Flashback - Parties for the People by the People

Rough Trade Books 2021 ISBN 9781914236136 Acqn 31769

Pb 14x21cm 85pp ills £19.99

Flashback- Parties For The People By The People tells the story of the infamous Blackburn Acid
House 'parties', the vital part this moment of counter-cultural history has played in the social,
economic and cultural lives of the area itself, and more broadly, of the country as a whole. Taking
in the post-industrial landscape of the area, the impact of years of regressive politics, both local
and national, the confluence of football hooligans, casuals, gang violence, and eventually, the
dispersal of all that into the culture of the parties and the emergent ecstasy boom, this is a
complicated rendering of both time and place, told through multiple, diverse voices, and through a
combination of reportage, fiction, poetry and oral history.

This set is made up of three pamphlets and a fold-out.

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Spit, Sawdust And Spirit: The Ingenious Players In Blackburn's Acid House Parties by Alex
Zawadzki Spit, Sawdust and Spirit works as a playbill of imagined characters, buried deep into
the underbelly of Blackburn, and beyond illegal parties. From the ideologists who envisioned a
utopian future catalysed by the raves; to the belt and braces lads who kicked in the doors to the
hollow mills. Amalgamated from real-life accounts of 45 individuals interviewed for Flashback-an
oral history archive for a modern age.

Lines Written A Few Miles Outside Blackburn, On Revisiting The Site Of The Sett End Pub,
April 10, 2021 by Anna Wood Anna Wood's Lines Written A Few Miles Outside Blackburn, On
Revisiting The Site Of The Sett End Pub, April 10, 2021 is both tribute to the Romantic tradition
and William Wordsworth and an exultant ode to the culture, social power and transcendence of
the night life. Wood's work is uniquely capable of communicating the complex amalgamation of
sensuality, imagination and memory that imbue the experience of those ecstatic nights out, and
this new poem is a wonderful addition to her singular canon.

Thesis Flashback by Balraj Singh Thesis Flashback re-examines an academic dissertation

written by Balraj Singh. Singh-a Sikh Blackburner known locally as Bob-found himself navigating
the fringes of gangs, housing estate boundaries, illegal parties, subcultures and street violence
through the acid house era. He explored the contributing factors in the evolution of the warehouse
parties in a university dissertation completed in 2003. Here in conversation with Jamie Holman,
he dissects selected passages of the original text, now a part of the Flashback archive- reflecting
back 30 years on from the parties and 20 years on from his original writing.

High On Hope: Politics And The Parties by Fergal Kinney In High On Hope: Politics And The
Parties, Fergal Kinney provides us with a political overview of both the impetus behind the
Blackburn parties, as well as the broader context into which they can be read. In highly readable,
always compelling prose, and using the oral histories of people at the very epicentre of things as
they unfolded, Kinney's essay is that most valuable of rarities - a text as intelligent and
illuminating as it is entertaining.

Howling Roughs by Jamie Holman Howling Roughs is a literary collage, a constructed

narrative created from interviews with leading participants in the arc of football hooliganism,
international shoplifting and the Blackburn Parties. Jamie Holman blends these recordings with
his own voice and propositions of the industrial revolution and the mills of Blackburn as a principal
signifier in the manifestation of culture. He locates the lesser-known journey of textiles in working-
class creative culture and identity politics through its place in the formation of the football league,
mill poetry, art, acid house and the 'Spezial' range of adidas clothing and trainers that
memorialise individuals, locations and events in Lancashire.

A Place Called Bliss by Adelle Stripe A Place Called Bliss tells the story of two friends and their
doomed attempt to escape their own quotidian drudge and try for the ecstatic promise of the
parties in the neighbouring county of Lancashire that had started to become legendary.
It is a shadow story of those Blackburn parties-a story of frustrated desire and frustrated
aspiration, where the small miracles of love and hedonistic transcendence appear all but
impossible.

Blackburn Love: A Blueprint by Dorothy A brief history of the Blackburn parties set to the
imagined footprint of Ewood Mill. The content on this blueprint has been largely sourced from the
archive of the Acid House Flashback website-an oral history project created to capture people's
memories of the Blackburn parties. As with all oral history projects, contributor's memories can be
hazy. Specific details such as dates are correct to the best of our knowledge.

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I am the Mother Cat - Ella Frears
Rough Trade Books 2021 ISBN 9781914236129 Acqn 31763
Pb 14x21cm 42pp £7.99

Ella Frears' I Am The Mother Cat charts, interrogates and attempts to take stock of what will
surely come to be understood as one of the most surreal and haunting periods the country has
known. Written as part of a residency at John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, these poems talk
of the strange absences of lockdown, the nature of work and socialisation, the urge to write and
create, and what it means to look out for one another in a violent world. These ideas are
shadowed, deepened, by their own opposites, deployed with wit and intelligence and Frears'
subtle musicality.

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