Much like many other people, I celebrate the birth of a noted anti-materialist religious teacher by going out to shopping centres and spending ludicrous piles of money. But this year has been subtly different.
No "Merry Christmas Everyone" (or is it "Xmas") by Slade.
It's not just that. Whether Parkhead Forge, Glasgow Fort or Coatbridge Faraday, many of the usual suspects have been conspicuously absent from the tannoy. Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime"? Mud's "Lonely This Christmas"? Even the only record that Wizzard ever, ever made has been put on the back burner.
Has there been an RATM style rebellion by chainstore employees, fed up to the back teeth of the same half dozen Christmas songs being played on a loop from mid-October onwards?
Wednesday 23 December 2009
Monday 16 November 2009
The Waters of Mars
Just a quick one to say I really enjoyed yesterday's episode. Best one since Midnight, and even Murray Gold's music couldn't mess this one up. And like Midnight, it dares to take Tennant's Doctor and slap him hard for being a twat. I'm not letting the girls watch it without me in the room, though.
What's next (cartoon episode aside)? Even if John Simm didn't very nearly knock my pint over after an Echo and the Bunnymen concert a few years ago, I'd still find his take on the Master a bit "Dr Evil". And Russell T Davies episodes can be risky, especially at Christmas. Time will tell....
What's next (cartoon episode aside)? Even if John Simm didn't very nearly knock my pint over after an Echo and the Bunnymen concert a few years ago, I'd still find his take on the Master a bit "Dr Evil". And Russell T Davies episodes can be risky, especially at Christmas. Time will tell....
Thursday 29 October 2009
Shouting Schlager Schlager Schlager
I was watching BBc4's Krautrock documentary last night - when you have a baby in the house, iPlayer is a boon - and something struck me. If we're meant to be grown-ups, shouldn't we stop sneering at other peoples' tastes like the bullying cool kids in the school playground?
The easy target for this programme was Schlager - mid-tempo, jolly, apolitical, vaguely oompah mainstream German pop music from the late 60s. Tee hee hee, how very dad-like and not down with the kids, who truly know the score. The sort of thing Eurotrash sniggered at frequently.
Now look at this UK chart from 1968 - more or less the one played on Radio 2 last Saturday afternoon. Leapy Lee, Engelbert Humperdinck - basically Schlager but sung in English. Not only is island-race smugness misplaced, but maybe we should now accept that our parents bought records too.
This aside, I'm still glad that someone actually makes television programmes on these subjects and shows them at 9 in the evening (or at your leisure if you're an iPlayer user). Sometimes interviewing people in their second language can backfire; it can make people seem inarticulate or, at the other end of the spectrum, cliché machines (Renate out of Amon Düül saying that she "used her voice as an instrument" as if we've never heard that said before). Go on BBC4, you know your audience can do subtitles.
Also... Wolfgang Flür again, after being on Synth Britannia last week. He used to play drums (or hit an electric tea tray with knitting needles, if you're a purist) for Kraftwerk. I know Florian Schneider's buggered off, but does Ralf Hütter not give television interviews?
The easy target for this programme was Schlager - mid-tempo, jolly, apolitical, vaguely oompah mainstream German pop music from the late 60s. Tee hee hee, how very dad-like and not down with the kids, who truly know the score. The sort of thing Eurotrash sniggered at frequently.
Now look at this UK chart from 1968 - more or less the one played on Radio 2 last Saturday afternoon. Leapy Lee, Engelbert Humperdinck - basically Schlager but sung in English. Not only is island-race smugness misplaced, but maybe we should now accept that our parents bought records too.
This aside, I'm still glad that someone actually makes television programmes on these subjects and shows them at 9 in the evening (or at your leisure if you're an iPlayer user). Sometimes interviewing people in their second language can backfire; it can make people seem inarticulate or, at the other end of the spectrum, cliché machines (Renate out of Amon Düül saying that she "used her voice as an instrument" as if we've never heard that said before). Go on BBC4, you know your audience can do subtitles.
Also... Wolfgang Flür again, after being on Synth Britannia last week. He used to play drums (or hit an electric tea tray with knitting needles, if you're a purist) for Kraftwerk. I know Florian Schneider's buggered off, but does Ralf Hütter not give television interviews?
Wednesday 9 September 2009
You Never Give Me Your Money
In the last week, the Beatles have had media worship normally reserved for U bloody 2 or someone. They’re still one of my favourite groups (The Beatles, that is) but it’s not just because a programme maker fancied doing a documentary – in our calculated modern world, there must be a reason. Which is…
...that all the recordings released during their career are re-released today.
Let’s get The Money out of the way first. It took several years after CDs were launched before The Beatles’ catalogue became available. The accompanying fanfare – happily timed with it being “Twenty Years Ago Today” since Sgt. Pepper first came out – was a big deal. (Pity it couldn’t have been Revolver as birthday boy instead, but there you go).
Now we are told that all this Was Not Good Enough so they have to release them all again. So we pay for them all again. There are plenty of brilliant musicians from that era who never made much – if anything - from their work. But that doesn’t include Paul and Ringo.
Next up is that the 1987 discs Not Being Good Enough is missing the point. This was music that your auntie played on her Dansette while putting her mazzy on. It’s neither a call to prayer nor a hi-fi demonstration record, it’s FUN. If it is to be made available in a new format, it still has to be sold in the album packages, which brings me to…
...control freakery. The Beatles - often credited with inventing the album (they didn’t) - will argue that you should listen to the songs in their chosen order. Poo to that one – do you have any LPs where you think one side is better than the other so you play it more often? I could go on all day with an argument of why albums will never be as important as singles anyway, especially with the Beatles, but I’ll leave that to some other time.
Ever since Anthology, I’ve had a creeping feeling that the surviving members want history written according to their own image. It’s like when a designer jeans label throws a hissy fit when a supermarket procures legitimate stock from abroad and sells it cheaply back here. I don’t know if Lennon would have gone along with Stalinist revision, but he would have had to agree with what Yoko told him to do anyway. If The Beatles are bigger than Jesus (and like it or not, the statistics show that they’re close) then they should have Christianity’s contradicting accounts, gospels that don’t quite mesh with each other, and urban legend.
To stay in the spirit of this, here’s one of those cartoons that Paul and Ringo would like us to think Never Existed:
...that all the recordings released during their career are re-released today.
Let’s get The Money out of the way first. It took several years after CDs were launched before The Beatles’ catalogue became available. The accompanying fanfare – happily timed with it being “Twenty Years Ago Today” since Sgt. Pepper first came out – was a big deal. (Pity it couldn’t have been Revolver as birthday boy instead, but there you go).
Now we are told that all this Was Not Good Enough so they have to release them all again. So we pay for them all again. There are plenty of brilliant musicians from that era who never made much – if anything - from their work. But that doesn’t include Paul and Ringo.
Next up is that the 1987 discs Not Being Good Enough is missing the point. This was music that your auntie played on her Dansette while putting her mazzy on. It’s neither a call to prayer nor a hi-fi demonstration record, it’s FUN. If it is to be made available in a new format, it still has to be sold in the album packages, which brings me to…
...control freakery. The Beatles - often credited with inventing the album (they didn’t) - will argue that you should listen to the songs in their chosen order. Poo to that one – do you have any LPs where you think one side is better than the other so you play it more often? I could go on all day with an argument of why albums will never be as important as singles anyway, especially with the Beatles, but I’ll leave that to some other time.
Ever since Anthology, I’ve had a creeping feeling that the surviving members want history written according to their own image. It’s like when a designer jeans label throws a hissy fit when a supermarket procures legitimate stock from abroad and sells it cheaply back here. I don’t know if Lennon would have gone along with Stalinist revision, but he would have had to agree with what Yoko told him to do anyway. If The Beatles are bigger than Jesus (and like it or not, the statistics show that they’re close) then they should have Christianity’s contradicting accounts, gospels that don’t quite mesh with each other, and urban legend.
To stay in the spirit of this, here’s one of those cartoons that Paul and Ringo would like us to think Never Existed:
Saturday 5 September 2009
Kitchen Person
For a while now I've been doing an Associates DVD with my wife. Nothing official, you understand - record company apathy has made sure that this stuff is not available in the shops. But by trading footage, and some avisynth-based video restoration work, we've built up a wedge of footage that people do want to see.
I'm touched by how much affection there still is for The Associates and Billy MacKenzie's later solo career, as they were genuinely forward-thinking as well as top 20 pop stars. I was 12 years old in 1982, so my window on music was daytime Radio One and Top Of the Pops, not the NME. But the Associates were at home in both worlds, which could have only ever happened during that time.
(Unfortunately, the comedy shorthand of the 1980s as being Thatcherism, shoulder pads and Phil Collins' snare drum sound still persists, and I wince. The era has so much better to offer).
Here's a snippet:
This and much more can be yours to watch again and again, etc. Just get in touch. If you have footage yourself, we're still on the lookout for:
I'm touched by how much affection there still is for The Associates and Billy MacKenzie's later solo career, as they were genuinely forward-thinking as well as top 20 pop stars. I was 12 years old in 1982, so my window on music was daytime Radio One and Top Of the Pops, not the NME. But the Associates were at home in both worlds, which could have only ever happened during that time.
(Unfortunately, the comedy shorthand of the 1980s as being Thatcherism, shoulder pads and Phil Collins' snare drum sound still persists, and I wince. The era has so much better to offer).
Here's a snippet:
This and much more can be yours to watch again and again, etc. Just get in touch. If you have footage yourself, we're still on the lookout for:
Any performances from Dutch, Belgian, German or French tv
Either performance of Party Fears Two on Top of the Pops
Those First Impressions on Top of the Pops
Breakfast on Riverside
Breakfast on the Oxford Road Show
Studio One in Concert (a regional programme made by Border)
Fever on Glasgow's Big Day Out
Thursday 3 September 2009
Three posts in and my first Lazy YouTube embed
Arthur and Martha have really grown on me of late:
I know that there's a Kraftwerk thing going one here, but it's not just the "I love my vacuum cleaner" era stuff - this pair have gone for the earlier, wackier "hello trees, hello flowers" records as well, and I love them for it.
The other single - Music For Hairproducts - is like Ladytron without the Mind Your Language accents. If you like it, the album's well worth a buy - eMusic are a dream for this kind of thing.
I know that there's a Kraftwerk thing going one here, but it's not just the "I love my vacuum cleaner" era stuff - this pair have gone for the earlier, wackier "hello trees, hello flowers" records as well, and I love them for it.
The other single - Music For Hairproducts - is like Ladytron without the Mind Your Language accents. If you like it, the album's well worth a buy - eMusic are a dream for this kind of thing.
Wednesday 2 September 2009
Crying babies sleepless nights
So I'm a father again, at the age of 39. I'll try my best not to go all sentimental, but that'll be a challenge. It's the silly little things that remind me what having a baby in the house is like - at the weekend, the weather was dry long enough to hang the washing out. When you look back at the line and it's taken up with lots and lots of really small clothes, you know you're back.
It's just as well I kept the Clangers DVD.
It's just as well I kept the Clangers DVD.
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