Dirty Utd

Claims to focus on Brian Clough's 44 day tenure at 'dirty' Leeds United in 1974, but is actually a pretty full career retrospective, just artfully re-arranged so the history is told in flashback. Couldn't decide if the staccato repetition worked or not, a strong sense of Clough's maniacal fear, loathing and twisted determination came through, but his character is so warped that even a conventional biography would have been a dark and ugly trip anyway.

Peace has written about the '70's quite extensively, which maybe explains why there's so little sociopolitical context here, apart from a few mentions of Nixon (another disgraced leader) there's no scene-setting nostalgic background chatter.

Ducks Deluxe

We went to the Wetland Centre in Barnes yesterday with Billie's mum, sister and brother-in-law.

There were loads of ducks.

Some headless.

Dragonflies.

And creepy crawlies.

It was unseasonably warm and sunny.

The light was spectacular.

There were signs in all of the hides:

I thought they needed warning signs for when the birds were overhead too.

Dreamtime #7

Madonna announced she had discovered a new massage technique, she allowed long haired rabbits to walk up and down her back. Billie thought this sounded like a good idea, but when she checked Madonna's back she saw lots of bites and bloody marks, so decided agdainst it.

Cooped Up With Koop

A trip to Camden Town with Billie, Hywel, Malcolm and Susie to see the cross-dressing Scandinavian jazz combo Koop. This is jazz, drum solos, sultry female vocals, challenging time signatures, but with a twist. A bit of rap, some beats and samples, and some slinky lingerie. I was a bit pissed off that we'd been sandwiched onto a table for 4, even though I'd been told it was a table for 6 (yeah right). We also had to stand up and mill around a bit to be able to see the band, but they were excellent, obviously respectful of the confines of 'jazz' but nice and playful and happy to stretch the rules to the limit.

Dreamtime #6

Two dreams, the first triggered by a forthcoming Patti Smith reading at the ICA. The event was advertised by a picture of a bunch of bananas covered in a greasy brown sugary gloop. Billie and I turned up and went into the cinema (where the reading was taking place). There were two rows of assorted chairs and stools at the front which were blocking the view. B. was happy where she was but I went and tried several different seats, but ended up standing at the side. Patti eventually came on and was interviewed by a real twattish Jeremy Kyle type. He kept saying the answers she was giving didn't make sense and kept insisting she clarify everything. The stage was invaded, and the event taken over by a group of radical feminists, but they didn't know what to do with it? One of them turned the lights on, but they were too hot? The End.

The second dream was more of a nightmare. Bilie, Adam, Toby and I were walking alongside a dirty muddy canal. Adam and Toby launched into a mock fight, and Billie tried to move away from them, stepped backwards and fell in the canal. I ran downstream to some metal steps that went down into the brown water to try and catch her as she came past. But then I woke up.

Flushed With Success

I hardly put a foot wrong all game. Won a fiver on the first hand with an Ace flush. Got another Ace flush on the third hand winning big against someone with a lower flush, so after 10 minutes I'd already doubled up. I hardly seemed to have a hand worth folding pre-flop all night. Had a nice win right at the end against my nearest rival. He was betting big with:


Especially when the flop came down:


He bet £3 and I called.
The turn was nothing special:

And he bet another £3, and again I called.
The final card was:

As can so often happen he was blind to any other options and could only see his top two pair. He bet £5 and I raised to £20, he didn't even pause to think, and called me straight away, and was gobsmacked when I turned over:


I was dead lucky to get the Jack on the river, but that was just the way things were running for me all night.

Confessions On A Dance Floor

We got free tickets to the press night of this show from Renato, a dancer friend of Morne's. I feel I just don't have the dance vocabulary to be able to judge how good or bad the dancing was. When it comes to music or films, I know what the basic building blocks are, and I know when someone is re-arranging them in an interesting way. Here I felt I was having to make judgements in a void, which was very difficult. All I can say was that there were lots of moves, and that they were obviously difficult to learn, and required considerable athletic ability to execute. That said none of the dance sequences achieved any transcendent quality for me where the lack of context became irrelevant.

Checking up on Antonia Franceschi I found she appeared in 'Grease' and in 'Fame' before joining the New York Ballet School under George Balanchine. And she is 10 days older than me. She'd had a difficult childhood, with a criminally negligent mother, and it was this painful time that she had decided to dramatise. Written as an autobiography, or a stage play may have provided a greater distance from the events and more room for some objectivity on the horrors of her early years. Here with painful episodes described directly to the audience by the 'victim', it felt more like a group therapy session than a piece of art. It made me a little uncomfortable as I felt she emphasised the more sensational encounters, and at the end of the day had traded one abusive parent for another (Balanchine) and one set of deviant behaviours for the obsessive competitiveness and self-denial of the dance world. I didn't get any sense of dance providing redemption, but maybe she didn't want to say that.

There were echoes of 'The Fortress Of Solitude' in the setting of a child being brought up negligently in an alien neighbourhood and having to find ways of dealing with peer abuse through a secret life and a blank submission to humiliation.

The Big Read

Well I finally finished a book, it only took about 6 months, but I stuck with it. and what a splendid sense of acheivement I now feel.

There was a time I was reading two books a week, but nowadays there just doesn't seem to be the time. Maybe it's the lack of commuting. or the rise in computing. Anyway this was largely excellent, the pop-cultural references, and the significance they have to the adolescent protagonists, and the impact they exert for the rest of their days, are superbly observed. I didn't realise until after I'd finished it that Lethem has a bit of a sci-fi leaning, which explains the rather obtrusive super-hero element that pokes out like an uwanted elbow in the ribs. It reads like an autobiography, and again afterwards I discovered it largely is. Like a Brooklyn based Philip K Dick, without the speed-freak intensity, but with added lyricism.

God Of Love

Three short films, cinematic short stories. Wong Kar Wai's dark rainy consumptive obsession set in sixties Hong Kong. Steven Soderbergh's stylish 1950's dream analysis comedy. Michelangelo Antonioni's timeless Italian coastal fantasy.

These portmanteau films are strange beasts, they've been produced for many years, have never acheived any degree of critical acclaim, or box-office success, and yet they keep being made. For the directors I guess it's a chance to go back to where they started, with shorts, and indulge themselves a little, knowing that they won't shoulder all the blame if the finished film is unsuccesful.

Accept the limitations and this is a beautifully shot, easily digested, amusing way to spend 104 minutes of ones life.

One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This

Another Iconic band to tick off the list. Even managed to see a Sex Pistol. The support act on stage when I arrived turned out to be Glen Matlock & The Philistines. Plodding through their lumpen generic rock riffings, it was just sad really. Spent most of their set looking at the other punters. I've never seen so many leather jackets/fishnet tights/peroxide blondes/winklepickers/eye-liner/leopard-skin prints/converse all-stars in the same room at the same time.

There seemed to be the usual sad old gits, but also an undercurrent of bright young things. I know the Dolls are one of the most influential bands of all time, but I wasn't aware that they had filtered down so deeply to the flaming teens, and was that Peaches Geldof? Made my way toward the front, then noticed that there was another drum-kit set up, and there was going to be another support band. They burst on and all became clear. They were hysterical, the guitarist in particular was beyond cartoonish, was in fact rock hyper-reality. He must have beeen genetically engineered, as he was Keith Richard/Slash/Johnny Thunders, I've never seen anyone pull so many guitar hero poses, and do them all to perfection. The music was a thumping glam-punk/heavy metal stomp, probably unlistenable in the comfort of your own home, but live farcically invigorating.

In a way the Towers stole some of the New York Dolls thunder (ha ha), as the Dolls seemed to go for volume over visceral impact. Johansen's voice has always been a deep gravelly bluesy growl, and any subtleties of phrasing he may have been capable of were totally drowned in the 12 foot waves of noise. The Johnny Thunders lookalike guitarist seemed stodgy and leaden next to The Rev, though Johansen was the epitome of skinny rock God cool, and, like iggy, one just has to admire the fact that he can still dominate the stage with such ease. Most bands who've been around for 35 years would have a fairly large back-catalogue to chose from, but as the NYD's only managed two albums in their short blaze of glory, the live set consists of the best songs from those, and a scattering of stuff from the new album, which stands up pretty well. Not that the Dolls ever had many truly classic songs, it was their attitude more than anything else that made them such an influence on punk, to start with, and then the whole glam/metal superstar-crud that followed in the US (Kiss/Aerosmith/G'n'R etc..). They finished with the anthemic 'Jet Boy', and I'm sure many of the SOG's present flashed back to their introduction to the Dolls on The Old Grey Whistle Test on November 28th 1973. They did 'Jet Boy' and 'Personality Crisis', and mild-mannered host 'whispering' Bob Harris, obviously deeply offended at their garish theatricality, especially set against the prevailing laid-back quagmire of the early '70's rock scene, described them as 'Mock Rock'. Wonder what he thinks of them now, there was certainly no Mock tonight, but maybe a little too much Rock.

That Was Then, This Is Now

Bay goes bonkers, Eucalyptus euphoric.

Silver Jubilee

Bobby Sands MP, the IRA hunger striker died, Bucks Fizz won the Eurovision Song Contest with 'Making Your Mind Up', Ronald Reagan was shot in the chest by John Hinkley, Bob Marley died of cancer, Charles & Di got married, The Yorkshire Ripper was arrested, Justin Timberlake, Paris Hilton, Craig David, Owen Hargreaves, Beyonce Knowles, Jade Goody and Britney Spears were born. Ricky Villa scored his wonder goal to win the FA Cup for Tottenham. Steve Davis won his first UK snooker Championship and John McEnroe won Wimbledon. Number one singles included Joe Dolce's 'Shaddap You Face', 'Ghost Town' by The Specials, 'Under Pressure' by Queen and David Bowie, and 'Stand and Deliver' and 'Prince Charming' by Adam and the Ants. The Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp was established. 'Chariots of Fire' won the best film Oscar; coming soon to a screen near you were: 'Mad Max 2', 'Raiders Of The Lost Ark'. 'Time Bandits', 'Reds' and 'An American Werewolf In London'. The NME voted 'Nightclubbing' by Grace Jones as their album of the year, also released were: 'Computer World' by Kraftwerk, 'Dare' by The Human league, 'East Side Story' by Squeeze, 'Almost Blue' by Elvis Costello and 'Psychedelic Jungle' by The Cramps, but the charts were dominated by Phil Collins 'Face Value' and 'Ghost In The Machine' by The Police. Watching ITV you would have seen adverts for the Duracell Bunny and a dog doing tricks for John Smiths bitter. The were only 3 TV channels and available for your viewing pleasure were 'Dynasty', 'Brideshead Revisited', 'The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy' and 'Hill Street Blues', Tom Baker made his last appearance as Dr. Who. MTV started in the UK, but God knows how you could watch it.

Meanwhile on October 21st 1981, in a basement in Wardour Street I started working for Rank Phicom Video Group, as was. Ah! seems like only a quarter of a century ago.

Dreamtime #5

Jen and Sid were going to have a boxing match to decide who was going to leave town. They lived in America in a place called Firhatch. Jen was a member of an anti-firearms group whose slogan was 'Yeah Burn Your Guns'. Jen was represented by a mid-twenties Zach Braff look-alike, and Sid was a thickset thirty-something black man, who I've seen in a photograph by Robert Mapplethorpe. Didn't see them fight but saw them sparring, and they looked fairly evenly matched.

Off His Rocker At the Art School Bop

A trip to the Luminaire is always a treat, probably my fave London venue these days.

Unfortunately I got there in time for the first act, Ben Parker. Dark blue Levi's with 2 inch turn-ups, white T with 1/4 inch sleeve turn-ups, unruly James Dean quiff, and a hint of George Michael around the stubbly jaw-line. There's a non-stop production line somewhere churning out these vacuous non-entities. I'd blame Chris Martin, but it's the whole accessibility thing these days, just 'cause anyone can set up a Myspace page, and record some songs in their bedroom, doesn't mean that they have to. If you can hold a tune on the Karaoke machine, it doesn't mean you should inflict yourself on an audience. He seemed to think affecting a Buckleyesque vibrato could excuse a song with a chorus like: 'These are changing times, so straighten crooked lines' repeated ad freakin' finitum. Or maybe I should just turn up later?

Next up was Vinny Peculiar, a pun for a name means your dead in the water from the get go, but he did have an ear for '60's British pop tunes, though witty songs in a Divine Comedy stylee delivered in a Mark E. Smith influenced Mancunian drawl have a limited appeal.

I've tried to see Luke Haines many times over the last few years, but something else has always cropped up, so I was delighted to catch up with him in this intimate venue. The set was quite short, but the power trio really powered through it, a chunk of stuff from the new album 'Of My Rocker At The Art School Bop' and a bunch of solo and Auteurs tunes for the afficiandos. The new stuff seems to focus a lot on the '70's; there was a song about how Gary Glitter's paedophile disgrace had erased the Glitter Band from pop history, Jonathon King's predatory nights at The Walton Hop, and the might of the classic Leeds United team. All were instantly accessible and catchy as hell. He was comfortable and commanding on stage, but seemed to hold the audience slightly in contempt, teasing them by asking them for requests, and then refusing to play them. He added a musical saw player for a few songs, which he seemed to enjoy. He's probably always going to be a cult figure, someone writing intelligent songs about English eccentrics (The Mitford sisters, Freddie Mills, The Rubettes) will find an audience, but a limited, educated. older audience, and you sense a frustration with that fact, and his inability to be able to, or want to, compromise in any way to break out of cult-dom.


Footnote: Haines was one factor in the emergence from my musical dark ages which ran through the late '80's early '90's, when I'd buried myself in a rut of work/family life and could see no point in external enlightenment. I heard 'American Guitars' from 'New Wave' on the David Hepworth show on GLR in '93, which helped with my audio re-think and made me want to find out what was happening musically. I borrowed 'New Wave' from the library, made a cassette copy and played it at work, and gradually my new musical dawn came up.

Oi You! You're Nicked!

Went along to The South Bank last night for the first time in ages to see the first gig at what was billed as The Front Room, but was in fact the foyer of the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Not really a space that lends itself to this type of event, but I guess they think it's more R'n'R than the all seated venues they have. Joan As Policewoman, seems to be a big draw at the mo' as it was heavin'.

The support act was Songdog. I dragged Hywel along to see them at the teeny 12-Bar a few years ago. They are our age, from Blackwood and present a sobering lesson in what might have happened to us in an alternative universe if we'd continued to plough that barren musical furrow. The singer looks like Ned Beatty, with a badly fitted, thinning, spiky peroxide wig. I'd like to think I could have churned out better stuff than his sixth-form pop-cultural-referenced smut, but who knows. One of their songs includes the line; '...and the view from the very top of Twmbarlwm...' which is one of the mountains which overlooks the ex-mining village of Crosskeys. My dad used to take me for walks to the top, where there was a little burial mound, called The Tump. I remember we watched the alarmed flight of larks as we walked, and traced their starting points to find their nests, magically woven circles of long grass, with a fistful of gaping babies inside.

Joan herself was a much more satisfying kettle of fish. Jeff Buckley's ex, a member of Rufus's backing band, and former Johnson she's got a great voice and writes very interesting songs. Her guitar playing reminds me of Buckley, and her singing of Annette Peacock. I don't think she's the finished article yet, but is a huge talent, and gives the impression that she has plenty of room to develop. She was very wacky and giggly between songs, which was a wierd contrast with the songs themselves, 'here's yet another song about obsession' she dead-panned. She was backed with just drums and bass, the drums were over-miked and were way too loud. I think she needs a bigger band to bring out the subtleness of the melodies. The highlights were the songs she sang alone, the title track from her album 'Real Life' was spine tingling, and her final encore of an obscure David Bowie song, 'Sweet Thing', was an unexpected treat.

Al Green

Not really a cinematic event, but a well presented, balanced, restrained yet impassioned plea from the former 'Next president of the United States' to slam the brakes on American environmental excess. It was supposed to be a social event for the Ealing Green Party, but only two of them turned up. Seems odd to me that at a time when the environmental tide is turning the Green Party can't seem to mobilise and take advantage of the potential to have more of a presence in the political arena?

There were some interesting facts from Al; Arnie's new bill to bring the Californian car manufacturers into the 21st century (which they are legally opposing by the way) means that by 2015 US manufacturers selling cars in California will have to make them as environmentally friendly as the Chinese are making their cars today.

Anyway go and see it, and persuade as many Americans to see it as possible.

New Cat On The Block

Treacle has settled in properly now, and has moved down from the study. He has the run of the garden, and after a few scares when he disappeared for a few hours, he's proved to be a stay at home kitty. Which is more than can be said for Pud, who turns up for the occasional snack from time to time. He ain't happy. There have been a few occasions when there's been a bit of hissing between them, but mainly they just tolerate each other, at a distance.

Baby I Can Drive Your Car

After only 7500 hours of lessons, it's finally all over...

Dreamtime #4

I was sitting on the living room couch, when I heard some rustling from the skirting board and two huge cockroaches crawled out. They were more like lobsters, or crayfish and were pink with big flappy claws. They kept making moves toward me, and I threw my slippers and a tea towel at them. I even turned over the coffee table onto one of them, but I knew they were tough critters and I'd need some special equipment to deal with them. What I needed was a large square of thick white card, with a small square missing from the middle, which was covered with cling film. This needed to be placed over the cockroach, so that it was trapped under the central cling film section. I could then hammer a nail into the beasts scaly back.

The Departed: A Departure From Multi-plex Let-downs.

Sometimes even I can have a good night out at The Odeon. Jen came along too, and even she was slightly gripped (though she tried to deny it). Great script, great performances, well crafted but not too slick. I haven't seen too many of Scorcese's recent films, don't think I've seen any at the cinema since 'Raging Bull', and I've not seen 'Goodfellas' which seems to be what most critics are judging this against, but it was nice to see a Hollywood veteran/maverick coming up with the goods, even if it was a remake of a Korean film. If he really needed to, Jack Nicholson not only confirms his supremacy as the leading actor of his generation, but shows the young punks that they've got a ways to go to reach Iconic status.

Dreamtime #3

I was waiting outside one of those hi-tech kerb-side loos for ages. Eventually the door opened and a man lead out two camels??

In The Beginning There Was Genesis P.

Genesis P. Orridge probably first came to my attention following some typically outraged piece in The Daily Mirror from the mid-'70's after some typically outrageous piece of performance art/exhibition. Musically I was certainly aware of the first Throbbing Gristle LP (Second Annual Report), can't remember if I bought it, but definately had the classic(?) single 'United' from 1978. I bought the next album as well, and got this postcard from Cosey Fanni Tutti herself when I was trying to get information about record pressing for the Z-Block project.


I was always aware that he was an arty wanker, but on the other hand I thought it was interesting to have a musical contribution to the punk/post-punk scene from someone who had some kind of transgressive track record. I lost interest as the 1980's dawned and he seemed to spiral into tedious self-indulgence, forming Psychic TV after Throbbing Gristle split.

I had no idea what the new line-up would sound like, having never heard anything by Psychic TV, but just thought it might be a different experience. They'd just come on when I arrived and I was amazed at the conventionality of it all. For someone who pushes most boundaries to breaking point (see here) the line-up of Gtr/Bass/Keybds/Drums/Vocs was remarkably bog standard. As were the sounds, typical Doors/Stooges/Velvets dark&pretty rock. Apart from the odd, contained, feedback frenzy, and the surgically enhanced back projections, this could have been any band who'd immersed themselves in late '60's American garage rock. Nice enough, but a bit safe really. They finished with a pretty good version of the Velvets 'Foggy Notion' which was probably better than Lou Reed could manage nowadays, but then he did the original, 40 years ago, and aguably doesn't need to.

Dreamtime #2

I was on the panel of an X-Factor type show. The act was a self taught interpretive dancer, dressed in a silver leotard. He danced to traditional folk and punk songs, sort of a cross between Michael Clark and Billy Elliot. The cruel verdict was that he was a novelty act and would never make the grade in a proper ballet company.

The Ten Most Irritating Things About Watching 'The Black Dahlia'

1. Everyone says darl-yu instead of day-lee-er. Bleedin' septics.
2. Chunky KD Lang's embarrassing cameo as a torch singer at a Lesbian Bar.
3. Scarlett Johansson's cigarette holder.
4. The villain's horrendous Scottish accent, why not just get a Scottish actor?
5. The waste of resources; sets, props, extras, costumes to film short scenes which added nothing to the storyline, and were surely included because of someone's perverse need to make the film look expensive.
6. Josh Hartnett's deep gravelly voice over. This would have sounded tired and over-used in films made in the 1940's.
7. Fiona Shaw.
8. The novel drags you into the unhealthy obsessions of the cops working on the case, they are presented as men struggling to be good amidst corrupting evil, but never truly succeeding. You never believe in these obsessions in the film, the cops behaviour just seems inexplicable. Just not enough time spent on trying to get into the bruised psyche's of these characters, and too much on getting their suits looking authentic.
9. The plummet in respect for James Ellroy for apparently endorsing this crap.
10. Having to sit in an Odeon, I'm just not accustomed to these non-Arthouse flea-pits anymore, with pop-corn trodden into the carpet and the constant slurp of the bottomless Coke. Yuk.

Allegedly David (Fight Club) Fincher was planning to make a three hour b/w version, but withdrew when he didn't think the studio would go with it. Instead they thought this shite would sell? Well the place was half full, and lots of women, who I can only assume were there to ogle the beefcake?

Dreamtime

Dreamed that we had a massive new garden, however it was full of huge stone mushrooms, which needed to be thinned out before we could plant anything. They had some sort of cartoonish magical quality though so it was hard to decide which ones had to go.

The Empire Strikes Back*

It's taken me a while to come around to Ryan Adams. I've been aware of him for ages, and viewed his crowning as the new Messiah of R'n'R with some suspicion. Last year he released three albums, including a double, which just seemed like grandstanding to me. However after recently hearing the last of those; '29' I thought I might have been being overly critical. So Hywel and I went along to see him at the Shepherds Bush Empire for our first London gig since March. Sadly we were up in the gods, I didn't realise we were on level freakin' three! Hywel was a good sport about it, and I was quite relieved to be able to sit down occasionally after too much bouncing around last night. The support act was Neal Casal, who was pleasant enough, and who I realised later had Ryan Adams playing drums for him, and was himself one of The Cardinals, Adams' backing band.

Everything was running late, and so the band didn't some on 'til about 9.30. The sound was surprisingly good from way on high, even though we saw more of the tops of the band's heads than anything else. It didn't take long to realise what all the hype was about, I had tried to listen to as much of his stuff, that I'd managed to download, as I could over the last week or so, concentrating on the songs featured on recent set lists. All of the songs were consistently good, despite the sheer volume there were no real weak songs, but similarly there were no true standouts, maybe that's what seems to be missing according to my canonical assessment criteria. Played live though every song was a classic, he always seems to range over his entire output, never playing the same set twice, and throwing in loads of new songs and cover versions, so despite my best efforts I only knew about half the songs. 'Magnolia Mountain' was one song that I'd listened to a lot and felt it could really open out live, and it was magnificent. The twin guitars of Adams And Casal reminded Hywel of vintage Wishbone Ash, but even the arch cynic Mr. Thomas had to admit there was a concentrated intensity that was impossible to resist. We could see the ground floor audience standing in rapt delirium, there was no dancing or drunken shenanigans, and the silence between songs was spooky. Ryan is a notoriously sensitive soul though and despite this obvious reverence, following one of his few between song chats (something about drinking tomato juice to battle a chest infection) somebody said something to piss him off, and after an abusive tirade aimed at the heckler he lead the band into one final barricade bursting number, and stormed off the stage - no encore.

This was the second show at Shepherds Bush, and if I'd been the previous night, I would have been straight back again, and paid whatever the touts were asking without blinking. Sometimes I need to get back in touch with what I love about groups playing electric guitars, and there's something elemental about Adam's performance that will re-kindle the flame for a while. He taps into something that makes him a definite must see anytime he's anywhere nearby.



* Adam's is alleged to have recorded an album called 'Star Wars' which was supposed to be released this year, one of the tracks he's been playing live recently is called 'Han Solo's Medicine Cabinet'.

This Town Is Big Enough For The Both Of Them

I was thirteen when I first heard Sparks, probably on Radio Luxembourg (Fab 208) who tended to play unknown new stuff ahead of the more reactive Ray-dee-oh One. Those were the days when an appearance on Top Of The Pops could make a career, and so it was for Sparks, whose wacky dashiness fizzed and popped onto my TV back in 1974. I was already massively over-investing in the significance of music in my life/the world and didn't really have any peers who watched TOTP with the same heightened excitement. Although it would have been talked about on the bus the next day, to most adolescent boys in the Welsh valleys Sparks were just another piece of glam fluff. However buried away inside the pages of the NME, consuming every word in the hope of being able to piece together my new world musical order I knew there was more going on here. Sparks, I read, were two American brothers who had tried and failed to get their band off the ground in the US, and thought they'd try their luck in the UK, seeing the British market as being more open to the camp and crazy. They were highly literate, archly cynical and knowing, post-modern before it had been properly invented, and with a sublime sense of what made a great pop tune. I was hooked, I bought the album 'Kimono My House', which contained their two hits: 'This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us' and 'Amateur Hour' and listened to it incessantly. Listened in a way that was only possible at that impressionable age, I eventually lost the ability to play tracks over and over again, and still be thrilled by them, but during the summer of '74 I could stare in total fascination at the album cover, and inner sleeve for hours. I absorbed and memorised all of the lyrics, which I would quote verbatim to my poor, sweetly indulgent girlfriend of the time, in the foolish hope I was being cool.


I've had a soft spot for them ever since, and have been delighted that they've been able to eke out a pop career, with varying degrees of failure/success. The last decade has seen a mini-resurgence, feted by Blur at the height of Brit-Pop, featured by Morrisey in his South Bank Meltdown festival, their last two albums have been well received critically. And it was to hear them play their most recent album 'Hello Young Lovers' that I went along to The Forum on Saturday. It's an excellent format really, the show was divided in two, the first set was a straight run through of the new album, with some mildly amusing animated projections, the second half being a blasted out greatest hits set. So they get to promote the new album, and also please the long term fans. Which seemed to make up most of the audience, lots of sad middle aged gits like myself, the odd thirty-something couple, but no-one younger than that, and certainly no young lovers. The new album is very good in parts, showing they haven't lost their ear for catchy-to-the-point-of-irritating tunes, but is oddly repetitive in places. The song 'There's No Such Thing As Aliens' consists largely of just that line repeated 34 times in two minutes(I know I just counted them). I was delighted that they showed that they were capable of stepping down from their apolitical podium by changing the lyrics to '(Baby Baby) Can I Invade Your Country'. This is normally a clever piece of word play contrasting crass dating techniques with military invasion, but by singing the 'Star Spangled Banner' in place of the normal verses this became an incredibly potent piece of anti-war pop, far more effective than some blatant piece of angsty propaganda. The greatest hits section was a hoot, I'd shoved myself toward the front, and was soon proving I could still remember the words to songs I'd obsessed over thirty years previously, by singing tunelessly, and bouncing awkwardly along with the rest of the crowd. Pop Perfection.