Top 10 concerts

I've been to a few concerts, so I thought it'd be a good idea to compile this list. I am excluding classical concerts. If they were included, a few of them might make themselves into this list too. While compiling this list, I felt pretty torn about what to leave in and what to leave out, but I am pretty satisfied with what I chose in the end.

10

65 Days of Static

Sheffield Plug
May 2007

Hadn't heard of them before at the time, but figured I should go. The crowd was pretty ecstatic, and my recollection of this gig consists as much of the assortment of lights thrown at the audience as the music. The music was brilliant, too. Intricately assembled Math Rock with a beat which makes you want to move.

9

Kirk Lightsey

Sheffield Crucible

November 2006

I look nostalgically at the period of time I saw this music - it was when I became an angry recluse, and it was when I stopped socialising altogether. This concert was very intimate; the seats were placed above the musicians, so you could see down on them as they played and sweat. The leader of this jazz piano trio, Kirk Lightsey, is a legend who has been playing jazz for decades, having performed for trumpeter Don Cherry in the past. He was a bit crackers in the concert as well, laughing maniacally whenever someone addressed him. The gig varied between be-bop and more freeform stuff. Lightsey also played the flute while wandering across the room, and the drummer had an assortment of interesting percussion with him as well as his drum set. Jazz really has to be seen live to be appreciated fully.

8

Napalm Death

Sheffield Corporation
April 2010

I've been to a fair amount of death metal concerts (I like going to this sort of thing to subject myself to extremes), but this was quite easily the best. Fucking intense, fast, loud, involving grindcore. Had my feet tapping frantically at the sheer speed of this wonderful, wonderful racket.

7

Acoustic Ladyland

Sheffield Harley
April 2010

Due to it being performed in a small venue, the sheer volume of this really assaulted your ears. A. L play a really fast fusion of jazz and punk. Their songs used to be quite short and ephemeral, but now they are longer and considerably abstract. These are really skilled musicians, and seeing them live is a rewarding experience.

6

Isis

Sheffield Corporation
December 2008

Isis play what could be termed 'progressive metal'. They produce an intense wall of sound that keeps builing up. In this concert I found myself enthralled in the concert so much that I had a Proustian moment, where I lost my sense of time. I'd seen them before, but this time was better.

5

A Silver MT Zion

Sheffield Corporation

May 2007

Long, progressive post-rock songs played by oddballs and attractive women with hairy armpits. This was a beautiful set of songs, and everyone in the audience knew it was something special.

4

Ornette Coleman

Southbank Centre, London

June 2009

I was very excited about this, travelling all the way to London to see it. Coleman is the most well-known exponent of free jazz, and he was joined by luminaries like guitarist Bill Frissel and singer Patti Smith. The concert was a reflection on 'The Shape of Jazz to Come', but he delved into all parts of his career for this monumental occasion.

3

Kayo Dot

A venue in Lancaster

September 2009

I was incredibly excited to find that this musical act were coming to UK. They were playing in Lancaster, which is where my mother's side of the family lives, and on a Saturday! I was quite worried about my ears at the time, fearing that if I subjected them to this they might burst. But, fortunately, most of the band members were stopped at Customs and couldn't get into the country so Mia, Tobi, a clarinet/keys player and a drummer from the audience played renditions of the quieter moments in their music. It was mostly improvised, so it was a huge privilege to be there and witness it. The music was very subdued and sparse, often sounding like a Morton Feldman composition. The fact that there were only 2o or 30 other people made this gig all the more special.

2

The Fall

Sheffield Boardwalk

November 2006

I liked The Fall around this time, but I wasn't a gruelling fan... This concert changed that. Mark E. Smith has an incredible stage presence. Seeing him as a Fall fan is like seeing Hitler as a Nazi. He mumbled and groaned incoherently, as he staggered across the stage. I even caught his eye once, but nervously looked away as he did so.

1

The Magic Band

A venue in Stoke

May 2005My first concert is also the best I've ever been to. I was a Beefheart-obsessed 14-year-old, and I pressured my parents to take me to Stoke just to see The Magic Band reunion. They played instrmental versions of their more complex material found on Trout Mask and later Drumbo stepped up as vocalist, accurately imitating the captain's growling voice. He gazed at my eyes for long-stretches of time, amazed at the sight of a fourteen-year-old at a Beefheart concert!

4 New short stories

Now that I have completed these four stories, my book Juvenilia: An Unacknowledged Literary Prodigy is now ready... But I'll wait til my A2 exams are over til I start to put it together... I should really be 'revising' now, but I stayed all night to complete 'Erotic Violence' and put them all on the Internet...

As usual, they aren't readable because I don't know how to fucking format them... I'll send them to Doug via email, as he is the only person in the universe who has the remotest interest in reading them... and he wouldn't like them anyway. If you really want to read this shite, email me...

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From Dreams to Reality

I thought it'd be interesting to have a female narrator for a change, and to prove that I'm not that much of a misogynistic scumbag.... Is it succesful?.... I think not.

The Moon of the Mirror

My homage to Borges.

Anxiety Attack

Another true story.

Erotic Violence

My homage to Bataille and Ballard.

My contact with these writers

This blog post is about writers I've had some sort of metaphysical 'contact' with, where I seem to actually make a connection with them despite them being dead or far away.... My mind was pretty fucked up when I had experiences with psychosis, so this partially explains me having contacted them.... Otherwise it might be new age voodooism, I don't know.

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J. G. Ballard

Around November 6th of 2007 I stayed up for three nights in succession and, as a consequence, had very little control over my actions. My mother gave me a highly potent pill which had a strong effect on my brain. I became very anxious to know something, and rubbed my head desperately to reach a conclusion until I shouted out "CRASH, CRASH, CRASH," the title of a Ballard novel. My mother then told me that my English teacher had killed herself after hearing this and that her husband, a mathematician, was willing to receive some sort of answer. I wrote gobledegook until, amazingly, my hand moved without my control and it was Ballard's writing. What is amazing is that it didn't seem like my words; it was something along the lines of "I was trying to show [with 'Crash'] what young people such as Simon are capable of" until I intercepted this movement and wrote my own fucking gobbledegook... After writing this shite relentlessly I kept wanting Ballard's hand movement to return so that I could see what he would say about me, but it never happened... What's strange is that I have another memory of this night, but I don't know how it meshes with this incident, but I also remember that after having taken the potent pill my English teacher and a girl I had a crush on in school came in after I touched my penis. I thought that Ballard was controlling us and that he was going to make us have some sort of depraved sex... They were sat in two chairs in my room and I was in my bed; we remained in silence until the girl suddenly leaped out of the chair, closed her eyes and left the room. I got up to see what this was when the English teacher said "Don't". I felt the urge to piss, but seeing as I couldn't leave the bed I let it all ooze out.
When I was in an intensive care unit in Derby, I got a phone call and I shouted out "Who's there???" and I heard Ballard's voice say "Your long-lost friend." This voice sounded weak, cracked and wearisome... It sounded like someone in his deathbed. Later I found that he had prostrate cancer, so the fact that he was actually ill seemed to confirm that it was him then.

Julio Cortázar

In Cortázar's novel Hopscotch, there is an Argentinean writer called Morelli who carries out correspondence with readers from different parts of the world. One of them is a 'young man from Sheffield'. I am from this city, and I always have a tendency to seek out obscure art... What's more is that one of the main aspects of Cortázar's fiction is that coincidences and unequivocal, arbitrary events; he said that he always had some sort of 'contact' with the reader, too.

Sera cuestión de tiempo. Pero me siento bien, se acabaron los problemas con la portera. Nadietrae correspondencia, ni siquera la de Nueva Zelandia, con sus estampillas tan bonitas. Cuando se ha publicado un libro que nace muerto, el único resultado es un correo pequeno perofiel. La senora de Nueva Zelandia, el muchacho de Sheffield. Francmasoneria delicada, voluptuosidad de ser tan pocos que participan de una adventura. Pero ahora, realmente...

Paul Auster

The next night after the Ballardian incident, I was rushed off to a room in a psychiatric ward. My parents were next to me and I lied on the bed. I felt shattered, there was no hope. Then a person who looked just like Paul Auster and sounded just like Paul Auster came into the room with a woman who looked just like his wife. He handed me a white pill and said "Take this." One of the things I really kick myself in the head now is that I forgot what he said, but my dad said "I don't know much about Paul Auster, but I think he says.." and then Auster quoted somebody else. I was left on my own with an old woman guarding me... but that's another story.

Franz Kafka

I once wrote in a website "The four people I am truly genetically derived from are Mark E. Smith, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar".... Amazingly enough, I was flicking through a Kafka biography in the library and found that he also chose a list of four writers he was genetically derived from... I read this after compiling the list!

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In my episode I also came across William Burroughs and polymath/director Alejandro Jodorowsky, but I should really be going to bed now...

Chilean football team of writers

Seeing as I chose an international football squad of writers, here there's a team of 11 Chilean writers. I have read a few Chilean writers, but I haven't read 11. This list will be completed with Internet assistance. Poets will be included as well as prose writers, because poetry has always been Chile's forte.

The current Chile squad is a 3-3-1-3 formation, so this squad will also have these tactics. The manager for these writers won't be me - it will be the current Chilean Manager, the great Marcelo Bielsa.

1. Gabriela Mistral (Goalkeeper)
2. Jorge Edwards (Defender)
3. Isabel Allende (Defender)
4. Hernan Rivera Letelier (Defender)
5. José Donoso (Midfielder)
6. Antonio Skarmeta (Midfielder)
7. Eduardo de la Barra ( Midfielder)
8. Pablo de Rohka (Attacker)
9. Pablo Neruda (Attacker)
10. Roberto Bolano (Midfielder)
11. Vicente Huidobro (Attacker)

Manager: Marcelo Bielsa

Football team of writers

I have always thought that it'd be a nifty idea to write a book of a football world cup of writers, where each country has a team of their best writers and they play each other. There's a funny Monty Python sketch where philosophers from Germany and Greece play each other.

This list of writers is international and is based on my own preferences, though I have only included writers who are deemed to be 'classics' and not contemporary. To avoid repetition, I won't choose all of the 10 writers I included in my recent list 'Top 10 writers'. It's a 4-4-2 squad.

1. Albert Camus (Goalkeeper)
2. Louis-Ferdinand Celine (Defender)
3. Aldous Huxley (Defender)
4. Samuel Beckett (Defender)
5. Georges Bataille (Defender)
6. Vladimir Nabokov (Midfielder)
7. James Joyce (Midfielder)
8. Jorge Luis Borges (Midfielder)
9. Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Attacker)
10. Franz Kafka (Midfielder)
11. William Faulkner (Attacker)

Manager: Me.