Vox and Roll is a free monthly event at which authors read their work and play a few of their favourite tunes. It is in the tiny Minibar at the Garage and well worth checking, even if (like me) the thought of attending a literary event makes you cringe.

Tonights show featured two authors who have new books published by The Do Not Press.

Maxim Jakubowski was first up and read some selections from his new novel Confessions of a Romantic Pornographer. Largely about a stripper who doubled up as an assassin. It was alright but you are kind of stuck there, listening politely, even if you have mixed feelings and I didn’t really enjoy his reading voice or presence. Sorry Maxim if you are reading this via google. I can’t remember much about the tracks he played either, but one of them was the Jesus and Mary Chain.

Stewart Home is another kettle of fish. For starters, he doesn’t read, he recites – great chunks of his work, from memory. He also gets animated – pacing backwards and forwards, not standing behind a lectern. He kicked off with some material from his latest novel Down and Out in Shoreditch and Hoxton. The bulk of the piece concerned the day to day life of a prostitute in the area and Stewart went on to explain that a lot of the book concerns his experiences living there a few years back and the ever-increasing gentrification of the place.

And thence on to the back catalogue including his other Do-Not Press book Cunt and the absolute classic A Fiery Flying Roll piece from Defiant Pose, which is included here. The piece superimposes a narrative that reveals the history and psychogeography of central London onto an account of a riot that destroys it, alongside a third text which describes an anarchist being given head whilst travelling down the Thames in a boat, reciting Abiezer Coppe’s rant. Stewart’s tracks included some obscure punk and some Funkadelic, if I remember correctly.