Silent Words Speak Loudest

2008-05-15T18:37:00.000-07:00

Know Your Enemy

"It's a bit late for Cherie Blair to write that Tony 'knew David Kelly was a loyal public servant driven to despair because of the furore'. Where was the furore created but in her husband's office?"

I think it's safe to say that Derek Vawdrey, the brother of government adviser Kelly's widow, won't be rushing out to encourage people to buy Cherie Blair's recently published memoirs.

2008-05-15T18:31:00.000-07:00

Quote of the day

"You can mythologise to your heart's content, but we were just four lads having a good time."

Stephen Morris on the new Joy Division documentary, which follows hot on the heels of Anton Corbijn's 'Control'.

Just don't mention '24 Hour Party People' (which I loved) - Morris' reference to it as "kind of 'Carry On Factory Records'" suggests he doesn't think too highly of it...

2008-05-15T17:59:00.000-07:00

Feel good hits of the 15th May

1. 'Gardenia' - Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks
2. 'I Was In Love With You' - The Gutter Twins
3. 'Whispered Thoughts' - Gossamer Albatross
4. 'Deceptacon' - Le Tigre
5. 'Sonny Liston' - Elapse-O
6. 'Australia' - The Shins
7. 'Soon' - My Bloody Valentine
8. 'The First Big Weekend' - Arab Strap
9. 'Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!' - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
10. 'Committed To Extinction' - The Icarus Line

2008-05-13T17:58:00.000-07:00

Quote of the day

"I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly, because they're surrounded by things like that all day long and it must make them miserable."

Robert Rauschenberg RIP.

2008-05-13T17:47:00.000-07:00

God moves in mysterious ways

Torn between Catholicism and a belief in the existence of aliens? Well worry no longer - the two aren't incompatible. Aside from the bizarrely ungrammatical title of the article in question as it appeared in the Vatican newspaper ('Aliens Are My Brother'), the most interesting aspect of the story is the claim that apparently "some aliens could even be free from original sin". Well bully for them...

2008-05-13T17:37:00.000-07:00

Know Your Enemy

"The same right wing that supported Hitler and fascism".

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union party. The man obviously has a way with international diplomatic relations...

2008-05-13T17:04:00.000-07:00

Reams of fun

Today I went to a presentation on paper which was actually quite interesting, though it did last for an arsenumbing hour and a half. Despite the office's relative proximity to Slough, it wasn't given by David Brent or any another employee of Wernham-Hogg. All the same, there was one moment of seat-squirming discomfort, when he began referring to Jamie Oliver's cookbooks as "gastro-porn"...

2008-05-12T16:00:00.000-07:00

Howling bells

Apparently there's a new Mogwai album imminent, called The Hawk Is Howling. Who knew? Well, apart from anyone who reads the music press and listens to the radio...

I've got slightly mixed feelings about the prospect. Mr Beast was in many ways their most accomplished record to date, but it didn't translate particularly well live - or, at least, the last time I saw them, headlining last year's Supersonic Festival in Birmingham, they were by their own standards rather flat and listless. That won't stop me buying the album, though.

And just when I'd taken a look at my bank balance from behind the back of the metaphorical sofa and decided I could only really stretch to Blood Red Shoes' debut, the Efterklang album and perhaps the new Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan collaboration, too...

2008-05-12T15:20:00.000-07:00

Know Your Enemy

"Most forms of alternative medicine remain either unproven or are demonstrably ineffective and several alternative therapies actually put patients at risk. We are not anti-alternative medicine, we are pro-evidence. If people take medicine, they should know it's safe".

So sayeth Edzard Ernst - and as a former homeopath and the first professor of complementary medicine in Britain, he's worth listening to. Simon Singh, co-author of 'Trick Or Treatment' with Ernst, is rather more blunt about homeopathy: "It's all baloney".

Which reminds me - I really must recover my copy of 'How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered The World', Francis Wheen's skewering of quackery in all its forms.

2008-05-08T14:23:00.000-07:00

Black Marx

CAREY MARX / BISHOP & DOUCH / NICK PAGE, 28TH APRIL 2008, OXFORD CELLAR

How to get people out to comedy gigs on a Monday night? That was the dilemma faced by Paddy Luscombe, the man behind The Free Beer Show. Can you guess how he manages it?

If the students who comprise the vast majority of the audience are aware who compere Nick Page is, then they do a good job of hiding it. Perhaps in these times of tuition fees and rising academic expectations, they're just too conscientious to spend their days sprawled in front of daytime TV, in which case they might not recognise the former presenter of shitey BBC property series 'Escape To The Country'. But somehow I doubt it.

Having begun by getting an uncomfortable laugh with a topical quip about us being squashed together into a confined underground space, Page does briefly savage the programme on which he prostituted himself, but gets more mileage out of his home county, Gloucestershire, being famous for only two things: the bizarre practice of cheese rolling and Fred West. Apparently there's so little to proud of if you're from Gloucester that if you badmouth West someone will come up to you and say "Yeah, but he was a fucking good builder..."

The fact that when Page reappears, some twenty-five minutes later (though it feels like twenty-five hours), he has a bemused smile plastered across his face should tell you something about support act Bishop & Douch (and friends). That that bemused smile raises a far bigger laugh than they could manage certainly should. That his first words are "Anyone need a drink?"...

Tonight's set consists of an amorphous and incoherent sketch that shifts in content and location. It begins with the hapless duo being chastised for a dereliction of duties by their boss at Disneyland, then becomes a tiresomely repetitive deconstruction of the familiar unmasking of Old Man Winters from 'Scooby Doo' with the backing cast stepping out of role to hijack the script, and ends up in a grim place called Sesame Lane.

Whether or not these three phases are deliberate nods to the first series of 'The Mighty Boosh', Charlie Kaufman's 'Adaptation' and David Chapelle's take on 'Sesame Street' respectively hardly matters - it all hangs together by the most tenuous of threads, and elicits far more awkward silence and bewilderment than it does laughs. Page has confessed that the thing he's inherited from his father (other than an excess of body hair) is the inability to avoid saying or doing something if he'll thereby amuse himself, even if only for a moment. I get the feeling I'm not alone in thinking it's unfortunate that Bishop & Douch seem to suffer from the same affliction.

Page welcomes us back after the interval by recounting his fondness for finding lists of names on noticeboards, very deliberately highlighting just one with a fluorescent marker pen and then making his escape, chuckling at the panic his mischief may have unleashed. But any whimsy is soon swept aside as he tells us, in the accelerated style of delivery he uses at times, of the night (which I suspect may be fictional) when he accidentally dosed himself with Rohypnol.

Tonight's billed headliner Rob Deering, who's had to pull out due to family illness, has been described on Chortle as an "easy-going act" whose "audience rapport is in the Eric Morecambe league, with a natural, non-threatening geniality that only the hardest of hearts wouldn't warm to". The same could hardly be said of his last-minute replacement, who apparently once made Princess Beatrice cry for more than an hour - quite probably not with laughter, one suspects.

For the most part, Carey Marx deals in the comedy of cruelty - or what he repeatedly refers to as "harsh jokes". Most are about midgets and women, and most are pretty unfunny and forgettable. All are delivered with a self-satisfied smirk. If there's anything worse than gratuitous offensiveness purely for the sake of it, then it's gratuitous offensiveness purely for the sake of it that tries to dress itself up as something more noble and purposive. Rather than pressing on regardless of the offence his material might cause, Marx irritatingly feels the need to try to justify and defend himself - but just doesn't have the arguments to do so.

It's a shame as much as an annoyance, though, because there's undoubted potential in some of the material, which has been culled from his diary and which is likely to form the basis for an Edinburgh show called 'Careyness' (and hence why I feel a bit like Herod, sticking the knife into the show in its infancy). We follow him out of his front door, through London, up to Scotland, in and out of hotel rooms, and back again - all the time on the look-out for subjects and incidents to riff on. It's a revealing window into the world of the professional stand-up, and the creation of a set, though much of it will probably rightly end up being filtered out when he sits down and seriously pans for the gold.

When he does dwell on something for long enough to probe a little deeper - such as Australian MP Ann Bressington's call for the introduction of "sex contracts" - it's clear that there's a perceptive wit lurking beneath the laddish exterior. Arguably the best element of the set is the mystery of the various bald men spotted around London folding and tearing up newspapers. But Marx's delivery of the punchline, which would make a neat conclusion to the set, is flat and hurried - and indeed would have been forgotten altogether if not for a prompt from a curious audience member.

Perhaps, to adopt a culinary analogy, you shouldn't sample and criticise what the chef's rustling up when it's still undercooked and far from ready - but even still the evening left rather a sour taste in the mouth.

2008-05-08T12:59:00.000-07:00

Feel good hits of the 8th May

1. 'Out Of Reaches' - Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks
2. 'Night Of The Lotus Eaters' - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
3. 'It's Summertime' - The Flaming Lips
4. 'My Way' - Frank Sinatra
5. 'Dudley' - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
6. 'Soft Sugar' - Noxagt
7. 'Great Waves' - Dirty Three feat. Cat Power
8. 'Olv 26' - Stereolab
9. 'Zionist Timing' - Aereogramme
10. 'Objects Of My Affection' - Peter, Bjorn & John

I should add that, strictly speaking, it wasn't Frank Sinatra's version that stuck in my head - it was the karaoke effort belted out by the snaggle-toothed old chap who held a drunken crowd spellbound in the Black Bull in Morpeth on Sunday night. Make that seven things I didn't expect to see over the course of the Bank Holiday weekend...

Meanwhile, another song from Real Emotional Trash tops the pile. At this rate, I can see every song putting in an appearance at the summit of future installments of FGH -it's hands-down my favourite album of the year so far.

2008-05-08T12:01:00.000-07:00

Quote of the day

"You may not believe in an interventionist God, but you're starting to look like Mr Kidd from 'Diamonds Are Forever'".

The last line of today's Guardian Fiver teatime football email. Whether it was Paul Doyle or Tom Lutz who went to the Hammersmith Apollo last night, they've got a point.

I, of course, am not in the slightest jealous of anyone who's already seen or is about to see the disconcertingly libidinous 50-year-old and his Bad Seeds on their current tour. No. Not one bit.

2008-05-07T17:03:00.000-07:00

Six things I didn't expect to see over the course of the Bank Holiday weekend

1. The inside of a former Little Chef that's been converted into a superb Indian restaurant. I remember eating Black Forest gateau in there many a time, back when I were a lad and it were all fields.

2. Golf balls disappearing beyond the 200m mark on our visit to the local driving range. Perhaps I should get over the cost and take up golf? After all, I am now of a certain age, and it would give me an excuse to wear silly clothes.

3. A man with a perfect monk haircut (shaven at the back and sides and on top, with a halo of hair left) helping to pack up the stalls on the Quayside in Newcastle at the end of the Sunday market. He must have either done it for a bet or had been on his stag do the previous night. Or maybe it's just the latest fashion that hasn't yet made its way down the country.

4. An aerial runway from the Tyne Bridge over the river. Not so long ago, that really would have been taking your life in your own hands, as one gulp of what passed for water would have probably caused you either to instantly vomit or sprout a third arm. As it is, fall into the Tyne in central Newcastle these days and you're more likely to find your fall broken by an otter.

5. Jimmy White on the M1, en route back to his manor from the World Championships in Sheffield. To be honest, the black Bentley with the number plate 'CUE 130Y' was a giveaway.

6. A Mad Hatter's Tea Party in the courtyard space between Cafe Coco and Kazbar on Cowley Road in Oxford. It was a while before I realised that the reason the wine-swilling fop in the regal cloak looked familiar was because I'd seen him representing his college on 'University Challenge'...

2008-05-07T16:55:00.000-07:00

Quote of the day

"A lot of gangsters and Radio 4".

Pete Doherty's comments on prison life upon being released from Wormwood Scrubs.

You can just imagine the scene, can't you?

"What you in for?"

"I done a copper. You?"

"I broke this geezer's ... oooooh, 'The Archers'!"

2008-05-07T16:21:00.000-07:00

Death of a nobody v death of a somebody

Anyone like to hazard a guess which of these two news stories about gun crime in the capital is likely to receive the most media coverage in the coming days: this one, which features a Polish immigrant being fatally wounded in New Cross, or this one, which involves a "leading barrister" and a "£2.2m Georgian flat in one of London's most prestigious neighbourhoods"?

2008-05-07T16:14:00.000-07:00

Is it just me...

... or is the news that a Talksport presenter has been sacked for forthrightly expressing a personal opinion rather bemusing? Can I vote that Jon Gaunt's next to go?

2008-05-07T16:03:00.000-07:00

The rating game

I'm sure I won't be the first to do this, but anyway...

What do you think of the new ratings function that suddenly seems to have been tacked on to the bottom of all my posts? You can use it to record your opinions...

(Seriously, if anyone knows how to switch it off, let me know.)

2008-05-01T17:04:00.000-07:00

Feel good hits of the 1st May

What, so soon? Yup, I've been listening to a lot of music this week, though not all of it new...

1. 'Dragonfly Pie' - Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks
2. 'Victory Gardens' - The Icarus Line
3. 'Bright Tomorrow' - Fuck Buttons
4. 'Lime Tree' - Bright Eyes
5. 'The Story Of Jazz' - Yo La Tengo
6. 'Get Innocuous!' - LCD Soundsystem
7. 'Superman' - Peggy Sue & The Pirates
8. 'The Stations' - The Gutter Twins
9. 'Who's Gonna Find Me' - The Coral
10. 'Crimewave' - Crystal Castles

Some brief notes:

Boy oh boy is the Malkmus album good.

I think I had a bit of a Eureka moment with Bright Eyes' Cassadaga tonight. The same can't be said of The Coral's Roots & Echoes, which continues to underwhelm hugely. Where did it all go wrong?

Anyone else found themselves earworming #6 as a result of the ad for 'Grand Theft Auto IV'?

2008-04-29T17:12:00.001-07:00

Seeing red

BLOOD RED SHOES / THESE NEW PURITANS / PEGGY SUE & THE PIRATES, 3RD APRIL 2008, OXFORD ZODIAC

Ever felt like you're the anomaly responsible for raising the average age of a gig crowd above 18? Well, I don't tonight. The dads chaperoning their daughters are doing that...

Fact number one: Peggy Sue & The Pirates have nothing to do with Pete & The Pirates. Fact number two: judging by the absence of peg-legs, pieces of eight and shoulder-perched parrots, neither are they particularly piratical.

The Brighton-based duo - yes, there are only two of them - have supported Kate Nash and so it's no great surprise that they come across as being in a similar vein, albeit possessed by the maverick spirit of someone like Natasha Khan of Bat For Lashes. Instruments come and instruments go, but always centre stage are their voices - strong, dovetailing, busily improvising additional sound effects (standout song, the single 'Television', ends with them imitating static), but for these ears too often irritatingly accented. Blood Red Shoes drummer Steven Ansell appears for an acoustic cover of his band's 'Take The Weight', but that's about the only time the chattering classes of sixth formers actually pay them much attention.

Slightly less straightforwardly cast in the role of prelude to the main act are These New Puritans. The Southenders played here as recently as January and have actually cancelled a headlining show of their own later in the month to appear in this support slot.

At times, there's something promising about the violent disco created by the two nerdy-looking mop-heads on stage, as thin as anorexic streaks of piss. Take single 'Elvis', for example: an indiefied Fall set to a thwacking great synthetic beat. But at others - the jackbooted Missy Elliott stomp of 'Swords Of Truth' (over which I guarantee you'll find yourself singing "Get your freak on"...) - it's distinctly underwhelming. And then there's 'Numbers AKA Numerology', on which they think they can get away with singing embarrassingly idiotic piffle like "What's your favourite number? / What does it mean?" by virtue of the fact that they're referencing mathematics, just like all good young angular NME-favoured bands should.

And so to the headliners.

As a wise man once opined, anger is an energy. That same wise man may have gone on to appear on ‘I’m A Celebrity ... Get Me Out Of Here!’, but his point remains valid – and that’s why the room is soon positively crackling with energy.

There’s no denying the fact that Blood Red Shoes are mightily miffed. Halfway through the set, Laura-Mary Carter furiously flings her guitar to the floor and storms off stage right, her partner Ansell following sharply after.

This is no inexcusably arrogant diva-ish strop or childish temper tantrum, though. With long-awaited and unfortunately delayed debut LP Box Of Secrets finally about to hit the shelves, the duo have been bedevilled by malevolent technical gremlins from the off (the set delayed for the best part of ten minutes, the intro tape left to loop over and over again), so it's hardly surprising they've become increasingly frustrated in their attempts to showcase a bunch of songs in which they passionately believe. "It's hard not to get worked up sometimes", Laura-Mary admits to me afterwards.

When they reappear, apologetically, the anger hasn’t dissipated and - further riled by The Man’s joyless limiting of the stage invasion encouraged by Ansell to just Peggy Sue & The Pirates and one lone fan - they set about those same songs with a ferocity that the recording process just can’t capture, mainlining their furious art-punk assault straight into our earholes. An explosive live act at the best of times, tonight their abrasive reimagining of Nirvana if they’d been on Kill Rock Stars rather than Sub Pop is in a different league altogether.

In truth, Box Of Secrets is ingenuously titled, a whole clutch of the songs – ‘It’s Getting Boring By The Sea’, ‘I Wish I Was Someone Better’, ‘You Bring Me Down’ and most recently ‘Say Something Say Anything’ – having already seen the light of day as singles and on the band’s numerous jaunts the length and breadth of the country.

But there’s the rub. It’s fitting that such serious contenders for the title of the hardest gigging band in Britain should take their name from a story about Ginger Rogers having to rehearse a dancing sequence so many times her white shoes turned red. After all, it’s precisely that kind of dogged tunnel-vision determination and dedication, even at risk of exhaustion and personal injury, that defines them.

Safe to say that suffering sabotage at the hands of the fucking Academy and its goons is unlikely to stop them.

2008-04-29T14:58:00.000-07:00

Let's get muddy and listen to CSS

The official SWSL reaction to this year's Glasto line-up, revealed today on the Guardian site? Meh, by and large - though it's never just about the music. Man.

That said, there are the odd alluring sequences (CSS, Battles and MGMT heading the Park Stage bill on the Saturday, and particularly The National, Spiritualized, Crystal Castles and The Brian Jonestown Massacre closing the John Peel Stage on the Sunday) and unexpected gems lying in wait - many of them with "black" in their name (Black Mountain, The Black Lips, Black Kids...).

And do my eyes deceive me, or is Shakin Stevens really opening up before The Hold Steady on the Pyramid Stage on the Saturday? Either someone's having a laugh, or Betty was closer to the truth than she could have imagined...

2008-04-27T17:11:00.000-07:00

Look who's squawking too

How do you cheer up a feathered fellow whose faithful companion has just flown off to the great birdcage in the sky? By getting him a harem of nubile ladyfriends.

Their names? Rita and Sue, of course.

While Rita has a bluish tinge, which is appropriate because the name conjures up images of blue rinses, we're not actually 100% certain that her companion is female. But then you've heard of a boy named Sue, haven't you?

And what of Bob? Well, he's currently playing the role of the grumpy old grouch whose feathers have been ruffled by the adventurous new arrivals having their beaks in his Trill - but no doubt he'll get used to them before long, once he gets over his shyness at talking to girls.

2008-04-27T15:46:00.000-07:00

Feel good hits of the 27th April

1. 'Real Emotional Trash' - Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks
2. 'This Odd Modern' - Truckers Of Husk
3. 'I Hate Myself And Want To Die' - Nirvana
4. 'God's Children' - The Gutter Twins
5. 'Other Cars Go' - It Hugs Back
6. 'More News From Nowhere' - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
7. 'Kokomo' - Black Dice
8. 'Mr Ladybird' - Lily Green
9. 'Eraser' - No Age
10. 'CCD' - Orcop

Warning: the Black Dice song and video may do funny things to your eyes and mind.

2008-04-24T16:51:00.000-07:00

Monsters of rock

Inevitably it's impossible to watch Metallica documentary (or rockumentary, if you will) 'Some Kind Of Monster', as I did recently, without immediately thinking of 'This Is Spinal Tap'.

After all, the behind-the-scenes access-all-areas film made during the tortuously protracted recording sessions for their 2003 album St Anger features ridiculously petulant feuds and childish tantrums on the part of James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich while a wearied Kirk Hammett, forever shaking his head, tries to keep the peace with a futile whine of "Hey guys, can't we all just get along?" And that's not to mention the psychologist / relationship counsellor they're paying $40,000 dollars a week to be call day and night...

But the other film that sprang to mind was 'DiG!', because both made for equally entertaining viewing despite my not caring much for the bands they focus on (in the case of 'DiG!', The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre).

And with 'Some Kind Of Monster' it isn't all laughs at the expense of the protagonists. It's actually a grippingly revealing insight into a world that music fans rarely see - one in which egotistical multi-million-selling musicians can suffer from envy and a crisis of confidence just by seeing their former bassist performing with his new band, and in which a band who have founded their career on being loud and angry but who now find themselves in comfortable middle-aged affluence feel the pressure to come up with something that stands up to their back catalogue.

And that's not to mention the way the film unpicks and exposes the creative process itself, showing the trio noodling away in the studio with little clue of how things might take shape - or, rather, be moulded into shape by ever-present producer Bob Rock.

Perhaps most curious is the feeling, unspoken but evidently shared by all involved, that no matter how bad the tensions and arguments get, they should persevere because ultimately they have something special together that should be preserved - misplaced though that feeling might be, when their collaborative brainstorming session for lyrical ideas throws up the line "My lifestyle determines my deathstyle" and they all decide it should make it onto the finished album...

2008-04-24T16:37:00.000-07:00

Know Your Enemy

"[He] gets so excited by the sound of his own opinions that his voice rises to a childish squeak. For me, he has an unwavering cloth ear, glass eye and polythene soul for culture, a flat-pack intellect of received truisms and committee-correct cliches, but is carried along by an innocent and meritless belief that his views are spring rain to a parched wasteland."

A A Gill on 'Newsnight Review' regular Ekow Eshun, director of "that zoo of onanistic, worthless pretension" the ICA.

Gill may know how to be entertainingly spiteful - I'll give him that - but he's a complete tosser and seems to have no sense of irony or self-awareness. His tirade against 'Newsnight Review' concludes with his admission that he "simply can't abide culture consumers who think criticism is point-scoring in an argument. It's not. That's a dinner party. THIS is criticism". But what is all the above if not public point-scoring of a particularly vindictive kind?

2008-04-24T16:34:00.000-07:00

It's not every day...

... you're looking through an engineering book and come across a subsection headed: "Indirect measurement of the fundamental natural frequency of a chicken".