Glasgow kiss

Grant McPhee’s second volume of oral history, after 2024’s Postcards From Scotland, chronicles the emergence and development of a distinctive Scottish music scene in the 1990s, at some remove (geographically, sonically and ideologically) from Britpop and its creative sterility, vacuous jingoism and ladsladslads loutishness. Along the way, Scene Within A Scene: Scottish Independent Music 1992-2001 tells the origin stories of beloved bands such as Belle & Sebastian, as well as piquing the reader’s interest in the likes of Lung Leg, the Yummy Fur, Pink Kross and the Poison Sisters, none of whom found mass success.

The inclusion of “Scottish” in the book’s subtitle is perhaps slightly misleading; aside from short sections on outfits such as the Beta Band, Dundee’s Spare Snare and Edinburgh eccentrics The Male Nurse and Country Teasers, the focus falls predominantly on the capital’s great Central Belt rival Glasgow. And understandably so. Vic Galloway, formerly of Huckleberry/Hail Caesar! and now a BBC presenter, explains Glasgow’s gravitational pull with reference to its sizeable population, its general music culture and its independent infrastructure. However, what McPhee’s book perhaps most powerfully underlines is that this infrastructure had to be built, painstakingly, by those with both vision and determination.

Take Craig Tannock, for instance. In a city where pay-to-play policies abounded and pubs were largely only interested in covers bands, Tannock was heroic in understanding the fundamental importance of providing young musicians with access to dedicated performance spaces as well as instruments and gear. Venues need enthusiastic promoters, of course, and Tannock’s 13^th Note had Alex Kapranos and RM Hubbert, whose Kazoo Club nights dispensed with “musical gatekeeping” in favour of a principle of open-mindedness.

Hubbert comments: “I joke about it sometimes but it gave us all a place to go and be shit at being in a band. And the opportunity to get good at it.” Sandy Black of the Poison Sisters similarly recalls revelling in having “finally found somewhere to play that would tolerate (and actively encourage) our shenanigans”. He adds: “It really was wonderful to see these bands transforming before our very eyes and ears in such a comparatively short period of time.” For Kapranos, “[t]here’s nothing more thrilling than knowing something exciting, something with substance is happening, but you don’t know what it is yet”. The man who subsequently found fame as the face of Franz Ferdinand expresses a measure of guilt that not all alumni of the Kazoo went on to receive the wider recognition they deserved – but the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that he personally did all he could to promote their cause.

One of the bands to benefit from stage time at the Kazoo was Urusei Yatsura, whose only previous performance had – according to guitarist/vocalist Graham Kemp – taken place “at a house party in a deconsecrated nunnery”. They were one of the first outfits to graduate to actually making a record (a split single with Kapranos’ the Blisters) – and then published a handy “how to” guide in the form of a comic strip in their fanzine Kitten Frenzy. Like Urusei Yatsura, the Delgados also founded a label and put out a single, but the scale of their ambition for Chemikal Underground appears to have been far greater than Urusei’s for Modern Independent. Despite being (in the words of vocalist/guitarist Emma Pollock) “so inexperienced”, they were nevertheless “very principled”, appreciating from the outset the need for both clear and consistent branding and an effective distribution deal.

As in any burgeoning scene, serendipity played a key part. The unprecedented platforming of a supposedly “unsigned” band on Top Of The Pops brought bis into the nation’s living rooms, and subsequent sales of The Secret Vampire Soundtrack EP, which was just Chemikal’s third release, raised the fledgling label’s profile as well as its bank balance. Further good fortune was to come in the form of a loan from drummer Paul Savage’s dad, which enabled them to buy their own studio, christened CHEM19. Resources were duly invested in promoting two of the finest acts ever to come out of Scotland, Mogwai and Arab Strap. Delgados bassist Stewart Henderson confesses that “Mogwai have extended levels of courtesy and patience to us as a record label that frankly we wouldn’t have been able to survive without” – though Savage diplomatically ventures that both Mogwai and Arab Strap profited from Chemikal’s propensity for “taking the eye off the financial ball”. Friendships were inevitably strained when creative decisions were restricted by budgetary constraints, and especially when both bands left for major labels – but there were no hard feelings (Arab Strap were soon welcomed back into the fold) and mutual respect endures.

Generous support for Glasgow’s scene came from further afield too: from Dutch punk band The Ex, who awakened a number of musicians to the possibilities of DIY collectivism; from record labels based outside Scotland (in particular, Slampt in Newcastle and Guided Missile in London); and from John Peel, who championed countless bands through regular radio play and session invitations.

The value of Peel’s patronage draws attention to the fact that this is a story set in a different time – a pre-digital, pre-social media age when airplay and physical distribution were critical. Henderson hints that had Chemikal launched five years later, in 2000, its existence would have been far more precarious. Meanwhile, Belle & Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch was among those who benefitted from the government’s New Deal for Musicians, which massaged the official unemployment statistics while incentivising participation both financially (housing benefit paid, an extra £10 a week on top of dole money) and through access to local studio Beatbox. But, as Lung Leg’s Annie Spandex laments, the scrapping of the scheme as well as enforced job searching, arts spaces losing funding and the introduction of university tuition fees have had a detrimental impact on people’s ability to make music.

Nevertheless, the lessons we can learn from the Scottish scene remain relevant today. McPhee concludes by insisting that the book’s message “is neither nostalgic nor cautionary. It is practical. You do not need to be chosen. Scenes still grow from contact, friction, shared spaces and stubborn belief.” Tom Worthington of Bosque Records puts it even better: “Do it yourself, with friends, and don’t wait. If there’s a door, open it. If there isn’t, put a hinge on a wall and call it a door.”

(An edited version of this review originally appeared on the Buzz website.)

Keeping on keeping on

Many happy returns to the Quietus, which has turned 18. Its birthday should be celebrated not only because of the consistently stellar quality of the articles it publishes week in, week out, but also because simply continuing to survive in the current climate, at a time of dwindling ad revenue, is a hugely admirable achievement.

That much was underlined by a less welcome announcement today: the sudden closure of The Skinny. The Scottish arts and culture magazine, in existence for more than two decades, has succumbed to the dreaded combination of "funding pressures across the sector, rising costs and the ongoing cost-of-living crisis", and will I suspect be much missed north of the border.

All the more reason to be thankful that the Quietus continue to fly the flag for quality music/culture journalism, in a media landscape that looks increasingly barren and impoverished.

Factory records

Prolonged exposure to commercial radio might constitute extreme audio torture in my book (the gurning hosts, the jingles, the soul-destroyingly appalling music on high rotation) - but its origins are surprising and fascinating.

As Kieran Morris recounts in an article for the Guardian, it all began in 1970 with the United Biscuits Network (UBN), which took inspiration and indeed staff from Radio Caroline and other pirate radio stations of the 1960s, and was established as a means of boosting the morale and productivity of factory workers engaged in monotonous and repetitive labour.

It was also, Morris notes, "a unique opportunity for fledgling DJs": a 24-hour enterprise with top-spec kit. Many of those who cut their teeth at UBN went on to have instrumental roles in the emergence and development of commercial stations around the country.

UBN is perhaps not a cultural milestone to be celebrated, admittedly - not least because it propelled Dale Winton to national fame - but the fact that commercial radio's roots lie in a not entirely benevolent industrial strategy nevertheless makes for an interesting story.

Down in the Tube station at midnight

Mark McEvoy's pictures taken on late-night Underground journeys in the 1990s are richly evocative of time and place. Framing them in a piece for the Guardian, Luke Turner observes that McEvoy effectively documented "the last years of the fiercely tribal nature of British youth culture before it was flattened out by the internet, as streaming homogenised music tastes" - which makes them of significant historical interest despite being only 30 years old. He may not have known that seismic change was on the horizon, but he makes clear that the attempt to capture "the wide range of British culture in that space at that moment" was very deliberate. (In this respect, it's no surprise to learn that the pictures have been published as a Cafe Royal zine.)

Turner also notes that there are, of course, no smartphones on view. This is something I recently reflected on in relation to the above-ground street photography of Joan Piekny from the same era. While her concern was with how smartphones have fundamentally changed people's public behaviours, I pointed out that they've also "giv[en] anyone the means to take pictures in public without a giveaway long lens". It must have been obvious that McEvoy was wielding a camera, and so the fact that he managed to capture such candid scenes apparently without arousing the irritation or ire of visibly refreshed travellers is some feat.

Shock factor

Jeremy Beadle was known for springing surprises, but, even still, I hadn't anticipated that the jovial prankster might have been an avid collector of grisly true crime magazines.

Writer David Barnett was among those recently invited by York St John University's Hauntology and Spectrality Research Group to peruse the many magazines that Beadle had amassed by the time he died in 2008 - including an issue of True Detective that he guest edited. Barnett's report on a distinctively MR Jamesian endeavour for the Observer is here.

"This project is simply about people"

As far as I could recall, I first came across Lee Shulman as the director of I Am Martin Parr - having forgotten I'd written about the pair's collaborative exhibition at Magnum Paris Gallery three years earlier. 

That show sprang out of Shulman's main endeavour, the Anonymous Project, and in this Blind article published at the time, he talks about the joy of (re)discovering other people's Kodachrome slides - time capsules offering portraits of families and friends that are at once intimate and laden with mystery.

The shock of the newThe familiarity of the old

I'm all for discovering new artists, but it's nevertheless a comfort when bands that have been among your favourites for decades are still producing solid albums rather than fading away into mediocrity. With There Near and Soft Control, old dogs Dinosaur Jr and the Afghan Whigs could hardly be accused of trying out new tricks - but would we really want them to?

Buzz reviews here and here.

Get Therapy?

Credit to Cardiff's own Russell Todd for resisting the temptation to select nothing but Troublegum tracks for his recent Toppermost post on Therapy? I'm not sure I'd have that willpower. As it is, he limits himself to blackly comic tone-setting opener 'Knives' and single 'Trigger Inside', plus a re-recorded version of 'Die Laughing' featuring the Manics' James Dean Bradfield. (Oh to have seen Bradfield accompanying Andy Cairns on stage at the Full Moon...)

For a band with a back catalogue as extensive as Therapy?'s, narrowing it down was always going to be challenging. 'Teethgrinder' was practically a dead cert, but Babyteeth's 'Loser Cop' is an astute choice - the fact that, on a debut mini-album full of "spiky, grubby noise", it "freewheels into avant garde, Zappa-esque jazz" was indeed an early indication that Therapy? "were going to be difficult to pigeonhole". (This, I think, has also been to their detriment to an extent, in that they've never been fully embraced by the metal community, or indie types, or noise rock enthusiasts.)

More controversial still is the selection of the orchestral cover of Husker Du's 'Diane' from Infernal Love. The song's creator (and one of Cairns' heroes) Grant Hart detested what he saw as a grotesque perversion of the original, and the band now play a version that is much closer to Husker Du's - but I would agree with Todd that its shock value (musically and lyrically) endures three decades on, even if it makes most sense in the context of that baroque, overwrought LP.

Todd is also quite right to describe Therapy?'s most recent album Hard Cold Fire as having "no right to sound as good as it does" (something implicit in my own review). All of which makes me take seriously his suggestion that Crooked Timber - a record that had passed me by - is a late-career highlight worthy of investigation.

"The beating hearts of our high streets and communities"

Live music venues have (mercifully) enjoyed a reduction in business rates before, and will now do so again - along with pubs and clubs - from April next year. But independent bookshops have been excluded - something that the Booksellers Association, with the backing of a number of high-profile authors, is quite understandably petitioning the government to change, on the grounds that they too "deliver significant community benefit" and therefore "deserve targeted support".

As the Guardian's Emma Loffhagen explains, the impact of projected business rates increases are already evident in terms of bookshops tightening their belts and avoiding investment in "stock, staffing, events or their premises". Closures will almost certainly also be a consequence.

One of those firmly behind the Booksellers Association's open letter is Philip Pullman: "In the current encircling corporate darkness, independent booksellers are lighthouses. They are almost the last beacons shining to remind us about private reading, personal discovery, and the life-saving joy of encountering minds and hearts that speak to us as one person to another." This glosses over the existence of public libraries - but of course those too continue to operate in the face of significant financial constraints.

In the US, the picture appears to be surprisingly positive, with a staggering 31 per cent more stores opening in 2025 than in 2024. Here in Cardiff, too, there are positive signs. I've long bemoaned the lack of indies beyond the likes of Troutmark, which only deals in second-hand books, but it now has Love Stories opposite, specialising in romantic fiction. (Incidentally, I hope Alice Fraser had a chance to visit when she was in town last month.) What's more, on the way to Wellfield Bookshop recently, I came across a new shop on Crwys Road. If such places are to survive and indeed thrive, they need custom - but they also need the support of a sympathetic government.

"I still felt unseen and unheard and misunderstood and lonely"

You learn something new every day - and today it was that Rivers Cuomo maintains a spreadsheet called "The Encyclopedia o'Riffs" and was originally in a Yngwie Malmsteen-inspired hair metal band called Avant Garde.

I've not really bothered with Weezer for years, but as a big fan of both their first two albums and Stevie Chick's Guardian features, I read this one with interest.

Cuomo was never your average frontman: raised in a Buddhist ashram, self-confessedly nerdy, fled to Harvard at the height of the band's fame to escape the pressure. Musicians aren't immune to anxiety and self-doubt, but what's particularly interesting in this interview is the sense of responsibility that Cuomo evidently feels towards his bandmates as Weezer's chief songwriter. That their immediate and continued success is largely in his hands clearly weighs heavy on his mind. On the new album (once again self-titled), that seems to have translated into a focus on giving the fans what they want.

2026 also marks the 30th anniversary of Pinkerton. It remains a difficult album, especially after the bubblegum pop-grunge of the self-titled debut, but Chick is right to signal its redemption arc, with critics as well as fans.

Trans Europa Express, Part II

Eighteen years on from our first cross-continental Europe jaunt by train, we did it again - this time with no wedding to go to, and with a teenager in tow. The mind boggles at how we managed to coordinate it all first time around - hats off to Byway for doing a sterling job of joining all the dots on our behalf this time (and to the European rail network for being exceptionally efficient).

The highlight of the trip, perhaps inevitably, was the journey from Tirano in Italy, through St Moritz and on to Chur in Switzerland on the Bernina/Albula lines. A genuine mountain railway ascends slowly between houses into verdant valleys, before a winding vertiginous climb that remarkably brings you out on a new valley floor, hundreds of metres above sea level, still dwarfed by misted peaks. From there, you pass pools and glaciers before descending gradually. Spectacular doesn't do it justice.

In addition to its charming old town, Chur boasts a cable car - a handy means of being able to enjoy a splendid Alpine stroll at altitude and then a pint with a view without having to trek a considerable distance uphill for the pleasure.

Getting down via the longest toboggan run in Switzerland was faintly terrifying - though perhaps not quite as terrifying as the bus journey back to Chur, our driver braking sharply to sweep around hairpin bends.

Of the cities we visited, the last - Strasbourg - took the prize for the most beautiful, its old town encircled by water. Its cathedral, too, was stunning, especially when illuminated by the special night-time display.

As church interiors go, though, it was slightly disappointing. Salzburg arguably had the most impressive array of churches overall.

However, Munich boasted both the freaky jeweled skeleton of Saint Munditia, allegedly dating back to the fourth century, at Alter Peter and the extraordinary Asamkirche, which looks like the ideal setting for a black mass.

Zurich's churches, meanwhile, were dour and uninteresting - blame the Reformation. It was at least possible to have a drink at the actual Cabaret Voltaire (though beware the almost impenetrably dense guide given to you if you venture into the museum, and the fact that you'll have 'Nag Nag Nag' playing in your head for the rest of the day).

Zurich also presented the opportunity to take a dip in the lake - which Stanley did, twice, despite not having any swimming trunks. Cooling off in Lake Como the next day, on our brief stopover in Lecco, was even more picturesque.

A diet that consisted almost entirely of bread, meat, breaded meat and cheese meant that the main souvenir we brought back to the UK was probably gout.

So, what did we learn? You can buy Bayern Munich-branded lederhosen, beer should be sold in two-pint glasses more widely, Swiss trains cater for camp bears and the young Mozart was able to pop downstairs for a Pot Noodle, a can of Monster and a scratchcard.

Corporal punishment

Karishma Jobanputra's The Body Of The Thing is remarkably assured for a debut collection of short stories. Each tale explores a different facet of female experience, cumulatively forming a portrait of the negotiations, tribulations, anxieties and complexities of modern womanhood. It's also further proof of publisher And Other Stories' eye for talent.

Buzz review here.

Resurrection men

HOLLYWOOD VAMPIRES / THE DAMNED, 14TH AUGUST 2026, CARDIFF CASTLE

Yet another hot, sunny evening at the Castle in this eternal summer, and Julie Andrews is sweetly announcing that the hills are alive with the sound of music. "Turn that shit off!" bellows Captain Sensible in his red-and-white-banded Monster Raving Loony Party shirt. The Damned still know how to make an entrance, half a century after forming.

In truth, the hills of South Wales are currently alive with the sound of crackling flames. The military have been called in to assist the emergency services, concertgoers' phones have pinged with the government warning of the severe wildfire risk and there's a distinctly smoky whiff in the air. And yet here's dapper Dave Vanian - part undertaker, part Prohibition-era pimp - taking delight in singing the chorus of 'Ignite': "I'm gonna set the world alight."

But then The Damned have never played by the rules, not even those of Punk Rock Club. Enlisting a member of punk's sworn enemies Pink Floyd, Nick Mason, to produce their second album Music For Pleasure was a provocative move and an excommunicable offence, as was their subsequent drift into psychedelia and goth rock, and the 1986 take on 'Eloise'.

Barry Ryan's crooner classic isn't the only cover to get an airing tonight; freakbeat gem 'Making Time' by The Creation features on new album Not Like Everybody Else, along with nine other tracks that inspired the band's late guitarist Brian James to first pick up an instrument. The record saw original drummer Rat Scabies return to the fold, and tonight underlines that there's life in the old dogs yet.

It's a shame they couldn't have been accommodated on the same  bill as first-wave punk contemporaries The Sex Pistols, The Stranglers and The Undertones here a fortnight ago. But that seems immaterial when you're witnessing them blast through 'Neat Neat Neat', 'New Rose' and 'Smash It Up' back to back like the last 50 years never happened.

And so - after 'Bela Lugosi's Dead' and an intro video that makes me want to cringe myself inside out - to Hollywood Vampires. This collective - I hesitate to call them a "supergroup", for reasons that will become apparent - could be written off as a Johnny Depp vanity project, following in the footsteps of Keanu Reeves and Steven Seagal, though Depp has at least had the good grace to surround himself with high-profile musicians who cast him in shadow.

While the actor has become permanently trapped in the character of Jack Sparrow, Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry appears to be wearing all of the rich stuff looted from another fictional pirate, The Goonies' One-Eyed Willy. Goth ringmaster Alice Cooper, meanwhile, is a baroque panda with a deeply disconcerting trouser bulge. The quartet, rounded out by guitarist Tommy Hendrikson, are like a hard rock Mount Rushmore: craggy, weathered and extremely big-headed.

The premise is that Hollywood Vampires are paying their respects to legends and personal heroes of rock. The reality is barely any better than you'd encounter at the Globe any night of the week, albeit with overinflated production values. We're treated to (ironically bloodless) covers of The Who, The Doors and Jeff Beck - the setlist reading like the tracklisting of one of those compilation albums put out to coincide with Father's Day that would subsequently get stuck in the family car's CD player and have to be forcibly removed at the garage for the sake of everyone's sanity.

Perry proclaims his enthusiasm for punk with all the conviction of a man signing his own death warrant, but I'd gladly sign mine if it meant not having to hear their version of David Bowie's '"Heroes"'. Remarkably, another Depp-fronted cover - a heinous Hammer-horror-meets-Marilyn-Manson rendition of The Velvet Underground's 'Venus In Furs' that will haunt me for all the wrong reasons - is even worse. At this point, calling them a tribute act feels absurdly generous; they're not so much honouring the dead as pissing on their graves, and hammering a stake through rock's barely beating heart in the process.

And yet.

When, at the end of the main set, they return to more familiar territory - the glorious stomp of AC/DC's 'Highway To Hell', Perry chopping out the riff to 'Walk This Way', Cooper declaring "School's out for the summer!" - a most unsettling thing occurs: a gormless grin gradually spreads across my face. This, finally, is fun of the biggest and dumbest kind, and my genetic hardwiring means that its lobotomising effect is (unfortunately) irresistible.

(An edited version of this review originally appeared on the Buzz website.)

Public disconnect

In this Huck article on her street photography in London in the 1990s (now published as a Cafe Royal zine), Joan Piekny makes an interesting observation: "Back in the '90s, the vibe was different. People would hang around on the streets, taking a break from work to smoke a cigarette, people watch, and sometimes strike up conversations. There was eye contact, communication, and people were more approachable. In the earlier era the only distraction was people lost in their own thoughts, and that could create a beautiful mood to photograph."

It's an intriguing point: has the advent of the smartphone, which monopolises people's attention even when they're out and about in public and on the move, made it more challenging for street photographers to find engaging subjects, and for them to then engage with those subjects? Piekny implies that it has.

Of course, smartphones have also impacted street photography in a more obvious way: by giving anyone the means to take pictures in public without a giveaway long lens. While this might seem democratising and may have facilitated more candid images, it has also reinvigorated decades-old debates around legality, ethics and consent.

Triumph and failure

It's often overlooked, but sport is as much about losing as it is about winning - and the former can arguably generate even more dramatic images.

This Guardian gallery bears out the truth of Greg Whitmore's assertion that Chris Smith "wanted to portray the moments when dreams are broken as well as when they are realised". The late photographer's most powerful pictures are of sporting superstars - Muhammad Ali, Barry McGuigan and Seve Ballesteros - suffering crises of confidence, captured intimately at the moment that circumstances are forcing them to face up to their own fallibility.

Unfinished symphonies

It's one thing to openly release different versions of the same song or album; it's quite another to deceive fans into thinking they're buying the finished product when in fact it's still a work in progress. The Guardian's Adam Benzine has shone light on "the year's worst pop trend" - one of which Charli XCX, Olivia Rodrigo, Raye and more are all guilty: "fans paying the highest price to pre-order what is ostensibly the most desirable, collectible or elaborate edition of an album are instead receiving incomplete or unpolished versions of the music".

The justification given, inevitably, is that vinyl pressing involves such long lead times that albums are being submitted half-baked, with further tweaks and indeed substantial alterations being made during the production process, meaning that the versions available for streaming end up being significantly different.

That's no excuse, of course - those lead times should simply be factored in. It's unethical to expect fans to shell out for LPs in advance in full knowledge that you'll continue to tinker away on the album while their copies are being pressed.

But the pop industry has never cared much for ethics, and Raye's suggestion that the substandard vinyl version could become a collectible is telling: a new means of exploiting fans can - and no doubt will - be marketed as benefitting them.

Tribute acts

When it comes to musicians and fans, the former are (inevitably) more often in the spotlight, literally and metaphorically, than the latter. And yet fandom - its forms, its eccentricities, its excesses - can be fascinating, and books such as Molly Tie's Rebel Grrrls productively shift the focus from those on stage to those in the audience.

The Holy Pop! exhibition currently on display at Somerset House follows in this trend, featuring fans' homemade shrines to dead pop stars. The Quietus' Jak Hutchcraft spoke to its curator Tory Turk about collections, collective memory and hero worship, and over the course of their conversation came to the realisation that "this exhibition is in fact a shrine itself. It's a temple dedicated to the undying power of pop music, the stories and storytellers that guide us through life, and the connection so many of us feel to the art and the artists we love."

Empty promises

There's something strange and unsettling about empty shopping centres and big-box retail units, and about the general air of vacancy (cultural, architectural, spiritual) of these bleak, identikit nowheresvilles they create. By contrast, in Up All Night, Imogen Willetts sees such spaces more positively, as a blank canvas and an exciting opportunity, endorsing their colonisation for cultural purposes.

In this fascinating piece for the Oakland Review Of Books that touches on the literal and metaphorical toxicity of Silicon Valley and AI, Colin Dickey suggests that they can be both, arguing that with Us and Backrooms the strip malls of the Bay Area have become "the preeminent setting for underground labyrinth horror".

Creative licence

Ghanaian film posters - painted by artists who hadn't seen the films, and designed to attract audiences who hadn't yet seen them either - have become the stuff of legend. But I hadn't realised that they were still being made today - albeit to order, for the benefit of collectors.

Not for nothing is the process called "imaginative painting". The artists conjure up things that simply don't appear in the films. "There is a kind of sensationalism to it", says academic Joseph Oduro-Frimpong - and the typically garish, bloody, exaggerated (often comically) imagery certainly suggests as much.

"This delirium of noise"

Popular wisdom has it that the gig that lit UK punk's blue touchpaper was the Sex Pistols' show at Manchester's Lesser Free Trade Hall in June 1976. Not so, according to Simon Price. In a splendid long read for the Quietus, he's made a convincing case for the Ramones' first trip across the pond (and indeed first shows outside the US) exactly a month later as being more energising and inspirational.

The oddball leather-jacketed products of an ailing, near-bankrupt New York initially played at the Roundhouse - sandwiched between the Stranglers and headliners the Flaming Groovies - and then at Dingwalls the following night. Price hails the band's flying visit as "the glue that bound the various factions of the British punk scene together while providing a blueprint of how an assault on the British cultural mainstream was now entirely possible".

As David St Hubbins and Nigel Tufnell muse in This Is Spinal Tap, "[i]t's such a fine line between stupid and clever" - and the Ramones were the band to prove it. Price is right that they boiled down rock 'n' roll to its "base elements", a cartoonish blitz. Their genius was to "take the classic three-minute pop song, trim off the excess bullshit, speed it up, and you've got a TWO-minute pop song". The Ramones' most obvious and principal impact on those who witnessed them on those two nights in Camden was to put a rocket up everyone's arses and get them playing faster.

However, as Price acknowledges, that 1976 visit was actually "a hugely important cultural exchange" in that it also proved to be of benefit to a rabble who were used to modest CBGB crowds: "The Ramones gave London a kickstart. And London gave the Ramones a career, enabling them to leave their mark as one of the most influential bands of all time."

"I’ve never been more excited about a record and I’m not even on it!"

Late last year came the unexpected and extremely exciting news that punk veterans and long-term pals Henry Rollins and Ian MacKaye had teamed up to record new music together. I haven't seen or heard anything more on that front - but at least one of their other joint projects is about to bear fruit.

The pair, whose impressionable teenage minds were blown by attending a Cramps gig together in 1979, are now part of the team breathing life back into the psychobilly legends' label Vengeance Records and setting up Cramps, Inc to look after their business interests. First up will be the release of lost 1977 album Gravest Gravy, produced by Alex Chilton, with at least nine reissues to follow.

Full credit to Rollins and MacKaye for working for free - though that shouldn't come as a surprise. What better way to pay tribute to your heroes than to make sure more people are able to enjoy their genius?

The roads less travelled

As someone who enjoyed pottering around Pontypridd in the company of Daryl Leeworthy and felt an irrepressible urge to go to Middlesbrough for a parmo thanks to Ben Benton, I was always likely to take pleasure in Chris Moss' book Where Tourists Seldom Tread. And so it proved.

It's staggering to me that people can be so uninterested in exploring their own country, and Moss is a kindred spirit, on a mission to make the case for veering off the beaten track in search of unexpected delights.

Buzz review here.

Romance and Roombas

It had been far too long since I'd seen stand-up of any kind, let alone gone along to a Go Faster Stripe recording - so, to make up for lost time, on Sunday I went to two. Alice Fraser was up first, with A Passion For Passion, and then it was ... Alice Fraser again, with Oh Man!. It's impressive enough to hold one one-hour show in your head, but two? Fair play.

Buzz review here.

The King is dead

Despite the recent revelation that Kevin Keegan had Stage 4 cancer, the news of his death at the age of 75 has still come as a devastating hammer blow.

Keegan had a radically transformative impact on Newcastle not once but twice, first on the pitch and then on the sidelines. Both times, his arrival not only arrested decline but reoriented the club in the right direction.

I'm too young to have seen him play (except for during John Anderson's testimonial, when he turned out in green, opposing those in black and white), but tales of his tenacity, work rate and goalscoring prowess were familiar. When he returned as a manager, the impact was almost immediate, and for the next five years we played with an unparalleled verve, dynamism, relentlessness and positivity. Not for nowt was the "Entertainers" tag earned; watching us was rarely less than thrilling.

Keegan's ethos was simply that matches are won by outscoring the opposition, and we accumulated the firepower to blow pretty much anyone away. In those terms, defence was unimportant. (Darren Peacock once pleaded for a defensive training session, which was duly delivered and then never repeated.) It was, quite simply, a glorious time to be a fan - even if ultimately we won nothing more than a lot of games and the hearts of neutrals.

Stories abound of Keegan's rapport with players, and of his decency, honesty and humility as a man as well as a much-decorated player and a manager. But perhaps what made him most special was his passion, charisma and ability to instil belief in both the team and the fans, galvanising the club and the city.

It remains the source of much sadness that Keegan's brief third spell panned out so badly, with Mike Ashley appearing to quell fan unrest by appointing our former double saviour only to be seemingly intent on undermining and humiliating him at every turn. That Keegan won the subsequent court case comes as scant consolation - but, while his relationship with our oafish owner at the time soon broke down, his relationship with the club or its supporters never soured.

Being a fan can be a blessing; it can also be a curse. For the fact that I've been an avid follower for 34 years, through thick and (more often) thin, the blame can be placed firmly at Keegan's door. Thank you for everything, King Kev.

Community spirit

If Ken Loach read Underdogs, he might be seriously tempted to come out of retirement to make one more film. The novel's Northern setting and themes of post-industrial hardship, working-class community and identity would be enough to make his eyes light up.

The book is, in the words of its author Louise Powell, about the "lost world" of "flapping" - unlicensed greyhound racing. Her objective, she told the BBC's Evie Lake, was "to reconstruct that world, not just how it looked" - an objective she has certainly achieved.

Buzz review here.

Success stories

The world of contemporary publishing can seem a depressing place, where publishers slavishly chase trends and churn out lowest-common-denominator slop. The aversion to risk taking is frustrating - though for small presses, which are often seen as nimble and adaptable but which live from hand to mouth, the temptation to play it safe is perhaps more understandable. All of which makes the rise of And Other Stories worth noting.

As co-founder Stefan Tobler explained in Ellen Peirson-Hagger's Observer profile, the Sheffield-based imprint has been able to be bold because it receives annual public funding from the Arts Council. Some (such as Green Man's Fiona Stewart) would question whether the press can legitimately claim to be "independent" - but it seems clear that the money has been liberating as well as "stabilising", and put to good use. Even if, as Tobler points out, "[t]he bulk of money is sales", simply having a guaranteed financial platform to build on is enormously helpful.

The result is that And Other Stories has been able to pursue its mission of publishing innovative contemporary writing, often in translation, and seeking to give readers what they need rather than what they want - or at least what mainstream publishers think they want. According to co-founder Tara Tobler, "[y]ou can do all these extraordinary things without having to cater to market assumptions about how much a reader is or isn't willing to work, because those assumptions are all just about privilege and the assumption that the English market is used to having everything handed to it".

Sales, awards and growth all suggest that And Other Stories is on the right lines. The press is vital proof that arts funding can genuinely pay off - and a valuable success story to cling on to amid challenges that seem to emerge or grow every day.

"A record of the injustice she saw around her"

It's somewhat mystifying and disappointing that Bluecoat have allowed Tish Murtha's Youth Unemployment to remain out of print - but the good news is that British Culture Archive (BCA) have stepped into the breach, in collaboration with Tish's daughter Ella. Vandalism On A Grand Scale features the photographs from Youth Unemployment and the searing essay from which the new book's title is taken.

BCA founder Paul Wright recalls being blown away by the series: "What struck me most was how real it felt. I couldn't understand why it wasn't more widely known. That really stayed with me." He's right to be adamant that the images should be available "in a serious and accessible form. For me, publishing isn't just about reproducing photographs. It's about ensuring important work remains visible." That, in a nutshell, is the BCA ethos generally, and it's nice to see them publishing more books.

Murtha's work is also being made visible through a joint exhibition with Kuba Ryniewicz at the Baltic that runs until April next year. As ever, it's somewhat bittersweet: pleasing that her talent is being more widely recognised and celebrated, especially in her native North East, but saddening (and maddening) that she never enjoyed this respect and admiration she deserved during her lifetime.

Ghost story

It goes without saying (or certainly should) that 'Ghost Town' is fantastic, one of the finest singles ever to top the UK charts. But we hear it now out of context - which is why Wrongtom's Quietus article outlining the sociopolitical, historical and musical circumstances surrounding the song's creation and recording in 1981 is so valuable.

I knew 'Ghost Town' - "like a dub reimagining of a mournful dirge you might hear at a particularly downbeat New Orleans funeral procession" - emerged against a backdrop of unemployment, urban decay and racial prejudice, all of which it succinctly captured. But it transpires that there were tensions within the Specials as well as on the streets, and the song ultimately failed to heal fractures, with the band's demise following soon after.

Wrongtom rightly lauds John Collins' "deceptively avant garde production" and notes his claim that it was Shaun Of The Dead that introduced 'Ghost Town' to a new generation, thus cementing its longevity.

He also points out that when the Brixton riot kicked off in April of that year, "'Ghost Town' was still in the works". Number one that week? 'This Ole House' - "though it's understandable why no one heralds Shakin' Stevens as the harbinger of civil unrest."

Up hill and down dale

Perhaps it's just me, but the cover of Jon Pountney's Valleys instantly calls to mind the "sunlit uplands" that we were promised by bullish Brexiteers. Valleys voters predominantly backed Brexit - not that they've seen any tangible benefits. The vote was fuelled by perceptions that the region has long been overlooked and neglected. Not by photographers, it has to be said - and Pountney sets out to show the Valleys in their best light, often quite literally, and to give them the attention they deserve.

This handsome, well-made photozine - a DIY effort in the face of mystifyingly disinterested publishers, for which Pountney met his crowdfunding target in just 36 hours - draws together a collection of images made over a number of years. A handful are already familiar, having appeared in the 2019 Waiting For The Light exhibition (most notably the net curtain billowing out of an open window in Treforest) or this year's Sheds show at the Turner House in Penarth. But most are new to these eyes, capturing the unique topography of the Valleys - tightly packed houses and scuzzy urban scenes down below, forests and steep green-flanked hills up above. (Not that Pountney draws a clear distinction between the built environment and the natural world - after all, the lesson from his Allure Of Ruins project is that here even the uplands are, if not manmade, then at least manscaped.)

As ever with Pountney, the collection has grown and coalesced organically over time, rather than being the result of deliberate planning. Much of his commissioned work takes place in the Valleys, and he's spent many a day driving around for Allure Of Ruins, so it was inevitable that he would amass a substantial portfolio. He's also called Treforest home for more than a decade now - a Valleys outsider becoming an insider through a real affinity for his surroundings.

In conversation at Treorchy Library as part of the Rhondda Arts Festival Treorchy (RAFT), Pountney expresses that enthusiasm, dismissing Cardiff as far less photogenic. Yet it was in the capital that his connection to (and love affair with) the Valleys first began - curiously enough, through a job taking portraits in Jumpin Jaks in the city centre. At weekends, he explains, the nightclub would be full of revellers from the Valleys, some of whom he got to know and who would invite him up to check out classic cars (a soft spot for which is evident from the photozine).

Pountney tells us that for many years he sought to photograph things that looked timeless, that couldn't be easily placed temporally. Two such examples would be Carpanini's Cafe and the Station Cafe, both in Treorchy and the latter a stone's throw from the library. But both have sadly closed down, so his camera and this photozine are now performing a memorialising function. He talks about bearing witness to a tragic loss of community spaces - and underlines the importance of places like the library continuing to exist.

Valleys has a subtitle: Volume 1. The way is paved for a sequel, so here's hoping it comes along before too long.

Jon Pountney in conversation with Offline's Brian Carroll

"A triumph, a revelation"

Stevie Chick's Quietus piece on Cat Power's 2006 album The Greatest is first and foremost a, well, great appraisal of a truly "miraculous" album - one on which Chan Marshall found her "perfect foils" in the form of the Memphis Rhythm Band, illuminated by songs like the "haunted and hopeless and pretty" 'Where Is My Love?'.

But it's also a thoughtful rumination on "the romantic archetype of the doomed artist" - on the connection between trauma, catharsis and artistic creation, and on the extent to which listeners/fans fetishise artists' suffering.

When I heard she was on this year's Green Man bill, I was distraught at having to miss out. When I discovered she'll be drawing heavily from The Greatest (if not playing it in its entirety?) to mark the twentieth anniversary of its release, I was even more distraught. But there is a part of me that agrees with Chick's verdict on the "erratic nature" of her live performances pre-The Greatest: "If this is so painful to her, we shouldn't be asking her do it." Maybe things have changed over the last two decades, and she's now much more comfortable - but I can't help but feel there might be a measure of guilt at watching her go through it all again.

Women to the front

Molly Tie’s Rebel Grrrls has three principal merits. First, it focuses not only on women but more narrowly on female fans, to explore “what punk was like on the ground – on the dancefloor – rather than the stage” – a facet neglected in most rock histories. Prompted by her own personal debt to punk, she has invited dozens of other women to share their experiences, reflect on the sense of connection and identity they have gained through punk culture, and discuss the political awakening it has inspired.

Second, while Rebel Grrrls’ publication may be timed to coincide with the 50^th anniversary of the “golden summer” of 1976, Tie gives tedious parochial purists a poke in the eye by not only acknowledging that punk began with the Velvet Underground in 1960s New York but also insisting that the genre did not then die with the dissolution of the Sex Pistols and is instead a living, breathing force to this day.

Third, Tie admirably refuses to let the fact that she is a devout, card-carrying (well, badge-wearing) punk cloud her judgement, offering a clear-sighted and often critical appraisal of its various incarnations past and present. With its inherently oppositional politics and focus on solidarity, community and grassroots organising, you would think that punk would be naturally aligned with feminism, providing women with a safe space within a patriarchal society. As Rebel Grrrls makes abundantly clear, though, that has not always been the case. Tie’s instinct to flag up the many blots on punk’s copybook comes from a place of love, but also a determination not to give it a free pass; given its typically idealistic and progressive aspirations and rhetoric, punk should rightly be held to its own high standards.

First-wave punk in the UK may have heralded moral panic for some, but for many young women its explosion was enormously liberating, offering an escape route from social and gender conformity and throwing up unconventional role models like Siouxsie Sioux and Poly Styrene. Furthermore, despite nihilistic strains, there was an emphasis on action that was constructive rather than merely destructive, inspiring belief in the possibility of bringing about positive change. Yet, as Tie notes, very few artists addressed issues that predominantly affect women, and it remained a male-dominated subculture.

Across the pond in the early 1980s, hardcore dispensed with any frivolity, getting leaner, faster and more furious. Most significantly, Tie observes, “[h]ardcore artists weren’t trying to reform existing structures or frameworks; rather, they were attempting to create spaces outside of them”.  However, sexism, misogyny and patriarchy were conspicuously absent from the long list of injustices that hardcore bands railed against – partly, no doubt, because women were once again poorly represented on stage. Hardcore’s aggressive and confrontational style gave birth to slam pits, which made gigs unwelcoming spaces for female fans. Perhaps most interestingly, Tie points out that to those outside the wider punk community, the abstinent straight-edge lifestyle associated with hardcore looked indistinguishable from puritanical conformity, regardless of its adherents’ motivations.

Riot grrrl – which emerged largely in the Pacific Northwest in the late 1980s and early 1990s – was the riposte, both to hardcore’s masculinity and grunge’s passive introspection. It took hardcore’s build-your-own-world ethos and put women front and centre, with issues such as abortion, sexual harassment, violence against women and safety at gigs now firmly on the agenda. Bands like Bikini Kill were, for countless girls, “the gateway drug for radical, feminist punk” – and for a wealth of feminist literature. Yet, as Tie concedes, even this apparently utopian feminist subculture of gigs, zines and activism can be criticised for a lack of diversity, with the community composed almost exclusively of white, middle-class women. Plus, I would suggest, it became something of an echo chamber – a classic case of preaching to the converted.

Nevertheless, the next historical phase, pop-punk, was a significant step backwards – a depoliticised, almost parodic form that saw boys barging their way back to the front, ushering in casual sexism and frat boy machismo. This was also the era in which every aspect of fandom became monetised, making bands’ relationship with fans more exploitative. Even worse was second-wave emo, with its focus on men who felt they had been “wronged” by women and lyrical content that some of Tie’s contributors retrospectively acknowledge contained harmful messages that led to internalised misogyny. Songs that encourage conformity with behavioural expectations are the antithesis of punk, and while Tie does not use the word “incel” herself, it is very much the elephant in the room.

The global turmoil of the last two decades – the political lurch to the right, financial crises and austerity, division and conflict, climate catastrophes – has of course been hugely damaging, but it has at least proven “fertile ground” for punk, which is now resurgent, repoliticised and raging. The likes of Dream Wife and Lambrini Girls have returned to the preoccupations of riot grrrl while performing for a broader audience. Encouragingly, there is now greater awareness of intersecting oppressions, with trans rights and decolonisation key causes. Challenges and concerns remain, though – about allyship and men’s reluctance to speak out, for instance, and about the distressingly frequent dissonance between what is preached from the stage and what is practised in dressing rooms and venue moshpits.

Rebel Grrrls is not a perfect book. Given its ambitious scope and modest length, it is at times inevitably a superficial survey, sacrificing deeper insight for sweeping generalisation; the visceral appeal of the music itself - raw, thrilling - is often buried beneath sustained consideration of its messaging; and the text would have benefited from more assiduous editing. But it is a necessary book - one that may hopefully pave the way for more forensic analyses of specific scenes and subcultures, and deeper explorations of topics such as the connection between punk fandom and activism and the paradox of seeking and finding individual identity within punk tribalism. And it ends by striking the right note: celebrating punk's current revival as a feminist force while warning against hypocrisy and complacency.

(An edited version of this review appeared on the Buzz website.)

Just like old times

Talking about the fantastic pictures he took in Vancouver over the course of a decade, between 1972 and 1982, Greg Girard described the period as "before the money arrived". And yet Vancouver Chromes, the latest zine by fellow photographer Marc Davenant, underlines that even when it did, the old city was not entirely swept away.

Arriving in Vancouver himself after the money, Davenant refused to be seduced by its glossy, wealthy self-image, instead finding himself drawn to depict Downtown Eastside in muted colour: a scuzzy area of down-at-heel shops and cafes, single room occupancy hotels and street art that is physically within walking distance of the modern city's heart and yet metaphorically a world away. It's a place where once-grand public buildings such as the Carnegie Public Library have been repurposed, still standing but poorly maintained. It comes as little surprise to spot a road sign and realise that Godspeed You! Black Emperor named the early track  'East Hastings' after one of the area's most prominent streets, home to many who have been forgotten or actively ignored amid the neoliberal boom.

Particularly striking are the alleyways: long, graffitied, with pipes and cables criss-crossing overhead like an imprisoning web. Davenant suggests that these alleys - often arenas for illicit transactions and transgression - "look like scenes from a 1970s American crime drama". He's right, though, having recently rewatched The Wire, these pictures remind me most strongly of the series' second season, which presents a gritty depiction of Baltimore's port in the late 1990s. Intriguingly, Girard appears to have made the same connection between the two cities: "When Nina Simone did her rendition of 'Baltimore', singing about a 'hard town by the sea' where it was 'hard just to live', I felt she was singing about the place I was living."

"It's all been just a glorious ride"

"I even introduced America to the roundabout" is the sort of bold claim you might expect would secure someone a guest appearance on Alan Partridge's radio show. Fair play to Martha Reeves for including that among her many more celebrated achievements.

Reeves, answering a host of readers' questions for the Guardian, also revealed that her friendship with Dusty Springfield began when they smashed crockery together in the dressing room of New York's Apollo Theatre. The Brit apparently convinced her that this is what we normally do to relieve "anxiety and anger". Well played, Dusty, well played.

Elsewhere, Reeves confessed that her key takeaway from touring the Jim Crow south in 1962 was "learn[ing] how to pee-pee without getting it on our shoes because there were signs saying 'white only' or 'no blacks allowed' or whatever". Talk about triumph in adversity.

And if we're going to allow anyone to get away with having such a gargantuan ego that they're only interested in listening to their own music, then the person who sang 'Heatwave' and 'Dancing In The Streets' has a fair claim.

Portraits of a nation

To mark the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, the Guardian have come up with something rather better than the Yank equivalent of the Willy Wonka Experience that is the Great American State Fair: publishing a selection of 48 photos dating as far back as the Gold Rush in 1852 - some instantly recognisable, some hugely influential, some lesser known but no less fascinating - that collectively help to trace the nation's turbulent history. Big-name photographers are represented, but so too are amateurs who simply happened to be in the right place at the right time to capture moments that are now imprinted on the American psyche.

In her framing introduction, Sarah Churchwell argues that "[p]hotography became the US's perfect art for because truth and myth could occupy the same frame". She concludes that the pictures "show the country inventing itself from evidence, denial, desire, grief. Every image asks not only what was made visible, but what a nation needed it to mean." The captions provided by Felix Bazalgette and Alice Robb are also excellent, succinctly explaining the context of every photo and helping to underline the significance of what they depict.

Feel good hits of the 1st July

1. 'Little Green Apples' - Bobbie Gentry & Glen Campbell

A sensational duet, as recommended by a friend after I'd watched THAT performance of 'Ode To Billie Joe' for the umpteenth time. It's fair to say they don't make 'em like this any more.

2. 'Sound' - Big Brave

As good as In Grief Or In Hope is, I found myself going back to where it all began (for me): this stunner from 2017's Ardor.

3. 'Lift' - Marisa Anderson

I'd never heard of solo guitarist Anderson until she featured among the picks on Big Brave's episode of Deep Digs, on which Thrill Jockey artists take the opportunity to champion others on the label's extensive roster. 2018's Cloud Corner, on which 'Lift' features, is sublime.

4. 'Black Paint' - Ty Segall

Ty Segall can pretty much do whatever he turns his hand to - but just as long as he continues to circle back to chunky fuzz riffs and squealing solos once in a while, I'll be more than happy. New album Chrome can't come soon enough.

5. 'I Am' - Alison Cotton

Sitting comfortably? Well, this track - tense, droning, harrowing - will change all that, as will the rest of new LP The Gods Laugh.

6. 'Gnistran / Hematopoesi / Emlodi' - Anna Hogberg Attack

A lesson that good things frequently come from following up on intriguing Bluesky tip-offs. This - the second of two tracks on last year's Ensamseglaren LP - starts out like a deconstructed orchestra, launches into big-band space-jazz and breaks down into percussive frenzy.

7. 'Capture/Release' - Elder

I've been under the impression that Innate Passage is the only Elder record I'd ever need. Wrong. New album Through Zero is another expansive proggy head-nodder.

8. 'Because The Night' - Patti Smith

An earworm from the music round of a recent pub quiz. (It could definitely have been worse.) How did I not know it was part-written by Bruce Springsteen?!

9. 'Bells Of Ireland' - Mono

I was perhaps a bit harsh on new album Snowdrop, but 'Bells Of Ireland's stirring/soothing piano-and-orchestra majesty is best enjoyed now, before it inevitably becomes a ubiquitous music bed on TV programmes.

10. 'Fireball' - Life Coach

Another of Big Brave's selections on Deep Digs. Life Coach feature guitarist Phil Manley (Trans Am, The Fucking Champs and many more) and drummer Jon Theodore (Queens Of The Stone Age, The Mars Volta), and were never likely to disappoint with that pedigree.

"The power of culture to bring people together"

Travelling to Newport didn't seem like the most sensible thing to be doing on the hottest day of the year - but I'm so glad I did. The draw? A screening of In Those Days, Don Letts' documentary about the experiences of the Windrush generation, plus a Q&A with the filmmaker/musician/DJ himself and an air-conditioned auditorium.

Buzz report here.

Bummed out

In the 1980s, Butthole Surfers effected a weird revolution - and went on to undergo a weird revolution themselves. When they leapt into the major-label mincing machine, it was never likely to end well - and sure enough the perceived failure to deliver a sufficiently commercial follow-up to Electriclarryland led to Capitol dropping them. That follow-up was subsequently released (as Weird Revolution) in 2001, but After The Astronaut is only now being put out in a form approved by the band. Buzz review here.

A friend recently ventured that they're more entertaining to read about than listen to, and I wouldn't disagree. Here are Daniel Dylan Wray's Guardian profile and an extract from JR Moores' Electric Wizards to prove the point.

What are the chances?

One of the many extraordinary details/anecdotes I took away from Imogen Willetts' fantastic Up All Night is the tale of how Detroit techno came to be so enthusiastically embraced in Berlin. Ultimately, it all boils down to Jim Nash of Wax Trax! taking a shine to Clock DVA's 'The Hacker' and inviting the boss of their West German label InterFisch Records, Dimitri Hegemann, to visit. Nash invited Hegemann to stay and then to pick what he liked out of a stash of demo tapes at Wax Trax!'s warehouse. By complete coincidence, Hegemann selected and was instantly smitten by a tape by Jeff Mills, and the rest is history.

That incident (as well as the infamous Sex Pistols gig in Manchester in 1976, among other shows) sprung to mind when I came across this Guardian article on another remarkable sliding-doors moment in music history. There may already have been a compilation album released by Analog Africa ten years ago, but there's surely also a film to be made about the fact that the signature sound of Cape Verde owes its existence to a ship's lost cargo of keyboards and synths washing up on the archipelago's shores in the late 1960s/early 1970s.

"I don't find anything I've done shocking"

Lydia Lunch would, frankly, be terrifying as a bandmate or acquaintance - but she's reliably good value as an interviewee. Here she is, giving appropriately chaotic answers to the Guardian's 10 Chaotic Questions - talking about Suicide's Alan Vega and The Birthday Party's Rowland S Howard (but, pointedly, not Nick Cave), assaulting a belligerent misogynist at one of her shows, how she won't have a funeral, how pop culture is "an existential vacuum", her hatred of sandwiches, and a fake agony aunt letter about whether it's possible to get salmonella from ejaculating into a Thanksgiving turkey.

"Sold down the river"

Us lefty Remainers bemoaning Brexit is only to be expected; it's more significant that so many Leave voters are also appalled by how things have panned out since the referendum a decade ago.

This Guardian article hints at the level of frustrated expectation and disillusionment nationwide. Many of those who backed Brexit - perhaps even most? - feel at best let down and at worst betrayed. In the words of Tony Rutherford, it's been an "absolute nightmare, shambles". David Milne, who also works in the fishing industry, is equally scathing about broken promises and "lies". Certainly, no one - whether in the article or generally - appears willing to celebrate Brexit as an unqualified success.

Of course, some Leavers will maintain that Brexit was the right course of action but that its implementation has been botched and that it could still be done "properly" (by a Reform government). However, I get the sense that it's dawned on a lot of people that "taking back control" - of our borders, of our economy, of our laws - and asserting our sovereignty was a naive jingoistic fantasy in a neoliberal, globalised world, that they were deliberately duped, and that we've made a colossal mistake.

And it's a mistake with enormous consequences. As the interviewees involved in politics make clear, for instance, Brexit has had a volcanic impact on the political landscape, facilitating the eruption of Reform while burying and obliterating traditional parties on both right and left. Even if moves were to be made to rejoin the EU, its effects will be felt for decades into the future.