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Ian

I am here for Friends and Networking

About Me

Ian Hough is an English writer living in the United States. Hough is a native of the city of Manchester, and believes that northwest England as a whole is a source of much of England's greatest accomplishments, particularly Manchester. Long interested in how seemingly unrelated evolutionary fragments combine to create new states of being for humans through history, Hough has used as his themes science, violence, groupthink (and the collective unconscious), modes of existence, and psychedelics in his written material.

His first book, Perry Boys , has just been published in the UK by Milo books. Perry Boys tells the story of how the so-called "casual" culture emerged in the northwest of England in the late 70s in the hands of a small and select group of individuals, and progressed to a nationwide obsession with designer clothing and clubbing. That the movement had no official title for several years is a source of wonder to Hough, who calls it "The Nameless Thing".


Ian has a degree in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and this scientific leaning is evident throughout his first book. Perry Boys draws parallels between those early working-class stylists and the hunter-gatherer period of human development. Hough draws this quasi-mystic thread through the entire story, culminating at the point where all Britain became enlightened as to new fashions, a phenomenon Hough compares to the shift to agriculture 10,000 years ago in western Asia, which quickly spread across Europe. The fact that he uses humour, and even graphs, to illustrate some of his points, must be realised as somewhat tongue-in-cheek while actually being quite convincing. It appears that this quality in Hough's writing is lost on some critics of Perry Boys, who have apparently been under the impression Hough was taking himself seriously at all times during the book. This is difficult to understand, as there are entire chapters which deal exclusively with fantasy and make-believe, in a blatant form of psychedelic mockery and simultaneous enhancement of the experience of reading the very trippy book.
Hough weaves together a complex plot-line, combining football hooliganism, clothing, language, drug culture, and crime in the city of Manchester. His interests in environmental chemistry and anthropology are used to define the hows and whys of an underground cult's journey from a media-ignored explosion on the football terraces to mainstream sensibilities thirty years later.

My Interests

Travel, reading, writing, nature, science, football, beer.

I'd like to meet:

It would be very difficult to simply meet the people who've had the greatest influence on you, because you change as time passes, and so do those who inspire you. An artist that blew your mind twenty years ago may have since undergone a decline in his or her creative powers. A musician who mystified a decade back might today have lost all trace of that ineffable originality.

I believe musicians such as David Bowie, Syd Barrett, Robyn Hitchcock, and David Byrne to be among the most original musical thinkers of recent times, especially Bowie. Their ultra-modern approach led to many imitators (Hitchcock indeed being an imitator of Barrett but one who eventually transcended Syd and became very much his own brilliant man) and their utter originality shines like a beacon on a vast plain of dullness. May they shine forever.

But would I like to meet these men? No, certainly not, because everything they did that was of their highest essence they did decades ago. No offense to them, but I would like to have met them when they were at the tops of their game, when they undoubtedly were spouting incredible talk about what they saw. Vision, mental vision in particular, has become diluted by modern life, by the easy access to creative tools, and the ability of people to be "artistic" without breaking sweat, via technology.

I have painters I admire, such as Caravaggio and Turner. Turner remains my favourite painter, but I will never meet him.

Others I would like to meet are the great scientists, and science is still alive today, unlike much of art. The scientists I'd like to meet are too numerous to mention, but obviously the heavyweights like Newton and Einstein spring to mind. The modern greats in science are, I think, from the field of biotech and not physics or chemistry. Modern physics has progressed too far beyond the scientific axiom that to see is to believe to even properly qualify as science. Super-symmetric string theory is pure mathematics, unlike the old school guys who dropped feathers off towers. Science was once dovetailed much more closely to art, as the two fields began their lives in the human mind before humans even remotely resembled the animal they are today, and this shows in early science.


So, I will say that I don't want to meet anybody!

Music:

Anything I think is good. But especially Robyn Hitchcock, Bowie, Roxy Music, The Seeds, Sky Sunlight Saxon, 13th Floor Elevators, Zappa, Robin Trower, Syd Barrett, Magazine, Rolling Stones, Ian Dury, Talking Heads, etc, etc...

Movies:

Jaws. Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Goodfellas. Beerleaguer. Shawshank Redemption. Jason and the Argonauts. Quadrophenia. Beerfest. King Kong (original). Papillon. Ray. Eraserhead. Brazil.

Television:

HBO BBC FSC

Books:

Symbiosis in Cell Evolution, by Lynn Margulis; The Third Policeman (and others), by Flann O' Brien; anything by HP Lovecraft; The Wasp Factory (and many others) by Iain Banks; After the Ice, by Steven Mithen, Storming Heaven; LSD and the American Dream, by Jay Stevens; Watership Down, by Richard Adams; Noost, by Frank Renwick; Lanark, by Alasdair Gray;

My Blog

Prestwich Hospital; those were the days, my friends...

A lonesome street, where led a winding path to a most alarming forest full of wayward spirits. The scene of much mischief and some great nights out. On the right of the picture is the ornate side entr...
Posted by Ian on Mon, 08 Oct 2007 04:22:00 PST

Ian Hough Perry Boys interview

Here's the interview I did with Chris Harris of EPL Talk for your listening pleasure. It is a story which deals with the gangs of England's football darkness, the slippery underbelly of the First Divi...
Posted by Ian on Wed, 07 Nov 2007 06:49:00 PST

iNFAMY, iNFAMY....THEY'VE ALL GOT THE 'UMP!!!

Reading the latest installment of United We Stand fanzine, I see a few FC United supporters are very much upset with "Dr" Hough and the piece he wrote from his "luxury" location in America. They talk ...
Posted by Ian on Fri, 22 Jun 2007 04:52:00 PST

FC United of Fragmentchester; United We Stand? Behave!!!

And as for the piece about FC in UWS - that's also an opinion. You who say you'll never buy Perry Boys cuz o' my "dig" at sacred FC. You claim to support United and love United and your heart is ...
Posted by Ian on Mon, 11 Jun 2007 10:39:00 PST

Malcolm Glazer Ate My Hamster (and my fucking football club, too!)

We live in a changing world. Life, by its very nature, dictates this; everything is constantly being replaced by something else, be it waste products generated from what was there before, or the simpl...
Posted by Ian on Mon, 11 Jun 2007 10:37:00 PST

U2 are Shite and I'll Tell You Why

Once upon a time, many years ago in a world not yet quite gone mad, musicians were like mushrooms and bands were spawned in patches, artistically related gene pools of little fellers, all sprouting up...
Posted by Ian on Mon, 11 Jun 2007 10:35:00 PST

The Media: Is the Black Lightbulb On or Off?

When we come to the crevasse and that dilation of the sphincter forces us to feel small and cowardly, when the salty water beads up on the frontal cranium and the wind whistles through the shrivelling...
Posted by Ian on Thu, 07 Jun 2007 04:50:00 PST

Perry Boys, second extract.

                          Perry Boys Ian Hough        &nb...
Posted by Ian on Tue, 08 May 2007 09:14:00 PST

Perry Boys; Extract One

Perry Boys Ian Hough                We all have our story of the day we first set eyes on hallowed ground, be it Upton Park, Villa Park,...
Posted by Ian on Tue, 08 May 2007 08:57:00 PST