Not many people realise that Newcastle has three independent cinemas and they are all being used by Press Play this weekend. Yesterday I went to the 48 seater Side Cinema on the city’s quayside to see Shut Up Little Man! the feature film debut by Australian documentary maker Matthew Bate.

The film describes an amazing tale which begins back in 1987 when Wisconsin students Eddie and Mitch head to San Francisco for adventure. They move into a shabby apartment and are alarmed by the late night antics of their aging neighbours. Gay Peter and homophobe Ray share a flat where they drink until insults fly and punches are thrown.

Eddie and Mitch make audio recordings of the nightly dramas which soon become a viral audio sensation (without the help of the internet). Eddie and Mitch are faced with moral as well as legal questions over their illicit recordings…but what will they do?

I don’t want to give anything away but will say the film includes interviews with most of the main players as well as film makers and comic artists. There are also fans of Pete and Ray, who mimic their heroes in the same way Python fans recount their favourite Life of Brian lines.

This film is beautifully and sensitively made. There is humour, sadness and scope to debate the ethics long after the film ends. Are these recordings any different from the hacked phone calls by Rupert Murdoch’s journalists? You decide.

Shut Up Little Man! premiered in competition at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. It was recently acquired by Tribeca Films. Badger your local independent cinema to screen it.

Well, 26 years on I’m sitting here looking at my ticket stubs for Sir Cliff’s ‘Soulicious’ tour and Glenn Campbell’s farewell tour. And my head’s full of their hits from the past 50 years.

I’m not a huge fan of Cliff but my dear Mam is. It was her 75th birthday on Thursday and when I realized Cliff was set to play Newcastle the following evening I knew I had to take her. By then I’d already bought tickets to see Glenn play Newcastle’s City Hall on the Saturday evening. Two legends in as many nights…rock and roll!

Is it fair to compare and contrast the self-styled Peter Pan of Pop with a man suffering from Alzheimer’s? Sir Cliff is 71 years but from where I was sitting in Newcastle’s Metro Arena he looked about 20 years younger. His show was slick with lithe dancers, guest singers, multiple costume changes and flattering lighting. Perhaps these stage tricks are the secrets to looking young?!

Cliff informed his adoring fans that the ‘Soulicious’ album is “where I’m at right now but I can’t forget the journey I’ve been on.” Cliff treated us to gems from his back catalogue performed in a chronological order with ‘Soulicious’ tracks in between.

Cliff seemed to enjoy inviting onstage some of the singers who helped him create ‘Soulicious’ including Lamont Dozier, Freda Payne and Percy Sledge. I felt it was value for money when these singers performed their own songs. I didn’t expect to hear ‘Band of Gold’ and ‘When A Man Loves A Woman’ but I feel better for seeing these classic songs brought to life.

Cliff’s fans adore him but it was hard to feel the love in Newcastle Arena’s air hangar of a building. By contrast, Newcastle’s City Hall was stuffed with love from the audience and the stage. Glenn’s band features three of his children and I could feel their loving support for him throughout the show.

Glenn started falteringly with ‘Gentle on my Mind’ but was soon into his stride with ‘Galveston.’ He made jokes, impersonated Elvis and delighted us with unique versions of ‘Where’s The Playground Susie?’ and ‘By the Time I Get To Phoenix.’ Tracks from his latest album, ‘Ghost on the Canvas’ stood tall and proud next to his back catalogue. Lyrics of love, the past, regret and death made the performance poignant and life-affirming.

The show’s crescendo was an astonishing version of ‘Wichita Lineman’ and a singalong rendition of ‘Rhinestone Cowboy.’ Newcastle gave Glenn and co a standing ovation. This gig was one of the best gigs I’ve ever seen. What on earth would my younger self say?!

A Walk On Part: The Fall of New Labour is the stage adaptation of former MP Chris Mullin’s diaries and starts a run at the Soho Theatre on 15th November.

The critically acclaimed diaries were effortlessly adapted for stage by Michael Chaplin and first performed at Newcastle’s Live Theatre in the spring. The show got rave reviews and now London theatregoers can take a ringside seat and enjoy an insider’s view of the last and most turbulent decade in British politics.

I saw the play in Newcastle and was blown away by the content and performances. The play made me think, laugh and almost cry. The five cast members are amazing. They bring to life a whopping 96 characters including Tony Blair, John Prescott, a Durham taxi-driver, the Prime minister of Ethiopia and the former MP for Sunderland South, Chris Mullin.

I urge you to book tickets for A Walk On Part The Fall of New Labour at the Soho Theatre
Tuesday 15th Nov to Saturday 10th December 2011.

With the nights drawing in I could just see Jools Holland introducing her on ‘Later’…

Thoughts?

Last night the north east rather than the south east coast of England was the setting for a special screening of Quadrophenia. The 1979 mod classic opened The Whitley Bay Film Festival 2011 which runs until next Sunday.

What an inspired choice for the first night! I missed the sea front scooter run scheduled for 6.30pm but arrived at biker-friendly venue, The Trojan Rooms as it filled with Ace Faces.

The venue is used to playing host to a variety of events from gigs to meditation classes but last night it was turned into a 1970s style local cinema. I loved the details: popcorn on sale, the Pearl and Dean theme tune and a spoof local business advert shown before the film. Nice touches.

It felt like I was watching the film with a bunch of mates rather than a room of strangers. Audience members shouted out quotes, sang or tapped feet along to the soundtrack and pointed at established Brit actors like Ray Winstone and Timothy Spall. How they’ve all changed in 30 years. Local-ish lad Sting is the only one who still looks good.

As the credits rolled we clapped both the film and the festival team. This is the festival’s second year and organisers, local film production company Primate Productions, should be proud of what they’ve achieved. They secured Whitley Bay-born screenwriting legend Ian La Frenais as festival patron and worked with local council and businesses to produce an imaginative programme utilising local buildings.

Festival highlights include tonight’s Secret Cinema. Meet at 8.30pm for a classic film at a site specific location. Apparently the screening “may not be suitable for persons of a nervous disposition.” On Monday evening The Fog will be screened at local landmark, St Mary’s Lighthouse.

Next Thursday a classic horror double bill: An American Werewolf in London and the Hammer Horror Dracula will be screened at iconic building, the century old Spanish City Dome. Dress code is “Naked, covered suspiciously in blood and lying, shivering in the foetal position.” Hmm I’ll have to see if I have anything suitable in my wardrobe..

The programme also includes an Ian La Frenais day plus screenings of work by local film makers. Oh yes and plenty of child-friendly events. Something for all the family. If you’re in the region, come along!

www.whitleybayfilmfestival.co.uk www.primateproductions.co.uk

Yes, thanks to staff from the English Departments of Teesside and Northumbria Universities, I now have an impressive, eclectic summer reading and play list to enjoy. Lecturers Rachel Carroll, Melanie Waters and Adam Hansen devised and coordinated Friday’s conference LitPop: Writing and Popular Music at Newcastle upon Tyne’s Northumbria University.

Right from the outset LitPop aimed be different from other conferences. The call for submissions last year urged potential participants to bring fresh perspectives to the relationship between popular music and literature. LitPop also redefined my image of conferences by packing the programme into one day (9am to 9pm) and using a local volunteer-run cinema as a second venue. It felt like I was attending a one day music and literature festival rather than an academic conference.

The only downside to packing it all into one day was the fact I missed out on papers including “Music, Mixtapes and Gendered Authorship in Alan Warner’s Morvern Callar”, “Radicalism in Poetry and Pop Culture in the 1960s and 1970s”, ”Morrissey and Larkin: Cynic Sensibilities” and “Writing and Recordings: Grooves, Labels, Sleevenotes and Sleeves.”

My morning session included an examination of Italian music magazines from the 1970s plus a look at music journalism in the English broadsheet press between 1985 and 1990. This was followed by the first key note speaker, Dr Gerry Smyth on “Waiting for the Performance to Begin: Ishiguro’s Musical Imagination.” I was gripped by Smyth’s topic and the musicality of his voice.

After lunch I listened to papers on Lester Bangs and Nick Tosches followed by Natalia Bremner’s “Writer? Poet? Lyricist? ‘Cross-over’ Cultural Actors in the Indian Ocean: The Case of Axel Gauvin.” Natalia has a passion for the language and culture of Réunion after spending time living and studying on the Indian Ocean island. I found her enthusiasm for Axel Gauvin’s collaborative work with band Ziskakan infectious and want to learn more about Réunion’s culture.

The final panel I attended started with a comparison of Black Swan Green by David Mitchell and Nick Cave’s Death of Bunny Munro. This was neatly followed by a paper on Cave’s Murder Ballad duet with PJ Harvey, Henry Lee. The session finished with papers on Joy Division and Sufjan Stevens.

The conference’s second key note speaker Professor Sheila Whitely spoke after 5pm. Her paper “The Look of Love: Intertextuality and Identity” examined Morrissey’s lyrics in Reel Around the Fountain, Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush and An Equal Music by Vikram Seth.

After almost eight hours of listening and talking in Northumbria University it was time to move onto The Star and Shadow Cinema for food, drink and entertainment. We ate and drank to the sounds of my favourite local band The Creels and the cinema’s resident (teenage) organist, Carl Heslop.

LitPop’s final keynote “paper” turned out to be a reading by prize-winning poet Professor Paul Farley. The audience was now a mix of conference delegates and regular punters. We all enjoyed Farley’s laid-back, modest delivery of his clever, moving poems.

It was nearing 10pm and time to introduce a couple of the delegates to Newcastle’s buzzing Ouseburn area. We joined Friday night drinkers in the beer garden of The Cumberland Arms and discussed life, politics and Litpop over real ale. I missed the last Metro home. Rock ’n Roll.

LitPop has made me sit up and take notice of the common ground shared by academics and rock writers. We all stare at computer screens, scribble ideas in notebooks, face deadlines and undertake research. We have all been rejected and accepted by editors. Some of us play instruments and sing but all of us love listening to and discussing music for hours on end.

I worry that funding cuts to further education in the UK will put the squeeze on events like LitPop. We need events like this where people can come together, share ideas and support local creative talent like The Creels and The Star and Shadow. Such events also add cash to the local economy (hotels, bars and restaurants).

I’d like to see future events where academics, writers, editors, documentary makers, musicians and fans come together to enthuse and muse about great music and literature.

N.B. An edited collection of selected papers from LitPop will be published in the nearish future. Watch this space.

soundcloud.com/the-creels
www.starandshadow.org.uk
www.northumbria.ac.uk
www.tees.ac.uk

Carl Heslop teenage organist

I wasn’t surprised when South Shore Road in Gateshead won the ‘Hippest Street’ category in Google’s Best Streets competition. The street is home to Baltic Art Gallery, The Sage Music Centre and was used as the DJ stage at the recent Evolution Weekender Festival. Of course it’s cool! That’s what it’s like up here in Geordieland nowadays. We “do” cool, not coal, daddio.

So let me tell you about next Friday’s cool event at Newcastle’s Northumbria University. LitPop: Writing and Popular Music is a conference aiming to bring fresh perspectives to debates about the forms and functions of popular music in relation to literature.

The day is packed with scholarly debate from Europe and America on Salman Rushdie, Leonard Cohen, Punk, Morrissey, Vikram Seth, Shakespeare, Alan Warner, Sufjan Stevens, D.B.C. Pierre, William Burroughs, Jerome K Jerome, Lester Bangs, The Beatles, Joy Division, Jack Kerouac, Nick Cave, The Blues, Philip Larkin, The Manic Street Preachers, Robert Wyatt, Tom Waits and more.

Titles of papers submitted include:
• ‘Get your head out of the oven, Sylvia’: Suicidal Poets in Twenty-First Century Pop Music
• ‘You should try lying more’: The Nomadic Impermanence of Bill Drummond
• ‘Natural’s Not In It’: Gang of Four, Scritti Politti and Gramsci’s concept of hegemony
• Versions of Cody: Jack Kerouac, Tom Waits and the Song ‘On the Road’
• Endlessly Rocking: Literary Influence and Narrative Structure within the Music of Rush

Keynote speakers include:

• Paul Farley (Professor of Poetry, Lancaster University, award-winning author of The Ice Age and Tramp in Flames,and The Electric Polyolbion)
• Gerry Smyth (Reader in Cultural History, Liverpool John Moores University, author of Music in Contemporary British Fiction: Listening to the Novel)
• Sheila Whiteley (Professor Emeritus, University of Salford, editor of Sexing the Groove: Popular Music and Gender)

The conference starts in the University but ends 12 hours later in The Star and Shadow, a volunteer-run independent cinema and venue in Newcastle’s effortlessly cool arty area, Ouseburn. The evening event is open to all.

For more information visit www.northumbria.ac.uk/sd/academic/sass/events/sassevents/litpop and www.starandshadow.org.uk

Annie Mac on the Baltic Stage The BBC Radio One DJ had the young audience in the palm of her hand as she blasted out their favourite tunes including Florence and the Machine and Adele. The crowd went wild but then the members are still young enough to be hugely impressed by a “famous person” standing in front of them playing pre-recorded tunes and waving their hands in the air like they just don’t care. Ah bless…

Mama Rosin on the Ballast Hills Stage My festival favourite but what’s not to like about this charming trio playing punk zydeco? I want to go and live with them in their Swiss Bayou commune. Catch them at Glastonbury next month.

Bellowhead on the Ballast Hills Stage Local promoter Jumpin’ Hot Club organised the acts for Ballast Hills Stage and they chose their closing headliners wisely. Bellowhead are the ultimate festival headline act and the crowd went wild to their unbridled folk rock. Catch them at Glasto, Latitude and Cambridge Folk Festival this summer.

Lows

The sound quality on Spillers Stage Was it just me or was the sound quality poor? I thought Iggy and the Stooges sounded too quiet on Saturday night but poor Tinie Tempah sounded like a distorted car stereo on Sunday evening. Shame.

Health and Safety “enforcers” To the security staff who kept trying to move me down some steps at the Baltic Stage on Sunday afternoon:“where was the risk, my friends?” You kept shouting “Health and Safety!” at me but where was the blummin’ risk in me sipping tea and standing on the steps. For five minutes? Humpf. Thankfully most of the other Evolution staff were lovely.

“Very old indeed,” he replied as he took in a 360 degree observation of our surroundings: the Evolution Weekender 2011 festival on NewcastleGateshead’s quayside.

It was some sight. We seemed to be completely surrounded by thousands of screaming, crying, excitable teenagers in varying stages of intoxication. There was only one thing for it:

“Fancy a plastic glass of fizzy lager, dear?” I suggested before bounding over to the beer stall yelling, “ If we can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”

Let’s get one thing straight. I’m not easily shocked by scenes of self-imposed carnage at music festivals. It would be hypocritical of me to comment on underage drinking and alcohol consumption at outdoor music festivals when I’ve seen it done it and got the hangover many, many times.

I suppose the shocker for me was seeing so many casualties at three in the afternoon. When I was 16 I was more interested in watching as many bands as possible. I would have killed for a two day music event on home turf.

Sitting at home this morning swigging tea and typing, I can’t seem to rid my mind of the scene we encountered en route to the festival’s main entrance. We saw a trail of young bodies lying on the ground. One lass held out her mobile phone asking someone, anyone to make a call for her:

“Ahm wasted,” she moaned.

It was like Hogarth’s Gin Lane but with push-up bras and fake tan. Did she manage to catch headline act Iggy and the Stooges? I hope so…

Evolution Festival has been, er, evolving over the past decade. It started as a free festival but inevitably became ticketed event. This year the two day weekend ticket cost £35 for a line up including Iggy and the Stooges, Plan B, Billy Bragg, Bellowhead and Tinie Tempah.

The festival’s USP is also its weakness. There are four stages: one on the south side of the Tyne next to Baltic Art Gallery and three on the Newcastle side. It was my first time at Evolution and I’m not sure if the festival worked as a whole. We felt like we were attending different festivals taking place next to each other.

So what about the music? Unsigned band Chased By Wolves impressed but much-hyped Two Door Cinema were hypnotically derivative. It was left to a couple of music legends with a collective age of 118 to rock my world.

Billy Bragg might be 54 but he sings to and stirs up the audience with the same passion I witnessed as a (sober) teenager during the Red Wedge tour 25 years ago. John Peel’s oft-quoted comment about his beloved The Fall, ‘They are always different, they are always the same,’ can be used to describe Bragg. He’s inspiring, funny and I know I’m not the only audience member with a hoarse voice today. What can you expect with the Bard of Barking’s huge singalong back catalogue?

Unfortunately I didn’t get to see his entire set as Hubby and I had to hot foot it to the main stage to catch headliners, Iggy and the Stooges. Somewhere between Billy and Iggy I lost my treasured ‘Read and Destroy’ badge. I’m gonna miss that button: it reflected my twin loves of music and books.

It’s disconcerting to think the Igster’s only nine years younger than Me Mam (we Geordies don’t have Mums or Moms) but how I love him. I was delighted to see young and old(er) audience members going mad for it during the set. Highlight was I Wanna Be Your Dog with a sea of Geordies pogo-ing as the sun finally set on Tyneside.

With the stage vacated and roadies unplugging amps, one teenager beside me didn’t want to let go of his Iggy experience. He yelled in the direction of the stage:

“Ah love him! Ah want him to come back on stage!”

“Yeah, beats Take That,” I quipped, referring to their sold out gigs taking place in Sunderland this weekend.

“No contest!” my young friend replied, restoring my faith in teenagers.

Hubby and I will be back for a second helping of Evolution today. I’m looking forward to Tinie Tempah and Bellowhead…