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musicandchips
Thoughts from 30-Something London
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Tuesday, July 05, 2005 :::
Read this
One of the best articles I've seen yet on the own-goal the Make Poverty History campaign is about to score by focusing on the surface issues of increasing govenment aid and debt releief whilst ignoring the mechanics of how these issues may be delivered by the G8 nations.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1521411,00.html
::: posted by Andy at 7/05/2005 11:46:00 AM
Monday, July 04, 2005 :::
Live 8
Short review of Live 8 London:
Really Bad: Maria Carey, Paul McCartney, Pete Doherty, Coldplay (except with Ashcroft, which was Ok). Average: Elton, Travis, Razorlight, Joss Stone, Ms Dynamite. Good: U2, Velvet Revolver, REM, Snoop. Really Good: Keane, Madonna, Robbie, The Who, UB40. Unbelievable: Floyd.
Good: having bars. Bad: not being able to take drinks into the gig.
Great: getting a pass for VIP hospitality (free bar, free food).
Dangerous: Realising that vodka in a water-bottle wouldn't get confiscated!!
Currently lovin' the Kaiser Chiefs, Mylo and Chalets.
::: posted by Andy at 7/04/2005 05:10:00 PM
Wednesday, April 13, 2005 :::
I like This....
"When a candidate faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a
mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are
incapable of weighing ideas - men whose whole thinking is done in terms of
emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand.
The odds are on the man who is the most devious and the most mediocre; the
man who can most aptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual
vacuum. As democracy is perfected, the presidency represents, more and
more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal.
On some glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's
desire at last, and the White House will be adorned a downright moron."
H.L.Mencken, writing in 1920 (Extract from "The Week")
I also like this...
"I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different."
Kurt Vonnegut
Will start posting again soon now that I have a palm pilot (oh yes), promise to self.
::: posted by Andy at 4/13/2005 11:14:00 AM
Wednesday, October 27, 2004 :::
An Inspiration Passes
John Peel OBE, RIP
30 Aug 1939 - 25 Oct 2004
"Teenage Dreams, so hard to beat..."
What on Earth are we going to listen to now?
...........
::: posted by Andy at 10/27/2004 05:11:00 PM
Friday, July 16, 2004 :::
Wow!
Usual excuses, really busy, no computer at home, internet cafes rip my soul out through my toe cuticles, blag blah blah.
How good does Blogger look since I last posted? Lovely. Profiles and everything!! Can't get my pic on there though, the only places I have with portraits have ridiculously long URLs. What's with a 68-char minimum? Must be some reason I guess.
So much has been happening recenlty, both personally and in the world at large, that I really don't know where to start (bearing in mind I've got 10 mins before I have to crack on with work again). So I guess the number one most exciting thing that's happened recently was Wednesday evening. I went with a couple of friends to see Bill Drummond launch his new website, and at the end he was signing posters, for sale as limited edition souvenirs. Numbering them he was. And I managed to land Limited Edition signed poster #23!! How excited was I? Shaking I was, shaking! I'm waiting on pay-day to get it framed along with the ticket from the evening to validate it, but number 23!! From Bill Drummond!! Keith Allen got #1, but that just goes to show how much he knows, the freeloader.
God I've become a sad git. First Kareoke, now spoddy signatures. What next? It'll all end in mullets I'm sure.
If you want more information on why 23 is special, read The Illuminatus Trilogy. In fact read it anyway, it's brilliant and has subtly informed popular culture for a quarter of a century.
Oh, and keep your ears open for Willy DeVille's new album, Crow Jane Alley. It should be out around September / October, and is fantastic.
Right, I need a gasper and to get back to work!
::: posted by Andy at 7/16/2004 12:48:00 PM
Monday, May 24, 2004 :::
Lunch-break blog
I saw Suw of chocnvodka fame over the weekend at a Ska-B-Q at my place; she's doing great in the blogosphere at the moment, and she reminded me how long it's been since I last posted, and how much I miss it. Work is crazy busy and I still don't have an adequate home computer, so postings will continue to be sporadic at best for the moment, but I've got to keep my toe in, however minimally.
Loads of politics that could be autopsied at the moment, but there's more than enough comment going on elsewhere, and I don't have the time to indulge in a major rant, so instead I will make a difficult confession of my own. On Friday night I committed a crime so heinous that I shake just relaying it. I still can't believe I did it; I mean I was thoroughly and comprehensively drunk at the time, and my judgement considerably impaired by sustained sleep deprivation over the last few weeks, but even so... I mean there are some crimes that are just unforgivable whatever the situation, for which no mitigating circumstances apply, and for those guilty of their perpetration the harshest of penalties should be mercilessly enforced. And I, in a moment of extreme weekness, enacted the greatest of these:
Kareoke.
I sang kareoke at the local pub.
Me.
I wasn't even physically coerced or threatened with violence.
I did 'Come Fly With Me'.
People clapped.
I'm so ashamed.
I mean, I've spent my entire life ranting and raving about the criminal nature of the passtime; inflicting bad songs 'sung' badly on unsuspecting and generally completely innocent people just out for an evening down the pub with their friends or family. Why do it? Sing along to the jukebox yes, by all means, but to actually have your drinken strangled-caterwaulings amplified and screached into all corners of the establishment; what kind of heartless sadist would even contemplate such an act of sheer aural violence? And yet there I was, merrily tooting my flute for all to suffer. Perhaps it's time to re-evaluate my relationship with sambucca.
Having said that I went some way to atoning for my sins by hosting one of the best Ska-B-Q's and parties we've ever thrown on Saturday, and helped a friend move house on Sunday. So perhaps I'm not all bad. Also I've just thought of a worse crime than Kareoke; that Scissor Sisters cover of Pink Floyd's 'Comfortably Numb', a truly unforgivable act of musical terrorism from which I will never ever recover. Yup, I'm Ok really.
Loads of great sound-tracks at the minute, from the obvious (new Streets, Ash and Keane albums) to the not-so (12 Rods' 2002 album demos and the new Alan Parsons album), but mostly I have been listening to the ambient electronica mix CD my flatmate and liggerswithattitude partner did whilst under the spell of 'inspiration cigarettes' in about 1994. I'd disseminate copies, but that's in breach of copyright law and illegal, and threatens the very fabric of our society. Or something.
::: posted by Andy at 5/24/2004 12:09:00 PM
Thursday, April 01, 2004 :::
A brief "Hello"!
Blimey, just read my last post. I was tired, bored and overly cynical that day!
As you will have gathered by my lack of postings this year, it was the holiday and not the computer that won out. 4 days 5-star in Madeira, cost a fortune, a gratuitous outporing of cash, but f*ck it, I needed it badly, and I did get to start my new job when I got back.
Loving work, loads more responsibility, loads more artists, great roster, great co-workers, better money, much better prospects, learning tons every day, and alot of fun to boot. I am however unimaginably busy, hence lack of posting (everyone's gone home and the phone has stopped for a minute, thus allowing this quick one). I'm hoping to start saving for a computer once I've cleared a few debts off so that I can post from home before bed, as I do miss it; it's my only real creative outlet, and as I've said before it's more for my benefit than because I think anyone actually reads it!
Finally before I get back to work (email is bing-bong-ing away merrily as I type), if you only ever take one thing from this blog, let it be this...
Buy the entire Sophia back-catalogue, starting with 'People Are Like Seasons' (their most recent album, on City Slang / Labels in the UK), and if you get the chance to see them live, just go. Robin Proper-Sheppard, ex-God Machine, you sir are a genius. You sing my life. How do people do that?
Adios for another 3 months (unless anyone has a spare computer they can't find a home for....? ;o) Oh well, if you don't ask!...)
::: posted by Andy at 4/01/2004 06:16:00 PM
Monday, December 29, 2003 :::
Tired, Bored and Overly Cynical
Christmas is drawing to a close, the New Year beckons, and I am exhausted, bored and deaf. I have DJed every night bar Christmas Day itself for about the last month (lost count to be honest), and my phone has been playing up terribly so I've been unable to speak to anyone outside of people asking me for Hip Hop/RnB in the last 5 days. I'm going stir crazy! Hopefully the Carphone Warehouse will have fixed it by the time I'm finished in the internet cafe and I can start ringing up my friends and explaining that I haven't been avoiding their calls! I really must get a landline put in to the house, mobiles are getting less and less reliable. I think it's no coincidence that service went haywire on boxing day, ie the day when all those new christmas-present phones would have been activated. Perhaps I'll get myself a computer at home that actually works, rig up to broadband and get a phone put in while I'm at it. It's that or a holiday in the sun, but I've asked after one of those, and short of a week in Antigua for a sliver under eleven grand there's nothing available. (As an aside, what on earth could possibly justify a holiday cost of almost 2 grand a day and still be legal??)
Christmas day itself was very pleasant; long hot candle-lit bath, lots of rubbish TV and a long early-evening walk. It was a bit of a battle getting permission from the peer-group to spend the day alone, but well worth the ultimate victory. Interestingly, very few of those most vociferously vying to enforce the 11th commandment ('Thou Shalt Not Be Alone At Christmas', it was the First Amendment to the 10 Commandments, AD36) actually called on the day. I guess they weren't as concerned as they professed to be by my solitude. Or perhaps they couldn't be arsed leaving a message on my voicemail. It's an interesting aspect of Christmas, well examined by the marvelous Jim Carey film 'The Grinch Who Stole Christmas'. Everyone has become so brainwashed by the veneer placed over the season by the marketeers, that it is the season of giving presents and being with as many family members / friends as possible (thus maximising the number of required presents per capita), that the guilt of allowing anyone to formulate their own plans overrides the natural urge to allow friends to spend the time in the way that best suits them. Since my father died very close to Christmas it has become a time of quiet reflection for me, and this was the first year I was unable to spend it quietly with my mother and brother. Coupled with the complete exhaustion I was suffering from working every night for 3 weeks or more, a still day by myself was blissful. Why must we feel pressured to get together in big gatherings irrespective of how we feel on the day? Be honest; how many people do you know that would say they had a "perfect" Christmas this year? How many times have you overheard someone saying "You know what, this Christmas was bloody fantastic, it was just what I needed, I had a wonderful time". Very few, if any, I'll bet. No, more likely you'll hear "Oh, it was OK, you know, the usual, family." Well, mine was wonderful.
No post would be complete without at least some angry-young-man politics, and luckily today's is a gloat of the 'Hate to say "I told you so"' variety. Performance figures have just been released for the two companies involved in the part-privatisation of London Underground, and they have excelled themselves, exceeding even my high expectations. Between them they have managed to rack up over 32 million pounds-worth of fines for failing to achieve targets in their first year of operation. In fact, not only did they fail to achieve their targets for improvements on last years' figures (when the company was publicly owned and run), but they have on average achieved around 28% worse scores across the various measurement criteria. This will of course come as no surprise to the millions of us that have had to endure the decline in quality, regularity, reliability and safety of the service, nor to those who have already witnessed the effect PPP has had on the railways, the water and electricity utilities, even the military sector. Hopefully it will however be noticed by those countries to whom our government tries so hard to export the idea of PPP to (with fat contracts for the government's favoured companies attached obviously), and we can slow this ridiculous globalisation movement that threatens to slowly but surely reduce the vast majority of the world to poverty, financially, ecologically and culturally.
As a final note, how sad was it to see the ruins of Bam and it's 2000-year-old citadel earlier this week? What a terrible tragedy, so many lives lost, and so much cultural heritage destroyed. Still, it'll be much harder for the Yanks to justify aggressive action with so much sympathy pouring into the region.
Bring on the new year, I'm getting far too cynical.
Today I've been listening to a great collection of 1920's honky-tonk jazz and jive.
::: posted by Andy at 12/29/2003 04:24:00 PM
Thursday, December 18, 2003 :::
The Best Christmas Present
Big breath.....
I GOT THE JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
How happy am I?
A complete vindication of the last 10 years of my life. Now that's something you don't get every day. I start in January, and absolutely can't wait. Everyone I've met there seems really nice, and crazy-bonkers at the same time. I should fit right in!
Oh, and I saw the international space station the other day. Not sure how that's related, if at all, except perhaps in some vague 'metaphor for the aspirations of man' kind of way, you know the cliche, everything is possible with the right dedication and focus, the future can be bright and shiny, yada yada yada. It was weird, watching this bright star-like point arcing across the sky (it even passed in front of the moon from where I stood) and thinking, "Wow, there are people on that". I sincerely hope to see space in my lifetime.
Too excited to write more today, plus I have to go and mentally prepare myself to DJ another accountants Christmas party tonight. Regular readers will be well aware of the hazardous nature of such an undertaking, but it makes for great blog material the next day! Have a read of my October 1st entry for a sampler...
Today I am listening to an old DJ mix tape I did in 1991. Top tunes, shocking mixing!
::: posted by Andy at 12/18/2003 05:24:00 PM
Monday, December 15, 2003 :::
Lost & Found
Ahh, internet cafe's, those bastions of the modern communication age. Having failed to retain my sanity in the characterless click-clack-cacophany that is EasyNet (basically warehouses with hundreds upon hundreds of broadband-connected machines in neat orange rows), I have found a nice one 10 minutes walk from my place with local art on the walls, music on the stereo, a comfy sofa area for taking breaks and a nice little cafe selling lovely cakes. It's still pricey to spend more than a couple of hours here, but at least it's access!
And the yanks have found Saddam at last. Cue huge quantities of back-slapping and self-aggrandisement, and surprising as it may seem, a big 'Well Done' from yours truly. Even with the huge number of troops and informants searching, and the frankly mind-boggling sums of money being offered for leads, to find one man in a 5 ft square room buried underground in the middle of nowhere is a pretty amazing feat. And the early noises from Washington seem to indicate that he will be processed by whatever court the international community decides has the greatest claim to jurisdiction, a small and welcome step back towards multi-lateralism from the Bush administration.
My only worry is that this sudden burst of good news is being blatantly used to cover up a whole raft of negative issues whilst at the same time re-inforcing the old doctrines. The perceived logic seems to be, "We said we'd find Saddam, we did, and therefore everything else we've said is also beyond question". Little details slipped into broader statements concerning the state of play abound. I heard a classic yesterday, it was from some military adviser to the president, and it went something along the lines of "It's great that we've captured Saddam, the world is now a safer place. Of course we know all about the biological and chemical weapons programmes that were fully functional under his regime, but now under questioning we can find out the true extent of Iraq's pre-war nuclear programme." Note the assumptions here, all highly dubious: i) That Saddam's capture will demoralise rather than inspire the insurrectionists / terrorists; ii) Despite the lack of even the tiniest shred of any supporting evidence (and huge and mounting evidence to the contrary), it is now a given that the coalition claims regarding the extent, combat-readiness and iminent deployment of WMDs were true; iii) Despite evidence that it never in fact existed, the idea that Iraq had a nuclear programme is now a priori true, we just don't know the extent of it. In addition, as media fascination with the capture, interrogation and trial of Saddam intensifies, so the interest in the actual on-the-ground situation in Iraq wanes. Obviously as far as the Bush camp are concerned this is a 'Very Very Good Thing', what with the election 'n' all. And of course Tony gets another chance to grin lots in front of foreign diplomats and dignitaries in that self-satisfied smug manner that he has. I just hope it doesn't slip off the radar entirely, as Afghanistan did the minute Iraq became the new focus. There are large numbers of heroin addicts all across Europe still suffering the aftermath of that action; there are always repercussions. It's great that Saddam is in custody and that the international community wil be able to bring this criminal to justice in the eyes of all, but we must be careful not to think of this as the end of the battle. Indeed, it may well be just the beginning.
On a more personal note, I think good karma is coming my way; I have a job interview tomorrow for the job of my dreams; an A&R position within a company that has a phenomenal roster of catalogue and current artists. Wish me luck!
Today I have been listening to the complete works of Joy Division, and mighty fine they are too!!
Oh, and if you're looking for a good book to while away those quiet Christmas hours when everyone is napping following tremendous over-indulgence in roast turkey, mince pies and mulled wine, you could do far worse than 'The Reality Dysfunction' by Peter F Hamilton. An awesome mix of Star Wars, Aliens, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Exorcist all rolled into one.
::: posted by Andy at 12/15/2003 05:58:00 PM
Thursday, December 04, 2003 :::
R.I.P. musicandchips HQ
An interesting thing about people is, you think you know them, and then they go and do something really weird. Or, in the case of the guy I share an office with, just plain mean. He works for the company that lease the building, a company that were going to employ me this time last year. Unfortunately, due to funding problems, they were unable to take me on at that time, but as a gesture of goodwill allowed me to use a desk and computer in a corner of their office (the very same at which I now sit). And so it’s been for the last year, and whilst he’s not the easiest of people to share space with (being prone to grumpiness and the repeated playing of average demos at full volume over and over), I felt we got on OK. Certainly no cause for nastiness either way.
How wrong I was. Turns out this guy, apparently jealous of my close working relationship with his ex-boss, has spent the last month poisoning the mind of the company owner and his accountant, claiming I am a drain on resources, a discredit to the company, and a back-stabbing two-faced something-or-other who's out to keep him out of the loop on everything. I know this because I had his emails read to me by their recipients. Anyone who knows me knows how ludicrous and paranoid these accusations are. The reason he gave me however was that the company was about to launch and expand, therefore they’d need my deskspace for new recruits. I know this to be factually false. A lie, and like Walter E Kurtz, there’s nothing more noxious to me than the stench of lies. Nonetheless, it has resulted in me being summarily dismissed from the office. Oh Joy.
So tomorrow I have to power down this computer, clear off all my files, addresses and bookmarks, pack up my stuff (including hundreds of pounds-worth of stationery now worthless as this place is listed as my address) and look for somewhere else to base myself. With no money. And for what? Because some lying, scheming chickenshit with a chip on his shoulder, who doesn’t have a clue what he’s supposed to be doing let alone the ability to do it, has decided that he needs to be alone in the office in order to sit and stare out of the window while the company he works for does f*ck all. What a w*nker.
C’est la vie I guess. Luckily I have a strong faith in karmic retribution, and I know he’ll get his. I just hope mine comes in the form of a job or a windfall, because I’m almost out of money, my computer at home is eclipsed in power, speed and memory by most modern pocket watches, and the rent’s due next week! If anyone with some cash burning a hole in their pocket looking for a worthy recipient wants to get in touch, well that’d be fine!
Next up, internet cafés, whoopieeee!
Don’t know what I’m going to listen to this evening, but you can bet your bottom dollar that it’ll be very fast, very loud, and very angry.
::: posted by Andy at 12/04/2003 06:33:00 PM
Tuesday, December 02, 2003 :::
Too Cool for School?
This last week or so has been an in-vitro study of the Art and Essence of Being Cool. It all started last Saturday at the Back To New York club night here in London, where Tom Tom Club were doing a rare DJ set. I hadn’t been there in a while, the last time having been to see Hooky and Barny from New Order DJ, which was brilliant. Somehow since then the club has become THE place to be scene. It was wall-to-wall trendies, all sporting this week’s trendy New York garage/punk-inspired threads, haircuts and make-up. Beautiful people looking beautiful paraded and preened everywhere, the epitome of cool. However, after an hour or so I began to notice something odd; the entire venue reeked of a strange, sad desperation. It took a while to pin down, but after some intense people-watching and eves-dropping it became apparent that no-one really seemed comfortable with themselves. One got the distinct impression that grey dressing-gowns, M&S school trousers and granddad slippers would have prevailed as the clothes to be seen in, had they only been the trend at the time, and who knows, maybe next month they will be. The entire atmosphere was loud, shallow and devoid of substance in the way that only excessive cocaine abuse can inspire, and very few people actually seemed to be enjoying themselves. I began to wonder what the night would be like were Grimsby to suddenly become the trendy place to be from. In all, the veneer of cool-ness was as thin as some of wannabe models parading around in various states of undress, easily scraped away to reveal the night-black lack of conviction or belief upon which these people build their personas.
Sunday was almost the mirror image. Kevin Ayers, founder of seminal 60’s band Soft Machine (amongst a multitude of other underground plaudits), performed a rare headline show at the Borderline, a small basement venue in the heart of the West End legendary for the calibre of it’s gigs (Bryan Adams recently played a secret show there). At first sight the patrons couldn’t have been less cool. An odd assortment of 60’s throwbacks clinging to a mythical and long-gone era, bespectacled bedsit-dwelling Ayers-obsessives, faded models and jaded glitterati whose times had long since passed, along with a few young and curious individuals like myself. When Kevin took the stage however, a strange bedraggled-looking individual, face weather- and drugs-beaten by over three decades of excess and hard living, something magical happened. Maybe it was his performance, a glorious, effortless, loose and soulful romp through thirty years of catalogue, maybe it was the vibe among the audience that only a room full of true fans can engender, maybe it was the sheer poignancy of the lyrics, but everyone in that venue, on and off the stage, just melded together into one fantastic and transcendent moment that, quite frankly, could have gone on for hours. And it was COOL, cool in a way that the back-to-new-yorkers couldn’t hope to grasp, let alone emulate.
Monday saw a third type of cool, the type of cool I suspect only Glaswegian council estates can create. Lapsus Linguae, one of my favourite young bands, headlined at 93 Feet East in Brick Lane. After the inevitable curry (for which Brick Lane is famous, non-Londoners), I was treated to that rarest of things; a band who would perform with the same passion and honesty whether at Wembley or to a man and his dog in the back room of a pub. Watching Lapsus almost feels voyeuristic, four crazy Scottish lunatics in leather and matching black T-shirts emblazoned with their logo thrashing, rocking, rolling and jittering to their own unique brand of undeniably musical noise and operatic brilliance. It’s hard to know what to make of their songs, since they refuse to conform to any method or recognizable structure, which is why I love them and many don’t, but to see them live is to be offered a glimpse of that very rarest of cool-alities – they are cool in and of themselves, and no-one else can be part of it except by imitation.
Today I’ve been listening to the Best of John Lee Hooker.
::: posted by Andy at 12/02/2003 03:07:00 PM
Friday, November 21, 2003 :::
The Long and Winding Road
It's a good job I can blog sitting down, because my legs are killing me today, and my back aches terribly. The reason for this is that yesterday I, along with an estimated 200,000 fellow countrymen of all ages, professions, faiths and fortunes, took to the streets of London to voice our concern over the effect George Bush's policies are having on our world. Initially I was also there to express my anger over his presence in my city, and the decision to grant his visit State status, however it became immediately evident on arriving at the march that it was his very presence that provided the focus needed to mobilise such a huge number of people on a Thursday afternoon. And it was a truly moving sight. I was on both the previous big demos prior to the invasion, both considerably larger than yesterday's (being on the weekend), but the atmosphere yesterday was slightly different. In addition to a palpable anger and dissapointment directed at Bush and Blair, there was a more subtle excitement, and almost relief, as people realised very quickly that their views were still shared by the majority of the population, that they weren't the only ones holding firm as everyone else rolled over and accepted the battle as lost, and the resulting feeling of camaraderie and union was very powerful. The first big marches, for many the first time they had ever demonstrated a cause, had the feeling of an awkward get-together, like the first day of senior school. Yesterday was more like the reunion of old friends, battle-weary veterans re-grouping for another assault, all knowing looks and grim determination. One criticism levelled at the movement has always been it's inability to unite behind one cause, rather than being a hotch-potch mixture of various complaints; Free Palestine, get out of Iraq, stick to the Kyoto accords, Anti-capitalism, etc etc. I've never personally understood why the legitimacy of these sentiments should be questionable due to their alliance, to me it's the fact there are so many interlinked issues that give the entire argument, that the current system isn't working, it's validity. But yesterday there was a common cause, a single focus for all the resentment and anger, and that focus was the person of the president.
I remember thinking as I shuffled south over Waterloo Bridge, two feet among hundreds of thousands in a 4-mile human millipede, the middle of which I could see half a mile away to my right as it worked it's way back north over Westminster Bridge adjacent to the Houses of Parliament, the head having long ago arrived in Trafalgar Square (still a couple of miles away for me); I remember thinking how odd that one man could be the focus of so much anger. I mean, how can one human being be allowed to make such a hash of his job that he p*sses everyone else off so badly that they feel the need to blow themselves up in public, or travel to their capital to protest march? Surely there must be some mechanism to prevent this kind of thing happening? I don't have any answers beyond that provided by a particularly drunk guy, leaning heavily on his home-made placard featuring a picture of a cow, and bellowing at the top of his voice every few minutes, "George Bush, Ger orf moi laaaand!"
After the march and a wander around a distinctly unfamiliar-looking and completely packed Trafalgar Square, which was fantastic for seeing all the weird and wonderful costumes, banners, props and slogans people had come up with, it was off to the Fuel Bar in Covent Garden for a rest and a well-earned pint. As a quick aside, if you ever go to Covent Garden ignore the over-crowded and over-priced Punch and Judy and seek out Fuel. It's kind of secret, you have to go into what looks like a cafe's kitchen then up a spiral staircase to find it, but once there it is warm in decor, welcoming in mood, and has a great terrace with views of most of the square. Later in the evening it has a small club that opens in its basement, an old cellar with low, arched ceilings and loads of nooks and crannies. Anyhow, once inside something happened which regular readers will know is very rare in London, it's absence being a bone of some contention among many young people and fequent speculation on this blog; we had a great time with a group of complete strangers, and by the end of the night (sometime around 2) had made some new friends! Yep, all in all yesterday was a good day.
But not for all. Poor old MJ, looks like his perversions have finally caught up with him. It's a bit unfortunate that his arrest is getting so much press considering we don't yet know anything beyond the vaguest of details about the accusations being levelled against him, effectively casting him as guilty in the eyes of the world irrespective of the facts of the case, but it sure doesn't look good. His previous dalliances with the Jordy Chandler payoff and the more 'intimate' moments of the Bashir interview won't help his defence much either. I used to believe him to be innocent of the charges of child mollestation, arguing to myself the anyone so immersed in their own strange infantalism would be incapable of the very adult act of sexploitation. I mean he just didn't fit the profile of your average paedophile. Now however I'm not so sure, and the protestations of his legal team that they will fight the lies to their last breath sound hollow and boy-who-cried-wolf-ish. Whatever happens his career is over. He'll either go down for a long stretch or settle out-of-court again (although if rumour is to be believed he's pretty much on his uppers at the moment), and even if he goes to trial and is acquitted the damage to his image will have already been done. Poor sales of his last couple of albums will merely serve to drive Sony even further down the road of distancing themselves from their troubled megastar. Greatest Hits compilations are always a sign that a label has lost faith in an artist, so maybe this will be the nail in the coffin for MJ and his long, illustrious career. Shame, as he wrote some belters in his time!
Today I'm listening to some demo the chap I share an office with has on very loud. For about the hundredth time this week. It was ok the first few times, but now it's just boring and making it hard to concentrate.
::: posted by Andy at 11/21/2003 03:02:00 PM
Tuesday, November 18, 2003 :::
Survival of the Fittest
I survived! Hurrah! Like Daniel I entered the lions' den, tamed the savage beasts and emerged triumphant and unscathed. Like David I squared-up to the giant Goliath, and with one simple stone brought about his utter demise. Like Theseus I found my way through the maze and slew the evil minotaur.
OK, ok, so maybe DJing isn't quite so heroic, but to successfully balance the needs of the most pop-tastic of cheese-loving party-goers and the uber-trendies of SW London's bar set without any bloodshed was an achievement of some note. Like Lady Macbeth and her 'damned spot' I'm still having to wash my ears out with soap and water at least five times a day (I still can't believe I actually played the Grease MegaMix !!), but that's about the extent of my punishment. Actually I was quite lucky; I kept the regulars happy for an hour or so, and they could clearly see the pain etched into every molecule of my body when I reverted to the non-music, so they were actually quite sympathetic. And the cheese-mongers were so pissed they left with only the memory of the last half hour or so, during which they had been more than satisfied with Bananarama b-sides, A1 album tracks and 60's wedding faves. No sweat, job done, beer earned.
Tonight I'm off to the wilds of South East London to meet a friend. For those of you not familiar with this fair city, SE London is virtually un-served by public transport (at least there are very few tube stations), and therefore, like Australia, has evolved it's own unique fauna. They look pretty much the same as other Londoners, but are far more dangerous. Normally this wouldn't faze me too much, as I have every faith and confidence in our Greater London Police Constabulary to protect my person in inclement areas. Today however, and for the next three days, my survival must take second priority to one Bush Junior. Half, yes half of the total operational strength of the Met Police has been re-deployed from serving and protecting the interests of the tax-payers who pay their wages to averting the hundreds of terrorist strikes Al Queda are planning to launch mercilessly upon the person of the President (non) Elect. Apparently the Pentagon wanted London Underground to halt services running under wherever Dubya may be in case someone blew up a train under him. How stupid are these monkeys? The underground system is buried hundreds of feet underground! A sizeable Nuke detonated at that depth would hardly disturb the dust at ground level! Oh, and our mobile phones might have to be blocked, in case we use them as remote-control devices for launching missile strikes or something. For f*cks sake! And there I was thinking that the actions in Afghanistan and Iraq made the world a safer place! And for all that a 61 year old grandmother was still able to scale the gates of Buckingham Palace and hold a protest vigil up there for a number of hours yesterday. Even disgruntled fathers in Spiderman costumes can hold large areas of central London to ransom for a whole week. What possible good will a 10 million pound security operation possibly be if someone REALLY wants to hit the president? "Ramp up the fear factor guys, those pesky Brits aren't falling for it!"
Today my stereo has featured the ambient genius of The Orb. The world's a safer place in the hands of whalesong-sampling hippies!
::: posted by Andy at 11/18/2003 07:26:00 PM
Thursday, November 13, 2003 :::
Goodbye perhaps...
This may well be my last-but-one blog entry. It’s not that I want to stop blogging; on the contrary, I find it highly remedial. No, I fear that this Saturday, the 15th of November, 2003, I am going to be publicly lynched. Strung up by the neck until I am dead. Hung from the PA support bars in a basement club in South West London. Beaten to a pulp by a lusty mob of enraged punters. Chased from town to die a slow, painful death, alone in the deserts surrounding Wimbledon.
Why I hear you cry? What possible crime can you commit that would justify such extreme punishment? What kind of behavioural depravity can you sink to that would so anger an otherwise festive crowd of revellers that they would throw off all vestments of civility and react with such murderous barbarism?
The answer is as simple as it is horrifying. The traditional crowd at the bar where I hold my Saturday residency have relatively good taste in music. It’s a posh bar, and they like to see themselves as among Wimbledon’s elite. They spend a lot of time and effort cultivating this image both for themselves and for those whose paths they cross. It means something to them. This Saturday however, the management have decreed that a private party shall be allowed to dictate the music I shall have to play on the night. And to say the very least, the list of requests I have just received from this party will not engender a further bolstering of the self-image of the regulars. In fact, to say it will deliver it a shattering blow would be a most heinous understatement.
You see, there are two types of cheese where music is concerned. There is what one may refer to as ‘ironic’ cheese, that is to say, it’s cheesy, but if danced to just so, with this particular smile of knowing condescension, one is able to project a certain coolness only those really in the know can aspire to. This is the cheese I can get away with. It is the mild cheddar of cheeses so to speak. Then there is the other type of cheese. The Gorgonzola of musical dairy products. There is no possible situation in which being in the same room as this kind of cheese can ever be construed as cool. In fact, were you to bring your cool friends to a venue in which this type of cheese was being played, you would find yourself removed from even the most loyal of email lists. Your mobile would fall strangely silent, and no longer would invitations to openings of celebrity restaurants cascade gracefully through your letterbox. It is the type of cheese that can seriously damage ones social prospects, and as such it is absolutely lethal to play it out in any but the most mainstream of clubs. The punters just won't stand for it. In Bar Sia on a Saturday night it is nigh on suicidal.
Looking down the list of requests I have to play on Saturday I know precisely how Guy Faulkes must have felt on reading the list of charges against him. Or any of Henry VIIIth’s wives on receiving his proposal of marriage. Or Saddam Hussein on watching the World Trade Centre collapse. I am, in short, f*cked.
I’m not listening to any music today, I’m too busy being scared!
::: posted by Andy at 11/13/2003 06:23:00 PM
Wednesday, November 12, 2003 :::
ERAS Productions
I've had a bit of a blog-holiday recently, several reasons. First, restricted access to computer thanks to not being in the office very much. Second, with rather a lot going on it's been hard to find the time even when I did have access. And Third, my last post (Oct 22nd) was possibly the most accomplished piece of writing I've managed so far, and when most of it was lost between posting and publishing something inside me snapped (I'd been having a bad connection week anyway), and I just couldn't face writing even when I did manage to scrape the time together. In order to avoid a similar disaster I’ve started composing in Word then copying over once it’s finished. A good friend who understands these things better than I is insistent I should be using Notepad, but I’ll be buggered if I can find it! So if there are any bizarre characters where there should be normal punctuation, Fear Not!! You don’t need to re-tune your sets - it’s just the digital projection of my incompetent self.
Speaking of which, I saw Matrix Revulsions over the weekend. ‘Nuff said. What a disappointment. What is it with final instalments in movie trilogies that they all have to be poor relations to their predecessors? How many others have weak plots, over-played special effects, ramped-up schmaltz levels, and inferior performances? Star Wars, Indiana Jones, The Godfather, Back To The Future, Star Trek, The Terminator, Die Hard, Mad Max, Vacation, Aliens, Lesbian Spank-Fest; the list is as long as it is depressing. Just as rock stars should all have the good grace to either retire of go out in a blaze of glory at 27, so movie-makers should be barred from completing trilogies. I just pray with everything crossed that Peter Jackson can break the mould. Return of the King, BRING IT ON!!
The Soham murders trial is in full swing at the Old Bailey at the moment, a fact it’s impossible to miss since it dominates every print and broadcast media outlet 24/7. I’m really unsure just how the public interest is served by reporting every breath of every participant in the grisly affair, every detail of the horrific crime, every movement of the jury. It feels voyeuristic in the worst possible way. Where are the people who complained the war took up too much air-time? I guess their consciences are guilt-free in this instance, so they can lap up the gore and moral outrage with impunity.
It also highlights the frankly ridiculous situation at the other end of the news-overdose spectrum; the heir to the British throne is embroiled in a scandal so shocking in its implications that we’re not allowed to know what it is (even though everyone does since it’s publication overseas cannot be prevented by a British court). Never mind that we pay for the f*cker to live his life of royal luxury and privilege, and therefore have every right to know what he’s been doing to the staff we pay for. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-royal per-se: a huge proportion of our national income from tourism, and a large part of our influence on the world stage, stems directly from our having the royal family. But these ain’t the dark ages anymore, and if you’re going to be allowed to live like royalty on tax-payers’ money then you damn well ought to be ultimately accountable to those same taxpayers. Can’t have it both ways chaps! This is a democracy remember?
Speaking of which, the hoo-har surrounding Bush’s imminent trip to our fair capital next week is reaching near comical levels. In order to protect his democratic right to dine at Buckingham Palace and No.10, I (and every other Londoner) must have my democratic right to walk down Whitehall denied for the day. And I must allow my taxes to pay for an extra hundred or so ex-special forces bodyguards for the duration of his trip. The fact that I don’t want the thieving, murdering, un-elected imbecile anywhere near my city be damned. I must also, according to Blair, forget the past where Iraq is concerned and look to the future. Forget that there never were any WMDs, nor any imminent threat from Saddam to even his closest neighbours, let alone anyone else, forget that every reason I marched against the war in the first place has been proved right, right, and right again. And in forgetting, I presume, we are also to ignore the fact that being asked to do so is tacit acknowledgement from the Prime Minister that he KNOWS every reason he posited for going to war was utterly fallacious? If even one of the original aims of the invasion had been accomplished he’d be baying it from the rooftops. Instead we are asked to forget. Again, you can’t have it both ways. And I’m sorry, but I will NOT forget. I was there the day democracy failed in England. I watched it’s final spasmodic death throes as it lay beaten and bleeding in the dust of Hyde Park, and let me tell you, it was not a pretty sight. I’ll be there when Bush is driven in bullet-proof convoy through my city, the conquering hero come to gloat with his whipping boy, because we must not forget. The very fabric of our society depends upon it.
On the home front, I’ve re-discovered Playstation, and have been virtually addicted to The Getaway ever since. I’m not very good, and am currently stuck in the middle of a gang war between the triads and the yardies. I’ve noticed they like to shoot each other, but they just won’t stop shooting at me! Gits.
Music-wise, I’ve been listening to a lot of demos recently, and in particular those of Shuffle, Galen Ayers, and the Ga Ga’s.
::: posted by Andy at 11/12/2003 02:24:00 PM
Wednesday, October 22, 2003 :::
Too Long...
Woah, it really has been too long since I last posted. This is primarily due to an unprecedented increase in my workload. If only this was mirrored by a similar rise in financial reward then life would be mighty peachy!! I also just re-read my last post. Perhaps it's better that I did take a break! Haha. Where was my head that day? Still, a bit of inane creative writing every so often to ease the tension can't be all bad.
Lots happening at the moment and much to report and comment on, but first .... a minute's silence in remembrance of Elliot Smith, who it is rumoured took his own life last night. One of those unfortunate individuals who's poetic gift for describing the darker moments of our lives was matched only by their inability to rise above their own, he joins Ian Curtis and Kurt Cobain in the great rehearsal room in the sky. Can you imagine the records they're writing together?
[silence]
.....
[/silence]
By complete contrast, that attention-seeking trickster-turned-wannabe-messiah finally got down from his box over the weekend, amid much wailing and crying (from him) and bemused heckling from the couple of thousand souls brave enough to witness the event live (it was bloody cold!). Personally I couldn't bring myself to go, one afternoon shouting banalities in his general direction having been enough for me. He was suspiciously healthy-looking, adding fuel to the rumours that the event was staged or fixed in some way, and not with a bang but a whimper he was gone. I guess now we'll get the interminable interviews on all the saccharine daytime TV magazine shows, further endearing him to his new audience of adoring bored housewives, and alienating him from his original audience of media-savvy bright young things. It's a shame: when he first came onto our screens he was a real breath of fresh air, a great magician performing close-up tricks in the seedier areas of New York's suburban battlefields to audiences who had probably never seen anything like it before, most other people choosing to cross the street at their approach than engage with them in entertainment. Now he's a has-been self-parody that took his own hype too far; a magician who destroyed his own magic.
::: posted by Andy at 10/22/2003 11:50:00 AM
Tuesday, October 07, 2003 :::
Reciprocal Generosity in the Handless: A short history
I've been having a rather surreal debate with a new friend on Friendster about the nature of reciprocal giving and receiving, which recently (and without going into how it got there, which is intractably complicated) settled on the notion that people without hands were by definition unable to perform either action. I was unhappy with this conclusion, believing it to be deeply unfair on the handless, and resolved to offer a proof against it. Clearly in order to meditate effectively I would require assistance to attain true objectivity, so it was off to the pub last night with a view to solving the problem.
A plane of understanding was achieved relatively quickly (not having eaten all day), and from there I was able to attain the heights of the 'Plateau of Undeniable Truth', with the help of sambuca and a couple of choice brandies (nectar of the Gods don't you know). Once there the whole history of this question, which I discovered was extensive, was revealed to me by a small green fairy remarkably similar in apprearance and stature to one Kylie Minogue. I didn't fully understand all of it, but promised to relate it here. So here goes:
“Reciprocal Generosity in the Handless: A short history.
The notion of reciprocal generosity harks back to the ancient days of hunter-gatherer society, when braves would take a wife, in return for which a gift would be given to the wife's former tribe, perhaps in the form of a mammoth skin rug, or an ornately carved sabre-tooth pendant. Similarly in pre-literate early polytheistic cultures, offerings would be given to various deities and spirits in exchange for that which was taken from nature.
Among the earliest written evidence we have for the notion of give-and-take as a pervading element of human culture appears around the 2nd millennia BC, where it features in the written texts that would later form the basis of modern religious works, such as the Koran and the bible. To quote the bible version (NIV), "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away" (Job 1:21). Similarly in the Koran we find “O Musa! surely I have chosen you above the people with My messages and with My words, therefore take what I give to you and be of the grateful ones.” (7:144).
All seemed perfectly straightforward, until scholars preparing for the great canonical conference of 1462, during which the final modern version of the bible was to be decided, noticed a curious preponderance of references to ‘hands’ where giving and receiving were concerned. Principle among these, and the verse that underpins the curious notion that handless individuals are incapable of acts of generosity, was Matthew 6:3; from the King James version, “When thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.” Handless people were therefore regarded as incapable of giving, and so were condemned to eternal purgatory after death for non-payment of tithe, as prescribed in scripture. [As an aside, the implication here that it is the right hand that is responsible for giving led to the subsequent demonisation of left-handed people.]
Of course for every ying there is a yang, and an equally vociferous camp sprang up that believed handless people to be the very archetypes of godliness and purity in generosity. They argued that were all men born without hands we would still be living eternally in the paradise of the Garden of Eden; taking as evidence Genesis 3:22-23 (‘“[Adam] must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” Therefore the lord God banished him from the garden of Eden’) they posit that it is prima fasciae true that it was the possession of hands that enabled Eve to take from the tree of knowledge and give of it’s fruit to Adam, resulting eventually in their banishment from God’s presence. Unfortunately very little survives of the teaching and beliefs of this sect, as shortly after formulating their argument they all cut off their hands to prevent sin, and were thus unable to write anything down.
Of course any modern scholar can see that both these arguments are in fact tautologous, and indeed equivalent, for both still hold it to be true that the handless can neither give nor take - each argument merely ascribes a different qualitative function to the act of giving or taking. No, it seems as though neither moral nor religious philosophy hold any real answers to our dilemma.
Instead the mantle was taken up by a rather more contemporary branch of thinker. Theoretical quantum physicians, realising the massive import of finding an answer to this momentous question, turned upon it the spotlight of their particular philosophical bent. Thankfully for all, after much rumination and rubbing-of-chins an equation was derived that proved once-and-for-all that, at least on the quantum level, the handless are perfectly capable of both giving and taking. In fact in some cases (dependant on a complicated mathematical relationship between stump surface area, proximity to donator / recipient and prevailing atmospheric conditions) they are even more proficient than the handed. This proof has become known on front-pages around the globe as the Quantum Theo-Sophical Mutual Generosity Solution, or “QuanTy SMuGS” for short.
Their findings and proofs involve mind-numbingly complicated equations spanning several dimensions and incorporating the square root of –1, but roughly translated into layman’s terms, “The propensity of the handless individual for giving is a function of the overall stump surface area divided by the thickness of the skin, multiplied by Hankx’s Constant for Quantum Bleed, and all expressed as a root factor of the product of distance from recipient, barometric pressure, prevailing windspeed, and Milessiovenski’s scalar humidity law.” For receiving, the proofs are even more complicated due to the unpredictability on any but the quark level of the motion and inclination of the arm, but simply put it mirrors the proof for giving, reversing the equation, substituting Vengel’s Quanta Absorbtion Ratio for Hankx’s Constant, and dividing the entire result by a complicated combination of stump velocity and angle of reference between arm and source.
Of course on a practical level QuanTy SmuGS may be worse than useless, but it has given hope to the handless community that they will now be more widely accepted into society, and indeed early indications are that this may well be the case. It has also given the one-handed community some new excitement, as it is hoped that a variation of the theory will one day be able to accurately simulate for human ears the sound they make when clapping, thus proving once and for all that they do, in fact, clap.”
I've been listening to Tangerine Dream. Does it show?
::: posted by Andy at 10/07/2003 03:56:00 PM
Monday, October 06, 2003 :::
Russian Roulette Revelations
Last night the psychological illusionist Derren Brown played a game of Russion Roulette live on British television. During the hour-long show he whittled the 12,000 people who applied for the position of gun-loader and sole witness down to one fella, the one he felt he was most able to 'read'. This chap, James, then loaded a live round into one chamber of a .357 Magnum, sat behind a bullet-proof glass shield and counted slowly from 1 to 6 (corresponding to the six chambers of the gun). From this count Derren deduced which chamber the bullet was in, put the gun to his head and started clicking. On reaching the chamber in which he believed the bullet to be he fired the weapon into a sandbag (actually he'd already fired once at the sandbag on an empty chamber, purely to raise the tension). Of course the press, police, politicians and charity groups are all going potty. He's accused of being irresponsible, of trivialising gun crime, of glamourising suicide with a cheap, dangerous and sick stunt.
Personally I couldn't disagree more. Anyone stupid enough to 'try this at home' would probably have ended up with a Darwin Award at some point anyway, and if someone is tentatively suicidal I doubt that a TV show would push them over the edge. I actually found the programme rivetting. I'm a huge fan of Derren Brown anyway, some of the things he's able to do are quite frankly breathtaking, and despite knowing that there was no imaginable way he would shoot himself in the head he held the drama and tension during the final performance on a knife edge. I will concede that friends and relatives of those who have taken their own lives in the past would have found the show distasteful in the extreme, but then why watch it? There were disclaimers and warnings throughout the programme that warned explicitly of it's content. Similarly I think it highly odd that a show so clearly broadcasting the extreme danger that guns pose (indeed the entire drama of the climax is reliant on this basic premise for it's edge-of-your-seat tenseness) should come in for such criticism, when kids TV is littered with cartoons of people and robots shooting at each other, when Hollywood movies are, in the main, orgiastic visual extravaganzas dedicated solely to the purpose of demonstrating the superiority (moral and physical) of the gun-wielder, when prime-time soap characters are regularly shot only to reappear later (thereby enforcing the view that firearms are typically non-lethal). Indeed one has only to look at the current state of the world to see why young people might be tempted to view guns as a legitimate means to conflict resolution; Israel bombing Syrian territory without discussion, America and Britain using force over diplomacy in Iraq and Afghanistan, North Korea developing a nuclear weapons programme as a deterrent; the list goes on.
On a lighter note (literally and metaphorically!) I came across this today and have seen nirvana! I'm not a major fan of junk food, but in just over a week's time I'll have all the information I need to permit the occasional indulgence in a guilt-free manner! I can't wait!! Hurrah for Andy Goff!
The Darkness album is back on again I'm afraid, it's just too good!
::: posted by Andy at 10/06/2003 06:19:00 PM
Wednesday, October 01, 2003 :::
Accountant Beer Holocaust
Having worked in the music and clubbing industries for the best part of 10 years I have come to hold the view that the levels of resistance to the influence of alcohol displayed by the majority of my friends and colleagues is normal. Last night however, I was given a humourous, if somewhat shocking, reminder that those levels are in fact excessively high. At the last minute I was asked to DJ an end-of-quater party for the accounts department of a particular firm. It was to start at 5.30, finish at midnight, and had a free bar for the duration.
Here's how it works in the music industry: There's a party with a free bar. It starts at 7, and finishes at 2. By midnight everyone's pretty merry, the quality of dancing deteriorates, and people begin to really mix drinks. Usually shots of some kind with beer or wine chasers. By 2am the heavy drinkers are in a pronounced state of drunkenness, but, with a few exceptions, are still to some degree coherent, functioning, and able to hold a professional conversation should their boss suddenly appear asking about some aspect of their work, before getting themselves home for a good night's kip and work the next day. Perhaps a hair-of-the-dog swifty at lunchtime, but otherwise none too much the worse for wear.
Here's how it went down last night: The department arrived en-masse right on time, and tucked into the beer and wine. Obviously drinking faster than they would have had they been paying, but still at a relatively sedate rate compared to a music bash. As the evening progresses I notice that everyone seems to be sticking to the same drinks. Quite sensible I thought, and precisely in keeping with the stereotypical image I hold of accountants. Fast forward to 10.30pm: Somehow in the last 20 minutes or so the patrons have degenerated from a polite, well-behaved and vertically-consistent gathering into a riotious melee of staggering, screeching, dribbling, jibbering lunatics, intent on covering themselves, each other, and anything in their near vacinity with as much beer as is humanly possible. Requests are coming in thick and fast, bawled into my ear with the vehemence (and coherence) of a herd of rutting stags. The receptionist is grinding her hips rhythmically into the a-rhythmicaly gyrating department head's groin. Three lads from bought ledger are hugging each other and leaping insanely (and at different tempos) around the dancefloor, knocking people flying in all directions until finally bouncing off one of the walls and heading back for another pass. The company secretary, a grandmother, is snogging and aggressively groping some poor kid in a corner. The company bike is sprawled across a table enjoying the attentions of most of the juniors, all hoping they'll get lucky (despite being unable to formulate any kind of cohesive words, let alone sentences). The MD is screaming at me (and anyone remotely near me that in her near-blind drunkenness may pass as a DJ) to "play more f*cking RnB", ostensibly so she can booty-clat in the direction of the only sober person in the room, a devout muslim black guy, who clearly has no interest in her advances whatsoever. Glass, beer and sweat are flying everywhere, and I'm genuinely in fear of my personal wellbeing. I'm not making this up!! Eventually I had to call the venue manager down who thoroughly agreed with me that we needed to terminate proceedings early before someone got killed. They were so hammered that no-one noticed we were throwing them out an hour before time. I only wish I could be a fly on the wall in that office today. The only consolation will be that, with the exception of the muslim, absolutely no-one in that room last night will be able to remember a single thing that happened.
So what conclusions can we draw from this? Whose behaviour is normal? To which group should we aspire? The near-alcoholic muso's who, despite consuming several times the accountants alcoholic intake over a similar period, thereby risking liver and heart damage, nevertheless hold it together without making too much of a spectacle of themselves? Or the not-so-mild-mannered accountants who, although perhaps subject to lower life-insurance premiums, make complete and utter arses of themselves on what in my circles would be considered an embarassingly small volume of drink?
Or perhaps one day, when mankind has evolved beyond his need to indescriminately destroy brain-cells in a quest for dutch courage and meaningless sexual encounters, we'll realise that the only person worth aspiring to is the muslim. Not for him the need for consciousness alteration, for he has found something that he values above inebriation. Perhaps we should all be searching for our faith beyond beer.
In the meantime however, mine's a Hoegarden! ;o)
::: posted by Andy at 10/01/2003 02:30:00 PM
Wednesday, September 24, 2003 :::
Hugo Young RIP
It was with great sadness that I read of the death on Monday of Hugo Young, in my opinion the greatest political commentator in my lifetime. Never allied to any political party, he wrote with an honesty, integrity and incisiveness that made him somewhat of an outsider in political circles, and all the more important for it, and to some degree inluenced my decision to try my hand at writing on this very site. If in the course of my scribblings I produce even one paragraph with just a tenth of his brilliance and insight I will be a very happy man. As a tribute to his genius, I transcribe some of his final column for the Guardian, from last Tuesday, here.
"The great over-arching fact about the war that Blair will never admit but cannot convincingly deny [is this]: he was committed to war months before he said he was. Of course, he wanted it buttered up. He wanted a UN sanction. He fought might and main to push Bush in that direction. But he was prepared to go to war without it.
He needed skewed intelligence to make the case, and he didn't mind what he had to say to get it. He had made his committment to Bush, stating among other extraordinary things that it was Britain's national task to prevent the US being isolated. But he was also in thrall to the mystic chords of history. He could not contemplate breaking free of ties and rituals that began with Churchill, and that both Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence have cultivated, out of fear and expectation, for decades.
He was driven by something else, which none of his predecessors, not even Margaret Thatcher, has succumbed to. Without exception they all kept their eye on the British ball. They could all make a kind of case for a profitable connection between the hard British national interest and occasional benefits from the special relationship. For Blair this has been a lot more theoretical: the theory of pre-emptive intervention in a third country's affairs, for moral purposes, at the insistence of the power whose hyperdom he cannot resist.
What does this mean? That we have ceased to be a sovereign nation. This is Blair's war and, except for Bush, hardly anybody else's. There are two ways to see him. The first is as the great deceiver. Driven by his own juices, compelled by moral imperatives obliterating pragmatism, forced by those compulsions to avoid levelling with his people, in the grip of a high belief in the need for the intervention of good guys against bad guys. This could yet be the end of him, if [he] is found to have twisted truth, for whatever good motive, too far.
There is another person emerging from the mist though. This is a great tragic figure. Tony Blair had such potential. He was a strong leader, a visionary in his own way, a figure surpassing all around him. His rhetorical power was unsurpassed, as was the readiness of people to listen to him. He had their trust. He brought credibility back to the political art.
It is now vanishing, though not before our open eyes. All this seems to be happening below the radar screen of opinion polls. The country carries on at least as semi-normal. Our boys are out there dying in a futile war. The leader goes about his business. Yet something big is happening. This concerns not merely him and whether he survives, but our country and what becomes of it in abject thrall to Bush and his gang." - Hugo Young (1938-2003) in the Guardian, 16.09.2003
Also on the subject of writing (or, more accurately, reading), a friend sent me this. Apparently it's quite old, but I was amazed when I saw it for the first time yesterday:
"Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer
in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht
the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a
total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit any porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the
huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a
wlohe."
I never came across anything like this during studies for my psychology degree, but I find it absolutely fascinating. Perhaps armed with further insight into this curious aspect of visuo-linguistic processing some clever spark will finally find a permanent cure for dyslexia.
Today I've had El Hula on repeat on the stereo. Fantastic crooning pop with a tex-mex twist.
::: posted by Andy at 9/24/2003 01:53:00 PM
Friday, September 12, 2003 :::
Surprise, surprise, surprise...
I must apologise in advance, because today's posting is going to be a major rant...
Well, the report by the Parliamentary Intelligence Committee has been made public, and surprise surprise it pretty much exhonerates all parties of malicious wrongdoing. Surprising since the committee was appointed by Blair, worked behind closed doors, was made up of MPs, and reported directly to No.10, which therefore had the ability to censor any unpleasant conclusions prior to publication, not that it was ever going to need to do so. So what did they conclude? In a nutshell, that the crime of omission of vitally important contextual and factual information, thus radically distorting the actual case for war, is not in fact a crime at all, and certainly doesn't amount to 'sexing-up'. At worst it is "unhelpful" or "unfortunate". No, only the addition of erroneous information would have amounted to misleading parliament in presenting the case for war. So it's a gentle tut-tut for Our Tone, a slap-on-the-wrist for Hoon, and all back to the clubhouse for tea. Never mind that thousands of people have died, billions of pounds been spent, an entire geographical region thrown into total chaos, and the threat of terrorism massvely increased (by the report's own admission) as a result of this sickening sh*t-show.
I can't believe these people are actually going to get away with it. And what are the opposition doing? With a british Prime Minister in possibly the weakest position since Callaghan in the late 1970's, why on Earth aren't the opposition parties absolutely weighing in? The Tories I can understand, this is effectively a Tory government in all but name anyhow; no, it's the Liberals I must take issue with. Not since their hey-day at the start of the 20th Century has there been such a strong platform from which the Liberals could launch themselves to a position of real authority; most people percieve the labour and conservative parties as ever-more-similar, with traditional labour and tory voters holding their heads and looking around desperately for an alternative; the liberals should be shouting from the rooftops right now! People have always been irked by crony-ism within politics, but now that crony-ism (or Tony-ism perhaps?) is operating across and between the two main political parties in a positively repulsive and blatant manner it's essential they are offered a strong, viable alternative. I despair. Let's hope Lord Hutton comes out all guns blazing.
In a similar vein, I saw perhaps the greatest ever expression of irony reported on Teletext this week. There are huge protests surrounding the international arms trade fair taking place in London's Docklands this week. The British government invited friends, alllies and dictators from around the world to exhibit, view and purchase arms of all shapes, sizes and destructive capabilities in the heart of the recently-rejuvenated docklands area, and needless to say a rag-tag coalition of leftist political parties, charities and causes, along with more radical activists and protesters, have been doing their utmost to disrupt proceedings. And in the middle of all this, a man dressed in a butcher's apron bearing the legend "Bush and Son, Family Butchers since 1989", was arrested for carrying a butcher's knife as part of his costume. So while just yards away warmongers from around the world were gleefully placing orders for landmines, bomblet-dispensing missile warheads, fully-automatic assault rifles, attack helicopters and tanks, a middle-aged family man from the commuter belt was being arrested for possesion of a dangerous weapon. What kind of a world are we living in, and how the f*ck do we change it?
Public Enemy's 'Fight The Power' is spiraling round my head. Funny that.
::: posted by Andy at 9/12/2003 03:25:00 PM
Wednesday, September 10, 2003 :::
No posts for a little while, but there's a kinda reason for that. I wrote an opus on Monday, a work of near creative genius of which Milton, Shakespeare and Homer would have been proud, a work so comprehensive and insightful that the very fabric of space-time itself would have been shaken to it's deepest foundations. Upon reading it the reverberations within the human meta-consciousness would have caused a flux-wave of such magnitude that the Gaia / mankind relationship would have finally swung into balance, ushering in an age of perpetual Utopian harmony and bliss, during which men and Gods would once again co-exist in perfect matrimony on Earth.
And then my poxy computer crashed, and I lost the lot. Needless to say I was more than a little miffed, and it's taken a couple of days to replenish my creative juices, restore my inner strength, and re-approach the terminal. Oh well, I guess it just wasn't to be quite yet.
Also I've just been introduced to Friendster, which has been taking up a fair amount of on-line down-time. What a great site. It remains to be seen whether any new networking goes on, but even just mucking about seeing who you can connect to via friends-of-friends is great fun. I have 23,000 people in my network with only 6 friends in my profile, so I predict much random person-contacting for the next few weeks.
David Blaine has started his London stunt as of last weekend, aiming to spend 44 days in a small perspex box suspended over the South Bank with nothing but water and a journal. A load of us went down there on Monday after the drubbing we doled out to the South Africans to level the test series at the Oval, just to see what was going on. Needless to say, watching a blatant self-publicist lying down and reading wasn't much fun, but some of the spectators were amazing. My favourite was the loony with the ukelele and the 'Be Strong David' sign chanting "Go on David", and going absolutely mental if anyone offered to hold his sign for him while he accompanied himself musically. The other classic was the guy who'd put out a mat, on which was written his explanation for why he was supporting Blaine's endeavour by sitting out on the grass in front of the box for the entire duration of the 44 days. Clearly he'd had little success, as after only 2 days he was nowhere to be seen!!
In the pub afterwards we discussed ways to spice up proceedings. A favourite was to use catapults to fire noodles at the perspex after 40 days or so, just to see if he'd crack. Unfortunately it later emerged that someone had already attempted a similar stunt. He'd catapulted an entire english breakfast at the star (plenty of scrambled egg and plenty of fried tomato), before being aggressively wrestled to the ground by Blaine's security force, held in a restraining position until the police arrived, and unceremoniously carted off down the nick. God knows what they'll charge him with; assault with a deadly sausage? Improper use of baked beans? Conspiracy to incite a food-fight? The other plan was to drive golf-balls at him from London Bridge, but that had also already been attempted. Personally I think these people were a bit previous; you need to wait until he's starting to really lose it before you'll get the desired reaction to any pranking.
A more impressive London stunt finally made it onto the TV yesterday. A few weeks ago a trio of French free runners performed incredible feats of acrobatic running on and around some of London's most famous landmarks. It was done with great secrecy, enabling them to interact with the environment and the public in a very spontaneous way, although the stunts themsleves were carefully planned in advance and filmed by a camera crew. The documentary made about them and their artform was pretty good. Set to a soundbed of appropriately ambient drum'n'bass it featured interviews with the inventor of the sport, his disciples, the curators of the buildings and monuments involved, achitects, philosophers and other sportspeople, and gave a really lucid and engaging account of this beautiful emerging sport. Unfortunately the filming of the running itself was shot in such a way as to minimise the feel of grandeur, beauty and skill that the performance engendered, being a little claustrophobic and jittery in style, but the overall effect of the program to inspire awe towards these amazing althletes was undiminished, as was it's invitation to view the urban lanscape in a new aesthetic way. I don't recommend trying it, but to watch it's incredible.
Dizzee Rascal, as tipped in this very journal some weeks ago, has won the Mercury Music Prize. A great result for underground British rap and the Prize itself; this was a brave choice, but utterly justified IMHO.
::: posted by Andy at 9/10/2003 02:08:00 PM
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