SOUNDTRACK: SPILLAGE VILLAGE-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #101 (October 23, 2020).
I never imagined that a video filmed in a church would have an explicit language warning at the beginning of it. But such is Spillage Village.
The Atlanta collective consists of Dreamville records standouts J.I.D and EARTHGANG along with Jurdan Bryant, Hollywood JB, Benji and Tiny Desk alumnus Mereba. R&B star 6lack, also a member of the group, was unable to make it to the shoot due to travel restrictions.
There’s 12 people in the church (let’s hope they are all tested since they are not social distancing). And seven of them are rapper/singers. The rest is a live band, and they are tight. They sound great. It’s amazing how much a live band can add to a rap concert.
Musically, “End of Daze” is very cool with funky bass from Benji and lots of grooving wah wah solos from the guitarist on the back. The verses are rapped and everyone gets a turn. What I especially liked was the diversity of voices and styles.
WowGr8 goes first. He has a cool accent and delivery. JID has a fantastic style–his voice is higher than the others and very distinctive. Mereba has one of the best verses–referencing Nipsey Hustle’s murder. Jurdan has the most conventional-sounding delivery. Hollywood JB seems a but more lighthearted in his delivery. Then OLU (dressed in a fantastic suit) sings his verse. He has a great singing voice. While he sings his verse and the song fades sprinkling keys twinkle. They all sing the super catchy chorus. The backing band is apparently all related but someone is playing the keys and the credits don’t say who: Justin Barnett: guitar; Jerramy Barnett: bass; Nick Barnett: guitar; Dj Barnett: drums.
Christo the DJ starts out “Baptize” with a sample. OLU raps. I love his delivery–.his verse is choppy and funky. JID takes the next verse, and I like him even more. The song has a fun sing along chorus which seems strangely raunchy for a song about baptism. WOWGr8 takes another verse and shows off some really fast rapping.
Before the next song, someone’s phone rings and one of them says “turn off your phone in church.” Mereba sings this next song, which she says is called “Hapi.” After she says this, someone sings “because I’m happy…) very quietly. The song proves to be a full on gospel type song. Mereba has a kind of spoken word section and then OLU croons beautifully.
“Jupiter” ends the set. Mereba grabs an acoustic guitar and the whole group sings an almost campfire singalong. The church does feel like an appropriate setting for these last two songs.
I’m really impressed by this group.
[READ: November 15, 2020] Where Are We Now?
Glenn Patterson is from Belfast, Northern Ireland. This novel is a small (in scope) story about life in Belfast. I don’t know that I’ve ever read a story that focused in such detail on the daily life in Belfast, post-Troubles. The Troubles don’t really enter into the story–except that there are ever present reminders of them.
This is the story of Herbie. Herbie is a middle-aged man. I initially assumed he was older middle aged, then I thought he might be younger middle-aged. I don’t believe it is ever stated.
I had a remarkably difficult time reading this book because there was so much I simply didn’t know. Stuff that the average Belfastian person probably knows very well and with no problem.
It started pretty early on when someone says that a person had dumped a Portakabin on one of the roads running up to the hills on the far west of the city.
Okay so first, you have to find out what a Portakabin is (a mobile home of some sort). Then there’s a lengthy talk about who might do such a thing. And I really didn’t understand much of what they were talking about. Although I did like that they conclude that whoever did it could be summed up as The Ungivers of Fuck.
The story begins with a wonderful conceit that someone has stolen Herbie’s identity. It turns out this is because he doesn’t recognize himself or the life he now lives–how did he end up here when he was once so different?
Then we meet Herbie’s neighborhood. Sam and Derek own the local coffee shop which uses Scrabble letters to indicate tables (but they only have random letters and everyone moves them around to spell DICK anyhow). They are gay, but no one seems bothered by that (so that’s progress).
There’s Peader with his three legged dog, Norrie.
When Herbie met Norrie, Peader said Norrie was a rescue dog. Herbie said, “I always thought of them as bigger, you know brandy barrels and everything.”
“He doesn’t do rescues, it was me rescued him…”
“I am a complete Dope,” Herbie said, to which Peader replied that his father has schooled him to believe that even wise man could say a foolish thing but that yes, Herbie was a bit of dope all right.
There’s also Brian who works at he local grocery store. He is full of terrible (hilarious) jokes.
Man walk in here earlier the day looking for a pair of stockings for his wife.
Is this a joke?
Says she has been going on and on about this kind she saw on the shopping channel, never stretch, never ladder, never even smell.”
“It is a joke.”
“Here’s me, stockings that never stretch, never ladder, never even smell? That’s nylon impossible.”
The rest of the cast comes around later.
Herbie lost his job in the economic crash. He has also lost his wife (she left him for a Southerner–which means Irish, not American South), although she emails him constantly. His adult daughter, Beth, is living in London and is rather successful.
Herbie got a call from a cousin in New Zealand who wanted some genealogical information. So, since he had nothing to do, Herbie went to the Records Office and did some research. He enjoyed it, then he became good at it. So he started volunteering there.
Things were going along as normal until his daughter called to say that she needed to come back home. She was bankrupt. He was weirded out by it at first but then he enjoyed the company.
A fascinating aspect of this story is the tourism industry. Apparently people flock from all over the world because they once had a cousin born in Ireland. Belfast is also making (or has made) a tourist site out of the Titanic shipyards. Again, there’s a lot of stuff in here that a Belfastian person would know that Patterson assumes we’ll know. So it was a bit puzzling.
The Troubles enter the story in an unexpected (and honestly confusing) way. One of the locals is a driver named Paul. While Herbie and Beth and their friends were out enjoying the piano playing of young Kurtis Bain, Paul stumbled in, bloody and confused. He’d been in a car crash. The man who did it is was brigadier.
A soldier, Beth asked, and they all looked at her: where have you been? (England of course, the best part of ten years). Oh right That sort of brigadier.”
What? What kind of brigadier? So, keep your paramilitary forces straight. The Loyalists wanted to remain with England. A brigadier was apparently a member of the Ulster Defense Association, a loyalist group. When they told Paul to tell the police, he said that the brigadier essentially told him that he said anything, he would be dead. So that was that. And that was Paul’s livelihood.
So Herbie goes on with his every day life. He winds up going to a local soccer game (unprofessional club) and the fans there greet him warmly and say they know he’ll be back for more.
And then, after some seemingly innocent flirting, Herbie asks out Louise who works at the shop with joke-telling Brian. They have a great time together (and great sex). They celebrate Christmas together, but alas, cannot be together for the New Year’s event. Herbie envisions a huge change in his life.
Herbie also gets invited to give a talk to the locals about the genealogy center (a weekly public event and he’ll be one of the speakers). He is full of nightmares about how bad it will go, including one where the whole building explodes.
The main plot of the book, if there is one, is that the local Post Office is closing down. A Northern Irish Post Office is very different from an American post office. I’m not even entirely sure of the scope of the services. But one huge difference is that there is money exchanged at this one.
And the local paramilitary thugs (the ones who hurt Paul) bring in huge duffel bags of money every month. If they keep it under ten thousand quid, there’s no tax or questions asked. So every month a whole bunch of them bring in nine thousand nine hundred pounds.
This Post Office has been around forever and the locals are (understandably) upset at losing it. They are also very concerned about what’s moving in (rumor is a celebrity chef is going to put a restaurant up). What eventually moves in is a wonderful payback to a running joke throughout the book.
There’s a huge climactic even at the end of the book that I didn’t get until it was explained a second time. I’m not sure if I wasn’t supposed to get it or if the language was too confusing. Since there was a second, more detailed explanation, I’m assuming there was an element of confusion intended in the original reveal. But once the explanation comes for, the conclusion is very rewarding.
So, again, not much happens, really. It’s a fairly true to life account of a middle-aged person’s life.
The blurb on the book says
No one is more acutely tuned to the heartbeat of Belfast than Glenn Patterson.
I’ll take David Park’s word for it, but I have to assume it’s true.
And even if I didn’t “get” a lot of what was happening, I enjoyed the story overall. And there were several jokes (the one about the talking leg) that were so funny I will never forget them. There are raves for his earlier book Gull and I would definitely consider reading it. I enjoyed Patterson’s writing style a lot. And I feel like I learned a thing or two about Belfast.
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