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 Gories - Boogie Chillun - Paris, July 2009.

On my top ten list of bands I wish I'd seen in their pomp, along with The Fingers, The Go-Nuts and The Untamed Youth, The Gories reformed to perform a couple of US dates and a month's worth of European engagements alongside the also-reformed Oblivians (who I put on at The Britons Protection a few years back). For various reasons, including it was in Nottingham, tickets were expensive, and I'd made a promise to myself after Magazine that I wouldn't do any more reunion gigs, I didn't go.

Anyhow, this clip from rapido1 on YouTube (Merci, fella) shows that they're still in pretty fine fettle, although Mick is packing on the pounds and Dan is looking creepily like Mr. RHJ of Chorltonville.