Review: Eely, by Steve Ely

I attended a reading of his new book, ‘Eely’, by Steve Ely, in Huddersfield, as part of Huddersfield Literature Festival.

How the hell am I going to describe this? I will try my utmost.

It is a book of poetry. It is not a poetry “collection”. It is not a bunch of poems that somebody wrote, and then put together. Every word in this book is concerted, and part of a single, coherent, dedicated work.

But you can dip in and out of it, and read the individually titled poems in isolation, should you want to.

I am a post-doctorally qualified scientist. Whenever a writer invokes scientific terms in their writing, I immediately want to know with what authenticity and accuracy they are doing it. Steve Ely has done his research, and you may take it that everything he says in this work that sounds scientific has the same rigour as an academic paper in a reputable journal. Steve Ely has dealt with his subject in that regard with more thoroughness than any other writer of poetry or fiction that I know of. I hope he has set a new standard.

This is a working class book. The experiences related are from working class characters who speak in working class vernacular. The breadth of vocabulary and the ingenuity of language in the whole work is broader than anything I can think of. Broader than Ted Hughes. Broader than T. S. Eliot.

I am struggling to describe such an unexpected, diverse, complex, and important object. I would say that it resembles ‘Dread Beat And Blood’ by Linton Kwesi Johnson, in the sense that it brings poetry to a set of subject matter that previously had been neglected. But it is much more detailed and thorough than any other poetic work I have previously read.

Parts of it will amaze and inspire you.

Parts of it will inform and engage you.

Parts of it will make you feel sick.

You need to read this book. If fewer than a hundred million people read this book, the Earth shall die.

Eeely
Steve Ely
Longbarrow Press

978-1-906175-48-1

184pp

GBP 14.99

Review: Getting Gobby In The Lobby, 17/04/2024

I arrived at Lobby 1867 on Westgate in Wakefield with only a vague idea of what I was going to read in my open mic slot. The organiser and compere, Tim Brookes, told me I was on second from last, in the second half, and so I would be able to listen to nearly all the other performers, and see if any theme would emerge.

Tim Brookes began with a piece called ‘Watch With Mother’. My friend and Black Horse Poets colleague, Stefan Grieve, read ‘If Time’, and ‘Sanctuary of Words’, which he wrote at a recent writing workshop at Wakefield Library, organised by Tim Brookes, and conducted by Gaia Holmes from Halifax.

I am not going to review all the open mikers. It suffices to say that the standard was generally very high, but some people could still do with doing a timed rehearsal beforehand, INCLUDING ANY PREAMBLE, all the better to stay within the 4 minute slot. Tim is commendably energetic in enforcing the time limit, but more cooperation from the readers would make his task easier, and wouldn’t kill anybody.

Aamina Khan read her pieces off a smart phone. She did not give titles to any of her pieces, as far as I could tell. When she is not reading a piece, Aamina talks incessantly, in a way that I find engaging. The banter is sufficiently relevant to her performance to be worthwhile, but not so long as to prevent the pieces from speaking for themselves. She read: a piece about regional accent (Aamina herself has a Calderdale accent), a piece about pain, and a piece that she said was inspired by me – by William Thirsk-Gaskill. I did not quite follow the explanation of this, but I gather it was to do with a reading that she and I attended, along with other poets in an anthology called We’re All In It Together, published by Grist Books. I had said something to her at that event. It might have been, “We are not many peoples. We are one people.” I also caught the phrase, “And then this old guy came up to me”. I am grateful for all acknowledgements. She finished with a piece about the deadline for a university assignment. The narrator may or may not be trying to convey ADHD. Aamina finished her set to rapturous and well-deserved applause.

The next headliner was Emma Purshouse, from Wolverhampton. She opened with a piece about the flamingoes in Dudley Zoo, delivered in Black Country dialect, and recited from memory. She followed with a piece about a contemporary version of Punch & Judy, delivered by Punch. Her next piece was introduced with the words, “This is what might happen if Thelma and Louise lived in the Black Country, were in their seventies, and didn’t have a car.” The next was about a poster on a pub wall, delivered in the voice of a drunk, female narrator. And then a poem about the sounds made by a walrus, narrated by a male walrus. And then a canal poem, set in Tipton, and poem about a woman who meets an antagonist on a bus.

Emma Purshouse’s poetry is mostly delivered in a Black Country accent, and contains dialect, the most significant elements of which are explained in advance. The accent and dialect are well-handled, because all the pieces stand up because of their subject, characterisation, and craft: the accent is the means of delivering the poem; it is not the whole poem. It lends authenticity, rather than acting as window dressing. Her first full poetry collection is called Close, and published by Offa’s Press. (In my browser, WordPress has not rendered this correctly, but the link to Emma’s website still works.)

Home

The second half was compered by Lisa Falshaw, another Black Horse Poets colleague. She read a Larkinesque piece called Photographs, and an ode to a paperclip.

The third and final headliner was Steve Pottinger, also from Wolverhampton. He mentioned coming from a relatively small city, near a relatively larger city, which diverts money, publicity, and opportunities away from the smaller city. That gave me an idea for my open mic slot. His first piece was about returning home from a trip to Birmingham on train full of drunks. It was authentic and well-observed. And then came ‘In Praise of the Hardiness of Market Traders’. ‘The Crown and Sceptre, Friday’ is a poem set in a traditional pub and again was well-observed, and not sentimental. Next came a preamble about a real, Chilean street dog called El Vaquita. The preamble was just enough to set up the poem, which was moving and powerful and full of emotion, but again, without sentimentality. ‘Fatima’s Working in Cyber’ was an economically-written and acute satire based on a Conservative goverment poster from a few years ago. It raised loud cheers. And then a poem about Palestine; ‘7:19 In The Evening’, about a busker singing in Birmingham New Street station, which was a suitably lyrical and calming end to a set full of fervour. To find out about El Vaquita, you can either google it, or you can attend one of Steve Pottinger’s performances, which is certainly the course I recommend.

https://stevepottinger.co.uk/

Another open miker I will mention is Faye Marshall, a regular at Getting Gobby in the Lobby and also a colleague of mine from Kevin P. Gilday’s lockdown venture, Scribbler’s Union. She continued the West Midlands theme with a piece about racism experienced by an Irishman in Birmingham. It packed several punches, and was well-handled.

I read a piece called Echo, which my wife says is the best poem I have ever written. It is about my late mother’s dictating machine, and all the punctuation is set out in words. Further to Steve’s remarks about larger, neighbouring cities, I finished with a short, silly piece I wrote about Leeds, which provoked suitably ironic cheers.

My piece mentioned the discovery (or, as I read it, the “invention”) of oxygen, and so it was entirely fitting that the final performer was Tom Priestley, who was standing in for Joseph Priestley, who couldn’t make it. I have heard him perform before, and he delivered another excellent set in his distinctive voice.

The open mikers were good. The headliners were outstanding. For a “pay as you feel event”, it was incredibly good value for money.

The next one is on 8 May 2024.

Review: The Hitchers, and Indignation Meeting, upstairs at The Pack Horse, 7 October 2023

The immediate reason I bought the ticket (GBP 7.50) for this gig was to hear The Hitchers perform their signature track, Strachan. I first heard that track on the John Peel Show in about 1997, and it had an immediate effect on me. I do not often go to gigs these days, but I still consider that gigs in small venues are essential for the development of new music.

The Pack Horse in this case is the one next to the Leeds University campus, not the one on Briggate. I decided to go by car. I parked on Rampart Road, and walked about a quarter of a mile to the venue. The streets were full of students, many in fancy dress. The pub was crowded. Downstairs, every customer was a student, and all apparently oblivous to the performance that was about to start, upstairs.

Upstairs, the age of the customers increased by about 30 years. The sex ratio went from 50:50 to 90:10 in favour of males. Hair largely disappeared. Day-glo fancy dress was replaced by black T-shirts and denim.

The stage is only about a foot high. It has a patterned rug on it. As well as the ceiling-mounted speakers, there were speakers and monitors on chairs, and one on a block of concrete. There was a small mixing desk at the back of the room. The background music seemed to be Cuban jazz. The live music started reasonably on time.

The PA set up was typical of a pub performance. It all seemed fine, except that it was impossible to hear the vocals. In other words, the sound was very different from what you get by listening to a recording of the same band.

The Hitchers came on second. Their line-up is two electric guitars, bass, drums, with the drummer and the lead guitarist also performing the vocals. There was a lot of banter in between songs, including a running commentary on the printed set list. The performance of Strachan was all in good order, except, as I said, the vocal tracks could have done with coming more cleanly through the PA.

Indignation Meeting also discussed the set list as they went along, except, like the UK constitution, it was unwritten. Their line-up is two electric guitars, bass, and drums. The drummer is the lead vocalist, and also plays a trumpet. He plays it with one hand, while continuing to play the drums with the other. At one point, the bassist played a couple of bars with his instrument held behind his head, Hendrix-style.

The genre of music that Indignation Meeting play is “railway punk”. This appears to mean, “short, fast, amplified tracks, with a single vocalist and strident percussion, with lyrics mostly on the subject of the British railway system”.

Like the front man of The Hitchers, the front man of Indignation Meeting plays the drums, sits at the back, and provides a commentary in between tracks. As well as what track they were going to play next, subjects covered by this commentary included: water (procuring more plastic beakers full of it, for drinking), and what amounted to sleeve notes about the tracks. If you want to know the content of these sleeve notes, you are either going to have to turn up to an Indignation Meeting gig, or buy their CD, which costs GBP 8.00 and is called Trouble In The Shed. The band also has a 7″ single, which is due for release in November. I forgot to note what this is called. The CD is on a label called Deputation Records: DEP001CD.

I don’t know how much more material in the railway punk genre Indignation Meeting have to produce. I hope, like Half Man Half Biscuit, they continue to write songs about subjects that other bands would never touch. I hope they get bookings in enough venues, and big enough venues. I hope that somewhere another band is rehearsing, who will one day, fairly soon, support them.

At GBP 7.50, this was outstandingly the best value for money gig I have been to in over 35 years. I have put my name down on the Indignation Meeting mailing list.

Review: The Dogs, poems by Michael Stewart

• Smokestack Books: http://www.smokestack-books.co.uk
• Publication date: 1 July 2023
• 978-1-7391730-2-9
• 88 pages
• GBP 7.99

I heard about this collection some time before it was printed.  Michael Stewart read some of the pieces at Huddersfield Literature Festival in 2022, and he explained the concept of the collection: 

“The Dogs is a book about what humans have done to the world and what we have done to ourselves. Specifically, it is a book about ‘Man’s best friend’ — their origin myths, and their place in the world before they were co-opted into human society and ideas of pure breeding and dysgenics. The Dogs also imagines a future where dogs have developed the power of speech; led by the non-violent UnderDogs and the more radical direct-action Der UberHünd, the animals of the world begin demanding their rights.”

The realisation of that concept in 49 poems, in three sections, is more elaborate and varied than I was expecting, both in terms of the ideas that are examined, and the styles in which the pieces are written and presented on the page.  The collection deals with many complex and universal themes, but the treatment of ideas is built up out of concrete details, and engagement with the reader’s senses and emotions. 

The book opens with a one-and-a-half page introduction.  One of the things this conveys is the reason why I could never keep a dog.  I could not bear the responsibility.  I have inherited a sensitivity from my father, regarding animals.  I don’t like animals, simply because they cannot talk to me and tell me they are happy.  And so, I felt raw by the time I had finished my first reading of The Dogs.

The acknowledgments include a mention of Crow by Ted Hughes.  Another poet this collection reminds me of is Adrian Mitchell.  This is because of the combination of the literal, the personified, and the metaphorical in the subjects of the poems; the use of some non-standard typography, in combination with images (by Louis Benoit) and the way that the individual and the present is combined with the historical, social, and political. 

I have just re-visited the collection to count how many of the pieces have a conventional rhyme scheme.  I was surprised to find that there is only one.  That is an indication that Michael Stewart is a poet who knows how to write free verse that reads like poetry, rather than, as the so-called traditionalists say, ‘prose cut up into bits’. 

Every reader will find their own personal associations and reflections in this rich collection.  The most poignant of mine came to me while I was reading the third and final section.  I recall a punk I met in Leeds in unusual and constrained circumstances in the spring of 1984.  He had a Mohican, and was wearing leather, chains, Doc Martens, and a tartan mini-skirt.  On the back of his red biker’s jacket was written what I took to be the name of a band.  In Gothic script, it said ENGLISH DOGS.  He was in a cage, with no food or water. 

Review: Hard Times Orchestra, Seven Arts in Leeds, 13/01/2023

This event was partly a birthday celebration for Jacqui Wicks, the lead vocalist in Hard Times Orchestra. Jacqui’s name already appears in this blog, from when I reviewed a performance by Gudrun’s Sisters.

The event had many personal connections for me and my wife, Valerie. One of these is that I grew up not far from the venue. I have also performed as part of a spoken word line-up at Seven Arts centre, as well as attending previous events there. But this was the first time that Valerie or I had heard Hard Times Orchestra.

There was no support act. They did their own compering. The line-up was Richard Ormrod (percussion, bass saxophone, clarinet, ukulele, vocals), Johnny Flockton (guitar, ukulele, backing vocals) and Jacqui Wicks (ukulele, and most of the vocals).

They did two sets, separated by a short interval. Every number, apart from the last one, was trad jazz or blues.

Seven Arts is an intimate venue. The auditorium is separate from the bar area, which of course means no background noise, but it is on the small side, and there is no stage: the artists perform on the same level as the front row of seating. I got the impression that most members of the audience were people who had heard Hard Times Orchestra before, or knew at least one member of the band (like Valerie and me) or both. This was a community event, as much as a professional performance.

Because I was driving, I was completely sober, but I did not have my notebook with me, and so I can’t remember what every number was called. I do remember that the artists whose work was being covered included Cole Porter, Cab Calloway, and Tom Waits. I will describe what I recollect of the musical techniques.

Hard Times Orchestra is not literally an orchestra, since it only has three musicians, and no conductor, but it is certainly one of those ensembles in which the audial impact is greater than you might expect from a mere consideration of the number of performers. The band who are the past masters at this in my opinion are Bob Marley and The Wailers. The way The Wailers did this was threefold: every member of the band has to be able to sing, every member of the band has to get the utmost out of whatever instrument they have in their hands at the time, and it also helps if as many people as possible can play more than one instrument. Hard Times Orchestra use similar techniques.

The performance itself contained a brief discussion of Jacqui Wicks’ vocal technique. After a previous performance, someone had said to her that she sounded like, “A Disney Princess”. It is true that the numbers divided into the ones that dealt with malice, infidelity, violence, and sex, and those that were conventional love songs, and Jacqui adapts her vocal style accordingly.

Richard Ormrod plays the clarinet as if he were playing the kazoo. By that I mean that he makes it look and sound easy. I was impressed by his bass saxophone playing, which reminded me of the bass saxophone on the recording I have heard of Ol’ Man River, by Bix Beiderbecke.

It was difficult for me to observe Johnny Flockton’s guitar technique, other than by listening to the music he made, because he stood for most of the performance with the neck of his guitar pointing straight at me. What I did see of both his left and right hand technique was impressive, both in accuracy and ability to put feeling into the sound. For every number, he played a semi-acoustic guitar with the amp controls turned to the “acoustic jazz” settings. Except for the last one.

I can’t remember what the last track was called, but it was a complete departure from the whole of the rest of the set. It required an augmented drum kit for Richard Ormrod. Earlier numbers had touched on dark subjects in the lyrics, but the last one was much darker and edgier in its arrangement, and instrumentation. Johnny Flockton used a Gibson: a proper, solid body Gibson, and it was very much set to “heavy rock” mode. While Jacqui was singing the lead vocals , she made a circling motion in the air with her left hand. You had to be there to appreciate this, but it was just right. It was the kind of thing that a virtuoso performer adds, and where someone else might say, “Why do you need to do that?” the virtuouso knows that it works.

I will definitely be going to hear Hard Times Orchestra again.

Review: Where The Road Runs Out, by Gaia Holmes, Part 2: The 7 Reasons

It was always my intention with my earlier review of Gaia Holmes’s third poetry collection that I would need to revisit it, as the appreciation of the poetry developed in my mind.

When I posted the link to the earlier review on Facebook, I said I could think of at least 7 reasons to buy the collection.  Michael Stewart has since asked what the 7 reasons are.  Some of those in the following list have already been touched on in the previous review.

1. It represents a much better treatment of poetry based on place than one is used to seeing.  Furthermore, the place in question is part of Scotland, which I regard as notorious, along with Yorkshire and the Lake District, for prompting mediocre poetry of place.  Holmes has not allowed the location to put her technique off balance.  Too many stanzas in poems of place might as well be struck out and replaced by the words, ‘It was amazing.  You should have been there.’  This criticism does not apply to any of the poems in WTRRO.  Holmes at all times applies the same craft to conveying the location as to any other subject. 
2. The cover, by Hondartza Fraga, is a masterpiece, which suits the content of the book, perfectly.
3. The treatment of the subject of dying, which is dealt with honestly and sensitively, but without sentimentality.  Holmes gives the feelings related to dying a personal identity, which is vitally important.  Feelings about death are useless if they are impersonal.  If I want to gain insight into how it feels to have a parent who is dying, then I want to read the impressions of another, real person: I want to know how you feel, to give me a bearing on how I might feel.  Anything which attempts abstraction is going to sound like a Hallmark sympathy card and be, at best, cloying, and at worst, oppressive.
4. Even if you take away the body of poems of place, and poems about dying, there is a substantial range of other subjects.  The breadth and balance of subject matter is one of the collection’s outstanding features.  I am not going to try to convey this in a review: if you want to appreciate it, buy the book.
5. It is yet another Holmesian masterclass in how to build the treatment of complex ideas out of the details of everyday life.  I am not merely repeating item 3: Holmes does this throughout. 
6. The sheer skill and ingenuity in the use of language.  When a poet reaches the stage of publishing a third collection, and when the blurbs on the back are written by Sara Maitland and Helen Mort, it is easy to overlook how the poet does the simple things.  In spite of the fact that Holmes generally uses a wider range of vocabulary than I do, there are pieces in which she produces something quite remarkable out of next to nothing.  An example of this is ‘Leaves’. 
7. Accessibility.  There are about 60 poems in the collection.  As I read them, they affect me in a variety of ways.  Not one of them has made me say, ‘What the hell was that about?’

Review: The Damned United by Red Ladder, Cluntergate Community Centre, Horbury, 17 November 2018

The Damned United

This was the first time my wife and I had been to Cluntergate Community Centre (CCC) since it was extensively renovated. The last time we were there, we were performing, together. We did ‘Welcome To The Mad’, our joint performance about how we met, with prose, poetry, and photographs. That was part of Wakefield Litfest 2017.

The Damned United is a play, based on the novel of the same name, by David Peace. This has already been adapted for cinema (2009). David Peace comes from Ossett, which is next to Horbury. I spoke to him at Huddersfield Literature Festival in 2011. This production is by Red Ladder, the same company that produced Sex And Docks And Rock ‘n’ Roll, which I have also reviewed.

This was a homegrown, intimate production: a play about my football team; staged at my local community centre; by a theatre company run by people I am acquainted with; based on a novel by an internationally acclaimed, local writer. The big room at CCC has a stage, but Red Ladder didn’t use it. The actors were at the same level as the audience, only a few feet away from the front row of seating. During the scenes when Brian Clough is berating players in the dressing room, members of the audience are picked on as if they are players. It just so happened that, when the player in question was Billy Bremner, Clough addressed him as ‘William’, and he was pointing at me.

The staging was minimal, but ingenious and engaging, at the same time. Apart from a 1970s chair, two occasional tables, a phone with a curly cord, a bottle of Bushmills, and a glass, the staging included several tall, narrow storage units made of galvanised wire mesh. One of these held a hand-axe. The dominant feature was a giant screen, at the back, which seemed to be made of the corrugated plastic that is used to keep rain off driveways. The images projected onto this were synchronised with the action and the dialogue. Most of them were in monochrome, and sinister. Members of the Leeds United team were identified by having their names, in white, on their jerseys. The fact that they names were always visible indicated that they were facing away when Clough was talking or shouting.

The screen is also used to convey text. Some of the scenes are preceded by which day of Clough’s 44-day tenure at Leeds is about to be examined. This is one of those plays where, like a Greek tragedy, the audience already knows how it is going to end, but that only increases the tension and drama.
This version of the adaptation has five characters, but only three actors. I cannot find their names: this production has a different cast from the one at Leeds Playhouse. One actor plays Brian Clough, another plays Peter Taylor, and the third plays Sam Longson (chairman of Derby County), Manny Cussins (chairman of Leeds United), and a coach, called Sidney. The projection screen serves another purpose in keeping the actors out of sight while they are picking up or discarding props, or changing costumes. The degree to which the same actor, with minimal time for changing, managed to project three different personas, was remarkable.

For those who are not familiar with the story, this is not a play about football. Football is the background, but not the story. The story is about hubris, obsession, envy, love, and betrayal. It is also a powerful portrayal of the 1970s, when football players ate steak and chips, and the managers of top clubs had sometimes grown up in households that didn’t have a refrigerator.

Apart from the imaginative staging and consistently convincing acting, another excellent feature of this production is its length: it is a single act, lasting 65 minutes. It delivers a more concentrated version of the story than either the book or the film.

The tour continues until 31 December 2018. Highly recommended.

Review: Where The Road Runs Out, by Gaia Holmes

ISBN 978 191097 445 2

GBP 9.99

90 pages

commapress.co.uk

 

Where The Road Runs Out is the third poetry collection by Gaia Holmes.

In one respect, this review is easy to write, because it is such an outstandingly good collection.  There is Gaia Holmes’s accustomed craft, and her ability to choose a completely unexpected word or phrase, while reinforcing the meaning of a poem, and not bewildering the reader for the sake of sounding poetic.  There is a secure foundation of universal themes, and a range of overlapping subjects which is very well balanced.  There are lines, and stanzas, and whole poems which will give individual readers back something of themselves and their own experiences, or make them realise that they have just read an articulation of something that has been bothering them for years.

On the other hand, this review is very difficult to write, because Gaia Holmes is one of my oldest writing-related friends, and some of the pieces in this collection are ones of which I have personal, prior knowledge. I have written a companion poem to at least one of them.  Even though I have not yet managed to attend any of the launch events, I have heard Gaia reading some of them, live.  But those personal associations only lend additional strength to my appreciation of this collection, because the collection is so good in the first place.

The themes the book opens with are the setting of the Orkney Islands, particularly Shapinsay, and the fact that the writer’s father is dying.  The subject of mortality is one that Gaia Holmes handles with a combination of honesty and acute observation.  There is an unfailing courage which is completely un-self-conscious, and is the kind of courage which is manifested by facing up to one’s fears.  There are details: lots and lots of important details.  Gaia Holmes is a more figurative poet than I am, and so some of these details refer to things that only exist in the imagination, but they are no less important or powerful for that.

I won’t tell you what the other themes are.  The collection continues beyond its starting point, which is poetic in itself.  The narrative voice throughout is feminine; acutely observant; somewhat overwhelmed and put upon, but fed by her own, quiet determination.  If you love contemporary poetry, then buy it.  If you don’t understand or think you do not like contemporary poetry, then buy it, because it is a superb set of examples of how contemporary poetry can demonstrate artistry and craft.

Review: 20 Stories High, by Michael Yates

ISBN 978-0-9934811-8-5

Armley Press

GBP 8.99

This collection contains some experimental pieces, including one which has no human characters, and others in which some of the characters are human, but also dead.  There is a story set aboard a stranded spaceship, in which two of the characters are inscrutable robots with seemingly diametrically opposed moral purposes.

There are some references to what the Open University calls ‘sensitive material’ (substance abuse, violence, sex – particularly sexual impropriety) and a healthy amount of swearing.

I enjoyed this collection in two, separate ways.

The experimental stories intrigue me not so much in how the weirdness of the story is set up, but more by how it is resolved.  These resolutions, without contradicting any of the set-up, often emphasise the more basic elements of character, motive, and desire.

This leads me to the second way I enjoyed them, which was to dwell on Michael Yates’s own biography and career as a provincial journalist in the days before word processors and the smoking ban.  Whether set in a sub-editor’s office or a spaceship, Michael Yates’s most convincing characters are male, middle-aged, and have a chip on their shoulder about something they may or may not admit to.  The chap who might try to bore you to tears in a golf club or railway station bar is somebody we never want to meet, but I do like to read about him in Michael Yates’s stories.  Michael, like any good writer, can make a character who sounds as if he has had a boring life come clean about the one part of it that makes a good story.  An extraordinary person, telling interesting stories, will soon get boring.  An ordinary person, telling just one story, as if his life depends upon it, can be fascinating.

I will not divulge which among the collection is my undoubted favourite.  I will just say that it uses a borrowed title, a first person narrator who is clearly out of his mind, and it has no section breaks.

Review: The Bleeding Obvious Christmas Party, The Red Shed, 16 December 2017

First up was Helen Rhodes. (You can follow her on Twitter: @ThinkingChimp )  She is based in Wakefield, but this was the first time I had heard her.  She began with an anti-fairy tale.  I do like a good anti-fairy tale (search on this blog for Fairy tale, if you don’t believe me).  It was well-crafted, with rhyme and metre effectively used, but not according to a rigid scheme.  She did a poem about self-doubt, and two political ones.  You may have heard me saying before that I do not usually like political poetry.  Politics, and self-doubt, are very frequent subjects in contemporary spoken word, and they are also frequently mishandled.  Poems about self-doubt have a tendency to implode in a way that makes the audience think, “Yes, you aren’t very good at this, are you?”  Poems about politics tend to produce a lot of sterile shouting about things that the audience already gets, or they inadvertently convince the listeners that the person speaking doesn’t know what they are talking about.  All Helen Rhodes’s pieces worked.  The self-doubt poem had the audience nodding with recognition and approval.  The political poems used poetic technique to make them stand up, rather than a mere, selfish appeal to the audience’s sense of justice.  Helen definitely left the audience wanting more, and I will be looking out for her next performance.

Helen, wife of The Bleeding Obvious’s Jess Rowbottom, began selling raffle tickets in the interval.  This was for the benefit of Mermaids UK, a charity which supports transgender children, and their families.  I bought two strips.

Next up was the inimitable (and I use that word advisedly) Lee McHale, from Castleford.  Those of you who are familiar with the ‘Mr Gum’ series of children’s books by Andy Stanton may be interested to know that Lee McHale looks uncannily like Mr Gum, himself.  It’s a combination of the beard, the cap, and the wild-eyed expression.  I have never yet seen Lee stick a picture of a scary shark on his beard to make himself look more frightening, but it would not surprise me if he did.

Lee started with ‘Ted, the Teabag’.  He then picked up a ukulele, which appeared to have been made out of a cigar box, with the bit of cord that Compo Simonite used to keep his trousers up with, instead of a strap.  The cord, and its unpredictable behaviour, were an unscripted contribution to the act.  He started a musical version of  ‘Jeremy Kyle Is A Wanker’.  I am familiar with the unaccompanied version, but not this one.  Lee can certainly play the ukulele, but he gave up on the instrument two verses from the end, because the unreliable trouser-cord was giving him gip.  He returned to reciting, unaccompanied, without any diminution of the effect or the audience enjoyment.

His last piece was announced as, ‘a hobby poem’, again set to the ukulele.  It was called, ‘I Like To Kill’.  The audience laughed out loud, though some people looked a bit uncertain at the injunction to “J O I N  I N !”

Whereas Lee did words with musical accompaniment, Louis James, who I mentioned in my last review, did guitar playing accompanied by singing.  Louis has a highly accomplished, complex finger-picking style, which includes a lot of moving his hands onto and off the strings, so that he can do things like strike the sound box, or play harmonics.  (If you don’t know what harmonics are, ask somebody.)

His first three pieces were his own compositions.  While his instrumental technique is breath-takingly sophisticated, I don’t really get his songs.  He is too young, too thin, and not sweaty enough for my taste.

Almost as if he were reading my mind, Louis finished with a cover version of ‘Ace of Spades’.  It was innovative, and it worked.

A late addition to the programme was Jasmine, from The Black Horse Poets.  She appeared under her pseudonym, which I didn’t catch.  She did a piece called ‘Spiderwoman’, which delighted the audience, including the bit where she stuck two fingers up.

As Geneviève Walsh was getting ready to go on, Helen Rhodes and Lee McHale had to go out into the cold, to travel to The Snooty Fox, for another benefit gig, a Christmas food drive.  “I’ll try not to take it personally,” exclaimed Geneviève, as they were leaving.

It was another effortlessly accomplished set from Geneviève.  Most of the pieces I had heard before, but I enjoyed them all the more for that.  The intro to ‘Contradiction’ (the piece about the beautiful woman in the library with the recalcitrant child, called Bradley) said that she was performing it in recognition of the casting of the new Doctor Who as a woman with a Yorkshire accent, and, so I was told, a male assistant, called Bradley.

The main thing I took from this performance of Geneviève’s was from the intro to ‘Dance Of A Thousand Losers’, and it was, “Life is about finding your kind of weirdo”.

The headline act was, of course, Jess Rowbottom in her guise as The Bleeding Obvious.

For those who have never yet enjoyed the blessing of visiting The Red Shed in Wakefield, it is, literally, a shed.  The – for want of a better word – “auditorium” is a room that has to be extended by opening a folding partition.  It tends to attract people who are looking for the bar and open the wrong door; it has 1970s-style, fireproof ceiling tiles, a self-assembly wardrobe in one corner, a granny carpet, and a laminate dancefloor and piles of stacked chairs, which give it the air of a low budget wedding reception.  Jess made it feel like Madison Square Garden.   Just about every seat was taken.

I am not going to go through the whole set list of 14 songs.  The performance began with some keyboard playing which reminded me of how Animal from The Muppets plays the drums.

One of my favourite pieces of unscripted banter was, “I didn’t used to be like this: I used to identify as a software engineer.”

I did not realise, the last time I heard Jess perform, that her instruments all have names.  I didn’t catch all of them, but the melodica is called Sven (which I always thought was the name of a Swedish hit man).  The gold keyboard with the shoulder strap is called Judith.  Don’t ask me why.

Louis James returned to the front, with his guitar, for a song called (I think) ‘Gender Babylon’.  They engaged in what I believe is known in some circles as, “getting down”.  It was very good.

The 13th song was ‘Keith Chegwin For A Day’, which Jess said she had written in 1991.  When Jess announced this as the last one, there were howls of protest, and so she finished with ‘One Foot In Front Of The Other’.

The raffle was drawn, and I won the naff Christmas compilation LP (yes, a vinyl LP) that had recently been contributed after a trip to a charity shop.

As I was on my way home, there were two middle-aged lesbians in the taxi office. One of them asked me about the record. “I love vinyl, me. What’s that? Christmas songs? I wish I had that. I’d love that.” I gave her the record.

When you have been unemployed as long as I have, the opportunity to attend an event devoted to self-realisation, with well-crafted music and words, in the company of people who are mostly familiar, does you a power of good.  The things I took from this event are that we are who we are, and anyone who doesn’t like it can fuck off, and that the exercise of talent, especially in an atmosphere of human warmth and solidarity, can keep austerity and prejudice at bay.

Merry Christmas, everybody.