Six Hour Power Cut, Last Night

Six hours of darkness,
countryside darkness,
can't-see-the-hand-
around-your-throat
darkness; just the
night and the candles
and the howling of
canines caged up the hill.

Flood, Yesterday

The flash flood
brings a slide
of silt from the
bowels of the hill;

sand and mud and
earthen mucilage
finally laid to rest
on our stone step.

Serious Steve Hillage*

Bad news for the River Calder last week.

I stepped out for my daily stroll last Friday and the stench of petrol was strong before I even reached the river. Before I could see or hear it. Stopping on the bridge by the old clog factory that sits over some of the prime fishing spots, I could see a rainbow film across the water in both directions. Heady fumes filled the air; I felt high.

Apparently a tanker had leaked two thousand litres of diesel a few miles upstream Walsden and now Todmorden, Hebden Bridge, Mytholmroyd and beyond smelled like a Middle Eastern oil field.

Reports in the paper said the slick was 15km long and moving swiftly down the Calder and on to the Hebble. It registered as Category One – the worst there is.

Fortunately a lot of people care about the Calder so a clean-up response was swift and it has been teeming down ever since, so the river has puffed out its chest and the worst seems to have passed. I’m not yet sure what the impact is on the fish and bird life down there. Accidents happen but two thousand litres running straight into one of the main arteries of West Yorkshire seems a tad careless.

(* Steve Hillage = spillage)

Great Songs Of The 00s #21: The Coral

The Coral may be that band who were a bit (OK, a lot) like The La's, only not quite as good - and a few years late (and with even crapper Scouse leisurewear) - but 'Skeleton Key' (released as a single in 2002) is full-on Beefheart bonkers, a stoned sea shanty and nicely eccentric in that uniquely northern English way.

'Dreaming Of You' isn't bad either.

Great Songs of the 00s #20: The Mars Volta

"Dolls wreck the minced meat of pupils
cast in oblong arms length -
the hooks had been picking their scabs
where wolves hide in the company of men..."

'Son Et Lumiere' / 'Inertiatic ESP'.

Views From A Bedroom Window

Great Songs Of The 00s #19 - Mogwai

'My Father, My King' by Mogwai (2001).

I like everything Mogwai do - probably because to these untrained ears it all sounds much the same and remains relatively unchanged over 15 years - but this twenty minute instrumental piece based on a traditional Jewish prayer is my favourite.

Namedrop alert: I once sniffed poppers with Mogwai seconds before we all met Ozzy Osbourne together - but that is another story...

Great Songs Of The 00s #18 - System Of A Down

If you're going to form a metal band you might as well make it sound more ridiculous and heavy and cryptic and colourful than all the other metal bands. Which is exactly what System Of A Down did with their second album Toxicity, released the week of September 11th 2001.

Here's a sound clip of them playing a song called X.

And here's the expensive MTV video they made for their single B.Y.O.B., released in 2005.

New Acquisitions

Reading
China Dreams by Sid Smith (below)
No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
Kafka by R. Crumb



Watching
Encounters At The End Of The World (DVD)
In Fading Light (DVD, below)
Tyson (DVD)
True Blood (TV)



Listening
Strange Pleasure - Galliard (below)
Truelove's Gutter - Richard Hawley
Live From Axis Mundi - Gogol Bordello
Two Dancers - Wild Beasts
Trapped In A Scene: UK Hardcore 1985 - 1989 - Various
Only Revolutions - Biffy Clyro
Telstar: The Joe Meek Story - Various

'Skull Of An Idiot'

Here's the latest postcard in my 'Message From
The Country' series for Caught By The River.

Sunday Evening, 8th November 2009

Crows like
death kites
stapled to
the red sky.

Great Songs of the 00s #17 - Wild Beasts

It's not all 'Ooh, remember 2002' round these parts. I like lots of new music too. So here's a welcome addition to the 00s canon from Wild Beasts. It's called 'All The King's Men'.

(Reading that back, I sound like a really bad DJ.)

Great Songs Of The 00s #16 - Acoustic Ladyland

'Iggy' by Acoustic Ladyland - jazz as it should be played.

I remember seeing this performance on Jools Holland (him again) in the summer of 2005, then the very next day the band discovered that the band were playing a tiny free festival-cum-community picnic in a park right around the corner from my house in Peckham. It was very exciting. As the band played, this middle age couple in tie-dye were humping against the barrier down the front. That was a little less exciting.

Art Notes And A New Nephew

To Newcastle....

To Newcastle to make the acquaintance of my day-old nephew - another branch to the Myers tree. Current name: unknown. Working title amongst family and doctors: Little Elvis. When I held him he tried to suckle on my teat. No luck there, little fella. Congratulations to my sister Kathryn and her man Stephen. Little Elvis is a fine fellow.
















And to Newcastle, to see Sirkka-Liisa Konttinenat the Side Gallery, to see this:



And this:



And to Newcastle, to see Martin Parr's Parrworld, to the Baltic, to see this:



And this:



And this:



And then back home again.

Hairy Hole

Though I'll 'befriend' anyone who asks, I never actually listen to bands who add me on MySpace because they're generally all terrible and I get depressed just looking at their stupid hair and reading their illiterate, highly delusional messages, but I think Hairy Hole are good.

I mean, they're terrible too - but at least they're good-terrible.