Second Chances

Ten O’Clock Live returned to British TV screens last night. I've been critical of the first series, reckoning that if the intention was to create a challenging alternative to Newsnight and Question Time, Channel 4 failed as miserably as if they had hired a bunch of Amish kids to write biting satire. So were lessons learned and improvements made?

Err, no.

Jimmy Carr is still doing sketches that define “truly wretched”. Charlie Brooker still looks uneasy playing live. Lauren Laverne takes “vapid” to a new level. Even David Mitchell looked like he couldn't be arsed. Quite what the point was in him arguing the importance of football with Alastair Campbell (a devoted Burnley fan) and Clarke Carlisle (a footballer) seems pointless when Mitchell freely admits he doesn't get “it”. If they’d had another fan doing the questioning, we may have got a decent debate about whether players should be held as heroes/idols, the role they can play in fighting racism/homophobia in sport and so on.

Today, I’m struggling to remember a single laugh. Laverne was given a pathetic counterpoint to withdrawing banker’s bonuses (an argument taken apart on the Mail Watch forum last week) to read on the autocue. Mitchell and Carr offering differing political stances was akin to watching two small children who have read the Ladybird Guides to Marxism and Capitalism.

On the plus side, reading back the complaints I had a year ago, at least they got rid of the cuts to audience chuckling.

I’ll be staggered if Ten O’Clock Live gets a third series. I was surprised it got a second. Brooker, for one, looks like he doesn't want to be there. His whole “what does a banker do?” routine was tired beyond belief. In his defence, his old anger and contempt may well be waning now he’s slipping into domesticity: he’s become a TV personality, whether he likes it or not, with another celeb as a wife and a baby on the way. The days where he could sit around playing video games and spit venom at vapid TV bods in his column are long gone. After all, he doubtless has to meet those people now. You had a good run, Charles, but you’re not one of us anymore.

What annoys most of us, however, is that C4 had the best show around that mixed comedy and news: the Daily Show. And they dumped it on E4, then ditched it altogether bar the weekly Global Edition. For that, I hate everyone involved with the entire channel. To knock out the excuse that putting together a weekly show can be tricky due to occasional lack of material in the news is somewhat pathetic, especially given the Daily Show manages around 90 minutes of it over four days a week. It also benefited from having a charismatic, confident host.

Meanwhile, we're left waiting for a mainstream English satirical show that can finally rid us of that tired corpse, Have I Got News For You.

What's My Name? (Slight Return)

I've written before that a crucial point in any fledgling band’s existence is when the point comes to choose a name, and the theme has been playing on my mind again recently. There are many considerations: how it sounds, how it looks on posters and the connotations it carries.

Having a great name can carry a band even if their image is a lot of cobblers. It would have been easy for the Human League to be known as Stupid Haircut if not for having such an ace handle. It doesn't need to be something too clever either: after all, the Smiths is as basic as it gets, but hints towards the band’s songs of normal working class lives.

Naturally, some get away with having a lousy name. Generally, it works if the look can compensate. The Beatles, as I said, is a terrible name. But first with their leather-clad rent boy look, then the smart suits and mop tops, they looked great – perfect for the oncoming TV age – and it’s easy to see how they became the biggest band in the world instead of more staid lookers like the Shadows. Equally so, Paul Weller could get over naming his band the Jam because he was a dynamic, handsome young lad with great taste in clothes that ensured he appealed to plenty of folk. That he fell into the same trap with the Style Council is a bit inexcusable, mind.

XTC may well have been a bunch of hicks from Swindon initially smuggling a ride on the punk bandwagon, but Andy Partridge knew exactly what he was doing when he picked the name. On a poster, it looks great – three capital letters suggesting high energy. Equally so, the Go-Betweens acts as a clue to more sussed people of the literary qualities of that band’s music.

Then there are bands who fail miserably on both counts: crap name, crap look. The biggest culprits of this that spring to mind are 80s Scouse synth-pop merchants A Flock of Seagulls, the band who got me thinking on these lines again while listening to their debut album this morning. Taking your name from a lyric by the ultra-macho Stranglers isn't a good starting point in the first place, especially when you look so fey that Belle and Sebastian would think they could take you in a fight. Which brings us to the look: now, younger readers may wish to take a minute to google image the band to see exactly what I’m talking about here.

(pause)

Back? Yeah, I know, I know. You have to ask what Mike Score was thinking about. Actually, I can take a faint guess that he saw the attention Phil Oakey got for his effort and wanted a slice of that action. Being a former hairdresser, he came up with the most bizarre look he could and voila. In fairness, the fact they scored a couple of hits in America (and a Grammy!) would suggest it worked. On the other hand, that they were pretty much finished in a couple of years says otherwise, and how often do you hear them mentioned these days other than as a point of ridicule? See The Wedding Singer and Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction.

Which is a shame, as they should be best remembered for a trio of classic singles in I Ran, Space Age Love Song and Wishing, all of which stand up to anything else from the era. I Ran is also fab enough to be used in the ads for Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, one the best games ever. But fate has decreed that they will be remembered for a haircut: new bands, take note

They're Real To Me...

Five great fictional bands that aren't Spinal Tap.

The Be-Sharps
A classic rise-and-fall story, the quartet of Homer Simpson, Seymour Skinner, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon and Barney Gumble (replacing Clancy Wiggum) rode the barber-shop craze to huge success for one 80s summer. Their Baby On Board remains a classic of American music and won them nods from legends such as George Harrison and David Crosby.

Good enough, need it to be said, to beat Dexy's Midnight Runners to a Grammy.

The Commitments
Well worth checking out in both book and film form, the forerunners of "Dublin Soul" were put together when bassist Derek Scully and guitarist "Outspan" Foster asked their friend Jimmy Rabbite to manage them on the basis that he knew more about music than them as "you were the first in school to get the Frankie Goes to Hollywood album. And you were the first to realise they were shite".

Jim got straight to work and put together a killer line-up built around mentor/trumpet player Joey "The Lips" Fagan, an apparent veteran of many classic sessions, and vocalist Declan Cuffe. Styling themselves as the world's hardest working band, Dublin was taken by the ten-piece group and fame awaited via a jam session with soul legend Wilson Pickett. Tragically, ego and in-fighting brought about an abrupt end to matters, not helped by Fagan working his way through the group's female contingent.

Smeg and the Heads
Oh, the folly of youth. 17 year old Dave Lister really thought his band would be massive, especially with their catchy number Om. Despite a strong set at their local Liverpool boozer, it wasn't to be. Their drummer, a crazed whacked-out hippy called Dobbin joined the police and became a big shot in the Freemasons; bassist Gazza "neo-marxist, nihilistic anarchist" ended up selling insurance.

Lister, meanwhile, joined the crew of the Red Dwarf and ended up three million years in the future and being the last human being alive, meaning he was quite probably the best musician in the universe. However, in one alternate reality, Lister became obscenely rich, never went into space and instead bought three million copies of Om, enough to make it top of the pops.

Josie and the Pussycats
At the risk of sounding terribly laddish, I have a major thing for women who play guitars. And if she's got red hair... well, double bonus points. And if on top of all that she's being played by Rachel Leigh Cook... then I don't care how average the film is. Especially when Rosario Dawson is backing her up on bass.

The Blues Brothers Band
Well, obviously. For one thing, they played throughout the best film of all time, which is a good start. Then, as I noted previously, they had Steve Cropper and Duck Dunn in their line-up. You can't top that.

Their greatest moment came in a reunion concert organised to raise funds to save the orphanage that "Joliet" Jake and Elwood Blues grew up in. Organising this had been tricky, as Jake had been jailed for sticking up a gas station to cover the band's bar tab, leaving the others to get straight jobs. What might have been the start of a fruitful career was somewhat spoiled when the whole group ended up joining Jake back in the Joint. Their next comeback, minus their frontman, is best forgotten.

Rolling Down The Slope

The country of my birth, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, was one of the, perhaps the, dominant force in the world at the end of the 19th century. To paraphrase the words of Manchester United supporters, we did what we wanted in the big wide world. Not that it mattered much to most people living here: my own great-grandpop was too busy not getting blown up while mining coal. I doubt the fact Queen Victoria was Empress of India meant more than jack shit to him or impacted on his life.

Fifty years, and two World Wars, later, the political map had taken a severe swing and the former colony of the USA had taken the crown as Big Chief of the World. OK, they got their arses handed to them in Vietnam, but what they couldn't do with bombs, they could do with their true big gun: capitalism. As opposed to Britain, which as noted by Eddie Izzard, utilised the clever use of flags.

Of course, sections of the English media still lament events before most of our lifetimes. They pine for the days Britannia ruled the waves and if any of the natives give us lip, we’d take them out back and have them shot. That nowadays the citizens of those same said countries should have the cheek to come over here looking for opportunity is nothing short of a scandal, obviously.

The more rational of us see this country for what it is: a pretty prosperous place, in the context of the world as a whole, where it rains a lot. Not as content as Costa Rica, perhaps, but hardly Iraq. Life here is good, despite our moaning about the weather, and the constant moaning from the likes of the Daily Mail and Express makes me struggle to correspond that with the reality I see every day.

And here’s the rub. 100 years ago, news to most people was what happened in their street or at the football game on a Saturday. Media meant the craic in the pub. Then, over the 20th century, first radio and television, then the Internet, took hold and the world shrunk so that now, what could be the fall of the American Empire is there for all to see.

Back to the States, and one of the more interesting aspects of reading the excellent Downward Spiral blog (see right) is that all the information about the economic decline in the States is out there – it’s hardly hidden away in secret Government files. It seems every day Bill blogs about some factory closing and other lay-offs. All I can imagine is that in 100 years time, the elderly will tell the youngsters that “there was a time we had airbases all over the world, and pictures of our film stars in states of undress were highly sought after”.

And yet the mainstream news sources seem to be far too preoccupied with which unhinged lunatic may end up El President next – the idea that there may not be much to take care off in 20 years or so doesn't seem to crop up. Still, who will the Republican choose to run? The homophobic one? The serial adulterer? The racist? Is that one or all of them?

Perhaps the plan is to level Iran and all move there, to ensure people are closer to the oil? All the same, I’d advise young Americans to start learning Chinese dialects if they want a job through the 21st century. It’ll be a damn sight harder then having to learn to spell colour and say aluminium incorrectly.

Soundtracking the Sky at Night

Naming yourself after a galaxy is one way of setting down a marker of how you’re going to sound. With their previous album Saturdays=Youth, M83 (or just Anthony Gonzalez, if you prefer) seemed to be stretching towards a soundtrack for dreamy stargazers. With Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, it feels at times as if we’re listening to a trip through space.

The whole idea of a “double” album seems obsolete in the CD/digital age, something the Clash and Springsteen made a bit more credible after years of abuse from prog rock. Past the 80s, the idea of a double CD album was most frequently used for compilation albums and the like. After all, to fill two discs would take 140 minutes of music. Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming isn't that long, and could probably have fit on the one disc. Seems it works more as an idea than anything, splitting the album into two distinct halves.

If Gonzalez makes one mistake with this, it’s that he hits the peak too soon on both sides: Intro, Midnight City and Reunion are all superb, sounding like little else out there at the moment. I've read some criticisms that he only knows one trick – make it more epic. It could be true, but it’s a good trick to have. Like Kim & Jessie from the previous album, there’s a wonderful soaring quality that creates a great atmosphere. Many of the songs that add to this are fairly short, offering brief respite from the bigger sounds, as with Train to Pluton before Claudette Lewis. The latter sees some top slap-bass playing amongst the rattling synths.

Side two is perhaps a little more sedate, though the one-two of New Map and OK Pal would initially suggest otherwise. It’s in the slower songs that M83's past dalliances with shoegazing come back to the fore, especially when compared to Slowdive’s later work, though another comparison might be a cross between Talk Talk’s last two albums and their first two: mournful post-rock with shedloads of keyboards.

There are flaws, naturally: lyrically, it at times verges on the banal with the suspicion they’re there to stop some songs being instrumental. Also, doing so many songs means quality control drops: Raconte-Moi Une Histoire, a number narrated by a child going on about frogs, does not warrant repeat listens. Finally, one personal quibble is the lack of Morgan Kibby singing, given her contributions on Saturdays=Youth were particular highlights of mine.

As a piece of work, however, Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming is nothing but very impressive. It got in a load of “Top Album” polls last year for good reason, and if I’d got myself together to have bought it on release, I’d have done the same. There’s plenty to put off a lot of people (those with an aversion to early 80s synth-pop may well end up retching), but those coming from a similar place as Anthony Gonzalez – and with the album making the US top 20, it seems there may be a growing number – will find it an essential listen.

Oddly Compelling

If you like action films, the 1980s was a great time. You could choose from those with a sci-fi slant (The Terminator, Robocop), heroic everymen (Die Hard) and murderous aliens out for cheap kicks (Predator). Something for everyone, in fact.

However, a select group decided to avoid issues such as “plot”, “character development” and “acting”. These peaks of filmmaking instead cut straight to the chase: musclebound male leads carrying guns that weigh more than me and offering pithy one-liners after they used them on unsuspecting mooks. The success and sequel of The Expendables shows there’s obviously a lot of love out there for these, so here’s some of my favourites of this top genre.

Commando (Arnold Schwarzenegger)
One time Special Forces bod John Matrix (curiously armed with an Austrian accent) has retired to a life in the countryside with his daughter, chopping wood and questioning Boy George’s gender – a role model of a single dad. All is ruined when one time teammate Bennett decides the only way to deal with his latent homosexuality is to take over a small Latin American country and so kidnaps the little girl to ensure Matrix helps out.

Obviously, our man isn't going to stand for that kind of cliché lying down and so goes on a philosophical journey of self-exploration involving slaughtering several hundred soldiers, some involving the clever use of garden tools. Legendary pay-off line “Let off some steam, Bennett!” somehow missed topping the “Top 100 Movie Quotes” poll.

Cobra (Sylvester Stallone)
Renegade cop Cobretti has managed to stay on the force despite dubious methods and a silly first name. But when a baffling plot device involving some cult ritually slaughtering people hits LA, he’s the man to protect the one living witness, played by Brigitte Nielsen in an inspired bit of casting.

Despite his top detective skills in working out the complex conspiracy, the chief isn't buying it and sends Cobra, his partner and the witness out into the hills to hide. Tagging along is a police woman who also happens to be in the cult, which is handy for all concerned, and moves things along so that it surprisingly leads to a big shoot-out at the end. Andrew Robinson (Scorpio from Dirty Harry) has a dignified cameo.

Raw Deal (Arnold Schwarzenegger)
Kicked out of his CIA job and working as a small town Sheriff, Mark Kaminsky (curiously armed with an Austrian accent) is offered a way back by his old boss. Not pleased at the murder of his son by the Mob, the chief wants our Mark to go undercover to bring those SOBs down – but the catch is that he’ll have no back up if things go South, as the job is strictly "off the books".

With Hitchcock-esque building of tension, our boy ingrates himself with the baddies with top acting skills (his playing drunk is a talent to behold) before deciding the best option is to just kill them all. Highlight is a sequence in a gravel pit in which the hero drives around at speed, sniping goons out of the window with expert precision while Satisfaction by the Stones blares out of his tape deck.

The Punisher (Dolph Lundgren)
In the right hands (i.e. Garth Ennis), Frank Castle is one of the great comic book characters. Here, he’s reborn, in an unusual move, as a Swedish muscle machine. Which works on some level, somewhere, I guess, but where’s the skull shirt? Eh?

So, the Punisher is an ex-cop understandably gone troppo after his family cop for a mob hit put on his head. Rather than hope for the forces of law and order to sort it out, Frank decides the best solution for all is huge amounts of violence. However, a spanner is thrown in the works when the Japanese mafia roll into town and kidnap their Italian rivals’ children in a severe bit of negotiation. Our Frank has his arm twisted by the Head Don to ride to the rescue, and does so leaving a large pile of bodies. At the climax, with all the Japanese people out of the way, he executes the mob guy he’s been helping on front of his own son. Really! I mean, that’s not going to send him on a roaring rampage of revenge when he grows up, is it?

Red Heat (Arnold Schwarzenegger)
Top Soviet cop Ivan Danko (curiously etc etc) is left miffed when his mark escapes to the capitalist West, killing his partner in the process. I’m assuming he’s miffed, as the acting doesn't really offer much of an insight beyond 'stoic'.

The bad guy is subsequently nicked in Chicago for littering or something, and Ivan is sent to pick him up. Thankfully, the hand over goes bell-end up and our Communist Chum has to team up with another stereotype (fat, chain-smoking wise-cracking Jim Belushi) to pick up the pieces via the use of bullets. At the end, Danko is so inspired by Regan’s America, he goes back to the USSR, destroy the regime and teams up with David Hasselhoff to tear down the Berlin Wall.

Where Did You Get That Blank Expression?

Until he rocked up in the excellent Justice League Unlimited cartoon series, the Question was pretty much a forgotten character in the DC universe, almost relegated to the status of somebody he might have been.

After falling out with Marvel, comics legend Steve Ditko signed up to Charlton and was allowed a greater deal of creative freedom. The Question first appeared in a Blue Beetle comic – introducing us to TV journalist Vic Sage, whose investigative skills nevertheless require a secret identity. Using inventions created by Professor Rodor, when needed Vic takes out a mask from a hidden belt compartment. This also releases a gas which bonds the mask to his face and changes the colour of his clothes and hair, but the best part is that the effect given is that our hero no longer appears to have any facial features, creating an unnerving effect to the villains he encounters.

Under Ditko, Sage/The Question took a stance inspired by the creator’s interest in the works of Ayn Rand. On his news show, Sage would attack his viewers for enabling criminals to prosper by using the illegal services they provided. Incorruptible to the core, he would refuse to tone down his (somewhat hectoring) stance, which carried over to his Question identity. This saw him refuse to help criminals in risk of mortal peril, musing that their activities had seen them put in a situation in which they would receive their just punishment.

Ditko would take these Objectivist ideas further still with Mr A, who had an absolute black and white view of the world, which doesn’t settle too well with this reader, who believes in a world full of various shades of grey. The Question pretty much slid from view until the 80s, where he was resurrected by another superb writer, Dennis O’Neil. That this happened soon after Alan Moore’s Watchmen was released, with its Question/Mr A expy Rorschach, may not be a coincidence.

It’s in this run that I came to the character, which may explain why I think O’Neil had Vic Sage nailed down the best. This Sage was given up at birth and brought up in an orphanage as Charles Victor Szasz, taking on his better known name when he appears in Hub City to work on the TV station. Professor Aristotle “Tot” Rodor provides a role as his mentor, voice of reason and best (only?) friend. In the first issue, we see Hub City as a deeply corrupt place with a drunken major being controlled by Reverend Hatch, who can best described as slightly hatstand. As both Sage and the Question, our man has been causing problems for the bad guys, and lured as his alter-ego into a trap, he’s beaten close to death by mercenary martial arts master Lady Shiva then shot in the head and dumped off the end of a pier for good measure.

As ever working for her own reasons, Shiva rescues Vic, heals his knackered body and arranges for him to spend time with Richard Dragon, a somewhat philosophical kung-fu dude who lives in the mountains. After a time, he returns to Hub City with a new line in Zen thinking to aid his honed fighting skills. Over 30-odd issues, we see him try to avoid falling back into his old ways as all around the city begins to collapse into absolute disorder with seemingly only the Question and bent-cop-now-reformed Izzy O’Toole fighting the other corner.

Though the overall tone is serious, Sage – in true comic book tradition - does have a good way with a line. Often asked about his (non) face, he replies “Overdosed on acne medicine”. Yet his jokes hide a man constantly at war with himself. As the series progresses, Sage spends less time meditating (or “going inside”, a technique he uses to put together seemingly obtuse clues) and more engaging in brutal fights as the fabrics of Hub City unravel.

One amusing sidenote sees Sage buy a copy of Watchmen to read on a flight and admiring Rorschach’s moves. Later, he adjusts his combat style to sheer brawling and get’s his arse handed to him on a plate, leading him to muse that “Rorschach sucks”.

As a collection, for me it’s only equalled by Watchmen and Garth Ennis’ run with the Punisher on the Marvel Max imprint. Vic’s work as the Question is shown to be more a search for identity: at times he seems to think that his actual name is the Question, as his original name was given to him at the orphanage and Vic Sage merely one he gave himself. A telling moment towards the end of the run has Sage save a man from a mugging and asked “who are you?”, to which he answers “A reasonable question. At least for now”. Earlier issues had seen him answer similar inquiries with “Good question”. We’re led to wonder, as Izzy O’Toole does, whether he will eventually crack and start killing criminals rather than just beating seven shades of shit out of them.

In the now and then, I believe the Question is still out there, albeit under a new identity: Renee Montoya taking on the mask after Sage died of lung cancer. As stated at the top, he returned on our TV screens as an oddball character convinced of various conspiracy theories involving boybands and the tips at the end of your shoelaces. Think of Fox Mulder in a cool coat and hat combo. Though miles away from previous incarnations, this Question worked in large part due to the brilliant voicework of Jeffery Coombs and a memorable scene where he confronts Lex Luthor on his latest plan for world domination with objectivist logic: “A is A, and no matter what reality he calls home, Luthor is Luthor”.