Some things I really should plug.
Mr MacGowan has made a charity record for Haiti, featuring his friends Nick Cave, Johnny Depp, Bobby Gillespie, Chryssie Hynde, Paloma Faith and others. It’s a rather devilish version of ‘I Put A Spell On You’, and comes out on March 8th. Proceeds go to Concern, the Dublin-based humanitarian organisation which has been working in Haiti since 1994.
YouTube video of the song
Facebook group
Digital download pre-order page
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I’ve written a piece on pseudonyms for the New Escapologist magazine, issue 3. Purchasing info at www.new-escapologist.co.uk.
It’s a superb issue, focusing on up-to-date ways of ‘escaping’ the soul-destroying aspects of modern life, without quite going entirely ‘off grid’, as they say. Editor Rob Wringham talks about how he effortlessly moved from Glasgow to Montreal, where he seems to be having an entirely nice time of things. Turns out Montreal’s cost of living is half the amount it is in Glasgow.
In fact, more than a few bohemian friends have been making the big leap abroad of late – with Berlin being a particularly popular New World for modern Impuritans.
Val G, DJ and promoter of London indie club nights like The Fanclub for some years, has just moved to Hong Kong, pretty much for good. ‘London’s dead’, she said.
Well, it’s certainly dead expensive. Tube and bus fares have gone up, for a start. Even if an event is free, getting there and back and buying a drink or two still prohibits going out much more than once a fortnight, if one is on the dole, that is. Money just keeps running out, whatever I do.
Much to my chagrin, I’ve had to sign up for a Job Centre job search programme, a mental health-based one. They want me to prepare a CV, which for me is the stuff of pure science fiction. ‘Just put down everything,’ they said.
What about the time, I muse, I was hired to be the only UK performer at the Stockholm International Poetry Festival? Or my engagement as guest of honour for an exhibition on male fashion, at a museum in The Hague? That was work I was considered qualified to do, after all – and head-hunted for it internationally. Those two invitations felt like achievements, that I was Of Use To The World, which is what a CV is meant to be about. But I rather think a typing speed of 45 words per minute (on a good day) is all that’s applicable.
And I’m trying very hard not to add ‘Works Badly As Part Of A Team’, ‘Copes Badly Under Pressure’, and ‘Isn’t Very Good With People.’
As for emigration, much as I love London, if I did suddenly get an offer of an income abroad – Stockholm, say – I’d move like a shot. But I’m not holding my breath. Trying to stay sane, sheltered and fed is at present, ambition enough.
Tags: new escapologist, shane macgowan
