Nation Stole My Robots

Lazy YouTube follow-up to last rant

2011-07-14T08:44:00.003+01:00

It looks like there are a few clips out there that back me up.

Item number one - spank me vicar, that'll be those popstars being shocking again:

It's a pity that there's only this version around. My only problem with Flanders and Swann is Flanders and Swann themselves - I've always found their delivery camp and knowing where playing straight would have worked better. Many of their songs were popular on BBC children's television when I was growing up and, on the whole, I'd rather hear Johnny Ball sing "A Transport of Delight" than its writers. It's like the old cliché about Bob Dylan songs sounding better when done by others.

Item number two - where swears might just be the point rather than the easy path to steet credibility

JCC (guesting on Neil Innes' programme) tries manfully against the broadcasting rules of the day, but it doesn't really work, does it?

This used to be a fun house, but now it's full of sweary clowns

2011-06-21T22:42:00.006+01:00

My daughter had to come up with a dance routine at school today. She chose "Funhouse" by P!nk, which I believe is pronounced "pink". It would be easy money to play the bewildered dad act, so I won't lie - I knew of the song. But we don't own a copy, and it was needed on a CD this morning.

Of course, I was told this at twenty past eight.

Not wanting to set a bad example to my children, I then went looking to buy the song as a download. I've had problems with burning CDs from files with digital rights management protection, so iTunes was ruled out. All other versions available had the warning that they were "explicit".

Let's make this clear: I'm not Mary Whitehouse. I can eff and jeff as much as anyone. I just don't expect to be PAID for it. We're not talking about "Evidently Chicken Town" by John Cooper Clarke here; "Funhouse" has a single swear two minutes in that adds nothing. I'd have laughed if the radio version had bowdlerised the line to "burn the bugger down", but my sense of humour doesn't travel.

The singles chart is absolutely full of this stuff - the mild thrill of BBC radio having to mask any instance of Paul Weller singing "shit" in a Jam song is in the distant past. I've had to tell my kids that this isn't the sole preserve of professional misanthropes like Eminem - chart music is either obsessed with sex or peppered with oil rig vocabulary. Or both. A recent Cee Lo Green single was called "Fuck You". It may as well have been titled "Piss Poo Bum Snot".

I just downloaded the radio version of Funhouse off YouTube in the end. If you feel like reporting me, phone the police. You know their number.

The Censor's Shite

2011-01-21T08:52:00.004Z

+++++++++++++SPOILER ALERT+++++++++++++++
The following rant reveals a few things about a film called "The King's Speech". You may have heard of it. Indeed, what I have to say is about published spoilers in unexpected places. As I am aware of the irony in all this, I'll warn you that if you haven't already seen the film and want to, you should keep yourself clean and read no further. To protect you, here's a nice picture of Dani Harmer before the rant starts:

Here in Britain, we rely on an organisation called the BBFC to ensure that our cinema films, DVD releases, etc. are restricted to certain age groups, if anyone at all. I appreciate that they're in a difficult position as they are under pressure from both sides, either from organised prudery to ban everything or from liberal progressiveness to not even exist. However, a BBFC habit that has emerged in recent years is proving to be a pain.

Since films like Jurassic Park, deemed suitable for families but likely to scare young children, the BBFC has included text advice alongside its certificates. This has gathered momentum since they replaced the rather straightforward "12" certificate (nobody under 12 allowed in) with the "12A" (the A presumably standing for "apology"), where under 12s may enter accompanied but the accompanying adults are warned about anything contentious.

The King's Speech is a 12A. It's been playing to packed cinemas (I don't call them "theatres", and don't get me started on the US spelling of that word) and is likely to hoover up any number of awards internationally. This is partly because it's a very well acted and put together film, but also because people expect British cinema to be about the emotional constrictions of the ruling class and this doesn't disappoint in that department.

The 12A certificate is for language reasons. We all know that in BBFC-talk "strong language" means that somebody says "fuck" and "extremely strong language" means somebody says "cunt". But here they had to embellish; "strong language in a speech therapy context", it says on every poster. You've guessed it - one of the funniest moments in the film has now been telegraphed to you by our moral guardians; Bertie Windsor momentarily becomes Sammy and His Stammer out of Viz Comic.

F-F-F-Fuck Off indeed.

The Associates and Billy MacKenzie - video research

2010-12-07T21:52:00.003Z

A guide to the Associates clips that I’m still looking to improve. Some are already on the DVD, but others have yet to be put on. I have YouTube links to samples of everything, although some of these clips are not the exact same copies as the ones I have so their quality is different.

THE LATE SHOW (BBC)
Live performance of “Wild and Lonely” and “Strasbourg Square”, with Tracy McLeod presenting. McLeod comments that this is the last edition before 30th April 1990, but the last edition listed at the BFI’s website (11th April) appears to be a different programme.
Quality is so-so 576i off-air recording with mono sound (given that this was 1990, it might have been broadcast in stereo), with McLeod’s links missed off. YouTube clip is low definition, progressive version of both songs in full with intros.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQc8og6M3zA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvtiAF3KKZQ

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S TUBE (Tyne Tees for Channel Four)
29th June 1984 (info from itnsource website). Off-air VHS. Interview with Muriel Gray is at lower quality than the mime of “Those First Impressions”, each being form a different part of the programme.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74ssPmpB-vU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsAcf7qew-8

STUDIO ONE IN CONCERT (Border)
21st September 1985, according to BFI. My newest version is a Daemons-style restoration with luma signal from one off-air VHS and chroma from an off-air Betamax. Set is “Breakfast”, “Message Oblique Speech”, “Those First Impressions”, “Club Country” and “Waiting for the Loveboat”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOTfym2fjLQ

STUDIO ONE (Border)
A sister programme of the above, with no data at the BFI. Comprises three interview segments of Muriel Gray interviewing Billy, with an astrologer, interspersed with three extracts from Studio One in Concert (“Breakfast”, “Club Country” and “Those First Impressions”). Some captures of this have the “striped” effect found when two interlaced fields have been resized and combined in the wrong way to make one progressive frame.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPyvAiAm9yk

RIVERSIDE (BBC)
Live performance of “Breakfast”. Again, my best version is a restoration using two different recordings. Date unknown.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u6EgA4sJmA

ORS 85 (BBC) (possibly ORS 84 instead)
A filmed interview walking around locations in Dundee and a live studio performance of Breakfast, with Timmy Mallett doing links inbetween. Breakfast was a single in January 1985 so I’ll guess ORS 85. Date unknown.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptq6Du1QHSI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaDeylF3qmI

TOP OF THE POPS (BBC)
I can’t find a definitive list of transmission dates for these:

Party Fears Two: 25th February and 11th March 1982 OR 11th March and 25th March 1982
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZSMDaewz2A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewiMdGXs3I0

Club Country: 27th May and 10th June 1982 OR 13th May and 10th June 1982
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozEm7g0NIA0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4SYf9wocNk

18 Carat Love Affair: 12th August 1982
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krsCEr-6V5Y

Those First Impressions: 21st June 1984
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzdkX3_youM

Quality varies. Both Party Fears Two clips and Those First Impressions are so-so.

WHISTLE TEST (BBC)
The quality is pretty good for an off-air, but does anyone know a transmission date for this interview with Suzanne Smith? It was accompanied with clips from the Ronnie Scott’s concert from December 1984.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxhB1KiziWs

HOGMANAY SHOW (unknown title) (Scottish TV )
31st December 1986. Mime of Paul Haig and Billy performing “Amazing Grace” is missing its intro from Muriel Gray. I have two different copies of this – the better one has a timeclock so I use a rectangle of picture from the off-air version to cover that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOTfym2fjLQ

DON’T LOOK DOWN (Scottish TV)
Sometime in 1994. Again, my copy has mono soundtrack while it is possible that it was broadcast in stereo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2wtJCDzVu0

GLASGOW’S BIG DAY (unknown production for Channel Four)
A live performance at George Square in Glasgow city centre, recorded on May Bank holiday 1990. I have a copy of the camera footage (only the first song - “Fever In The Shadows” - was broadcast) but it’s 576p when it should be 576i.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BIChAUd_LY

UNKNOWN BRITISH PROGRAMMES
Does anyone know which programmes these two interviews come from?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw5p4Ts3iIE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAqYmTH6REE

OVERSEAS....
“Party Fears Two”, “Skipping” and “White Car in Germany” from Dutch VPRO TV programme GÖTTERDAMMERUNG 2000 (every British band with a Velvet Underground LP and valid passports appeared on that show - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh-FwoZQZG0), and “Party Fears Two” from Belgian RTBF GÉNÉRATION 80 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aNIv7h2s5g). All from 1982, and rough. There are others that I don’t know the titles of – a Japanese clip at a festival in Yokohama in 1985 playing “A Matter of Gender” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqoQfR_GesA) and a French clip of “Kites” being played live in the studio by Billy MacKenzie and Howard Hughes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4gXrYHnbXA).

Please, Mister Postman

2010-11-10T21:53:00.003Z

Sarah and I are still going through the pile of DVDs and selling them on Amazon. Amazon Marketplace doesn't fetishise feedback in the same way as eBay, but it does feature and some buyers do leave comments. I do sometimes wonder why people say that they consider the service "excellent" but only give three points out of five. The other problem is delivery times for international customers, where Royal Mail is only the first link in the chain and not always the weakest.

In fact, other countries' postal services are much like phoning Dial-A-Stereotype:
GERMANY: Scarily efficient
PORTUGAL: anything but
FRANCE: well, you know, that depends, doesn't it?

Anyway, time for another Lazy Youtube Embed. Anyone who knows me will wonder why it's taken me so long to discover this lot, given how many Andy buttons they press:

Saturday morning at the movies, who cares what picture we see?

2010-02-27T20:21:00.003Z

Glasgow City Council run a free film for children every Saturday morning at a couple of participating cinemas - the Glasgow Film Theatre and the Parkhead branch of Cineworld. Very often the film in question is an old classic or something that has recently come off distribution (recent ones have been Up, Coraline, Fantastic
Mr Fox and Where the Wild Things Are). Staying in the east, and with a baby in tow, I use the car so that makes it Parkhead.

This morning was left open in the schedules as a surprise - it turned out to be "CJ7", an amiable enough comedy from China. The minute the staff told people it was in Cantonese the queue halved in size, with phrases like "ach, rubbish" being thrown about. Good job it wasn't in black and white or there would have been a bloody riot.

Unless people have really young children - for whom the film wouldn't have been suitable anyway - I never understood this problem. Film's a very visual medium. It's MEANT to be. Subtitles didn't stop people watching Avatar or Passion of the Christ, did they?

The most chilling bit in all this, when the house lights went back on at the end, was the ethnic mix in the room. The people who turned their nose up at foreign muck were largely white, while those open-minded enough to at least give it a go largely weren't. Sometimes I need the east end of Glasgow like I need a hole in my head.

The John Lennon Effect

2010-01-24T20:54:00.003Z

For months now, my younger sister has been selling off my late father's DVD collection with me - I set up the sales on Amazon or eBay and she does the to-ing and fro-ing. It's a big collection and it's taking time, so we've seen something happen several times. It happened again this weekend.

The John Lennon effect.

My wife told me while eating our tea last night that Jean Simmons had died. After I checked that she meant the actress and not the bloke above on the left - easy mistake to make and all that - the penny dropped. A copy of Olivier's Hamlet, where she plays Ophelia, had been on sale for weeks, but it sold that very afternoon. I shifted a Pretty In Pink within 24 hours of John Hughes dying. Polanski films did well after the long arm of the law finally caught up with the dirty old bugger.

I name it after the ex-Beatle, because of the way I remember the UK singles chart filling up with Lennon's solo singles after he was killed. If it happened just once I'd shrug my shoulders and say "it's just coincidence", but there's a pattern. Do you go out and buy a film or an album, just because the people involved are in the news? I can't say I've ever done that.

Slayed

2009-12-23T13:26:00.004Z

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?

The Waters of Mars

2009-11-16T22:04:00.002Z

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....

Shouting Schlager Schlager Schlager

2009-10-29T22:42:00.005Z

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?

You Never Give Me Your Money

2009-09-09T16:47:00.003+01:00

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:

Kitchen Person

2009-09-05T20:02:00.003+01:00

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:

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

Three posts in and my first Lazy YouTube embed

2009-09-03T15:10:00.003+01:00

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.

Crying babies sleepless nights

2009-09-02T14:06:00.000+01:00

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.

57 channels and there IS something on

2007-02-15T13:27:00.000Z

I've just seen QUATERMASS on ITV4 - the late seventies version starring John Mills.

Among the bastard sons of ITV on Freeview (the UK's digital television service) , ITV4 is the strangest of all. It simply serves up good and bad in equal measure, as if the people in charge don't know the difference. Adverts are added clumsily to old programmes (commercial breaks are more frequent now than they used to be) and bookended with tacky endorsements for some online casino. But, as I'm quite a one for cult TV of the 60s and 70s, it does unearth some goodies - Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), UFO, The Champions, etc.

Quatermass itself is something I'm chuffed to see again - I watched repeats of it sometime in the 80s and haven't seen it since. It does suffer from bargain-bucket channel cack-handedness; the sound quality on three out of the four episodes was bloody awful, as was the ham-fisted chopping in of advert breaks in places where they weren't meant to be.

But once I'm passed all this, I really enjoyed it. If you do watch it yourself, here are a few things to look out for:
the Planet People - aren't they the most hygenic hippies ever?
the Ringstone Round rhyme has the same tune as "In My Liverpool Home"
great spotting ground for up-and-coming actors like David Yip, Brenda Fricker, Toyah Willcox, er.... Chris Quinten