I was reminded of this yesterday when a friend sent me a clip from YouTube. It was a track called ‘Broken Leg’ by a band called ‘Blue Juice’ from their soon to be released second album. I’d never heard of them before, but watching the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJAWLfdkapQ I was struck once again by the notion that Indie Pop gets a much softer ride both from the critics and listeners than do mainstream artists.

Listening to the song made me think back to Rick Springfield and his Grammy-winning hit ‘Jessie’s Girl’. Back in the day, Springfield was about as un-hip as it was humanly possible to be. A sub-Cassidy pin-up, he switched careers between that of a top-40 musician and an actor in an American soap. Nevertheless, play the songs side by side, and it seems clear to me that the 1981 US #1, pisses all over the new offering by the Aussie youngsters. Nevertheless like the schnook and coincidentally-monikered Rodney Dangerfield, Rick ‘never got no respect’.

Now this is no life changing observation it has to be said. But it does make me think how two value systems seem to be at work here. David Lee Roth once commented that the reason why so many rock critics loved Elvis Costello, was because most of them looked like him. And this schlump-like approach to music criticism pervades to this day. It seems that one can only obtain true critical acclaim, is if you look like the misfit who is writing about you.

Blue Juice come from a long line of geeks, their ‘witty’ rope-skipping championship-themed video seems pulled directly from the pages of Weezer, another band with a singer who struggled with a disability, Rivers Cuomo born with one leg longer than the other. The band Wheatus, known primarily for their number one hit ‘Teenage Dirtbag’, sported a boss-eyed singer. If the eyes are the windows to the soul, then I guess it was only appropriate that his were skewed, the song containing a veiled reference to the Columbine killers.

Any road, my point isn’t that people with some sort of affliction shouldn’t be allowed to make records or have hits, my point is, just because you’re some sort of misfit or suffering from a physical attribute which may have made teenage-life difficult for you, doesn’t automatically mean you can write decent songs. You can be as crazy as you like - cf. Phil Spector - and make fantastic music, but you can also be what-is-known-as traditionally handsome, and still write brilliant songs. What bothers me, is this sense of inverted snobbery, that someone like Rick Springfield can only be enjoyed in a post-modern ironic way. There’s even a term for it; ‘a guilty pleasure’. So all those unfashionable bands whose songs we secretly loved: Boston - More Than a Feeling, ELO - Telephone Man, Foreigner - I Want to Know What Love Is - can now be enjoyed, usually when drunk in front of a Karaoke machine, even though they were seen as pariahs by the in-crowd at the time their records were actually released.

And of course it goes on. There are a slew of completely average Indie Pop bands who don’t even deserve the term Pop - they simply aren’t skilled or brilliant enough to merit it. ‘Blue Juice’ are the ones getting my goat today, (and I am sure they are lovely boys) but consider; ‘Editors’ - aptly named but a sub New Romantic electro jerk-off, ‘Death Cab for Cutie’ - utterly unmemorable and formulaic jangle, ‘Foals’ - art twaddle (and duller than ‘The Beat’), the same could be said for ‘Vampire Weekend’ and ‘Interpol’, and lets just ignore the irrelevance of ‘The Kooks’, ‘The Pigeon Detectives’ and ‘Maximo Park’. These bands come and go, cluttering up magazines and evening radio schedules, never reaching further than middle-of-the-bill on a Festival listing before disappearing back into day jobs as supply-teachers or computer programmers.

I know in the past the Record Industry needed such fodder in order to give itself something to do while it waited for the next major release, but those days are gone. Much like the Independent Film sector which is now simply waiting for the flushing of excess product to be completed so it can restructure itself and come up with a future-model that might actually work, so Music has to do the same.

“But these bands you listed, they give people pleasure,” I hear you whine. So does Morris Dancing and Death Metal, but I don’t hear any of you complaining that those particular art forms don’t get enough investment or coverage.

No, I say let these Pop Schlumps toil away in the netherworld. Be happy being bar bands. Play for your mates. Have a laugh at the youth club. But don’t foist yourself on the rest of us exhausted souls. Don’t expect a record deal, let alone sales. The Pop world has been awash with mediocrity for too long. I say it’s time for a cull. If you aren’t absolutely brilliant, just do us a favour and please... keep it local.

© Simon Fellowes September 2009

Comments

I was reminded of the corrupting effect of power while standing on a raised platform last night, filming the second of U2’s two night’s 360˚ show at London’s Wembley Stadium. How I ended up there is a story in itself. I had gone to meet an old friend who is directing the filming of the show. He had graciously given me an extensive tour of the stage and the production area, and five minutes before the gig was about to begin, led me to a viewing area where he felt I would best enjoy the performance. On arrival at the designated spot, we discovered I lacked the particular wristband required, and entry was politely barred. Attempts to to locate the relevant wristband proved fruitless, but my friend, ever the host, had a better idea, and led me to another platform where he said I could stand behind the cameramen shooting wide angle footage of the show. This cameramen was however, nowhere to be seen, and despite frantic efforts by my-friend-the-director, it transpired no one knew of the person’s whereabouts. Now, only minutes from showtime, my friend turned to me and said. “You know how to operate one of these things don’t you?” My eyes widened. I’m a director not a camera operator, but I know how to compose a shot, and I know the kind of footage a director would want from wide-angle coverage of a rock concert. So I replied, “Sure,” not knowing how to change tapes, batteries, or even how to turn the damn thing on or off. That’s how I found myself filming U2. My greatest fear was that I would see my hastily-composed efforts, as I tried to familiarise myself with the camera’s dynamics, beamed across Wembley for everyone to see. Luckily for me, and for the audience, the footage I was shooting was for the archive, possibly to be released at a later date. Everything, as ever, could be fixed in the edit. Nevertheless, as I pressed my one good eye to the viewfinder, something odd struck me.

During the preceding hours while I had loitered backstage, enjoying the hospitality of the band, eating and drinking their food, being shown - up close and underneath - their extraordinary stage-set, marvelling at the calm efficiency of the production team, I had found myself, almost unwillingly, certainly unknowingly, being drawn into - if only for a brief moment - their own special world. Hence, finding myself perched with an extraordinary view of the performance, and being tasked to capture it as best as I could, it felt only honourable that I should try and deliver the best I could under the somewhat surprising circumstances. I say this because of what I am about to write. 

My position of de facto crew member immediately compromised my ability to be wholly objective about what I was about to witness. Usually when I go to any event, I am unencumbered by any specific relationship to the proceedings I am enjoying (or not as the case may be). The worst that can happen is that I know people involved. If the performance stinks, I just blather something meaningless at the time, and wait for a few days to pass before letting slip my true thoughts, and then only if my friends swear on their mothers lives they really want to hear them. Luckily after last night’s gig, I didn’t find myself in any such compromising position. Besides - from what I could tell - I enjoyed the performance. I had allowed myself the occasional moment to stand back and appreciate ‘the whole’, but for the most part I was checking framing, and making sure to respond as best as I could from sound cues to songs, many of which I had never heard before, and if truth be known, some I will probably never want to hear again. Those I did know, for the most part, were delivered with aplomb. Stand out tracks were ‘Beautiful Day,’ ‘With or Without You’, ‘Stay’, ‘Walk On’ and surprisingly ‘Vertigo’ - a song I had always dismissed as somewhat throwaway but turned out to be explosive live. (I am still convinced the lyrics are about the Saudi bombers that flew into The Twin Towers but no one believes me...) However, some of U2’s classics which I have previously seen performed brilliantly - ‘Streets Have No Name’ and ‘One’ - felt almost tossed away as if the band are bored with playing them. Nevertheless, overall, it was a more-than-efficient show, musically speaking at least. The crowd were delirious and sung their 30-something hearts out. They forgave the band for their new album (more on that later) and drifted away into the night, light on merchandise - it seemed to me - but thoroughly satisfied by the evening’s entertainment. Yet as I joined them on my way home, I felt that the abiding memory would not be the songs, would not be the sometimes emotionally-chaotic Bono, or the ever-grumpy Larry, would not be the plea for the release of Burmese freedom-fighter Aung San Suu Kyi, or even the message of brotherly love beamed from the screens by Desmond Tutu, looking like a character from the TV show Banzai - “Racial Harmony Now? Place your bets!” - No... what the audience would be talking about over the water-cooler on the following Monday morning is the extraordinary stage set.

Designed by a man named Willie Williams, and realised by the architect Mark Fisher, the structure had been in the making for over three years. By now, many of you may have seen photographs of it in the media. But nothing can quite prepare you for the ‘real thing’ when it is in full modus operandi. I had been to other large-scale U2 concert tours before; Zoo TV in 1992, PopMart in ’97, and Vertigo in 2005. They all had memorable stage sets, but they were all operating essentially within a proscenium arch (even the Vertigo tour with it’s semicircular walkway). What this means is that one is essentially dealing with a facade. However impressive the structure facing you, a quick look behind and everything is revealed as cladding, essentially a series of screens hung from scaffolding. With the four legged claw built for the 360˚ tour placed, not directly centre of the Wembley pitch but two thirds of the way down, the audience can see everything. It hovers much like the giant spider built by the artist Louise Bourgeois and exhibited in the great turbine hall of Tate Modern when it first opened - perhaps this is where Williams found his his inspiration. It is an impressive structure when at rest. When lit up and moving, it is at times, absolutely breathtaking. To walk away from the show and not have marvelled at the spectacle would be an act of sheer bloody-mindedness, bordering on stupidity. If one saw the stage in any other context, say as a piece of contemporary urban sculpture, the response would be unanimously positive. It is quite likely going to be the most visually exciting piece of man-made machinery that I, and the five million or so other people, will see during the coming year. Whatever one’s thoughts on Bono and his band, the degree of creative ambition and licence they are happy to grant in order to present their audience with an everlasting theatrical memory is not something to dismiss.

Indeed, most of the reviews of the show have been positive. One that was not, and that caught my eye, was written by The Independent’s Simon Price, a man so unhappy with his lot that he still walks around in his late thirties dressed as a teenage Goth. Each to their own. But his beef with the show rested not on the staging, which he admitted was ‘quite cool’ (high praise indeed), but the band’s new material which peppered the set. The album, despite an extensive marketing campaign (the week of its UK release it felt as if U2 had moved into your living room) has sold relatively poorly. But this is as much due to the downturn in general CD sales as anything particularly wrong with the record (which debuted at number one in 30 countries including the UK and The United States). But reviews were mixed, and repeated listenings have not done it huge favours. The lead-off single failed to crack the top ten in the US, UK or Germany, two follow-up releases (‘Magnificent’, ‘I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight’) fared notably worse, and received wisdom was that apart from the band’s core-audience the public at large was really only interested in seeing them live. As this was the only real way to make a living out of music nowadays, it was surely no skin off the band’s nose. Despite this relatively lukewarm reaction the album definitely has its merits, most of them captured in the more melancholic and contemplative songs. The best of these and in my opinion the stand out track on the album, is the lament ‘White As Snow’. But the song illuminates the dilemma in which I feel the group now finds itself. 

Bono is fifty years old next year. The band has been together for thirty-three of them. The rabble rousing of the past, the flag waving, the intentionally grotesque posturing (The Fly, Macphisto), the grand gestures, not only feel a little worn, but sit uncomfortably on the shoulders of older and wiser men. Mercifully the proselytising was reigned back on Saturday night; hell, there’s little wrong in bringing to the attention of a captive audience what it really feels to be a captive, especially if it only takes up five minutes of their time. But the pontificating of the past, the back-slapping with presidents, has left the band vulnerable to easy jibes. The eco-friendliness - or not - of schlepping 180 trucks worth of gear around the world twice, has predictably opened the band up to accusations of hypocrisy. It seems they can do no right. I mentioned this to my friend, suggesting the band come up with a range of T-Shirts. They could read ‘Blame U2’, ‘Blame Bono’... and one for Bono himself reading, ‘Blame Me’. Perhaps then people might lay off, though I doubt it.

However, more interesting that any of this, and something the media tends to forget amongst all the hoopla, is the music. Where does a band go as it moves into the third stage of its life. Where does a man go? This is something I felt Bono himself was grappling with as he stood looking out over the vast London audience. 

U2 have been the earnest young punks, figuring out how to define themselves, making mistakes along the way (Adam’s haircuts being a prime example). They ended up the biggest rock band of their generation, and fair play to them, have managed to hold onto that position for twenty years. They have seen off REM, Guns & Roses, Nirvana, The Stone Roses, Oasis, and a host of others. Only Springsteen and Metallica can be seen as competitors when it comes to animating vast crowds around the world - Radiohead having willingly thrown in the towel - while still making number one albums perceived to be of artistic worth.

But U2 can’t be the U2 of old forever. There is nothing more embarrassing than watching a man pout and gurn as he shimmies from pillar to post in the quest for eternal youth. As former dinosaur-hating punks, U2 will know this. There’s an art to growing old gracefully while remaining as potent as ever; look to their former mentor BB King as a perfect example. But finding a means of expressing that evolution is a complicated task. This is made yet more complicated when all your audience wants to do is fix you in aspic and use you for a trip down memory lane. Look at The Rolling Stones. 

That is not to say that it’s time for unplugging the Fender and setting up a Céilidh. There’s a way of staying angry and aggrieved, noisy and boisterous. But it can only work if one is able to express what was once a sense of tumultuous sexuality, a teenage call to arms, in a manner that still feels honest and genuine to the individual you are now. Bolting on grooviness in the hope of staying hip is always patently see-through, and undermines the true essence of who you are (the song ‘Get on Your Boots’ reeks of this).

U2 have to find a new way of expressing the anger, love and passion of old, but in a way that makes sense to the men they have become. It’s an exciting challenge. To fail would leave them in two equally arrid places. The stadium oldies band, cranking out hits, slipping in one or two new songs while the audience goes off to pee. Or worse still, evaporating into the ether like Bowie, mojo lost, the increasingly desperate efforts to redefine himself since a decade of continued brilliance, failing time and time again, leaving nothing but a sad pantomime husk.

It seems scarily apropos that the tour which precipitated the end of the Diamond Dog, is also remembered for its vast spider-like structure whose grandiosity eventually suffocated all who stood beneath. Let’s hope that the Irish can learn from their Heroes, while keeping at bay the battalions of Yes Men who live only to expedite your demise.

© Simon Fellowes   17/8/2009

Comments

We have had the pornography of cooking, gardens and interior design. We have even had the pornography of property buying - how hollow that now looks. The notion of changing your life has been constant over recent years, even if it is only a question of swapping your wife for a week (and note how the show was called ‘Wife - not husband - swap’, even though it was aimed squarely at women, tapping into a sense of self-loathing and inadequacy perhaps). The worst of these shows have been those trading off the body dysmorphic - too fat or too thin, super size or super skinny, make me a new a face etc. Anything to effect a change. To become someone else... someone new.

The latest of these proposes a change to your life.

‘Monty Hall’s Great Escape’ tells of a posh Bristolian marine biologist (...for chrissake) who sublets his city flat for six months, and moves to the wilds of West Scotland to live in a run-down shack by the edge of a beach. It all seems idyllic, the sun always shines, the views are spectacular, the locals are delightful. But then they would be. Monty is something of a cash cow and is quickly handing out tenners left right and centre. He buys pigs and chickens from local vendors. He has a crew re-building the shack. He has landscape gardeners fencing off his plot of land. His only regret is that the actual owner of the ‘bothy’ (the technical term for the shack), won’t allow him to put in a window to enjoy the view. As the landlord points out, if the original tenants wanted to see the view, they would step the f**k outside.

At one point, Monty fancies purchasing a boat, so he drives into town, in his top-of-the-range Landrover, and picks up a dirigible with trailer, no haggling involved. No wonder the locals loved him. One presume it was his own money he was using. Or maybe, as BBC licence payers, it was actually ours. Neverthless, and despite this largesse, the reality of the situation is that Monty is living in a stone shack, with no heating, no comfy bed, no toilet or bathroom facilities, and dieting solely it seems, on bacon sandwiches. I wonder how he’ll feel when the weather turns.

Anyway enough of the perma-grinning Monty. More important is what the programme is selling us; the simple life, the organic, the back-to-basics.

As this credit crunch escalates and jobs are being carved off by their hundreds every day, western societies, coddled since the second world war, are genuinely beginning to feel a sense of unease. As stories reach us of social and economic breakdown in the Ukraine - a country longing to join Europe - we begin to wonder if there is any chance of revolution, however small, happening here. There is already talk of a summer of unrest. Rumours of police riot-training and stocking-up on shields and tear gas abound. The usual scare-mongering probably, but with a government so clearly adept at obfuscating facts and lying to its people, who knows what might be true? We watch France become bolshier, the Greek youth explode, the Icelandic debacle...

Meanwhile, Obama pours a 50 billion here, another 20 billion there, as US companies announce losses of such astronomical proportions that they no longer shock, struggling even to make headline news.

A billion suddenly feels like a million did six months ago.

No wonder we feel like packing up and running away. Admittedly most of us are far too lazy to do anything about it. And that’s what TV execs are counting on. They know we’ll prefer to enjoy someone else doing it on our behalf. And that’s what Reality TV is all about. Watching people do things we would never have the nerve, the energy or the wherewithal to do ourselves. If they fail, so much to the good. It makes us feel better about ourselves for never getting up off the sofa in the first place.

So this return to a bucolic, simpler - ‘Cranford’-like - time... is it truly all its cracked up to be?

My experience of the countryside, and I lived there for ten years as a child, is slightly different. When I visit it now, I am struck by the reactionary, conservative, claustrophobic, petty-minded and inward looking atmosphere that abounds once one travels ten miles away from any city. There are good and bad people everywhere, but the advantage of a town or city, is that you can usually avoid the bad ones. In a small village they are always in your face. Ask Madame Bovary.

Besides, if the countryside is truly so great, why do so many people migrate to the cities in the first place? Of course, it’s about money, but once they have made their stash, why don’t they immediately move back where they came from? Because they remember how it was. Only people who have never lived in the country move there. They’ve watched the TV programmes, they’ve been seduced by the porn. People who have spent the early part of their lives in the countryside and manage to escape, remember the hardships, the drudgery, the unremitting slog. Those who move there and wax lyrical about its slower pace, find themselves spending most of their days talking to animals. Or worse, plants. They make jam and bake bread. But it all takes hours... and is still eaten in minutes. “It’s about the process!” I hear you holler. But how much bloody process can one person take? If it was all about ‘the process’ why do we pay bakers to bake our bread for us?

It’s a great life for the children is thrown up as a mitigating reason. No it’s not! Children are so bored in the countryside they have to create imaginary worlds and imaginary friends. You don’t need to do that in the city. There’s enough stimuli to make such dysfunctional behaviour completely unnecessary (unless you’re a single child and completely ignored by your workaholic parents that is...). Once a child begins to realise that wandering around in his or her own private ‘zoo’ at the bottom of the garden, is frankly absurd, they begin to commit small acts of vandalism, breaking things for no particular reason, killing small animals, kicking down walls. Eventually drink, drugs and sex appear on the menu. If your precious child hasn’t been fortunate enough to obtain a place at ‘Uni’, or a job with his uncle in the nearest town, his life atrophies into a medicated, dunderheaded stupor as they slowly begin to replicate the meaningless lives of their Victorian forebears. They retreat into their own codes, their own language, their own way of doing things. Outsiders are something to be fleeced and then driven away. You want to integrate? Maybe in ten or twenty years. And that’s if you accept the rules, don’t rock the boat, accept the status quo... “Don’t come around here trying to change us with your fancy city ways.”

This notion that you’ll find some kind of personal salvation by turning your back on all you know and running away is a myth. And it’s damaging because it perpetuates the same aspirational crap which has brought us where we are today. Always offer the consumer something they don’t already have... and convince them they need it. As they don’t believe in the riches any more... the bigger house, the new car, the hundreds of pairs of shoes... get creative! They know what they bought into before doesn’t work anymore, which is largely why they’ve stopped buying. So what to sell them now?

The idea of 'Escape'.

Get simple. Knit. Grow your own!...

Have you any idea how much more expensive that turns out to be compared to going to your local Tescos and buying your food off the shelf? (“It’s the process!”) This new version of the countryside is being sold by people who arrive on the Friday night and are back in Notting Hill by Sunday teatime. It’s the only version they know.

Sure there are great things about small communities of like-minded souls, fresh air and long walks will do anyone the power of good. But you can experience that anywhere. You don’t have to up-sticks and live on an island to find it. But as a recipe for change, a panacea for society’s ills, this notion of ‘Escape’ is patent nonsense. And in the way porn works in comparison to a healthy sexual relationship, it is a pretty poor substitute for the truth.

So... get a grip. Life is all around us. We have no excuses, no easy refuge. We simply have to stay where we are and learn to get on with it.

Comments

The BBC announced its list today of the fifteen brightest hopes for 2009. Some I was previously aware of, due to various heads-up from friends in the business, some not. But what surprised me when I clicked on the various pages and links to the artists’ work was how young they all were. In reality they aren’t that young at all. They’re the normal age for kids starting careers in bands, the same age I was when I signed my first record deal. What’s different... is me. I am now a lot older, not much older than I was last year, but something inside of me has appreciably shifted. Because for the first time in my life, when I looked at these musicians and singers and listened to them speak, I thought to myself, “My God, these are children!”

This of course says far more about me than it does about them. But as I clicked and observed, something else came to my notice. None of the music being made was particularly interesting to me. That’s not to say it didn’t have energy or imagination, much of it did. But not one of the 15 artists on offer had created anything that made me want to investigate further. And I had to admit that out of fifteen of the best for 2009 that was a pretty poor ratio.

Wondering what it was about these bands that left me disinterested, I came to the conclusion that it was the age-old problem. Everything they were doing I had heard before, in another era, in a purer format, and in a context where it made some sort of political and social sense.

The electro of the Eighties came out of the development of new technology - the synthesiser, the sequencer, the sampler - coupled with a reaction against a previously drab and strike-ridden decade. Shiny, shiny, bad times behind me. The folk music of the 60’s & 70’s was inspired by a Peace movement turning away from 50’s consumerism which had led to the Vietnam War, a misguided attempt to halt the spread of Communism and perpetuate the American Dream. The psychedelic scene which ran simultaneously was motivated by the same sense of rebellion but with better drugs.

For some reason, these seem to be the musical forms most prevalent amongst the current list of hopefuls. There are a couple of tedious rock bands ploughing the early Simple Minds/New Order furrow, but they can be dismissed as a last hurrah of bedroom bloke-dom.

Watching these youngsters raid the cultural dressing-up box, I find myself smiling. There’s no harm in what they’re doing. It all looks like fun. And if I had children I would be encouraging them to join in. Boxing Day was in fact spent teaching my 8-year old nephew the riff to James Bond and the chords to ‘Highway to Hell’ on his scaled-down Fender Strat copy.

But the big difference, when it comes to the music performed by this new crop, is that as opposed to what came before, it doesn’t mean anything. Perhaps it doesn’t set out to. But it only means something by proxy, a reflection of its own lack of meaning. And this I suppose, is what makes men of a certain age frown and mutter over their lovingly-maintained vinyl collections. Or worse, gives them something to ponder as they spend months downloading the entire catalogue onto their 120GB Ipods. The new garden shed, as I call it.

The kids don’t give a damn either way. They’re simply too busy plundering. Much in the way of a fashion designer. To anyone who follows fashion it has become clear for the last twenty years, that apart from the occasional bum-cleavage revealing pair of denims, there hasn’t been a single original idea. Designers instead plough through history books and travelogues, picking something from here and mixing it with something from there. It’s not a question of brain surgery, just a sharp eye and a quick pencil.

Pop music has now reached the same impasse. 60 years since the days of Bill Haley and the beast has been flayed to a pulp. It doesn’t help when prime-time talent shows reduce the history of the pop song to meaningless pulp. But the public don’t seem to mind.

Pop music has long ceased to be anything truly worth caring about. Of course it still is to to the 30 and 40-somethings who write about it and desperately continue to try and sell it. But to anyone born after 1980, and that means just about everyone on the BBC’s list, music is simply part of the disposable junk of life. Like a top from Miss Selfridge, worn today, binned tomorrow.

The young generation don’t pay for music. They don’t examine it. The only stars they are interested in are the ones that implode. The gig is simply an excuse for a night-out and a sing-a-along. All the stadium acts of the last ten years have built their careers out of songs with chants for choruses rather than lyrics. Woohs, Lahs, and Eh-Oh’s have been the order of the day. So much for revolution.

And the reason? Teenagers have studied the generation that came before. Us. With our angst-ridden hopes of music being able to change the world. How absurd. Pop music is really about emotion. It’s a way of figuring yourself out. Finding out where you fit in. How you want to dress, where you want to hang out. And in that regard, the kids who are checking out the bands for 2009 are doing exactly the same thing, unencumbered by any notion of meaning, potency, or important point of view. They’re using music as something to play with. To dress up to. To have a laugh. The lyrics of these new acts are funny, smart, reflective, cheeky... and they speak to the experience of being a teenager now. Not one from times past.

And if this all feels irrelevant, empty and pointless to anyone over the age of 25, then so it should. This is a fuck-you to us. Through greed and exploitation we reduced Pop Music to a soulless pile of regurgitated nonsense. This generation is smart enough to celebrate that fact and make something useful out of it.

It’s day-glo, it’s third-hand, it’s amateur and shambolic. It’s ramshackle, half-arsed, indulgent and comedic. There’s a knowingness in its stupidity. The mix and match appropriation of everything from Kate Bush to Afrika Bambaataa is done with an irreverent verve that would make Malcolm McClaren proud.

But more than anything, it’s fun, it’s specific and it’s all about now. It’s self-defining. And if anyone old enough to be these children’s parents is still using Pop Music to define themselves, I suggest they get themselves into therapy pretty damn quick.

© Simon Fellowes 2009

Comments

The documentary itself took a laid-back approach, positing the question of the title to various movers and shakers within the industry before letting them witter about their own particular area of expertise with nary a comeback question, challenge or follow-up.

This approach may well have been intentional - let the buggers hoist themselves by their own petards - but only really works if you have an informed audience who have a take on the matter. Most people are quite happy to sit passively and let others decide for them. It became clear during the film that no-one was going to do very much deciding at all, the only merit of the piece was that it illuminated the fact, as if it needed illuminating, that the music industry is floundering like a wounded seal while everyone comes up with their own self-centred prognosis but with little joined-up thinking.

In contrast to the Industry figures who felt some sort of responsibility to at least come up with some burbling response, members of the public when asked, either had no idea or didn’t give a fig either way; apart from some Jack Sparrow look-a-like who declared the best thing would be for music to return “to the 1800’s... or some shit”.

And the reason? Like I said, it’s because they really don’t give a damn. As far as they’re concerned there’s a surfeit of music, loads of the stuff, coming out of every radio, Ipod, stereo-system, TV-show, phone, shop, movie, car, airport lounge, elevator... why should they think there was anything wrong with the music industry?

The original question is in fact disingenuous. The real question that should have been asked was, “How do we keep getting paid?” Because at the heart of the matter, this isn't really a question of music, it's a question of money.

If all the record companies in the world folded tomorrow would music go away? Of course not. Kids would still be playing it. There would be gigs, smaller of course... weekend ‘hops’, people gathering to see and hear a word-of-mouth band. Perhaps more folks would return to playing musical instruments themselves, as without a vast machine promoting and marketing music through every possible outlet, there wouldn't be so much of it freely available. People might then feel a need to fill the void themselves; a Saturday night gathered around an old Joanna perhaps?

Maybe I’m being too romantic, but music as a communal experience is already returning to the fore, the rise in attendances at live gigs the proof. The solitary soundtrack one builds for one’s own life only comes into its own when you are able to share it with like-minded souls, even if that only turns out to be one other person... the person you probably end up falling in love with.

Of course now that the Internet is here there will still be downloads and websites... plenty of avenues through which musicians will make themselves heard and eventually, slowly, we’ll return to a pattern of filtering, much like the record companies of old. The average member of the public neither has the time or the interest to plough through a myriad of channels to search for the music they love. Instead people will provide that service. The public will grow to trust in these arbiters of taste and therefore, as they have done before by tuning into a specific radio station or buying a particular music paper, they will pay a fair price for them.

I get bored of listening to the Music Industry bleating. It does it every ten years or so until it manages to come up with a new way of fleecing the public and replenishing its coffers. The last time it managed to do so was when it convinced us suckers to replace our vinyl collections with CD’s. If only they could come up with another must-have technology now. The funny thing is someone else did, and in doing so, the Ipod blew a hole right through the recording industry’s model.

The only way record companies can maximise their revenue these days is by signing bands to an overall deal, demanding percentages of live ticket sales and merchandising rights. To compensate for this loss, the bands and agents ramp these prices to a ridiculous level. As a musician friend pointed out to me the other day, remember when going to the gig was cheaper than buying the album? Well that’s all changed now.

I suppose what annoys me most about the music industry is the overriding sense they send out that somehow they have been hard done by, that they’ve been caught out, blind-sided, had the carpet pulled from under their feet. It’s as if they’re a special case, a pouting adolescent moaning “life’s so unfair”. Yet when you look around, far larger and far more established industries than music are finding themselves under the cosh.

The banking world as we know is currently imploding. This seems to be down to the same frailties found in the music scene; greed, arrogance and stupidity. The City felt it was infallible, and while money poured in, despite all the warning signs, ignoring any doom-mongers, they maintained their corrosive business practices and partied like it would forever be 1999 (...when I see the number of Award shows the Music Biz still enjoys, I see a strange similarity).

The American Auto Industry is also heading for meltdown. Why? Because it has been building the wrong type of products for the last 15 years. It is being brought down by its own lack of foresight, having whipped the public into believing an SUV or 4X4 was the only vehicle worth driving through those rocky canyons of the flat American suburbs. In the 1980’s the US car industry nearly went to the wall because of low-fuel-consuming Japanese imports. When the economic good times returned, they tossed that model out of the window, went Supersized and wilfully created another disaster-in-waiting. Thanks to the volatility of oil prices and the credit crunch, their erstwhile market has suddenly disappeared, forcing Chevy, Ford and GM to look for a 25 billion dollar Federal bail-out, on top of the $25bn they have already received to fund belated research into hybrid models.

Will the Music Industry be looking for government backing as well? Because if you analyse their business practices over the last 15 years, you can see that their investment was also in all the wrong places.

During that time the music business treated the public with contempt. To them they were sheep to be bamboozled and battered. The industry genuinely feels that if you hammer the public’s consciousness hard enough - multiple plays in heavy rotation, TV prime-time, wall-to-wall poster campaigns, expensive videos and magazine covers - they will always succumb. And it’s true. More often than not they do. Simon Fuller and Cowell have built entertainment empires on just such an approach. But note, these are entertainment empires, not music. Their forte is understanding that once the public tires of one of their products, they can immediately replace it with another.

Looking back on their dominance of the last decade in British Pop, these men have essentially, for all the tens of thousands wannabes, brought the world two acts - The Spice Girls and Will Young (for me the jury is still definitely out on the longevity of Leona Lewis). But then the top end of the music business hasn’t really been about music during the last ten years. It’s been about cross-platform selling, product placement, hitting demographics, market share... creating and selling a brand.

Once the major labels began to be bought out by global media conglomerates in the early 1990’s, music itself became no more than one small piece of the overall puzzle. Artists were signed as much for what they could do for the label as what the label could do for them, not just in terms of sales but in terms of profile. Labels were prepared to take a market loss on an act if, having them signed, it positioned the label optimally in the eyes of the paying-public. This was a ludicrous position and one the music industry had wilfully put itself in: sign two types of acts - those that sell, and those that make you look good. One would have thought that if instead they had concentrated on finding bands that managed to cover both requirements, the world of music might have been a hell of lot more interesting over the last ten years.

For too long the companies got away with selling inferior product in the knowledge that thanks to a marketing blitz, the kids would impulse buy. And with the economy strong, discovering that the CD you had bought for £14.99 contained only two decent songs, was no great loss.

But thanks to Steve Jobs and individual track downloading, the arrogance which that propagated went out the window. Kids realised they’d been shafted and now had a way out. Besides, since the demise of vinyl, there was no artwork worth owning either (who the hell stares at a CD cover?) so what was the downside of downloading? 

So what’s to be done?

Bottom line it’s about being smart. Whether that means predicting new markets (culturally & musically), forecasting trends, innovating products, spotting and nurturing great talent... those with the imagination, knowledge, taste and wisdom will always rise to the top. 

In my opinion those characters within the business still exist. 

There’s nothing wrong with the music industry apart from the fact that than it has grown too big and is subsequently over-staffed with people who are in it for the wrong reasons (money & lifestyle). Because of its size, it is forced to sign numerous mediocre acts simply to give its bloated workforce and all its knock-on industries, Radio, TV & Film, which the parent company also owns - something to do.

Four great bands on the label - you only need a small staff. Make it forty - of which only fourteen might be any good - and the costs rise exponentially.

So my prescription? Downsize. Music isn’t going to go away just because of massive lay-offs and less record labels. Let the kids form bands. Let them form their own labels. Let them play for years, scrimping and saving, not going to some automaton Brit School. Give them time - on their own - to get good, to build up their songwriting, their stage craft, their stamina. Stop signing these numbnuts straight out of school.

If any of them really are any good, it’ll become clear. They’ll have built up a following through their own ingenuity, through their own talent, through their own self-belief.

At which point one of the handful of record companies that still remain could offer to take them on, for a fair deal, and bring them to wider, perhaps global audience. 

At which point the artist themselves might actually be good enough to create something worthwhile.

Comments

While I am sure decisions made on funding for local police and taxation for eco-projects all had serious import for their respective communities, the specific proposition put to the citizens of California, Arizona and Florida, was possibly the most contentious.

It dealt with the issue of same-sex marriages.

Proposition 8, the most publicised of these, largely due to the amount of money spent on its support, sought to overturn California State Law sanctioning marriage between individuals of the same gender. On the day of the election it was passed with a slim if definite majority. Many who voted for it came from the same Afro-American community who voted for Obama and his promise of Change. However this same demographic, being deeply religious, found it impossible to go against the words of The Bible, disappointing thousands of gay Californian couples legally wed since June of this year.

This notion of gay marriage has exercised me for some time. Perhaps it is down to my own inability to find a suitable wife of the female persuasion. In fact at times I begin to wonder whether a domestically-obsessed house-boy might be a better option as old age and infirmity set in.

But what has troubled me more than any notion of two men or two women living and loving together - to state the obvious, that doesn’t bother me at all - is the appropriation of language. This may sound like a somewhat pretentious way of looking at things but I have to admit I do find it troubling. The fact that words which have meaning - meaning which Society as a whole understands, acknowledges and accepts - can simply be re-worked and re-defined because of the will of a large if motivated minority, somehow sits awkwardly on my shoulders.

“They’re only words, pal. Get over it,” I hear you say. But if they were only words, why would the various minorities, feeling put upon by the use or lack of use of such words, make such a fuss about them in the first place? And once these words, these terms, are called into question, how come the majority, for so long quite happy in their understanding of what certain words mean, not only get up in arms about them, but spend millions of dollars to protect what they perceive to be their meaning.

So I guess words are important.

When this religious debate first kicked-off over same-sex marriages, and mark my words it is a big deal, a big enough deal to create schisms within the Anglican Church, I thought the Bishops and Archbishops had missed a trick.

Following the advice of their crucified champion, I would have thought a turn-of-the-cheek approach might have been advisable, if employed with a certain wiliness. Let the gay community take the word ‘marriage’ and simply come up with another term which suits your needs more completely. I was thinking ‘Lord-enjoined’ perhaps. As in “Are you married? No, we’re Lord-enjoined”. Whether that means diddly-squat would largely depend on the degree of your religious leanings. The gays get their marriage-tag, the God squad feel suitably blessed. Everyone’s a winner.

But something nagged at me. In a way this all seems to be something of a moveable feast. As it is, the gay community has seemed to vacillate in recent years when it comes to their choice of self-description. Since the 1970’s the term ‘Queer’ was seen as pejorative. Up until then, before the term political-correctness had even been coined, homosexuals were abused and taunted with every name under the sun. It was thanks to a vociferous and politicised movement that Gay Lib came about and with it a new vocabulary.

Without much of a shrug, the wider world accepted that a word which had previously been associated with girls in summer dresses, pastel colours and a lot of skipping and jumping, was now a rainbow-coloured umbrella for a section of society, certain members of which enjoyed night-time shenanigans which to a God-fearing heterosexual at least, seemed anything but gay. Pictures of muscular men in SS caps, leather shorts and handle-bar moustaches challenged all previous notions of the meaning of the word. Nevertheless, the world learnt to live with it. As long as ‘they’ weren’t doing anyone any harm. Well no one who didn’t want any harm done, that is.

And so we now have a similar debate about ‘marriage’.

You can see the Conservatives hunkering down once more. “What more do these people want?” they ask. “Give them an inch and they always want more.” And that is something which is undoubtably true. Ahem...

But do these traditionalists have a point? Is this a vocabulary land-grab we should sit back and allow?

Ultimately I suppose it comes down to what you consider marriage to be about, what you consider it for.

Is it for promulgation of the species? Strength in the family unit? Protection of the community? Child-bearing certainly does seem to be an essential ingredient of marriage, which isn’t to say couples who are unable to conceive are any less married. But the only reason they can’t conceive - should they wish to - is because of a medical condition, or old age.

A man and a man cannot conceive for obvious reasons. Nor can a woman and a woman unless they get a little outside help. It’s not an aberration of nature, a medical mishap, it’s the way we as animals were made. It’s biology. A fact of life. Now whether this has anything to do with the institution of marriage is another matter. Plenty of people manage to have kids without being married, although society seems quite happy to state that this is not an optimal state of affairs.

So are we prepared to cloud the issue further in order to keep a minority happy?

No one seems to be questioning Gay rights. Okay some people are, but not the majority who voted for Proposition 8. Civil partnerships, shared rights under the law, complete parity in all matters social and financial... that’s surely unarguable. We’re all equal human beings after all. Right?

Gay opponents of Proposition 8 state the issue is about dignity; for their relationships to be seen in the same terms as Straight couples is a matter of decency and Human Rights. Yet I still wonder whether this positive outcome and shift in perception can be done merely by the stroke of a judge’s pen.

So what’s the answer? Who gets to decide what someone is called? The person who feels they are being discriminated against, or the majority who blindly continue calling someone something they have no idea is offensive.

We’re beginning to see the same difficulties arise with the success of Obama.

In America the term ‘Black’ has come to be seen as a somewhat ugly term, hence the use of the catch-all phrase ‘Afro-American’. Yet here in the UK, describing Obama as America’s first Black president causes less than a ripple. It’s only when morons like Silvio Berlusconi chip-in with what they consider an amusing remark that we notice just how far certain parts of Europe lag behind on the path towards inclusivity.

But it does seem to me that we are presently lost in a forest of words. Should how people wish to be perceived always dictate how the world perceives them?

‘Nazis’ was an abbreviation for National Socialists. If the far right in the US hated Nazis as much as they seem to hate Socialism we might be getting somewhere.

So what’s the best answer? A popular vote? God help us. We know full well that in the UK that would probably bring back capital punishment. Some things are simply not safe left in the hands of the great unwashed, and by that I mean the rabid reactionism of the opinion-stirring tabloid press.

When it comes down to it, language evolves. You can’t force new terminology on people. Even if they know they are supposed to say something in a different way - Bi-Racial, Special Needs, Gender-Neutral - if it doesn’t come naturally to them it only re-enforces the original prejudice, causing resentment that personal thoughts are being forcibly subjugated, self-censored, only given free reign through the mouths of ‘dangerous comedians’ or whispered behind closed doors.

Perhaps all we can do is let life evolve. The more society comes to terms with long-term gay relationships, the more used society is to seeing them succeed, the more likely it is to perceive them on parallel and equal terms.

One thing we have seen this week with the inspiring success of Barack Obama, is that when the world is ready, change is both sweeping, dynamic and powerful.

When that happens, nothing can stand in its way.

An addendum:

An older friend points out to me that back in the 70’s, the term GAY was actually an acronym for ‘Good As You’, and was first seen on a banner beneath which homosexuals marched at Stonewall.

Attention must also be drawn to the recent track by songstress Katy Perry ‘You’re So Gay’ where the term is used in a fashionably derogatory manner. Radio One DJ Chris Moyles, listened to by millions of UK youngster every morning, has been doing the same for some time without any censure from his BBC employers.

Comments

But ironically it is not only Wolfe’s 80’s satire that feels so prescient. His novel ‘A Man in Full’, examining the absurdities of the new American art market and its collusion with big business, also feels more than a little relevant in the light of the well-timed if highly dubious open auction of Damien Hirst’s left-overs at Sotheby’s two weeks ago, the day the stock market crisis finally hit. And just to complete the trilogy, it could be said (and don’t get me started on her - if nothing else, the Prime Time talk-show awaits) that Sarah Palin’s attack on Barack Obama’s tenuous links with former member of ‘The Weatherman’, Bill Ayers somehow echoes Wolfe’s denunciation of the half-baked liberals cosying up to Huey Newton and ‘The Black Panthers’ in his essay ‘Radical Chic and the Mau-Mau Gang’.

All these ideas seemed to dovetail into last night’s private view of an acquaintance’s first Art show. A self-proclaimed artist is always something to see (to paraphrase John Lennon). Much like the Victorian hobbyists, anyone who on a first outing prices each piece somewhere north of a grand, must be said to have a somewhat inflated sense of themselves. Family life is put on hold, often to some cost, while the artist struggles with his demons, determined to make something useful of their life, to make a mark, to lay claim to their own existence. It reminded me of Jackson Pollock, another painter who dabbled in the abstract. But these paintings, unlike Pollock’s, exhibited no emotion, no rage, passion or wildness, something that might reflect our turbulent times. While Pollock’s huge abstracts reflected a reconfiguring of the American Dream, a sense of Existentialism - man alone, trying to make patterns from the swirling mass of chaos which surrounds him - the paintings that hung so neatly on the walls of the large private house turned - very successfully - into a make-shift gallery, felt no more than decorative squares of abstract obsessiveness, differentiated only by their choice of colour.

They consisted of a series of dots painted on dots painted on dots. Thousands of them. Tiny. Microscopic. A blue dot overlaid with a lighter blue dot, overlaid with a white dot. And so on. One stared at them hoping something might arrive... a dolphin perhaps, or, in a pink version, a word in 3D spelling ‘LOVE’. But nothing did happen. The paintings just lay there politely, not accusingly, not even drawing you in. Just a small splash of rice-krispied colour, guaranteed to brighten-up that don’t-know-what-to-do-with cranny. 

It was if someone had taken a Seurat and blown it up macro-sized, as if to examine the side of a cheek perhaps, a turn of a sleeve, a piece of tree bark... one inch blown up to a two foot square. And then, on each of Seurat’s dots, another dot had been painted, and on top of that, another. It was no more than pointless pointillism. 

But away from it all, I began to ponder its possible significance.

It was while the great and the good gathered to admire and support their friend’s work, that I had been first reminded of Wolfe and his society of furiously paddling swans, chaos lying just beneath the surface symbolised by a wrong turn into a bad neighbourhood. Here the smooth bravado belied the unhappy marriages, the thwarted careers, and now more than any time in recent memory - even more than after the collapse of The Twin Towers - a sense of ‘fin de siecle’. The economic chaos which ebbs and eddies like starlings in flight seems unfathomable even to seasoned economists, their predictions veering wildly from one day to the next. In the meantime the rest of us peons are left to batten down the hatches and wait for the bomb to explode over our heads.

This had been coming we had been been repeatedly told. But the boom was so compelling, along with everything it brought, we stayed at the table, continuing to roll the dice because we couldn’t stop winning. What real gambler ever quits while he’s ahead?

But as this fiesta slowly came to an end - the houses now bigger, the holidays more frequent, the restaurants, the clothes, the private memberships all increased - the painter whose work I saw last night, decided to abstract himself, the years of decadence and indulgence finally becoming too much. So he shut himself away and painted dots. Dots upon dots upon dots.

That’s all that was left when the party was over... when the the brain was left so mangled from the pounds of MDMA ingested over two decades... nothing but meaningless semi-autistic renditions of pebble-dashed emptiness, a brain filled with microscopic blobs of decorative bubbles. A brain exploded like the heart of an atom. 

And as I looked around the rooms of the make-shift gallery, people chattered and drank and ignored the pictures on the wall, unsure what to make of them. 

Possibly fearful of what they might be saying about the painter’s mind.

Or maybe afraid of what they might be saying about themselves.

Comments

As I drifted past these iconographic paintings of my youth, I thankfully found myself brought up short by pieces of Art that had once struck me much like a grey day in Debden, something to be noticed without actually being drawn to. Such an example were the Victorian sculptures, particularly Antonio Canova’s The Three Graces on loan from the V&A. They turned me on in a way I could never, and would never, have imagined. Whether this is down to the fact that I am now ageing and the opportunities to feast my eyes upon such youthful pulchritude become less frequent, the poise and beauty of the work, the delicacy with which the women were draped around each other, I found both erotic and tender. It reminded me of my heterosexuality and strangely - although the two are probably inextricably linked - it also made me think about God. The notion of anything, any great power, being able to create something, some body, which can then engender such emotions simply by the implication of form felt somehow profound. Perhaps it can simply be put down to Dawkins’ selfish gene and all its latent urges, but to feel such delight in something carved out of marble surely implies something more than mere self-perpetuation.

Before I made a complete fool of myself - so tempted to touch, to caress - I moved on, and it was on my journey back towards the museum’s exit that I caught sight of it... a portrait of a woman in a simple black dress standing in an austere, sparely furnished room, her back to the viewer, hair tied in a bun. There was little if no hint as to her personality or identity but there was something strangely mysterious about the picture, something melancholic, somehow lonely, but nevertheless full of poise and calm. It was at that moment I first entered the world of Vilhelm Hammershoi.

Time passed, but the memory of the painting, its muted pewters and greys, stayed with me. I mentioned the artist’s name to a few friends but drew a complete blank. I researched him on The Web and found that he was an acquired taste. Unsuccessful during his career in the late 19th century, Hammershoi was rediscovered only as recently as the 1980’s. One of his great champions is the broadcaster Michael Palin who, like me, had stumbled into his work when on other matters, in his case a travelogue around Denmark. I felt quite proud of my discovery. It was like being a teenager again, finding a band no-one had heard of - a Prag Vec or Thomas Leer. But all that was to change twelve weeks ago.

Much to my surprise I learnt that the former Python and I weren’t the only aficionados to harbour a special interest in the moody Scandinavian. The Royal Academy was about to put on a major UK retrospective of Hammershoi’s work. Why on earth now? I asked myself. Was it something I said? Yet despite my amazement - once more considering Plato’s theory of floating ideas - I didn’t rush down to Piccadilly to see the show. As is my usual wont, I kept putting it off until the exhibition was about to close. I finally hurried to Green Park last Saturday lunchtime, fearful of potential crowds but thinking who the hell’s going to turn up to see an unknown painter from the dark side of Christianshavn?

Plenty it turned out. And as I found myself jostling for room space between Home County harridans and earnest Germans with large headphones clamped to their ears, I asked myself, why the unexpected appeal? And this ultimately is what I came up with.

These are tough times we’re living in, as if it needs to be pointed out. We’ve reached a post 9/11 era where nothing seems to connect. Wars are being fought in our name, the justifications for them changing seasonally. A generation of Baby Boomers have grown up to see their 60’s optimism slowly overwhelmed by a sea of empty materialism, ungrateful kids, failed marriages and insecure jobs. What’s more, their friends have begun to start dying around them. The new century promised so much. Technology would, we were told, make life more liveable. The Soviet threat had long gone, Europe was one big happy family and America was thriving. How swiftly that has changed.

In its place drifted in a seemingly-permanent cloud, a general malaise, a sense of dissatisfaction. All the stuff that was supposed to work, that was meant to make you happy, wasn’t paying off. Commentators like Oliver James and Alain De Boton became bestsellers as the public found themselves turning to someone, anyone, who could explain why this was happening in the hope that once understood they might be able to do something about it. But the remedy suggested by such writers was to scale down, return to a way of life more akin to the period after the Second World War.

That of course made little sense to a generation brought up on the belief that everything they have worked for, everything they have been told will make not only their lives better but the world a better place to live, is actually having the opposite effect. Giving up a hard-slaved for life of creature comforts in order to get in touch with yourself may look good on paper but the reality is another thing altogether.

Instead people began to retreat into their own little worlds. Whether through the Internet or the cubicle-sized society we have built for ourselves, people hid away in their bedrooms, their personal work-spaces or garden sheds. There they could sit with their own private thoughts wondering how they were supposed to make sense of it all. Concepts of community no longer rang true because at the end of the day we were still left with the nagging sense that none of this was really worth it, certainly not as rewarding as we had been led to believe. Besides which, we no longer knew who our community was.

And now the credit crunch. After five years of watching the axis of the world wobble furiously and all the philosophical indulgences of the 60’s & 70’s replaced by fundamentalist considerations we thought long left behind, we are now being forced to consider a new way of life, a downsized, more modest way of life we seemingly have no choice but to embrace. People unsurprisingly are mighty concerned about it. Beyond the fact that it doesn’t really appeal, there is also an overriding sense that we have been sold a pup. What have we spent the last 20,30,40 years working for if it’s all going to be taken away because of matters beyond our control?

Except they were in our control. Global warming and rapid population growth are completely down to us. The de-regulation of the finance industries we voted for... if any of us had bothered to read the small print. So we can’t wring our hands, stamp our feet and say it wasn’t our fault. Because it was.

But what has any of this got to do with Vilhelm Hammershoi?

Looking at his paintings of people standing alone in empty, cold rooms, one realises the work is less about the geography or the details - the porcelain serving dish, the bare table, the perfunctory decoration on the walls - but more about a state of mind. There is a willing austerity, a cleanliness of space, no clutter, no fuss, a pre-Ikea interior. The rooms are left sparse in order to give room to the thoughts on the mind of either the character pictured in the space or, if the space is empty, then the viewer themselves. And the relationship with this spare, meditative, restrained - almost ‘Huis Clos’ - type of environment seems enormously prescient in the current climate.

All the junk we have bought to fill up our lives suddenly seems irredeemably useless. It’s not working... it’s a fraud. And looking at Hammershoi's unoccupied rooms and desolate streets we are both reminded of that fact while being left with nothing but our own relationship to their sobriety. They feel barren, post-apocalyptic, as if some terrible virus has come to rid the world of its self-made ills.

All that remains is a place to exist... a place to reflect... a place solely for oneself.

Comments

This in itself wasn’t unduly alarming, although I did notice a sideways look of terror on the face of my compatriot, as it came at the apex of a continuous and unrelenting babble which had begun pretty much from the moment the lights in the theatre had begun to dim. In fact as the film progressed I noticed that the audience felt it appropriate to talk at exactly the same time as the characters onscreen. It was as if some social nicety was being observed. “Ladies and gentlemen you may now chat freely amongst yourselves...”

Of course this was in an era before the ubiquitous mobile phone, so all conversations involved the people in the room rather than the limitless opportunities for communication afforded by a buzzing, chirping handset. But what stuck me, if in truth such conversations taking place weren’t taking their lead from the behaviour onscreen, was the notion that they were occurring because, in the eyes of the audience at least, the scripted speeches only served to signify that nothing of dramatic interest was taking place. This wasn’t some sub-conscious notion of manners, the filmgoers feeling it rude to eavesdrop. No, they simply felt that the concept of characters talking was of no import, no relevance to their enjoyment of the film whatsoever. Onscreen yakking was seen as marking time, filler before the next moment of action grabbed their emotions and gave them a good shake.

Since that fateful day in the American suburbs I have witnessed this type of behaviour more and more often, so much so that I have learnt to avoid Multiplexes at certain times and days of the week. But more profound than a simple re-arrangement of my social habits is the influence this kind of public reaction is having on Film itself.

In the days of its infancy, Film was a silent medium. It was then that the building blocks of its language were formed. These obviously evolved with the influence of sound but the fundamental expressions of technique and story-telling had been laid down. With the influx of sound, dialogue became a necessity. The audiences wanted to see their movie stars talk. The fact that several careers hit the buffers - the alto squeak of a barrel-chested leading man revealing his true predilections, the raven haired beauty’s Russian dialect proving as impenetrable as her personality - were a small price to pay. Besides, there were hundreds if not thousands of plays which could be cheaply put up on screen. Playwrights, often from New York, were paid to put words into the mouths of the more adept actors. Writers who had come from a verbal and character-driven medium (after all, what is most theatre except for people conversing in a room?) took the coin and moved West. The best of them sometimes directed - Billy Wilder, Joseph Mankiewicz - and in doing so produced some of Hollywood’s classics.

But times have changed. Television, once seen as Film's poor cousin, has in recent years raised its game. Writers who want time and space not only to develop more complex story-lines but deeper, more involved characters can now, thanks to the lead shown by HBO, find a more welcoming and appropriate stage for their work. They also for once receive due kudos (something they never got before) their work becoming if anything more entrenched in the zeitgeist than a film struggling to compete in a saturated market-place.

Meanwhile movies themselves seem to be travelling inexorably in an opposite direction. The only real money-makers are the ‘tent-pole’, franchise, star-driven pics aimed at the 15-25 year old demographic (the chatterers), a post-MTV generation who have developed the attention span of gnats. Childhood years spent being dumped in front of TV screens forced to imbibe hundreds of thousands of 30-second narratives have given them the ability to comprehend, retain and process a story-line far more effectively and quickly than their forebears. Talk has thus become unnecessary. Everything can be ‘said’ without words and a generation now growing up without reading but 'txt-speak' has no love for language. Words become the sole preserve of ‘Juno’-type freaks and geeks.

At the same time, Television, because of the size of the screen, always lending itself more graciously to the concept of talking heads, has undermined Film’s role in regards a more verbal form of storytelling. Unless it’s one of the great icons of the day - a Brad Pitt or Keira Knightley - no one wants to spend money to look at an anonymous nobody chuntering away.

So what’s the long-term prognosis? I like others, see Film returning to its roots. In an article in last weekend’s Sunday Times, the author Jonathan Coe quotes Hitchcock as saying, “The art of cinema does not consist of taking photographs of people talking.” Coe goes on to set down the thoughts of Irish critic Fintan O’Toole: “What we’re now seeing is the beginning of a return by cinema to its own distinctive essence - moving pictures.” O’Toole cites the 20-minute wordless sequence at the beginning of Pixar’s Wall-E, the silent first act of Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, and the long, dialogue-free sequences in the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men.

CGI and other spectacular means of presentation (3D & Imax) in which the studios seem to be investing heavily, imply that the movie-going experience will, like its early days, return to something of a more visceral, whizz-bang experience.

So if you want to see stories about human relationships you’ll find yourself forced to survive on small-screen fodder and the film screenwriter, with a passion for intricate, witty, sometimes moving dialogue, will be nor more than a relic of history, peddling software deemed well past its sell-by date.

Comments

Of course the trick is listening to what is being said between the lines, sometimes hard to do as in both cases the respective audiences have been whipped into such a state of frenzy they holler like an army of cheerleaders on adrenochrome, no doubt concerned that anything less than a rabid appreciation of their candidate will play badly on Prime Time.

The speeches naturally play up to the crowd, the rhetoric carefully orchestrated to whip up already trigger-haired emotions. But beyond the difference in party politics - big and small government, high and low taxes, pro-life, pro-choice, more war or jaw-jaw - something else struck me last night, or should I say the wee hours of the morning. It was the continued reference to America being the greatest country on earth.

This theme was hammered repeatedly. It was used to justify everything from foreign policy to the reason the candidates first became involved in politics itself. “Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country” has become the core idea beating at the heart of American politics.

America still sees itself as an idea as much as a nation. It was a country created rather than one that slowly evolved. And this sense of self-definition and self-justification is what drives it. Because at its centre, I believe, is a sense that somehow it is not a country in the way the rest of the countries of the world see themselves. America will forever be the new kid on the block, a nation of immigrants, rejects and runaways who stole a nation from indigenous people to create its own slice of heaven.

Hence this relentless self-assurance that such a dream was worth it... that the American people truly are living in the greatest country on Earth.

I considered this I lay in bed watching the first glimpses of dawn peek through the curtains. And I asked myself whether the people of my own country Britain thought of themselves the same way. The last time it seemed that we were asked to do so was way back in the 1940’s when Churchill exhorted the populace to remain both steadfast and loyal. But looking back at those wartime speeches it is salient to note that he never spoke of Britain in isolation. While professing an abiding love for this sceptred island he knew our future could only be secured with the aid and support of our friends and allies. We were always part of bigger picture, whether fighting the Nazis or later, Communist totalitarianism.

Even if we could have afforded it, Churchill knew we couldn’t go it alone. But more importantly, he wasn’t presenting a Great British way of life as a model for the whole world to follow or adhere to. He had travelled far and wide in his youth and was worldly enough to realise there were other nations who felt their own way of life was of equal worth and value.

This is an idea with which America seems to struggle.

The recent Olympics in Beijing proved a salutary reminder of how other people can also feel passionately that what their country represents is the strongest and most powerful model in the world. The Chinese after years of censorship and repression find it hard to acknowledge that what they have been told by their leaders about themselves might not always be the truth. Their table-topping medal count no doubt went a long way towards convincing them they are once more a major player on the World stage.

Russia too, smarting from its post Soviet break-up, while having to accept its lowlier position on the Olympic rostrums, now finds itself gripped by a fever of hero-worship as Putin re-awakens their sense of self-respect after twenty years of disillusion, confusion and loss by invading former Soviet territories, throwing America’s diplomatic arguments back in her face, installing its own army of ’peacekeepers’ and proving itself to be both a belligerent foe and a wily political animal, the likes of which haven’t been seen for half a generation.

As for us - Team GB - while revelling in our record medal haul - discovered on returning home that we are anything but a United Kingdom, instead increasingly seeing ourselves as four distinct countries.

While the English struggle to define their identity, media commentators spending thousands of words on the subject, at once self-mocking, self-hating, more often uncomfortable and bemused, our Celtic counterparts have no such qualms or confusion in knowing who they are. Welsh, Scottish, Irish first - British a very definite second. But for the English to declare the same is seen as a dark form of Nationalism and by proxy, racist. The Little Englander, the Middle Englander, Mondeo man, Colonel Blimp... is seen as a figure of embarrassment, of fun. The solid stock, the Yeoman of old, has disappeared, to be replaced by white collar workers in call centres, consultancies, sales-reps. We’ve become a nation of David Brents.

Nevertheless, when I hear American politicians barking on about their country being the greatest in the world it still leaves me perplexed. Do the Dutch feel the same? The Danes, the Swedes, the Norwegians? European states have long recognised that it was this way of thinking which nearly caused their annihilation half a century ago. There is no longer any appetite for such posturing. Only the French maintain a pretence, but they are so consumed with their own crisis of identity even they know it is only for domestic show. The Germans accept they are still not allowed such utterances and the Spanish and Italians recognise that for all their bluff and posturing no one will ever take them that seriously.

The most belligerent form of self-aggrandisement comes from The East. China, as I have already described, is finally waking from its own self-imposed nightmare. India, for so long tethered to the yoke of its own mumbo-jumbo and spiritual madness, also feels it is time for a share of the cake. Sadly if any nation is likely to kick off a nuclear conflagration it is them, its petty and adolescent relationship with Pakistan a continuing worry to the rest of the world. And let’s not even get into the bonkers posturing of the Middle East.

But as Westerners, we look to our closest allies for a sense of understanding and wisdom when it comes to the global picture. We need to feel that like us, America appreciates that such self-absorbed sabre-rattling and dick-swinging gets you nowhere. There is no right way to live. There is no blueprint. Democracy sure, freedom of speech, equal rights... then leave it for people to determine their own sense of personal values. As long as no one’s getting hurt - then live and let live.

John McCain seems to me something of a confused character. To a degree he’s an outsider, a leftward leaning Republican, and as such disliked by many in his party. Outside of his military leanings and his attitude towards tax & spend, much of what he says could easily fit beneath the Democratic umbrella. Perhaps those beatings he took in Hanoi made him take a right turn. His running mate Palin is a small town ignoramus. Unworldly and untravelled, she’s a woman whose understanding of the world reaches as far as the state line. And as such, she is similar to a vast number of her fellow Americans. She is also similar to vast number of Russians, Indians and Chinese, people who also see the world only in their own terms, through their own particular and reactionary prism.

This type of small-mindedness, to me at least, feels like the last thing the world needs right now. We don’t want nations governed by fear, but by hope. We need to find our commonalities, not our differences. We need to reach out to other, break down the prejudices, whether perpetuated by religious maniacs from all sides of the spectrum, or nationalistic leaders stirring emotions for their own political and power-hungry ends.

The old line, though over worn, still rings true today. Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. And after the stupidity and chaos of last eight years, it should also be the last thing on the minds of either political party or the American people themselves.

Comments

I expect you must be getting quite a few of these letters right now... “2012 - Opening Ceremony - what the hell are we going to do?”

Fear not, or as the saying goes... “The only thing we have to fear is... Stephen Bayley or some other Design Guru getting his hands on it.” Of course it was Bayley who walked out on The Dome, the white elephant which for a generation will serve as a reminder of how we can get things spectacularly wrong when we let the focus groups, the PC brigade and the all-things-to-all-people fanny about with a ‘Grand Projet’.

It seems clear that these events only work if they are entrusted to one person to oversee them; one person with a theme, a vision, a through-line, a sense of purpose, scale and imagination. Moreover, someone with a sense of narrative, someone who knows the story that needs to be told.

And the story itself? It seems these days people have become unclear as to what Britain actually stands for, what she represents. Certainly Britain of Old, The Empire, hangs around my generation’s neck like a millstone. But there is much in our History of which should be rightly proud. Nevertheless, unlike the Chinese, I’m not sure that an Olympic ceremony should solely be about that... spacemen and Sarah Brightman notwithstanding.

Comment has already been made as to how much the Chinese had to whitewash from their past during their ceremony, and we would no doubt be accused of the same thing, especially from press naysayers keen to leap up and down like spoilsports from the touchlines. But what 2012 really provides us with is an opportunity to move forward. Too often Britain is seen as a Nation trading on its past. The National Heritage version of Britain seems to be defined by others, and greedy for their dollar, we forever play up to it. While I think there is no harm in referencing our proud History, we should treasure it rather than be bound by it.

The great thing about our country has been its ability to constantly re-invent itself. You of all people hardly need a lesson in History, but I do think this is a theme we should celebrate.

Over the years and during my travels, one thing I have become both aware of and delighted by when speaking to people from foreign lands is the main reason they give for coming to Britain. They come here to feel free. Not in a traditional political or economic sense but something more personal, more emotional. We live in a country that celebrates the eccentric, the idiosyncratic, the one-off. We are quick to assume but slow to judge. We can bluster and grump but at the end of the day if you’re an honest, kind man or woman who works hard and has a good sense of humour, more often than not we will take you to our hearts, wherever you originally hail from.

Young people travel to Britain from all over the world for precisely that reason; to escape the shackles of their family, their society, their religious or social upbringing. Here they can dress how they want, wear their hair how they want, play the music they want, and no one bats an eyelid. This sense of liberation we take for granted. For people from other lands, it’s a revelation.

This is the kind of spirit we need to celebrate in 2012... the uniquely British concept of the individual. We love the bawdy, the belligerent and the bold. We’re often crude, curmudgeonly, loud and obscene, but we’re also the country of manners, of understatement and the stiff upper lip. This contradiction and complexity should be extolled. It’s what makes us original. It’s what makes us who we are.

So... no sanitized version. No Morris Dancers and Maypoles (unless styled by Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen). We have some of the greatest artists, designers, musicians, actors, dancers and singers in the world. We have have black, brown, yellow, straight, gay, and people somewhere in the middle... we have Radio 4 and Pirate Radio.

What we have is a big old rainy-day umbrella coming out of a Mary Poppins’ carpet bag, everything is in there and everything is sheltered by it.

This is the Britain we need to show off... with glee, with a tongue sticking out, with our bums in the air and with a firm but polite handshake.

We need to show off our Queen, our benign and benevolent Mum... always charming, always unruffled. And like Artful Dodgers, we need to show off ourselves.

By the time our show’s over in 2012 we should want everyone watching from all over the world to be thinking - “That looks like one hell of a place... when can we go?”

Until then...

A thunder-thighed Leona Lewis, a gurning Jimmy Page, a zonked David Beckham looking as if he'd crossed one time zone too many... doesn't portend well. And the Junior Showtime dancers? Hmmmmm....

Comments

The Coronet is a last throwback to another era of cinema-going. The seats are rickety cast-offs in red velvet which rock back and forth but at least they give leg room. The screen is too small for the film itself, a line of light spilling over the bottom lip, but the room has a balcony. Hey, it almost feels majestic.

So I settle back. The place is pretty busy for a Tuesday afternoon. Schools are out for the summer but there are as many young men in their twenties as there are kids. The picture begins with a sheet of rolling blue flame coming towards the camera. I have no idea why because within moments we’re in a blandly shot city, no doubt supposed to be New York. There’s a bank robbery taking place. The robbers are wearing scary clown masks. There’s no sense of who’s leading this gang but they shoot very noisy guns. The music is pounding. It’s violent, mindlessly violent. The type of violence where the shooter kills his victim without looking at his target... the death usually accompanied by a dry quip. The film has a 12A certificate.

Then the gang start killing each other. Greed is good. Less of you means more for me, industrial lay-offs in full effect. There’s bound to be one man left standing and sure enough it’s golden-boy Ledger, the main reason some people are saying the film has been treated with kid gloves by the critics and is doing such phenomenal business. Ledger looks good. A freak. White powder smeared over his face, black rings around his eyes, a slash of badly-applied red-lipstick around his mouth and some bubbly scar tissue on each cheek. He makes a good baddie. Until he starts acting.

Immediately you realise why actors love these kind of roles. The restraints are off. They can go for it. Fly. Indulge. Show-off. And being allowed to show-off is of course why they became actors in the first place. If only Mom and Pop had showed them just an ickle more love.

So Heath starts to act. He wobbles, he shakes, he licks, he pouts. He’s like Uncle Fester on steroids, juiced up like an athlete sneaking out of a hotel room, the prick of the needle still burning. 

We sit back and watch. Ledger’s messing with The Mob. He’s got Italians, Russians, Chinese and super-fly Niggas all spinning on his dick - the biggest bad guys in New York and looney tunes has them dancing.

So what’s he doing it for? Vengeance, pain, money? It’s unclear. He just wants to smash things up. He runs a massive and unending army of mask-wearing cohorts who must be getting paid but The Joker, as we now know him to be thanks to the playing cards he liberally tosses about the place, doesn’t seem to care much about money. Money can't buy him you know what.

What he really wants is The Batman. Reasons unclear. Guess he just doesn’t like the guy. And should he get his hands on The Caped Crusader he wants the dude to take off his mask... to reveal himself.  I wasn’t quite sure why this was so personally important but hey, everyone has to have an agenda.

Meanwhile, and you just knew there had to be a ‘meanwhile’, the District Attorney, blonde-looker Harvey Dent played by some artsy-fart actor who was once in a film about beating-up on a blind woman, is doing his best to clean up the streets of Gotham... which essentially means The Joker as Batman has put the fear of God into all the other suckers. Harvey is also balling some chick called Rachel, Maggie Gyllenhal, who permanently looks like she's been hit with a frying pan... hell, the D.A. is prettier than his girlfriend!... No matter, he’s in love.

Problem is, so is somebody else.

You got it... Batman. Rachel is his ex. She knows who he is and wants nothing to do with some introspective freak who spends his nights dressed in rubber.

So, Batman... rather, Bruce Wayne... what’s been going on with him since his last outing? 

Well he’s moved from Wayne Manor and is now living in some vast Condenast wankpad somewhere high above the streets of Manhattan. His company is debating whether to deal with some Chinese money-man based in Hong Kong - a man we have already seen is tied up with the Mobsters. Wayne himself is in an almighty grump. His outfits are beginning to suck and he keeps getting bitten by dogs. What's worse, his girl has left him for the D.A. although he comforts himself with a super-hot Russian ballerina and later three models tricked out like Christy, Helena and Linda in Versace knock-offs. Nevertheless, the strangely sexless Bale is tired of being a super-hero. Our leading man is mopey, broody, and, way ahead of the rest of us, wants out of this movie right from the start.

So there’s your set-up. What happens next is The Joker rampaging through the streets of Gotham, blowing up shit and whining about his Dad. He steals all the bad guys’ money - which the Chinese dude thought he was moving out of the country - and then sets fire to it. He kidnaps Harvey Dent and the ugly chick Rachel after a tediously protracted truck chase. He ties them to a bunch of oil cans and says who ever gets saved first, lives. He then dresses up as a nurse and blows up an empty Gotham Central Hospital clearly located somewhere deep in the suburbs. He also bribes cops whose mothers can't afford Medicare.

The main cop, Gary Oldman, sporting a Geraldo-moustache and retro specs, gets to Rachel. But Batman gets to Dent first. Or was it the other way round? For the life of me I can’t remember, it was so damn dark and confusing. Anyway the chick buys it. Dent’s face catches fire and, refusing skin grafts or surgery, he turns into another villain, this one called Two-Face, looking much like Damien Hirst’s ‘Hymn’, a lamer version of Chigurh from ’No Country for Old Men’ who decides everything on a toss of a coin, except in Two-Face’s world he just keeps tossing ‘til someone dies (which in some ways seems an apt metaphor for the movie).

While all this is taking place, Morgan Freeman mooches about as a version of Q - making a new suit for the Bat guy - “Try and concentrate, Bond” - and a sonar phone - “You mean like Radar?” - which enables his employer to digitally see through walls. This causes Freeman to have a crisis of conscience - a stab at the invasiveness of Homeland Security - and he tenders his resignation. Not surprisingly he wants out of this franchise too.

Percolating this daft farrago of nonsense is Michael Caine as a member of the serving class dispensing cockney words of wisdom to his charge - “How’s yer Father, Apples and Pears, I hate the French” etc...

The story ends with Batman killing the D.A./Harvey Dent/Two-Face so that Gary Oldman can declare the same man a hero. (Oldman, now Commissioner Gordon, has already faked his own death, freaking out his wife and family in order to... protect them?)

My own personal favourite “How the hell did he do that?” is when The Joker - interrogated in an underground bunker at Police HQ by a nameless cop who keeps turning up and is played neither by a recognisable actor or one of any charm - somehow manages to escape from an electrically bolted interrogation room and make his way past the massed ranks of heavily-armed members of New York's finest wielding no more than a pocket-knife. Maybe they loved him for earlier killing their boss. They got a day off work for the guy's funeral after all.

Despite this barrage of illogical nonsense there is some fun to be had in watching the director Christopher Nolan take swipes at recent American history - from Batman standing amongst the rubble of Ground Zero, to prisoners being sprung from their cells as in Hurricane Katrina - it’s all in there if you're still awake to notice.

Some have said The Joker represents some Bin Laden figure - creating chaos for chaos's sake. But Bin laden has a clear goal, to re-establish a united Muslim state under a revived caliphate. The mad Mullah, however misguided, has a clear sense of purpose.

If anything it’s the movie itself which ends up most slavishly following the Joker’s raison d'etre. 

Personally I'm looking forward to finding out in the next one if Batman can get any grumpier? He's like his audience, teenage boys sulking in their rooms, and playing with their gadgets.

At least I hope he gets over his strep throat.

Comments

It made me wonder about my attention span. Whether the modern world had indeed affected me to such a degree that I no longer had the capacity to stick with a story, to make that marathon commitment, to remain involved. In fact when I mentioned to friends I was reading Trollope they looked at me with a sense of admiration. As if I was willfully submitting myself to some sort of flagelletory self-betterment, something they felt that some day, long into the future, they might possibly consider doing themselves.

In Nicholas Carr’s recent piece in The Atlantic, ‘Is Google Making Us Stupid?’ he wrote of this phenomenon, wondering if all this browsing, this clicking on links, these animated box-ads begging us to stop looking at whatever it is we are looking at and go elsewhere, wasn’t having the culminative effect of re-programming our brains. People were making similar claims about MTV when it first pitched up on our screens, that the rapid editing style of its videos would create a world of rapacious young viewers ever-hungry for their next visual feast.

Publicist Mark Borkowski has just published a peculiar study on Fame. Decrying Warhol’s 15 minutes - the length I always considered of sexual intercourse between two overly-familiar partners - Borkowski has come up with a playfully absurd equation by which he believes he can measure the true length of a person’s celebrity-heat. It’s fifteen months, unless you happen to employ the services of a particularly slick publicist, amongst which I am sure he counts himself.

The more interesting point he makes concerns the inevitable declining shelf-life of a person’s interest to the outside world. Like a programme set to self-destruct, without careful manipulation, the narrative, in this case an individual’s celebrity, will fade from the public’s attention like the light from a fluorescent neck-band worn at a summer music festival. And without such manipulation the length of the narrative become exponentially shorter. 

Britain has just discovered ‘The Wire’ - at least its media journalists have. This seems logical for the UK as the show has just come to the end of its run in the US. Cancelled because of a lack of viewers, it has been pointed out that one of the reasons the show failed to hold an audience was because unlike the neatly-packaged story-lines of mainstream fare such as ‘Law & Order’, ‘CSI’ and ‘Without a Trace’, The Wire's narrative arc (how I loathe that term) stretched over each series’ thirteen episodes, and unlike a show like ’24’ the drama lacked a bona-fide clearly identified hero, something of which America seems forever in need.

So maybe it’s true. Maybe the public are indeed unable to focus on anything for any great length of time. Maybe the modern world has made it impossible for any of us to make a commitment - “Sure it looks interesting but - Tivo-less - I’m simply un-prepared to be in the same place at the same time for thirteen weeks anymore.”

Outside of the dwindling fascination for the freaks inhabiting ‘Big Brother’ and its ilk, the daily dose of emotional car-crash porn that is Britney, Amy and Lindsay (note how Britney’s own restorative arc is coming up to the 15-month time frame), or the PR-fed tales of female self-abuse - sex, weight, drugs and most strangely, pregnancy - the public does indeed seem to struggle to deal with the more complex through-lines both permeating and affecting their lives.

Hence their surprise at this sudden economic downturn. Never mind that economists had been predicting it for months, stating over and over again that the housing market was absurdly inflated and completely unsustainable. 

The public took the stance of believing what they wanted to believe. If a mortgage broker was offering them free money then hell, why shouldn’t they take it? And despite the myriad of tomes bemoaning the decline in the world's natural resources the public figured hell, they’re building those 4X4’s, why shouldn’t I get me one?

Given the choice of standing back for a moment, taking a breath, reading the small print... or clicking on a clip of Star Wars Boy or another cute kitten, we the public allowed ourselves to be distracted by the ephemeral, the immediate, the here and now. Like crack whores we simply yearned for another fix. And of course there were plenty of new entrepreneurs ready to sell us one. How much worse our lives would be if we couldn’t take pictures with our phones, Twitter each other to death, or blog to our hearts’ content.

Problem is, none of these methods of understanding the world have an extended narrative anymore, nor a narrator. Hence no overseeing point of view, no skillful hand at the wheel like a Dickens, an Austen, and yes even a Trollope. Nowadays we have to make up and define the tapestry of the big picture ourselves. And being not only inept, unsuited and woefully unprepared for such a complex task, it should come as no great surprise that from time to time we find ourselves completely unable to make sense of it all.

The remedy? It’s already being sold to us. Slow down, slow food, grow your own, make do and mend. There isn’t a war on... not one which is actually affecting us, but the current hysterical mood feels reminiscent of World War Two. 

They're telling us it’s time to batten down the hatches, to ride out the storm, reconnect with your loved ones... 

Then again, it might simply be time to read that really big book.

Comments

Reading about his capture made me realise something. Now that the war has been over these thirteen years, people seem a lot clearer as to who were the bad guys. When it was going on, Milosovic, Karadzic and even the brutish military commander Mladic, who is still being hidden up in the mountains by his former cohorts, were all treated with a degree of respect. They may have been the villains of the piece but they were never out-and-out demonised.

One had to negotiate with these monsters, so it was considered bad-form to bad-mouth them. I don’t remember the same approach being taken towards Hitler or Saddam Hussein, even though in the case of the latter we had happily done business with him for the first twenty-three years of his reign.

During the Balkan crisis, our own Doctor Death, MP David Owen, shuttled back and forth in an interminable round of push and shove where nothing much was achieved, a spade was rarely called a spade and if it was, neither NATO nor the UN had the balls to back it up.

In the meantime, a low-rent mobster such as Milosovic happily ran rings around the best diplomats Europe had to offer, knowing that without America’s support - Clinton at the time ridiculously embroiled in a petty farrago of his own making with intern Monica Lewinksy - NATO was both impotent and reduced to the immobile.

This fiasco of real-politik was brilliantly illuminated some years later in Peter Kominsky’s film ‘Warriors’, a savage indictment of the restrictions placed on the serving soldiers of UNPROFOR. I urge you to watch it.

Looking back at these events now, with the benefits of hindsight and clear of the so-called Fog of War, it seems utterly remarkable that villains such as Milosovic, Karadzic and Mladic were tolerated at all. One look at their wives should have been enough to know these were deeply disturbed men. Each spouse wore the look of a harridan lifted from a Tim Burton movie, their black, beehive hairdos set off by a mis-applied smear of garish red lipstick. These were women of your nightmares, not so much mothers of the nation as their ugly, weird relations.

Karadzic himself, a failed poet, in love with his own words, a vain egoist scarcely believing his own luck at finally being given an open mike, bestrode our screens nightly, his grey fringe continuously swept from his face as he gazed down from his gun-placements at the pock-marked ruins of buildings his men had been gleefully shelling, his henchman Mladic, forever impassive by his side, his demeanour that of a vicious night-club bouncer.

One thing united these three charlatans, they were all out-and-out bullies. Worse, all three of them had a deep understanding of the venality of human nature. Learnt from Hitler, a man Karadzic's own father fought against during the Second World War and whose methods of fear and control have been followed by every totalitarian leader since, they understood the idea that when the chips are down and you want to seize power, the best way to do it is to find someone the public can blame for all its ills.

This happened in Germany in the 1930’s and it happened again in Serbia in the 1990’s. After the Eastern Bloc fell, Yugoslavs had to find some group on whom to pin their economic woes - however illogical. What was bizarre was that unlike the Jews of the 30’s, who at least had a degree of social standing and were undeniably successful in various businesses, the Muslims of Bosnia had no such claim.

In no sense could it be suggested they were secretly turning the wheels of power. And less it should be thought that the Jews were doing the same back in Germany, let me state now, the success of a family trade should be celebrated rather than feared. There’s no reason on earth why Jews shouldn’t be allowed to pass their talents onto their sons and daughters just like everyone else. No conspiracy... merely expertise and knowledge.

The Muslims of Bosnia were simply used as a scapegoat. No logic. No economic justification. A bit of long-forgotten 400 year-old history dug up for the sake of it - the battle at Kosovo Polje - and that was it. Communities who had happily lived with each other for years, had worked together, had inter-married, were suddenly set against each other simply to foster the power-base of a small minority of deranged egomaniacs who, because of their own failings both socially and professionally, would stoop at nothing in order to claw their way up the social ladder.

And what did we do? We sent envoys, peace-keepers, an army of diplomats. We discussed, we negotiated, we hummed and we hawed. We tied ourselves in knots in hopeless attempts to come up with a ‘language’ which would satisfy all sides, while extricating us from the unholy quagmire of horror we had allowed a few psychopathic criminals to create.

How did it end? A good question. Did we “strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger”? Did we heck. A three-week bombing campaign by NATO forces finally forced talks to be held in Dayton Ohio in November 1995 where an agreement was signed allowing Milosovic to remain in power while formally separating the territories of Bosnia Herzogovina from Serbia.

Milosovic was finally brought down by his own people having led them into the fourth of his ill-considered wars, this time in Kosovo. Once again he only capitulated when NATO used limited air strikes against strategic Serbian targets in the spring of 1999. It took another two years before he was finally arrested and sent to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where Karadzic himself will be headed soon.

What strikes me looking back at this ignominious fiasco of foreign policy, is how little we seem to have learnt from our errors.

Currents events in Darfur seem as opaque as those taking place in the Balkans a decade ago. The Sudanese territory is split into three separate states, North, West and South. The Janjaweed, a violent Arab Militia backed by the President Omar al-Bashir are presently decimating the population of the South using spurious claims that they are housing rebel forces. Breaking it down, it becomes clear that it is essentially a North versus South battle, Arab Nomads backed by the Government attacking rural farmers.

While the chief prosecutor of the International Court in Hague, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, last week formally filed a request for the arrest of Bashir on genocide charges, there seems little appetite amongst the International community to implement his wishes.

China in particular still invests heavily in Sudan (for investment read arms sales) needing its oil for its own rapidly-growing infrastructure... hell, something has to power those Olympic floodlights after all. And as happened with Burma, China is one superpower with whom we clearly don’t want to pick a fight.

So until those farmers in Southern Sudan have something we feel is worth fighting for, they’re pretty much on their own.

Milosovic, like so many tyrants before him, sowed the seeds of his own destruction. He never knew when to quit.

In the end his own people had simply had enough. Nevertheless, as long as he wasn’t bothering us, we’d have happily put up with him. After all, for eleven long years, we did.

As for Karazdic, why capture him now? It seems Serbia realises its economic prosperity lies at the heart of the European Union. You want something? You better give us a little in return.

Funny how money talks.

Question is... do you think we could bribe the Taliban? There's a certain fellow whose whereabouts they must surely know. Doesn't every man have his price?

Comments

The pain I am currently dealing with is compounded by the fact that the reason I was anywhere near Hyde Park at all was to see Morrissey perform, a reason many would deem cause for minor injury in itself. The former Mancuinian was headlining one of the many festivals now littering the British summer months. This one in particular seemed more anodyne than most, a corporate affair sponsored by a telecommunications company.

As I stumbled around backstage I found myself struck by the absolute lack of atmosphere. This despite the fact that everywhere I looked someone seemed to be wielding a camera or microphone, no doubt in an eager attempt to fill their websites and channels with unquotable garbage muttered by the smatterings of anonymous popstars twisting awkwardly in their skinny-tight jeans. But however much they tried to whip up an atmosphere none of it actually meant anything. It was a litany of cliché, second hand quotes dressed up in third hand attitudes. I was standing in a crèche for trendy teenagers.

Now, as I lounge on my sofa like a latter-day Jimmy Stewart in ‘Rear Window’ - though sadly without benefit of a Grace Kelly, (the girl I had hoped to be cast in the role failed to rise to the occasion) I find myself reading the sort of light material I normally only scan when killing time at my local library, specifically the autobiography of former pop-star turned cheese farmer, (note the marvellous circularity to the two terms) Blur’s Alex James. Ans as I plough through the book’s hastily cobbled-together paragraphs I find myself struck by a singular notion; how oddly familiar the trajectory of Mr. James’ and my life seem to have been.

Both from the English suburbs, although his slightly more picturesque, we found ourselves studying at Goldsmiths College, a refuge from the tedious Oxbridge brigade and their closeted world of codified codswallop and dull superiority. For a time we both lived in squats or squat-like dwellings, (I had the edge on Alex there, largely because by the time he had left home the law had been changed, probably because of people like me, and living in an illegal premises for any length of time had become considerably harder to do).

From college our paths took another similar turn when despite any plans we might have had when enrolling on our three year courses, both of us fell into the world of Pop.

Reading through Alex’s experiences, his gradually becoming far more successful than my own, what brought me up short was the repeated echoes even though my own Pop journey had taken place almost a decade earlier. The details mirrored each other to such a degree it felt almost spooky; the travel, the hotels, venues, road crews, fans, models, night-clubs... they seemed to be almost identical.

I began to wonder whether, if you were to speak to any band going through the same process you would find it the same. We think we’re all off on our own fabulous journeys but in fact we are following a pre-ordained route mapped out years earlier by a bunch of men wearing too-tight jeans and dodgy, satin tour jackets.

It made me once more consider the depressing notion that the well-worn fantasy of being a rock star is in fact no more than a myth, that in fact ‘Rock and Roll’ has become nothing but a predictable and well-worn career path. This is of course a large reason for its irrelevance today.

I first discussed this subject with Bill Drummond. Bill wrote the legendary book ‘The Manual’, a pocket-sized paperback now exchanging hands at £250 a throw. It explained in simple detail how one went about having a number one. People bought the book and tried it. For one pair of Austrian individuals the manual worked.

Bill asked me what was it that had made me want to become a singer. I flippantly replied, “I dunno, it just seemed a logical career choice for a middle-class boy.” While I was being semi-flippant at the time, it now seems my explanation was horribly prescient.

Back in 1983, when I got my first record deal, pop as a cold-hearted career option seemed quite a radical notion.

At the time I only expected the band to last for a couple of years. In the event it lasted even shorter than I had predicted, my partner in crime quitting two weeks before the first album was due to be released. I subsequently went solo and discovering the money was so good extended my tour of duty, (I have never been so well paid since).

However, and here’s the thing, I’m pretty sure my generation - post punk, D.I.Y - was the first group of teenagers to consider Pop Music in such terms. Before then the music business had, logically enough, (outside the pre-fab pin-ups of Larry Parnes) been the preserve of musicians. You learnt an instrument, you formed a band, you played your music. If you managed to secure some kind of professional contract out of it, that was a bonus... a big bonus.

Nowadays however ‘the music and the band’ part of the equation turns out for too many people to be something of a tedious pre-requisite one has to go through in order to get the contract. (The TV talent shows of course obviate such a task - you win the contest, you get a number one, shortly followed by oblivion, but hey...)

But for the music world without a deal, the process itself becomes meaningless. In their minds you play music to get paid, to become famous, there is no other reason. That’s why the airwaves, the venues, the web-sites, the festivals are clogged up with bog-standard bands who can’t really play, can’t really write songs, and who aren’t really stars. They’ve simply jumped on the musical band-wagon in the hope of carving out a career.

Up until recently the music business has been been bloated enough to accommodate such tedious practitioners. But times are a-changing as people are becoming all too aware. Deals, the like of which could once support you, are now thin on the ground. It won’t be too long, if the day hasn’t arrived already, when the point of being in a band will once again be merely to play music, to entertain a crowd on a Saturday night.

We’ll find ourselves returning to the days before vinyl, before CD’s, before the record industry was able to package music as a sellable commodity. Thanks to downloading those days are already gone. A generation is growing up believing music should be free. The live experience they’ll pay for but the raw material is simply out there to be heard.

This is no bad thing, if only for the fact that the slew of pug-ordinary bands who neither enlighten nor entertain might quickly fade away. There’ll be nothing in it for them, no audiences turning up to their gigs, no one downloading their tracks, no hope of a deal, no hope of a career.

If this turns out to be the case bring it on I say. And while you’re about it, why not roll out the Joanna and we can all gather round like the old days and have ourselves a right proper knees-up.

As for Alex James, he sussed it. Cheese, babies and Mars... what one might call a proper job.

Comments

Why didn’t I get Sci-Fi? It seems a whole lot of people most certainly do. In the world of Movies, Science Fiction and Horror are the two strands most likely to be funded, pretty much regardless of whether the script is any good. As this mountain of supernatural garbage cluttering up Popular Culture grows ever higher I felt it only proper I put my mind to the question.

Back in the 1950’s when Sci-Fi as we know it first came to the fore, it had a socio-political logic. The twin-presence of the A-Bomb and The Red Menace gave the citizens of the West plenty to be fearful about. These were two unfathomable entities constantly reminding them that all they had worked for, all they had built, all they had fought for, could be wiped out in a moment. This fear of The Other created a huge sense of powerlessness which Sci-Fiction perfectly tapped into.

Even H.G. Wells work in the earlier part of the century reflected a fear of the unknown, of machines not just taking over the World, but Time itself. But as the 50’s gave way to the 1960’s, Science Fiction gradually became seen, by the mainstream at least, as something rather fun, rather silly. It was there to be toyed with and slightly mocked (cf. ‘Barbarella’ and the space-age fashion of Pierre Cardin). And while the literature of the time, such as Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, garnered a huge underground following, it was very much seen as Cult work rather than anything which might possibly crossover. Most people were too busy ingesting pharmaceuticals which took them inwards rather than exploring the outer reaches of the universe. If you wanted something more physical one could opt for NASA’s militaristic space programme even if their astronauts all sounded like Republicans and sported G.I haircuts, not a good look at the time. Kennedy tried his damnedest to make their missions sexy, but he was largely motivated by the fact that the Russians had beaten America in putting a man into space.

If people weren’t sitting around getting stoned they were having sex, at least so history keeps telling us. Only recently has a sense of revisionism been taking place. Not everyone in Society was Swinging. In fact many were living tediously humdrum lives out in the suburbs. But at the time these folks were ignored. Bedroom misfits were seen as uninteresting, uninspiring. This was an era for adventure and self-discovery. If you couldn’t make it out of your bedroom what use were you to anyone? The dynamos of Society were those who picked up a pen, a paintbrush, an electric guitar. They weren’t losing themselves in parallel universes, alien invasions or floating space-fleets (not unless they had a particularly good dealer).

But as the 60’s dream began to disintegrate a sense of alienation set in. Films like ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ and ‘Silent Running’ portrayed men cast adrift with only computers or robots for company. This drew a parallel with the sudden sense of emptiness consuming Mankind, the Woodstock years succumbing to a post-Altamont Armageddon, the drugs becoming harder and empty hedonism losing itself in escapist retro. People partied as if their lives depended on it as the economy, which had once promised so much, hit by a war-inspired Oil Crisis, headed rapidly into depression (sound familiar?). A film like Bob Rafelson’s ‘Five Easy Pieces’ captured this sense of bewilderment at a world no longer making sense. In it, Jack Nicholson plays a young man attempting to turn his back on his family, his talent and his class, while being forced to accept that despite his efforts to rebel he is not only defined by these elements but trapped by them. His only escape is a life of solitude with no connections to anyone or anything.

This was pretty dark stuff. No wonder it was too much for some people to take. Those who couldn’t had been biding their time in the aforementioned bedrooms. Now was their time to strike back.

Much has been written about the ‘Revenge of the Nerds’, the nerds in question being Lucas and Spielberg. And while I have little time for the former, Spielberg's triptych of ‘Jaws’, ‘Close Encounters’ and ‘E.T.’ are undeniably terrific films. While Spielberg celebrates the dysfunction of suburbia along with its absent fathers and their private obsessions (Richard Dreyfus’ front room mountain of mash its apogee), Lucas merely disappears into a world of cod-mythology and Wild West retreads, just the sort of fantasy-nonsense all teenage boys come up with until they get their hands on some Kerouac or Camus and actually mature.

‘Star Wars’ is a model-makers world, a facsimile of the real thing. Tales abound of avid collectors, now in their 40’s, buying two of every item of merchandise connected with the saga, one to ’play with’, the other forever un-boxed in order to retain its sell-on value.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with nine-year old boys playing with spaceships and light-sabres. It's just that I find it disheartening to see people old enough to have their own nine-year olds doing the same, whether hand-held or via a computer screen.

Once upon a time Star Wars Addicts, Trekkies and their ilk were there to be sneered at, derided for their home-made and half-baked world of fancy-dress. Their bonkers devotion to the cause, while essentially harmless, nevertheless spoke volumes for their sense of social inadequacy, as does any form of regular self-immersion in a time other than the one we are actually living in (come on down you weekend Roundheads and Cavaliers). But recently it seems these soft-headed misfits have been given the keys to the asylum.

There is of course a cold-hearted commercial logic to why this has happened. In an increasingly disloyal world, one exacerbated by increasing consumer choice, the one demographic which can be counted on to stay true to the cause are Sci-Fi freaks. Received wisdom is that they’ll turn up to see anything, particularly on opening week. This is as much down to a sense of completism (back to the model-figurines) as any inquisitiveness. Rooted in a mixture of adolescent competitiveness and a fear of being left out, the need to have clocked something, annotated it, whether to praise or dismiss, is fundamental to their experience.

In music their closest counterparts are fans of Heavy Metal, and its not surprising that the two worlds often collide. But one would never consider allowing Heavy Metal to dominate prime-time, so why is Sci-Fi given so much space? Both sub-cultures deal in fantasy, dressing-up, strange codes of behaviour, and when comes to matters of taste, the fans of both feel they are entering a private world outside of the mainstream. Yet it’s only Sci-Fi that the mainstream has to put up with.

I can’t turn on the TV or sit through Film Previews without having some wretched form of comic-book escapism being foisted on me as if it was genuinely worth a millisecond of my time. This upcoming summer we have Iron Man, Batman, The Hulk (again), Hellboy, The Happening, Wall E and on and on... On TV we have Tin Man, Heroes, Battlestar Galactica, all manner of Star Trek spin-offs, Flash Gordon (yes he’s back too), a remake of Blakes Seven (spare us) while suffering round-the-clock re-runs of the quintessentially unfunny ‘Red Dwarf’. Last but not least of course is the BBC’s jewel in the crown, ‘Doctor Who’.

Once upon a time, a mercifully long time ago, ‘Doctor Who’ used to be quite a good kids show. Troughton, Pertwee, Baker et al camped about on cruddy sets accompanied by vaguely attractive female assistants. The monsters were sometimes scary, if you were six years old. Any older and hiding behind the proverbial sofa might have proved somewhat tricky. I remember watching it fondly, alongside 'The Tomorrow People' and 'Joe 90'. It didn’t define my life and like the other programmes mentioned, it didn’t define the Broadcasters who made it.

Times have changed. Now, in bringing back 'Doctor Who' you’d have thought the BBC had re-invented the wheel. The coverage borders on saturation. And while I understand it’s a big investment for the corporation (ie. us), the level of regard with which the programme is treated often borders on the rabid. No more so than in the ‘Making of Doctor Who’ slots regularly shown on BBC 3. Here the toilers behind the series portentously babble on about the philosophical dilemmas of the characters as if they are deconstructing Nietzsche. It’s a children’s television programme for heavens sake, not ‘Cathy Come Home’. I’m sure the writer Russell T. Davies, while reassuring himself he was slipping in all sorts of non-conformist messages amongst the Daleks and Slitheen, finally realised that if he really wanted to shake things up he had to stop kidding himself he was being subversive by drip-dripping from the inside and return to ramming the barricades as he did with ‘Queer as Folk’... (hence his diplomatic exit from the show last week).

Personally I wouldn’t mind so much if the show was seen for what it is, a bit of escapist fluff at Saturday tea-time. But it’s even held up as a method of social repair; this is a programme which will bring families together, something parents can sit down with their kids and all enjoy. Get a grip. The parents are probably passed out from dragging their mewling offspring around Lakeside shopping centres, while the children are heads-down text-messaging on their mobiles while arguing who’s next on the computer.

The over-riding problem with Sci-Fi is that it convinces itself, nay prides itself, that beyond all the scary monsters, the nanobots and toxic goo, it’s dealing in Big Human Issues and that on closer examination we can find sophisticated parallels with everything going on in our everyday lives.

But why bother with parallels? We’ve got all that we need right outside our front door. You want scary, try Josef Fritzl. You want disasters, try earthquakes and cyclones. You want a dystopian state, try the inside of Gordon Brown's head. It’s all out there. You don’t even have to search very hard.

That, fundamentally, is the problem with Sci-Fi aficionados. They’re too scared to look. They can handle the great ideas of humanity but only as they pertain to some far-off planet made out of turtles. They can grapple with complex political theories but only as spoken by a man with a walnut welded to his cranium. They can even examine the deepest emotions expressed between a man and a woman, as long as the man is Captain Kirk and the woman he’s wooing is dressed in a one-legged diaphanous pant-suit and comes from the planet Scalos.

So I say to them, grow up... re-engage. The whole of life is out there waiting for you, so much beauty, power and intrigue to fall in love with. Put down your phasers, hang up your helmets, put away your sonic-screwdrivers and join us here in Reality...

Try boldly going where none of you diddums have ever gone before.

Comments

There is apparently an equation to consider. To determine the perfect age for your partner you halve your age and add ten. Who came up with this formula I have no idea. And it only works for men. For women there is a different sequence of numbers, though what they might be I neither know nor care as there’s little I can do about the outcome either way. Suffice to say that the optimum age for me at the moment is thirty-three. This meant the girl I had spent the last seven days patiently listening to was well under the limit. To be honest I could have deduced that without the use of mathematics. But more importantly, what this brief interlude brought into relief - and how - was the sheer one-sidedness of such arrangements. They work in one way and one way only. The old fart (me) gets to ogle ripe pulchritude (her), these days more commonly expressed by a firm set of limbs. Meanwhile Missy can burble on to her heart’s content about all or more usually nothing, knowing that at any moment she can threaten to withdraw her well-wrapped treasures, leaving the leery-eyed onlooker (me again) grasping for air and madly backtracking. This of itself is no great revelation. It has been ruin of man since time immemorial, certainly since the days of Humbert Humbert. What does amaze me is that despite the sterility and exploitative nature of the set-up, it seems to have a greater hold than ever not only on me but Society as a whole.

This sweet prize of youth is still presented to us as an indisputable thing of desire and the girl/woman continues to hold the power to destabilise, fascinate and disturb. From a semi-clad Miley Cyrus in Vanity Fair to Elizabeth Fritzl, the girl kept in cellar for 24 years and the mother of seven of her father’s children, the child/woman for some reason is at the forefront of discussion like never before. The commercial sexualisation of our children is of course a familiar trope; ‘Daddy’s Girl’ T-shirts for the under-nines, thongs for the under-eights, mothers buying breast implants for their daughters’ sixteenth birthdays... Such post-modern ironies we’ve learnt to take in our stride, or at least enjoy vicariously thanks to the documentary strands of BBC3 and Channel Five. More disturbing are the legal websites where girls as young as twelve pose in lingerie and swimsuits, sites run by the models’ own parents.

A colleague of mine working in Hollywood, while discussing its citizens’ ravenous need for validation - and he wasn’t referring to underground parking - made the absurd if amusing claim that one way or another, if only metaphorically speaking, most actors and actresses have probably been 'diddled by their parents', and if not their parents, an uncle, a sibling or family friend. Hence their unnatural need for love and attention. And though on the surface he may have been exaggerating slightly, there is an element of truth to his proposition... only nowadays the catchment is wider. Far beyond the boundaries of Tinseltown a more pervasive form of cultural diddling is going on.

We’re living in a world where only recently post-pubescent girls, rather than celebrating their burgeoning womanhood - and lets leave the 'girl-as-boy' fashion debate to one side for a moment - are finding themselves infantalised by men (cf. Britney’s schoolgirl, the unbreakable Hayden Panettiere from ‘Heroes’ - “Bend me, shape me, anyway you want me...” - and of course, the strangely malleable Kylie Doll). But while Tweenies are encouraged to see these girls as role models, their older sisters are rapidly leaving such notions of Barbiedom behind, attacking life with a Breezer in each hand while terrifying not only Society but its men who can’t handle them.

This of course was the reason Josef Fritzl buried his daughter for a quarter of a century, to ‘protect her’, to prevent her from going off the rails. "She did not obey any rules, she hung around in bars all night, drank, smoked." And if certain sections of the UK Media are to be believed, we should be constructing a network of bunkers for our womenfolk as we speak and the likes of Lily, Peaches and Daisy (fragrant one and all) regularly pictured drunk, preggers, or out of it, should be keeping one bleary eye over their shoulder at all times.

It seems ironic to me that as soon as Britney began to assert herself, misbehaving, changing her hair-do, putting on weight... in essence returning to her roots and living a life not dissimilar to so many of the girls she originally grew up with in Kentwood Louisiana, she was vilified and traduced. She was no longer the moppet, no longer did as she was told, no longer the cash-cow. And she was hounded for it 24/7.

The template for these girls was of course Marilyn Monroe, a woman who allowed herself to be completely defined by men. With her coochie-coo mutterings and explosively corsetted form, she both worked and was worked over. Yet no matter the quantity of barbiturates she downed to help her sleep at night, she was never perceived as a victim during her lifetime. A mess, a conundrum, a pain-in-the-ass maybe, but no one considered helping her (Arthur Miller posthumously claimed it impossible) until it was too late.

Of course while these mixed messages of womanhood - supplicant Pussycat or out-of-control Valkyrie - are confusing enough to the young women trying to de-code them, what seems even more worrying are the excuses they’re giving the growing number of men unable to countenance a world they feel they are no longer able to control.

Comments

Well times haven’t changed. Last night I went to the first night of the new Howard Brenton play ‘Never So Good’, a play about the life of former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, a man who presided over the last days of Empire, an Edwardian figure, scarred by his experiences during the First World War who had to live with the ignominy of his wife carrying on with one of his political colleagues, Lord Boothby, an individual who himself came unstuck after too many nights spent fraternizing with the brothers Kray.

And while the production was both well staged and well written, my overriding feeling about the evening was one of missed opportunity. The most significant event in Macmillan’s political life, the moment which finally handed him the reins of power, was the imbecilic catastrophe of Suez, Britain’s last attempt to effect World Order. The Americans having bailed us out of World War Two were in no mind to allow us such status and pulled the rug from under our feet once our boys had reached Port Said, threatening to sell off the Pound which would have bankrupted Britain in less than three days.

Suez of course was largely about Oil, and much in the way Paul Thomas Anderson’s bizarrely vacuous film ‘There Will Be Blood’ implied far more than it actually delivered, so Brenton’s play also suffered, going as far - in the only really cack-handed moment of the evening - as having the invading Tommies of 1953 dressed in contemporary Iraq-styled battle-gear and run around yelling the word ‘fuck’.

This half-baked bit of agit-prop didn’t bother me unduly, there has to be some reason for going to see a play about a largely forgotten Prime Minister after all, and the more obvious the dramatist can make his contemporary parallels the more likely he’ll receive a commission. And of course, for Brenton’s generation of writers, the gang currently at the top of the heap - your Pinter brigade - the 50’s was their coming of age, the time when they got their first break, their launch into public and professional life. The decade means something more to them than it does the rest of us and therefore they’re going to do their upmost to remind us of its importance. It’s notable that in the world of television - the world of the Baby Boomers - you never see list-shows of the 1950’s. They all begin ten years later. That’s not because footage doesn’t exist. It’s because the programme makers don’t give a damn about a crusty, repressed and somewhat confused era, when homosexuality was illegal, divorces were frowned upon and sex before marriage, amongst the middle and upper classes at least, was still a reason for social exclusion.

Sitting in the Lyttleton Theatre - its lobby manifesting all the ambience of a secondary airport - I found myself surrounded by members of that same 50’s generation, all looking a little tired, grey and weather-beaten, shuffling to their seats rheumy-eyed, the Aldermaston March obviously having finally caught up with them. As as they knowingly chuckled along to the material, proudly spotting the references and in-jokes - Peter Cook, Christine Keeler, Churchill’s ‘Black Dog’ - I found myself thinking, why the loving analysis of men and women who are now dead? Why the examination of a time gone by? It is so easy to nod sagely at the errors of judgement made by ghosts from the past, the psychological flaws, their bizarre predilections, their manner of doing things we wouldn’t do now. What about the errors of today? What about the buffoons, the egotists, the sly little monsters running Britain right now?

As Iraq continues to burn, the economy veers like an unattached weather balloon, feckless mothers and fathers - as if reliving some sort of Dickensian tale - find their children stolen or murdered, I see little purchase in consoling our intellect by making the parallels between Now versus Then, when it’s clearly Now we should be worrying about. We’ve just watched a Pope-driven lawyer sidle away from the nation’s centre-stage like some latter day Pontius Pilate, not even bothering to dry his hands before picking up 'jobs from the boys' left, right and centre. The man he has left behind is a charmless obsessive who chews his nails to to the bone and shuffles about like a bear with a head on. I can’t see much of a play being written about Gordon Brown 50 years from now. The rest of the Cabinet is made up of middle-management types, starry-eyed policy wonks and mini-bots - come on down Miliband and Blears. Is this really the best our country has to offer? No wonder we’re in a cultural mess. The opposition if anything is worse. Made up of ‘characters’, though for character read privileged toffs, some of whom find it quite alright to sleep with other women behind their wife’s back - all a bit of a Mayoral laugh. In that sense at least little has changed since Macmillan’s day. Truly, Cameron and Boris are the New Edwardians.

I suppose we get the Government we deserve. Always have, always will. But as these chubby-cheeked minnows flap and holler across the despatch box we are left to look on in weary despair. Britons abroad mean less and less by the year. A rump of an Army the rest of Nato neglects, the odd freak of a performer smacked-up and cracked, a football league made up of multi-millionaire foreigners, a capital city now a refuge for gangsters - both blue and white collar - a tabloid culture spiteful and petty, a young population washing itself in booze for underlying reasons no one seems to want to address for fear that the revenue might be lost if habits were irrevocably changed. Suicides up, divorces up, unwanted pregnancies up, violent crime between people who know each other up... we're a happy breed indeed.

So while we sit humming and hawing about a world left behind, picking through its carcass for those elements we miss - order, respect, a proper cup of tea - we might take a moment to ponder or even dissect the second-rate salesman currently running the show. Fifty-years from now, it’ll might well be too late.

Comments

Indeed the opening episode of ‘Madmen’ was well written, well performed (by its ensemble of largely unknowns), well filmed - all hard surfaces, pencil skirts and sharp suits - that it was a pleasure to watch. But a guilty pleasure - the guilt coming from obtaining such a vicarious thrill at watching a drama set at a time when smoking wasn’t a capital crime (socially speaking at least), when non-PC attitudes - which most of all still have but never express unless we’re with very close friends - are given full and unbridled rein.

But by the end all I was left with was the sense that I was watching nothing more than the beginning of slightly superior Soap. So why such respect and critical admiration?

A conversation I had last week with a friend, far wiser and more knowledgeable about these things than I, may hold a clue. He was decrying the state of British Culture - primarily artistic, although I’m sure if we’d had time he’d have moved on to all things including football, politics and garden design. He was speaking from a position of some experience, sitting as he does on various boards, both governmental and independent, tasked to debate and discuss such issues.

He had come to the conclusion that British Culture was moribund, in a terminal funk. It had enjoyed 50 years of growth and success since the Second World War but was now so far up its own fundament, populated almost exclusively by people who saw Art/Music/Film etc. as a way to get paid, rather than anything truly burning within their very fibre that it was dead on its legs. The ‘counter culture’ particularly - in his opinion - was over.

What we are left with is karaoke singers trained at The Brit School, technically adept at appropriating Soul without the experience. Film makers enslaved to the Hollywood Dream, while the domestic audience shows little or no interest in stories centred around their own world. Meanwhile Prime Time TV chooses to eat itself, resorting to creating dramas based on reality shows. It’s like watching a dog chasing its own tail.

Why has this happened? Because we have become a market-led society. It’s all about giving the audience what they want. Not giving them stuff they don’t know about, showing them something new, beyond their previous realm of understanding, thus perhaps in some small way changing their vision of the world. No, much better off regurgitating something they’re already familiar with. Whether that’s ‘Doctor Who’, Ant & Dec’s nostalgic game-show extravaganzas, the plethora of talent shows, whether celebrity-based like ‘Strictly Come Dancing’, or the more gladiatorial arenas of ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ (thumbs down I’d say). This is pablum for the masses made by money-grabbing cynics.

And who are these cynics? Well, they are us. The ex-punks of ‘77. My generation was the first to glamorise and fall in love with the Art of the Sell (thanks Malcolm). From D.I.Y to ‘Frankie Says’ and the multitude of unnecessary 12” re-packages and re-mixes, it was my generation who truly embraced the concept of a market-driven society. Gordon Gekko was coining the catch-phrases while Maggie was stoking the kilns.
Any notion that we might have been behaving irresponsibly, that we might be due a reality check was sub-sumed in the verbiage of knowing post-modernism where everything could be wittily de-constructed. You were either in or the joke or a dumb relic from the drab days of the working class, strike-bound 70’s.

The world of selling became a world of glamour. As Britain moved away from manufacturing, its economy changed to one based on service industries, nice clean jobs where no one got their hands dirty. This new economy heralded the arrival of consultants, PR’S, branding companies, people who told you who you should be, to consider yourself a product in an intensely competitive market. Your profile - your image - had to be perfect in order to maximise your potential. It was all about perception. It was all about New Labour.
It was all about convincing people they needed something they didn’t.

After 35 years of this onslaught folks in The West are beginning to wonder if maybe, just maybe, they might have been sold a pup. Luckily there are the emerging markets of The Far East to come to the multi-nationals’ rescue. Even if we are beginning to fall out of love with decades of unfettered Consumerism, thank heaven’s the burgeoning Third World will be around to pick up the slack, no matter if if they happen to incinerate the planet in doing so.

Meanwhile on this side of the world, as we stumble around watching prices go up and the value of everything we own go down, we find refuge in nostalgia - Austerity Britain, slow cooking, make do and mend. Books like Richard Mabey’s ‘Nature Cure’, detailing his forensic pleasure in all around us, become word-of-mouth best-sellers. Jamie delights in showing off his organic garden and we delight in the idea, just the idea mind, that we too could grow tomatoes out of a re-cyclable plastic bag.

And as dinner party conversations rage about what is and isn’t ‘really important in life’ now that even the drugs don’t work (seroxat and prozac) or in contrast, work too much (skunk and crack) the war in Iraq rages on too, now costing an unimaginable $3 trillion (... twelve noughts). The US economy is now officially in recession despite Bush’s desperate claims to the contrary, causing people’s last-resort nest eggs - their homes - to lose value and jobs to disappear.

So who’s to blame? Where did it it all go wrong? Who the hell can we pin this on?

Of course we blame not ourselves but the messengers, the sly devils who convinced all of us this stuff would work. The hucksters, the shysters, the snake-oil salesmen who promised that just by buying into whatever it was they had to offer, a product, a policy, a design for life, happiness, power, respect and success, could all be easily and instantly achieved.

It was the Madmen.

And that, my friends, in the same way that Misery Porn or the films of Richard Curtis have been such a success, is the answer as to why the show in question has found such a willing, complicit, fascinated and self-flagellating audience.

Comments

Leading up to Christmas much was written of atomized families, relations cast to the winds. Yet statistically - in Britain at least - more families planned to spend the holiday together than they did in the mid-1970’s. Travel is now such an integrated part of our lives little is thought of flying half-way around the globe to be with one’s loved ones for less than a week.

However, inclement weather can soon dampen elaborate plans and it seems abundantly clear that the equation between the number of people who wish to travel at this time of year and the ability of major airlines to carry them has yet to be squared.
Television meanwhile, for the latter part of the last century a symbol of families coming together, has inversely splintered into a myriad of channels. No longer do ‘Xmas Specials’ garner audiences in their tens of millions. Children are upstairs watching DVD’s or playing with their Wii’s (those fortunate enough to receive one) while their parents and grandparents are slumped, one eye open, over whatever comedy fare has been served as a post-bacchanalian treat.

By then, cheap Chinese-made goods have been unwrapped and discarded. Gifts so lovingly clicked-on and delivered are politely stacked in small piles around the room. Chekhovian family undercurrents have been deftly negotiated and thoughts once more return to the coming gloom of a New Year. Self-audits have at this point already lasted a couple of weeks. Relationships have ended in higher numbers than at any other time of the year. Male suicides boomed. Plans to quit the city and relocate to the country discussed for the gazillionth time, while those already relocated wonder how many solitary walks they can take before grabbing a shotgun and ending it once and for all.

I too took a walk. On Boxing Day. The mountain of turkey, stuffing, roast potatoes, parsnips, brussels, bread sauce, stilton and Christmas pud were weighing heavy if not on my mind, certainly my gut. The sky was blue and the sun burned bright so I decided to wander to Hyde Park and lap up the day. Quite a few folks were doing the same, including a depressingly large number of joggers, who, while like me feeling guilty for the gluttony of the day before, seemed to be missing the point of the pagan feast by punishing themselves less than twenty-four hours after the event. Then again, perhaps they had simply found themselves alone the day after Xmas. The idea of another twelve hours staring at a computer or television screen had been too much to bear. Better to run it off with a flinty-eyed stare at the terrifying year ahead.

I enjoyed my walk. So much so that I continued further than my usual route and continued on towards Marble Arch. I was already somewhat taken aback by the amount of traffic on the roads. I had been led to believe Boxing Day was something of a day of recovery, a time to catch up with the second string of relations who, due to family politics, one hadn’t been able to see on Christmas Day. But the citizens of London had other ideas.

I lived in New York and Los Angeles for some years and remember being surprised by the disdain with which many of my American friends took Christmas. Admittedly they had only just recovered from Thanksgiving, an opportunity for them to crack jokes at the expense of us Brits graciously invited to sit at their dinner tables. While the Bible-bashing heartland of the USA still embraces Christ’s birthday both literally and passionately, I found an undercurrent of resentment on both Coasts.

Jewish-Americans, while expressing no great fuss over their Christian brethren’s moment in the sun, take a small degree of pleasure in poo-poohing it. In Hollywood one year I remember my Jewish friends rushing to the opening of Coppola’s ‘Godfather III’... on Christmas Day. Couldn’t they have waited 24 hours like the rest of their countrymen? It almost seemed as if they felt they had to make a point. On another occassion spending a Christmas day at a friend's house in Los Feliz I suddenly realised that no arrangements had been made for the traditional lunch. When I enquired as to the plan I was met with the response - "I guess we could order Chinese..."

Of course being the multi-faith society America in which prides itself - although if I’m honest I’m not sure that the Muslim, Sikh or Hindu lobby has a particularly loud voice in the halls of Congress - the all-inclusive term ‘Happy Holidays’ has been de rigeur for years.

This open-mindedness is progress. As Prince Charles has himself declared should he ever become King, he will no longer be defender of The Faith (the Anglican Church) but the defender of Faith, a nebulous spiritual catch-all guaranteed to upset no-one while simultaneously making everyone feel at home.

These thoughts came to me yesterday as I neared the end of my walk. Reaching Marble Arch I realized I had strayed perilously close to Selfridges Department Store. The Boxing Day sales had begun, the cause of much wringing of hands in the hamlets of Middle England and a source of lurid headlines in the tabloid Press. In all my years I have never ventured to the sites of such madness and like many others have looked on at reports with a mixture of bemusement and despair. But as I strolled from the relative tranquillity of the park, I decided this was an opportunity to witness the whirling beast in all its insanity. Surely it couldn’t be as crazy as folks would have one believe.

As I approached the entrance to the store I was met with a sea of people converging upon the swing-doors with a wide-eyed expression last seen on the faces of the passengers of the Titanic once they’d acknowledged the vessel was going down. What was more surprising to me about these faces wasn’t the expression of delirium, but the colour of the skin. Of the the thousands filling Oxford Street I would say 90% were of ethnicities other than white. Black, brown, yellow... this was their day in the sun. Pasty-skinned Englanders may have been packing the out-of-town shopping centers but Central London was the domain of the immigrant. The poor working-class who had probably worked up until Christmas Eve for a celebration many of them didn’t believe in, finally had the chance to partake in the feast of mammon their richer counterparts were able to enjoy the year round.

Whether this meant they were able to save fifty or even a few hundred pounds wasn’t important. What was important was that these savings would be on ‘Designer Goods’, the symbols of success so prized by the folks who make up the rules in this, their new land of opportunity.

The escalators were rammed as people elbowed their way up the inside track. Shoppers poured over tables covered with accessories. Racks laden with items unsold due to their unappealing design or bizarre sizing were being shunted back and forth as consumers found themselves in an air of hysteria. Once a bargain was discovered, the buyer would line up like an animal waiting for execution, joining a line forty strong, for a scarf reduced by £15. Looking at their benign if exhausted faces, I realized I would have paid the difference in price just to avoid such a dehumanizing experience. But I have the £15 to spare. Many of these people don’t. Or if they do they would rather spend it on something else... another scarf maybe?

Beyond the frenzy there seemed to be an air of delight. This was a jamboree, a wild adventure. Selfridges wasn’t a store many of these people could afford to visit regularly. The young black and brown teenagers buzzing around would normally feel put-upon by the accusatory stares of uniformed security guards. Today these kids had the advantage of numbers. It was carnage, a free-for-all. No one would accost them, ask to search through their bag. They could enjoy the freedom of buying-power like any other citizen. What’s more, there was the opportunity to purchase an item of ‘Bling’, an item with a name embossed and at a price they could afford. No matter that at London prices the same items could be bought for less than half-price on E-Bay or America (much the same concept these days). This was all about now. Not a deferred payment but an immediate fix. A thrill, a treat, an explosion of capitalism. Yeah Boyee... bum rush the show!

Having finally made my way outside, I looked for a side-street to facilitate my escape and as I walked home home, couldn’t help but feel slightly depressed to have witnessed 20th century materialism in such rude health. At the same time I consoled myself with the acknowledgment that as long as another wave of newcomers can be conned into believing such a value system will both delight and improve their lives, then the long term economic security of our Nation is assured... no matter what the doom-mongers may tell us.

Happy New Year.

Comments

There is bitterness towards the amount of money top English internationals are payed - the superstars up to £150,000 a week. There is bitterness towards the number of foreign players populating our domestic league, although given the option of watching the best the world has to offer compared to the clod-hopping hoof merchants we seem to develop somewhat complicates the issue.

When the likes of Benitez, Wenger, Allardyce and Redknapp staff their squads with predominantly foreign players it isn’t only down to the money. Some of their imports - Torres, Eduardo, Muntari - are amongst the most expensive players on the team, so they can hardly be accused of picking up bargains. The reason they buy these players is simply because they know they can’t find anything of that quality in the country where they work.

Why is this? Because at the heart of England’s footballing dilemma the problem isn’t the coaches or administrators, it’s the players. And in that regard there are some obvious truths that the English football fan, and to some extent the English football media simply refuse to take on board. How many English internationals play for foreign sides? None. Why is that? Because foreign owners can’t afford them? The scouts of Milan, Real, Barca are regularly able to dig up gems from all over the world and more often than not, the likes of Ferguson and Wenger step in to relieve them of the 16-year old prodigy they’ve both discovered and nurtured.

Clearly the muddy playing fields of England are less than a fertile ground for foreign scouts. Perhaps they figure that if there is any talent to be found, the kid will have already been snapped up by a domestic club. Trying to tempt that child or its parents to relocate to a foreign country would, to a predominantly xenophobic and wary populace, be out of the question.

And here we find the essence of the problem. Football has traditionally been a working class sport. Unlike Rugby Union for example, it was seen as a way of escaping a life of manual labour. Up until the early 1960’s it was similarly badly paid, but at least you were getting badly paid for doing something you liked. Of course that’s changed now. Now you get amazingly well-paid for doing something you like. And that dynamic has distorted the game completely, both in the eyes of the players, their parents, and of course the fans.

In Britain, football may once have been seen as a way out of a back-breaking job, but it was never seen as a way out of the ghetto, a way out of the slum. The problem for our national team is that to many of the foreign players now delighting us in our league, that remains precisely the case.

Whether African, South American or Eastern European, these boys see football not only as a way out of poverty, but as a way of dragging their families out of poverty as well. Factor in recent wars - the Balkans, Liberia, Sierra Leone - and the break up of the Soviet bloc, and you discover even more reasons why a kid might want to ply his trade abroad. Those who aren’t discovered by scouts may well have already emigrated. Look at the French team post 70’s and you see it consists of a number of second generation superstars; Zidane, Henry, Viera, Trezeuget... sensational players whose family ties to the country they play for go back less than 40 years.

It was at this time that France took a hard look at its sporting infrastructure. A nation as proud and as egotistical as us, it recognized post-colonization, that its standing in the world left a lot to be desired. How to put itself back on the big stage? The Germans went through a similar period of navel-gazing post 1966 and the answer they came up with was sport. Both countries thus invested massively in academies, facilities, detailed and well-managed programs. Meanwhile what were we doing? Arguing about whether competitiveness was ‘healthy for kids’ while selling off our pitches to build out-of-town superstores.

Mind you, even if those football pitches still existed, don’t think our children would be playing on them. No doubt it would be too cold, too wet... too far. Unless games are properly organized children seem to have lost the ability to construct them for themselves. This is largely due to the fact that they aren’t allowed out of the house unaccompanied for any length of time - certainly not long enough for a game of football - such is the hysterical fear of pedophiles or the admittedly more threatening water-cooled saloon-cars prowling our streets.

Travel to any third world country and one is immediately struck by the number of children playing on the streets. Sleeping four to a room, a room mercifully lacking a TV, computer or Playstation, forces them to find their kicks elsewhere. Play encourages them to be not only healthier physically, but mentally as well. Instead of being lost in a private world of Facebook or Bebo, they are interacting on a one-to-one level, something which surely prepares them better for adult life.

I think about football a lot. Firstly because I love the game. But also because I think it serves as a mirror to the society in which we live. The money which surrounds the game now and which has done so for the last 15 years has changed it beyond all recognition. But this same money, and our love for it, has changed our whole society. Whether its oligarchs like Abramovich moving to London, much as the Arabs did in the 1970’s, stunning us with their overt wealth, or media barons like Murdoch building empires on the backs of us lowly sports fans, we have come to both accept and acquiesce to the fact that our country is up for grabs. Give us your money and you can take the lot. A nation of shopkeepers we’ve sold the shop, so we can hardly complain when we discover that our cupboards are now bare.

What’s to be done? It all depends on what people want. It’ll take a sea-change in opinion, in priorities. Fans have to decide what they want out of their football team and their football league. If you insist on the very best, and the owners and television moguls will encourage you to do so, for only then can they make their money back on the world stage, then the favelas and shanty towns of the developing world will continue to be scoured for raw talent. But if instead, like the Scots, the Italians (an underachieving nation which lives through its football) or even the Croats, you will have to accept that you are not the best in the world, that you don’t even care about being the best in the world...

What you care about, is being the best that you are, the best you can be.

And that in itself should surely be enough.

Comments

I was standing outside a bar which 15 years ago was the only decent bar in the neighbourhood, but which has now, like so many local watering holes, been transformed into an after-work joint for stock-traders, fund-managers and the women who hope to ensnare one. The influx of these newcomers has of course lowered the tone of the neighbourhood immeasurably, much in the same way New York’s East Village has gone to the dogs. I have accepted this relentless march of progress with a degree of equanimity but there are still times when my bile rises to the surface and I find myself unable to control my antipathy towards this breed of braying bread-heads who clutter the sidewalk in their Gucci slip-ons and silver-sequinned ballet pumps.

Matters got off to a bad start thanks to England’s puny World Cup rugby performance against the Veldt laborers of South Africa which people had gathered to watch. Rugby Union has become a classic symbol of Britain's post-90’s class divide. Once an amateur sport played largely by doctors and lawyers, it set itself up as a gentlemanly exercise in high contrast to the gaudy working-class circus that is Premiership Football. It was a world of men who never cried, cheated or complained, who played by the rules and for the team. No wonder it appealed so strongly to the drones working in High Finance. But I digress. What got my goat wasn’t the rugby or the stripey-shirted yee-haws bellowing in ignorance of the rules, although it certainly contributed to my darkening mood. No, what finally burst the lid of the cooker was a conversation I overheard between a friend of mine and a woman attired in a shiny green dress with a squawk of a voice which could stop traffic at thirty yards. Their discussion was Fashion and at my point of entry, the woman had just stated that her ‘problem with London’ was that while one might perceive the city as 'cool', compared to the Continent one found oneself constantly let down by its lack of sophistication. Annoyed by her patronising tone, and no doubt swift to defend the glory of the motherland as our boys took a pounding on the overhead screen, I stepped in with the aperçu that cool and sophisticated are not necessarily the same things.

“Well I think they are,” the woman replied.

By now, hacked off with this tribe of ignoramuses cluttering my patch - the territorial nature of the English - I answered, “Well I think you’re wrong.”

“It’s just my opinion,” the woman continued.

Opinion - the first refuge of the mentally indolent.

“Well you’re ill-informed,” I retorted, wondering as I said so whether ‘ill-informed’ was an actual word.

This of course lit the blue touch paper and the woman, amusingly mistaking my accent for that of an American (I must have been slurring) asked, “How long have you spent in America to feel you can behave in such an arrogant manner?”

“Clearly not long enough,” I replied. At which point the woman stomped off with a, “I don’t need to listen to this. I have never been so insulted... yadda yadda...”

She was about 29 years old.

Nevertheless, this slight amuse guele got me thinking. Were sophistication and cool the same thing? And if so, how had this come about?

I considered those people in History who were undeniably cool but could never be thought of as having a whit of refinement. The mumbling Marlon Brando sprang to mind quickly followed by his junior neophyte, James Dean (of the cigarette burns). Both masters of cool but deliberately badly-behaved in polite company, their small-town insecurities forever shining through. (For small town in Britain read suburbs... and the rise of the Dartford-bred Rolling Stones, the Bromley Contingent and latterly... actually there is no latterly, we don’t breed rebels any more, just junkies.)

Back to my list. Nick Cave would be up there - cool, but taking his fashion directive from a southern Baptist with a drink problem rather than anything emanating from Milan. I’m not sure if there are any cool English-speaking actors of the current generation. We had Nicholson, De Niro and Al but they’re all 60 plus now. The cool guys are Javier Bardem, Gael Garcia Bernal, Romain Duris. Foreign.

In the world of pop, Jamie Hewlett is cool, Beth Ditto is kinda cool, but one struggles to add to the list. Being a pop-star per se simply isn’t a cool thing to be any more and hasn’t been for some time. This is amply illustrated by the annual charity beanfest, ‘Fashion Rocks’ which, while worthy in cause, hammers the nail into rock and roll’s coffin more effectively than any lame Britney performance. At these A-list gatherings for the great and the good, the cream of the Billboard top 40 are invited to lip-sync their greatest hit to a black-tie audience, while a slew of dead-faced bambinos shuffle and pony-walk along specially constructed catwalks in front of the grinderman’s monkeys. It’s reductive and grim but the hedge-fund boys and their trophy RGFE’s can’t get enough, having no critical facility in the first place.

But let’s look at it the other way round. Can you be sophisticated and uncool. It is harder to find such people who have made any cultural impact, but they do exist. King Edward VIII springs to mind. He of the Windsor knot and Nazi sympathies was the height of blue-blooded sophistication, but by all accounts an unutterable bore as he slagged himself around the bought-up palaces of Europe with his American divorcée. The Nazis in fact were responsible for ruining many a rich man’s image. The Astors are a case in point. At one point beloved by British society, they are now seen as something of an unpleasant stain, a representation of all that can go wrong with the Upper Classes if left too long in its self-imposed bubble. Yet the bulk of these so-called sophisticates remain nameless to the likes of you and me. Their faces litter the society pages of Tatler and its ilk, but these double-barreled harridans, canapés in hand, the remarkably-depicted social X-Rays of Tom Wolfe’s ‘Bonfire of the Vanities’, remain perplexingly elusive. What exactly are they they there for? And why do people spend such an inordinate amount of time wanting to gaze at them?

The new breed of toff - Chelsea Davy (whose multi-millionaire father still works at the dispensation of Robert Mugabe - something no one in our Royal Family seems too pertubed about), bushy-tailed Zac Goldsmith, running as a Tory in the next election despite or maybe because of his Green credentials, and the rest of the polo-playing Tompkington-Pumptingtons with their identikit blonde-jobs and horsey demeanors, manifest less sophistication than a Russian call-girl who got lucky with an oligarch or a follicly-challenged New York property-developer.

The dandies - those that remain - such as design guru Stephen Bayley, self-flagellating artist Sebastian Horsley or the journalist Adrian Gill, while understanding the difference between sophistication and cool, put so much effort into demarcating it, that the effortlessness required as part of the Act – cf. Fred Astaire - is too harshly revealed, thus undermining their slick aspiration.

Before I leave this cul de sac of unsophisticated sophisticates, I’m bound to bring up the living embodiment of all that has become absurd with the notion. Posh herself. This pock-marked Essex Girl, now our First Lady of BH 90210, has transformed herself into a slightly knowing (she has to be - if she took herself seriously she would be certifiably insane) pastiche of all that is mooted to be desired. She has the clobber, the house, the bloke and the kids. She has it all. She has no career but then most women like her never set out to have one in the first place, and the fact that for five years she was part of a bona fide pop phenomenon is more than most of generation can shove onto their CV's. Posh (wittingly I believe) holds up a mirror of ridicule to everything the have-nots want to have. Yet at the same time, while she understands the ridiculousness of both her life and her lifestyle, she adores it and can’t get enough. She’s a poor girl with a rich man’s budget. Could she survive if it all disappeared tomorrow? She doesn’t have to worry. Beckham Inc. has amassed so much dough it never will. But sophisticated, in her little Audrey Hepburn dresses, her Audrey Hepburn sunglasses, her Audrey Hepburn bob? Not in a 200 million years. And to her credit, unlike Chanelle from Big Brother, whose stated ambition is to be Victoria B., Posh has resisted the one give-away that all working class girls seemingly fall for during sun-lashed vacations in San An or Ayia Napa - the blithering slag-tag tattooed above the coccyx, surely the height of non-sophistication.

Nevertheless, it seems marvellously ironic that it’s left to a wannabe-Posh from Wakefield to remind us of one of the few figures in History who truly did manage to marry sophistication with cool. No, not Bryan Ferry. I am of course talking about Coco Chanel.

Along with the French fashion doyen there have been similar markers over the years, I won’t deny it. The aforementioned Tom Wolfe springs to mind, as does bombed-out society-gal Edie Sedgwick... well-played in the movie, badly-played in real life by girl-about-everywhere, Sienna Miller. If anyone, Noel Coward remains the blend's epitome, unlike Vogue editor Anna Wintour who has taken dear Coco so closely to heart, she is no longer cool but frosty.

Anyway, less of these numbskulls and back to the girl in the pub.

What seemed to upset her was the fact that us Brits didn't scrub up as well as our European counterparts, and having spent a few days in Rome at the beginning of the year, I agree, she may well have a point. But smartness doesn't equal cool – I'm not even sure if it always equals sophisticated. One thing I've learnt over the years is that one of the reasons so many European kids come over to England in the first place is to escape the smart yet stultifying Catholic environment they've grown up in. It's our attitude of anything goes just as long as no one gets hurt (well, not badly) which has made us great. This also used to be said of New York. It was something which twinned our cities both culturally and philosophically. They even gave it a name - Bohemia.

The perceived freedom of Bohemia, its liberated morals and wild living naturally attracted the young, specifically the Young Rich, keen to escape the shackles of Daddy's dynastic plan. They could slum it for a few years, content in the knowledge that once bored of it all, and should it get a bit messy, they could return to the stern bosom of the family seat, chastened, exhausted, but ready to pick up the reigns of the Firm (or in Australians' case, once the visa's expired... the family shop.) The downside of this cultural tourism is that nothing is ever put back. Life becomes a process of grazing, skimming various cities and cherry-picking the experiences on offer.

Fashion has grown to exemplify this. You don't actually live the life but if you wear it, people might think that you do.

Since the 80's the Fashion Industry has exploded into our lives. As actresses in the 70's became more worthy - your Fondas and Streeps - the media was starved of glamorous women. Supermodels stepped into the void. Gay men had new Barbies to dress, Barbies who wouldn't talk back or challenge their perception of women as prostitutes, dominatrixes or teenage boys. Cheap manufacturing in a newly-industrialised China increased profit margins, Media needed advertisers, advertisers needed Media. A beautiful relationship was born. Once Fashion became taken over by the conglomerates such as LVMH and its ilk, clothing became part of an overall package. And this package was branded 'Lifestyle'. And without getting into a long winded dirge about what this meant to a materially-based, market-driven society, 'sophistication and cool' became the twin towers of aspiration, seemingly joined at the hip. Because what use was 'cool' if it was cheap? What use was cool if it was indefinable – if it was something money couldn't buy?

Cool had to be coupled with something you could purchase. Cool had to be something which could be bought. And the first designer to really understand that, transforming himself from a hick boy from Texas into a multi-millionaire icon was Tom Ford. Ford showed genius when it came to tapping into the New Rich. Like Versace before him, he understood the need for transgression that lies at the heart of the conservative mind, the need to convince yourself that you too could be a little bit dangerous, a little bit cool. Such territory wasn't the sole preserve of the neighbourhood misfits who sold you drugs and somehow managed to belittle your world of privilege simply by the way they stood. This was Ford's product. Designer attitude. Perfume as Porn. And the wannabes lapped it up. Caught in a never-ending, self-determining adolescence, they felt that by appropriating these various badges of stylised-decay, they too could be part of the twilight demi-monde, a world of plush decadence in which they could dip a perfectly-manicured toe. For a long time there had been the notion that with enough money - a lot – you could buy sophistication – see Jay Gatsby, see East Hampton – it took Tom Ford to convince people that with enough money - a lot – you could also buy cool.

Thus lines became blurred. Sophisticated became cool. Fashion triumphed.

In return, girls in green dresses spend their days scouring glossies for what's hot and what's not, feeling sadly frustrated when life doesn't turn out like a photo-shoot by Steven Klein. Boho chic becomes another fad. Match the antique with the £800 handbag. It's a whirling typhoon taking them straight up to Oz before dumping them down in the flat plains of Kansas.

It may not be sophisticated, but hey...

Comments

This summer has had a catalogue of festivals from June onwards, bands trawling the circuit, from Fuji to Lollapalooza. Yet have any of these events truly really stuck in the public’s consciousness? From Al Gore’s ‘Earth Day’ to ‘The Concert for Diana’, what would once have been seminal moments in the music calendar now pass like a blur, much like Prince’s 21 nights at the O2 Centre, memorable mainly for the fact that he gave his album away, an album notably devoid of a hit single. Of course the song of the UK summer was the more than appropriate ‘Umbrella-ella-ella” by Rhianna. As we patiently looked up for a break in the skies, we were assailed by this crude piece of symbolism, the imagery suggested by the song’s lyrics somewhat inappropriate in an era of designer vaginas. Lou Reed came and went with his performance of ‘Berlin’, to no great fanfare it has to be said. Most people reckoned you’d have been better off staying home and listening to the record. 'Muse 'and George Michael bitched about which of them had truly opened the new Wembley, as if anyone but them cared. Jarvis had his Meltdown, including the less than triumphant return of ‘Jesus and the Mary Chain’ and Melanie. Looking back at it all, you can see that a huge effort was being made, a veritable tsunami of acts offered up for our delight and delectation. From Springsteen and his Seeger-like Hillbillies, Bon Jovi and his blow-dry rock, to ‘Arcade Fire’, who seemed to be omnipresent with their manifestation of the collective, all weird bits of percussion and embarrassing dance moves (the sort of people you’d stay well away from at a party). There were pretty or not so pretty folk-boys such as James Morrison, Paolo Nutini and Ray Lamontaigne - lithium for the masses. The ‘Chilli Peppers’ showed up to collect the cheques. The Arctic Monkeys disappointed - one good song, ‘Fluorescent Adolescent’, does not a follow-up make. The same can be said of Mika... great debut, the rest of his squawking output, beyond irritating. Even Beth Ditto - all attitude and no tunes, ultimately deflated. No, the summer of 2007 belonged to one person and one person only. Amy Winehouse made the papers mainly for all the wrong reasons but her aptly-titled album ‘Back to Black’ and its sublime trio of singles was the perfect antidote to the wet weather. More than Lily Allen, Amy seemed to represent all that was rotten yet fabulous at the heart of the English experience. An understanding of black American music, something we have been able to absorb with aplomb since the days of The Stones (also puffing away on tour), coupled with a fuck-you sensibility that has always set us apart from other countries. And while our boys now seem to be fey posers of the ‘Razorlight’ variety complete with Hollywood add-ons, it’s left to the girls to give two fingers to the rest of the world. Unlike that sad sack of tabloid shit that is Pete Doherty, Amy is genuinely talented with true star appeal that transcends borders. Her bonkers thousand yard stare and little girl shuffle were riveting in May, sadly depressing by the end of August. But if she does manage to get herself back on track, you know that the songs on the next record are going to blinding. Music is all about experience and the black crows nesting within that insane beehive of hers will be tattooing a melancholic rhythm of heartbreak and pain that can only fuel the idiosyncrasies of England’s only real star. Let’s, for both her sake and ours, hope it turns out okay.

Comments

We'll have the perfunctory late-night discussions on Amendment issues and the semantics of The Constitution; whether the 'right to bear arms' pertains to the ordinary citizen or was in fact simply a proposition made at a time when a fledgling America felt threatened - when has it never felt so? - by its Colonial masters and thus made provision for a civilian militia in order to protect its interests.

Yet strangely, in all the years of living both in the USA and UK, I have never known a man (or woman) - as a friend or even strong acquaintance - who has expressed the desire, need or wish to own a gun, whether for fun, sport or self-protection. Should a hunting expedition be on the cards… (not a common pursuit amongst my social circle it has to be said) a shotgun might be provided on the day by the company or farmer organising the shoot.

These days it seems that the only members of British society who feel a need to possess a weapon, especially an automatic handgun such as those allegedly used in Virginia, are the terminally dispossessed, the emasculated, largely black but often white, marginalised males living in a state of perpetual hopelessness. What does that tells us about the American Dream?

The second thought that strikes me whenever one of these tragedies takes place is 'the numbers'. For some reason, when possible, before the true total is actually known, the digits are always evened up. In death it seems we humans still prefer a sense of order. More importantly, when in doubt, a higher number is always preferred. It comes as little surprise that the media outlets with the highest ratings always seem to be those propogating the largest death count. I am reminded of early reports after 9/11 when wild extrapolations took place, the numbers of bodies lost in the Twin Towers thought at one point to be as high as 10,000, resulting in an irrefutable jolt as the mind later adjusted to the true and much lower number.

The same effect could be felt yesterday. As I returned home late afternoon to be confronted by the breaking news, the two channels competing for round the clock coverage - the BBC & Sky - much like they do on election night, furiously marshalled their sources to determine the scale of escalating horror. And as expected it was the more tabloid-orientated Sky which kept bumping up the numbers - always it seemed one ahead of its rival. The effect was to create a sense of dissatisfaction if one turned back to the trusty Beeb. They say 31 but Sky are saying 32! What was the point of watching the BBC if the numbers were in fact rising by the second? Even if Sky had turned out to be wrong they were working on the basis that in a moment of crisis they would capture a public lost in a primeval whirlwind of masochistic bloodlust. For at these moments of crisis, when the world truly seems to stand still, who amongst us doesn't feel the erotic charge of violence? We are being taken to the edge and like a child, feel unable to prevent ourselves from peeking over, or reaching a hand into its flame.

And flame - or fame through flame more particularly - is my final point. These shooters, as they are so familiarly called, remind me of Kamikazi pilots with their 'I go down, we all go down' modus operandi. Life deals someone a bad hand and instead of dealing with the pain alone, the whole world is entreated to suffer. Whether by killing a number of innocent children (Dunblane), fellow pupils (Columbine) or an individual who has touched the lives of many (John Lennon), the killer has to make his statement, his last hurrah. It's as if he is saying - and it is nearly always a 'he' ("I don't like Mondays" was many Mondays ago) - my life may have sucked but at least I'll be remembered for my moment of death.

What is terrifying and the one aspect of this tragedy which I think more than any other will be discussed over the water coolers and cappuccinos in coming days, is the fact that should this happen again, or rather when, the ante will be upped and the number increased. For if you want your place in History, like any other Guinness record, you have to be known for an act greater than the one committed before.

As of 10:30 am yesterday morning the wretched exploits of Harris and Klebold at Columbine were eclipsed. The bar had been reset and who is to say what the bodycount of the next jilted, alienated or unloved screw-up might be? Thirty-two victims killed with two semi-automatic handguns is shocking but any loser looking in - and you can bet America's gun lovers contain quite a few - will be wondering just how much more carnage could have resulted from the use of more powerful firearms.

The last time any serious legislation regarding gun control was added to the United States statute were the Brady Laws, a result of the failed assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, his then adviser James Brady left paralysed from a stray bullet. So what are we saying… that an attempt on a Republican president is the only event which can effect US gun policy...

Huh, George?

Comments

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1596756.ece

Guess I'll be staying in for a while.

Comments

On Saturday I'd met my friend J. for a drink. I'd been out the night before and had had a fairly riotous time with a bunch of old friends and had drunk too much (too much for me): three pints of lager, two further bottles of lager, a scotch on the rocks and then a pair of indeterminate shots of liquid, dark amber in colour and tasting vile - as 90% of all shots do - which is why they are a) served in such tiny quantities and b) you are instructed to down them in one so you don’t have time to realise quite how disgusting they are.

Saturday morning I didn't wake-up with a hangover as such but certainly felt pretty damn tired. Yet despite the drinking session I'd still managed to make it home by 12:30 am. Admittedly I had then stayed up a further hour sending daft emails to exes (never wise) before singing harmony parts to The Beatles 'Revolver' (also wretched behaviour but without the same long-term repercussions - the neighbours might disagree). Anyway, feeling somewhat sluggish I made it outside the following afternoon to a local bar. J. had warned me he was surrounded by girls carrying Pekinese pups and that everyone - but everyone - was wearing sunglasses. I had sunglasses but no dog but nevetheless figured it would be good to get some air.

Arriving at the bar I could see my friend wasn't lying. He was sat in the centre of the room flanked by two women sporting wraparound shades, said dogs perched on laps. Various young men bounced in and out of vision, drawling and confident, uninterested in any other men unless they were former college alumni it seemed, which didn't bother me as the girls were keen to chat.

The one to my left was a blonde-rocker-type (think Anastasia), face protected by Chloe's. She latched onto me fast which was a drag because her friend, brunette, hot, sporting green floral tattoos peeking from her wrists and a small star on a middle finger (I know it spelt trouble but there was something irresistible about her) was drifting in and out of focus, occasionally bothered by male intrusions but perking up at the sound of the word 'murder' (always a top conversation starter for me).

However, as I tried to connect the various dots and dashes it became clear I was dealing with people whose synapses were even more frazzled than my own. These were 'glamorous' club-girls, door-people, paid to say 'no' with an ambivalent if decorous smile. Nevertheless I persevered with my attempts to kick start conversation, but it was hard work. A friend of ours joined us. A woman in her mid 30's, as beautiful as the present company but overwhelmed by the brash confidence rippling through the room. It was at this point that the girl to my left chose to announce she couldn’t be bothered to read books, a worrying trait to be sure (though this failing certainly hadn't hindered her from becoming a seer within her own circle). And here came the first thought that bothered me....

Reading… a knowledge or a reflection on Life, is simply no longer important to a huge strand of 20-something movers and shakers who bounce from one party, vacation, fashion-event, to the next. In fact, the only moment the two women beside me felt remotely beholden to express any opinion was when they spotted a girl at the bar wearing beige shoes with white tights. Was this a good thing? Apparently it depended on whether the girl's legs were skinny enough. Looking over I pointed out that one wouldn't want them any skinnier. The two fashionistas seemed unsure. Any further debate was swiftly curtailed when one of their lap-dogs needed to pee.

The noise in the room was now becoming intolerable and we decided to move across the road to our regular joint where we hoped the volume might be lessened. The brunette with the tattoos had already made tracks for the same locale but even in the quieter venue it remained impossible to engage her in any meaningful conversation. I managed to determine her name at least - Anoushka - but every time she approached me she found herself being forcibly dragged away by a younger man, something she didn’t particularly seem to mind. I did mention to her at one point that 'it must be nice to feel owned' but my witticism didn't register (probably unheard as she was being propelled forcibly towards a wall at the time). The young man doing the propelling was a Kevin Dillon look-alike - if Kevin Dillon had gone to Eton and had a father in the House of Lords. He had a winning smile but the words coming out of his mouth were more those of a loser. He had a form of sexual-Tourettes, unable to say anything more than 'Cunts, pussy… that's all that they're good for…' a phrase uttered with a delirious grin. My friend J. had initially seemed quite impressed by his act of bad-ass behaviour and particularly the number of pretty women it seemed to attract. But as time wore on it became clear that this man's connection to the women was loose to non-existent. While they initially accepted his prehistoric approach, implicit in its arrogance the notion that he was dangerous, hip, and most importantly could probably provide cocaine. But this turned out to be the extent of his dynamic. The verbal onslaughts were allowed to last not more than 30 seconds before being interrupted by a phone-call, a screech - as a new addition to the circle made themselves known - or an incontinent dog.

It seemed this was the only type of social interaction with which these people felt comfortable. No thought was necessary, no examination… beyond the beige shoes of course and these verbal dilettantes were quite content to inhabit this philosophical wasteland. Topics pinged back and forth and once each subject had passed its three paragraph mark it was time to move on. Either nothing was worth spending that much time on, or the group hadn’t thought about it long enough for more than three paragraphs to be deemed necessary. This, dear reader, is the nub of today's witterings.

There used to be a time when people bemoaned the influence of 'MTV culture' (at a time when MTV was even thought to be cultural). There was a fear that the three minute videos, the rapid-fire editing, would create a generation voracious for stimulation but unable to make much sense of it; fast at processing but hopeless at seeing the bigger picture.

Such fear was well-founded and its consequences have arrived. Compounded by the internet, YouTube, vidlets, blip-verts (call them what you will)... the world has been transformed into bite-sized nuggets. These snapshots are all anyone under the age of 25 has time to digest.

Books? You've got to be kidding... a magazine article at most. Movies too are chewed up and spat out - the only ones of any meaning - 'Scarface' for boys, 'Dirty Dancing' for girls - watched repeatedly and memorised for kitsch value. Newspapers aren’t read but skimmed for their pictures… leaving no understanding of why events are happening other than a vague notion that "War sucks, China & India are nicking our jobs, the weather's getting seriously weird and er… Posh has moved to L.A.."

Of course I despaired - probably more at my inability to impress the girl with the tattoos than any great sense of social disintegration - and sensing both defeat and exhaustion in equal measure, I left her and the right honourable Kevin Dillon - still muttering expletives into his JD & soda - and toddled off home.

But the following morning, having bought the Sunday papers and scanned the web, I realised my own world was becoming chock-full of crapola which I struggled to process. New books, new albums… plays, films, and various reports of social trauma I was supposed to make sense of... it was a blizzard of stuff; gang wars in L.A, the failure of modern novelists to engage with the body politic, Mugabe, Sienna Miller (who also happened to be at the pub on Saturday afternoon), Diane Arbus, part two of Adam Curtis' BBC documentary, Billy Piper, Brown's budget, Cameron's side-parting, Kate Middleton, the Rugby, the Cricket, the new Formula One star, Arcade Fire, The Gallows, South by Southwest, teen stabbings, whether pregnant women should drink… I could go on.

It was all too much even for me, let alone the brain-dead if gorgeous door-girls of West London. And it was then that I wondered whether maybe their casual grazing, their rapacious lifestyle, their notion of easy-come-easy-go money and experiences, was in fact the only smart way to navigate this superhighway of information.

Perhaps like them we should surf through our lives until the day comes when we've had enough. Then, when we're done, we can retire to the countryside to potter away mindlessly… whiling away our days… praying that on discovering the sheer mundanity of it all we don't suddenly drop dead of boredom.

I dunno... what d'you fink, Noush?

Comments

As I looked down from the venue's balcony this sense of time passing became clear. It was written on the faces of the men staring up at the stage. Their objects of scrutiny, like them, were no longer the guaranteed teenagers of yore. But instead had metamorphosed into a bulkier trio plying their trade, enjoying their craft, but in pocket of their own making; a bubble of time, captured and frozen, as so many others have been before. The relationship between performer and audience was symbiotic. Everyone gathered had grown beyond their years of innocence and were now using the experience to re-capture memories, perhaps of early romances, summers spent at festivals before slow train journeys home. It wasn't a wholly redundant exercise but it worked more as an expression of nostalgia than a celebration of anything current. And there is nothing wrong with an evening spent down Memory Lane. Not long ago I took a similar trip watching Patti Smith at the Royal Festival Hall (a marvellous locale for taking an inventory of one's life). Those gathered revelled in the momentary flashbacks sparked by the bile of the songstress' verse, and it had to be said, and this is only an opinion, there were moments when the art produced onstage retained a validity undimmed by the lengthening years. The Pixies, another band who re-united a decade after the usual tour-bus acrimony, also provided a striking example of a generation reconvening. I saw them play twice; once in the their heyday in 1991 and again ten years later. On both occasions I could have sworn the crowd was exactly the same, only later somewhat thinner of hair and saggier of breast, yet still determined to relive those exotic years when they were first allowed to slip the family bonds and step out into the world; the first time they really felt free. This is the moment in one's life when a band feels most important, when a soundtrack can both define who you are and the path you have chosen. And this is a great thing. But as the years roll by the same soundtrack ripens. It becomes a photographic album, sepia-toned. We can smile fondly as the tunes burst once more from the over-sized speakers. We can squeeze the hand tighter of the partner first met under the magical light. But for the practitioners onstage, the lumbering troubadours cranking a hits package from town to town, savouring the proceeds ever more carefully as the light at the end of the tunnel brightens, this dip into nostalgia is no momentary escape but a noose against which they must pull in a effort to define a new life.

As we punters walk out into the night, appetites satiated, preconceptions confirmed, the band, cryogenically lost in a design of their own making are simply left to scrape off the grease, glad-handle the record company and thank the Lord once more that their ride on the merry-go-round isn't yet over.

Comments

The recent UNICEF report on the degree of disaffection, unhappiness and general lack of well-being amongst Britain's young is what concerns me. Of the wealthiest countries in the West our children come bottom of nearly every league table pertaining to self-esteem, communication and relationships. Family dynamics are shot, internecine rivalry abounds, the problems of drink & drug abuse and teenage pregnancies increase at an alarming rate.

The political parties have responded, as is their wont, by trying to score points off each other. Labour refers to the years of under-investment under the Tories, the Tories blame Labour for a decade spent doing nothing to clear up their doo-doo. What is at root here is not simply a question of poverty - though indeed long-term poverty nearly always results in both dysfunctional & broken families - there is a bigger dynamic overwhelming both of our political parties.

What we are seeing is the almost inevitable disintegration of the post-industrial capitalist dream. I'm aware that using such terms immediately portrays me as some dreadful Dave Spart-like commie-cleric, but what we are witnessing amongst our young I unapologetically put down to Monetarism and Milton Friedman's trickle-down effect.

This is because there is never enough of a trickle-down. People make their pile and do their damnedest to hang onto it. What they deem they can spare is the amount they won't miss, the amount they don't need. But in an ever-increasingly insecure society, where dot.com crashes, pension plan scandals and corrupt accounting practices bring huge corporations down overnight, people suddenly feel somewhat protective when it comes to their properties, investments and holdings.

But that's just the guys at the top, the guys who at Xmas still pull £1m bonuses, the guys on the lengthening waiting-lists for Aston Martin DB-whatevers. No, we're talking about the kids here, the unhappy and miserable kids. And the reason they're so unhappy?

Us.

My generation... the post-punk 40-somethings, who have sold them a lifestyle few of them can afford.

This isn't simply a question of 'bling', of box-fresh trainers, designer labels and the latest mobile phone, this is also about self image… of boob-jobs, tummy-tucks, tanning-salons, hair and nail extensions... all lovingly detailed in 'before and after' make-over shows. These programmes are sandwiched between American-made specials detailing 'The Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous', the mansions, the boats, the profligate spending.

No wonder our kids feel left out.

But don't worry, instant wealth and success are only a talent show away. Pop Idol, Popstarz, Fame Academy, Big Brother… hours of prime-time peddling the notion that if you've got what it takes, your life can be transformed overnight.

But what if you haven’t got what it takes? What happens to you then? What's the point of your life if you know you’re never going to make it into the public eye, the only place where kids feel truly defined these days and where it's enough to be famous for being famous.

This reduction of identity and self-worth is the product of cooler-than-thou 80's post-modernism, where nothing can mean everything… or nothing at all. It's up to you.

It's a refuge for the lily-livered. People too scared to nail their colours to the mast for fear of being found out. The emperor's new clothes as a design for life.

At the same time the media, fashion and entertainment industry continue to foster a sense of newness, of the must-have, the 'hip'. Its flip-side of course is yesterdays news... old, tired, and resolutely 'over'. Western society needs this constant reservoir of fresh blood to maintain its profit margins. Why mend a product when you can simply replace it? And to make people keep buying, a culture of bullying is created. On the internet and in magazines, the public is entertained by a relentless barrage of unflattering pics. Women are taken to task for wearing the same dress twice, for carrying the 'wrong' hand-bag, for leaving home with no make-up. It's a prurient cornucopia of human error and failure.

This is nothing new. The 'Hush-Hush' Hollywood magazines of the 50's worked on the same basis. But thanks to new technology… You Tube, camera-phones etc… the dissemination of negative imagery now enters the public domain so pervasively, that it's a constant open season on anyone foolish enough to live within the public arena.

However, this culture of bullying - sanctioned by society - infects the playground.

Values which, once upon a time, might have been used to help define one's identity have been reduced to a blur. Our cultural history has shrunk to no more than a series of Top 100 lists, to be sneered at, dismissed and then tossed aside in a patronising, know-it-all orgy of self-congratulation.

But the editor of 'Loaded' magazine is now tee-total. The wild-childs and It-Girls of the 80's & 90's are worn-out non-entities. Society chews, spits and tramples, while its appetite remains undiminished. The tabloid newspapers, pandering as ever to the lowest common denominator team up with companies like Endemol to make and break human beings, Jade Goody only the latest and most celebrated example. The editors and producers running such organs claim behind stifled grins, that the people involved know exactly what they are letting themselves in for, that they chose to do it, and that nobody forced them.

But of course what the 'people involved' didn’t know, was how savagely their actions would be edited, blown-up, repeated ad-nauseum, sensationalized and then headlined. Any lapse of judgement, any mistake, any moment of vulnerability, is greedily seized on and exaggerated in order to boost ratings and sales.

This is grown ups showing us how to destroy someone for money, and our kids are at home watching.

Between these gladiatorial events come the sales-pitches. From the moment a child can read an image they are taught how to desire a product. They grow up feeling that if they then don’t get it a) they aren’t really loved and b) there must be something fundamental lacking in their life. In essence they're made to feel inadequate.

But they aren’t alone in this. Their parents are going through a similar trauma. The constant need for self-improvement has in some ways replaced the notion of keeping up with the Jones'. Nowadays the idea is that you are 'doing it for yourself', you being the individual in your own existential material-driven world.

The three vacations a year, the new kitchen and bathroom, the private schooling, the shopping sprees, the constant upgrading… they exist simply because you’re worth it, to prove to yourself that your life is moving forward.

But to maintain such a lifestyle is a drain. The hours of work seem endless. They put a strain on your marriage, you have no time to spend with your kids, and when you do you're too exhausted to engage with them in anyway meaningful. The only recourse is retreat, a time-out where you can once again lose yourself in yourself, in a spiritual massage, an alternative therapy…retreating with unbounded relief into the self-imposed womb.

This is what has become of my generation...

The post-punk, DIY, fanzine culture became Thatcher's children... 'Greed is good', Cool Britannia, conceptualism, Ecstasy, hedonism, 'Show me the money' and 'Live Forever'.

This is what led us to where we are now... the property porn, the celebrity chefs, 'Relocation Relocation'... the never-ending quest for perfection in both partnerships and places to live.

They are all a product of the sense of consumerism hardwired into our DNA.

And in our wake stand our children, confused, alienated and upset. They see us tearing ourselves and each other apart, pleasuring in other people's failure. They watch us drink and drug, figuring if that's how we get through it, why shouldn't they?

Besides… they're not even children anymore, we sexualise them as soon as we can in preparation for the material merry-go-round... they're simply part of the chain the rest of us keep pulling in the hope it might lead somewhere better… somewhere we really want to be.

No wonder they're bloody unhappy.

15/2/07

Comments

"How do you mean? The students have got to get their money from somewhere."

"Well, you know Jim. You can see the Authorities' point in a way. "We pay for John Smith to enter college here and now you tell us, after seven years, that he'll never get a degree. You're wasting our money." If we institute an entrance exam to keep out the ones who can't read or write, the entry goes down by half, and half of us lose our jobs. And then the other demand: "We want two hundred teachers this year and we mean to have them." All right, we'll lower the pass mark to twenty percent and give you the quantity you want, but for God's sake don't start complaining in two years' time that your schools are full of teachers who couldn't pass the General Certificate themselves, let alone teach anyone else to pass it. It's a wonderful position isn't it?"

Dixon rather agreed than disagreed with Beesley, but he didn't feel interested enough to say so.

I read this the other day; from 'Lucky Jim' by Kingsley Amis, published in 1954 - over fifty years ago. How we've moved on.

This morning I lay on my sofa - bad back, it's hurting me just to write this - and spent a couple of hours watching trash telly; pop videos and the aftermath of Big Brother.

First the videos; some were fun, the bands punky and committed, but my attention was caught by yet another Pharell monstrosity (he seems to pitch up in one out of every four promos on TV these days). In this mini-epic he journeyed with a couple of mates, one shorter, one fatter, to a deserted island in the Med where a Mr. Big loaned them the use of his 80ft cruiser named Margarita - the name of the song incidentally - for a large bag of uncut diamonds, while a couple of models strutted around in Chanel bikinis and high-heels. The girls in music videos nowadays are quite extraordinary. I don't know whether it’s down to cheap air travel or the loss of the Iron Curtain but the number of amazingly beautiful women seems to have risen tremendously in the last five to ten years. I'm not complaining, other than they only seem to be there to fulfil one purpose; bump, grind and serve. Perhaps that's three. Oh, and those diamonds, so liberally showered, perhaps our young American rappers might like to question their source. The horrendous mines in Africa where fellow brothers are treated like a cattle, forced to slave at gun-point to provide swank decoration for those across the ocean, no-longer slaves but still muttering about reparation. Respect? Don't make me laugh.

And the BB inmates. Back in the real world after their 17 week incarceration (for the lucky winner that is). And they come out to what? A couple of soft-core photo shoots in a Lads magazine, breakfast telly and some in-store signings where they're surrounded by besotted 8-year olds... the true meaning of celebrity I guess.

Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?

Comments

‘On the Road’ is a well-known, sometimes derided, rite of passage. At least it used to be. These days it’s probably ‘The Beach’ and an old skool Buck Rogers ring-tone. But in my day (yawn) ‘On the Road’ was just something you read, along with ‘Protest and Survive’, ‘The Anarchist’s Cookbook’ and ‘Rothman’s Football Annual’. I hardly remember a word of it now of course. But then how could I? With the mountains of verbiage that have passed through my system since then, it’s a miracle I can remember something I read one year ago, let alone thirty. And picking the legendary underground tome from my shelf, I have to admit, I had little desire to trawl once again through thirty-five yards of typed manuscript (or whatever it is currently doing the rounds of United States libraries). Nowadays, when it comes to America, I find myself turning instead to the leaner prose of Joan Didion, Carver or A.M.Holmes. But I dunno… something about those silhouettes.

So I purchased ‘Big Sur’, Jack’s burnout novel. Sojourned up on the North Californian coast away from everybody, away from his new found success, away from the wittering voices and sycophantic groupies, up there above the rocks he does pretty well for a while. Only losing it occasionally when he starts creating onomatopoeic poems to the sea. But the solitude gets to him. Despite its purity, despite the fact that he knows it doing him good, he can’t help himself, and breaking out of his self-imposed exile careens back into a weekend with friends which all goes wrong, bad and badly drunk. Jack knows he’s fucked forever and wishes he was back with his Mom because he knows on his own, he ain’t never going be nothing but a mess. It’s a pretty good book. Wordy but compensated by a ton of emotion, which is damn hard to find in this day and age, especially in this country. Not that we’re the buttoned up England of old. Hell no. Even our football players are feminised now. They shed tears at the missing of a penalty kick. But generally speaking? We’re in a fog of misappropriated and confused feelings.

If we’re too emotional, struggling with our sensibilities, then prescription medication is the key. And if that feels just a little too formal, a little too much of an admission, then the permanently lubricated lifestyle of Modern Britain will suffice, whether that be four pints of lager, a bottle of Sancerre or a half bottle of Gordons poured down the gullet of most English men and women every night of the week. And the result? A dull and drowsy numbness to all but the most extreme of cataclysms… a Tsunami or a World Trade Centre… anything less hardly registers. Geldof rails and Comic & Sport Relief roll around like twin buses with their celebrity endorsed festival of giving. Meanwhile, Africa collapses, the Middle East implodes, the world begins to boil, suicide rates soar and the government considers teaching Happiness to eleven year-olds.

Last Sunday I found myself amongst some comfortably wealthy people. A woman was discussing Wimbledon. She had been to the women’s final the day before and had somehow found herself missing the television commentary. She thought it would be great if the audience could be supplied with earphones so they could receive a running description of what was happening in front of their eyes. No matter that they were there only feet away, part of the event, able to smell, hear and sense things that the television viewer can only dream of. I thought it terrible idea and told her so. Besides the practical fact that if anyone really wanted that singular experience, they could take a small radio, imagine the whispering rattle from all those headphones. It would be like being stuck on a train when the idiot next to you decides to crank up his Ipod’s industrial garage, only magnified a thousand-fold. It would ruin the atmosphere. "Who care’s about that? It’s business," the woman snapped and promptly wrote her idea down in a notepad evidently purchased for just such a purpose.

I was reminded of a gig I attended only a couple of weeks ago. I found myself standing twenty feet from the outdoor stage behind a group of gurning Japs and Scandinavians. This group of kids spent the entire show taking cell-phone pictures either of themselves, the stage or most bizarrely, the close-ups on the screens at the side of the stage. Rather than appreciating the moment, they preferred to keep themselves one step away from it, a pace detached by the need to constantly frame and composes the event into a one-inch by two-inch rectangle. This would no doubt be used to later remind them of the experience (they weren’t having) when they got home. Which brings us back to Jack. Via Jim.

A couple of years ago I read Stephen (Hammer of the Gods) Davis' biography of Jim Morrison. It made an unexpected impression. The book itself is nothing special, a typical back-of the-tour-bus trawl through gossipy conjecture and rock-journo hyperbole. But being re-introduced to the life and methods of the Californian poet/singer/drunk gave me pause for thought. What most interested me in re-reading Morrison's story, was his lust for knowledge, his passion for art, ideas, literature and film. It infected his every moment, his every lyric and thought. His obsession with the concept of the shamanistic performer destroying the status quo in order to return the audience to a point of purity was fairly ambitious stuff at the time. Because although 'The Doors' are perceived as a 'Rock' band now, they were very much operating within the world of American Pop. Top Ten hits, appearances on primetime TV, this motley group of longhairs weren't slaves to the underground but bright and shiny examples of new & explosive US youth. The fact that Jim preached most of his ideas to a middle-class America stoned out of its gourd was hardly his fault, particularly as he was, more often than not, twice as fried as anyone else in the room.

His way of thinking was clearly a product of his time, one spawning the hippie revolution, new religions, sexual freedom and freely available drugs. Of course it would all crash and burn in a post Vietnam wake-up call, fostering a collective feeling of guilt and provoking a re-awakening of The Right who throughout had felt utterly disengaged and now short-changed by lack of anything to show for it all. But having lived through the subsequent glut of consumerism, media, fashion and porn, one is taken aback by how dissatisfied so many of us still are. We seem to have it all yet spend 90% of our time wondering either how to get more or survive on less.

What has this got to do with an alcoholic son of the military with a penchant for pulling out his privates? Little in regards Morrison as an icon. His shrine at Père La Chaise is now no more than a tourist trap. But in as much as he represented a popular artist trying to rub against a totem-pole of ideas, challenging what it means to be alive, of what we’re all here for, he demands a modicum of admiration, if not whole-hearted respect.

Which brings me back to Jack; the Kerouac of ‘Big Sur’, ‘Dharma Bums’ and ‘Desolation Angels’. Like the army brat who would shape his generation a decade later, he too gives us no answers, only questions. His was a struggle to confront and make sense of the real deal rather than trying to avoid it. He never claimed to have the solution, but instead encouraged us to keep probing for a greater truth, dismissing the junk and petty distractions that so inexorably clutter our lives. In doing so he showed us both his vulnerability and failings, and it is through them that we are able to countenance our own, both with greater assurance and a lesser sense of isolation. He may be at times gauche, confused and at worst indulgent, but his efforts to reach some higher ground both figuratively and metaphorically - see the Hozomeen peak of ‘Desolation Angels’ – is nothing less than inspiring. Particularly in an age where we are dulled to the notion of meaning in Life outside of a self-help book, a weekend course, a half-baked, or more frighteningly, a fundamental, religion.

Comments