I’m here:

www.speakerspushair.wordpress.com

it’ll be much better, honest.

bye for now

.. which sadly may be the last one, at least in that location: whether you’ve got Geography GCSE and blame longshore drift or have a more eco-explanation for such things, either way the beach is fucked – at high tide a 1/3 of the breadth it was when we first went out there 2 years ago, as you can see below as literally of hundreds of UK and Italian ravers cram themselves onto a narrow band of sand..

It’s bad news for the Sunbound Unsound Parties, but much much worse for a local community that was already dying on its arse and is now losing even the little tourism it has..

This weekend it’s up to Newcastle – via Buxton – for the first long run in Truck, and a birthday party, and then on Wednesday we’re off to Glastonbury. Rumours of bad weather irk – aren’t we owed a decent one yet? – but there’s a good line-up, a million friends going and we don’t have to sleep in a tent anymore. Amidst all this, my company is moving offices too, to the Barbican.

So it’s all a bit hectic. Proper posting before the end of June..

We’ve got Truck. Well, van, but Truck sounds better and it has got an old CB radio in it, so I can relive my early teens as a bedroom breaker…

It’s not without its problems, Truck – currently lacks brakelights and headlights (not sure what that’s about), weighs 3 tonnes and is petrol rather than diesel. But it’s in lovely condition, has done comparatively few miles for a 20 year old vehicle (due to its past life as an airport ambulance) and means no more festival camping horror stories.

playing at this tomorrow – opening slot, 2pm, with lots of excellent eclecticism to follow. I’m probably going to play the kind of fucked up, speaker punishing dub nonsense I don’t normally get to play out. Kennington be warned.

Reading Under A Hoodoo Moon, an excellent autobiography by Mac “Dr John” Rebennack at the moment. It’s been co / ghostwritten but the flavour of the man definitely comes through, and it’s not always palatable. Rebennack is an intriguing character and he’s strong on what made the New Orleans sound, the origins of “fonk”, the major players.

It was published in the early 90s and I’m still in the mid-70s, before he started cleaning up, but the man’s had a hard paper-round. His obsession with music from an early age led him into some serious drug habits in his teens and prison in the early 60s, and along the way he did some pretty unpleasant stuff (pimping, violence, fraud etc). It does give him an interesting perspective on things – he saw a lot of the 60s debauchery and twattery by the likes of the Stones and the Who first hand, and was very dismissive – he thought it was just try-hard rich kid eccentricity (he’d also been on the wrong end of police interest for long enough to believe you never carried more drugs than you could eat, so bowls of coke and big bags of weed at parties made him anxious).

He’s also quite strong on mish-mash of spiritual traditions in New Orleans – Catholicism, santeria, voodoo, gris-gris, orisha and the rest – at one point, running Dr John’s Temple of Voodoo for some of the community. I could have used a little more of this, but it’s still of interest.

But the book’s key strength is in the portrayal of his early years – his teens and twenties in New Orleans before the Feds sucked the life out of it and the talent fled and before Rebennack got too fucked up. The constantly rotating bands, the endless gigs, the fusions of styles, the drag queens and dealers and gangsters and brass bands and voodoo mystics and the rest that make me pine for the chance to have been there, rough as it was. He tells a great story about the lack of respect for segregation / Jim Crow laws in the city, and how two adjacent venues, one purportedly white, the other black, would see the members of the night’s band swap, member by member, during the set (they simply ran from one venue to the other, mid-song) until each venue had a completely different band to the one they’d started out with.

Well worth a read, and I’d recommend digging out your Dr John, Professor Longhair, Huey Piano Smith and Meters records while you read it too.

Offline FREE
May 19th (Brixton Prince Albert)
Usual eclectic line-up, including a return to the UK of the mighty DJ Broken Yolk, which is cool. I plan to only play songs with ‘Soul’ in the title.

People’s Republic Of Disco £3
May 26th (Brixton Canterbury Arms)
Last PROD before we hit the road for the summer.

Stumbleworthy FREE
May 27th (The Duke of Sutherland Pub in Kennington)
New all-day promotion from the Housebreakin’ crew, mainly reggae and related sounds. I’ve got the 2-3pm slot so I can go and have a little lie down after PROD the night before

Glastonbury Festival MILLIONS OF QUID
June 22nd – 24th (A field)
The PROD / Randy & Earl Crew do Glastonbury again. We’ll be in the Pussy Parlure down in the Dance Village and also in the backstage bar, but don’t tell anyone…

Endorse It Festival £75
August 10th-12th (Sixpenny Handley)
One of our favourite festies of last year, so this year we’re running a whole tent. Juke Joint one night, a mod / soul / rocksteady / bluebeat / garage night the next, and a proper 50s swingin’ extravaganza on the last. With us in both our PROD and Randy and Earl guise plus guests like Miss Feelgood. (Bad timing this one, because I was asked to play Steve Barker’s daughter’s wedding the same wedding… )

There’s going to be more festies added to that list, I’ll post them as they come in.

 Martin at Beyond The Implode has finally started his in-depth exploration of the industrial scene with an exclusive interview with Ian Curtis and it’s intense stuff.

We wait with baited badgers for the next instalment (probably some time next year.. )

despite management / promoter / venue hassles and the like, the Leadpipe crew did a fine job on Saturday.. we got DJ Wrongspeed in at the last minute to stand in for a missing DJ Scotch Egg, Shitmat was marvellous despite having his set truncated when the venue (in fact all the venues involved) chucked everyone out, only to let them back in AN HOUR later having weeded out the ‘all ages’ crowd… Thoroughly enjoyed my set, and it seemed to go OK (despite being astonishingly pissed). Lots of DJ niceness followed, especially Rory, Eltham John and obviously Deadlock who finished off.

There seems to be some rubbish politics  / flagrant capitalism trying to undo the best efforts of Leadpipe et al to build a cool little scene down in the New X / Deptford area, but Leadpipe are soldiering on regardless and respect is due for that. Hopefully won’t be the last thing I do with them, they’re sound!