Smile Or Die / Endless Ocean 2

It’s been a very successful evening. I’ve written a song that I’m quite proud of*, even though the verse and the chorus do sound a bit welded together, like those cut and shut cars that come apart when you’re doing 70 on the motorway. It’s lovely when people who’s never driven use car metaphors, isn’t it?

It’s a bit belated but I thought I’d blog about the last two things I’ve written for newspapers. The first thing was a review of Smile Or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America And The World. It was a very forced review, proof-read at 4am with my brain screaming at me, demanding to do anything other than think about words, so I’m quite happy with how it came out. The other review was for the fish-based computer game, which I dismissively alluded to in one of my previous blog entries.

This was pretty exciting, as it got in the Guardian’s G2 section. It’s always good when things get in the G2, as the Guardian is a proper newspaper my grandma likes, and she can have a nice read of it, even if she’s only dimly aware of what a computer game is. Not that the Morning Star isn’t a proper newspaper, I just think she worries that by writing for it I’m hanging out with the wrong crowd, and am going to head off to South America to become a charismatic revolutionary leader. If only.

The review also appeared on guardian.co.uk, and for the first time I received a decent flurry of comments. Most of them were overwhelmingly negative, but heigh ho. That’s the internets for you. Or maybe I’m just shite. Either way, they would probably have been even more annoyed if I’d mentioned in my review that I maturely called my character ‘cockmaster’, which led to some saucy exchanges with my salty captain, who couldn’t dive anymore because he had the bends:

Aye aye, Captain Birdseye. I’ll investigate… YOUR PANTS.

It’s probably time I got myself one of those fancy professional journalist websites, with links to everything I’ve written. In the meantime, here is a lovely picture of my dive partner of choice, jism the dolphin.

* GLOCKENSPIEL SOLO

Lahnden Town

We had a nice wander around snowy London today. Here are some highlights.

First up was Denmark Street, where we went in search of twee instruments* for our band, The Leytonstone Shitkickers. There we found the whole of London’s alternative music culture all squeezed into a tiny row opposite the hole in the ground where the Astoria used to be. There’s the 12 Bar Cafe, home of the London anti-folk scene and always full of interesting characters; a couple of recording studios; the wall of dreams, plastered with ads asking for vocalists, or bassists, or anyone, provided you really like the Foo Fighters; and of course, many music shops, most of them full of the kind of people who still think that wiggly-woo Guns & Roses style guitar solos are still the greatest cultural achievement of mankind. Which of course in some ways they are.

The shop we were after was the Early Music shop, cunningly hidden on the second floor of another shop. We opened the door to find it was still the 16th century, with the kind of instruments that would have once been played by minstrels, hopping up and down the country on one leg**, playing amusing ballads in exchange for their daily bread.

Then we made our way to Wardour Street for a cuppa, past one of those space invader mosaics which apparently are everywhere, but I’ve barely noticed them before because I’m too busy thinking big, important thoughts that will one day change or possibly destroy the world:

We ended up in Bar Bruno, an old-school proper Italian cafe, the like of which Soho was once stuffed with but are now sadly rare. It was full of chatty London-Italian staff, lovely booths, and cheap tea. All around us were people reading the Evening Standard and eating Spaghetti Bolognese WITH TOAST. The way it should be.

Opposite was a newsagents called The Hobbit. If anyone knows why there is a newsagents on Wardour Street called The Hobbit, please get in touch.

* I bought a glockenspiel and some pink egg shakers. We’re going to ROCK.
** There is in fact no evidence to suggest that ye olde minstrels were notably lacking in limbs

Islington Swan Crisis

There was a swan in the middle of Cloudesley Road, Islington this morning. It was the biggest swan I’ve ever seen – at least six foot tall, although I did see it over half an hour ago and my memory may already be fading into hyperbole. It was outside the King Of Denmark pub, which has recently been refurbished to stop the old men from going in it, and was surrounded by gawping locals, who had encircled it with bits of white sliced bread as a kind of pagan offering.

I did what anyone would do in this situation, and started taking pictures of it. I stood outside the pub for a better shot, and it reared up at me, hissing, to reveal its full magnificent height, similar to that of a routemaster bus. I didn’t move – I’ve seen nature documentaries – and it calmed down.

I remembered my citizen journalism training and shouted out a question to the locals beyond the line of bread.

“How did it get here?”
“It crashed.”

It must have been from the Regent’s canal down the hill. It was probably fine. It would frighten the locals for a bit longer, some of whom had never seen a swan before, then majestically take to the skies, before crashing once more, due to being laden down by Tesco value sliced white.

I moved on. The swan had made me late for work.

Everybody Was In The French Resistance… Now!

Oh yes, I reviewed an album and things. This was in the Morning Star last week.

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Fixin’ The Charts Volume 1

Take lyrics a bit too seriously? This might just be the band for you.

Art Brut’s Eddie Argos, never one to back away from pop’s vital mission of taking ridiculous ideas to their natural conclusion, has written an album of responses to pop songs that have struck him as unfair or incorrect.

So Avril Lavigne’s Girlfriend is dismissed as the work of a scary stalker, Frank Sinatra is reminded that My Way Is Not Always The Best Way and electro-pop highlight Billy’s Genes looks at Michael Jackson’s ’80s classic from the perspective of the song’s resulting illegitimate child. “You left us in such a mess/no need for a paternity test.”

Remarkably, this album works without ever straying into novelty or pastiche. With Eddie’s trademark dead-pan vocals coupled to Dylan of The Blood Arm’s sweet backing vocals and choruses, EWITFR…N! have produced an early contender for album of the year.

Cultures Of Fear

Hey valued readers. I’ve been a bit too busy with reviews, life and work to do any blogging for a few days. I’ll try to do a ranty roundup of recent events tomorrow, but until then here’s my review of Cultures Of Fear, which as the name suggests wasn’t exactly a barrel of laughs. It appeared in today’s Morning Star.

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Cultures Of Fear
Edited by Uli Linke and Danielle Taana Smith

According to the Home Office website, the current terrorism threat level for the UK is Substantial. In the United States, it is currently Elevated, or Yellow. I don’t know if Substantial or Elevated is more dangerous, and it’s impossible to know when this current, linguistically meaningless level of potential terror is to subside. Possibly never: the home office website goes on to warn “…threat levels do not have an expiry date, and can be revised at any time”

For the authors of Cultures Of Fear, a collection of essays concerning global manifestations of fear and its affect on ordinary people, such disconcerting uninformation would come as no surprise. With contributors including Noam Chomsky and Susan Sontag, Cultures Of Fear forms a coherent look at how fear is increasingly used as an instrument of control via a backdrop of global chaos, instability, terror and war.

Masco’s “Engineering Ruins and Affect” recalls the ‘duck and cover’ and cheerful obliteration drills of the early Cold War Era, a state-led attempt to prepare for an ordered Armageddon; this compares interestingly with Atheide’s “Terrorism and the Politics of Fear”, which notes how the “US Homeland Security advised the American people to buy duct tape and plastic sheeting as a barrier to terrorism”. The point being that this anticipation of victimhood comes with an accompanying curtailment and suspension of civil liberties.

Elsewhere, we find Susan Sontag’s reaction to the abuses at Abu Ghraib – her comparison of pictures taken by US soldiers proudly posing in front of their torture to that of lynching photos from the early 1900s is a chilling one – and the Kleinmans’ “Cultural Appropriations of suffering” examines the neocolonial contradictions of humanitarianism, the phenomenon of ‘compassion fatigue’ and the ethics of photojournalism with reference to Kevin Carter’s infamous images of a Sudanese famine victim – suffering viewed via a paternalistic “ideology of failure, inadequacy, passivity, fatalism and inevitability”.

But perhaps the most moving article in this collection is Solrun Williksen’s “Narrative of an Asylum Seeker”, in which the concepts of nationalities and borders are rendered meaningless by a girl fleeing oppression across continents, coming up against cruel and contradictory authorities and policies, before finally becoming a citizen (and thus an actual person) in Norway. This is a moment of relief in an otherwise bleak and worrying read, which suggests the fight for true freedom – the freedom from fear – will need to be the defining movement of the 21^st century.

Islington pubs: a mini crawl

There’s been a social habit amongst some of my friends for meeting up for drinks on a Wednesday: creatively, they call it Wednesday Drinking. This tradition has lost its way recently, as people settle into their lives of partners and proper jobs and actual cats, but it was re-ignited for 2010 by one of the ringmasters of this ancient and noble tradition.

Who then got ill and cancelled it.

So myself and a couple of likely ladies met up to keep the Wednesday drinking dream alive in their absence.

We went for a jaunt around some of the drinking holes of Islington. First up was the New Rose, a place with decent ales, a bar / lounge separation so distinct that it feels like two different pubs, and a landlord with a great ‘tashe. They also have half-pint ale pots, which is above and beyond the call of duty.

They also have a big sign outside that is hearty and encouraging without ever resorting to the dreaded WACKINESS:

No sign of the pub dog yet, though. Maybe it’s invisible.

Next up was The Crown, a slushy walk up beyond Upper Street and a couple of lovely Islington squares. The Crown seems to be one of those pubs where eating is as important as the drinking, but I’ll forgive them this as the interior is rather lovely:

Also, extra respect for the massive old-fashioned clock, which is exists to tell you how much more time you have to drink before you go back to your miserable lives of not drinking. In this case, 105 minutes. The pub had an older clientele than the previous one, as befitting its backstreets location. There was one guy who looked like he owned the world – given that this was Islington, he probably did. Or at least half of Berkshire.

After a swift pint of 6X, we headed on, this time to a pub that shut down for a while. It was an old spit and sawdust venue, clearly much loved by locals, which has reopened as a place with clean pine tables and a thai menu. The clientele that once populated it have disappeared, and the night we went there was only a table stuffed with a post-work posse and one token local standing proud at the bar. There were no ales available, but we chose the room with the fireplace and went and sat in there.

This was fine for a bit, but there was an awkward moment after we’d settled and i went back to put a squid into the juke box. The barman clocked me about to spend my pound, and brazenly TURNED DOWN the sound before I had my chance to pick my songs. Like he somehow knew who I was and that I was going to play the worse songs in history, to drive out the other eight or so punters.

So I saved my quid and returned to my seat by the fire, suitable chastised.

Next up was the Salmon & Compass, which is more a restaurant that a beer emporium these days. The prices were a bit scary, even by Islington standards – £6.50 for a half pint of ale and a vodka & cranberry – but time had moved on and there was no going back. So we found a corner and chatted about whether the guy across the room who looked like MJ Hibbett was MJ Hibbett.

It was MJ Hibbett.

New Tesco On Pentonville Road Leads To End Of Civilisation

Following on from my last entry…

On my way to work this morning, through the unexpected extra snow* that proves conclusively that global warming is a Marxist plot by those who wish to set up a world government and steal our freedom, I spotted a new Tesco being readied for opening on Pentonville Road.

I was genuinely shocked – surely there are enough Tescos already? One of my favourite bits of the Hitchhiker’s Guide books is the cautionary tale of the planet with slightly too many shoe shops, where it became economically impossible to justify building anything other than shoe shops – eventually the entire civilisation collapsed. I suspect we’re getting close to the Tesco Event Horizon.

There’s a massive new student accomodation complex on Pentonville Road, with big shiny posters by the entrance of models pretending to be aspirational students doing aspirational things like owning iphones and not drinking cider. I’m going to assume that’s the market this latest, potentially civilisation-ending Tesco is going for.

* I was really proud that I’d managed not to blog about the snow. Bollocks.

Islington Music

Like most of you I’m scared of where we’ll likely be in a few years hence – namely living in pods  24 hours a day, pawing at the big green Tesco omnicorp home delivery button for all our consumer needs, be they drugs, genetically modified kittens*, or drugs that make us think we own genetically modified kittens.

So I really like doomed shops. You know the sort of shop I mean – the kind of place that is still miraculously plodding on despite the internet having everything they sell at a much lower price, albeit without the twin gifts of social interaction and talking to someone who knows what they’re talking about.

Islington Sounds is like that. Hidden down a side street behind Upper Street, I check it still exists every time I pass. Finally, on Tuesday, I was brave enough to go inside. The tinkle of the bell as we walked in brought the single member of staff from a backroom, where she had been busy freebasing cocaine, or having a lovely cup of tea while listening to radio four. One of the two. The shop was far too small for me to do what I’d probably have done in a larger shop, ie avoided eye contact and wandered around embarrasedly, before leaving empty handed, so I immediately asked her if she had any ukulele books.

She did, and grabbed all the ones she had and spread them all out on the counter for my perusal. Morgan asked if she had any books on dulcimers. Amazingly, she did, although she wasn’t quite sure what one was. We had a lovely chat about dulcimers for a while, and Morgan found an important line in one of the books, about why the appalachian types stuck to the traditional hymns: “We must remember that the hill people did not believe in different kinds of music.”

We bought our books, and I hope the place keeps on keeping on. It’s lovely.

* Not sure how many GM kittens it would be wise to buy if you live in a pod

The Lonely Princess

I wrote a story for Morgan’s neices for Christmas. Morgan edited it for American consumption, so apologies if some of the spelling seems a bit foreign.

The story was supposed to teach the kids the importance of the three S’s: Sharing, Sisterhood and Socialism. Even though the story takes place under the unoppressive yolk of a benevolent monarchy.

Anyway. Enjoy.

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Once upon a time there was a little girl called Jana, and she was a very lucky little girl. Her mother and father were King and Queen of a small but beautiful country, which meant that she was a Princess. She was named after the brightest star in the sky.

Jana lived in a comfortable castle on the top of a hill. The castle had many rooms and doors, and behind the doors were many magical things, including a room full of dancing pigs, another room with an enormous table covered in unusual and colorful maps of all the strangest lands in the world, and a room stuffed with shining armor, gold cups and diamonds.

But Jana’s favorite room was the room next to her bedroom. It was called “The Royal Playroom,” and had been designed by some of the cleverest men and women in the whole Kingdom. It had all the toys in the world, and a giant bath that was almost like a swimming pool, and when Jana turned on the taps giant rainbows came out, and each color of the rainbow would smell of a different fruit.

But despite all her toys, and her bath, and her dancing pigs, the little princess was quite lonely. She wanted someone to splash with in her pool or to share the games and laughter with. Playing on her own wasn’t very much fun. Her parents were very loving, but they were often very busy, away fighting wars against the giants. They never had time to play.

So one night, when everyone was asleep, Jana snuck out of the castle and using the light of her star to guide her, she made her way to the village at the bottom of the hill. She knew it was very naughty to leave her castle without telling her parents, but she was desperate to find a friend to play with.

It was very late, and as Jana walked across the stone bridge at the bottom of the hill, through the fields of corn and into the village, there was barely a sound save the rushing of the wind in the trees, the burbling of the brook as the water made its way to the sea, and the occasional hoot of an owl. But she wasn’t afraid. The sleeping village looked beautiful under the light of the moon and the stars.

But then, as she reached the outskirts of the village, she heard a big squeak: it sounded like an enormous mouse. Jana had only ever seen small mice before, so she opened the door and went into the barn, hoping to see a mouse as big as a person. She’d always wanted to see an enormous mouse.

The light from the moon and the stars streamed into the barn and shone on the straw. Then something in the straw sneezed: sneezed with a squeak.

“That’s funny,” said Jana to herself. “Mice don’t sneeze!”

“I ain’t a mouse!” said a voice from the straw. And a little girl, even smaller than Jana, stood up, shaking bits of straw from her hair and overalls.

“What’s your name, mouse girl?” said Jana.

“I ain’t a mouse, but I am a girl,” said the girl. “My name’s Haley.”

Jana liked Haley straight away. She had a little cute nose like a button, two twinkling eyes, and unruly hair that tumbled down the back of her head like a waterfall.

Haley explained that she was an orphan, and spent her days stealing turnips and her nights sleeping in the barn.

“But when do you play?” asked Jana

“Play? What’s play mean?” said Haley, looking all puzzled.

And Jana was sad. She realized that Jana had never played a game in her whole life.

“Playing is having fun and using your imagination,” said Jana. She could be quite good at explaining things. “Let’s play a game together!”

And they did. They played hide and seek, and hopscotch, and a clapping game, and a special animal game. And Jana found she was having the most fun she’d ever had in her life, even though she was far away from her playroom full of toys and games, and her room full of dancing pigs.

She had so much fun that she snuck out every night, heading down the hill to her new friend, the pockets of her cloak stuffed full of cakes, and pies, and other treats for her hungry friend. And every night they’d invent a new game, and they played it together, and the barn was full of laughter and giggles.

But one night, when she was in the barn playing with Haley, Jana’s nanny noticed that she was missing, and raised the alarm. Her parents were scared that the giants had taken her, and so, with much ringing of bells and gongs, woke up their entire army and its elephants and tame lions and tigers.

With much crashing and trumpeting and roaring, the King, Queen and their army galloped down the hill, the moonlight flashing against their crowns and the tusks of the elephants. When she heard the noise, Jana ran to the door of the barn and looked out. But Haley was scared and hid underneath the hay.

The King, seated atop his favorite elephant, spotted Jana and told his army to halt.

He climbed down from his elephant and ran up to his beloved daughter. He was very, very angry, because he loved her very much and was worried that she might have got lost.

But before Jana could explain herself, Haley sneezed one of her squeaky mouse-like sneezes. The King, and the Queen, and all the elephants and lions and tigers all turned their heads to look at the small girl as she emerged from the straw.

“I’m sorry, sir,” said Haley, “but I’m Jana’s friend and we were playing a game together. I’m sorry if I got her in trouble.”

There was a silence. All the elephants and lions seemed to hold their breath. The only sound was the rushing of the water and the hooting of a passing owl.

Then, slowly but surely, a smile spread across the King’s face. Meanwhile, still seated on her royal snow leopard, the Queen was laughing, but crying, at the same time.

“No,” said the King. “I should be the one who is sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you, with all these elephants, lions and tigers. We use them to fight giants, but you’re not a giant. You’re a little girl – a beautiful little girl, who is friends with our daughter. And a friend of our daughter is a friend of ours.”

The King hugged Haley, and the Queen hugged Jana, who by now had tears running down her cheeks. And they all walked back up the hill to the castle together, with Haley staying in Jana’s room.

Haley loved Jana’s room, and her bath as big as a swimming pool, and her incredible toys and games, and her room full of dancing pigs. And the King and Queen loved having her in the castle, being friends with Jana, and so they ended up adopting Haley, and so she became a Princess too. And the two princesses loved to play together, inside in their room or outside under the clouds and the sun. And, on special occasions, during the full moon, the King would take the two princesses to the tallest tower in the castle, and they’d stare at the sky together through a giant telescope. And they’d gaze at the moon, and the stars, and talk about when they first met, in the barn, under the night sky.

And they lived happily ever after.

Sounds of 2010

Here are my tips for 2010 – two of these appeared in yesterday’s Morning Star. One of them didn’t.

Stornoway

Hotly tipped by the claque of hacks, pluggers and insiders who make up the industry taste making machine, Stornoway are thus the only band on this list who may actually make it big. Hailing from Oxford (not Stornoway), the band are made of gently eccentric academics with a clear love for Celtic folk and Belle & Sebastian.

Their music is of the wistful, pretty, crystalline type, with big pop balladry, trumpets, and yearning vocals reminiscent of King Creosote. The multi-layered, Fleet Foxes like Zorbing promised much, and if they can keep themselves from translating Russian novels and going on tandem bicycle rides long enough to produce an album, mild mannered world domination could be theirs.

Allo, Darlin’

Allo Darlin’ are the vehicle for the songs of Elizabeth Morris, a young Australian who decamped to London in search of adventure and the raw materials to create the perfect pop band. Five years down the line and she’s nearly there – the flute-enhanced indiepop jangle of Polaroid Song, and the brassy, joyous stomp of Henry Rollins Don’t Dance were two of the best singles of 2009.

Masters of intimate lovelorn balladry, up-tempo ukulele-pop, and armed with a voice to match a young Kirsty MacColl, Allo, Darlin’s debut album comes out in February and deserves the love of shy extroverts everywhere.

Shrag

Shrag sound like a pissed off mash of Kenickie, Elastica, Le Tigre, The B52s, The Long Blondes and Bis. Thus, they have the potential to be the best band of all time.

Last year’s eponymous debut was a collection of their singles so far, and suggested that Shrag are surrounded by shit lovers, trendy pricks and other assorted idiots, and they’ve had enough. The delightful Pregnancy Scene bewails all their friends having kids too young, and the lovely Forty Five 45′ seems to be about hating bands simply because someone you think is a twat likes them. Loud, shout and funny, I await Shrag’s next move with great interest.