Beyond ‘Capturing the Wry’

 ‘Capturing the Wry’ is a musical memoir of being in an indie band in the early to mid 1990s. At the time it felt like came and fortune were both a single song and a million miles away. I mean, who would really be interested in the songcraft of an unemployed twenty year old from the periphery of Bolton? Would the bass guitarist really find his golden ticket away from the Royal Mail in a jangly indie band as lacking in confidence as they were riddled with daydreams? Would the band be enough to keep my cousin away from a proper career? Would it be sufficient to persuade one of my best friends to put his profession on hold?

In 1995 I moved to the outskirts of London and began a new life. It took me a couple of years to find a kindred musical spirit again, and when I did it was in a unit of an industrial estate in the darker reaches of Southall, where a day service for adults with autism and extremely challenging behaviour was located. I didn’t really want to form a band again; my heart was still wrapped up in the Irony Board even though we had been out of commission for a good while by then. However, once you push a cartoon snowball down a cartoon mountain it quickly gathers animated pace and ends up chasing Yosemite Sam through a canyon or something daft like that. And that’s sort of what happened with Echolalia.

The sequel to ‘Capturing the Wry’ will be published shortly. It tells the story of Echolalia, and how I got even closer to the dream of one day holding in my hand a 7”single of my musical wares. ‘Welcome to the Underachievers’ - for that is the title - will be published in early summer. A strictly limited edition print run will be accompanied by a CD containing the songs that soundtrack the story. An ebook version will also be available. Advance orders coming soon.

In the meantime, here’s a video for one of the songs…

Welcome to Croalworth

 Welcome to Croalworth.

Nestling in the West Pennine Moors in Lancashire, north west England, Croalworth’s history is dominated by industry. Weaving and coal feature heavily in the local museum, both industries now far less relevant in the modern world than they had been, leaving the once-proud town now resting its reputation upon fading glory. 

Much the same can be said about the town’s football team, winners of some of football’s most prestigious prizes in the early parts of the last century, now resigned to kicking balls aimlessly around a crumbling stadium in front of supporters whose humour is blacker than the coals upon which the town once relied.

The town takes its name from the river that runs through it. Its source is one of the many deep springs that pepper the hilly terrain and it eventually joins Manchester’s famous River Irwell. At one time the river, whose name is derived from old English meaning ‘winding stream’, was used to power the local industry. These days it mainly transports discarded plastics and other non-recyclables, although a family of rogue terrapins is reputed to live on its banks close to the town centre.

Modern day Croalworth has been hampered by the growth of out-of-town shopping centres, leaving the pedestrianised town hall squad much quieter than it would have been thirty years ago. However, a shift in town planning policy has seen an increase of former commercial premises returning to the family accommodation that could have been found a hundred years ago, and a number of fiercely proud and independent local businesses are beginning for take control of the retail sector. This is drawing in many more visitors from neighbouring towns, and the historic indoor market is becoming a cultural focal point.

Croalworth’s most recent claim to fame is it being the home of Wilfred Hughes, a fictional character in the novel ‘The Broken Bottle’ by John Hartley.