BEATS OF LOVE 

181. Failure is Always An Option: Glorious Adventures on the Beta Band Front Line and Other Tales by Steve Mason

BY 1997 I was so pleased to hear the Beta Band's Champion Versions EP rewinding everything back to hearing Loaded for the first time, as I had become truly jaded with going out clubbing. 

I was lucky to catch them live early at the Roadhouse and Uni so witnessed the idiosyncrasy and humour that made them so special up close. I travelled far and wide to fall under their spell of redemptive eclecticism. Getting red-eyed with them in South after their farewell performance in Manchester. I knew they were going to be missed, especially by me, as I was already feeling old by then. 

That his best music is fragmented, unselfconsciously, ditto his best writing. Seeping out in candid tales haphazardly revealing a droll humour. Tales that thankfully encompass more than the Beta Band years. He downplays his bravery by reassessing everything on today's terms. You bemoan the fact that selling out is an outdated form of practice and with that realisation; I come to see why I'd feel so old in 2004. 

He's especially hard on himself when letting us into the drifts of his mind. It's a little too near home but his brilliant gift for story telling makes even the most depressing episodes highly entertaining. The peaks and troughs of his life don't come at you in linear and obvious ways either, instead springing out of the pages in a surprising manner. 

So pleased to read this, rewinding everything back to hearing the mighty and magical Champion Versions' EP for the first time. 

BEATS OF LOVE 

180. Tracey Emin: a second life  & Nigerian Modernism: art and independence

A TATE double-header began with the predictably packed blockbuster Emin exhibition.

No sooner are you in than a big screen recounts her teenage time in Margate. I'd seen excerpts of Why I Never Became a Dancer (1995) on the South Bank show and felt the revenge footage a little hollow in its mockery. I still do. 

She was the most endearing YBA artist, the one we could relate to. And it was a blessed relief to reach My Bed (1998), the most compelling conceptual self portrait bar none and the reason for her lasting infamy. Everything else was a little less tender than I'd hoped and less fearless. That said, not taken on standalone merit but shot through the prism of a personality cult, the work is engaging and not without reverence.

The effect was that when I visited my favourite spiritual space, Rothko's Seagram Murals (1958-59), I was a little less transported than usual. Fortunately, I immersed myself in Nigerian Modernism after a strong coffee a little later. Art that added to a pro-independence fervour that I'd seen in books suddenly had more vibrancy and purpose scaled up.

The Zaria Arts Society room, a melting pot of learning and leisure, is wild. The Black Orpheius magazines look so now but it's the paintings which radiate the colourful essences of a nightlife that first introduced us to Fela and the original fat bottomed girls. Whilst Ben Enwonwu's impressive room contained the expressive and dizzyingly rhythmic Monotony (1948), causing me to enthuse, I had to listen to the missus, who most admired the work of Nike Davies-Okundaye. 

It's fitting that, as the Tate double-header ended, this trailblazing woman who valued the workshop culture of passing on folklore tradition should reverberate around my head, reminding me of Emin's textile-influenced work. While vastly different mediums and cultural contexts, their work is highly personal and evocative. Both are part taught but self-developed, which is why they're so original, I guess. 

Their motifs hold personal significance and are not merely decorative. European tutors encouraged a self-expression of style, which makes a work like Davies-Okundaye ultra vivid The Finger that Feeds Never Lacks (1979) so unique. Created long after the tutors had fled the civil war of the late sixties, it epitomises a constant need to create inherent in nearly all artists. 

Davies-Okundaye helped charge Emin's work with much more emotion. Something that only happened later on the tube, reflecting.