B Is For Blog

You may have met Alan Zweig already, perhaps through his homevideo documentary ‘Vinyl’ - i haven’t seen it, but the trailer above suggests to me that its exploration of record collectors’ lives is as much about what they (feel they) lack as it is the treasures they’ve amassed. A clip here dips even further into abjecthood. Since then, he’s added ‘I, Curmudgeon’ (with Harvey Pekar!) and ‘Lovable’ (about older still-singles). More an oof than a yay, but OH WELL.

Manchester always assumes a new guise when the evenings begin to draw in and the Christmas markets arrive. The city is a bundle of activity right now (I’ll post a round-up of impending events coming soon), and preparations/fundraisers for our instalment of Ladyfest have been well underway for months.

From November 7th until November 9th, The Zion Arts Centre in Hulme will play host to boundless amounts of friendly carnage and positive (audio) vibrations with music from stalwarts The Slits, Ladyfest veterans The Duloks, Truecore favourites The Bobby McGees, local nutpots Hotpants Romance, ex-Bis laydee Manda Rin and Plan B darlin’ Envy.

There’ll be workshops a-plenty to embroil yerself in, with talks on DIY music promotion, zine-making, self defence and car maintenance, alongside film installations (they’re still taking entries, budding directors!), visual and performance art.

If you want to make and do rather than just go, there’s still time to get involved: Ladyfest general meetings have been taking place every Wednesday for the last few weeks and there are still ones to come on October 29th and November 5th.

For more information (and details of how to help out), head here.

Two fascinating new records unearthed by Drag City-affiliated labels, both those that could fit the ‘outsider’ bracket, if that is your wont. The first is a collection by one JTIV, aka John Henry Timmis IV, a cult musician from Chicago who reportedly had a pretty tough time of it (short summary: put in an institution by his mother, lived on the streets, struggled with drug and alcohol abuse) but still got it together enough to cut a handful of self-funded records in the early Eighties. (more…)

Galvanised is a London-based noisefest of ‘other music’ and sound art that’s now in its second year. For 2008 it’s all about (a) drumming and (b) audiovisual mashups of various kinds - righteous pastimes both. Here’s what’s going on:

Tuesday 7 October
Curated by Kevin Quigley (ICA’s The Experiment), an evening of drum-orientated acts, with five groups of musicians exploring percussive and drumming composition. Café Oto will be adapted to form a visual installation with five uniquely lit performance areas. Acts include headliner Charles Hayward (This Heat,Camberwell Now), Temperatures (Thurston Moore’s favorite London based improv electronic/drum duo), Blood Moon (Manchester’s Cage-ian free rock drum duo) A middle sex (Manchester’s This Heat-inspired proto-punk band) Bromancer (London’s Chaos vs Cosmos spawned primeval drumming). (more…)