Life Behind the Scenes at London Underground's Angel Station in 1989

Last night, I saw a repeat on TV of a 1989 documentary called Heart of the Angel, part of the BBC’s 1980s 40 Minutes series of documentaries. Though filmed in 1989, it had the look and feel of a much earlier period, say, the early 1960s, due mainly to the way it was shot, and what it focused on—the dilapidated Angel London Underground station and the people who worked there.

The documentary is a remarkable piece of filmmaking by director Molly Dineen. And unlike the modern, fast-paced, reality-TV style superficial “documentaries” we are bombarded with today, this one simply shows life at Angel station over 48 hours, letting viewers witness the daily grind in all its uncomfortable detail.

Watching it in 2025, the station itself looks Dickensian. The lifts, still manually operated at the time, break down frequently. The platforms are narrow and overcrowded, and the staff kitchen is a depressing sight, with peeling paint, rusty appliances and grime that make it look like a staff kitchen from a 1930s workhouse or prison.

Perhaps the most unsettling aspect of the documentary is the depiction of the “fluffers”: female cleaners crawling along the tracks at night, clearing hair and debris to prevent fire hazards. I was shocked that such a practice was still allowed in 1989. Thankfully, due to health-and-safety improvements and the modernisation of the London Underground, automated track cleaning machines and vacuum systems now do that job.

What makes the documentary so fascinating is not just the sense of a bygone era, but the humanity (warts and all) of the staff. You see the station foreman stressing out over the malfunctioning lifts, the misanthropic ticket-seller being rude and sarcastic to customers (I wonder if he was sacked after the documentary was originally broadcast?) and the maintenance crew working on the tracks at night in near-darkness and in unhealthy conditions.

For anyone interested in urban history, social history or the history of public transport in London, this documentary is a fascinating look at a world that has vanished.

Bob Dylan’s “Jimmie Rodgers” Voice on ‘Nashville Skyline’

Last year I noticed for the first time that Bob Dylan’s singing voice on Nashville Skyline was a direct homage to Jimmie Rodgers. I’d been a Dylan fan for years without realising this; and wouldn’t have, had I not happened to hear a clip of Rodgers singing. I was astounded by the similarity.

When Nashville Skyline came out in 1969, Dylan’s voice was widely remarked upon as being very different from his usual one. The nasal, reedy tone had been replaced by a warmer and smoother sound. This was seen as being more “country music–oriented”, though in what specific sense was never really explained. It was simply taken as a given.

As far as I know, no one has ever identified this “specific sense”, which I now believe to be Dylan’s adoption of Jimmie Rodgers’ vocal style.

Jimmie Rodgers is often called “the father of country music” for his relaxed, storytelling delivery, which helped define the genre’s emotional vocabulary. He was also distinct in his use of yodelling, which, as far as I know, was never used in country music before him.

Dylan, with his near-encyclopaedic knowledge of folk and country songs, would have known Rodgers’ songs inside out. He grew up with Rodgers’ music, and in interviews mentioned owning the album Hank Snow Sings Jimmie Rodgers as a teenager. And in The Bootleg Series Vol. 15: Travelin' Thru, 1967–1969 sessions, he sang Jimmie Rodgers medleys with Johnny Cash.

It seems very likely, then, that for Nashville Skyline he chose to base its vocal “sonic architecture” on Rodgers’ voice. Every song on the album can be heard as an homage to Rodgers’ singing.

Though critics immediately noticed Dylan’s changed voice, none remarked on how much it sounded like Rodgers’. That oversight is glaring, given the unmistakable resemblance.

And while Dylan never said outright, 'I sang like Jimmie Rodgers on Nashville Skyline' the parallels are obvious.

This is not to suggest that he was "channelling" Rodgers or mimicking him. It was more a continuation of a lineage. Rodgers’ voice represented the ordinary person singing about their troubles and pleasures in a simple, unembellished way. However, where Rodgers had turned American “work songs” and blues into country, Dylan turned country into something like an “art song”—but without pretension.

Rachel Lisi—Still Remembered

A dear friend of mine died in 2010, aged only 40. Her name was Rachel Lisi. She was an unknown poet who deserved to be known. She was also a photographer and graphic artist, and did a few cover images for Argotist Ebooks.

I just wanted to mention her now, after all these years, to keep her memory alive.

Here is a YouTube video her family put together after she died.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xbL4R0CS34

Kent Johnson: In Praise of Mischief and Literary Disruption

It’s been several years now since Kent Johnson passed. I had corresponded with him for roughly a decade, from around 2008 until a few months before his death, and I once interviewed him for The Argotist Online. At one point, he approached me about publishing an ebook of his collected writings. I was eager to do so but the project ultimately fell through: the sheer volume of material he offered, and the extensive editing it required, felt beyond my capacity. Still, I was genuinely flattered that he had asked me—and that he had such faith in ebooks as a medium.

Kent was something of a mythical figure in the circles of contemporary poetry. He was someone no one could quite categorise: was he a critic, a satirist, an archivist or a literary provocateur? When he was a child in Montevideo, he played ping-pong with the sons of ambassadors and even had Duke Ellington pat him on the head, and saying, ‘And what is your name, handsome young man?’—which he mentioned decades later with fondness. And in his early twenties, he was a literacy teacher in Nicaragua, living with revolutionaries and translating his first poetry collection in collaboration with Ernesto Cardenal, a priest and poet.

In the correspondence I had with him, I saw the breadth of his vision. He engaged deeply with avant-garde practice, the politics of poetry and the sociology of literary communities. He was always curious about the literary world; and no claim, scandal and poetic controversy was too insignificant for his attention. He questioned cliques, examined complicity and exposed absurdities with a sharp wit, but never with cruelty.

Looking back, I think what fascinated him most about poetry was its potential as a kind of “performance art”. Not in the sense of being performed as in “performance poetry”, but as an “idea” that could be used for performative interventions: mischief, satire or creative disruption. He cared less for poetry as a personal or aesthetic expression than for its capacity to function as a “disruptive element”—a kind of conceptual defamiliarisation that could unsettle, provoke or even create chaos.

Even in his youth, chaos was never too far away. A bowling alley in Carrasco, Uruguay, was bombed by Tupamaros (a Marxist–Leninist urban guerrilla group that operated in Uruguay during the 1960s and 1970s) just a few hours after he'd been there with the two sons of two CIA counterinsurgency specialists.

In the end, his work demonstrates that poetry is not only about the page, but is a performative act, a playground for imaginative intervention. He treated the literary world as a stage, and poetry as the stage directions.

When my friend the poet and photographer, Rachel Lisi, died unexpectedly at the age of only 40 in 2010, Kent commiserated with me, saying that though as a poet she was little-recognised, she would always be remembered. May the same be true of him.