Stocks and shares on my reality index are climbing, whilst my imagination exchange has nosedived and is about to crash and burn. I am creatively bankrupt, and the bailiffs are hammering at the door.
Fifteen reasons and counting, from the ever-dependable (and occasionally comprehensible, which is always nice) Unreliable Witness.
Congrats to Salvadore Vincent of Smaller Than Life for coming up with this ingenious little stocking-filler-slash-toilet-companion:
Needless to say, Venn That Tune has My Sort Of Thing written all over it, being:
a) A book which isn’t really a “book” book, as I’m too lazy and shallow to read many of those.
b) All about the Pop Music.
c) All about the Stats, mmm, Stats!
A fab idea. I commend it to the group.
(Re-posted from Freaky Trigger’s Popular)
“I don’t think it mean anything to you.”
This song’s four-week stay at Number One coincided with the first (and second, third, fourth, fifth…) occasions where my passions were – at least in the strictly physical sense – requited. He was fair, athletic, pretty-boy handsome, and frankly well out of my league in the normal scheme of things – but in the cloistered all-male confines of the English public school, one took one’s pleasures where one found them, and I took considerable pains to signal my availability.
Darkened hallways, knocks on doors, cigarettes, shadows on bedside walls, sly touches, white lies – these were the symbols of our encounters, which eventually and inevitably brought far more suffering than pleasure.
Running simultaneously with all of this nocturnal furtiveness, my daytime existence had never been happier. Once our A-levels were over, our school in Cambridge became transformed from prison to boarding camp. Seemingly endless days were spent lounging by the river, or drinking in The Anchor, The Mill, The Fountain and The Granta, where we pumped our pennies into the jukeboxes, soundtracking our first tastes of freedom and independence with selections from the best singles chart since… well, since the last time I was in the senior year, five summers earlier.
For all of these reasons, the singles charts of June and July 1979 remain my absolute favourites. Dance Away, Boogie Wonderland, Pop Muzik, Shine A Little Love, Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now, Boys Keep Swinging, Hot Stuff, Number One Song In Heaven, We Are Family, HAPPY Radio, Masquerade, Roxanne, Up The Junction, The Lone Ranger, Say When, I Want You To Want Me, I Fought The Law, Love Song, Accidents Will Happen, Light My Fire/137 Disco Heaven, Silly Games, Babylon Burning, Space Bass, C’mon Everybody, Good Times, Girls Talk, Born To Be Alive, Breakfast In America, Bad Girls, My Sharona, Chuck E’s In Love, Death Disco, Playground Twist, Can’t Stand Losing You, If I Had You, Voulez-Vous, Beat The Clock, The Diary of Horace Wimp, Kid, Morning Dance, Harmony In My Head, Reasons To Be Cheerful, After The Love Has Gone… hell, even the also-rans such as the Beach Boys’ “Lady Lynda” and (most especially) Voyager’s “Halfway Hotel”… I’d challenge anyone to find a better soundtrack to teenage life, love, laughter and longing.
And topping them all: only Tubeway Bloody Army, if you please! Having previously dismissed them as bunch of third-rate fag-end-of-punk chancers who had been lucky to get a Peel session, nothing could have prepared me for the template-setting WTF Future Shock of “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?”, whose length and lack of chorus didn’t stop it from being THE defining pop record of that early summer. Everyone I knew loved it, a good half of them owned it, and you couldn’t spend more than a few minutes walking our corridors without hearing it (or its excellent B-side “We Are So Fragile”) booming out of somebody’s study.
Of course, and like most of us, my interest in Gary Numan rapidly waned – and it took a full 29 years and a freelance assignment for me to re-assess both the man and AFE’s parent album Replicas. Numan turned out to be one of my favourite interviewees: frank, forthcoming, perceptive and grounded, the worst of his demons long since laid to rest, happy to see his influence finally acknowledged, and – on the eve of his fiftieth birthday and his thirtieth anniversary in the music business, profoundly grateful for his survival within that business.
By way of a thank-you to his fanbase, Numan broke his anti-nostalgia rule and toured the Replicas album this spring. I had never seen him live before, and was astonished by his performance. As for his rendition of AFE, “ambushed by unexpected emotion” scarcely begins to cover it, as the the symbolic significance of those lyrics coupled with the overall mood of alienated longing hit harder than they had done in decades.
“It meant everything to me.”
Monday.
You know it’s Autumn when the Monday morning journey back to Nottingham takes an hour and twenty minutes. I blame Derby. More specifically, I blame the University of Derby – who have installed queue-building gatekeepers, checking everybody’s ID upon entry – and the dreaded traffic lights at Five Lamps.
As usual, I dozed off from the minute we hit the A52, the new Lindstrøm album (beautiful, atmospheric, custom-built for travelling) ably soundtracking my dreams.
An interview opportunity with Kim Wilde materialised. I’ll be talking to her next week. Perhaps I’ll ask her for some Autumn gardening tips.
The usual Monday night telly: University Challenge (there’s usually at least one contestant per week with “Just K’s Type” written all over him; he likes them pale, skinny and earnest); Only Connect (a delightfully old-fashioned lateral-thinking panel game on BBC4, of which my late grandmother would have approved – especially since it’s hosted by the daughter of her beloved Alan Coren); the last part of that police thriller with Juliet Stevenson in it (CBATG the title, but K loved the book).
Tuesday.
For various reasons (a poorly Plus One; no room in the newspaper; a declining interest in the band), I gave the Hot Club De Paris gig a miss. Another telly night ensued. Not the most memorable of days.
Oh, but wait! I forgot! Today was the day that I discovered the Best Bottled Beer Ever: St. Peter’s Golden Ale, which is brewed near Bungay in Suffolk and comes in rather beautiful oval bottles. I’ve been going through a major Bottled Ale exploratory phase lately, and this really is the best that I’ve tasted.
Update: Having just fished the empty bottle out of the recycling bin, I now realise that it was the Organic Ale, not the Golden Ale. Please accept my apologies for any inconvenience caused.
Wednesday.
After much diddling around with calendars, I finally sorted out the rest of this year’s holidays: a series of long weekends, stretching from early November to the start of January. For nine consecutive weeks, I’ll be working four days or fewer. There may be trips to London. There may be podcasts. I might even buy some new clothes; my trouser situation borders on the disgraceful.
Subscribed to a couple of new blogs: Advanced Style (a photo-blog dedicated to snappily dressed senior citizens in New York City) and Musicophilia (absolutely superb extended MP3 mixes, compiled with skill, passion and exceptional attention to detail).
As has become customary, our team (myself, LB, Sarah, Suburban Hen and SwissToni, aka The Shadowy Cabal) thrashed the competition down at the LeftLion Pub Quiz, romping home to victory for the sixth week running.
(If truth be told, it has all got a little embarrassing – but what can we do? Accept bungs to throw the match?)
There was, however, one question that no-one in the pub guessed correctly.
“What eight-syllable word will get you automatically fired from the BBC if you use it on the TV or the radio?”
I’ll stick the “answer” in the comments.
Thursday.
Thursday was not the greatest of days. Work-wise, it was a day of chasing impossible deadlines, of trying to accommodate shall-we-say challenging last minute demands, of fevered instant messaging, dizzyingly complicated phone calls to the US, hold-your-mouth-right conference calls, of cock-ups averted, of managers placated… in short, the sort of day which would have stressed me to breaking point a few years ago, but which I seem to be able to cope with pretty well these days. Keep calm, take notes, don’t be afraid to ask questions, hold your mouth right, adopt a tone of unflappable authority, and you’re halfway there in this job.
(Sidenote: I was browsing through some of my archives this week, and was surprised to find several references to a tendency to self-subordinate in work-related or semi-formal situations. Surprised and also rather gladdened, as it dawned on me that, somewhere along the line, self-subordination has ceased to be a problem. 46 years old, and I have finally mastered the art of self-confidence! Such progress!)
The day’s biggest disappointment: having to turn down a last-minute interview with Mary Wilson of the Supremes. Dammit, I just know she would have been good value. Always the most “real” one, the tell-it-like-it-is one, and the best singer to boot. Instead, I had to content myself with feeding questions to Simon, chasing that “additional research by” credit.
The day ended on a suitably crappy note, with SwissToni and I – hot, tired, bored, pissed off – bailing out of Rock City fifteen minutes before the end of the Seasick Steve show (see below), only to stumble into an ugly drunken brawl outside the Rescue Rooms. Once inside the bar, we observed a couple of trendy student DJs on a retro-ironic kick, playing George Harrison’s “Got My Mind Set On You” and Dire Straits’ “Walk Of Life” to their equally trendy mates.
I always swore that Dire Straits were ironic-revival-proof. Clearly, I was wrong.
1. Book deals. 15
2. Blogging ain’t dead! Get with the programme, Grandad! 14
3. The death of the blogroll. 13
4. Facebook. 12
5. RSS feeds. 10
6= Twitter. 9
6= Weight of numbers / critical mass. 9
8. Blogging awards. 8
9. Spammers. 7
10= All of the above ( give or take the odd one or two). 6
10= Perez Chuffing Hilton, and all *that* lot. 6
12= Assimilation by Old Media. 5
12= Blog ads. 5
12= The Web 2.0 dis-aggregation effect. 5
15. Farming your links out to del.icio.us. 4
16= Other (please specify). 3
16= Permalinks to standalone posts rather than bookmarks on the archive page. 3
18. Post titles. 2
Discuss.
| The Death of Blogging Poll. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
What killed blogging?
|
Our village pub has become quite the Local Media Hub this year.
Firstly, when our local TV celebrity opened our new village shop, conveniently situated up the passage from the lounge bar…
Secondly, when freak flash floods devastated the ground floor and the car park…
Thirdly, when it won “Best Community Pub 2008” and “Best Midlands Pub” in the national Great British Pub Awards…
And most recently – and if you tune into BBC1’s East Midlands Today at 18:30 this evening (Monday), you’ll be able to see this for yourselves – when a few dozen villagers crammed into the bar on Saturday evening, in order to cheer on the aforementioned local TV celebrity as he danced the jive on Strictly Come Dancing.
I do keep forgetting to mention this at the right time, but for future reference:
Troubled Diva says: VOTE FOR TOM CHAMBERS!
Update: For the Flash-enabled, here’s the village pub footage on the BBC website. Please note that K and I are discreetly hidden by the landlady’s mum (in the pink cardie) and the chap with his arms in the air. As regular readers will be aware, we do like to keep a low media profile.
The tiny cluster of readers who still arrive at this site by typing the address into their browsers (ah, bless!) will already have noticed this, as I have temporarily re-instated my Flickr feed at the top of the page… but for the rest of you (*), might I direct your attention to K’s splendid photo gallery, taken at the third annual Sotheby’s Beyond Limits sculpture exhibition in the gardens of Chatsworth House?
The exhibition runs until Sunday November 2nd, and we can highly recommend it – particularly on a clear, bright afternoon, when the sunlight displays the works to their best advantage.
The same images can also be viewed on the village blog, where I’ve squashed them all together onto one page. You might find this a more convenient way of viewing them.
(*) Unless you’ve already picked up K’s Flickr stream via RSS, or via the link which I posted on my Facebook profile, or… sheesh, this brave new “multiple points of entry” paradigm doesn’t half get complicated at times…
I’m a little hazy as to the respective dates, but Gary Numan’s “Cars” is one of three candidates from the charts of September 1979 to qualify as the first record I ever danced to at a disco. (If we discount Cockney Rebel’s “Mr. Soft” in a marquee at a traction engine rally in 1974, and I rather think we should.)
The other candidates? I’m glad you asked.
Candidate #2: “Gangsters” by the Special AKA, after a half-term gig by The Jags at Retford Porterhouse. “Back Of My Hand” was in the charts, and the band were staying a few miles away in our local village pub.
(A popular rock and roll stop off point, as it happened; my step-sister once spent an evening chatting to a pre-fame Billy Idol, and the Psychedelic Furs scandalised all and sundry by smoking weed on the landing.)
The post-gig disco took place in a separate night club area, complete with a totally authentic Saturday Night Fever style dancefloor, laid out with the statutory multi-coloured illuminated cubes. Thrust into the midst of such sophistication, I felt a little out of my depth.
Candidate #3: “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough” by Michael Jackson – in its first week on the Top 40 – at the Friday night teenage disco at the Cambridge YMCA. We blagged our way in without paying while the trendy vicar’s back was turned, nipped upstairs, and soon found ourselves quite the centres of attention.
“You’re the new John Travolta!”, beamed a starry-eyed fifteen year old (curly perm, horizontally striped sweater dress, thick black belt), as I galumphed around the dancefloor in my ghastly tweed sports jacket.
“You should have been in Saturday Night Fever, or Grease, or something!”
(I am quoting this strictly verbatim. As I suspect was she, perhaps from some “How To Pick Up Boys!” guide in Mirabelle.)
As the strains of “Bitch” by the Olympic Runners started up, another all-to-easily impressed chancer (dark crop, pencil skirt) tried to muscle in.
“Oy! Get off him! He’s MY boyfriend!”
A tussle ensued. Fingernails flew. Five minutes on the dancefloor, and I was quite literally being fought over.
Oh, this was the best night out ever! It was like being in a photo-love story in my sister’s My Guy, or something!
Eager to stay in role, I leant between them and uttered these immortal words:
“Now then, girls. Break it up.”
The effect was instant. Oh, the power! I swear they both simpered.
Nothing like this ever happened to me again.
At least, not where the ladies were concerned.
The professional bit:
For anyone impatient to hear more from all-star folk band Bellowhead, the past few days have been a rare treat. Following Thursday’s Playhouse appearance by Benji Kirkpatrick and Paul Sartin as part of Faustus, last night saw the Maze play host to Bellowhead’s key founder members: singer and violinist Jon Boden, backed by John Spiers on melodeon and concertina.
Where Faustus focus on finely balanced three-way counterpoints (*), Spiers and Boden take a more straight-up traditional approach, with Spiers providing a solid, unflashy backdrop to his partner’s resonant vocals and amazing fiddle playing.
Clocking in at over two and a half hours, the duo’s marathon set showcased many numbers from their fifth album Vagabond. As befits its title, these were songs of rebels, wastrels, pirates, beggars… and even a certain Mr. Hood, whose conception and birth in the “good green-wood” provided the subject matter for a fine epic ballad.
Amongst the many splendid jigs, the irresistible Sloe Gin – as recently popularised by Bellowhead and The Imagined Village – made a welcome appearance.
The evening finished with a surprise non-traditional choice from the Tom Waits songbook: a lilting, yearning Innocent When You Dream, which had the crowd softly singing along, almost to themselves.
The amateur bit:
(*) The eagle-eyed reader will have noticed that this is the third consecutive gig review in which I have used the word “counterpoint”. Are counterpoints the new curveballs? Perhaps they are.
(In truth, I filched the observation from K, who described Faustus as “more contrapuntal” and Spiers/Boden as “more chordal”. I love it when he talks dirty.)
Boden, it has to be said, looked physically knackered – pasty-faced and red-eyed, in the manner of a new dad who hadn’t slept for a few weeks – which made the two and a half hour set all the more remarkable. To further emphasise the already significant height difference between his lanky frame and Spiers’ altogether squatter construction, Boden performed on top of a wooden box, which K reckoned was miked up, in order to add resonance to his all-important foot-stamping.
(Faustus were all about the feet, as well. I may be new to the folk scene, but I’m learning fast.)
The professional bit:
Two years on from the breakup of Gorkys Zygotic Mynci, former leader Euros Childs continues to plough his gently idiosyncratic furrow. Seemingly impervious to the normal aging process, his demeanour remains cheerfully relaxed, and his solo material continues to blend whimsical pastoralism with understated tunefulness.
The Dodos have been steadily gathering critical acclaim since the release of their remarkable second album Visiter. Their music is both brutally primitive and impossibly complex, with drummer Logan Kroeber the undisputed star of the show.
In place of a standard kit, Kroeber pounded out his dizzyingly syncopated rhythms on a semi-circular set of four drums, balancing his breakneck tempo with an extraordinary lightness of touch, and displaying a technical accomplishment which frankly beggared belief. (*)
Over to the left, a seated, floppy-fringed Meric Long added plaintive indie-boy vocals, sometimes using two microphones to build looping effects. His equally unique guitar style combined bottleneck blues and oblique thrash, providing a mesmerising counterpoint to Kroeber’s ceaseless energy.
Meanwhile, Joe Heaner drifted on and off the stage, alternating between an industrial-sized glockenspiel, an ancient miniature organ, a giant cymbal and a vast, ugly-looking metal bucket.
Veering between rapturous applause and stunned silence, the uncommonly attentive audience lapped up every note. (**)
The amateur bit:
(*) In actual fact, his drumming technique repeatedly brought Adam and the Ants to mind, circa Kings of the Wild Frontier, and particularly the intro to Antmusic. Lots of rimshots, and virtually no footwork, save for a tambourine attached to his left foot. Oh, and can we say CUTE? All lean and moustachioed, like a baby-faced Brandon Flowers.
(**) As my friends found out after the show (getting their posters signed while I chatted to Euros about his connection with Kevin Ayers), the band initially mistook our reverential silence for icy indifference. “We thought you weren’t into it”, they explained. “Then we realised: actually, you were just really into it.”
Luckily for us, this lead to them adding an unscripted second encore (despite the drummer making reluctant “tired” signs at the singer, as well he might) – which turned out to be the most spectacular performance of the whole show. How the hell these things even get composed in the first place, I simply have no idea.
The professional bit:
Boasting a collective pedigree that stretches from Norma Waterson to Seth Lakeman, and from Paul Weller to Bellowhead, Faustus could almost be described as a folk supergroup. Kicking off an exceptionally promising new folk season at the Playhouse, they worked hard to warm up the initially subdued audience, scattered over three rows in the stark studio space above Cast.
The three band members – Paul Sartin on violin and occasional oboe, Saul Rose on an array of melodeons, and Benji Kirkpatrick on guitar and bouzouki – radiated a relaxed, good-natured rapport, interspersing their music with droll asides and a dry banter which sometimes bordered on the surreal.
This easy demeanour masked a remarkable level of dexterity and craftsmanship. On dizzying jig medleys such as Next Stop Grimsby / The Three Rascals / Aunt Crisps, the players perched their intoxicatingly cheery melodic refrains on top of complex rhythms and constantly shifting counterpoints.
While the jigs were largely self-penned, the songs were all traditional: excavated from a variety of archives and songbooks, and given fresh, sturdy new arrangements. A broadly nautical theme ran through many of them. The Green Willow Tree told the story of a heroic but doomed cabin boy, betrayed by his captain and dispatched to a watery grave (*), while The Old Miser recounted the fate of an amorous sailor, sold for transportation by his sweetheart’s jealous father. On The New Deserter, a ballad made popular by Fairport Convention, the familiar lyric was given a haunting and effective new melody.
The amateur bit:
(*) This was of particular interest, since I ONCE WAS THAT CABIN BOY! ‘Twas in the year 1974, and I had been assigned an understudy role to the lead chorister in our school’s end-of-term production: The Golden Vanity, a childrens’ opera by Benjamin Britten, which is based upon the same story as The Green Willow Tree. (With certain variations as to the exact manner of the plucky cabin boy’s watery demise.)
Three or four days before show time, said chorister went down with a nasty case of the measles, and I was duly bumped up to Heroic Male Lead – a role I discharged with great gusto (drama being one of my Big Things at the age of 12, and did I ever tell you about the time I played Mole to Jeremy Clarkson’s Toad?), albeit a semi-tone flat throughout (I winced my way through a subsequent classroom playback on the music master’s reel-to-reel).
All matters of pitch control aside, my greatest challenge was miming a convincing dive from the deck of my ship (the titular Golden Vanity) into the tempestuous ocean below (as represented by the floor of the school gym), and then battling my way through the waves until I reached the dastardly pirate ship (on the other side of the gym, manned by a bunch of classmates in Marks and Sparks pyjamas with their mothers’ scarves tied around their heads). As a confirmed non-swimmer, whose irreducible combination of stubborness and terror had broken the will of a long succcession of swimming teachers down at Doncaster Baths, I lacked all semblance of convincing mime technique. Many hours of coaching ensued, after which I was just about able to muster a vaguely convincing upper body breast stroke.
Following the high drama of my drowning (“And then, and only-then, did the crew-throw-out-a-ROPE!”), the opera climaxed with my re-appearance as a ghostly presence (i.e. standing behind a darkened screen with a gauze-covered, head-shaped hole cut in it, a hand-held torch pointing up at my ghostly chin), forever destined to haunt the ocean waves with my netherworldly wailing:
“I AM SIIIIIIIN-KING, SIIIIIIIN-KING, IN THE LOOOOOOW-LAND SEEEEEA….”
It was very moving. If half a tone flat.
I nearly told all this to Benji Kirkpatrick during the post-gig Meet And Greet/Retail Opportunity session – but thought better of it, confining myself to a simple “Ooh, I’ve got all these CDs already, thank you very much, that was great, bye bye!”
Well, one doesn’t like to monopolise.
…but William B. Swygart’s just-published piece on Rocktimists is so bang on the money, that there scarcely seems any point.
In short, then:
If Rachel Unthank and the Winterset win, I shall be beside myself with joy. Look, one of the token specialist genre acts (folk/jazz/classical) has got to win the thing sooner or later, or else what’s the point in including them in the first place?
If Elbow or British Sea Power win, I shall be very very happy. Because they’re both bloody wonderful albums, that’s why.
If Estelle or Burial win, then I shall smile broadly – because both albums are more than worthy, and it will be a nice change from the usual skinny white boys with guitars.
If Radiohead or Plant & Krauss win, then I shall think: fair enough in terms of quality, but what’s the point, and what purpose has been served?
If Laura Marling wins, then I shall smile fondly, and resolve to listen a little more closely.
If the Portico Quartet win, then I’ll be all like, huh? Pretty but unessential, that’s my verdict.
If the Last Shadow Puppets win, then I’ll be all like, sigh. It’s an interesting but flawed project, and Alex Turner certainly doesn’t need the award a second time.
If Neon Neon win, then I’ll be all cross-armed and resentful and frowny and BAH.
If Adele wins, then I might require oblivion-hastening medication, with some degree of urgency.
The Guardian are live-blogging the whole thing, by the way. As of now.
Update: I am very very happy at Elbow’s well deserved win. This seems like a good moment to link back to my interview with guitarist Mark Potter, which I conducted on the very morning that The Seldom Seem Kid hit the shops.
I am now onto, let’s see, DAY NINE of my viral infection, with no end in sight – and frankly, it is all starting to get a little boring. Yesterday in particular was a complete write-off, which saw me up and about for not much more than ten hours – most of them spent groaning, mithering and angrily breaking wind. I’m generally quite good at handling illness – at least when it provides me with a justification for doing sod all – but one can only hold self-pity at bay for so long.
However, this was as nothing compared to the problems faced in our village over the weekend, as a freak downpour on Friday night/Saturday morning caused flash flooding, wreaking unprecedented havoc. (I’ve written the episode up on the village blog, accompanied by photos from K.) The village pub in particular was hit hard, but a concerted collective effort saw it back open for business on Saturday night. Our local pub singer performed a free set; couples danced on the newly exposed quarry-tiled floor (a distinct improvement on the ancient and now ruined carpets, if truth be told); everyone affected to ignore the pervading smell of damp; and the whole evening displayed the sort of Pulling Together In Times Of Trial spirit that Made Our Country Great, Spirit Of The Blitz, etc etc etc.
Turning to lighter matters, I’m pleased as Punch to have received this beautiful and extremely tasteful hand-crafted trophy from Guyana-Gyal, which will nestle in nicely with the contemporary ceramics on us cottage mantlepiece:
It’s an understated little thing, isn’t it?
Now then, the rules also state that I have to pass the award on to “five other blogs that you consider deserve this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and also for contributing to the blogging community“. (Oh, and I also have to credit the award’s originator. There, ’tis done.)
In which case, I shall firstly make a posthumous award to the much-missed Tired Dad, who rather abruptly shut up shop in April. TD’s contribution to the You’re Not The Only One blogging anthology (“Truce or Scare”, page 98) is not only the best thing he’s ever written – a masterpiece of controlled exposition, which saw me swerve from hysterical laughter to a full-on sobbing fit in a matter of minutes – but it also serves as the missing final post from his blog, for reasons which should become apparent.
My second award is also a posthumous one. Peach did a fantastic job with the aforementioned blogging anthology, and she has also done a first-rate job at keeping Post of the Week going this year. (And she’s dropping her first Babby soon, so Yay for that.)
My third award goes to Gordon McLean, both for long service (he’s been at it more or less continuously since 1999), and for generally being helpful, supportive and an all-round good egg.
The fourth and fifth awards go to two relatively new blogs, which have been my favourite discoveries of 2008: Todger Talk (especially for the disarmingly honest and unfailingly hilarious reviews of sex toys for men) and Bête De Jour (back in business after a nasty flooding incident, which rather neatly brings this post full circle).
I hope that all recipients feel as aesthetically blessed by this sumptuous piece of craftmanship as I do. Oh yes indeed!
“Daily blogging, he said. Grumble grumble…”
Mea culpa, readers. And the excuse is a thin one: namely that I spent the earlier part of the week bed-ridden with man-flu. Well OK, just two days – but my affliction has cast a long shadow over this dreary week.
Amongst other disappointments, I had to duck out of the LeftLion pub quiz on Wednesday night (hosted by no less a figure than Nottingham’s ‘Mr Sex’, no less), where the ever-shifting team known as The Shadowy Cabal romped to victory for the second time in three showings. This quiz is fast becoming a regular social fixture, not least for the “Which pop classic is Mr Sex’s Nana from the Meadows playing on her Bontempi organ?” round. (We did well in Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” week, and less well in Brian May’s “Too Much Love Will Kill You” week.) But mostly because we keep winning it. Eight! Beer! Tokens!
The man-flu probably has its roots in last Friday’s marathon drinkathon in London’s trendy Clerkenwell, where friends and colleagues of Anna and Bobbie gathered to wish them bon voyage and bonne chance as they prepared to start their new life in America’s trendy San Francisco. Photos are here, here, here, here and here. (Yes, there were glowsticks. It was that kind of night.)
Suitably battered by the rigours of the occasion, I spent Saturday afternoon wandering around Stoke Newington with my sister, who has bought a flat there. (Strictly speaking it’s in Clapton, but let’s not quibble over a couple of blocks.) It’s not a part of London that I’m familiar with (barring a messy post-Trade All Back To Mine in 1995, which doesn’t really count), and I found myself quite charmed by its relative villagey-ness, overall vibrancy and good cheer. Yes, it’s getting a bit gentrified in places (a Farmer’s Market here, a Fresh And Wild there), but not in a snotty, obnoxious way. And my sister’s ex-council flat, while compact, is perfectly charming: a pleasantly characterful example of 1950s social housing from a period when public sector architecture still retained a certain idealistic sense of purpose, marrying simple functionalism and good design.
Regrettably, my battered state (coupled with the blazing sunshine) engendered such a false sense of security that I allowed my jacket to dangle a little too far over my arm, resulting in a lost wallet, a trip to the police station and a call to the bank. Hell, who needs plastic anyway? It has all been quite liberating.
I found out through Betty that some blogger is collecting 10cc Top Tens. “This is a sort of Group-Mind thing whereby we use 10cc as a sort of upside glass-tumbler on an ouija-board”, he says. Splendid, I say. Here’s mine.
1. The Dean And I. Why, its scope is positively cinematic. I’m a sucker for a good condensed multi-part mini-drama (see also Squeeze’s “Up The Junction”).
2. I’m Mandy, Fly Me. Especially the bit where the acoustic guitar comes in, and then it all builds up and up and… ohh.
3. Life Is A Minestrone. Fab 208 under the bedclothes, yadda yadda.
4. Donna. My sister and I thought they were such funny fellers on TopDiPop, especially the bloke with the squeaky voice. (LOL! Creme.)
5. The Wall Street Shuffle. “Dow Jones ain’t got time for the bums.” A searing critique.
6. Rubber Bullets. You can’t beat that glam-rock chunka-chunka-chunka beat.
7. Art For Art’s Sake. We bought this for a Christmas party in 1975. Not a dancefloor anthem, as it turned out. (That honour belonged to “You Sexy Thing”.)
8. I’m Not In Love. “It’s just a w@nking phase I’m going through”, we sang at school. What wags we were!
9. The Things We Do For Love. I’m starting to struggle a bit here, to be honest.
10,000. Dreadlock Holiday. “Safe European Home” for uncool people with curly perms, and hence obviously – obviously! – unforgiveable. I sense that this analysis might lack a certain rigour.
As it has been a quiet week, I have seized the opportunity to dive headlong into the Exciting New Sound that the kids are calling “funky house”. It’s a little confusing, as the term has been around since the late 1990s – but this stuff is far removed from the shiny-shirted, disco-sampling (and fairly clapped out) genre that periodically surfaces on Hed Kandi compilations. And goodness me, I LOVE IT I LOVE IT I LOVE IT!
The music sounds to me like an update on the UK garage sound of 1999/2000 – but with a more propulsive edge to the rhythms, and a percussive feel that bears some comparison to soca. Some of it is quite song-based and girly, while at the other edge of the spectrum the feel is dirtier, rawer, and distinctly butcher. Predictably, it’s the girly, song-based stuff which grabs me most of all – most notably the genre’s cheesiest offering to date, “Bongo Jam” by Crazy Cousinz ft. Calista, which I have been playing five or six times a day. This SO has to be a massive hit single.
Indeed, Crazy Cousinz are quite the production team du jour – as evidenced by their gorgeous remix of Paleface ft. Kyla’s “Do You Mind”, which just grows and grows. Both of these tunes can be found on a handy 26-minute mix from DJ Cable, which serves as an ideal introduction to the genre. To this end, I’d also recommend Tim Finney’s impeccably learned overview of the scene, as blogged at Idolator three months ago.
All of this funkiness has led me to investigating the current playlist at BBC 1Xtra, which reveals an absolute wealth of riches, signalling to me (and better late than never) that so-called “urban” music is currently enjoying a significant upswing, after a couple of years of stagnation. YouTube links for virtually the entire playlist can be found here. I particularly recommend Jazmine Sullivan’s raw, yearning, reggae-tinged “Need U Bad”, Perempay’s sultry, smoking “In The Air”, the floaty, piano-housey “Falling Again” from Wookie ft Ny, and the more classically soulful “LoveLost” from the long-lost Shola Ama. Ooh, you’ll have hours of fun!
Respect is due to the remarkable Marcello Carlin, for embarking on a marathon project that will see him review every UK Number One album from 1956 to the present day. Meanwhile, his wife Lena has started reviewing all the singles which reached Number Two (but no higher) on the British charts. Good luck to them both, and I’ll be following both projects avidly over the coming weeks/months/years/decades.
Along with three randoms from The Other Much Larger Company In The Building, I got trapped in the lift this morning. Tenth floor. Doors not-quite closed; gap of maybe a finger’s width.
Random #1 (short, female) tried to open the doors and failed. As did Random #2 (slim, male).
There’s a reason why I don’t entangle myself with practical things, and I wasn’t about to put it to the test. Assuming a managerial role, I suggested ringing security, using the number displayed above the lift buttons. Random #2 got on the case. Good man.
In large office blocks such as ours, safety procedures have to be precisely defined, and strictly adhered to. In this case, Stage Number One of the “Employees Trapped In Lift” scenario turned out to be…
…taking the first and last names of each employee, checking for correct spellings where necessary.
Well, it would be awful if they cocked up the headstones. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.
At this point, the previously silent Random #3 (burly, male) stepped forward, casually prised the doors open, and calmly stepped out.
It was either that or give his name out. You can only push a bloke so far.
(I first parked these thoughts in the comments box at Freaky Trigger’s Popular, where you’ll find me hanging out on an increasingly regular basis. What follows is an amalgamated and slightly tidied-up version.)
In a way, that wonderful Barney Bubbles pic sleeve is the first clue: that the ground is fundamentally shifting, that certain key characteristics of chart pop are mutating, and that a whole new vista of as yet untapped possibilities are opening up. For just as we prepare to bid farewell to those cheerfully corny NUMMER EINS TIP-TOP SUPER-HIT IN GROSSBRITANNIEN! import sleeves at the top of each entry, so we prepare to welcome – for better and for worse – an altogether more visual, more design-led, more themed approach to the pop single.
Forget the false dawn of “Rat Trap”; for me, the success of “Rhythm Stick” was a sign that Our Side were indeed taking over. As such, it marked a clear staging post, heralding the true start of not only my all-time favourite year for pop, but also the start of a whole new Golden Age, both for pop in general (unquestionably matching the glories of 1964-67 and 1972-74), and for me personally. For from this point on, and for several years to come, I felt that that much of the best pop was capable of precisely representing me – my generation, my outlook, my emotions, my concerns – and that I was a fully-fledged member of its natural constituency.
Simultaneously with this glorious upswing in the charts – an upswing which had been heavily hinted at during 1978, and which was now starting to bear full fruit – a similarly major upswing started to take place in my personal life. Simply put, I began to get my shit together: gaining confidence, making friends, having adventures, “re-inventing” myself, as I dubbed it then and still view it now. 1979 was a year of fun, friendship, excitement and experimentation; of major milestones; of massive changes. I started the year as a nervous, fearful, virtually friendless, deeply immature 16-year old schoolboy; I ended it on the threshold of stepping out into the real world, beyond the cloistered confines of my Cambridge boarding school, making independent choices, earning a real wage, tearing up the past and beginning an unguesssable new chapter.
A month or so earlier, with “Rhythm Stick” still climbing the charts, I saw Ian and the Blockheads in North London (Shepherd’s Bush Empire, was it?), supported by Alberto Y Lost Trios Paranoias, Humphrey Ocean & the Hardy Annuals, and a surrealist puppet show. Discounting various school bands, it was only my third gig – and coming after the disappointments of the first two (including being stuck behind a concrete pillar in the back corner of Earls Court for Bowie’s Stage tour, an experience which put me off arena gigs for the next decade), the Blockheads’ magnificent two and a half hour set came as a revelation. To this day, and even allowing for the novelty of the experience at the time, I have rarely heard any band play so wonderfully well together (drummer Charley Charles particularly standing out in my memory). And what excitement – again rarely matched since – to hear my favourite single in the charts being played while it was still actually in the charts!
It was partially the knowledge of Dury’s declining health that coaxed me into seeing him and the Blockheads a second time, towards the end of the 1990s – and what a show that was, with the irrepressible Norman Watt-Roy vying with Ian as the true star.
I must also get around to revisiting Dury’s 1979 Do It Yourself album. It didn’t contain any singles – which although admirable, failed to prolong its shelf life – and despite wonderful tracks such as “Sink My Boats”, there couldn’t help but be a sense of general anti-climax after the glories of New Boots. Undaunted, the band bounced back with “Reasons To Be Cheerful”: the first ever rap hit anywhere, and given Chaz Jankel’s musical connections, presumably made in the knowledge of the newly emergent genre…?
However, I’m still struggling to articulate what it is about “Hit Me” that affects me so much as a piece of music, rather than for what it represents in the wider context of chart pop. And I think it’s primarily to do with what I perceive as the almost dream-like quality of its opening, dominant piano/bass-led riff, coupled with the almost mythical travelogue of the verses. For me, the chorus is where “everybody else” is invited in for a chirpy, cheeky Cockney singalong, as if that was what the song was all about – but for me it’s almost a smokescreen, an entryist device which allows the rest of the track to exist. And it’s within the restlessly undulating contours of the rest of the track that I reside as a listener, shifting over periodically to admit the chorus’s house-guests.
Dream-like? Un-equipped to play vinyl in my school study, I had this on one side of a home-made C90, which I used to play over and over again as I drifted off to sleep, inventing videos that eventually turned into dreams. And so there’s something here which touches that half-asleep/half-awake state of consciousness, in a way that still cuts deep – allowing me to visualise the music almost as a physical space, which part of me still inhabits. (If that doesn’t sound too pretentious.)
Postscript: I had experienced a similar effect with Rose Royce’s “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore” a few months earlier, albeit as a one-off moment. The first time I heard the track was on FM radio one morning, as I emerged from sleep into wakefulness, and so the sparse, haunting oddness of the arrangement – the syn-drums, the rising and falling string shimmers – first took root in my sub-consciousness as I dreamt. I woke up with the strangest sense of wonder at what I literally perceived as its other-worldly quality, and it’s a sense of wonder that I’ve never quite lost over the years.
troubled diva 