Search Results for life

This week started badly. Like so many weeks of its kind it was proceeded by a triumphant weekend. A reunion with some sorely missed co-conspirators above a pub in Streatham. The session cast a long shadow. The minute I was capable of more than just laying around, I had to march two hundred meters from … Continued

As luck would have it we received news that Lias would be DJing at The Social and this piece entirely by coincidence on the very same day. Except there is no such thing as coincidence is there. It’s been a long time since I’ve spoken to you, you who kept me going through the darkest … Continued

You know what, 2021 is the year that killed some of my favourite movies, dead. So you know how it’s really hard to listen to R. Kelly songs because, well, R. Kelly? I mean, yeah, at one time, in the innocent early noughties, Golden Showers could’ve been a subtitle for the fourth Indiana Jones movie, … Continued

Last week saw the publication of Daniel O’Connor’s astonishing debut Nothing – an irreverent and mischievous novel about a man who can imagine things out of existence; about a world where nothing is as it seems. The Social Gathering is delighted to share an exclusive and equally memorable short story from Daniel about a John Lennon stripper. … Continued

As part of our on going ‘We Are One’ week we’re pleased to share this special broadcast from Lias Saoudi with you. Lias’ posts for us have been a hugely important part of The Social Gathering, he’s been with us since the first week (a year ago) and contributed some truly brilliant writing. Big thank … Continued

I recently asked the Irish novelist Rob Doyle to make a contribution to an edition of AMBIT magazine I’d been asked to guest edit (more on that later) and he suggested we attempt an Oulipo; a kind of literary exercise built around prescribed constraints. He asked me to send him fifty or so prompts which … Continued

Back in 1988 life as a closeted gay teenager felt to me like being a spy in a cold war thriller. Not the sort with loads of sex and glamorous locations, but the kind where shady figures lurk by dead letter drops and quietly surveil the world – a place that wasn’t to be engaged … Continued

Quick, there’s very little time to spare. We’re almost at the end. The weekends here are impossible as far as writing anything is concerned, and there’s only one of them left separating me from a reunion with my mum and my brothers, from the inactive sprawl of ‘the Holidays’. My father hasn’t got any software … Continued

When this crisis started, when every live music event in the entire world was cancelled pretty much over night for the foreseeable future, I was in disarray. I was one good festival season away from having saved up enough money for a deposit. An end to rent slavery seemed like a fair renumeration for sacrifices … Continued

My grandmother on my mum’s side, Patricia, died young, in her early fifties. My memories of her are faint, the approximation of several early childhood encounters at best. When I think of her now all I recall is a cloud of cigarette smoke and skin the texture of cracked leather. Apparently she died while she … Continued

In a state of frenzied arrogance around 18 months ago I took it upon myself to hurl a few digital petrol bombs at some of the country’s most beloved acts from the comfort of my hovel in Streatham. In choosing to attack two groups at once I believed I was demonstrating a supreme confidence: a … Continued

Around the time I started writing these posts I also started writing a collection of personal essays about various periods in my life down through the years, in a way these posts were kind of the bi-product of that process, but also a way of confronting a general anxiety I have about publishing anything. When … Continued

I’ve got to get this off my chest: just how completely fucking shit the phonies and bellends that have made up and represented the Labour Party for my entire life have been and continue to be. Never have I wanted something to succeed so much and watched it fail to so badly, time after time … Continued

Randell Jarrell wrote, ‘a good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times’, and Pessimism is for Lightweights, since its first publication, indeed since its first performance in front of an appreciative Jeremy Corbyn, has shown itself to be one of Salena Godden’s … Continued

Among the first reported covid cases in Mexico are prominent businessmen who were skiing with their families in Vail, Colorado. On March 15th, the millionaire José Kuri, cousin of one of the richest persons in the world, Carlos Slim, was reported dead due to the virus, after catching it on a skiing trip. Then, as … Continued

The reality of the pandemic descended upon me during a Guns n´Roses concert in Mexico City. The date was March 14th. While Mexico hadn’t yet formally declared any confinement measures (that would happen on March 23rd), the pandemic was well advanced throughout the world and many bands cancelled their participation in one of Mexico’s biggest … Continued

Stood outside Downing Street yesterday I saw something that cut through even my own iron clad pessimism. I haven’t been reading or writing much these last few weeks, well I haven’t been writing at all, I’ve been too busy sliding down a greasy pole, making the most of lockdown easing, seeing a few friends, drinking … Continued

The biggest thing clouding my vision is my martyr complex. Even with all the bountiful fruits that life has delivered for me to devour, my rather adept imagination still throws up a sense of having endured a superior kind of suffering to those around me. I have borne indignities that few could possibly understand, I … Continued

Of all the weird and wonderful tales to have emerged in the last six weeks, my little brother deciding to finally try and get a job is the most confounding. Nathan has been a dedicated job hunter since he left our mum’s bungalow in Co. Tyrone to live on my couch in London after getting … Continued

Certain aspects of my personal hygiene have taken a backseat in recent weeks, with nobody around who could possibly care, why not wear the same crappy Primark boxers six days in a row? I love it when they get to this point actually, stepping out of my daily bath back into my room, I take … Continued

In the second of our regular collection of letters from Fat White Family’s Lias Saoudi, the writer’s mind travels from Brixton’s Windmill to Sebald’s Suffolk via a fictional Mexican border town and alights upon the most pressing question of the day: “will the pubs open again before the summer ends, and if they don’t, what’s to become … Continued

Arthur Schopenhauer, it was reputed, would stick to a strict daily routine. He would reveille at 7am, drink a strong coffee, take a bath, write until noon, luncheon, read for four hours, practice the flute for half an hour, go for a two hour walk, dine out, then take in a play or a show … Continued

From 7th June 2025 Dean Chalkley has been taking compelling cultural photographs since the mid 1990s and his work with the likes of Oasis, Idris Elba and Amy Winehouse is widely celebrated.At the tail end of the ’90s, Dean Chalkley found himself in Ibiza, the capital of the clubbing world. For many, the turn of … Continued

Our latest exhibition showcases a collection of images shot on film by Welsh artist Clare-Marie Bailey, who created imagery for Gwenno’s fourth album ‘Utopia.’ Each picture captures a moment in the diverse landscapes that inspired the album—from the vibrant energy of Las Vegas to the urban backdrops of London. The exhibition offers a glimpse into … Continued

I am very sad to announce that we’re having to cancel our NYE SOCIAL 23 party on 31 Dec. It’s been a really hard decision to make, but on balance we feel it is the right one for us right now. Our headliner Sean Johnston has got Covid and is isolating, he wouldn’t have been … Continued

After hooking up with Velocity Press during lockdown it is a great pleasure to finally have a real life event coming up on 8 Nov with them here at the venue, for the launch of this fantastic new edition – Tape Leaders: A Compendium Of Early British Electronic Music Composers. A richly illustrated A-Z compendium … Continued

Six months or so into the life of White Rabbit Books  I was contacted by David Katz, informing me his classic authorised biography of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry was out of print.  We agreed the book – most recently updated in 2004 – needed a makeover, revising the original edition and adding new material covering the … Continued

In the dingy backrooms of beer-damp pubs, where the snakebite and black  glowed in plastic cups, and the curling wraiths of cigarette smoke  slowly choked us, I’d held the blue volts of youth aloft. Triumphant, above the shaggy-haired crowd too young to drink, already buzzed on Hooch  and hormones, thudding  in the dark of a … Continued

“And so I’m saying goodbye, although God knows I don’t want to…” ‘You Say’ – Michael Chapman  I’ve listened to no-one’s music more over the last ten years than the Leeds-born guitarist and singer-songwriter Michael Chapman, who died last week at the age of 80. Of all the great guitar players who plugged themselves into … Continued

Soon after Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry threw off this mortal coil on Sunday, I received a missive from my author, Richard Russell, suggesting we might post a ‘remix’ of the passage in his book, Liberation through Hearing, which described his inspiring and extremely unorthodox collaboration with ‘Scratch’ in 2014. This is not an obituary or an account of … Continued

We’re not going to die because I’m positively sure that music cannot die. The music is eternal in my thoughts. The music heal brain and heal heart and make you happy. If the music die, everybody going to die. (Lee Perry) Its 1982 and I’m barefoot in the Octagon centre in High Wycombe. The land … Continued

Brian Hamill was a phenomenally talented writer, a visionary editor and a genius publisher. He took the capability of literature to transform your life incredibly seriously and the way he would write about books, especially in his reviews, was rapturous and one of the first things that alerted me to his talents. Brian engaged with … Continued

John Constantine aka Hellblazer is what you’d get if you wanted Sherlock Holmes, but as a blonde haired, yellow-trenchcoat wearing Liverpudlian,who skulks around the grimy under-garms of London, dabbling in the otherworldly and bringing tragedy and despair to everyone near and dear to him. A Diamond Geezer. Columbo in the UK, via Hell. Created by … Continued

We’re honoured to publish an extract from Rob Young’s The Magic Box. Dreamt up as a companion piece to Rob’s peerless 2010 book Electric Eden, The Magic Box does for British television what Electric Eden did for this country’s post-war folk music. In this extract, Rob blows the dust off a dystopian classic broadcast by … Continued

When news hit of a new release from the fabled Paisley Park Vaults, we immediately asked The Social Gathering’s Prince correspondent for an overview (of course we’ve got a Prince correspondent – way better than having a bog standard obsequious royal correspondent like the BBC have). So, over to our man Matt Thorne for the … Continued

This month saw the publication of Australian author Jamie Marina Lau’s UK debut Gunk Baby – a cutting critique of consumer culture that gets to the core of the dangers of chasing a capitalist agenda and what happens when our lives are taken over by the ‘things’ we fill them with. In her exclusive piece for the … Continued

I turned to my boy, and without thinking, without an idea in mind, I began. Let me tell you the story of a man who tries to build himself a time machine, I said to him. He decides that he will take note of a certain period in time and space, I began, a certain … Continued

My love for The Doors is such that I have been known to walk out of bars, exit cabs and terminate friendship when others disagree with the quality of their radical legacy. The Doors’ impact on the evolution of rock n roll was the equal of any of their peers before or since and their … Continued

A SIRK publication © The Flashlight/Token Bob, 1995 Victory Garden (short story, originally published in Plus de Choses Dans le Ciel et la Terre #3, 1982) Pirates of the Universe Divide (novelisation of an unmade Doctor Who script submitted to Douglas Adams in the summer of 1979, published by Tara, 1983) Belly of the Fish of Christ, Ship (credited as a ‘found’ … Continued

When we visit a place as a tourist or disciple, we often want to return with a part of that place, an aide-memoire, a memento that in future years will take on an almost religious power, reminding us of a time pregnant with possibility, new vistas, and the sense – ironically of course given the … Continued

It was a typical Friday night in. I put on Netflix and chose Army Of The Dead as my evening’s entertainment. I’m a hardcore zombie movie fan, and the director, Zack Snyder, previously made one of my all time fave zombie flicks (Dawn Of The Dead remake, 2003)  Therefore, my reptile brain’s two-plus-two-equals-seven logic predicted … Continued

As we start to think about the reality of being a real life bar again we’re coming back with some brand new membership cards for you all to come pick up next time you make it down our way.  Now along with all the other changes, the membership has moved along a little as well. We’ll … Continued

The more perceptive among you might have noticed we missed a few entries into the Social Library. Well for one reason or another we got a bit behind, many apologies. But we’re back with a fantastic review and recommendation from Matt Thorne, introducing the June Social Library entry, Got to Be Something Here: The Rise … Continued

The moon is a balloon, Muldoon announced to a half-empty auditorium. After all, who cared about the thoughts of an artist and poet, now that reality itself had the veneer of the fantastic? The moon is a balloon, he said, the earth’s plaything, let go, the toy of our childhood. When we first looked up, … Continued

With special guests Lias Saoudi, Anna Wood, Pete Fowler, Sophie Green + more The first in a new series of real life Social Gathering events in the basement of Little Portland St… a chance to invite some of our wonderful contributors downstairs to read, talk and play music. A Social Gathering Social if you like. Or a … Continued

(Photo: Nigeria, 1999) Wasn’t sure if the world needed another article on DMX, to be honest. Everything that could be said about Earl Simmons was penned and posted in that long weekend where it was announced he’d died from a drug overdose, then nope he’s in a coma, then actually he’s brain-dead, which was that … Continued

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? In the thrill of easing and the queue to get jabbed TV has taken a back seat, a rare thing around here for sure. But there remain some real gems out there to unearth. You’ll need a fair chunk of time for this week’s first highlight. BARON NOIR, (Amazon … Continued

(PLEASE NOTE, DUE THE EASING OF RESTRICTIONS DELAY THIS EVENT WILL NOW TAKE PLACE ON FRI 30 JULY) After a year of online gathering, The Social is delighted to be able to finally announce a real life party in the basement. Time to resocialise! Since the start of lockdown, The Social Gathering has become our … Continued

Wild, mercurial, uncategorisable – three words that could be applied to both William Blake and the author of a radical new biography of the poet, artist and visionary who has inspired and baffled for generations. John Higgs takes us on an unexpected journey through culture, science, philosophy and religion to better understand William Blake in … Continued

Acid House guru and astral traveller Justin Robertson has just announced his debut novel The Tangle, due for publication on November 4th this year. The Social Gathering is delighted to share an exclusive extract. Pre-order the book from your favourite book/record shops here: https://smarturl.it/TheTangle Uncle Tobias’s hand gripped young Ethan’s shoulders with an inappropriate firmness. The odour … Continued

The world is covered in a thick fog. I open the kitchen window and sniff the air.  Nothing. No cars, no gunshots. One solitary bird calls out for reassurance that it is not alone.  A light frost thaws. Nature drips with delicate sounds. CAT perches on the edge of the breakfast bar, like a bird … Continued

We love Anna Wood here at The Social Gathering. When we were collating pieces for the collection we put out before Christmas last year (copies available here) we were convinced we needed to finish the thing on a positive note. I mean, remember how bad 2020 was? We were all begging for a shot of … Continued

As a very amateur DJ myself it’s great to share this with you today, taken from Harold Heath’s new book Long Relationships: My Incredible Journey From Unknown DJ to Small-time DJ. In this extract Harold recalls his best gig ever, one which came out of nowhere, the most unsuspecting of bookings turned transcendental experience. The … Continued

I saw a ghost once, the man with the obnoxious tattoo interrupted, steering the story somewhere else completely, and despite what you say, in my experience, ghosts are quite beautiful, he continued, and this story, he interjected, might go some way towards explaining the provenance of my unfortunate tattoo, which, believe me, I am aware … Continued

Outside the back door a thin layer of snow has started to settle on the old stonework and the wooden decking. The mulch I’d put down on the borders a week ago is covered in what looks like a delicate lattice of white flakes. I can see my breath on the air as I walk … Continued

Human beings themselves are at risk – not just on some survival-of-civilization level, but more basically on the level of heart and soul. We are ignorant of our own nature and confused about what it is to be a human being. Gary Snyder I live on the edge of a magic perimeter. The Lake District … Continued

When you write a book about foghorns you end up in strange and unexpected places.  Jennifer Lucy Allan Accounts of animal and bird life at lighthouse stations are often dream-like or nightmarish. A  lighthouse is a solid, unmoving structure built to improve safety at sea for humans. It is also an accidental observation tower, a … Continued

Let me begin by saying that I envy people their gods. I envy their ghosts, their unseen guides, their visions and shivers of intuition. Not unrelatedly, I also envy people’s transgression and transcendence, their states of expansive wildness. Ekstasis — the experience of being outside of oneself — comes in many forms; its absence or … Continued

Lenny Kaye has been working on his new book, Lightning Striking: Ten Transformative Moments in Rock & Roll for half a decade but he has spent every second of his 74 years living at the heart of the counter-culture he has depicted. Over the course of almost 500 pages of entertaining and impeccably researched prose, Lenny anatomizes the … Continued

Just before Christmas I leave London, where I have been sleepless for most of the month, and go back to Dublin. I’m finally observing a more normal sleep schedule. Sleep came back slowly; the heaviness, and the half-open eyes. I began to surrender, taking naps during the day, then late in the day, then easing … Continued

Hate to say it, but Joe fucking bloody bastarding Wicks   The Red Book by Jung: always The Terror Luke Unabomber’s occasional Worldwide FM extravaganzas Supporting English products which have survived other pandemics. William Whiteley has been making scissors in Sheffield since the 18th century and is still making scissors in Sheffield. Never mind the … Continued

Peter Laughner is dead. That’s the first line of the greatest piece of music writing I ever read, “Peter Laughner”, by Lester Bangs, re-published in Bangs’ seminal collection, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung in 1988 when I was 17 years old. Lester Bangs is dead, too. Yet I have lived with Bangs and Laughner ever … Continued

The clock is ticking…soon you will be allowed out again and you won’t need this handy guide to a random list of new and old things to watch to stave off the ennui and help you ignore the familiar walls and ceiling. Unlucky thirteen. If only there was some catastrophe that could keep me writing….. … Continued

We’re delighted to be able to share with you this cracking extract from Craig Taylor’s new book New Yorkers. The book is drawn from hundreds of interviews over six years and is ‘a grand portrait of an irrepressible city and a hymn to the vitality and resilience of its people’ and a fantastic follow up … Continued

TL:DR Review: 2020. Shit Year. 0/10. Would not recommend. Oh, you still want a long read? Alright then. When I was asked to review 2020 for The Social, I had three thoughts: 1) I’m not Charlie Brooker 2) I said I’m not Charlie Brooker and 3) 2020 hasn’t ended, not really: we’re actually in 2016, … Continued

A year ago today, we started our pandemic posts at The Social Gathering. Carl, or Robin, called me up – I cant remember which, they are both interchangeable to me – and suggested we turn the bar into an online iteration of itself for the two months or so we naively expected ‘this’ was going to be … Continued

In 1703 a student returned from studying at Oxford to the family home in Worcestershire. His name isn’t known – it might have been Thomas Appletree – because he did not mark his name in the weather diary he kept that year. While his diary predates the Met Office by 150 years, even by the … Continued

The night sleeps tight and thick as ink, wrapped around the house, head tucked under its tail. On the top road, a solitary car’s headlights thread a needle through its matted fir without it waking. The night dreams alone, fathoms deep, sensing the approaching sun coming to slit it open like a diver’s blade splits … Continued

HEALING STUDIO Come for a half-price ear-clean therapy service. Limited time only! Or 25% off shoulder massage Exclusive organic candle and soap sale I’m proud of the flyers. Printed on thick, linen cardstock at the Office-Mart. There was a queue behind me, and so I’d typed them up so quickly on the self-serve machine, that … Continued

It’s All Sensations – Bessie Smith by Jackie Kay. Reviewed By Will Burns How do we come to our musical heroes and heroines? How do we find them, those figures from our own young and emergent tastes, and through that finding start to build ourselves? Jackie Kay’s book on Bessie Smith, originally published in 1997 … Continued

If I asked her why she was always trying to need more than she needed, she’d say that borrowing brought you closer to other people, while buying mostly made you lonelier. You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine, Alexandra Kleeman Vaporwave is happening to you. It’s a way of seeing, of being, pitched somewhere … Continued

We’ve always been big fans of Cold War Steve over here, The Social put on his first ever exhibition back in 2018 and then last year with everything closed we stepped in to host the amazing Benny’s Babbies on The Social Gathering. So when we heard that a guy from Bristol called Nick had been … Continued

When you write a book about foghorns you end up in strange and unexpected places.  Jennifer Lucy Allan The last entry in the logbook at the Flannan Isles Lighthouse was the morning weather readings on 15th December 1900. When the relief boat turned up on the 26th December, there was nobody to greet them, and … Continued

The view from the back yard. ‘Conquer your way of being.’ Speaking desperanto on the road to Lyon. Early morning, before sunrise. Bleary-eyed in the back of a cab. Hurtling down Ronda Litoral. Head still spinning. Stumbling and mumbling through a conversation in broken Spanish—mine broken, the taxi driver’s rapid-fire and of the mother tongue … Continued

In 2009, on our honeymoon, my wife and I went in search of Lawrence Ferlinghetti on the west coast of the USA. We carried two books with us, Ferlinghetti’s 1993 New Directions collection, These Are My Rivers, and Big Sur by Jack Kerouac. In San Francisco we dropped into City Lights Books and asked if Ferlinghetti was around, but … Continued

‘Here comes the wine,’ Abigail told me. True enough, the waitress was approaching with the wine in her hands. I noted that, though full, the bottle had already been opened. Obviously if I had been in New York – say at Lutèce – I would have immediately sent it back. You don’t open a bottle … Continued

When Serge Gainsbourg died 30 years ago, he was a musical footnote outside of France. Gainsbourg was considered a novelty artist in Britain – the answer to a nagging question down at the local pub quiz, and remembered, if at all, as the guy who had made ‘Je t’aime… moi non plus’ with Jane Birkin. … Continued

The perfect performance of the music of J.S. Bach would consist of a setting of ‘Cantata BWV 172’, the cantata for the first day of Pentecost that begins ‘Ring forth, o songs, resound, you strings!/ O most blessed time!/ God Himself shall prepare our souls to be His temples’, followed by Bach’s setting of the … Continued

Reviewed By Martha Sprackland ‘all days have their inheritance’, the anxious narrator of little scratch muses. This particular day – the single, threaded day of Rebecca Watson’s debut novel – begins with a mild hangover, an almost-missed train, and proceeds through the mundanity of a day at the office. Soup for lunch, chitchat with anonymous … Continued

In the latest in a series of collaborative exchanges with Lias Saoudi of the band Fat White Family – which I’m thinking of titling ‘Have They Nothing Better To Do?’ – Lias sent me a few dozen subject headings; I randomly plucked fifteen of these from a bowl and wrote about them. I present the … Continued

There was a moment a week or so ago when I thought about the next guide and wondered if there was anything left to write about. Sure, there is plenty of stuff I haven’t covered here that is worth your time, THE SERPENT being probably top of the list, but I figure you already know … Continued

Our aim in collecting these stories together is to take what scares us seriously. Fear is rarely treated with the same respect as other more prestigious or edifying emotions, and, in the horror genre particularly, fear is often dismissed as a technical contrivance or mere gimmick. As such, it is diminished, and employed as an … Continued