A blessed companion is a book

July 16, 2013 //

Examples of the Companion Book Club

It was my Grandmother’s fault, really. She loved a book, and passed on that love of books to me. I think from the time that I could cruise around the living room in her cottage, I could spy the lovely patterns on the dust covers of the books on the glass-doored bookcase. Not for me, then, books, aged one. No, the black cat held more interest; Maxine, my cousin would hold one end, and I would hold the other. I think the screams of all three of us put paid to further exploration of the cat-as-a-long-doorstop. A happy infancy, then….where were we? Ah….those books.

In 1956 or thereabouts, one of the family seems to have bought my grandmother a subscription for 6 months for 30/- (that is £1.50 in your current AngloPeso) to the Companion Book Club. The Companion Book Club, or CBC as I shall refer to it from now on, had been founded in 1952, with a view to taking the best sellers of a year earlier, and then reprinting them for offer to their members…or subscribers. Not that innovative an idea when viewed from the other side of the subscription and part-work frenzy of the 1970’s and 1980’s, but for the time, these half-price books met a demand in a post war austerity society.

The books were of good quality, with good boards, a clear (and to my mind, very pleasing) spine and it was an easy way for people to read current novels, and I suppose, create a library. The dust covers from 1952 to 1963 all followed the same pattern, with a geometric design, and so far as I can ascertain, the actual boards and spine design only changed towards the end of the 1960’s. It is said that good design doesn’t age, and there is your proof, I suppose.

None of the novels are what you might call beacons of the mid 50’s novel landscape, though, and the works of Joy Packer, Hammond Innes and Howard Spring are long forgotten. They aren’t without their charm, though. Occasionally there were ‘proper’ authors, like W. Somerset Maugham, Alistair MacLean and John Steinbeck – but the majority of the authors are no longer numbered among the literary illuminati.

Odhams Press, the company behind the CBC, maintained a quiet yet steady increase in business by the look of things; after their first year, they had moved to larger premises in Long Acre in WC2, and after ten years or so, absorbed another company, the Popular Book Company into their fold. Persistence marketing was conducted in the form of a pamphlet with each order, which told the reader in clipped stentorian tones that they were doing the right thing, saving money and printed a number of accolades of the sort “Marvellous – Mrs A.B., Ealing”. This pamphlet, The Companion, as it was known, published a list of the forthcoming novels that were in the pipeline for the next 6 months (remember the 30/- earlier for the 6 month subscription?) and carried various short articles about this month’s author or book. I assume that the back pages of the Daily Express carried adverts for the CBC, which ensured a fresh flow of subscribers.

I’d learnt to read, and books appeared at every visit to my Grandmother. A smile on her face at my joy at yet another night spent under the covers with a torch makes me think that she knew the way I thought. For me, the reading was always the reward. I think she was pleased that I consumed the Enid Blyton nonsense quickly, and when I was 8, I was allowed to read “Fly for your Life” by Larry Forrester. This was the epitome of a boy’s derring-do book, being the biography of Bob Stanford Tuck, the WW2 RAF ace. I was hooked. I consumed anything with a military biography bent, (Montgomery, Bader, The D-Day Landings) and moved swiftly on to the novels that were extant in the bookcase. I read my Grandmother’s collection in about 6 months. I wasn’t allowed to have “Zoo quest for a dragon” by David Attenborough on account of the colour plates of African ladies, but everything else was fair game. My own private library….

Today, the books are worth next to nothing, not being first editions, or indeed, not being published by the original publisher. This makes them a target for me, and I have, over the years, come to dream of a bookcase containing all these books. The shock of paying 10p at a car boot sale last year for 12 of the things made me realise that the collecting of something has it’s own pleasure, and it matters not that the collection has no value. No, the nostalgia pays the urge to collect, but in this case, you get to read some great examples of the art of the novel, circa 1950.

The CBC fuelled my love of reading, together with the Ladybird imprints and the Sparky and Beano. Cheers, Nanny, and thanks. Oh, and thank you, the wise minds behind the CBC, for being instrumental in my literacy.

Categories Uncategorized

NHS drug ripoff

June 21, 2013 //

I note that Jeremy Hunt is saying that the collusion between pharmacists and drug companies is causing the NHS to pay higher prices for drugs, and that this is unfair to the NHS users.

I wonder if this is a classic deflection tactic, pointing our outrage at something else rather than the thorny issue of the prescription tax? After all –

http://www.chemistdirect.co.uk/spironolactone-tablet-25mg_4_16690.html

£2.80 on a private prescription – to you, Mr Prescription holder, £7.85. £5.05 profit for the NHS. Bear in mind that is a retail cost, so you can bet that they are around 5p per tablet wholesale.

We, the end users of the NHS are being robbed at the point of delivery, unless we live in Scotland. I think this is a far bigger crime than the NHS not having the procurement intellect to counter the force a drug company may apply to pricing…but because the prescription charge is enshrined in law, that makes it legal piracy. Frankly, it is immoral.

Tags Jeremy Hunt, NHS, Pharmaceutical, prescription charges

Categories Uncategorized

How to become a hi-fi journalist

November 8, 2012 //

Firstly, we shall assume that you can write and understand the basics of grammar and structure – after all, you will be writing for people who are capable of purchasing expensive hi-fi kit. In short, your target audience is AB, and their disposable income is vast – they can spell and they are going to be the kind of people who can spot the greengrocer’s apostrophe at 50 yards.

Secondly, you will need to be able to use a thesaurus, and be willing to seek out fresh ways of expressing the abstract in a subjective manner. It is useful to have a nose for the under-used superlative, too as we shall see.

Thirdly, you will need to be able to cope with the eternal pressing of the hi-fi sales reps who will be lunching you on a daily basis.

Happy with all that? Let us begin with an example.

Rep #1 has just had delivered a pair of speakers to you via a courier. There are some notes with it, which you read. The specs don’t actually mean a great deal to you – and with no degree in electronics, why should they, but the key ones to pick out here are the frequency response, the power handling in watts and the impedance. These three numbers will help pad out the article when you are stuck for those final inches of the article – equally, when the editor tells you to trim it as Linn have decided to take out a half-pager this month, these can be useful things to cut out.

So, the best trick is to write the article first and do the listening afterwards. Start with a bit of historical background about the company – feel free to crib from wikipedia, this is a proven educational source in schools these days – and egg the pudding with a little pathos; struggling UK company, journeyman products for years (as a top gear fan, imagine Clarkson doing his opening description of of a new Lotus, for example) and so on.

Next, describe the finish of the speakers. You have to look at them – try taking them out of the box first – and determine the wood veneer. Of course, the veneer doesn’t mean jackshit, but there is always the possibility that a purchasing decision may be made on colour. Describe the connectivity (look up bi-wiring – if there are 4 speaker connections, then Bi-wiring is a possibility) and what the connection posts are made of.

Imagine them in your room, and then construct some phrases around ‘situational’ and save them for the article.

Throw on a suitably obscure CD or album by as obscure yet soon-to-be mainstream cool artist, or delve into the annals for an equally obscure album that everyone has sort-of heard of and then find a track you particularly dislike and use that as a basis for the listening test. Don’t connect the new speakers to your hi-fi – remember the object of this exercise is to bash off copy with very little effort.

If in doubt, drag out early John Martyn (London Conversations) or the Incredible String Band (the hangman’s lovely daughter). Close your eyes, and then pick on a passage that you can use to describe the speakers with. The “Milky Darkness of the bass notes soar through the ether like a bird released” for example. Yes? Grab your thesaurus and track down some underused superlatives, and construct meaningless and subjective phrases like that. “Trebles that sound like an echo from an angels wing” is probably pushing it, but a comment about one particular member of the ensemble’s playing should form part of your retinue. Pick out a passage that you know to have been played by that person (remember to consult the sleeve notes, there are lots of people who will point out your error) and point out hitherto unheard tremelo or paradiddles (qv the Oxford dictionary of music – always a plus). Use words like precision, and timing – nothing that can be quantified by scientific scrutiny. “The scuff of his fingers against the round wounds strings becomes evident”.

It is that easy. Imagine yourself as loquacious as Stephen Fry, and you are home free. Write the copy, end with a strong positive along the lines of “these absolutely must be on your list to have demonstrated”. Feel free to split infinitives as this often gives emphasis to an otherwise cliched phrase, and remember, there is a lot more lunch where that came from.

Categories Music

Latitude Festival-going for the over 50’s

September 3, 2012 //

Some idiot at Radio 1 (tell me, is it still on 275/285?) coined the phrase “Festival Dads” recently which caused me to think “I resemble that remark”. Sharon and I went to Latitude this year, and took the little one with us, although our involvement in her “good time” extended to a daily meet up to hand over food and money. I saw quite a few Festival Dads. Festival Mums too, were much in evidence, as were a genre overlooked by that arrogant controller of Radio 1, “The Festival Grandparents”. Of course, Latitude is different from say, Download or Reading, in that there are events going on that are of interest to all genres and ages. The literature tent might as well have been renamed the Radio 4 tent, in effect – indeed, I had the pleasure of hearing a program on Radio 4 that was recorded at Latitude.

The bands, too, were cross genre, and cross age. Many of the youngsters getting their first break by playing at the festival could have benefitted from dropping by Daryl Hall’s performance for a lesson in stagecraft, and musicality in general, though. The bravery of Lloyd Cole, who performed a set with his son – the very definition of a Festival Dad, if you like – was rewarded with an appreciative audience, the majority of whom were there to see him, rather than shelter from the rain, as seemed to be the case with many other acts.

I’m digressing. This is supposed to be a guide for the over 50’s and how to negotiate some of the pitfalls you may find should you decide to embark on the fun packed adventure that is festival going.

Noise

Well, we like a good sleep, so the essence of being fit and ready for the following day is to make sure of two things. The first is that you choose a pitch in the ‘quiet’ corner. Your admiration for the stamina of youth to do stupid things at three in the morning will be blunted if their tents are pitched near yours. No, find the quiet corner – main gates, turn left. You’ll spot the rest of the wise souls by the fact that they have tents that they can stand up in. Pitch up there. You will not regret it. The second thing is the equipment you buy. The tent should, ideally, allow you to stand up. As years go by, getting dressed on your knees is often a challenge to your flexibility and mobility. No, a tent that you can stand up in is a must.

Mud

You can’t rehearse for this. Nothing can prepare you for life in apocalyptic mud. It could be the most sun-baked summer since 1976 – you’ll need wellies regardless. I recommend a good make, a stout pair of green ones, possibly with ‘Dunlop’ on them somewhere.

Don’t try to get away with ankle length boots, you need proper down-on-the-farm wellies.

The mud will quickly spread throughout the site, and you will be left pondering how on earth soldiers in the Somme actually coped. Have you ever seen the harrowing pictures of a horse trapped in the mud? A typical English summer shower, and the campsite inhabitants will be resembling that poor animal.

This was Thursday evening. By Saturday evening this was impassable! Amazingly, to the right of this picture, a number of youngsters had pitched their tent, which were completely covered in splashmarks and mud. Still, they were close to the entrance, I suppose. Perhaps they were social animals. Or perhaps just animals, I don’t know.

Now, I hate to sink to a level that suggests toilet humour, but needs must….

Latrines

The facilities on the camp site – well, there is nothing humorous in these, at all whatsoever. If the Elizabethans had been transported through time, and landed in a 2012 festival, they would have been appalled. The phrase ‘festival toilet’ is a byword for medieval squalor. If you are at all squeamish about your ablutions (perhaps you don’t like the close proximity of people when you need to go?), then this is going to be your worst nightmare. How to describe…..well, the toilet blocks are approached via a quagmire, which is probably the most hygienic part of the process, as, hopefully, it is ‘pure’ mud. The toilets (and I use the work advisedly) are on a raised gantry, 6ft in the air. When you approach from the quagmire, you can see nothing but metal half doors, and wellies at the bottom. These are approached by climbing up some metal stairs to a metal stall with the aforementioned door. Inside is a metal bowl, around which is caked an eclectic mix of mud and fecal matter. Trust me, you aren’t going to want to sit, so I recommend taking an Imodium on a daily basis no matter how bad it makes you feel. No, all you can do is urinate, and frankly, that is fraught with danger, as you’ll be caught by the splash back. Remember, all this is accomplished whilst wearing wellies, and every stall is continually occupied. So, you need a new life skill, that of being able to point percy in the general direction of the bowl at the same time as holding your nose. Finished? Somewhere amongst the caked filth on the floor, there is a pedal. Press it, and it sort of flushes in the manner of a drinking fountain. Now, do yourself up (still holding your nose? Interesting how quickly you can learn new skills, isn’t it?), and exit the stalls. Remember to take it easy on the stairs going down, as in your haste to exit this particular circle of hell, you may find yourself slipping. Moving gingerly to what I consider to be the ultimate irony – you can avail yourself of a handwash, a sort of soap concoction that you acquire by pressing a button….which is covered in other people’s fecal matter. Still, at this point, you have emptied your bladder. Reach into your pocket and fish out one of the handy baby-wipes you’ve packed for the occasion. Back to the quagmire, my friends, back to the quagmire. I should point out that the latrines inside the actual festival are a hundred, a thousand times cleaner and more palatable than the campsite ones. Of course, the main festival doesn’t open until 10/11am, so don’t count on that as a solution.

Tent

Well, this is your first festival – so you’ve done this your way, haven’t you? You’ve nipped to Halfords or Argos in the morning, and bought a tent. This sir, is your first mistake, because you haven’t had time to put it up and test whether you can in fact live in it for 4 days. I have more advice for you. You are over 50, and you are perhaps a bit stiff in the morning. You will need a tent that you can stand upright in. You may have been able to dress yourself while bouncing around on an air-bed when you were 21, but you cannot do it reliably, or with any finesse now. Remember, that the noise insulation afforded by bricks and mortar are no longer available to you, and the grunting and moaning and gasps of “oh for fsck’s sake” as you roll around what has become a bouncy castle of a mattress can be heard by your neighbours. These neighbours are all seasoned festival go-ers and all of them have tents 6ft tall, and they bought all their possessions into the camp on a trolley. They know you are a greenhorn, and best of all, you don’t realise that you are their floorshow. They had you marked down as ‘entertainment’ the minute you erected your tent, and they were proved right the minute you started banging it tent pegs with shoes, and tripping over guy-ropes. So, go for something large, and don’t be afraid to take more territory than you believe is decent (a windbreak is ideal for making a land grab that would make Hitler himself nod with approval). This is why you get there on a thursday afternoon, even if you had to queue from Sax-bloody-mundham. It is time well spent. While we are at it, let us discuss what else you need and why. A blowup mattress with known air-retention properties. You buy it a week before, blow it up and see how long it takes to deflate. You can bring a hand pump, but invariably, the nozzle won’t fit, so you start the festival hyperventilating like a 4 year old at a birthday party and this is not good. Share the load with your other half, and come back to it every say, half an hour. You’ve got ages, there is nothing but some substandard orchestral nonsense on at the ‘lake arena’ anyway on a thursday. Oh and doubtless some poetry. See later, when I cover how to cope inside the arena. In short, get the tallest fsck-off tent you can find, get some windbreaks and one of those gazebos. I cannot stress how big the tent or the area you need to grab must be. A quick phone call to Billy Smart’s liquidators might yield the kind of thing you really need.

Lebesraum

I mentioned the land grab, didn’t I? Well, position yourself in such a way that the windbreaks shield you from the main pathway (LED lights atop the posts for the windbreak make an ideal navigational aid) – and make sure you are as close to a main pathway as possible. Not so close as to invite people to use the side of the tent as a byway, no. The idea is that the windbreaks shield you from the mud splatter of the main path, protect your tent from drunken halfwits tripping over your guy-ropes and define it’s boundaries. They also discourage latecomers pitching their tent in the 30cm space next to your tent. No, these windbreaks are the picket fences of the camping world and I recommend them heartily enough. Especially as some Saturday arrivals decided that it was fair game to pitch their tent abutting ours, and this caused a fair amount of consternation. Still, they were from up north somewhere, so I expect they were just mirroring their own back-to-back and cobbled street or something. That brings me on to a note of caution – Lattitude is marketed as a ‘middle class’ festival, but this doesn’t stop some frightful northern types thinking it is OK to turn up and well, re-enact the four yorkshiremen skit. Endlessly.

Seating

All this is secondary to what is to become your new best friend – the fold up chair. Get one that is padded under the thigh, or you will end up with the back of your thighs looking like Flashman has decided to take out some of his frustration on you. These are great things, and fold down into a cylindrical shape and fit in bags that can then be worn across your shoulder, quiver style, and imbue you with the illusion that you are being cool like Legolas in the Lord of the Rings. Mine had an integral cup holder which made it ideal for settling down with a NCOT. Except, there is NOWHERE that makes a NCOT, they all use that shite UHT smeg that masquerades as milk. This brings me to…..

Nutrition

You have choices here, but in the end, to quote Rich Hall in his Kraft rant in the comedy tent, “It’s all shit”. Latitude might be a delightfully peaceful middle class festival with little hippie children in tie-dye frocks frolicking around their parent’s picnic whilst nodding intelligently to the Alabama Shakes (Festival Dads and Mums universally liked and nodded at the Alabama Shakes. “They were on Jools Holland a few weeks back, ya know…”), but I am afraid I have to disabuse you of the notion that there is anything worth eating from any of the outlets. Everything is stodge, noodles, rice, burgers – all flavourless carbohydrate laden nonsense, that made me want to scream. Where was the olive bar? Where was the sushi? Whither a lightly grilled Halloumi on a bed of cous-cous? Where was the nice crisp fresh salad that even McDonalds seem to manage these days? Choose your path carefully, young man, for even the Kebab isn’t even what it seems. I did have a kebab. It wasn’t even like the Friday Night special that we are all used to, this meat looked the same, but was grey in colour, and tasted of something faintly herby. It was vile.

Sharon acquired a box of noodles from one of the vendors one lunchtime, and handed it to me. I swear it weighed the same as a bag of sugar, and the tasteless worm-fest inside the box had clearly been boiled for hours. Caribbean pork? Delightful if you like your rice fried to oblivion and beyond and are fond of working out which part of a pig’s knee cartilage you might be tucking into.

The onsite supermarket is also not what it seems. You queue up to be permitted entry in a “no more than two children in the shop at any time”-style. The customer is always a thief and never in the right. Plain demeaning, especially when you are eventually admitted to this holy grail of fresh food and wholesome goodness, you realise that it is just a teenage festival-go-er’s dream – £40 for 24 cans of weak nonsense cider/lager and £2.50 for a tube of pringles. Waitrose, it assuredly is not. The best meal I had? Well, it was one of those John West Tuna pasta things that are pre-cooked and all you do is pull the lid off. After the muck we had seen on offer, this was manna from heaven. You can of course, elect to cook in and around your tent. I expect that is the answer.

I think from a culinary perspective, I’d like to know why festival food is of such a low standard, and why we put up with it. Perhaps next year I should go along and offer something like I’d like to eat and enjoy. A bubble and squeak stand, for example – the breakfast of champions.

What to do ‘inside’ the festival

Buy the overpriced programme (£10) and plan your strategy about where you want to be at any given time. Resolve potential clashes early, and always exit the place you are about to move from 5 minutes early, lest you get swept up by everyone else flocking to see, oh, I don’t know – Jack Dee for example (Jack, by the way, likes the word f*ck. A lot. He comes across as curmudgeonly as you or I which is his charm, I suppose, but he has a microphone, an audience, no censor, and a case of borderline Tourettes. It gets old, very quickly). The comedy tent is always good for keeping dry – I nearly said laugh, but I didn’t, much – just nodded at the gags and concepts I’d heard before. Although Russell Kane….now he is original, but he does remind me of my SarfIssix roots a bit too much. It is a good place for keeping tabs on your youngest, who in our case, was sat in the front row, hoping to be picked on by the comedian.

In this case, that awfully nice Rich Hall did indeed pick on Lydia and derided her career choices (she admitted to wanting to be a psychologist, which I imagine would unnerve most comedians…) and we witnessed the whole episode, to our eternal mirth. I think that if I was to keep score, it was a 1-1 draw, with Rich Hall getting a bit wobbly at the end of the wannabe psychologist’s onslaught. Kudos too, goes to Rich Hall for his innovative method of clearing the tent of the under 13’s by claiming that Justin Bieber was a vagina. Or something like that.

The poetry tent is to be avoided. This is difficult, because you have to walk past it to get everywhere. The only point that I got close to having a peep inside was to see the veritable John Cooper Clarke, but then, I only wanted to chant along with “I married a monster from outer space” anyway. No, avoid. It is invariably a young poet trying to convince people that rap and shouting are indeed art forms.

The literature tent is where you go to do Radio 4 stuff (where were The Archers? An interview with Elizabeth Pargetter on why she is such a pr*ck would have been nice. for example) invariably involving Stuart Maconie fawning all over Simon Armitage, or John McCarthy talking about anything and everything. I just liked the sound of JMcC’s voice. This tent is also good because here is the place for a spot of people-watching. We managed to spot the lesser leather-patched geography teacher in the wild. You can tell them – they laugh too loudly at all the wrong places, and wear corduroy. In fact, 90% of the audience in the literature tent are teachers or students. It is a surprisingly nice way to spent a few hours, we found.

Everywhere else, well that is all music. Pick who you want to see, and walk there and watch. I think the record Sharon and I held was 10 minutes for Metronomy, and we stayed that long because we liked the bacofoil outfit the drummeress was wearing. Simple Minds were a pastiche, Richard Hawley was a small God, and if Guy Garvey implored me to build another rocket boy, well, guess where I would be shoving it? I loved seeing Daryl Hall, and Lloyd Cole. I was amazed at how darned southern the Alabama Shakes sounded, and I quite enjoyed Alt-J in a “I don’t understand this, but I’ll give it a shot” sort of way.

Beware. Every single ‘new’ band you see will have referenced work from your halcyon days of music. You KNOW there is nothing original under the sun, and you should learn to accept that Metronomy were locked in a room with a bunch of Human League “Being Boiled” and OMD tapes. Just go with it. No one around you is going to be impressed that you spotted that that riff is a straight lift from the 1978 Original Mirrors’ “Sharp words”…..

Alternatives

There is an alternative to spending 4 days in abject squalour, and one that I plan to put into action if I ever go again.

Every day, we traipsed the mile to the main arena in mud (a mile on tarmac is one thing, doing it on mud is like a cross between Ice-skating and dancing like Ian Curtis – oho, could it be said that I was “Dancing to Joy Division”?) and on our right was an fenced off area that you could, cruelly, I thought, see people exiting their camper vans, stretching to greet the morning sun (well, metaphorically at least) and looking like they had had the most relaxing night’s sleep ever. There was grass around their pitches. They had space for awnings, and the smell of sausages and bacon gently sizzling on proper camping stoves almost bought me to my knees on more than one occasion. I felt like I was a second class citizen – not only were we forced to see this nirvana as we trudged toward the festival, but we couldn’t photograph through the mesh fence! Let me tell you there were some spectacular VW camper vans there. Oh how the elite seem to live! If I have one piece of advice to you – apart from a getting a good pair of wellies – it is find a camper van.

Conclusion

Well, you have to go through a bit of pain in order to understand what might be missing, and we did suffer, as you have seen. It isn’t all bad – in fact, it is all quite good fun in the end. I may have been guilty of accentuating the negative, but nothing can detract from seeing bands and artistes that you enjoy (Richard Hawley – you ARE a small God) and seeing the joy on my daughter’s face at being allowed to roam free without parental control or input. She is still wearing her ID tag, two months later, and has a love of live music as a result. Even thought she sat in the comedy tent most of the days. No, I enjoyed myself although at times you wouldn’t have thought so to look at my fizzog. Next year? Well, I plan to either beg, borrow or acquire a camper van or start saving now to rent one of the glamping tents. I shall wave at you from my VW palace or my glamping teepee as you traipse through the mud next year. You have to do it the hard way to know how to do it the easy way…..

Categories Festival, Manners, Music, Teachers

This song

May 6, 2012 //

If there is one defining song that marks my very late teens, it is Love will tear us apart. If I hear it on the radio, it transports me back to the spring of 1980, when the world was ripe with possibility and music was the urging of me.

Everyone seems to want to cover it, as if it imbues you with some grave-robbing chic or supposed coolness, so beloved of anyone who currently nods towards Nick Drake. None of you nod at John Martyn, do you? This bloody song – everyone seems to want to chip away at my enduring memory of it, to replace Ian’s version with theirs. “Look at this” they say “this is a great version of this song”. I’ve lost count of the attempts, but I’ve listed some of the extremes that youtube has to offer below. Even the subtle remixing of it on “Closer” riles and irritates me, and makes me question my own audio ability.

I think that if you are going to cover the song, you should take something of it, and work forward from there. You’re never going to capture the animalistic thrash of the 12 string in the intro, and I defy you to find that synth sound on your garageband setup – you need a proper Yamaha SK10. No, if you want to cover this song. you need to begin with it’s USP – the emotion expressed in the lyric – and take it from there. We’ll come back to the only version that I hold as dear to me as I do the original at the end of this. For now, let’s have an amusing walk through the villainy – those that would try and fail publicly. You have to admire their bravery.

Paul Young

I think Paul was the first out of the traps to cover this, and establish himself as Mr no-original-material of the 80’s (have a look at the writing credits on ‘No Parlez’…). It is at least a different interpretation of the song, and I grudgingly admit that he manages to convey emotion in it. What you might call a valiant attempt. I have to say that calling your backing singers the “Fabulous Wealthy Tarts” is always going to affect the way you view the subject matter of the song.

6/10 – taking different roads…

Mark Owen

Oh <insert deity of choice here> – this is utter trite shite.

I have ALWAYS hated the sound of the Ovation Balladeer guitar I have always hated Take That. I’ve never understood his mis-pronounced r’s and the only time I’ve ever had a sneaking admiration for him was seeing him with a dustbin in the front seat of his merc, driving home from a DIY store. Can’t he find better things to do with his time – this is as appropriate as polar bear at a penguin convention…

1/10 Resentment riding quite high indeed

10,000 Maniacs

Natalie is never averse to a spot of cover stuff, and I have been bowled over, in a bad way of course, at how similar to Steve Harley’s ‘Come up and see me’ she manages to make this sound. Yes Natalie, your timing IS that flawed.

4/10 – ambitions are low

Nouvelle Vague

It’s a nice frock and suits her, but my daughter could come up with a more interesting arrangement than this.

3/10 – bedroom quite cold….

New Order

You’d think they’d know better, wouldn’t you. No, this is a pedestrian slog through the song that you just wouldn’t expect from the makers of “The Perfect Kiss”, it shows the difference between the two groups vocal affectations though. Ian could sing this song, and that is an end to it.

4/10 – Failings exposed.

The Cure

I had high hopes of this – Robert Smith should really have ‘got it’. Instead, it sounds like a song played as if he is going through the motions. A shame – strip it bare and play it in the manner of ‘Killing an Arab’ and it might have worked – but we’ll never know..

2/10 – Desperation taking hold

Simple Minds

I said that you have to take a flavour of the song and run with it, didn’t I? I want to hate this so much but my feet just get persuaded by what sounds like a John Digweed/Sasha type remix. But Simple Minds? Surely not – this sounds nothing like the band I knew and variously loved and hated through the 80’s. I score this highly, because there is nothing recognisable about the music other than the chord progression, and that I think perhaps this has some merit as a dance track. The problem there is, that if you remember the original, this is an abomination, but to the children of the 90’s, this isn’t that bad. Someone has written in the comments that they should be tried in the Hague for crimes against art. If it polarises you to that extent, it must have some merit?

7/10 – Taking different roads.

Dave Gahan

You did read that correctly. I’d love to have a soundboard copy of this, because it is exactly what you wouldn’t expect from Basildon’s premier Barstable Baritone. Dave takes the song and makes it his own – even though this is a live rendition. I think it benefits from not being over-thought, too.

8/10 – There’s still this appeal

Susanna and the Magic Orchestra

Sublime. This is deconstructed to the point where you are forced to listen to the words, and the nuances and meanings behind them are bought into a sharp focus. The spartan musical backdrop adds an ethereal quality to the song – it no longer relies on the adrenaline reaction of the original; this song requires that you engage with it on a cerebral level. If this song were a work of art, it would be behind alarmed glass doors in the Louvre.

10/10 Love of this version tears me apart.

Tags entertainment, music, nick drake

Categories 80's, Humour, Joy Division, Music

The youth of today….bless them. Or something…

April 21, 2012 //

A year or so ago, the 14 year old decided that a new bed would make the ideal christmas present for her room. A loft bed, so that she could have her computer and other stuff [*] under it. Quite the sensible present. We hunted high and low in our search even to the point of driving all the way to Ikea in snow, the like of which had not been seen since….oh, the previous year maybe. Ikea kindly told us they were out of stock. Ask me how I know they have an online stock checker now.

In the grand tradition of shopping, the item you require is always located in the place you initially dismissed as ‘no, they’ll never have it’ – or it will be located at the farthest point to you in your shopping parabola. I think, if a university wanted to pay me enough money as a research fellow, I could come up with a set of shopping theories, all of which would be absolutely splendid, but as with all research, it is simply something we inherently knew anyway.

The journey back was fraught (I mentioned the snow, did I? Rasmussen would have blanched. No, really) , and as a ‘let’s exhaust all the possibilities wile we’re out sort of thing’, we called in at our local DIY place, 2 miles from home. Focus is now defunct, and I think what follows might shine a light on their eventual demise. There, glittering in all it’s brushed metal glory stood the last loft bed in the country.

I cursed a little bit when I found out that, as it was a display model, we’d have to disassemble it ourselves, and brightened slightly when the price was reduced as it was an ex-display model. We left a deposit, and made the intrepid journey of oh, 2 miles home, glowing in the knowledge that we had found and located the bed.

Christmas eve dawned crisp and even (actually, floppy and a bit wobbly, to be slightly more honest about it) and we made out way to the DIY store. We were armed with those Ikea hex-head cranked spanners that everyone has in their draws, and we were grateful for them and for the ubiquity of design as we unbolted the bed. The bed was nearly down and on the trolley, there were just a few of these pesky screws to undo. We hadn’t bought a screwdriver, so we asked one of the DIY shop’s staff – a callow youth – if he could find us a Philips screwdriver. “Of course” he said, and bounded off as only teenagers can,…

He returned, and related to us apologetically and earnestly that he could find any Phillips, but would a Stanley do instead?

[*] Other stuff. This turns out to be a rats nest of hair straighteners, hairdryers, lava lamp leads and as many things that you can plug into a socket, imbued with make up and hairspray residue. Add to that heady mix, plates, glasses and half eaten bags of crisps (the other half presumably carpet food), and you wonder about what actually makes them the fairer sex? Tracey Emin? A mere pretender compared to this room….

Categories Uncategorized

Daft lyrics #2 in an occasional series

April 6, 2012 //

The Final Countdown.

I know, I could be considered xenophobic for this – after all, this was written by a Swede, and so I should forgive it and walk away from the temptation to rubbish someone’s efforts that aren’t in our mother tongue. But, no – Benny and Bjorn wrote sensible and well constructed English lyrics, Roxette did the same (um….bites lip) and of course, who can forget the classic lyrical gymnastics of the Cardigans (“I need some fine wine, and you, you need to be nicer” is utterly brilliant, in my opinion). The Final Countdown, then, has been knocked and laughed at for so many years, it is almost the “Hi Ho Silver Lining” of cheesy 80’s hair rock – played at the end of the evening by way of lampoonery. Although, thinking about it, interchangeable with any Bon Jovi or Whitesnake track you can care to mention. Poodle-rockers, I salute you all – you have donated a wealth of lyrics to take the piss out of. Mr Coverdale? Back of the queue, sir, you’ll have your own article in due course.

The music – I have no problem with, it is the benchmark for formulaic 80’s rock that is defined as Hair Rock. Poodle rock sounds better to me though. To the lyric then. I can’t be bothered to type out the refrain (some would call it the chorus, but no, it is a refrain , no more) but here is the second verse, I think.

We’re heading for Venus.

Why? Lads, it has a surface temperature of 460c, an atmospheric pressure 80 times that of earth, an atmosphere of dubious gases, and clouds. Lots of them. Are you stupid?

And still we stand tall

Which way is ‘up’ in space, exactly?

Because maybe they’ve seen us, and welcome us all. Yeah.

So, they are looking at us? Who? Venusians? Small rodents called Gerald?

With so many light years to go

Here’s the thing, Joey. I think Venus is something like 25 million miles away from us, and in terms of light years, it is about, give or take a bit – 3 minutes away. That is an epic fail in terms of your astrophysical calculations, right there.

And things to be found

You’re not really getting the nature of space, are you? Empty as fsck, it is…

I’m sure that we’ll all miss her so

Who? You’ve just introduced a random female into the song. Good grief….

It’s the final countdown.

This begs the question what you all sang about in the penultimate countdown, doesn’t it?.

I think I rest my case. If you want space rock, try Brock and Calvert – they’ve been (lyrically) doing it better for years.

Categories 80's, Humour, Language, Music, Uncategorized

An acquaintance is a friend you haven’t made yet

March 22, 2012 //

Before the internet, when landlines ruled the world, when queueing for the phone box at the end of the road was a social event in itself, and Buzby would inform you that “It’s cheaper after six”, we tended to manage our social lives around the telephone. Imagine a world without Facebook, or without email and Google. Those of you who can remember will be nodding sagely, and remembering about how you’d meet new people through the medium of the pub, and friends of friends. This was proper socialising – you used this interaction with people face to face to find out about them. You’d do this at work, or at play – you maintained a mental list of people you knew who did this or did that, who had a brother that had welding equipment, and you used this knowledge – at work, school or at play.

Now, back then, if you were in a band, you’d advertise for a like minded muso on a notice board at school, or a rehearsal studio or plain just ask around. If you were serious/pretentious (in this context, the terms are interchangeable), you’d advertise in the back of the New Musical Express or Melody Maker, and some weirdo would turn up….but I digress, and I have yet to write my rant about drummers. The ad would run something like this :

Bassist required, must be into Ultravox/Psychedlic Furs/Only Ones for gigging band [*]. No Grebos, metal freaks or skinheads need apply. We’re serious and ready for the big time – are you? call Mark on 01375 123456 (if my Mum answers, hang up).

You get the picture. We knew a lot of people by reputation, and often, the friend of a friend network would yield the phone number of that person because he was going out with the drummers sisters wife (think about it…) who worked in the same shop as your next door neighbour’s cousin. Easy, yes? I think that we held and processed more information about our peers than we do today. The Social Network? No, it is nothing more than a replacement for the queue for the phone box at the end of the road.

I joined a band as a bass player (invited by the keyboard player who was an old schoolmate whose Mum had been a girlfriend of my Dad before I was born – see how this works?) and our stated aim was to become as good as if not better than another local band who had just had a musical difference with this band’s guitarist and said keyboard player. That was your motivation back then, to be as good as if not better than a perceived rival band. A rival band was one you’d been in and got kicked out of, or they’d had press coverage and you hadn’t. I had a one to one rivalry there straight out of the box, with the bass player of that band. Simple as that. We went to see them play, and then I realised that I’d seen them years before. I noted that my rival, such as he was, was older than me, and not to put too fine a point on it, better than I was. In fact, this chap was the best bassist I’d seen in years, he could sing, and there was no competition really, but you have to have something to aim for, right? We shared the same tin hut to rehearse in and that he stored his bass bin there, and I used it when I couldn’t be bothered to lug my amp about it. I thought he knew, but I figured I’d be for the high jump if he caught me. Unabashed, I soldiered on in this band, and I recruited someone I knew who’d had the same piano teacher as me who was into the same stuff and was presently looking for his big break out of the mundane world of hairdressing. Keeping up at the back?

We played one gig, and imploded in a myriad of autistic differences (similar to artistic differences, but we were unable to articulate them) and the hairdresser went off to be famous, and I went on to join another friend of a bloke who managed a bunch of lads who were into Paul Weller, who needed showing how it was all done. I played extensively with this bunch – rode in the back of transits, drank a lot of Pils and Brandy, tried to coax the drummer and the bassist take the same drugs at the same time (there is little worse than playing live with a speeding drummer and a stoned bassist) and generally had a lot of fun for a few years.

Fast forward to a few decades later, and I found that this perceived rival of mine had made a comment of a website where copies of his album have been downloaded. Did I mention he was a lot better than me? Well, he achieved the holy grail of a record deal, and now in the present day was both trying to discourage it’s download (you can’t buy the original and no, it wasn’t ever out on CD) and at the same time trying to come to terms with the fact that there were still people out there that liked it.

I emailed him. Something was bugging me about a misconception I’d had when I was younger. It occurred to me that I’d not spoken to him because I (yep, me…) had decided he’d not be much interested in talking to someone younger and less talented than him. Especially not someone who had regularly purloined his equipment. Weird, thinking back on it, but it made sense at the time.

Last sunday, he come over for sunday lunch, and we had a great time, telling stories and reminiscing about the old days. It was one of those times that an acquaintance becomes the friend you haven’t met yet.

The serious bit – and a lecture to my children.

Just because someone appears to be better at something than you, don’t assume they aren’t an approachable human being. There is almost certainly a friend there that you haven’t met yet. Smile and say hello, make their acquaintance – if you don’t, it might take you another 30 years. As Ian Dury would have it “What a waste”.

Slainche, Kirk. You really have to self-release that second album, you know. Anyway, the rehearsal studio is booked for a laugh and a bash when you come back to the UK for a holiday….

[*] An utterly meaningless term, which could mean that you are actually gigging, you plan to gig, you may gig if it all works out – the phrase covered the musical situation of a band so well, it is probably one of the biggest muso lies ever told…. that and “no, never heard that before. You think it sounds the same? Well, I never”….

Categories Uncategorized

New Adventures in Hi-Fi.

September 22, 2011 //

Retro HiFi
Some years ago – 1975 to be precise, I used to hang out with my friend Tony. We shared a similar taste in music – we still do, if the truth is told, and the best things about hanging out at his house was his Dad’s hi-fi. Picture the scene if you will, a be-flared and platformed Richard whose records are played on a dubious BSR deck with a decidedly odd stereo setup (one channel wired through the record player, the other through the amp of an ‘Elizabethan’ reel to reel over the other side of the room – stereo yes, but woefully unbalanced) experiencing his first exposure to ‘proper’ hi-fi.

Tony’s Dad’s hi-fi was something that I had never seen before – separates. Not a ‘Fidelity’ or ‘Steepletone’ hi-fi, this was separates. A Goldring Lenco deck, a Goodmans Module 80 amp and (I think) Celestion Ditton speakers, it was a symphony of teak and chrome and was, I still believe, a piece of installation art.

It was on this hi-fi marvel that I heard – properly, mind – Led Zeppelin 4, and was struck by the fact that there seemed to be patches of, well, nothing. There was no noise between tracks, only what I can describe as a blackness, a void. No sound. The detail of Jimmy Page’s fingers scraping on the strings on first part of ‘Stairway To Heaven’ was completely new to me. I wouldn’t call it a religious experience, but it still stays with me as the first time I properly appreciated recorded music. I’d almost call it a St Paul-type revelation, but you tend not to get too many of those in your teens….

Over the years, I’ve I have been dabbling with hi-fi – I prefer vinyl to CD, but I’m not that bothered about it. Frankly, the prices of vinyl have escalated now to the point where I won’t buy it unless the offending article is in really good condition. To my ear, CDs have always sounded a bit tinny and jar like a dentist’s waiting room. I have a reasonable setup – Linn LP12, NAD amp and a pair of speakers whose name eludes me for the minute. They are referred to, lovingly, by the family as the pillars of hercules. This setup makes me happy enough, but I have this nagging doubt that I’ve not yet achieved the same level as Tony’s Dad’s setup did. That, and the fact that I believe that my ears are on their way out has led me to try and put together a taste-test.

This test should put that nagging doubt to rest once and for all; I have set about recreating that setup that first moved me, and to that end, I’ve acquired a Goodmans Module 80, a pair of Celestion Dittons and these will hooked up to my trusty old Thorens TD150 turntable. I figure that is as close as it gets without absolutely replicating the setup, and I like to think that my old Thorens deck is a match for the Goldring Lenco. The fun should begin soon, after all there is no rush to do this, and I suspect I’ll need a day to set it all up properly. Interestingly, I’m having to make up some cables to connect the amp to the turntable and speakers – DIN plugs are no longer easily acquired.

The two pieces of music will be Led Zeppelin 4, and Shine on you crazy diamond parts 1 to whatever. I shall report back on my aural adventures in another posting. As David Gray (he of the incredibly mobile head) says, ‘see you on the other side’….

Categories 70's, Music

Quad-Rant

April 26, 2011 //

Just when I thought that my ears were going the way of my eyesight, heart and feet, along came a new musical experience that has one foot in the past and one foot in the future. I refer to quad, and to the army of brilliant chaps who have transformed the quadraphonic output of artists from the 70’s into media playable on a modern home cinema system.

I’ve listened to Dark Side Of the Moon more times than I care to recall – I suspect ‘Us and Them’ will be played at my humanist death celebration – and I am probably note-perfect on every aspect of it. Except the drums, but they aren’t really music, are they? But, let’s not get me diverted into my rants about drummers, there is time a-plenty for that. Playing DSotM is a bit like having an old friend over for lunch; comfortable and easy to get along with but with no real surprises.

I’ve got a copy of DSotM converted to DTS that I can play on my living room cinema system. It is the original 4 channel recording, encoded onto DTS and thence to the four speakers as originally intended. I am impressed, and that happens all too rarely these days.

A bit of background – most living rooms now boast a cinema sound system now, but when quad was around in the early to mid 70’s, I had absolutely no exposure to it. I was lucky to even get a sniff of a stereo, let alone – quadraphonic – or four speaker sound. In many ways I am glad of that, because now I can discover it through the quad mixes of albums I knew, loved and literally played to death [1]. Being so intimate with each piece of work means that you can spot the subtle nuances of a quad mix almost straight away. The Alan Parsons quad mix of Dark Side of the Moon is no exception. You know the voices? Well, they are different. I believe they are clearer – you can make out what the announcer is saying in ‘On the run’. There are guitar parts I didn’t know existed, and it is just more involving.

It isn’t just old hippy prog rock bands that made the most of quad – Simon and Garfuunkel’s Bridge over Troubled Water (I much prefer Half-man Half-Biscuit’s Trouble Over Bridgewater as a title, if I am honest) is quite glorious and…oh..that word again. Involving. I’ll shut up lest I sound like a beardie hi-fi journalist who is convinced that he can hear the difference between types of mains cables. It always strikes me as the only qualification to write for the Hi-fi press is a ownership of a dictionary, sandals, a catweazle-like demeanour and a diploma in peddling snake oil. [2]

So, how do you get this new loveliness? Simple – enter ‘quad’ into the search engine of any well known torrent site – I find the green demon quite useful, and pull down the file that you require. Once downloaded, you’ll need to burn the file onto a DVD (important this…) and then play it in your DTS surround sound system. That is all. Oh, a fast internet connection helps….

Try a few of them, and see what you think. Excuse me while I nod sagely to Joni Mitchell’s Hissing of Summer Lawns. I’m expecting to smile….the summer of 1976 is still with me, I suspect.

[1] I did actually destroy side 4 of Quadrophenia by wearing it out. Ironic, really, that there is no Quad mix of Quadrophenia. And my copy of ‘Who’s Next’ is utterly devastated too….

[2] There is another blog about the perils of venturing into Sevenoaks HiFi unaccompanied (yes, let out on my own, and without idiot mittens), which has the moral – believe and trust nothing but your ears.

Categories 70's, Music