Life Without Meaning


Everyone has a role. Everyone has a job. Mother, father, junkie, or middle management. Everybody is something. The one thing they define themselves by. The crowning achievement. Gay is not the whole of me, it’s a part of me. Straight, that’s what I am, but not all of me.

Some people, they live to work. I was born to do this one thing. Ingrained into them, and taught from birth. Schools are training camps. Indoctrinating us into the cult of work. That one only has worth through what they do. What they achieve. What they earn.

I now know why I was born.

The poor are invisible. The rich are the only ones who contribute to society economically. What doesn’t pay has no worth.

You can’t be a pop star with stretch marks. You can’t go back into the movies with stretch marks. You can’t get World’s Sexiest Woman from FHM with stretch marks.

Because there’s always someone younger, cheaper, and more desperate than you for that front page. That cover shot. That springboard into fame.

You can’t be famous for having a talent. You can’t be known for having a skill. You can’t be recognised for contributing something to society. Nobody wants a cure for cancer anymore. Nobody wants to end global warming. Sorry, climate change. Healthy, lovely, scorching summers of climate change.

Nobody wants anything but to be famous. Nobody wants to be a great singer. Nobody wants to be an actor. They want fame. Fame, fame, fatal fame. Just fame. I wanna be famous, they say. As if that’s all there is that’s worth having.

Fame, they say. If I can have fame… I can have anything I want. I can fuck anyone I want. I can buy anything I want. But you’re always a prisoner of yourself. You can’t be anyone else. Everytime you look in the mirror, you’re looking at someone who never stood for anything but self-promotion. Never took a stand. Never said anything they believed in, but always what they wanted other people to believe they believed.

You are hollow and transparent. A clothes peg for the age. A medium speaking in the tongues of nothing. Mute icons are the only acceptable form of beauty. And that is all you are. Reduced to a set of broad brush strokes. Nobody wants complexity. Because life is difficult enough as it is. Simplify your life. Downsize. Go back to core values. Be dumb. All you are is what you do. Simplify, simplify, simplify.

The President never sits in a meeting longer than half an hour.

Some people, they work to live. That this, their job is not an extension of themselves, they are not defined by what they do, but that this, their job is a means to an end. At the end of this, the house. The retirement. The gold watch.

Thank you. Go off and die now.

Some people, they live so long for whatever their work is, that when the work stops, they stop. Stanley Kubrick died five days after finishing “Eyes Wide Shut”. Retired, aimless, one no longer grazes. One sits around looking for a reason to carry on living.

Here, we have not enough. There is no fat on this rock. No freeloaders. Everyone has a purpose. Man does not create, he discovers. Every piece of knowledge is merely one step further in the walk from ignorance.

In five hundred years time, if there are any humans left, they will look back on our Industrial Revolution, our Age Of Enlightenment, and think.. How Dumb They Were. The established knowledge we have built our life upon is no more solid. People thought that the sun went round the earth, once. They thought that you could measure Jewishness with a ruler. Intelligence by the weight of a brain. Mussolini’s brain, analysed and dissected in America in the Nineteen Forties.



What is left of mankind will look at the rock in the sky with the patches like the dark eyes of a underground mouse with a diet of discarded human food. They will say… they really thought that one day we would come back.

But as you know, once you leave home, you can never go home again.

That’s age for you. Mankind is a greedy teenager, leaving home and not thinking about the future. It’ll work out, we say to ourselves. It always does.

And we suffer from Denialitis.

Denialitis. The modern affliction. That the problem is so big, so enormous, so undisputable that the only reason is to ignore it. The problem is too enormous to contemplate. The conspiracy too large to ever really understand. Maybe the big picture is that there is no big picture. Just a vast collage of pictures that somehow interweave into each other that no one person understands, no one architect made.

I now know why I was born
- posted by Planet Me @ 9:41 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
A Million Ways To Die


"At least half of all writing involves just sitting and staring into space. Letting your brain out to hunt down ideas, bringing them back all warm and bloody between its teeth." - Warren Ellis

I'm currently 26,900 words into my Nanowrimo for 2009. Primarily, I have been wrestling with an idea for three years and I really want it done, and it feels right to do it now, and I've been frantically braindumping and writing fiercely a new, somewhat odd story called A Million Ways To Die. I'm not sure of the title. The Last Thing You Should Do or The Last Five Seconds Of Your Life or ... well, any ideas?

The plot? Well, it's the thoughts that go through a mans brain in the last five seconds of his life. And what a lot of thoughts there are. It's the story told backwards, of a sort, of a very unusual moment in human history some time in the near future.

Anyway, you ok?
- posted by Planet Me @ 10:29 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
Two Weeks

Gardening


On a Bridge


View From A Bridge


X and Nev


Spiral - best way to spend a penny I can think of


3-D


Fatherhood


On way home
- posted by Planet Me @ 10:14 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
How you all doing?


This guy is so much fun. He is stubborn, individual, hard work, and follows his own muse. But that is also wonderful, fun, and fascinating to experience. Watching his personality grow, and ideas form in his mind, is amazing.

And don't forget, he's having a brother or sister join him next month.
- posted by Planet Me @ 10:14 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
BRETT ANDERSON - "Slow Attack"


In an artistic middle age, Brett Anderson has done what many artists should do : ditch the drugs, the major label, and make more records.

Given that he's released four albums in five years, when the five years previous to that saw one, utterly disappointingly average Suede album, it's something everyone should do – take the gift of making music and use it. Anyone can be a junkie ; not anyone can be a genius.

Is Brett Anderson a genius? No. But stripped of his ego, headline status, and the need to make hit singles, his solo career has seen him remould himself. In the way that any artistic statement is an element, and an exagerration of the core personality – witness Bowie's constant requirement to reinvent himself, always different, always the same – Anderson's third album is a refreshing, and somewhat individual mix of his trademark style ; the Bedsit Balladeer, and the epic torch singer, “Slow Attack” might very well be his most accomplished record yet. Aided by grand yet intimate string flourishes and a live band, it fulfills the potential of his solo debut and it's sequel, the acoustic “Wilderness” with an effective combination of the two.

There's not much in the way of instantly recognisable, unforgettable, great songs : instead there is a effortlessly cohesive set of material that compliments and complicates each other in a narrative. “Hymn” and “The Hunted” are particular highlights,each song sitting well in the context and surrounding material, in a thematically accurate essay of the emotional climate. For the first time, Anderson is showing definite maturity.

Oh, maturity, what a word. It implies boredom and tedium. Here what it means is refinement, articulacy, and intellect. No longer is Anderson trapped by gasoline, petrol,heroin, concrete pigs, nuclear skies and suburban wives. The words are big yet small, intimate and wideranging, populated with intruiging flourishes. What “Slow Attack” is, is not a pop album, but something far more effective, and far more artistic – a song cycle that takes the listener on a journey through feeling and music to somewhere else. Few albums have ever worked so well as a whole experience. It is a grand restatement of the dying art – that of the strength of the album as a valid artistic statement.
- posted by Planet Me @ 10:03 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
Letter Never Sent


There's a lot of discussion of the Royal Mail Strike, most of it generally uninformed opinion, all divided : most of it opiniating that the Posties are antequated stick-in-the-muds, and some of it that management are useless guffmonkeys that should be strung up for taking Mandelson's shill and deliberately running their employer into the ground for a backhander of profit from TNT.

Suffice to say, both these opinions are utterly ignorant tosh : the truth is somewhere inbetween. The Royal Mail has been brutally and incompetently managed, but also Postmen have been guilty of resisting necessary change and burying their heads in the sand against an unstoppable tide of change. The solution is somewhere between the two.

Let me make my position absoluely clear : the Royal Mail is a grossly inefficient and mismanaged organisation that provides a vital public service and would benefit completely and utterly from a strong dose of common sense on the sides of both parties. The service it provides must not be allowed to fail the remote communities and geographical extremities that are both expensive and vulnerable.



What the solution is not, is strikes. Strikes cost the Royal Mail alone £1million per day (and £1m lost revenue for each subsequent day). These strikes cost our country dear in lost business, delayed payments, and vital documents and medicines not being delivered when they are due and when they are needed.

As a former Royal Mail employee, who spent six years there between December 2001 when it was known, repugnantly as “Consignia”, and October 2007, I dutifully trod out of Mail Centres, Delivery Offices, and Sorting Centres for years. I was not quite Senior Management, and whilst I was involved at a Strategic Level with many business decisions, I certainly wasn't prone to any masterplan. If there was an agenda to destroy the Post Office it seemed to be hidden from me. I believe that the intention was not to destroy the Post Office, but to save it – without knowing quite how, and without necessarily considering the best way to do it.

The Postal Strikes are the result of both management incompetence at a senior level and a now outdated attitude towards working practices. When I was there there were many people, not even forty seven, who had worked there for over thirty years : starting as a postman aged 16 straight from school on sorting frames and graduating to deliveries before ending up promoted out of their expertise. Many of them had never worked for anyone who wasn't the Royal Mail. They had no experience of any working environment that wasn't the Royal Mail.



An old fashioned attitude was that you keep your head down, you work hardish, and you get a tasty pension at the end of it. The outside world, as such, didn't quite exist. It's still common for people to be working late shifts and sleep on the job. For a few. The majority of front line delivery staff work too hard in ever shrinking efficiency windows.

Senior Management operated in roughly the same strata until at least early 2003 : The business itself barely changed in any substantial way for decades, and when I was there, at least for the first few years, the businesses operations were many years behind the rest of the business world. Part of my job involved bringing the Royal Mail to what anyone would regard as a common sense way of working.

Not many years ago, I walked around a deserted office somewhere in Britain, populated with hundreds of dormant, outdated computers from a failed scheme. All of this seemed mothballed and able to be reawakened at any moment : the moment when the foolish plan could be resurrected. The idea was that the Royal Mail would control your email address, print off all your emails, and deliver them through your letterbox. You would write responses, post them back, whereby they would be retyped into a computer and emailed back.



How utterly ridiculous. I dread to think how much money was spent on this absurd, Kafkaian idea. You might as well pay other people to wear your underpants on your behalf, or whisper into a little Goblin sitting next to your telephone. It was another absurd example of how the Royal Mail jettisoned common sense at a high level in favour of a peabrained idea.

The idea at the time, from senior management was that email could be used as a way of sending more letters.

That's not even taking into account the Royal Mail cannot provide the relatively simple service of Desktop Printing : the competition offer a service where instead of being printed at your local corporate printer, then placing into an envelope and being put in a post tray (at a cost of around £3 in total including staff time), the letter is printed off enmasse at a distribution centre with a computerised signature. The Royal Mail have been promising this service for longer than a decade and failed to deliver it.

The competition cracked it in less than three years.

Over a sustained period lasting at least a decade, the Royal Mail's leadership failed to understand that technology is an opportunity, not a threat, and carried on regardless with half-baked scheme (if any at all), and followed the Management Style of “Head In Sand”, hoping this internet fad would blow over.

As a result, the majority of the workforce, as such, also carried on regardless. Job for life, all you do is turn up and carry on.



The Royal Mail has been undoubtedly incompetently managed by small-minded Senior Management who regard any challenge as an insurrection to be stamped out ruthlessly. I'm reminded of the Communist childrens TV series “Worker Meet Parasite” which is still occasionally seen on the Simpsons. Where the workforce are nothing but pawns to be moved on a chessboard and to unthinkingly obey instructions. People do not mind being lead – as long as they understand why, and are lead by someone competent.

When change at Senior Management Level came, it was ruthless, vicious, and utterly misguided. There was a corporate Night of The Long Knives with mass voluntary redundancies every couple of years which saw the talented and ambitious hop off with a cheque into a bright future. After the third time such was waved under my nose, I indeed, also got on a lifeboat. I had seen by then more than enough examples of corporate stupidity to not want to be dragged down with the rest of them.

In short, change is coming, and no amount of strikes can save anyone. It will be brutal, indiscriminate, and prolonged. There will be an enormous changes, mass redundancy, and a shrinkage of the people in the business, as well as reallocation of roles for those who remain. Where Senior Management have gone wrong is in trying to impose these demands upon workers without any consideration for the workers. And expecting the workers to just be happy they've got a job in any place.



Striking isn't the answer. With every strike, every delayed letter and missed prescription, the Royal Mail – as a whole – stabs another knife into it's stricken heart and more customers look for alternative options with furious enthusiasm. Since the deregulation of the business, the competition have inched away from Royal Mail vast chunks of business – the profitable Business-to-Business Market that subsidises the domestic post we enjoy every day the Royal Mail isn't on strike.

It is only a matter of time before Tnt and Deustche Post open their own Mail Centres, and the Royal Mail can be bypassed completely. When that happens, the Royal Mail will shrink and buckle, castrated by incompetent politicians who are ridiculously relaxed about people getting rich and who don't care about the most vulnerable (and geographically distant) in our society. The free market does not provide equality of access to everyone, and never will. Competition is healthy for business evolution, but also brutal and should not be allowed to run unchecked akin to a vicious imported predator that makes extinct the indigenous population.



The issue simply put are the bullheaded attitudes of the ride-roughshod Managers and the antiquated, old-fashioned Unions. The strikes lead the Postmen to a corporate suicide. I'm not by any stretch of the imagination sympathetic to the imbecile management either.

For many years, Royal Mail was grossly inefficient. In order not to go bankrupt, The Royal Mail deliberately absconded from its pension responsibilities for seventeen years : instead of investing the money into a final salary pension, it instead ferreted the money away – a large percentage of most employees salary per month – into God Knows What in the hope of a sunnier day. This was during the height of the boom, not the depths of recession.

The next major error the Royal Mail has made has been on both sides : the lack of compulsory redundancies. Simply put, the Royal Mail has never faced any compulsory redundancies. As long as I was there, and a long before, staff were offered voluntary redundancy. The talented slipped away with a handshake, and those who were to all intents and purposes unemployable elsewhere stayed on. The policy was to reach a level of shrinkage by attrition : those retired, fired, and who left for pastures news were not to be replaced.



As a result, the Royal Mail carries more staff than it requires, and often in the wrong place.

As a result, the Royal Mail automatically sorts 55% of mail by machine. TNT autosorts 93%. It takes no genius to see that The Royal Mail could autosort at least a third more of its millions of letters a day. And each letter handsorted takes time.

Add to this the handcuffs of PostComm, and is it any wonder the Royal Mail is in such poor health? If the Royal Mail wants to raise the price of any service, it applies to the Postal Regulator PostComm for permission. PostComm normally refuses. It it assents it is normally to a rise that is below inflation and fails to cover the rising costs.



For example, TNT utilises what is called 'downstream access' to the Royal Mail's Final Mile delivery scheme. The Final Mile sees the post delivered to the nearest Sorting Office, sorted into destination postcode, then delivered. This is the most labour intensive part of the process, and costs about 18p per letter.

Price to TNT? 13p per letter. This is the price set by PostComm. PostComm therefore, have decided to charge Royal Mail 5p per letter it delivers for the competition. No wonder then, that the Royal Mail is in poor financial straits.

Don't think going to TNT will solve the problem. Your TNT mail will still sit undelivered in Royal Mail Yorks for days to come.



On top of this, The Unions still think the only way to secure jobs in this day and age is not to lambast PostComm or archaic former management, but to Strike.

Striking is, at best, an outdated concept. Scargill may have tried it and failed. Those who resist change will find that those that do not bend will break. You cannot stop change by refusing to work.



Now, this is not to advocate the singlehanded dismantling of The Royal Mail. The Royal Mail is a beautiful instution that is the envy of many other countries. The Royal Mail provides an affordable, generally reliable service that is less than half price of most of the similar services provided in Europe. It cannot be allowed to strangle itself.

A world without the Royal Mail will see us beholden to a private institution that sees Customer Service as an afterthought, and charges much more than we pay now. With collections on distant industrial estates located twenty or more miles away.

The strikers have genuine concerns, but are hastening their own demise by striking. The union has misjudged public anger and failed to explain its position except in old-fashioned, outdated, and ineffective ways.

The Royal Mail senior management has alienated most of the long standing genuine talent and made some olympically stupid moves that have wasted opportunities in a vandalistic fashion. Postcomm handcuffs the Royal Mail to a unfeasable financial model and refuses to let go of the reins. What is required is an immediate, and complete sea change.

Royal Mail Senior Management should be sacked – all of them. The Unionised Workforce should realise immediately that compulsory redundancies are coming : and striking will only exacerbate the wound. Those that stand in front of the tide and pretend that it isn't coming in will drown. PostComm should be replaced immediately by a more realistic charging model.



What are we are looking at is a combined, many headed act of mass corporate suicide. And when the Royal Mail is gone, it cannot be resurrected. And maybe that's exactly what the Government wants. To decimate communities and marginalise the poor, the remote, and the unprofitable. The way the world will look if the Royal Mail dies will be ugly : prices will rise, deliveries will be delayed and take far longer, service will be slow, collections will be from remote, distant and unfriendly industrial estates. You will feel the pain : and it will be an unforgiving and expensive lesson harshly learnt.

And there will be an extra 135,000 people on the dole queue. That's the price that everyone in our society will pay.
- posted by Planet Me @ 10:23 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
Cobain Cash Cow Carries On


At the time, you don't realise you are living through history. If is the middle word in life, and if Kurt Cobain hadn't blown his head off as the useless and selfish junkie moron he had become, Nirvana's Reading appearance in 1992 would not have taken on the mythological status it currently occupies, but seen for what it was : a band wrecked by fame and a singer quadraspazzed on drugs achieving a rare moment of clarity and doing a days work.

Of course, strip away all the context, and what you have is a “An Evening With”. For the first time, a full electric Nirvana concert has been officially released – capturing the band at the very height of their noteriety and popularity. For those who were around at the time, myself included, it's unsettling to see a somewhat normal performance lionized by context and historically reappropriated as something far more important than it actually was. What it was, and still is, is a one shot performance of three men performing some brilliant music with enthusiasm. It's a fairly basic recording, captured on the fly for Japanese TV, and thus, free of any of the specific intentions of an officially shot performance intended for release. This show – 80 or so minutes of fine music that does not betray the internal economic, egotistic, or narcotic tensions of the group – was never intended to be immortalised forever as the definitive Nirvana concert document. And it certainly isn't.

The video and audio is competent but no more than that. Every other band that has ever performed at the Reading festival possesses similar material. It is only that the singer is now dead and the estate requires more money that this has been allowed out, 17 years after the event. For those of you who were there, the performance was regarded by fervent fans as godlike ; for the less than devout, it was a cold, windy day stuck in mud where most of the performance drifted away in the gales. Not that you would necessarily know that from this. Nirvana were not the best band in the world that night ; they weren't even the best band that played the festival that weekend. Not by a long chalk.

Everything always looks better looking back. On disc, this resembles a pretty exceptional performance by a band at its artistic height. But it was not exceptional, amazing, or in any way any more than a confused band performing to 30,000 people on a summer night in a suburban field. History is always written after the fact, but it is important to remember that, for those of us who lived it, that “Live At Reading” wasn't all THAT. It's a competent document but not necessarily worth release, and what worries me is not that it has been released, but how many more artistically worthless and exploitative concert and out-take releases of sketchbooks and shopping lists are to be foisted on us by those who see Nirvana as nothing more than a useful revenue stream to keep them in mansions, Yoga lessons, and millionaire tantrums. The legacy was fine as it was, and all these continual re-releases, re-issues, and invalid concert releases do is devalue the currency and economy of the Nirvana identity. Still, the money will roll right in.
- posted by Planet Me @ 7:23 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
Completely Knackered


Last night I wrote a 1,000 word essay, with diagrams, in 80 minutes on the train. Today and most of yesterday I spent helping a blind old lady decide who will repair her home. It's an interesting, fascinating life. Later this week, I am preparinga corporate induction, and interviewing for a new person at work. It is fascinating, but boy, I do miss sitting down, thinking, and doing things I want to do. Still, I have updated the iPod with goodies, and have some great music to look forward to.

We are excited here by our news. It is not long now. The future is bright. We're looking forward to it. We're spending the rest of our lives there.
- posted by Planet Me @ 10:57 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
In The Midst Of Life We Are In Debt


I've spent half of my life in debt of some form. And I fucking hate it. It started at University, with overdrafts whilst trying to extend a poor student grant out to a half-livable quality of life. Then it was Student Loans. Then Credit Cards to pull through the last few weeks at Uni. Over time, I got used to owing people money whilst I was unemployed, or studying. I got used to it. I understood it. It's a cruel way of life, and I know that, conscious or not, this is exactly how they do it. And then they own you for life. Unless you dig your way out.

And there comes a time when you get used to living beyond your then meagre means, when a career either does not exist, or is just starting off, and you can't wait to leave your parents home, be yourself. You realise that your parents home is no longer your home. And then you have to make your own reality.

And since you can't afford to buy a home outright in cash, you have to accept debt as a way of owning a property - the mortgage. This is how they train you to accept it. It's that, or rent forever and race for money at 80 with no assets to live within. Realistically, my actual expenditure, once I take away the cost of the mortgage, the debts, the commute, and the ripoff Child Support Agency is a tiny part of my pre-tax earnings a month. After tax and all the other crap is paid off I have a fraction of my monthly salary left. It's fucking nuts. But that's how it works when you're crawling out of debt.

And the money must be paid back. You must live not just within your means, but far within them. But the time will come when the slave is free. It gets nearer every month.
- posted by Planet Me @ 10:40 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
Saturday Night, Sunday Mornings


Living on a main road, as we do, often we find that our road is one of the main arteries for the drunks and the twats walking home until 5am. During the summer, most weekends are interuppted by cries of you fucking bithch or he aint worth it or say it again. The usual old crap, from overfuelled idiots with big mouths and tiny minds.

This road used to be the main bus route in and out of town. The people we brought this from tired quickly of the old windows constantly rattling by parked up trucks and queuing buses outside in a constant traffic jam. Even now, we find the terror of the BEEPS. Vehicles doing three point turns on the tiny corner outside ours, and it is only a matter of time before a double jointed articulated lorry cuts up a parked car.

Through these triple glazed windows, we're woken normally once a weekend by the shouts. I've seen teeth being picked out concrete by coppers before. I've had to go out there with a hammer hidden in my pocket to tell two cretins with a car horn fetish to fuck off at 4.30am. I wasn't being brave, I was at the end of my somewhat long tether.

Last night I saw a grown man pull down his pants to his knees, throw his girlfriends mobile phone into the street, and piss on the shattered pieces.

It takes all sorts. I rolled back to bed, and let them wrestle with their hangovers in the mornings. That's the way they want their Saturday Nights, Sunday Mornings. Let them have it.
- posted by Planet Me @ 9:41 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
A Decade Misunderestimated : The Noughties by Tim Footman


No matter how you try, you can't examine the Decade That Didn't Know What To Call Itself without also reflecting on the changes within yourself as a person over those ten years. Tim Footman tries not map the decade in terms of historical events, even though those events shaped the decade, but in the level oif change, the evolution of the emotional temperature of the decade, and for this, does so admirably, accessibly, and easily. The decade moved so fat, and all of us lived through it so much that now, as we near its end - but there is still time yet to go - that it is not so much a history book, but a recollection of the recent past, close my eyes and this is yesterday, we are still there, I still remember the smallest details from the start of the decade. In this book, the context and the culture of the decade is explored and explained, tiny details made clear for the big effect that they have had, and the decade so confused that it might never make sense made at least, a little clearer.
- posted by Planet Me @ 3:55 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
Secret Britain by Justin Pollard


Like his previous title, Pollard has ramped up all the old, fascinating, and lesser known facts of British History, and rounded them all up. The tales are succinct, expediently and effectively told, and cover all of human ingenuity and British history. As if the best bits of obscure Wikipedia were laid into short, sharp narratives. If you are looking for an ideal Christmas Present for someone, pick this up. It's fascinating stuff.
- posted by Planet Me @ 2:12 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
Wahl Lithium Ion Rechargeable Deluxe Grooming Station 9854-802


Imagine this. I'm stood there trying to change the head on this shaver with a screwdriver, two small screws all over the floor, and a bunch of confusion going on. This is how friendly and intuative the instructions are. Once you've cracked that, this is easy. It's not a workhorse shaver, but a fine tool if you want a moustache, a beard, a goatee, or perhaps to experiment in facial foilage.

This is suitable for fine trimming only : if you're the kind of person who would rather see the existence of facial hair obliterated from history forever, this is not the Hair Napalm you are looking for. As a trimming tool it is a fine product, however there are some negative elements - the manual is frustratingly lightweight, the attachments are not necessarily changable with any great ease. The instructions are about as friendly as a piranha. And as useful as an Ikea diagram.

That said, it does a fine job of hair removal, but not on an industrial scale. If you want facial hair and a trim, or to look like a sculpted George Michael circa 1988, this is your tool of seduction. If you want to trim your nose and ear hair, this is your dream product. For fine detail, its a great tool.
- posted by Planet Me @ 1:41 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
GEORGE CARLIN - It's Bad For Ya!


George Carlin's loss was a loss to us all, and a loss to society in the absence of a curmudgeonly voice that cut through the fog of life to the heart of a man. However, “It's Bad For Ya!” isn't a fitting epitah or farewell. To be fair, Carlin didn't know his time was up – he died of heart failure three months after. But the shadow of death hangs over this 67 minute rant like an eclipse.

After all, age means you stop caring what people think. After all, by the time you get to 70, the path of life is set anyway, by and large. And so, Carlin doesn't care if he shocks. Some of it is shock for shocks sake. Some of it is an old man ranting. No novelty there – I have my dad's phone number.

It's not necessarily bad stuff here, but not a suitable exit for this verbal warrior. He rants about death,death, death, and not much else. To be honest, whilst I enjoyed it, I did not smile once. So, as a comedy unit, this is an abject failure.

Aided and abetted by a complete lack of any extras, this is bad for you. Carlin ran out of things to say before this, and this sadly is the sound of a man trying to fill the void and failing. It may help you think, but it doesn't make me laugh. A sad farewell.
- posted by Planet Me @ 1:30 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
R.E.M. - "Live At The Olympia"


This is R.E.M. in excelsis. The songs - and so many songs, 39 in all - roar and purr. Songs last played live in 1984 return to the stage, new songs are born in front of your ears, and this is R.E.M at their most artistically exciting. New songs and old sit together, adding new textures, context, and meaning to each other. And thankfully. R.E.M are free of the weight of expectation to explore.

Over five nights in Dublin, R.E.M broke the mould of playing live to 'roadtest' new material and exhume old, lesser known songs in what they called 'live rehearsals'. Stripped of the stadium moves, huge video screens, and the need to play The Big Hits, R.E.M. Also slimmed down their lineup to the five-man-configuration of the late Eighties, ditched all the big numbers, played songs live for the first time in a quarter century if ever, and premiered eleven new numbers. Featuring every song played over the five shows, "Live At The Olympia" is one of the rarest live albums : it has an artistically valid reason to exist. At 39 songs and 150 minutes it's not for the faint of heart, nor any of you in a hurry. There's no sign of "Man On The Moon", "Losing My Religion", "The Great Beyond", "Whats The Frequency Kenneth", "Imitation Of Life", "The One I Love", "It's The End of The World As We Know It", or "Everybody Hurts".



In the context of this, the record works because it documents an almost complete live rendition of last years brilliant "Accelerate" album (thankfully without all the distorted effects, so you can hear the songs and not the fuzz) : and not only this, but the 11 new songs on this are in embryonic stages, with different melodies, titles, and ideas : here some fall out fully formed - the charging "Living Well Is The Best Revenge", the grand "Man Sized Wreath" and the beautiful, as-good-as-anything-they've ever done "On The Fly".

There's also a new context for these new songs. Instead of trying to recreate past glories by hollow imitation, this is R.E.M. stepping out of their 'comfort zone', ditching the armour and the egojacket of stadium shows and big hits, and exhuming songs such as "Wolves, Lower", "West of The Fields","Circus Envy", and "Romance". The songs have never sounded better. "I've Been High" appears live for the first time in an age, this time as a gentle acoustic strum instead of a piece of mogadon semi-bleepy electronica. And it sounds beautiful.

By setting the new songs in the same frames as the old, both material new and old can be appreciated differently, the line between them clearly drawn, and also a thematic union, whereby it can clearly be seen that R.E.M, at least for a while, were trapped by the gulf between expectation and expression, between the desire to please, and the desire to explore, and here, this is R.E.M at its rawest, most honest - no Elvis moves, no studied stagecraft. Here it is, charmingly made of warts, bum notes and all : false starts, wonky solos, fudged endings for unrehearsed songs, forgotten words, laughs, misplaced cues, and improvised odd, silly, and funny dialogues that bookends each song : akin to a volumnous version of VH-1's "Storytellers" where R.E.M are free. Bono's in the audience, and if you listen carefully you can hear him heckle the band at one point.



With age comes hypocrisy.

But not only that, comes the sense, not of mellowing out, but of becoming emboldened, entrenched, more certain. After the last "live" record, as prosaic as its title, yet also a keen and enjoyable resetting of the anaemic, jaundiced material that the tour was due to showcase, comes this : "Live At The Olympia" is a far better record, and far more appealing.

There is little overlap from 2007's "Live" package : just 3 songs out of the 39 appeared on the previous live set. This is essential listening.

Of course, for most casual fans, these nights would be a nightmare : no sign of slick stagecraft, nor the endless string of hits you might expect. Unless you own all of R.E.M's albums, you may very well be lost - or surprised - by the sheer wealth of material here, how many great songs they made that sit on albums and are rarely seen or heard in public, by how vital these songs are, and also, by how good they sound now, played now, by middle aged men.



For inside each of the men is also the boy, and inside the boy the child : the river of time runs through it, and whilst these songs may be out of time, they are not monsters. It's as if everyone is rediscovering these songs - R.E.M included. And what joy it is to hear R.E.M sounding as keen and aware as they did in 1983. Of course, not everyone from then is here now : Bill Berry having retired, but supplemented admirably by the more-than-capable Bill Rieflin who, it seems, has become as adept and perfect a choice as anyone could imagine.

I could warble on for chapters about how good this record is. It is not perfect - for it does not reflect the setlists played by the band, nor does it sound like a show in the way the songs travel narratively between each other. And the 59 minute DVD is a frustrating cut n paste of degraded, fuzzy, black and white footage which features only a handful of songs and none of them completely. It is without doubt the most dull DVD I have seen in years with no rewatchability at all and isn't necessarily worth paying any extra for.

However, of the record itself.. suffice to say it is a brilliant, stunningly good live record that documents faithfully an artistic highpoint of R.E.M's creativity, and breathe new fresh life into undeservedly forgotten songs. If you ever liked R.E.M., ever wanted to like R.E.M., or were ever tempted with an entry point into their work, this is the way. Step inside.
- posted by Planet Me @ 6:21 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
THE FANTASTIC MR FOX


A childrens film that isn't annoying? Isn't populated by idiotic, poorly animated, computer generated penguins and aliens? A children's film that is actually enjoyable? Well, it's an almost extinct species..

Purists will hate this for how it steps away from the apparently sacred relic of Dahl's original text, but lets be blunt about it : this Fantastic Mr Fox is a charming and rare experience that follows the spirit if not the letter of the original, and is a charming, clever, endlessly quotable adventure that has a distinctive and wonderful style and some of the finest stop motion. If you think this is the same kind of bland dross that they turned “The Magic Roundabout” and “Thunderbirds” into, well then,you clearly haven't seen too many awful Hollywood adaptations. Purists step away, and see this for what it is, not what it isn't.

Each summer, the cinemas are full of dull, boring, insultingly inane childrens film. Tedious, generic, poorly plotted and pontlessly loud, dayglo rubbish tested on humans for irritancy seemly designed to have no effect on adults apart from making adults want to slowly torture the perpetrators to death. Any of you who have seen “Ben 10” twenty hundred million times – in one afternoon - would agree wholeheartedly than the one who eventually stabs the creator to death with a passing poison dipped swordfish should be given a medal for services to Humanity. With a statue in Rekyavik harbour for posterity.

This is not one of those films that make you want to stab yourself in the eyes with plastic sporks until your pupils are replaced by small blue crosses. It is a fine film but an unfaithful adaptation of the original text.

Not only does it contain some of the most charming, and beautiful, stop motion animation seen, a brilliant performance from the understated Bill Murray as the most resigned but explosive badger in the history of the planet, and a quietly poignant overarching narrative that expands the original story. Whilst there are significant deviances from the original text, the film is faithful to the spirit of Dahl, and the additions never feel superfluous or unwanted : unlike the cinematic holocaust that was 2004's appalling “Thunderbirds” or the risible “Scooby Doo” movies. (Oh, and for the record, animals don't have British accents).



Suffice to say then, the vast majority of kids films are absolutely meaningless to anyone once you get your first pubic hair. The art of a good children's film is rare indeed, to make a film that works as well for a 4 year old as a forty year old : and only a handful have ever suceeded.

Welcome then, “Fantastic Mr Fox”. Shot through with the wonderful, and rare, purity – one might call an innocence even – this film is an undisputed classic of the medium of children's film. Not only is the story told with an understated, but clear wit and simple maturity, which enchanted an auditorium of children – and adults. The characters are fully fleshed out, memorable, and charming. Even the unexpected appearance of a stopmotion former Britpop star.

Every film director is a victim of their own style : the great filmmakers of this day and age have their own personality on film – and it's easy to spot a Gilliam or a Tarantino or a Wes Anderson moment a mile off. Even when the film is a meticulously constructed, stop motion tale based on a Roald Dahl book, there is no way that this film can be recognised as anything other than the work of Wes Anderson. Talking of which, this film is versed in the language of cinema – with homages to Tarantino, DePalma, and most classic heist movies of the 70's, as well as quite a few war movies with Nazi's from the 60's, Communist propoganda movies, and a wonderfully sly take on the moronic overdubbing of movies that often happens for TV.

Being Wes Anderson must carry with it some pressure ; the plot lines that revolve around acceptance, the unusual and distinctively quirky mise-en-scene, and the small revolving cast of names and talent (Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, The Wilsons), and the odd musical interludes. Were a Wes Anderson film not to contain these moments, it is possible that the studio could sue for “unrepresentative” material ; just as Warners sued Neil Young in 1982 when he veered from his distinctive country rock to bizarre electro with “Trans”.

So even if “Fantastic Mr Fox” doesn't necessarily feel like a Wes Anderson film, the fact is that it is, and the stylistic choices that we would not really notice in any other film are now seen through the Anderson Lens. It is possibly the best Wes Anderson film yet, a brilliantly likeable children's tale, and, above all, a success. It's an Anderson film first, and what a film it is.

Purists and traditionalists need not apply : go watch “Thunderbirds On A Magic Roundabout” to see what true cinematic rape is, and then come back to this.
- posted by Planet Me @ 6:55 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
The Best Day I Have Had In Months


We spent the day at the smallest Public railway in the world, the New Romeny, Dymchurch and Hythe Railway. We took the longest journey you can : from Hythe to Dungeness. Dungeness is my favourite place in the world. A nuclear power station desert and fishing cottage community populated by rotting grounded boats.


We travelled on Samson.


All aboard!


Here we go!


On the Trans Europe Express


View


Boy


West of The Fields


all it needs is an open lolling tongue


Taking pictures!


Abandoned Vehicles


At New Romney


Rolling Stock at Romney Sands


Hunting Seaside! WE FOUND IT!


In the only desert conditions in the UK, on the smallest train in the world. Geekgasm.


Coming into the Station.


There's a train a coming!


Samson.


At the Dungeness Old Lighthouse Tower


Going up the ladder





View over the Bay, overlooking the lighthouse keepers digs, and the Sonar Warning.


Looking up


Looking down


In the distance, Binky The Three Eyed Fish


On the top of the Lighthouse


View of railway


On the edge of Kent


The Lens Of The Lamp




Going Down The 300 Steps


View through the window to the Power Station


Decomissioned warning lamp


At the foot of adventure


Prospect Cottage, Derek Jarman's Garden


Greatstone Beach


View to the sea from the Beach


Boy, Wet Sand


On way home.
- posted by Planet Me @ 11:31 AM 1 comments links to this post

 
Parenthood


I'm knackered. Everyday with my son is a battle of wills : a war between what he wants and what I need. And each day I don't get every part of it my way I am a weak-willed wimp, a poor parent who caves in at the slightest sign of dissent to please him, demonstrates nothing.

All it demonstrates really is that someone who spends their whole life fighting, if they lose, they still just didn't fight hard enough, they wanted to lose.

Every day I make decisions such as it is worth making my son have an hour long meltdown that I don't give him chocolate shreddies, or is that such an inconsequential battle compared to living life that it isn't worth fighting?

Everyday I am torn between what I should do, what I want to do, and what every other person on the planet wants me to do. Apparently, when I refused a cheeky, unprompted, and audaciously rude request today I was told I was being nasty. Nasty? Please... just because I don't acquiesce to your every fucking demand without hestitation does NOT make me a bad person.

No one seems to see or notice the immense efforts I make in life - the constant battles I fight against the will of others - every time I win and do not cave in to others is not seen, all I ever am is judged by the times I compromised, considered other people, did not stomp along crushing everyone in my path like an Emotional Panzer. Life would be a lot easier if I were a bully : but I'm not. For this ability to take other people into consideration I am lambasted by someone - no matter who I please, if it is myself or someone else, I end up ignoring someone and being The Bad Guy.

Either it's my son, or someone else who thinks I'm a piece of shit because I'm not their obidient servant, or myself who is pushed to the side as merely an unimportant tool, for all I am, and the only reason I exist as an unfeeling, inexhaustable object that exists solely to serve others.

I'm not appreciated for the good I do, only lambasted for where I do not bend and yield unquestioningly to the demands of everyone else. I try my best not to let everyone down. It is inevitable at some point that I will let someone down. Normally that someone is me.

Parenthood is brilliant. We are looking forward to the future. But the days of me taking a soft line on certain things are well and truly over.

And hypocrites, go Fuck Yourselves.
- posted by Planet Me @ 10:01 PM 2 comments links to this post

 
Air Grenades


It's been a really busy week. If I exhaustively listed everything I've done well... I'd be here a long time. I spend most of my time welded to a computer - not writing, but working or reading.

Today for example, I was up at 8am, did 3 lots of clothes, washed up 3 sets of clothes and plates, dried and hung up the clothes, filed some stuff, cleaned the washing machine, shaved, vaccumed, r=tidied up, fed and cleaned Elvis' flat (that six and a half year old rabbit is looking stoic, for his age), and tidied up the house. Then a big fat trip to the supermarket and a months worth of groceries.

I hate it when they move everything in the shops. I spent at least twice as long dodging all the mums, kids, and idiots who stand in the middle of the junction staring into space when all I want to do is get through to the toothpaste.

I used finger guns more than once.

Friends round tonight. All is good.
- posted by Planet Me @ 10:36 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
Decade Of Decadence


(sorry for the interruption in service, normal transmission resumes)

What has been the high point of this decade? 4th November 2008 and 20th Jan 2009 must have been fairly momentous.

And the low point? Personally, the decade has been mostly low points punctuated with odd flashes of brilliance. Globally, September 11 2001 and the aftermath have shaped the decade like a hammer against clay.

Who was the greatest hero of the decade? Anyone who followed their own muse and their own spirit : too many of us are crushed by the necessity of economics.

Who was the biggest villain? Personally – three particularly cruel individuals who have inflicted pointless agony on others to justify their own incompetence. Globally, George Fucking Bush of course : an incompetent, ignorant, flippant idiot at the wheel who drove the world to ruin politically, morally, and environmentally.

What has been your proudest moment of the past 10 years? The way I have lived my life uncorrupted by the adult world.



Which invention has changed your life the most? In the past decade, the mobile phone.

Which work of art / book / piece of music made the biggest impression on you? “Do You Realize??” by The Flaming Lips.

What or who has been the greatest loss? The innocence nations used to have in our belief that we were morally sound. Our national identities are corrupt.

Sum up the decade on three words? Torture and happiness
- posted by Planet Me @ 3:30 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
London


Where do you live in London? I don't. I have lived in Balham, Sutton, Victoria, and Surbiton. I think I preferred Surbiton most of all.

Where did you last go on holiday? I went to Dublin,and before that Barcelona.

What advice would you give a tourist? Get out of the fucking way. We're living here, working here, trying to get to work on time and buying food here, I don't need someone the side of a house standing in the entrance to the tube station trying to read a fucking map.

Which is your favourite London restaurant? I rarely eat out, so I don't have one.

What is your earliest London Memory? The twin domes of the old Wembley Stadium, faded white in a summer blue.

What's on your tombstone? “I'll send you a postcard when I get there and let you know what the weathers like.”

What are you most afraid of? Losing the little I have spiritually and materially. I've worked damn hard to get it.

What are your guilty pleasures? I love a stupid action movie, and ridiculously simple pop music.



What would you as Mayor for a day? Get rid of those officious ticket inspectors at Waterloo East, for a start. Sort out the pathetic Stop N Search policy the police enjoy. Clean up the tubes and shared spaces. Get rid of the slow invasion into shared, public space by corporations insistent on putting an advert and a logo on everything. Increase the number of Space Invader mosaics you finjd on street corners. Make the tube run all night. Make the trains run all night. Make gigs finish earlier. Stop charging for the public to use the toilet. Put the homeless and the poor in the unoccupied properties that dangle from the necks of the Investment Rich. And make sure that all mobile phones cannot play MP3's – unless the headphones are plugged in. Oh, and hunt down, skin, and cook TOX03.

What is your life philosophy? Do the best you can with what you have got. Everything will be alright as long as you want it to be.

What animal would you most like to be? A happy one.

What is the last album you downloaded? I don't download music : I buy records. I love the feel of them, the moment of opening the sleeve, the work of art that is the package itself. The last one I bought was The Editors “In This Light And On This Evening”, which is genius.

What would you save from a fire? 2 back up external hard drives.

What makes you laugh? The video for “Touched By The Hand Of God”.




What makes you cry? The future.

What are you up to at the moment? On the way home before a week off.

Who's your hero? Ken Livingston : he did what he felt was right and what he believed in. Without morality we have nothing.

What do you most like wearing? A good, accurate watch.

Whats the best place for a romantic date? The balcony of The Tate Modern on a warm summers afternoon just before the schools break up for the summer.

What is your favourite pub? The Pilot, Dungeness. A desrted small pub that serves a tiny community in the only desert conditions in the UK, that serves ace fish and chips, in the shadow of a Nuclear Power Station, two lighthouses, and Derek Jarman's cottage. The food is brilliant, and teh location cannot be beaten.

What is your favourite London discovery? Notting Hill's second hand shops.

Have you ever stolen anything? A flexi disc of the moon launch from a toy store in Northfield, Birmingham in 1984. A copy of U2's “The Fly” CD Single, from the chuck-out discount bin of WH Smith in Leicester 1991.
- posted by Planet Me @ 3:17 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
BAD LIEUTENANT - London Heaven - 21 October 2009

(live Wolverhampton Civic 2006)

There comes a time in life when perhaps you have to pick up the pieces, and begin again. Often the result of some form of middle-aged revelation – that there is little enough time left to spend it fighting against wills you cannot bend, and a desire to exist ina world without conflict – this is often the age of divorce and the what you could call stubborn continuation – going on as ever : Keep Calm And Carry On.

On the back of a highly public divorce – the messy end of New Order, that saw bassist Peter Hook leave, and ensure the valued name retired – Bernard Sumner, alongside former New Order drummer Stephen Morris and Phil Cunningham – offer a continuation : a new New Order, if you like.

With Heaven only their second public appearance (also the site of New Order's first London show twenty eight years previous), Bad Lieutenant are, to all intents and purposes nothing more – and nothing less – than a new lineup of New Order. With the retirement of the name, the band themselves are both familiar and a little bit alien. In many ways, the flavour of the previous band is still there, as is the sound. It would be foolhardy to draw a division between Bad Lieutenant and New Order, for one is the evolution from the other.

Whilst Peter Hook's presence is sorely missed on stage, there is also no substantial sonic difference between new and old songs – the same ingredients are there -nor any qualitative difference. What there is though, is something fairly relevant : Bad Lieutenant are free to an extent of the weight of history.

And whilst this was no bad thing about New Order gigs, what was obvious was that New Order as was were often held back by the weight of their previous, immense legacy. Shows became predictable, with the expected appearances of many predictable big hits removing the element of invention. After all, you were never far from “Temptation”, “Blue Monday”, “Bizarre Love Triangle”, “True Faith”, “Regret”, “Ceremony”, or “Crystal” for most of their final decade.

Tonight instead, is a different interpretation of the New Order lineage : opening with seven new songs in a row is a brave move for any band, especially when these songs have only been out for a week. No wonder is it then that, for Heaven, the sense of giddy anticipation that encompassed most New Order gigs is strangely absent. New Order gigs were often about a release, some kind of musical orgasm, where the crowd was as eager to receive the songs as any I've seen. Tonight was more curiosity, more a subdued interest – until the old friends came to visit.

Of course, any musician over a certain age trades, by definition on some level of past glories, be it a pre-established reputation or a known catalogue. The band becomes the brand. And thus, whilst this is a new band, playing new songs, it's also an old band, playing old songs. And even if the marvellous “Poisonous Intent” and “Dynamo” are creatively equal to New Order, they are not as well known, nor as familiar, and thus only time can tell.

The room only livens when Bad Lieutenant slip into their old ways : a rolling, fabulous “Crystal”, the neglected Electronic classic “Tighten Up”, and best of all, the 20-minute medley that sees “Out Of Control” merge effortlessly into “Temptation” - a trick stolen from the Chemical Brothers live sets of yore. It's the kind of trick that New Order were fluent in twenty years ago, keeping the old pictures fresh and the landscapes new. And it sounds as good as ever. These songs are not performed any better, or any worse, than the new stuff – just that they are more familiar.



To be blunt, nobody would've seen this band had it not been for the history Sumner and Morris bring to the stage, irrespective of the talent here. Jake Evans, and Phil Cunningham are the relative newcomers to this but bring to the band a talent and ability that complements Sumner. Whilst it is odd to see a new face occupying the space, it is also, thankfully a relief and a right for the band to continue in their new form, writing, recording, and playing new music, and looking to the future instead of the past : I've never seen any of them looking quite so enthusiastic - nor Morris work so hard behind the drums.

It's not a new beginning, but a new order for New Order. It's an artistically valid, and as authentic an experience as any band with thirty three years and a few lineup changes can be. The line follows through from the first record to the latest. About the only thing that was not quite ideal was the bassists position, who seemed to be placed unobtrusively around a corner crouched next to a drumkit. Certainly to the rolling, beer throwing, shitfaced fat dads slipping on spilt beer there seemed to be no substantial change in anything. Business as usual then.

Bad Lieutenant are a new phase for what is clearly both an old and a new band : and whilst the band would be entitled to lazily drag a nostalgia show across the globe for money, it is to their credit that this new version of New Order are trying new things. Life is too short not to.
- posted by Planet Me @ 7:25 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
Staunton Hill Is The Longest 85 Minutes Of Your Life


This isn't a horror film as such : more a drearily predictable collection of set pieces that you can see coming a year away with the familiarity of Christmas and the imagination of a rabbit.

If I said, for example, that it was about -and 'about' is a very loose word - a set of young twenty somethings driving across the American Midwest who have a car breakdown and spend a night on a seemingly deserted farm. Quicker than you can say "Obvious", it transpires that there's a retarded, mother-obsessed violent son, a weird Mother with crazy hair in a wheelchair, and a Godloving woman with a strange face. Unsurprisingly, the main nutter wears dunagrees. Every box in the ACME book of Dumb Horror Plots is faithfully ticked off over the course of the longest 85 minutes of your life.

The plot as such is stupefyingly unoriginal. It is staggering how films like this get funded : does anyone actually think they are doing more than wasting yet more of the world's resources on tedious drivel like this? It's more a case of waiting until some people die gruesomely and being bored in the process by jumpcuts and flashframes and banjo music.

This film, is also a prime example of "The Idiot Plot" : the film only progresses because the main characters are olympically dumb and no one with more than one brain cell would do any of the stupendously dense things the Canon-Fodder twentysomethings do.

When George Romero said "This is as scary as it gets" , maybe he meant that it is more horrific that films this dull get made than the scares within the film itself.

I'd rather have been at work.
- posted by Planet Me @ 6:24 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
The Dead Cannot Speak For Themselves


Should you wish to complain about Jan Moirs deeply repulsive, homophobic, and offensive rant about the recently deceased Steven Gately, you can click here.

Please that Jan Moirs article breaches articles 1,3,5, and 12 of the Press Code.

1. It is inaccurate : using supposition and innuendo to suggest unproven events and take these innuendos as fact for the rest of the article

3. It intrudes into the private life of the friends and family of the deceased, as well as stating that "Nevertheless, his mother is still insisting that her son died from a previously undetected heart condition that has plagued the family." : this alleged 'insistence' is no more, and no less, than an agreement with the coroners reports, so therefore, her state of 'still insisting' is a case of agreeing with medical professionals

5.Intrusion into grief or shock : the entire article breaches this part of the code.

12.The Sexual Orientation of the deceased is irrelevant to the legally accepted case of death. The article discriminates against homosexuals and raises the deceased sexuality as being a clearly inferred cause of death, which is both contrary to the coroners statement and also not relevant. Both areas of this clause are repeatedly and clearly breached throughout the whole article.

Stop Reading. Click that link. Complain. Speak Up.
- posted by Planet Me @ 4:53 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
It's So Easy!


“It's easier to get divorced these days”, she said.

I was on a training course. This by itself is by no means worthy of remark or mention. Training courses are often populated by general guff and nonsense, by buzzwords, phrases and ideas, and most of these courses will be mostly forgotten. The human mind can only remember so much anyway.

There was a discussion of the changing social factors that shape our lives. These included, amongst many other things, the rise of single parent families.

Apparently, this is all because it's easier to get divorced these days. That's all there is to it. Bored of marriage? Leave. Fed up with boring sex, if there is any? Just leave. It's easy.

It's not easy to get divorced by any standard. It's not easy to end a relationship. It's not easy to act and admit the often painful truth that your hopes and dreams will not be fulfilled, not easy at all. To give up everything you have been working for for years and maybe decades. Breaking up is never easy I know. Have they ever heard Abba?

What stuck me is the implication that people get divorced these days because it's easier to split up than stay together, easier to bail out than stick with it, and anyone who gets divorced or splits up, does so because they like it ; they do it casually, leave the parent of their child, abandoned their children to someone else, dismantle the unit and reality that their children have known because... it's easy?

It's easy?

Getting divorced was the best decision I ever made after the worst decision I ever made. Getting divorced was the only realistic option I could take. The most expensive decision ever, certainly, as well as the most painful to that point in my life. It was the hardest thing I ever did, and probably the hardest thing I ever will do.

But easy? NEVER. No one who has ever divorced would say it was easy.

But getting divorced was easier than being hit over the head fifty times, so hard with objects that my glass broke and I had X-Rays for bone fractures.

Getting divorced was easier than living with someone who thinks it entirely justifiable to empty my bank account. From where I come, violence and theft is normally called “Mugging”.

Getting divorced was easier than seeing the tired, exhausted, hopeless loathing I saw in my parents, who were welded together by years of mutual distance, poverty, and finally a bored resignation that their future was to be, at best, spent staring at a television passionlessly and endlessly regretting not making a different decision years before.

I saw that, and for me, I chose a different life. I would rather have been alone with a possibility of happiness in the future than been together with not the slightest chance of any happiness. I made the right decision. What is right is not always easy. At last I have found my happiness.

So no, you ignorant prejudiced person, it's not easy to get divorced. It's easy to talk about things you know nothing about and judge other people. Try walking in my shoes, and then maybe you'll understand.

But I hope that no one ever has to experience what I did. No one deserves that.
- posted by Planet Me @ 4:31 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
THE FLAMING LIPS - "Embryonic"


Murder, Torture, Cancer. There are worse words in the human lexicon than “Free Form Jam”. To those who joined The Flaming Lips ship with the wonderful phase that was 1999's “Soft Bulletin” to 2006's “At War With The Mystics”, “Embryonic” will be, at best, a significant challenge.

Whereas those records were sumptious, Spector-esque visions, halfway between Pink Floyd's early years and a philosophical Ronettes, “Embryonic” is something else completely. 70 minutes, 18 tracks of largely improvised music, the sound of four men in a room making a racket. Drums punctuate and dominate the recording for the first time in 12 years, now that Kliph Scurlock is a full time and official member of The F'Lips, and the songs roll on rhythms and drum breaks with adeptness of the Zeppelin's finest hours, Steve makes a racket by guitar and strings, fuzzy bass that reminds me of The Stooges throbs and moans, and over the top of all this, Wayne Coyne is no longer the band leader, extracting melody and vision to dominate the musical palette, but a band member : the voice used as another instrument : “Worm Mountain” is an undulating wave – formless, and uncertain. As indeed is most of this failed experiment.

There's little in the way of memorable material here - “I Can Be A Frog” is the nearest thing to a hit, and that would've occupied a space reserved for a weird out near the end of any other recent album. “Silver Trembling Hands” is a largely focused freakzoid experiment that is the nearest living relative to an actual song. But aside from that, if you are drawn to the Flaming Lips melodic song-writing skills, you will be shortly served on this.

I can imagine Warner Brothers recieving this and wondering aloud ... “What's THIS For?” at the end of the first listen. The deft dynamics, memorable choruses, and fabulous songs of the last decade have been abandoned in favour of a more brutal way of working : instrumental fractions are extended until they topple, words and choruses are dispensed with, and the whole thing is an incoherent mess.

Reminiscent of listening to some – but not all – of 1997's bonkers 4CD box set “Zaireeka” at once, “Embryonic” was undoubtedly great fun to make, and an exciting display of a band working together as a unit for the sake of music, but, and perhaps most crucially of all, it does not work successfully as a record.

In many ways, it is their first retrogressive step, as The F'Lips return to the well that they abandoned in 1995, trying to recapture the kind of punk rock acid super semi-cosmic jam that saw them spend their first fifteen years in obscurity. It may very well send them back there.



p.s.

In addition, the fact that several songs are bonus tracks only available if you buy low grade MP3's from a certain well known retail website, a website that the band themselves will probably only see fractions of pennies in royalties from, makes me wonder what exactly the point is. Especially as there is space on the double CD format for these songs. Own Goal, Flips!
- posted by Planet Me @ 7:33 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
EDITORS - In This Light And On This Evening



Editors continue their path for artistic integrity and musical freedom by going wherever they want, and doing whatever they want. Seemingly created absent from any considerations of how many this will sell, this, their third record, is their apex of achievement. Whilst some people think a band like Coldplay may be vaguely edgy, Editors are off in another orbit by dispensing with guitars completely and relying ona brave new world made of a tight, coiled rhythm section and a crescendo of synth sweeps seemingly carved from the soft, home made Tandy kits last seen on early New Order records.

Whilst the voice is intact and present, and the lyrical concerns the same, a usual palette of coastal wind, an absent God, a bullet, and light, Editors are clearly – wether they want to admit it or not – influenced by Joy Division, but also, in these songs and to these ears, keenly trained in the dynamics of Garage Rock, Kraftwerk, and the Brian Eno. Keyboard motifs rise and fall, simple and straightforward, but never inane or anything less than inticate, substantial and compelling.

Having seen these new songs performed live to a somewhat indifferent crowd, I can confirm that exposure and repeated listening are integral to these songs. Editors songs are not instant grooves, but carefully constructed and intelligent creations that reveal their mysteries and depths slowly. There are moments – the midpoint-break of “Papillion” and “Bricks And Mortar” – where, for those us with a large memory are reminded of Depeche Mode's mid 80's high point, built around images that are merely fragments of a larger story. Here, “It kicks like a Sleeptwitch” speaks at a level as profound as the words “Miles To Go”. The human mind is smart enough to fill the gaps.

The story behind these songs are, like all great art, questing, searching, looking for something. There's a question in the heart of everything, for no sane being can truly admit they know everything : or even enough to be satisfied.

For those of you who are adamant that Editors are depressed guitar rock, it is time to scoff. There is nary a guitar on this record at all – though there is something that could be a guitar on “You Don't Know Love” - akin to the quantum leap between “Movement” and “Power Corruption And Lies”, where the world expanded, the leap from black and white to colour.

Some records you grab hold of at first listen, and come back to you for years and years and years. This is one of those records. Free of padding, filled with vision and compelling songwriting – whilst aware of history, and unafraid to walk in the shadow of their influences, Editors also make these influences their own, and create something new as a result. A triumph.
- posted by Planet Me @ 7:25 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
JONSI AND ALEX - "Riceboy Sleeps"


A few years ago, the Buddha FM3 Machine was all the rage. A handy red box that played twelve, random, mostly atonal and formless drone sound pieces that resembled songs in the vaguest form – all rising and falling uniform notes from one set of synth pads – it eclipsed the genre and became a form of music generative device whereby the music and sound created within became interchangable and indistinguishable from each other.

Four years later, this Sigur Ros related act follow the artistic howl with a disc of unique and oddly formless sonic landsc apes. There are melodies hidden in here, and tones, colour, texture, but ultimately nothing as conventional as a song – in the nicest sense of the word – the listener can get utterly lost in this music : think of the closing and opening sections of an art rock classic, the shimmering hum, and make a whole record of it. Like a formless desert landscape, this record creates a sonic space – the kind of vista you receive standing at the top of a cliff face toward a stormy sea – lost in a reveries, and invents a world of sound far removed from the tired convention of conventional music, new colours, different shapes, imaginary friends, unique skies, and a world unlike any other.
- posted by Planet Me @ 7:23 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
Swing Vote


At best, improbable, as all narratives are – after all, a realistic film would usually several months and have a lot of boredom, sleeping, and eating in it - “Swing Vote” takes a vaguely plausible event, and magnifies it, whilst using it as a blunt hammer to smash the vagaries of the Policial System.

Kevin Costner is a mostly hungover, barely employable redneck – lets call him Chuck McChuck – whose vote in a tiny town can decide the whole Presidential election. Since the two candidates are a Not Loopy Dennis Hopper, and Kelsey Grammar, you could easily say that such a decision is as straightforward as using a water cannon to brush your teeth. Costner is both plausable and terrifying, because its easy to be stupid and to be so stupid you don't even know it. The basic creature of comforts meanwhile wanders uncaring through the whole thing.

If there's one thing I dislike about stories like this, its that it plots itself into a corner, and then gives up. After 112 minutes to preamble and discussion, the crux of the film would be, for some, what happens when he walks into the room. That's what we want to see. But this, like many others, eschews this Main Event completely. Maybe the point of the journey is never to arrive, but that's a decision I like to make, not have made for me. Whilst taking a predictable and annoying abdication of narrative resolution with the whole Walking Off Into The Distance ambiguity, I have to point out, this isn't a great work of art where the Ambigious Ending does anything much than mildly annoy.

Like many films, “Swing Vote” exists in a reality where the only country that exists, and every other country is a mere plot detail. Far be it for me to criticse that, but it is a little insular.

It's by no means a bad film, but a confused one. Uncertain wether to walk the line between satire and gentle comedy, it falls between both points and fails to convince at either. The point of this is clear and fairly effective, but Swing Vote promised more than it delivered. Just like politics then.
- posted by Planet Me @ 7:16 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
You Can Never Go Home Again - ONE MORE YEAR by Sana Krasikov


One of the by products of the fall of the Berlin Wall is the great art that came out of it : aside from Roger Waters debacle. One More" Year" tackles the nature of identity, nationality, and personality - the gulf between where one is and where one comes from, and the ties that bind us to the past we sometimes seek to leave behind. With a depth belying her age, she tackles the nature of migration with no small subtlely. For anyone who has ever felt not quite of their world, this may speak to you.
- posted by Planet Me @ 7:15 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
B3ta QUESTION!


Boxers or briefs?
Boxers. Briefs are for fat dads.

If you could rotate anything, what would you rotate?
The collective lives we live upwards.

Weather. Discuss.
Best when you don't notice it's there.

I
Is purple rubbish or just pretty bad?
Purple is the colour of the People's Republic of Prince.

Who the hell do you think you are?
I think I am therefore I am

Books are papery and sharp. That's pretty cool, don't you think?
I remember the days you could slice your wrists open with a paper cut. Ah, the good old days.

I can't find my favourite trousers. Do you know where they are?
Thataway (gestures)

Can you backflip?
Not tried since 1991.

Are you afraid of assassination attempts?
Make Your Time. All Your Base Belong To Us.

Have you ever picked your nose and eaten the findings?
Findings is not the word..

Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?
Put the Seven Inch In The Computer. Keep Bustin'

Sometimes I use books to make stairs for my cat. Is this normal?
I enjoyed that stair bookcase I saw on quirkystuffontheinternet dot com.

Did you ever wish you'd wrote derivate shite and sold loads of books like Dan Brown?
"I haven't seen Jaws 4, but I've seen the house I bought with the money, and the house is fabulous" - Michael Caine

If you couldn't use paper to print your books on anymore, what would you use instead?
A LCD Screen. Or perhaps the side of an old power station.

JK Rowling - Marry, fuck or strangle?
I think her husband would object to any of them, she seems a lot more grounded than a lot of stupendously rich people.

Or all three simultaneously?
Not to completion, and only consensually.

Train A, travelling 70 miles per hour (mph), leaves Westford heading toward Eastford, 260 miles away. At the same time Train B, travelling 60 mph, leaves Eastford heading toward Westford. When do the two trains meet? How far from each city do they meet?
At Nearer To Eastford Than Westford By Sea.

What's the plural of daddy long legs?
Daddies Long Leggies

Who would win in a fight, you or JK Rowling?
Godzilla.

When exactly did you run out of your own ideas?
At birth, possibly sooner.



If Hitchhikers Guide was remade as a film (again) who would you cast a Ford Prefect?
Stephen Morris from New Order.

If you were a robot who would you be?
I'd be Florian Schneiders dummy.

What number am I thinking of. Right now.
53 – The Number Of Herbie. Or “Ocho” as Herbie Goes Bananas has it.

Do you like Vogon poetry?
No.

If this were a job interview and we'd reached the end, what question would YOU ask us?
Where' s my Death Star?
- posted by Planet Me @ 9:04 AM 0 comments links to this post

 
HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY



1. What was the last thing you put in your mouth
A bit of fudge and some tea. That was two and a half hours ago.

2. Where was your profile picture taken?
A table outside a coffee shop in a rainstorm, in Eastbourne, in September 2008.

3. Can you play canasta?
I don't even know what it is, so that must be a No.

4. Name someone who made you laugh today.
George.

5. How late did you stay up last night and why?
I'm not sure exactly what time I went to sleep and did not sleep well, but was in bed by 11.15. No particular reason, my bed was calling to me.

6. If you could move somewhere else, would you?
A large cottage set back from a moderate clifftop about twenty miles from where I currently live, with broadband and technology, and a whacking great big contract to produce writing. I'd be an ace recluse.

7. Ever been kissed under fireworks?
I'd remember that.

8. Which of your friends lives closest to you?
My best one lives with me, besides that two of them are approximately the same distance, less than a mile.

9. Do you believe ex's can be friends?
It depends upon the circumstances. There are some Ex's I'd rather see die in a hail of bullets than in my living room. Only a very few – less than 20%. Most of them I wish a happy and beautiful future. But those who treated me as if I were worthless, saying forever then running away, - one day they will fuck with the wrong person and karma will come visit.

10. How do you feel about magma?*
Um, the substance? I don't feel much but I never want to feel it.

11. When was the last time you cried really hard?
January 27th 2009, about 1.40am.

12. Who took your profile picture?
I did that.

13. Who was the last person you took a picture of?
Ian Astbury, Billy Duffy, James Stewart, and Mark Unpronouncablename.

14. Was yesterday better than today?
Jury's out.

15. Can you live a day without TV?
A day? I'd rather not do without a TV, but it would be a long time before I missed a TV show – unless Peep Show were on.


16. Are you upset about anything?
There are a few injusticies some major and cruel where the flame of anger will never extinguish.

17. Do you think relationships are very really worth it?
Yes. It is better to loved and lost than spent the whole time wanking.

18. Are you a bad influence?
Not consciously. I do however encourage occasionally non boring behaviour.

19. Night out or night in?
I prefer a night in. Which is good. Because I have a night in almost every night.

20. What items could you not go without during the day?
Food, power, clothing.

21. Who was the last person you visited in the hospital?
We normally go to the hospital together. The last person I visited was my partners mother.

22. What does the last text message in your inbox say?
xxx

23. How do you feel about your life right now?
Mostly harmless.

24. Do you hate anyone?
Hate is very powerful. I do not hate, as such. I identify the people who morally and ethically are bankrupt, and seperate myself from them as much as I reasonably can.

25. If we were to look in your Facebook inbox, what would we find?
Emails about rabbits, invites to gigs, and general gossip.

26. Say you were given a drug test right now, would you pass?
I would always pass a drug test. Straight Edge, Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan.

27. Has anyone ever called you perfect before?
Never.

28. What song is stuck in your head?
“The Day That Never Comes” by Metallica and “Fire Woman” by The Cult. LAWD HAVE MERCY!

29. Someone knocks on your window at 2:00 a.m., who do you want it to be?
Someone on their knees, crawling, and begging for forgiveness, whilst on fire, so I could piss near them, not on them.

30.Wanna have grandkids before you’re 50?
No.

31. Name something you have to do tomorrow?
Make that train.

32. Do you think too much or too little?
Both at the same time.

33. Do you smile a lot?
I smile less now.
- posted by Planet Me @ 7:53 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
Rock Of Ages


Long day. I don't talk about work much, because the last time I did I got into trouble. I still deeply resent the shitty treatment I got there, when I broke a rule that didn't exist. But that's past.

It's very busy at work. I was working from home today, and 13 hours later I was still at it. I don't want,or like to be this busy. I don't. Anyone who thinks I have such an absence in the centre of my life that I must fill the vaccum with a flood of work doesn't understand me. I'm committed to doing the best job I can, and the service I provide, but do not luxuriate in having far too much work on. There's so many things I cannot control : the growth of body hair, work, the fact we're a slave to money -we do the best we can.

Nonetheless, it's a good life. Not perfect, but good. I've climbed a mountain and the view is pretty good. More to come.

I watched the four Rambo movies recently ; golly, some of them are proper rubbish, I'd forgotten how bad they are.
- posted by Planet Me @ 10:03 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
THE CULT - LOVE LIVE - London Royal Albert Hall - 10 October 2009


Rock is dumb. Rock is stupid. Rock – the raw primal riffing, the tight, leaden white boy rhythms of a lumpen drummer and a plodding bass, the moronic lyrics – is retarded. But sometimes, there's a genius, a cleverness, in succumbing to this willing simplicity, to throw off the shackles of everything. There's a brilliant, and intense, intelligence, in the way that Billy Duffy tilt his geetar to the heavens, legs wider than an ocean, flick the switch, and squeeze out another 17 seconds of atonal squealing that somehow seems to sum up the whole of human history.

This happens around every two minutes. At the start and end, as well as the middle. A one man, metallic Johnny Marr,Billy Duffy writes some of the finest riffs ever seen or heard. There's no other rock guitarist in the world – not even Angus Young – who consistently writes solid, immortal riffola like Duffy.

Life can be reduced, and thus, made bearable, by taking out the oh so very complicated things in life : where less is so much more. Reducing the very essence of life, the battle between comfort and conflict, between love and hate, to a few moments of what Van Morrision called The Inarticulate Speech of The Heart. And thus, Ian Astbury becomes the Poet Incarnate of the rage of mankind. On the other hand, he could be a great dumb rock dude who can roar great articulacy as soon as you take the microphone from him.



As soon as he sings, Astbury becomes some kind of weird, juvenile man child who can speak in sentences of no more than three words at a time. Soul Stealer! Love Removal Machine! Smoke she is a-rising! LAWD HAVE MERCY! Smoke-Stacked Lightning! C'Mon Little Sister! Smoke On The Horizon!

That's the limits of Astbury's musical universe. His East, his West, his North, his Sarf. This rapscallion musical pirate, a one man guru seer who channels some kind of urge - no wonder he was recruited by a reunited Doors to tour the old songs. But more than that, Astbury and Duffy are a potent partnership.

And there is nothing in the world, quite as glorious, or as utterly rock as 5,214 t-shirted middle aged rock devotees punching the air in a steaming 150 foot dome of Victorian Architecture (designed for orchestra and brass), turning it into a Sonic Temple, and screaming at the top of their lungs BABY! BABY! BABY! BABY! BABY!



No. There isn't. That's The Way I Wanna Rock N Roll.

There's a whole lot of stuff to go through before then : The Cult, being Duffy and Astbury, longtime bassist Chris Wyse and Mike Dimmich on geetar, alongside Joey Tempesta on drums, are aflame. Performing the whole of 1985's “Love” album, in full. Traditionally, I hate the tired nostalgia of such sets, trying to recapture a time that you can only ever imitate. Bands playing the whole of an ancient album is a tired, dull trip. And you know that every band you like has written a duff song – and often more than one duffer. There's not one person who would've preferred to hear “Judith” over say, “Wild Hearted Son”, “Spirit Walker”, “Edie”, “Sweet Soul Sister”, “Lil Devil”. Not one.

Opening with an assured “Nirvana”, ending with an underwhelming “Judith”, it's only when the band perform the transcendent nonsense that is “Rain”, followed by “Revolution” and the amazing “She Sells Sanctuary” that the room enters a kind of rapture. Forget that the lyrics resemble the kind of bizarre Crypto-nonsense used by the KGB, made of a lexicon of cliches - “Wolf Child. Alligator Smile, Dynamite Lover, Scorpion Child. Saigon Kiss” . Forget anything as complex as thinking.



If you think, you can't feel this.

The opening part of the night is a predictable, whole-album-in-a-row moment. It's the encore that is perhaps, the finest one of the finest rock gigs I have ever seen : “Wild Flower”, “Rise”, a glorious, brilliant HELL YEAH of “Sun King” and “Fire Woman”, “Love Removal Machine” : this is big dumb, clever, rock Nirvana. This is just like living in paradise.

These are the songs where The Cult were not a democracy that wrote songs, but a crazy, bugnuts dictatorship where the songs were excuses for some of the finest riffs and widdly-woo guitar solos in human history. These are songs were Astbury doesn't do anything as antiquated as 'sing', but bomb the notes with an approximate accuracy that means that it doesn't sound anything like the record – but can't help but sound just like the record. It's a fabulously dumb forty minutes of rocks finest riffs. It ends with “Love Removal Machine”, which is the simplist, stupidest song ever written : and therefore one of the cleverest, most intricate songs ever heard. Absolute gobsmacking genius.

After this, there's an encore : the original 1985 lineup for the first time in twenty four years, and perform an obviously under-rehearsed, historic “Phoenix” and “She Sells Sanctuary”, for once in a lifetime. You can see why they're called The Cult. This is Nirvana.

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- posted by Planet Me @ 6:59 PM 1 comments links to this post

 
The Cult In London

8pm. Saturday Night.


Nirvana


Sun King


Fire Woman


Original 1985 four piece line up return for the encore.... a once in a lifetime experience.


She Sells Sanctuary.
- posted by Planet Me @ 9:17 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
Lost In The Supermarket


On Friday Night, we were walking to the Albert Hall to see Maximo Park : coming out of Knightsbridge, I admit to being totally and utterly lost. A good place to start for London is to think of it not as one small village you can walk across in a couple of hours at 3am (though you can, and I have covered the city centre in such time on a cold May night)

Walking round http://www.harrods.com/harrodsstore/is brilliant. I've never been, and so 6pm on a Friday Night, decided to be a tourist for a few minutes. I remembered that in 1989, there was a scandal that Bros (and when are they reforming?) would not be allowed in because they were wearing JEANS. Jeans, I tell you.

Civilisations crumble when denim enters the portals of the capitalist shrine that is Harrods.



We wandered around, and the place was packed. Since I've been to Vegas, it was like being in a new Vegas in Britain, a grand, silly opulence, and an amusement park of cash where everything you thought would never exist (coats for dogs, £1200 teddy bears, £80 sandwiches) was not just real, but for sale.

I made a special point of wandering briefly around the Toy Section of the fourth floor, which was where the last scene of the last film by Stanley Kubrick was filmed. It was quite fun. It felt liek a massive, grown up, terrifyingly crowded Ikea - a place where there were too many people, too much stuff, and no real idea of where we were, what we were doing or even how to get out of there. I was lost in the Supermarket.

Turning the corner at the bottom of the stairs, though, we found this. A giant gold statue, a dove soaring to the heavens, the words "INNCOENT VICTIMS" carved into the base.

Bloody hell. That was unexpected. A sobering moment, but also, as a monument, perhaps opulent, overstated, and more than a little granoise. And as a Brit, I don't do grandoise. We might be repressed, but we're remarkably dressed..



And then we were out in the cold of the Autumn. And a little confused by the whole thing - never in a million years would I imagine Dodi and Diana as angels dancing and skipping merrily along the seas of happiness, setting a dove free. But then again, I wouldn't have imagined them ending their lives the way they did. The state was so very unBritish, in so much, as it was overstated.

Nights are drawing in. Winter is coming. The future is stretching out.
- posted by Planet Me @ 8:45 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
FOO FIGHTERS - "Greatest Hits"


Everyone loves Dave Grohl. Rock's Mr. Nice, busy with Them Crooked Vultures, takes his accidental stadium rock career and spoils the symmetry with a Greatest Hits record. Traditionally, Greatest Hits records are Christmas Stocking Fillers ; designed to do little but sell a few copies at Christmas, and often seen as the end of any band's invincible phase – after all, what did Erasure do after 1992's “Pop”? Blur after “The Best Of”? The Cure after “Galore”? Suede, The Sisters Of Mercy? Not much, to be honest, but gamely continued with what could be percieved to be diminishing returns, smaller audiences, less airplay.

A Hits Album is often a full stop, an end. A place where a band admits – wether it wants to or not - that stage one of their career, the breathless fullpelt of the their first flush, has come to an end. After here, most bands take a step back, slow down. The records grow further and further apart – before eventually they stop. Whatever happens, a Greatest Hits – especially one as lazily titled as “Greatest Hits”- is often the first sign of commercial instincts over-riding any creative impulse.

Therefore, Foo Fighters follow the inevitable commercial intermission of a compilation. There's ways of creating a compilation that can provide new insight into the work. And ways of throwing all the songs up in the air and flogging them off cheap.

And what a compilation it could have been. Sure, you get all the Foos big hitters from the fabulous “This Is A Call” to stonking later stuff such as “Best Of You” and “The Pretender”. There's the obligatory new songs - “Wheels” and “Word Forward” - which refuse to break the mould. Yes, there's a bag full of the best Foo Fighters songs, but it doesn't feel as if the Foo Fighters are proud of themselves. It feels like a contractual obligation.

The songs themselves, no one can argue with. Great songs, with thundering drums, buzzing guitars, and the perfect late night union of The Beatles and Black Sabbath in a Seattle Back Alley in 1977. At once modern and also made of the ingredients of classic rock, these are, on their own, fine fine songs.

But the sum is less than the parts. Stripped of chronology, there is little opportunity to see the subtle but important progression over time and of the varied lineups, and some frankly surprising omissions : Where's the brilliant “The One”? What about a comprehensive, chronological collection? Or even a bonus disc of rare songs and b-sides? Why are there two versions of “Everlong” when there are only sixteen songs?

Few bands have ever done b-sides are good as the Foos. They deserve a better fate than being ignored by history. Where's the definitive collection?

Overall, if you look beyond the music, this record is a cash-in, a careless stocking filler, an attempt to sell product without much care for the thing itself within : the music itself. You deserve better, Dave. These songs maybe the 'Best of You' : but not the best you could do.
- posted by Planet Me @ 10:16 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
Death Is Not The End


If you're lucky, death is a distant concept until your mid-thirties.

By then, with some element of fortune, you've been to funerals, of course : distant relatives, grandparents. Maybe lost a pet. But the idea of an absence, permanent, and irretrievable, an end to everything someone was, that idea is more.

The idea of a spiritual annihilation, our own, individual, personal armageddon that is not only unavoidable, but inevitable, we run from.

You watch your parents wrinkle. You know, we all know, that everything dies eventually, and the only way to survive is to carry on anyway. You could be pessimistic ; say we're all going to die anyway, so what's the point – but one of beautiful things about people is there is often no point to what we do, but we do it anyway.

We hide. In the bottom of a glass, in sex, love, in friends. We all hope that maybe we will be different. That we shall, in some way, avoid the same things everyone else has suffered : the curse of work, the cold hand of mortality. Being the last one of our generation alive in a nursing home, our skin pale and thinner than tracing paper, rippled and delicate, the blue veins protrouding as if they were mountains.

We take comfort where we can find it. We create our own respite. We find light in the chinks between the darkness.

At least though, if we reach that age, we had a life. Hopes, fears, dreams. We breathed fresh air.

But there's no luck in it really. It is what it is, nature is neither cruel nor kind, it just is. We surf that beach, ride the point break, and duck the force of the blow. We hope the weight behind the punch of reality will carry through and cause them to fall.

We? Whose is we? Me and all the people who live in my head. Who knows?

But whatever the future holds, that's where everyone is spending the rest of our lives, so we better get used to it.
- posted by Planet Me @ 8:23 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
Hunting The Snark!


A sharp, eloquent rebuttal of the mean, narrow minded cruelty that has become the default setting of cultural discourse, “Snark” tackles the often ignorant, faux-clever dialogue. The deconstruction is all the things Snark isn't : informed, logical, eloquent. Why say a clever thing when a cruel witticism will do?

Nonetheless, this book will preach to the converted, and embody everything snarkers hate. By exposing the limitations of The Snark, David Denby opens himself up on a pedestal as a target for those who value idiocy over intelligence. The argument is well presented, clear, structured and accurate.

Whilst there is a time and a place for snarkiness in society, that is, to burst the bubbles of the reverered, self-reverential, arrogant and rich, snark sued in excess loses its currency, and here we find Denby arguing both for and against the use of it : against the use of snark without substance, and in favour of sparing use when supported by fact and logical. It's a difficult line to walk and one he succeeds in. However, ultimately, Snark is a one-note riff. By taking a micromanaged element of cultural commentary and disempowering it, Denby exposes the weakness of the commentators, and the society, that values cruelty and merciless judgement over fact and compassion. It is effective, and a convincing argument, but it has always been easier to win an argument with a one-liner than a essay. But that's just Snark, isn't it? You wouldn't expect any more from a Snarker.

Labels: Snark

- posted by Planet Me @ 8:21 PM 0 comments links to this post