My second and third chapters to be published; one in the book 'Venue Stories' and the other in the 'Routledge Companion to Folk Horror'. The trick is to write about what makes you passionate rather than simply 'what you know'. If you're passionate, you can research, and then of course, you will know.
VENUE STORIES - Friday 29th September saw Venue Stories being published by Equinox. Edited by a team from York St John University, it's something of a hymn to music venues, with several venues having gone under during the early days of the Covid pandemic, and many grassroots venues under threat. It documents the importance of music venues and celebrates their history. In my chapter - 'Kings Cross, Kentish Town and Kensington Gore via Gallowgate: In Search of the Goldilocks Zone' - I discuss venues such as the Kentish Town Bull & Gate (now a gastropub), The Royal Albert Hall and the marvellously legendary Glasgow Barrowlands.
And on that note, on this day in 2000, 23 years ago, All About Eve played an acoustic show at the characterful venue of the Beverley Picture Playhouse.
The venue struck me as having a beautiful faded, pleasantly fusty glamour.
It was a good night with a responsive and warm audience.
Photo by Howard Crowe.
It was built in 1886 as a Corn Exchange, Butter Market and Baths. For two years post 1904 it was a school, then opened as a cinema in 1911; corn was still traded there up until 1947.
The building is now a department store.
To the right is a still taken from a short film on the BFI Player, which states:
"A native filmmaker uses his local knowledge of Beverley to great effect here to give a wonderful portrait of his home town, covering everything from the shipyards to the market."
The book is currently available here with a 20% discount if you use the code VENUE.
ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO FOLK HORROR - My advance copy was delivered yesterday and it's a beautiful, weighty, hardback affair. Here are some words from the publisher:
The Routledge Companion to Folk Horror offers a comprehensive guide to this popular genre. It explores its origins, canonical texts and thinkers, the crucial underlying themes of nostalgia and hauntology, and identifies new trends in the field...[Part IV: Sound and Image in Folk Horror ] discusses recent examples of Folk Horror-infused music and image... Featuring 40 contributions, this authoritative collection brings together leading voices in the field. It is an invaluable resource for students and scholars interested in this vibrant genre and its enduring influence on literature, film, music, and culture.
My chapter, 'The Idyllic Horrific– Field, Farm, Garden, Forest and Machine' draws upon the work of musical artists such as Siouxsie and the Banshees, Suede, and in particular And Also The Trees.
The chapter also looks at the darker side of the pastoral and rurality and at pylons, wind farms and the sometimes lonely life of farmers.
The book is available to pre-order here & ships from Oct 9th.
Here's the abstract:
From a romanticised distance, farm life blurs into idyll; in closer focus, there looms the foreshadowing of accidents, slaughter, murder, and suicide. This rural eerie emanates from barn and sty, through land and soil, from field, forest, and garden. In the song, ‘The Garden of Jane Delawney’ the band Trees warn that should you pick a certain rose therein, your hair will be engulfed in flame. ‘Green Fingers’ by Siouxsie and the Banshees evokes the macabre with the suggestion of a diabolical and lascivious hand grown from the planting of a severed finger. ‘The Flatlands’ by And Also The Trees, creates a less gory sense of unease, insinuating the edgelands where nature and industry interfuse, with lyricist Simon Huw-Jones writing of ‘pylons in lace white fields’ (1993). His is a landscape over-ripe with rotten fruit and cursed with stillborn piglets, a landscape inhabited by revenants as blighted as Hardy's Tess and Jude. Primarily through the lens of song, but alongside a wider consideration of the arts, this chapter explores the notion of a warped sense of the idyllic as a compelling element of Folk Horror, with a rurality steeped in the uncanny, the sublime, and the liminal.
If you use the promo code EFL30 there is a 20% discount. It's not cheap as it's with an academic publisher, so if you work or study at a Uni or College, get your librarian on the case. The price, with discount, is as follows:
Hardback: £164.00 / Paperback: £34.39
Although there is a discount code for the paperback, there is not yet a release date.
And Also The Trees.
AATT are still creating the most beautiful albums, by the way, worthy of your attention.
You can find them here and I recommend their new album The Bone Carver.
Siouxsie and the Banshees.
Siouxsie has just completed a tour.
Budgie's latest music project is a collaboration with Lol Tolhurst of The Cure, and Jacknife Lee.
Lol and Budgie are the creators of the Curious Creatures podcast.
Suede.
Their most recent album is Autofiction, however album I discuss in my chapter is The Blue Hour.
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