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Saturday, 23 July 2011
Monday, 28 March 2011
Net losses
Google started life as a research project just fifteen years ago, Facebook celebrates its mere seventh birthday this year and Twitter is barely out of short trousers and for the music fan, the Internet really has changed everything. An invaluable resource of listening, discovery and information, the days of waiting for a magazine to update you on your favourite bands are gone. Now we simply use a website, a social network or a blog.
But is this really a good thing?
It’s easy to adopt a contrary viewpoint and fetishise physical magazines but former big names, Melody Maker, The Face and Smash Hits have all fallen by the wayside. This may not seem like big news, but Melody Maker alone led to the formation of Depeche Mode, Suede and The Jimi Hendrix Experience. It’s true that magazines used to fail in the pre-Internet era too, but magazine readership has been decreasing for a good while. Last year, circulation of the NME fell by 17.3%.
So, now the value of magazines as a source of news has all but disappeared, they’re more of a niche interest. David Hepworth launched Q, Mojo and The Word Magazine (as well as The Rocking Vicar), and has observed a staggering change in the role of the music magazine:
“The economic basis of the music magazine used to be: readers who needed to buy them to keep up and advertisers who needed them to reach record buyers. Both groups have gone away. In their place you have: readers who like to read and advertisers who need to reach this valuable minority. It's not the same.”
So, how do music magazines buck the trend? Why should people pay for writing when the Internet is full of music websites offering their content for free? One idea is brand extension; you’re not just buying a magazine, but entering into something much bigger. For example, as well as a monthly magazine, The Word gives away cover mounted CDs with each issue, releases a weekly podcast and has a thriving online readers’ forum. These extras don’t directly generate money, but they do make readers more likely to continue to buy the magazine. This is the Holy Grail for magazine publishers: subscriptions from content. David Hepworth explains:
“We really value the site, the podcast, the Twitter feed and all the other means of interacting with the readership but the only one we can get any kind of revenue for at the moment is the magazine. I think they make people feel closer to the magazine, which is good.”
Equally vital to a loyal readership is a consistently high standard of professional writing. So it’s no accident that the biggest music magazines don’t make all their content freely available online. Most UK newspapers make their content available for free via their websites but expect people to pay for the physical edition too. Unsurprisingly, this seems not to be a sustainable business strategy, and advertising revenue isn’t filling in the gap. We’re in very real danger of welcoming a generation that believes all recorded music and quality journalism is and should be free. Eamonn Forde is a freelance music journalist and is worried:
“I think people need to know that it [art] has to be paid for, whether that’s by handing over money in a newsagent’s or a paywall payment every month. But the culture of free, where everything’s free and everything’s going to be paid for by advertising, what you’re going to get is that all culture’s going to be like Metro.”
Metro is a free newspaper distributed throughout the UK, where it’s typically found in train and underground stations. Thanks to the fact it’s free, it’s advertising heavy and features lighter news items, rather than hard-hitting, factual reporting. We can assume Forde isn’t a fan: “It’s going to be this say-nothing, kind-of-press-release, unquestioning, uncritical smug culture and that’s bad for culture overall. I think quality products should come with a quality price tag. I think Metro is like an early warning from history and there is the thought that we get the culture that we deserve. But if that’s culture, then creatives will go somewhere else because they have to make money.”
So, if newspapers and magazines need to make money to stay in business, but their readership expects at least some content for free, how does the professional writer feel about their work being given away?
Jude Rogers is a freelance journalist who writes about music for The Word, The Guardian, The Times and website The Quietus. She recognises not everything can be free, but having your work widely available has its advantages:
“Everything can be linked on Twitter, which is really helpful to spread your work around. I love the fact my stuff’s on The Guardian and people can read it and if you want to pitch your work, you can say, ‘Look, here’s my stuff on The Guardian‘.”
She also has first-hand experience of the News International paywall, which charges for access to their titles:
“I did an interview, last summer with a Tory MP called Louise Bagshawe who also writes trashy, holiday, chick-lit novels, and she came out with some really juicy stuff and I thought everyone would be talking about it, but it was behind the paywall. It’s frustrating when people can’t read my stuff; in a professional capacity I’m more than happy for people to read it for free online.”
It would be a little premature to read physical newspapers and magazines their last rites just yet, but it is a fact that the current trends don’t look good and need to be addressed. A combination of professionalism, goodwill, advertising and innovation is just about enabling the industry muddle along, but surely that can’t last.
For the print media, the Internet has been a cures and a blessing – opening up limitless possibilities while making awakening the industry’s darkest fears.
Of course, there is a future for newspapers and magazines. This is the information age after all. But whether that future lies with a website, behind a paywall, downloaded to a slate or transmitted directly into your readers’ cerebral cortex is a long way from certain. There’s a bewildering wind blowing through the business but when the storm subsides, someone will have put their finger on the new model and how to make it work and pay. That person is almost certainly working in the media right now. We can only hope they realise their greater purpose very soon.
Joe Rivers, March 2011
But is this really a good thing?
It’s easy to adopt a contrary viewpoint and fetishise physical magazines but former big names, Melody Maker, The Face and Smash Hits have all fallen by the wayside. This may not seem like big news, but Melody Maker alone led to the formation of Depeche Mode, Suede and The Jimi Hendrix Experience. It’s true that magazines used to fail in the pre-Internet era too, but magazine readership has been decreasing for a good while. Last year, circulation of the NME fell by 17.3%.
So, now the value of magazines as a source of news has all but disappeared, they’re more of a niche interest. David Hepworth launched Q, Mojo and The Word Magazine (as well as The Rocking Vicar), and has observed a staggering change in the role of the music magazine:
“The economic basis of the music magazine used to be: readers who needed to buy them to keep up and advertisers who needed them to reach record buyers. Both groups have gone away. In their place you have: readers who like to read and advertisers who need to reach this valuable minority. It's not the same.”
So, how do music magazines buck the trend? Why should people pay for writing when the Internet is full of music websites offering their content for free? One idea is brand extension; you’re not just buying a magazine, but entering into something much bigger. For example, as well as a monthly magazine, The Word gives away cover mounted CDs with each issue, releases a weekly podcast and has a thriving online readers’ forum. These extras don’t directly generate money, but they do make readers more likely to continue to buy the magazine. This is the Holy Grail for magazine publishers: subscriptions from content. David Hepworth explains:
“We really value the site, the podcast, the Twitter feed and all the other means of interacting with the readership but the only one we can get any kind of revenue for at the moment is the magazine. I think they make people feel closer to the magazine, which is good.”
Equally vital to a loyal readership is a consistently high standard of professional writing. So it’s no accident that the biggest music magazines don’t make all their content freely available online. Most UK newspapers make their content available for free via their websites but expect people to pay for the physical edition too. Unsurprisingly, this seems not to be a sustainable business strategy, and advertising revenue isn’t filling in the gap. We’re in very real danger of welcoming a generation that believes all recorded music and quality journalism is and should be free. Eamonn Forde is a freelance music journalist and is worried:
“I think people need to know that it [art] has to be paid for, whether that’s by handing over money in a newsagent’s or a paywall payment every month. But the culture of free, where everything’s free and everything’s going to be paid for by advertising, what you’re going to get is that all culture’s going to be like Metro.”
Metro is a free newspaper distributed throughout the UK, where it’s typically found in train and underground stations. Thanks to the fact it’s free, it’s advertising heavy and features lighter news items, rather than hard-hitting, factual reporting. We can assume Forde isn’t a fan: “It’s going to be this say-nothing, kind-of-press-release, unquestioning, uncritical smug culture and that’s bad for culture overall. I think quality products should come with a quality price tag. I think Metro is like an early warning from history and there is the thought that we get the culture that we deserve. But if that’s culture, then creatives will go somewhere else because they have to make money.”
So, if newspapers and magazines need to make money to stay in business, but their readership expects at least some content for free, how does the professional writer feel about their work being given away?
Jude Rogers is a freelance journalist who writes about music for The Word, The Guardian, The Times and website The Quietus. She recognises not everything can be free, but having your work widely available has its advantages:
“Everything can be linked on Twitter, which is really helpful to spread your work around. I love the fact my stuff’s on The Guardian and people can read it and if you want to pitch your work, you can say, ‘Look, here’s my stuff on The Guardian‘.”
She also has first-hand experience of the News International paywall, which charges for access to their titles:
“I did an interview, last summer with a Tory MP called Louise Bagshawe who also writes trashy, holiday, chick-lit novels, and she came out with some really juicy stuff and I thought everyone would be talking about it, but it was behind the paywall. It’s frustrating when people can’t read my stuff; in a professional capacity I’m more than happy for people to read it for free online.”
It would be a little premature to read physical newspapers and magazines their last rites just yet, but it is a fact that the current trends don’t look good and need to be addressed. A combination of professionalism, goodwill, advertising and innovation is just about enabling the industry muddle along, but surely that can’t last.
For the print media, the Internet has been a cures and a blessing – opening up limitless possibilities while making awakening the industry’s darkest fears.
Of course, there is a future for newspapers and magazines. This is the information age after all. But whether that future lies with a website, behind a paywall, downloaded to a slate or transmitted directly into your readers’ cerebral cortex is a long way from certain. There’s a bewildering wind blowing through the business but when the storm subsides, someone will have put their finger on the new model and how to make it work and pay. That person is almost certainly working in the media right now. We can only hope they realise their greater purpose very soon.
Joe Rivers, March 2011
Are you sitting comfortably ...?
Can I ask you this? When you’re attending a rock concert (not an 02 Academy club style affair, but a more sedate allocated seating event) at what point do you fetch drinks, buy food or have a pee?
If you go right at the start when everyone’s arriving, good for you. That’s when I use the facilities too. Or perhaps you attend the bar and lavatory between the support and the main act. Again, perfect choice, that’s what the interval is for - no argument whatsoever.
However, if you wait until a band is on stage and your fellow ticket holders are concentrating on the music, then push your way past the entire row, ensuring you shove your rear end into the faces of its occupants, before returning five minutes later with large beakers of beer, bags of Doritos and even pizza, repeating the process in reverse, can I ask you this?
What in holy hell do you think you’re doing?
A gig by a 'name' act now costs upwards of £35. Like me, you paid to attend. Unlike me, you have little or no interest in the performance, the band or their work. You can’t have. Because if you did, you’d sit and watch and listen and enjoy. The band is likely to be on stage for little more than 90 minutes. Are you really unable to pass that time without alcohol, snacks or several wee-wees? As if you were six?
This week I was very happy to attend the show staged by The Feeling and Squeeze at the Royal Albert Hall in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust. The RHA is a great venue. It’s not literally ‘in the round’ but because of the circular building, it has that intimate feel. It’s high and plush and thanks to roof-mounted baffles has a very crisp sound. Which is just as well, as Danny from The Feeling had a noticeably heavy cold (he called it flu, the big softy) and his projection needed that lift.
When I first heard this band on the wireless, I was rather underwhelmed. Had I never caught them live, that’s pretty much where I’d have rested. But after four evenings in their presence, I really like them. They remind me of those early 80s new-wave acts like The Jags and The Knack – all
skinny ties, wedge hairdos and uplifting power pop love songs. What’s more, they seem to have the enviable ability to build instantly memorable and lovable tunes with lyrics in similar territory to those of Neil Hannon or Paul Heaton.
The Feeling look good, love to show off and genuinely enjoy themselves. That’s a spirit you quickly find very infectious.
Between bands, those of us not at the bar or the smallest room in the Hall received a spirited presentation on the work of the TCC, including testimonials from two young men whose illnesses had been tempered by the charity’s work. So I’d just like to give a special mention to the two women sitting in front of us, who spent this entire section (and indeed most of the rest of the evening) nattering incessantly about their dull careers and aimless office lives. Thanks for that, it added to the atmosphere and experience no end.
Being tagged ‘the new Lennon & McCartney’ is no blessing. It does nothing to manage people’s expectations and insults the originality and personality of a band’s work. Squeeze have been party to this lazy labeling, but they shouldn’t – and probably don’t - care. After all, it should be obvious to any fan of popular music that Chris Difford and Glen Tilbrook have spent over 30 years crafting a collection of songs so unbelievably attractive, they defy idle comparisons. As they canter through ‘Is That Love?’, ‘Annie Get Your Gun’, ‘Black Coffee In Bed’ and over a dozen more stone cold gems, it’s the undiminished clarity and idiosyncratic tone of Tilbrook’s vocal one notices most. ‘Slap & Tickle’s bridge (“If you ever change your mind …”) is as nasally and brilliantly sharp as the venerable single version. The man’s larynx is either touched by a divine hand or the result of regular hot water, honey, lemon and Scotch.
By the way, alongside their regular cohorts, a 26-piece string section – very appropriate considering the venue, accompanied Glen and Chris. Now I’m a big fan of the old violins and cellos in pop music. From Spector to The Manic Street Preachers, they rarely fail to get me all roused up. And their addition to the comedy and tragedy of the Squeeze repertoire worked perfectly well. But to say this mini-orchestra was on stage throughout the set, they seemed strangely underused, only kicking in about a quarter of the way through. It would be churlish to suggest an opportunity was missed, but that was the niggling doubt by the time ‘Cool For Cats’ tore the house down. Perhaps it’s an idea needing more development, because there’s definitely an exciting kinship between Squeeze’s ear-worm melodies and a wash of orchestral arrangement, but they're not quite connecting just yet.
There's no doubt, if they choose it, Squeeze's story will run and run, such is the affection they generated here. And there is no reason The Feeling’s third album shouldn’t see their stock rising nicely.
But whether there’s a future for this punter and the modern concert going audience is something that is very much more uncertain.
Magnus Shaw, March 2011
If you go right at the start when everyone’s arriving, good for you. That’s when I use the facilities too. Or perhaps you attend the bar and lavatory between the support and the main act. Again, perfect choice, that’s what the interval is for - no argument whatsoever.
However, if you wait until a band is on stage and your fellow ticket holders are concentrating on the music, then push your way past the entire row, ensuring you shove your rear end into the faces of its occupants, before returning five minutes later with large beakers of beer, bags of Doritos and even pizza, repeating the process in reverse, can I ask you this?
What in holy hell do you think you’re doing?
A gig by a 'name' act now costs upwards of £35. Like me, you paid to attend. Unlike me, you have little or no interest in the performance, the band or their work. You can’t have. Because if you did, you’d sit and watch and listen and enjoy. The band is likely to be on stage for little more than 90 minutes. Are you really unable to pass that time without alcohol, snacks or several wee-wees? As if you were six?
This week I was very happy to attend the show staged by The Feeling and Squeeze at the Royal Albert Hall in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust. The RHA is a great venue. It’s not literally ‘in the round’ but because of the circular building, it has that intimate feel. It’s high and plush and thanks to roof-mounted baffles has a very crisp sound. Which is just as well, as Danny from The Feeling had a noticeably heavy cold (he called it flu, the big softy) and his projection needed that lift.
When I first heard this band on the wireless, I was rather underwhelmed. Had I never caught them live, that’s pretty much where I’d have rested. But after four evenings in their presence, I really like them. They remind me of those early 80s new-wave acts like The Jags and The Knack – all
skinny ties, wedge hairdos and uplifting power pop love songs. What’s more, they seem to have the enviable ability to build instantly memorable and lovable tunes with lyrics in similar territory to those of Neil Hannon or Paul Heaton.
The Feeling look good, love to show off and genuinely enjoy themselves. That’s a spirit you quickly find very infectious.
Between bands, those of us not at the bar or the smallest room in the Hall received a spirited presentation on the work of the TCC, including testimonials from two young men whose illnesses had been tempered by the charity’s work. So I’d just like to give a special mention to the two women sitting in front of us, who spent this entire section (and indeed most of the rest of the evening) nattering incessantly about their dull careers and aimless office lives. Thanks for that, it added to the atmosphere and experience no end.
Being tagged ‘the new Lennon & McCartney’ is no blessing. It does nothing to manage people’s expectations and insults the originality and personality of a band’s work. Squeeze have been party to this lazy labeling, but they shouldn’t – and probably don’t - care. After all, it should be obvious to any fan of popular music that Chris Difford and Glen Tilbrook have spent over 30 years crafting a collection of songs so unbelievably attractive, they defy idle comparisons. As they canter through ‘Is That Love?’, ‘Annie Get Your Gun’, ‘Black Coffee In Bed’ and over a dozen more stone cold gems, it’s the undiminished clarity and idiosyncratic tone of Tilbrook’s vocal one notices most. ‘Slap & Tickle’s bridge (“If you ever change your mind …”) is as nasally and brilliantly sharp as the venerable single version. The man’s larynx is either touched by a divine hand or the result of regular hot water, honey, lemon and Scotch.
By the way, alongside their regular cohorts, a 26-piece string section – very appropriate considering the venue, accompanied Glen and Chris. Now I’m a big fan of the old violins and cellos in pop music. From Spector to The Manic Street Preachers, they rarely fail to get me all roused up. And their addition to the comedy and tragedy of the Squeeze repertoire worked perfectly well. But to say this mini-orchestra was on stage throughout the set, they seemed strangely underused, only kicking in about a quarter of the way through. It would be churlish to suggest an opportunity was missed, but that was the niggling doubt by the time ‘Cool For Cats’ tore the house down. Perhaps it’s an idea needing more development, because there’s definitely an exciting kinship between Squeeze’s ear-worm melodies and a wash of orchestral arrangement, but they're not quite connecting just yet.
There's no doubt, if they choose it, Squeeze's story will run and run, such is the affection they generated here. And there is no reason The Feeling’s third album shouldn’t see their stock rising nicely.
But whether there’s a future for this punter and the modern concert going audience is something that is very much more uncertain.
Magnus Shaw, March 2011
Eat my sport
Richard Keys opened the huge, overwhelming chasm of the show he presents with Andy Gray by issuing a plea for callers to debate the great footballing matters of the day – including MK Dons’ (of the third tier in English football) splendid victory over Peterborough the previous evening.
From the hosannas of the Champions League to the Denbigh Stadium in Milton Keynes in five weeks.
After the supplication for listeners to call in, there was a queue of football people waiting to feel a metaphorical arm round the shoulder and a 19th hole style of chit chat. It would be over stating it to call them interviews.
Craig Bellamy; Karl Robinson, youthful manager of the previously mentioned MK Dons; and Ugo Ehiogu. The drums were beating to a rhythm of favours called in.
Bellamy and Ehiogu said nothing; Robinson bounded along like a puppy off the leash in the spring sunshine, but also said nothing.
As pretenders for the crown held by Five Live, talkSPORT are caught between the longing for credibility and the struggle for the legal tender. Keys(ey) and Gray, there for the former ambition, adopt their Sky Sports personas with the comfort it brings them in this not so brave, not so new, world of downsizing. They chase and reach for testosterone like bulldozers chasing butterflies. Bulldozers that are low on fuel and lost in dreams of the past.
Riffing, or flying by the seats of their respective pants, whichever you prefer, through the first forty five minutes, there were in fact, no callers.
Keys continues his matey, sit down lawn mower, Sunday roast, man of the people role. Gray makes no contribution for several minutes at a stretch, to the point of a jolting reminder he’s still there when he generously supplies an over-hearty “Ha, Ha, Ha” to a weak anecdote or dreary pun.
I went away, got on with life, drove across London, pushed the preset a couple of hours later, and they were still there; talking about Leyton Orient.
There had been no breaking news. Nothing had happened. They were talking about Barry Hearn as if their lives had always intended to be this way. They sound like broken men.
This is the herd of elephants in the talkSPORT studio and they aren’t only trampling Keys(ey) and Gray. The reality is, in sporting circles in the vast, gaping expanse of any given week, nothing happens. Transfers are embargoed. Players train in security heavy compounds from which they drive out furiously, hammering the gas, behind their tinted shades, in their Hummers with tinted windows.
Presenters are left hanging around like mice outside the lions’ cage, hoping that a shard of discarded flesh will tumble their way.
A UK radio station dedicated to sport can only talk about the last game and preview the next one. To string out that premise over a twenty four rolling format is like trying to fill a hall of mirrors with smoke.
Keys(ey) and Gray try and fill fifteen hours of this enormous hole of limited possibilities each week.
They fill it with desperation and abandoned hope.
Terence Dackombe, March 2011
From the hosannas of the Champions League to the Denbigh Stadium in Milton Keynes in five weeks.
After the supplication for listeners to call in, there was a queue of football people waiting to feel a metaphorical arm round the shoulder and a 19th hole style of chit chat. It would be over stating it to call them interviews.
Craig Bellamy; Karl Robinson, youthful manager of the previously mentioned MK Dons; and Ugo Ehiogu. The drums were beating to a rhythm of favours called in.
Bellamy and Ehiogu said nothing; Robinson bounded along like a puppy off the leash in the spring sunshine, but also said nothing.
As pretenders for the crown held by Five Live, talkSPORT are caught between the longing for credibility and the struggle for the legal tender. Keys(ey) and Gray, there for the former ambition, adopt their Sky Sports personas with the comfort it brings them in this not so brave, not so new, world of downsizing. They chase and reach for testosterone like bulldozers chasing butterflies. Bulldozers that are low on fuel and lost in dreams of the past.
Riffing, or flying by the seats of their respective pants, whichever you prefer, through the first forty five minutes, there were in fact, no callers.
Keys continues his matey, sit down lawn mower, Sunday roast, man of the people role. Gray makes no contribution for several minutes at a stretch, to the point of a jolting reminder he’s still there when he generously supplies an over-hearty “Ha, Ha, Ha” to a weak anecdote or dreary pun.
I went away, got on with life, drove across London, pushed the preset a couple of hours later, and they were still there; talking about Leyton Orient.
There had been no breaking news. Nothing had happened. They were talking about Barry Hearn as if their lives had always intended to be this way. They sound like broken men.
This is the herd of elephants in the talkSPORT studio and they aren’t only trampling Keys(ey) and Gray. The reality is, in sporting circles in the vast, gaping expanse of any given week, nothing happens. Transfers are embargoed. Players train in security heavy compounds from which they drive out furiously, hammering the gas, behind their tinted shades, in their Hummers with tinted windows.
Presenters are left hanging around like mice outside the lions’ cage, hoping that a shard of discarded flesh will tumble their way.
A UK radio station dedicated to sport can only talk about the last game and preview the next one. To string out that premise over a twenty four rolling format is like trying to fill a hall of mirrors with smoke.
Keys(ey) and Gray try and fill fifteen hours of this enormous hole of limited possibilities each week.
They fill it with desperation and abandoned hope.
Terence Dackombe, March 2011
Saturday, 12 March 2011
Go your own way
I imagine it will be one of those too-cheerful-by-half doctors who seem to run their surgeries from the studios of breakfast television that will write it. Probably launched in time for Valentine’s Day next year, “Your Guide To Maintaining A Partnership For Life”. Something like that, only with a sexier title, obviously.
There will be two people in this world who will definitely not be consulted as expert contributors to this no doubt great work. Stevie Nicks, and me.
As my haphazard history of relationships with women is of little interest beyond my world of memories of “It’s not you, it’s me” and “I hope we can still stay friends”, the reader may be pleased to know that we are instead going to try and unravel a period in the life of Stevie Nicks, when overlapping relationships, torrid break-ups and splintered friendships led to her spilling a million dollars on cocaine.
There’s a book and a movie to be written about that period in the lives of the members of Fleetwood Mac; the four years from when Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined, through to the disintegration following the recording of the ‘Tusk’ album.
An entanglement that would tie Pete Frame in knots.
There will be errors here as even Stevie herself says that she can’t quite recall the order of what happened when, and to whom.
In a way, the detail is the least important aspect of our quest, for this imbroglio of romance led to the construction and recording of one of the finest, most evocative, and emotionally draining songs in the history of pop music.
Stevie Nicks was the partner of Lindsey Buckingham. Their relationship was hitting turbulence.
Stevie began an affair with Don Henley, who, using his newly acquired riches, sent his Lear jet around the world to pick up Nicks, bring her to his house, and then ‘deliver’ her back to the Fleetwood Mac tour. Stevie Nicks was not the only dalliance that benefitted from this luxurious commute. The practice became so commonplace that Eagles’ roadies referred to the process as “Love ‘em and Lear ‘em”
At this time, Nicks was also seeing J.D. Souther, so when she became pregnant there was an understandable confusion; but Henley and Nicks both knew that he was the father, and together they decided an abortion was the answer. Stevie called the unborn child ‘Sara’ after her closest friend, Sara Recor.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the Henley/Nicks alliance didn’t survive, and Stevie began a relationship with a member of the Fleetwood Mac road crew.
Mick Fleetwood was married to Jenny Boyd and over a short period of time they were to divorce, remarry, and divorce again. Whilst Fleetwood and Boyd were still married but not too comfortably, he began a clandestine affair with Nicks. However, Fleetwood simultaneously started a relationship with Sara Recor (who was also married at the time).
Stevie found out, and naturally was deeply upset; yet she blamed Fleetwood, and for a time at least, her friendship with Recor survived, to the extent that Nicks wrote the song that encapsulates this era, with Sara Recor sitting beside her at the piano.
The original demo for ‘Sara’ ran to sixteen minutes and is an unburdening of the soul. There are verses alluding to each individual member of Fleetwood Mac and the song includes references to this extraordinary entanglement of lives, love, and pain.
Over the years reviewers have seized on the obvious but misleading conclusion that the song is wholly based on Stevie’s relationship with Recor, but researching many interviews and snippets from news sources and magazines reveals a wider panorama.
The 6:27 version of the song leaves the multiple references behind and brings a zoom lens towards the Henley, Nicks, Fleetwood, Recor quadrangle. Although the four sides are criss-crossed with overlapping triangles of love and regret.
Only those with a soul hewn from the toughest flint can fail to feel their heart flutter and a misting of the eyes as Stevie Nicks sets out an almost unbearable sadness of Janov proportions.
Fleetwood is a ‘great dark wing’; Recor is the poet in Nicks’ heart, and it is almost too much to hear her calling out to Henley, “When you build your house.... call me....”
There is no other performance of a song that attempts to unburden the writer and help find some peace as the operatic drama Stevie Nicks brings to ‘Sara’.
Yet the most poignant references are almost impossible to hear for the casual listener. In the fade, Stevie (and it is heart breaking) pleads to her terminated baby:
“All I ever wanted was to know you were dreaming; there’s a heartbeat. No it never really died; you never really died.”
Stevie and I share a problem. It is so much easier to build a house than build a relationship.
“When you build your house, call me.”
Terence Dackombe, March 2011
Sources:
Marc Eliot - To The Limit: The Untold Story of the Eagles
Barney Hoskyns – Hotel California
Michael Walker – Laurel Canyon
MTV archives
VH1 Storytellers
US magazine
Interview with Tommy Vance, 1994
Daily Telegraph interview, 2007
There will be two people in this world who will definitely not be consulted as expert contributors to this no doubt great work. Stevie Nicks, and me.
As my haphazard history of relationships with women is of little interest beyond my world of memories of “It’s not you, it’s me” and “I hope we can still stay friends”, the reader may be pleased to know that we are instead going to try and unravel a period in the life of Stevie Nicks, when overlapping relationships, torrid break-ups and splintered friendships led to her spilling a million dollars on cocaine.
There’s a book and a movie to be written about that period in the lives of the members of Fleetwood Mac; the four years from when Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined, through to the disintegration following the recording of the ‘Tusk’ album.
An entanglement that would tie Pete Frame in knots.
There will be errors here as even Stevie herself says that she can’t quite recall the order of what happened when, and to whom.
In a way, the detail is the least important aspect of our quest, for this imbroglio of romance led to the construction and recording of one of the finest, most evocative, and emotionally draining songs in the history of pop music.
Stevie Nicks was the partner of Lindsey Buckingham. Their relationship was hitting turbulence.
Stevie began an affair with Don Henley, who, using his newly acquired riches, sent his Lear jet around the world to pick up Nicks, bring her to his house, and then ‘deliver’ her back to the Fleetwood Mac tour. Stevie Nicks was not the only dalliance that benefitted from this luxurious commute. The practice became so commonplace that Eagles’ roadies referred to the process as “Love ‘em and Lear ‘em”
At this time, Nicks was also seeing J.D. Souther, so when she became pregnant there was an understandable confusion; but Henley and Nicks both knew that he was the father, and together they decided an abortion was the answer. Stevie called the unborn child ‘Sara’ after her closest friend, Sara Recor.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the Henley/Nicks alliance didn’t survive, and Stevie began a relationship with a member of the Fleetwood Mac road crew.
Mick Fleetwood was married to Jenny Boyd and over a short period of time they were to divorce, remarry, and divorce again. Whilst Fleetwood and Boyd were still married but not too comfortably, he began a clandestine affair with Nicks. However, Fleetwood simultaneously started a relationship with Sara Recor (who was also married at the time).
Stevie found out, and naturally was deeply upset; yet she blamed Fleetwood, and for a time at least, her friendship with Recor survived, to the extent that Nicks wrote the song that encapsulates this era, with Sara Recor sitting beside her at the piano.
The original demo for ‘Sara’ ran to sixteen minutes and is an unburdening of the soul. There are verses alluding to each individual member of Fleetwood Mac and the song includes references to this extraordinary entanglement of lives, love, and pain.
Over the years reviewers have seized on the obvious but misleading conclusion that the song is wholly based on Stevie’s relationship with Recor, but researching many interviews and snippets from news sources and magazines reveals a wider panorama.
The 6:27 version of the song leaves the multiple references behind and brings a zoom lens towards the Henley, Nicks, Fleetwood, Recor quadrangle. Although the four sides are criss-crossed with overlapping triangles of love and regret.
Only those with a soul hewn from the toughest flint can fail to feel their heart flutter and a misting of the eyes as Stevie Nicks sets out an almost unbearable sadness of Janov proportions.
Fleetwood is a ‘great dark wing’; Recor is the poet in Nicks’ heart, and it is almost too much to hear her calling out to Henley, “When you build your house.... call me....”
There is no other performance of a song that attempts to unburden the writer and help find some peace as the operatic drama Stevie Nicks brings to ‘Sara’.
Yet the most poignant references are almost impossible to hear for the casual listener. In the fade, Stevie (and it is heart breaking) pleads to her terminated baby:
“All I ever wanted was to know you were dreaming; there’s a heartbeat. No it never really died; you never really died.”
Stevie and I share a problem. It is so much easier to build a house than build a relationship.
“When you build your house, call me.”
Terence Dackombe, March 2011
Sources:
Marc Eliot - To The Limit: The Untold Story of the Eagles
Barney Hoskyns – Hotel California
Michael Walker – Laurel Canyon
MTV archives
VH1 Storytellers
US magazine
Interview with Tommy Vance, 1994
Daily Telegraph interview, 2007
Slipped discs - the worst singles ever (pt.3)
10. Simple Minds - Kick It In
It pains us to include the once mighty Minds in this list as they have produced some wonderful singles in their time. This however is the most tuneless, empty bluster disguised as a rock song we can recall.
9. Outhere Brothers - Boom Boom Boom
Just the kind of call-and-response record that goes down really well at a party for five year olds who are all hyped up on Tizer. No use whatsoever to anyone else - unless of course the musical equivalent of a head injury is your bag. And don't leave the album running as it contains a charming track called Fuk U In Da Ass.
8. Reel 2 Real - I Like To Move It
In the mid 90s there was something of a boom in these lumpy, growly, vulgar dance records and they were all unfailingly awful (see above). This one features some berk called the Mad Stuntman rapping about girls not wearing make up. Music for the evolutionarily challenged.
7. Puff Daddy - I'll Be Missing You
The Diddy Man was so distressed by the death of his pal Biggie Smalls, that he couldn't be arsed to write a proper song about him and instead chose to cover The Police's tribute to stalking 'Every Breath You Take'. Badly. With lyrics, he must have cobbled together while waiting for a bus. Astonishingly, this won a Grammy. Jeez.
6. R. Kelly - I Believe I Can Fly
While quite admirably leaning towards the utterly bananas, even eccentricity cannot excuse Mr. Kelly's 'inspirational' ballady tribute to jumping out of windows. He thinks about it every night and day, apparently.
5. Bryan Adams - Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman?
Non-threatening Canadian rock type Bry, has a go at a Spanish slush fest with a lyric so bum tighteningly mawkish it can actually induce light-headedness and projectile puking. To his credit, he never tried it again.
4. Chris Rea - Tell Me There's A Heaven
So your gruff uncle from South Shields has decided to pay an unannounced visit. Only you were out so he went to the pub and downed his bodyweight in export lager. Now he's back and trying to wake you by singing through the letterbox. Either that or it's this turgid Chris Rea record.
3. Kiss - God Gave Rock And Roll To You
If only he'd kept it out of the hands of you buggers.
2. Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody
People who know nothing about music hear this once and declare it to be a profound work of genius. In fact, it is an over-long, overrated, pretentious, preposterous and pathetic mish-mash of unintelligible themes, unappealing camp and fake emoting. The reason the punk wars had to happen.
1. Cliff Richard - Milennium Prayer
There's only one problem here: the entire premise for the song. Cliff seems to think, that by some cosmic co-incidence, the words of the Lord's Prayer fit neatly and precisely to the tune of Auld Lang Syne. Unfortunately for him, they don't. Not in any way whatsoever. He probably noticed this when he was recording the single, but was already so taken with the idea, he managed to convince himself all was well and he'd truly uncovered a deeply spiritual relevation with which to guide us all into the 21st century. The daft twunt.
Anyone who had a chart
Watching Top Of The Pops was a big part of my life; it was the first television programme I was allowed to “stay up” to watch, and I would sit attentively for half an hour, enraptured. I loved finding out what songs had gone up, what had gone down, and best of all, spotting the new entries in the chart.
As I grew older and my interest in chart music waned, the Top 40 became less important. Then, in 2006, Top Of The Pops was cancelled, and since then I’ve hardly been aware of what was at the summit of the charts.
So, this week, I decided to listen to the Official Charts in their entirety, on Radio 1. Three hours later, I was exhausted and suffering from pop music overload, but what had I learnt? I’d discovered that a young man named Bruno Mars would go to such lengths for his beloved that he makes Meat Loaf look uncommitted; I’d found out that twelve years after his chart debut, Eminem was still unfeasibly angry about something or other; and I’d realised that a bright young thing called Jessie J has a fairly lose grip on the difference between the genders.
Recently chart music was described as “variations on the same shade of beige” but that’s not really the case. While there were similarities between many of the tracks, to call them “beige” would be to suggest they were insignificant and content to blend into the background.
That couldn’t be further from the truth; most songs demanded attention from the moment they began. Every possible space was filled with sound, leaving the songs strangled of any semblance of character; instead conjuring a relentless assault.
Music is so ubiquitous nowadays; you want to make yourself heard, and heard now. Today, music is often heard through MP3 players and faces tough competition from outside noise: traffic, and the general hubbub of daily life so it’s no surprise that the average chart entry displays all the subtlety of a seaside kiss-me-quick hat.
The leading example in this week’s crop appears to be Jessie J, whose debut hit, ‘Do It Like A Dude’ displays an approach to production that is akin to banging your head against a wall; repeatedly.
The singles market has actually experienced a renaissance in recent years, largely thanks to the advent of online music stores, like iTunes and in 2007, with eligibility rules relaxed, songs could enter the charts based on downloads alone, regardless of whether they’d ever been officially released as a single.
However, there will always be loopholes, and the latest to benefit is the mysterious American rap troupe ‘Hype Squad’ who have capitalised upon the buzz surrounding the as-yet-unavailable Wiz Khalifa track, “Black and Yellow”, and rush-released their own version (which sounds strangely similar to the original). Those who pine for the Wiz Khalifa version can’t wait, apparently, it for its UK release so Hype Squad’s ingenuity has given them a Top 40 hit.
Frighteningly, the average age of artists making up the Top 10 this week is less than 22, with the aforementioned Hawaiian, Bruno Mars, representing the old-timers, clocking in at a not-exactly-decrepit 25.
The lack of what we’d probably call traditional bands is striking It’s no secret that dance and R&B are the sound of the 21st Century generation, but there are only two acts, Foo Fighters and Noah & The Whale, who have a classic pop/rock line-up consisting of a guitarist and a drummer.
Does all of this mean it’s time to denounce chart music and claim things were better ‘back in the day’? Well it’s true that the trend of (perceived) “maximum impact” production is a little unsettling, but there is always room for invention and experimentation in pop music.
It may not be to everyone’s taste, but the exhilarating dubstep of Breakage shows promise, and the collaboration between Tiesto, Diplo and Busta Rhymes is oddly thrilling. For anyone wishing to write off the class of 2011, it’s worth bearing in mind that the current number one is Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’, a timeless piano-led ballad fit to top the charts of any era.
Of course, looking at the charts of one week in isolation doesn’t provide a watertight conclusion. It’s a snapshot.
The charts of 2011 are brash, an indictment of our obsession with celebrities, and display a severe shortage of guitars, yet the Official UK Top Forty still provides surprises and a few traces of gold amongst the silt.
Sunday at 4.00pm on Radio One – bring your own sieve.
Joe Rivers, March 2011
Friday, 4 March 2011
Dark side of the Mac
This week, as Steve Jobs and his ill-fitting jeans, were holding a press conference to launch the i-Pad 2, members of staff at a major broadcasting outlet were standing round a telly, watching and applauding.
Imagine for a moment, this behaviour was triggered by the appearance of Muhtar Kent, the CEO of Coca-Cola or Tommy Davis, leader of the Church of Scientology. Wouldn’t it be regarded by most folk with a mixture of discomfort and horror? After all, aren’t major corporations and powerful organisations supposed to be viewed with at least some suspicion or even contempt. Particularly by the free minded, intellectual media classes. So what on earth is happening here?
What is happening is ‘the cult of Mac’.
Since IBM, Microsoft and Apple MacIntosh peeled away from
each other in the race to perfect a micro-computer for the mass
consumer market, Apple has always been the one to deviate from
the expected path. They were first with the mouse, which incredibly
was widely dismissed at the time, they also used graphics as buttons and drop down menus when the competition was concentrating on glowing green text. However, far from bringing them huge and immediate success, Apple came very close to insolvency as this new technology found it’s level and the market settled. Indeed, had Steve Jobs’ firm not captured the graphic design audience so comprehensively, they would probably have succumbed to Bill Gates’ dominance in the same way IBM caved.
Instead, they sought to drag the computer out of the mathematics lab and into the world of interior design and objects of desire. From the PowerMac to the i-Book, they did this with considerable aplomb and when MP3 showed itself to be future of recorded sound, the pulled off the same magic with the mighty i-Pod.
It is not for me to scoff at the achievements of this corporation and, in fact, I believe they have a remarkable flair for building very functional and rather beautiful kit – albeit using Chinese low-wage, non-union labour. No, it’s their disciples that leave me bewildered. And ‘disciples’ is not too strong a word.
Quite what inspired a section of 21st century society to fall in thrall to a range of metal and plastic boxes filled with wires and circuits, I can’t begin to guess. Do we ever meet people who evangelise about a particular dishwasher, at length, at dinner parties? Or come across folk who sneer with superiority at your choice of calculator? Of course we don’t. But we all know individuals prepared to take such stances on the subject of their computer or music player.
An Art Director of my acquaintance once told me he believed his Mac had a soul and PCs were just toys. All other evidence suggested he was a reasonable and rational fellow, but he was quite serious when describing these emotions and ascribing them to his machine and screen.
I’m a PC user by habit. Nevertheless, I have no inclination to defend Microsoft Windows and am very happy to admit is quite badly designed and prone to cause frustrations from time-to-time. But, on the whole, it works, delivers the functions I ask of it and does so at fairly reasonable price. To that extent, it’s no different from my fridge.
The Mac adherent, however, is liable to extol the virtues of the device and its operating system in much the same way a street preacher would recommend a particular route to salvation. That is, without exception, without question and with a slightly scary zeal.
Not only is this not a healthy relationship to have with a company which sees you as little more than a revenue unit, it is a rather sad attempt to assert some kind of techno-exclusiveness in order to belittle the non-believer.
Naturally, Apple is more than happy to exploit this unwavering devotion. The firm is delighted to continually re-release its products with slight modifications, in the knowledge there is an immense army of devotees only too happy to bin the previous model and fork out another several hundred pounds for the new. Lest they should slip from grace and be black-balled from the club which gives them so much status and self-affirmation.
The OED defines the psychological term ‘fetishism’ as:
‘A form of desire in which gratification is linked to an abnormal degree to a particular object’
That is what Mac lovers are indulging in – a fetish. And like all fetishes, it only really arouses a certain kind of person. For various reasons, I’m actually writing this on a MacBook Pro. Sadly I remain entirely unmoved and notably flaccid.
Magnus Shaw, March 2011
Imagine for a moment, this behaviour was triggered by the appearance of Muhtar Kent, the CEO of Coca-Cola or Tommy Davis, leader of the Church of Scientology. Wouldn’t it be regarded by most folk with a mixture of discomfort and horror? After all, aren’t major corporations and powerful organisations supposed to be viewed with at least some suspicion or even contempt. Particularly by the free minded, intellectual media classes. So what on earth is happening here?
What is happening is ‘the cult of Mac’.
Since IBM, Microsoft and Apple MacIntosh peeled away from
each other in the race to perfect a micro-computer for the mass
consumer market, Apple has always been the one to deviate from
the expected path. They were first with the mouse, which incredibly
was widely dismissed at the time, they also used graphics as buttons and drop down menus when the competition was concentrating on glowing green text. However, far from bringing them huge and immediate success, Apple came very close to insolvency as this new technology found it’s level and the market settled. Indeed, had Steve Jobs’ firm not captured the graphic design audience so comprehensively, they would probably have succumbed to Bill Gates’ dominance in the same way IBM caved.
Instead, they sought to drag the computer out of the mathematics lab and into the world of interior design and objects of desire. From the PowerMac to the i-Book, they did this with considerable aplomb and when MP3 showed itself to be future of recorded sound, the pulled off the same magic with the mighty i-Pod.
It is not for me to scoff at the achievements of this corporation and, in fact, I believe they have a remarkable flair for building very functional and rather beautiful kit – albeit using Chinese low-wage, non-union labour. No, it’s their disciples that leave me bewildered. And ‘disciples’ is not too strong a word.
Quite what inspired a section of 21st century society to fall in thrall to a range of metal and plastic boxes filled with wires and circuits, I can’t begin to guess. Do we ever meet people who evangelise about a particular dishwasher, at length, at dinner parties? Or come across folk who sneer with superiority at your choice of calculator? Of course we don’t. But we all know individuals prepared to take such stances on the subject of their computer or music player.
An Art Director of my acquaintance once told me he believed his Mac had a soul and PCs were just toys. All other evidence suggested he was a reasonable and rational fellow, but he was quite serious when describing these emotions and ascribing them to his machine and screen.
I’m a PC user by habit. Nevertheless, I have no inclination to defend Microsoft Windows and am very happy to admit is quite badly designed and prone to cause frustrations from time-to-time. But, on the whole, it works, delivers the functions I ask of it and does so at fairly reasonable price. To that extent, it’s no different from my fridge.
The Mac adherent, however, is liable to extol the virtues of the device and its operating system in much the same way a street preacher would recommend a particular route to salvation. That is, without exception, without question and with a slightly scary zeal.
Not only is this not a healthy relationship to have with a company which sees you as little more than a revenue unit, it is a rather sad attempt to assert some kind of techno-exclusiveness in order to belittle the non-believer.
Naturally, Apple is more than happy to exploit this unwavering devotion. The firm is delighted to continually re-release its products with slight modifications, in the knowledge there is an immense army of devotees only too happy to bin the previous model and fork out another several hundred pounds for the new. Lest they should slip from grace and be black-balled from the club which gives them so much status and self-affirmation.
The OED defines the psychological term ‘fetishism’ as:
‘A form of desire in which gratification is linked to an abnormal degree to a particular object’
That is what Mac lovers are indulging in – a fetish. And like all fetishes, it only really arouses a certain kind of person. For various reasons, I’m actually writing this on a MacBook Pro. Sadly I remain entirely unmoved and notably flaccid.
Magnus Shaw, March 2011
Altered States
“I like to be in America
OK by me in America
Ev’rything free in America
For a small fee in America”
Today, in England, and without even paying that small fee, I can live my life as if I was in Boston, Milwaukee or Los Angeles.
I can access live American TV, the New York Times is just a click away, and thanks to my iPhone, I can drive along the M4 surrounded by the urban sprawl of West London, listening live to KTYD-FM in Santa Barbara and imagine I am driving the Pacific Highway, just like Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate.
In 2011, we are closer than ever to being the 51st State, if only in the cultural sense of interaction and accessibility.
To a boy (well, this boy) growing up in a 1960s England that was just beginning to finally shake off the exhaustion of post war rationing, and starting to come to terms with the loss of Empire, the United States of America might as well have been somewhere a million light years away in another solar system.
America was the land of plenty, of excess, where there was space, room to breathe and a burning optimism for the future.
But nobody hopped on a plane to the States. There were no holidays in Florida, no weekend getaways to New York.
America!
In the 1960s I loved America from afar, glimpsing, through black and white grainy televisions, the Beverley Hillbillies and (when ITV hadn’t sold enough advertising for the commercial breaks) occasional clips of the Beach Boys and the Four Seasons.
I really did believe that in Gotham City, Chief O’Hara would breathlessly and excitedly inform Commissioner Gordon that The Riddler was leaving diabolical clues to dreadful crimes all over the city, and that a call through on the Batphone was the only way for the villain to be apprehended.
(Batman, in Episode One: "The Riddler's mind is like an artichoke. You have to rip off spiny leaves to reach the heart!")
I wanted to go and live in America more than anything else in the world.
In the tiny sweet shop around the corner from where I lived, near the Thames, in Middlesex, I would browse the carousel of American comics inexplicably on display amongst the ageing copies of Woman’s Weekly and The People’s Friend. There was a battle for supremacy between Stan Lee’s Marvel Comics, which were certainly seen as the cooler option, and DC Comics which seemed a bit more establishment, but DC had Superman.
American comics were like a spy hole into a world that was so far removed from a small town twenty five miles outside of London that could ever be imagined.
It was the advertisements. Grits (what were they?), guns and gum. And ant farms; in a small quarter page advert, these tiny ranches of insect colonies would be depicted as the most exotic and educational talking point that could feature in your home. I dreamed of owning an ant farm, though I suspect my mother would have taken an opposing view following their almost inevitable escape and creation of a new home under the floorboards.
Then, through the almost impossibly romantic medium of pirate radio ships bouncing on the North Sea swell, ‘God Only Knows’, ‘Good Vibrations’ and ‘California Dreamin’.
The Beatles produced Penny Lane and The Kinks sang of the sun setting over Waterloo; but gorgeous hymns that they are – we knew these places. They were our identity and our home.
We knew nothing of the life of a Wichita Lineman and we didn’t know the way to San Jose.
The first time I flew to America, I had to catch my breath as we descended to Chicago O’Hare and I could see the yellow taxi cabs on the city streets way below. The Man From UNCLE, Mr Magoo, and Top Cat; the yellow taxis had become icons of this mysterious but desirable lifestyle, so far away across the Atlantic to a dream filled teenager in England.
Nothing, really nothing, in America disappointed me. My dreams came true and I found new loves: stores called Piggly Wiggly, drive through banking, diners in the north of Wisconsin where the menu hadn’t changed in fifty years and waitresses flirted with the customers in the hope of larger tips.
So now that we have moved further on from the global village and the world is inside our houses and apartments, I know everything there is to know about America and Americans.
Nah, of course not.
Every week, Ira Glass offers us a window to the soul of America. ‘This American Life’ reports on stories of people doing extraordinary things in ordinary lives.
If like me, you are fascinated, sometimes appalled, often enlightened, by the astonishing way that the U.S.A. manages to bring all of its disparate parts together, then This American Life will only add to your journey of understanding.
‘TAL’ as we shall call it here, is produced in Chicago for the National Public Radio (NPR) network, and is easy to find as a podcast from several sources.
Here’s the best place to find links to current This American Life shows, and the entire archive can be accessed for free.
I can’t guarantee TAL will make you fall in love with America to the same degree of giddiness that is in my heart, but I shall accuse you of having flint for a soul if you don’t find yourself moved by This American Life – The Parent Trap.
This week I have:
Been reading ‘You Never Give Me Your Money’ – Peter Doggett’s splendidly researched book about the painful separation of The Beatles through their latter years of untogetherness
Viewed the first five episodes of The Big C – a very watchable, light and shade comedy drama about a suburban woman, recently diagnosed with cancer
Been listening to the works of John Tavener – here’s a Spotify link to the slightly scary Lamentations And Praises (I suggest a dark, candle-lit room for this one)
Decided not to fly to Libya for a short ‘get away from it all’ break
Terence Dackombe - March 2011
(follow me on Twitter at @sirterence)
OK by me in America
Ev’rything free in America
For a small fee in America”
Today, in England, and without even paying that small fee, I can live my life as if I was in Boston, Milwaukee or Los Angeles.
I can access live American TV, the New York Times is just a click away, and thanks to my iPhone, I can drive along the M4 surrounded by the urban sprawl of West London, listening live to KTYD-FM in Santa Barbara and imagine I am driving the Pacific Highway, just like Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate.
In 2011, we are closer than ever to being the 51st State, if only in the cultural sense of interaction and accessibility.
To a boy (well, this boy) growing up in a 1960s England that was just beginning to finally shake off the exhaustion of post war rationing, and starting to come to terms with the loss of Empire, the United States of America might as well have been somewhere a million light years away in another solar system.
America was the land of plenty, of excess, where there was space, room to breathe and a burning optimism for the future.
But nobody hopped on a plane to the States. There were no holidays in Florida, no weekend getaways to New York.
America!
In the 1960s I loved America from afar, glimpsing, through black and white grainy televisions, the Beverley Hillbillies and (when ITV hadn’t sold enough advertising for the commercial breaks) occasional clips of the Beach Boys and the Four Seasons.
I really did believe that in Gotham City, Chief O’Hara would breathlessly and excitedly inform Commissioner Gordon that The Riddler was leaving diabolical clues to dreadful crimes all over the city, and that a call through on the Batphone was the only way for the villain to be apprehended.
(Batman, in Episode One: "The Riddler's mind is like an artichoke. You have to rip off spiny leaves to reach the heart!")
I wanted to go and live in America more than anything else in the world.
In the tiny sweet shop around the corner from where I lived, near the Thames, in Middlesex, I would browse the carousel of American comics inexplicably on display amongst the ageing copies of Woman’s Weekly and The People’s Friend. There was a battle for supremacy between Stan Lee’s Marvel Comics, which were certainly seen as the cooler option, and DC Comics which seemed a bit more establishment, but DC had Superman.
American comics were like a spy hole into a world that was so far removed from a small town twenty five miles outside of London that could ever be imagined.
It was the advertisements. Grits (what were they?), guns and gum. And ant farms; in a small quarter page advert, these tiny ranches of insect colonies would be depicted as the most exotic and educational talking point that could feature in your home. I dreamed of owning an ant farm, though I suspect my mother would have taken an opposing view following their almost inevitable escape and creation of a new home under the floorboards.
Then, through the almost impossibly romantic medium of pirate radio ships bouncing on the North Sea swell, ‘God Only Knows’, ‘Good Vibrations’ and ‘California Dreamin’.
The Beatles produced Penny Lane and The Kinks sang of the sun setting over Waterloo; but gorgeous hymns that they are – we knew these places. They were our identity and our home.
We knew nothing of the life of a Wichita Lineman and we didn’t know the way to San Jose.
The first time I flew to America, I had to catch my breath as we descended to Chicago O’Hare and I could see the yellow taxi cabs on the city streets way below. The Man From UNCLE, Mr Magoo, and Top Cat; the yellow taxis had become icons of this mysterious but desirable lifestyle, so far away across the Atlantic to a dream filled teenager in England.
Nothing, really nothing, in America disappointed me. My dreams came true and I found new loves: stores called Piggly Wiggly, drive through banking, diners in the north of Wisconsin where the menu hadn’t changed in fifty years and waitresses flirted with the customers in the hope of larger tips.
So now that we have moved further on from the global village and the world is inside our houses and apartments, I know everything there is to know about America and Americans.
Nah, of course not.
Every week, Ira Glass offers us a window to the soul of America. ‘This American Life’ reports on stories of people doing extraordinary things in ordinary lives.
If like me, you are fascinated, sometimes appalled, often enlightened, by the astonishing way that the U.S.A. manages to bring all of its disparate parts together, then This American Life will only add to your journey of understanding.
‘TAL’ as we shall call it here, is produced in Chicago for the National Public Radio (NPR) network, and is easy to find as a podcast from several sources.
Here’s the best place to find links to current This American Life shows, and the entire archive can be accessed for free.
I can’t guarantee TAL will make you fall in love with America to the same degree of giddiness that is in my heart, but I shall accuse you of having flint for a soul if you don’t find yourself moved by This American Life – The Parent Trap.
This week I have:
Been reading ‘You Never Give Me Your Money’ – Peter Doggett’s splendidly researched book about the painful separation of The Beatles through their latter years of untogetherness
Viewed the first five episodes of The Big C – a very watchable, light and shade comedy drama about a suburban woman, recently diagnosed with cancer
Been listening to the works of John Tavener – here’s a Spotify link to the slightly scary Lamentations And Praises (I suggest a dark, candle-lit room for this one)
Decided not to fly to Libya for a short ‘get away from it all’ break
Terence Dackombe - March 2011
(follow me on Twitter at @sirterence)
Slipped discs - the worst singles ever (pt.2)
19. 2 Unlimited - No Limits
Nothing, perhaps, more cringeworthy than an underground music movement being overtaken mainstream by 'artists' who just don't understand it. And the masters of this offence were these two (unlimited) and their 'Techno, techno, techno'. No lyrics.
18. Whigfield - Saturday Night
There's something quite cheery and unifying about a record that has a nice dance to go with it. Somehow, however, this hit managed to fill us all with a terrible sadness.
17. Whitney Houston - I Will Always Love You
It's not the song - Dolly's version is quite passable. No, it's the bleeding lungs delivery, overblown melodrama and sheer number of notes that makes this almost unlistenable. Sounds like she had to be dragged from the mic.
16. Madonna - Dear Jessie
There is no doubting that Madge has turned out some outstanding pop numbers in her lengthy career (Vogue, Express Yourself). But she is also more than capable of scraping the floor beneath the barrel and this nonsense about pink elephants and lemonade sets oen's teeth aching.
15. SL2 - On A Ragga Tip
If you were to lobotomise some gibbons and lock them in a room with some dustbin lids, kazoos and samplers - the results would sound almost sublimely subtle and searingly intelligent than this mindless racket. Don't do that though.
14. Maroon 5 - This Love
Remember Hootie and the Blowfish? Very safe, conservative campus, American pop rock. Well, they sound like a lost Captain Beefheart bootleg in comparison with this bunch of stiff faux-funk bores. Excruitiating orgasm reference too.
13. Radiohead - Pyramid Song
Yes, you read that correctly. This is the rock equivalent of people looking at a lump of old chewing gum in a glass case at a 'modern' art gallery and pretending they can see something profound. This is not an artistic statement, it's a miserable bloke wailing away while he plays off-key piano to a lucicrous time signature. And nothing more.
12. Crazy Town - Butterfly
Even if you've never heard this dreadful attempt to blend hip-hop and white rock in a style the kids are all loving, the fact that the band are called Crazy Town should tell you all you need to know.
11. Sigue Sigue Sputnik - Love Missle F1-11
Great band name, excellent title for the single, unprecedented use of PR and hype - surely we were entitled to expect the new Sex Pistols. Unfortunately what we got was something which may well have been cobbled together by some ten year olds who had borrowed their brothers' synths and guitars before getting bored and going out to play on their bikes. In short, a right ruddy let down.
NEXT WEEK: The world's worst singles numbers 10 - 1
Monday, 28 February 2011
Slipped discs
The 30 worst singles of all time (pt.1)
30. The Cheeky Girls - Cheeky Song
Not funny, not sexy, not entertaining - just stupid and a bit creepy. And that's before Lembit got involved.
29. Color Me Badd - I Want To Sex You Up
Talking of unsexy, this horrible slab of R&B lite is about as erotic as a road accident and reminds one of white, middle class frat boys trying to do raunchy street music. Because it is.
28. Gazza and Lindisfarne - Fog On The Tyne
The original was a slightly drab, folky tribute to Newcastle. This unecessary 'cover' pulled in a cheap drum machine and worst of all, Paul Gascoine rapping. It's not just the sausage rolls that were sickly.
27. Grange Hill Kids - Just Say No
Of all the misguided attempts to put kiddywinks off the old Persian Rugs, this was surely the most ridiculous. Not only was the message trite and empty, it soon transpired that almost none of the GH cast could carry a note in a bucket. Pass the crack-pipe.
26. Michael Bolton - Can I Touch You There?
Unless you wish to spend a fortnight in hospital followed by a lengthy spell in court. No.
25. Vanilla - No Way, No Way
We only hope this was a post-modern experiment to see how far a very, very annoying, piss poor song from an anonymous girl band could be hyped before it collapsed. Makes 'Wannabe' sound like 'Hey Jude'.
24. Five featuring Queen - We Will Rock You
We could debate the quality (or lack of it) of the original long into the night but few would doubt that this remake is a dreadful waste of everybody's time. Close cousin of Blue and Elton's equally awful 'Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word'.
23. General Levy - Incredible
Clearly 'jungle' wasn't a musical genre that suited everyone, but the problem here was that proper followers of the speedy drums and bassy bass genre labelled this as inauthentic tripe. 'General' made matters worse by appointing himself 'King of Jungle and was never seen again.
22. Mr. Big - To Be With You
If you ever hankered after seeing a bunch of second rate poodle rockers sitting around and jamming trite, garbagey love songs on acoustic guitars, this is the hit for you. Or you might try 'More Than Words' by Extreme.
21. Black Eyed Peas - My Humps
Rapidly becoming the worst very successful band of all time, BEP hit a bizarre and frankly embarrasing low with this ditty about a lady's special parts.
20. Afroman - Because I Got High
Song about a useless b*stard who gets so wasted he can't perform even the most basic of tasks (or 'entertain' his lady love), proves to be more irritating than an actual useless b*stard who ...
NEXT WEEK: The world's worst singles numbers 19 - 11
30. The Cheeky Girls - Cheeky Song
Not funny, not sexy, not entertaining - just stupid and a bit creepy. And that's before Lembit got involved.
29. Color Me Badd - I Want To Sex You Up
Talking of unsexy, this horrible slab of R&B lite is about as erotic as a road accident and reminds one of white, middle class frat boys trying to do raunchy street music. Because it is.
28. Gazza and Lindisfarne - Fog On The Tyne
The original was a slightly drab, folky tribute to Newcastle. This unecessary 'cover' pulled in a cheap drum machine and worst of all, Paul Gascoine rapping. It's not just the sausage rolls that were sickly.
27. Grange Hill Kids - Just Say No
Of all the misguided attempts to put kiddywinks off the old Persian Rugs, this was surely the most ridiculous. Not only was the message trite and empty, it soon transpired that almost none of the GH cast could carry a note in a bucket. Pass the crack-pipe.
26. Michael Bolton - Can I Touch You There?
Unless you wish to spend a fortnight in hospital followed by a lengthy spell in court. No.
25. Vanilla - No Way, No Way
We only hope this was a post-modern experiment to see how far a very, very annoying, piss poor song from an anonymous girl band could be hyped before it collapsed. Makes 'Wannabe' sound like 'Hey Jude'.
24. Five featuring Queen - We Will Rock You
We could debate the quality (or lack of it) of the original long into the night but few would doubt that this remake is a dreadful waste of everybody's time. Close cousin of Blue and Elton's equally awful 'Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word'.
23. General Levy - Incredible
Clearly 'jungle' wasn't a musical genre that suited everyone, but the problem here was that proper followers of the speedy drums and bassy bass genre labelled this as inauthentic tripe. 'General' made matters worse by appointing himself 'King of Jungle and was never seen again.
22. Mr. Big - To Be With You
If you ever hankered after seeing a bunch of second rate poodle rockers sitting around and jamming trite, garbagey love songs on acoustic guitars, this is the hit for you. Or you might try 'More Than Words' by Extreme.
21. Black Eyed Peas - My Humps
Rapidly becoming the worst very successful band of all time, BEP hit a bizarre and frankly embarrasing low with this ditty about a lady's special parts.
20. Afroman - Because I Got High
Song about a useless b*stard who gets so wasted he can't perform even the most basic of tasks (or 'entertain' his lady love), proves to be more irritating than an actual useless b*stard who ...
NEXT WEEK: The world's worst singles numbers 19 - 11
Mostly 'armless
Whether you’re a fan of Radiohead or not, you have to admit they’re no slouches when it comes to marketing. Already known for pioneering the “honesty box” payment method with 'In Rainbows' in 2007, they’ve got everyone in a tizzy again with 'The King Of Limbs'. As if an out-of-the-blue announcement of an album release in just five days time wasn’t enough, they then brought the date forward by 24 hours with no warning.
On the day itself, bloggers and web journalists tripped over themselves - and each other - in an attempt to be the first to review the record, but now the dust has settled, The King Of Limbs can be seen in context, divorced from the brouhaha surrounding its release. What we’re left with is an album which is striking on first listen, promises a great deal, but ultimately fails to deliver.
The King Of Limbs is very much an album of two sides. The first five tracks display a more prominent dance influence than any of their previous work, while the last three (yes, there are only eight songs) are more sedate and genteel, as if the band have exhausted their capacity for intensity.
The “dance” side is propelled by twitchy, off-kilter rhythms and wandering basslines, but it’s too often a case of style over substance. Opening track, 'Bloom', is unsettling enough to hold the listener’s attention with its bursts of white noise and backward looping effects, but subsequent numbers are too similar. Feral is the worst offender - an urgent, breathless song with a soupçon of dubstep that sounds like a work in progress. Chord stabs are barely there, hints of melody are snatched at and the threat that something interesting might happen is never realised.
These five songs are far from a pointless exercise though. 'Little By Little' sounds like a Morricone score in a hall of mirrors and its descending, chiming chords are haunting. As Yorke’s falsetto
reaches at the lyrics, “Little by little, by hook or by crook / You are such a tease and I am such a flirt”, it’s striking how incongruous the chorus sounds. That’s because it’s pretty much the only chorus on offer throughout the record. It’s also telling that 'Little By Little' is one of the highlights as well as sounding most like Radiohead in their 90s pomp.
This rhythm-driven approach comes to an abrupt end with 'Codex', a gorgeous, reverb-drenched piece which would soundtrack slow-motion footage of a space walk perfectly. It’s probably the strongest, most melodious work on show, and provides a welcome counterpart to the frostiness of the first act. We then get our first burst of acoustic guitar on the mournful 'Give Up The Ghost' before 'Separator' - a pretty yet insubstantial song - closes the record.
If this all sounds a bit “glass half-empty”, it’s worth noting that Radiohead ought to be commended for trying something experimental like this so far into their career. It’s difficult to think of a band this popular who would still be taking these kinds of risks after so many albums. It’s just that, sadly, 'The King Of Limbs' is more of a record to appreciate than love, a thing of intrigue rather than a thing of joy. After many listens, it recently struck me that 90% of everything you need to know about each track occurs in its first ten seconds, and that kind of limitation isn’t going to keep you going back for more.
So, is 'The King Of Limbs' a stop-gap? It may well be, but it’s also true that Radiohead’s stop-gaps are better than most bands’ finest albums, so there needn’t be too much cause for alarm. 'The King Of Limbs' isn’t a bad record by any means, but in a canon that includes 'OK Computer', 'Kid A' and 'In Rainbows', it can’t help but be tinged with disappointment.
Joe Rivers, February 2011
On the day itself, bloggers and web journalists tripped over themselves - and each other - in an attempt to be the first to review the record, but now the dust has settled, The King Of Limbs can be seen in context, divorced from the brouhaha surrounding its release. What we’re left with is an album which is striking on first listen, promises a great deal, but ultimately fails to deliver.
The King Of Limbs is very much an album of two sides. The first five tracks display a more prominent dance influence than any of their previous work, while the last three (yes, there are only eight songs) are more sedate and genteel, as if the band have exhausted their capacity for intensity.
The “dance” side is propelled by twitchy, off-kilter rhythms and wandering basslines, but it’s too often a case of style over substance. Opening track, 'Bloom', is unsettling enough to hold the listener’s attention with its bursts of white noise and backward looping effects, but subsequent numbers are too similar. Feral is the worst offender - an urgent, breathless song with a soupçon of dubstep that sounds like a work in progress. Chord stabs are barely there, hints of melody are snatched at and the threat that something interesting might happen is never realised.
These five songs are far from a pointless exercise though. 'Little By Little' sounds like a Morricone score in a hall of mirrors and its descending, chiming chords are haunting. As Yorke’s falsetto
reaches at the lyrics, “Little by little, by hook or by crook / You are such a tease and I am such a flirt”, it’s striking how incongruous the chorus sounds. That’s because it’s pretty much the only chorus on offer throughout the record. It’s also telling that 'Little By Little' is one of the highlights as well as sounding most like Radiohead in their 90s pomp.
This rhythm-driven approach comes to an abrupt end with 'Codex', a gorgeous, reverb-drenched piece which would soundtrack slow-motion footage of a space walk perfectly. It’s probably the strongest, most melodious work on show, and provides a welcome counterpart to the frostiness of the first act. We then get our first burst of acoustic guitar on the mournful 'Give Up The Ghost' before 'Separator' - a pretty yet insubstantial song - closes the record.
If this all sounds a bit “glass half-empty”, it’s worth noting that Radiohead ought to be commended for trying something experimental like this so far into their career. It’s difficult to think of a band this popular who would still be taking these kinds of risks after so many albums. It’s just that, sadly, 'The King Of Limbs' is more of a record to appreciate than love, a thing of intrigue rather than a thing of joy. After many listens, it recently struck me that 90% of everything you need to know about each track occurs in its first ten seconds, and that kind of limitation isn’t going to keep you going back for more.
So, is 'The King Of Limbs' a stop-gap? It may well be, but it’s also true that Radiohead’s stop-gaps are better than most bands’ finest albums, so there needn’t be too much cause for alarm. 'The King Of Limbs' isn’t a bad record by any means, but in a canon that includes 'OK Computer', 'Kid A' and 'In Rainbows', it can’t help but be tinged with disappointment.
Joe Rivers, February 2011
The art of not falling apart.
I’d make a better job of it now, I’m sure. I’m unlikely to get a chance though, for the compelling reason that she’s dead.
The first live interview I conducted on the radio was thirty years ago. A Christmas ‘Special’ in 1981; I interviewed Mary Whitehouse and let her get away with it. I think (though recollection is hazy) I probably asked about three or four questions in the forty minutes that she went on, and on, and on. Of course, I should have interrupted but she didn’t actually appear to be breathing. It was one word sliding into the next without a pause.
“Mrs Whitehouse, thanks for joining us; is there really a place for an organisation such as yours in these modern times? Many commentators might suggest....” (I don’t think I got any further)
That was my opening question, and she was off. Like a thoroughbred scooting out of the stalls in a six furlong dash at Ascot.
There are probably as many media courses and ‘coaches’ available to match the number of media jobs that don’t exist anymore, and I’m sure they spend many hours ‘teaching’ the art of interviewing. I don’t think it can be taught. You can either do it or you can’t. You can improve, and learn, but if you can’t relax, and empower your interviewee to relax, you can’t do it.
Earlier this week, I asked Razia Iqbal, Special Correspondent for BBC News, about the techniques she employs for the breadth of interviews she conducts, from the less challenging encounters with authors on ‘Talking Books’ to the harder hitting political interviews on mainstream news.
Confirming this contrast, Razia told me when conducting a three minute ‘junket interview’ with a star plugging a movie, she never wastes any time with introductory chit-chat (“I love your dress; who designed it?”) and goes straight in, ever aware that a P.A. clutching a stopwatch is hovering a few feet away.
In relation to the longer interview, Razia referred to the drama of silence, and how not being panicked into filling every gap may draw a more reasoned response, and a more compelling story. We reflected upon unfashionable styles of interviewing and Razia said she was learning a great deal from looking back at interviews from British television in the 1950s; Edith Sitwell and Carl Jung interviewed by John Freeman in the ground breaking Face To Face series.
There is a disagreement amongst many prominent interviewers about how much preparation should be undertaken prior to an interview. In the relatively recent past, the BBC has gone through a lot of anxiety in drawing up rather terrifying flow charts for its presenters, instructing them that if the guest answers this way, then guide him or her to this next question box and so on. Many breathed a heavy sigh of relief when John Birt moved on, and his grand vision was buried in a lead-lined box, somewhere under the Blue Peter garden.
This week I also chatted with Adam Boulton from Sky News and we discussed a similar theme about styles of interviewing. Adam told me we should never be worried about asking ‘the stupid question’, in that appearing to be completely ignorant of the subject may encourage an interviewee to open up and explain their position more thoughtfully. As Adam conducts most of his interviews in the heat of the Westminster greenhouse, this seemed like sage advice when questioning a reluctant politician.
“The best question you can ever ask” said Adam, “is ‘Why?’”
In summary, it seems to be important not to over-prepare to the point that the interviewer seems to be reading from a series of cues, and thus not responding to the replies; but equally that Terry Wogan look of ‘frozen fear in the eyes’ is soon picked up by the guest and brings with it a lack of confidence in the interviewer from which the encounter will never recover.
Confidence and relaxation are vital.
One of the most famous political interviews was broadcast in May 1997, when, on BBC Newsnight, Jeremy Paxman asked the same question, twelve times, to former Conservative Home Secretary Michael Howard.
Razia Iqbal told me that Jeremy Paxman has since revealed that he did this not for the reasons that have been recorded in history – a pursuit of the ultimate truth, but simply because he had been informed, in his earpiece, that the next item wasn’t ready.
So, if by some miracle of resuscitation I was interviewing Mary Whitehouse today, I would take on board some of that advice from Adam Boulton and Razia Iqbal, and try out the occasional pause here and there, but more likely, I would probably find myself yelling, “Will you bloody well shut up for a moment, so I can ask you something else?”
This week I have:
Been listening to the excellent ‘Pickin’ Up The Pieces’ album from Fitz and the Tantrums
Reverted to buying paper copies of the Times & the Racing Post. I missed the ‘feel’
of them.
Stared, and pursed my lips at a minor member of the Royal Family who didn’t leave me enough space to edge out of a lane near Windsor. She frowned back at me.
Discovered that Newmarket’s Michael Bell is training a horse named ‘Joe Strummer’
Terence Dackombe, February 2011
The first live interview I conducted on the radio was thirty years ago. A Christmas ‘Special’ in 1981; I interviewed Mary Whitehouse and let her get away with it. I think (though recollection is hazy) I probably asked about three or four questions in the forty minutes that she went on, and on, and on. Of course, I should have interrupted but she didn’t actually appear to be breathing. It was one word sliding into the next without a pause.
“Mrs Whitehouse, thanks for joining us; is there really a place for an organisation such as yours in these modern times? Many commentators might suggest....” (I don’t think I got any further)
That was my opening question, and she was off. Like a thoroughbred scooting out of the stalls in a six furlong dash at Ascot.
There are probably as many media courses and ‘coaches’ available to match the number of media jobs that don’t exist anymore, and I’m sure they spend many hours ‘teaching’ the art of interviewing. I don’t think it can be taught. You can either do it or you can’t. You can improve, and learn, but if you can’t relax, and empower your interviewee to relax, you can’t do it.
Earlier this week, I asked Razia Iqbal, Special Correspondent for BBC News, about the techniques she employs for the breadth of interviews she conducts, from the less challenging encounters with authors on ‘Talking Books’ to the harder hitting political interviews on mainstream news.
Confirming this contrast, Razia told me when conducting a three minute ‘junket interview’ with a star plugging a movie, she never wastes any time with introductory chit-chat (“I love your dress; who designed it?”) and goes straight in, ever aware that a P.A. clutching a stopwatch is hovering a few feet away.
In relation to the longer interview, Razia referred to the drama of silence, and how not being panicked into filling every gap may draw a more reasoned response, and a more compelling story. We reflected upon unfashionable styles of interviewing and Razia said she was learning a great deal from looking back at interviews from British television in the 1950s; Edith Sitwell and Carl Jung interviewed by John Freeman in the ground breaking Face To Face series.
There is a disagreement amongst many prominent interviewers about how much preparation should be undertaken prior to an interview. In the relatively recent past, the BBC has gone through a lot of anxiety in drawing up rather terrifying flow charts for its presenters, instructing them that if the guest answers this way, then guide him or her to this next question box and so on. Many breathed a heavy sigh of relief when John Birt moved on, and his grand vision was buried in a lead-lined box, somewhere under the Blue Peter garden.
This week I also chatted with Adam Boulton from Sky News and we discussed a similar theme about styles of interviewing. Adam told me we should never be worried about asking ‘the stupid question’, in that appearing to be completely ignorant of the subject may encourage an interviewee to open up and explain their position more thoughtfully. As Adam conducts most of his interviews in the heat of the Westminster greenhouse, this seemed like sage advice when questioning a reluctant politician.
“The best question you can ever ask” said Adam, “is ‘Why?’”
In summary, it seems to be important not to over-prepare to the point that the interviewer seems to be reading from a series of cues, and thus not responding to the replies; but equally that Terry Wogan look of ‘frozen fear in the eyes’ is soon picked up by the guest and brings with it a lack of confidence in the interviewer from which the encounter will never recover.
Confidence and relaxation are vital.
One of the most famous political interviews was broadcast in May 1997, when, on BBC Newsnight, Jeremy Paxman asked the same question, twelve times, to former Conservative Home Secretary Michael Howard.
Razia Iqbal told me that Jeremy Paxman has since revealed that he did this not for the reasons that have been recorded in history – a pursuit of the ultimate truth, but simply because he had been informed, in his earpiece, that the next item wasn’t ready.
So, if by some miracle of resuscitation I was interviewing Mary Whitehouse today, I would take on board some of that advice from Adam Boulton and Razia Iqbal, and try out the occasional pause here and there, but more likely, I would probably find myself yelling, “Will you bloody well shut up for a moment, so I can ask you something else?”
This week I have:
Been listening to the excellent ‘Pickin’ Up The Pieces’ album from Fitz and the Tantrums
Reverted to buying paper copies of the Times & the Racing Post. I missed the ‘feel’
of them.
Stared, and pursed my lips at a minor member of the Royal Family who didn’t leave me enough space to edge out of a lane near Windsor. She frowned back at me.
Discovered that Newmarket’s Michael Bell is training a horse named ‘Joe Strummer’
Terence Dackombe, February 2011
Sunday, 20 February 2011
You say you want a revolution.
It’s different now. Everything has changed in 2011. A government can fall in days if the people that government ‘serves’ can be mobilised in sufficient numbers for the armed forces and police to be overwhelmed; or more likely that they see which way the wind of change is blowing, and make a tactical decision to follow the winning side.
Commentators tell us it’s the Twitter Revolution, the Facebook Foment, indicating that thousands, if not millions, of citizens have been stirred to gather in city squares and on roundabouts by instructions or comments on social network sites.
A more prudent explanation is that whilst these lines of communication have their place (hard to imagine people in Tahrir Square were busy checking how many ‘Follow Friday’ mentions they achieved), it is the knowledge, the reassurance, that television cameras, and to a degree, mobile phone footage through YouTube, are cascading the images, sights and sounds around the world, that impels people to risk everything to bring about change in their country.
As I write this, on Friday evening, February 18th 2011, the BBC is reporting that Bahraini security forces are firing at their own people. Indications are that similar scenes are building in Libya and Yemen.
President Obama and Mrs Clinton have expressed their deep concern.
It is often useful to reflect on the past to gather a sense of place about the present and the future.
Richard Nixon was elected to office in 1968, on a ticket that included a promise to end the war in Vietnam. Shortly afterwards, a unit of the U.S. military executed approximately five hundred unarmed South Vietnamese civilians. In early 1970, Nixon announced that United States forces had invaded Cambodia.
Although there was widespread concern across America and the rest of the world, as usual it was the young people who had the energy and the will to get together to express their outrage at what was being undertaken in their country’s name.
At Kent State University (oddly, on a grassy knoll), several hundred students gathered to rally and protest against the expansion of the war in Asia. The Governor of Ohio, James Rhodes, banged his fists on a table and said of the students, “"They're the worst type of people that we harbour in America. I think that we're up against the strongest, well-trained, militant, revolutionary group that has ever assembled in America."
At 12:24 pm on May 4th 1970, twenty-nine of seventy-seven National Guards who were present at the university fired sixty-seven rounds of live ammunition at the students.
They were firing at their own people.
Four students, aged 19 and 20, were killed. Nine were wounded, including one who was permanently paralysed.
They shot their own people.
Five days later 100,000 people rallied in Washington to demonstrate against the war, and the deaths and wounding at Kent State.
There was television, but no Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. It was different then. For the young people (and I was one of them) repulsed by the horror of the Vietnam War and the Kent State murders, the protests were organised through the underground press; we grew our hair to stand out, to show we were part of the counter-culture, the peaceful side of the trenches.
Immediately after the Kent State shootings, Neil Young wrote a powerful and angry song, ‘Ohio’.
Music doesn’t bring about revolution in 2011, and it didn’t in 1970, but it gives a voice to dissenters. It can add to our understanding.
“Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?”
They shot their own people
This week I have:
Learned that Chrissie Hynde was studying at Kent State and was on campus at the time of the massacre in 1970.
So was Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo.
Realised that Gill Scott-Heron was wrong. The revolution will be televised.
Terence Dackombe, February 2011
Commentators tell us it’s the Twitter Revolution, the Facebook Foment, indicating that thousands, if not millions, of citizens have been stirred to gather in city squares and on roundabouts by instructions or comments on social network sites.
A more prudent explanation is that whilst these lines of communication have their place (hard to imagine people in Tahrir Square were busy checking how many ‘Follow Friday’ mentions they achieved), it is the knowledge, the reassurance, that television cameras, and to a degree, mobile phone footage through YouTube, are cascading the images, sights and sounds around the world, that impels people to risk everything to bring about change in their country.
As I write this, on Friday evening, February 18th 2011, the BBC is reporting that Bahraini security forces are firing at their own people. Indications are that similar scenes are building in Libya and Yemen.
President Obama and Mrs Clinton have expressed their deep concern.
It is often useful to reflect on the past to gather a sense of place about the present and the future.
Richard Nixon was elected to office in 1968, on a ticket that included a promise to end the war in Vietnam. Shortly afterwards, a unit of the U.S. military executed approximately five hundred unarmed South Vietnamese civilians. In early 1970, Nixon announced that United States forces had invaded Cambodia.
Although there was widespread concern across America and the rest of the world, as usual it was the young people who had the energy and the will to get together to express their outrage at what was being undertaken in their country’s name.
At Kent State University (oddly, on a grassy knoll), several hundred students gathered to rally and protest against the expansion of the war in Asia. The Governor of Ohio, James Rhodes, banged his fists on a table and said of the students, “"They're the worst type of people that we harbour in America. I think that we're up against the strongest, well-trained, militant, revolutionary group that has ever assembled in America."
At 12:24 pm on May 4th 1970, twenty-nine of seventy-seven National Guards who were present at the university fired sixty-seven rounds of live ammunition at the students.
They were firing at their own people.
Four students, aged 19 and 20, were killed. Nine were wounded, including one who was permanently paralysed.
They shot their own people.
Five days later 100,000 people rallied in Washington to demonstrate against the war, and the deaths and wounding at Kent State.
There was television, but no Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. It was different then. For the young people (and I was one of them) repulsed by the horror of the Vietnam War and the Kent State murders, the protests were organised through the underground press; we grew our hair to stand out, to show we were part of the counter-culture, the peaceful side of the trenches.
Immediately after the Kent State shootings, Neil Young wrote a powerful and angry song, ‘Ohio’.
Music doesn’t bring about revolution in 2011, and it didn’t in 1970, but it gives a voice to dissenters. It can add to our understanding.
“Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?”
They shot their own people
This week I have:
Learned that Chrissie Hynde was studying at Kent State and was on campus at the time of the massacre in 1970.
So was Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo.
Realised that Gill Scott-Heron was wrong. The revolution will be televised.
Terence Dackombe, February 2011
More deadly than The Mail ...
Jan Moir's greatest hits
15. The truth about my views on the tragic death of Stephen Gately
You were pretty mean, disparaging and homophobic. Does that cover it?
14. Forget the icy roads, where's our own grit?
You're right, Jan. Skidding to your untimely death is what made this country great.
13. Were Kate Winslet and Sam Mendes just too alike to survive?
I don't know, Jan. And neither do you.
12. Saintly but sinister Sarah vs outspoken Miriam
She may be sinister but does she need new worktops?
11. Does Waity Katie know something we don't?
Waity Katie? WTF?
10. An artless victim of the hip hop woman haters
Jan blames rappers for woman's silicone poisoning. Naturally.
9. Austerity? Just get on with it and stop moaning!
Jan thinks a bit of poverty will do us all good.
8. The year I fell out of love with Planet Celeb
Jan used to like famous people. Not so keen now.
7. Why I'm tired of deluded losers whining they've been
cheated out of stardom
Not big on X-factor either.
6. Still loving the X Factor after five weeks
Oh! Hang on ...
5. Is all this dirty dancing really family viewing?
No, no. As you were.
4. Why don't designers make clothes that flatter real women?
Like Jan.
3. Get real, Selina, you were an autocutie too
Yeah! Female jounalists, eh? Who needs 'em?
2. Why Sam Cam deserves new worktops at Downing Street
Oh, good grief.
1. Lads' mags and a toxic culture that treats all women like meat
Or calls them autocuties.
15. The truth about my views on the tragic death of Stephen Gately
You were pretty mean, disparaging and homophobic. Does that cover it?
14. Forget the icy roads, where's our own grit?
You're right, Jan. Skidding to your untimely death is what made this country great.
13. Were Kate Winslet and Sam Mendes just too alike to survive?
I don't know, Jan. And neither do you.
12. Saintly but sinister Sarah vs outspoken Miriam
She may be sinister but does she need new worktops?
11. Does Waity Katie know something we don't?
Waity Katie? WTF?
10. An artless victim of the hip hop woman haters
Jan blames rappers for woman's silicone poisoning. Naturally.
9. Austerity? Just get on with it and stop moaning!
Jan thinks a bit of poverty will do us all good.
8. The year I fell out of love with Planet Celeb
Jan used to like famous people. Not so keen now.
7. Why I'm tired of deluded losers whining they've been
cheated out of stardom
Not big on X-factor either.
6. Still loving the X Factor after five weeks
Oh! Hang on ...
5. Is all this dirty dancing really family viewing?
No, no. As you were.
4. Why don't designers make clothes that flatter real women?
Like Jan.
3. Get real, Selina, you were an autocutie too
Yeah! Female jounalists, eh? Who needs 'em?
2. Why Sam Cam deserves new worktops at Downing Street
Oh, good grief.
1. Lads' mags and a toxic culture that treats all women like meat
Or calls them autocuties.
Who's BAD?
Mick Jones always wanted to re-form The Clash. He and Strummer came very close to doing it too. Negotiations were approaching a conclusion when Joe simply said ‘Let’s not bother’. It was probably a good decision - and with Joe now absent, one that will be permanent. But I hope Mick doesn’t feel his next band proper - Big Audio Dynamite - were in any way a substitute for a re-united Clash, because they were far more important than that.
When Jones and his former punk colleagues parted company amid no little bitterness in 1984, they were already exploring the unfamiliar music they’d heard in New York: the nascent hip-hop and electro scenes. In fact, they’d gone as far as to have Futura 2000 appear on stage with them at Bonds Casino and incorporate raps into tracks on Sandinista and Combat Rock. But Jones’ departure led to a marked fissure – Joe and traditional rock on one side, Mick and the new electronic territories on the other.
I’m sure it felt very different at the time, but this was an unintended parting gift from the band. As his former comrades descended into the compromised, disowned disaster that was Cut The Crap, Mick Jones was free to recruit a likeminded posse and cut loose with a blend of rockabilly guitars, dub, electro, hip-hop and sampling. After a brief false start with TRAC, Mick formed a new band. This was B.A.D. and their debut album was intriguing, adventurous, fresh and clever in just the way that Cut The Crap was not. They sported a terrific line up too: former Roxy DJ and London Calling video director Don Letts, keyboard ace (and first husband to Patsy Kensit) Dan Donovan, reggae bassist Leo Williams and drummer Greg Roberts. As with The Clash, they looked fantastic too – a blend of sharp young punks and cool rastas led by Jones, often in an outsized titfer.
More importantly, B.A.D. were opening doors and exploring possibilities, the effects of which are still very much seen and heard today.
Sampling is now taken for granted, but the first time I heard snippets from other songs and classic movie dialogue in a track was on early Big Audio Dynamite releases. And I don’t recall having the slightest inclination to discover breakbeats until Mick and his crew introduced them to the ever eclectic B.A.D. sound.
Pleasingly, the second Dynamite album - ‘No.10 Upping Street’ - was co-produced and co-written by Joe Strummer and it started to dawn on those of us who cared, that this was the music The Clash would have created had they managed to hold it together.
I saw Joe Strummer and The Latino Rockabilly War around this time (Mick was dangerously ill with pneumonia) and he not only praised Jones and his band but covered B.A.D.’s Sightsee MC. Joe clearly liked B.A.D. a great deal, but loved Mick even more. Regretting his rash decision to fire Jones years before, he was now contrite and possibly even meditating on a means to restore their working relationship.
But I guess it was more than just logistics and money that prevented these two friends and brothers in music coming together again. Could Joe join B.A.D. without it becoming a quasi-Clash? Not really. Would Mick split his band in order to work with Joe? Of course not.
Effectively, Big Audio Dynamite were so good they put the kibosh on any further Strummer/Jones/ Clash adventures.
Fortunately, a number of excellent albums from the band (Tighten Up Vol. 88, Megatop Phoenix) followed and the burgeoning acid house scene was absorbed into their later work. But eventually members left, inspiration faded and subsequent releases brought diminishing returns. Name changes (BADII and Big Audio) did little to boost their fortunes and in 1994 the band called it a day.
Now rapid wind to the present and Mick Jones, fresh from a world tour with Gorillaz no less, has announced the reformation of the original Big Audio Dynamite line-up and a UK tour. I, for one, am delighted. I sincerely hope this outing will draw attention to a truly original and unmistakable act, who were never properly recognised for their influence and pioneering spirit. But more than that, I hope Mick Jones is reminded of the fact that he fronted not one, but two stupendous, legendary bands, that he feels rightly proud and I am there to see it.
Magnus Shaw, February 2011
When Jones and his former punk colleagues parted company amid no little bitterness in 1984, they were already exploring the unfamiliar music they’d heard in New York: the nascent hip-hop and electro scenes. In fact, they’d gone as far as to have Futura 2000 appear on stage with them at Bonds Casino and incorporate raps into tracks on Sandinista and Combat Rock. But Jones’ departure led to a marked fissure – Joe and traditional rock on one side, Mick and the new electronic territories on the other.
I’m sure it felt very different at the time, but this was an unintended parting gift from the band. As his former comrades descended into the compromised, disowned disaster that was Cut The Crap, Mick Jones was free to recruit a likeminded posse and cut loose with a blend of rockabilly guitars, dub, electro, hip-hop and sampling. After a brief false start with TRAC, Mick formed a new band. This was B.A.D. and their debut album was intriguing, adventurous, fresh and clever in just the way that Cut The Crap was not. They sported a terrific line up too: former Roxy DJ and London Calling video director Don Letts, keyboard ace (and first husband to Patsy Kensit) Dan Donovan, reggae bassist Leo Williams and drummer Greg Roberts. As with The Clash, they looked fantastic too – a blend of sharp young punks and cool rastas led by Jones, often in an outsized titfer.
More importantly, B.A.D. were opening doors and exploring possibilities, the effects of which are still very much seen and heard today.
Sampling is now taken for granted, but the first time I heard snippets from other songs and classic movie dialogue in a track was on early Big Audio Dynamite releases. And I don’t recall having the slightest inclination to discover breakbeats until Mick and his crew introduced them to the ever eclectic B.A.D. sound.
Pleasingly, the second Dynamite album - ‘No.10 Upping Street’ - was co-produced and co-written by Joe Strummer and it started to dawn on those of us who cared, that this was the music The Clash would have created had they managed to hold it together.
I saw Joe Strummer and The Latino Rockabilly War around this time (Mick was dangerously ill with pneumonia) and he not only praised Jones and his band but covered B.A.D.’s Sightsee MC. Joe clearly liked B.A.D. a great deal, but loved Mick even more. Regretting his rash decision to fire Jones years before, he was now contrite and possibly even meditating on a means to restore their working relationship.
But I guess it was more than just logistics and money that prevented these two friends and brothers in music coming together again. Could Joe join B.A.D. without it becoming a quasi-Clash? Not really. Would Mick split his band in order to work with Joe? Of course not.
Effectively, Big Audio Dynamite were so good they put the kibosh on any further Strummer/Jones/ Clash adventures.
Fortunately, a number of excellent albums from the band (Tighten Up Vol. 88, Megatop Phoenix) followed and the burgeoning acid house scene was absorbed into their later work. But eventually members left, inspiration faded and subsequent releases brought diminishing returns. Name changes (BADII and Big Audio) did little to boost their fortunes and in 1994 the band called it a day.
Now rapid wind to the present and Mick Jones, fresh from a world tour with Gorillaz no less, has announced the reformation of the original Big Audio Dynamite line-up and a UK tour. I, for one, am delighted. I sincerely hope this outing will draw attention to a truly original and unmistakable act, who were never properly recognised for their influence and pioneering spirit. But more than that, I hope Mick Jones is reminded of the fact that he fronted not one, but two stupendous, legendary bands, that he feels rightly proud and I am there to see it.
Magnus Shaw, February 2011
Saturday, 12 February 2011
The Man Who Fell To Earth
Some things are hard to admit. Pilfering cigarettes from your Mum’s dinner party would be one. Using the same train ticket for six weeks would be another. But admitting David Bowie hasn’t been much cop for about 25 years – well, that takes real emotional courage.
If there was ever an artist touched by an almost supernatural genius, surely it was Bowie. From 1969’s 'Space Oddity' to 1980’s 'Scary Monsters', he produced a body of near faultless work. Not simply interesting or satisfactory, but heart-stopping in its scope, invention and creativity. What’s more, unlike contemporaries Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, he was a household name and hugely commercially successful. Even the more experimental exercises on 'Low' and 'Heroes' did nothing to detract from his standing as one of the world’s most admired, dazzling and purchased recording artists.
But Bowie was always a breed apart. While Rod Stewart and the Rolling Stones were firmly anchored in the rhythm and blues which spawned their careers (likewise Dylan and protest folk), David Bowie appeared to be creating brand new genres on a six monthly basis – sci-fi rock, glam, white soul, industrial synth and more. If he was ever too camp or outré for the post-hippy musical traditionalists, he was never dissuaded from his theatrical adventures and constant re-invention. Indeed his approach dared the conservative plodders still adhering to the twelve bar formulae of Deep Purple and the nascent metal acts to re-think everything. Through the 70s, only T-Rex and Roxy Music really challenged rock and roll convention with anything like the same vigor. Until punk, it would have been a very dreary decade without Bowie, Bolan and Ferry. And Bowie led that trinity.
Punk is often seen as a year zero. This was the movement with the scorched earth policy, which took no prisoners and left the old school dying in the dust. But there was an exception. Indeed, the Bromley Contingent – the Sex Pistols’ fan base, which gave birth to Siouxsie and the Banshees and Generation X – came together through their shared admiration of David Bowie.
In the early 80s, The Blitz Kids (later New Romantics) arrived to replace the stagnating punks and who was their figurehead? Who pushed them to a wider audience via his Ashes To Ashes video?
And yet, and yet. Even as Bowie led Steve Strange and his friends along that beach, in their nun, priest and clown costumes, David Bowie was only a couple of years from the ‘Tonight’ album and drop in quality so marked, it was hard to believe this was the same artist and not some imposter recruited to compensate for the real David’s unexplained disappearance.
This was no forgivable blip. After ‘Tonight’ things went from bad to worse. I recall a press conference to launch the Glass Spider tour in 1987. Bowie seemed to be subtly acknowledging his frailties and promising a return to form, with fantastic sets and a fine band. Most of us believed him until we saw the gigs. Dismay rapidly set in as we gazed upon a mulleted man in a crimson jump suit with plastic wings, trolling out anemic versions of his old hits and new stuff so lame it was hard not to wander off to the pizza stand shaking one's head.
‘Never Let Me Down’ – the album he was plugging - was a new low (as opposed to a new ‘Low’, sadly) bringing grown men to tears of disappointment and frustration.
Admittedly forming a ‘proper’ band was at least unexpected and did much to give us hope of a Bowie revival and new impetus for the man who once made songs like ‘Scary Monsters and Supercreeps’ sound at once effortless and so astonishingly good they may well have been beamed from another dimension. Surely he still had that ability in his head and that power in his heart. No, not really.
The Tin Machine project has enjoyed some retrospective kudos, but not much. They were superficially noisy and owned some smashing suits, but their output was never anything inspiring and had they not had Bowie as their lead singer, they would never had managed so much as a contract, let alone two albums.
I’d like to pinpoint a moment when it all came right, but I cannot. At the same time it is also too painful to recount the evaporation of the man’s talent, release by release, track by track. So the simple truth is this: somewhere around 1983 David Bowie lost it. Whether you include the ‘Let’s Dance’ collection as the start of the decline or regard it as Bowie’s last great (albeit very mainstream) album is a moot point – nevertheless either just before or just after the release of that huge selling LP, an unexplained rot set in.
Maybe such a level of exceptional achievement is just unsustainable and we should be grateful that Bowie’s abilities were so mighty they carried him through a fifteen year period of unbroken highs. Perhaps Bowie’s only failing was forgetting to retire in 1984. But being a rock star isn’t like being a civil engineer and I can’t think of a single example of a famous musician simply putting down pen and guitar to spend their days in a country cottage. And as a solo artist, David could hardly split up.
Earlier this week, Radio 2 re-broadcast a live performance given by David Bowie to a select BBC audience in 2002. Although the man was in fine avuncular form between songs, the set was heavy on material from that year's so-so ‘Heathen’ album and, although admirably eclectic, firmly resisted the spectacular glories of 'The Man Who Sold The World' or 'Aladdin Sane'.
Then, without warning, he rolled out the divine ‘Bewlay Brothers’ from 1971’s ‘Hunky Dory’. And how it leapt from the DAB, sublime genius rippling through every note, every cadence. Sung with conviction, style and skill, the Bowie we fell in love with was right there.
And then he was gone.
Magnus Shaw, February 2011
Roots Britannia
It’s Reggae Month in the UK! No, I don’t know why either. Still, any excuse to bring out those old Trojan & Greensleeves compilations.
Normally, in my house and car, the reggae season begins as soon as the temperature moves into the 20s, the sun is shining, and the windows can be opened without a snow drift appearing in one’s lap.
I’m old fashioned. The misogyny, violence and homosexual bashing that accompanies much of latter day reggae, especially ‘Dancehall’ is at best, very sad, and at worst, a disgrace to the peaceful intentions of the pioneers (and The Pioneers, as it happens) of reggae from the 1960s and 70s.
The breakthrough singles for reggae in the UK, ‘Young, Gifted and Black’, ‘Montego Bay’ and ‘Double Barrel’ brought a sense of mystery and excitement to the top forty charts in the early 70s. As a teenager caught halfway between the hippie era fleeing over the hill and the punk rock circus not yet in town, reggae was my natural home. Rebellious, but not too scary for a white boy from Middlesex.
As the local record stores only stocked the hit singles, I soon learned that to increase my reggae knowledge and record collection, I would have look further afield than W.H. Smith & Son in Staines.
Strummer may have been the white man in Hammersmith Palais; I was the very pale face in Daddy Kool Records in Dean Street, Soho. I realised the only way to overcome the 1972 awkwardness of being a long haired, white teenager in a tiny shop full of dreadlocked Rastafarians was to stride boldly to the counter and hand over my list with a self-enforced confidence. Initially, I was met with some patronising comments and asked, rather hurtfully I felt, if I didn’t want to be in the Virgin Store up the road on Oxford Street. I don’t think I ever quite overcame the mild reverse racism, but as my visits increased, I was at least met with a smile, as the assistant muttered that they didn’t have half of the records I sought.
There was something glorious about those imported 7” singles from Jamaica. Yes, ‘the 1970s never been anywhere’ glamour of knowing they had come all the way from Kingston, but additionally it was the tactile experience of the weighty vinyl, the lack of a ‘middle’, the off centre printing of the label (and sometimes the off centre pressing of the record) that was so very distant from the Porky Prime Cut thin, plastic-y, vinyl of British records.
Sometimes I chose these Jamaican plates of vinyl purely on the name of the singer or group; Burning Spear, Big Youth, Junior Murvin – their names sounded like they would be a good bet.
Dub. I liked the idea of dub, and again, the names were exotic, and such a selection process rarely let me down; King Tubby, Augustus Pablo – I found them both through this random process, and immediately fell for these new bass-heavy sounds.
Lovers Rock, One Drop, Roots, and Rockers Reggae, I loved them all.
Wandering through Harlesden today, and remembering gigs at the Roxy and the Coliseum; singing Police and Thieves in my head, I stumbled across a lovely piece of synchronicity, as I noticed, in a shop window, a flyer for a Millie Jackson gig at the Brixton O2 – supporting artists are Ken Boothe, Maxi Priest, and Marcia Griffith. When I returned home, I tried on my Trojan Records t-shirt from 1974.
No. Of course it didn’t fit.
You may wish to sample our ten track Spotify Roots Reggae selection
If you like any of the sounds you hear, consider checking out the BBC’s Reggae Britannia season on BBC4, which includes a movie in which I make the most fleeting of all fleeting appearances as an extra.
This week I have:
Had lunch in what used to be the Wimpy Bar in Harlesden, and sat at the same table where I bought lunch for an impoverished member of the 101ers in 1975. Including that bendy frankfurter.
Read ‘I, Me Mine’, the disappointing George Harrison ‘autobiography’.
Watched a couple of rather terrifying fellows having a fight in My Big Fat Gypsy Weddings.
Noticed that Giles Coren looks rather grumpy when walking in the London rain.
Terence Dackombe, February 2011
Tickets please
The best attended tours - ever!
10. Wildest Dreams Tour, Tina Turner
3,000,000 attendees
Wobbly, bewigged grandma of soul pulls in a crowd in 1996.
9. U2 360° Tour, U2
3,071,290 attendees
God's favourite rock band and tax avoiders sell a ticket or two in 2009.
8. Licks Tour, The Rolling Stones
3,400,000 attendees
Vintage, Seven Seas abusing, white blues fellas coin it in 2003.
7. Living Proof: The Farewell Tour, Cher
3,500,000 attendees
Gypsy, tramp, thief and semi-bionic songstress attracts attention in 2002.
6. Sticky & Sweet Tour, Madonna
3,500,000 attendees
Creepy auntie and ex-Mrs Penn, sucks up the ticket dollars in 2008.
5. PopMart Tour, U2
3,935,936 attendees
Them again. Nearly half a million people and one pair of wraparound shades.
4. Bad World Tour, Michael Jackson
4,400,000 attendees
Before the awkward questions and the overdose, Jacko does the business.
3. HIStory World Tour, Michael Jackson
4,500,000 attendees
1996 and the world was his for the taking. How wrong it went.
2. Vertigo Tour, U2
4,619,021 attendees
That's a lot of folk, so it is. 2005.
1. A Bigger Bang Tour, The Rolling Stones
4,680,000 attendees
Just goes to show, losing Bill Wyman needn't make you unpopular.
Saturday, 5 February 2011
Cutting cruise
You know things have come to a pretty pass when you’re sleeping in your singer’s kitchen with your suitcase of belongings taking up barely more room than the guitar case beside it at the end of the mattress. One of the items of clothing I’d stuffed into the case, and thence into the back of the van, when making my troubled escape from Humberside domesticity to the bright lights of Ipswich’s downtown rock n’ roll heartland was my Kevin McDermott Orchestra t-shirt, a gift from a grateful record industry in the days when a pencil and the back of a fag packet were all you needed in order to complete a fully authoritative chart return. It was clean, it was comfortable, it was on top of the washing pile when I left.
We were on a cross-North Sea ferry en route to play a series of arts festival-funded shows to disinterested Danish youths when a bass player walked up to me and said that he knew one of the guys on the back of my t-shirt.
We got chatting and it turned out that he lived four doors down from where James the Singer and I were sharing rather too much domesticity. Drinks were taken, tour plans discussed and before too long overtures were being made to the in-house cabaret band who had already proved themselves to be embittered veterans of the Harwich to Esbjerg round trip and had forewarned us darkly of the fates that lay in wait for any rising young group of popstrels who should misguidedly accept an engagement playing covers while they waited for their proper career to sort itself out. A visibly sweating floor manager watched as we disengaged ourselves from the ancient musicians, leaving them as idle as painted ships upon a painted sea and took their places on the bandstand for a glimpse into our future. The ghosts of cruise ships past, present and future were in the room.
At some point during the evening it became apparent that wagers were being taken on various courses of action and their possible outcomes. Thus it was that I found myself asking a lady of fairly advanced years if she would like to take to the floor in order to both dance, and earn me several Krone in illicit gambling returns. After some discussion regarding the advisability, motives and possible outcomes of such a course she gracefully accepted, and started to tell me about herself. She had been widowed some years before after a long and happy marriage, and when newly bereaved had decided to explore what else life had to offer and, as a result, had eventually pitched up on a ferry as part of a choral group doing a low key tour of opera recitals. At the same time, I was going off to do a low key series of evenings, staying up late, playing indoor cricket with a tennis ball, building campfires, riffing on a double bass we found in a games room at our accommodation and putting the drummer’s hand in a glass of water when he fell asleep to see if he’d wet himself.
She was not planning to indulge in any of these activities herself but, to be fair, I hadn’t exactly set them in stone at this point either. She spoke on, I moved my clumsy feet to the music as best I could, trying not to either trip me or her up or become entangled in her evening dress, and after some time had passed I realized that we’d been talking easily for ages, her quietly with grace, passion and humility, me with a sense that I was learning a life lesson in the company of a far wiser head than I had been able to muster so far. It was almost spiritual. As we parted, I think I may have kissed her hand. “Will you still respect me in the morning?” I enquired wolfishly. “I’m sure that won’t be a problem” she replied, the coquette.
When the band disembarked the next day in a flurry of sleeping bags and hangovers, I felt a tap on my shoulder. “I told you I’d still respect you in the morning”. She smiled, with eyes as grey as the colour of the sea. “I wasn’t sure I’d recognize you in the daylight, but I saw your shirt. Be kind, you are a good person, I wish you happiness” she said.
Shane Kirk, February 2011
We were on a cross-North Sea ferry en route to play a series of arts festival-funded shows to disinterested Danish youths when a bass player walked up to me and said that he knew one of the guys on the back of my t-shirt.
We got chatting and it turned out that he lived four doors down from where James the Singer and I were sharing rather too much domesticity. Drinks were taken, tour plans discussed and before too long overtures were being made to the in-house cabaret band who had already proved themselves to be embittered veterans of the Harwich to Esbjerg round trip and had forewarned us darkly of the fates that lay in wait for any rising young group of popstrels who should misguidedly accept an engagement playing covers while they waited for their proper career to sort itself out. A visibly sweating floor manager watched as we disengaged ourselves from the ancient musicians, leaving them as idle as painted ships upon a painted sea and took their places on the bandstand for a glimpse into our future. The ghosts of cruise ships past, present and future were in the room.
At some point during the evening it became apparent that wagers were being taken on various courses of action and their possible outcomes. Thus it was that I found myself asking a lady of fairly advanced years if she would like to take to the floor in order to both dance, and earn me several Krone in illicit gambling returns. After some discussion regarding the advisability, motives and possible outcomes of such a course she gracefully accepted, and started to tell me about herself. She had been widowed some years before after a long and happy marriage, and when newly bereaved had decided to explore what else life had to offer and, as a result, had eventually pitched up on a ferry as part of a choral group doing a low key tour of opera recitals. At the same time, I was going off to do a low key series of evenings, staying up late, playing indoor cricket with a tennis ball, building campfires, riffing on a double bass we found in a games room at our accommodation and putting the drummer’s hand in a glass of water when he fell asleep to see if he’d wet himself.
She was not planning to indulge in any of these activities herself but, to be fair, I hadn’t exactly set them in stone at this point either. She spoke on, I moved my clumsy feet to the music as best I could, trying not to either trip me or her up or become entangled in her evening dress, and after some time had passed I realized that we’d been talking easily for ages, her quietly with grace, passion and humility, me with a sense that I was learning a life lesson in the company of a far wiser head than I had been able to muster so far. It was almost spiritual. As we parted, I think I may have kissed her hand. “Will you still respect me in the morning?” I enquired wolfishly. “I’m sure that won’t be a problem” she replied, the coquette.
When the band disembarked the next day in a flurry of sleeping bags and hangovers, I felt a tap on my shoulder. “I told you I’d still respect you in the morning”. She smiled, with eyes as grey as the colour of the sea. “I wasn’t sure I’d recognize you in the daylight, but I saw your shirt. Be kind, you are a good person, I wish you happiness” she said.
Shane Kirk, February 2011
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