Science & Magic | 13

Written By Matt Lockett

Last Saturday, I was in a dusty, poorly-lit record shop in Manchester. I was on a specific mission: to find a clean, early pressing of Gil Scott-Heron's Pieces of a Man, an album I think I have owned in four different formats but have convinced myself I need one more time. After twenty minutes of sifting through crates of dross, I saw the spine. I reached in, my fingers fumbling with the anticipation of a clean extraction, and pulled out the record next to it by mistake. It was a battered copy of Bridget St. John's 1969 album, Ask Me No Questions, her face half-obscured by a faded price sticker. I felt a flash of pure, irrational annoyance. I bought it anyway, out of a sense of obligation to my own clumsiness.

   Later that night, I put it on the turntable. It was not the sharp, political soul-poetry I had set out to find. Nor was it the quiet, flawed, and devastatingly beautiful folk of Bridget St. John. Inside the sleeve, inexplicably, was disc one of ELO's Out of the Blue.

   It strikes me that the most profound discoveries are very rarely the result of a successful search. They are almost always by-products of some failed plan or other, a cosmic joke or someone else's hungover administrative error in a second-hand shop three years ago. The history of innovation is a history of beautiful mistakes. Penicillin, the microwave, the Post-it Note - none of these were the intended destination. They were strange, unexpected products discovered when the original experiment went gloriously, beautifully wrong.

   This then is the architecture of the accident. Science designs the experiment; the magic, it seems, is always in the contaminated petri dish, the failed adhesive or Jeff Lynne's symphonic Beatle-esque prog-pop hiding in a folk sleeve. The revolution will not be televised, nor will it be served to you by a recommendation engine. It simply cannot account for the beautiful, generative power of human error.

   And that, I suppose, is the very soul of this here correspondence: a collection of happy accidents, of things on the periphery. These are the margin notes from the main text.

   This edition gathers another set of dispatches from the edges. Pete Wilkinson opens with ten pointed reflections that map the fault lines of his musical life. Jeff Young returns to Mathew Street, tracing the ghosts that hover between memory and stone. Jasmine Nahal sends us a warm, precise account of small kindnesses and solitary walks. Toria Garbutt and Eimear Kavanagh file a new Ministry of Small Truths report, all smoke, light and improbable beauty. Brendan Fenerty weaves in a lean, off-centre vignette on our ever beautiful dead girl walking, La Violette Società. John Canning Yates shares a quiet fragment from his world behind The Quiet Portraits. Tom Roberts adds a sharp, thoughtful note of his own, a kind of anchor in the middle of his drift. And I fill the gaps with a dive into Mary Margaret O’Hara’s Miss America, a record that delightfully refuses to behave. 

   This is what we found in the ruins of a perfectly good plan. Welcome to your latest edition.

Matt

Ten Questions

by Pete Wilkinson

There are certain figures in a city’s music scene who feel less like participants and more like part of the very architecture. Pete Wilkinson is one of them. For me, the story began when, at 19, he joined Shack and laid down the iconic, melodic basslines on Waterpistol, an album that remains a touchstone for so many of us. He learned to play with that distinctive, fluid style by immersing himself in jazz records - Miles Davis, in particular - and you can hear that deep, intuitive understanding of melody in every note he plays.

   His musical journey is like a map of the last thirty years of Liverpool’s guitar music. As a founding member of Cast, he was at the heart of Britpop. He later lent his formidable talent to the legendary Echo & the Bunnymen. And his solo project, Aviator, has been a quiet, consistent source of brilliant psych-rock for over a decade.

   But beyond the impressive CV, Pete has always been one of the good guys. In the early, chaotic days of Violette Records, he was a constant source of kindness, advice and encouragement when it was needed most.

   He knows what it takes to build something from the ground up, having started his own excellent label, AV8 Records in 2015. Initially a vehicle for his own solo project, Aviator, AV8 organically evolved into a platform for "artists past, present and future," releasing beautiful, limited-edition vinyl by the likes of Will Sergeant, Paul Simpson, Edgar Jones, and Martin Carr. Their ethos - "the past becomes the present and the present becomes the future" - feels like a perfect summation of Pete's entire approach to music.

We invited Pete to select ten questions from our archive. His responses serve as a field guide to a life lived in sound, from the revelation of a Siouxsie and the Banshees gig at age nine to the enduring, life-affirming joy of a Doves classic. This is a story told in shouts, whispers and the quiet, comforting rumble of a distant bus depot.

● What’s your favourite sound that isn’t music?

I think about this a lot and once read that some people see the world whilst others hear. I definitely feel like I’m in the hear camp and have lived experientially most of my life. There are obvious sounds like rain and wind that really comfort me but the one I’d love to hear again is the bus depot on Green Lane, Liverpool. As a child I could hear the sounds of engines beginning their day, coughing and spluttering into life whilst I lay in bed feeling safe. It's an odd choice but reminds me of my childhood. If I can't have the bus depot give me the sea. 

● What album would you press into the hands of an 18-year-old today, insisting they listen to it front-to-back right now?

Where do you begin with a question like this? There are endless possibilities and answers that can change daily

. Right now I’d say OK Computer by Radiohead. For me this album has everything. The songwriting is unique, the colours are amazing, the playing, particularly the bass, are inventive and well executed and it leads onto their follow up Kid A. A marked and significant shift in the band's sound and approach to making music. Heavily lifted from Aphex Twin (who I adore). These two albums are genius in my opinion. Sorry, I chose two records.

● What Top of the Pops performance changed you?

The confusion around seeing Boy George and Culture Club was huge. Seeing them spun a 13-year-old Pete into a right froth. Is it a boy or a girl? Do I think they're pretty? Am I gay? Do I fancy them? Oh, for fuck’s sake! Not only was I in a tizz, but my Dad was shouting all sorts of obscenities at the telly. Boy George’s appearance was huge on the whole of the UK and it was fantastic!

   I’d probably actually go with Echo and the Bunnymen doing 'Back of Love' though. That was quite a moment. A band from Liverpool doing a fantastic song and every member looking like a star. I would later have my own appearance on Top of The Pops and join the Bunnymen. Dreams came true. 

● Which band from Liverpool deserved to be huge but wasn’t?

Shack. Next question.

● Who’s the person who gives you the best music tips today?

It’s probably Dave McDonnell aka The Sand Band. We send each other masses of tunes weekly. This week I sent him Ethel Cain's record Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You. A fantastic, drugged out, sluggish record on the inevitability of loss and how it clings to beauty no matter how painful. He sent me 'Skeleton' (acoustic version) by Yeah Yeah Yeahs and other beauties.

● Which person most shaped your musical taste before you turned 18, and what specific record or gig did they introduce you to that changed everything?

This is easily my favourite question and it belongs to my big brother Ian.

   He is 6 years older than me so from the age of 8 onwards these cool records would come into our house. Firstly punk right through to early 80s but I’ll always remember him coming home after seeing the Buzzcocks at Mountford Hall, Liverpool saying he’d seen the most amazing band and could I, after school, go to our local record shop and buy their album. That album and band was Closer by Joy Division.

   So I was being introduced to all this incredible music early doors but the one most singular important moment was 1979 and him taking me to see Siouxsie and the Banshees at the Empire, Liverpool. I was 9 and from the moment the first band came on, Spizz Energi, to The Banshees I had decided there and then that I was going to be in a band. The audience comprised of Punks and bikers. There was a huge fight at the front of the stage and I remember thinking, 'I've arrived!' To this day I still get a thrill from live music and recently saw The Cure again with my brother who also played that night. A wonderful introduction to music and a wonderful brother.

● What’s your favourite song that is from a soundtrack to a film?

It's not a song but more a piece. The film is Paris, Texas and the soundtrack is by Ry Cooder. Absolutely sublime. The space and air in this recording are as important as the music itself.

● What song should be the new national anthem?

'Wonderwall' by Oasis. My kids know all the words without owning a single Oasis record. Speaks for itself really.

● What was the first song you ever learned to play on an instrument (even badly)?

This would be 'House of the Rising Sun' and I’m probably still playing it wrong and badly.


● What’s your go-to song for pure, uncomplicated, turn-it-up-and-dance joy?

'Here Comes the Fear' by Doves. There's a moment where, for me, it just lifts off like the clouds have opened to reveal this brilliant blue sky. It's uplifting, a life-affirming joy. Every single time I hear it I smile. I love it. 

Magnetic North

by Jeff Young

13 : Dream Street, Part Two


‘A grimmer time, I can’t recall, like ancient Rome we start to fall, like John and Ringo, George and Paul. It’s breathed it’s last, it’s dead, it’s over now...”  - My Town, the Wild Swans

Every few years, C.G Jung disintegrates. Rain, wind and vandalism turn the great man to dust, and then he’s resurrected in another incarnation that bears less and less resemblance to the actual man. I’m talking about the sculpture of Jung on Mathew Street here, leaning out of his hole in the wall like an old bloke flogging the Echo from his kiosk. Below the diminished psychologist there’s a block of grey sandstone transported here from Switzerland in 1976 and carved into the stone are these words:

   Liverpool is the pool of life C.G. Jung. 1927.

   You can walk down Mathew Street and not even notice the Jung stone but for a loose cabal of cosmic drifters and grifters scavenging the Mathew Street gutters for countercultural debris it’s a site of pilgrimage. From the 50’s onwards - see Grant McPhee’s forthcoming trilogy of documentaries for evidence - the street was a fugitive enclave for jazz heads, mystics, scholars, poets, drunks, drunk poets, astrologers, navigators, beatniks, anarchists, holy fools, post-punk ghosts, illuminati, painters, actors, Merry Pranksters, dandies, psychonauts, psychopaths, visionaries, Fab Four hustlers, and singers with shit haircuts. It’s a street stained with spilled alcohol and scarred with memories of regrettable trouser choices. If I’d spent more time in the Armadillo Tearooms back in the day maybe I’d have signed to Zoo Records and released a Nuggets style single now only available on Discogs. But I was drawn more to alcohol than Yorkshire Tea, so I was across the street in the Grapes drinking cheap whisky with alcoholics from the tax office and The Man Who Gave the Beatles Away.

   Writing about Peter O’Halligan’s Liverpool School in my memoir Ghost Town I wrote that ‘my favourite network of streets – Mathew Street, Button Street, Rainford Square, Temple Court – now had its own strange university, like Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo ship, a tramp steamer full of ideas and dreams, beached down a cobbled back alley...’ Ancient history now.

   It’s Saturday night and I’m standing at the Jung stone. All around me there’s a carnival of high heels and eyelashes, glamour and clamor, the wild parade of desires. I close my eyes, hoping for visions of magnolias. If I touch the stone, will it all come back, that radiating magic of long ago?

   Nothing happens. C.G. Jung disintegrates. It’s gone forever, the Mathew Street of lucid dreams. It’s breathed its last, it’s dead, it’s over now...


— Jeff Young, 25 November 2025

—

Jeff Young continues his work as the city's unofficial psychic surveyor, documenting the places where the membrane between Liverpool's past and present has worn dangerously thin. His dispatch this week is the second instalment from Mathew Street, a territory he treats as a site of recurring, fever-dreamed visions. He believes the street itself is a lucid dreamer, constantly inventing and reinventing its own mythology. During his last visit, he claims he witnessed the statue of C.G. Jung momentarily transform into a young, spectral version of Pete de Freitas, who leaned out from the wall and attempted to sell him a slightly damaged copy of Ocean Rain before dissolving back into sandstone.

Extracts From a Letter to My Friend

by Jasmine Nahal


I could cry when a stranger smiles back at me in passing, or when a four-legged friend looks up at me.

   I’ve shared thoughts in my kitchen; babies, blocked toilets and boys.

   I bought two vintage suits from Vinted (god bless it and keep it) for less than £10. They arrived, fit well, and I received compliments from colleagues (and one friendly stranger whom I passed several days later and exchanged finger guns and a wave with) when I wore one to the office.

   I took a spontaneous visit to Liverpool and squeezed as much as I could out of the culture-rich and humble city. I found it, quite literally, a breath of fresh air to be amongst such friendly people, a plethora of history, and a buzz of music and exciting vibrations, all the whilst never feeling intimidated or out of place. I hope we can visit together someday and continue to see what there is to learn from the world.

—

Jasmine Nahal is a translator of the quietest frequencies. She believes that a compliment from a stranger and the perfect fit of a second-hand suit are transmissions from the same benevolent source. Her work is a collection of these captured signals - field notes from a world where kindness is the highest form of currency and beauty is a found object. She calibrates her creative decisions against the silent, unerring judgment of Susan, a large, theoretical dog who occupies the space just to the left of her desk and who, she insists, has never once been wrong about the emotional weight of a carefully positioned copular verb.

Jasmine is a collector of incidental beauty, an archivist of her own becoming and her work is a quiet, determined act of proving to herself that she is, indeed, here.

The Ministry of Small Truths

by Toria Garbutt & Eimear Kavanagh

Up in the eaves of the Violette art deco headquarters, in a small, draughty office situated directly above the main archives, sits The Ministry of Small Truths. The department consists of two operatives.

   Toria, the Chief Observer, believes that no truth is too small for documentation. She arrives each morning with a collection of field notes - scrawled on junk mail, receipts and the backs of her own hands - insisting that the universe is constantly transmitting vital information, and that it is their solemn duty to intercept it. She is a completist, an enthusiast, a believer.

   Eimear, the Head of Visual Corroboration, is more skeptical. She maintains that ninety percent of all observed phenomena are merely ‘atmospheric interference’ and not worthy of official filing. She works in silence, communicating primarily through a series of subtle, often contradictory, facial expressions.

   Each case file represents a hard-won victory for Toria, a ‘Small Truth’ that has survived Eimear's rigorous, silent vetting process. The following report, concerning the interaction between smoke and light in a Halifax living room, was debated for three days before Eimear, with a single, decisive nod, finally deemed it worthy of archival.

Case File #002 :

Report on the interaction between smoke from a match stick and a shaft of light through a living room window in Halifax on a winter morning.


A Floating Cauldron
Rotates mid air 

An astonishing hologram 

You can 
Walk through or around it
Dare to dip your hand in 
Wear it like a lace glove
An Intricate trickster 

A wispy disc 
A thin pool of magic 
Exists

Dance in it 
Wear it like a shawl 
Wear it like a stole
Wear it like a shrug 

Exquisite 

Leave your scent in its silky lining 

Your fingerprints in utero 
Your molluscs in a shell 
A blueprint for a secret code 
Look closely 

Read the lines on her face
The crumples on his pillow
The indentations on his desk 

Blow it like steam from a teacup 

And watch it disappear

Into the Heart of Beautiful Chaos : Miss America 

by Matt Lockett

I remember exactly when ‘Body's in Trouble’ finally broke me open. Not the first listen - that had been filed away as "interesting but difficult" - but months later, driving alone from Glasgow at 2am, city lights streaking past like meteors. The song had been playing in my car for maybe just over a minute when something inside O'Hara's voice shattered, and my hands actually trembled on the steering wheel. I pulled over onto an empty side street, stopped the engine, and sat in complete silence after the song ended. What the fuck had just happened to me?

   This is the problem with trying to write about Mary Margaret O'Hara's Miss America - words collapse under the weight of the actual experience. Released in 1988 after a tortured four-year recording process, this album exists in that rare category of music that physically alters you upon listening. It's not just that it sounds like nothing else, it feels like nothing else. The album creates its own gravity, pulling you into emotional territory so raw and unfamiliar that you emerge slightly changed, like you've witnessed something you weren't supposed to see.

   The story behind Miss America reads like some kind of biblical test of faith. Virgin Records signed O'Hara in 1984, giving her remarkable creative freedom based on some demo recordings. But as the project continued, the label's enthusiasm curdled into confusion and eventually horror at what they deemed ‘unlistenable.’ Multiple producers cycled through, with XTC's Andy Partridge famously abandoning the project after a single day, unable to cope with O'Hara's unorthodox approach.

   But this tale of music industry friction misses the fundamental truth: O'Hara wasn't being difficult, she was being absolutely necessary. She was making the exact album her mind and body needed to make, following an internal logic that the machinery of commercial music simply couldn't process in 1988. By the time producer Michael Brook finally helped shepherd the album to completion, what emerged was a document so singular that Virgin had no idea how to market it. They dropped O'Hara shortly after the album's release.

   Miss America begins with ‘To Cry About,’ where O'Hara's voice floats over ghostly, minimalist instrumentation. "You take a walk / I'm by your side / Take my life, I'll give you mine," she sings, her phrasing already revealing the astonishing elasticity that defines her approach. The melody feels both improvised and somehow devastatingly inevitable, like watching someone navigate a labyrinth from memory.

   But it's on the album's third track, "Body's in Trouble," where something truly transcendent happens. The song opens with a hypnotic, echoing guitar line, soon joined by a rhythm section that locks into a groove of almost mechanical precision. Then O'Hara enters, her voice already sounding like it's barely containing something enormous:


Oh, you just want to push somebody – your body won’t let you
Just want to move somebody – body won’t let you
You want to steal somebody – body won’t let you
Ah who, ah who, who do you talk to?"


   The lyrics explore the maddening constraints of physical existence, the betrayal of wanting to connect but being trapped. As the song builds, the band creates an ascending figure that grows more intense with each repetition. And then, about two-thirds through, O'Hara's voice begins to disintegrate. There's no other word for it. She repeats "body's in trouble" with escalating desperation until her voice literally cracks open, exposing something primal and frightening and gorgeous. I've heard this song hundreds of times, and this moment still raises the hair on my arms, still makes me feel like I'm witnessing something dangerously intimate.

   This vocal approach where control and chaos achieve perfect equilibrium defines the entire album. On ‘Year in Song,’ O'Hara begins with a relatively straightforward delivery before gradually fragmenting into what sounds like improvised glossolalia, repeating "Joy is the aim" with such varied emphasis that the phrase becomes simultaneously an affirmation and a question. On ‘When You Know Why You're Happy,’ she pushes her voice into registers that seem physically impossible, moving from whispery introspection to wounded howl within a single phrase.

   What makes these performances so extraordinary isn't their technical unusualness but their emotional accuracy. O'Hara sings like someone trying to articulate feelings that exist in the spaces between the words. Her phrasing feels intuitive in the very deepest sense, not practiced or considered, but arising from some subterranean wellspring of primal truth.

   The musicians supporting O'Hara create the perfect architecture for her explorations. The arrangements throughout Miss America feel so mathematically precise, instruments locked into grooves of almost terrifying exactitude. This tension between the band's metronomic control and O'Hara's wildly improvisational approach creates a dynamic that mirrors the album's lyrical focus: the body that won't let you, the self constrained by circumstance, the ecstatic breaking through of some deeper truth. I once asked a friend who's a jazz drummer what he thought of the album, and he described it as "the sound of someone discovering their own voice in real time." That gets to something essential about Miss America. It doesn't feel composed so much as uncovered, like we're witnessing O'Hara excavating parts of herself she didn't actually know existed until the moment of recording.

   This quality made the album a touchstone for other artists. When Michael Stipe brought O'Hara onstage during an R.E.M. show in Toronto in the 1990s, he introduced her as "one of the greatest singers alive." Morrissey, who later invited O'Hara to sing on his own records, described Miss America as "…so beautiful I suddenly realised I hadn't in a decade heard someone singing because of deep-set personal neurosis, absolute need and desperation. You'd think she might fall apart at any second and become a pile of rags and bones onstage. For the first time in almost a decade I was 'high' - mentally really, really high." Even now, in 2025, I encounter musicians who speak of this album with a kind of reverential awe.

   Yet Miss America remains O'Hara's only full-length album. She released a Christmas EP in 1991 and contributed to a film soundtrack in 2001, but never created another complete statement under her own name. She's collaborated with various artists over the years, acted occasionally, surfaced for rare live performances, but largely retreated from the spotlight.

   This absence only intensifies the album's mystique. This era where artists are expected to maintain constant visibility, O'Hara's silence feels almost like an extension of the album's artistic statement, a refusal to participate in their commercial games. When Tracey Thorn references playing Miss America "again and again" during a New York Christmas in her song ‘Tinsel and Lights,’ she's acknowledging how deeply this music can embed itself in life's significant moments.

   I've played Miss America during the darker periods of my life and found solace in its beautiful mess. I've played it during moments of joy and found that it deepens those emotions too. It’s what makes the album enduring, it reflects back whatever state you bring to it while somehow also transcending that state entirely.

   To listen to Miss America in 2025 is to reconnect with something increasingly rare: art that exists purely on its own terms. In an era where songs are crafted to trigger specific emotions at precisely timed intervals, O'Hara's uncompromising vision feels almost radical. Her voice - cracking, soaring, whispering, howling - reminds us what music can be when it emerges from absolute necessity rather than some commercial calculation.

   For those already familiar with this record, my words here will seem woefully inadequate compared to the actual experience of listening. For those who haven't yet encountered it, I can only say: approach with open ears and an open heart. Miss America isn't an obvious or easy album, but it offers rewards that few other records can ever provide. A sense that you're hearing music and witnessing something elemental and true about what it means to be human in all our beautiful, broken complexity.

   And if you find yourself driving alone late at night, put on ‘Body's In Trouble’ and turn the volume up. Just be prepared to pull over when your hands start to shake on the wheel.

Drifting…featuring Jeff Young

with Joe Mckechnie


Joe Mckechnie write songs and measures time. As a drummer, he was more interested in the rhythmic structure that holds a moment together - the steady, four-four beat of a city street, the syncopated chaos of an overheard argument, the long, slow decay of a final cymbal crash.

   His Drifting... project is a collection of these studies. He believes that every memory has a unique time signature, and his collaborations are an attempt to find it.

   This week’s missive, Ghost Cinemas, marks his second collaboration with writer Jeff Young - our écrivain en résidence at Science & Magic. The piece emerged from a conversation which ended with a phone number scribbled in a notebook, followed by a long, patient wait. The result is an aural exploration of Liverpool's lost picture palaces, a ghost story told in music and spoken word.

   These are all conversations and shared memories between friends and another chapter in Joe's quiet, brilliant cartography of the city's soul.

Ghost Cinemas

Regular readers will already be aware of how a random 2020 reconnection with singer Pascale Martini over in Zurich led to the 'Drifting ft' collection of tracks that I now write about here. 

   Likewise the first Drifting ft… track I recorded with that writer bloke, Jeff Young, led me to the idea of creating a collection of tracks that loosely document the cultural and social history of Liverpool, music from me, spoken word from some of the actively involved crew.

   There's more to come on that, both here, and there, currently there's a list of people waiting for me to send them their track.  People, hold on.

   I've known Jeff for as long as the mists of time allow.  Along with most things pertaining to music & bars, we were part of the Liverpool bookshop browser scene. Atticus, News From Nowhere, Progressive Books (where I worked/got told off by Dave Cope for shouting "HELLO AGGRESSIVE BOOKS!" when answering the phone) and more.

   One afternoon in The Grapes on Roscoe Street, I'm telling Jeff how much I enjoyed his latest BBC Radio play, or essay was it? I know it was set in the Walton area of Liverpool, childhood, a pub, a bedroom window, Elsie barmaid, mists of time.

   Let's talk some more says Jeff, the current notebook is flourished, I write my number down, and wait.

   The funny thing about waiting.

   I read Jeff's essay on the Lost Cinemas of Liverpool (lot more going on of course, this isn't a Liverpool Echo "remember when..." article).

   The wait is over.

   I've got to be Drifting …

— Joe the Drifter, 26 November 2025











Shadow Songs

by  John Canning Yates

A friend, an aficionado of all things not much, sent me this song yesterday, which took up a good chunk of my day, on repeat and then into the night, playing my own version of it.

   I like it when songs occupy a whole day in this way. Dog walks, bike rides, round that corner. Music becomes place and I often think of certain parts of a song in terms of location…exactly where I’m walking when I hear something that moves me.

   An organ part coming in just as you reach the front door. Anyway, here’s my very late night version of The Walker Brothers’ ‘I Can’t Let It Happen to You’. One sung tenderly by John Walker, a founding members of the brothers pretend. A real beauty of a song. A song of help. Described by said friend as… ‘a belter’. It’s good when a friend sends a song over and it takes hold of your day.


— JCY, 27 November 2025

 

—

John Canning Yates : the collector of nocturnal frequencies. He operates in the wee small hours, when songs shed their daytime skins and reveal their true forms. His piano is a sophisticated device, a receiver tuned to these faint, melancholic signals that broadcast only after midnight. The recordings he makes for his Shadow Songs series are handwritten notes from late-night expeditions - the captured whispers, the half-recalled melodies, the beautiful, sleep-deprived logic of a song communing with itself in the dark.


Further Travelled : Memories of Violette

by  Brendan Fenerty


As La Violette Società nights draw to a close next year, I will have completed near ten years of scrambling around - inventing reasons to be working in Liverpool on a Tuesday at the end of every other month. Home is precisely 124 miles away for me – likely to make the Racing Post’s ‘Furthest Travelled’ section. I’ve worn this dedication like an unseen badge of honour and admit to wanting to throw out the football argument of ‘where were you on a cold wet Tuesday night in February when we were away at Stoke?’  I never got the chance to say that in the queue but the truth is that nobody would have been arsed about any of that. ‘Fuss’ isn’t something the Società does.

   Like many good discoveries, my first venture to La Violette Società was entirely by chance. Back in 2016, my boss at the time had got us tickets for Jamie T at the Olympia in Liverpool. Jamie T had left it late before cancelling the gig due to illness. I had happily settled upon the idea that a good few pints would fill the time we had on our hands. However, he’d spotted something called ‘La Violette Società’ that was on in town. We weren’t entirely sure of what it was going to be and the much-loved artwork by Pascal Blua certainly was never intended to make that clear. We made an educated guess that the premise was likely music related and off we went to Parr Street. I would love to be able to regale lots of detail from that evening, but I admit to a hazy memory of the entire night – a drink had certainly been taken. I do remember one of the acts to be somewhat chaotic but enthusiastic and joyous and that we chatted to them afterward. We also bought a couple of bits of merch that they were selling – “cash if you’ve got it lad”.  I had loved every minute of it.

   What came after changed things for me. Despite being in my mid 40’s, going to the pub or a gig completely on my own wasn’t entirely a comfortable prospect. “His date hasn’t turned up” was something I didn’t want to hear. However, given how much I enjoyed it, I did commit to being brave and in the absence of my closest friends and family (who were stuck back in the Midlands),

   La Violette Società went onto provide a comfort blanket. I set my own tradition over the years of venturing to Belvedere Pub on Sugnall Street, then grabbing something to eat in The Blackburne Arms or The Quarter before walking down Hardman Street and beyond to join the always ‘alarmingly’ early queue to get in. Parr Street was cool and quirky but I must confess to enjoying the relative luxury that the move to the now defunct Leaf on Bold Street brought…well, it provided a seat at least.

   The format of these nights was fantastic and ten years of providing consistent, quality eclectic acts is a mammoth achievement. The evenings just flowed. It was (at it’s heart) free spirited but held an air of professionalism from the venue right down to timings. Unfamiliarity with the acts kept us all interested but more often than not, fully immersed. I had no clue initially that an act called Roy (PJ Smith) had anything to do with Violette, but he was doing something called ‘spoken word’. I’ve heard he has a tweed jacket nowadays, but back then, entering the venue, I imagined him differently. He had the look of someone who might ‘leg’ me at an away ground in the mid nineties but at the same time, would be careful not to tear his Lacoste polo in any such fracas . “I’m not a poet” we were told. Afterward, I was intrigued to know the difference between poetry and spoken word ? I was none the wiser even when presented with the answer, but encouragingly and crucially, 'Violette had somehow meant that I’d lost the desire to find things like that out. It was good stuff - what else matters ?

   People watching can be a fun pastime for all of us and the Violette crowd were absolutely fascinating to me. Try as I might, there was no pigeon holing any of them. My ‘badge of honour’ of potentially being the furthest travelled outsider was soon cast aside. It became very apparent that I wasn’t the only visitor from outside the City. My fear of going on my own had also evaporated away by meeting lots of lovely, genuine people. Once sat down, I loved Jane Gallagher who introduced the acts for a long while at Leaf. Her research/analogies ahead of the acts coming on stage were brief, funny and honest. She seemed like a homage to radio presenter Annie Nightingale - beginning always with her own catchphrase ‘RIGHT!!!....’ which signalled the audience to an immediate hush. Jane set the tone and I was glad of it.

   I became conscious that I hadn’t really found out how or why Violette had started out? Naively, I had simply not realised the Violette audience common denominator – total and utter reverence to Michael Head was the connection. People would talk like they all knew him – many do. Descriptions of him or his work bounced excitedly around the bar area or sometimes in hushed tones in the outside queue. I considered buying online a ‘Shack’ tee shirt to wear next time but cringed at the idea. After all, my own purchase of a Sonic Youth tee shirt years prior didn’t do me any good and in truth, back then I wouldn’t have known Kim Deal if I’d bumped into her in The Lobster Pot. Don’t get me wrong, I also loved Shack, but from afar. The beautiful ‘As Long As I’ve Got You’ was chosen for my wedding ceremony 18 years ago. Best to avoid the cultural hand grenade debate as to whether Mick ‘may or may not be the best songwriter ever to come from the City’.

   Choosing favourite acts that played at La Violette Società would be somewhat unfair and indeed would almost certainly change if you asked me next week or next month. If held at gunpoint, I’d say Keiths Brother, Ellis Murphy, Westside Cowboy and Roy would get in my starting lineup. Yesterday’s Flowers ready to come off the bench. The line up was something that I got perilously close to earlier this year when hosting a Violette ‘away fixture’. Others must surely have noticed, but the ‘comfort’ in silence that the Violette crowd had is unique. Whether it was an acoustic artist playing softly, a spoken word act finishing abruptly or a band warming up, there was never interruption (for the purposes of diplomacy, I’ll leave out that French band incident a year or so ago..)  I had predicted the polar opposite to respectful silence but a rogue shout or off putting loud talking didn’t happen. Artists were respected and then assured of warm applause following their performance – this was irrespective of ‘what it was’ they were showcasing. It was all so incredibly supportive.

   With my family from Liverpool, I’m very familiar and sensitive to the clichés that can surround the city and its people. I’m relieved when artists don’t lazily throw out compliments that they think Liverpool people will want to hear.  Violette seems to have steadfastly avoided these lazy and often unwarranted stereotypes (be they positive or negative). It is much better for it - relying instead on artists and the audience taking the evening at face value. The ethos they have steadfastly followed of paying artists the same fee, no headliners, equal stage time felt natural and unforced – never virtue signalling. Their ‘suspended’ tickets idea was also articulated in a pragmatic way rather than being put as some sort of political statement. ‘No questions asked’ if you wanted to claim one – Perfect, let’s move on !

   My redundant question for years was whether Violette ‘could travel’ and still hold its appeal? Could it work outside Liverpool and would it even want to ? I’d heard there was a dalliance in the South West of the country once and back at home, I’d long since championed ‘this Violette thing’ to family and friends. The culmination was that on New Year 2024, I build up the courage to ask PJ if I could take a night to the Midlands (Leamington Spa). He agreed with minimal fuss (Everton must have won?) and I quickly realised that my enthusiasm would likely need to carve out ‘a one nil win’ over the obvious fact of me being ‘totally out of my depth’. What acts could I get?, sound desks? PA systems? lighting ?, suitable venue? Selling tickets surprisingly didn’t initially worry me although it was always going to be a very manual process outside of Liverpool…”No, I know the artwork doesn’t say what it is, but honestly, it’ll be a great night” ….I wish I had a pound for every time I said that…I’d put blind faith in that once someone had agreed to come, they were going to go onto the site and get a ticket. PJ was likely driven mad by my ‘how many we sold now?’ throughout the lead up. Remarkably however, something worked and ignited imaginations enough. We’d sold it out with weeks to spare. A line up of Ellis Murphy, Roy, Emma Hughes and Horace Panter with Sally Williams (to whom I am massively grateful) were guaranteed to provide a brilliant night to what was a sellout crowd.

   I’ll miss La Violette Società nights enormously and even after ten years, I evidently can’t articulate properly why it was so meaningful and important to me. In the absence of anything better, I’ll finish with what I’d said to my mates …… “I don’t know how you’d describe it really, but it’s good stuff – what else matters?”

—

Brendan Fenerty is a man who understands that true dedication often looks like a form of madness to the outside world. For nearly a decade, he has treated the 124-mile journey from the Midlands to Liverpool as a necessary pilgrimage, inventing work trips and rearranging his life to align with the Società's fortnightly schedule. He is a collector of hazy memories from Parr Street, a connoisseur of the perfect pre-gig pint at The Belvedere and a quiet champion of our entire enterprise. When he decided that his own town needed a dose of the Violette spirit, he took it upon himself to transplant the entire, chaotic operation to Leamington Spa, an act of beautiful, reckless optimism that, against all odds, resulted in a sold-out show. He insists that he still can't quite articulate why these nights matter, but his actions have already provided the most eloquent explanation possible.

The Gen Alpha Lexicography

by Maya Chen

11: 'Ate'

Etymology: Evolved from African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) and drag culture's ‘ate it up.’ Abbreviated by Gen Z and Alpha into a single, definitive verb of approval (c. 2021).

   I spent two hours last Sunday making a coq au vin. I followed the recipe with the forensic precision of a bomb disposal expert, sourcing organic shallots and a bottle of Burgundy I couldn't really afford. When I presented it at the dinner table, my son took one bite, nodded with the quiet authority of a Michelin inspector, and declared, "You ate that, Mum."

   For a brief, beautiful moment, I thought he was simply describing the act of consumption. He was not. He was delivering the highest possible form of praise in the Gen Alpha arsenal.

   'Ate' is not a verb about eating; it is a verdict of absolute success. It is the linguistic equivalent of a flawless dismount in gymnastics. To have 'ate' is to have executed something perfectly, with an effortless, almost unconscious mastery. It has completely replaced words like 'brilliant,' 'excellent,' or 'well done.' My daughter recently described a friend's perfectly applied winged eyeliner as "she ate that." The local cat, having successfully navigated a garden fence, "ate."

   The term's brilliance lies in its finality. It's a closed loop. There is no higher praise, no further qualification needed. It signifies the complete and total consumption of a challenge. You didn't just do the thing; you devoured it, leaving no crumbs, no room for criticism.

   What makes it so particular to this generation is its application to any act, no matter how mundane. A well-argued point in a debate? "You ate." A perfectly parallel-parked car? "They ate that." Successfully opening a stubborn jar of pickles? "I ate."

   It is the ultimate elevation of competence. In a world of digital ephemera and half-hearted attempts, to 'ate' is to have achieved a moment of tangible, undeniable mastery. It is a tiny, perfect victory in the relentless, ongoing battle against general mediocrity. And for that, I suppose, they deserve a biscuit.

Next time: 'Cap / No Cap' - The binary system that has replaced the entire spectrum of truth and lies.

—

Maya Chen’s work on The Gen Alpha Lexicography is driven by a single, haunting question: are they evolving or are we just becoming obsolete? She is a cultural linguist by trade, but is coming to see herself more as a lonely archivist, meticulously documenting the last recorded words of a dying civilisation: her own. She believes that when the final, comprehensible sentence is uttered, it will be by a middle-aged woman asking if anyone wants a cup of tea, and the only response will be a single, indifferent emoji.

Heart Work

by Ange Woolf


I was gripped by an idea
I would tell you
Everything
That I am
That I was
That I would be
Then I would be yours
A part of you
I could then leave
Do as I please
Free as a bird
Riding the wind
Soaring and swooping
All through the day
Loop the looping
Into the dusk
My outline fading
As the skies
Turned to black
Every day
A flock of birds
Would land in the park
But they would all look alike
Extras in a human background
Their important perspectives
Filling their brains
Leaving each of the birds
Invisible
Anonymous
And free to fly again

—

Angela Woolf claims invisibility can only be achieved by sitting perfectly still on a specific park bench for exactly 47 minutes, a duration she believes aligns with the resonant frequency of public indifference. Her latest poem, ‘On Becoming Invisible,’ is a personal note from one such experiment, a meditation on the strange freedom that comes from being seen but not noticed. In our recent correspondence, she revealed she is compiling a catalogue of all the things people say when they think no one is listening, an archive she describes as ‘the city's true, secret soundtrack.’

The Perfect Strange Attractor

by Tom Roberts

Ah, you know me. It doesn’t take much to get me talking about the things I love and how could I resist the chance to talk about two of my favourites: David Lynch and the writer John Higgs.

   Higgs has just released a book about Lynch: Lynchian: The Spell of David Lynch.

   That’s it. That’s all you really need to know. The perfect strange attractor.

   As most of you know, I don’t consider myself to be an aficionado of cultural historians.

   I don’t consider myself to be an aficionado of any historians tbh, but to my mind John Higgs is a national treasure who deserves to be celebrated from the drainage covers of Mathew Street to the omphalos of the Greenwich Meridian.

   You probably know him for The KLF: Chaos Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds, but he’s also written about the Beatles, Doctor Who, William Blake, Watling Street and the very shape of British identity.

   Higgs has an uncanny knack for noticing what hides in plain sight. He points out the details that may not seem obvious at first and once he does it’s impossible to unsee them. His talent for tracing patterns, hidden structures and cosmic coincidences makes him, as far as I am concerned, the perfect person to write about the films of David Lynch.

   I am only halfway through the book as I write this, but I’ve read everything else he’s written, I promise. It’s a journey I would highly recommend. If you are anything like me, you probably have stacks of unread books, some of which you know you’ll never finish. The Japanese call this tsundoku. The art or condition of buying books, letting them pile up and feeling excitement at the possibility of reading them. A revelation I recognised instantly, but Higgs books always mange to avoid this fate.

   I intended to read it quickly before this fortnight’s deadline, but that didn’t happen.

   What can I say, life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans and it will pull you where it will. I don’t usually like giving too much away anyway.

   I was going to write about Mary Margaret O’Hara. In times like these, we all need to erase our heads, listen to the genius of Miss America and “walk in brightness.” That didn’t happen either. To be fair, I delegated it.

   My midnight ramblings remain as a ranty WhatsApp chat between friends.

   I also tried to write something about Bella Freud and her podcast. I know some of you are drawn to her mellifluous tones and laid-back sofa style interview technique. That didn’t happen either.

   I wanted to explore how fashion, creativity and unique perspectives are socially and politically relevant in troubled times. Essential in periods were us against them narratives begin to emerge.

   Which now I think on it, is also why Higgs and Lynch are so essential in exploring the shadows we all need to confront.

   Who knows where the time goes. What can I say, I’m a disappointment to myself and to others…

   Anyway, I digress.

   For the podcast lovers among you, Higgs recently spoke about the Lynch book on The Bureau of Lost Culture, which is another corner of the world dedicated to the weird and the wonderful. Also highly recommended.

   In hindsight it seems obvious that Higgs would take on a subject like Lynch.

   Both have the uncanny ability to look behind the curtain, scratch at the surface and reveal the truth, or at least the feeling of truth, that lies beneath. They both give you the sense that the world is stranger, deeper and more alive than we tend to acknowledge in our everyday lives, leaving you with a new-found sense of wonder, joy and mystique.

   If you are looking to get more familiar with either of these visionaries, Higgs’ new book seems like the perfect place to start.

 

 

—

Tom Roberts experiences cultural deadlines not as theoretical destinations he might one day arrive at, if he doesn't get distracted by a more interesting service station along the way. A former member of Cranebuilders, he now dedicates his time to the serious business of tsundoku - the art of buying books he fully intends to read and then arranging them into architecturally pleasing, unread stacks. His recommendations are the rare survivors of this process, the ones that somehow manage to cut through his current profound state of cultural paralysis. He believes that the best way to understand an artist is to read everything around them first, a research method that has led him to become a leading, if entirely self-appointed, authority on the history of Swedish minimalist furniture design as it relates to the films of David Lynch.

Where You Going Now?


 Jeff Young

Tigers & Flies

Toria Garbutt

Eimear Kavanagh

Pete Wilkinson

Angie Woolf

John Canning Yates

Tom Roberts

Violette Records

 

Science & Magic

 

Matt Lockett
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