Human After All

Human After All

For many of you out there, there may be none more seismic a newsflash over the festive season. The prospect of a new Daft Punk album has excited me for some time, but hang on, it’s not been mentioned on The Raft, only NME from what I can tell. And, that title! Those track titles…it’s all rather fishy isn’t it? Risky to speculate either way if you want to avoid getting a plate, getting your words, putting those words on said plate, and eating your words…BUT if it IS true then it did bring to mind an interesting ‘tactic’ for bands as they bid to distinguish their new great work from the last. Supposedly, by denial or retraction they go forwards…almost too keen to convince everyone this one will be different from the previous effort, at least in concept and premise. Not that another Discovery or Homework would probably be a good idea, I think I just adhere to a rather ‘boyish’ (and both appealing yet disturbing) ideal about machines or indeed man-machines being superior to the human, an ethos that’s resulted in some of the most amazing, dynamic electronic pop music of the last 30 years or more. And I hope Thomas and Guy-Man still recognise that and don’t ’sell their turntables and buy guitars’ (to paraphrase ‘Losing My Edge’) as it were.

So I think I’d prefer ‘We Are Still Zer Robotz’ for the title…

John Peel (1939-2004)

John Peel (1939-2004)

Lore! That new Robbie Williams single may be the worst thing he’s ever released…

Lore! That new Robbie Williams single may be the worst thing he’s ever released…

but combined with the new Beastie Boys single ‘Triple Trouble’ it has prompted me to think about the pros and cons of putting on a silly accent in a song for reasons hard to discern. On ‘Radio’ Robbie comes over somewhere between Roger Moore and Neil Hannon - but it doesn’t work for me at all but the song is so weak (I haven’t done my research but this can’t feature any residue of the partnership with Guy Chambers surely?) and perhaps it was felt this sort of gimmick was required as a booster. Then again, you might not even notice it, and it may even make a nice change from his usual jarring Trentian nagging tone. It is a dubious portent for how this proposed ‘Pure Francis’ material will go down though, and a tad irritating that ‘Radio’ will probably knock Alcazar or someone else good off the #1 spot.

‘Triple Trouble’ on the other hand is the sound of washed-up salesmen with the same old schtick coming through the other side, appealing again somehow. Adequate fodder livened up by comedy English accents from the boys themselves, of the more gruff Cockney variety this time if I’m not mistaken. The point? I have no idea, amusing though it is. And the only difference between it as a throwaway gimmick here and what Robbie does in ‘Radio’ may just be that one is funny and the other isn’t. I can think of a few other examples in hip-hop and related areas where it occurs (Ugly Duckling’s ‘Samba’ (”yoo rook marvellous”), The Streets ‘Too Much Brandy’ (”yes you’re paranoid!”) but if others spring to mind then do write in…

I have a stupidly early flight tomorrow morning…

I have a stupidly early flight tomorrow morning…

to delightful Amsterdam - one of my favourite things about the place possibly being it’s relative proximity to where I am now. An hour in the sky and you’re back on the ground, wham bam. My attitude to flying veers haphazardly from excitement to trepidation and even on these ultra-short haul flights I find I can never really relax fully. I made this exact same trip on the exact same date two years ago and that was the first time I’d flown anywhere in eight years, so everything about the experience felt new once more. How did I forget so much? Of course back then there was a little more tension in the air, and however irrational it would seem then and now I will probably always have it. I recognise that the ’solution’ may be to fly more often, near and far, to get more used to the experience. This year alone I’ve actually doubled the number of flights I’ve taken in my life from the previous total, which is pathetic really considering that total is now a measly twelve. I want to love it so that I can start seriously entertaining ideas of travelling halfway round the world and back before I’m too old, and the prices get jacked up again. But for now, another chance to visit the Tuschinskitheater and purchase smoked eel from Schipol duty-free will do…

The Fall And Rise Of Fiorentina

The Fall And Rise Of Fiorentina

As related here, an extraordinary sequence of events has ensured that Fiorentina will play in Serie A only two years after being stripped of the rights to their old badge and team colours and relegated to Serie C2 after financial irregularities and crippling debts.

I had no idea how severe Fiorentina’s descent had been until I read this article. What I find most interesting is how it highlights what seems to be a farcical method of managing not just a football club but an entire national league - at least the lower echelons. By rights we should be expecting a movie, for this story has everything; power, corruption, lies, honour, humour and family ties (to paraphrase; ‘(Gori) briefly handed control (of the club) to his 82-year-old mother Valeria). I’d watch it. And perhaps I’ll try and watch a bit more Serie A this season too.

‘Greatest’ ‘Greatest Chatshow Moments’ ‘Moments’

‘Greatest’ ‘Greatest Chatshow Moments’ ‘Moments’

1) The camera was on the presenter from the start but took about a minute to inch slowly forward enough so we could actually see her face properly, revealing it to be…

2) Quasi-famous star-adultering Rebecca Loos. Perhaps we get what we deserve for watching this tripe but really, what on earth is this woman doing on TV at all let alone presenting a show. I expect these kind of cynical nudge-wink tactics from Channel 4 but not the fine broadcasting network and upholder of all that is pure and wealthy in televisual spirit that is Five. Anyway, of course, she was bad. REALLY bad. But this was to be expected by everyone so it’s OK right? No.

3) Loos introducing her own appearance on the interview she gave to some woman on…Five during the time of the star-adultering. A bit like looking at a mirror opposite another mirror. Except not fun.

4) Gyles Brandreth and Brian Sewell lowering themselves, if that were possible, by joining in the pundit fun. I was relatively impressed by the range of pundits though (Serge Gainsbourg’s biographer!)

5) Okay there were actually some great clips in amongst the ones we’ve seen a gazillion times already (hello Bill Grundy, Shabba Ranks, Myleene Klass) - nice to see Paul Morley looking like the World’s Worst Dressed Man on the ‘guy who would later become the World’s Worst Dressed Man’s show all those years ago (One Hour With Jonathan Ross), David Icke not saying ‘Goodbye Ruby Tuesday…’ and best of all Peter Cook’s fabulous turns on the Clive Anderson show back in the mid 90s. Just about worth all the other dreadful gubbins.

6) David Schneider confusing Knowing Me Knowing You With Alan Parridge with something that was actually real.

7) Not being able to figure out what was going to be number one…

8) Remembering this was a ‘public vote’ and that the nation has the collective memory of a lobotomised goldfish…so Hello Tara Palmer-Tomkinson. Again.

9) Feeling as if I’d been caught masturbating by my own mother when the credits rolled, such was the shame. Would’ve been better off watching Laid Bare on Bravo or something…for the first time, you understand…

10) No really, this is horrible. Rebecca Loos! She could show Richard Blackwood a thing or two with an autocue but this felt too much like Five punching you in the face then holding up a mirror singing that new Alcazar song in a horrendously off-key falsetto. Stop the planet of the instant nostalgia-obssessed list fetishists, even I want to get off now… Oh but wait, it’s Greatest Soap Moments tonight with Mike Reid. Maybe just one more then…

Catch them on the Flipside

Catch them on the Flipside

Innovative, audacious, useful…unimaginative, cowardly, lazy…You could apply any or all of these adjectives to Channel 4’s new late night show Flipside, that consists of a bunch of K-listers (MTV dudes), pwned props (Victor Big Brother) and meeja pundits (Heat’s Boyd Hilton) watching different TV channels on digital TV and commenting on them. My first instinct: you’ve gotta be kidding me. The logic behind it is highly apparent though: Let them watch other channels, but whilst still watching our channel. Genius. No. Bloody cheeky. Channel 4.

Funnily enough I had an idea similar to this a while back when people still cared about what should replace RI:SE. If C4 are exposing loopholes regarding broadcasting copyright then hats off, because I can’t imagine other channels are that happy about this. The sweetener is perhaps that they tend to only look at things like UK Gold+1 (so it’s not ‘live’ as it were), Babestation, E! and those terrible channels that get bundled with your Sky box that you never watch. Of course now that I know the latest incarnation of Japanese ‘punishment wins prizes’ show Endurance can be found somewhere in there, I don’t have to watch late night Channel 4 ever again - yay!

ResFest

ResFest looms once again - along with OneDotZero this is a key event in the medium of artistic digital film, primarily showcasing cutting edge film-making, animation and effects. Needless to say I will be there at the NFT when it happens, glued to my seat drooling over Shynola’s gorgeous work and similar.

Res the magazine provides a DVD every issue featuring short films, music videos, tracks and whatever extras they can muster. On the latest disc I was surprised to find a new video for Michael Andrews ft Gary Jules ‘Mad World’ directed by one Mr M Gondry…
Even before it starts you know it’s going to better than the terrible (tho perhaps appropriate) video that accompanied the song’s release last Christmas…and yes it is.

Why have Universal chosen to commission a new video for this song? Perhaps the popularity of the track lingers in some quarters of the world previously unexposed to the dreariest Christmas number one ever? And why choose Gondry? I can only assume they share the view that the original video was dire and it would be nice to have something a bit more stylish to go with one of the best selling songs of the decade so far (at least in the UK).

We are in a city, on a building roof. By we I mean the camera, looking down onto the street where a collection of children are starting to form shapes. They form a face…it’s all a bit British Airways isn’t it? Reminiscent of his classic clip for Massive Attack’s ‘Protection’ too. The kids assume other forms together, a car, a dove, a dog with disturbingly thin legs…occasionally the camera (us) pans slowly (in Gondry’s typical haunting ‘uncertain/mesmerised’ style) to the left where we see Mr Jules himself, still wearing that darned flat cap, looking down on the kids just as we are. Cars trundle by on the road, the skies are a cool grey with a low yellowish hue in the distance - hard to tell if it’s morning or evening. It looks cold but it probably isn’t. Eventually the camera shifts right and around and we see Mr Andrews (presumably) at the piano, his back turned to us, with the Empire State Building perfectly poised and majestic as ever in the distance. Ah…

A chaste affair but ordinary by his standards perhaps. Still what’s admirable here is the obedience in applying an organic theme to an organically rendered song - the use of people, rather than computer effects, to pull off the usual Gondry hallmarks of transformation, mirrors without smoke, the clockwork behind the clockwork, or just a really neat idea so simple anyone could conceive it, especially for something as supposedly trivial and throwaway as a music video. But still nobody conceives of it quite like Gondry does. It doesn’t quite save a poor cover from poverty but it does provide it with a much more comfortable bed to sleep in.

Metropolimbo

Metropolimbo

Perhaps the biggest disadvantage with growing up in a surburban satellite such as the towns within the Zone 5/6 boundary is that while you feel comfort in being able to experience both urban thrills and rural bliss quicker than most, you can unfortunately end up knowing not as much about either as may be desired. Metroland et al = limbo. The people there don’t tend to grow up yearning to escape to the big city, because the big city is only 45 minutes away on the Tube anyway. Likewise there’s no craving for the idealised simplicity of country life, because once you’re into Zone 5 the woodland/office block ratio really starts to tip towards the former’s favour. Growing up with cattle-filled farmland AND multiple Tube routes within equal reach I always felt re-assured by having these ‘options’ - nurturing - if not a key influence in - my blatant general dilletantism in life.

Only, now I live in Zone 3, with an urge to get even closer to the centre, and I find myself constantly struggling when it comes to knowing and recommending places to go and things to do. It’s a complacency perhaps not recognised by the abundance of people I know who live in Zone 3 but originally hail from other places in the UK, more often than not THE NORTH. Because of course when people move to London after college or whatever, they’re not going to take it for granted, they’re going to want to live reasonably close to some ‘action’ and seek out the places to go and the things to do in them. This could mean anything from just knowing a little place on a side street that does great tapas, to having been to all the big clubs at least once out of curiosity AND convenience. Anglophiles from overseas who’ve settled in the centre only in the last few years or visit London several times a year can also have this edge over a suburbanite like myself, who bitches about the place all too often thinking they know it so well.

So lately, because I have been living in an area that was previously alien to me (Harringay), and working in an area that previously felt so hostile or just plain indifferent (Old Street/Hoxton), having got to know them a bit more in that time, I realise more and more how little I did and still do know - and I almost envy the people who did feel the compulsion to escape their hometowns to come here, to experience London fully and freshly as an adult. Then again, the wide-eyed fascination I felt for the city as a child what with being able to encounter it relatively easily still counts for an awful lot. Perhaps people growing up in the outskirts of NY’s outer boroughs, or the edge of any large thiriving city feel or have felt these things too. All of which makes me personally feel that there is a little catching up to do, and what better time than now?

Long

Long

Dark

Tunnel

(Confessions Of A Metropolitan Claustrophobe part 1)

Living and travelling around and through London is easy on the Tube, despite all it’s flaws. But take it away and the nightmarish urban journey takes on a new dimension. Around six years ago now I decided I really couldn’t face travelling underground anymore - more for fear of irrational panic attacks and subsequent humiliation rather than a feeling I was actually in genuine danger. Quite what brought this on other than an over-active imagination I’m not sure. Delays between stations were always tense. Perhaps some see no difference whether it’s underground or overground - the simple fact that you are unable to womble free is an inconvenience irrespective of where and on what level it takes place. But something about the tunnels got to me in the end. Where once I adored passing through them, taking regular carefree trips around the city exploring everywhere and anywhere, somehow despite having grown up and having learned how to apply rational thought to situations far better than I had been able to as a child and adolescent, a fear took hold - merely the fear of being trapped, unable to move, unable to escape - and never knowing exactly when you would be able to again… (actual answer: couple of minutes, nine times out of a hundred).

Ridiculous? Of course. Irrational phobias tend to be ridiculous by default, though they can be quite reasonable at the same time. It might make more sense if some traumatising incident had happened to me on the Tube in the past, but thankfully no. I was not on that late night Northern Line service that ended up hurtling backwards past three stations one night because the driver fell asleep on his Dead Man’s Handle. Nor was I on the Victoria Line morning service when one train broke down at Highbury & Islington causing the two just behind it to stop in their tracks for the best part of an hour. Weirdly however, I’ve recently used the subterranean Metro in Bilbao and the subways in New York and Chicago and I enjoyed them. You can feel a strange sense of indomitability far from home though, as if nothing can really hurt or flummox you, because half the time you don’t feel like you are really there.

Friends remain confused and bemused. But absteining had some advantages. I saved money and I got to see parts of London I had not before via the bus or the invaluable Metrolink. Confidence was gained in having a better grasp of bearings and alternative travel routes around town. Moving closer to the centre of the city also helped. Prior to that I had travelled underground maybe just six times in as many years, the most recent time confirming my fears somewhat - our Northern Line tube screeching to a half abruptly just before Warren Street, the engines going eerily quiet (the darkness through the windows, the silence - broken only by the occasional sighing and tutting from passengers, or the giggling from my American friends as I nervously played with my phone, all very unsettling). Of course about three minutes later we were on the move again, and I had not freaked out. Yet the reluctance persists. It’s habit now. Often I find myself hovering around the station entrances just wondering what the hell my problem is. Sometimes that torrent of warm air rises up from the escalators, followed by the throngs of addled gasping passengers. At that point I hop on the bus…

What to do? Hypnosis? Perhaps take part in those organised emergency drills LU invite the public to participate in as volunteers? Or stay as I am, confident at least that I’ll get from Angel to Brixton eventually… only not as a sardine. I do miss it though, the art works at Gloucester Road, never experiencing the sci-fi sophistication of the Jubilee Line extension first hand, the extraordinary way the passage from White City to Shepherds Bush seems to take three times longer than it should do given the distance on foot…In the meantime, submit your own tube-related horror anecdotes in the comments box if you wish. I’m off now to prepare another blog post, this time concerning what I have come to term as BUS RAGE…