The Urban Spaceman

Volume Two, Issue Nine. January 2025

It’s not too late to wish you all a Happy New Year, is it? Best hopes and good vibes to everyone who’s stuck with this erratic, occasional newsletter for the past few years, and all the new subscribers who’ve probably forgotten that they subscribed in the first place and are wondering what this is and where it’s come from. Well, a new year seems like a good place for a recap: my name is Ben Graham, and I’m a writer (despite my constant doubts and stretches of inactivity), a reader, a daydreamer, a flaneur and, if such a thing is possible, a magician.

My music writing can be found on the Quietus website and in Shindig! magazine. I’ve published books on the Thirteenth Floor Elevators, The Butthole Surfers, and the disastrous Yorkshire Folk, Blues and Jazz Festival at Krumlin in 1970, as well as four novels of varying lengths. The most recent of these, Electric Tibet, is part of an ongoing sequence called American Underground, a psychedelic odyssey through the twentieth century’s magical counterculture, which is the main focus of my creative energies at present.

I’ve also written and performed poetry fairly consistently for the past thirty years, and since June 2017 I’ve been the regular co-host of Verity Spott’s long-running monthly poetry open mic night Horseplay at the Black Dove in Brighton. I performed this role for the last time in September, before handing over to new host Anna Kista. Before becoming host I’d been reading my work regularly at Horseplay for about five years, so it’s been a big part of my life. But moving from Brighton to Eastbourne meant I couldn’t commit to being there every month.

My last evening as host was quite a moving experience, not least because of how many friends and regulars got up and read my poems or excerpts from my novels. I joked that it was a bit like being at my own funeral. I read what’s become bit of a keynote piece for me, my 2015 poem ‘For Everyone’, for the last time, and handed over to Anna at the end of the night in a reenactment of Jon Pertwee’s regeneration into Tom Baker in the 1973 Doctor Who serial Planet of the Spiders.

Me hosting Horseplay for the last time

Lisa and I picked up the keys to our new house on October 17 and moved in properly at the beginning of November. We’d hoped to get more prep and decorating done in the two weeks in between but as it turned out I was having to work almost every day and it was enough of a struggle just to get everything packed and the old flat cleaned. Since then, I’ll confess it’s been quite a challenge: moving from the town we’ve lived in for 27 years to somewhere not that far away but very different, and becoming homeowners for the first time and having a whole house to deal with, a house that’s been pretty neglected for a long time. Doing it in winter didn’t help, particularly as the house has no central heating and relies on an immersion heater for hot water.

As a result I’ve done barely any writing in the last quarter of 2024, and the financial strain has meant I haven’t got out to as many cultural or social events as I’d like to. But we went to our first gig in Eastbourne, at the Grove Theatre underneath the library, where a dozen or so people watched the Brighton post-rock band Ensemble One supported by the entertaining stoner rock of Numskull and the heavy prog of The Defamation Project. The town does have a grass roots live music scene but it’s a bit of a flower in the desert, one that’s going to need a lot of nurturing to survive. The promoters, Mind’s Eye, seem to have the neccesary drive and enthusiasm though, so we’ll see.

At the other end of the scale, we went to see The Damned at Eastbourne Winter Gardens, an impressive old-world venue that unfortunately wasn’t quite up to providing a decent sound mix on the night, but the energy still came over which is really what’s most important with what’s still essentially punk rock. For this tour, Dave Vanian and Captain Sensible (plus long-time keyboard player the wonderful Monty Oxymoron) have been rejoined by bassist Paul Gray and, after a lengthy feud, legendary drummer Rat Scabies, thus reconstituting their classic early ‘80s line-up. Accordingly, the set was dominated by songs from Machine Gun Etiquette, Strawberries and The Black Album, plus a storming ‘Eloise’ from their later high goth period and the inevitable encore of ‘Neat Neat Neat’ and ‘New Rose’.

For me and many others, this was the band’s most fertile and creative period, so it was great to hear deep cuts such as ‘Ignite’ ‘Stranger On The Town’, Sensible’s surprisingly moving ‘Life Goes On’ and an epic ‘Curtain Call’ alongside the more familiar likes of ‘Love Song’ ‘I Just Can’t Be Happy Today’, ‘Wait For The Blackout’ and of course, ‘Smash It Up.’ Scabies remains one of the great rock drummers, and the old punks performed with a power and precision to shame musicians half their age.

Impressive support came from vintage New York garage rockers The Fleshtones and a reconstituted Doctor & The Medics - actually The Doctor and a completely new band - who were unexpectedly great, though as much for The Doctor’s between-song chat as the music. They played early material from their Alice In Wonderland era and yes, they did ‘Spirit In The Sky’ and yes it was brilliant. Well, it was Christmas, after all…

The Christmas period for me was enlivened by an outpouring of creative writing by my friend James Burt. First was his long-awaited new short story collection, True Clown Stories. The tales in this anthology, mostly by Burt but also containing contributions by Chris Parkinson, Louise Halvardsson and Michael Somerset Ward, explore the deep-seated notion of clowns as sinister figures, though they’re also sometimes presented as pathetic or pitiful. The tone ranges from black humour to eerie horror and as someone with no strong feelings about clowns one way or another I was still engrossed by the taut, economical writing and the seemingly endless flow of intriguing ideas and nasty plot twists.

James also sent me an “advent calendar” of his trademark micro fictions, each one with a Christmas theme and each printed on an individual A5 sheet of paper that was sealed up to resemble an envelope, one to be opened each day until December 24th. All were notionally horror stories, though some were whimsical and humourous where others were truly dark, playing with the traditional images and tropes of Christmas and giving them a grotesque 180 degree spin. Zombies and the idea of Christmas after a nuclear apocalypse were recurring themes, as well as Santa’s secret life and what happens when office parties go wrong. We didn’t really do Christmas this year - decorations would just get in the way while trying to get a new house liveable - but it was good to open one of James’s short stories each morning through December and so have some kind of seasonal ritual.

Then just after Christmas I received my copy of the 2024 Mycelium Parish News, put together by James and Dan Sumption at Peakrill Press and documenting the activities of our extended creative circles, plus related interesting things, over the previous 12 months. in some ways, the MPN makes me think of the regular Whole Earth Catalog that provided a valuable link to physical, spiritual and artistic resources for the hippy counterculture of late 60s/early 70s America and beyond.

The MPN includes capsule reviews and links for books, zines, newsletters like this one, blogs, websites, podcasts, films and music. There are also pieces on recurring events in the physical world, and a look back at some key countercultural happenings of the past year. If this risks triggering FOMO, there are short articles by guest contributors suggesting ways to get involved with such things in 2025, or start your own. So the Parish News is equally a valuable historical document, a list of exciting things to catch up with, and a spur to future activity. Long may it continue!

True Clown Stories is available from Peakrill Press

James Burt sends out a weekly short story to his mailing list at microfictions.substack.com and blogs at orbific.com

You can buy the Mycelium Parish News for 2024 here

I think I should probably wrap up now. Just time to mention that Verity Spott and Alan Hay are having a joint book launch for their new poetry collections at the Komedia Studio Bar in Brighton on Thursday 9th January. Entry is free but donations are welcome. And on Wednesday 22 January Dan Spicer launches his long-awaited biography of free jazz titan Peter Brotzmann at the Rose Hill - also in Brighton, also free.

Catch you later, pop kids.

Ben x