Entry 11

Played Birmingham, at the Glee Club.

glee clubbing.

The crowd all sat in chairs, which is a little off-putting, especially if you're really going for it, but at least they're comfortable...they were very well behaved, no real heckling---i keep expecting someone to shout at me, i really go off on tangents sometimes, with mixed results, and people so far have been pretty patient, bless them.

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Next stop, manchester, the ruby lounge, an underground lair that had a cool secret passage to the stage from the dressing room:

what would become a familiar scene...

So afterwards, i saw julie mclarnon, one half of analogue catalogue records, hanging out with a couple of people. i walked up to say hi, and julie said, 'jeremy, this is hmmmf hmmf' (i didn't make out what she said). i said 'hi, sorry, didnt catch your name---', julie repeated a little more intently, 'this is mike joyce, the drummer from the smiths..." ...uhhhh. hello mike joyce, the drummer from the smiths. fucking hell, didn't see that coming, probably good i didn't. mr. joyce was a friendly guy and i only spoke to him briefly, but i suddenly had the sinking suspicion he might have seen my set. VERY good i didn't see that coming.

So all of these places i visit i have associations with, mostly bands, and there's an infinite number of bands you could associate with manchester, but with birmingham, the clear association is sabbath (which i fucking love sabbath, the early stuff)---its a bit ignorant, i suppose, but i've got no other frame of reference, culturally. i suppose thats a bit of a cross to bear for birmingham, england. birmingham, alabama, on the other hand has the burden of being the battleground for the civil rights movement in the 50's and 60's in the US, little children getting blown up in churchs by the klan, that sort of thing. which leads me to my next photo:

mmm hmmm...

(warning: i go a little political and self-righteous here...)In York. to the un-initiated, these are called gollys (or more historically, gollywogs, wog dropped as it's become a racial epithet). heres a link to some explanation. um, lets not mince words here: this is completely racist and fucked up. because it is perceived by a lot of people as a part of their childhood, and it is a harmless child's toy, which perhaps they have fond memories of, these are still sold, rather shamelessly. what my american friends should understand is that racism in the UK is a bit more insidious and subconscious than in the states. slavery wasn't as much an integral part of their society, alot of the people of african descent here had ancestors who came willingly, not brought on slave ships, and integration was a seemingly much more peaceful affair here (as far as i can tell). i grew up in mostly black neighborhoods and went to mostly black schools in middle america. my sense of american culture was very much shaped by that experience, and my observation of black people's (sorry, i don't know if there's a preferred nomenclature there) culture in britain has been a real eye-opening experience, in the differences and similarities. as i feel people of african descent have had an overwhelming influence on our culture worldwide, particularly in music, which is the world i occupy, i don't take this kind of stuff lightly. i regard britain as being one of the more forward-thinking places in the western world, but i suppose people are people no matter where you go. you'll always have an element of NIMBY (not in my back yard) if you don't understand why golliwogs are a very negative image of black people, i'll cite some american counter-parts:

1. Lawn Jockeys

2. Blackface

3. Aunt Jemima

4. Mammy Two-Shoes

What's interesting is that i've experienced all these things in my lifetime. the imprint of how we view cultures different from ours is placed at an early age, and is hard to shake. how must america be viewed by the children of today in the muslim world? how must they be viewed by the kids in america?

The BNP. in regards to the idea of keeping britain 'british'...how british do you mean? can you be part french? how about italian? do you really mean white? face it guys, things change. there's nothing you can do about it. culture, like music, is a fluid thing. it changes hands and evolves, hopefully. and thats pretty cool, when you think about it.

sorry, there's lots of time to think about shit when you're on the road, but there's lots to see as well. and by the same token, the good people of york shouldn't be judged by the contents of one window in one shop in the tourist-y part on that one narrow street...

last gig before glasgow here. hope it goes well.

xJ