Still Real Afters All These Years

It had been a good night at Chapter, proving that the cultural epicentre of the city hadn’t yet completely shifted to Roath. The night before I’d been at Market House, the art centre’s extension next door, a mess of studios, work rooms, offices for small arts companies, designers, publishers, dancers. I’d been talking up the capital, giving the assembled my take on what makes this great place tick, how it shines and shimmers, how it had been in its dirty past, how its Welshness works, how it fits into Wales, a post-industrial coal valley capital, growing ever larger over the hills that stand behind it, recovering land from the mass of tidal bog to its south.

“I bought your Real Cardiff when I first came here,” says the Turkish girl, smiling. “I thought it might tell me where I was”. I tell them about the lost wells of Penylan and the one with the shape of Christ’s knee on the rim. I tell them about the Butes being like Bill Gates and buying out anything that sprang up in opposition. The austere second Marquis with his docks and his visions. The Catholic third with his Victorian Disneyworld at Cardiff’s heart. I talk about the rivers, the Tan, the Whitebrook, the Canna, the Wedal, which we no longer have. We sup Cabernet Sauvignon and sporadically nibble at the crisps brought by the organiser. Some of the listeners buy books.

For many years I came here to the New Welsh Review offices, presided over, then, by the late Robin Reeves. Robin was a green-leaning socialist nationalist. Voice of understanding. Knew the world’s shape. He ploughed a liberal furrow with his literary magazine, NWR. You got a free mug if you subscribed. On these were the faces of Idris Davies and R.S. Mug collectors signed up and then threw the magazine away. The magazine itself has now moved to Aberystwyth and its former offices are occupied by men with drawing boards and computers and tubes of paint. Out of the window I can see early evening Market Road revellers, setting off for the pubs of Cowbridge Road – the Corporation, the Ivor Davies, the Kings Castle, the Admiral Napier. Places full of shine and light.

It has always been like this in West Cardiff. Before the Arts Centre came to Chapter in 1971 the buildings were Cantonian High School. Before that the space was used by the monthly Canton cattle market which ran from the Police Station to Carmarthen Street. Sheep and cattle pens, stables, slaughter house, meat market, manure, dust.

But today culture shines. Blown Magazine is based here and the theatre is the venue for John William’s In Chapters performances. NWR under its new editor Gwen Davies might even launch in the bar. Watch this space.

An earlier version of this posting appeared as The Insider in the Western Mail. #192

No Zips They Scratch

I’m in Crewe. I’ve just been collected from the rail station by a uniformed chauffer piloting an elite Bentley Mulsanne. I sit in the back in isolated splendour and am driven the ten minute glide to the factory at Pyms Lane. A car works gleaming like a freshly glossed hotel. New limousines stand in the yard, cocooned in white plastic shrouds. Clean, clear post-Industrial assembly. None of the workers wear anything held together with a zip or a button. Bentley keep clear of things that scratch.

I’m here to write a feature for Blown magazine, Wales’s new and glossy magazine of image, text and cultural intelligence. “Swearing, Murder, Gypsies, Pies, Bingo, Torture, Drinking, Lies” are bannered on Blown’s cover. Inside there’s as much avant-garde fashion as there is Llwyd Owen and Paul Granjon.

The Bentley Piece is a joint amalgamation of my work with that of photographer Paul Avis. I’m listening to the guide telling me about how Bentley’s bling quotient is low. Mos Def doesn’t have one. The rappers go for Rolls. Bentleys are made to order, every single one. You tell them just where amid the tooled leather and polished walnut you’d like to fix your iPod and they do it. Paintwork to match the colour of your shirt? Done.

I cover the detail, find out how much of Germany there is in this quintessentially British car (the company today is owned by Volkswagen), check the lamps, stare at the machined radiator grills. Their planes and lattices. Their Cricklewood forms. Paul shoots on a digital half-plate, lamp lit, slow and sure.

The result, a car review like few others, fills the pages of Blown issue two. This is a print magazine that stakes new cultural ground, crosses genres, really does make new. The thrust is to forget that visual artists rarely mix with writers, dancers with film-makers and that fashion photographers live beyond art on a platform of their own. It’s a high risk strategy. Do you really want to wade through twelve full plate colour fashion shots by stylist Danielle Rees and photographer Jeff Orgina just to get Richard Huw Morgan and Sam Hasler’s interview with Bill Drummond? Fans of the Superfurrys reading Emma Price’s conversation with Gruff Rhys about his new film Separado! will they also read on into Sian Melangell Dafydd’s hunt for the answer to water and aging in Bangor and in Bala?

Here in 2011 where iPhones have no chance of replicating album sleeve gloss and TV programming rarely embraces such cultural diversity the answer is yes. Absolutely. Blown: you can’t really pin it down. You need to just sit there and look at it. Richard Gwyn, Niall Griffiths and Gerald Tyler mix with DJ Fonteyn, Charlotte Hatherley and Gordon Dalton. Fancy a great ride? Buy this.

An earlier version of this posting appeared as The Insider in the Western Mail. #183