Author: Rob

Writer. Film-maker. Cartoonist. Cook. Lover.

Opportunities

Much as I admire and base my actions on Master Lao Tzu, there’s only so much banging on about life in a Taoist stylee you can do before you start to repeat yourself. I’ve decided to open up my Sunday thread, which will henceforth be retitled The Sunday Spiritual, to other voices, opinions and philosophies. Possibly even some I don’t agree with, so that you can have the edifying experience of watching Yours Truly arguing with himself.

Meanwhile, the last couple of weekends have been spent with the extended family, celebrating birthdays and generally enjoying the rare occasion of everyone getting together. Both sides of our clan are equidistant, meaning that visits are bookended with two-hour car rides. Another reason, I guess, for the rarity of family reunions. There are only so many Saturday mornings that you can spend on motorways.

The meet-ups have had a couple of unexpected benefits. I have an evil plan that may turn into an biography, and another that is likely to lead to a regular blogging gig separate from X&HT. Neither of which I can really talk about yet.

Meanwhile, I and another group of friends that don’t get together often enough will be meeting tomorrow, following which there may be more news. And it looks as if another piece written a while back will be making an appearance in print very soon. But again, I can’t really talk about these yet either.

In other words, although I’m bubbling over with excitement about events in the latter half of the year, I can’t do more than hint and tease. Which makes this whole post a bit redundant, really.

Oh well. Dance me off, Mulder and Scully…

They're doing the twist to the theme from "The Munsters", you know.

The Saturday Foto: Window

We spent a highly agreeable day in Oxford yesterday, and took full advantage of TLC’s ability to get us into the colleges for free. I can recommend a wander through the grounds of Magdalen or Balliol. You get a feel for why the city is called The Dreaming Spires.

The pic below is of the window at the chapel of Balliol College. It had me quite mesmerised.

Up until the point where I was lured away with the promise of a pint, anyway.

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Those In Peril

I live on an island nation, a tiny scrap of land off the western coast of Europe. My life is comfortable, secure. I don’t think twice about where my morning coffee comes from, or the sugar I use to sweeten it. I don’t think about the petrol that drives the train that gets me to work in the morning. I simply assume that they will always be there.

But, as I’ve just said, I live on an island. And a lot of the goods and materials I depend on to get me through my day have to be imported. And as I live on an island, it makes sense for those goods to come in by sea.

In fact, 90% of all our imports come in via Britain’s ports. What, then, would happen if the ships and all the people on them suddenly … disappeared?

This powerful dystopian vision of a country rapidly starving to death comes from my good friend and long-time X&HTeam-mate Clive Ashenden. He’s no Leading Man here (although if you look carefully you’ll spot his cameo – just remember he has a thing for police uniforms). He wrote and directed this one. He’s done a great job.

The Vanished was made to help publicise Seafarers Awareness Week. Seafarers UK is the leading charity for the maritime community, and this event is designed to help raise awareness of everyone who earns their living from the sea. It’s a chance for us to learn more about their everyday challenges and risks, their welfare needs, and the vital work they do to keep this country going. They help members of the Royal Navy, Merchant Navy and fishing fleets and their families in times of trouble.

Seafarers Awareness Week is on from 6-12 June, and it’s worth your time to check out the events and donate to a very worthy cause.

We are a seafaring nation. Our strength, influence, and wealth has always been based on the sea. I think it’s worth remembering that for week in every year, and take the time to celebrate our maritime heritage, and those who risk their lives every day to keep us fed, warm and content.

The Minor Fall, The Major Lift: 5 Soundtracks That Transcend Their Movies

These are good times for film soundtracks. Reputable dance acts are now willing to work with a director and come up with music that complements and adds to the visuals, rather than simply licensing a couple of songs to play over the end credits. Instead of a duff compilation or an orchestral suite, soundtrack albums are becoming sharp experimental works with a proper narrative flow.

The big beat boys of the nineties make music that has always had a cinematic edge, and the addition of an orchestral edge to the bounce really opens out the sound. Basement Jaxx’s work on Attack The Block adds theremin to the mix, accentuating the sci-fi. The Chemical Brothers created a jagged, jittery soundscape for Hanna that seems to have influenced Joe Wright’s cutting style.

Then of course, there’s the epic score to Tron: Legacy, which has frankly raised the bar for electronic soundtrack work. The scale and sweep of Daft Punk’s work made the album one of my favourites of last year.

A decent soundtrack album can be a sheer joy, mixing great songs with massive instrumentals and moments of mood and drama. Some don’t work at album length. I’m thinking specifically of John Carpenter’s Assault On Precinct 13, which is simply the same cues played over and over again at different track lengths. Or, sadly, Clint Mansell’s music to Moon, which I love to bits, but is stretched uncomfortably thinly over 75 minutes. The final ten-minute piece Welcome To Lunar Industries (Three Years) gives you everything you need. Tellingly, it’s the one track not available on Spotify.

There are certain soundtrack albums that have managed to find an identity above and beyond their origins, becoming works of art in their own right. Here are my top five. I’m sure there are more. I’m sure you’ll let me know.

Continue reading The Minor Fall, The Major Lift: 5 Soundtracks That Transcend Their Movies

DC: Dunces and Conmen?

Every time I think the comics industry can’t get any stupider, something happens to make me wonder how I got so complacent.

No, hang on, let me qualify that. Every time I think the American superhero-based comics industry can’t get any stupider, something like, well, this happens. DC are cancelling and rehashing 52 of their titles, starting them all back at no.1 with simplified back stories and in some cases changes to the origins.

Retcons. The curse of the American superhero-based comics industry. Ever since DC killed Superman, brought him back in a new costume before slowly reverting him back to the old blue-and-red romper suit, this nonsense happens on an annual basis. The claim is always that creators want to do something fresh and new with the old franchises. Rubbish. It’s all about squeezing a few more cents out of them. The new editions are scheduled to take place over the traditionally quiet sales period of September. No. 1’s of any title always sell, and all of a sudden DC are flooding the market with 52 of the buggers at once.

The argument brought forward by DC head Dan DiDio is that it’s a chance to make the books relavent for a 21st century audience who have little investment in the stories of the past. Which is, in it’s way, fair comment. Fifty years of character development and story cruft can leave any title in a funk, unable to properly innovate or tell tales in a fresh way.

But, as comics blogger and funny-book shop owner Mike Sterling points out, a jumping-on point can also be a jumping off point. The end of a story gives the bored reader who just wanted to see how things turn out the excuse not to bother with next month’s issue. Especially if it’s not the character he or she enjoyed reading about.

I’ve long been bored with the American superhero-based comics industry’s obsession with huge, multi-book events and gimmicky promotions, to the detriment of decent characterisation and storytelling. If this event doesn’t work, it could signal a reboot for DC as a whole, becoming a placeholder for superhero franchises, a brand name for movies, TV shows and lunchboxes. Which can only be bad news for fans and retailers again. Mike Sterling again:

“While I’m curious as a fan about what DC is doing, as a retailer I’m a little worried. Not just about the jumping-off point thing I noted already, but also about how I’m going to explain this to the customers who are going to be caught completely by surprise by DC’s plans. I know it sounds strange, since all of you reading this are plugged into the Web Matrix-style via interface ports at the bases of your skulls, but I have regular customers for whom their exposure to comics news comes from walking into the store and looking at the rack to see what’s new. I can hear them already: “Hey, why is Superman at issue #1 again? And Batman? …And, hey, Legion of Super-Heroes? Again? What’s going on?” Which is fine…that’s part of my job, to explain what new dumb thing a comic publisher has done to confuse and frighten its readership this week.

But as a pal of mine noted to me in email, if this particular publishing initiative falls flat on its face, where does DC go from there? This is an awfully drastic and wide-ranging strategy that won’t be easy to reverse without some consequences. And not just of the “fans and Marvel Comics laughing at DC’s failure” kind, but having highers-up at Warner Brothers looking at the crash-and-burn and thinking “that didn’t work, so why are we bothering with these pamphlet-thingies? Let’s just do cartoons and movies with these characters, and make some real money on them.”

Yes, quite. Although I’m no fan of capes and masks any more, and will gleefully and at length point out how comics are so much more, I don’t want to see a huge part of the industry collapse into rubble. I can see DC’s core readership shrink rapidly as no-one wants to read crappy new interpretations of perfectly good characters, with no new fanbase to take over. I could be wrong. I really hope I am. But confusing and alienating your customers is no way to run a business.

However, there’s no reason you can’t have a little fun with the idea…

Oh, and if you want to know how to elegantly tell an origin story without letting it taking over an issue, Grant Morrison’s four panel recap that started off his masterly All-Star Superman is the way to go. Perfect comics work.

Four panels. Eight Words. Seventy Years Of Back-story.

*One last thing. The heads up/impetus/desperate steal of an idea at the end of a dry creative day for this one came from long time X&HTeam-mate, Rob May. His new geek-friendly website Cake And Lies is very much worth your time. And as he says here, there are prizes to be won.  

Pride

You won’t often get a football post out of me. I can think of only a couple in my entire blogging career, both of which were snarks at the so-called beautiful game.

Why, then, am I so saddened to hear that Reading had lost to Swansea in the playoffs for a place in next year’s Premiership? Considering the fact that I’ve never been to a match, even though the bus to the Madjeski Stadium runs from the bottom of our road. Even though I’d struggle to name more than a couple of our first team players.

I think it’s got a lot to do with the events of the past few years. Under the visionary Steve Coppell, Reading made their way into the Premiership in 2007 for the first time in their history. After a giddy couple of seasons in the top flight, they crashed out unceremoniously and faced tough times. Coppell left, to be replaced briefly by Swansea manager Brendon Rodgers, under whom the Royals couldn’t couldn’t seem to win a game. The first team was strip-mined of talent by Premiership clubs, and left in the hands of caretaker manager Brian McDermott. Saddled with a first team of untried youngsters, and a season that started with the team hovering a point or so off the bottom of the Championship, the glory days seemed like a very distant memory.

But this year, Reading seem to have hit their stride. Unbeaten in eleven games, striker Shane Long up for player of the year. McDermott’s quietly inspiring managership and a playing style that could best be described as “no surrender” (several games this season have been won in extra time), meant that the Royals suddenly looked like they had a good chance of getting back in the major leagues.

Yesterday’s 4-2 result was especially heartbreaking, then. Reading were 3-0 down at half-time, thanks to a penalty and a lucky deflection that seemed to knock all the fight out of the boys. It’s absolutely typical of them that they came out in the second half and fought back hard. It looked as if they could pull off a miracle, but luck and the run of the ball were simply against them. Jem Karacan’s strike smacked off the post, and a late penalty rang the final bell on Reading’s chances. It seems ironic that Rodger’s Swansea is the team to go up. Like Reading, they were suffering only a couple of seasons ago. The Royals’ loss would seem to be the Swan’s gain.

I don’t think any Reading fan can be anything but proud of their team today, though. They showed the spirit and determination that have turned them into a deeply respected team in the Championship, and the team to watch next season. The town and it’s community are behind them, and they are a true unifying force in Reading. It’s been a rollercoaster year for the Royals. Who knows what could happen in 2012?

Lyrics That Make You Want To Listen To Instrumentals

I’ve been listening to The Icicle Works again lately – Ian McNab’s epic bombast suits my mood, especially here under the grey dome of a typical late spring bank holiday.

Their breakout single “Love Is A Wonderful Colour” is wonderful, widescreen bellow-along stuff, but the opening line almost knocks you out of the spell the band are trying to create.

“My friend and I were talking one evening, beside some burning wood…”

That, I guess, would be a bonfire. I’d listened to the song for years, but only recently glommed on to how clumsy that opening line is. Now, of course, it’s all I can hear. Great.

This fumbled attempt at mystery and atmosphere, while at the same time trying to keep the metre and rhyme of the song in check can lead to some unexpectedly hilarious or outright bizarre lyrical choices. Take, for example, one of my favourites, Thin Lizzy’s “Jailbreak”. Phil Lynott asserts:

“Tonight there’s going to be a jailbreak, somewhere in this town…”

I’d start with the jail.

Comedian Russell Howard pointed this one out, and I have to hold back from yelling “try the jail!” whenever I hear the song. The song also contains a prime example of Lynott’s way with the ladies:

“Searchlight on my trail
Tonight’s the night all systems fail
Hey you, good lookin’ female
Come here!”

You can’t resist, can you? This is the man who allegedly coined the come-on line “Got any Irish in you? Would you like some?” You have to at least admire the swagger and testosterone in the couplet above, and the wink in it is almost visible.

Sometimes, all you need is one syllable to make a line scan, and the temptation is to jam one in and damn the consequences. That’s all that I can think was going through Paul McCartney’s mind when he wrote the opening verse of “Live And Let Die”. It starts off with a philosophical flourish:

“When you were young, and your heart was an open book, you used to say live and let live…”

All good so far. But then we get a sentence that doesn’t seem to know when to finish.

“But in this everchanging world in which we live in…”

CLANG. Brakes on. A binful of prepositions, and all of a sudden Sir Paul is tripping over his own feet. Makes me give in and cry.

Readership, you all know of my love and admiration for R.E.M. but even the saintly Michael Stipe gets it wrong every so often. Famously, the band’s first album Murmur was titled after Michael’s less than clear vocal delivery. Sometimes, it might be better if he mumbled a bit more. The lovely Leaving New York contains the line

“…leaving was never my proud…”

which I would dearly love someone to explain to me. It doesn’t even rhyme properly with the next line of the chorus. In a song that has a strong personal meaning for TLC and I, that line sticks out like a gangrenous thumb.

Of course, the king of rotten lyrics is Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran. He seems to be quite happy to sling together any old word salad as long as it matches the tune. My personal favourite is from “Wild Boys”, where our Simon loses the plot and the ability to string a sentence together all at once:

“You got sirens for a welcome
There’s bloodstain for your pain
And your telephone been ringing while
You’re dancing in the rain
Wild boys wonder where is glory
Where is all you angels
Now the figureheads have fell
And lovers war with arrows over secrets they could tell…”

There’s plenty more where that came from. Although I’d disagree with the school of thought that claims the line “You’re about as easy as a nuclear war” is one of the worst ever. It has the right level of over-the-top silliness that suits the Dran in their heyday.

We could go on and on, but I don’t want to turn this into a simple “crap lyrics” post. It’s the lines that almost work that are the most fun. Besides which quoting out of context does every songwriter here a disservice. There is one that always makes me smile, though, and I want to conclude with Sade. I am happy to say she taught me something about American geography when she sang:

“Coast to coast, LA to Chicago…”

The Windy City is, as any fule with access to Google Maps no, 800 miles inland. I guess “LA to New Jersey” didn’t have the glamourous cosmopolitan ring Sade was after.

The Sunday Buddha: Storm

(The most appropriate quote I could find from Master Lao this week was used a couple of weeks ago. So, for one week only, please welcome our guest speaker, the Buddha.)

“What is the appropriate behavior for a man or a woman in the midst of this world, where each person is clinging to his piece of debris? What’s the proper salutation between people as they pass each other in this flood?”

For the third year in a row, there have been redundancies at the company for which I work. This time around, I was not in the frame. People that I have worked with for many years were not so lucky.

Losing a long-held job can be a lot like losing a loved one, and will leave you subject to the same feelings of helpless loss. No matter how much you rationalise it as a chance to start again, to try something new, the kick in the gut when you’re told there’s not a place for you is a terrible blow.

We’re all subject to the cruel vagaries of fate, and to forces that are very much above and beyond our control. It can feel as if we are buffeted by a storm, clinging to any piece of flotsam we can find to keep our heads above water. It doesn’t have to be like that, and the simple recognition that we are all drifting together can, I hope, bring some measure of comfort. If we treat each other as equals under the storm, then there is the possibility of everyone finding their way to higher ground together.

The End Of Recorded Music: Bill Drummond And The17

Let’s begin with a few words from artist musician and cultural rabble-rouser Bill Drummond.

Drummond has always been about flipping the switch on baked-in ideas about art and music, but this is something else. Performance for the sake of performance, completely dissolving the boundaries between musician and audience, to the point where they become one and the same entity.

In his explanation of the concept found here Bill mentions influences as disparate as Yoko Ono and Steve Reich. I’d add the experiments David Byrne carried out in Brooklyn, turning an old warehouse into a musical instrument. I’m also thinking about Jem Finer’s Longplayer, a software instrument designed to play by itself for a thousand years without ever repeating. Or his Score For A Hole In The Ground, a tuned series of metal bowls that play a random melody when water is dripped onto them from above, hidden in a forest in Kent.

I find conceptual music deeply fascinating and satisfying, and the idea of a piece of music mutating and evolving beyond the reach of it’s composer is an amazing idea. The17 aren’t quite there yet – they are still organised by Drummond, and sing libretti that he has written. But this will change, I’m certain. And Drummond has stated his intention to set it free on his 60th birthday in 2013.

There is something so freeing and fresh in these ideas. I find it more and more difficult to connect with modern chart music, which has become shamelessly blatant in the way it cribs older songs, or have the sound and lyrical content of skipping rhymes. Yes, yes, I know, old git thinks music ain’t worrit used to be. Which is a rubbish argument, because there’s a lot of great new music out there. And let’s not lose the image of me bouncing up and down on the sofa cackling at Eurovision a couple of weeks back. I’m still not convinced about Drummond’s argument that all music has been heard to death, either. But a radical stance is the first move towards new way of thinking, and Bill has always been an innovator.

You could argue that performance by and for a small group is as ancient as gatherings around campfires. But then sometimes we need to see where we’ve been to understand where we’re going. I love the Spotify model of complete access to a vast range of music. I love discovering new and old music alike. (an example: this absolutely gorgeous version of Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne by… well, you’ll be surprised. Pleasantly.) The17 ties into that process of discovery and distills it down to a very pure, clear extract. A perfect circle, welcoming and enclosed all at once. Music for the initiated, performed in an open church.

The next The17 performance will be in Portugal on June 17th. For more details, or if you’re interested in participating, check the website.

On a slight deviation, Bill Drummond is the unheard voice in our conversations about the M25 Spin, following chats with Gimpo and Iain Sinclair. Dom is in contact with him, and it’s a dear wish of mine to be able to chat to Bill about the Spin, The17 and his other projects. We remain hopeful, and will update you as news becomes available.