There’s nothing like speech. It’s amazing how many subjects you can touch on, buttons you can press, situations you can recall and pictures you can paint in the course of the kind of free-ranging conversation I had with Stuart Maconie and Mark Ellen at Tuesday night’s Word In Your Ear in Manchester at the very excellent and most welcoming Deaf Institute.
These included: the use of fertiliser bags as makeshift sleeping accommodation during the early years of rock festivals, the very specific sex appeal of the young Vera Lynn, the strange popularity of Wishbone Ash among school boys in the early 70s, the chances of hitting a 12” copy of a Phil Collins single in-flight with an air gun, the links between British heavy metal and British heavy industry, the curious British genius for pop music and Van Morrison’s uncanny resemblance to a mini-cab driver.
Stuart was talking about his book The People’s Songs and Mark about his memoir Rock Stars Stole My Life.
Thanks very much to them for taking part and for everyone who came and made it feel like such a success. I don’t think there will have been a night of higher quality banter anywhere this week. (Unless you count the things we said in the pub afterwards.)
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