3:AM Magazine
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04/07/09: Saturday Night at the Movies
By Stewart Home.
The British Film Institutes’s first three Flipside releases of neglected and off-beat British cinema; these DVD and Blu-ray reissues are an extension of the monthly ‘Flipside’ screenings at BFI Southbank. Aside from The Bed Sitting Room (1969), the other two disks are the fabulous London In The Raw (1964) and Primitive London (1965), both directed by Arnold L. Miller. The Miller titles are mondo movies about London and its nightlife in the 1960s. There are variant versions of each film on the disks plus a host of extras, including two great documentary shorts about London strip clubs – Strip (1966) is served up alongside London In The Raw, while Carousella (1966) acts as a side-dish to Primitive London.
I contributed an essay to the London In The Raw booklet, while Iain Sinclair provides a companion-piece to my text for Primitive London. I got quite carried with this engagement, since it was an opportunity to write about London clubs in the 1960s… and very quickly my composition became too long to accompany a film release. Therefore, I chopped out a lot of material before I emailed the text to the BFI and reformatted some of that into an earlier blog (the opening and closing paragraphs were written to make this material work as an online post, the rest is unrevised material I’d cut from my BFI essay). I find the subject of London clubs of the 1960s endlessly fascinating, which is why I ran way over the word count the BFI provided and had to take rather a lot out. Originally, I’d wanted to conclude with a paragraph or three of contextualising remarks, but in the end this also had to go. One of those ‘lost’ paragraphs read as follows:
The fascination with strip and hostess clubs evident in the work of both sets of film-makers represented on this disk reflects the fact that such establishments proliferated in London during the sixties as a direct consequence of the 1959 Street Offences Act, which attempted to sweep prostitution off the city’s pavements in line with the desires of the Wolfenden Committee. It should go without saying that the sex industry didn’t disappear, although large parts of it did relocate to both dank basements and apparently swanky clubs. When strip clubs spread to the vast bulk of cities in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s, a similar cinematic obsession with such establishments was evident in many North American movies. That said, to my eyes and ears, London in the sixties is infinitely preferable to the American mid-west of the nineteen-nineties; the girls were more varied in those largely pre-plastic surgery days and the music was better. The British pop-cultural obsession with strippers was still very much in evidence a few years after the films gathered here were made; one example being the song ‘The Girls Are Naked’ issued by top London mod act The Creation as the b-side to their May 1968 Polydor single ‘Midway Down’.
03/07/09: 3:AM Top 5: Karren Ablaze
Karren Ablaze was editor of the Leeds-based Ablaze! zine back in the 1990s. You can read about it in just about every book on Riot Grrrl. Now, she says her Top 5 English band songs are:
1. ‘Rock-A-Boy Blue,’ — Scritti Politti
2. ‘Thinking,’ — Champion Kickboxer
3. ‘Wings,’ — The Fall
4. ‘Prince The Boat,’ — Soeza
5. ‘Diplomatic Sugar, Naturally,’ — The ‘Club
: Love & Hate - The Second Gathering
After the success of The Recession Sessions Live, Steve Finbow, Melissa Mann, & Joseph Ridgwell invite you all to an evening of readings, music, & more on the theme of love & hate, featuring:
Will Ashon, Paul Ewen, David Oprava, Jenni Fagan, Mark Walton, Heidi James, Emily McPhillips, Steve Finbow, Melissa Mann, & Joseph Ridgwell - with music from Yardghost - plus mush & bile DJ sets.
: Friday I’m in Love
A new feature at Buzzwords, a companion piece to our ‘Saturday Night at the Movies’, if you will. Every Friday, writers and 3:AM editors will discuss clips of pop promos of note (worthy of their love, no less.)
First up in the series is Kitchens of Distinction and ‘Drive That Fast’. KOD always sat uneasy among many bands of their day, the music press didn’t quite know what to make of their name, the fact that frontman Patrick Fitzgerald pushed his homosexuality to the fore lyrically and in interviews, and that such melodic noise could be made by three gawky types rather than a troop of big-lipped floppy-haired sullen boys from the Home counties. While their peers might have been content to pay more attention to the effects pedals deck than lyrics, KOD embodied a peculiar intellectual warmth, dealing with politics (the Thatcher death fantasy ‘Margaret’s Injection’) and, yes, love. Also of note is the pure psychogeography of a resolutely Tooting band (like fellow South Londoners Sidi Bou Said), both the video above’s use of the South London skyline and on tracks like ‘On Tooting Broadway Station’ (live clip here). For those less inclined to sneer, Fitzgerald’s emotional currency could be enjoyed by gay and straight alike. After a quartet of critically acclaimed albums, the band called it a day when Britpop altered the music press’ affiliations even further against their favour. A brief collaboration with Lush’s Miki Berenyi aside, Fitzgerald now records under the Joycean guise of Stephen Hero.
01/07/09: In the footsteps of George Smiley
The Sohemians leave the claret fumes of Fitzrovia behind by organising a guided walk (led by Benedict Newbery), a literary journey in Hampstead to be precise, following in the footsteps of Le Carré’s George Smiley. The walk will trace the action in the novel Smiley’s People, introducing key landmarks from the book on, and around, Hampstead Heath.
Those wishing to participate should rendezvous at Hampstead underground station (Northern line) at 10.45 on Saturday July 11. The contact will be carrying a copy of Punch magazine under his left arm and will be wearing a quizical look. The contact will then lead the group off at 11am. For those who arrive late, the first assignment will be at the Tin Pavilion - indicated on the A-Z as the Sports Ground. Those who have not been terminally ‘health-adjusted’ en route will end up at The Magdala Pub, South End Green (where, incidentally, Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain, shot her lover David Blakeley) at approximately 1.30pm.
: A Night of Anarchy
July 8, 7pm
KGB Bar, NYC
Rob Plath is a 39 year old poet from New York. He is a former student of American poet Allen Ginsberg. Rob has published 7 books of poetry: Ashtrays and Bulls (Liquid Paper Press 2003), An IV Bag Full of Bile (Scintillating Publications 2007), Whiskey and Clay (Pudding House Publications 2008), Squeezing Blood from the Alphabet (erbacce press 2008), Tapping Ashes in the Dark (Lummox Press 2008), There’s A Little Hobo In My Heart Who Forever Gives The Finger To Humanity (d/e/a/d/b/e/a/t press 2008) and Nicotine Stained Scribblings From A Hammock In The Void (Good Japan Press 2009). He has a monster collection of new poems 300 pages in length called A Bellyful of Anarchy (Epic Rites Press 2009) coming out in April. Rob has also published hundreds of poems in nearly 200 different magazines and journals both nationally and internationally. He is co-host of infamous blogtalk radio poetry show ‘Rob & Jack America’ and is editor and creator of an online zine called The Exuberant Ashtray.
In a previous life Tony O’Neill played keyboards for bands and artists as diverse as Kenickie, Marc Almond and The Brian Jonestown Massacre. After moving to Los Angeles his promising career was derailed by heroin addiction, quickie marriages and crack abuse. While kicking methadone he started writing about his experiences on the periphery of the Hollywood Dream and he has been writing ever since. His autobiographical novel DIGGING THE VEIN was published in Feb 2006 by Contemporary Press, in the US and Canada. Wrecking Ball Press released a UK edition April 2007. SEIZURE WET DREAMS, a collection of short stories and poems was released in the UK on Social Disease January 2006. A volume of poetry, SONGS FROM THE SHOOTING GALLERY was released on Burning Shore Press, Spring 2007. DOWN AND OUT ON MURDER MILE, his new novel, will be released in October 2008 by Harper Perennial. He also is the co-author of HERO OF THE UNDERGROUND, the memoir of Jason Peter [2008, St Martins Press]. He lives in New York.
(clip: Tony O’Neill at the 3:AM event, KGB Bar, 2007)
: 3:AM Asia: Howl at Berkeley
3:AM Asia contributor Roland Kelts will be in conversation with acclaimed Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away/Howl’s Moving Castle) on July 25 at the Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley. Roland tells us it will be the first (and likely only) time Miyazaki has consented to such an interview/conversation in public (and probably his last trip outside of Japan.) Tickets for the event are available from UC Berkeley ($25).
: ‘Seething Wells’ - A Tribute
(Me and Swells at an anti apartheid gig sometime mid 80s (I reckon it was with the Redskins) Cheers to Paul Woodwright for the photo.)
By Attila the Stockbroker.
Just about to leave for Glasto last Thursday morning, one final email check…among the spam a message from my footie mate Alan. Title: ‘Have you seen this?’ Open it. Link to Philadelphia Weekly: ‘In extremis: Steven Wells says goodbye.’ Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck.
Two days previously I’d emailed him a poem I’d just written. Must have arrived in his inbox hours before he disappeared off this earth.
Swells, I always thought you’d pull through. I’d read ‘The English Patient’ - your brilliant, witty, moving piece about your simultaneous battle with cancer and the US healthcare system - in the Weekly, swapped emails where you sounded as, well, Swellslike as ever and thought: you’ll make it. This is one roaring, iconoclastic, larger than life, indestructible, stupidly clever, logically illogical everything-demolishing mouth monster who won’t be demolished himself by something as mundane as cancer. But no. Seething Wells is dead. ‘Swells’ and ‘dead’ in the same sentence. We’re all going to die, sure – and our biological health dictates when, not our brain, our spirit, our love of life or our capacity to write verse with the caustic power of concentrated sulphuric acid or prose which immolates crap rock bands, pompous sports stars or anyone else we feel like taking on – but…oh, fuck.
There have already been some fine tributes, mostly from his music journo friends. Here are my memories, and they start at a slightly earlier time. For me, despite his long ‘career’ (he hated that word!) in music journalism, Swells was first and foremost a poet, and then some. I first heard from him in 1981: I’d christened myself Attila the Stockbroker and had started getting up on stage performing energetic political poems between bands. He wrote to me, enclosing his fanzine Molotov Comics, saying he was doing the same up in Bradford, and so were some friends of his including Little Brother, Joolz and Slade the Leveller from a then unknown band called New Model Army. He called it ‘ranting poetry’….and from the moment I heard the phrase so did I.
Our first meeting was performing on the back of a lorry at a Right to Work demonstration in London in November 1981: coincidentally, Paul Weller was headlining a poetry event at the Young Vic theatre that night, and I persuaded Swells to come and ‘crash’ it with me and try and blag a few minutes. Organiser Michael Horovitz, bless him, gave us ten between us and the audience loved it. So did Paul Weller – two weeks later we were supporting the Jam at Hammersmith Odeon. NME editor Neil Spencer was there to review the gig and was impressed as well, sending budding writer and soon to be Redskins leader Chris Moore to do a big review of us at another gig a few weeks later. A music press ‘ranting poetry’ fad was born. And so was a pugnacious punk poetry partnership…
Swells and I did an EP together, ‘Rough Raw & Ranting’ which hit the indie charts, then a book for Unwins ‘The Rising Sons of Ranting Verse’ and for the next few years we saw a hell of a lot of each other. We gigged together, wrestled, drank, argued, and shouted together, watched bands together, went on demos together. But underneath the roaring exterior (and many people will be astonished by this) Swells never really enjoyed being on stage: many is the time I remember him throwing up before we tackled an audience. I guess it was this, plus his realisation that he could reach many more people writing for papers like the NME than as a ranting poet, that made him make the transition, first to Susan Williams, social surrealist feminist rock critic (many fell for it!) and then to the Steven Wells loved (by bands he liked) loathed (by bands he didn’t) and feared (by bands who didn’t know whether he was going to like or loathe them) everywhere.
I carried on being a poet, but we kept in touch as the years went by and every time we met the same roaring, hyper-opinionated clash would ensue. I’d take the piss out of him for choosing nerdy trainspotteresque behind-the-scenes music hackdom as the vehicle for his scattergun obliterations of everything Middle England held dear rather than getting on stage and doing it in front of a live audience like what a REAL stroppy bastard would do. He’d take the piss out of me for stubbornly carrying on being a ranting poet despite the fact that the entire collected ranks of nerdy music hackdom he hung around with thought ranting poetry was FINISHED and RUBBISH and that everything to do with Attila the Stockbroker was complete and utter DOG FAECES.
We’d agree to differ.
Then we’d smile, get pissed and wrestle with each other. And slag off Morrissey.
In the 90s I tried to coax him out of retirement and instigate the Seething Wells Comeback and got as far as booking him for a gig at the performance poetry series I was running in my home village near Brighton – but he phoned a couple of days before to cancel. So I gave up that idea and just enjoyed his demolitions of shit bands, shit football and shit politics in all the publications that would have him. (Plus the humanity, insight and above all the supreme intelligence which imbued all his writing – but I never told him that bit…)
The last time I saw him was by chance - he was was a loud Swellsian vision in a pink satin suit by the Thames as I walked through London with my wife- and stepchildren- to-be. ‘John! John! John!’ Then he moved to the States to be with Katherine, the woman he loved, and and our occasional contacts and spats became more occasional and less memorable – apart from anything else it’s impossible to wrestle via email. For a couple of years, silence. Then one day in 2006 I thought ‘I wonder what Swells is doing now?’ and, because you can these days, Googled him. To my shock and sadness the first thing I found was the ‘English Patient’ article, and I got back in touch and stayed so to the end. A month ago I was congratulating him on a great piece on the corporate hijacking of football and he was doing the same to me about the football poems on my website. (Maybe we were mellowing in our old age). Last Tuesday I emailed him a poem, ‘Dad Rock Antidote Manifesto’ which I thought he’d like. Same old Swells. He was up for the battle, that’s for sure. I can’t believe he’s gone.
This morning I re-read that last piece he wrote, on the edge of death but so full of life, so stark, so self aware, so unutterably Swells. Then I went to visit my much loved old mum, battling bravely against Alzheimer’s, deafness and blindness, saying with dignity and calmness for the hundredth time ‘I’ve had enough, John. I want out.’
Fuck me, life can be unfair.
RIP Swells, you wonderful, stroppy, clever bastard. We’ll miss you.
THE NIGHT I SLEPT WITH SEETHING WELLS (1982)
A far off town and a late night bash
And a double bed was our place to crash
So listen here – ‘cos this story tells
Of the night I slept with Seething Wells!
I didn’t mind – or so I said
But I wish I’d had the floor instead
Cos you’d never imagine the thousand hells
Of a night in bed with Seething Wells….
When he got undressed I had to retreat
From his shaven head and his mouldy feet
The feet that launched a thousand smells
In that fragrant night with Seething Wells
So I kept right close to the edge of the bed
And I pulled the blankets over my head
But eerie snores and stifled yells
Soon woke me, thanks to Seething Wells
And, turning, I came face to face
With a massive boil in a private place
And a couple of hairy bagatelles
Made me run like hell from Seething Wells!
And I vowed right then that if need be
I’d spend the night in a cemetery
Or sleep with dogs, or DEAD GAZELLES
But never again with Seething Wells!
30/06/09: The Missing Links
“To say he had a way with words is something of an understatement – a way with rampaging, amphetamine-crazed, cock-shaft metaphors was closer to the truth. He was a journalist who didn’t so much write as spit, curse and hyperventilate. He was brilliant.” Tim Jonze on the late Steve Wells. More here. * Coming soon from Damaged Goods Records, Archive From 1959 - The Billy Childish Story, a 51-track triple vinyl or double CD compilation. * Ben Myers’ (postcard) Message from the Country. * Bukowski letter sells for $1,500. It reads: “Hold, dear, hold to the fucking walls, and soon you’ll be laughing, you’ll be thinking, how did I ever let it get hold of me like that? All we need is time – to straighten out, feel better, and then make the same mistake all over again.” (via @bookdepository) * Kevin O’Neill’s report on the Michael Moorcock / Iain Sinclair / Alan Moore event (via @stml) * Michael Moorcock’s call to preserve memories of London: The rise of psychogeography was in some ways an impulse to rediscover those old natural paths that I and others like me had trodden through the ruins, to find ways of rediscovering serious memory, something which Peter Ackroyd (with Chatterton), Alan Moore (From Hell) and Will Self (The Book of Dave) were searching out among the virtual ruins of a London that was becoming a shadow played out on the newly tarted-up walls of Notting Hill and Shadwell. * ‘Literary London’ is dead. Good riddance * Suburbia needs a new literary champion * Derek McCormack’s The Show That Smells day at Dennis Cooper’s blog * Tropic of Cancer, Ewan Morrison’s book of a lifetime, the “only book in my parents’ bookcase which was turned the wrong way round with the spine hidden” [read Ewan in 3:AM here] * Courtesy of A Piece of Monologue, William Burroughs and Susan Sontag on meeting Beckett: “He received us in a very courtly way and we sat at a very big long table. He waited for us to talk. Allen [Ginsberg] was, as usual, very forthcoming and did a great deal of talking. He did manage to draw Beckett out asking him about Joyce. That was somehow deeply embarrassing to me. Then we talked about singing, and Beckett and Allen began to sing while I was getting more and more embarrassed.” * Is this the future bookstore? * Len Deighton’s Action Cook Book is back! * Poetry sells! * ‘”The death of literature”, or something’, an interview with Brandon Scott Gorrell [read his 'Two Poems', 'Hardware' & 'my personal ad from the stranger’s dating website is entirely unsuccessful' in 3:AM] * Maud Newton & Alexander Chee on Jean Rhys‘ & Ford Maddox Ford’s affair and the vengeful novels they wrote afterward * [Image: Alphbunny]
: Whatever it is, we’re against it
The relaunch of 3:AM continues apace, with:
- a less cluttered, easier to read front page
- some new team members
- a new separate section for 3:AM Asia on the sidebar
You can also find us on facebook, both at the group and the 3:AM page.
