Stevie B

Just a clip at the moment; will post the rest when I’m...

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 17:57:00 +0000

Just a clip at the moment; will post the rest when I’m done. It’s a new song; a folky, shoe-gazing toe-tapper.

Never mind the jokes

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 13:59:00 +0000

Perhaps I was just the right age to be suitably titilated by a post prime-time concoction of pop trivia and bad language, but whatever it was, I certainly enjoyed Never Mind The Buzzcocks when I was a lad. Looking back, it had a certain pre-smoking ban charm about it; a devilish glee on the faces of the panel as they twisted the knife. Of course, after Mark Lamarr they eventually went with Simon Amstell as the long-term presenter (who I personally think got a little overpraised for his stint in the chair) and these days it is a revolving door policy which is always going to mean the show is a bit hit and miss.

I’m not sure if it was a repeat, but this week I caught Tinie Tempah hosting. And ‘caught’ seems right because he was bang to rights on a litany of charges against comedy. But my main concern was the the lines he had been given, which were, presumably, beyond his control. I can only think that when Amstell left the show he must have left the back gate open and the more inquisitive writers tumbled along after him.*

“Gene Simmons has the longest tongue in the world,” announced Tinie, “even longer than the one Louis Walsh sticks up Simon Cowell’s arse.”

Oh please. This isn’t a joke; it’s a hopeful colletion of famous names and a reference to analingus that I genuinely can’t understand. Humour me (if you still can, Buzzcocks) but are we suggesting Simon Cowell permits Louis Walsh to pleasure him, rectally, in order for the Irishman to keep his seat on the X Factor? Firstly, I’m not sure this would be Cowell’s cup of Earl Grey and secondly, if he wants to get his rocks off, considering he has a fortune that could buy him several planets, do we really think he would turn to an overactive adrenal gland like Walsh, (who, we must all agree, is more likely to be a figment of our collective imagination than a real person)?

Buzzcocks, drop your glue and B&H and come out from behind the bike sheds with some jokes; it needn’t be this way at all.

———————————————————————————————-

*New figures from the Inquisitive Writers Trust suggest that on average 345 stray writers are picked up every day.

Soured cream

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 22:36:00 +0000

No, the cream does NOT always rise to the top. It might seem obvious to some, but the most famous musicians are not the best musicians, and I’ll tell you what, many of them don’t even know “all the chords”.

Whilst studying music and sharing lodgings with the usual hotchpotch from other faculties, a flat-mate made some comment about the then-Oasis lead guitarist which led to a troubling discussion.

“Hang on, so, you’re saying you’re a better guitarist than Noel Gallagher?”

I confirmed.

“Alright, then how come he’s sold millions of albums and you haven’t?”

Of course, this wasn’t a discourse at the cutting edge of musical debate, and my learned friend should probably be pitied for his quasi-Pilkington, squashed-worm’s eye view of the world, but it struck me how readily he had plotted a graph of talent against fame where the latter evidently guaranteed that you had the lion’s share of the former. That I might whisper the notion of having a better grasp of an instrument played by someone who has sold records by the truckload - especially when I was only a teenage bedroom-musician with a greasy complexion and a low threshold for snakebite - marked me out (in his eyes) as colossally arrogant.

In reality, being a great guitar player is no guarantee of great song-smithery, and many wonderful songwriters have only a rudimentary grasp of their instrument (sometimes literally). If Noel’s to be celebrated for anything (he doesn’t mind me calling him Noel) then it should be for his songs - and specifically his choruses - but clearly my friend had long since blurred Gallagher’s technical merits and songwriting skills; his fame and his talent, and felt there was no other explanation for this success: he looks like Captain Scarlet, but I guess he must be talented. Surely all these people can’t be wrong?

Much more recently, a work colleague asked me for a CD of songs by bands I had been in. I provided and, knowing the sort of character I was dealing with, wasn’t wholly surprised when the next day he made me his very first port of call, armed with a splurtation of half-baked recommendations and mincing-machine musical cliches which, I’m guessing, were somehow supposed to suggest his deep understanding of the material.

“I just felt at one point you seemed like you were all sort of fighting to do your own bit.” It was intended that I should reluctantly agree to this; a comment I’m sure was derived from some semi-understood or overheard idea about group improvisation which he had tried desperately to recall as soon as he had heard the first non-diatonic chord on the disc. I politely rebuffed the idea and mumbled something about it being more of a nu-soul thing, yet continued to absorb another 10 minutes of full-on mouth-slurry.

The point of my tale is what made me smile during our conversation the next day, when the topic of my former musical exploits arose again. He asked a few questions about the make-up of the bands themselves, and I mentioned that one of the singers he had heard was a full time musician - as we all had been at the time of recording - but now singing with a touring band, playing her own music, playing at festivals and had recently been doing some backing vocals for Pulp. And it was the mention of Pulp that brought about a tangible shift in his perception of what the band was all about, and even how it now sounded to him. All of a sudden there were the first chinks of praise beaming into the room, and an admission that “yeah, I could tell she’s got a good voice”; yes, stuff he could have said the day before but chosen not to, but it was (not really) mysterious how he suddenly found the words for this following the rudimentary revelation that a fifth of the band had performed with Jarvis Cocker. Now, I’ll tell you that she is hugely worthy of her success, but I can categorically confirm that her moments on big stages and approval from celebrities has not miraculously improved her past recordings. They sound the same now as they ever did: good.

Jamie Cullum certainly has his detractors … is a sentence I’ll try and end here. But, I have heard him freely admit that he his not the best pianist or singer in the world, the UK, or any of its cities come to that. He has said that we have music colleges chock-full of talent as great or greater than his own; he just happens to have been in the right places at the right times and someone saw something in him they could sell and sell well. For what it’s worth, I don’t see any harm in Jamie Cullum at all - as opposed to many a jazz-head who seem to view him as some sort of fatal E-number attack on the overactive frontal lobe of John Coltrane’s legacy - but he isn’t the greatest exponent of his instrument. This shouldn’t surprise anyone - it doesn’t surprise him - so it is worth reminding anyone who still harbours some belief that the cream of the crop really is the cream, that the music business is a business and they are giving you the cream they think you want, hoping it will be a long time after it’s been opened before everyone decides it stinks. To bring back Jamie Cullum, I’m not saying he’s off, I’m just saying he might not be the best thing to put in your coffee.

If Music were a football club, you can be sure that there would be a glut of talent in the youth ranks that never makes it to the starting XI and, of course, there are stacks of reasons for that. Sometimes people decide that for all their talent, the climb to success is just way too steep, they decide that this is not something they want to do full time, or find themselves at a time when the club is overflowing with ‘tricky wingers’ and there really isn’t room for one more to come through, i.e. you don’t do something that Music needs right now, but you might have more luck down the road at Retail/Catering or Other Clerical FC. For myself - and I don’t pretend to be any sort of virtuoso or some unearthed gifted songwriter that’s been left to rot in the reserves for way too long - I believe that I have met the sufficient level of talent to be a ‘famous’ musician (this actually means simply that I can hold and strum a guitar) but that what I do on my instrument or in my songs is not something that is necessarily saleable. Like any job, if I applied to work for Music I would surely be asked, what can I offer Music? And frankly, pfft, is my answer. The music business is a business, and I was told that long before I realised what it meant. Talent in your playing is not a key to the director’s office at Music, though a talent for persistence and hard work might allow you to sneak in after hours when no-one is looking. That you can sing louder, play faster or drum harder will not award you anything if Music can’t hang a pound sign on it. The day Music released Crazy Frog was surely the day that talent got a disturbing wake up call. If people will buy that, they will surely buy a turd in a feather boa singing Ten Green Bottles if Music gets its marketing strategy right. Of course, Music is a diverse world and, thankfully, some people will always value musicianship or good composing, and I include plenty of pop music and pop music fans in that. But let’s not kid ourselves that even those people are the only people that could have done it; sometimes they were just the lucky ones, or the ones that could convince a few people, for a short time, that they were as talented as their hype.

As if all cooks were fat, all peasants phlegmatic, all statesmen stately. As if all who love and are loved were beautiful. As if all good speakers had a fine voice.

- Bertolt Brecht

I turned to him as he slurped the foamy head from the top of his freshly poured pint and said, “You know I’m the better guitarist right, Noel?”

“Of couse!” he said, “you know all the fucking chords for a start.”

"As if all cooks were fat, all peasants phlegmatic, all statesmen stately. As if all who love and are..."

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 22:02:28 +0000

“As if all cooks were fat, all peasants phlegmatic, all statesmen stately. As if all who love and are loved were beautiful. As if all good speakers had a fine voice.”

- Bertolt Brecht

Blake vs Blake

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 13:09:37 +0100

As I sat by what must have been North London’s most incredulous and highest pitched Indian on a bus yesterday, I got to thinking, just who would win in a battle between William Blake and James Blake?

I fancy that the former Blake may begin with a slow building barrage of poetry, each one more sexually supressed than its predecessor, but ultimately, James would win by turning each stanza into a delay-ridden cacophony of increasingly bit-crushed sound which would gradually consume itself and his enemy, leaving nothing but his buckled shoes behind.

Miss of the century

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 20:43:19 +0100

Miss of the century

You can shine a torch down their ears, but you won't find much

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 17:32:06 +0100

It was a few months back now but did you see the Blackberry Torch adverts? Heading down the escalators at Euston I couldn’t help but notice a 20ft slew of banality dribbling down the wall. What irked me wasn’t so much the product - I’m an iPhone incidentally - but Blackberry Man’s schema of what their demographic sounds like in first person. I’m referring to the “status updates” of their fictional characters. Stuff like “do I go for sushi or Italian” or “I wish I could tell my boss what I really think of him” squirting out from an array of attractive 20-something-smiles. Incidentally, number 1 you should go to Chicken Cottage and chow down on a Pterodactyl burger with extra cheese (wet wipe gratis) and a perpetually refilling schooner of your own piss which forces you to throw up twice as hard as I want to every time I see your shitty little face, and number 2 I think what you’re really trying to say is that your anger is a pathetic transference of your deep-seated love for your boss, who, with his teenage moustache and high-pitched voice actually reminds you of the gerbil you lost your viginity to ten long years ago.

For some time I actually listened with interest to Chris Evans’ morning show on Radio 2 but gave up on it and vowed never to return after growing disillusioned by the amount of time devoted to soundbites from his listeners, crystallised best in one joyless (for me) feature, The Mega-Phone-Call. Callers would create an ersatz megaphone out of any old bollocks lying around - a rolled up newspaper or a hollowed-out elderly relative - and then make an announcement, via the megaphone, live on air. Of course, Joe Public’s consistent lack of timing didn’t help - “are you still there Julie?” - but for me, the worst thing was the announcement itself. After arsing around with the megaphone - “that’s right Chris, I’ve trained the dog to swallow the phone while I bellow as hard as I can up his alimentary canal” - the announcements always landed somewhere between “I want that minute back” and “I’ve had more interesting shits” on the long-jump sandpit of entertainment.

“Today, Chris, I will be selling some old furniture” … Christ.

“Today, Chris, I will be cooking for some friends who have come from Australia” … yes, we have planes now, but sadly we still don’t have a cure for pricks like you.

“Today, Chris, I will be taking the kids to school and they’re going to be in a play” … I bet you live a mile from the gates but insist on wheeling your fortified 4x4 up there, taking out all the other children en route.

The very worst ones, the ones that truly endangered my hi-fi each morning, were those where the announcer thought it would be a good idea to put in a little witty addendum, albeit an addendum that lasted twice as long as the announcement, with exponentially diminishing returns.

“Today, Chris, I will be practicing my salsa!!!!! I’m not as good as [insert current soapstar Strictly tossbag] but me and my husband have been going now for two months and love every minute, and we’re hoping, with a little bit of practice …”

… that you might shimmy into a pylon.

The lowest notes

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 13:02:37 +0100

There is a unique dread to the realisation that you are on stage and you’re not making any noise. At first, it’s the slow-dawning of “where’s the bass gone?” and then quickly remembering that this is meant to be your own contribution to the band. This is followed by the hand on jack moment - “yes, I am plugged in” - the hand on volume-knob moment - “no, I didn’t turn it down for no reason half-way through this song” - the fumble of tone knobs - “these don’t affect volume but I will twiddle them anyway” and of course the “I still seem to have fingers” double-take which is essential, if only to rule out the possibility of a sudden but unlikely explosion of leprosy in the right hand.

Things quickly escalate and it isn’t so long before the semi-logical checking of inputs and amp-fronted knobs descends into an ill-fated peer around the back of the amp for nothing in particular and hitting the bass a little as if to coax it from its apparent narcolepsy. Any pedals on the deck are now at the sharp end of the fury, particularly any that glow or have digital displays. Indiscriminate stamping may then give way to some shrugging of the shoulders to the worried keyboard player. Before you know it, your whole body has been given over to the cause.

Finally, you are led from the stage by a tall, good-looking man who hails a black cab outside the venue in seconds and carefully but rapdily shepherds you inside. He squints a little as the vehicle takes off into the night, heading towards a Travelodge on the other side of town where you have a room booked under the name Pignoramous and a 20 hour window to consider what you have done.

Denial

Mon, 02 May 2011 10:15:49 +0100

Oh Tuesday, runt of the weekday litter, I can see you wheezing and lumbering over the hill towards me. Why don’t you just piss off?

Jonathan Wilson on football bloggers

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 21:24:49 +0100

Jonathan Wilson on football bloggers

"There comes a time in your life when everyday is the anniversary of something"

Mon, 28 Mar 2011 21:41:20 +0100

“There comes a time in your life when everyday is the anniversary of something”

- John Peel

It's a sign

Mon, 28 Mar 2011 21:29:00 +0100

There’s a sign I notice on the final leg of my journey home, which seldom fails to ‘grind my gears’. Before I go further, I should clarify that the gears grind only a little and it’s not the thin end of the vehicle’s terminal decline, more the endearing lurch of an old banger.

“SLOW - Low trees”

It once served a purpose. It was something of a beacon when, yes, branches hung paint-scrapingly low over this stretch of road and we all wished for simpler times. But now the branches have been tastefully vanquished and yet the sign remains, lest we forget the woody menace that once lived there.

What occurs to me, as I walk underneath it on that contemplative stroll homeward, is how it smacks of a job unfinished. Why could it not come down with the last of those worrisome branches? I wonder who put the sign up in the first place, I wonder who chopped the branches down. I wonder who oversaw this delicate botanical operation. Clearly my life must be suitably devoid of meaning that I must write a back-story to immerse myself in the minutiae of any tinpot local issue, but I think that I recognise this sign so often because deep down something resonates …

This sign is my morning struggle to get as far out of bed as possible by 8.15; it is the new pint of milk that sat in a bag until 11 o’clock because I couldn’t be bothered to take it to the kitchen; it is the previewed but unopened e-mail that looks like too much hard work for a Monday (or a Tuesday); it is the lunch break that dawdles past in an all-too rapid succession of YouTube and football tittle-tattle and definitely not in a good book or a good walk; it is the countless drafts of unblogged blogs, the strings of five chords that are crying out for a chorus and a few words to get off the ground; the lazy listing; the listless typing; my own personal detours …

It’s my sign up there.

Every cloud

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 21:43:00 +0000

“You alright?”

“Not really,” she retorted. “I’ve a bad back, a bad foot and I’ve been in bed all day. I haven’t been able to get my paper yet”.

For me, this was more information than I was able to work with from a woman who I barely know, despite sharing walls with her for several years. Short on words for a response, I offered my best face in sympathy - for which you should read that I conjured a simpering, damp chamois of an expression - and proceeded to ladle on the misery by declaring it had been “muggy” today.

In my defence, I think I divulged this non-descript reference to humidity, not out of the usual British conversational tic where weather is concerned, but to somehow suggest to her that if she was finding today more difficult than yesterday, it may be down to weather systems rather than her own physical shortcomings.

Old one from 2010

Tyrannasaurus Tax

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 23:24:00 +0000

I’m fully taxed-up for the year (most likely overtaxed with a slew of coding notices to cement up my postbox in the very near future). Genuinely now, why is the process so ridiculous, unintuitive and unreliable? And do the people who design the forms not actually go online themselves? It is a maze of dead-ends and false dawns and, when you finally finish, the thing disappears without so much as a hangover-fart of appreciation and you end up trawling back to find the unfathomably unreasonable sum you owe and then have to work out from their clues (they post a daily installment of pigeon entrails for you to pick over and a 70s P.E. teacher with halitosis to jab you in the eye with a quill as you do so) which of their accounts you have to pay into. Needless to say, I make it very clear which account of mine they should pay into, but they seldom seem to take me up on the offer.

Coming first

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:33:58 +0100

With some embarrassment, this post came first.

"Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy when seen in longshot"

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:49:07 +0100

“Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy when seen in longshot”

- Charlie Chaplin