I arrived in Oxford in 1994 extraordinarily naïve and chippy, to a world of brilliant tutors and fellow students who seemed all to be North London cosmopolitan sophisticates or rugger-bugger public schoolboys who rowed and drank to excess. I found some fellow Northern sourpusses, and revelled in Hume, Macintyre, Nietzsche, Sartre, Saint-Simon, Hegel, Marx and the rest without every really getting the point of focusing on the exams, and every term I put the times of all the lectures into my Psion 5mx, religiously cycled to the first one, then decided that lectures were not for me and I should use my time differently.
But I suspose my space, my attempt to be cool, was music. I arrived just at a time I was getting into John Martyn’s London Conversation and Solid Air, Tim Buckley’s Happy Sad, a Dylan side with Don’t Think Twice and The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, thanks to pirate cassettes given to me by a British library student I met on an international workcamp in Denmark (who my then girlfriend, offered him when she came to visit ‘the British guy’ described as ‘a sex god’), to add to my Mark Radcliffe Out On Blue Six selection, Aztec Camera, Deacon Blue… and also trad jazz and rollerdisco hits.
So then, in 1995, I walked into the Jude The Obscure in Jericho and discovered the Catweazle Club. Tons of Oxford hippies and weirdos, many barefoot, mostly sitting on the floor, an appreciative crowd, a good compere – Matt Sage, and great, talented people sharing their art. I heard amazing music, and poetry, I remember Jools and Jules, my friend Eoin Quiery, George, who was the best Dylan impersonator I have ever heard (I remember George saying ‘I’ve been a bit down, and when I’m down I always turn to protest songs’ and then doing Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands perfectly, full length). I even performed, once with the very talented Katie Buckhaven (I shook maracas, she played guitar and sang). Maybe I read some poetry on another occasion?
But as an undergraduate with an overloaded life (even then), it was an authentic, welcoming, intentional space. And many of the musicians and poets were kind enough to appear on my show, Dead Air, on Oxygen 107.9FM (very much a recreation, as best I could, of Out On Blue Six).
I never recreated quite the Catweasle experience – the Kashmir Klub in a basement near Baker Street – where I once heard Chip Taylor do Angel of the Morning, and then have Reg Presley join him for Wild Thing, complete with ocarina solo – was probably the closest.
But the conviviality, focused attention, respect, encouragement and the vibes definitely informed my facilitation and, generally, what I value.
And now it’s officially over – here’s the eulogy, many years later for some https://www.catweazleclub.co.uk/about-3
Well, thanks for the music and memories!
(Also commemorated, appropriate, in a documentary on Radio 4 – my other constant cultural companion at uni: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovReu_DP75o )
chosen path 