Raves Archive 2010
Date: 21/12/10
Clannad - "Newgrange" (1983)
Hell, it's Tuesday and I nearly forgot.
I picked this track in a hurry, but then realised listening to it that it was very fitting.
I don't know if I'd noticed Clannad at all before, even missing their big hit Theme From Harry's Game. But I do remember hearing Terry Wogan playing this on Radio Two one morning in June 1983 as I was getting ready for an exam at Uni.
This track, and the Magical Ring LP from which it was taken, catches Clannad at the point between them being predominantly an Irish folk act and being a fully-fledged rock outfit (as was seen on their next album Macalla, where they even collaborated with Bono, Prince Of Arses).
Someone has put together this nice video for the track, so enjoy!
Oh, and the appropriateness of it? Well, it's in the lyrics:
"Wait for the Sun on a winter's day,
And a beam of light shines across the floor."
And the winter's day in question is the shortest day of the year, which was today.
Update: This is getting annoying. Another one pulled.
Here's the track anyway, with a very fuzzy static image. After all, it's the music which matters, isn't it?
Date: 19/12/10
Food Fights (Back)
I had no idea until now what gnocchi were.
I'm still not entirely sure, but I am now certain that you shouldn't try to deep-fry them:
(Wig-tip to BoingBoing)
Date: 18/12/10
Mike Batt - "Love Makes You Crazy" (1982)
You were expecting something seasonal? Well, as Slim Pickens once nearly said, "Piss on you, I'm with Mel Brooks!"
There is a slight Christmas connection here though, because when I was in Sainsbury's last Tuesday afternoon I was assaulted by The Wombles' Wombling Merry Christmas playing over the PA. All it did for me was to induce a spasm of hard-core misanthropy was lasted the rest of the day.
Mike Batt was the man behind - and inside, if you see what I mean - The Wombles (and the nearest I ever came to meeting a pop star was sharing a house at University with a guy - hi, Tim! - whose brother-in-law had been their bass player), but he had done other things before, and went on to do many another thing thereafter. What follows is one of them.
The Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) had asked Batt to produce a piece for a live concert to celebrate its fiftieth birthday. Instead, Batt came up with the idea for an actual concept production - sets, costumes, graphics and all - while yachting from the US to Australia.
The video production - which cost the equivalent of televising two operas - was fraught with problems, and was eventually screened in two versions; one with Batt in the lead rôle (for the international market), and one with an Australian actor playing that part (for Oz). It was the international version which I first saw in the early months of Channel Four in early 1983 as far as I can recall.
There was also an LP - rare as hen's teeth, I finally picked up a copy in a record fair in Chester about fifteen years ago. From the sleeve, here is the beginning of the tale:
"Long, long ago, far into the distant future there is a civilisation called System 605, where the diseases of love and emotion no longer exist to complicate our lives..."
The protagonist, Number 17 ("But you can call me Ralph; my friends do"), falls in love with Number 36, and ends up being committed to an establishment called Zero Zero, an 'Emotional Decontamination Centre', to be 're-orientated'. With predictable results.
The video is very much of its time, and seems somewhat unsubtle by more recent standards, but at least I can be sure that it won't be pulled by YouTube, seeing as it has been put there by Mike Batt himself via his production company!
Date: 14/12/10
John Cooper Clarke - "Beasley Street" (1980)
John Cooper Clarke is a pioneering figure, in that he combines poetic sensibilties with the original beat/punk ethos. He first came to prominence in the late 1970s with poems which often addressed the seedy side of life at the time melded - once he had been lured into the studio to re-record them - with some of Manchester's best young musicians of that time, under the production of the legendary Martin Hannett.
Beasley Street is probably Clarke's masterpiece. Appearing on his 1980 LP Snap Crackle [&] Bop, it sums up what it was like to live in a depressed and depressing city at the beginning of the Thatcher era and, as such, could equally apply to those living in such circumstances and such times as we find around us today.
There is, in fact, a better video put to the track, but some bunch of corporate asshats referring to themselves as "Sony Music Entertainment" have blocked it from some 'territories' (including, ironically, the one most interested in viewing it). If you want to see if you can view it wherever you are, click this link).
Date: 11/12/10
Genesis - "The Fountain Of Salmacis" (1971)
Jumping back in time a bit here, primarily because I've had this track as an earworm all week, and it might help to dispel it.
Nursery Cryme was Genesis' third LP, and the first to feature Steve Hackett on guitar and Phil Collins on drums and vocals. This track - the album's closer - is based on the story of the encounter of the demi-god Hermaphroditus with the naughty naiad Salmacis.
Although the already-apparent aspects of Genesis' style are present in full - the vocal gymnastics of Peter Gabriel, the dominant organ and Mellotron of Tony Banks, the bass of Michael Rutherford, alternately agile and thudding - the strong features of the track are the contributions of Hackett, showing already his ability to range between the understatedly atmospheric and the adeptly powerful.
There's only the static image of the album cover on this video, but that means you can read the back-story and the lyrics as the song progresses without missing anything:
Date: 07/12/10
Tom Robinson Band - "Power In The Darkness" (live, 1978)
There was a lot of political posturing when punk came along. But posturing was what it mostly was, from the sheer, bullshit hype of the Sex Pistols across to the oh-so-with-it Clash, who didn't take all that long to become corporate whores just like the artists they claimed to be usurping.
The Tom Robinson Band weren't quite like that, in that the radicalism of their subject matter was based quite strongly on what they believed in - the politics of the left, equally fair treatment for all races, genders and sexualities, and such unfashionable stuff.
The band produced two strong albums, and this is the title track of the second one. As a departure, this clip (just audio, but worth it anyway) comes not from the LP itself, but from a live show they did at The Bottom Line in New York City in the summer of 1978. So many of the things Robinson sings (and talks) about could apply equally today both here and in the US.
Enjoy...and ponder:
Update:Oh, bloody hell, not this one as well! I did find one from the same tour (at The Waldorf, San Francisco), but the introductory remarks weren't as good and Tom's singing voice was shot, so I won't bother putting that up here.
Date: 04/12/10
Brand X - "...And So To F..." (1979)
I've mentioned before somewhere (here, in fact, under the giant Jaffa Cake) about the part played in my musical education by some of my colleagues in Yale Sixth Form College, Wrexham in the late 1970s, and here's another example.
I think it was Dave Williams who brought along Brand X's fourth LP Product to the feast, and I remember being impressed by it. So much so that I saved my pennies and bought a copy not very long afterwards from the much-missed branch of Cob Records which stood in Wrexham High Street.
My copy was a US import which meant, I found out later, that a couple of the tracks were in different places in the running order. This was one of them, appearing as the last track on Side One on the import, but next-to-last on Side Two on the UK release.
...And So To F... was composed by Phil Collins and, as one might expect, it has a characteristic 9/8 time signature for much of its length, before moving into a standard rock 4/4 later on. The playing is strong and driving throughout, with Collins setting the pace with drums and percussion (a part which didn't work quite so well live when it was played on standard keyboards), and John Giblin (who composed the wonderfully atmospheric track April which follows this one on the UK issue) augmenting the rhythm, allowing Robin Lumley (keyboards) and John Goodsall (guitars) to go to town over the top of it.
It's remained a favourite ever since, so here it is. The visual is static - just the LP cover - but enjoy the music:
Update: Well that's another one pulled by the corpos.
Instead, here's former Brand X man John Goodsall and his band Transcendental Medication performing the piece in LA in 1988:
Date: 30/11/10
Hawkwind - "The Forge Of Vulcan" (1977)
Everyone who's ever heard of Hawkwind will have heard (or heard of) the one-everybody-knows that is Silver Machine, the band's sole Top Ten smash of 1972.
Even I, as out of touch with the rock world as I was, had heard that one. Reaction: meh.
Then in 1977 or early 1978 in our bog-standard comprehensive school, we were sitting in Music class (probably trying to draw pictures of 'cellos; no-one in our year was taking O-level Music, so that's all that was left to us), when my friend Nik (whose art can be seen here) brought in a recently-released single by Hawkwind, called Quark, Strangeness And Charm, the title track from their then-current LP. Our music teacher, Mrs Creber, put it on the large, wooden-box record player, presumably out of a combination of curiosity and trust in Nik's judgement (he was - and remains - a talented musician as well as an artist).
(Just a small diversion here to share with you one of the most important things anyone has ever said in my presence. 'Twas Mrs Creber who said it, at around the same time as the events I'm describing. And this is what she said:
"It doesn't matter how many times you listen to a piece of music - any piece of music. If you're listening properly, you'll always hear something in it that you've never noticed before."
I can't tell you how much my enjoyment of music has been enhanced by following that one, simple guide. Thanks, Mrs. C).
Anyway, back to the plot. Mrs Creber, for whatever reason, chose to play the B-side of the single. This turned out to be an instrumental called The Forge Of Vulcan, composed by the band's keyboard player Simon House.
I was almost hypnotised by it: a recurring ground bass, a repeating sequence of chords on top of it, topped by what we were assured was a real anvil.
It wasn't - as I was to discover - a particularly typical Hawkwind track, even for a time when their sound was more varied and nuanced than it had previously been, but I felt that any band which was capable of producing something like that even once had to be worth 'getting in to'. So I did; and remained so for many years.
The video below has nothing to do with the original track or the band, but it illustrates the theme of the piece quite nicely, so here it is:
Date: 27/11/10
Matt Monro - "We're Gonna Change The World" (1970)
I'm wondering whether to institute a special feature called Saturday Sounds and Tuesday Tunes for all this; but I'd probably get bored with it in short order, and it'd turn into Monday Music and Thursday Thongs in due course.
Anyway, here's the latest sonic gift to youse.
There are two reasons for me including it: firstly, I have wonderful memories of it at the time it was released in the summer of 1970 when I had just turned eight years old. I have a particular image in my head associated with it; that of sitting in a café on the first floor of a building in Dolgellau, where we (me, my parents and a neighbour who was providing the transport) were making a stop on the way to our rented holiday caravan in Tywyn. It was an old building, and the floor was worryingly uneven, sloping up towards the walls. I recall looking out over the logjammed junction either side of the bridge over the River Wnion (pre-bypass days these - all traffic had to cross that bridge and crawl its way through the narrow streets of the town).
A song which seemed to talk of mass public protest - and even possible revolution - may have appeared to be an odd choice for the recorded repertoire of one of the finest popular singers of the second half of the twentieth century (someone for whom even Sinatra had respect), but the sheer joie de vivre of the piece was - and remains - infectious. For whatever reason, however, it was not a hit, despite getting copious airplay on BBC Radio 2. Perhaps there was a conspiracy...
Oh, and the second reason for putting it here? In tribute to the young people who protested in London and many another place this week just passed, and who were forced to undergo what has become the standard thuggery from police forces who are collectively out of control and to whom the word consent has become as meaningless as the word proportionate.
Date: 23/11/10
World Of Twist - "Sons Of The Stage" (1991)
I've put all my digitised vinyl on the hard drive of this 'ere PC so that I can now play it whenever I want. So I thought it would be an idea to pick a track out now and again to put here (so long as there's a YouTube video or something to show for it).
The following is - as far as I can make out - the official video for the Manchester band World Of Twist's 1991 single Sons Of The Stage, which should have been a hit, but wasn't.
The actual single is about a minute longer than this, but you can still get a good taste of what a cracking number it is as you watch the late Tony Ogden and his colleagues express something of the state of mind of that time.
Date: 11/11/10
The Soldier
From one of the best writers on the Web comes this timely reminder:
"Now I have died, think only this of me:
That bank accounts are swollen in my wake.
'Neath freedom's flag the terrorists make free
As bombs go off for oil's or Allah's sake.
I was a dupe, but others close to me
Joined up to throw me to the desert storm:
Ere I was mangled by that IED,
Mum thought I looked so fine in uniform.
"From living memory the war to end
All war is gone; poppies are slickly sold,
For which our High Command are glad to pay.
Two minutes' thought - on that I may depend
While this year's crop of babes in arms are told:
Grey suits may likewise honour you one day."
(Philip Challinor)
Date: 30/10/10
With Goth On Our Side, or "Hello, Ian!"
Just saw a couple waiting for the bus outside.
As far as I could make out in the street lights and passing headlamps, they were dressed as Dracula and Lucy. It seemed to suit them well, only I hope Van Helsing didn't get on at the next stop.
Anyway, it gives me the excuse to give you this; a humorous video someone has made based on one of my favourite humorous songs.
Thoushaltnot are a band from the US who are best known for their EBM/darkwave-type music from the early part of the last decade. They are not without a sense of humour however, and on their 2002 album You'll Wake Up Yesterday they performed a parody of a famous song from The Wizard Of Oz, calling it If I Only Were A Goth.
Unfortunately for Thoushaltnot, someone at some point misattributed the song to a completely different performer, so a lot of people who know the song don't know who actually did it.
The video (not connected with the band in any way) was made by someone who followed the lyrics of the song to the letter (you'll find the lyrics here).
Date: 27/10/10
Baby News
(Hell, haven't done one of these in years!)
A big YAY! (or should that be a big WAHHH!?) to my chums Gemma and Steve on the birth of their son Leon this morning.
Date: 25/10/10
When Fairytales Go Wrong...
(Wig-tip to Chris Zakes on alt.fan.pratchett)
Date: 16/10/10
Review: Steve Reich - "Double Sextet"/"2x5" (Nonesuch 7559-79786-4)
You may recall that in July last year I had the privilege of being present for the world première of Steve Reich's latest work, 2x5. 'May recall', that is, in the sense that I've hardly shut up about it since.
I was wondering how long it would be before I would be able to hear an official release of a recording of the piece. I need wonder no more (and neither need you), as last month Nonesuch Records issued a recording of it (performed - as in the première - by Bang On A Can), along with a piece which was new to me - Reich's Pulitzer Prize-winning Double Sextet of 2008.
At the time of hearing 2x5 at the Manchester Velodrome, I remarked that I knew too little of Reich's work to be able to give any worthwhile description of them. I have since remedied this to some extent by buying Nonesuch's five-CD retrospective Phases, which I can heartily recommend (it's also surprisingly cheap for a five-disc set). Some of the pieces on that set I had already heard - 1988's seminal Different Trains, and part of the guitar lines from Electric Counterpoint as sampled on The Orb's classic Little Fluffy Clouds - but the rest were all new to me, such as the fascinating (and at times disturbing) phase-shifting of Come Out (the more famous It's Gonna Rain is mystifyingly absent from the collection) and the sublime Music For 18 Musicians.
I do not claim as a result of my short, if broad, education however to have any ability to dissect technically any of this. Musicology, like most criticism, always seems to me to be concerned with mystifying with terminology when it should use less opaque language to clarify for any potential listener. So, I have to make do with impressions and instincts, with which I may succeed in enlightening the reader.
The pairing of these two works - each at around or just over twenty minutes in length - is not merely fortuitous, in that they combine to give a CD of reasonable length and are also of the composer's two most recent works; it is also highly appropriate in that they have a great deal in common between them.
Each piece is divided into three sections: fast, slow and fast (although the two fast sections in each case have a few bars of minimal playing in them as a sort of breathing point); each piece can be played by a full ensemble (two flutes, two clarinets, two violins, two cellos, two vibraphones and two pianos in the case of the Sextet; four electric guitars, two electric basses, two sets of kit drums and two pianos in the case of 2x5) or by a group half the size accompanying a recording of themselves, which is what we have here - a technique which Reich first used for solo instruments in 1967's Violin Phase, and for ensembles in Different Trains.
So we come to the pieces themselves. Double Sextet, with the instrumentation as described in the previous paragraph provided by the American ensemble eighth blackbird, maintains the dense interplay and inerlocking of percussive rhythms but, being Reich, is carried as much by the piano (which, technically, is of course a percussion instrument) as the vibes. There is an insistency about this rhythm in the first fast section which drives the whole work forward with both determination and ease; there's no sense of haste here. There is, however, a sense of street hustle and bustle; this is a very urban sounding piece. The strings come in very early, but the woodwind doesn't come totally to the front until about halfway through the section.
The slow section introduces an ambience of slight menace into the work; indeed at one point a slight mis-match of phase makes the doubled violins sound like brass. Slow sections by composers of Reich's stamp can be tricky for musicians to pull off, especially with small groupings. However, it isn't necessary for a composer to have sixteen violinists, eight violas, four cellos and a couple of lost-looking double-bassists to create a dense texture. eighth blackbird (note fashionable all-lower-case name) provide that density via the compactness of the scoring and their deftness of touch.
The air of unease created by the slow section carries forward into the early stages of the final fast section, but is ultimately replaced by bright and pleasing harmonies, until the percussive bass of the piano returns to stamp (or possibly stomp) it's mark on the performance, building up to a climax of the rhythm carried to the end of the piece by the treble instruments.
The piece is an unalloyed delight, and may be the best which Reich has produced for some twenty years. Although to win the Pulitzer Prize for this rather than the majestic Music For 18 Musicians may be simply the prize-givers realising that the accolade was long overdue, Double Sextet would be a worthy winner in any year.
The recording - produced in Chicago by Judith Sherman and mixed in New York by Sherman, John Kilgore and Steve Reich himself - is of the highest quality. It is clear, clean, bright and dynamic, and brings out the best in the piece...
...and in the performance. I had never heard (or even heard of) eighth blackbird before this, but I am hugely impressed by not only the technical excellence of their playing (which, with this type of music, can't be easy even for the most experienced and talented musicians; I've often wondered how the Philip Glass Ensemble manage it, for example), but by the verve and enthusiasm which is obvious in spades throughout, another difficult trick with such tightly-defined works.
2x5 (and I've been calling it "two by five" all along whereas it seems, from the mouth of the composer itself, it should be called "two times five") marks Steve Reich's first foray into rock instrumentation (although one could make the claim for Electric Counterpoint on that score, but that was for a solo instrument rather than a group). As with the première, it is played on this recording by Bang On A Can.
As with the Double Sextet, the piece begins with the same dense, insistent rhythm. This is again carried by the piano(s), but here augmented by the doubled electric bass, an instrument which Reich finds attractive for his style in the sense that - as opposed to its acoustic counterpart - you can play very crisp, well-defined notes on it. When I reported to you after the Velodrome gig that it seemed to me that the piano and bass were carrying the beat rather than the drums, I feared I may have been talking out of my ignorance (or, more likely, out of my arse), but I'm glad to read from the sleeve notes of this recording that that is what the composer intended all along. During this first section there is a pleasing density of interplay between each of the doubled basses and between them and the pianos.
What Reich also tells us is how the guitars ended up playing the notes that they did. Some strange interaction between his software programs made the guitar sounds come out an octave higher than he had intended. It seems to have been one of those happy accidents out of which great moments of art can come, as the high treble of the guitars in the finished version chime beautifully, counterpoised as they are with the driving bass rhythms. Indeed, at times they sound something like harpsichords. The kit drums, however, sound rather less coherent, although their rôle here is more to play around the main rhythm rather than within it.
The second, slow, section causes a problem. It seems to suffer from a lack of cohesion and drive, from a jerkiness which is uncharacteristic of the composer, and which may be down to a lack of focus in the performance itself which overall, I have to say, doesn't seem to be on a par with that of the live performance I witnessed. In the light of this, it is probably just as well that this section is a short one (scarcely over three minutes).
The final section seems at first to be little more than a recapitulation of the first, but it garners interest by the fact that one set of guitars now augments the rhythm line still being driven by the pianos and basses, whereas the other set plays a pleasing melody line over and around it. One is inevitably reminded of Pat Metheny's work on Electric Counterpoint, but I also heard echoes of some of Frank Zappa's compositional style in there as well. Again, as in the Sextet, the piece ends with the rhythm being played at the treble end.
Although the piece is still a pleasing one, it suffers not only from comparison with its companion piece on this disc, but also from a rather lifeless production (done in New York with the same producer and mixers, but a different sound engineer), and possibly from a less proficient and rather too loose performance. Reich's works, as with those of his confrère Glass, require a very tight ensemble, especially when that group is doubling a recording of themselves. This does not always happen in this recording, which is a shame.
So, overall then. Worth getting? Yes, particularly for the Double Sextet, this recording of which may already have earned 'definitive' status. As for 2x5, one can only hope that at some point a performance and production will come out which will realise the full potential of the piece and buff out its more obvious deficiencies, especially in the slow section.
Date: 10/10/10
2x5xNext Weekend!
I found out this morning that 2x5, the Steve Reich piece I had the privilege of hearing the public première of last year, has now been released on CD by Nonesuch, along with Reich's Double Sextet.
Needless to say, I put my order in pronto, and hope to have it by the end of this week. Yay!
Date: 08/10/10
Hello Boys, It's The Battered Sav!
Sport is ludicrous, when you stop to think about it. Some of it can be traced back to exercises and practices which may once have been necessary for human survival, but most of what we have nowadays was invented a week last Tuesday (historically speaking) and serves little purpose other than to keep the gullible amused, and to keep the aggressive from killing their neighbours on a regular basis.
So, perhaps sending it up is the best policy. This was done to great effect at the Sydney Olympics by the comedy duo Roy and HG (alias Greig Pickhaver and John Doyle). They were given a show on Australia's Seven Network called The Dream which would come on after the day's events at the ring-fest, in which they sent up the sports with their own brand of comedy.
After watching and listening to this, you'll never be able to watch men's gymnastics again; which is probably something to be very pleased about:
Date: 24/09/10
Tell Rupert Murdoch to Fox Off!
Marina Hyde is one of the few reasons to read The Guardian these days.
I particularly commend to you her piece today on the possibility that the rogue Murdochs may be allowed to get total control of the UK's dominant satellite TV company.
I like her style, and particularly this bit:
"Within days of the coalition government being formed, it emerged that one of the prime minister's first meetings was with the News Corp overlord himself. According to one account, Murdoch was "ushered up the back stairs of Downing Street" - which sounds like both a statement of fact and a euphemism for what Rupert has been doing to successive governments for decades."
Go Marina!
Date: 20/09/10
Turn The Page, Fathead!
Those of you who have been with me for some time may remember my teenage tale of treading the boards in the school play.
Mentioned therein is the work of my school friend Nik (as he then was) Randles, and if you follow the link near the bottom of that piece you will see a small part of what he did for the production.
After a long time without hearing from each other, contact has now been re-established, and I find that Nick (as he now is) has his own on-line gallery, which you can see here.
Date: 18/09/10
"How Are We Going To Distract Them From Buggering Boys?"
Watching the lather-fest of crawl-arsing from the corporate media towards Ratzinger - along with the suspiciously orchestrated-looking counter-attack from alleged journalists (some of whom are self-alleged 'atheists', but preface their shows of cowardice in the face of the superstition lobby with that infamous formulation, "I'm an atheist, but...", at which point they go on to accuse us atheists of being 'strident', 'aggressive' and 'fundamentalist') - I felt in need of a corrective, a blast of hard light shining on the hypocrisy, the cant, the sheer humbuggery (or something-buggery) of the Vatican and its apologists.
Fortunately, I have been provided with such a tonic from the size of the Protest The Pope march in London this afternoon (over 12 000 by most estimates), and here is that well-known 'strident', 'aggressive' 'fundamentalist', the great Richard Dawkins, to lay out a few home truths to Ratzi and his ring-kissers:
Update: Because of the size of the rally and the consequent lateness of the speeches starting, Dawkins had to edit his remarks on the fly. You can find the full text here.
Update Update: Did youse know that POPE BENEDICT is an anagram of EPIC BENT PEDO?
Date: 09/09/10
Owen Edwards
My tribute-cum-obituary of the first Chief Executive of Sianel Pedwar Cymru has just gone up at Transdiffusion.
Date: 08/09/10
Fortune Cookie Win!
Date: 03/09/10
Baby/Snakes
Two tales of fiendish revenge for you.
Firstly from 0tt3r on the B3ta board:
"I lived in a little terraced house, in an area popular with young families. When the baby Ott3r arrived, amidst a storm of primary coloured plastic and weird things that I still haven't worked out the use of, we bought a baby monitor. It turns out that there are only so many frequencies: after rushing upstairs to calm the cries of mysteriously sleeping baby on a couple of occasions, we figured out that someone was using OUR frequency. Well, something had to be done. So, in the wee small hours of the morning...I picked up the 'transmit' bit of the baby monitor, and started speaking into it... And so it was that a house a few doors up the street suddenly lit up as (I imagine) the concerned parents rushed to baby's room to find the source of a creepy baby voice that was repeating "Satan is my Maaaaaster, Satan is my Maaaaaster"."
I think this almost tops my favourite payback story, which I first heard from the writer and broadcaster Dr Michael O'Donnell.
It concerned a London teaching hospital, where there was a particular medical registrar who was a nasty little shit, particularly towards the student doctors.
A group of these pondered their revenge, and their course of action was determined for them when they discovered that the Registrar had a phobia of snakes.
That weekend, they drove out onto the North Downs and collected three grass snakes (in case you didn't know, grass snakes are not poisonous, but they look a bit like adders, which are). They then took the snakes back to the hospital and let them loose in the Registrar's room while he was elsewhere.
OK, standard medical-student-type prank, you may think. But they added a stroke of malign genius: they left a note on his desk, which read:
"Dear Dr. _____,
We have left four snakes in your room."
Date: 25/08/10
Bring On The (Not So) Empty Horses, or 'Robin Hood - Men In Tucks'
Television and the movies have had a lot of mileage out of the Robin Hood story down the years, from Errol Flynn and Richard Greene through to Mel Brooks and Kevin Costner.
One of the most successful and well-regarded retellings of the legend was Robin Of Sherwood, made by Goldcrest Films and HTV West in the mid-1980s. I remember watching it and thinking that, mysticism apart, this was probably the most gritty (and therefore nearer to the real world) adaptation yet. The characters were more rounded than the 'man in green, unconvincing maiden and cipher crew members' tendency of previous efforts. And it had great music by Clannad.
I can't say that I watched it all; I drifted away by the time Michael Praed (Robin) went off to Broadway and was replaced with Jason Connery. But it was one of the better TV series of the time.
By the magic of teh interwebs, it is now possible to watch those most interesting parts of any dramatic production: the out-takes. Below are two collections of bloopers, cock-ups and pranks from the show's whole run. They're probably the funniest I've ever come across and, if nothing else, they suggest that - however hard location filming can be - the cast and crew were having a great time.
Chuckle as Judi Trott (as Marian) completely fails to get to grips with the fundamentals of archery!
Groan as a stick fight between Clive Mantle (as Little John) and Praed ends up with someone's rod seriously bent out of shape!
Giggle as Nickolas Grace (as Robert de Rainault, Sheriff of Nottingham) camps it up like there's no tomorrow!
And cheer as Praed, Grace and the late, lamented Robert Addie (as de Rainault's sidekick, Guy of Gisburne) fail totally to take seriously the trails they have to make to camera to promote the US network which was to screen the show over there (where they called it Robin Hood because Americans have no sense of geography beyond their own shores)!
And as for the horses...well, just watch...and listen.
Update:The bloody lawyers have been at it again, and the first one has been pulled from YouTube (though not, interestingly, the second one - yet). If I find it again, I''ll update this.
Date: 22/08/10
Cake Time!
I think I'm in love...
(Baked by Mictoboy, and posted to the B3ta board (Warning! Some content there NSFW!) just to make us all feel jealous).
**********
Fay Ray - "Different Morning"
Back in 1978/79, when I was in sixth form, we had a record player (as they were then called, my children) in the corner of the Common Room. This was little more than a square wooden box with a Garrard turntable and a crappy speaker bunged in it (we often connected it up to a guitar amp to give it a bit more ooomph).
There was a clique of us who monopolised that corner and who used the machine to play what suited us. This varied from heavy metal (usually courtesy of Andy Beresford - AC/DC for preference) and Led Zeppelin and The Faces (Pol Wong's special interest), via space rock (lots of Hawkwind, with Alan Howells to the fore in this area) to prog (Gabriel-era Genesis). There were other, less frequent, excursions into new wave and what would come much later to be called 'indie'.
It was the dawn of the independent labels, proliferating in the space afforded by the explosion of musical activity following punk. DinDisc (OMD), Mute (Silicon Teens), Bludgeon Riffola (Def Leppard); they all made their appearances in our corner.
It was there I first heard a record on another label I'd never heard of. The label was Duff, the band was called Hot Water, and the single (strictly speaking, the B-side) was called Different Morning. It was one of the better tracks I'd heard from that whole era, and although I didn't get a copy myself due to a shortage of funds and a lack of opportunity, I never completely forgot it. I find now that someone is trying to sell a copy on eBay for £40, when the book price for it is probably around a quarter of that. Good luck, fella.
Hot Water didn't last all that long, and most of the band morphed into a group called Fay Ray. They released one well-regarded album before their record company dumped them, but included on that LP was a cover of Different Morning. What follows is a clip of Fay Ray's version, presumably recorded for promotional release. It seems to have the energy I remember from the Hot Water version, though.
Some thoughts on this clip: firstly the antics of the lead guitarist. John Lovering (who wrote this track) was at that time a lecturer in economics at University College Bangor. He's now Professor of Urban Development and Governance at Cardiff University. Someone commenting on the YouTube clip below said that he was trying to be like Robert Fripp, but I see a strong resemblance to the engineer and author Tim Hunkin. Secondly, there is a very visible saxophonist on this clip. Goodness knows why, because - blowing up a storm as he obviously is at times - he is completely inaudible (although sax featured strongly on the original Hot Water recording, as I recall it).
Anyway, enjoy:
Update: Through devious means, I've managed to get to hear Fay Ray's 1982 album Contact You. It's a good one, which makes it all the sadder that it has never been officially reissued on CD. Perhaps also the cokehead wankers of Warners could be persuaded to loosen their grip on the band's second LP, which has lain unreleased in their vaults these last twenty-seven years.
Date: 13/08/10
"A rat race is for rats. We're not rats. We're human beings"
In his Inaugural Address as Rector of Glasgow University in 1972, a speech which was reported on the front page of the New York Times (which compared it to Lincoln at Gettysburg), the trade union leader Jimmy Reid got it so right. The correctness of his analysis is even more apparent today, and the need for his vision greater than it has ever been in my lifetime:
"Alienation is the precise and correctly applied word for describing the major social problem in Britain today. People feel alienated by society. In some intellectual circles it is treated almost as a new phenomenon. It has, however, been with us for years. What I believe is true is that today it is more widespread, more pervasive than ever before. Let me right at the outset define what I mean by alienation. It is the cry of men who feel themselves the victims of blind economic forces beyond their control. It's the frustration of ordinary people excluded from the processes of decision-making. The feeling of despair and hopelessness that pervades people who feel with justification that they have no real say in shaping or determining their own destinies.
"Many may not have rationalised it. May not even understand, may not be able to articulate it. But they feel it. It therefore conditions and colours their social attitudes. Alienation expresses itself in different ways in different people. It is to be found in what our courts often describe as the criminal antisocial behaviour of a section of the community. It is expressed by those young people who want to opt out of society, by drop-outs, the so-called maladjusted, those who seek to escape permanently from the reality of society through intoxicants and narcotics. Of course, it would be wrong to say it was the sole reason for these things. But it is a much greater factor in all of them than is generally recognised.
"Society and its prevailing sense of values leads to another form of alienation. It alienates some from humanity. It partially de-humanises some people, makes them insensitive, ruthless in their handling of fellow human beings, self-centred and grasping. The irony is, they are often considered normal and well-adjusted. It is my sincere contention that anyone who can be totally adjusted to our society is in greater need of psychiatric analysis and treatment than anyone else. They remind me of the character in the novel, Catch 22, the father of Major Major. He was a farmer in the American Mid-West. He hated suggestions for things like medi-care, social services, unemployment benefits or civil rights. He was, however, an enthusiast for the agricultural policies that paid farmers for not bringing their fields under cultivation. From the money he got for not growing alfalfa he bought more land in order not to grow alfalfa. He became rich. Pilgrims came from all over the state to sit at his feet and learn how to be a successful non-grower of alfalfa. His philosophy was simple. The poor didn't work hard enough and so they were poor. He believed that the good Lord gave him two strong hands to grab as much as he could for himself. He is a comic figure. But think - have you not met his like here in Britain? Here in Scotland? I have."
"It is easy and tempting to hate such people. However, it is wrong. They are as much products of society, and of a consequence of that society, human alienation, as the poor drop-out. They are losers. They have lost the essential elements of our common humanity. Man is a social being. Real fulfilment for any person lies in service to his fellow men and women. The big challenge to our civilisation is not Oz, a magazine I haven't seen, let alone read. Nor is it permissiveness, although I agree our society is too permissive. Any society which, for example, permits over one million people to be unemployed is far too permissive for my liking. Nor is it moral laxity in the narrow sense that this word is generally employed - although in a sense here we come nearer to the problem. It does involve morality, ethics, and our concept of human values. The challenge we face is that of rooting out anything and everything that distorts and devalues human relations.
"Let me give two examples from contemporary experience to illustrate the point.
"Recently on television I saw an advert. The scene is a banquet. A gentleman is on his feet proposing a toast. His speech is full of phrases like "this full-bodied specimen". Sitting beside him is a young, buxom woman. The image she projects is not pompous but foolish. She is visibly preening herself, believing that she is the object of the bloke's eulogy. Then he concludes - "and now I give...", then a brand name of what used to be described as Empire sherry. Then the laughter. Derisive and cruel laughter. The real point, of course, is this. In this charade, the viewers were obviously expected to identify not with the victim but with her tormentors.
"The other illustration is the widespread, implicit acceptance of the concept and term "the rat race". The picture it conjures up is one where we are scurrying around scrambling for position, trampling on others, back-stabbing, all in pursuit of personal success. Even genuinely intended, friendly advice can sometimes take the form of someone saying to you, "Listen, you look after number one." Or as they say in London, "Bang the bell, Jack, I'm on the bus."
"To the students I address this appeal. Reject these attitudes. Reject the values and false morality that underlie these attitudes. A rat race is for rats. We're not rats. We're human beings. Reject the insidious pressures in society that would blunt your critical faculties to all that is happening around you, that would caution silence in the face of injustice lest you jeopardise your chances of promotion and self-advancement. This is how it starts, and before you know where you are, you're a fully paid-up member of the rat-pack. The price is too high. It entails the loss of your dignity and human spirit. Or as Christ put it, "What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?"
"Profit is the sole criterion used by the establishment to evaluate economic activity. From the rat race to lame ducks. The vocabulary in vogue is a give-away. It's more reminiscent of a human menagerie than human society. The power structures that have inevitably emerged from this approach threaten and undermine our hard-won democratic rights. The whole process is towards the centralisation and concentration of power in fewer and fewer hands. The facts are there for all who want to see. Giant monopoly companies and consortia dominate almost every branch of our economy. The men who wield effective control within these giants exercise a power over their fellow men which is frightening and is a negation of democracy.
"Government by the people for the people becomes meaningless unless it includes major economic decision-making by the people for the people. This is not simply an economic matter. In essence it is an ethical and moral question, for whoever takes the important economic decisions in society ipso facto determines the social priorities of that society.
"From the Olympian heights of an executive suite, in an atmosphere where your success is judged by the extent to which you can maximise profits, the overwhelming tendency must be to see people as units of production, as indices in your accountants' books. To appreciate fully the inhumanity of this situation, you have to see the hurt and despair in the eyes of a man suddenly told he is redundant, without provision made for suitable alternative employment, with the prospect in the West of Scotland, if he is in his late forties or fifties, of spending the rest of his life in the Labour Exchange. Someone, somewhere has decided he is unwanted, unneeded, and is to be thrown on the industrial scrap heap. From the very depth of my being, I challenge the right of any man or any group of men, in business or in government, to tell a fellow human being that he or she is expendable.
"The concentration of power in the economic field is matched by the centralisation of decision-making in the political institutions of society. The power of Parliament has undoubtedly been eroded over past decades, with more and more authority being invested in the Executive. The power of local authorities has been and is being systematically undermined. The only justification I can see for local government is as a counter- balance to the centralised character of national government.
"Local government is to be restructured. What an opportunity, one would think, for de-centralising as much power as possible back to the local communities. Instead, the proposals are for centralising local government. It's once again a blue-print for bureaucracy, not democracy. If these proposals are implemented, in a few years when asked "Where do you come from?" I can reply: "The Western Region." It even sounds like a hospital board.
"It stretches from Oban to Girvan and eastwards to include most of the Glasgow conurbation. As in other matters, I must ask the politicians who favour these proposals - where and how in your calculations did you quantify the value of a community? Of community life? Of a sense of belonging? Of the feeling of identification? These are rhetorical questions. I know the answer. Such human considerations do not feature in their thought processes.
"Everything that is proposed from the establishment seems almost calculated to minimise the role of the people, to miniaturise man. I can understand how attractive this prospect must be to those at the top. Those of us who refuse to be pawns in their power game can be picked up by their bureaucratic tweezers and dropped in a filing cabinet under 'M' for malcontent or maladjusted. When you think of some of the high flats around us, it can hardly be an accident that they are as near as one could get to an architectural representation of a filing cabinet.
"If modern technology requires greater and larger productive units, let's make our wealth-producing resources and potential subject to public control and to social accountability. Let's gear our society to social need, not personal greed. Given such creative re-orientation of society, there is no doubt in my mind that in a few years we could eradicate in our country the scourge of poverty, the underprivileged, slums, and insecurity.
"Even this is not enough. To measure social progress purely by material advance is not enough. Our aim must be the enrichment of the whole quality of life. It requires a social and cultural, or if you wish, a spiritual transformation of our country. A necessary part of this must be the restructuring of the institutions of government and, where necessary, the evolution of additional structures so as to involve the people in the decision-making processes of our society. The so-called experts will tell you that this would be cumbersome or marginally inefficient. I am prepared to sacrifice a margin of efficiency for the value of the people's participation. Anyway, in the longer term, I reject this argument.
"To unleash the latent potential of our people requires that we give them responsibility. The untapped resources of the North Sea are as nothing compared to the untapped resources of our people. I am convinced that the great mass of our people go through life without even a glimmer of what they could have contributed to their fellow human beings. This is a personal tragedy. It's a social crime. The flowering of each individual's personality and talents is the pre-condition for everyone's development.
"In this context education has a vital role to play. If automation and technology is accompanied as it must be with a full employment, then the leisure time available to man will be enormously increased. If that is so, then our whole concept of education must change. The whole object must be to equip and educate people for life, not solely for work or a profession. The creative use of leisure, in communion with and in service to our fellow human beings, can and must become an important element in self-fulfilment.
"Universities must be in the forefront of development, must meet social needs and not lag behind them. It is my earnest desire that this great University of Glasgow should be in the vanguard, initiating changes and setting the example for others to follow. Part of our educational process must be the involvement of all sections of the university on the governing bodies. The case for student representation is unanswerable. It is inevitable.
"My conclusion is to re-affirm what I hope and certainly intend to be the spirit permeating this address. It's an affirmation of faith in humanity. All that is good in man' s heritage involves recognition of our common humanity, an unashamed acknowledgement that man is good by nature. Burns expressed it in a poem that technically was not his best, yet captured the spirit. In "Why should we idly waste our prime...":
"The golden age, we'll then revive, each man shall be a brother,
In harmony we all shall live and till the earth together,
In virtue trained, enlightened youth shall move each fellow creature,
And time shall surely prove the truth that man is good by nature."
"It's my belief that all the factors to make a practical reality of such a world are maturing now. I would like to think that our generation took mankind some way along the road towards this goal. It's a goal worth fighting for."
Jimmy Reid
Trade unionist and journalist
b. 9 July 1932, d. 10 August 2010
Date: 10/08/10
Mason Williams - "Classical Gas" (x2)
I'll just throw this in here quickly before I go to bed.
It's 1968. I am about six years old. If I have been a good boy, my mother lets me take her brand-new Marconiphone transistor radio up to bed with me for an hour or so (so it would be around eight o'clock).
I listen mostly to Radio Luxembourg. A particularly catchy record is getting what would later be termed 'heavy rotation'. There are no lyrics; just a tune on an acoustic guitar with a lively orchestral accompaniment.
It is some years later before I find out that the piece is called Classical Gas, and was composed and performed by one Mason Williams, an American musician and comedy writer.
Over forty years on from when I first heard it (complete with the legendary 'Luxembourg Fade'), I still think it's a wonderful piece.
In the first clip below, you can see Williams and orchestra performing it on an edition of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (for which he was chief writer), with the familiar Mike Post arrangement.
Then, as a bonus, the second clip features a purely acoustic version which Williams recorded for his 1970 album Hand Made. It provides for an interesting contrast with the recording which many of us have known and loved for much of our lives.
Date: 08/08/10
Man Balloon
This is strangely, movingly beautiful (click on the image below):
(Four warnings: 1. You'll need Adobe Flash enabled, 2. It loops forever if you let it, 3. The sound level is a bit loud, 4. You could end up as I have done, struggling to keep watching it through your tears - it really is that beautiful)
Date: 07/08/10
Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich - "Last Night In Soho"
Back at the start of last year, I did a brief obit of Dave Dee, mentioning one of their more intriguing hits, "Last Night In Soho", written (as were all their chart records) by Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley.
Contrary to what I said then, it's quite clear now that the song was not about a rent-boy, but rather about a young hit-man for the gangsters who proliferated around the seedy side of Swinging London. The lyrics are here.
It's a great story song - and was Dave Dee's stated favourite as a result - and it's a song I've not been able to get very far away from in the last eighteen months. So I thought I might as well link to a YouTube video of them performing (i.e. miming) on the German TV show Beat Club at the time of its release.
It's in that terrible fake stereo they went in for around that time and the sound drops out briefly at the start of the last verse, but the excellence still shines through.
Date: 02/08/10
Making Dramas Out Of Crises?
One of my favourite writers on the web is Philip Challinor, who blogs as The Curmudgeon. He writes with a combination of ascerbity, asperity, absurdity, irony and outrage about literature, politics and society (amongst other - more mundane - concerns).
It is not simply because he is probably the only blogger (yech!!) who links back to here that I warmly recommmend him, and particularly two of his most recent pieces:
Personal Apocalypses
Faut-il brûler la terre?
Date: 19/07/10
I Do Declare (Again)!
Atheist Ireland have produced a simpler, clearer version of The Copenhagen Declaration (featured here on 29/06/10):
Declaration on Religion in Public Life
"We support this amended version of the Copenhagen Declaration on Religion in Public Life. We invite other people and groups to also support it.
Personal Freedoms
Freedom of conscience, religion and belief are unlimited. Freedom to practice religion should be limited only by the need to respect the rights of others.
All people should be free to participate equally in public life, and should be treated equally before the law and in the democratic process.
Freedom of expression should be limited only as prescribed in international law. All blasphemy laws should be repealed.
Secular Democracy
Society should be based on democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Public policy should be formed by applying reason to evidence.
Government should be secular. The state should be strictly neutral in matters of religion, favoring none and discriminating against none.
Religions should have no special financial consideration in public life, such as tax-free status for religious activities, or grants to promote religion or run faith schools.
Secular Education
State education should be secular. Children should be taught about the diversity of religious beliefs in an objective manner, with no faith formation in school hours.
Children should be educated in critical thinking and the distinction between faith and reason as a guide to knowledge. Science should be taught free from religious interference.
One Law For All
There should be one law for all, democratically decided and evenly enforced, with no jurisdiction for religious courts to settle civil matters or family disputes.
The law should not criminalize private conduct that respects the rights of others because the doctrine of any religion deems such conduct to be immoral.
Employers or social service providers with religious beliefs should not be allowed to discriminate on any grounds not essential to the job in question."
Needless to say, Thy Judge commandeth thee to read, absorb and Spread The Word.
(As before, thanks to P Z Myers for the link)
Date: 17/07/10
Fingered!
Courtesy of Captain Howdy on the B3ta board:
Date: 13/07/10
10cc - The Making Of "I'm Not In Love"
Come with me, my dears, back thirty-five years...
...and that, to me, is a scary concept in itself. I'm taking you back to a point in my life where contemplating thirty-five years was akin to countenancing eternity. Thirty-five years back, to me then, was Ancient History. I mean, from that point it would have meant going back all the way to 1940, to a time when not only did I not exist, but to when my parents probably hadn't even met yet. So much had happened, so much had changed; a war had been fought and - ostensibly - won (although the ideas of the Nazis have never really died, and the world was still going to spend decades divided against itself).
So the mere notion of thirty-five years would have seemed unreal to me at the time. And yet, here I am guiding you back to my own 1940, as 'twere.
Anyway, to cut - as they say - to the chase. It is the summer of 1975; one of the last real summers we had here. I was thirteen years old. The weather was hot, humid and sticky. And so was I. Late nights featured an open bedroom window, me wearing in bed as little as possible consistent with the need to cover potential embarrassment, as even being under a bedsheet raised the temperature to uncomfortable levels.
What late nights also featured was listening to Downtown on Radio City out of Liverpool some thirty miles distant. A late-night programme of easy-ish listening, presented at the weekend by a mad Irish broadcasting legend called Arthur Murphy, and during the week by the smooth, calm voice of Bill Bingham.
The music featured on the shows was, to a large degree, the standard commercial radio playlist of the time, but with the odd excursion (and I mean odd - Isao Tomita's electronic mangling of Debussy's Arabesque No. 1 got what they call 'heavy rotation').
This meant that chart material featured very strongly, although it tended towards the AOR end of the scale (this was way before punk, remember). Which meant that late nights for me meant hearing one of the most sublime songs - and one of the most remarkable feats of production - of the whole pop era; 10cc's I'm Not In Love.
I've remarked elsewhere (well, here to be precise) what a gem of a track that is: a beautiful tune, lyrics at once both wistful and ironic, and a multi-layered production which in its conception and execution seemed many years ahead of what anyone else was doing.
The techniques used in creating the track seem primitive in comparison to the ease of electronic and digital recording and sequencing with which we have become so familiar. But remember, just like Kraftwerk's Autobahn (and more on that here), it was all done with tape, razor blades and a lot of Heath Robinson/Rube Goldberg inventiveness.
But just how did Stewart, Gouldman, Godley and Creme bring about this miracle? Listen to this, and be aware of genius at work:
(Tip of the wig to BoingBoing)
Date: 29/06/10
Well, I Do Declare!
Yer Judge approves this message:
The Copenhagen Declaration on Religion in Public Life
"We, at the World Atheist Conference: "Gods and Politics", held in Copenhagen from 18 to 20 June 2010, hereby declare as follows:
"We recognize the unlimited right to freedom of conscience, religion and belief, and that freedom to practice one's religion should be limited only by the need to respect the rights of others.
"We submit that public policy should be informed by evidence and reason, not by dogma.
"We assert the need for a society based on democracy, human rights and the rule of law. History has shown that the most successful societies are the most secular.
"We assert that the only equitable system of government in a democratic society is based on secularism: state neutrality in matters of religion or belief, favoring none and discriminating against none.
"We assert that private conduct which respects the rights of others should not be the subject of legal sanction or government concern.
"We affirm the right of believers and non-believers alike to participate in public life and their right to equality of treatment in the democratic process.
"We affirm the right to freedom of expression for all, subject to limitations only as prescribed in international law - laws which all governments should respect and enforce. We reject all blasphemy laws and restrictions on the right to criticize religion or nonreligious life stances.
"We assert the principle of one law for all, with no special treatment for minority communities, and no jurisdiction for religious courts for the settlement of civil matters or family disputes.
"We reject all discrimination in employment (other than for religious leaders) and the provision of social services on the grounds of race, religion or belief, gender, class, caste or sexual orientation.
"We reject any special consideration for religion in politics and public life, and oppose charitable, tax-free status and state grants for the promotion of any religion as inimical to the interests of non-believers and those of other faiths. We oppose state funding for faith schools.
"We support the right to secular education, and assert the need for education in critical thinking and the distinction between faith and reason as a guide to knowledge, and in the diversity of religious beliefs. We support the spirit of free inquiry and the teaching of science free from religious interference, and are opposed to indoctrination, religious or otherwise.
"Adopted by the conference, Copenhagen, 20 June 2010."
(Thanks to P Z Myers for the link)
Date: 27/06/10
What Goes Around, Comes Around...
1966:
2010:
Tee hee....
Date: 14/06/10
Written In Water
In the Japanese city of Fukuoka, there is a shopping mall called Canal City.
Like many such places, it has a fountain.
The word 'fountain' doesn't seem to do Canal City's 'water feature' justice, though:
(Thanks to David W on the PlusNet forums for the link).
Date: 04/06/10
The Moiré Effect and A Lego Printer
Courtesy of a link from my old chum Alex:
And, if you wanted to print it out, you could use this Lego Printer:
(Wig tip to the B3ta Newsletter)
Date: 02/06/10
8 Ways To Prepare Your Pets For War
A public service announcement courtesy of The Oatmeal.
Date: 30/05/10
Tim Minchin - "Pope Song"
The Australian writer and performer Tim Minchin is one of his country's most prominent atheists. So it's no surprise that he has turned his ire upon Pope Ratzi and his organisation's covering up of the perverted behaviour of many of its employees. He has written the song the video for which is linked below.
Unusually for me, I've decided not to post this on the same page. This is not an attempt at coyness, simply a recognition that the song and video have a very high NSFW quotient, and that I wouldn't want anyone to get sacked, arrested, excommunicated or otherwise fucked over for watching it.
So, here's the link to the video and the lyrics, AND IT'S NOT SUITABLE FOR WORK OR ANYWHERE ELSE WHERE THE NARROW-MINDED CAN HEAR/SEE YOU! THOU HAST BEEN WARNÈD!!
Date: 23/05/10
Got It In One!
Great letter in today's Independent (at least in the online version):
"It is not at all surprising that there is a workplace stress epidemic (16 May). In my experience, modern senior managers and their acolytes are, in the main, sad, dislikeable misfits who have little else in their lives but work and cannot understand why everyone else does not share their goals and beliefs.
"They do not understand, and cannot accept, that the only reason most of us turn up every day is to pay our bills. They exist in a world of targets, tick boxes and buzz words, divorced from the rest of humanity. As if this was not bad enough, most white-collar staff these days work in the soulless, battery farm atmosphere of large open-plan offices where banter and laughter is frowned upon. These are the ingredients for a "perfect storm". And yes, in most workplaces, stress and depression is frowned upon and looked upon as individual weakness."
Jim Allen
Sheffield
Nailed it, I'd say.
Date: 20/05/10
Marillion - "Garden Party"
One teatime in about 1982, I saw a music video which was being used by HTV to fill a gap in the schedule. I didn't see the beginning, and no announcement - either written or verbal - was given at the end, so I didn't know who it was.
What it certainly looked like was live footage of Gabriel-era Genesis. The lead singer certainly had a lot of weird and stark makeup on, and the music certainly fitted the mould of mid-seventies prog. But the other musicians certainly were not Genesis.
I recounted my experience to my friends down the pub a couple of evenings later. "Oh,"said Alan Howells, "you mean Marillion."
"Do I?" I replied, knowing no better.
It was some little while after that before I heard of them again, when their Script From A Jester's Tear LP came out. I think I only heard a couple of tracks from that, but Garden Party became a top twenty single (in its edited form), and I recall seeing the video for it.
That video is something of a classic, in which the band members - dressed as unruly schoolboys - tease the upper-class guests at the eponymous 'do', before things take a more sinister turn and create a small but entertaining battle in the class war.
(Thanks to The Cathode Ray Choob for the link)
Date: 17/05/10
On The Record
As promised more than once, the list of all my CDs, vinyl albums and singles and pre-recorded cassettes (remember those?) are now on the site.
Just click on the appropriate icon below to go to them.
Just a quick point (which I reiterate on each of the pages): none of these items is for sale, and please don't ask for sound files for anything because I don't want the potential hassle from that.
The idea for posting these lists came to me while I was digitising my entire vinyl collection - a process which took most of last year and a few weeks of this one.
I have sought to hide nothing here; it's all in there, the ones which show how wonderfully au fait I am with, say, mid-seventies space rock or late-eighties/early-nineties indie, alongside such gems of high culture as The Wombling Song.
I suppose that I could, had I really wanted to, have jettisoned the more embarrassing items. I could have re-invented myself as someone of such rarified tastes that nothing in my collection would cause inveterate and intolerable pseuds such as Paul Morley to suffer an attack of the vapours.
To do such, however, would have been - to my mind - a form of betrayal. For these recordings are, as it were, the tracks of my life. For good or ill, they show where I have been, from the first records I bought (or had bought for me) in the late sixties and early seventies, via a variety of obsessions nearing on that mental pathology known as 'completism', to the present day where I buy very little new stuff (I lost touch with what is au courant after Peelie died), tending instead to concentrate on deepening my knowledge of earlier times.
They're all here; the makers of mastery and the creators of cringe. Je Ne Regrette Rien (which is a track you will find in the singles list under 1991 in its version by Half Man Half Biscuit with Margi Clarke).
Date: 13/05/10
Tuned Out
I know that the clips that I've included on the Hundred Best Tunes pages (the last of which was three and a half years ago) have been quite popular downloads from what I can see from my webstats, but I've had to remove them.
This isn't due to legal issues or similar pressures - after all, the clips were only about a minute long and in reduced quality. No, the reason is that I'm getting close to the size limit of my free webspace with my ISP, and the site as a whole is not going to get any smaller. Removing those clips will free up nearly 40MB of space and will enable me to continue to add other material (text and pictures) without having to go looking to buy extra space somewhere.
Sorry if you were looking for one of those clips, but the bullet was always going to have to be bitten sometime, and I think that being able to delay it until the site had been up for close on seven years isn't bad going.
As a sort of compensation, and as previously hinted, I will be putting a list of my entire record collection up here soon so that you can see what eclectic ('eclectic' is the Sunday supplement word for 'weird') musical taste I have.
Date: 09/05/10
What Really Sank The Titanic
A few weeks back I posted an animation by Prodigy69 of B3ta fame.
He seems to have the happy knack of producing pictures which just make you smile straight away (his 'baked bean people', as I call them, like the earlier image being an example).
Now he comes up with an animation which just made me laugh out loud:
(Hit Refresh to run it again)
Date: 24/04/10
James Randi Takes Down The Woo-Merchants
A talk by the conjuror and sceptic James Randi at the 2007 TED Conference where he rips the psychics, the homeopaths and other pedlars of pish an extra arsehole for them to talk out of.
(I would have preferred to have embedded the video here, but the embed code which TED uses simply will not validate, and I have no intention of breaking standards compliance - at least not deliberately).
Date: 11/04/10
XTC - "Senses Working Overtime"
XTC is one of those bands I really keep meaning to check out. I mean, I remember them at the height of their public profile between 1979 and 1982 but - apart from their hits - I've heard very little else, despite them continuing for many years after that.
I used to have a blind spot about their song Making Plans For Nigel for obvious reasons, and although I can now hear that track without wincing, it still isn't in the same category as this; their only top ten single from the early part of 1982, and what might be termed 'English post-punk pastoral':
Update: The video originally embedded here - which showed XTC performing this track for TV - has since been removed by YouTube for "terms of use violation". Probably some twat of a corporate lawyer. This replacement doesn't have anything other than the single's sleeve to look at, but the music's just as cracking.
Update Update: Arse! This has been yanked as well, and the only other ones I can find are of the radio edit.
Date: 30/03/10
The Good Man Pullman
I can't say that I'm likely to buy or even read Philip Pullman's new book, but this is the clearest statement for freedom that I've come across in a long, long time:
Date: 18/03/10
If Mondrian had drawn for "The Beano"...
(Created by 'Mofaha' for the B3ta.com board's "Make Art More Awsome" competition. Click on the image to go to Mofaha's own site)
Date: 28/02/10
Yma O Hyd (Still Here)
OK, I know that it's not March 1 here yet, but it is in some places already, so I'm putting this up now.
Dafydd Iwan is a singer and songwriter, a cultural activist, an architect, a politician and a businessman (in a small nation, you have to be versatile). He has been a central figure in our nation's and our culture's struggle for survival for over forty five years.
In 1981, at a time when all the odds seemed to stacked against our continuation as a meaningful entity - unchecked buying up of our villages by outsiders, the further erosion of our culture by the English mass media, and the imposition by an unwanted extremist government in London of an economic programme which was totally alien to our traditions and outlook, and which had already started to wipe out most of our industrial base - he wrote this, a passionate and defiant shout against the encroaching darkness.
It has since become a sort of second national anthem for many of us. For it speaks of our long (and long-untaught) history, back to the 4th century CE and how - "despite everyone and everything" - we are still here to answer for these few small acres of Earth.
The lyrics follow the video.
| Cymraeg | English |
| Dwyt ti'm yn cofio Macsen, Does neb yn ei 'nabod o. Mae mil a chwe chant o flynyddoedd Yn amser rhy hir i'r co'. Ond aeth Magnus Maximus o Gymru Yn y flwyddyn tri-chant-wyth-tri A'n gadael yn genedl gyfan, A heddiw - wele ni! [Cytgan] Ry'n ni yma o hyd! Ry'n ni yma o hyd! Er gwaetha' pawb a phopeth, Er gwaetha' pawb a phopeth, Er gwaetha' pawb a phopeth Ry'n ni yma o hyd! Chwythed y gwynt o'r dwyrain, Rhued y storm o'r môr, Hollted y mellt yr wybren, A gwaedded y daran encôr, Llifed dagrau'r gwangalon, A llyfed y taeog y llawr, Er dued y fagddu o'n cwmpas Ry'n ni'n barod am doriad y wawr! [Cytgan] Cofiwn i Facsen Wledig Adael ein gwlad yn un darn, A bloeddiwn gerbron y gwledydd, "Byddwn yma hyd Ddydd Y Farn!" Er gwaetha' pob Dic-Siôn-Dafydd, Er gwaetha'r hen Fagi a'i chriw, Byddwn yma hyd ddiwedd amser, Fydd yr iaith Gymraeg yn fyw! [Cytgan] |
You don't remember Magnus, No-one knows him. One thousand six hundred years Is too long a time for the memory. But Magnus Maximus went from Wales In the year three-eight-three And left us a nation whole, And today - behold us! [Chorus] We're still here! We're still here! Despite everyone and everything, Despite everyone and everything, Despite everyone and everything We're still here! Let the wind blow from the East, Let the storm howl from the sea, Let the lightning split the sky, And let the thunder shout its 'Encore!", Let the tears of the weak-hearted flow, And let the servile lick the ground, However black the gloom around us, We're ready for the break of dawn! [Chorus] We remember that the emperor Magnus Left our country entire, And we shout before the nations, "We'll be here until Judgement Day!" Despite every Dic-Siôn-Dafydd, Despite old Maggie and her crew, We'll be here until the end of time, The Welsh language shall live! [Chorus] |
Is it too much to ask that we, as a nation, stop our endless squabbling between ourselves - north-south, Cymraeg-English, rural-urban - and recognise our common adversary, namely the Anglo-American corporate culture which is overrunning our world like so much sewage, which has no time for any sense of rootedness, identity or culture which cannot be packaged for profit for a small cabal at a distance? Is it too much to expect that we might - as the modern saying goes - grow a pair and take that stand for the small civilisations of this planet? And is it really too much to hope that - when my time comes - my ashes may be scattered over the land of a people who, at long last, are free to be themselves in the world?
One can but hope - and possibly to dream a bit, too. After all, "Ry'n ni yma o hyd!"
(For Alex and Blod)
Date: 26/02/10
Tears For Fears - "Sowing The Seeds Of Love"
As I've remarked elsewhere on this site, the 1980s were a wretched decade if you weren't rich, pushy, status-obsessed and devoid of anything which could be called a social conscience.
There had been some indications towards the end of the decade that a some sort of counter-effect was brewing. We had the rave culture and the lifestyle and music which went with it, for example, and there was just the hint of an undercurrent of change.
Of course, we can see in hindsight that nothing much was to change in any substantial way; merely that those in whose interest it was to make things continue as they had been became rather more subtle and devious in their words and deeds.
Nonetheless, when this song came out in the summer of 1989, with all its allusions to The Beatles and the ideals of thirty years earlier, it was impossible not to hope for something better. It's still a favourite of mine.
Update (25/03/10): That cabal of assholes known as Universal Music Group have prevented you from seeing this clip embedded in my site. If you click on the 'YouTube' logo at the bottom right, however, it should play the video.
Update update (26/03/10): It seems that it'll play all right after all, but won't play when I'm viewing the copy of the page on my hard drive. As you were...
Date: 25/02/10
Boogie Moogie Oogie!
There are some things which just bring a little bit of glee into your day.
For instance, I challenge anyone not to smile when they see this:
