Shop Around … part 49
Let me set the scene. Our local library’s been refurbished, and there’s part of me that baulks at the result, as there seems to be everything in there these days other than books, but there you go. But I did pop in last week, looking for something a little diverting and different. In the end I settled for a book. Oh please yourselves.
What I actually picked up was The Not Knowing by Cathi Unsworth. Now Cathi’s name is one I’ve vaguely been aware of from the music press, and other activities down the years. Her world’s a little different than my milieu, but I always have a sneaking and grudging admiration for people who have actually got their act together enough to produce a real book.
Reviews I had read of The Not Knowing made much of the connections and influence of Derek Raymond. That was a good place to start, though it does conjure up links to numerous Iain Sinclair works, so that you expect Martin Stone too to be lurking somewhere in the background with a bag full of salvaged books. The actual cover of The Not Knowing comes complete with endorsements from the great James Sallis, which is interesting as I seem to recall some stupid bitchy Sinclair comments about Sallis.
Anyway, I have to confess that I wasn’t expecting much from The Not Knowing, but rapidly became totally lost in the world Cathi creates. It’s a world of the early ‘80s, where everyone is walking around Camden looking just like a member of Gallon Drunk, watching Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire, reading Patrick Hamilton, listening to Nick Cave, talking about Preminger, and getting by selling on old Northern Soul 7”s.
It is after all the absolute moral duty of any writer to recreate the world in the way that reflects their own very personal obsessions. And I know only too well how all those references will have been boiling up inside the writer down all the days, while they watch the world around them in abject contempt for not knowing.
The folk tinged folk is by Nadia Cattouse, who came from Belize to Britain in the late ‘60s and became a contemporary of some of my absolute favourites like Bridget St John, whose first few records (on John Peel’s Dandelion label) have just been salvaged by Cherry Red, and are absolutely essential. I first discovered Bridget about 1982 when an older associate said if you love Tracey Thorn so much then you’ll love Bridget’s records too. And I did. If you need any persuading then her second LP was produced by Ron Geesin, dearly beloved musical expeditionary oft namedropped by the likes of Broadcast these days, while my current favourite (her third LP) Thank You For features the cream of the UK folk rock scene, including Ian Whiteman on keyboards for the gorgeous Goodbaby Goodbye. Whiteman being a colleague of Martin Stone in Mighty Baby (and indeed The Action), and their fingerprints are all over the UK folk rock scene in a way that is only now being really revealed to me.
Alice contributes vocals to a rousing rendition of 'Seven Nation Army' on Nostalgia 77’s The Garden set on Tru Thoughts, which flirts with danger but it works. Again I have to confess to ignorance about Nostalgia 77, somehow suspecting it was a neo-punk outfit. But no it’s very funky post-Ninja Tunes jazzy deep beats, very studious but decidedly funky. And well worth investigating, if only to support what is a very healthy underground, thriving away from the mainstream media.
Which is sort of one of the themes of Tricksta, Nik Cohn’s totally absorbing account of his dabblings in the New Orleans hip hop scene. I was lucky enough to find, as with the Tru Thoughts releases, a promo copy dead cheap, and didn’t know what on earth to expect. I have loved Cohn as a writer more than any other, have indeed ripped him off more than anyone, but hadn’t loved his last few works. But this Tricksta is amazing. And like the best of Cohn it leaves you reeling, feeling a thousand conflicting emotions, many of which you may not like. But I’m pre-empting myself. I’ve not finished the book, and I have to get back to it.
© 2005 John Carney