Half Man Half Biscuit once noted that "it's cliched to be cynical at Christmas", and I have no intention of being so. It would be easy for me to go into a rant about commercialisation or suchlike, but no.
The reason being is that when I do come back home at Christmas, and on this day in particular, I'm always reminded of those who aren't around anymore. I'm reminded of grandparents and great-aunties and uncles that once used to be a part of this, but whom the passage of time has taken from me. If anything, it's a pretty melancholic time of year for me, when I often look at pictures of myself aged seven or eight and feel envious of that little lad's innocence.
And now it's nearly all over. Come Wednesday I'll be back to work and it's gone for another year, that period where I stretch back into the past in search of a sense of belonging and place. I'm not in any way a religious man, but I see Christmas as a time for remembering those in our past and enjoying being with those we have in the present. I hope anybody reading this has been able to take part in the latter.
Saturday 25 December 2010
Wednesday 22 December 2010
Shaking All Over
Apparently, there was an earthquake of some variety in Cumbria last night. Can't say I noticed, myself, which perhaps says a lot for the building quality of my parents' house. I'd always wanted to sit through a 'quake, for some reason, and was bitterly disappointed when LA stayed steady during my visit there.
Which is also a roundabout way of being able to say I'm back in the safety of home. Driving back here was probably the most mentally exhausting thing I've done in years (constantly watching for bits of ice on the road takes it out of you) but it was worthwhile if only to eat some decent food for the first time in about three months.
When I do come back here, I'm always reminded of one of the stories my dad told us when driving on the A66 between Penrith (his hometown, where we would visit relatives) and Whitehaven. Driving past Bassenthwaite Lake, there's a lump of chalk on the scree slope of one of the hills.
The story, as I remember it, was that a guy resolved to climb this hill on his faithful horse and attempted to do so. Trust me when I say this was a stupid idea. as the incline is steep beyond belief, but it would appear he didn't do too badly, as the lump of chalk that is supposed to mark how far he made it is pretty far up. But still a long way from the top. The mark was always the "Horse's Head" to my brother and I, as it did look so from the distance you see it from the road.
Now, I've tried looking this up online and found zilch to collaborate anybody else is aware of this story, so it may turn out my dad was just making something up to amuse two small children on a car journey. I'll choose to keep buying the myth for now, though, as it's become one of those symbols on the drive back that reminds me I'm almost home.
Which is also a roundabout way of being able to say I'm back in the safety of home. Driving back here was probably the most mentally exhausting thing I've done in years (constantly watching for bits of ice on the road takes it out of you) but it was worthwhile if only to eat some decent food for the first time in about three months.
When I do come back here, I'm always reminded of one of the stories my dad told us when driving on the A66 between Penrith (his hometown, where we would visit relatives) and Whitehaven. Driving past Bassenthwaite Lake, there's a lump of chalk on the scree slope of one of the hills.
The story, as I remember it, was that a guy resolved to climb this hill on his faithful horse and attempted to do so. Trust me when I say this was a stupid idea. as the incline is steep beyond belief, but it would appear he didn't do too badly, as the lump of chalk that is supposed to mark how far he made it is pretty far up. But still a long way from the top. The mark was always the "Horse's Head" to my brother and I, as it did look so from the distance you see it from the road.
Now, I've tried looking this up online and found zilch to collaborate anybody else is aware of this story, so it may turn out my dad was just making something up to amuse two small children on a car journey. I'll choose to keep buying the myth for now, though, as it's become one of those symbols on the drive back that reminds me I'm almost home.
Sunday 19 December 2010
Back in the Wastelands
It's unusual for me to write about a game without actually getting round to finishing it, but 45 hours into Fallout: New Vegas and I wonder if I'll get round to doing so. So here's my thoughts so far.
Let's get the positives in first, or at least the main ones as there are too many to list. This is a huge game that can easily swallow up huge sections of your life. Fallout 3 was big, but this is a whole new level. There seems to be far, far more quests to get engaged in and more to explore, despite the Nevada wasteland area not being that much bigger surface-area wise than it's Capital equivalent.
The bods behind Fallout 3 and New Vegas have been sensible in one aspect by not changing too much in the new game. The controls and general look are essentially the same, which will be fine to most. Too many step forwards in one go isn't always the best thing - sometimes we just want a lot more of what we already know we like.
Perhaps expecting that the vast majority of players will have come from Fallout 3, rather than going through a tutorial of sorts, we're thrown right into the mix by having Matthew Perry shoot you - a humble courier for a delivery company - in the head. Obviously. this is going to put a crimp in anyone's day. Luckily, you put on your lucky kex that morning and after being dug from your shallow grave by a passing robot (who thinks it's a cowboy), you're stitched back up a local doctor and sent on your way.
As with Fallout 3, the game world is the setting for a battleground between two groups: here, it's the New California Republic (NCR), who have expanded eastward from the early games, and Caesar's Legion, a cult of personality who like crucifying and enslaving folk they don't like. But there's also a few more groups out there you can ignore, work for or happily hunt and slaughter, such as the Great Khans, the Powder Gangers and the Followers of the Apocalypse. The Brotherhood of Steel are also hiding somewhere in the Wastes, and that's before you consider the plans of the enigmatic Mr House, who rules over the New Vegas Strip.
Though the Karma system is still in place, it's your relations with these gangs that will determine how safely you get around. Keep pissing off the NCR, for example, and it'll get to the point where you feel the full force of their military might, which is a lot more of a hassle than if you cheese off the relatively small and badly equipped Powder Gangers.
Travelling, working and socialising through the Wasteland and Vegas is an enjoyable experience and it doesn't take much encouragement to spend hours veering off the main storyline (i.e. finding out why you were shot in the bonce) to help out the people you meet. Or being a cold-blooded psycho, if you feel so inclined. The feel is helped by the quality of voice casting, with Kris Kristofferson, William Sadler and Michael Dorn featuring, the latter reprising a character he played in Fallout 2. Ron Pearlman, of course, is back as the narrator.
But, but, but, in this gamer's experience, at the exact point things started to get interesting, the bugs kicked in big time. The gamebreaker is my now inability to walk down the Vegas Strip without the game crashing, which is tricky when that location is the heart of the entire game. I've also found two side-quests to be impossible to complete due to bugs. This is on top of other random crashes that are just plain irritating - the biggies are inexcusable.
I'm sure there may be patches to fix these, and I'll have to lug my PS3 round to a friend's house to try and get them downloaded, but it still strikes me as a bit rubbish for a game to be released that seemed so obviously not ready to be so. It's in big danger of turning what could be one of my all-time favourites into an all-time disappointment.
Let's get the positives in first, or at least the main ones as there are too many to list. This is a huge game that can easily swallow up huge sections of your life. Fallout 3 was big, but this is a whole new level. There seems to be far, far more quests to get engaged in and more to explore, despite the Nevada wasteland area not being that much bigger surface-area wise than it's Capital equivalent.
The bods behind Fallout 3 and New Vegas have been sensible in one aspect by not changing too much in the new game. The controls and general look are essentially the same, which will be fine to most. Too many step forwards in one go isn't always the best thing - sometimes we just want a lot more of what we already know we like.
Perhaps expecting that the vast majority of players will have come from Fallout 3, rather than going through a tutorial of sorts, we're thrown right into the mix by having Matthew Perry shoot you - a humble courier for a delivery company - in the head. Obviously. this is going to put a crimp in anyone's day. Luckily, you put on your lucky kex that morning and after being dug from your shallow grave by a passing robot (who thinks it's a cowboy), you're stitched back up a local doctor and sent on your way.
As with Fallout 3, the game world is the setting for a battleground between two groups: here, it's the New California Republic (NCR), who have expanded eastward from the early games, and Caesar's Legion, a cult of personality who like crucifying and enslaving folk they don't like. But there's also a few more groups out there you can ignore, work for or happily hunt and slaughter, such as the Great Khans, the Powder Gangers and the Followers of the Apocalypse. The Brotherhood of Steel are also hiding somewhere in the Wastes, and that's before you consider the plans of the enigmatic Mr House, who rules over the New Vegas Strip.
Though the Karma system is still in place, it's your relations with these gangs that will determine how safely you get around. Keep pissing off the NCR, for example, and it'll get to the point where you feel the full force of their military might, which is a lot more of a hassle than if you cheese off the relatively small and badly equipped Powder Gangers.
Travelling, working and socialising through the Wasteland and Vegas is an enjoyable experience and it doesn't take much encouragement to spend hours veering off the main storyline (i.e. finding out why you were shot in the bonce) to help out the people you meet. Or being a cold-blooded psycho, if you feel so inclined. The feel is helped by the quality of voice casting, with Kris Kristofferson, William Sadler and Michael Dorn featuring, the latter reprising a character he played in Fallout 2. Ron Pearlman, of course, is back as the narrator.
But, but, but, in this gamer's experience, at the exact point things started to get interesting, the bugs kicked in big time. The gamebreaker is my now inability to walk down the Vegas Strip without the game crashing, which is tricky when that location is the heart of the entire game. I've also found two side-quests to be impossible to complete due to bugs. This is on top of other random crashes that are just plain irritating - the biggies are inexcusable.
I'm sure there may be patches to fix these, and I'll have to lug my PS3 round to a friend's house to try and get them downloaded, but it still strikes me as a bit rubbish for a game to be released that seemed so obviously not ready to be so. It's in big danger of turning what could be one of my all-time favourites into an all-time disappointment.
Saturday 18 December 2010
The Last Mile is the Longest Mile
An early Christmas present came my way when, through a friend, I received my very own Mr. Bill. Thanks go to Richard Feltoon at www.gumbystore.com/ for shipping out to the UK and for showing excellent customer service.As I vowed, I've been treated the little fellow with a lot of respect and compassion and in return, he's been helping me out with my work, as you can see. What a helpful chap.
It's just as well as he has too, as the last week seemed to drag on forever, in no small part due to being the countdown to a long-needed ten days off. Matters weren't helped by picking up a bit of bug in midweek which left my skeleton feeling like it was made of metal and giving me berserk fever dreams on Wednesday night.
Still, all over now and I can afford to relax a little. Or I could, if it weren't for the sodding snow making a unwelcome comeback. Quite how I'm going to get back to West Cumbria is something of a mystery unless we get a rapid thaw. Not to worry about that now, though: I've got a week and a bit of freedom to try and do some writing and play some games. Bliss.
Sunday 12 December 2010
Strange Arrangements
I believe Dave Coleman over at No Ripcord is set to write a piece about ABC's 1982 debut album The Lexicon of Love, but I thought I'd get my own thoughts in first. Seems only fair, given it was I who recommended the album to him in the first place...
I came to ABC sometime in the mid 90s, from liking their three biggest hits over here, Poison Arrow, The Look of Love and All Of My Heart. At the time, Britpop was all the rage, but it's sounds and lyrical themes did little for me. Indeed, even now the only albums from that whole scene I'd consider listening to would be Blur's Parklike and Pulp's Different Class. ABC, on the other hand, had a huge sound: sweeping orchestral stabs with funky rhythm tracks. Later on, I would see how the band Chic had been a big influence here.
Yet as has been stated elsewhere, the band's frontman, Martin Fry, was fired up by punk in so much as it gave him the confidence to follow his own ambitions. As a student in Sheffield, he interviewed local outfit Vice Versa for his fanzine and ended up as their singer. Renamed ABC, the band benefited from writers such as Paul Morley moving away from the dark sounds of the likes of Joy Division and embracing the brighter 'new pop' angle. Aided by such support, debut single Tears Are Not Enough made the top 20.
For the album, ABC decided they needed the right man to create the sound they wanted. Trevor Horn was a one-time pop star (having fronted Buggles, of Video Killed The Radio Star one hit wonder fame) and growing name in the production world. On the back of working with Malcolm McLaren, he was looking for a new project. ABC turned out to be it, and he signed on for their second single, as a kind of testing ground.
That Poison Arrow turned out to be a brilliantly dramatic piece of pop did the trick, as did it's success. Work began on the album with Horn bringing in his team of Anne Dudley, Gary Langan and J.J. Jeczalik, soon to become the Art of Noise, to help with arrangements, engineering and working the then cutting edge Fairlight synthesiser.
Unlike with Horn's next big project, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Horn was aided in his work by ABC being able enough musicians to play on their own album (drummer David Palmer would later become an in-demand session player with The The and Rod Stewart amongst others) as well as not being short of their own ideas: the spoken word middle section in Poison Arrow being suggested by saxophonist Stephen Singleton.
Though the title and general musical approach may suggest songs more in the Bacharach/David mold, Lexicon is essential an album about being dumped, as had happened to Martin Fry at the time. He even signals his weariness with traditional images of love and romance on All Of My Heart, singing "skip the hearts and flowers/skip the ivory towers".
ABC succeeded where many of their contemporaries failed by producing an consistently brilliant album. While at the time they were lumped in with the New Romantic movement, along with Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet, neither of those bands managed to knock together a set of cohesive songs as brilliant as ABC did. Particular highlights for me are Date Stamp (a cousin of sorts to Heaven 17's I'm Your Money) and Many Happy Returns, but the whole album is filled with hooks, huge choruses and fantastic playing.
The Lexicon of Love topped the album charts in the UK and did well in the States, leading to inevitable second album syndrome - as would happen with Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Working with Gary Langan, Beauty Stab stripped back the excesses of before and tried to tackle political themes. They were never again a serious force at home, instead focusing on the States, where they enjoyed a number of fine pop hits such as Be Near Me and When Smokey Sings. The Lexicon of Love remains their absolute peak, an example of the very best pop music can be.
I came to ABC sometime in the mid 90s, from liking their three biggest hits over here, Poison Arrow, The Look of Love and All Of My Heart. At the time, Britpop was all the rage, but it's sounds and lyrical themes did little for me. Indeed, even now the only albums from that whole scene I'd consider listening to would be Blur's Parklike and Pulp's Different Class. ABC, on the other hand, had a huge sound: sweeping orchestral stabs with funky rhythm tracks. Later on, I would see how the band Chic had been a big influence here.
Yet as has been stated elsewhere, the band's frontman, Martin Fry, was fired up by punk in so much as it gave him the confidence to follow his own ambitions. As a student in Sheffield, he interviewed local outfit Vice Versa for his fanzine and ended up as their singer. Renamed ABC, the band benefited from writers such as Paul Morley moving away from the dark sounds of the likes of Joy Division and embracing the brighter 'new pop' angle. Aided by such support, debut single Tears Are Not Enough made the top 20.
For the album, ABC decided they needed the right man to create the sound they wanted. Trevor Horn was a one-time pop star (having fronted Buggles, of Video Killed The Radio Star one hit wonder fame) and growing name in the production world. On the back of working with Malcolm McLaren, he was looking for a new project. ABC turned out to be it, and he signed on for their second single, as a kind of testing ground.
That Poison Arrow turned out to be a brilliantly dramatic piece of pop did the trick, as did it's success. Work began on the album with Horn bringing in his team of Anne Dudley, Gary Langan and J.J. Jeczalik, soon to become the Art of Noise, to help with arrangements, engineering and working the then cutting edge Fairlight synthesiser.
Unlike with Horn's next big project, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Horn was aided in his work by ABC being able enough musicians to play on their own album (drummer David Palmer would later become an in-demand session player with The The and Rod Stewart amongst others) as well as not being short of their own ideas: the spoken word middle section in Poison Arrow being suggested by saxophonist Stephen Singleton.
Though the title and general musical approach may suggest songs more in the Bacharach/David mold, Lexicon is essential an album about being dumped, as had happened to Martin Fry at the time. He even signals his weariness with traditional images of love and romance on All Of My Heart, singing "skip the hearts and flowers/skip the ivory towers".
ABC succeeded where many of their contemporaries failed by producing an consistently brilliant album. While at the time they were lumped in with the New Romantic movement, along with Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet, neither of those bands managed to knock together a set of cohesive songs as brilliant as ABC did. Particular highlights for me are Date Stamp (a cousin of sorts to Heaven 17's I'm Your Money) and Many Happy Returns, but the whole album is filled with hooks, huge choruses and fantastic playing.
The Lexicon of Love topped the album charts in the UK and did well in the States, leading to inevitable second album syndrome - as would happen with Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Working with Gary Langan, Beauty Stab stripped back the excesses of before and tried to tackle political themes. They were never again a serious force at home, instead focusing on the States, where they enjoyed a number of fine pop hits such as Be Near Me and When Smokey Sings. The Lexicon of Love remains their absolute peak, an example of the very best pop music can be.
Thursday 9 December 2010
Cup in the Cold
The creation and continued existence of FC United of Manchester, a club formed by supporters of Manchester United disillusioned by the Glazer takeover and top level football as a whole in 2005, is still a contentious issue for many. Supporters of FC are still labelled "Judas Scum" by some and even Alex Ferguson isn't keen on talking about the matter.
My own personal stance has been one of "good luck to them" while still maintaining a certain distance. Perhaps it was just laziness of not wanting to trail up to Bury for a "home" game, I can't say. But when a friend suggested we take a trip to see them play Brighton in a FA Cup 2nd round replay, I decided to make the effort. Yes, a glory hunting ,Johnny-come-Lately am I.
FC United's exploits in the cup have received a fair bit of media attention. Still a fair bit down the non-league ladder, they knocked out League One side Rochdale with a last minute winner in the previous round and a last-minute penalty save from Sam Ashton ensured they held on for a draw down in Brighton, despite being down to 10 men for a fair chunk of the game.
Fans of FC make a lot of their return to "real" football supporting: being able to stand up all game (despite Bury's Gigg Lane stadium being all-seater) along with your mates and have a proper sing-song without some over-zealous steward telling you to sit down and shut up. I'm glad to say this was the case last night - I was especially impressed with the song to tune of Anarchy In The UK that went "I am a FC Fan/I am a Mancunian/Know what I want, and I know how to get it/I wanna destroy/Glazer and Sky". Presumably it's just as well the game was transmitted live on ESPN, the proceeds helping the club raise the cash to construct their own home in Newton Heath, the birthplace of course of "big" United. A crowd of 7,000 will have helped on this front too.
As for the game itself - well, the old adage of "you never get two bites of the cherry" rang true for the most part. Brighton's professional status ensured their players appeared fitter and stronger and they dominated a lot of the possession. FC were never short of effort, however, and showed bits of class through the skill of winger Roca and forward Ben Deegan.
If one player seemed to be the undoing of FC, it was Brighton wideman Elliot Bennett, who teed up the first two goals, the second being a real sucker punch right before half-time. Till this point, United hadn't really challenged the Brighton keeper (who was serenaded with the chant 'You fat bastard' with every touch) but the second half saw them come close following a good move and then win a penalty following more good work from Deegan.
A goal here might have seen a dramatic final 20 minutes, but sadly the chance wasn't converted. Perhaps somewhat deflated, FC's energy levels waned and Brighton grabbed two late goals, including one from Man Of The Match (in my book) Bennett, leading to a slightly flattering scoreline.
Excluding a pitch invasion by a bunch of scallies at full time, which was deservedly met with shouts of 'wankers' from the rest of the crowd, it seemed a good time was had by all. Certainly by myself and my friend, and we reckon we'll be back sometime for a league game this season. OK, so the quality of football may be a far cry from the Premiership, but the atmosphere created by 7,000 had an edge and humour that's often lacking from crowds ten times that size at Old Trafford on many a day. I'm still not sure it could ever be a replacement for my love of the other United, no matter what level they may reach in the future, but I support what the club are trying to do and wish them nothing but good luck.
My own personal stance has been one of "good luck to them" while still maintaining a certain distance. Perhaps it was just laziness of not wanting to trail up to Bury for a "home" game, I can't say. But when a friend suggested we take a trip to see them play Brighton in a FA Cup 2nd round replay, I decided to make the effort. Yes, a glory hunting ,Johnny-come-Lately am I.
FC United's exploits in the cup have received a fair bit of media attention. Still a fair bit down the non-league ladder, they knocked out League One side Rochdale with a last minute winner in the previous round and a last-minute penalty save from Sam Ashton ensured they held on for a draw down in Brighton, despite being down to 10 men for a fair chunk of the game.
Fans of FC make a lot of their return to "real" football supporting: being able to stand up all game (despite Bury's Gigg Lane stadium being all-seater) along with your mates and have a proper sing-song without some over-zealous steward telling you to sit down and shut up. I'm glad to say this was the case last night - I was especially impressed with the song to tune of Anarchy In The UK that went "I am a FC Fan/I am a Mancunian/Know what I want, and I know how to get it/I wanna destroy/Glazer and Sky". Presumably it's just as well the game was transmitted live on ESPN, the proceeds helping the club raise the cash to construct their own home in Newton Heath, the birthplace of course of "big" United. A crowd of 7,000 will have helped on this front too.
As for the game itself - well, the old adage of "you never get two bites of the cherry" rang true for the most part. Brighton's professional status ensured their players appeared fitter and stronger and they dominated a lot of the possession. FC were never short of effort, however, and showed bits of class through the skill of winger Roca and forward Ben Deegan.
If one player seemed to be the undoing of FC, it was Brighton wideman Elliot Bennett, who teed up the first two goals, the second being a real sucker punch right before half-time. Till this point, United hadn't really challenged the Brighton keeper (who was serenaded with the chant 'You fat bastard' with every touch) but the second half saw them come close following a good move and then win a penalty following more good work from Deegan.
A goal here might have seen a dramatic final 20 minutes, but sadly the chance wasn't converted. Perhaps somewhat deflated, FC's energy levels waned and Brighton grabbed two late goals, including one from Man Of The Match (in my book) Bennett, leading to a slightly flattering scoreline.
Excluding a pitch invasion by a bunch of scallies at full time, which was deservedly met with shouts of 'wankers' from the rest of the crowd, it seemed a good time was had by all. Certainly by myself and my friend, and we reckon we'll be back sometime for a league game this season. OK, so the quality of football may be a far cry from the Premiership, but the atmosphere created by 7,000 had an edge and humour that's often lacking from crowds ten times that size at Old Trafford on many a day. I'm still not sure it could ever be a replacement for my love of the other United, no matter what level they may reach in the future, but I support what the club are trying to do and wish them nothing but good luck.
Monday 6 December 2010
Tragic Figure
It's a habit of mine to get obsessed about things. Bands, football, games and so on. It may have happened again. Seeing a picture of a friend wearing a t-shirt featuring a cartoon head and the slogan 'The Mr. Bill Show', I wanted to find out what this meant.
What it was was a series of sketches that featured on Saturday Night Live throughout the late 70s staring the eponymous Mr. Bill, a play-doh figure created by one Walter Williams, whose attempts to do routine tasks were frustrated by the sadistic Mr. Hands, often ending in disaster for our hero and his dog Spot, leading to his catchphrase "ohhh nooooo!". The link below shows our man try to teach kids all about safety in and out of the home.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k78TVkbrHHM&feature=related
Now, I can't explain why I love this little guy so much, but I do. I think it's his sunny disposition despite his constant injury and mutilation, which made me want a Mr. Bill in my life. Searching online for help, I found a toy version of him is available, the blurb for which went: "Now you can relive the repeated mistreatment and destruction of this innocent with your very own Mr. Bill Bendable Figure. Smash him, crush him, bend him, and make his life miserable."
Well, I'm not going to stand for that. I've resolved to get me a Mr. Bill (which is proving tricky, as none of the retailers I've checked seem to ship to the UK) and show him the love and respect that he deserves after over 30 years of maltreatment.
What it was was a series of sketches that featured on Saturday Night Live throughout the late 70s staring the eponymous Mr. Bill, a play-doh figure created by one Walter Williams, whose attempts to do routine tasks were frustrated by the sadistic Mr. Hands, often ending in disaster for our hero and his dog Spot, leading to his catchphrase "ohhh nooooo!". The link below shows our man try to teach kids all about safety in and out of the home.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k78TVkbrHHM&feature=related
Now, I can't explain why I love this little guy so much, but I do. I think it's his sunny disposition despite his constant injury and mutilation, which made me want a Mr. Bill in my life. Searching online for help, I found a toy version of him is available, the blurb for which went: "Now you can relive the repeated mistreatment and destruction of this innocent with your very own Mr. Bill Bendable Figure. Smash him, crush him, bend him, and make his life miserable."
Well, I'm not going to stand for that. I've resolved to get me a Mr. Bill (which is proving tricky, as none of the retailers I've checked seem to ship to the UK) and show him the love and respect that he deserves after over 30 years of maltreatment.
Sunday 5 December 2010
Drive, She Said
Though I generally like my video games to have a strong storyline and character development, I've always been a sucker for a good racing game. In the 80s, when I was a nipper, any holiday to Butlins for me was just an chance to beg my dad for some 20p pieces to have a blast on Out Run or Chase HQ.
What the arcade provided back then was far more colourful and high-octane thrills than could be had on your faithful Spectrum. The first racing game I remember was on the Speccy: Chequered Flag let you loose on a featureless track with no other drivers. Boring as hell, but cutting edge at the time. Later, we had gems like the conversions of Chase HQ and Stunt Car Racer to keep our inner speed demon satisfied.
But I digress. I always loved cars as a kid, so racing games were an obvious extension of that. To this day, I like my wheels, but have no idea how they work. All I know is that one pedal make car go faster, another make it slow down, the other change gear to help with the aforementioned two functions. So, as racing games have developed, so they have brought in the ability to tinker endlessly with gear ratios, brake management and all that guff.
Thankfully, we've also been given more arcade style racers to compensate. Out Run 2006: Coast2Coast on the Playstation 2 was an excellent updating of the classic format. More recently, both Burnout: Paradise and Midnight Club: Los Angeles have give me hours of racing fun, the latter especially due to it's 'real-world' cars and setting. They also took care to avoid any kind of in-depth story to the game, knowing the player just wants to drive very fast and dangerously. Need For Speed: Undercover hired actors to film cut-scenes to try and add some sense of drama to proceedings and fell flat on it's arse as a result: I don't care about ruthless mobsters and betrayal in a game like this. Just let me race a Porsche 911 at 150mph into oncoming traffic. Christina Milian did look lovely, though.
All of this is why I gave into temptation and tramped out into the ice yesterday to pick up Gran Turismo 5, a game that doesn't even bother with the pretext of a plot or any point except racing and getting more cars.
Initial impressions are that it looks amazing. It being some years since GT4 and while it doesn't seem an immediate quantum leap, the level of detail in the tracks shows just what the developers were doing all those times the release date was put back. Elsewhere, not much has changed about the core game, only that everything has been tweaked and worked on to make it better.
The addition of the Top Gear test track is a fun one too, especially when you're trying to race on it while driving a VW camper van that doesn't seem able to get about 60mph.
Where they have changed matters is a "level" system, where you gain points by doing well in races and earning new licenses. I can't quite see the point in this - I assume it's to make you go through the game 'properly' and to stop people spamming easy races until they get enough credit to buy the best cars.
The obvious flaw is the loading times, even after you spend an hour dumping a load of info onto your hard drive. Also, the music provided in game is a load of tosh, but that's purely a matter of taste and can be resolved by being able to select your own tunes, which is excellent but seems to take to feature a fatal bug that means the shuffle function doesn't work, meaning you have to manually pick a 'first' song everytime. Very, very annoying. Still, speeding down Le Mans in some fancy French sports car with Killing Joke's Love Like Blood in the background was a pleasing moment.
There was never any doubt that GT5 was going to sell by the ship-load and I'm sure Sony and the developers were overjoyed to get it into the shops before Christmas. I can't find a reason why this shouldn't be so: like it's predecessors, it's addictive playing and the realistic tone of the racing adds rather than takes away. I did find the go-karting very irritating, though - gimme monster trucks next time.
What the arcade provided back then was far more colourful and high-octane thrills than could be had on your faithful Spectrum. The first racing game I remember was on the Speccy: Chequered Flag let you loose on a featureless track with no other drivers. Boring as hell, but cutting edge at the time. Later, we had gems like the conversions of Chase HQ and Stunt Car Racer to keep our inner speed demon satisfied.
But I digress. I always loved cars as a kid, so racing games were an obvious extension of that. To this day, I like my wheels, but have no idea how they work. All I know is that one pedal make car go faster, another make it slow down, the other change gear to help with the aforementioned two functions. So, as racing games have developed, so they have brought in the ability to tinker endlessly with gear ratios, brake management and all that guff.
Thankfully, we've also been given more arcade style racers to compensate. Out Run 2006: Coast2Coast on the Playstation 2 was an excellent updating of the classic format. More recently, both Burnout: Paradise and Midnight Club: Los Angeles have give me hours of racing fun, the latter especially due to it's 'real-world' cars and setting. They also took care to avoid any kind of in-depth story to the game, knowing the player just wants to drive very fast and dangerously. Need For Speed: Undercover hired actors to film cut-scenes to try and add some sense of drama to proceedings and fell flat on it's arse as a result: I don't care about ruthless mobsters and betrayal in a game like this. Just let me race a Porsche 911 at 150mph into oncoming traffic. Christina Milian did look lovely, though.
All of this is why I gave into temptation and tramped out into the ice yesterday to pick up Gran Turismo 5, a game that doesn't even bother with the pretext of a plot or any point except racing and getting more cars.
Initial impressions are that it looks amazing. It being some years since GT4 and while it doesn't seem an immediate quantum leap, the level of detail in the tracks shows just what the developers were doing all those times the release date was put back. Elsewhere, not much has changed about the core game, only that everything has been tweaked and worked on to make it better.
The addition of the Top Gear test track is a fun one too, especially when you're trying to race on it while driving a VW camper van that doesn't seem able to get about 60mph.
Where they have changed matters is a "level" system, where you gain points by doing well in races and earning new licenses. I can't quite see the point in this - I assume it's to make you go through the game 'properly' and to stop people spamming easy races until they get enough credit to buy the best cars.
The obvious flaw is the loading times, even after you spend an hour dumping a load of info onto your hard drive. Also, the music provided in game is a load of tosh, but that's purely a matter of taste and can be resolved by being able to select your own tunes, which is excellent but seems to take to feature a fatal bug that means the shuffle function doesn't work, meaning you have to manually pick a 'first' song everytime. Very, very annoying. Still, speeding down Le Mans in some fancy French sports car with Killing Joke's Love Like Blood in the background was a pleasing moment.
There was never any doubt that GT5 was going to sell by the ship-load and I'm sure Sony and the developers were overjoyed to get it into the shops before Christmas. I can't find a reason why this shouldn't be so: like it's predecessors, it's addictive playing and the realistic tone of the racing adds rather than takes away. I did find the go-karting very irritating, though - gimme monster trucks next time.
Friday 3 December 2010
Paper and Ink
I can't tell you exactly when I decided I wanted to be a journalist, but I can tell you why. It was because I was crap at football.
This was a conclusion I came too fairly early, probably around the age of seven or so. I was gangling, hopeless at just about all the basic skills except the ability to hit the ball very hard with my left foot. In hindsight, I should have stuck at it, as I can't have been any worse than some of the chancers who've been tried on the left wing for England over the last 20 years.
So, taking on a pragmatic attitude, I resolved to know more about football than anybody else at my school, which evolved into a desire to write about. The idea of being paid to be a footy journalist seemed pretty sound back then, so I ensured that every birthday and Christmas, I got at least one or two football stat books, which I'd pore over and have ensured that to this day I have an incredibly amount of useless information in my head. Outside the confines of a pub quiz, it's unlikely I'll ever need to know Alan Taylor scored both goals in West Ham's 2-0 victory over Fulham in the 1975 cup final.
What it did provide me with was something of a focus to get me through troubled teenage years. I needed to stick in at school to some degree, just so I could get to university to study Journalism. Somehow, despite a complete lack of interest in studying, I managed to get a place at a small university in the South of England.
Over three years, I learnt that I had neither the attitude not the application to crack the journo game. Even back then, the process of 'churnalism' was being taught in some form and the importance of toeing the line was emphasised. Don't be creative, don't be individual, do as you are told.
After graduation, I spent a long time on the dole applying for various jobs on papers and the like, to no joy. Eventually, I wound up in Manchester and while working the cricket ground job I wrote about recently, applied for a journalist job I saw in the local rag, thinking nothing of it. Instead, I got an interview, in which I got down to the last two. Bummer not getting it, but nice to get that close for the first time.
Some months later, out of work again and wondering what the fuck to do with my life, I was sat in the Castle pub, in Manchester's Northern Quarter, when the phone rang and I was asked to return to the aforementioned publishing company. I trooped up a couple of days later, if I remember right it was Valentine's Day, and talked to the publishing manager. I got the job.
The money was peanuts, it involved about three hours of bus journeys a day and there weren't many perks, but the point was that I was a fully paid up journalist. A professional writer, of sorts. It was the first of four major ambitions that I managed to fulfill between 2005-2007.
Seeing my name on a byline was a huge thrill, even if the stories were all on the business-to-business theme of the company's publications and extremely boring. But what made it worthwhile was that the production team (designers and editorial staff) were a great bunch of lads. It helped we were all, but one, United fans and it helped getting up at 6.30am knowing there might be a few laughs to have.
Over time, the crew was broken up due to frustrations with the directors and the chance to make a proper wage elsewhere. I hacked it for two years before my own frustrations spilled over. Despite the chance to take my manager's job and earn a bit more wedge, the workload seemed too much and I bailed.
I've been asked a few times whether I'll go back to the journo gig full-time, and it seems incredibly unlikely. I've been out of the game three years now, in an industry where contacts are everything. And I never really enjoyed the work anyways. The vast majority of hacks do batter farm work, endlessly knocking out passionless articles that are barely read. Much as this blog is probably read by about five people, it's giving me a much better sense of self-fulfillment.
This was a conclusion I came too fairly early, probably around the age of seven or so. I was gangling, hopeless at just about all the basic skills except the ability to hit the ball very hard with my left foot. In hindsight, I should have stuck at it, as I can't have been any worse than some of the chancers who've been tried on the left wing for England over the last 20 years.
So, taking on a pragmatic attitude, I resolved to know more about football than anybody else at my school, which evolved into a desire to write about. The idea of being paid to be a footy journalist seemed pretty sound back then, so I ensured that every birthday and Christmas, I got at least one or two football stat books, which I'd pore over and have ensured that to this day I have an incredibly amount of useless information in my head. Outside the confines of a pub quiz, it's unlikely I'll ever need to know Alan Taylor scored both goals in West Ham's 2-0 victory over Fulham in the 1975 cup final.
What it did provide me with was something of a focus to get me through troubled teenage years. I needed to stick in at school to some degree, just so I could get to university to study Journalism. Somehow, despite a complete lack of interest in studying, I managed to get a place at a small university in the South of England.
Over three years, I learnt that I had neither the attitude not the application to crack the journo game. Even back then, the process of 'churnalism' was being taught in some form and the importance of toeing the line was emphasised. Don't be creative, don't be individual, do as you are told.
After graduation, I spent a long time on the dole applying for various jobs on papers and the like, to no joy. Eventually, I wound up in Manchester and while working the cricket ground job I wrote about recently, applied for a journalist job I saw in the local rag, thinking nothing of it. Instead, I got an interview, in which I got down to the last two. Bummer not getting it, but nice to get that close for the first time.
Some months later, out of work again and wondering what the fuck to do with my life, I was sat in the Castle pub, in Manchester's Northern Quarter, when the phone rang and I was asked to return to the aforementioned publishing company. I trooped up a couple of days later, if I remember right it was Valentine's Day, and talked to the publishing manager. I got the job.
The money was peanuts, it involved about three hours of bus journeys a day and there weren't many perks, but the point was that I was a fully paid up journalist. A professional writer, of sorts. It was the first of four major ambitions that I managed to fulfill between 2005-2007.
Seeing my name on a byline was a huge thrill, even if the stories were all on the business-to-business theme of the company's publications and extremely boring. But what made it worthwhile was that the production team (designers and editorial staff) were a great bunch of lads. It helped we were all, but one, United fans and it helped getting up at 6.30am knowing there might be a few laughs to have.
Over time, the crew was broken up due to frustrations with the directors and the chance to make a proper wage elsewhere. I hacked it for two years before my own frustrations spilled over. Despite the chance to take my manager's job and earn a bit more wedge, the workload seemed too much and I bailed.
I've been asked a few times whether I'll go back to the journo gig full-time, and it seems incredibly unlikely. I've been out of the game three years now, in an industry where contacts are everything. And I never really enjoyed the work anyways. The vast majority of hacks do batter farm work, endlessly knocking out passionless articles that are barely read. Much as this blog is probably read by about five people, it's giving me a much better sense of self-fulfillment.
Tuesday 30 November 2010
Wrapped in Furs
There are several bands I have a deep love for that nobody else I know owns a record by. One of these are the Psychedelic Furs, perhaps due to their being pretty much all but forgotten in their native Britain after they spent most of the 80s over in the States.
Formed, like so many, in the wake of the Sex Pistols opening minds in 1976/77, Richard Butler was an aspiring artist fired up by Lydon's unconventional vocal style, to which he'd often by compared to in the early days of the band. Younger brother Tim picked up the bass and local friends Roger Morris and Duncan Kilburn filled in on guitar and saxophone. Various auxiliary drummers and names passed before John Ashton (guitar) and Vince Ely (drums) completed the 'classic' line up for the Psychedelic Furs.
Working on the well-worn route of heavy gigging and Peel sessions, a deal was secured and debut single We Love You introduced the 'Beautiful Chaos' sound that would characterise the band's initial phase. Butler works through a list of things he 'loves' - "I'm in love with your blue car...I'm in love with the Supremes/ah, Baby Love" - his voice dripping with withering sarcasm.
Quickly following in 1980, their self-titled debut album was produced by Steve Lillywhite (following his fine work with XTC). A fine debut set, it stood out from the pack by the racket the band produced and Butler's tendency to use the word 'stupid' in just about every song.
Following touring duties, sessions with legendary Manchester producer Martin Hannet produced several new songs, two of which - including the great Susan's Strange - would appear on a repackaged version of the debut set for the American market. However, the band were not inclined to work with Hannet further.
Instead, the band hooked up again with Lillywhite to produce their finest work: Talk Talk Talk took the rough edges of the debut, smoothed them where necessary and threw in exceptional songwriting. Opening with the sick sax squeal of Dumb Waiters and the sublime Pretty In Pink, it caught a group at the height of their powers, musically and lyrically. Though slated by the press on release, time has only made it stand out more, from the frank I Wanna Sleep With You to the more tender closing She Is Mine. It's an album I'd recommend to anyone with an interest in post-punk/new wave music.
Sadly, just as the band were hitting a creative peak, fractures appeared. Inevitably in a six piece band, tensions arose brought on by the pressures and excesses of touring. Following a European tour, Duncan Kilburn decided to quit the band (or was sacked, depending on who you believe) and Roger Morris soon followed him out of the door.
Managing to keep it together, the remaining quarter travelled to the States to record with Todd Rundgren, after initial rumours that David Bowie would be the man in the producer's chair. The album that would become Forever Now would be unlike it's elder siblings. Rundgren brought in session musicians and backing vocalists Flo and Eddie (formerly of the Turtles) to fill the vacuum left by Kilburn and Morris.
Though a very different animal from Talk Talk Talk, the album was as 'psychedelic' as they would get, especially on Sleep Comes Down and Yes I Do (Merry-Go-Round). Run and Run, President Gas and the title track benefited from Rundgren's production chops
With the album in the bag, Vince Ely decided to quit, preferring the chance to get ahead in production than face months on the road. But with the band down to a trio, they began to enjoy success in the US. Lead single Love My Way made the top 50 after strong support from the fledgling MTV. Reflecting this, the Butler brothers moved to New York at the conclusion of the Forever Now tour.
Reflecting a desire to build on recent progress, the now-trio hooked up with Keith Forsey for album #4. Forsey had recently helped make Billy Idol a massive star in the States with his production on Rebel Yell. With him came the drum machines and synths that would dominate what would become Mirror Moves.
According to the band and their manager, as interviewed for Dave Thompson's slighty-lightweight biog Beautiful Chaos, all concerned believed the album was perfect to move the band into the big leagues in America, only to be scuppered by a payola scandal that was all over the industry at the time. And indeed, The Ghost In You, Heaven (their first UK top 40 hit, aided by a great Tim Pope video) and Heartbeat appeared tailor-made for radio in 1984. On the downside, the production dates the album severely, and John Ashton's guitar talents seem sidelined in the quest for commercial ground.
That would gain a boost when John Hughes followed up the huge success of The Breakfast Club with Pretty In Pink, named after the Furs' song, which was re-recorded for the soundtrack. It's not a stretch to imagine the band were hoping it would do for them what Don't You (Forget About Me) did for Simple Minds. Alas, it was not to be, as OMD got the big US hit from the film with If You Leave, as Pretty In Pink stalled outside the top 40, though becoming their only top 20 hit in the UK.
With the band now fully stylised in the fashions of the time - the main evidence for the prosecution being Tim Butler's horrendous mullet - work began on what was expected to be the 'breakthrough' album. Sessions with Daniel Lanois broke down and instead the band turned to Chris Kimsey, who had earned his spurs working with the Rolling Stones.
Midnight to Midnight, appearing in 1987 along with lead single Heartbreak Beat, was as far removed from the days of Beautiful Chaos as could be. Slick, heavily produced and squarely aimed at the mainstream, it achieved it's immediate aim by making the US top 30. But something didn't sit right with Richard Butler: as the supporting tour went on, heart problems troubled him, not helped by a sense of mild disgust over what had become of the band. With the problem diagnosed as stress-related, the band's setlists began to contain fewer of the songs they were supposed to be promoting. The leather jackets and spikey haircuts were also dropped and it seemed the band were set to finish.
Instead, when it was suggested that a compilation should be their next album, the band reunited with Vince Ely and produced All That Money Wants as a 'new' song for the All Of This And Nothing best-of. A stormer of a song (as was it's b-side, Birdland), would appear to be Butler's musing on the fame he once chased ("Painted lies on painted lips that promise heaven tastes like this... I don't believe that I believed in you").
Though any kind of mass acceptance had long washed away with the hair gel from the Midnight to Midnight days, the Furs decided to carry on with 1989's Book of Days, produced by Dave Allen, who had worked the desk for the Cure and the Chameleons amongst others.
With Ashton finally set loose, a superb set of songs was put together, making my second favourite Furs album after Talk Talk Talk. House, Should God Forget and the title track stood out, but this was an album of many peaks. If it had been a debut set by a new band, it may have received a warmer reception. Instead, it sank without trace. A shame, and the album deserves much, much better. After a few live dates, Ely left the band once more.
World Outside followed in 1991, continuing the guitar-based sounds, but by now grunge was in the ascendancy and the Psychedelic Furs had failed to climb up the notches that contemporaries such as the Cure, U2 and Depeche Mode had. Despite the album again featuring some excellent songs - In My Head and Until She Comes in particular stand up to anything else they produced - it failed to chart and the band split soon after.
A reformation of sorts ten years ago saw the trio of Butler, Butler and Ashton tour the US and release a pretty good live album. Richard Butler also released a fine solo album, though little new material has come from the Furs, which is as disappointing as Ashton's more recent departure, leaving the Butler brothers as the only original members, though sax player Mars Williams did play on their albums and live gigs from 1983-87.
A month or so ago, the band were playing in Manchester on one of those 'classic album' gig wheezes, performing all of Talk Talk Talk. I didn't go, partly due to it seeming almost cabaret when only one third of the band from that album would be playing and also partly from some contempt of how the band (or their management) treated the woman behind the excellent Burned Down Days "official unofficial" website.
Despite this, they remain one of my all-time favourite bands. There's never less than three of their albums on my mp3 player (currently: Talk Talk Talk, Forever Now and World Outside). Perhaps if the Psychedelic Furs could get back to being a proper band i.e. with Ashton and Ely, and recorded an album of new material, I would be first in line for any subsequent shows. For now, I'll comfort myself with what I do have, and keep trying to push them on my friends.
Formed, like so many, in the wake of the Sex Pistols opening minds in 1976/77, Richard Butler was an aspiring artist fired up by Lydon's unconventional vocal style, to which he'd often by compared to in the early days of the band. Younger brother Tim picked up the bass and local friends Roger Morris and Duncan Kilburn filled in on guitar and saxophone. Various auxiliary drummers and names passed before John Ashton (guitar) and Vince Ely (drums) completed the 'classic' line up for the Psychedelic Furs.
Working on the well-worn route of heavy gigging and Peel sessions, a deal was secured and debut single We Love You introduced the 'Beautiful Chaos' sound that would characterise the band's initial phase. Butler works through a list of things he 'loves' - "I'm in love with your blue car...I'm in love with the Supremes/ah, Baby Love" - his voice dripping with withering sarcasm.
Quickly following in 1980, their self-titled debut album was produced by Steve Lillywhite (following his fine work with XTC). A fine debut set, it stood out from the pack by the racket the band produced and Butler's tendency to use the word 'stupid' in just about every song.
Following touring duties, sessions with legendary Manchester producer Martin Hannet produced several new songs, two of which - including the great Susan's Strange - would appear on a repackaged version of the debut set for the American market. However, the band were not inclined to work with Hannet further.
Instead, the band hooked up again with Lillywhite to produce their finest work: Talk Talk Talk took the rough edges of the debut, smoothed them where necessary and threw in exceptional songwriting. Opening with the sick sax squeal of Dumb Waiters and the sublime Pretty In Pink, it caught a group at the height of their powers, musically and lyrically. Though slated by the press on release, time has only made it stand out more, from the frank I Wanna Sleep With You to the more tender closing She Is Mine. It's an album I'd recommend to anyone with an interest in post-punk/new wave music.
Sadly, just as the band were hitting a creative peak, fractures appeared. Inevitably in a six piece band, tensions arose brought on by the pressures and excesses of touring. Following a European tour, Duncan Kilburn decided to quit the band (or was sacked, depending on who you believe) and Roger Morris soon followed him out of the door.
Managing to keep it together, the remaining quarter travelled to the States to record with Todd Rundgren, after initial rumours that David Bowie would be the man in the producer's chair. The album that would become Forever Now would be unlike it's elder siblings. Rundgren brought in session musicians and backing vocalists Flo and Eddie (formerly of the Turtles) to fill the vacuum left by Kilburn and Morris.
Though a very different animal from Talk Talk Talk, the album was as 'psychedelic' as they would get, especially on Sleep Comes Down and Yes I Do (Merry-Go-Round). Run and Run, President Gas and the title track benefited from Rundgren's production chops
With the album in the bag, Vince Ely decided to quit, preferring the chance to get ahead in production than face months on the road. But with the band down to a trio, they began to enjoy success in the US. Lead single Love My Way made the top 50 after strong support from the fledgling MTV. Reflecting this, the Butler brothers moved to New York at the conclusion of the Forever Now tour.
Reflecting a desire to build on recent progress, the now-trio hooked up with Keith Forsey for album #4. Forsey had recently helped make Billy Idol a massive star in the States with his production on Rebel Yell. With him came the drum machines and synths that would dominate what would become Mirror Moves.
According to the band and their manager, as interviewed for Dave Thompson's slighty-lightweight biog Beautiful Chaos, all concerned believed the album was perfect to move the band into the big leagues in America, only to be scuppered by a payola scandal that was all over the industry at the time. And indeed, The Ghost In You, Heaven (their first UK top 40 hit, aided by a great Tim Pope video) and Heartbeat appeared tailor-made for radio in 1984. On the downside, the production dates the album severely, and John Ashton's guitar talents seem sidelined in the quest for commercial ground.
That would gain a boost when John Hughes followed up the huge success of The Breakfast Club with Pretty In Pink, named after the Furs' song, which was re-recorded for the soundtrack. It's not a stretch to imagine the band were hoping it would do for them what Don't You (Forget About Me) did for Simple Minds. Alas, it was not to be, as OMD got the big US hit from the film with If You Leave, as Pretty In Pink stalled outside the top 40, though becoming their only top 20 hit in the UK.
With the band now fully stylised in the fashions of the time - the main evidence for the prosecution being Tim Butler's horrendous mullet - work began on what was expected to be the 'breakthrough' album. Sessions with Daniel Lanois broke down and instead the band turned to Chris Kimsey, who had earned his spurs working with the Rolling Stones.
Midnight to Midnight, appearing in 1987 along with lead single Heartbreak Beat, was as far removed from the days of Beautiful Chaos as could be. Slick, heavily produced and squarely aimed at the mainstream, it achieved it's immediate aim by making the US top 30. But something didn't sit right with Richard Butler: as the supporting tour went on, heart problems troubled him, not helped by a sense of mild disgust over what had become of the band. With the problem diagnosed as stress-related, the band's setlists began to contain fewer of the songs they were supposed to be promoting. The leather jackets and spikey haircuts were also dropped and it seemed the band were set to finish.
Instead, when it was suggested that a compilation should be their next album, the band reunited with Vince Ely and produced All That Money Wants as a 'new' song for the All Of This And Nothing best-of. A stormer of a song (as was it's b-side, Birdland), would appear to be Butler's musing on the fame he once chased ("Painted lies on painted lips that promise heaven tastes like this... I don't believe that I believed in you").
Though any kind of mass acceptance had long washed away with the hair gel from the Midnight to Midnight days, the Furs decided to carry on with 1989's Book of Days, produced by Dave Allen, who had worked the desk for the Cure and the Chameleons amongst others.
With Ashton finally set loose, a superb set of songs was put together, making my second favourite Furs album after Talk Talk Talk. House, Should God Forget and the title track stood out, but this was an album of many peaks. If it had been a debut set by a new band, it may have received a warmer reception. Instead, it sank without trace. A shame, and the album deserves much, much better. After a few live dates, Ely left the band once more.
World Outside followed in 1991, continuing the guitar-based sounds, but by now grunge was in the ascendancy and the Psychedelic Furs had failed to climb up the notches that contemporaries such as the Cure, U2 and Depeche Mode had. Despite the album again featuring some excellent songs - In My Head and Until She Comes in particular stand up to anything else they produced - it failed to chart and the band split soon after.
A reformation of sorts ten years ago saw the trio of Butler, Butler and Ashton tour the US and release a pretty good live album. Richard Butler also released a fine solo album, though little new material has come from the Furs, which is as disappointing as Ashton's more recent departure, leaving the Butler brothers as the only original members, though sax player Mars Williams did play on their albums and live gigs from 1983-87.
A month or so ago, the band were playing in Manchester on one of those 'classic album' gig wheezes, performing all of Talk Talk Talk. I didn't go, partly due to it seeming almost cabaret when only one third of the band from that album would be playing and also partly from some contempt of how the band (or their management) treated the woman behind the excellent Burned Down Days "official unofficial" website.
Despite this, they remain one of my all-time favourite bands. There's never less than three of their albums on my mp3 player (currently: Talk Talk Talk, Forever Now and World Outside). Perhaps if the Psychedelic Furs could get back to being a proper band i.e. with Ashton and Ely, and recorded an album of new material, I would be first in line for any subsequent shows. For now, I'll comfort myself with what I do have, and keep trying to push them on my friends.
Sunday 28 November 2010
I Smell Winter
Somewhat mercifully, South Manchester has avoided the snow that seems to be covering vast areas of the UK. I'm thankful for this because I hate snow.
The cold weather, for the main part, I can handle. Sure, it's a pain in the arse scrapping the ice off the car windows every morning but for the rest of the time, it's easy enough to stick a jumper on and keep warm. I've also been aided in this by a friend re-introducing me to the joys of the hot water bottle, which have the double positive effect of keeping me warm and giving a nostalgic feeling of remembering when I used to stay at my auntie's house as a kid, where I always had one in bed due to there being no central heating.
Snow, however, is just a nightmare. Though growing on the coast meant it was a rarity, when it did happen it meant days at school spend dodging snowballs loaded with stones that could easily send you sprawling. Nowadays, it just means having to leave the car and take the bus to work, a journey which takes twice the time due to everyone else being in the same boat, unless they own some kind of 4x4 off-road beast.
Then there's the constant danger of slipping on your arse, which if you handle ice like Bambi, is a constant threat. Frustratingly, when we had the heavy snow last year, I managed to keep my footing until the very last day before it all melted. OK, I'd had a few drinks at the time, but it was still annoying.
The only vaguely positive aspect of this kind of weather is the amusement I get from seeing the whole country ground to a standstill. Every single time. I've been to Estonia in wintertime, where they have constant snow, ice and freezing temperatures for months on end, and everything seems to run just fine.
"Ah," you may say. "But they're used to it, so have all the arrangements in place to deal with it." True enough, but given we've had heavy snow a fair few times in my lifetime, you'd think the people who matter will have learnt. Instead, we're surprised everytime and there's never enough gritting salt, the trains grind to a halt and the airports close. Perhaps it's some kind of unwritten rule - never prepare, so most of us can skive off work for a few days.
The cold weather, for the main part, I can handle. Sure, it's a pain in the arse scrapping the ice off the car windows every morning but for the rest of the time, it's easy enough to stick a jumper on and keep warm. I've also been aided in this by a friend re-introducing me to the joys of the hot water bottle, which have the double positive effect of keeping me warm and giving a nostalgic feeling of remembering when I used to stay at my auntie's house as a kid, where I always had one in bed due to there being no central heating.
Snow, however, is just a nightmare. Though growing on the coast meant it was a rarity, when it did happen it meant days at school spend dodging snowballs loaded with stones that could easily send you sprawling. Nowadays, it just means having to leave the car and take the bus to work, a journey which takes twice the time due to everyone else being in the same boat, unless they own some kind of 4x4 off-road beast.
Then there's the constant danger of slipping on your arse, which if you handle ice like Bambi, is a constant threat. Frustratingly, when we had the heavy snow last year, I managed to keep my footing until the very last day before it all melted. OK, I'd had a few drinks at the time, but it was still annoying.
The only vaguely positive aspect of this kind of weather is the amusement I get from seeing the whole country ground to a standstill. Every single time. I've been to Estonia in wintertime, where they have constant snow, ice and freezing temperatures for months on end, and everything seems to run just fine.
"Ah," you may say. "But they're used to it, so have all the arrangements in place to deal with it." True enough, but given we've had heavy snow a fair few times in my lifetime, you'd think the people who matter will have learnt. Instead, we're surprised everytime and there's never enough gritting salt, the trains grind to a halt and the airports close. Perhaps it's some kind of unwritten rule - never prepare, so most of us can skive off work for a few days.
Thursday 25 November 2010
The Summer of 2004
My first job in Manchester set the tone for the next six years in that it was boring as fuck. Having moved here in a desperate shot at finding work and escaping the dole queue, I'd spied an advert in the Evening News asking for people to work event security. Stewards, basically.
I rang the number and was invited to an interview straight away. This seemed a good sign and I figured it would pay crap, but enough to ensure I could get myself somewhere more permanent to live than the student digs I was crashed in while the usual occupiers were away for summer. Perhaps I'd get to see the odd band or football game as a bonus.
After the briefest of interviews, which seemed to me to be an exercise to prove I could speak decent English and wasn't a complete lunatic, I was invited to start the next day. All I needed to do was wear a white shirt, black trousers and 'smart' shoes. I didn't have the shirt, so on my way home I stopped at BHS and bought the cheapest one possible.
I'd been told to report to the cricket ground at 10am, the first of working at many games there. I hate cricket. Eventually, I settled into it over the remainder of the summer. Four day test matches came around every other week, depending on the rain, working from 10am to 6pm for £5 an hour. Occasional night 20/20 matches brought in an extra £20 or so, enough for me to pay the £60 a week rent for the tiny bedsit I'd found by chance.
After a little while, we were invited to sit this Health and Safety exam that gave us some vague qualification to earn an extra 50p per hour. I copied the answers from the guy next to me, who said he was studying an NVQ in Sport Science, and got the raise.
Generally, I worked around the non-smoking section of the ground, doing a loop of the four exits and the club museum with six other people, doing half an hour at each before a rest period. I soon arranged it so that my break came straight before or after the spell in the museum, where all you had to do was ensure nobody broke anything. I would position myself in a corner that allowed me pre-warning of any incomers (i.e. the boss) through the reflection of the glass boxes that contained prizes and memories of LCCC past.
With the chance to spend an hour out of every two-and-a-half sat on my arse doing nothing, it seemed a good time to get in some reading. I read Love On The Dole over a couple of days (thanks, Red), and a few others.
My main memory of a lot of the games was that the first two days (Thursday and Friday) would generally be mainly attended by pensioners, as most other people would be at work. Part of the job was checking on any spectators who may have dozed off in the sun, just to check they were still breathing. Getting close enough to clarify this, as in enough to hear snoring but not so that you looked like you were trying to rob them, became an art form.
As the summer ended, I finally got a 'proper' job in an office, with a desk and a computer, and I've rotated around several others like this since. When I think back to my first summer in Manchester, I'm sometimes surprised by how much I've changed and whether the distance I've covered has been for the better or not.
I rang the number and was invited to an interview straight away. This seemed a good sign and I figured it would pay crap, but enough to ensure I could get myself somewhere more permanent to live than the student digs I was crashed in while the usual occupiers were away for summer. Perhaps I'd get to see the odd band or football game as a bonus.
After the briefest of interviews, which seemed to me to be an exercise to prove I could speak decent English and wasn't a complete lunatic, I was invited to start the next day. All I needed to do was wear a white shirt, black trousers and 'smart' shoes. I didn't have the shirt, so on my way home I stopped at BHS and bought the cheapest one possible.
I'd been told to report to the cricket ground at 10am, the first of working at many games there. I hate cricket. Eventually, I settled into it over the remainder of the summer. Four day test matches came around every other week, depending on the rain, working from 10am to 6pm for £5 an hour. Occasional night 20/20 matches brought in an extra £20 or so, enough for me to pay the £60 a week rent for the tiny bedsit I'd found by chance.
After a little while, we were invited to sit this Health and Safety exam that gave us some vague qualification to earn an extra 50p per hour. I copied the answers from the guy next to me, who said he was studying an NVQ in Sport Science, and got the raise.
Generally, I worked around the non-smoking section of the ground, doing a loop of the four exits and the club museum with six other people, doing half an hour at each before a rest period. I soon arranged it so that my break came straight before or after the spell in the museum, where all you had to do was ensure nobody broke anything. I would position myself in a corner that allowed me pre-warning of any incomers (i.e. the boss) through the reflection of the glass boxes that contained prizes and memories of LCCC past.
With the chance to spend an hour out of every two-and-a-half sat on my arse doing nothing, it seemed a good time to get in some reading. I read Love On The Dole over a couple of days (thanks, Red), and a few others.
My main memory of a lot of the games was that the first two days (Thursday and Friday) would generally be mainly attended by pensioners, as most other people would be at work. Part of the job was checking on any spectators who may have dozed off in the sun, just to check they were still breathing. Getting close enough to clarify this, as in enough to hear snoring but not so that you looked like you were trying to rob them, became an art form.
As the summer ended, I finally got a 'proper' job in an office, with a desk and a computer, and I've rotated around several others like this since. When I think back to my first summer in Manchester, I'm sometimes surprised by how much I've changed and whether the distance I've covered has been for the better or not.
Sunday 21 November 2010
From the Cheap Seats
I was at the Manchester United vs Wigan Athletic game yesterday. Usually, it's a nothing fixture that United win with ease, as was the case. Yet an extra edge was added by the media build up around the re-appearance of Wayne Rooney in a red shirt for the first time since his contract antics.
When his name was read out as a substitute pre-game, there were audible jeers. When Rooney finally got into the game, it was to a mix of more of them and some chanting his name. My personal stance has been to always get behind the player when you're at the game, and save the criticisms for the pub.
This time, I did have the strong feeling that the supporters who booed Rooney need to get a bit of a grip. Sure, it's never nice when your best player decides he wants to leave, but examine the reasons he came out last month and stated he wants to leave:
a) Wayne Rooney wants to win medals and feels his current club aren't in a position to do so.
and/or
b) Wayne Rooney (and his agent) wants more money.
Essentially, the main reasons he came to United in the first place, back in 2003. And this was when he was leaving the club he'd supported as a kid growing up in Liverpool - loyalty would not appear to be behind personal glory in his list of character traits
Not that I'll condemn him for it. It's common enough in players these days, with the likes of Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes (both of whom could easily have engineered transfers to a big Italian or Spanish club at their peaks) being a dying breed with their wish to play for the club they grew up with.
If, and it's a big 'if', point (a) was the true core of Rooney's discontent, then it's an understandable one. United are still reliant on several players the wrong side of 30 and building a squad able to challenge for the top honours in the next five years - when Rooney should be hitting his peak - will need heavy investment. Money it would appear the club don't have. Wayne has a limited amount of time left to play at the top level (ten years absolute tops, you would think) - can we criticise him for wanting to use his rare talents in winning prizes?
That he was pacified into signing a new contract opens up other questions. What were the assurances, or was it just about the cash? If it was just a matter of earning another £80,000 a week, then supporters may well be disappointed, but they shouldn't be surprised. The 'Glory Game' of the likes of Busby, Blanchflower and Shankly is long gone, to be replaced by something far more of the times we live in. I read a comment on a message board regarding Chelsea fans booing their team off the pitch after a defeat by Sunderland, despite their team being the reigning champions, holders of the FA Cup and still top of the league. "Clubs have turned supporters into customers - they didn't get the 'product' they paid a lot of money for, so they boo." Such is modern football.
When his name was read out as a substitute pre-game, there were audible jeers. When Rooney finally got into the game, it was to a mix of more of them and some chanting his name. My personal stance has been to always get behind the player when you're at the game, and save the criticisms for the pub.
This time, I did have the strong feeling that the supporters who booed Rooney need to get a bit of a grip. Sure, it's never nice when your best player decides he wants to leave, but examine the reasons he came out last month and stated he wants to leave:
a) Wayne Rooney wants to win medals and feels his current club aren't in a position to do so.
and/or
b) Wayne Rooney (and his agent) wants more money.
Essentially, the main reasons he came to United in the first place, back in 2003. And this was when he was leaving the club he'd supported as a kid growing up in Liverpool - loyalty would not appear to be behind personal glory in his list of character traits
Not that I'll condemn him for it. It's common enough in players these days, with the likes of Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes (both of whom could easily have engineered transfers to a big Italian or Spanish club at their peaks) being a dying breed with their wish to play for the club they grew up with.
If, and it's a big 'if', point (a) was the true core of Rooney's discontent, then it's an understandable one. United are still reliant on several players the wrong side of 30 and building a squad able to challenge for the top honours in the next five years - when Rooney should be hitting his peak - will need heavy investment. Money it would appear the club don't have. Wayne has a limited amount of time left to play at the top level (ten years absolute tops, you would think) - can we criticise him for wanting to use his rare talents in winning prizes?
That he was pacified into signing a new contract opens up other questions. What were the assurances, or was it just about the cash? If it was just a matter of earning another £80,000 a week, then supporters may well be disappointed, but they shouldn't be surprised. The 'Glory Game' of the likes of Busby, Blanchflower and Shankly is long gone, to be replaced by something far more of the times we live in. I read a comment on a message board regarding Chelsea fans booing their team off the pitch after a defeat by Sunderland, despite their team being the reigning champions, holders of the FA Cup and still top of the league. "Clubs have turned supporters into customers - they didn't get the 'product' they paid a lot of money for, so they boo." Such is modern football.
Thursday 18 November 2010
Kick the Keyboard
As Smokey Robinson's mama once informed us, "You better shop around". Having heard their Search Party song a few weeks ago, I'd decided to purchase Small Black's New Chain album whilst taking a very extended lunch break in Manchester city centre last week.
Browsing brought prizes, as I found it for the bargain price of a fiver in the racks of the wonderful Vinyl Exchange up in the Northern Quarter. Since then, I've listened to New Chain many times and found a lot to be impressed about.
First, I've not bothered to do any research into the band prior to writing this. I may have caught an article that mentioned them being a four-piece from somewhere in New York, but bar that I'm working from a position of knowing little but what they've put into the ten tracks to be found here.
From what I can make out, it all seems to be made using nothing but various synths/keyboards and drum machines (expects to be corrected). This is not a bad thing, given my like of the early works of OMD, Talk Talk and being a huge fan of New Order.
(Random tangent: about seven years ago, a friend insisted I go with her to see Ladytron knowing my like of some synth music. They were blown off stage by support band Vic-20 and were so bad, even my friend insisted we left 25 minutes into the set, full of apologies.)
Small Black would seem to be coming from the more experimental angle, as few of the numbers here carry much in the way of hooks or radio friendly tunes. What it does have is plenty of atmosphere, brought on by various electronic beeps and vocals that often sound like they're coming from a tunnel covered in thick fog. In the context of the songs, it works very well.
At it's best, such as on Search Party and Photojournalist, it works to brilliant effect. Matters do flag a little towards the end and it just manages to not overstay it's welcome and I'm left with two questions: are Small Black able to produce a half-decent live show or do they resort to Kraftwerk-esque statue poses, and will they repeat the formula for any subsequent work or (like, for example, the Human League) bring in acoustic instruments to avoid repetition? I'm interested in finding out the answers.
Browsing brought prizes, as I found it for the bargain price of a fiver in the racks of the wonderful Vinyl Exchange up in the Northern Quarter. Since then, I've listened to New Chain many times and found a lot to be impressed about.
First, I've not bothered to do any research into the band prior to writing this. I may have caught an article that mentioned them being a four-piece from somewhere in New York, but bar that I'm working from a position of knowing little but what they've put into the ten tracks to be found here.
From what I can make out, it all seems to be made using nothing but various synths/keyboards and drum machines (expects to be corrected). This is not a bad thing, given my like of the early works of OMD, Talk Talk and being a huge fan of New Order.
(Random tangent: about seven years ago, a friend insisted I go with her to see Ladytron knowing my like of some synth music. They were blown off stage by support band Vic-20 and were so bad, even my friend insisted we left 25 minutes into the set, full of apologies.)
Small Black would seem to be coming from the more experimental angle, as few of the numbers here carry much in the way of hooks or radio friendly tunes. What it does have is plenty of atmosphere, brought on by various electronic beeps and vocals that often sound like they're coming from a tunnel covered in thick fog. In the context of the songs, it works very well.
At it's best, such as on Search Party and Photojournalist, it works to brilliant effect. Matters do flag a little towards the end and it just manages to not overstay it's welcome and I'm left with two questions: are Small Black able to produce a half-decent live show or do they resort to Kraftwerk-esque statue poses, and will they repeat the formula for any subsequent work or (like, for example, the Human League) bring in acoustic instruments to avoid repetition? I'm interested in finding out the answers.
Sunday 14 November 2010
Market of the Senses
It's rare that I notice adverts on television, as the times I do watch the box, I tend to switch over to something else when the lifestyle choices are offered. Yesterday, however, for some reason I happened to be doing other things when I heard a familiar guitar riff.
It's not for me, or anyone, to tell Gang of Four whether they've 'sold out' or not, assuming they've had a choice in allowing Natural's Not In It for the new XBox360 toy. Nobody can comment until we've been in that position. Perhaps they need the money (Go4 being one of those 'more influential than successful' type of bands), or it was just too much wedge to turn down. A personal stance is all very well, but until you've been offered a large cheque for your work, it's hard to make a judgement call on somebody else. It's one thing slagging off millionaires lending their voices to adverts, quite another a bunch of musicians who never got much of a sniff of a hit single over the last 30 years.
And of course, guitarist Andy Gill has commented that the band's lyrics often mused on the inability to be "pure" or have "clean hands" in modern society, dismissing the stance of more righteous types such as the Pop Group and the Slits as "hand wringing bollocks". They were unashamed about singing to EMI rather then staying on an indie, though refused to compromise when requested to alter a lyric in At Home He's a Tourist to allow them to appear on Top of the Pops. If Messieurs Allen, Burnham, Gill and King see no problem with cashing their chips to help flog some gadgets, then that's their decision. After all, surely to 'sell out' means to compromise your own values, not those imposed on you by people you don't know.
What is confusing is why Microsoft chose this song, which starts with the words 'the problem of leisure/what to do for pleasure?', from an album that frequently questions whether popular culture can offer any real kind of satisfaction. Is one of Bill Gates' mates having a personal joke, or was it simply more a case of "This song rocks. It'll do"? Bit of a shame they didn't go with Love Like Anthrax...
It's not for me, or anyone, to tell Gang of Four whether they've 'sold out' or not, assuming they've had a choice in allowing Natural's Not In It for the new XBox360 toy. Nobody can comment until we've been in that position. Perhaps they need the money (Go4 being one of those 'more influential than successful' type of bands), or it was just too much wedge to turn down. A personal stance is all very well, but until you've been offered a large cheque for your work, it's hard to make a judgement call on somebody else. It's one thing slagging off millionaires lending their voices to adverts, quite another a bunch of musicians who never got much of a sniff of a hit single over the last 30 years.
And of course, guitarist Andy Gill has commented that the band's lyrics often mused on the inability to be "pure" or have "clean hands" in modern society, dismissing the stance of more righteous types such as the Pop Group and the Slits as "hand wringing bollocks". They were unashamed about singing to EMI rather then staying on an indie, though refused to compromise when requested to alter a lyric in At Home He's a Tourist to allow them to appear on Top of the Pops. If Messieurs Allen, Burnham, Gill and King see no problem with cashing their chips to help flog some gadgets, then that's their decision. After all, surely to 'sell out' means to compromise your own values, not those imposed on you by people you don't know.
What is confusing is why Microsoft chose this song, which starts with the words 'the problem of leisure/what to do for pleasure?', from an album that frequently questions whether popular culture can offer any real kind of satisfaction. Is one of Bill Gates' mates having a personal joke, or was it simply more a case of "This song rocks. It'll do"? Bit of a shame they didn't go with Love Like Anthrax...
Thursday 11 November 2010
Railing On
It came as no surprise to me to read that conditions for passengers on Britain's rail network are set to get worse over the next few years. As somebody who spent the best part of a decade using trains for most journeys over 10 miles, it was a relief when I finally got my own car.
As a disclaimer, I'll say first of all that in the ideal world, using the train to head back to Cumbria would be a pleasant way to travel. However, it's often a thoroughly miserable experience for which you get charged a fair old whack. The last two trips, from Penrith to Manchester, were enough to put me off for the foreseeable future.
The first of those, back in March, saw me catch a train that was running from Glasgow or Edinburgh to Manc Airport. It had two carriages, both of which were rammed to put it mildly. Given the final destination, suitcases and bags were everywhere and people who had booked seats from Penrith didn't even try to fight their way across. I was one of the lucky ones - by the next stop, nobody else was allowed aboard.
Eventually, the conductor or whoever came over the PA to apologise. It seemed "for some reason we don't know", the train hadn't been given the right number of carriages at the depo. Humph. Arriving at Manchester Oxford Road very tired and very sore, what made this even worse was a month later, when making the same trip, the same thing happened and we were given pretty much the same excuse!
And that was that, barring a trip to Rochdale a few months ago. Sadly, I gather this is quickly becoming the norm for a lot of commuters and now the word is improvements won't be forthcoming despite ever-increasing fares without major support from the taxpayer. Obviously the system has gone to bollocks in an epic way and you have to wonder if there's a way to try and rectify the numerous mistakes privatisation has brought. Answers on a postcard...
As a disclaimer, I'll say first of all that in the ideal world, using the train to head back to Cumbria would be a pleasant way to travel. However, it's often a thoroughly miserable experience for which you get charged a fair old whack. The last two trips, from Penrith to Manchester, were enough to put me off for the foreseeable future.
The first of those, back in March, saw me catch a train that was running from Glasgow or Edinburgh to Manc Airport. It had two carriages, both of which were rammed to put it mildly. Given the final destination, suitcases and bags were everywhere and people who had booked seats from Penrith didn't even try to fight their way across. I was one of the lucky ones - by the next stop, nobody else was allowed aboard.
Eventually, the conductor or whoever came over the PA to apologise. It seemed "for some reason we don't know", the train hadn't been given the right number of carriages at the depo. Humph. Arriving at Manchester Oxford Road very tired and very sore, what made this even worse was a month later, when making the same trip, the same thing happened and we were given pretty much the same excuse!
And that was that, barring a trip to Rochdale a few months ago. Sadly, I gather this is quickly becoming the norm for a lot of commuters and now the word is improvements won't be forthcoming despite ever-increasing fares without major support from the taxpayer. Obviously the system has gone to bollocks in an epic way and you have to wonder if there's a way to try and rectify the numerous mistakes privatisation has brought. Answers on a postcard...
Sunday 7 November 2010
Some Noise, Some Melody
Unusually for me, I've been listening to a fair bit of contemporary tunes recently. As well as the M83 and British Sea Power albums I've mentioned, I fell in love the other day with the song Search Party by Small Black. In addition, the last two weeks have seen me hammering the self-titled album by The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, released in 2009.
For this, I have to thank my good friend Simon, who tipped me off after a discussion about Galaxie 500 and the Jesus and Mary Chain. Certainly, on first listen the comparison to Boston's finest seemed apt, with Kip Berman having a similar whiney vocal style to Dean Wareham and their general sounds (skinny guitars, droning bass) does call to mind a more fey Psychocandy. Repeating playthroughs, however, have revealed a somewhat wonderful set of songs that have left me eagerly awaiting the follow-up.
Somewhat strangely to this hack, I've read reviews that have used comparisons to Joy Division and the Smiths: they have neither the sparse intensity of one, or the complex structures of the other. What they do have is a knack for a great tune: the 1-2-3 of This Love Is Fucking Right!, The Tenure Itch and Stay Alive is as good a short progression of songs as I've heard this century. Stay Alive is particularly glorious, all jangling guitars and gorgeous vocal harmonies between Berman and keys player/backing vocalist Peggy Wang.
While a lot of this kind of dream-pop often takes vague lyrical themes of isolation and other kinds of existential despair, this band here seem to prefer a more simple approach: being a teenager crops up throughout, notably in Young Adult Friction and (more obviously) A Teenager In Love, the riff from which reminds me - somewhat weirdly - of Bowie's Modern Love.
Minor criticisms would be that in can get a little samey after a while, though the penultimate Hey Paul livens things up with a nicely distorted bassline and the closing Gentle Sons is probably the best tribute to the sound of the early Jesus and Mary Chain as you're likely to hear. Quibbles aside, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart is an excellent album worth checking out if you need a soundtrack to a few hours daydreaming in a field.
For this, I have to thank my good friend Simon, who tipped me off after a discussion about Galaxie 500 and the Jesus and Mary Chain. Certainly, on first listen the comparison to Boston's finest seemed apt, with Kip Berman having a similar whiney vocal style to Dean Wareham and their general sounds (skinny guitars, droning bass) does call to mind a more fey Psychocandy. Repeating playthroughs, however, have revealed a somewhat wonderful set of songs that have left me eagerly awaiting the follow-up.
Somewhat strangely to this hack, I've read reviews that have used comparisons to Joy Division and the Smiths: they have neither the sparse intensity of one, or the complex structures of the other. What they do have is a knack for a great tune: the 1-2-3 of This Love Is Fucking Right!, The Tenure Itch and Stay Alive is as good a short progression of songs as I've heard this century. Stay Alive is particularly glorious, all jangling guitars and gorgeous vocal harmonies between Berman and keys player/backing vocalist Peggy Wang.
While a lot of this kind of dream-pop often takes vague lyrical themes of isolation and other kinds of existential despair, this band here seem to prefer a more simple approach: being a teenager crops up throughout, notably in Young Adult Friction and (more obviously) A Teenager In Love, the riff from which reminds me - somewhat weirdly - of Bowie's Modern Love.
Minor criticisms would be that in can get a little samey after a while, though the penultimate Hey Paul livens things up with a nicely distorted bassline and the closing Gentle Sons is probably the best tribute to the sound of the early Jesus and Mary Chain as you're likely to hear. Quibbles aside, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart is an excellent album worth checking out if you need a soundtrack to a few hours daydreaming in a field.
Friday 5 November 2010
Dangerous Days
I'm not a big film buff. I think the last time I went to the cinema was to see The Wrestler, which must be around two years ago. The only time I bought one of those "Collectors Edition" box sets of a film was for Blade Runner.
Seeing Blade Runner for the first time was a moment that hit me hard. I must have been around 13 or so, lying in bed one night when it came onto ITV, in the 'Director's Cut' version. This was a lucky turn, as it obviously meant my initial impressions weren't hindered by the lousy voiceover and the cop-out ending. Even on a portable TV, the world of Blade Runner looking staggering. Constant rain, walls of flashing screens and a sense of a constant night.
I fell in love and I think just about every piece of creative writing I did for English lessons over the next three years was in some way influenced by it, in that teenage way that you do. It created a love of sci-fi that wasn't too fantastical, 'Myths of the Near Future', as the brilliant J.G. Ballard put it. Games such as Dreamweb and Beneath a Steel Sky fell into this bracket, the former nicking Blade Runner's dystopian city setting bigtime.
The Blade Runner box contained a fair few versions of the film: the original cinematic one, a workprint, the Director's Cut and a 'Final Cut', the latter being Ridley's Scott truest vision of how it should look. Best of all is a fantastic feature length 'Making Of' documentary that tracks development from the optioning of Philip K. Dick's novella Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? to the stressful filming and editing. All major players are here and it would seem Harrison Ford's attitude towards the film (and Scott) has mellowed over the years: perhaps he realises this was his finest acting moment.
Which reminds me that Blade Runner might be the best cast film I can think of - every player gets their role down perfectly. Particular favourites include Edward James Olmos as the enigmatic colleague of Ford's Decker, Brion James as the strong but slightly dim replicant Leon who gets to say the fab line "wake up, time to die!", and Rutger Hauer (obviously).
When I picked it up on DVD a couple of years ago, the visuals and music still knocked me back, despite the "future" it portrays now being only a decade away. Unless the science bods are being very quiet, we're nowhere near to creating 'replicant' humans or hover cars, yet it holds up on the strength of it's script, performances and themes. Plus, of course, the fact everyone can argue over the meaning of the ending, unless it's the original cinematic ending, which removes any ambiguity with sledgehammer force.
Seeing Blade Runner for the first time was a moment that hit me hard. I must have been around 13 or so, lying in bed one night when it came onto ITV, in the 'Director's Cut' version. This was a lucky turn, as it obviously meant my initial impressions weren't hindered by the lousy voiceover and the cop-out ending. Even on a portable TV, the world of Blade Runner looking staggering. Constant rain, walls of flashing screens and a sense of a constant night.
I fell in love and I think just about every piece of creative writing I did for English lessons over the next three years was in some way influenced by it, in that teenage way that you do. It created a love of sci-fi that wasn't too fantastical, 'Myths of the Near Future', as the brilliant J.G. Ballard put it. Games such as Dreamweb and Beneath a Steel Sky fell into this bracket, the former nicking Blade Runner's dystopian city setting bigtime.
The Blade Runner box contained a fair few versions of the film: the original cinematic one, a workprint, the Director's Cut and a 'Final Cut', the latter being Ridley's Scott truest vision of how it should look. Best of all is a fantastic feature length 'Making Of' documentary that tracks development from the optioning of Philip K. Dick's novella Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? to the stressful filming and editing. All major players are here and it would seem Harrison Ford's attitude towards the film (and Scott) has mellowed over the years: perhaps he realises this was his finest acting moment.
Which reminds me that Blade Runner might be the best cast film I can think of - every player gets their role down perfectly. Particular favourites include Edward James Olmos as the enigmatic colleague of Ford's Decker, Brion James as the strong but slightly dim replicant Leon who gets to say the fab line "wake up, time to die!", and Rutger Hauer (obviously).
When I picked it up on DVD a couple of years ago, the visuals and music still knocked me back, despite the "future" it portrays now being only a decade away. Unless the science bods are being very quiet, we're nowhere near to creating 'replicant' humans or hover cars, yet it holds up on the strength of it's script, performances and themes. Plus, of course, the fact everyone can argue over the meaning of the ending, unless it's the original cinematic ending, which removes any ambiguity with sledgehammer force.
Wednesday 3 November 2010
Furious Over Five
Recently, my mind has been vexed by a recurring thought. It's troubled me deeply and often kept me up at night, I'm sad to say. The source of my woe is this: since when were Take That seen in any way as credible?
Perhaps the source of this is that they recently won a Q award of some kind. Now, I know Q magazine has long gone to the dogs in terms of any kind of journalistic integrity, but I did buy it every month between around 1996 (Paul Heaton from the Beautiful South on the cover, if I remember right, and a cover CD featuring hip up-and-coming bands like Mansun) and 2001. I'm assuming the slide I noted became terminal if they consider Take That worthy of an entry into any "Hall of Fame". I'll guess David Cassidy will get the nod next year.
What disturbs me more is that a band who made it by covering crap songs with crap arrangements and crap singing are set to go on a tour of stadiums. I'm aware I have little patience with most aspects of pop culture, but this really is a step too far. I can only assume the media have decided to get behind the Take That story - with the return of Bob Williams being as inevitable as a comeback in a Rocky film.
I shouldn't care, I know, but I'll remain eternally baffled why tens of thousands of people - most of whom around my age - will pay stupid sums of money to see five middle aged men sing wretched AOR ballads alongside the inconsequential shite they peddled first time around. Even back then, as a young lad unversed in music, I recognised it was crap and, please, don't give me that "come on, Back For Good wasn't bad": it was nothing but a dried, encrusted wank stain on the blanket of popular music.
And of course, an extra reason to loathe Take That is what they started. They made a huge pile of cash and fully cemented the boy band line up including at least two useless tossers who did nothing but have a few dance moves and enough muscles and dumb smiles to moisten some teenage girls' kex. We can blame Westlife on Take sodding That and the quicker this whole fiasco is over, the quicker we can consign them to the blackest voids of our memory.
Perhaps the source of this is that they recently won a Q award of some kind. Now, I know Q magazine has long gone to the dogs in terms of any kind of journalistic integrity, but I did buy it every month between around 1996 (Paul Heaton from the Beautiful South on the cover, if I remember right, and a cover CD featuring hip up-and-coming bands like Mansun) and 2001. I'm assuming the slide I noted became terminal if they consider Take That worthy of an entry into any "Hall of Fame". I'll guess David Cassidy will get the nod next year.
What disturbs me more is that a band who made it by covering crap songs with crap arrangements and crap singing are set to go on a tour of stadiums. I'm aware I have little patience with most aspects of pop culture, but this really is a step too far. I can only assume the media have decided to get behind the Take That story - with the return of Bob Williams being as inevitable as a comeback in a Rocky film.
I shouldn't care, I know, but I'll remain eternally baffled why tens of thousands of people - most of whom around my age - will pay stupid sums of money to see five middle aged men sing wretched AOR ballads alongside the inconsequential shite they peddled first time around. Even back then, as a young lad unversed in music, I recognised it was crap and, please, don't give me that "come on, Back For Good wasn't bad": it was nothing but a dried, encrusted wank stain on the blanket of popular music.
And of course, an extra reason to loathe Take That is what they started. They made a huge pile of cash and fully cemented the boy band line up including at least two useless tossers who did nothing but have a few dance moves and enough muscles and dumb smiles to moisten some teenage girls' kex. We can blame Westlife on Take sodding That and the quicker this whole fiasco is over, the quicker we can consign them to the blackest voids of our memory.
Sunday 31 October 2010
A Walk and a Song
Yesterday, prior to the game between Manchester United (my team) and Spurs, I took part in an organised protest march against the current owners of the the club.
The last time I took part in anything of this ilk was over seven years ago, when I happened to be in London and so joined the anti-War in Iraq rally that was widely publicised at the time.
The end result of that was a cause of some disillusionment as to the actual point of such events. A lot of people (and I can be one of them) look enviously towards the French, who tend to kick off at the slightest thing they're not happy about. But of course, different nation, different people.
Part of me suspects that the results of the poll tax riots and the miner's strike have penetrated into the national conscious, in a way, as in "why bother, when we end up doing what we're told anyways".
One of the reasons I decided to go on the march yesterday was purely just to express some kind of disillusionment with the situation at United. I've been a supporter for most of my life, and I can remember seeing the club grow from constant also-rans to top team in the country thanks to the expert management of Alex Ferguson. In turn, this allowed the club to become one of the richest in the world.
All of which is being undone due to the scourge of the Glazer family, the club have the concrete boots of debt threatening to drag them into the murky depths. Fergie, despite his sad backing of the owners, deserves some credit for keeping things looking good to the casual observer: the signing of Javier Hernandez is looking to be a top piece of management and his handling of the Rooney saga was superb - emerging as the broken hearted father figure, let down by his favourite son.
But a lot of United fans (including me) are of the mind that the team needs major investment, which wouldn't have been so much of a problem ten years ago. True intentions aside, a lot of us had to smile when Rooney stated he wanted to leave United because nobody could assure him of future signings of good enough quality to bring success. That he has been apparently appeased somehow should make for an interesting summer, one way or another.
I'm realistic enough to know the protest yesterday won't change much. The Glazer family don't give two hoots what we think of them, as long as enough people spend enough money to keep the whole thing going. For now, maybe it's enough to say we were there, that maybe something will grow from it, if we're lucky, and that it's warming to see that a few thousand people felt strongly enough about an issue to get up and make some noise about it.
Tuesday 26 October 2010
On The Wall
As mentioned a few weeks ago, I'd decided to check out Suzanne Vega when her current tour made it to Manchester, hence finding myself at the Hard Rock cafe last Friday.
It being my first time at the venue, I couldn't help but chuckle at the Oasis lyrics painted on the balcony. Little bit sad that somebody thought that Wonderwall somehow symbolised all that's good about Manchester music.
Such is my insistence on getting anywhere for the time displayed on the ticket, a stupid habit I know, but I'm always worried of missing something, that it meant standing around for the best part of an hour or so when we could have been over the road at Sinclair's enjoying cheapo pints of Samuel Smith's Best Bitter. Getting there early did mean seeing the support act, a local called Sarah Dixon, who has apparently only been playing guitar for a year. She showed off some impressive finger-picking techniques and vocal skills, but perhaps could do with a songwriting partner to hone down lyrical ideas that often drift into cliche.
Following an auction of stuff signed by the main act (this being a gig in support of a breast cancer research charity), on came the woman herself. When I saw her back in 1997, she was armed with a full band - this time it was just her and a guitarist armed with a selection of effects units. Setting the tone for the night with Marlene On The Wall, the room got just about all the most well-known numbers from Ms Vega's back catalogue. Perhaps two reasons for this: first of all, it was a charity gig, so it's natural to stick to the classics. Secondly, she's recently put out two albums of acoustic re-recordings of older songs, so it makes sense to play them in such a style here.
To my recollection, we got songs from all albums bar Days of Open Hand, with half of Solitude Standing getting an airing, presumably it's her best seller over here. Having the best part of 30 years doing this singer/songwriter lark behind her, Vega's a pro at the between song banter game, telling us that Gypsy was inspired by a boyfriend from Liverpool she met while teaching folk singing and disco dancing (!) at a summer camp in the late 1970s.
One lark, preceding a song about her hometown of New York, sees Vega asking the audience what kind of person their own home would be. Manchester, it would see, is a miserable old man...
Two things spring to mind throughout the night, those being that Suzanne Vega is a fantastic songwriter and that she's an equally talented guitarist. On this instance, her backing fellow had a few tricks of his own, using loop, delay and other effects to very good effect. On Tom's Diner, he managed to create a rhythm track of sorts that put it more on the footing of the DNA remix than the acapella original. By the end of the night, I was insanely jealous of Suzanne Vega for having such a guy to play music with, when I could do with somebody like that myself.
An entertaining night, then, despite the venue not being to my liking all that much. To round it off, I found out that the Comsat Angels are playing more shows after their top gigs from last year. Superb!
It being my first time at the venue, I couldn't help but chuckle at the Oasis lyrics painted on the balcony. Little bit sad that somebody thought that Wonderwall somehow symbolised all that's good about Manchester music.
Such is my insistence on getting anywhere for the time displayed on the ticket, a stupid habit I know, but I'm always worried of missing something, that it meant standing around for the best part of an hour or so when we could have been over the road at Sinclair's enjoying cheapo pints of Samuel Smith's Best Bitter. Getting there early did mean seeing the support act, a local called Sarah Dixon, who has apparently only been playing guitar for a year. She showed off some impressive finger-picking techniques and vocal skills, but perhaps could do with a songwriting partner to hone down lyrical ideas that often drift into cliche.
Following an auction of stuff signed by the main act (this being a gig in support of a breast cancer research charity), on came the woman herself. When I saw her back in 1997, she was armed with a full band - this time it was just her and a guitarist armed with a selection of effects units. Setting the tone for the night with Marlene On The Wall, the room got just about all the most well-known numbers from Ms Vega's back catalogue. Perhaps two reasons for this: first of all, it was a charity gig, so it's natural to stick to the classics. Secondly, she's recently put out two albums of acoustic re-recordings of older songs, so it makes sense to play them in such a style here.
To my recollection, we got songs from all albums bar Days of Open Hand, with half of Solitude Standing getting an airing, presumably it's her best seller over here. Having the best part of 30 years doing this singer/songwriter lark behind her, Vega's a pro at the between song banter game, telling us that Gypsy was inspired by a boyfriend from Liverpool she met while teaching folk singing and disco dancing (!) at a summer camp in the late 1970s.
One lark, preceding a song about her hometown of New York, sees Vega asking the audience what kind of person their own home would be. Manchester, it would see, is a miserable old man...
Two things spring to mind throughout the night, those being that Suzanne Vega is a fantastic songwriter and that she's an equally talented guitarist. On this instance, her backing fellow had a few tricks of his own, using loop, delay and other effects to very good effect. On Tom's Diner, he managed to create a rhythm track of sorts that put it more on the footing of the DNA remix than the acapella original. By the end of the night, I was insanely jealous of Suzanne Vega for having such a guy to play music with, when I could do with somebody like that myself.
An entertaining night, then, despite the venue not being to my liking all that much. To round it off, I found out that the Comsat Angels are playing more shows after their top gigs from last year. Superb!
Saturday 23 October 2010
Nothing But The Hits
Yesterday, while driving over to Rochdale, the radio threw up a catchy ditty that sound familiar. Turned out it was Let's Go by the Cars, which I remembered I owned as I'd picked up the Greatest Hits albums for next to nothing a few years ago.
This got me to thinking about the compilation albums I have in my collection by bands where I have no real intention of picking up anything else by them. Here's the five that sprang to mind.
The Cars - Greatest Hits (1985)
A band that never really meant too much over here, except for two moments: My Best Friend's Girl being a big hit apparently on the basis on it being released on picture disc and Drive being used to soundtrack famine footage during Live Aid, songwriter Ric Ocasek generously donating royalties from the song to the charity.
The Cars were basically journeymen musicians (bassist Ben Orr had his first mainstream pop exposure in the 1960s) who found their niche when 'New Wave' became the fashionable sound. Ocasek did have a knack for writing a canny hook, though, and their first compilation album is a concise 13 song affair which doesn't outstay it's welcome. There's a song or two were the synths grate a little, but in the main it's fun stuff.
At their high points, as with Just What I Needed or Since You're Gone, it's extremely good power pop, but there's still not just enough to make me want to investigate further. I somehow have the feeling it'd just be more of the same, except not as good as the singles.
All this said, I just remembered that the Cars' Moving in Stereo (which is a track from their first album, and not anywhere else) was used to soundtrack the famous Phoebe Cates bikini scene in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which kind of makes me want the album now. And also makes me want to be excused for a few minutes. (ahem)
Pixies - Wave of Mutilation: Best Of... (2004)
Possibly a kind of heresy to some of my friends, but I've never really bought into the Pixies that much. I can't explain why, but I suspect Frank Black's (or Black Francis, or whatever the hell he calls himself these days) bark had a lot to do with it.
On the other hand, Kim Deal is obviously a bass goddess. Luckily, she also grew a bit stroppy about not getting enough of her songs on the albums and decided to form her own band, the Breeders, whose albums I do enjoy. Not that the Pixies didn't have some fantastic moments, it's just that they're all collected on the one compilation I have. People can, and have, played me their actual albums and I just feel "well... it's OK, but I'd rather listen to Last Splash".
I did catch the band at a festival in 2004, and they were pretty good despite all being a lot older, fatter and balder than they were first time round (Kim excepted on the last two, natch). But then again, aren't we all these days?
The Rolling Stones - Rolled Gold (1975)
I'm one of those who subscribe to the idea that if the Stones had jacked it in at some point in the 70s, maybe when Mick Taylor handed his cards in, then they'd be remembered in much better terms then they are now. Which is a bunch of geriatrics performing for the masses who are willing to pay stupid money in the mindset that "surely Keith is going to die soon - this could be the last tour!"
My dad told me you tended to fall into either the Beatles or the Stones if you were young in the 60s. He was into the scouse quartet, and I've concurred in my own tastes. After all, Lennon and McCartney wrote one of the Stones' first hits and you never saw the Beatles hanging around with the southern lot to try and pick up cool points.
Some may go on to me about Exile On Main Street or Let It Bleed, but this is all the Stones I need. To give them dues, there's plenty of classics on here to ensure Mick Jagger always has at least one "Get Out of Jail" card if I finds himself in Judge D.C. Harrison's court.
The Stranglers - Greatest Hits 1977-1990 (1990)
Like the Cars, the Stranglers were essentially a bunch of older guys who jumped on a passing fashion: punk, in this instance. But perhaps more so than the Americans - Hugh Cornwall was a schoolfriend of Richard Thompson and drummer Jet Black was born in the 1930s. Credit to the guy, he's still drumming away.
What the Stranglers did have going for them was Jean-Jacques Burnel's bass sound and Cornwell managing to sound suitably sleazy enough to appeal to the younger crowd. Plus, they obviously had a stronger melodic sense than many of the others doing the rounds at the time, mainly through Dave Greenfield's Door-copying keyboard runs that are best seen on their pretty great version of Bacharach/David's Walk On By.
As time went on, the Stranglers were able to show that, actually, they were pretty good musicians, which led to them taking Golden Brown, a song in waltz time and also about smack, to #2 in the charts. The later stuff holds up as well as the rawer songs, with Always The Sun and Nice in Nice being particular highlights though their version of the Kinks' All Day And All Of The Night doesn't embarrass anyone, and it ends when Cornwell sacks off the band in 1990, when they move into the nostalgia circuit from which they've stayed for the last 20 years. Kind of admirable, really.
Ramones - Hey! Ho! Let's Go: The Anthology (1999)
Probably the most obvious band to put in this article. A double compilation album covering their whole career - does anybody really need more Ramones in their life?
This one covers their whole career, though misses out Baby I Love You, as produced by Phil Spector and their biggest hit over here in the UK. But nevermind, everything else is here: Blitzkrieg Bop, Sheena Is a Punk Rocker and I Wanna Be Sedated etc etc.
What's tragic about thinking about the band is that, if you've seen the documentary film End of the Century, you'd know what a tragically bunch of dysfunctional types they were (Tommy excepted, it seems). While The KKK Took My Baby Away is amusing enough by title alone, it takes on a darker tone when you hear that the liberal Joey Ramone penned it after his girlfriend dumped him for the famously conservative Johnny Ramone.
This got me to thinking about the compilation albums I have in my collection by bands where I have no real intention of picking up anything else by them. Here's the five that sprang to mind.
The Cars - Greatest Hits (1985)
A band that never really meant too much over here, except for two moments: My Best Friend's Girl being a big hit apparently on the basis on it being released on picture disc and Drive being used to soundtrack famine footage during Live Aid, songwriter Ric Ocasek generously donating royalties from the song to the charity.
The Cars were basically journeymen musicians (bassist Ben Orr had his first mainstream pop exposure in the 1960s) who found their niche when 'New Wave' became the fashionable sound. Ocasek did have a knack for writing a canny hook, though, and their first compilation album is a concise 13 song affair which doesn't outstay it's welcome. There's a song or two were the synths grate a little, but in the main it's fun stuff.
At their high points, as with Just What I Needed or Since You're Gone, it's extremely good power pop, but there's still not just enough to make me want to investigate further. I somehow have the feeling it'd just be more of the same, except not as good as the singles.
All this said, I just remembered that the Cars' Moving in Stereo (which is a track from their first album, and not anywhere else) was used to soundtrack the famous Phoebe Cates bikini scene in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which kind of makes me want the album now. And also makes me want to be excused for a few minutes. (ahem)
Pixies - Wave of Mutilation: Best Of... (2004)
Possibly a kind of heresy to some of my friends, but I've never really bought into the Pixies that much. I can't explain why, but I suspect Frank Black's (or Black Francis, or whatever the hell he calls himself these days) bark had a lot to do with it.
On the other hand, Kim Deal is obviously a bass goddess. Luckily, she also grew a bit stroppy about not getting enough of her songs on the albums and decided to form her own band, the Breeders, whose albums I do enjoy. Not that the Pixies didn't have some fantastic moments, it's just that they're all collected on the one compilation I have. People can, and have, played me their actual albums and I just feel "well... it's OK, but I'd rather listen to Last Splash".
I did catch the band at a festival in 2004, and they were pretty good despite all being a lot older, fatter and balder than they were first time round (Kim excepted on the last two, natch). But then again, aren't we all these days?
The Rolling Stones - Rolled Gold (1975)
I'm one of those who subscribe to the idea that if the Stones had jacked it in at some point in the 70s, maybe when Mick Taylor handed his cards in, then they'd be remembered in much better terms then they are now. Which is a bunch of geriatrics performing for the masses who are willing to pay stupid money in the mindset that "surely Keith is going to die soon - this could be the last tour!"
My dad told me you tended to fall into either the Beatles or the Stones if you were young in the 60s. He was into the scouse quartet, and I've concurred in my own tastes. After all, Lennon and McCartney wrote one of the Stones' first hits and you never saw the Beatles hanging around with the southern lot to try and pick up cool points.
Some may go on to me about Exile On Main Street or Let It Bleed, but this is all the Stones I need. To give them dues, there's plenty of classics on here to ensure Mick Jagger always has at least one "Get Out of Jail" card if I finds himself in Judge D.C. Harrison's court.
The Stranglers - Greatest Hits 1977-1990 (1990)
Like the Cars, the Stranglers were essentially a bunch of older guys who jumped on a passing fashion: punk, in this instance. But perhaps more so than the Americans - Hugh Cornwall was a schoolfriend of Richard Thompson and drummer Jet Black was born in the 1930s. Credit to the guy, he's still drumming away.
What the Stranglers did have going for them was Jean-Jacques Burnel's bass sound and Cornwell managing to sound suitably sleazy enough to appeal to the younger crowd. Plus, they obviously had a stronger melodic sense than many of the others doing the rounds at the time, mainly through Dave Greenfield's Door-copying keyboard runs that are best seen on their pretty great version of Bacharach/David's Walk On By.
As time went on, the Stranglers were able to show that, actually, they were pretty good musicians, which led to them taking Golden Brown, a song in waltz time and also about smack, to #2 in the charts. The later stuff holds up as well as the rawer songs, with Always The Sun and Nice in Nice being particular highlights though their version of the Kinks' All Day And All Of The Night doesn't embarrass anyone, and it ends when Cornwell sacks off the band in 1990, when they move into the nostalgia circuit from which they've stayed for the last 20 years. Kind of admirable, really.
Ramones - Hey! Ho! Let's Go: The Anthology (1999)
Probably the most obvious band to put in this article. A double compilation album covering their whole career - does anybody really need more Ramones in their life?
This one covers their whole career, though misses out Baby I Love You, as produced by Phil Spector and their biggest hit over here in the UK. But nevermind, everything else is here: Blitzkrieg Bop, Sheena Is a Punk Rocker and I Wanna Be Sedated etc etc.
What's tragic about thinking about the band is that, if you've seen the documentary film End of the Century, you'd know what a tragically bunch of dysfunctional types they were (Tommy excepted, it seems). While The KKK Took My Baby Away is amusing enough by title alone, it takes on a darker tone when you hear that the liberal Joey Ramone penned it after his girlfriend dumped him for the famously conservative Johnny Ramone.
Yet as a testament to their genius-of-kinds, it's worth that saying that a friend of mine who generally listens to nothing but hip-hop absolutely loves Somebody Put Something In My Drink, and has ever performed a version in his favoured style. I'm sure Dee Dee would have been proud.
Monday 18 October 2010
Extended Play
Quite how eight tracks clocking in at over 40 minutes qualifies as an EP is beyond my ken, but that is what British Sea Power are labelling Zeus, and given it's priced at a few quid less than a usual CD album, who am I to complain?
Following on from the success of Do You Like Rock Music?, they released the Man of Aran, a soundtrack to a 1934 documentary-of-sorts of the same name: a typically commercially perverse move from a band that doesn't seem to give much consideration to issues such as chart placement or sales.
The title track and opener is classic British Sea Power: surging guitars, killer hooks and non-conventional lyrics that namecheck Rick Stein and Nikita Khrushchev in their first verse. Though clocking in at around seven minutes, it never overstays it's welcome and builds up to a tremendous climatic guitar riff.
Cleaning Out The Rooms shows off the new expanded line-up, with violinist Abi Fry and keys player Phil Sumner showing off their chops. It's a wonderful epic swirl of the song, much in contrast to Can We Do It?, which is almost caveman rock.
Bear, like Zeus, drops in some contemporary culture with the lyric "I saw you reading the Daily Star/saw you watching the X Factor/And I was wondering/how could you fall so far?", sang with sadness rather than contempt. The song rolls along languidly before kicking up a gear in the coda, driven by an pretty killer bassline.
The second half of the EP is generally given to the band's more experimental impulses that were generally housed on b-sides to singles. Pardon My Friends is a tinkling piano number that doesn't really go anywhere, Mongk rocks along pretty well but the EP is raised back by kW-h, which bounces in jolly fashion with warped vocals and siren sounds that recall glam rock.
Those of us who bought the CD/12" versions (as opposed to download, presumably) get an extra track, Retreat, which continues the aural themes of Cleaning Out The Rooms in a more sedate fashion.
Quite what these eight tracks mean for the forthcoming 'proper' album I can't say. There are no instant pop songs here - three of the tracks clock in over seven minutes - and newcomers would be best advised to check out their previous work than jump in here. Anyone who's followed their progression with interest, however, will find plenty to enjoy.
Following on from the success of Do You Like Rock Music?, they released the Man of Aran, a soundtrack to a 1934 documentary-of-sorts of the same name: a typically commercially perverse move from a band that doesn't seem to give much consideration to issues such as chart placement or sales.
The title track and opener is classic British Sea Power: surging guitars, killer hooks and non-conventional lyrics that namecheck Rick Stein and Nikita Khrushchev in their first verse. Though clocking in at around seven minutes, it never overstays it's welcome and builds up to a tremendous climatic guitar riff.
Cleaning Out The Rooms shows off the new expanded line-up, with violinist Abi Fry and keys player Phil Sumner showing off their chops. It's a wonderful epic swirl of the song, much in contrast to Can We Do It?, which is almost caveman rock.
Bear, like Zeus, drops in some contemporary culture with the lyric "I saw you reading the Daily Star/saw you watching the X Factor/And I was wondering/how could you fall so far?", sang with sadness rather than contempt. The song rolls along languidly before kicking up a gear in the coda, driven by an pretty killer bassline.
The second half of the EP is generally given to the band's more experimental impulses that were generally housed on b-sides to singles. Pardon My Friends is a tinkling piano number that doesn't really go anywhere, Mongk rocks along pretty well but the EP is raised back by kW-h, which bounces in jolly fashion with warped vocals and siren sounds that recall glam rock.
Those of us who bought the CD/12" versions (as opposed to download, presumably) get an extra track, Retreat, which continues the aural themes of Cleaning Out The Rooms in a more sedate fashion.
Quite what these eight tracks mean for the forthcoming 'proper' album I can't say. There are no instant pop songs here - three of the tracks clock in over seven minutes - and newcomers would be best advised to check out their previous work than jump in here. Anyone who's followed their progression with interest, however, will find plenty to enjoy.
Thursday 14 October 2010
Specialist Subject
I was hoping to write about the new British Sea Power EP Zeus earlier this week, but the Royal Mail decreed I would have to wait a week to receive it. Thoughts on that over the weekend, but initial listening shows it is fab.
Only minutes ago, I was quite disturbed by an advert for Cliff Richard's new album, which appears to take a big band/swing theme. Alright, not my bag, but whatever. But one of the songs he's covered is Willie Dixon's I Just Want To Make Love To You, best known for versions by Muddy Waters and Etta James.
As the title might suggest, it's a song about shagging. Nothing subtle, no subtexts. It's a song about not wanting anything else from someone except that one thing. And I have watched and heard with my own eyes and ears it being sung by Cliff Richard, a man who knows as much about sex as I did circa 1993. Truly, some things are beyond parody.
Only minutes ago, I was quite disturbed by an advert for Cliff Richard's new album, which appears to take a big band/swing theme. Alright, not my bag, but whatever. But one of the songs he's covered is Willie Dixon's I Just Want To Make Love To You, best known for versions by Muddy Waters and Etta James.
As the title might suggest, it's a song about shagging. Nothing subtle, no subtexts. It's a song about not wanting anything else from someone except that one thing. And I have watched and heard with my own eyes and ears it being sung by Cliff Richard, a man who knows as much about sex as I did circa 1993. Truly, some things are beyond parody.
Sunday 10 October 2010
Talk Talk Talk
Mark Hollis' disappearing act has interested me for some time. As frontman of the pioneering Talk Talk, he went from synth-pop to post-rock before recording a solo album in the mid 90s and staying quiet ever since.
Which isn't too surprising, given his attitude to the pop game. A quick glance on youtube will reveal many awkward interviews from the mid 80s, when Talk Talk were at the height of their popularity.
Despite the elaborate music he would later make, Hollis was kick-started by punk. His elder brother Ed managed Essex outfit Eddie and the Hot Rods and helped out when young Mark formed his own band. Though it came to nothing, a song entitled Talk Talk that the brothers wrote would later name his next band, and provide a hit.
By the mid 80s, with synth-pop all the rage, Hollis needed musicians to record some demos to get a publishing deal: bassist Paul Webb, drummer Lee Harris and keyboard player Simon Bremner were recruited. A record deal was secured and the quintet recorded The Party's Over - a minor hit dismissed by many critics for jumping on the bandwagon. Notably, it featured artwork by James Marsh, who would design all the band's striking album covers.
Though featuring some fine pop songs (Talk Talk, Today and Mirror Man), it did suffer from very dated production. Subsequently, after the single My Foolish Friend, Bremner was replaced by Tim Friese-Greene. Though never appearing on promotional photos, and very rarely on stage, he would prove to be the crucial collaborator and producer needed to help Hollis reach his musical goals.
It's My Life, released in 1984, was a vast improvement on the debut. Though still synth heavy, the songs were a massive step forward. The title song and Such a Shame (apparently inspired by the book The Dice Man) remain classics of their style and time. While the album sunk without trace in the UK, it proved a big hit throughout Europe and It's My Life made the US top 40, where the band toured as support to New Wave heroes the Psychedelic Furs.
The Colour of Spring was an even bigger hit than It's My Life. Lead single Life's What You Make It, built entirely around a four note piano riff, hit the UK top 20, helped by a wonderful Tim Pope video. With extra money to spare due to the worldwide success of It's My Life, the band abandoned synths, bringing in the likes of Steve Winwood to provide Hammond organ and Danny Thompson on acoustic bass.
On the back of this profitable success, their label (EMI) were keen for more and granted an open budget for a follow-up. Locked away in the studio for the best part of a year, legend has it that the A&R man burst into tears when he first heard Spirit of Eden. 40 minutes long, it contained only six songs, none of which were even slightly suitable for daytime radio or MTV.
What is important, and time has proven so, is that Spirit of Eden is a timeless work of art. Subdued, crafted and beautifully played, I can't believe it sounds like anything else that made the album charts in 1988. The anti-heroin I Believe In You was somewhat pointlessly released as a single but any commercial ground gained by The Colour of Spring was lost by Hollis' insistence that the album would be impossible to replicate live (parts of it were improvised) and so therefore there would be no live shows.
Somewhat miffed, EMI released a compilation Natural History to claw some dollar back, which proved to be a decent plan when it sold a million. A further compilation of remixes was a step too far, and court action from the band ensured it was soon withdrawn.
Signed to the Verve label and now minus bassist Paul Webb, 1991 brought Laughing Stock, was continued in the vein of it's predecessor, though it seems even more stripped down and far away. Along with Spirit of Eden, it's one of my favourite albums to listen to at 3am with a bottle of Scotch. It's not chill out music by any stretch, but requires the kind of open listening you can sustain in the late hours.
And that was it, for Talk Talk. Drummer Paul Harris would work with Paul Webb as O.Rang and drum on Bark Psychosis' second album Codename: Dustsucker. Webb would collaborate as Rustin Man on an album with Portishead singer Beth Gibbons and Friese-Greene would continue to work as a producer with Lush and Catherine Wheel (huge Talk Talk fans) amongst others.
Hollis himself briefly reappeared in 1998 with a self-titled solo album that continued his musical trends from Talk Talk. Since then, he appears to have retired from music, mentioned as an example of someone for whom artistic purpose was far more important than the whims of record company or public. The move from easily-dismissed angsty pop group for experimental critical darlings is one Radiohead may have paid some attention to.
Which isn't too surprising, given his attitude to the pop game. A quick glance on youtube will reveal many awkward interviews from the mid 80s, when Talk Talk were at the height of their popularity.
Despite the elaborate music he would later make, Hollis was kick-started by punk. His elder brother Ed managed Essex outfit Eddie and the Hot Rods and helped out when young Mark formed his own band. Though it came to nothing, a song entitled Talk Talk that the brothers wrote would later name his next band, and provide a hit.
By the mid 80s, with synth-pop all the rage, Hollis needed musicians to record some demos to get a publishing deal: bassist Paul Webb, drummer Lee Harris and keyboard player Simon Bremner were recruited. A record deal was secured and the quintet recorded The Party's Over - a minor hit dismissed by many critics for jumping on the bandwagon. Notably, it featured artwork by James Marsh, who would design all the band's striking album covers.
Though featuring some fine pop songs (Talk Talk, Today and Mirror Man), it did suffer from very dated production. Subsequently, after the single My Foolish Friend, Bremner was replaced by Tim Friese-Greene. Though never appearing on promotional photos, and very rarely on stage, he would prove to be the crucial collaborator and producer needed to help Hollis reach his musical goals.
It's My Life, released in 1984, was a vast improvement on the debut. Though still synth heavy, the songs were a massive step forward. The title song and Such a Shame (apparently inspired by the book The Dice Man) remain classics of their style and time. While the album sunk without trace in the UK, it proved a big hit throughout Europe and It's My Life made the US top 40, where the band toured as support to New Wave heroes the Psychedelic Furs.
The Colour of Spring was an even bigger hit than It's My Life. Lead single Life's What You Make It, built entirely around a four note piano riff, hit the UK top 20, helped by a wonderful Tim Pope video. With extra money to spare due to the worldwide success of It's My Life, the band abandoned synths, bringing in the likes of Steve Winwood to provide Hammond organ and Danny Thompson on acoustic bass.
On the back of this profitable success, their label (EMI) were keen for more and granted an open budget for a follow-up. Locked away in the studio for the best part of a year, legend has it that the A&R man burst into tears when he first heard Spirit of Eden. 40 minutes long, it contained only six songs, none of which were even slightly suitable for daytime radio or MTV.
What is important, and time has proven so, is that Spirit of Eden is a timeless work of art. Subdued, crafted and beautifully played, I can't believe it sounds like anything else that made the album charts in 1988. The anti-heroin I Believe In You was somewhat pointlessly released as a single but any commercial ground gained by The Colour of Spring was lost by Hollis' insistence that the album would be impossible to replicate live (parts of it were improvised) and so therefore there would be no live shows.
Somewhat miffed, EMI released a compilation Natural History to claw some dollar back, which proved to be a decent plan when it sold a million. A further compilation of remixes was a step too far, and court action from the band ensured it was soon withdrawn.
Signed to the Verve label and now minus bassist Paul Webb, 1991 brought Laughing Stock, was continued in the vein of it's predecessor, though it seems even more stripped down and far away. Along with Spirit of Eden, it's one of my favourite albums to listen to at 3am with a bottle of Scotch. It's not chill out music by any stretch, but requires the kind of open listening you can sustain in the late hours.
And that was it, for Talk Talk. Drummer Paul Harris would work with Paul Webb as O.Rang and drum on Bark Psychosis' second album Codename: Dustsucker. Webb would collaborate as Rustin Man on an album with Portishead singer Beth Gibbons and Friese-Greene would continue to work as a producer with Lush and Catherine Wheel (huge Talk Talk fans) amongst others.
Hollis himself briefly reappeared in 1998 with a self-titled solo album that continued his musical trends from Talk Talk. Since then, he appears to have retired from music, mentioned as an example of someone for whom artistic purpose was far more important than the whims of record company or public. The move from easily-dismissed angsty pop group for experimental critical darlings is one Radiohead may have paid some attention to.
Thursday 7 October 2010
Anti-Social Networking
Two questions I would like to never hear again in my existence:
"Why aren't you on Facebook?"
and
"When are you getting an Iphone?"
The second is easier to answer: because I don't need one. I've had the same mobile for about five years now and have no intention of replacing it. I don't see the point in having a new one that does loads of fancy things that will bring zero benefits to my life. The magazine Private Eye has an excellent cartoon called "Ibores" that hits the target bang on.
As for the first question: I never have nor will see the point in those social networking sites, unless you're looking for someone to cop off with. Yet some people seem to see being on this site (or Twitter) as some kind of essential aspect of modern life. I'm baffled as to why the footballer Rio Ferdinand feels the need to constantly update thousands of strangers as to the most trivial aspects of his day, or why anyone wants to know.
A work colleague told me "it's useful for finding people you used to go to school with", which translated to me as that old game of finding people you didn't like back then, and laughing if it turns out they're flipping burgers for a living. The other line is "it's good for letting everyone you know what you're doing" - which seems odd, as I never realised sending an email to more than one person at a time was that tricky.
I'm not covering new ground on this topic, of course, but what I do wonder whether a so-called 'surveillance' society that the likes of the Daily Mail get in a tizz about won't come as too much of a trouble to people who already tell the world what they're doing at any given moment. I'm not a Luddite, but I like new technology to enrich and improve our lives, not trivialise it (and yes, I'm aware of the irony of saying that on a blog, of all things).
If you allow me to be a paranoid nut for a moment (and why not?), I can at times envisage a future where anyone who doesn't have their own Facebook/Twitter pages is banished from society like the 'savages' in Brave New World, ostracised for not knowing the correct context to say "OMG!" or letting everyone know what bar we'll be in that Friday night.
For now, though, I'll remain quite happy in the knowledge that nobody from my past can find out any personal information about me online because, after all, if I wanted them to know, I would fucking tell them.
"Why aren't you on Facebook?"
and
"When are you getting an Iphone?"
The second is easier to answer: because I don't need one. I've had the same mobile for about five years now and have no intention of replacing it. I don't see the point in having a new one that does loads of fancy things that will bring zero benefits to my life. The magazine Private Eye has an excellent cartoon called "Ibores" that hits the target bang on.
As for the first question: I never have nor will see the point in those social networking sites, unless you're looking for someone to cop off with. Yet some people seem to see being on this site (or Twitter) as some kind of essential aspect of modern life. I'm baffled as to why the footballer Rio Ferdinand feels the need to constantly update thousands of strangers as to the most trivial aspects of his day, or why anyone wants to know.
A work colleague told me "it's useful for finding people you used to go to school with", which translated to me as that old game of finding people you didn't like back then, and laughing if it turns out they're flipping burgers for a living. The other line is "it's good for letting everyone you know what you're doing" - which seems odd, as I never realised sending an email to more than one person at a time was that tricky.
I'm not covering new ground on this topic, of course, but what I do wonder whether a so-called 'surveillance' society that the likes of the Daily Mail get in a tizz about won't come as too much of a trouble to people who already tell the world what they're doing at any given moment. I'm not a Luddite, but I like new technology to enrich and improve our lives, not trivialise it (and yes, I'm aware of the irony of saying that on a blog, of all things).
If you allow me to be a paranoid nut for a moment (and why not?), I can at times envisage a future where anyone who doesn't have their own Facebook/Twitter pages is banished from society like the 'savages' in Brave New World, ostracised for not knowing the correct context to say "OMG!" or letting everyone know what bar we'll be in that Friday night.
For now, though, I'll remain quite happy in the knowledge that nobody from my past can find out any personal information about me online because, after all, if I wanted them to know, I would fucking tell them.
Tuesday 5 October 2010
Not a Protest Singer
Horizontal on the sofa last Friday night, nursing another bottle of beer, I noticed that Songwriter's Circle was back on BBC4. I remembered it from years ago, when they had the likes of Neil Finn, John Cale and Graham Gouldman on. That was enough to engage a flicker of enthusiasm, which burned a little brighter when I saw Suzanne Vega was on.
Ms Vega was my first gig, at Northampton way back in 1997 when I was visiting relatives down that way. Bands never came to my town, and I'd recently picked up the album Suzanne Vega after seeing Marlene On The Wall on VH-1 (or something) and been impressed. On seeing she was playing a gig close to where I would be at that time, I got my cousin to, reluctantly, at the time, come along. It was a brilliant show, and I often wonder if my thing for red haired women began at that point.
The next day, I went out and bought the rest of her back catalogue. Except the fairly average third album, Days of Open Hand, all were brilliant. I wasn't, and still aren't, into folk music in any big way, perhaps because traditional themes found in English folk bear little relevance to me in any way. Though Vega is often classed as a folkie, her topics tended to stick with the contemporary, and when she didn't (such as The Queen and the Soldier on her debut), it still managed to keep my interest.
For a brief time, she was a pop star. Luka, taken from her second album Solitude Standing, was a huge hit in the US and a dance mix of the acapella Tom's Diner (from the same album) did equally well. However, writing radio friendly pop songs was never her style,
99.9F°, her fourth album and my personal favourite, excellently crossed styles and was produced by Mitchell Froom, who she'd later marry and have a daughter with. Despite the new styles, In Liverpool should still have been a big hit. The album featured help from Pete and Bruce Thomas, formerly the rhythm section in the Attractions, both of whom returned on 1996's Nine Objects of Desire, the last of her studio works I've heard.
In the present, she was brilliant on the TV show - and she still looks fab - giving me the urge to check out her more recent works. By coincidence, I quick check of her website showed she was playing a single date in the UK in a couple of weeks - in Manchester. Naturally, I picked up a couple of tickets on the quick.
Ms Vega was my first gig, at Northampton way back in 1997 when I was visiting relatives down that way. Bands never came to my town, and I'd recently picked up the album Suzanne Vega after seeing Marlene On The Wall on VH-1 (or something) and been impressed. On seeing she was playing a gig close to where I would be at that time, I got my cousin to, reluctantly, at the time, come along. It was a brilliant show, and I often wonder if my thing for red haired women began at that point.
The next day, I went out and bought the rest of her back catalogue. Except the fairly average third album, Days of Open Hand, all were brilliant. I wasn't, and still aren't, into folk music in any big way, perhaps because traditional themes found in English folk bear little relevance to me in any way. Though Vega is often classed as a folkie, her topics tended to stick with the contemporary, and when she didn't (such as The Queen and the Soldier on her debut), it still managed to keep my interest.
For a brief time, she was a pop star. Luka, taken from her second album Solitude Standing, was a huge hit in the US and a dance mix of the acapella Tom's Diner (from the same album) did equally well. However, writing radio friendly pop songs was never her style,
99.9F°, her fourth album and my personal favourite, excellently crossed styles and was produced by Mitchell Froom, who she'd later marry and have a daughter with. Despite the new styles, In Liverpool should still have been a big hit. The album featured help from Pete and Bruce Thomas, formerly the rhythm section in the Attractions, both of whom returned on 1996's Nine Objects of Desire, the last of her studio works I've heard.
In the present, she was brilliant on the TV show - and she still looks fab - giving me the urge to check out her more recent works. By coincidence, I quick check of her website showed she was playing a single date in the UK in a couple of weeks - in Manchester. Naturally, I picked up a couple of tickets on the quick.
Sunday 3 October 2010
Lost Weekends
Personally, I find the weekend begins at 4pm on Friday, when I get out of work, and ends at the same time on Sunday, when the day becomes like any other, waiting for the next day rolls around. It's the 48 hours the Clash sang about on their first album: "Short space of time and a heavy scene/Monday is coming like a jail on wheels".
A friend of mine made a perceptive observation last week, when the topic of weekends came up. She said that having spent most of Monday to Friday looking forward to it, it can never live up to the expectation. Certainly true in my case, having spent many a time feeling I should be doing something with the freedom I have, but usually end up staying in bed till noon on Saturday and Sunday.
Of course, there's always the football to get me out of the flat for a few hours but even that is starting to lose it's ability to get me through the week. The obvious conclusion is that I, as with everyone I would imagine, need some kind of purpose and motivation.
It seems to be a modern problem, this. Someone at work was banging on about a "course" she attended a few weeks ago and was urging others to go to some forum they hold. I won't mention the name (you never know who's reading) but some investigation led me to the conclusion it's one of those quasi-cults that essentially take hundreds of pounds off you under the guise of "helping you achieve your goals and ambitions".
Not my scene at all, especially as part of the whole course seems to be when the leader hurls abuse at you in some vague form of reverse psychology that would be more likely to lead me to smack them round the chops. Yet I imagine that in the modern world, where concepts of god and church no longer mean much to a large part of the population, people are looking elsewhere for their spiritual fulfillment.
Having never been one to follow anyone, or be a leader myself, I can't help but feel I'm at a very important junction in my life. I try to tell myself it's a big world, and that there's something out there. Then I worry I'm too cynical/lazy/easily bored to actually get up off my arse and start looking. Ah, the troubles of 21st century man.
A friend of mine made a perceptive observation last week, when the topic of weekends came up. She said that having spent most of Monday to Friday looking forward to it, it can never live up to the expectation. Certainly true in my case, having spent many a time feeling I should be doing something with the freedom I have, but usually end up staying in bed till noon on Saturday and Sunday.
Of course, there's always the football to get me out of the flat for a few hours but even that is starting to lose it's ability to get me through the week. The obvious conclusion is that I, as with everyone I would imagine, need some kind of purpose and motivation.
It seems to be a modern problem, this. Someone at work was banging on about a "course" she attended a few weeks ago and was urging others to go to some forum they hold. I won't mention the name (you never know who's reading) but some investigation led me to the conclusion it's one of those quasi-cults that essentially take hundreds of pounds off you under the guise of "helping you achieve your goals and ambitions".
Not my scene at all, especially as part of the whole course seems to be when the leader hurls abuse at you in some vague form of reverse psychology that would be more likely to lead me to smack them round the chops. Yet I imagine that in the modern world, where concepts of god and church no longer mean much to a large part of the population, people are looking elsewhere for their spiritual fulfillment.
Having never been one to follow anyone, or be a leader myself, I can't help but feel I'm at a very important junction in my life. I try to tell myself it's a big world, and that there's something out there. Then I worry I'm too cynical/lazy/easily bored to actually get up off my arse and start looking. Ah, the troubles of 21st century man.
Friday 1 October 2010
Stains on the Heartland
It's interesting, for want of a better word, to actually be living through a recession as an adult. Though I can just about remember the 80s and early 90s and the effects on my hometown, I was one of the lucky ones in that my dad was never out of work.
Not so lucky were two of my mother's elder brothers, who worked at the last coal mine in West Cumbria until that was shut down in 1986. Some 15 years later, I went to the place, now operating as a mining museum, and the anger in the voice of my guide (an ex-miner) was still strong. My mother to this day refers to Thatcher as "that woman", which isn't that surprising considering she comes from a family where mining was the family profession over many generations.
That was then, though. The 80s were pretty much all about Matchbox toy cars, my Sinclair +2 computer and Bryan Robson for me. This time round, it's personal. The last week, I've been hearing constant talk about "restructuring" and "corporate visions" in the place I work. Euphemistic bollocks, of course - may as well call fucking you over by it's correct term.
For a brief moment, I considered asking about voluntary redundancy, even if any offer would be around £1.50 and a bag of chips. Then I remembered my own two years on the dole and watching Alan Bleasdale's brilliant Boys From The Blackstuff to know that signing on is never a good option when it comes to maintaining some sense of pride in self.
More worrying was a conversation with my landlord the other week (on being told he had to put the rent up a few quid a week). A chap in his early 60s, he informed me this was looking like the worst recession he could remember. Worrying times indeed. The point of me writing this? I think it's in setting down a marker in terms of my own life, and on a bigger scale, of when things either started getting better, or a whole lot worse.
Not so lucky were two of my mother's elder brothers, who worked at the last coal mine in West Cumbria until that was shut down in 1986. Some 15 years later, I went to the place, now operating as a mining museum, and the anger in the voice of my guide (an ex-miner) was still strong. My mother to this day refers to Thatcher as "that woman", which isn't that surprising considering she comes from a family where mining was the family profession over many generations.
That was then, though. The 80s were pretty much all about Matchbox toy cars, my Sinclair +2 computer and Bryan Robson for me. This time round, it's personal. The last week, I've been hearing constant talk about "restructuring" and "corporate visions" in the place I work. Euphemistic bollocks, of course - may as well call fucking you over by it's correct term.
For a brief moment, I considered asking about voluntary redundancy, even if any offer would be around £1.50 and a bag of chips. Then I remembered my own two years on the dole and watching Alan Bleasdale's brilliant Boys From The Blackstuff to know that signing on is never a good option when it comes to maintaining some sense of pride in self.
More worrying was a conversation with my landlord the other week (on being told he had to put the rent up a few quid a week). A chap in his early 60s, he informed me this was looking like the worst recession he could remember. Worrying times indeed. The point of me writing this? I think it's in setting down a marker in terms of my own life, and on a bigger scale, of when things either started getting better, or a whole lot worse.
Wednesday 29 September 2010
Speed Writing
This morn, having forgotten my MP3 player and being too lazy to go back up the stairs to get it, I resigned myself to local radio. Halfway through, a guy talked about how great the new Formula 1 game is, as part of a competition to win a copy.
All of which got me thinking. In the last week, I've read a large number of complaints of this very game on various forums, all contrasting to numerous positive reviews in the mainstream gaming media. Numerous bugs have been reported, including one which stops some of your opponents having to do their compulsory pit stop, all adding up to some very angry gamers. I was glad to read these, as I had been considering purchasing a copy, after enjoying the F1 season so far.
All this confirms my suspicion and disillusionment with gaming journalism, which is a shame as my journalistic ambitions were probably fired by Your Sinclair, of which I was a loyal reader from the late 80s till it's death. It was a brilliant magazine, full of in-jokes and absurd humour that still appealed to my youthful self. Recently, I went over some articles at the wonderful "Your Sinclair - The Rock and Roll Years" website and was surprised at how much it still stood up. I've subsequently nicked loads of the reader's jokes from the 'Kindly Leave The Stage' section.
Yet now, it appears a lot of gaming magazines are firmly in the pocket of games developers. Exclusive previews given on certain 'understandings' about subsequent reviews. Nothing unique there, of course, as the music industry has long since did the same. But it's still depressing to see that the huge issues with the F1 2010 game were overlooked and 9/10 reviews dished out wholesale - journalists may well claim they were 'promised' that the bugs would be remedied before sale, as happened with one very infamous case several years ago that noted games hack Stuart Campbell discovered.
Not that any of this will concern Codemasters (the company behind the game) too much, as it's a cert copies will have shifted by the truckload. From my perspective, I just hope the people behind the long awaited Gran Turismo 5 have managed to keep some sense of ethics and pride in their work.
All of which got me thinking. In the last week, I've read a large number of complaints of this very game on various forums, all contrasting to numerous positive reviews in the mainstream gaming media. Numerous bugs have been reported, including one which stops some of your opponents having to do their compulsory pit stop, all adding up to some very angry gamers. I was glad to read these, as I had been considering purchasing a copy, after enjoying the F1 season so far.
All this confirms my suspicion and disillusionment with gaming journalism, which is a shame as my journalistic ambitions were probably fired by Your Sinclair, of which I was a loyal reader from the late 80s till it's death. It was a brilliant magazine, full of in-jokes and absurd humour that still appealed to my youthful self. Recently, I went over some articles at the wonderful "Your Sinclair - The Rock and Roll Years" website and was surprised at how much it still stood up. I've subsequently nicked loads of the reader's jokes from the 'Kindly Leave The Stage' section.
Yet now, it appears a lot of gaming magazines are firmly in the pocket of games developers. Exclusive previews given on certain 'understandings' about subsequent reviews. Nothing unique there, of course, as the music industry has long since did the same. But it's still depressing to see that the huge issues with the F1 2010 game were overlooked and 9/10 reviews dished out wholesale - journalists may well claim they were 'promised' that the bugs would be remedied before sale, as happened with one very infamous case several years ago that noted games hack Stuart Campbell discovered.
Not that any of this will concern Codemasters (the company behind the game) too much, as it's a cert copies will have shifted by the truckload. From my perspective, I just hope the people behind the long awaited Gran Turismo 5 have managed to keep some sense of ethics and pride in their work.
Monday 27 September 2010
Three Chords and a Lyric About Something
Following my post about Felt, I did a little internet digging to find out more about Lawrence, and his current activities. I'd heard rumours, and hoped that's all they were, regarding his lifestyle of late. One forum mentioned a book that featured some extended interviews with the man.
The book was Song Man by Will Hodgkinson, whose brother was one of the people behind The Idler, a magazine I've long dismissed as tedious, middle class and having nothing to say to the true idle git. This genetic connection put me off, but luckily, a second hand copy was tracked down for a couple of quid. Result.
In a nutshell, it's the sequel to Guitar Man, in which a mid 30s-Hodgkinson sets out to learn guitar with help from various masters he's able to call on through his dayjob as a journalist. Subsequently, and somewhat obviously, he decides to write a song. And this is the story behind this book, with the added clause that he intends to record a single by a set deadline.
Lawrence appears in the first chapter, and my fears were confirmed when he's shown to be living the life of a junkie in a tiny flat, constantly in fear of being thrown out and onto the street. Hodgkinson loses points right away for describing Felt as "fey", but Lawrence seems to take to him (though the author is honest enough to admit he may just like the company) and acts as a kind of songwriting guide throughout the book.
Elsewhere, he gets 'lessons' from the likes of XTC's Andy Partridge, Bert Jansch and Richard Hawley, as well as picking the brains of songwriting genius' like Lamont Dozier, Hal David and Ray Davies, the latter somewhat predictably turning out to be a bit of a distant type. In between, he squabbles with the friend he wants to co-write with and his wife, who he wants to sing on the single.
Despite the author coming across as a bit of a dick at many points, Song Man is a decent read because of the songwriters interviewed. A highlight for me was when we come across Jake Holmes, who recorded a couple of albums in the late 60s that sold to nobody, but also wrote a song called Dazed and Confused, later to be ripped off by Jimmy Page. Hodgkinson is surprised to find he works in a very plush office/studio complex: it turns out he turned his hand to advertising jingles, notably the "Gillette - the best a man can get" riff, which has doubtless kept him in guitar strings for the past 30 years.
At the conclusion, the narrator gets his song penned and recorded, with help with a sympathetic friend who owns a studio. Lawrence is evicted from his flat and is living in a hostel in London's east end, constantly in fear of being mugged. Given this book was written in 2007, I hope the last three years have seen Lawrence - one of my favourite songwriters - get back on his feet, off the junk and living with a bit of security.
The book was Song Man by Will Hodgkinson, whose brother was one of the people behind The Idler, a magazine I've long dismissed as tedious, middle class and having nothing to say to the true idle git. This genetic connection put me off, but luckily, a second hand copy was tracked down for a couple of quid. Result.
In a nutshell, it's the sequel to Guitar Man, in which a mid 30s-Hodgkinson sets out to learn guitar with help from various masters he's able to call on through his dayjob as a journalist. Subsequently, and somewhat obviously, he decides to write a song. And this is the story behind this book, with the added clause that he intends to record a single by a set deadline.
Lawrence appears in the first chapter, and my fears were confirmed when he's shown to be living the life of a junkie in a tiny flat, constantly in fear of being thrown out and onto the street. Hodgkinson loses points right away for describing Felt as "fey", but Lawrence seems to take to him (though the author is honest enough to admit he may just like the company) and acts as a kind of songwriting guide throughout the book.
Elsewhere, he gets 'lessons' from the likes of XTC's Andy Partridge, Bert Jansch and Richard Hawley, as well as picking the brains of songwriting genius' like Lamont Dozier, Hal David and Ray Davies, the latter somewhat predictably turning out to be a bit of a distant type. In between, he squabbles with the friend he wants to co-write with and his wife, who he wants to sing on the single.
Despite the author coming across as a bit of a dick at many points, Song Man is a decent read because of the songwriters interviewed. A highlight for me was when we come across Jake Holmes, who recorded a couple of albums in the late 60s that sold to nobody, but also wrote a song called Dazed and Confused, later to be ripped off by Jimmy Page. Hodgkinson is surprised to find he works in a very plush office/studio complex: it turns out he turned his hand to advertising jingles, notably the "Gillette - the best a man can get" riff, which has doubtless kept him in guitar strings for the past 30 years.
At the conclusion, the narrator gets his song penned and recorded, with help with a sympathetic friend who owns a studio. Lawrence is evicted from his flat and is living in a hostel in London's east end, constantly in fear of being mugged. Given this book was written in 2007, I hope the last three years have seen Lawrence - one of my favourite songwriters - get back on his feet, off the junk and living with a bit of security.
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