May 2012
5 posts
Tapeworm fanzine cover
I like this fanzine cover I did, it’s simple, lewd and was drawn to size at A6. And yes, the worm in question is his penis.
Moral Sense #3 cover
Moral Sense was a music fanzine founded by my friend Mike Noon and so named because of the never ending supply of free badges saying just that in the Christian book shop on Deansgate in Manchester. We took plenty, and gave them away with the first issue. They also sold T shirts that said HELL (in flames) IS NOT COOL (with icicles). I wish I’d bought one. Anyhow I kinda like this, even though...
The Art Supermarket
This is another thing I drew for Deadline magazine, again it happened pretty much the way I tell it, though I can tell you that the artsy nom de guerre I adopted was Crispin Taylor (I think I’d been watching Crispin Glover in River’s Edge). But no, I never went and collected my art, what the hell was I going to do with it?
7 inch middle I drew an age ago
The Hypnotist
This is an old cartoon. I drew it for Deadline magazine, which you may remember as the UK monthly that launched Jamie Hewlett’s career amongst other things. I had a page a month that they let me fill how I wished, and for a while it was a pretty sweet deal. I was ultimately bumped for reprints of the Los Bros Hernandez’ Love and Rockets I think, which seems as thoroughly reasonable now...
August 2011
1 post
Revenge is a dish best served with margarine
I think this is a funny story. It’s short and to the point – a perfect little thing – and I’ve told it a bunch of times, generally with the desired effect (yuck), but I’ve had to think twice about writing it up here.
It was told first-hand to me by someone who is reasonably well known these days but back before they’d made a solid name for themselves. As best I can recall I wasn’t sworn to...
May 2011
1 post
Perfect pop
Uno, dos, one, two, tres, quarto…
Let’s not get into a discussion about what exactly ‘Pop’ is here, let’s stick with ‘Popular’ and cut straight to the tune in question (as you’d expect, treatise on Pop are mostly dull as ditchwater and the antithesis of what we are focusing on today). I want to talk about a strange little song, by a strange Mexican American, backed by a strange band who travelled...
March 2011
1 post
Thom Yorke and some sage advice
In late 1995 I moved into a flat in Manchester city centre, Whitworth Street to be precise. My new flat-mate Pete and I didn’t really know each other that well, so when a mutual friend passed on tickets to a premier screening of John Woo’s Broken Arrow movie we took it as an opportunity to get to know each other a little. The event is at one of Manchester’s first multiplex theatres - the Showcase...
January 2011
1 post
Dexys Midnight Runners, Debenhams & the wedding...
It’s a Saturday afternoon in August 1982 and my mother is dragging my sister and I around Stockport town centre. We are all weary from the trudge about the shops so before heading home we call into Debenhams department store for a customary cuppa.
We’ve been sat for a few minutes when a desperate looking woman rushes across the café towards us. She’s middle-aged, all 70’s beads and bangles, and...
December 2010
1 post
Open door policy
If there was someone working in the Night & Day Café office then the door remained open; visitors simply wandered downstairs, made their way across the tatty dressing room and there they’d find me, sat in the small converted World War 2 bomb shelter that served as my workspace. As you may expect, this open-armed arrangement produced varying results.
On the whole it worked just fine; musicians...
November 2010
1 post
Who'd open a live music venue?
“I’ve never really had a hobby, unless you count art, which the IRS once told me I had to declare as a hobby since I hadn’t made money with it.” Laurie Anderson
Opening a live music venue can be a terrible idea. That may sound quite a statement from a chap who’s worked in three - having launched two of them from scratch - so let me qualify it.
I’m talking about those small spaces...
July 2010
1 post
Harvey Pekar RIP
I met Harvey Pekar once.
It’s September 2006 and I’m in New York visiting friends.
Leaving where I’m staying in Brooklyn one morning, I head across to Manhattan to pick up my old Mac after a fix by the good people at Tekserve. My receipt says ‘please don’t call us up to ask whether your computer has been repaired as we’ll have to stop repairing it to answer the phone. We will call you.’ Good...
June 2010
5 posts
The casino carpet
I worked at a casino for a while. It was by measure fascinating, taxing and ultimately dispiriting.
Once, one of my colleagues congratulated me saying, “we wondered how you’d fit in without any gaming background but you’ve settled in nicely”. Well yes, I’d been in casinos, visited Las Vegas and had read up, I even knew a few croupiers so had a pretty sound grasp of just how casinos functioned. I...
What is in the bag?
Over the years people have left behind countless things at the venues I’ve worked in. Some bits and pieces you’d expect, coats, bags, passports, house keys, wallets, phones – oh, plenty of phones.
I’ve found a fair amount of instruments unsurprisingly but often left for surprising lengths of time, their owners never to return in some cases. I’ve never been able to figure why through a simple...
Valentine's day
It’s Valentine’s Day 2006 at Night & Day Café, we have Isobel Campbell playing, and no it’s not a themed evening.
When Isobel takes the stage the venue is full to brimming and as she begins to play a heavy hush falls across the venue. It’s quiet. Really, really, quiet.
Towards the middle of her set I’m sat in my basement office doing something or other when the phone rings. There’s trouble...
CD tennis
The dramatist Jean Anouilh said, “Life has a way of setting things in order and leaving them be. Very tidy, is life.”
Jean hadn’t set foot in the basement of Night & Day Café.
It’s January 7th 2002, day one of what I’ll sardonically refer to in the future as my 9 to 5 and the effects of deterministic chaos are everywhere. Somewhere a bored barmaid drops a bottle of mascara and a year later...
My favourite joke
I’ve long forgotten when and where I first heard my favourite gag though Mick Jones gave the best rendition I ever heard on stage at Night and Day Cafe. He may well have been referencing the show I’d booked for him. Anyhow, it goes a something like this…
A man visits his doctor in some distress, and on entering the consultation room says, “Doctor, you have to help me. I’m in total and utter...