At this point of the Easter weekend, now that you’re immobile on the couch, with 50lbs of undigested chocolate in your stomach and the last of the ketamine and Happy Shopper pale cream sherry slowly filtering through your kidneys we at the Quietus know exactly what you need.
But given that we can’t arrange for any diazepam, a saline drip and a stay at a spa hotel for you all we can suggest is that you grin and bear it while listening to the recent DO!!YOU!!! show on NTS co-hosted by Charlie Bones and John Doran.
Among the subjects covered by the pair include how tQ’s editor came to play live on the same stage as a deranged black metal musician who threatened to kill him because of a particularly scathing review. (As the gentleman in question – Sauron V of Madame Guillotine – had already hospitalised his neighbour with a samurai sword and spent spells detained both in an insane asylum and at her majesty’s pleasure – and self-released a single called ‘We Hate You John Doran’, it was a threat worth taking seriously. At the time of press, it is felt that only the presence of Matt Cargill of Sly And The Family Drone in his underpants on the same bill, was enough to repel any wrongdoer – sword or not.)
John was invited to choose the music for the show which includes Turkish funk, Lebanese belly dance music, Kenyan disco, Holden, Bo Didley, Annette Peacock and Gwen McRae and he turns up about 25 minutes into the show. (He was late arriving at NTS’ Dalston studios after missing his stop on the bus because he was composing a particularly convoluted tweet about Jay-Z.)
He was invited on to talk about his new audiobook – Jolly Lad – which is officially out on April 1st but is actually available right now. You can hear several excerpts from the book during the show.
Buy Jolly Lad audiobook from Audible by clicking here.
Buy Jolly Lad audiobook from Amazon by clicking here.
Buy Jolly Lad audiobook from iTunes by clicking here.
Jolly Lad is an audiobook about the recovery from alcoholism, habitual drug use and mental illness. Narrated by the author, it also concerns the healing power of music, how memory defines us, the redemption offered by fatherhood and what it means to be working class.
It is an ‘anti-misery memoir’. As the author, John Doran states: “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, a really good time drinking.”
Instead the book is about what happens after the drink has gone. It is about gentrification; being diagnosed bipolar; attending Alcoholics Anonymous; living in a block of flats on a housing estate in London; the psychological damage done by psychedelic drugs; depression; DJing; factory work; friendship; growing old; hallucinations; street violence and obsessive behaviour – especially regarding music and art.
Recorded by John Tatlock in Manchester. Contains bonus material – a 60 minute discussion between the author and Kjetil Nernes of Arabrot about the publication of the book and the highs and lows of the 31 date reading tour that followed…
Praise for Jolly Lad:
“A wonderful tale… very funny.” The Independent
“This is the work of a real writer propelled by that most vital of properties, self-doubt.” Jonathan Meades
"Makes Withnail & I look like Little House On The Prairie." Caitlin Moran
"Channels the vitality of Down And Out In Paris And London… This is a brave and vital voice, emerging." Rick Holland
“[An] endlessly compelling memoir… the prose is so vivid as to be cinematic… This is a stirring, moving tale, carved out of a cruelly formless world.” Musa Okwonga, The Huff Post
“Jolly Lad details [Doran’s] journey with unflinching honesty: the masking of fear, the circuitous thinking, the physicality of withdrawal. It’s a startling guide to self-destruction… hilarious yet insightful.” Cian Traynor, The Irish Times
“This book is one of the great first person narratives of recent times.” Louder Than War
“A pugnacious account of the descent into addiction.” The New Statesman
“As compelling as it is poetic.” The Times Higher Education
“A fucked-up, horrible, brilliant, hilarious tale.” 3AM Magazine
“Akin to some MR James ghost story; the lulls, the reasoning, the relief before the unveiling; all the while the reader being slowly marinated on a spit.” Incendiary Magazine
