0.31.1 - Sheffield: Sex City*
By 1991, my Father had settled us down; in part I think to try and give my sister and I somewhere stable to complete our education, but also because the first Iraq War would soon whisk my him away to the deserts of Saudi Arabia for near on two years, and it seems unlikely we would follow him to that extreme. My mother's family were from a small town in the very centre of England called Chesterfield, famous for its regular outdoor markets, being the central hub for the UK Post Office**, and for failing spectacularly to build churches correctly.
I love Atlas Obscura, who have a nice article on The Crooked Spire here.
For a while, Chesterfield was my home; the seat of my education, home several jobs of various qualities, my parents, my expanding group of friends, the first nightclub I went to, the first date, the first kiss, some other firsts. I never felt much for Chesterfield though, truth be told. My parents left long before I did, retiring to Spain, my sister off to Manchester to live with her now ex-husband; and me, I changed jobs, relationships, made unwise financial choices, had a breakdown all inside the confines of a town with a population of less than 100,000 people. I've been to musical performances where you could have fit the entire population, every man woman and child from my little town into the venue, and the crowd there would have exceeded them***.
I never got a say in moving to Chesterfield, it was just where my mother's family were from; we could have really ended up anywhere, but inertia and my friends kept me there, long after I realised it was a dead end.
But throughout my time in Chesterfield, the allure of the big city just across the county border called to us. Sheffield, The Steel City****, with it's more-than-one-hobby-shop and cinemas-with-more-than-one-screen and nightclubs-where-you-didn't-see-the-same-thirty-people-every-week was only a 10 minute train ride away, followed by a cripplingly expensive late night taxi ride home if you missed the last train back at 10.22pm*****. I worked there, shopped there, partied there, played at living the city life there, saw a hundred different bands there, and eventually, met my partner there.
That's a story for another time, but because of circumstances (her housemate was moving out unexpectedly, my lease on my terrible flat was up), I ended up moving to Sheffield in 2008 and never really looked back. For 17 years, this city has been my adoptive home and its a place I have grown to have great affection for; a northern industrial town turned home of further education, filled with green spaces and bohemian neighbourhoods, culture and celebration. It has a distinct sensibility, and while like all cities it has share of poverty and deprivation, it doesn't feel as oppressive as Manchester, as filled with glass and steel artifice as Leeds, as lost in it's own history as York. I may have grown up in, lived in, inhabited a lot of different places in my 48 years, but Sheffield is my home, and amongst the two places in the entire country I would ever want to live.
It's also a town with a rich musical history; through every era of music, Sheffield has produced bands influential across a variety of genres, something that I was originally going to celebrate as part of writing about Tramlines (being the Sheffield music festival), but that went another direction and so here we are, days away from me disappearing on vacation with self-imposed deadlines to at least get some albums written up and covered before my two week hiatus.
So, lets talk about the music of the Steel City.
When the Tramlines festival was more distributed, more dispersed across the city, you could be certain that somewhere (normally the Corporation nightclub, which I wrote about in 2017 here) would play host to metal band Bring Me The Horizon and Post-rock band 65daysofstatic somewhere in the city.
I like metal, so when Bring Me The Horizon started to achieve some success with Suicide Season, and I learned they were from Sheffield and that we'd almost certainly been in the same room together in Corporation over the course of multiple Saturday nights, I felt I owed them a listen, so acquired the album without really any expectation. What I found was a highly energetic kind of pure metal I hadn't heard from a band (not for lack of availability, there were many bands doing this but I just hadn't sought them out) since my days of listening to Pantera and Sepultura and Slayer back in my teenage years; both familiar and new and loud and pounding and energetic, I spent a long time with Suicide Season, and then more time with their follow up There Is A Hell Believe Me I've Seen It, There Is A Heaven Lets Keep It A Secret which I liked even more. I've dipped into every single Bring Me The Horizon release since, and what I enjoy about them is their expectation that they will keep innovating and changing their sound. Just this year they released an album called Lo-files which has songs from throughout their very Metal career remixed and recontextualised as Lo-Fi Anime Beats To Study And Relax to, which not only works incredibly well, but is a sign of a band who trust their fans to come along with them in any direction they plan to go, rather than living in fear that changing anything about their output will destroy the career they've made. BMTH are certainly the most modern successful band from Sheffield on this list, but they are worthy bearers of the musical legacy of Sheffield bands.
There was a time after my Big Depressive Episode where I lived in a single room bedsit and didn't have access to the internet for 9 months; this was before the event of 4G and you needed a phone line and I was assured I was only a few weeks in from moving into a full flat once the refurb job was done; 9 months later, it was. In that interim period, friends would burn stuff onto DVD-Rs and send them to me in the post - I still have in my possession about 50 DVDs with episodes of obscure US sitcoms, the first half of the first season of House, some anime, and a whole bunch of albums on MP3 that I worked through slowly while going crazy. One of those DVDs included a bunch of Post-rock albums, a kind of instrumental ambient guitar music I got incredibly into******, amongst that collection was The Fall Of Math by 65daysofstatic. Like Pelican and Sunn 0))), I got extremely into 65dos and every so often I go on a post-rock tear and listen to their stuff. I really like their No Man's Sky: Music For An Infinite Universe album which soundtracked the ambient space exploration game of the same name, but One Time For All Time remains my favourite of their albums, which is why I listened to it for this article. Oh, and they are from Sheffield if that wasn't clear.
Def Leppard, hair metal 90's legends, are also from Sheffield. I'm not crazy about the music on Hysteria, if only because the grunge revolution that formed the cornerstone of my musical tastes in the early 90s was in part designed to play counter to the tide of hair metal, but as a drummer myself, I have huge respect for someone who loses a limb in a car accident and continues to play the drums in a rock band. The discipline it must have taken to retrain all his limb coordination to allow him to play with only one arm and some pedal tools just blows my mind. I thought Hysteria was fine, but nothing unexpected - Pour Some Sugar On Me is like the definition of hair metal, but the whole Skid Row/Judas Priest/Winger thing never did it for me.
I remember my former Brother In Law telling me that the Arctic Monkeys were going to be the biggest band to come out of Sheffield for a decade. He played in a small band in Manchester, and had seen them doing some early touring somewhere, and saw the potential. I didn't pay that much mind until I heard The View From The Afternoon - actually, saw it played live on a Tv show that I realised he was right. Like Bring Me The Horizon, Arctic Monkeys blend energy and smarts and compelling riffs with the desire to keep pushing to do something different marks them as special. I actually listened to AM as well as Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not and I love both of those albums, but they sound worlds apart over the course of just the few years between their release dates. Not every musical journey Arctic Monkeys go on lands with me (I'm still waiting for Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino to click with me, I keep trying every year or so) but the fact they redefine their sound so insatiably makes them mostly a delight to listen to.
My friend Hado, who's sister switched us on to Tori Amos, had Moloko's Do You Like My Tight Sweater which meant soon enough, most of us had a copy. It's very classic 90's alternative electronica, and I had a huge thing for Roisin Murphy (the vocalist for Moloko, a two-person operation) who I met once at a party, and whose album Ruby Blue was one of my all time favourites until she revealed herself to be a terrible transphobe and ruined my enjoyment of both her and it. This album is still great, she's got an incredibly vocal style that just oozes all over everything and it reminds me of happier times. I wrote about my close encounter with her in my 2017 version of the blog, and it makes me a little sad that I know I won't be listening to Ruby Blue as part of this project for this year, but principles aren't worth much if you only apply them to things you don't care about.
In 1995, there was a celebration of film which meant certain cinemas were offering showings for £1 each. Being nineteen at the time, myself and my friends travelled to Sheffield (the nearest city with any kind of multi-screen cinemas we could access) and saw what I think might have been Four Rooms******* and little known Andy Garcia gangster tragedy Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead back to back. When one film finished, we just switched theatres into the other one for the next showing (this was back in the day when sometimes screens just sat idle for 45-60 minutes at a time for reasons I don't understand) and sat around talking to kill the time. It wasn't until about 20 minutes in that one of us pointed out that the incidental music in the theatre was ABC's The Look Of Love; not normally worth pointing out apart from we collectively realised it had been The Look Of Love for the whole of the 20 minutes we had been in the theatre. We waited quietly, and sure enough, as the song came to an end, it immediately just began again from the beginning. For nearly a full hour, we listened to ABC's The Look Of Love at least twenty times before the house lights went down and trailers started. That's my review of The Lexicon Of Love********.
Sometimes you have to break the prose up with a picture so here's Sheffield skyline from Park Hill
Like ABC, Heaven 17 live in my head in a box just labelled "very 80's", mainly because right alongside The Look Of Love, I'd expect to see Temptation featured on any self-respecting "Now Thats What I Call The 1980s" compilation. I didn't really know much else about Heaven 17 before I listened to The Luxury Gap and I wasn't expecting it to have the socially conscious, anti-capitalist sentiment running through it (though the title does kind of give it away). My respect for Heaven 17 increased severalfold during my enjoyment of this album, and made me reconsider my preconceived notions of what 80's synth music might be about.
Before Pulp and Arctic Monkeys, I always thought The Human League would be the biggest band to come out of Sheffield, if only because of the true universality of Don't You Want Me. After Pulp finished their Tramlines set two weekends ago, the audience slowly trooped towards the single exit, like trying to pass a kilo of mince through the eye of a needle, we shuffled towards the exit and the crowd as one sang along to Don't You Want Me as it played over the stage PA. The Human League (along with Gary Numan) were my proto-goth gateway drug, sending me from them, to The Cure, and then spiralling into black lipstick and spiky dog collars. Dare! for some reason evades the "very 80's" accusations, but probably because I listened to it enough as a youth that I considered it "proper music".
While the bands on this article are all representative of music of the Steel City, but no-one is more emblematic of Sheffield music than Richard Hawley, a musician that Catherine has walked past while he was talking his dog for a walk in the countryside outside of the city. Richard Hawley shows that the principles of what I'd call pure country music can be just as easily applied to the lives of industrial northern residents as well as ranchers working their cattle on the plains. He writes genuine, heartfelt music filled with warmth and empathy and if you like twangy guitar and expressive storytelling, Coles Corner is just a delight.
If you grow up in a house where your parents listened to every Beatles album, you end up learning about Joe Cocker through osmosis and A Little Help From Your Friends. I knew the song was his, I knew he was from Sheffield, I knew he was big in the 60's and that was about all I knew, apart from there was a picture of him on the wall of the Nottingham House pub next to the house Catherine and I used to rent from a crazy old coot who's deranged antics made us pool our money and buy our own house just to get away from him. Fun times. With A Little Help From My Friends fits into that weird incestuous thing where 60's soul singers would all just pass around to each other songs and soul standards and all record versions of them which is why I had to listen to Joe Cocker sing Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood and Do I Still Figure In Your Life. He's a talented vocalist with a strong delivery but I just don't have the historic nostalgia for what, for me, is just another northern soul singer.
Finally, let's talk about Different Class. Pulp, for me, are the Sheffield band. I remember initially not liking them - Common People (of all things) felt like a novelty song to me when I was young and very stupid; primarily I resented it for being representative of the 'alternative music for girls to dance to' section of my nights out at seedy nightclubs in Chesterfield which meant the DJ wasn't playing Nirvana or Rage Against The Machine or Helmet but instead was choosing to provide something for the other 50% of club patrons by playing upbeat indie songs by bands like The Lemonheads and Dodgy and The Divine Comedy (another band I came to love after this unfortunate period of ignorance in my life) and, of course, Pulp. As other Pulp songs assaulted the charts, each of them an alt-pop bullet aimed squarely at the heart of those tired of the endless "Blur vs Oasis, is it better to be a well educated Tory or a sweary football hooligan" debate, I was drawn further and further into their orbit, shedding my younger, more ignorant idea of who they were. Pulp had been looking for their break since the mid 1980's, constantly looking for someone to crack the door open for them, and with the release of His & Hers in 94 and Do You Remember The First Time? getting played on the radio, the confluence between having the attention of the audience for a moment, and releasing an album which is basically perfect alternative rock and stocked with no less than five mega-hits, Different Class was a clarion announcement that The Steel City had a new standard bearer. I still like This Is Hardcore better than Different Class, but I am a contrary soul, and it's really a masterpiece.
So, that's Sheffield, Northern Town, Steel City, home of incredible bands and incredible people and it makes me happy to call this place home. Eagle-eyed readers will notice there is one album I haven't covered yet, and I think its because it deserves a little time in the spotlight on its own. So, bear with me, dear reader, while I do something unconventional, and ask you to join me for Part Two....
*It's a song title and not a lyric, but it was too perfect to be excluded on a technicality
** The story I heard when I worked at Future Walk, home the UK Postal Office Administration Building, was that Chesterfield was chosen as its destination by someone folding a map of England in half length and widthways, and where the two creases intersected was Chesterfield.
***I mean, specifically one gig which was the Eras Tour in Edinburgh which had an attendance just under 100,000 people and greater than the last recorded census value for the town of Chesterfield.
**** Nice try Pittsburgh, it was ours first
***** I once went to see Ben Kweller play at Sheffield Foundry, he was late on stage, coming on at close to 9.30, and because the venue was a good 25 minute walk from the train station, I was able to enjoy precisely 3 songs from his set before I had to leave and get the train home or remain stranded in Sheffield overnight.
****** I've already had near misses with listening to At The Soundless Dawn by Red Sparowes or All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone by Explosions in the Sky but not finishing either so far, and before I hit 1000, I will listen to a bunch of post-rock albums and write about them.
******* I remember the trip, I remember its when I saw Things To Do In Denver because that's my favourite movie no-one remembers, but I can't be sure what we saw before it. I checked IMDB for options and there were many that fit the bill, and I initially thought it was From Dusk Till Dawn (but that came out in 1996) so Four Rooms is an educated guess. I know I've seen it in the cinema at least.
******** That's unfair I know, this album was extremely 80's but not in an way which might offend you, and I like 'Poison Arrow', but perhaps because I haven't had it Clockwork Oranged into my psyche.
