Daily life is full of decisions. What shall I have on my sandwiches? Where should I park? Should I download child pornography for the purposes of spurious ‘research’ into the area of childhood as a whole for a one line appearance in a BBC Three late night comedy drama, or is that a bad idea fraught with pitfalls?
Decisions, decisions, decisions. But in what form of reality could you reasonably be expected to decide whether you prefer a serial killer, a dwarf, or an animated crab? I’ll tell you where, in a land called Listopia, where even the most idiotic of people can claim to be film buffs because they can enthusiastically rate fictional characters depending on their resonance in their pathetic daily lives.
We all know that lists are big money these days. Lists on TV can last for six hours and straddle a whole bank holiday weekend, and will guarantee news coverage and promotion when the Daily Mail gets upset that ‘Gaz twatting Mozz’ is the nation’s best loved street crime on YouTube. Lists in magazines always guarantee big sales, because everybody wants to match their personal outrages with those of their film/music/tv heroes. “Jimmy Page better than Jimi Hendrix by one place! I’ll firebomb the offices of Mojo before I will allow this travesty to stand!”
Total Film magazine have already delivered their Top 100, as voted for by people who find Empire too mentally challenging. Readers placed The Empire Strikes Back at number one, rather predictably, in a list so masculine that it virtually sprouted chest hairs. The gangster, horror and sci-fi genres were so overwhelmingly represented that you get to number 18 in the list before you find a film with no violent deaths. Total Film have now unveiled the voting forms for their newest list, the Top 100 Movie Characters, and the result is a trip to Listopia so surreal and unfathomable that David Lynch must have been the guest editor.
Only in the fields of entertainment are enthusiasts expected, nay encouraged, to rate completely disparate paradigms against one another. In Annie Hall Woody Allen jokes about the pointless awards industry and wonder whether they will crown ‘Best Fascist Dictator – Adolf Hitler’. But that would at least draw some lines of comparison – Maggie probably wouldn’t make the cut if there was a panel involved - unlike the idea that a sci-fi film about killer robots can be judged equally against a Swedish language dadaist introspective about fruit trees.
To help those film buffs who don’t actually know or like any films, Total Film has compiled a list of characters to choose a Top 100 from. As well as fictional characters from literature (Atticus Finch from To Kill A Mockingbird, Gandalf) there are real people (Johnny Cash, Bonnie Parker) and all manner of weird inclusions. Nowhere does the magazine attempt to justify or explain its reasons for compiling this list. Is it to measure the skill of actors in taking a script and developing a character, including voice and movement? If so then Johnny Depp’s rendering of Captain Jack Sparrow is certainly a relevant entry. Caspar on the other hand owes very little of his ‘character’ to the voice actor playing him in the children’s movies. There’s a even a clue for the kid in the description ‘the friendly ghost’. Not rocket science really, just don’t make him a bastard platypus who speaks fluent German.
Elsewhere amongst the prescribed choices is ‘The Monster’ from Frankenstein. Unfortunately the IMDB lists four films called Frankenstein, including a frankly strange method attempt by Robert De Niro and the 1931 version with Boris Karloff. Other multiples occur with Alice In Wonderland (8 versions), Aladdin (3), and Cinderella (24). This would suggest that it is the character in general that is being celebrated and not the film character at all. If that’s the case, why is there Hightower from Police Academy, but not Dr.Jekyll? Are we voting for Jude Law or Michael Caine as Alfie?
There are so many errors and omissions in the list that it becomes painfully clear that the magazine is putting this out as a money making exercise. Who is Willy Wonker? What the fuck is Toy’s Story? Who is Romeo ‘Montigue’? Don’t they know that Danny Zucco is in Grease and not ‘Greece’? Or is this a straight to video version that I haven’t seen? Also, if the Total Film journalists are choosing the list from which to vote, should they not be fired immediately for suggesting that of the millions of characters ever committed to celluloid, the dad from Jumanji and the whale from Free Willy are among them?
In the October issue of Total Film, this feature will probably take up around ten pages. That’s ten pages that could have been used to discuss relevant and important issues in film, such as funding for independent films which haven’t been produced by George Clooney and don’t have Oscar nominees in them, or the state of British film industry, or the fact that cinemas like FACT in Liverpool are forced to screen summer blockbusters instead of foreign language films to keep on the sweet side of the distributors. Instead we have the eternal question – is Sebastian the crab better than Idi Amin? If only we didn’t have to wait til October to find out….
Tuesday, 31 July 2007
Monday, 28 May 2007
The Cribs - Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever
Fuck the NME. Fuck them right up the arse with a pointy stick. Fuck XFM. Fuck polka dot dresses, new rave and the ‘re-birth’ of indie guitar music, because without all that overblown, empty dollar green garbage, The Cribs new album would be number one for a hundred million years and The Kooks would spontaneously combust in the face of the awesome power of three brothers from Wakefield who write the best songs this fledgling century has seen.
As you might have gathered, it’s hard for me to undersell The Cribs. Their presence in British music is like a little Radio Caroline, bobbing about in treacherous circumstances, battling through the jaunty and the desperate on the airwaves to re-assure you that you’re not going mad. Their first album, ‘The Cribs’, was a DIY effort which burned through 40 odd minutes of adrenaline guitars, shouting and Beatles-esque melodies. It was a gem which was left in the dust as the majors pushed out The Thrills, The Coral and other soft going singalong albums in time for festival season of 2004. The follow up ‘The New Fellas’ was a hook-led classic. Something of a climb down from the rattiness of the first album, but it held chart worthy songs like ‘Mirror Kissers’, ‘Hey Scenesters’ and ‘Martell’ which amused the Radio One playlist for a good few weeks. With Alex Kapranos at the helm, some were expecting a sharper, more poppy album this time round. ‘Men’s Needs’ is anything but a compromise to the current scene. You can hear the influence of Kapranos as vocals are shoved up front, the distortion has been reduced and the hook lines and iron-clad melodies are given a starring role.
More than anything this album is threatening the boundaries of what the indie revivalists expect from a record. There is not one second of filler on this offering, listen to any big seller from The Kooks, The Feeling, The Killers and try and say the same, the words’ll stick in your throat. In fact, it’s difficult to keep a straight face discussing these bands in the same breath as The Cribs, although they’ve been lumped together by every magazine and radio station going. The record starts with the spastic rallying cry of ‘Our Bovine Public’, reducing The Cribs so-called rivals to porridge in the space of 2 minutes and 16 seconds. Any one of the next eight tracks could be a single, horrifically catchy equality anthem ‘Men’s Needs’ has been, and ‘Moving Pictures’, the half mournful, half hopeful tune that feels like you’ve always known it, is the next one out of the bag. The big surprise of the record is ‘Be Safe’, which marries a marching bassline to the spoken words of Lee Renaldo (of Sonic Youth) and a rousing event chorus. It will sneak up on you and assault you before delivering you battered into the end of the album and the warm waters of ‘Shoot The Poets’, a sweet anti-love song with a touching vocal from Ryan Jarman.
In all probability The Cribs will survive the poisoned association with the increasingly generic indie scene, and will still be releasing albums as brilliant as this one when the likes of The View are ‘pursuing other projects’. In the meantime, The Cribs are flicking vs at the bands they recently lambasted on stage at Glastonbury and going off on tour to be with the already converted, who are getting smugger by the minute.
As you might have gathered, it’s hard for me to undersell The Cribs. Their presence in British music is like a little Radio Caroline, bobbing about in treacherous circumstances, battling through the jaunty and the desperate on the airwaves to re-assure you that you’re not going mad. Their first album, ‘The Cribs’, was a DIY effort which burned through 40 odd minutes of adrenaline guitars, shouting and Beatles-esque melodies. It was a gem which was left in the dust as the majors pushed out The Thrills, The Coral and other soft going singalong albums in time for festival season of 2004. The follow up ‘The New Fellas’ was a hook-led classic. Something of a climb down from the rattiness of the first album, but it held chart worthy songs like ‘Mirror Kissers’, ‘Hey Scenesters’ and ‘Martell’ which amused the Radio One playlist for a good few weeks. With Alex Kapranos at the helm, some were expecting a sharper, more poppy album this time round. ‘Men’s Needs’ is anything but a compromise to the current scene. You can hear the influence of Kapranos as vocals are shoved up front, the distortion has been reduced and the hook lines and iron-clad melodies are given a starring role.
More than anything this album is threatening the boundaries of what the indie revivalists expect from a record. There is not one second of filler on this offering, listen to any big seller from The Kooks, The Feeling, The Killers and try and say the same, the words’ll stick in your throat. In fact, it’s difficult to keep a straight face discussing these bands in the same breath as The Cribs, although they’ve been lumped together by every magazine and radio station going. The record starts with the spastic rallying cry of ‘Our Bovine Public’, reducing The Cribs so-called rivals to porridge in the space of 2 minutes and 16 seconds. Any one of the next eight tracks could be a single, horrifically catchy equality anthem ‘Men’s Needs’ has been, and ‘Moving Pictures’, the half mournful, half hopeful tune that feels like you’ve always known it, is the next one out of the bag. The big surprise of the record is ‘Be Safe’, which marries a marching bassline to the spoken words of Lee Renaldo (of Sonic Youth) and a rousing event chorus. It will sneak up on you and assault you before delivering you battered into the end of the album and the warm waters of ‘Shoot The Poets’, a sweet anti-love song with a touching vocal from Ryan Jarman.
In all probability The Cribs will survive the poisoned association with the increasingly generic indie scene, and will still be releasing albums as brilliant as this one when the likes of The View are ‘pursuing other projects’. In the meantime, The Cribs are flicking vs at the bands they recently lambasted on stage at Glastonbury and going off on tour to be with the already converted, who are getting smugger by the minute.
Saturday, 26 May 2007
The Cribs - Liverpool Academy - 25.05.07
Originally published on Twistedear.com
Remember when pop music used to be fun? Roughly 5 years BC (Before Coldplay) when bands didn’t really care whether they were taken seriously and didn’t date models or actresses because they weren’t really handsome or fucked up enough? Those were good days, and The Cribs are slowly dragging them back.
You won’t catch the Jarman brothers campaigning against climate change, or being papped for Heat magazine, but you will find them pumping out riff-led anthems whilst jumping around and sweating, you know, like bands are supposed to. At the Liverpool Academy Ryan Jarman, on vocals and guitar, wears a constant look of confusion, as if he still can’t believe that this happening to him. He sweats like Joan of Arc and bounds about the stage, oblivious to the plastic jewellery and beer dregs that are being flung onto him. The Cribs have risen in the public psyche with TV appearances, festival headline slots and their new album and single going top 20. But to look at them perform you could be fooled into thinking that they’ve only just graduated from booking their own gigs at the local conservative club. The energy, the hunger, the newness – it’s all still there.
The Cribs have always attracted a healthy mix of indie kids and townies - a bit like Oasis they have that duel appeal that stems from bouncy guitar lines meant for pogo-ing and lyrics that sound apt when they’re being yelled at taxi drivers after 12 pints of Stella. The brothers Jarman are also popular with the ladies – Ryan and Gary are twins but there’s a ‘nice’ one and a ‘dirty’ one, and then there’s little brother Ross, ripe for corruption. One love-struck lady feigns an injury and is taken into the backstage corridor for a rest, only to make a run for it when security’s back is turned. When Ryan hurls himself into the pit as customary at the end of the show, his shirt’s torn up within seconds and feminine screams emerge from the melee. It’s just like the golden days of The Osmonds.
Their first album ‘The Cribs’ was recorded somewhere between a shed and an underpass by the sounds of it. It’s lo-tech to the extreme with bits of odd toy-like effects, outtakes and shouting . Somewhere within each two minute classic a chorus and a hook are dumped in, and against all the odds it works. By the time ‘The New Fellas’ came along the hooks were clearer and the songs fully formed. Singles like ‘Mirror Kissers’, ‘Hey Scenesters’ and ‘Martell’ are their true pop classics and these are still the songs that lead to the most screaming and singing along. Most of the crowd could probably play them more accurately aswell but it just wouldn’t be the same. Rather than balking at the hits, the band revel in them, swaggering and smacking away at their instruments saying with every stroke ‘We wrote this!’.
Now onto their third album, produced by Alex Kapranos, The Cribs have polished their recorded sound but retain that no-frills performing style that makes them such a great live prospect. There are bum notes, inadvertent tempo changes and moments when no-one on stage seems to know what’s happening next. The crowd chimes in with ‘der der der doo doo da da’ which signals that they want to hear the three note riff of ‘Another Number’ from ‘The New Fellas’, and the band start it up dutifully, as if they’re glad of the idea. As a member of the audience one feels like they wouldn’t quite know what to do without our cues, it’s a comforting thought, we’re all in this together.
Down in the venue foyer, minus three pints of sweat but with half a dozen new mates the Crib-ettes are still singing twenty minutes after the band have vacated. A girl is lipsticking her phone number on the bus outside. These are a simple but happy bunch, you could do worse than to join them next time round.
Remember when pop music used to be fun? Roughly 5 years BC (Before Coldplay) when bands didn’t really care whether they were taken seriously and didn’t date models or actresses because they weren’t really handsome or fucked up enough? Those were good days, and The Cribs are slowly dragging them back.
You won’t catch the Jarman brothers campaigning against climate change, or being papped for Heat magazine, but you will find them pumping out riff-led anthems whilst jumping around and sweating, you know, like bands are supposed to. At the Liverpool Academy Ryan Jarman, on vocals and guitar, wears a constant look of confusion, as if he still can’t believe that this happening to him. He sweats like Joan of Arc and bounds about the stage, oblivious to the plastic jewellery and beer dregs that are being flung onto him. The Cribs have risen in the public psyche with TV appearances, festival headline slots and their new album and single going top 20. But to look at them perform you could be fooled into thinking that they’ve only just graduated from booking their own gigs at the local conservative club. The energy, the hunger, the newness – it’s all still there.
The Cribs have always attracted a healthy mix of indie kids and townies - a bit like Oasis they have that duel appeal that stems from bouncy guitar lines meant for pogo-ing and lyrics that sound apt when they’re being yelled at taxi drivers after 12 pints of Stella. The brothers Jarman are also popular with the ladies – Ryan and Gary are twins but there’s a ‘nice’ one and a ‘dirty’ one, and then there’s little brother Ross, ripe for corruption. One love-struck lady feigns an injury and is taken into the backstage corridor for a rest, only to make a run for it when security’s back is turned. When Ryan hurls himself into the pit as customary at the end of the show, his shirt’s torn up within seconds and feminine screams emerge from the melee. It’s just like the golden days of The Osmonds.
Their first album ‘The Cribs’ was recorded somewhere between a shed and an underpass by the sounds of it. It’s lo-tech to the extreme with bits of odd toy-like effects, outtakes and shouting . Somewhere within each two minute classic a chorus and a hook are dumped in, and against all the odds it works. By the time ‘The New Fellas’ came along the hooks were clearer and the songs fully formed. Singles like ‘Mirror Kissers’, ‘Hey Scenesters’ and ‘Martell’ are their true pop classics and these are still the songs that lead to the most screaming and singing along. Most of the crowd could probably play them more accurately aswell but it just wouldn’t be the same. Rather than balking at the hits, the band revel in them, swaggering and smacking away at their instruments saying with every stroke ‘We wrote this!’.
Now onto their third album, produced by Alex Kapranos, The Cribs have polished their recorded sound but retain that no-frills performing style that makes them such a great live prospect. There are bum notes, inadvertent tempo changes and moments when no-one on stage seems to know what’s happening next. The crowd chimes in with ‘der der der doo doo da da’ which signals that they want to hear the three note riff of ‘Another Number’ from ‘The New Fellas’, and the band start it up dutifully, as if they’re glad of the idea. As a member of the audience one feels like they wouldn’t quite know what to do without our cues, it’s a comforting thought, we’re all in this together.
Down in the venue foyer, minus three pints of sweat but with half a dozen new mates the Crib-ettes are still singing twenty minutes after the band have vacated. A girl is lipsticking her phone number on the bus outside. These are a simple but happy bunch, you could do worse than to join them next time round.
Saturday, 5 May 2007
Willy Mason - Liverpool Carling Academy 05.05.07
In March 2006 Willy Mason played a sold out show to roughly 300 in the smallest room of Barfly Liverpool. This year the show sells out again, only this time the venue is the 1200 capacity Carling Academy. Such is the draw of the New Yorker whose mix of accessible political anthems and songs about cats has attracted all kinds of music lover to his warm and intimate shows.
Can a show still be intimate when there are 1200 people there? It’s strange but it can. The heat in the Academy is immense but the bar is virtually ignored once Mason hits the stage, with little brother Sam on guitar and Nina Violet on viola. The subject of the tour is Mason’s second studio album If The Ocean Gets Rough, and like other artists he has enabled fans to listen to the album for free on MySpace for the last two months, ensuring none of the killer ‘We Don’t Know This One’ moments which can distract the casual attendee. This tour has been preceded by a series of ‘Living Room’ gigs, where Willy shows up at the house of a fan and plays literally in their living room. Seeing his stagecraft, you can believe that nothing changes between the set in a lounge in suburbia and the set in the Shepherd’s Bush Empire or the Leadmill.
If The Ocean Gets Rough has had a mixed reception by the popular music press in general, who were so pleased with themselves for liking the Grandma’s Basement EP but cooled towards Where The Humans Eat. It’s not a firebrand Willy that has emerged from the hype of the first album and perhaps that’s where the industry criticism comes from – this is personal writing about his Martha’s Vineyard life and his frustrations at the hypocrisy and greed of the modern world. Mason is still only 23, a fact that can be forgotten when he performs so assuredly, and his world is still that of a young American, wondering why his generation can produce such poetry and passion and yet still find a functioning illiterate in the White House. Willy works through the album steadily, throwing in older tracks along the way. There isn’t a huge difference between this album and the last, a fact which has led to criticism from some quarters. What happened though to the idea of constancy? How much can a 20-something’s world view change over 2 years? What does change is the confidence with which Willy Mason tells stories, like the son mourning his father in ‘The World That I Wanted’.
At the Carling Academy the crowd is almost reverential. “He’s fuckin’ brilliant inne?’ remarks one young man, who wouldn’t look out of place on page four of the Daily Mirror with a black rectangle over his eyes and ‘Asbo Teen’ as the headline. To say that the crowd is ‘mixed’ is an understatement of epic proportions. As Mason picks the opening bars of ‘Where The Humans Eat’ (the aforementioned cat song), a fifty-ish white haired man and a pierced emo teenager look at each other with glee as if to say ‘I love this one!’. A few rows in front stands a old school punk next to three shaven-headed lads in tracksuits. Seems that frustration, left wing politics, domestic animals and lilting ballads about the sea make up that elusive uniting force amongst the youth of Britain.
The band’s sound is balmy, full and responsive. Underpinned by gentle resonant bass lines and brush-struck drums the instrumentation rushes back and forth like a dying tide behind Mason’s raw moans. This is the sound of a long-touring band who have had time to adjust to each other and they never falter. After finishing the night with the much loved ‘Hard Hand To Hold’, Nina Violet fiddling for all she’s worth, Mason wanders back on stage to allow one more burst from the choir. ‘Heads or tails; So Long or Oxygen’ he says, flipping a coin. Of course he plays both, because he’s the nicest man in folk.
In the wake of the local elections the doom-mongers who wrung their hands over youth political apathy would have been heartened by the sound of 400 18 to 30 years olds singing ‘Justice, equality, freedom to every race’ at the top of their lungs. ‘Oxygen’, Mason’s own non-partisan manifesto draws the most joy from the steaming crowd. He has a habit of adapting and changing his third verse to ensure that his is the lone voice for at least a part of the sing-a-long anthem, announcing truths like a scruffy statesman while the throngs look on with pride.
Willy Mason – believe the hype and get your tickets early next time, or you might have to depend on him showing up to play in your living room.
Can a show still be intimate when there are 1200 people there? It’s strange but it can. The heat in the Academy is immense but the bar is virtually ignored once Mason hits the stage, with little brother Sam on guitar and Nina Violet on viola. The subject of the tour is Mason’s second studio album If The Ocean Gets Rough, and like other artists he has enabled fans to listen to the album for free on MySpace for the last two months, ensuring none of the killer ‘We Don’t Know This One’ moments which can distract the casual attendee. This tour has been preceded by a series of ‘Living Room’ gigs, where Willy shows up at the house of a fan and plays literally in their living room. Seeing his stagecraft, you can believe that nothing changes between the set in a lounge in suburbia and the set in the Shepherd’s Bush Empire or the Leadmill.
If The Ocean Gets Rough has had a mixed reception by the popular music press in general, who were so pleased with themselves for liking the Grandma’s Basement EP but cooled towards Where The Humans Eat. It’s not a firebrand Willy that has emerged from the hype of the first album and perhaps that’s where the industry criticism comes from – this is personal writing about his Martha’s Vineyard life and his frustrations at the hypocrisy and greed of the modern world. Mason is still only 23, a fact that can be forgotten when he performs so assuredly, and his world is still that of a young American, wondering why his generation can produce such poetry and passion and yet still find a functioning illiterate in the White House. Willy works through the album steadily, throwing in older tracks along the way. There isn’t a huge difference between this album and the last, a fact which has led to criticism from some quarters. What happened though to the idea of constancy? How much can a 20-something’s world view change over 2 years? What does change is the confidence with which Willy Mason tells stories, like the son mourning his father in ‘The World That I Wanted’.
At the Carling Academy the crowd is almost reverential. “He’s fuckin’ brilliant inne?’ remarks one young man, who wouldn’t look out of place on page four of the Daily Mirror with a black rectangle over his eyes and ‘Asbo Teen’ as the headline. To say that the crowd is ‘mixed’ is an understatement of epic proportions. As Mason picks the opening bars of ‘Where The Humans Eat’ (the aforementioned cat song), a fifty-ish white haired man and a pierced emo teenager look at each other with glee as if to say ‘I love this one!’. A few rows in front stands a old school punk next to three shaven-headed lads in tracksuits. Seems that frustration, left wing politics, domestic animals and lilting ballads about the sea make up that elusive uniting force amongst the youth of Britain.
The band’s sound is balmy, full and responsive. Underpinned by gentle resonant bass lines and brush-struck drums the instrumentation rushes back and forth like a dying tide behind Mason’s raw moans. This is the sound of a long-touring band who have had time to adjust to each other and they never falter. After finishing the night with the much loved ‘Hard Hand To Hold’, Nina Violet fiddling for all she’s worth, Mason wanders back on stage to allow one more burst from the choir. ‘Heads or tails; So Long or Oxygen’ he says, flipping a coin. Of course he plays both, because he’s the nicest man in folk.
In the wake of the local elections the doom-mongers who wrung their hands over youth political apathy would have been heartened by the sound of 400 18 to 30 years olds singing ‘Justice, equality, freedom to every race’ at the top of their lungs. ‘Oxygen’, Mason’s own non-partisan manifesto draws the most joy from the steaming crowd. He has a habit of adapting and changing his third verse to ensure that his is the lone voice for at least a part of the sing-a-long anthem, announcing truths like a scruffy statesman while the throngs look on with pride.
Willy Mason – believe the hype and get your tickets early next time, or you might have to depend on him showing up to play in your living room.
Monday, 23 April 2007
The Kids Are All Nuts
According to Professor Aric Sigman, a psychologist and biologist, children under 3 shouldn’t be allowed to watch television. Aged 3-7 they might be permitted half an hour a day. Aged 7-13 they can watch 2 hours. Any more than this and your child is liable to suffer all manner of problems, from ADHD to morbid obesity. "Screen media must now be considered a major public health issue” wobbles Aric. Strangely enough, he used to appear as the resident doctor on Going Live! which was over two hours long and therefore unacceptable for children’s viewing by his standards. I remember switching over immediately when he came on with his transatlantic drawl, trying to tell me about acne treatments when I wanted to see Trev hit Simon with a pie.
Who’d want to be a kid in 2007? Junk food will kill you, toy adverts are immoral, myspace will see you killed by paedophiles, television makes you fat. The poor little sods are cosseted from all sides by over-protective hand wringers desperate to preserve an idea of childhood that hasn’t existed outside of The Famous Five. We are in danger of producing a generation of defenceless weirdos who have no idea how to survive in the modern world. If parents absorbed all the media messages about how to bring up their children their heads would explode. Your child may not sit in front of the television but they may not be allowed outside in case a stranger kidnaps them for a starring role in his child porn videos. They may not eat junk food or too much salt, or sweets, or fizzy drinks, or more than one serving of oily fish, or red meat. In fact, why don’t we just suspend our newborns in saline filled pods until they reach 18, that way no harm can possible come to them and we won’t feel like Fred and Rosemary West because Cosmo ate a cheeseburger and then watched Dr Who.
Unfortunately this kind of relentless over-parenting has infiltrated television anyway. Any child allowed to watch TV after 7pm will see wave after wave of ‘bad’ children being fixed by Supernannys or Child Psychologists until they sit properly, eat their carrot sticks and go to bed at 8pm on the dot dreaming of another sticker on their behaviour chart. The BBC even has a parenting website where you can check up on where you’re going wrong. There’s a very helpful section on how to explain wars and conflicts to your kids. During the first Gulf War I remember writing a diary entry on the day the conflict began. I wrote with great detail and excitement about the new Sylvanian Families rabbit I had been given, and added at the end ‘PS War broke out’. I really didn’t give a shit about war and international politics, I assumed that if it got really bad, ie there were Iraqi soldiers marching down High Street, that school would be cancelled and my dad would probably sort them out. Now, parents are being told to sit their children down quietly and explain that ‘something bad is going on very far away but you’re safe here’. Of course we all know that this will actually scare kids shitless because they understand inherently that parents lie about everything. They will interpret this ‘chat’ as “We’re probably going to die soon, but please don’t make a fuss’.
Star charts are another method of breeding greedy brats who can’t cope without attention. The thinking behind them is that they encourage good behaviour by rewarding it. Eaten your dinner? Star! Gone to bed? Star! Stopped beating your brother with a wooden spoon for no reason other than it’s mildly diverting? Star! So what happens when junior gets to school and expects praise and rewards for behaviour he should be displaying anyway?
Will they have a star chart in his University classroom? Or in the boardroom? No. By this time he’ll have to get used to the fact that the vast majority of people behave well all of the time, and get bugger all benefit from it. Either that or he can siphon off interest from company pension funds into an offshore account for forty years and then spend five minutes on the naughty step.
The Sunday Supplement method of child rearing is even more vomit inducing. It generally involves skipping ropes and Mummy and Me Painting Classes and is the preserve of middle class upward movers who think that the childhood they never had is what should be afforded to their children whatever the cost. This imagined idea of what children enjoy doing is even more barmy than the Supernanny tribe’s. They spend hundreds of pounds on toys the same as the rest of us, only Harry and Olivia-Jane get hand made Cornish hoops and sticks or genuine Gloucester-built rocking horses that Dad saw on Countryfile. The children’s misery at being the only people in school who don’t know how to pronounce Wii is compounded by the weekends being rigorously timetabled with ballet, pony trekking, pottery and cello practice. Then, when Olivia-Jane gets happy slapped because she can’t weave herself a wicker shield quick enough, they take their kids out for ‘home schooling’, effectively ending their normal lives and consigning them to a future filled with Bee Identification courses at the local Ranger’s station because pubs are for morons.
“Screen media” is one of the few pleasures that kids are still allowed to enjoy. Where else is a child able to see a lion eat a gazelle? Toxteth? Is mum meant to fork out £25 on a ticket to see Manchester United play in the FA cup because 90 minutes is too long for a child to sit and watch it for free at home? I would like to challenge Professor Sigman to try and prevent my two year old sisters from watching Numberjacks. He won’t last five minutes.
Who’d want to be a kid in 2007? Junk food will kill you, toy adverts are immoral, myspace will see you killed by paedophiles, television makes you fat. The poor little sods are cosseted from all sides by over-protective hand wringers desperate to preserve an idea of childhood that hasn’t existed outside of The Famous Five. We are in danger of producing a generation of defenceless weirdos who have no idea how to survive in the modern world. If parents absorbed all the media messages about how to bring up their children their heads would explode. Your child may not sit in front of the television but they may not be allowed outside in case a stranger kidnaps them for a starring role in his child porn videos. They may not eat junk food or too much salt, or sweets, or fizzy drinks, or more than one serving of oily fish, or red meat. In fact, why don’t we just suspend our newborns in saline filled pods until they reach 18, that way no harm can possible come to them and we won’t feel like Fred and Rosemary West because Cosmo ate a cheeseburger and then watched Dr Who.
Unfortunately this kind of relentless over-parenting has infiltrated television anyway. Any child allowed to watch TV after 7pm will see wave after wave of ‘bad’ children being fixed by Supernannys or Child Psychologists until they sit properly, eat their carrot sticks and go to bed at 8pm on the dot dreaming of another sticker on their behaviour chart. The BBC even has a parenting website where you can check up on where you’re going wrong. There’s a very helpful section on how to explain wars and conflicts to your kids. During the first Gulf War I remember writing a diary entry on the day the conflict began. I wrote with great detail and excitement about the new Sylvanian Families rabbit I had been given, and added at the end ‘PS War broke out’. I really didn’t give a shit about war and international politics, I assumed that if it got really bad, ie there were Iraqi soldiers marching down High Street, that school would be cancelled and my dad would probably sort them out. Now, parents are being told to sit their children down quietly and explain that ‘something bad is going on very far away but you’re safe here’. Of course we all know that this will actually scare kids shitless because they understand inherently that parents lie about everything. They will interpret this ‘chat’ as “We’re probably going to die soon, but please don’t make a fuss’.
Star charts are another method of breeding greedy brats who can’t cope without attention. The thinking behind them is that they encourage good behaviour by rewarding it. Eaten your dinner? Star! Gone to bed? Star! Stopped beating your brother with a wooden spoon for no reason other than it’s mildly diverting? Star! So what happens when junior gets to school and expects praise and rewards for behaviour he should be displaying anyway?
Will they have a star chart in his University classroom? Or in the boardroom? No. By this time he’ll have to get used to the fact that the vast majority of people behave well all of the time, and get bugger all benefit from it. Either that or he can siphon off interest from company pension funds into an offshore account for forty years and then spend five minutes on the naughty step.
The Sunday Supplement method of child rearing is even more vomit inducing. It generally involves skipping ropes and Mummy and Me Painting Classes and is the preserve of middle class upward movers who think that the childhood they never had is what should be afforded to their children whatever the cost. This imagined idea of what children enjoy doing is even more barmy than the Supernanny tribe’s. They spend hundreds of pounds on toys the same as the rest of us, only Harry and Olivia-Jane get hand made Cornish hoops and sticks or genuine Gloucester-built rocking horses that Dad saw on Countryfile. The children’s misery at being the only people in school who don’t know how to pronounce Wii is compounded by the weekends being rigorously timetabled with ballet, pony trekking, pottery and cello practice. Then, when Olivia-Jane gets happy slapped because she can’t weave herself a wicker shield quick enough, they take their kids out for ‘home schooling’, effectively ending their normal lives and consigning them to a future filled with Bee Identification courses at the local Ranger’s station because pubs are for morons.
“Screen media” is one of the few pleasures that kids are still allowed to enjoy. Where else is a child able to see a lion eat a gazelle? Toxteth? Is mum meant to fork out £25 on a ticket to see Manchester United play in the FA cup because 90 minutes is too long for a child to sit and watch it for free at home? I would like to challenge Professor Sigman to try and prevent my two year old sisters from watching Numberjacks. He won’t last five minutes.
Thursday, 5 April 2007
Cherry Ghost - Liverpool Carling Academy 2 05.04.07
What with the traditional music press being made increasingly redundant by the speed and relative freedoms of the internet, many music fans rely on a thin portfolio of advisors for their news. Zane Lowe perhaps. MySpace perchance. Toilet doors inscribed with the words ‘Holocaust Breakfast R the Future of rock’ possibly.
Herein lies a problem, as with the explosion of new music content comes a reduction in reliability, and accountability. Previously, any print journalist extolling the virtues of a band could be humiliated by the non-performance of their Next Big Thing. Bets were not hedged, colours to the mast were not pinned unless an act was so startling good and so cruelly forgotten that to not shout their praises from the rooftops would make the infant Jesus cry with horror. Now, print journalists are few, and web journalists are many. Web journalists are largely unaccountable. As Kirsty Walker I can proclaim that a band I quite like are the most amazing musical happening since Og the caveman banged on a stretched animal skin. Tomorrow, as Lulu DeBournville-Smythley I can proclaim that they are, in fact, shit and everyone has jumped the gun. Whoah, whoah, everyone back in their own beds, they are not the Messiahs, they are The Ordinary Boys.
I may have jumped the gun with Cherry Ghost. But so did Zane Lowe. So ner.
Close to six months ago I was telling everyone I knew that Cherry Ghost, AKA Simon Aldred of Salford, was the Next Big Thing. I had found him through MySpace, where the four songs on their meagre profile were enough to send me reeling into ecstasies. The multi-layered, wonderfully over-produced ballads swelled with fat xylophone notes and swirling prickling strings. Aldred’s voice was raw and brilliant, like a tramp in a doorway singing Handel’s Messiah with full accompaniment. It’s a whiskey voice, a smoke filled battle cry of a voice, which lends every lyric a kind of drunken truth. It’s gorgeous, and it’s a pleasure to listen to.
What was on offer at Liverpool Academy was so diluted, so understated that it smacked of embarrassment. The Big Sound of the produced tracks offered up on the Cherry Ghost MySpace profile was gone. It was replaced by a bloodless strumming and dreary bass lines performed by a band who looked like they were kicked out of Towers Of London for being too scruffy. Aldred himself looked grateful for the attention, and his voice was as moving as ever, but the songs which made people sit up and pay attention to Cherry Ghost in the first place were abandoned for a setlist which was prosaic and well, average. In an hour’s set, only the new single ‘Mathematics’ and a strutting mid-tempo number called ‘Here Come The Romans’ stood out. The problem was they stuck out too much, like two Monets in a gallery full of wallpaper samples.
A quick glance at the front row of the audience spoke volumes. Polo shirts and Timberland as far as the eye could see, all checking their watches to see if they could still make last orders in the Dog and Duck. It was your typical Supporters Club. The story was a little different a few rows back where interested parties had assembled to hear more of what they had been treated to from free downloads and the first single from the album, played to death on Zane Lowe. It didn’t happen, and some wandered off before time.
Cherry Ghost’s music has been compared to Mercury Rev and The Flaming Lips. I pray that Simon Aldred sees the distinction between their live performances, and his. He may feel more comfortable returning to the working men’s clubs after his performance at the Academy, but if it takes glitter, a light show and forty piece orchestra to translate his recorded material to the stage, he should do it, and Heavenly should pay for it. Buy the album, it will be wonderful, but give Simon Aldred a few more coins and a few more months before his live performances live up to the hype.
Herein lies a problem, as with the explosion of new music content comes a reduction in reliability, and accountability. Previously, any print journalist extolling the virtues of a band could be humiliated by the non-performance of their Next Big Thing. Bets were not hedged, colours to the mast were not pinned unless an act was so startling good and so cruelly forgotten that to not shout their praises from the rooftops would make the infant Jesus cry with horror. Now, print journalists are few, and web journalists are many. Web journalists are largely unaccountable. As Kirsty Walker I can proclaim that a band I quite like are the most amazing musical happening since Og the caveman banged on a stretched animal skin. Tomorrow, as Lulu DeBournville-Smythley I can proclaim that they are, in fact, shit and everyone has jumped the gun. Whoah, whoah, everyone back in their own beds, they are not the Messiahs, they are The Ordinary Boys.
I may have jumped the gun with Cherry Ghost. But so did Zane Lowe. So ner.
Close to six months ago I was telling everyone I knew that Cherry Ghost, AKA Simon Aldred of Salford, was the Next Big Thing. I had found him through MySpace, where the four songs on their meagre profile were enough to send me reeling into ecstasies. The multi-layered, wonderfully over-produced ballads swelled with fat xylophone notes and swirling prickling strings. Aldred’s voice was raw and brilliant, like a tramp in a doorway singing Handel’s Messiah with full accompaniment. It’s a whiskey voice, a smoke filled battle cry of a voice, which lends every lyric a kind of drunken truth. It’s gorgeous, and it’s a pleasure to listen to.
What was on offer at Liverpool Academy was so diluted, so understated that it smacked of embarrassment. The Big Sound of the produced tracks offered up on the Cherry Ghost MySpace profile was gone. It was replaced by a bloodless strumming and dreary bass lines performed by a band who looked like they were kicked out of Towers Of London for being too scruffy. Aldred himself looked grateful for the attention, and his voice was as moving as ever, but the songs which made people sit up and pay attention to Cherry Ghost in the first place were abandoned for a setlist which was prosaic and well, average. In an hour’s set, only the new single ‘Mathematics’ and a strutting mid-tempo number called ‘Here Come The Romans’ stood out. The problem was they stuck out too much, like two Monets in a gallery full of wallpaper samples.
A quick glance at the front row of the audience spoke volumes. Polo shirts and Timberland as far as the eye could see, all checking their watches to see if they could still make last orders in the Dog and Duck. It was your typical Supporters Club. The story was a little different a few rows back where interested parties had assembled to hear more of what they had been treated to from free downloads and the first single from the album, played to death on Zane Lowe. It didn’t happen, and some wandered off before time.
Cherry Ghost’s music has been compared to Mercury Rev and The Flaming Lips. I pray that Simon Aldred sees the distinction between their live performances, and his. He may feel more comfortable returning to the working men’s clubs after his performance at the Academy, but if it takes glitter, a light show and forty piece orchestra to translate his recorded material to the stage, he should do it, and Heavenly should pay for it. Buy the album, it will be wonderful, but give Simon Aldred a few more coins and a few more months before his live performances live up to the hype.
Tuesday, 27 March 2007
Whiny Dancer
Elt goes political all too late for Sun City....
Mention the words ‘Sun City’ to any adult over the age of 30 and watch them shrink away in revulsion as they remember the injustice, the pain and the stigma attached to owning that record, written by Silvio Dante from The Sopranos. But Sun City was also a resort, built in ‘Bophuthatswana’, a made up country which was named as an independent state in order to strip black tribespeople of their South African citizenship, and force them to work in the lucrative platinum mines, and the new Sun City casino.
Sun City was a nauseating example of white cultural and economical supremacy in South Africa. Apartheid was at its most healthy and the ban on gambling under the National Party drew thousands upon thousands of rich, white South Africans from Jo’burg and Pretoria to Sun City, where gambling was legal and blacks were banned. In a country where virtually every business and institution stank of corruption and apartheid, Sun City excelled itself. And what better way to draw the rich, racist and ignorant than to stage huge concerts, with some of the world’s headline acts. Acts like Queen, Rod Stewart and Elton John. Ah yes….Elton John.
Elton’s been back in the news lately. He’s turned 60, he’s caused controversy in Tobago as local church leaders have warned he may ‘unduly influence’ the youngsters (presumably they mean dressing like Benny Hill after a date with Trinny and Susannah), and he’s taken on a new role as a crusader for equal rights.
Oozing sanctimony like a giant lefty slug, Elton tells the New Statesman that he is very concerned over bigotry and tells is “We should all stand up for basic human rights.” Right on Elton, except you’ve changed your tune since 1983 when the basic human rights of black people to be treated better than dogs in South Africa were the subject of much consternation to many. Elton crossed the picket line of all cultural picket lines when he agreed to take the Sun City dollar and stick two fingers up to the UN boycott. Of course, when questioned about this sanction break he simply replied that he did not see Sun City as being the real South Africa. Roberta Flack turned down $2 million to perform at Sun City. You can bet she thought it was the real South Africa.
Mind you, it would be easy for Elton to forget he ever visited Sun City, the world wide web holds little information about the show or the surrounding controversy : it’s like the event never happened. In the 1908s he UK Musician’s Union refused to support visas for many artists, including noted anti-apartheid singer Johnny Clegg who had ‘broken’ the UN boycott by playing with Zulu tribespeople, but had nothing to say about Elton’s transgressions. The Union had initiated the boycott itself in 1961, years before the UN, but strangely failed to take action or make comment on any British or American artists, concentrating instead on those from other countries looking for approval to tour Britain.
John’s constant whining about gay rights in the UK is sickening when you contrast this cause with that of the black South Africans he so quickly pissed on to be able to thrust his fat spangled arse into the foulest of all money troughs. Gay people in the UK may have it tough, but they can vote, they can employ straight people, they can ride on the same buses with straight people, they can have passports. Elton’s personal political battle – for the right to have a wedding as tacky as Jordan’s and to have bigger tits – is a transparent act of selfishness. In fact, all of his political leanings show a distinct lack of empathy with anyone dissimilar to Elton John. ‘It Could Have Been Me’ is the title of his New Statesman whine. God, just imagine….
Mention the words ‘Sun City’ to any adult over the age of 30 and watch them shrink away in revulsion as they remember the injustice, the pain and the stigma attached to owning that record, written by Silvio Dante from The Sopranos. But Sun City was also a resort, built in ‘Bophuthatswana’, a made up country which was named as an independent state in order to strip black tribespeople of their South African citizenship, and force them to work in the lucrative platinum mines, and the new Sun City casino.
Sun City was a nauseating example of white cultural and economical supremacy in South Africa. Apartheid was at its most healthy and the ban on gambling under the National Party drew thousands upon thousands of rich, white South Africans from Jo’burg and Pretoria to Sun City, where gambling was legal and blacks were banned. In a country where virtually every business and institution stank of corruption and apartheid, Sun City excelled itself. And what better way to draw the rich, racist and ignorant than to stage huge concerts, with some of the world’s headline acts. Acts like Queen, Rod Stewart and Elton John. Ah yes….Elton John.
Elton’s been back in the news lately. He’s turned 60, he’s caused controversy in Tobago as local church leaders have warned he may ‘unduly influence’ the youngsters (presumably they mean dressing like Benny Hill after a date with Trinny and Susannah), and he’s taken on a new role as a crusader for equal rights.
Oozing sanctimony like a giant lefty slug, Elton tells the New Statesman that he is very concerned over bigotry and tells is “We should all stand up for basic human rights.” Right on Elton, except you’ve changed your tune since 1983 when the basic human rights of black people to be treated better than dogs in South Africa were the subject of much consternation to many. Elton crossed the picket line of all cultural picket lines when he agreed to take the Sun City dollar and stick two fingers up to the UN boycott. Of course, when questioned about this sanction break he simply replied that he did not see Sun City as being the real South Africa. Roberta Flack turned down $2 million to perform at Sun City. You can bet she thought it was the real South Africa.
Mind you, it would be easy for Elton to forget he ever visited Sun City, the world wide web holds little information about the show or the surrounding controversy : it’s like the event never happened. In the 1908s he UK Musician’s Union refused to support visas for many artists, including noted anti-apartheid singer Johnny Clegg who had ‘broken’ the UN boycott by playing with Zulu tribespeople, but had nothing to say about Elton’s transgressions. The Union had initiated the boycott itself in 1961, years before the UN, but strangely failed to take action or make comment on any British or American artists, concentrating instead on those from other countries looking for approval to tour Britain.
John’s constant whining about gay rights in the UK is sickening when you contrast this cause with that of the black South Africans he so quickly pissed on to be able to thrust his fat spangled arse into the foulest of all money troughs. Gay people in the UK may have it tough, but they can vote, they can employ straight people, they can ride on the same buses with straight people, they can have passports. Elton’s personal political battle – for the right to have a wedding as tacky as Jordan’s and to have bigger tits – is a transparent act of selfishness. In fact, all of his political leanings show a distinct lack of empathy with anyone dissimilar to Elton John. ‘It Could Have Been Me’ is the title of his New Statesman whine. God, just imagine….
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