Fresh Meat is Murder

If, like me, you were once a student in one of the many venerable establishments of higher education across the United Kingdom, then it’s easy to slip into a kind of revere about a halcyon time before the grim reality of real life came along.

Absolute crap like Fresh Meat appeals to this. It’s been given the red carpet treatment on account of being from the biros of Armstrong and Bain, the guys who wrote Peep Show. I never really bought into the fandom for that show, but they did also work with Chris Morris on Four Lions, which I did enjoy. Plus anyone who has The Thick Of It in their credits earns plenty of respect from me.

But this? It comes across as something they’ve knocked out over a few liquid lunches while picking up some cheques to fund other projects.

Obviously, we get a cliché or two. There’s the geek, of course, who’s also useless at trying to pick up the cute girl from his course, there’s the lecturer desperate to be seen as hip by the students and there’s the obnoxious fuckwit who thinks he’s a lot funnier than he is. In an inspired piece of casting, the last one is played by Jack Whitehall.

Add in to that the posh lads who deride the people of Manchester as "sweaty Shaun Ryders" and the ditzy girl who pretends (?) to forget she has her own car. Really, chaps, is this the best you can do?

The root problem, I would suggest, is that the second you graduate you lose all touch with student life. You have to adjust to not being able to go on the piss four nights a week as you have to haul your sorry arse into work. Plus, as I found to my cost, you actually get older and your body decides to extract grisly revenge on three years of abuse. Also, you end up getting really pissed off with students for filling the buses up every morning after you’ve enjoyed a summer of relatively easy travel. By being a lot older than the main characters in the world they’ve created, the writers are limited to using pre-existing stereotypes.

The plot for the episode, such as it was, centred on the organisation and execution of a party. That it doesn’t go as well as planned is to be expected. It would appear that in the first episode, simmering sexual tension had been established between two characters. But oh no, the female half of that would-be-coupling actually has a boyfriend that she’s kept quiet about. And he’s a right bit of rough-and-tumble with an aggressive stance against students. That’s because he’s working class, and they’re not, I guess. The whole set-up was tiresome from start to finish: I would have been more impressed if the student chap had stuck the head on his would-be love rival.

Instead, we had to make do with yet another horrific cliché as he tried to drown out the sounds of their rampant shagging the next morning with the radio. But guess what? All he hears is more stuff to remind him of his sorry situation – an advert raising awareness of unplanned pregnancies and an Aerosmith song.

It would have been more excusable if this had been one of those Channel 4 Comedy Lab experiments that give a couple of new writers a chance to prove themselves. But this is the work of supposedly leading lights in British TV comedy. Comparisons to The Young Ones are entirely misleading: that was a show that used a vague pretext of student life to put a set of caricatures into absurd situations (finding a nuclear bomb in the kitchen, being held hostage by a psychotic bank robber). Fresh Meat just comes across as the work of two middle aged guys trying far too hard to appeal to a young demographic. Perhaps viewers aged 16-21 will find something to enjoy here, others may find themselves shaking their heads and muttering "student wankers".

Everybody Do The Knee-Jerk

It’s been highly amusing in the last week or so to see certain sections of the media get themselves in a right state about a supposed "BBC diktat" ordering staff to stop using BC and AD when referring to a year in favour of CE and BCE. That’s Common Era and Before Common Era, apparently.

Naturally, the story is a load of complete unadulterated bollocks. No surprises there. You’d think they would have learned a lesson after the whole Jeremy Vine non-scandal the other week – a devout Christian, he’d joked on his Twitter feed that he’d needed permission from his bosses to play a hymn on his show. Cue meltdown from sections of the press, the readers of which also tend to be the same reactionary lunatics who call up Vine on a weekday afternoon. You get the feeling they’d be equally unhappy if the BBC hadn't allowed someone to play a selection from Marching Songs of the Third Reich. Political Correctness gone mad.

Lessons weren't learned in any case, and so the AD/CE story rolled on. My favourite quote was one infamous hack stating that this was clearly evidence of a "Marxist plot to destroy civilisation from within".

Fantastic. I mean, seriously, you could almost admire someone for writing that, submitting it to the subs and collecting his pay – all with a straight face! I’d have lost it at the first stage, probably at the point where the sub raised their eyebrow and said "seriously?" However, the writer in question would appear to be very serious indeed, so instead I just feel sorry for them.

Why pity? Well, I can dig a good conspiracy theory as much as the next open-minded fellow. Hell, that was half the point of the Deus Ex and Metal Gear Solid games. But Marxist plot? In reality? Really? I’d have been more inclined to give them the time of day if he’d instead written it was a scheme by Martians to soften up humanity’s spirit before an invasion scheduled for 2015 (CE, natch).

Maybe it’s because I live in the grim North, and not down that London, where the cocaine is fair trade I’m told. Maybe there is a ruthless cabal of hardline Marxists who have taken up positions of power and influence in the media and government. Before you know it, they’ll be coming for us to send us all off to the gulags they’ll set up in the frozen wastelands of, umm, Scotland.

Or, instead, it could be the rantings of somebody whose sanity filter is on the blink. Personally, I wish there was a bit more of a left-wing feel to British politics but being born in 1981, I've yet to see much of anything but us swinging more and more to the kind of ultra-capitalism that’s gotten the States into the mess they’re in. Utilities and railways sold off, university education going from costing nothing to tens of thousands of pounds, cuts made to local authorities. Aye, the spirit of Karl Marx is doubtless sat back somewhere, probably at BBC HQ, rubbing his hands and whispering "yes, yes… it’s all coming together".

Actually, so far away are we from any kind of Socialist Nightmare that I’d not be surprised if before every commercial break we got a shot of Davey Cameron saying "Listen up, peasants: spend your money on some of the crap you’re about to see. I’m not asking, I’m telling, or else I’ll stick another 10p tax on those fags and tins of cheap lager I’m told you’re all so fond of."

At least there’s still the NHS, thankfully. For those unaware, a few months ago I had a random fit at work, collapsed in a heap and was carted off to the local Accident and Emergency. Since then, efforts are being made to ensure there’s nothing wrong with me and it was just the kind of one-off event that can happen to anyone. A couple of days ago, as part of this, I had an ultrasound scan of my heart, which pretty much works in the same way as the scans they do of a baby in the womb.

To say it was weird seeing it pumping away inside my chest is an understatement. Like most, I try not to think too much of what’s going on underneath my skin a lot of the time. Beneath this devilishly handsome and toned exterior (cough) is a lot of soft, squishy stuff that can easily go wrong and inevitably will do at some point.

For now, though, my heart seemed to be ticking over quite nicely and seeing it do so gave me a strange sense of calm. I even wanted to wave at the screen and say "Hey you! Thanks for keeping me alive and all". But I didn't, because the nurse would have given me a strange look and maybe even sent me off for some psychiatric evaluation.

To surmise the point of this anecdote: the NHS is bloody great, as I don’t even want to think about how much my insurance premiums would have gone up if I’d been American. Here in Blighty, it’s not a problem. Of course there’s problems with it – an organisation that size is never going to be perfectly efficient – but it’s there when you need it and you don’t need to fret about expense if you’re not rich and get really sick. So nice one and thanks, Nye Bevan.

Love (and Guns) From Outta Space

OK, yes, this is a review of Mass Effect 2, which is already a year old, so 0/10 for timeliness. But I only just got round to buying it. Why? Well, for one thing, the first game never appeared on the PS3, so the idea of jumping into a universe I had no clue about didn't appeal too much. Plus being the tightarse I am, I elected to wait till the price dropped below the £20 barrier. With that all-important barrier passed and with nothing else catching my eye, I decided to give my sci-fi bone a tickle.

Somewhat mercifully, the PS3 package contains a code to allow access to the vast majority of downloadable content for free, with a couple of extra characters and missions thrown in. We also get a comic book of sorts that whizzes through the events of the first game, allowing you to decide which way you swayed on the big decisions, namely who lived or died and the all-important matter of whose kex you managed to get into.

Before we get to do this, there’s the small matter of our hero, Commander Shepard, being dead, which really puts a damper on their day. Or on their two years, as it turns out, as the corpse is subsequently grabbed by Cerebus, an extreme pro-humanity group who are kind of like a space age National Front. But it’s not all bad, as their big cheese has the same voice as, and looks like, President Bartlett.

Brought back to life by means explained with little more than a hand wave, we’re given the job of saving the galaxy. Again. And the odds of survival are pretty much nil. Again. But first we must assemble a team of disparate characters who must overcome their prejudices and rivalries against each other if they’re to stand any chance of survival. Again.

You get the idea. As a basic storyline, it’s clichéd beyond belief yet I still found myself hugely engaged with what was presented to me. It helps that it looks great, of course, and when you have a top notch acting cast including Martin Sheen, Seth Green and Keith David, you’re always going to pay attention to what’s being said to you. Not quite enough of Keith David for me, though, because you can never have enough of that guy in your video game.

Developers BioWare were also behind the Dragon Age games which found a lot favour with this gamer (a big factor in my finally buying ME2), and their skill at character development carries over here, though not quite to the same level. Characters tend to have little to say outside their own recruitment mission and a later episode where you can try to win their loyalty - or not, if you feel like being a bit of a bastard about matters. This is a bit of a shame, as I was really keen to find out more about Garrus, whose kick-arse manner made him a regular member of my team.

So, looks great, sounds great. Now the catch: a large part of playing Mass Effect 2 involves running around shooting things. Fair enough, but the way this happens (essentially, hiding behind a wall and jumping out to crack off a few rounds) gets very repetitive very quickly. It’s not helped by the battle intelligence of your comrades being a tad limited. While you may show some common sense by staying hidden while under fire from a group of robot killing machines, colleagues may instead decide a Charge Of The Light Brigade tactic is in order, resulting in them needing urgent medical attention soon after.

Regarding these parts of the game, it struck me that it didn't really matter who you took along. It would have been nice for certain situations to be approached differently depending on your squad. All the same, it was always satisfying to ventilate some unaware mook from distance with a sniper rifle.

There’s also the problem of tedious loading times, an issue that comes into play the most when you’re mooching around your spaceship. In principal, this is one of the best parts of game – you can wander round, banter with the crew, flirt with the ladies (or gents, if you play as a female Shepard) and feed the fish in your swanky cabin. All of this is offset with loading that seems to go on for ages as you travel between the four levels. Reminds me of being back on the ZX Spectrum.

Last, the basic "ethical" system of making decisions on being either a "Paragon" or "Renegade" is often too black and white – it works at times and the fact I was extremely annoyed at letting somebody go when it turned out they were a murderer backs this up, but a little more choice would have been nice. Many games use a variation of this these days, from Fallout’s karma meter and Dragon Age’s friend/rival gauges. None of them have really nailed that all-important morally ambiguous area yet.

Flaws aside, ME2 does a great job of creating a top notch atmosphere. As the story progresses towards the conclusion, I found myself wondering how my actions would effect the conclusion. By not gaining the loyalty of Zaeed, a ruthless Merc, was I creating trouble for myself down the line? When the final battle came, the desire to get everyone home made for excellent entertainment. Sadly, I didn't manage it but a casualty rate of one seems a decent return, especially as that person was terminally ill anyways.

To wrap up: the 44 hours I spent on Mass Effect 2 rarely dragged by, the storyline managing to keep me motivated through the combat sections and I’ll probably give it another play-through at some point to try things with a different back story. Doubtless I’ll download the Arrival add-on and I’ll be anticipating Mass Effect 3 to see how Shepard gets on with the consequences of my decisions.

Back to Rockville

So, farewell then, REM. 30 odd years is a good run for anyone, and in truth they’d been on life-support ever since Bill Berry quit, though I’d argue they hit their absolute peak as far back as Green.

Back in my teens, REM were a gateway into what I guess you’d label Alternative music. In the mid 90s, they were a mainstream rock band that got plenty of radio play – especially during the Automatic For The People era – and that your dad could like, but had an interesting back story. More importantly still, they had a brilliant back catalogue.

What always struck me about REM was how little they looked like a band. Mike Mills had a fringe that looked as though his mother had cut it. Bill Berry had a magnificent monobrow that would shame a Gallagher brother. Peter Buck had long hair even though it didn't look a good idea. Stipe was the exception – enigmatic, handsome and intelligent, he was in many ways the American version of Morrissey.

Automatic, like Out of Time, had some great songs, but it was far from my favourite album. Too many tunes that didn't particularly go anywhere. Luckily, the branch of Woolworths in my hometown had a copy of Murmur, which was brilliant. I spent hours as a rookie bassist playing along to Radio Free Europe.

It was investigating the band’s indie years that proved the most rewarding part of my REM fandom. I’ll always argue their first four albums are as good a run as anyone else has managed. The debut and Reckoning showed me that you can be a good musician and not have to show off – certainly I can’t remember Buck playing a conventional guitar solo until Flowers of Guatemala on Lifes Rich Pageant, their fourth album. Naturally, it was brilliant, one of those solos that I repeat about ten times in a row.

Weirdly (or perhaps not), their big commercial breakthrough came with what I’d put down as one of their weakest albums, Document, though the huge riff that carried The One I Love ensured the then-vital avenue of radio was open to them. Major labeldom awaited, though cries of ‘sell out’ could hardly be justified by Green, which had them as political as ever. It rocked too, a side they’d return to (harder) with 1995s Monster. Touring that album, Bill Berry fell critically ill – an event which doubtless influenced his decision to quit after the darker New Adventures In Hi-Fi.

The tour to support the first album as a trio, Up, was when I saw them, at Stirling Castle. It was a good show, the first time I’d seen such a big production. Stipe worked the crowd well and the newer songs were good enough that I bought the album – the last of theirs that I did so. In 2005, I saw them again at Old Trafford Cricket Ground. They hadn't changed much, but I had: the size of the venue left me a bit cold, even if I had managed to get myself close enough to the front to see Stipe's make-up. They were part of the old order, not going through the motions but seemingly settled in their role.

After that, I hadn't given much thought to REM until a few weeks ago, when I stuck Reckoning on my MP3 player. It still sounds great, its stripped down arrangements ensuring it hasn't dated. It’s hard to be sad that they've split, but it’s always worth remembering that there was a time when they had hit the Holy Grail for bands on independent labels – critically acclaimed and making the charts.

Muttering Man Machine

On learning that Deux Ex: Human Revolution was out, I had to stretch my memory to remember playing the original Deus Ex on the Playstation 2, some ten years ago. At the time, it was considered revolutionary for combining RPG levelling up/character building with a first-person shooter gameplay style. It's certainly a format that took off.

Over a decade on, the developers are looking to set down a new marker and in terms of looks, they may well have done. DX: HR (as I'm calling it for the purposes of this review) is visually stunning with a great soundtrack to boot - sneaking round the perma-dark streets (hello, Blade Runner), I felt a palpable sense of tension as I tried not to get spotted by tooled up guards and rent-a-cops.

Anyways, set twenty minutes into the future, you play as Adam Jensen who, despite losing his SWAT job due to some unpleasantness on a mission, seems to have it going for him. He's got the gravelly Clint Eastwood voice, has a cool black overcoat and his ex-girlfriend has set him up with a nice gig working in Detroit as Chief of Security at Sarif Industries, one of the prime movers in the new industry of human augmentation - fitting electronic limbs and other upgrades to bods. Sadly, sitting in his office all day watching the security camera in the female dressing room wouldn't make for a good game.

During an attack on his office, he's left in a condition very close to dead. Which is a step better than just about everybody else, it seems, including his ex-girlfriend. Luckily, he must have paid up his company health insurance premiums, as he's put all back together again with the latest tech. But is he now more machine then man? Hmm? And if this does sound a tad familiar, then it is lampshaded very well - listening in to a passing conversation between two cops has one of them mention "this movie from the 80s, about a cop who gets killed and they rebuild him..."

Despite this setback-of-sorts (it's never really explored how Adam feels about being turned into what he becomes), he's soon back to work and out to find out who was responsible for the current situation. Players of the original Deus Ex will not be surprised to find out this involves a mass conspiracy of sorts.

My problem with DX: HR is twofold. First, the boss fights seem against the spirit of the game. If, like me, you play as a sneaky get, avoiding detection and having to kill people, it seems a bit odd to have to suddenly engage in a stand-up firefight against someone who can end your game with a couple of well-placed grenades. It feels like you've suddenly been transported into another game.

It's a shame you have to go through these parts, as using stealth is a lot more fun than engaging every enemy mook you see: the combat doesn't really hold up all that well and becomes just another cover-and-shoot affair that we've seen before.

Secondly, the storyline isn't quite as clever as it thinks it is. There's a couple of 'twists' that came as no surprise whatsoever and I was disappointed that the various decisions I made throughout the game didn't really come into play during the endgame. Indeed, much like the original, your choice of ending is made by a decision at the very end. And anyways, as this is a prequel, we kind of already know what happens in the long run from playing Deus Ex.

Indeed, the mild feeling of anti-climax at the conclusion brought to mind Alpha Protocol, a game which got little attention a couple of years back, and its terrific story (in which decisions throughout led you to one of many endings) hindered by lousy gameplay. I get the impression that if that game had been afforded the budget DX:HR got, it might have been a classic. As we are, DX:HR is a worthy game that doesn't quite fulfill the potential it had but provides a decent 20/30 hours of gameplay with a decent slice of replay value.

Heading Out To The West Coast

Despite saying in my piece on Warren Zevon a couple of months ago that I had no interest in the Los Angeles music scene of the 1970s, the city itself has always had a strong allure to me.

Naturally, the whole of the States can have that to those of us left behind in the old world. Though reality always brings us back down, the vastness of America has a huge romantic pull on us. Places just sound better over there, hence why you can't really write a song about Leeds as easily as you can New York or San Jose.

I was lucky enough to spend a couple of weeks in LA six years ago. I'd moved to Manchester and managed, for the first time in my life, to earn enough money so that I had enough to treat myself. Then when I got a couple of hundred quid on a tax rebate, a friend out there suggested I pay a visit. So I did, via a pleasant journey where I knocked back enough free Jack Daniels to ease any nerves and enable me to watch The Spongebob Squarepants Movie about three times in a row and still laugh everytime.

Flying across Canada/the States allows you to appreciate just how huge it is. From ice fields to deserts, it seemed to go on forever. I was lucky it was a clear day, and looking down could see the roads below populated with trucks hauling across the Roman-straight roads. When we finally prepared to land at LAX Airport, the city below was beyond anything I'd seen below. Sure, Manchester is fairly big, and London is obviously massive, but Los Angeles was something else.

The two weeks that followed were nothing but golden. A lot of people aren't too keen on the city, but this occasional traveller felt right at home. I remember the first song I heard on the radio when being driven to my temporary accommodation was Crash by the Primitives, which was very cool and set the tone nicely. For perhaps the first and only time in my life, I acted like a proper tourist, a mindset aided by the fact I was crashing in an apartment in Hollywood. Strolling down Sunset Boulevard, I couldn't help but gawp at landmarks I'd seen in TV and film.

Not that I viewed the place with over-idealistic eyes. Two of my favourite films, L.A. Confidential and To Live and Die In L.A. show the seediness that lurks in any town - though what grabbed me more was a guy stood at a roadside with a piece of cardboard asking not for money, but a job. It's been said many times before, but the contrast between that guy and the millionaires living round the corner in Beverley Hills was jarring.

Being brought up on the coast, I've long had a thing about staring out over the water and drifting into daydreams. Sat on the beach at Santa Monica, looking out over the Pacific and knowing there was little between me and Japan, I felt a kind of peace I've been trying to catch up with ever since.

Just about the only downside of my whole trip that comes to mind is that we went to see the Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy film, before which I bigged up the genius of Douglas Adams. Sadly, it was complete and utter cack of the highest order, leaving her to question my reputation as a man of good taste.

Luckily, I was able to redeem myself by spending a huge chunk of my cash at Amoeba Records, where she worked, on albums that had been hard-to-find back home. Babe Rainbow and A Spy In The House of Love by the House of Love and Flipping Out by Gigolo Aunts all got the nod of approval from the woman who years earlier had steered me in the right musical direction by taping albums by Mazzy Star and the Jesus and Mary Chain for me.

When I got back, I ended up growing my hair out to try and look like the Dude from The Big Lebowki, an experiment I'm not sure really worked. I've not been back out west since, sadly, though I always mean to as an ambition of mine is to drive up the coastline in an open topped Cadillac (like Don Draper in that episode of Mad Men), or at the very least a Dodge Challenger like Kowalski went crazy with in Vanishing Point. New York? You can keep it. My heart belongs to the Pacific.

A Full Tank of Gas, Half a Pack of Cigarettes

Seemingly because I am male, when I get talking to people the topic of favourite books/music/films crops up with unerring haste. I think it’s because if they don’t support Manchester United, I run out of things to say, such is my lack of basic social skills. That’s what a childhood spent playing video games does to you. Well, that and going on murderous rampages, apparently.

Back on topic, the answer to my number one film has been for the last 15 years and for the rest of time is the Blues Brothers. Frankly, due to my occasional shallow nature (excepting the odd foray into deeper stuff like Blade Runner), it has the things I like in the medium: car chases and great music. Plus it’s got the coolest guy of all time, John Lee Hooker, in it.

The Brothers and their band were born from Saturday Night Live due to the efforts of blues fan Dan Aykroyd, who had been getting his comedy partner John Belushi into the blues. By luck, Belushi also had a fair old voice on him and the duo formed a band around his singing and Aykroyd's harp playing. Becoming regulars on the show, the 'Brothers' recorded an album Briefcase Full Of Blues that proved successful and led to the film, directed by John Landis, who was coming off the back of successfully helming Animal House, which also starred Belushi.

To surmise the basic plot for any poor souls who haven’t seen this masterpiece: "Joliet" Jake Blues (Belushi) is released from prison, where he is picked up by his brother, Elwood (Aykroyd), in his ex-police issue Dodge having traded the old Bluesmobile for a microphone. Visiting the orphanage where they were raised, they learn it is to be closed by the state unless a large tax bill can be paid in two weeks. Fired up by a dose of evangelical preaching from James Brown, the duo set out to reform their old band to raise the cash by honest means.

Naturally, doing so isn't all that easy. The old band have straight jobs and the brothers end up on the wrong side of John Q. Law, the local Nazis and a bunch of Good Ol’ Boys. Not that the plot is all that important, more of a framework on which to strap a lot of appearances from some of the giants of soul and blues. As well as Brown and Hooker, Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin make cameos while jazz scat singer Cab Calloway takes the role of the brothers’ mentor, Curtis. Franklin’s appearance is particularly amusing if just for her muttering of "shit!" as her husband Matt "Guitar" Murphy is convinced to go back on the road.

It’s the actual Blues Brothers Band that is my favourite part of the film. For starters, any outfit with half of Booker T and the MGs in it is always going to have some serious chops and indeed, Donald "Duck" Dunn observes that they’re "powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline" (Dunn’s constant puffing on a pipe during performances is also a great wheeze).

It’d be easy to say the scenes with the band doing what they do best (playing music rather than acting) are the highlights: after all, their versions of Otis Redding’s I Can’t Turn You Loose and Solomon Burke’s Everybody Needs Somebody To Love have become as equally regarded as the originals – the former is often referred to as Blues Brothers’ Theme. But then you have to consider that they somehow managed to fit in a car chase in a shopping mall. A car chase! In a shopping mall! Really, if that’s not genius, I don’t know what is. The only negative about the whole set up is that watching John Belushi at his best makes you angry that he didn't have the sense to stay off the speedballs to stay alive long enough to ensure the horrendous sequel wasn't the complete fiasco it ended up being.

I've seen this flick hundreds of times, including last night. It never, never gets old. I can quote probably every line in advance but it’s still the only film that makes me want to get up and dance. Shake a Tail Feather indeed.

Ride On, Baby, Ride On

Dipping back into the world of Creation Records in recent months, after engaging in biographies in print and film, caused me to once again appreciate how Ride were one of the most under-appreciated bands of the early 90s and lament their collapse.

Formed in the late 80s around Oxford college friends Mark Gardner and Andy Bell, also both guitarists and singers (though Gardner would dominate the early songs singing-wise), completing the line-up were drummer Loz Colbert and bassist Steve Queralt. The latter worked in the local branch of Our Price records, and his boss Dave Newton would handle the band’s management.

With the band, barring Queralt, not even out of their teens, early gigs were enough to get interest from Alan McGee, who followed the band’s stint as support on a Soup Dragons tour. Given the band loved My Bloody Valentine and the House of Love, signing to Creation Records seemed an obvious choice, one that would benefit the label in the short-term.

Little is written about Creation at that time – none of their acts had even touched the top 75 in the singles chart and money was scarce. Ride, in their favour, had pretty boy looks and a strong melodic sense under the guitar noise, even if neither of Gardner and Bell had much power on the vocal front. Behind them, Colbert swirled away in the way of a less chaotic Keith Moon.

Their debut release, the Ride EP went in at #71 in January 1990 – Creation’s first "hit". A strong set, it set the tone for the next year’s worth of releases: buzzsaw guitars and vocals singing vague lyrics in a, perhaps mercifully, murmured tone. Andy Bell was already showing some serious guitar chops and it’s not surprising that the follow up Play and Fall EPs both landed inside the top 40: the press were on board and audiences that didn't buy into the "Madchester" vibe at the time were eager for something else.

All of which led to expectation for an album, and Nowhere delivered. Crashing in with the wonderful racket of Seagull (Queralt's finest moment), it goes on to have some great guitar sounds - especially on the dreamy In A Different Place and Dreams Burn Down. The closing Vapour Trail (at the time a rare song sung by Andy Bell) pointed to a future directions with jangly guitar and chugging chello.

Charting just outside the top ten, Nowhere was the album that introduced Creation as a label that wasn't just dealing with cult success anymore. Heavy touring saw Ride into 1991, which also brought the release of the Today Forever EP, a top 20 hit that got them on Top Of The Pops. The four tracks, including the excellent Unfamiliar, were added onto the 2001 re-release of Nowhere, along with the Fall EP, making the album even more essential.

By being attached by the media to the shoegaze scene, though the band's ability to rock out separated them from many others in that club, Ride were prime for a backlash, especially as the new flavour, Grunge, had made having 20 effects pedals in front of you seem unfashionable. Initially, however, Oxford's finest seemed to have dodged the gunfire. Their first release of 1992 was their best: Leave Them All Behind was a four chord thrash with keyboards straight from Who's Next and lasting eight minutes. Despite or because of all this, it went top 10, continuing a remarkable trajectory over the previous two years.

Going Blank Again would be their commercial peak, making #4, and shows a band looking to leave any former contemporaries behind. Though not as cohesive as their debut, there's some killer moments on Mouse Trap and the epic closing OX4. The vocals are higher in the mix and there are plenty of dabbles into indie-pop on Time Of Her Time and Twisterella. The latter was selected as a follow-up single to Leave Them All Behind, but stalled big time, the first signs of the wheels coming off the Ride Wagon.

By 1994, the idea of shoegazing was a distant memory. Suede had kickstarted a retro vibe with their Glam Rock stomp and music had begun going further back still into the 1960s. Ride, with fellow survivors such as Lush, tried to reinvent themselves as more melodic and accessible (Slowdive would morph into the folk-y Mojave 3). Carnival of Light, recorded with John Leckie, may well have been a decent hit if it had been the debut album by a Britpop band. Instead, it was a document of a band fragmented.

Andy Bell had now insisted on individual songwriting credits rather than the previous "songs by Ride" label. Perversely, this just showed how his own efforts were found wanting. The first half was mainly Gardner songs, including strong numbers such as From Time To Time and 1000 Miles, with Loz Colbert chipping in with the upbeat Natural Grace. All benefited from Leckie’s 60s-centric production.

Which couldn't be said for the second half, on which Bell stars but also features an ill-advised hash job of 60s cult-act the Creation’s How Does It Feel To Feel? Perhaps more misjudged was the choice of Birdman as lead single: by no means a bad song, at least musically, it was barely radio material and thus limped into the bottom reaches of the top 40.

Though Magical Spring had a jaunty optimism, the nadir of Ride’s career closed the album. I Don’t Know Where It Comes From took a lead from the Stones’ You Can’t Always Get What You Want by employing a children's choir, but failed to attach a decent song to it. The lyric "turned on the radio last night/and I was overwhelmed with shite" may well be amongst the worst in my entire record collection.

With the moment passed and momentum stunted, Ride found themselves overtaken and lapped several times by Creation's new darlings - Oasis. A final album, Tarantula, was released but deleted a week later as the band had already split. With most of the band disinterested at this late stage - most of the songs are Bell's - it's hard to love, though both Black Nite Crash and Burning have a great swagger to them, which makes it sadder that Bell then went onto form the completely dreadful Hurricane #1.

After that fiasco, he of course went on to join some top pub rocker outfit from the North of England, with whom he still runs through the Faces greatest hits to this day. Mark Gardener has dabbled in solo albums, working for sometime with Oxford band Goldrush. Loz Colbert has recently earned a good gig drumming with the Jesus and Mary Chain alongside fellow shoegaze alumni Phil King and Steve Queralt dropped out of music.

After the messy end, there's been a few occasions where talk of reforming has been in the air. Indeed, the band briefly got back together to provide backing music for a documentary on Sonic Youth, it got a limited release as the Coming Up For Air EP (I've got my copy), and Bell and Gardener have joined each other on stage on a couple of occasions. But the odds on a full-on getting back together seem long, perhaps for the best. At their peak, Ride were an excellent rock band with an experimental edge that for one brief moment in time may have pointed a different direction for popular guitar-based music. Alas.

Doing Your Duty

Once again, The Tedious World is lucky to have a guest post from our Tame Social Worker. In an age where websites such as "Name and Shame Your Social Worker" are doing the rounds, I for one think it's vital for the other side of the story to get some airtime, no matter how little.

The curse of any Social Worker on a Duty and Assessment Team is Duty Week. Once upon a time, in the days before budget cuts, there were teams that just did Duty (where you respond to initial concerns about the welfare of children and assess the situation within seven days). Once you had assessed the families, if you decided they needed long term intervention, the case was passed to the appropiate team.

No longer is this the case: our team will have the same family from initial assessment to potential court proceedings and even adoption of children. Technically, one social worker could have the same family on their case load for several years, all the while getting more new cases every three weeks.

Duty week is always a mixture of high energy mixed with deep despair. In an average week we can receive between 15-30 referrals and sorting the wheat from the chaff is difficult and time consuming.

Over the summer holidays, the silly season occurs. My advice to parents would be, don’t have any parties, ensure your children play inside the house or, if you’re lucky enough to have one, your own back garden. And don’t fall out with any of your neighbours (especially if you’re a housing association tenant) - malicious referrals from neighbours and, on occasion, extended family members rise to a ridiculous level during school holidays.

Last duty week saw many such referrals from neighbours claiming their next door neighbour and mother of two young children was a drug addict and prostitute who was also engaging in anti-social behaviour. Upon investigation, it turned out the ‘concerned neighbours’ reporting this were in fact the type you see on those ‘Neighbours From Hell’ programmes on ITV2 who had repeatedly broken into this woman’s house, set fire to her garden and thrown bricks through her window. Thankfully, our intervention will ensure this woman gets to move home.

Then there’s the family who had the audacity to have a birthday party for their 17 year old. When an uninvited guest was ejected from the house and proceeded to rant and rave in the street, the family’s neighbour, who they had long standing issues with, called the Housing Association and the police claiming that the parents were encouraging their underage children to drink alcohol. That’s one family who won’t be having any more parties soon. And finally, there’s the case of the three children playing outside their own home when their football accidentally hit a neighbours car. A quick call to Children’s Services claiming their parents are neglecting them and we show up on the doorstep.

Needless to say, all these cases were closed after Initial Assessment, but it is indicative of the time and resources we waste investigating either trumped up or completely fabricated accusations against parents. Since Baby P, councils are terrified of anything going wrong on their watch, so again and again, Social Workers are sent to investigate every family who we receive a referral about, regardless of whether it appears to be malicious.

Obviously most of the referrals we receive do warrant our investigation, but it bugs me that people who make malicious referrals about their neighbours (and are allowed to remain anonymous) ensure that we can spend time following up false claims to the detriment of spending extra time with families who really need our help.

The Return of Rex Hamilton

Re-watching Police Squad! (in color, of course) in the past few days, I was reminded how it set a standard for parody that’s rarely been matched. It’s also become infamous as an example of Executive Meddling Gone Wrong, as the show was cancelled after only six episodes.

What we also learnt was that if you’re going to do this kind of thing, do it right. At the time (1982), the writer/production team of Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker were hot from the success of Airplane! from two years previous. Casting Leslie Nielsen, who had been the standout actor from that film, as the ultra-deadpan Frank Drebin was inspired – previously a serious character actor, he carried over those mannerisms into the farcical world of Police Squad! Alan North was also excellent as Captain Hocken, the boss of the department.

Also turning up were Peter Lupus as the Officer Norberg, who gets a bit too involved in his undercover role as a keystore salesman ("can I interest you in our holiday gift pack?") and Ed Williams as Ted Olsen, the lab expert whose slightly dubious experiments are frequently interrupted by Drebin.

You have to wonder if anybody else but Nielsen could have delivered a line such as "Ed and I drove around for hours for no particular reason. We came up empty" without it coming across as a piss-take. Instead, such lines are presented as if they should be high-drama. The lack of a laugh track also helps create an atmosphere of Drebin going diligently about his work, checking his sources (the regular appearances of Johnny the Shoeshine Gun always crack me up, particularly when a passing priest pays for "information" on life after death: "are you talking existential being, or anthropomorphic deity?").

Not that you would be aware of any of this from the somewhat awful DVD cover that the series comes wrapped in, which presents the show as being far more straight-forward than it is. Still, we should be grateful for it at all after years of the show being available through occasional TV repeats. Extras on the DVD include a ten minute interview with the late Leslie Nielsen, who comes across as an avuncular old guy that reminded me of my mischievous granddad.

As for Police Squad! itself, the ratings didn’t hit the mark and the show was cancelled after half a dozen episodes. Legend has it that the complaint was that "you had to watch it" to get the laughs due to the large number of background gags and clever wordplay. For an example of the latter, check out the Jim Fell/Ralph Twice routine.

Later, the Zuckers and Abrahams would say the show’s cancellation was a blessing in disguise, as maintaining the standard of the original run would have been impossible. Perhaps true, but my feeling is that if it had been made in Britain, creating six episodes per series every few years would have been more than doable.

Instead, the characters and best jokes turned up again in The Naked Gun, though the roles of Hocken and Norberg were given to the more high-profile George Kennedy and OJ Simpson, perhaps the latter being a mistake in hindsight. The Law of Diminishing Returns applies to the sequels. If you’re into this kind of thing, however, you’ll not do much better than to pick up a copy of Top Secret, an excellent spoof of Cold War spy films starring Val Kilmer on top form and showing the singing skills that may have got him the nod to play Jim Morrison. Whether he might regret that one or not is up to you to decide.