Fillum...

This is not a review of a film - Claudia Winkelman I am not - but rather a story around a film, and a vindication - in 1986, I was right to like something.....

In the 1980's, BBC2 used to run a film programme that ran two films back to back, and had a critique of both movies in the middle. For example, they ran Fritz Lang's 1920's masterpiece "Metropolis", and then compared and contrasted the techniques used in that film to Coppola's "Rumblefish". Both black and white, although thematically different, they highlighted Coppola's nods towards Metropolis. It was a very interesting programme, and a great way to while away an evening. Sadly however, it predated my ownership of a video recorder - not that I'd have been able to put the entire programme on one tape, and, back then, keeping things for posterity on tape was not something I did.

I wish I had. For the last 25 or so years, I have been hunting down a film by Kathryn Bigelow that was used in this programme, The Loveless. It was compared and contrasted with The Wild One, Marlon Brando's banned 50's motorcycle gang flick - showing, for example, how Bigelow used stylistic and iconic shots from the Wild One to compose a nihilistic and brooding film that doesn't so much tell a story, but paints it. The effect is of the story being told as a sideshow to a slideshow of leather clad 'bad boy' sequences - think, if you will, of a very, very dark flip side of "Happy Days", where the Fonze is a really, really bad boy...

This is a quite relevant film because it represents Kathryn Bigelow's directorial debut, is Willem Dafoe's first film and because of the way it eschewed the formulaic pacing of movies - you know the sort of thing - 15 minutes setting the scene, building to a hectic and chaotic "leave them on the edge of their seats" ending that Hollywood seems to think is de-rigeur these days. No, this film slides along at a pace similar to Dafoe's brylcreem-ed hair melting in the sun, and invites you to enjoy the view along the way. It oozes along to the fairly inevitable conclusion.

Interestingly, it has a soundtrack by Robert Gordon (yes, the same late 70's Rockabilly chap who had his whole act and sound lifted by those oh so naughty Stray Cats) who also plays the foil to Dafoe's brooding malevolence in the film. Gordon's part in the film portrays the constant challenging of alpha male status present in every gang.

It is rare that I can have seen or heard something once, a long time ago, and for it to be as good, if not better than I remembered. I salute myself - although it bombed on release, it is now considered a cult classic. I've altered my list of '1001 films you must see before you die' to include it....

Lucky Dips....

One of the joys of record collecting - or vinyl to those of you that are unable to understand music that doesn't come on shiny discs - is that some of the sellers of vinyl quite often throw stuff in a 'bargain bucket' and you can get three or four LPs for a fiver. A fiver for an armful of vinyl is worth taking a punt on, and quite apart from the fact that the record might be physically dubious, you never know, it might turn out to be worth listening to. You know the sort of mild panic that comes over you when you succumb to the three for two deals - you can never quite figure out what the third one should be?

Well, I'd grabbed a bunch of stuff - all 80's, as they are in these circumstances, typically, and I was looking through the racks trying to work out what to take a chance on to make up that elusive fourth purchase. In the end I closed my eyes, and picked one. Well, it fitted the bill - I'd never heard of The Big Dish, or their "Swimmer" album. I handed over my denarii and headed for home, wondering why I never get that feeling you used to get when you'd splashed your pocket money on a saturday morning in WH Smith on a new record. I digress. I do that a lot, which is why I don't write for a living... Well, it was unplayed - it still stuck to the inner sleeve, so I thought I'd take a chance on playing it on my Linn (I have a Thorens that I use for physically dubious stuff...).

It isn't often I get sonically clobbered by a record - largely because I've heard most stuff and I know what to expect - but this record did that for me. From the opening track (Prospect Street) to the last track, I was captivated. It has 80's production values, but thankfully no Yamaha DX7 synth washes, and it has a feel of what Hall & Oates might have done if they had collided with Lloyd Cole on the way to see Go West. It is a slice of intelligent pop, of the kind that existed before Stock, Aitken and Waterman took over the remainder of the decade's output.

Daft lyrics #1 in an occasional series

"Tonight theres going to be a jailbreak, somewhere in this town".

In this age of geolocation, geolocation, geolocation (doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?), one might be forgiven for looking back on the days when maps ruled the earth - possibly even the glovebox of the car - with a benevolent sigh, thinking that 'they' didn't know what it was to be geolocated. You'd be wrong - even with the aid of a map, you can pretty much deduce what Mr Philip Lynott meant - there is going to be a jailbreak, and it is going to be somewhere in this town. Well, golly gee, might that be at ....the jail? Is this the dumbest lyric ever written in a song? Well, possibly, but a little further study of the offending lyric sheet, and I use the word 'lyric' advisedly, reveals that he is suggesting that "Don't you be around"....implying that he and the boys are going to make trouble for you. Now I may not be going along with the spirit of the song, but if you break out of jail, you aren't going to hang around to settle scores and draw attention to those that would want you back behind bars, are you? And why on earth issue a warning about it in the first place - surely the element of surprise is key to the whole caper?

Phil, not one of your brightest moments with a pen.

New Technology baffles pis*ed old hack...

The 'news' (can news about news actually be called news?) that the hit rate on the Times website has fallen by 66% since Uncle Rupe's paywall idea was implemented is no real surprise. Falling circulation and the lack of people buying traditional print are cited as the reason behind this brave move, but the Guardian and Telegraph are still available for free, so in reality, it is braver than you would think. As long as google news aggregates the feeds that still exist in the clear, then News International are doomed to fail in this rather crude attempt at market-making. Any online presence, be it newspapers or otherwise, relies on google's monetisation of the site for income - does this mean then that the Dirty Digger is not getting enough footfall in the first place to sustain the online presence? Has he perhaps failed to learn the lesson in the myspace debacle and is having another go at imposing a fiscal structure on this herd of cats we call the internet?

As to falling revenues in print at Wapping, maybe this is what happens when you substitute news in a paper with the relentless chasing of "news nouveau" - this endless reporting on vacuous celebrity culture and lifestyle, which exists only because the redtops are too lazy to get proper stories written up. Wapping, meet the Ouboros.

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Californication

I don't watch tv. I like to acquire my entertainment, I think it is fair to say, by taking my custom to a show, and watch it at my leisure, not as a bum-on-seat to be 'messaged' at by advertisers. As a result, I have quite a narrow list of things I watch, although I have been working my way through the '1001 films you must see before you die' book and I've been enjoying and appreciating work that, let's face it, Murdoch just wouldn't give air time to. Perhaps I'll return to that in another blog, but at the moment I am 'learning' film. What else is a boy to do with these hours available to him?

Californication is not for the faint of heart - if you thought you'd like it because it has 'that bloke from the x-files in it' then it probably isn't for you - I am amazed at the irreverence it shows. For an American tv show, anyway - the pandering to the bible belt and the advertising demographic gamut that producers have to run normally means that this kind of innovation gets stifled. Or left to Canada, or the UK.

Look it up, grab the first series wherever you can, and watch some first class writing, and dare I say it, acting. David Duchovny plays a superb and believable character (ok, believable in my dreams) with such swagger and bravado, I wonder if he isn't wasted on the small screen. Fox Mulder would regard Hank Moody as a phenomena to be investigated as paranormal by his standards in the x files. It is a work of genius and I've just learnt that it has been commissioned for a fourth series. That makes me a happy man.

Men and motors

I own (or rather, I am the custodian of) a 1981 Lotus Esprit S3. It does one of three things. It sits hibernating in a garage, is on the road and is running, or it is undergoing one of those 'niggly' jobs. I am not the world's greatest custodian of Hethel's finest, and how I came to own it is a story in itself.

I was a young petrolhead (mark II cortina) having freshly passed my test and I was out poodling about in the car when I was overtaken by a JPS Esprit. The rear view of these cars is quite breathtaking, and being a man with a certain amount of ambition and benchmarking to do in his life, I declared that I was going to own an Esprit before I got married. So, aged 19, my die was cast - I'd already become a Lotus afficianado aged 14 when I was allowed to sit in a Lotus Elan, and that combined with a wildly successful F1 team contributed to my choice. I think every petrolhead affiliates themselves with a supercar marque - some pledge undying allegience to Ferrari, some to Aston Martin, some to Lamborghini and some actually achieve their aim of owning a supercar. Now, in the grand scheme of things, Lotus were supercar 'wannabees' and had never managed to shake the tag of 'kit cars' despite some very attractive traits like handling and (your mileage may vary at this point, but stay with me) styling.

So, this young 19 year old made a vow that still haunts him. "I'm going to have an Esprit before I am married". Well, guess what, I didn't. Revision 2. "I'm going to have an Esprit before I have children". I think you can probably guess what happened there. Revision 3 of the vow suggested that I was going to own an Esprit before I was 33. Douglas Adams wrote, "I love deadlines, I love the sound they make as they go whooshing past", and this vow was beginning to resemble his comment. What happens at this point (it is 1995 by now) is that the Vow was modified to have slightly less concrete milestones. As soon as I did this though, Autotrader popped the "car of my dreams" (TM) into my peripheral vision, and without consulting anyone (the then-wife, bank manager or indeed my common sense), PTO208X was mine. I had done it, I was 34, and I owned a Lotus Esprit. This one, an S3 was a better bet than the fragile S1 and S2 versions, and wasn't quite as garish as the Turbo - even then, I wanted that classic wedge shape, unfettered by louvres and skirts.

It stunk of petrol (leaking tank) and so began my long standing relationship with the Stratton Motor Company. Fixed, I drove it to work every day. In the summer it was unbearable, in winter, it was, well, less fun. It started to be left for a month at a time in the garage, and of course, it only had two seats so it's use as transport for the family was a bit of a problem. It didn't languish unloved exactly, but it did need more TLC than I had time to give.

It still gave me the thrill I had anticipated when I made the vow, but what happens after the vow, or, more to the point, the ambition has been fulfilled? When you make the vow, do you understand that you might be taking on something for the rest of your days? No.

Allow me to share something of the car with you. I am no motoring journalist, but I'll attempt to give you a flavour of the experience. As you can see, it is blue - rather appropriately, it is Essex Blue. It has a blue velour interior (no leather anywhere), unkindly described as "muppet pelt". It has a period stereo with chrome buttons and a green LED readout. It has silver and gold wheels. It has mistakenly had it's bumpers and mirrors colour coded (returning them to matt black is number 3 on my list of stuff to do) but overall it is a proper example.

An Esprit of this vintage is so different from modern cars. Opening the car-park unfriendly wide doors, and lowing one's sizeable frame into the unfeasibly small seat is easy enough, and once ensconced, you can drink in the little 70's touches - the Jaeger digital clock, the Austin Maxi ashtray (to the right of you in the door sill, just behind the rather daftly placed handbrake). It is quite snug as the interior is dominated by a huge tunnel through the middle (which is of course the chassis, not a transmission tunnel as the engine is behind you), but it isn't claustrophobic. It is at this point that I feel I can chuck a Barry White tape in the player, open the shirt to the waist and check my white flares for chocolate stains - it has an ability to transport you back to the 70's. Later Esprits don not appear to have this effect, I think it is simply the velour acreage...

The next stage is to pull the choke out. This novel, yet effective device causes the carburettors to run slightly rich which aids starting. I turn the key in the ignition, listening for the sound of the small gatling gun behind me to finish it's protest (fuel pump - the noise it makes when it is priming is quite comedic) and then I can pump the accelerator pedal twice. I pause, and turn the key. Sometimes, it will catch first time, if not then it will go on the second try. I leave it to settle for 10 seconds or so and then we are good to go. Reversing is always interesting, because of the appalling rearward visibility, but in the Esprit the mirrors are your absolute best friends, and you need to buy them a pint on a regular basis. At this point, having moved it out of the garage, I'll move the choke back to halfway, and leave it to "warm up" for a few minutes.

The gear selection is a work of art - the lever is topped by a beautiful globe of turned wood, and it is no more difficult to select the gears than it is on a modern car. Which is quite an achievement when you consider that the rods, levers and cables that operate this do so through half the length of the car. So, into first and take off. As you pick up speed and work through the gears (short-shifting, and being gentle of course, because it won't quite be up to operating temperature yet (does this sound like I am describing an old pre-war Morris?) you can hear the engine behind you, the note of the cam belt whine rising and falling like a banshee experimenting with it's new-found voice for the first time. It is amazingly smooth to drive. This variant of the Esprit didn't have power steering, yet the steering is never heavy (no great lump of an engine over the front wheels) but chats to you all the time like an over excited child on a sweetshop trip. Pulling up in traffic, a glance at your fellow road users give you a birds eye view of their doors, or if you have a lorry to your right, you can pass the time waiting for the lights admiring their wheelnuts. It is low, and that is when you begin to appreciate that not everyone can see you. Pushing the choke fully home, you can start explore what happens with the slightly higher engine revs. A spirited push of the loud pedal propels you forwards like a giant has just started to play with a matchbox toy - this is due to the fact that the car weighs next to nothing, so a much larger part of the engine's ability is available for it's primary function - forward motion. But even at the legal maximum, it still feels smooth, and nothing changes - the steering is still talkative, and you only have to think your way through a bend; the car responds with no drama or lean. Corners become irrelevant, and you begin to understand why people refer to the Esprit as a driver's car. It takes a lot to unsettle it, and to use a cliche, the car always seems to be organically attached to the road. If you drive this car like you drive your daily car, you'll never fully appreciate it's capability. If you tune in to what the car is telling you it can do, you'll find yourself able to negotiate roundabouts with the minimum of fuss, at speeds that you won't quite believe. It is the quickest way to put a mile on your face.

The downsides to driving this car are that the noise and the heat in the cabin are a bit much especially on really hot days (1981 - air conditioning was something that was fitted to American and Japanese cars only) but it isn't a showstopper. At cruising speeds (yes, 70mph, officer) in 5th, it is quiet enough to hold a conversation, and appears quite civilised. 100mph, I am reliably informed, comes up all too quickly and fuss free if you let it.

I write this in the knowledge that this week, my car comes back from hibernation - she has been at Strattons for some work, and hopefully, she will be available for some fun this summer. I can't wait. Now, where did I put that Barry White tape.....

Friday on my mind. Plagiarism for beginners, pt 1.

I think the reason that I wasn't aware of a lot of music in the mid-late 80's was because I no longer avidly read the New Musical Express and Melody Maker from cover to cover, and because I was in a band. Oh, and maybe Stock Aitken and Waterman had rather poisoned the rock chalice for me, into the bargain. You all paid for his train hobby, you know, every time you stuck your hand in your wallet for the latest Kylie....

I always felt it was important to not listen to too much current stuff lest you plagarise. As Morrissey said, Theres always someone with a big nose who knows, who trips you up and laughs when you fall. A truism, as it turns out...

We'd been in the studio ("we" being "Another Country") and time was running out [2] - everyone else had done their bits and finally it was down to me to do the lead bits (which were never my forte) in the 30 minutes left. By my own admission, I am no Steve Jones (the Pistols guitarist is renowned for being the most accurate studio guitarist of the 70's...and to this day, if 'Fire and Gasoline' is anything to go by) and I'd got nothing prepared so I busked it. I rattled some bits off - nothing coherent, but the nods from the other site of the plexiglass window made it all seem like I'd done an OK job. In today's vernacula-transatlantica, I believe I 'nailed it' (which used to be a euphemism for something quite different back then, but I digress).

I got the thumbs up from the rest of the band and settled down to listen to a fairly crude mix in the control room, and then we were off into the warm Sarfend (thats Southend on Sea, for those of you that don't frequent the Canvey Delta) night with two tracks on a cassette. We used to rehearse at Lee Brilleaux's rehearsal place (yes, there was a mezzanine bar, no we never did. Not ever. All we ever did was admire the records set into the walls) and got a reasonable facsimile of the studio tape into the live version, and it turned out that the song, "Ring Out", was a firm favourite at the weekly gigs we were doing around Southend. [1]

Another Country were taking the Sarfend scene by storm according to our own well-oiled publicity machine (4 pints of Stella is a brilliant journalistic lubricant - ooh, a new word - Journolube. Now is that a verb or a noun? I am getting to the point of this, trust me) and we landed a big gig supporting The Bible at the Cliffs Pavilion (I think it was The Bible - or The Christians, I'm not sure). We went on, and pulled the old Faces trick of owning the stage (helped by the fact that our 'following' had nothing else to do that sunday evening) and played an absolute blinder. I wouldn't say it was our best gig ever, but we did rather blow the main band away. The £30 we slipped the sound engineer to turn us up louder than the main act was the first in a litany of dirty tricks I learned....

Afterwards, we were hobnobbing with the quite multitudinous audience when some spotty oik came up to me and asked if the Easybeats tribute lick was intentional. Oh yes, I'd absorbed at some point in my teens, 'Friday on my mind', (most likely the Bowie version on Pin ups, as I used to fall asleep with the headphones on with that album) and spat the lick onto tape in my hurry to get something out. And of course, the spotty oik scored a good three points there, because I hadn't got a clue what he was on about. Of course, my position is quite different (22 years to form a riposte helps) now inasmuch as I take the view that Good Artists copy, Great Artists steal. In my case, though, I'd add a subnote to the effect that Mediocre Artists absorb Mick Ronson licks in their sleep...

[1] The provisional title of the as yet unrecorded album was "Kiss me where it smells", the punchline to the band's favourite joke. A young couple were parked up and steaming up the windows. As things progressed, she whispered "Darling, kiss me where it smells"....so he jumped into the drivers seat and drove her to Canvey Island.

[2] Sorry, that wasn't meant to read like 'Smoke on the water'; I shan't insult your intelligence by editing it - Canvey is so very like Montreaux, no?

RIP, Alex Chilton

I hate the way that magazines like Mojo write eulogies about recently deceased "stars". One of thie phrases is "they also served" - how crappy does that sound? That you never really made it to tier 1 celebrity status, so that in death we write about your career as a footnote to the big star that died last month? It is done in a fawning and obsequious manner, suggesting that (insert star here) couldn't have possibly risen to the levels he did without the help of (poor hapless 2nd rate muso). Really, in the language of transatlantica, it sucks. Possibly as much as being dead...

Take this month's issue of Mojo's "Real Gone" page - Lena Horne. Now I'm fine with having her in the obituary pages of a serious paper - as a singer, she was the first black superstar, as the headline notes. But really, it isn't for the pages of Mojo. Ronnie James Dio, Steve New, and Stuart Cable all bought the farm this month. Steve New did some brilliant and often overlooked work with the Rich Kids (the first "punk/New Wave" supergroup?). My opinion is that he was probably more deserving and relevant recipient of the full page with the 'headline'.

This brings me to my point, and the title of this entry - the untimely death of Alex Chilton in March. Very few people in the UK really understood or had ever heard of Big Star - I'd have never sought them out if I hadn't spent valuable homework time listening to Radio Caroline in my youth - and in the UK, the most recognisable piece of work he ever did was arguably "In the streets", the theme tune to "That 70's show". Yet, in the mid 70's Alex and Big Star produced a body of work in their three/four albums that still brim over with ideas and creativity that makes them sound apart from their contemporaries and, (cliche alert) ahead of their time.

I was upset when I heard he had died, as he was down on my list of people to see before I died. My friend Ed sent me a soundboard recording of a live gig from the late 80's which I listened to by way of a tribute, but all it did was crystallise the "what a waste" feeling I had into something approaching real loss. I don't often get that from a dead "rock star" (sorry Ronnie James Dio, but I'm not about to track down your finest work, even in death), and I feel like I do when I know that a favourite author is no longer producing work - for example, I have three unread John Steinbeck works to read that I have been saving because once I've read them, I'll never be able to enjoy the delight of discovering another "Doc" or "Jeb".

Thank you Alex, for the music you created that was thoughtful, tuneful, and inspiring. I can't admit that you featured on every mixtape I ever put together, but songs like "September Gurls" or "Thirteen" will always remind me of a time past - and I don't think I can think of a higher accolade than that.

I think Robyn Hitchcock (another Alex Chilton afficionado) put it quite well, when he said "Myriad musical roads met in Alex, and he diverted their course to his own artistic purposes with much grace and few illusions."

Mac on a shoestring.

It was the last time I lost all my data to a virus in 1999 that made me wonder if there was a better way of improving the lot of the average computer user. Windows, whatever version, is a large target for any malware author, so I began with a brief switch to linux/aix and solaris - which worked to an extent for me, in that it stopped me doing real paid work and let me waste my time with incessant fiddling with init.d and assorted shell scripts. An education, sure, but it didn't put food on the table. And then Lotus/IBM dropped the unix client for Lotus Notes and I was forced back into the misery of windows.

Guess what - more viruses, more BSODs and generally more misery - plus reduced battery life that meant I had a laptop that wouldn't last the hour and a half commute to work. During this brief sojourn I was still keeping one eye on OS X - an OS that I had known, loved and used as NextStep for many years. I even had a black NeXT cube at one point, but I digress. In 2002 then, I bought my first mac for many years, a cube. I maxed it out to 1.5gb, I upgraded it left right and centre to run the fastest processor going, and set about seeing what the delta was between XP and OS X. Well, I was pleased at the time that MS Office presented no issues, all the Adobe products I might use were there, and wow, there was a Lotus Notes client....sadly though, it didn't work. Well, it did, but it didn't understand fonts at all, and rendered most of my work as unintelligable gibberish. Nevermind, I thought, Virtual PC should solve this. It didn't. I ended up with an inane mix of a small PC running on my network that I remotely ran via VNC. This wasn't ideal, but OK. So - I became a mac user. I especially loved the fact that the terminal program would do a delightful green on black to make me feel child-like again...

Then in 2005/6 Apple announced it was going to move to the intel platform, and since then I have followed the antics of a community of people that are committed (or they should be) to running

OS X on non-apple hardware. I've tried it several times - and actually lived with one for a year or so, but nothing seemed to quite match the Apple hardware....until last year. Quite by chance, I bought a Dell 490 for a client and noticed that it's spec was identical to the then current Mac Pro. So I had a go at installing OS X on it. Well, I'm still using it. I can't let go of it. It has 32gb ram and two quad core xeons. I'm sure you'll agree that is overkill for most things, but for the first time in - oh, 10 years, I have a proper workstation that runs like stink, does everything I want it to do, and is still unthreatened by viruses and malware. But the best thing of all is that I can run VMWare Fusion on it, and I have copies of every OS I have ever used, right from dos 3.3 through to Windows 7 - all available to me at the click of a mouse. I can even run - count them - eight VMs simultaneously with it barely registering an increase in fan speed. I don't need a separate W2K3 server, it is a VM. I don't need a separate domino server - it is a VM. In fact, I've managed to replicate almost every hosting environment I could ever need to, from solaris to linux, all in one box. Hmm. Loads to fiddle with, but how much productivity is there in that?

Well, the answer to that is that when things "Just Work" TM, you don't need to fiddle with stuff incessantly. A new project using wordpress? Fire up an appliance, configure wordpress and go. Joomla? Start the Joomla environment. It is too easy, really, when I look back on the days when if I needed a new "server" of any description, it would take a day to install and configure. It has set me wondering if this is the IT equivalent of the disposable consumer society that I have come to despise (throwing a toaster out? Did you check the fuse?) - that "environments" that were created and maintained as a result of time and effort can just be disposed of without a second thought? One day, and it may come soon, we'll have lost the skills that allowed us to create a centos 4.0 domino server on linux, and OS/2 LAN server or a version of netBSD that allows Nintendo 64 development tools to run. Think back to running DOS. Could you edit a config.sys file with edlin, still?I know I'm an old fart, and that I am a packrat when it comes to knowledge about old IT skills, but I really worry that I am turning into the old nerd in the corner of the pub that suggests that a twin disk setup for your cpm/80 might solve all your problems...

My "hackintosh" does need me to keep those skills I acquired with NextSTEP to keep it running, but only if I upgrade the OS or add hardware that doesn't fit the apple envelope,but guess what? I bought a Mac Pro anyway....

Laughter....the best medicine.

That is quite evocative of that famous Reader's Digest feature, no? I confess to being quite sad at the passing of the UK edition of the Reader's Digest - I learnt a lot from the late 60's and early 70's issues. I recall surprising my mum with my detailed knowledge of the pineal gland after reading "I am John's Kidney". A shame - nevermore, the letters from Tom Champagne (made up name? I think so - Harry Merlot and Dick Shiraz aren't quite in the same league are they?) telling me I've won a boxed set of James Last LPs. I shall mourn their decline with a thunderbird wine, as the bard of Upminster once said.

What makes me laugh? Well you have seen the Leo Sayer and Linda Ronstadt clip in a recent blog so I'll leave that out. In no particular order, other than they occured to me that way, here is my top 10 'things' that make me laugh. Although, having just done a crafty edit and run through of this, I think on balance the order is about right - but of course the value of your investments may go up or down. Or was it your mileage may vary? Indeed, should all men have a tag on their neck saying caution, may contain nuts? Thenkyew, here all week laydeesangennelmen, he's here all week.

1. The Anaconda Ball Pool. This is just straightforward idiocy from the lads at Jackass. I'm not sure which bit I like best, the end, or the slapstick kicking at the start. Don't try this at home, and if you have kids, well....the ball pit will never be quite the same for you....if you liked this, may I recommend the "Bee Limousine", and for pure stupidity, the Penny Farthing BMX. Or buy Jackass 2 the movie - available from all good retailers. Pick up some tena-lady while you are there....

2. Bill Hicks - The Marketing Rant. This was a close run thing between oh, EVERYTHING the master did, and this one. This has a message that I feel I can relate to. How it is that I've never found anything Bill Hicks says or rants about remotely disagreeable, I'll never know. It is quite possibly the only time I've agreed with an American on everything. Taken too soon, he was, taken too soon...

3. From failblog - The Error Message. 'Nuff said. I laughed until I stopped....

4. Sid James' laugh. Not a 'naturally' funny man by his own admission, he did have the epitome of the dirty cackle to carry him through.

5. The Goon Show. When I was younger, I'd sit glued to the radio when Radio 4 (or was that the Home Service....eek, does that age me?) used to re-run the Goons and I used to find it hilarious. Milligan and Sellers were in a class of their own. My favourite anecdote is of Sellers turning up at Milligan's doorstep stark naked at midnight, and saying "I say, Spike, do you know a good tailor?" when Milligan answered the door...

6. No child born in the sixties could escape the influence of Monty Python and I am no exception. Here is one of the paths less travelled. Really, everyone knows (and can recite good chunks of) the Parrot Sketch so I've chosen this :



Why Marcel Proust is featured in so many comedy skits is beyond me, or perdu les temps. Cough. I blame Kenny Everett.

7. Steven Wright. This clip by the unique Steven Wright (not to be confused by the english idiot radio DJ) shows his technique of extreme deadpanning.

8. Dennis Leary - I never really thought DL was funny per se - "No cure for cancer was just a load of recycled Bill Hicks rants, but he did a set of trailer rants for MTV which I liked at the time, and still make me laugh.



I'm a particular fan of the tirade against Michael Stipe....

9. Rob Wells, aka Ricky from the Trailer Park Boys. I spent ages trying to find a single clip of the Trailer Park Boys that typified the whole series, and this one just about does it. I fell in love with this show in Canada years ago (hell, I even have a TPB T-shirt, which is a bit, er fan-boy of me) and I've followed their exploits ever since. This clip comes second to one that I was looking for but couldn't find - if you find Ricky baked out of his head on animal tranquilisers shooting at "fuckin' purple squirrels", well, you'll have hit paydirt. If you haven't seen the adventures of Ricky, Bubbles and Julian, then you have missed out. Frankly, I have never understood why Canadian comedy is always overlooked by the UK terrestrial channels.

10. This is Paul Merton at his best. I know 'LOL' is a bit of a passe thing as it has become the riposte of choice at the end of a text message, but I did when I first watched this. In fact, I very nearly PMSL, and was in extreme danger of ROFLOL. Watch and I defy you not to smile. It is a joy to watch him warm to the theme and take it to ever more ludicrous levels....

Watching the detectives

Today, I got pulled over for speeding. Well it was a strange road, and I wasn't a) paying attention to my speed and b) had no clue what the limit should have been. So when I saw the WPC waving me in to the side of the road, I knew I was in for one of two things - 3 points and a 60 binners fine, or a good talking to.

I got the talking to. I nodded in all the right places, told the truth about my lack of attention to the speed limits, looked aghast at the new revelation that I'm likely to kill someone at 40 and only maim them at 30 (seriously, if I hit someone and they are IN THE ROAD, isn't that darwinian?), shook my head like a pantomime villain when asked if I wanted three points on my license (do turkeys vote for christmas?) and then I glimpsed redemption in something she said and decided to play the obsequious buffoon card, which seemed to satisfy her, and she said I was free to go. Yes, she said I was free to go. Oh, come on - I hadn't been arrested, I was always free to go.

So no raised insurance premiums, and no real damage other than to my psyche. I do so hate having to play the Uriah Heep role, but it is a given that if you pander to someone in alleged authority, you get a more favourable result than if you challenge them. Dale Carnegie had a whole chapter on it in his "How to win friends and influence people"...
Besides, I was in a hurry, which was obviously my undoing, so there is a bit of yin and yang going on there.
On the remainder of the journey, I started pondering how badly wrong things could have gone for me had I decided to go for wit over sensibility. So I have compiled my top six alternative opening lines that may well have led to an alternative outcome....viz, the fine, or possibly worse - and let me tell you, as someone who has recently watched Midnight Express again, I have no wish to do time.

1. Crumbs, you don't look bad for a copper. What are you doing later?
2. Oh come on, what now? I'm in a 'kin hurry...
3. I've just come from a burglary. Where were you?
4. Oh that hi-viz jerkin is sooo last year. And the hat...well, Daaahlink...
5. I've got a couple of lezzers next door, do you know them?
6. Nice ankles, love.

Virtual Insanity

Apologies to Jay Kay for nicking one of his song titles. I needed to build a virtual linux box to run Joomla so that I could get up to speed with it. The last time I had anything to do with this, it was called Mambo, and wasn't half bad as a CMS.

So I settled down with a copy of ubuntu (I'd like to say I have a favourite linux distro but it strikes me as like joining a club that likes only yellow cars - linux is linux, really) and installed it together with xampp and after a few hours I had my Joomla server up and running. Nothing wrong there - a perfectly acceptable overhead, a morning's work - but it wasn't until I started trawling the net for some Joomla templates to modify that I came across these people:

Jumpbox

They do pre-configured virtual machines, with the software that you need to run on top of it already loaded. So, in effect, you can download a Joomla appliance that you fire up in vmware and configure, and then you are good to go. Excuse me while I flagellate myself for using an american-ism there, I meant "Ready to go", of course. 5 minutes - compare and contrast that with the effort and configuration to get my linux VM up and running.

Some of these appliances are free to download - Joomla, sugarCRM, Drupal and TikiWiki, others, like OrangeHRM and Wordpress are available on a subscription basis. What is interesting is that you have an option to launch software in the cloud, so assuming you have an Amazon EC2 account, you can launch the software on a PAYG basis. Which is very very cool. So if you need to architect solutions using a bunch of discrete boxes, this is a very quick and interesting way of putting together rough sandboxes.

Yes yes, the usual disclaimers apply, I'm not employed by these people, nor do I recommend them in any professional capacity. It just struck me as a useful weapon to have around to save time if you have to build environments....

Moonlighting

A long, long drive today - and to pass the time, I found myself concentrating on the song lyrics of whatever was on. This does pass the time quite nicely as the miles go by, and there is always the chance of some humour to be had in the form of the odd Mondegreen. However, today, there was more than that for me. That golden-throated seventies pierriot Leo Sayer's 'Moonlighting' came on and I got to thinking...

This is a song about two young people running away to Gretna Green to get married. That much is quite easily understood by the time that you have listened to the song, complete with the daft vocal inflections he puts in ("My mother would have lost her mind", for example) but it raised some interesting questions for me. There is mention of the van he has had resprayed, because he figures the disguise is worth it - "when they go missing they're going to look for the van first". Isn't this just a little over the top for 1974? Does he expect police helicopters chasing him up the M6 to Gretna? Or did they indeed in days of old, have roadblocks to prevent the randy sassenach from marrying in their fine country?

If we assume then, that these two are between 16 and 18 - are they 'moonlighting' to get married or are they running away together to start a new life together in - er, Scotland? I'm confused and frustrated by what the song is telling me - "They're losing everything, but it means they'll stay toooo-gether" - are they actually coming home again as man and wife (Is it too cynical of me to say that they are indeed losing everything by marrying that young anyway?) - are they going to be shunned by everyone ("They're losing all their friends")? The deep dissatisfaction I have felt after listening to this song is that he does convey the minutae of doing a runner quite well (her bag is bursting at the seams) but never actually saying why they have to do it in the first place? Is she pregnant? I don't recall it being that difficult in 1974 to shack up with your boyfriend aged 16+ if that is what you wanted to do?

Well, that much was enough to ignite my curiosity of Mr Sayer and his somewhat erratic songwriting abilities (after all , he wrote most of Roger Daltrey's first solo album which wasn't - er- that bad) so I thought I'd youtube the daft clown. Yep, I was right, he wore a clown's outfit on TOTP in 1974 performing "I won't let the show go on". But it wasn't all bad - surely, he is ripe for rehabilitation as a performer and artist, no? I mean, "When I need you" got me all gropy-teenager'd at the disco in the 70's, and "Long Tall Glasses" was a bit of a bopper, no? Leo, come back into the fold. Sit down, and tell us all about that nasty Adam Faith who made you do all those idiotic things in the name of fame. Leo - do we need a comeback album?

Then, just as I was warming to the idea.....I saw this:




I've always been an advocate of 'one good bellylaugh a day' being the best medicine you can wish for, and here, I appear to have stumbled on a week's supply. The very idea that Linda Ronstadt would appear on his TV show in the first place is quite amusing, and then to sing the first line of her version of Tumbling Dice - "People tryin' to rape me" is quite courageous in the context of the less-than-PC 1970's [1], but look at the way she looks at him! She can't quite believe that she has come all this way, leaving behind her buddies in LA (this is a woman who can boast the Eagles as her backing band at one point in her career) to find herself on some third rate TV show with someone she has clearly never heard of. She looks like she has been joined on stage by the class idiot on speed who now wants to Dad-dance [2] with the best looking woman in the room, whilst forgetting that he is choreographically challenged, not to mention six inches shorter than her and has two left feet into the bargain. Clearly, he doesn't make her feel like dancing and frankly who can blame her? Watch the whole clip; it is the dancing that is the utter cringer. He kisses her hand....

Leo mate, I know we can forgive some things from the 70's but that was wrong on too many levels. Hunt down Terry Jacks and David Dundas and, I don't know - do an album or something.

[1] And Linda, while we're at it, what on earth possessed you to try to out-misogynise Mr Jagger and Mr Richards by changing the first line to "People tryin' to rape me, always think I'm crazy"? What on earth was wrong with singing the original ? Rape, fer chrissakes? Were you throwing a stalker party or something?
[2] Did someone tell him to dance to the beat of a "Different Drum", perhaps. Thank you....here all week, laydeesangennelmen, here all week.

Hotel on Mayfair for Mr Tesco, please

Why do we kick the living sh*t out of our monopoly suppliers (BT and the various water companies) to the point where they can't fart without some "OFBOLOX" investigation, yet we continue to allow Asda and Tesco to steal with alacrity from people's shopping baskets ?

This story (link) detailing the manipulation of prices by the (big?) two in the run-up to christmas shows that the end-game in competition results in an absolute limitation of choice for the consumer and a situation that is almost identical to a cartel.

As someone who delights in buying eggs [1] from the market (33% saving at the very least) and fruit and veg from the same market (and the only difference is that you don't have the pesky cellophane wrapping to contend with - saving 40%) I like to think I'm doing my bit to support the ONLY alternative left to the supermarkets.

But back to my original point. Broadband (I nearly said telephone there, but I can't recall the last time I used a landline) - there are a single pair of wires entering your premises that BT own. I can't get Talk Talk to own those wires, can I? I can't persuade Talk Talk or PlusNet to provide me with FTTC, can I? There is a single water pipe entering your premises that the water company own. It isn't as if I have any choice other than Anglian water or Severn Trent. I think that if you were to move the people that run OFCOM and OFWAT and set these watchdogs on the supermarkets, then ASDA and Tesco might think twice before abusing their customers.


[1] Eggs - Half a dozen large free range eggs from the market =£1, from [insert robberbaron store name in here]= £1.50

Snow Days

I write this with a heavy heart, knowing that it will be seen as an attack on the teaching profession (and I use the word 'profession' advisedly) who do a quite amazing job educating our children - when they are there. I refer of course to the concept of a snow day.

I'd like to know this : why are teachers and people in education the only people who get 'snow days'? I've seen all the arguments from the teaching establishment during the latest spate of bad weather, and I understand all the arguments about "if police say only make emergency journeys then I can't make my staff risk coming in" and "ice and snow on the premises can make it difficult to comply with health and safety regulations" but they always lead to the same conclusion - closed schools, and hugely inconvenienced parents.

I don't know of another 'profession' that would close my place of business because of bad weather and tell me not to come in lest I endanger my life getting to work. Teachers choose to live where they live, the same as the rest of us do, and if that involves a commute, then that is their choice, surely? The LEA didn't decree that they should live within walking distance of the school, so it is the teacher's own choice that they live that far away from the school. So, I don't think that argument holds water. Or ice. Or snow. The teacher, of their own free will, holds the commuting risk of their own volition.

Secondly, why can't the teacher - like they used to do - turn up at their local school and effectively be a supply teacher? The excuse used here is that you can't have complete strangers turning up at school purporting to be a teacher. I cannot believe that this is valid - surely an LEA has a register of teachers that are local to each school? A simple list that a headteacher will have that says "Mrs Jones attends this school in case of bad weather". Teachers have identity cards already?

For years, teachers have been complaining that they aren't taken as 'professionals' any more. Try showing, as a body of people, some commitment to the children you purport to educate on the days that you are required to attend school.

And for pity's sake, stop demeaning yourself and the rest of your 'trade' by not making the same effort as the rest of society to cope with bad weather. Spend some of your winter holiday in Canada. And learn.

Right on the target but wide of the mark

Forgive the use of Mr Fry's lyrics, but the hardest part of this lark is finding a suitably witty title. I am struck by the rabble-rousing angry mob tactics of the media and the politicians lately with regard to bankers, and more expressly their bonuses, and how desperately wide of the mark they are. It is a fact of life - it has been for some time - that performance related pay is an easy way for banks and other financial services institutions to reward the staff that do well and to carrot-and-stick those that don't perform. Let's call this a 'bonus', shall we? It is part of every employees remuneration package and it is earned, one way or another.

Why then, does the frankly nasty, tawdry old man in front of me in the queue at the bank the other day decide to score points off the poor girl by berating her for her 'bonus' and the link he has - erroneously - made between her bonus and his lack of a pension increase? Did he arrive at that conclusion himself? No. He read it in the paper, or is dim enough to believe a politician.

It is the same at every election time. This time it is the banker. Previous candidates for pillorying have been, variously, Fat Cats, Benefit Cheats, Captains of Industry, Football Hooligans - every election brings a new villain to the table.

Please, by all means, banker bash all you want, but please use some intelligence when having a pop at bank clerks. They weren't trading in sub-prime securitisations, they were just counting your money.

Are you ready children? We're going to learn a new word...

Hello children. Today, we are going to look at how the English language evolves. Now, as we all know, there is no English equivalent for the german word "shadenfreude", so we have adopted it into our mother tongue - this is called a "loanword". There is a branch of irony (ask a grown-up what that means - although do avoid asking an American grown-up or anyone called Alanis) that I feel deserves it's own word, so today, boys and girls, I am creating the word Ironfreude, the joy at finding that someone who has been slighted by someone getting their own back in an ironic way.

Now for an example of this, we are going to look at that nice Mr Branson's desire to acquire a high street presence and look a little closer at his right hand person, Jayne-Anne Gadhia's background. Jayne-Anne used to work for Virgin Direct, and then moved to the RBS to do - oh, to run mortgage stuff, I think. It is said that RBS, being a dour and unprogressive bunch didn't care much for an English person telling them how to lend money and so, Jayne-Anne moved back to Virgin. Then she and that nice Mr Branson attempted to acquire the Northern Rock when it got into it's troubles [*] but they failed to persuade the government to let them have it. Nasty Government. So, having failed to acquire the Northern Rock, and having bought ^h^h^h^h^h established their own banking license, they are now looking for a high street distribution method. That is a bit like having your own sweetshop in every town. What fun!

Ironfreude, then, is the humour found in the discovery that the RBS is being forced to sell 316 branches under EU competition law, and finding that Jayne-Anne/Virgin Money is stepping forward to try to buy them.

It isn't very often that I find banks funny, but I do love the idea that the most aggressive and acquisitive upstart in the UK banking sector, the RBS (who I have been with since the year dot - the Hotel California of the banking world - when they were Williams and Glyns and they used to send me cheques back with my statements every month. Proper customer service, that was) finally have to sell off some branches to someone they decided to....part company with.

And that, children, is how we get new words in this language of ours. Geoffrey, Bungle? Shall we go and meet Zippy at the gay bar?

[*] Am I alone in blaming that Peston fool for creating the run on that bank? Where is responsible journalism when you need it? In the pub with the same policeman that is never around when you need him either, I expect. Perhaps the teacher joins them every time it snows, I don't know....

Odds and Sods....

I know, I know. I am a boring old f*rt, but I've long been convinced that the early 70's were the creative hotbed that gave rise to everything we listen to and enjoy now, and yet so much is overlooked these days. Here are a few of my favourite oft-overlooked tracks fron the early 70's - so thoughtfully upped onto youtube by people with more time than I have. Enjoy.

Stay With Me - The Faces

This was my first proper single, and it had a deep influence on me. Note that in these days, Rod Stewart was 'just' the vocalist, not the lycra-panted disco diva of later years. And it was OK and a bit cool to like the Faces in the early 70's.

I never really went for the heavy end of the rock spectrum (hell, we didn't even know that heavy rock existed then, only later did the name tags and genres come) but I remember liking the sound of the guitar. And I've stuck with Ronnie Wood as my favourite guitarist through all these years simply for that slide guitar sound. And in later years, for being a role model for growing old disgracefully. Anyone who can claim to have persuaded Keith Richards to climb a tree that he subsequently fell out of is OK in my book....

Water - The Who

The 'Oo were the soundtrack to my early teens, and Charlton in 1976 was probably responsible for my slight hearing issues today. This song, an outtake from Who's Next, eventually made it onto the B-side of 5:15, which is how it is a favourite...

In the Street - Big Star

This is probably better known as a cover version by Cheap Trick and used as the theme to "That seventies show". I never felt I was swimming against the tide with my taste in music, but I could never understand why Big Star weren't bigger than they were. But then again, I suppose you can say that about so many bands through the years - perhaps they fell behind with the payola payments.

Get Down and Get With it - Slade

(The version on Slade Alive Volume 1). If anyone ever questions what was so great about Slade, play them this track - loud. If they don't smile, they aren't human. Don't try this with pets, obviously, as they aren't. And small children, whilst human, will be frightened at Noddy's vocal equivalent of an air-raid.

So much has been written about Sir Noddy, nothing I can say can add to the man's vocal genius. I want him knighted.

Bless The Weather - John Martyn

Sadly, John is no longer with us. This is the finest legacy anyone could leave behind. A true pathfinder - which is a polite way of saying he was way ahead of his time. I quite often think when I listen to guitar work that I could have a go at playing it, but John's work just issues me with a 'cease and desist' order from the first bar; I just enjoy listening to it instead. So should more people. For further listening, try the album 'Bless the weather' and maybe 'Solid Air'.

Please Stay - Marvin Gaye.

Another dead star, here at the absolute peak of his prowess. I grew up with my Mum's copy of this album (which is a bit freaky, thinking about this - either I had a right-on parent, or she didn't listen closely to the lyrics...) and I never got to dismiss the beauty of the arrangements as cheesy like so many other songs of the genre. It also provided me with two things: the first is a lifelong love of soul music, and the second was the basis for every shag tape I ever made. Hmmmm - a separate blog I feel.

Halleluhwah - Can

Hmmm, Happy Mondays in 1971. Well, perhaps Sean's mind altering intake turned him into a time traveller? It does get a bit Interstellar Overdrive after a bit, but persevere with it.

Superstar - The Carpenters

There is a version of this by Sonic Youth, and much as I am a fan of the dissembling noodle-fest of Kim and Thurston (first name terms there for irony, OK?), this song reminds me of my first pair of flares and learning to walk on my first pair of platforms without looking like a complete dork. Tough call, and more praise should be due to those who mastered it. I believe that as a sop to parental concern about the damage to my feet, they were from Clark's and were a 4 inch heel, a 1 inch sole and had uppers of ox-blood, black and burnt ochre. Hardly peacock colouration, but subtle enough to get away with them for school. The song is a perfect piece of pop orchestration, and is still evocative of the era today, which is a powerful attribute. You couldn't say that about Peters and Lee or Vicky Leandros, could you now?

The Bewlay Brothers - David Bowie

I think this was the first time I listened to a song and was impressed with the wordplay in the lyrics. My desk lid at school had this tatooed/inscribed into it in turquoise ink. Took me months and then I had to move classrooms. Gah...

That Lady - The Isley Brothers

This song has the dirtiest fuzz guitar sound going. I've never found it anywhere else. Anyway, another parental record, I think I'm trying to endow them with good taste, but really you should see the rest of the collection. This track then - a bit of vocals between one of the longest guitar solos I have ever heard. A toss up between this and Summer Breeze really, but this is the road less travelled I think. An interesting point is that in 1981 I furnished my old Russian Bouquet bandmate Roy with a tape with this on, and some years later, he gave us a pastiche of the solo in 'Miss You Blind'...two Ern's don't make Hay while the sun shines. Or something like that....

Hypnotised - Fleetwood Mac

It might be just me, but the early seventies Fleetwood Mac seemed directionless - not blues, or rock, yet not pop. Small wonder then that there was an 'alternative' Fleetwood Mac put together and almost sent out to tour by their management. This track, from 1973, shows that it wasn't just the arrival of Buckingham and Nicks that sent Fleetwood Mac scampering for the FM market, that was the direction they seemed to be experimenting with on this track.

So, before they disappeared in a flurry of cocaine and divorce lawyers, this track (and 'Come a little bit closer' from a later album) showed their eventual direction years before they took it.

Roxette - Dr Feelgood

As a one time resident of a tributary of what is now fondly called the Canvey Delta by idiots who never properly understood, and also mispronounced Sarfenonsea, I was never allowed - yessss, too young - into the pubs that Mickey Jupp and his ilk were playing in - even with the platforms. I remember being ejected from one (The Jellicoe? Or the Grand?) after me and a few chums attempted to watch Dr Feelgood (who were so loud we just stood outside and listened). Roxette was my first introduction to stripped bare R&B. God bless, Lee.

Marketing Consultant FAIL

My favourite picture of last year. I know it isn't a term widely used over here, but most us know what a Diaper in America is?

I wonder if this is the start of a new line in meat products?

Pamper's Pork?

Dr Whites' Duck?

Huggy's Pull-up Lamb?

Anyway, I laughed until I stopped. And now I am sharing it with you. Wave at the van if you see it out and about in East Anglia.

Whither the violin in Rock?

Where has the electric (and acoustic) violin gone in rock? And why has it disappeared?

The 70's were a hotbed of experimental sounds and saw the violin accepted into the fray - largely, I suspect as a result of John Cale's viola noodlings on the early Velvet Underground LPs. Jim Lea of Slade achieved a number 1 with "Cos I Luv You" with a jaunty violin lead, whilst at around the same time, Daryl Way was spicing up Curved Air's prog-tastic offerings (note to self - no crude Sonja Kristina gags, or indeed references to Stewart Copeland's brief sojourn as the drummer), and the very kings of glam rock, Roxy Music were rarely seen live without Eddie Jobson on the violin ("Out Of The Blue" on "Country Life" is a great example). Cockney Rebel's Judy Teen was based around a pizzicato violin and as for ELO - well, let's not, shall we?

It seemed that every 70's band had a solo violin (or viola) - Caravan, UK, The Who, Zappa, King Crimson, Hawkwind - until Kevin Rowland did his Celtic nonsense in the early 80's and then nothing. Why? Should we blame Kevin for the demise of the violin (although they were 'fiddling' in a folk style more than using it in a rock context), but is there another reason, perhaps?

Well, I blame the rise and subsequent dominance of the synthesiser. Suddenly, every note that needed infinite sustain was available at the tweak of a knob and the flick of a switch. It is odd really, that the violin didn't really continue it's journey in rock - an instrument easily learnt and widely taught in schools should really have achieved greater prominence.

Did the association with prog-rock dinosaurs stick it in a coffin as punk dawned? Did Mr Rowland carry it to the church? Did Billy Currie of Ultravox lower it into the ground on "Vienna"?

I miss it.

Born Free and everywhere he is in chains

As it is over 30 years since the fateful winter of '79 and the cabinet minutes of the time are being made available, I thought I'd drag out possibly the most politically charged album of recent years out and give it a listen with fresh ears. Well, quite jaded ears, really - I've been listening to the revelations about James Callaghan's last days in office.

JC was about to legislate against Trade Unionism using the Canadian model, mobilise the Army against picket lines, and generally clamp down on everything and everyone that he had allowed to walk all over the government since he had taken over from Wilson in 1976. And try to win an election at the same time. Poor sod, he didn't stand a chance. They were amateurs, by Hattersley's own admission.

What interests me about this era is that I was there, and I was becoming politically aware all through 1978, although I wouldn't be old enough to vote at the next election. But politics isn't just about the vote, it is about sensing the mood of the country, and it was in a pretty foul state at the time. I was becoming aware of this quickly as this 'realpolitik' was landing quite nastily on my doorstep.

On the radio of the time - 1978 - The Pistols, The Clash and the Damned were doing whatever they did to make punk that bit scarier to the older generation, but only Tom Robinson had a grasp of the politics of the time. Listen to it closely, and it is no wonder that the album was placed on a censored list by Capital Radio. I'm no social historian, but I was there and I remember all too well the feeling of radical change in the air. It was palpable in late 1978. I had to leave school and go out to work to help support my family because of pay restraints and rampant inflation (admittedly, my set of circumstances were unique, widowed mother and 4 siblings to bring up) were threatening to erode what little income we had. Everyone signed up to the (laughably named) "Social Contract" (Rousseau turned in his grave as they robbed, one assumes), yet we got nothing - literally - back in return, except higher prices and fewer services. One of JC's worries of the time was that there would be a marxist coup. I wonder how close to the precipice of revolution the country was at that time? It certainly felt like "Something Better Change" as Hugh Cornwell sang at the time.

"The National Front was getting awful strong" sang Tom, and he was right - it was in the same position as the BNP is today. The only thing he didn't foresee was Thatcher jumping so far to the right that she picked up the NF sympathisers and effectively neutered that particular menace's threat. And if history is to repeat itself, is 'dave' (capitalisation intended) going to swing to the right just before this election to neuter the BNP?

Listen to 'Power In The Darkness' and tell me if you have ever heard anything as overtly political since? TRB were regarded as 'lightweight' by the music press. Oh sure, they were Birchill's darlings for a few months, but they were never quite The Clash, whose political sensibilities extended to being "Lost in a Supermarket" and covering Junior Murvin songs badly. No, once the press realised Tom meant everything he wrote, he was consigned to live in the field of tall poppies, and sure enough, by 1979 they were a spent force.

Sleevenotes, for the younger readers : "Supercharged Fizzies on the Asphalt" refers to the Yamaha FS1e, a popular 49cc moped of the time (although supercharging one would be problematic, at best...) and "The Kids are coming in from the cold" refers to a Ready-Brek (an oat based breakfast cereal of the time) advert. I am sure there are more cultural references, but that'll do for starters....

Tom Robinson was a powerful antagonism in my nascent political thinking, but I wonder - where are the outspoken disaffected of today? Where and who is their voice? Even the MPs that used to speak out - Clare Short, for example - have all succumbed to the whip. Where is our voice these days - are we truly reduced to only being able to wield a vote at the ballot box now?

Thirty years on though - Tom's words appear prophetic. "Whitehall up against the wall" was how it turned out in the winter of discontent, but does whitehall have us up against that same wall now?