"The Heat This Time of Year is Ridiculous": Kale Returns to Glasgow

During a plane’s descent, there comes that splendid moment when the clouds suddenly pull apart, revealing patchwork farmlands, picturesque villages or sprawling cities underneath. I anticipated the familiar stretches of green as I was about to visit Scotland for the third time (I lived there first as an exchange student and second as a Masters student). At first, as the plane drifted lower and lower, the layers of cloud opened only to more layers of cloud. When the ground below was finally visible, we were close enough to see that it had rained recently, suddenly reminding me of the cold, wet realities of Scottish weather.

It had been thirteen months since my incredibly happy year in Glasgow ended, giving-way to the not-so-happy times between summer of last year and last spring. I now refer to this era as my “post-Glasgow bereavement period.” With the expiration of my student visa looming, and with my inability to find work in Scotland, I unwillingly left Glasgow to return to New York City, losing my student lifestyle and academic identity, a city in which I felt comfortable and stimulated, and various circles of friends in the process; I began life in Brooklyn unemployed, isolated and directionless. The transition made me feel more gutted than a wildcat in a taxidermy warehouse.

And yet, although I spent months thinking of nothing else but returning to Glasgow, finally walking down Otago Lane, Sauchiehall Street and Paisley Road West again did not make me feel as though tremendous wrongs had been righted. A lot had changed. For instance, many of my friends had left Glasgow. I had known this, but it nevertheless jarred me to experience their absence firsthand.

Remembering the cynical refrain of a few Glasgow residents, I asked Stuart – my flatmate during my wonderful postgraduate year – if the saying “Glasgow is a place that people leave” actually held water.

“Eh, you’re surprised that your uni friends who graduated aren’t here anymore?” he said, definitely smiling and probably smoking a cigarette.

***

Sloth Metropolis performing "Wee Fib" at The 13th Note.

Glasgow welcomes myriad music scenes, from "shambling" indie pop to hardcore punk. At a harvest festival in the north of the city, for instance, I watched members of the Glasgow-based band Sloth Metropolis stomp down distortion peddles and launch an electric fiddle freak-out while children played tag, parents sold home-made chutney, a woman gave away clay-oven baked pizza, and a few young men were asking attendees to sample treats made from their proposed, sustainable protein source: mealworms.

By happy happenstance, a Glaswegian band called Close Lobsters – one of the greatest bands to jangle-pop out of the C86 scene – were performing at Stereo during my visit. I discovered them less than a year ago and have recommended their catchy, cerebral masterpiece Foxheads Stalk this Land to just about everyone. Tickets to their gig were a bargain at £10.

Close Lobsters performing "I Kiss the Flower in Bloom" at Stereo last year.

I met a young woman from Hong Kong there. She was a fresher and happened to be staying in the dorm I lived in as an exchange student. When she mentioned that she was vegan, I told her nothing of my temporary devolution into ovo-lacto vegetarianism; egg-and-cress sandwiches, and the yokes of guilt that follow every convenient carton, are part and parcel of my life in Glasgow.

The first song that Close Lobsters played had the refrain “the heat this time of year is ridiculous.” I chanted along, clogged-up by a cold brought on by the chllly dampness this time of year. From Foxheads, they performed “Prophecy” and “I Kiss the Flower in Bloom,” which received the greatest share of the crowd's enthusiasm. After a second encore, and after the DJ signaled the end of the set with Orange Juice’s “Rip It Up” (the Glaswegians in the room recited the lyrics as we left), I walked outside feeling as though I had just been to one of the greatest gigs I had ever seen. I'll provide two reasons in support of this claim:
 

• First, local performances by local bands are always best, and Close Lobsters were playing to an audience that knew their city's musical history. Most of those in the room were old enough to have remembered Close Lobsters when C86 first hit Glasgow, and most probably had fond recollections of how the band affected them in their youth. This leant itself to an emotional intensity to the room.
• Second, Close Lobsters play a kind of music that I find myself listening to frequently these days: a jangly, cerebral, catchy indie pop with a punk lineage. What could be better than sharing my love of this unusual genre with scores of others?

In addition to Close Lobsters, Glasgow is home to musical legends aplenty, and given the amount of times I have randomly walked past Stuart Murdoch during my previous visits, I'm inclined to write that these musicians are remarkably accessible. I had heard that a certain record shop had some sort of connection with The Pastels: another legendary Glaswegian C86 band, and during this visit, I decided to buy something there. One of the people behind the counter looked familiar. Just to confirm my suspicion, I asked a different person at the cash register about their supposed connection with the band. “That’s the lead singer,” she said, pointing to Stephen McRobbie. He rang me up when I bought his new album and we had a brief conversation about Helen Love.

***

On my final night in Glasgow, while briefly separating from a subcrawl (wherein revelers must order a drink from a bar at every stop along the city’s circular subway line), Stuart took me to his favorite pub: an unassuming southside joint beneath a bridge. He described it as walking through a timewarp to the city in the 1970’s. The mementoes from Glasgow’s past, nailed to margarine-colored walls, validated his assessment.

A man had randomly brought in a guitar and was belting out Radiohead’s “Creep.” Stuart and I sang along. A plump woman with short gray hair sang folk, country-western and protest songs next, including a recent song about the Bedroom Tax imposed by the current coalition government.

The anti-Bedroom Tax song covered by the woman in the pub.

Stuart got into a conversation with a middle-aged woman who, after making fun of him for hailing from Aberdeen, somehow got the entire pub to sing the Aberdonian anthem “Northern Lights.” Stuart beamed.

She then asked me where I was from. When I answered, the response I usually get from Glaswegians followed: “You’re from New York City?” she said, expressing genuine confusion, “why are ya over here for? Why would anyone from New York come to this place?”

I immediately thought of everything that's wrong with New York City today: about how suburban kids flock to New York in search of the extinct countercultures of yesteryear, pretending to recreate those countercultures by buying things; I thought about my coworker, who rode the Ramones/Patti Smith wave of punk, only to get pushed out of Bedford-Stuyvesant by hipster gentrification thirty-five years later; I thought about the nihilism that pervades New York City at the present time, and how much privilege a person must possess to have the luxury of not caring.

And then I looked around at this Glasgow pub that had not changed its décor in forty years, at people singing together and buying each other drinks, and how all were welcome to join in – even outsiders like me.

“Because this is real,” I said.

She accepted my answer. I reckon the Englishman who bade us all sing Hamish Imlach’s “Cod Liver Oil and the Orange Juice” at closing time probably felt similarly.

Decisions in Footwear Ethics, Part II: New Balance

When I was particularly young, I was more grossed-out by the thought of wearing something else’s skin than with sticky geopolitical issues. Converse and most things Payless sufficed for my anti-leather phase. However, as I began to learn about the grisly world of globalization, sweatshops and child labor, I wanted the kicks I picked to match my politics. Thus, New Balance, with its lovely range of non-leather, Made-in-America footwear, seemed a happy option for my ambling needs. Without having researched the company, I bought a pair and sported them throughout my high school days.

In college, in Boston, with my New Balance sneaks all roughed-up and losing their inner-padding, I gave No Sweat a try. No Sweat's mock-Converse shoes ticked all of my ethics boxes. Lamentably, in addition to providing no arch support, they fell apart within just two months of (daily) wear. I then bought used, Made-in-America Danner boots (my first leather footwear since age eight – second-hand leather doesn’t directly support the industry... or so I had reasoned). I clunked around in those heavy things for two years. They weighed a ton; I might as well have strapped the rest of the cow to my feet.

In the summer of my final year in Boston, in desperate need of something more lightweight, I dragged my Danner-clad feet over to the New Balance factory and bought a pair of Made-in-America sneakers. These lasted me until just recently, with the inner-padding once more rubbing away. I bought yet another pair – again, “Made-in-America,” vegan-friendly – and, finally, albeit retroactively, did the ethics research.

Run Run Run...

As it turns-out, New Balance is a company of ambiguous ethical character, with various websites lending contrasting opinions. From what I can gather, there was a labor dispute in 1999, during which New Balance’s American workforce accused the company of employing extreme low-wage, no-benefit temp workers in China. The following year, these accusations were exposed as valid in Business Week.

We must also mention the strange relationship between New Balance and the Li Kai Shoe Manufacturing Company – a giant Chinese sweatshop rife with child labor, unsafe food, and women being forced to shower in the same facilities as men. This partnership is elaborated in an online report by the National Labor Committee and China Labor Watch:

http://www.iatp.org/files/451_2_78428.pdf 

Granted, these scandals are a bit old, back when every company was getting hit by similar or worse accusations. Plus, to their credit, New Balance remains the only major manufacturer of athletic footwear that still employs an American workforce, even if this accounts only for a symbolic 15% of their product line, and even if the material components for the shoes themselves are imported. Whether these idiomatic grains of salt changes New Balance's ethical flavor is your decision alone, but personally, I'll need a lot more sodium chloride before I buy another pair.

Expect a sequel entry about Macbeths shortly. In the meantime, here’s a link to the prequel entry about Dr Martens (or, as a work colleague called them when I donned them for casual Friday, “shit-kickers”).

I Ushered for Morrissey: Now My Heart is Full

By odd coincidence (or maybe because he read the book), much like Charlie in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, I was introduced to The Smiths when a junior high school teacher made me a mix tape of their works. “In order to be an eighties fan,” said my teacher, for lamentably, I once claimed that title, “you’ve got to like The Smiths.”

Hesitantly, I put the tape in my portable tape player, pressed play, and at “There is a Light that Never Goes Out,” I felt some switch deep within me click. Thus, at age twelve, with my interest in music piqued (having lain dormant with the worsening state of popular music at the start of the millennium), a lifelong adventure ensued.

All of my indie flames taken into account, my lengthiest musical love affair has been with Morrissey and The Smiths (the band he once led). The iconic singer has long provided the theme music to my life. In High School, Viva Hate and Strangeways, Here We Come spun round and round on my turntable. In College, I mourned to “I Know it’s Over,” celebrated with “A Swallow on my Neck” and wandered around Boston to “Late Night, Maudlin Street,” wondering about the whereabouts of loved ones lost. More recently, I spent my 24^th birthday – still shell-shocked from losing Glasgow – ambling around Manhattan to “Why Don’t You Find Out for Yourself?”

In addition to all of his erudite lyricism, often tailored to empathize with his listeners, Morrissey made me feel less lonely about my decision to abstain from meat. I became vegetarian at age nine. When I discovered that Morrissey had similar anti-meat reservations – enough to write a song about it and even entitle an album “Meat is Murder” – I felt infinitely grateful.

***

While browsing his songs on YouTube, I discovered that Morrissey would soon be performing at the very place in which I ushered. I yelped around my apartment. This was simply surreal: I had the opportunity to watch my musical amore perform, and I would get paid for doing so.

Immediately, I sent an e-mail to the head usher, wondering how long in advance I should request that shift. I was told to wait a month. These things take time. When it became time to sign-up, I mistakenly sent my request to the wrong e-mail address. I did not discover that I had done this until a week before the gig. Fortunately, remembering how I felt about the man (she knows I’d love to see him), my manager added my name to the shift. Cue Natalie Merchant:

On the day of the gig, I felt an unbearable mixture of excitement and anxiety, as if my shift were some mixture between a hot date and the interview for the perfect job. I spent hours preparing: showering, grooming, making sure I smelled alright, double-checking that my black ushering clothes did not magically disappear, etc. Once aboard the subway, my muscles and viscera started seizing-up: taut as steel knots. “Panic” indeed.

I arrived fifty minutes before call, so I decided to pass the time by talking distractedly to fellow ushers. Eventually, the sign-in sheet was brought out, naming our stations. Mine was far up in the balcony: our theater's nosebleed section. What difference does that make? It makes none.

During our pre-show usher meeting, I found myself grinning in blithe disbelief throughout the head usher's introduction to the show. No attempts at composure would hide my happiness as she ran-down the details. She was presumably unfamiliar with Morrissey and bemused by the unusual protocols surrounding the show:

• In case we weren't aware, Morrissey has a highly-devoted fan base. Despite being a ticketed event, and despite being sold-out, some of the people in the lobby had been there for over three hours, just happy to be in the same building as their musical hero. On a related note, this would be a high-security gig and extra measures would be taken to keep order.
• Morrissey is a vegan (has he gone vegan?) who is "into PETA," hence the PETA stall in the lobby and the absence of meat on the first floor. However, should a patron ask for meat, there were turkey sandwiches available in the mezzanine café.
• It is not unusual for people to leap on stage and try to hug Morrissey. Four guards would patrol the stage to keep people from doing this.
• The water bottle incident was mentioned. Patrons would be discouraged from bringing capped bottled into the theatre. However, as the ushers reasoned, this was a difficult rule to enforce, and damage could be done with an uncapped water bottle if thrown correctly. The head usher agreed, adding that slips from water spillage were more of a priority anyway.
• Kristeen Young was the opening act. She would perform for the first thirty minutes. There would be a thirty minute intermission in which an anti-meat film would be screened (this did not actually happen: music videos – including those starring Nico, the New York Dolls, The Sparks, David Bowie and a couple of sixties/seventies European pop musicians – were instead shown during the break).
•  Morrissey would come on stage at around nine and play until ten thirty, “but Kelsey, the devoted fan in our midst, would probably like to see him play until midnight." You guessed it, Ms. Manager!

The first hour was chaotic. People entered and exited at their will during the opening act, which meant that I had to guide rushes of people to their seats, in darkness, on the steep inclines of the balcony level. I also had to remind people to keep their tickets with them as they left for concessions.

Soon, the intermission ended, and the screen on which the aforementioned music videos were projected went dark. A disembodied voice had started reading from a list (was it a list of 20th century new events?) and a light show commenced. People were still trickling in. I was momentarily worried that I wouldn’t find a position from which to enjoy the show before it started, but the announcer's bizarre list droned on. Thankfully, with the trickle quickly slowing, I took my place, and as I rested on a post between two emergency doors, Morrissey and his band emerged from stage left. Even that far up, I recognized him: the stage lights caught the contours of his face.

My job during the show was reduced to shining my flashlight at the floor, helping patrons see whenever they ascended/descended the stairs. That, in addition to keeping an eye out for the special instructions of floor managers (which I did by glancing over my shoulder every few minutes), I was able to enjoy the performance.

 

Morrissey began the show with “Action is My Middle Name,” a newer song that he's been performing a lot lately. He followed with “Everyday is Like Sunday,” which resonated through my bones like a religious affirmation. I shouted the lyrics along with my comrades in the audience in spite of myself. I was only singing.

At first, I tried to keep a mental playlist, but my memory has not held up. Instead, I’ll run through some highlights:

• “How Soon is Now?” finished with killer drumming from a most splendid drum set.
• There was one apparel casualty: a pink shirt was sacrificed following a magical performance of “Let Me Kiss You.” Morrissey tore it off and threw it to the ravenously crowd. Three shirts were worn overall.
• I regard Vauxhall and I as a flawless album – his best solo work, even if Viva Hate has personal significance to  me – and so I was thrilled by his stunning performance of “Speedway.”
• In between songs, Morrissey brought out a sealed envelope. "...And 'the best musician award' goes to..." This was how he introduced his band: "Boz Boorer on guitar..." etc.  "...And the winner is," said the singer, opening the envelope to the sound of the audience chanting his name, "Taylor Swift?" He flicked the envelope into the audience. Trash.
• During “November Spawned a Monster,” the first person to successfully jump up on stage embraced Morrissey at the lyric when the Mozzer requested to be hugged. I found this incredibly touching (much more so than the couple next to whom I was standing, who seem to have found romance in this song about a disabled child).
• A female audience member was able to climb up on stage and hug Morrissey. I get the impression that this is rather rare. Usually the men do the hugging.
• “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want” was performed like a prayer, answered in the end.
• The show finished with “Meat is Murder,” in which Morrissey gesticulated to graphic factory farm footage, asking “Do you care? Do you care? Do you care?” Some of the lines were changed, most memorably: "K. F. C. ...MURDER." The song concluded with Moz kneeling in front of the screen as the guitars shrieked like screaming knives.

At the end of "Meat is Murder," Morrissey bowed with his band members and left the stage. The audience and I applauded wildly until they agreed to perform an encore. He chose “Still Ill,” a favorite of mine. Here the audience went wild. Several who got on stage were thrown violently back into the crowd by the security guards, who were now lurking behind Morrissey like failed back-up dancers.

Then Morrissey and his band left the stage permanently, and no amount of applause would bring them back.

***

With our love-drenched feelings mutual, I enjoyed my interactions with Morrissey fans. Noting my status as an usher – an enforcer of theatre house rules – a bearded gent jovially grabbed my arm, albeit unexpectedly, and informed me that he wouldn't stop dancing even if I told him to do so. After all, this was a concert. Smiling, I told him that I wouldn’t stop him unless my superior said I should. He wasn’t in the aisle, so this wouldn't have been a problem.

After the show, a different fellow shook my hand, noting that he had seen me clearly enjoying myself in the corner. He expressed happiness that I did, being that there were probably several shows that I had to see and didn’t like (this isn’t really the case; my venue puts on amazing gigs). I awkwardly shook his hand for the second time and thanked him for his positive regard.

As the crowd emptied, a woman who had enjoyed the show asked me whether I knew much about Morrissey. I confessed my enthusiasm, which I hope paralleled her own.

I would have liked to talk to other patrons about Morrissey, but alas, I had to hop a subway and head back to the old house. A fellow usher was seated next to me on the subway. I found myself speaking loudly to her about the show (which wasn't her thing), hoping to catch the attention of a rather attractive concert attendee seated across from me. It didn't work. The said concert-goer had earphones in and alighted only a few stops down.

Regardless, after finally witnessing the splendor of Morrissey in concert, Now My Heart is Full.