Woolgatherer

100-word Album of the Week (42)

2011-12-08T18:53:00.004Z

Curtis Mayfield, Curtis Live! (1971)

Stripping back the orchestral soul of his debut album, this New York recording has a low-key, smoky jazz feel, with Curtis’ nimble guitar work in the lead. But the intimacy doesn’t dampen the racial politics, which take in a spectrum from righteous anger (Mighty Mighty Spade And Whitey) to bare sadness (We The People Who Are Darker Than Blue). Alongside Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield was perhaps the most creatively ambitious of all the black American songwriters of the 70s, and while this album doesn’t show his full musical range, its suggestion of a different, quieter soul aesthetic make it indispensable.

> See here for a list of all the 100-word albums.

Lessons from Libya

2011-10-27T10:37:00.001Z

In a lecture at the Temple of Peace in Cardiff earlier this month, Alan Doss reminded us that the United Nations is not a pacifist organisation. In its search for peace and justice – at least when that is what its members seek – an international alliance will sometimes have to choose a violent way to bring about change. Doss, who worked for the UN throughout his career but saw his greatest challenge at the end of it, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, faced criticism from Congolese refugees who accused him of not doing enough to prevent violence there. But while the Congo’s situation may be unique in its level of depravity, with rape being used as a systematic weapon of war, it is not unique in demonstrating that where international troops intervene in a national conflict, things will inevitably get dirty. Iraq and Afghanistan provide our clearest recent examples of what can go wrong.

However, no-one who is committed to democracy or human rights should doubt that sometimes, the violence used to bring about change is justifiable when weighed against its longer-term benefits. It looks as if Libya falls into that category and, I would argue, provides a case study about which pacifists might think long and hard.

Saying this, by the way, is not the same as saying that we should ignore the abuses carried out by liberators, or that we should applaud Muammar Gaddafi’s swift and bloody execution. Plainly, the former are inexcusable in the context of a fight for freedom and democratic rights; we can only hope that reconciliation with Gaddafi loyalists is not all the harder as a result. The latter is a greyer area, as it’s clear that seeing the dictator’s corpse paraded on national television has been cathartic for Libyans, most of whom frankly had no interest in seeing him tried in court. But the justice seeker in me wishes it had been otherwise.

As many journalists noted, Gaddafi’s end looked like that of Saddam Hussein. Months after losing power, he had lost the country and his name had lost its power to terrorise. He was found in a bolthole, and despite keeping his promise to die in Libya, the end was inglorious. But attempts to draw comparisons with the actual conflict in Iraq are less fruitful.

First, this was a widely backed military intervention, endorsed by the United Nations and, perhaps more importantly, the League of Arab States. The UN resolution that decided NATO’s course stressed that this was a mission to protect Libyan civilians from Gaddafi’s attacks, under the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine hammered out following the international community’s inaction in Rwanda. Gareth Evans, who co-chaired the commission that developed R2P, said:

"The international military intervention in Libya is not about bombing for democracy or Muammar Gaddafi's head… Legally, morally, politically, and militarily it has only one justification: protecting the country's people."

That was on 24 March, a few days after the action began. In the months that followed there were worldwide cries of “mission creep”, as the intervention evolved from simply protecting civilians into an all-out effort to unseat Gaddafi’s regime. But what remained constant throughout those months was that NATO essentially played a supporting role. This was a genuine popular revolution with nationwide support from those who had seen their communities beaten, starved and denied a voice for 42 years.

Secondly, Libya has seemed remarkably united behind efforts to oust the dictator, with Gaddafi loyalists evaporating to an insignificant (though well armed) minority in a relatively short time. And there seems a real hunger for democracy throughout the country, despite the recent suggestion that sharia law will hold sway. The optimistic view is that Libyans will simply not allow a strongly Islamist government to take root, and that they will prioritise their new freedoms over tribal differences. But even if they do not, Libya is still no Iraq: there is no powder keg of ethnic and religious conflict waiting to be lit, and no comparable regional influences seeking to undermine the new order.

Debate will continue to rage over the way in which NATO plainly exceeded its authority in pursuing regime change in Libya. There will also be voices raised in objection at the UN’s selective protection of Libyan civilians from their own government, when it has done little or nothing in Syria or Burma or Zimbabwe. Richard Falk at Princeton University argues that the UN needs to separate the responsibility to protect from geopolitical considerations, and proposes establishing a UN Emergency Force in future cases – similar, perhaps, to the international standing army sought by Lord David Davies, founder of the Temple of Peace.

But whatever course that debate takes, Libya does remind us that international intervention can work; that military force is a legitimate means of protecting human rights; and that pacifism as a principle is difficult to defend. What happens next will, if the peace is secured effectively over the coming months, be up to ordinary Libyans. And that’s as it should be.

Gervais malaise

2011-10-19T16:39:00.004Z

You might think he’s a genius, you might plump for big-headed tosser: but there’s one thing I hadn’t thought Ricky Gervais was until today, and that’s a borderline bigot.

Gervais, in case you haven’t followed the Twitter storm of the last week or so, thinks that using the word “mong” for a laugh is perfectly acceptable. Actually, he’s said this before in his Science show, so this is nothing new. He apparently believes that because words change their meaning over time – no shit, Sherlock – words can’t actually be offensive unless you mean them to be.

For now, let’s overlook the interesting implication that he’d be happy to use, for example, the word “Paki” as a term of endearment to his Asian fans. The real point here seems to be that Gervais seems, in one decisive move, to have jumped over the barrier that alternative comedy put in the way of authentic bigotry. Since the early 1980s it’s been widely accepted that sexism, racism, homophobia and the like may be referred to - ironically, 'knowingly' - in order to ridicule them; but once that layer of irony is removed it becomes, simply, prejudice. In fact, Frankie Boyle overstepped the mark long ago, but got away with comments about Jordan’s son because, y’know, it’s only Jordan. But Gervais is a modern icon of comedy, a genuine innovator with mainstream appeal who is better than this. That’s what hurts.

Of course, Gervais probably isn't intending to belittle disabled people. Richard Herring – who has gone beyond the call of duty in challenging Gervais’ Twitter defenders to think again – argues that he uses “mong” essentially because they are a group he can get away with offending. But it’s arguable that, objectively speaking, the particular prejudice is irrelevant. The ground has shifted; demeaning language is mainstream again. I’m not suggesting we’re on a slippery slope to racist slogans daubed on walls, but I do think that Gervais is playing a dangerous game at the margins of what is right and wrong.

This tweet from Gervais was particularly worrying

The humourless PC brigade have been out in force trying to influence the vote with ill informed negative comments

as it suggests that not only is he happy to try on such language for size, he’s also quite happy to equate his detractors with some general politically correct “movement” to appeal to people’s more idiotic instincts. The Gervais I used to know is incisive, clever, needling at mediocrity rather than cosying up to it – he isn’t a millionaire Melanie Phillips.

Look at those two letters: PC. The cheap-shot unthinking man’s alternative to defending your point. What the readers of right-wing tabloids think of as “politically correct” is no more than correct: because yes, there are things that are objectively right and wrong to say, and that has more to do with society than it does with politics.

Embracing diversity, looking at people as people and not as stereotypes, is one of the great challenges to all of us living in a would-be tolerant, multicultural society. Having an intelligent person like Ricky Gervais undermine that principle for the sake of keeping his Twitter followers on side is simply depressing.

A bagful of promises

2011-10-04T15:04:00.002Z

Anyone doing the usual hellish trawl of Cardiff’s shopping metropolis on Saturday will not have failed to notice that something has changed. How much it affects you, of course, will depend on your existing eco-credentials, or at least your penchant for a rucksack. Yes, the carrier bag charge – mighty symbol of a new green Wales – has arrived, and shop assistants everywhere are tiring already of the need to remind us.

Don’t let my soupçon of sarcasm give you the wrong idea: the 5p charge is clearly A Good Idea. We should doubtless be proud that our newly-empowered lawmakers have decided to follow the example of Ireland, albeit at a lower rate and without any of the new funds entering public coffers. It’s just that one might argue – as George Monbiot did at the weekend – that in the grand scheme of environmental sustainability, it isn’t really that big a deal.

The Federation of Small Businesses was determined to make a stand against it all, even though consumers themselves seemed supportive. “There's a lot of confusion and I think it will take a long time for people to get used to the charge,” they noted, a comment which could hardly be translated into rage by even the hardiest of tabloid headline writers. The Western Mail did, however, manage to make a “storm” out of the fact that the Welsh Local Government Association doubted the law’s enforceability.

The real importance of this law is that it will prove, once again, that legislation is better than regulation if you want the nation to change its lifestyle. We’ve seen it with the decline in smoking, and with the ban on using our phones when driving. On the flip side, one look at our hopelessly inadequate response to the obesity crisis is enough to tell us that so-called ‘self-regulation’ by the food industry simply doesn’t work.

But charging for carrier bags is painless. It will take a few weeks, or months at most, for everyone to accept it as a fact of life and take reusable bags wherever they go. No-one makes a big sacrifice. Dealing with the ramifications of climate change on a bigger scale is where the real challenge lies.

Oxfam recently reported that the Horn of Africa, already suffering a devastating drought which has killed thousands and forced nearly a million Somalis to leave their homes, faces a likely temperature increase of 3-4°C by 2080-2099 relative to 1980-1999. Quoting a Royal Society report, they predicted a 20% decline in yields in maize crops and up to 50% in bean crops. That’s just one region of one continent, but Somalia is one of the poorest and least stable countries in the world. The effects of climate change, as we are continually reminded by NGOs desperate for swifter global action, will be felt most keenly by those who have the least resources to cope.

It’s not even as if our governments fundamentally disagree on the science of climate change. Last December in Cancun, nearly every member state of the UN agreed on a whole range of principles including cutting carbon emissions, helping developing countries to deploy cleaner energy, and getting a grip on the destruction of rainforests. But it’s the political leadership back home, after the inspiring words have been spoken on the world stage, that is lacking.

Here in our cosseted world of the developed North, we have still not come terms with the fact that dealing with climate change really is going to mean making sacrifices. We can dream all we like about fleets of electric cars, vast investments in renewable energy, or the wholesale dismantling of global capitalism to make way for some kind of pastoral localist idyll. But in real world politics, what will really make the change will be when world leaders are brave enough to stand up and start saying, “Sorry – this is going to hurt.”

No more cheap flights. Big increases in taxation for private cars and investment in sustainable transport. Public campaigns to eat less meat. Until governments start speaking up for these kinds of steps – and there are many more – we, the public, are unlikely to adopt the wholesale change of mindset that will be necessary if we really mean business. Climate change is likely to be the defining issue of the twenty-first century – politically and socially as well as environmentally – and we need our public figures to face up to it. Like the Poor Laws or the start of the welfare state – but a global issue in an unprecedentedly globalised world – we need a wholesale change in our society’s narrative. Individuals and communities will contribute in important ways, but we need the political weight and financial wherewithal of our governments to make the really big changes.

I do believe that this change will come: it has to. But as mitigation of climate change fades inexorably into adaptation to its reality, we can only hope that it will happen sooner rather than later.

Kicking against the Nicks (77 days to go)

2011-09-28T18:22:00.001Z

Last night Pollard Jr was giving Liz a right old kicking. I put my hand on the danger area and couldn’t believe the force: this is a baby, for crying out loud! It was wonderful and life-affirming and all that, but I couldn’t help also thinking about how the chest-bursting scene begins in Alien.

This is not the kind of thing that you read in Emma’s Diary, the supremely irritating booklet that the NHS foists on all expectant mothers. In there, ‘Nick’ (the supposedly real, sub-Tony Parsons type husband) hilariously compares their newly-painted baby room to a giant egg and ‘Emma’ (his supposedly real wife) – wait for it – ignores him! This kind of jollity is commonplace in a book which is basically a patronising how-to guide written from the perspective of two people you would never want to meet but would punch if you did.

That said, I’ve just realised that we inadvertently painted our room the same colour as they did. And in the same week. Not sure if this means we’re doing something right or will inevitably turn into morons.

Making room (78 days to go)

2011-09-27T07:29:00.002Z

Woolgatherer readers – for some do exist – may wonder why there has been yet another lengthy silence from me on diverse matters of culture, politics and nonsense. The answer, I’m afraid, is boringly clear: decorating. And not just that: decorating for our new family member. Two and a half months to go, and while Liz pulls off the feat of simultaneously blooming and collapsing in a knackered heap, I’m coated with paint and, like all good workmen, blaming my tools.

Decorating a baby’s room has none of the sentimental glow that one might expect from watching too many films of the type that you don’t really watch but secretly do. It is exactly the same as any other room – there are rollers, skirting boards, rolls of masking tape, endless visits to B & Q – with the added inconvenience of trying to do right by t’ bairn. An extra coat is added so that his/her predicted range of unidentifiable splatterings can be sponged off the walls. And Liz is banned from helping out, on account of some dubious principle that pregnant women shouldn’t be exposed to paint fumes.

Anyway, now it’s done and we’ve ordered the new carpet (one that is actually possible to clean with bleach; we’re not doing this by halves), I have finally begun to feel like something is changing. Oh, I’ve been smiling at adorable babies on the bus for a couple of months now, and hearing the little one’s heart has already caused mine to do the required leaping at the hospital. But now that the room is there – empty, expectant – it finally dawns on me that someone will be arriving soon; and they’re going to be, well, staying.

Am I ready? No, of course not. Am I excited? Just a bit. Bring it on, I say.

100-word Album of the Week (41)

2011-08-07T17:04:00.002Z

Four Tet, There Is Love In You (2010)

For over a decade now, Kieran Hebden has been producing some of the most beautiful music in any genre, and this album is his subtle masterpiece. Relying on ghostly vocal samples in its first half and delicate instrumental patterns in its second, it pulses with a hypnotic minimalism that can never quite be pinned down. There are hints of Boards of Canada and Kraftwerk’s softer moments, but where the German recluses favour head music, this (as the title suggests) is definitely good for the heart. It’s one to float through after a hard day at work, with your eyes closed.

> See here for a list of all the 100-word albums.

From one extreme to the other

2011-07-27T09:58:00.003Z

An interesting article on Tuesday’s Today programme posed the question of whether Anders Behring Breivik – the extremist who has confessed to the mass killings in Norway – should be considered “mad”. There followed much talk of semantics and definitions, of course, with John Humphrys playing his usual role of straight-talking stalwart to the guests’ more cautious undertakings. But the most intriguing point was one that had nothing to do with insanity, but with politics. Rightly identifying that all forms of extremism should be confronted with civic debate where possible, Maajid Nawaz (former extremist himself and founder of the think-tank Quilliam) nonetheless stated that Breivik, a “fascist”, was “the mirror opposite” of an Islamist.

Now, clearly there is a very important difference between Islamic extremism and right-wing extremism. Quite apart from the differing demands of a white supremacist gunman in Norway and a bomb layer in Kabul, there is a gulf in majority-white Britain’s reaction to the two which has its roots in culture, language, religion and – let’s face it – skin colour. That’s why it is so very important that the media get this right. We should all applaud Charlie Brooker’s very eloquent condemnation of the ill-informed speculation that dogged the initial coverage of the Norway killings, a symptom of the must-guess -now obsession that is the unintended consequence of our 24-hour news culture. We must resist the narrative of the post-9/11 world that pushes us towards the view that nowhere in world will ever be safe again, and that this is the fault of Muslims.

But “the other end of the scale”? Something in this doesn’t ring true; in fact, as soon as you start to pull apart those words, you smell a rat, and perhaps an unpleasant and hypocritical one at that.

What precisely is this scale? A political one, with white fascists at one end at Islamists at the other? This appears to have no rational basis at all. Both groups exist primarily out of a hatred for others who don’t look or sound like them, whether the targets are pro-immigration left-wingers or democracy-loving Westerners. In fact, fascists and Islamic extremists essentially hate the same people – liberals. The fact that the latter purport to have religious reasons for doing so seems only to be relevant in terms of how they define the ‘other’. Both support the violent overthrow of those who oppose them; both have demonstrated numerous times that they will act on those beliefs.

Both groups push an extreme ideology, and do not care whether this outrages the majority of peaceful citizens in their countries. They assume that much of this opposition derives from some establishment-driven conspiracy theory, and their propaganda rests on this conceit. It has a degree of success in both cases, trickling down through more mainstream opinion and emerging in street protests that demand the killing of Americans, or in fact-free hate campaigns against immigrants led by national newspapers.

It is a deeply unpleasant aspect of such movements that they equate democracy and freedom with cowardice and immorality. But many of us progressives must accept a part of the blame, for all too often we fail to condemn such voices equally, to stand firm against hatred and fascism in all its forms. For Islamist terrorism is a form of fascism; not the opposite of a right-wing ideology cooked up in a Norwegian’s bedroom, but the same thing seen through a different lens.

The denial of such commonalities is not new. When the US and UK were preparing to invade Iraq in 2003, I condemned it as an illegal act which would kill tens of thousands of civilians and take many years to achieve a resolution. So it has proved, and I stand by my opposition to that war. But at the time, I was also ashamed at some of the company I found myself in. I found it bizarre that fellow liberals – led, of course, by the left’s über-clown of reductivist posturing, George Galloway – could actually support Saddam Hussein, one of the worst mass-murderers of the 20th century, to all intents and purposes a fascist dictator. And there was more: a deeply unpleasant current of anti-American fervour, a blind prejudice against everything the US stood for which should now be named for what it was – racism. (For more in this vein, I recommend reading Nick Cohen’s excoriating What’s Left?. I don’t endorse Cohen’s arguments in their entirety, but he does make a good case that the left is in danger of becoming morally redundant on such issues.)

Of course, there are those who claim that Islamism is different, that it derives from anger at Western economic and cultural dominance, and that this might be righteous anger. But while Al-Qaeda might spin theories about Judaeo-Christian conspiracies to destroy Islam, it makes no claim to be the ideology of the oppressed. Even if it did, we have long seen our way past the failures of the Weimar and the Third Reich’s promises of riches to – rightly – pass judgement on the Nazi foot-soldiers and collaborators. We should do the same with Islamist extremists.

Francis Wheen, in his entertaining survey of How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World, singles out Noam Chomsky among the so-called leftists who are so intent on damning America and all its works that they “abandon reality and morality altogether rather than forgo their comforting choices”. Chomsky gave the benefit of the doubt to Pol Pot and Slobodan Milošević, “strenuously downplaying the scale of their terror”, whereas:

With the United States… no proof is required. In October 2001 he stated as a fact that Pentagon strategists were planning the ‘slaughter and silent genocide’ of three or four million Afghans during their military campaign against the Taliban.

It is vital that we oppose ugly prejudices wherever we find them – and that includes a recognition that hatred and violence can emerge from people of all backgrounds, all ethnic and religious groups. We can all agree that our popular media have a key role to play here, in resisting what often appears to be an engrained prejudice – sometimes subtle, sometimes not – against people who are not Christian or not white. But liberals, lefties and internationalist must play their part too, if those descriptions are to mean anything. We must resist the analysis of world events which divides acts into two broad camps – things which challenge the West, and are therefore good, and things which support its ‘hegemony’, and are therefore bad. If freedom and human rights are to mean anything, then we have a duty to defend them against all their attackers.

My name is Prince. And I am funky.

2011-07-07T18:37:00.002Z

Prince is a man surrounded by his fair share of rumours, some fascinating, some plain ridiculous. The main rumour doing the rounds at the Hop Farm Festival last weekend was simply that he wouldn’t turn up. He’d bloody better, I said. I only came because of him.

The previous day had been a smorgasbord of legendary appearances, almost all of them wonderful. Patti Smith had played it straight with an acoustic set, Iggy and the Stooges had ripped up the place with a ferocity astonishing for men their age, Morrissey had been magisterial. Only Lou Reed, who clearly doesn’t give a toss about his audience, disappointed.

Contrastingly, it seemed that virtually no-one was booked for the Sunday; a consequence, no doubt, of its last-minute arrangement, but a point which only served to heighten the mystique. Sly Stone’s bassist Larry Graham would make an appearance, plainly at Prince’s request (he turned out to be spectacular).Tinie Tempah – of all people, considering the generally middle-aged demographic at this genteel festival in Kent – would be the main support. This was going to be a two-and-a-half-hour headline slot, with no other entertainment on offer for its duration.

He did turn up. Only after toying with us for a good half hour of other people’s music videos, mind, and reportedly after demanding a chauffeur-driven limo for the 25-metre walk to the stage. But the crowd was in too much of a good mood to care. The drummer came on first, apparently soundchecking. And then suddenly, there he was, a vision in white sequins and high-rose collars, a man with the most self-possessed air I have ever witnessed. He started work on his guitar. This was no ordinary soundcheck, but an extended funk jam taking in two of his songs – one old, one new – simply to get his band ready. But of course it wasn’t really about that. He was saying: look, even when I’m getting ready, I’m better than anyone else on the planet. And he was.

Prince treated us to two and a bit hours of the greatest, most committed, most exciting gig I have ever seen, and the crowd lapped up every minute of it. There were hits galore: a stunning sing-along Purple Rain with confetti bombs; a slinkily down-tempo Little Red Corvette; a superlatively funky Controversy. Introducing Kiss in the first of three encores (we wanted a fourth, but the festival’s licence restrictions denied it), he told the crowd that he had so many hits we’d be here till next year. He clearly looked as if he wouldn’t have minded.

The big revelation for me was just what an astonishing all-round performer he is. Part of me expected an aloof disregard for the crowd, but there was none of that. He knew exactly how much to say to us; when to whip us up, when to bring us down. Every note he sang was perfect, and his guitar playing was out of this world, the best I’ve seen besides Neil Young. And this was alongside directing the band, giving ad hoc instructions to the sound and lighting people, making pitch-perfect moves to every song. At one point he stood in a spotlight and executed some pretty damn nifty Jacko-style dance moves in his platform shoes. Then he looked straight at us: yeah, I can do that too.

He also showed off his own influences with a second encore that consisted entirely of cover versions, fitting in two Sly and the Family Stone numbers - with Larry Graham popping onto stage, of course - and the Beatles' Come Together in one joyous, groove-driven bundle. And there was Nothing Compares 2 U, another of his songs but made famous by someone else, which he slyly credited to Sinead O'Connor. The crowd booed playfully but we were told not to be mean: "I bought me a house with that song."

It’s no exaggeration to say that Prince must surely be the greatest stage performer alive today, possibly the greatest ever. I feel genuinely privileged to have witnessed him in what still, astonishingly, appears to be his prime – the man’s 53, for God’s sake. Once I returned I had a look at a few internet forums, and most people concur. Apart from one guy who said that sure, it was a great evening, but maybe only the third or fourth best Prince gig he’d seen. Honestly, he’s that good.

It's all fun and games until...

2011-05-26T15:39:00.005Z

This news item has the greatest opening paragraph I can remember. It also makes me wonder at what point - somewhere between the coming of the ATM and the death of dial-up, perhaps - I started to lose my grip on the technological revolution.

Apparently the practice of selling virtual powers is known rather ordinarily as 'gold mining', and it isn't far off some of the more traditional mining industries in its value - something like $3bn in 2009 alone. This perhaps isn't surprising, given that the games industry long ago overtook the cinema in financial takings, and that the production of Grand Theft Auto IV employed 1,000 people for three and a half years.

Obviously, though, there's a difference between motion-capturing a well-paid actor in a games studio in California and beating a prisoner for failing to earn enough credit from "monotonous tasks" (whatever they are) in World of Warcraft. It's all part of the topsy-turvy, loveable barrel of contradictions that is global capitalism, I suppose: found an industry, no matter how seemingly innocent, and sooner or later someone will find a way to exploit people from it.

And here we are, too, with yet another way for us Guardian readers to fell guilty about everything. It'll never end. Soon I'm going to discover that the seeds for my lettuces, grown with rainwater in my new organic vegetable patch, were packaged by children in Bangladesh and flown to Wilkinson's in a special helicopter fuelled by tar oil.

That's the real world, folks. Sometimes I can see why people want to exist in the virtual one.

iShuffling

2011-03-27T18:12:00.006Z

Over on The Dabbler, I bemoan my laptop's lack of eclecticism when choosing a random smattering of tracks from my entire music collection (800 CDs and counting, dontcha know). Well, it took more than 24 hours to transfer the buggers to my shiny new iPod, but once that was done, I thought I'd give things another go. Here were the first 10 pumped from its sleek black exterior. I'm not sure if you can draw any conclusions from any of this, except that it likes hip-hop artists and it has no quality control.

1. James Brown, I Don't Mind

From: Live at the Apollo (1963)

A short, elegant slice of down-tempo bluesy soul, showcasing JB's yearning vocals. I love these live soul albums where you can hear (but never quite discern the words) individual shouts from the audience. 4/5

2. N.W.A., Straight Outta Compton

From: Straight Outta Compton (1988)

Full of everything that makes the moral majority hate gangsta rap - swearing, violence, unashamed misogyny - this nonetheless has a deeply funky central groove and can trace its history (sort of) back to the above Godfather. Contains the memorable line "AK47 is the tool, don't make me out a motherfuckin' fool". 4/5

3. Eels, Rock Hard Times

From: Shootenanny! (2003)

Like all the best Eels songs, this mixes a modern, depressive outlook with a musical backing that is classic Americana. A bouncy country rock number from an underrated songwriter. 4/5

4. David Bowie, The Jean Genie

From: Aladdin Sane (1973)

A song about his friend Iggy Pop, and Bowie's genius is to make it sound simultaneously like an Iggy song and one of his own. See also his Lou Reed tribute, Queen Bitch. 5/5

5. Fatboy Slim, Kalifornia

From: You've Come a Long Way, Baby (1998)

Contains all the usual Fatboy hallmarks - a heavily treated vocal riff, drugs references, bouncy beats and unthreateningly phased instrumentals. But it's no Rockefeller Skank. 3/5

6. Oasis, Hey Now!

From: (What's the Story) Morning Glory? (1995)

Oh, now this is getting depressing. One of the songs that stopped Morning Glory being as good as their debut, this is lazy filler, slow paced and deathly dull. Is "Hey now" the laziest chorus ever? 1/5

7. Pixies, Rock Music

From: Bossanova (1990)

After Nevermind, Nirvana did a short, nasty, raucous song called Radio Friendly Unit Shifter. That was sarcastic, but this feels like Pixies' literal interpretation of its title. Rock music in its purest form: caveman beatas, incomprehensible lyrics, sub two minutes. Elemental fun. 3/5

8. The Black Crowes, Sometimes Salvation

From: The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion (1992)

Spirit of old-time blues, slacker styling of the Stones; great drawling vocals from Chris Robinson. This was one of the first albums I was given as a present, and I still pop it on occasionally now. A minor classic. 4/5

9. Kate Bush, Under Ice

From: Hounds of Love (1985)

Solemn and string-led, this is part of Hounds of Love's fantastically odd second-half suite. It sounds like the album's dark heart; gloomy but perversely pretty. 4/5

10. Eminem, Steve Berman

From: The Marshall Mathers LP (2000)

Ah, the skit. The thing which every hip-hop album seems to contain, and which every one would be better without. This is no exception. 2/5

100-word Album of the Week (40)

2011-03-24T10:56:00.003Z

Average White Band, AWB (1974)

Elvis, the Beatles and numerous others may have admired and reinterpreted black music for the mainstream, but you would never have doubted their whiteness. Average White Band, on the other hand, really sound black, and were true contemporaries of trailblazers like Sly and the Family Stone and the Isley Brothers. Tight and seriously funky – but Scottish – this album offers floor-filling classics like Got The Love, Pick Up The Pieces and Work To Do, alongside smokier grooves like Just Want To Love You Tonight. All is sewn together with effortless melody and Alan Gorrie and Hamish Stuart’s peerless vocal harmonies.

> See here for a list of all the 100-word albums.

Local fame

2011-03-18T09:46:00.001Z

Having rarely got close to usefulness with my poetry, it was gratifying the other day to win 1st prize in the Cardiff Writers' Circle competition - and to get my prize from a proper, bona fide successful poet.

It's all here.

Desert island pics

2011-02-27T18:20:00.025Z

Liz and I recently got back from a holiday in the Dominican Republic.

We stayed in an extraordinarily beautiful area called the Samana Peninsula, which has lots of these:

Even more of these:

And a fair few of these:

We went self-catering and stayed in a remote little place called El Cabito, a romantic spot perched right on top of a cliff:

They had more dogs. (And nice owners. And spiny lobsters for dinner.)

This was the local beach. Never anyone on it!

Everywhere we went, no matter how deserted, there was always someone selling coconuts, which they hacked apart with a machete.

But the developers are on their way. Pretty much everything seems to be for sale:

Still, I wouldn't abandon ship just yet.

The night skies are lovely...

The beer is cold...

And the locals are about to get richer.

A Caribbean dream is guaranteed for all.

As long as your Spanish is up to scratch.

Bye bye Brig

2011-02-24T07:52:00.005Z

I'll be posting some photos from our holiday soon, but in the meantime, sad news comes along about one of Doctor Who's most well-loved actors, Nicholas Courtney.

It's hard to convey to non-fans just how important Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart was to the show's development in the 70s. When Jon Pertwee took the lead role in 1970 and black-and-white turned to colour, the Beeb started lavishing previously unheard-of budgets on Doctor Who. Even so, the only way to make things more realistic was to contrive to have the Doctor stranded on Earth - I think a bit of the TARDIS was missing - and fend off alien invasions, rather than visiting a new planet every few weeks. To make the change work, they introduced a wider range of regulars, including the Master and the Brigadier, who headed up the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce (UNIT).

As the following clip shows, the Brigadier always had a bit of a love-hate relationship with the Doctor; or perhaps more accurately, a classic straight man relationship with an oddball. He was a proper upper-crust officer type. He liked doing things by the book but grudgingly accepted that the Doctor tended to know best about everything; except when he didn't, when the Brig stepped into the fray with (a) a bit of heroism and (b) the usual selection of Earth weapons that didn't work very well against aliens.

Astonishingly, Courtney first played Lethbridge-Stewart in 1968 (he was a Colonel then) and didn't stop until 1989. He then returned in 2008 for one of the new Doctor Who spin-offs, The Sarah Jane Adventures, aged 79. The new Who is made by people who grew up loving the old show, and it's heartwarming to know that they were able to pay him this final tribute.

Farewell, Brigadier. Here are a couple of choice quotes to see you off:

"The Cabinet's accepted my report, and the whole affair is now completely closed. ... A fifty-foot monster can't swim up the Thames and attack a large building without some people noticing, but you know what politicians are like."
(from Terror of the Zygons)

Brigadier: Oh dear. Women, not really my field.
Doctor: Don't worry, Brigadier, people will be shooting at you soon.
(from Battlefield)

You know just once I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets.
(from Robot)

1995: End of year Britpop disco

2010-12-22T11:09:00.004Z

Back in September, when we were all throwing open our curtains wide eyed, in full expectation of the promised Indian summer, it struck me that a full fifteen years had passed since I passed over the Severn bridge and across the border. Fifteen years since starting university: stick thin, lank of hair; Lennon-like (so I hoped) in my NHS specs; registering, on the emotional Geiger counter, that odd state somewhere between excitement and terror.

Whatever else might or might not have happened during those surreal first months living away from home – I remember a snowball fight, someone puking in a bin, a preposterously large Christmas dinner and a couple of lectures – what is undoubtedly true is that we had some damn good music. On Wednesdays and weekends, we lived for the indie clubs and student union discos. In my first year alone, Oasis, Blur, Pulp, Black Grape, The Boo Radleys and Cast played the university or Cardiff International Arena. Stereophonics and Catatonia (then just beginning their journeys) were relegated to playing for £1 on a Friday night. A gang of northerners seemed to haunt our living room every night from midnight to 4am, playing the whole of (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? so repeatedly that it became part and parcel of my dreams.

The end of Britpop coincided with the emergence of a phenomenon that continues to this day: ultra short-term nostalgia. On this view, we sneered at Britpop. It was, we were told almost as soon as we’d stopped hearing Parklife on the radio, shallow hyperbole, written by people with more chutzpah than talent, aimed at mockneys and would-be hard partyers who had all the attitude without the coke. As with any musical phenomenon, there was some truth in this. One need only mention Menswear and Northern Uproar to illustrate the perennial rule that if something good comes along, an awful lot of crap arrives in its wake.

But these were glorious times too. Britpop marked the last time, to date, that British guitar music made a genuine impact on the country’s charts, culture and even politics. You could even argue that it was the last time really good music of any sort really dominated the airwaves. Listen to Radio 1 now and it’s a mishmash of styles and sub-genres; and not a good mish-mash, but a pot pourri of largely substandard vocoding and grinding. In other words, it’s what Radio 1 has been like for much of its existence. But for three years, roughly, from 1994 to 1997, there was at least a sense that this was it: classic tunes were making a return, and we were right there, just for that brief moment, right in the centre of it.

Too many great British songs were released in 1995 for me to list them all. So instead, allow me to take you on a journey through the year, with one song a month, to allow a brief, nostalgic dipping in. As a flavour of those who haven’t made my list, I left out Elastica’s Waking Up, Paul Weller’s The Changingman, The Charlatans’ Just When You’re Thinkin’ Things Over, Ash’s Girl From Mars, and all sorts of tracks from the Boos and Cast. Well, there’s always the 1996 list; watch this space next December...

January
New Generation by Suede

Suede’s second album, Dog Man Star, may not have had the classic pop appeal of their debut, but this one is a right belter to start off our imaginary disco. It’s got horns, multi-tracked guitars, a massive chorus, lyrics that recall David Bowie’s “Heroes”, and a title that makes us feel we’re all part of it. Nice work.

February
Slight Return by The Bluetones

No-one our age could possibly fail to recognise its opening notes; and even better, it’s one of those songs with just the right amount of time to get on the dancefloor before the chorus kicks in. Something about the Bluetones perfectly encapsulates Britpop: it might be the jangly guitars, or perhaps the vocals that tread the line between swagger and vulnerability. Either way, this song couldn’t come from any other country, or any other decade.

March
Ten Storey Love Song by The Stone Roses

OK, so the Roses aren’t officially Britpop – they predate it, and they were pretty much dead in the water by the time Christmas ’95 came around. But we were still sixth formers when they came out with this superb number, which sounds more like their earlier classics than anything else on Second Coming. Much like New Generation, it’s about the soaring ambition of love, but cleverly, the theme is combined with a rhythm that’s laid-back, almost dream-like.

April
Some Might Say by Oasis

You can’t do a Britpop piece without Oasis, and this is the one that had us whacking up the volume and opening all the windows at school. The first taster of the Morning Glory album, it has the usual guitar swagger from Noel Gallagher and meaningless lyrics from Liam, but neatly avoids their occasional pitfalls of over-zealous self-regard and over-extended choruses. A massive song, so much better than Roll With It, with which they later battled Blur.

May
Common People by Pulp

If civilisation ends, and the internet goes down, and in the mad scrabble to salvage some small vestiges of culture, we only have time to save one Britpop song, this will surely be the one. Perfect in every way, it manages to say something serious about the times as well as providing the ultimate 90s dancefloor filler. What’s great about the lyrics is that, regardless of how common you happen to be, you can still sing along with the common people, without fear of castigation.

June
Reverend Black Grape by Black Grape

Somehow, Shaun Ryder managed not to die while heading up Happy Mondays. What’s more, he came back with Black Grape, arguably a better band with – for just a short period – more in the musical tank. Love the groove, love the harmonica, love the combination of proper rapper and Shaun’s unique just-off-shouting vocals. Proof, too, that Britpop wasn’t just about guitars.

July
Alright by Supergrass

One of the ultimate summer tunes, this could just as easily have been a Small Faces or Kinks track, and the video (which annoyingly can’t be embedded) is similarly timeless. Simple, short and sweet, they played it pretty much everywhere, every week, and rarely was it unwelcome.

August
Neil Jung by Teenage Fanclub

Both the song title and the band name may be silly, but Teenage Fanclub delivered some of the all-time great vocal harmonies. This, to be fair, wasn’t heard that much in the clubs around our way, but it still sounds just as fresh now.

September
History by The Verve

Richard Ashcroft has always thought a great deal of himself, sometimes with justification. This, and the later The Drugs Don’t Work, are beautiful illustrations of the slower, melancholic side of Britpop – string-laden, dewy-eyed and using Ashcroft’s northern vowels to their full effect. This is what you’d stick on when you returned from the club with your mates, empty handed, and wanted to feel like your inability to pull was part of something grander and more meaningful.

October
King of the Kerb by Echobelly

Back to classic Britpop, and another song that could only have been made there, then. With great fuzzy guitar, mid-tempo four-four beat, and a proper sing-along chorus, this is the kind of song that probably doesn’t mean much to anyone, but evokes a nostalgic sigh nonetheless.

November
The Universal by Blur

Fifteen years on and British Gas are still using it for their adverts – that’s the price of coming up with some really catchy strings. But divorce it from its later commercial use (if you can), and this is a truly marvellous, life-affirming song, despite its apparent cynical intent. “When the days seem to fall through you, well just let them go” seems to sum up those heady days of young adulthood: you’ve gone through the trauma of adolescence, you won’t have to worry about any of the really big stuff for another couple of years, so just live. And “The future’s been sold” seems to sum up how utilities companies procure their gas supplies. Ah well.

December
Disco 2000 by Pulp

Yes, I know it’s another one of theirs, but I couldn’t let the year – and this post – end without this extra slice of classic bitter-sweet Pulp. At this stage, remember, we were still half a decade away. Meeting up in the year 2000 – when we would be out of uni and possibly, bloody hell, actually working – seemed insanely unlikely. Which, I suppose is, the point of the song.

Merry Christmas, one and all.

100-word Album of the Week (39)

2010-12-08T08:27:00.001Z

Sly and the Family Stone, Fresh (1973)

Truly, this is funk for the wee small hours. The vocals and bass are out front, the horns tease your dancing feet, but there is a dark, swampy vibe that suggests you sit back down and finish your drink. The melodies – including a hypnotic Thankful N’ Thoughtful and the surely self-referential Let Me Have It All – are second to none, but they emerge slowly from the mix, suggesting an older, wiser Sly. More accessible than the feted There’s A Riot Goin’ On but less bouncy than Stand!, Fresh comes across as a low-slung, dreamy compromise between the two.

Solomon Burke, 1940-2010

2010-10-18T17:53:00.002Z

On a pleasant Saturday night at Glastonbury 2008, we were torn. We stood in the Pyramid field as a seventy-something Leonard Cohen put out a career-revitalising set, stopping after each number to doff his hat politely to the awed crowd. Delivered in his signature flat baritone, awash with irony and self-deprecation, his poetry shone.

Given the walking time between stages, it is a tough decision to leave any halfway-decent set at Glastonbury (let alone a classic in the making). But Liz and I sighed and moved on, starting around the field’s perimeter for the quarter-hour traipse to the Jazzworld stage.

We knew very little about Solomon Burke. I remembered seeing him on a Jools Holland show a few years back, immense on a glittering throne and belting out numbers from what I now realise was his acclaimed late comeback album, Don’t Give Up On Me. Other than that, unlike his late-60s contemporaries (Otis Redding, Aretha Frankin, Marvin Gaye, Wilson Pickett), I had somehow managed to miss out altogether on Burke. But something attracted us about the photo in the official programme (he positively radiated his title, the King of Rock ‘n’ Soul); and in any case we thought that an hour of testifyin’, almighty soul would round off the evening in a more cheerful way than doomy Cohen.

The King, throned indeed and dressed in glittering red, was already in full flow when we arrived. Jazzworld is a long, thin field where passers-by lounge at the back, sipping Brothers cider as they watch and chat from a distance. But here there was a clear delineation: no-one who watched was doing so casually; almost all were standing; many of them dancing. Burke had love and soul to spare, and he wanted all comers to share it. Despite being immobile, we felt as if he embraced us all.

I don’t remember what was in the set. Without doubt it included Mustang Sally and Sittin’ On the Dock of the Bay. Almost certainly there was Everybody Needs Somebody To Love, the brilliantly rousing Burke number that Wilson Pickett later made big (not without namechecking its writer at the start). There might also have been Down In The Valley, famously covered by Otis Redding. Burke was a great songwriter as well as an interpreter; but at this gig, everything fitted together in one soulful whole, backed by a superbly smooth band and the expected quota of slinky backing singers. During that hour, you could really believe in the transformative power of music – and there aren’t many performers you can say that about.

Since then, I’ve bought two albums by the great man: a Very Best of Solomon Burke, which covers his seven early years with Atlantic Records; and Soul Alive!, the live comeback album from the 80s which showcases all of the qualities I’ve raved about above. Both are recommended without reservation.

Soul Alive! contains a stunning extended version of I Can’t Stop Loving You – so while we’re about it…

Switch to the other side

2010-09-19T17:01:00.002Z

There'll be another post coming soon, but in the meantime I have a guest slot over at The Dabbler.

See you shortly.

Eye protest

2010-09-14T07:27:00.004Z

One of the most heard phrases in our house is "Who have you been bothering this time?". This is Liz's regular response to my repeated nagging of MPs, AMs, ministers, food companies and anyone else who is doing bad things or can make better things happen.

Well, time has been short recently, and the thick beige envelopes from the House of Commons have appeared only rarely on our doormat. The only bit of bothering I've found time for is this, on one of my pet topics, sent to the Beeb just this morning:

I would like to raise my concerns about a news story broadcast on the Today programme yesterday morning (13 September 2010). I heard the item just after 7.30am, though no doubt it was repeated several times during the programme.

The article concerned the high level of expenses claimed by executives at CDC (formerly the Commonwealth Development Corporation), the international development bank funded by UK taxpayers. It is not the content of the story that I would like to question, but the BBC’s highlighting of the Daily Mail’s supposed role in revealing the scandal.

In fact, Private Eye has exposed a wide range of excesses at CDC – of which expenses claims are arguably one of the more minor – in a series of investigative reports spanning several years. This culminated just last week (in Private Eye issue 1270) in the publication of a 7-page cumulative report covering the firm’s profiteering at the expense of the developing countries it was set up to assist. It appears that little attention was given to this report in the wider media, although the Daily Mail has perhaps ‘borrowed’ from Private Eye’s reporting in order to create its own, narrower story.

As I did not hear the whole of the Today programme, I do not know whether Private Eye’s investigative efforts were given due credit elsewhere; but certainly they were not in the news summary. More broadly, it should be noted that Private Eye is perhaps the UK’s leading institution of investigative journalism, yet its contributions are rarely acknowledged by the BBC. Given that the BBC shares its commitment to rigorous, non-partisan reporting, I would expect your news monitoring staff to use Private Eye as one of its key sources. I would be interested to know why this policy apparently does not exist.

A pasty and some doughnuts...

2010-09-02T18:00:00.002Z

...hardly constitutes a healthy lunch. But it's a belter, as I reflected with a sigh and the politest of belches just today.

There's something about a Cornish pasty that just about defines comfort food. It might be the mixture of protective but crumbly crust with warm, stodgy, peppery filling; the wonderful browny-yellow sheen of the perfectly executed specimen; or simply the sheer quantity of saturated fat. Much the same goes for the dougnut, though of course without the pepperiness.

The other thing that links these two great foodstuffs is the important of not mucking around with the original concept. It is a solid fact that the best pasties contain beef, onion, carrot and potato. Sure, you can play around with your lamb and mint, curried veg, coronation chicken and whatnot, but you'll always come back to what they call in my local shop the Traditional. It just works better. (I emphasis here that I am talking about Cornish pasties, not pies, funsize party food or 'slices'. You can fill them with whatever you want.)

Similarly, a doughnut must be crispy and contain jam (or no filling at all - a ring doughnut is fine) or it simply won't do. None of your Dunkin', Krispy Kreme nonsense, where something doughnut shaped and soggy is coated in one of a dozen variants of icing. Indeed, I refuse even to complete the name of the former multinational soul-destroyer, as it would force me to use the reprehensible American spelling. I don't mind for other words - neighbor, diarrea, and all those chaps ending with -ize - but the doughnut must be held sacred.

While here, harping, I feel it my duty to declare other foodstuffs which should not be tampered with and yet, for some reason, have:

Branston pickle (the version with small chunks is both pointless and joyless)
Cider and Coke (stop adding sodding flavours to them)
Ham (no marmalade glazing, thank you)
Chocolate digestives (I read about a version with chocolate on both sides - WTF?!)
Kit-Kats (is mint the worst variant ever?)

None of the above are especially healthy, either, but at least leave them alone to give us the pleasures they have always afforded.

The future is now

2010-09-01T12:16:00.003Z

We watched Westworld last night: first time I'd seen it in ages. It's still great fun, all paranoid futurism, macho satire and the insane staring killer-robot eyes of Yul Brynner. Perhaps more surprisingly, it's also clearly a big influence on the Terminator films.

My favourite moment is one character explaining to another how you can tell who's a robot and who's not: "The hands," he says. "They haven't managed to perfect those yet." Which begs two questions: what's different about their hands (it might have been the grainy film that denied forensic analysis) and, more importantly, why haven't they?

Anyway, despite the fact that it's a classic, what's more fun is of course noting how it Gets The Future Wrong in Entertaining Ways. Thus:

All the computer technicians are men in white coats. Clearly the world of the early 70s was more respectful towards its geeks, and would have been shocked at the prospect of dead-white skinned conspiracy freaks getting high on Diet Coke as they shinned up the latest data drainpipe to hack into the NATO mainframe or something.
The computers themselves all use tapes. Come on, people, let's at least try to imagine the future.
Everyone travels from place to place in sleek-looking spaceships. And yet the robot repairmen go around in electric buggies that would fall apart at the mere thought of a Sinclair C5. Highly practical for getting around the rocky desert-scape.
The green-screen lab monitors appear to show little useful information, but do a nifty line in seemingly pointless twisting geometric shapes, a bit like pre-Windows 95 screensavers.

And finally, seemingly the first thing all the men do when they arrive in Westworld is seek out the nearest robot prostitute. Completely ridiculous.

Words of love

2010-08-24T18:20:00.007Z

In response to my Suede-slating below, Brit comments that lyrics are overrated and this: "She loves you yeah yeah yeah" is all pop needs to say.

This is of course provocative nonsense, if only because at the very least pop also needs to say: "She's left me, oh no, oh no, oh no". And of course, being catchily simple is not the same as being - as in Brett Anderson's case - trite. You only need to look at other contemporary Beatles songs like, say, the half-heartedly titled You Like Me Too Much: "You like me too much and I like you. I really do, and it's nice when you believe me...". Hardly woon city.

I tend to agree, however, that in most popular music lyrics play second fiddle to melody and harmony. Decent hip-hop is an obvious exception to the rule, as are individual artists: Dylan, Bowie, Tom Waits, Nick Cave. At the extremes, some bands (purveyors of shoegazing and death metal spring to mind) get round this problem by making the words completely unintelligible. Others make them impenetrable: Michael Stipe was good at that game, at least in the last century.

However, there are noble exceptions to all of these hastily concocted Rules of Pop, and a truly mighty exception raised us all to the heavens on Saturday night at the Green Man Festival, when the Flaming Lips drew their stunning set to a close. We knew they'd leave the best till last: something to transcend all the confetti, plastic bubble crowd-surfing, laser-shooting giant hands and weird dancing that are the band's live trademarks.

Wayne Coyne dedicated Do You Realize? to the unhappy folk in the crowd, hoping that its transformative power would raise them. Only the truly lost would have been untouched. Part of the song's power is in its old-fashioned film-musical backing vocals, the pure opera of its melody. But more of its power rests in its wonderful lyrics:

Do you realize
That everyone you know someday will die

And instead of saying all of your goodbyes
Let them know you realize that life goes fast
It's hard to make the good things last

You realize the sun doesn't go down
It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round

There's good therapy in that. Sadly, there isn't really a decent festival recording out there, but here's the song plain and simple:

100-word Album of the Week (38)

2010-08-01T09:03:00.000Z

Suede, Coming Up (1996)

When Bernard Butler left Suede, Brett Anderson retreated from expansive orchestration to make crowd-pleasing pop songs. Lead single Trash succeeds admirably, weaving a genuine classic from his usual preoccupations with nightlife and class. There’s also shabby majesty in The Chemistry Between Us and She. What leaves a lasting impression, however, is the triteness of Anderson’s lyrics. On some throwaway ditties, they become banal beyond belief: “Here they come with their make-up on,” goes the aptly-named Lazy, “as lovely as the clouds, come and see them.” Butler may have envied Coming Up’s success, but not its artistic ambition.

Attack of the pill-poppers

2010-07-16T10:26:00.003Z

Having just been spammed by Valium-touters on a post that's four years old, I thought I should at least come on here and inform readers that I am still alive.

I really do hope to be posting regularly again soon. Assuming there's anyone out there still reading, of course!

Brown gets my vote

2010-04-21T17:56:00.002Z

Last night Liz and I went to see Derren Brown in his latest elaborate stage show, Enigma - a title which sounds a bit Mystic Meg at first, but is explained excusably later.

We didn't know quite what to expect, having been somewhat disappointed by his recent TV 'events', which seemed to be more in the realm of gimmickry than show-off mentalism. But I can hereby confirm that live, Brown is wonderful. So wonderful, in fact, that we didn't mind the annoying people sitting to the side and in front of us, or the somewhat cramped seats of St David's Hall in Cardiff, and afterwards declared it to be two and a half of the most entertaining hours we could remember.

Seeing Brown live puts to one side any doubts about his abilities. Here he is, doing it live, with no cheap trickery. I now know that, for example, it is not a Massive Con With A Paid-Up Audience Of Stooges. He has nothing except his skills, and they're considerable: suggestion, cold reading, muscle reading, good old-fasioned magic, trance induction, showmanship, loveability and a stand-up comic's timing.

Sadly, the frisbees that he used to randomly select audience participants rarely made their way up to the gods, so I was unable to put things to the ultimate test by being the personal subject of bamboozlement. I am, however, under his spell sufficiently not to divulge any of the specific tricks that he performs, as he requested after the psychological fireworks had finished. Suffice to say that the wonders include tin foil, confetti, Maltesers, a tambourine, and an example of audience susceptibility so astonishing that it makes one question whether Brown is not, really and truly, in touch with some darker force.

100-word Album of the Week (37)

2010-04-13T07:13:00.000Z

Talking Heads, Fear of Music (1979)

For those familiar with Talking Heads’ magnum opus, Remain in Light, this comes across as an altogether funkier proposition. Most of its 11 songs are shorter and sweeter, and at least half are eminently danceable. But there is darkness here, too, particularly in the skewed shape of Life During Wartime and the menacing pulse of Drugs. Other tracks – Mind, Heaven and especially the heart-racing Cities – have a way of burrowing their way into your head and staying there, with David Byrne’s voice an insistent background soundtrack to your own life. It’s like a disco imagined by paranoiacs and addicts.

Who's next

2010-04-07T18:33:00.002Z

Ben e-mails me to note that I have failed to react publicly to the new face of Doctor Who. I duly check in and find that it has been a whole month - a month, for goodness' sake - since I last blogged.

Time is a confusing thing, as the Doctor himself would no doubt note. One minute the BBC is fanfaring the end of the Tenth Doctor with appearances by David Tennant on everything from Test cricket to the Antiques Roadshow; the next they're furiously promoting a completely different programme. New Doctor, new companion, new TARDIS, new theme tune.

On the evidence of last Saturday's debut, I can safely say that I like the first two but not the others. Which, I suppose, is the right way round. Matt Smith's Doctor is a bit Tennant but mostly makes the role his own, adding new dimensions of mild arrogance and madcap energy. Amy Pond, played by Karen Gillan, is an intriguing character with a back story that promises much for the future but has little substance just yet.

As for the episode itself, it was like most of the Doctor Who season debuts: take a fairly thin story, mix in plenty of action and a few (generally palatable) laughs, keep it light enough for all comers. We might have expected more from Steven Moffatt, who has previously given us four of the best ever episodes: The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, The Girl in the Fireplace, and the all-conquering Blink. But it did its job.

So there we are: not a glowing report, but watch this space. The Beeb are too canny to let something silly - like the departure of their most popular actor ever - ruin the party.

Mark Linkous, 1962-2010

2010-03-08T19:10:00.004Z

I'm genuinely upset to learn of the death of Mark Linkous, the singer/songwriter/general one-man gathering storm behind one of my favourite bands, Sparklehorse.

It would be pointless to pretend that his suicide was a big surprise. Sparklehorse are not a band known for their levity, but a kind of fragile, often brooding alt-rock planted firmly in the darker side of Americana. But it is a shock to the system nonetheless: a reminder that music is still populated by a minority who have genuine, deep rooted problems.

Linkous produced four albums as Sparklehorse between 1995 and 2008, and a collaboration with the producer Danger Mouse which didn't see the light of day for legal reasons (an official release was finally announced last week). All four are treasures for different reasons. The third, It's a Wonderful Life, is perhaps his most complete expression. Gentle, woozy, often stately, but punctuated by bursts of darkness and distortion, it contains some of the most beautiful music I've heard. The words are like waking dreams, packed with impressionistic detail: check out the lyrics to More Yellow Birds, which also highlights Linkous' odd obsession with all things equine.

Good Morning Spider is wonderful too, veering back and forth between quiet-as-a-breath acoustics and out-and-out rockers. The debut, Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot, took hold of me on first listen and has never quite let go; it inspired Radiohead to offer Sparklehorse a supporting slot on their 1996 tour, during which Linkous managed to end up disabled after a drugs overdose. The last album, Slept for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain, is not quite as attention-grabbing but contains plenty of special moments nonetheless.

Mark Linkous seemed like a true outsider, uncomfortable in his own skin, but creative enough to channel his dark thoughts into something wonderful. He will be hugely missed. If only that knowledge had been enough to save him.

Big congratulations...

2010-03-08T07:42:00.001Z

...to our friends Ben and Debbie, who married in Devon on Saturday.

Cream tea at the wedding party: genius move.

Auntie's axe

2010-03-03T18:47:00.002Z

On a quick note before returning to the grindstone, I feel moved to register my dismay at the news that the BBC is cutting 6 Music, the only music station I listen to regularly.

They are trying to justify this move by talking about the supposedly unfair competition that the station provides to its commercial rivals, as well as the need to spend God knows how many more millions on plush-looking drama. This is simply wrong. Find me another station that does what 6 Music does: not just indie rock but funk, soul, metal, rave, experimental weirdness of all varieties, comedy gold in the shape of Adam and Joe, and a general wilful disinterest in all things fashionable.

No-one else does what 6 Music does because it is paid for the licence fee, and made by a corporation with a public service remit that goes beyond mere audience figures and commercial appeal. The same goes for the Asian Network.

If you care about this stuff, please sign a petition, complain direct to the Beeb, or do something on behalf of those whose lives will be a little emptier if services like 6 Music disappear.

Result!

2010-02-17T09:36:00.000Z

I return to blogging duties with the news that Wales have just beaten Australia in the quarter-finals of the World Schools Debating Championships!

Those in the know know that this is a remarkable result, partly because Wales has never before reached the semi-finals (nor the quarter-finals, except in the very early days with few competing teams), but mainly because Australia are eight-times world champions who are mightily feared by all concerned and won all of their 8 preliminary debates this year.

The semi-finals are this afternoon, with Wales facing (I think) England. More on that when it happens. Of course, this would be the first World Championships for which I’ve decided to stay at home, so results can only be gleaned from afar.

A brief interlude

2010-02-15T19:31:00.003Z

How quickly two and a half weeks have sputtered past, flopping exhausted into the gutter of life without so much as a mournful sigh.

I've been working on one of those short-term, relatively lucrative contracts which apparently are the future for charities, but which leave one feeling dizzy, slightly empty and in need of a good lie down.

In the meantime, here is one of my favourite newspaper pretensions of the last little while, from Friday's Guardian:

Alexander McQueen: A genius is lost – and darkness has won
(see, the title is wonderful enough)

No one who went to an Alexander McQueen catwalk show could ever again have believed that fashion is merely superficial...

A show in the Conciergerie in Paris, a chill dungeon where Marie Antoinette was held before her execution, starred a model in lilac hooded coat, guarded by wolves.

In one London show, the audience was seated around a giant mirrored cube, which turned transparent so that they could see models on a padded white floor while the models could see only their reflections.

There was the show inspired by the 1970s classic Picnic at Hanging Rock, one which referenced Lord of the Flies, and another in which models moved around a giant chess board.

100-word Album of the Week (36)

2010-01-27T17:25:00.002Z

The Chemical Brothers, We Are The Night (2007)

Since 1999’s celeb-heavy but generally fabulous Surrender, the Chemicals have taken a steady downhill path. Nonetheless, it’s surprising just how much this lacks originality. There are interesting Krautrock and disco influences, but the general atmosphere – from the lack of bass punch throughout, to tracks like The Pills Won’t Help You Now – is downbeat and party-pooping. Do It Again is the only real high point, while The Salmon Dance is just plain, piss-takingly poor. If only they’d take a leaf out of The Prodigy’s book, and produce something to rival their balls-out, old-school Invaders Must Die.

You give music a bad name

2010-01-25T07:42:00.002Z

Hold the front page: the award for Worst Ever Band Name has passed into new hands once more. They entered this week's charts at number 19, they're an all-girl trio, and they're called - wait for it - Girls Can't Catch.

No doubt Death Cab For Cutie, Limp Bizkit, Bullet For My Valentine will be breathing a sigh of relief, whereas The Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band with Choir won't feel the need to: they're post-rock, dontcha know.

For those about to riff, I salute you

2010-01-22T08:00:00.000Z

We watched School of Rock for the first time the other day, and a very agreeable slice of feelgood comedy it was too. I did the washing up half way through, and I couldn't help myself: it was fundamentally necessary to life that I stick on Paranoid by Black Sabbath. Behold, some of the greatest guitar riffs of all time filled the kitchen with joy: Iron Man being, of course, the rockest, the riffest of them all.

Watching the second half of the film, I realised just how in awe it is (or possibly Jack Black is) of old-school riff-o-rama: AC/DC, Deep Purple, Led Zep, Sabbath and the rest. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but I feel that today's rockers are perhaps falling behind. There are those who complain about endless guitar solos, of course, but few who would begrudge a good floor-filling, air-punching combination of a dozen or so notes, delivered with a gurn of appropriate seriousness by a man and his axe.

I turned to wondering what would be the most recent riff whose brilliance all would agree on, and it came down to Sweet Child O' Mine by Guns N' Roses. But that was in 1988. It was time to revisit my own collection and come up with at least a few selections that hold their own from the last two decades.

How about this lot?

The White Stripes - 'Seven Nation Army'
Sounds like a bass, but is actually a lead guitar, so it counts.

Metallica - 'Seek and Destroy'
It's a legal requirement to gurn while listening to it. (I realise this is more than 20 years old, but it doesn't sound it.)

Blur - 'Song 2'
Guaranteed to get everyone jumping on the dancefloor, regardless of embarrassment threshold.

The Prodigy - 'Their Law'
When dance met rock, and they got along famously. One of the most exciting songs by anyone.

Nirvana - 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'
Actually I think All Apologies, Come As You Are and Serve The Servants all have better riffs, but I thought that would look churlish.

Beck - 'Devils Haircut'
Five notes, three of them the same. Genius.

The Dandy Warhols - 'Bohemian Like You'
What AC/DC might sound like as an American indie band.

Pixies - 'Debaser'
Three riffs in one, really - one of them being on the bass.

Radiohead - 'The National Anthem'
If this really was the national anthem, I'd sing it. Except there are hardly any lyrics.

Iron Maiden - 'Holy Smoke'
I don't care what anyone says, Iron Maiden have written a bunch of truly great songs in their time. This one kicks ass.

Franz Ferdinand - 'Take Me Out'
Unusually, the killer riff doesn't happen until a minute in. See also here.

Ocean Colour Scene - 'The Circle'
They may have been Britpop also-rans, but this has a cracking guitar line.

U2 - 'The Fly'
Not only supremely funky, but sounds like The Edge is playing it inside a giant, spinning tin can.

What have I missed?

A bridge

2010-01-20T07:57:00.002Z

Yesterday I was held up in traffic by, as it turned out, a man in a red jacket.

As I approached the Gabalfa Interchange, the busiest intersection in Cardiff, blue lights lit up the dull afternoon sky, but tellingly no sirens. Then I saw him, perched on the bridge. He wasn't imminently about to jump, you could tell, but his legs swung gently in the breeze as he talked to some unseen police officers.

He wasn't about to jump but I wanted him to. The thought crept up on me and pounced, then just as quickly disappeared, fought off by guilt and decency and goodness: that kind of thing. Later, I was pleased to discover in the sparsest of news reports that he hadn't.

I spoke to Liz about it. Virtually the first thing she said was: "Did you find that part of you wanted him to jump?" I mumbled my agreement. She told me not to worry, it was a common reaction; adding that some people would actually consciously want him to jump and feel no guilt about it.

I don't know what part of the human psyche is at work here - the fight-or-flight instinct, perhaps, or the simple craving for excitement - but it is definitely something to jolt you out of your liberal-progressive, social-improvement comfort zone. It seems to say: whoever you are, whatever you think you believe, part of you always yearns to throw off the sheep's clothing of civilisation. A jump from a bridge might be a leap to a darker place, if only for an instant.

War is hell

2010-01-14T19:18:00.002Z

Just before Christmas, our office was given a print of Guernica. Not as unusual as it might sound, as we work in international affairs and have a project going on Wales and the Spanish Civil War. It is a good sized piece, large enough to see the details of Picasso's depiction of the bombing, in all their symbolic starkness.

We pulled away a set of faded photos from the corridor wall, and there it now hangs in their place: able to be seen by all the considerable human traffic that passes through.

Hardly an original opinion, but I think it is one of the greatest works of art of any period. It is at once chaotic and controlled, ludicrous and horrific, as war no doubt is. Its black and white rendering makes it remarkably stark.

A colleague put her head around the door the other day and said she couldn't stand it, would no longer look at the wall as she left the room. I'm not sure if that makes it a very wise office move, but it does at least confirm it as a talking point, and that must be at least one criterion of great art.

Judgement Day for Aliens

2010-01-11T19:16:00.002Z

I was once in love with the cinema. I bought the books, soaked up the history, had a column in the student newspaper; even thought I might become a professional critic. The love affair has diminished over the years, as time has become short and music more important, but I do retain some of the attitudes I once had as that budding journalist: one of them being, you must go out of your way to pick holes in blockbusters.

As a critic, it’s painful when some zillion-dollar epic is actually any good, because it seems to belie one of the core principles of good art – that it should come from the heart, not the depth of wallet. The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Dark Knight have posed some problems recently for that principle, as they have seemed to combine the two and produce genuine cinematic magic. But at least, we could all chortle, those examples were few and far between: we might grab at the examples of overblown sequels (The Matrix Regurgitated and Pirates of the Caribbean spring to mind); and, say, Titanic.

We all know the blah about James Cameron’s 1997 film: most expensive ever, biggest box-office haul, Leo ‘n’ Kate, annoying Oscars speech. In the cinema it felt like an immense spectacle dragged down only by a pointlessly lengthy love story: only once ship meets iceberg does the whole thing really kicks off. On the small screen, that first half drags interminably, and it’s far easier to see the film’s flaws for what they are.

This is pretty much what I expected from Avatar, too. I anticipated being blown away by the technical achievement of it all, perhaps a little disappointed by the story, and having a good old chuckle at the script. As it turned out, I was wrong. It’s actually a rather good film, just not quite in the league that would force critics to swallow their pride: hence all of the exaggerated lambastings that suggest it is some sort of monumental folly.

First off, it’s not some kind of environmentalist fable as reported in some quarters; unless you think that forcing out an indigenous population and destroying or stealing all they have is some sort of woolly green issue. There are obvious parallels here, and once you taken into account the basic plot – human/alien hybrid gets lost, gets rescued by aliens, discovers their ways, learns to respect them – then, as one critic pointed out, it is pretty much exactly the same film as Dances With Wolves. And it shares that film’s weaknesses, too: it’s a bit too long, and for all the interesting culture-clash stuff early on, by half way through it’s all become your standard good versus evil narrative. Evil, in this case, is represented by Stephen Lang’s head of security on the planet Pandora, a man who has a very large arsenal of weapons and wants to use it.

Hollywood has for a long time been the place where wildly rich Americans are allowed to indulge their left-wing fantasies, but even by those standards, Avatar feels pretty subversive for the biggest blockbuster ever. Cameron has basically used the wealth of a small country and used it to imagine how a country with huge wealth could overrun a small country. And he’s done it with incredible technical achievement. This genuinely is 3D film-making as most directors, even today, could only imagine it. The depth of field is incredible, and draws the eye throughout, so that there’s no need to throw things regularly at the screen to remind the viewer why they bothered. At a time where CG landscapes have become trite and uninvolving, Cameron’s sheer realism and audacity throws down the gauntlet in much the same way as his second Terminator film did nearly 20 years ago.

So Avatar may be derivative, but it’s also a technical success like no other, as well as being exciting and adventurous for almost its entire two and three-quarter hours. Seems like a fair deal to me. Just don’t remind of all this in three years’ time, when the inevitable pallid sequel arrives and Cameron becomes a laughing stock. I will, friends, stay true to my principles and provide the due blockbuster demolition.

One last list

2010-01-05T07:57:00.005Z

Before I end this current run of polling rebukes, I must mention Channel 4's other round-up, the greatest TV shows of the noughties.

Ignoring the obviously weird entries (Grand Designs?!) and the over-bumped comedies (The Simpsons episodes of the noughties, and Friends), the most remarkable thing is that Big Brother isn't there. Now I know that it's finishing, and everyone agrees that Channel 4 let it run for too long, but not to even make the top 20 is astonishing. It isn't as if other guff doesn't make it. This leads me to reflect once more on the short-term loyalties (and memory) of the voting public in these things, who would certainly have made Big Brother top three 8 or 9 years ago, and probably top ten only recently.

Perhaps less surprisingly, the following ten gems of the last decade were missed:

The Sopranos
The missus and I are working through the boxsets. It strikes me that The Sopranos - staggeringly well written, acted and conceived - is the closest thing TV has ever come to an epic novel.

Extras
Of course The Office made it, but much of Ricky Gervais' follow-up series is just as good. The 90-minute Christmas special that finished it off is, genuinely, one of the most moving and wonderful pieces of TV I've ever seen.

The Armstrongs
Brilliant BBC fly-on-the-wall which, reversing The Office, looks like a comedy but is actually a documentary. It followed John and Ann, a couple running a double-glazing firm like the mafia.

South Park
Unlike The Simpsons, Trey Parker and Matt Stone's animated filth just gets funnier by the year. It manages a rare combination of political subversion and downright offensiveness: typified by episodes like Margaritaville (which explained the current recession through the eyes of Stan trying to return a gimmicky cocktail maker) and Scott Tenorman Must Die (Cartman hatches an elaborately sickening revenge plot involving, bizarrely, Radiohead).

Saxondale
See here.

A Life of Grime
I'm not really sure why this frequently disgusting documentary series appealed to me. Maybe the narration by John Peel, maybe its star turn in the form of thick-skinned Polish eccentric Mr Trebus. Either way, like Peel, it's sorely missed.

Kitchen Nightmares
Say what you like about Gordon Ramsay, he is a genuine TV star, arresting and energetic as well as being foul-mouthed and impatient. Nightmares is the programme he was born to present, as he trawls around the establishments of various hapless and hopeless individuals who appear not to have watched the programme or read their contract, astonished at Gordon's audacity at telling them what to do. Great entertainment.

The League of Gentlemen
Dark, cinematic comedy which - at least on the small screen - got better by the season. Last year's follow-up Psychoville was excellent too.

Help and The Thick Of It
What links these two wonderful BBC comedies? Only the presence of Chris Langham, a gifted actor who turned out to have unpleasant tastes on the side. But while The Thick Of It - the brilliant satire on New Labour from Armando Iannucci - has continued unabated, Help has disappeared without trace. A shame: this low-key two-hander, with Langham as a psychiatrist and Paul Whitehouse as his many and varied patients, was both hilarious and touching.

Apparently it all boils down to this

2010-01-03T18:08:00.002Z

Well, I got nowhere near my promised ten favourite songs of the noughties before Channel 4 got in on the act with twice that number.

In case you didn’t see it, the list basically broke down into the following categories:

Genre-bending urban brilliance
Gnarls Barkley – Crazy
Outkast – Hey Ya!
Eminem – Stan

Pop classics
Kylie – Can’t Get You Out Of My Head
Beyoncé – Crazy In Love
Scissor Sisters – I Don’t Feel Like Dancing

Hugely exciting guitar rock
Arctic Monkeys – I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor
Franz Ferdinand – Take Me Out

Somewhat overrated, overplayed guitar rock
Kings of Leon – Sex On Fire
The Killers – Mr. Brightside
Kaiser Chiefs – Ruby
Snow Patrol – Chasing Cars

Amy Winehouse and pretender
Valerie / Rehab
Duffy – Mercy

Middle-of-the-road tat
James Blunt – You’re Beautiful
Take That – Patience / Rule the World
Coldplay – Viva La Vida
Will Young – Leave Right Now

So, only one crossover with my own choices so far (Crazy), though I’d certainly find a place for Outkast, Eminem, Kylie and Franz Ferdinand too. It’s interesting to note that there’s also only one crossover with the top 10 bestselling singles of the decade, which for the record were:

1. Will Young - Evergreen
2. Gareth Gates - Unchained Melody
3. Shaggy - It Wasn't Me
4. Tony Christie/Peter Kay - Is This The Way To Amarillo?
5. Band Aid 20 - Do They Know It's Christmas?
6. Hear’Say - Pure And Simple
7. Shayne Ward - That's My Goal
8. Kylie Minogue - Can't Get You Out Of My Head
9. Bob The Builder - Can We Fix It
10. Atomic Kitten - Whole Again

So, apart from Kylie almost total shite, although I have something of a soft spot for the Shaggy song. All of which goes to prove that if you want to find some good stuff, you still have to dig below the surface of the charts (it’s rarely been different, of course); and if you want really fantastic stuff, ignore the public altogether and ask me. No, really.

Here's to a good ten

2010-01-01T18:47:00.001Z

So that was that, then. The noughties have passed us by, and have already been chopped up, retooled and presented to bite-sized chunks on Channel 4 and BBC3. The endless smug mickey-taking by minor celebrities suggests that we should, if anything, look back with deep embarrassment at what ‘we’ all did, watched and listened to for the last ten years.

Peering through the fug of top 100 whatnots, it is possible to recognise that some important things have happened. We’ve had the odd war, the public acceptance of climate change, the rapid ramping up and scaling down of ordinary people’s wealth. And, of course, the spawning of a trillion blogs. More importantly than all that, though, the noughties were the time when we all grew up. For me at least, it feels like the last decade – ages 22 to 32, the big push after leaving behind studenthood – has defined me more than any other.

The change in personal circumstances has been huge. Married, home owner, decent professional job, food from farmers’ markets, music on tap. Rescued a dog (now already gone four years). Discovered the joy of wine and the poetry of good whisky. Completed a novel, for heaven’s sake. Next we will be taking the path to parenthood, with all its joy and love and tiredness.

So, congratulations to Dev and Dani, Matt and Chloe, Andrew and Anna, for the weddings and births of 2009. And to Ben and Debs, Dave and Vic for 2010. It’s going to be a breathless ten years, and we may end up with a few more lines on our faces. But it’s going to be good. Happy New Year.

The happiest days of our lives

2009-12-17T07:37:00.004Z

Brit's reminiscence about sixth-form scroatiness led me to revisit one of the musical landmarks we all held very dear back in those glory days. Astonishingly, Pink Floyd's The Wall is 30 years old this year. When we huddled around our dusty tape deck it was only 15, which is how old Live Forever is now.

Rediscovering old musical treasures brings a mixed bag of feelings: Will I still like it? Will I find it ridiculous? Do I actually want to find it ridiculous, so that I can post a snooty reassessment? Well, I can confirm that my feelings towards The Wall have indeed changed, but I still love it.

In my student days - grunge was still big back then, remember - I thought of it as some sort of dark and crushing insight into the human soul. I found Pink's tortured musings worthy of deep consideration; I might even have admired Roger Waters for telling it how it was. Of course a rock star would turn into a lonely and spiteful fascist: it's what the industry does, man.

Now, my radar switches to detect the mocking humour of the whole thing. I listen to One Of My Turns - previously a slice of scary monomania - and I pick up for the first time its twisted hedonism, the longing for the hotel-trashing, TV-chucking abandon of rock star youth. Then there is the deliberately silly title of Goodbye Cruel World, the regular flashes of lyrical brilliance ("I've got a grand piano to prop up my mortal remains" sticks in the mind). Waters, who later really did turn into a moaning old sod, seems here to have got at the very nub of celebrity self-obsession and indulgence; the way it feeds on childhood angst, on emotional insecurity and the apparent inability to form proper relationships.

I've also had fifteen years to expand my musical tastes, but here again, The Wall comes up trumps. It contains some of Pink Floyd's most intimate songwriting and superb melodies, particularly in the shape of Mother, Goodbye Blue Sky, Hey You, Nobody Home and Comfortably Numb. There's even a modern-sounding slice of funk-rock with the wonderful Run Like Hell, and my taste for discord has allowed me to embrace Don't Leave Me Now, previously an almost unlistenable indulgence of Waters' pained upper-register vocals.

Of course, many view The Wall as Pink Floyd's last decent album, starting a period of strained relationships which ended with Richard Wright's sacking and Waters' departure. It's certainly true that (ironically) Waters' obsession with the whole concept went on for too long, taking two years to devise an accompanying stage show and a further two years to come up with a mediocre Alan Parker film. But as an artistic object, a double-album conceit that sounds great as well as exercising the intellect, it's one of the best we've seen.

Another triumph for impartiality

2009-12-02T08:05:00.002Z

Sorry, things have been stupidly hectic of late, and the virtual world is virtually absent from my life.

So I'll slip into the holding pattern of reporting BBC viewer stupidity. This one was just heard on the Breakfast TV show, during a feature on cutting down unnecessary electricity use to save money and the climate. A viewer (male) e-mailed in to say something of such witless magnitude, such ill-conceived righteousness, that it cannot be allowed to pass into the ether:

"I'll switch off my lights when the House of Commons switches off theirs!"

100-word Album of the Week (35)

2009-11-16T19:39:00.002Z

Bob Marley, Natty Dread (1974)

I know little about Bob Marley or the Jamaica he describes, but this album appears to exist in the space between revolution and resignation. It speaks to a people weary of their troubles but finding an outlet in music: the mob in Them Belly Full (But We Hungry), urged to forget their sorrows and dance. Which is more important to Marley: salvation through community and music, or thirst for change? With a song titled Rebel Music that is playfully light, and the most powerful emotions reserved for the intimate setting of No Woman No Cry, there are no easy answers.

This will be my only post this week, as I'm off to Ireland for a conference. I'll have a pint of Guiness on you. Yes, and you.

Time Lord update

2009-11-13T08:23:00.007Z

I did it; well, it couldn't be helped. There he was, coming into the toilet as I was coming out and I shook him by the hand (yes, they were clean) and said: "Excuse me, are you the new Doctor Who?" He agreed that he was and I suppressed a girly giggle.

By the way, in case you wondered, this is what the hall in the Temple of Peace looks like usually:

And this is the stage at the end (beneath the curtains), as realised in The End of the World:

Actually, that futuristic screen is always there, popping out of the walls and showing us glimpses of the end of time. We just don't tell most people.

Temple of Who

2009-11-11T19:18:00.001Z

They’ve just finished filming Doctor Who where I work, at the grandly/creepily named Temple of Peace in Cardiff. It’s the fourth time they’ve descended on us, transforming the austere (some say semi-fascistic) architecture of our main hall into, variously, a spaceship for alien tourists (The End of the World), a grand hall (Gridlock) and a secret Greek temple (The Fires of Pompeii). They’ve even used the place for the kids’ spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures.

Each time, however detailed all the preparations and advance negotiations, they take over the place as if it were a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BBC. Huge lights go up everywhere, cables present a tripping hazard wherever we go, catering vans park in places we would never dare; latex-masked monsters queue for the loos alongside us mere humans. It’s intrusive, frustrating and incredibly exciting.

I’ve watched Doctor Who since the age of 4 or 5, my first memory being the regeneration of Tom Baker into the young upstart Peter Davison. These days, of course, the whole thing is properly funded, glitzy and seriously important to the BBC; and the young upstarts have got much younger, with the soon-to-be new Doctor, Matt Smith, actually born in the 1980s. Being older than your hero really does make you feel ancient, but then the Doctor has always been a different type of hero: sensitive, vulnerable, funny; in a permanent state of conflict between his wonder at the universe and his sadness at its aggressors. I’m sure that whatever Smith does with the role, at least those traits will remain.

When Christopher Eccleston came to the Temple of Peace, it was in the heady early days of the series’ revival. Heady but less well funded: it took them only a few days to film large chunks of the episode, whereas now they’d probably spent that much time and money on two minutes of broadcast material. I didn’t get to meet the man himself, as I was away, although a kind co-worker secured an autograph for me. When David Tennant appeared a couple of years later, I cleared the diary and staked out the territory, eventually accosting him as he left the toilet. It was a very brief meeting, as he propped his leg up on the wall to sign my slip of paper, but I do remember being surprised at his Scottish accent.

This time around, I had every opportunity to bump into the Eleventh Doctor. They were in the building for two days solid. Lizard-like aliens roamed the ground floor in search of coffee, sandwiches and decent mobile reception. A colleague came into the office excitedly brandishing a signed t-shirt. The set – a underground cavern scene, apparently, lit in eerie yellow – was fairly open, and on one of my many passings by I spotted him. Tall, thin, young and – as our room bookings person noted – a bit geeky looking. There was hardly anyone around, and I could easily have gone in for a chinwag and signature.

I’m not quite sure why I didn’t. It might have been the fact of his being so young, and some predicted embarrassment at the oddly-pitched scene of hero worship that might ensue. More likely, it comes down to the reason that I scrupulously avoid all mention of new Doctor Who episodes*, right down to running out of the room at the end of an instalment to avoid the “next week” spoilers (why do they do that?). I’m still excited about the programme, not for nostalgia or because it is ‘event’ programming, but for itself. I still love its conception and its spirit and its warm humanity. In the end, I am interested in Doctor Who, not the actors who play him, and a small part of me continues to believe that he is (or should be) real.

I’m still cursing myself for not doing it, though.

* Commenters please note: Any spoilers of the forthcoming episodes, or revelations about how or why David Tennant regenerates, will be met with sharp rebuke and possible lifetime exile from these virtual shores.

Songs of the decade (4)

2009-11-10T08:18:00.002Z

'Date With The Night' by Yeah Yeah Yeahs

From: Fever To Tell (2003)
Watch the video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOL-lzVT5Jc

A crushing, driving riff, like the fast-paced wayward father to Wake Up. The voice of Karen O, maybe the greatest female voice of her generation with her over-sexed mix of New York punk attitude and honeyed breathiness. Suggestive lyrics about walking on water and squeezing thighs. All this in the first 30 seconds; can it get any better?

Yep. The whole things ramps up a notch as Karen screams “Choke!” – eight times, as the detuned guitars and rhythm section create a battering ram behind her. Twice is enough for all of that. Then it all breaks and we’re back to earth with another repeated phrase: “I’ll set it, I’ll set you off”, meaning God knows what but it hardly matters: her voice has become an ultra-sexual pant, with a couple of Pixies-style compressed guitar solo joining things in the middle. Then that riff again, one more verse, and we’re done.

Two and a half minutes of punk perfection, and one of the most exciting songs I know.

A trio of insults

2009-11-09T08:19:00.003Z

Last week the BBC started its celebration of the noughties, which in a true reflection of its time (a) uses the format of a top 100 countdown, and (b) contains about a 1 in 4 hit rate of interesting points from interesting people versus vacuous nonsense from C-list celebs. It also reminds me to write about a couple more of my favourite songs.

In the meantime, I note that the programme fell into one particular trap that really is typical of the decade: the Nanny State Outrage (NSO). There is nothing wrong, of course, with a good, well-argued point about overweaning state interference in parenting or suchlike. That might well be a legitimate NSO argument. But as so often, the comments wheeled out here about NSO issues were almost all irrelevant to such genuine political debate.

First, there were the NSO situations that there are absolutely nothing to do with the state. The example of choice was a school that required kids to wear goggles in order to play conkers. This is ludicrous enough in itself for high jinks and ribald remarks, but no, the celebs decided that No-one Was Allowed To Play Conkers Any More, and it is Health and Safety Gone Mad. There's hardly any need to state that this is not the case, but even if it was, it would probably be more to do with schools avoiding stupid court cases than nannying people.

The second type of NSO mistake is sillier and potentially more damaging, and that is the conflation of Health and Safety Gone Mad with Political Correctness Gone Mad. People bandied around the PC emergency siren as if the Health and Safety Executive and the Equalities and Human Rights Commission were one and the same, something which would doubtless displease members of both. For political correctness is just as provocative a phrase, but one dreamt up to insult largely fictional examples of local governments being overzealous in their promotion of equality. Most situations plastered with the PC label are, therefore, borne of really rather important concerns for society, such as sexism, racism and homophobia.

The problem when people use these terms to mean one and the same thing (and I've heard people do the opposite too, pulling the health and safety card when talking about Muslim integration), alongside the nanny state hysteria, is that it becomes harder to point out legitimate concerns about shortcomings in society. As soon as the PC, HS or NS placard is raised by the Daily Mail or another influential source, it becomes pompous or interfering to talk about the issue at all.

Ban all three phrases, I say, and make people come up with new ways of making their point (if they have one). But then an interfering PC leftie would say that, wouldn't he?

It's high time

2009-11-03T08:08:00.002Z

There are many hot topics – climate change, education, the financial crisis – in which political goodwill is prone to being eroded by practical realities. But there can be few areas in which good scientific evidence is allowed to be so roundly trounced by political expediency than the government’s policy on drugs.

As Professor David Nutt is sacked by his masters, and the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs heads for meltdown, it would be good to think that there are two sides to this story. But there really aren’t. Nutt’s job was to give evidence-based advice to the government about the relative dangers of different drugs and about the restrictions that should apply to them. And that’s what he has done: most notably on the issues of ecstasy and cannabis, and by reviewing far more scientific papers than ever before.

The Home Secretary claims that Nutt was sacked on Friday because he was being too political in his approach to cannabis. This is one of those fantastic obfuscations that sounds important but means little. Does he mean party political? Hardly; there is no party building its policies on changing drug classifications, although the Lib Dems have toyed with the idea in the past. What he means is that Nutt overstepped his remit by trying to unduly influence government policy. This is, of course, outrageous behaviour from a government policy advisor.

Unfortunately, all roads in the drugs debate lead to one conclusion: prohibition, prohibition and prohibition with knobs on. If you fail to tow this line then you are irresponsible, nigh on doling out pills and powders to the kids yourself. Never mind that it is plainly ridiculous and unscientific to classify ecstasy and magic mushrooms as being as dangerous as heroin, and more so than ketamine (a horse tranquiliser, currently class C). They are drugs, pure and simple, and drugs are bad.

There are a number of more sensible approaches that could be adopted by a government that is actually interested in people’s health and wellbeing. The most obvious of these – banning alcohol and tobacco, the true, highly addictive mass killers – will not work for social reasons, although the policy is objectively far more sensible than banning other substances.

Another solution is to classify drugs according to their actual dangers, which seems so obvious that to otherwise is ridiculous. Scientists researched it over two years ago – looking at health as well as addiction potential and social harms – and sure enough, their findings suggest that the system is all over the place. Cannabis is mid-table, LSD lower, ecstasy right at the bottom. But everyone guessed that already. The stumbling block is how to justify a harms-based classification system when alcohol is at number 5 and tobacco at 9; but it would still be a good deal more sensible than the current situation.

Finally, there is the system favoured by a growing number of experts and rehabilitation charities worldwide, and it’s a simple one: decriminalise, or actually legalise, all drugs. Control production and supply, tax them, then use the revenue to treat addicts and other problem users. Most of the policing problem disappears overnight, and suddenly it is OK to seek treatment for something that is a legitimate personal choice. Most importantly, harm is reduced, and the government can actually prove it is doing its job: protecting and promoting the lives of citizens, rather than causing them gratuitous damage through ignorance, tainted supplies and the need to consort with criminals.

Now that’s something I would be astonished – and pleased – to see in someone’s manifesto next year.

From the bowels of the Spamosphere

2009-11-02T09:46:00.001Z

The following landed in my inbox today, with the subject line, "What, what a". I've removed the dodgy web address.

Thus the difficulty with which the more advanced republics are confronted is no longer one connected with rapid and disorderly changes of government and presidents.

Hello, i am Winona Estrada.

Try it for the well-being.

Why are you not eating anything, gentlemen. And running out from the porch he went round the corner of the house and along the path that led to the back porch.

100-word Album of the Week (34)

2009-10-30T08:19:00.000Z

School of Seven Bells, Alpinisms (2008)

I discovered School of Seven Bells playing support to Bat For Lashes earlier this year. They were an imposing presence – cool, slightly other-worldly, able to kick up a whirlwind of hypnotic ambience. We said how good we thought they were, and I looked forward to finally telling my good friend Matt about a band before he got to them. Pleased with myself, I declared that they were the exact midpoint between My Bloody Valentine and Cocteau Twins. I got home, bought the CD and phoned Matt. Turned out I was six months late. He was already calling them S7B.

Yield at crossing

2009-10-28T17:51:00.003Z

Pootling along on my bike, red-faced after the challenging hill climb back from work, I signal weakly and wobble into the middle of the road to make the right turn into my road.

The driver behind me doesn't screech to a halt. Instead, he pulls up alongside me in his black van and winds down the window.

"Get some lights, boy!"

I hate this sort of thing: shouty drivers and their haranguing of cyclists. And I hate the idiots who hog the road while I'm driving, hanging ten inches behind your bumper as you exceed the motorway speed limit by not quite enough. I have only a second to think of a retort and launch it pithily over my shoulder to the rogue. I could point it that it's only dusk, that I signalled clearly and well in advance; that he is only perpetuating the tired stereotype of van drivers and the rotten truth of cyclist-hatred.

Instead, I look up at the darkening sky and think: he's got a point, you know. He was right. I do need lights. I already have them and I haven't got round to fixing them on yet. My fault.

Sometimes you just have to concede and shuffle along.

Possibly Invincible, probably just Bad

2009-10-28T08:08:00.003Z

The director of the new Michael Jackson film - by most accounts a pretty paltry offering with no real insight into the madman himself - has described it as "the last sacred document of our leader and friend".

The comment itself is so hilarious as to be self-satirising, but it does raise the grim prospect that Jacko wasn't just a once-talented artist turned mentally ill sideshow exhibit. Instead, he was the leader of a sinister cult, peopled by losers who genuinely think that he had the answers to all the great questions; white of glove, spangled of hat, moving down our streets with the taut-limbed precision of the Thriller video; part zombie, part raving fanatic.

The only question is whether they will now multiply, or simply go away.

Some thoughts on ability

2009-10-27T08:32:00.002Z

Disability is the topic of the day, seemingly. First there is the news that more babies are being diagnosed with Down's syndrome, but fewer born with the condition because of screenings and abortions. Then there are the feelgood stories about our current Paralympic sensation winning five golds and the award-winning head of a special school in north Wales.

For all my admiration of civil rights activists, environmental campaigners, promoters of religious harmony and the like, it's those who work with disabled children who I always end up admiring most strongly.

I'm aware that the above statement might sound patronising towards disabled people themselves. The Eleanor Simmonds story is all about her own achievements, though doubtless with the addition of some very supportive parents. And of course the whole thrust of the disability rights movement has been to enable people to lead dignified, independent lives whatever their circumstances. So let me be clear: whatever the achievements of children as individuals, I think that it takes a very special kind of person to actively dedicate their life to working with disabled children.

I'm always struck, for example, by the teachers who seek out a job at a special school. I had my fair share of difficulties at the comprehensive where I taught, but I would never have dreamed of working at somewhere like St Christopher's in Wrexham - regardless of how good it is, despite its shining record of innovation. Although teaching children with special needs shares factors in common with all teaching, there's no getting away from the fact that you are dealing, every day, with a whole range of learning disabilities, physical impairments and mental health issues. From my impressions when visiting special schools (always places which seem full of joy), you are part teacher, part social care worker, part parent. I got into education only for one of those three.

Disability takes on a different dimension of care and understanding when you are the parent of a disabled child, and the care part takes up much of your life, time and possibly savings. The striking thing about the number of children born with Down's syndrome is that is still so high, despite the opportunities now available for screening babies. This suggests that a lot of parents-to-be aren't interested in screening (or aren't offered it) and that others who take up the offer decide, despite the results, to raise a disabled child anyway. Again, I am truly impressed.

Let me be honest to the point of potential offensiveness. I am at a loss to explain why someone would wish to have a child with Down's syndrome, when they have the option not to. I don't have children yet, which is undoubtedly an important factor; I can well understand that there comes a point during a pregnancy where the mother (and/or the father), pro-life or otherwise, simply would not have an abortion, no matter what. But if you asked me before any of that happened - if there were an option to either have a perfectly healthy baby or take our chances in life's lottery - I would choose the former every time. I'm astonished that there are people who think otherwise.

So before I get diverted into the ultra-sensitive ethical and philosophical minefield of eugenics, I'll return to my original point. I am not just impressed, but truly inspired, by people who not only don't make that choice, but don't wish to, and dedicate themselves to enabling disabled children to live a fulfilling life. It's something that I could never do.

It's a man's world (but it wouldn't be nothin' without proper skilled tradesmen)

2009-10-21T07:08:00.003Z

There are few opportunities for someone like me to feel properly manly. I work in education (the most feminine of professions), I'm a soppy Grauniad reader, I have no interest in cars, and I'm a moist-eyed devotee of the natural world.

But like any man worth even half the name, I have a toolbox and by God, I'll use it when I absolutely need to. It contains screwdrivers (plentiful, cheap), pliers (rusting), an old-fashioned hammer and a thing that beeps if I'm going to drill into a gas pipe or something. And the usual debris of rawlplugs, screws, fuses and nails that a proper DIY-er would sort into small plastic boxes.

My current project is to make my own shelves for my apparently self-duplicating CD collection. Oh yes, you heard me right: it's a project. I had someone machine the lengths of American ash, and the rest is up to me. I've smoothed them with my electric belt sander (cheapest I could get at B&Q, obviously) on my workbench. Now I'm waxing them and next I will be gluing on back supports and attaching decorative brackets.

Of course, in reality I do all this to distract myself from learning any real skills. Knowing how to plumb, wire, tile or plaster would undoubtedly be more important, money-saving uses of my previous free time. But I have a real man (or several of them) to those kinds of things. After all, DIY stands for Do It Yourself; an imperative that I'm only inclined to obey for the small range of tasks required to stoke the dormant fires of my masculinity.

Dancing in the dark

2009-10-19T07:01:00.002Z

Was it really six months ago that I reflected on my favourite horror films of the decade? Well, I was foolishly short-sighted: a couple more have now appeared on my radar that cannot pass without mention.

Zombieland is the recent release of the two, and is possibly the funniest horror film ever made. Like Shaun of the Dead and Evil Dead II before it, the director knows enough to leaven the laughs with enough genuine terror to keep all possible audiences satisfied. There's nothing clever about Zombieland, and nothing particularly original: it's just a fast-paced, awe-inspiringly gory, very witty road movie with an excellent cast.

Entirely different, then, from Calvaire ('The Ordeal'), a 2004 Belgian film which is grubby, nasty and makes you glad you're sitting at home in the warm. It too starts with its protagonist on the road, but his journey is cut short when (you guessed it) his van breaks down and he has no phone reception and (you guessed it again) he seeks help from the less-than-ordinary locals. There is a lot borrowed from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Deliverance, but the film really makes it mark with a streak of savagely black humour and a couple of truly bizarre scenes.

One of them is this little beauty. There's nothing horrific about it, but I wouldn't watch it at work unless you want some funny looks:

Songs of the decade (3)

2009-10-12T18:11:00.002Z

'Crazy' by Gnarls Barkley

From: St Elsewhere (2006)
Watch the cover but for some reason not the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe500eIK1oA

Now here’s a rare thing: a song that sold by the millions, spent nine weeks at number 1, got all the airtime it could ever want, and is actually genuinely great. And there’s more: the reason for its success seems to come down to nothing more than classic songwriting skills.

Musically, Crazy is part modern hip-hop styled cool, part classic soul. It takes a number of listens to realise that the latter is not just a lazy reference point, not an ironic Motown throwback, but actual bona fide soul, with the kind of vocals from Cee-Lo Green that should make a Marvin Gaye fan swoon. To achieve this in the 2000s – to score so massively with a song that is straightforwardly well written, and from an act no-one had heard of – must testify to some sort of residual, race-memory interest in good music on the part of the British public.

There is not much to it lyrically (although the tone is downbeat, reminiscent of classic disco floor-fillers like I Will Survive), and it isn’t a song I listen to often or with great emotional investment. But Crazy is a super catchy, 24-carat piece of craftsmanship, and that should be celebrated.

Racy stuff

2009-10-09T17:42:00.003Z

I was going to post about Bruce Forsyth's idiotic defence of racist language, but I shan't bother: Speak You're Branes has done it for me.

When did racism become something that other people do, not me? And why am I not a racist when I use racist language? Is that some sort of special category reserved only for people that everybody agrees are horrible?

100-word Album of the Week (33)

2009-10-09T07:01:00.001Z

Pavement, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (1994)

One of my favourite American albums of the 90s, this comes across as an underground idler’s manifesto with detuned guitars – a sort of hippy slant on the Pixies. Although it’s all instantly recognisable as Pavement, it takes a saunter through a whole range of styles, from the bouncy slacker anthem of Cut Your Hair, through quirky jazz improv in 5-4=Unity, to the grungey Stop Breathin. Range Life so perfectly fuses alt-rock with country, and personal lyrics with a durable American dream, that it should outlast Nirvana.

Pavement have just reformed, so hopefully there are UK dates in the offing.

Looking right

2009-10-07T06:38:00.004Z

I must be dreaming. Did I just hear the Tories - the Tories?! - talk about the possibility of tax rises? And in a recession, no less?

A shiver runs down my spine, the fibres of my being reject it. But no - there it was - I found myself agreeing with the Tories.

Despite being a socialist leaner rather than a card-carrying Labour supporter (and who wants to be such a thing these days, anyway?), I've always toed the leftist's line that anything - plague, famine, even Gordon Brown as prime minister - is better than a Conservative government. But in the last few months it's become increasingly clear that Cameron's lot, whatever else they may be doing, appear to be playing a clearer, more honest game of recessionary cards than anyone else. Sure, this includes pay freezes and other forms of non-socialist frugality, but with the economy rapidly disappearing beneath the largest national debt we've ever seen, such things are only to be expected.

What am I to do? I've always prided myself on being intellectually honest and willing to listen. Even though I didn't agree with all his analysis, Nick Cohen's What's Left?*, had me nodding at the sad truth of how leftists have lost their way. Now I'm being asked to listen to a Tory (a Tory?! etc. etc.) and believe that not all he says is moonshine and deceit?

What will happen next?

* Brit's gift, for which belated thanks.

The truth about Ricky

2009-10-05T06:54:00.001Z

Watching The Invention of Lying, Ricky Gervais’ new comedy, you can’t help but be struck by just how far he has made it in America. Gervais is middle aged, British, with a proudly unchanged Reading accent, and hardly great looking (a fact which the film plays on so much that it might reveal a genuine insecurity). Yet here he is, co-writing and co-directing a major Hollywood release, with a properly big co-star (Jennifer Garner) and cameos from the likes of Philip Seymour Hoffman.

The film boasts the high-concept central conceit that everyone in the world always tells the truth, until one day Gervais finds himself doing otherwise. Give this concept to the average rom-com writer and you’d end up mainly with disappointingly small-scale musings on love (something which I half expected here, given its star’s acknowledged desire to be big Stateside). Give it to Charlie Kaufman and you’d get a surreal mind-bender, operating on a different plane of reality altogether. In Gervais’ hands, however, The Invention of Lying turns out to be a witty, semi-cerebral thing: definitely a cut above the average, but with rather too many concessions to the mainstream for my liking.

It manages to be challenging, in a way that suggests Gervais might have had to fight to keep his own distinctive voice in the script. This is particularly the case with the film’s consideration of the subject of God, which (without giving too much away) has the attitude of an indie iconoclast but the appealing trappings of a brilliantly broad, Life of Brian style crowd scene. That unique voice is also present in the dialogue style, in which Gervais softens the curmudgeonly persona of his previous film Ghost Town (also well worth a watch) while still keeping the naturalistic edge of his performances in The Office and Extras.

But if there is a battle between Gervais the true original and Gervais the rising Hollywood star, its result is far from conclusive. Having built up a bank of intriguing questions and clever scenarios from the central idea, things peter out a little, and blockbuster conventions edge back in for the final act. It isn’t so much dissatisfying – even Gervais in (possibly forced) default mode is too funny for that – but it is a little disappointing. Here was an opportunity for a genuinely legendary film, I left thinking, but what we got was merely a very good one.

It's all true

2009-10-02T07:10:00.003Z

Following Brit and Ben's requests, I hereby present an image of me, my bike and that steep hill in Cardiff.

Don't worry, my wife trusts me out by myself.

I've got a bike, you can ride it if you like

2009-10-01T06:59:00.001Z

I've started cycling to work. I don't expect showers of praise (though garlands of honour are welcome at the usual address) but by crikey, it's shown me a thing or two about my fitness level.

The thing about cycling - at least for someone not used to a life of jaunty exercise - is that it seems to use bits of you that you'd forgotten were there. The muscles at the top of your legs, for example. And your heart. The vague taste of blood lingers at the back of your mouth for some time after you're, and you feel a little queasy.

It doesn't help that we live at the top of pretty much the only hill in Cardiff, or that I still haven't really got the hang of the gears, or that there are people whose job is seemingly to park the widest vehicles they can find at the busiest point of a bike lane.

I wear a helmet, of course, something which elicits derisory shouts from Cyncoed's version of feral youths (i.e. not very feral at all; no swearing and little in the way of pack hunting tactics). It's my one concession to cycling paraphernalia, which generally comprises a lycra accessory pack spray-painted onto unnaturally bulging leg muscles. Of course, I now actually look stupider than them all, with my jeans-t-shirt-and-helmet combo and red face.

It will all be worth it if cycling can just help me achieve one of my key thirty-something goals: to remain able to buy the same trouser size that I've taken for the last 10 years. It's an uphill struggle, literally.

Setting sun

2009-09-30T06:53:00.003Z

Our excellent politics teacher, Mr Smith, started a discussion in around 1994 on an interesting topic: do newspapers set the political agenda, or do they simply follow the lead of the electorate? (He also took us through the Communist Manifesto, occasionally taught standing on a table, and predicted that the United States would elect a black president before a female, but those are other stories.)

At the time John Major's government already seemed to be in its death throes, despite only being re-elected a couple of years previously, and the rumours had already started about the right-leaning tabloids cosying up to Tony Blair's New Labour. In the event, The Sun only switched sides six weeks before the general election in 1997, which neatly demonstrates just how unbelievable the notion of a Labour government appeared at the time.

In 2009, no-one (including most Labour MPs) thinks that a switch back to the Tories is unbelievable, with David Cameron trying his best not to preen while Gordon Brown flounders in a mess of half-baked ideas and a hopeless public image. And The Sun has done it again, much earlier in the day and to no-one's great surprise.

The answer, of course, to Mr Smith's puzzler, is "a bit of both". Newspapers have limited control of information and ideas in a democracy, but they can have a significant influence on shaping opinion. And the most important opinion here - that Labour has run its course - is one that has emerged from public opinion, not been sold to it. The MPs' expenses scandal was important, but it was the last nail in the coffin, the government having appeared doomed since Brown's prime ministership started unravelling frighteningly soon after he'd been handed it.

Of course, Labour is trying to make light of this latest media blow, dusting off the old line that it's "the British people who decide the election". True as that may be, it's a little like saying that smoking doesn't cause lung cancer, cancerous cells do. All The Sun is doing is taking its lead from the changing tide of opinion, which it can now (depressingly) be seen to lead from the front in the run-up to the election, all the way to Rupert Murdoch's pride of place at David Cameron's inauguration piss-up. Newspapers may not single-handedly set the agenda, but they definitely get the chance to edit it for general circulation.

A good crowd

2009-09-25T07:14:00.008Z

I thought I'd make a list, for my own amusement, of all the musical acts I've seen over the years. Then I thought, why just for my own amusement? I can stick it here as a lazy post, and (with a few embarrassing exceptions) to show off.

So, here it is. Mind, it does include support acts and people I saw for a couple of songs before wandering off at a festival.

Amy LaVere (Bristol 2008)
Arcade Fire (Glastonbury 2007)
Asian Dub Foundation (Cardiff 2003)
Bat For Lashes (Glastonbury 2007, Bristol 2009)
Björk (Glastonbury 2007)
Bjorn Again (Glastonbury 2009)
Blur (Cardiff 1997)
Bob Dylan (Cardiff 2009)
Bruce Springsteen (Glastonbury 2009)
Buddy Guy (Glastonbury 2008)
Cast (Cardiff 1996)
The Chemical Brothers (Glastonbury 2007)
Corrosion of Conformity (Cardiff 1996)
Dizzee Rascal (Cardiff 2009)
DJ Shadow (Cardiff 1997)
Editors (Glastonbury 2007)
Elbow (Glastonbury 2008, Cardiff 2008)
Fairport Convention (Glastonbury 2009)
Fatboy Slim (Glastonbury 2008)
Gideon Conn (Glastonbury 2008)
Glasvegas (Cardiff 2009)
The Hat (Glastonbury 2008)
Hobo Jones and the Junkyard Dogs (Glastonbury 2008, Glastonbury 2009)
The Hours (Cardiff 2009)
Idlewild (Cardiff 2005)
Iggy and the Stooges (Glastonbury 2007)
James (Manchester 2007, Bristol 2008)
Johnathan Rice (Cardiff 2005)
Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra (Cardiff 1997-ish)
The Killers (Cardiff 2005)
Leonard Cohen (Glastonbury 2008)
The Libertines (Cardiff 2002)
Lykke Li (Glastonbury 2008)
Madness (Glastonbury 2009)
Mansun (Cardiff 1996)
Mark Knopfler (Cardiff 1996)
Massive Attack (Glastonbury 2008)
Metallica (Cardiff 1996)
My Federation (Bristol 2008)
Neil Young (Glastonbury 2009)
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (Glastonbury 2009)
Oasis (Cardiff 1996)
Operator Please (Glastonbury 2008)
Portico Quartet (Glastonbury 2008)
The Prodigy (Cardiff 2009)
Radiohead (Cardiff 1997, Newport 2000, Cardiff 2003)
R.E.M. (Cardiff 2005)
Róisín Murphy (Glastonbury 2008)
Rolf Harris (Glastonbury 2009)
School of Seven Bells (Bristol 2009)
Seasick Steve (Glastonbury 2008, Bristol 2008)
Shlomo and the Beatbox Orchestra (Glastonbury 2009)
Sigur Rós (Newport 2000)
Simon Warner (Cardiff 1997)
Skunk Anansie (Cardiff 1996)
Solomon Burke (Glastonbury 2008)
Spinal Tap (Glastonbury 2009)
Starsailor (Cardiff 2005)
Steffan Pope (Glastonbury 2009)
Steve Hillage’s Mirror System (Glastonbury 2008)
Super Furry Animals (Cardiff 1997, Glastonbury 2007)
Supergrass (Cardiff 2002)
Teenage Fanclub (Cardiff 1997)
Three Colours Red (Cardiff 1996)
The Twang (Manchester 2007)
U2 (Cardiff 2005, Cardiff 2009)
The Wannadies (Cardiff 2002)
The Zutons (Cardiff 2005)

100-word Album of the Week (32)

2009-09-24T08:15:00.004Z

The Bangles, Greatest Hits (1990)

This collection displays a bewildering range of styles – jangle pop, rock, slow-burning ambience, even a strange cover of Simon and Garfunkel – but not necessarily in a good way. There’s very little to really get your teeth into, except of course for those three incredible 80s singles: the Prince-penned perfect pop single Manic Monday; the deeply groovy dance-floor filler Walk Like An Egyptian, which still sounds like nothing else; and grandstanding ballad Eternal Flame. Those three are just as diverse as the rest here, but the difference is I could listen to them repeatedly and not start yawning.

» All the other 100-word reviews are listed here. «

Coogan's greatest

2009-09-23T06:53:00.004Z

We've been working our way through DVDs of Saxondale, Steve Coogan's low-key sitcom about a former roadie turned pest controller in Stevenage.

It struck me last night that, genius creation though Alan Partridge is, this is almost certainly Coogan's finest performance - and possibly the greatest sitcom performance by anyone, ever.* The extent to which he inhabits the character is astonishing - every breath, verbal mannerism and facial tic seems to come from somewhere deep inside.

The difference, of course, is that in Partridge Coogan was excellent playing a ridiculous character. But Tommy Saxondale is far more finely tuned - he's an opinionated, outdated rocker with anger problems, but he's also a loveable rogue and an intelligent conversationalist. He's fundamentally a good person, which Alan is not. A very difficult cocktail of a characterisation, and so convincingly done that it's almost unnerving.

This is one of my favourite scenes - even better for also featuring Ruth Jones, another of our great comedy performers:

* With the possible exception of John Cleese as Basil Fawlty. But for me, Coogan's performance outshines even Harry H Corbett, Kelsey Grammer and Ricky Gervais.

No rebranding required

2009-09-22T06:38:00.002Z

So now we have it. The apotheosis of pop as commodity turns out not to be an ITV talent show, or a band constructed by venture capitalists out of binary code. Instead, it is the announcement that Sugababes - a group that had an excellent debut single, Overload, and whom I am only guessing have done little of worth since then - are losing their final original member, Keisha Buchanan.

Note "losing" Buchanan, because there is no question of the remaining two shrugging and deciding to call it quits. An ultra-glossy threesome who look rather like robot versions of a girl band, Sugababes have been through two line-up changes already, and it has apparently made no difference to their appeal to the public. In fact, they've already found a new member and seemingly announced her arrival at the same time as Buchanan's departure.

I previously posted my displeasure at The Jam reforming without Paul Weller, a money-grabbing sin that seemed to go far enough. But this latest news strikes me as truly beyond the pale. A modern, extant group emerges from line-up changes with its name the only thing intact? Truly, in the 21st century pop scheme of things, brand is king.

Songs of the decade (2)

2009-09-21T06:47:00.003Z

‘Dry Your Eyes’ by The Streets

From: A Grand Don’t Come for Free (2004)
Watch the video (but without a crucial, sweary verse): www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHOf3s70w-c

This is a song which has a reputation for a certain blokish charm, a kind of 21st century cheeky-chappy version of what it’s like to be dumped. But it’s important not to be fooled. Mike Skinner may sound like a pub raconteur, yet his first two albums are home to an impressive emotional and artistic range, going well beyond any such straightforward labelling. Dry Your Eyes is a wonderful song pure and simple, and it paints one of the most realistic (and heartbreaking) pictures of the end of a relationship.

Skinner could be a witty wordsmith in any genre, but his chosen medium is rapping, which lends him the advantage of being able to pack a complex plot into a four-minute single. In case, though, he doesn’t tell the whole story: just the final act, in microscopic detail, because “In one single moment your whole life can turn round”.

It’s a clever move. A lot of the other songs from its parent album sound chipper, if not flippant, but this one comes across as desperately intimate. Skinner tracks the last act in painful detail, switching between his character’s words (which are true to form, not intellectualised a jot) and the physical movements which say more:

She brings her hands up towards where my hands rested
She wraps her fingers round mine with the softness she's blessed with
She peels away my fingers, looks at me and then gestures
By pushin' my hand away to my chest, from hers

The pain is salved by a chorus which is indeed blokish, but also feels like the only set of things you could say if you were in the situation yourself: there’s plenty more fish in the sea, you’ve got to walk away now. (How do I stop him crying? I can imagine his friend thinking. This isn’t what we normally do, us boys.) The song feels like the high point of British urban music, but also the death throes of lad culture.

But it’s more personal than that to me. Having been there, having made the moves and said the things myself, I see an honesty in Dry Your Eyes which is missing from so many other break-up songs. In that moment when it all happens, it doesn’t even cross your mind to be poetic. Later, you will read many things into that discussion, and into countless others that came previously. You’ll write your poetry and wrestle internally with the magnitude of it all. But on the day, it comes down to the details. And this song captures that feeling perfectly.

Sofa of my lethargy

2009-09-17T07:33:00.005Z

We've just had our new sofa delivered, a mere six weeks after placing the order. It's outrageously comfortable, in a kind of sink-in-and-immediately-doze-off way, and looks like this:

That's not our living room, mind: ours is far more dominated by the sheer size and deep-cushionedness of it all.

Having a sofa somehow completes the house, filling both a physical and psychological need which has been nagging away since we moved in. It'll be loved for many years. In fact, it'll probably be a good few years now before we remember all the other things we were going to do to the place. It all seems less important now...

Two long roads

2009-09-16T06:55:00.002Z

Not to be outdone by Liz, whose voracious reading habits demand up to two victims a week, I’ve recently finished two novels in a row which are among the greatest I’ve read. In style and theme, two more different books would be hard to come by.

The Stars My Destination by Alfred J Bester is an American sci-fi classic with a true fifties sci-fi title. Never having heard of it, I picked it up at random because of the accompanying quotes from luminaries, suggesting that it is among the genre’s great works of genius. It tells the story of Gulliver Foyle, a hard-bitten labourer betrayed and left to die on his cargo ship. The complex, obsessive tale of his revenge makes for an astonishing read: it’s a universe where teleportation has become a life skill; there are inescapable prisons and luxurious mansions, substances that can change the universe and characters with multiple shady motives. What is really gripping, though, is Bester’s style: hyperactive, hyper-real and rather poetic, with the novel culminating in the kind of mind-expanding coda that only the great sci-fi stylist can pull off.

Completely at the other end of the scale is The Road by Cormac McCarthy, who aims for something so starkly simple that he has dispensed with most punctuation, lending the novel a beautiful but blunt fragility. It is about an unnamed man and boy walking south through post-apocalyptic America to escape the encroaching winter. But it isn’t really about that at all, of course: it’s about human nature, and love, the purpose of life and the belief in something greater. It’s an astonishing, but also punishing read, and I’m unsure whether to agree with those who would put a ‘but’ after that statement: but it’s ultimately positive, or redemptive.

There is a link to be made between these two great contrasting works, however, and that is a question mark over the point of it all. Their leading characters are both searching for their goal with such obsession that they barely stop to think about why. For Gulliver Foyle, revenge becomes an end in itself, a reason to live but not one that necessarily makes things any better; the same is true of the man and his obsession, beyond reason, to protect his son and find something better. The question hanging over all of their heads – why not just end the misery? – is too much. The reason appears not to be a survival instinct but a yearning: for the better state of affairs which all of us, as humans cursed with the ability to hypothesise, can imagine.

Smoke and mirrors and a load of balls

2009-09-14T07:22:00.002Z

Apparently, Derren Brown's explanation of how he predicted the lottery last week has had mathematicians snorting with derision and fans left with something of an empty feeling. In the offending programme, Brown said that there were three ways he could do it: fake the winning ticket, fix the lottery, or actually predict the numbers; to which he might have added "and I will, of course, not be doing any of those things".

He went on to reveal a knowledge of 'deep maths', automatic writing and something called the 'wisdom of crowds'. It was sort-of believable, sort-of credible, but we didn't need professionals to tell us that the latter phenomenon may exist but doesn't apply to completely random events like the lottery.

Obfuscation and double-bluff are, after all, Brown's stock in trade, and one of the reasons we love him so much is that he does them so damn well. The fans said by the Beeb to be disappointed by the explanation seem to be missing something: we never really would have wanted him to explain properly, because that would take away the small part of all of us which wants to believe he really is the Devil.

Songs of the decade (1)

2009-09-13T18:14:00.002Z

'Wake Up' by Arcade Fire

From: Funeral, 2005
Watch the video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEKC5pyOKFU

I thought I should start with this song because I once described it to a friend as “the sound of the twenty-first century”. In fact, honesty dictates that I take a further step into the hall of pretentiousness: Wake Up is in actually among several on my ‘best of the decade’ list that add up to a serious statement about what the human race is, what it can or should do, these days.

I could discuss how the repeat listener is teased with an unexpectedly long, driving guitar intro relying on just a single note, before the whole thing soars away. And how that single note is exciting too: it takes on its own beauty because of what it precedes, rather like the drum loop that opens the Beatles’ Tomorrow Never Knows.

I could talk about its unusual structure: wordless chorus, verse, wordless chorus, verse; then, just as we’re ready to hear it all over again, a shift into a minor-key and a whole new melodic territory, from which we never return. It’s a disconcerting move, but then the landscape shifts once again, to a bouncy coda reminiscent of the Flaming Lips in playful mood. Where we started with a low, distorted guitar, we finish with up-register strings.

And I really should pay homage to the key to this musical shiftiness: Win Butler’s lyrics, which – as with a number of Arcade Fire’s heartfelt hymns of love, loss and the human spirit – are an ambiguous mix of cold hearts and triumphal stick-waving.

But all that is only the backdrop to the real reason I love Wake Up so much: the sheer joy of its anthemic chorus – stunning in its simplicity, outrageously rousing in its magnitude. A football team would kill for it. Its marriage to such an emotionally complex song is neither here nor there: I find it impossible to hear without a shiver of excitement. Unlike some other songs, it has never been the soundtrack to a particularly important moment in my life. But every time I hear it – kitchen, sofa, car, desk – my pulse quickens and I stop what I’m doing. Often, it remains in my head for hours, turning even the most mundane of days into a torch song for humankind. Which, if you’re stuck behind a pile of papers on a Tuesday afternoon, is either a blessing or a curse depending on your point of your view.

Polls apart

2009-09-10T18:08:00.001Z

It took me by surprise the other day, as I was pottering through someone else’s leftover papers on the train, but apparently the decade is ending soon. This is somewhat forthright, if not rude, of it. When the 90s ended there was all manner of hullabaloo, partly but certainly not exclusively of the millennial variety. By comparison, one would think that people are rather keen to see this one shuffle off into history, rather than be feted, analysed or put up for nostalgic reminiscence by B-list comedians and society types. Maybe it’s because no-one could ever quite agree what to call it: The Noughties always sounded a bit frivolous, and The 2000s felt as if a ten-year period was attempting to hijack the whole bright new century.

Inevitably, the thing that drew my attention to the encroachment of time’s next chunk (the Twenty Tens, presumably) was a poll. Specifically, one to name the ten greatest songs so far this millennium, conducted by Pitchfork Media – one of those companies I’ve vaguely heard of and must be very important in the online scheme of things, but whose opinions on music I feel disinclined to take seriously.

This will, of course, be the one guaranteed celebration of the decade: the one that allows magazines, TV networks and every website under the sun to bypass editorial creativity for a few months and poll everything they can conceive of. The best song lists will be mere titbits, as will those covering the best films, books and other laughably obvious fare. I confidently expect Heat to cover the 100 Tritest Celebrity Crises, Hello! to look at the 50 Most Inordinately Expensive Weddings, and Railway Modeller to turn introspective in its pursuit of the 20 Best Excuses Used Not To Get A More Interesting Hobby.

I love it. Like many men, I love lists, even those about subjects that would not usually hold the slightest interest for me. But particularly, I love arguing with people about things that I do know about: music most of all. I look forward to crossly refuting the attractions of Air’s Moon Safari, noting that Zero 7’s Simple Things is a far more enticing prospect if you want a slice of lounge soul/electronica; and to getting annoyed at the retrospective critical downgrading of Doves’ Last Broadcast, which was the thing happening in 2003 and is still unbelievably good now.

I toyed with the idea of creating my own lists, but decided that my limited readership would preclude the sort of lively tussle I’d hope to engage in afterwards. (But Brit, please note that I enjoyed our efforts to get Dylan and the Beatles into a top 10 arrangement; we really must have a go at Bowie sometime.)

Instead, I’ve decided to go a little more in-depth. I’m going to write a series of posts about my favourite songs of the decade, in no particular order and in no defined quantity (though I’d like to think I could manage 10 before the year’s out – consider this the rebirth of the blog after some months in semi-deep freeze). These will be mainly for my own amusement, and to pay tribute to some of the artists who have had a real impact on my life, and capture for me some of the essence and joy of music.

There now, I’ve gone all serious. Someone call Jimmy Carr so that he can chip in to the middle of the songs with some smug one-liners.

Something old, something new, something funk but nothing blues

2009-08-04T07:47:00.003Z

Big congratulations to our friends Dev and Dani, who got married on Friday – and not only that, managed to get the whole thing done outside, in beautiful garden surroundings, in just about the only envelope of sunshine allotted to south Wales last week. Everything that should have been lovely was, and the talk and drink flowed freely between old friends.

I was nursing a degree of apprehension throughout, however, as I’d been asked to put together the music for the evening. It was a huge honour and all that, and readers will not be surprised to learn that I had a great deal of fun fulfilling the request. But there are some things that you worry about getting wrong, and putting your musical taste on show for sixty people (many strangers), at one of the most important events of your friends’ lives, is one of them.

Dani’s brother and another friend, Chloe – possessed of a superb smoky jazz voice – provided the live entertainment. Not being a proper DJ (to my continuing regret), my job was to put together two playlists, stitch together the tracks, and plug and play on the evening. The first list was easy – 2 hours of background music, to be played while the starting tranche of reception beer was quaffed, gently teasing the guests when it was not being drowned out by children in their late afternoon tornados of energy.

The second part – to be played after speeches had been made, cake cut and congratulations exhausted – was for dancing. There are factors about a wedding crowd that make for a unique situation, when it comes to dancing. Of course, just about everyone is upbeat, appreciably drunk and in forgiving mood. On the other hand, they are an odd mix of ages and types, and then there is the formal dress. No-one is going to breakdance in their newly-pressed Debenhams three-piece with wilting buttonhole bouquet.

I wanted to balance the happy couple’s scribbled four-page list of suggestions with my own taste in music. And I was aware of the need for the hard-wearing, crowd-pleasing classics that are expected at these things, but I wanted to avoid absolute cheese of the YMCA variety. Then, once I’d finalised the list – initially weeks in advance, but with countless changes later – there was fine-tuning the order, beat-matching and segueing all three and a half hours of it.

So, here was the eventual order of play, and I have to say most of it went down rather well. Tracks marked aturned out to be decent floor-fillers, while those marked r gave people a much-needed rest. Those in brackets didn’t get played in the end, for various reasons.

a Wilson Pickett – Everybody Needs Somebody
Otis Redding – Wonderful World
The Waterboys – The Whole of the Moon
The Feeling – Fill My Little World
a Queen – Don’t Stop Me Now
Oasis – Don’t Look Back in Anger
a The Pogues – Fiesta
a Madness – One Step Beyond
a The Proclaimers – I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)
r The Cure – In Between Days
r Stereophonics – A Thousand Trees
James – She’s A Star
Curtis Mayfield – Move On Up
a Stevie Wonder – Superstition
a Ray Parker Junior – Ghostbusters
a Deee-lite – Groove Is In The Heart / Guy Pratt – A-Team Remix
Salt-N-Pepa – Push It
Prince – Kiss
a Scissor Sisters – I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’
Mika – Relax (Take It Easy)
r Klaxons – Golden Skans
(Kaiser Chiefs – I Predict A Riot)
(The White Stripes – Seven Nation Army)
a Bon Jovi – Livin’ On A Prayer
Bruce Springsteen – Born To Run
a Kings of Leon – Sex On Fire
Pixies – Here Comes Your Man
Sly and the Family Stone – Everyday People
r Zero 7 – Destiny
r Elbow – One Day Like This
The Bluetones – Slight Return
The Stone Roses – Ten Storey Love Song
a Pulp – Disco 2000
a Shed Seven – Chasing Rainbows
r The Only Ones – Another Girl, Another Planet
a Blur – Song 2
Fatboy Slim – The Rockefeller Skank
r The Chemical Brothers – Block Rockin’ Beats
a Beyoncé feat. Jay-Z – Crazy In Love
The Bangles – Walk Like An Egyptian
a The Rolling Stones – (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
Fun Lovin’ Criminals – Scooby Snacks
Spin Doctors – Two Princes
r Happy Mondays – Step On
Beats International – Dub Be Good To Me
r Outkast – Ms. Jackson
a ABBA – Dancing Queen
r David Bowie – The Jean Genie
(Iggy Pop – The Passenger)
(Bryan Adams – Summer of ’69)
(Guns N’ Roses – Sweet Child O’ Mine)
(Madonna – Ray of Light)
Kylie Minogue – Spinning Around
Michael Jackson – Thriller
Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel – Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me)
a The Beatles – Hey Jude

Normal service may be resumed sometime this decade

2009-07-24T08:53:00.002Z

Moving house has turned out to be a nightmare, a mess. We were supposed to be in the new place by now, sipping vintage champagne, polishing the solid-wood flooring and reflecting smugly that we were within spitting distance of Waitrose. Instead, we're in a flat in Cardiff Bay with no furniture, squinting at a 14 inch telly and cursing each time we look for another beloved possession only to remember that it's in a high-security storage box.

So, in lieu of a proper, intellectually stimulating post, here is a list of things that have happened in the last couple of weeks:

Good

Watching Bruno (hilarious, though not quite as good as Borat)
Arguing about Bruno, pointlessly and at length, with an atheist whose hobby is to tell people they're going to hell on internet forums
Finishing putting together the music for our friends' wedding - full report later

Bad

The current owners of our new house losing one of their parents just before sealing the deal: tragic for them, tricky for us
Moving house in a day: most worldly possessions to a shed, ourselves and a Transit van to an empty flat after dark
Rain, and additional rain - generally when moving possessions

Ugly

Reminding ourselves that some people (i.e. the buyers of our house in Caerphilly) can be small-minded, selfish and vindictive, even in the face of others' bereavement, when I thought humankind had sort of just agreed to move on from that and be nice all the time

Legends in every field

2009-07-02T07:39:00.001Z

Perhaps as a warm-up for the festival’s 40th anniversary next year, Glastonbury 2009 was all about the legends. You could spot them from even a cursory glance at the schedule; and I did more than my fair share of glancing, unlike some festival ‘purists’ who claim that they don’t even look at who’s playing until they turn up.

First there were the headliners. Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen were both absolute musts, though we eventually ducked out of Blur to explore other bits of the festival (and anyway, I’d seen them in their heyday in ’96 – one of the best gigs I’d ever seen, and I didn’t fancy spoiling the memory). Young shaded it in my opinion, with a blistering assault of a set that belied the overweight, shaggy dog look that he has apparently adopted in his dotage. Every song was a highlight, but the 15-minute Down By The River sticks in the memory, as do the repeated, exultant encores of Rockin’ In The Free World, during which he actually smiled.

In comparison, Springsteen is more of a typical rock star, though he could hardly be accused of lacking ambition, with a two and a half hour set covering every stage of his career. He was loud, he crackled with energy, he played with the crowd and even had the front rows hold him up; he was pure Glastonbury, and he seemed to be loving every minute of it. The River, Lonesome Day and Born To Run were particularly spectacular.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, and I should also mention a band that is surely a legend in the making, at least in Glastonbury terms. After the usual day and a half of mooching around every corner of the staggeringly huge festival site, we ended up on Thursday night heading towards the Avalon field for a raucous set by Hobo Jones and the Junkyard Dogs, a ‘skiffle punk’ band which set the place alight last year. Along the way, we had heard someone attempt to start a bizarre rumour, a clear example of festival high jinks of which we thought little more. Hobo Jones and his dogs kicked up a cider-fuelled, audience-participation frenzy, culminating in a raucous What Shall We Do With a Drunken Sailor? Then something odd happened: they started riffing on Michael Jackson songs. All very amusing and inconsequential; but then, as the final applause died down, they announced it was a tribute. I scrambled for my phone. Surely that strange rumour wasn’t true? And there it was, right in front of us: King of Pop Dead.

It was a truly surreal place to find out. We had no idea how to react, but luckily everyone else did: stalls belted out Jackson hits, t-shirts were printed and shipped to the site with indecent haste, a Jackson joke board was set up within hours; Nick Cave drily dedicated his set to the late Farrah Fawcett.

And beyond the music that took place after the sun went down, the legends just kept on dominating. Friday morning, which is officially when the music starts, saw us drag our shell-shocked selves to the Pyramid stage for a feelgood set by Bjorn Again: a rain-scorning tribute to other legends, though in this case still alive. We missed out on Ray Davies and the Blockheads for Neil Young, but we did catch 20 minutes of a rather lifeless set from Fairport Convention, who now seem basically like any other bespectacled, greying folk band.

Saturday saw the one instance of Glastonbury apparently disrespecting its legends, with Rolf Harris – who had previously packed out the Pyramid stage with his wry humour and wobble-boarding antics – consigned to the considerably smaller, and screen-less, Jazzworld stage. It was a rare example of ridiculous planning. Thousands upon thousands of us trooped over there at the same time, only to find ourselves so far back in the field that we heard barely a whisper of the set. We left, but still our quest for the oldies continued. Better by far was a fully-costumed set from Spinal Tap. It almost seems unbelievable that three sixty-something American actors can play a spoof British heavy metal band 25 years after their original film, and still make it hilarious and musically impressive at the same time. But they can, and Stonehenge was a particularly appropriate and hilarious moment.

Two final legends saw us through much of Sunday, and were another reason to skip Blur, as we didn’t fancy standing through three sets on the same field. First up were Madness, with their blokey, cheery charm still intact, some new songs that were really quite good, and an entertaining interlude in which their saxophonist went somersaulting through the air on a wire. And then, finally, we came to what was, for me, the defining act of the weekend: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. I won’t begin to explain all of the reasons why I adore Cave so much. But suffice to say, I happen to think that he is the best singer-songwriter since David Bowie, and that his band’s most recent album is among their best – good going for an act that’s a quarter-century old. Their Glastonbury set was just astounding: there was a frenetic We Call Upon the Author, a pitch-black Mercy Seat, a sing-along Weeping Song and a heartfelt Ship Song. For the closer, they chose an extended, truly dark, filthy-mouthed version of Stagger Lee, perhaps almost as a two-finger gesture to Blur, whose requirements seemingly made Cave cut his set short. It was utterly unique, electrically brilliant.

So that was that: a festival of legends. I haven’t even mentioned seeing the greatest one of all, Michael Eavis, at a rather genteel Q & A session; or the brilliant Shlomo and his beatbox ‘orchestra’; or Kevin Eldon reading some of his hilarious poetry; or all of the other strange, wonderful things that make up this slightly unhinged festival. It rained a couple of times and got a bit muddy, but we hardly noticed. Next year it will all be different again, but 2009, for me, seemed to be all about the music.

Laughter in the dark

2009-06-09T09:47:00.002Z

This has to be one of the best cartoons I've seen about the current political fiasco:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/cartoon/2009/jun/08/gordon-brown-labour-leadership

Praising Gordon Brown with faint damnation

2009-06-08T06:37:00.008Z

So, the drawn-out Telegraph scandal over MPs' expenses has finally achieved something far beyond a Westminster 'shake-up' or political renewal, and certainly unintended: the election of two British fascists to the European Parliament. Although this was not necessarily the main factor in the BNP's success - we can blame the recession in part - it seems that the atmosphere of "let's punish politicians" provides the most fertile ground for political commentators at present, rather than that of "let's blame immigrants".

In countries such as Italy and Denmark, where far-right parties have long maintained a foothold, this would not be a particularly shocking event. But in Britain, it seems not to have crossed anyone's mind until very recently that the BNP could be a serious political force. Particularly in the last 20 years, we have tended to pride ourselves on a near-universal distaste for racists and fascists.

The sorry truth of the matter is that the Conservatives are now too centrist for some people's tastes, and Labour have travelled from success story to political mediocrity in just 3 or 4 years. With the loss of ideological difference between the main parties, and with the collapse of political literacy, angry and disenfranchised people believe there is no way to vent their spleen other than by siding with marginal causes.

It's tempting to cheer on the growing band of Labour backbenchers who think that if Gordon Brown goes, and goes now, there is a chance that all might not be lost by the time of the next general election. But unfortunately, there is pretty much universal agreement that a new leader would automatically equal an immediate election. That's no good as we continue to wallow in the mire of financial scandal, as well as the general unfocused fury about politics and politicians in general. Hopefully, given another 6 or 9 months, that will have dried up and we will once again be able to make level-headed decisions about matters that are truly important.

This brings me to the hard conclusion that, whatever my misgivings about Gordon Brown (and they are manifold), the best thing for the country right now would be for him to soldier on. Because despite my traditional leftist stance of "anything to stop the Tories", in reality there can be worse things. One of those would be a Conservative government with a fatally weakened Labour party and a genuinely powerful minority of fascists intent on undermining what is good about Britain.

That's enough of hat

2009-06-01T13:54:00.003Z

Liz brings my attention to the following riveting analysis by the Beeb of one of the day's most important issues:

Reminded very strongly of the Private Eye 'Spoons' articles ['Me and My Spoon', their occasional witty poke at celeb culture] by this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8074663.stm

You do have to read it through to get the full effect. Especially like the fact that they've invited comments at the end. If you don't have time, here is a flavour: Ollie Thomas, 25, a publicist, often wears a hat to work. He says they can be "anything from beanies to bobbles to flat caps to Cubans". "When I am in the office I prefer to wear a more traditional flat cap as opposed to weekend when I would wear a beanie." Mr Howarth says it's younger men - aged between 14 and 25 - who are keeping hat wearing alive. "They are wearing a lot of hats - beanies and baseball caps and flat caps. And they're doing it a lot more than they were 10 years ago. To them it's a fashion thing. My teenage son wears a hat all the time - it'll be interesting to see if he still is in 10 years time."

100-word Album Special: because in theory everything is...

2009-05-20T18:11:00.007Z

Yes, it's true: we've decided to gather our belongings and leave the dull but orderly Valleys town Caerphilly, and return to our spiritual home of Cardiff - just in time for the latest nationwide tabloid exhibition of its disastrous Saturday night culture. Hence the lack of activity on Woolgatherer lately.

Those belongings include, of course, things we no longer love, others we will upgrade, and some that we haven't needed for years. Many will come with us anyway, just in case.

In recent years I've made the transition from inveterate hoarder to relatively responsible possessor of what is useful. Over the same period, however, my collection of CDs has ballooned to something like 800. So I thought it was perhaps time to look through and see what, if anything, I really didn't listen to or like. Do my bit and all that.

It seem surprising to note that, in fact, there is almost nothing I can do away with. Not for sentimental reasons, I like to think, but because I'm an eclectic sort of chap and I am rather proud of the quality of what I own. So far I've managed to nominate just five albums that made me balk and think, "It's been years since I even picked that up."

My task, therefore: to listen to each of them all the way through (I have the necessary strong musical stomach), ascertain their true worth, write the usual century about each, and decide which, if any, to do away with...

Primal Scream, Give Out But Don’t Give Up (1994)
Of all Primal Scream’s incarnations, I’m only really a fan of their hard-edged electronica, a phase that reached its peak in 2000’s gloriously nihilistic Xtrmntr. This one is a rootsy diversion, an attempt to cast the weedy Scots as throwback Americana. It works on the single 'Rocks', which it hardly seems possible is not a Stones song, and on the two funky numbers with George Clinton. The soulful R & B that makes up the rest is more varied; for every gutsy, winning track like '(I’m Gonna) Cry Myself Blind', there are two more with little to recommend them.

Subcircus, Are You Receiving? (2000)
Subcircus’ excellent debut, Carousel, sounded like a more spacey, less gloomy Sparklehorse. Here, Peter Bradley’s vocals still echo Mark Linkous, but he’s married them to a sub-glam imagining of a sex-obsessed Lou Reed. Songs come and go, building hope with interesting little hooks, then dashing it by going nowhere. But hold on – what’s this? With ‘Boys Are Naturally Cruel’ and ‘Tiredness Can Kill’, something starts happening. Could it be that the second half –

But I’ll never know, because the CD stops working. Will I replace it? Nah, I’ll listen to the first Suede album instead. Talking of which…

Bernard Butler, Friends and Lovers (1999)
Brilliant Suede guitarist, strange but beautiful collaborations with David McAlmont, in-demand producer…was there anything Bernard Butler couldn’t do well? Yes: release more than one solo album with anything to recommend it. Brimming with dire, over-produced nonsense with titles like 'Has Your Mind Got Away’, not a single one of these songs is memorable in any way. On all of them, though, Butler riffs, solos and soulfully yearns as if they actually mean something. ‘You Must Go On’ is cleverly placed at track 5, as if urging the listener on in the expectation of something better. But there is, sadly, nothing.

Sleeper, The It Girl (1996)
Back in my early days of would-be music journalism, I’m sure that I proudly claimed Sleeper to be the natural inheritors of Blondie’s legacy. While it’s true that the band exhibits more than a little New Wave influence, that’s where the comparisons end. The It Girl is evidence of the poor quality control of a time when all you needed was a no-frills attitude, some bouncy-sounding guitars and a singer who chose not to pronounce consonants. Sadly, it’s all proof that Elastica – whose debut album still packs a fresh, pop-punk punch – were Britpop’s only decent female-fronted band.

Sebadoh, The Sebadoh (1999)
Sebadoh, a key American alt-rock band of their time, have a signature sound that is part crunching detuned guitars, part minor-key semi-balladry, all tortured vocals from Lou Barlow. This was all used to excellent effect on their two mid-90s albums, Bakesale and Harmacy, but the problem is that they’ve seemingly forgotten how to write tunes. Thus the only moment of note is when it all slows down for ‘Love Is Stronger’ (itself not as good as the earlier single ‘Beauty of the Ride’). Everything else sounds like a less enthusiastic, less layered tribute to Sonic Youth.

Verdict:
Keep 1 (Primal Scream), get rid of the rest. We're making progress!

A lazy post

2009-04-23T06:50:00.000Z

Inspired (some time ago) by Kev's funniest-sentence-ever reference over on Think of England, I did one of my occasional trawls of Wikipedia's stranger and more obsessive pages. Here are some of my favourites. Enjoy!

List of human anatomical parts named after people ("long thoracic nerve of Bell"!)

List of micronations (just the first entry: "An eccentric tongue-in-cheek micronation founded by Canadian Eric Lis as a child, and maintained for the several decades since. It claims various terrestrial and interplanetary territories as Aerican land.")

List of films considered the worst

List of premature obituaries (note at the top: "This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy certain standards for completeness.")

List of frivolous political parties (yes, Britain has the most)

...and surely the most tragic by far (although Franz Reichelt is just an idiot):
List of inventors killed by their own inventions

100-word Album of the Week (31)

2009-04-17T06:53:00.002Z

Harmony Rockets, Paralysed Mind of the Archangel Void (1995)

In between Mercury Rev's transformation from avant-garde pop to neo-psychedelic grandiosity, they released this unique and slightly unsettling effort. Consisting of one 42-minute track, recorded live, it's a hypnotic dirge of guitars, brass and occasional incomprehensible vocals. Sounds emerge with no prelude or explanation, disappearing quickly back into the whole shimmering mass. It's hardly dinner party listening, and I can't see it making its way that regularly onto my listening list. It does, however, provide a sense of what might have happened had Miles Davis and Godspeed You Black Emperor! collaborated under the influence of psychedelic drugs.

The horror, the horror

2009-04-13T09:12:00.006Z

As friends will know, Liz and I love a good horror film. In fact, we just can't get enough of chilling music, creepy children, monsters and the odd bit of unpleasant gore. We are not, however, undiscriminating horror fiends in the American mode; we have no interest in seeing yet another slasher movie with irritating teenagers (let alone a remake of one), unless of course it's reputed to be good.

So it's with some knowledge of the genre that I wholeheartedly recommend the film that everybody is recommending, the Swedish masterpiece Let the Right One In. It does what all good horror films do - grips, frightens and intrigues - and it does so as if unaware it's part of that genre at all. Most importantly, it has characters who you care about - the lack of which is often a failing of the bog-standard slasher.

Why is it that Hollywood so rarely gets it right these days? There was a brief period after the first Scream movie (13 years ago now) in which US producers suddenly seemed to get the genre again, and money was invested in decent writers and directors. But all that disappeared just as quickly under, first, a barrage of unamusing in-jokes and, second, an emphasis on truly shocking gore over quality. Now, it seems that unimaginative remakes are the order of the day. We've had The Omen, Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes and even, God help us, Friday the 13th and Prom Night. A new (and doubtless far inferior) Nightmare on Elm Street is on the way. All it needs is for some idiot with a chequebook to sanction a retooled Exorcist and truly, Hollywood will have swallowed its tail completely, without hope of useful regurgitation.

Below, for your squeamish delectation, I've put together a list of what I consider the true horror classics of the 21st century. You will doubtless note that only two of these hail from America.

El Orfanato, "The Orphanage" (2007)
Chilling traditional ghost story produced by Guillermo del Toro, the maker of the equally brilliant Pan's Labyrinth. Understated and elegant, its tone and style are similar to the Nicole Kidman film The Others - but this is better.

Saw (2004)
The original is unnerving, claustrophobic and ingenius. I cannot emphasise enough how much I am excluding its sequels, or indeed any of the rest of the recent sub-genre it's spawned, pleasantly known as 'torture porn'.

The Descent (2005)
Underground nastiness from the maker of Dog Soldiers, unusually featuring an all-female cast. One of these tense, small-scale films that works almost entirely because of its camerawork and lighting.

[Rec] (2007)
Another Spanish-language film, this has to be one of the most terrifying "trapped in a confined space" films ever made. We recently rewatched it, our hearts just as much in our mouths as the first time.

My Little Eye (2002)
Another British classic-in-waiting (though it seems the punters at IMDB disagree), this was probably the first film to effectively consider the frightening possibilities of reality TV and the internet.

Wolf Creek (2005)
The best psycho film of the last few years is set in the Australian outback. It's short, brutal and lacking in frills, and all the better for it.

Cabin Fever (2002)
One of those rare films in which unpleasant things happen to unpleasant characters and we do care - largely because it's all done with a healthy dose of humour.

28 Weeks Later (2007)
I'm going for the sequel rather than 28 Days Later, as I find it scarier and more effectively apocalyptic. Plus, the tantalising proposition of Robert Carlyle turning into a zombie is perhaps the ultimate casting coup.

Honogurai mizu no soko kara, "Dark Water" (2002)
Creepy Japanese film from the makers of the original Ring. There is something about east Asian horror, with its generally slow pace, eerie sounds and malevolent ghosts, that seems to get to the heart of what it means to be scared.

Grafters, sleaze theorists and other accounts of the world

2009-03-31T06:31:00.008Z

So, the punters on the BBC's Have Your Say take to task the thorny issue of MPs' expenses. It all stems, of course, from the complete non-issue of Jacqui Smith's husband claiming for 'adult entertainment': a non-issue because of course, far from demonstrating any sort of corruption, it simply demonstrated stupidity. I refuse to believe that anyone who has thought it through genuinely thinks that a government minister's financial assistant would deliberately claim for two porn films under a public expenses account.

But every time like this something happens, out come the moaners and politics-haters to put the world of parliamentary politics to rights. Many of the commenters fall into two camps: the Normal British Grafters and the Sleaze Theorists. Both are equally misguided.

The Normal British Grafter (NBG) is the person who believes that MPs ought to behave like he or she, i.e. an everyday, hard-working, good old fashioned honest British worker. They believe that MPs are 'out of touch' with normal people, whose lives are a constant rollercoaster of under-payment, over-working and (a new one, this) battling the recession. A typical comment in today's Have Your Say:

"These MP's need to start looking at the real world, they're claiming more in expenses than an awful lot of people earn in a year."

But so they should. How many NBGs have to work in a job where they are on call essentially 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and responsible not only for the concerns of everyone in their local area, but also - in the case of ministers - for the future prosperity of the country? How many of them have to shuttle back and forth to London so regularly that it begins to be their second home (of which more later), regardless of where in the UK they happen to live?

MPs work bloody hard, and for important goals. The notion that they should receive the same, or even close to the same, as the average NBG, is utterly fallacious. Their standard pay is £63, 291, which pales next to the salaries of many to whom we should compare MPs: experienced GPs, headteachers, local business leaders in any area you choose.

Sleaze Theorists, meanwhile, put even less thought into their objections. Their automatic assumption is that, as the interestingly-named "Proud_Smoker" puts it: "Not one of them is trustworthy and their [sic] all morally bankrupt!" Every single MP, goes the theory, has their "snout in the trough", corruptly pinching every penny they can muster (including 88p for a bathplug - weird how that became such an indictable offence in Jacquismithgate) as they hoodwink us impoverished, honest-to-goodness British taxpayers.

This, too, is nonsense. There might have been major scandals over MPs' pay in the past, when politics really was a grab-anything, I'll-scratch-your-back-you-load-my-bank-account kind of under-the-counter culture. But MPs expenses are now open to more public scrutiny than anyone else's in the country, and nearly all manage to avoid tabloid infamy - presumably precisely because they are behaving themselves.

Of course, anyone may choose to criticise a system in which MPs can legitimately claim a whole range of 'second home' expenses while living away from their constituency. But that is just what they are doing, the vast majority of the time: claiming expenses legitimately. They are not 'stealing' taxpayers' money any more than the local council which overspends on a new bus station by a few hundred thousand pounds. They're working within the existing system - itself already scaled down and further scrutinised after the John Lewis list 'scandal' of a couple of years ago (which I still don't understand: I mean, do we expect MPs to shop exclusively at Tesco and Primark in some wayward effort to establish empathy with 'the people'?).

Gordon Brown is now suggesting changing the system yet again, so that MPs can only claim a simple 'overnight allowance'. Fine, go ahead if necessary. But let's not forget that, for better or for worse (and they undoubtedly fall into both categories), MPs do a job that underpins the very workings of the country. I'm getting heartily sick of the predominant British attitude that all MPs, of all persuasions, are just selfish, back-stabbing, double-dealing crooks. Let's just criticise the ones who really are. Or, better still, get into some serious, mature discussions about the real political issues of the day; the ones that actually make a difference to the future of our country, and for which we really should be holding politicians to account.

P.S. For a more constant stream of Have Your Say cynicism, have a look at the amusing Speak You're Branes. It's enough to stop me renaming this blog "Why Do The British Public Always Get It So Wrong?".

Maybe I'm just Jaded

2009-03-23T07:32:00.006Z

A few nights ago, I caused a minor stir around the pub table when I declared that I didn't care about Jade Goody's impending death. Looks were exchanged, semi-shocked sentiments were shared. I refined my statement: of course I care, on a basic human level, that anyone is dying of cancer, particularly at a young age. But I didn't care that one such person was Goody; in fact, given a notional 'line-up' of people who were about to die, I was quite sure that there would be other lives more worthy of public sadness.

Well, now she is gone, and it's with the same disinterest, rather than any sense of satisfaction, that I report that I have not changed my views.

What is undoubtedly interesting about this situation is that Goody is the first proper reality TV star to die - i.e. someone who is literally famous for being famous, and for nothing else. Her dying weeks, as the rest of her life since appearing on Big Brother, was spent in and around the clutches of TV cameras, OK! magazine and - heaven help the poor woman - Max Clifford. The task of 'doing the best for her kids' (quite right too) was accomplished by hoovering up as much publicity cash as possible, while dying. The complicity of the British public in all this is nothing extraordinary in view of our obsession with 'reality' shows, but it is saddening and - objectively speaking - rather weird.

Goody's departure has been greeted with a slew of tabloid pull-out supplements on her life (an accolade notably lacking for award-winning actress Natasha Richardson) and a bizarre battle for inappropriate adjectives. Goody is "brave" because she faced cancer in the public eye (as apparently was her charming husband, though his latest criminal conviction will be to limiting his parenting abilities soon enough); she was "lovely" and "remarkable" in life.

In fact, until 2002 Jade Goody had an utterly unremarkable British working class life. There's nothing to suggest that she faced the unpleasantness of her early family life with any more braveness than anyone else. She came to fame on Big Brother essentially by appearing remarkably ill educated, as well as taking part in the usual shenanigans of strip poker, drunken gropes and tantrums. Later she added racist bullying into the mix when she appeared - as an actual celebrity, with no apparent irony intended - on Celebrity Big Brother.

Today's Guardian ran a front-page article which tried to steer away from the mawkishness by suggesting that:

...despite the supposed democratisation of television, the truly uneducated, those marked by true poverty and deprivation, rarely appear in our light entertainment schedules. And suddenly, there was Jade, an unapologetic and unadorned symbol of all sorts of uncomfortable truths that we choose to face through the occasional well-chosen documentary.

This may be true, but it's a pretty poor excuse for fame. The notion that socially disadvantaged people are best represented by someone whose public image only compounds their disadvantage is unhelpful at best. And the idea that someone should achieve fame and fortune just because it's unlikely that they would, without the need for any distinguishing features as a human being, is preposterous.

The importance of being unheard of

2009-02-27T07:40:00.005Z

Last year, two British indie bands - both of which drew comparisons with Radiohead in their early days - released long-awaited fourth albums. One came out with an astonishingly dull effort which polluted my CD player three times before I decided I really couldn't be bothered to get into it. The other's album was simply, well, astonishing, and I cannot go more than a couple of weeks without hearing it.

Last week, in a highly unusual example of justice from a glossily meaningless awards ceremony, it was Elbow rather than Coldplay that won the Brit for best band.

They'd already picked up the Mercury Music Prize and South Bank Show awards, of course. But it's the Brit that matters in terms of commercial clout. It's the Brit that will allow them to cross their fairytale divide from minority interest to (potentially) major-label wealth.

The question, do Elbow's fans really want them to?

On the face of it, we all should. We should be delighted that, after 18 years in existence, and three critically acclaimed but underachieving previous albums, the band is finally getting the recognition it so obviously deserves. Elbow have not written a single bad song, and I cannot easily think of another band to whom that applies. Their songs are by turns skyscraping, elegant, earthy, intimate and complex. They certainly give Radiohead a run for their money as the best British band of the last two decades.

The other side of the coin, of course, is fans' ever-present desire to be cool. Once Elbow have been 'lost' to the masses, what will we have left that is ours? What will happen when we can no longer mention the band to disinterested shrugs from our peers, allowing us to bestow a smugly knowing half-smile on the unfortunate ignorants? This may be named the Nirvana Complex, after the relatively small numbers of underground rock fans who got into their debut Bleach album before Smells Like Teen Spirit came along and fame and fortune ruined everything (never mind Nevermind being a superior album; although they probably did ultimately have a point, in that Kurt Cobain ended up killing himself).

There is also the concern that fame doesn't just equal a dilution of cool, but also, more seriously, a potential threat to quality. I remember discovering Travis in 1997, following an early performance on Jools Holland; I still have those first threee singles now, full of wit and raw promise, a conscious effort to set themselves apart from landfill indie. Very rapidly thereafter, they released The Man Who, sold millions, and landfill indie they have become - when was the last time you heard a Travis song that was actually any good?

I don't actually think this will happen to Elbow, who are well known in the industry for ploughing their own furrow, and who have publicly considered making their fifth album one of "dark" children's songs. But I'm still not at all sure that I am comfortable with their recent position as darlings of awards ceremonies, album charts and BBC sports coverage. Maybe this is because I believe passionately that they're a band that deserve better than soundbiting; or maybe it's because I'm a selfish sod who doesn't want other people to play with my toys.

My 10 favourite Elbow songs - and some lyrics

Coming Second (from Asleep in the Back, 2001)
"Best dishevelled lover 3 years running /
Coming second to a picket fence white 9-5 who's just alive"

Scattered Black and Whites (from Asleep in the Back)
"He talks of people ten years gone /
Like I've known them all my life"

Ribcage (from Cast of Thousands, 2003)
"I wanted to explode /
To pull my ribs apart and let the sun inside"

Fugitive Motel (from Cast of Thousands)
"Curtains stay closed but everyone knows /
You hear through the walls in this place
Cigarette holes for every lost soul /
To give up the ghost in this place"

Switching Off (from Cast of Thousands)
"I choose my final scene today /
Switching off with you"

Station Approach (from Leaders of the Free World, 2005)
"I never know what I want but I know when I'm low /
That I need to be in the town where they know what I'm like"

My Very Best (from Leaders of the Free World)
"Would you tell her not to talk as if I died /
Though a tiny part just did /
And would you tell her /
I'm from a long line of survivors /
And I'll be swinging with the kids"

Starlings (from The Seldom Seen Kid, 2008)
"You are the only thing in any room you're ever in /
I'm stubborn, selfish and too old"

Some Riot (from The Seldom Seen Kid)
"A friend of mine grows his very own brambles /
They twist all around him till he can't move /
Beautiful, quivering, chivalrous shambles /
What is my friend trying to prove?"

One Day Like This (from The Seldom Seen Kid)
"Kiss me like the final meal /
Kiss me like we die tonight"

Finally some new photos...

2009-02-05T07:43:00.001Z

I've just uploaded some from my trip to Washington D.C./New York in September.

See here.

Some thoughts on food and moral choices

2009-01-27T19:57:00.001Z

Tuning in to Channel 4 last night for Hugh, Chickens and Tesco Too was one of those affirming television experiences: like attending a political rally, we watched it because we wanted to cheer on someone who we already agreed with on just about everything.

Most will probably know the story, as it was splashed around all the papers at the time, but to summarise: Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (of the fruity accent and idyllic smallholding ways) wants supermarkets to improve the welfare of chickens, and Tesco is the only one that hasn’t budged. He tries to set up meetings with someone high up at the mega-chain where we spend something like 99 pence out of our pound. He bothers them by phone, e-mail, post and carrier pigeon, all to no avail. So in the end he buys a share, rallies others and puts forward a motion at the AGM. Tesco tries to foil him by insisting he pay for the motion to be sent out to shareholders; he raises the requisite £86,000 from supporters in 24 hours. Of course, the motion is defeated, but then he can hardly have expected to have won over the majority of beneficiaries of the fourth largest grocery chain in the world.

One of the striking things about Tesco’s reaction to all this (apart from them allowing competitors to steal a march on them by proclaiming higher welfare standards) was the sheer audacity of its double-think corporate bullshitting. They finally dispatched a PR rep – as opposed to a buyer or welfare spokesperson – to meet Hugh, who claimed both that Tesco were leading the way on animal welfare and that they’d only improve welfare in response to customer demand. The company’s website cites a list of five ethical practices, none of which its standard chicken farming meets (and which the PR woman essentially agrees is the case). Asked why one label shows a farmer standing outdoors, with no mention that the chicken is raised indoors, she loftily claims it would be patronising to customers who know all about different chicken-rearing systems anyway.

Clearly, Tesco have absolutely no commitment to animal welfare beyond just saying they do. But this is telling, and is where they probably do reflect the practices of many consumers. The fact is, most of us would like to claim that we care about animal welfare. But too few of us actually put our money where our mouth is and bother thinking about it when we shop. It would almost be better for people to say “I don’t care about animal welfare” and buy whatever they want.

Of course, there are some people for whom the higher cost of ethically reared meat (which doesn’t have to be much higher – 90p extra for a Freedom Food chicken) makes it a non-option. But even then, what we are talking about is a matter of priorities. If you care about animal welfare, you’ll spend the extra anyway, and make cutbacks elsewhere. In any case, we spend so little these days on food as a proportion of income that almost all of us actually can afford it. It’s a question of trying to change our view of food, from ‘source of dietary requirements’ to something worth thinking and caring about.

Mrs Woolgatherer and I gave up eating non-free range chicken several years ago, and this year we resolved to try eating only free range pork products. We don’t expect to meet this fully at first – the odd packet of pork scratchings is bound to find its way past our ethical filters – and we’ve already found that it’s actually really difficult to find the stuff. Supermarkets mostly offer only “outdoor bred” and “outdoor reared” pork, which confuses the issue. The upshot of these sorts of choices is that, rather than spending more and more money on meat, we tend to buy less of it, and get good quality stuff when we do. Perhaps 3 or 4 of our weekly meals now have meat as the main ingredient, compared to 5 or 6 previously.

Occasionally I toy with the idea of vegetarianism, but here there are further complications. Clearly, vegetarians win hands down from the environmental point of view, when you take into account the impact of, for example, rearing cows for beef. But morally it’s a trickier area. For instance, if you’re a vegetarian and eat dairy or eggs, aren’t you relying on the same industries that you oppose for producing meat? Unless you choose to buy organic cheese every time, aren’t you buying into the same intensive dairy system that is constantly upping its milk quotas from each exhausted cow? Can I, with my organic sirloin steak bought direct from a farmer, actually make just as convincing a claim to moral uprightness?

Vegans are perhaps a different matter, striving as they do to divorce themselves completely from meat production. But even then there are niggling doubts: for example, does the soya in your milk come from a monoculture farm in Brazil, swept clear of ancient rainforest?

I don’t claim to have any definitive answers to these questions. As soon as you start getting into the question of food, you enter a minefield of moral, political, economic and social concerns which should (if properly considered) make even the most ardent greenie scratch their head. But I do know that it doesn’t help when supermarkets are allowed to make fatuous or just plain false claims about their standards. And I also contend that we often help them do it, by waiving honesty or genuine moral debate in favour of personal contentment.

A bit of a round-up

2008-12-19T09:19:00.002Z

So, here’s my completely non-comprehensive round-up of the year as I saw it. You may be surprised to find that it doesn’t actually include any top 10s. Maybe it’s because I’m growing up, maybe I just haven’t listened to enough new music to warrant it, but anyway…

Albums of the year
I’m still absolutely entranced by Elbow’s The Seldom Seen Kid. The last time I was this excited by British indie music was when Doves released The Last Broadcast, but this is on another level again. Actually, indie doesn’t really describe it. Elbow happen to be from Manchester and their music happens to seem defiantly British. But the tunes are epic, Guy Garvey’s heart aches beautifully, and there is something ageless about each and every song here. ‘Some Riot’ is my pick.

I also loved Third by Portishead, which achieved the near-impossible by being worth the 11-year wait. The samples are stranger and the beats eerier than ever. The whole thing feels both entirely different from their other two albums and a natural continuation from them. For evidence of its diversity, compare ‘Machine Gun’ (Aphex Twin influenced industrial nightmare, presumably released as the lead single to ward off those who would buy the album as coffee-table music) and the sighingly sweet ‘Deep Water’.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds provided another fantastic comeback album, with Dig!!! Lazarus, Dig!!! proving his best album since 1997’s The Boatman’s Call. Having recently moved in the direction of dark balladry, this brought Cave half back into the territory that his older fans know and love: ferociously dark, spiky guitar rock. ‘We Call Upon the Author’ is the highlight.

Now I must get on with buying three other albums that have been recommended to me over the course of the year: the new Kings of Leon, MGMT’s Oracular Spectacular and Fleet Foxes’ self-titled debut.

New artist of the year
For me it was Lykke Li. I first heard her while standing in HMV, and immediately went and bought the album, Youth Novels. There’s something special about Li, who has the musical sensibility of a poppier Björk and sings in a quirky Swedish-cum-Estuary-English accent. Several of the songs on this album, particularly ‘Dance. Dance. Dance’ and ‘Tonight’, are utterly beautiful, and I can’t wait to hear more from her.

Song of the year
Has to be Elbow’s ‘One Day Like This’, which has an absolutely timeless, singalong ending but was sampled to death by the BBC’s Olympics coverage. Outside of that, it would be MGMT’s ‘Kids’.

Crushing disappointment of the year
Undoubtedly Coldplay’s Viva La Vida:
“Ooh, new Coldplay album, hope it’s good.”
First play: “Hmmm, not great. Let’s try again.”
Second play: “No better. But Coldplay’s songs tend to be growers.”
Third play: “This is actually getting worse. I can’t remember any of the songs except the title track, and that’s only because it doesn’t go anywhere.”
Fourth play: “This is really terrible. How could they?”
Several months later: Coldplay win a Q award and lots of Grammy nominations. Title track still everywhere. Has the world gone barking mad?

Movie of the year
I feel I’m bandwagon jumping, but The Dark Knight was really very good indeed. It felt like somebody had taken a really cracking thriller and made it into a Batman film, which is a much better approach then taking 15 set pieces and building a film around them. And in what was surely a case of bad planning, studios actually released two good superhero films in 2008: Iron Man was also excellent.

Other good ones were Burn After Reading, Cloverfield and Eden Lake.

And Juno: it came out in 2007 but is so utterly brilliant that it gets an honorary mention anyway.

My Big Announcement

2008-12-18T11:33:00.003Z

I've just written the words The End.

Not too much of a big deal, perhaps. But they come at the end of 4 years of work (or thereabouts) on my first proper attempt at a novel.

Of course I'm relieved, but I know that there's a good deal of work to do to turn it into something marketable. Characters are inconsistent, the style has change substantially since I started writing it, and there are various gaps and plot holes to be filled. But overall, I'm very glad I took the step of trying to write a little bit every day for the last two years (I didn't, of course, but it was a principle that served me well) and not looking back at any of the previous stuff except for plot purposes. So, the stuff at the start was written some time ago and will presumably need a lot more polishing than the later stuff.

The book is called Press Play and the main character is Jon Birch. Jon is in a band and thinks he's got what it takes to write the perfect song, 'Grip'. Things take a toll on the rest of his life, however, and... well, I won't give away too much for now, in case any of you small band who read this blog decides you want to give it a go. If it gets published, of course. And that's if I can find an agent who is even vaguely interested.

So, I'll now be starting to rewrite Press Play. I'll do it from the beginning, so that I can send the first few chapters and a synopsis of the rest of the book to some agents. After that, who knows? But for now, it stands 85,275 words tall and I feel justified in having a bit of a grin.

Coming soon...

2008-12-11T08:07:00.002Z

Will be a big (for me) announcement. Give it a week or so.

In the meantime, you may be interested in a long and pointless argument I've been having on The Weekly Gripe. Yesterday, someone actually presented a counter-argument, rather than just moaning about me being there and suggesting I go to a "kiddies site" (they're obsessed with this). The other day I sadly succumbed to the Hitler Argument, but I don't think it looks too bad in context.

Of course it's all futile, and I keep saying I'm going to go away (doubtless infuriating), but I've decided to keep going for just a little bit longer...

That's the problem with blogs and forums, of course. You end up spending far too much time arguing at cross-purposes with people you've never met.

100-word Album of the Week (30)

2008-11-23T11:17:00.002Z

Aphex Twin, ...I Care Because You Do (1995)

Listening to Aphex Twin feels like participating in something you shouldn’t: as if something forbidden has slipped under the radar. He’s an artist whose music questions the idea of what music is. This album’s first couple of tracks are calm enough, but it soon gets down to the real business of beats that sound like they’ve been through a food processor, jarringly soft instrumentation and the ear-splitting feedback whine of ‘Ventolin’. A decade on, this sounds like genuinely exciting, revolutionary music; but maybe I only think that because I’ve listened to it too many times. Either way, it’s fantastic.

May I celebrate my 200th post by saying...

2008-11-06T19:05:00.002Z

Phew.

I would laugh, but I actually think I'll cry

2008-10-30T19:26:00.003Z

So, amid the utterly disproportionate soul-searching, resignations and financial losses for Jonathan Ross, it seems that Andrew Sachs' granddaughter has now sold the story of her 'romps' with Russell Brand to The Sun.

Is it just me, or isn't that - in context - actually more offensive than the original incident?

We Hold These Truths To Be Self-Evident, part 4

2008-10-29T08:59:00.001Z

"Heads Must Roll at the BBC!"

It’s almost enough to make you wish Mary Whitehouse was still around. While she was alive to pronounce judgement on broadcasting offences, it was easy: people simply chose either to agree with her moral indignation, or to ignore her as a barmy old cow living in the last decade/century. Most of the time the latter was the sensible option, but not having anyone of her ilk means that some of us are increasingly losing our focus on reality.

Of course, Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross did go over the top. What was said was offensive (though also, dare I say it, funny) and shouldn’t have been said. But the facts of the debacle are simple enough: two broadcasters, well known for being daring and/or offensive, go somewhat too far one day and insult a well-known actor and his granddaughter on air. Actor demands an apology. Apology is given, by both broadcasters and the BBC.

That this isn’t enough – that 10,000 people have complained, and that Georgina Baillie has taken to the tabloids to demand “at least” (!) the end of Brand’s and Ross’s contracts – shows just how far our loss of perspective has gone.

Many of the complainers seem unable to separate the issue of offensiveness from their own opinions of Brand and Ross. The BBC’s “Have Your Say” messageboard is packed with the likes of this: “For too long these overpaid broadcasters have deemed it acceptable that base and vulgar so called humour is acceptable to the majority of decent people living in this country.”

Unfortunately for these people, such humour – witty, risk-taking, occasionally offensive – is acceptable to much of the British public, and that is why Brand and Ross are two of the BBC’s most treasured and most highly paid presenters. The broadcasting world would miss them, greatly. The “so called humour” remark is the most telling, with its self-righteous tone of “I don’t understand it, and therefore it isn’t funny to most people”.

Others go for the usual familial jugular. The notion that someone’s grandfather has been offended and that’s just wrong is rife. I groaned when I read the comment beginning “I have a grandson” (I mean, so what?) and when I spotted the deeply patronising inclusion of Andrew Sachs’ age in the Mail on Sunday’s most hysterical article.

Everyone, of course, is talking about sackings. Some people want this after the usual Full, Independent Enquiry; others don’t see the need to wait before dismissing the two presenters, their producers, researches and anyone else who has worked with or known them. One asks why there “needs to be an investigation (for what must be deemed gross contractual misconduct) instead of instant dismissal”. I suppose he’s read their contracts, then. But presumably he too has a job contract with someone, which outlines a series of sanctions starting from verbal warning and going through several other stages before ending in actual dismissal.

Tory MP Philip Davies epitomises the wrong-headedness when he says: “In any other walk of life, anyone who did this type of thing would face serious disciplinary proceedings.” The fact is that Brand and Ross (and Andrew Sachs) belong to a different world to “everyone else”, and are entitled to different rules as a result. This may be unfortunate for Sachs, the target in this instance. But if the BBC wants to continue keeping the best talent that the country has to offer, it will have to be stronger willed than giving in those who complain that anything that offends anyone is unacceptable. It admirably kept its cool over Jerry Springer – The Opera, which attracted five times as many complaints; it spectacularly lost it over the Hutton Inquiry, which whitewashed Tony Blair’s government while rightly predicting that the BBC would crawl on its belly and bleat abject apologies.

Come on, Auntie (and Ofcom). Show us that you’re made of sterner stuff this time, and refuse to cave in to the bleaters for once.

Down to the woods

2008-09-25T06:56:00.002Z

A quick recommendation: go and see Eden Lake, the new British thriller which comes across as part horror, part all-too-easy-to-swallow social commentary. Basically, a couple for a weekend break to a beautiful lake, soon to be turned into a paradise for yuppies. But they meet violent teenagers, and...

It's brilliantly made, believable, and features a scarily good performance from Jack O'Donnell as the leader of the thugs. As a word of warning, it's also shockingly brutal, pulling off the (these days) rare feat of getting an 18 rating on violence alone. But if you can get past that, it's definitely one of the best British films of the past few years.

Yanked away from normal life...

2008-09-10T16:28:00.002Z

Oh dear - yet another long bout of silence. I'm currently in Washington D.C. at the World Schools Debating Championships, and that's my excuse for now. Wales has one remaining preliminary round to go, and if we win then we're through to the knock-out stage.

Anyway, all here is burgers, patriotism and ridiculously large 'portion sizes' of very sweet drinks, as you'd expect. The people are mostly charming, though a chunk of them are artificially so, smiling and call you "sir" through plainly gritted teeth.

As yet, it's been all debating, with no visits to D.C. proper, and thus no White House, Capitol building, monuments or museums. So the most interesting things has been the observation, at a metro station, of a number of posters advertising weapons manufacturers. Guns, warships, missile delivery systems. The general message is: "We make weapons that kill many, many people. But because you are all good Americans, you'll swallow our claims about them being surgically accurate, and sign up to the army forthwith."

More soon(ish).

Worthless songs of the moment (3 & 4)

2008-08-15T14:54:00.000Z

Kid Rock, 'All Summer Long' / Nickelback, 'Rockstar'

So, you’ve made a fortune selling rap rock, post-grunge, or whatever other god-awful genre of derivative rock music the young folk like these days. You’ve got a few gold discs and a huge pile of cash, enough to make you not care about the lack of critical acclaim. What do you do next?

In Kid Rock’s case, at least you try to make something with emotional resonance. Nostalgia is all the rage these days, even when it’s about that most un-rosy of times, the late-1980s. So you slap down a few lyrics about talking by the campfire, sleeping with loose summery women, waves, whiskey, etc. etc. It’s utterly awful, of course, and its only memorable hook is stolen from a far better song, but still, you have the balls to actually admit that in the song. Sad thing is, while Kid Rock was “singing ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ all summer long” – something that doesn’t sound too bad – he now presumably has the next generation of teenagers singing his song. And that will never do.

If you’re Nickelback, you go completely the other way and discover your – wait for it – cynical side. Remember, this is the band who described heartbreak on their biggest hit, the execrable ‘How You Remind Me’, as being “sick inside without a sense of feelin’”. Once they decide to be all piss-takey about the rock industry, things ain’t gonna be pretty. It surprised me to find out that this is the sort of song today’s sixth-formers (and I mean intelligent, well-meaning students) go for, but it’s true, at least based on the half-dozen I’ve spoken to. Perhaps it’s because they like their rock music with a kind of faux-country lilt. Or perhaps because the lyrics themselves are so desperately, awfully sixth-formerish.

The worst thing about the words is that they describe – oh so cynically – the life of a rock star that many of us would actually be quite happy with. Take this, for example:

“I'm through with standin in line
To clubs I'll never get in”
Fair enough, we’ve all been there.

“I want a brand new house…
And a king size tub
Big enough for ten plus me”
Mmm, sounds fruity. Never enough room in those damn baths anyway.

“A credit card that’s got no limit” – check.
“A big black jet with a bedroom in it” – check, with a momentary nod to those of us with an environmental conscience.
“A new tour bus full of old guitars” – sounds good to me!

And then the chorus:
“We all just wanna be big rockstars
Livin’ in top houses
Drivin’ fifteen cars
The girls come easy
And the drugs come cheap…”

OK, we’re getting into law-breaking territory here, but yeah: get me some of that. I wanna live it up like you, Nickelback!

Then the realisation: you’re being sarcastic. Whoops, that’s embarrassing. Sorry, I didn’t think you’d have a proper sense of humour, what with you being Canadian and grungey and all. So all these trappings of fame are actually bad, and this isn’t a recruitment song? And the irony is conveyed through the song’s chirpy, country-rock variation on your usual incessant whining?

Ah well. Try harder next time. Or - preferably - burn all your instruments and never release another record.