Author Archives: Neil Clasper

Field Day, Victoria Park; June 2016

16 Thursday Jun 2016

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The day after Neil Young at the O2 started out damp and got wetter; by late morning we were actively putting off going over to Hackney for Field Day. Fortunately, friends who’d attended the first day sent warnings to wear walking boots… In the end, though the ground was heavy going in the busiest places, it wasn’t too bad. We didn’t get to do much lying around on the grass listening to music this year, though: standing pretty much all day.

A huge downpour arrived while were in a tent watching Blossoms (who could probably count themselves lucky to have a captive audience for a while), but otherwise somehow we stayed dry. Steve Mason was a bit disappointing, I thought, but maybe I wasn’t really in the right mood for that kind of swagger at that time of day – and maybe any act would have seemed underwhelming after Neil Young the previous evening; Ben Watt and band (inc. Bernard Butler) were really good, even if I’m not sure the songs would stand up to much listening in the long run; Moon Duo were great, and PJ Harvey delivered something very different and pretty special to close it out.

It’s a really good event – the food and drinks work – and I was struck by just how excellent the sound was, particularly for PJ Harvey (helped no doubt, but the absence of any breeze for most of the day).

Neil Young & The Promise of the Real; June 2016

15 Wednesday Jun 2016

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To the O2 Arena down the road on Greenwich Peninsula on a warm and airless evening, for Neil Young and his new band. The Promise of the Real might have the most terrible of terrible band names, but they did a great job of interpreting the different styles of NY’s various bands and musical phases. A surprising tour through the back catalogue, with a very different set from the last time I saw him at this venue, including some Greatest Hits (Heart of Gold), mid-90’s songs that I’d forgotten about entirely (Western Hero), two off On The Beach – particularly good – plus If I Could Have Her Tonight which had apparently been played the previous night in Leeds for the first time since 1968. His singing was strong and his guitar playing and tone – particularly with his Gretsch – was ace and uplifting. 

*obligatory Long May He Run conclusion*

June 2nd

02 Thursday Jun 2016

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Work, plus the all-pervading sense of existential despair engendered by politics in 2016. Or maybe I’m just coming down with a cold.

Some good things that came by via Twitter and MixCloud through the day:

Fantastic photos of London c.1970-71 by David Wisdom: “I was more entranced by the continued existence, both architectural and human, of a London that stretched back in time before The Beatles, before The Wars, back to the slophouses of Dickens, back to the slatterns and toffs of William Hogarth and back to the Romans.”

News of a new SoulJazz Records compilation: Venezuela 70. A nagging thought in my brain says I can’t just buy everything that comes out on SoulJazz, but there would be worse ways to build a record collection. Anyway, the teaser track sounds great:

 

Ghostpoet’s Soho Radio show threw up a few great tracks, in particular Herbie Hancock’s Wiggle Waggle, which I’d never heard before – an excellent bit of soul-funk apparently recorded for a kids’ tv show; also Rangda, whose album I’d  made a mental note to buy when I heard the single on Soundcloud then immediately forgot about.


Photobook collection addition

Got home to find East End by John Claridge had arrived in the post, published by Spitalfields Life blog, which I’d quite forgotten ordering. It’s good: nicely produced with a lot of images in,and smartly edited. I’m not a huge fan of that blog’s prose style but its commitment to photography, never mind its overall scope of recording the history of Spitalfields – and in particular the history of ordinary people – in detail, is hugely impressively.

The Last Day Of May

01 Wednesday Jun 2016

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Back from Oxford via a short tour of Jericho and a Lebanese lunch, only to discover midway back on the Jubilee line that I’d left my bag (with camera) on the train. We are now at the mercy of the kindness of strangers and the efficiency of First Great Western’s lost property organisation. I try to be stoical about these things – they’re only possessions, in the end we’re all dead, etc – but it’s a Fuji X100t and they’ve not even been replaced by an upgraded model yet. I’ve had two cameras stolen before, so I’m not particularly sentimental about them as possessions, but previously the annoyance of losing them has been tempered slightly by the thought of newer, better replacements. Fingers crossed that FGW has the bag and manages to connect it with my lost luggage claim.

Otherwise, a dull, damp afternoon spent playing the records I bought over the weekend while logging the loss of my bag through various systems – pleased to find Daniel Romano’s ‘secret’ new album (by his side-project(?)/alter-ego(?) Ancient Shapes) tucked away in the sleeve of Mosey (which, incidentally, is split over two 45RPM 12″s. In mono…).

Failing to swim

I should have gone to the lido for the first day of the nominal summer swimming season but a combination of bad mood from losing my bag and the weather put me off; finding out what they’ve done to upgrade the cafe will have to wait (I can’t say that I’m optimistic – this is the lido cafe that doesn’t have a view of the pool from inside the cafe: a work of particular genius on behalf of the architect. But maybe they’ll have shrugged the functional provincial leisure centre cafe of the early 90’s vibes and come up with something a bit more welcoming).

Other things

I enjoyed these photos from the 1960’s of workers in a Suffolk village going to the pub after work on the Guardian.

I didn’t enjoy the new Stone Roses single, which I’d somehow managed to avoid since it was released. My hopes weren’t high, but really…What were they thinking? We shouldn’t expect people to keep making the same music they made briefly decades before, but it’s hard to imagine that they’re really satisfied with what they’ve put out; none of the lightness of touch or melody that they had once in evidence, and none of the style left in the guitar playing. Quite a sad way to end up. But maybe they’re having the time of their lives?

Daniel Romano – Mosey

June 1st

01 Wednesday Jun 2016

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The first swim of June felt like the last swim of March: damp air, grey skies and a cold headwind. There’s never a bad swim at Charlton Lido but the outdoor spin class and its terrible music does harsh the vibes of a relaxed evening swim a bit; like being in the front room of a really nice pub while a terrible disco goes off in the function room. But still, the swim worked its brain-settling magic eventually.

I saw the biggest flock of parakeets I’ve seen over Hornfair Park from the pool. Usually there are two or three circling around but tonight there were probably a dozen. They’re easily spotted: bright green against a grey sky.

Other things:

Good to hear a new song from Ryley Walker in advance of his new album. It didn’t grab me straightaway, but nor did his last album and that grew on me very quickly after a couple of listens.

 

My friend-from-off-of-The-Twitter, Niall McDiarmid has announced a well-deserved exhibition of his work, and is doing a print sale to support it. Buy yourself one, I say: http://www.niallmcdiarmid.com/exhibitions.php. I’m waiting until payday, though.

This Guardian long read on betting shops was very good and also very depressing.

My heart was cheered by this interview with The Handsome Family on Pete Paphides’ Soho Radio show. I wish I’d got round to booking tickets for their show at the 100 Club, though.

The Last Bank Holiday Monday of May

31 Tuesday May 2016

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To Oxford on Bank Holiday Monday to see a friend and a gig. London was grey and seemed pretty quiet on my way to Paddington, operating at Bank Holiday public transport pace. I missed the 11.10 train having forgotten, like an amateur, that the Bakerloo line isn’t stopping at Paddington at the moment; funny how even an escalator replacement project in tyr opposite corner of town can make south-east London feel more cut off from the west of the country. 

Oxford seemed quiet too, not packed with tourists as I expected. I was there to help out a friend who was promoting a gig by Daniel Romano, a Canadian singer-songwriter who changes a significant chunk of his concept and aesthetic from album to album: a cause of delight and confusion amongst his fans, we learnt later.

With time to kill we walked up the wonderful Cowley Rd taking in Truck Records (where I bought the latestWoods album, which I’d been listening to on SoundCloud for a while), past a ‘speed queen equipped’ laundrette, and had a pint while watching simultaneously two great (well, maybe…) sporting occasions: England finally closing out a match against Sri Lanka that should have been won much sooner, and Wimbledon beating Plymouth in the League Two play-off final.

Back to the venue to sort out the band’s rider and various other admin, off to get changed, back to the venue, then the doors opened and I found myself working the door, which I enjoyed far more than I expected. I would definitely put my hand up and volunteer for that task again. The gig went well, with more people through the door than expected and the band and crowd seemed happy (we’d heard that some of the crowd had walked out of a previous night’s show – expecting, presumably, Romano’s Stetson-wearing, handlebar-mustached, pedal steel-accompanied persona). Vive la DIY!

The Last Sunday of May

30 Monday May 2016

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Down to Ditchling for a visit to the Museum of Arts & Crafts, but up and out and so eager to beat the traffic we arrived an hour before opening time. A drive up to Ditchling Beacon gave us glimpses of Ravilious landscapes but nowhere to park (a burnt-out car in the NT’s car  park would have been ideal for one of those ‘rural Britain’s not what you think it is’ photo series). I’d like to return to Ditchling and Ditchling Beacon when it’s not full of traffic (of which, of course, we were part). The villages of the South Downs are like another country; an odd reminder that the edge-of-town neighbourhood I grew up in Durham have more in common with the south-east London semi-suburb I live in now than the hidden away corners of the rural Home Counties have.

I very much liked the museum once we got in; interesting displays, a serene atmosphere, and we enjoyed adding our amateurish contributions to the Big Steam Print linocut. 

Next, to the Interrobang letterpress exhibition – part of the artists’ open house weekend taking place in the village. A nice display and I was tempted by a couple of prints, but really need to get through the backlog of pictures to frame and hang before acquiring any more (still not worked out where to hang Brighter Later yet). One thing that occurred to me, not specific to Interrobang is that a lot of letterpress art ends up being about letterpress and, while it’s nice to see the craft celebrated, there’s an implied sense of the limitations of the process.

Then home via Nyman’s: nice meadowland and planting and some timely use of the National Trust membership we took out last year and have hardly used since.

An evening wrestling with a mortgage application accompanied by Vic Mars – a perfect accompaniment to a pastoral rural day, if not for dealing with tedium of financial admin.

The Last Saturday of May

29 Sunday May 2016

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Awake at an ungodly hour – even before daughter –  cursing our continued failure to sort out blackout lining for our bedroom curtains; exactly as per last summer and the summer before. A morning of pottering around the house, failing to make a cyanotype print (either it just doesn’t work indoors on a cloudy day or the paper’s gone off), listening to records (including multiple plays of a newly arrived Northern Soul 7″ of the sort that I really must not start collecting) and giving too much inconclusive thought as to why I just can’t bring myself to love The Band’s Music From Big Pink in the same way that I love, say, The Basement Tapes or The Band.

Then, as the clouds shifted and the temperature went up, off on my bike to a surprisingly quiet Charlton Lido for a slow-ish mile’s swim. Then round to the Old Cottage Cafe in Charlton Park and had a not-nutritionist-recommended coffee and cake to recover.

Spotted one of the bonkers ‘Legal Name Fraud’ posters off Charlton Rd – whoever is behind them must have a lot of cash, or the billboard advertising industry really is on its knees. Later an exciting trip out to buy a non-symbolic new broom (Dad tip: B&Q is alway quiet at 5.30 on a Saturday).

In between I’ve been listening to the New Daniel Romano album as prep for Monday night’s gig in Oxford. It surprises me that reviews of his recent work don’t all mention Lee Hazlewood straight up in the first paragraph, which is not to be critical: more artists in that kind-of-Americana world would benefit from looking at songwriting and production from a Hazlewood angle.

A reasonable way to start a Bank Holiday weekend, all in all.