HIROSHIMA YEAH!
ISSUE 9
NOVEMBRRRRR 2005
"Creation, to me, is to try to orchestrate the universe to understand what surrounds us. Even if, to accomplish that, we use all sorts of stratagems which in the end prove completely incapable of staving off chaos." - Peter Greenaway
BLACK FRIDAY
We would see him walking
towards us from a distance,
this figure clad in black,
only he would never arrive.
We called him Black Friday,
for reasons which now escape me,
me and my childhood friend Craig.
We�d see him when we were playing
in the swing park or in the garden
of Craig�s grandparent�s house.
Of course, it was just some
random guy out for a walk,
but we enjoyed scaring ourselves like that,
when we were young and didn�t have
anything real to scare us.
Back when summers seemed to
last forever,
before we lost sight of ourselves.
BACK TO THE OLD HOUSE
It's not there anymore,
the house where I was born.
They tore it down some time ago
to build newer, more expensive homes
I could never afford.
But I still dream of the old place often,
although it is usually a nightmarish vision,
for some reason.
The walls and roof are crumbling and decayed,
piles of junk litter the half-empty rooms
and a general feeling of unease is in the air.
The corners are dusty and dark
and spiders patrol the bare floorboards
like eight-legged sentry guards.
Confusion haunts the place like a ghost.
A friend once told me that,
if you placed your hands on the walls of a house,
then you would never really leave.
At least not in your heart.
And, so, that�s what I did before
leaving the old place.
I went around from room to room
putting my hands on the walls,
touching them like lovers.
So many memories were caught in those rooms.
So many traumas and dramas played out,
good times and bad.
Maybe that�s why, in some ways, I feel
like I�ve never really left that old house.
And I never really will.
CDS
MARK EITZEL � CANDY ASS (COOKING VINYL)
Once you get over the shock of hearing QUITE so many electro-ambient instrumentals on a Mark Eitzel album, this is really rather excellent. It all starts off in the way you�d expect, with a slow and quiet acoustic song called �My Pet Rat St Michael� (which, impressively, manages to name-check both Maria Carey and the pope!) but then it gets pretty mental pretty fast. �Cotton Candy Tenth Power�, �A Loving Tribute to My City�, �COBH� and �Guitar Lover� are all instrumental (bar the slightly eerie child�s voice on �..Loving Tribute..�) sound-scapes which are GOOD, just not something you would necessarily expect to hear on an Eitzel LP. But he�s a contrary old bugger who seems to delight in confounding audience expectations. Maybe he�s saving all his best new songs for the next American Music Club release. Having said that, though, �Sleeping Beauty� is heartbreakingly gorgeous, blending the acoustic and electronic elements masterfully. �Roll Away My Stone� is also really great � the third best track, after �Sleeping Beauty� and the one about the rat! Honourable mentions must also go to �Make Sure They Hear�, �Green Eyes�, �Homeland Pastoral�, �I Am Fassbinder� and �Song of the Mole� as these are all also very fine indeed (although, on these tracks, it does seem like the vocals were added as an afterthought). It is actually quite refreshing to hear Eitzel�s songs done in a format which is so totally different from AMC.
SON VOLT � AFTERGLOW 61 EP (TRANSMIT SOUND/LEGACY)
Had a shower at around 10am. Decided to go to Shawlands. Went out, got a quiche from Greggs on Byres Road then rang in sick to work, leaving a voice message. Then I had a look in the ex-Salvation Army shop on Dumbarton Road, where I got a checked shirt for �2 (it had a 20p coin in the pocket, which I took to be lucky!) Hopped on a bus into town. Saw my old lecturer Mick M---- in Borders! He looked old and awful! I think he spotted me and did a very quick turnaround and vanished. I remember him saying once that he hated meeting ex-students in the street. I had a piss in the Sir John Moore then looked at 2nd hand CDs in Missing then got a 38 bus to Shawlands. Texted Joe. He said he was ill but I could go round the flat if I wanted. I went to Sir John�s instead and had a pint, then went out to buy a birthday card for Maggie in the Arcade. I also went into Salvation Sounds and they had a Son Volt CD EP I never even knew was out, so I bought that (it was a fiver) then went back to the pub, had another pint and wrote Maggie's card. Was on my 3rd pint when I saw Joe and Cat walking past, so I dragged them in. Joe didn't look very ill to me! We had a couple of drinks then Ronnie came in, then Jim, who seemed a bit pissed (he'd been in the Bay Horse). Joe and Cat left after a bit and me and Jim were reminiscing about CSV and shit. Ronnie left eventually as well and me and Jim chatted till 7, when he went to get something to eat. He's into those Sudoku puzzles, he was telling me! I'd had a few by then so bussed it into town and had a pint in the Horseshoe. Andy N---- rang me to say that the mini-disc I was going to buy off him doesn't record (which was the only reason I wanted it), so that was that. I wouldn�t have been in any fit state to meet him anyway. Bought some cider in Sainsbury�s and got a subway back. Was in at 9pm and was so pissed I'm amazed I even made it to 10pm, which is when I went to bed. But I stuck the Son Volt CD on before passing out. It�s mainly live takes of songs from the recent LP but there�s a great new song on it too, called �Joe Citizen Blues�, which is another one of Jay Farrar�s modern day protest songs. Nice!
VARIOUS � THE UGLY TRUTH ABOUT BLACKPOOL VOLUME ONE (JUST SAY NO TO GOVERNMENT MUSIC)
Used to have a Just Say No To Government Music sticker on my wall, because I heard that the band Erase Today (who ran the label, I believe) sounded just like Husker Du. They didn�t, of course, but I quite liked the sticker anyway. This CD (which was, rather bizarrely, jointly funded by the Arts Council of England, the Blackpool Evening Gazette � who gave copies away free with the paper � and Blackpool Council) features such, er, luminaries as the aforementioned un-Husker Du sound-a-likes (but still really good) Erase Today, Razor Dog (previously described here as �fist-in-the-air pub rockers�, which caused some amusement in certain circles), the brilliantly bonkers Ceramic Hobs, The Membranes (who I remember hearing on late night Radio One back in the 1980s) and tonnes of other bands I�d never heard of.. Oh yeah, plus Skrewdriver! Er, yeah, the nazi punks (fuck off!) Although, apparently, it was only LATER that they turned into nazis (and it wasn�t even really the same band, but a kind of Bucks Fizz/Black Lace style FAKE version of the original band featuring the tambourine player and the triangle player or SOMEthing.. I DON�T FUCKING KNOW!!) Actually, I�d heard that early Skrewdriver stuff was quite good, so it was with breath-a-bated that I stuck this CD on, as theirs� is the very first track. It�s a dumb punk thing called �An-ti-so-cial� (�I�m antisocial, I hate the world�.. Oooooh! You and me BOTH, baby!) The tracks are arranged in chronological order and the first few bands are of the punk/post-punk variety (there seem to be quite a few Joy Division sound-a-likes, especially Tunnel Vision and Syntax), which is good fun if you like that sort of thing (which I DO, actually). But things start to get REALLY interesting with the late 80s/90s bands. The songs by The Membranes, The Phantom Creeps, Erase Today, and especially, Container Drivers, are all very impressive indeed. Of the noughties bands, the stars that shine the brightest are The(e) Transmissions, Neocoma (who contribute the brilliantly-named �Alcoholocaust�) and Ceramic Hobs. Can�t wait for volume two!
GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS � BODIES & MINDS (FARGO)
Spent a bleak Monday morning trying to track this CD down, as I�d heard some impressive things about it in Internet Land. Typically, it was in the LAST shop I looked in (the greengrocers!! Ha Ha!! I�m joking, of COURSE!) The cover is reminiscent of the, sadly seemingly defunct, Leeds-based band Dakota Suite and the comparison doesn�t end there as this was recorded in a church too (just like the Suite�s own stuff) and it also contains an absolutely BEAUTIFUL opening track, which can be put on �repeat� for HOURS without boredom ever setting in. �Song for the Angels� is the exquisite song in question and it�s a PERFECT start to an album which contains many moments of quiet, hymn-like wonder. This CD has already proved itself a worthy addition to my lovely late night line-up of albums, which includes Tom Wait�s �The Heart of Saturday Night� and Edith Frost�s �Calling Over Time�. Great to stick on when you�ve had a few drinks and you�re really sleepy and you want to listen to something relaxing and peaceful and beautiful. This fits the bill nicely.
VARIOUS � NOW HEAR THIS! (THE WORD)
Now that I�m old and don�t get as many compilation tapes made for me by friends as I used to, I pretty much rely on magazine freebie CDs to hear new music. I bought this month�s copy of �The Word� because it has some great articles (about John Martyn, Neil Young, Alan Bennett and more) but I was also drawn by some of the people on the free CD. Big Star (a song from their first new album since the 1970s), Silver Jews (a song called �Sometimes a Pony Gets Depressed�), Peter Bruntnell and John Prine especially. There�s not really a bad track on this � standouts for me include (as well as the aforementioned peopleoids) Jackie Leven, Sufjan Stevens (a lovely, lovely song about a nasty, nasty bastard � John Wayne Gacy, Jr), My Morning Jacket, The Wrens and Halloween, Alaska. Final track is a lump-in-the-throat thing called �A Minute�s Noise for John� by Mitch Benn, which is a fitting tribute to the late, great and very sadly-missed John Peel.
DIARY � GOT TO GET IN LOVE (BY TUESDAY) (DYSCFUNCTIONAL)
Bringing back memories of those heady, long-gone days of early September, when I was staying with friends in glamorous North Finchley (�cos that�s where I first heard this), this is a BLOODY GREAT CD. The music is semi-competent rock which feels on the verge of falling apart at any moment and the �singing� isn�t really singing at all, but spoken word pieces from a guy called John Plant. By turns hilarious, weird and unnerving, his topics range from Biblical-style parables (�The Parable of Two Horses�) to public transport (the hilarious �Season Ticket� and the downright fucking AWESOME �Rats�) and communism (er, �Communists�!) The one time he DOES try to actually SING (on the brilliant �The Old Git Song�), you can tell why he sticks to the spoken word! I was laughing out loud at the song where he mentions how his brother used to wank over pictures of Dusty Springfield and how he doesn�t trust drummers but likes Moe Tucker! Genius! A great band and very elusive (a Google search for them turned up only one or two pages). They play at London�s Bull and Gate a lot and I, for one, would love to check them out next time I�m daaaaaaaaahn saaaaaaaarf.
TOM WAITS � BLUE VALENTINE (ELEKTRA)
SWORDFISHTROMBONES (ISLAND)
I�m a hopeless romantic who finds beauty in the most mundane things. An empty, rainy street, Christmas tree lights, clouds, sad, lonely people in sad, lonely bars.. I could list a million things that I find poetic and beautiful, and that�s how a lot of Tom Waits songs make me feel. For years I�ve been meaning to get 1978�s �Blue Valentine�. The title, the cover, EVERYTHING about it has always screamed out to me, so why it�s taken me SO long to get a copy is a mystery. In fact, I picked up both these CDs yesterday before work (a little treat for myself for making it through another week, perhaps) as they were only a fiver each in Fopp. �Blue Valentine� doesn�t disappoint. Lovely songs abound: �Somewhere� (from �West Side Story�) sits beautifully alongside Waits originals like �Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis� (WHAT a title and the pay-off final couple of lines are completely heartbreaking) and �Kentucky Avenue�. Another late night treat. I was expecting some seriously mental shit on 1983�s �Swordfishtrombones�, but it�s not nearly as crazy as I�d been led to believe over the years. However, opening track �Underground� sounds like the work of a complete lunatic. Great! And, although there ARE a couple of other pretty fucked-up tracks, such as �Dave the Butcher� and �Trouble Braids�, there are ALSO plenty of lovely, 3am ballads here too. �Johnsburg, Illinois�, �Soldier�s Things� (which an old friend taped me years ago. Where are you now, Gavin Hogg?) and �Rainbirds� are all absolutely gorgeous piano ballads. �Town With No Cheer� is hauntingly wonderful and there are many other great tracks (�Frank�s Wild Years�, �In the Neighbourhood�, the title track, etc). I can see why this album is widely regarded as a classic.
CASSETTE
MICKY SAUNDERS & DAN SUSNARA � THE HELLO PEOPLE / RUNNING THROUGH THE RAIN / SUMMERAGE (SELF-RELEASED)
Each year, as the summer dies, I find my thoughts slowly turning to despair. But then the annual cassette single from Dan Susnara and Micky Saunders drops through my letterbox and that summer feeling enters my life once again! This year�s offering features three songs instead of the usual two. First track, �The Hello People�, is a breezy duet of poptasticness with underlying musical crunch courtesy of some diirrttyy guitars, while �Running Through the Rain� reminds me of some 60s band whose name presently escapes me, but it has cool horn stabs and an energetic pace and I wish I could remember the name of the band it reminds me of! Aaargh! Senile dementia is a terrible thing! Final track, �Summerage�, piles on the weirdness like it�s going out of fashion. Like some outtake from �The White Album�, there are echoey backwards vocals a-plenty and ghostly recorded-in-a-cave keyboard and various other goings-on. This wouldn�t sound out of place in an episode of �Lost�. Micky and Dan must�ve smoked some DAMN good shit when they recorded THIS little beauty! A CD compiling all of their summer pop gems is surely long overdue?
GIGS
HOBOKEN / SALON BORIS � NICE N SLEAZY, GLASGOW, 4TH OCTOBER 2005
After work, I got the staff bus into town and overheard some guy telling his mates he�d been in the cells all weekend �cos the cops mistook him for a guy who�d nearly murdered someone. He kicked off at the cops and then got charged with assaulting THEM! Crazy! Was in Sleazy�s BEFORE Andy, Erren and David, who all got the subway! We had a couple of drinks in the upstairs bar. Kenny came over with ultra frizzy hair. We gossiped about this and that (mainly Tom!) and then we all went downstairs. We�d missed Cnut, who was apparently some guy with a cardboard box on his head singing along to a backing track! Salon Boris were good. Sort of East European electro-rock with a heavily pregnant female singer. �Tokyo Techno Girls� was great, as was their new single. Hoboken were like Kraftwerk fronted by the guy out of the Divine Comedy and they all wore matching suits and ties, so I actually felt quite at home in my work tie! I suppose it�s the Franz Ferdinand look, although I look more like a dodgy insurance salesman (which is, er, exactly what I am!) Had several more drinks and Erren revealed that she�s a big Elliott Smith fan! Fucking great! Sleazy�s is open till 1am all this month but I left after the gig and walked back. Was in at 12.45am.
MARK EITZEL � ABC2, GLASGOW, 28TH OCTOBER 2005
Woke at 9.30, showered, went out to Somerfield then ate breakfast in my room. Was in Oran Mor at midday. Had a Magners, which they've started selling again, for �3.20 a bottle. Walked into town and looked in various shops. Went into the Crystal Palace at around 3pm and had a �1.89 pint of Carling, sitting upstairs looking out of the window. Looked in yet MORE shops then went to the Horseshoe after 4pm and sat at the bar, drinking a couple of �1.90 pints of Carling (weekend prices!) Drunken Eyes was in, as he was on Monday, in fact. I bumped into Joe McGarvey walking down Sauchiehall Street. He'd been out boozing all day and said he was going to email me as he'd lost his address book and didn't have my phone number anymore. We went into a bookies so he could put a bet on some darts match then we went for a drink in Nico's, which is �1.20 a drink ALL day EVERY day! I had a pint of Miller (in a plastic glass) and he had a double Baileys. He had to run off to watch the darts in some sports bar but he took down my phone number in his little black book. I was in Sleazy�s at around 6.10pm and met Michael and Thomas sitting in a corner. Gary showed up not long after and we all had a couple of drinks and then went off to the ABC. It wasn't very busy when we got there, so we sat around drinking and chatting. The support 'band', a solo guy called Beerjacket, came on. Just him and an acoustic guitar. He was good, actually. Said hello to some Fireflies - Scot, Ben and Nancy - and Eitzel was on stage soon enough. We were right down the front and I, for one, was spellbound, as usual. The set was much the same as I'd expected, from seeing various online reports of recent gigs but my eyes were filling up a couple of times, it was so great, and the between song banter was priceless and off-the-cuff as ever, with Mark trying to pronounce Sauchiehall Street (and failing!) and slagging off Diamanda Gallas. Third time he's played Scotland this year and each time he played 'Outside this Bar', which I had waited YEARS to hear him play. It just doesn't get much better than THAT! After the set, he was selling CDs at the side of the stage. I jumped the orderly queue to tell him I already had the CD but could I take a quick photo? He obliged and I shook his hand and returned to my friends and our drinks. The bouncers started hassling everyone to leave, so we stumbled out into the street, hopped in a taxi and went back to Michael's house in Stepps. It's a proper house, with piles of CDs everywhere. We drank vodka and Cokes and sat about the living room passing round an acoustic guitar, doing versions of Eitzel songs and also some originals. Had a good laugh. Don't remember going to sleep but I awoke early next day on the couch next to Gary. When I awoke again, at about 8.50am, he'd moved onto the OTHER couch and was still asleep. I finished my vodka, went for a shit and then slipped out into the early morning sun. The local train station was closed, so I got a bus into town, got a subway back to mine and then got ready and walked to Partick (stopping off in Fopp to buy 'Rain Dogs' on CD for �5) to get a train home. Got the 11.31-ish train as far as Motherwell and then had a half hour wait for the rail replacement bus, so I went into the pub that used to be called Centre Focus back in my college days. It's a lot nicer (and darker!) than it used to be. I ordered a cider and enjoyed it in a peaceful corner. I enjoyed the bus journey to Lanark too, listening to my walkman.
THE DAY I DISAPPEARED
I slept under a bridge the first night.
The cold didn�t bother me too much, as I had drank almost a full bottle of vodka, but I soon discovered that, if you were sleeping outside, you had to take the weather into account before passing out. If you didn�t then you�d end up dead really fast.
The day I disappeared started off much the same as any other. After making breakfast for the family and dropping the kids off at school, I wandered the supermarket aisles in a sort of daze, randomly picking things up and throwing them into the trolley. It had been a long time since I�d needed a shopping list. Each item was burned indelibly into my memory. Frankie couldn�t even get out of bed without half a pot of fresh coffee, Mel wouldn�t eat any other brand of cereal apart from Corn Flakes and Dawn had been unnaturally obsessed with Pop Tarts for months now.
As I turned the car in the direction of home, a fog seemed to descend over me. I wasn�t thinking about anything. Not about the other drivers on the road or even about where I was going. It was as if I was on automatic pilot. I kept on driving for a long time.
I had known for a while, deep down inside, that the life I�d been leading wasn�t enough. Not only that, but I actually felt it was destroying me, eating me away from the inside until I felt that the only way to stop the process was to get out. Get out and leave the whole lot behind.
So I kept on driving.
I arrived at around one in the afternoon. I didn�t know the name of the town and didn�t particularly want to know, either. It was the end of September but still warm. I wandered the streets of the pretty town centre, watching the tourists, the office workers on their lunch breaks, the drunks lying around, the beggars, people spilling out of buildings and crowding onto buses. It was something to see. Real life. I was supposed to be sitting at home, doing the housework and making endless cups of coffee and absent-mindedly flicking TV channels to see if there was anything worth watching. Not that there ever was. I would usually crack open the vodka sometime in the mid-afternoon, drinking it from a coffee mug. It was the only way I could face having to make dinner for the family when they got home. The only way I could manage to fake my way through the cheerful conversations with them, even though I had absolutely nothing to say because I�d been stuck in a big house on my own all day, as usual, with nothing to do but slowly, quietly go mad.
I was glad I wasn�t in that house and glad I wasn�t going back. Glad not to be having the same meaningless chit-chat with the neighbour over the garden fence while I was hanging out the washing. The house, the family, everything. I was free from the whole lot. I was pretty sure I was even free of the car now, as I had left the keys in the ignition on purpose when I�d arrived in this nameless town, where I�d been walking for an hour or more by now. I would soon be free even of money. The burden of making it, the worry of keeping it. A few beggars asked me for spare change and I gave each of them a note or two, leaving them with surprised looks on their faces. I was getting rid of my money fast. Soon, I would have nothing left. It was a prospect I was strangely looking forward to.
When it began to get dark, I had grown tired of wandering aimlessly around, so I went into a shop and bought myself a bottle of vodka. One of the expensive brands. I went out into the street, opened the bottle and took a drink. I winced a little as I wasn�t used to drinking it straight but I didn�t want to go into a pub and have a proper, civilized drink. I didn�t feel like being proper or civilized anymore. Instead, I sat down on a bench underneath a bridge and watched people eating in a burger bar across the street. I drank from the bottle and watched everyone passing by, in cars and on foot. All in a hurry to get somewhere. It felt good not having to be anywhere at all. I sat there for a very long time, drinking and allowing the realisation to sink in that the world was a great big place and that no one would find me. The alcohol shook my body and my eyes slowly began to close.
When I awoke the next day, the first thing I noticed was the light. It was very, very bright and, at first, I wondered where I was. Then I remembered. It felt good to wake up, not to the sound of an alarm clock but to the natural movement of the world. The noise from traffic, people talking and shouting. It was all good. It was all real. And I even felt happy, although I was a bit sore from sleeping on the cold bench. I got up and walked until I came to a caf�, going in and ordering a full breakfast with coffee.
As I ate, I began wondering about what was going on at home. The family would be frantic by now. Frankie would have called all the local hospitals as well as the police. Mel would be putting on a brave face, trying to act as if it wasn�t really bothering her that I had gone, but Dawn would be terribly upset. She was such a sensitive girl. Everyone would be worried. I wasn�t in the habit of disappearing. I was normally so stoic, so dependable. All the things I was totally sick of being, or pretending to be. Those things become your whole life after a while. You evolve into a person you don�t feel comfortable with, a person you don�t even recognise. All because you�re just trying to do the right thing, trying not to rock the boat or upset anybody. I had gone so far down that road that I couldn�t see any way back now. I had to make a total change, a complete turnaround. No looking back. So, I tried not to think about my old life. I tried to look upon it as a dream that I had just woken up from, albeit a very long, very realistic dream.
The funny thing is, I still feel that way. I still feel the same way I did on the day I disappeared, even though it was fifteen years ago.