Effects of Recession on the A62

The Guardian has a great gallery of Christopher Thomond's images depicting scenes representing the effect the recession is having along the A62.

View the gallery here.

MMU's (FREE!) MANCHESTER TIME MACHINE APP - 20th Century Procession of the iPhone Ghosts

A little over 60 years after the Computer was allegedly invented here in the form of 'the Baby', most of us now carry around something profoundly more powerful - shallower than a fag packet but with a similar sized Perimeter. Key to this Pandora's Box's myriad capabilities are Apps. Those not endemic to any given device are predominantly pointless, and this one is barely any different depending on your perspective. While nicely put together, and seemingly free of the bugs that louse-up most others, the Manchester Time Machine app is little more than a glorified collection of looping snippets of History to haunt your pocket. But as far as apps go, that's no bad thing. While the Map Function gives the impression that you'll be able to summon-up archive footage of your immediate vicinity, it is in fact largely redundant unless you happen to be on our City's most often-trod streets. In spite of this, this free mini archive of 77 clips spanning from 1911 to 1974 is likely to provide you with more profound hours than catapulting cartoon birds.

Of particular interest: A luminescent tram, careering through the night like the glowing of so many lost souls through a V-Day crowd in Albert Square.

A Bobby giving directions in front of a crazily-laden horse-drawn wagon, towering almost as high as a nearby tram.

The impeccable looking 1960s Piccadilly Gardens, when it was actually a Garden.

The old Orange & White SELNEC buses in St Peter's Square. 

 

 

Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.Requires iOS 4.2 or later

Download the FREE app here

Manchester Histories Festival 2012: Fanzine Event

 

Taking place on Saturday 3rd March at 4pm at Manchester Town Hall, Manchester District Music Archive, in association with Manchester Histories Festival, will be hosting a panel discussing the history and legacy of Manchester’s alternative music publications. The discussion will be chaired by Dave (‘Debris’) Haslam. On the panel will be Mike Don from ‘Mole Express’ (legendary early 1970s local underground paper), plus Liz Naylor (of post-punk ‘City Fun’ fame), Bob Dickinson (a contributor to the likes of ‘New Manchester Review’, and ‘City Fun’), and Dan Russell (from the contemporary fanzine ‘Things Happen’). 

The panelists will:

 -  recount tales of Manchester’s music scene

 -  celebrate fanzines and analyse their relationship to the music scene, to the political underground, and to other independent and/or marginalised cultural activity in past eras

 -  discuss the significance of fanzines and other self-published/alternative publications in an era of blogs, digital technology and social media

The panel event is free admission. But attendance should be confirmed by registering here:

http://fanzinespanel.eventbrite.co.uk/

There may be some unregistered availability on the day but this can’t be guaranteed.

http://www.manchesterhistoriesfestival.org.uk/ 

 

Via Manchester District Music Archive

Rock's Backpages

~ Chester Whelks tunnels deep beneath the sarcophogus of the Rock Writers' Mausoleum.

To celebrate Manchester Library Card Holders’ newly granted access to Rock's Backpages, a wonderful online repository of a wealth of material dating back to the birth of the Rock, the Roll, and the writing thereupon (but deserves special condemnation for containing not one article on The Daddy of Rock N’ Roll: Wesley Willis), a select number of diligent Manchester Library user-musos are gathered in an oak-paneled study room in the City’s makeshift Library in Elliot house on Deansgate, for a pub-quiz style competition. Sans alcohol, naturally. The idea behind this event presumably is that the loser could always bolster their woeful knowledge by accessing the aforementioned website. Leading proceedings is Brother John Robb – author of a Demi-Century of articles to be found on the site in question, on subjects ranging from The Roses to Rapeman and My Bloody Valentine.

The backpages of Rock magazines were always to my mind, the preserve of frustrated musicians seeking to make contact with likeminded individuals, isolated by geography or a fierce, alienating taste. While not, I imagine, the intent behind the title, its still very apt, considering music writers are supposedly just that: Frustrated, failed and embittered musicians. Jealousy is their Muse. Source of both their scorn and fauning. Her untouchable honeydewed mammilla swings pendulously, each extreme of a nipple's swing ticking away the seconds of their wasted lives, agonizingly out of reach of the frantic suck of their pucker. Not Robb, who has gorged himself to succor at bosom, bush and backdoor of the Floosie-Muse - a Renaissance Man-Jack of all trades.

Maybe I’m in the wrong job?

John Robb? What a job…

…but which one?

He does it all, having earned his Punk Rock chops in 1977's The Membranes. After their dissolution he osmosed his way into writing for seminal music mag SOUNDS, before forging Punk Soul combo 'Goldblade', for whom he acts as bug-eyed, hoarse-throated vocalist. He's also recognisable to a portion of the docile populace as a regular Talking Head on self-indulgent TV nostalgiagasms such as 'I Love The…(Past)'

He's a Mental Gentleman and a Rock N’ Roll Scholar. A riddle wrapped-inside an Enigma, and a Quizzical wizard, but tonight, he's pointing his throbbing, knotted wand squarely at us...

...but first, if I might be so bold as to foray into an alien vocation, I’d like to step off the beaten track into intimidating wilderness (where still looms the odd Barn casting a shadow the colour of dried-up blood) and impress upon you a poem.

THE 'GROWING-OLD' RADIO SHOW

A November 9am is worth just as much as a summer's 6,

Or at least, the skies plough their clouds with a similar, if chillier, indifference.

While last night's poos commute through the sewer…

I sit-up from slumber and enmesh myself headfirst in the switchboard-limbo of a morning radio DJ.

The delicious intern screens me like she did the comb segmenting her hair at 5,

Ironing-out any personality chasms that might house unforeseen twitches or nits.

A Tourette’s sufferer stutters at her inability to p-p-p-put him on the Nun-fucking Air,

Forgetting she’s in her Hitler-position based on knitting-pattern and fringe-skirting logistics.

("Of course I've fucked some ugly girls, the good-looking ones are too much hard work.")

Quarantined in the Leonard Cohen introspection of the anechoic chamber of a telephonic waiting area,

I beatbox-compete with my own tachycardic biorhythms,

Until the paterfamilias of the wheels of steel eventually lets me out and welcomes me in:

“Long-time caller, first time listener...

Even as a toddler I promised I’d never be here, providing the likes of you with your microphone goo,

The whooping cough of your infantile, mongoloid colic.

Using my aimless AM to populate FM radio with banality chatter for the work-bound jerks.

The grumpy sun screaming out from behind lung cancer cloud cover promising that, despite jobs to the contrary -



I was alive.

                        Dancing about Grave Architecture: “Fuck Art. LET’S DANCE!”

Look at these people: They don’t know either. 

Rock’s Backpages crystalizes a time when Music Writing was an invaluable source of information for bands that couldn't get mainstream airplay or TV time, gaining notoriety instead via reliance on fans’ mix tapes, festival attendance, resulting word of mouth. Now our information is trickled down the thighs of the go-to guys – from the Pitchfork, the Stereogum, disseminated by Twitter and cast to the digital winds. Rock’s Backpages is a familial Mausoleum for the Golden Age of Rock Writers, resplendent with various crypts, niches and sarcophagi, and I heartily recommend it as an indispensable reference pension.


But remember to siphon some life through your pipe.

Easter, Outer Dark + Cyril Snear - Dulcimer 12/1/12

“No sooner is Christmas in the bin than we’re thinking about Easter.”

The pine needle outlines tell me the bin men have finally disposed of the Christmas tree corpses that have besieged my street for a week. I’m Febreze-ing my bollocks-off this frosty Friday the 13th, because as chance would have it, I’m sat only in these pants, and last night saw fit to damn them to the stench of ‘Kaltenberg Hell’. Why don’t they arbitrarily randomize the smell of Febreze? This stink is an insinuation of filth. Much the same as Hospitals seem like they’re frantically distracting your olfactics from their clandestine death.

It’s refreshing to be away from the inner circle of the City Centre’s scene & herd – the overambitious bollocks of atrocity boys and cupcake-baking girls…but then again, this is the bohemian outpost, of which I’m swiftly reminded by a streetlamp in knitwear as I make my way down Wilbraham Road.

Dulcimer is dully simmering as a band sound checks upstairs, attempting to approximate the date (“1-2…1…1-2″) and Thursday night pints are sunk in its cosy corners amid handovers in conversation. Bypassing the vacant ticket table at the top of the stairs I inadvertently eavesdrop on the start time being pushed back to 9 0′clock from the stated ’8′. When I come around to the idea of descending for last minute cigarettes and drinks, I think it best to introduce myself to the guy now manning the desk, who identifies himself as Paul from ‘Outer Dark’, and offers an outstretched hand along with his thanks for coming down. My cynicism insists this is an act of pandering to ‘the press’, but is seemingly sincere enough to make me hope his band isn’t shit.

Having minus’d my life by 11 minutes while Kitty Saros was at the bar pledging her allegiance to the cirrhosis sorority after pleading free drinks from the bar after some unrepentant cunt vanquished her vodka, its time for another insinuation of villainy as we rendezvous with…


CYRIL SNEAR

 

“This song’s called ‘My Pet Goat’”.

Rather than the menace suggested by the all-but-naked, pink skinned, cigar-chomping nemesis of Evergreen Forest, the now audience-plumped upstairs is enveloped by the harmonic fretboard slaps and sit-atop-clobber-box of tonight’s stripped-down Cyril Snear, swaying with the mystical whimsy of a time signature reminiscent of Jeff Buckley’s ‘Grace’ with similarly earnest, if less adventurous, vox frosting-it. Skinny Arms gee-tar man ironically has a ‘Fear and Loathing’ tee on, with it’s Steadman illustration of our narcotic-Don Quixote & Gonzo-Sancho Panza cannonballing toward the rollercoaster ride of the undulating gradient of Vegas’ skyline, which is at odds with the temptation to cosy-up to bobos in the redundant bass drum’s muting duvet & pillow combo.

OUTER DARK

Outer Dark look like Middle class white guys who profess to like Tom Waits, and shake their flaky heads at sacrilegious Cookie Monster comparisons. The opening song is a vociferous behemoth reminiscent of Mastodon, with intermittent funky Jazz schisms and underlying Pearl Jam lamentations. On the whole, they make a sound that simpletons think-of as ‘Grunge’.

A bandaged hand whose brother I shook, strangles the fretboard and neck of a Gibson SG. Funky stop/start nipple-high bass pulsations are wrought by a guy that looks like Jeffrey Treblezine to whom I owe a month-overdue review of The Fall’s ‘Ersatz GB’ and is freaking me out. Everything slides into a Roni Size avalanche of overabundant beats, before cascading into ‘Morning Bell’ skibbidy-bop catch-up drumming. The arpeggiated guitar riff Goosy Ganders upstairs, downstairs, while the keyboard tinkles like streetlights on rainy Rhodes.

‘Outer Dark’ aren’t my cup of tea, but tea isn’t my cup of black coffee. Outer Dark aren’t as outré or noir as their name suggests, but frenetically caffeinated enough to be of interest…

"WEIRD ERA, ARE YOU PLAYING SOUNDS FROM THE OTHER CITY?"

…having said that, while they’re winding-up their set, I’m distracted by Adam from ‘Weird Era’ who is front and centre, mentally dissecting them for himself. I’ll spare you the metaphorical cock-suck I undertook and just tell you that Adam says: Yes. Yes they are.

EASTER

Like Jesus, I’m late for the start of Easter. While I’m wondering if that duct taped guitar strap on the lead singer’s Fender Jaguar is really necessary or just a tokenistic Indie Rock affectation, stage left’s Merzbow T-Shirted guy Greenwoods his guitar into a Three Mile Island of a sonic cacophony courtesy of what he’s learned from his Japanese noisemeister idol, undercutting the coolly crafted Indie Pop the song once was, and everything vapourises into cloudy screams reminiscent of ‘Yrself Is Steam‘, until I no longer give a fuck about the duct tape’s integrity, as I’m blown away. I don’t know what else to say. Easter held my attention hostage with unknown melodies underscored with skilfully invoked explosions, ploughing tinnitus into us as guitarist and bassist physically shifted their most unwieldy speaker to the front of the stage as the showstopper.

PrettyfuckingWOW.

Easter is, like, a festival of Death & Resurrection which has been supplanted by chocolate eggs, which presumably are a metaphor for the shit we feed our children, i.e. the fairytale of a well meaning Biblical hippy whose depressing execution needed a happy ending tacked onto it so we don’t get all Emo over the futility of our existence.

‘Easter’, resurrected my faith in Rock N’ Roll or something…that’s all I’ve got for my showstopper.

Hey, it’s better than saying I was chained to a radiator with a stiletto in the testicles.

But I did spill beer on my leg, honest.


Photos: Kitty Saros

Review featured on Manchester Scenewipe

Fanclub Flyers : Stone Love, The Phoenix 1999

Fanclub Flyers : Fridays at South 1998

Impressions of Manchester: A Transcendental Perspective

I have never physically been to Manchester, but one evening, meditating on the reflection of a candle flame in a bowl of Sasquatch milk, I believe my consciousness went there.

[You can replicate the experience by following this procedure:

• Prepare strong black coffee
• Spread poo over signed photograph of Jack Duckworth
• Get into lotus position
• Place dirty photograph on knee
• Hold breath for three minutes
• Exhale like affected spiritualist
• Quickly drink coffee
• Look up at light bulb (>80w)
• Sneeze
• Do candle/sasquatch milk meditation (see Fig. 1) 
• Make up lies about consciousness going to Manchester]

Fig. 1

 At first there was a kind of infinite nothing, only not a perfect nothing because it smelt like a catered holiday to Majorca – a mix of super-sweet orange  juice, sun tan lotion spread over fat backs, and pale slabs of veal bleeding under heat lamps – then I was in Manchester. It was pretty weird.

There were lots of red brick houses all squashed up into long rows, and each house had a look of defilement on its face, as though it didn't like being touched by the other houses. The roofs of the houses were hippopotamus-grey and seemed to sweat...like hippopotamuses. In the distance, there were tall blocks of flats that looked like strips of yellowing graph paper, complete with rubbed-out pencil marks where someone had messed up the scale for the y-axis more than once.

I floated in for a closer look.

Every flat had a balcony for drying wet Manchester United towels and storing deflated footballs, and people came out and stood on them to shout WANKER at me, even though all I was doing was astral projection and a bit of shimmering. There was a scary pugnacity about the balcony people (see fig. 2), like cheekiness turned sour by repetition. I thought I could identify myself as a friend by shouting out that my favourite player was Dave Beckman, but this only seemed to anger them further.

Fig. 2

The air was a bit like church air after a long sermon on Satan's minions, and it smelt faintly of burning coal dust. The birds didn't want to fly in it, so they lined up on walls and telephone wires looking slightly irradiated but quite well fed. There was a young boy just staring up at the birds, and that young boy was Bez – a bit of time travel must have happened because Bez isn't a young boy (physiologically) at the time of writing this.

Milkmen were delivering milk, and along with the milkmen there were men delivering bread. Such a thing as a 'bread round' existed, and it was existing right in front of my disembodied eyeballs. Other men delivered pieces of scrap metal for uncles to tinker with. There were a lot of uncles in Manchester, and they all used cologne-scented talcum powder instead of lynx - despite having tried lynx last Christmas when their daughter-in-laws gave them some as part of a festive gift pack that also included shower gel and shampoo. Most of the uncles preferred lynx to talcum powder, but simply had no idea about where one might go to buy it.

Then I possessed a woodlouse and did some spying. What were ostensibly conversations between husband and wife over breakfast were, in fact, two parallel monologues on unrelated matters. The men talked about how much they hated flamboyancy, whilst the women dissected the merits of cheese and onion crisps, why the snack is good, but also bad, but also good, etc. The expressions and phrases used were creative and funny: precise, frank language is reserved only for combat.

Bez's mother comes outside. She's holding a rolling pin with bits of yellow dough stuck to it. 'You have to choose between being introspective or being a brute,' she says. Bez laughs and starts doing the Bez dance. She lets him off, again.

The Smiths are being chased by Oasis down an alleyway. Andy Rourke clatters into some bins, falls. Noel leaps on top of him, straddling Rourke in a way that looks something like the cowgirl sex position. Noel has never actually punched a man before, and he's feeling uneasy about the proximity of the craven bassist's willy to his bum hole.
''it 'im our Kid,' demands Liam in a Mancunian accent because he's from Manchester.
Noel can't do it. Instead he screams like a snapped nerd and rains down a thousand indecisive pats to Rourke's head. It looks like he's playing the fucking bongos, thinks Liam. Rourke thinks it's worse thing that's ever happened.
Morrissey escapes, though, and writes 'This Night Has Opened My Eyes'.
Then I went back to the infinite nothing. It still smelt of a catered holiday to Majorca, but now there was music – Manchester-type music. The musicians had character and humanity and the male ones made it seem okay to be male. They seemed authentic, like blues players who'd decided pop was the real thing, or punk, or post punk, or whatever. Oasis were also playing.

I came back into my body and noticed that the Sasquatch milk had turned into Sasquatch cheese. I had an erection. My mother came in – she sort of knocked and turned the handle at the same time, which was annoying.
'What's all that over your face?' She asked.
I felt my face. It was Sasquatch cheese.
'It's Sasquatch cheese,' I said.
Nothing happened; then something made me look down at my erection. She followed my eyes down and flinched when she saw it.
'Mum, I...'
'Get a job.'

But I didn't get a job: I waited until she'd left the room, then put the radio on. The DJ was using the word 'new' too much. He interviewed a band from (and by 'from' I mean 'living in') Manchester that sounded full of cheery earnestness; they were happy to be alive in a world that was treating them well. They did a song: the singer's voice was all squelchy with sham emotion and the band had used four tonnes of flashing electronic equipment to produce something that sounded like a muzak take on a bad Paul McCartney song. The DJ said 'new' a few more times, then did another little bit of interviewing. The band talked about their new music video, how it was filmed on a beach and had some CGI in it. The drummer seemed to have less soul power than the average deal or no deal audience member. My erection disappeared. It all felt bit like a New Labour party conference, somehow; the psychic landscape was the same.

Then I ate an apple and thought about the backlash.

This is Sir Ian Morgan's inaugural post for The Mancunia - he's positively our favourite non-Mancunian music writer.