The Quietus PRESENTS:- AN ENGLISH TRIP aka Jolly Lad

Writer John Doran has just published a memoir about recovery from alcoholism, substance abuse and mental illness called Jolly Lad.

Tonight he performs readings from the book with musical accompaniment Lone Taxidermist and Kjetil Nernes of the Norwegian Noise Rock bandÅRABROT

www.thequietus.com
www.facebook.com/lonetaxidermist
www.johndoran.co.uk
www.arabrot.com

Tix: £5
Doors: 7.30

Jolly Lad is published by Strange Attractor Press, you can order a copy here: http://strangeattractor.co.uk/shoppe/jolly-lad/

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JOLLY LAD by John Doran

Published in hardback, paperback and electronic edition by Strange Attractor in June 2015.

Cover art by Simon Fowler and illustrations by Krent Able.

Hardback Edition comes with free CD of readings and music from Nicky Wire of Manic Street Preachers, Abi & Neil of British Sea Power, Eccentronic Research Council, Teeth Of The Sea, English Heretic, Grumbling Fur, Mark Dicker, GNOD and Bronze Teeth.

Jolly Lad is a memoir about the recovery from alcoholism, habitual drug use and mental illness. It is also about the healing power of music, how memory defines us, the redemption offered by fatherhood and what it means to be working class.

In 2011 VICE magazine asked music journalist John Doran for a weekly column. The only instruction they gave him was simple: “You can write about whatever you want but it can’t be about music.”

The column ended up being called MENK – a shortened version of ‘mental’ used in some, but by no means all, parts of Merseyside, to mean intellectually feeble or mentally handicapped rather than mentally ill. Doran grew up round the corner from the largest Victorian insane asylum in Europe, Rainhill Hospital, and this harsh epithet would be shouted at him by other kids when he got off the bus after school.

He says: “I was determined not to write a ‘my drink and drug hell’ kind of book for several reasons – the main one being that I had, for the most part, had a really good time drinking.True, a handful of pretty appalling things have happened to me and some people that I know or used to know over the years. But I have, for the most part, left them out of this book as they are not illuminating, not edifying and in some cases concern other people who aren’t here to consent to their appearance. Instead this book concentrates on what you face after the drink and the drugs have gone.

For more details contact John Doran John@theQuietus.com or Mark Pilkington mark@strangeattractor.co.uk

Praise for Jolly Lad:

“This is the work of a real writer propelled by that most vital of properties, self-doubt.

Insanitary squats, Cellar Five own-brand pale cream sherry, exploding aerosol factories, Welwyn Garden City, an A&E ‘like Breughel’, a 7-foot-tall 20-stone laboratory, epilepsy, every drug you’ve ever heard of and many you haven’t, every band you’ve ever heard of and never want to hear, maniacs in GreatYarmouth bearing samurai swords, fingerless leather gloves (the stylistic hallmark of the complete bellend), cockroaches, ‘ull, cocaine’s ability to keep you awake and give you more drinking time, hallucinations of astronauts, Happy Shopper vodka, a foreigner’s tragic confusion about the nature of Big Sexy Land... and this is before you get to the Special Brew.

From this prototypically squalid material John Doran has confected a book that is – against all odds – a hoot: a cheerful, balanced, beautifully wrought, un-self-pitying and weirdly objective study of himself and his multiple addictions, of which by far the gravest was alcoholism, ‘a self-inflicted leisure injury’. Fatherhood brings something approximating to redemption – but things are not quite that pat.” Jonathan Meades

"Makes Withnail & I look like Little House On The Prairie." Caitlin Moran

"John Doran's remarkable Jolly Lad channels the vitality of Down And Out In Paris And London. It strikes the same timeless chimes. Politicised documentary as rich and pithy as Orwell's own gives way to a deeper probe until we feel we are being given a guided tour of the inner world through the eyes of one surviving evangelist... This is a brave and vital voice, emerging." Rick Holland

JOLLY LAD CD

1. Mark Dicker - Hypnotherapy
2. Abi Fry & Neil Hamilton Wilkinson - Area Forecast
3. Eccentronic Research Council - Halloween
4. Teeth Of The Sea - Sky Burial
5. GNOD - Lacerated Sky
6. Grumbling Fur - Dead Flowers New Romney
7. Nicky Wire & Loz - Marguerita Time
8. English Heretic - Slaughter In The Air
9. Bronze Teeth - Hypnotherapy

BIOGRAPHY:

John Doran is the co-founder and editor of The Quietus website. He lives in Hackney, London, with his girlfriend and three year old son and has written for the BBC, the Guardian, the WIRE, Metal Hammer, The Stool Pigeon, VICE, the Word, NME, Drowned In Sound, Louder Than War and Careless Talk Costs Lives. He co-runs the Quietus Phonographic Corporation record label - which he helped set up to promote the music of East India Youth, Sex Swing and Grumbling Fur - and the Quietus Lithographic Corporation publishing venture. He is also an occasional broadcaster for NOISEY and BBC TV and radio.