Alan Dearling
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“She takes your voice, and leaves you howling at the moon.” Bob Dylan
“God must be a Boogie Man.” Joni Mitchell
“What will I do with the sky when you have left me?” Judy Collins
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If you cannot actually share in the experience of a live music event, and there is no video or recording, the next option is to read someone else’s description, their words. That’s where the likes of myself can offer my Gonzo-style depictions. Gonzo journalism mostly came to world attention through the rants and escapades of Hunter S. Thompson along with his side-kick, artist, the long-suffering, put-upon, Ralph Steadman. ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ along with ‘Hells’ Angels’, ‘The Rum Diaries’ and ‘The Curse of Lono’ (I particularly like that one – a totally off-the-wall, bonkers trip by Hunter and Ralph to Hawaii). It’s journalism at its most frenetic, personal, fractured, dissipated, dissolute, factual and sometimes fraudulent too!
One of the many attractions of reviewing albums and attending live music events is spending many hours listening to the words of songs. Unpicking complex lyrics, marvelling at the sounds and emotions conjured up and listening to the lyrical poetry created by many of the great musicians of the last sixty years. Long may we seek out and discover new musicians, new poets…
In my own life, I studied social history and sociology during a time at the back-end of the 1960s – I was ‘subjected’ to lots of ‘ologies’, pedagogies of social phenomenology, and finally the almost opposite of objectivity – ‘ethnomethodology’. You didn’t ‘do’ research you ‘lived in it’. You were active in it, an actor, a participant. The sociologists called it ‘participant observation’. There was even ‘epistemology’, which one liked to think might involve the imbibing of plenty of alcoholic beverages!
And so, that’s what I try to create or replicate in many of my scribblings, in what I often say to my friends are my ‘joined-up-handwriting’ and pics. It is Gonzo. It’s cut-and-paste journalism. A tad quirky, slightly off-kilter. I try to create word-pictures. Sometimes it is words about arts, sometimes about music, or events. I drink it up. See it. Hear it. Try to share it. As one of the ethnomethodologists, Dick Hobbs said about his personal research amongst drop-outs, drug-users, alcoholics, street-people (and the police) in ‘Doing the Business’:
“… for the most part I spoke, acted, drank and generally behaved as though I was not doing research. Indeed, I often had to remind myself that I was not in a pub to enjoy myself, but to conduct an academic inquiry and repeatedly woke up the following morning with an incredible hangover facing the dilemma of whether to throw it up or write it up.”
And today I want to share a little of what I witnessed on my first visit to a gig at the relatively new Ginger Tiger in Todmorden. Two musicians in the corner: John (kora) and Mark (guitar) accompanying noodle-eaters and wine-suppers! A liminal musical experience – sonic shimmerings… African harp-like sounds from John, and shadows and lights of Gypsy music and the rhythms of South America, apparent amongst the ambience of Mark’s guitar-stroking. It reminded me in a strangely surreal way of the receptions I used to go to regularly for ten years in the bowels of the Houses of Parliament at Westminster. These were the lobbying events organised by the All-Party Writers’ Group. Waiters dressed as flunkies, flitting from tables of drinks, a handful of creative-types, writers from all genres, co-habiting a space with many dozens of members of the parliamentary Commons and the Lords, sharing finger-foods, gossip, politics and words of wisdom (or not!). And in the corner, and almost always ignored, a harpist caressing her strings, eyes glazed, drifting off into the oblivion of her own musical universe of the mind!
At the Ginger Tiger in Todmorden, John and Mark proved that they are genuine musical magicians, weaving tapestries of sound. Often their playing was being treated as sonic wallpaper. At best, some of the noodle bar customers were respectful of the musicians. Most of the time, it felt like an ambient space, vaguely reverential, a setting for playful romantic encounter, friendships and conversations kindled over wine, amidst plates and bowls of steaming foods, chopsticks and yet more wine!
Respect to John and Mark, the gastro bar musicians!
Here’s a tiny clip of video from Ginger Tiger Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/reel/719688594433384
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