Shove It.

Last November I found an old cassette in a bag of a hundred or so old cassettes. C60s, C90s, the odd C120. Hastily written titles scrawled on their sides, mixtapes, pirated material. The one that caught my eye said ‘Xero Slingsby’.

The reason I was looking through this bag of tapes is simple enough. I’d not long sold my Land Rover (shot fuel system, alas) which had been the only method I had of playing cassettes: no Landy, no cassette-player, no need for cassettes. So there I was, having a bit of a sort out. Only I couldn’t bring myself to sort much out. Each tape seemed to have a Proustian-like ability to take me back to a year, a moment, a gig.

I went to see Xero Slingsby & The Works play the upstairs room at The Adelphi in Leeds in 1985. I didn’t know who they were – I just turned up with a friend. But I remember that night quite clearly and also quite foggily.

Clearly: because the music - a kind of jazz, not-jazz, punk, not-punk, cabaret, not-cabaret thrash of sax and bass and drums - was so amazingly, thrillingly original it made and left an immediate impression on me. Here were three young musicians filling the room with energy and attitude. It was, and still possibly is, one of the best gigs I’d been to. Made all the better for being unexpected, spontaneous, a surprise. Foggily: because I can’t actually remember much about it other than it happened and I was there, and it was important.

I weighed the cassette in my palm, trying to remember this music that had excited me. YouTube proved more reliable.

I clicked on the first film from a set the band had played at Cafe Click in Essen, Germany. And dunked the madeleine in the tea. There was Xero Slingsby, looking exactly like he had done when I saw him in Leeds all those years ago. Lean. Urgent. A man in a hurry. The band kicked in to the title track of their first album, ‘Shove It’, a punchy exhilarating slice of be-bop influenced jazz… and I was hooked once again.

I Googled them and was happy to see that the world had not forgotten this band. And I read and had confirmed the half-memory I had, that Matthew Coe (alias Xero Slingsby, the sax player and leader) had died of a brain tumour in 1988, aged just 30.

There’s a great site written by Solomon Robson, which details Matthew and the band’s story. The years busking on the streets of Leeds, getting arrested over 40 times for ‘blowing a saxophone’ in public; the ‘do-it-yourself because no-one else is going to do it for you’ attitude that propelled them; their play-what-we-like ethos; the touring, and making a name for themselves in the jazz bars of Europe; of winning the Battle of the Bands and playing the 100 Club in London; of Matthew’s illness, his resilience and genius, and I thought: wow, this would make a fantastic documentary.

So I made it.

I got in touch with Solomon, and through Solomon with Sally, Matthew’s widow, who was 100% behind the idea. We decided to crowdfund, to help make the film happen - and thankfully some very generous people supported the project. We hit our target in April and I spent chunks of May and June filming in Leeds, Newcastle, York, Skipton, London, Ghent and Amsterdam – meeting band members and friends of Matthew’s, as well as those who just loved the band and were influenced by them, and those who weren’t even born in the 1980s but have discovered Xero Slingsby by word-of-mouth, and find the music and attitude still resonates today. Super8 films and VHS tapes were digitised, and features in the Yorkshire Post and appeals on BBC Radio Leeds and online led to new-found stills being handed to me in Amsterdam and long-lost audio bootlegs being sent from Rotterdam …And I edited for most of July.

I’ve just submitted the finished film to the 2022 Leeds International Film Festival, ahead of the 40th anniversary of Matthew forming the band - in 2023, when we hope ‘Shove It - the Xero Slingsby Story’ will play as part of the Leeds23, the city’s celebration of its cultural heritage.

Don’t throw away those old cassettes.