The Bucket At The Thin End Of The Rope

I was very pleased/surprised/relieved/honoured (delete as applicable) to find the seventy-third edition of Bucketfull Of Brains magazine waiting for me on my doormat the other evening. In its thirty year history, it’s often barely struggled out – nominally a quarterly, I think there have been occasions where one issue a year has been a big ask. Yet in those thirty years, under various editorial leaderships, it’s never once dipped in quality.

Since its launch in 1979, it’s been a source of inspiration, a font of knowledge and a basket of light. I guess I first picked it up around ’86 on a vinyl-buying expedition to London, at a time when my hard-earned student grant was earmarked for various Australian imports. At that time BoB was the only publication featuring the likes of The Church, The Celibate Rifles, The Lime Spiders, The Hoodoo Gurus, etc. And as such, it was right up my street. But it also turned me on to such unheard delights as Davis, CA’s Thin White Rope, Hoboken, NJ’s Yo La Tengo and Walthamstow’s Bevis Frond.

As time’s worn on, I’ve only had limited access to each of these acts. Yo La Tengo have developed into a successful mainstream act by means of crossmatching plangent indie with psyched-out free jazz. Frond sits in his Walthamstow bunker, compiling brilliant compilation CDs for the Psychic Circle label, but very rarely gigging. And the Rope? They called it a day in ’92 after a string of brilliant desert-psych albums, including their live epitaph The One That Got Away, recorded at their final performance in the Belgian town of Ghent.

I was lucky enough to see Thin White Rope on the second day of my sojourn as a student in Birmingham in October ’88. It was in the backroom of The Hummingbird, there were only about thirty people there and the band came on at 11pm. And it was revelatory. Like Clarence White had joined Television and taken them off in a more Krautrock direction, yet still staying close to his country roots. Oh, halcyon days!

Unfortunately, I never got another chance to see them. I don’t know why. But by the time of their final tour, frontman Guy Kyser had decided that he’d rather play in bars with his girlfriend that front a brilliant desert psych band.

And, to cut a long story short, that is why Bucketfull Of Brains is so, so important: it knows what its readers want to read about and is the first to bring it to them. In every issue there are so many new musical relationships waiting to be formed, with bands you just won’t read about anywhere else, that – if they gig at all – you are only likely to see one or two times, in the weirdest of venues, on the rainiest of November nights, before they prematurely implode leaving you with the sweet, aching memory of it all. And isn’t that what being a fan is all about?

Hackney Central, Murder Mile

It seems like Lower Clapton Road has cleared up a bit these days. Certainly since those shagsacks Oasis came and made a video in the Round Chapel. Terminally uncool, the Burnage boys would've been oblivious that just up the road is another place of worship, Biddle's Bar.

Apparently a former hardware store, the place looks pretty much unchanged from those days. I guess. They've certainly still got the original signage. Quite a tiny little gaff, it's still big enough to have live music in the back bit. The first band I saw there were Hackney's veteran gypsy-punk renegades, Walking Wounded. Man! They tore the roof off the place that night. Thirty years, nine albums and still going strong.

The next act I saw there was Public Speech. Basically a project of Joe Eye Joe, onetime guitarist with Dalston's Pearl Jam soundalikes The Dolmen. Joe became something of a Hackney equivalent of Eminem - if a white boy can't rap in an integrated community like Dalston, then what's up with the world? The kid was good, he mad himself known and got a load of hits on his MySpace.

He couldn't leave his geetar down though, and Hey Presto! From beats and samples, Public Speech have become a full fledged band. And Saturday night's show indicates he's on track at last. One can't escape the pub-rockness of it all. who would want to? Joe's a tasty guitarist, from skanking Wilko-isms to far out Hendrixy flourishes. Other times they sound like a weird cross between The Specials and Hawkwind! And this is just a wee trio in a back-bar in Clapton!

But better still, those teenage observations still hold true. Truer! And Joe's lyrics are sharp as a tack. The posing DJs, the casual sexism of the Daily Star brigade, Hackney's own middle-class ghetto just up the road in Stokey. and now, the hilarious and self-explanatory 'Twitter'.

There's something really rich and vibrant about the Hackney scene. The salt and vinegar spirit of cynicism and protest is very much alive and well. A living, breathing heir to Ian Dury, Joe Eye Joe and Public Speech have taken something old and worn and made it new and very real indeed.

Of Pharmacy and Phree Speech

Well it's been a long time coming and now, after a brief false start last week, it finally arrived. Errgh? I'm talking about The Pharmacist, the debut full-length feature for Texture Films and the debut acting performance of Stovepony recording artist, Simon Onions. And you know? It's actually very good.

Briefly, the film revolves around the title character, played by Liana Gould, an embattled South-East London high-street pharmacist, surrounded by the needy men and petty bureaucracy. Tell me about it! I'm about as cheesed off with Boots, but I digress - that's for another time and another place.

Anyway, she discovers smalltime gangster Onions, hiding out and wounded and so begins a dangerous trail of dodgy dealings, drugs, dogs and.... Look, you'll just have to see it! Suffice to say it's great, Simon also provides the original music, and there's a bit of Bonnie Prince Billy in there too. Out officially next year.

While I'm here, I just want to flag up the fact that I was shocked, stunned and, frankly, not best pleased earlier today because some twat called me a hypocrite because of my perceived (by them) anti-free speech stance. For the record, I truly believe in the right to free speech, even for the most unsavoury. But there is such a thing as abuse of that right. And today, someone crossed that line. To them I say, you have the right speak as freely as you like, but don't also expect the right not to be called on it.

I've been negotiating something of a malaise of late. Might just be an Autumnal thing; you know, post-holiday, shortening days, the jarring realisation that you're closer to another year off your life. Also, another factor might be that I'm engaged in a crucial battle of wits with someone in a position of some power but I'm not at liberty to discuss it.

As it goes, a crucial indicator was the fact that I had a variety of options for Thursday night - the Midwich bash up at Ryan's, the Weli's new acoustic evening, 3rd Rok at Biddle's - and chose to do precisely none, instead staying in to watch the first instalment of Raymond Blanc's Restaurant show (rewarding, as it was, to witness two would-be retaurateurs, a mother and daughter couple, attempting to open a can of condensed milk with a carving knife and a rolling pin - now there's real talent!).

Anyway, the fact that I chose to stay in made me question whether I'd reached a point where I no longer went to gigs and that, effectively, that period of my life was at an end.

So it was good to resume DJing antics at What's Cookin' last night, in the company of those Jawbone boys, and somebody called the Monster Trucks, who allege themselves to be Southern Rock but in fact sound more like Toploader. No! I don't want you to think that I'm having a petty dig: they're all competent musicians who play well together. It's just that their name is a bit misleading. I was expecting baseball caps, big boots'n'beards, not Top Man trilbeys.

Delight of the night, though, had to be the opening boy/girl garage blues duo, Cowbell. They're from Stokey. Not particularly keen on the name, but the singer/guitarist had a great Guild semi and a powerful soulful voice to match. The lass on the drums - Wednesday - also had a very heavy right-foot which broke the bass pedal on the first song. I look forward to hearing more from this lot. But for now, here's a pic.....