Single Reviews
September 21st, 2007 at 16:07

Disclosure: I was sent these CDs to review for free by the PR company, who desperately want to engage with young people by using the, er, hippest blogs on the internet, as vehicles for them to hawk their bands. So here are some, er, reviews, of new singles by some bands:

The Scratch – Numbers (released on 24th September, on Ponyland Records)

The Scratch, judging by their logo, their photo and the sound of their music are one of these new stylish indie bands that all of the cool kids listen to – only nicely, they don’t appear to be sell outs, having stuck with an independent label. Not quite sure what ‘Numbers’ is about thematically, as one of the key lyrics is “Da, da, da, daaah, da da dah”, but its a pretty decent song. I’m going to go as far as saying I like this song. I predict big things for this band – because of their genre and “attitude” equally as much as the quality of their song.

Elena – I’m Your Face (October 1st, Delicious Records)

The soft-rocky whine of this song is fairly pleasant, if somewhat forgettable. What is disconcerting about this is the mental image that the lyrics conjure up. Despite no doubt being a devastatingly introspective, poetic examination of her melancholy feelings, I can’t help but not think about the terrifying nightmare that actually would be waking and looking in the mirror, only to find that I couldn’t actually see anything, as my eyes and the rest of my face have been replaced by a tiny growly-voiced woman super-glued to the flat pane on my head where my face once sat.

The song’s a bit too gentle for my liking, nor does it tackle issues like politics, capitalism, or detecting teen spirit in the immediate vicinity enough.

Axisgallery – Boy Cum Over (October 29th)

If you’re a fan of the background music from bad 8-bit video games, and lyrics of the calibre of “Boy come over, I’ve got the heat, I’m burning so hot, so come and step to me” (whatever that means) sang by a robotic woman, then this song is for you! The press release tries to explain it by saying that “Axisgallery set out top create a multi-faceted multi genre musical language which combined multi-layered rhythms with a whole array of sounds and instruments”, which outside of the legal profession, is the longest possible way of saying in the English language that something is shite. Dire.

Sorry, Axisgallery.

Lucius – Say It Again (October 29th, Ditto Music)

I’m finding it hard to pin down Lucius’s genre. Which I guess is a bit of a pain when you’re trying to review a song on a written medium. Basically they have drums, a guitar, a bloke singing, and apparently some samples. They’re not playing in samples all the time though, they appear to be fairly restrained about it. The scary thing about the song is that the opening few seconds sound vaguely like a Morrissey song – although thankfully the song turns out completely different. The song’s pretty good really. Yeah, that’s a bit of an underwhelming conclusion. I’ll try and be more polarised on the next one.

The Deodates – Before The Bench (October 29th, Taboo Music)

The Deodates are a couple of blokes who claim that they’re a mixture of punk and soul – they sound more like the aforementioned popular indie stuff to me, but then what do I know? Their song is pretty good, nothing too offensive. Not sure what the message is, but I’d wager its marginally more complex than that the band are “burning so hot” and want the boy to “step to them”. The B-side on the single, a live version of ‘Hippy Crack’, which I guess is another song of theirs, is alright too. I reckon they could become quite successful – they already have a celebrity fan in the form of Mark Radcliffe, and so for a horrendously obscure parody of him parodying someone else: If you don’t like this song, then you might still like music, but not The Deodates.

I wonder what a Deodate is?

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Parliament / The National Gallery
September 21st, 2007 at 01:32

Today, Katy and I went down to London for the final time this summer to do some tourism, and went to arguably the best place yet: The Palace of Westminster. So I’m going to attempt to review the tourist attraction like a proper blogger would.

The tour was really good – it followed the route the Queen takes when she opens Parliament. It turns out she first walks up some steps and goes into a ridiculously opulent room decorated with paintings of King Arthur. In here, she makes a great faff of putting on a crown, before waltzing on down to the House of Lords through a corridor decked out with yet more pictures of royalty – and two massive paintings of Waterloo and Trafalgar.

After this, we broke with what the Queen does (disappointingly you’re not allowed to sit on the throne), we went to the Commons, and we actually got to stand about on the floor of the House. Which is more exciting than it sounds – sure, you’re just surrounded by a load of green seats, but they’re a load of really exciting green seats. Its pretty amazing being somewhere you’ve seen on TV so often, and knowing whats gone on in there in the past- although one thing that surprised me was how tatty some of the seats were – certain opposition benches looked really well warn.

Perhaps the most notable and easily describable thing (that isn’t already written about on Wikipedia) was the tour guide. She was a rather posh woman, who was undoubtedly a Tory voter. It was the lack of references to the system being corrupt, unfair and a desire to smash it that gave it away.

Throughout the tour, she was keen to make as many references to David Cameron as possible, simply dismissively referring to Gordon Brown as “The Government” whilst sneering. When showing us the statues of famous Prime Minister’s in the Common’s lobby, she said “But this is the one everyone wants to see – the marvellous statue of Margaret Thatcher” whilst wiping away a tear and going weak at the knees. Metaphorically, I mean.

Sensing the end was near, I thought I should ask a question, as its not every day you get to ask questions to people who are experts on the Houses of Parliament. Unfortunately, the best question I could muster was “Are the green seats in the ‘No’ lobby [just outside the Commons chamber] upholstered in the same way as the seats in the chamber? They were really comfortable.” I even said the second sentence which really, is unnecessary detail and isn’t part of the question. The tour guide said that they were.

Like all of the best tourist places, the last stop on the tour was the House of Commons gift-shop, which was located in the chamber that used to be where the Commons sat. What used to be a hall where laws were made, the place where slavery was abolished, where all men regardless of land ownership were given the vote, where representative democracy began, now contains a stall hawking teddies dressed as Yeoman warders and, bizarrely, baseball caps with the Parliament portcullis logo on it, which no doubt does wonders for your street cred. I’d have bought the latter as a hilarious prop to wear “ironically” if it wasn’t a ridiculous £7.50.

I wonder what Charles James Fox would think if he knew that his statue is now surrounded by stationary with “House of Commons” written on in Tahoma?

The tour was dead good though – I’d recommend it. But does that constitute a review? I don’t know.

After Parliament, we took a trip to the National Gallery, in a bid to look a bit high cultured. I mean, I’m already pretty damn cultured, but Katy was making decisively low-brow references to tabloid newspapers and greyhound (instead of horse) racing, so we had to sharpen her mind.

One thing the National Gallery does better than the Louvre is that it puts all of the famous stuff in one room. Top tip: walk in, first gallery on your right, is where all of the famous shit is, the rest is mostly filler. They’ve got some Van Gogh’s: one of the versions of sunflowers, Van Gogh’s chair and another, er, famous one, that, er, escapes me.

I was also shocked to see a Monet hanging on one of the walls. Specifically: the one of the bridge over the river. I was sure I’d seen it in Musée D’Orsay in Paris. Disappointingly, it turns out that Monet painted no less than seventeen of them. I didn’t realise they were so ten-a-penny. There was also a massive picture of a horse. You know the one. You’d know it if you saw it. Yeah.

As you might have guessed, I’m not an art critic. The National Gallery was pretty good too though. Parliament was better though.

* Yeah, I know, everyone else already knows too.

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Looking for a nemesis
September 19th, 2007 at 15:11

The university year is fast approaching, and I’m trying to think of some ways I can liven it up. Don’t get me wrong, studying International Relations is infinitely more thrilling than your plebeian minds could ever dare to comprehend, but much like how Heroes adds superpowers to give a twist to what would be an otherwise pedestrian human drama, I’d quite like to add a clever twist the forthcoming university storyline. To this end, I’ve decided I’d quite like to find a nemesis to battle against over the next year.

Much like how Wolverine has Sabretooth, The Doctor has The Master, and Sabrina the Teenage Witch has the popular cheerleader as their nemeses, I think it’d be fun to have my equal and opposite, my Moriarty, constantly trying to undermine me. I’m not looking to be violently assaulted here – that’d be hideous, I’m talking about a more low intensity conflict akin to Walter the Softie and Dennis the Menace.

My nemesis needs to be witty and cutting, and the sort of person who is capable of firing tens of veiled digs a minute. Someone who will say to me, whilst in the earshot of other people, something euphemistic, that on the surface sounds friendly and pleasant, but if you know the back-story like I do, is actually a a clever burn. For example, perhaps my nemesis could say something like, “I think parking fines should be increased to encourage people to Pay & Display more regularly, don’t you think, James?”

The nemesis will also be required to exhibit all of the standard nemesis behaviour so that people look unfavourably on them instead of me, the hero: they need to be a glory hog, ridiculously arrogant, convinced that they’re the best and have no problem with constantly pointing out my flaws.

Of course, being my nemesis wouldn’t be all glory. A pre-requisite to being a nemesis means that by the end of each story, I ultimately come out on top, as I’m the hero and underdog after all. My nemesis should be prepared to end up each time inadvertently falling head first into a cake in front of the whole student population or something – and this is especially likely to occur after the nemesis has just remarked about or demonstrated their supposed superiority over me.

So would anyone be interested in filling the position? If you submit your CV in the comments selection below, I’ll be interviewing next week, and if you get the job, you can expect to start on October 1st with the new uni term.

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Threshers Week
September 17th, 2007 at 23:11

At long last, it appears that the university year is finally getting going. Well, I’ve still got two weeks to go until I go back, but I’m now actively counting down because I’ve got practically nothing else to do. The glitz and glamour associated with unemployment has, surprisingly, worn off.

This week or next week is Freshers Week in a lot of universities – its the sort of singularity moment in the year when the vast majority of new students begin (or perpetuate) their binge drinking habit, and an unfortunate tiny minority of students realise that university isn’t all its cracked up to be, and that the insufferable wankers who you thought wouldn’t qualify for any higher education are in fact outnumbering you and have the entirety of student culture based around pandering to their needs. Guess which description describes me.

I think freshers week is particularly bad for the environment – at my university at the start of the year there’s (approximately) fifty billion people outside the student union building, handing out flyers promoting nightclubs, pubs, and societies and so on. Last year I remember being handed a flyer, being told that there’s “Free Pizza” inside the students union. Only when checking the flyer did I find out that the event was being run by the Christian Union.

Clearly eternal salvation isn’t quite the attention grabber it once was, and they now need to offer people bribes to go in and listen to their undoubtedly evil propaganda. It must be pretty cheap to run though, as they can presumably just order the one pizza and have more than enough to feed up to 5000 people.

You’re supposed to spend freshers week joining clubs and societies like this – annoyingly for me though, I couldn’t find something that suited my interests. The sports clubs were a bit of a non-starter for someone who gets tired out simply watching sport (especially tennis when the ball is constantly moving back and fourth so you have to keep shaking your head), and the Salvador Dali society never got off the ground because of scheduling issues due to melted clocks.

Likewise, I had to rule out the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and Transexual) society because I’m none of those things – although it does make you wonder… could a heterosexual person join? Surely if they’re not allowed they could complain that they’re being discriminated against? And I think the world would implode into a cloud of irony if that were to happen.

Its annoying really that there isn’t an “arrogant smartmouth with needlessly controversial opinions” society. Apart from the Conservative Society, of course. But I wouldn’t really fit into that.

I think I have a bit of an irrational problem with freshers week though – presumably because mine went so badly. It took two days living in halls of residence (essentially a filing cabinet containing students) before I realised that I didn’t know how to use a dishwasher or and oven, and that I was essentially useless without parental intervention. It wasn’t even just using appliances – on first day, I actually forgot to eat because there were no parents there to remind me.

So if there’s any freshers reading, good luck and that. You’ll probably need it. I mean, unless unlike me, you have a basic level of common sense or a wider range of more mainstream interests.

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London Open House: TV Centre and the FCO
September 16th, 2007 at 23:50

This weekend was London Open House – for some reason loads of places in London decided to let in members of the public for free. So Katy and I did the most obvious thing and pursued my favourite hobby: being an awful tourist in London.

There was a lot to choose from – we could have gone to the top of the Gherkin, or to the Bank of England, or even to the Argentinian Ambassador’s official residence. Presumably if we’d gone to the latter, we would have seen tourists taking photos of a man lying on his sofa watching Last of the Summer Wine and the Antiques Roadshow.

So we decided to go to BBC Television Centre, and the Foreign (and Commonwealth) Office.

BBC Television Centre

Before the tour began, we walked over to the BBC Broadcast Centre (where transmission actually happens) and the Media Centre. It was here when I visited TVC a few years ago that I saw Director General Mark Thompson striding across the plaza like he was crushing the lives (and jobs) of tiny people. Unfortunately, rather than celebrities this time, we bumped into a woman who looked a bit… stoned. “Can either of you two do me a favour? If you do it, I’ll give you my phone”, she said, waving her phone at us. “…”, we replied. “Do either of you have a bus pass?”. We didn’t, as we’re not proper Londoners, so she had to keep her stolen phone and go and pester some more people.

TVC though, is an incredible building, because there’s so much famous stuff in it, and best of all, there’s a metal detector and security guards who keep the nutters out. Being the massive BBC nerd that I am, I’m already pretty well versed on the history of the building, the BBC and what goes on inside, but its still pretty spectacular to actually be there. The tour took us first to the central doughnut area where Roy Castle famously broke the world record for… tap dancing or something.

“The ground is covered in glitter as last night we hosted The National Lottery Awards Ceremony… which you might have seen on BBC One”, the tour guide told us, shortly before losing eye contact with everyone in the group.

Next, we were led into studio 2, the smallest studio in the complex. It wasn’t being used so there were no sets erected in there, but it was still interesting to see. Apparently it had been used for filming Red Dwarf, and they didn’t have the money to actually build a set, so they just ran around the gantry as it looked quite space age anyway.

Next stop was the former main reception and current “star entrance” that lead to the dressing rooms and so on. We all managed to crowd in one of the poshest dressing rooms, which was a bit like a rather upmarket hotel room with no windows. The tour guide explained that a lot of celebrities who come to TVC make demands on what is in their dressing room – Paul McCartney apparently demanding a bowl of fruit when he visits. He told a story, and I’ve no idea how much of this is verifiable fact, about Madonna when she came to appear on Top of the Pops once, demanded a life-size cardboard cut-out of Pope John Paul II. Apparently the BBC had to borrow a waxwork from Madame Tussauds.

Next up, we went to the Blue Peter garden. Its pretty weird seeing something you’ve seen on TV hundreds of times in the, er, flesh. It turns out that the vast majority of the stuff in the garden is bunched into one corner, as that’s where the camera tower points. I wanted a photo of me doing a thumbs up next to the pets graves, but, alas, there wasn’t really time, and I guess the BBC wouldn’t have been too pleased with me.

Interestingly, just outside the garden was a mural on the wall of Studio 9 (the former CBBC studio) of all of the Blue Peter presenters (and pets) past and present – including Richard “Sacked for Cocaine” Bacon.

The final stop on the tour was the news centre. We got to sit in the conference room whilst they told us about the news. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see any actual news studios, but then, I guess its pretty difficult to present a rolling news channel if you’ve got some tourists turning up to look around.

The tour was excellent though – the icing on the cake was the TARDIS in the BBC reception. Apparently it isn’t just a replica, and was used as the, er, actual, TARDIS for quite a while on the old series of Doctor Who. I dare-say that it was a little bit disappointing that there’s nothing inside, but I guess I’ve just been deceived by TV, again. First faking Bargain Hunt, now this!

The Foreign Office

We also went and had a look around the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, which was formerly the India Office. This was especially cool as its usually closed to the public, because its quite difficult to manipulate weaker states for your own evil ends if the general public are watching – they might blow the gaffe.

A couple of things surprised me about the building. First of all, it wasn’t just a load of offices with out of date computers covered in post-it notes like other branches of government. It was one of the most ridiculously ornate buildings this side of Paris. There were statues of famous generals everywhere, opulently decorated domes and the walls were practically caked in historical tat and nicknacks.

There was one particularly fancy room that had apparently been used to sign a treaty to ease European tensions in 1925. Needless to say it couldn’t have been a particularly effective treaty.

The second thing that surprised me was the massive courtyard in the middle of the FCO – which seems to be the same for most massive governmental/palace buildings in London (and indeed Paris). They look like huge structures from the outside – yet get inside and there’s just a big empty space. One advantage of being allowed into this courtyard was that there’s an archway that links both it and the front door of 10 Downing Street. So you can get a front-on view of Number 10, rather than an obscured sideways view like you get from standing on Whitehall. It was like watching telly, only from slightly further away, on an arch-shaped screen, without Nick Robinson jabbering on in front of the door.

The third surprising, and perhaps most worrying thing was that at the FCO I didn’t actually see anyone working. I mean, obviously there were security people and guides, but there didn’t seem to be anyone doing any actual foreign policy. Because it was Open House weekend, did they just send all of the staff home? Do foreign affairs not happen on a Sunday? Do they tell Iran to call back on Monday? What if North Korea were to ring up and threaten a nuclear war… will they just get an answer phone message? “Thank you for calling Britain. Our opening hours are weekdays from 9am until 5pm. Please leave a message after the tone or call back later. BEEP.”

Either way, the FCO was pretty good.

London is excellent.

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Column – 14/09/07
September 15th, 2007 at 01:08

My column this week was something I wrote a while back about why I don’t like shopping. I particularly like the headline on the column: “Shopping: all that is wrong in humanity”, and that I managed to get the word “slags” printed in a newspaper to casually describe the average woman.

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Every Cloud
September 11th, 2007 at 19:33

There’s a school of thought in academia that World War II, far from being the horrible destructive conflict that it was, causing the deaths of millions, was actually a good thing. And this school isn’t just attended by David Irving, and doesn’t stop in 1943. The theory goes that WWII was excellent because it led to advances in technology quicker than during peace time, like radar and rockets and so on, led to the creation of the UN and EU, which have helped secured world peace and inadvertently stimulated the desire for a welfare state, and so on.

Academics have even argued that the Cold War was pretty excellent, and that the bipolar world order was best for maintaining stability in the world.

So given that today is September 11th, I’m wondering if people will look back on 9/11 and the ‘War on Terror’, and turn to each other with their thumbs up and index fingers extended into a point, and exclaim “Awesome!“.

When you think about it, 9/11 has caused some positive stuff. I mean, its probably what caused or confirmed my interest in politics… and lets face it, a world without me broadcasting my uninformed political opinions on the internet doesn’t bear thinking about. So every cloud, eh?

Without 9/11, we’d all be too scared about things that are actually likely to happen. Rather than bricking it every time we’re on-board an aeroplane, we’d be terrified of muggers or getting hit by a car – but because of the climate of fear, we can confidently step out into busy roads knowing that we’re not going to be hit by a car, unless it is driven by a terrorist. And excellently, this isn’t very likely, as we know that terrorists are rubbish at driving.

If 9/11 hadn’t happened, the music industry would be creatively bankrupt. Everyone knows that if a musician wants something easy to write about, they can just go political and write a song about how rubbish George Bush is. And that’s something everyone can get behind. The war is bad – and its hard to be on the wrong side of the argument if you’re arguing for peace.

If Iraq hadn’t been invaded, the best (mainstream) song writers would have to go on would be say, Bush pulling out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which aside from being a complex issue, is hard to rhyme.

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Big Brother is watching you
September 10th, 2007 at 12:03

This is slightly creepy. After logging on to the council website to pay my parking fine, I put the details on the ticket in, and I was given the option to “view evidence”. It turns out that the traffic warden has been taking photos of my car. I didn’t realise they could do that. Whilst this is arguably a massive invasion of privacy and yet another sign that a surveillance culture is turning modern society into an Orwellian nightmare, it also has an upside: I get to post action photos of the actual thrilling event.

The amazing thing, I think, is that the photographer was the bastard traffic warden himself. With photography skills like these, I wonder if he’s got a Flickr account and is one of the many semi-pro photographers on there who post endless artsy black and white pictures of their pets?

I think the lesson here is to pay and display when you park, kids.

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Parking isn’t fine
September 10th, 2007 at 00:56

On Friday night, for some inexplicable reason I ended up going to Mosh, again. As I don’t drink and I’m the only one qualified to operate a B-class motor vehicle, I was driving.

When you’re sober in a dank nightclub, you really begin to appreciate why people at these places drink to get drunk. I don’t drink because I reckon I don’t need artificial stimulants to appreciate the world. Basically I’m trying to take a pseudo-scientific high-ground by referencing the majesty of nature. Trouble is, there isn’t a lot of that nature to appreciate inside Mosh because there aren’t any windows, and I’ve seen spooky tunnels that are better lit. So I guess the patrons have to liven it up somehow.

But anyway, the next day, rather than waking up with a hangover, I woke up with something worse: a parking fine.

I opened the plastic bag stuck to the windscreen, that I’d failed to spot the night before, to see a demand for £60… or £30 if I pay in the next two weeks.

It turns out that the Nazis who run the car parks insist on charging people around the clock – I’d previously assumed that it would become free at some point during the early evening like nearly every other parking space on earth.

This raises two annoying questions in my mind: what sort of parking attendant works at 11:40pm on a Friday night?! What sort of car park demands money at that time of night?

I guess the new guy must have started – I’ve parked in the same place without a problem before… but maybe I was just lucky? The new guy must be so enthusiastic he’s donning his traffic wardens jacket and can’t wait for 8am. Presumably he justifies this moral travesty by framing himself as a sort of Batman vigilante figure, fighting the bastards who didn’t realise that it was 24 hour Pay & Display.

I’m not happy about this, as you might imagine, as I’m a poor student. I’ve already wrote to Bono to ask him to release a charity single to try and raise the £30 I need.

(Oh yeah, the Freedom of Information request is also in the post)

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Send More Paramedics
September 9th, 2007 at 15:03

Last night, my friend Bouff and I went to see Send More Paramedics on their last ever tour – as they’re splitting up next month. They’re a fun band, because their gimmick is that they claim to be zombies. They dressed up as zombies, bantered about feasting on the audience, and introduced every single song by saying something like “this one’s about brains”, “this is a song about cannibalism”, “this song’s about zombies”, and so on. They had a varied repertoire.

Their music is much heavier than a lot of stuff I listen to – they’re hardcore and cross-over thrash, whatever that means. They call it “Zombiecore”. Regardless of genre placement, they were excellent. Or you could say they were dead good. Here’s a picture of a grown man dressed as a zombie:

At one point, the singer urged everyone to move forwards into the pit, specifically asking (well, telling), “you in the NOFX shirt and you in the Bane t-shirt” to move forwards. That was us. So I confidently strode forwards before having to make a humiliating retreat back away from the pit as I realised that I was going to be mauled by the nutter standing next to me who was jumping and waving his arms about as if he were being electrocuted.

They only played for about 45 minutes, which felt a bit short – especially as there was no encore. Although they did finish on Zombie Crew, which is to Zombiecore what Hey Jude is to big charity gigs: the big finishing song. Its actually better than Hey Jude because its about zombies, and Paul McCartney isn’t in the band.

After the gig, Bouff has the bright idea of going to Mosh, which for the uninitiated is an awful nightclub in Leicester. Its just about tolerable when its playing agreeable music, but last night when we went there thinking it was metal night, it turned out it was terrible indie night. Unfortunately, we didn’t discover this until we were inside.

I made the following observations:

1. There were a lot of glowsticks. According to Bouff who is less cripplingly out of touch than me, this is apparently because “new rave” is in. If I’d have known this, I’d have bought mine and (figuratively) made a killing.
2. Out of everyone there, I’d probably spent the least amount of time preparing my hair (approx 0 minutes)
3. Going out in fancy dress still makes you look like a twat. This is practically a scientific law as it has been proved countless times throughout history.

But Send More Paramedics were ace, which is the main thing. More exciting gig reports soon!

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