little raindrops, tiny epiphanies

Caitlin Moran Stole My Life.

2011-08-25T11:21:00.000+01:00

Well not really, but sometimes it kind of feels like it. I'm finally reading her book, How To Be A Woman and remembering how I first came across her when she used to write for the Melody Maker.

My Gran, keen clipper of articles from the Daily Mail, presented me with a full page feature on the young Moran, aged 16. In the accompanying photo she is resplendently grungey in long floral frock, doc marten boots and possibly a floppy velvet hat. She is brunette, a bit fat and a bit goth. Granny passes me the page and says something like "She looks a bit like you. She's had a book published already. You could do that. Why haven't you done something like that?"

In that fabulous way that family members have of undermining your confidence while at the same time imagining they are boosting it, she didn't understand why I read the article and went off in a strop. At 17, I may have been reading the Melody Maker and NME religiously but I was still stuck in the sausage machine of A Levels - seemingly the only logical option for someone with a modicum of intelligence wanting to leave a Midland town in the early 1990s - and here was this girl, published, leading a rock 'n' roll lifestyle free of parental constraint in London, who had been home schooled by hippies and had no qualifications to speak of at all.

Later, when I did leave town and adopt my version of a rock 'n' roll lifestyle (though from reading the book it certainly contained less sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll than Moran's) our paths did briefly cross.

At a gig in Wolverhampton in 1995, I spotted Moran and Pete Paphides ligging at a Radiohead gig. Had I been less shy and more drunk, I might have introduced myself but I didn't. I was just a pleb and they were proper music journalists. I always wondered what it was that stopped me being more like Caitlin Moran and getting on in the way that she has and now, reading her book - which like the cover says is "part memoir, part rant" - I think I've worked it out. She wasn't afraid of making a fool of herself, had the luck to be in the right places at the right times, was brave enough to be a bit stupid sometimes and most important of all had the confidence to throw herself headlong into things and not worry about the consequences.

I'm just over half way through the book now and I've identified with her, laughed at her jokes, agreed with her most of the time and recognised some familiar episodes of teenage angst that seemed to be so popular in the 90s. I was always annoyed that she managed to make a living writing one of those "me, me, me"columns about everyday stuff, that seem so easy but unless you are prepared to exploit yourself and your experiences like a true writer are actually very difficult.

I think I'm still a bit jealous.

Book Review... Sophie Hannah Spilling CID series

2011-05-25T10:23:00.002+01:00

Sophie Hannah: Little Face, Hurting Distance, The Point Of Rescue, The Other Half Live, A Room Swept White. (Hodder)

After finding the latest three of Sophie Hannah’s books in paperback in Biblocafe, having been alerted to their existence by an ITV adaptation staring Olivia Williams and Darren Boyd called Case Sensitive (which turned out to be loosely based on the third of her Spilling CID series The Point Of Rescue), I found myself compelled to read the whole set and binge read the lot. A quick trip to Amazon found me the first two but by the time they arrived I had already hungrily got through most of The Point Of Rescue and The Other Half Live.

Hannah’s psychological cop thrillers stand out both for the strength of her writing (she is also a poet and author of several non-crime novels), and for the inventiveness with which she approaches the genre. Each book is written from at least two perspectives; beginning with a teasing, scene setting chapter from the point of view of a woman at the centre of a usually complex and emotionally fraught crime, she then switches to the third person to take us to the heart of the investigation from the police side. Alternating view points like this cleverly allows Hannah to set up some nail biting suspense and audacious plot twists. There is a victim’s eye view from some often unreliable narrators alongside the unfolding investigation.

Her team of cops, based in the fictional but well-realised town of Spilling, centre around DS Charlie Zailer, an academic-turned detective with a sharp tongue and a volatile personal life; DC Simon Waterhouse, a brilliant but emotionally suffocated sleuth and their glacial boss, DI Proust (nicknamed The Snowman). The rest of the CID officers – including the boorish DC Sellers and the hardnosed DC Gibbs - each have their own fleshed out characters, but Hannah is savvy enough to know when to paint with broad strokes and when to delve deeper.

Each book untangles the emotional fall out from a case – Little Face centres on a manipulated and manipulative young mother and the identity of the baby she claims has been swapped; Hurting Distance is a convoluted but ultimately gripping investigation into what starts off as a missing persons case, becomes an allegation of a rape, looks like an attempted murder but finally is none and all of these, dragging all the protagonists through an emotional firestorm which has repercussions in successive books.

The Point Of Rescue pulls together a double murder, an abduction and the detectives’ own increasingly complicated relationship – Zailer and Waterhouse’s bond is too awkward to be called a romance, but the author gives you just enough to keep you intrigued, denies you easy outcomes and leaves a lot unsaid, coming back to the underlying tensions between them at salient moments, allowing you to piece together what has happened in the gaps between the books.

The Other Half Live, billed as a murder mystery with no dead body, pushes credulity but has some nicely written details like a Sunday Newspaper “rising stars” feature linking important characters and some (for once in this sort of novel) fairly accurate Art History. A Room Swept White is the most ambitious of the books, encompassing well researched, but potentially sensitive material about mothers wrongly convicted of killing their own babies, a shamed forensic paediatrician and some rather colourfully drawn TV documentary makers. As with the other books, this one is told from the perspective of a woman embedded in the story but possibly deluded about her role in it.

I found myself pulled in and gripped by the whole series (even though I read them from the middle outwards) and I enjoyed the relative unpredictability of the plots - a formula is starting to emerge but even five books in (with one more available in hardback) there is still enough invention to keep a lit-snob like me happy. Like Kate Atkinson, but with a cruel psychological bent, Sophie Hannah keeps enough style and wit in her writing and interest in her characters to satisfy even a demanding reader.

Live Review: Best Coast

2011-05-19T15:45:00.000+01:00

Here's one that got away...

Best Coast, The Arches, Glasgow, 27/4/11

Photo by Alex Woodward,@ CrimsonGlowPhotography

On last July’s Crazy For You, the much touted long-player from trio Best Coast, singer Bethany Cosentino conveys an obsession with her native California with the intensity of a teenage infatuation. It’s all about crushes on boys and long days at the beach being the most important things in the world. As one song puts it, “When the sun don’t shine you aren’t mine.”

Taking the stage to the Beach Boys’ California Girls and greeting us with a “Waaaasup?!” Cosentino’s distinctly lo-fi glamour and directness with the crowd is demonstrated when she decries a heckler for daring to tell her that he doesn’t like her beloved cat, as featured on the album cover, with a pithy retort. (“Suck My Dick!”) She’s like a surfer dude version of Courtney Love.

It soon becomes apparent that the stoner attitude of her songs are her code to live by, after The Sun Was High And So Was I she says “Feel free to move, y’all look kinda bored, smoke some weed like my guys have.”

There is a Ramones-like quality of happy dumbness to Summer Moon, which is dedicated to the beautiful weather. New song Gone Again has a wordless vocal intro and sounds like a work in progress. Like on the older material, too many of the harmonies that gave their album richness are missing, a backing singer or some vocal participation from ex-Vivian Girls drummer Ali Koehler would make no end of difference.

Boyfriend, the most direct nod to the saccharine masochism of the 1960s Girl Groups is the pop hit of the set. A stoned Shirelles go garage. When The Sun Don’t Shine looses its melodic hold and while most of the songs are basically solid enough, sometimes the band can’t quite keep up with themselves and things seem on the verge of falling apart. Cosentino needs to vary her wailing vocal, as the songs are already unsophisticated.

Lesley Gore’s That’s The Way Boys Are is followed by a demand that we all go home and “download a bunch of her songs.”

Our Deal, gets bogged down and comes off like Joan Jett with no bite. A new song, When You Wake Up/11.30 has no wild departures from the formula and yet more of what is starting to sound like mooing. A crowd surfer braves the security guards and receives congratulations and Cosentino apologies for referring to the UK instead of to Scotland, pleading our forgiveness as she didn’t graduate high school.

A mosh pit erupts at the younger end of the all ages crowd as if to embody the dumb urgency of youth embedded in the songs. Apparently members of the support band Spectrals (who owe an even bigger dept to the Phil Spectre back catalogue than Best Coast) are causing a ruckus, spitting beer and generally kicking off. Closing number Each And Everyday is the noisiest of the night, it takes unrequited love to levels that without the innocence of the tune might be construed as stalking, but as a threat it lacks teeth. The band don’t seem to have the chops to cut loose and really impress, and without the production values of the album, nor do they quite have the charm.

More photos by Alex on his site

Overdue Reviews Archive 2010-2011

2011-03-30T12:18:00.002+01:00

Going back to last year, here's a round up of stuff I've been writing for various sites. Think of it as a folder full of clippings...

For The Fly:

Wickerman Festival

We Are The Physics

Big Chill Festival

Wilco, supported by Philip Selway

Fyfe Dangerfield

Eastern Promise at Platform

Sparrow & The Workshop, supported by Fists

Frankie & The Heartstrings

Mudhoney

Jim Jones Revue

The Black Keys

Foals

The Phantom Band

The Yummy Fur

Kochka

A Blog about Celtic Connections

For Wears The Trousers:

School Of Seven Bells: Disconnect From Desire

Land Of Talk: Cloak & Cipher

Josephine Foster & The Victor Herrero Band

Dark Dark Dark: Wild Go

Ani DiFranco

Jessica Lea Mayfield: Tell Me

Joan As Policewoman

Janelle Monae

New for This Is Fake DIY:

Crystal Stilts

and bang up to date with

Deerhunter, with Lower Dens

Escapees: Reviews that got spiked...

2011-03-30T11:41:00.002+01:00

Here are a few reviews from the last few months, that for whatever reason, didn't quite make the cut:

Band Of Horses, O2 Academy, Glasgow, 27/1/11

Apparently, in 2011, bands who want to fill good sized venues need to be sensitive guys with beards and checked shirts. North Carolina based five-piece, Band Of Horses, fulfil this requirement having mastered a brand of classic American rock whose appeal, judging by tonight’s turn out, is as strong as ever.

Is There A Ghost establishes this formula. Country tinged Southern rock, with amiable vocals, melodic details and radio friendly hooks. Further polished on last year’s Infinite Arms album, this method serves them well, even when some of the more delicate details get dulled by the bombast.

Lazy comparisons with Neil Young don’t hold much water: songs are earnest yet ambiguous - emotional dilemmas, starry nights, life on the road - all are touched on with a vagueness that leaves space for the audience to add their own imaginative interpretations. There’s no danger of any politics or polemic sneaking through.

Compliments is one of several transiently engaging numbers that have spread the band’s popularity across the world. Their slideshow of tour snaps indicates they had a particularly good time in Australia and at an array of German festivals.

No One’s Gonna Love You, the kind of song that polite boys put on mixtapes, recalls a drowsy Midlake. Ben Bridwell’s twangy voice is ably complimented but the band is too workmanlike to possess either the dexterity of My Morning Jacket or the melodic invention of Granddaddy.

Factory’s “this motel ain’t home” sentiment loses its crispness, the organ part sounding muddy. Monochrome National Geographic images of barns and landscapes seek to conjure some country authenticity for Laredo.

A cover of Silver Jews’ Black And Brown Blues sounds like a band fooling around to enliven an overlong tour, but they’re happy to be duty bound to deliver the goods.

Belle & Sebastian, Barrowlands, Glasgow, 20/12/10

I Fought In A War, this band’s answer to Two Little Boys, provides an understated start to the second of three festive hometown gigs. The stage is full, with up to a dozen musicians helping to create the now distinctive B&S sound.

Tonight’s set is largely made up of songs from their second and most Glaswegian record, If You’re Feeling Sinister, and by comparison some of their later material sounds twee to the point of self parody.

Stuart Murdoch, demonstrating his fey shadow boxing moves, which is never really what you could call dancing, seems narcissistic and oddly sexless. His trendy teacher persona takes charge, he even calms the crowd with “Now, now class settle down”.

An appeal for participation precedes Stevie Jackson’s I’m Not Living In The Real World. It typifies the polished nostalgia for childhood that pervades many of their songs, including Lord Anthony which sees Murdoch have mascara applied to his lashes by a front row fan.

Suki In The Graveyard adds another to their gallery of characters and We Rule The School begins as a melancholy piano ballad but ends as a anthem. A collection for a local homeless mission sees buckets passed through the crowd as Murdoch and Jackson busk a new Christmas song.

Mayfly, with it’s Stylophone solo, highlights their influence on a generation of bands who force too many instruments into their line ups. B&S use this novelty sparingly, a quality exemplified by Stars Of Track And Field and The Boy With The Arab Strap’s recorder solo; never has one been greeted with such enthusiasm.

Get Me Away From Here I’m Dying proves to be the perfect B&S song even though by now Murdoch’s voice is flagging. Monica Queen reprises her vocals for a driving version of Lazy Line Painter Jane. Only an impromptu audience rendition of The Beatles Daytripper, inspired by Jackson’s expanded intro to Legal Man can top it. Class dismissed.

St Deluxe, King Tut’s, Glasgow, 19/12/10

The Glasgow fuzz pop quartet channel the robust spirit of 1990s American alternative rock into their noisy yet tuneful repertoire. They draw a loyal audience who tonight display extra fortitude by showing up at a very cold King Tuts, but the chill keeps the band keen and a new drummer adds momentum and focus to their sound. Our plaid-shirted heroes play with commitment and spark, even if they can sometimes be a little whammy bar-happy.

A couple of the new songs they play tonight sound less derivative alongside their older tunes. It’s a torch they’ve been burning for a while, a descendent of shoegaze with feedback soaked vibes that is currently being indulged in by bands such as Yuck and Crocodiles.

At their catchiest, Slip Away with it’s pounding riff, they can recall Sebadoh or Dinosaur Jr and they’re at their best when they keep things spiky.

A mutual love of the music of Spacemen 3, demonstrated by a cover of Losing Touch With My Mind, proves that when they have the courage to drop the pace they can do hypnotic just as well as they do noisy

Singer Jamie assaults his guitar with a pen, a screwdriver and the mic stand, anything to get a noise going, while guitarist Martin takes on his amp in pursuit of the cause. They close with a version of Johnny Cash’s Big River that transforms it from clattering country blues into a distorted, dark twisted tale of debauchery and doom.

St Deluxe give an assured performance tonight, a promise perhaps of a more consolidated direction in future, and an affirmation of their ability to damage eardrums in the best possible way.

St Deluxe's website

Come On Gang, Capitals, Betatone Distraction, King Tuts, Glasgow, 16/12/10

Trio Betatone layer their sound with synths and distortion but their electronics never feel like a gimmick. Compared to the barrage of laptops presented by Capitals they have personality too. Come On Gang’s singing drummer Sarah multitasks her way through some punchy punk pop, more urgent live than on record. Such doubling up limits the band to a single style and turns every song into a headlong rush to the finish. Single Fortune Favours The Brave demonstrates this straightforwardness and her admirable amount of puff. But when she introduces “another stompy one”, they sound too polite to be a proper punk band.

Yuck, Captain’s Rest, Glasgow, 11^th October 2010 3.5 stars

Yuck comprise drummer Jonny with his sphagnum crash helmet of hair; nonchalant bassist Mariko; singer Daniel, and guitarist Max who both look like they need to eat more pies. With scuzzy melodies cribbed from early Teenage Fanclub and Sonic Youth, their influences are about the same age as the band themselves. The presence of a chump with a paparazzi flash distracts the audience but is indicative of the buzz around the band. New single Rubber, coming soon on heavyweight vinyl, is a fuzz-drenched, slowed down jam making use of their bank of pedals. If they consolidate their sound in time for the release of their debut LP next year they might just be worth the hype.

All photos by Michael Gallacher, more at Twistyfoldy.net

Life After God.

2011-01-06T12:40:00.001Z

I've reached 1998 in my reading for on my other blog, Not Rock. Further to my previous post about Douglas Coupland, I've found a paragraph from his Life After God that I wrote in my diary that seems to still be affecting the way I think:

"Everyday each of us experiences a few little moment that have just a bit more resonance than other moments - we hear a word that sticks in our mind - or maybe we have a small experience that pull us out of ourselves if only briefly. (...)
And if we were to collect these small moments in a notebook and save them... we would see certain trends emerge from our collection - certain voices would emerge that have been trying to speak through us. We would realize that we have been having another life altogether, one we didn't even know was going on inside us. And maybe this other life is more important than the one we think of as being real - this chunky day-to-day world of furniture and noise and metal. So just maybe it is these small silent moments which are the true story-making events of out lives."

Incarceration for idiots

2010-11-04T15:48:00.002Z

A quick update now it's all over: I just heard that the burglar who got charged went through court today, they've given him a substantial sentance. I think this means it's over now. Good news to get on the same day I get keys for a new flat....

Ottoline Books at Made In The Shade Supermercado 9/10/10

2010-10-05T16:51:00.001+01:00

My book selling venture, Ottoline Books (until now I've just been selling on Amazon) makes it's "live" début this Saturday. I've got film, art and cult books in the main...hopefully you can bag a bargain. I saw some pics from last weekend's Supermercado and it looks worth a visit for the cupcakes alone... so see you down there?
Check out Made In The Shade's blog about organising the market for news of other stall holders.

"Nostalgia Is A Weapon"

2010-09-05T21:17:00.001+01:00

I've been going over my old diaries from 1997 for my other blog, Notrock, and I've been reminded of some of the books and films I was reading and watching at the time. I'm kind of surprised by how formative they've been to my world view, how they have remained among my favourites ever since. In the interests of understanding the 1997 version of me, I've re-read Douglas Coupland's Generation X and since I was going back to look through some old video tapes, I've just watched Hal Hartley's film Amateur for the umpteenth time.

Hal Hartley's films seem a little obscure now, but in the mid 1990s they were touchstones for anyone who enjoyed 'art-house' cinema. Maybe it's time for a revival - a quick search finds Amateur on the bill for the New York Film Festival (along with a couple of my other faves - Bullets Over Broadway and Ed Wood - I really should get around to replacing those VHS tapes with DVDs...)

At the time, I was a Film Studies student, but I never quite managed to write the kind of essay that it deserved, I was still getting to grips with concepts like Post-modernism and Irony. Here's one in Film Journal that kind of gets to the point. I still love the film, maybe because it makes a lot of the stuff I agonised over in Film Studies make sense - parody, self-reflexivity, all that Hitchcockian malarky about 'doubles' that I never quite got my head around until after I'd finished my degree...

By 1997, I'd dropped out of English Literature in favour of History Of Art, so I was able to read books that weren't being proscribed by a University reading list. Instead my reading list mostly came from magazine interviews with people whom I admired. Hence I sought out Douglas Coupland whose first novel, Generation X, comes with the heavy qualification that it was responsible for "capturing the zeitgeist".

As this piece in the Guardian points out, so many of the book's ideas and catchphrases have "become cultural common places". For all that, I think it was his later book, Microserfs that had a greater impact on me at the time (perhaps because I'm a couple of years younger than Coupland's X-ers), but some of the buzz-words and concepts from the book - "Plastics Never Disintegrate", "You are (not) a target market" and a few more, ended up becoming part of the fabric of some of Stanley Donwood's early Radiohead artwork and website design (something that was just starting to happen around the same time as I was reading the book - in fact that might have been where it was pointed out to me in the first place.) Another instance of the interconnectedness of all things then...

Reviews Round Up...

2010-07-13T20:54:00.000+01:00

Just for the record, here is some of my recent music writing that DID make the final cut:

A couple of my reviews are in the print issue of The Fly this month (pages 25 and 28) and they've been running my other live reviews on their website, in reverse order of appearance:

Th' Legendary Shack Shakers at King Tut's last night.

Teenage Fanclub and friends Celebration of Alex Chilton at Mono on 10th June.

A longer version of the JD Set Madonna theme night at ABC2, 17th June. (The short version appears in the print edition).

One of Supergrass's final gigs, at The Barrowlands, 8th June.

Mystery Jets at Edinburgh's Electric Circus, 27th May. (A version of this, coupled with !!!'s performance at The Arches is included in the print edition).

And my contribution to the report on the rehearsals for the JD Set at Lofi studios. 19th-21st May.

For Wears The Trousers:

Wildbirds And Peacedrums EP, Iris.

A few that got away...

2010-07-11T17:22:00.000+01:00

I've been doing quite a few reviews for The Fly lately. Here are a few that got away:

Song By Toad Night with Meursault, Loch Lomond, Jonnie Common.

Mono Glasgow, 19 May 2010

Its Edinburgh based blog turned DIY record label Song By Toad’s first Glasgow show. Early signs weren’t good as the sound desk blew up with an almighty bang but after half an hour emergency equipment was borrowed and the gig went ahead.

Jonnie Common, also known as Down The Tiny Steps and as a member of ‘Toad signings Inspector Tapehead, was joined by Neil Pennycook from Meursault on squeeze box for compositions which cover themes of social inadequacy, Shogun and Oliver Reed.

Loch Lomond, from Portland Oregon, are touring as a two-piece with acoustic guitar and fiddle. Ritchie Young sings folk-edged chamber pop songs about eggs and bears with a couple of jokes thrown in. As a 6 piece they’ve played with Decemberists and they share some of their quirkiness, particularly on their “only love song” Witchy.

Meursault (pronounced Mer-So) have up to seven members when on full strength. Tonight, though they crowd the stage with instruments, they perform as a three-piece. They still manage to create an urgent barrage of sound, almost too loud for a small venue, particularly the maudlin Scots bellow of singer Neil Pennycook. The squeezebox wheezes like bagpipes, the Mac book gives out choppy beats and there is a constant wall of rhythm guitar on early single A Few Kind Words.

New Room builds to an epic crescendo with Neil pounding the dust out of Mono’s on-stage rug with his foot. Finale, One Day This Will All Be Fields, has all three sing accompanied by tenor ukulele, “and we will descend from the sky/ and we will bury you alive” becomes a gentle yet malevolent threat and the most effective thing in the set. Maybe less IS more?

Stag & Dagger Glasgow, Various Venues, 22 May 2010

Glasgow’s hot – perfect weather for a festival except this one is inside, spread over seven venues. Scottish talent from folkies Sparrow & The Workshop to garage barflies Schnapps, is on display. Among the best bits: Django Django - budget Betas with a fondness for sound FX, coconut shells and loud shirts; The amazing voice of Jesca Hoop; Hardcore punks Divorce covering Fleetwood Mac; The air-con actually working in Sleazy’s; The unintentionally hilarious Sleigh Bells (think the Ting Tings gone industrial); Patrick from Titus Andronicus’ spectacular beard; And finally Silver Columns getting tired and sweaty people dancing at 2am.

A Sunny Day In Glasgow, Glasgow Nice N Sleazy, 15th May 2010

As Scotland catches up with springtime, Philadelphia-based A Sunny Day In Glasgow return with a reshuffled line-up. Multi-instrumentalist Ben Daniels is now joined by Annie Fredrickson and Jen Goma taking the place of his twin sisters on vocals.
At the dreamy, droney end of the shoegaze scale – a more ethereal Lush or a Kraut Rock Cocteau Twins with the texture to make Panda Bear jealous - their dissonant vocals become dark siren calls on Failure. Melodies are buried but nagging and it’s just a taster of the layers on last years’ LP Ashes Grammar.
A mid-set take on Fleetwood Mac’s Everywhere comes as a surprise but provides punctuation amid the drone.

(Photos from this gig)

The Phantom Band, James Yorkston, Alasdair Roberts, Remember Remember, Platform, Easterhouse, 27 February 2010

Ex-Delgado Alun Woodward aka Lord Cut-Glass now music programmer for Easterhouse’s Platform venue launched a new season of gigs with a four band line-up that had the scensters of Glasgow out in force.

Rock Action’s Remember Remember, now a five-piece band, rather than the one-man operation of earlier shows, have influences including Tangerine Dream, Can and Tortoise. The charm of their eponymous 2008 album, all found sounds and home made loops, gets lost when rendered by a beardy band who take everything a little too seriously.

Alasdair Roberts, with his accountant’s tie and lanky frame makes for an unlikely troubadour, but his murder ballads mark out a unique performer. Inspired by Scottish musical traditions and the 1950s British folk scene, his songs teem with dark imagery and significance. Anyone who can fit the word “antediluvian” comfortably into a lyric or sing about a woman being burned at the stake in Dundee deserves respect.

Fife’s James Yorkston’s easy banter and wonderful voice belie his lyrical skill and make his brand of folk singing look deceptively straightforward. Damp afternoons become romantic odysseys and you can smell the peaty whisky and log fires conjured by songs like Shipwreckers and When The Haar Rolls In. Clarinettist Sarah Scutt, a new addition to the JY line-up provided a jazzy dimension to the sound.

The Phantom Band have a more muscular sound than anything else heard tonight. They are an unlikely point of convergence between Krautrock and Scottish Folk, suggesting The Beta Band minus the psychiatric issues, a masculine Stereolab with impressive locked-groove drumming. Scottishness is worn on their sleeves and at times this threatens to become overwhelming; a chugging intro dangerously conjures The Proclaimers 500 Miles. But with Folk Song Oblivion or Throwing Bones they recall the angularity of Devo. The pounding drums on Left Hand Wave go a bit Sisters Of Mercy, but despite this four bands for £5 still seems like excellent value for money.

The Chuckle Brothers remanded in custard

2010-07-11T16:09:00.000+01:00

Apologies for the break in transmission, I’ve not really felt like writing anything much other than gig reviews for the past few weeks. What with one thing and another I’ve not been in the right place.

Many thanks to everyone who has helped me out. All the contributions and donations, loans and loaned equipment, beds to sleep in and glasses of wine have been much appreciated. Thanks also for some of the comments I’ve had on the piece I wrote, it’s heartening to note that, if nothing else, it made an entertaining read. I’m slightly worried now that to keep up that kind of output I’ll have to start getting myself into scrapes. Still, sense of humour is the last thing to go; maybe it’s my way of dealing with what was a pretty nasty experience.

Various people have told me they thought I was brave, but to be honest I don’t really feel it. My main reaction has been anger, not only at the idiots for having the audacity to break in and take stuff from under my nose, but also at myself for not being able to do more about it, not having sufficient contingency to deal with the losses and for letting it drag me back down into a state of torpidity for the last couple of weeks.

I’m pretty much back to the state I was in before The Chuckle Brothers decided to help themselves to my stuff. I’m not going to go into it here, but to my knowledge the culprits have been apprehended and are in custody. Once all proceedings are over, maybe I’ll be able to write about the whole CSI Merry Hell episode in detail. Meanwhile I’ve discovered that I’d backed up slightly more material than I feared from my computer, and invested in a new external hard drive to back up all future stuff… stay tuned for normal service to be resumed.

Home Invasion for Idiots

2010-06-05T13:04:00.007+01:00

I find I need more than ever to process life by writing it down. I've had surreal days before but Thursday has topped the charts. I feel like I'm in a bad episode of The Bill scripted by Chris Morris.This is pretty much as I wrote it down, unable to sleep until about until 3am Friday morning:

I'm packing to leave the house to go and visit friends for the weekend, I'm listening to the 6Music, checking my email, reading an article about feminist reaction to Mr Gove's new education policy, a fairly average sort of morning, thinking I'd better get a move on if I want to be at the station in time to buy a sandwich before I catch the train. I just have to take the bin out.

On the bottom flight of stairs (my 'granny flat' is on the third floor), I notice that the storm doors are closed and the front door is open. Odd. Maybe the Profs have come back from their trip early (it's their house, they're away a lot). I call out a couple of hellos but some thing's not right. I stand still, clutching my rubbish bag, a man in a hooded top turns in his tracks from the front living room, another man behind him darts back inside. When I see them from behind for a split second I think they're builders or something, but Hoody has pulled the drawstrings up so his face is covered. He questions my presence and tells me I'm having a bad day. It's like he took a moment to come up with a little speech. Didn't I hear them hammering on the door? Didn't I hear them forcing the lock? There's not meant to be anybody here when we do that. I stand on the stairs, 'Just go.' This is not happening, it's too wrong. I'm frozen to the spot and I still have a bin liner full of coffee grounds and melon rinds in my hand.

Hoody guy leaves his mate to turn over the front room and insists I accompany him upstairs. I find myself on the stairs and then standing on the landing, subconsciously I'm blocking his path to my part of the house. I drop my bag of rubbish. He's opening doors, demanding to know where the money is, where is all the STUFF? These must be rich people, this is a big house. Why are there only books and pictures. He calls to his mate, who being downstairs can't hear him. He shouts 'Oi Mate' in what at first sounds strangulated, but then I realise he's putting on an Essex-Mockney gangster film accent, somewhere between Danny Dyer and Bob Hoskins, to distract me from the fact that he's obviously a local. (of course to my English-living in Scotland for years ears one Glasgow accent is pretty much indistinguishable from another but anyway...) 'Oi Mayte come up 'ere.' or something to that effect. Is the artful dodger going to show up? One of those lad's from Lock Stock? His mate comes upstairs and goes into the drawing room (yes it's the sort of house that has a drawing room). Hoody waves a laptop charger (the Prof's) at me and wants to know where the corresponding Macbook is - as far as I know it's out of the country with its owner. He doesn't understand the absence of plasma screens, wads of cash, boxes of jewellery.

He heads for the Master Bedroom and insists I follow to be where he can keep an eye on me. His accent has gone from Essex to East End and back again, when it slips he sort of Americanises it but the odd word comes out Scottish and harsh. I stand in the doorway of the bedroom not wanting to cross the threshold or allow him to close the door. This isn't happening. He will see sense and just leave. I try not to cry out. Just leave. He starts overturning a jewellery box but there's nothing in it he wants. 'Where is it?' he keeps asking, 'Who are these people who have this big house and no stuff?'

I say something about how the owner of that box doesn't wear jewellery, if she's got anything she will have it on her and she's away.

He fumbles with the tiny drawers of the box, I don't think he has proper gloves so doing anything with his fingers is tricky. He was trying not to leave prints, of course, but seemed to be using his sleeves. There's no gold, I can see that from where I'm standing. He plucks out a ring, but tosses it. He tears open a couple of drawers then spots the wardrobe, pulls open some compartments, shakes a couple of evening bags, they're empty, they fall to the floor. 'Ah! Oxfam Visa' he's found a credit card. But he flicks it dismissively back into the cupboard - I'm not sure if he rejected it because it has expired or because it denoted a charity. He asks me repeatedly to sit down but I find I cannot move from the spot in spite of the fact that my knees have turned to liquid. 'It's another world' he says, his accent slipping. I thought he was going to give me a speech about class difference, he pondered the point, exasperated. I keep repeating that there is no cash, no jewellery worth having. He doesn't understand. I want to explain that left-leaning, allotment tending, academic liberals live here. They don't wear ostentatious jewellery, let alone leave it stashed around the house. They rarely even watch TV. Hoody asks me again to sit down, pointing at a wicker stool. But I really don't want to. I lean on the door.

'I'm not going to rape you or anything like that, that's not what I'm abahht.' he says, back in Mockney again. It hadn't even consciously crossed my mind. ' This is what I do,' he says. I think he even said 'I'm a blagger.' at this point. I can't be sure as I was trying not to start laughing hysterically. Career burglar he may be but he doesn't appear to have much of a contingency plan for finding a person in a house. His pal comes back, he's been addressing him as 'Mate' and getting called Mate back again, but the second guy's mockney is even more wasp-chewing, there is a reason why Ray Winston never gets a part in Taggart.
I'm staring at the back of the door, wishing all this would just stop happening. The second guy is standing beside me and at first I can't take in what's weird about him and then my brain processes it. He's got a plastic carrier bag over his head, eye holes crudely fashioned, like some sort of upcycled balaclava. He's also brandishing a very big knife. He looks for a nod from Hoody, but he says 'Nah need for that, Mate.' and the knife, never really pointed AT me, it's presence just being demonstrated for my benefit, is lowered. Baghead goes away. A jittery man with no peripheral vision and a very big knife. I'm glad he's got more important things to do than stand around waiting for me to do something stupid. He makes a show of cutting a cord attached to the phone on the landing. He obviously can't see too well though, as it's a digital cordless and he's just sliced through the power cable.

Hoody is now addressing him by a name, a pre-arranged pseudonym or a spur of the moment imaginative addition to this bizarre, scary panto that I'm stuck in the middle of, I don't know.
Bedroom cupboard exhausted, Hoody decides it's time for the top floor of the house and pushes me in front. I really, really don't want these bastards in my living space. 'There's nothing up there.'

Somehow up until now they've been in the house, but not quite in MY house. If we go upstairs then they will be violating my space. I walk slowly, unable to feel my legs, unable to stop myself emitting a sort of dry sobbing noise. I'm not going to cry in front of these pricks but I'm shaking. I think I might be angry. It's all I can do to keep quiet.

They take a quick shuftie in the spare room, I bite back the words 'there's nothing in there.' Maybe I should let them carry on, waste some effort turning over the old spare beds and dusty book shelves, but part of me just wants them to get this over with. Hoody passes me and is in my room. Baghead goes to poke about in my kitchen and tips over a few things in the mountain of boxes, broken lamps, shopping bags and junk I keep in there. They're in front of me in all their ridiculous and terrifying reality in my room. It's all suddenly got real, like someone turned the brightness up on the picture. Hoody spies my macbook on the desk. It's plugged in but he can't seem to identify the charger. He has to make his eye hole bigger. His mate pushes me into the room and tells me to sit down and this time I do. I think I might be whimpering. 'Not that, please not that it's all my work. It's months of work.' I doubt this pair can read, let alone understand what it means to try to write for some kind of living. This hurts me more than anything else. They'll get a couple of hundred quid at the most for the only valuable thing I own. It's not about the hardware, although I'm always surprised at how attached I've become to the machine I call 'The Beast' but it's all the stuff on it. I try not to think about it because I know I'll start to cry.

Hoody is not satisfied that this is the only thing I've got and starts turning out the pyramid of cardboard trinket boxes on my dressing table. Unless he likes hair clips, plastic beads and toe dividers he's out of luck. His mate takes them into the bay window to look through them in the light but I know there is nothing in there. I don't own any valuable jewellery. Hoody finds the empty box from Tiffany - a souvenir from New York City but not the chain and 'cheapest thing in the shop' pendant that came in it (I later find it ravelled in a plastic bead necklace). Anything I have only has value to me. He opens my sock drawer (Tidied the day before for the first time in months) half heartedly rummages and then looses interest. His mate opens the drawer in my dressing table, I hope my stash of sanitary towels, packets of tissues and old make up gives him a start.

I'm still whimpering in the arm chair. Hoody spots my handbag and crouches down by the sofa to empty it out. He's fiddling with zips and pockets, opening the purse I keep hand cream and paracetamol in, tossing things on the floor. He eventually gets to my wallet and almost leaps for joy when he finds a ten pound note. He abandons his makeshift gloves to get into the change purse and exclaims 'A Pahhhnnnd!' but I'm not sure if it's triumph or disappointment - everything sounds the same in this weird accent that he's nicked from a football hooligan movie.

Baghead keeps saying that they should tie me up and riffles through my stuff looking for suitable items with which to do this. I have scarves and belts draped about and he's behind me testing them out and rejecting them. I can't see what he's doing but he seems jumpier than ever. Hoody is getting ever more exasperated with the disappointing contents of my handbag and then liberates my iphone. I've only had it a couple of weeks. He points at it and says 'Charger?' and I give him the plug from my laptop bag where I'd packed it away. I don't want him to go in this bag as it also contains my ipod and camera, various other cables and bits and pieces.

He puts the phone on the sofa and continues to try and get the cards out of my wallet, they're jammed in at the best of times but he's trying to do it without touching the outside surface. He manages to extract my Delta card but seems to have missed my credit card. He wipes the wallet on the crotch of his trousers and throws it against the wall.

Baghead is still coming and going. He trips over my suitcase. Shame he doesn't have the knife in his hand. He's rejected a scarf and now seems interested in the belt off my fleece dressing gown. He's still keeps saying 'tie her up' and Hoody keeps saying that he's getting 'really irritated now.' They tell me to shut up a few more times, but then keep saying things that demand response. I'm not even sure if they were still keeping up the accents.

Hoody wants the number for my card. At first I don't understand and then when I do I give him the first PIN that springs to mind. He says I'm lying but then loses interest and starts asking his mate if he's got the iphone. He then shakes out my signing on book as if he's expecting it to be full of cash. He tears an envelope with a job application form, he's getting a bit desperate now. He manages to miss the large paperback copy of David Simon's Homicide that was also in my bag, (the irony of being in the middle of a very enjoyable document of CID procedures will hit me later on.) Somewhere in all of this, Baghead flicked me on the top of the head and told me to shut up. I was expecting it to hurt and it didn't. Hoody keeps asking where the iphone is, having forgotten he's put it on the sofa, he just can't see it through his eye holes. He keeps looking at me as if I've some how managed to magic it across the room. He tries to open the pockets on my laptop bag but can't manage it, the only thing he takes out is the little case I keep my camera charger in - I thought he'd got the camera too but turns out he left it - he's now the proud owner of a Japanese character make-up purse with a useless charger and camera cable -he hands it to Baghead to put in his rucksack/swagbag.
He spots the Delta card on the arm of the sofa where he left it and asks me again for the number. I repeat the same one as before digit for digit this time and add that I changed it so I could remember it, and he seems satisfied. He spies my other Apple charger and asks what it's for. 'Spare.' I say, 'I'm always loosing them.' He's missed my ipod and I'm not going to direct him to it. He tosses a few papers around my desk and for some reason I find myself trying to tell him that the speakers aren't worth anything, but he hadn't even recognised them, I think his hood was slipping over his eyes.

Baghead finally gets his way and they go about wrapping the woollen belt from my red cardigan around one wrist in a childish selection of knots. They tell me not to look so I'm not sure who is doing what. He finally gets around to my other hand, it feels like a tangle but it's not all that tight. They loop the fleece dressing gown cord around my ankles, but again it's not tight. Hoody repeats that he's getting really irritated, so I'd better not do anything. He puts my land line phone on the floor and stomps on it until the receiver cord snaps.

He goes out of the room, perhaps to make sure Baghead isn't leaving without him, and the radio is still on (it's been on the whole time), I'm glad I was never a fan of Faithless and gladder still they're on playing a session of unfamiliar material. I don't want to have to associate any music I know with this. I stretch my feet towards the busted phone, but it's definitely off the hook. They seem to be gone so I reach round to see if I can still dial with my hands tied. I can but then what? No one can hear me without the handset. I jump back into the chair just in time and make like I'm just fidgeting when Hoody comes back in. He's pissed off now, He leans over and in his Mockney voice calls me a cunt and tells me not to try anything. I don't feel scared now. Maybe because I know there is nothing else for him to take. I know, somehow, for all his talk, that if he were going to strike me he would have done it by now. I don't quite feel as if I'm actually here anymore. He calls me a cunt again, but it doesn't sound right in the Essex voice, it's slipping, if he were giving me the full Glaswegian obscenity treatment it would be a lot worse, but he's having to change the order of his words to fit them into his fake voice. He realises he's making eye contact with me and tells me not to look at his face. So I stare at his shoes.

He starts asking if I know what HIV is and getting slightly carried away trying to impress me with his knowledge of what all the acronyms stand for. He's got a year to live he says. He doesn't care. Do I understand? He's got months...He's making this up as he goes along, I'm sure. I tell him I understand, just go, I'm not doing anything. I understand. My voice is clear again now.
Maybe he doesn't have anything to lose, do I know what that means? I want him to stop talking and go away so I keep saying that I understand and looking down at his feet.

'Oi Mate?' calls Baghead from downstairs, and Hoody, medical melodrama not quite resolved goes out to find him. Faithless kick off another track. I sit still, not quite ready to pull my hands free in case he comes back to tell me more about his doctor's opinions. I wait until the end of the song, a minute or two? I think they've gone. I tentatively free my hand keeping the cord around my wrist so I can feign it again if I need to. I leave my feet, but all I need to do is get my shoe off and then I'll be free. I can reach my desk and know that my old mobile is under the pile of papers. With my new phone the mobile company have sent me some spare sim cards I grab one and the phone and sit back, wedging them down the side of the chair. I want another moment to make sure they've gone. With trembling hands I get the back off the phone and eventually get the battery out. I get the sim card in and close it up. I turn it on and my hands are shaking so much I can't press the buttons. It goes into set up mode and somehow lights up in German. I shout 'Have you gone?' and can hear nothing and no one moving about. I dial 999 and then realise the reason I ditched this phone is because it only works on speaker. I turn it on and it's impossibly loud. I get put through by the emergency voice but she's reciting this new phone number at me and it's so loud, I manage to say my address and then hang up. Fuck, they will have heard that if they're here. I spin round for the hands free headphones, which are thankfully where I left them in the phone's box (which Hoody and Baggy have completely missed) I plug in and dial again, this time getting through for long enough to get through my name, address and what's happening. I cut the woman short and say I don't know if they're still in the house.

I get up and hop to the open door. I shout again but they've gone now, I'm pretty sure. I go back and take the tie off my feet. I go to the top of the stairs, calling out loudly. I go down one flight at a time slowly and then speed up as I get to the ground floor. By the time I'm outside I can feel tears running down my face. I'm not outside in the sunshine for long before I hear sirens. And then I see a couple of cop cars up at the other end of the street. They, like all mini cab drivers, have gone to the wrong end of the split street. I wave and two black clad PCs are running towards me. They are there quickly. The other car drives round the right way and is soon in front of me. The two PCs ask me how many people in the house and I say two but I'm not 100% sure if they've gone. They radio, they draw their batons and they go in. A WPC and another guy arrive and sit with me on the front step as I tell them what's happened. The first two come back out. 'It's a big house isn't it?'

They send for the dog squad and soon a very keen looking German Shepherd is being let into the house, he takes about 2 minutes to check that there is no sign of life inside. I don't get to pat him. Time is settling back into its normal speed again now. Two CID guys show up and I take them through the whole thing, first as a walk round and then as a statement. The SOCO show up and the whole thing takes a couple of hours... It's over and I don't want to stay here any more.

Busy week

2010-05-21T18:46:00.000+01:00

It's been a busy week, been to a clutch of gigs and had a load of pieces published.

There's more to come but so far the Drugstore review got the Wears the Trousers treatment; I got my first gig review on The Fly website - of The Charlatans at The Barrowlands; and I did an on the hop review of The Dead Weather for WTT... more stuff soon.

Thanks to Alan (Editor at WTT) for his ever-sterling work and to Michael for the photies.

Drugstore, ICA London 5/5/2010

2010-05-07T16:02:00.006+01:00

The adventures of Isabel Monterio have been documented in her own inimitable style via her blog and twitter account. The search for new cowboys has been a long and entertaining one, but would they be rehearsed and ready for the first gig of the new era?

Drugstore are a band that always made more sense live than they ever did on record, and as such provided some of the best nights I’ve ever had at live shows. They were one of those rare things, a band that wear their influences blatantly and yet manage to sound like nothing but themselves.

Isabel makes you feel what she is feeling, her songs are felt as much as heard and the performance is experienced viscerally. She might be tough, ironic and smart mouthed between songs but when she sings she is soulful and direct in a way that few “indie” vocalists can manage. For the duration of the show you are under her spell. And it’s a place where decisions are made with the heart and not the head. Old favourite Superglider has an emotional clarity and now makes sense like never before, as with the rest of the older material it benefits from being worked over by the new musicians. The band compliment Monterio’s strong on-stage character and serve her vision, with more shows they will add their own distinct ingredients to the Drugstore mix.

There was a more country-orientated sound, with less cello than the Drugstore of old, what with cellist Ian Burdge having found work with the “A-List” circuit with his string group Millennia Strings. An encore of Communication Breakdown, dedicated to founder members Mike and Darron was both a full stop to the old line-up and an introduction to the potential of the new cowboys. Guitarist Tito in particular making his mark on the supporting vocals and at one point rescues Isabel from a rogue microphone stand.

This was one of those gigs where you’re not thinking about anything else for the duration of the show. No other distractions enter your head and your feet don’t touch the ground. You are lifted out of yourself and give yourself up to the will of the tiny Brazilian woman on the stage.

Later, the ICA bar is full of overwhelmed people clutching Drugstore T-shirts. This after show is for everyone; the loyal and well-travelled fans that have been willing the band on and who are looking forward to what the future holds for a very special band.

Better photos by Lex Gatineau

Muso round up

2010-03-24T20:40:00.000Z

I've been writing a few bits and pieces lately, here's a summary:

Jesca Hoop Interview

Anna Kashfi LP Review

More reviews for Wears The Trousers

Tindersticks live review

Withered Hand live review

More to come hopefully....

Nottingham Contemporary: Star City

2010-03-13T23:23:00.006Z

Star City: The Future Under Communism is the second show at the new Nottingham Contemporary gallery. I’ve been getting a-behind-the scenes look at the construction of the exhibition via this photo blog.

It was unnerving to be able to walk around and inside Mother Earth, Sister Moon, the giant sculpture inspired by cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova's space suit after watching this film documenting its construction.

The other highlight of the exhibition was a film installation by Jane and Louise Wilson, featuring footage shot at Star City, the Russian’s space training centre. Four screens surround you with disjointed sound and movement making you feel as if you're trapped inside, like a cosmonaut practicing for a journey into space. The footage of the deserted training camp becomes a poignant comment on the past glories and dashed dreams of the Soviet part in the space race.

This is what the future was supposed to look like. The propaganda produced by the USSR before the fall of the Iron Curtain made it seem possible. Some of the posters here are beautiful objects in their own right but here they are put into context. They urge the comrades to support the cosmonauts, their heroes exploring the universe for the good of the party. The irony is that the bold designs of the Soviet posters have been hugely influential on the iconography of Capitalism - we live in a world full of slogans and logos, dreams and promises.

Sparklyhorse

2010-03-07T10:18:00.000Z

When Radiohead first brought fellow EMI signings Sparklehorse out on tour I didn’t really know what to make of them. They filled the stage with instruments completely alien to the world of indie bands at the time. I remember being horrified that they had a banjo. Over the course of the tour though, my resistance started to break down. There was something intriguing and new about the blend of cryptic lyrics, bitter sweetness and beautiful melodies.

Later, I was sent an advance tape of their debut album, Vivadixie… and by the time it was actually released it was a firm favourite. It’s the kind of album I still recommend to friends, it hasn’t aged; it is always a slowly creeping revelation to the listener.

When Linkous had his accident and nearly died it was a shock, but he came back with some wonderful off the planet songs for his second album, Good Morning Spider, and returned to play live in a wheelchair. They played in Glasgow loads of times after that, often at King Tuts, an ever changing line-up with more or fewer musicians, a brass section or sometimes just Linkous on his own.
I would drag friends along and at first they didn’t know quite what to make of their array of instruments and Linkous’ Dave Stewart-ish beard, but by the end of the show they were always won over.

Good Morning Spider was a slow grower but has even more textures than the first record, I was listening to it the other day and it makes more sense now than it did at the time. Later records like It’s A Wonderful Life developed their sound further and have some truly lovely moments. Then there was Linkous’ production work on the first A Camp record and more recently the Dangermouse collaboration Dark Night Of The Soul - both bare his unmistakable imprint.

At the last Glasgow gig a couple of years ago, Sparklehorse was just Linkous on his own using musicians from the support band to back him. At first it seemed like a reduced performance but the strength of the material shone through. I remember I’d had a rotten day, was in a bit of a state and made it to the gig late. I’d nearly just given up and gone home but I made it in time to see them play.
The songs, about the emptiness of the galaxy, the beautifulness of small things, tiny details, loneliness, surreal observations, motorcycle gas tanks and horses teeth made me cry. Sometimes that is all you can do when you realise it’s all about nothing and it doesn’t really matter anyway.

I feel that way this morning, waking up slightly too early on a Sunday, when I might ordinarily have put on a Sparklehorse album to start the day, only to find out the very very sad news about Mark Linkous’ death.

Adventures in Ebaying

2010-01-31T18:19:00.004Z

In an effort to raise some much needed cash, I’ve been selling on some "online market places".

I’ve been an ebayer for a good few years and have been astonished at what people will buy. I’ve mostly sold books and DVDs, which occasionally make a bit more than what they originally cost – or at least enough to buy more, or the next box set in a series.

Occasionally I sell something random – a Fairy Liquid Power Dish Brush (a sort of battery operated loo brush but for cleaning your dishes) that was sent to me by an over enthusiastic PR who didn’t understand the meaning of the word “No”, went for a fiver. Some melamine cups and saucers went for double what I paid for them and made a collector of Melaware happy. I’ve shipped Doc Martens to Australia and been paid extra to express post some vintage shoes to Canada.

Probably my best and most unexpected bit of profiteering was making close to £40 for a theatre programme featuring David Tennant, from a performance of Look Back In Anger that I’d been to just before his TV career really took off – which sold to an individual with a purchase history almost completely made up of David Tennant memorabilia. My habit of hanging onto programmes and promotional material paid off when I sent some art catalogues to Mexico and a play script to the Royal Shakespeare Company Library in Stratford-upon-Avon.

I sold a book on Dorothy Wordsworth to a lady who needed it immediately the auction ended, so that her mother could read it for her book group. I ended up rendezvousing with her in a coffee shop by Queen Street station. Our emails were like something from a spy novel, “I’ll be the blonde in the white mac...”

I’ve packed off hard to find VHS versions of obscure early films staring now popular actors (and in one case re-contacted a buyer to offer them some cuttings on the same star, that I just happened to have saved – the fee barely covered the postage but it was cool to send something like that to someone who was obviously a fan).

I keep my eye on new releases and choose my moment to flog an artist’s back catalogue or a book just before it gets made into a film. There was a run on the novels of James Ellroy, for example, after he was featured on Desert Island Discs a couple of weeks ago.

As an habitué of charity shops and second hand emporiums I’m now always on the look out for anything that might have a bit of resale value. Recently I lucked out in the Sally Army and got all three Stieg Larsson novels for £2. I read them all in about a week (they're addictive!) The Girl Who Kicked A Hornet’s Nest in hardback turned out to be a first edition and I’m just about to post it to the USA having made a nearly 2000% profit!

I’ve become quite ruthless and unsentimental about selling my vinyl, cult books and CDs, weeding out music I either no longer listen to or which I’ve since acquired on MP3. Vinyl LPs in particular seem to weight in at a profit if they’re in good condition, I’ve even had to buy more special cardboard mailers (off eBay of course) to cope with the demand.

Anything that I’ve been given for free, or bought at a low price is ripe for listing as in these straightened times a little income goes a long way. EBay’s recent change of rules about postage charges (you can no longer charge postage and packing fees on things like books, DVDs and Music for UK customers) has cramped my style a little bit – it’s definitely become a buyer’s market and you have to be prepared to either make a loss or suffer a very small profit margin.

Because of these changes, I’ve been having a go at selling on Amazon’s Marketplace. It turns out to be quite straightforward, and if anything it’s quicker to list things on Amazon as items can be added using their ISBN or product code – plus there is usually already a picture and description on the site. In the last fortnight I’ve added about two dozen books, CDs and DVDs and I’ve averaged one sale per day. Amazon deducts it’s fees from the final selling total (and they charge the buyer for postage on your behalf). Depending on the item you’re selling this sometimes means you come out ahead and sometimes you take a hit for selling a heavier item (DVDs are cheaper to send than the Amazon P&P rate but some books cost way more.)

There is also the small matter of keeping an eye on your inventory. Many of the sellers on Amazon seem to be bulk warehouses or book shops in their own right, and some of the more competitive ones seem to check their prices on a daily basis. I’ve had a nightly battle on my hands to keep my prices down, (I don’t know about you, but when I buy something from Amazon Marketplace I always tend to go for the cheapest option as long as the seller has a good feedback score.) It’s paid off though, as I’ve sold a couple of items by knocking a few vital pence off the price to make them more attractive.

So far I seem to have been having a good turn over and can barely keep up with the daily visits to the Post Office. Amazon know a good thing, however and don’t credit your earnings until you’ve been registered for 2 weeks – which means that all postage costs come out of your own pocket for this period. I would say that their fees make up about 10% of what I’ve made and postage about 20% give or take. I stocked up on packaging materials at the big Pound Shop in the centre of town before this run started (having run out of jiffy bags to recycle and missed out on the last batch to be offered on Glasgow’s sporadically interesting Freecycle Forum.)

It’s been a pretty good week, so much so that I started thinking about hunting for some more stock. My local charity shops are pretty good for books and the occasional gem (for example the Joan Hickson era Miss Marple DVD box set bought for a tenner, watched and enjoyed, sold on for about £30) and I salve any conscience by donating things that don’t sell, won’t sell (clothes are on the whole a dead loss unless they have some novelty or design kudos) or which will mean that I get a voucher back to spend in M&S (Oxfam are still running this offer!).

But in the post-Portas world, a lot of the charity shops have got wise and priced up their goods, that feeling of bargain hunting has diminished somewhat. I don’t think some of them realise that people aren’t going to pay £4 for a second hand DVD that they can buy online for about £1.99.

In the interests of research, I made a foray into the world of car boot sales this morning. I woke up relatively early and jumped on the bus to the Polmadie Car Boot Sale on the other side of town. The bus route looked pretty close on the map, but I’d not taken into account the M8 motorway extension works. The road giving access to the sale was closed. After missing my bus stop, having an unscheduled walk around Rutherglen and bussing it back to the big sign pointing to the Sale, I navigated across the large road works that looked like the sort of place where someone would bury a body in an episode of Taggart and finally found the decrepit warehouse with broken windows that is home to this thrice weekly boot sale.

Inside it was absolutely freezing, quite dark and about two thirds empty. This was the real dregs of second hand selling. EBay really has pretty much killed off this sort of early morning bargain hunting. Like something out of a post apocalyptic dystopian movie, people huddled around makeshift tables and stalls with small piles of defunct and obsolete electrical equipment, racks of damp looking clothes, unwanted books, cassette tapes, crockery, a job lot of cheap thermal long johns (which surely everyone here, freezing their bits off since 6am, should have been queuing up for).

This is the kind of stuff that charity shops reject as not good enough to put on their shelves. If anyone was selling anything, I couldn’t see it; these people would be lucky to cover the £10 fee charged to secure a plot. I did a circuit of the place, rubbing my hands together to try to keep warm and ended up back at the first stall I’d looked at. I bought a couple of DVDs for a pound each. The chap gave me a fist full of change and looked offended that I hadn’t tried to haggle the price down.

Disheartened, I went back to find a bus stop on the other side of the road works and the rail depot. I half expected to see Viggo Mortensen and his shopping trolley from The Road go by.
Viggo takes some bargains home from the car boot.

Back at home, I’ve bumped a few CDs from Amazon over to Play.com (they are refunding their selling fees on the first five items you sell before the end of February so it seems worth a punt), and checked out the mobile phone accessories that I put on eBay last week.

On the advice of the Money Saving Expert I weighed in my old mobile phone (and received a cheque for nearly £13) and I’ve sold on the headphones, USB and data stick that came with it – not for much, admittedly, but it’s a few quid for very little output and everything counts. And hey, it seems to be keeping the Royal Mail in business…

Sticky Back Plastic

2010-01-15T17:01:00.010Z

You can tell I'm trying to write, because I'm becoming better and better at displacement activities.

Today's project was something I've been meaning to do for ages. I revamped my TV cabinet.
I inherited this rather nasty looking piece of furniture when some friends moved house. In the process of installing it, the classy fake wood finish got damaged. I had a brainwave about how to make funkier and cover up the damage at the same time. It took me a while to track down the material I needed but it came to me in a flash - the magic word - FABLON! I ordered three rolls of the loudest pattern I could find online and it arrived today.

With a bit of trial and error and a few redone edges I covered most of the visible parts of the cabinet and used what I'd got left over to cover a box I've been using as a makeshift coffee table. Voila, an only slightly migraine inducing zebra living room set!

Maybe now I can finish that review I've been trying to write for 3 days... if I can resist settling down to watch a box set on my inviting new crazy zebra TV!?

100 Days / Fail Better

2010-01-11T16:11:00.005Z

Yeah, alright, I know. I've not managed to keep going with this 100 days thing. I started off quite well but things soon deteriorated into trying to keep a diary and that was OK while I had interesting things to write about (like being in Spain) but over Christmas things fell into a routine and I stopped being able to make the effort. The idea being to break out of the ordinary and try to do some creative stuff. Maybe I'm not in the right head space for this right now... but this was meant to help get me out of it. Hmmmm. I think the problem is that there are just too many options and I seem to be completely incapable of making any important decisions about any of them and because of this I just keep chasing my own tail. Apparently accepting failure is the first step to overcoming it. I might have just made that one up myself.

#100days days 3-15

2009-12-15T19:51:00.003Z

I HAVE actually been writing 100 words per day, or at the very least catching up with them the following day, but in a note book, not online. I was away from wi-fi-ed up civilisation for a week and what with one thing and another you're not going to get the ramblings here. I'm analogue at heart and sometimes it's difficult to write stuff that people are going to read, no matter how few people or how random the stuff. I don't actually care if that doesn't make sense, this is supposed to make ME the better person isn't it?

I've got a load of thoughts about Spain, going on holiday with other people, a possible idea for a crime novel, a lot of obsessional ramblings about TV programmes and how much I love TV on demand, and god knows what all else, but I can't quite put it into straight lines at the moment.

I'll come back to you.

Advent Playlist (uncut)

2009-12-03T08:56:00.004Z

My selection today on The List Advent playlist.
Here's the full piece:

Jimmy Witherspoon – How I Hate To See Christmas Come Around

If you’re allergic to sleigh bells and curse the annual decent into mawkish madness that is the general norm for Christmas music, December can feel like a very long month. For a Scrooge like myself, who resents anything resembling tinsel or a tree before December 24th, there is salvation from the usual carols and one hit wonders in the form of Mark Lamarr’s Rhythm & Blues Christmas album. This subtly seasonal selection of 1950s novelties is a genuine alternative to the relentlessly upbeat fair that is usually served up at this time of year.

My favourite track from a strong line up including Lightnin’ Hopkins and Louis Armstrong is Jimmy Witherspoon’s How I Hate To See Christmas Come Around. The Arkansas blues shouter turns Jingle Bells into a guitar lick and bemoans the arrival of another Christmas and it’s attendant expense. It gets so bad he tries to get a bank loan, tries to pawn his radio but is refused. No turkey, no tree and not even a stocking for Jimmy, but he’ll keep on singing the blues. No matter how bad you’ve got it, even in the credit crunch, it’s consoling to know there’s always a blues singer who’s got it worse.

Day 2 #100days Advent tunes/ Charity Shops

2009-12-02T19:19:00.005Z

Today's 100 words or more should be available to read tomorrow on The List website. They're doing a spotify advent playlist and I sent a couple of suggestions.

Earlier on I got a couple of charity shop bargains including a pair of jeans for less than £4. This was after reading this morning that "Queen of Shops" Mary Portas has opened the first in her new chain of boutique charity shops in Stockbridge, Charrie capital of Edinburgh. Now don't get me wrong, I totally see what she is trying to do, and I watched her series Mary Queen Of Charity shops, but as was noted at the time, I don't think she really understands how charity shops work for the people who SHOP in them.

I have noticed that since Portas's series, a lot of charity shops, particularly those staffed by younger volunteers, or those with paid managers, have been revamping their lay out and otherwise smartening up their act. I notice this sort of thing, mainly because of my serious second hand book habit, which I have to feed with alarming regularity. I rarely pass a charity shop without going in to see if there are any lost classics or cult titles looking for a home, and I also occasionally look for clothes and have my eye out for other items. I don't go looking for designer labels (I think the jeans I bought today are from one ofs my favourite designers George d'Asda...), just things that I like the look of, that are in decent condition, and that fit me. I'm also looking to spend LESS than I would on a new garment.

I enjoy the satisfaction of finding a nugget among the dross. If the shops are minimally stocked and overpriced, too organised and over merchandised, you might as well be in a regular shop. Oxfam seem to have lead the way with this idea, they have three separate shops on the high street nearest to me - a music branch, a books branch and a clothes branch - the last one in particular tends to be an expensive shop, and seems to be following the Portas model with a vintage clothing section and lots of name brands. It's a pleasant shop but it's not really a great place to find a bargain.

I accept (grudgingly) that there are people in the world for whom spending £500 on a handbag constitutes a bargain, but I'll never be one of them. If this new type of shop means that Save The Children increases it's profits and the work that it can do - that's all to the good, but the charity shops' job is two fold; they provide a place for those who don't have much money to spend and those who want to be a bit more environmentally friendly (or like me, both) to have access to clothing, books and whatever else they might be looking for that they otherwise would not easily be able to buy. That the charity benefits from the sale is sometimes a secondary concern.

I prefer the Aladdin's Cave approach to charity shops, where there is always a copy of Shardick on the shelves, a stack of bizarre records to rummage through and the occasional amazing find for less than a fiver.

100 Days / Marooning Morrissey

2009-11-30T16:46:00.008Z

I've decided to pledge that I'll write (at least) 100 a words a day for 100 days as part of One Hundred Days To Make Me A Better Person. When I can come up with something appropriate and I have access to the Interweb I'll put them here but otherwise I've christened a new note book and put some ink in my nice pen. I hope I can come up with something interesting or develop some ideas. Wish me luck. There's still time to join in - it all starts tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I took advantage of the fact that Radio 4's Desert Island Discs has become available as a podcast and listened to yesterday's edition featuring Morrissey while on the move. The playlist was just right, and the interview served as a reminder of why Morrissey is such a singular figure in so many people's cultural universe.

It was timely to be reminded how much one identifies with someone who has chosen to embrace their "difference" and live life on their own terms completely and utterly. And although there may be "comfort in nothing", perhaps there is a morsel of consolation in knowing that someone who does so can get to 50 and be "at one" with himself.

No Klaus Nomi or Nico on Spotify but here's a playlist of the other Discs.

I don't wanna grow up

2009-11-26T16:12:00.007Z

At what point does one accept the fact that one is content to grow old disgracefully? I hit another birthday last week. It’s got a 5 in it. It makes me old enough to qualify for the middle aged bracket in some surveys. Following on from yesterday’s post where I mentioned using old diaries to compile a list for all the gigs I've ever been to for SongKick, I realised I’ve topped the 500 mark and I’m nowhere near finished yet. I’ve also been reading Simon Armitage’s book, Gig: Confessions Of A Rock Star Fantasist – which is full of flash backs to important gig-going moments in the poet’s life. (He also gives a pretty acurate survey of the structure of your average gig crowd, from front row, through mosh pit, to the guy with a dog at the back.)

At Mono for the Fence gig the other night, I had a nice little Glasgow gig moment with all the usual suspects in place, a good score on my Glasgow Indie Scene Bingo Card, standing near Stephen Pastel at the back of the room tapping my foot to the music. I wasn’t being pushed around, I was enjoying a nice quiet pint and thinking that this was the way it should be.

But haven’t we all been in this room before? Only ten years ago we didn’t have these bags under our eyes and this urge to sit down because our knees were starting to feel a bit stiff? When you get to the stage when you realise people who you know are leaving early because they’ve got to get back for the babysitter or you’re out on your own because your friends can’t afford babysitters… maybe it’s time to settle down to the fact that you can’t play at being an angst-ridden teenager anymore. It used to be that people would cry off coming out of an evening because they had an essay to finish, these days they’re more likely to stay at home because they’ve got marking to do. I often find myself at a gig looking around at all the balding Wire readers and wondering what all those old people are doing there. And then I have a moment of clarity and realise that these are the same people who were always out at gigs… The worst thing is being at a show and realising that the 14 year old kids have come with their mums or more usually their dads... and these parental minders aren’t much more long in the tooth than me.

It seems though that to some extent musicians have aged with their fanbase. When bands that you remember from the first time around start getting back together – Pavement and My Bloody Valentine being recent examples – should I be worried or feel happy that at least these days I can afford the tickets to see them? After all, the bands are of the same generation, it makes sense that they should still appeal to us. There is something frightening about liking a new song and finding out that the person who made wasn’t born until after you’d left school.

As an aging Indie Kid (or should that now be Indie Old Fart?) is it any wonder I feel uncomfortable with the idea of 1990s Brit Pop theme nights? The 1980s revival was bad enough. Was it like this for our parents back when we had a 1970s revival and started wearing flares and dangly flower pendants? If you can remember it the first time round then maybe you shouldn’t be doing it again.

There’s a whole other essay to be written here about mobile phone ringtones and the effect of the Internet on the consumption of music – I could download anything I like, but I still prefer to take satisfaction in nipping out for a pint of milk and at the same time popping into my local record shop so I can come back and bang a new album on my stereo at top hole while I drink my tea. (I bought and am now listening to the Moderat album, if you're interested, another act I've seen live this year. )

Maybe it’s endemic to my generation that we are trapped in a sort of limbo, not really growing up, putting off doing things that we can’t afford. Although for me it’s a conscious decision to spend what money I have on music and not a mortgage. My enthusiasm for live music changes and gets channeled into different things, but it doesn't seem to be getting any dimmer. These days, I just sometimes need to be enthusiastic while sitting down.

100 Lists of 100 Things.

2009-11-25T17:43:00.007Z

After rounding up my Fence stuff yesterday I notified The Pictish Trail, and it turns out he's now on Twitter. I had a look at his feed and found his blog, from there I was linked to this idea, One Hundred Days To Make Yourself A Better Person, being curated by Comedian Josie Long. I'd also been randomly searching for some sort of lazy Internet-generated inspiration and trying to avoid all those "find your inner spiritual creativity" type books, when I came across the illustrator Keri Smith's blog and her list of 100 ideas for use with a journal. (There are loads of creativity- prodding ideas on the site, but I'm still getting around to them)

Much as my deeply cynical soul wants to resist the touchy-feely nature of much of this stuff, maybe there would be something to gain, if only in motivation, by some combination of the two ideas. I'd like for example to say that I could write something everyday for 100 days, but I can't promise it would be on any particular topic. Maybe I should keep it loose, the daily nature of the task would be pressure enough. I try to keep some kind of notebook, quite often very disorganized, just whatever pad or piece of paper that happens to be to hand. I also tend to hoard clippings and postcards.

I used to keep end-of-the-day diaries, but stopped around the same time I got my first full time job, because they just got too repetitive. I still keep some sort of appointment book (although I've been at my screen so much lately that iCal has started to supersede it, which for some reason worries me - I still like having things on paper).

I've also got a sort of scrap book, which I pick up and stick things into when the piles of stuff (maps, leaflets, quotes copied out of books, pictures from magazines that take my fancy) start to pile up and get in the way of the surface of my desk. It's not much of a journal, not really in any kind of order, not very organized. Maybe I let it remain loose on purpose.

Looking back at the oldest one there are themes that continue: I like to paste in Tube maps and situationist quotes, movie stills and odd lines of poetry, postcards from art exhibitions and the results of reading too much Douglas Coupland at an impressionable age.
Found objects are juxtaposed with borrowed wisdom and occasionally gain additional significance. If I'd ever been an art student I would probably have submitted it as work.

I've never really known how to integrate these idea books into a proper journal/diary - I've done that a couple of times when I've been on trips where I wanted to keep my own thoughts and things I've picked up along the way together. To some extent this blog replaced the "ideas" book, mainly due to my reading of newspapers etc being more online than in physical print in the last couple of years. It certainly has the same jumping off point (too much Coupland-ism and Situationist theory mixed into art Historical studies). I don't update it with any regularity and so it doesn't feel legitimate.

I always feel that I lack what I think of as Art School Permission to keep a proper integrated book where everything is together. Maybe that's what I should do for the 100 days project - see what appears if I concentrate... perhaps I can blog just the highlights as I've never really got my head around the journal part of this blog. Sometimes the whole point of a diary is that NO ONE ELSE reads it.

I've been going through some old diaries (again) recently in order to compile my list of gigs for SongKick. I'll end up with a disproportionate number of gigs on there purely because I've still got the tickets or I've got the names of the venues and bands written down. Maybe this is what has got me thinking about trying to record things in some way again.

Even if stuff seems inconsequential, with the addition of time, it can start to become illuminating.

I &hearts Fence

2009-11-24T19:07:00.003Z

Here's my interview with Francois from Francois And The Atlas Mountains in The List.

I also did a little review of the live show for Nothing At All. Thanks to Michael a.k.a. Twistyfoldy for the photos and the video.

Here's top chap The Pictish Trail performing The Lighthouse.

More Fence Records news, King Creosote is doing something special at next year's Home Game, as featured in
The Scotsman.

Bye Bye Geocities

2009-10-26T11:11:00.006Z

It's the end of the line for Geocities, where like many people I had my first real go at having a webpage. I was reading through some of my old stuff recently and it reminded me of my much I got out of being a pretentious music journalist!

Maybe I'll get to have another go, as finally my Scarce and Swimming pieces have made it to The List's site on their Exposure page. Better late than never... so who shall I interview next?

Is It Workin' Chief?

2009-10-19T12:53:00.003+01:00

Tracks from all three of the bands I've interviewed recently are featured on this week's show, It Ain't Workin' Chief on Subcity.

Also the Mary Hampton piece was picked up by the lovely people at Wears The Trousers and they've also added another review I did for them.

Swimming: "Superhero Shoegaze"

2009-10-15T12:18:00.004+01:00

Swimming are a Nottingham-based five piece, comprising John Sampson, vocals and guitar, Peter Sampson, drums and vocals , Andrew Wright, samplers and vocals, Jonathon Spittlehouse, guitar and Blake Pearson, bass. Their post-rock influenced sound has been described as the energy of the Pixies taking on the ambient soundscapes of Boards Of Canada, but they prefer the term “Superhero Shoegaze”. Their debut album The Fireflow Trade was released earlier this year on their own Colourschool label.

Would you describe your music as “post-rock” or “progressive” or would you say it was something else?
We like to think we are more mainstream than either of those labels would suggest. We're influenced by a lot of post-rock bands and there are progressive elements to some of the songs but there are also simple melodies and harmonies and pop tunes. We've been compared to something like 50 bands or artists this year and enjoy reading some of the more creative descriptions that are out there - like superhero shoegaze.

The band was formed after you used to rehearse after going swimming and a lot of the song titles seem to have oceans and seas in them. Do you think this love of water has had an influence on your sound?
Yeah of course. People see different meanings in the water imagery. It seems to resonate with so many bigger ideas, but we didn't really plan it. We were kind of drawn to that quality of the sound and feeling of being in water or the ways water is used. We used to make a lot of field recordings of drains, streams, swimming pools, the Channel, a frozen pond and sometimes you get an emotional reaction listening back to them. The music reflects this little obsession we had and it spread almost subconsciously into the songs and then, to a point the lyrics. We've moved away from it a bit now as it was never meant to be too literal. You can only take a vague metaphor so far before people start to think you are actually singing about ancient oceans.

You’ve done several Headphone Only gigs in Nottingham with Binaural artist Dallas Simpson – can you explain what these were and what they entailed? Do you have plans for anymore?
Dallas is a legend. He is our link to the audience for these gigs. He puts tiny mics in his ears and sends what he hears to the audience who all wear headphones in another room. This means that you hear exactly what he hears as he moves around us playing in true 3D surround sound. We also strap a camera to his head and project that on a wall for the people to see what he sees. Its the best way to listen to ambient music so we play a more stripped down set. We did a little tour earlier this year and we have plans do it again this winter.

You’ve also had Dallas “remix” one of your tracks - but it’s more like it captures his experience of listening to the component parts while out in the countryside. Did this influence your usual recording process?
That remix totally opened our minds to the potential of environmental recording in music - if done right. We used more of the binaural (headphone) recordings on the Pacific Title EP but the freedom to record in other spaces carried into the album. We recorded instruments in old halls, outdoors and used field recordings to create the ambience and space we wanted on the record. You don’t have to be limited to the studio or a computer.

You’ve played some unusual venues, including Lee Rosey’s Tea Room in Nottingham. What’s the weirdest venue you’ve played or would like to play?
We had planned to have the album launch party at a planetarium but it couldn't happen then for a load of reasons....one day we will do it. With a film that we make.

There seem to be a lot more bands coming out of Nottingham these days, but there doesn’t seem to be a particular sound common to any of them? Would you agree? Would you say that there is a healthy music scene in Notts these days?
There are loads of great bands coming out of Notts over the last year or so, FISTS!, Ronika, Pilgrim Fathers, Souvaris, The Cusp, Lone, No Lovers, Origami Biro, JCDecaux and First Blood are all ace. Amusement Parks On Fire's (who front man John has produced in the past) new album is gonna be amazing too. It's good there is no generic sound coming out.

Swimming support ILIKETRAINS on tour at Glasgow King Tuts on October 17th.

Mary Hampton

2009-10-14T20:41:00.006+01:00

Mary Hampton is an Brighton-based singer who takes an experimental approach to the traditional folk style and whose songs have been described as unnerving and enchanting, sensual and unsettling. She will be supporting James Yorkston and the Big Eyes Family Players on tour in support of their recent Folk Songs album. Her own album My Mother’s Children was released in 2008. She has recorded with Eliza Carthy and toured with American anti-folk singer Diane Cluck.

When did you first start playing and writing songs?
I first started writing music at the piano when I was about 14. It was mainly
chamber music that interested me, the powerful interplay of a small number of musicians always did something immense to me and still does, so I wrote a bunch of small ensemble pieces over the years that followed.
I eventually began singing at the age of 22, when I became really interested by words and their possibilities when combined with music.

Do you come from a folk singing background or is it something you’ve discovered that suits you?
Sadly no. Some Buddy Holly may have transpired in the kitchen at some point, but that's another story.
I grew up in West London in the nineties, and despite
having a voracious appetite for all kinds of music, I didn't have the good fortune to hear any folk music until quite late on.
It's true to say I'd had a earful of serialism, free-form jazz and Japanese death metal long before I ever heard a traditional English song, and it certainly sounded pretty exotic to me when I did hear it. In fact I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Anne Briggs for basically blowing everything else out of the water.

Is there any particular record or artist that you feel has influenced your style?
Here's the long answer...I feel like it's usually something very small that influences me most, often just a gesture.
It might only be a few notes run together in a particular way, or a certain
way one lyric is inflected in a song. When I hear it, such a musical moment seems so complete that it can feed my imagination for many months to come.
There is rarely any way of knowing when or where such a phrase might occur, so
I try to keep my listening pretty broad.

The short answer is probably Bob Dylan.

Have you played in Scotland before?
Yes, I've played in Scotland a few times. The first time was in Aberdeen with Alasdair Roberts a couple of years back on my first tour. Since then, I've played the Blend Festival in Stirling, the Fence Homegame in Anstruther and done various shows alongside some really inspiring singers like the mighty Diane Cluck who I toured with in the Summer. The Scottish have a pretty healthy quota of great songwriters, so it always means a lot to play and be appreciated up there.

Are mainstream music fans more open to folk music than they used to
be? Do you think people are receptive to the simplicity of more traditional music?
Maybe so. For me, folk music at it's best is immediate and meaningful, and doesn't obscure it's own content with ostentatious arrangements or space-age production values. It is unapologetic about being what it is. You don't need a 4 million dollar studio to make a song sound genuine, you just need to fetch it out to people and let it do it's work. This is maybe the simplicity you are talking about, a certain baldness of intent. Right now, that might be quite refreshing for listeners who are used to all the hooks and eyes of more mainstream commercial music, I don't know. Maybe it's just good to hear a person sing an interesting song they know.

You appear to share influences like Anne Briggs and Sandy Denny with James Yorkston. Will you be performing together on this tour?
Yes, I'm really excited about that... There are definitely some group efforts afoot!

Mary Hampton, plus David A Jaycock will be supporting James Yorkston and The Big Eyes Family players at the following gigs:

THURS 15TH OCT Aberdeen The Tunnels

FRIDAY 16TH OCT Glasgow The Arches

MONDAY 19TH OCT Edinburgh Bongo Club

Mary on Myspace

ADDITIONAL Free Music Friday an Mp3 from Mary's album - but just for today!

Scarce : Days Like This

2009-10-14T12:28:00.007+01:00

Scarce are a band whose record, Deadsexy, I really love and I've blogged about them here before. I'm looking forward to seeing them live for the first time tomorrow. Here's a Q&A interview I did with Joyce from the band and Sally Irvine, who has made a film about them:

1995: Rhode Island-based trio Scarce, whose post-Pixies sound and exciting on-stage dynamics had been receiving some attention from UK indie radio, released their debut LP Deadsexy on the Paradox label in the UK. They toured Europe supporting Hole and returned to the USA, having been picked up by major label A&M. Then in June 1995, singer Chick Graning suffered a brain haemorrhage. He was discovered by his band mates, bass player Joyce Raskin and new drummer Joseph Propatier, who broke into his apartment concerned when he didn’t turn up for a rehearsal. Their swift action saved his life, but he was in a coma for 18 days. Six months later Scarce were back on the road, playing to promote their now delayed album but Graning wasn’t ready and the band split in late 1997.

Fast forward to 2008 and after writing a book Aching To Be: A Girl’s True Rock & Roll Story about her experiences in the band, bass player Joyce Raskin contacted Chick to apologise and rekindle their friendship. She also suggested they get the band back together.

The band played a London show last year, have been working on new material and they play a string of UK dates this week accompanied by a screening of a documentary about their career, Scarce: Days Like This, directed by British artist Sally Irvine.

Joyce and Sally kindly answered my questions about the tour:

Joyce, It’s been a while! What have you all been doing since you the band was last active?
Chick has released a solo album called MT available on iTunes etc. He toured solo in Germany in 2001 and 2002, and had a steady acoustic gig in the French Quarter in New Orleans.
Joe has toured with several bands including The Silver Apples, The Bevis Frond, Mary Lou Lord, Jason Lowenstein Project, Will Oldham, Songs Ohia, Damon and Graham from Blur and The Velocet.
I have worked as a book designer, written several books, and am raising two children.

The music industry has changed so much since you first released Deadsexy – did it feel like it would be easier to do your own thing now, without a major label to put pressure on you?
It is much easier to do everything. The fact is our record Deadsexy never would have had a second chance to be heard if it weren't for iTunes and the ease with which to release things on the Internet. All our videos can be seen as well. Instead of vying for the few select spots anyone can release anything. It is much tougher to be heard amongst that space but we'll take it to have a chance to be heard. We are happy to be able to be a band, even if it is being heard by a few people. They are definitely some wonderful people. If it weren't for the Internet not sure we would have ever known how many people did hear about us. There was such a disconnect before. Now you know instantaneously as people can contact you directly.

Scarce on iTunes

How does the rest of the band feel about your book?
They are happy to have story out there being told and not forgotten.

How does it feel to be performing again after such a long break?
Wonderful. We feel like a bunch of hormonal teenagers.

What should someone who never got to see you live the first time around expect from your live show?
The storm before the calm has settled onto the harbour. Like two ships passing in the night but on a parallel course.

What has been the highlight of this reunion so far?
Playing the London show and having everyone sing along to every song. Mind blowing and so thankful. And Sally making a documentary about us.

Do you plan to keep recording more new material and touring more in the future?
We have a new record that will be released worldwide called No One Likes You in January 2010.

Here's a preview of Sally Irvine's film, Scarce: Days Like This. She's touring with the band and screening it at their UK shows this week.

Sally, How did you come to make a film about Scarce?
I've been friends with Joe since the late '90's... We met soon after Scarce split up at The Terrastock Festival in San Francisco, where he was then drumming for The Silver Apples and I was there to photograph the festival. I was thrilled when he told me a year or so ago that Scarce had got back together and I went to see them when they played a couple of London dates in October 2008. Joyce gave me a copy of her book which I loved and we got chatting about making a film of their story. I had had quite a long break from focusing on the music industry while I worked on my own art projects and I've loved getting back into working with a band again.

Was there a lot of archive material for you to work with?
I had a fantastic response from several fans who sent me lots of live footage plus I managed to get hold of a couple of old interviews, television performances and music videos. In addition to this I was provided with lots of photographs and Joyce's artwork to work with. Its meant that I think I have a good balance of the old and the new.

Did you see the band in their earlier incarnation? Do you think
they’ve changed much in the intervening years?
I didn't ever get to see them in the 90's though I did buy Deadsexy. It was, and still is, probably one of my most played albums. From watching the old live footage though and comparing it to the recent gigs, both in the UK and in the US that I've been to, I think they still have that amazing connectivity that they always had and they're still just as exciting to watch as ever.

It’s unusual to screen a film at a gig – how has it been going down
with audiences so far?
I think (and hope!) that people like the idea of mixing up culture so that you can see a film and a live show all in one night. I've had a really positive response from everyone I've talked to about it. I've been part of an art collective for years that have always put on events that mix up sound, film and performance so it didn't feel like an unusual thing for me to do. I hope its the start of a new trend for live shows!

Scarce on Myspace

Scarce on Twitter

Scarce play Manchester Night & Day tonight (October 14th), Glasgow Stereo tomorrow, (October 15th) and London Luminaire on Saturday (October 17th).

Fanfarlo

2009-10-01T17:56:00.004+01:00

I went to see Fanfarlo at King Tuts last night. And very good they were too... Today (as promised on their Twitter) they played a Guerilla gig at Glasgow University.

I went along and caught one song on my phone. (I don't usually shoot video with it so excuse my rather experimental camera work.) Some school kids were passing by just as the band got going and they added a rather nice dimension to the performance! After about 3 songs Uni security got wise and the band got moved along as it was all very unofficial (they had bought a couple of people along to film and record the event though, so not as spontaneous as all that.)

It Ain't Workin' Chief, reprise

2009-09-26T12:36:00.002+01:00

My radio show, It Ain't Workin' Chief is back on Subcity Radio. You can listen again or catch it live on Saturdays at 11am. I also sat in for Build & Destroy this week.

Ukulele

2009-09-24T18:58:00.002+01:00

I've got a new Ukulele and I'm going to try and learn to play it. The first step was tuning the little blighter... and I eventually managed this with a little help from a Metro Tuner (which tells you what note you're playing and gives you a green light when you're in tune) which made a very frustrating job a lot easier. I thought my hearing was going funny and I was emiting minor frequencies or something as even with a guide sound I was having great difficulty. Being new, and a cheap model it's quite tricky to keep in tune, so I think I'm going to have to keep twiddling! Still, for me, someone who's never played a stringed instrument before, and not played any kind of instrument for a very long time, this felt like a tiny breakthrough. And then I learned how to strum a C chord! I think tunes might be a long way off and I might need a plectrum as my finger is a bit sore...

Byron Bingo

2009-08-03T22:16:00.005+01:00

I wasn't going to post about The Scandalous Adventures Of Lord Byron, actor Rupert Everett's personal take on the life and travels of the poet, mainly because I've covered the subject before and I don't have a great deal to add at the moment. But it was an enjoyable show, if a little indulgent and suitably salacious... what amused me the most was how Everett ended up back in Hucknall, and instead of visiting Byron's burial place, popped into the more visible landmark at the other end of the high street... Byron Bingo. And there, this being Mucky Uckna, the ladies out-filthed Everett's story about the exhumation of the embalmed and preserved body without even trying!

Lipstick Traces

2009-06-28T10:51:00.004+01:00

Oddly enough, I was only talking about my favourite music writing the other day and of course Greil Marcus' Lipstick Traces was mentioned. And lo and behold here's John Harris in the Guardian writing about it. I have a certain amount of disdain for Harris' writing itself, particularly his later political commentaries for that paper. (I think I must hold a grudge for spiteful reviews of bands I like written back in his NME days.)
Also reported this week, the death of Steven Wells, another NME writer of a similar vintage. It reminded me of the days when I'd read the inkies and follow the work of a writer whose opinion had matched my own or who lead me to a band that I liked.

The blanket coverage of Glastonbury Festival on the BBC and other media outlets is such a contrast to the year I was writing about it myself (well, writing about the TV coverage for my dissertation on Music TV) which is - oh my god - 11 years ago. It doesn't change my opinion that festivals are sometimes best experienced from your own living room. The whole thing seems to be one huge exercise in nostalgia anyway, I never know if this is a good or bad thing. And I want to write about it. I seem to have lost the ability. I just read about Bruce Springsteen (who everyone is now pretending to always have liked...and some unlikely people HAVE always liked - see this article from also from the Guardian) He opened his set with Joe Strummer's Coma Girl a song about the festival itself - oh the reference points!

Blue Peter corner! T-Shirt into a skirt hack

2009-06-02T14:29:00.009+01:00

I've been playing around with T-shirt "hacks" for a while now. Here's a really simple one of my own which I've managed to document. I found 3 identical shirts in a charity shop, but you only need one.
You will need:
*One Large or XL T Shirt with a sewn hem at the bottom. This works well if the Shirt pattern is below the sleeve level or will look good cut in half)
*A piece of elastic thin enough to be threaded through the bottom seam and long enough to go around your waist (this stuff was 20p a metre from Habiknit in the Idlewells, indoor market, Sutton-in Ashfield. Support your local haberdasher!!)
*Sharp scissors.
*A safety pin (to thread the elastic with)
*optional: Needle and thread if you want to sew up after elasticating.

First: Lay the shirt flat on a table and cut along a straight line starting at the armpit. This will be the bottom edge of the skirt so decide on the length and how much of the design you want to see at this point.

Once you have cut the top of the shirt off it should look like this:

This particular shirt is a tube with no side seam and so you can decide which is the front and which is the back. Pick a small hole in the bottom seam, large enough to fit the safety pin through. Attach the end of the elastic to the safety pin and thread through the hem. Keep hold of the loose end or use another pin to secure it.

Pull the elastic all the way around and pin ends together. At this point you should try the skirt on and tie the ends together (or pin and sew them). Once you have the right size you can sew up the hole if you so wish.

Voila! A simple skirt to wear with leggings.

I had three identical T shirts, so I had a go at making a top.
I used an old sundress as a template and cut a crescent shape from each side for the underarms, then threaded through a length of unused material for the straps (I might replace this with ribbon or something as it's a bit too stretchy) Not bad for a first attempt!

Unofficial And Unauthorised

2009-03-02T18:18:00.008Z

As promised, a review of Thom Yorke: Radiohead And Trading Solo by Trevor Baker.

Firstly, the cover photo: A fairly early and not particularly interesting or representative shot. And secondly, the title: What's that all about? Previous attempts to immortalise Radiohead in biography have had titles derived in some way from their work. Trading Solo? Just doesn't seem appropriate to the subject.
The author's track record too strikes me as a little bit too reminiscent of Ed Reardon to be entirely relied upon, with similar looking biog-jobs on Richard Ashcroft and Kylie in his Amazon listings, but also a fair few TV tie-in type books, on Ant & Dec and Steve "Crocodile Hunter" Irwin... Anyhow he does a workmanlike job of the interviews that mostly comprise the book. As it clearly states on the back cover, it's unofficial and unauthorised, and as such none of the main players nor any of the inner circle of the Radiohead Corporation are interviewed directly. Any insight we might have hoped to gain from them comes from interviews previously published elsewhere.

Of those that are interviewed, Nigel Powell gives a fairly unbiased eyewitness account of the early days of the band on tour, and I remember him always being around in the first few years that I went to see them, as he acted as lighting engineer for the band early on. Other people with something to add include John Matthias who not only attended Exeter University at the same time as the subject, but was also in the Headless Chickens collective (I'm rather loathe to call it a band after having read about it) and played Violin on The Bends (of which experience he gives an interesting, if not especially illuminating account here) But he's fairly easy to track down from his day job as a sonic arts lecturer. Another Headless Chicken unearthed for this book is Martin Brooks, now an advertising executive, which maybe offers one an insight into possible alternative careers for fellow 'Chickens... I don't feel I learned anything about "Thom Yorke" the person or the musician that wasn't already out there, and nothing that would really need to be kept under wraps - apart from the extent to which he was a U2 fan as a teenager. There is no mention of the fact that for the first few years of Radiohead's existance Thom was always credited as 'Thom e. Yorke' - no exploration about the origins of this affectation - alluding as it does to the influence of purposefully lower case poet e.e.cummings and possibly even Mark E. Smith of the Fall, indeed if one was analysing the teenage Yorke wouldn't spelling be a more interesting place to start than the often mentioned childhood eye operations?

There are no representatives of EMI directly approached and so for reminiscences of the early days of Radiohead as a signed band this book relies on one of Pablo Honey's producers Paul Q Koldarie, whose every observation is rather coloured by hindsight. There's some insight from Ash, drummer of Frank and Walters into what it was like to have Radiohead as a support band early in their career, but once again, these seem inevitable coloured by the difference in the two band's subsequent levels of success. Within a couple of chapters the author has jumped through the formative years and as his contacts close to the band run out he reduces each album to a short chapter, offering no more insight than any number of articles or interviews that took place at the time of the record's releases or retrospectives published in magazines (some are quoted here but it feels like an overview without time for much in depth research). He mentions Thom not playing Reading but doesn’t mention the following year when they did eventually play, plus he neglects their early Glastonbury and T in The Park performances despite there being pictures included in the book from both. All the photos are agency ones, which makes me think there was no co-operation from Oxford magazine Curfew (where the band's very early interviews were published) or from either of the Inky music titles; NME and Melody Maker are largely ignored despite their huge influence on the British scene in the early 1990s. Sometimes the selection of photographs makes a book like this worth looking at, but there's not really anything here that a fan would not have seen before.

Latterly Baker relies heavily on Meeting People Is Easy for his view of OK Computer-era Radiohead, and while he is not entirely convinced that Grant Gee's film gives a balanced view of the band on tour, he doesn't appear to have experienced the band at first hand during this period. In interviews here, Gee himself admits that the film only tells half the story and misses out some of the more positive aspects of the experience. Baker increasingly uses hindsight and seems to be in a hurry to finish his book at this point, adding nothing new to the story of the making of Kid A, Amnesiac or Hail To The Thief. The Radiohead mythology is all but set in stone now, by the band themselves as much as by anyone else, and it's difficult to view events in a different way. By the time Baker reaches the period that produced The Eraser and In Rainbows, one can almost hear his deadline approaching as he races through the story up to the present day, he has ceased to look for any further insight into Thom's character, and is content to hymn the praises of a band that have been accepted by the mainstream in what seems like their own terms.

This is not a book that makes any attempt to analyse the band's musical output or lyrics, beyond those of Creep, (in which to be fair, the author is clear to separate Thom the person from the character in the song, something Thom was latterly fairly definite about in interviews himself.) In his haste, Baker neglects to look at whole swathes of songs which a fan looking for clues might turn to. The use of the band's own quotes in interviews is often out of sequence, which misses the fact that the band have tended to re-write their own history with their own hindsight or faulty memories as the years have passed. There are also a couple of vague allusions to fan behaviour which perhaps warrant a closer look (and possibly a fact check or two).

In trying to examine what the blurb on the back of the book calls "the drive, ambition and perfectionism of just one man" the author seeks to mythologise Thom Yorke as a Rock Star, something that the man himself has been at pains to avoid, having created his own version of "rock stardom" which differs from anyone else's. This book doesn't unpick that self-created role to any great degree, nor does it (thankfully from my own personal point of view) get anywhere near the bottom of a very private and complex person.

The Dustbin of History

2009-02-26T13:19:00.002Z

Fanzines make it into the collection of the National Library of Scotland

A Fragment

2009-02-21T15:13:00.003Z

I've just been to the Hidden Gardens to see Alasdair Roberts perform an acoustic set as part of the 24 Fragments project. This is a too complicated to explain project that was in receipt of funding from the PRS and was conceived by the chaps who were responsible for NonClassical - Cortical Songs, that is NickRyan and John Matthias. Pop fact... John Matthias was at University in Exeter with Thom Yorke and they play together in Headless Chickens, this thought comes to mind because I'm reading a promo copy of a book on Thom, somewhat oddly subtitled Radiohead and Trading Solo. I'll review it here when I've finished it, but it's one of those unofficial things and as such the closest people to the band who are interviewed are Mr Matthias and Nigel "Sad Song Co" Powell...

The Idiots are winning

2009-02-17T15:43:00.005Z

Nathan Barley's Dan Ashcroft was right.

news outsourcing

redundancy press gazette

Words & Coffee

2008-12-21T14:04:00.003Z

Biblocafe is back open and they now do soup and have more cakes. They have an imbargo on Christmas music, as will I on the final It Ain't Workin' Chief of the year.

For Good Or Ill...

2008-12-21T13:30:00.005Z

I only seem to go to the GFT for documentaries these days, the last time was for Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten and I went back yesterday for another featuring a now dead, dissolute hero, Gonzo: The Life And Work Of Hunter S. Thompson. I've been immersed in the man's writing again lately, getting through two volumes of his copious and sprawling letters. I don't know if it's possible to have a balanced view of such an unhinged personality, this film, made up of the man's own words didn't attempt to question the myth, rather to put it in historical context and highlight the impact of Thompson's political journalism.
In front of me in the cinema was a big, bald bloke dressed in aloha shirt, hunting vest, shorts and very possibly white Chuck Taylor Converse... which reminded me of the Doonesbury which marked the Doktor's passing...
Tom Woolf has his white suit, and Thompson found himself becoming the Fear And Loathing character Raoul Duke and acting in the depraved way people expected him to, his notoriety destroying the possibility of continuing as a serious journalist.
It all proves that heroic failure (Thompson idolised F Scott Fitzgerald and wanted to write the Great American Novel, but never managed it. In failing, he created Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, a work that no one else could have written, and which he spent the remainder of his career trying to outrun) is far more interesting (at least to me) than a story of high achieving success. As usual, Philip French is more elliquent than I could possibly be on the subject.

Children's TV Heroes...RIP

2008-12-09T09:56:00.003Z

Sad to hear about the deaths of two people who, however subconsciously, must have shaped my viewing tastes as a kid. Oliver Postgate, the creator of Ivor The Engine, Bagpuss and The Clangers, inspiration behind Radiohead's There There and as it turns out a political thinker too. When I was a researcher I had to track down the owner of the rights to The Clangers and ended up phoning Mr Postgate himself. It was just like having Bagpuss answer the phone and I was in awe.

Also news that the director Bob Spiers has died. Rarely do you notice who has directed a sit com or a TV show but his name always stood out. He was brought in specifically to give Press Gang (ostensibly a children's programme) a grown-up telly look and you could always tell his episodes from those put together by other directors. I was wondering why I'd not seen his name on anything recently. His credits read like a history of British TV comedy.

Eating Out

2008-12-06T18:56:00.003Z

I seem to be eating my way through the inventively named items on the menu at Where The Monkey Sleeps and it's becoming one of my favourite Glasgow places. Anywhere that calls their sandwiches things like Stoofa, Lovely Nancy and Child Of The Goat earns my loyal custom.

Another establishment making a stand against the caffeinated hegemony of the major franchises is Stereo. It's one of the few vegan places to eat in the city centre. I'm not a vegan but sometimes it's nice to be able to get some vegetables (Roast Sweet Potato Chips, say no more). It does suffer from a lack of staff though, and I can't help but wonder if an extra barperson might make dining and drinking there a more enjoyable experience. And they should get some cakes! Meanwhile it's the sort of place that's so anti-hip that it's achingly trendy (if you see what I mean) and thus always busy at the weekends.

I'm Bill Hicks and I'm Dead Now

2008-12-03T12:24:00.003Z

Richard Herring's blog today is about writing an article about Bill Hicks. Which is strange as I was just explaining one of my favourite jokes to a friend who just came back from a trip across the USA... rather like Bill's Flying Saucer Tour. Look's Like We Got Ourselves A Reader

Royal Baroque

2008-11-20T20:11:00.006Z

I visited the on-going exhibition of Italian art from The Royal Collection at the Queen's Gallery at Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh today. They have a very new, very pleasing little gallery there - and if you fill out a form when you buy your ticket it's valid for unlimited visits for a year, so I was able to see this Baroque part of the exhibition without paying again, having been to the Mannerist part in the summer. The whole gallery is very well done, with an audio guide that doesn't presume you know nothing about the paintings, an exhibition space that is small enough so that you can take everything in and digest it, but not so small that you feel short changed by the number of works. The website also has all the pictures with the facility to look at them in detail. I'll always go and see a Caravagio and there was the newly restored Calling of Sts Peter and Andrew, along side an impressive small figure by Annibale Carrachi, that looks almost modern, perhaps 18th century, almost like a Manet or something. Plus I finally got to see Artemisia Gentileschi's well known self-portrait, remarkable as one of the few female artists of the age. There was also a couple of works by her father, Orazio Gentileschi who was a court painter for Charles I. I avoided the National Galleries today, what with all the fuss over the Titians... Maybe the Queen could step in and cough up...and make a permanent exhibit of her collection?

Laziness, procrastination, doubt, fear and loathing

2008-11-14T15:38:00.006Z

I've been subscribing to Richard Herring's blog Warming Up lately, possibly in the hope that it might inspire me to post here more often (FAIL) but partly because he seems to be very busy lately. He's got a series of short programmes on Radio 4 called Bad Habits, investigating such phenomena as Workaholism, Laziness and Procrastination. This week's was laziness and the "sickie", featuring an inevitable contribution from Tom Hodgkinson of The Idler. I've been working in spite of a heavy cold this week, unable to take time off due to one reason and another and it's been just one more thing about work that has been weighing me down... Suffice to say that Hodgkinson's tactic of "reclaiming dignity from your slavery" is all being well when you're working for a big company who take advantage of you, but what happens if you're working for yourself? Or indeed if said company just assumes that all sick leave is swinging the lead and introduces quotas and targets? I seem to have lost any grammatical ability or the indeed skills needed to type or use punctuation. I'm starting to wonder if it's some kind of psychosomatic condition... I'm banging my head against the desk rather too regularly lately. I need to find something else. Some way to get paid and live and not be sitting here staring into the void all day.
Anyway. Boring.

Displacement activity is much more stimulating. I generally rely on radio for this -
Ed Reardon's Week which is indeed mostly about a writer's displacement activity and Mark Lamarr's exemplary Shake, Rattle & Roll 1950s show. (This is ever more important since it's now impossible to enjoy 6Music properly due to G***** L***)

I've been reading Hunter S. Thompson's early letters in The Proud Highway, which covers 1955-67, before he became the Gonzo monster that most readers will know from Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. It's about being someone for whom writing is more important than anything else, and the struggles of scraping a living as a freelance. There's a moment during the writing of Hell's Angels when HST realises he'd go further if his journalism was more like his letters and his work gets increasingly irreverent and off balance, edging towards the substance-fueled and occasionally mercurial stuff with which he made his name. He also emerges as someone who knew he was never going to live a straight life. In one of his letters he advises a friend to "Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life." Reading him as a young man, his eventual fate becomes something he foresaw very early on. No Compromise.

I'm pausing before embarking on the next volume, Fear & Loathing In America, because reading a lot of HST tends to make me jumpy and aggressive, I wish I was able to write like that. And Gonzo the Movie is also forthcoming... More on that later if I get to see it. Selah

End of BST Blues

2008-10-26T17:48:00.001Z

I'm quite chuffed with this week's show - It Ain't Workin'Chief Blues Special. So give it a listen and let me know what you think.

Goodbye Astoria

2008-10-17T15:49:00.008+01:00

Shed a little tear, The Astoria, the rock venue at the top of Tottenham Court Road, is finally scheduled for demolition to make way for the expansion of the station for the Cross Rail project. It may not have the significance of the similarly irradicated Hammersmith Palais, subject of a (repeated?) documentary Last Man In Hammersmith Palais which I watched on the BBC 4 iPlayer this week, and The Astoria hasn't got the same level of mythology as the Palais (where seemingly half of London met their spouses and which was famously hymned by The Clash...) but it will always hold memories for me. The first and so far only Radiohead live video was filmed there in 1994, a gig I was at (you'll have to wait for the full story) and they also played a fanclub show there a couple of years later, which was pretty memorable. I always got a little lump in my throat whenever I walked past the place on my way across London and I shall miss it.
Here's the end of that gig May 1994:

All Sideways

2008-10-17T11:00:00.002+01:00

Great lost grunge band Scarce perform in London tomorrow. Shame it's not a tour.

Traveller's Century

2008-10-16T20:39:00.007+01:00

I just watched the remaining episode of Traveller's Century, having seen the other two earlier in the year. This one about Eric Newby was perhaps the one I least enjoyed, as it seemed to involve more of the intrepid Benedict Allen (and his scarf) recreating the journey detailed in the late Mr Newby's book, A Short Walk Up The Hindu Kush than it concentrated on the book itself. But the other two episodes on Laurie Lee (whose work I was familiar with) and Patrick Leigh Fermor (whose work I wasn't familiar with but should have been, considering he's a bit of a Byron obsessive) were very enjoyable. In the wake of all the blokey celebrity travel shows hitting the screens lately (Stephen Fry, Paul Merton, etc), it was good to be reminded of a time before Michael Palin was the last word in travel journalism.

Leigh Fermor still hasn't published what would arguably be the most interesting part of his travel journals - about the end of his convoluted walk across Europe to Greece - he seems to have been distracted by being an unlikely war hero, as mythologised in the Powell and Pressburger film Ill Met By Moonlight. But he's still alive, having stayed in Greece. That episode is still forthcoming and well worth a look.

[Additional Nov 16th: I've now read a collection of Fermor's stuff - Words Of Mercury - and when he's good he's great ( I think his whole books might require one to have had a classical education to understand all the references). They make Greece seem tremendously attractive and have set me further on a trail of Byzantine art history which started with seeing AGD's series earlier in the year...]

How To Be Free

2008-10-09T16:13:00.004+01:00

I've been reading Tom Hodgkinson's How To Be Free, and I was delighted to find that he makes reference to The Revolution Of Everyday Life alongside a simplified overview of Existentialism - "Life is absurd, life is about nothingness, all is vanity, so create your own life", being the gist. "Commit to nothing, try everything and above all be original." Mr Hodgkinson does place a little more reliance on growing his own vegetables and playing the ukulele than I would ideally have in my pursuit of self-determination, but otherwise I'd recommend anyone feeling oppressed by contemporary life to read this book. I'm hovering over that resignation letter...first one must "find your gift" then re-engage with society and the self...

A good observation on music in there too, "Music gets you into yourself and is the opposite of distraction."

Lord Won't You Hear Me When I Call?

2008-10-09T00:23:00.006+01:00

Notes from Spiritualized at The ABC:

We want Come Together played at our funerals. This is the atheist's Gospel music. Grown men cry and spines shiver, being lifted from your body by the tension of light and sound. Jason is the only person allowed to wear sunglasses indoors in the dark. Apparently I dance like I'm "on drugs at Woodstock" and tell me, what is wrong with that?

Tindersticks

2008-10-06T16:19:00.004+01:00

Notes from Tindersticks at Glasgow City Hall:

Why and how am I still coming to gigs on my own and standing awkwardly at the bar on my own after all this time?
This place looks like its half full of ex-goths who now work in admin. It's like a more sedate version of the crowd at a Nick Cave gig. I always wondered who the Tindersticks fans were. I've put my black dress on to fit in. And who is that bloke in the black suit and glasses that I always see at gigs - is he a journalist? It's triple points on Glasgow Indie Eye Spy tonight as well - A full Belle and Seb compliment.
They're playing some really dreadful new age space music as the band gets set up. It's like being in a holistic massage parlour. How do I always manage to arrive too early to these things? Great seat though, the middle of the front row on the balcony.
The support band is cut to a duo and the singer is very nervous and keeps apologising and I wish I had someone to hang out with in the bar, but I don't so I stay in my seat.
The 12 piece band with strings and brass come on stage. With singer Stuart Staples joining them last. He seems rather overcome by the rapturous Glasgow welcome and comments that it's been so long since they played here that he's forgotten how beautiful the city is, which gets them on his side even more. The edge of a Nottingham accent that remains in his soft speaking voice makes me intolerably homesick. Most of the band are still wearing some elements of their trademark suits, Staples in shirt, jacket and jeans.
They're playing a fair bit of new stuff (but I think I'm about 3 albums behind) The newest songs sound great and then they play Travelling Light and it all falls into place. They're the soundtrack to the saddest film ever, it's in a foreign language and it's full of shadows. I wipe small tears from my eyes and remember the first time I saw them, at Reading Festival in 1994, where I was so exhausted that I sat down on the ground and wept. Some sense memory of this comes back to me every time I hear them but it's not an unpleasant feeling, rather a quiet nostalgic melancholy.

Workin' it Chief...

2008-10-05T17:35:00.002+01:00

All this web 2.0 gubbins means I can link everything together so listen again to today's show here.
Lots of gigs this week. Hopefully report back if there are any moments worth documenting...

Radio On

2008-09-21T18:37:00.000+01:00

Show One Playlist and listen again. Hope you can listen in!

Ride The Beast

2008-09-19T11:24:00.004+01:00

To the Theatre Royal to see the Scottish Ballet's Autumn Season. I've never been to a dance performance like this before, but I wanted to see Ride The Beast - which was set to five songs by my beloved Radiohead. I was sceptical at first, there is an air of pretension attached to this sort of thing - "modern dance" - that I'm intensely wary of, but the reviews from the premiere of this at last year's Edinburgh festival were very strong, so I wanted to see it and make up my own mind.

It was very disquieting to have music with which I am so familiar coupled with dance which was alien and new to me. But at the same time immensely powerful to see a completely new interpretation of the work. The Radiohead tracks used - Fitter, Happier, the acoustic version of Creep (which has been known to reduce me to tears), Hunting Bears, Idioteque and The National Anthem weren't even the most obvious choices for a dance work over. The last two worked best, with dancers moving about the stage from all sides, these people are almost superhuman in their fitness. I was very impressed. The choreographer Stephen Petronio is a gushing fan of the music, "their music demands a physical response from me that by-passes reason." Can't argue with that...

The other piece that I enjoyed was called Pennies From Heaven, the dancers in Hollywood-style costumes danced to a series of pieces of music from the 1930s, in a set that looked like a giant cocktail bar. It was all very glamorous, full of humour and style. And I'm not just saying that because of the White Ladies I drank in the interval...
Video of behind the scenes shot by one of my colleagues.

It Ain't Workin' Chief

2008-09-15T16:34:00.002+01:00

I've got a time for my new radio show on Subcity.
It Ain't Workin' Chief starts on Sunday 21st Sept at 3pm. Listen live online or listen again later.
The show page will have playlists and more details as the show goes on...

Back On Air

2008-09-06T14:04:00.005+01:00

I've been neglecting this blog for Notrock over the last few months, it seemed to make sense to record all the touring stuff in a separate place, but after that it all sort of tailed off (mostly I have to admit because of the lack of any wi-fi in some of the places I've been and the fact that while one is actually doing things, one is often too busy to record them.)
Since the end of the notrock adventures I carried on with the travelling by train and I've been all over the place.

Highlights: Misbehaving at the Ropewalk and recovering with a pot of tea at Lee Rosy's in Nottingham; going to the Klimt exhibition, shopping in the sunshine and dancing my feet off at Le Bateau in Liverpool; tea and cake at Badgers in Llandudno; Playing scrabble at Birchwood commune near Malvern; seeing a load of Scottish bands (King Creosote, Emma Pollock, Errors, Frightened Rabbit, Camera Obscura, James Yorkston) and some Non-Scottish ones (Supergrass, Nina Nastasia, Joan As PoliceWoman) at the Summer Sundae Festival in Leicester and seeing my brother in action as part of Vent Media.

I also went back to Newstead Abbey to see That beautiful pale face is my fate (For Lord Byron) which had contemporary pieces of art dotted around the house. It was like an anarchic treasure hunt and I thought it was great (even if the sound installation wasn't working).

Finally when I got back to Scotland I took one last train trip to Mallaig and then took a boat trip to Knoydart and took a tour with the ranger, including tea at Doune and a quick peek at Mainland Britain's Remotest Pub The Old Forge.

Lots of photos on Flickr.

I'm back to reality now and back at work. Hopefully there is something to be done about that soon. Meanwhile I'm hopefully going to do another show for Subcity (this time with a producer) so more news as I get it....

Bevvy cross the Mersey

2008-07-28T11:21:00.002+01:00

I've rolled up in Liverpool to shop, drink, dress up and dance then went to the Klimt exhibition which reminded me hugely of when I worked at the Charles Rennie Mackintosh exhibition in Glasgow all those years ago. I do like to occassionally reactivate the Art History portion of my brain. After inspecting the pumps (at The Pumphouse.. long stry) we went on the Mersey Ferry, which gives a great view of the city and does actually play you aboard with a bit of Gerry and Pacemakers...Next stop Manchester.

Hours Of Idleness

2008-07-18T15:58:00.004+01:00

After recovering from the exploits documented at Notrock, I hit the rails again for a week in Notts. After actually checking the opening times I managed to get to have a look inside Hucknall Mary Magdalene Church, final resting place of Lord Byron. I turned up in the afternoon and ended up having a tour from a chap called Tim who was learning he ropes from the Verger, and trying to remember all the stuff about the place (10th century tower, lots of alterations, stained glass by Kempe, and the memorials of Byron and Ada.) The ladies minding the church gave me a cup of tea and a biscuit and turned the lights on for me. Is this low impact tourism?

Also while in that neck of the woods I went for a walk in and around Eyam, a beautiful spot with some fairly gruesome history (in the 1660s the Plague struck and the villagers contained it under self-imposed quarantine. The village is full of graves and memorials). We drove around Derbyshire with Test Match Special on the radio, appreciating the idea of England on a summer afternoon. That, I suppose, is what having a sabbatical is all about.

Gimme Fiction

2008-05-30T16:10:00.003+01:00

A few posts ago I mentioned I'd been to a creative writing course.. well I've struggled with some of it (because it's my instinct to write from experience and coming up with fictional scenarios seems rather pointless. But hey, lets get into my self esteem issues somewhere else) I wrote the following "story" for the Fiction Workshop...I've got no problem with being vocal in the workshop situation, I talk too much to be serious writer...

Comedians aren’t generally funny people without a microphone in their hands; some are funny with one, but not all of them. Waiting to go on stage in a room full of them can be bleak. As the only female of half a dozen new acts at an open mic night, I didn’t really have anyone to compare myself to. Stand-ups tend to be very blokey with each other, hiding their nerves, because if you let them show then they might just get the better of you. The worst thing you can do is let an audience see that you’re afraid. And the second worst thing you can do is use up all your energy before you go on. So in this tiny room everyone seemed rather subdued. It was more like a waiting room for a particularly sadistic dentist than a dressing room. Not much of a dressing room either come to that, there was a sink, a toilet cubical, a couple of threadbare sofas and assorted junk, but no mirror and a strange smell akin to old socks.

I wasn’t on until the second half, so I crept out from behind the curtain that separated us from the front of house and out to the proper ladies loos near the main door. When I came back into the bar it was starting to fill up with people, at least near the front of the stage. They seemed like an eager crowd for a Tuesday night, mostly students taking advantage of the discount. They were all drinking and chatting, waiting for the show to start. Comedians were just fresh meat to them. We’d each do our five minutes and then they’d move onto the next act. Just something to do between pints, so they didn’t have to talk to each other all night. A nice change from just going to the pub.

I felt my stomach flip and went back behind the curtain into the smelly little room. Two guys were sitting talking quietly, on one of the sofas. One was a skinny geeky lad; no more than about 21 with a flat nasal voice and the sort of face that looked like it should have been wearing glasses, even though he wasn’t actually wearing them. He was complaining about his day job to an overweight middle aged man who I vaguely recognised as this evenings ‘name act’, I’d seen him do his set somewhere before. He did a ‘joke’ about how a group of good-looking woman always have one ugly friend who they bring along on a night out. He had then proceeded to try and find such a group in the audience and in doing so humiliated a woman in the front row. I always though that comics who resorted to picking on the audience did it because they didn’t have enough of their own material, but this guy probably did it just because it made him feel less inadequate. The geeky guy was whinging about his day job. I really didn’t want to listen to them; I was trying to keep myself focused, trying to keep my adrenaline flowing until I had to use it. Thankfully they were ignoring me, too wrapped up in distracting themselves from their own nerves to care about anyone else. The first thing a group of comics does when they’re put in a room together is to weigh up the competition. As an unknown quantity, a girl whose act they had not seen before, they were trying to figure out if I was worth fearing or worth trying to impress as possible groupie material. I’d been found wanting on both of these counts, for which frankly I was grateful. They didn’t know which box to put me in. I wanted to pace up and down but the room was too small. I could hear laughter from the other side of the curtain. Someone was going down well and for some reason that made me feel worse.

The smell of sweat and dread was getting too much for me so I went outside into the club again. I wanted a drink, but I’d promised myself I would wait until after I’d been on. I had trouble enough holding my material in my head as it was. I’d have to manage sober. Last time, when I came off stage some bloke had come up to me and admiringly told me that I had “balls of steel”. I do wonder where I was supposed to keep these balls. A boule set in a little cloth bag perhaps. I had to work that line into the act, maybe it would come to me when I needed it. He didn’t seem to understand why anybody would get up on a stage and do this, I didn’t really understand it myself but it only takes one great gig to make you want the feeling again. Like some weird chemical reaction. I didn’t understand what people who didn’t have this did in their lives, how do they get ‘that’ feeling? Are they in love? Do they have passion for their work? What lifts them up and fills them and gives them their moment of glory? Maybe they don’t need it and their ordinary life is enough for them. Maybe that’s why performers are so miserable; the hit is so fleeting, it would probably be less destructive to take drugs, certainly more reliable.

I was jittery now, like I’d had too much coffee. The geeky guy was on stage, I was on next. I prayed he’d keep off anything topical that I’d got in my act. But it was ok, he was tanking. Desperately repeating his gags in the hope that they would some how come out funny the second or third time. There’s nothing worse than watching a comic die on stage. Apart from doing it yourself. If you let the audience see that you’ve lost your grip , let them feel even the tiniest bit sorry for you, if you lose their laughter, you’re left with their pity. And pity just isn’t funny. I longed for this awful guy to get off the stage so I could get it over with. Any minute now I would loose my nerve. I could feel myself getting tired, it was all waiting and then after five minutes it would be over. If you peak too early you go flat when you hit the stage. I was ready to burst. There was an insultingly polite ripple of applause and Geeky Guy finally left the
stage. The compere came on and tried to work them up with some call and response stuff. I went behind the curtain and stood at the lip of the stage. The best I could do now was to remember my lines and not trip over the mic lead. He said my name, stepped away from the mic, and I was on.

Hubba Hubba Ding Ding

2008-05-29T14:22:00.002+01:00

I've said it before and I'll say it again Mark Lamarr's Shake, Rattle & Roll is just about my favourite radio show.

Heavy Metal

2008-05-24T22:23:00.002+01:00

Ok Ok I'm on a Robert Downey jag. It started with going to see Iron Man and then going to see it again last week. That's the joy of having a season ticket. It's a great big crash bang wallop of a movie with dubious messages about US patriotism that ought to make me uncomfortable (that DO make me uncomfortable) but dammnit, it's a comic, it's a superhero movie. But yeah, OK, I got distracted. Robert Downey Jr. Oh. My God. It's his eyes, and the fact that even with that hideous beard he's still beautiful. What a noisy, unethical, unsound, load of techy nonsense, but there's effective use of AC/DC and Sabbath on the sountrack..oh hello, have you been working out?
The confident madness of the guy. Is this the enduring influence of Ms Quirke? ("...big unapologetic features, a touch simian.. I love the way it looks corrupting but not corrupt, the impersonations of propriety it stages while slipping you filthy winks...") It's like he's on about 60% charm power and we'd go blind if he turned it up any higher. ( In Two Girls And A Guy, James Tobak's improvised three hander he's on about 80%.. on the verge of overdoing it.) If he amped it up some more what could he be capable of? Did it scare him into his previous excesses? (I caugh RDJ on Jonathan Ross the other week, plugging the film, and he was on about 5% power, quiet and slightly actorly pretentious - it's a craft, it's a martial art, whatever. Good actors are dull when they're off or they wouldn't be good, unless they're Peter O'Toole or one of the old school buffers).
In the meantime I've sort of caught up and (thanks to the joy of Lovefilm) watched Chaplin (a film that is NOTHING without his performance) and the recent and remarkable A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, a film that sort of slipped through the net, but which packs a fair punch - autobiographical, directed by the guy upon whose life it is based, with RDJ, and playing his younger self Shia "in Indiana Jones this week" LeBouef and a few more kids who are gonna be 'names' any day now. It's a bit of a mishmash of flashback and very actorly performances but I watched it without expectation and was quite pleasantly surprised. Remained me a bit of Spike Lee's Summer Of Sam, which is an odd film, similarly set in New York during a hot summer.)

Back to RDJ though; It's not fair he should have come out a couple of places behind Oliver Reed in a "hellraisers poll" and still look that good. And this is his window for greatness. Please don't waste it on this noisy tosh.. do some good stuff (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, the small but movie-saving part in Wonder Boys, that sort of thing?). Ms Quirke suggests Tartuffe... last word to her then:

"There are many super-talented yet joyless people, but the ones who revel in the delightful surprise of their own talent... are the true irresistibles. Brilliance is a suspect quality, tending, as it can, to turn inwards instead of out, as genius should. Tending to get drunk on itself. Tending not to be a good caretaker of itself...Brilliance, if it means anything, means talent that comes easy. It's not as burdensome as genius, or as hard won as excellence. Brillance is fun. And fun is usually trouble."

Go Slowly...

2008-04-29T16:43:00.004+01:00

So plans are falling into place for this "Career Break" thing, otherwise known as "skiving off for the summer".
I'm off as of June 2 so I'm going to go to some gigs on the Radiohead tour and try and see if it's possible to do the traveling without flying... It seems hypocritical to do it any other way... So I'm going to try to document the experience at sister site NotRock . Maybe it'll generate some interest...which might lead to some more things to do when I get back... Any suggestions?

Farewell Triptych

2008-04-28T10:29:00.001+01:00

Yesterday was the final ever gig as part of the Triptych Festival. It was pretty much a survey of all the acts that have appeared over the years. I managed to see 1990s, who's punky-pop has grown on me, Four Tet who turned in a particularly ravey set which had everyone dancing and then The Fence Collective with King Creosote, James Yorkston and the Pictish Trail leaning towards the rockier end of their repertoire. Not a three in a row you would have seen anywhere else on the same night, but I enjoyed it. I also had a bit of a dance to the Kinky Afro DJs and saw Found rather than Candi Staton. A great night for scoring Glasgow Indie Eye-Spy points...

We are now approaching Hades...

2008-04-28T10:10:00.001+01:00

The announcement voice on the train this morning was all slowed down. So the announcements sounded like they were being done by Linda Blair in The Exorcist..
"At the next stop, you mother will cook socks in hell..."

Action Is Character

2008-04-27T08:54:00.005+01:00

I stayed up last night and watched The Last Tycoon on DVD. I read the book last week, the latest installment in my F.Scott Fitzgerald jag. It was the novel he was working on when he died in 1940, and draws heavily on his times in Hollywood in the 1930s. It's unfinished, and as such is only really the bones of a novel, there are little flashes of the potential classic and of the writer's mind at work. The film, made in 1976 by Elia Kazan (the last film he made), was scripted by Harold Pinter and sticks very closely to the completed chapters of the novel. There's something odd about the film though...There's Robert De Niro at the peak of his career (has any actor ever had a run of great performances like he had in the '70s? And then turned in such a lot of tosh in his later career? As Antonia Quirk has it "The resentment is just an index of your greatness"). There's nods to old Hollywood in the casting of Robert Mitchum and (an almost unrecognisably aged) Ray Milland, but there's a strange air about the whole thing. Maurice Jarre's heavily romantic music, mostly used in the rushes that are watched by Stahr (De Niro), feels all wrong and the rest of the film is filled with silences (Pinteresque pauses?). The character of Kathleen (Stahr's love interest) seems to be hindered by Ingrid Boulting's attempts to smother her presumably South African accent... De Niro is great in it though, back when he could still do understated, reactive acting. As he walks alone into a darkened sound stage and the film ends, there's space for what the story was going to be.

Sad Bitch: A Lifestyle Column...

2008-04-26T19:19:00.007+01:00

I spent the day walking and sitting in a cafe trying to think big. I've fixed up 3 months "career break" for this summer. And I'm trying to formulate a plan that lets me have a proper break and hopefully find some spark for moving forward on the job front. Yeah, it's that easy right?
In reality this involved looking longingly at all-terrain sandals and going into the apple store to look at Macbooks. Because a magic computer would write it all for me!?
So would there be a market for a blog of my "adventures"? I've got unique selling points coming out of my ears (apparently). No Kids, no pets, no mortgage, no pension, so what's next?

In other news I am very, very sad that Humphrey Lyttleton has died. I ran to the library to borrow his early Parlophone sides again (I had them ages ago on mini disc but found that the long neglected player has packed in and wouldn't play them) So I made do with Life In A Glasshouse at top volume this morning. But the eary stuff is an endless joy. I suppose this means no more I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue. Unthinkable.

Biblocafe, Laurie Lee, The Literature Of Loneliness...

2008-04-22T19:15:00.006+01:00

Having completely bottomed out on Sunday morning, due to my totally crushing indecision about "Future, The" which has been baring down on me for months now, I left the house with a bag of books and an air of uncertainty... I'd finally managed the day before to walk past on the right side of the road to read the instructions in the window of Biblocafe, so I was taking some books to part exchange. The cafe looks impressive from the outside (good sign, window full of books, plenty of notices) and I'd been meaning to go in for ages, but it's a little bit out of my way and somehow I'd not got around to it until now. I was greeted by the antipodean proprietor, who was fixing her computer, swearing, being rude in a friendly way to her regulars and immediately cheered me up. I offered her the books, she gave me a credit note and a cappuccino, and complemented me on the fact that I'd not asked when the Bible Study Group started (Biblo as in books, cafe as in coffee.. fairly straightforward I'd have thought, but apparently all Greek to some people.) Good coffee. Pleasingly unobtrusive Soul on the stereo, no prams, no screaming kids, books. I found three books for my swap, stayed for another drink and got some writing done.
I've found my own Black Books and it caters for my caffeine addiction. I will be back.

One of the books I picked up, to make up the last £1 of my credit, was a dogeared copy of Laurie Lee's second volume of autobiography As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning. I remember reading this in A Level English Lit, but not anything that we discussed or wrote about it. It must have left an impression on me, though having just finished it again I hadn't really remembered much of it apart from Lee's seemingly endless good luck, his easy descriptions of pretty girls and the fact that he was able to take a couple of years to walk through Spain living on scrounged fruit and cheese, his wits and his violin. I think the book had stayed somewhere in the back of my mind because I'd love to travel through Spain one day, not walking as he did, probably impossible now, but starting in the north and working south taking it all in. I have the feeling (I must check) that my mum has one of his other books (A Rose For Winter perhaps) on her shelf at home. (There were never that many books in our house - not really much room for them - I relied heavily on the Library, I can't remember reading it though so I'll have to see if I can find it next time I'm there.) I remember Cider With Rosie being dramatised on TV when I was a kid and it being considered quite racy (so our English teacher probably used his wiles to get it on the syllabus... I can't remember if Lee's book was the one the class begged for him to choose instead of DH Lawrence's The Rainbow which we vetoed to a pupil for being too long and likely to be full of tiresome local references).

Meanwhile in a desperate attempt to make my brain work I'm taking another Creative Writing beginners evening class at Strathclyde. It's a slight expansion on the introductory month I did last year. It's fairly basic but I'm working on the premise that anything that forces me to work has to be a good thing... If I come up with anything readable or relevent I'll try to post it here. So far I've hammered out 500 words about a meal I ate in Japan. I feel like I need a project (If the job situation isn't going to improve) I don't suppose any realistic artistic daydreams are helped by me reading so much 1930s literature (I've had an F. Scott Fitzgerald jag, Hemingway, Carson McCullers, Patrick Hamilton (whose Slaves of Solitude is fantastic. Can I go back to Uni and write a thesis about the Literature of Loneliness?) this pre-war, pre-corporate world seems so appealing somehow. Things seem possible there.

Singin' In The Rain

2008-03-26T14:35:00.003Z

After picking it at random from my rather neglected shelf of VHS tapes, I watched Singin' In The Rain last night. It one of those films that always cheers you up. Must have been at the back of my mind since I glimpsed this article by Philip French in the Observer (but I didn't read it until this morning).
It's one of those films, no one in it ever bettered it. Gene Kelly is perfect, and he works really hard to make it all look effortless. And it's a happy film without being mawkish. They do not make them like that anymore. I seem to have a childhood memory of it but I think it might be based on the Paddington pastiche, which is almost as good (in my memory) as the film version.

"Wish it was the sixties..."

2008-03-24T13:19:00.004Z

One of the events I went to at the recently finished book festival, Aye Write was record producer and "eminence grise" Joe Boyd talking about his book White Bicycles - Making Music In The 1960s. I've just finished it, and it's a great insight into one person's role in seemingly disparate bits of the music scene. He finishes off very neatly summing up the difference between his 1960s and the present day:

"The atmosphere in which music flourished then had a lot to do with economics. It was a time of unprecedented prosperity. People are supposedly wealthier now, yet most feel they haven't enough money and time is at an even greater premium. The prediction that our biggest dilemma in the new millennium would be how to use the endless hours of leisure time freed up by computers has proved to be futurology's least amusing joke. In the sixies, we had surpluses of both money and time.
Friends of mine lived comfortably in Greenwich Village, Harvard Square, Bayswater, Santa Monica and on the Left Bank and were, by current standardss, broke. Yet they survived easily on occasional coffee-house gigs or part-time work. Today, urbanites must feverishly maximize their economic potential just to maintain a small flat in Hoboken, Somerville, Hackney, Korea Town or belleville. The economy of the sixties cut us a lot of slack, leaving time to travel, take drugs, write songs and rethink the universe. There was a feeling that nothing was nailed down, that an assumption held was one worth challenging. The meek regularly took on the mighty and often won - or at least drew. Dept-free students with time on their hands forced the Pentagon to stop using drafted American kids as cannon fodder and altered the political landscape of France."

"History today seems more like a postmodern collage; w are surrounded by two-dimensial representations of our heritage. Access via amazon.com or iPod to all those boxed sets of old blues singers - or Nick Drake, for that matter - doesn't equate with the sense of discovery and connection we experienced. The very existence of such a wealth of information creates an overload that can drown out vivd moments of revelation."

iplayer art

2008-03-19T19:32:00.009Z

I love the BBC iPlayer. Mainly because it gives me the opportunity to see BBC 4 programmes that I otherwise miss, whenever I feel like it. I really enjoyed Art Of Spain a couple of months ago and now they're re-showing Andrew Graham-Dixon's earlier series Art Of Eternity. I've just watched the first episode, and learnt about Coptic Art, of the early Christians in Egypt, an area of Art History I'd never known about before. The Faiyum portraits in particular are astonishing. The series looks at early Christian art's rejection of naturalism, the second part concentrates on Byzantine art in Constantinople, Greece and Ravenna, Italy. For example the inventive mosaics in Hosios Lukas, a monestry on Mount Helikon in Greece. Or the later mosaics in the Hagia Sophia, in modern day Istambul.
Some of the most sumptuous ones are in Ravenna
(another Byron link, makes me want to follow and explore) A G-D concluded by discovering that Byzantine art uses perspective the the opposite way to Renaissance art, it comes out into the viewer's space rather than creating space and drawing the viewer in.

A Difference Engine: Byron, Ada, Art, Computers

2008-03-06T13:58:00.019Z

This week's In Our Time on Radio 4 focused on mathematician and daughter of Lord Byron Ada Lovelace, which was a conincidence because I've just finished Fiona MacCarthy's Byron Life And Legend. It draws heavily on the resources of the John Murray Archive, which is now located in the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh, must pay a visit soon. I think I was started off on my Byron jag a few years ago when I read Bride Of Science, which was about Ada, after reading Sadie Plant's Zeroes and Ones about women and digital culture (this was a long time ago and it's probably hopelessly outdated now). I'd read that in turn afte being hugely inspired by her earlier book, The Most Radical Gesture, the most thorough book I've ever read on Situationism (and probably the font of all my reference to it).

Meanwhile, I was in Liverpool a while ago and found Fournier's rather idealised Funeral of Shelley (featuring Byron, Leigh Hunt and Edward Trelawney), which along with the book lead me to wonder if anyone has made a study of Images of Byron in art both during his lifetime and after his death (like the one above).
Of course all this Byronism lead me to watch the BBC's Byron again (any excuse), two of it's cast, Philip Glenister and Stephen Campbell Moore seem to be getting a lot of work lately (principally in Ashes To Ashes).

And yes I know I do go on about all this stuff! yawn!
Extra!
A Blunt Instrument tells the tale of Wilfred Scawen Blunt, who married Ada's daughter and lived a life Byron might have been proud of...though this rather bitty programme seems more interested in Arabian Horses (which he bred) than in making a decent stab at "a life".

Good Day, Bad Day

2008-02-13T20:24:00.003Z

I was on Steve Lamacq's show on 6music today ("Britain's 6th Favourite Radio Station"), taking part in the Good Day, Bad Day Feature. (I'd emailed in some comment last week and they emailed back and asked me to take part.) It was a bit nerve wracking at first, but fun to do. I hope he was serious about being their correspondent. Because I am!
It's on listen again for a week, or here's just my bit on Sendspace.

And just to reiterate - that Mystery Jets tune is a good 'un.

Arpeggios And Flangers

2008-02-04T14:57:00.001Z

A patchy but informative documentary on Radio 2 about the short life of guitar anti hero John McGeoch of Magazine, The Banshees, PIL and less expectedly, Visage.

Bellowhead

2008-01-20T18:38:00.001Z

An attempt to review a gig I went to on Friday:
Celtic Connections, Glasgow’s annual winter music festival usually throws up some pleasant surprises to anyone expecting nasal singing, whining fiddles and endless bagpipe solos. Bellowhead, an English folk “big band” promise a mish mash of styles which seems rather daunting on paper. The band’s eleven multi-instrumentalists all steeped in English folk music tradition but not constrained by it, were immediately captivating and blew away my prejudices about this being a “folk” gig. This is folk music from the wider world, a pre-rock and roll paradigm. From this performance this band’s peers are acts like Gogol Bordello and Hawk And A Hacksaw – bands who don’t take the term “World Music” as a pejorative.
There are elements of cabaret and circus about Bellowhead (indeed their album is entitled 'Burlesque’), their musicianship and energy, humour and invention make for a invigorating show. With a stage full of instruments ranging from fiddle to Sousaphone, squeezebox to megaphone, no musical style is off limits. Drummer Pete Flood who plays everything from pebbles on bits of string to what looks like a frying pan, is unafraid to take the band in reggae or salsa directions, or let a sea shanty become a funk breakdown. This seems to work mainly due to the band’s exuberance. Lead singer and multi-instrumentalist Jon Boden, who looks a little like Jason Pierce’s lanky brother, has arranged most of the traditional songs that make up the band’s repertoire. These range from Victorian protest songs and Napoleonic ballads to shanties – an international genre with influences from as far a field as Brazil and Australia. With Bellowhead, English folk music opens up to global influences and becomes a World Music in the best sense of the term.

No Cheques, Coins Stuck On Card Please

2008-01-18T13:37:00.001Z

Jarvis Cocker's Zine Scene on Radio 4 brough back a flood of memories for me... I think I was kind of in at the tale end of the 'Zine boom in the early 1990s - helping with the cutting and pasting process for a few small zines that a friend of mine put together... Jon Savage has a proper archive... I wonder if I could do something similar with my own?
The interweb seems to have pretty much killed off the old scene - you can blog about stuff now, but there was something great about writing for and reading home made stuff. It gave the power back to the fans and let me believe that what the conventional press thought wasn't the be all or end all.

Not coming to a cinema near you

2008-01-09T13:35:00.001Z

I've just found a great little movie site via this piece on the title sequences of Saul Bass, which I in turn found via the newly redesigned I Like.
They need writers at Not coming to a cinema near you, I should do something.

Instant Karma

2008-01-07T23:17:00.002Z

Rich asked me to write a thing about In Rainbows for Nothing At All.
I forgot how much I like doing things like that. Off the cuff, like.

Everything Flows

2007-12-05T23:28:00.001Z

The launch for the Project Ability annual exhibtion last week at Mono had short live sets from The Pastels and Teenage Fanclub. It was an occasion for Glasgow Moments... The Fannies whacked out some oldies and B-sides and showed all the attendent scenesters how it's done. It was a good occassion for playing Glasgow Scene Eye Spy.. or Top Trumps as I like to think of it... 3 Points for a Belle and Sebastian member, extra for Eugene... We play by our own rules...The following night Gerry Love (you're not any one unless he's playing in your band) played with National Park, who don't play very often, and also contain a couple of members of Lucky Luke. They were playing at
ATP, which I was at - I didn't see them but I did catch a bit of Malcolm Middleton's set. He's furthering his quest to get a Christmas Number One with a gig for Shelter at Mono on Sunday.
By the way Portishead were great and I think my favourite band of the weekend was A Hawk And A Hacksaw, who have some mean dulcimer...

Energy Is Pure Delight

2007-11-28T11:49:00.002Z

Today is the 250th anniversary of the birth of William Blake, artist, poet, visionary and revolutionary. Terry Eagleton explains.
Radio 4 have had a season of programmes, including Jenny Uglow's The Poet of Albion.
Unfortunately my copy of Peter Ackroyd's biography got left out in the rain and ruined.
There's an exhibition at the Burrell...

A Humument

2007-11-26T15:28:00.000Z

I went through to Edinburgh yesterday with the intention of seeing some art before attending the Scottish Chamber Orchestra concert, where Messiaen's unusual piece Quartet For The End Of Time was being performed. It's a very strange piece of music that I first heard a burst of as Radiohead's intro music (don't let anyone tell you a band can't come on stage to the sound of a cellist proclaiming the apocalypse). Anyway, due to the crappy Sunday service on the trains I didn't have as much time as I would have liked, but I did get a quick look into the Dean Gallery to see a few pages from Tom Philips' book A Humument. Over the last 40 years he's been effacing and modifying a little-known Victorian novel, A Human Document by W.H. Mallock, into an intriuging work of art. I wanted it to be meaningful - some of the pages pick out words like plucking a second a secret story out of the original novel, some had been drawn on. I suppose that's two separate art works in one afternoon that are linked by the fact that they have been made using particular constraints - Messiaen's Quartet written for an unusual combination of instruments - because those where the musicians available to him in the POW camp, and Phillips' transforming an existing work into his own life's work...

In A City Of The Future

2007-11-22T13:50:00.000Z

Radio 3's Night Waves (Wednesday's programme) featured a particularly high-minded interview by the idiosyncratic Philip Dodd with Patrick Keiller, director of London and Robinson in Space. He talks about his forthcoming installation Cities Of The Future at the South Bank. I hope it see it when I'm in London at the end of the year. A slightly more to the point article on it in the Independent.
I picked up a book at the CCA's book fair at the weekend, a pocket guide to
Psycogeography, which I don't suppose I'll learn many new things from, but perhaps I'll renew my interest. I realised the other day that since I've been writing here (no matter how sporadically) I no longer keep such interesting notebooks, or scrapbooks in the way I used to. And the original imputus for doing this was an interest in situationism and ideas around Ian Sinclair's Lights Out For The Territory and Keiller's Robinson films. Maybe I'll start again. Maybe I'll use this blog for more of that kind of thing?

A Strange Stranger

2007-11-10T20:53:00.000Z

The Sydney Pollack film, The Yakuza has finally appeared on DVD. It's been one of the missing links in my mission to watch everything Robert Mitchum ever made, (along with The Friends Of Eddie Coyle, which is still not available.) It turns out that The Yakuza was written by Paul Schrader and then doctored by Robert Towne, and as such it is a very, very 1970s film. There's echoes of both Schrader's later work and, because of the presence of Mitchum, the Noir world that Towne so sucessfully revitalised with Chinatown, made around the same time. I'm just listening to Pollack's commentary, and he notes that it's not the sort of film that would ever get made now. It has it's flaws of course, there's too much exposition and the pace is a lot slower than you'd ever get now (in my opinion that's not such a bad thing, the only recent film I can think of that's approximated anything approaching a 1970's pace is Michael Clayton*).

But as a Mitchum Movie, it's great. In the commentary Pollack notes that Mitchum was an unique actor, who was rather shy about his own talent, and who described himself as a "Mule"... "he would give you what you wanted, but you had to beat him, you had to keep pushing and pushing."
I've been wanting to see this film since I'd read Lee Server's Mitchum BiographyBaby, I Don't Care and Damien Love's fantastic Solid, Dad, Crazy (A remaindered gem and a real fan's book about Mitchum, so much so that about the only thing I can find when I google it is my last post about it!). As Pollack says in the commentary, The Yakuza is an uneasy mix of genre martial arts film and cultural exposition, with some almost operatic elements. Watching it has sent me back to the (typically romantic) passage in Antonia Quirke's book:

"...Of all actors he explains himself the most, needs analysis the least. He tells you more than anyone else, that a body is what a soul looks like, that the way you speak and move is all there is and nothing more need be said. You don't explain it, you just love it. In Mitchum's case, the eyebrows like droplets sliding off a windshield and the genius for standing still, as if he is both moving and staying put at the same time. The way his gaze comes at you through the second set of tranparent eyelids he seems to have, like a crocodile. The upswing in his voice as if he's continually stopping himself from drifting off. The mysterious depth of experience implied by so many of his gestures as if he is laughing at the smallness of movies compared to life, which goes back forever."

*I've just realised that another film I'd watched again recently, Three Days Of The Condor was also directed by Pollack... That links in with Michael Clayton, which stars George Clooney and was produced by Pollack and Steven Soderberg, who directed Clooney in Out Of Sight, which name checks... Three Days Of The Condor... and so it all goes around!

Live: The Baltic, Gateshead

2007-11-03T11:22:00.001Z

I'm trying a little experiment.. Here I am in the Baltic centre for contemporary art and they've got a whole floor called QUAY where you can come to read, watch films about the exhibitions and a room full of macs - and because it's a Saturday morning they are free to use. I've just spent an hour or so wandering around the exhibitions and shaking my head at the state of contemporary art... I know it's not all about "what art is for" but some of the stuff really doesn't seem to have any function whatever... anyway maybe it's because I saw the Flemish masterpieces yesterday at The Queen's Gallery in Edinburgh and my perspective is all warped.
Of what I've seen today, Kader Attia's Untitled (Skyline), a load of old fridges coved in mirror tiles, like some sort of recycled disco was the best thing. The only piece in the Zabludowicz collection exhibition that grabbed me was a photo by Andreas Gursky... I'm not sure yet what that says about my appreciation of the material.. maybe the fact that I enjoyed the view out onto the Tyne and the Sage centre more than anything else tells you enough.

Take us back down the comedy road Uncle Robert!

2007-10-29T10:45:00.000Z

Mr Newman's back on the telly at long last. I might have to wait as it's on BBC 4 and I only have "council telly" but we shall see if it's as good as the live shows of the last few years have been. I think he missed wearing all the wigs...

Comeandwipeyerhandsonmecoat!

2007-10-25T15:49:00.001+01:00

I've been watching the first series of 15 Storeys High with Sean Lock and Benedict Wong... It's one of those comedies where it takes a while to get into the rhythm and at first it seems to be about nothing much at all, but once you do it's surreal and very funny.
Suitable surrealist blog post

POP IS DEAD!

2007-10-01T12:24:00.000+01:00

Radiohead's new album, In Rainbows will be downloadable next week and you can pay what you like (or get this rather fab package - which is the album on cd, double vinyl and then extra track and art work - so basically an entire album campaigns worth of stuff in one go) for £40 all in. BBC News

As Time notes, could this be the end for the Record Companies?

Blogging masterclass...

2007-09-28T11:35:00.000+01:00

Stephen Fry on fame from the other side of the lens...

100 Word LP Reviews

2007-09-22T17:17:00.000+01:00

I've been writing album reviews for syndication for a while, for various places including the "This Is..." regional websites, Metro, Pipex and Virgin. Here are the ones that I can find online, in their sub-edited form (I wouldn't use the word "sweet" with such profusion!). The idea is that they're no more than 100 words long and fairly positive with a score out of 5. I get to choose what I write about so there aren't any records I completely hate...

PJ Harvey - White Chalk: The singular Polly Jean Harvey continues to outwit her imitators by returning to her Dorset roots and her frequent collaborators, Flood and John Parish. Guitars are relinquished in favour of the piano, which Harvey plays like a beginner in thrall to the instrument, indeed, a standout song is simple titled Piano.
She sings in a higher register than previously and there is a childlike naivety to the lyrics and the playing. A stark, disquieting record full of spectral presences and elemental images, brittle vocals and emotional lacunas, this is worlds away from Stories From The City..., her poppiest album, but White Chalk is all the more interesting for it. Rating 4/5

Emma Pollock - Watch The Fireworks: The former member of the under appreciated Delgados releases her solo debut.
Her sweet, yet slightly off-kilter vocals mark her out from the acoustic singer-songwriter herd. She utilises the full band sound and her new confidence as a vocalist to good effect on the piano-driven single Adrenaline and This Rope's Getting Tighter.
Several tracks are reminiscent not only of her former band, but also of the jangly melodies of bands like Belly and Throwing Muses.
Producer Victor Van Vugt, who's worked with Athlete and Nick Cave, adds polish and brings out the pop potential of these simple yet affecting songs. Rating 4/5

King Creosote - Bombshell: Kenny Anderson's second release on the Names label is outwardly his most commercial to date, but it's not the departure that the title seems to suggest. More a crisper, more radio friendly evolution of his earlier homemade output.
KC's beautiful and distinctively Scottish voice remains to the fore, with sincere lyrics that never become angsty.
The rockier impulses of the well-toured band, comprising members of The Earlies and The Fence Collective, are tempered by the folk influence of traditional instruments. Moments are sweet but never twee.
This album lacks the familiar rough edges of KC's Fence releases, but retains his essential charm. Rating 4/5

M.I.A - Kala: The Anglo-Sri Lankan's second album develops the Day-glo multi-ethnic genre-raiding crash of styles established on her debut Arular. The Brazilian Baile Funk heard on that record, popularised since by CSS And Bonde de Role, is thrown into the mix with everything from disco-era Bollywood to Pixies lyrics.
Mango Pickle Down River's Didgeridoo beats and raps from Aboriginal kid's crew The Wilcannia Mob might be a novelty too far, but Boyz comes on like Missy Elliot's Get Ur Freak On, and sampling The Clash's Straight To Hell on Paper Planes is inspired. The much vaunted extra track produced by Timbaland pales in comparison. Rating 3/5

Wilco - Sky Blue Sky: Jeff Tweedy's mature alt-rockers return with their fifth studio album (not counting their Mermaid Avenue collaborations with Billy Bragg). There is a gentle country influence, redolent of their earliest work, dropping the experimentalism of their biggest seller, 2002's Yankee Foxtrot Hotel.
Songs like the single Impossible Germany burn slowly with soft guitars in a spacious Neil Young style. Loose melodies and domestic motifs in the lyrics (Hate It Here is a litany of household chores) give the impression that the band has become more laid-back. The crisp production doesn't disguise their occasional ELO tendencies but with bands like Midlake making 1972 a musical bench mark, this uncontemporary feel fits in. Rating: 3/5

Bjork - Volta: Bjork has her pick of collaborators for her latest LP - regular Mark Bell is joined by the ubiquitous Timbaland and Antony And The Johnsons' Anthony Hegarty plus Konono No 1, the Congolese analogue trance collective who use car parts and likembé thumb pianos to create astonishing walls of sound.
Earth Intruders combines these various elements to greatest effect starting with a rhythmic trudging through mud and lyrics that reference the tsunami over a percussive storm. Wanderlust is a symphony of fog horns merging into an Icelandic choir.
Beyond dance music or anything so mundane as "pop", this is a global, experimental enterprise as one has come to expect from a Bjork record. Rating: 4/5

Gruff Rhys - Candylion: The latest solo offering from the Super Furry Animals front-man comes with a cute cartoonish character on the cover, and, true enough, the whole thing is like an imaginary soundtrack for an off kilter foreign language (in this case Welsh and ungrammatical Patagonian Spanish) children's TV programme (the vinyl version comes with a flat-pack kit to build your own Candylion).
There's a 1970s feel in the music too. The mix of acoustic melodies and psychedelic orchestrations from the High Llamas juxtaposes with Rhys's distinctively sleepy multilingual lyrics. Production from the Beastie Boy's Mario Caldato Jr ensures that things never get too twee and are always rather warmly nostalgic. Rating: 4/5

Jeremy Warmsley - The Art Of Fiction: This collection of awkward electronica songs rises from the mire of bland indie pop. Warmsley's literate, angular music often makes for an uncomfortable listen, though sometimes this hybrid of traditional instruments and off kilter beats is a success - the clever lyrics of Modern Children or the storytelling of 5 Verses.
But sometimes it's not, with melodies sacrificed to words, and rhythms jumping out at strange angles. Guest musicians from Hoxton's Betsy Trotwood, like Emmy the Great and Simon Mastrantone, add texture, but the ideas come in swoops and bursts rather than resembling catchy melodies.
It seems unfair to criticise an album for having too much going on, but this busy, brittle production feels very crowded. Rating: 3/5

"Guilty Pleasure" or Alternate Universe?

2007-09-14T23:43:00.000+01:00

I seem to have wandered into an alternate universe where Clive Owen (The Chancer.. come on, you remember! And he still can't help ending up as some sort of Athena Man always holding the baby... is the man's whole career some sort of in-joke?) is a proper movie star and John Cusack still dresses like he did when he was 19 (combats, hawaiian shirt, boots)....but it's real!

I saw Shoot 'Em Up and 1408 this week.. and although neither will be queuing up for Oscars any time soon.. I have to say that I had a good time watching them.
I'm not ready with some complex deconstruction of either (this is the internet, someone else will have done it already), as it seem to be the way that all the film studies grads are directors these days, this is already done for you. And don't despair, I have also seen Atonement, Hallam Foe and Two Days In Paris in the last fortnight, so it's not all wham bam instant-grat schlock. But one does notice something watching serveral "actor-led" movies in a short space of time, screen acting is all in the eyes...I shan't start rhapsodising (and oh how I could about Cusack's pools of coca cola and Owen's grey eyes that flicker with humour one moment and menace the next, and not to mention James McAvoy's blue headlamps that turn a small guy into someone who can fill the screen...)

Something I missed while I was away, John Cusack on his "ten good films".

Paris, Je t'aime

2007-09-07T16:47:00.002+01:00

Not the short films, but the real thing. I visited the African and North American art at Musee De Quai Branly,which is a very cool building with plants growing all over it, had coffee and watched the skateboarders at
Palais De Tokyo. Another nice cafe is Georges at the Centre Pompidou, where I saw the 20th century art. There was an excelent exhibition on the history of Rock 'n'Roll 1939-59, with some great music at the Cartier Foundation, and then we went a bit more up to date and saw Micky Green.
The following day I had a look around the 20th century art at Musee D'Art Moderne de la Ville as well.
I follwed the route mentioned in this article on the Passages and Arcades at the back of the Louvre, there's more pictures here of the Passages Couvert
Later on we sat on the Pont des Arts and had a picnic. Trés Bo Bo...
My favourite art museum is probably Musee D'Orsay, I like Manet's Olympia best of all, it's still a pretty jaw dropping painting, it must have been awesome at the time. Later we wound up on the Rive Gauche and I had a look at the books in Shakespeare & Company, it's no longer the same shop mentioned in
Hemingway's Moveable Feast but I bought a copy and started reading it.. only to find that the place where we had dinner was just by where he used to live on the rue de Cardinal Lemoine.
Finally, we checked out The Ninja Tune Festival at Le Batofar, just hanging out while some DJs played, sitting in the deck chairs, enjoying the nice weather. More photos in this Flickr Set.

Love Film Shameless Plug

2007-08-24T09:47:00.000+01:00

If someone signs up to Lovefilm online DVD rental from this link:Love Film I get a discount.. I would genuinely recommend this site and I'm not just saying that! I've been using it since last year, and I've caught up on all the films I could possibly have wanted to see - much better than the local Blockbuster who never have anything I haven't seen. I've had to reduce my sub to the minimum because I couldn't keep up! (and at £4.50 for 2 films a month it's cheaper than Blockbuster too...) anyway shamelessly self serving pimping over...

I'm Bill Hicks And I'm Dead Now

2007-08-23T13:43:00.000+01:00

As the BBC are at pains to point out that this programme about Bill Hicks contains language that some people may find offensive. Phill Jupitus (we saw him stick his head round the door of Bar Napoli in Edinburgh on Saturday!)narrates a documentary about the most missed stand up...

The Interconnectedness of all things

2007-07-31T14:38:00.000+01:00

Radio 4 are going to dramatise Douglas Adams'sDirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, it's so long since I've read it, it might be interesting.. It will feature the ubiquitous Olivia Coleman, presumably proving that casting directors watch a lot of Peep Show?!

Perforated Screening Mechanism

2007-07-28T09:58:00.000+01:00

I've just finished reading a book I started last night (whose last 20 pages I saved to read in bed this morning with tea and toast, as it should be): Antonia Quirke's Madame Depardieu & The Beautiful Strangers.
It's the funniest, most insightful memoir-type thing I've read in ages. Quirke was a film critic (I'd heard a quick plug for her book on Radio 4's Front Row a while back, then forgotten about it until yesterday I noticed it was on offer at Borders when I was trying to find out if it was a shiatsu day, I went anyway and got the book instead of a back rub- voucher on their site until 31 July).
Anyway, she comes across as terribly ditzy but writes like a dream about how her life was refracted through all the actors she loves (lots of them) and now this made her real life quite chaotic.. I won't do it justice here, but read it!
She's spot on about so many actors, Mitchum (the benchmark, so much so that there isn't a need to write about him), the obvious ones like Brando and DeNiro, the EARLY films of Jack Nicholson - but also on less likely people like Steve Buschimi and Jeff Bridges - about how and why they are great.
Ignore the cover illustration (she says inside that she can't stand Audrey Hepburn) and read it!