There is something about Richard Cabut’s Disorderly Magic & Other Disturbances that transported the long coat back to London in the early eighties, wandering, walking, dreaming and, more prosaically, praying for delivery of the Thursday morning dole cheque. And when the long coat eventually pockets the state’s reluctant handout he heads north to Camden and the delights of Rock On or Rhythm Records, making sure there’s enough left for a visit to the idlers/dole kids’ dream that is the Scala. Drifting into the Kings Cross twilight with all the other dole kids after the double bill had ended, “angels brushing commuters’ eyelids with their wings”, never quite convinced that his story (our story, their story) would emerge or be remembered, “The other England is buried, hidden, naked…but this deep wild England also contains the euphoria of possibility”. As Richard Cabut writes in the intro, the free-fall free-for-all poetry in Disorderly Magic, “mixes magic, culture, mystery, memoir, history, melodrama”. Meanwhile, the long coat ventures northwards from the Scala to the back streets of Camden and beyond where he lives with friends, lovers, and schemers in a “colourful movie…more magical than the depressing, collective dim motion-less picture the 9-5 conformists…had to settle for.” Waiting for the man, waiting for the band, waiting for the dream to end. Disorderly Magic forever in his back pocket.

Disorderly Magic (& Other Disturbances) – Richard Cabut – publ. Far West Press - £10.99

Steven Long