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Highly limited edition Book with 10" Vinyl Album.
(please allow 7 days for UK delivery )
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The book includes poetic commentaries from Japan-based British writer Paul Hullah.
The book contains a series of paintings by Filthy Tongues front man Martin Metcalfe.
The book is accompanied by a 6 track 10" vinyl with music from The Filthy Tongues & Kitsch and the Night Set.
CONTACT: info@scenesalive.co.uk
Paul Hullah and Martin Metcalfe were inhabitants of Scotland's capital city Edinburgh during the 1980s. They shared many experiences together, but most notably, along with Billy Gould and Gordon MacKenzie (The Horrible Sexy Vampires a.k.a. The Calloways), they shared music. For a short time, these members of local wannabe bands created the anti-supergroup Teenage Dog Orgy (of which Paul was anti-vocalist). There are no recordings of this band, no photograph sessions, no press releases, no singles, no tangible memorabilia. Just a handful of unfocused live photographs, and the hazy memories of shocked onlookers.
This was a world of Psychobillies, Goths, Flat-tops, Post Punks, tired hippies, art-rockers, druggies, drunks, dealers, nice people, not so nice people, outrageous gays, hungry bisexuals and (or as it seemed at the time) hundreds of amazing little bands performing in darkened tiny venues: La Sorbonne, The Black Bull, Potterrow, TeviotRow, The Venue. In these places romances began and ended: there was sexual intimacy and blazing rows. We all lived in badly-furnished Victorian buildings, slept in bedding that was sometimes as familiar and/or mismatched as the people in those beds.
"Never mind those late night docs on BBC Four, Scenes, which is published by Edinburgh's Word Power Books, is an album of snapshots of the 1980s in Scotland as they really were". THE HERALD, Keith Bruce Arts editor 22/11/2014
'This project is really going to get people thinking' BBC RADIO SCOTLAND, Janice Forsyth The Culture Studio, 01/12/2014
Highly limited edition Book with 10" Vinyl Album.
(please allow 7 days for UK delivery )
|
|
VINYL OPTION |
CD OPTION |
AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.CO.UK
No different this year, I lie, bore’s
Blindfold on, my Short
Term Drinker’s Ticket
Nestling primed beside the onion
Placed for grown-up friends
And time in my top pocket. Behold your long
Lost samurai caught rolling out of Robbie’s
Bar in older skates and age’s earplugs: neutered,
Asperitic, hair-shirt humour worn
Like armour, half-forgotten exile’s aura
Lit with hopeful sparks of confidence,
Conniving to convince myself
That all is as it once was and will be.
Ahoy Leith Walk, you leery road, I came
Here thirty years ago and now I’ve strayed,
Decades away. O Scotland, wearing weary
Of these strangers teasing me
How tired I look, quick-irked
Like tetchy ex-pat drunks as stout Iona
Street Big Issue peddlers ask me if it kills me
Being always this annoyed. Unfriendly
Taxis pass aloof like wronged ex-wives:
I trundle back to Trinity as Lucifer castrated.
Newtown’s halo’s crackling fireworks, sharp September
Sky outside my borrowed windows, both sides fickly dry,
Since I chucked in the sauce, and till it pours:
I’m near to where I need to be and wish to be.
Old tomcat on the guttering across from me
Shoots stares at me, blinks evilly: he knows
I am a gaijin, foreign, unconvincing, new. This
Scottish haar comes creeping down the changing streets
Below me, breaks my sleep as dreams of drinking
Half my life in Lethe to remember
Here and now and me and you will always do.
Hullah went on to academia. He has lived and worked in Japan since 1992, and written several books, including critically-acclaimed poetry of his own. He is currently Professor of British Poetry at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo.
Metcalfe went on to national chart success in the 1990s with his own bands, Goodbye Mr. Mackenzie and Angelfish. He has recently returned to art, making music with Isa & The Filthy Tongues, and painting.
'It is rare these days to encounter people who are willing to pursue art for the joy of it. Rarer still tosee people pushing themselves out of their comfort zones and challenging preconceptions of who they are and what they are capable of. So it is the courage being executed here in this endeavour I find so compelling: two old warriors still banging at the gates, challenging kings and fighting monsters. This is why as artists they remain exciting. And why we should take the time to look. And to listen.'
'Edinburgh gets into your system and does strange things to your idea of being creative. The people, the villages, the hills, the bars, the cafés, streets and buildings become part of a daily 24/7 narrative. It's not enough just to write about it, you need to hear it, see it and breathe it. This project bravely injects a new dynamic energy and vitality into the evolving story of the beauty and madness of a city that becomes part of your heart and soul.'
'Herein you will find a collaboration between a Japan-based academic and poet and an Edinburgh musician who can now legitimately add the job 'Artist' to the social media sites he frequents. Theirs is a friendship - no let's have kinship - that remains elastic as steel despite, or perhaps because of, too many frenzied 1980s nights. (And days. And weeks.) Back then they were waiting for the dust to settle around them, waiting for the news from elsewhere. As I write, a bookshelf catches my eye. If this book had come out in the 80s it might have been called Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned. In the 90s My War Gone By I Miss It So would have sufficed. Now, the contents would best be described by a thin volume’s lower case: and our faces, my heart, brief as photos. The poet still writes home; the artist now reflects it. They have learned, in their colliding ways, to come to terms with things. What you have in your hands is a 30-year coming together.'