When the music's over

"I'll miss 'TOTP' in the same way that I missed the local greengrocer's when it closed. It had been there before I arrived and it's a shame that it's gone, but I haven't used it all that much recently". Thus quoth ByTheSeaShore in his post on the demise of 'Top Of The Pops'. Couldn't have put it better myself.

In truth I can't remember the last time I watched 'Top Of The Pops'. It was certainly before it was symbolically relegated to BBC2, as clear a precursor to its demise as any. The reasons for my not tuning in were manifold, not least the presenters and the increasingly rubbish selection of acts invited to perform (no real reflection of the make-up of the charts).

I could say that the decision to axe the show, a national institution, is untimely and appalling - but the sad truth of the matter is that it isn't.

It had clearly been in desperate need of being shot between the eyes for some time. Inspector Sands has laid the blame squarely at Andi Peters's door, and I can't disagree with him. Peters single-handedly destroyed the programme's unique identity. It's a worrying day when I find myself in agreement with Noel Edmonds, but he had a point (of sorts) when he said: "It's a tragedy when a broadcaster doesn't understand such a powerful brand".

The Inspector is absolutely right in saying that despite (or perhaps even because of) the changes in record-buying patterns and means of consumption, and the fracturing of the common ground in musical and TV terms, there was still certainly a place for the sort of show that 'Top Of The Pops' once was. Seeing a favourite band perform on the programme was the always source of much excitement, and as a whole the show played an integral part in my musical education. That's something of which The Kidz are now going to be deprived.

So what's left but to remember some of the moments that made 'Top Of The Pops' such great viewing? Of all the performances noted by Del, Eels' debut remains the most memorable for me - the trio stopped miming along to 'Novocaine For The Soul' towards the end and instead destroyed Butch's miniature child's drumkit as the song continued to play. Also worthy of mention on a personal note was Therapy?'s first appearance when they performed 'Screamager' - I fell in love instantly and bought the Shortsharpshock EP the very next day.

'TOTP' RIP.

(See, it IS possible to write about 'Top Of The Pops' without making reference to Pan's People. Oh...)

Coogan's latest run

Now HERE's a pointless post - about a programme I haven't even seen yet...

Dammit, why didn't I discover that Steve Coogan's new comedy series 'Saxondale' (Mon, 10pm, BBC2) had started until the next day? And, more to the point, how come I hadn't even heard or read anything about it until belatedly coming across a friend's reminder to tune in?

The Metro's comments weren't entirely fulsome in its praise - but to take much stock of that would be the first sign of madness, and in any case several discerning comedy fans of my acquaintance (Coogan fans to be sure, but not the sort that treat everything he's done - including 'Dr Terrible's House Of Horrible' - as a sacred cow) suggested the first in the series contained several very funny episodes and held considerable promise for future installments.

Hopefully I'll remember to tune in this coming Monday and form my own conclusions - but, in the meantime, what did you make of it? Answers on a postcard.

The finishing line

Well, it's been emotional. After 26 weeks (give or take a few), the A-Z Of Music feature on The Art Of Noise comes to a conclusion with a collection of contributions on the letter Z. Click for two splendidly contrasting pieces on Frank Zappa, plus contributions on zine writing and 'Zorba The Greek' (amongst other things).

Super grass

DEAD MEADOW / THE VOICES, 26TH MAY 2006, CARDIFF CLWB IFOR BACH

(Yes, this is long, long overdue...)

I'm not sure whether or not it still exists, but there used to be a club called Pieces in Nottingham. This inevitably led to hilarious exchanges about whether or not you were going to Pieces.

Well, it's along similar lines that I report I have now heard The Voices. That's Cardiff's The Voices, by the way, not this lot, who cite Coldplay and Oasis amongst their influences.

By contrast, Cardiff's The Voices might as well be from another planet as well as another country. Taking their cue from Spacemen 3, My Bloody Valentine and the sort of usual suspects that get me nodding my head, they fashion a dense, effects-laden and virtually vocal-less noise not a million miles from Spotlight Kid.

Comprising two male guitarists (one the spit of Jason Pierce) flanking a female keyboard player, they get through just four songs in the course of a half-hour set. The first, a long droning beast, is effortlessly impressive, as is the last, at the climax of which the keyboardist reverts to electronic drums. Another Cardiff band to write home about, then.

I first saw headliners Dead Meadow two years ago when they supported Mogwai on the second leg of the Happy Music For Happy People tour, and it's clear that a few things have changed for a band beloved of Super Furry Animals and Anton Newcombe of The Brian Jonestown Massacre (amongst others).

Firstly, though Cory Shane, the second guitarist whom I suspected then wasn't a full-time member of the band, played on their latest album, he's not here tonight so they're back to being a threesome, at least temporarily.

And secondly, they've evidently started to write some songs. I'm guessing that the shorter, more neatly constructed tracks aired tonight hail from their fourth LP Feathers. They're all fine and well, and certainly still at an interesting remove from their post-hardcore-obsessed Washington DC brethren - but what is actually most enjoyable tonight is the Black-Sabbath-pre-Ozzy's-hair-dye-and-coke-phase-meets-blues-meets-psychedelia of their earlier records.

Whereas appearing before Mogwai on Rock City's biggest stage they seemed a little lost and remote, in this intimate room packed full with an enthusiastic Friday night crowd, and on a stage shrouded in green smoke, they are instantly at home.

Jason Simon's lyrics are barely audible given the noise they kick out, but no-one's bothered as the trio kick into another twisting, grooving jam that has my guitar-playing companion drooling into his beer and the rest of us nodding in time like dazed but deliriously happy puppets. Behind the kit Stephen McCarty, who appears to have gone feral, gradually morphs into John Bonham as the set progresses, and bassist Steve Kille hops his strange hop in front of an audience lapping up what his band are feeding us.

A fine way for Kille to celebrate his birthday, and a fine way for us to spend a Friday night.

Now to order a copy of Shivering King And Others, methinks...

Blogwatch

Welcome...

Delete Music - the blog to accompany my old mucker LMT's new musical project

Meanwhile...

Reluctant Nomad discovers the "delights" of Chris Moyles and weighs up whether it's wrong for the BBC to condone his use of the word "gay" to mean "lame" - "While it may be impossible to change the development of meanings in the language, I’d venture that it’s really not a good thing for the BBC to defend the use of the new meaning of ‘gay’ while there isn’t an alternative word that doesn’t have a negative connotation".

Elsewhere...

ByTheSeaShore reports on his recent foray into amateur dramatics, for which he received a Best Newcomer nomination - "Having seen Emmerdale for the first time in ages, I feel much better about the Northern accent I put on. Thanks again to Jarvis Cocker and the Arctic Monkeys for their assistance".

Pete finds much to enjoy at the Wychwood Festival, most of it with beer in hand - "Dusk was coming down and from nearly every venue there seemed to be emanating something good, something positive. It was a beautiful sunset, the temperature hadn't dropped too drastically yet and everyone, everywhere, was chilled and happy. You could almost slice through the happiness and hand it around. I don't know if you ever find yourself in a countryside or riverside pub, with good ale and good food and everyone just enjoying the moment... it was like that, but magnified a thousand times".

Simon ponders whether Heavenly were "the greatest life achievers in music history?"

Alan revels in being able to call himself a cool dad - "I like the fact that I go to these sorts of things with my kids. It shows that I’ve been at least partly successful in being the cool dad I always wanted to be. I know that I’m not totally cool dad, that I am in fact embarrassing dad at times. But lets face it, we are all destined to be embarrassing dad at times. But I would never have gone to a gig with my dad when I was young. We had the traditional relationship where I listened to music and he shouted at me to turn it down and that it was all just noise anyway".

And finally...

JonnyB is appalled to discover that the LTLP "is the sort of person who posts dog shit through people's letterboxes if she is cross with them... We do not even have a dog. She would have to borrow Short Tony's. That would be going to quite a lot of trouble".

Quote of the day

"From a music point of view, it will never be as popular as the hymns and tunes written by the Wesley brothers and others all those hundreds of years ago. That was when music was written to be listened to and enjoyed rather than deafening everybody. As much as those who bought tickets might not have been unduly worried about God, they were certainly ripped off by the Devil".

Malcolm H Mort writes to the South Wales Echo about 'Jerry Springer: The Opera'. As both the show's co-writer and a DJ and rock critic, I think Stewart Lee might like to come back on that, Mr Mort.

When 'Jerry Springer: The Opera' arrived in Cardiff, it was greeted with protests. Interestingly, the Western Mail's reporter failed to find a single protestor who had seen the show. But they'd all read and heard a lot about it, so that's OK.

Funny how it was in this very city that the '90s Comedian' set was performed for the last time earlier in the year. Lee's moved on, but has anything else?

Hoff: an update

Following last Friday's post encouraging people to sign up to a site aiming to send David Hasselhoff to #1, I gather that the site has been featured on the B3TA newsletter.

One person who I'm sure must have signed up by now is Fulham's German right-back Moritz Volz - his website has a special section dedicated to the Hoff:

"Being German, I love David Hasselhoff. It's actually the law back in the Motherland. For me the Hoff is almost like some kind of higher spirit. Hoff-ness is everywhere. The Hoff is a big inspiration - in times of trouble I often ask myself 'how would the Hoff deal with this situation...?' I'm actually thinking of having a mini Baywatch Tower built in my house so I can sit there in my red shorts in true Hoff style. I'm also delighted to see that he's appearing as Captain Hook in a Peter Pan panto at Wimbledon Theatre this Christmas! I'm going to have to work out a way I can meet him!"

Feel good hits of the 16th June

1. 'Kevin Is Gay' - Giant Drag
2. 'Machines' - Spotlight Kid
3. 'Into The Woods' - Howling Bells
4. 'Alone, Jealous And Stoned' - Secret Machines
5. 'By Number' - Anathallo
6. 'Not Even Jail' - Interpol
7. 'Fortune' - Emma Pollock
8. 'Single Again' - The Fiery Furnaces
9. 'Crushed' - The Wedding Present
10. 'These Days' - Death Of Fashion

Thanks to Iain for pointing me in the direction of the Emma Pollock track.

Fifteen minutes of fame

When I lived in Nottingham, it was a bit of a long-standing joke that if the Queens Medical Centre appeared in the news it was either because researchers had made an extraordinary medical discovery or breakthrough, or because a hapless and no doubt hungover junior doctor had accidentally injected a patient with the wrong drug in the wrong quantity.

The infamous exception that proved the rule was when a brain surgeon at the hospital was suspended for allegedly helping himself to an extra bowl of soup (with croutons, I might add) without paying.

Today two of the QMC's specialist consultants are in the news spotlight for a rather different reason, Professors Angus Wallace and Chris Moran having passed a certain Wayne Rooney fit to take part in England's match against Trinidad & Tobago, due to kick off in less than an hour's time.

On their shoulders, it seems, rest the hopes of the country. Let's just hope their diagnosis was right, and that they didn't need to administer young Master Rooney with any injections...

The hard(back) sell

If you thought books are in the bestseller lists and on prominent display in bookshop windows purely on the strength of public interest, then think again: "That W H Smith’s 'book of the week' title, which attracts you as if it had won a prize, has been bought and paid for. The publisher handed over £50,000. Waterstone’s Book of the Week accolade is £10,000, less for ecstatic mini-reviews. Borders charges for 'fiction buyer’s favourite'".

(Thanks to Richard for the link.)

Ys right!

The penultimate installment of the A-Z Of Music on The Art Of Noise sees us musing on the letter Y - which means contributions on Manic Street Preachers, Young Marble Giants, Yellow Magic Orchestra, live bootlegs and bizarre gig venues.

World looks red

The hottest day of the year so far, the auditorium stiflingly hot (hotter than the gradually cooling evening outside), and the sweat virtually dripping off my nose - I can think of no better circumstances in which to have watched 'The Proposition'.

You see, if it hadn't already have been hot, the film would have made me feel hot. It's a very red film, full of the scorched baked-dry Australian outback, sunrises and sunsets, and the characters are constantly glazed in a slick of sweat.

Another reason why you might say, as Sonic Youth did in an early song, that the world looks red is that there's plenty of blood. Lots of it. Loads. Bucketfuls. There's a gruesome seemingly never-ending flogging scene, and another where a chap gets his head blown off.

'The Proposition' is a violent, primal yet occasionally touching and even comical Australian Western - in other words, just what you'd expect given that the screenplay was written by Nick Cave. He and Warren Ellis of The Bad Seeds and Dirty Three provide an original soundtrack, but it was Cave songs like 'Red Right Hand' and the whole of Murder Ballads that continually played in my mind as I watched the stubbled characters with their yellow-teethed grins stare warily and shoot at each other.

Contrasting with the violence there's a real and quite stunning beauty in the barren, desolate vistas of the outback, for which credit must go to director John Hillcoat and director of cinematography Benoit Delhomme.

And yet part of the film's message is that, despite best intentions, that landscape makes everyone savages in the end. Ray Winston's character the British officer Captain Stanley is adamant he will "civilise" the place, and the viewer might have some sympathy for him by the end, but he is at times just as brutal as those on the "wrong" side of the law. At the end of the film he lies badly (perhaps fatally) wounded, the absurdity of his naive colonialist's faith in civilisation underlined by the smashed white picket fence and trampled roses outside his home.

'The Proposition' is stark, bloody, hopeless and unsettling - and worth seeing.

Achosion I Laweni

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

#4 - Ninjah

For the last installment of the A-Z Of Music feature on The Art Of Noise, Paul wrote about Nottingham legend Frank Robinson. Better known as Xylophone Man, he used to busk with a small toy xylophone in the city centre, his enthusiasm and cheery demeanour more than making up for his lack of musical talent. He was a part of the city, and everyone loved him - as became abundantly clear in the wake of his death in July 2004.

Every city has its characters, and Cardiff is no exception. Mention must be made of Toy Mic Trev, an oldish busker who earnestly and passionately belts out renditions of crooner classics with one of those toy microphones that distorts your voice, but it's another fixture of Queens Street (as well as Chapter) who is most widely known.

Walking through the city centre on the first day of the Six Nations tournament, it was a riot of red-shirted rugby fans - noisy and boisterous but good-spirited. I walked past a very tall dreadlocked chap who was drumming away with sticks on a bin. Naturally I assumed this was in aid of the rugby, but I was wrong - Ninjah's out doing that most days, or otherwise loudly proclaiming his philosphies on life, how great he is as a rapper and how to find his MySpace site (as he was the other day).

You see, this guy really does fancy himself as a demon MC, a street poet, an artist with knowledge to impart. And, as deluded as he obviously is about his own talent, you've got to love him for the colour he brings to the city - not least when you know that he "is often seen wandering around in a Pharaoh's headdress, with tights upon his head or wearing cricket whites for no apparent reason" and when you read the testimonies of others (via his BBC Wales biography and Knowhere):

"He never forgets a face (I have even had to introduce him to my mum and yes, he was wearing Speedos at the time). A word of warning: do not ask him about how he had to bury his mother - it involves nailpolish, a turban, ballet slippers and some wardrobe doors. Just don't!"

"I astounded him with an amazing fact one night that cats have 37 muscles per ear. Ever since then, whenever I bump into him, he runs up to me and shouts 'Cats have 37 muscles per ear' then roars like a tiger and paws the air with his hand. A legend".

"Ninjah once told me how he used to live naked in Sofia Gardens, we had an indepth conversation on what's best to wipe with when caught short there (grass and leaves came out on top)".

"I once dislocated my knee playing football in Bute Park and he freestyled for me until the ambulance came."

"Favourite Ninjah line - 'Peter Andre got a 6 pack, Ninjah got an 8 pack'".

In the Spotlight

Calling fans of Spiritualized, My Bloody Valentine, M83 and shoegazery stuff in general! While Chris Olley busies himself with his electronic "side" projects Twelve and Fuck Me USA, and with working with James Flower towards a new Six. By Seven album, the Nottingham band's now-departed drummer Chris Davis has branched out on his own.

Together with a host of collaborators including Bent's Katty Heath, he's making music under the name Spotlight Kid - and rather marvellous stuff it is too. Dare I say it, but 'Machines' and 'Never's Too Soon' (both up on his MySpace site) put Six. By Seven's last recordings in the shade somewhat.

Drummers emerging from the shadows behind the kit to make a name for themselves? Dave Grohl'll be doing it next...

On a music-related tangent, my latest reviews - of You & The Atom Bomb's Shake Shake Hello?! and Lovemat's The Fearless Hair Days Of Youth - are now up on the Vanity Project site. Have a read, and if you like the sound of them, give them a listen here and here.

"You'll never guess who I had in the back of here last week..."

You've got to love Will Self. For many reasons, one of which is the fact that his novels and short stories are always so brilliant conceptually that you feel compelled to read. Here's the synopsis of his forthcoming novel from his site:

"'The Book Of Dave' is based around the rants of Dave Roth, a disgruntled East End taxi driver, who writes his woes down and buries them only to have them discovered 500 years later and used as the sacred text for a religion that has taken hold in the flooded remnants of London. Will Self’s big bold book dares to take on the grand themes in the grand manner. It is at once a profound meditation upon the nature of received religion; a love story; a caustic satire of contemporary urban life and a historical detective story set in the far future".

I've been meaning to get round to reading 'Dorian' for ages, but it's probably best avoided for a while given the proximity of its subject matter (at least) to that of the novel in which my nose is currently buried, 'The Line Of Beauty'.

It’s the way she tells ‘em

What exactly IS a short story?

In the introduction to her ‘Selected Stories’, Nobel Prize winner Nadine Gordimer offers a compelling definition: “whether or not it has a narrative in the external or internal sense, whether it sprawls or neatly bites its own tail, a short story is a concept that the writer can ‘hold’, fully realised, in his imagination, at one time. A novel is, by comparison, staked out, and must be taken possession of stage by stage; it is impossible to contain, all at once, the proliferation of concepts it ultimately may use”.

Both types of short story are represented in ‘Selected Stories’. Gordimer shows herself to be a master of the quick self-contained sketch, the vividly depicted moment, particularly in her earlier work. ‘The Soft Voice Of The Serpent’ is a case in point. It concerns a one-legged man confined to wheelchair identifying with a locust which has also lost a leg, and ends neatly with the man’s painful realisation that locusts can fly.

Of the sprawling variety are many of the later stories. These include ‘Friday’s Footprint’, in which woman widowed following a boat accident marries her husband’s step-brother, and belatedly and shamefully realises with horror her mistake: “it was as if something had burst inside her and was seeping up in a stain through all the layers of muscle and flesh and skin”. ‘Livingstone’s Companions’, too, unfolds gradually with a sense of narrative development, as a journalist retracing Livingstone’s last journey finds himself at a hotel he can’t leave, obsessed with the nearby lake and inexorably ending up in bed with the hotel owner Mrs Palmer.

A white South African writing during the time of Apartheid, Gordimer is inevitably particularly sensitive to issues of race, and most of the stories centre upon and explore attitudes and suspicions, depicting encounters between people of different race and status. Her skill is to dramatise social scenarios haunted by awkwardness, discomfort and misunderstanding, and as such she is perhaps even more interested in those whites opposed to Apartheid than she is in those who are openly racist.

In this respect, ‘Which New Era Would That Be?’ is exemplary, recounting the visit of a white woman, Jennifer Tetzel, to a black man’s house. Though sympathetic and benign in her intentions, she nevertheless succeeds in further stoking the resentment of those whose rights she champions: “these women felt as YOU did. They were sure of it. They thought they understood the humiliation of the black man walking the streets only by permission of a pass written out by a white person, and the guilt and swagger of the coloured man light-faced enough to slink, fugitive from his own skin, in the preserves – the cinemas, bars, libraries – marked ‘EUROPEANS ONLY’. Yes, breathless with stout sensitivity, they insisted on walking the whole teeter-totter of the colour line. There was no escaping their understanding. They even insisted on feeling the resentment YOU must feel at identifying themselves with your feelings…”.

Similarly, in ‘Abroad’ Manie Swemmer, a South African who returns to Northern Rhodesia after a long absence to discover it’s changed almost beyond recognition, professes to be open-minded and modern in his attitudes towards black Africans, but, despite being broadly well-meaning, cannot help but give occasional voice to deeply ingrained prejudices.

The advice often given to aspiring writers is: “Write about what you know”. Gordimer certainly couldn’t be accused of not doing so, but her reflections on the theme of race never become repetitious – not least because, as she reflects in the introduction, the chronological arrangement of the stories allows the reader to trace the development of her own attitudes. If, as she claims, what makes a writer is “the tension between standing apart and being fully involved”, then ‘Selected Stories’ is the work of a consummate professional.

‘The Gentle Art’ narrates a different type of encounter to ‘Which New Era Would That Be?’. A couple of holidaymakers are taken crocodile-hunting at night, and capture a baby: “she touched the creature’s cool, hard back, a horny hide of leather medallions, fresh, strange, alive; from a life unknown to the touch of humans, beneath the dark river”. Later, a larger crocodile is shot, Gordimer emphasising the uncomprehending barbarism of the act in graphic terms: “Then the pale gaze coming from the dark forehead exploded; it blew up as if from within, and where the gaze had been there was a soft pink mess of brain with the scarlet wetness of blood and the mother-of-pearl sheen of muscle”.

That the story is Gordimer’s take on the central imagery and ideas of ‘Heart Of Darkness’ becomes clear towards the story’s conclusion as the hunting party returns to camp: “The night river closed away behind them. It went back where it came from; from the world of sleep, of eternity and darkness, the place before birth, after death – all those ideas with which the flowing continuity of dark water is bound up. And the boat came back; brought them within sight of the light of the camp itself, existence itself, a fire, the reed house, the smell of food and a human figure”. This sense of a return to civilisation, a retreat from the African unknown, is itself an oblique reflection upon the issue of race.

Best of all, however, is a story in which race does not figure at all. In ‘A Company Of Laughing Faces’ a 17-year-old girl is taken to a South African seaside resort for the Christmas holidays by her mother with the hope that she might meet and have fun with other young people. Struggling to fit in, Kathy falls into companionship with a boy, and the story appears to be panning out as a beautifully written but familiar narrative of lost innocence and emergent sexuality: “She had never been caressed before, but she was not alarmed because it seemed to her such a simple gesture, like stroking a cat or dog. She and her mother were great readers of novels and she knew, of course, that there were a large number of caresses – hair, and eyes and arms and even breasts – and an immense variety of feelings that would be attached to them”.

But Kathy’s fictionally derived notions of romance and sexuality are shattered when the boy attempts to rape her. She escapes, but Gordimer’s point is made evident by the conclusion, in which, on a trip, she discovers in the water the body of a younger boy whom she has befriended. The sight is “the one real happening of the holiday, the one truth and the one beauty”; her childhood is as dead as his.

Often beautiful yet ominous, the stories collected here are descriptively rich and packed with observational insight, and encourage me to not only read more Gordimer but more short fiction in general.

(An aside: Is this sort of review pointless? On the one hand I write them partly in the hope that they might inspire someone to hunt out and read a copy of the book, but on the other they’re unlikely to do so if the review’s packed with spoilers. I’d be interested to know. It’s just difficult to review fiction without spoiling things… That’s the beauty of music criticism – you can say what you want, because no words can quite ever convey what a song or album sounds like.)

Moonlighting

This burst of postage aside, it's been rather quiet here of late - and it's not all been down to the pressures of work or the recent crapness of Blogger. No, it's partly because I've been writing away elsewhere.

Unless you've not a head, you'll be aware that there's some kind of football shindig about to kick off over in Germany. Well, I'm one of several bloggers contributing to a collaborative blog Finals Fantasy. We'll be covering every game, as well as wading through / dissecting / lampooning all the extraneous bullshit that goes with it. Come and pay us a visit.

I've also contributed a feature on 'The Big Lebowski' for the Films I Love series on The Bargain Basement. Thanks to Lord Bargain for inviting me to contribute.

Miss Moustache

It's always great to get Good Post amongst all the bills and fast food flyers, isn't it? Which is why it was cheering to receive the latest copy of Drawing Moustaches In Magazines earlier in the week.

A free fanzine-type publication that's lovingly hand-crafted and photocopied, DMIM is the brainchild of Stewart Lee approved comedian Josie Long and an assortment of friends.

Contained within the pages of this issue (the third) you'll find a guest introduction from TV's Mike Reid, a cartoon strip about a chap whose brain has been infested with puffins, a feature called 'The Bits That Philosophers Forgot', instructions for a knitted iPod cover and a free mini-booklet called The Shane Richie Insect Book (it's self-explanatory).

Leave Josie a message on her blog if you fancy a copy.

Hoff: #1 (hopefully)

"Think what he's given to the world. 'Knight Rider'. 'Baywatch'. The reunification of East and West Germany. Untold laughter from forwarded e-mails of him in hotpants.

He's given a lot. It's time we gave something back.

The Hoff's having a hard time. He's split from his wife. He needs a lift.

Let's help him out with something that would mean the world to him. Something that would repay all the goodness he's given us over the years. A glittering prize that thus far eludes him.

A top spot in the UK music charts".

You know it makes sense. As much sense as using Barry Manilow records to drive away troublesome youths.

(Thanks to Gordon and J for the links.)

Aye aye Captain

Remember Captain Lazonby-Threpwell? The hub-cap-collecting Army veteran and resident of Kingswinford who wrote the rather excellent liner notes to Black Country punk situationists The Pubic Fringe's demo The Misanthropic Sounds Of The Pubic Fringe?

Well, he's got his very own Corner. Turns out that while, as their director of communications, he's enthusiastic about the band now known as Das Fringe, he was not a big fan of Jif changing its name to Cif...

(Thanks to Tom, who stumbled across my blog while searching for stuff on the good Captain.)

The X factor

Up now on The Art Of Noise - the pre-penultimate installment of the A-Z Of Music feature. This week X, and incredibly only one contributor cheated (I'm looking at you, drmigs...) There are pieces on Blondie's 'X Offender', Xfm and Nottingham legend the late Xylophone Man, while I've taken the opportunity to develop my recent post here about The Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt and hip-hop into something a bit more substantial.

Blogwatch

Welcome...

Fictions - interweb home of Brum resident and graphic comic fan Richard

Greavsie - the rather amusing site of one of JonnyB's most loyal commenters

Never Trust A Hippy - sound advice indeed from Forest fan Paulie

Meanwhile...

Pete dissects "the MySpace phenomenon" - "The end result is an ecosystem which, while it may not replace the major labels, provides a viable alternative".

Elsewhere...

Kenny indulges in a gig-going frenzy, taking in Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Dinosaur Jr, Metric and Tilly And The Wall.

Back from fulfilling his journalistic duties at Eurovision, Mike also witnesses a live act to enthuse about, Mexican duo Rodrigo Y Gabriela - "high-octane flamenco-esque covers of thrash metal tunes being just what the doctor ordered".

Also in Nottingham, Phill reports on the Bank Holiday weekend Dot-To-Dot Festival - "Headliners Bromhead's Jacket are the southern equivalent of the Arctic Monkeys, with their tales of small town life, Samsungs and girls. Brilliant lyrics, great tunes and an engaging frontman mean that this band are one breakthrough song away from moving into the mainstream".

Robin ruminates on the foolishness of his light-fingered neighbours - "Oh, they said, they had found this umbrella on their lawn on Thursday, just lying there. They seemed to assume very readily at this point that it was ours. Must have blown over the fence, they suggested. Yes, I agreed, inwardly figuring that it probably hopped over in that enormous, short lived northerly hurricane we unexpectedly experienced in Peckham on Wednesday night"

And finally...

Betty is bemused by the antics of a couple of local goths - "They had decided to have a picnic, at twilight, intermittent showers and low temperatures notwithstanding, in a parking bay on a Wimpey estate".

Daydream unbeliever

With Sonic Youth's new album Rather Ripped due to be released next week, it was timely that, in a recent On Second Thought piece on Stylus, Ian Mathers should give his personal take on the band's 1988 classic Daydream Nation.

As someone who thinks it's their masterpiece (though Dirty runs it very close - perhaps partly on account of it being the first Sonic Youth record I heard), I can't agree with Ian's assessment - but the vitriol and abuse he's received as a result (see the comments box) is incredible and utterly unjustified. Of course music critics should be able to take shots at sacred cows - I may not like what Ian has to say, but I'll defend his right to say it. The whole idea of the feature is for someone to give a personal take on an album - it's always going to be more personal than the regular album reviews - so why then complain about it?

I can well understand that annoyance at feeling you "should" like a certain band simply because it's what's expected - after all, I've never really "got" The Pixies (amongst others) and am constantly faced with disbelieving faces when I confess it. I'm not sure whether that wouldn't change if I was exposed to more of their stuff, but, as Ian says, there does come a point when you realise that no matter how often you listen to something, or how often people tell you how amazing it is, you just don't like it.

Quote of the day

"The question of late is often asked, what is Cardiff coming to? The principal streets are almost impassable for the respectable portion of the community, especially in the main street, owing to girls as imprudent as they can be, and using profane language, quite unfit for respectable and decent people to hear.

St Mary Street, once one of the most quiet and orderly in town, is getting really bad, if not quite as bad as Bute Street.

Girls by the dozen, stand in groups all through the evening and all week long, and if perchance you get twirled off the pavement and remonstrate, you may reckon upon such a torrent of abuse and filthy language, as will make you shudder.

Why should this state of things be tolerated? If the Mayor and Watch Committee do their duty, the police would not wink at this kind of thing until it is unbearable - but would soon rid the streets of these pests of society".

So quoth a local rag, back in 1888. How times have changed. I wonder if these imprudent and foul-mouthed young ladies often wore bunny outfits and congregated in Walkabout?

Punk'd

The funniest thing I've seen for quite some time: a mohicaned punk hopping from one foot to the other while screeching in a high-pitched effeminate voice "You're dumped!" to his burly butch ex-girlfriend, who was hoofing him in the shins.

It was run close by the two deranged cyclists we saw on Splott Road the other day, though - one had no tyre on his back wheel, and the other was carrying an enormous bit of carpet...

Feel good hits of the 4th June

1. 'Velvet Girl' - Howling Bells
2. 'I Can't Look At Your Skin' - Graham Coxon
3. 'Sweet Leaf' - Mogwai
4. 'Canada' - Low
5. 'This Scene Is Dead' - We Are Scientists
6. 'Hoodwink' - Anathallo
7. 'Casimir Pulaski Day' - Sufjan Stevens
8. 'Cheated Hearts' - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
9. 'Lightning Blue Eyes' - Secret Machines
10. 'Bewitched' - The Wedding Present

Holding pattern

Apologies for the paucity of postage around these 'ere parts of late, but unfortunately circumstances are such that there won't be a full resumption of activity here until the end of the week at the earliest.

I don't flatter myself that this revelation is likely to reduce anyone to tears - just to let those of you not signed up to Bloglines or whatever not to bother swinging by in the expectation of anything new until then.

On the cards when I return (with a vengeance?): a report on Friday evening's Dead Meadow gig at Clwb, reviews of Nadine Gordimer's 'Selected Stories' and (at long last) Thomas Pynchon's 'Mason & Dixon' plus the usual gibberings and dribblings.

Right, back to the coal face...

W've lost that loving feeling

The latest installment of the Art Of Noise A-Z Of Music is up now - this week, W. Click to read pieces on The White Stripes, Scott Walker, the world wide web and German indie bands, and to find me eulogising about Codeine, early 90s purveyors of exquisitely slow rock.

Feel good hits of the 25th May

1. 'A Ballad For The Bleeding Hearts' - Howling Bells
2. 'Tom' - Codeine
3. 'Faded Lines' - Secret Machines
4. 'Gold Lion' - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
5. 'Mudwig Bahnhoff' - You & The Atom Bomb
6. 'No 1 Cheesecake' - Urusei Yatsura
7. 'We're No Here' - Mogwai
8. 'Pretty Persuasion' - REM
9. 'Plates' - Proton Proton
10. 'Blueberry Boat' - The Fiery Furnaces

Curse The Cooper Temple Clause! If it wasn't for them hand-picking Howling Bells as their support act, I would have seen the Aussies at the Barfly here on Sunday. As it is, I'll just have to make do with the album for the meantime (which is brilliant, by the way). The gig-going drought continues...

Oh Lordi!

Congratulations to Lordi - "the Finnish GWAR", as one friend succinctly put it - on romping to victory in Saturday night's 'Eurovision Song Contest'. Congratulations too to Mike for backing the winner - you can read his take on the outcome here, where he points out that before 'Hard Rock Hallelujah' not only had Finland never won the contest, they'd never even had a song placed in the top five.

I didn't actually see events unfold as we were hosting an all-day barbecue party, but one of our guests, a Finn, had to leave early on because he was going to a Eurovision party at which they were due to play a drinking game that would involve having a drink every time a Finnish flag was spotted. Best of all, he was already wearing his Lordi T-shirt with pride and looked very nervous...

Of course, I may well have scoffed at the time, but let's just say it's unlikely that at any point later that evening he decided to pay homage to Alan Partridge by swigging red wine out of an aerialator...

Not so black and white

Is it racist for a white person to dislike hip-hop and rap? The Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt has recently been taken to task by a couple of American critics, Jessica Hopper and Sacha Frere-Jones, for his (forgive the pun) repellent views. Take a look at John Cook's article about the controversy on Slate (via Ian) and make up your own mind, but it all seems ridiculous to me - my aversion to the vast majority of mindless booty-and-cash-obsessed rap songs is a matter of taste (and aesthetics and politics...), just as is that of rap and pop fans to the sort of skinny white boy indie that I like.

Also worth a look on a musical tip, if you're in the West Midlands: The Great West Midlands Gig Venue Survey, as compiled by Russ L of Oh. Just as deserved as the Actress & Bishop coming out on top is the fact that the Academy venues scored terribly in the drinks and staff categories.

Back in the firing line

Oh dear. Despite the hard work being put in by the Council and police etc, Nottingham finds itself back in the headlines as "the most crime-ridden place in England and Wales".

Whenever I read or hear about Nottingham in these terms, I wince. I'm regularly back there, and I'll always retain a fondness for the city. Statistics aside, it didn't strike me as being any more "dangerous" than other places, even though I lived for six years in an area widely considered one of the dodgiest in the city.

Nottingham suffers - unjustly, I think - from a real perception problem, and this sort of thing isn't going to do it any favours.

Blogwatch

Congratulations...

A dream come true for Mike: being the official correspondent at the Eurovision Song Contest for American website Slate. Fingers crossed the laptop holds out...

Meanwhile...

Inspector Sands is struck by the selfishness of those who try to commit suicide by chucking themselves under a train: "Why anybody would want to throw themselves in front of a train which is slowing down to kill themselves is beyond me. But if anybody who was that desperate could see the look on our train driver's face tonight, surely they'd think again".

Elsewhere...

Del writes about what Englishness means to him - "To me it's fair play, cricket, football, a good drink, a slightly warped sense of humour, distrust of authority, a nice Sunday roast, punk rock and acid house, complaining about the weather, hot cross buns, a belief in personal privacy that tips into stand-offishness, a certain arrogance about foreign climes based on the fact that there's no place like home, but also a genuine affection for other peoples and a willingness to embrace new things, a wonderful language that we're lucky the rest of the world understands".

The Quiz Blogger digresses from his usual buggering-hard-question-setting schtik to reflect that if he hadn't had a childhood spent within stone-throwing distance of the sea, "I would have eaten a lot less Wimpy meals and believed that the north was a real place with normal people, rather than this near mythical, sun-less place populated by entrail-eating Dickensian grotesques with accents so incomprehensible and phrases so confusing that when I met one for real I would have to bring a translator and a Stanley knife. Just in case. But don't worry, I stopped thinking such things when I watched 'Geordie Racer' at school. Understanding through pigeons and educational drama you see".

Mish celebrates us menfolk as the "uncomplicated, yet driven, creatures" we are.

Alan is hypnotised by a pair of breasts while out and about with his ladyfriend (don't worry, though - she was too...).

And finally...

Swiss Toni has been reading Girl With A One-Track Mind if this post about all-over body tanning is anything to go by...

Is it just me...

... or, when you have an eye test / contact lens aftercare session, do you feel like you're being interrogated? "With that lens is it less blurred, more blurred or the same?" "Is the circle clearer or more blurred now?" "Are the letters on the middle line smaller and darker now?" Aaaarrrrgggghhhh.

The worst bit is the fear of contradicting myself - sometimes the differences are so small as to be almost negligible, and I'm convinced that I must give some fairly erratic data. The opticians are almost trying to catch you out, I'm convinced of it. Quite how they ultimately manage to decide upon a prescription for me is a mystery - and how that prescription is good enough to improve my vision significantly even more so.

Incidentally, ever wanted to look at the world in sepia tones, as it was in olden times? Just walk into an opticians and ask them to administer some of that yellow dye stuff into each eye...

V have vays of making you talk

The latest installment of the Art Of Noise A-Z Of Music is up online now. Contributions on The Velvet Underground could perhaps have been predicted - though Jean Claude Vannier, Vivian Stanshall and VW Camper Van couldn't...

"A big bowl of wrong"

First it was 'Chappelle's Show', and now it's 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' - the latest US comedy import to grab my attention (thanks to Jez).

I'd heard of it - after all, it's been on E4 if not Channel 4 itself of late - but hadn't ever seen an episode. But over the course of the weekend all that changed, and I watched all but one episode of the first series on DVD.

And, yes, it's great stuff. Written by and starring 'Seinfeld' producer Larry David, who plays himself, it's cringeworthy comedy in the same vein as 'I'm Alan Partridge' and 'The Office' (the latter is the most obvious influence, I think, in terms of content, characterisation and camerawork). Naturally many of the laughs are in poor taste - but if you don't like the sound of comedy episodes centred on an obituary or an incest survivor's group then just avoid.

And it's educational too - I now know what a "cut-off time" is. Mine's about 11.30pm - what's yours?

The dilemma now, though, is whether or not to start watching the episodes which are currently being televised. Although they work as stand-alone comic programmes, there are also certain narrative threads that link them together - and so there might well be things I'd be missing out on by just jumping into a later series (I gather there have been four or five in total?). What to do...

18 till I die

Out now, in paper 'n' print as well as on that there internet: issue #18 of Skif's Vanity Project fanzine. And my what goodness it contains...

Interviews: Autons

Album reviews: Mogwai, White Rose Movement, Soledad Brothers, Cat Power, Dakar & Grinser, Hefner, My Latest Novel, Saint Jude's Infirmary, Pete Dale & The Beta Males, Millionaire, Six. By Seven, Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds, Dawn Of The Replicants, Dilated Peoples, Charlie Parr, Jethro Tull

Single reviews: Be Your Own Pet, This Et Al, Autons, Lovemat

Live reviews: Manchester Vs Cancer, Ladytron, The Like, Shitdisco, White Rose Movement, Boy Kill Boy, Gogol Bordello

Fanzine reviews: Homelovin'

And much more besides - including a review of an album featuring twelve Swedish artists covering Haddaway's early 90s Eurodance favourite 'What Is Love?'... How can you resist? Visit the Vanity Project site for details of how to avail yourself of a copy.

(Incidentally, my review of The Invisible Clock Factory's double A-side single 'Penelope Rose' / 'The Quantum Particles Rock And Roll Song' is now up.)

Quote of the day

"That was the Red Hot Chili Peppers there with 'Dani California'. Sounds just like all their other songs, which is a bit of a disappointment. It's from their new 28 track album Stadium Arcadium, so there are another 27 songs just like it there. If you like that kind of thing. Which I hope you don't".

Richard Herring, standing in for Andrew Collins on his Sunday afternoon 6 Music show, fails to grasp the concept (essential to being a radio DJ) of being dishonestly enthusiastic about every single song he plays.

Feel good hits of the 16th May

1. 'Marvellous Transmissions Of Star Craft' - You & The Atom Bomb
2. 'I Hate Pretending' - Secret Machines
3. 'Wicked Game' - Giant Drag
4. 'The Mercy Seat' - Johnny Cash
5. 'The Distance' - Cake
6. 'Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt' - We Are Scientists
7. 'Ladyflash' - The Go! Team
8. 'Formed A Band' - Art Brut
9. '1980' - Estelle
10. 'Jenny Says' - Death Of Fashion

Several of these are the result of Richard Herring playing them - though of those I think only 'Ladyflash' was his personal choice.

Odd jobs

Watching the new BBC4 panel quiz 'Never Mind The Full Stops' last night (which, of course, I enjoyed, being a pedant), I was reminded of some of the things I'd love to hear myself described as.

One of the panellists was Ned Sherrin, who was introduced as (amongst other things) a "raconteur". A raconteur is, in essence, a storyteller or someone who tells anecdotes - but, of course, the word's French origins make it seem that bit more cultured. A raconteur's anecdotes might ultimately be lewd, but there would be a sprinkling of well-chosen bon mots to season it with sophistication.

Raconteurs like Peter Ustinov were once the stars of chat shows before they dumbed down and the guests became one long procession of slebs trying to sell something, whether it be CD, book, film or whatever. Now they seem to be a dying breed, one of the finest left being Stephen Fry, whose anecdotes are what make 'QI' one of the best things on TV.

Someone described as a raconteur is often also described as a "bon viveur" (or perhaps that's just Forbes McAllister on 'Knowing Me Knowing You With Alan Partridge' - oh, just bear with me...) This roughly translates as: "enjoys the finer things in life - food, drink, women [bon viveurs are almost invariably men]".

And then there's that most wonderful of titles, "man of letters", meaning not a prolific letter-writer but "someone devoted to literary or scholarly pursuits".

In truth, I could probably get away with describing myself as a bon viveur and man of letters, but it would be phenomenally pretentious. What you want ideally is for someone else to describe you as such, for it to be a label which routinely prefixes your name in newspapers much like "diva Mariah Carey" and "love rat John Prescott" - in other words, for these to be your professions.

Just imagine going in to see your careers advisor at school and saying: "I'd like to be a bon viveur". The response "Well, have you thought about accountancy or the civil service?" probably wouldn't cut it.

Recycling

An addendum to the post I wrote a couple of months back about the state of British sitcoms, and one in which I make a concession to Greg Dyke's pessimistic perspective.

I'd thought 'The Two Ronnies Sketchbook' was a one-off series, and perhaps it was originally intended as such, but now it seems it's just one in a larger series, the latest being 'Smith & Jones Sketchbook' which is on tonight. Both original programmes might have been sketch shows rather than sitcoms, and - don't get me wrong - they were often half-decent, but it's a sorry state of affairs when Friday night's on BBC1 are much like any night of the week on UK Play or UK Gold.

Perhaps, though, it's just a symptom of the fact that the middle ground doesn't exist anymore, and none of the many sitcoms and comedy shows the BBC have nurtured and nourished of late (particularly on BBC3) are capable of filling that sort of slot - which isn't a criticism of them. Times change, after all, and as I said before the British sitcom is still in rude good health, even if its target audience is much smaller than in the 1970s and 1980s.

On a very tangential comedy note, I just noticed while watching the BBC news this lunchtime that they've got a correspondent called Chris Morris. Watch out for reports on horse infestations on the London Underground.

I've been expecting U

Up now on The Art Of Noise: the latest installment of the A-Z Of Music feature. We've got as far as U, so click to read pieces on (amongst other things) university radio, untitled songs and The Boo Radleys' 'Upon 9th And Fairchild'. And witness me resorting to writing about comically misheard lyrics.

Feel good hits of the 11th May

1. 'The Triumph Of Our Tired Eyes' - The Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band
2. '1000 Seconds' - Secret Machines
3. 'Behold, Coelacanth' - You & The Atom Bomb
4. 'Dudley' - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
5. 'What Have I Said Now?' - The Wedding Present
6. '15 Minutes' - The Strokes
7. 'Lock Picker' - Proton Proton
8. 'Friend Of The Night' - Mogwai
9. 'Hoodwink' - Anathallo
10. 'Take Me Out' - Franz Ferdinand

No laughing matter

Comic actor charged over net porn. Well, Chris Langham really is in 'The Thick Of It' now.

What's Hot On The SWSL Stereo: May 2006

(aka The Scrawny Little Brother Of The Parallax View Album Review Compendium)

The Strokes - First Impressions Of Earth

First impressions of The Strokes' third LP were good, and it just gets better with every listen (though it's a touch too long to be really effective).

Naturally it was the singles 'Juicebox' (Noo Yawk cool goes metal!) and 'Heart In A Cage' that initially grabbed the attention, and then the track on which they're most obviously pushing in a new direction, 'Ask Me Anything'. For a while, '15 Minutes' promises something different too, until it all speeds up unexpectedly and rather unnecessarily. On each spin a different track catches the ear - 'Fear Of Sleep' with its tremendous chorus, closer 'Red Light', 'Electricityscape' (on which Fab Moretti's drumming is as great as anywhere else on the album). It's as though in the three years since Room On Fire all the media attention and pressure has shifted elsewhere, allowing them to do what they come back reinvigorated.

Not that you'd draw that conclusion from Julian Casablancas's contribution to the album, mind. He spends the early part of the aforementioned '15 Minutes' doing a passable impersonation of Shane McGowan after his third pint of whiskey of the day and singing beyond-paranoid lines like: "They've got it in for me, I know".

Elsewhere it's much the same story: "The world is in your hand / Or it's at your throat". That's from 'Razorblade', which contains perhaps their most gorgeous chorus yet, over which Casablancas declares: "Oh no, my feelings are more important than yours / Oh, drop dead, I don't care, I won't worry". Later he changes his mind - "Sweetheart, your feelings are more important of course" - but the line's not so much dripping with sarcasm as sodden with it.

Not that Casablancas's world-weariness manifests itself only in the form of a loathing for others - there's a fascinatingly honest self-disgust in 'On The Other Side': "I hate them all / I hate them all / I hate myself for hating them / So drink some more / I'll love them all /I'll drink even more / I'll hate them even more than I did before".

So there you have it: not as good as Is This It, but certainly the first Strokes album on which the lyrics have grabbed me as much as the music - all of which makes a mockery of Casablancas's claim on 'Ask Me Anything', "I've got nothing to say".

(The words to 'Ize Of The World' are a bit cringeworthy, though, and the less said about the line "Don't be a coconut" the better...)

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Show Your Bones

One of those surprises that, in hindsight, we should have seen coming.

Back in 2003 Yeah Yeah Yeahs were an art-rock band you could actually MOVE to, and their debut Fever To Tell was an absolute fucking blast of an album, lead single 'Date For The Night' only one of several songs which made you want to glug wine like it was going out of fashion and thrash around on a dancefloor with no concept of age or shame.

But even in the midst of it all there was 'Maps', the album's stand-out track - and not simply because it struck such a different chord. It was evidently 'Maps' rather than 'Pin' or 'Man' that provided the blueprint for Show Your Bones - it's more sensitive, restrained, ambitious, multi-textured and (yes) mature. All of which means it's less fun. The ceaseless partying obviously took its toll, and at first this sounds like the hangover - not the worst in the world, but a hangover nonetheless.

But that's unfair. The new tracks, though likely to induce you to start fires, are undoubtedly stronger songs than their predecessors, and much more emotionally involving - 'Dudley' is particularly special. What's more, once the initial surprise has worn off, it turns out that there are plenty of moments when Nick Zinner's guitar and Karen O's paint-peeling yelp come together to familiar and superb effect after all - 'Fancy', the jerky genius of 'Phenomena', the climax of 'Mysteries'. One of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' responses to suffering a hangover, it seems, is hair of the dog.

All the same it's revealing that 'Deja Vu', arguably the closest they come to the material on Fever To Tell, is tacked on as a bonus track, the album proper coming to a conclusion with the predominantly acoustic 'Turn Into'. They're evidently intent on moving on rather than standing still - which is laudable in itself, but has led to a sophomore record that, whichever way you look at it, is just less darned exciting.

The Magic Numbers - The Magic Numbers

(Look, I know this was a 2005 release, but I've just dug it out and decided to include it here as it slipped through the review net last year.)

Excitement is in even shorter supply here, and therein lies The Magic Numbers' greatest problem.

Instinctively you'd imagine that a band's faster more upbeat songs would fare best in the live environment, whereas with Romeo and co it's swooning slowies like 'Hymn To Her' and 'Wheels On Fire' that routinely hold the audience enraptured.

And yet on record, where those same slowies could potentially come into their own even more, they fall a bit flat. Their existence beyond the confines of a darkened tent and when not witnessed as part of a hushed but beaming mass seems somehow wrong. Listening to them is like having a magician show you how to perform a trick that had previously confounded and amazed you.

What don't disappoint, though, are the two transcendent singles 'Forever Lost' and 'Love Me Like You', a pair of power-pop rays of sunshine. It's just a shame that the album overall is light on such moments, instead burdened down by plodding and too-wet-for-their-own-good ballads.

Secret Machines - Ten Silver Drops

Now THIS is a hard one to call.

Loved by David Bowie and former touring partners of Interpol, Secret Machines draw upon both prog and Krautrock - intriguing, you might think, and you'd be right but it's certainly not all good.

'Daddy's In The Doldrums', weighing in at nearly nine minutes, has a bassline that might have come straight from the new Tool album, but even that indicates the extent to which the Texan threesome worship Pink Floyd. Fine to a point, but then I'm wary of anything that old prog-rockers are likely to hold up as heralding the return of "proper" music. You know, the sort of humourless bores who not only failed to see any merit in Scissor Sisters' cover of 'Comfortably Numb' but silently pronounced a fatwa on them too.

Ten Silver Drops is in many ways rather like the Ridley Scott film 'Kingdom Of Heaven', which I saw at the weekend - epic, but forcedly and studiously so, to the extent that more often than not it's ponderous and occasionally tedious with it (thankfully, though, Orlando fucking Bloom doesn't make an appearance). The worst culprit is 'I Want To Know', which comes across by and large as a mid 80s power ballad. It opens with the sound of thunder and rain a la 'November Rain', for fuck's sake - the mark of all that is blustery and pompous.

And yet the following track, album closer '1000 Seconds', gets it as right as 'I Want To Know' is wrong, doing a decent job of approximating The Flaming Lips as it builds to a heady climax. Plus a part of me is actually glad to find a much-hyped band that are so completely at odds with the prevailing trends - scuzzy Arctic Monkeys style indie, disco-punk, the "new emo", "grindie", whatever.

At least for the moment, I keep going back to Ten Silver Drops without quite understanding why, rather like I did with ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead's World's Apart. And I'm not really any nearer to knowing what I think of that, over a year on...

* * * * *

Other recent albums I've had difficulty prising off my stereo include Mogwai's Mr Beast, Cat Power's The Greatest and My Latest Novel's Wolves - click on the links for reviews. There have also been a couple of oldies in residence: The Wedding Present's Bizarro (is there a better and more furiously bashed-out song in their canon than 'Crushed'? I doubt it) and REM's Reckoning (ah, so THAT's what Idlewild have been styling themselves on, and quite successfully too).

On top of that there are albums from You & The Atom Bomb and Lovemat for which reviews will hopefully appear over there soon (ie when they're written...), as well as a double A-side single from The Invisible Clock Factory.

Amongst many other albums stacked up by the stereo that I've yet to give a proper hearing are The Flaming Lips' At War With The Mystics, The White Stripes' Get Behind Me Satan (yes, yes, I know - Jack White's already onto his side project...) and two old PJ Harvey LPs. With new records from Howling Bells and Giant Drag winging their way to me as I type and Sonic Youth and The Futureheads both about to bless us with new releases, it shouldn't be too long before another What's Hot On The SWSL Stereo feature - but then I'm sure that's what I said last time, back in August...

Words of the day

From my desktop diary, a couple more etymylogical insights of potential interest to any fellow 'Balderdash & Piffle' enthusiasts:

"ACRONYM: This word describes words made from the first letters of a phrase, but it is not an acronym itself. It was coined during World War II at Bell Laboratories, probably in response to the growing number of military-related terms entering the language. It comes from the Greek words 'akros', meaning 'tip', and 'onyma', meaning 'name', thus referring to something made from the 'tips' or initial letters of other words".

"SOLDIER: Soldiers are professional warriors, paid for their work, and the term 'soldier' derives from this pay. In ancient Rome, a gold coin used to pay 'soldiers' was called a 'solidus', so called because it was solid. This led to 'soldum', meaning 'one being paid with a solidus', and then 'soldarius', meaning 'a professional warrior' or 'a soldier'".

If you learn something new every day, then there's tomorrow covered.

Blogwatch

Welcome...

Anthony Is Right - music-centred blog written by one of the Stylus crew (via his fellow Stylus writer Ian)

Silence Is A Rhythm Too - a music blog which frequently features MP3s (the Royksopp cover of Queens Of The Stone Age's 'Go With The Flow' got me hooked, and like me Michael's been plugging The Invisible Clock Factory) (via Sweeping The Nation)

Throughsilver In Blog - a third music-focused blog written by a chap in Leeds (via RussL)

Congratulations...

Mike, who is now "FOOKIN MARRIED" and on honeymoon holiday in the Maldives. Nice one mate!

Meanwhile...

Alan marvels at the American attitude to food - "The adverts for the BK Triple Cheeseburger were bad enough, with their promises of 'patty on patty on patty technology', as if there were anything remotely scientific about sticking three beefburgers in a bun. It seems to be one of those things that they did just because they could. Was the world really crying out for a sandwich containing three beefburgers? It’s like the ever increasing number of blades in a razor. I think we’re up to four now, so it shouldn’t be long before some genius comes up with the idea for the five blade razor".

Also on his travels on the North American continent is Jonathan, who is confronted by the fact that not everyone in Montreal speaks English - "Last night when I got a taxi back from the airport I cheerfully tried to engage my cabbie in conversation, and was horrified to discover that not only was his English not good enough for him to understand me, but that his English, however poor, was spoken through an accent so disdainfully French that I could hardly understand it".

Elsewhere...

James ventures into the Scottish Highlands for the opportunity to see Will Oldham in a village hall - "'I See A Darkness' had an additional poignancy when we stepped outside, since that exactly what we saw. Back in the hall it was easy to neglect the fact but it was the middle of nowhere - probably many miles from the nearest street lighting. We drove home quiet but satisfied".

Jaymaster is less enthusiastic about another gig which took place in an unusual setting, the performance of the Pet Shop Boys' soundtrack to 'Battleship Potemkin' at the Swan Hunter shipyard in Wallsend.

Jason compiles a list of albums that bands have allegedly disowned - "Why do bands orphan albums, leaving them in little baskets at the door of irrelevance? Some blame record labels for cobbling together contract obligation releases. Some blame themselves. Other acts change styles and grow in talent so dramatically from one album to another that they render their past work incongruous. Some albums are so bad, so ill-conceived that abandoning them is the only understandable response".

Robin expresses his concerns about Tufty the Squirrel - "If I wanted to select an animal which could impart serious lessons about road safety then I would probably choose a mole who always used the underpass or a zebra who had his own crossing, which would be magic or something. I certainly wouldn't choose an animal that was a complete lunatic when it came to decisions about traffic and never, in my experience, ever looks either left or right before crossing and in fact seems to select the most exciting moment possible to take on oncoming traffic".

JonnyB is perturbed by the amount of female attention he attracts in walking around Norwich with Baby Servalan - "I explain my problem to the LTLP when we meet up again. She laughs at me and tells me that women don't really leer at men with babies and that it is all my imagination, but it is pretty well exactly the same reply that I give her about looking at women's breasts so I am not convinced".

Betty does that Seven Things You Didn't Know About Me meme that's been doing the rounds, and in far more entertaining fashion than anyone else - "3. My GP once looked closely and quizzically at me and asked 'Have you got that syndrome?' 'What's that?' I asked. 'Er, no, never mind', he replied. I've been paranoid about it ever since".

And finally...

Girl explains why she's attracted to men with green fingers (not literally) (NSFW).

Time for T

The latest installment of the Art Of Noise A-Z Of Music is up now. There you'll find contributions on Teenage Fanclub, TV theme tunes, They Might Be Giants, Franz Ferdinand's 'Take Me Out' and Tin Pan Alley amongst other things - plus my adjective-strewn appreciation of 'The Triumph Of Our Tired Eyes', the closing track on (deep breath) The Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band's 2001's LP Born Into Trouble As The Sparks Fly Upwards.

Silent words don’t speak loudest

About time we had a book review, isn’t it? And it’s a long one…

A while back – well, a year and a half ago, to be precise – I read and reviewed Melvin Bragg’s ‘The Adventure Of English’, lauding it as an excellent chronicle of the English language’s evolution into the dominant world language. Though Bragg’s tone is never triumphalist, and he does not shy away from acknowledging that the global “adventure” of English was often inextricably associated with the exertion of colonial power, he does argue that it is English’s adaptability and flexibility, its ability to absorb and adopt words from other tongues, that has ensured its status and richness.

In many ways, then, Mark Abley’s book ‘Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages’ can be read as the flipside of Bragg’s story. For, in nearly every case Abley examines, languages are audibly dying or – worse still – becoming extinct altogether because of the inexorable march of English into every corner of the globe. “Modern English”, he says, “is the Wal-Mart of languages: convenient, huge, hard to avoid, superficially friendly, and devouring all rivals in its eagerness to expand”. It’s an analogy that someone he meets later qualifies: “‘At Wal-Mart you can still buy the stuff that smaller stores used to sell. Languages aren’t like that. Languages are unique. English doesn’t sell other merchandise – it eliminates the other merchandise”.

The disappearance of languages around the world is not, Abley acknowledges, a new problem: “languages have always been in flux; languages have always died … But the sheer pace of change is unprecedented”. And, it almost goes without saying, very worrying to someone who, like the linguist David Crystal, articulates passionately the inherent value of the existence of different languages, each with its own unique qualities and characteristics. Adopting another analogy, Abley argues that there should exist the same imperative to protect and sustain endangered languages and linguistic diversity as there is to protect and sustain endangered species and ecological diversity. He reads the Tower of Babel story from the Bible as a blessing rather than a curse.

Another central objective of Abley’s book is to debunk the notion that languages come under threat of extinction and die out because they are “primitive” (and, by extension, their speakers “savages”): “The grammar and syntax of Mati Ke and Murrinh-Patha are just as elaborate, just as complex and intellectually demanding, as the grammar and syntax of any well-known European tongue. Being widely spoken does not make a language any better, more intelligent, or more perceptive that a language that has never spread beyond its birthplace”.

Of course, this goes against the grain of history. It was not only Christianity which was believed to be necessary to make “barbarous” natives become “civilised”, but English too. Those who refuse to submit to a “majority language” have traditionally suffered physical and psychological abuse at the hands of the supposedly “civilised” and “civilising” authority. Hard to believe it wasn’t too long ago that here in my current home country “pupils caught speaking Welsh wore a strap around their necks with a heavy piece of wood attached: a badge of dishonour, the infamous ‘Welsh Not’”.

There is a sense of injustice and indignation that fires Abley’s book, and this is in part what ensures it never threatens to become a dry textbook. As he is quick to acknowledge, he is not a specialist linguist. But, he adds, “[linguists’] voices are unlikely to be heard on the subject unless they speak out in terms that are lucid, intelligible and free from jargon” – which is precisely what he does. (He does however later note a welcome development within the academic sphere: “Linguists have been learning to act as partisans, campaigning on behalf of the languages they once set out to study in a cool, neutral light”.)

Despite Abley’s admission that he isn't a specialist, one early chapter discusses Noam Chomsky’s theory of language, and the countervailing Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, according to which – in very simple terms – language constructs the world (as well as reflecting it). If a language distinguishes between two shades of yellow, for instance, then that distinction exists for that speaker, when a non-speaker might just refer to both shades as yellow. The book is a (perhaps unsurprisingly) convincing endorsement of Sapir and Whorf’s theory.

Over the course of the book Abley immerses himself in a variety of threatened languages, including Yuchi, Manx, Provencal, Mohawk, Yiddish and some interrelated Aboriginal languages. It isn’t simply a pre-mortem, an attempt to preserve these languages in amber before they die out. After all, as he says, “languages are social creations, constantly being tested and renewed in the mouths of their speakers. They require use, not just study. You can no more restore a vanished language from a scholarly monograph and a software program than you can restore a population of cheetahs from a vial of frozen sperm and a National Geographic film”.

That’s why “this book is not just about threatened languages but about the people who speak them”. The languages Abley writes about are felt to be vital and real because his focus is as much on their speakers as on the languages themselves as abstract entities. In narrating the struggles to keep the flame of individual languages alive – the squabbles as well as the successes – the book has human interest at its heart.

Abley makes clear that not everyone is pulling in the same direction, not even those who ostensibly share the aim of saving a particular language. The fight to preserve the Mohawk language, for instance, is inextricably bound up with a resistance to cultural assimilation. It’s a political issue related to territory, one which has led to violence, bloodshed and imprisonment. And yet Mohawks are themselves split into factions, divided over issues of pronunciation and orthography.

It’s a similar if slightly more sinister story in the south of France, where disagreements between defenders of Provencal continue to impede the language’s rehabilitation. Again there are contentious political issues at stake, and Abley expresses his discomfort at the fact that the fervent desire to ensure Provencal’s survival often spills over into ugly xenophobia, immigrants being blamed for the dilution of “native” culture in classically racist rhetoric.

One of the book’s central messages is that these conservative defenders of the faith are misguided. Languages must be living to survive: “stasis is death … Any living tradition is also a tradition in flux”. But they have to adapt and evolve on their own terms, not as a result of external pressures. Abley notes that there is evidence that even major European languages – Russian, French, Polish, German – are “melting at the edges” because of the influence of English.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. There are, Abley says, good reasons for not falling into “a despairing fatalism”: “On a global level the triumph of English may seem unstoppable, but on a local level you can find innumerable tales of a bullheaded refusal to submit”.

Here he’s referring to Manx, but he might as well be talking about Welsh – or Cymraeg, to give its proper name. In a chapter of particular interest to me given my recent move, Abley looks at Cymraeg as an example of a flourishing minority language, celebrating those schools that actively encourage the learning and speaking of the language (for English immigrants as well as for "natives") and the way S4C has directly countered the incursion of English via popular culture (incidentally, I learned that the channel was “won” by Plaid Cymru leader Gwynfor Evans who threatened to go on hunger strike to the point of death unless Maggie followed up her pre-election pledge to bring it into existence).

Even then, Abley acknowledges the intimidating difficulties of learning the language’s multiple grammatical mutations, and notes the ever-present threat of English, lurking at the border. Certainly, the picture the pressure groups Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg and Cymuned paint on their websites isn’t all rosy.

Overall, though, Abley’s tone is lyrical without ever becoming elegiac. ‘Spoken Here’ is a superb book, brilliantly written and researched, keenly observed and – best of all – passionate.

And if that’s not enough to sell it to you, there are also the fascinating and frequently hilarious trivia titbits ripe for pub conversations…

* One in every six languages comes from New Guinea.

* In Yiddish, gestures used to accompany an adverb can significantly qualify its meaning – there is a gesture to accompany the word “late”, for instance, that means “sort of late, but not too late”.

* As the German scientist and explorer Humboldt discovered, the last known speaker of the Atures language of South America was a parrot.

* Amongst the verbs of the Boro language of north-east India are: “zum”, “to wear or put on clothing for the upper part of the body”; “egthu”, “to create a pinching sensation in the armpit”; and “gobray”, “to fall into a well unknowingly”. Yes, I know what you’re thinking – “How did I ever do without a word for that?”

* For the Lokele people of the eastern Congo, intonation and pitch matters so much to meaning that the word for “fiancée” and the phrase for “I’m watching the riverbank” mean “rubbish dump” and “I’m boiling my mother-in-law” respectively if pronounced in a different way. There’s definite sitcom potential there, methinks…

Feel good hits of the 2nd May

Yes, another one, less than a week after the last - I've been listening to a lot of music of late, OK?

1. 'Phenomena' - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
2. 'Mornings Eleven' - The Magic Numbers
3. 'Dirty Mind' - The Pipettes
4. 'The Quantum Particles Rock And Roll Song' - The Invisible Clock Factory
5. 'Drunk Kid Catholic' - Bright Eyes
6. 'Sometimes' - My Bloody Valentine
7. 'Plates' - Proton Proton
8. 'If Only The Moon Were Up' - Field Music
9. 'A Great Wind More Ash' - Anathallo
10. 'PS Scotland I Luv Ya' - Saint Jude's Infirmary

Thanks to Simon for pointing me in the direction of Proton Proton and Anathallo via his weekly Hey You Get Offa MySpace feature. His recommendations are always worth checking out.