Well I suppose it wasn't that bad, but after so many glowing reviews (and given that it's billed as a comedy) I expected to laugh at least once. I don't think I even smirked. A dearth of mirth.
In other news, Dean Green wishes to announce his retirement.
I found a poem in my inbox this morning, sent to me by a work colleague. The subject line read: 'I saw this and thought of you'.
The Man In The Bowler Hat
I am the unnoticed, the unnoticeable man:
The man who sat on your right in the morning train:
The man you looked through like a windowpane:
The man who was the colour of the carriage, the colour of the mounting
Morning pipe smoke.
I am the man too busy with a living to live,
Too hurried and worried to see and smell and touch:
The man who is patient too long and obeys too much
And wishes too often and seldom.
I am the man they call the nation’s backbone,
Who am boneless – playable catgut, pliable clay:
The Man they label Little lest one day
I dare to grow.
I am the rails on which the moment passes,
The megaphone for many words and voices:
I am graph, diagram,
Composite face.
I am the led, the easily-fed,
The tool, the not-quite-fool,
The would-be-safe-and-sound,
The uncomplaining bound,
The dust fine-ground,
Stone-for-a-statue waveworn pebble-round.
Once a year, after our staff Christmas meal, I go clubbing. I don't like clubbing - I just go to remind myself why I don't like clubbing. Being teetotal as your colleagues get drunker and more argumentative usually means that you have to adopt a peacekeeping role as the night wears on and this year was no different but that's by the by. Going clubbing is not my reason for posting.
This year's foray took place last night, and I was running my usual taxi service (I dubbed it 'The Party Wagon', but this epithet somehow failed to capture my passengers' imagination was we piled into my Ford Fusion). Afterwards, while waiting for a couple of my tired and emotional colleagues to stop screaming at each other and bawling their eyes out so that I could take them home, I found myself standing on some compacted ice. Conscious as I was about the lack of traction offered by my shoes, it was still something of a shock to find myself hitting the deck so quickly and forcefully. With my hands buried deep in my pockets, I had no way of breaking my fall and landed with my full weight on my ribcage. If you've never had a serious rib injury, be thankful because it's one of the most uncomfortable things you can endure. By that I mean that it's fine so long as you don't breathe, laugh, cough or move. Having a nasty cold, then, doesn't help much. I sneezed earlier and needed five minutes to recover.
Consulting some online sources this morning, it appears that there's not much you can do except to take strong painkillers and ride it out. One site suggested that relief could be achieved by applying some ice. Oh, the irony.
It sounds trite, I know - but be careful out there.
Some very clever people are saying some very stupid things about Rage Against The Machine claiming the Christmas No.1 slot. Some stupid people too, of course, but we aren't worried about them. Most of these comments centre around the supposed irony of asking people to download a song that includes the lyric fuck you I won't do what you tell me. Oh! You've got us all bang to rights there, haven't you? You're dead right and we should all cry ourselves to sleep with shame tonight.
Or, perhaps, you should go back and locate the point that you missed because you were looking the wrong way.
If you do something without really thinking about it just because someone tells you to, you're a sheep. Downloading a piece of music as part of a protest cannot possibly fall into that category. Nobody who downloaded KITN did it without realising what they were doing. No one is now thinking 'Gosh, I was coerced into buying a track that I don't even like! They must have slipped something into my cherryade! Please forgive me Joe, you're such a nice lad and I've ruined your life!' No: people bought it because they believed in seeing real music triumph over cynicism; a song about corruption and racism triumph over a song written to help propel the Hannah Montana commercial juggernaut and appropriated by the Simon Cowell commercial juggernaut. I don't think for a minute that charity was a factor in people's decision making, but that Shelter have also benefitted is a huge bonus.
Sadly, though, some people think it's cooler to just condemn the whole thing as petty, hypocritical, cruel, vindictive or just plain pointless. Come on, think. It's none of these things. It's a huge showing of collective sanity that is very rarely seen from the British public.
Not that it wasn't funny as hell. I laughed out loud when Zack de la Rocha said: "We would like to congratulate Joe and Simon on having the number two single for the Christmas chart!"
Earlier this year I signed up to Spotify, which means that I now have thousands of albums at my fingertips without having to pay a penny for the pleasure, or displeasure, of listening to them. This ought to have signalled a frenzy of indulgence as I immersed myself in the aural equivalent of a supermarket trolley dash, but it didn’t. I love Spotify, but I don’t use it very much. It’s a bit like the internet in general; we all have access to information that could change our lives but, largely speaking, we’d rather spend our time on Twitter and Facebook.
Anyway, my point is that I haven’t heard very many new albums this year and I’m a bit ashamed of myself for that. The LP, as a format, is something that needs to be preserved in the face of ‘pick and choose’ downloading and I feel as though I ought to be doing my bit. Give it an airing on Spotify, then buy it if it’s any good. Easy.
Of the few albums I have heard, I would nominate Paloma Faith’s Do You Want The Truth Or Something Beautiful? as my favourite. She’s an interesting character to say the least, and the album is a belter – especially the title track and New York. She’s one of these people whose speaking voice is so at odds with her singing voice that you wonder if she’s pulling off some insane ventriloquism act, but it works wonderfully. Another album I’ve been listening to a lot lately is Brand New Eyes by Paramore. Yes, yes, I know. I’ve tried my very hardest to hate Paramore because it seems like the right thing to do but it just isn’t working. They’re young, bible thumping Americans who have all the ingredients for being exceptionally annoying and yet they have a knack of writing very good pop songs. Ignorance and The Only Exception are just brilliant. So why do I feel so dirty?
I also have to mention the race for the Christmas number one single. I’m fully behind the Rage Against The Machine hijack campaign, and downloaded my copy on Monday, but I found myself wondering today why anyone cares what is number one at Christmas. We don’t care what’s topping the chart for the rest of the year, so why should the Christmas week be any different? Well, to be honest, it wouldn’t normally bother me that much but Simon Cowell’s outburst on the issue left me with no choice. What a complete arse that man is. If he came out and admitted that he doesn’t give a shit about his artists as long they’re making him money, I’d at least respect his honesty but pretending that The X Factor is anything but a puppet show is absurd. Along with Britain’s Got Talent he’s managed to corner the market in misnamed television phenomena. Still, moaning that no one on The X Factor has ever actually possessed said indefinable attribute is pointless because if they did have it they wouldn’t have applied for such a tacky competition in the first place. The real question is how such a show can attract 19 million viewers for its final. Why do so many people enjoy watching cabaret singers doing cover versions? When I was young I always thought famous people were a different species, somehow above the rest of us, and that was how I liked it. I wanted to be impressed by the things they could do. Nowadays people seem to prefer the idea that just about anyone has the potential to be famous. Perhaps it makes them feel like they might be next? Susan Boyle has sold over four million albums on the back of the fact that she used to look a bit rough. Okay, she can sing a bit, but if she was conventionally attractive in the first place she wouldn't have got anywhere. Being a good singer isn't that unusual, after all. John and Edward (inspired name) are famous for not being able to sing. They are famous for jumping around. Well, aren't they? Stavros Flatley plumb yet further depths.
I'm not saying anything new or interesting here and I'm not trying to, but it's all a bit sad. These programmes won't stop people with real ability from doing their thing of course, but it does rather devalue their achievements. And, if it's getting easier to be famous, what incentive is there for future generations to try any harder than they need to? I just have this chilling vision of parents in 40 years' time bemoaning the music of the day and harking back to when we had 'proper' artists like Girls Aloud and Take That. Or perhaps this is what every generation says. Is that what happens? Have I taken the cheese?
I asked, in the preceding post, for your thoughts on my next project and I'm grateful for your comments. I wasn't expecting a consensus of course, but some ideas clearly have more potential than others.
I'm quite keen on doing part two of Creative Year. It irks me a little that I never finished it, although I know that I had to stop when I did. If I were to resume, therefore, it would have to be under less pressure. Perhaps there would only be five posts per week instead of seven, and I'd definitely want to build up a buffer to avoid pulling late nighters. The only sticking point is coming up with a sufficient stock of new ideas to ensure I don't end up rehashing old ones.
The letter writing idea interests me as well, because it really could lead anywhere. There's a series called The Timewaster Letters in which a guy assumes a false name and sends out all manner of daft correspondence, but I wasn't necessarily thinking along those lines. There could be a serious point to it, at least some of the time. I quite like the idea of writing to people who wouldn't normally expect to receive letters, just to bring some light into their lives.
Volunteer work is something I'd never considered until very recently. I've always been obsessed with making some kind of artistic impression to the exclusion of everything else, but it's becoming clearer every day that fulfilment doesn't reside there. Even if one achieves success, there's very likely to follow an undignified effort to maintain it. And for what? I can't imagine myself ever sitting back and feeling sated, so it's a very odd thing to pursue. I'm coming round to the fact that creative ambition should be a passenger to, and not a replacement for, personal relationships. I need to meet more people, make more friends, expand my experience. Volunteering for something, on the face of it, appears to be a good way of doing that.
As some of you pointed out, there were other things on my list that can be dropped in here or there without necessarily turning them into a project. Or they could just be combined as part of something else. In any case, I feel rather more positive about things now which is a decent starting point.
