80: May 2024
Hello. Welcome to Border Crossing issue #80.
It’s May already? Getting older makes each year whizz past, evermore uncomfortably quickly. Yuck. We need to fill our lives with good things, try to enrich every day, that’s the only way to slow down time.
Anyway, I hope you’re rock’n’roll. A thousand thank-yous for continuing to support my writing.
I’m mostly putting together this Border Crossing in a tour van, somewhere south of Glasgow. We just played a couple of the most kick-ass Jim Bob shows I’ve ever been involved in — immense crowds, the band on magic form. This morning I realised (though it ought to be obvious) we’re a better live outfit now, after a few years of backing Jim, than when the same group of musicians used to tour my T-T stuff, back in the mid-teens.
Next Weds 15th May, I’m presenting a Slack City Social live radio chat show, at the Spiegeltent garden, in the centre of Brighton. There’s one each Wednesday in May, for Brighton Festival. I’ve got psych and electronic music pioneer Richard Norris (The Grid/Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve) talking about his memoir Strange Things Are Happening, comedy writer Joel Morris on his book Be Funny Or Die and burlesque poet Naomi Wood talking about her solo show Gobbess. We’ll also have a live performance from Cubzoa (Jack from Penelope Isles). It goes out live on Slack City Radio but we’ll have a small live audience, which you can join, so just show up. That’s Weds 15th May, from 6pm, free, in the Spiegeltent garden.
This week I reviewed Keeley Forsyth’s new album The Hollow for The Quietus.
I’m boycotting Eurovision this year and I hope you do too, though I won’t be checking up! I’m pretty sure I already boycotted it in recent years (because of Israel obviously, but maybe other political shit) but I used to absolutely love Eurovision, so I do miss it. If I write properly about all that, it’ll be over on Double Chorus — but I may not, because it’s a bit heartbreaking. Also, you could even still watch it at home, just not talk about it on the socials, so they’ll measure the drop in traction. But of course that’s up to you.
gems
1
Smriti Mallapaty’s deeply unsettling article in Nature about the bird flu virus spreading through cattle in the USA.
2
Dunstan Bruce’s off-kilter, tour-de-force documentary I Get Knocked Down is now free to view on Prime Video. It documents the great anarchist art/punk band Chumbawamba accidentally creating the global megahit song ‘Tubthumping’ — and what it meant for them. Mostly, Dunstan looks back and tries to confront this complicated aspect of his creative life and legacy.
3
Perhaps my long-time favourite ‘non-famous’ (yet) writer is Sarah Crowder, who I first met fifteen years ago doing merch on a punk tour. Sarah’s current output is One Stone Two Birds, an excellent email newsletter. Last week’s intense, lengthy essay was a truly outstanding reflection on the songs of Jason Molina, and her father, and writing about pain, and birds. It unfolds into as fine a personal essay as I’ve read this year, including by the famous names. She has lighter pieces too.
4
If you’re within reach of Tyneside, Michael Rakowitz’s major installation The Waiting Gardens Of The North at the Baltic Centre is now in its final three weeks. It’s hard to explain but comprises a big indoor garden, loads of herbs and edibles, constructed around a centrepiece of a sixth century relief panel depicting Assyrian hanging gardens. Anyway, it’s really good, and it closes on 26th May. And while you’re at the Baltic, check out the 2024 Open exhibition, which is terrific and runs through to September.
5
If you can access the Channel 4 player, Miriam: Death of a Reality Star is a three-part documentary about a horrific early 2000s reality TV show, and the incredible damage it did to its main participant.
6
An unexpectedly lithe, free-soaring chunk of jazz-fusion, injected onto mainstream US late night telly, as Willow performs ‘Home’ from her belter of a new LP Empathogen on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show. I like everything about this band performance, from the setting and instrument layout and weirdo gear choices, to the time-warping fluidity of this genuinely brilliant five-piece. What a stunning rhythm section (hats off Mohini Dey and Taylor Gordon) but actually they’re all busting immense jazz/pop chops: to jam this unfettered, not just halfway through a gig but exposed on a TV set, is really something. Writing as a modestly decent (but no jazz chops whatsoever) occasional performing pianist, the playing here — by someone easily young enough to be my kid — demolishes and thrills in equal measure. Excited, I check YouTube and here they are again doing Tiny Desk just a few days ago. Wow.
What a fascinating music career Willow Smith is constructing, after her initial burst of reluctant nepo-tinted child stardom way back when we all whipped our hair for a few months. At twenty-three she’s on her sixth album, and that’s besides all the acting and other stuff super-famous people do. A much, much classier act than she could’ve been.
potato gems
Piotr Jasinski’s New Yorker short film from a few weeks ago about how a geopolitical dispute between Poland and Czech Republic manifested itself in a potato salad contest.
Also, the leading global potato website Potato News Today has cut ties with its Israeli contacts.
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get in touch
email: chris@christt.com
Instagram: @cjthorpetracey @doublechorus
Bluesky: @christt
Twitter/X: @christt | @doublechorus
always there
Try my music newsletter Double Chorus
Listen to Refigure podcast, the bitesize DIY arts review show I make with Rifa. We’re on series #7 and there’s a new episode roughly every two weeks, just search “Refigure” wherever you get podcasts and you’ll find us.
Spotify | Apple
My annotated lyrics book Buried in the English Earth is still (just about) available via the Border Crossing shop.
My Pact Coffee discount code is CHRIS-A8UKQG. Sign up for coffee bean delivery, use this code, you get £5 off and I get £5 off a bag too.
Look after yourself and your people.
All my love. Have a good fortnight.
Christopher
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