Nostalgia.

Belle Vue 2, originally uploaded by mithering.

So, the second edition of Belle Vue finally rolls into town. I intended to review the sold-out first issue back when I finally managed to get my hands on one, but felt that it wasn’t fresh enough to cover as by then most of the print-run had sold out. The cynic in me also decided it was better to wait and see if they had the staying power to produce another issue. Which they have. Obviously. Good for them.

This time round, the cover features a view under the Castlefield railway arches, lovingly rendered by Neil Dimelow, who also provided the ‘view from Cornerhouse’ drawing on the front of the first issue. His finely rendered work looks like something produced by a slightly dope-addled Chris Ware. The magazine contains mostly illustrations, and one photograph. These work fine, but it’s not clear if there was any collaboration between the writers of the pieces and the illustrators.

The writers of this magazine consist of some people who I’ve known for a long-time, some people who I’ve known for a relatively short time, some total strangers, some people whose work I admire, some people whose work I dislike, and some people whose work just fails to engage me on any level. In the main, it’s well-written, and contains some interesting information and reminiscence, but there’s a huge problem with it. And it’s something that editor Joe addresses directly in his opening editorial; (so directly, in fact, that it’s as if his future-self wrote it as a warning message to an earlier incarnation, but past-self went and ignored it anyway), there’s too much nostalgia contained within.

Now, I’m as guilty as the next man for yanking the nostalgia chain. This blog contains several examples of it. But in this case, it is relentless, and it makes me wonder how the magazine would be received by an audience for whom the little details pored over in here are either exotica (I once put on a musician from Columbus, Ohio, who was thrilled to be driven through Prestwich, regarding it as some sort of northern Memphis, Tennessee) or just navel-gazing.

The real challenge for Belle Vue issue Three is not to come up with another dazzling cover, nor to maintain the already high-level quality of writing, it is to harness the talent evident in that writing and force it to look beyond the local history society and over-30s bar-room banter.

I’m already looking forward to it.

Belle Vue issue Two is available from Piccadilly Records on Oldham Street and Cornerhouse bookshop on the corner of Oxford Road and Whitworth Street West. Edit. I saw it on sale in The Britons' Protection this afternoon, so it may be available in other 'appropriate' hostelries.

Little Creatures.

Little Creatures., originally uploaded by mithering.

Just a few tiny things to catch up on.

First up, I’ve now seen Kingfishers on the Irwell in town/Salford two mornings in a row. Yesterday, two shot under Millennium Bridge, near Salford's five-star Lowry Hotel, heading towards Victoria Bridge at quite a pace. This morning, as I sped along The Crescent towards The Old Pint Pot, I saw one heading in the counter direction following the course of The Irwell, low above the river, towards Castle Irwell. Their colours seemed more muted than previous viewings, and I’m not sure if this was because they were juveniles (I hope not, it’s getting cold) or because their colours flare or wane according to seasonal need.

Second, there’s a new issue of Under The Boardwalk out. Under The Boardwalk, FC United's Fanzine! Get one while there are still some left, or download an excerpt, from http://www.undertheboardwalk.net/

Thirdly, I’ve added a Library Thing widget to this blog, and decided to theme it. Have I got 200 graphic literature books? You’re going to find out soon enough.

Finally, a quick plug for little adele - funemployed , a blog put together by one of the wittiest people I know to detail the journey from restructure to relief. Or something like that…

Really Free.

rachaelball, originally uploaded by mithering.

Sometimes things just fall into place. Spent some time on Twitter recently wondering what had happened to Rachael Ball, the fantastic and talented comic book artist who I was lucky to work with for a very short while at City Life. Then, on Sunday, having been instructed that 'those shelves will have to go' I was going through some old boxes of stuff and came across various issues of Hungry and Homeless, a free magazine I used to produce with Mr. Richard Hector-Jones and Mr. Jay Taylor. On top was the one which had a cover drawn by Rachael Ball.



Hungry and Homeless started out as an A4 sheet, folded down to A7 in order to create a pleasing little beast which we used to leave in the bars, shops and public conveniences of Manchester. To quote one issue, "Reviews hardly ever exceed 20 words, features end around fifty, and interviews are usually one question." Those were the rules. We accidentally invented Twitter. In the end we produced about 16 issues, the later ones, including the Rachael Ball one above, were A3 folded down to A6, with covers drawn by a number of comic book 'superstars', including D'Israeli, Evan Dorkin, Sue Platt, Phillip Bond and (to his great confusion) Art Spiegelman. Random interviewees included Arthur Lee of Love, DJ Superstar Justin Robertson, Her out of Bikini Kill, Al Jourgensen of Ministry and Ornette Coleman.



In the spirit of giving, I rescued a small number of spare copies from the bin and will send them to those of you who want them, and who promise me they will not be offended, insulted or otherwise outraged by the offensive juvenalia contained therein. e-mail details to rapwithlester -AT- googlemail -DOT- com (reconstruct the address using Airfix Glue).

The Only Fun In Town

Cover of City Fun issue 20, originally uploaded by mithering.

City Fun was a fanzine published in Manchester in the late 70s and early 80s. At its height it was being published fortnightly. Having had to move from Salford to Grantham just as punk broke, and on the eve of Thatcher's rise to power, it was my talisman, my touchstone, my connection with the opportunities I'd left behind. Possibly. Stuck on a council estate on the edge of town in a family of non-drivers, in a place where the buses didn't run at night, and where there was literally zero entertainment for your archetypal bored teenagers, I had plenty of time to read. Initially the NME, from cover to cover, sometimes Sounds, and very occasionally The Melody Maker or Record Mirror.

It on one of my school holiday visits to my Gran's in Kipling Street that I happened upon City Fun, the magazine that opened my eyes fully to the possibility that you could, actually, Do It Yourself. I bought my first copy from England's Glory on Peter Street when I was in there to buy comics from their ever-bountiful, ripe with stale, damp, promise basement.

The earliest issue I now own is number five, but I may have bought that at a later date. The important thing is that they had an editorial policy to print all submissions. (I'm not convinced they printed 'everything', to be honest, as the content is, at worst, always readable, if sometimes dull). I longed for the day that I could contribute something meaningful and my chance came when I bought tickets for A Certain Ratio at The Derby Hall in Bury. I'd calculated that I'd be allowed to go on my own because it was in Bury not Manchester (therefore no chance that I would end up smoking the 'reefer' dreaded by my Gran) and that it was at the end of the 95 bus route, which ran late and along Great Clowes Street. And so it happened.

I took a pencil and made notes on the back of my ticket, planning to write the review I knew I had in me. Best of all, there were tickets on sale that night for the following Tuesday's appearance by hyped-to-the-Gods-by-the-music press Joy Division. It was a huge piece of luck as I was due to return to rural drudgery the day after the gig. Little did I know that the first piece of writing I had published anywhere (City Fun issue 21) chronicled a piece of bizarre rock and roll history that I would later see (badly) dramatised in 24 Hour Party People, and that would lead me into publishing and writing my own fanzines (over fifty at the last count), and to working as a music journalist for some years.

So, City Fun, thank you!

I've uploaded a complete scan of this issue in CBR format, which is a full-screen image reader usually used for reading comics and magazines on computer screens. CDisplay Comic Reader can be downloaded, for free, here: http://www.geocities.com/davidayton/CDisplay . This issue can be directly accessed at http://www.savefile.com/files/2054195