No Bounds Festival 2024 – a review

I spent the weekend at No Bounds Festival in Sheffield, marvelling at the splendour of the city's cathedral and revelling in the raves held in its grubby old factories.

This was my second trip to the festival. You can read my review below. What I didn't include is I treated myself to a hotel room with a proper veranda, I trilled with delight when I crossed its spooky Cobweb Bridge, and I had a smashing time having a pint with my mate Lee.

Also you can see me in one of the photos on the Electronic Sound website. See if you can spot me. It's like Where's Wally with emphasis on the wally.

I sit at a picnic bench in the cold night air. Surrounding me is a cluster of industrial buildings, and inside each of these is a rave. Dirty techno rhythms pulse from inside, and the windows dance with colour. In the relative peace of this outdoor smoking area, a student called Chris joins me and exchanges pleasantries. He tells me about the DJs he has seen here and the DJs he wants to see. In turn, I preach about the strange sounds I heard in the cathedral, and I ask if he is going to chapel on Sunday. He does not flinch. This is No Bounds Festival. It is no ordinary rave...

Continue reading my review on the Electronic Sound website^ – including the stunning full photograph by James Ward featured above

Ultimate 90s number one: The Steve Miller Band ruins everything

Pull up a chaise longue. You're just in time to suffer through the latest edition of my Ultimate 1990s Number One competition.

This is a blog series in which I attempt to wheedle out the best number one single of the 1990s, and handful of chart-toppers at a time. Only the ultimate bestest tunes will go through to the final. 

My twin judging criteria are (a) is it bleepy and electronic, and (b) is it a banging tune. I don't really show my workings-out. Rather, I just waffle until we all lose interest.

Let's take a peek at the latest batch of contenders.

The contenders

Bryan Adams: (Everything I Do) I Do It for You  |  Cornershop: Brimful Of Asha  |  George Michael and Queen with Lisa Stansfield: Five Live (EP)  |  Kylie Minogue: Tears On My Pillow  |  Manic Street Preachers: If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next  |  New Kids on the Block: Hangin' Tough  |  No Doubt: Don't Speak  |  Shaggy: Boombastic  |  Steve Miller Band: The Joker  |  Vanilla Ice: Ice Ice Baby

You must be joking

Let's start with some excellent humour. Steve Miller Band?! Yeah, he certainly should be. Banned, that is. See what I did there? That is clever wordplay; the kind of linguistic acrobatics you've come to expect from someone who uses a big hardback dictionary as a pillow.

Steve Miller. Steve flipping Miller. There he is in the photo above. In a 2021 blog post, I said The Joker was "one of the worst songs ever written". In another 2021 blog post, I described the single as "one of the worst singles of all time" and "I want this song to die". This sounds like I've only formed this opinion in the last few years. Quite the contrary. My loathing for this song has been burning within me since the beginning of time.

For a start, the lyrics are naff. He "loves your peaches". And "lovey dovey, lovey dovey". He loves smoking and he's a "gangster of love". If he talked like this on a first date, I'd walk straight out of the Greggs without warning.

What's with the wolf-whistling guitar? I know the song is partly based on a song penned in the 1950s, but surely we can leave lazy sexism in the past. Nobody wants to listen a guitar sound like it's winking at you while rubbing its crotch. Gross.

And another thing. The Joker stopped Deee-Lite from getting to number one with Groove Is In The Heart. This is the worst injustice that has happened in the history of humankind. Yes, I see you reaching from your dusty hardback book of historical disasters, but you know I'm right. Steve Miller made Towa Tei sad. And nobody should make Towa Tei sad.

Also. Yes, there's more. Also, The Joker is roughly the same age as me. Not the exact month, but close enough that we'd probably share a birthday cake. I cannot accept the fact that there is something the same age as me that is as annoying as me. That is not acceptable. Steve Miller makes me ill-er.

Everything's ruined

Oh great. Thanks to Miller, I don't have enough time to properly cover all the other songs in this list. Sorry, George Michael, there are barely any column inches left to let you know that I found your Queen covers somewhat dull. And no, Kylie, I haven't got the energy to explain that your Imperials doo wop cover was one of your weaker hits.

Miller has also robbed me of the opportunity to opine, at length, at the blandness of New Kids On The Block. Or to explain, in a patient but forced voice, that nobody really likes Vanilla Ice's Ice Ice Baby, especially when Uncle Kenneth is drunkenly slurring the wrong words at Sunday night karaoke. Mr Ice should have stopped when he said "stop". in that bit of the song where he says "stop"

What's the point

I've still got that Steve Miller song on loop in my brain, each annoying guitar lick a razor blade to my ear drums. There are two epic songs on this list that I would be impressed by, but The Joker has bled me of all hope. Those songs are...

In July 1991, a month after Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves landed on cinema screens, Bryan Adams' theme song (Everything I Do) I Do It for You shot an arrow into the number one spot of the UK singles chart. It stayed there until Halloween, when it was overtaken in the charts by U2, 2 Unlimited and the comedian Vic Reeves.

And in a just world, the Manic Street Preachers should have scored a string of number one successes by the time that If You Tolerate This... topped the singles chart. It's a big anthem, for sure, although marked a blunting of their once-cutting edge.

Both are epic bangers, but they're not bleepy enough to continue in this competition.

What a joke(r)

This leaves us with a few final singles to talk about – if I had time, that is [glares at Steve]. No Doubt were ten years into their career when Don't Speak dominated the charts. A veritable banger with pop credibility. Meanwhile, Shaggy's Boombastic is the only song to have topped the charts containing the lyric "don't you tickle my foot bottom". Which is silly song-writing but not as ridiculous as Steve Miller and his space cowboy carbuncle.

This brings us to the only electronic music-adjacent tune in this selection. That is Cornershop's tribute to the Indian film industry, Brimful Of Asha. The song got to number one in the form of its remix by Fatboy Slim. Sadly, it's not bleepy enough to continue in this competition. Which is a shame because Cornershop tracks like the 16-minute jam Spectral Mornings are a dancefloor delight.

So nobody wins this round. Do you know who I blame? Steve Miller. Steven Haworth Miller. Miller and his band which is called the Steve Miller Band. Cheeky rapper Enimen might be on a one-man crusade to revive Millers career with his recent Miller-sampling single Houdini). But honestly, Stevie-boy has ruined this blog post, and possibly this blog, and possibly the entire universe.

I guess WE'RE the joker, amiright?!

More Ultimate 90s number ones 

Brothers gonna work it out: my short story in 'The Book of Manchester'

I have fiction news, so please unfurl your FICTION NEWS banner and tie each end to a lampshade. Ready? Here goes. I have a short story featured in 'The Book of Manchester', an anthology coming out on Comma Press.

Comma have a long history of releasing city-specific fiction anthologies. Their locational muses have spanned Shanghai to Sheffield, Cairo to Coventry, and Gaza to, er, goodness-knows elsewhere. There's loads of them, but this one is special in a way: Manchester is their home city.

The blurb for the book talks about the city's industrial past, its music scene, and – in themes that are perhaps more relevant to this book – the homelessness that is skyrocketing as the same rate as its new towers, and the "struggles of ordinary residents navigating a city in dramatic flux".

My story is called 'Ten-Two Forty-Four', and I wrote it during the fog of my stroke recovery last winter. The tale of two estranged brothers is threaded through with the discommunication and illusory nonsense-bobbins I experienced as a result of my medical emergency. Not that it's a story about strokes, but the elements are there.

Because the way this story came about was kind of painful and personal, and because this feels like a literary reset of sorts, I'm publishing under my real name Ian Carrington. The full list of writers featured in the book are (deep breath): David Constantine, Tom Benn, Pete Kalu, Brontë Schiltz , Sophie Parkes, Ian Carrington, Shelagh Delaney, Mike Duff, Mish Green, Okechukwu Nzelu, Reshma Ruia, Yusra Warsama, and Zig & Zag. I lied about that last one.

Because you are special, due to the fact you still read blogs, you can read the opening bit of the story below.

You can order the book from the Comma website^. Meanwhile, everyone's beloved and/or baffling writer Fat Roland will continue, of course, on this blog and in Electronic Sound and on various comedy stages hither and thither and where-iver.

Ten-Two Forty-Four excerpt

He turns up looking like a drowned rat or a soaked ferret or some other crappy animal dragged through piss that had no business being on my doorstep. The rain drips from his hands and his nose and whatever appendage that had not been chopped off by the torturing scum that had been holding him. For a moment, I say nothing despite all the things I had been planning on saying. Something about not trampling into the carpet or not sending me a postcard or some other witticism that, in truth, I am too afraid to say... (continue reading by buying the book^)

See the Book of Manchester launch event (Contact Theatre, 7pm, 12 October 2024, tickets £12 / £10)^