The Midnight Bell

Pop History: a poor substitute for real history

2011-12-23T03:10:00.000-08:00

It is unavoidable to the point of stating the obvious - pop is now obsessed with its past. As Simon Reynolds puts it in his book Retromania the Noughties (and beyond) is the 'Re' era: revivals, reissues, reunions and rereleases. But what is driving this back to the past trend? Why is pop history celebrated but real history all but ignored? Read my review of Retromania here

The Culture of Entitlement and the August Riots

2011-12-22T11:00:00.000-08:00

'The Culture of Entitlement' has been a concept mentioned, both separately and specifically to the English riots back in August 2011. Other journalists argue that rioting/looting existed before this apparent new social trend emerged. Maybe, but then again there are many different causes of riots just as there different types of riots. The August riots are best seen as a more dramatic, visible expression of lumpenised behaviour common in many of Britain's inner cities. Such a dramatic turn of events have been quelled, but the causes - entitlement fuelled by therapy culture - remain unchecked and unchallenged in the UK.I respond to the increasing 'poverty caused the riots' determinism found in the Guardian and the Children's Survey here on spiked-online. Immediately after the August riots I explored how the peculiarities of the victim-centred English education system, particularly in London, may have been a causal factor on such a nihilistic outburst. This can be found here

Shelagh Delaney RIP

2011-12-20T11:06:00.000-08:00

My obituary on the playwright Shelagh Delaney for spiked-online. It can be found here

Can Conservatism Survive the 20th Century?

2011-12-20T10:53:00.000-08:00

At the Battle of Ideas in October, I produced a strand that examined the changing character of 20th century ideologies. Key to understanding the shift in recent years has been the decline in influence of western conservatism. It might be an odd question for individuals on the Left to mull over, but it is important in understanding how and why the post-political terrain came about.

Prior to this discussion, spiked published an article that set out many of these themes in The Decline and Fall of British Conservatism. It can be read here.

Horrors Live Review

2011-12-17T02:56:00.000-08:00

Second live review for John Robb's wonderful Louder Than War website. This time of The Horrors back in October...

The Horrors
The Roundhouse, Camden, London

Only those with tin ears have been ‘surprised’ by The Horrors sonic muscle. On account of their youth and subscription to textbook Goth aesthetics, they were dismissed as jokers in the pack four years ago. But for anyone with musical references beyond the first Libertines album, there was always more going on here than, say, The View or The Automatic. At their flick-knife sharp best, The Horrors chartered a similar psychotic territory to sixties garage freaks like The Monks and 13th Floor Elevators. As their still underrated debut album, Strange House, makes clear, they nailed that shiver ’n’ shake, voodoo rock’n’roll absolutely right.

Despite being endorsed by Chris Cunningham (he directed ‘Sheena is a Parasite’) and being produced by The Bad Seeds cerebral drummer Jim Sclavunos (he did ‘Courting in Fives’); The Horrors appear uncomfortable with their first album incarnation. Only ‘Sheena is a Parasite’ makes an appearance right at the end. Instead, The Horrors more or less alternate between the Mercury nominated (which always sounds like Guardian readers giving you ‘permission’ to like a band) Primary Colours and current album, Skying. Selling out The Roundhouse is another important notch on The Horrors’ old-fashioned ‘getting-big-by-album-three’ journey.

So far at least the Southend quintet haven’t overly impressed live, alternating between a sound that lacked punch and a sound that became ponderous. Clearly emboldened by the soaring beauty of Skying, tonight any tentative stage shuffling has been shown the exit door. Whereas the less successful tracks from ‘Primary Colours’ once sounded like unsigned Manchester bands grappling with The Chameleons, now their texture and Can-like attack have an enveloping quality. ‘Three Decades’ and ‘Scarlet Fields’ have a sonorous edge that was partly absent two years ago.

By playing these two albums side-by-side, there’s also a noticeable step-up in song writing skills too. The proto-rave jitters of ‘You Said’, all barmy horns and insidious sequencers, displays a knack for grafting melodies that sneak up on your subconscious. New single ‘I Can See Through You’ was pounded out relatively early and, with its luminous keyboard riff on green, filled out The Roundhouse’s spherical horizons brilliantly.

Indeed with ‘I Can See Through You’, The Horrors excursion into John Hughes-era Simple Minds/Psychedelic Furs is a masterstroke for a number of reasons. As once U2 stadium chasers, Simple Minds have been a pariah band for a couple of decades. No one would surely borrow their shimmering bombast for fear of equal derision? But The Horrors understand – like anyone else who owns New Gold Dream and Sparkle in the Rain – that Simple Minds were once heart stoppingly brilliant. That’s right, they were. It’s this mix of knowingness on something ‘uncool’ but quietly fantastic that lends Faris Badwan’s Kerr-esque ‘La-la-la-la’ its grin stretching appeal. And on ‘Still Life’ in particular, such open mindedness offers there own handsome rewards. Elsewhere album centre-piece ‘Moving Further Away’ refines an earlier debt to Krautrock and tonight its eight glorious minutes don’t feel nearly long enough.

Nevertheless there are still one or two minor shortcomings which, as ever, are cruelly exposed on stage. A reliance on My Bloody Valentine FX touches is a tad over familiar in 2011 and, on ‘Endless Blue’, features the sort of filler riffs that Blur clumsily re-cycled on padded out Modern Life Is Rubbish tracks. And while they now possess an authority live that they previously lacked, their capacity for reinvention doesn’t extend to theatrics. This is a no-frills, heads down, promote-the-album with zero quips or surprises.

Still, when it’s an album as strikingly good as Skying, playing with such a straight bat is not necessarily a bad thing.

Eleanor Friedberger: Live Review

2011-10-01T11:16:00.000-07:00

Platform Café, Bar & Terrace, Hackney, London (Thursday 29th Sept)

‘Um, this is another new song,’ declares Eleanor Friedberger tentatively, ‘I guess not all the songs from my album would work up here’. The album in question, Last Summer, is Friedberger’s debut solo album and tonight is her inaugural UK appearance without her brother, Matthew, and the Fiery Furnaces set up. It’s a strikingly low-key appearance, too, just Friedberger and an outsized semi-acoustic guitar. We’re unfortunately deprived of her band’s berserker tendencies, wherein their merry go-round time signatures induce a freaky sort of mania. The lovely, 70s AM radio embellishments that adorn her album, all glowing mellotrons and late summer saxophones, are at times sorely missed too.

Still, as the instantly breezy ‘My Mistakes’ makes abundantly clear, Friedberger has the songwriter chops to fill out a Boho bar anyway. The nod to girl group heartbreak, ‘Heaven’, and the soaring defiance of ‘I Won’t Fall Apart’ lose little in pared down translation. She is also a lyricist of high pedigree, too, and the Spartan set up only draws attention to her articulate, storytelling gifts. In the early days of Fiery Furnances, her ragged pile up of smart wordplay was a little too arch for some, but in recent years her words convey emotions of genuine longing and regret.

The slightly Joni Mitchell air of tonight, particularly on the non-album new songs, suggests that, free from the pummelling sonic demands of her parent band, solo mode is where estrangement, loss and nostalgia can be dwelt upon. After nearly a decade fronting New York’s ultimate hipster band, Friedberger seems to be mulling over events long before ‘Gallowsbird’s Bark’ floored indie kids worldwide. The wistful tone that she slips in and out of on the album is more readily felt tonight and no bad thing. Only the Prog-psyche shimmer of ‘Inn of the Seventh Ray’ echoes her daytime musical occupation. As she crouches down by an armchair, as a way of ‘coming off stage’, and dressed in preppy-geek gear that only she carries off well, Friedberger lets out a sly grin. Any signs of apprehension have been banished. An intimate triumph.
Neil Davenport

From SlutWalk to Social Mobility

2011-08-04T04:15:00.000-07:00

Back in May, I penned a piece on the SlutWalk Protests which argued that feminists are playing the victim card when, in fact, law enforcers take sexual harassment very seriously. And in keeping with a sex theme, my piece on the sexualisation of mainstream media, with references to Katie Perry's exhibitionism , polarised opinions amongst spiked readers.

My response to the phone hacking scandal was to note how the Guardian have campaigned previously against other newspapers and companies they morally disapprove of. I called this 'the revenge of the middle classes.' Today, my obituary on kitchen sink novelist Stan Barstow noted how social aspiration had real meaning some 50 years ago. (Pictured, Joanne Whalley as Ingrid in the Granada adaptation of A Kind of Loving)

Fallada's Alone in Berlin

2011-05-01T04:38:00.000-07:00

One of the most fascinating literary developments this year has been the ongoing news stories on Hans Fallada and his 1946 novel, Alone in Berlin. Read my essay on why it has rattled Europe's cultural elite.

Upside Down: Creation Film

2011-04-30T23:05:00.000-07:00

As documentary films go, Upside Down - the story of Creation records 17 year existence - was a sharp, confident, engaging and senses juddering re-telling of a familiar indie fable. The two hours flew by and enjoyably so. Footage of the Mary Chain, The Loft (yes, I know), TFC and, in particular, My Bloody Valentine was genuinely thrilling to see and hear in a big screen environment. Ex-Creation bands and talking heads were open, considered and likeable throughout (even a normally reticent Bobby Gillespie) and, of course, McGee was a reliable 'force of nature' presence.

Already, criticisms of the film seem to rest on what they've left out rather than what's on the screen. It would, of course, have been impossible to cover every Creation act in any detail, but there was a sense that this was the 'Shine Compilation' version of Creation's history - the big hitters, the big sellers, the ones we've heard to death from 'Destroy the Heart' to 'Loaded' through to 'Rock'n'Roll Star' and so on. As such, Upside Down felt one-sided, too eager to lionise the big successes at the expense of smaller detail, as if Creation was only measured by sales figures alone.

The film made great play of being a label of 'misfits and weirdos', but the label's eccentricity - namely its often erratic output and mind boggling gestures - were largely absent. No mention of Les Zarjaz, Mishka or Kevin Rowlands trannie covers album or, for that matter, tales of McGee playing Tom Petty down the phone at 4am in the morning or the whole Baby Amphetamine scam. Even in big stories, the credibility is in the detail.

As an alternative we had copious amount of drugs and booze stories. In case we didn't get the drift that Creation was, you know, a rock'n'roll label, a map of Britain was helpfully done using white powder. By all accounts pills and nose-bag substances did play a big part in the labels later years, but at times it felt like we were stuck with Lad mag, coke bloke bores. Mysteriously, though, no mention of how all this paved the way for 'Be Here Now' and, arguably, the downfall of the label's iconoclastic instincts.

Perhaps the most weary aspect of Upside Down is the realisation that Creation's world was rather small, despite their admirably big ambitions. The early years of the label was driven by a desire to act out great rock'n'roll stories and, to their credit, they created some of their own. But the fixation on pop culture and rock'n'roll alone meant Creation's imagination only existed within these boundaries. Whereas Rough Trade was informed by the squatland politics of the 1970s and Factory had Wilson's art aestheticism and mercurial intellect, Creation tended to stop at old photos and biogs of Brian Jones and Arthur Lee. Creation only led you to want to buy more records rather than seek out obscure films, novels or neglected art movements. John Harris cited this as a particular criticism of Britpop in his Last Party book and, with barely any representation of Creation's imaginative gestures, wind ups and daftness in the film, it could equally be applied here. Still, terrific soundtrack and, for McGee and Gillespie, that's what matters.

Calling time on London's counterculture

2011-04-17T03:23:00.001-07:00

Closing London Underground

Reviewing London Calling: A countercultural history of London since 1945 by Barry Miles

In London’s Time Out magazine, barely a week goes by without officialdom slowly suffocating the life and soul out of London. One week it could be local councils and the police making it difficult to keep clubs open in Shoreditch on ‘residential safety’ grounds. Another week there is news that, as a result of recent music licence regulations, The Luminaire venue in Kilburn has closed down. The iconic 100 Club in Oxford Street has only managed to stay open recently due to the patronage of wealthy rock stars, but other smaller places are threatened too.

A few years back the hyper regulatory Westminster Council, as well as enforcing drinking zones everywhere, hassled Korean restaurants on stringent and sometimes unworkable ‘healthy and safety’ grounds. While last autumn, Hackney Council ordered a shop owner to paint over his rather beautiful mural of a giant rabbit for ‘environmental’ reasons i.e. they thought it was an eye sore. And now there’s a rumour sweeping seasoned drinkers that the late night bars around Hanway Street, popularly referred to as the ‘Spanish Bars’, are to be closed down too.

Many friends have reacted with genuine horror to this - and with good reason. The Spanish Bars are one of the few remaining late-night drinking dens in the west end. And they are, without doubt, one of the few remaining signposts of an altogether unsanitised, unregulated but exciting London. The bars are always heaving, the atmosphere is debauched, reckless and, at any moment, you wonder whether the floor will give way as revellers stamp their approval to Northern Soul belters, mod-garage rip snorters and perspiring disco classics. Yes, the toilets stink and the carpets would keep archaeologists busy for months but, naturally, that’s all part of the charm.

It’s this demise of west end bohemia that publisher and author Barry Miles addresses in London Calling: A countercultural history of London since 1945. It’s a timely, exhaustive account of all the artists, poets, musicians, hustlers, club owners and publishers who made Soho their own over the past sixty years. As a renowned counter-culture figure himself, Miles set up International Times and was an NME journalist in the Sixties and Seventies; he has lived to tell the frontline story. He reminds us that the phrase ‘Soho isn’t what it used to be’ is a frequently heard claim since the 1940s onwards. Only now, however, does Miles sadly concede that London’s infamous bohemian enclave is a shadow of its former self.

The journey leading up to its demise is predictably enthralling, gripping stuff. Starting with the self-styled ‘Fitzrovia set’, featuring writer Julian McLaren-Ross and poet Dylan Thomas, we’re in a boozy whirl of ‘gin and pop’ lunches, the Fitzroy Tavern, debates at the Wheatchief and slanging matches at ‘the French pub’ before it closes. Miles is clearly a gifted raconteur and his gossipy observations rise above a knocked-off ‘cut and paste’ history tome. He genuinely cares about the people and the geography he is covering. The finest chapters are ‘the Long Forties’ and ‘Sohoitis’ whereby Miles’ ear for revealing anecdotes brings to life struggling writes and artists, whether Lucian Freud and Colin Wilson, and their eventual stratospheric impact. Soho’s bit players, whether French prostitutes, book-shop owners, barfly lushes, café-dwellers and shop workers, are as tightly woven into the Soho story as famous names like Frances Bacon, Ronnie Scott, Malcolm McClaren and Boy George.

By doing so, Miles avoids any teeth-grating pop elite snobbery, particularly against ‘straight society’ (in both definitions of the word) and is frequently of the opinion that Soho was ‘open to anybody’ willing to be open minded. Miles’ solidarity with Soho gays and lesbians, and newly arrived post-war immigrants, isn’t used to take the moral high ground against the masses’ alleged ‘narrow minds’. Instead, it’s a genuine reminder of what toleration and moral autonomy once properly looked like. The artist George Melly reckoned that Soho was an area where ‘the rules didn’t apply’ and while some saw it as a ‘no go area’ for respectability, Melly countered that the area’s password was simply ‘tolerance’.

Soho’s importance in the 1950s was that it became a refuge against claustrophobic conformity right across the class spectrum. Many of the young Soho dwellers at the time, fresh in from the continent or provincial Britain, had no fear of living in rancid beds its, squats with no electricity or, in the case of Colin Wilson, sleeping rough on Hampstead Heath. It’s a far cry from today when a substantial number of young people, particularly it seems in London, choose to live at home with the folks. Miles shows how a genuine culture of freedom fosters fearless self-reliance, albeit one sustained by an informal network of support and solidarity too. A key feature of London bohemia was when established artists cultivated ‘open houses’ enabling waifs and strays to pop in for nutritional and intellectual sustenance. London’s artistic set clearly didn’t need lessons from Tory leaders on what self reliance really means.

Against all this, London Calling is no gushing hagiography either. With toleration comes judgement and Miles isn’t restrained on exposing the excesses, snobbery and lazy indulgences of Soho bohemians either. Nihilistic types are given a withering dismissal throughout, while the likes of MacInnes, William Boroughs and other Beatniks are criticised for their ‘sadistic fetishism’. While the Beats’ patronisation of Notting Hill’s black community for ‘being Negroes rather than equals’ is said to be unforgivable. Damien Hirst and Keith Allen are painted unfavourably for their cocaine-fuelled boorishness in The Grouch Club during the Nineties. For Miles, Soho was a place to go ‘for the conversation, the ideas, the alcohol and the bonhomie…Soho and its environs were the stage, the various cafes, pubs and clubs were the stage sets and in them, propping up the bar, were the characters, talking and talking’. Man-children like Hirst and Allen getting their knobs out in The Groucho Club was a sign that Soho’s intellectual repute had now become, well, rather flaccid.

Although the chapters on punk are slightly rushed and over-familiar by now (Jon Savage’s England’s Dreaming is endlessly quoted), Miles challenges punk history orthodoxy by daring to suggest casual racism was rife and that the Rock Against Racism festival was cosmetic and flimsy. By the early Eighties, punk merely accentuated gormless inarticulacy and tabloidesque fearmonging and Miles deserves credit for refusing to follow the revisionist line on punk’s impeccable ‘left-wing credentials’. Oddly enough, though, Miles does have a blind spot on the daft, misanthropic indulgences of COUM Transmissions and industrial band Throbbing Gristle, declaring that they were ‘courageous…in taking on the police and the establishment to break new ground artistically, musically and politically’. In truth, Throbbing Gristle act as a cautionary tale of when being ‘outrageous’ and ‘controversial’ for the sake of it slips into wanton degeneracy. Eating used tampons, as Genesis P. Orridge did at their notorious ICA festival in 1976, sounds like a Chris Morris style parody of ‘cutting edge’ artists. If they pioneered anything, it’s the current conceit that vulgarity exposes the masses ‘stupidity’ as repeated by numerous Hoxton types, TV presenter Jonathan Ross and comedian Frankie Boyle.

Interestingly enough, Miles sees the beginning of the end of London bohemianism with the arrival and then consolidation of Thatcher in the Eighties. This is a pretty astute point, especially when every other pop historian argues that Thatcher singularly galvanised a radical opposition and alternative. True, an underground of sorts did flourish during this period, mainly in alternative music, but the established left was in retreat and a new culture of instrumentalism, born out of ‘There Is No Alternative’, stifled a genuine artistic underground. As an old left-wing radical himself, Miles is right to recognise how the demise of radical politics has lead to the demise of a vibrant public life and bohemian culture.

In more recent accounts of London, he attacks the changes to the education system and its effects on London’s artistic community. “The greater commodification of art (was) exacerbated by the disastrous move of amalgamating the art colleges into universities and colleges to that instead of having the freedom to experiment and explore dead-ends, to make mistakes and chop and change, students are now subject to regular assessment and evaluation as if they were studying maths. The aim is now to produce workers for the ‘arts industries’, a ghastly new hybrid created by arts consultants who know nothing about the actual creation of art’.

These are all good points, but surprisingly there’s nothing on the impact of the smoking ban or the tighter drinking regulations set up by Westminster Council in Soho. Instead, Miles is delighted that the establishment’s moral censoriousness on sex, particularly on oppressing gays and lesbians, has faded into the background. Indeed, New Britain watchwords of ‘social inclusion’ and ‘non-judgementalism’ gives the superficial impression that Soho liberal values are now so commonplace that the area has lost its meaning. But false declarations of ‘tolerance’ has simply redefined censoriousness to mean ousting the ‘intolerant’, while comprehensive regulations of public life has gone much further than occasional raids on Soho strip joints and sex shops.

Although there was a liberalising agenda in the late 1960s, Miles points out that sections of the state and moral entrepreneurs still attempted to enforce traditional bourgeois morality in Soho. The problem with state clampdowns justified on moral grounds is that they can be open to contestation and hostility. Throughout London Calling, the opposition to the police raids and drug busts takes the forms of ‘how dare middle class moralisers tell us how to live our lives’. But what if state regulation is apparently objective, neutral and simply acting in everybody’s best interests? What’s wrong with ensuring that safety and precautions are observed at all times?

With the benefit of hindsight, the 1986 AIDS panic was such a remarkable and important shift for the authorities. Here, Conservative politicians abandoned traditional morality to talk ‘objectively’ about a ‘health and safety issue’ that affected ‘everybody’. By posing this form of regulation in the apparently moralising free language of people’s health, state intervention of this kind was beyond criticism. In fact, to challenge such justifications was seen as cynically putting people’s lives ‘at risk’, as many radical activists said at the time.

So while traditional morality became useless in re-establishing state authority, the watchwords of health, safety and risk did so with minimal opposition. Miles notes how London’s rave and club scene were quickly neutered to meet ‘Metropolitan Police standards’ but doesn’t recognise how this was achieved through the script of risk and safety established in the mid-Nineties. Since then, further regulations on nightclubs, music venues, smoking bans and public drinking have all been justified for health rather than moral reasons. The sanitisation of a once fearless enclave like Soho is the dismal, end result.

It’s not entirely doom and gloom. The Manifesto Club’s Josie Appleton is right to point out that there’s a growing anger and opposition to hyper-regulation and the shrinking of public life. In the wider media there’s increasing column inches devoted to the calamitous state of pubs in London and elsewhere. Barry Miles’ appropriately titled London Calling is a welcome addition to such opposition as it shows, with passion and verve, why freedom and proper toleration has never been more important.

This essay is the original, unedited version of the review that appeared in March 2011 Spiked Review of Books.

Putting childishness into perspective...

2011-04-14T02:30:00.001-07:00

One of my current sociological interests is the UK's inability to socialise children properly (see the article on Laura Hall below). Sometimes this expresses itself in a fear and nervousness towards children, at others it wrongly judges children to be 'just like adults' and thus makes lopsided judgements against them. So it was with Rebecca Black last month whose vanity pop single, Friday, attracted disproportionate hostility. My piece here attempted to put the twitter rage into perspective..

Adult society, young people and booze

2011-01-30T02:12:00.000-08:00

There was something instantly annoying about the Guardian weekend's interview with the tabloid's favourite boozer, Laura Hall, last week. It all reeked of a society that has become babyishly unworldly and bereft of understanding on the follies of youth. As she put it, anyone would think she went out killing people. There has also been a BBC3 documentary on Ms Hall, My Battle With Booze, and my response to both can be found here.

What I didn't mention in the piece, though, was how Hall's anecdotes in the Guardian interview were often hilarious. Although her penchant for self-harm - her arms look like she's been wrestling with a cheese grater - hardly paints a cheery picture either. Still, no excuse for attempting to hike the price of booze for the rest of us...

Kick 'Corporate Skills' Out of the Academy

2011-01-25T03:46:00.000-08:00

Despite the 'standards' rhetoric of Michael Gove, the instrumentalism of education continues as some universities are now awarding marks based on 'work-place relevance'. When Durham University's English department subscribe to such philistinism, you wonder whether the game is already up. Have a read of my response to this here

Trish Keenan RIP

2011-01-14T08:18:00.001-08:00

It is with great sadness to hear the passing away of Broadcast's Trish Keenan this morning, 14th January 2011. Keenan died of illness related to catching pneumonia whilst on tour in Australia. Broadcast were one of my all time favourite bands, a fully formed, immaculately conceived art-electronic outfit who made records of staggering originality. Obsessive perfectionists, they only made 3 proper studio albums and two albums worth of EPs and singles during their 15 year existence. They had incredibly high standards and refused to release anything that rested on established laurels or material that would be considered throwaway. And for a band who relished the studio, they could be a toweringly powerful live band when their daring mood got the better of them. Their performance in an old cinema in Brighton, October 2000, would be in my Top Ten of utterly memorable gigs.

I had the fortune to interview the outrageously talented Trish Keenan for Jockey Slut magazine back in February, 2000. After a string of brilliant EPs, they were about to release their debut album, The Noises Made By People, for Warp records. Sharp, funny, combative and beautiful, she was the ideal frontwoman for a band this achingly cool and hip. Their final release, Witch Cults of the Radio Age, was in collaboration with The Focus Group and they always stimulated interest with any news of an EP or rare live appearance. Today was not the kind of news you'd want to hear about Broadcast. The Midnight Bell sends condolences to her family and friends.

December Articles

2011-01-02T07:54:00.000-08:00

Three years ago the now UK Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, said that the current economic recession would be a 'good thing' as it would encourage a sort of 'stay at home' society - surely every Tory MPs dream scenario for the masses? Of course, at the time he was attacked for such foolhardy comments and even George Monbiot expressed regret for saying similar 'bring on the recession!' statements too. Nevertheless, the idea of Austerity Britain as a vision for the future still animates the political class and intelligentsia. This is why the Royal Society advocated enforced austerity as a way of combating climate change. My scathing response to the poverty mongers can be found here

As part of a spiked round up of 2010, I penned another chattering classes against the masses type piece. Truth be told, this could have been developed much further than the piece that was published, though no doubt there will be plenty of time to return to this theme. In 2011, cultural class hatred is not going to go away....

Finally for December, I also penned a review of Francis Spufford's Red Plenty for Spiked Review of Books. A highly enjoyable and inventive book all round, but marred by the usual anti-growth cynicism and green austerity that passes for a contemporary vision of the future.

Do we live in a class society?

2010-12-03T19:20:00.000-08:00

At the Battle of Ideas conference this year I spoke, alongside a panel of others, at the session Are we still a classless society, Mr. Cameron? An audio recording of this debate can be heard here. A loose transcipt of my introductory speech was published at The Independent's blog page here. And recently, a much longer version of this article was published at the Battle of Ideas website as part of the Battles in Print series here.

Rooney - a role model for a another type of striker?

2010-11-10T13:24:00.001-08:00

A few weeks back I penned a 'defend the indefensible' type of spiked article that appears like one of those 'this will be big news for you sunshine' rants designed to bait the liberal left. This time it was on Rooney's 100% pay rise that he managed to prise from Manchester United. Interestingly enough, Simon Jenkins in the London Evening Standard yesterday penned an article attacking London Underground workers - who I championed in the Rooney piece - in exactly the same what-about-the-poor manner as the anti-Rooney journalists before hand. Politics, a funny old game, innit?

The Obligatory Sally Hawkins Mention

2010-11-06T03:45:00.000-07:00

Two recent articles of mine drooled over the divine Sally Hawkins - we all have our indulgences. The first was a cautiously positive review of Made In Dagenham, the 'from the makers of Calender Girls' film on the 1968 strike over sexual discrimination. The director went for a glossy mainstream take on a bitterly faught dispute and it's lack of grit means its far less interesting or absorbing than it could have been. Nevertheless, it's sympathetic portrayal of working class communities, particularly on relationships between men and women, means it's watchable and enjoyable enough. And, of course, Hawkins shines brightly here and single handedly elevates it from sub-Richard Curtis fare.

One thing I didn't mention in the review was that, alongside the innacurate Socialist Workers Party namecheck, an outfit called the Revolutionary Communist Party was mentioned too. Was the writer referring to Ted Grant's outfit or did they seriously believe that the next step was being sold around Dagenham in 1968?

The second excuse to mention Sally Hawkins was in my review of Mike Leigh's Another Year whereby I mention how a lot of women found her performance in Happy-Go-Lucky infuriating. Unfortunately Hawkins is not in the excellent Another Year but Leigh regulars Ruth Sheen, Jim Broadbent and Lesley Manville are and they are on mesmirising form throughout - particularly Manville as the painfully tragic Mary. I'm in agreement with Peter Bradshaw's review in the Guardian that Leigh has moved on from the loopy, cartoonish dialogue of his earlier films and are an altogether better proposition.

Indeed, re-watching Life Is Sweet again this week felt like the work of an altogether different director. Sure, Horrock's Nicola has screamingly funny lines, but it's borderline Carry On in places and all the slapstick stuff with Spall's Aubrey is truly dreadful. Likewise, although the 1980s college scenes in Career Girls are great and, again, some genuinely funny lines, it's still a very slight and hesitant film - a long way away from the startling power of his earlier TV films like Mean Time and, of course, Abigail's Party. Twenty years on, he's now making some of the best British films available.

At Time Out's Q&A session with Leigh last week, he was on engaging, combatative form, dismissing lazy quesitons with a 'that's absurd' response and comically riffing on the notion on whether Another Year was inspired by the Good Life or not....

Put That Book Back On The Shelf

2010-09-11T08:43:00.000-07:00

The recent figures on the decline of adults using libraries has sparked an on-going debate about the future, and meaning, of public libraries. This blogger's response can be found here.

Europe's Identity Crisis

2010-08-31T03:10:00.000-07:00

Two recent articles explore the question of troubled European identity. Firstly, a review of The People's State on the old German Democratic Republic (GDR) and then a review of the film on French songwriter and national icon, Serge Gainsbourg. In their seperate ways, they explore how the question of what it means to be a European citizen is either difficult to ascertain or fraught with national shame.

1, 2, 3, 4 Festival

2010-07-26T04:35:00.000-07:00

For The Midnight Bell, school was out for the summer on Friday 23rd July and this festival in Shoreditch was quite an inviting way to start the holidays proper. It provided an opportunity to check out hipster acts such as Dum Dum Girls and Wavves, the bands you read about but don’t get the chance to see during ‘school nights‘. Venturing into Shoreditch for a day out was kind of dotted with nostalgia, as this was once a regular haunt for free-lance music scribes and I cut my teaching teeth at the Shoreditch Community College near Shoreditch Park too.

It made sense that some of the day’s billing tapped into 40something nostalgia. A key draw for many of us was the return of ex-Earl Brutus members plying their glam-kraut stomp under the moniker The Pre New, although it wasn’t quite the tribute to their former band as initially expected. Apart from a closing Navy Head, what followed was a fairly ordinary garage rock set with little of the menace, mischief and hilarity that made Earl Brutus such a glorious one-off. It must gall them that Kasabian have more or less copied their musical template and emptied it of any intelligence, wit and style, but that‘s always the drawback for true pioneers. Still, we liked the adoption of the old British Rail logo as their own. Always an eye for iconography these former art terrorists.

On the main stage, Peter Hook was taking a former iconic moment - Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures - and dismantling it with a rusty crow bar. When New Order started playing old JD tracks a decade ago, it sounded thrilling and vital. But Hook on his own with hired hands, including Happy Mondays vocalist Rowetta, could only reduce this to a Stone Roses at Reading Festival 96 experience. Oh alright it wasn’t that bad, just stupendously ungainly and foolhardy - why reduce this key moment in post-punk to a night out at The Witchwood in Ashton-under-Lyne?

Bobby Gillespie’s super group, The Silver Machine, were the outright winners of the day. Together with Glenn Matlock, Oasis/Who drummer Zak Starkey and Primal Scream bandmates Andrew Innes and Barrie Cadogan they pile-drived through a consistently invigorating set of covers of MC5, Creation, Troggs and the Flaming Groovies. Gillespie can sometimes be a cynical performer, but here free from pressure of expectations and/or rock’n’roll conformity, there was a passion, verve and enjoyment here that was translated into a dizzying performance.

Festivals are commonplace in a gig-frenzied market, but 1,2,3,4 had enough individuality and vitality to stand out. It essentially appealed to hipsters of, um, all ages and there was no sense that the organisers were out to rip off punters with inflated ticket and drink prices or shoddily organised facilities. And the fact that this was in Zone 1 London, and not out in a Kent farmyard, made it all the sweeter. Shoreditch twats no more?

Comedy of Terrors

2010-05-12T07:15:00.000-07:00

Chris Morris’s depiction of jihadists as dunces who hate slags and Maccy D’s is scarily accurate.

In a climactic scene in Chris Morris’s debut feature-length movie Four Lions, armed police ask aspiring jihadist Waj (Kayvan Novak), who is about to blow up a kebab shop, what his demands are. ‘Um, we don’t have any demands’, he replies, gormlessly.

In a single stroke, Morris – and his fellow writers, Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain of Peep Show fame – rip apart the supposed political pretensions of deluded jihadists and also have a sly cackle at the Islamists’ expense. We should expect nothing less from three of the sharpest, most forensic comedy minds in Britain, and, on an observational level at least, Four Lions works very well.

The film opens with a botched attempt to record a martyrdom video, which is deeply absurdist and also captures the narcissistic degeneracy of jihadism in all its non-glory. Omar (Riz Ahmed) is a family man who functions as the ‘brains’ of the dunce outfit. He is outwardly confident but emotionally brittle and deeply confused. He receives an email about attending an ‘uncle’s wedding’ in Pakistan – jihadist code for attending a Taliban training camp. Once there, he finds himself way out of his depth and accidentally fires a missile launcher in the wrong direction, destroying a nearby Taliban camp.

Disgraced, Omar is sent packing back to Sheffield where he starts to hatch murderous plans with hot-headed white convert Barry (Nigel Lindsay), who wants to bomb mosques in order to make Muslims rise up, and Fessal (Adeel Akhtar), a complete child clown who looks more like Badly Drawn Boy than a radical bomber boy. Along the way they hook up with Hassan (Arsher Ali), a Tupac-loving rapper who wears a bomb belt made of party-poppers (‘It was the gesture that messed ya!’).

Morris has apparently done years of research, and it shows. One of the most acute parts of the film is the interaction between Omar and his more traditionally religious brother. ‘Don’t give me that look’, says Omar. ‘You’re doing the face again’, he says, as his brother indicates growing disapproval of Omar’s apocalyptic fantasies. This cleverly echoes the experience of the 7/7 bombers from Leeds, who, contrary to received wisdom, radicalised themselves rather than being brainwashed at a local mosque or by some hook-wielding preacher.

So what, exactly, is getting these ‘four lions’ all fired up? Omar makes passing, unconvincing references to ‘Western imperialism’ and says: ‘Just pretend you’re from Gaza.’ But he actually spends more time railing against McDonald’s, consumerism and the ‘kaffir slags’ who go out dancing on a Friday night. That’s right: they possess some very mainstream liberal prejudices. The four men certainly can’t get fired up over any personal experiences of racism. Every white person they meet earnestly befriends them in a casual, ‘I’m-not-prejudiced-me’ kind of way. Even the police are jokey with the foursome just before they’re about to launch their suicide mission. This captures well a tiptoeing culture around young Muslims today.

What Morris and Co. are driving at is that in the absence of a real problem (such as racial discrimination) with real solutions (such as politics), phantom threats with no resolutions loom ever-larger in these young men’s demented imaginations. As Barry says when their car breaks down: ‘Jews invented spark plugs to control global traffic.’ Their overall outlook is an incoherent, adolescent mish-mash of conspiracy theories, second-hand ‘hurts’ against Muslims, and the ‘yo bro’ patter of gangsta-rap devotees. The depiction of these men as anti-consumerist and anti-slag is especially perceptive, echoing Brendan O’Neill’s description of wannabe Islamic militants as ‘the armed wing of the chattering classes’ who carry out ASBOs: ‘Anti-Social Behaviour Outrages.’

In order to keep the characters believable, Armstrong and Bain have cut back on the hyperreal, road-drilling profanities they deploy in Peep Show and The Thick of It. Anyone expecting rapid-fire laughs will be disappointed. But then, it’s not that kind of film. Surprisingly for Morris, there is a rough, knockabout feel to much of the action, as bungling bomb after bungling bomb goes off and the remaining protagonists are busy running round like beheaded chickens. The training of crows to become feathered suicide bombers is a particularly funny moment – but the high quota of slapstick is likely to wrongfoot many Morris fans.

The softening of Morris’s kamikaze approach to satire (although Islamic militants and the culture in which they emerge are hardly soft targets) is, I suspect, a result of the storm provoked by his Brass Eye special on paedophilia on Channel 4 in 2001. Back then, Morris was depicted in the press as a Hoxton-ite nihilist messing around with taboos simply in order to shock straight society. In fact, Morris was making a serious point about the degraded obsession with child abuse and the poisonous impact of this obsession on adult-child relationships.

No one could accuse Four Lions of glorifying suicide bombers simply to make some sort of ‘shock jock’ statement. In fact, Morris’s quieter, less bombastic direction furnishes the film with an oddly moving quality. As we are essentially looking at the world through the bombers’ eyes, an unsettlingly atomistic and lonely tone creeps into the film. Panning shots of Britain’s urban landscape – often with no people in sight – give the impression of a society with no real human bonds. When the foursome decide to launch their suicide attacks as part of a fancy-dress marathon run, the collision between other runners, well-meaning shop staff, Omar’s affable work pal and the apocalyptic mindset that the four have created makes for uneasy but enthralling viewing. Riz Ahmed, who plays Omar, has a similar intensity to Robert Carlyle and is particularly brilliant as a man drowning in his own confusion.

There are some good gags in Four Lions and I suspect many more would come to life on a repeat viewing (as was the case with last year’s In the Loop). While slapstick may be an acquired taste, this is still a bold, fearless and unnervingly accurate demolition job on both goonish jihadists and their equally deluded radical apologists. Britain’s undisputed master of whiplash satire has done it again.

This article was originally published at www.spiked-online.com

UK Election 2010

2010-05-08T08:20:00.000-07:00

As predicted by many pundits at the start of the election campaign, the UK has a hung parliament – the first time since 1974. And at time of writing, Gordon Brown is still clinging onto power – or squatting - by his chubby finger nails courtesy of an unwritten constitutional convention. It all adds up to one of the oddest general elections in living memory, not least the disjuncture between opinion makers, pollsters and the British public. As Brendan O’Neill has already explored on spiked, their screeching prediction that Nick Clegg would smash the mould of British politics looked embarrassingly off-beam by Friday morning. Acres of favourable TV and press and still the Lib Dems actually lost seats rather than the expected miraculous breakthrough.

For the Midnight Bell, Cameron’s cardboard Conservatives did slightly better than expected or feared. By Friday afternoon, Cameron’s oily slick PR delivery on the news was already inducing mild nausea. It’s not so much that Cameron is too-posh-by-half, but that what he says is so utterly devoid of any real meaning that it becomes impossible to listen to him. Cameron actually had an easy ride by the media, with the Murdoch papers backing him all the way, and it was only Time Out’s Rachel Halliburton who put him under any real interview pressure. Of course, Brown was never fit to run the country and his dithery weakness as leader, and that stupendously revealing gaffe, only amplified these glaring horrors during the election campaign. Brown’s refusal to let go of power indicates a singular lack of public awareness. No doubt Brown will cling on as leader of the Labour Party rather than doing the decent thing and resign (though subsequent events have proved this prediction wrong!).

And so the big talking point of the election campaign, the televised leadership debate. To a certain extent it briefly stimulated interest in the campaign, but the viewing figures were woefully down on the predicted 20 million. Alongside boring viewers to death with the paucity of their ideas and vision, it reduced an active general election to a passive couch-and-pizza affair. As a sign of contempt for the public - or they simply couldn’t be bothered - canvassers were rather thin on the ground. The entire campaign was seemingly conducted in TV studios, save for the odd dash around the country by party leaders who then revealed that they didn’t like the public very much at all. Nevertheless, people wanted to discuss the election as serious adults and be part of civic society. So while there maybe understandable cynicism towards the major parties, there wasn’t cynicism towards the idea of democratically elected government. The public are open to future orientated ideas but none of the parties rose to the challenge.

As for the minor parties, the dreadful Greens won a seat in Brighton and already friends who live there are quickly stock piling proper light bulbs. The Midnight Bell was delighted that the BNP failed spectacularly in Barking and lost all of their council seats as well. Whilst not indulging in the pantomime hysterics of the radical left, it was important that the BNP did badly in order to silence the white-working-class-equals-racists-in-waiting sentiments of the political elite. A lot of their authority rests on the dangerous notion that freedoms should be curtailed to save society from the racist mob. Curiously enough, the fact that Nick Griffin was pelted with tomatoes by white working class youth was barely highlighted in the press. This was clearly a case of behaviour not fitting the preordained script written by liberal broadsheet editors and journalists.

There were moments of enjoyable farce during the election. Whilst obviously horrifying and very nearly tragic, Nigel Farage’s plane getting tangled up in his UKIP banner and crashing had a whiff of Carry On slapstick about it. The guy dressed up as a ghoulish Jesus in Cameron’s constituency was something else again. But he still wasn’t as bizarre as Andrew Neil’s VIP boat party as part of BBC 1’s election coverage. In between constituency election announcements, we’d be offered up political opinions by such political titans as Joan Collins, Bruce Forsyth and a very pissed Martin Amis. Neil’s giddy, hyper-ventilating interview technique contributed to the cheesy queasiness of it all. The message from this odd looking boat party was that if you were not here then you’re nobody (although most of us would prefer pins poked in our eyes than climb aboard). Still, the aloof-from-the-public atmosphere of Neil’s boat party, whilst spouting absolute drivel, perfectly captures the uneasy tone of the General Election.

Temple of Fortune

2010-05-03T08:47:00.000-07:00

Last week two of Julian Temple’s films on Seventies alt.cult Britain, Oil City Confidential and The Filth & the Fury, were broadcast on BBC4 and FilmFour respectively. Both films clearly demonstrate Temple’s innate sensitivity and understanding to this era and a striking knack for bringing these events to life in vivid, electrifying detail. Raw footage, often previously unseen, is deftly spliced with reflective talking heads from the period and film sample interludes to carry the narrative along (although on Oil City Confidential this does become an aggravating intrusion towards the end).

Out of the two films, Oil City Confidential is the strongest and most fascinating due, in part, to the largely uncommented upon Dr. Feelgood and the alluring strangeness of the Canvey Island landscape. Wilko Johnson, Dr. Feelgood’s charismatic guitarist, is part unhinged eccentric, part erudite thinker and wholly, immensely engaging. Curiously enough, although Oil City Confidential and The Filth & the Fury overlap historically, with Glen Matlock praising Dr. Feelgood in Oil City Confidential, the historical lens here could be decades apart. Whereas Feelgood’s Britain is all communal bonds, joyous knees ups in Canvey Island pubs and the freedom of the open road, Punk Britain hones in on the sheer absurdities of Seventies Britain (inexplicable fashion, cosy TV, socialised into accepting stupidity) and its resolute solutions: pent-up aggression, destroying generational deference and transgressing the postwar consensus of genteel Britannia all round.

Arguably, both sides of Britain existed side by side but Temple is astute enough to highlight the joyful – rather than downbeat – rawness of Seventies Britain in Oil City as a way of revealing just how sanitised and hemmed in British society is today. The life-affirming spirit and pint throwing pub chaos in both films suggests that the taming of public life today is almost complete. Could you imagine a smoking or drinking ban even being suggested in 1975, let alone enforced by law?

Watching the Filth & the Fury again, though, John Lydon comes across as contradictory rather than merely contrary. On the one hand he extols the virtues of being obnoxious, dangerous and ammoral, the next he denounces the late Nancy Spungen for being…. obnoxious, dangerous and ammoral. Likewise, his angry criticism of Virgin records for commercially exploiting Sid Vicious’ death is denounced, Catholic style, as ‘evil and immoral’. And while he expresses the righteous class anger common to 1970s kids, he’s quick to denounce ordinary people as royalist sheep and conformists in the same breath too.

Still, Lydon throughout is unsurprisingly thoughtful, compassionate, human and damming, while Cook, Jones and Matlock retain an honesty and integrity throughout the film. The punk story has been flogged and resold many times, but not as humane or as insightful as this. Even if Temple never makes another film again, his reputation is forever sealed by these two stone cold classics (although his Pandemonium from 2001 is an underrated peach.

Damon & Naomi @ The Luminaire, 1st May 2010

2010-05-02T05:15:00.000-07:00

“Many thanks for braving the awful weather and transport difficulties,” says the ever softly spoken Damon Krukowski, as if rationalising to himself and us the notable lack of numbers at The Luminaire. True, too much rain and not enough trains did make the journey to Kilburn a weary slog. And then there’s the irritation of de-quiffed hair and the constant damp-dog smell to put up with too. At this point it’s customary to say in passing ‘hey but they were worth it’ and, in actual fact, they were.

As Anglophiles (ex)New York’s Damon Krukowski & Naomi Yang have a good understanding of British aesthetics, sensibilities and embrace them accordingly. Damon waxes lyrical about the Luminaire and like-minded souls who keep London’s tiny indie-firmament going. The Midnight Bell always likes the fact that D&N choose to play rather off-kilter venues – BoHo cafes in Dalston, King’s Head pub in Crouch End – that helps furnish their gigs, whatever the numbers, with a sense of occasion and atmosphere.

Tonight, it really is just Damon & Naomi and their parred down set up – ringing acoustic guitar and Roland keyboard – only amplifies their warm, caressing melancholy. The duo are in fine vocal form, too, with Naomi’s arched high-notes illuminating the entire venue effortlessly. A handful of new songs sound surprisingly sparky while older one are still magnetically sad and sullen. As always the couple are chatty, funny and engaging. Damon’s become fascinated by Magic FM – "London traffic jams are less painful with that on" – and wishes one or two of their songs would be rotated regularly on there. After all, reasons Damon, don’t they play soft rock love songs as well? “All love songs, all of the time would be a great slogan for the station,” says Damon cheerfully.

The Guardian’s Guide mistakenly suggests that this tour was to promote Domino Record’s reissuing of Galaxie 500's three studio albums. It would be unfair to suggest they’re still bitter about Dean Wareham’s decision to split Galaxie 500 up nearly twenty years ago, but there is a faint aura of scorned lover brittleness about the pair in relation to Wareham. What perhaps compounds their sense of injustice is Wareham’s prickly judgements about them in his strikingly honest memoir, Black Postcards. Wareham complained about their ‘bloc vote’ position in Galaxie 500 – ‘the curse of being in a band with a couple’ – and complained that they complained all the time, characteristics he put down to New York psychobabble and attitude (Wareham is from New Zealand).

Nevertheless, Wareham also states how much he admires Damon’s poetry and Naomi’s miniature paintings and praises them as ‘brilliant and artistic and likeable’ with just a little hint of envy. Indeed, it could be said that while Damon & Naomi have maintained a refined aesthetic quality since their 1992 debut, More Sad Hits, Wareham’s Luna quickly became Just Another Band releasing live albums and doing arched Guns’n’Roses covers. Damon & Naomi are clearly not Rick and Bruce in relation to Dean’s Paul Weller.

As it happens, though, Damon does mention Domino’s reissues and thanks them for “keeping the memory of our old band alive”. For many of us who were poleaxed by their implausible cool beauty twenty years ago, they’re pretty much impossible to forget anyway. With the help of The Clientele’s Alasdair MacLean and James Hornsey, they play a respectful cover of Galaxie 500’s ‘Blue Thunder’ with MacLean’s solo pin-sharp enough to clear away the storm clouds. There’s an encore of the deliciously mournful ‘Turn of the Century’ from D&N’s Playback Singers before we’re heading back into Kilburn’s cold rainy streets. Definitely worth the soaked over-coat and ruined hair for.

Death To Trad Rock

2010-05-01T06:48:00.000-07:00

Compadre and comrade of Midnight Bell, John Robb, has recently published a fascinating book on the early 1980s post-punk scene. Midnight Bell recommends it unreservedly and you can read a comprehensive review of it here.

Election 2010

2010-05-01T06:44:00.000-07:00

With only 6 days until polling day, this piece exposes on the latest Twitterstorm the anti-masses sentiment so common around the Labour Party. Prior to this, a useful piece examining how the anti-drinking lobby are now targeting Clubs and societies at Universities. Read it here

Rage Against The Masses

2010-02-20T03:36:00.000-08:00

Over the Christmas holiday period, my piece on Rage Against The Machine Vs X Factor generated a lot of email blather. It can be read here Many felt that including such totems of relative naffness, such as Eddie & The Hotrods and Ian Dury, somewhat deflated the central argument. Whichever way you want to look at it, such inclusions are only highlighting how excrable Killing In The Name really is?

Whatever Happened to the Class Strugge?

2010-01-07T03:21:00.000-08:00

At the end of November 09, I was asked to speak at Worker's Liberty conference, Ideas For Freedom. The session asked the question 'Is the class struggle out of debate?' You can read a transcript of my speech, 'Whatever Happened to the Class Struggle?' courtesy of spiked-online. Worker's Liberty response to IOI's contribution was the rather predictable and baffling 'right-wing' jibes. This can be found here.

Chav Bashing

2010-01-07T03:15:00.000-08:00

Back in very late October, at the Institute of Ideas Battle of Ideas conference, I took part in a debate called Chav Bashing: Demonising the White Working Class? (see previous blog entry). You can here the introductions and debate in full here

Faulty Wiring

2009-08-27T10:34:00.000-07:00

In an odd way, there's something astute about shadow home secretary, Chris Grayling, name-checking The Wire recently. He probably knew that it would generate more column inches than if he hadn't mentioned the Baltimore-based cop drama at all. What's perhaps more dishonest is the predictable sniggering from broadsheet liberals who believe they're above the snobbish old Tories. As my article on Wire-sponsored debacle shows, liberal-leftists are even more vocal on condemning society's lower-orders. This article lays out some of the themes for the forthcoming debate on Chavs at this year's Battle of Ideas, along with the journalist Suzanne Moore on the panel too.

Low Intellectual Horizons

2009-08-22T04:25:00.001-07:00

I've written quite a lot on education over the past 5 years, but this piece - A Low Level of Educational Ambition - examines broader social trends, rather than narrowly on state policy, to explain why education really isn't what it used to be.

A month before that, I'd also taken a timely pop at the ridiculous fawning of Charles Windsor. Remember when we all thought he was mad?

New Articles Floating On The Web

2009-07-15T01:14:00.000-07:00

Back in March I reviewed Channel Four's adaptation of Red Riding and also reviewed political satire In The Loop the following month for spiked-online. On the website MetaMute I penned an essay, 'Dialectic of Anti-Enlightenment', examining the Frankfurt School and comparing their findings of The Third Reich to that of Cambridge historian Richard J. Evans.

One of the most heart-stiring books of recent years is Leslie T. Chang's Factory Girls an excellent account of the human benefits of economic development for the people of China. This was reviewed for the Spiked Review of Books.

Recent and Not So Ruminations

2009-03-14T03:49:00.001-07:00

Since the last time I updated The Midnight Bell, a number of articles have slipped out into cyber space. Perhaps one of the most controversial articles I've written, at least being argued against by friends, is my take on the Brand/Ross/Sach's debacle back in November. "It sounds like the Daily Mail", said one friend. Judge for yourself here

Appropriate for a blog named after a fictional pub by Patrick Hamilton, back in December I penned another article bemoaning the current war against pubs and public drinking. In the Times this week, an article revealed that 3 pubs a week are calling closing time for good with the loss of some 20, 000 jobs. The government's drive to force adults to stay in seems to be working. What a disgrace.

Sticking with redundancies and recessions, in January I noted how an alarming number of commentators were championing poverty as a way of curbing our 'greed' and 'disgusting' eating habits. Thanks for that. This topic was also dealt with in more detail through reviewing David Kynaston's Austerity Britain for Spiked Review of Books back in February.

Not In Her Name

2008-10-25T01:28:00.000-07:00

Read my review of...

Julie Burchill & Chas Newkey-Burden's Not in My Name

at this month's Spiked Review of Books

And in the previous week, read my criticisms of Dr. David Fowler's new book on the 1960s and the Beatles here

The Future of Community

2008-10-15T03:19:00.000-07:00

I have contributed a chapter, 'Minorities, Multiculturalism and the Metropolitan Experience', to a new book out this week called The Future of Community. The collection of 14 essays, including contributions from Andrew Calcutt, Stuart Waiton and Dave Clements (amongst others) examines governmental policies that aim to create 'a sense of community'. The Pluto published book shows that the notion of community is actually under threat from the very thing intended to nurture it: relentless government intervention. Instead, The Future of Community argues that creating the conditions for communities to truly flourish requires creating a space free from official intervention.

The Future of Community can be purchased from Amazon here. There is also a website accompanying the book at www.futureofcommunity.org.uk

Blaming Poverty Solely For Crime? That's a bit poor...

2008-09-07T11:33:00.000-07:00

Two spiked articles of mine were published very recently. Firstly, a response to UK Home Office Minister, Jacqui Smith's document that the recession will lead to a spiralling of crime. I've also reviewed the bizarre Rebel, Rebel 'protestors handbook' here

Blaming Affluence for Crime? That's a bit rich...

2008-08-21T05:46:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, spiked-online published my article Blaming Affluence for Crime? This was written specifically in response to New Labour MP David Lammy's article in last week's New Statesman, the UK's left-leaning political weekly. It seems Lammy's main concern is to blame and attack affluence and consumption for fuelling the spate of tragic teen murders in London this year. His hypothesis represents a dramatic turn around on long-established leftish thinking, which always identified poverty as having some influence on anti-social behaviour. David Lammy's article 'Youth Violence Is Not About Race' can be read here

Noah & the Whale Interview feature

2008-08-20T00:48:00.000-07:00

Charlie Fink, the 21 year old singer and songwriter behind sunshine folk outfit, Noah and the Whale, is doing his utmost to appear unfazed by his current and rather glorious predicament. Whilst a lot of young people his age would be negotiating post-University repayment loans, Fink is negotiating the final running order and guest slots for when he and his band headline The Roundhouse in Camden tonight. With a top ten single, 5 Years Time, engraved into the playlists of radio stations everywhere, Fink’s display of stoic modesty eventually gives way to an incredulous grin.

‘Yeah alright, it feels completely bizarre,’ he says emphatically, ‘to be honest it all just seems weird, especially when, after I wrote it, I’d never envisage it having any cross-over appeal. I thought it was quite a low-key song.’

We’re in a noisy café in King’s Cross near to where Noah and the Whale are rehearsing for forthcoming live shows. With any luck, these will help cement their steady ascendancy from world-of-mouth buzz to mainstream stardom. The other consolidating element is the release this week of their debut album, Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down. As anticipated, the band’s skipping breeziness, arching jangle and sunny élan soars high, but Fink’s frequent bouts of downcast gloom offers a rather more absorbing journey than the perky singles suggests. It’s simple stuff, but no less magically affecting. And anyone who can turn whistling and ukuleles into this summer’s ubiquitous hit surely has a knack for spotting big possibilities in the slenderest of premises.

For Fink, this is all about getting ‘the right balance’, between rudimentary ‘anti-folk’ and studio-harnessed grandeur, between the intimacy of threadbare lo-fi and the warm embrace of mainstream pop. ‘The key to it all is actually having a basic form of songwriting,’ says Fink, ‘I think people like Daniel Johnson, Jeffrey Lewis and Jonathan Richman. These were all going back to an essence of songwriting that’s something I want to tap into. The flipside is Radiohead’s building an album entirely in the studio and that’s what I’m also into.’

Nevertheless, anyone found using handclaps, triangles and, yes, those pesky ukuleles will inevitably be dismissed outright as insufferably ‘twee’. True, Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down is unlikely to impress Enter Shikari fans, but Noah and the Whale aren’t cultivating innocence or nostalgia for kid’s TV programs. In fact, throughout the album there’s a palpable quest for adventure, exploring both the wider world and big universal themes. As 5 Years Time makes clear, Fink is looking towards an optimistic adult future, not dwelling on a mythical childhood past.

‘I only started to write songs properly after I had traveled across the Mediterranean and India that I had something to write about,’ says Fink. ‘Once I had discovered a proper subject matter, the songs just fell out. The album effectively examines love, death and time and how these things can compromise each other. I’m trying to examine the value of each. But I’m not trying to be conclusive with these songs and, thankfully, people read lots of different meanings into the lyrics. Some of my friends who are religious interpret a religious slant on the lyrics, although I’m not explicitly writing about that.’

Fink attended a Catholic primary school in Twickenham and shrugs ‘I guess at an early age I vaguely believed in something, but it was never been forced upon me’. He started playing guitar and writing songs by the age of 12, spent a gap year traveling before taking up American Studies at Manchester University. He dropped out after a few months citing ‘boredom’ and stayed in Manchester further honing his impressive array of songs.

Back in London, by early 2007 he recruited his brother Doug on drums – ‘except we were called Johnny Hat Racket back then,’ says Fink helpfully – with fiddler Tom and bass player Urby completing the settled line-up. The band’s name is a hybrid of one of their favourite films, The Squid and the Whale, and that film’s director, Noah Baumbach. From the beginning they attracted some impressive collaborators. Emmy the Great is the backing singer you can hear on 5 Years Time while the equally feted folkie, and Fink’s ex-girlfriend, Laura Marling sang with the band as well. Fink ended up producing her first EP and her acclaimed debut album, Alas, I Cannot Swim.

‘Laura was frustrated at being lumped in as a pop singer to start with,’ says Fink. ‘She liked what I was doing and, at that time, I was producing demos for friends, nothing massively serious. So producing Laura’s stuff was no big deal, it simply felt a fun, natural thing to do’.

They quickly learnt their chops supporting Feist and Broken Social Scene and were further nurtured by tiny indie label, Young and Lost, releasing a few singles along the way. Since then, expectations for Noah and the Whale have been as large as the titular mammal and, thankfully, Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down affirms our initial affection and ratchets them up a notch. Fink, though, is already devising the next quantum leap.

‘I’ve found the next album’s songs subject matter because I’ve sorted out the philosophical theme,’ says Fink. ‘Whereas the debut album deals in quite broad strokes, the next album is much more personal and intimate. Actually, we’re going to play the first song on our next album as the last song tonight.’ A man, it seems, who is definitely unfazed.
Neil Davenport

Who Gives A Folk?

2008-08-18T13:38:00.000-07:00

Last month I spoke at the Time Out Battle Satellites event, Who Gives A Folk? alongside singer Barb Jungr, Telegraph music critic Ivan Hewett and Time Out music editor Eddy Lawrence. And in the run up to this event, I penned a piece exploring past and recent trends in folk for spiked-online. Surprisingly, the event was favourably reviewed in the New Statesman and discussed at length at the Culture Wars website.

Recent Spiked Articles

2008-07-12T09:37:00.001-07:00

A number of recent spiked articles haven't been signposted on my blog this year, so here's a brief round up, for what its worth.

A few weeks ago I was surveying misanthropic Greens who cheerfully said 'Recession? Bring It On!' and the month before I was berating the Reactionary Firebrands of Real England in the May, Spiked Review of Books.

During the London Mayoral Elections I argued that the charade was tantamount to candidates Squabbling Over A Polluted Fiefdom while Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky was perhaps are more truthful and absorbing portrayal of London life than the candidate's grim manifestos.

On the 40th Anniversary of Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood speech, I explained what the furore revealed about Establishment and liberal thought then and now. And further historical comparisons were made between supermarket bashers today and those during the Third Reich in Germany. Elsewhere I also argued that the colonisation of family life was complete after the government is setting parental guidelines on their children's video games consoles, while at the start of the year I explained why radical feminists are now against the freedoms of young women. Further comments on these missives are welcome...

Accelerate from the past

2008-04-24T04:32:00.001-07:00

REM's Mike Mills talks to Neil Davenport about where it all went right

Veteran bands often have their history devised and distorted by those a million miles away from the creative hub itself. Ask REM. For years now, the US alt-rock giants have been hostages of a frequently unflattering portrait. It goes something like this: when drummer and leading band songwriter, Bill Berry, left the band in 1996, REM have never been the same since. In fact, they’ve become crushingly complacent and dull – two words you’d rarely associate with a band once as creatively vital and mysterious as this. Apparently, REM have found some reprieve.

The band's new album, Accelerate, is considered a complete and startling return to form, a jolting reminder of Lifes Rich Pageant/Document era and those galloping, riff-strapped anthems. The ten year creative drought is over and REM can reclaim their alt.rock crown once more, right?

Mike Mills, REM’s shaggy-haired, bespectacled bassist and backing singer, is nodding carefully to 'the Accepted Fable of REM’s Decline'. He’s bemused at the increasingly bold yet simplistic narrative of REM’s career path and mildly irritated that the rather more illuminating, zigzagging detail has been lost in the process.

“I remember that Out of Time received lukewarm reviews on its release and was seen as a set-back after Green,” says Mills in an imperious hotel in Piccadilly Circus, central London. “Also, does anyone remember that Fables of the Reconstruction (REM’s third album from 1985) was also panned on its release as well? The idea that everything was golden up until Bill left the band isn’t true –like any band we’ve had our creative ups and downs."

It seems the real point of notable departure for REM was attempting to sustain the level of ubiquity after their mammoth selling albums, Out of Time and Automatic for the People, back in the early 1990s. The distortion-heavy and rather prosaic follow-up, 1994’s Monster, sashayed around the world’s stadiums just when everyone became bored of hard-driving, American rock. By the time of REM’s brave, experimental and quietly absorbing New Adventures In Hi-Fi two years later, the band were even lower on the zeitgeist radar.

“Well the pendulum swings both ways,” says Mills, “you can’t be the biggest band in the world all the time. We never expected to reach the heights we did reach. And, of course, no band can sustain that”.

And yet, REM did have a creative and commercial re-birth rather more recently than current wisdom admits. In 2001, the warm and luxurious melodies of Reveal was their best effort since Automatic for the People and, fact fans, it outsold the Berry-era albums, Document and Green, too.

Nevertheless REM’s fourteenth album, Accelerate, is indeed something quite special and capable of inducing cartwheels in the REM faithful. Armed with cocky, strident and blissfully tuneful songs, it often recalls that hiccupping velocity found in the best of their late-eighties albums. Even better, though, is that the album avoids that era's stadium blowouts which now sound painfully dated. Instead, Accelerate’s pile-up of stripped down jangle-rockers and brittle folk ballads untaps REM’s mercurial magic almost without blinking. How did they do it?

“During out last tour in 2005 we felt more like a fully functioning band,” says Mills cheerfully. “Some of the songs emerged during soundchecks and they immediately sounded exciting. It also sounded as if we were onto something fresh and vital. From then on it just got better and better.”

There was a conscious effort with Accelerate to avoid the pitfalls of 2004’s flat and directionless album, Around the Sun. “With Accelerate we limited the amount of time in the studio or the amount of songs we bought in,” says Mills. “All that worked to our advantage. I can understand why there are comparisons with Lifes Rich Pageant, but for us we don’t look back as we don’t know how to - that’s for other people. Accelerate is REM in 2008, not REM in 1987.”

Accelerate also features plenty of singer Michael Stipe’s barbed attacks on George Bush and the calamitous Iraq war. There is no doubt that REM are Good Athens Gents, but it’s a little wearying to hear, yet again, the soft-option protest against the Republicans and being all for ‘the environment’. It’s also galling to be told, by multi-millionaires, that everyone else needs to consume less. Cheers. Rather than this making REM appear angry, engaged and righteous, it all feels like being trapped in a broadsheet colour supplement forever. What’s sexy or mysterious about that? To be fair, though, the band were trailblazers for eco-doom politics that's become all too pervasive now.

“Do we feel vindicated? Er, no,” says Mills. “We’re more relieved that more people are aware of its importance as an issue. People talk about saving the planet, we say the planet will be fine - it’s the people you need to be worried about.”

By contrast to the apparent on-coming apocalypse, Mike Mills appears a relaxed and calm man. He won’t admit it, but he exudes the quiet satisfaction of someone whose proved REM’s bring-back-Bill-Berry doubters wrong. But when were they completely right anyway?

“REM is our lifework and I have no regrets with how things have gone,” says Mill earnestly. "But it does feel great to be loved again.”

Digging Cave's Herculean New Album

2008-03-08T07:28:00.000-08:00

Most musicians who hit 50 have long seen their best years behind them. So why does Nick Cave gets better as he gets older?

Even though Nick Cave has been making and promoting albums for nigh on thirty years, he is still furious that anyone wants to know about his wife, his kids or what he has for breakfast. “I find it all so…invasive, so demeaning,” says Cave in bullish mode. Of course, bemoaning ‘personal questions’ has long been a weary complaint of those in the public eye. But the way Nick Cave splutters ‘I find it all so exasperating’…well, you can’t doubt his genuine and sincere bewilderment. A closed case, then, of another musician who’ll only talk steadfastly about scales, hi-hats and his art. Ho hum.

But with Nick Cave, all this doesn’t really mater. Right now his Indian summer of a career, his staggeringly prolific work-rate and, yes goddam it, his art are for more scintillating topics to mull over than asking whether he has mellowed with age or whether he likes Brighton Pier.

Today, Cave is in London, at Mute Records HQ in west London, chatting enthusiastically - and affably – about his and the Bad Seeds 14th studio album, Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! By anybody else’s standards, clocking in album number 14 would have been greeted with a polite but indifferent shrug. After all, did anyone organise ticker tape parades for the arrival of, say, REM’s New Adventures in Hi-Fi album or Sonic Youth’s Murray Street? Isn’t there often a feeling that such ‘can’t-quite-let-go’ mainstay artists should be put out to graze or simply negotiate afternoon slots at the Guildford festival?

With Cave it’s all rather different. When he says ‘I’m enjoying what I do now more than ever’, again his sincerity is striking and rings true. Last year he was having riotous fun with his dirty-garage-rock side-project, Grinderman. In 2004 he climbed a new career and commercial peak with the tour de force double album, Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus that twinned thunderous gospel-blues with mystical and hallucinatory autumnal folk. And now here comes Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! which by dint of some horizontal soul-funk diversions and balmy exotica rippling throughout, is a very singular Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds album. True, the Sister Ray riffs and swampy atmospherics is in keeping with their subterranean netherworld, but this time Cave and his Bad Seeds have aimed partly for the hips and they stand up tall in the process.

“Well, we’ve always been sexy,” deadpans Cave. "Basically, most of the funkier songs I wrote on a little toy organ that belongs to my 7 year old child, and it has this great little drum beat built in. I started off writing songs for this record on a piano and they were simply Bad Seeds songs that you know and love. I wanted to get away from that. We were aiming for a lightness of touch with this record.”

Indeed, this is a Nick Cave album packed full of surprises. So while the title-track (and recent single) sounds judderingly and quintessentially Bad Seeds, its boozy, chanting chorus has the faint whiff of a spit’n’sawdust bar out in the dusty, Australian outback. Nick Cave as Paul Hogan, Oz-ambassador? Crikey.

“Well I take that as a supreme compliment,” says Cave. “To me the Bad Seeds music is Australian. Recently I was inducted into the Australian Hall of Fame, which was weird in itself – the Bad Seeds weren’t because they were seen as imposters! But I’ve always believed that what we’re sending out to the world is authentically Australian music.”

Cave insists that, while drawing on American and European cultures, there’s an expansive atmosphere in their work that’s undeniably Australian. The new album’s closing track, ‘More News From Nowhere’, gloriously evokes Australia's searing horizon as luminously as The Go-Betweens ‘Cattle and Cane’ and The Triffids ‘Born Sandy Devotional’ did before it. ‘Yes, that’s about right’ says Cave cheerfully, ‘but it’s not as if we’re Midnight Oil either!’

A glance at the lyric sheet, though, and such panoramic vistas are quickly clouded over. Scattershot images of the Holocaust, grinding poverty and infectious diseases, wanton hatred and corrosive self-loathing fall from the speakers like ash from a crematorium. Charles Bukowski takes a ribald kicking at one point, while Cave has invited back his lyrical Talisman, Jesus Christ, back into the fray. At one point he snarls ‘how come he only loves a loser?’

“There’s too much of a culture of confession and redemption everywhere,’ says Cave carefully. ‘Everything now has to have a sob story attached. I don’t buy into that at all and I find it all disgraceful. But I’ve always been fascinated by Jesus as a character and the stuff that he said.”

Arguably, Cave feels more comfortable writing in the third person than opting for lyrical open heart surgery. His 1997 album, The Boatman’s Call, infamously detailed his break up with another singular singer-songwriter, P J Harvey. In fact, although The Boatman’s Call has long been hailed as a masterpiece, he seems embarrassed about that album’s content and non-committal about the brooding ballads. ‘I don’t have endless Boatman’s Call available at hand anyway,” says Cave. “I like writing in the third person because I can go in other places with my psyche that I can’t if I’m just writing in a diary form. I’m not really interested in documenting my life through songs at all. Obviously I have made one or two records that have done that, but I am concerned with being personally attached to songs rather than particular issues. This new record feels very personal to me, even if it reads like a grotesque travelling carnival of characters and situations.”

A few years back Cave revealed that he works a 9 to 5 routine – complete with suit and tie - in his office when writing for a new album. When pushed on this today, it’s clear he enjoys the decidedly non-rock’n’roll incongruity of embracing the Protestant work-ethnic.

“I’ve always worked hard,” he says, “and there’s always people telling me how to do my job. To work in the way that I do is seen as demeaning to the creative process, that I’m supposed just to lie around on silk cushions and wait for the muse to find me. Most of that criticism comes from people not involved in making art. In truth, if you are involved in making art you have to sit down and do the work. To write well, I have to do that. It’s not like there’s a matter of choice. Songs for me don’t just drop out of the sky whilst I have a blonde sitting on my lap. It’s quite an excruciating process. I say all that but I’ve never enjoyed being in the Bad Seeds as much as I am now. Our new album shows that.”

The Changing Man

2008-01-04T03:59:00.000-08:00

Interview feature with Paolo Hewitt on his Paul Weller biography...

In February 2006, London-based author and broadcaster, Paolo Hewitt, realised that an intense, close and volatile friendship had withered and died. There has been no phone-calls, no emails and no postcards suggesting some kind of reconciliation. Hewitt, though, isn’t expecting one. For that once close-friend was Paul Weller, the English songwriting legend who famously split The Jam up in 1982 at 24-years-of-age and never looked back; the man who abandoned The Style Council in 1990 after record company politics and critical derision took their toll; the man who went from ‘anti-rockist’ soul boy in the 1980s to archetypal ‘Dad rocker’ with his current, and largely lamentable, solo career. Weller is clearly an individual who believes you can only explore fresh territory by burning bridges to the past. And that, it seems, applies to close-friends and committed lovers as it does music directions and haircuts.

All this is carefully mapped out in Hewitt’s biography Paul Weller: The Changing Man, which takes a successfully distinct approach to the well-worn rock-biog format. Rather than laboriously chart Weller’s 49 years with acres of interviews, anecdotes and press clippings, Hewitt surveys Weller’s life and times through judiciously selecting key songs from Weller’s vast repertoire and using that to shed insight on Weller's outlook and internal demons. Think of Ian McDonald’s sainted Beatles book, Revolution in the Head, crossed with personal diary entries from a life up close with Paul Weller. It’s neither a dirt-spilling hatchet job, nor a fawning white-wash, but an absorbing and illuminating study on what motivates and moves this celebrated songsmith.

“A publisher came to me suggesting I do a Revolution in the Head style book on Paul Weller,” says Paolo Hewitt, “but I didn’t fancy doing a technical, he used a D-minor chord type of book. I was more interested in taking a psychological look at Paul as I knew him so well. I started thinking about some of his songs, ‘A Town Called Malice, ‘Wild Wood’, ‘Wings of Speed’, and how I could use that to show how art and other ideas inspired him. I quickly realised that I had a really good way of writing a biography here”.

To Hewitt’s credit, there is no bitterness, no shrill carping and back-biting, just a tinge of nostalgic sadness coupled with an objective assessment on Weller’s strength’s and weaknesses as both musician and friend. “Any kind of emotional turbulence I had about the fall-out had gone,” says Hewitt, “and so I could look at Paul in the same way I would John Lennon or other musicians I hadn’t met. It was a very dispassionate process”.

The other approach Hewitt developed was to use Antony Sorr’s The Dynamics of Creation to assess whether Sorr’s thesis, that artists have a different psychological make-up to the rest of us, applies to Paul Weller. Hewitt believes it does. While his once good friend was loyal and generous, warm and witty, he could also be thoughtless and mean, vicious and vindictive – and usually in the same evening. By the end of The Changing Man, you wonder why Hewitt tolerated the latter’s outbursts so often, especially when Weller’s increased alcohol in-take hot wired his already short-fuse temper.

Hewitt blames the adoration he received during the Britpop years for ‘derailing Weller’ and turning him into a decadent rock star. He started ingesting stronger substances than simply lager. He hung around other musicians like Noel Gallagher, Tim Burgess and Primal Scream. And he even hung around star-studded parties and clubs, something that the once anti-music industry Weller studiously ignored.

“A night out with Paul can go either way, as he’s governed by moods”, says Hewitt, “especially when alcohol is involved, though he’ll say that himself in interviews. Most artists are incredibly self-centred, the world revolves around them, and everything else comes second. Nevertheless, I only write this if it reveals something about his music. It’s never done in a News of the World, sensationalist way – it is all about what sparks the music”.

The hallmark of any good biography is how freshly informative it is and The Changing Man has that in spades. We learn that Weller’s suspicion towards America and American popular culture is so deeply ingrained, he can’t even bring himself to watch Martin Scorsese’s films or genius US comedy such as Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiasm. After the experience of Red Wedge, the Labour Party’s ‘yoof recruitment campaign’ in 1986, he distanced himself from party politics because he was stunned that Labour politicians went socialising with Conservative MPs. And while it disillusioned him with parliamentary socialism, Weller's sense of class and injustice, that so often barked out on The Jam’s tightly incendiary singles, remains a constant compass in his life.

“I think the Style Council articulated that clear cut battle between the Tory Party and the working-class better than anyone then,” says Hewitt of Weller's most musically and politically radical vehcile after The Jam. “He was writing deeply political songs, but was never crass slogans like the Redskins. It was more that he wrote vignettes on how Thatcher’s policies affected working-people’s day to day lives. But the really great revolutionary thing about the Style Council, which in the end wound up more critics than supported, was how they were always aspiring for more – and that came out in their broader influences, emphasises on different music and better aesthetic styles – even if this wound up the donkey jacketed left”.

Indeed, through out Hewitt’s book, it’s clear that Weller’s cherished Mod ideals have been another grounding compass and guiding light. Arguably, though, today that’s somewhat tainted with 1970s rock-star trappings and week long guitar solos to match. For Hewitt, though, the measure of Weller is all down to his contradictory personality, his infamous ever changing moods. “This is a man who basically goes to bed not knowing quite what who he will be when he wakes the next day,” says Hewitt. “It is the journey between his various states of being that this book seeks to examine.”

Is New Labour's Music Manifesto Anything to Sing About?

2007-12-27T11:23:00.000-08:00

A couple of months back, BBC1 brodacast The Brick In the Wall Kids a documentary on what happened to the kids who sang on Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick In The Wall’ back in 1979. As reality documentaries go, it was fascinating in the same manner as the old 7-Up programmes were. And the programmes appeal lay in the evocation of all the real life dramas that most people go through: bad decisions and quiet regret, life-changing jobs and life-changing relationships. It was also fascinating for another reason, too: how music teaching has slid off the educational scales and how little enthusiasm there is for learning-for-learning’s sake.

The star of The Brick In the Wall Kids was a grizzled, bear-like music teacher called Alan Renshaw. Back in 1979, he managed to sneak his music students out to sing on ‘Another Brick in the Wall’. What was clear from the programme was how Renshaw’s passion for learning music inspired his students to value learning-for-learning’s more broadly, too. You can tell from his former pupil’s eulogies that Renshaw’s passion for music, rather than any vocational orientated pressures, had gripped them like nothing else. So much so, that one former student, a 42 year old married mother, was now doing her best to get her sons into a top-flight prep school.

The head teacher over Renshaw said that he probably wouldn’t fit into today’s education system, what with its emphasis on target sheets, quotas and yardstick to see how ‘economically viable’ it all is. Indeed, even the government recognises that music lessons have fallen by the wayside as instrumentalism has risen and learning instruments has fallen. To this end, New Labour has introduced a ‘Music Manifesto’ and the ‘Sing Up’ initiative to try and enthuse a new generation of school students into learning music. Will it hit all the right notes?

As you’d expect, the initiative is not really so much about learning scales, and it’s not about learning to sing either, but the educational equivalent of a communal hug. In ‘Sing Up’, the criteria will be that everyone must participate and no one is left out. It seems the hymn sheet put in front of the kids is the mantra of ‘participation is everything, learning is nothing’. It’s often said that music lessons were always a poor relation in comprehensive schools compared to ‘proper’ subjects. I’m not sure. I’m about the same age as the adults who sang on ‘Another Brick of the Wall’ some 27 years ago, and went to a similar comprehensive school. From my experience, the school made its best effort to pass on a passion for learning music, even if most of us were reduced to playing the triangle in the school orchestra. As the example of Renshaw shows, those running the education system back in the 1970s not only believed that music was worth passing on in comprehensives, but that we were deemed good enough to receive it, too. Is it the case today that New Labour believes that classical music and ordinary pupils deserve one another? The Music Manifesto suggests the opposite.

It is worth remembering that 4 years ago, the government apparently made the GCSE Music Exam more ‘relevant’ by introducing a section related to Britpop. Are we really training a future generation of world class musicians by getting them to recite such towering examples of music as, say, Shed Seven’s ‘On A Friday’ or Dodgy’s ‘Staying Out For The Summer’? Or do such measures speak decibels about this government’s crass populism? Unfortunately, the Music Manifesto and Sing Up are perhaps even worse than that. These measures take their cue from risible corners of X-Factor. Perhaps the government believes that memories of Darius Dinesh singing ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’ is the kind of ‘shared experience’ the kids should be emulating?

In reality, learning scales and learning an instrument takes years of dedication and practise just to begin getting right. Not for nothing is classical music considered to be the highest art-form: it is the most demanding on those learning it and the most demanding on those listening to it. This is why, in the present climate, music lessons are as much out on a limb within education as studying, say, physics or pure maths. Learning the piano or violin or cello is no doubt viewed as too ‘difficult’, too ‘demanding’ and, potentially, too ‘damaging’ on an individual’s self-esteem - especially when they’ve hit a duff note.

So rather than investing more resources on proper music teaching, the Music Manifesto has all the gravitas and high expectation of singing in a local lock-in. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with singing lessons, or even learning lung-busting anthems of great repute, but this initiative has nothing to do with aspirations to be a great tenor, but a lowest common denominator that congratulates any kid who possesses a voice box. Learning music properly requires the kind of transformative development that this government seems inherently suspicious of. Rather than demand that pupils learn an instrument, Music Manifesto is all about relevance (i.e. children can speak and therefore, like can, sing) and bringing things to their ‘level’.

The only kind of instruments piloted in Music Manifesto is, predictably enough, of the instrumentalist kind. If you read much of the literature on Sing Up, the government are keen on it because they believe that an exposure to music at an early age improves ‘numeracy and literacy’ and therefore improves such quotas in education and probably the economy, too. This kind of spread sheet guff is hardly going to inspire anyone to study music-for-music’s sake, to become immersed in music’s power and beauty and aspire to become a leading player in a leading orchestra. All ‘Sing Up’ aspires to is that, whatever your background, you too can be part of an all singing, all participating community where you’re ‘free’ to express your ‘creativity’. But how can young people become creative when the learning of instruments and scales are not even on the agenda?

All in all, then, this half-baked initiative is just another brick in the socially inclusive wall. Is that really anything to sing about?

This is a transcript from the Battle of Ideas session ‘Teach the World to Sing?’

A round up of recent sp!ked articles...

2007-11-12T07:50:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a revisionist article on Mike Leigh's Abigail's Party, which can be found here

The week before I reviewed Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine while I was similarily critical of the recent Ian Curtis bio-pic, Control; and exasperated that some London bars are operating a Hat Ban in order that the spy cameras can get a better look at us.

Who needs 'community' police?

2007-09-27T02:05:00.000-07:00

A new article on spiked this week examines the changing roles and attitudes towards the police in recent years. in Boys in Blue: someone to watch over us the reaction to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann reveals how much demand there is for more extensive policing throughout society. Surely the Birmingham Chartists spirit of democracy and freedom is a better place to start?

Incidentally, this article landed pole-position in The Times 'best of the web' round up on their opinion webpages.

A New Conservative Kleimate

2007-09-14T02:33:00.000-07:00

Last night Canadian journalist and author, Naomi Klein, launched her new book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall at the South Bank, London. Prior to Klein going through her main thesis on 'shock therapy capialism', there was a short film by Klein and Alfonso Cuarón and Jonás Cuarón (Children of Men) to accompany the book. It was one of those fast-cut, MTV montage of images and diagrams to show that, hey, the world is a really bad place. Whenever video makers use footage of 1950s America, complete with ironic use of avancular conservatives narrating over the top, you know we're in the terrain of fifth form radicalism.

And so to The Shock Doctrine itself. As you might know from acres of coverage elsewhere, Klein's thesis is that present-day global capitalism took hold when its advocates learned to exploit disasters. After a disaster (war, tsunami, terrorist attack), you can push your agenda for worsening labour conditions, looser regulation, and pocket-lining exercises (Enron, Halliburton) while the reeling, disaster-struck population of the world has its attention elsewhere. All radical, agenda setting stuff on the destructive limitations of capitalism, right? Not quite.

What Klein is concerned about is the disruption caused by rapid, tumultuous social change. Aiming her fire on the likes of Friedman and Thatcher and advocates of New Right classical liberalism might appear progressively left-wing, but in the footnotes she is also hostile to the left-wing version of social change: revolution. During her speech, she sounded very similar to aristocratic conservatives response to the 1789 French Revolution, and later the Russian Revolution, and how 'shock tactic' political change by any stripe is best avoided altogether. After all, One Nation Conservatism emerged precisely to instill order and continuity as a buffer against the deference-challenging dynamic of the market.

Interestingly enough, it was Madeline Bunting from the Guardian, who interviewed/chaired last night's discussion, that proved more insightful. She challenged Klein by arguing that shock disasters can be positive because they can allow a society to start again and replace a previous order with a more progressive one. Indeed so. Why should rapid social change be viewed solely as destructive and terrible? Well, only if you have the Burkeian mindset of Naomi Klein, that is.

Alongside all this, Klein's thesis buys into and borrows wholesale from various manifestations of therapy culture. She argues that individuals are easily cowed and diminished by authoritarian 'shock tactics' and therefore are unable of fighting back. Aren't we incapable of getting over 'shock' and moving on? When does the 'shock' actually wear off? For Klein, in true therapy couch mode, it doesn't. She gives the example of the 1973 coup in Chile, but fails to mention that while Allende's Worker's Party was brutually crushed, there was still opposition to Pinochet throught out Chilean society.

Elsewhere, her assessment of the defeat of the British working-class isolated the 'shock' of the Falklands War, not the weakness and exhaustion of British labourism as the main contributing factor. Too often it seems that Klein is shoehorning her thesis onto events outside of any broader historical context. Overall, though, far from The Shock Doctrine reconstituting any robust subjectivism, Klein presents 'blue collar workers' as fragile creatures easily disorientated by the manipulations of 'shock tactic' politicians. As with much of the old British radical left, she ends up endorsing our victim-in-waiting-status all the way.

It's hardly a recipe for encouraging dissent and revolt, as some of her more fanciful supporters will inevitably claim. Then again, as Klein abhors the disruptive effects of social crisis and social change, perhaps that's just as well.

A Sense of Belonging?

2007-09-12T09:02:00.000-07:00

Bugle-blowing time I'm afraid, but I'm quoted in a new report on class identity in Britain. Below is the blurb for SIRC...

"This report focuses on the theme of 'belonging' in 21st century Britain. The notion of belonging, or social identity, is a central aspect of how we define who we are. We consider ourselves to be individuals but it is our membership of particular groups that is most important in constructing a sense of identity. Social identity is a fundamental aspect of what it is to be human.

In Britain today there is public debate suggesting that we are losing this essential sense of belonging - that globalization, for example, far from bringing people closer together, is actually moving us apart. We hear that our neighbourhoods are becoming evermore impersonal and anonymous and that we no longer have a sense of place. But is this really the case? Are we losing our sense of belonging, or are we simply finding new ways to locate ourselves in a changing society? This report seeks an answer."

The full report is here scroll down and you can download it in pdf format.

Recent Spiked Articles

2007-09-11T13:14:00.000-07:00

Today spiked-online published my response to New Labour's draconian proposals to make parents potentially pay for their children's stroppy behaviour at school. Not so much 'education, education, education' as 'detention, detention, detention'.

A few weeks previously, I reviewed Dana R. Fisher's brilliant analysis on outsourced activism for the Spiked Review of Books. The kind words on Activism, Inc can be found in the Treating Voters As Instruments piece.

The week before, my review of Richard Dawkins 'The Enemies of Reason' (see previous entry) made it into the Guardian's 'Best of The Web' chart (straight in at number 2), while I made the dizzying heights of being interviewed for BBC Radio Wales in the process. A few bloggers, meanwhile, concentrated their ire more on me questioning the 'CO2 = Global Warming' mantra than any verbal projectiles aimed at Dawkins himself.

Curiously enough myself and spiked's editor, Brendan O'Neill, thought my piece on Doreen Lawrence published 8th August would cause a ripple of some sort. Alas, it sank in the proverbial cyber-ocean without a trace. Still, my piece mischeviously slating dopeheads did have weed evangelists skinning up the bile on the blogfront. Who'd have guessed they'd have the energy?

Unveiling the Real Enemies of Reason

2007-08-15T00:44:00.000-07:00

This is a slightly longer version of the article published on spiked (14.08.07)
After taking on organised religion in The Root of All Evil? in January 2006, distinguished British scientist Professor Richard Dawkins challenged other irrational thought, such as astrologists and clairvoyants, on Channel 4’s The Enemies of Reason last night. Dawkins complaint is that horoscopes in daily newspapers, or mediums seeking to ‘speak to the dead’, are not only ‘misleading the public’ but undermining the very foundations of Enlightenment civilisation. In order to protect the gullible masses, it seems the solution is to expose mystic peddlers as cranks and charlatans and to hoist Dawkins’ books high up in the best sellers list.

Is this professor’s vision of, shall we say, a ‘Brave New World’ the shining path towards true enlightenment? Or in his rush to denounce ‘non-evidence based’ fads and thinking, is he in danger of throwing out a dimension of humanity that can’t solely be reducible to mathematical calculations?

On the surface at least, Dawkins protestations that religion or astrology or palm reading lack any ground in provable fact or reason seems plausible and agreeable enough. Indeed, the spiritualists, mediums and New Age faith healers on the programme last night came across as either deluded or sly hustlers. The transparent gibberish they spouted certainly doesn’t need defending or indulging any further. But they are not a mortal danger to others nor are they ‘wreckers of civilisation’, as Dawkins hysterically suggests. Even worse, not long after Dawkins presented the mystics as being beyond the rational pale, it was only a matter of time before the casual horoscope reader or séance attendee were also branded as contemptible fools, too. In fact, it was Dawkins who came across as shockingly naïve, as well as possessing all the sense of humour of a wooden chair leg.

In tackling astrology, Dawkins adopted the ‘will this be big news for you, sunshine’ tone as if the average TV viewer are complete dunces. His ‘revelation’ that astrology is impossible to prove or that the predictions found in newspapers don’t, like, really have a bearing on your day to day life would only be shocking to a 5 year old. When he conducted a random survey on Londoners, and asked them to outline their sun sign’s ‘characteristics’, the experiment was meant to show how us ‘idiots’ have internalised such rampant mysticism. Wrong. What Dawkins failed to see was how everyone giggled when they said things like, ‘I’m a Leo. I’m meant to spend too much money but possess leadership skills’. In other words, they didn’t take it seriously and laughed at the endearingly daft character ‘traits’. Like most people, many of the respondents also said that horoscopes ‘are a load of nonsense’. The reason why individuals will sometimes say ‘that’s because I’m a typical Scorpio’ is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, one of those throwaway comments that provides recognisable connections with people. Incredibly, the equally banal and harmless saying ‘touch wood for luck’ was cited as evidence by Dawkins that we’ve all gone mad for mysticism. He clearly needs to get out more.

Trouble is even when he does get out more, his reductive approach to humanity means he couldn’t get beyond his rehearsed ‘these people are stupid’ outlook. So at a meeting held by a spiritualist medium, Dawkins approached it as if it was a piece of primitive anthropology. Anyone with a semblance of understanding for human behaviour would understand that séances are often populated by lonely, desperate pensioners seeking connections with this world as much as the ‘next’. The fact they were ‘regulars’ at these sessions suggested the social was indeed more important than the ‘spiritual’. Then again, when you’ve reduced humans to being ‘no better than pigeons’, as Dawkins does when explaining ‘superstitious’ behaviour, it’s perhaps not surprising your starting and end point will be jaundiced to say the least.

It took the engaging illusionist Darren Brown to provide half-decent insights into why people dabble with the hocus pocus. Brown openly says he uses psychology and sleights of hand word play to ‘trick’ people into believing all sorts of things. His punters mostly know this too, and so go along with his tricks to be amused, entertained and baffled. It’s of the same pitch you get on BBC3’s The Real Hustle whereby experienced scammers and tricksters perform confidence tricks on people in bars and hotels. The only difference here is that these TV entertainers wouldn’t use this as evidence that the general public are ‘stupid’ in the way Dawkins does.

Of course, contemporary hi-tech irrationality is definitely a problem in many areas of society. For example, the idea that long-distant air-travel should be banned because of the belief that CO2 emissions = global warming doesn’t stand up to any rational calculations. After all, how would cutting back on air travel make much of a difference when air travel only contributes to about 3% of CO2 emissions? Why not attack the irrationality of the current vetting process, which demands that teachers fill in a fresh Criminal Record Bureau (CRB) form at every place they teach at, even if they only filled in an identical form one a few weeks earlier? Why not investigate the tidal waves of doomsday scenarios that have no basis in reality or science, such as the ‘150 million expected to die from bird flu’ headlines that were common a year ago? After all, these outbursts of irrationality have a potentially more destructive impact on society than a handful of camp astrologers and mediums.

To be fair to Dawkins, though, the second part of Enemies of Reason (broadcast next week) does attack the impact of alternative medicines, quack remedies and the irrational MMR vaccine panic. He is entirely correct to point out that a lack of direct evidence on whether MMR jabs causes autism in children has been entirely destructive, with the re-emergence of measles in the first time in decades. In this area at least, Dawkins is on solid ground – and more of it. But where he is deeply problematic is on his understanding on the relationship between science and society. As a humanist rationalist, I’d welcome the development of scientific enquiry to advance our understanding of the natural world and improve the quality of our lives in the process. Indeed, Dawkins is almost inspiring when he reels off the triumphs of scientific discoveries and achievements over the pat 300 year. But he’s on somewhat shakier territory when he boils social progress down to such narrow, technical innovations.

Science alone wasn’t responsible for generating more free-time for humans in modern times; that was through the expansion of the productive forces and the greater capacity to develop more life-sustaining resources in less time. Dawkins, however, only conceptualises science as acting alone and outside of wider social developments. This is why he also ignores how human-centred political thought helped throw off the shackles of mysticism and tradition and enabled scientific enquiry to flourish. To put social progress down to diligent scientists alone reveals an outlook notably disengaged from the workings of society. Unfortunately, Dawkins isn’t the only one today to fall into this blinkered trap.

The recent attack on humanities A-level subjects English literature, history and sociology follows the logical trajectory of attacking religious belief. Behind the banal name-calling that these subjects are ‘easier than physics and maths’ (as if such disciplines can be compared like-by-like), lies a hostility towards the non-instrumental enquiry of understanding human existence, our relationship to each other and to society. Previously, such issues were considered to be the cornerstone not only of a humanist education, but central to public and political life, too. To re-cast such important areas as lightweight endeavours are not only breathtakingly philistine, it ultimately suggests humans have no real purpose in life. This is why Dawkins can calmly and seriously assert that ‘humans are no better than pigeons’. He sees both merely as biologically reflexive creatures prone to ‘irrational’ behaviour. No doubt Dawkins and the anti-literature scientists would cite imaginative storytelling as ‘irrational’ (‘those characters don’t exist!), when in fact the towering figures of literature, whether Proust or Dostoyevsky, have used fiction to shed dazzling insights into the human condition. Some things, such as love, sexual infatuation, mortality, beauty, existential angst, can’t be measured by a set of scales or a measuring tape.

Perhaps the real irony of Dawkins diatribe is not that his brand of thinking is under threat, but whose time has come. After all, why would anyone give this charisma-free professor such prime-time slots? It certainly can’t be for his presenting skills. Last night’s programme wasn’t the celebration of science as such, but the elevation of scientism, the idea that ‘evidence-based calculations’ becomes the organising principle for human society. In fact, it already has. The routine use of ‘carbon footprint’ calculations in everyday life use ‘scientism’ to lend bogus authority to the climate change doom mongers. Smoking and drinking bans are often justified on the ‘calculated cost’ they supposedly incur on the National Health Service (NHS). The education system is now only judged on ‘cost effective’ criteria based on student attendance, retention and pass rate. Far from being a lone maverick, Dawkins strong emphasis on ‘evidence based calculations’ on human activity dove-tails entirely with the political class’ narrow managerialism. While his ‘tut-tut ting’ on ‘irrational’ activities such as gambling, dowsing and séances has a whiff of New Labour’s ‘stop this nonsense’ behavioural politics about it, too.

Alongside all this, there’s a bigger and more pervasive problem with Dawkin’s lab-coated hectoring – it’s profoundly conservative. Denying the importance of meaning and purpose to human action, our consciousness of the world and our relationship to it, leads to ‘naturalising’ the human subject as merely biological rather than social in character. Elsewhere his emphasis on ‘evidence based calculations’ is also both a recipe for sliding scale presentism and a bulwark against visions for a better, future orientated society. After all, if you can’t ‘calculate’ or ‘prove’ that a different way of organising society will be concretely better, surely it’s irrational to believe otherwise?

The apparent ‘Enemies of Reason’, then, are not so much cranky mystics offering cut price tarot card readings, but the more powerful peddlers of doomsday scenarios and health panics with minimal foundations in fact. If Dawkins had concentrated his unblinking gaze more on this area, then he would have been onto something good. But championing scientism as a model for society rather than science as a tool for humanity means he ends up contributing to the dead hand of instrumentalism, philistinism and presentism. Unlike scientific pioneers of The Enlightenment, unfortunately nobody is really going to benefit from that.

Robots Rock!

2007-07-24T06:26:00.000-07:00

The transfer of pop musicians to celluloid has often been an ignoble affair. A quick and derisory reminder of such cinematic dross as The Bee Gees’ misfired ‘rock opera’, their take on The Beatles’ Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band; U2’s ponderously awful Rattle and Hum and the Spice Girls crimson-inducing Spiceworld are examples to fear and dread. Only Slade’s cautionary music biz fable, Flame, comes anywhere near to giving the big screen the respect it deserves.

So it’s with some nervous trepidation that French disco-tech producers Daft Punk, namely Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem Christo, unveil their 73 minute art-house excursion, Electroma; nervous because, so far at least, Daft Punk’s reputation resides on their colossal influence, their peerless agenda setting on the dancefloor and in the charts. Can they also usher in a new era of credible, pop-based cinema? Or will they end up on the cutting room floor of cinematic history?

It’s been over ten years now since Daft Punk’s debut album, Homework, was unleashed and quickly grabbed up, gobbled down and shamefully copied time and time again. Daft Punk’s signature sound, a hyper-frenetic pinball of silvery, squelching synths and vocodo’s put through a mangled C-90 tape, quickly established itself as the way to ensure bank rolling cash and press-pleasing kudos. After all, where would Madonna and Kylie’s back-from-the-dead career revivals be without ripping off Daft Punk? The same is true of any number of young hopefuls today. This year’s much approved dancefloor acts Digitalism, Justice and MSTRKRFT seem to take their riffs and ideas solely from Daft Punk’s 2001 album, Discovery (nee Disco Very. Ha!). And then there’s New York’s LCD Soundsystem, whose fanboy fantasy single from 2005, Daft Punk Is Playing At My House, really says it all.

If all this sounds annoyingly hip, self-consciously ‘cool’ and all a bit Shoreditch Twat, think again. A big factor in why Daft Punk are so genuinely adored is their levity, their bare-faced cheek, their contrariness and their refusal to play by anyone’s rules. Long before London DJ Sean Rowley’s Guilty Pleasures clubnight, wherein North London 30somethings go misty-eyed for old Leo Sayer singles, Daft Punk were already outraging some critics by incorporating AOR dullards Supertramp and Prog-rock abominations Sky into their streamlined Gallic disco. Who else would decide to omit their most jaw-droppingly brilliant moment, Digital Love, from last year’s Greatest Hits set? Who sometime insist on giving (rare) interviews wearing their trademark Robot masks? And who else could get away playing big stadiums by simply miming to a mixed CD-R (and still make it sound great)? Daft Punk are slyly grin-stretching for all the right reasons.

So it’s with some relief, then, that Daft Punk’s idiosyncratic qualities can be found aplenty in Electroma. The plot is breathtakingly simple. Two robots, who you assume are Bangalter and de Homem Christo, but in fact played by actors Peter Hurteau and Michael Reich, drive through the Southwestern American landscape in a Ferrari 412. They arrive at a small town in Inyo County, California where the residents are also robot-like but living a perfectly becalmed suburban existence. The ‘hero robots’, though, appear to want something more. They drive up to a high-tech facility where liquid latex is poured over their heads and meticulously shaped into human faces (which actually do resemble our Daft Punk heroes). As the twosome stroll through the smalltown, the Robo-residents are non-plussed at these ‘humans’. When the duo’s faces start to melt in the sun, the locals realise they’re fake and chase after them. Once in hiding, the ‘hero robots’ reluctantly peel off the ruined masks, leave the town, their dream of becoming human behind, and begin a gloomy hike across the desert salt flats.

It doesn’t take a great deal of grey matter to decipher what Daft Punk are mulling over here. In many ways Electroma seems an outgrowth of Daft Punk’s third album, 2005’s Human After All, wherein the songs suggested a tension between being liberated and dominated by technology. In Electroma, there’s an obvious and simplified nod to Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man and his tract that modern day technology has helped regiment and stifle our humanity and freedom. In particular, the suburban robots seem to play out Marcuse’s notion that ‘individuals identify themselves with the existence which is imposed upon them’ and that ‘the subject which is alienated is swallowed up by its alienated existence’. The two ‘hero robots’ attempt to break out of such ‘one-dimensional conformity’, by attempting to be more ‘real’ and ‘human’, plays on much of the counter-culture ethos that Marcuse’s book influenced.

As a genuine art-house film, interpretation is obviously in the eye of the cinema-seat-holder. So while it might appear that Daft Punk are endorsing over-familiar themes here, the film’s closing scenes suggests a critique of such ideas that has chilling contemporary resonance. As the ‘hero robots’ become obsessed by being ‘different’ to the suburbanites, their only way to fulfil this is by being estranged from them altogether - hence their isolated hike across the desert. But rather than this providing fulfilment and meaning to their existence, they eventually become suicidal and blow themselves up. Whilst it might be screamingly obvious to think of Islamic Jihadists here, the murder/suicide pact in Electroma echoes that of other loathers of modern society, Gert Bastian and Petra Kelly of the German Green Party.

The real strength of Electroma is that Daft Punk use these rather slender ideas to their advantage. By having no dialogue there’s an absorbing quality, even intensity, to the slow-folding action on the screen. We become highly curious as to the fate of the two placid robots on the Californian planes. Other than that, however, Electroma exists as a piece of pure cinematic eye-candy, an indulgence of aesthetic pleasure – and it’s all the better for it. As directors with no previous experience, Bangalter and De Homem Christo are remarkably accomplished behind the camera. Their ability to conjure off-kilter atmospheres has that same steady gaze that David Lynch brings to the screen, while the sun-bleached glare and slightly technicolour hues recalls Nicolas Roeg’s sci-fi masterpiece, The Man Who Feel To Earth.

And let’s not forget Daft Punk’s aforementioned humour here. In one scene that’s already become a talking point of Electroma - and caused outbreaks of laughter at the screening - is when footage of a naked woman is dotted amongst the sand dunes. The laugh of recognition is that Bangalter and de Homem Christo had clearly read our minds – those sand dunes really do look like an attractive, naked woman.

For all Daft Punk’s Robo-obsessions, technophilia/phobia and Electroma’s sci-fi subtext, it seems Bangalter and De Homem Christo really are ‘human after all’. Does this mean that Electroma is also flawed and self-indulgent, then? At times it can be, but in the slim-pickings of pop cinema, Electroma, like Daft Punk themselves, stand robot-head and shoulders above the rest.

Electroma is on at selected cinemas across the UK (see www.electronma.org). It is released on DVD on September 3rd 2007.

2007: The Return of the Teenager

2007-07-15T05:13:00.000-07:00

In recent months there have been a number of articles ruminating on the 're-emergence' of teenagers within popular music. For years now, 30somethings have clung onto heritage rock and attempted to colonise gigs from its traditional teen constituency. In Friday's Guardian, Alexis Petridis was right to breathe a welcome relief on the generation gap re-appearing, likewise Miranda Sawyer in the OMM provided a compelling overview of how teenagers are forming bands, clubnights, fanzines just in the way we once did some 20 years ago.

What's also noticeable, is how it's done in defiance of usual Dadrock sensibilities. One of my 18 year old tutees, for instance, uttered the immortal line 'I used to be into the White Stripes when I was 14, but I've grown out of them now'. Indeed, this is why the likes of the Klaxons, New Young Pony Club, CSS and Calvin Harris have emerged and taken off: it's a sign of a generation bored to death with the Beatles and the Beach Boys.

Outside immediate pop cult. fripperies, the development is positive in the sense that the Culture of Unfreedom hasn't dominated all just yet. We can be cynical about Myspace and txt msg speak, but there's no denying that it has provided a non-regulative space for teenagers to explore and develop. This is why so much creativity has emerged in the past few years, such technology has become a lifeline away from state regulation and the 'hey kids' high fives from 40something DJs and music writers.

What's also sneakily mischievous is that by re-claiming ground lost to the post-punk and post-rave (de)generation, teenagers are in effect telling 50quid bloke to get lost and grow up. It's the equivalent of when Bow Wow Wow's Anabelle Luwin berated duff singer-songwriter BA Robertson for being an 'aging hippy' on TV. Hooray for that.

Live Working Or Die Denying?

2007-07-14T02:19:00.000-07:00

A few weeks back spiked-online published my review of Paul Mason's (BBC Newsnight's) Live Working Or Die Fighting. He's summarised the essay 'for those who don't have time to read spiked-online' (so why write a book if you think nobody reads?), on his blog.

Interestingly, he denies championing NGO's cause against China, so why does he bemoan the fact that NGO's are 'weak in that area'? It surely suggests he wishes they were stronger. And this actually follows other passages in his book (which were not quoted in my book review), whereby he reckons that Oxfam and others can do some good in challenging international capital. Still, his pithy comment about 180 degree turn on goggle-eyed workerisms raised a smile.

Midlake reveal new album details...

2007-04-13T04:33:00.000-07:00

Tim Smith is the singer and key songwriter with Texas quintet Midlake. Their second album, The Trials of Van Occupanther, featured highly in many end of year critics polls last December (including this blog). They’re currently back in Britain promoting a new single, Roscoe.

You’ve been touring The Trials of Van Occupanther for a year now. Did you envisage 12 months ago there’d be such a demand for this album?

“Yeah…I think always hoped so. In the beginning after we finished Occupanther, I thought we have to make a name for ourselves with this album; we have to get out there and get it heard. So…we kind of expected it, we wanted it and it happened. Nevertheless at times we can’t believe that people are listening to us and buying the album.”

When I interviewed Midlake exactly a year ago, the band already seemed quite homesick. Have you grown used to being away now?

“Actually I haven’t. I love being at home - all the time; but I understand it’s something that I have to do. Having said that it doesn’t feel that we’ve been playing that much anyway, though it helps there’s more people coming to see us. Also, we’re able to rent a proper tour bus now. Nothing posh, and quite basic, but still better than trying sleep upright in a white van. But…being away from home doesn’t get any easier for me, no.”

Your new single, Roscoe, has been the highlight of your live shows. On the single, what pushed you into having it remixed by different DJs, such as Justin Robertson?

“That actually wasn’t up to the band, though we did have the final say and we gave it the all clear. We didn’t sit round and think ‘this needs remixing’ or that it needs to be pushed in a certain way. It was a label decision so it’s purely about marketing. Don’t get me wrong, I trust our label and I can see why they’re doing it. They’re trying to get more people interested in Midlake. So long as they’re not destroying our music, that’s okay. From what I’ve heard, there’s no damage.”

Are you daunted about following up The Trials of Van Occupanther?
“Actually, I’m really excited by it and I’ve already been working on it. The album’s going to be called The Courage of Others. At the moment I’ve put together some very rough demos of songs on my iPod, so I’m constantly listening to them and working out what songs to pick. Once we’ve finished this tour we’re going to start on the next album straight away. We’re going to be working with some new equipment and so far the songs have a much darker and richer sound than previous. Unfortunately, it takes us such a long time to make albums, so don’t get expecting it just yet.”

Are you getting bored of playing the same songs so often now?

“I don’t know if we do. We usually play the same set every night, there’s a certain flow that we go with. Recently we’ve been playing Roscoe second or third song in, just to get it out of the way, so people can just relax and enjoy the rest of the show. So…we’re not tired of playing our songs because, after all, it’s really nice that so many people know your songs. We never had that before. So to turn up from town to town in the UK and Europe and realise that thousands of people know who we are is fantastic. I’m not bored of that yet”.

Can we expect anything different on this tour?

“There was a comment made by a journalist in UK who said that we show so many videos that’s it like watching the telly rather than paying attention to the music. It really hit me that, yeah, it was true. Videos on stage can be been difficult to get right. I think I have too many ideas going on. So this time we’re simplifying them for this tour. We’re going to use still images, such as the album cover, and then zoom those outwards, just to slow the pace a bit and allow the audience to concentrate on the music. I think we should have realised earlier that we don’t need such distractions. The music stands up for itself”.

Tim Smith was talking to Neil Davenport

Recent (and fairly recent) Spiked articles...

2007-04-12T02:05:00.000-07:00

One of the purposes of this blog was to publish 'think piece' articles outside of spiked. However, as spiked has become broader in what it wants to publish (articles on Ted Chippington, anyone?), this humble blog has fallen slightly by the wayside. For those who've missed 'em, my spiked articles in 2007 began with a piece called Testing Time For Literacy which examined how New Labour instrumentalism is destroying student's appetite for writing well. This was followed by an article examining the lamentable Celebrity Big Brother/Jade Goody farrago with Time To Evict Official Anti-Racism, which has probably generated more letters than anything else I've penned for spiked so far.

Speaking of letters, a policeman responded to my article Wannabe A Worker by saying that, hey, coppers are 'worker's too' (something which the old left idiotically rehearsed as well). A few days latter I was nonplussed by the BBC's new post-This Life drama Party Animals, but delighted that Eighties comedian Ted Chippington had made a return. Sticking with the West Midlands, the day after I was reporting on why a Tipton pub was Sticking With Its Un-PC Pie. The week after I was laughing uproariously at Dopey Dave Cameron for his yooful cannabis antics, while once again writing incredulously about the anti-Tesco lobby.

In March I argued that the government's anti-lone parents reforms was fuelled by something other than fiscal bean counting in Why They Won't Leave Lone Parents Alone, while my response to the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade was to say it would Chain Black Youth To Victim Culture. Finally, I reckoned that Alan Johnson's (nothing to do with Peep Show...) proposals to fine school/college drop outs was Another Fine Mess By The Education Authorities. Shameless self-promotion, for sure, but surely that's what the vanity publishing world of blogs are all about?

Nico the Nazi?

2007-03-18T08:41:00.000-07:00

In Friday's Guardian, music journalist and author Simon Reynolds wrote a piece on Nico to coincide with the reissue of The Marble Index and Desertshore. Alongside the welcome praise for her idiosyncratic talents and often over-looked originality, Reynolds revealed Nico to be a Nazi sympathising racist. Now to observe that Nico was a nihilist is as insightful as saying the sky is grey, but these revelations, particularly the glassing of a black woman at a party, were quite startling. It's all the more so when a book chronicling the later years of Nico's life painted a different picture.

In James Young's literary masterpiece Songs They Never Play On The Radio, Nico is, in Young's words, "a monster" who alienated nearly everyone she worked with. But far from being the German nationalist as Reynolds has it, Young contests that Nico "felt an unease towards her country and its guilty past. She no longer saw herself as specifically German...she never liked to stay there very long".

What also contradicts Reynold's account of Nico is the question of anti-Semitism. For a start, Nico was a former lover of Lou Reed and, according to Young, lamented that "Lou never really liked me because of what my people did to his people" (hilariously, Young cuts in by saying 'The truth was perhaps more banal - he resented being upstaged by her'). Also, Young's book also makes light that Nico was infatuated with another Jewish singer-cum-icon, Bob Dylan. It hardly tallies with rabid anti-semitism.

Having said this, Reynolds account of Nico stemmed from the 1970s. James Young's from 1982 to Nico's death in Ibiza, 1988. And, let's not forget, many a rock icon flirted with Nazi imagery during the 1970s as some kind of childish, nihilistic gesture (for example, Keith Moon riding around Golders Green in a Nazi uniform). As few rock musicians were as childish or as nihilistic as Nico, it's highly likely she did flirt with German nationalism during the 1970s. The account of Nico in Songs They Don't Play On The Radio, though, suggests that, beneath the tantrums and hissy fits, she was shellshocked rather than sangaine about the second world war.

All this, of course, is a historical curiosity for music heads. What is indisputable, though, is that Songs They Don't Play On The Radio is the finest ever music biography ever written. Honestly, it makes nearly every other biog seem like it was written by a five year old with broken pencils.

Checking Out The Anti-Supermarket Lobby

2007-03-04T13:05:00.000-08:00

Last week's spiked article on criticising the anti-Tesco lobby seems to have upset a few people. In particular, the revelation that the Nazi Party introduced legislation to curb the growth of chainstores in favour of petitbourgeois traders. The point I was making here was NOT to suggest that the anti-supermarket lobby are goosesteppers in-waiting; rather simply to show that the type of 'anti-capitalism' favoured by the middle-classes is deeply reactionary. Unfortunately, many on the left now accept that PB complaints against growth, progress and modernity are somehow insightful and radical. The Socialism of Fools, it seems, knows no bounds.

Closed for refurbishing...but open once more

2007-02-02T14:47:00.000-08:00

Yes, a whole month has passed since anything has appeared on The Midnight Bell, which must be a disappointment to all of the tens of readers out there. So what's happened? Well, the start of January has consisted of moving flat which, as everyone can surely relate to, always takes more time than you think (a big thanks to Ben Smith for helping out). Of course, various spiked articles of mine have been published, but I simply haven't had the time to post anything up here. All being well, a few paragraphs on the return of Ted Chippington will be here soon...

Adjágas: 2007's first great album

2006-12-26T08:58:00.000-08:00

Hold onto those HMV gift tokens, 2007's first great album is out on the 8th January....

Most aspiring musicians will hail from a locale sufficiently recognisable by its culture, its trade and its geography. Even bands from dormant sleepy towns in Britain and the States will have some familiar landmarks to register with people’s grey matter. Lawra Somby, one half of evocative traditionalists Adjágas, is rather different. Sitting in the bar of the infamous Columbia Hotel in west London, Somby is carefully outlining the rituals and beliefs of his native Sami tribes.

Apparently, this ancient nomadic people number about 60, 000 and reside mostly in a territory called Sámpi. Asked to locate this on a map and Somby says it’s at the very northern parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland, spreading into Russia. “Except over the years we have been colonised by these different countries,” says Somby in a lullaby bur that’s just about audible. “We have since tried to hold onto our culture, but it’s slowly been eroded. The main way of living is through herding reindeers, hunting and gathering. In Norwegian schools, it was illegal to speak Sami”.

Perhaps as an act of defiance, and possibly because it sounds good, Sambi and cohort Sara Mariella Gaup sing in their native Sami language. And judging by their forthcoming eponymous debut album, it is the most sweetly musical language. At times the aural equivalent of somersaulting gymnastics, Somby and Mariella Gaup whoop, holler and yodel in unison and apart. In theory, it could be a pile-up of disharmony and disaggregated shrieks. In practise it’s beautifully symmetrical and giddily circular, all pirouetting vocal turns and bird-like chirps. It’s singularly enchanting and otherworldly, but anchored in recognisable heart and soul language. Somby simply says “it’s the Sami way of singing”.

Nevertheless, for all its primitive cultural leanings, there’s nothing impenetrable and alien about Adjágas’ music either. Furnished by pin-sharp mandolins and Glockenspiels, rolling pianos and reverb guitars, Adjágas are spiritual heirs to The Cowboy Junkies Trinity Sessions album, Low and long forgotten 4AD folkies, La Mystere Des Voix Bulgares. The major difference, though, is that there’s far more joy and goggle-eyed wonderment here than anything austere and threadbare. In fact, songs such as Dolgemáŧki and Ozan simply flow with enviable, dextrous melody. It seems Adjágas are hardly dour and worthy ‘world music’ types after all.

“We do listen to a lot of west European music,” says Somby, “I used to live in Oslo, so came across Sigor Ros, Cocteau Twins – we’ve absorbed a fair amount of what’s outside our traditions”.

Somby first met Sara Mariella Gaup whilst the pair were still at school. It was on a trip to Russia that they started singing together. “A couple of years later we bumped into each other,” says Somby, “and we decided to try and develop what we started. To our surprise it fell into place with little effort. We wrote our first song in September 2004 and a year later we recorded the album”.

According to Somby, Sara has been singing since she was a child and performed on stage since the age of 12. It also helped that her father, Ańde, is a musician and passed on his considerable skills. Needless to say, their Sami roots do play a huge part, too. Their songwriting approach is based on the Sami concept of the ‘yoik’, which attempts to describe ideas and stories with sounds rather than words. It is abstract, unstructured and open to interpretations – and actually comes to a person, sometimes in the half-conscious state prior to waking up.

“Our name actually means ‘dream state’ in Sami,” he says, “and a yoik is something that everyone carries around with them. They are the equivalent to stories but in instrumental folk music. In Sami, people can be identified by their yoik and be interpreted accordingly.”

In Norway, Adjágas’ album has inevitably led to curiosity regarding this ancient tribe. For Somby, this is an opportunity, not a threat. “Yes, we were stunned by the media’s attention,” he says, grinning, “but we’re not expecting influxes of tourists just yet. For us, it’s simply a good way we can tell our stories”.

Adjágas is released on Ever Records on 8th January

Hoffer interview spiked...

2006-12-19T03:20:00.000-08:00

at the request of Tony himself (Hoffer, not Blair)...

The 2006 Cultural Awards

2006-12-18T04:59:00.000-08:00

Midnight Bell and spiked contributor ANNA TRAVIS devised the format for this end-of-year review. If there is anyone out there who'd like to make their own contribution, get in touch. In alphabetical order....

ANNA BARKER-TRAVIS

Musical newcomers: Mew (A-ha meets Shudder to Think), Band of Horses: as epic, intense and full of galloping drama as the name suggests.

Musical Rediscovery: King Missile – In particular ‘Jesus was way cool’, laconic-infantile comic-nonsense genius. Krameresque soundscapes (Wayne not Seinfeld).

Reissue/blast from the past: Bill Fay – how did this guy go unnoticed in the 70’s! Quaint, British, Ray Davies whimsy with yearning melancholy: ‘Don’t, don’t let my Marigolds die!’

Top Gig: Sufjan Stevens- Barbican, Spoon- All Tomorrows Parties – A tight, polished Guided By Voices, fronted by blonde beauty

Best Read: The Burrow by Franz Kafka – manic musings of a mole. Is his underground labyrinth a cosy heaven or lethal hell? Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse-Self-loathing philosopher implodes in a sea of imagined social mediocrity.

Favourite Flicks: Grizzly Man – Werner Herzog. Terrifying idiot wants Disney-fied nature but the Grizzly Adams fantasy turns nasty. Dead Man’s Shoes: Brother enacts unhinged revenge on behalf of his ‘simple’ sibling. Paddy Consadine does understated, slow burning, smalltown sociopaths like no other.

Comedy: The Mighty Boosh: Indescribable universe populated with an endless array of monstrous/harmless beasts and the adventures of hapless Hoxtonite Vince Noir and aspiring poetic soul Howard Moon. Nathan Barley revisited on DVD: Chris Morris takes on London magazine/fashion/PR goons with his usual chilling accuracy and linguistic exactitude. Russell Brand, particularly in Big Brother’s Big Mouth. Initially found him a narcissistic bore, grew to love his audacious flirtation, crowd control and random flights of fancy straight from the ID.

Tipple: Chateau Neuf De Pap RED/Perrin’s Reserve (Not sprout wine from Grot)

TV Heaven: Grey Gardens (1975) Documentary: Mesmerizing, creepy look at Jackie Onassis' aunt and cousin. Crazy passive/aggressive double act who live through their memories of faded glamour in a crumbling, overgrown mansion.

Political Culture lowpoint/highpoint: Lowpoint: Predictable onslaught of anti-drinking as next step for behaviour politics. Highpoint: Battle of Ideas festival – in particular ‘Reassessing Liberty’ debate.

2006 Cultural Highlights – DAVID BARKER

Musical newcomers: Wilderness – epic, dream-rock straight outta Baltimore reminiscent of John Lydon (circa Metal Box) fronting Explosions in the Sky.
The Ponys – fantastic garage rock from Chicago’s coolest kids - recently signed to Matador – 2007 could be their year. Band of Horses – came from nowhere at the start of the year to deliver the first classic album of 2006 – Neil Young fans should check them out and fall in love all over again.

Musical Rediscovery: The collection of REM’s IRS years “And I feel fine” reminded me of why they were such a soundtrack to my teenage years (before Michael Stipe’s little-boy-lost faux-naivety became so grating). Not a rediscovery, but I spent much of 2005 and 2006 marvelling at the great lost Chameleons records that passed me by in the 80s.

Reissue/blast from the past: The 3 Judee Sill re-issues were a genuine revelation - re-mastered by Jim O’Rourke they showcase a talent somewhere between Joni Mitchell and Karen Carpenter. The Josef K compilation “Entomology” brought together the choice cuts from Edinburgh’s finest.

Album of the year: Midlake’s “The Trial of Van Occupanther” and Band Of Horses’ “Everything All the Time” prove that the US is still the centre of the musical world. Two gorgeously evocative records, that were streets ahead competition from across the water. The Clientele’s “Strange Geometry” actually came out at the back end of 2005 but was a fine reminder that Walthamstow isn’t just about drive-bys and dogs.

Top Gig: By a country mile the finest gig of the year was Sufjan Stevens at the Barbican. Sufjan live brings to the fore jazz and minimalist influences that ghost through his (great) records – he is now operating at a level of songwriting sophistication that puts most of the competition to shame.

Best Read: Two novels set in the great depression illuminated my year. Saul Bellow’s “The Adventures of Augie March” was a timely reminder of a time when ambition, achievement and the American Dream were seen as aspirational goals, not selfish human endeavours. “Studs Lonigan” by James Farrell was a harrowing, brutal, but ultimately joyful celebration of the human condition.

Favourite Flicks: Michael Hanneke’s “Hidden” was a claustrophobic tale of a couple terrorised by a stalker secretly filming their life. David Cronenburg’s “A History of Violence” was a menacing story of double lives and ambiguous violence. Two excellent documentaries worth catching; “The Devil and Daniel Johnston” was a funny and moving tribute to the troubled genius; “Grizzly Man”, Werner Herzog’s latest, laid bare the infantilism of those who sentimentalise nature, and was the next step in his exploration of human obsession.

Comedy: The dearth of any real new comic talent emerging in 2006 shows that this continues to be one of the most difficult art forms to master. Larry David continues to set the benchmark (both with Curb Your Enthusiasm and with the Seinfeld box-sets, which continue to amaze with the quality and depth of material), although Peep Show series 3 gives David some genuine competition at last. I also enjoyed Coogan’s new vehicle Saxondale which was brilliantly observed and displayed a genuine warmth for his characters. Jack Dee’s new show Lead Balloon was promising, although the writers had probably consumed a few too many Curb episodes for it to truly stand on its own two feet. I was bludgeoned by my wife into enjoying The Mighty Boosh, which despite initial reservations, stands up as one of the most enjoyable and original shows of recent years.

Tipple: When at home nothing can beat a glass of Amarone, the finest red wine that Italy can offer. I also became very fond of a fine Spanish Brandy, Carlos V, which gave me a sore head once or twice. When out you can’t beat a well poured pint of Guinness, or when oop North a pint of Boddingtons always goes down well.

TV Heaven: I loved the Sun Ra documentary on BBC4 which was brilliantly researched and truly hilarious, showing a genius at the peak of his powers. Some great anecdotes from former Arkestra members revealed much of what made the great man tick. My favourite was from Thurston Moore who recounted the first time he witnessed the Arkestra live – Sun Ra walked into the audience and approached Moore whispered into his ear “will you lay down your life for me?” – somehow I can’t imagine Chris Martin doing this!
Biggest disappointment was the World Cup which was populated by average teams playing dire football – England being the worst culprits.

Political Culture lowpoint/highpoint: Highpoint was the protests organised by the Coalition for Medical Progress to support vivisection and the use of animals in medical experiments. A brave and righteous riposte to the unelected minority of lunatics who attempt to curtail necessary experimentation through violence and intimidation.
There were many lowpoints, but the over-riding one for me was the continued focus in political circles and in the liberal media portraying human activity as problematic, and of mankind as a virus on the earth. Lucy Siegle’s (Rosie May from the Day Today) ethical living column in the Observer continues to be the most self-righteous, smug piece of journalism ever vomited up in the mainstream media.

2006 Cultural Highlights – JIM CLEAR

Musical newcomers: Archie Bronson Outfit – raw controlled Fall meets Girls Against Boys garage punk from Britain’s current best band. Band Of Horses – Another spot-on Pitchfork recommendation, yearning heartbreaking country rock reminiscent of both My Morning Jacket and Teenage Fanclub. Sneaking in from the tail end of 2005 - Wolf Parade, another Canadian band benefiting from the glow of the Arcade Fire, their debut LP provided the previously overlooked missing link between Bruce Springsteen and the Pixies

Musical Rediscovery: Denim’s “Back In Denim” CD reissue re-affirmed the glory of this early 90s proto Britpop classic; gloriously “middle of the road” and out of synch with the music scene then (and now). Plus, “No Time” by Whiteout on 7” when back home from the pub: the great lost Britpop song from one time Oasis rivals - hard to believe but true.

Reissue/blast from the past: Another year has sadly passed without the reissue of Dennis Wilson’s “Pacific Ocean Blue” so that will hopefully be next year’s blast from the past. Moving on, although wildly patchy, the Children of Nuggets boxset contained some revelations, in particular the Bevis Frond’s sublime “Lights Are Changing”. Oh yes and the original “Nuggets” was re-issued this year, so that has to win this category – the best compilation album of all time by a street.

Album of the year: Although not a vintage year for the long player, “The Trials Of Von Occupanther” by Midlake’s melodic lush 70s harmonies built on their debut album to create a familiar comforting sound that was simultaneously fresh and exciting. Honourable mentions to the aforementioned Band Of Horses’ “Everything All The Time” and “DerDang DerDang” by Archie Bronson Outfit.

Top Gig: Lots of competition here – has to jointly go to the Monks at Tufnell Park Dome in October (huge excitement to see this legendary garage band’s only ever UK gig 40 years after they split – could they pull it off? Oh yes) plus Nick Cave’s stripped down set at the Apollo Victoria Theatre in February – exhilarating in such an intimate setting. Plus Sufjan Stevens (Barbican), Flaming Lips + Midlake (Hammersmith), Radar Bros (All Tomorrow’s Parties), all of Benicassim Festival but especially the last night beach party (Spain) etc etc

Best Read: “Rip It Up and Start Again” by Simon Reynolds. This history of post-punk/new wave led to revisiting or discovering a large amount of the music covered, always a sure sign of a successful music tome. Also “Who’s the best Captain – Kirk or Birdseye?” in Viz: still funny despite what anyone else says.

Favourite Flicks: Preferring the comfort of the DVD/home theatre, I only made it to the cinema once all year, but Scorsese’s “The Departed” did live up to the hype as a return to form, up there with Casino as his best since Goodfellas; Nicholson in a typical love it or hate it performance (I loved it) and Di Caprio finally living up to the potential Marty obviously always saw in him. Home viewing highlights: The Consequences Of Love (Italy’s greatest ever film?) and Team America World Police (an acquired taste)

Comedy: Aside from the evergreen favourites which didn’t disappoint (Curb Your Enthusiasm season 5, Peep Show series 3) a couple of new series from the Day Today dream team hit the heights again: Saxondale (a more gentle and mature Steve Coogan offering, but no less enjoyable or funny for it) plus Time Trumpet - Armando Iannucci spoofing the easy target of list shows with panache; particularly enjoyed the “old celebrities” reminiscing plus Tesco invading Denmark.

Tipple: Once again lager or vodka, although sadly the Daily Mail was wrong and I have not become an out of control raging alcoholic since the change in licensing laws led to most pubs staying open for a whole extra hour at weekends.

TV Heaven: Dragon’s Den continued to defy convention (a reality business game show – surely that’ll never work) and prove highly entertaining on many levels, especially Duncan Bannatyne’s waterskiing and Peter Jones’ massive head. After an amazing first episode, the latest Sopranos series recovered from a couple of weeks of Tony in a coma nonsense at the start to hit such heights again. AJ’s struggles to work out his role in life were especially poignant, while also showing how lucky they were with their original casting; no UK soap style going up the stairs and then reappearing as someone totally different here. Sky Sports News also deserves a mention (sample story “Breaking News – Tranmere take left back on loan from Sochaux reserves”), especially for Soccer Saturday when presented by the peerless Jeff Stelling, without doubt the best presenter on TV right now.

Political Culture lowpoint/highpoint: In my typically shallow manner, the highpoint is the hilarious, clueless way the mainstream parties attempt to “interact” with the “YouTube generation” – Webcameron, Sion Simon’s spoof etc etc. The lowpoint would be the continuing and ever growing lack of engagement with said generation due to such parties getting excited about this Internet thing as a way to “speak to da yoof” instead of addressing or encouraging debate on many day to day issues in a rational manner.

2006 Cultural Highlights – NEIL DAVENPORT

Musical newcomers: Howling Bells. Hailing from Australia via Eastern Europe but now based in north London, this country-Gothic outfit released a perfectly formed, fully-realised eponymous debut back in May. Whereas so much alt.country has become a bi-word for bland mediocrity, Howling Bells invested pedal-steel sojourns with both Twin Peeks spookiness and leather-booted, rock’n’roll grit. At a time when NME new bands inevitably and lamentably disappoint, Howling Bells became a band you could trust.

Honourable mention goes to Band of Horses for their wondrously elegiac debut, Everything All the Time

Musical Rediscovery: A Quiet Revolution by Quiet Revolution was essentially a solo album by ex-Undertones guitarist Damien O’Neill and released on Alan McGee’s fledgling Poptones label in January 2001. Recorded with the uncredited assistance of Kevin Shields, this instrumental album unites MBV’s Loveless with a stack of badly scratched, charity shop easy listening albums. It’s wonky, out-of-focus stuff, but somehow evokes overcast, mid-winter Sunday afternoons like no other. It’s currently selling on Amazon for £1.99, so there’s no excuse.

Reissue/blast from the past: Bob Stanley’s reissue label Eclipse was launched in grand style back in July. His label’s definitive assembling of Dusty Springfield’s singles with A and B sides was definitely needed. Of course, Springfield has been regularly furnished with best ofs and compilations, but none had included b-sides and EP cuts that were as essential as the more famous A-side hits. Springfield has repute as a studio perfectionist, and this all killer, no filler compilations shows why.

Special mention goes to Cherry Red’s compilation on lost C-86 outfit The Servants. The demos and rickety live-cuts were perhaps over-stretched here, but it was great to hear Rings On Her Fingers, the epic It’s My Turn and A Sun, A Small Star have a digital transfer.

Album of the Year: ‘The Greatest’ by Cat Power. No doubt the title of Chan Marshall’s fifth album was deliberately prescient. She’d always been a talent and charismatic star, but too often plagued by slightly patchy albums and car-crash live shows. On The Greatest, she’d played, rather naturally, to all her key strengths. Recorded with Stax legends the Memphis Horns, Marshall’s love of southern country soul galvanized her compositional skills and that drawling, husky voice to the nth degree. Much of The Greatest simply felt like the first rushes of love colliding with the first flush of spring. Yep, dewy-eyed, tender but big on ambition, scope and heart, few albums were as consistently returned to as this. What could be a better recommendation than that?

Honourable mention goes to Midlake’s ‘The Trials of Van Occupanther’, a roaming, warm and literate collection of beardy AOR via some plaintive Neil Young chord changes and frail wonderment.

Top Gig: As a seasoned gig goer for 20 years, it’s increasingly difficult to get truly open-jawed anymore. However, my personal favourite was former Lift To Experience mainmain, Josh T. Pearson. At both The Spitz and, a few days later, The Betsy Trotwood, Pearson’s coal black Texan drawl and FX-battered guitar heroics was the equivalent of riding pillion with the four horsemen of the apocalypse. That he managed to cast such a foreboding shadow without any backing band, was testament to his menacing skills. Then again, he is over seven foot tall. All hail the southern Americans in 2006.

Best Read: the Third Reich in Power by Richard J. Evans continues with his definitive and exhaustive explanation of this widely discussed, but still rarely understood, black hole in European history. It’s commendable largely because it empirically refutes the Frankfurt School theory that is was the working-masses who were to blame for Hitler. By carefully detailing how the police, army and big businesses assisted the Nazi’s programme of liquidating organised labour, the Third Reich is at last re-located in its economic and political context. No wonder The Sunday Times hated this book so much. Incidentally, the passages on how the Nazi’s banned animal experiments, waged a campaign against supermarkets and smokers, as well as championing environmentalism, is a salutary reminder what happens when the irrational middle-classes take state power.

Honorary mention to novels published this year include Ian McEwan’s Saturday as a thoughtful meditation on the west’s moral malaise, while Zadie Smith’s On Beauty showed she’s growing in statue as a novelist to (finally) write home about. From yesteryear Manuael vazquez Montalban's Murder in the Central is the finest book written about murder in the Spanish Communist Party.....

Favourite Flicks: Not a vintage year for cinema, though Scorsese came good again with The Departed after the visually dazzling but emotionally empty farrago of Gangs of New York. My personal highlight, though, was Festival, a scabrous satire of the comedy circuit during the Edinburgh festival. For the most part, this was queasy eyes-behind-fingers viewing; though observational and insightful on the destructiveness of thwarted ambition. A special mention goes to Wolf Creek; the most disturbing horror movie to grace the widescreen in decades.

Comedy: While Ricky Gervais floundered with the lame Extras 2, Coogan’s Saxondale was both a return to form and a fresh departure. Coogan’s genius has always been his attention to detail, and here Saxondale was bolstered by even greater character-depth and top drawer performances. A slow burner that everyone I knew had opinions on, always a good sign. Best comedy must surely go to Pulling, bleakly funny shot through with wise truths and clear insights on sex wars shenanigans. Elsewhere Jack Dee’s vastly overrated Lead Balloon was just that – an obvious joke, yes, but one that’s entirely fitting. Still, Raquel Cassidy was worth tuning in for.

Tipple: Having shifted from lager to bitter this year, a pint of Black Kat has proven the most flavoursome for the taste buds. Slurp it while you can.

TV Heaven: The Sopranos sixth season was a return to form after the Guy Ritchie-esque diversions of the previous. Plenty of focus on how parasitic the mob are on working-class Americans, but also how pitifully inadequate and infantile Soprano’s mob really are. The episode where Chrissy stalks Sir Ben Kingsley was a masterclass in portraying low-lifes getting it all wrong amongst the high-life. Dragon’s Den continues to be the surprise hit and great fun. The strengths and weaknesses of capitalist social relations in 60 minutes: any advances on that offer? Plus the BBC 4 documentary on Alma Cogan was a fine to elegy to a lost post-war singer.

Political Culture lowpoint/highpoint: The lowpoint is the ongoing and irrational obsession with ‘healthy’ food and, in particular, the hatred of supermarkets. Bring back empty shelves and empty stomachs, I say! Worse, this is no longer contained to the idiotic columnists clogging up the illiberal press, but part of government policy. The banning of delicious fizzy drinks and chocolate from schools? Inspections of packed lunches? As Jerry Seinfeld would say, enough of this tuckshop Taliban already.

Political highlight would be the spat between The Guardian and Noam Chomsky. Back in February Emma Brockes raked over the ITN/LM libel trial and berated Chomsky for supporting these ‘holocaust deniers’. The result? A crimson-faced apology from The Guardian for misquoting Chomsky; a complete retraction of the offending article from their website and the wholesale alienation of a key radical academic. Nice going!

The Rise of the Posh Slobs

2006-12-12T03:25:00.000-08:00

According to scientists in Australia, The Queen’s English is drifting down the social hierarchy. After trawling through archives of Her Majesty’s annual Christmas messages since 1952, they conclude that the royal accent is becoming less ‘posh’. The experts, based at Sydney’s Macquarie University, believe the vowel sounds of Queen Elizabeth II have been influenced by subjects who are of ‘lower social standing’ (1).

Well the researchers don’t have to look too far down the ladder. Perhaps such developments are a consequence of when her Grandson, Prince William, comes over to visit dressed in an Ali-G tracksuit from Pound stretchers. After all, with his night outs down the Mecca Bingo hall, he has probably perfected glottal stops and staccato slang by now anyway. Like some over-eager Johnny-cum-lately, it seems the House of Windsor are keen to show they’re – hey – ‘cool’.

In the recent past, it was the insecure middle-classes who’d often affected the ‘common touch’. When Britain was an outwardly meritocratic society, and the working-classes had real clout in society, it was de rigour for, say, art-school fops like The Who to cultivate mockney accents and geezer charm. Sounding like you were born with a plastic spoon in your mouth, as Roger Daltrey sang on The Who’s ‘Substitute’, was a sure fire way to earning a crust and credibility.

These days, though, dropping your aitches and cranking up aggression is no longer good enough. In the case of Tory Colonel’s son Pete Doherty, a full-blown smack habit, ABH and regular stints inside is now the acceptable roughneck benchmark. Pop music’s ephemeral natures means its long equated rootsy ‘authenticity’ with substance and even ‘spiritual’ meaning. No self-respecting indie band can get through an NME interview without swapping the perfectly legible ‘I’m going to’ for the faux-moronic ‘I’m gonner’.

Trouble is everyone else is getting in on the act, too. Novelist Stewart Holmes, installation artist Damien Hirst and gravely voiced actor Keith Allen have variously affected the mannerisms of a Dickensian vagabond (albeit from the safety of a Soho members-only bar). In the case of Allen, his privately educated daughter Lily is following in the family steps. Her public persona is a stage-school version of adolescent delinquency, knowwhatImean?

Currently on BBC 2, wine buff Oz Clarke is trying to cultivate Top Gear presenter and all round Petrolhead, James May, in appreciating fine wine. The latter’s bluff; belligerent response is supposedly a manly cheer for the joys of cheap lager and unwashed T-shirts. Leaving aside the obvious contrivance here, its clear May really does not want any public associations with anything ‘posh’ or ostentatious. When asked to cook for their rather fragrant French hostess, May opts for a dish familiar with war time rationing or crackheads: spam and beans. As when Vic Reeves ordered egg on toast at Gordon Ramsey’s restaurant, this is supposed to be a blow against puffed-up food snobs everywhere. In actual fact, it smacks of petulant, bumbling adolescents unable and unwilling to grapple with grown-up settings. “This is all getting too poncey for me,” said May at one point. Just to prove that he does know better, his withering comments were said in a voice more commonly heard cheering on Tim Henman or commentating for the Chelsea Flower Show.

Now it’s one thing for pop musicians, artists and TV presenters to feign blokish bonhomie for the press and cameras. It’s another thing entirely when both the UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and the leader of the Parliamentary opposition, David Cameron, do the same. Previously, former Eton and Oxbridge students would battle in Parliament over which ideas could provide the most effective stewardship of Britain, George Bernard Shaw Vs Edmund Burke. Now it’s over which leader can display the most affecting ‘common touch’, a sort of heat magazine Vs Closer. Of course, Blair has been way ahead in this field for a good ten tears. Last we’d heard, he was praising comedy-metal goons, The Darkness. Cameron, meanwhile, declares a lifelong adoration to fellow conservative Morrissey and reveals what’s on his iPod. While Blair was (un)fortunate to have the Britpop roadshow briefly decamp at Number 10, Cameron has to make do with waving at the YouTube generation (see A Blogstandard Leader by Neil Davenport).

All this hasn’t gone unnoticed. In New Elites: A Career in the Masses, George Walden correctly points out how this debased process, this ‘ingratiation to populism’, is not a clumsy attempt at ‘democratisation’, but the elites old habit of condescending the masses. Hey, we’re just like you – honestly. Now there’s nothing wrong with popular culture in itself. It’s often influenced by and dependent upon higher art forms. But a populist impulse is rather different. It suggests a lowest-common-denominator measurement falsely projected onto what the masses are supposedly interested in. As with those well-educated journalists behind The Sun and News of the World, there’s a sniggering but genuine belief that the masses can’t possibly understand anything more, can they?

Nevertheless, there’s more going on here than old fashioned snobbery disguised by new populism. There’s a genuine, palpable sense the elites aren’t overly enamoured with high-brow culture any more. For them, its become an awkward reminder of their isolation from wider society and an apparent barrier to connecting with and running the country. As those Australian academics point out about The Queen’s changing accent, ‘it demonstrates that the monarchy, at least as far as the spoken accent is concerned, isn’t isolated from the rest of the community’ (2).

Ironically enough, it was precisely such knowledge on Latin and Greek, classical music and fine art that partly endowed the elites with the moral justification to rule. Even such paternal displays, such as the building of museums, galleries and concert halls, was designed to showcase their leadership and authority; particularly against those with competing ambitions to run society. In the absence of social and political alternatives banging on their mansion door, there isn’t a pressing need for learning and showing-off demanding and superior culture.

Instead, inertia, laziness and self-justified slobbery, rather than self-satisfied snobbery, has slowly crept in. Whether the Queen will be high-fiving ‘Yo! Blair’, though, remains to be seen.

1. The Queen is becoming less posh, BBC newswebsite, Monday 4th December 2006
2. The Queen is becoming less posh, BBC news website, Monday 4th December 2006

Slaves to self-flagellation

2006-11-28T11:45:00.000-08:00

On Sunday, Tony Blair half-apologised for Britain's role in the slave trade. For some commentators, it's a noble gesture. In fact, it's done more for his benefit than anyone else. Read here for my response.

Multiculturalism: There Is No Alternative

2006-11-21T09:19:00.000-08:00

Last Friday Goodenough College in London hosted The Mosaic of Multiculturalism conference. Read my report of the Friday events here

Worth more than a peep

2006-11-15T02:29:00.000-08:00

New DVD of Series 3 appears even better second time round

Last year, the failure of the British Comedy Awards not to award Channel 4’s Peepshow has been rightly described as farcical. The recent release of Peepshow’s third series on DVD only makes you wonder whether the judges should be mainlined industrial strength Prozac. A year ago, too, there were mutterings on blogospheres that Sam Baine & Jesse Armstrong’s last effort wasn’t worth writing home about anyway. Not so. Watched together in a marathon viewing (ideal, of course, for mid-winter Sundays), Peepshow 3 is as spectacularly funny as series one and two. Familiarity with the settings, themes and characters initially blunted the still reams of blink-and-you’ll-miss-them gags and embarrassments. So why is this comedy so good?

Peepshow stars David Mitchell as Mark Corrigan and Robert Webb as Jeremy Osbourne, two aimless twentysomethings sharing a poky flat in Croydon. Whilst the naïve Jeremy fancies himself as a ‘cutting edge’ hipster, Mark is essentially the bastard offspring of David Cameron and Jeremy Clarkson, a fifty year old in the body of a twentysomething. Together they compensate for what the other sometimes lacks, though neither can quite calm each other’s neurotic and reckless impulses – especially over women.

In many ways, Peepshow successfully revisits the male bonding terrain explored by Dick Clements and Ian La Frenais. But whereas in The Likely Lads the main characters were aware and preoccupied by social class, in Peepshow Mark and Jeremy are only aware and preoccupied by themselves. This is why we hear their inner thoughts - the rampant id if you will - alongside their public chatter. Mark will say “Yes of course I like dancing”, only to think “so long as it doesn’t make me look like a coma victim being zapped by a cattle prod”. The contradictions between social etiquette, and what we really think, provide endless scope for comedy that’s both rich and strange. And given that we live in a society that really does believe that what we think is as important as what we do or say, Peepshow is a truly 21st century comedy.

What also amplifies that slightly woozy and disorientating feel is the way it is filmed. For the most part, it is shot through the eyes of Mark and Jeremy (hence the title). The ambience is akin to wondering home after a day-time drinking session in mid-Winter, wherein everything suddenly appears weirdly overcast and over bright at the same time. When the third series began, there were a worry that it wouldn’t scale the giddy heights of series one and two. Within five minutes it clearly had. Peepshow has such potent atmospherics the viewer is immediately pulled into Mark and Jeremy’s wonky universe.

Lesser comedies would have relied solely on such production devices. But writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain are as fascinated with the power of words as they are images. Whereas traditional sitcoms are all pregnant pauses and one-liners, Peepshow is a full-on torrent of scathing wordplay. At times it can be course and crude, but it’s always clever and considered too. For the most part, it captures the triumphs and absurdities, the elation and despair of chasing, and sometimes winning, glamorously elusive women.

If all this sounds worryingly close to Men Behaving Badly, it’s not. Whilst sloth and sex do play a part in Peepshow, it neither celebrates the former nor fixates on the latter. Instead Armstrong and Bain set up a raft of modern day targets and machine-guns them down. Top of the list is undoubtedly the hollow conceit of style mag reading, Hoxton twats. In Jeremy’s idiotic but manipulative friend Super Hans, Peepshow rips to shreds the grand self-delusions of unemployed ‘creatives’. The scenes with Super Hans and the easily led Jeremy single-handedly made Charlie Brooker and Chris Morris’ Nathan Barley appear slightly redundant. Whereas Brooker and Morris’ concentrates on the fripperies of EC1, Peepshow dwells on the recognisably human side of inflated talk, empty heads and empty lives.

In a twist of expected narrative, it’s nerdy loan manager Mark who always wins our sympathies. Whether its dismissing irritating street slang, New Age practitioners, rave culture, religious moralising or its new equivalent, therapy, Marks’s withering put downs are reliably and hilariously accurate.

Yet for all their differences in character and interests, Mark and Jeremy are united by nervous uncertainty. These are rudderless individuals unsure of their place in the world, what’s expected of them or how to relate to it. Whereas Dick Clements and Ian La Frenais’ heroes were grounded and directed by social class and class politics, there are no such frameworks for Mark and Jeremy. Instead both seek anchorage in relationships at a time when they’re fraught with uncertainty as well.

At the end of series two, Jeremy marries Visa-seeking American Nancy in a bid for deluded security and purpose. At the end of series three, Mark proposes to frumpish Sophie and, as the brighter of the two, quickly wonders whether it’s a mistake. He’s been so caught up with the idea of love equalling fulfilment he’s not sure whether he really loves Sophie. Nevertheless, his desire for anchorage overrides such considerations and goes ahead anyway. Forget Bridget Jones, Peepshow realises that these days men are as likely to be as nervy, needy and neurotic about the opposite sex as women are supposed to be.

With so much going for it, Peepshow needs all the superlatives we can muster. Three series of unstoppable brilliance and it’s still barely seen or written or talked about. But should the creative talents behind Peepshow really worry? In one respect, being ignored by the British Comedy Awards is a sign of maverick quality. In the past, the judges ignored such high watermarks of comedy as The Day Today and The League of Gentlemen. For such an outwardly conformist institution, perhaps it is fitting that Little Britain wins everything after all.

The Myth of Anti-White Racism

2006-11-11T05:22:00.000-08:00

The presentation of the murder of a white boy in Glasgow as racially motivated distorts the facts for cynical political gain.

Read this spiked article here

Sufjan Stevens at The Barbican, 4/11/2006

2006-11-07T13:02:00.000-08:00

Flights of Fancy

BY ANNA TRAVIS

Legendary for his plans to write an album for each of the 50 U.S. states, Sufjan Stevens is two landmarks down the line with Michigan (2003) and Illinois (2005). But alongside this epic journey, the self-taught musician has recently found time to reroute and ruminate with childlike wonder on two other deceptively straightforward concepts: Christmas and Birds, dedicating an entire album to each and an airing of their highlights on a European tour.

Chrysalis-like he emerges onto The Barbican stage with his ‘band of butterflies.’ The tribe set the dazzling theatrical tone of the evening with their feathered masks and kite style wings. This is a white, Sun-Ra Arkestra, led by a Michigan born Christian who sings of family and faith, instead of outer space. Sufjan’s still wants to reach a metaphysical plane, but does so via earthly elegies to the majesty of urban America

The set opener is the first of his persistent evocations of flight. In The Transfiguration from Seven Swans, Sufjan is king bird at his piano. He sings in hushed awe of Christ’s appearance on a mountaintop. Such seriousness centre stage jars magically with the secular Gods piled up either side; a stockpile of inflatable Santa’s and Supermen.

Next up is the academic minimalism of Michigan. The five-strong brass backing create a Mariachi take on Steve Reich, the metronomic precision stressed in the stunning skyscraper footage. The grand conductor of his own Americana then takes flight into the pastoral realm of The Predatory Wasp. The countryside nostalgia continues with dry childhood tales of the competitive hell that is Summer Camp. The companion piece is the rendition of John Wayne Gacy Jr, as unbearably poignant as a lament for senseless child murder can only ever be. To ‘lighten the mood’, as Sufjan puts it, the inflatable Santa’s are let lose, ironically bouncing and squeaking their way around the theatre to the new tune of 'That Was the Worst Xmas Ever'.

Fragile, male/female counterpoint vocals punctuate most of the set. A dizzying highpoint is 'Seven Swans', achieving the spine chilling power of Low at their pious best. The air then fills up with an evangelical-jazz-wig-out-crescendo of ‘I am Lords’. The leitmotif of ornithology swoops down again with a future classic Majesty Snowbird, from the forthcoming birdlife album. This is clearly a man attached to his themes.

The valedictory refrain of ‘all things go’ from 'Chicago', feels like Sufjan’s signature line. It charts the flight away from pastoral ‘freedom from the land’ is the plaintive cry. He soundtracks the inspiring pull back to the urban realm of skyscrapers, rolling tarmac and subways, the cinematic backdrop to the show’s climax. A standing ovation brought the modest bandleader back with city tales of tentative dates, cars, bossy girls and the sensuality of The Dress Looks nice on you.

Lazarus turned to the skies tonight, his plastic stage wings were eventually cast off and, using only his poetic, melodic powers to ascend, he was unstoppable.

Eastern Europeans: the White Niggers of Europe

2006-11-05T10:12:00.000-08:00

The political targeting of Eastern Europeans is becoming a regular news fixture. Last week, Trevor Philips argues that they're racist against black people. This week John Reid believes Romanians are responsible for 85% of cash point robberies. Read my response to this new immigration panic on spiked here

Cat Soul Power

2006-11-02T02:44:00.000-08:00

Chan Marshall finally shows her stagewise authority at The Roundhouse in Camden, London.

It’s incredible to think that seven years ago Chan Marshall, a.k.a Cat Power, almost gave up writing original songs altogether. Back then, the Memphis-born, New York based singer released a covers album that, oddly for such a venture, became a minor classic. She has since overcome any songwritng reticence, though, but it is only with this years’ The Greatest that a major breakthrough has been palpable. Marshall was aware of that, too. Last night, much of that album’s understated guile and soulful strains was played out with utter conviction and authority.

It undoubtedly helped that the Memphis Horns were bought over to add further dimension and detail. Of course, it’s not that Marshall needed extra frills to make her wistful alt.country songs come alive; but they surely provided enough discipline to prevent her from getting, shall we say, side-tracked.

In the past, Marshall’s live shows have been the stuff of car-crash nightmares, all drunken chit-chat and rudderless songs that go on forever. Last night was very different. While the eye-shielding fringe and hunched stage movements were still in-place, the ability to face and play upfront seemed shockingly new and, more importantly, welcome. As such, Marshall and the Memphis horns' display of lulling country-soul was nigh-on unassailable.

After a blaring and honking cabaret revue style intro - complete with worrying signs of slap-bass - The Greatest’s shimmering, hammock-swaying title track inaugurated Marshall’s on-stage appearance. With her ‘boxing-champ’ fists resembling a playful kitten, she unwittingly (or deliberately?) demonstrated that songs questing, but doubting, tenor perfectly. Rarely has a song about ego-stroking meditation sounded so, so…sombre.

Elsewhere, the slo-mo, quasi-doowop Lived In Bars and the balmy breeze of Willie only emphasised the rarefied plane Marshall was working on here. Commendably, she was neither adopting Southern-soul styles for affectation; nor were the Horns awkwardly bolted on. Instead, their languid but fluid style both suited and played up to Marshall’s ricocheting, melodic prowess. Only the unravelling Where Is My Love bordered on the self-consciously worthy.

Far better was the plangent, psychedelic clouds of The Moon, a master class in making economical arrangements sound big and bold. Round one, so to speak, was an unqualified success.

Nevertheless, even without the Memphis Horns, Marshall couldn’t do that much wrong anyway. Dipping back into her ‘covers period’, a ghostly, spectral reading of The House of the Rising Sun by The Animals obliterated any groaning familiarity. Perched behind a piano, she couldn’t resist drawling anecdotes about Nick Rhodes and Courtney Love to a neck-craning audience. ‘Hey…they both love that (covers) record…wow,’ which either suggested saucer-eyed impressionability or withering contempt. From this angle, it was hard to tell.

The covers continued with a returning Memphis Horns pile-driving through an over-heated reading of The Rolling Stones (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, while an accapella sprint through Smoky Robinson’s Tracks of My Tears sounded slightly forced. Still, as the menacing, climbing chords of Marshall’s own Love and Communication filled the air, you wonder why, on this form, she bothered with covers at all.

Up On The Midlake

2006-10-31T19:28:00.000-08:00

Texan soft-rock outfit Midlake on the miseries of touring and the joys of beards

Ignore the fables of Led Zeppelin’s Hammer of the Gods or Motley Crue’s The Dirt, touring isn’t always a barrel of free rider and frisky über-fans. It’s also cold and damp tour buses, unsympathetic venue managers and even more unsympathetic audiences. Just ask Texan quintet Midlake. Having been touring Europe for seven weeks, they’re craving home comforts and familiarities.

“You know I’d rather be at home all the time,” declares Midlake’s quietly genial singer, Tim Smith. ”I don’t miss Texas as such, more my wife. Other guys in the band have kids as well. No doubt touring the world has its appeal, but I don’t really care if I see Australia or Japan or anything.”

It is early evening in Kilburn, west London. Midlake are tucking into steaming hot piles of Mexican food in a post-work Gastro pub. Band chatter quietly hums to what Texan upholsteries and eateries they’ll be frequenting once more. Midlake’s manager says their tour bus was broken into which only multiplied their disorientated woe. Tonight, though, should be a cause for mild celebration. They’re playing the Luminaire club to launch their gorgeously doleful second album, The Trials of Van Occupanther. Although most of Midlake are college trained jazz musicians, via the North Texas School of Music, they’ve alighted upon a warm and fuzzy soft rock route.

“As a band we started off playing Jazz-funk ala Herbie Hancock in about 1998,” says Tim, “but the more we got into Radiohead and the Flaming Lips, the more we wanted to write music of a similar ilk. Yeah it is soft-rock, but then I’ve always enjoyed listening to Christopher Cross more than I have hardcore punk.”

For all the supposedly ‘square’ connotations here, The Trials of Van Occupanther is, in its thinking and execution, sublimely off-beam. It chugs chugs in a frazzled Neil Young way before giving in to psychedelic astral pop vaguely redolent of Syd Barrett. In essence, Midlake unites the frail charms of latterday San Francisco with leftfield Chicago luminaries, John McEntire and Jim O’Rourke, via a warm and wonky overhaul of American AOR. In turn it’s achingly wistful and ever so gently lulling.

“We recorded and produced the album ourselves in my front living room,” says Smith. “So whilst it was put on a digital computer, we had an analogue mixer to make it sound warmer and intimate. Actually that was very frustrating, very difficult thing to do. I think we got there, though.”

But just who is Van Occupanther?

“It came from a silly game we’d used to play,” says Tim, “a meet and greet thing I’d play, like ‘I’m James Bond and this is my friend…’. You’d have to top his crazy name with an even crazier name without cracking a smile. Our drummer Mckenzie came up with Van Occupanther. On the album he isn’t a king of the town, but mocked by his peers”.

In his honour, Tim painted a portrait of the anti-hero but didn’t want the album sleeve “looking like it was about fairy tales”. Instead, Tim and guitarist Eric Pulido don the type of costumes last scene in The Wickerman. Still, such amateur dramatics came in handy when touring with the Flaming Lips. “Yep, we got to dress up as Santa Clauses and throw balloons t the audience, “ says Tim, breaking into a smile. “At SXSW this year we had to follow them after they played. Now, we really love those guys and the Soft Bulletin was a big influence on us, but you just don’t follow the Flaming Lips, you know?”

Midlake are also connected with fellow Texans Explosions in the Sky and Lift to Experience. It was through the latter that Midlake grabbed the attention of ex-Cocteau Twin Simon Raymonde who released their debut album, Bamnan and Silvercork, on his Bella Union label two years ago. Did Raymonde think Midlake’s collective beard look would be a marketable asset?

“I had my beard first,” insists Smith. “Then our keyboard player, Eric, grew a beard, Paul has a goatee but our drummer can’t grow a beard to save his life. I don’t know it wasn’t intentional. We didn’t decided to go for that look intentionally, I don’t know if it does give us a 1970s look. I’m going bald up here, so a beard distracts from going think on top. You see, I just wish I had big hair.”

Big hair and beards aside, with the strength of leftfield American music currently unassailable, Midlake look set to loom large for sometime yet. Well, if they have the stomach for more faceless hotels, greasy caffs and British reticence.

“Strangely all that only makes us play better,” says Tim scratching his beard. “Not caring if we screw things up means we usually get it right.”

Midlake are currently touring the UK

The Retreat of the Tastemakers

2006-10-27T07:07:00.000-07:00

How inclusive and relativist art agendas are impoverishing not just our cultural products but our critical faculties

Classics Lite

BY ANNA TRAVIS

John Humprey’s latest volume, Beyond Words: How Language Reveals the Way We Live Now(1), laments the contamination of our words with management speak and a loss of social formality. He cites the next to useless educational tool of condensed Shakespeare text messages as prime evidence, but his book misses the real target in the dumbing down debacle. ‘2b?Ntb?’ is a laughable attempt to make the Bard ‘street.’ But, it is the impoverished view of adult and child readerships and the retreat from moral and artistic value judgements that drive these depressing initiatives.

This private retreat of establishment tastemakers is in curious contrast to the public scene. Book groups are flourishing in the pubs, lounges and libraries of Great Britain, with an attendant healthy appetite for canonical reading lists and top ten longevity polls. So why have publishers chosen now as the moment to spoon-feed us with a new series of butchered versions of the classics? Strange to that whilst art supplements are concerned on our behalf about ‘taxing’ lists and ‘arrogant’ declarations of masterpieces, people are consuming and ranking the difficult stuff quite happily themselves.

Attitudes to real and imagined readerships have often provided interesting historical snapshots of crisis points for the cultural elite. The 1930’s mockery of the ‘middle-brow’ vulgarity of Boots’ lending libraries and nineteenth century moral panics over a new hysterical, female readership of romantic fiction are interesting cases in point.

The current version of the ‘average’ reader and the crop of downsized doorstops exposes a spineless and uninspiring critical consensus that holds up its hands in defeat. The Enlightenment project of moral edification and intellectual enrichment through literature has been well and truly ditched. A recent lament on the state of the reading nation states this surrender emphatically, “Reading fiction is not a rationalistic act of enlightenment” and with relativistic glee adds, “ I abandoned reviews, critical consensus and the judgement of others long ago.” (2) Even Professor John Carey, previously a passionate defender of the lively and contested ground of literary value, has retired from the game, with What Good are The Arts? (3) Contrast the contemporary scene with the bountiful age of nineteenth century literature where ‘print became indelibly linked in the public mind with progress.’ And ‘People seemed to be picking up beliefs from their reading like apples from a barrel.’ (4)

Behind the ‘reader-friendly’ reworking of Tolstoy’s War and Peace lies an ominous vision of philistine hordes. Professor Biggs sneers ‘someone’s taste for the “classics” can cover up no discernable individual or original taste of their own.’ This academic is ‘On a mission to enlighten the great zombie-unread of Britain.’ (2) Hardly Gibbon’s Enlightenment declaration of faith in the mass audience; ‘I rejoice to concur with the common reader…The public is seldom wrong.’ (5)

This inability to come up with the critical goods stems in part, from a dim view of the average consumer, ‘The guilty truth is’, according to one arts correspondent, ‘that imposing volumes of this size and significance tend to sit pristine on the bookshelf and are never read.’ (6) While we all may be guilty of the odd doorstop bulking out a designer shelf, the charges of cultural philistinism seem suspiciously disproportionate. Penguin are rebranding these cut and paste classics as ‘the most melodramatic of soap operas’ which is actually painfully apt blurb for our contemporary literati, that sees its audience as only fit for an epic narrative, when it’s been shrunken to the banal formula of thirty minute brain candy.

Not content with just paring things down, the chief translator of the new batch of lightweight classics is also intent on protecting us from a perceived sense of alienation and exclusion, induced by these challenging works. This hatchet job is permissible if your editor or translator wears his inclusive credentials with pride.

‘When you read one of the older translations you feel as if you are being read to by the Queen or Lady Antonia Fraser…I am very different to previous translators…I am from a pragmatic, lower-class, Northern background, and I hope I have made it more readable’ (6)

It’s not just the use of marketing’s new breed of absurd, vacuous non-plaudits like ‘readability’ (see also ‘watchable’ films and ‘drinkable’ wine), that’s offensive here, it’s the suggestion of our shrinking attention spans. New Labour’s dogmatic logic of accessibility has started to infect literary criticism. Professors and publishers talk of ‘exclusion’ and ‘denying’ the tide of world literature to minority groups. What they are really advocating is abandoning the quest for universal truths or great works for an individualized, ideally multi-cultural, quest for ‘your’ classic.

Even when hefty tomes stay high on the bestseller’s lists, such as Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Bloomsbury fears for an illusionary, untapped corner of the marker ‘out there who were put off by its size.’ So another epic gets the ‘approachability’ treatment. Optimistic observers have argued such editing is comparable to the Victorian serialization phenomena; the making of Dickens and his cliffhanging style. But there is a crucial difference between literary forms that evolved in response to a burgeoning magazine market, with all the rich modifications resulting from dialogues with your public, and an editing job on narratives that were designed, at their inception, to expand over four hundred plus pages.

But what do we lose from the original? Surely, the accessibility logic insists, any door that’s pushed open onto these ‘elitist’ and ‘intimidating’ tomes is a help? Not to the intricate art form of the novel. Take one particularly ironic choice for editing and its thematic resistance to streamlining. Proust’s six-volume modernist meditation on memory, In Search of Lost Time, has as its central motif time itself, and how ‘every instant…is a pinprick of eternity.’ (7) A moment or fleeting thought will magically spin out into chapters and volumes of nostalgic reverie. Such a cavalier approach to the imaginative and philosophical subtleties in these masterpieces speaks volumes about the cultural establishment’s faith in their readership’s intellectual ambitions and abilities. Next for the chop includes Moby Dick, Clarissa, Gravity’s Rainbow (Thomas Pynchon), Underworld (Don DeLillo), The Bible and A Brief History of Time (yes, even briefer).

From public to private critic and artist

Past proselytizers, such as F.R. Leavis, one of the most influential literary critics of the twentieth century, had a certainty that deeply offends contemporary relativist sensibilities. Received wisdom on literature courses is that Leavis is a sinister, arrogant purveyor of an ‘absolute’ canon of value. But in a society where moral conviction is taboo, cultural criticism is steadily eroded; it retreats from the public sphere and resurfaces in highly individuated and banal forms.

Take Britain’s well documented list mania in pop and now high culture journalism. When there are no meaningful public dialogues on what is of cultural value, personal favourites begin to fill the discursive chasm, taking on over loaded significance (spawning pop-literary genres in the process like Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity). Additionally, frantic attempts to ‘connect’ with the reading, judging public becomes a process analogous to desperate politicians over-polling their disinterested electorates. As passionate, consistent doctrines on good or bad art, or its morally worthy role disappear, so the arbitrary and banal litmus tests of consumer tastes proliferate. Reader’s polls begin to take the place of heavyweight opinion pieces. When culture is no longer an expression of shared values or communal experience, tastemakers search for patterns or meaning in trivialized shopping lists of ‘favourites’. So recent studies speculate, ‘most of us crave overwhelmingly a happy ending to a novel…41% prefer novels that make them feel better. Young people most likely to welcome sad finale’ (8) It seems that the role of culture is no longer to civilize or create a public, imaginative territory to work out issues of morality, but to make us happy in our individuated space.

We are also privatising the artist as well as the audience, deeply blurring the line between a creator and their acts of imagination. This process has degenerated beyond the scope of the tortured genius stereotype of Romanticism. Biography has swamped contemporary arts criticism and bookshelves, from bestselling victim-lit biographies, witch hunts over Philip Larkin and his misogynist, racist diaries in the 1990’s, to Channel 5 programmes preoccupied with Caravaggio’s bisexuality.

Passing the buck to celebrity and the market

Another symptom of the tastemaker’s retreat is our over-deference to celebrity opinion in the arts today. In the world of avant-garde classical and rock music there is a sudden rush for artists to curate anything, from the South Bank’s Meltdown festival, the south coast’s tri-annual All Tomorrow’s Parties, MTV2’s 120 Minutes, to the endless stream of D-list ‘talking heads’ that keep TV’s nostalgia industry alive. Popular music journalism has also lost writers like Simon Reynolds who attempted to place sounds sociologically or scene svengali’s like Simon Price and his ‘Romo’ fads, to the privatized world of blogging. Instead magazines across the cultural spectrum are hypnotised by a perpetual role call of artist’s influences. Article after article evades critical judgment on artistic products in themselves and instead reveres a musician’s or author’s self-proclaimed influences or process of working. A culture that has lost its critical faculties makes individuals famous for what they like, rather than engaging in philosophically challenging discussions about first principles of good art.

The amount of awards ceremonies in the arts also seems to increase, as a common notion of quality culture diminishes; with more intellectual angst devoted to the validity and inclusivity of shortlists, than to the merits of what’s on offer.

Publishers too have retreated from the critical sphere; they want to let the free market, decide what is of literary worth. In ‘a cross between EBay and Amazon,’ the burgeoning online Lulu publishing phenomena prides itself in its democratizing of the industry. In fact, despite the bold armour of author empowerment, or brave signings of neglected genres, this is simply writers uploading their vanity projects; ‘We allow our people to go in and change their books….Authors are rejected not because the book is terrible but because the publisher thinks the book will not sell enough.’(9) TV book clubs driving new signings and the emergent blog-lit genre are further evidence, not of dumbing down, but copping out of more profound artistic value judgments.

Literary presentism

For the first time we have a cultural establishment unwilling to boldly declare an agreed set of classics for the next generation. ‘The question that remains is whether the book will come to seem dated in the years to come, or if it will pass the Poundian test of being news that stays news. Who can tell?’(10). The replacement is countless articles on personal classics, ranked on banal criteria such as books that have helped you through difficult times, or top ten women’s choices of ‘strong’ female characters .

The flipside to this reluctance to pass lasting cultural verdicts is the emphasis on ‘now’ literature, as Howard Jacobson observes, ‘proof of our philistinism is our politicising of literature. I am not thinking only of the hijacking of book programmes and literary festivals by the current-affairs mob, I also mean the excitement generated by the idea that a novel, or indeed a clutch of novels, has, say, 9/11 as its subject matter. There is, of course, no reason why it shouldn't. But there is equally no reason why it should.’ (6) This presentism is a cultural manifestation of what Frank Furedi has described as political presentism, a climate with ‘neither an orientation towards the future nor a defense of society's historic gains’.(11)

But dumbing down can’t be entirely blamed on the cultural establishment. What Philip Roth captures so eloquently, in the bitter dialogue of his campus novels, is the defeatist state of students infected by the politics of identity and victimhood, ‘It used to be the person who fell short. Now it’s the discipline. Reading the classics is too difficult, therefore it’s the classics that are to blame. Today the student asserts his incapacity as a privilege. I can’t learn it, so there’s something wrong with it….There are no more criteria Mr Zuckerman, only opinions.’(12)

Roth’s Professors were advocates of a post-war notion of the ‘civilizing’ potential of art. This notion has died. Broadsheets annually re-imagine chilling historical scenes ‘History shows that claims for the civilising influence of culture are iffy, at best… Nazis who were stirred by Wagner were gassing Jews; and Stalin regularly attended the Bolshoi theatre while orchestrating the Gulag.’ (13) Once we have given up on the notion of the civilizing potential of art why should we bother to debate the merits of individual works?

Gone are the value-laden modernist critics such as Edmund Wilson who believed literature was ‘ “an instrument of human progress" ’ and an ally in ‘the struggle for a better American society.’ (14) In contrast to the often private literary conversation today, Wilson saw it as his mission to introduce worthy writers to an intelligent public, to ‘persuade people of their importance and persuade people to read them.’ But with no perception of an intelligent or civilizable public, is it any wonder we have so few who are willing to loudly convert?

The self-cultured autodidact also doesn’t have a chance to flourish today, crushed by the weight of a well-meaning culture industry who wish to enforce their ‘relevant’ or ‘accessible’ works, based on reader’s perceived immediate circumstances. Take the ‘Diversity in Publishing Network’ (DIPN), who are concerned with targeting ethnic minorities with their products as ‘They want to see themselves in the book.’ This leaves everyone none the wiser on how art has enriched their life, what it’s taught them and what this should mean for a broader aesthetic or view of humanity.

So why should we be troubled that the cultural critics have retreated and given up the game? Because our critical and creative instincts are one and the same. As Oscar Wilde argued in The Critic as Artist ‘It is to the critical instinct that we owe each new school that springs up…criticism of the highest kind treats the work of art simply as a starting-point for a new creation.’(15)

Raymond William’s definition of culture also demonstrates the transformative worth of cultural criticism, ‘[culture is]the signifying system through which…..a social order is communicated, reproduced, experienced and explored.’ (16) It is clearly a politically bankrupt social order that passes the intellectual buck, or in fact gives up on rigorously exploring the meaning of the arts altogether.

(1) Beyond Words: How Language Reveals the Way We Live Now. John Humphrys. Hodder & Stoughton. 2006
(2) The curse of the classics – Alan Warner. Sept 3, 2005, The Guardian
(3) What Good are The Arts? John Carey. Faber. 2005
(4)Enlightenment – Britain and the Creation of the Modern World – Roy Porter, p94
Penguin. 2000
(5)Memoirs of My Life – Gibbon p162-162
(6)Why Hawking’s Brief History is about to get briefer. Vanessa Thorpe. Sept 11, 2005, The Observer
(7)The Golden Notebook – Marcus Aurelius
(8) ‘Pride, prejudice and happiness: readers choose favourite endings’ John Ezard, The Guardian, 2 March 2006
(9) ‘Rewriting the rules of publishing’ Bill Wilson, BBC Business News Online, 31 July 2005
(10) ‘Critical condition’, Scott Timberg, Los Angeles Times, 22 May 2005
(11) The Politics of Fear – Beyond Left and Right , Frank Furedi, Continuum, 2005.
(12)The Human Stain, Philip Roth, Vintage, 2000
(13) ‘Now all the women come and go... talking of Caravaggio’, Cristina Odone, The Observer, 20 Feb 2005.
(14) EDMUND WILSON, A Life in Literature, Lewis M. Dabney. Cited in The Washington Post – Reviews, Jonathan Yardley, 4 September 2005.
(15) The Critic as Artist in The writings of Oscar Wilde. London; New York: A. R. Keller & Co. 1907
(16) Culture and Society, 1780-1950, Raymond Williams. Columbia University Press, 1958.

Never mind Muslims. What about..er...poverty?

2006-10-25T07:14:00.000-07:00

John Harris notes in The Guardian yesterday that both the media and politicians present a phony image of affluent Britain. With some 12 million adults still living below the poverty line, he argues, why can't we talk about such economic factors rather than cultural debates on Muslim integration? It's a fair enough point; but raising the issue of poverty and rubbish wages alone won't necessarily lead to greater interest on tackling these issues. One of the successes of the Thatcher-era, and largely acquiesced by a spineless Trade Union movement, has been that for a long period, poverty has become both naturalised and individualised. It is thus seen outside of the arena of politics altogether. If issues on poverty and low-wages don't move people, then progressives have to make headway on issues that do.

This is why on spiked today there is far greater attention given to cultural issues surrounding health and diets, behaviour and free-expression, identity and multiculturalism. This isn't necessarily because they're more 'interesting' or sexy than discussing economnic hardship; but these are simply issues that, to some degree, agitate or motivate people.

Harris is right to suggest there's a reality gap between politicians, the cultural elites and mass society; but he underestimates how there's a growing climate against affluence altogether, particularly for the Tesco-shopping masses he is seeking to defend. Citing the likes of Kirstie Allsopp and political lightweight David Cameron as examples of Britain's lack of meritocracy is fine. But bemoaning them having 'the good life' entrenches a levelling down mentality, whereby having 'too much' stuff is either ethically reprehensible or psychologically damaging. Attacking the rich for being rich won't lead to a trickle down effect of wealth redistribution; rather, it simply stigmatises having material aspirations in the first place.

Articles on today's sp!ked-online

2006-10-24T05:25:00.000-07:00

I've a couple of pieces published at spiked-online today. In the main section, I've penned a review of Channel Four's Dispatches Debate programme on Free Speech and Muslims. This can be found here

Over in the spiked-bites section I've conbributed a few ascerbic comments about Trevor Philips, er, ascerbic comments about 'Migrant bigots'.

Second Extras? No Thanks.

2006-10-23T05:41:00.000-07:00

Extras Where did it all go wrong?

Last year Extras, the comedy series by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, suggested the pair were not ‘one trick ponies’. Although not as exceptional or insightful as the rightly sainted Office, it contained more than enough observational brilliance to warrant further garlands. With the second Extras series, it seems ‘where did it all go wrong’ is the fitting response.

Firstly, Gervais and Merchant chartered Andy Millman’s ascension far too quickly. After all, in The Office it took two series and two Christmas specials before there was a glimmer of good news for David Brent. So by giving Millman the fame and fortune he so desperately craved for by the end of Series One, it ripped out the heart and pathos of Extras original premise. Ideally, another series of demeaning extra work and put downs from Greg would have worked better.

In episode one, though, the changed format seemed very promising indeed. Millman’s When the Whistle Blows sitcom – easily the highlight of the whole series – captured the queasy trash of downmarket sitcoms. Although it had the feel of Frank Skinner’s terrifyingly banal Shane, it was actually based on Simon Nye’s Hardware, featuring former Office star Martin Freeman (who shamefully implied it was better than The Office). Millman’s Ray character is basically an impersonation of Ken ‘Reg Holdsworth’ Morley, who also starred (mostly silently, actually) in Hardware too. Millman’s descent into corrosive, what-am-I-doing doubt suggested that Gervais and Merchant were scaling new heights of quiet drama. Alas it wasn’t to be.

By the series end, something odd had happened. Millman was no longer expressing loathing for his sitcom, but appeared comfortable with its very existence. And for a show that had been widely regarded as a bad joke in episodes 1, 2 and 3, why was Millman feted by other celebrities at the end? Even Jonathan Ross wouldn’t want to hang out with someone who’d created something as awful as When The Whistle Blows. But then, like so much about this series, Extras 2 said more about the life of Ricky Gervais than Andy Millman; and none more so than the almost gratuitous use of ‘celebrity’ cameos throughout the series. The appearance of Robert De Niro at the end of episode six, for instance, was simply to show off that - hey -we can pull big names. It’s doubtful whether they can do so again.

Whereas in Series One Gervais and Merchant had Ross Kemp saying to the camera ‘I’m not a very good actor’, in Extras 2 they gave everyone either an easy ride or bore no resemblance to their personas. Who could be a better target than David Bowie? ‘So David, how much cocaine were you taking when you believed you could act?’ ‘Are you going to play Laughing Gnome for us’ etc etc. While critics thought Gervais and Merchants send up of Chris Martin was ‘genius’, it actually let him off the hook far too easily. No doubt the endless flow of cameos was supposed to lend ‘authenticity’ to the celeb-caked world at the BBC. In fact, it merely stretched the bounds of believability and compounded predictability, too.

Yet the biggest flaw of Extras 2 was the diminishing role for Ashley Jensen’s Maggie Jacobs. It’s noticeable on their DVDs that Gervais is not exactly generous about their co-stars. Jacobs was easily the star of Extras 1 (she has the awards to prove it); so it’s not too fanciful to suggest that maybe Gervais and Merchant didn’t want her to be bigger than they are. How else do we explain that Merchant’s Darren Lamb (admittedly a funny enough character) seemed to dominate so many scenes? Or that there were hardly any stand-alone scenes featuring Jensen's Maggie? To downplay such a gifted actress, and beautifully observed character, back-fired spectacularly on the programmes appeal.

Aside from this, there was also a sense that Gervais and Merchant hadn’t worked hard enough on the script. There were too many gags merely repeated from Series One and not enough heart. Thankfully, there isn’t to be another series of Extras. There is no doubt Gervais and Merchant are highly talented enough to pull off comedy gold again. This time, Extras 2 simply wasn’t it.

The doors are open at the Midnight Bell..

2006-10-22T14:48:00.000-07:00

Hello, welcome to my inaugural blogspot. As ever, I'm about five years behind the times. Even my nan has her own blog, probably.

Anyway, the purpose of this blog will be, of course, to ruminate on politics, on books, on music and TV. Anyone who has read my articles on www.spiked-online.com will hopefully find some interest here.

My current spiked article, criticising New Labour's campaign against 'binge' drinkers, can be found here.