Refried Ectoplasm

Astonishingly, despite my entry for Sweeping The Nation's series on songs of the last ten years being largely about boilers leaking and the cuteness of the guest vocalist, I did manage to write some even more irrelevant fluff about Hear The Air that I edited out for everyone's sake. However, whereas most of my offcuts tend to end up clogging up my hard drive to be seen by no one, I've decided to try and conjure something out of this one, on account of the post complaining about the spelling of "The First Noel" on the posters for Myleene Klass' Christmas Spectacular turning out to be hopelessly misguided.

(Seriously, who knew? I'm sure that at some point in the last 33 years I must have seen the title written down somewhere, and I'm sure I would have noticed if it was spelt 'Nowell'. And you don't really expect the promoters of Myleene Klass' Christmas Spectacular to be the people to be pedantic about this sort of thing. But, good on them for doing it.)

Other than the fact that I really like it, one of the reasons why Hear The Air stood out for me when I was considering songs I might write about is because I really didn't care for Mo-Ho-Bish-O-Pi at all. And I've always had a soft spot for one-off really good songs by bands I otherwise dislike: there's something oddly reassuring about it, as if the dreadful support slots I had to stand through, looking at my watch and wondering why I bother, were actually worth it in the end; that there's the chance that all bands with the whiff of averageness about them may have one existence-justifying shining moment lurking within.

(I used to have this theory that every vaguely competent band had at least one good single in them. It was a particularly stupid theory - to be honest the only other song I can recall that fits it is Take It Easy Chicken by Mansun - and by the turn of the millennium this had already been irrevocably proved so by the continuing existence of the Stereofuckingphonics (trad.), and clearly it would never have survived Kasabian.)

I remember seeing Mo-Ho-Bish-O-Pi three times, although, unusually for me, I can only place two of them: one was at the Camden Falcon when the Barfly was still based there (they were supporting Rosita, but I seem to remember leaving early to go and see Spearmint around the corner somewhere - oh, the days when I would wander the streets of Camden going from gig to gig), and once at one of those NME Awards shows at the Astoria. The Astoria one was particularly memorable as being the worst gig I'd ever been to, something which wasn't really Mo-Ho-Bish-O-Pi's fault. I think I'd probably still hold it up as the worst I've ever attended, not so much because of the wretchedness of the bands (although two of the four were pretty rotten), but because of the horrible dashing of expectations.

Being useless at deleting things, I still have my commentary of events from the night, and my review of Mo-Ho-Bish-O-Pi is telling: "Save for one nice thumpy thing when some girl called Rachel (probably in some band or other, I expect) joined them, they were pretty much any band you're likely to see first on in any old backroom in Camden." Telling, that is, that I haven't had any new ideas in the last 10 years. They were followed by a then largely unknown Sigur Ros ("They'd possibly have been much better playing where people actually went to see them rather than as support, and were less likely to chatter incessantly or imitate bow-wielding bloke's extraordinarily high-pitched 'ooooo's'") and Mudlumz, who were hand-picked to represent British hip-hop but mostly reminded me of the time I saw Chumbawamba, and you never want to be reminded of that.

However, none of this was anything to do with why this was the worst gig I ever went to (not that Mudlumz weren't dreadful, but I can handle bad support bands): that was down to the headliners, who were The Beta Band. Because I've never seen a band as insultingly, willfully rotten as The Beta Band were that night. I don't mind bands who don't necessarily play the songs that you want them to play, as long as what they choose to do instead is worth seeing. But bands who play the songs you want them to play in a really half arsed manner and just noodle around amusing themselves the rest of the time... well, that's not really on, is it? The only positive thing was that they were so dull that I felt able to go to collect my coat early, thus beating the Astoria's notoriously long queues to retrieve your belongings. I sulked for about a week afterwards. No band I'd been looking forward to seeing let me down as badly as The Beta Band did that night.

And yet, despite all that, I still really like Hear The Air. And now I have to write six more bits about songs I like, despite the ones I've already done being like pulling teeth and those being the easy ones.

Save Biggins

Last night I watched The X Factor for the first time. I've seen bits of it before but never the whole progamme all the way though. But I was round someone's house, and they were watching it, and after spending the start of the programme being all disdainful I then got drawn in like a big fat hypocrite. I suppose it was like watching Eurovision, if you don't think Eurovision is something to be celebrated by donning some sort of national costume and going round to the house of someone dreadful.

Here are my observations:

* I can kind of see why people would watch it, because I started out trying to ignore it and then found myself getting drawn in, and instead of just saying that such and such was awful, tried to explain precisely why I thought such and such was awful. Which, given how paralysingly unable I am to write anything even slightly coherent about music I really like for Sweeping The Nation's latest feature, is clearly going to make me look an idiot, particularly when I'm sitting around with a family who can spot my bullshit a mile off.

* The really painful thing is that every now and then, amongst the nondescript pretty boys and girls doing really weedy versions of songs that didn't deserve it, there'd be someone who actually might be any good. Take, for example, the girl who my sister declared useless before she started, and who I thought wasn't half bad (and really quite cute until she started shrieking once she'd completed the song): all right, so she was being horribly drowned out by the band - I spared the family the stuff about modern music mastering at this point - but she could sing a bit, and there was a bit of life in the performance rather than a lot of simpering at the camera. And it seemed even better in the brief recap after most of the following contestants had been thoroughly dull.

* I really wanted to like the Welsh lass, as her parents seemed pleasingly humble and self-deprecating compared the other families with their dull stories about how exciting it is to see their kids on the TV and the amazing sacrifices involved in driving into London from Kent once a week, but it turned out that she had an even weaker voice than most of the others. Shame that.

* Anyone who wonders why the BNP do so well in Dagenham only has to listen to the one from Dagenham who the bloke on the PA at Victoria Road was urging us to vote for last week speak; ie, the reason the BNP do so well in Dagenham is that a lot of the people there are fucking idiots.

* The strange thing about watching the 'big band night' is how little big bandiness there was. (I realise that in this instance 'big band' means 'Robbie Williams doing Mack The Knife', by the way, but there wasn't even any of that.) Now, I don't proclaim to be an expert on these things, but I did listen to those eps of Big Band Special featuring D Gedge which at least suggested that you can adapt jangling guitar pop to a big band format in a way that works quite well sometimes, which means that if someone must sing Angel Of Harlem or When You Wish Upon A Star (and there's no need for anyone to sing either in any circumstance that doesn't involve Jiminy Cricket) you could at least do something out of the ordinary with them. This, I suspect, is where the ITV audience and I part. (Although the sneery comments on that link suggest that people who'd probably think themselves above The X Factor are every bit as unimaginative.)

* The box of the Singstar game I was asked to look at (so that I could read out the names of the artists included for someone who couldn't see them properly) lists the names of the artists in alphabetical order but with solo artists listed by first name rather than surname (so the list starts Alphabeat - Amy Winehouse - Bronski Beat - all right, not Bronski Beat unless you want to make the game entirely unbeatable). And this is downright despicable: I don't mind iTunes listing things that way, because clearly it would be quite complicated to get it to behave in any other way, but it wouldn't have been that difficult to order things properly. It's just lazy and stupid and clearly a sign that the Daily Mail was right all along in some way.

* And then there were The Twins. "You must see the twins", us non-viewers were told. "Everyone's talking about The Twins" says the otherwise admirable O'Leary, who I've always hated before. Nothing could possibly live up to this sort of build-up, but I was expecting better (well, worse) than something that looked a bit like The Chuckle Brothers doing a Eurovision parody. Except that The Chuckle Brothers doing a parody of Eurovision would clearly be awesome.

*But you know the real shame of it? Having decided that I was going to do the ironing while watching Doc Martin tonight (and, really, if anyone with any sense had the choice, clearly they'd go off with the strict doctor woman rather than the annoying woman with the scary eyelashes, even if they had got scary eyelashes up the duff), I turned the TV on early to find out the result. I even had an opinion on it. (Clearly it had to be the women who'd decided that pinstripe suits were a good idea, even though everyone was miles better than the simpering manchild one who we were told had been given some 'sexy choreography' that seemed to involve him waving his arms around a bit; I make no claims to any idea of what counts as being 'sexy' but I'm willing to suggest that this probably isn't it.) And now I'm scared I'll watch it again next time I happen to have nothing better to do on a Saturday night (ie next Saturday). There is no hope. No hope.

Baby's First Youtube Embed

I'm long used to my favourite bands splitting up. Madness split when I was 10, for example, a useful early lesson in the lack of permanence of everything. And so it's been ever since: Kenickie, Bis, The Dismemberment Plan, McLusky, Stereolab... I know that my current favourites will go the same way sooner or later, that one day Los Campesinos! will decide that they want to get proper jobs and that Falco will get fed up with looking on indulgently while Kelson hurls himself into the crowd, but that's fine. (And anyway, I suspect Half Man Half Biscuit will outlive us all.)

Chas & Dave haven't been among my favourites at any point in the last 26 years, but the 7 year old me would probably have been a bit sad that they've called it a day and, particularly for the reasons given, so am I.

(NB: The phrases 'Snooker Loopy' and 'LOL' will not appear in close proximity at any point in the following. Although I do recall being on the bus coming back from swimming and a mass singalong of it starting, primarily for the excellent opportunities for saying the words "nuts", "balls" and "screw" that the song provided. This what being a 10 year old growing up in Dagenham is all about.)


Look! On the Rockney label and everything! With my infant doodlings on the label to boot!


I'm not sure quite why I liked Rabbit at the time. It might have been the incongruous nature of being a song called Rabbit (not that I would have been using words like "incongruous" at the time; I don't use words like that very often now), or possibly it was the ending, the "yep yep rabbit rabbit yep yep rabbit rabbit bunny bunny jabber jabber" bit. Listening again I can't imagine that it fitted in with my understanding of pop music as it stood then and I think that this rather suited me, despite only being 5 or 6; some sort of interest in the different (or some strange sort of musical snobbbery) that I've never really got over. (I was going to attempt some sort of conceptual link to listening to Fuck Buttons while walking in the park and feeling rather giddy, but it wouldn't really wash.) These days I wouldn't say it's as splendid as Jake Thackray's treatise on the same subject, or that my experiences with women suggest that the problem they describe is a common one, but I do admire it's use of the word "incessant" in a rockney sing-a-long. S'not as good as Gertcha, mind, but then I don't have a copy of Gertcha.

I don't have a copy of Chas & Dave's Christmas Jamboree album either, but I definitely wanted one. I recall a family party where a copy was present and my insisting on it being played. Looking at the tracklisting I can still remember bits of it; there's no other reason why I would know how Robert E. Lee goes, although I am rather foggier on the subject of Too Fat Polka. Sounds like a good 'un though. A pity Spotify only appears to have a re-recorded Best Of.

I eventually saw Chas & Dave at the Ian Dury Memorial Concert thingummy. I seem to recall that there was some sort of spurious justification for them being on the bill; I can't imagine Ian Dury being a fan, but maybe he was, some sort of non-authentic Cockney thing maybe. At the start I think there was a lot of the aging geezer equivalent of "Snooker Loopy! LOL!", and I wasn't expecting much, but by the end they'd charmed the crowd. Or maybe they'd just charmed me and I just assumed that everyone else was charmed as well, that seems more likely. They ended with this, and it was lovely, although I could do without the soft focus/sincere look close-ups in the video.

Write things down

The man from the mortgage company is sitting in my armchair. (Mine as in the armchair in my flat, obviously; I was sitting on the sofa.) He is quietly tapping away on his laptop. I begin to wonder about the man from the mortgage company. I know he's married with kids. I wonder how old the kids are - not very, I guess, if they've broken the lid of his laptop. I wonder how he met his wife. Was she buying a mortgage? Or did they meet in some other social situation? As he taps away I try to imagine him on the dancefloor somewhere, wowing the womenfolk of (I'm guessing) Essex with his moves. He doesn't look like the type, but then how would I know what the type looks like if I've never seen them?

I've been thinking about this sort of thing a lot lately. It's probably not healthy.

The man from the mortgage company likes certainty. He recommends the fixed rate rather than the tracker, because that way you know what you're going to pay. (And because taking out a tracker when the interest rate is low and only likely to rise is plainly a bad move, but that doesn't fit with my my narrative, so sod that.) He recommends the insurance policy that always pays a set amount rather than decreasing because that way you know what you're going to get. I like this. I'm all for certainty.

He taps away quietly. Apart from the two-finger tapping It is deathly silent. I had turned the radio off when he arrived in case it disturbed us (and to stop me from worrying about him judging my choice of radio station). Even the people downstairs seem to have stopped arguing for a bit. Occasionally a motorbike roars down the road nearby, but that's all that can be heard. There are no attempts at small talk. Possibly this is because he is very serious and needs to concentrate, or possibly it's because he's realised that I'm horribly out of my depth when it comes to both mortgages and small talk and doesn't want to have me floundering again. He concludes our business, we shake hands again and I show him the way out.

Also, I seem to be worryingly close to buying 35% of a flat. Fuck!

This is my world of today

It had been a good day. Things have been rather getting me down of late - talk to me about affordable housing and I'll bite your head off. Possibly literally - and a long walk around some eroding coastline, breathing the undeniably fresh air and then eating chips on the seafront was precisely what I needed. The journey home was swift and I arrived back at the station feeling that if all wasn't necessarily right with the world, then at least the bad things weren't so bad that they couldn't be dealt with. To add to my air of contentedness, the bus came around almost straight away.

A woman had sat in the seat in front of mine. This was not a problem. At the second stop, two young women with a pram boarded the bus. This also was not a problem. One of the young women was holding on to the baby rather than having it in the pram. She recognised the woman in the seat in front of mine and began to talk to her. This was a problem, because when the bus moved off she was in the awkward position of not being able to grab hold of anything to steady herself. The sensible thing to do would be to take a seat.

However, despite the seat next to the woman in front being closer, and despite the seat next to the woman in front being next to the woman in front who she knew and had started talking to, she decided to take the seat next to mine. However, this didn't stop her from carrying on her conversation. Which, this being Essex, was conducted at such high volume that I could hear it over my headphones and, this being Essex, was unbelievably banal, taking in trips to Lakeside, the possible availability of work now that the students have gone back, the child's resemblance to its father, and other details that I really, really, did not want to know.

I tried an exasperated glance at her. It didn't work.

I considered my other options. I could have asked politely why she'd chosen to sit next to me when the person she wanted to speak to was sat in front, but I suspected that this might go down quite badly. I could have pointed out that actually talking over someone in this way was quite rude, but this would also have gone down badly. I could have questioned what was likely to become of the unfortunate infant cursed with at least one plainly rather stupid parent, but this might have resulted in punching from two sides. So I looked out of the window, increased the volume of my headphones to a fairly painful level and hoped one of them would get off soon. They lasted about half of my journey, which was still far too long.

Will there ever be a rainbow (part 12 in a cut-out-and-keep series)

Yes. Look, there's one now.


Actually, this reminds me that I was going to write something about Famous D Mitchell from TV's First Ep Of The New Radio Series Was A Bit "Meh" Mitchell and Webb choosing Rainbow Connection as sung by Kermit the Frog on Desert Island Discs the other week, only I forgot the programme wasn't iPlayerable and then forgot exactly what he said, so I decided not to bother. D Mitchell's hypothesis was, as I recall, that it was a lovely cheery song which would give him hope while stuck on the theoretical desert island, whereas I've always seen the song as terribly bleak. "Someday we'll find it/the rainbow connection/the lovers, the dreamers and me" sings the frog; he's saying that he is neither a lover or a dreamer, which seems rather sad, particularly when you bear in mind that he's a frog in thrall to a particularly erratic pig.

Also, this version of it once made me blub a bit. There were reasons, honestly. Although I'm not watching it now just in case it happens again.

Me, my dad and a clown

I realised the other day that my walk to the station in the morning is exactly like the arcade game Paperboy.

Ways in which my walk to the station in the morning is exactly like the arcade game Paperboy

* I see the same people walking along the road each morning. The old man out for his morning constitutional who always wears shorts even in winter; the middle-aged woman with the obviously dyed hair; the slightly odd looking woman with the grey hair who could be any age between 30 and 60; the fellow with the wig walking two small dogs; the cute (if rather large) lass who wears nice skirts; and the woman on the bike (OK, not strictly walking in this case) with the billowing hair and the amount of make-up usually only seen on eastern European athletes. Every morning, invariably in not quite the same place as I saw them the day before.

* The vehicles are also quite regular: the van from the letting agents; the white van with the 'for sale' signs in the window driven by a magnificently-bearded Sikh gentleman (which, having seen it nearly every day this week, was the moment I realised the similarities); the milkfloat which always makes me feel guilty that I buy my milk from a shop even though it would be utterly impractical for me to do it any other way; the van from the carpet warehouse.

* There are hazards! I'm fairly sure that the hazards in Paperboy didn't include discarded fried chicken boxes, shattered glass and dog poo (preferring fighting drunks and remote controlled cars and such), but the principle of nimbly avoiding them is the important thing in this instance.

* There are some houses with windows boarded up, which you can imagine have been boarded up because someone threw a newspaper through them the previous day

* Halfway along there's a road to cross which can sometimes be quite dangerous (albeit that most of the danger is caused by drivers not indicating that they're about to turn left).

* Cars often pull unexpectedly out of driveways, which can prove hazardous for the pedestrian as it does for the paperboy.

* At the end of the road is a training ground. Well, all right, it's the station. The entrance to the station doesn't have any ramps or targets to hit, but you do have to dodge around people standing in the queue for the ticket machine, dawdling by the pile of piece-of-crap free newspapers, struggling with the concept of the ticket barriers and hurtling down the stairs attempting to catch trains that you're not putting yourself out to board, which is at least a slightly different discipline to the walking down the road bit.

Ways in which my walk to the station is not like the arcade game Paperboy

* The business with the bike and delivering papers. But this is a trifling difference and should not be dwelt upon.