The Greatness of Tom Courtney...

A rain sodden Friday night in home town Northern Ireland. It's too wet to venture out to get pissed without the taxi fare home and it's too wet to make a dash for it and spend the rest of the evening drying off your Wranglers in front of your local pub's open fire. You know it's not going to stop pissing down until at least tomorrow tea time and even if you do brave the endless rain, the puddles, the  dreaded hair disaster, the damp Wranglers and the pub...there will be sweet fuck all to do after the six pints and twenty fags, and like most of the other folk you will call it a night and resign yourself to the obligatory hangover. For a second you warm to the possibility of a 'lock in', but you realise, this will not be happening because the owner simply wants to shut up this damp bar and piss off to bed the minute that the hour hand hits 11PM.

So instead, you bite the bullett, swallow your bile inflected misery and turn on the  T.V. and slump into what passes for entertainment.  Meanwhile the end of the week descends on you like a weighted blanket and your stomach churns as you resign yourself to the reality that your one shot at some semblance of glory has definitely passed you by for another week. 

A cup of tea, some toast, that's as good as you think it's going to get until a black and white movie flickers into view on good old BBC 2. It's not 'this is what your Granny watched' black and white, more, 'early sixties kitchen sink grey and white'. 

There's a light flurry of flute music, (you think..."is this Kes?" for a moment, but no, that was definitely shot in colour) then you recognise a face. Hold on, that's the guy from The Likely Lads and that's definitely a very young John Thaw from The Sweeney. The Friday evening blues start to fade as the opening titles come into view. 

A scrawny, underfed war baby, in a white gym slip and worn black plimsolls, with a horror of a pudding basin hair cut, (this is definitely pre Beatles), runs through the opening sequence gasping, chest heaving, head back, chin extended, splashing through endless puddles. As the title music fades into the opening scene, you sit back and relax into the knowledge that, no matter what, you are going to love this simple little movie... 

The movie is "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner", and the runner is Tom Courtney.

"Sparrow Nights" by Anton Chekhov

There are terrible nights with thunder, lightning, rain, and wind, such as are called among the people "sparrow nights." There has been one such night in my personal life.
I woke up after midnight and leaped suddenly out of bed. It seemed to me for some reason that I was just immediately going to die. Why did it seem so? I had no sensation in my body that suggested my immediate death, but my soul was oppressed with terror, as though I had suddenly seen a vast menacing glow of fire.

I rapidly struck a light, drank some water straight out of the decanter, then hurried to the open window. The weather outside was magnificent. There was a smell of hay and some other very sweet scent. I could see the spikes of the fence, the gaunt, drowsy trees by the window, the road, the dark streak of woodland, there was a serene, very bright moon in the sky and not a single cloud, perfect stillness, not one leaf stirring. I felt that everything was looking at me and waiting for me to die....

It was uncanny. I closed the window and ran to my bed. I felt for my pulse, and not finding it in my wrist, tried to find it in my temple, then in my chin, and again in my wrist, and everything I touched was cold and clammy with sweat. My breathing came more and more rapidly, my body was shivering, all my inside was in commotion; I had a sensation on my face and on my bald head as though they were covered with spiders' webs.

What should I do? Call my family? No; it would be no use. I could not imagine what my wife and Liza would do when they came in to me.

I hid my head under the pillow, closed my eyes, and waited and waited....My spine was cold; it seemed to be drawn inwards, and I felt as though death were coming upon me stealthily from behind

"Kee-vee! kee-vee!" I heard a sudden shriek in the night's stillness, and did not know where it was – in my breast or in the street – "Kee-vee! kee-vee!"

"My God, how terrible!" I would have drunk some more water, but by then it was fearful to open my eyes and I was afraid to raise my head. I was possessed by unaccountable animal terror, and I cannot understand why I was so frightened: was it that I wanted to live, or that some new unknown pain was in store for me?

Upstairs, overhead, some one moaned or laughed. I listened. Soon afterwards there was a sound of footsteps on the stairs. Some one came hurriedly down, then went up again. A minute later there was a sound of steps downstairs again; some one stopped near my door and listened.

"Who is there?" I cried.

The door opened. I boldly opened my eyes, and saw my wife. Her face was pale and her eyes were tear-stained.

"You are not asleep, Nikolay Stepanovitch?" she asked.

"What is it? "

"For God's sake, go up and have a look at Liza; there is something the matter with her...."

"Very good, with pleasure," I muttered, greatly relieved at not being alone. "Very good, this minute...."

I followed my wife, heard what she said to me, and was too agitated to understand a word. Patches of light from her candle danced about the stairs, our long shadows trembled. My feet caught in the skirts of my dressing-gown; I gasped for breath, and felt as though something were pursuing me and trying to catch me from behind.

"I shall die on the spot, here on the staircase," I thought. "On the spot...." But we passed the staircase, the dark corridor with the Italian windows, and went into Liza's room. She was sitting on the bed in her nightdress, with her bare feet hanging down, and she was moaning.

"Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" she was muttering, screwing up her eyes at our candle. "I can't bear it."

"Liza, my child," I said, "what is it?"

Seeing me, she began crying out, and flung herself on my neck.

"My kind papa!" she sobbed – "my dear, good papa....my darling, my pet, I don't know what is the matter with me....I am miserable!"

She hugged me, kissed me, and babbled fond words I used to hear from her when she was a child.

"Calm yourself, my child. God be with you," I said. "There is no need to cry. I am miserable, too."

I tried to tuck her in; my wife gave her water, and we awkwardly stumbled by her bedside; my shoulder jostled against her shoulder, and meanwhile I was thinking how we used to give our children their bath together.

"Help her! help her!" my wife implored me. "Do something!"

What could I do? I could do nothing. There was some load on the girl's heart; but I did not understand, I knew nothing about it, and could only mutter:

"It's nothing, it's nothing; it will pass. Sleep, sleep!"

To make things worse, there was a sudden sound of dogs howling, at first subdued and uncertain, then loud, two dogs howling together. I had never attached significance to such omens as the howling of dogs or the shrieking of owls, but on that occasion it sent a pang to my heart, and I hastened to explain the howl to myself.

"It's nonsense," I thought, "the influence of one organism on another. The intensely strained condition of my nerves has infected my wife, Liza, the dog – that is all....Such infection explains presentiments, forebodings...."

When a little later I went back to my room to write a prescription for Liza, I no longer thought I should die at once, but only had such a weight, such a feeling of oppression in my soul that I felt actually sorry that I had not died on the spot. For a long time I stood motionless in the middle of the room, pondering what to prescribe for Liza. But the moans overhead ceased, and I decided to prescribe nothing, and yet I went on standing there....

There was a deathlike stillness, such a stillness, as some author has expressed it, "it rang in one's ears." Time passed slowly; the streaks of moonlight on the window-sill did not shift their position, but seemed as though frozen....It was still some time before dawn.

But the gate in the fence creaked, some one stole in and, breaking a twig from one of those scraggy trees, cautiously tapped on the window with it.

"Nikolay Stepanovitch," I heard a whisper. "Nikolay Stepanovitch."

I opened the window, and fancied I was dreaming: under the window, huddled against the wall, stood a woman in a black dress, with the moonlight bright upon her, looking at me with great eyes. Her face was pale, stern, and weird-looking in the moonlight, like marble, her chin was quivering.

"It is I," she said –" I....Katya."

In the moonlight all women's eyes look big and black, all people look taller and paler, and that was probably why I had not recognised her for the first minute.

"What is it?"

"Forgive me! " she said. "I suddenly felt unbearably miserable....I couldn't stand it, so came here. There was a light in your window and....and I ventured to knock....I beg your pardon. Ah! if you knew how miserable I am! What are you doing just now?"

"Nothing....I can't sleep."

"I had a feeling that there was something wrong, but that is nonsense."

Her brows were lifted, her eyes shone with tears, and her whole face was lighted up with the familiar look of trustfulness which I had not seen for so long.

"Nikolay Stepanovitch," she said imploringly, stretching out both hands to me, "my precious friend, I beg you, I implore you....If you don't despise my affection and respect for you, consent to what I ask of you."

"What is it?"

"Take my money from me!"

"Come! what an idea! What do I want with your money?"

"You'll go away somewhere for your health....You ought to go for your health. Will you take it? Yes? Nikolay Stepanovitch darling, yes?"

She looked greedily into my face and repeated: "Yes, you will take it?"

"No, my dear, I won't take it..." I said. "Thank you."

She turned her back upon me and bowed her head. Probably I refused her in a tone which made further conversation about money impossible.

"Go home to bed," I said. "We will see each other tomorrow."

"So you don't consider me your friend?" she asked dejectedly.

"I don't say that. But your money would be no use to me now."

"I beg your pardon . . ." she said, dropping her voice a whole octave. "I understand you to be indebted to a person like me....a retired actress....But, good-bye...."

And she went away so quickly that I had not time even to say good-bye.

It seems like a long time...

It has been years since I wrote on this and I am writing it only for myself. What a life. I'm alone again naturally, just hit the bottle again and it doesn't seem that bad apart from the headache. What do you do when you love a woman, have children with her, then discover that you can't handle being a father? What do you do when everyday you feel like running away? What do you do when you are overwhelmed by a fear of death? How do we live with all this going on 24 hours a day in our heads. I know I'm not the only one! So anyone who reads this....please give me your answer. Over the past year I have lost two dear friends, one to suicide and one to alcoholism and today I found out my best friends father died. What are we to make of this life? Yours respectfully. Anthony

If it's not broken....

Led Zeppelin are re-issuing their entire back catalogue, starting with the first three albums, I, II and III. Although I'm experiencing a sense of deja vu around the news of the re-issues (we have definitely been here before), my interest is piqued by the promise of a disk of unreleased material as a companion to the 'deluxe audio editions' of the original albums. But what can we expect?

According to Jimmy Page, as there wasn't enough studio material for an alternate mix of Led Zeppelin I, the first album will come with a disc of Led Zeppelin's live show from the Paris Olympia, recorded in 1969 and broadcast on French radio, which Jimmy discovered as a bootleg while in Japan. In other words it's been out there for years, and we have probably heard it before.I'm sure the audio will have been cleaned up but there seems to be a lot of those early shows on the internet already, not to mention released previousley.

Led Zeppelin II and III, meanwhile, come with an additional disc of what Page calls “working mixes”, that were produced during the course of the sessions. “It’s not a mirror image of the original album because it can’t be exactly that,” says Jimmy. “That’s why it’s a companion."
“But it’s important to get this clear:  these aren’t the 8-tracks or the 16-tracks that we’re listening to” he clarifies further. “These tracks are the working mixes, mixes the were taken home at the end of the night. Not every night did I take them home, because I was going in the next night to do some more work, but that’s why Robert [Plant] had a little box of tapes: he needed mixes that he hadn’t heard that day to work on the song. He sent me what he had down and that was useful too.”

So, basically we're getting Led Zeppelin doing The Beatles anthology, or what The Velvet Underground did with their fully loaded version of Loaded. As a Led Zeppelin fan, I find it hard to get excited about this. Rough mixes, are just that, rough mixes. With The Beatles we got an incite into the working of the most exciting musical sensation in the history of the known Universe, with The Velvets we got what sounded almost like an entirely lost album. But this is Led Zeppelin, and particularly with Led Zeppelin II which is pretty much a meat and potatoes blues rock album, I can't see how this is gonna pan out. An extra guitar or mandolin here, a missing bongo track there, more of Percy's 'my my baby baby mama mama' wailing, a bit of mouth harp? Only time will tell.

Now onto more sacred ground...
The cover art for the new re-issues is a different kettle of fish (mostly rotten) altogether. Frankly the images I have seen look like a sixth form Photoshop homework assignment, particularly Led Zeppelin III. An inverted version of the original cover! WHY?

The original covers were intrinsic to the whole 'Led Zeppelin experience' (I know, I couldn't come up with anything more original). Remix the album, add some 'un-released material', chuck a live show at us (which has been doing the rounds for decades), stick in a booklet of photo's and much needed reminiscences about the glory days at Olympic Studios, but for fuck sake leave the covers alone Jimmy!

Maybe I'm just not enough of a Led Zeppelin archaeologist to get excited about this. While alternative mixes are interesting, the originals were released like that for a reason, because they were the best. Jimmy goes to great lengths to stress that he even made sure the running order was the same, well I'm sure that must have kept you up for days Jim!

Anyway, enough of my neigh-saying,  if this 'auspicious occasion' opens the Led Zeppelin door to a whole legion of new fans, then that's great, because let's face it Led Zeppelin were, are and always will be fantastic, but on the other hand if this is a thinly disguised and horribly designed attempt to open the door to Page, Plant and Jones' wallets, then I for one am not buying it....

See the wanton destruction of beautiful album cover artwork below.

Sunrise. A.M.Monaghan

"Sunrise"

Bloom life! and part the skies, oh bringer of light.

Come, warm and quicken the heart beat off the day.

Shine on brightly, undaunted, until your last beams fade,

then saturate the world with your colours of dusk.

"Sunlight" by A.M.Monaghan

Just for a moment

the sun fell upon your face

illuminating your deep red lips

and your skin, illuminated pale and perfect.

I noticed the fine blonde child's hair
on your cheek catching the light
the outline of your legs visible through

 your pale printed summer skirt.

A brief moment, seared onto my memory
to be stored and revisited at random moments
how happy and content we were then
until you moved into shadow and where gone.

"Murphy O'Malley The Alley Cat" 

by A.M. Monaghan

 

Murphy O'Malley the alley cat
Walked into town in his bowler hat
In his right paw he carried his cane
He bought some fresh fish and walked home again.

Murphy O'Malley the alley cat
Hung up his cane and his bowler hat
He cooked his fish and ate it with ale
Then licked himself over from whiskers to tail.

Murphy O'Malley the alley cat
Read for a while as he lay on his mat
He brushed his teeth and got into his bed
And dreamed kitty dreams in his alley cat head.

For Danny...

"The Transience of Life" 

by A.M. Monaghan

I found a dead Monarch butterfly
lying in the garden, 
it's frail brilliant wings flapping in the
cold winter morning breeze
and I thought of the transience of all
life in the universe and I was
grateful for the passing moments
I have experienced and all the
passing moments I have yet to experience.

Vampire Vultures...it's not about vampires stupid!

Vampire Vultures is a music/culture/film/art/everything you need to know blog I recently discovered. I don't know anything apart from I really like it. Who ever runs it writes great, concise little articles on all kindsa good stuff, so, next time you're board, don't go to your favourite porn site or shoe buying site or whatever...go to http://vampirevultures.wordpress.com/2008/01/  You'll find everything from John Fahey, to Carl Orff, from The Shangrila's to Elis Regina. It'll brighten up your day. 

A young and innocent John Fahey.

 

John Peel's Virtual Record Collection

We all know the greatness that was John Peel. The original D. J. He started out in the states, then later aboard pirate radio stations off the stormy coasts of Britain, original hippie scenester, originator and presenter of the legendary "Perfumed Garden," supporter and champion to everyone from Donovan , The Misunderstood and Marc Bolan to David Bowie, The Fall and The White Sripes and all stops inbetween, ground breaking presenter of his formidable night time session shows on BBC Radio One and of course life long obsessive record collector. Well now we get to personally peruse his private and of course extensive collection at
http://thespace.org/content/s000004u/albums/index.html?letter=B At the moment they have only got as far as the A's, but drop in and watch the collection grow alphabetically. Fascinating, funny, obscure and heartwarming....just like the great man himself. And he supported Liverpool. Greatness indeed.

"If This is a Man" by Primo Levi

     You who live safe
     In your warm houses,
     You who find, returning in the evening,
     Hot food and friendly faces:

     Consider if this is a man
     Who works in the mud,
     Who does not know peace,
     Who fights for a scrap of bread,
     Who dies because of a yes or a no.
     Consider if this is a woman
     Without hair and without name,
     With no more strength to remember,
     Her eyes empty and her womb cold
     Like a frog in winter.

     Meditate that this came about:
     I command these words to you.
     Carve them in your hearts
     At home, in the street,
     Going to bed, rising;
     Repeat them to your children.

     Or may your house fall apart,
     May illness impede you,
     May your children turn their faces from you.

"A Misplaced Homecoming"

As Jack Delaney walked the five minutes to his ex wives house, he felt the beginnings of a rain shower. He approached the door, knocked, and felt the old familiar tightening in his chest.

She came to the door. "You know you don't need to knock, you can just come in." she said.

"That's OK" he replied, "I don't like to just walk in, you know, unannounced."

He took his shoes off as he stepped in and handed her the bag off oranges he had picked earlier that morning. "Here, a gift" he said as he handed them to her. She took them and said thanks.

He said hi to the boy who was playing with Lego bricks on the floor. His son was concentrating hard on putting together what looked like some kind of space ship and hadn't noticed him enter.

He went over and kissed him on the head, then asked if her parents had got away OK.

"Yeah, no problems. They left at two on the dot as usual. You know what dad's like."

He replied with a weak smile, but didn't say anything.

"Do you want a tea"? she asked."No. I just came to give you the oranges and say goodnight, but, thanks anyway".

He sat down on the floor beside the boy and watched him stick the finishing pieces onto the space ship.

"Looks great kiddo", "Thanks", the boy replied without looking up.
He stood up and watched her as she worked in the tiny kitchen, making dinner.


He had been in this same house only the day before. He knew she would be out as it was a Saturday. He had a key and would come over and do odd jobs for her occasionally, when she was at work and the boy was at school.

Walking around the empty house his head was filled with images from the past, when they had lived here as a family. He had walked up the stairs to her bedroom. He sat on the bed and remembered vividly for a moment the day they had bought it. How different things had been then. A different time, different city, different lives. He touched the pillow where she slept and lay down. He felt tired, old, empty. Getting up, he saw a picture he had made for her out of magazine clippings when their son had been born. He picked it up and rubbed the dust of the frame and put it back. Then he went down stairs and left, locking the door behind him and putting the bottom bolt in place so she wouldn't know he had been there.

As he got up she stopped what she was doing. "Have you eaten today?" she asked.

"Sorry?" he replied, pretending he hadn't heard her.

"Do you want to stay for dinner?"

"No, I better go, I've got stuff to do".

He went to say goodbye to the boy who was now sitting at the dining table looking at a toy catalog, but stopped and stood for a moment.

He turned back and looked at her. She was bent over trying to find something in one of the cupboards.

"Can you believe we were once in Love with each other?" he said.

She looked at him and he saw a slight nervous smile appear around her mouth. She didn't say anything. He continued, feeling his breath quickening, "I mean, can you believe how we couldn't bear to be apart, to be away from each other, how much in love we were"?
She looked away. "What is it? Do you need to talk?" she asked.

They looked at each other for a brief moment. He felt his stomach drop and he purposely exhaled and took a sharp breath. "No, no I don't want to talk. What is there to talk About?" She stood in silence looking at him.

He turned to the boy and said goodnight, asked him for a kiss, put on his shoes and went to leave. He heard her say something as he opened the door, but he wasn't listening and didn't reply. He closed the door lightly and stepped out onto the path that led to the street.

By now the rain was coming down heavy. He wrapped his coat around him, noticing the bottom button was missing, and started walking home.

By anthony MONAGHAN

"Hangover" by A. Monaghan

Am I surfacing,
becoming lighter, slow
and still drink sodden.
Coming up for air,
rising, rising, dizzy,
everything spinning
in the dimness,
a diver with the bends,
a bestial, filthy wretched thing,
face stuck to carpet,
in three day drunk
tortured clothes.

Pure, black pain
everywhere, no
prayers or tears will
save me. A victim
of myself, beaten
by my own hand,
bruised and battered,
broken and mad.

No amount of water
can wash away this thirst.
Everything is dried
and petrified.
Horror piles upon horror,
delirium Tremens!

I swat imaginary
flies and they
dissapear, nothing
left, but they
keep coming and
buzzing all night,
visions and voices.

This room is dark
but I can't get it
dark enough to ease
the pain in my skull,
in my soul. I need
to dissolve into
the night, into oblivion.

Shaking, and shocked,
solidly I try to breath,
with a huge, humming
sound in my ears
and I sweat and sweat
and still sweat.

My brain feels like
a day old turd,
floating in a bowl of piss,
and I drop and vomit,
my lungs emptied out
crushed and breathless, 
and I faint momentarily,
my legs have gone, knees
buckled and useless.

I come around
freezing cold but cleansed
and pure, if only
for a moment,
like the saints,
all their names
charging through
my brain finishing
with Francis, the
great sufferer,
and his prayer...

"Lord make me a vessel,
off thy peace..."
that's all I can
remember, and I laugh stupidly
with my head resting
on my hand, slowly
sliding to the floor.

And a tiny flower floats
down from the open
window, but with no
breeze behind it.
It is purple
and yellow and I
hold it, and it
seems like it is
enough to help me
through this terrible,
endless night.

I tear off my angry,
soaking, slept in clothes
and fall on the bed.
It is too hot and too cold
and those awful words, raging
in my head, with guilt,
and fear and madness...
never again! never again!
but I'm really saying
never enough...

I know I am destined,
doomed to repeat this
insanity and repeat
it again and again
and it will BE me
and it will be my hell.

My most treasured piece of vinyl

My 1966 , gold Parlophone label, mono pressing of Revolver by The Beatles (of course).
It still plays without a jump, bit scratchy though. Finest!

"Battleships" by A. Monaghan

We were lying on our stomachs face to face
playing a game of battleships.

It was America versus the Japs, he was America
and I was the Japs (as always when it came to the
Pacific campaign).

As I went to place a dud,
white peg on my attack radar board,
he asked, "How did you get those purple scars
on your arms dad, was it in a war?"

He's past seven years old now, a tricky age.
I had read in a parenting book, that at this
age with boys, honesty was always the best
road to go down. I decided to be honest.

"I did those scars myself, when I was crazy
and sad. You where very young then," I explained.

"How?" he asked.

"Well, you know that sharp sharp knife that you
aren't allowed to use unless a grown up is helping
you? Well that's how."

"Why? he asked.

"Because I was crazy and sad at the time. I cut myself
to stop being crazy and sad."

"Do all grown ups make scars, will I make scars?" he asked.

"I don't know." I replied. "Maybe other grown ups do other things
when they are crazy and sad, but I don't think you will do it."

"Did it hurt dad?" he asked.

"No, not at the time, but it did hurt later," I replied.

"Does it still hurt?" he asked.

"Yep, but in a different way than when I actually cut myself, it hurts
more inside than outside," I tried to explain.

"Can I kiss it better, like when you kiss it better when I hurt
myself playing?" he asked.

"Sure thing," I replied. "That would help."

As he leaned over the two opposing battleship boards,
he took a long good look at my fleet.

He kissed the dark red scar on my bi-cep and returned to his side
of the game.

Two moves later he sank my destroyer!

Kids are much sharper than we give them credit for...he won the game.

"This Dark Star" by A. Monaghan

This dark star is all sadness, all sorrow.
It is blinding, deafening and unforgiving,
offers no light, no sound and no relief,
to the one caught in it's orbit.
Like a door of thick, heavy glass.
Frosted and warped, distorting all reality,
it reduces the entire cosmos into
a single dot of pure black pain...an atom of despair.
a black hole that sucks everything into
an eternal and endless night,
shooting cold shards of ice
to pierce the heart and freeze the soul.
This dark star is always present,
it has no future and no past.
It is the weight of the whole of creation
pressing and diminishing everything
into a drowned nothing,
in a soulless and drowned world.

Volcano: An Inquiry into the Life and Death of Malcolm Lowry

Malcolm Lowry, writer. 28 July 1909 – 26 June 1957

"My secrets are of the grave, and must be kept, and this is how I sometimes think of myself...as a great explorer who has discovered some extraordinary land from which he can never return to give his knowledge to the world. But the name of this land is hell. It is not Mexico of course, but in the heart..." Extract from "Under The Volcano".

Malcolm Lowry was born near Liverpool, Cheshire, England in 1909 and educated at The Leys School and St Catharine’s College, Cambridge. He came from a family of four boys all of whom described their mother as cold and distant, something Lowry would carry with him for the rest of his adult life.

Between school and university at the age of 17, Lowry enrolled as a deckhand and sailed to the far east. This experience provided the material for his first novel Ultramarine which was published in 1933. It is the story of a privileged young man and his need to be accepted, by his shipmates. The story takes place during 48-hours on board a tramp steamer, the Oedipus Tyrannus, “outward bound for Hell.” The ship is caught in a furious tempest and the experience of the terrified animals aboard ship, being transported to western Zoo's from the far East brings to life for the first time Lowry's extraordinary prose and his relationship with subjects of death and the descent to hell. Like most of Lowry’s work it is a semi - autobiographical work, and contains themes he would later develop in "Under the Volcano"(1947).

By the time Lowry came to start work on "Under The Volcano" he was 27, living in Mexico, separated from his first wife, and already an alcoholic on the slow hellish slide that would end with his suicide at the age of 48 from an overdose of gin and barbiturate sleeping tablets.

"Under The Volcano" was published in 1947 after many rejections and re-writes, and at the time was hailed as the successor to James Joyces "Ulysees". Lowry was described as a genius, but all of this merely added to his unabated alcoholism and mental instability. He re-married and moved to British Colombia, settling in a lakeside cabin which eventually burnt down. Lowry was a haunted man and it was this interior, hellish landscape that he couldn't escape from no matter where he settled.

Despite the agonies of his addiction to alcohol, Lowry wrote and worked nearly constantly. In many ways, the only other artist to compare Lowry to, in his self destruction and constant seeking for salvation from himself, is the painter Jackson Pollock. The difference being that it is regarded Pollock created his best work during a long period of abstinence from alcohol, where as alcohol fueled and fired Lowry's writing. Indeed it has been said of "Under The Volcano", that no other book captures the life of the alcoholic quite as acutely and in such raw and unnerving detail.

Of Lowry's other work, the novella "Lunar Caustic" really brings home the true cost of Lowry's alcoholism. It’s the story of Bill Plantagenet who, after a long night’s drinking, awakens to find himself in New York’s notorious Bellevue psychiatric hospital (based on events taken from Lowry's earlier life in New York) surrounded by the truly dispossessed and insane. The story is as much about Lowry as it is about the “anxieties of the age he lived in.” Early versions were published in literary magazines, and Lowry eventually created a novella he thought too painful to publish in his own lifetime.

Malcolm Lowry seems to have slipped into obscurity when compared to other writer's of his generation, perhaps owing to his short life and relatively small amount of printed work, but it is undeniable that "Under The Volcano" is indeed a work of genius, to be read and re-read, and that no other work exists like it to this day.

In 1976, Malcolm Lowry's life and his greatest work were the subject of an Oscar nominated documentary, Volcano: An Inquiry into the Life and Death of Malcolm Lowry. It is a brilliantly paced and unflinching look at the man, his life, his work and the demons that possessed and drove him. With readings from the late Richard Burton and interviews with family members, colleagues, friends and his second wife Marjorie Bonner, the film brings Lowry's pain and neurosis to life in vivid and unsettling detail. To truly understand the work and life off this great writer, and his 'dark night of the soul', read "Under The Volcano", then read it again.

"The Critic" by A. Monaghan

He stands at the mirror and doesn't like what he sees, hates it and turns away. After a few minutes he drops his shoulders and turns back and faces himself, looks himself in those grey green eyes for a long time and sees nothing.

He rubs his coarse chin, picks up the toothbrush and starts to clean his teeth. The water brings a sharp pain to the broken tooth, the decaying tooth, a thought passes through his mind "You deserve this pain, this decay. You deserve THIS".

He begins the routine, washing his hands. The icy water is a shock, he starts to turn on the hot water tap but turns it off again. "You don't deserve hot water, You don't deserve warmth or comfort. You're a bastard, you're a drunk, you're a waste. You don't deserve anything"!

He washes his face in the cold water and as he rinses he sees his sons tiny toothbrush in the cup on the edge of the sink, "You're a bad father, you're a failure, a shit, a selfish, impatient asshole, not a man, not a person, you're nothing"

He rubs his face dry and feels a familiar wave of heavy remorse settle on his chest. He sighs loudly, turns off the light and moves towards the bedroom. Their is a weight now in his stomach, a ball of pure black hate. Hate for this bed, hate for this night, hate for this body, hate for this life. "You are unlovable, you are ugly, unbearable. You'll be alone forever, live alone, die alone and it's all you deserve".

"Stop...stop"! he says out loud, and then, "Just stop" in a quiet, defeated voice. He turns out the light and gets into bed, staring into the darkness and the silence for a long time. Finally he closes his eyes and allows himself to sleep.

"When Rock Goes Acoustic" Documentary

From the title it's pretty obvious what it's about. Take a stroll down 'rock's' many highways and discover the role of the acoustic guitar in the making of modern music. Everyone from Donovan to Albert Lee to Ray Davies have their say. Excellent documentary, and as Johnny Marr says, "If you can't play acoustic, you're not a guitarist!

part one...

Sylvia Robinson Remebered

Nik Cohn’s written the best pop books ever. I Am The Greatest, Says Johnny Angelo, Awopbopaloobop, Today There Are No Gentlemen, and so on. That’s not news. What did surprise people though was his 2005 book, Triksta, on life and death and New Orleans rap. It was an unexpected treat, and it worked ridiculously well.

There’s a lovely bit in Triksta where Cohn describes hearing the Sugarhill Gang’s ‘Rapper’s Delight’ for the first time on a cool, bright morning in 1979 – “I thought it was inspired ­ the freshest thing I’d heard in years ­ and started rocking to that ‘Good Times’ beat in front of the Planter’s Peanut shop.” His girlfriend is appalled, and by the end of the day is no longer his girl, but Nik’s got a new love.

Now in many ways the person to blame for all this is Sylvia Robinson. There’s a lot of stories out there about this, but the best one explains how sometime in 1979 at a family birthday party at a Bronx disco Sylvia witnessed the kids rocking to DJs chatting over records, and decided there might be something in this. She put together her own rap group, called them the Sugarhill Gang, put together a label Sugarhill with her husband, got a single called ‘Rapper’s Delight’ recorded, stuck it out on a 12”, and it sold like hot cakes. Rap and hip hop never looked back.

Sylvia Robinson is one of the great pop figures. She would still be one of the great pop figures if the only thing she’d been involved in was the ‘Love Is Strange’ hit for Mickey & Sylvia back in the r’n’r ‘50s. What a song! One of the great moments of cinema history is Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen on the run in Badlands, dancing away to ‘Love Is Strange’. The guitar wheedles and needles, and the singers vamp it up, with Sylvia coolly coquettish. And like Barry Gifford wrote about the film Badlands, “it meanders but it’s meaningful as hell”.

After a string of great pop-light Bo Diddley-esque hits as part of Mickey & Sylvia, we’d next see Sylvia again in the late ‘60s when with her husband Joe Robinson she started the All Platinum group of labels, releasing a fantastic flurry of soul/disco records for years to come. There were hugely successful and highly influential compilations of All Platinum singles, that contained absolute classics like ‘Hypertension’ by Calender, ‘I Dig Your Act’ by the Whatnauts, Brother to Brother’s cover of ‘In The Bottle’, and the phenomenal deep soul of Linda Jones’ ‘Your Precious Love’.
Many of the All Platinum hits were written by Sylvia. Maybe her finest moment as a writer was the contagious ‘Shame, Shame, Shame’ by Shirley & Company (and incidentally Shirley too was an r’n’r survivor being the Shirley of ‘Let The Good Times Roll’ fame). But her closest association was with the close harmony soul group, the Moments, for whom Shirley wrote many gems before their fantastic populist-disco hits like ‘Girls’, ‘Jack In The Box’, and ‘Dolly My Love’. Sylvia herself would score a string of hits with what can best be described in the words of one of these as Soul ‘Je T’Aime’s.

So Sugarhill took off in a way that could not have been expected. Hip hop scholars will no doubt explain how what Sylvia put out initially on Sugarhill was not exactly cutting edge, was indeed shamelessly stolen, and that they did not go about their business in an upright and admirable way, but the fact remains she had the vision to get on and do something. And there’s no disputing the fact that the great Sugarhill releases stand the test of time, and indeed have grown more charming, in the same way the rawest of rockabilly or garage punk records have.

The most famous of the early rap releases are probably those of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, and the holy trinity of ‘The Adventures of Grandmaster on the Wheels of Steel’, ‘The Message’, and ‘White Lines’. ‘The Message’ still has the power to shock. As Nik Cohn rightly writes: “For rap, all roads lead back to this. In the course of its three minutes and ten seconds, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, with Melle Mel on the mic, mapped out the hip hop universe. Everything that’s come since can be measured against the vistas it opened up, the promises it implied. More than party music, here was a world. ‘The Message’ was lived, every grimy, suffering bar of it”. This, after all, was what punk was supposed to be.

But Sugarhill was about more than rap, and the early days of hip hop. Sylvia maintained her connections with soul traditions, and the label issued many sides that could have been on All Platinum too. These included recordings by the great soul singer Candi Staton, in one of the several stages of a great career that has broached deep country soul, glorious disco, straight gospel, through her regular reappearances in the charts with the magical ‘You’ve Got The Love’, to her renaissance with Honest Jons in 2006.
Another soul singer who also found her voice at Sugarhill was Angie Stone, then a member of the femme-rap trio Sequence. Sugarhill also provided a temporary home for Washington go-go outfit Trouble Funk, and took advantage of hip hop’s diversion into electro experimentation, courtesy of her son’s involvement in the West Street Mob.

Should anyone be brave enough to look down on the populism of Sugarhill they should be reminded that the label’s house band would continue to send ripples through the most adventurous outreaches of music for years to come. The musicians on many a Sugarhill release included Keith LeBlanc, Doug Wimbush, and Skip McDonald, who would go on to work most importantly with Adrian Sherwood as part of Tackhead, and on many of the On-U Sounds recordings. The three would also play together as the Mafia, backing Mark Stewart on his post-Pop Group recordings.

Mark Stewart still talks excitedly how he was lucky enough to spend time in New York as the ‘70s became the ‘80s, rubbing shoulders with No Wavers like DNA and James Chance and the Contortions, and the hip hop pioneers like the Sugarhill crew and Afrika Bambaataa, and the areas where these cultures collided as captured in the Jean Michel Basquiat film Downtown 81. You could cite Grandmaster Flash’s ungracious but highly effective appropriation of Liquid Liquid’s ‘Cavern’ for the (ahem) phenomenal ‘White Lines’, but that may lead into discussion of the more unpleasant business practices of Sugarhill, and indeed the legal dispute over the use of the ‘Cavern’ rhythm led to the demise of the great New York underground 99 label.

There at the end of Downtown 81 there is ‘Beat Bop’ by Rammelzee vs K Rob, a taste of the future, described in the liner notes to the Depth Charge compilation Beat Classic by David Toop as a “unique immersion into a cyberian echozone of 808 beatbox, latin percussion, slow funk bass and guitar, soaring droning violin and Rammelzee’s streaming unconscious word cutting, swooping in and out of reverb, in and out of perfect nonsense and street reality”. Within a short space of time Sugarhill was overtaken in the hip hop stakes, and Sylvia decided the fun was gone. But the echoes resonate still. (Text source "Caught by the River")

Sylvia Robinson, March 6, 1936 – September 29, 2011

Where it all began.."Love is Strange" by Mickey and Sylvia