Scaledown

This is where the real fun in gig-going lies - 7 acts, none of which I've heard before, presented under the aegis of Resonance FM's "Scaledown" programme. It's billed as alternative/experimental - who can say what that'll involve? Could be great, could be awful - but it's free, so why not take the chance? And it's being held in a room above a pub, which automatically makes anything better.

We arrive round about 7, get the first round in, then hang about in the downstairs room wondering if we should wait until there seems to be some action, as there doesn't appear to be anyone going through the door to the upstairs room. Eventually we feel emboldened enough to go up, on the assumption that if we're not supposed to be there we'll be told about it. The room's small, it's almost like being in someone's living room. there are a few people milling about, mostly the organisers as far as we can tell. We sit down and nurse our pints, and people start to drift in. We wonder if we're the only people here who haven't come because they're mates with one of the acts or connected with Resonance in some way.

Two of our compères, Mark Braby and Dan Whaley, start off the evening with a rendition of a Copper Family song, "Babes in the Wood", before Whaley gets things going as the first act proper, under the pseudonym Big Ron Turner (one of many, as you'll see if you click through to his site). It's twangy bluesy stuff, which is the sort of thing I like, but it doesn't quite hit the mark for me. It makes me feel slightly bad to say this, because he's obviously deeply committed in his performing and deeply in love with the music.

Same Actor announces that tonight's a bit of an experiment for him, as he's left his laptop at home. His set divides into two parts, the first of which, he happily informs us, is inspired by the feeling of having stepped in some dog poo, and the second by the elation at having been shat on by a bird (it's good luck, you know). It's a minimalist affair, droning acoustic guitar which for the latter part is looped through some kind of sampler pedal (I assume - he's sat on the floor so I can't really see him) over which he then plays a sitar. it's quite hypnotic, although maybe lacking something - probably the laptop, judging by the excellent tracks on his MySpace page.

The Reactor Core Is Splendid consists of one man and his guitar, playing naive songs that have words that ramble rather than scan, that bring Ivor Cutler to my mind, for some reason. It's kitchen sink music, all about little details, which, while it does raise a chuckle or two, I can't help think lacks humour. On the back of these thoughts we wonder between ourselves whether it's humour or charisma that the performances so far have fallen short on - or whether these two things are connected.

Things perk up with the Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra, whose leader Martin White is the first performer tonight I feel has connected with the audience. (I wonder if it's partly that as the biggest band there, they have more friends in the audience, but I don't think that's it, although the fuller room obviously helps). It's funny stuff, stylistically out of the Weill/Eisler school of cabaret, with a healthy dollop of the Bonzo Dog Doodah Band thrown in for good measure, with settings of Poe as well as a song about John Cage's 4'33" and a heartfelt ballad about Euro-rockers Europe, which are very funny and leave us determined to catch them again sometime.

Nigel Burch is, as the pre-show publicity has it, a big man with a small instrument (a banjolele, to be precise) who rattles through some gleefully misanthropic songs that seem mostly concerned with the idea that people in love should not be permitted to live. It's what might happen to you if you grew old without shedding yourself of your youthful sense of the world's injustice against you. I Thoroughly enjoy it, my companion finds it to aggressive and bitter.




From one man with a tinny strumming instrument to another - Al Duvall look like he's stepped out of a Robert Crumb cartoon, dressed in cream suit and plantation tie. His songs are pure vaudeville, and seem to have a fixation with the act of being beaten up by one's love - "bare-knuckle ballerina" for instance. Lest this sound disturbing, I should point out that it's very funny, and he demonstrates that Americans in fact can do irony when he asks us to buy his album, thereby support the War in Iraq via his tax bill.

The final act is Mike Cooper who's been around since the sixties when he was part of the English blues/folk movement led by Davey Graham and John Martyn, and therefore the nearest thing to a star we've seen tonight. He's come to sing completely unaccompanied, so, he explains, as he rarely does this, he'll only sing two songs. In fact he's coaxed into doing a third, and all of them he sings with a dignity that ends the evening on an unexpected note.

I really enjoyed this evening. There's something in a small-scale event like this that moves me in a way that larger gigs don't. it's not to do with the style of music, or the quality - it's about the passion. These are all people doing what they do for love - the only payment any of them will get for this evening is what gets thrown in the pint glass that's been passed round the audience for donations - and there's a DIY aesthetic to the whole proceedings that's refreshing and inspiring.

There was recording going on, so listen out for some of this stuff on "Scaledown" on Resonance (alternate Friday afternoons), and keep an eye out for the next gigs at The Orchestra Pit. It'll be good for your soul.

A sudden attack of careerism

Last week I recorded myself playing (badly) a piece of mine for solo cello, partly to check the microphone I borrowed works properly with my mini disc recorder (hey, it was cutting edge technology 3 years ago, and anyway, it's better quality than mp3) ahead of the première next month, and also partly because recordings are always a Good Thing to have to foist upon those who might play your music (the days having gone, apparently, when such people could be bothered to read scores properly and imagine what the damn thing might sound like). You can hear a (badly played) extract here, if it takes your fancy.

So anyway, yesterday, I came across an application form for the SPNM's 2007 shortlist. It was obviously fate, so into the post today went a score and a copy of the recording. Now, I've been here before - I've had 3 pieces shortlisted by the spnm in the past. If I'd had more time to think about it I'd probably have um-ed and ah-ed about it, whether I was happy enough with the piece to submit it and the like, but as time was short and i happened to have the necessary stuff together to send, there was very little thought involved in the decision. Proof of the value of procrastination - decisions are much easier to make if you don't have time to think about them too much. Is it worth the effort? We'll find out.
All this sudden activity reminds me I haven't done much in the way of writing since New Year, just this little thing I scribbled down a couple of weeks ago and never got round to posting. Partly down to the bastards, of course, but as well as feeling like a bit of a self pimping whore today, I feel a bit guilty about my lack of productivity. Must try and get myself into gear.

Hooray for radio!

Maybe it's the Man-Flu making me even more of a grouch than usual, but isn't TV shit at the moment? The odd repeat (Life On Mars, Charlie Brooker) apart, it's wall to wall unwatchable trash that actually makes me wish Torchwood was still on.*

Thank god for the radio. Already today I've heard some great documentaries about memory, Woman's Hour, and some Beethoven. And I've got a Sibelius concert on Radio 3, a documentary on Herbie Hancock on Radio 2, Chain Reaction on Radio 4 and Lee and Herring on BBC7 to look forward to. And that's not even to mention all the stuff you can listen again" to on the interweb (like yesterday's editions of Ross Noble and Down the Line, for instance). And all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff on Resonance FM, where you really do never know quite what you're going to get (which is a Good Thing, of course). There's a ton of stuff there, so switch off the telly and use your ears.

Talking of radio, I've just heard professional shit-stirring twat Norman Lebrecht advertising his show this weekend on Radio 3, when his subject will be blogs. Read this, and then email him, and make him look like an ignorant fool.


*I must confess to a strange obsession with Deal Or No Deal, though. Especially this week, which has an astoundingly camp twat called Bunney on it, who sings a song about whoever's playing that day before he opens his box.

Man-flu and cake

The trouble with illness is that it gives you time off work to do all the things that you never get done, but robs you of the ability to do these things. So I find myself here, struggling to get my head around the fairly simple concept of drawing a new Big Dog cartoon, and feeling vaguely disoriented from lack of sleep and the Man-Flu (which is, of course, very different from a plain old cold). The situation is relieved by the fact that one of the last things I did last night before I succumbed to the lurgy was bake a cake, so I can now test the cold-fighting properties of my Genius Banana Cake. I know that cake is not a subject that normally comes up here, but it's never too far from my heart, and so in a spirit of generosity, I give you the recipe. this cake is the product of many hours intensive research, is a handy way to use up all those over-ripe bananas sitting in your fruit bowl*, and is widely acknowledged to be in the forefront of cakes. If enough of us bake it, it may even End War and Unite all Nations in Peace and Hope.**

2-3 bananas
9oz. self-raising flour
4 oz. brown sugar
4 oz. butter
2 eggs
2 dessert spoons golden syrup
nutmeg & cinnamon, to taste

Mash up the bananas. Cream the butter and sugar together***. Mix the two sludges together with the eggs and syrup. Add spices to taste, then mix in the flour. Pour the resulting goo into a greased cake or loaf tin, and bake at gas mark4/ 180° for about 40 minutes, or until done. Check with a knife or skewer, and turn onto a rack to cool. Although it's rather nice warm, too.

On a completely unrelated note, may I also commend to you Rachel Mayfield, whose album you should buy, because it's good.


*N.B. I'm aware this is a problem only suffered by sad live-alone types like me.
** N.B. this is a wild assertion, unverified by any fact.
***If you have a food processor, you can just bung everything in and whizz it round until it congeals.

Fall marathon 9: The Light User Syndrome/Levitate/The Marshall Suite

The course of these three albums saw the biggest upheaval in the Fall's line-up yet. First to go was long-time guitarist Craig Scanlon (incidentally, the one sacking M.E.S. has subsequently admitted regret for). So, following her unexpected reappearance on "Cerebral Caustic", Brix appears on the sleeve of this album, perhaps significantly, between M.E.S. and the rest of the band. Is the tile of The Light User Syndrome a suggestion that after the previous few years, when speculation had been rife in the music press about whether his notorious liking for a drink was getting the better of him, we are witnessing a more sober Smith? If you were to suspect that it meant one of the Fall's more easy on the ear moments, you'd be wrong. I didn't think of it like this when it came out, but listening to it now it's striking how minimalist and industrial it sounds, lending it an almost brutal quality. The moment at the end of "Chilinism" where the song apparently winds down, only to stutter into a fierce low-fi riff at the bark of "Chiselers!" is a classic Scary Fall Moment. All in all, it's mostly the scowling, vituperative Smith who's mostly present here. It's a thrilling and often terrifying album. Having said that, it's a typically unpredictable gesture to throw in a brass section at the end.

The Fall do Drum and bass? Well, why not? One of the things that's been surprisingly prominent going through all these albums is how consistently the Fall adapt all forms of dance music, and Levitate does just that. The sound here is less industrial, more cavernous, with not only breakbeats but fierce garage rock and even smooth jazz (!) thrown into the mix, though as ever the result sounds like nothing but the Fall. This album seems to have fallen through the cracks a bit - I suppose that after the previous one had put the band firmly back on track (as it seemed at the time), it seemed like business as usual, and maybe I took it a bit for granted, something you should never do. Coming back to it now it reveals new riches, and is definitely one to spend some time with.


It was at this point that the notorious New York gig happened that saw the entire band sacked onstage in chaotic circumstances. At the time the press reported it as the end of the Fall. Smith simply hired a new band and carried on (memorably asserting that "if it's me and you granny on bongos, then it's a Fall gig"). The Marshall Suite shows no sign of letting up, in fact at the time, after all the turmoil, it was thrilling to hear Smith back on top form. I guess the evolution of the band's dynamic is here complete, anyone who might be thought of as M.E.S's peer is gone, and the band now consists of a group of young musicians under his iron hand. Thus the impression here is very much that of a tightly-drilled garage band, with Smith exuding a resurgent energy, defiant and malevolent. it's also one of the most sheerly loud albums so far!

priorities

I was starting to formulate a very interesting, thoughtful and provocative post about the state of modern music on the tube home this evening, but it'll have to wait, as such thoughts must make way for this!

And indeed this!

Inspired by pandemian, I've written a Haiku to celebrate this Significant Day in the History of Birmingham City:

5-1! Yes! 5-1!
Enjoy the moment, Bluenose;
We'll be out next round.

Bastards

Well, it turned out to be a good gig last night, a good time was had by all, a few beers were enjoyed afterwards, and then I went home to find some bastard had broken in and nicked my laptop. I'm now sitting twiddling my thumbs waiting for the police to arrive. There wasn't anything crucial or irretrievable on it, and they didn't take anything else as far as I can see, so it could have been worse, but still: bastards.

Come to my concert!

so much excitement to talk about, so little time... so for now you'll have to make do with this (apologies to those not in London):

+++PIMP ALERT+++PIMP ALERT+++

Kensington Symphony Orchestra plays film music of the 80s and 90s
Queen Elizabeth Hall, 15th January, 7.30
And if you fancy a drink afterwards, come to the Mulberry Bush. If you see a speccy bloke with a cello, say hello, 'cause it's probably me.

Daniel Johnston

Last night I watched The Devil and Daniel Johnston, a documentary tracing the career of this singer-songwriter, who's become something of a cult figure, namechecked by many prominent figures in the American indie/alternative scene (you can read about him here). I found it fascinating, but also unsettling. There is one very important fact about Johnston that colours any discussion of him - the fact that he has for many years suffered from Bi-polar disorder, and has had to be hospitalised periodically due to psychotic episodes.

As I watched people queue up to testify to his talent I found myself thinking of two other mentally ill musicians who have been brought to public attention: Wild Man Fischer, who was championed by Frank Zappa, among others, and the Australian pianist David Helfgott, whose story was dramatised/romanticised in the film Shine.

Fall marathon 8: Cerebral Caustic

Cerebral Caustic got some decidedly iffy reviews when it came out, as I recall, although I also remember that no two reviewers seemed to agree which tracks were good and which weren't, which may say something. At the time it seemed like an unusually retrograde step, away from the electro influences that pervaded the early '90s albums and back towards the krautabilly sound of early-mid 80s Fall. This may not be unconnected with the entirely unexpected reappearance of Brix.

As it happens, there is a clear return to the pop riffs of Smith(L.E.)'s first stint with the group, but there's a lot more noise and distortion layered over the top, which gives a combative feel to proceedings. I can't help but think that there must have been some unresolved issues between the former Mr & Mrs Smith, as there seems to be a recurring theme of sparring between the two through most of this record, most extremely in "Bonkers at Phoenix", where an out-and-out bubblegum song sung by Brix is overlayed with extreme electronic dissonance and M.E.S.'s barbed comments on the festival scene.

Hindsight's a wonderful thing, and the sense of retreading old ground that made this a slightly disappointing outing first time round has receded with time, so much that I feel inclined to declare this record a Neglected Gem. Not to mention that it has a damn fine title, and an excellent picture on the cover. And how can you not like an album which includes the line "On TV today somebody claimed their dog had been molested by a textile chemist"?

Jesus Christ!

Mark E. Smith is to play Jesus on telly!

Fall marathon 7: The Frenz Experiment/ I Am Kurious, Oranj/ Extricate/ Shift-Work/ Code: Selfish/ The Infotainment Scan/ Middle Class Revolt

Frenz=Friendly? The Frenz Experiment seems on the surface to take the Fall sound into a more mainstream, even chart-friendly place (it's even got a hit single on it!). It's not that simple, of course.

Slightly un-nerving that "Athlete Cured" shares a riff with Spinal Tap's "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock you tonight".

This isn't one of my favourite Fall albums, really. Not that it's bad, it just seems a bit too polished for my taste. It's got a vibe that could almost be described as amiable (almost!).

I Am Kurious, Oranj, on the other hand, crackles with malevolance. I guess the ballet theme got M.E.S. worked up good and proper, not least in his corruscating take on "Jerusalem". Add in such delights as the title track's warped reggae, and the reworking of "Hip Priest"'s line "He is not appreciated" into a battle cry, and you've got a splendid album, perhaps smaller in scope than a typical Fall record, but none the worse for that.

I'm trying (somewhat perversely) to avoid talking about lyrics in these posts, but there's no escaping the fact that Extricate was recorded in the aftermath of M.E.S.'s split from Brix, and there's a bilious quality that comes from that. I see the Amazon review reckons tht the Brix/pop influence disappears here, but I don't think I'd agree with that - it's certainly more abrasive than "The Frenz Experiment", but there are plenty of hooks there. Once again the Fall are ahead of the pack in their collaboration with Coldcut. And there's some wonderful humour amongst the bile, not least Smith's explanation of the origin of the title "I'm Frank". I've always loved this record, and it's still a corker.

Falling as it does btween two of my favourite albums, Shift-Work has always slightly fallen between the gaps in my perception too, as it were. So it's good to return to it and be reminded just how much good stuff there is on it, ranging from the angry (Idiot Joy Showland), the funny (A Lot of Wind) to the tender and moving (Edinburgh Man, Rose). Anyone who thinks the Fall are just about beligerence and bloody-mindedness should listen to these last two in particular. This album came out in the middle of the "Madchester" scene, and effortlessly appropriates those beats while surpassing the young upstarts. Overall, though, I can't shake the feeling tht this sounds like a transitional record.

I make no excuse for loving Code:Selfish purely for the reason that it has a song that namechecks Birmingham (albeit not in a flattering manner - though what else wopuld you expect?!). The electronic sound that has ben developing through the previous two albums blosoms here, and what you have is a dance-rock album, but about a million times better than such a thing has any right to be. Bizarrely, I found myself thinking of Bob Dylan when listening to "Just Waiting", not a connection I've made before. This album's obligatory field recording, "Crew Filth", appears at the end, which seems unusual in that I'd expect such a "difficult" track to be put in the middle where it's harder to skip. "Free Range" is as fine a single as The Fall have ever released, and retains its relevance in our world of continuing misadventures in Iraq, sad to say.

The last three albums were released by Fontana, but the label then sacked the band, who responded by scoring a top 10 hit with the first single from their next, The Infotainment Scan. This is where the dance/rave experiments blossom fully, industrial-strength production giving the whole album a meaty feel. It also features possibly their most unlikely cover version, Sister Sledge's "Lost In Music". Probably the nearest the Fall ever came to a party album.





Middle Class Revolt seems to take a step back from the dance influence, there are several songs here (e.g. "Hey! Student") that mark a big swing back to the rockabilly influenced side of the Fall. I remember being slighty disappointed with this at the time, partly due to the version of "M5", which I thought wasn't really a patch on the version they'd done for a Peel session the previous year. It sounds better thanI remember (although I still think the Peel version was better!), but there are moments on the album that feel slightly like Fall by numbers.

Cet homme charmant

Morrissey is apparently in talks to represent the U.K. at the next Eurovision Song Contest. This news fills me with a strange delight, even though I've never much cared for his post-Smiths career. Still, any source of a smile is good after this debacle.

Exciting news! My new viola piece will be performed very soon, details to follow soon.

Sound vs. Noise (2)

Today's experiment: Is it possible to filter out the inane twittering surrounding one, or at least abstract it so it becomes an ignorable background noise? It's got to be worth a try, anyway. I suspect this will require either an heroic effort or an heroic passivity.

In other news, I see that new science minister Malcolm Wicks has been busy demonstrating what an ignorant fucking cock he is. I hope all you teachers are brushing up on the real-life science of sonic screwdrivers.

Sound vs. Noise

So, one day of the new scene completed and I'm still sane, just about. I feel bad moaning about these people - it's not that I don't like them or anything. I just wish they'd shut up for 5 minutes. Maybe in time I'll settle down, feel less disorientated and get used to it. Or maybe this is a hint that it's time to find another job. Come lunchtime, I rushed out of the office and tried to find somewhere quiet to eat my lunch, not an easy task. I find myself longing increasingly for quiet, and increasingly aware of how difficult it is to find it. There's something uniquely irritating about unwanted noise, I think it's because you can avert your eyes from something you don't want to look at, but you can't avert your ears. I was looking at one of those mp3 players with noise cancelling headphones on some website or other the other day. Trouble with that is that it's still using music just as a blanket to smother the rest of the world, something I heartily disapprove of on the whole, and also it just cancels out everything. When I'm on the tube, I don't mind the noise of the train and the like, I rather enjoy listening to ambient noise like that (yeah, I know, weirdo). What really grates with me is the tinny hiss leaking from earphones. I suppose it's because it's something imposed upon the situation rather than arising from it. What I need is something that can selectively cancel out the noise I don't want to hear, and leave the sounds I want to listen to.

Id like to be tremendously Buddha-like and decide to choose to accept and listen to whatever sounds happen to reach my ears as simply part of the world. it's not easy to achieve that level of enlightenment on the Central Line at 8.30 in the morning, though.

Fall marathon 6: This Nation's Saving Grace / Bend Sinister

I've always thought of This Nation's Saving Grace as being in a continuum with Wonderful & Frightening World, with TNSG being maybe the less poppy side of TWAFW's sound world. However, listening to them now, they sound almost the opposite. WAF has more obvious "pop" elements in its makeup, but the way they're put together, caked on top of one another, drenched in dischord, makes it seem much more abrasive than I remember, wheras TNSG, while it doesn't trade quite so obviously on pop riffs and the like, has a sparser, more warmly recorded sound, that would remind you of Can even if there wasn't a song on it called "I am Damo Suzuki".




Bend Sinister occupies a place somewhere between the two, more pop hooks again, but with the sparser sound of "Nation". And unlikely electro influences in "U.S. 80's-90's". Although I should know by now that nothing's unlikely with The Fall. With the benefit of hindsight, "Terry Waite Sez" seems an unfortunately mis-timed gag, but bollocks to hindsight, it was funny at the time.

This period is probably the most stable the Fall ever had in terms of line-up. It's difficult to know how much this contributes to the consistency of these albums. I suspect there may be a connection between this and the way Smith's working methods changed later, but I'll come back to that on another occasion.

Post festivities

Well, that's that for another year. I find as I get older that I've less and less time for the forced jollity of Christmas, and find myself in the ironic position of really just doing it for the parents, as I guess they once did it just for my sake. It's a week off work, true, but so much time is spent on an endless round of social/family visits that you get no time for yourself, and end up feeling exhausted and enervated from too much crap food, booze and small talk. I also find myself getting more and more annoyed by the whole present thing, the spending of money on things no-one really wants. I used to think getting something that someone had asked for/ had put on a wish list represented a failure of imagination, but I'm increasingly of the opinion that unless you really have a brilliant idea of your own, you shouldn't bother with anything else. I got two books this year that I know I'm never going to read. Not because they're not perfectly decent books, but they're just too damn big, certainly not the kind of thing to be carried on public transport, which is almost the only place I have time to read these days. When I was a student I might have been interested enough to dig my way through Prokofiev's student diaries, but now I can't persuade myself that it matters enough to bother. There seem to be many more important things to occupy my time. Not least actually listening to his music. And while a zipperobe in the shape of the Tardis seemed funny for about 5 minutes, I rapidly found myself reflecting that a) it was going to be a pain in the arse to get home, b) I don't have room for it and c) I don't need it, as I have a proper wardrobe. And at a time when I'm pretty desperately short of money, I can't help but think that the no doubt considerable amount that was spent on what is essentially a joke present could have been more profitably used to get me stuff that I would have got for myself, and kept me a little less in debt.

Anyway, back to work today. We rotate specific duties once a year in my office, and due to the differing space needed by different roles this means I will also have to move desk, where I will be surrounded by the 2 most talkative people in the office. I am now wondering if there's any way I can politely say "Actually, while you find everything your children do fascinating, I don't. I especially don't find them interesting first thing in the morning, when my foremost desire is to drink my coffee and talk as little as possible. I also don't consider the fact that we both own bicycles to be an adequate basis for extended conversation. And I'm not that interested in pictures of rabbits, either. Please shut up."
I think this year I will be mostly wearing headphones. With very loud music coming through them.

Still, mustn't grumble, eh? Happy New Year!

Fall marathon 5: Perverted By Language/ The Wonderful & Frightening World of The Fall

I've always had a problematic relationship with Perverted By Language. It's highly regarded by many, and, hey, it has "Eat Y'self Fitter" on it, which is marvellous, of course. But there's something about it that doesn't quite gel for me. I guess it feels like a transitional album, the stabbing atonal sound of "Hex Enduction Hour" and "Room To Live" is being left behind - rightly, I think, one of the Fall's best aspects has always been their ability to avoid becoming routine - but the poppier sound that emerged once they signed to Beggar's Banquet hasn't really emerged (albeit there are traces, not entirely unconnected to the fact that this marks Brix's appearance in the line-up) and it feels slightly unfocused to me. There's a lot to enjoy, but somehow it comes out less than the sum of its parts. As far as I know I'm the only person who thinks this, mind.

The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall, on the other hand, marks a real paradigm shift for the band, with its gloriously skewed take on transatlantic guitar pop. It's all great stuff, though I have a particular fondness for "Bug Day", which is pure bubblegum laced with something definitely mind-altering. "Elves" is clearly a rip-off of "I Wanna Be Your Dog" by the Stooges, but it doesn't matter at all. I love that. Plus the CD has a load of singles bunged on too, including the mighty 7'51" version of "No Bulbs", a song I could happily play over and over again, and occasionally have, much to the consternation of neighbours.

Happy Christmas!

I'm sitting in the office drinking wine, which is how things should be. I'll be off to Birmingham for a few days in a bit, where I shall divide my time between paying respect to the aged parents, listening to the Fall, putting up Christmas decorations and over-indulging. And sleeping. Plenty of sleeping. Back in a week or so. Happy Christmas to all my loyal readers (both of you)!

The perils of Christmas parties.

So, we met up in the pub, then went on to the restaurant, I took my place, took off my coat, removed my jumper, and one of the lenses fell out of my glasses because a screw had fallen out. I scrabbled around on the floor, but had to accept that it was gone and I'd be spending the rest of the evening squinting. Now I must wear my old specs that make me look like Harry Potter. On the other hand, I get to spend my lunch hour tomorrow trying to find an optician who's prepared to give me a screw. Innuendo always makes things seem better.

Booze and work - the fatal combination

I have had the definite feeling lately that there is one week too many before Christmas. Surely work should have stopped last week?

The season of too many nights out on the sauce is upon us. I shall be a physical wreck by next week, even more than usual. Tonight is the Work Meal. I fear for my liver.

Fall marathon 4: Room To Live

"Room To Live - Undilutable Slang Truth!" is an album I only heard for the first time a year or so ago. My mate Jason, who got me into The Fall, didn't have the album (the only one he didn't have) and it was long out of print, so until it was finally re-released last year it remained a mythical, reputedly un-listenably obscuritan beast. Which of course is a red rag to a bull as far as I'm concerned.

Now, the line-up for this album is essentially the same as "Hex Enduction Hour" (quite unusual for the Fall) and it was recorded hot on the heels of that album, so it's no surprise to find a lot of the same dense, angular feel of that album. And Smith's lyrical concerns are certainly obtuse, even for him. What's more surprising listening to it now is that it seems to be an idiosyncratic take on easy-listening music. joker Hysterical Face and Marquis Cha-Cha in particular coming across like Lounge-core from Hell. Hard Life In Country starts off as another mantra-drone minimalist Fall track, but is embellished by a guitar line which wouldn't be altogether out of place on a Spandau Ballet song. The effect of this funky disco strumming set against the oppressive repetitiveness of the rest of the song is extraordinarily disorientating, and coupled to Smith's paranoid lyrics the overall effect is one of claustrophobia. "Room To Live" is in classic Fall-rockabilly vein, but with the sort of john Barry-esque cimbalom flourishes that would later become familiar from Portishead. "Detective Instinct" is just terrifying! Solicitor in Studio comes across like an evil Madness. "Papal Visit" is not really like anything else you'd be likely to hear on a pop album, and almost seems like "anti-music"; Smith has suggested that at the time this record was meant as a two-fingered salute to the record industry (and possibly a farewell), which explains that, I guess.

Probably not the Fall's finest hour, but a neglected and underrated gem, I think.

A mild surprise

Torchwood wasn't shit last night. Is this because it was better or because my expectations have dropped that much further? This conundrum can be expressed by the equation a=e(r/e), where a represents appreciation, e represents expectation, and r represents reality. Thus, a high expectation combined with a disappointing reality will lead to a lower satisfaction than something you expect to be a steaming pile of dog shit, which turns out not to be as bad as you thought it'd be. This equation explains why it's possible to gain more enjoyment from an above-par episode of a crap sitcom than a quality period drama adaptation that's as good as, but no better, than you expected.

Unrelated: There's a post by Shane MacGowan on the Guardian blogs today noting the anniversary of the death of Kirsty MacColl. I was listening to some of her songs with Cheerful One on Saturday night. Life's full of little coincidences, not always happy.

Fall marathon 3: Hex Enduction Hour

There's a moment during Hex Enduction Hour that seems like an encapsulation of everything that's great about this record. we're at the end of the near 8 minute lanquid spinning of "Hip Priest", which fades away, to be replaced by... a bontempi organ beat. This is wildly incongruous, and very funny. That is then swamped by a fierec guitar attack reminiscent of the Magic Band or Zappa, which then seques into a driving garage beat, before ending up in the same territory as the Velvet Underground's "Sister Ray", wailing organ and all. And this all happens in the space of about 2 minutes. But without ever sounding like anyone other than the Fall.

This is the sound of a band on the verge of combustion, the savagery and violence of the invective on opener "The Classical" palpable. There's a story that, incredibly, The Fall almost signed for Motown during this period. It never happened, and you have to wonder what they made of the tape they were sent of this, Mark E. Smith spitting out such user-friendly lines as "Where are the obligatory niggers? Hey there, Fuck Face! Hey there Fuck Face!" As he spews out bile in the general direction of British pop culture. "Jawbone and the Air-Rifle" adopts a wryer tone... "Who'd have thought they would do harm?" asks Smith in a mild tone that belies the subject matter of war and violence. "Hip Priest" was memorably used in "The Silence of the Lambs", and it's easy to see why, its languid spinning paranoia and mantra-like delivery providing a chilling contrast to what's gone before. That's what this record's about, really - long quiet, bleak expanses punctuated by sudden violent, frenzied activity, often laced with black humour. It's like a cut-up presentation of the Apocalypse.

By the time we get to "Iceland" it feels we're on the other side of the universe from "The Classical", floating in a sparse and pallid landscape.

Then we're abruptly dragged into "And This Day", a relentless march that takes us further beyond. it makes me think of those characters of lovecraft, abandoned in the antarctic wastes, attempting to articulate the undescribable majestical horrors they have witnessed. Ai Cthuhlu! An appropriate reaction, I think, considering thast at the time the band thought this might be their final album. If it had all imploded, this would have been one hell of an exit. There's so much depth to this record, compared to the vapid posturing that makes up so many bands' output. It's a record that needs to exist.

Fall marathon 2: Grotesque/Slates

One thing that keeps coming to mind as I go through these early albums, which isn't something generally associated with The Fall, is how much they groove. Everyone knows about the more angular influences - 60s garage rock, Beefheart, Can, etc. - but it's too easily forgotten that they come as much from a background of Northern Soul (and attendant amphetamine culture), and those kind of influences can be discerned in tracks like "C'n'C-s Mithering" from their third album, "Grotesque (after the Gramme)". Smith's caustic sense of humour seems to come more to the fore on this album, through such songs as "The Container Drivers" and "English Scheme", where barbed comments on the UK music scene reveal another of his perennial bugbears. All the elements from the first two albums seem to click into a greater whole on this album,

and the result is their most satisfying long-playing outing so far.

"Slates" is, strictly speaking, an E.P. rather than an album, but it's one of my favourite Fall records, so I certainly wasn't going to skip it. I remember an interview with Steve Albini In one of the inky music papers where he named it as a favourite album, describing it as "a weird band at their weirdest", and that certainly holds true, not just for the angular, atonal guitar stabs in opener "Middle Mass", but the surprisingly emotional "An Older Lover etc", as well as the heartfelt "Leave the Capitol". it's only 6 songs long, but this is as substantial a record as any they've made, and I'm tempted to say it's the first truly essential Fall record, one that belongs in everybody's collection, whether they're interested in the Fall or not. And it prepares the way for an absolutely blinding record, which is next on my pile...

The Fall marathon, part 1

The Fall, who are just about my favourite band in the world, have a new album out in February. In celebration, I have decide to listen to every Fall studio album between now and then in chronological order. Today I listened to their first album, "Live At The Witch Trials", and the follow up, "Dragnet".

What's remarkable about these two albums is how complete the Fall were right from the start. There's no sense of finding feet, the sound's pretty much right there from the off. "Witch Trials" has some superficial similarity with the nascent post-punk scene (e.g. P.i.L.), but the soul of it is entirely Fall-ish, Mark E. Smith's idiosyncratic vision apparently emerging fully formed. One thing that does startle after so many years not hearing this early stuff is how clear Smith's enunciation is compared to the bilious drawl he's latterly adopted - not that that makes understanding his oblique lyrics much easier.

It's worth noting that by the time they recorded their debut album, the Fall had already been through several of the line-up changes that would become a recurring feature of their career.

Some people think all the fall's records sound the same, but then again some people think all Haydn's music sounds the same, and they're wrong too. "Dragnet", made within a year, sees the band determined to push forward and avoid repeating themselves - an admirable attitude that many bands now would do well to note. So the sound here is denser and more intense, with a harder, rockabilly-inspired edge coming to the fore. There's even an oblique nod of the hat to the disco craze of the time, evident in "Psykick Dancehall". If the core influences of '60s garage bands aren't quite as deeply ingrained as they were to become, there's always Smith's voice to lend the distinctive tone. And the grinding paranoia of "Before the Moon Falls" and "Spectre vs. Rector" needles its way into the skull in a way that many more recent bands would love to be able to do.

When I first decided to dig out these old records, I wondered how well they'd come up after all these years. I'm happy to report that they sound wonderful, incredibly fresh, and with a grating lo-fi sound that sounds positively subversive in these super-smooth digital times.

As Smith says in the intro of the excellent live album "Totales' Turns" from this era, "The difference between you and us is that we have brains!"

Oh, the weather outside is frightful...

But who cares when we have such lovely tasteful decorations in the office?

Even Elgar's getting into the mood!

One in the eye for The Man

The Gowers Review of Intellectual Property has been published (if you can't face wading through the whole thing there's a good precis here), and it's good to see that it rejects the recording industry's argument for extending copyright on recordings, as well as making some other recommendations that nudge copyright law in a more enlightened direction. There's still a long way to go - I believe that the whole concept of intellectual rights needs to be radically re-thought - but, assuming the government follows the report's recommendations, this is a significant victory for creative freedom against corporate greed. And of course Mick Hucknall.

On an altogether less worthy note, here's a splendid tribute to Paris, Britney and Lindsay.

Captain America cheers me up

Some days you just wish you hadn't got out of bed. We have this irritating Nazi phone system at work which works on the assumption that all we do is sit around waiting for the phone to ring. So when you're busy doing something it sometimes feels impossible to make any headway, as you're constantly interrupted by phone calls from people who want things doing NOW! NOW!. We also had a visit from a large group of librarians today (god knows why) who spent a long time milling around right in front of my desk drinking tea, which made it impossible to concentrate on work for the feeling of being in a goldfish bowl. And also made it impossible to get at the kettle and make tea for myself. Oh, and they've put this new door in the office which you need one of those fob things to open, but as i haven't yet been given a fob thing whenever I leave the office I'm locked out and on my return have to stand at the door knocking and looking through the glass trying to capture someone's eye like an abandoned puppy. GRRRR! At least I had the mighty Fall in the CD drive to channel the irritation. And I have this splendid picture on my desktop, which makes me laugh, in that way that only rude words can :

pitch slack

A friend sent me this article about Robert Johnson today... I'm not sure how convinced I am, but it's an intriguing theory.






On a completely unrelated note, isn't it great once again to hear "Soul Limbo" as the theme music for cricket on telly? :)

Damo Suzuki

David Cronenberg's Wife want to be the Fall. They really want to be the Fall. Except for the bits where they want to be early REM. But the singer can't sing quite well enough to carry that bit off.

Kontakte take their name from a piece by Stockhausen, and have a heavy Eno influence. It's a bit like shoegazing performed by competent musicians, which is not meant as a sleight. They have moments that suggest brilliance. They need to have the courage to do less. The opening of their set was magical, then the drum machine kicked in and it became a bit more ordinary, albeit with flashes of magic.

I mention the support bands partly because they're worth mentioning, but mostly because members of them form Damo Suzuki's band. This is how he works: he turns up in whichever city he's performing in, picks up some local musicians, and then, in the fashion of a krautrock Mickey Rooney, does the show right here.

I'm being flippant. I shouldn't be, because this show was one of the best gigs I've been to in ages. I can't really describe it, because there's no set list, just a free-flowing stream of consciousness, the band flying while Damo sings, burbles and growls at whim on top of it all. It all ought to be a disaster and self-indulgent nonsense, but it isn't. It's magical. He's a shaman, and I find myself drawn into his sound-world, my mind in a trance, my body moving instinctively to the music. I feel as I think I might at some primitive ritual, where the sheer force of sound transports me from my physical existence to another plane. If you think this sounds pretentious, I don't care, really, because this is how it felt. It's primal, gutteral stuff, a relentless, hard rocking beat underpinning a welter of sound from guitars, one-string bass (a strange looking contraption that looks like a broomstick that's been strung and plugged in) and violin that's almost palpable in its intensity and volume (my ears rang all the way home). He played for an hour and a half, and I'd have been happy if he carried on all night. When he eventually draws the evening to a close (more at the behest of his band than any desire of his own, it seems) he is applauded rapturously by the audience. I'm at the front, and I get to take his hand, and bow to him in a gesture of gratitude. He bounds beyond me into the audience, and proceeds to hug pretty much everyone, as far as I can see. That doesn't make me feel less special. This is a man of huge generosity of spirit, and to him we're all special. This is the only show he's playing in this country this time, I have a feeling we'll all be back for the next one though.

Fuck it, this is how music should be.

Hucknall the idiot

Ginger Charlie Drake lookalike, ageing lothario and all-round twat Mick Hucknall wrote this article in the Guardian the other day. It's worth reading for the comments posted after it comprehensively demolishing his "argument". Go on, read it. Read it and laugh at the stupid ginger tosser. And then tell him what a stupid smug wanker he is. Do it. Do it.

Some random thoughts on No Music Day

Avoiding music's very difficult. I'm not sure if it's harder in a music library or not. the obvious course would have been to take the day off, but I've already used up my holiday allowance for the year, and anyway, where's the challenge if you take the easy way out?

Here are most of the incidents of inadvertent hearing of music that happened to me:

tinny sound leaking from iPod/Walkman headphones: 2 (less than I'd have expected)
colleague playing CD in stock room: 2
whistling: 12 (much more than I'd have expected)
sounds from colleagues' PC: 2
singing: 1
inadvertent playing of music by Resonance FM: 3
Mobile phone: 2 (much less than I'd have expected)

I found myself putting Resonance FM on the PC headphones for most of the day, just to block out the noise in the office. it really drove home how noisy the place is. This is what I use music for normally during the day. I feel very bad about this, but I'm not sure I could bear to sit here without that shield. Maybe I'm just basically intolerant and antisocial. I don't think I am, though. This is one to ponder at length. Is it just the lack of control over sound that grates?

Spoken word stuff doesn't smother ambient noise nearly as well as music.

It's much harder to listen to non-musical sounds and work at the same time. Does this mean that my mind can absorb music on a more basic level, or just that I'm not really listening?

I heard some very interesting things that I would probably never have listened to otherwise.

I really, really, hate the sound of whistling.

When you're trying to avoid it, hearing music can be rather painful and stressful.

If I'm using spoken word and ambient recordings to the same purpose as music, does that make them music?

Conversely, if I hear music and treat it as unwanted noise and avoid it, does that stop it being music?

How would my experience have differed if I'd stayed at home, in an environment I could control? Would it have been calmer, or more stressful?

I've always been aware of the way music is imposed on us - it's different from other art forms like that. If there's a painting in the room you can avert your eyes, but if someone is playing music you can't really avert your ears. Today really rammed that fact home, it's that imposition that robs music of its meaning, it just becomes more noise.

Why are we afraid of silence? If you read the statements on the No Music Day website, there are some extraordinarily aggressive posts against the idea of going for a day without. I had a mini-argument with one colleague who really seemed unable to comprehend the idea, and could only make smug snobbish comments along the lines of "oh well, I suppose some music's very easy not to listen to." I found myself thinking what a small world he inhabits, and how awful it must be to have such a blinkered outlook.

I think I've become more aware of a very fundamental need/desire for music as a result of spending a day shunning it.

Throughout the day I had various pieces/songs pop up in my head. If I have music in the front of my imagination, even though I'm not physically hearing it, am I really experiencing a day without music?

I've gone straight back to listening to music today. Am I really any better than a junkie?

There are too many unanswered questions here. I'm going to have to do it again next year.

Anyway, Hail! bright Cecilia, and all that.

No Music Day

Tomorrow is No Music Day. No music will be posted here tomorrow, nor anything on the subject of music. Please do not look at or attempt to perform or in any way interact with any of the music here, or anywhere. Thank you.

release the music

Copyright's a subject I've long had mixed feelings about, and indeed it was partly thoughts about it that prompted me to start this blog. The pieces I post here are intended to be free for anyone to use as they will for any non-profit making purpose, in the spirit of the creative commons principle, and I've long thought that current copyright law is not only inadequate to cope with a world in which sampling exists and the presence of the internet is making national differences in the laws governing creative activity unsustainable, but actively harms composers' (and any creative artist's) ability and freedom to create. Think of J.S. Bach's arrangements of Vivaldi or Mozart's rewriting of J.C. Bach, and you'll have an idea of the kind of thing I'm thinking of as work which is vital to a composer's development, but which is rendered illegal by current law.

Now the recording industry seeks further to limit artists' ability to react with the culture around them by campaigning to have the duration of copyright on recordings from 50 to 70 years. They claim this is in the interests of the artists, but the truth is that all they are really interested is maintaining their grip on a cash cow. I believe that to change the law in the way they propose would be not just capitulating to corporate greed, but an act that would actively damage the cultural life of this country.

I won't bore you with facts and figures, you can find all the information you need here. What I will do is implore you to go to the Release the Music website and add your name to their petition.

Of course it's important to protect artists' livelihoods, and record companies are entitled to profit from their business like any other. But it's also important that creative work be allowed to pass into the public domain, where it can become the seed for new work. because if we can't do that, what on earth's the point?

Fast N Bulbous

I love Captain Beefheart. Let me make this clear. I need to convey how much I love Beefheart before I talk about this gig, so please bear with me.

When I was about 15, I liked to think of myself as someone who could get all the weird shit no-one else got. I listened to the Mary Chain, I listened to 8 Songs for a Mad King... I took pride in finding sense and truth in sounds others dismissed as noise.

And then, in the space of a few weeks, I did 2 things: I borrowed Bitches Brew from Birmingham Central Library and bought Trout Mask Replica.

These two albums were like nothing I could conceive of. There was nothing I could hang anything on, they were both just so far out. But I could hear, somewhere in this confusing noise, SOMETHING. Something very important that I knew I had to grasp, no matter how long it took.

In the event, it took me the best part of 10 years to understand those records. And it was worth every second when I reached that point when suddenly everything clicked and they became as clear as the simplest nursery rhyme to me. Since then I've always harboured a suspicion that any really great music takes a decade to understand, and if it doesn't, it's not really worth it.

Anyway, the point is that I love this music beyond reason. So when I heard that ex-Magic Band guitarist Gary Lucas was coming to these shores with a new band dedicated to performing the Captain's music, I was intrigued, but also wary. I've seen Lucas perform before, both in his own right and with various collaborators, including the reconstituted Magic Band, so I knew that at least the evening would be a well presented, respectful display of Beefheart's music.

What I wasn't really prepared for was that the band would do something I'd have doubted possible: they didn't just play the tunes, they worked them to create something new. Everything they played was familiar, yet also sounded as if it were being recreated right in front of me. This show was presented under the aegis of the London Jazz Festival, and it succeeded purely in the terms you might expect from that: it presented Beefheart's music as a living, breathing thing, no museum exhibit.

I went expecting some good musicianship and some rekindling of memories. I got that - Gary Lucas played Evening Bell and Flavor Bud Living about 2 feet away from me, for chrissakes! - but I ended up buying the album, and more importantly, I went home dizzy in the joy of having been reminded in the best possible way why I love this music.

Do I sound lime a raving fanboy? I don't care. This was one of those rare evenings when I really felt the full force of what music is capable of. Did I mention that I LOVE Captain Beefheart?

Bowmans update: They're nearly there, but they still need your votes, and all your friends, people! Get on over to the Deli and do that voting thang! And then make your friends do it. And their friends. (&c.)

Seems a while since I did one of these... there's always a slump when you've finished a piece, when suddenly something that's been in your mind for weeks or months (or longer) is no longer there, so this is the time when it's important just to write stuff, without worrying about quality. Keep the brain working.

Hail! Herbie

Herbie Hancock took the stage at about 8.10, and looked about 20 years younger than he actually is. God, I hope I look that good if I reach that age. Seaton and I had me up in the aptly named World's End pub down the road at 6-ish. He was early, I was late, a first for both of us, I think. When we got there they were playing Guns N Roses as if the '90s had never happened, and Strictly Come Dancing was on the big screen, which led to some touching male bonding as we admitted our mutual addiction to the programme. Things got beyond parody when they started playing Spinal Tap.

Anyway, we moved on to have a very nice Vietnamese curry, then to the Roundhouse, the first time I've been there. If it had been a rock gig, I'd have said it was a small, intimate venue. But for a jazz gig, it was a cavernous barn, and this was a lot of the problem with this gig. The half-hour of African-influenced ambient stuff would have gone down very well in a venue like Ronnie Scott's, but in the roundhouse it was just a cue for many in the audience to have a very loud natter.

If I'm giving the impression that I didn't enjoy this gig, that's not right. I loved parts of it. There was a certain amount of Weather Report style noodling which tested the patience, but there were also moments of transcendence. Herbie is of course renowned for what he's done to make the synthesiser an acceptable instrument, and there was plenty of evidence to support this, but for me the best moments were those when he sat down at the piano and let rip. He's done an awful lot of groundbreaking things in his time, but at the heart of it is the fact that he's a phenomenal keyboard player, and it was in the moments that I heard that, unencumbered by sound effects or stylistic statements, that the force of the man was truly to be felt.

I took my camera along, but way at the back as I was, I couldn't get a decent shot. Them's the breaks.

p.s.: today's obligatory Bowmans plug: Please go to the Deli Magazine and vote for the twins in their Band of the Month poll. They're currently second, and they really should be first. Let's make it happen!

more gigology

Tonight I went to the Bedford in Balham, where a lot of fine people were playing, but I was mainly there to see the excellent Bowmans, whose album (which you can, and should, buy here) is one of my very favourite things at the moment. In fact, I rate them so highly I skived off my orchestra rehearsal to go. I was lucky enough to nab them for a quick chat, and I'm pleased to say they're as nice as they are talented. And their album's ace, did I mention that? Really, buy it.

sound and vision

Tonight I went to see the Photophonic Experiment at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. The basic idea of the show was the interplay between light and sound, using light sources to generate noises. If that all sounds rather esoteric, the result wasn't: There's a very simple delight in hearing sounds resulting from flashing or moving light, and the sheer playfulness of the project came across wonderfully. Well, I enjoyed it, anyway. Sometimes it's good just to revel in sound.

The Joy of Colds

One of the advantages of being ill, as I've been for the past few days, apart from the fact that it forces you to stay sober and go to bed early, is that your brain goes haywire and dredges up old things you'd forgotten about, which makes for much surfing fun. And oh joy! I see that finally, the excellent Police Squad is coming out on DVD. I first saw this at some ungodly hour on TV in the '80's and it remains one of the funniest shows of the past 25 years, absolutely stuffed full of gags that demand and repay repeated viewings.

While I'm on the subject of obscure things that are about to become available again, Vivian Stanshall's bizarre and insane Sir Henry At Rawlinson End finally resurfaces very soon. I can't really describe it in any way that would do it justice, really, suffice to say that Stanshall was a comic genius in the same league as Spike Milligan, and you really should watch this.

Oh, I've just updated Big Dog's Kennel, so go along and have a look at that. I was looking over sketch books and the like the past couple of days, and I didn't quite realise how many unfinished ideas I had sitting about, so with any luck I may get back into the habit of putting new stuff up a bit more regularly than I have done recently.

Finally, because - hell, I don't need a reason - here's a picture of my nephew:

"The complete consort dancing together"

Last night Kensington Symphony Orchestra celebrated its 50th anniversary with a concert at the Barbican.

We'd been worried about the risk of booking a hall like that - what if nobody came? We'd have been in a very deep financial hole, for one. Fortunately everyone worked incredibly hard to sell the gig, and over the past week or so, it became clear that far from struggling to minimise our losses, we were looking at the possibility of a sell-out. The last few days I lost a lot of time to regular visits to the Barbican website, willing those last remaining tickets to go. When I arrive at the hall yesterday lunchtime to set up, I was told there were only 25 seats left unsold.

It felt very strange, almost surreal, to stand on that stage as we hauled percussion instruments into place and look out at the empty hall, and to think that we'd be on this side of the performer/audience divide in a matter of hours. As the players arrived, and we began to rehearse, there was a palpable air of excitement, but more remarkably a kind of serenity. No sense of nervousness, just of expectation, that after all the work that has gone into preparing for this night, not just in rehearsing these particular pieces or haranguing anyone and everyone to buy tickets, but over many years to raise the orchestra's standards and ambition to the point where playing the Barbican seems appropriate rather than hubristic, this was a defining moment, the top of a mountain from where we could look back at where we'd come from, and out to the peaks that stand ahead.

Perhaps I'm being a bit over the top here, but what the hell - I'm damn proud of this band and what it's achieved, and of the fact that I get to play in it. As our conductor Russell Keable said in the article in the concert programme, an amateur orchestra can exist for the indulgence of its members or it can try and make a difference, and that's what makes KSO such a rewarding thing to be part of.

Strangely, the size of the audience doesn't really register, I think partly because of the steep banking of the seats in the auditorium. And anyway, the audience tends only to register peripherally when you go onstage - there are too many things to think about without getting nervous at the thought of all those people waiting to hear you. What did make a powerful impression, however, was the sound of the applause. In the places we normally play, the couple of hundred or so people sitting there certainly make a noise, but there are always hints of individual pairs of hands. Here, there was a kind of whooshing sound, like waves on a shingle beach. It was a noise that utterly transformed the evening, and suddenly brought into focus the specialness of the occasion.

Afterwards, we drank in the bar until midnight, and everyone shone with giddy joy at what had just happened. And the next day we got ready for the next 50 years.

Origins

I went back to Birmingham this weekend, for my parents' golden wedding anniversary. It turned out to be a good do, it was just the immediate family (although that's still 15 people, including my brother's newborn). It's always a source of mild anxiety when we all get together, as there's we're not a particularly close bunch, and there can be tension between us (especially the older ones), never explicit, but always hanging in the background. But there was relatively little of that, everyone behaved themselves, the food was great (courtesy of Syd the chef, who was absolutely lovely as well as being a wonderful cook). The bombshell came at lunch on Sunday, when my 2nd brother announced he was getting married. I'd had an inkling this was coming, but it was still a shock to hear this actually said. It's a complicated situation for all sorts of reasons, but I'm certainly not in a position to criticize anyone else's love life, so I can only wish them all the best.

In a parallel universe of awkward family ties, 2000 AD is currently running Origins, which will over the course of the next 6 months or so lay out definitively the tale of how Judge Dredd's world came to be. It's written and drawn by Dredd creators John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra, and is well worth anybody's time. It's only up to Episode 4, so there's still time to jump on board. What Wagner's done with Dredd over the past 30 years is little short of miraculous, it's still one of the finest pieces of social satire you'll read anywhere, and this story promises to be a landmark, so you really should take out a subscription to the comic.

On a sad note, one thing that's missing from this tale is the lettering of tom Frame, who died recently. Lettering is the Cinderella job in comics, often un-noticed, but essential, and tom's work was as much a part of Mega City One as Wagner's prose or the drawing of Ezquerra, MacMahon, Bolland, and all the artists who've contributed to the strip over the years - in fact, even Wagner himself takes second place to Frame as the most prolific talent to work on Dredd not to mention the many other stories he worked on in his career). Please remember him by contributing something to this excellent charity: www.mariecurie.org.uk/supportus/waystodonate/

Vworrrp! Vworrrp!

Today I felt more excited than I ever have about where I work when I found out what's lurking 3 floors below my office.

In case you're not a spod, I should explain that the title of this post is the rendering of the tardis's dematerialisation sound that they use in the comic strips published in Doctor Who magazine since the late '70s. Some of these strips are quite brilliant, and there's one in particular that's reprinted in this book featuring an old-school cyberman beautifully drawn by the great Mick McMahon.

The Mules

I've been listening to The Mules' album, and I think you should too.