Northbound

 

JUDE ROGERS used to work for an unpleasant charitable organisation up a fire escape in Acton, from where, in an attempt to bring back her will to live, she emailed a man she’d met at a gig, suggesting they start a fanzine about London. A year later, she was employed by some people at The Word magazine, who’d seen a copy of Smoke and found her amusing. Since then, she’s written about music, films, books and politics for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Q, New Statesman, Elle, Red, The Quietus and Caught By The River, and broadcast regularly and Welshily on the BBC. Claims to fame: Paul McCartney has rung her mobile, Martin Amis laughed at one of her jokes (or was it wind?), and Robert Plant, Björk and Tony Benn have brewed her cups of tea (Tony used Value bags – he said that proper tea was theft). Jude once told her husband that her highlight of 2011 was interviewing Michael Stipe of REM; he pointed out that they also got married that year. She’s judged the Mercury Music Prize for six years, and would like it noted that The Klaxons’ triumph was not her fault. Born and bred in two villages near Swansea, she’s lived in almost every part of north and east London since 1999, but has now settled in Leyton.

Jude has a webpage at www.juderogers.com. In the past, she’s also been responsible for the following blogs:

VANISHING POINTS

In recent years, I keep getting drawn to landscapes where change reveals itself powerfully, their coasts fallen, their buildings emptied, their valleys drowned, their people gone. To me, these vanishing points form a huge part of who we are, and say so much about our country, as well as my consciousness.

50 SONGS, 10 YEARS

Written in the last 50 days of the last decade, an alternative end-of-decade list – one that doesn’t tell you why this record mattered, or that record counted, but simply tells the story of a 21-year-old girl who grew into a 31-year-old woman, and the songs that soundtracked and shaped her life.
 

LINES MADE BY WALKING

Baudelaire probably waved his hair beautifully into the wind while he walked; I let mine skidaddle in the air, unwashed and silvery. I’m no Iain Sinclair either; I only care about lines that guide me across zebras, or past red and green men. My heart doesn’t pine for the leys that may or may not exist, it beats for the Lee Navigation River I can trace with my feet.

MY BAND T-SHIRT

Band t-shirts say things about us, tell stories about us, take us back to times, places and people, never really leave us behind. This is a blog about band t-shirts people owned, that still mean something to them, and why.