Whoever it was that said time passes more quickly the older you get was bang on the money. In October I'll have been living in this place for six years and 2027 will mark a whole decade of working in the supermarket. The fourteen years I spent running my own little record shop in my 20s & 30s felt like an eternity, but this past ten years of shelf stacking has absolutely flown by. I enjoy my job tremendously, though these days I have to admit that it takes a lot out of me. 15-18000 steps per shift is not uncommon, plus the constant bending and lifting - I'm not sure how many more years at the sharp end of retail I have in me. Mind you, I still seem to run rings around many of the youngsters, so maybe I've got a handful of Christmases in the old bones yet.
The reason for all these random ruminations? Today I turn 66....sixty bloody six! My cousin and her husband arrive from New York for a short stay in a few hours and before they fly out next week we're going to attempt a unique meet-up with a further two far-flung cousins, one from the Midlands and the other from the South coast. They're both over ten years older than me and, as I've noted, time is marching on, so we're aiming to convene for a long pub lunch in London, before jumping on our respective trains to head home. There are another two cousins along the South coast who can't make it this time round, so hopefully we'll have another chance someday, because, although our Fathers were brothers, we've never all been in a room at the same time.
60 years ago today - the fifth of my annual birthday portraits in front of the family radiogram.
This morning you find your roving reporter at the front end of a 10 day stay with my cousin and her family in New York. Interestingly, a couple of things will have changed forever by the time I return to Old Blighty next week. 1) All future visits to my barber on a Monday or Tuesday will be £5 cheaper than previously, and, of even greater significance, 2) My local pub will apparently give me a 10% discount every Thursday. The reason? Today I turn 65....sixty bloody five! Like the t-shirt says, it's weird being the same age as old people, but at least those are two somewhat positive points of my extreme dotage.
I'm obviously writing this ahead of time, but my cousin has already let it slip that they've made plans for my, ahem, big day, even though I will only just have flown into the country and will therefore probably be a complete mess. I can barely make it past 8pm when I'm on home turf these days, so attempting to stay awake, alert and coherent late into the evening of my first day in a different time zone is going to be something of a challenge, to say the least. In a restaurant on the first evening of a New York trip about 20 years ago, after being awake for 24 hours, I momentarily forgot to open my eyes again when blinking and very nearly ended up face first in my meal. I'll let you know how I get on this time round.
Our old pal Brian pointed me in the direction of Community Radio's 'Look Now You're Cursed' nine long years ago and I still spin it regularly. This one seemed appropriate today.
Tomorrow it'll be exactly 60 years since this photo was taken. It's the second in a series of annual birthday portraits taken of me in front of the family radiogram, a series that stretched until my 21st birthday in 1981 (see more examples here and here). The relatives must have been round, as I'm dressed in my best bib and tucker (the bow-tie was something of a fixture in the early days) and keen to show off my first ever bike....or more accurately trike. Dad was one of eight children so there were no doubt Aunts and Uncles aplenty on hand to spoil me rotten on my big day. Mum, like me, was an only child, but her own Mum, my dear old Nan, was probably not too far away from the action either. If you squint you might be able to make out an Easter Egg or two nestled among the birthday cards atop the radiogram, even though my second birthday actually fell a few days before the Easter weekend of 1962.This year it's the first time that my birthday has fallen on an Easter Saturday since the day I was born in 1960, having only coincided with that particular date on three other occasions in the 20th century, in 1927, 1938 and 1949.
I'll be at work from 7 till 5 tomorrow, as the last minute rush to buy whatever Easter Eggs we have left reaches a no doubt chaotic and panic stricken crescendo. Then home for a chilled beverage or two in the evening.
A group of us at work who were due to celebrate a milestone birthday or anniversary last year, came to an informal agreement when it became increasingly apparent that no-one would be doing any celebrating whatsoever in 2020. We decided to ignore the usual protocol and steam into 2021 intent on marking the traditionally less celebrated occasions - 22nd or 51st birthdays, 26th wedding anniversaries etc. In that spirit, I've spent the last couple of weeks bigging-up my impending Big Six One, which has duly arrived today. Is it wine o'clock yet?
Here's the great Fred McDowell recorded live in November 1971.
Today I turn 60. Excuse me for a moment while I double check those numbers.....60. Shit. Yes, I'm definitely 60. If the world wasn't where it is, I would be celebrating with the family in New York right now. But instead of walking over the Brooklyn Bridge to track down a suitable birthday brunch location, instead of rummaging through the dusty bins of my favourite Williamsburg second-hand record store, instead of hitting a dive bar or two with my cousin's husband and instead of watching the sun go down across Lower Manhattan with a huge slice of pizza in my hand, instead of all those things...., I'll start the day by creating the largest veggie fry-up I can muster from the darkest corners of the fridge, wash it down with a pot or two of fabulous coffee (Honduras Pedro Ayala since you ask), take a walk down the lane and around a field or two and then head off to work for a few hours. This evening there are plans afoot to hang out with a couple of close chums on Skype, while quaffing the odd glass or three of red. There'll probably also be tunes and crisps involved.
Just rechecking those numbers again one last time. Yep, I'm definitely 60. Bloody hell, how did that happen?
After deciding that I was going to travel to Nottingham and join in the fun at John and Bright Ambassador's inaugural Sunday Vinyl Session, I had a poke about the interweb to find out what might be going on in town during the evening, by way of entertainment. Amazingly there was a gig of interest at the Running Horse, in the very same room where I'd be spending the afternoon discussing all things Bowie. Johnny Dowd was in town. So after dinner and a brief pit-stop in another cool little bar, John, Jenny and I headed back to the pub where we'd met just a few hours earlier.
I knew only a little about Johnny Dowd before the show, but what I did know definitely ticked my boxes. Prolific, maverick, alt-country oddball doesn't begin to adequately describe the man and the music he makes. He's a dark poet, as funny as hell and as serious as your life. After the show we chatted to a couple of fans who are following Johnny's tour around parts of the UK. 'Completely different every night' said one. 'A totally different set from yesterday's' said another. I'm linking a short documentary on Johnny's 2015 UK tour at the bottom of this post, which is worth 18 minutes of anyone's time and will probably tell you more about him that I ever could. Johnny Dowd is 71 and already visibly more frail than when 'Disco Sausage' was filmed. If he tips up in your town anytime soon, I'd highly recommend that you give him a go. I really hope that I can catch up with him again one day. It was late, I'd had a long day, done a lot of driving and (for me) a lot of drinking. I was bushed. Hugs were exchanged between myself and my wonderful hosts and I headed off down the hill to my hotel. I suspect that I was asleep before John and Jenny had even caught their bus home.
On Monday morning I wandered into the centre of Nottingham in search of sustenance and enjoyed the most delicious breakfast/brunch in the Cartwheel Cafe - Roasted cauliflower, chickpeas, sun-blushed tomatoes, potato hash, roasted beetroot houmous, red amaranth and spring onions drizzled with garden pesto. It really was amazing, as was the Rwandan coffee that accompanied it. After ambling around for another half an hour, I necked an espresso at Outpost Coffee for the road and headed off to Cambridge.
David Thomas Broughton is part singer-songwriter, part avant-garde performance artist - the clipped Northern diction of his sonorous baritone (think a 21st Century Jake Thackray), guitar and various electronic gizmos are looped, dissected and reassembled to inject sometimes spontaneous elements to each individual performance. He's a baffling prospect to many, but once you fall under his spell, it's hard to look away. He had the entire room in his hands on Monday evening in Cambridge. On Tuesday morning I bumped into him in the hotel lift as we were both on our way to check out. Not wishing to come across as a weird stalker type, I merely thanked him for a great show the previous evening and told him I'd catch up with him later in the day in Norwich.
I was in Cambridge and, as it was my birthday, I figured that I deserved a treat or two, so I made tracks for the frankly magnificent Relevant Records. I'm so glad that this place isn't my local record shop. I could have easily dropped a months wages without even starting to dig deep into the bins. As it was I behaved myself, coming away with Nursery Rhymes by Bill Wells & Friends (a physical copy of which I've been after since posting about it here), second hand copies of John Cale's 'Paris 1919' and 'Future Songs' by The Doozer, plus the Joe Strummer RSD 12" of 'Forbidden City'. Then there was more food, more coffee and a drive onto Norwich, where David Thomas Broughton's performance was in a public bar and free of charge. Unfortunately this meant that a contingent of the audience were not only not there to see him - they simply didn't get what he was doing. This resulted in much peripheral chatter from sections of the crowd, which was a shame as they were missing a terrifically engaging show. After the gig, I wearily drove the last 20 miles home through the night, the first day of my 60th year completed.
Broughton didn't play 'Silent Arrow' at either of the shows I caught on this tour, but it's become something of a personal favourite of mine and illustrates what it is he actually does pretty well.
On Monday evening I stood towards the back of a small Norwich venue as Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs hurled their splendidly unholy racket in my general direction. And that was just for starters. Five nights later, downstairs in the larger room, Sleaford Mods made their third visit to the Fine City. While 'Moptop', Tweet Tweet Tweet' 'Giddy on the Ciggies' and 'No-one's Bothered' have all disappeared from the band's current setlist, newer songs like 'TCR', 'Stick in a Five and Go', 'Kebab Spider' and 'Discourse' have quickly become live favourites. Another grand night out.
The rarely seen Double McSwedeface
The following morning I was up with the larks and on the road early to reach a 2pm appointment in Nottingham. After a 150 mile drive, I stepped through the doors of the Running Horse public house to be greeted by a chap adjusting the levels behind his mixing desk. The event in question was the inaugural Sunday Vinyl Session and the chap twiddling the knobs was our mutual friend John Medd. Crucially, he didn't know I was coming and his casual nodded greeting told me that he didn't recognise me from Adam, so I did the only thing I could think of and held up the LP I was carrying so that it covered the bottom half of my face in a Swedey McSwedeface stylee. If anyone in the Nottingham area heard a clunking sound around that time, it was probably the sound of John's jaw hitting the floor. Along with his co-conspirator Bright Ambassador (he of Modern Gutnish), John introduced, played, then led an informal discussion on, David Bowie's 'Hunky Dory' LP. The three hour session was an absolute joy and fairly flew by. Exciting plans are well underway for future Sunday Vinyl Sessions, which will take place at the same venue on the second Sunday of every month. Watch John's blog / twitter account for further details - there's even a Facebook group you can join. Is there anything better than sitting in a good pub for a few hours with a group of like minded, friendly people, while listening to a few records? I can't think of anything.
My drive to Nottingham was punctuated by a couple of long roadwork related tailbacks, which meant that by the time I eventually arrived at the Running Horse, I hadn't had a chance to grab a bite to eat as planned. Consequently, by the time the Sunday Vinyl Session wound down at 5pm, I'd consumed a few beers on a stomach that had seen no food since a bowl of cereal at 8 o'clock that morning and was in imminent danger of sliding off my chair. Step forward John and Jenny, who marched their unexpected guest off to The Angel for a big plate of delicious grub and the first of many more beers that we enjoyed throughout the evening.
Today is a milestone birthday for Mrs S. She sees it as a very big milestone, though of course from my aged perspective it's just a modest marker in her journey through life. Mrs S is in the middle of a busy series of art related projects at the moment and I've been putting in long hours at work for some months, but to celebrate the occasion, we've taken a brief hiatus from our respective hectic schedules and, as you read this, are in Cambridge, doing cultural stuff and hopefully recharging the batteries.
Here's a song from one of Cambridge's finest sons. For Mrs S, now and always.
I'm writing a little ahead of time, but, all being well, by the time you read this Mrs S & I will be enjoying a short break in deepest North Norfolk. Today I turn 58 and the remote self-catering cabin we discovered a few years back has become something of an annual birthday retreat for us. I'm no psychic, but while we're away I can foresee lots of walking, lots of eating and, who knows, perhaps even a little drinking. We're looking forward to the break. The pace of our lives has increased considerably in recent weeks, so it'll be good to recharge for a few days before we pile back into it again.
Here's a band that I'm surprised to find hasn't put in an appearance on this blog before today. After Bob Dylan, I've probably seen Oysterband in concert more times than anyone else. In fact I'm long enough in the tooth to have attended both their 20th & 25th anniversary shows and just before Christmas I caught a date on their 40th anniversary tour - ouch! That means that when these guys started playing together, I was but a mere 18 year-old whippersnapper.
To celebrate Terry Hall's 59th birthday, here's a great clip of him covering 'Sorrow' in 2014, with the assistance of friends including Ian Broudie and the late John Bradbury.
Somehow, don't ask me exactly how it happened, I seem to have reached the grand old age of 57. Last time I checked, I could've sworn I was hovering somewhere around my late thirties. In spite of previously doubting and poo-pooing the notion, it appears that the passage of time really does speed up as you get older. These days time doesn't so much pass, as hurtle by.
Whenever either of our respective birthdays roll around, Mrs S & I generally take ourselves off to the coast for the day to eat some chips, drink a beer, mooch about for a bit, then come home - the simple pleasures. This year, following several months of niggling health issues, we've decided to push the boat out a bit more than usual. As you read these words, we're on the last full day of a short break in deepest North Norfolk. We found a little bolthole a couple of years ago and remarkably it wasn't booked out for the Easter weekend. It's a self contained cabin in the middle of nowhere - a perfect base for exploring the coast, taking quiet country walks or simply staying put and chilling on the porch with a celebratory birthday beverage. The Birthday Party - Happy Birthday
Soon after discovering the joys of Adnams beer at the tender age of 20, my pals and I pledged to make a group pilgrimage to Southwold (home of the aforementioned sacred beverage) to take the Adnams Brewery tour. We were never organised enough to get it together in those days though and another 30+ years would elapse before I eventually took the tour in 2013 - and it's well recommended if you ever find yourself in the area, but then I would say that wouldn't I? On Saturday, my 56th birthday, I fulfilled another similarly long-held ambition in the very same seaside town, when Mrs S & I climbed the iconic Southwold Lighthouse. The 113 steps to the top, spiral up around the internal wall of the structure, with just a handrail to separate you from the void. Mrs S, who isn't great with heights, had a very big wobble half way up (and a pretty much continuous wobble all the way down at the conclusion of the visit), but we made it and were rewarded with excellent views, in spite of the general miserableness of the weather on the day. (Click on any photo to enlarge)
Looking up at the climb and looking down towards the pier.
In the distance, Dunwich & Minsmere and down there............
..........the Adnams brewery. It must be time for a pint.
Here I am, blowing out the candles on my birthday cake in 1966. There'll be no candles today though, it's too much of a fire risk. But I might go mad and have a slither of cake with my afternoon coffee. Well, you're only 56 once aren't you?
He was the engine room of the only band that mattered and his beats have been sampled almost as much as those of James Browns' funky drummer, Clyde Stubblefield. Happy 60th birthday to the great Topper Headon.
Bob Dylan put in a mighty fine performance of
'The Night We Called It a Day' on the
penultimate David Letterman show last week,
despite looking profoundly uncomfortable for
every single second that he wasn't singing. When Bob's on the telly you never quite know what
you're going to get. I wouldn't have him any
other way.
Here are a couple of Bob's previous appearances on the
box from a few years back, each of them a triumph. Many happy returns of the day
Mr Dylan. See you in October.
55 songs in 55 days - one for every year of
my life...so far.
This whole shebang started on a whim. A few
tunes, each with an attached few lines of
waffle - 55 posts, bob's yer uncle. Once I
got into the groove though, the thing took
on a life of its own. For some of the years I
struggled to come up with anything and it
probably showed, while for others I had more
memories, tunes or photos than you could
shake a stick at. So I've got a little
backlog of stuff to dip into, going forward
(one for all you Buzzword Bingo fans out
there).
One
of the unfortunate by-products of my devoting
so much spare time to 55 From 55 (as well as
being laid low by an absolute stinker of a
cold last week) is that I've fallen way
behind with all the excellent blogs I follow
myself. Normal service, on all counts,
returns henceforth. Next time I post, it'll no doubt be regarding some of the newer stuff that's
been tickling my fancy over the past couple
of months.
Thank you to everyone who has dropped by to
support this little endeavor, it really is
very much appreciated. Right, I'm off out for
a spot of Birthday lunch with Mrs S. Catch you later. And remember - age is just a number.
---------------
As is the way of such things these days, many
of my favourite albums of 2014 don't actually
enjoy a physical presence here at Swede
Towers. A case in point was, until recently, 'Unlikely Mothers'
by Big Blood, where the only physical release
was of the 'Limited Edition Coloured Vinyl
Double LP' variety, which of course I was too
slow off the mark to snap up. Fortunately for
me, a second limited run of 150 appeared
early in 2015. This time I was off like a
shot and managed to bag a copy.
I can't recommend Big Blood highly enough and
I shall return to them more fully at some
point in the future. If you have any space in
your head and heart for a gothic acid psych folk hybrid, then I urge you to check out
'Unlikely Mothers' here and if you like what
you hear, you're in luck. The band have a
wealth of music going back 10 years, all
available to consume at the Free Music
Archive (here).
In just a few hours, I'll greet Mrs S with the same phrase my Nan used every year, when I was a kid, on the morning of my birthday. 'Many happy returns of the day...do you feel any older?' Then we'll jump in the car and, as tradition dictates, head for the coast for a beer or two, a portion of chips and a blast of balmy sea air.
On this day, a couple of years ago, I shared a handful of childhood photos of yours truly, plonked in front of the family radiogram (original post here). As I explained at the time, the birthday snapshot was an annual family tradition, which, as far as I recalled, came to an abrupt end in 1976. At the time of that post, I'd found eight photos in the archives and was trying to locate the rest to complete the set.
Two years on, I can exclusively reveal that, not for the first time, my memory wasn't serving me well. I have indeed unearthed more radiogram shots and unexpectedly these include three taken after 1976. (Just yesterday evening, at the end of an undeveloped strip of negatives, I found one from the dreaded moustache period.) It now appears that the very last Radiogram photo was actually taken in 1981, on my 21st birthday. There are still gaps to be plugged though, so there may well be further updates to come, somewhere down the line.
Meanwhile, here I am 50 years ago today, wearing a fetching bow tie & shorts combo and looking as if butter wouldn't melt in my mouth. I got a good haul for my 4th birthday, including a basketball, my first big-boy's bike (stabilisers hidden behind the jigsaw puzzle) and, crucially, a transistor radio. My very own personal source of music. Life would never be quite the same again.
To ensure a healthy appetite for my birthday pub
lunch yesterday, Mrs S and I first took a long walk
on a wild and windy stretch of coastal
heath, where the birdlife was plentiful, if
sometimes a little distant. Not distant in
any way, however, were these deer. As we passed a thicket of gorse bushes
there they were, not ten feet away, looking straight at us. When I'm out
walking locally, in a quiet lane or by the river, I occasionally spook a
little fawn, which will run like the wind into the distance. Not these
guys though. We were on their manor and they stood their ground and stared us out, as if daring us to blink first. I
very gently took a couple of shots and then
we moved on and left the beautiful creatures
to graze in peace.
It's a tenuous link I know, but I'm
nevertheless excited to learn that
Deerhunter have a new LP, 'Monomania', due
for release in a couple of weeks time. The
album is the follow up to 2010's brilliant
'Halcyon Digest', which featured one of the
very best tracks of that year, 'He Would
Have Laughed'.
In addition to the family tradition of the radiogram photo, every year on my birthday Dad did his best to capture my puffed cheeks as I blew out the candles on my cake, usually at a little party with friends or relatives. Here are two examples from the archives.
In 1963 I don't look 100% sure of what I'm supposed to be doing, although I clearly know that there is more food involved, judging by my tight grip on the cutlery.
By 1966, however, I'm an old hand at this candle blowing malarkey, demonstrating a polished technique and solid embouchure.
I won't be blowing any candles out today - it becomes too much of a fire risk after a certain age. Instead Mrs S & I will be celebrating my 53rd with a day at the coast, incorporating a pub lunch and leisurely walk.
Here's an audience recording of an appropriately titled traditional tune, dating back to the 17th century, from Nancy Wallace & Jason Steel. I was at this show in 2009 and regretfully it remains the only time I've seen either artist in concert. Nancy is surely long overdue for a new album, her solo debut, 'Old Stories', is a hugely recommended favourite of mine.
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