A nice bit of synchronicity happened upon me last week: after writing my piece on the Venture Bros, mentioning a character named after the bassist from the Specials, an extended bumming around town on my lunch break saw me happen upon the memoirs of the man also known as Horace Panter, and at a price that demanded purchase too.
Panter is a man who knows what the audience want: titled 'Ska'd For Life' and featuring our hero in his two-tone gear on the front, he skips over most of his childhood to the point we want to know the details - the formation and exploits of Coventry's finest musical exports. Having moved to Cov from Kettering to study art, meeting Jerry Dammers along the way, he plays in various small-time pub bands before gravitating towards the ska sound.
What comes across very well throughout is the speed at which things seemed to happen once the seven Specials were all in place. From debut single Gangsters hitting the top 10, to the debut album, first tour of America, first chart topping single followed by second album, the legendary Ghost Town hitting the top and the band splitting whizzes by in no time.
Panter comes across as an affable narrator, and points out early on that this is just his version of events, rather than a true history of the band. The core of the book is a reproduction of the diary he kept during a gruelling six week tour of the States in 1980: tempers fray, exhaustion sets in and all question just why they are doing what they are. It's not a great advertisement for being in a band, but makes for interesting reading.
Where 'Ska'd For Life' does fall down a tad is a lack of, for me, insight into the various personalities of many of his bandmates. Though conversations with Dammers are mentioned, no details are gone into. Yet Panter still manages to convey his own sadness at how the band gradually splintered and failed to explore their potential further (this was also written before their well-received comeback tour last year) and expresses his own wish for his old bandleader to write his own book.
If you pop along to your local Fopp, as I did, you may find 'Ska'd For Life' costing less than a pint of beer. Well worth checking for anyone with even only a casual interest in the Specials.
(In an additional bit of happy coincidence, on getting home later in the day I bought this book, whilst looking for something else, I found my Rude Boy/Beat Girl ska badge that I thought I'd lost ages ago. Great stuff)
Wednesday 30 June 2010
Monday 28 June 2010
Always Coming Around Again
I feel I have a chronic inability to enjoy Sundays, due to the gut-wrenching sickness that eventually overcomes me as the spectre of Monday looms every larger.
It's not even as if I'm totally paranoid about it: the start of the last two weeks has been the shrapnel of bad news explode in my trench, sending me scarpering for cover. Last week, I found out a colleague of mine had been "let go" and would not be replaced. This essentially means more work for me, unsurprisingly. I did half expect this would happen at some point, but the vibe seems to be that if could be anyone next, myself included.
In truth, I wouldn't care too much about getting the chop: it's the waiting that kills you, the not knowing from one day to next whether that next phone call is going to be from management asking you to "pop round" for a talk. I like having some control over my life, and this situation isn't talking a lot away.
Then, today, I return home and see I have an email from my landlord. They're looking to sell the building and it could mean I'll be on my uppers in a few months. Superb.
Returning to the point of employment, I noted the Daily Mail did a hatchet job against public sector workers a couple of days ago. An apparent 'whistle-blower' penned an article stating he and his colleagues at one local authority basically lazed about all day, took long lunches, plenty of sick leave and turned in whatever time they wanted.
Now, I don't doubt there may well be some workers like this in some council offices, as I'm sure in any other office. No doubt there's a few journos out there who've put a liquid lunch or two on expenses over the years. But this kind of extreme propaganda strikes me as being nothing more than softening public opinion against one section of workers before cuts are made.
We seem to be getting to a point again now where people will be saying "well, you're lucky to have a job". Is that a healthy attitude? Lucky to have a nice car, yes. You might be lucky to have a Playstation 3 and plasma TV, of course - we're all privileged to be able to obtain such luxury items. But lucky to have a job?
Perhaps I'm being extreme and it won't come to that point, yet with the top bods in power talking about "pain" in the future, I can't help but feel the future is looking pretty bleak for a lot of people.
It's not even as if I'm totally paranoid about it: the start of the last two weeks has been the shrapnel of bad news explode in my trench, sending me scarpering for cover. Last week, I found out a colleague of mine had been "let go" and would not be replaced. This essentially means more work for me, unsurprisingly. I did half expect this would happen at some point, but the vibe seems to be that if could be anyone next, myself included.
In truth, I wouldn't care too much about getting the chop: it's the waiting that kills you, the not knowing from one day to next whether that next phone call is going to be from management asking you to "pop round" for a talk. I like having some control over my life, and this situation isn't talking a lot away.
Then, today, I return home and see I have an email from my landlord. They're looking to sell the building and it could mean I'll be on my uppers in a few months. Superb.
Returning to the point of employment, I noted the Daily Mail did a hatchet job against public sector workers a couple of days ago. An apparent 'whistle-blower' penned an article stating he and his colleagues at one local authority basically lazed about all day, took long lunches, plenty of sick leave and turned in whatever time they wanted.
Now, I don't doubt there may well be some workers like this in some council offices, as I'm sure in any other office. No doubt there's a few journos out there who've put a liquid lunch or two on expenses over the years. But this kind of extreme propaganda strikes me as being nothing more than softening public opinion against one section of workers before cuts are made.
We seem to be getting to a point again now where people will be saying "well, you're lucky to have a job". Is that a healthy attitude? Lucky to have a nice car, yes. You might be lucky to have a Playstation 3 and plasma TV, of course - we're all privileged to be able to obtain such luxury items. But lucky to have a job?
Perhaps I'm being extreme and it won't come to that point, yet with the top bods in power talking about "pain" in the future, I can't help but feel the future is looking pretty bleak for a lot of people.
Sunday 27 June 2010
Three Lions In The Bin
So, farewell England.
I've resisted writing about the World Cup on this here blog, as I know a fair few of you good people reading have little or no interest in the beautiful game. But as a follower, I want to write few notes for posterity prior to what (I believe) will be out a massive outpouring of grief, rage and excuses in the wake of this 4-1 thrashing.
First of all, I'd like to offer a huge "fuck off" to the Daily Star for their headline on Thursday: "Job Done...Now For The Hun!" I mean, really, whichever sub-editor wrote that, I hope you spend hours in the shower, scrubbing bleach onto your skin and whimpering "The dirt! It won't come off!" right until you're working away to the bone. Not even my grandfather, who actually spent a bit of time fighting the German nation in 1944-45, referred to them as "the Hun".
Quite why anyone thought a narrow 1-0 win over a nation with a population about the same as Greater Manchester meant beating Germany was a reasonable shout seems beyond me, but hey, hindsight can be a cruel mistress.
In the wake of this, it seems likely to me that Fabio Cappello will soon jump or be pushed and an English replacement will be chosen, most likely Roy Hodgson or Harry Redknapp. This, we will be told, will mean the "passion" will be put back into the team by someone who knows what the England team means to the nation.
Yet I ask, is passion really the answer? Did the German team run around like lunatics? Or did they show cohesion, teamwork and calmness to put four goals past a hapless defence? Their team may not possess many world-class talents, but being organised and having each player know their role can work wonders.
I've always been of the belief that the source of the problem with England's national team goes back to how we coach from the earliest age. Speaking from personal experience, I was often lumped at centre-half, on the basis I was a good foot taller than anyone else my age. Now, it didn't matter I wasn't the best tackler and a useless header, I was the guy to cancel out the other teams "big lad", who would be playing centre forward. The few times I did find myself with the ball at my feet, I was under orders to "hoof it forward".
When I got older, I learnt that in Europe, they tend to do things different. There's less emphasis on getting kids playing full-size games as soon as possible. More on getting players to learn to use the ball with skill. Perhaps this is why the Netherlands, population 16 million, produces way more quality players than England, population nearly three times more.
Back when England failed to qualify for the 2008 European Championships, I remember seeing Trevor Brooking bleat on about a "root and branch" investigation of how football was organised and ran in this country. I laughed then, and for good reason: nothing will change as long as the status quo continues to make piles of cash from the Premiership. The media will bay for blood and they'll get it - but until they point the finger of blame where it's deserved, England will continue to be shown up by the very best (or even just the above average) on the world stage.
I've resisted writing about the World Cup on this here blog, as I know a fair few of you good people reading have little or no interest in the beautiful game. But as a follower, I want to write few notes for posterity prior to what (I believe) will be out a massive outpouring of grief, rage and excuses in the wake of this 4-1 thrashing.
First of all, I'd like to offer a huge "fuck off" to the Daily Star for their headline on Thursday: "Job Done...Now For The Hun!" I mean, really, whichever sub-editor wrote that, I hope you spend hours in the shower, scrubbing bleach onto your skin and whimpering "The dirt! It won't come off!" right until you're working away to the bone. Not even my grandfather, who actually spent a bit of time fighting the German nation in 1944-45, referred to them as "the Hun".
Quite why anyone thought a narrow 1-0 win over a nation with a population about the same as Greater Manchester meant beating Germany was a reasonable shout seems beyond me, but hey, hindsight can be a cruel mistress.
In the wake of this, it seems likely to me that Fabio Cappello will soon jump or be pushed and an English replacement will be chosen, most likely Roy Hodgson or Harry Redknapp. This, we will be told, will mean the "passion" will be put back into the team by someone who knows what the England team means to the nation.
Yet I ask, is passion really the answer? Did the German team run around like lunatics? Or did they show cohesion, teamwork and calmness to put four goals past a hapless defence? Their team may not possess many world-class talents, but being organised and having each player know their role can work wonders.
I've always been of the belief that the source of the problem with England's national team goes back to how we coach from the earliest age. Speaking from personal experience, I was often lumped at centre-half, on the basis I was a good foot taller than anyone else my age. Now, it didn't matter I wasn't the best tackler and a useless header, I was the guy to cancel out the other teams "big lad", who would be playing centre forward. The few times I did find myself with the ball at my feet, I was under orders to "hoof it forward".
When I got older, I learnt that in Europe, they tend to do things different. There's less emphasis on getting kids playing full-size games as soon as possible. More on getting players to learn to use the ball with skill. Perhaps this is why the Netherlands, population 16 million, produces way more quality players than England, population nearly three times more.
Back when England failed to qualify for the 2008 European Championships, I remember seeing Trevor Brooking bleat on about a "root and branch" investigation of how football was organised and ran in this country. I laughed then, and for good reason: nothing will change as long as the status quo continues to make piles of cash from the Premiership. The media will bay for blood and they'll get it - but until they point the finger of blame where it's deserved, England will continue to be shown up by the very best (or even just the above average) on the world stage.
Friday 25 June 2010
Waste Paper
Kudos to MacGuffin over at the excellent Tabloid Watch for bringing up Copeland MP Jamie Reed's justified attack at sections of the media over the West Cumbria shootings.
http://tabloid-watch.blogspot.com/2010/06/cumbria-mp-launches-attack-on-media.html
He's essentially spot on and surmises why I haven't bothered to buy a newspaper for over five years. Perhaps it's telling that Reed is a Whitehaven lad, and feels a bit more protective of his constituency than some of his colleagues. In any case, at a time where it's hard to approve of anything a politician does, my hat is tipped to Jamie.
http://tabloid-watch.blogspot.com/2010/06/cumbria-mp-launches-attack-on-media.html
He's essentially spot on and surmises why I haven't bothered to buy a newspaper for over five years. Perhaps it's telling that Reed is a Whitehaven lad, and feels a bit more protective of his constituency than some of his colleagues. In any case, at a time where it's hard to approve of anything a politician does, my hat is tipped to Jamie.
Thursday 24 June 2010
Compulsive Family Entertainment
Yesterday, I finished watching the third series of "The Venture Bros" and came to the conclusion that it's the best show going at the moment, and perhaps since the Simpsons was at its peak, way back in the last century.
Like the Simpsons, it focuses on a family unit (of sorts): Dr 'Rusty' Venture, one time boy adventurer, now pill-popping scientist; Brock Samson, bodyguard and "Swedish Murder Machine"; robot dogsbody HELPeR and the characters of the shows name, twins Dean and Hank. Episodes usually circle around the Doc's attempts to get some cash, with little concern for morals or ethics, including reanimating the dead to be used as manual labour and creating machines using parts from orphaned children.
Generally standing against them is Dr Venture's nemesis (at least in his own mind), the Monarch, who takes his name and outfit from being raised by the species of butterfly. He's aided by a small army of henchman and his partner in life and crime, Dr Girlfriend. Other bad guys who fade into view include "two bit Doctor Doom" Baron Ünderbheit and the sinister Phantom Limb.
The show comes from the AdultSwim stable, which also includes several other big favourites of mine: Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Robot Chicken, Frisky Dingo and Harvey Birdman. Venture Bros tops the pile, however, because of the wonderful sense of utter failure the creators fill into the world they've created: Rusty is a failed scientist, his father was a brilliant scientist but a terrible father and the Monarch is a pathetic villain who routinely fails in his aims.
Plus, it's also extremely funny. Taking cues from old cartoons such as 'Johnny Quest' (who makes a cameo as a strung-out junkie), it rips into the adventurer style, with the clear implication that the Venture clan would be long dead were it not for the protection of Brock, one of the few characters who show any skill or competency at that they do. Indeed, he frequently takes great pleasure in slaughtering hordes of henchmen with little else but his knife.
As with any good show, much of the pleasure is from the side characters. A particular favourite of mine is the next-door-neighbour/necromancer Doctor Orpheus, whose tendency to over-dramatise just about anything provides many a chuckle.
But for the main part, it's the brilliantly skilled writing that makes the show stand a mile above most the crap out there. Creators Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer have created something fab and wonderful here, especially with their eye for cute references: how can you not love a show where a bisexual Sean Connery-soundalike secret agent is named after the bassist from the Specials?
Currently, I'm eagerly awaiting getting hold of a copy of the fourth series. My only hope is that they, unlike the bods behind the Simpsons, know when and how to end it. For now, though, the unfamiliar wouldn't make many better decisions then to get hold of the first series on DVD.
Like the Simpsons, it focuses on a family unit (of sorts): Dr 'Rusty' Venture, one time boy adventurer, now pill-popping scientist; Brock Samson, bodyguard and "Swedish Murder Machine"; robot dogsbody HELPeR and the characters of the shows name, twins Dean and Hank. Episodes usually circle around the Doc's attempts to get some cash, with little concern for morals or ethics, including reanimating the dead to be used as manual labour and creating machines using parts from orphaned children.
Generally standing against them is Dr Venture's nemesis (at least in his own mind), the Monarch, who takes his name and outfit from being raised by the species of butterfly. He's aided by a small army of henchman and his partner in life and crime, Dr Girlfriend. Other bad guys who fade into view include "two bit Doctor Doom" Baron Ünderbheit and the sinister Phantom Limb.
The show comes from the AdultSwim stable, which also includes several other big favourites of mine: Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Robot Chicken, Frisky Dingo and Harvey Birdman. Venture Bros tops the pile, however, because of the wonderful sense of utter failure the creators fill into the world they've created: Rusty is a failed scientist, his father was a brilliant scientist but a terrible father and the Monarch is a pathetic villain who routinely fails in his aims.
Plus, it's also extremely funny. Taking cues from old cartoons such as 'Johnny Quest' (who makes a cameo as a strung-out junkie), it rips into the adventurer style, with the clear implication that the Venture clan would be long dead were it not for the protection of Brock, one of the few characters who show any skill or competency at that they do. Indeed, he frequently takes great pleasure in slaughtering hordes of henchmen with little else but his knife.
As with any good show, much of the pleasure is from the side characters. A particular favourite of mine is the next-door-neighbour/necromancer Doctor Orpheus, whose tendency to over-dramatise just about anything provides many a chuckle.
But for the main part, it's the brilliantly skilled writing that makes the show stand a mile above most the crap out there. Creators Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer have created something fab and wonderful here, especially with their eye for cute references: how can you not love a show where a bisexual Sean Connery-soundalike secret agent is named after the bassist from the Specials?
Currently, I'm eagerly awaiting getting hold of a copy of the fourth series. My only hope is that they, unlike the bods behind the Simpsons, know when and how to end it. For now, though, the unfamiliar wouldn't make many better decisions then to get hold of the first series on DVD.
Tuesday 22 June 2010
Generation Kill
Whilst on the train on Thursday night, I noticed an advertisement at Chorley station for the latest Oasis compilation album, released I presume to milk the last few pounds out of the cash cow now that the abattoir has called. The tagline was something like "The soundtrack to a generation!", which made me chuckle a bit at first.
Then a terrible thought came to me: is the Oasis generation my very own? Quite probably: they are the most successful (at least in the UK) band over the last 20 years. Every single one of their original albums has topped the charts and, by my reckoning, they've had more chart topping singles than any rock band since the Beatles.
That band being one I remember plenty of early comparisons being made to. Even at 15, I never understood that. Actually, listening to Revolver or Abbey Road for the first time was a far more exciting moment than when I did finally get round to Definitely Maybe. Sure, it had a certain energy, mainly through force of personality of the Gallaghers, but the lyrics seemed even worse than the angsty, horrific nonsense I was writing at the time. Listening back years later, only Live Forever and Slide Away stood up to this listener's scrutiny.
Yet, they remained there at the top, seeing out all the competition (Pulp, Blur and the rest of the Britpop crowd) and inspiring their own followers, such as the equally tiresome Kasabian. Everytime a new album was on the way, I wondered if they really would surprise me and the world - after all, the stuff Noel Gallagher did with the Chemical Brothers wasn't too shabby at all. But no: the same old claptrap - the acoustic song, the big rocker, the one sung by Noel.
And yet it sold by the shedload and they remained one of the few genuine British stadium rock groups. I figured people bought their albums the same way people keep buying the same newspaper even though they disagree with the majority of it ("Yes, well, but the spelling is always good").
I recently saw Stewart Copeland on TV explaining that bands tended to be either 'gangs' or 'mercenaries'. One is made up of friends from similar backgrounds who get a band together to cure boredom, get girls etc etc. Happy Mondays and the Ramones would be good examples. The other type are generally well-honed musicians who seek the best possible people to work with, regardless of friendship or personal feelings. The Police, Led Zep and pretty much any supergroup ever fall into this category.
Oasis are a rarity in that they've been both. Starting out as a gang of mates from South Manchester, along with the singers big brother, they ended up as a cartoon based around two brothers and a cast of more talented sidemen. The most weird part is that the music didn't really change: same old chugging rock with horrific lyrics, making them the Status Quo of their age.
And now they're gone, and for good, with some luck. Maybe in years to come, people will parody the Liam Gallagher walk/talk/look the same way they have done Boy George or the glam rockers. Children in the future will gasp that their dad actually owned an Oasis album the same way a kid in the 80s would about an ELP or Yes LP. If Oasis were the soundtrack to my generation, then I'm glad I'm getting older.
Then a terrible thought came to me: is the Oasis generation my very own? Quite probably: they are the most successful (at least in the UK) band over the last 20 years. Every single one of their original albums has topped the charts and, by my reckoning, they've had more chart topping singles than any rock band since the Beatles.
That band being one I remember plenty of early comparisons being made to. Even at 15, I never understood that. Actually, listening to Revolver or Abbey Road for the first time was a far more exciting moment than when I did finally get round to Definitely Maybe. Sure, it had a certain energy, mainly through force of personality of the Gallaghers, but the lyrics seemed even worse than the angsty, horrific nonsense I was writing at the time. Listening back years later, only Live Forever and Slide Away stood up to this listener's scrutiny.
Yet, they remained there at the top, seeing out all the competition (Pulp, Blur and the rest of the Britpop crowd) and inspiring their own followers, such as the equally tiresome Kasabian. Everytime a new album was on the way, I wondered if they really would surprise me and the world - after all, the stuff Noel Gallagher did with the Chemical Brothers wasn't too shabby at all. But no: the same old claptrap - the acoustic song, the big rocker, the one sung by Noel.
And yet it sold by the shedload and they remained one of the few genuine British stadium rock groups. I figured people bought their albums the same way people keep buying the same newspaper even though they disagree with the majority of it ("Yes, well, but the spelling is always good").
I recently saw Stewart Copeland on TV explaining that bands tended to be either 'gangs' or 'mercenaries'. One is made up of friends from similar backgrounds who get a band together to cure boredom, get girls etc etc. Happy Mondays and the Ramones would be good examples. The other type are generally well-honed musicians who seek the best possible people to work with, regardless of friendship or personal feelings. The Police, Led Zep and pretty much any supergroup ever fall into this category.
Oasis are a rarity in that they've been both. Starting out as a gang of mates from South Manchester, along with the singers big brother, they ended up as a cartoon based around two brothers and a cast of more talented sidemen. The most weird part is that the music didn't really change: same old chugging rock with horrific lyrics, making them the Status Quo of their age.
And now they're gone, and for good, with some luck. Maybe in years to come, people will parody the Liam Gallagher walk/talk/look the same way they have done Boy George or the glam rockers. Children in the future will gasp that their dad actually owned an Oasis album the same way a kid in the 80s would about an ELP or Yes LP. If Oasis were the soundtrack to my generation, then I'm glad I'm getting older.
Sunday 20 June 2010
Music for an Unquiet Mind
A review of Paul Simpson's new download-only albums is up on No Ripcord for y'all to have a read.
http://www.noripcord.com/reviews/music/paul-simpson/man-in-a-burning-anorak
You can pick up both at the Wild Swans website, and I'll repeat my recommendation that Vol. 2 is a good an album of songs as you're likely to hear this year.
http://www.thewildswans.co.uk/cart/
http://www.noripcord.com/reviews/music/paul-simpson/man-in-a-burning-anorak
You can pick up both at the Wild Swans website, and I'll repeat my recommendation that Vol. 2 is a good an album of songs as you're likely to hear this year.
http://www.thewildswans.co.uk/cart/
Friday 18 June 2010
Heartland
Yesterday, I travelled back to my hometown for the first time since the shootings a few weeks ago. The press have now gone, moved onto a different story, the funerals of the victims are nearly are nearly complete and as I expected, life has gone on.
Walking round the town centre this morning, there was nothing to suggest something terrible had happened. A brass band played in the market area, card shops spill over with people buying Father's Day cards and my mother seems to know at least one person on every street.
It would more that than likely be the same had it been any other town. Hungerford was probably the same when the same kind of incident happened there. But walking from my parents' house to town reminds me how much Whitehaven has been hit over recent years. Sellafield continues to cut jobs, a textile factory at the bottom of our road has been shut down and demolished and the gap on the horizon were a chemical works once stood still strikes me as strange.
I'm aware, again, that Whitehaven is not the only one-time industrial town to suffer like this. There are countless others across Britain, pretty much forgotten about and left on the scrapheap. It's unlikely anything will change with a new government, so all the people can do is shrug, try to carry on and wonder who'll play in goal for England tonight.
Walking round the town centre this morning, there was nothing to suggest something terrible had happened. A brass band played in the market area, card shops spill over with people buying Father's Day cards and my mother seems to know at least one person on every street.
It would more that than likely be the same had it been any other town. Hungerford was probably the same when the same kind of incident happened there. But walking from my parents' house to town reminds me how much Whitehaven has been hit over recent years. Sellafield continues to cut jobs, a textile factory at the bottom of our road has been shut down and demolished and the gap on the horizon were a chemical works once stood still strikes me as strange.
I'm aware, again, that Whitehaven is not the only one-time industrial town to suffer like this. There are countless others across Britain, pretty much forgotten about and left on the scrapheap. It's unlikely anything will change with a new government, so all the people can do is shrug, try to carry on and wonder who'll play in goal for England tonight.
Wednesday 16 June 2010
Make Yourself Dance
One of the great things about the internet is how it allows you to read, see or hear things you might not otherwise.
As I've previously posted, I love the Beat. Through youtube, I've managed to hear a couple of their tunes I've found hard to track down on albums and compilation CDs, though one can be picked up on the US version of the What Is Beat? best-of. I think both are brilliant, so check them out if you have time.
- Hit It (Auto Erotic)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ks_bamhVbhU&feature=related
- Which Side Of The Bed?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgIo6jcpylE
These are the a and b-side of a single released in 1981, which failed to get to the UK top 40. While the band had passed their commercial peak in this country, it still staggers me how it didn't do better. A guess would be the title putting off radio. In any case, it made my day to finally get my ears round both songs.
As I've previously posted, I love the Beat. Through youtube, I've managed to hear a couple of their tunes I've found hard to track down on albums and compilation CDs, though one can be picked up on the US version of the What Is Beat? best-of. I think both are brilliant, so check them out if you have time.
- Hit It (Auto Erotic)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ks_bamhVbhU&feature=related
- Which Side Of The Bed?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgIo6jcpylE
These are the a and b-side of a single released in 1981, which failed to get to the UK top 40. While the band had passed their commercial peak in this country, it still staggers me how it didn't do better. A guess would be the title putting off radio. In any case, it made my day to finally get my ears round both songs.
Tuesday 15 June 2010
Radio Radio
As previously posted, we've started having the radio on in the office. Inevitably, nobody wanted to listen to whatever was on in the first place and it came down to listening to one of the two stations: Radio 1 or Xfm.
Now, personally, this is like having to choose between being stabbed in your left or right hand. Both are painful, but I do a lot of useful things with my right hand, so my vote went to Xfm and so it's that station which currently buzzes away in the background.
What I have noticed in a short time is how well it sticks to a format. There's the 'modern classic' bands who get their greatest hits played (Oasis, Foo Fighters, Green Day) alongside the likes of the Killers and Kings of Leon. Even Franz Ferdinand are getting a couple of plays, and I thought their moment had long passed. I actually had my first exposure to Florence and the Machine - I preferred my ignorance.
It's depressing how incredibly safe it is, which I would hazard a guess is down to commercial reasons. People want to hear songs they know, especially in the daytime to provide background sounds to a workday. It reminds me of those MOR or AOR stations they have in America - except we're told this is 'alternative' music that we're having thrown at us over the airwaves. Of course, the alternative is always swallowed by the mainstream, the same way large department stores sell punk themed t-shirts. Being a proud music snob, my temptation is always to stop one of those student types with the Ramones shirt and ask them to name five of their songs. Terrible, perhaps, but just the way I am.
To hope for anything else may well be unrealistic. The Oldham-based station Revolution attempted to plug local bands and work on a less obvious playlist (I heard the acoustic version of the Chameleons' Swamp Thing on their daytime show once, which staggered me) and ended up with minimal listening figures. Hence why I, and I would guess many people, can thank the development of the Ipod or Mp3 player that can hold more than enough songs to get you through the day.
On the plus side, Xfm does not have DJs so irritating they make you want to rip out your own eyeballs with a screwdriver and use them to stuff your ears up to cease the pain.
Now, personally, this is like having to choose between being stabbed in your left or right hand. Both are painful, but I do a lot of useful things with my right hand, so my vote went to Xfm and so it's that station which currently buzzes away in the background.
What I have noticed in a short time is how well it sticks to a format. There's the 'modern classic' bands who get their greatest hits played (Oasis, Foo Fighters, Green Day) alongside the likes of the Killers and Kings of Leon. Even Franz Ferdinand are getting a couple of plays, and I thought their moment had long passed. I actually had my first exposure to Florence and the Machine - I preferred my ignorance.
It's depressing how incredibly safe it is, which I would hazard a guess is down to commercial reasons. People want to hear songs they know, especially in the daytime to provide background sounds to a workday. It reminds me of those MOR or AOR stations they have in America - except we're told this is 'alternative' music that we're having thrown at us over the airwaves. Of course, the alternative is always swallowed by the mainstream, the same way large department stores sell punk themed t-shirts. Being a proud music snob, my temptation is always to stop one of those student types with the Ramones shirt and ask them to name five of their songs. Terrible, perhaps, but just the way I am.
To hope for anything else may well be unrealistic. The Oldham-based station Revolution attempted to plug local bands and work on a less obvious playlist (I heard the acoustic version of the Chameleons' Swamp Thing on their daytime show once, which staggered me) and ended up with minimal listening figures. Hence why I, and I would guess many people, can thank the development of the Ipod or Mp3 player that can hold more than enough songs to get you through the day.
On the plus side, Xfm does not have DJs so irritating they make you want to rip out your own eyeballs with a screwdriver and use them to stuff your ears up to cease the pain.
Monday 14 June 2010
On the Factory Floor
The Chameleons were a band I came around to too late to see in person. Though they initially split in the late 80s, a reformation happened back in the early part of the last decade which also produced a pretty good album. However, it all fell apart again a matter of months before I got hold of a copy of their Strange Times album, becoming instantly smitten.
Since then, I've seen Burgess do several solo concerts where the main focus has been on his extensive solo career, with a few Chameleons highlights thrown in, and I've always enjoyed the shows. He’s a natural frontman with plenty of charisma and energy and at a charity show in Middleton Civic Hall, I was lucky enough to see him play through a version of Alternative TV’s Splitting In Two (a feature of the old band’s set) with both John Lever and Reg Smithies. Reg, incidentally, looked pretty much exactly as he did in 1982.
More recently, drummer Lever elected to start doing a set of Chameleons’ songs with his current band. Certain fans grumbled, but a guy has to make a living and those are his songs as much as anybodies. A gig at Manchester’s Roadhouse saw Burgess join in – I was there and it was an excellent night, so when the chance to see the same line-up (now billed as Chameleons-Vox) at the new Fac251 club came up, it was a no-brainer.
Firstly, the venue itself is no great shakes. Tiny bars and narrow stairs would seem to be a recipe for disaster, but perhaps that the clientele would mostly be student types, the potential for aggro is low. The Factory motif is central to design (portrait of Wilson by the door, as with the Hacienda, the typeface on all signs) and the sound wasn't too shabby either.
On entry, we’re pointed to the upstairs bar and a pathetic range of drinks. After sitting through England bravely battling to a draw against the States, everyone troops back downstairs and politely watches the support band trip through a set of Joy Division/Sonic Youth type riffs. A glance round the room shows a fair mix of ages: plenty of those who saw them first time round and a number like myself, who've discovered them after the fact. For us, we know this may well the closest we get to seeing the full band for ourselves.
When they do finally get on stage, it’s to a loud reception. Burgess somehow manages to not sweat bricks in his Doc Martens and jacket, though it still looks a bit weird seeing him on stage without a bass. From the off, it’s pretty much full on: In Shreds powers along, fuelled by Lever’s drums – he’s worth being here alone and he’s not lost any of the stamina or skill that made him one of the best of his generation.
The rest of the band does their job ably. The guitarists may not be in the league of Smithies and Dave Fielding, but not many are. The set maintains its early peak, running through all your favourites are more: personal faves would be Nostalgia (appropriate on such a night), Perfume Garden and Signing Rule Britannia (While The Walls Close In). As ever, Burgess peppers his own songs with grabbed lyrics from others: Get Back, Break On Through (To The Other Side) and White Riot are make their way in, somehow, while men in their late 40s energetically mosh away with people who could be their own children. An interesting sight.
The main set ends with Second Skin, with everyone singing the synth parts. Then it’s all back on for the run through Swamp Thing. We all go home happy as the kids outside line up to enter the club night that will carry on till the early hours.
At one point in the show, Burgess made a point that while some people have criticised the rebirth of the Factory brand, it’ll work until we find something better. As I left Fac251 to a room of students bouncing to Happy Mondays and Stone Roses, I wondered later just when the Manchester music scene will finally find something to help lift the weight of the past.
Since then, I've seen Burgess do several solo concerts where the main focus has been on his extensive solo career, with a few Chameleons highlights thrown in, and I've always enjoyed the shows. He’s a natural frontman with plenty of charisma and energy and at a charity show in Middleton Civic Hall, I was lucky enough to see him play through a version of Alternative TV’s Splitting In Two (a feature of the old band’s set) with both John Lever and Reg Smithies. Reg, incidentally, looked pretty much exactly as he did in 1982.
More recently, drummer Lever elected to start doing a set of Chameleons’ songs with his current band. Certain fans grumbled, but a guy has to make a living and those are his songs as much as anybodies. A gig at Manchester’s Roadhouse saw Burgess join in – I was there and it was an excellent night, so when the chance to see the same line-up (now billed as Chameleons-Vox) at the new Fac251 club came up, it was a no-brainer.
Firstly, the venue itself is no great shakes. Tiny bars and narrow stairs would seem to be a recipe for disaster, but perhaps that the clientele would mostly be student types, the potential for aggro is low. The Factory motif is central to design (portrait of Wilson by the door, as with the Hacienda, the typeface on all signs) and the sound wasn't too shabby either.
On entry, we’re pointed to the upstairs bar and a pathetic range of drinks. After sitting through England bravely battling to a draw against the States, everyone troops back downstairs and politely watches the support band trip through a set of Joy Division/Sonic Youth type riffs. A glance round the room shows a fair mix of ages: plenty of those who saw them first time round and a number like myself, who've discovered them after the fact. For us, we know this may well the closest we get to seeing the full band for ourselves.
When they do finally get on stage, it’s to a loud reception. Burgess somehow manages to not sweat bricks in his Doc Martens and jacket, though it still looks a bit weird seeing him on stage without a bass. From the off, it’s pretty much full on: In Shreds powers along, fuelled by Lever’s drums – he’s worth being here alone and he’s not lost any of the stamina or skill that made him one of the best of his generation.
The rest of the band does their job ably. The guitarists may not be in the league of Smithies and Dave Fielding, but not many are. The set maintains its early peak, running through all your favourites are more: personal faves would be Nostalgia (appropriate on such a night), Perfume Garden and Signing Rule Britannia (While The Walls Close In). As ever, Burgess peppers his own songs with grabbed lyrics from others: Get Back, Break On Through (To The Other Side) and White Riot are make their way in, somehow, while men in their late 40s energetically mosh away with people who could be their own children. An interesting sight.
The main set ends with Second Skin, with everyone singing the synth parts. Then it’s all back on for the run through Swamp Thing. We all go home happy as the kids outside line up to enter the club night that will carry on till the early hours.
At one point in the show, Burgess made a point that while some people have criticised the rebirth of the Factory brand, it’ll work until we find something better. As I left Fac251 to a room of students bouncing to Happy Mondays and Stone Roses, I wondered later just when the Manchester music scene will finally find something to help lift the weight of the past.
Sunday 13 June 2010
Ten Years
Take a look at http://www.noripcord.com/features/debate-series-2-1980s. I've made some kind of attempt to defend the music produced in the 1980s while an esteemed colleague argues that it was a wretched time full of crap.
If you agree with me, be a darling and comment saying so.
If you agree with me, be a darling and comment saying so.
Friday 11 June 2010
The Place in the Side of Our Lives
Over the last two days, my patience at work has been running thin. Sick of phone calls demanding information, and now, sick of the people in the office going on about their personal lives.
At one point on Wednesday, I was all set to hand in my cards and just quit. Fuck it all off and spend some time working out a new direction to take. Of course, I would probably just sit on my arse for a few months before panicking about everything. But the idea of just answering another call from the boss with "Yes, OK. I'd like to hand in my notice" was there, and continues to crop up.
All this is the background to something a bit more positive - the buzz you get when a song you love comes on the radio. In this instance, it was was Pretty In Pink by the Psychedelic Furs. The original as well, not the cleaned-up version that was their biggest hit when the film of the same name come out.
Though I have the song on my mp3 player, so I can listen to it anytime I want, it feels different when it comes over the airwaves, as if the DJ picked it especially for you. It's also a song that can make me insanely jealous, from a lyrical perspective. I would have loved to have written that song and it's just a shame the film didn't even vaguely follow the same narrative.
It also reminds me of driving down Santa Monica Boulevard when I visited LA some years ago and it came on the radio then. Along with Crash by the Primitives (the first song I heard in California) and Tenderness by General Public, it's a song that always reminds me of the summer of 2005: Japanese beer, spending a fortune in Amoeba Records and staring out over the ocean.
At one point on Wednesday, I was all set to hand in my cards and just quit. Fuck it all off and spend some time working out a new direction to take. Of course, I would probably just sit on my arse for a few months before panicking about everything. But the idea of just answering another call from the boss with "Yes, OK. I'd like to hand in my notice" was there, and continues to crop up.
All this is the background to something a bit more positive - the buzz you get when a song you love comes on the radio. In this instance, it was was Pretty In Pink by the Psychedelic Furs. The original as well, not the cleaned-up version that was their biggest hit when the film of the same name come out.
Though I have the song on my mp3 player, so I can listen to it anytime I want, it feels different when it comes over the airwaves, as if the DJ picked it especially for you. It's also a song that can make me insanely jealous, from a lyrical perspective. I would have loved to have written that song and it's just a shame the film didn't even vaguely follow the same narrative.
It also reminds me of driving down Santa Monica Boulevard when I visited LA some years ago and it came on the radio then. Along with Crash by the Primitives (the first song I heard in California) and Tenderness by General Public, it's a song that always reminds me of the summer of 2005: Japanese beer, spending a fortune in Amoeba Records and staring out over the ocean.
Thursday 10 June 2010
An Agreeable Stance
A few minor things that irritate me greatly:
1) Random people who remark on my height. Just yesterday two teenage girls said as I passed 'He's tall!'. Really? I hadn't noticed. It's not even as if I'm that big - I'm hardly Andre the Giant. My brother got me a badge once that said 'Don't tell me I am tall, you fucking midget'. I wish I still had it.
2) People at gigs who come in late but try to force their way through the crowd to the front. I take great pleasure in adopting a "thou shall not pass" stance. Arrive earlier, dickhead.
3) The evil ginger tom next door that hisses and lunges at the other neighbourhood cats. He'll get a size 12 up the arse if I see him doing that again, the big bully.
4) People who ask me questions about Newcastle, just because they think my accent is a little similar. Well, it's not. Go watch some reruns of Byker Grove and get back to me, you ignorant tit.
5) The fact that the media are already setting up Wayne Rooney to take a huge fall in the World Cup, Apparently, his temper is like a faulty Soviet nuclear reactor, waiting to blow and take the dreams and hopes of a nation with it. Part of me hopes it does, and after receiving his marching orders, he sparks out John Terry on the way back to the dressing room.
1) Random people who remark on my height. Just yesterday two teenage girls said as I passed 'He's tall!'. Really? I hadn't noticed. It's not even as if I'm that big - I'm hardly Andre the Giant. My brother got me a badge once that said 'Don't tell me I am tall, you fucking midget'. I wish I still had it.
2) People at gigs who come in late but try to force their way through the crowd to the front. I take great pleasure in adopting a "thou shall not pass" stance. Arrive earlier, dickhead.
3) The evil ginger tom next door that hisses and lunges at the other neighbourhood cats. He'll get a size 12 up the arse if I see him doing that again, the big bully.
4) People who ask me questions about Newcastle, just because they think my accent is a little similar. Well, it's not. Go watch some reruns of Byker Grove and get back to me, you ignorant tit.
5) The fact that the media are already setting up Wayne Rooney to take a huge fall in the World Cup, Apparently, his temper is like a faulty Soviet nuclear reactor, waiting to blow and take the dreams and hopes of a nation with it. Part of me hopes it does, and after receiving his marching orders, he sparks out John Terry on the way back to the dressing room.
Wednesday 9 June 2010
Go Frank Go
Since I was a little kid, I've loved comic books. There's pictures of me from Christmas 1983 in a Spiderman outfit with a huge smile on my face. I think I even believed it would allow me to stick to walls like the man himself, an illusion that didn't last too long when put to the test.
Though Superman never did much for me - even as a young 'un, I could see how boring he was - issues of X-Men and Batman would be eagerly read alongside more English fare such as Beezer, the Beano (just for the Bash Street Kids) and Roy of the Rovers. These days, thanks to people like Frank Miller and Alan Moore, comics are acceptable even to people pushing 30, like me. Ahem.
My own particular favourites these days would be the Question (as written by Dennis O'Neil) and the Punisher (as written by Garth Ennis). In the case of the latter, the 60 issue series under the 'Marvel Max' banner is amongst the best things I've ever read by in any medium.
But I ask myself why it is I enjoyed so. After all, Frank Castle (aka the Punisher) is essentially a ruthless killing machine who has no purpose in life but to execute criminals in all manner of brutal fashions. Through the run, more extreme moments include: removing limbs with a fire axe, gouging an eye out of a spook to get information and shooting a senile mafia Don on his 100th birthday. One particular storyline saw our Frank punish a group trafficking sex slaves in particularly gruesome fashion, including some amateur stomach surgery.
So why do I read these comics with glee? Do I enjoy seeing such bad (albeit fictional) people suffer their comeuppance in such a way? Perhaps I like to think of the ethics of what the Punisher does. Is he a psychopath? It's made clear throughout that Castle takes extreme care to ensure innocent civilians are never harmed by his actions and the times he is apprehended by police, he merely administers a mild beating to ensure his escape.
Regardless: what Ennis does do, as he did with his also-excellent 'Preacher' series, is give us a real insight into the character of Frank Castle. Unlike with most comics, Frank has aged - he's a Vietnam vet moving closer to 60, who's spent over 30 years on his self-perpetuating war. He sees no end in sight and doesn't look for one, fighting Russian gangs, the Mafia and ex-IRA members with equal deadly force.
Ennis also tied up two ends of Castle's life with the one-shot books 'Born' and 'The End'. The former shows us him in Vietnam, through the eyes of a young soldier who sees Captain Castle as his only way out of the hell of war. The latter shows him in a post-apocalyptic New York, searching for a cabal of figures hidden from the destruction who he believes responsible for what happened. Despite pleas from the group that they remain the only chance for humanity to emerge from the chaos and ashes, Frank dispatches them all with the justification of "The human race. You've seen what that leads to".
So, yes. As much as the Punisher can be seen as an extreme right-wing reaction to problems of crime and social disorder, Ennis never lets him slip into parody. Particularly enjoyable to me was an episode that saw our man go after uber-capitalists looking to profit from shutting electricity down in vital areas of Floria, thereby causing deaths in hospitals and the like. Frank's solution to these sharks is to... well... feed them to the sharks.
Punisher Max #1-60 deserves to be filled alongside the likes of 'Watchmen' and 'The Dark Knight Returns' as a great piece of storytelling. Anyone with an interest in (very) dark fiction would do well to check it out.
Though Superman never did much for me - even as a young 'un, I could see how boring he was - issues of X-Men and Batman would be eagerly read alongside more English fare such as Beezer, the Beano (just for the Bash Street Kids) and Roy of the Rovers. These days, thanks to people like Frank Miller and Alan Moore, comics are acceptable even to people pushing 30, like me. Ahem.
My own particular favourites these days would be the Question (as written by Dennis O'Neil) and the Punisher (as written by Garth Ennis). In the case of the latter, the 60 issue series under the 'Marvel Max' banner is amongst the best things I've ever read by in any medium.
But I ask myself why it is I enjoyed so. After all, Frank Castle (aka the Punisher) is essentially a ruthless killing machine who has no purpose in life but to execute criminals in all manner of brutal fashions. Through the run, more extreme moments include: removing limbs with a fire axe, gouging an eye out of a spook to get information and shooting a senile mafia Don on his 100th birthday. One particular storyline saw our Frank punish a group trafficking sex slaves in particularly gruesome fashion, including some amateur stomach surgery.
So why do I read these comics with glee? Do I enjoy seeing such bad (albeit fictional) people suffer their comeuppance in such a way? Perhaps I like to think of the ethics of what the Punisher does. Is he a psychopath? It's made clear throughout that Castle takes extreme care to ensure innocent civilians are never harmed by his actions and the times he is apprehended by police, he merely administers a mild beating to ensure his escape.
Regardless: what Ennis does do, as he did with his also-excellent 'Preacher' series, is give us a real insight into the character of Frank Castle. Unlike with most comics, Frank has aged - he's a Vietnam vet moving closer to 60, who's spent over 30 years on his self-perpetuating war. He sees no end in sight and doesn't look for one, fighting Russian gangs, the Mafia and ex-IRA members with equal deadly force.
Ennis also tied up two ends of Castle's life with the one-shot books 'Born' and 'The End'. The former shows us him in Vietnam, through the eyes of a young soldier who sees Captain Castle as his only way out of the hell of war. The latter shows him in a post-apocalyptic New York, searching for a cabal of figures hidden from the destruction who he believes responsible for what happened. Despite pleas from the group that they remain the only chance for humanity to emerge from the chaos and ashes, Frank dispatches them all with the justification of "The human race. You've seen what that leads to".
So, yes. As much as the Punisher can be seen as an extreme right-wing reaction to problems of crime and social disorder, Ennis never lets him slip into parody. Particularly enjoyable to me was an episode that saw our man go after uber-capitalists looking to profit from shutting electricity down in vital areas of Floria, thereby causing deaths in hospitals and the like. Frank's solution to these sharks is to... well... feed them to the sharks.
Punisher Max #1-60 deserves to be filled alongside the likes of 'Watchmen' and 'The Dark Knight Returns' as a great piece of storytelling. Anyone with an interest in (very) dark fiction would do well to check it out.
Monday 7 June 2010
A Cure for Calmness
I shouldn't do it, I really shouldn't. Not on a Monday, at least, when my mood is already as it's lowest. Yet I still check out the bilge Peter Hitchens has knocked out for the Mail on Sunday.
It's much like the way you always pick at a scab when you know you shouldn't. No good can come of it. Actually, that's unfair on a scab: at least it serves a purpose. No, reading a Peter Hitchens article is like squeezing a huge spot on the tip of your nose. It causes nothing but pain, mess and leaves you feeling dirty and stupid afterwards. Yet it also feels somehow necessary.
Handsome Pete must be something of a pin-up in Mail World. He's from a proper middle-class background, for one thing. Better still, he used to be a card-carrying Trotskyist before he turned back to the side of light and right. Chuck in a heavy dose of traditional Christianity into the mix, and leave to cool.
Now, all this is fair enough - he's allowed to be a right-wing Christian as much as I'm allowed to be a left-wing atheist. Perhaps I even enjoy the process of getting slightly miffed by his rantings, in the same way the narrator of 'Notes From The Underground' enjoyed his toothache.
This morning, however, I felt an urge to skip work, take the next train to Chez Hitchens, tie him to a chair and spend a day screaming "what the fuck are you thinking, man?" until my vocal chords are shredded. Then I'd use a tape loop of the mantra fed into earphones until I could leave him a quivering wreck. And even that would be too good for him.
See, the Hitch has seen fit to comment on what happened in West Cumbria last week. This much isn't a surprise. But where most people would accept the events as the kind of random tragedy that could (and does) happen anywhere at anytime, our man reckons he knows better. He wonders whether Derrick Bird was on prescription anti-depressants and reels off a short list of some other perpetrators of gun-related massacres, all of whom were on medication.
That's right: the sinister link between anti-depressants and waking up one day wanting to shoot as many people as possible has finally been unearthed. Honestly, it's like watching Mr Monk at work. Mind you, he doesn't actually know whether Bird had been treated for any mental illnesses. It's just a theory, an assumption. Still, no harm in using your column in a national newspaper to test it out. Maybe Harold Shipman was writing himself prescriptions for industrial amounts of prozac:
He also suggests that: "It’s possible an old-fashioned village constable, on the spot, might have done something to halt Derrick Bird, or have realised something bad was going to happen before it did". Which is a good point, as your standard member of the police is fully trained in psychoanalysis these days and can use their Derren Brown-esque mind skills to spot in seconds whether you're even going to litter, let alone go insane with firearms.
Perhaps I'm wrong on all this. Perhaps Peter Hitchens doesn't actually believe all this and he's enjoying a good laugh at mugs like me working ourselves in a frenzy over a column he knocks together 20 minutes before the deadline. Perhaps he just loves causing a stir. I really hope so, because the idea that a supposed intelligent human being can believe the kind of shit Hitchens writes is enough, to steal a quote, to make me pray for nuclear holocaust in the next five minutes.
It's much like the way you always pick at a scab when you know you shouldn't. No good can come of it. Actually, that's unfair on a scab: at least it serves a purpose. No, reading a Peter Hitchens article is like squeezing a huge spot on the tip of your nose. It causes nothing but pain, mess and leaves you feeling dirty and stupid afterwards. Yet it also feels somehow necessary.
Handsome Pete must be something of a pin-up in Mail World. He's from a proper middle-class background, for one thing. Better still, he used to be a card-carrying Trotskyist before he turned back to the side of light and right. Chuck in a heavy dose of traditional Christianity into the mix, and leave to cool.
Now, all this is fair enough - he's allowed to be a right-wing Christian as much as I'm allowed to be a left-wing atheist. Perhaps I even enjoy the process of getting slightly miffed by his rantings, in the same way the narrator of 'Notes From The Underground' enjoyed his toothache.
This morning, however, I felt an urge to skip work, take the next train to Chez Hitchens, tie him to a chair and spend a day screaming "what the fuck are you thinking, man?" until my vocal chords are shredded. Then I'd use a tape loop of the mantra fed into earphones until I could leave him a quivering wreck. And even that would be too good for him.
See, the Hitch has seen fit to comment on what happened in West Cumbria last week. This much isn't a surprise. But where most people would accept the events as the kind of random tragedy that could (and does) happen anywhere at anytime, our man reckons he knows better. He wonders whether Derrick Bird was on prescription anti-depressants and reels off a short list of some other perpetrators of gun-related massacres, all of whom were on medication.
That's right: the sinister link between anti-depressants and waking up one day wanting to shoot as many people as possible has finally been unearthed. Honestly, it's like watching Mr Monk at work. Mind you, he doesn't actually know whether Bird had been treated for any mental illnesses. It's just a theory, an assumption. Still, no harm in using your column in a national newspaper to test it out. Maybe Harold Shipman was writing himself prescriptions for industrial amounts of prozac:
He also suggests that: "It’s possible an old-fashioned village constable, on the spot, might have done something to halt Derrick Bird, or have realised something bad was going to happen before it did". Which is a good point, as your standard member of the police is fully trained in psychoanalysis these days and can use their Derren Brown-esque mind skills to spot in seconds whether you're even going to litter, let alone go insane with firearms.
Perhaps I'm wrong on all this. Perhaps Peter Hitchens doesn't actually believe all this and he's enjoying a good laugh at mugs like me working ourselves in a frenzy over a column he knocks together 20 minutes before the deadline. Perhaps he just loves causing a stir. I really hope so, because the idea that a supposed intelligent human being can believe the kind of shit Hitchens writes is enough, to steal a quote, to make me pray for nuclear holocaust in the next five minutes.
Friday 4 June 2010
The Certainty of Chance
Some days ago, I was summoned by my managers to the head office for a meeting. The main reason for this was to meet "The Big Cheese". The guy with the purse strings.
When you work for a large organisation, you rarely get to meet the people who essentially can hold your fate in their hands, especially when you're at the bottom of the heap. Not that I was actually bothered by this, but at least it gave me an opportunity to stop by the bank on my way to cash in my coppers in their handy sorting machine.
After the usual babbling about trivial crap that basically had the net result of us getting lumped with more work in order to cut costs, Big Boss strode into the room with his corporate haircut and business speak. The words filtered through my skull as I instead stared at the clock as it ticked past four. Thanks for the hard work, emphasis on how times will be tough for all of us in the coming months. All of us? Yeah, right.
What I did wonder, though, was how somebody gets to the position where they earn a huge fuck-off salary, an air condition office for themselves and a PA to pretty much organise their working life. Do you actually have to work hard, get lucky or kiss a biblically huge amount of arse? Or a combination of all three?
In turn, this led me to consider how some bands or artists are less successful than others, in terms of recognition. The Chameleons, for example, seem to me to have all the power and passion of U2, but without the pious bollocks spouted by Bono at any given opportunity. Did they not 'play the game' like U2, or was it just a succession of bad luck/choices?
Of course, recognition isn't what any creative person should be seeking, first or foremost, but I'd imagine it certainly helps when the rent needs paid.
When you work for a large organisation, you rarely get to meet the people who essentially can hold your fate in their hands, especially when you're at the bottom of the heap. Not that I was actually bothered by this, but at least it gave me an opportunity to stop by the bank on my way to cash in my coppers in their handy sorting machine.
After the usual babbling about trivial crap that basically had the net result of us getting lumped with more work in order to cut costs, Big Boss strode into the room with his corporate haircut and business speak. The words filtered through my skull as I instead stared at the clock as it ticked past four. Thanks for the hard work, emphasis on how times will be tough for all of us in the coming months. All of us? Yeah, right.
What I did wonder, though, was how somebody gets to the position where they earn a huge fuck-off salary, an air condition office for themselves and a PA to pretty much organise their working life. Do you actually have to work hard, get lucky or kiss a biblically huge amount of arse? Or a combination of all three?
In turn, this led me to consider how some bands or artists are less successful than others, in terms of recognition. The Chameleons, for example, seem to me to have all the power and passion of U2, but without the pious bollocks spouted by Bono at any given opportunity. Did they not 'play the game' like U2, or was it just a succession of bad luck/choices?
Of course, recognition isn't what any creative person should be seeking, first or foremost, but I'd imagine it certainly helps when the rent needs paid.
Thursday 3 June 2010
Home
Normally, I wouldn't even think about writing about the events that happened in West Cumbria yesterday. I don't have the intelligence, insight or articulation to make any kind of meaningful comment. However, this is different and I feel I should try, because West Cumbria is where I was born and raised.
Except 'Newsnight' yesterday, I've tried to avoid the media coverage and will attempt to continue to do so. In recent months the area has taken a real battering, with first the floods and the more recently the bus crash which caused the death of two children. Now Whitehaven, my hometown, is the centre for the media to try to find out the hows and whys of what made Derrick Bird murder 13 people, many at random, before taking his own life.
Doubtless reasons will be discussed and his life put under intense scrutiny. This isn't a surprise, but I fail to comprehend how any reason can even scratch the surface of what makes a man act out such horrors. Perhaps I should be glad for that.
Though I haven't lived in the area of nearly six years now, being a Cumbrian is important to me. When I first heard there had been a shooting, via a text message from a friend asking if my family were alright, I assumed that some idiot had been waving a replica about and had been shot by the armed response unit. It wasn't until I rang my mother that I found out the details.
Whitehaven and the surrounding villages affected (Egremont, Gosforth, Seascale) are the typical Northern towns: people know each other and many will be directly connected to the victims. My mother told me the name of one of the victims as somebody my brother knew through playing rugby.
What West Cumbria also has it that we're stubborn people: over the last 60+ years, the area has been hit hard by job losses in the steel and coal industries, lack of investment from various governments and now this. I'm due to go back to Whitehaven in two weeks and I know life will still be going on. The glare of the media will pass and my town may be filed alongside Hungerford and Dunblane but the people will go on working and trying to bring the spark back to our hometowns.
Except 'Newsnight' yesterday, I've tried to avoid the media coverage and will attempt to continue to do so. In recent months the area has taken a real battering, with first the floods and the more recently the bus crash which caused the death of two children. Now Whitehaven, my hometown, is the centre for the media to try to find out the hows and whys of what made Derrick Bird murder 13 people, many at random, before taking his own life.
Doubtless reasons will be discussed and his life put under intense scrutiny. This isn't a surprise, but I fail to comprehend how any reason can even scratch the surface of what makes a man act out such horrors. Perhaps I should be glad for that.
Though I haven't lived in the area of nearly six years now, being a Cumbrian is important to me. When I first heard there had been a shooting, via a text message from a friend asking if my family were alright, I assumed that some idiot had been waving a replica about and had been shot by the armed response unit. It wasn't until I rang my mother that I found out the details.
Whitehaven and the surrounding villages affected (Egremont, Gosforth, Seascale) are the typical Northern towns: people know each other and many will be directly connected to the victims. My mother told me the name of one of the victims as somebody my brother knew through playing rugby.
What West Cumbria also has it that we're stubborn people: over the last 60+ years, the area has been hit hard by job losses in the steel and coal industries, lack of investment from various governments and now this. I'm due to go back to Whitehaven in two weeks and I know life will still be going on. The glare of the media will pass and my town may be filed alongside Hungerford and Dunblane but the people will go on working and trying to bring the spark back to our hometowns.
Tuesday 1 June 2010
Misplaced Childhood
After a few days where we've seen North and South Korea at loggerheads, big trouble off the coast of Gaza and a psycho killer (apparently) caught in Yorkshire, a television advert shouldn't really irritate me.
But it has, and it's the latest World Cup cash in ad from Mars, featuring John Barnes recreating his World In Motion vocal skills. Now, despite the fact that back in the late 80s he made my team (and many others) look rather silly by breezing past defenders with the utmost ease, I've always had a lot of time for Barnes. He had stupid amounts of skill and, at my school, was the player that most of us (a bunch of working class white herberts) wanted to 'be' on the playground. It didn't matter if you supported Man United, Everton or Arsenal: John Barnes was a class act and you wanted to play like him, unless you were either me (who wanted to be Bryan Robson) or the strange kid who insisted Steve McMahon had a lot to offer.
World In Motion itself brings up a golden memory of being nine years old, singing along with the others as we believed England would be World Champions, 1990. Such youthful optimism: shame the actual England performances in the tournament were pretty much awful until the semi - both Belgium and Cameroon came very close to eliminating them earlier on.
I digress: the point is that Barnes has now cashed in on that memory to create a truly shite commercial. It shouldn't make me angry, I know, I know. I should use this bile to get angry about global inequality and injustice. Instead, I wish I could be like Colonel Kilgore and order a napalm strike on that park during the filming process. Sorry, Digger.
This also reminds me that Mars also used Blue Monday for an ad campaign some years ago. I half expect the Freebass tour that starts tomorrow to be sponsored by the Undertones' favourite sweet. Altogether now: "There's glucose for energy, caramel for strength/The chocolate's only there, to keep it the right length."
But it has, and it's the latest World Cup cash in ad from Mars, featuring John Barnes recreating his World In Motion vocal skills. Now, despite the fact that back in the late 80s he made my team (and many others) look rather silly by breezing past defenders with the utmost ease, I've always had a lot of time for Barnes. He had stupid amounts of skill and, at my school, was the player that most of us (a bunch of working class white herberts) wanted to 'be' on the playground. It didn't matter if you supported Man United, Everton or Arsenal: John Barnes was a class act and you wanted to play like him, unless you were either me (who wanted to be Bryan Robson) or the strange kid who insisted Steve McMahon had a lot to offer.
World In Motion itself brings up a golden memory of being nine years old, singing along with the others as we believed England would be World Champions, 1990. Such youthful optimism: shame the actual England performances in the tournament were pretty much awful until the semi - both Belgium and Cameroon came very close to eliminating them earlier on.
I digress: the point is that Barnes has now cashed in on that memory to create a truly shite commercial. It shouldn't make me angry, I know, I know. I should use this bile to get angry about global inequality and injustice. Instead, I wish I could be like Colonel Kilgore and order a napalm strike on that park during the filming process. Sorry, Digger.
This also reminds me that Mars also used Blue Monday for an ad campaign some years ago. I half expect the Freebass tour that starts tomorrow to be sponsored by the Undertones' favourite sweet. Altogether now: "There's glucose for energy, caramel for strength/The chocolate's only there, to keep it the right length."
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