Most of my favourite bands are ignored by almost everyone else, and in some cases I can convincingly argue that almost everyone else is wrong. There's no reason at all, for example, why Ballboy and Half Man Half Biscuit haven't ruled the charts in recent years, given that they write catchier pop tunes with better lyrics than most 'mainstream' acts. Or why the more sombre students have flocked to the superficial whinings of Coldplay rather than the intense and intelligent Low. But with certain groups I can build no rational case at all. I try to shield non-believers from them rather than hoping to make converts, unable to explain my devotion. These tend to be the bands I like most of all and the supreme example is The Fall.
The Fall are relentlessly innovative artists. Their lead singer and autocratic leader Mark E Smith hasn't run out of ideas after nearly 30 years. But there tends to be an artetypal Fall song, 5 or 6 examples of which crop up on every album. Guitars, or less commonly keyboards, repeat a catchy riff. The bass and drums thud through a fast, ominous rhythm. And Smith yelps out lyrics in his inimicable voice, sometimes shouting, sometimes growling, sometimes making eternally unsucessful attempts to sing in tune. There's been a lot of variations on this model. Sometimes conventional verses and choruses are included, sometimes these fripperies are discarded. The structure of Dr Bucks' Letter is so loose that it barely resembles a song at all. On City Dweller Smith has to 'sing' over an overlapping medley of conversations. The drum line for Ladybird Green Grass is so intricate that it becomes a secondary tune. That's the basic template, though. And I honestly can't explain why it's so good, why those 5 or 6 songs tend to be the best ones on each album.
The standard defence for The Fall is to cite their scaborous, satirical wit. Listen carefully to the lyrics, though, and this argument starts wobbling at the knees. Any trenchant observations tend to be thrown in at random, unconnected with the rest of the song. "The Dutch East of India Company and the United States of Anything they can fool" Smith remarks in what was supposed to be a guest vocal for an Inspiral Carpets love song, I Want You. Or else they're so opaque ("Designer tramp goes grrrr") that they could, in fact, mean nothing. And most of the time what we actually get is, most likely, gibberish. The phrase "cavalry or Calvary" pops up throughout Blindness with no justification at all. Or take Chicago Now, where Smith sounds like the park drunk he increasingly resembles: "Do you... work hard? You don't... Do you... You don't... Chicago Now!"
The last Fall gig I went to was revealing. More evident even than Smith's contempt for the venue, a tiny York nightclub, was the diversity of the audience (who he also seemed to dislike). There were balding middle-agers who had dug their old punk t-shirts out of the attic for the occasion. There were fresh-faced students looking around nervously. And there were in-betweeners like me and my friend, hooked on the group since The Frenz Experiment and Extricate in the late 80's. And hooked is the word. The Fall will only ever appeal to a tiny minority; but if they ever get inside your blood, you'll never get them out. We will endure Smith's strops, his faulty quality control (at least a quarter of each album is unlistenable) and his habit of sacking all his fellow band-members. All to get some more of those songs which should sound awful and don't. The Fall are ultimate proof that music is the most irrational of all the arts, incapable of being reduced to its component parts and analysed. They are an addiction, pure and simple, and I hope that it never ends.
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Monday, March 27, 2006
Entirely Bad Poetry Part Two
The next installment of my 'Office Poems Epic Series'. Fortunately there is only one more which I can even bear to type up.
Fag Break
I stand in the cool freshness
Inhaling my stick of death.
Pyramids of red tiles
Dignified by their dotage
Overlap and jostle
Across the cityscape
On the edge of vision
An old monument to God
Flying rats perch on brick stacks
Daytime bats whistle forth and back
Smoke dribbles into clouds
From my mobile chimney
Peace is with the world.
What exactly were they thinking
When they bolted this terrace
To the top floor of our office?
A playground for executives?
Dragging hampers and business plans
To share sandwiches with ants?
Surprisingly, never happened.
Instead, a haven for us addicts.
We slip out wordlessly
Protected by the silent pact
To add to the heap of orange
Crumpled little relics.
Escaping, just for five minutes
The bright vigilance of monitors.
Erratic heart, hard arteries
High blood pressure, bronchitis
Emphysema, impotence
(Though I think that one's a joke)
Peptic ulcers, which sound lively
And the C word wherever you choose
Throat, lungs, lip or mouth.
Those the terms on offer.
I'll take them every time.
Fag Break
I stand in the cool freshness
Inhaling my stick of death.
Pyramids of red tiles
Dignified by their dotage
Overlap and jostle
Across the cityscape
On the edge of vision
An old monument to God
Flying rats perch on brick stacks
Daytime bats whistle forth and back
Smoke dribbles into clouds
From my mobile chimney
Peace is with the world.
What exactly were they thinking
When they bolted this terrace
To the top floor of our office?
A playground for executives?
Dragging hampers and business plans
To share sandwiches with ants?
Surprisingly, never happened.
Instead, a haven for us addicts.
We slip out wordlessly
Protected by the silent pact
To add to the heap of orange
Crumpled little relics.
Escaping, just for five minutes
The bright vigilance of monitors.
Erratic heart, hard arteries
High blood pressure, bronchitis
Emphysema, impotence
(Though I think that one's a joke)
Peptic ulcers, which sound lively
And the C word wherever you choose
Throat, lungs, lip or mouth.
Those the terms on offer.
I'll take them every time.
Sunday, March 26, 2006
Just Buy The Damn Flowers
Mothering Sunday today, at least in Britain, which like most celebrations has filled me full of rage. More specifically, those whining about it have. You know the arguments, used each year to justify being too mean to fork out ten quid for a bunch of flowers. "It's an artificial holiday." As opposed to other festivals, I suppose, which are organic creations and natural products of our DNA. And of course: "It was just invented by the card manufacturers."
It's remarkable the level of power often credited to card manufacturers. To some they play the same role others give to Zionist conspirators or liberal media barons or, in David Icke's case, giant extra-terrestrial lizards. A shadowy cabal who can bring down presidents and kings. This despite their lack of all the standard mechanisms of power. There are, to my knowledge, no ancient clubs for gentleman card manufacturers nestled within London's Square Mile, no lobbyists for their firms striding through the corridors of the White House. Yet they apparently control our thoughts and deeds and, most importantly, spending habits.
Actually Mother's Day began long before Hallmark and the others fixed their iron grip on the world. An old Greek festival was turned by the Romans into a day honouring Cybele, Mother of the Gods, which was held on the Ides of March. The Christians appropriated this, just as they transformed Saturnalia into Christmas, fixing it to the extensive Lent rituals. By the 1600's in England Mother's Day was the one time of the year when young domestic servants were allowed home to visit their parents. They customarily brought gifts. But it would have been a holiday for the whole family, divided the rest of the year by the power of economics.
One might argue that this has little relevance for modern Britain. (Though any rich families with Sudanese or Filipino maids locked in the attic might consider letting them out for the weekend). Neither does Guy Fawkes Night, however, and there seems to be far less complaints about that. If we can celebrate the disembowling of a seventeenth century terrorist, surely we can commemorate what was a tiny oasis of compassion in a generally awful society. Oh, and I gather that it really, really hurts our mothers to squeeze us out of their wombs. That deserves a few flowers at least.
It's remarkable the level of power often credited to card manufacturers. To some they play the same role others give to Zionist conspirators or liberal media barons or, in David Icke's case, giant extra-terrestrial lizards. A shadowy cabal who can bring down presidents and kings. This despite their lack of all the standard mechanisms of power. There are, to my knowledge, no ancient clubs for gentleman card manufacturers nestled within London's Square Mile, no lobbyists for their firms striding through the corridors of the White House. Yet they apparently control our thoughts and deeds and, most importantly, spending habits.
Actually Mother's Day began long before Hallmark and the others fixed their iron grip on the world. An old Greek festival was turned by the Romans into a day honouring Cybele, Mother of the Gods, which was held on the Ides of March. The Christians appropriated this, just as they transformed Saturnalia into Christmas, fixing it to the extensive Lent rituals. By the 1600's in England Mother's Day was the one time of the year when young domestic servants were allowed home to visit their parents. They customarily brought gifts. But it would have been a holiday for the whole family, divided the rest of the year by the power of economics.
One might argue that this has little relevance for modern Britain. (Though any rich families with Sudanese or Filipino maids locked in the attic might consider letting them out for the weekend). Neither does Guy Fawkes Night, however, and there seems to be far less complaints about that. If we can celebrate the disembowling of a seventeenth century terrorist, surely we can commemorate what was a tiny oasis of compassion in a generally awful society. Oh, and I gather that it really, really hurts our mothers to squeeze us out of their wombs. That deserves a few flowers at least.
Monday, March 20, 2006
Some Stereotypes
Some strong contenders for the most logic-defying news stories lately. One comes from America. A certain Curtis Gorkey, clearly one to uphold national stereotypes, is suing himself. As an employee of the City of Lodi, Gorkey smashed a civic lorry into his own pickup. As a private citizen, he then tried suing the city for damages to the truck. The lawyers laughed the case out before it even got as far as court. I think this a shame; there aren't enough old-fashioned farces around these days. I would have liked to hear about Gorkey rushing between plaintiff and defendent benches, perhaps adopting a different hat and voice for each role.
The winner, though, is supplied by the French. They are on the streets again, this time not to demand the EC give them even more subsidies but to protest about a new employment law. This will make it far easier for employers to sack anyone under 26 within the first two years of their job. The government have introduced it on the basis that it will cut the staggeringly high youth employment levels.
You need to be a special kind of politician to follow this logic. The idea, I suppose, is to make young people more attractive to prospective employers. But aren't they so alluring because quite a lot of them will get sacked very quickly and become unemployed again? Never mind, some more might get hired, then sacked - and so it goes on. The RSPCA might as well praise abertoirs for housing large numbers of animals. They don't house them for long, admittedly, but there's always a fresh batch coming along and that's what will show on the statistics.
I said you need to be a special kind of politician. 'Special' because this is the kind running every country in the industrialised world nowadays.
The winner, though, is supplied by the French. They are on the streets again, this time not to demand the EC give them even more subsidies but to protest about a new employment law. This will make it far easier for employers to sack anyone under 26 within the first two years of their job. The government have introduced it on the basis that it will cut the staggeringly high youth employment levels.
You need to be a special kind of politician to follow this logic. The idea, I suppose, is to make young people more attractive to prospective employers. But aren't they so alluring because quite a lot of them will get sacked very quickly and become unemployed again? Never mind, some more might get hired, then sacked - and so it goes on. The RSPCA might as well praise abertoirs for housing large numbers of animals. They don't house them for long, admittedly, but there's always a fresh batch coming along and that's what will show on the statistics.
I said you need to be a special kind of politician. 'Special' because this is the kind running every country in the industrialised world nowadays.
Saturday, March 11, 2006
They Would, Wouldn't They?
At the risk of turning this into an obituary column for extremely old men: Everybody knew what headlines to run when announcing the death of John Profumo. The Scandal Which Rocked Britain; The Man Who Brought Down The Macmillan Government. Profumo, the Tory defence secretary caught sleeping with a call girl who, rather inconveniently, was sleeping with a Russian spy at the same time. And that happened in 1963. Imagine spending over forty years, nearly half a century, with something like that pressing down on your life. Profumo escaped into charity work, which was very worthy. But I bet nearly every new person he met still tried not to snigger and muttered "Well, he would, wouldn't he?" (Mandy Rice Davies' reaction to his initial denial of the affair) to themselves.
The Yorkshire Post found another angle to it. The Post caters for far-right Yorkshiremen who enjoy reading about decapitations in Barnsley and crooked Labour councillors in Doncaster, a surprisingly large market. It's not a paper I'd buy myself. My parents take it though and I was round having dinner with them tonight. Profumo may have shagged prostitutes, endangered national security and lied about it all in Parliament. But when he was finally nailed he went with dignity; and that, according to the Yorkshire Post, is something New Labour politicians today can learn from. Upon reading this I involuntarily uttered the F word in an extremely loud voice, right in front of my sweet white-haired mother and father. Right wing opinions: as bad for family values as they are for everything else.
The Yorkshire Post found another angle to it. The Post caters for far-right Yorkshiremen who enjoy reading about decapitations in Barnsley and crooked Labour councillors in Doncaster, a surprisingly large market. It's not a paper I'd buy myself. My parents take it though and I was round having dinner with them tonight. Profumo may have shagged prostitutes, endangered national security and lied about it all in Parliament. But when he was finally nailed he went with dignity; and that, according to the Yorkshire Post, is something New Labour politicians today can learn from. Upon reading this I involuntarily uttered the F word in an extremely loud voice, right in front of my sweet white-haired mother and father. Right wing opinions: as bad for family values as they are for everything else.
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
RIP Ivor Cutler
Sadness on hearing of the death of Ivor Cutler yesterday but not shock. That came when I learned he was only 83. The Glaswegian popped up as an old man on the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour in 1967 and managed to remain old for decades, like a dark counterpart to Peter Pan. He was utterly unique, his albums a melange of bizaare poems and folk ditties. Their humour worked through archaic words carefully pronounced and through the ramming together of images and phrases which didn't belong. "My father would utter an oath he learned from an agricultural magazine he subscribed to." That came from the Life In A Scotch Sitting Room series, a long-running parody of nostalgic family rememberences. My favourite, though, was probably Breasts, which contained some sage advice: "If your breasts are to big, you will fall over. Unless you wear a rucksack."
Incidentally, a friend lived near Ivor in north London and reported that he was a cantankerous old bastard, always moaning about local parking. It's nice when your heroes meet your expectations in real life.
Incidentally, a friend lived near Ivor in north London and reported that he was a cantankerous old bastard, always moaning about local parking. It's nice when your heroes meet your expectations in real life.
Monday, March 06, 2006
High Time For Chico Time
So congratulations to Chico. The slightly deranged singer has been one of the classic Plucky English Losers in recent years, entering most and winning none of the TV talent contests which have sprung up like toadstools. But the publicity he slowly gained has had an effect. A record deal, now a Number One and a chance, on the Radio 1 chart show, to explain what Chico Time really is. It appears, from what I could gather, to be everything which has ever existed and ever can. First there was Darkness, then Chico Time and then came the Light.
Some people won't be happy by his triumph. There's been a lot of tutting at the talent shows, saying they clutter the charts up with a lot of artificial acts. But most chart bands have always been artificial. The talent shows simply make the process more transparent and democratic. Their main trouble is that the public as a whole seem even more conservative than the record companies' A&R men, something I wouldn't have thought possible. Anybody with a glimmer of energy or originality is systematically voted out as each series progresses. The winners are interchangeable clones with perfectly trained voices who belt out ballads oozing with sentimentality and devoid of any actual emotions; and if you like that sort of thing you should stick to opera. An oddball like Chico would always have to find a different route.
His song has energy and you can dance to it, even if it would probably have to be a rather strange dance. It's trash, of course, but it's fun trash and that's the best you can expect from the charts. I'm not sure I want Chico Time to last indefinetely (though presumably when it ends the whole universe will as well). But as long as the alternative is Will Young Time or Shayne Ward time, it will do for now.
Some people won't be happy by his triumph. There's been a lot of tutting at the talent shows, saying they clutter the charts up with a lot of artificial acts. But most chart bands have always been artificial. The talent shows simply make the process more transparent and democratic. Their main trouble is that the public as a whole seem even more conservative than the record companies' A&R men, something I wouldn't have thought possible. Anybody with a glimmer of energy or originality is systematically voted out as each series progresses. The winners are interchangeable clones with perfectly trained voices who belt out ballads oozing with sentimentality and devoid of any actual emotions; and if you like that sort of thing you should stick to opera. An oddball like Chico would always have to find a different route.
His song has energy and you can dance to it, even if it would probably have to be a rather strange dance. It's trash, of course, but it's fun trash and that's the best you can expect from the charts. I'm not sure I want Chico Time to last indefinetely (though presumably when it ends the whole universe will as well). But as long as the alternative is Will Young Time or Shayne Ward time, it will do for now.
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Spacefiller Alert
In order to bulk out the blog without in any way using my brain, some of my favourite quotes from over the years:
"Mankind... is now one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order"
- Walter Benjamin
"Life - what a bastard. You've got to give it a go, though, haven't you? What else is there to do?"
- Bez
"Is it possible that there is some sort of metaphysical justice in the anatomical fact that the male sex organ, which has been misused from time immemorial as a weapon of terror against women, should have at its root an awkward place of painful vulnerability?"
- Susan Brownmiller
"The kilt: A costume sometimes worn by Scotchmen in America and Americans in Scotland"
- Ambrose Bierce
"Women rule everything in our house. The last thing I did on my own was recognise Angola as an independent state"
- Brian Clough
"Progress isn't a dirty word, you know. 'Arse' is a dirty word and so, to some extent, is 'labia'"
- Steven Fry
"Obstinacy can be a substitute for liking work, it can be a substitute for courage, it can be a substitute for practically all other qualities "
- Michel Houllebecq
"Let us not become gloomy as soon as we hear the word 'torture'.... there is plenty to offset and mitigate that word - even something to laugh at"
- Friedrich Nietzche
"One more drink and I'll be under the host"
- Dorothy Parker
"I played that record on the BBC World Service recently and got complaints from, well, all around the world"
- John Peel
"If extreme ugliness were not repulsive I should prefer it to extreme beauty"
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"The socialism I believe in is everyone working for each other, everyone having a share of the rewards. It's the way I see football, it's the way I see life"
- bill Shankly
"Our present security is nothing, and can be nothing, but evil made irresistable"
- George Bernard Shaw
"Nothing is so over-rated as a good screw and nothing so under-rated as a good dump"
- Paul Theroux
"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench. A long plastic hallway where pimps and thieves run free and good men die like dogs. There is also a negative side."
- Hunter S Thompson
"When we say a thing or an event is real, never mind how suspect it sounds, we honour it. But when a thing is made up - regardless of how true and just it seems - we turn up our noses. That's the age we live in. The documentary age"
- Carol Shields
"I've got better things to do than talk about Augustin Delgardo. I've a yoghurt that's reached its expirary date. It needs eating up. That's more important."
- Gordon Strachan
"If God did not exist it would be necessary to invent him"
- Voltaire
"When the second goal went in I knew our pig was dead"
- Danny Williams
"Mankind... is now one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order"
- Walter Benjamin
"Life - what a bastard. You've got to give it a go, though, haven't you? What else is there to do?"
- Bez
"Is it possible that there is some sort of metaphysical justice in the anatomical fact that the male sex organ, which has been misused from time immemorial as a weapon of terror against women, should have at its root an awkward place of painful vulnerability?"
- Susan Brownmiller
"The kilt: A costume sometimes worn by Scotchmen in America and Americans in Scotland"
- Ambrose Bierce
"Women rule everything in our house. The last thing I did on my own was recognise Angola as an independent state"
- Brian Clough
"Progress isn't a dirty word, you know. 'Arse' is a dirty word and so, to some extent, is 'labia'"
- Steven Fry
"Obstinacy can be a substitute for liking work, it can be a substitute for courage, it can be a substitute for practically all other qualities "
- Michel Houllebecq
"Let us not become gloomy as soon as we hear the word 'torture'.... there is plenty to offset and mitigate that word - even something to laugh at"
- Friedrich Nietzche
"One more drink and I'll be under the host"
- Dorothy Parker
"I played that record on the BBC World Service recently and got complaints from, well, all around the world"
- John Peel
"If extreme ugliness were not repulsive I should prefer it to extreme beauty"
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"The socialism I believe in is everyone working for each other, everyone having a share of the rewards. It's the way I see football, it's the way I see life"
- bill Shankly
"Our present security is nothing, and can be nothing, but evil made irresistable"
- George Bernard Shaw
"Nothing is so over-rated as a good screw and nothing so under-rated as a good dump"
- Paul Theroux
"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench. A long plastic hallway where pimps and thieves run free and good men die like dogs. There is also a negative side."
- Hunter S Thompson
"When we say a thing or an event is real, never mind how suspect it sounds, we honour it. But when a thing is made up - regardless of how true and just it seems - we turn up our noses. That's the age we live in. The documentary age"
- Carol Shields
"I've got better things to do than talk about Augustin Delgardo. I've a yoghurt that's reached its expirary date. It needs eating up. That's more important."
- Gordon Strachan
"If God did not exist it would be necessary to invent him"
- Voltaire
"When the second goal went in I knew our pig was dead"
- Danny Williams
Friday, March 03, 2006
The Dissident
Perhaps I should have responded to this story earlier. Instant reaction is, after all, the main (and only?) virtue in a blog. I held off, though, partly because of idleness but chiefly because I really didn't think it was actually a story. But the repercussions keep rumbling on and I feel I have to add my tuppenyworth.
It is, of course, Prince Charles. According to one of his former lackeys, the Prince's opinion of himself rather differs to ours. He believes he is raising important issues, from the value of talking to plants to China's human rights record. He brings a voice to debates which is generally excluded from political circles. He is, in short, a dissident.
Even the royalists I know reacted in the same way to this. Laughter, basically, often quite loud. Charles does bring publicity to certain issues and derision at exactly the same time; rather like Tom Cruise's championing of Scientology. It's hard to think of a single change he has made in all his years of wittering on. The 'brutalist' modern buildings only dropped out of fashion when architects got bored with concrete and turned to glass. Organic produce had to wait until the serious campaigners, who could explain the benefits properly, started to champion it before it appeared in the supermarkets. And I think we all concluded that China turning tanks on unarmed protestors was a bad idea. Charles is basically a more palatable version of his father, who used to travel the world and call his hosts a bunch of slit-eyed wops. We read about them, laugh at them and move on. There is a reason why voices like his are excluded. They are ludicrous and there is no logical reason why we should be heeding them at all. After all, Charles is a man whose job description starts and ends with 'hanging around waiting for my mum to die.'
But his beliefs in himself, if nothing else, have been taken seriously. Columnists in The Guardian have been worrying about them all week; Steven Hewlett, for example, called him "a quite serious... media manipulator." And no doubt The Mail et al have been full of articles cheering him on. I wouldn't care to read these on a full stomach but I hope that Charles listens to them. And that they inspire him to greater things when his mum does finally die.
Because I have a dream of a republican Britain, probably the only way we'll get one in the near future, and it is this: A pushy new monarch on the throne clashes with the Prime Minister. Said monarch decides to actually exercise some of his theoretical powers, particularly the one allowing him to dissolve Parliament. The result, a very short constitutional crisis ending with Parliament asking for the keys to Buckingham Palace and 1,000 years of back taxes. Yes, you keep standing up for yourself, Charles, and don't let the example of one of your namesakes hold you back.
It is, of course, Prince Charles. According to one of his former lackeys, the Prince's opinion of himself rather differs to ours. He believes he is raising important issues, from the value of talking to plants to China's human rights record. He brings a voice to debates which is generally excluded from political circles. He is, in short, a dissident.
Even the royalists I know reacted in the same way to this. Laughter, basically, often quite loud. Charles does bring publicity to certain issues and derision at exactly the same time; rather like Tom Cruise's championing of Scientology. It's hard to think of a single change he has made in all his years of wittering on. The 'brutalist' modern buildings only dropped out of fashion when architects got bored with concrete and turned to glass. Organic produce had to wait until the serious campaigners, who could explain the benefits properly, started to champion it before it appeared in the supermarkets. And I think we all concluded that China turning tanks on unarmed protestors was a bad idea. Charles is basically a more palatable version of his father, who used to travel the world and call his hosts a bunch of slit-eyed wops. We read about them, laugh at them and move on. There is a reason why voices like his are excluded. They are ludicrous and there is no logical reason why we should be heeding them at all. After all, Charles is a man whose job description starts and ends with 'hanging around waiting for my mum to die.'
But his beliefs in himself, if nothing else, have been taken seriously. Columnists in The Guardian have been worrying about them all week; Steven Hewlett, for example, called him "a quite serious... media manipulator." And no doubt The Mail et al have been full of articles cheering him on. I wouldn't care to read these on a full stomach but I hope that Charles listens to them. And that they inspire him to greater things when his mum does finally die.
Because I have a dream of a republican Britain, probably the only way we'll get one in the near future, and it is this: A pushy new monarch on the throne clashes with the Prime Minister. Said monarch decides to actually exercise some of his theoretical powers, particularly the one allowing him to dissolve Parliament. The result, a very short constitutional crisis ending with Parliament asking for the keys to Buckingham Palace and 1,000 years of back taxes. Yes, you keep standing up for yourself, Charles, and don't let the example of one of your namesakes hold you back.
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