Word The Cat

(a lot of text and music at the bottom)
(update with extra track and less bandwidth freeloading)

Leeds is apparently coming up in the world. What this means is the council want to restore Leeds to its ‘glory days’ of being a Victorian commerical centre. This has meant a 10 year plan of attracting big chain-stores to the town centre including a much celebrated branch of Harvey Nicholls (shit, we even have Primark now). However, these days its not enough to create a commercial centre, the council must also create ideal consumers. Success can no longer be measured in economic terms alone, but must also take place culturally. The theory is ‘re-generation or ‘genrification’ the practice is the clearance of Little London (prime land near the city centre) to make way for luxury flats. This information via The Common Place:

In March 2002, 54% of Little London and Woodhouse residents on a 67% turnout voted NO to a £35m PFI regeneration scheme that would have seen a third of council homes in Little London demolished and replaced with far less council homes and far more private flats and housing = gentrification of prime city centre land.

For the council, however, the NO vote was the ‘wrong result’. They analysed the results and found that a potential majority existed in support of the PFI scheme in Little London, so they decided to re-ballot Little London by itself – within weeks of the original vote – with the promise that one of the Tower Blocks originally scheduled for demolition
would stay up. This time, 57% voted YES to PFI, but around 46% of residents didn’t vote.

Then nothing happened. Nothing. That was the last time the tenants and residents heard from the council for 3 years. That’s 3 years without proper repairs being done to their houses. Until late 2005, when the Little London Tenants and Residents Association were invited to take part in a new process to take the regeneration scheme forward. Because
of a delay in other Leeds PFI projects, the government decided that the council had to consult tenants and residents again, only this time with a new choice: a bigger PFI programme or a minimal refurbishment option

Guess what? Under the new PFI proposal, the Tower Block that was promised to be saved in the second vote was now once again scheduled for demolition; 450 homes would be demolished, private flats and housing built, and the whole thing wouldn’t be finished until at least 2013.

The main problem with the PFI scheme is that a third of the Little London community will probably be forced to leave their homes forever – this is because the council wants to bring richer families and students into the area in order to ‘regenerate it’.

The Tenants and Residents Association, which represents the entire community, is not against PFI per se, but is against the prospect of demolition of homes, the eviction of a third of the community and the fact that £80m is not going to be enjoyed by those people.

Another wing of the council’s project is the clearance of schoolkids from outside the Corn Exchange. This place has been a battleground for goths and scallies for generations. However in New Leeds is has been decided that young people look untidy and so, under ASBO legislation, the council and police are proposing a dispersal order forbidding more than 2 people to gather there at any time. If more than two people do gather there they can be moved on, if they loiter anywhere else in the city centre they are subject to arrest. The streets are (no longer?) a public space, they are a route by which one moves between sites of consumption. Partisan report and pictures here

Against this background I saw David Broad and Mike Rossiter play at the Grove Inn yesterday.

The Grove is currently hidden away between two newly-built 20 story buildings (one of which is a new office for Eversheds corporate law firm). They’re two lights of Leeds’ flourishing folk scene. Also seek Benjamin Wetherill, Fran Rogers .

Hear David Broad (more to be found here) – lonely folk songs for the space between law firms and hyper-mechanised guitar picking.

David Broad – Pretty Polly 4.1mb

David Broad – John Henry 3.7mb

EXTRA!
David Broad & The Jug Liberation Orchestra – Hava Nagila 6.2mb

hear Mike Rossiter at hismyspace.

Another angle comes from just north of Leeds. Xenis Emputae Travelling Band is the work of one Mr Larkfall. Site-specific improvisations from the Yorkshire countryside. There are many MP3s and buyable CDs available for your perusal here and some bits and pieces below.

Xenis Emputae Travelling Band – Bogle Burn 17.1mb
Xenis Emputae Travelling Band – Thee Gold of a Thousand Mornings (sample)

Xenis Emputae Travelling Band – Holly King 5.8mb