Plan B Magazine R.I.P. pt 5 - June 2004

After the (relative) success of the previous entry in this series - Melissa's 'Making Plan B' from right at the magazine's inception - I thought I'd re-post an early blog entry from the same year.

The file is dated 29/6/04, and I see no reason to doubt it. It must have been written after issue '0' came out, and before the (alternate) cover shown above. Beautiful photography by Sarah Bowles.

Life spirals out of control.
Life lurches in fits and starts between long periods of abject boredom and a welter of activity culminating in performing the songs of Mr Daniel Treacy in front of a crowd of mildly interested indie sorts in a queer-themed Belfast nightclub. I tell a story of prison boats off the shore of England. I tell a tale of a punk band that once supported Nirvana, big show, big date, big chance – and slowed all their songs down to third-speed to fuck off the grunge kids. I speak of beauty, and try to emulate what I speak of, through the sound of my voice wistfully singing words of defiance and Outsider Status, love and heartbreak. Underneath it is a mini-disc recorded in Chris and Sadie’s excellent Hove seafront flat a few days hence – one song is too slow, and I stumble painfully.
Belfast is magic. Our hostess Helen is at pains to keep us topped up with company and food, and I even win a tiebreak on Trivial Pursuit final night. All this, a second viewing for Harry Potter AND a bomb scare (which nicely broke up Goat Boy’s birthday bash at the Front Page, and simply moved the party onto another part of town). It brought back a nice warm glow, me in my early twenties, shunted off one more train, out of one more building, London 1983. The pop quiz (a reprise from the Brighton night) went down a treat, especially the last prize of a pack of cold onion rings, left over from a visit to Ballycastle, and, previously, Giant’s Causeway, which itself was viewed through a slightly auburn haze after I’d downed eight or nine whiskies at the Bushmill’s Distillery. I was elected taster. Shame I can’t stand Bushmill’s, then.
Also in town, The Chalets – we found their voices and contrived pub bounciness a fraction grating in our delirium of no sleep, but listening to the single a week later, it does retain a real Bis charm. I’m a sucker for male/female vocal interplay. Songs should tell stories. Or, in the very least, be written by Herman Düne...
The sound you hear is rushing silence playing around the more gentle parts of my head, concentration and good humour broken by yet another sleepless night spent fermenting plots of revenge against everyone I know, but especially my friends (although probably not Andrew Clare, for some reason).
I vow to do away with this Plan B bullshit, soon as I can.
I vow to stop writing.
I vow to stop listening to music.
I vow to send emails to everyone looking for input from me, telling them to go fuck themselves. (This last one I do.)
I vow to move to America.
I vow to never leave my house again.
I vow to be like Howe Gelb, or Jon Slade, and be loved only for my maverick brutality.
I vow to stop mentioning Jon Slade so much.

The sound you hear is the silence of my basement, broken only by the rumble of distant cars (always) and trains, a clock ticking on the kitchen wall. Last week was spent in a hazy largesse of train journeys and insomnia: many men with nice smiles give me many CDs and seven-inch singles, some of which are even by bands I like. Many men with nice smiles pat me on the back (not literally) and tell me how good Plan B looks, like they have any fucking right to do so. Many men with nice smiles buy Chris Houghton and I food, and I realise that Chris probably has a nicer smile than all of them combined. (This isn’t necessarily a plus.) The only parable I remember from the age of 10 runs thus: the smile you see is on the face of a tiger.
I am hailed as the prodigal son in Rough Trade Records, Ladbroke Grove – outside of which I once danced my ass off, bopping to the sweet sounds of Violent Femmes on their debut acoustic busking tour of London: outside of which I once busked myself as The Legend And The Swinging Soul Sisters, regaling passers-by with a cappella versions of ‘Sweet Soul Music’ and ‘Papa Was A Rolling Stone’.
I am given a James Kochalka single in XL Records, for which I am very grateful, because it is – indeed – exactly what you’d expect. I meet two dudes from Fatcat Records on the rooftop café of Brighton’s Duke Of Yorks cinema, and they exchange gossip about Sigur Ros that I cannot hope to divulge here. On the way, Chris engineers a moment whereby his mobile rings and we are offered a full-page clothing ad for our next issue. I accuse him of getting one of his interns to call.
Another evening, I DJ at an architecture party in Farringdon – Electric Six, Throbbing Gristle, Dance Disorder Movement – and attempt, half-heartedly, to live up to my reputation for being a mean drunk in front of a captive audience. A man is very excited to hear Shock-Headed Peters once more, and shares his enthusiasm with me.
Someone claiming to be Tricky’s touring guitarist offers to perform with me on stage, possibly when I support The Cribs at their NME in London next month...er, assuming they contact me first.
England lose at football.

The sound you hear is the gorgeous, enflamed tone of Ms Rachel Nagy of The Detroit Cobras, sweating and sweltering but never once losing her poise. Steve Gullick phones, to let me know Plan B looks like Careless Talk Costs Lives from the back: and it’s lacking him. I tell him I know that already. (I’ll share a secret with y’awl here: neither me nor Andrew expected Plan B to appear looking the way it does. We thought we’d actually made it look different. Yes, we are disappointed...but that’s what pilot issues are for.) Steve drunkenly emails the forum to complain at both our magazine and Bright Eyes – he doesn’t do this overtly, but I’m fully aware of his intentions. I like Steve.
Yesterday evening after a Plan B night at Border’s, Brighton, a bearded man who once wrote for UFO magazine and produces television pilots suggests that I drop a copy of Plan B magazine over to the Sussex Arts Club where it is well known cantankerous critic Julie Burchill has a residency. He thinks she’ll hold court. Lovely. I also enjoy films made about people who make films. The talk went fine, thank you – David was composed and frighteningly erudite (thank God he didn’t hold the mic too close, he might have shown us all up). I rambled and fell back on my usual defence of repetition. Chris seemed confused by the question about whether Issue Zero (the cover you see here on the site) is simply ‘a teaser’. “Well, of course it is...” he smirked. Through familiarity, eager media students taking notes of my lecture bullshit no longer disconcert me. No one mentioned THE MUSIC and that’s a fucking shame.
We should have.
Saturday evening, Jon Slade plays surf and twang guitar in a three-piece composed entirely of Taurus musicians – even says a few words into the microphone (probably “I’m thirsty”).  They’re called Electric Bull, and have a ‘list’ song that contrives to be smart, rude and vaguely spontaneous (although amateurism should never be confused with spontaneity).
So there’s Jon Slade, and he’s as swarthy and unkempt as ever. And there’s his pal Stephanie who dresses like a Teenage Mum, with her four-day teeth and obscene mini-skirt. And on the walls – heralding another clinical performance from the oddly pure Miss Pain (odd, because they aim for a sleazy afterglow from their invigorating electric buzz) – are Rorschach inkblots, and nicotine stains. Pills litter the bar. Bucks fizz is proffered to early risers. Girls dress as nurses. Boys look seedy (as ever). Personality tests afford a five-minute sideline: Hey I’m highly neurotic. We call it ‘moody’ in the 00s.

Life slows down to a crawl.
I’m stuck on a train up to London. I’m stuck in London. I’m stuck playing a Gameboy on a train stuck somewhere in London. I’m stuck with this pornographic teen-fest of a novel, The Wanderers. I wanted to throw some words into this blog somewhere about beauty – beauty and the riotous, geeky, pure dancing of the two brothers from Herman Düne with their stories and travel and travail, and their chugging stop-start rhythms and four-second guitar solos and clouds of cigarette pluming above their bearded, beautiful heads, and their laconic dry wit and enflamed harmonies, and the way everything got stripped so gentle so quiet so beautiful and aware during that cover of Tom Waits with the singing saw... but this is why I wanna quit writing, one of the many maddening reasons.
I had Herman Düne pinned down as somewhere between mediocre and Belle And Sebastian but – oh my God, the laconic wit, the brief brutal-sweet interludes of plangent guitar chiming and ringing out like the Modern Lovers raised on a solid diet of The Velvet Underground (or should that be the other way round?), like all the dream New Zealand bands of the 80s back for one last great hurrah, the brothers Herman dancing and lolloping so gracefully bear bellies hanging out and tales of debauched weed-infested train journeys and remembered loves seeping out, the harmonies so beautiful and beautiful and FUCKING BEAUTIFUL.
I had Herman Düne down as – and this despite Mr Gullick and Mr Vanoli and Mr Clare’s recommendations, despite the fact that David dances like Mr Gullick in slow velvet motion and nods his head likewise, sports a pair of broken shades like The Legend! circa 1991, and all these songs are all new not that I’d know, Mr Vanoli has a tape of another show in France,  three weeks back, and that an entirely new set in itself but nothing from even that performed for the first 40 minutes…and it’s like the Velvets and the travelling bed from Little Nemo In Wonderland and Calvin Johnson and Howe Gelb and Jonathan (of course, because I’ve been listening to hardly anything except his new album for the past month) and all your other cool male friends all got together and decided to not scare you, only comfort you, only hold you close and make you sad make you happy make you sweet make you sour with the cute ghostly wonderment of life.
Something that Royal City singularly failed to do. There’s a reason why Classic Rock was so reviled round these parts formerly, y’know.
And something that The Customers will only ever be able to dream of. Such fluidity! Such easy grace round an amplifier! Such smoking! Such unravelling and ravelling back up of dreams. Oh man. Oh daughter.
And just a quick word to say how much I fucking LOVE Electrelane – they are everything that is good and pure and passionate and melodic and righteous and female and mysterious and wicked about music. Someone grabs my hand. It’s my wife. And we’re dancing to the sweet Sixties sounds of Brighton’s own Phil Spector-tribute act, The Pipettes (matching polka dot outfits, hand movements, perfect two-minute self-aggrandising pop songs and all).
Man, I’m a fucking lucky bastard sometimes.

Keep the roaring silence away.