Ricky Monahan Brown's Blog

It’s TERMINAL

Finally, an explanation for why things have been quiet on this blog in recent times!

My new book of short stories, TERMINAL, drops in the UK on 20 September, and is available for preorder from sincere corkscrew press NOW. As well as the Leith launch, we’re planning events in Glasgow and hopefully elsewhere in Scotland.

We’re looking to arrange some U.S. launch events and outlets, too, so please do stay tuned if you’re from that side of the Atlantic.

in the meantime, I’ll also be dropping additional content and drip feeding some snippets from the book here.

BUT FIRST, check out the early notices:

From visionary writer Ricky Monahan Brown comes Terminal: fourteen tales of ‘the end’. From the neo-Gothic to sci-fi, Leith to Brooklyn, this is vibrant short fiction which will shock, humour and astound in equal heady measure.

“Smart, trippy and irreverent”

“Summons the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson and Poe”

“Tense, funny and original”

PRE-ORDER FOR U.K. DELIVERY HERE

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Mr Death

Just as I typed that title, I heard Bill & Ted talking to the very man on the telly in the next room.

Gets everywhere, doesn’t he?

I’m sure that Death must have been a regular spectre looming over the posts on this blog, and he seems particularly present as I return to it after another long absence.

Read on to find out why, and whether it might have anything to do with my next book.

Well, this is still (to some small degree, at least) a stroke-adjacent blog. And, one doesn’t emerge from an apparently catastrophic stroke without being affected by the proximity of The Grim Reaper.

“It’s me gags, innit?”

More pertinently, my father died after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease and various other maladies at the beginning of May. The whole time had been a testing one, and something I noticed when he passed was that I had kind of pre-grieved for the man he had previously been.

Examining the strangeness of this sensation gave rise to what I think might be some interesting writing. This arose not least from the fact that I was listening to Scott Walker’s musical interpretation of Bergman’s The Seventh Seal as I drove to the hospital, having received the call that I would want to be there as soon as I could.

Royal Infirmary’s that way, mate

That piece of writing I have in mind probably won’t make its way into print until 2026, given what’s going to be coming out in the meantime.

What’s coming out in the meantime should hopefully include at least one book of work united by the theme of Death – or, more pertinently for sales pitch purposes, LIFE.

Jennifer Saunders being delighted to be alive

British comedy duo French & Saunders look very pleased to hear about that, but you can rest assured that it’s not time to talk about it yet.

However, anyone who’s interested to hear about something that I might have rustled together recklessly quickly can pop along to Scotland’s first Democratic Prose Slam at the Lost In Leith Bar this Sunday.

Jings, I'll be among some rather impressive and intimidating company at @anitagovan and @LivingSunbeam's innovative Democratic Prose Slam.

Come along to @lostinleithbar on Sunday to give me some moral support, eh? https://t.co/vGqe4W7MjK

— Ricky Monahan Brown (@ricky_ballboy) July 15, 2024

Here’s hoping I don’t die a death!!! (You will with gags like that – Ed.)

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Edging Closer(s) I

In January, I took part in a Twitter thing where people nominated a different favourite album closing song for each day of the month.

We’re going in

Albums closers make for perfect playlists, because you’ve got a selection of tracks aiming to distill a closing statement for a full album. Play ’em on random, and the intensity should be unchanged and unabated.

My selections are on Apple Music and Spotify.

But for the sad musos out there, here’s the running commentary for Days 1-16. Interested to hear your takes.

#AlbumClosingSongs Day 2

It's inspired other great album closers & penultimate tracks. Thomas Erlewine describes it as having a grand sense of staged drama previously unheard of in rock & roll – Bowie himself saw the song in the French chanson tradition.https://t.co/MNMSBDqRih

— Ricky Monahan Brown (@ricky_ballboy) January 2, 2023

#AlbumClosingSongs Day 4

Pete Shelley's love of Krautrock creates Buzzcocks' beautiful beast of pulsating, motorik-punk.

With the Fast Cars coda and infinite runout groove under the same track listing, it creates a perfect circle with the album opener.https://t.co/IQyWWkQEva

— Ricky Monahan Brown (@ricky_ballboy) January 4, 2023

#AlbumClosingSongs Day 6

Would have dropped this one in earlier, but I never think of it as an album closer. Even on Fear of a Black Planet, it stands alone.

This track's just an absolute behemoth of hip hop. Hell, an absolute behemoth of music, period.https://t.co/EufQulGF6M

— Ricky Monahan Brown (@ricky_ballboy) January 6, 2023

#AlbumClosingSongs Day 8

Things gone to hell? Dave Grohl knows you can fix em.

A 5'40" song inc. a 3'40" coda that *starts* by quietly referencing Devo's Gut Feeling b4 winding things up into all-out drum-smashing & screaming? That's how you close out.https://t.co/83PE8T8Ifj

— Ricky Monahan Brown (@ricky_ballboy) January 8, 2023

#AlbumClosingSongs Day 10

My favourite album for years & I listened back to this track for the list. It CLOSES & keeps CLOSING up to & including the last two secs.

Maybe not the most momentous track on the list, but maybe the one that closes out hardest.https://t.co/rkjwNBIMqa

— Ricky Monahan Brown (@ricky_ballboy) January 10, 2023

#AlbumClosingSongs Day 12

I've performed this track with @NerdBaitBand, and when you're inside it, it's really striking how the deceptively simple lyrics build and build to cap off the album and deliver Waters' message of solidarity to the listener. https://t.co/8pOAJKbFfp

— Ricky Monahan Brown (@ricky_ballboy) January 12, 2023

#AlbumClosingSongs Day 14

I’m a sucker for a reprise, particularly one that encapsulates a “harrowingly intense” and “darkly hypnotic” album (thanks, Allmusic!) over six sprawling, psychedelic minutes.

Take a bow, Nick McCabe and The Verve.https://t.co/KYo3Dg31FO

— Ricky Monahan Brown (@ricky_ballboy) January 14, 2023

#AlbumClosingSongs Day 16

Of *course* a Cure song called End has to be the end-iest album closing song to end all album closing songs.

To the extent that, when I first heard it in 1992, I genuinely thought Bob was calling it a day! https://t.co/tooZj5c03j

— Ricky Monahan Brown (@ricky_ballboy) January 16, 2023

That’s the End. Or, is it?

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Eight Tracks VI

I’m going to try to do monthly blog posts this year. Here’s the first – my annual round-up of the best popular music tracks of the year just ended.

“Now here’s 20 mins of the sound of Hell through the medium of bass saxophone and circular breathing”

You can also check this new list out on Apple Music or Spotify. And, check out the Apoplexy Tiny Letter for a bonus track.

If there’s one thing I’ve come to believe while doing events for my books, it’s that it doesn’t do to come between the art and the reader/viewer/listener. I’m more interested to hear your opinions on these tracks and what you think might be better choices. Please do leave a comment.

That said, let’s get down to it – in no order other than a track sequence that works for me…

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Robot Love

I’m tentatively exploring the idea of the Caledonian antisyzygy. Does The Sensational Alex Harvey Band provide the right soundtrack for this blog post? Read on!

The idea of the Caledonian antisyzygy emerged as a reaction to T.S. Eliot’s assertion that ––

that there is no value in Scottish provincial literature, noting an absence of coherence and an anchor in a single language.

Scots writers and academics subsequently argued that idea of dueling polarities within the Scottish psyche and literature – the Caledonian antisyzgy – is a positive characteristic of Scottish literature – and how could it not be, given creative tensions thrown up by the contrasts between the Highlands and the Lowlands, Protestantism and Catholicism, Britishness and Scottishness, and others?

I’m tempted to include gallusness vs. the Cringe, but the Dictionary of the Scots Language on what it means to be gallus (cf. II.1 and II.2) makes it clear that’s another 10,000-word essay!

Oh, yeah. Did I mention that I’ve got a new story out? And it’s just a few pages! The U.S. link for the ebooks and hard copies is here.

Pleased that my slightly seditious Sco-fi sci-fi story The Abrasive Embrace is out in the world

Seems a propos that it should be picked up first in the US, rather than in Scotland #antisyzygy

In the UK, you can get the ebook anthology here https://t.co/7EucyRefij

— Ricky Monahan Brown (@ricky_ballboy) September 7, 2022

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Thirtysomething Yr

30 years ago:

You probably hadn't heard of Boris Johnson
The management at the Edinburgh Playhouse thought it was realistic to expect an audience not to rave it up during an Orbital gig.

Another shorter, less boring blog post (maybe)
https://t.co/R03sNE0FtI https://t.co/d3F7PQGdih

— Ricky Monahan Brown (@ricky_ballboy) July 15, 2022

“I SAID, WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE MAASTRICHT TREATY?!?!”

1992. Halcyon days. At least, if you like war in Europe and riots in America. Yep. So much has changed now. Better days.

One of the closing themes of my book, Stroke, is the subjective nature of time. So, it’s interesting to hear two remixes of Orbital’s Halcyon, thirty years on.

Logic 1000 strips it back and makes an asthmatic middle-aged stroke survivor think he could still rave it up in a sweaty whitewashed cube of a room somewhere in Edinburgh – if such a place still exists, Grandad.

John Hopkins makes some concessions to the passing of time and makes an A.M-a.S.S. think he could really dig it after the Wee Man’s gone to sleep, on a good pair of noise-cancelling headphones.

None of it convinces me that 17-year-old Ricky was right in his conviction that time’s arrow was dragging us into a future that could only get better [sic].

On the other hand, Long-sufferingreaderoftheblogpaul introduced me today to a trilogy of science fiction books which opens with Earth awaiting an invasion from the closest star system. So, things aren’t necessarily all bad.

“One of these days, we’re going to cut you up into little pieces”

Cheery-bye!!!

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Embra Calling

I went to @Lighthousebks to hear @leftacademic talk about his book, The Punk Rock Politics of Joe Strummer.

Now I'm thinking about politically charged music of more recent vintage I've been listening to – https://t.co/UeWLwas2kh

Yeah. I’m blogging again (in a shorter format). pic.twitter.com/j74VdWzFjp

— Ricky Monahan Brown (@ricky_ballboy) July 4, 2022

I’m pretty sure that was Barbra Streisand, wasn’t it?

The conversation got to the author remarking that he hadn’t listened to much more-or-less-political music with the impact of Strummer’s work (with and without The Clash) since the late punk’s death.

Conversely, I don’t seem to be able to listen to anything that isn’t angry about something right now. Not least since, now he’s five, the Wee Man is all

Public Enemy, the Bee Gees or die, Sucker!

My son, every day (not really (but yeah, kinda))

Maybe by the end of the month, I can expand his palette to include Run The Jewels, Sleaford Mods and the great new(ish) Leith/Peebles band I checked out at the Banshee Labyrinth last month, Gutterblood.

Poor wee sod.

Oh yeah, and Mrs Stroke Bloke stumbled across an article about Killer Mike from Run The Jewels in the paper today.

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Eight Tracks V

Well, of course apoplectic.me is back for my favourite post of every year – a round-up of the best popular music tracks of 2021. I wonder if the list will reflect the nature of the year…?

Remember the good old days?

You know, my tracks of 2020 did tend towards the distressingly fey and shoegaze-y. Well, not this year. This year’s better. You can also check this new list out on Apple Music or Spotify.

[ Check out the Apoplexy Tiny Letter for a bonus track .]

I listened to Wet Leg’s Chaise Longue on repeat for an unhealthy amount of time in 2021. Yeah, 2021, look at me:

I’m young and snotty, I’m gonna hang out with my friends outside, and when I get to a gig again, I’m gonna be totally irresponsible.

Ricky Monahan Brown, age 47 & 1/4

Check out the video for the song: They’re outside! Being snotty!

Spoiler: I’m not actually young, and I’m delighted that Sleater-Kinney came back in 2021. Worry With You isn’t the sound of young, angry Riot Grrrlz. Carrie and Corin are older now, too. Pitchfork called Worry With You –

[A] wholesome, Covid-era twin to Hurry On Home: a lovingly codependent couple just riding life’s highways, armed with good, vaguely psychedelic vibes.

Pitchfork

A nice thought, but I’m not totally buying it. They’re still singing about taking wrong turns and getting lost and messing up and they still know they’re Sleater-Kinney, dammit.

Either way, I had the huge privilege of being in a lovingly codependent couple this year, armed with good, vaguely psychedelic vibes, and I kind of needed that reflected back at me.

They still *sound* snotty, though

OK: I’m old and Scottish, with a penchant for disco and miserabilism. And even I have to admit playing Arab Strap’s The Turning Of Our Bones once is unhealthy enough.

D’ye want a fish supper with that?

Aye, and a buckfast chaser

I mean, who stages a comeback singing about not giving a damn about the past, about how it’s been another seven years and it’s showing round the eyes?

Take that, ABBA

Mogwai might wear a lot of Kappa sports gear, but they’re still the beauty to Arab Strap’s beastliness. One of my favourite live bands streaming a live rendition of their new album into our living room while we were locked down was one of the gifts of 2021.

“It’s nice doing a gig without that drunk guy from Edinburgh here for once.”

Staying with boys in tracksuits, but with a New-Order-off-their-heids-on-eccies-in-1988 vibe, here’s Working Men’s Club.

Phew. That’s better!

Well, that’s quite enough of that. No more dancing at the back! Don’t you know we’re all going to die? [Isn’t that a bit on the nose? –– Ed.] Spencer Cullum does, and he’s decided to make it sound eerily beautiful in a Nick Drake-stylee.

See? I’m not just bandying those comparisons around.

I didn’t know I needed to hear Sharon Van Etten and Angel Olsen’s Like I Used To. Then I heard it. In the face of Spencer Cullum’s imminent shadow, it feels like a defiant refusal, a insistence to live with whatever we have left.

Give it a spin. Maybe it’ll transport you to your glory days, too, turn you around and take you back to a quiet bar late at night – or whatever your version is – where the person you loved all along is still waiting for you and promising that it’s still that day and that time.

Right. When I heard Meg Ward’s Make U Mine, I tweeted something about how it was exactly the track we needed in 2021 –

It’s the sound of a rammed club in 1991 with condensation running down the walls cos everyone’s absolutely HAVIN IT – but better!

Me. on twitter. more or less. i already told you that.

‘AVE IT!

So, that’s my track of the year. Obviously. I’ll be back soon with a new Stroke Digest…

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A Personal History Of Creation

After King Rocker the other week, Mrs Stroke Bloke indulged me by sitting through Creation Stories, a biopic of sorts about Creation Records main man, Alan McGee.

Creation Records plays a big part in my, er, origin story, as indirectly noted by an old school friend.

A youthful @ricky_ballboy on the left there. https://t.co/wY8xf3Z1yV

— Allan Tanner (@weesandy) January 4, 2021

[ The Apoplexy Tiny Letter is hiding the best song associated with Creation Stories]

The movie’s fun, and the songs play a key part in telling the story. I wrote about how songs played a key part in my writing of Stroke: A 5% chance of survival for my Undercover Soundtrack for Roz Morris’s website.

Looking through the Creation Records catalogue, I could pick a different set of favourite tunes for every night of the year to tell a story. Here’s tonight’s ––

Great label, shame about the… label?Ride: Leave Them All Behind

Yeah, Al’s right. I did and still do kneel at the altar of shoegaze, and Ride was my Dianetics. They’re probably the reason this middle-aged stroke survivor still shambles around Edinburgh in a long-sleeved t-shirt pretending to be the archetypal skinny white boy to this day.

I know, good luck with that, grandad.

My Bloody Valentine: Only Shallow

In Creation Stories, Alan McGee is traumatised by being locked out of the studio by My Bloody Valentine as Kevin Shields burns all the label’s money trying the recreate the perfect sounds in his head.

In fact, he seems as traumatised by Only Shallow as my dad was when I took it home and put it on his first, new CD player ––

Is that thing broken ALREADY?!

Paw Brown, 1991

Teenage Fanclub: Mellow Doubt

Looking through the Creation catalogue, I’m struck by the number of records in it that got me through rough times. When I lived thousands of miles away, it didn’t hurt that so many of the Creation bands were Scottish.

When I was racked with doubt, Teenage Fanclub could mellow it out. (Boooo! –– Ed.)

Primal Scream: Swastika Eyes (Jagz Kooner Mix)

Right. That’s enough mellow.

The Jagz Kooner remix of Swastika Eyes starts pretty intense, and cranks it up remorselessly for a full seven minutes. In my Undercover Soundtrack, I mention writing while Swastika Eyes plays in the “background”. The resulting short story is coming out later this year.

It’s gonna be pretty intense.

Super Furry Animals: The Man Don’t Give A F–––

I think a lot of the intensity that’s feeding into my writing and musical choices right now – and, let’s face it, the disgust simmering under the last apoplectic.me post – arises from the current state of affairs in Scotland and Britain.

So, I suppose it’s nice to look back to a time when dissatisfaction might be reasonably expressed by getting a song featuring 52 F–bombs into the Top 40.

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Disappointment

The Wee Man objects to my musical taste. Fair enough. If your three-year-old is waxing lyrical about Arab Strap’s marvellous return, he’s got problems. But not as many as he’s got in store for you.

So, when I’m listening to 6Music/something from 1991/Britain’s slide into fascism*, the demands from the back seat begin.

“80s MUSIC!!!”

The Wee Man, 2021

[ Check out the reliably disappointing Apoplexy Tiny Letter ]

I happily comply with the request, of course. Because – of course – any 80s music is better than any of them other things.

“Cressida Dick has our full support”

As an added bonus recently, I heard comedian Stuart Lee talking about his new documentary, King Rocker, on Frank Skinner’s Absolute 80s weekend show. King Rocker is the story of Robert Lloyd, frontman of 70s Birmingham punk outfit The Prefects and latterly The Nightingales.

Being a good sport and a Stuart Lee fan, Mrs Stroke Bloke agreed to watch King Rocker with me.

Someone Has A Weakness For Things That Were In Better Nick In The 80s

Little did I know – and it only gets a brief reference in the film – Robert Lloyd suffered a stroke, I think around the same time I did. In interviews, he’s joked about getting a band together with fellow stroke survivors Edwyn Collins and Bid from The Monochrome Set, and calling it The Real Strokes.

But the line that sticks with me from the film comes when Lloyd talks about the time The Prefects were asked to support The Clash. The Clash’s manager wanted The Prefects to wear Clash t-shirts on stage. Right(eous)ly objecting, The Prefects wore the shirts inside-out and got chucked off the tour.

Yeah. Right on, you guys.

The disillusionment I got in those five days saved me a lot of time.

Robert Lloyd, King Rocker

That’s it. That’s the line.

I’ve supported Aberdeen FC on their long downhill slide from the early 80s through to this week’s latest managerial sacking.

This weekend, Mrs Stroke Bloke and I watched the Scottish rugby team claw their way back from certain defeat to salvage a draw in the last minute which they immediately chucked away to a loss.

Teenage Ricky is still reeling from the fact that the singer who co-wrote How Soon Is Now? and introduced him to Oscar Wilde is now a celebrity racist.

Oh, and there’s a Scottish parliamentary election on the horizon, for whatever good that’ll do anyone.

Just don’t mention 1978. Eh? Oh.

And, you know what? After considerably more than five days, I think I’ve finally reached the point of radical acceptance.

Maybe, if Joe Strummer hadn’t done such a great rendition of London Calling with The Pogues at the Edinburgh Playhouse in 1991, it would have saved a lot of heartache.

Of course, Lloyd does then have to go and ruin everything again by finishing the movie being a gnarled old stroke survivor doing something great.

Yeah, thanks.

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