Latitude 2014 - the curtains open

Dear Sheddists,

tonight yours truly is to be found tuckered up behind his trusty Victrola, sun-burnt and destitute once more as Master Amazon drains the last  pitiful vestiges of the electrofried current account in return for the promise of yet more silver-glinting discs to come. The washing is on the line and the films are ready for processing - yes, Latitude 2014 was indeed a rip-roaring success, so let's return to the scene of the crime...

Base-camp established 

On Thursday morning we load up Veronica the camper-van and set off in search of four days of music, culture, strong drink and hideously over-priced festival food.  Last year we smuggled mrs electrofried's contraband marmalade jars unwittingly past the waiting Check Point Charlie glass-embargoing gendarmerie. This year it's the turn of my bottle of M&S aftershave to evade detection - 40 degrees proof with a mild but tastefully perfumed after-shock.

We're waved through with little more than a perfunctory glance at Veronica's tight-packed interior and it's onward to claim a prime spot in the general camper-van section. I set the girls to work putting up the awning whilst I focus attentions on the 'Green Agenda' by downing a can or two of Mrs Patel's finest cut-price super-strength lager and depositing the empties in a thoughtfully provided festival recycling bag.

Before long we're surrounded by a veritable cornucopia of camper-vannery ranging from the more modern and tastefully decorated, to the old and much-loved rust-buckets of yore.  Unsurprisingly the 'yoof' opt for the latter whilst the more elderly amongst us plump for the former.

In search of food

Camp safely established we set off in search of sustenance. I've booked a spot at the Latitude lakeside restaurant but a fifteen minute wait with ne'er a sniff of a drink or the offer of a humble crust of bread decides it for us.

We leave for the Noodle Bar just round the corner and they produce the goods in something under thirty seconds.  We're not entirely sure what the goods are, but they fill a hole and so it's on to our first taste of festival music.

Inna 40's stylee

The Film and Music Arena boasts a night of electro swing speakeasy hosted by the White Mink club.  I must confess I had not encountered this curious genre before, but within the beat of a heart it has me captivated!  Old style 1940s jazz backed by a rich panoply of electro-beats is exactly what the doctor ordered.

I join the merry throng moshing to the sounds of Natty Congeroo and the Flames of Rhythm and before long the electrofried knee-swing is seen in full action. The next act, on stage for barely five minutes (in every sense of the word), is a vaudeville act comprising a young lady in full flapper attire and a tastefully placed piano. Suffice to say that by the end of a brief, but spirited performance the piano remains firmly in place but the flapper outfit now decorates the stage floor.

Back to the music and this time it's DJ Chris Tofu spinning vintage platters in what the festival programme promises to be his own inimitable 'selector' style.  And a rather jolly thing it is too, punctuated at regular intervals by repeated rewinds and a healthy measure of back-beat accompaniment to go.

The final act is The Sweet Life Society who have, we are informed, spent two days in a bus criss-crossing Europe to be with us. The crowd rises as one to greet them as the opening salvo of 'Swingin' with the Cadillac' lets rip. It's one sweat-soaked glistening cake-walk from start to finish - glorious, glorious stuff and a great way to see out the night.


So stay tuned for the next exciting episode … !!!

journey no. 25 - transitory

journey no. 24 - and the trail of blood led to?

A red line, traced thin across the floor beckons us on.  Is it her … the Nowhere Girl?

Descending in an arc-lit elevator shaft to the basement we set off in pursuit. It's a mad dogs and englishmen noon, blinding and burning us to the pavement.

Passing pedestrians, mirrored and shambling, a strange leathered bicycle-seat jutting out awkwardly toward the flotsam and jetsam of yet another lunchtime journey.  We see cut-up shattered frames, endless shards of city life reflections.

But no, she's not be found here.

Tales from the Apocalypse - in the air

The Cheyenne speak of Wolf Star, sent to steal the whirlwind bag that contains 'The Storm that comes from the West' and now as their thin dreams cover the dank, turpentine forest they prop the body of the late General George Armstrong Custer beside the sparking kindle of yet one more arid camp-site fire.

The magic telephone is placed beside the cadaver and they wait..

and wait…

and wait…..

until at last it rings.

'George, is that you …. ?'

In a white Zen arcade somewhere back of Dealey Plaza a clown dons the ceremonial leather head of a tooth-studded wolverine. He picks up a telephone and dials whilst a skeletal crew, bowed and oiled, clanks past in chains, cutting out an easy path through the forest.

The Cheyenne have gathered to dream. They breathe out. A thousand years fly in peyote nightmares of a dancing clown-head storm. They breathe in and a calling telephone rings.

'George .. is that you???!!!!!!'

Then Wolf Star comes, frozen above them. Lupine and sharp-toothed, her flanks still glistening, she is caught in the air. Hanging, on the line.

We watch as their reverie dissolves, spitting smouldering ashes and a wasted bakelite handset in its wake.

'George, is that you …………………………'

There is no sense he is hearing any of this.

Tales from the Apocalypse - the wolf's eyelashes

He watched her like an animal - lycanthrope howls, needled and cooking up some fine free-base sun in the early hours.  He pined for her.

Every stretch, every shallow, sullen yawn as the hours broke across the top of yet one more turpentine forest morning.  There were saws coming this way, chained and skeletal chanting, easing down the trees in a line of least resistance. The startling flower in some dark, foreign soil that called this fresh field holler…

'Just like a tree, planted by the waters, I shall not be moved.'

Yet he was circling her, scratching out the ground in deep longing. He watched them pass and she danced like fine-spun dew as the skeletal chorus chanted …

'I'm choppin' in this bottom with a hundred years,

Tree fall on me, I don't bit mo' care.'

He marked his territory carefully, claw-cut patterns sundered in the bark, repeating the colour of the glistening flanks he would deem possess.  The feral perfume traces still lingered in his nostrils, musky beckoning.

The skeletal party now no more than the dying echoes of raddled chain in an oily, mosquito haze, he advanced. She was there, sunning as he pounced, pinned to the warming mossed ground. Flying fur and bloodshot eyes roiling under the lashes. She was taken, howling.

Dance on fire as it intends ...

… is a line in the lyrics to, 'When the Music's Over' one of the cornerstone compositions of the mighty Doors.

So why am I dancing?

A week or two ago I bought a Doors' compilation CD called, 'Weird Scenes inside the Goldmine'. Nothing unusual about that - there's a veritable tsunami of such compilations out there, a witness to the premature death of yet another ill-fated rock star. But for me this has special memories. I bought it, in double-disc vinyl format, aged seventeen during my first year at University.

I'd heard the rough-edged 'Roadhouse Blues' erupt from the speakers of the Student Union disco-floor like some mad bar-room brawl, danced with increasing fervour to the cries of 'Mr Mojo Risin'…', the anagrammed Taoist puzzle tucked deep in the heart of the lyrics to 'LA Woman' and embraced passionately with the love of my life to the draining drizzle that presages the arrival of 'Riders on the Storm'.

And now I had to have some for myself!

My very first Doors' purchase, but certainly not the last, 'Weird Scenes' was the perfect introduction to the dark magus of James Douglas Morrison and his intrepid band of fellow travellers.  With each new song I became more and more entranced and during the thirty nine years that followed it has occupied a very special place in my music collection.

The history of the Doors is by now a well-trodden path and there is little I can add other than to observe it was a unique place in time that brought together a dark, brooding and self-obsesseed Neitzschean disciple with three musicians of impeccable standing capable of negotiating hair-pin turns between the colliding worlds of blues, jazz, rock and the classics with seemingly effortless ease.  The plentiful supply of cheap alcohol and psychotic drugs probably helped some, too.

Two weeks ago the long-deleted 'Weird Scenes' re-appeared on the racks, for the first time ever in CD format. How could I resist?  It would be like ignoring a long-lost friend travelling the other side of the street. And so it comes to pass that today the windows of my car are cranked down, the music is cranked up and I'm screaming through Spaghetti Junction with Big Jim as we near the denouement to 'When the Music's Over'.

Let me tell you, brothers and sisters, I am indeed dancing as it intends ……...

Peace … an ending