Death of the 'Greatest'

 

 

 



It's a sorry state of affairs when the only two posts I have made this year to date concern the deaths of two people who were outstanding in their particular chosen fields and who were also an inspiration for generations.  Of course between Bowie and Ali I could have also posted about Glenn Frey, Prince and a whole other host of luminaries from the worlds of sport, entertainment and beyond.

Muhammad Ali was obviously a big inspiration to black people everywhere but it shouldn't be forgotten that his rise in the boxing world came at a time when we only had two television channels, later three for most of his boxing career, and our exposure to international boxing was once every four years at the Olympics and on a Wednesday night with Harry Carpenter, courtesy of Sportsnight with David Coleman.

When Harry Carpenter died back in 2010 I posted on a BBC board that he should be remembered for one quote above all others, the end of the 'rumble in the jungle' when Ali beat Foreman in Kinshasa in 1974, "Oh my God, he’s won the title back at 32!’   It was one of those hairs on the back of the neck moments, accompanying the fuzzy images of a legend winning the title I think everybody outside of George Foreman's entourage hoped he would win.

Ali was not only one of the greatest sportsmen who has ever lived but he was being the poster boy for civil rights and pricked consciousness in America during the Vietnam War. His comments on not wanting to fight in one of America's many pointless foreign meddling forays were a wake up call to many: “Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end".

Like all people he was a bundle of contradictions and his comments about Joe Frazier do not look any better in retrospect then they did at the time but they were all part of what is now regarded as simple 'trash talk' the thing that has you reaching for the mute button whenever their is a weigh-in or press conference for any of the 200 different weight divisions that seem to exist today.

The 'float like a butterfly' and 'I am the greatest' quotes kept us amused for hours during those long winters of the 1970's as along with George Best he seemed to be the only person in sport who featured at the front of the daily papers as much as the back pages.

Legend? Well in an era where you can be called world class if you score from thirty yards against Andorra it is difficult, without sounding like one of the Four Yorkshiremen, to convey what a special sportsman, personality and inspiration he was.  In boxing terms in won 56 of the 61 fights he fought, 37 of those were knockouts,  and three of the five defeats he suffered came in his last four fights between the ages of 36 and 3, but to people of all ages from all backgrounds spread far and wide across the world he was simply a wonderful human being who touched the hearts of so many and gave us so many special memories.

David Bowie (8 January 1947 - 10 January 2016)



7:15 a.m on Monday 10 January 2016. That was the time of my 'Kennedyesque' moment. A knock on the bathroom door and my wife saying "Did you know David Bowie has died?" Let's be honest as questions go that's up there with the daftest but my Wife knows me well after thirty odd years and it did take me eight months once to casually mention I'd seen three people knocked down by a bus/taxi combination whilst on a visit to Glasgow, so it was rhetorical rather than anything else.

Back in 2013 when I wrote a series of reviews under the title 'Bowie Week' it was as a result of the excitement surrounding his last but one album release, now I find myself writing again just days after his death and the release of his latest and last album, sorry posthumous releases just don't do it for me anymore than extended versions or special collectors editions, so with Blackstar that is the end of a brilliant, glittering and innovative career.

Last Friday's release saw me up and on the computer before breakfast to complete the purchasing of the aforementioned album. Two tracks had already been made available and both sounded like classic Bowie, in the sense that they sounded familiar and yet new at the same time.

I once read somebody boldly declare online that the two things that keep most people excited beyond their daily work and family routines are sport and art and I agree. The spiritual aspect of both cannot and should not ever be underestimated. We all need that outlet and more often than not we shall find it, not necessarily within ourselves nor lived vicariously through others, through the simple pleasure of letting sport and art into our lives.

Reading comments on various media websites and in the newspapers about the over reaction to the death of a pop singer, very little of the comments were of the ironic nature noting that the over reaction was by the media itself. I haven't been running up and down the street outside the office shouting at strangers "he was a bloody genius, yes an overused word but he was!" No, I've been listening and reflecting, listening to his music and reflecting on how it impacted on me during the better part of fifty years that it provided so much enjoyment, occasional bewilderment and sometimes frustration. I've not said to anybody, "Yeah, but man, I loved him more than you".

A public death and the media frenzy that surrounds it are a creature to behold. All those politicians you hoped didn't like music suddenly do, Blair (who didn't mention Bowie once in his 700 page autobiography), Cameron (who didn't include one Bowie song on Desert Island Discs but did include Benny Hill) and of course Boris Johnson who seemingly believed that Bowie was the second coming.

John Lennon, a man whose death was greatly mourned in the pre-Interweb era despite not having released a decent album in almost a decade, summed it up best for me when he said, of The Beatles, "We're a pop band nothing else." You could never tell whether Lennon was being serious or just wilful but you know what he meant.

As I sat alone on Monday night listening to 'Hunky Dory' it occurred to me, almost without thinking and with a genuine brief moment of pain, how many pivotal moments Bowie and his music had played at various stages in my life, the sound of his voice and Rick Wakeman's piano on 'Life on Mars?' transported me back to 1972 and a school disco and I smiled at the memory.

Blackstar will  probably be number one in the album charts this weekend on both sides of the Atlantic, a first which in itself seems a fitting closing curtain on an outstanding contribution to music.

I cannot think of another artist who has spanned so many years and continued to make music that demands the attention of its listener, certainly none of his contemporaries have continually sought to reinvent themselves, the likes of Jagger, Richards, McCartney, Townshend and Davies ran out of ideas around about 1973 just as Bowie was getting up a head of steam.

It was a brilliant career and we shall miss him but we have his music and more than anything, his fashion, his politics or his drug taking, that was what was important.

I can see clearly now

Having wanted to go to the Isle of Wight for years now but always put off by the cost - £96 return by car from Lymington to Yarmouth - I was pleased, nay delighted, to see that fares had come down to £20.75 single, including the Easter weekend and the up and coming May bank holiday weekend.

I duly completed the booking form, registered as a member, printed out the tickets and then realised I had made an ever so slight mistake - the tickets were for foot passengers and the car return was still £96.

What fascinated me though was that on the bottom of the ticket was a strip that you were instructed to fold in half (one half the outward journey the other half the return) and 'put in your windscreen'. Obviously foot passengers must prepare themselves for the south westerly blowing between the island and the mainland by carrying a piece of glass. 

Picture This

We all like stats and bizarre numbers and sometimes one comes along that makes you go wow!

10% of all photographs ever taking were taken last year. In fact just to add to that thought in 2011 it was estimated that the number of photos appearing on the Facebook, all 140 billion of them, represented 4% of all the photographs ever taken.

Of course, and I am going to sound like photo luvvie here adopting the voice of Brian Sewell, there are photos and there are photos and we are not talking about the golden age of photographic art here just the mass availability of devices on which we can take photographs and the Internet based sites available to display them.

When Channel 4 ran one of those Top 100 lists a few years ago, this one was on inventions, somebody suggested Flickr as an example of how the taking of photographs had been revolutionised simply by making a site available for everybody to contribute to - the democratisation of the Internet in full flow. Flickr has become a great online resource and among the endless kittens and pictures of readers wives (trust me, putting online any photograph of a scantily clad model attracts a strange mix of 'followers')  collections there is some genuine art and there is the facility for an exchange of ideas and questions that didn't exist previously.

With regards to Facebook, apparently the biggest demographic in the U.K are 25-34 year old married women, a fact I would suggest that leaves itself open to any number of prejudices! Looking at a selection of photographs that have been posted I have to say that the sexist pig in me is stirred and prodded, food recipes, cats, Christmas trees, nights out (mainly on very poor quality phones), magpie philosophy, have as much of an appeal to me as an explanation of the offside law has to my female colleagues - men and women truly are from different planets.

Then there are 'selfies' and 'photobombing' which would be funny if done once and shown to your mates but when pushed out into the wider world really do become self indulgent - yes as a blog writer I am aware of the irony here - and people complaining about them whilst posting endless selfies (yes Ms Lily Allen I'm looking at you) really do confirm that it is all about the 'look at me I must be important' approach to life that seems ubiquitous at the beginning of this century.

Still, I suppose rather than be Mr Grumpy about the whole thing I should just accept it all as being part of our western lifestyle and be grateful that at least we are free to make arses of ourselves without fear of reprisals (within reason on both counts of course).

Fade to Grey

The Grand Pier, Weston Super Mare
 

Would you pay £1 to walk on a pier that had cost £39 million to rebuild in 2010 two years after the fire that had all but destroyed it?  Well we did yesterday.

It might be a case of taking coals to Newcastle or sand covered shoes to a beach the best part of ninety miles away for the day but it was a special occasion. Twenty years ago on (Easter) Monday 4th April at 3:31 pm our daughter Nathalie was born and we arranged to have a family day out. Why Weston Super Mare? Well it's the location for one of Nathalie's favourite television programmes of recent years, The Café, which ran for two series of Sky before being cancelled in November last year.

Weston Super Mare, days before the Easter half term school holiday starts, was much like any other typical English seaside resort coming out of its winter slumber, rubbing its eyes before a new dawn, painting its shop fronts, smoothing out its beaches and generally preparing for that much hoped for influx of tourists weighed down with expectations and, more importantly, cash.

The Grand Pier is the main attraction with its fast food outlets, upmarket tea house, sea views, children's rides and twenty strategically placed A4 sized information boards - although maths clearly isn't the strongest point for this part of North Somerset as one of the boards was numbered 21/20. Incidentally in this era of self determination and independence seeking opportunities it was interesting to note that a couple of miles outside of Weston is a sign welcoming you to Somerset, clearly the division between North Somerset and the rest of the county is important to some people.

Like a lot of towns up and down the country the proliferation and ubiquity of places to eat and drink is as depressing as it is welcoming, there's nothing like being a fickle traveller is there. Having grown up in an era when it was Wimpy or the pub (and pubs actively discouraged children for most of the 20th century) the outbreak of places to eat over the last decade and in particular the last five years or so should be welcomed, it's a renaissance that has come with a price though, and I don't just mean in the increase of health concerns. Town centres are the battleground for chains of coffee houses, driving up the rents so that only national chains (Boots, M&S, BHS) and charity shops (with their exclusion from council taxes) seem to be their only rivals for our attention.

Weston Super Mare does though have more than its fair share of fish and chip shops, something that should be taken for granted as it sits on the second largest tidal range in the world, fish shouldn't be too much of an issue - although Brixham, the main source of its fish, is the same distance away, 86 miles, as were are - oh the joys of refrigerated lorries.

A lot of the front at Weston clearly dates back to the Regency period and in common with other coastal towns (Brighton, Hastings and Weymouth to name three) those old buildings that had once been family hotels and before that hotels for the English middle classes have now been converted into flats and have something of the air of faded seaside glamour about them. The one striking building close to the sea front, the Grand Pier excepted, is Weston College, and a finer example of the Brutalist style of architecture you will struggle to find anywhere in North Somerset.

Weston College, Weston Super Mare

 

There will be plenty for the kids to do come the holidays, although in common with almost everywhere on the planet you do wonder what will appeal to teenagers other than hanging around the amusement arcades or waiting for the tattoo parlours to open. One shop that did bring a smile to my face though was located within the Sovereign Centre, a shopping mall from the Basingstoke school of architecture which was bright, clean, free from social misfits shouting at passing strangers whilst downing cans of Special Brew and also relatively free of national 'chains' - it was a shop that sold vinyl records. Okay this may not be ground breaking stuff but I don't live within five miles of a shop that sells CD's and the nearest shop with any vinyl in it only sells second hand stuff so this was a trip back to the future. If only I still had the equipment to play vinyl I might have been tempted!

For a day trip to the seaside North Somerset's finest was just that, fine. The weather was good, the food was good, the company was excellent and to top it off Nathalie said on the way home that she prefers the Nerves (original) version of 'Hanging on The Telephone' to the Blondie cover version - I think I might just have cracked it!

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

To anybody under the age of thirty (Sir) Elton John is probably best known as the composer of music for the funeral of the 'People's Princess' but there was a time, long, long, ago, when he was the biggest pop star in the world. 

Between May 1972 and October 1975 EJ had six consecutive Number One albums in the United States, three of which made Number One in the U.K, two of the other three peaking at the Number Two position. In the same period he made the Billboard Top Ten singles chart on nine occasions, including three Number One singles - the Americans seemed to get his act a lot more than we did here in Blighty where his only, pre funeral Number One, was a duet with Kiki Dee in the long hot summer of 1976. He was at a strange place in terms of his public appeal, he could sell records by the lorry load but admitting that you actually liked him was like saying you fancied the chemistry teacher when everybody knew it was the French teacher who was the hot one, why would you like Elton John when there was T.Rex or Bowie or the nascent Roxy Music?

The answer was that Elton John was the closest we had in Britain to the American troubadour singer, he was James Taylor with platforms, Don McLean with stupid glasses, his melodies put to Bernie Taupin's lyrics were knowing, capable of both subtlety and pastiche, he recorded songs that demanded that you listen to them, seated in front of your stereo or in the arms of somebody you had a crush on - urban myth had it in 1972 that two of my classmates had 'snogged' all the way through Side One of Honky Chateau, all twenty two minutes of it!  

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was recorded in France and London during the Spring of 1973, released that Autumn it reached Number One on both sides of the Atlantic. Two things stand out from that time, looking back now as the fortieth anniversary edition hits the shops (or Internet outlets), firstly the fact that the album was being recorded barely a couple of months after his previous album, "Don't Shoot Me I'm Only The Piano Player' had made Number One and secondly the fact that, despite such a prolific output during the early seventies, this was a double album. 'Double's were pretty much de rigueur for rock artists, from The Who via Hendrix to ELP, The Rolling Stones, Deep Purple, The Allman Brothers and onto Led Zeppelin but for non-rock artists the field of double albums was limited to Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde and of course a certain 'White Album'.

GYBR was EJ's seventh album and whilst Honky Chateau, released in May 1972 and the second of four albums released in under two years, is considered the peak of the John/Bernie Taupin songwriting axis this double, or seven tracks from it, runs it a pretty close second in my opinion.  Part of the success of the album and its enduring legacy is down to the production of Gus Dudgeon and the engineering of David Hentschel, coupled with the fact that Elton's 'band' of Dee Murray (bass), Davey Johnstone (guitars) and Nigel Olsson (drums) really were a tight outfit and this was the third of five consecutive albums that they would be the core musicians and it shows.

The album opens with the double header 'Funeral for a Friend'/Love Lies Bleeding'. Coming in at just over eleven minutes it is longer than the careers of most X Factor winners and is much a product of its time as anything on the album. It's all pomp and circumstance to begin with, almost slipping into prog. rock before happenstance, the first song ends in the key of A and the second starts in A apparently, takes over and we have a traditional rock song about love, death and musical differences. Incidentally I can't be the only one who smiles at the line, "But my guitar couldn't hold you so I split the band" being a nod in the direction of Ziggy Stardust and the line, " When the kids had killed the man I had to break up the band"  - or perhaps I am.

Track Two on the album is 'Candle In The Wind' a track that for most of the past sixteen years has been almost unlistenable and unlistened to by me due to its association with that funeral. However in the interests of fair play I revisited a track that had meant so much to me during my early teenage years and it still sounds good, perhaps I will play it again in 2031.

Bennie and The Jets closed Side One of the original vinyl release, opening with crowd noises from a Jimi Hendrix concert it was one of the most popular of all EJ tracks at the time being a hit in the US singles charts and I can remember it being played at every school or youth club disco I went to in those pre-punk days.

Side Two of the vinyl album, and track four of all CD and download releases, opens with the albums title track and is probably Elton John's finest three minutes as a vocalist. Taupin's lyrics have been examined extensively over the years, who are they about? what are they about? etc. Given that we know Bernie Taupin was fascinated by the Wizard of Oz and that Elton John himself despised the adulation that was given to him simply for him being himself I think the songs meaning isn't too difficult to fathom - it's about rejecting style over substance, rejecting the empty wealth that often accompanies those with little genuine talent and it is therefore as relevant today in its 'clear as mud' message as it was when recorded over forty years ago.

'This Song Has No Title' and 'Grey Seal' are the last two tracks before the album seems to suffer from 'mid-album' fatigue. The former might not have a title but it has some great lines:  

"Tune me in to the wild side of life
I'm an innocent young child sharp as a knife
Take me to the garretts where the artists have died
Show me the courtrooms where the judges have lied

Let me drink deeply from the water and the wine
Light coloured candles in dark dreary mines
Look in the mirror and stare at myself
And wonder if that's really me on the shelf

And each day I learn just a little bit more
I don't know why but I do know what for
If we're all going somewhere let's get there soon
Oh this song's got no title just words and a tune"

 

The problem with youth is that you have very little in the way of life experience and you take what you are given, or what life deals you, mainly on face value. It is only as you grow that you become more 'wordly' or cynical - listening to this album with fresh ears its clear that the three tracks that open side two of the old vinyl release really are reflecting how difficult it was for Bernie Taupin to deal with the express train that was fame during those highly successful years between 1972 and 1974.

 

'Grey Seal' was used as a theme tune by the BBC back in 1986 for a programme about the history of the World Cup. Again, as with the two previous tracks, it contains a verse which seems to suggest that Bernie Taupin felt a little out of his depth in the exalted company he was now keeping as Pinner's very own Reg Dwight became a global superstar.    

 

"I never learned why meteors were formed
I only farmed in schools that were so warn and torn
If anyone can cry then so can I
I read books and draw life from the eye
All my life is drawings from the eye"

'Jamaica Jerk-Off'' hasn't survived the intervening forty years as well as some of its track mates and there's no doubt that some would find the cod-Jamaican accent of the backing singers slightly offensive. Forget those claims, the track simply isn't very good and it is what the forward button on your remote was designed for.

'I've Seen That Movie Too' closes Side Two of the vinyl and is a traditional love song about break-up and deception all told using the not to subtle metaphor of B movies, it's also the second longest track on the album coming it at a second under six minutes.

One of the things that has always fascinated and horrified me in equal measure over the years has been Elton John's tendency to sing in a cod-American accent. I fully understand the reasons why, he grew up in an era and musical tradition where to get on you had to either sing like Elvis or if you sang the blues you had to sound as if you'd eaten grits for breakfast but it still sounds bizarre.

Whilst the opening two sides of the old vinyl release still sound good side three sounds awful and hasn't survived the test of time. 'Sweet Painted Lady' is cringey, a product of its time. Back in 1974 I went to see Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel in concert, the audience was 90% teenage girls, perfect for me as I was 100% teenage boy, but the support were a band called Sailor best remembered, if indeed remembered at all, for a song called Glass of Champagne. Most of Sailor's songs were about prostitution, sex and generally being a sailor on leave in a town that consisted mainly of bars and bordellos - 'Sweet Painted Lady' is in that tradition of 'tart with a heart' - the repeated line - 'Getting paid for being laid' would have 'Mothers against anything slightly suggestive' reaching for their twitter and Mumsnet accounts.

'The Ballad of Danny Bailey (1909-1934)' is the story of a fictional gangster, a born and raised Robin Hood type character from Kentucky. What makes this song just about bearable is the melody and piano playing style of Elton John which fit perfectly in with the lyrics.

'Dirty Little Girl' and 'All The Girls Love Alice' are the songs making up the second half of side three. The former is, like 'Sweet Painted Lady', a misogynistic product of its time made worse than it should be, if that's possible, by the 'dirty old man' vocal style Elton John decides to use, reminiscent of Mick Jagger at his grubbiest.

'All The Girls Love Alice' must have been Bernie Taupin's fantasy about teenage lesbians and you can't wait for it to finish so you can wash your ears out after listening it really is that grubby. Given the sensitive times we live in I can't help thinking that somebody releasing a song with the following lyrics in 2014 would expect a visit from Operation Yewtree: 

"And who could you call your friends down in Soho
One or two middle-aged dykes in a Go-Go
And what do you expect from a sixteen year old yo-yo
And hey, hey, hey, oh don't you know".

Having disinfected our ears, Ipods  and anything else that has come in contact with Side Three of the vinyl (or tracks 7-12 of the CD/digital release) we are on the home straight, just six tracks and eighteen minutes to go.

In the among the eighteen tracks that make up the original album are nine that probably shouldn't have been there had some sort of stringent quality control been in place, in fact both its predecessor 'Don't Shoot Me..." and the subsequent release 'Caribou' had ten tracks that left you wanting more, with GYBR I never played the third side of the album and the only track that got a regular playing on Side Four was 'Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting' a departure from the usual ballad AOR style that suited Elton John well throughout his career.

'Roy Rogers', 'Social Disease' and 'Harmony' conclude the album although I doubt anybody bothered playing any of them more than once either on original release or in one of the subsequent releases.

At seventy six minutes long and with sales in excess of thirty million worldwide this represents the possible artistic and certainly commercial peak of Elton John's career, the problem is that there is more filler than killer. Elton John once said that GYBR was his 'White Album' and in many respects he is right, that was an album that was two sides quality and two sides overblown rambling rubbish by an artist at the peak of their powers who thought they could record and sell anything to a record buying public in thrall to their every utterance. What a pity he didn't set the bar higher and imagine he was recording his own version of 'Blonde on Blonde' an album that some forty nine years after its release still has me looking (and listening) for the duff track, I mean surely his Bobness must have recorded one in among those fourteen gems.

He recorded better albums both before and after this but if he had only recorded and released the first six tracks plus 'Saturday Night' we would have had an album of seven very good tracks and a true musical legacy rather than one that has seven very good tracks and ten really not worth ever playing again tracks.    

The Sound of Silence

It's usually July that finds me inactive on this blog but the last three or four weeks have found me reluctant to commit anything to paper (or screen as the case is here). I've found myself coming up with three or four ideas for posts only to find that by the time I have sat down and pressed the 'on' button that they have, just like my dreams, faded and died.

It's not for the want of some decent material, Bowie's representative on earth at the Brits, West Ham claiming the most clean sheets in the Premier League this season, the pros and cons of Scottish Independence and of course the Winter Olympics. Then there are the heavier subjects such as the Ukraine, the use of Cossacks to break-up a demonstration by a pop band in Russia and the increasing, but hitherto slipping under the radar (no pun intended), tensions in the Pacific between the Chinese and the Americans each posturing and posing in that 'my Dad is bigger than your Dad' style of military muscle flexing we hoped had died back in 1989.

I could put it down to the weather, which has gone from the pre-Christmas flooding to the 'follow that tornado' (well almost) living in the windy city February. I could put it down to the problems at work, I have never worked in an office where morale has been lower as London realises that they have bitten off more than they can chew and don't know what to do with the leftovers (usual TV chefs hints on what to do with leftovers don't apply in these circumstances). But I actually think that I have briefly lost my mojo.

A week's break between the end of January rush and the start of the February slog coincided with the wettest and windiest month since January and offered exactly zero in terms of inspiration. That said if you haven't seen American Hustle yet do yourself a favour and go and see it. The remarkable thing about the film (and I am not posting any spoliers here) is that it really does look like a 1970's film, it is quite superb. I went to see it on Valentines Day with Nathalie (probably normal behaviour in some Southern States but slightly weird in the U.K) and the wind was so strong that even in the films quiet moments you struggled to hear the dialogue.

She Loves You

....Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.

Back on 27th August 1990 a new BBC radio station hit the airwaves, it was called BBC Radio 5. The station was a mixture of news, plays, childrens programmes, phone-ins and a long forgotten radio soap set in South London. On Monday 28th March 1994 the station was re branded and relaunched as BBC Radio Five Live, the BBC's response to a 'demand' for rolling news, it provoked much anger among the existing listeners who felt that this was a betrayal of trust on the part of the BBC and even to this day the BBC still fails to even recognise the need for a place on the network for mothers and children.

Anyway back to that soap, it was called The Mall and featured a cameo performance by a young singer called Sarah Cracknell. Cracknell was, and is, one third of the London band Saint Etienne and her role in the show was simply, or so it seemed, to shamelessly plug the bands second album So Tough. The plug worked for me at least and So Tough began a twenty year (and counting) love affair with the band, the musical nous of Pete Wiggs and Bob Stanley and in Miss Cracknell the closest we have in the U.K to a French Ye! Ye! girl voice.  

Bob Stanley published his second solo book towards the end of last year: Yeah, Yeah, Yeah - The Story of Modern Pop. At 776 pages long it could come in useful as a barrier against rising floods in the weeks to come but primarily it is a work lovingly put together by somebody who not only cares about pop music but who also appreciates its place in the social history of those countries where it has set down its roots. It begins at the end of World War Two and ends, or rather peters out, around 2003 when digital downloads had begun to take over physical purchases of singles.

It is a book that needs to be read at least twice, once to appreciate the sheer breadth of the subject and again to allow the reader to place various bookmarks on the pages where there are references to tracks that have either been forgotten with the passing of time or simply not known about because of the availability of so much music, particularly in the post 'pirates' era of British radio broadcasting.

Although they probably didn't realise it at the time, the opening up of the airwaves to a variety of radio stations over the last fifty years may well have destroyed forever the communal experience of hearing a certain track for the first time but it democratised the listening habits of each successive generations, no longer were we subjects to be played to by a few men on ships off the Essex coast but the financial clout and technical knowledge of those employed by the BBC enabled audiences to listen to a whole smorgasbord of music. Well that's my take on it for what its worth.

Bob Stanley is first and foremost a music fan, no make that a pop music fan. He's one of us, it's all in the melody, the hook, those jangly guitars or those beautiful backing vocals, that phrasing or, in the case of the Small Faces Itchycoo Park, that phasing. We have all begun our musical history and pleasures in the cradle of pop music, those three minutes of pure distilled exhilaration. For me it was, so family legend has it, a tennis racket on the back step of my Grandmothers house in East London singing my head off to, inevitably, 'She Loves You'. The Beatles changed music forever, it's no exaggeration to say that and as Stanley demonstrates that the most famous phrase in popular music, from which the book takes it title, ended the pop careers of many acts from The Shadows, via Elvis Presley to Billy Fury and the famous Brill building writers in New York.

There are so many stories, facts, nuggets  across the vast acreage of popular music that it isn't possible to select one chapter at the expense of another except to say that those chapters that deal with 'Glam' and 'Punk' certainly demonstrate perfectly that Britain and America really are two countries (for the purpose of this argument) divided by a common (musical) language.

I can see that this is a book which will be kept alongside my keyboard for months, possibly years as I delve in and out locating various obscure tracks that are now available, in many cases for the first time in decades, thank to the digital age.  As one of the cover notes suggests, this book is "an extraordinary piece of work. scholarly, witty and painstakingly researched".

Not A Second Time

Friday 7th February 2014

Thirty two years ago Janis and I went on our first 'date'. It was the traditional first date in the sense that it was a visit to the cinema. Back in 1982 we had gone to see 'Arthur', in those days you still had a support feature and on that particular night the support was about roller skating in London, the reason the subject remains in my mind but the title of the film has long since vanished is because of the soundtrack which featured The Kinks, Van Morrison and the Yardbirds, the film was being shown about fifteen years after the music had been popular.

Fast forward to last Friday and it is fair to say that if that first date had been as spectacularly wrong as our celebratory visit to the cinema we probably wouldn't be together to laugh at what happened. We had decided to go and see Inside Llewyn Davis the latest Coen Brothers film about a folk singer in New York at the beginning of the sixties. Actually persuading Janis to go involved listening to some Bob Dylan and the cause wasn't advanced much when she laughed during the song 'Down The Highway' and asked me "Do you have some highway shoes?" - this from a person for whom the first two Bruce Springsteen albums are the closest she has ever got to owning folk music.

Anyway having insulted his Bobness we set off to the local multiplex. Looking up at the posters that adorned the entrance there was no getting away from the fact that Inside Llewyn Davis was conspicuous by its absence. Nothing unusual in that, with ten screens and five 'studios' there isn't room for every film on the outside of the building. Inside though there still wasn't any sign of our hero, the electronic board listing all the films on show didn't feature him, the wall planner showing the seating arrangement for each screen/studio didn't feature him neither did the leaflet listing the films for the week commencing Friday 7th February 2014. That date rang loudly and clearly in my head. I had checked the previous day that the film was showing at 12:45 and 4:30 pm but hadn't noticed that the change over day was Friday. Llewyn Davis had left the building, guitar, cat and all.

We stepped outside. "Is there another film you want to see?" Janis asked. To be honest I wasn't even aware of any of the other films on show, none of the titles meant anything as we looked up at the posters, searching for inspiration in the same way we had searched for Llewyn Davis some five minutes earlier.

"That one," I said pointing up at the last but one film, "Matthew McConaughey is always good value, no idea what the film is about though."

Famous last words. The film opens with McConaughey's character Ron Woodroff
enjoying a threesome with two prostitutes whilst watching a rodeo event through the slats of the fence of the indoor hall. Over the next two hours we watch one of the great performances of recent times, an Oscar winning performance not just by one but by two actors as both McConaughey and Jared Leto as the transgender Rayon/Raymond make compulsive viewing. 

According to many articles I have read since the film does take liberties with the truth but that doesn't make it any less compelling. McConaughey lost some 47 lbs in preparation for the role and Leto's character offers a sympathetic view of the HIV/AIDS world as stark relief to the macho world that the Ron Woodroff inhabits where gays are called faggots or cock suckers. When the two of them come together for business purposes the vulnerability of both takes the film to another level.




After the film finished we stepped outside the cinema, looked at each other and burst out laughing, not at the film or its subject but at the sheer absurdity of the situation. If we had been caught on camera coming out of a film dealing with this subject matter it would have taken some explaining but these things just happen. When we got home we discovered that we had actually been at the local premiere of the film indeed none of the national papers actually carried a full review until the Saturday morning - I promised however that next time we go to the pictures I will have a back-up plan that includes reading up on what the alternatives to our first choice might actually be about.

January

....sick and tired you've been hanging on me.

The wettest month since records began apparently, that's the problem with records they are always being broken and it's no use wandering around thinking 'blimey May 1789 was a wet one' because somebody will pop up and tell you that 2013 was the second wettest year on record (well since records began, the venerable Bede was more bothered about the sturm und drang of the ecclesiastical and political worlds than the meteorological one).

It is of course also the month when anybody required to complete a Self Assessment Tax Return must ensure that their 2013 return is filed (to avoid a £100 fine) and that they must also pay the balance of their 2012-13 income tax and an amount of account of their 2013-14 liability. What has become noticeable over recent years is that the number of returns that have been filed late across the country is on the decline, this is mainly due to the filing penalties introduced by HMRC in 2012. Prior to that date you would be fined £100 for late filing only if there was a tax liability now you can be fined regardless of whether or not you actually have any tax to pay. Of course those who are both lazy and clever can file their returns to make the deadline and later withdraw it and file an amended return without any consequences other than the prospect of some interest on the late payment of tax.

It's been a manic month in the office hence the lack of blogging and also because even when faced with the opportunity to blog there has been little to fire my imagination out there in the bigger world. January really has been a grey, wet and windy month and given that February is generally even wetter, greyer and more miserable I can't see too many fun times ahead.

It's usually that month when you want to get out in the garden, rain permitting, and try and organise things as the ground warms up but the fences are still down from the Christmas storms and even the frogs are absent so far which must be some sort of record in previous years the sound of males calling for a mate has begun half way through the month.

Roll on February..............................

This Song Has No Title

A red letter day in our family yesterday as Nathalie had to call in sick. That's the first day she has had sick since starting primary school at the age of 4 which is pretty good going.

As she works with small children she is open to all sorts of infections, colds etc and there haven't been many days since last July when she began her NVQ that she hasn't had a cold or sniffles but she's kept going up until now. Last Friday she came home from work to say that three children in the two year old age group had been sent home with high temperatures and by 8 o' clock Friday night she was in bed where she stayed on and off until this morning when she returned to work.

Fifteen + years without a day sick from school, college or work - well done.

Good Times, Bad Times

Anybody who has visited the cinema over the past month or seen the trailer for 'American Hustle' on tv couldn't help but notice the distinctive opening of Led Zeppelin's 'Good Times Bad Times'. One of the great lead tracks off any debut album it also contains one of my favourite lyrics as well, "When my woman left home with a b-blind man I still don't seem to care'. Looking at the soundtrack album though there is a distinct lack of 'Zep'. That's not say it isn't a good soundtrack, although to be honest it contains two too many tracks by ELO for my own personal taste

1. Jeep's Blues - Duke Ellington

2. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - Elton John

3. White Rabbit - Mayssa Karaa

4. 10538 Overture - Electric Light Orchestra

5. Live and Let Die - Wings

6. How Can You Mend a Broken Heart - Bee Gees

7. I Feel Love - Donna Summer

8. Don't Leave Me This Way - Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes

9. Delilah - Tom Jones

10. I've Got Your Number - Jack Jones

11. Long Black Road - Electric Light Orchestra

12. A Horse with No Name - America

13. Stream of Stars - Jeff Lynne

14. Live to Live - Chris Stills

15. Irving Montage - Danny Elfman

So why no Page, Plant, Jones and Bonham? Well the answer lies within this interview with the person responsible for matching tracks with pictures - Susan Jacobs.  It's good to see one of the great underrated tracks of American music: Dirty Work by Steely Dan featured in the film, but unfortunately not on the soundtrack.

From watching British TV It would appear sometimes that the choice of music is often a game of one upmanship, something we are all guilty of sometimes, between producers so it's good to see that some thought does go into choosing the tracks that can often make a film a little more rounded. And who among us wouldn't love to have the words' Film Music Supervisor' on our business card?

Too Good To Be Forgotten

Alexandra Bastedo (9 March 1946 - 12 January 2014) died today, another actress from our collective teenage years, another relatively young person cut down by cancer.

For those of us of certain age The Champions were part of our television heritage, although the single, thirty episode, series finished its original run back in 1969 it was repeated at regular intervals during the Seventies and when ITV4 began transmitting in 2005 it was one of the Lew Grade ITC Entertainment programmes that began another life for another generation.

Bastedo, along with Stuart Damon and William Gaunt were a trio who had been picked to lead a United Nations law enforcement team and on their first mission the plane they were travelling in crashed in Tibet where they were cared for by a secret group of locals. Here there senses were sharpened, their intellect enhanced and their physical skills improved, they then put these improved skills to use fighting the baddies!

After The Champions Bastedo featured in  very few  films considering the high profile nature of the television series, she even appeared in EastEnders a few years ago. It was away from the tv, cinema and theatre that Bastedo found a more important role - in animal welfare.

She was quite a canny businesswoman, realising that in the age of the Internet and DVD's, blu-ray etc that even if she had moved away from the limelight there were others, like people of my generation, who still held her in high esteem even if that esteem was based on a tv series nearly forty five years ago. She sold autographed photographs, both current and from her archive (see below), for £10 a go on the understanding that the money would be put into championing (pun intended) animal welfare. She would hold open days at her animal sanctuary in West Sussex, posing for photographs and signing autographs - I read recently on a photography messageboard of somebody who attended one of these open days a few years ago and he said she was a gracious and charming host.

 

Girls on Film

I had intended writing about aspirational advertising today (no really) but when looking for an external hard drive online I came across this photograph of Elizabeth Taylor from the Life magazine archives - published in their book 'Life in Hollywood'. The model looks beautiful, she is lit perfectly, for the era it was taken in, but just look at the state of that background! If I had been lucky enough to have taken that shot I would have spent hours using Photoshop trying to smooth out those blotches on the roll of paper.

Something About Us*

Let's be honest two people turning up at an anonymous Paris address on a moped wearing crash helmets doesn't look out of place does it? But when you learn that one of those people is the French President Francois Hollande and that what you are looking at is a photograph appearing in a French magazine then things start to take on a potentially different scenario.

The French generally shrug their shoulders and get back to the more important things in life when presented with the revelation that one of their politicians has been caught 'sans culotte'  but those revelations aren't generally accompanied by a photograph and coverage on national and international television. I can't remember a time when BBC and Sky news reporters took to the streets of the French capital and walked the short route from the Elysee Palance to the address of the Presidents mistress.

It's not the affair that matters, nor do the revelations on their own after all there is nothing to say that public and private lives cannot be maintained separately from each other but it's surely the potential security issue that is the problem here.

The head of one of Western Europes largest countries, a NATO member, G-20 member and the person beneath whose index finger the launching of France's nuclear weapons depends upon has been photographed arriving for "une nuit sous les couvertures" by a paparazzi.

Whether or not the magazine 'Closer', remember them from last year and the Kate Middleton long lens photographs, was right in publishing the story is down to their readership, where they were clearly wrong in my opinion is the use of photographs to illustrate the story. Stories do not need photographic embellishments, nor do they need details of a lone security man arriving each morning with a bag of croissants to persuade somebody who has no interest in affairs of the heart to pitch up one night, sit in a car and take a pot shot at the President.

If, as we are led to believe, tired, depressed and unhappy then perhaps he should resign from office rather than putting himself in the firing line. After all unlike Kate Middleton in her birthday suit any potential attack here would be up close and personal, after all the whole world now knows where Julie Gayet lives and that those two figures arriving at night on a moped aren't Daft Punk putting in some remixing time on the next album.  

Hollande and his bodyguard should have gone for this look

* Daft Punk track from their second album 'Discovery'

Rattlesnakes*

Simone de Beauvoir is the latest dead celebrity to get the 'Google Doodle' accolade. Not sure where us men stand in the second decade of the 21st Century regarding feminist icons, are supposed to acknowledge them or is that considered sexism?

Anyway, and I apologise to any passing feminists, De Beauvoir's most famous work 'The Second Sex' may be one of the great works on feminist philosophy and the history of the treatment of women but I can't help thinking that like many of the 'great works' of philosophy it is far too deep and meaningful for most of us. One of the criticisms of the work is that it shows De Beauvoir to be just as guilty of being as misogynous as those men she criticises and there has been much debate over the last thirty years or so as to whether or not she actually liked women at all and whether or not her views have been pursued blindly and actually set the role of women in society back a few decades.

In 1960 De Beauvoir along with John Paul Sartre met Che Guevara in Cuba.  Sartre praised Guevara after the meeting calling him ' the most complete human being of our time' and as the couple were both Marxists I'm sure they had plenty to talk about. It's quite possible that her appearance as a 'Google Doodle' will lead more people to investigate Marxism which is certainly the flavour of the month/year in intellectual and political circles.

One of the joys of the Internet is the abundance of material that has now been digitalised and made available that would have otherwise remained out of public circulation or requiring a great deal of knowledge and digging to unearth it. There is an interview  with De Beauvoir from 1976 where she discusses her writing and influence and one section that leaps from the page, certainly in the context of other posts I have made this week, is the following: In other words, men are now much more aggressive, vulgar, violent. In my youth we could stroll down Montparnasse or sit in cafés without being molested. Oh, we got smiles, winks, stares, and so on. But now it’s impossible for a woman to sit alone in a café reading a book. And if she’s firm about being left alone when the males accost her, their parting remark is most often salope [bitch] or putain [whore].


Happy 106th Birthday



She looks like Eva Marie Saint in On the Waterfront
As she reads Simone de Beauvoir in her American circumstance

Lloyd Cole and The Commotions 1984

Frankie say.....Relax

Be careful for what you wish for is the motto of this story that is currently doing the rounds.

It Ain't What You Do It's The Way That You Do It

Tory MP Penny Mordaunt as shown that she isn't daunted at all by the prospect of getting down and clean by accepting an invitation to take part in the ITV Splash!.   I suppose ITV had to put the exclamation mark at the end of the title in case their audience weren't entirely aware of the words onomatopoeic attributes.

Of course it's all for charity so that makes it okay and I like her self effacing attitude when she said,  “I have the elegance and drive of a paving slab, but my navy training has certainly given me the guts to take on the challenge head on".

It's a classic case of an MP being damned if she does and damned if she doesn't, we all want our politicians to reflect the average man/woman in the street and as long as it doesn't take away from her job for too long I can't see the harm.


Talking of MP's doing things that are worthy sad to learn this lunchtime of the death of Labour MP Paul Goggins  one of the House of Commons good guys and somebody who had a career before politics and who cared deeply about child welfare and fighting child poverty. I thought the tribute paid by David Cameron at PMQ's showed a cross party respect and fondness that is often missing in the bear pit of modern politics.

Don't Get Mad, Get Even

Caroline Criado-Perez  is the sort of woman I would hope we would all want our daughters to grow up like. She believed enough in her principles to suggest that Jane Austen be the face of the new £10 note, she won widespread praise for her campaign but unfortunately she also attracted the attention of the type of people that nobody should have to encounter either online or 'in real world'.

The level of abuse this young woman had to suffer was truly shocking and, as she has said herself tonight in a radio interview, there is always something very sad about a woman threatening another woman whether it is with physical or verbal abuse. We've all seen online abuse, the name calling, the personal insults but they tend to be petty and only once have I seen somebody actually wish another person harm.

Unfortunately this isn't an isolated case, although it is certainly the most high profile thus far, and the people who run social network sites clearly don't have either a clue or an interest in policing the sites they are happy to boast about.

 The Everyday Sexism Project does what it says on the tin,  it "catalogues instances of sexism experienced by women on a day to day basis. They might be serious or minor, outrageously offensive or so niggling and normalised that you don’t even feel able to protest".   It's a very depressing read and despite the subject matter there's no titillation in there it's a very sad indictment of the age we live in. Some of the things that men say to women, and there are a few which are the other way round, will leave you opened mouthed chin on your chest. The site isn't a celebration of sexism but a reflection of some people's attitudes to the opposite sex.

Back to Caroline Criado-Perez and I really hope that she eventually gets over this sad episode in her life, she comes across as somebody who has been left scarred by the whole sorry episode, as I'm sure we all would whether male or female, and you hope that friends and family will form a support group for her.

As for the two perpetrators  I would like to think that a prison sentence will deter others - although unfortunately I doubt it. I'm also at a loss to understand why the person responsible for threats against Stella Creasy wasn't prosecuted, the 'not in the public interest' argument seems to be the dfault position for lazy law enforcement too often these days. 

"Nat West–Barclays–Midlands–Lloyds" *

Last year I suggested Haim might be a band to watch in 2013, it wasn't that much of a long shot given that their first two singles had sold well and that the BBC had chosen them for one of their 'ones to watch' list. Haim duly came up with the goods releasing an album that sold well, a UK tour that sold out and they finished the year with the ultimate musical acolade, an appearance on Jools Holland's Hootenany.

Looking at who might be a possible breakthrough act in 2014 probably should have been something on my 'to do list' at the end of last year but hey ho. The one artist who has impressed me, with just three singles to her name, is Jillian Banks who is known simply as Banks.




Waiting Game is the first track off her third single (EP) called London.  She has been described as having a voice similar to Zola Jesus but without the goth attitude. What I think sets Banks apart, so far, is that her each of the songs released so far have a tangible atmosphere to them.






*Manic Street Preachers from their first album "Generation Terrorists"