troubadours Igloo The Bodega Free, 11pm If you could put on a festival locally, where would you stage it and what local acts would you have £5, 7pm playing? Mechanical Evolution album A big, well-organised house party event. Like the Hockley Hustle, but in living rooms and stuff. Everyone would brokeNCYDE launch day 2 party-hop from house to house. There’d be house parties with bands like Lords and Human Hair, and Seven The Maze £10 adv, 7pm Free, 7.30pm grime, and hip-hop houses and quieter pastoral folky houses. At the end everyone would congregate With Cookie Monsta, Breathe in that big hole surrounded by the caves in The Rock Cemetery on Mansfield Road, for some reason. Plus Cure The Disaster, Winch House and What Makes You Beats, DJ Mickey Real, Mirky Beautiful. Megz, Das Helmet, Truth Danny What can we expect from you at your LeftLion Presents gig? P and Co. Ascendance of Seven, Lots of heart. A bigger sound as we’ve got some new equipment, hopefully some new songs as well. We’ll Improvisations and Ghoul Garden. also have copies of our single this time too. www..com/fistsmusic

www.leftlion.co.uk/issue29leftlion.co.uk/issue29 2125 event listings... for more: leftlion.co.uk/listings

Saturday 13/06 Monday 15/06

Athlete Revolution Sounds The Rescue Rooms The Maze All Snap, No Tin £15, 7pm Free, 8pm - late Introducing Copper – West Bridgford’s brand new nosherie Noodle with Warlock and Sir Real Tuesday 16/06 As well as being an essential mineral found in many foods, Copper is

Moog the name of a recently opened café bar in West Bridgford under the Kid Harpoon Free, 8pm - 4am stewardship of Anthony ‘Willo’ Wilson, formerly of Harts restaurant. The Bodega £5, 7pm Saturday Night Knees Up! On what was previously the site of La Vina, the designers have served The Malt Cross Revolution Sounds themselves proud transforming what was once an average space with little £3, 8pm design impact into a sleek, cosy interior. Comprising a cafe downstairs and The Maze a bar/lounge upstairs, the venue offers an impressive variety of food (served Duke Dumont and Nero £5 / £6, 8pm – late 8am to 7pm) and drink. Stealth With Mischief Brew, Johnny £5, 10.15pm One Lung, 10 O’Clock Horses, Resolution 242 and Al Baker. The entire breakfast menu (including classics like the full English or a Psycle - Bermuda shorts special scrambled egg and smoked salmon bagel) and the full range of coffee, teas, and fresh juices are available to take away - making Copper an ideal pit- Blueprint Bar club Wednesday 17/06 £5, 10pm – late stop on the way to the office. Or, if you take full advantage of their free wi-fi, Full Lotus, Petran, Bren Shiv UFO it could even become the office. Danm, Bashi Bashi, Hypnotoad, Rock City Animinimal, Boystrike and Tommy. £18, 7.30pm Lunchtime offers a salad bar and tasty baguettes (such as their delicious Merguez sausage with confit of red onions). For a taste of New York, check out their very own deli counter with a Ghoul Garden We Were Promised Jet Packs range of homemade chutneys, jams, terrines, pates, soups and breads - all homemade and prepared on site The Maze The Bodega £3 / £3.50, 9pm £6, 7pm Into the evening hours indulge in an extensive wine and cocktail list, try one of their imported beers or go for a more traditional ale in conjunction with the Local Ale scheme. A well devised, inviting venue that provides a Sticky Morales Cup of Tea welcome retreat from the usual city centre haunts. Southbank Bar Lee Rosy’s Tea Shop Free, 7pm £4 / £5, 8.30pm Copper, 21-23 Central Avenue, West Bridgford NG2 5GQ. With Rue Royale and Andy Whittle. www.coppercafe.co.uk Love Ends Disaster Seven 8pm, £3.50 Thursday 18/06

Plus The Amber Herd, We Are Friday 19/06 Saturday 20/06 Thursday 25/06

The Man, The Cult Of Dom Keller, Thin Lizzy A Smiths and Morrissey Night Notts Music Showcase Richie Muir Smugglers Run, Old Basford, The Rock City The Rescue Rooms The Maze Southbank Bar Kull, Yipil DJs, And loads more. £21.50, 6.30pm £4, 9.30pm - 1.30am £3, 8pm Free, 7pm

Tubelord / Blakfish / Colour With Tim McDonald band. Sunday 14/06 The Bodega LeftLion Buttonpusher £5, 7pm Brownes Sould Seven Jarvis Cocker Plus Grande Duke and Ocean Free, 8pm - 1am Southbank Bar 8pm, tbc Rock City Bottom Nightmare. With Fists, Swimming and Stiff Free, 7pm With These Monsters, Freezing £20, 7pm Kittens DJs, see box out for info. Fog, Venice Ahoy, Stag and Hallé Therapy Maybeshewill DJ Set. Jamie T Royal Centre 25 Past the Skank Seven The Rescue Rooms Jamcafe £tbc, 7.30pm £9 - £30, 7.30pm £12.50, 7pm Free, 7pm - late Friday 26/06

Kerfuffle Fat Digester Baber Luck, Ruby Kid Mark James Sunday 21/06 Nottingham Playhouse The Maze The Maze Bluu £10 / £12, 8pm Kathy Stewart and The £tbc, 9pm £5, 8.30pm Free, 8pm Frequent Flyers Plus Celariac and more tbc. Plus Twenty Five Past. Steve McGill The Maze Lippstik, Abaddon Southbank Bar £9, 7.30pm Detonate Richie Muir Band Seven Free, 7pm Stealth Southbank Bar 7.30pm, tbc Serpico / Here’s To Tragedy £10 / £12, 10pm - 4am Free, 7pm Ghost Cassette Gentlemans Buffet. Seven Goldie, Calibre, Plastician, SP:MC £4, 8PM and Transit Mafia. Plus Ocean Bottom Nightmare The Old Nick Trading Company Performance Jamcafe Southbank Bar Free, 7pm - late Free, 7pm The Deep End Tom Wardle They may have beeb dabbling with improvisational ‘headphone-only’ shows of late, but on June 19, Bluu

Swimming will be bringing their full-on rock oeuvre to Brownes. We had a chat with John Sampson Monday 22/06 Free, 8pm

Aqualung Explain the headphone-only gigs with Dallas Simpson… The Rescue Rooms Saturday 27/06 They’ve been amazing to play. It’s a totally different mindset £12.50, 7.30pm with those shows - you can’t see the audience directly so it’s Ronnie Groove Lounge just you, the band, the music and Dallas floating nearby. Grosvenor Tuesday 23/06 £3 b4 11pm, 8pm - 1am

What was your first ever gig? Neil Young Foo Fighters at Rock City. I lost my shoe crowd-surfing and Nottingham Arena The Rescue Rooms someone lobbed it at Pat Smear. £50, 7pm £9, 7pm

What has been your worst live experience? Jason Isbell Saturday Night Knees Up! The Maze Playing a night in Chester to the bar staff, bands and the The Malt Cross £10, 7.30pm £3, 8pm promoter - everyone else was at a party next door where they were trying to break the world record for the most people in one place dressed as a Smurf. Napoleon 3rd Green For Go’s Gazeebo’d Seven The Running Horse If you could put on a festival locally, where would you stage it and what local acts would you have £5, 8pm £4, 8:30pm - 2am playing? We’d stage it at the planetarium at the Space Centre down the road and split the event into eight parts Wednesday 24/06 Junk Yard - like The Planets by Holst. With The Petebox, Lone, APOF, Pilgrim Fathers, Fists, 1st Blood, JCDecaux, The Market Bar WeShowUpOnRadaR, Love Ends Disaster, Russian Linesman, Cuban Crimewave, The Cusp, Made of Leaves, Kasabian £5, 10pm - 4am Souvaris, Spaceships Are Cool, 7081, Origami Biro, Scorzayzee and Zero Theory - all in zero gravity. Rock City Mike Monday, Luke Black, David £22.50, 7.30pm Russel, Paul Sekhri and Mark Cohen.

If you could play in any other band, who would it be and why? Jack Rabbit Slim Clark - his sounds are flippin’ bonza. I’d want to play slide and blip guitar. Thursday 25/06 The Maze £5, 9pm If you could introduce one law to make gig-going more enjoyable, what would it be? Thin Lizzy Promoters who really care, amazing PAs and trampolines. Rock City Jason Heart Band £21.50, 6.30pm Southbank Bar

What can we expect from you at your LeftLion Presents gig? Free, 7pm In Isolation We’re going to do some tracks with Peter [Champion beatboxer the PeteBox] beatboxing instead of The Maze Syndicate on the kit. £4, 8pm Seven Plus The Jackdaws. 7.30pm, £1 www.myspace.com/swimmingband Delta Red, The Arcadian Kicks, The Fakers and Jon Brookes DJ Set.

22 leftlion.co.uk/issue29 nottingham event listings... for more: leftlion.co.uk/listings Sunday 28/06 Thursday 02/07

M. Ward Daor The Rescue Rooms Seven On Yer Bike £11, 7.30pm £tbc, 8pm Dig out your old bicycle from the shed this summer and you will find a good few reasons to get active and have a bit Plus Moscow and Internal Confl ict. of fun at the same time. The Big Wheel, the organisation tasked with helping Lucy Kaplanski you get around Nottingham using sustainable transport, is putting on a series The Maze Revolution Sounds of events to encourage you to forsake four wheels for two. £15, 7.30pm The Maze £tbc, 8pm Saturday 13 – Sunday 21 June is UK Bike Week and the largest mass Wavves participation cycling event in the country. This aim is to encourage people to The Bodega ‘get more out of life’ by exploring their local communities using pedal power. £8, 8pm Friday 03/07 First up, the Castle Galleries is holding a special Bike Week exhibition in the Establishment Malcolm Middleton Southbank Bar The Bodega Exchange Arcade. Showing daily for the whole week, they will be displaying Free, 7pm £10, 7pm paintings and prints with a cycling theme by some of the country’s leading artists. The Answer Swanee River Monday 29/06 The Rescue Rooms Then on Sunday 14 June at 1pm in Broadway Cinema there is a screening of £11, 7pm Overcoming, a documentary which follows the riders of the CSC Pro-Cycling Notts In A Nutshell team as they take on the Tour de France. This is accompanied by a short film The Maze Working Nights about a pedal powered cinema! £3, 8pm The Loggerheads With Long Nines, Songs By Free, 9 – late Canadians, Slinky Peach and With Matt, Alex and Neetin. On Tuesday 16 June at 6pm check out the Nottingham Classics Drivetime Concert at Nottingham Royal Centre. This Jacket. is a fantastic introduction to classical music, featuring pieces by Beethoven, Handel and even a bit of Star Wars. Tee Dymond Those cycling to the event can receive a 25% discount by quoting ‘Drivetime biker’ when booking. Bluu Tuesday 30/06 Free, 8pm On Wednesday 17 June, you can get some free snap with the Wheelie Big Breakfast in the Old Market Square from 8–10am, by turning up on a bike between those hours. Register at www.thebigwheel.org.uk/bigbreakfast and enter Death Angel / Kataklysm / Liferuiner the free prize draw too. Later that day (10.30am-12.30pm) the annual Cycle Forum will take place in the Council Keep Of Kalessin Seven House and attendees can learn more about the past, present and future of cycling in Greater Nottingham. Seven £tbc, 8pm £12, 7pm Mindvox Also don’t forget The Big Track, a serene ten mile car free route that runs between Trent Bridge and Beeston Marina, Muzika!! The Maze along the River Trent and canal. Visit www.thebigwheel.org.uk/bigtrack/ for more details. The Maze £tbc, 8pm www.thebigwheel.org £tbc, 8pm Accidentals, Bonus Beyond, The Judos and Low Down Dirty Reds. Saturday 04/07 Sunday 05/07 Monday 06/07 Thursday 09/07 Wednesday 01/07 LA Guns John Mayall Transition Nottingham BlastOff! Festival Rock City Rock City The Maze Marcus Garvey Ballroom £15, 7pm £19.50, 7.30pm £2, 9pm £59 Weekend Pass, 8pm - 6pm You Animals With Steve Riley and Phil Lewis. The Bodega Runs until: 11/07 £5, 7pm Johnny and the Raindrops Acts include The Gories, The Ebony Bones Polish Club Wednesday 08/07 Oblivians and The Ghastly Ones. Stealth £2.50, 2.30pm - 4pm The Dead Formats £5, 10.15pm Thunder Seven Rock City Friday 10/07 £4, 7.30pm Saturday Night Knees Up! Monday 06/07 £22, 7pm The Malt Cross Rigbee Deep Thursday 02/07 £3, 8pm That Petrol Emotion Sleepy Sun Alley Cafe The Rescue Rooms Seven Free, 8:30pm - 1am White Denim Back to Basics £10, 7.30pm £6, 7.30pm Plus Minister Hill, Nowhere The Bodega The Maze Common and Jah Bunndy. £9, 8pm £5, 9pm Out And About The title of our regular outdoorsy preview section couldn’t be more ap- propriate, as Nottingham Pride gets bigger than ever…

It’s been a regular event on the Notts calendar for ages, but for the first time ever, Nottingham Pride – the annual celebration of all things L, G, B and T – kicks off on the morning of July 25 with a march from the Forest that takes in Mansfield Road, Shake- speare Street, North Sherwood Street - ending up in the Arboretum. Hopefully, the march will be a regu- lar event from now on, so get out there and give it Lowdham and Proud the full support it deserves – and it goes without saying that the actual event is one of the outdoor The East Midlands’ largest literary event is celebrating its tenth birthday in style this year, highlights of the year… with an impressive line-up featuring local, national and international writers. Poets Jackie www.nottinghampride.co.uk Kay and Pauline Prior-Pitt, crime writers John Harvey and Stephen Booth and Nottingham’s very own Nicola Monaghan will all be making an appearance alongside new up-and- Before that, from 27 June to 4 July, the Sneinton coming young writers from the region, Dan Tunstall and Jonathan David. Festival promises a full seven days of full-on Snein- tonian Pride, with a full array of events from gigs The festival programme covers a variety of topics from cookery books to cricket and (featuring bands such as Captain Dangerous, Fat includes a French day, a transport themed afternoon and a reprise on Charles Darwin, Digester and Mr Plow) to a tea party hosted by Not- besides some Lowdham on Tour events in Nottingham , Caythorpe and Calverton. Writing tingham Craft Mafia and the Sneinton Ladies Club workshops, music, films and storytelling adds to the diversity of the event, with a licensed to the wonderfully-titled Sneinton’s Got Talent com- bar at The Village Hall and a deli café on the last Saturday providing refreshments. The petition, it climaxes with the carnival on the 4 July. book fair on the final day is ’s largest, with stalls from publishers and Someday, all areas of Nottingham will have some- writers’ organisations, and second hand bargains to browse. Accessible by car, bus and thing as brilliant as this, and we’ll be a much better train, there’s no excuse for missing out - so get along to our very own Hay-On-Wye for a place for it. spot of culture! www.sneinton.com Tickets are available from The Bookcase, 50 Main Street , Lowdham NG14 7BE over the If you just can’t wait to have a dabble in outdoorsy counter, by mail or by credit card over the phone (Festival Box Office is 0115 9663219 10am- creativity, Sherwood Art Week occurs from 13 June 4pm Monday-Saturday) or, subject to availability, on the door at events. to 20 June. Over 70 shop windows in the area will turn themselves into gallery spaces, some of the area’s most gifted artists will be displaying their work for sale, there’ll be talks and events a-plenty, and the opportunities to have a go at creating your own masterpieces will be The Lowdham Book Festival, June 15-27, Lowdham Village, Notts. Tickets are not required endless. Don’t miss out! for free events - see website for booking details for certain events www.sherwoodartweek.co.uk Words: Aly Stoneman For more information on what’s happening in the NG over the next two months, our online listings section is the first place to visit – hit up www.leftlion.co.uk/listings for full details on, well, everything.

leftlion.co.uk/issue29 23 event listings... for more: leftlion.co.uk/listings

Monday 08/06 Tuesday 07/07 From sniffing aerosol to using Anusol The Happiest Days of Your Life The Big Friendly Giant words: Adrian Baghat Lace Market Theatre Royal Centre Garage Band: When Punks Get Older £6 - £9, 7.30pm £12.50 - £17.50, Various Runs until: 13/06 Runs until: 11/07 Back in the late seventies, some people were punks. They were young, angry, rebellious, cynical and raised two giant fingers

to society. Today, those people have 2.4 children, worry about Tuesday 09/06 Monday 13/07

paying their mortgage, drive a Ford Galaxy and cross the street Mad Crop The Musical Chicago if they see someone a bit scruffy heading towards them. They Royal Centre Royal Centre look back on their former selves with a mixture of bemusement £13 - £22, 7.30pm £14.50 - £33, Various and envy. If any of this sounds familiar, local playwright Andy Runs until: 13/06 Runs until: 18/07 Barrett has written a play just for you.

The punk movement posed a serious threat to the establishment Tuesday 16/06 Monday 20/07

both in music and politics. Kids who could barely play a few Opera North Summer Season Quartet chords were challenging big rock bands while nurturing a Royal Centre Lace Market Theatre grassroots political movement that was radical, iconoclastic £14.50 - £45, 7.15m £6 - £9, 7.30pm and truly revolutionary. Yet somehow the music was tamed and Runs until: 19/06 Runs until: 25/07 commercialised and the politics neutralised. How did that happen? It’s hard to say. Maybe the Playhouse’s latest show has the answer. Wednesday 17/06 Thursday 23/07 Garage Band tells the story of a group of forty-somethings living in suburbia who try to defeat middle age and recapture the heyday of punk by forming a covers band. Gavin is the driving force behind the group, infecting the DIY Poets present Sophia and the Magic Skirt Maze Arts Organisation others with his enthusiasm. Alan is a technocrat, bringing band promotion up-to-date by making YouTube videos in TBC, 8pm £3.45 per child, £4.60 per between sessions playing Guitar Hero. Penny fulfils her dream of being Beki Bondage and Danny looks set to become adult, 2pm-3pm the first punk professor. Runs until: 24/07 Monday 22/06 The band begins to play well together, thumping out classic songs, but, inevitably, problems arise as they realise that rebellion is a lot easier when you’re young, and balancing their new punk lifestyles with children and careers Spiders Web COMEDY is not going to be easy. While all this takes place, the play features live performances of the music of bands like The Royal Centre £9 - £24.50, 7.30m Tuesday 02/06 Damned, Sex Pistols, The Clash and the Buzzcocks. Garage Band runs from the 5th to 20th June and the opening night features a Guitar Hero competition. If you are under 26 you may be able to get free tickets to see the play. Runs until: 27/06 Funhouse Comedy Consider that a consolation for being born too late to experience music’s best and most chaotic period. Grove Wednesday 24/06 £4 / £5, 8pm Ben Schofield, Geoff Norcott, Ben Friday 10/07 Friday 17/07 Saturday 25/07 Once On The Island Briggs and Compere Spiky Mike. Nottingham Playhouse BassLaced LeftLion The New 1920 £12 / £17.50, Various Stealth Brownes Rock City Tuesday 09/06 £6, 10pm - 4am Free, 8pm - 1am £3, 10pm Pinch with Senate, Dawntreader With Nottingham School of Samba Tuesday 30/06 Funhouse Comedy and Dread MC. and Karizma. Saturday Night Knees Up! Maze The Malt Cross Roll Out The Barrel £7 / £8, 8pm Haiki Berhane Tom Wardle £3, 8pm Royal Centre With Sarah Millican. Jamcafe Bluu £10 / £12, 2pm Free, 7pm - late Free, 8pm Blood Divided Flintoff’s Ashes Preview Seven Nottingham Arena Wednesday 01/07 £15 - £125, 8pm Richie Muir Better Left Alone £6 / £7, 8pm Bluu Seven Plus 12 Gauge Facelift. With Paddy McGuinness. Defending The Caveman Free, 8pm £7, 2pm Royal Centre Plus Make It Through, Almost £10.50 - £19.50, 7.30pm Thursday 11/06 Warrior Soul home, We Stare at Mirrors, Feral Sunday 26/07 Runs until: 04/07 Seven Eve and Nochaa. Russel Howard £7.50 / £9, 7.30pm Nottingham Folkus The Maze Helen Royal Centre Plus The More I see, Suicide Lace Market Theatre £15, 8pm Tuesday and Remedy. Saturday 18/07 £4, 8pm With Syzygy, Steve Turner Bob £6 / £7, 7.30pm Runs until: 04/07 Saturday Night Knees Up! Ballar and Al Harris. Saturday 13/06 Saturday 11/07 The Malt Cross £3, 8pm Just The Tonic Sonic Dirt Afternoon Blowout Thursday 30/07 Royal Centre The Old Angel Turbowolf £20, 7.30pm £5, 2pm - 6pm Rock City Pepper With Thee Vicars, The Hipshakes, £3, 10pm Rock City Beast With A Gun, Thee Fair Ohs £8, 7.30pm and The Murdochs. The Warlocks The Bodega Friday 31/07 Más Y Más £8, 7pm The Next Stage Adrian Bhagat lays out your board-treading options for The Malt Cross Hot Club of Cowtown £3, 8pm Dividing The Line The Maze the next two months Seven £15, 7.30pm Ghoul Garden £tbc, 2pm Although the theatre The Maze Plus Many Things Untold, Deaf Detonate season is nearly over, £3 / £3.50, 9pm Havana, Shadows Chasing Ghosts, Stealth there are lots of great Ghosts On Pegasus Bridge, Oribine, £10 / £12, 10pm - 4am shows to see before Proceed, A World Defined and more. Tuesday 14/07 the summer. First up Jennifer James is Stephen Daldry’s Kylesa Sunday 19/07 Bluu Free, 8pm fantastic production Rock City of An Inspector Calls £8, 7.30Ppm Eliza Gilkyson Trio which has played for The Maze THEATRE years in the West End The BossHoss £13, 7.30pm and Broadway, winning Seven Tuesday 02/06 countless awards, and £8 adv, 7.30pm Splendour Festival Wollaton Hall, History Museum An Inspector Calls returning to the Theatre Acoustic Tuesdays and Industrial Museum Royal Centre Royal from 2nd to 6th The Malt Cross £10 - £30, All Day £11.50 - £23.50, 7.30pm June. JB Priestley’s thriller depicts a wealthy family being confronted by a fFree, 8:30pm Madness, The Pogues, Fun Lovin’ Runs until: 06/06 detective who gradually reveals the harm they do to the working class and Criminals, Imelda May, The Rifles, picks apart their moral facade to reveal the most telling hypocrisy. Kid British, Dog is Dead and loads Friday 05/06 Wednesday 15/07 more, including a LeftLion Stage... A more classical theatre experience can be found from 1st to 4th July at

the Lace Market Theatre where the amateur company will be performing Cup of Tea Garage Band Euripides’ tragedy, Helen. After the destruction of Troy, the beautiful Helen Lee Rosy’s Tea Shop Wednesday 22/07 Nottingham Playhouse £4 / £5, 8.30pm £7.50 - £26.50 (NUS), Check is a fugitive in Egypt. On hearing of the death of her husband, Menelaus, she With Sam Beer and Trailer Star’s Joseph Arthur and The Lonely website for details is in danger of being forced to marry the King. For comedy fans, Bill Bailey is Suit of Nettles. Astronauts Runs until: 20/06 performing for a full week at the Theatre Royal starting on July 27. His musical The Bodega See box out for more information. stand-up routine is unmissable, and this tour promises to include lots of new Derillium £11, 7pm material as well as excerpts from his London show, Tinselworm. Seven Brian Cloughs Way £tbc, 8pm The Casino Brawl Royal Centre www.nottinghamplayhouse.co.uk Plus Laceration Of Fate and Seven £20, 7.30pm www.royalcentre-nottingham.co.uk Arcanite Reaper. £5, 7.30pm Kenny Burns, John McGovern, Tony www.lacemarkettheatre.co.uk Plus Millicent Grove, Skies In Woodcock, Larry Lloyd and Garry Motion and With Silent Eyes. Birtles talk Forest. 24 leftlion.co.uk/issue29 nottingham event listings... for more: leftlion.co.uk/listings Monday 22/06 Monday 01/06 Saturday 13/06

Funhouse Comedy The Grounds Project Finding Time - Exhibition Bonington Voyage Maze Nottingham Castle White Rabbit Studios £7 adv, 8pm All day Free, 10am - 5pm (Sat) 11am - The return of Nottingham Trent’s Art and Design degree shows With Rhod Gilbert. Runs until: 07/06 5pm (Sun) Runs until: 14/06 It’s that time of the year Joan Fontcuberta - Datascapes whiterabbitstudio.wordpress.com when another load of Art Wednesday 01/07 Lakeside Arts Centre Adam Goodge, Amanda Going, and Design students get Free, All day Jeannie Clark, Katrine Brosnan and re-introduced to the big, Funhouse Comedy Runs until: 14/06 Rebecca Gove-Humphries. Maze bad world, but not without £7 adv, 8pm Back To Life: Jennifer Bell letting said big, bad world Ican Brackenbury and Zoe Lyons. Yard Gallery Thursday 18/06 have a look at what they’ve Free, 11am - 4pm been doing for the past Runs until: 05/06 Nazir Tanbouli - Baptism of three years, and what they Tuesday 14/07 Hailstones intend to keep doing for Folk and Tribal Art from India Surface Gallery the rest of their careers. Funhouse Comedy Free, All day New Art Exchange Yes, it’s Nottingham Trent Maze £7 adv, 8pm Free, All day University’s Art and Design With Rhod Gilbert, James Runs until: 19/07 Thursday 25/06 degree shows, and this Sherwood and Compere Spiky year’s exhibition – which Mike. Skies Rachel Reupke usually takes over half the Nottingham Castle Moot city - is heralded as the £tbc, All day Free, All day biggest festival yet. Thursday 16/07 Runs until: 12/07 Runs until: 19/07

Funhouse Comedy Laura Mccafferty As always, there’s a phenomenal array of disciplines on offer, from sculpture, Maze Lakeside Arts Centre Thursday 02/07 painting, illustration and graphics to photography and print; from moving £7 adv, 8pm Free, All day image, theatre and digital design to directional fashion, knitwear, textiles, With Andrew Lawrence and Pippa Runs until: 02/07 Exhibition-Homing and decorative arts; and from futuristic products to cutting-edge furniture Evans. Nottingham Society of Artists and interior design solutions. PhotoRadar Free, 9am - 5.30 pm Various Locations Runs until: 08/07 Naturally, the centrepiece of the whole shebang is the University’s Bonington Monday 27/07 Free building, and it’s open to all – yes, even the divviest local - from June 6 to Bill Bailey Live Runs until: 14/06 Thursday 23/07 June 11 - where Fashion students will also be showing a selection of their Royal Centre The 13th Annual Nottingham Trent work. Meanwhile, Photography student exhibitions will be scattered right £25, 7.30pm Photography Degree Show. East International Showreel across the city, from the Surface Gallery to the former Beatties from June Runs until: 01/08 Moot 1 to June 12, while over 100 students pool their talents at the Photoradar Thursday 11/06 Free, 6pm - 9pm exhibition, at Bonington. And for the first time, Architecture students get a EXHIBITIONS look-in: they’ll be taking over the Waverley building for the duration of the Mark Titchner Friday 07/08 shows. Monday 01/06 Backlit Free Dan Ford Whether it’s film, fashion or fine art that floats your boat – or you just fancy Laxton: Farming in an open Runs until: 28/06 Moot having a nose around the campus – this is one event that is, as they say, not field village Free, All day to be missed. Lakeside Arts Centre Saturday 13/06 Runs until: 30/08 Free, All day Nottingham Trent University Art and Design degree shows. Saturday June 6, Runs until: 16/08 Sherwood Arts Week 11am to 5pm; Sunday June 7, 11am to 4pm; Monday June 8 to Thursday June

Various Locations 11, 10am to 5pm. Free, Daytime www.ntu.ac.uk/degreeshows Runs until: 20/06

leftlion.co.uk/issue29 25 Write Lion To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Lowdham Book Festival (15-27 June), we would like to dedicate this page to the man behind the scenes, Ross Bradshaw. All poems and books reviewed are by people who will be performing or have been associated with the festival over the years. But fear not, our regular contributors from the forum will be back with a vengeance next issue and - if they’re interested - could also feature in a special poetry podcast. Please visit www.leftlion.co.uk/forum for more details.

That Afternoon Desperanto Members Only by Wayne Burrows (from The Protein Songs) by Mike Wilson by Jenny Swann

She sleeps, and into consciousness Sad poetry. It’s written everywhere, I think I’ll start an élitist club swim fish and flatworms, a cloud of moths; by broken hearts in search of self-expression: for people like me, catastrophically unfocussed termites building ziggurats, beetles crossing tarmac roads. the universal language of despair. despite the valiant efforts of teachers down the years.

She turns, and from the midday heat She writes of anguish (and it’s hard to bear). Its members will be chaotic, bumbling souls, comes a fever of lizards with iridescent crests, She chisels, from the floes of her depression, its patrons hand-picked from the good and great a carpet of serpents, a sunlit rain of frogs. sad poetry. It’s written everywhere. of seeming-vagueness.

She murmurs, and as her body twists He tries (in vain) to emulate John Clare, Rothko, whose monolithic forms trilobites scuttle across the coastal shelves, to forge a bridge between his self-obsession and loom out of the fog of their canvases, jellyfish ripple translucently with the flow of the mind. the universal language of despair. can alternate as chair

She stretches, her leg muscles flexing But he’s not self-aware, not debonair, with Vermeer, like the wings of a ray in the turbulence, prised from sand he lacks the savoir-faire, the self-possession… the latter so slick at avoiding a hard-edged finish, to pulse and float like breathing gills Sad poet, try! It’s written, everywhere, the undisputed Master of the Blur,

on the edge of the shore. When she wakes, that anyone who’s sad, and solitaire, not forgetting Monet beside her on the floral sheets, is a body, of the species hominid, should curse in verse, as if their flair could freshen (his water-lilies drift apart, picking crumbs from the folds of its clothes the universal language of despair. break up, the more one stares)

like a chimp with a straw at a termite-nest. And round they go - mad fingers twirling hair nor the intimiste, Vuillard, In the window, the windows of another house, (which tends to give a negative impression: famous for a long life red brick and rain, the aquatic light of TV in a darkened room. sad!). Poetry? It’s written. Everywhere, devoted to making nothing quite hang together. the universal language of despair. Our brief will be: To celebrate things that are ill-defined, lie in wait, Forever Afters bide their time, out of focus -

by John Agard the peripheralised, the marginalised, Extract from a Fine Romance only minds and eyes in the habit of wandering off Served, as always, for the last. by Roger McGough at the critical moment, would notice. The tail end of the menu. copyright Penguin The main course’s epitaph. A pudding knows the meaning Excuse me darling, in advance of waiting one’s turn in queue. for the slow, macabre dance Patience is what puddings know best. I may one day lead you into. And when all face the final test on that day of reckoning, Holding you too tight for comfort puddings will array their glory and whispering endearments, down to the smallest gooseberry, if I should call you by another’s name, for every pudding knows one truth – a lover’s perhaps, from years ago, that the first shall be last don’t be startled. It’s just a slip and the last shall be first. of the moonlight. Yes, puddings shall have the last laugh when the sweet inherits the tooth.

Book Reviews James Walker

I Love Samuel Taylor The Sea of Azov The Dirty Thirty: Ian Collinson edited by Anne Joseph Heroes of the Miners’ Weathervane Press, £7.99 Five Leaves, £9.99 Strike

Award-winning poet Ian Collinson The sea in question is the David Bell proves he is a literary jack-of- birthplace of Chekhov – the Five Leaves, £7.99 all-trades by setting up his own master of the short story, and this publishing house and kick-starting collection pays suitable homage David Bell is something of an it with his debut novel. This is the with an impressive list of authors expert when it comes to local exact kind of positive enthusiasm such as Jon McGregor, Nicola history and he here turns his which is making Nottingham one of Krauss and Etgar Keret. The book attention to the infamous 1984-5 the fastest growing literary scenes was published in association miners’ strike which saw thirty outside of London. The novel is an with the World Jewish Relief and out of 2,500 Leicestershire miners easy-flowing romantic love story, is themed around ‘connections’. stand up against the pit closure set between Nottingham and These come in various forms programme. The ‘dirty thirty’ in , and best summarised by ranging from domineering question give first-hand accounts the line ‘what a difference a boy makes’. The boy in question is matriarchs still correcting offspring from beyond the grave of why they felt so passionate about the closures and continued Samuel, a wannabe writer with a good heart who helps central to more reflective pieces such as Ali Smith’s offering, which to fight with the same spirit as the Tolpuddle Martyrs before character Jess come to terms with her family’s emotional and uses the short story format to explore wider social issues. An them. The book gives an insight into the effect these changes had financial problems. Given the current economic climate, this excellent accompaniment for any writer/reader wishing to learn on local communities and, perhaps more importantly, explains could be the first of many on a familiar theme. this simple yet underrated craft. how we have arrived at the impersonal and subservient working conditions which epitomise modern employment. Given the James Walker James Walker contempt the current government seems to have for its people, www.weathervanepress.co.uk www.fiveleaves.co.uk this is a timely reminder of how important solidarity can be.

James Walker www.fiveleaves.co.uk

26 www.leftlion.co.uk/issue29 Gerrem in yer tab www.leftlion.co.uk/podcasts Once again, a full page of all-Notts reviews. We’d like to keep it this way, so if you’re local and you have a new release, go to www.leftlion.co.uk/sendusmusic to find out how you can get your stuff reviewed on this very page...

MUSIC

…And Stars Collide Dog Is Dead Fists …And Stars Collide EP Dog Is Dead EP Cockatoo/ Skit 7”

Boasting an excellent live sound Dog Is Dead have successfully Over the past few months Fists where their songs truly come to secured themselves a place on have been slowly but surely life - often in a violent and ultra- Nottingham’s ‘keep a bloody gathering a groundswell of loud fashion - ASC are the best close eye on’ list with this, support, with each of their parts of Explosions in the Sky their debut EP. With a brazen gigs being even more rammed and Red Sparowes. From sweet mix of indie-flavoured tunes than the last, and it’s not hard and vulnerable guitar arpeggios with choppy rhythms, jazzy to see why. This 7” from the to crushing riffage and heavily saxophone, complex textures mighty Hello Thor stable is their delayed and fast-picked lead, and endearing lyrics, this is an debut release, and is a perfect they are sure to impress any accomplished record by anyone’s showcase for their talents. This post-rock fan. Opening song standards, but especially so is a 45 full of charm, melody, Every Step Takes Me Further From Home (part II) starts with a considering their age - they’re all and wit, all delivered with right guitar harmony-laden build-up that eventually gives way to a doing their A’ levels this month. It’s a refreshingly indefinable amount of knowingness, like a cheeky wink from that crush you complete implosion of epic high-pitched lead, guitar and bass sound, bending the generic indie-pop template almost beyond know you will never have. A-side Cockatoo is delivered in such riffage. See the Opening Morn is very aptly titled, bringing to recognition to incorporate their jazz-fuelled licks and full vocal a ramshackle, yet sweet, way that you almost think that it’s all your mind’s eye a particularly beautiful sun rising over a horizon harmonies to create songs that are fun, complicated, and sound going to fall apart at any minute. Yet the delicate female vocals of lush forestry, before everything going supernova with Your something like collaboration between The Futureheads and somehow manage to keep this sixties C&W-influenced song Winter and Night Spent in Disguise, which begins with layers of Madness. They’re tight as hell through every song, and with together. On the flipside, Skit is the complete opposite; it powers bass fuzz before giving way to a build-up riff that Young Team- so many unexpected stops, starts, tempo changes and surprise along in a whirlwind of screwed-up, manic, rusty vocals and a era Mogwai would’ve been particularly damn proud of. Closer bursts of musical energy it’s a wonder you don’t hear them barrage of dirty, distorted, jagged guitars. The song goes along We Are None Of Us Long Of This World maintains its sensitivity collapse halfway through the second track! Although the record with such momentum that it is all over in under two and a half and innocence for longer than any of its predecessors, like the doesn’t do justice to their explosive live shows – if you get the minutes. In fact, like any great single, both sides are short and calm after a bombing raid. This EP is an excellent exercise in chance, go and see them play, and thank me later – it shows a to the point, with each song complementing the other perfectly. instrumental moodiness. There comes great difficulty with level of musical maturity that’s well beyond their years whilst Paul Klotschkow crafting a good, long post-rock song, but these guys do it very maintaining their cheeky youthful charm. Sarah Morrison well. Nothing meanders for too long, and the whiplash heaviness Available from www.hellothor.com. See them at Left Lion Dog Is Dead will play the main stage at Splendour on July 19 is maintained with great intensity. Ant Whitton Presents at Brownes on Friday 19 www.myspace.com/dogisdeadband http://www.myspace.com/fistsmusic Available from the website and at gigs www.andstarscollide.com Lenroy Guiste Inukshuk Dub LP Morninglights EP Geiom ft Spamchop One of the greatest instrumentalists Sirius Star/Cave Rave 12” single Nottingham has ever produced, Matt Rai has assembled a band having been a founder member that may well fly the flag for Over the last three years Geiom of the god-like Natural Ites (one local indie/alternative bands, has been working hard on of the best UK roots bands of the and Inukshuk have arrived releasing some uplifting and 1980s - check Picture On The Wall with a thought-inspiring trio of solid wax action. Now on his on YouTube) as well as Royal Roots treasures. Formed in 2006, with twelfth 12-inch release, from his and Porcelain Dolls, Lenroy ‘Bassie’ influences such as Nick Drake independent label Berkane Sol, Guiste unfurls an electric mix of and Jeff Buckley, Morninglights this will be found in the dubstep dub, and beats on is a well-balanced sample of section of good stores soon. this envelope-pushing slab of 21st what hopefully will be to follow. The release sounds technically century roots. Opening track China Dub sets the tone; a soulful Paint is the first stop with an intro smashing and - dropped correctly and spacious riddim, featuring sinuous and majestic erhu lines that may draw similarities vocally to Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, during a set - is guaranteed to (that’s ‘Chinese ’ to non-world music types) with punishing laced with heavy guitar stabs with a well-placed underlying keep clubbers sliding and gurning stabs of electric guitar. The influence of the titans of reggae are piano-driven melody giving the track an orb of life and drama. until early morning with production as tight as ever. The flip never far away - particularly on Elements Of The Past, which Second track Morninglights is a ballad which has an eerie and sees Wigflex regular Spamchop pitching in on the collaborative draws on a bewildering array of influences and hits harder adventurous feel to it with a delightful piano melody contrasted track Cave Rave - a deep stepper with a sexy rolling bassline than your first gas bill after being made redundant. Naturally, by raw beats. Tunnel is a real gem and a track that can be likened switching into some jerky quirky synth action. Hand in hand because it’s a dub LP, its light on the vocals, but contributions to Queens of the Stone Age, opening up Rai’s vocal chords and with Geiom’s Island Noise album, the Midlands is looking from Taxman (on Frontline) and Jodie Ayers (on You Ted) smooth giving a climactic finish to the EP. If these guys appear in a local extremely bass-healthy. Manchurian things out considerably. There’s even a monged-out nod to Jimi venue, a visit is a must for those wanting drama, entertainment Hendrix on Purple Dazed. All in all, proof positive that there’s and a local band who not only want to break the mould, but Available now from selected stores and www.boomkat.com more to modern-day reggae than you think. Sneinton Dale have already done it. Nik Storey www.myspace.com/geiom Available from website as a CD or download Available now from iTunes www.lenroyguiste.co.uk www.myspace.com/inukshukmusic Rory McCarthy Memories I Never Had EP Swimming Russian Linesman The Fireflow Trade LP This is McCarthy’s debut EP, but Story EP even on first listen you would This debut release is an ecstatic never know - this clutch of songs Since previous EP Love Is Over rush of Smashing Pumpkins alt- sound as if they were written in 2006, Russian Linesman rock theatrics, combined with and performed with the gusto of have remained under the radar, a hedonistic trip of dream pop a seasoned professional. Themes mainly opting to release four- and a dabble of soaring post- of love and loss are handled with track tasters from time to time rock thrown in for good measure. maturity - there is no bubblegum with the odd extended session. Walls upon walls of warm, fuzzy pop or lovelorn cheesiness here. Fuelled by a refreshing ambience, guitars and glistening keyboards Comparisons to Conor Oberst, Amsterdam Story EP contains are built up, acting as the perfect Bright Eyes and Bonnie Prince Billy 4 tight, midi-tastic tracks of backdrop to the high, soaring can be made, but the influences never transform into mimicry, progressive techno, warmed with vocals, creating some of the most thanks to passionate but fragile vocals. The highlight here is pads and classy electro hooks. glorious music you are likely to Plain Sailing, a song where the country-tinged pop formula Amsterdam Story is the most hear all year. Swimming have never been a band content to rest really works, with a hook reminiscent of Ben Kweller at his most instantly appealing track, with a steady paced techno beat and on their laurels, and are determined to push themselves and their perky. I Don’t Even Know and Dream (I Can’t See the Way) also traces of Kraftwerk etched into the melody. Without any vocal sound as far as the constraints of a typical two guitars, keys, bounce away with country guitars, flourishes of harmonica and tracks, this still manages to be well layered and mood evoking, bass, drums set-up will allow, resulting in a deeply satisfying glockenspiel adding texture to the summery feel of the songs. dark and occasionally sinister release. Offering a more uplifting listen, with repeated plays bringing out the depth of each track. Ships Have Sailed is perhaps a hint as to where his sound will reprise, Poor Runa is brighter and has a more chord-driven trip- This is an album that challenges the listener to lose themselves go next, with an electronica tinge. Singer- come and hop direction sounding not dissimilar to The Beloved or Moby. in it. It’s extremely rare for a debut album to sound so fully go a lot nowadays, but this chap may be around for a very long The overall feel of the EP is very adventurous and has a dream- realised, self-assured, and perfectly executed, and even more time. Joe O’Leary like atmosphere with the light melodies and gentle beats. excitingly, they’re from our very own city. Hopefully this will get Occasionally, EPs can be a diamond in the rough and leave you more local bands pulling up their socks to push themselves to Available for download on the website wanting more, others aren’t short enough. In this case it’s more create something just as fulfilling and ambitious. Outstanding. www.myspace.com/songsbyrory than worth a listen. Nik Storey Paul Klotschkow

Available from www.manual-music.com Out now on iTunes, and Napster. Catch them at www.myspace.com/russianlinesman LeftLion Presents at Brownes on Friday June 19 www.swimmingband.com

28 www.leftlion.co.uk/issue29 2nd birthday

Electro - House - Techno Capricorn (December 23 - January 19) It’s easy to get nuns and penguins mixed up from a distance! I found this out to my cost recently when I spent the best part of an hour confessing my sins to an Emperor, with little in the way of a reply. Still, at least I managed to p-p-pick up Sister Amelia of the Benedictines later that evening. Don’t tell the wife…

Aquarius (January 20 - February 19) Cocktail season is underway and they’re all on offer: two for none if you steal the ingredients from Asda and make them yourself. My own personal favourite is the 1964 Car Bomb. But I’m also partial to A Crow Left of the Murder, A-Rang-A-Tang and A Short Trip To Hell.

Pisces (February 20 - March 20) When buying cigars, it’s important to choose wisely and spend a bit extra to get the quality. If you’re going to stink of faeces and have a fiery stick in your mouth, which you can’t even inhale, you might as well do it in the most expensive and tasteful manner possible. Check out Arturo Fuente Añejo No. 48, and tell him I said hello. LEFTLION ABROAD Celtic Park, Glasgow, Scotland. Aries (March 21 - April 20) The Death Adder is not the most poisonous snake in the world. That honour goes to the brown or Celtic Park is the home stadium of Celtic Football Club. The all-seater stadium is also known as Parkhead olive-skinned Oxyuranus microlepidotus (aka Fierce Snake), found across Central Australia, which and occasionally nicknamed Paradise by Celtic fans. This photo was taken outside before the home game has enough venom to kill 100 humans in a single bite. However the Adder will still do a decent against Hamilton Academical on Saturday 4 April 2009, which Celtic won 4-0. It is the largest football number on your legs later this week. stadium in Scotland in terms of capacity and the third-largest in the UK after Old Trafford and Wembley. It contains four stands, 60,832 seats and one copy of LeftLion Magazine. Taurus (April 21 - May 21) If you can get a photo of a LeftLion sticker or a copy of the magazine somewhere interesting and A day at the races this month will do you good. But remember, all experienced gamblers know outside of England, email us on [email protected]. that a prize-winning horse should have a thick coat, strong hindlegs and an elegant gait. It probably shouldn’t talk in multiple voices, suddenly split in two and run off in opposing directions though. All bets are off!

Gemini (May 22 - June 22) They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so when you come across someone doing impressions of you this week, then there is some cause to look on the bright side. However, the exaggerated and drawn-out stutter, monotonous voice, hideous features and total lack of conversational skills may indicate otherwise.

Cancer (June 23 - July 23) No seas tímida y no dejes que el orgullo o el decoro se interpongan para entablar una conversación con alguien. El tiempo pasará, debes saberlo, y siempre está la posibilidad de que puedan convertirse en grandes amigos. Relájate, sonríe con tu sonrisa más encantadora, y disfruta del viaje.

Leo (July 24 - August 23) Being headhunted by a major Japanese organisation sounds like it could be a major boost for your career. However the more you learn, the more you realise that they’re less likely to offer you a job than to make you an offer you can’t refuse. The Yakuza are looking for you. Virgo (August 24 - September 23) I danced for the scribe and the pharisee, but they would not dance and they wouldn’t follow me. I danced for the fishermen, for James and John, they came with me and the dance went on. Dance, then, wherever you may be, I am the Lord of the Dance, said he and I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be and I’ll lead you all in the dance, said he.

Libra (September 24 - October 23) Space and time as we know are concepts that are soon to be broken. A course of events that seems incomprehensively long to the human mind, yet is totally small and insignificant in terms of the greater span of the universe, is coming to an end. It’s time to reassess time itself. Don’t be late.

Scorpio (October 24 - November 22) When we met, it wasn’t quite clear to me. What you had in store was there for only me. Silly, you know you took me by surprise. Then I turned and looked, I saw that message in your eye. And I thought what a strange place to put a message? In your eye? How does it even fit in there?

DRINKING 20/20 UNDER TRENT BRIDGE Sagittarius (November 23 - December 22) WATCHING TWENTY20 AT TRENT BRIDGE Bonding with new puppies lesson one: At feeding time masticate (yes I said masticate!) a piece of white bread till it is gooey, then feed this as a titbit to them once a day for the first week they live with you. It mimics the regurgitation process when pups and cubs are being weaned in the wild and will help them settle.

The next issue of LeftLion Magazine

Cost: £4.50 from Bargain Booze will be out in Notts Cost: Up to £100 on ebay Headgear: Headgear: Big poncy fedora Manky balaclava on friday 31 July. Sitting next to: A pool of your Sitting next to: A couple of Aussie own vomit and needles lads dressed as Scooby Doo With extra monkey Chance of seeing Ian Botham: Very Chance of seeing Ian Botham: High high blood...

30 www.leftlion.co.uk/issue29 www.leftlion.co.uk/issue29 31 NOTTINGHAM EVENTS UNDERGRADUATE DEGREE SHOWS: June 6–11 (admission free) Twenty stunning exhibitions of final-year degree work spanning all areas of art, design & creative practice

– Photoradar Photography Festival: June 1–12 – Knitwear & Fashion Catwalks: May 21, 22 & 23

POSTGRADUATE MA EXPOSITION: July 11 & 13–18 (admission free) A showcase celebration of the vibrant & diverse work of our Masters art & design community

LONDON EVENTS NTU@GRADUATE FASHION WEEK Earls Court 2: June 7–11 D&AD NEW BLOOD Olympia National Hall: June 29–July 2 FREE RANGE Old Truman Brewery: July 9–13 NEW DESIGNERS Business Design Centre: July 9–12 & 16–19

MAKE YOUR MARK@NTU All enquiries, locations, information & tickets: www.ntu.ac.uk/ntushow09