LeftLion Magazine - June 2008 - Issue 23

#23 our style is legendary June - July 2008

ANOTHER SHOOTING IN

NOTTINGHAM

PARENTAL GUIDANCE

IBNASDIDWEORDS

Nottingham Event Listings Guide

illustration: Sasha Leech

contents

editorial

LeftLion Magazine Issue 23 June-July 2008

Youths and Ducks, This particular issue of LeftLion arrives at a time when our dear ode citeh appears to be receiving one boot after another to its civic bollocks. Capital One lays off, bars that we thought were going to be around forever have gone under, and things are looking well moody. So this issue is dedicated to any of you reading this who have been firmly jabbed by the shittiest end of the stick this past month (including, as you’ll notice, our resident Canalien Rob Cutforth).

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May Contain Notts If you’ve been in a coma for the past eight weeks, here’s what you’ve missed

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LeftEyeOn Our squad of snappers capture the souls of assorted local sorts

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Work Over Time Shit jobs in Notts, 600-2008: a retrospective King Hell!

King Henry: vivacious iconoclast or dirty little bogger?

A Canadian In New Basford Rob Cutforth – another victim of Brown’s Britain

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Grocers Point Blank The incomparable Thompson Brothers

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Artists Profiles Alan Armstrong, Benjamin Hargrave, Debbie Bryan and Hetain Patel

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24 Hour Arty People Making a short film from script to screening – in a day?

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Sorry, I Don’t Speak Geek In Spod we trust

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Resistance Is Futile, Creativity Is Not Introducing the New Art Exchange

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LeftLion Listings Your complete guide to what a gwan in the NG in June and July

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Write Lion More literary offerings from NottsBards a-plenty

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LeftLion Presents…

Another unfurling ribbon of bandage, including Green For Go, Himalayas, The Smears and Moonbuggy

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Reviews Our still-rather-new breakdown of the latest books and CDs

Chris Needham The creator of the greatest TV programme ever breaks his silence

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The Arthole Plus Notts Trumps and Rocky Horrorscopes

This Lad’s Got A Right Gob On Him THePETEBOX leaves spittle all over our Dictaphone

If there’s a theme running through this particular issue, it’s the do-it-yourself ethic which appears to be booming in Notts, and not before time. We’re all for people who are prepared to get off their ringpieces and sacrifice the easy life to pursue what they do best. People like THePETEBOX, who busts his arse and his vocal cords on a daily basis and is actually making a living at his craft.

People like King Henry, who got sick of being pissed about by publishing twats in London and invested his time and cash into putting his own book out. The people involved in the recent 24-hour film festival, who demonstrated that you can do amazing things in a very short time. And people like the Thompson Brothers, who have attained legendary status across Sherwood by simply being themselves. We love giving people like that the coverage they deserve, because we see a lot of ourselves in them.

Moral of the story: if you’re creative in Notts and you’re still waiting for that record deal/book contract/arts grant, get your thumb out your arse, get your shit together, and do it yoursen.

As for the rest of the mag, I’m delighted to team up the indomitable Rikki Marr and The All-Knowing Abbott (our resident pulsing brain of Nottsness) for a look back at career opportunities in the ‘Ham, and my absolute highlight was spending an afto in the company of the one and only Chris Needham, who I’ve been wanting to have a chat with ever since I saw his video diary. Some people might say that a Notts mag devoting space to a TV programme filmed in Loughborough is a wrong. I say; Bogga, please. It’s the best TV programme ever, as guest writer Taylor Parkes (a critic from the toppermost drawer of music journalism) points out in ways far more eloquent than I could ever say. Put aside 50 minutes or so, check it on YouTube, and thank us later.

Word To Your Nana,

credits

Al Needham nishlord@leftlion.co.uk

Editor Al Needham (nishlord@leftlion.co.uk)

Photography Editor Dominic Henry (dom@leftlion.co.uk)

Still On Holiday Jared Wilson

Contributors Michael Abbott Pete Connell Rob Cutforth Alison Emm Colin The Geek Joe O’Leary Roger Mean Johnny Royal Dan Skorok Jack Tunnecliff Kate Wojcik

Deputy Editor Nathan Miller (njm@leftlion.co.uk) Technical Director Alan Gilby (alan@leftlion.co.uk) Marketing and Sales Manager Ben Hacking (ben@leftlion.co.uk) Art Director David Blenkey (reason@leftlion.co.uk) Art Editor Amanda Young (amanda@leftlion.co.uk) Community Editor Charlotte Kingsbury (charlotte@leftlion.co.uk) Theatre Editor Adrian Bhagat (adrian@leftlion.co.uk) Literature Editor James Walker (books@leftlion.co.uk) Music Editor Natasha Chowdhury (natasha@leftlion.co.uk) Listings Editor Tim Bates (timmy@leftlion.co.uk)

Photographers Tracy Adams David Baird Julie Green Mike Guess Uldis Miergis Wayne Harrison Frenchy Phil Christine Preedy Jon Rouston Dave Wild Illustrators Sasha Leech Rkki Marr Mark Mackay Rob White

Sound Bloke Mike Cheque "Because I listen to stuff like that it gives us a bad name. We are evil, and we will grow up and we will be evil, and do evil things. That kind of shit gets me down. Fuck You If You Think Abaaht That. Just get out of my fucking face, now. Do not bother me with that shit. I am perfectly okay. So don't think abaaht it" Chris Needham Correspondence Address LeftLion, care of Stone Soup, The Oldknows Factory, St Anns Hill Road, NG3 4GP If you would like to reach our readers by advertising your company in these pages please contact Ben on 07984 275453 or email ben@leftlion.co.uk LeftLion has an estimated readership of 40,000 in the city of Nottingham. LeftLion.co.uk received over 4 million page views in the last 12 months.

This magazine is printed on paper sourced from sustainable forests. Our printers are ISO 14001 certified by the British Accreditation Bureau for their environmental management system.

Jared, watch out for them girls with the prominent adams apple

Nathan Miller Deputy Editor

As well as being our Film Ed, Nathan is a box officer, theatre director, impresario, occasional filmmaker, and semi-professional Santa. He pretended to be shot at the start of a race at school sports days when Sir fired a starting pistol, earning him our undying respect. He's recently launched Hatch, a platform for performance-y things in Notts.

If you'd like to find out more and get involved, visit www. hatchnottingham.co.uk

Mike Cheque Sound Bloke

If Mike were any more of a diamond, he’d be embedded into a horribly chunky crucifix around the neck of some gorm who hangs around the Viccy Centre on a Saturday afto who thinks he’s summat.

Mike does the sound for our LeftLion Presents throwdowns at the Orange Tree.

When he’s not doing that, he’s part of Nuclear Family, reading, climbing mountains and amassing both musical trivia and trivial music. www.leftlion.co.uk/issue23

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There was some young girls on the bus yesterday who had Primark thongs on outside their jeans.

Like a chatty Superman. I don’t think they were expressing their femininity, exploring their sexuality or questioning social taboos, though. seamus flannery Did Pick Up Nottingham ever come out? It’s supposed to be ‘available in MSR Newsagents and local supermarkets’ apparently, though that doesn’t really help to make it sound less like a dodgy singles magazine full of classifieds for ‘exclusive escorts’ to be honest.

Nottzuke: Junior Monster Quit your job and gain employment at the QMC. Every morning, hack off an appendage then call an ambulance. Travel free to work! Don’t know how you’d get home, though. Also, this will only work until you run out of appendages.

BassRooster I worked at Capital One about seven years ago. Best job ever - all I did was go to meetings about how we could meet and communicate more effectively, eat buffet food and organise fun days out going quad biking and having spa treatments. Nights out paid for with those corporate cards an all. Glad I worked there then rather than now though, bet there isn’t so much buffet food anymore. theonelikethe I live very near to the Ice Arena, and it cracks me up every day to see the line-up on the side of the building with the Dalai Lama squeezed in between Shayne Ward and Dolly Parton. I just hope the Lama comes with the goods - he must be feeling the pressure facing off against an X-Factor winner in the same month.

Beast of the Bay I had dinner with Ann Charleston (Madge Ramsey) 3 weeks ago she’s my mate’s foster mum she’s ace Floydy I was recently in Poland, and their version of Hooters is called Roosters. I’m glad to see that American Tan tights are easily available in Eastern Europe.

Sparrow

MAY CONTAIN NOTTS with Nottingham’s ‘Mr. Sex’, Al Needham illustration: Mark Mackay

April-May 2008

March 28 John Batchelor, a bell-end with a lot of money, wants to buy Mansfield Town and change its name to Harchester United, after the club in a programme on Sky that was cancelled due to low ratings and being, well, shit, really. ‘One club has been on the television for 10 years and the other one hasn’t,’ says his hideously ignorant mouth on the telly. Well in that case, why not go the whole way and call them Madelaine United, you sucky twat?

April 1 The Arena sells its naming rights to Rubbish Local Radio Station. Everybody still calls it ‘The Arena’.

April 6 The Nottingham Eye is finally packed up and presumably rolled down the M1 by a giant child after a staggeringly successful stint in the Square, sparking talk of bringing it back in the future. Hopefully with a massive sucker stick wedged in the spokes, so it sort of makes a motorbike noise.

April 8 What’s in your wallet? If you’re one of 750 poor bastards at Capital One, it’s a P45.

They give out some flange about needing to say economically competitive and innovative in the UK credit card market, which is shorthand for ‘get your fucking desk cleared, we’re pissing off to India now’.

April 9 The Lawn Tennis Association decide to nob off the Nottingham Open and move it to Eastbourne, wherever that is. Good.

Tennis is wank. Message to Council: let’s have the World Kerby Championships in the Square. Or, even better the World Cup of Dobby Scarecrow. We’d batter everyone.

April 18 Shocking news as the shutters go up at Brownes, one of those bars in town that you thought would go on for ever. They created a VIP area for me and my Dad once, when I was taking him out on the pull for a newspaper article. He looked down upon the beautiful people and said ‘Look at those fookin’ coonts’. Then he got pissed off because they didn’t serve bitter, and then looked at a complimentary cocktail as if it was made of mashed-up slugs and monkey wee.

April 20 And then I told him how much it was, and he went mental. Even though it was free. He’s one of those old gets who would happily drink in an abbotoir with animals being cut up with chainsaws and blood flying everywhere, as long as the ale cost £1.50 a pint.

April 21 More redundancies, as Thomas Fish collapses under five million quid’s worth of debt. I’d say that their arse was hanging right of their trousers but, seeing as they’re builders…y’know.

April 22 The local bobbies offer a £500 reward for the capture of Tasty and Nasty, two graffitilovebirds who hold hands while throwing up not-particularly-brilliant pieces, aw, bless, etc. Question: which is which? And do they say their names as a rhyme? And if so, is it Tassty and Nasty, or Tasty and Naysty?

That’s what the police should be offering five hundred quid for, so I can sleep at night.

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April 26 Notts County beat Wycombe 1-0, and stay up in Division Four. Harch - er, Mansfield – don’t, and are relegated from the human race. I mean, the Football League.

April 29 The police get slagged off for taking three hours to respond to a call from a bloke in Arnold whose house was invaded by eight nutters, one of whom is swinging an axe about. You see the trouble you’ve caused, Tasty and Nasty?

May 5 Forest beat Yeovil 3-2, securing promotion from Division Rubbish at last. ‘We can compete in the Championship, eye on the Premier League, blah blah blah’ say the Forest suits. ‘RAYYFOOKING’ELLYOOOO REEE-DDDDSS!’ bellow the fans. ‘Thank fuck we’re not in the playoffs thank fuck we’re not in the playoffs thank fuck we’re not in the playoffs’ they all say, inwardly, over and over again.

May 8 The latest edition of The Rough Guide to England slags us all off for being a country of ‘overweight, alcopop-swilling sex and celebrity-obsessed TV addicts’, but – wahey! – Notts gets bigged up for our shopping, architecture and restaurants. They were dead right about the crust of shitty pubs that cling around the rim of the Square like toilety clag, though.

May 10 Carl Froch batters some Polish lad at the Fucking Hell Is That Twiggy And Jo Switch That Shit Off Now Before I Stab You Arena. I watched it on telly next to a Notts fan, who wanted our Carl to get pasted because he supports Forest. Fucking hell, so it’s come to this, has it? In that case, let him fight Jimmy Sirrel next time.

May 12 Someone, quite possibly someone who’d borrowed Christine by Stephen King out the library, fires a shotgun at a car in Bilborough. No-one was hurt. Apart from the car’s feelings, obviously.

May 16 Two students at Nottingham Uni get arrested under the Oh My God They’re Going To Murder Us In Our Beds Act for downloading Al Queda stuff, even though they were just looking. By the way, I live in mortal terror that one day, a terrorist group called Al Needham will spring up and start kicking off.

May 22 The Independent announces that Nottingham has the worst crime rate for students ever ever EVER in the entire universe, or something. I’d have to change my name. Garry Fresh has a nice ring to it.

May 23 The Dalai Lama rolls into town to kick off his week-long stand at Rubbish Radio Station Arena (just after Girls Aloud, and just after Dolly Parton). Buddhists are known for their vegetarianism and huge reserves of patience, which is just as well if he decides to nip across the road and wait 45 minutes at Spice Arena for a beanburger.

LeftEyeOn

What’s been going on recently as seen through the eyes of Nottingham’s flickr folk...

The best images posted on www.flickr.com/groups/nottingham during April and May. l-r from top left: England’s patron saint is welcomed into town by the Council’s official Sheriff of Nottingham and Robin Hood for St George’s Day at the Castle. - Designcat (Julie Green) Who’s round is it? Nottingham’s knackers feel the grip of the global credit crunch as Capital One announces massive job cuts.

- frenchyphil Fountain frolics: Nottingham’s New Old Market Water Feature baptises the first signs of warm weather. - Mik G (Mike Guess) Careful now... Man prepares to jump through hoop of knives for money, as the grip of the global credit crunch tightens. - Uldis Miergis Rattlejag Morris lead Laxton Castle villagers in a sunrise celebration of Beltaine, almost making you believe the last 600 years were just something that happened to other people. - TallGuyTosh (Wayne Harrison) Five for a pound? - Publicenergy (Dave Wild) Nottingham’s New Old Market Grenadier Guards practice their stern-faced hat balancing. - melodysparks Chris (Christine Preedy) The global credit crunch claims another victim, as Nottingham’s New Old Market French Farmer’s Market is scaled down 2000% for cost reasons. - vcrimson (Tracy Adams) www.leftlion.co.uk/issue23

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work over time Think your manky job is rubbish, demeaning and an insult to your integrity? Well, yeah, it probably is - but it’s nowhere as bad as the jobs our ancestors had to put up with... ∙ words: michael Abbott ∙ illustrations: rikki marr

In 600, you’d probably be: on the farm, seeing as

Your working conditions were: a combination of lots of smoke, lots of dirt and lots of accidents from all the manufacturing and sedanracing across the town centre.

offices and factories weren’t invented then. And neither was the dole, or being on the sick. Or tellies. Yes, living off the land was the thing back then, and continued to be so for the next, ooh, 800 years or so.

If you were dead lucky, you’d be: working as a brewer. Ale was an incredibly important product back in the day; not only did it take your mind off having a life expectancy in the mid-30s, it actually kept you alive for a few more years, seeing as the water was potentially lethal. Brewing was a niche industry all over the country, but only Nottingham - with its network of caves offering a constant temperature and humidity that was conveniently perfect for malting - could do it all year round.

But if you were really unlucky, you’d be: manning Mester Snott’s toll bridge across the Trent. Long hours, surly, pissed-off customers, and all the carts looked the same.

Your working conditions were: pretty decent-ish. Work was a stone’s throw from your hut. You were out in the sun. Nottingham was a big allotment, really, without the convenience of a nearby Wilko’s.

Your snap tin would probably contain: a surprisingly tip-top selection of fresh fruit and veg, and even fish. The mediaeval diet was pretty good, meaning that most Nottinghamians of working age were tall and fit.

After work, you’d be: having your tea and getting your head down.

These poor bastards used to go at it 18 hours a day. Fortunately, Nottingham’s foremost leisure pursuit - buying crap - kicked off round about this time, due to the city’s handy location and the addition of that French settlement that was clustered on Castle Rock. A Saturday market attracted peddlers and hawkers from as far afield as Yorkshire and Norfolk. And what’s this? An annual ‘Goose Fair’? It’ll never catch on…

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Your snap tin would probably contain: Whatever you could grow, and a hunk of bread that your missus spent as much as four hours a day to make, what with having to grind up wheat, rye, oats and barley between two plate-sized stones to make the ‘flour’.

After work, you’d be: getting pissed up, of course.

In the 1300s, you’d probably be:

If you were dead lucky, you’d be: an alabaster carver. Our lads were the absolute top rank in their field, so much so that ‘Nottingham Alabaster’ became a catch-all term for all sculptures of the period, rather like Hoover and vacuum cleaners. The best local carvers made an absolute packet; ancient records show that Windsor Castle forked out £200 for a carved altar piece.

But if you were really unlucky, you’d be: soaking animal hides in a vat of horse shit and piss for a couple of weeks, then scraping the fat off and stretching it to make leather. The tanning industry was huge in Notts, and ran from where the Loggerheads is now all the way to the Lace Market. The downside of this was that Nottingham funked so badly that not even the rats would go there. The upside according to legend - was that Notts only had a dozen or so fatalities from the bubonic plague, as opposed to the one-in-two death rate in other towns across Europe.

Your working conditions were: unbelievably squalid. Not only were our ancestors caked in shit and piss, they also couldn’t be arsed to wash and were lifting with lice, the chatty boggers.

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After work, you’d be: knackered, even though you only worked a mere 16 hours a day. Possibly checking out any traveling musicians and plays that strolled into town every now and then.

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in the 1800s, you’d probably be:

caught right up in the Industrial Revolution, working your genitalia off in a factory, mill or mine. Nottingham was right at the forefront of the mass production boom, and it showed; a mass exodus to the city for work saw our population rise from 29,000 in 1801 to over 50,000 in 1841. Seeing as the boundaries of the city didn’t open up to swallow vast tracts of former farmland until 1865, town was heaving.

Obviously, lace was the major industry; the machine that copied hand-made lace was invented by a Derby lad called John Heathcoat, but when his patent ran out, scores of Nottingham entrepreneurs ripped it off - ha ha! - and within a decade, Notts was the dominant lace city in the world, with factories running from Canning Circus to the bottom of Carlton Hill. And the Lace Market, of course.

If you were dead lucky, you’d be: running your own shop or market stall in a family-owned business - like FG Garton, who invented HP Sauce in his grocers, and then gave away the recipe and brand to settle a debt. The twat.

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working the land for a Lord of the Manor. Thanks to the good old feudal system, approximately 90% of us were grafting for someone else’s benefit. Naturally, new-fangled trades were coming in, which was borne out by street names that still exist today; Fletcher Gate (from the Saxon for ‘flesh hewers’, or butchers), Beast Market Hill, Bridlesmith Gate, etc. Sadly, we somehow lost Blow Bladder Street (part of Fletcher Gate where they made musical instruments using bladders as the wind-bag on pipes!) Fair Maiden Lane (off Stoney Street) and Whore Lane (next to BZR).

Your snap tin would probably contain: unleavened black bread with some boiled grain, cheese, and loads of veg. No meat, though - any domestic animal was kept for its eggs or milk.

But if you were really unlucky, you’d be: in the workhouse, knocking back gruel and doing the most menial of labour - possibly the one in Southwell, which was so deliberately grim and austere that Victorian legislation made every other workhouse in the county follow its lead. Nice.

In the 1600s

, you’d probably be: a farmer. Still. Although vacancies were starting to arise for manufacturing jobs in town. Lots of building work available too, as Notts was on the up. We’d been granted a royal charter, making us the de facto commercial powerhouse in the East Midlands, so down came the wood-and horse-shit domiciles and up went new buildings with state-of-the-art things like bricks and tiles. And if you didn’t fancy that, you could be recruited by either the Roundheads or Cavaliers in the Sal, and have a bang on that Civil War thing everyone was going on about.

If you were dead lucky, you’d be: a silk dresser, making dead expensive clobber and accessories for people with more money than sense and togging out yourself and your mates on the cheap. Bit like working at Smithy’s today, then.

But if you were really unlucky, you’d be: a sedan-chair bearer. By this time, massively plush armchairs set on runners were the must have ultra-pimpin’ vehicle for anyone with a bit of cash (which was a few people by then). Problem was, you and three equally brick shithouse-like mates had the job of lugging your gaffer round town. And presumably spending Sunday nights pegging it round Broad Marsh with the Stuart version of UV lighting protruding from your master’s arse.

Your working conditions were: not brilliant, usually consisting of 16 to 18 hours in the vicinity of a massive and temperamental machine that was prone to toppling over, snagging you with its assorted flailing gubbins, or exploding. For next to nothing in pay.

Your snap tin would probably contain: some suet pudding and boiled spuds. Maybe the odd pint of soup or broth. Meat? Only on Sundays. If you’re lucky.

After work, you’d be: trying to stay alive. Nottingham was renowned for being one of the most densely populated places in the British Empire at one point, meaning that viruses and disease spread like wildfire - particularly in your one-room house, on your only mattress, with the rest of your family.

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in the 1950s, you’d probably be:

running straight out of school at the age of 15 into the loving arms of the factory of your choice. Raleigh, Boots and Players absolutely dominated the job market, but you could also take your pick from Sturmey-Archer, Speedo, the local Royal Ordnance in the Meadows, the massive telephone exchange on Alfreton Road, or a host of smaller factories and offices.

King Hell!

If you were dead lucky, you’d be: Working at that new University of Nottingham place, which was granted university status in 1948 (although it has roots going back as far as 1798, giving it a serious claim to being the third oldest Uni after Oxbridge).

But if you were really unlucky, you’d be: having your quiff shorn off and doing a two-year stint of National Service (which was compulsory for every healthy man between 17 and 21 from 1950 to 1960, sharing a barracks with other assorted herberts, and hoping that the Cold War doesn’t heat up.

Your working conditions were: a quantum leap from anything even 30 years previous. Unionisation ensured a decent-ish wage and safer premises, overtime if you want it, a brand new National Health Service, a Welfare State, you’d probably have a cupboard full of Players vouchers and England wee going to win the World Cup in a decade or so’s time.

Your snap tin would probably contain: Cobs, and loads on ‘em. War rationing only ended properly in 1954, so stodge both sweet and savoury was the order of the day. And it’s not like you’re not gonna burn it off at your lathe in the afternoon, right?

After work, you’d be: well, if you were Arthur Seaton, you’d be a) getting kaylide, b) tipping over cars in Canning Circus, and c) knocking off your workmate’s missus. The post-war period appears now to be an absolute golden age for the average grafter, with more leisure time and leisure opportunities.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

words: James K.Walker photo: David Baird King Henry is the author of England, my England, a violently sexual yet elegantly witty novel that has drawn comparisons to both American Psycho and P. G. Wodehouse (had he lived on a council estate), and is certainly not the kind of thing you’d like the woman behind you on the bus to read over your shoulder. Vivacious iconoclast or attention-seeking potty-mouth? You decide…

In 2008, you’re probably: not in a factory. Of the

top 10 employers in Notts, only one is a manufacturing company (Boots), with only three more in the top 30 (Imperial Tobacco, Rolls-Royce and Games Workshop). Players was swallowed by Imperial 20 years ago. Raleigh was bought out by - spit! - Derby International at the same time and moved production to China.

Like most other cities, service culture reigns supreme - the two local councils, the two local unis, the local NHS and Police and the QMC are the biggest employers now. Oh, and there’s a few shops and pubs, too. In 2004, Nottingham’s gross domestic product per capita was second in England only to London’s.

If you’re dead lucky, you’re: in a job that’s not going to take a direct hit from the credit crunch.

If you’re really unlucky, you’re: looking to make a living doing something vaguely creative or media-ish, especially when there are so many graduates sticking around. One box office job in the city attracted over 200 applications from arts grads desperate to get a foot on the ladder, and the established media companies in the city are pretty much closed shops.

Your working conditions probably: involve you hunched over a monitor, dicking about on Facebook or YouTube; according to a recent survey, 25% of office employers waste more than four hours a week on cyber-dossing (the other 75% presumably position their monitors away from doors and windows). On the other hand, 55% of us are now working unpaid overtime.

Your snap tin probably contains: Nothing. It’s most likely in the cupboard, seeing as there’s a Greggs on virtually every street. Just because we’re not working in factories doesn’t mean we can’t eat like we do.

After work, you’re: in the pub, reading this.

Your book is, how shall we say this, evocative to the extreme.

We can’t help but wonder: did you have a happy childhood?

I can’t really remember my childhood, other than selected books and TV programmes. Both my parents are from Cotgrave and I grew up in West Bridgford; I’m a true Notts lad. I used to have a book about Robin Hood that I read every day, but unfortunately it was stolen from my school bag. Interestingly, a couple of years ago I submitted a script about Robin Hood to the BBC, but they said it was too dark and unsuitable for kids. The man was a murdering robber!

The England in your title is one of chaos and self-intoxication - a bit like Jerry Springer meets Shameless, but with a more violent undercurrent. Is this how you perceive our nation?

We’re all privileged to be living in a country where the standard of living is high, there’s free healthcare, and hard work is usually rewarded. But something’s changed - something in the psyche of the nation. Just walk around the streets and you can almost feel the mask of civility slipping. Whenever I queue anywhere I always wonder if the person behind me is going to snap and start blasting.

The book is relentless in its sexual and violent descriptions. Is there a boundary or taboo you wouldn’t cross?

Graphic scenes of a sexual or violent nature only work if they’re in a higher context, and relevant within the plot. Any idiot could write a book full of ‘shocking’ scenes, but weaving them into a coherent and interesting story takes a modicum of skill. Being extreme just for the sake of it is boring.

What kind of reactions did you get from friends when they read passages?

My girlfriend threatened to leave me.

Given the controversial subject matter, is this why you decided to use a pseudonym?

Not at all. I used to sign my work at school ‘King Henry’ to annoy the teachers, and it became something of an occasionally ironic nickname.

You decided to self-publish. Why? When I initially began contacting agents and publishers I was met by an almost unanimously positive response, yet they had severe reservations about the commercial viability. All demanded major ‘artistic revisions’ - which in English means ‘dumb down and take the money’. Obviously I was tempted, but at the moment I’m still young enough to believe in artistic integrity. Apart from anything, the book satirises our culture’s incessant pandering to the gormless, snot-clotted masses, so I would have been a hypocrite if I’d played along.

Admirable as this is, who on earth is going to stock it?

Getting a self-published book into a major store is virtually impossible, as most self-published books are shit. Therefore I’m relying on independent publications and the internet to prove my literary worth. If I can demonstrate my work is commercially viable, then I’ve no doubt one day England, my England will be for sale in Tescos next to Jordan’s latest bestseller. Until then it can be bought from http://kinghenry.info/

Do you think readers will be able to extract the moral beneath the vulgarity?

I can’t blame someone for being stupid, but I can blame them for being wilfully ignorant. People can view the book as a vile pornographic kill-fest, or a satirical comedy, joyously fisting contemporary English culture. I really don’t care.

Will you be doing readings anywhere?

I contacted a few coffee shops and asked if I could do some readings, but they insisted on previewing the material. All were thoroughly horrified, and basically told me fuck off. In the coming months, I’ll probably organise a reading in a more artistically welcoming environment..

You can invite four authors or characters from books to dinner. Who would they be and why?

Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, as she’s a brilliantly-written metaphor particularly relevant in today’s political climate. Enid Blyton, as she’s the forgotten genius of English literature. HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu – well, who wouldn’t want to have dinner with the ultimate evil? And Stephen King.

I’d poison the overrated fucker.

Last words?

If you’re the kind of person that sometimes fantasises about marching through the streets with a sub-machine gun, then England, my England is for you. http://kinghenry.info/ www.leftlion.co.uk/issue23

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Rob Cutforth; nobody knows him but he’s always there, a statistical reminder of a world that doesn’t care…

words: Rob Cutforth / illustration: Rob White

What’s that, a recession you say?

In the past month, my wife and I both got made redundant from our jobs. ‘Made redundant’ is an interesting British expression. Being colonial, if a word has more than two syllables, I’m pretty lost. I look it up in my trusty thesaurus: re·dun·dant 1. excessive; useless; superfluous, tautologous.

Well, there’s nothing worse than being tautologous, I always say. Even my spell checker doesn’t know what tautologous means.

While you are looking at my ‘tautologous’ on a freshly printed LeftLion page, I am looking at it on my computer screen complete with bright red squiggle underneath it. However, there is a red squiggle underneath LeftLion as well, so what does it know anyway?

My eyes are naturally drawn to the only twosyllable word in the list and I gotta tell you, I’m not exactly thrilled by it. If there is one thing the English don’t do, it’s mince words. I cringe every time I’m in a pub and someone asks where the ‘toilet’ is. You might as well point at your ass and say ‘me need dump!’ If you ask where the ‘bathroom’ or ‘restroom’ is, it leaves a bit of mystery in the question. As far as the bartender is concerned, I’m simply going to have a little rest, get away from it all for a bit. He doesn’t need to know that my insides are at Def Con One after fourteen Stellas and a vindaloo.

Applying that same brash vernacular to someone who’s just lost their job is a touch heartless. ‘Why don’t I work here anymore?’ ‘Because you’re fucking useless, that’s why, asshole.’ Bloody Brits, you can’t just blurt it out like that, you’ve gotta finesse it a little. Saying you got ‘laid off’ by your employer, like we do in Canada, might just get you a high five from your buddies.

I’ve never been unemployed before. It’s an interesting experience. The first week of being made useless, you just walk around in a kind of delightful fog. You’re not sure what the future holds, it’s almost like being a student again.

I’m not held down by some nine-to-five job anymore! The world is my oyster!

I put my resume up on Monster, built a portfolio website (I’m a Flash Developer when I’m not writing, by the way – nudge, nudge) and signed up to a number of job agencies. The second week of being made useless is even better than the first week. During the second week, your phone rings off the hook with recruiters trying to get you to move to London. Holy Cow, the movers and shakers in the big smoke heard about little ol’ me? Wow! Golly gee!

You get cocky in week two. I know what I’ll do, I’ll start asking for more money than I was making in my old job, yeah! Surely, if they want me down in big-time-hotshot-centre-of-theuniverse London, I must be damn good.

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Week three is a wake-up call. The calls from the keen recruiters peter out and you start getting calls from the crap ones. Recruiters with chavvy Mancunian accents calling to ask if you have a clean driving record and forklift experience.

Um, yikes.

Walking around town when you’re unemployed sucks. Drinking your crappy builder’s tea from Wimpy’s, watching the employed people laughing and drinking Starbucks lattes. I hate employed people. I look at these people and think, ‘God, how can I be unemployed when that dude’s got a job?

He’s got a smoker’s cough, a limp and he’s missing a front tooth for God’s sake. The lucky bastard! I wonder how much selling fruit pays?’

I hate other unemployed people even more. Big, fat women pushing prams overflowing with brats, little pink pieces of slutty underwear peaking out of the tops of their track pants, gripping a copy of Closer magazine. You know you’ve hit rock bottom when you are reading discount tabloid magazines. Those things should be treated like porno mags, covered in foil and placed out of the reach of children. I would rather be caught with a copy of Ass Tickling Coochie Smoochers than one of those horrible things.

I went down to the Job Centre Plus to see if they could help me. What’s the ‘Plus’ all about?

It sounds like a name devised by an ad agency.

I can imagine a group of twenty-somethings with designer eyewear sitting around a large table discussing how to make unemployment ‘hip’. Good thing it wasn’t just called a ‘Job Centre’, that would be far too gloomy. That ‘Plus’ on the end really helps me forget that I may be out in the street soon eating cat food out of a tin. God, I feel better already. In fact, I feel like doing a little pompom dance. Job Centre PLUS! SISS BOOM BAH! It almost makes me forget just how shit the dole (yet another delightful British term) is in this country. Back home if you get made useless, you receive 55% of whatever your salary was.

It’s not a lot of money, but it’s enough to get you by until you find another job. I go to the Job Centre Plus website expecting to see something similar. I click through the site and find this line: ‘Person aged 25 or over: £60.50’. Wow, they pay daily in England? How efficient! Um, wait, that’s per week. Two hundred and forty-two measly pounds per month. That’s wonderful; that will cover just over a quarter of my mortgage.

That’s when the panic starts to set in. My redundancy money drains out of my account faster and faster, I wake up at night in a cold sweat and have ridiculous thoughts like ‘hey, why don’t I just go freelance?’ Yeah, I’ll work three days a week and use the other two to write! This will be a good thing! I’ll finally get my ‘Living as an Expat in England’ book back on track, sell a million copies and then kick back while the royalties roll in. Hell, I can add a chapter in my book about living on the dole! This is the best thing that has ever happened to me! HOORAY! I get the odd waft of shit creek on the breeze, but I have some savings and a month’s more redundancy pay coming. If I haven’t found anything by the time that runs out, I won’t necessarily be swimming in shit creek, but I’ll definitely be dipping my big toe in it. In fact, by the time you read this, I will have received (and most likely spent) my last redundancy cheque.

I wonder what I’m doing right now? Hopefully I’m scoffing a £20 Starbucks mocha celebrating my new job, and not on the corner saying ‘Big Issue, mate?’ spitting little pieces of Whiskas on passers by.

Oh well, at least Forest are in the Championship. Things are looking up.

That Lad’s Got A Right Gob On Him

words · Tasha Chowdhury photo · Jon Rouston

Award-winning beatbox overlord of the parish, THePETEBOX is one of the city’s most ridiculously gifted musical talents. One night, he’s mashing down the Rescue Rooms. Another night, he’s doing guest appearances with people like Nizlopi and blowing them offstage. Then he’s being dragged around Europe. But before that, he’s sitting down and having a natter with us…

How do you even begin to learn how to do what you do?

To learn beatboxing you’ve got to be patient and accept the fact you’re not going to sound how you want from day one.

Nowadays, it’s a bit easier; there are so many internet resources dedicated to beatboxing, you can see loads of tutorials, you can watch ten year-olds doing some pretty hectic stuff… it’s more accessible. When I was learning all I had was Rahzel and Kela, recorded really well on huge systems, and it’s quite hard to keep going when you’re spluttering out some weak snares and Rahzel is doing things you can’t begin to understand for reference! It all comes with practice, though.

How much time do you spend practising your beatboxing?

Sometimes when I’m on it properly I can spend a couple of hours a day working on new material and practising what I have. Other times, I won’t beatbox for ages. If I’ve got a load of shows on, I don’t tend to practise as the shows are good practice themselves.

When you’re as good as you are, is it difficult to expand your range?

New sounds can be difficult to learn, and can take days or weeks to finally work out. It’s important to believe that you will get there in the end, and just keep on trying. Most sounds are ones you kind of stumble across, then you work on keeping them consistent and working them into routines. My relationship with beatboxing is a strange one; sometimes I love it, and sometimes it bores the hell out of me. Although doing shows is a different matter. I always absolutely love them.

Are your days taken up with beatboxing, or do you have a day job too?

I don’t have a day job. Over the past two months I’ve toured France, the Czech Republic, Norway and the UK, so that keeps me pretty busy. I also do workshops from time to time, and do lots of corporate events like trade shows. There’s always something to do, be it recording or pursuing the projects I’m involved in at the moment.

Where is the best place you’ve played abroad?

I did a tour of Africa last year from Johannesburg to Malawi

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which finished at the Lake of Stars festival. That place really does affect you; the people, the music, the setting; it’s one of the best places I’ve ever visited and my slot was right after the headline artist on the Saturday, who was Lucias Banda from Malawi. The place was rammed with locals, Malawians, South Africans, Europeans, Americans, such a mix of people and the show rocked! I’ve also been playing a lot in Prague and they really know how to party there.

for me. Glastonbury, V Festival, Bestival, Creamfields UK and Europe, Isle of Wight and a few smaller ones…they’re all going to be amazing.

I’m involved in a few different projects making ringtones and samples for stuff, and have just been shooting a short film I’m starring in with a company called Film 38, which will be ready later in the year. I also play drums in Swimming and we’ve got our debut album The Fireflow Trade coming out over summer.

So who is the best person you’ve worked with to date?

I’m currently working with recording and production genius John Sampson, from the band Swimming, who is really helping me present my recorded material in the best way. He knows how to approach all the things I don’t, so working with him is proving to be a good learning experience as well as making sure all turns out well. Other than John, I’d say it’s gotta be Foreign Beggars.

I’ve been on a couple of tours with them as their beatboxer, and being part of their incredible on-stage energy is awesome. The parties are always pretty cool, as well.

Who are your greatest musical influences?

My biggest influence in music is definitely Kurt Cobain. He was the guy who made me want to pick up a guitar and start writing, along with The Pixies and Foo Fighters. Obviously Rahzel and Kela got me started with beatboxing but I think it’s the people around me that inspire me most, my brothers and friends that make music. Like Andy from WeShowUpOnRadar and Ben Fawce. I love electronica stuff like Air, Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin and lots of metal like Tool, Korn, Deftones, Marilyn Manson and System of a Down. I’m a sucker for folk and really like people like Laura Veirs and Maria Taylor. My ‘early listening career’ was started by a love of Queen, The Beatles, Beach Boys, Pop Will Eat Itself and, erm, Jason Donovan.

Where is the best place you’ve played in the UK? Difficult one! Eastern Haze festival last year was wicked, and Fabric’s always pretty rocking but I have to say the Chibuku nights are my favourite. I reckon that the Masque in Liverpool when I was supporting Kela at a Chibuku night, a couple of years back, is one of my most memorable.

Are you planning to enter any other beatboxing competitions?

I’m in the UK Championship Finals after winning the Midland heats at the Rescue Rooms in February. I never have fun at them because it’s more focused on the gimmicky side of things and you’re there to win.

What future projects do you have lined up?

I’m recording my album at the moment. It’s going to be an extension of what I do live with some more song-based stuff.

I’m working with a few producers, one being Notts DnB maniac Ben Fawce. Aside from the recorded stuff, I’m always working to develop my live show, and I’m getting ready for more shows in Prague and the festival season which is looking really good

What do you like to do to chill out?

Going to the gym is good for getting away from thinking about business. I’m usually not too happy about going and am only really glad when I’ve been, it can be a good time to listen to music, clear your head and let ideas swill around. Aside from that, I think I just prime myself for an erratic brain and lifestyle by always thinking about music.

Any recommendations for local talent at the moment?

Yeah, check out 1st Blood, Dan Rattomatic, Ben Fawce, WeShowUpOnRadar, Pilgrim Fathers and Swimming. Trent FM also has a new music podcast on their website, which is Nottingham’s first new music show! www.thepetebox.com www.myspace.com/thepetebox

words: James Walker photo: David Blenkey

Grocers

PointBlank

The Thompson Brothers - Stephen and Andrew - run a greengrocers in Sherwood, and are possibly the most legendary people from that part of town since You Know Who. Born within ten minutes of each other on 3 October 1958, they speak in the Received Pronunciation which was once the sole domain of BBC newsreaders.

They’ve always lived together, and seem to treat the shop as a side-project to their real career of talking endlessly with people about anything and everything and generally behaving like shopkeepers used to do in the pre-Tescofication of Britain. Cherish them, Nottingham, for we may never see their like again…

So what kind of shop is this?

Andrew: We tell people ‘Just serve yourself but you’ve got to speak to us. We’re here to talk to you.’ That’s what we do. Talk to people all day.

Are the people in Nottingham friendly?

Stephen: Of course. They are marvellous.

Andrew: It’s because we’ve never relied on one industry. Other cities such as Sunderland have shipping and nothing else. Well, they don’t even have that anymore. Nottingham is different.

It’s got or had everything. We’ve had Players, Boots, Home Ales, Raleigh, the pits. All different people working in different industries in the same place. You’re going to be friendly then, aren’t you? Because you have to.

Stephen: Now if you’re a shop assistant in Tesco’s, you’re not allowed to talk. I mean, our sister has tried to make polite conversation to them in supermarkets and they look bamboozled.

Andrew: Talk to them on any other level than the weather and they start to freak out.

Have sales gone up recently, now that everyone’s on an organic health kick?

Andrew: Our sales have gone up, yes. Not because of the fruit and veg, but because of the other things we have started to stock like olive oil. We sell olive oil like it’s going out of fashion.

Where do you get your produce from?

Andrew: The greens come from Mr. Foster, a market gardener.

The potatoes are from Lincolnshire. The trouble is nowadays people are very concerned about air miles, so we tell them that the oranges are from the orange tree in the corner and the bananas were freshly picked from Woodthorpe Park. But we always point out to them, where do you go for your holidays? You can’t say ‘I don’t want my apples from Australia’ and then nip off to Australia with the kids for a fortnight.

Talking of holidays, we heard a rumour that neither of you has a passport…

Stephen: It’s true. We don’t. We bought one in 1987 when they were thinking of changing from the Royal Blue to the navy blue.

Andrew: (disdainfully) The European colour.

Stephen: We thought ‘we’re going to stay British here,’ and purchased one. But it ran out in 1997 and we thought, well, we’ve seen the world. We’ve been to Ireland and we’ve been to Crete on this passport, and we don’t want to see the rest. And

when you’ve discovered Suffolk, as we did twenty years ago, you don’t want to go anywhere else. It’s paradise.

So will you retire there or are you Nottingham through and through?

Stephen: We’re Nottingham born and bred, but we’d like to retire there or at least go there for a few months a year.

Won’t it be strange to up sticks?

Stephen: It will be fantastic! Marvellous. No, we would come back and visit. See the sister and the mother. Then back to the seaside. Fantastic.

You are both very well-spoken. Where did you go to school?

Andrew: Our parents are Roman Catholics so we went to the Good Shepherd, then St. Bernadettes’ and finally Christ the King.

When we went you couldn’t swear at school but now you can.

It’s no wonder teachers are leaving like it’s going out of fashion.

So do you think discipline is missing from modern life?

Stephen: Yes. You shouldn’t be able to swear in a classroom. It’s all wrong. And then of course there’s the uniform. Without a uniform, school kids want marvellous clothes. The whole system has gone pear-shaped. It has to go back, because we’ll have anarchy in this country soon and youth is going to rule over the old people. And you can’t have that, can you?

Have you ever been married?

Stephen: Oh, of course not. I’ve been seeing someone for six years, and so had Andrew up to a few months ago, so he definitely won’t be getting married. Women are very nice, they are lovely, but you know. You’ve got to draw the line sensibly.

Andrew: I don’t know why she left. She came round the other week and just said she didn’t want to see me anymore. I don’t know what’s wrong with her. Fancy doing that, eh?

Has it ever been a problem then, living together with lady friends on the scene?

Stephen: No. We have our own rooms! We have a spare room as well.

Andrew: At the end of the day we’ve been together longer than we will ever be with a woman.

How do you unwind?

Stephen: Not pubs anymore. We like to eat out; World Service, Harts, Merchants. We can’t go locally, or else everyone will say

‘hello you two’ and we don’t want that when we’ve finished work. We do find that a better class of restaurant is a better kind of food. We like good presentation, and you have to pay for that.

If you’re going to go out, go to town. Marvellous.

So who’s Clough and who’s Taylor?

Andrew: What did Clough and Taylor do?

Stephen: We are on equal terms, not like Cloughie who was the boss. We are fifty/fifty. We can’t do without the other. Not allowed.

Andrew: Company policy.

What would you say at Speakers’ corner?

Andrew: I would talk about the morals of society and how we should bring back a Christian society again and we should all love the monarchy.

Stephen: I would talk about buying British. You can’t complain about imports if you don’t buy British. You can’t complain about unemployment if you don’t support Britain. We make lots of things in this country but you do have to pay for them.

So should Britain devolve?

Stephen: There’s good and bad in both but all together we are a stronger nation. I mean, Wales on its own would be useless. Cut off Scotland and we’d only need to reopen Berwick on Tweed for the oil. It’s good that they have their own rugby teams, and we, of course, are World Champions (erm, not any more - LL). But we need to keep the union together.

Who should follow the Queen?

Andrew: Charles, of course.

Stephen: You have to follow the line. His son will be good but he’s only a young man at the moment. He doesn’t know anything.

Charles is wonderful. He’s got more people in work than the Labour party. He raises 154 million a year through charity.

Any advice to our readers?

Stephen: Have a positive outlook. Everyday is a marvellous day, regardless of the weather and most of life is a challenge but it can be a good, fun challenge.

Andrew: Be marvellous.

For more chitty-chattery, check the full interview at www.leftlion.co.uk/issue23. Or, you could nip over to the Thompson Brothers greengrocers, Haydn Road, Nottingham. www.leftlion.co.uk/issue23

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24-Hour Arty People

words: Nathan Miller photography: David Blenkey

15.19 The script requires a bottle-smashing shot. Luckily, Rupert’s a first-take professional and nails it in one. Which is fortunate; there’s no back-up bottle.

15.44 We’ve got the pigeon! Owen has been scouring the rooftops with his camera when one swoops slowly overhead for a good three or four seconds. Then another turns and hovers above, and we’ve got what we need. It’s officially a wrap, and in less than a normal office working day. Maybe next time this should be a 12hour film challenge?

16.41 The film’s in the can, and we’re are en route to an edit suite, somewhere in the beating heart of Derby.

On Saturday May 10, the Notts-based movie site BritFilms.tv gathered 30 film crews and set them the task of creating and delivering a short film in just 24 hours. LeftLion were there to follow one plucky team throughout the process, blogging live via mobile phone. Here’s what happened...

MOST SHORT FILMS never get made. Or at least, never get finished. Whilst the cost of digital film-making equipment has plummeted even faster than its quality has risen, one fact remains: time is still money. When you’re putting together your magnum opus at weekends, having to wait on the availability of family and friends to provide you with favours, and fiddling with the edit until you’ve got all those cross-fades, whip-pans and reverse dolly shots slotting together like a well-oiled jigsaw, it’s easy to let things to drag on to the point where you forget why you wanted to make the thing in the first place. And then not bother. But what if you didn’t have time? What if whatever you started had to be finished by exactly the same time tomorrow, or else?

Sunday 00.00 We’re done! Everyone’s pleased with the finished result, but is the T-shirt visible enough? As Amir says, ‘not even an apocalyptic war will wake me up tonight.’

11.20 First shot is in the can. We’re quickly on to the next. One Giant Leap is about an office worker (Amir) wondering whether to jump off a roof, before being surprised by a homeless guy (Rupert) who helps him decide. I’ve never met any of these people before, but Nottingham being what it is, it turns out Amir and I have a mutual friend and Rupert is a previous LeftLion interviewee. It’s a small world, but an even smaller town.

12.00 He’s already an experienced director, but this is Amir’s first proper acting role. ‘I usually stay on the safe side of the camera,’ he says. He’s doing a good job, though.

12.05 Rupert, on the other hand, is a bit of a veteran (Check him out in Chris Cooke’s fantastic One For The Road). He comes to Notts at least once a year to work, so impressed is he with the quality of talent here.

Saturday 10.00 I’ve forgotten my sandwiches, but other than that I’m prepared: pens, jumper, phone charger, and a jar of coffee.

God knows if I’ll end up anywhere near a kettle though. All I’ve been told is that filming is taking place all day at a secret location...

10.23 Receive instructions and head to the location. The shoot is proper old-school guerrilla style - we don’t have permission to film here, and need to keep an eye out for authority figures.

10.45 All crews have been given a prop - a T-shirt - which must appear in every scene to prove that all filming took place on the day.

The crew get it dirtied up and add it to Rupert’s costume. He’s playing a tramp.

10.58 Owen has arrived, and is already busy setting up his first shot.

Meanwhile, Jeanne is strapping a boom mike together. Things are starting to happen...

11.15 ”Ready to shoot in about a minute,” calls Paul, the director. And then, a minute later… “Action!”

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20.34 Rough edit completed. We’re one minute and 47 seconds over the time limit. After shooting outdoors all day, Paul’s suffering for his art: his face and arms look redder than a lobster.

22.37 Picture edit completed! Feelings are a mixture of satisfaction and tiredness. Sound levels need sorting, which shouldn’t take too long. Paul’s arms are on fire.

Cast (l-r): Rupert - Tramp Amir - Suicidal Office Worker Owen - Cameraman Jeanne - Sound Paul - Director

19.50 In the edit suite, going through the rushes. The sound is OK, which is a huge relief. The crew are trying to put down a basic edit, but keep getting distracted by the comedy of the actors’ performances.

12.32 The sky has darkened, but there’s little danger of rain stopping play. In fact, it’s starting to look like this might not be the caffeine-crazed dash to the finish I was expecting. Still, we haven’t filmed any stunts yet, and there’s an extremely important shot of a bird in flight which needs to be snatched at some point...

09.56 I’m at the Cornerhouse - location of the judging and screening - to see the films being handed in, but nowhere’s open.

10.01 Johnny Oddball, one of the judges, arrives, and mans the submission desk. Izzy and Harry are first to hand in their film, Dawn and the Dead. ‘We’re known for blood and cheese,’ Izzy says.

10.27 There’s a queue of finished filmmakers building up now, but noone from our crew’s here yet.

10.45 There’s a steady stream of bleary-eyed filmmakers rocking up with their completed pieces, but still no sign of our boys.

Deadline is 11am. It’d be heartbreaking if they got stuck in traffic on the way from Derby or something.

10.53 People are piling in to the desk now. Apparently Paul set off with the finished film over an hour ago, but there’s been no sign of him since. This really is cutting it fine.

10.59

13.20 Things are going so well we’ve broken for lunch! The only thing that would really throw a spanner in the works now would be getting turfed off the secret location. And it would be a massive spanner. Even if we could find a back-up location, there wouldn’t be enough time to start again from the beginning. The only option would be to bribe whoever found us...

13.50 Filming restarts. Owen is concentrating on getting shots of Rupert being weird. There’s a pigeon sat right on the ledge of the secret location, but it flies off in the wrong direction.

14.06 Three birds fly low, directly overhead. Owen’s concentrating on something else though, and just misses them. Right this minute, somewhere in this city, 29 other different films are being made.

14.40 Things are moving very quickly, which is surprising, considering the heat. The cloud’s cleared and it’s swelteringly hot. The biggest threat to production now appears to be sunstroke.

He’s made it! After missing his only bus and having to walk here, Paul’s just managed to get the film in on time. And he’s happy.

‘I don’t think we could have done better if we’d had weeks to film it,’ he says, while another team desperately attempt to master their film to tape right on the submissions desk.

And now we wait until 6.30 to find out who’s won...

To find out who won, and read the original live blog, go to 24hourfilm.blogspot.com. To watch all the 24-Hour Film Challenge entries, go to www.britfilms.tv.

Resistance Is Futile, Creativity Is Not

words: Amanda Young

The only art gallery outside London dedicated to black and Asian artists is ours, all ours. The New Art Exchange in Hyson Green has already turned heads with its Borg-like outer shell - but what’s inside? We spoke to Chief Executive Jim Robertson and acting senior curator David Thomas...

Can you tell us about the facilities in the building?

Jim: There are five floors; the basement is a storage space, hot-desking area and exhibition preparation room. The ground floor is the café and main gallery space. The first floor has a mezzanine gallery space and an office. The second floor has a workshop/learning space and a rehearsal/performance space for 55 people, with outdoor mezzanine space, and the top floor has a meeting room and an artist residency space.

And who’s paid for all this?

Jim: The total funding for the building is £5m. The Arts Council are putting in around about £2.7m, we’ve had £1.2m from the Neighbourhood Development Company, and nearly a million from EMDA. This is just for the building, in order to fund a reasonable artistic programme without relying too heavily upon the shop and café.

Do the funding parties influence how NAE identifies itself?

Jim: We have bought into the idea of having a contemporary space for African, Caribbean and Asian art in Nottingham and putting it into Hyson Green, allowing lots of opportunities to work with the local community. To have that sort of space where Nottingham Contemporary is going would be more difficult. We have objectives to encourage the local community to come in and use the building.

going through our existing mailing list, inviting people who might be interested in becoming a volunteer or to be friends of the NAE. We will be having a large open day - running a workshop with performances, so you can actually see the building being used - with a meeting in the meeting room and an artist in the artist residency space. We want to get across that it doesn’t cost anything to come and see the art.

Dave: We’re very interested in working with young people, offering opportunities to learn about other aspects of the arts - not just the creative side - including the marketing and hosting of an exhibition. Young people are quite key to the project.

Jim: We’ve been involved in other venues up until now, at the Galleries of Justice and the Yard gallery, Wollaton. The young people were involved in the launch event, and invigilating. We are still doing workshops at our current base of 181 Alfreton Road now.

Dave: We’re developing strategic relationships with local schools through creative partnerships at Djanogly Academy…

we are presenting contemporary art in Nottingham, with Nottingham artists.

Your brief is to support and showcase African, Afro-Caribbean and South Asian artists. Simple as that?

Jim: In the main, but we don’t want to restrict ourselves to that. It is artists from a BEM (Black and Ethnic Minority) background, from any ethnic minority who might not get the opportunity, so we’re also doing some things with the Chinese community. Dave is looking at Islamic art for the future.

Dave: We’ve already had an exhibition with Romany gypsy communities and the Portuguese community. Our audiences will be primarily local people, South Asian, Afro-Caribbean and Eastern European; it’s important to reflect the audience. The next exhibition we’ve got will be looking at local refugee artists, community cohesion and citizenship from around the world including Afghanistan and Eastern Europe. In the future we will look at contemporary slavery, not just slavery within the African and Asian continent but sex slaves from Eastern European backgrounds. From an artist perspective, I’ve travelled a lot to India and talked to artists about coming over and they say, as long as it’s not an ‘Indian’ show. Artists do not like to be put into a box, and we as curators have to be careful to not create those prisons for artists to be put into.

Where do local people come into it?

Jim: We will work with our networks, go door to door, target local groups and invite people in for a taster session. We’re

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Jim:…and we’re negotiating with the NTU fine art department, to bring in some student work.

Give us a sneak preview of the launch...

Dave: Our launch exhibition will be an exhibition of local artists from the past, present and future. This will include Donald Rodney, who died ten years ago. His work has been bought by the Tate modern and hasn’t had much chance to be seen. We have got some Nottingham artists making some waves like Hetain Patel who is getting some big opportunities.

Jim: The first statement will say; here we are, presenting contemporary art in Nottingham, with Nottingham artists.

When is the launch?

Jim: This building will be finished and fitted out with a soft launch in June. This will involve opening the doors to the local community. It won’t be a big exhibition - the idea is to engage with local community. Then in September we will open with a VIP launch and the first big exhibition.

Anything else you want to add?

Jim: We’re on budget, we’re on time...

Dave: …and we’re one of the few capital projects in the country that has ever done that!

The New Art Exchange, 39-41 Gregory Boulevard, NG7 6BE www.thenewartexchange.org.uk

Hew Locke: another art installation goes over Nottingham’s head words: Kat Wojcik BRIGHT AND FLAMBOYANT whilst loaded with hidden meaning, Hew Locke’s installations are some of the most sought-after in the country. Originally from Guyana, Locke’s visual language is forthright, rebellious (his Royal Family installation, The House of Windsor, caused uproar in Daily Mail Land) but also reflective. And his latest installation hits the roof at the New Art Exchange…

Tell us about your piece.

It’s photograph-based, using images of Nottingham - bits and pieces of buildings and architectural details. These are then painted and turned into silkscreens, printed onto aluminium, worked into a pattern and fixed to the ceiling of the café as a public sculpture.

Your work is incredibly complex and intricate and works on many different levels. How do you go about weaving it all together?

What I tend to say is that there are layers of meaning, and literally layers of process, in making the work. Sometimes it can be read one way, other times slightly differently. For example, the images of the Queen that I use in my work can be read by some people as celebratory and by some people as something defamatory. And for me that is how it should work. I like ambiguity, and I like complexity, and the older I get I find things less simple. We all want black and white, and we all want cut and dry, but life is quite often grey with grey areas.

Your work often uses bright and colourful objects, so why have you opted for a monochrome look here?

I felt that to do something colourful, on such a low ceiling, would be too overpowering. If the ceiling were much higher, that would be different. In black and white I feel that I can say things in a much more punchy way; it comes across much more direct. Even though it’s in monochrome, to me there is colour in the different shades of cream, white, grey, whatever.

The political and historical references within your work seem more digestible presented in a tactile and colourful way. Is that intentional?

Exactly. For me it’s about seducing people and also seducing myself as well. It’s about making something that’s tactile and attractive. Then once you’ve drawn your audience in, it’s like fishing basically. Once you’ve got somebody on the line you slowly reel them in, and then people realise what it’s about. Everybody brings his or her own life story, their own life experience to the work I produce. And that’s fair enough.

Black and Asian artists are extremely underrepresented in contemporary art, aren’t they?

To a certain extent, yes, particularly in the contemporary gallery scene; there are very, very few black and Asian artists compared to how many black and Asian artists there are out there. That’s a problem. But then, it’s business, and people are finding their African and Asian artists in Africa and Asia, or finding people in New York, in Paris, or South Africa. It’s an international art world, and the competition has got stiffer.

Do you feel that people make assumptions about your work because of your cultural background?

Yeah, people definitely make assumptions, and sometimes I play along with it and make a critical comment on those assumptions.

How have you found the negative reactions to your work, in particular The House of Windsor?

I find it interesting what people think when they don’t like something - and why they don’t like something. I think the work you do becomes so much a part of you that you don’t see it as disturbing any more. In actual fact these pictures of the Royal Family, which are all quite strange, are done with an incredible amount of sensitivity in terms of the formal aspect of the image, which is very careful, meticulous and precise. But they end up looking obviously quite weird. Long story short, it doesn’t bother me what people think either way, if people thought I was doing very pretty, celebratory images, I would be a bit concerned that I wasn’t pushing enough.

Hew Locke’s installation is on permanent display at The New Art Exchange, Hyson Green, Nottingham. www.hewlocke.net

Want to submerge yourself in the deep and choppy waters of Nottingham’s gigging scene, but are a bit scared of getting a noseful of musical chloroform? Fear not, young ‘un - let LeftLion and the Orange Tree act as your waterwings. We put on FREE gigs on the first Saturday of every month, we only choose the very cream of the local scene, and we don’t allow dive-bombing or petting…

*** LEFTLION PRESENTS... GREEN FOR GO & MOONBUGGY *** Saturday June 7 · The Orange Tree · 8PM-MIDNIGHT 38 Shakespeare Street · NG1 4FQ · FREE

GREEN FOR GO

MOONBUGGY

The four-headed skank behemoths known as Bruce Forsyth, Brucey Poos, Steve Bruce and Bruce Trooper possibly not their real names - started out as nice indie lads until they had their heads turned by the Highness Sound System and a stack of 2-Tone 45s. If you miss them here, they’ll be playing Junktion 7 on June 20…

To hear Moonbuggy is to feel no pain at all. Specialising in the sweeter, brasstinged end of the Roots spectrum, the band - James, Neckie, Sophie, Deb and Dave - are on the verge of releasing their second LP, out in July - and this’ll be their last appearance before the launch at the Sumac Centre on July 5th…

If your band was a pub in town, which one would it be?

The Hubb, because it’s chilled out and funky.

If your band was a pub in town, which one would it be?

The Green Tree. Thats what we're going to rename The Orange Tree when we play there!

If you could play anywhere in Nottingham, where would it be?

Liberty's. There is such a good vibe in there. Full of chavs and other great customers. Its just the audience we want to appeal to. Wink.

Who are you supporting in Euro 2008?

Nigeria.

What’s the one thing that would improve the music scene in Nottingham?

We would be bigger and everywhere. We’d also stop people from writing average indie tunes.

Thats been done ten times over and ten years ago too.

What’s your all-time favourite TV theme tune?

The music to the Gillette advert. It’s the best a man can get, you know.

What’s the best retort you’ve ever given to a heckler?

“Shut up and pedal!” (while playing at the Climate Camp through the famous bicycle-powered sound system, after the police wouldn’t let the PA equipment on site. It was one of our best ever gigs!)

What was the last big argument you had with a band member about?

We don’t really argue, but we sometimes have strongly-worded debates about who has to stay sober and drive the van home after a gig.

Who are you supporting in Euro 2008?

Poland.

What’s your all-time favourite TV theme tune?

Roobarb and Custard, obviously! www.moonbuggy.info

www.myspace.com/greenforgo

*** LEFTLION PRESENTS... HIMALAYAS & THE SMEARS *** Saturday July 5 · The Orange Tree · 8PM-MIDNIGHT 38 Shakespeare Street · NG1 4FQ · FREE

HIMALAYAS

THE SMEARS

Toiling at the coalface of NottsRock since January 2006, Himalayas are an indie-rock power trio consisting of Mick Smith (vocals/guitar), Julian Palmer (bass) and Paul Sycamore (drums). Strongly influenced by the poppier end of grunge, they’ll be playing Loggerheads on June 28 if you can’t wait that long to see ‘em for nowt…

Our favourite exponents of punky chelp, and always guaranteed to leave a piss-stain of fear and excitement on the tightest indieboy trousers, The Smears - Emma O’Neill, Miss C and C Doll - are the sonic equivalent of that girl at school you still fancied a bit even though she gobbed in your snap tin every dinnertime and laughed at your trainers. Not only have they dropped a new single - Deliverance - they’ve also dropped a babbeh. Bless.

If your band were a pub in town, which one would it be?

We would be the bar in The Broadway Cinema, because we appeal to most, are laid back and serve a good variety.

If you could play anywhere in Nottingham, where would it be?

It would be great to play on the back of a flatbed lorry, driving round the city centre on a busy summer’s day, with the sun and wind on our hairy faces.

Who are you supporting in Euro 2008?

We would have to find out who are in it and get back to you on that…

What’s the one thing that would improve the music scene in Nottingham?

Maybe some of the venues who charge our audience ridiculous amounts of money to get in could pay some of that money to the bands that play. These venues extort enough money out of our band alone on drinks to cover their overheads.

If you couldn’t be in this band, which other Notts band would like to be a member of?

Made of Leaves; a great, original-sounding band, with a clever approach to their songwriting.

Not to mention a lovely bunch of guys.

So what’s been happening since we last had a natter?

Em: Babies, break-ups, breakdowns, lots of gigs, sexy parties, mayhem. The usual.

How hard is it being a punk Mam? Miss C: When you have to get up at 5am in the morning and watch Iggle Piggle, everything else is a doddle. But Marley is the best thing I have created, he is pure genius and I love him dearly. I would rather smell his poopa doop than sweaty punks any day.

You’re in town, you have a rocket launcher, and there’s nobody looking.

Which building gets it first?

Em: Oceana at full capacity, or the nearest firework shop for the free display.

What’s the best retort you’ve ever given to a heckler?

C Doll: Em’s was the best one. The heckle was the ever-so-unique ‘Show us your tits!’ To which she replied, ‘you show us yours!’ When he lifted his top Em said ‘I wouldn’t get them out if they were mine, mate.’ He walked out crying, ha!

Em: I love getting heckled as long as it’s intelligent or funny. Jumping off stage to erm, wrestle someone was a good one.

Miss C: I usually just heckle Emma.

What’s your all-time favourite TV theme tune?

Roobarb and Custard, of course! (what, again? - LL)

Who are you supporting in Euro 2008?

Miss C: Poland. My great-granddad was Polish, God bless him. He always waffled on in Polish and would start laughing manically. I didn’t have a clue what he was on about. Still, he always gave me a fiver when I visited…

www.myspace.com/himalayashigh

www.myspace.com/smearsuk www.leftlion.co.uk/issue23

15

ALL YOU OLD BASTARDS SHOULD LEARN SOMETHING FROM THIS

words Al Needham (no relation) / photo David Blenkey

If you’ve never seen In Bed With Chris Needham, we feel sorry for you and envy you. The former because it’s unquestionably the best music documentary ever as well as the definitive statement on how rubbish it is to be an English teenager, and the latter because it’s the kind of TV programme that makes you want to club yourself into amnesia so you can experience the first time over and over again.

The plot: Chris Needham, a 17 year-old Thrash Metal fan from Loughbrough, is about to play his first gig with his band, Manslaughter.

The problem is, they’re absolutely rammell. Along the way, Chris takes the time to defend Metal and Youth, unleashes torrents of adolescent venom upon the Green movement, the older generation, vegetarians, ‘Chart Music’, organised religion, teachers, and Neighbours. Forget your massmarket wannabe-niche crap that goes straight to DVD - this is the cultest TV programme ever. Only screened twice on BBC2 (and the last time was 16 years ago) and never put out on video or DVD, its legacy has been kept alive on third-generation VHS copies and the internet by Needham obsessives desperate to know what became of him and his band.

So, on a gloriously sunny afternoon, we linked up with him in a Loughborough beer garden. The hair had been tamed, the ‘tache had gone, and the callow teenage frame had bulked out, but the man on the other side of the table was unmistakably the frontman of Manslaughter and the spokesman for a generation…

So, let’s go back to 1991: Communism was falling, Nelson Mandela was out of prison… …Wind Of Change was on Radio One non-stop… …and you did a video diary. How did it all begin?

I’d loved the first series of Video Diaries, and saw an advert in the TV Times looking for people for the second series. And I thought; ‘I could do that’. I sent off all my song lyrics, poems, stories - all the things you do when you’re a teenager - with a note that said ‘If you want a no-bullshit TV programme about the life of a teenage Heavy Metal fan, give me the camera and I will give you the programme,’ thinking nothing more would happen. About three weeks later, I got a letter from Steve Pope at the BBC. And so began one of the finest, craziest, maddest, saddest, baddest periods of my life.

What was going through your mind when you started filming?

‘I’m going to be on the telly’. Remember that cameras had only really just come out then, and people were still reticent around them. I often think that if I’d made it today, the attitude off people would be a lot different.

That’s what makes it a bit more natural.

So what was the state of play with Manslaughter before filming started?

Manslaughter didn’t even exist. I never had a guitar lesson in my life - I used to sit in my bedroom for hours on end every night like a typical teenage Metal freak, playing along to records. And I was useless. I was rubbish. I told the BBC that I was putting a band together. Which was a complete lie. And they said ‘Hm, that sounds interesting’. Boy, did that turn out to be the understatement of the year!

Did you see the diary before it was screened on TV? The only thing I really saw was the Manslaughter concert in full. And that was stunning. That was fantastic. I’m sitting there watching us play, and I’m thinking, God, we’re good. We are good. God, was I naïve!

Where were you the night it was broadcast?

At home, with my family, the band, other mates…standing room only. I couldn’t handle the scene with Jane (Chris’ girlfriend), because we’d just split up and it was still raw. I wanted her back. I walked out the room. I sat on the stairs with a can of Heineken, and then I came back in.

But the two of you didn’t seem that massively into each other…

It hurt me more than I ever knew. I was in love. We went out for six and a half months, and when you’re seventeen, that’s as permanent as it gets. I thought she was The One. I was like the Metal version of Rob in High Fidelity - I lost the plot, the picture, the lights, the exit signs, the popcorn, everything.

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www.leftlion.co.uk/issue23

IN THE OLD DAYS, when ordinary people got on TV it was as murder victims or game show contestants: humiliated by circumstance, or by some wig-wearing mansion-dweller. After a decade of docusoaps and dubious reality shows, little has changed. The general public are interchangeable (except for those whose mental problems might amuse you), there to be sniggered at by gutter-press gutbuckets, sworn at by jumped-up chefs, exposed in the limelight as peons who don’t know their place. It’s always been the way.

And then Lawnmower Deth came a-knocking…

I get this phone call from someone saying they were Pete from Nottingham, Pete Lee. ‘Hello Chris, you don’t know me, but you might know my stage name - Qualcast Mutilator’. I went ‘I KNOW YOU! Is this a wind-up? Is that you, Gav?’ He said that they’d watched the video diary and loved it, and wondered if Manslaughter would support them in London. Then he phoned up again and said ‘The venue’s been changed.

We’re doing the Marquee. And I thought ‘Fucking hell!’

Except that in 1992, there was a series called Teenage Diaries. The BBC handed high-end video cameras to mouthy adolescents, told them to film their lives, then edited the results into 45-minute shows, each subject getting final approval of the finished product. No one was dropped into some hopelessly contrived situation and poked until they cried, although some cried anyway; Teenage Diaries lurked in the everyday lives of averagely-extraordinary young people and just... watched. The results were painfully real - that is, hilarious, touching, absurd, worthwhile. There was, however, only one star: the unforgettable Chris Needham, whose astonishing programme passed instantly into legend. If anything better has been on TV - ever - I must have missed it.

We were there for comedy value, let’s face it, but then again so were the headliners. And by the end, I was looking at the wings and I saw all of Lawnmower Deth headbanging. Whether they were tekkin’ the piss or not, I didn’t care. This was my stage. I own this stage. No fucker follows me.

Everyone between the ages of 14 and 25 watched In Bed With Chris Needham, or that’s how it felt at the time (when the BBC repeated the show shortly afterwards, heavily trailed, anyone who’d missed out caught up). We all recognised Chris, or thought we did: the heavy metal freak in wire-rimmed specs, skinny jeans and jumbo trainers, taking A/S levels in Loughborough and struggling to put a band together with his loyal, hapless mates. It was easy to laugh. That hair, hanging in clumps like spaniels’ ears; the proto-moustache, frothy and diaphanous. The callow pomposity and self-importance of youth. The fact that every single thing that happens is breathtakingly, painfully funny.

So what happened to the band?

I just had an artistic temperament at the time; full-on, pissed-up, complete arrogant, pretentious frontman - ‘I’m fed up with this, I’m fed up with that, and where’s my fucking blue M&Ms and reh reh reh’ Also, I saw that there was a serpent in my Metal Garden of Eden, in the shape of Paul Frost (AKA ‘Greb’, original Manslaughter vocalist - he of the pierced nipples and rottweiler called Pagan). He ended up playing with Kev and Martin in a band called Epitaph. They wanted to play heavier music, and got fed up of playing AC/DC covers. And I wonder now, why wasn’t I able to meet them halfway?

We went through the usual line-up changes, and it dawned on us that it wasn’t going to happen. I did a solo album, and then formed a new band - CJB Inc - with my Dad and little bro, who is now 24, and one of Britain’s best undiscovered Thrash Metal drummers. He ended up contracting cancer when he was 9, and he had to go in for a six and a half hour operation where they removed a gland and muscle tissue from his neck and put 150 stitches in his head. And two days later - two days! - he’s sitting up playing Sonic The Hedgehog and the doctors couldn’t believe it! He’s now in a band called Fall Of Jupiter, and working for a recycling company - which is hateful seeing as I fucking hate the fucking Green movement…

Ah, yes. You kicked off about that in the diary (Chris famously said that he’d sooner see the world burn and ‘all you Greens burn with it’ than be preached to about Global Warming)…

Well, I saw a comment on YouTube the other day that said ‘God, if he didn’t like the Green movement then, he must be apoplectic now.’ Yes I am, actually! It’s all bullshit!

The Green movement seems to be even more omnipresent now than it was then… …and it’s just ‘Oh, is this gonna make me look cool in front of girls who like fluffy bunny rabbits? It will?

I’ll pretend I’m a caring guy, then.’ Fuck you! I eat meat, I smoke like a train, I drink beer, and I fuck like a jackhammer! Deal with it! As for politicians jumping on the Green bandwagon…to me, that’s as bad as kissing babies. ‘I am a caring guy and I do appreciate what’s going on’ No, you’re doing it to make you look good with the voters, because suddenly it’s a big thing! And the twats who are of voting age go ‘Oh, they’re good people, aren’t they?’ Wankers! I like to think I was part of the backlash against the Green movement before there even was one.

It’s about growing up; we were all teenagers who were a pain in the arse

So you really believed in Manslaughter?

The whole point is you forget what it’s like to have that fire coursing through your veins when you were seventeen.

Y’know, you were playing in bands. You believed with your whole heart that you’re gonna be in one of the greatest Rock bands in the world.

And I presented myself to the world at a time when I truly believed it. College doesn’t matter, girls are gonna be easy and cheap, because I’ll be a Rock star, money’ll come rolling in, and…it’s just an inevitablility.

Taylor Parkes on the cult of Chris Needham.

One of your most famous quotes in the documentary was when you said that Youth was a ‘damned culture’. So what do you think about the youth of today?

It’s still a damned culture, but now they’re damning themselves. It’s the unfocused hatred that gets me. The more intelligent kids, the artistic, articulate ones, tend to be into Rock music, or become Goths, or whatever else. And the ignorant, vacuous, violent ones tend to come from the mainstream. Remember when you were that age and you’d always know one or two people who were out-and-out nutters who’d kick off over nothing? It seems like entire city centres have been taken over by those people! When I was growing up, I always had that teenage rebellion, lackof-respect thing, but it was healthy rebellion.

Have you ever worn a suit? (Chris famously said one only wears a suit for two reasons, getting married and dying, which were the same thing) I had one in 1994. Only worn once, for a job interview. And I still had my hair this big! I’ve never worn a suit since. If I ever got married - which I’m never going to do, by the way - it’d be denim, leather and a t-shirt, and I’d

But Needham fans, those of us who’ve kept the faith for the last decade and a half, wearing out VHS tapes and passing on the legend to new generations, haven’t curated this cult because we like to snigger at awkward kids. In Bed With... is better than that. It doesn’t just reconnect us with our past - because we were all Chris Needham once - it absolutely nails the tragicomedy of adolescence like nothing else, fact or fiction, before or since. Some of this is down to the superb editing, which sharpens the hilarity without scoring cheap points at Chris’ expense, but it couldn’t have worked without a subject so improbably charismatic, so perfectly imperfect. ‘I guess I’m just a bit angry,’ sniffs Needham, playing air guitar in his darkened cellar. ‘I’m a bit of an angry young man.’ Years pass, and In Bed With… just gets better and better.

have an iPod or an old Walkman, headphones in, and I’d make sure I had some decent tunes on while I was standing at the altar.

As one of the pioneers of Reality TV, what do you think of the Jades of the world?

DON’T FUCKING BLAME ME FOR JADE! It’s just a demonstration of the vacuity of this society. We’re an instant-fix society now. Everyone wants instant gratification. And everything feels speeded-up.

So what have you been doing since?

I’ve been doing lots of warehouse opping since I left college. There’s no disgrace in that. It’s a working man’s job, and it pays the bills. By the way, I never got that fishing tackle shop job that people on the internet say I had. And the other thing I’ve seen on the internet which was complete bullshit , and I’d be grateful if you’d print this: I never turned up on a Harley Davidson outside Burleigh (the rival college) after the documentary, and I don’t give a fuck who said it. He’s a wanker, and as far as I’m concerned he can fuck off and die, ‘cos he’s a liar.

moved on. I’ve not watched the full video diary in one piece - start to finish - since the night of my 20th birthday. I had a bottle of Jack, a couple of spliffs, and I basically said goodbye to my teenage self.

Your famous quote is ‘We were all teenagers once. Some of us always will be’. How much of you is still that teenager?

There’s two teenagers inside me - the hardcore dangerous Metal fan, and the dreamer who still wants to be that guy in a Rock band. And I know it’s never gonna happen now. I’ve passed my prime - but I wouldn’t trade my life for all the fucking world.

I’m still METAL as FUCK - and yes, you can put that I gave the Metal Salute when I said that

Why do people get so obsessive about the diary?

Because it taps into a universal truth - living the American Dream, but in England. It’s the idea of forming a band and doing the show right here, and believing in and eulogising the flame of Rock n’ Roll and Metal. And it’s about growing up; we were all teenagers who were a pain in the arse and thought they had all the answers to the world, and in reality we knew next to jack shit. And people connect with that, and laugh at it as well.

So if you could go back in time to that 17 year-old lad, what would you tell him?

‘Don’t worry. You’re going to get better on guitar.’ And I’d like to think if I could go back and he could see me now, he’d be proud of me. Because I couldn’t play guitar, and I didn’t know how to sing, and now I do, simply because I’ve done it. I’d tell him; ‘lighten up, man, because you’re still gonna be rocking at my age.’

How does it feel to look at the diary now?

When I see the clips, I feel like I’m watching myself through Perspex glass.

I can laugh at it, smile at it, feel sad at it, but I can’t feel it anymore. I’ve

What do you think about Motörhead and Maiden t-shirts in Top Shop?

Don’t get me started on that. Part of me thinks it’s great, if the people wearing them actually check it out. But I know they won’t, because to them it’s like a fashion accessory. And I feel like grabbing hold of them and going ‘HOW MANY FUCKING MOTÖRHEAD ALBUMS DO YOU OWN? NAME ME ONE SONG OTHER THAN ACE OF SPADES BY MOTÖRHEAD! NAME ME FIVE IRON MAIDEN ALBUMS! NOWWWWW!’ I know it’s their registered trademark and they’re getting paid, but as a Metal fan who loves Maiden and Motörhead and still goes out and sees them, it pisses me off.

So what do you want people to know about Chris Needham circa 2008?

That I’m still Metal as fuck. And you can put that I did give the Metal Salute when I said that. I’m still Metal as FUCK and I make no apologies for it AT ALL. Because fucking no matter what comes, what goes, Metal’s always been here and it’s always gonna be here, and it’s not about trends or nothing else, it’s about just fucking Heavy fucking Metal. And by the way; when it came to Reality TV and Metal frontmen - Ozzy? You’re weren’t here first!

In Bed With Chris Needham is presently only available on YouTube.

For the full interview - including a run-down on what happened to the other members of Manslaughter, Chris’ opinions on pretty much everything and the reason he got rid of his mullet, get yourself over to www.leftlion.co.uk/issue23 chrisneedham.com.mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk

It is beautifully, brutally authentic. Flat lighting brings out bad skin and hair grease; wintry-pale on unprocessed video, Loughborough looks like Krakow in the 70s. Chris lopes through a hideous shopping precinct, ranting about Neighbours under skies the colour of a switched-off TV screen. He sits in a Wimpy bar and thrusts a floppy burger at the camera, crumbs falling out of the side of his mouth: ‘Hey, vegetarians - cop this!’ He swaggers up to the front window of a terraced house, and his nan’s face peers out from the murk of her front room and barks back at him: ‘what about that bleddy fish?’ It’s set in those last few years before the internet left us immobile and over-informed, before coke orgies for musclebound 14-year-olds, the last time everyone smoked with the windows closed and tried to be self-effacing. A different Britain, pre-dating that simultaneous buffing and cheapening of our culture (achieved in part through reality TV). A place where young people still responded to the sight of a video camera by covering their face in embarrassment. It already looks like another age.

Chris’ band - they’re called Manslaughter, later changed to Manslorter after too much mispronounciation (people thought they were called Man’s Laughter) - are truly horrible and utterly unaffected. The songs he writes are beautifully generic, substandard metal, monumental ambition undermined by circumstances (being young and powerless, being a product of the English class system, being no good at music). ‘Now feel sudden death... from my guitar,’ growls Chris on Hate Song, raising his Woolworth’s Strat copy and launching into a riff so tinny it wouldn’t fell a gerbil. When they finally perform (a lunchtime gig in the college hall with the curtains drawn) they are, simultaneously, an appalling shambles and the absolute, ultimate perfection of rock ‘n’ roll. As they plough into You Shook Me All Night Long, Gav Skinner leans into the camera and gives it the finger. Unfortunately, it’s the index finger.

At first, half the people I’ve lured into the Needham cult refused to believe the thing wasn’t scripted.

What finally convinced them is that it’s just too good. The scene where Chris and then-girlfriend Jane perch on his narrow bed under the Airtex ceiling, exchanging Christmas cards, is an odyssey of discomfort, the flurry of furtive glances far too awkward to have been choreographed. Slumped on his floor, Chris addresses the camera on the subject of climate change: ‘There are times... and I will say it now... look, you can burn this planet, it’s your fault. With any luck, we won’t be havin’ another generation, OK? I’d rather have the planet burnt, and all you Greens burnt with it... Don’t think I don’t understand it.

Indeed, there are solutions I’ve come up with myself. But I don’t see why I should share these ideas, for the simple reason, impracticality one, and two...’ - a slight shrug - ‘nobody’s liable to listen to me.’

Quoting this stuff does not do it justice - you have to watch. The magic only works in context: the scrawny, strange-smelling world of teenage boys, perfectly captured, that inescapable tangle of hope, hopelessness, heartfelt doziness and buggered ambition, flashing between a howl and a horselaugh. With its startlingly accurate blend of shabbiness, hilarity and genuine hurt, and its utter lack of glamour, In Bed With Chris Needham is the only authentic document of the British teenage experience, and we can all learn something from it. He might not have reached the gates of Metal Valhalla, but in the end he achieved something that a thousand movies and a million episodes of Skins could never come close to. Unlike you or I, this 17-year-old was not a twat - he was a twat savant.

Taylor Parkes is the UK’s foremost disillusioned ex-music journalist, who now gripes about football for When Saturday Comes www.leftlion.co.uk/issue23

17

free cycle training - visit www.thebigwheel.org.uk

Alan Armstrong · sculptor/hybrid painter

Benjamin Hargrave · fine artist

Tell us your artistic concept.

Work that attempts to question and provoke us into questioning what we are looking at.

What artist studio/group are you a part of?

A new group based in Sneinton called Exit Here.

What makes you an artist?

Nothing. Artists are just like the rest of you lot, you know. Artists, contrary to popular belief, don’t have any special powers.

Most influential artist?

Ian Pedigo, amongst many others.

Best thing about the Nottingham art community?

I moved to Nottingham after graduating from Lincoln University, as I knew that Nottingham’s art community was very approachable and didn’t have a snobbish manner. I reckon Nottingham gives artists a good name.

What artist would you exhibit with?

Jessica Stockholder.

What in Nottingham would you convert into an art space?

One of the NCT buses, so you could hop on and look at some art while on your daily business.

What happened to you today?

Nothing of great importance, but hopefully that will change.

What are your thoughts on art school?

Although they are becoming increasingly institutionalised and maybe lack the same level of individualism as they had back in the 80sand 90s, they are still a place where you can become totally selfindulgent within your own practice for three years before the postuni realities of bills and dayjobs hit.

Worst job?

Cleaning toilets at a secondary school, which can get messy.

Use your imagination.

Best creative tool?

My brain-hand interactive system, which is powered by pure concentration.

What artist studio/group are you a part of?

Tether and SFRA. What makes you an artist?

Slaving away for hours for no cash and minimal benefit to myself, purely because I am compelled to do it.

Top tip for upcoming artists?

Pally up with a really rich benefactor who loves your work.

Best thing about the Nottingham art community?

I can't pretend that I like everything, but what with this new Tether group and Nottingham Contemporary, everything's just getting... more!

Where in Nottingham would you convert into an art space?

I'd like to turn all the roofs in Nottingham into art spaces, making a secret world above the streets.

What would you state from the speakers corner in Market Square?

‘I am King’.

Hardest thing about doing art?

Democracy.

Worst job?

It’s between emptying bins at Robert Sayle, Cambridge’s John Lewis, and pot-washing for Cambridge University.

What other piece of art would you recommend checking out?

If you've not been or not appreciated it fully, go and have a good long look at the Sky Mirror at the Nottingham Playhouse.

Current activity?

Tether is going to be going to Free Range on Brick Lane in London at the start of June. Also, keep your eyes peeled for The Wasp Room.

www.exithere.co.uk

ben.hargrave@gmail.com

Debbie Bryan · knitter and mould maker

Hetain Patel · contemporary artist

Tell us your artistic concept.

Specialising in creating design-led craft-based pieces, committed to a handmade local ethos that ensures quality and a unique character in each scarf, brooch and pair of cufflinks.

What artist studio/group are you a part of?

Nottingham Creative Network, Design Factory, Association of Contemporary Jewellers East Midlands, Hidden Art and The Hive.

Most influential designer?

The Couture Houses, Elsa Schiaparelli and Christian Dior; I love the old style glamour of the early to mid 20th century. An influence closer to home is local lace-knit designer/manufacturer GH Hurt & Sons.

Top tip for upcoming artists?

The Hive at Nottingham Trent University is great for business mentoring.

What artist would you work with?

I love Nottingham illustrator Charlotte Thomson’s work. She has created a series of limited edition Victorian burlesque drawings that will be encapsulated in my hand-cast broaches and cufflinks.

Favourite quote?

‘Debbie, you’ve just got to set your stall out, and get on with it...’ my Dad Hardest thing about doing art?

Being a salesperson, but it enables me to do what I love.

What funds your art?

I’ve had match funding from Design Factory, The Hive, UKTI, UK Fashion Exports, NTI and Business Link.

Current activity?

Showcases at Lakeside Arts Centre and Nottingham Tourism Centre. I’m exhibiting in June at Stand LP57, London and Design Factory Area, Liverpool

What area of the arts do you work in?

I work across video photography and live art.

Tell us your artistic concept.

Interrogating language and cultural identity through movement, rhythm and science.

Most influential artist?

Bruce Nauman.

Best thing about the Nottingham art community?

It is just that, a community. Artists support each other’s activities, and there’s always someone to talk to that is going through the same thing as you.

What happened to you today?

I had a film crew following me around documenting some of my practice for the BBC. I showed them some of my video works at my studio, then took them along to my tabla drum practice with Nottingham kathak dance school Manushi.

Favourite quote?

‘It’s like a finger pointing away to the moon. Don’t concentrate on the finger, or you will miss all the heavenly glory’ Bruce Lee What are you thoughts on art school?

Loved it. It’s essential to be around your peers who are also finding their own creative feet. Peer feedback is the thing you instantly miss the most when you leave.

What funds your art?

Commissions, exhibition fees, workshops, lecturing, sales of artwork, a bit of good fortune and a lot of hard graft.

What piece of art would you recommend checking out?

Any dance work by Akram Khan. His piece Zero Degrees blew me away.

Current activity?

A new video work launched as part of a project called 60x60 by Motiroti. Sixty videos by artists from Britain, India and Pakistan should now be touring all three countries.

www.debbiebryan.co.uk

www.hetainpatel.com

If you are a Nottingham-based artist and would like to be profiled in this section, please email amanda@leftlion.co.uk page design by Ali Hazeldene thebonsaiprojects@hotmail.com Myspace.com/bonsaiprojects

www.leftlion.co.uk/issue23

19

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If you have ques tions about tech nology, audio, video, ph otography, compu ters or indeed anything else, let the geek s know by emailing geek @leftlion.co.uk.

All questions will be answered and a se le ct ion of them will be pr inted in this mag azine…

Can you recomm end a decent bu dget bass?

The prerequisit es are something playable and something chea p!

There are quite a few makes and models in the £1 price bracket th 50 at should suit yo ur needs. Makes to look for are Ep iphone, Aria, Ya maha and Fender Squire. The older Arias (MIJ) are far better than their modern counter parts, so you’ll be looking on eBay for them. Persona lly I would steer clear of Epiphon I’ve never playe e; d a bass of their s that I liked! Fro personal experie m nce, Yamaha is yo ur best bet. Buy any Yamaha unde r £300 and it’ll pla y and sound far better than any other bass in that range. For exam I had a client in ple, with a couple of Fenders (a Squir and a Mexican) e and his beaten up old cheap Yamaha knocked spots off both as a record ing guitar.

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Buzz - Somew here between a tracker and environment, a modular sy but with bags nth more flexibilit might imply. y than that www.buzzm ac hi nes.com Ardour - A Pr o Tools clone that runs on Linux, will ru both MacOS n on Window and s soon. www Hopefully that .ardour.org will be enough to get you go ing.

Sorr y, I Don’t Speak Geek is brought to yo in association u with The Sto ne Soup Proje www.thesto ct. nesoupproje ct.com

NEW YORK · LONDON · PARIS · MANSFIELD INTRODUCING LEFTLION SUBSCRIPTIONS it’s like having a little piece of Nottingham in your toilet BACK ISSUES

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Don’t mither yoursen, kids - simply giz some more money, and we’ll sort you out. We have limited copies of every issue of the ‘Lion (excluding issue 3), and when they’re gone, they’re gone.

That’s right, youths and ducks - from now on, you don’t have to ratchet up your carbon footprint by jetting into Nottingham in order to pick up the latest issue of the only magazine in Nottingham worth the steam off your wazz - simply giz some money, and we’ll send every issue to you the minute it comes off the presses. With a stamp and everything.

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Again, check www.leftlion.co.uk/subs.

Now you don’t have to spend your lonely nights in a lesser town worrying about who is playing at The Maze next month as you slowly lose your accent - we’ll get your postie to shove Nottingham through your letterbox on a bi-monthly basis. Hit up www.leftlion.co.uk/subs to order online.

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www.leftlion.co.uk/issue23

LEFTLION LISTINGS

featured listing

JUNE-JULY 2008

OK, so it’s one of the less frantic periods in the calendar, as everyone seems to be nicking off to a field to wallow in their own filth under the shadow of mobile phone banding whilst listening to third-division indie rammell - but it’s not that quiet in Notts this summer.

For starters, there’s the long-awaited return of a festival to Wollaton Park, Europe’s biggest gathering of massive hunks of American machinery, this year’s batch of arts graduates tout their wares, a huge cycling rally at Holme Pierrepont, outdoor theatre a-plenty, and – best of all – the chance to watch Euro 2008 in the pub without all the crappy bunting and No Surrender-monkeys...

As always, the entire bi-month of post-work dossery is covered, nailed down and liberally smeared across the following pages.

If you can’t find anything to do in Notts amongst this little lot, you’re either dead, or, er, live too far away.

PG 23 ∙ GIGS Current favourite band names include Total Bloody Chaos, Favours For Sailors, The Beetroot Kings, and Eek!

PG 26 ∙ WEEKLIES All your once-every-seven-daysrelated jollies taken care of

PG 27 ∙ ART New exhibitions at Moot, Southwell Artspace, Lakeside, plus Bonington’s degree shows

PG 27 ∙ COMEDY Er, not a massive amount of it this summer. But there’s loads of…

PG 27 ∙ THEATRE Outdoors, indoors, readings, festivals, Euro-Tat - it’s all over Notts this summer

For even more listings, check our regularly updated online section at leftlion.co.uk/listings.

And if your event is still not in there, spread the word by aiming your browser at leftlion.co.uk/add.

22

www.leftlion.co.uk/issue23

Splendour Bender Wollaton finally gets its fezzie back

It’s been six years - six bleddy years! since Nottingham had a proper dead big open-air festival - but, on July 19 and 20, the wait will be over...

Splendour is the name of the new collaboration between the Council and Daybrook House - the people who brought you Rock City, the Rescue Rooms and the Social, fresh from their third year of Dot To Dot - and an interesting melange of styles has already been lined up, cross-breeding established pop sorts with oldschool favourites with local bands looking to catch a break.

Of course, this isn’t the first time Wollaton Park has done something like this; back in the day, the old Heineken Festivals, City In The Park and Distortions brought a bewilderingly corking range of talent to Notts, including Hawkwind, The Levellers, Shane McGowan, Iggy Pop, Ian Dury and the Blockheads, Ozric Tentacles, and Blur (alright, let’s not mention Chumbawamba, All Saints, Ronan Keating, Bryan Adams and Steps). It all came crashing to a halt in 2002 when the more rocklar Distortions was simultaneously hit by an outbreak of foot-and-mouth, the rise of Download at Donno, and - according to legend - Jamairoqui having a big and awkward enough stage to get his stupid hat on.

At the time we went to press, the line-up was looking like a back-to-basics mixture of big safe pop acts (Kate Nash, Paulo Nutini), up-and-coming singer-songwriter types (Tom Baxter, Gabriella Cilmi, Liam Gerner), and a smattering of the offbeat (the

Charlatans, Rufus Wainwright). At least four more major acts are to be announced - check the LeftLion site for further details when we get ‘em.

The really good news from our point of view is that local bands are getting some vital exposure on something a bit bigger than a flatbed truck at a garden fete; so far House of Brothers (featuring the multi-talented Andrew Jackson) and The Recovery (check our Reviews section on page 29 for more details) have bagged a slot - more to follow. And there’s a second stage. And a kids area. And a funfair.

Best of all, it’s all the fun of the fest without having to pitch a tent next to some elderly hippies or having to deal with student twats out of their mash on Cake. There’s no camping, and you can be home at a decent hour. Better still, if you own a Citycard - free to anyone in the Motherland - you can get a tenner off the daily ticket price, and twenty quid off the entire two-day binge…

Splendour, Wollaton Park, July 19-20 £25 per day (£15 with Citycard), £50 both days (£30 with Citycard) www.citycardnottingham.co.uk

nottingham event listings...

for more: leftlion.co.uk/listings

Sunday 01/06

Friday 06/06

Saturday 07/06

Thursday 12/06

Saturday 14/06

Farmyard Records The Golden Fleece Free, 8pm

Funkasaurus Moog Free, 8pm - 2am With Joe Budha, Furious P, Dimes, Endemic and Squigz.

Johnsonbury The Johnson Arms Free, 1pm - 11pm With Russ Clark, Eek!, Plans and Apologies, Leni Ward and Huw Costin.

Sign and My Passion Junktion 7 £5, 7.30pm - 12am

The Pitty Patt Club The Bodega Social Club £6 adv, 8pm - 2am

Atomic Hooligan Dogma Free, 10pm - 3am

Steelyard Blues The Running Horse £6, 8pm

Sunset Duo Southbank Bar Free, 7pm

Model Morning Junktion 7 £5, 8pm - 2am

Friday 13/06

Afro Brazilian night Muse £3, 9.30 - 2am

Blunted In The Basement Moog Free, 1pm - 8pm Performance Southbank Bar Free, 7pm Demo BluePrint £5, 9pm - 3am Ed Steelefox, Sexy Wierdo Soundsystem, Cats and Criminals, Team Hughes (tbc), Jack-Attack, Be Nimble, Rabbit, Flash, The Lightning Tokyo, Ella Edmonson, Jamie Singleton, Jonty Coleman, Jigging’ Jacob’s, Banjo and more.

Ned Evett The Maze £8, 7.30pm Plus Pom and Jai. Thea Gilmore The Rescue Rooms £12.50, 7.30pm

Monday 02/06 Vetiver and Birds of Avalon The Bodega Social Club £8.50 adv, 8pm - 11pm Richard Howells Southbank Bar Free, 7pm Guy Buttery The Maze £7, 8pm Plus Matt Marriott, Elliott Morris and David Jenkins.

Tuesday 03/06 Clocks The Bodega Social Club £5, 8pm - 11pm Azriel and Your Demise with A Farewell Fall Junktion 7 £5 / £7, 7pm - 11.30pm Plus Abandon Hope and Make It Through.

R.B Morris The Maze £9, 7.30pm Plus Romi Mayes.

Guillemots Rock City £13.50, 7.30pm Plus Royworld.

The Futureheads The Rescue Rooms £11, 7.30pm

Wednesday 04/06 Off Street Parking MHYH Moog Free, 7pm - late Sugar Free Eleven Free, 9pm - 3am Lois The Maze £4, 7.30pm Plus James Warner Prophecies, The Idents, Mellow Rebellion and The Missingword Scandal.

The Rascals The Rescue Rooms £7.50, 7.30pm

Thursday 05/06 Guerilla Radio The Golden Fleece Free, 9pm Yuksek Dogma Free, 10pm - 3am

Overvibe Junktion 7 £3 / £5, 8pm - 2am Plus King Claw.

Joe Strange Band Southbank Bar Free, 7pm Siesta Project Saltwater Free, 2.30pm - 6.30pm DJs include: Alex Traska, Fran Green, Red Rack’em, Dave Boultbee and Pedro K. Garrison Deux 8pm

Mind The Gap Igloo £5, 10pm - late Andy George, Bad Robot, Mattei Saint and Moro.

Sunday 08/06 Why? and SJ Esau The Bodega Social Club £9, 8pm - 11pm

Oxe Eagle Lion Man The Bodega Social Club £6, 7pm Followed by The Rubber Room.

Fat Digester and Kill It Kid The Running Horse 8pm, Free

Poppycock Moog Free, 8pm - Late

Rachel Harrington Deux Free, 8pm

Monday 09/06

Lightning Willie / Poor Boys The Running Horse £8 adv, 8pm

Psycle BluePrint £5, 10pm - late Gary Normal, Percussion, Ravi, Furry Hands and Samyouwell, DPi, Delete, DJ Lobes.

The Bopp The Market Bar £5, 10pm - late

Kris Ward Southbank Bar Free, 7pm

Demob The Maze £5, 9pm Plus Fight-Back, Total Bloody Chaos and The Rutherfords.

Benji Kilpatrick The Maze £8, 8pm Plus Ed Sheeran and Luke Richie.

Mnstr GatecrasherLovesNottingham £10 / £12, 10pm - 4am Spectrum and Detonate presents: Plump DJs, Goldie, c2c present Beattorrent, Marcus Intalex (2hr set), Aquasky, David Ekenback (Sweden), Heavyfeet ft Switch MC, Pete Jordan, Transit Mafia, MC Ruthless, Freeman, Pablo and Vtekk.

Claude Von Stroke Stealth £10, 10pm - 4am Plus The Count and Sinden.

Saturday 07/06 The Nightmarchers The Bodega Social Club £8 adv, 7pm - 10pm Followed by Perucussion (£3) LeftLion Presents The Orange Tree Free, 8pm - 12am Moonbuggy, Green For Go and Stiff Kittens DJs. Wildside 5th Year Anniversary Junktion 7 £5, 9pm - 2am With Rock$tar Soy Un Caballo Deux 8pm Firefly Marcus Garvey Ballroom £15 adv, 10pm - 6am Alter Ego, Ben Sims, Fergie, Thrash Jelly, Rip Off Vs Beat Repeaters Pure Filth BluePrint £6, 10pm - 3am DDR , Maxx and Shodan.

My Awesome Compilation The Maze £5 / £6 (NUS), 9pm Plus Ocean Bottom Nightmare, The Wickets and El Cielo.

I Was A Cub Scout Rock City £8, 7pm Brodinski Stealth £5, 10.15pm Plus Lykke Li. The Log Jam The Loggerheads Free, 8pm

CULT DnB Sessions Muse £4 / £6, 10pm - 3am Nookie, DJ Slider, Mouse, Houghmeister and MC Juma Phist.

REO Speedwagon Rock City £26, 7.30pm

MyHouse-YourHouse Saltwater Free, 8pm - late Jim Baron, Woosh and Simon DK, Rick Donohue and Alex Traska.

Battle of The Bands Final Rock City £3, 7.30pm

Ruth and Friends Deux Free, 8pm

Wednesday 11/06

Futureproof Vs Wigflex BluePrint £6, 10pm - 3am Appleblim, Darkstar, Sigha, Eleven Tigers, Meta Phi, Spamchop, Bizmarc, Aled, Brackles and Martin Kemp.

MyHouse-YourHouse Moog Free, 6pm - late Livan and Fall of Jupiter The Maze £3, 8pm University Philharmonia Lakeside £6, 6pm

Thursday 12/06 Fleet Foxes The Bodega Social Club £6.50, 7.30pm Plus Beach House.

Favours for Sailors The Golden Fleece Free, 9pm

Random Hand The Maze £5, 9pm Plus Minus Society, Anonymous Tip, Crazy Arms and Mindless Raskal Gaz.

Saturday 14/06 Noodle - Data-Trace Records Moog Free, 12pm-2am Smashback, Glove:r, Teutonic Kaboom, Mazzula, Digital Video Filth, Solen, Greyground, Felson, Margovan, The Outsider, Foo, DJ Weiss, Matt Hinton and more.

Sticky Morales Southbank Bar Free, 7pm

Sunburned Hand of Man The Maze £5 / £6, 8.30pm Plus Zuzunegui.

Audio Jack Stealth 10pm, £5

Tuesday 17/06 Sergeant The Bodega Social Club £8 adv, 8pm - 11pm LeftLion Unplugged The Malt Cross Free, 8pm - 11pm Rebel Soul Collective The Maze £3, 8pm Shivoo and Just Insane Music Loughborough SU £10 adv, 9pm - 3am Annie Mac (BBC Radio 1), The Count, Sinden, DJ Fu and Jungle Drummer, Qemists, MC ID, Sigma, MC Master X and Transit Mafia.

Wednesday 18/06 The Twilight Sad The Bodega Social Club £7 adv, 7pm - 10pm

Nookie, Bare

Champion DNB DJ hits up Muse on Friday the 13th Running four years strong now, CULT have been dragging in quality underground music across the genres to just about every venue in the city, combining talent on the decks with cult movie imagery and gaining a reputation for serious parties along the way. In their current residency at Muse, they’re concentrating on the more musical side of the dnb spectrum - recent bookings have included Furney, Zero T, and Kubiks & Lomax.

The next gig is a coup de grace: DJ Nookie, AKA New Balance (alongside Blame), AKA Second Vision, AKA Cloud 9 and AKA Gavin Cheung (to his mum). One of the true pioneers of the scene who has been shaking dancefloors since the dawn of the genre, he’s best known for his anthemic material on Moving Shadow and Reinforced Records (run by 4Hero). He’s also been a prolific artist for Good Looking Records (the seminal home of the atmospheric sound, run

by LTJ Bukem) as well as being a reputed remixer in his own right, Goldie’s Inner City Life being a career highlight.

With its dark wooden beams and intimate capacity, Muse can achieve a house party feel that the big venues will always lack – a vibe that this DJ is more than likely to capitalize on, with support from Detonate’s Slider and the home team’s Mouse and Houghmeister.

Check it out, and bring your dancing shoes.

CULT Presents DJ Nookie, Friday 13th June, £4 before 11pm, £6 after Muse, 9 Broad Street, Hockley, NG1 3AL. www.wearethecult.com leftlion.co.uk/issue23

23

event listings...

Wednesday 18/06

Saturday 21/06

MyHouse-YourHouse Moog Free, 7pm - late

Sandi Thom The Bodega Social Club £9.50 adv, 7pm - 10pm

Sugar Free Eleven Free, 9pm - 3am

Tuaca Live Music Event Moog Free, 1pm - 3am

Charity Gig for Cancer Research The Maze 8pm

Keiperbelt The Running Horse £3, 8pm

Thursday 19/06

The Messengers Southbank Bar Free, 7pm

Wisp Live Moog Free, 8pm - 2am Plus Sublight, Terminal Dusk, The Gasman, NeuTek, Plucking Skanker and Missaw.

Joe Driscoll The Maze £8, 8pm Plus Trouble Over Tokyo and Ed Sheeran.

Friday 20/06 Charity Event The Running Horse 8pm for The Air Ambulance Service.

The Arcane Junktion 7 £5, 7pm - 11.30pm Tusken Coalition Muse £3, 9.30pm - 2am With support from Papa La Bas. Joe Strange Band Southbank Bar Siesta Project Saltwater Free, 2:30pm - 6:30pm Mr Ford and Mr Gibbs Deux Free, 8pm You Slut!

The Maze £4 adv, 9pm Plus Tubelord, Wander Phantom, Sinasour Pile-up and Hot Bone.

Studio 54 The Loggerheads Free, 8pm

Smokescreen The Maze £5, 9.30pm

The Fish Man hits Newark (Notts, not New Jersey) for Americana International Every July for three days, Newark - that sleepy little market town to the East - turns itself into Boss Hogg’s wet dream. Yes siree, July 11 til the 13th sees the return of Americana International, Europe’s biggest American lifestyle event. We’re talking a huge collection of bleddy massive Yank cars, bikes and trucks, and a gargantuan selection of bands spanning 80 years of musical taste (including Darts, The Manfreds, and Hank Wangford, the UK’s only Country and Western gynecologist) on two hefty outdoor stages. Suffice to say, it’s a bit more of an authentic American experience than, say, going to Hooters. Or skulking round Bulwell bus station in a Yankees cap.

Doing it For Daniel Rock City £5, 6.30pm Spirytus, The Swiines, Benno Blum and Ryan Birch.

This monumentally huge, award-winning music festival/car-meet has been going since 1980, and is probably the biggest event the Shire of Nottingham hosts, bringing in people from across Europe year on year. Live out your Elvis fantasies by strolling around in a white jumpsuit with a big set of old keys, occasionally leaning on a Cadillac as if you own it, peeling off a key, handing it over to a total stranger, and saying ‘Hon, I want you to have this lil’ automobile ’cos you remind me of my own grandma over theah in Memphis’. And yes, you heard right - our very own Fish Man will be in the house, fresh off his triumphant appareance in the pages of this very mag. Don’t forget, if your pub is still bereft of both cockle and mussel, dash off an e-mail to fishman@leftlion.co.uk, and we’ll link you up.

Lo Ego The Rescue Rooms £3, 7pm

Americana International, Newark County Showground, July 11-13. £20 per day advance, £25 on the, er, swinging saloon doors. Under-16s free if accompanied by adult. www.americana-international.co.uk

Fred Falke Stealth 10pm, £5

Sunday 22/06

Thursday 26/06

Saturday 28/06

Roadblock The Loggerheads Free, 8pm DJ Daddio and special friends.

Southern Tenant Folk Union The Maze £9 adv, 7.30pm Plus Toy Hearts.

Flux The Loggerheads Free, 8pm

Sunday 22/06

Johnny and the Raindrops Polish Club £2 / £7, 3pm - 5pm

Mindvox Presents The Maze £4 adv, 8pm With The Drains, Night Parade, The Bridges and The Saboteurs.

The Sugars The Bodega Social Club £6, 8pm - 11pm Beane and Toe Tappers Delight Moog Free, 1pm - 9pm Tom Smiths Birthday Bash Junktion 7 Free, 7pm - 11.30pm Millicent Grove, Zenith, Martyr Defiled and more.

Buster Southbank Bar Free, 7pm

Monday 23/06 Mark James Southbank Bar Free, 7pm Melt Banana Rock City £10, 7.30pm Atmosphere with Brother Ali The Rescue Rooms £12, 7pm

Tuesday 24/06 Blood Divided The Maze £2 / £3, 8pm Plus Scarset, BadComa and Smoking Kills.

City Pulse Festival Various Locations Free, various Runs until: 26/06

VIEw from the Top’s summer showcase

Wednesday 25/06

If you’ve not visited VIEw from the Top, the newish art gallery situated above Waterstones, there’s never been a better time.

This summer sees a blinding selection of exhibitions, with the opportunity to purchase art both established and home-grown.

MyHouse-YourHouse Live Moog Free, 6pm - 2am

June begins with Unseen (315 June), a contemporary photography show by the Nottingham-based collective of the same name, showcasing work by recent graduates. Stitch One Print One (24-30 June) is a group show of Nottingham textile designers, featuring constructed, printed and stitched textiles with bold colours and delicate features.

July sees the Fine Art Partnership (3-6 July) exhibiting quality etchings, lithographs and dry point by Picasso, Matisse, Miro and Cocteau, with an opportunity to buy the works. Finishing off the summer months is Fresh Art and Design (23 July – 30 August), VIEw’s open exhibition and sale, featuring new work from upcoming Midlands talent. Expect to see a host of emerging artists and designers at the show, and don’t forget the opening night - 23 July 5-9pm.

VIEw from the top Gallery, 4th Floor above Waterstones, 1-5 Bridlesmith Gate, NG1 2GR. www.viewfromthetop.co.uk leftlion.co.uk/issue23

PRAWN IN THE USA

Wholesome Fish Deux Free, 8pm

TOP DRAWER

24

for more: leftlion.co.uk/listings

Kill The Arcade and Dividing The Line Junktion 7 £5, 7pm - 11.30pm Plus High Vixons and Long Drop.

Kit Holmes The Maze £8, 8pm Plus Kit Richardson and Elliot Morris.

Blazin’ Fiddles Lakeside £15 adv, 8pm

Thursday 26/06 Dave Arcari The Running Horse 8pm Richie Muir Southbank Bar Free, 7pm

The Establishment The Approach Free, 7pm

Shivoo Rapture (Loughborough) £4 / £5 / £6, 11pm - 5am Parker and Pasquale, Collo, Robochop, Steve Gibson and more.

Friday 27/06

Sunday 29/06

Poppycock Moog Free, 8pm - 2am Hosted by Dave and Mike.

Wholseome Fish The Running Horse £3, 8.30pm

Rollo Markee and The Tail Shakers The Running Horse £6 adv, 8pm End Of Exams Party Junktion 7 £5, 7.30pm - 2am With High Vixons, Vaarlets, Dog Is Dead, Jonny Dodds and Disco Beaver.

Satnam’s Tash Deux Free, 8pm Bobby Melody and The Good Vibrations The Maze £8, 8pm The Sman Live GatecrasherLovesNottingham £10, 10pm - 4am Auditorium, Roger Sanchez, Corey, Mandarin, Simon Brown, James Ellis, Mark Cohen,and more.

Detonate Stealth £10, 10pm - 4am Nicky Blackmarket, Bailey, Transit Mafia, Judda and Deep, Rust and.

Saturday 28/06 Genotype Bunkers Hill Inn £3 / £4, 9pm - 2am DJ Berrega, Traumahound and DJ Psy-Tek. Ronnie London’s Groove Lounge Grosvenor £3, 8pm - 1am All Systems Clash The Maze £5, 2pm - 2am

Fab 4 Southbank Bar Free, 7pm

Wednesday 02/07 MyHouseYourHouse!

Moog Free, 7pm - late Black Kids The Rescue Rooms £8, 7.30pm

Thursday 03/07 Saboteurs The Golden Fleece Free, 9pm Route 66 The Running Horse £5, 8.30pm The Establishment Southbank Bar Free, 7pm

Thursday 03/07 Sonic Boom 6 The Maze £6, 8.30pm Plus Jimmy The Squirrel Tift Merritt The Rescue Rooms £14, 7.30pm

Friday 04/07 The Pop Confessional The Bodega Social Club £3 / £5, 11pm - 3am The Rotted and Ted Maul Junktion 7 £6 / £7, 8pm - 2am With support from Martyr Defiled and In Dying Days.

nottingham event listings...

for more: leftlion.co.uk/listings

Friday 04/07

Saturday 05/07

Friday 11/07

The Bouviers Deux Free, 8pm

Rebellion Igloo 10pm - late Drumsound, Transit Mafia, Prophecy, Andy Massive, Hoax Jungleman, The Monk, Erosion, Strike, Case, Tantrum, Vtekk, Velocity, Select McKenzie, Skeez, Monchi, Dribbs, Sleepy C, Magic, Flameus, Tnt, Sk and Lady MJ.

Big Mommas Door The Running Horse £6, 8pm

The Bopp The Market Bar £5, 10pm - late The Beetroot Kings The Maze 8.30pm Plus 10 O’Clock Horses, Babar Luck, Captain Hotknives and Mindless Raskal Gaz. Working Nights The Loggerheads Free, 8pm - 1am DJs Matt, Alex and Neetin.

Beat-Herder Festival Ribble Valley, Lancs £55 adv Runs until: 06/07 X-Press 2, Dub Pistols, Rennie Pilgrem, Tayo, Krysko, Aration Steppas, The Loungs, The Fairy Brass Band, Misty in Roots, Utah Saints, Evil Nine and loads more.

Saturday 05/07 Percussion The Bodega Social Club £3 / £5, 11pm - 3am Noodle meets the Centrifuge Moog Free, 4pm - 4am The Establishment The Running Horse 8pm LeftLion Presents The Orange Tree Free, 8pm - 12am Himalayas, The Smears and Stiff Kittens DJs. Wildside Clubnight Junktion 7 9pm - 2am Jason Heart Band Southbank Bar Burlesque Night The Maze £5, 8pm

Sunday 06/07 Performance Southbank Bar Free, 7pm Blood Divided The Maze 8pm

Monday 07/07 White Denim The Bodega Social Club £7, 8pm - 11pm Ben Folds Rock City £23.50, 7.30pm

Bob Cheevers and Dan Britten Deux 8pm Furthest Drive Home Rock City £6, 7pm My Morning Jacket The Rescue Rooms £13.50, 7.30pm Richie Muir The Approach Free, 7pm Americana Festival Newark County Showground £20 per day adv / £25 per day Runs until: 13/07 Wayne Hancock, Limehouse Lizzy, Jack Earls, Rip Masters, Sassafras, Dez Walters, The Blue Flames, Billy Fadden and The Rhythm Busters, Paul Ansells No. 9, The Infernos, Greggi G and The Crazy Gang.

Tuesday 08/07

Pitty Patt Club The Bodega Social Club £6 adv, 8pm - 2am

The Goo Goo Dolls Rock City £19.50, 7.30pm

Wilko Johnson The Running Horse £10 adv, 8pm

The Rocket Summer The Rescue Rooms £9, 7pm

Sticky Morales Southbank Bar Free, 7pm

Thursday 10/07

MyHouse-YourHouse is 3!

Saltwater Free, 12pm - 2am

Alberto Veto The Golden Fleece Free, 9pm

Saturday 12/07

Scotch Egg and Friends Moog Free, 8pm - 2am

Jinder Deux Free, 8pm

Mindless Self Indulgence Rock City £12, 6.30pm Plus The Blackout.

Bollocks to Poverty Tour The Maze £2 / £3, 8pm

Brian Jonestown Massacre The Rescue Rooms £12.50, 7.30pm

The Galvatrons Rock City £3, 10pm

Friday 11/07

The Log Jam The Loggerheads Free, 8pm

Poppycock Moog Free, 8pm - late With Dave and Mike.

One World The Old Market Square Free

Tuesday 15/07 LeftLion Unplugged The Malt Cross Free, 8pm - 11pm

Str8 Crêppin’ The Malt Cross get all continental

You all know how mint the Malt Cross on St James Street is, but were you also aware of their new side-project, Bon Bons? Situated directly next door, Bon Bons is aimed directly at people looking for summat different from the usual sandwiches and pasties, and fancy a continental tickle of the tastebuds in the shape of the not-so-humble crêpe.

The menu alone has the potential to set you drooling like Pavlov’s Dog, with a seriously impressive array of fillings both sweet and savoury. For the former, check out their blueberries with Greek yoghurt and runny honey, bananas with chopped nuts, or strawberries and Nutella. For the latter, there’s the classic bacon and melted cheese or the Parma ham, mozzarella, basil and tomato, which we had when were on the blag - it was lush.

Alongside the crêpeage, there’s a selection of 100% fresh fruit smoothies, milkshakes, homemade cakes and fairtrade hot drinks (including the amazing hot chocolate you can find in the Malty), and fresh homemade soup in chillier months. The entire menu is also available to enjoy in the Malt Cross, or take away to munch in the Square: all take-away food is served in ethical packaging made from recycled biodegradable sources.

Boasting a vast open space and surrounding balcony, The Malt Cross has already earned a firm reputation as one of the most individual and down-to-earth venues in town (in a city with a definite lack of ‘em). With its warm, cosy interior and friendly service, Bon Bons is a welcome string to both their bow and Nottingham’s choice of culinary delights. Oh, and check out their Wednesday night Crêpe sessions (7pm – 9.30pm) for a dazzling array of boozy Crêpes…

Bon Bons, 16 St James’s Street, NG1 6FG. Closed on Sunday and Monday.

INSTALLATION OVERDRIVE

The pick of the local art happenings this month The Jerwood Photography Awards (Lakeside Arts, June 7-13) showcases an array of dynamic work from Britain’s finest current photographers, selected by a team headed up the senior curator of photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Highlights include Moira Lovell’s montage of school-themed night-clubbers, and Sophie Gerrad’s record of India’s electronic waste in abundance.

Meanwhile, Southwell Artspace hosts a short, sharp burst of contemporary art which explores narrative, storytelling and history.

Nicola Dale’s Flashback (until June 6) comprises of books painstakingly sculpted to look like fires, while Short Stories (June 14 – 27) is a rare chance to witness the work Geraldine Cox and Andrew Litten. Their residency kicks off with an opportunity to meet the artists from noon until 2pm on June 14.

Finally, It’s Not What We Wanted But We’ll Settle (until June 8) is Moot’s exhibition du jour. Sean Edwards, an artist who flies the flag for a practice of multidisciplinarism, deploys a myriad of media to create sculptural installations and site-specific interventions which endeavour to question the viewer’s perception of the familiar. The seemingly banal becomes imbued with an almost ritualistic significance, delicate curiosity is teased out from otherwise stark, unremarkable materials, and the conceived functionality of objects unravel and displace.

Thursday 17/07

Tuesday 22/07

Moonbuggy The Golden Fleece Free, 9pm

Kokolo Stealth Free, 8pm

In Case of Fire Rock City £6, 7pm Plus Slaves to Gravity.

Wednesday 23/07

Watermelon Slim The Rescue Rooms £12, 7.30pm

Friday 18/07 Joanne Shaw Taylor Band The Running Horse £6 adv, 8pm David Blazye Deux 8pm

Ballboy The Bodega Social Club £8 adv, 7pm - 10pm The Acacia Strain Junktion 7 £8 / £11, 6.30pm - 12am Plus Annotations of an Autopsy, Nights of The Abyss and Milicent G. Lyrics Born The Rescue Rooms £13, 7.30pm

Friday 25/07

Muzika The Maze £5, 9pm

Poppycock Moog Free, 8pm - 2am

Studio 54 The Loggerheads Free, 8pm

Gorilla Radio and Euler The Running Horse

Saturday 19/07 Arcane The Running Horse 8pm Plus High Vixons and The Turf.

Andy Whittle Deux 8pm Smokescreen The Maze £5, 9pm Trent The Rescue Rooms £5, 7pm Kris Menace Stealth 10pm, £5 Roadblock The Loggerheads Free, 8pm With DJ Daddio and special friends.

Kambasemba Muse £3, 9.30 - 2am Detonate Stealth £10 adv, 10pm - 4am Swift, Makoto and Deeizm, Kasra, Transit Mafia and Rust.

Yeah I’ll Play It Later The Loggerheads

Saturday 26/07 Ronnie London’s Groove Lounge Grosvenor £3, 8pm - 1am Fat Digester The Running Horse 8pm Flux The Loggerheads Free, 8pm

Sunday 27/07

Splendour Festival Wollaton Hall £25 a day or £50 both, 12pm Runs until: 20/07 Kate Nash (Sat), Paolo Nutini (Sun), The Charlatans (Sat), Rufus Wainwright solo (Sun) and more.

Tellison and Tubelord The Bodega Social Club £6 adv, 8pm - 11pm

Tuesday 22/07

Monday 28/07

A J Roach The Maze £10, 7.30pm

Nottingham Pride Arboretum Park Free, All day

Mela The Old Market Square A celebration of Asian culture.

leftlion.co.uk/issue23

25

event listings...

for more: leftlion.co.uk/listings

Mondays

Wednesdays

Thursdays

Neon Rocks Stealth £3, 9pm - late NTU student night.

Electric Banana Bodega Social £2 / £5, 10pm - 3am The Reverend Car-Bootleg.

Loft Conversions Loft Free, 8pm Tribute and acoustic bands.

(or your racer, or your mountain bike)

Motherfunker The Cookie Club £1 before 11pm, 10.30pm - 3am

Blues Jam Night Running Horse Free, 8.30pm Hosted by Colin staples, great blues entertainment, come and join in.

Tuned Rock City £1 - £5, 10pm - 3am All the latest alternative music alongside a healthy dose of pop and chart music.

The Big Wheel’s citywide campaign to get people out of the car and enjoying the benefits of alternative transport continues with a summer of cycling and walking events geared towards getting Nottingham off its anus and into its trainers.

Tuesdays

Thursdays

Acoustic Open Mic Night Running Horse Free, 8.30pm Hosted by Steve Pinnock ‘Notts premier acoustic guitarist.’

Showcase Loggerheads Free, 8pm

Chic GatecrasherLovesNottingham £4 / £5, 10.30pm - 3am Four floors of music.

Open Mic Golden Fleece Free, 9pm

Acoustic Tuesdays Malt Cross Free, 8pm A great selection of local acts every week.

Planet Moog Moog Free, 8pm

Wednesdays The Big Wednesday The Cookie Club £2.50, 10.30pm - 2am LeftLion Pub Quiz Golden Fleece £2 per team, 9pm Our weekly pub quiz continues, come down and you could win a load of beer or a meal for your team, but more importantly have a laugh!

26

leftlion.co.uk/issue23

Live Thursdays Golden Fleece Free, 8.30pm Live music every week.

Club NME Stealth £2 / £4, 10pm - 2am Word Of Mouth Muse £less than a pint Run in partnership with Camouflage, the home of live underground hip-hop, making sure we keep bringing you the finest quality acts for your acoustical enchantment.

Radar Bodega Social 11pm - 3am The best in new music - first!

Radar residents and guests.

Modern World The Cookie Club £1 / £3, 10.30pm - 2am

Fridays Fridays Golden Fleece Free, 8pm DJs playing reggae, DnB, funk, hip hop, disco, and all sorts else.

Joe Strange Band Southbank Bar Free, 8pm Roy De Wired Approach Free, 7pm Plus Good Times.

Love Shack (Nineties) Rock City £4 - £5, 9.30pm - 2am Atomic / Sabotage The Cookie Club £2 b4 11pm, £4 after (NUS discount), 10.30pm - 3am Distortion Rock City £5, 9pm - 2.30am

Get Your Chopper Out

It all kicks off on Wednesday June 18 with the Wheelie Big Breakfast.

Register on the website - www.thebigwheel.org.uk/bigbreakfast - and sign up for a free breakfast in the Square when you leave the car at home and turn up on your bike between 8am and 10am. The Bike Doctor will also be on hand to give your wheels the once-over.

Straight after that at 10am, the annual Nottingham Cycle Forum takes place, giving hardcore cyclists the opportunity to find out what’s on the horizon. Nottingham has been shortlisted by the Dept of Transport for Cycling Demonstration Town status, meaning that Notts would become a centre of excellence for cycling and receive extra funding.

And don’t forget that the annual Great Nottinghamshire Bike Ride takes place on Sunday June 22 around Holme Pierrepont, with events ranging from a chance to do a lap round the National Water Sports Centre to a 100-mile slog round North Notts… www.thebigwheel.org.uk

Fridays

Sundays

Liars Club Stealth Free / £5 / £6 9pm - late

Sunday Jam Sessions Loggerheads Free, 8pm

Play GatecrasherLovesNottingham £7 / £9, 10pm - 4am Rise and Shine / Funk You The Cookie Club £5, 10.30pm - 3am

Jazz Bell Inn Free, 12.30pm - 3am Reggae Roast Golden Fleece Free entry, all day.

nottingham event listings...

Theatre Sunday 06/04 Yamato Drums Playhouse £19.50, 7.30pm Runs until: 07/08

Tuesday 03/06 Doctor Dolittle Royal Centre £18 - £32.50, 7.30pm Runs until: 14/06

Wednesday 04/06 Endgame Lace Market Theatre 7.30pm Runs until: 07/06

Thursday 05/06 New English Contemporary Ballet Playhouse £8.50 - £18, 7.30pm

Friday 06/06 Jane Bond Playhouse £10 - £15, 8pm Runs until: 07/06

Monday 09/06 The Ghost Train Nottingham Arts Theatre £7.50 / £9 Runs until: 14/06

Tuesday 10/06 Reading Room Playhouse £8.50 - £18, 8pm

Saturday 14/06 Peter Pan Nottingham Castle

Monday 30/06

Thursday 24/07

Shout! The Musical Royal Centre £8 - £23, 7.30pm + matinees Runs until: 05/07

Much Ado About Nothing Nottingham Castle Runs until: 25/07

Sleeping Beauty On Ice Royal Centre £12 - £26.50, 7.30pm + matinees Runs until: 05/07

Much Ado About Nothing Newstead Abbey £9 / £11, 7.30pm

Saturday 21/06 Dancing Queen Royal Centre £19 / £21, 7.30ppm

Monday 23/06 Big Bad Mouse Royal Centre £10 - £23, 7.30pm Runs until: 28/06 Legendary comedy duo Cannon and Ball take to the stage in a brand new production.

Monday 30/06 Don’t Dress for Dinner Lace Market Theatre 7.30pm Runs until: 05/07

Sean Edwards Moot Free Runs until: 08/06

Charleston Follies Nottingham Arts Theatre £10/£8.50 (NUS) Runs until: 12/07

Tuesday 03/06

Tuesday 08/07 Treasure Island Royal Centre £8 - £16.50, 7.30pm + Matinees Runs until: 12/07

Thursday 10/07

EXIIT Photography Festival Various Locations Free, various Runs until: 13/06 Work from the NTU photography degree show.

Friday 06/06

Scandalous!

Playhouse £5, 7.30pm Runs until: 11/07

Leap 08 - New Writing Waterstone’s Free, 7pm - 9pm

Monday 14/07

Saturday 07/06

The Wedding Singer Royal Centre £11 - £28, 7.30pm + matinees Runs until: 19/07

Jerwood Photography Awards Lakeside Free, All Day Runs until: 13/07

Tuesday 15/07

Bonington: Monsters Of Frock The NTU degree shows open up to the public

Another year, and another batch of fledgling artists and designers prepare to fly the nest of Nottingham Trent University - but not before the annual five day-long art and design degree shows, which are open to the likes of us from June 7 to the 12th.

Once again, the shows will demonstrate a staggering range of disciplines, executed by people who you only usually see working part-time behind bars; from sculpture, painting, illustration and graphics to photography and print; from moving image, theatre and digital design to directional fashion, knitwear, textiles and decorative arts; and from futuristic products to cutting-edge furniture and interior design solutions. And you thought they had only spent the past three years fetching you a clean glass.

If nothing else, it’s a golden opportunity to have a nose inside Bonington, that there state-of-the-art home of varsity creativity in the centre of town. And it’ll be your one and only chance to catch some of the UK’s hottest young artists before they explode upon the art world. For full information on the event, check the website.

Nottingham Trent University degree shows, June 7-15, Bonington building, NTU City Site, NG1 4BU. www.ntu.ac.uk/degreeshows

Saturday 05/07

Saturday 19/07

NTU Fine Art Degree Show Bonningon Gallery Free, All Day Runs until: 12/06

Recent Drawings Lakeside Free, All Day Runs until: 10/08 Drawings of the urban environment and the people living within its boundaries.

Styling Project 1 Nottingham Castle Normal admission, 10am - 5pm Runs until: 28/09

Tuesday 17/06

Thursday 17/07

What is a Veteran? Why should I Remember?

The Yard Gallery Runs until: 13/07

Wollaton Hall and Park: Scene Unseen - Peter Lester The Yard Gallery Runs until: 07/09

The Real Deal Comedy Jam Royal Centre £15 / £20, 7.30pm Kareem Green, Donna Spence and Joe Bor.

Monday 21/07

Saturday 28/06

Saturday 19/07

Thursday 05/06

Eurobeat Royal Centre £10 - £25, 5pm & 8pm Runs until: 26/07

Paint, Draw, Stitch, Knit Nottingham Castle Various times and prices Runs until: 06/07

Laura Knight at the Theatre Nottingham Castle Normal admission, 10am - 5pm Runs until: 28/09

Funhouse Comedy Phoenix Cue Sports £5 / £6, 8pm Dave Dynamite, Danny Deegan, Special Guest and Spiky Mike.

Little Shop of Horrors Playhouse £6.50-£19.50, 7.15pm + matinees Runs until: 19/07

Henry V Nottingham Castle

Tom’s Midnight Garden Playhouse £7.50 - £24.50 Runs until: 05/07

Wheels of Fortune Lakeside Arts Centre Free, 11am - 4pm Runs until: 03/07

Monday 07/07

Divas Royal Centre £10 - £22.50, 7.30pm Performed by the Peter Schaufuss Dance Company from Denmark.

Friday 20/06

Charles Ross - One Man Star Wars (TM) Royal Centre £14 - £20, 7.30pm

Exhibitions Sunday 01/06

Sunday 06/07

Thursday 17/07

The Journey Lakeside Arts Centre £9 / £12, various times Runs until: 20/06

Wednesday 30/07

Tuesday 01/07

Tuesday 17/06

Thursday 19/06

for more: leftlion.co.uk/listings

THE NEXT STAGE Theatre and Comedy round-up, with Adrian Bhagat

As summer approaches, theatre-goers emerge from their stuffy, darkened halls and huddle ’neath umbrellas to watch shivering actors splutter their lines through mouthfuls of rain. Yes, outdoor theatre season is upon us, and Nottingham Castle will be hosting a variety of oneoff performances including Peter Pan, Charley’s Aunt, Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing and, of course, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Hot tip for this bi-month: Nottingham Playhouse’s Scandalous!, a rehearsed reading with music and song of a new musical based on the life of D.H. Lawrence, which promises to dwell on the sexy bits and not worry too much about the hard-to-read prose. The creator, Nottingham-born Glyn Bailey, is hoping to drum up interest in producing the work professionally.

There are slim pickings for comedy fans, but for cringe-inducing fun try EuroBeat at the Royal Concert Hall. It’s a faithful recreation of the Eurovision Song Contest employing bucket-loads of campness, innuendo, outdated national stereotypes and a video-projected Terry Wogan which promises to be a true celebration of awfulness. Finally, the Lace Market theatre gives us the obscurely-titled Fent Festival in July, with a variety of work from their excellent company of multi-talented actors and writers…

Comedy Sunday 01/06

Saturday 14/06 How to Get Almost Anyone to Want to Sleep with you Playhouse £15, 8pm

Tuesday 08/07 Funhouse Comedy Maze Edinburgh Festival Preview Special.

Rhod Gilbert, Liam Mullone and compere Spiky Mike.

Thursday 17/07 Funhouse Comedy Maze £6, 9pm Ivan Brackenbry’s Hospital Radio Roadshow!

Wednesday 23/07 Funhouse Comedy Maze £6, 8pm Jim Jeffries

www.nottinghamcity.gov.uk; www.scandalousthemusical.com www.royalcentre-nottingham.co.uk; www.lacemarkettheatre.co.uk leftlion.co.uk/issue23

27

Write Lion

If God, Elvis, suicide bombers and a calculator with feelings are not enough to get you going, King Henry has kindly let us reproduce the opening paragraph of his debut novel. We would have loved to have printed more, but didn’t want to risk offending the entire population. So apologies all mothers out there...

England, My England (extract)

by King Henry My birth was easy; I slipped out like a greasy turd. Cleared of deviancy I turned to look at the host, a ruffled looking creature of perhaps thirty. I noticed in disgust that mucus had pooled in the pronounced cleft of her chin and as I was placed in flab dimpled arms I frantically tried to wipe it away. Interpreted as affection this elicited knowing chuckles from the assembled professionals, all of whom were sodden with perspiration and blood. I have yet to reason why so many were present at my conjuring - perchance the stars ordained my coming?

Psychosis and Money (extract)

by Jobee

What is it then that makes them pray That makes them creep and crawl all day That makes them read some silly script Their pride and confidence slyly stripped What is it then that transfers their minds To heavens and angels and spiritual kinds To attend cathedrals in little groups Then dress in robes as exemplar troops

A Work in Process how I resent that my talents are deemed suitable for the writing of obituaries, thus undermining my aspiration to pen a posthumous opus so epic that should you find a passage you like, then commit it to memory, comrade… you may never find it again; how we are lovers subjugated by cheap makeup parlour tricks, such as the application of mascara when onion vapour tears are due; this prolific assumption that God isn’t big enough to fight his own battles; how it is this very assumption that got us into this mess in the first place; how some troubadour painted this sentiment somewhere it would certainly be seen; and how by way of scholarly riposte they left us an orchestra of amputees, rendered our sleep holes shallow graves and misaligned our Feng Shui with mortar shells.

I am a calculator For all my complex maths I am not loved

Untitled

Closed

We Ought to Look up More Often

Talk to me but don't listen

We pull the curtains Shut just to feel Them between our Fingers

by Lian

[Caution: My words don't mean what you want them to mean.]

Does it help in anyway To wile away the hours of day Dressed in black and on their knees Praying to anything and making pleas

Mental semantics hidden in the skull Vocal vibrations shaking my throat

Is it selfishness that makes them think We all need them to cower and shrink On our behalf at their request So that our souls be sublimely blessed

seldom correspond together

by John Humphreys

When you put on smart clothes, neatly pressed and presented, different from the ordinary shoes, shirts and suits that attire the world around you, you stand above, at arms length, beyond reach, from all those who would be king.

Elvis knew how much is said by the perfect poise of a sharp crease.

28

www.leftlion.co.uk/issue23

by Death Crab

Let us contemplate how best to entertain an uninvited hand grenade; how a corpse wagon is no more pleasant in the wake of incense; how hate gestates on kitchen stoves in accordance with traditional recipes inherited from unfortunates, whose skill with ink & abacus spared them martyrdom’s promised bounty; how acknowledgement of tragic flaws makes us less likely to perish l refer to my tendency to fall apart at the pool table when it boils down to the black (though the less said about your endgame the better, particularly in light of your queen disappearing so conveniently); how as a foreigner in a foreign land I can spend hours at the hand dryer exalting a warmth on my face that evokes the homeland breeze; how as children they weren’t trees we climbed, but wooden mountains;

What is it then that makes them build On fertile land where food was tilled Huge cathedrals and churches too Just to sing and confess anew

A Sharp Crease

I Am a Calculator

by Gareth Durasow

language isn't language when it is still inside me and when it walks out or lopes loud and brash or quiet and measured with masking laughter and clumsy syntax It unfulfils me

by A Catterall

And while Lee sits At the table, I lie on the couch And listen to the Dog bark at the Baby next door Lee rolls out Dumpling dough And the whole room Smells of garlic, Onions and meat And the sun is sinking Like a battle already won And despite the feeling In our heads in this slow Evening, there is Wild laughter Brimming like a rising Tide, because For once, we know We’ve won.

He comes and does His mindless sums Then goes away again.

He even leaves me on sometimes But it's ok I'm partly solar-powered.

I have no pride of place Not like that bloody clock What has it ever worked out?

What does the future hold for me?

Some more additions Then my batteries will run out.

Perhaps a subtraction too I like those They’re my favourite

(extract)

by mistakemistake and see the suns It’ll get dark without us knowing But we’ll rush out and Squint streaks into the lights Then rub our eyes till we See those black dot patterns That move like no other Kaleidoscope or lightning shower Sown on thick black sheets With distant diamond sparks And occasional fireflies That we tried counting When the moon went red A faint red Like it had blushed All too sudden And hidden in the axis of the Earth

Time, once again, to clear though that pile of CDs, books, mags, and all the other stuff we get sent. If you have anything you want us to give the once-over, please send it to LeftLion Reviews, LeftLion, The Oldknows Factory, St Anns Hill Road, Nottingham NG3 4GP...

Book

CD Album

CD Album

Patrick Wright Iron Curtain: From Stage to Cold War

Drive-By Argument Drive-By Argument

The Recovery The Recovery

Nottingham Trent professor Patrick Wright is a master of the ‘cultural’ biography. Following on from his seminal biography of the tank, he now turns his hand to this evocative metaphor and proves conclusively that the story of the Iron Curtain began well before Churchill mentioned it in his famous post-war speech of 1946. Obsessive, informative and entertaining, the book is a unique alternative to the usual staid historical offerings. If this book were an alcoholic beverage, half of it would it would be a glass of champagne in the World Service, and the other half would be a home-brewed real ale in the Trip. James Walker

The sound of this band has already been claimed for all the current favourite genre-splitting labels from techno-indie through to emotronica.

Too heavy for the indie crowd, too techno for the emos, multiple layers of frenetic drumming, jagged guitars and rippling keyboards, complete with the bells and whistles of post new rave, making for a heady eclectic mix that never falls the wrong side of experimentation for its own sake. Both Disco Storm and Dance like No-One’s Watching could sit quite easily alongside either debut albums from The Bravery or The Killers. Yes, Drive-By Argument are another synth-based indie band and aren’t really offering us anything new here, but with more hooks than Liberace’s wardrobe these are songs that will set-up a long and welcome residence in both your feet and in your head. Johnny Royall

This Nottingham based guitar band has been playing together since the start of 2005 and have supported bands such as The Raveonettes and Morning Runner around prominent live music venues in Hoodtown.

Singling out any one track from this album would be doing the other songs a serious injustice with each one sounding like a mini-masterpiece. The running theme of the album is volume, the guitars provide plenty of tuneful ammunition backed up by the purposeful drumming of Hautenne. This, coupled with Rickers’s distinctive vocal style, gives The Recovery a thoroughly unique sound which deserves to be investigated further.

Buy if you like: the swathe of populist history books available at the moment, but need a break from Hitler.

Buy if you like: The Killers, Bloc Party or Shitdisco.

Buy if you like: Delays and Mogwai. Dan Skurok

(Lizard King Records)

(Oxford University Press)

Out now, £18.99 www.patrickwright.net

(Retarded Records)

Out now www.therecovery.co.uk

Out now www.drivebyargument.co.uk

CD Album

Book

CD Album

Hadouken!

Music for an Accelerated Culture

Ian Shipley Notes of a Gravedigger

Steve Pinnock Against The Flow

Grindie, new rave, or whatever you call it, Hadouken! is all about keyboards, computer-based sound clips and drum machines, drawing influence from eighties electronica bands. Their debut album has been a long time in the making. First single, That Boy That Girl, was released over a year ago in a storm of publicity as a limited edition in hand-coloured covers. The majority of the album is made up of chanting club tracks with a few pop tunes thrown in for good measure. The album is never going to be everyone’s cup of tea and can be a touch on the repetitive side but there are signs that they might mature into a great dance band.

Alison Emm

Ian Shipley dug graves for two decades at Newark cemetery before finally setting up his own business.

In this factual account he pulls open the lid on this honourable profession and recalls the various trials and tribulations of his profession over 86 pages. Highlights include collapsed graves, exhumations at midnight and my favourite - the cast of quirky characters who willingly hang about such places. Informative and enjoyable, but more detail about the author would have been nice. The Pit and Pendulum of local modern history books. James Walker

Drawing on influences from Ireland, Cuba, Brazil and Spain, Steve Pinnock has created an intricately devised album that all fans of folk, jazz and latin will appreciate. With such a diversity of style, Pinnock manages to surprise the listener throughout the album. Man In Havana is a personal favourite, an upbeat journey through Latin America, whilst Irish Eyes, beginning softly before evolving into a thunderous jig, makes for another special track. Even if you are a novice when it comes to World music, you will still find this enjoyable! Jack Tunnecliff

(Surface Noise Records)

(Narrowminded Productions)

(Stamford House Publishing)

Buy if you like: The Prodigy or The Chemical Brothers.

Buy if you like: something to read whilst sitting on the steps of the Council House this summer when your Byron Boots start killing you and your black lipstick is starting to melt.

Buy if you like: John Martyn, Django Reinhardt or Bert Jansch.

Out Now, £6.99 www.patrickwright.net

Out now www.hadouken.co.uk

Out now www.stevepinnock.com

CD Album

CD Album

Book

The Pigeon Detectives Emergency

XS.iF The Hip Hop Disciple

King Henry England, my England

Emergency sees the band pick up from where their recent debut album left off. The songs still follow the same formula, though there is an added maturity in the lyrical content. Similar themes are explored but with more sensitivity and emotion this time round. Sonically, the band sound more diverse now too, giving the songs an extra dimension, making for a more consistent listen. Collectively, Emergency is an impressive piece of work, no song sounds out of place and pretty much everyone could be a single; Say It Like You Mean It and Keep On Your Dress are particularly infectious. But if you weren’t a fan of the band before, this album will not be changing your mind. For the rest, this is everything needed to keep their current fan base happy. Joe O’Leary

XS.iF, aided by what appears to be an ever-growing UK hip hop family, has delivered an album that defies the rules. You get the impression he’s more interested in giving us a piece of his creativity to admire rather than adhering to the stereotypes that often accompany a genre obsessed with image. The album contains tracks that almost sound like a collaboration with Royksopp and others clearly written by somebody who lived in 1990s Britain whilst all the time there are splashes of hip hop as we all know it. The lyrics, too, are thoughtful at times with an interesting array of subjects neatly woven into a conformity that this arena demands. The future looks bright for this talented and connected performer. Pete Connell

Welcome to the most self-indulgent rant of the century, as an unnamed male goes on an eloquently wordy killing spree through modern England.

Not so much showing contempt towards taboo as having unprotected sex with it in a bad sit and then wiping itself on the curtains afterwards, the book details everything from incest to a cat anally raping a baby, making the Marquis De Sade seem like Enid Blyton. Gloriously iconoclastic, it is written in an elegant and witty prose - though slightly too long for my liking. If this book were a pub in town, it’d be a 3am brawl outside Oceana with duelling rapiers, after a six-hour absinthe binge. See the interview with the author on page 7 of the very magazine you’re holding. James Walker

Buy if you like: the Kaiser Chiefs or the Arctic Monkeys.

Buy if you like: The Roots or Outkast.

Buy if you like: Vernon God Little, American Psycho.

(Dance To The Radio)

(WithMe Music)

Out now www.thepigeondetectives.com

(self-published)

Out now www.myspace.cn/xsif

Out now, £6.40 www.kinghenry.info www.leftlion.co.uk/issue23

29

Gemini (May 22 - June 22) You feel you need to make your views count. People died for you to have the right to vote, so it’s important right? But choosing one right-wing white man over another when they all seem to spend their time bickering and filibustering ain’t easy. So just bear in mind that if you vote for Pedro then all of your wildest dreams will come true.

LEFTLION ABROAD

Carnival of Culture, Kreuzberg, Berlin, May 2008.

Cancer (June 23 - July 23)

How not to get a photo for LeftLion Abroad:

Sometimes you feel like you’re trapped in a cage by the rules of society and the seemingly endless list of social niceties that you are made to conform to. And sometimes you feel you are trapped in a cage because you got drunk and unconscious and a hillbilly gave you a fireman’s lift back to his secret human zoo. Tough break kid!

1. Go to carnival in the capital of Germany that celebrates cultural diversity.

Leo (July 24 - August 23)

5. Be jumped on by panicky German mate, who explains to you that raising your arm in that way is not only frowned upon by the locals, but it’s actually been illegal in Germany since 1945.

Relationships have been playing on your mind over the last few weeks. As you get older the mind becomes plagued with concerns over your age and whether you are on the right course. However your mind will come to a new plateau this week when you find yourself shouting your loved one’s name from the rooftops. The bad news is they will still refuse to let you back into the house.

2. Try to get picture of a LeftLion sticker during a procession.

3. Affix sticker to back of hand, and raise it skywards.

4. Wonder why people are looking at you funny.

6. Feel a bit sheepish.

If you can get a photo of a LeftLion sticker or copy of the mag somewhere dead exotic, send it to info@leftlion.co.uk.

Virgo (August 24 - September 23) Ever get one of those itches that you just can’t scratch? No matter how hard you try to reach it you just can’t seem to get the right spot? Either something is wrong in your personal life or you have infectious rabies. Make a call to either the Samaritans or Rentokill.

Libra (September 24 - October 23) Everything is going like clockwork for you at the moment. While some would say that makes you reliable and dependable, others would refer to it as repetitive and boring. Find the time to look at your inner mechanisms and the things that make you tick. I’m the reason it’s called Greenwich Mean Time, mofo!

Scorpio (October 24 - November 22) Do things differently this month. Get a cat and train it to feed you. Get a dog and bite it. Alert the doorbell when guests pop by. Send a series of letters to the postman. Force a cow to drink milk.

Take the baby to work and make it the boss. Buy dinner for your lunch.

Sagittarius (November 23 - December 22) The boss told me to be careful what I said to this guy. He had connections and we didn’t want to argue with him, but at the same time it was only right that I got the coat back. It was a gift from my wife. So I rang the doorbell and as he answered I smacked him in the nose, grabbed the jacket off the kitchen table and got out of there. Job done!

Capricorn (December 23 - January 19) Even the most prominent scientific minds will admit that there are phenomena that do not adhere to theory and cannot be rationalised. However, the reason your family and so-called friends talk about you behind your back and generally despise everything you say and do is not one of these things. You suck!

Aquarius (January 20 - February 19) Love doesn’t necessarily make the world go round, but some might say it’s what makes the ride worthwhile. The journey your heart has taken recently may have been slightly bumpy, but you will soon realise that you can pull over and have a cry on the hard shoulder even if you haven’t really broken down.

THOMPSON TWINS

THOMPSON BROTHERS

Pisces (February 20 - March 20) You wonder, ‘How can I leave it all behind if I am just coming back to it? How can I make a new beginning if I simply return to the old?’ But the answer lies in the return. You will not come back to the same thing. What you return to has changed because you have changed. Your perceptions will be altered.

Aries (March 21 - April 20) It was Tammy Wynette who sang the words ‘Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman...’ Remember this wisdom as your father tries out something new this month. He was in town last weekend all dragged up. He looked rank, but he was still copping off with that chavvy Darren bloke from the Meadows you went to school with. Stand by your mam!

Taurus (April 21 - May 21) When you do your next weekly shop don’t bother going for all the saver multipacks you normally stock your trolley with. You’re not going to have time to use them in this life and you can’t take them with you to the other side. Except for those Lidl fishcakes, the taste of which will stay with you through hell and beyond.

30

www.leftlion.co.uk/issue23

(1977-93) Years in operation: 16 Me Up Biggest hit: You Take

(#2)

Years in operation: 50 (1958-2008) Biggest hit: Olive Oil

1

Stupid baseball caps:

Hair-frizziness: 66.6%

Hair-frizziness: 100%

0 - because they’re not Twinniness (out of 10):

Twinniness (out of 10): 10 - because they are

Stupid baseball caps:

0

Nottingham City Council

proud to present

Nottingham City Council is proud to present an exciting programme of events and activities for you to enjoy this Summer…

Love Parks Week

Nottingham Open

A fun event for all the family with a range of activities to participate in.

One of the world’s most prestigious tennis tournaments.

14 JUNE, ARBORETUM

16-21 JUNE

Outdoor Theatre Veterans Nottingham Castle Weekend Peter Pan 14 June Charley’s Aunt 28 June Henry V 17 July Much Ado About Nothing 24-25 July A Midsummer Night’s Dream 22 & 24 August

Newstead Abbey Much Ado About Nothing 6 July The Merry Wives of Windsor 11 July Pinocchio 16 August

21-22 JUNE WOLLATON PARK

An exciting weekend of family activities to mark Veterans Day 2008.

One City One World

12 JULY - 10 AUGUST VARIOUS VENUES

A season of events including: One World Festival 12-13 July, Old Market Square Mela 27 July, Old Market Square Caribbean Carnival 9-10 August, Forest Recreation Ground

Splendour live music festival 19-20 JULY WOLLATON PARK

Join Kate Nash, The Charlatans, Paolo Nutini, Rufus Wainwright and more for a real party in the park.

Riverside Festival

1-3 AUGUST VICTORIA EMBANKMENT Live music, fairground rides, street theatre, craft workshops and more along the beautiful Trent riverside. Fireworks spectacular 10.30pm on Saturday.

Nottingham Children’s Festival

1-17 AUGUST VARIOUS VENUES

A myths and Legends themed celebration for children from the age of 0-12.

Exhibition: Laura Knight at the Theatre

19 JULY - 28 SEPTEMBER NOTTINGHAM CASTLE A major exhibition of paintings by leading British Impressionist painter Dame Laura Knight.

Nottingham Pride

26 JULY, ARBORETUM Celebration with music and information stalls.

Latin Party in the Park

10 AUGUST NEWSTEAD ABBEY

Live outdoor Latin and Salsa from the Fabulous Cach’e seven piece band and dancers.

A Country Affair 29-31 AUGUST WOLLATON PARK

Traditional ‘county fair’ style show with fairground, bands, workshops, crafts and great food and drink.

As well as the major events listed there will also be hundreds of activities taking place in Nottingham’s libraries, museums and parks throughout the summer.

To find out what’s happening where and when call the Nottingham Tourism Centre on 0844 477 5678 or visit www.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/whatson

ART&DESIGN ATNOTTINGHAM TRENTUNIVERSITY DEGREESHOWS 2008 UNDERGRADUATE DEGREE SHOWS JUNE 7 – 12 NOTTINGHAM ‘EXiiT’ PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL JUNE 3 – 13 For festival locations visit www.exiit.co.uk

NOTTINGHAM CATWALK SHOWS Fashion Design May 23 Knitwear Design May 29

POSTGRADUATE MA EXPOSITION JULY 12 & JULY 14 – 19

For all degree show locations and information visit: www.ntu.ac.uk/ntushow tel: 0115 848 8436 email: ntsad@ntu.ac.uk