1998: That goes in there, and then it's over

Back in the day, I used to spend the afternoon of New Year's Eve putting together a tape of my favourite songs of the year. I started this at some point in the early 90s and have done so ever since, save for the odd occasion where I haven't had time and done it the day before or after. (These days I put together two 45 minute playlists instead. as committing it to tape would involve a lot of frantic stabbing at buttons on different remote controls, but it's the same principle.) There are, obviously, important rules; no more than one song per artist, one album track that wasn't a single allowed but not compulsory, ditto one b-side/extra track. I've broken all of these rules over the years, but then that's half the fun.

Usually I would then spend January making up additional tapes of other things I liked during the year, invariably ending up with this sort of thing:


Mobile Phone Photography Corner, there.

And so, unable to resist Simon's Muxtape Challenge, I fairly naturally gravitated to my tapes of the year to make my selections from. Originally I'd wanted 1999, on the grounds that that always seemed like quite an important year, as if I became fully-formed or something, but someone had beaten me to that one (and did a much better job, although I'd have had Flame and possibly You Can Have It All as well), and so I took 98 instead.

So, 6 hours worth of listening to cassettes later, and refusing to deviate from what was on the tapes (hence nothing from Four Lads Who Shook The Wirral or Music Has The Right To Children, both of which I came to later), this is what I came up with.

It was an interesting year to revisit: I think I was on the cusp of something, the tapes veering between fairly bog-standard major label indie (it's quite nice to hear Solomon Bites The Worm by The Bluetones again, but it's not something I'd really want to play to someone else), hype I'd bought into (hence the Lo-Fi Allstars, who I thought were the most 1998 band I came across, if you see what I mean, although I would have left them out if I'd have found Buzzin' by Asian Dub Foundation anywhere) and the slightly more, er, esoteric.

It did seem to be a year of epic singles; in the playlist I made as I listened there are nine songs of over 6 minutes, and in the end I left most of them out as they were making the tape teribly long; I can't imagine anyone wanting to listen to someone else's music for over an hour. Hence no Ice Hockey Hair, Stay Young by Ultrasound or 88-92-96 by Six By Seven, splendid though they all are (and I couldn't get Xmas Steps by Mogwai to fit into the file size limit). Instead, er, Pimblico. I'll probably regret that one later, but then I like rudimentary two minute pop songs which are so insubstantial that they're barely there.

Anyway, it was a fun exercise, and I may eventually do one for 1999 anyway, once I've got through listening to the pile of ten-year-old CD singles and albums I've blown the dust from.

The one-man campaign for stricter firearms controls

While preparing my tea yesterday evening, I was delighted to hear a trailer mentioning that the fine broadcaster George Lamb has been nominated for an award. This is clearly long overdue, but splendid nonetheless. I was slightly confused to hear the trailer imploring us to vote for him, as I'm sure that in the past when 6 Music presenters have been up for awards they've not promoted the fact that we can vote so keenly; I can't think why they'd make a point of it in this instance.

Sorry, got a bit confused there. What I meant to say was, "Oh, for fuck's sake".

The citation for Lamb is a triumph of redefining language so great that even Susie Dent off of Countdown would be impressed. Consider, for starters, the claim that Lamb deals in 'surrealist humour'. Now, I'll be honest, I'm never quite sure what surrealist humour is; I always immediately think of Milligan and Python, probably not an original thought I'll admit. My handy dictionary suggests surrealism is "a style of art and literature seeking to express what is in the subconscious mind, characterized by unusual images", and a bloke playing a sample of someone saying 'Shabba', while possibly intended as 'humour', doesn't seem to me to be all that 'surreal'. Childish, maybe; indicative of a limited imagination, almost certainly. Not really all that surreal.

'Irreverent interviewing technique', the copywriter bleats. Now, an irreverent interviewing technique is all well and good if you're interviewing somebody who needs to be brought down a peg or two, or someone who's going to respond in an amusing way; neither of these are necessarily going to be true of, say, the sort of mid-ranking indie bands that turn up to do sessions on 6 Music. The irreverent interviewer has to know his subject, otherwise there's no point to the interview. When him off of The Daily Show interviews some politician you've never heard of, the interview can usually be described as 'irreverant' but because he knows what he's talking about it's usually a worthwhile exercise; when George Lamb interviews Sons And Daughters having absolutely no idea who they are, it becomes a waste of everyones time.

'Tongue-in-cheek antics', they offer. Now, Wikipedia claims that tongue-in-cheek means "a statement, or an entire fictional work, is not meant to be taken seriously, but its lack of seriousness is subtle". It seems difficult to see where the tongue-in-cheek aspect of a perma-hollering bloke and his equally loud sidekicks shouting about "boss-eyed birds" and 'ting' and the like lies; perhaps the humour is so subtle that only an expert panel of radio awards judges can possibly detect it.

The astonishing thing is that the clip they offer up utterly disproves everything they say. There's nothing 'surreal' or 'tongue-in-cheek', no 'engaging banter' or 'quirkiness'; it sounds more like a group of blokes on a late-night train that you'd change carriages to get away from at the first station. Having listened to all of the clips on the voting page, I can safely say that literally everyone is better than George Lamb. I can't imagine ever wanting to listen to any of the others' programmes, but none of them are utterly hateful and all seem quite charming compared to Lamb; even Kelly Osbourne seems remarkably competent by comparison.

Of course he'll win; when the head of Radio 2 needs a favour from some awards ceremony I would imagine that she gets it. And then we get to listen to the trailer in which George celebrates his triumph, following which the word "magnanimous" will have to be struck from the dictionary for being of no use any more.

It started going downhill when they outlawed mantraps

I'm currently being amazed by how little sleep I can survive on. I can't have had more than about four hours or so last night, due to unfortunate upset stomach issues that resolved themselves in my fleeting moments of sleep, and yet I seem to have survived a day at work with only one excruciating moment around a young woman. And that probably would have happened if I was wide awake.

Anyway.

I'm sure I've written before on the awkwardness of the office greetings card. However, I can't find the relevant thing at the moment, and never being afraid to repeat myself (as 11 years' worth of jokes about not having a girlfriend bears testament to), here's another one of it.

Because today I had to fill in a birthday card and a wedding card. And I can handle the birthday card - we get one passed around every few weeks and nobody seems to mind much if you just write "Happy birthday, have a good one" and maybe a comment about biscuits. While the people I work with are unfailingly lovely, none of us has much to say in birthday cards, which is good; in the past I've always felt left out when I've been passed a card and noted that everyone else is recounting lengthy anecdotes about drinking exploits or somesuch, when all I have to offer is "Have a good day".

Yes, I can handle the birthday cards. But wedding cards are a different matter. Fortunately most of my workmates are modern go-ahead types who shun such things, but that only makes it more awkward when one of the buggers does decide to go through with it. I can manage a cheery "congratulations!" and a comment hoping it's a good day, but offering best wishes for a long and happy marriage doesn't seem to ring true when it's me that's about to write it; it's as if those 11 years of jokes about not having a girlfriend have diminished my authority to make such statements.

The real nightmare, though, is the maternity leave card. Because I'm completely lost on the maternity leave card. Maternity cards make me nervous, as I'm sure that any comment I might make will be taken the wrong way. "Good luck", for example, is right out; may as well say "as long as you survive the ride to the hospital, modern medical technology is very good and it's unlikely that things will go wrong, really it is, but, y'know, I'll keep my fingers crossed just in case". You could be brutally honest - "hope your child doesn't turn out sick or ugly or stupid or anything" - but it's not really very tactful.

(One tack that I've spotted other people taking is to write something along the lines of "look forward to meeting your new baby soon". Which strikes me as odd. You don't meet babies; you look at them, possibly getting warm maternal/paternal feelings, possibly hoping it won't look at you and start crying, and they sleep and grizzle and suck away on anything that gets put in their mouth. It's hardly the Yalta Conference.)

So, in conclusion then, what to write in a maternity leave card then? Well, er, goodness me I suddenly feel sleepy, is that the time?, good night then.

The dance of the 17 podcasts

As I made my way from the tube station and across the concourse of Liverpool Street station last night, it occurred to me that there were more police around than usual. Not that aren't usually police dotted about the place, but they tend to lurk around the edges of the station, watching as people come and go and occasionally dragging someone aside for a random stop and search; last night they were all stood on the main concourse, watching the crowd as they looked at the information screens.

Now, the concourse of Liverpool Street station is not a good place to be during the rush hour. The problem is that, because there are various entrances and exits to the Underground and various entrances and exits from the streets with the various platforms spread along one side of the station, there are lots of people walking in different directions. In an attempt to explain it, I have drawn the world's most rudimentary diagram.

The idea is that the arrows represent the directions people might walk in from various entrances to various trains and vice-versa, with the giant boards with the train information in the middle of the concourse. But this doesn't take into account the shops, the toilets, the distraction of the screens with the Sky News headlines, the benches, the people dragging suitcases that you can't see until you fall over them, the couples snogging illicitly before they go home to their spouses, the people talking on their mobiles who don't look where they're going that you have to jump out of the way of, and so on. But it was awkward enough drawing a bunch of lines in Word, and so you'll just have to imagine them. And the trains.

As such, crossing Liverpool Street station in the rush hour is a fraught business; my favourite tactic is to find someone who looks as if she might be cute from the back as I exit the tube station and follow her across as far as possible, on the ground that people are more likely to get out of the way of an attractive woman than they are a fat ugly man. And every time I despair at people who, at the end of the day, seem content to stand around or wander aimlessly instead of trying to go somewhere, because Liverpool Street station isn't much of a spot for taking in the view.

I didn't really give much thought about the police at Liverpool Street until this morning, when I found out that if I'd arrived a few minutes earlier I would have been caught up in an event combining the tiresomeness of Rickrolling with the hang on, wasn't this declared officially crap three years ago-ness of flashmobs. And thank goodness for that, because if, at the end of what's been a pretty dismal week, I'd have arrived to find a crowd of people wearing Rick Astley masks and didn't have, say, a shovel to attack them with, I'd have been quite disappointed. Quotes:

"For those of us who knew what was going on it was really funny" says eyewitness Billy Dreadful. It strikes me that you don't need to know what's going on; when you come across 3-400 people clogging up the concourse of an already crowded station to sing the song of Rick Astley you can tell instantly that a) it isn't funny, and b) everyone involved is a waste of skin.

"We monitored the incident. There were no problems, no arrests. They did what they had to do and then left." says a police. This isn't true; nobody has to stand on the concourse of a train station, obstructing people who want to go home, singing Rick Astley songs because they read about it on the internet and it's, like, so funny. There clearly is a problem. You've shot people for less than this - no, really; people in masks in a big crowd at a major rail terminus in the rush hour? how do you know for sure that it's a smirking internet ironist under there? - and how difficult would have been to have fired indiscriminately into the crowd? All you need to do is spread a few rumours to the press afterwards - they were running away, they were illegal immigrants, if we'd known he commissioned reality shows for BBC3 we definitely wouldn't have fired - and even if they're shown to be a pack of lies you still won't get fired. So, you know, if you're in the police, please bear that in mind should this happen again.

Sing Hosannah, the jazz snobs are all going home

28 April? How the dickens did this get past my radar? I'm really going to have to spend more time on the internet or something.

Still, this has cheered me up absolutely hugely, at the end of a day so bad that I actually ended up feeling sad when a mad cat lady asked me to keep an eye out for her missing cat. It was the way her voice cracked slightly when she said that she thought a fox must have taken her. I'd have defied even the most hardcore cat-hater not to have felt a bit sorry for her at that point.

Isn't My Year In Lists out that day as well? If that comes on particularly attractive vinyl I may explode with the collective pleasure of it all.