‘Which do you want first,’ we used to say. ‘The good news or the bad news?’

The bad (although very old) news is that there is no Glastonbury this year. It’s a shame as I’ve enjoyed doing gigs at the Free University of Glastonbury over the past couple of years. Highlight of the 2011 festival for me was performing with Richard Norris of The Grid and The Time and Space Machine on a new live version of my short story ‘A Porky Prime Cut.’

The story was commissioned by SCAN in Bournemouth and Poole and is set in and around Turbary Common and the West Howe area of the conurbation. The ‘Porky Prime Cut’ of the title refers of course to the messages that were scratched into vinyl records by legendary pressing engineer George Peckham, and the ebook of my story includes links to various resources by and about George. The story itself tells of a subtle war of attrition between wannabe art students and soul boys of the time, a particular byproduct of which was a certain acid house myth about, ‘Bournemouth soul boys who were so “hard core” that they were into T.G.’

If you know Richard Norris’s work you’ll immediately see why it was such a good fit to work with him on the story: he really was a UK acid house pioneer. Richard co-produced (with Genesis P-Orridge) Psychic TV’s Jack the Tab LP, a piece of musical metafiction in its own right in that it was presented as if it were a various artists compilation of the then nascent UK acid house scene.

The good news is that we enjoyed doing the Glastonbury gig so much that a few weeks later I went down to Richard’s studio in Lewes, East Sussex to record a studio version. Here is an exclusive preview of that session: me reading ‘A Porky Prime Cut’ with Richard’s fantastic accompaniment. Click the ‘forward’ button on the small player icon below to start.

A Porky Prime Cut by Tony White, music by Richard Norris is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 UK: England & Wales License. Download a free ebook of ‘A Porky Prime Cut’ (published by James Bridle’s Artists’ eBooks project), which includes beautiful photographs of Turbary Common by Bournemouth photographer Diane Humphries.

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For news of more live events including the Free Word Centre, London on 26 April, and — just confirmed — the Port Eliot Festival in July, see my new Events page.

More good news: Taste the Lazer, a new LP by The Time and Space Machine is out next week!