Blogwatch

Welcome...

The Bargain Basement - home of Lord Bargain, a co-author of football blog Cheer Up Alan Shearer (via Swiss Toni)

Boob Pencil - the site run by author / blogmeet organiser / blog commenter extraordinaire Clare Sudbery (via too many blogs to name)

Me And My CDs - the tales of one man and his ever-expanding record collection (via Paul)

Some Kind Of Drum Chick - on which Creepy Lesbo chronicles her attempts to master the drums

Trabant Driver - the blog of a Trabant enthusiast (via Skif)

Congratulations...

JonnyB, who's been having a little trouble with boilers of late, celebrates his blog's second birthday.

Meanwhile...

The wanderings of By The Sea Shore's mind take a dark turn - "It's funny how the mind works. For example, as I leant back from the loft ladder against the wall supported only by my head, my first thought was not how I and the impossibly heavy crate of LPs that I was gingerly holding above my head could make it safely back to the floor. Instead of deciding how best to ease out of an uncomfortably rigid pose without falling, I tried to work out how long it would take anyone to notice in the event of my having an incapacitating or fatal accident".

Elsewhere...

Jonathan bows the pressures of the 21st century and gets himself a mobile phone - "I didn't quite get the hang of text messaging at first - I had to call the Virgin helpline, where a very patient young man explained the reason I was 'getting more letters than I'm typing in here' was because of something called 'predictive text'. And OK, I didn't know how to do punctuation at first - and couldn't get used to the need for brevity - so my first few text messages came out as free-form, stream-of-consciousness riffs that would have been rejected by Jack Kerouac's publishers as being rambling and lacking in structure".

Swiss Toni somehow survives a James Blunt gig without shooting himself in the head - "The Force is very much with him at the moment..... why can't we just celebrate the fact that a British singer-songwriter is being so bizarrely and unexpectedly successful worldwide? Why do we have to throw stones at him because he has escaped the indie ghetto? Far better this than Westlife, I say".

Betty hands her blog over to young Jimmy Blunt's dad for some insightful comment on Junior's recent conduct - "Going cap in hand is not my usual approach, but we have been rather frozen out by heir apparent due to his choice of career. Heir apparent started out rather promisingly viz. army career, playing big part in annexing of valuable bits of Austro-Hungarian empire, but it has all gone to ground. Why, I was encouraged be some downstairs staff to watch a recent 'television programme' in which he received some 'swing music' award or another. Bally fool was wittering on about how many pretty fillies there were in the audience, AND he rather seemed to be mocking his army career".

Mike reports on an unusual night out - "Yesterday's amateur strip night at the White Swan exceeded all my expectations, chiefly due to the extraordinary performance given by 'Viola', a scrawny sixtysomething tranny from Latvia with a limited grasp of English, and indeed reality. Despite being initially received by a more or less stunned silence from the punters, by the time it came to the public vote we had all recovered our bearings enough to give her a massive, sustained ovation".

Laura finds herself ensnared in a "fart trap" - "The aroma intensified around me in an acrid invisible cloud. I spotted the pharmacist coming back to serve me".

And finally...

Mario's latest 100 word poem is 'The Metaphysics Of Error' - "Sandcastle Uproar was knot the beast proofreader anyone had ever scene, but she worked hat a hack add dim ick small press. Spel lung and gram mar is not hen exact sigh hence, she used to say, so I down try too be par fact. San Kastle had in accomadating boss who dint expect a grate deal from her and loved her scents of home mar. Thanks to San Case Sell, he said, oar press pub lushes many ink cohere ant books. Whee have a ripe pew tea shun four chill lunge ink books that reword close ink speck shun".

Linda Smith RIP

"People knock Asbos, but you have to bear in mind they're the only qualification some of these kids are ever going to get".

"David Mellor, the thinking woman's fat, ugly bastard. The last woman to run her fingers through his hair was the nit nurse".

"Laughter is the best medicine, but that's not true if you've got facial injuries".

We're going to miss Linda Smith, aren't we? An institution on an institution (Radio 4). Voted the Wittiest Living Person in 2002. Only 48 years old. Forty-fucking-eight.

Her quickwittedness is encapsulated in the following response to a heckle when performing stand-up:

Student: "Show us yer tits!"

Smith: "Ah, is it time for a breast-feed?"

Mark Steel's obituary in the Independent

Jeremy Hardy's obituary in the Guardian

Tributes in the Guardian

(Thanks to Jonathan for the links.)

Quote of the day

"It is not in our power stop Bush's visit. It is in our power to protest it, and we will. The government, the police and the corporate press will do everything they can to minimise the extent of our outrage. Nothing the Happy-news Papers say can change the fact that all over India, from the biggest cities to the smallest villages, in public places and private homes, George W Bush, incumbent president of the United States of America, world nightmare incarnate, is just not welcome".

Arundhati Roy writes about Bush's visit to India in the Guardian.

(Thanks to Pete for the link.)

Powerful stuff

Brad Shoup gives us his Top Ten Power Ballads, a list featuring everyone from Ozzy Osbourne to The 13th Floor Elevators, The Rapture and Lift To Experience. No 'Eternal Flame', or 'Alone' by Canadian soft rockers Heart, both of which would have got my vote.

Feel good hits of the 3rd March

1. 'Willie' - Cat Power
2. 'Caviar' - The Icarus Line
3. 'Sailing Around The Horn' - Six. By Seven
4. 'The Battle Of Falcon Hill' - Lovemat
5. 'The Boy's Republic' - Deftones
6. 'Be Honest' - The Wedding Present
7. 'Don't Want To Know If You Are Lonely' - Husker Du
8. 'Camera' - REM
9. 'Red Weather' - The Duke Spirit
10. 'Bullets' - Editors

Incidentally, my review of the Lovemat single 'Between The Lines' is now up on the Vanity Project site.

The sweet smell of bullshit

Films, eh? Like buses. There's nothing I want to see, and then suddenly New Year arrives and - hey presto! - they're everywhere. To name but a few (all thus far unseen): 'Capote', 'Good Night, And Good Luck', 'Jarhead', 'Brokeback Mountain', 'Walk The Line'...

Last night, approximately two months after the rest of the world left auditoriums with tears streaming down their faces, I finally got to see 'A Cock & Bull Story', Michael Winterbottom's marvellously self-reflexive adaptation of Lawrence Sterne's 18th century classic 'The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman'. Starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon - or should that be Steve Coogan / Rob Brydon, or Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan if it's in alphabetical order? They have quite a ding-dong about this...

But I'm getting ahead of myself - the film hasn't even started yet.

We only just make it to Chapter in time for the early screening, my journey on foot having been somewhat circuitous. There was an undelivered parcel to pick up from the sorting depot, you see, which meant venturing into Grangetown and wandering past the lovely shithole that is Ninian Park, home to Cardiff City FC.

What was in the parcel, you ask? A selection of CDs a mate was returning to me. Don't be so nosy.

So, the film. Quite pricey there, at £5.20 each. Maybe that's the going rate these days. No concessions for us any more, unfortunately. Those days are long gone.

There isn't any time for a drink beforehand, unfortunately - we're both parched and could have done with a nice pint of their finest Warsteiner. Or perhaps a bottle of Duvel. The Samuel Smiths Cider slips down very well too. Steve Coogan seems to spend the entirety of 'A Cock & Bull Story' drinking. Vodka tonics, to be precise. Of course, it's not really Steve Coogan. Or, rather, it is - on one level. He's also Tristram Shandy, Tristram's dad Walter and a fictionalised version of himself. Rob Brydon is just two characters - Uncle Toby and a fictionalised version of himself. Or is it three?

Actually, it's more. The fictionalised Coogan plays Alan Partridge. Brydon plays Alan Partridge, much to the fictionalised Coogan's annoyance. Both play Al Pacino. Yeah, I know - I could have done with one of those vodka tonics. And there's Dylan Moran stood at the bar playing a fictionalised version of himself drinking a glass of wine. The bastard. I do hope there's going to be another series of 'Black Books'.

Speaking of black, the screen goes black at one point, to represent the black page in the novel. It's not for long because someone says it wouldn't be very interesting for the audience. Well, I find it interesting. And funny.

As does the audience member in front of me. Actually, he seems to find plenty of things funny. Such as the scene in which the fictionalised Coogan dreams he is miniaturised and suspended naked upside down in a miniature model womb. And the scene in which the fictionalised Coogan acts at acting as if he has a hot chestnut down his trousers, and then acts as if he has a hot chestnut down his trousers. The man's laughter is loud. Louder than mine. Am I showing my appreciation enough, I wonder? Perhaps I should be a bit more enthusiastic. After all, the film is very good indeed. And funny. And Tristram hasn't even been born yet.

But I'm getting ahead of myself again - the film hasn't even started yet.

When we walk into the auditorium, there's a healthy audience but it's not full. We take a pair of seats next to the aisle. Very comfortable. It's quite a decent size, the auditorium. Bigger than the one that appears in the film when the fictionalised versions of the actors are watching and then discussing the filming of the film.

And then the lights go down, and the film begins. The fictionalised Brydon is asking the fictionalised Coogan to look at his off-white teeth. That reminds me - a trip to the dentist is overdue. That either means going all the way back to Nottingham or registering with a dental surgery here. Hmm.

I'm feeling a bit peckish. We'll have some chips in the cafe.

But I'm getting ahead of myself again - the film hasn't even finished yet.

You want to know who's in the film? Well, it's started now, so let's see. Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon (see above). And Dylan Moran.

There's David Walliams. Underused. A bit of a waste. He's a great comic actor, even if 'Little Britain' is just becoming as tired as 'The Fast Show'. I used to like that.

There's 'The Fast Show's Mark Williams. A battle recreation fanatic. Excellent. Also has a go at playing Alan Partridge.

There's Keeley Hawes acting as if she's giving birth to Tristram, and then acting at acting as if she's giving birth to Tristram.

There's Shirley Henderson. Saw her in Shane Meadows' 'Once Upon A Time In The Midlands'. She was the only one who had to master the Nottingham accent, and did it with aplomb. Saw it in the Broadway Cinema in Nottingham. This place - Chapter - is better, I think.

There's Tony Wilson, playing the person Coogan played in Winterbottom's '24 Hour Party People' and interviewing the fictionalised Coogan. I'm thinking of Joy Division. 'Love Will Tear Us Apart'. That was quite something at Glastonbury, wasn't it? If you closed your eyes, at least.

There's Gillian Anderson in it, strangely enough because of Tony Wilson. Gillian Anderson? You know, Agent Mulder from off of 'X Files'. Or is it Agent Scully? I can't take her appearance seriously. Now I'm thinking of that fucking Catatonia song. Hang on, am I supposed to profess an undying love for them now I'm a Welsh resident and it's St David's Day?

OK then. What's the message? Well, one of Stephen Fry's two characters (oh, didn't I mention he's in it too?) (and by that I don't mean he plays a schizophrenic) says something clever about life and art. But his other character says something funnier about a cock and a bull so I think that may be it.

What would Lawrence Sterne have made of 'A Cock & Bull Story'? Well, I think he'd have loved it. Faithful to the spirit of the book, and it's that incredible spirit that's most important.

Of course, if this review was to have been faithful to the spirit of the book and the film, I'd have written about anything but the book and the film...

Ah, you seen what I been trying to do there?

A bear's man's tale

When 'A Cock & Bull Story' finished, the night was yet young and we were already at Chapter, so it made sense to make the most of it and stay on for another film. We had a choice of documentaries: 'Channels Of Rage', about a pair of Israeli rappers, one a Zionist and the other an Arab; and Werner Herzog's 'Grizzly Man', about Timothy Treadwell, who lived with grizzly bears in the wilderness of Alaska for fourteen summers until he and his girlfriend were killed by them in 2003. Both sounded potentially interesting, but we plumped for the latter.

'Grizzly Man' incorporates interviews with Treadwell's friends, acquaintances and - towards the end - his parents, but consists mainly of footage edited by Herzog from over 100 hours of film that Treadwell himself shot during his last five "expeditions" (it's still overly long, but that's a fairly minor quibble). This footage includes some impressive images of Treadwell's ursine companions in their natural habitat, but wildlife documentary this is not. The film is entitled 'Grizzly Man' with good reason - it is Treadwell himself and not the bears that is at its centre.

With his flowing golden locks, baseball cap and shades, Treadwell looks like a surfer washed up on unfamiliar shores, and his bouncy, bright enthusiasm when on camera with the bears behind him is reminiscent not of David Attenborough but a hyperactive children's TV presenter. As Herzog suggests at one point, Treadwell appears to have cast himself as the "kind warrior", the fearless all-action hero of his own movie, and indeed it is as a fellow filmmaker as much as anything else that Herzog is interested in him.

Throughout the film Treadwell has three mantra-like lines.

Firstly, he constantly claims that by living with the bears he is protecting them from outside threats to them and their habitat, and by documenting it he is able to educate children. But, aside from some brief clips very early on, we never really see him in action in the classroom (a failing of the film, perhaps). More puzzling is that first claim - how is he protecting them, one wants to ask him, and from what? Indeed, when he encounters poachers who throw rocks at one of the bears, he is appalled but remains hidden, refusing to reveal himself and stop the torture. As an Alaskan native points out, Treadwell was himself an intruder, and in ignoring the safe distance between humans and grizzlies he was equally guilty of disrespecting them. And, of course, it was that dangerous disrespect that ultimately got him killed.

Secondly, he spends much of his screen-time declaring his love for the creatures that surround him (or with which he has surrounded himself): the bears (which are all given names), foxes, even - pathetically, amusingly but nevertheless touchingly - a bee. Herzog talks of Treadwell's desire to live in harmony with the natural world, but of course it also betrays a desire to be loved - a desire that seems to have gone unfulfilled in the human world, in which he was troubled by (amongst other things) alcoholism and relationships with women.

Thirdly, he repeatedly draws attention to the perilous situations in which he places himself, claiming that his survival is a matter of special courage and ability, as well as a rapport with the animals. Anyone else, he argues more than once, would be ripped to pieces. And this is where I think Herzog's otherwise excellent commentary could have been sharper. For, while harmonious living was important to Treadwell, he also evidently wanted to be at the centre and in control, to feel master of all he surveyed - wildlife, landscape, himself. Good old-fashioned hubris, in other words. It was like some kind of crazily dangerous child's game - one precipitated by a deep-seated psychological need, but childish all the same.

And yet for all his self-obsession and idiocy, Treadwell remains a sympathetic character it's hard not to warm to, and when Herzog listens to the audio tape of the fatal attack and later when Treadwell's ashes are scattered in the place he called home there was a definite lump in the throat.

Effin' L

Now up on The Art Of Noise: the letter L installment of the A-Z Of Music feature, in which - amongst other things - Skif writes about locomotion and Swiss Toni touches on Lionel Richie's appearance on 'Top Gear'. So, not quite planes, trains and automobiles, but close.

Achosion I Laweni #1

(That's "Reasons To Rejoice" to you.)

Yes, long overdue, it's the first installment in the new Cardiff equivalent of the Reasons To Be Cheerful series. The idea remains the same: I'll explore the city and write about the places, events, people etc that give Cardiff its appeal.

So, without further ado...

#1 - Chapter Arts Centre

Where better to start than with somewhere I've already been three times and which is very likely to become something of a second home?

A short walk from the Millennium Stadium, Chapter is an all-in-one arts centre of the highest order incorporating two small cinemas, a theatre space (which doubles as a gig venue) and an art gallery. No wonder it draws the city's culture vultures to it like a bloodied corpse.

But its attractions don't stop there. It also boasts a cafe and a splendid bar that is every bit a match for that of the more self-consciously swanky Broadway Cinema in Nottingham. An enormous range of continental lagers is available in bottles and on draught. Of course it doesn't come particularly cheap, but then this is a sophisticated and cosmopolitan drinking venue a couple of leagues above the pubs of the nearby Cowbridge Road.

As you might have surmised, thus far the bar has been what has drawn me to Chapter most often, though I've already attended one gig there. Visits are likely to be frequent in the next few weeks, what with screenings of Michael Winterbottom's 'A Cock & Bull Story' and the appearance of Stewart Lee pencilled in the diary. Maybe I'll just get them to set me up a camp bed?

Right to reply

Well, it was bound to happen sometime. It's just a surprise it's taken so long - as I reflected over on Pete's site when he was the recipient of similar comments.

Following last week's gig review, this comment has appeared:

"A friend of the Band found this blog by accident. It's a shame the person reviewing our gig didn't have the balls to tell us what they thought of us to our respective faces and the crowd that came to see us when he saw us play - oh the joys of the internet.

I appreciate we're not everyone's cup of tea however, I find it lazy journalism to write us off as a Stone Roses clone.

Finally, I would probably have been more concerned about this short paragraph slating my band but it would appear that this website is very rarely used by anyone that may have a worthy opinion so I'll be sleeping easy tonight.

See you on the way back down eh lads?

Delta Red"

On the whole I think this is a restrained mud-slinging-free response to what was, with hindsight, a pretty sharp review, so the least I can do is dignify it by responding in kind.

First up, while I can see it might be unsettling for bands to think there are people lurking in the crowd waiting to pen critical reviews, it's part and parcel of being in a band. Put yourself on a stage and you're there to be shot at (just as I am by putting myself on a virtual stage here - you had every right to reply). That said, I don't set out to take pot shots at bands, especially not at those who are just starting out. I call it as I see it, without intentionally setting out to cause offence.

Introducing myself to the band and explaining my views? Not always practical, and that's not just a get-out clause. I've spoken to plenty of bands post-performance, though - this isn't about being a faceless sniper. And telling the crowd what I thought of the performance? Well, I have done - if people are interested they can find the review here via Google. The implication seems to be that I should have taken to the stage between sets to deliver my verdict orally. Er, right...

Was the Stone Roses comparison "lazy journalism"? Perhaps, but then it sounded like lazy indie to these ears, I'm afraid.

Delta Red certainly weren't my cup of tea, but (and the review didn't mention this, admittedly) they went down very well with many of those present. Which, of course, leads onto the final point. This site has, ahem, a modest number of readers, and is the vehicle for the opinions of one person - so to shrug off the review as the ravings of one lone gunman is a perfectly reasonable response.

Not quite so sure about the slight on the worthiness of your opinions, readers, but there you are...

The band member who left the comment didn't leave an email address, but if you're reading and want to come back on any of these points, then feel free to contact me at silentwordsspeakloudestAThotmail.com. Let it not be said that communication is unidirectional with this site...

Blogwatch

Welcome...

Wandering Scribe - A law graduate currently living in a car in woods somewhere near London writes about her experiences of being homeless (this is a recent and very worthy recipient of the Blog Of The Week award over at Swiss Toni's Place)

This Blog Will Change Your Life - "My year-long adventure following the daily instructions presented in This Book Will Change Your Life by Benrik Limited as closely as possible without getting arrested or dying..." (via Parallax View)

Scarecrow - A .blogspot site, but more a fully-fledged literary site featuring reviews, short fiction, poetry, essays and interviews (via one of its contributors, Wan)

Meanwhile...

No competition for most powerful post of the week: Reluctant Nomad is confronted with the news of regular reader / virtual friend Felicitas's suicide, and her spiteful yet somehow affectionate parting shot.

Elsewhere...

On a tangentially related note, Gordon writes about making sudden discoveries about those whose blogs you read avidly - "As you read you start to build mental pictures of people, their opinions and their pet peeves, yet we don’t know the person at all".

Forksplit is writing a book - "The first time I started writing the book, I opened a new Word file and sat staring at the blinking cursor. I smoked a cigarette and stared at it. I ate a microwaved Amy's Organic Breakfast Burrito and stared at it. I couldn't write. So I went into my blogger account and opened a "New Post" window. And immediately started writing. There was something about that format that just felt right. I wrote just like I always do on the blog".

Jonathan catches the NME Tour in Brighton - "As great as the Arctic Monkeys were, it's plain that the right band are headlining tonight; Maximo Park, unlike the young whippersnappers, have simply honed their act to perfection, and the extra few years that they've put in have rendered their songs as tight and lean as you could imagine".

Kenny reports back on gigs by Broken Social Scene and The Magic Numbers.

Alex and Valentine's Day involves a trip to see an Anglo-Italian horror movie - "The plot of 'The Night Evelyn Came Out Of The Grave' is as convoluted as the title, and centers around one 'Lord' Alan Cunningham. He's a millionaire playboy type character - sort of a cross between a less-charismatic Lord Summerisle and Bruce Wayne, except where Bruce has a batcave Alan has a dungeon, and where Bruce fights crime, Alan likes to pick up red-headed prostitutes, take them back to his castle, and murder them while babbling about his late wife Evelyn".

Jonathan kidnaps a new friend and takes him "on an impromptu whistlestop tour of [Manchester's] night-club queues".

And finally...

Laura tries speed-dating for what may have been the first and certainly is the last time - "'Well, I'm really good in bed. Really good. I can go all night'".

Mmm K

The latest installment of the A-Z Of Music feature is up now on The Art Of Noise, including pieces on Killing Joke, Nat 'King' Cole, Kraftwerk, The Kinks and, er, Kevin Keegan. And - mercifully - none on Kula Shaker, though it seems to have been a close call.

Animal instincts

LOVEMAT / DELTA RED, 18TH FEBRUARY 2006, NOTTINGHAM HORN IN HAND

I honestly wish it wasn't the case, but there are just some bands that invite and compel me to make critical and snide commments. Delta Red, bless 'em, are just such a bunch of unfortunates.

For many of those assembled, there's nothing whatsoever wrong with what they're selling - neat, tidy and predominantly upbeat indie of a distinctly Mancunian variety. Me, I fucking hate The fucking Stone Roses and The Bluetones and think any individual or band who adopts that Liam Gallagher / Ian Brown upwards singing pose when stood behind a mic should be stoned to death. I gnaw on my fist silently to one side of the stage. "Where did all the good times go?", they ponder. Well, I can feel myself getting older and more terminally bored by the second.

So thank fuck for Lovemat, who, having escaped the asylum their native North-East for three days, are hungry for blood. The venue couldn't be much more suited to them - a few doors from Rock City, the Horn In Hand is also aptly named in that Lovemat come on like priapic werewolves intent on impregnating some of the local maidens.

Buoyed by the evening's football result and relieved at the lack of sound and electricity problems that blighted last night's set in godforsaken hellhole Mansfield, the Geordies set about their task with relish. New single 'Between The Lines' - salivating with disgust, propelled by a splendid riff - opens proceedings, with much of the debut LP The Fearless Hair Days Of Youth following. There's a local flavour to 'RSVP' (about Newcastle's Bigg Market) and 'The Battle Of Falcon Hill' (about their home town - "Small song, small town", vocalist Paul Kell says). You wouldn't want to taste these songs, though - you don't know where they've been. Or, rather, you know EXACTLY where they've been.

While guitarists Frank Major and Kenny Luke are by and large a picture of cool restraint holding things and themselves together, bassist Danny Bray and the hyper-animated Kell fling themselves about with abandon. Drummer Chris, sporting a superb handlebar moustache, begins dressed like a dapper Victorian gent in shirt, tie and waistcoat (only the pocket watch is missing) but by the time he's gurning his way through set-closer 'Lost In The City' he's partially stripped off and punching the cymbals like the same gent after an all-day session in an illicit booze den drinking absinthe and listening to Slayer.

A shame I couldn't stay for headliners Hinterland - the song they soundchecked with hinted at Mclusky and Shellac - but, as for Lovemat, they came, they saw, they conquered. I doubt if it'll be too long before they're back. You have been warned.

Eat that, Cowell!

You've heard of starmakers, the Cowells and Walshs of this world, moulding and promoting prospective pop idols like puppeteers? Well, ex KLF duo Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty are claiming to have gone at least one step further in declaring that "they plucked a young Buddy Holly impersonator [Pete] Doherty from obscurity and made him a media darling" in "one of the largest hoaxes in British history". Genius.

Incidentally, in the latest installment of the A-Z Of Music feature on The Art Of Noise, Del profiles Drummond and Cauty's musical career.

According to a friend of mine who knows Drummond quite well, he's "just a really nice down-to-earth guy who drives a clapped-out Range Rover and eats raw carrots and apples". Not the sort of person you expect to be a media terrorist, now, is he?

(Thanks to Simon for the link.)

First of the gang to get married

I've never heard Morrissey's 'Hairdresser On Fire' at a wedding ceremony before, and I doubt I ever will again.

Congratulations Matt and Tracey, cheers for a fantastic weekend and very best wishes for the future.

Feel good hits of the 21st February

1. 'There Is A Light That Never Goes Out' - The Smiths
2. 'On The Lash' - The Icarus Line
3. 'Forever Lost' - The Magic Numbers
4. 'Lost In The City' - Lovemat
5. 'Crusher' - The Wedding Present
6. 'Win Your Love' - The Duke Spirit
7. 'Stay Away' - Nirvana
8. 'The Greatest' - Cat Power
9. 'A Boy Named Sue' - Johnny Cash
10. 'Ride A White Horse' - Goldfrapp

And, yes, 'There Is A Light That Never Goes Out' was the last track played at the reception for the wedding mentioned above...

American beauty

NEAL CASAL / DANNY GEORGE WILSON, 12TH FEBRUARY 2006, CHAPTER ARTS CENTRE, CARDIFF

An unfamiliar city (Cardiff), an unfamiliar venue (Chapter, or more specifically one of the two theatre spaces therein), an unfamiliar crowd (mostly middle-aged and seated, and sufficiently sizeable for Pete and I to contrive to miss each other) and unfamiliar artists. This is stepping into the unknown.

First up is Danny George Wilson of Grand Drive performing solo. Bounding up to the microphone wearing a bright red shirt and a broad cheeky grin, he looks every bit like a stand-up comedian. What follows, however, is not a torrent of one-liners but six neat but slight acoustic songs - which would be fine were it not for one incessant niggle: authenticity. (Yes, that old chestnut - but, given that we're firmly in Uncut territory here, I think a little bit of rockism is excusable.) There's just something jarring about an Englishman singing about BMXs and boy racers in an American accent and to a very American musical style. Mojave 3 were much the same - remember them? Sounded like they were from the dustbowls of the American Midwest, when really they were indie scenesters from North London.

After an interval of no more than five minutes, headliner Neal Casal takes to the stage - such are the joys of seeing a solo acoustic performer follow a solo acoustic performer, even if it does preclude disappearing for another swift pint. Last time he was in Cardiff, in the summer, he was playing with Johnathan Rice in front of thousands as the opening act on the REM tour when it called at the Millenium Stadium. The time before that, playing on his own at the Barfly, the set was interrupted by some drunks clowning around with an umbrella. There's little chance of a repeat tonight - the crowd is impeccably behaved, aside for the odd undignified whoop here and there. One chap even goes so far as to volunteer to venture downstairs to the bar and thereby miss out on a couple of songs in order to bring Casal up some much-needed liquid refreshment.

Much-needed a drink of some description may have been, but alcohol perhaps isn't quite what Casal needs. Between songs he appears tired and jaded, losing track of what he's saying in his New Jersey drawl. At one point he refuses to play certain old songs requested by audience members because they're "too depressing" - one gets the impression that if forced to do so he'd crumple up in a heap mid-song and curl up foetus-like on the stage.

And yet Casal is often witty, and, when playing, utterly in command of the room. There are no mobiles chirruping, there's no irritating chatter around me, stood at the back. The audience seem to be asking him silently to do as one bloke at the front blurts out aloud and somewhat embarrassingly: "Go on Neal, cast your spell".

As one might expect of someone compared to Gram Parsons and Gene Clark who has toured with Ryan Adams & The Cardinals, Casal deals in exquisite Americana, his gorgeous lovelorn songs evocative of dusty shoes, open highways and distant mountains. His guitar playing is sublime, and his voice even better.

But the problem with Americana, for me, is that everything's about loss, about how things used to be "in the good ol' days". It's about living in the past - lyrically and, it has to be said, musically. There's an inherent denial that the future, or even the present, could be as valuable. And as such, touching as it can be, it just doesn't excite.

I come away feeling that I've been entertained, but that I'm not ready for that subscription to Mojo just yet.

Links:

Pete's review of the gig

Oh J

After a three week hiatus, the A-Z Of Music feature is back up and running on The Art Of Noise - this week's featured letter being J. There you'll find pieces on everything from The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu to jug 'n' spasm.

Blogwatch

Welcome (a bumper selection today)...

Forksplit - Mike's been raving about this site, and with very good reason

The Quiz Blogger - a new site from a quiz fanatic, complete with fiendishly difficult questions

Drawing Moustaches In Magazines - the blog of the fanzine of the same name written and edited by comedienne Josie Long

Oh! - written by a chap called Russ who seems to spend half his time at gigs in and around Birmingham and the other half writing about them

One Eyed Man - written by Scott, a Brit from Brighton currently resident in Melbourne

After The Rat Race - the internet diary of someone who dropped out with a stitch

Eine Kleine Nichtmusik - witterings on everything and nothing, which is just what we like

Photographs Of Newcastle - a self-explanatory site, quite enough to make me feel a bit homesick

Meanwhile...

The most touching yet gently amusing post of the week? Mish saying a tearful goodbye to a dear friend, her cat Big Ron - "He was diagnosed with inoperable tumours back in November and I was told it would be ‘weeks, not months’. Three months and one week later he was still around despite being merely a bag of bones held together by spite ... The vet trapped his finger in the medical box as he was putting everything away. It’s what Big Ron would have wanted".

Elsewhere...

LondonMark is now New York Mark, for obvious reasons.

Robin contemplates that modern phenomenon, the conspiracy theory - "There is an infinite supply of facts in the world and not all of them will fit together neatly on a grand scale. Some people will find that worrying, others will not feel the need to resolve every fact neatly into a whole. The worriers have enough material to select any two events and connect them, while ignoring other events which resist connection. After God, conspiracy is the second most popular forwarding address for incongruous facts".

Jonathan is smitten by Graham Coxon's new LP - "Love Travels At Illegal Speeds is an absolute joy. Each Coxon record has been a progression from the last, but most have been dizzily eclectic and varied - only on 2004's decent Happiness In Magazines did it sound like he was moving towards a level of consistency. But this time round all 13 songs are both tremendously self-contained and perfectly in sequence".

Pete announces his Big Project for 2006, writing a book about the Birmingham Outer Circle bus route - "Maybe it'll get published and I'll be able to retire on the earnings. Maybe I'll just move to onto something else. Whatever happens, it should keep me nice and busy for the next 10 months, and that's the important thing. I've been faffing around too much recently and need some kind of long term thing".

Judging by Clare's post (and those by other attendees), Saturday's blogmeet in Manchester was quite a success, complete with special guest.

Alan had the good fortune to see Nick Cave on his recent tour - "Nick Cave is an enigma, almost impossible to explain, a man who can sing about the darker side of life and make you feel good, who can take a cacophany of noise and turn it into something beautiful. His existence makes the world a much stranger place, and it’s all the better for it".

Paul and Neil give that "four things" meme a go.

Phill's Say No To Sting campaign steps up a gear - "The Say No To Sting campaign dictates that I immediately stop playing the banjo. This will be a wrench, but I'll manage somehow. Though where the ukelele stands with regards to this I don't know".

And finally...

Del recounts how he managed to blow up his toilet - "Argh! I cracked the bowl! I blew up the bloody toilet! It's full of a black evil looking liquid, which is now leaking all over the floor, and burning it away! Holy sweet merciful crap!"

Good to know, isn't it, that even misfortune and disaster have their silver linings - if it hadn't happened, Del, the post wouldn't exist and I wouldn't have spat coffee all over my keyboard.

Just seventeen

Congratulations to Vanity Project - the fanzine is currently celebrating its fourth birthday, and doing so in style with a special issue out now. Issue #17 includes the following, amongst much, much more:

Interviews: Iodo

Album reviews: Jenny Lewis, The Fallout Trust, Sigur Ros, Deerhoof, Broken Social Scene, Ryan Adams & The Cardinals, Magnetophone, The Raveonettes, Quintron & Miss Pussycat, Greg Dulli's Amber Headlights, Laura Veirs, Venetian Snares, The Ralfe Band, Shooting At Unarmed Men, Angels Of Light, Kelley Stoltz, The Graham Parsnip Liquidiser Torture Think-Tank (Project)

Single reviews: Brian Eno, Korn, The Golden Virgins, Dilated Peoples, iForward Russia!, The Modern, The Hot Puppies, Tender Trap, The White Stripes, The Chemistry Experiment, Boy Kill Boy, Silver Sun, StrangeTime, The Strange Death Of Liberal England

Live reviews: The Young Gods, Regina Spektor, The Research

DVD reviews: Siouxsie, The Mission

So go on, click on the link above and get yourself a copy. How many indie fanzines do you know that sponsor non-league footballers (in VP's case, Guy Lopez Da Cruz of Skif's beloved Havant & Waterlooville), ferchrisakes?

Reasons why the internet is a marvellous thing #3716

Pets In Uniform - "Imagine: your dog, cat, or other pet in full military regalia. We make this fantasy a reality". Genius.

(Thanks to Chunk for the link.)

Croeso i Gaerdydd

As promised, some initial incoherent observations about the country and city we are slowly learning to call home...

* £9.80 to cross the bridge over River Severn into Wales in a van?! Croeso i Gymru indeed! (Incidentally, the van we'd hired to transport all our worldly possessions was as anticipated white - but sadly I forgot to purchase the prerequisite copy of the Sun to display proudly in the window.)

* The Welsh language really is marvellous, but at least partly because it's so cheeky. In many cases it seems that, to make an English word Welsh, all you have to do is change or knock off a letter or two and Bob's your uncle. Lesson one: "coffee" is "coffi". Lesson two: "cinema" is "sinema". Lesson three: "theatre" is "theatr". I'll be fluent before long - or, rather, as fluent as it's possible to be in a language with so many consonants...

* The Cardiff accent (in English), like the Nottingham and Birmingham accents before it, makes me smile. There's something mellifluous about it - even when the speaker is talking about a routine surgical operation that was botched and resulted in the horrific death of the patient. That this particular speaker was preparing our food in a takeaway at the time didn't do much for our appetites.

* Cardiff seems to be full of disused churches with smashed windows. This has lead me to conclude that it's a godless, dissolute place and thus helped to explain why Charlotte Church is so at home here. We'll fit in fine, too.

* Speaking of la Church, no sightings of either her or that muppet Henson yet. Perhaps that's because we haven't ventured out onto the notorious sick-strewn booze strip that is St Mary's Street of an evening yet. Or perhaps it's because she knows I'd drink her under the table.

* Churches (of the ecclesiastical kind) aren't the only things that are boarded up round here. So are what would have been both our locals, the Moorland and the Tredegar. A shame we didn't move in earlier, because I could quite possibly have kept them both in business. In fact, I could have immortalised the Moorland on SWSL in much the same way as JonnyB has the Village Pub, and before too long I'm sure people would have been flocking to Splott and hopscotching all the dogshit on the pavements to see what all the fuss was about.

* Sorry, yes, our house is situated in Splott. It's an area of the city, not (as one friend suggested) the place where a children's TV show is set. There's something very strange about the street names round here. On the other side of the very logically named Newport Road, for instance, there are a few streets named after East Anglian cities and towns. Meanwhile, the roads off Clifton Street on one side are all named after precious stones - Sapphire Street, Topaz Street etc - whereas on the other they're all named after types of precious metals. Well, it starts off with Gold Street and Silver Street, but before long there's evidence of some serious barrel-scraping - as you go further south, Copper Street, Lead Street, Iron Street, Tin Street and Zinc Street. Best of all is the other road that runs perpendicular to them and parallel to Clifton Street - it's just called Metal Street. As for us, we live on Florence Street. Sadly, it isn't one of a whole load of roads named after Italian cities of global significance during the Renaissance period. Or characters from 'The Magic Roundabout'.

* Splott has, erm, character. And, like most places with character, it also appears to have characters. Take, for instance, the cheeky young whippersnappers whom we heard greeting a passing cyclist with an array of airborne glass bottles. Probably the same youngsters who, no doubt high on nothing more than youthful exuberance, lobbed something sharp and metallic in our direction when we were unable to furnish one of their number with a cigarette a few nights later. More harmless is the bloke I'm going to call Headphone Man - with good reason, for a pair of those enormous DJ style headphones appears to be permanently attached to his pony-tailed head. I've seen him a couple of times, sat on his step with the front door open, nodding and tapping his slippers on the pavement. Once he looked up and smiled at me. I hurried on, though. If there's one rule I live by, it's 'Never stop to talk to anyone wearing slippers in public'.

* If someone offers to take you "up the Valleys" there's no need to snigger and politely decline - it's not a euphemism. It's a bit grim up there, mind - claustrophobic and narrow in the valleys themselves, to the extent that you instinctively feel the air's clearer and cleaner when you get up and out onto the hills. I think there's a series about the area on BBC2 Wales at the moment, imaginatively titled 'Valleys', but it clashes with 'Coronation Street' or something equally unmissable, so it's gone unwatched. It wasn't all grim, though - we also went to Caerphilly Castle, which boasts its own leaning tower (albeit not quite on the same scale as that in Pisa) and an assortment of medieval weaponry, including a device designed to fire "large darts" and allegedly sufficiently powerful to skewer seven men through in one fell swoop. Probably not as accurate as Raymond van Barneveld though.

Is it just me...

... or is crack one of the primary ingredients of Sainsbury's toffee tiffin? It's not listed on the label, but it must be in there somewhere. We just can't stop buying and gobbling the stuff. Anyone got a number for Tiffin Guzzlers Anonymous?

A blast from the past (two weeks)

And the good Lord Of NTL said "Let there be a broadband connection!" and it was so. Thus it is that, after an absence of a little over a week (but which feels more like two or three), I return to the blogging fray. A few preliminary observations about Cardiff to follow tomorrow, but first...

Prior to my enforced internet hibernation, I was asked by both Alex and Pete to give the following meme a go. I promised to do so when back online, and as I'm always (er, knowingly, at least) true to my word, here goes…

Four jobs I've had
(Those of you that know me personally - no sniggering at the back, OK?)
Saturday assistant, Superdrug
Seasonal assistant, Malham Youth Hostel
Cafeteria assistant, Whitehouse Farm Centre
Secreterial assistant, Birmingham City Council
(I should be quite good at assisting by now, I reckon...)

Four movies I can watch over and over
'American Beauty'
'The Big Lebowski'
'The Shining'
'The Goonies'
(If anyone wants the rules of a drinking game to be played while watching the latter, let me know and I'll post 'em here.)

Four places I have lived
(Multimap at the ready...)
Morpeth (NE62 2BY - 1977-1997)
Nottingham (NG7 2RD / NG7 1SP / NG7 1PY / NG7 1PE / NG7 1PW - 1997-2004)
Birmingham (B4 7EG - 2004-2006)
Cardiff (CF24 2PA - 2006-present)

Four TV shows I like to watch
(Well, what I've been enjoying of late, at least...)
'Coronation Street'
'Balderdash & Piffle'
'The Thick Of It'
'Match Of The Day'

Four foods that I like
Deep pan pepperoni, chicken tikka, green chilli and green pepper pizza from El Paso in Nottingham
Crusty bake steak pie from the 19 Gales stall at the Birmingham Farmers' Market
Pork scratchings
Hot 'n' sour soup and Vietnamese-style hot 'n' spicy noodles (both from Cafe Soya - my mouth's watering just thinking about them...)

Four websites I visit daily
NUFC.com
BBC News
Troubled Diva
Casino Avenue

Four things I want to do before I die
Write a book of some description (and knowing me, it'll have A LOT of description...)
See Newcastle Utd win something, anything
Have children
Live

Four places I would rather be right now
Selectadisc, Nottingham
The Anchor, Birmingham
My local pub in Morpeth at 7pm on Christmas Eve
Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon's house

Four people I'm tagging
(Don't feel obliged, and apologies if you've already done it, somewhere back in the mists of time...)
Paul
He Who Cannot Be Named
Del
Jonathan
(I'm guessing that Paul and Jonathan might share one of my "Four things I want to do before I die"...)

Spam up! It’s Friday!

The strangest couple of minutes of TV I saw while I was away? Without a doubt, the interview on last Sunday evening’s ‘Child Of Our Time’ (BBC1) with a pub landlord who had a remarkable form of synesthesia.

Rather than experiencing words and music as colours (as most of those with the condition do), this chap experienced tastes, including smell and texture. He has come to associate most days of the week with particularly distinctive tastes, for instance – Mondays with rubber bands, and Fridays with Spam. Even people’s names conjure up tastes, and the footage showed him having to leave the bar because frequent mention was being made of a regular whose name caused him to suffer the taste of Marmite sandwiches.

In case you’re gutted you missed it, don’t be – the rest of the programme was bollocks.

"I think I'm cracking up"

'Balderdash & Piffle' may have finished on Monday, but I've still got an appetite for all things linguistic and etymylogical - not least because of my current reading material, Mark Abley's 'Spoken Here', which has been excellent thus far.

One of my Christmas stocking fillers was a tear-off desk diary, each day giving the origins of a different word or expression. It's very American, with all that that implies - ie who gives a shit about where and how trademark names like Pringles and Alpo (?) originated? - but every now and again there's a real gem.

Take today's, for instance:

"BASKET CASE: Someone who is out of control mentally or unable to perform may now be called a 'basket case', but the term originally applied to someone who was physically unable to move. The term arose as a consequence of injuries suffered by British soldiers in World War I; in those years, a 'basket case' referred to a quadruple amputee, someone carried in a basket".

Well, you learn something every day, don't you?

'There's A Guy Fitting My Friend's Mum's New Shower Room Swears He's Craig David's Dad'

... as Kirsty MacColl didn't sing.

From an email from mother to daughter: "The shower room is costing a fortune and seems to be progressing quite slowly. Have you heard of a pop star called Craig David? The guy doing much of the work is his dad. He tells us he has bought him a pension".

To not have heard of Craig David - ah, ignorance would be bliss. Anyway, so now you know what he's spent the ill-gotten gains from such songs as '7 Days' and 'Walking Away' on.

Feel good hits of the 8th February

1. ‘Darling, You’re Mean’ – The Duke Spirit
2. ‘Love Is Happiness’ – The Icarus Line
3. ‘From Which I Came / A Magic World’ – Eels
4. ‘Forever Lost’ – The Magic Numbers
5. ‘Juicebox’ – The Strokes
6. ‘Lights’ – Editors
7. ‘Son Of A Gun’ – The Vaselines
8. ‘Area’ – The Futureheads
9. ‘Used For Glue’ – Rival Schools
10. ‘Pretty Persuasion’ – REM

Westward the wagons

So, less than a year and a half after arriving in Birmingham, I'm on the move again.

Since swapping East Midlands for West, I've actually become rather attached to a city of which I really wasn't fond. In part this is because I've been actively seeking out and finding places and things to like about the city, as documented in the Reasons To Be Cheerful series (links below). The biggest miss? The Anchor and the Farmers' Market come close, but it has to be Cafe Soya.

But, as the old saying goes, it's who you're with that often matters most, and my new-found appreciation for Birmingham is inextricably connected with those I've met here, including Phill, Kate, Kenny and Andy. Friendly, sociable, well-adjusted bloggers? It's almost unheard of.

The next stop on the SWSL UK Tour is Cardiff. Unfortunately I'm anticipating being without internet access for at least a week following tomorrow's move, so there won't be anything new appearing here for a while. I'm sure you'll all survive.

When I return, expect the usual mix of reviews, links and self-righteous blathering, as well as a new Reasons To Be Cheerful series about Cardiff - but until then, take care. See you on the other side (of the border).

Reasons To Be Cheerful:
#1 - Birmingham Book Festival
#2 - The Bartons Arms
#3 - Cold Rice
#4 - The Farmers' Market / The Frankfurt Christmas Market
#5 - Clare Short MP
#6 - The Sunflower Lounge
#7 - The Electric Cinema
#8 - The REP
#9 - Pork scratchings
#10 - The Anchor Inn
#11 - Cafe Soya
#12 - Guest Contributor Special
#13 - The Actress & Bishop
#14 - The Wellington

Finger-lickin' Thumb-suckin' good

There are a few actors whose names are an automatic selling point for me when they appear on film posters: Robert de Niro, Jack Nicholson, Steve Buscemi... Suffice to say that spotting the names of Keanu Reeves and Vince Vaughn doesn't exactly have me rushing to the cinema with feverish excitement and anticipation, but both appear in 'Thumbsucker', which I saw at the Electric Cinema earlier in the week.

Based on a novel by Walter Kirn, 'Thumbsucker' is as indie as they come, not least because it's soundtracked by The Polyphonic Spree and Elliott Smith - the involvement of Reeves and Vaughn aside. Mercifully, their "star quality" and predominantly lame performances (as an oddball orthodontist and an unconventional teacher respectively) don't detract from what is by and large a very good film.

The thumbsucker of the title is seventeen-year-old Justin Cobb, and the film explores with a careful sensitivity and from an unusual angle the traumas of adolescence. The subject matter actually reveals itself to be rather broader, though: the strategies and mechanisms by which people find comfort and cope with the world around them - thumbsucking, drugs (whether prescribed or illegal), flights of imagination, cod-philosophies, self-deceiving fictions.

As Justin, Lou Taylor Pucci is excellent, and much of the film's drama comes from his interrelation with his parents Mike and Audrey, played brilliantly by Vincent D'Onofrio and Tilda Swinton. What is wonderful about this film is that it illustrates that "ordinary" interfamilial relations, when scrutinised, can be extraordinarily complex.

Disappointingly, as with another relatively recent American indie flick, 'Garden State', the ending is all too trite and tidy. The fact that Justin has only got into a New York college by lying about his parents' mental condition on his application form is conveniently swept under the carpet - or is the point that everyone is mentally ill to some extent, so he hasn't actually lied? I'm not sure.

Either way, it's well worth seeing.

Incidentally, as we filed out of the auditorium, who should we encounter outside in the lobby waiting for the private 8.30pm screening of the film but Warren Clarke and Colin Buchanan aka Dalziel and Pascoe. Do all TV police / detective double-acts go everywhere together, we wondered. Alas, Morse and Lewis were nowhere to be seen in The Crown, and The Anchor probably isn't the sort of establishment you'd find Rosemary and Thyme.

Blogwatch

Congratulations...

Anna, Girl, Diamond Geezer and Zoe whose sites have all been nominated for the 2006 Bloggies.

Welcome...

Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day, a remarkably wide-ranging blog that covers everything from politics to the arts.

Gordon McLean, whose comments on others' sites I've read for ages and whose own superb site I'm only belatedly linking to.

Ditch Monkey, a gem thrown up by Swiss Toni's Blog Of The Week series written by a chap who works in London but lives in Oxford. Oh, and who lives in a bivouac in the woods.

Meanwhile...

Inspired by the Bloggies, Betty suggests a shortlist for the inaugural Crappies - "LIVING WITH HALITOSIS - The daily diary of 36 year old Timothy from Chipping Norton. People give him a wide berth but he refuses to give in. Details his frequent visits to the dentist, homeopathic remedies, purchase of a tongue scraper etc".

Elsewhere...

Simon casts his eyes over the NME Awards nominees - "It's pointless really to complain how the NME Awards, with Shockwaves lest we forget, mirror the Brit nominations more and more, although which organisation changed more to make this the case is a moot point".

ByTheSeaShore has a close encounter with his former boss - "The choice was mine. Should I say hello? I recognised her and she probably recognised me. I used to be a favourite, in the way that Darth Vader was quite fond of his Admirals".

JonnyB receives a bequest - "I pace around a bit. With money comes worries, and I do not want eg to be ripped off in the Village Shop by the Village Shop Man dressed as a fake sheikh. My celebrity status also brings the risk of extortion, blackmail etc by those who would forge photographs of me with prostitutes. Fortunately I think of this immediately, and am able to provide an alibi by saying here first that people might forge photographs of me with prostitutes, thus proving that any subsequent photographs of me with prostitutes will be forgeries, especially ugly ones".

A tearful farewell...

Musings From Middle England, indefinitely suspended by its author Willie - it'll be sorely missed.

Quote of the day

"Number one single 'I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor' is an acceptable enough slice of date rape indie, how The Kaiser Chiefs would sound if Ricky Wilson didn't have the girth of an MP3 blogger".

Dom Passantino isn't exactly fulsome in his praise of The Arctic Monkeys' debut LP Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not.

Also worth a look:

Dom relishes the opportunity to consign the site's Album Of The Week feature to the dustbin with a feature entitled The Top Ten Worst Stylus Albums Of The Week, including Elbow's Leaders Of The Free World, The Streets' A Grand Don't Come For Free, Devendra Banhart's Cripple Crow, Bright Eyes' I'm Wide Awake It's Morning and (dear god) Dry Kids, the Embrace B-sides album.

Nick Southall reviews The Strokes' third album First Impressions Of Earth.

Derek Miller offers an excellent assessment of Abba's career, records and enduring appeal.

I's right

The latest installment of the Art Of Noise A-Z Of Music feature finds me ranting and raving about the virtues of LA's premier bunch of headache-inducers The Icarus Line.

Alongside the regulars this week's installment also includes a piece from our newest contributor Steve of the band Johnny Domino, who, together with his bandmates, runs Domino Rally, an excellent mp3 blog showcasing their favourite music. There he's helpfully posted two versions of Miles Davis's 'In A Silent Way' for anyone intrigued by his A-Z contribution.

In other news, my review of StrangeTime's 'Demonstration No 1' is now up on the Vanity Project site.

"The dark funk"

News from SWSL-endorsed Stourbridge "fuckabilly" mob The Pubic Fringe: henceforth they are to be known as Das Fringe, and their new demo - entitled The Misanthropic Sounds Of The Pubic Fringe - is available now. The demo comes accompanied by liner notes from the band's Director of Communications, retired Army officer and hubcap collector Captain Lazonby-Threpwell, which are perhaps the finest I've ever read.

Here, for instance, we find him reflecting on the circumstances he found himself in before first chancing upon the band: "In the summer of 1986, my life lay in utter ruins. My import-export business had self-destructed, largely due to a petty ban on the trade of live human skin. I was bankrupt and homeless, had not washed for six months and had developed a serious addiction to wood-glue and Ajax speedballs. To top it all, my live-in lover left me for a lathe operator from Bilston. I don’t mind admitting that I had drifted into a dark, aimless netherworld. My days were spent in a mindless haze, populated by false friends and invisible phantasms. I somehow imagined that I was being pursued through the streets and back alleys of Stourbridge by a medieval, time-travelling robot called Yohoshira. This horrifying, gothic future-machine whispered dark threats to me in a language I could barely recognise and I became trapped in a self-made vortex of confused paranoia and nausea".

If you thought The Libertines were incomparable self-mythologists, then read on and think again...

Who do you think you are?

Two great links courtesy of Pete:

The Surname Profiler, created by "boffins" (copyright The Sun) at UCL, allows you to search a database of census information to find out the frequency, ethnicity and geographical spread of your surname. According to the 1998 census, mine occurs six times per million surnames - not a great surprise, though its geographical incidence confounded my expectations.

The 50 Most Loathsome People In America - as Pete suggests, the list may be stuffed full of unfamiliar names, but there's still much to admire in the sheer biliousness of it all. On Paris Hilton, for example: "Her continued success as a celebrity famous for nothing, despite the eerie resemblance she bears to the inbred banjoist from 'Deliverance' and a lack of talent so profound that others become duller as they approach her, indicates that something is fundamentally wrong with humanity".

“If nothing gets challenged, nothing gets changed”

"The best book about punk rock and pop culture ever". Thus reads the NME critic's appraisal on the cover of Jon Savage's 'England's Dreaming: Sex Pistols And Punk Rock'. Perhaps it's just an idiosyncratic tendency of mine, a function of my cynicism, that leads me immediately to view such pronouncements with suspicion and spend my time hunting out and dwelling upon perceived faults. Anyway, more of that later.

The book begins not with Malcolm McLaren's puppet-masterly bringing together of the volatile foursome, but with a history of 430 King’s Road (what would become Sex, the shop run by McLaren and Vivienne Westwood at the geographical centre of The Sex Pistols' story) and with a discussion of McLaren’s interest in New York Dolls and the Situationist politics that arose out of the 1968 student uprisings in Paris and the subsequent writings of theorists like Guy Debord.

It's evidently fundamental to Savage's understanding of pop culture that it affects and is affected by the wider artistic, social and historical context - the band themselves are explicitly seen as a "social phenomenon". Not only is this material essential to the narration of a movement that gathered pace gradually and then peaked suddenly before a sharp decline; it also underlines the fact that McLaren and, to a lesser extent, Westwood were a huge influence on the band, and so any history of the band should properly begin with their history.

When the four central protagonists - Steve Jones, Paul Cook, Glen Matlock and lastly John Lydon - are brought together centre-stage, Savage makes clear that they were never the most cohesive and compatible of units; "The Sex Pistols began in a miasma of antagonism, misunderstanding and mutual suspicion".

Nevertheless, Savage depicts the summer of 1976 as punk's golden age, when the movement was full of youthful vigour and hostile idealism, before the nihilism, cynicism and violence took over.

One thing that came as something of a surprise was the fact that McLaren always envisaged his charges signing to a major label, being fascinated about the possibility of destroying a decaying industry and society from the inside. Wherever the punk ethos of DIY and abhorrence of selling out came from, it wasn't The Sex Pistols.

By December 1976, trouble had been brewing for some time, not least because the confused symbolism - and the "ironic" flirtation with Nazi imagery in particular - was becoming increasingly dangerous : "A song like 'White Riot' could be taken a different way: not as an admiring shout of solidarity in sympathy with the blacks of Notting Hill Gate, but as a racist rallying cry".

And then came Bill Grundy and the 'Today' show. Savage is particularly adept at pointing up the programme as a watershed moment that changed everything, not only for the band themselves but also for the movement of which they were at the vanguard: "The Grundy scandal made The Sex Pistols, but it also killed them. They were now frozen in time, leaders of a movement which had been wrested out of their control". Notoriety was their fate. From then on, it was all downhill - and spectacularly so.

Their behaviour became ever more cartoonish and farcical, no day exemplifying this better than that on which, having left EMI in the wake of the Grundy episode, they signed to A&M in front of Buckingham Palace. There was a horrendously drunken press conference, followed by in-band fisticuffs in the back of a limousine, and, at A&M's offices, Sid Vicious breaking a toilet and then bathing his bleeding foot in it. A few days later, during a nightclub fracas, associates of the band threatened to kill Bob Harris of 'The Old Grey Whistle Test' - and they were promptly dumped by A&M.

Savage underlines the significance of 'God Save The Queen', and the way its release was timed to coincide with the Jubilee celebrations: "The Sex Pistols appeared with all the force of a hand-grenade tossed into an arrangement of gladioli. 'God Save The Queen' was the only serious anti-Jubilee protest, the only rallying call for those who didn't agree with the Jubilee because they didn't like the Queen, either because like John Lydon, they were Irish, or, much more to the point, because they resented being steamrollered by such sickening hype, by a view of England which had not the remotest bearing on their everyday experience". The Sex Pistols famously played a gig on a boat on the Thames which ended in arrests, but - as Savage makes clear - even on an evening which should have been a triumph the writing was already on the wall: no future.

Punk's messy decline is depicted in all its gory detail, as people and events span out of control and the lines were suddenly drawn, the whole debacle ending with Sid Vicious's death. The Sex Pistols were essentially finished by February 1978, even though McLaren kept the idea of them alive for the purposes of 'The Great Rock 'N' Roll Swindle'.

Thatcherism arrived in 1979, and though it didn't mean Britain changed overnight, it did (for Savage at least) mark the end of the road for punk: "Punk was beaten, but it had also won. If it had been the project of The Sex Pistols to destroy the music industry, then they had failed; but as they gave it new life, they allowed a myriad of new forms to become possible. When punk entered the music and media industries, its vision of freedom was eventually swamped by New Right power politics and the accompanying value systems, but its original, gleeful negation remains a beacon. Histroy is made by those who say 'No' and punk's utopian heresies remain its gift to the world".

And so to the book's faults - two of which I think are major, and another which is also significant if understandable.

Firstly, given the intense and ferocious nature of punk music, there is an extraordinary lack of raw passion evident in what Savage writes. Knowledge, yes; fascination, yes; enthusiasm, perhaps; but outright passion? No. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's rather bloodless and dispassionate. This might be assumed to be the deliberate strategy of someone wanting to give an objective overview of the band, movement and period; but not only is it very often markedly subjective, the diary entries which start to crop up are also as coolly detached, despite being recorded in the heat of the moment.

Secondly, as former Melody Maker journalist Jonh Ingham observes in a comment glossed over by Savage, "'You couldn't intellectualise the band. You couldn't analyse it'". That is precisely what 'England's Dreaming' does. Savage marshalls an impressive range of philosophers, theorists and historians in seeking to make sense of the phenomenon and the period. At times, such as the reference to Bakunin's 1842 statement from 'Reaction In Germany' that "The passion for destruction is also a creative passion", this is illuminating - but at others it comes across as pretentious intellectualising. To what extent could The Sex Pistols be said to have genuinely and consciously aligned themselves with the history of English anarchist thinking and revolutionary practice, as Savage intimates that they did? One gets the feeling that he's continually talking over the heads of his characters, as it were. Punk's impact came from its fiercely primal quality - and that's something that I think's all too often lost in the midst of Savage's analysis.

Thirdly, it's an inevitable consequence of the focus on The Sex Pistols that their cultural importance is always in danger of being overstated. London was very much the focus of the movement for Savage, and consequently other provincial scenes (Manchester aside) are almost completely ignored. Savage might (rightly) complain in his preface that "The Union Jack-strewn Britpop ... did not reflect Britain's multicultural reality but highlighted, almost exclusively, white rock groups from the South East" - but then he himself does much the same with punk. The British focus also means that punk emerges from the pages as very much an English phenomenon; America is by and large ignored, the role of the likes of Andy Warhol and The Velvet Underground hardly even alluded to. Natural, given that the lines had to be drawn somewhere - but the well-documented obsession of The Sex Pistols and others with American predecessors like the New York Dolls and particularly The Stooges subtly detracts from the pioneering status Savage claims for the Brits.

But 'England's Dreaming' is nevertheless a fantastic documentation of one of the most fascinatingly short-lived and self-destructive musical movements since pop music "began", meticulously researched, well written and packed with the accounts and testimonies of those who, like Savage, were there to witness it all first-hand. Highly recommended for anyone with an interest in "alternative" music and pop culture, not least because, thirty years on, the story remains the same: "how do you avoid becoming part of what you’re protesting against?”

Perhaps the highest praise? It made me want to buy lots of records.

Next up on this front has to be Simon Reynolds's 'Rip It Up And Start Again', I think...

StrangeTime for heroes

STRANGETIME / DEDD ZEBRA / THE DISCIPLES OF TONE, 20TH JANUARY 2006, BIRMINGHAM ACTRESS & BISHOP

Uh-oh! Embarrassing dad x3 alert! By day (one suspects) a high school teacher, a solicitor and a tax inspector, but by night The Disciples Of Tone. The only concession to showmanship might be the vocalist / guitarist's green Teddy Boy jacket, but it's Friday night and they're intent on cutting some rug.

And what does this public recapturing (or at least recapitulation) of youth through songs called 'The Ice Cream Man' and 'Psychedelic Kid' sound like? A bit of The Jam, a bit of The Kinks - not particularly disagreeable at times. But then at others The Disciples Of Tone do nothing to challenge the ageist "truism" that rock 'n' roll is a young man's game.

Worse in many ways are Dedd Zebra - not least because of the name. Tight and proficient, undeniably, but unfortunately precisely the sort of band that made Pete's Going Deaf For A Fortnight project such an endurance test ie nondescript and seemingly adept at making what can be thrilling unfeasibly dull. It doesn't help that neither singer can seem to hold a note.

One song ends in such incredibly bombastic style that I'm expecting that to be it for the set - but no, there's more. It's like 'The Return Of The King', and I'm left impatiently willing it to draw to a close. Uncharitable I know, but that's the way it is.

For StrangeTime, tonight's gig is the biggest challenge to date: their first headlining slot, and the first time they've been called upon to play for longer than the usual half an hour. It's a challenge they meet head on with aplomb.

It's a measure of their gradually growing self-confidence that the set-list is now no longer set in stone but manipulated subtly and effectively anew each gig, while three of tonight's opening four songs are relatively recent compositions.

Sure, songs like 'Interference' would benefit in terms of impact by being abbreviated, others ('Doppelganger', for instance) are lyrically a bit too simplistic and cut 'n' dried, the band are still predominantly static on stage, and the concerns voice between songs about the sound quality betray a residual nervousness.

But then you can't run before you walk, and it's not so long ago that StrangeTime weren't even crawling, having played live for the very first time last July. The vocals are powerful, the instrumentation inventive and in the likes of 'Dressing Up' and 'Mundane' they have songs that can make the hair stand up on the back of your neck. Not something you encounter too often on the local toilet gig scene - a fact that the vast majority of those assembled (a sizeable audience) evidently recognise.

If the gig marks the beginnings of a buzz surrounding the band, then it'll be richly deserved.

Blogwatch

Congratulations...

JonnyB, whose LTLP has given birth to almost certainly the most anticipated baby in the history of the blogosphere - cue the nappy posts...

Meanwhile...

As recommended by Mike, Joe. My. God. writes a tremendously powerful post about the failure to recognise an old friend (the epilogue can be found here).

Elsewhere...

Mike, Anna and Zoe make up part of the team of contributors for new collaborative blog Agonising. So, if you've got a problem, if no-one else can solve it...

Jonathan returns after an extended Christmas holiday with a typically superb post about Italian films and Twiglets - "Judging from the depressingly small amounts of Harvey's Irish Cream (well OK, Tescos Irish Cream), Martini and sherry over there, I would say our once-yearly flirtation with the middle-class idea of having a drinks cabinet, or at least a drinks area of the kitchen work surface just beside the kettle, is all but over, and it must be at least January 15th, and possibly even later. So it really is about time to get back into the swing of things".

Dave investigates the possibility of owning his own pub - "Pringle jumpers and cigars and cheese chunks on cocktail sticks and muddy knees on Sunday footballers and darts team buffets and lock-ins and pork scratchings. These are a few of my favourite things".

Jonathan overcomes his own initial prejudices and does his best to convince us we should give The Arctic Monkeys a chance - "The first thing of note is the guitars; nice loud crunchy guitars which are at times more reminiscent of the full throttle Mudhoney than the tinny, ramshackle Libertines - it's nice to hear a production job which doesn't follow the brittle post-punk blueprint and instead goes for volume and effect. Alex Turner's vocals, meanwhile, unlike Doherty's, are more than strong enough to punch through the sound, as he does to such great effect on 'I Bet That You Look Good On The Dancefloor', which is great apart from the horrible backing vocals".

And finally...

Silent Words Speak Loudest is honoured to have been officially designated a friend of Conditional Reality - and so I point you in that direction, if you haven't already visited. Mario might be on a temporary hiatus, but there's a fantastic back catalogue of daily 100 word prose poems for you to browse through. Example: "The old ones returned and told us about their lives since their funerals. It’s not too bad, they said. We are very comfortable. Everyone is super nice. Lots of food and amazing levels of politeness. There are benefits to being dead, no doubt about it. We listened carefully and asked them why they came back if the afterlife was so much to their liking. Well, they said, we didn’t know we could take some things with us, so we came back for our anger, sarcasm, snobbery, greed, vanity, condescension, and rudeness. See, the only thing missing over there is fun".

Feel good hits of the 20th January

1. 'Heart Of Glass' - Blondie
2. 'Munich' - Editors
3. 'Red Weather' - The Duke Spirit
4. 'Casmimir Pulaski Day' - Sufjan Stevens
5. 'Mundane' - StrangeTime
6. 'Been Caught Stealing' - Jane's Addiction
7. 'Just Friends' - Nine Black Alps
8. 'Helicopter' - Bloc Party
9. 'Apply Some Pressure' - Maximo Park
10. 'No-One Knows' - Queens Of The Stone Age

H(ave a look)

The latest installment of the A-Z Of Music feature is up now on The Art Of Noise. This week, it's the letter H, and there are contributions on everything from Bowie's 'Heroes', legendary bluesman Howlin' Wolf, the Nick Hornby inspired film 'High Fidelity' and the cult radio show that introduced Marc and Lard to the wider world, 'Hit The North'.

An hour and a half of bliss

No, not watching Newcastle, but BBC2 from 9pm on Monday evenings.

Tonight was the first time I've been able to watch 'Balderdash & Piffle', 'Up In Town' and 'The Thick Of It' without the aid of either a video recorder (remember them?) or subtitles in a public house.

Letter of the week on 'Balderdash & Piffle' was N, and the four words or expressions upon which attention was focussed were: "ninety-nine" (as in ice-cream), as researched by Daniela Nardini (descendent of an ice-cream dynasty); "nit-nurse", as researched by presenter Victoria Coren; "nice", as researched by impossibly well-spoken writer and City of London School headmaster Jonathan Keates (who did an excellent job of revealing the extraordinary semantic ebbs and flows of a word we're taught to avoid at all costs); and "nutmeg", in the sense of the football trick, as researched by writer Giles Milton (something to do with bollocks, probably).

Asked for his favourite word beginning with the letter N, Ian Hislop again came up trumps. His suggestion: "namby-pamby", originally a mocking nickname given by Alexander Pope to an contemporary writer of excessively sentimental verse.

Then 'Up In Town', which I haven't paid much attention to over the course of the last two weeks. Written, produced and directed by Hugo Blick, who also co-wrote 'Marion And Geoff' with Rob Brydon, 'Up In Town' is a series of ten minute monologues starring Joanna Lumley as fading society queen Madison Blakelock and hailing from Steve Coogan and Henry Normal's Baby Cow Productions stable. It was originally shown three years ago, from what I can make out, but must have completely passed me by. I guess the inevitable comparison to be made is with Alan Bennett's superb 'Talking Heads' series, and certainly 'Up In Town' features the same elements of gentle humour and mockery alongside more touching moments of genuine pathos.

Armando Iannucci and Jesse Armstrong's 'The Thick Of It' surpassed itself this week. To sum it up as 'Yes Minister' shot in the style of 'The Office' and with an impressively high expletive count wouldn't do it justice, but it gives you some idea. Each week, bumbling Minister for Social Affairs Hugh Abbot (Chris Langham) staggers from pothole to pitfall, aided and abetted by a bunch of alternately sycophantic and squabbling staff.

This week's episode saw Abbot caught up in a scandal over an unused city centre flat in his name which becomes known, uninspiringly, as "Flatgate" - "They should be calling it Notting Hill Gate Gate". Abbot, given a severe dressing-down by the particularly foul-mouthed Alistair Campbell figure Malcolm Tucker (brilliantly played by Peter Capaldi) within hearing of a Daily Mail journalist, was left to chomp on biscuits somewhat sheepishly and exclaim Partridge-style "Yes, I am king of remembering my own password!" while seated at his computer as the shit hit the fan, eventually being spared by the resignation of an "brushed-aluminium cyberprick" some years his junior.

If 'The Office' was uncomfortable viewing for the general public, then 'The Thick Of It' is likely to be particularly uncomfortable viewing for the inhabitants of Westminster.

(Incidentally, here's a link to an article on Nottinghamshire dialect which I came across via the 'Balderdash & Piffle' site and which may well be of interest to those of you familiar with the city and area. It's particularly worth a read for the golfing anecdote at the end...)

What you wrote on your blog, like, two years ago

The way iTunes insists on DJ-style enjambement of consecutive songs? Fine in many cases, but every now and again it's the split second of silence that makes all the difference between two perfectly juxtaposed songs. Ho hum.

Perhaps by next week I'll have discovered a way to turn it off.

And the week after expect me to be raving about how the shuffle function has led to a new appreciation of lots of hitherto overlooked album tracks.

Reasons To Be Cheerful #14

(If you’re wondering what this is all about, click here.)

The Wellington

For the real ale enthusiast (and yes, I now consider myself as such), The Wellington is a veritable oasis in the desert that is Birmingham city centre – as testified by the fact that thirsty, rotund bellied and impeccably bearded gentlemen of a certain age are drawn to it like Wayne Rooney is to sextaganarian prostitutes.

That, since its doors first opened around a year ago, it seems to have proved a massive hit presumably has something to do with the ever-excellent selection of beverages on offer. The beers available on any particular day are chalked up on the blackboard by the bar, each given a letter according to colour - A being the palest of pale ales, and E the Marmiteiest of stouts.

If ale's not your thing, then there's still plenty else to choose from - not least two or three different ciders and a whole host of continental lagers, as well as Erdinger on tap. You can have a pint of Carling, if you must, but be warned that if you do so you run the risk of being bundled into the back of a van, driven into darkest Staffordshire, put in the stocks on the village green, pelted with rotten tomatoes and probably mercilessly taunted by morris dancers for good measure.

One particularly distinctive feature of The Wellington is that they don't serve food, but do allow patrons to take in their own food, even going so far as to provide crockery and cutlery. The last time we were in, the table next to us was laid out with a veritable picnic.

Actually, it's not strictly true that they don't do food. They do, after all, sell a decent range of pub snackfoods, most importantly the local delicacy pork scratchings. There's a wicker basket behind the bar full of large clear bags of the stuff.

Mine's a pint of Parson's Nipple and some pig in a bag, please...