Sunday 30 September 2012

Question Time

In a stroke of good luck, I happened upon mention of Lawrence of Belgravia finally getting a showing in Manchester. Naturally, I moved quickly to snap up tickets.

I've heard plenty of the documentary, about the Lawrence of Felt/Denim/Go-Kart Mozart non-fame, to know I wanted to see it. It's being shown in various cities across the country, and it's about time it made it to Manchester. By all accounts, it's a very well made film.

But what's this? Lawrence himself will be at the screening and fielding questions afterwards? Cue much excited jumping up and down.

So, do I become a total fanboy and take all my Felt vinyl LPs (and Ballad of the Band EP!) down for him to sign, along with getting pictures of him looking slightly annoyed with me grinning like a total arse? October 13th will reveal all.

(Incidentally, if any Lawrence fans read this before then and can think of any decent questions to ask, let me know, as all my journalistic training will doubtless abandon me and leave my mind blank.)

Tuesday 25 September 2012

When the Soul Rebels Grow Up

Everything comes back round again, they say. Such it is for the critical verdict on the career of Dexys Midnight Runners and their unique leader (and only constant) Kevin Rowland.

Starting out playing soul music with a Midlands slant in the post-punk years, Rowland managed to antagonise just about everyone he could (record label, bandmates, the press) over three albums in the first half of the 1980s. The last of those, Don’t Stand Me Down, managed to kill stone dead a career that just a couple of years prior had seen them top of the singles chart both here and the States.

What followed was a spell in the wilderness for Rowland, personal issues not helped by a crippling drug habit. When he finally got it together to record a fine album of covers of songs that held special significance to him, he shot his chances down in flames by insisting on promoting it while wearing clothes generally seen on women. Legend (doubtlessly incorrectly) has it sales of My Beauty were counted in the hundreds.

In the new century, several “greatest hits” type tours under the Dexys name helped pay the bills and the media decided to grant both the debut Searching For The Young Soul Rebels and Don’t Stand Me Down the genius label they deserve. Come On Eileen, meanwhile, remains the wedding disco standard of all time.

A new album, therefore, was always going to get plenty of attention, especially with Rowland deservedly becoming a icon of English (Irish) eccentricity of sorts. On Some Day I’m Going To Soar, he’s teamed with Mick Talbot (ex-Style Council) and veterans of the Young Soul Rebels line-up Pete Williams and Jimmy Paterson. Talbot was originally in the band long enough to play on a chart-topping single (Geno) back in 1981.

With an album tends to come a tour, with the Manchester stop being at the Bridgewater Hall, more suited to Dexys’ more theatrical stylings. Prior to the band, we’re treated to a burlesque show, to which I was a bit ambivalent. Perhaps that’s just me living in the post-internet age where you can see all manner of naked flesh in a heartbeat, so the idea of mild titillation left me reading a magazine instead. She was a fine looking woman, no doubt, but perhaps I was additionally disconcerted when the act was performed to the theme tune from Perry Mason.

Then the band itself, now called just "Dexys" for some reason, and the larger part of the gig is set out as blasting through the whole album in sequence. The material itself works better on stage: Williams, who played bass on the album, gets someone else to do that job and instead takes the role of Rowland’s foil, reacting to his lyrics and throwing in the odd line/backing vocal himself. It’s all a bit like a show by James Brown or Bruce Springsteen – Williams taking the Bobby Byrd role and Jimmy Paterson being like Clarence Clemons, the “Big Man” whose solos (there’s more on stage than on the album) get some of the biggest receptions of the night.

As a concept, the music works well: middle aged man questions his life, gets infatuated with a lady, proclaims his love, which is then returned. Unfortunately, he then decides he’s “incapable of love” after all, leaving her somewhat annoyed. Nothing too new, perhaps, but Rowland does it well. The whole package may well bring heckles of “self-indulgent”, but Kev has never been one to shy away from such matters: after all, he has that ultra-conviction going back over 30 years from the days he was belting out covers of Northern Soul tunes.

What certainly is self-indulgent is getting a young lady to play his love interest for the music. Although Madeline Hyland may look the part, the bottom line is that she’s not a great singer and it’s just as well the most she has to do is engage in some dialogue.

Once she’s gone, the rest of the album (both on album and stage) does fade away a tad and the night doesn’t pick up again until the encore, when they blast through Tell Me When My Light Turns Green, Come On Eileen and This Is What She’s Like. The second of those was drawn out to perhaps too long a length, and I'd rather have had them give us Let's Make This Precious instead. But nevermind, a great gig and always nice to see a band make an effort with presentation.

Sunday 16 September 2012

In a Special Place

Anyone who knows me can tell you I have a thing about "epic" music. It's not a matter of size so much, more ambition and scope of vision. After all, No Bleeding by the Wild Swans has only been released as a Peel Session track, yet is one of the most glorious bits of music I've ever heard.

Head Swan Paul Simpson is someone who went in for writing epic paeans to the cosmos and I've recently got into the music of someone else who had similar goals - Mike Scott, leader of the Waterboys, whose desire to make "The Big Music" eventually brought the exceptional 1985 album This Is The Sea.

Raised in Edinburgh and Ayrshire, Scott turfed up in London and eventually got a deal with the Enigma label, who were expecting to release solo albums. Instead, he created the Waterboys name, saxophonist Anthony Thistlethwaite also signed up, bringing drummer Kevin Wilkinson to play on the sessions for the debut self-titled album.

However, it was the follow-up A Pagan Place that Scott began hitting his pace. Half recorded in 1982, half in 1984, the latter saw new recruit Karl Wallinger join to play piano. Completing the core line-up were Wilkinson back on drums and Roddy Lorimer helping out on trumpet. Naming a song The Big Music, Scott was setting the template of what he was looking at.

On the next album, This Is The Sea, he realised his ambitions. A gloriously "huge" album, it took all the best aspects of the previous albums and amped them up. In the lead single, The Whole of the Moon, there's a real "throw in everything" vibe that matches the lyrics, where Mike Scott tries to fit in as many words as possible at the climax - and yet it works incredibly well in the same way early Springsteen does. Allusions to the Boss are helped along by Thistlethwaite being able to bang out a huge sax solo in true Clarence Clemons fashion.

In a time where huge rock sounds made by Celtic lads seemed in vogue (Big Country and Simple Minds were having hits, U2 had broke into the big time), the Waterboys fit to a degree and This Is The Sea was their first album to make the top 40. It may have done better if not for Scott's insistence on not miming on Top of the Pops and a general reluctance to embrace "fame" the way Bono or Jim Kerr did.

Shortly after the album was released, Wallinger left. Full of his own music, he took the name World Party and did his own thing. Steve Wickham took his part as full-time Waterboy and encouraged Scott to move over to Ireland, where the local music would flavour his subsequent Fisherman's Blues album. Perhaps after realising what the Big Music could be so perfectly, it was natural to go back to the roots, as had been hinted at by the title tracks of the two previous albums.

A coda to the Big Music period came in 1991, when a compilation of the band's work was released - The Whole of the Moon was also re-issued and hit #3. More recently, Scott released the album An Appointment with Mr Yeats in 2011 under the Waterboys banner, putting his music to the prose of top Irish poet, W.B. Yeats - a man whose work ended up having a big impact on my own life. This Is The Sea, however, acts as a high water mark of just how bloody huge British rock music could sound.

Monday 10 September 2012

Talk Yourself Into It

In an interesting turn of events, last week I got an email inviting me to attend a job interview. This threw me a wee bit, as I'd applied for the job with a quick, half-arsed application over a month ago. Yet here I am, asked to put on my best shirt to go and attempt to convince them I'm the man for them.

This may take some doing, as I've had the grand total of three interviews. One was unsuccessful, but got me asked back for another six months down the line, in which I did get the gig. Years later, I did well enough in another but the job seemed a crock of shit, so I stuck with what I had at the time.

My current occupation came about after I jacked in the journalist life to spend a year bumming around temp jobs while trying to work it out with a band. After a month spent filing and generally dossing around, the office manager was in need of someone fast. I could use a computer, work a spreadsheet and turned up on time, therefore I got the gig and £250 a week. Result!

Four years later, however, it does feel like I need to move on, hence applying for other jobs in the first place.  The plus side, in the unlikely event I'm successful, would be a bit of extra dosh and working closer to home. Excellent. But of course, it'll be more work, which isn't so good, for more than the usual (i.e. I'm a lazy bastard) reasons.

As it may turn out that finally (he says, worried of jinxing the whole thing) I've found a decent bunch of bods to make music with, with the final part of a singer potentially being about to fall into place. This is an issue in that I'm pretty certain my energy levels have taken a huge fall since my mid 20s peak. Back then, I could get up at 6.30am, finish work at 5pm, travel to the darkest corner of Salford to work on songs till close to midnight and get home around 1am, to repeat the next day with no real problems.

Now, aged 31, I get home from work at 4pm and even after a fairly easy day, want to lie down all evening. To quote many a bad film, am I getting too old for this shit? Maybe I should pack in work and use my life savings to commit a whole year to following my dreams. But then, as we all know, it would only mean on my last day that I would end up killed by a bomb of some variety, planted by one of my many enemies. Damn.  

Wednesday 5 September 2012

Empathy Is Not a Dirty Word

I try to stay chilled out about things in this world whenever possible. I get stressed out, I get pissed off, I get sick. But with the news that charity Save the Children are launching a campaign to raise cash for children living in poverty in the UK, I've got really wound up.

Of course, I've not been living in a hole. I've known a while there are young kids out there who aren't getting enough in the way of proper food and clothing. Times are hard and getting harder for a lot of people. But this story brings it home.

It's too easy to dismiss people who this affects. The media will tell us these people have squandered their money on booze, fags and betting. Politicians will put the boot in too, to justify their callous behaviour with their own expense fiddling now a distant memory in the public mind.

Take Douglas Carswell, the MP for Clacton: "I don’t actually mind charities making political interventions but I totally disagree with them in terms of the causes of child poverty. We have actually spent a very large chunk of taxpayers’ money creating a state of dependency in this country – that’s one of the main causes of child poverty."

And then there's Philip Davies, the Conservative MP for Shipley. He reckons: "It is just a publicity seeking campaign. I think people will see through the fact that this is an organisation that has been campaigning for as much money as possible to be sent abroad for many years so it’s no good now telling us there’s no money left to go round to British children."

What a pair of complete and utter drizzling shitehawks. I have to love it when politicians use words like "dependency" in regard to the people at the bottom of the ladder. This from people so far detached from the realities of life, who are chauffeured around and often have second homes on the public's expense. You almost wish for them to just come out and say "look, you people are scum. If there are no jobs, just go to one of our new state-assisted suicide machines. You're of no value to anyone".

The truth is they believe being poor is a lifestyle choice, not the end result of the politics we've been living under for too long. Several years ago, the writer and comedian Robert Newman spoke about "Employed homeless" people in the States - folk who worked a full week, but couldn't afford somewhere to live. He warned it was coming this way, and I fear he was spot on. Support for those who need it will continue to be taken away, legalised loan sharks will thrive and the scrapheap will get bigger.

For now, Save the Children have set a target of half a million pounds for their appeal. I expect it will be met, and then our esteemed Prime Minister will crow on about how this shows "The Big Society" at work. The fucking tosser.

Monday 3 September 2012

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

It's "bye bye" to Manchester for Dimitar Berbatov, then. Never has there been a player I can remember at United who polarised opinion to such a level between thinking he was a genius or complete shite.

Even Juan Veron, whose career with us was patchy at best, was generally regarded as a brilliant player who just couldn't hack it in English football. Poor Dimi never had that excuse - after all, he'd done well for Tottenham Hotspur before his £30 million transfer four years ago. Since then, he won two championships and was top scorer in 2010/11 and yet last year, he was a stranger to the first team with only a short spell around Christmas (six goals in three games) to take from it. He had a nightmare up at Newcastle, but then so did everybody - yet the Berb was the only one to get the axe.

Perhaps he should have left last summer. Despite the Golden Boot, his being left out of the entire squad for the Champions League final against Barcelona was nothing short of humiliation - especially when you consider even Michael Owen got a space on the bench ahead of him. However, he kept his silence throughout it all and it's only now, since his transfer to Fulham last week, that he's voiced his disappointment and a feeling that he's lost some respect for his manager.

Fair enough, says I. But then I would, as I was always a fan. He was a player who could do things that made you gasp, had sublime skill and that cool thing of being able to beat a man despite having no pace whatsoever. He's probably the type I'd like to have been, if I had been good enough to play.

The real puzzler for me, that said, is why we bought him in the first place. At the time, we were English and European champions down to in large part the front three of Wayne Rooney, Carlos Tevez and Cristiano Ronaldo - a trio whose speed and ability to switch positions had caused all manner of problems for the best around.

My only guess would be Ferguson knew Ronaldo wanted away to Madrid and also that there would be problems with Tevez and his agent. Perhaps the whole system was set to change. What we do know is that in the season after those two stars left, Berb made two fatal misses against Blackburn and Manchester City that many believe (with some cause) cost us the league and FA Cup.

Which will explain why in the future, a man who scored a hat-trick past Liverpool won't go down in legend. I always wanted him to succeed. People said he only scored against the teams we beat easily, like five against Blackburn, hat-tricks against Wigan and Birmingham. Perhaps so, but given we lost the league on goal difference last season, maybe, just maybe, he could have found a few more goals against West Brom, QPR, Norwich...?

It wasn't to be for him here, though I'll always count myself lucky to have been in the crowd when he pulled off an incredible bit of skill against West Ham to set up a Ronaldo goal soon after joining. Good luck at Fulham, Dimi, and know that now you're gone, we're back to being a squad of right ugly bastards again.