Separated at birth?

Why this is hell, nor am I out of it

I just joined Facebook, thus dragging myself a little further into the hideous mire of online networking, the fashionable alternative to having real friends. By a strange coincidence, having heard John Humphries sneering about "Face Back" (sic) on the radio this morning, I checked my mail to discover I'd been added as a friend on the place. I wavered, then typed in my name and created an account, partly out of that horribly British sense of social embarrassment that demands I say yes to things for risk of offending, but also partly to annoy John Humphries.

Palindrome

I am Berlioz

I don't even like Berlioz. I am disturbed.

You scored as Hector Berlioz. You're OCD. You may think you want something... but think again before you move land and sea to get it. However, you are very talented. Hector Berlioz 75% Mozart 65% Beethoven 60% Tchaikovsky 55% Schumann 55% Brahms 55% Handel 50% Haydn 50% J.S. Bach 45% Liszt 45% Chopin 40% Wagner 35% Schubert 35% Which classical composer are you? created with QuizFarm.com

The Classical Brits, or, Big Mac and Fries.

Do you think I enjoy this? Two and a quarter bloody hours of this? Of course not. But I must do this, because even if it is ultimately futile to make the gesture, a stand must be made. Because this will not do.

Here we begin, with Katheryn Jenkins looking pretty and blonde as she squeezes Holst into a 4/4 meter, with added bongos, male voice choir and a key change so unsubtle it could be in Eurovision. Here's Joshua Bell, who ought to know better, posing his way through Vivaldi in that "exciting", highly charged" fashion previously associated with Vanessa Mae. Why doesn't he stick a wet T-shirt on and be done with it?

Oh look, here comes Sting with his lute. Is there a bigger, smugger twat than Sting? (Well, yes there is, but we'll let that pass for now.) I should be glad he's bringing Dowland to a wider audience, I ought to applaud the fact that he does these songs straight, without the sort of knobby "crossover" bollocks you'd normally get with this sort of enterprise, but when I see his smug face all reason leaves me, and I want to punch him repeatedly in the mouth while shouting "You didn't invent Dowland, you fucking smug twat!" Oh look, he's bunged some close harmony singers in halfway through. Twat.

Ooh, here's Katie Derham presenting the Record of the Year award to Simon Rattle for the Planets, she must be annoyed at losing the presenting gig to Fearne Brittain. Some bunch of actresses calling themselves "All Angels" croon their way through "Nimrod", robbing it of all dignity and subtlety in the process. Still, they're fit, eh? So that's all right, then.
Mrs. Sting pops up to award George Fenton the award for soundtrack for Planet Earth (or was it Blue Planet? No, that was last time). I suppose I should be grateful that John Adams won the contemporary composer award rather than Karl Jenkyns and his dreary new age toss.

And on and on it goes, culminating in the award of Classical Album of the year to Paul McCartney's new "Classical" work, another bit of trite rubbish that soils the genuine legacy of his work with the Beatles. I have a horrible feeling he really believes that this insipid nonsense is better and more worthwhile than "Helter Skelter" or "Penny Lane".

It's not that it's bad as such, it's that it's relentlessly average. I can't report that it was badly presented or that there were any terrible howlers (although it was edited terribly, shoddily), but the whole thing reeks of mediocrity. Music can be exciting, dangerous, provocative, heady, all-embracing. But the Classical Brits, and the industry they celebrate reduce it to muzak. It's not bad because it pushes crossover and TV soundtracks over more serious work. It's bad because it neuters the music, it removes all ambition and reduces it to a cheap bauble. The Classical Brits have the same relation to music as pornography to sex, or MacDonald's to a restaurant. They tell their audience that they should limit their horizons, that they're too stupid to cope with anything more than the scraps they're thrown, that they shouldn't above all make any effort to try and understand. That they don't deserve anything better, and neither should they aspire to anything better.

They diminish us all. This is what will kill music: the insistence that mediocrity is not just acceptable, but desirable.

Now go and listen to someone who understands what music can be.

Idiot Joy Showland

Ever heard the opinion voiced that stupid people shouldn't breed? Well, apparently that's no longer a problem, judging by this poster I saw on the tube today.

Low

There are many bands who wish they were the Fall, and Meat for a Dark Day are another one. Impressive facial hair, though.

Death Vessel turns out to be one man (although we weren't entirely sure about this, and I can only state this definitively having looked at his website). Our first thought is "Hey look! It's Neil from the Young Ones!" but he wins us round with some very impressive guitar picking and a distinctive, androgynous voice. The material maybe doesn't always match the performance, but nevertheless, this is someone worth keeping an eye on. Although I maintain that "Death Vulture" would be a better name.

People say Low are slow, and miserable. Only slow in the way an iceberg is. There's a driving power in their music that belies their steady tempi, and while they don't address the audience much at first, when they do there's a wry, dry humour that puts the miserablist tag into perspective. They're certainly not the sort of band you're likely to wave your hands in the air (like you just don't care) to, but they're a compelling live presence, and not too removed from rock 'n' roll theatrics to make us wait for encores that they clearly are going to play.

Slava V

Sound vs. Noise (4)

Regular readers will be aware of the constant stream of verbal diarrhea that plagues my working hours. Just because I haven't mentioned it recently, don't imagine that it's gone. Oh no. A long weekend is of course a very pleasant and welcome thing, but it leads to a heavier heart when you have to haul yourself out of bed on Tuesday morning to go to work, and even the prospect of a 4 day week can't quite lift the spirits. The mood is as grey and dark as the sky, and the babbling that assaults the ear seems to ricochet around the skull. Meanwhile, the seconds, minutes, hours slip away, and stifle the ideas and thoughts that are, or might be. The clouds stretch across the whole sky, imposing and oppressing, and the light feebly scratches through.

Slava IV

Earworms

One of the collateral delights of cycling through London is the music that appears unbidden in the mind. This week I've found tunes from Bill Callahan's new album popping into my head, as well as bits of The Rite of Spring and Carmen. Both these are understandable - I've been listening to the album a lot, and KSO is currently rehearsing the Stravinsky and Bizet (in arrangement by Shchedrin) and for our next concert. This evening, though, I suddenly found "Mack the Knife" running through my mind. Why should Kurt Weill suddenly pop into my head this way? Once these things get into your consciousness, they linger. I briefly wonder if the appearance of these old tunes will interfere with my own composing - a pre-existing idea in the head must make it harder to think of an original one, I conjecture - but I decide not to worry and enjoy the moment. It is a holiday weekend coming up, after all.

Slava III

Something you don't see every day...

...is the second performance of a piece of contemporary music. Well, I'm pleased to announce that I'll be bucking this trend later this month, when Le tombeau de Feldman receives its second outing. Toby Deller once again plays (and sings), coupling it this time with Bach's Cello Suite No.4 (on the viola, obviously). It's at St. George's Bloomsbury (near the British Museum) on Sunday 27th May, and entry is free! A bargain if ever there was one.

Slava II

Slava

Bill Callahan

It's the dancing you remember.

Bill Callahan has been making music for many years now, generally under the name of Smog (or, in an act of obfuscation typical of the man, as (smog)). He's much admired by those who know his work, but there aren't that many of them. However, the massive attention that's been paid to his current beau Joanna Newsom means that inevitably some more light is shining on his corner at the moment, and maybe his time is finally coming. There's been a change in the Callahan method, bringing a new album released under his own name, which features songs presenting a demeanour that might be described as cheerful. Fortunately this doesn't seem to have compromised the quality of his work, so we take ourselves to the Queen Elizabeth Hall to hear how this newly lighter mood transfers to the stage.

Last time I saw him he was on his own with his guitar, and although this time he's brought a band with him, all the songs at their core retain that aesthetic. Although he's linked with the "lo-fi" movement, that label doesn't really do him justice. His sound might broadly be described as "countrified Velvet underground", but he seems to draw from a deeper and older well, the same feel you get when you listen to old scratchy blues records from before the war, of something rooted in an ancient past. He's not one for stage banter, his quiet demeanour contrasting incongruously with an audience that applauds the opening bars of most of the songs in the way you might expect at a Barry Manilow concert (incidentally, this audience seemed to spend an awful lot of time standing up and going to the bar, although maybe it just seems more obvious because it's a seated venue with the bar outside the hall?). He stands upright and rigid, strumming his guitar and intoning his lyrics, deadpan and impassive. Which makes it all the more strange, his penchant for suddenly twitching, his legs writing and kicking occasionally, rather in the manner of a slow-motion Elvis as impersonated by Max Wall. The music is hypnotic, soulful, occasionally terrifying in its intensity, and seems utterly at odds with these curious movements. And yet afterwards, on long reflection on what I've seen and heard, it comes to seem absolutely right, the man's movements as singular as his music.

He doesn't say much to us, although at one point he does announce, "I feel good tonight". And it seems a simple, honest thing to say, that at the same time suggests something more profound, merely alluded to.

Mstislav Rostropovich 1927-2007

Tortelier was the cellist of choice in my household when I was small, so it wasn't until later that I discovered Rostropovich, which coincided with my discovering Shostakovich. Rummaging through my parents' LPs, I discovered Slava's recording of Shostakovich's First Concerto, and it made an immediate impression, not just the music, but the extraordinary personality of the soloist that leapt out of the speakers, a boisterous, extrovert earthiness that contrasted sharply with Tortelier's Gallic nobility. I was hooked, and began to seek out any recordings of his I could find, and my admiration grew as I discovered just how much of the cello literature of the past 60 years came into being through and for him. His status as a man without nationhood after his exile from Russia seemed the noblest of stances, and he came to stand for much more than being simply a very fine musician.

Of course, it's very easy when someone has just died to paint them in saintly colours, and it would be dishonest to deny that he was far from flawless as a man. And I have to say I thought he was an awful conductor. But he opened up worlds for me as a child, and I don't see that anyone could hear a few bars of his performances of the Beethoven cello sonatas without being struck by the sense of being in the presence of a great, generous and very human spirit.

Elgar

I was thinking of Elgar, whose 150th birthday falls this year, and this came up.

Things I saw this week when I did not have a camera to hand

A black swan.

A heron pause on the bank of a river before taking flight.

A horse underneath a motorway.

My uncle's remains lowered into the ground.

A baby's smile.

The sun on the water.

Basquiat Strings with Seb Rochford

I've had a vague desire for a long time to be Miles Davis, or maybe John Coltrane, although apparently not a strong enough desire to get up off my arse and actually learn the trumpet or sax. The cello always seemed, well, just not a jazz instrument, really (I did contemplate trading up to the bass, but have you seen the size of those things?). I did see someone playing jazz cello once, but it didn't really convince me. So it's very gratifying to hear this splendid album by Basquiat Strings, an ensemble led by cellist Ben Davis and allied to the F-IRE collective, and hear just what I could have done if I'd had the imagination.

Davis studied with Miles Davis alumnus Dave Holland, and the album's very much in that sort of vein (there's even a version of "In a Silent Way". It's also rather slinky in its rhythms, in a way that brings Piazzolla to mind. If you've heard any of the other bands in F-IRE (Polar Bear, Acoustic Ladyland, etc) and enjoyed them, you should enjoy this, so stop dawdling and buy it.

Two Wheels Good

I cycled to work for the first time today. I feel inordinately smug about this. I'll draw a veil over getting hideously lost in Maida Vale.

Xanadu falling

The unusual situation of a gloriously sunny bank holiday is a good excuse to cycle along the Thames pathway from Abbey Wood to Greenwich. Of all the things in London, the river is the one that most consistently makes me glad I live here, and the route takes us right alongside the water for most of the journey.

We round the Greenwich peninsula, and circle the Millennium Dome. I thought at the time, and still do, that the building itself is an impressive looking structure, hamstrung by a lack of purpose. The problem with it always was that they built it and then wondered what to put in it, precisely the wrong way round to go about it. So it ended up filled with tawdry, empty baubles, and now sits forlorn, empty and surrounded by decay, a beacon of broken promises and disappointment, an apposite monument to Blair's government. I reflect on Tony Blair, the man who was so desperate to be liked by everybody, and who ended up being liked by nobody much at all.

En vacances

I've been on holiday. Here are some pictures. Happy Easter!

What use is a book without pictures and conversations?

I am very much looking forward to the next few days. This is for several reasons. One is the prospect of some time off work, and some rest. Another is the prospect of having some time getting out and about in some fresh air in good company. Another is the fact that I have got the new book by Bryan Talbot, Alice in Sunderland, which from what I've read so far will be a thoroughly absorbing holiday read. And I shall be going to see him give a talk about it next week, which should be fascinating, if his similar talk about The Tale of One Bad Rat (soon to be republished, I'm told) that I saw a couple of years ago is anything to go by. I'm also getting quite excited at the prospect of the return of Doctor Who. Yes, I am a geek. So what?

I'm also looking forward to some time away from certain annoyances, such as the person who's barely paused to draw breath since I got into the office this morning. Sheesh, can't some people shut up for 5 minutes?

Absences

There seems to be a chill in the air, a general ennui, disillusion and withdrawal. Where does this come from (apart from here)? Am I just imagining this, spurred on by a few coincidences and my own unproductivity to a hyperbolic conclusion? Maybe now that the days are stretching into the evening and the sun strains to bring in the spring people have simply realised that there are other things to do. Or perhaps it's simply a fallow moment before new buds appear. As I stumble over clumsy attempts to shake off my creative torpor I'm reminded of this poem:

Lambs that learn to walk in snow
When their bleating clouds the air
Meet a vast unwelcome, know
Nothing but a sunless glare.
Newly stumbling to and fro
All they find, outside the fold,
Is a wretched width of cold.

As they wait beside the ewe,
Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies
Hidden round them, waiting too,
Earth's immeasureable surprise.
They could not grasp it if they knew,
What so soon will wake and grow
Utterly unlike the snow.

The trouble with Thomas Ades

(While I was waiting for my friend to arrive I sketched a few of the people arriving at the hall, some of which are dotted about this post.)

BCMG, Arditti Quartet, Pokrovsky Ensemble/Ades

LSO St. Luke's, 25 March

This concert was part of a wider retrospective of Thomas Ades' music (the accent you see on his name is an affectation that I'm not going to dignify by using). I can't help but wonder at the reasoning of structuring such an event around a still young composer whose output numbers barely 35 works. Surely there are other composers with a more substantial body of work that deserves the exposure?

Still, I do have a guarded liking for some of Ades' music, so it seemed interesting to go along to this concert and hear several pieces together.

The opening work, a song cycle Ades wrote at 18, was a disappointment. "Five Eliot Landscapes" sets poems of T.S. Eliot in a style that might be described as "generic non-scary modernist". If I had to imagine how a teenager would set Eliot (not hard to do, as I did it myself) this is pretty much exactly what I'd expect - self-consciously "high art", with a few striking ideas amongst a morass of dreary note-spinning. I've always thought one of the problems with setting poetry is that you come up with a brilliant idea for one or two lines, and then have the inconvenience of having to set the rest of the poem too, and this was how these songs came across. All perfectly well executed (although I found myself distracted by the frequent extreme hand-crossing in the piano part - played by the composer - which seemed to have no real reason behind it) but ultimately unmemorable.

The Chamber Symphony, composed shortly afterwards, is a completely different matter. Here is a work that stakes its territory with precocious confidence, a jazz-tinged undercurrent fuelling an exuberant and vital piece. it does flag after a while (Ades seems happier writing fast music) but picks up admirably before ending in a slyly off-hand manner.

Living Toys is cut from very similar cloth, although written 3 years later. Again there are many exuberant moments, although I couldn't help but feel that it lacked the freshness of the Chamber Symphony. There's a lot of music here that comes across as the sort of thing a young man might write having just heard Ligeti, especially in the prominent horn part that plays considerably on natural "out of tune" harmonics. There's also an ill-advised reference to "2001: a Space Odyssey", bound to fail because the harmonics and glissandi Ades presents, effective though they are in their own right, can never evoke the death of H.A.L. as well as the distorted singing of "Daisy Daisy" in the film.

"Arcadiana" was written a year later, and is a very self-conscious affair that uses quotations from and allusions to other composers to no great effect. There's a deconstruction of "Nimrod" from Elgar's Enigma Variations that has nothing to say about the Elgar and hence comes across as pretty but pointless. Occasionally striking ideas surface, but are never around long enough to make an impression. One gets the impression of a composer losing his nerve, and settling for writing acceptable "official" music rather than risk failure in the pursuit of something greater. I've been listening to the complete quartets of Elizabeth Maconchy, a composer whose astringent but approachable language might put her in the same category as Ades, but her works are altogether more substantial and hewn from tougher stuff than this rather limp affair.

(Why isn't there a major retrospective of Maconchy going on, in her centenary year? Her neglect is criminal, compared to the adulation that Ades routinely receives for a far lesser achievement.)

There's no doubt that Ades is a talented composer, but it's hard to see a coherent personality in his music. Maybe this will emerge in the coming years, but it feels too soon to be holding grandiose surveys of his work. Of course, the impetus behind this is, I suspect, more down to lazy programming and the influence of a certain coterie in classical music that Ades has slotted in with very effectively. He needs to take some risks, otherwise I fear he's doomed to be a composer of effective but uncompelling pastiche, polite music for polite people that upsets no-one and harms no-one. Music should never be harmless. There's nothing wrong with overt influences, of course, but I'm not convinced Ades owns his, in the way that Stravinsky does, who always sounds like no-one but himself, even when he's appropriating a style in as extreme a fashion as he does to Mozart in "The Rake's Progress".

Talking ofStravinsky, his "Les Noces" completed the concert. Stravinsky also borrowed from numerous styles liberally, but never sounds like anyone but himself. And how wonderful to hear the singing of the Pokrovsky Ensemble, whose raw, strident folk singing style energised this wonderful piece in a way that preened conservatoire voices never could.

There was another concert after this one, featuring works by Conlon Nancarrow, that I'd like to have stayed for, but I was disoriented enough by the clocks going forward without staying out til past midnight. Shame. Still, I can always dig out my CDs of his Studies for Player-piano.

Top heavy

Big people on little bikes - what's that all about?

I don't mean commuters on folding bikes with little Noddy-wheels, although let's face it that does make you look a bit of a twonk,* but young men on little bikes that make them look like clowns. I see this a lot round my way,** and it puzzles me. Do they not realise they look like twats carting their adult bodies around on a child's wheels? Or am I just an old fart who doesn't get it because I'm not Down with Da Kidz?


* Bromptons are the cycling equivalent of Macs, they seem to induce a similar air of smugness in their owners that makes you want to punch them. Hard.

**My way being somewhere near Chav Central, which may explain something.

Deconstructive criticism

An apocryphal tale of Morton Feldman, the ugliest composer who ever lived, reaches me. If it isn't true it ought to be.

Feldman's later music is notorious for its extreme length, and his second string quartet must be one of the lengthiest pieces ever written, clocking up at some 5-6 hours (yes, hours). Understandably, it's rarely performed in its entirety, due to the immense stamina it requires.*

Anyway, the story goes that a young quartet decided to take up the challenge, and having prepared themselves, they played this behemoth through for the composer. Feldman sat quietly through the performance for the full six-odd hours it took to perform it. On finishing, the quartet looked, tired but filled with a sense of achievement, to the composer for his opinion. Feldman stood up and announced:

"That was fucking rubbish."


* I believe the Kronos Quartet, for whom it was written, never performed it in full, although in recent years a couple of recordings have appeared, notably an excellent one by the Flux Quartet on DVD, meaning you can listen to it without having to get up and change the disc. If you've got the guts to sit through it, it's well worth your time.

I suspect the quote is inaccurate, mainly because it's highly unlikely that an eminent American composer would use the word "rubbish". It is, however, entirely probable he'd have used the word "fucking".

Drinking

It's a young man's game, really, isn't it?

Send in the clowns

It's every coulrophobic's least favourite day, Red Nose Day. One of those occasions where we fill ourselves with that squirming, embarrassed, enforced jollity so peculiar to the British. A day of desperately unfunny "humour", all because apparently we can't be relied upon to help out worthy causes unless gurning celebrities tell us to.

The thing is, the charities that benefit from it are all Good Things and worthy of support. I just can't help thinking, why can't we just, you know, give the money? Then we'd be both helping those who need it, and sparing ourselves hours of light entertainment hell.

Anyway, to prove I'm not a heartless curmudgeon (even though I clearly am), I shall suggest that you buy this book, all the profits of which go to Comic Relief.

Interrupted

I find it difficult to get to the end of a record at the moment. This is one of the problems with listening to CDs at work: The nature of my job means that I may be sat at my desk for ages, or I may find myself frequently having to get up and go somewhere else. This means I constantly have to pause whatever I'm listening to, and I find that after a number of interruptions I've lost the thread of the album and it seems pointless to continue with it. So another on goes in the drive and the process begins again.

When I was young I got it into my head that once a record was on the turntable (as it was in those days) it could not be interrupted; the passage of the music took precedence over me, and if I had to leave the room for any reason, the record kept playing and I just had to miss whatever happened until I got back. There's an impracticality at work there that I rather like. and I'd often find that on returning to the room, the act of coming in halfway through something made me hear it afresh, so I'd often notice something I hadn't before, just from the removal of the context.

Maybe I should do that again. What's preferable, to miss a large chunk of the middle, and possibly the end, or never to find out what happens in the end? Things are happening all over all the time outside our presence, after all. Life is in some ways a continuous coming in on something halfway through. And the one thing we all have in common is that none of us will ever find out how it ends.

The mind boggles

Remember that bit in Rocky where he's doing his training by punching a hung slab of meat? Well, you lucky people, you can now recreate that seminal scene in your own home with this fantastic new action figure. No, really.

Also, I was bemused by the list of books we haven't finished. I mean, I'll 'fess up to not finishing Ulysses (although I shall one day, oh yes), but what's so difficult about Vernon God Little? I remember it being an easy read. Are we becoming so dumb? Judging by this story, HMV seems to think we are.

Lunch with the Doctor

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Originally uploaded by petemaskreplica.

I'm not normally one to get excited about celebs, but my fanboy nerves did tingle a bit when I saw David Tennant filming an interview of some sort today.

Activity vs. Achievement

Some weeks you don't seem to get anything done, yet when you look back you can't quite work out why, as nothing seems to have left an impression on your memory. Is it because you've been too busy? Or are you being lazy? Is this a block, or just a natural fallow period? Are you drying up, or do you just need a holiday? Are you fed up with your job, or just your immediate circumstances? Was the week really that featureless, or is it just that it seems so after such a good weekend when you glimpsed a freedom you've been missing?

Maybe it's for the best to have a quiet evening pottering, washing, cleaning. Then a day of activity to follow. The thing is not to work or not to work - it's to achieve a balance between the two. Inactivity isn't necessarily unproductive, any more than business is necessarily constructive.

Happy Smith-Day!

I'm reminded by an entertaining article on BBC4's Front Row that today is Mark E. Smith's 50th birthday. Happy birthday, Mark!

Of course, in the unlikely event that he actually read this, he'd probably tell me to fuck off, middle-class wanker. He'd be right, of course.

You can hear Stewart Lee, among others, talk about why the Fall are great via the BBC's splendid listen again facility.


(Lego Mark E. Smith from here.)

The seaside! The seaside!

It's nice to get out, even for a few hours - especially on such a nice day as Saturday was. This is Whitstable. A stroll along the beach and proper fish and chips made for a restorative day. You can see more pictures here.

As a contrast, you can now download something rather more nocturnal - an mp3 of "Le tombeau de Feldman".

First (and not last, I hope) performance

Well, in the end the concert went off really well, lots of people said nice things about my piece, and they can't all have been being just polite, can they? I think the real credit should go to Toby, for putting together a really good programme and playing it so beautifully. I've been listening to the recording I made, and it still sounds good the day after - not always the case with recordings...

Thanks to everyone who came along. We have an idle plan to do the concert in Paris, so if that ever actually happens, it'll be a great excuse for you to have a weekend over the channel.

30 years of thrill power

I can't let 2000ad's 30th birthday pass without a mention. I wasn't there at the start, but it's been a part of my life for a very long time nevertheless. When it hit the newsstands in 1977 it was just the latest in a long line of British comics, cashing in on the renascent popularity of sci-fi that Star Wars was engendering. It built on its immediate predecessors Battle and Action in being a subversive, cool read that your parents didn't approve of. It was also clever - dripping with black humour and vicious satire, as well as out and out weirdness. It lost its way in the 90s, it could have folded (actually, if you read David Bishop's forthcoming history, you'll see it could have folded many, many times), but it came through and recovered, and is still here, after all its competitors have fallen by the wayside, almost the only comic left in this country.

There's been a couple of articles marking the anniversary, in the Independent on Sunday (a strangely apologetic affair) and online by the BBC (which does a better job of capturing the sense of what's so great and enduring about it). It doesn't have the audience it did in its 80s heyday, of course, but what does? Doctor Who is now acclaimed as a massive success for attracting the same sort of audience figures that got it cancelled in the late 80s. All audiences are fragmented these days, there are simply too many things competing for our attention for anything to have that much impact. But it's still here, still great, and rooted deep in British culture, and that's something to celebrate. So raise a glass and wish Tharg many happy returns, and another 30 years of thrills.

One shot

I was thinking about Finnissy, and Feldman, as I often do, and particularly having just written a piece honouring the latter, and having met the former at the same time as I first heard Feldman in Huddersfield in 1996 (a story I'll post here at some point, as it's quite entertaining), and from there about all the new music workshops and the like I've been to or been involved with over the years, and it worries me the attitude young composers are encouraged to have. I remember reading an interview with Feldman once where he said something to the effect that the normal thing for a composer to do is give up composing, it's actually abnormal to continue beyond your university/college years. And there's also the fact that, as 90% of anything in the world isn't very good, chances are if you're a composer you're not very good. And yet composers are encouraged to think of themselves as being on a par with all the undisputed greats, to write for posterity, music which needs many listens to be understood, when the fact is, your piece will almost certainly be heard only once. I've been lucky, I've had one piece played twice. Toby and I have a vague dream that we might repeat next week's concert in Paris, so maybe I'll be really lucky and have a second second performance. And it occurs to me that so much that's wrong with so-called contemporary classical music stems from this. We need to abandon our delusions of greatness, and remember that anything we write will almost certainly have one chance and one chance only to make an impact.

Mostly I think I'm OK, I have some degree of talent. But there's always the voice inside me nagging away: Am I really any good? Am I wasting my time? Why should anyone care? Am I really any good?

Stewart Lee - 90s Comedian

Once upon a time, we lived in the 90s. it was a fairly nondescript time - the Pixies had split up, and I'd left university and gone on the dole. Fortunately there were one or two things to cheer us up, one of which was Lee and Herring's Fist of Fun, which began on Radio 1, then transferred to BBC 2, then was inexplicably taken off air. It was superceded by This Morning With Richard Not Judy, another slice of comic genius from Rich and Stew that ran for 2 series on Sunday mornings before also being inexplicably removed from our screens.

Stewart Lee's profile plummeted for a few years, before he re-emerged as librettist and director for Jerry Springer - The Opera, which began in a tiny theatre in East London, and ended up a high profile West End hit, and the focus for raving fundamentalist Christians. Some of these experiences formed the basis for Lee's last stand-up show, which has just come out on DVD. I went to see this show in London in December 2005, and it was absolutely brilliant, although also uncomfortable, which was due to the provocative nature of the last part of the set especially, but also to the fact that at the time I was sat next to my Catholic sister in law. (I also managed, through a combination of trying to say too many things at once and being pissed, to make an utter arse of myself in front of Stew after the show, but that's another story.) Suffice to say the finale to the show is a story involving Jesus that is unlikely to find favour with those of a devoutly Christian bent.

"But what could this tale possibly be, that is so controversial?" I hear you ask. Well, you can find out by buying the DVD. Buy it. It's a masterful and thought-provoking piece of stand-up, with some important points to make about censorship, freedom of speech and the right to offend. And it's only a tenner. Go on, buy it.

Look at me! Look at me!

I'm second on Google! That's "the web", too, not your poxy old "pages from the U.K.".

Googling your own name is of course a vile sign of self-obsession, and I shall probably feel thoroughly ashamed in the morning.

A journey begins with a single step

I did something I haven't done for a very long time today: picked up a copy of the Guardian and had a look at the job pages. it's the result of a lot of thinking over recent weeks, especially last week when I was laid up sick, and actually feeling glad about it because it meant I wasn't at work. the job's become a terrible combination of boredom and stress, and I increasingly feel like I don't belong, and I'm wasting my time when I'm there.

I have a disadvantage that I don't really have any idea of what I'd like to do instead, but sometimes you reach a point where you need to shake things up, and I think that time is coming.

I had a lovely weekend in Devon, and standing on a beach in grey winter felt like a little glimpse of freedom.

Judge Ignatz

When you're nobbled by a virus (again! I never used to get ill at all) what better way to distract yourself than to do a valentine's mash-up of two of your favourite comics?

What do you mean, you don't recognise them?? Go here, here and here, then.

The Fall marathon 11: Reformation Post TLC

When I was a lad, there was one irrefutable proof that you were a true fan of a band. When talk turned to a classic record, you would know that you knew and loved this record better than anyone if you could declare: "I got it on the day it came out".

Of course, as age encroaches and the matter of bills and other such mundane use of money envelop our souls, we realise that it doesn't really matter what day you get a record on. It'll still be there next week, and it'll sound the same. And so we slide into a gentler relationship with our bands, and they slowly cease to be ours.

Sometimes though, you have to say to hell with maturity and keep the flame of obsessive passion alive, to keep a faith that this incidental luxury called music can be a transformative, vital part of life. So, here is the new Fall album, and I got it on the day it came out.

This is, of course, a brand-new lineup since "Fall Heads Roll", and there's a certain feeling of the band bedding in. Initial impressions: this year's style is minimalist - I'm reminded of the Monks album I was listening to the other day in the pounding, aggressive, repetitive riffing on display through much of this album. There's a lengthy and testing collage-y track ("Das Boat") the like of which hasn't been seen on a Fall album for a good while, and this seems one of MES's more belligerent outings of recent years. Plenty of sly humour if you want to find it, though - "I think they've over-done the Trout Mask thing" comments Smith at one point, only to quote "Veterans' Day Poppy" from that album a few tracks later. And "The Wright Stuff" offers a very funny lambasting of Celebrity culture, all the better for being delivered dead-pan by Elena Poulou (aka Mrs Smith) to an unexpectedly synth-pop backing. And the cover of "White Line Fever" is surprisingly affecting.

You need a few listens of any Fall album to get your head round it, really, so who knows what I'll make of it next week? That's the joy of it - knots to unravel, puzzles that twist and turn and shape-shift with every new look. As John Peel said - always different, always the same.

This is the end of the Fall marathon... for now. It's also my 100th post on this blog. I didn't plan it that way, honest.

Ups and downs

Some days are just awful. You force yourself out of bed, you drag yourself into work, you remember the stuff you forgot to bring just as you get there, you're surrounded by blithering idiot jabber, there's little of import to do and you spend the whole day thinking "WHY AM I HERE?!!".

Fortunately there are other days, which start with an evening out after the shit day, seeing funny stuff with cool people, then a night and a day and another night with someone special, with visits to arty places and seeing cool looking fire escapes and the cooking of roast dinner and Miyazaki films on the DVD player. the trips to hear a new piece you wrote, which sounds really cool and fill you with confidence that it'll be great at the performance, followed by too much beer for a Sunday afternoon, accompanied by jazz and talk of art and music, and plans involving such things.

And looking forward to the new Fall album tomorow!

The British Library needs you!

Read this:
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/news/story/0,,2000823,00.html

Then go and sign this:
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/library/

Oh, the weather outside is frightful... (2)

Ooh! Snow in winter! Who'd have thort it, eh?
Annoyingly, my trains seemed to run slightly better (or less shitly, to be more accurate) than normal. I can't even rely on the buggers to be unreliable.

it's already disappeared from W12, though patches of white still cling to the wild northern climes where I live. In Birmingham all the schools are closed again. Lucky sods, I'm sure it wouldn't have happened in my day.



The London Eye's gone all red. It's rather pretty, but disturbing as I suspect it to be a marketing gimmick to do with one the bearded twat Richard Branson's dodgy ventures.

Today seems to be Mad Fucker Day. I can't decide if it would be easier to have the lot of them carted off in a van, or just to have myself carted off. Surely if I got hold of a gun and went postal there's not a court in the land that would convict?

Fall marathon 10: The Unutterable/Are You Are Missing Winner/The Real New Fall Album/Fall Heads Roll

The Unutterable gives the sense of a well-drilled band who are probably shit-scared of their leader. At the time it came out I thought it was one of the Fall's best albums for many a year, even more satisfying for coming after a period when many in the press speculated that it was all over. Little things like "Das Katerer" - effectively a re-write of "Free Range" - give a sense that MES has to some extent reconciled himself to his past, and I guess from hereon there's a sense of the band being more willing to draw on its own history, less worried about pointedly refusing to revisit old ground. Especially welcome is the humour, more evident on this album than it had been for quite some time.



After "The Unutterable"'s fairly flash production, Are You Are Missing Winner contrarily reverts to a resolutely lo-fi sound. I remember being disappointed by this album when it came out, but time's been kind to it - the hyper-garagey tone stands up well, even if this isn't one of their best. There's probably a lesson about the perspective of hindsight to be had here.







The Real New Fall LP (Formerly "Country On The Click") is a step up again, though. Xyralothep sounds a convincing Lovecrafty name, but extensive research (i.e. a few minutes on Google) suggests that the name is MES's own creation. It's an opportunity to note the sci-fi element to the Fall, though. "Sparta FC" is brilliantly belligerent, how they got away with using this as the theme to Final score I'll never know.

And so to Fall Heads Roll, the most recent (until 12th Feb) album. It seems almost like a meta-Fall album, embodying the quixotic (beginning with an extended country-reggae number?!) the relentless grind (the wonderful and frightening "Blindness"), a reference to an old song and a tribute to Bo Diddley.

after 30 years, it's remarkable simply that The Fall are still around. It's positively astounding that not only is MES still here, but he's still at the top of his game. Having gone through all these albums over the past couple of months, I can honestly say that, some variation in quality aside (perfectly natural over such a long time) there isn't a single one that isn't good. I can't think of any other band of whom that can be said over thirty years.

These days it's very easy to think of the Fall as existing in some sort of separate time continuum, where each individual album fades into one huge welter of sound. it's nice to have been able to remind myself of each record's individual merits, and make some surprising connections. Who'd have thought that one of the constant threads that seems more and more prominent with the passing years would be dance music? Mark E Smith, for one, probably.

The Monks

The Monks were a group of GIs stationed in Germany in the 60s who decided to form a band. Nothing very strange about that, except that they shaved tonsures into their heads, wore black robes and nooses as ties, and eschewed the standard R&B repertoire of 60s garage bands in favour of such self-penned ditties as "I Hate You" and "Shut Up". They produced one album, the excellent "Black Monk Time", and imploded, although in recent years they have resurfaced and even played a few gigs. They were punk 10 years too soon, basically. Oh yeah, and they had an electric banjo, which is very cool, obviously.

I mention them because the album is the perfect listen if it took you three hours to get to work this morning (bastard trains, bastard buses, bastard everything) and then found yourself surrounded by people who wouldn't shut up. Oh, there were delays on the tram in Croydon this morning, were there? Did it take you 3 hours to get to work? No, didn't think so.

After a session in the downstairs store with "Black Monk Time" on VERY LOUD INDEED I guarantee you will feel much better, and able to move on to a different, more relaxing type of monk.

A short ride in an alternative machine

A spontaneous moment! As we leave the office, L tells me she's off to the Barbican, where ahead of the LSO concert of John Adams works there's a free performance of an arrangement of Mr Adams' "A Short Ride in a Fast Machine" for Gamelan, of all things. Well, I'm a sucker for free stuff, and there's bugger all on telly, so I tag along.

It's great, and when you hear it, it all makes perfect sense, of course - the pulsing rhythms and post-minimalist repetitions of Adams' style transfer very well indeed to the Gamelan. They play it twice, and it's better second time around - people have drifted away and it's easier to get a good view of the players. That ringing, metallic sound is captivating, a sound I know well from second hand imitations by numerous 20th century composers, and (somewhat to my shame) rather less so from hearing the genuine article. It's nice to hear the distinctive tonality, too - when you're surrounded by the western scale, as we all are, it's good to be reminded every now and again that there's always a different way to do things.

At work today, in the middle of researching something else entirely, I came across a review that I didn't realise existed of a piece of mine that was performed in 2001 (I already knew about the one in the Guardian). According to David Harrison of the Manchester Evening News, "The world premiere of Peter Nagle's Infinite Breathing proved a spectral sort of affair with attenuated chords in the violins and violas."

I suspect this is the sort of thing a reviewer writes when he doesn't like the music, but doesn't want to say so.

Sound vs. Noise (3)

Please. Just shut. The fuck. Up.

Joey Ramone is the only thing keeping me sane at the moment.