No, Kate. No, I haven’t. But it’s worse than that.
Many Christmasses ago, I bought the debut novel by Sebastian Faulks – The Girl at the Lion D’Or, newly published in hardback – as a present for my mother. She loved it, and duly complimented me on my selection. We don’t share many cultural interests, and so she must have been delighted that, for once, we had been able to forge a connection.
The only trouble was: I hadn’t read the book, nor indeed anything else by Sebastian Faulks, other than his weekly columns for the Independent On Sunday. It merely had been inspired guesswork on my part. The cover blurb looked promising, the artwork was nice, and I couldn’t readily find any sex or swearing in it. It had said “quality middlebrow read” to me, and so I had taken my chances.
Unable to bluff my way through the literary discussion that my mother seemed intent on initiating, I gently fessed up. No problem. She seemed fine about it.
A few years later, as part of my birthday present, my mother gave me a paperback copy of Faulks’s third novel, Birdsong. She had read it, loved it, and was keen to share her reading pleasure with me. As I appreciatively scanned the back cover, she offered up a brief introduction to the book, and expressed the hope that I would enjoy it as much as she did.
I got about thirty pages in, before giving up. Not because of any deficiencies in the writing, but simply because I am a lazy reader with a tiny concentration span, and had put the book aside for slightly too long. In other words, the moment had passed. It happens quite often.
The next time we met, a few months later, my mother brightly asked me how I had got on with the novel.
Shit. I had completely forgotten, and was totally unprepared. I mumbled something about not having finished it, and quickly changed the subject.
z asks: Mike, honey, what makes you so Good? Not in the saintly sense of course.
Plenty of fresh food in my diet, the love of my man, nice socks, a sunny disposition and an enquiring mind.
OR…
A ready smile, a cute bum, a focus on the other person’s needs, and a great snogging technique.
OR…
Guilt, shame (or the lack of it), displacement activity, a neurotic fear of criticism, a competitive, heirarchical mindset and an ego the size of Leeds.
OR…
Peter Pan Syndrome, Olympic levels of denial, Molton Brown moisturiser and a resolute belief in Nirvana through Shallowness.
Since getting out of medical chokey, I am completely and utterly and dreadfully uninspired by blogging. If I had something better to do with my time, I would do that. But I don’t. So help me, O Diva of the Troubled! What’s inspiring you in the world of blogging (I refuse to say blogosphere, or I may vomit copiously) these days? What should I be reading? What can I simply not miss?
Alas, alas, this is one of the perils of being Ancien Regime; for the days when I used to be able to spot Hot New Blogs before they Made It Big are long gone. These days, I’m more like the clapped-out old rock star who says things like “I’m getting into this great new band called the Kaiser Chiefs, have you heard of them?”
Consequently, all of my newest reads are the same ones that everyone else has been getting into: that chap who takes photographs of a bathmat, that unemployed lady who posts pictures of simian life-forms, that bloke who gets pissed off a lot… all very Hive Mind, I’m afraid.
(But do any of these “inspire” me? No, that would be the wrong word. Many, many blogs have inspired me over the years – not least because I’m a right old imitative bastard at heart – but currently, the bar for UK personal weblog writing is being raised so high that I’m finding myself rather over-awed by it all.)
(I’ll tell you what the above three new-ish blogs do make me feel, though. They make me feel nostalgic. Nostalgic for the days when I was still discovering, on a daily basis, just what I could do with this medium – fired up with energy and enthusiasm, on a roll, breaking rules, taking risks, posting like a madman, and building my audience. There’s a particular phase which a lot of blogs go through, somewhere towards the end of their first year of existence or thereabouts, where it all comes together and you can feel the buzz in the air. It’s a lovely phase, and I enjoy bearing witness to it.)
On the music front, I’ve been enjoying the weekly “In The Dock” feature on The Art Of Noise, which is currently deliberating over whether Birmingham has a musical legacy which is worth defending. It’s particularly refreshing to read a group of people talking about music without ostentatiously parading their knowledge, and without seeking to score points off one another.
However, if I am to target my recommendations specifically at you, dear Witness, then – having briefly paused to check your links page (and I see that Bathmat Boy, Monkey Lady and Furious Fella are already present and correct) – might I direct your attention to The Overnight Editor? I suspect that this will be Your Sort Of Thing… and indeed, many other people’s Sort Of Thing besides.
Pam asks: What is the most embarrassing story you know about somebody else?
It has to be the one about the secret underwear fetishist who forgot to lock the bathroom door at his party. However, if you think I’m going to wantonly violate the Unwritten But Tacitly Accepted Bloggers’ Code in order to peddle a few cheap laughs… well bless my soul, what do you take me for? Away with you, temptress!
(But really, over his head? In front of the mirror? Goodness, how outré.)
Mike, as a gay man well versed in the modern world and this being World AIDS Day and all: what is your opinion on the archaic and, in my opinion, homophobic rule regarding gay men and giving blood? I’ve been on my soap box about this all day at work as the blood doners are coming round and I’m boycotting them.
Oh, lawks. This was supposed to be a bit of light-hearted fluff for a Friday – and now here I am, mentally knackered at the end of a rather trying Tuesday on the mainframe, and faced with the prospect of knocking out another extended essay on a Major Issue. You’ve got me confused with a Deep and Knowledgable Authority Figure Slash Spokesman For His Community, with carefully evaluated opinions on stuff that actually, you know, matters! Hay-ulp!
Although I have always rather shied away from making AIDS-related posts on December 1st (a.k.a. World AIDS Day), this doesn’t mean to say that the day ever passes unremembered. Far from it. However – and perhaps this is surprising for someone of my generation, who came of Gay Age in 1982 – my direct personal experiences with the full-blown illness have been few and far between – and for the most part, they have occurred at one remove. I have never lost a friend to AIDS, and I have never been to the funeral of someone with AIDS. There have just been the occasional slight acquaintances, and friends of friends – and, OK, there was that one guy I slept with after a New Year’s Eve party in the early 1990s, but we only ever met the once, and… you know how it goes, right?
Naturally, I have known (and indeed had sex with) a few HIV+ people over the years – and obviously many more whose positive status has never been made known to me – but (and how can I best put this?) their status has only ever hovered in the background between us: as an abstract piece of information, rather than as a tangible reality which has ever required a more direct personal engagement.
I have always, always practised safer sex, and have never been tempted to lapse. Not that this has been too difficult, given my historic lack of enthusiasm – in either role – for that particular act which is so often held to be virtually synonymous with gay male sexuality.
(In fact, that handy little phrase “Sorry, I don’t have any condoms” has saved me from several potentially awkward situations over the years – and so, if anything, the global tragedy has worked very slightly in my favour. Talk about Survivor’s Guilt.)
And so, as a mere remote observer, I have never quite liked to claim the disease for my own by dredging up some tangential reminiscences, seasoning them with a few well-meant homilies, offering them up on this site, and standing by for compliments in the comments box. It would feel a little stretched, a little forced – and even slightly exploitative. Such matters are best left to those with stories which are truly worth telling, and memories which should never be forgotten.
However, I do have a vivid memory of the screening interview which I attended about six years ago, at my previous place of employment, with the intention of donating my blood – and of the awkward surprise and embarrassment on the face of the rather ill-briefed young nurse, as she falteringly tried to explain why my blood could not be accepted. And yes, I remember feeling a sharp pang of wounded embarrassment of my own. After all, I prided myself on being clued up in such matters. So how could I not have known that all gay men – or indeed any men who had ever had even one same-sex experience, of any nature, no matter how long ago – were still being barred from donating blood, even though all donations were now being screened for possible infection?
Did I feel unfairly discriminated against? Hell, yeah. Any straight person who had ever had unprotected sex could donate, whereas Lil’ Ol’ Goody Two-Shoes Me couldn’t. Where was the fairness in that?
Was it – indeed, is it still – evidence of institutionalised homophobia? In the light of all the recent legislative changes in this country, it is a viewpoint which has progressively become more and more untenable. Not so much homophobic, as hyper-cautious – maybe excessively cautious.
But is this caution truly excessive? Reading the explanatory document “Why we ask gay men not to give blood“, as produced by the UK Blood Transfusion Service, I cannot help but feel that their case is, by and large, a sound one. Yes, all donated blood is screened – but this is not a perfect process, and infected blood can still slip through the net. It’s a tiny risk, but a real one – and so, arguably, any measures which can significantly reduce that risk should be followed, regardless of the feelings of unjustified exclusion which they might cause. After all, what’s more important here: sparing hurt feelings, or saving lives?
Of course, I could always choose to treat this exclusion as evidence of my continued status as a member of an Oppressed Minority – but in this case, I have actively chosen not to do this. In my experience – and counter-assimilationists amongst My People may commence hissing here – the less that we gay men consider ourselves to be marginalised victims, and the more that our social interactions spring from the assumption that we are already fully integrated and equal members of society, then the less that straight society will marginalise and victimise us.
I might be missing some important facts here, and my lurking inner Peter Tatchell would actually quite like to be proved wrong – so, if you know of any compelling counter-arguments which I might have missed, then (ahum) please deposit them in my box. (Now, that’s an invitation you won’t ever hear me issue lightly.)
Dearie dearie me, I really do seem to be losing the power of written expression altogether. Evidence: I spent over an hour and half yesterday evening, penning a mere 120 word blurb on one of my favourite singles of the year, for the forthcoming “Best Singles of 2006” round-up on Stylus. And that’s not counting the time I spent doing the research, either.
So, yeah: the plan was to answer all ten of your questions over the weekend in a fairly quick-and-dirty, rapid-fire manner – but the aforementioned Failing Powers got in the way of doing this. This wasn’t helped by the gargantuan nature of Question Number One, either – in which jo asked:
Has the proliferation of alternative sources for finding and hearing new music such as music blogs, YouTube, Myspace, etc., helped or hindered the populace in the quest to find new music?
Do you think these alternative sources are allowing smaller acts who might not have caught the attention of music scouts or writers previously to promote without the backing of giant label conglomerates – and if so, do you think this has led to a dearth or a surplus of quality music?
Is it simply nostalgia for previous decades that causes us to feel that music from *then* was, in general, better than whatever is *current* – or is it that we simply manage to blot out all the crap that was around *then*, and create a rosy post-image?
Blimey, jo! And, er, Naughty jo! Not only did I say “one question per person only”, but I even said it in bold type, so that no-one could miss it!
OK, so let’s try and answer this one without turning in a 5000 word dissertation on The General State Of Popular Music In 2006. Yeah, fat chance. Brevity has never been my forte.
I’m not sure that I can speak for the general populace, but YouTube and Myspace in particular have certainly made it easier than ever before for people like me to access new music with a minimum of effort. For instance: the last time that I posted a list of my favourite tunes, I was able to add helpful illustrative YouTube and/or Myspace links for all of them – and in 11 cases out of 20, I was able to supply both. This wouldn’t have happened 12 months ago, and I most certainly welcome it.
These days, I regularly use both sites in order to decide which gigs and albums I should review, or whether it’s worth turning up early to catch the support act. If I read of a new song or act on a website, or a message board, or in the print media, I can be listening to that song in seconds – and because the content is being streamed rather than downloaded to my hard drive, nobody seems to mind. This makes for a more reliable – and more ethically defensible – alternative to peer-to-peer file-sharing sites, which I only access in cases of dire need. (Compare and contrast with the trigger-happy days of Napster and Audiogalaxy.)
All of this has to be set against my declining interest in old media – both print and broadcast – as reliable sources of information. Radio One is a hyper-active, unlistenable racket; I’m still (just) too hip for Radio Two; and as I don’t own a digital radio and can’t stream live audio at work, 6 Music has yet to become a regular listen – even though it is clearly the station which most closely matches my needs. In fact – and in a highly unexpected reversal of roles – it’s now K who relies on the radio for most of his new CD purchases, as he is a long-standing fan of Radio 3’s Late Junction, and he frequently uses the “Listen Again” service in tandem with the archived playlists on the show’s website.
Meanwhile, Top of the Pops and CD:UK have vanished, Popworld is as nothing without Simon Amstell at the helm, and I can never get it together to set the Sky box for all those late-late-night Channel 4 music shows. Which just leaves Jools Holland’s Later, which will occasionally – very occasionally – throw something new in my direction.
As for the music press: Uncut and the NME are shadows of their former selves, Q and Mixmag are comics for people who don’t really like music, Mojo is overly heavy on the retro, The Wire is impenetrably “difficult” for a shallow soul like me, Straight No Chaser is indiscriminately nice about everybody and everything, which makes it an untrustworthy guide… which leaves Plan B (excellent in its way, but mostly far too indie for my personal tastes), The Word (trendy vicar stuff for the most part, but I have long since learnt to live with my inner Mark Ellen), The Guardian on a Friday (but please don’t get me started on the questionable merits of Alexis “Man at C&A” Petridis) and the Observer Music Magazine once a month (probably my favourite read of the lot, despite having its own fair share of horrors: that “Record Doctor” of theirs should be struck off the register forthwith, for instance). Oh, and there’s always fRoots and Songlines – both excellent in their way, but somehow they have never become essential purchases.
All of this means that, thanks to the likes of the ILM message board, webzines like Stylus and MP3 blogs like the ever-reliable Fluxblog, the web is now by far and away my main source of information regarding new music – and I should imagine that applies to many thousands of others. Do I think that’s a healthy, democratising, liberating shift of emphasis, which enables people to make a freer set of personal choices? Absolutely. Much as I regret the passing of the Top 40 as a mass-consensus barometer of popular taste, I’d rather have things this way round. Maybe that’s partly why my tolerance for music radio has diminished; why should I endure five consecutive crap songs in order to discover one good song, when I could be assembling my own playlists instead?
Has all of this helped smaller acts to flourish? Absolutely. I cannot recall a time when live music in this country was in such a healthy state – or maybe it’s just a local upswing, and I’m just lucky enough to have access to six excellent venues, catering for all sizes of audience, and all within 15 minutes walk from my front door.
Has this led to a dearth or a surplus of quality music? A moot point. It has been a particularly rubbish year for the singles and album charts, with the intelligent and innovative new pop and R&B of the first half of the decade increasingly giving way to identikit faux-rebellious “corporate indie” bands, dreary singer-songwriters, and a iredeemably fossiled slurry of creatively bankrupt commercial dance tunes. So, in order to get to the good stuff, you really do have to make a bit of an effort – but once you do (and really, it’s not that great an effort) – there’s as much good stuff out there as ever.
As for jo’s “are we just giving in to rose-tinted nostalgia, or was music really better in the old days” question: it’s problematic, as…
a) The popular music of our formative years will generally cut deeper than anything we will ever experience in adult life, for reasons which shouldn’t need spelling out.
b) Old music tends to feel more “significant” than new music, as it accumulates depth and weight over time.
c) I genuinely do believe that the singles charts were objectively at their best between 1964 and 1984, with “golden ages” from 1964 to 1966, and again from 1979 to 1982. But that’s just the singles charts. Once you look beyond the commercially popular, the seemingly “good” years and “crap” years even themselves out to a much greater degree.
Extended ramble over, or else we’ll be here all night.
(I’d cop out and do you a vidcast instead, but I sense a looming backlash in the air.)
Marrakech was lovely. Next to no street hassles (we dressed smartly, which helped), a beautiful Marrakech riad (I promised the nice Dutch owners that I’d bestow the gift of Googlejuice), good shopping (once you leave the souks), stylish restaurants (Dar Moha and Foundouk were our favourites), pleasant weather (fractionally too cool to sunbathe, hence perfect for wandering about)… ack, holiday-blogging, who needs it? But thank you for your recommendations; many of them were acted upon. (Ooh, that Yves St Laurent cactus garden was lov-er-ley.)
I have taken up a new hobby. It is called Reading Books. They might be the next big thing after vidcasts – but they do take rather a long time to read, when you could be skim-reading blogs instead, and it’s difficult to read them at work, so maybe not.
The tired-all-the-time syndrome is improved, but it hasn’t altogether disappeared. However, Positive Steps are being taken, so fret not.
A couple of weeks ago, I took a couple of sick days, with what I took to be a viral infection. Constant fatigue, aching limbs – but no other symptoms. It passed, and I returned to work.
In the last few days, the fatigue has returned – but in a more subtle way, that I can’t really attribute to a virus. I go to bed at a sensible time, sleep for 8 or 9 hours – and wake up feeling as tired as when I went to bed.
During the day, everything feels like an effort – even the most straightforward of everyday tasks, even getting up from my desk to make a cup of tea. Give you an example: even when busting for a pee, I’ll stay at my desk until I’m absolutely desperate – because I can’t even be bothered to go upstairs to the loo.
And it’s not only fatigue. My piles have flared up; a couple of days ago, I was in severe pain just walking home from work. I’m back on the bum bullets and the prescription gel. They’re under control now, but I’m having to be careful.
The eczema on both ankles has also flared up. I’ve had to buy betnovate, a eczema cream to treat them, every day for two weeks. It brings the eczema under control, but not to the point where it actually vanishes.
I went to the dentist today. The “nasty” area around my bottom left cavity has been giving me grief. The dentist says it’s the early stages of gum disease, to be treated with a high-powered mouthwash to stop it spreading and doing damage.
Work has been tough for the past few months. I’m been out of my comfort zone all year. Every new task involves areas which are largely new to me, and the information which I need isn’t readily available. The work is difficult, but not unsurmountably so. It’s just taking a lot of will power to apply myself.
I started the year in China. Shortly after returning, I started commuting to London. For five months, I lived out of a suitcase. Keeping on top of things at home was another struggle, when all I wanted to do was flop out. In the middle of it all, K lost his sister. He has needed a lot of support, and so has his family.
Outside of work, I have taken on a considerable amount of freelance music journalism work. I’ve reviewed nearly thirty gigs, over a dozen albums, several dozen singles, and the Eurovision Song Contest in Athens. Most weeks during the Autumn, I’ve been doing two gigs a week, sometimes three.
So the physical problems that I’m experiencing: as K gently pointed out this evening, they have to be stress-related. I may not be climbing the walls with stress, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not taking a steady toll.
Mercifully – and I have last year’s cognitive behavioural therapy course to thank for this – none of this has led the sort of depressive relapse which plagued me in the last half of 2004. I’m proud of this fact. Sure, there has been the odd wobble – but nothing which I haven’t been able to challenge and rationalise.
Next week, we’ll be on holiday, in gentle, tranquil, relaxing… Marrakech. Hahahahaha! But hey, a change is as good as a rest. I can’t wait, and neither can he.
In amongst all the helpful comments which people have left me (see next post down), these two (from Boz) have particularly struck me.
“Expect to get lost – but don’t mind if you do. Going with the flow is part of the fun.”
“All the traders will be out for your money, but actually, it’s part of the craic. Pretend you’re Indiana Jones.”
Excellent and much needed advice – because, by default, both situations could all too easily stress us out. I shall bear them in mind, Boz.
And finally, and just before I retire for the night: in amongst all the madness, we’ve still found time to cultivate a garden which looked like this, just before the village gardens open day in June. (It’s a professionally taken photograph, which may be appearing in a garden design book some time next year. I’ll tell you when I know more.)
I’m proud of this, as well.
In fact, I’m proud of the way that I’ve handled a lot of situations this year.
Yesterday, K declined an invitation to be photographed – in his guise as “prominent local businessman” – for a promotional campaign that would have seen his beaming visage plastered all over town: billboards, bus stops, public transport, the full works.
His reasons for turning the offer down were reasonable enough: he wasn’t dolled up in the requisite business drag, and in any case, he has people to do that sort of thing on his behalf these days. Besides, there’s only room for the one media whore in our household.
Whilst applauding his modesty, I couldn’t help but experience a slight twinge of regret. God, the mileage I could have extracted from that one…
“My boyfriend’s got a face like the back of a bus! Quite literally! Look, over there!“
1. once and never again – the long blondes (video) 2. let’s call it off – peter bjorn & john (audio) (video) 3. let’s get out of this country – camera obscura (audio) (video) 4. take me back to your house – basement jaxx (video) 5. last night i nearly died – duke special (audio) (video) 6. nothing’s gonna change your mind – badly drawn boy (audio) (video) 7. rehab – amy winehouse (audio) (video) 8. myspace – chicks on speed (audio) 9. ice cream – new young pony club (audio) (video) 10. beware of the dog – jamelia (video) 11. idlewild blue (don’t chu worry ’bout me) – outkast (audio) (video) 12. lovelight – robbie williams (audio) (video) 13. this is not real love – george michael featuring mutya (audio) 14. here in your arms – hellogoodbye (audio) (video) 15. magick – klaxons (audio) (video) 16. alala – cansei de ser sexy (video) 17. something kinda ooh – girls aloud (audio) (video) 18. herculean – the good the bad and the queen (audio) (live video) 19. standing in the way of control – the gossip (audio) (video) 20. no pussy blues – grinderman (a.k.a. nick cave) (audio)
I do make a rod for my own back sometimes. This post has been hanging over me like an overdue homework assignment, and I’m rapidly approaching the Can’t Be Arsed stage with it. So here goes – but quickly now – and then we can all move on with our lives.
Immediately upon arriving at my friends’ house in Clapham – three and a half pints down, and beginning to wilt – I was informed that I was going to Duckie, and that I had better get a move on, as they were already waiting for me at Kazbar. Having successfully negotiated a brief top-changing window (nice smart Paul Smith stripey shirt OFF; interesting glow-in-the-dark Camembert Electrique T-shirt ON – it’s the only vaguely “rock and roll” garment I possess, providing you don’t peer too closely at the hippy-dippy graphic), I was summarily bundled back out onto the street, with barely even time to snatch a burger. Still, being told I’d been guest-listed put a spring in my step.
“Guest listed for Duckie!”, I texted to K, with the customary glee which I reserve for such nano-triumphs. Duckie is the only gay club EVER, in nearly a quarter of a century of being made to suffer them, which K has genuinely enjoyed. (There had to be somewhere.) That’s probably because a) they don’t play “dance” music, b) nobody’s cruising (at least not so as you’d notice), so there’s none of that brittle, competitive sexual tension, c) tops are kept firmly ON, d) it’s relaxed, friendly and mostly 30+ (at least), e) there are no vicious, self-adoring, sociopathic disco bunnies bouncing around on f**king E. I wish we could go more often.
As we walked in, the Readers Wifes were playing my second favourite single of the year so far: Peter Bjorn and John‘s “Young Folks”. GOOD sign.
In the middle of what passes for the dancefloor, Amy Lamé was making popcorn from a little machine that she picked up from Argos during the week, and was handing it out in plastic bowls. (“Why am I doing it? Because we’ve been running this club for eleven f**king years and I’ve run out of ideas, OKAY?”)
Cabaret Act #1 performed a routine that was vaguely based around The Phantom of the Opera. Gothic burlesque, you could have called it. A bunch of red roses was seized; the petals were bitten off, chewed up and spat out over our eagerly upturned faces; and the remaining stems were contemptuously tossed away, most of them landing smack in my face. (The honour!) Upper clothing was removed, leaving a pair of red love hearts, one covering each bosom. A large crimson candle was brandished and dangled above the performer’s bare midriff, so that a third love heart could be etched upon her skin with the molten wax. Ooh! Aah! Hey, that’s actually quite pretty!
Next, a tourniquet was applied to the performer’s upper arm, a syringe inserted, and a blood sample extracted. (I couldn’t look. I’ve got a thing about needles). The blood was then squirted into a half-full wine glass, stirred, and greedily gulped down. Erk! Eek! But hold up, we’re not done yet!
Lower clothing (such as it was) was removed, revealing – you guessed it – a fourth love heart, protecting what little remained of the performer’s modesty.
It was at this point that we noticed the string.
As the soundtrack changed to “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend”, and even before a collective “Uh-oh!” could be muttered, the performer grabbed the string and yanked it downwards – extracting a length of large, threaded beads from her hoo-hah as she did so.
It swiftly occurred to me that this was only the second time in my life that I had been presented with a lady’s hoo-hah at such close quarters – and that the first time had also been at a Duckie event, when Ursula Martinez had extracted a string of brightly coloured handkerchiefs from her “special place”. Really, the place is an education.
Cabaret Act #2, a slender, bare-chested androgyne of indeterminate ethnicity (if pressed, I’d plump for Flipino), who had previously performed at Caesar’s Palace and the Brixton Academy, proceeded to thrill us all with the most remarkable display of hula-hoop-manship that any of us are ever likely to see. To the strains of CCS’s cover of “Whole Lotta Love” (used as the theme tune for Top of the Pops for most of the 1970s), he/she worked that hoop like a whirling dervish, spinning it from every limb, and at every angle, at dazzling speed – and somehow managing to avoid hitting the ceiling, the walls, and indeed us (it was a very small stage, and a very large hula hoop). Ooh, we went mental – all lingering memories of vaginal bead extraction banished, as we cheered him/her to the rafters.
The music was – as ever – eclectic, seemingly random, but never obscure (I recognised everything they played, even that “modern” one by The Fratellis) , and always perfectly chosen. Forget the Guilty Pleasures aesthetic; although many of the choices would have overlapped, their context was quite different. For the final run, we gave it up to: “Living Thing” (ELO), “Cannonball” (The Breeders), “Justified and Ancient” (The KLF with Tammy Wynette), “Teenage Kicks” (The Undertones) and “Get Down” (Gilbert O’Sullivan). As I say: perfect.
The day’s total damage: seven pints of lager and one can of Red Bull – but spread out over eleven hours, allowing plenty of time for absorption and processing. At forty-four, I don’t do shit-faced. So unbecoming in the slightly older gentleman.
1. Seen the Puppini Sisters, at a Halloween “burlesque” evening down The Social.
This was one of those nights when I find myself thinking, “Writing teeny-tiny gig reviewlets for t’local paper: is it really worth standing around in the oppressive heat, for hours on end, bored and restless, and unable to pass the time by drinking more than the statutory maximum of two pints of lager (even half a pint extra, and Drunkard’s Block sets in; been there, tried that, got the shit article to prove it), when the headline act in question turns out to as underwhelming as this lot?”
I’d say more – but I know you don’t come here for the music, so I shan’t. Suffice it to say that the Puppini Sisters – an immaculately coiffed and maquillaged trio of not-actually-siblings, who specialise in mixing Andrews Sisters standards with Andrews-ified novelty covers of modern pop numbers (Wuthering Heights, Heart Of Glass, Panic), who would have been fine as a three-minute interlude on a TV chat show, and might have been OK in a swishy cabaret bar, with proper chairs and tables and waiters and stuff – were utterly unsuited to performing in a packed, sweaty rock venue, at half past eleven on a Tuesday night, to a glammed-up but rapidly wilting crowd whose Halloweeny goodwill had been gradually eroded by a succession of alternately amateurish and ill-matched support acts, and by a tedious and unjustifiable forty-five minute wait with nothing to do except get into fractious arguments with each other (just behind us), or faint (just in front of us).
(Did you enjoy that last sentence? I know I did.)
Anyhow, Alan at Reluctant Nomad (currently enjoying his second massive traffic spike in a month, and really quite the belle of the Internet these days, not that it will change him in any way, oh dear me no, although 18,000 page views in a day would certainly turn my head, at least just a little) has posted his own report – and also some photos of the sexy ginger-haired double bass player, who made our ordeal so much more bearable. (Note: Don’t get too excited. He was heaps better in the flesh.)
2. Collapsed in a heap in front of the telly for two days.
Finding myself possessed of an overhwelming desire to be horizontal, with an achey breaky bod to match, I promptly excused myself from all professional commitments, and spent a perversely agreeable couple of days watching old movies, in a fuzzed-out swoon of grateful surrender.
(Best movie: The Card, starring Alec Guinness. Biggest let-down: Our Man In Havana, also starring Alec Guinness. Those afternoon schedulers on TCM and More4 sure do be liking their Alec Guinness movies.)
3. Had a Good Old Fashioned Big Gay Night Out In Nottingham.
“Oh! I’m in town on a Friday night! Oh, and K’s away! Well, I must Go Out On The Scene, then! It’s my duty! I’m not ready for the knacker’s yard just yet, ha ha! Maybe they’ll play the Scissor Sisters! Maybe I’ll dance! Maybe someone will flirt with me! Even though I’ve got my specs on! Or “cruising shields”, as I call them, ha ha! Not that I care one way or the other, of course! I’m beyond all that!”
Thus did I rage against the dying of the light. At some length. With Belle of the Internet Alan (“Whoops, Mind My Spike!”) and Nurse Alan – and special guest TGI Paul, up from London for the weekend.
4. Attended a Big Old Birthday Blogmeet in London.
I really must stop getting totally bladdered on the night before “society” blogmeets, such as the one held in honour of Andre‘s 40th birthday, last Saturday afternoon/evening. That way, I wouldn’t have to spend the first hour telling everyone how knackered I was and how little sleep I’d had, and that I was “running on empty”, and “faking it”. No-one likes to be told that the person they’re talking to is “faking it”, do they?
However, by setting expectations of social fabulousness at rock bottom, I was actually freeing myself from the anxiety which they could have induced. This turned out to be quite an effective strategy, and one which I could usefully bear in mind for the future.
And so, one pint of lager later, and thus restored to full functionality, I was working the room like the hoary old tart that I am. Damn, but it was great to see some of my bestest blogpals again – and equally, to meet others for the first time. It was a good mix in that respect – and, indeed, in every respect.
Shall we do a roll-call? Or will it just turn into one of those icky displays of linky-love, that can be so off-putting when you don’t know the people concerned?
Nah, let’s do a roll-call. In alphabetical order, so that people don’t start reading things into randomness. (We’re a sensitive bunch.) Off we go!
Abby “One Track” Lee. “I don’t know what I should be calling her”, someone said to me during the course of the afternoon. “Do I say Abby, or [real name], or Girl, or what?”
“Well, Andre calls her One Track. Why not go with that?”
As was only right and proper, One Track and I got to share a couple of agreeably fruity exchanges along the way. One was at my instigation, involved webcams, and contained the punchline “So what was I supposed to do: reply to them with my nose?” More than that, I am not at liberty to divulge. You’ll have to invent your own middle bit.
The other was at One Track’s instigation, and concerned itself with the lamentable lack of lube-awareness within the heterosexual community. (I didn’t realise that it was ever required for front-door action – but then, why would I? My sexual knowledge operates mainly on a need-to-know basis.)
On my return journey, I noticed that One Track’s worthy little tome is currently at Number Two in the “best sellers” display at the St. Pancras station branch of WH Smith. Awesome or what!
Andre Revolution. Birthday Boy Andre was showered with cards and compact-sized gift-ettes – a “Head Boy” badge here, a freshly laid farm egg there – and from me, a hand-crafted CD entitled (wait for it) A Beautiful Compilation. (My days of sighing semi-recumbence were not entirely unproductive, then.)
If you would like to assemble your own copy of A Beautiful Compilation, then you will need the following ingredients.
1. I Started A Blog Nobody Read – Sprites 2. Lloyd, I’m Ready To Be Heartbroken – Camera Obscura 3. Young Folks – Peter, Bjorn & John 4. Casanova In Hell (live) – Pet Shop Boys featuring Rufus Wainwright 5. Everybody Wants A Little Something – Duke Special 6. Long Way Round – Badly Drawn Boy 7. Once I Was – Tim Buckley 8. Everything I Cannot See – Charlotte Gainsbourg 9. The Greatest – Cat Power 10. She’s Gone – The Hidden Cameras 11. Giddy Stratospheres – The Long Blondes 12. The Decision – The Young Knives 13. Oops! I Did It Again (live) – Richard Thompson 14. Uncertain Smile – The The 15. Tower Of Song – Leonard Cohen 16. Crazy – Gnarls Barkley 17. Hey Man (Now You’re Really Living) – Eels 18. If It Feels Good, Do It – Della Reese 19. The Only Way Is Up – Otis Clay 20. What A Wonderful World – Nick Cave & Shane MacGowan
(Yes, an “emotional journey”. Well spotted, you.)
Anna P Boat. Anna had a box of those little mini-photo-card things that you can get done off Flickr, and I have to say that they were absolutely gorgeous. I’ve never quite got the appeal of Flickr (especially when people stick Flickr pics on their blogs – they’re so SLOW), but these little card things were enough to make me want to go off and take hundreds of photos, like, tomorrow or something.
Ann Pixeldiva. Last time I saw Pix, it was in a “jazz curry” joint at Archway. We didn’t chat for long enough this time, but you know how these things can be.
Anxious. (whose write-up is here) I’ve been following Status Anxiety ever since the previous time we met (over a year ago), so Anxious was one of the people that I was particularly looking forward to seeing. We talked about all sorts, including – what else? – that ole devil called Anxiety. (She actually comes across as rather self-assured in real life, lest you should think otherwise. But I don’t want to burst any bubbles. Invisible inner anx is still anx. Hell, I should know.)
Cheerful One. (who refers to the event, albeit obliquely, here) I might be wrong, but Cheerful One was the only person at the meet that I don’t recall even so much as saying “Hello” to. Bah! It’s always the ones that get away that come back to haunt you…
Clare Boob Pencil. Clare told us a long and involved story concerning her train journey to London, a sewing kit, various defective items of clothing, and a number of costume changes in the train’s toilets. A little while later, she re-emerged in a different top. Is this evidence of some sort of compulsive costume changing syndrome?
Damian of Our Albion and Universal Critic. (whose write-up is here) We had quite a long chat – but I was three pints down by that stage, and my memory had switched to RealPlayer streaming mode.
Girl on a Train. She was on that bit of the table that I never quite managed to infiltrate, so we didn’t do much more than wave and smile at each other.
Greavsie. (who avoids the subject here) He got caught in the crossfire of my self-instigated and unpublishable webcam-related exchange with One Track – but coped with it manfully, I thought. Unlike someone else, of whom more in a bit…
Hydragenic. Hg has been a Gentleman of Leisure for most of this year. I deeply envy his freedom, and the the unflustered serenity which it seems to have elicited.
JonnyB. (whose write-up is here) We talked about blog sponsorship, and the Googlejuice which a carefully placed hyperlink can induce. (Until I linked to K’s company’s website with the words “canine cancer” the other day, the site was languishing in the 40s for the term in question. A couple of days later, it had shot up to fourth position. We bloggers don’t always know what we’re sitting on.)
Later on, as One Track and I steered our lube-based discussion onto foreskin-related territory (do circumcised cocks need more lube than uncut cocks?), something inside this sheltered East Anglian diarist cracked. Why, you could have heard his howl of trapped anguish all the way up to Covent Garden tube. How unlike the stoic sang froid demonstrated by Greavsie (see above). We do put our str8 boyz through the mill sometimes!
Karen Uborka, Pete Dot Nu and Baby Bernard. As has been well documented, Baby Bernard could be said to owe his very existence to a blogmeet. The first baby of British blogging looked thrilled to be amongst us all, and gurgled merrily throughout. The cutest and most sunny-natured baby you ever did see – and I don’t even like babies, so I speak without prejudice in this matter.
Leonie. (whose write-ups are here and here) Again, we didn’t really get past the nodding and smiling stage. She really is a very lovely looking lady, though. Is it OK to say that? Well, she is, dammit! I’m a big old poof-arse, I can say these things.
Mark Britblog–Technoranki. “Are you here to arrange us all into alphabetical order?”, I quipped, facetiously. Mark has just taken his fledgling Technoranki service to the next level – meaning that those of us Britbloggers who have registered with the site and added his thingy to our template now get a nice little PageRank graphic, and the chance to qualify for the Technoranki Top 200 chart. And as you should all know by now, I ain’t half a sucker for a good chart. Especially one that puts me at Number… well, never mind about that.
Meg P Meish. “I felt like a Betamax in a room full of DVDs“, says the pioneering first-waver whom I have come to regard as the Dowager Duchess of British blogging. No, no, no. As Damian says in her comments box: Meg is like vinyl in a sea of MP3s. Wish she’d stayed longer; it had been ages, and I fancied a good long chat.
Mimi in New York. Accompanied by her intrepid polar explorer boyfriend, and looking dazzling in a white woollen dress, Mimi was the afternoon’s surprise guest. We could have chatted for much longer, were it not for the impertinent demands of a lager-swollen bladder (on my part) and the lure of Borat (on her part). We talked about her forthcoming book, and of the difficulties of sticking to one’s literary guns when others would rather you dumbed down and sexed up.
Non-Working Monkey. (who briefly mentions the occasion here) “Oh, you’re Non-Working Monkey!”, I exclaimed, brightly. “You’re quite the Hot Blog of the moment, aren’t you? Everyone keeps saying how good you are, and linking to you, and…”
“AAAARGH!”, she squirmed, with what I took to be equal measures of embarrassment and delight. “Will people STOP SAYING THAT!”
Shiz good though, intshi? Are you reading her yet? Everybody else is!
Petite Anglaise. (whose write-up is here) After Petite appeared on Richard and Judy a few months ago, we enjoyed a little e-mail exchange, during which she admitted that she “had kittens in the dressing room”. As I reminded her, I then spent a full twenty-four hours thinking that Petite really did have real, live kittens in her dressing room, in best Mariah Carey diva-style – until K gently suggested that maybe, just maybe, she was using a figure of speech. I can be worryingly literal-minded at times.
Rachel Frizzy-Logic. We talked world music, as we usually do, and I said “Have you heard of Tartit?” At which point, our high-minded cultural exchange somewhat collapsed in on itself. Hee hee, Tartit! Their new album’s good, though…
Unlucky Man. Had to disappear early, due to reasons amply documented elsewhere. The “living up to the name of his blog” gag has been done as well. Hey ho!
Over at collaborative music blog The Art Of Noise, the second of their “In The Dock” features sees Eurovision being prosecuted (by drmigs), and defended by… well, who do you think?
Having studied the cases for the prosecution and the defence, you are then invited to leave your verdict in the comments box. I won’t say any more than that, in case I am accused of unduly influencing the jury – but I think we all know where the balance of justice lies in this instance, don’t we? I SAID, DON’T WE?
“The new Madonna album is, essentially, and provided you edit out all the usual aren’t-I-just-so-uniquely-fascinating fame-is-such-a-headf**k me-me-me-ness of the lyrics, one great big, non-stop-segued, spangly-disco-balled, glad-rags-on, hands-in-the-air, yo-DJ-pump-this-party, we’re-all-in-this-crazy-ship-together, ooh-these-are-good-ones, Christ-he’s-smiling-back-have-I-pulled-or-what, sod-the-attitude-let’s-SCREAM, (well-OK-just-a-little-bit-of-attitude-then), most entrancingly transiently transcendentally meltingly beltingly everything-just-SO, sometimes-life-is-just-like-the-movies, move-over-losers-Miss-THING-has-come-to-town Saturday Night Out of the year.”
K starts his own moblog. (Now long defunct. Some of us just don’t have the staying power.)
“Nice, aren’t they?”
“They’re gorgeous. But Mike, what are you supposed to do with them?”
“Oh, you just have to love them.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
Walking the Forest Path: a weekend ramble in the Derbyshire Peak District is blogged at great length, over several episodes. Buried within the wildlife descriptions is a major nugget of news.
Frizzy diva! Amdist much discussion of “what is mauve” and “what is puce”, qB creates an exciting new bespoke shade.
A three-column layout is trialled, and swiftly withdrawn.
“And you may ask yourself: how did I get here?” Troubled Diva becomes a finalist in the Best Poof category at the grandly titled Weblog Awards 2005, where it finds itself in distinctly gung-ho, yee-hah, right wing company.
The final nail is hammered into the coffin of my unreconstructed 1980s student politics radical chic. (Look, it was a drag hunt, OK?) All of my newly acquired gung-ho, yee-hah friends must have loved that one…
Tom Worstall’s 2005 Blogged anthology is reviewed – needless to say, at some length.
The Sum Of All Years meme requires me to pen a year-by-year autobiography, in which the number of words for each year matches my age at that time.
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After drunkenly attempting to channel the spirit of Jarvis Cocker at a karaoke evening in a lesbian pub, the only honourable course of action is to leave the country. I therefore spend the next three weeks – including Christmas and New Year’s Eve – working in the Chinese city of Hangzhou.
My time in Hangzhou gets off to a wobbly start, all alone in a freezing apartment, but improves immeasurably once I acquire a flatmate (J, now in London, still reading the blog).
What would it be like if I really did “just do it for myself, and if anyone else happens to like it, that’s a bonus”? To find out, Troubled Diva Xtra is semi-secretly launched.
The Cognitive Behavioural Therapy sessions are concluded.
Following a meeting with the deputy editor, the Nottingham Evening Post invites me to join its team of freelance music reviewers.
After a couple of weeks’ inactivity, a gig is secured with a new London-based client. Apparently, I am to spend “between four and six weeks” working in Canary Wharf. Little did I know that this was to expand to five months…
February 2006.
“Post of the Week” is discontinued – but plans are made to set it up on a dedicated site. Sadly, the planning fizzles out during the spring, as other commitments get in the way…
Troubled Diva is a finalist at the European Satin Pajama Awards (hosted by Fistful of Euros), in the category of Best Personal Weblog.
The London Phase commences, with four or five nights a week being spent at the Britannia Hotel at Canary Wharf. Sunday evenings see me at Horsemeat Disco in Vauxhall; Wednesday nights are spent at Get Yer Kecks Off And Win A Hundred Quid Nite at the White Swan in Limehouse. Other than that, I’m out every night – more often than not, with friends that I have made through blogging. So it wasn’t all just shouting into the void, then. Never have I felt more grateful of the social blessings which the medium has bestowed.
Meanwhile, and inevitably, blogging itself becomes decidedly thin on the ground.
(Note to self: one of these days, when you’re no longer concerned about maintaining any sort of reputation whatsoever, tell them about The Night Of The Five Cs.)
My 44th birthday is spent at an alt.gay.goth-slash-industrial night, with my middle-aged gut squeezed into tight leather kecks, having balloons filled with laughing gas shoved down my mouth while dancing to It’s A Sin by the Pet Shop Boys. How deliciously age-inappropriate!
K buys me an exercise bike for my birthday. Shamefully, it is still sitting in the entrance hall, inside the box that it came in.
March 2006.
The month begins with two diametric opposites. At the White Swan, Ian and I witness a sixty-something Latvian transvestite called Viola do a full strip-tease. The following night, I meet qB for exceedingly posh nosh at a sleek Conran joint: the Plateau Bar & Grill. This is just the sort of contradictory existence which I love.
Down at the BBC Television Centre, I attend the live recording of Making Your Mind Up, in which the UK’s Eurovision entry is selected. Following this joyous re-absorption into the Eurovision brotherhood, I become a regular at the monthly Douze Points nights at the Retro Bar.
Pop Quiz Theme Week sees David (ex-Swish Cottage) and I winning the Retro Bar quiz – and lumbering ourselves with a drunken madwoman “team mate” in the process, who develops a worrying habit of knocking our drinks over and falling off her chair. A couple of nights later, the I Love Music message board crowd holds their own music quiz, which our team is winning… until I have to leave early, at which point the lead crumbles. (Not boasting! Just saying!)
My cousin, who is a Something at the House of Commons, gives me a personal, access-all-areas, in-depth guided tour of the Palace of Westminster. We nip out onto the roof, where I stand only a few feet away from the illuminated clock tower of Big Ben. In the main debating chamber of the Commons, I stand at the dispatch box and pretend that I am running the country. Shortly afterwards, we have a drink in the suprisingly poky Members’ Bar, rubbing shoulders with the Honourable Members. I find myself in utter awe of the mad Gothic splendour of the place.
Loving London. Absolutely loving it. But then, I thought my time down there was nearly up…
April 2006.
With my stay extended for an indefinite period, being out every night starts to lose some of its initial sparkle. Down at Canary Wharf, I am showing signs of becoming assimilated into the matrix – why, I’ve got the “business casual” T.M. Lewin shirts, and everything.
I am interviewed live on BBC Radio Nottingham for a second time, talking about blogging again – but at considerably greater length, and with considerably greater articulacy and confidence. My contribution is made at the BBC studios in Westminster, which is frankly pretty bloody exciting (especially when I accidentally blunder into the ITN newsroom).
A jolly little mini-blogmeet is hosted in Soho, at the Duke of Argyll on Brewer Street.
A stag weekend – incorporating another jolly little mini-blogmeet – is held in Manchester, starting in the Northern Quarter and ending (where else?) on Canal Street. It is by no means a typical stag weekend; we spend the afternoon shopping for outfits in Selfridges, and I have invited GIRLS out for the night as well.
On Friday April 28th, K and I register our civil partnership. Or, as I put it late that night, I’M FOOKIN MARRIED!!! Friends join us for early-doors drinks; this is followed by a lavish multi-course banquet for our respective immediate families.
That we should have lived to see the day.
The following afternoon, we fly off to the Maldives for a blissfully relaxing not-a-honeymoon-actually in a tropical island paradise.
2006 is fast shaping up to be the best year of my life.
May 2006.
Just five days after returning from the Maldives, I fly off to Athens, where I am to be covering this year’s Eurovision Song Contest all week, on behalf of Slate magazine in the USA. As a member of the official press pack, I get access to the rehearsals, the press conferences and the parties, along with a massive bunch of fellow journalists fellow fans on the blag. This is the week which I have been looking forward to for well over a year, and it doesn’t disappoint – although filing my daily dispatches proves to be my most challenging writing assignment to date, by a long long way…
…not least when my laptop irretrievably crashes, just as I am mailing my first article to my editor, and forcing me to a) blag a higher level accreditation (already once denied me), so that I can use the PCs in the press centre, and b) re-write the entire article from scratch, immediately and without delay. (It had taken me over four hours to write it the first time round.) One of the most stressful days of my life – I finished the evening drenched in sweat, not having eaten since breakfast time – but also one of the most fulfilling, as the re-written article was a significant improvement upon the original.
However, I omit to mention the news which I have received by telephone from K in the UK that morning. K’s sister – whom we only saw a couple of weeks earlier, at our civil partnership – has suffered a massive stroke, and is in intensive care.
This casts a long shadow over the long-awaited finals night. I drink myself through it, stay up all night at the winners’ press conference and the after-party… and generally rely on Denial to see me through.
Upon returning to the UK on the Monday, I learn that all hope for K’s sister’s survival has been extinguished. In the meantime, my fourth and final Slate article has – has – to be written. It takes me all day, and I miss my last train. This is when I realise that professional journalism is no walk in the park.
By the time I make it to K’s parents’ house on the Tuesday, M is dead.
I am still working three days a week in London – when I should be at home, supporting K.
2006 is no longer the happiest year of my adult life.
July 2006.
My five months in London come to an end – but not before I have been reunited with a school friend who I haven’t seen in over 30 years, a cousin in his thirties who I haven’t seen since he was an infant… and J, my flatmate from Hangzhou who is now working for the same client in Canary Wharf.
Oh, and there is the week where every evening seems to start with complementary glasses of champagne at some Do or other… and my introduction to the ABSOLUTELY BLOODY FANTASTIC Phoenix Arts Club on Charing Cross Road (one of London’s last outposts of true Bohemia, which evokes warm memories of the late lamented George’s Bar). So, you know, not all bad… not by a long chalk.
Upon my return, I do my level best not to start every sentence with the words “When I was in London…” But frankly darlings, Nottingham has never looked shittier.
As you will have observed from the lack of links in most of the above, the separation between blog and life has never been sharper.
Back on the blog, the first embedded Youtube video is posted – after which, Troubled Diva Xtra makes a brief comeback as a clicky-on-the-piccy Youtube blog.
Year Four of Which Decade Is Tops For Pops? kicks off, five months later than it should have done. This year, the 1970s emerge victorious for the second time.
The podcasts re-commence, as have the Stylus Singles Jukebox reviews (but not for long), and the gig reviews for the local paper.
My first pair of vari-focal spectacles are purchased. Can it really only be three and a half years since I danced topless in a nightclub for the very last time?
Suddenly, and after many many months, the blogging mojo returns. (Here at Troubled Diva, these things are more cyclical than at most normal blogs. God, what what must it be like to have a normal blog? I guess I’ll never know.) Arbeit macht frei, an account of a nightmare holiday job in a wholesalers’ warehouse, is the first decent bit of non-music writing that I’ve done since China.
I pledge to make at least one post per day for the whole of September. If I succeed, then I shall buy a webcam and make an inaugural vidcast. If I fail, then the name of the blog will change to Clapped Out Has Been from October 1st. The tension of it all, eh readers?
A nasty attack of groin strain leaves me stranded in the city centre, and unable to walk, until K picks me up and takes me to hospital. A post explaining this earns me a measly three comments. A follow-up hissy fit (“Nobody cares. I hate you all.“) earns me 26 comments. Much more like it.
The experience moves me to change my comments box strapline, from the age-old “Purge yourself – go on, purge yourself” to the much more descriptive “Transitory fluff, yoo-hoos, woo-hoos, poor-yous and me-toos.”
My duties for the local paper have stepped up a couple of notches, as I am now reviewing as many gigs as I can squeeze into my schedule, as well as semi-regular album reviews for the Friday entertainment supplement. Meeting the deadlines can be tough – but I am deliberately pushing myself, in order to derive maximum benefit from the experience. Besides, I still get an adolescent kick from being on the guest list.
A snapshot is provided of my whereabouts, circumstances and states of mind in October 1996, 1986, 1976 and 1966.
A Journey South concert review is potentially compromised by my proximity to the artists’ parents. Well, a hatchet job would have been too predictable…
My favourite albums of the 1970s are listed, year by year. A request for reader recommendations unearths a previously hidden coterie of Jake Thackeray fans. Who knew?
“Look, I’m bruising. This is a vicious sport! Why was it never banned? OK, I’m getting a tea-towel and wrapping it round my… stop LAUGHING, will you!” K and I go conkers bonkers.
Back down in London for the evening (hooray!), I make it over to Girl With A One Track Mind‘s debut book signing, and stick around for drinkies afterwards. But which other Midlands blogger of note ends up sharing my hotel room?
The local paper prints my first lead album review: a 500 word hatchet job on the forthcoming, tatty, lazy, half-baked so-called “greatest hits” compilation from George “Penelope Pitstop” Michael.
My colleague JP returns to the UK (and today, to the office), already well on his way to a full recovery.
And finally…
On October 30th 2006, Troubled Diva celebrates its fifth birthday.
It has been a fascinating experience, reviewing the past five years of my life in such depth. Not having kept a diary since adolescence, I have never had access to this level of detail before, and it is remarkable how long-forgotten blog entries can trigger such powerful memories.
I have also realised, with a force that has never really hit me before, that Troubled Diva really is a very peculiar weblog indeed. In fact, it’s a f**king BONKERS weblog, if you ask me. Where do all those mad surges of energy come from, and why do they have to alternate with all those periods of near inactivity? Why can’t postings be regular, and moderate, and normal? Jeez, you lot must think I’m bi-polar or summat! I’m not! Honest! I’m just a neurotic, narcissistic, self-obsessed drama queen, that’s all!
There also been times over the past few days where I have observed myself almost as a cartoon character: tearing around the place, squawking and squeaking, and living a life which seems packed with an uncommonly high number of “incidents” – good and bad, clever and stupid, sorrowful and triumphal, important and trivial.
(Particularly the latter. “Doubled Trivia”, someone once called this place.)
I have also been reminded of the extremes of self-aggrandisement and self-deprecation which peremeate these archives. Both can, at times, make me cringe. Hopefully – and at least over time – the one will generally balance out the other. And besides, if there’s one thing which the tragic events of this otherwise fantastic year have shown me, it’s that moments of pleasure, joy, excitement and fulfilment should be savoured as they happen, and never taken for granted. So if that comes sometimes across as “Gee, isn’t my life amazing!”… well, I guess that’s because my life frequently amazes me.
This blog has taken me to places that I never thought I would go. Backstage at an annual music event that I have loved since childhood. In front of a writers’ conference. Onto live radio, and onto the printed page. And it has introduced me to many, many wonderful new friends – who, in varying ways, seem to be capable of tuning into my way of thinking, making sense of it, and making sense of me. (And vice versa, many times over.) As a former Neurotic Boy Outsider who felt for a long time that nobody truly “got” him, and that he wasn’t much good at anything at all, this kind of collective mutual validation is something to which I ascribe the highest value.
But I’m delirious, and gushing… and knackered. (This little exercise took far longer than I had expected, but then I never was much good at doing things by halves.) Time for a congratulatory glass of something cold and refreshing. The sodding album reviews can wait until tomorrow.
Only four posts are made during November: a slagging of Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty (premature, as I ended up loving it); an account of my first Reiki session (a major help on my path back to mental serenity, even if it is just Placebo effect smoke-and-mirrors); an ode to the joys of my newly purchased iPod (which earns me a good kicking in a forum for iPod-h8erz); and an announcement that, from December 6th, Troubled Diva will return to a full regular service.
A doomed attempt is made to convince my readers (and indeed myself) that the Band Aid 20 version of “Do They Know It’s Christmas” is superior to the 1984 original.
“Love your work!” Another London blogmeet is attended, back in the basement of the Green Man.
Finally converted to the superiority of Firefox over IE, and to the delights of del.icio.us. Thanks to Adrian, the “Linkrack” on the sidebar becomes powered by del.icio.us for several months, before collapsing in an ungainly heap when del.icio.us changes the rules.
Commence an extended series of postings about music, in which I write (in frequently laborious detail) about my 100 favourite singles of 2004.
A competitive element is added to the “100 singles” write-up, as readers are invited to guess my favourite single of 2004.
As attempts to explain the new-at-the-time genres of crunk, glitch and microhouse to my readers fall on stony ground, the acronym NMC is introduced, in order to flag posts with significant non-musical content. I have a slight strop about this.
Steve of My Ace Life re-works the 2004 Xmas photo in a Gilbert and George style.
Troubled Diva is nominated as Best UK Weblog in the The Queery Awards, hosted by the US site Queer Day (now defunct). Curiously, one of the other nominees isn’t even British…
Over on the I Love Music message board, I mark the occasion of the 1000th UK Number One by hosting a poll of the board’s favourite Number Ones of all time. The Top 100 singles are posted in real time during Radio One’s Sunday afternoon Top 40 show, and archived on Troubled Diva.
Troubled Diva becomes a finalist in the Best GLBT category at the 2005 Bloggies. Distressingly, I am still in the middle of my interminable series of music-related posts, few of which have much in the way of gay-related content. Whoops.
K and I subscribe to the Lovefilm DVD rental service. I duly solicit my readers for movie recommendations – which we are still working through to this day.
Is it that time of the year already? Which Decade Is Tops For Pops? gets going again. (This year, for the first time, the 1980s win it.)
“I WANT MY F***ING APPLES!” The boot is put into another swanky hotel – this time, it’s the Cumberland at Marble Arch.
On the occasion of my 43rd birthday, someone at Merchants Restaurant is Having A Larf. Is he Having A Larf?
March 2005.
This year’s Comic Relief stunt involves making your selection for the Bloggers’ Disco.
“It was an honour simply to be nominated. It was an honour simply to be nominated. It was an honour simply to be nominated.” At the Bloggies, the World’s Best Poof award goes elswehere.
The Write Like A Diva contest is hosted, with is-it-me-or-isn’t-it entries on the subject of My Gayest Ever Moment. Clare, JonnyB and Peter pit their entries against one of my own. A lack of entries also causes me to throw an April Fool hissy fit.
April 2005.
I Can Pick ‘Em Department, Parts Nine and Ten: early plugs are made for Joan As Policewoman and The Long Blondes.
A dramatis personae is published, detailing some of the more regularly mentioned non-blogging Friends of Troubled Diva.
The start of the month finds me in a rather flat state of mind: pissed off with Nottingham, and living for weekends in the cottage. But it’s only a mini-wobble.
Seasonal maxim: You know that spring is ending when you tire of the smell of asparagus in your urine.
An exhaustive Readership Survey is issued and analysed. Lyle is duly awarded the dubious accolade of being, statistically sepaking, Troubled Diva’s most typical reader.
“There has long been a repressed radio presenter in me; take a listen, and see whether you think it should have remained repressed, or whether I have a future in broadcasting bright and breezy “drivetime sounds” to the blogosphere.” The first podcast is published.
My last European business trip takes place, to Vienna.
August 2005.
An sizeable excerpt from the blog is reproduced (sans permission, natch) in the pages of The Independent, as part of a two-page spread on “Citizens of the internet”. However, the piece wasn’t actually written by me. Instead, the dear confused old Indie lifted one of Vitriolica’s Consequences pieces, crediting the author of Troubled Diva as “Anonymous woman”. Oh well!
Vitrolica then goes on to win Big Blogger 2005, leaving me in second place. Oh well!
The Trash Boudoir mixes seek to recreate the atmosphere of a seedy backstreet 1980s gay club.
“All these years, I’ve been standing on the sidelines, the perennial Detached Observer. Sometimes sneering – sometimes spinning my wheel and muttering my incantations – but most usually dabbing my eyes, raising my glass, Wishing Them Every Happiness, and tearing up the floor at the disco afterwards.
A Secret London Gathering Of Extremely Nervous People With Weblogs is attended. I wonder whether we’ll ever have another one?
October 2005.
I start transcribing my mother’s detailed account of the first twenty years of her life, on a separate blog – but not before sharing an account of her experiences as a model for Vogue magazine.
Many months after first consulting my GP, I commence a three month course of cognitive behavioural therapy. (Excellent, and recommended.)
Guest Month ends – with a “best of” round-up – as the weekly business trips expand from Paris to Cologne and (best of all!) Barcelona. Consequently, and after an extraordinarily prolific work-rate over the past 18 months (looking back at it all now, I’m actually quite astonished that I ever wrote so much) Blogger’s Block begins to bite, and signs of work-related stress start to mount up. It’s a tell-tale sign…
I Can Pick ‘Em Department, Part Four: ahead of her victory in the second Guardian competition, an early link is made to Belle De Jour.
K leaves the company which he founded seven years earlier, and starts from scratch all over again with his canine cancer venture.
Guest blogger Zena turns up, with a series of posts detailing all the “w@nkers” she has ever slept with. As soon as the series is completed, the posts vanish into thin air. (“Think of it like a fascinating woman you met at a cocktail party who left before you got her phone-number.”)
In parallel with Zena’s posts, a new competition is launched: Who’s The W@nker? (“Tell me the story of a relationship in which you were the w@nker.”) The competition is won by Sarah, with this story.
When satire falls flat: we still don’t talk about the which recreational substance am I on? project. Some people thought I was doing it for real, you know…
“F**k off, I’m dead. Now go outside and look at the f**king flowers.” During another wild weekend in London (actually, it was on the dancefloor of the Two Brewers in Clapham), and just ahead of yet another a business trip (this time to Zurich), a major decision is made. Troubled Diva is put on hold for an indefinite period, and an emotional farewell speech is made…
January 2004.
The weekly business trips continue. The blog remains closed.
February 2004.
An article about a trip to Barcelona is published in the Nottingham Evening Post, and re-printed on the blog.
In the meantime, I have become a regular on the I Love Music message board, and a tireless advocate of the Scissor Sisters, whom I go to see live at every opportunity.
The Nottingham house is taken off the market, and a decision is made to stay put for the forseeable future. Goodbye, architect-designed dream home! We were never worthy of you in the first place!
Midweek boozing sessions are back on the agenda, thanks to my new friend (and future blogger) Alan of Reluctant Nomad.
“I’ve been to paradise… but I’ve never been to Bulwell.” Nottingham’s tram service is opened, and a bunch of local dignatories board it for an inaugural ride. Finding myself in their midst, I record the experience. (“Do you think they’ll have white wine in Hucknall?“)
Which Decade Is Tops For Pops? returns, to cheers all round.
Simultaneously with this, an anonymous employee of News International attempts to “out” Belle De Jour in my comments box, ahead of a would-be exposé in The Times. (The comment is swiftly deleted, even though the “outing” subsequently turns out to be inaccurate.) The enusing intrigue and kerfuffle drags on for days, as I find myself thrust into the middle of all the fevered press speculation regarding Belle’s identity. Why, I even come up with an amusing (if highly fanciful) conspiracy theory of my own. As a result, March 22nd becomes the busiest day ever on Troubled Diva, with nearly 2000 page views. Way to make a comeback!
A hand-drawn version of the front page appears on April Fool’s Day; allegedly, I am testing a new handwriting recognition package. (But how did he do those links?)
“F**k off, you vaseline-arsed fairy.” A scathing review of one of the Scissor Sisters’ support acts earns me my first (and hopefully my last) piece of hate-mail.
Easter is spent in Lisbon with Dymbel and Dymbellina, soaking up the fado.
Window Into My World: The Troubled Diva Pointlessly Detailed Journal Theme Weekstarts well, until midweek illness calls a swift halt to the venture.
A performance MP3 of the Boutique Hotel Casual Shag post is published. In many ways, this remains my favourite piece of work on the whole blog.
May 2004.
Blanket Eurovision coverage re-commences, with detailed song-by-song breakdowns of the finals and the inaugural semi-finals alike.
An attempt is made to live-blog the Eurovision semi-finals, in front of the telly, with a laptop. This proves to be tougher than it looks. The coverage starts well enough, before descending into drunken bitch-queen one-liners. (“State of ‘er!“)
In the first of what would prove to be a spate of such ventures, I spend the week guest-blogging at Karen and Pete’s Uborka. The week ends with the hosting of Krissa and Stuart‘s online engagement party. Not a dry eye in the house…
A camp-as-knickers Bollywood MP3 (“One Two Cha Cha Cha” by Usha Uthup) gets Troubled Diva linked by mega-blog BoingBoing. The enusing traffic spike is well lush. More exciting still is the revelation that Usha lives on the same street as one of my regular readers.
I Can Pick ‘Em Department, Part Six: Become one of the first bloggers to plug Joe. My. God.
July 2004.
K and I experiment with different hairdos. While my hair is re-styled for the first time since the late 1980s, K decides to dally with the dreaded TUFTS. After vocalising my loathing for the TUFTS, a hideous pact is made…
The foreign business trips are slowing down, but there is still the occasional jaunt to Paris to contend with. Annoyingly, my presence is required there only a couple of days before disappearing to Peru for two and a half weeks.
During my Peruvian absence, the blog is maintained by five guests, all of them local: Alan, Ben, Buni, MissMish and Nixon. Just as an earlier guest week had spurred the creation of Aprosexic, so does this fortnight eventually lead to the creation of Reluctant Nomad.
August 2004.
Directly upon returning from Peru, K and I crash the get-together that the guest bloggers have arranged during our absence. It is our first meeting with Ben, with Miss Mish – and with Nottingham’s last outpost of true Bohemia, George’s Bar on Broad Street. A new social era begins…
I Can Pick ‘Em Department, Part Seven: Become one of the first bloggers to link to Petite Anglaise: specifically, to this post. Although I am not yet to know it, I have already made my last business trip to Paris.
As is hinted, the Peruvian trip turns out to be more of an endurance test than a relaxing break. I arrive back in poor health, and remain in poor health (and off work) for some time thereafter.
This period of ill-health provides the trigger for my worst period of depression since 1999. Posting on the blog is severely curtailed, with posts generally appearing once or twice a week, if at all.
“Dog tired of the damnable persona, the expectations, the limitations, the repetition, the pop-up chorus line (sorry, nuffink personal like, luvyaloads), the dead weight of accumulated history.”
Less than six months after my last blogging “comeback”, is it now curtains for Troubled Diva again?
September 2004.
A very quiet month – although I am secretly blogging elsewhere, deliberately in a very different style, under the assumed character of “Neil”. The writing is stark, confessional, and fairly high on scandals and misdemeanours. Although the original host blog is still on hiatus, some of the main posts can be viewed here. (The stories are true, but the narrative voice is invented. Give a man a mask, etc.)
October 2004.
With the mental wobbles intensifying, I finally start to talk openly about the matter – although not on the blog – and pay a visit to my GP.
Compensation for mis-sold endowments is obtained, to the tune of over £8000.
Returning from a business trip in Amsterdam, news of John Peel’s death reaches me. He has died in Cuzco (Peru), where my physical ailments were at their most debilitating over the summer.
Still with no actual work to do at work, I continue to amuse myself with Nottingham, My Nottingham and the never-ending Shirt Off My Back Project, with daily photos all the way through the month. Midweek boozeathons have become the norm, although I have formed an age-inappropriate attachment to the podium in the middle of the dancefloor at the local gay club.
There is much activity in connection with Chig’s 50 Number Ones Project, with various MP3 medleys being made available.
A series of “defining vignettes of the 1980s” are posted, covering sanctimonious self-righteousness, greed, style fascism and dogma.
But really, November 2002 is basically about the shirts.
December 2002.
Horrified by the crap camera angles which I have been using during the Shirt Off My Back Project, my partner K breaks his silence on the blog.
This is immediately followed by So you think you’re a Blogaholic?, a quiz designed to test my readers’ knowledge of the 56 blogs in my sidebar. The quiz is won by Amanda, who receives a set of Old Curiosity Box CDs.
Some of my co-workers discover my weblog, as I learn at the office Christmas party. Gulp.
Receive a comment from a member of the Estonian girl band Vanilla Ninja, having just raved about their (sadly failed) Eurovision entry, Club “Kung-Fu”. “Troubled Diva – the blog that the STARS read!”
Attend my first public London blogmeet, downstairs at the Green Man on Great Portland Street. You know: the famous one, where Pete met Karen. (Meg took a great photo of their historic meeting, in which I appeared either to be giving Pete dating tips, or else passing favourable judgement on his bride-to-be’s cleavage.)
The weekend – which I refer to as “Apotheosis Of Blog” – ends with me dancing topless in public, for what was almost certainly the last time ever (barring the odd cartoon representation here and there).
The first of the fully interactive, MP3-enabled instalments of Which Decade Is Tops For Pops? is launched (causing a major intra-blog kerfuffle over the relative merits of Whitney Houston’s and Dolly Parton’s renditions of “I Will Always Love You”.)
I earn my first sneery, snarky, who-the-hell-does-he-think-he-is reference on another (now defunct) blog. A year or so later, we’re exchanging friendly e-mails and linking to each other.
March 2003.
Following a nail-biting tie-break round, the first Which Decade? contest is won by the 1970s.
Threatened by possible redundancy, I hide out in my comments box until the all-clear is sounded. This morphs into the Let’s Get More Comments Than Wil Wheaton Project (yeesh, me and my Projects), which sees me receiving over 235 comments in return for a £100 donation to Comic Relief – but without leaving my comments box for the duration, meaning that publicity for the stunt has to be raised by others on my behalf.
I Can Pick ‘Em Department, Part Two: become one of the first bloggers to plug Call Centre Confidential – arguably one of the first examples of a new approach to personal blogging, which sees tightly themed and constructed writing come to the forefront, in place of the usual links-and-commentary paradigm.
The Which Is The Best Madonna Album? Project gets underway, as I experiment with stepping the music criticism up a notch. (Music and Bedtime Stories end up tying for first position, in case you were wondering.)
But in the morning, with all done and dusted, and what remained of the spell completely broken, this awful quietness and retreat descended upon the room. A shuffle back from intimacy to cordiality. From “oh yeah, me too, absolutely” to “do you want a shower now, or wait till you get back?” From new best mate, to cipher, to statistic. No phone numbers. No point. Respective little black books already bulging, with page after alphabetised page of half-smile memories, mild accusations, slowly fading obligations.
The Old Curiosity Box series splutters to a close, as I belatedly realise that nobody is actually downloading my super-rare MP3s. Puh.
August 2003.
The ill-fated 100 x 100 Project – my first serious misfire – is put out of its mystery, via a marathon weekend Blogathon.
Ah, the Zbornak interview. What fun that was – especially the autobiographical musical.
“Will I be cooking lunch, or will I be cooking dinner? ” A photo shoot takes place for Period Living magazine. Little did we realise that it would take another three years for the article to be published…
September 2003.
The Nottingham house is put up for sale. We don’t sell, and opt to stay put instead.
Directly following my thespian triumph, I am dispatched to Paris for the forseeable future. To cope with the absence, Guest Month is launched. Frankly, darlings… it was a triumph. Hands up, who remembers Aunt Cyn?
Down at our local gay club, K’s drink is spiked with DRUGZ. Not big. Not clever.
Enter Danny, my sex-hungry “guest blogger”. Except it was me all along, you fools! Hands up, who remembers The Spritzer? Ee, we’ve done some bonk-blogging in our time…
On my second day of blogging, I “out” a nascent super-chef as a mardy, aggressive git, pushing my fledgling blog into the Google Top 10 for his smart Ludlow restaurant for several years to come. Indeed, I am still in the Google Top 10 for the chef in question. The story subsequently went all around town, as we were amused to discover. Sorry, Claude – but you were unacceptably rude to my partner in public, while remaining perfectly happy to take his money. Revenge is, indeed, a dish best served cold.
November 2001.
Following an e-mail from a “concerned” friend about my new venture (“Are you having a mid-life crisis?”), I adopt his withering summary (“Dermot O’Leary does the South Bank Show”) as my first strapline.
First appearance of my future avatar: James Gillray’s “A Voluptuary under the horrors of Digestion“. One of these days, I might get around to telling you more about our Gillray collection, which has been strangely under-represented over the years.
Discover, with some measure of dismay, the existence of blogging awards and the concept of “A-list bloggers”.
Forty days shy of my fortieth birthday, embark on the autobiographical 40 In 40 Days Project.
Stop buying the NME, after 28 years as a loyal weekly reader. Discover, with some measure of surprise, that it is still possible to “keep up” without it.
Attend my first blogmeet: a gathering of London gay bloggers, down at Pop Quiz night at the Retro Bar.
Clean up my act, and stop hot-linking to other people’s images. (NAUGHTY! DON’T DO IT!) Start receiving over 100 visitors a day, and have a bit of a “Sally Field moment” about it (success being something of a novelty, after decades of mediocre underachievement).
After making one lengthy autobiographical posting every day, without fail, for forty days, I reach the end of the 40 In 40 Days Project. The next day, I turn 40. A party is held.
Abandon the basic Blogger template design (see above), in favour of the mauve-flavoured template which persists to this day. Farewell, fat opera singer in red dress!
The underscore changes to a hyphen, as troubled_diva.blogspot.com moves to troubled-diva.blogspot.com.
A good eighteen months away from the birth of MP3 blogging as we now know it, the Troubled Diva Old Curiosity Box is opened for the first time, with a posting of Cristina’s “Is That All There Is?” Over the next eighteen months or so, around 140 rare MP3s are posted, generally on a weekly basis.
Chapter Three of Peter’s collaborative fiction project, The Naked Novel. To this day, this remains the only fiction I have written since adolescence. To this day, I’m still rather proud of it. Hmm, there’s a message in there somewhere.
Home broadband arrives in Nottingham. Goodbye, 56k dial-up! I only have to suffer you at weekends now!
Spend most of the rest of the month in the wind-lashed Portakabin, growing progressively more over-worked, miserable and lonely. The “Portakabin Diary” becomes a regular weekly feature for a while, as Troubled Diva briefly flirts with angst-blogging.
An unfairly bitchy early post is discovered by a friend of the people that I was unfairly bitching about, and is quickly removed. The blushes remain for the rest of the month, as an important lesson is learnt the hard way.
Make my first of many visits to the one-time spiritual home of the London gay blogger: Sundays at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, where The Dame Edna Experience ruled (and still rules) supreme.
Add a Tag Board to the site, for a short while. Does anyone still remember Tag Boards? Oh, they were quite the rage.
May 2002.
On May 4th, Troubled Diva welcomes its 10,000th visitor.
To Tallinn, where I attend the finals of the Eurovision Song Contest for the third time. To the horror of some of my more cultured regular readers, Eurovision-related content dominates the blog for a good couple of weeks – and not for the last time, either.
June 2002.
Install the YACCS commenting system – which remains in place to this day, with all 17,000+ comments still archived and available. Peter of Naked Blog is the first reader to leave a comment.
Portakabin-related angst reaches fever pitch – and then is no more, as I am finally released from the Project From Hell. In its place, a lengthy period of professional inactivity commences. With little else to do, blogging takes centre stage, as Troubled Diva enters what I have long considered to be its twelve-month Golden Age.
This gives me time to research and post the first ever list of the UK’s most linked weblogs. Surprisingly, only four blogs from that first list (Plastic Bag, Blogjam, Rather Good and Interconnected) are still present in the most recently published Top 50.
July 2002.
The month starts with great excitement, as a technical fault with the then all-powerful Blogdex sees me sitting at Number Two on its listings for a day or so, earning myself my first major traffic spike. (Well, as major as traffic spikes ever got in those dim and distant pioneering days.) Oh, it was all about the Blogdex and the Daypop back then. Technorati? Wassthatthen?
(Traffic spikes? Popularity charts? How soon was that early innocence corrupted?)
The Stations Of The Diva series starts: another set of autobiographical posts, based around the various addresses I have lived in. Who knows, perhaps I’ll finish it one of these days?
To London, to watch Madonna upon the West End stage… followed by a chance encounter which ushers in a most unexpected temporary return to London hedonism, mid-1990s style.
The Guardian’s “Best British Weblog” competition is launched, with a deafening crash which splits the UK blogosphere in half. Honestly, you wouldn’t believe the kerfuffle which this caused – indeed, it was all that anyone could talk about for a few weeks. Myself included. Oh dear. I still blush a bit over that one.
Over at the Nottingham Arena, Neil Diamond rocks my world. Of all the gig reviews that I have written over the years, this one is probably still my favourite.
THAT London weekend. The one where I… where we… where they… nope, still can’t blog about it. Maybe I’ll blog about it in another five years’ time.
The following weekend, K and I spend a disillusioning night in a past-it “boutique” hotel (OK, it was the Hempel, and here’s my hatchet job), before heading off to Vietnam for two amazing, incredible, best-holiday-ever weeks. Troubled Diva duly takes its first hiatus, before returning with a detailed day-by-day diary of the Vietnamese experience.
The day before we depart, a chance meeting at a cricket match inspires K to start his next business venture. Nevertheless, it will still be over a year before he is in a position to make his move…
Post titles are introduced, in dinky little title boxes, thus bringing to an end the quickfire, hit-and-run, linky-love, one-or-two-line posts which used to be such a major feature of this, and of so many other blogs. The tide, it was a-turning…
The site acquires its first RSS feed, making it a relative early adopter – and the Mozilla browser is tinkered with for the first time (we hadn’t yet started calling it Firefox).
September 2002.
The long-defunct Isabella’s Teddy blog points out my alarming facial similarity to… erm, yes.
The infamous – and bafflingly popular, considering a) how much it makes me cringe to this day and b) how often people still refer to it, in strangely wistful “ah, them were the days” tones – Shirt Off My Back Project gets underway…
(I’m wearing this one today, as it happens.)
…and as if this wasn’t enough, the Nottingham, My Nottingham series is launched. Wow, I really did have a LOT of spare time on my hands back then…
First mobile phone purchase, unwillingly made. Four years later, and I’m still using the same handset. Well, if it works, right?
…but I need to archive these reviews somewhere, and here’s as good a place as any. These all appeared in t’local paper in the last couple of weeks – but either they never made it to the website, or else they were only published in a heavily edited state.
The Automatic / Mumm-Ra – Nottingham Trent University, Wednesday October 18.
With the sold out NME Rock’n’Roll Riot Tour lined up for tomorrow, and The Divine Comedy scheduled for November, Nottingham Trent is clearly serious about re-establishing its Shakespeare Street building as a venue for “name” acts. After a gap of over a decade, this is welcome news, as the hall lends itself superbly to live music. The stage has been shifted onto the long wall, allowing the crowd to spread itself out, visibility is excellent, and the acoustics are spot-on.
None of this was enough to lift Mumm-Ra’s support set out of competent mediocrity. The band cut their teeth with two-hour experimental Krautrock jam sessions in village halls – but such experimentalism is long gone, replaced by the sort of tame orthodoxy which has characterised far too many of this year’s bands. They need to get their Krautrock back, and fast.
Thankfully, The Automatic took the evening to a new level, aided by excellent lighting from the impressive rig, and an inventive series of brain-scrambling animations on the cinema-sized screen behind them, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Super Furry Animals last came to town.
It would have been understandable if they had been weighed down by Monster, their ubiquitous mega-hit of the summer. (Indeed, it was cheekily introduced as a “Status Quo cover version”.) However, a tight, energetic, confident set showed that the band have stepped up to the mark admirably, and are already at ease in larger venues.
An unexpected highlight was a cover of Kanye West’s Gold Digger, which had the irrepressible keyboardist Alex Pennie rapping over vocalist Rob Hawkins’ flute, in a kind of hip hop/Jethro Tull soundclash (ask your Dad).
If straight-up, student-friendly, NME-approved guitar rock has begun to bore you, then The Automatic are the hugely enjoyable exception to the rule.
Duke Special – Songs from the Deep Forest. (V2) ****
When first encountering Duke Special – the stage name of Peter Wilson, an outlandishly dreadlocked singer, songwriter and pianist from Belfast – the inevitable first point of reference has to be Rufus Wainwright. Not only do both singers use similar phrasing (complete with that same slightly nasal quality), but they also share a certain theatricality, with deft orchestral arrangements and stylistic nods to Gershwin, Weill and vaudeville traditions.
What sets Wilson apart from Wainwright – aside from his pronounced Irish brogue – is a lighter, warmer, more straightforward approach to his songwriting. There’s little arch, artsy self-consciousness to be found in these instantly accessible melodies – alternately rousing and reassuring – which engulf the listener in a kind of genial bear-hug. For despite a certain wounded quality here and there, the aim of Wilson’s songs – like those on the new Badly Drawn Boy album – is to tell you that everything is ultimately going to be okay. In his own words: “I want to capture something that sounds like Christmas smoking through an old wooden radio.”
Sean Lennon – Friendly Fire. (Capitol) **
When you consider how much mileage could have been extracted from his family connections, it is to Sean Lennon’s credit that he has followed a more low-key, unassuming career path. Indeed, this is only the 31 year old’s second album, and his first in eight years.
Unlike its more stylistically adventurous predecessor, Friendly Fire sees a move towards more conventional song structures. The overall mood of these ten mid-tempo love songs is gently plaintive, as a resigned Lennon sighs over the loss of his girlfriend, and the betrayal of the friend who snatched her away.
Perhaps this would have been an angrier album, were it not for the real-life fate of the friend in question, who died in a motorcycle accident shortly after Lennon penned the vengeful opening track, Dead Meat. Consequently, most of the album is drenched with a regretful melancholy, which – despite some attractive arrangements from Jon Brion – becomes increasingly monotonous.
None of this is helped by Lennon’s puny, strained, curiously inexpressive vocals, which – like the album in general – are a pale shadow of his father’s grit and passion.
The Datsuns – Smoke & Mirrors. (V2) ***
Stand by your bass-bins: it’s the Battle of the Retro Rockers! With those flash-in-the-pan upstarts The Darkness already a fading memory, there are only two serious contenders left standing. Representing Australia, it’s Jet, with their newly released second album. And in the New Zealand corner, plucky underdogs The Datsuns are trying to claw back lost ground with their third, self-produced effort.
Jet may have the cheekbones, the column inches – and, well, the sales – but at least The Datsuns have a comparative maturity, and a deeper commitment to the core values of head-banging, hard rifffing, Jack Daniels swigging, Led Zep ripping, Good Time Rock And Roll. Unlike Jet, there are no sappy Beatles-esque “sensitive” ballads to be found here. Perish the thought!
Instead, this is a swaggering, stomping, merciless assault, with hefty dollops of slide guitar and swampy Southern boogie thrown into the usual hard rock stew. You will search in vain for subtlety, substance, originality, or indeed any sense of musical history much beyond 1975 – but if tunnel vision’s your thing, then Smoke & Mirrors will serve you well.
Bugz In The Attic – Rescue Rooms, Monday September 25.
This multi-racial seven-piece collective from West London specialises in something called “broken beat”. If you thought this was an esoteric sub-genre, of interest only to serious-minded chin-strokers, then think again: there is nothing “broken” about this good-natured, accessible and thoroughly likeable music, which mixes the best elements of funk, soul and electronica into an infectious brew which deserves a wider audience than the clued-up Gilles Peterson crowd from which it originates.
Now promoting their long overdue debut album Back In The Doghouse, the band are finally taking their live show to the rest of the country. After a competent but lukewarm start, heavy on the groove but light on actual songcraft, things clicked into place from the fourth number onwards.
Despite the large number of people onstage, the music was mainly generated from three keyboardists and a live drummer. In the back corner, the band’s resident DJ had the cushiest job. Never touching his decks, he contented himself with occasional light percussion duties. Nice work if you can get it.
The Bugz belong to that fine tradition of eclectic home-grown funk which stretches back from Basement Jaxx to the Brand New Heavies and Soul II Soul. Some of their most effective material evoked classic early 1980s acts such as Shalamar and Evelyn King. Their powerful re-working of Don’t Stop The Music ignited the crowd, as did all the material which is currently showcased on their Myspace page – an increasingly common phenomenon.
An encore of Sounds Like turned into a celebratory extended jam, with three band members attacking the drumkit, as the DJ cheekily lapped up the applause from centre stage. With Basement Jaxx beginning to falter, and the reformed Brand New Heavies desperately trying to claw back lost ground, the opportunity for the Bugz to break through is wide open.
Coming soon: New album releases from Isobel Campbell (a respectful shrug) and George Michael’s latest “greatest hits” collection (a well-deserved kicking).
Not coming in a month of Sundays: My wince-makingly corny David Essex gig review. There’s “respecting your target readership” by not being a sneery snobby show-off… and then there’s stepping over the line, into full-blooded Light Entertainment cheese. (“The enduringly fantastic Gonna Make You A Star sent us home smiling.” Aaargh! My soul, my soul!)
troubled diva 
