My Top 10 Gigs of 2007

Don't you just hate those end of year countdown shows? Cheap, schedule-padding fodder consisting of cobbled together clips and witless pundits pontificating witlessly. I even wrote about me intense dislike for this pernicious genre here. Oh, how I hate them.

Here's a countdown of my favourite gigs of 2007:


10. Jeffrey Lewis & The Jitters, Birmingham Hare & Hounds, 20th October

My third Jeffrey Lewis gig and the best so far. I wrote a lengthy review of it here. In that review I forgot to mention that in addition to Jeffrey's uncle - Professor Louis - there was also support from local ska hipsters Dexter. Let me remedy that now: I thought they were fab. This belated endorsement is a little pointless, however, as Dexter have since imploded-slash-morphed into a new popular beat combo called walk.don't.walk. Oh, well - it's the thought that counts.



9. CSS, Latitude Festival, 14th July

A guilty pleasure, and we're all allowed those. CSS's vibrant set encapsulated the wonderful Latitude Festival for me, and their track "Let's Make Love and Listen to Death From Above" was this year's feelgood Summer song of choice with my tinny-but-temperamental car stereo.

The Latitude weekend was one of my highlights of this year for me, and this is the first of several mentions it gets on this list. I've already booked my ticket for next year's. You should, too.



8. Damo Suzuki and his Assortment of Sound-Carrying Biatches : Birmingham Hare & Hounds, August 16th

A mad, mad night of madness and the madness does not diminish with the passage of time. I wrote about it here. Did I mention it was mad?

Here's a pic wot Pete took:

Former Can-man Suzuki played what was possibly the same song repeatedly (it was hard to tell) with a rotating lineup of "sound carrying" local bands including The Courtesy Group, Mills and Boon and the mighty Modified Toy Orchestra (whose gig at the Birmingham Town Hall in October very almost nearly got into this Top 10).

Here some YouTubery featuring Damo at a Courtesy Group event from 2005:





7. Tony Bennett, Birmingham Town Hall, 8th May

The next best thing to seeing Sinatra live. As Stan Lee would say, "'Nuff Said."




6. Jarvis Cocker: Latitude Festival, 15th July

He is Jarvis: that is reason enough.

As an encore he played Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger".

Need I say more?



5. Jim White & Jenny Owen Youngs, Birmingham Barfly, 18th October

A headliner and his support. Is that allowed? Shouldn't that be two separate entries?

It's my list. They're my rules. Deal with it.

Here's Jenny Owen Youngs on the night in question, courtesy of YouTube and a public-minded citizen:



And here's Jim White at a different Barfly on the same tour singing the wonderfully-titled "A Bar Is Just A Church Where They Serve Beer":



4. The Pogues: Birmingham Academy, 16th December

Tough call. I was very tempted to place them higher as they played an absolute blinder of a gig, even by the legendary standards of a Pogues' gig. But it was only a fortnight ago (and I only wrote about it two blog entries ago) and I like to give my perceptions space to breathe, so I'll exercise some restraint.

But, Goddamnit - that was one helluva night...

Here's a taster from the night, courtesy of yet another public-spirited soul & YouTube:



3. The National: Latitude Festival, 15th July; Birmingham Irish Centre, 6th November

So good I saw them twice this year. That should say it all.

This is them quiet:

This is them loud:


2. Devo: Birmingham Symphony Hall, 22nd June

At the beginning of the year, Devo - they of the yellow boiler suits, red plastic hats and New Wave bequirkery - weren't really on my Gigs I Must Really Go To This Year list. But my friends Pete and Jez - two self-confessed Devo spuds - were so excited at the prospect of their first UK tour in 17-odd years that it would have been churlish of me to decline the invite. So I went.

Let's just say that their set lit me up, fused my synapses and left me smiling like a simple-minded child. I'd never thought that such hard-rocking euphoria could be produced within the ornate surroundings of Birmingham Symphony Hall. I wasn't alone: the venue's security staff looked positively bewildered.

I am convinced. I am converted. I am Devolved.




1. Arcade Fire: Latitude Festival, 15th July

I mentioned before that the Latitude Festival was one of the highlights of my year. Well, this was the highlight of Latitude.

Arcade Fire concerts are legendary, so my expectations were high. That can be a kiss of death, but thankfully they delivered. It was everything I'd hoped for and more.

Sublime, awe-inducing, breathtaking. Up there with Radiohead at Glastonbury '97. Really: that's how good it was.


Honourable mention should go to the following who didn't quite make the list: The Modified Toy Orchestra at Birmingham Town Hall [15th October]; Misty's Big Adventure & The Destroyers at Brum's Rootsville Festival [30th June]; Wilco [who I heard but couldn't see so can't include], Rodrigo Y Gabriela [disqualified as I only caught the last 15 minutes of their set, which seemed pretty fucking awesome], The Good The Bad & The Queen, Bat For Lashes and Joan as Policewoman at Latitude; Bearsuit at the Sunflower Lounge [September 7th].

Also, despite the cruel and resentful things I said in a previous post, I quite enjoyed The Police at the NIA, too. Begrudgingly.

It's only now that I realise that 2007 was the year I became a fully fledged gig tart.

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Expletive Deleted, Deletion Retreated

It's a bit late in the day, but I can't talk about The Pogues without at least mentioning the recent brouhaha over the re-release of their classic seasonal hit Fairytale of New York (AKA The Greatest Goddamn Christmas Song Ever).

In case you missed it, BBC Radio 1 hit the headlines exactly a week before Christmas Day when they announced that they would censor the song for broadcast. The offending lyrics were embedded in the song's penultimate verse, in which Shane MacGowan memorably exchanged a barrage of earthy insults with the late Kirsty MacColl:

You're a bum
You're a punk
You're an old slut on junk
Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed
You scumbag, you maggot
You cheap lousy faggot
Happy Christmas your arse
I pray God it's our last

Radio 1 announced they would dub out the words "faggot" and "slut" and told the BBC News website: "We are playing an edited version because some members of the audience might find it offensive." According to BBC News, a Radio 1 spokeswoman said the station's management met on 18th December, discussed the issue and '"had made their decision' and would not be backing down."

Later that day - and with almost textbook comic timing - the BBC News website announced: "Radio 1 backs down in Pogues row."

It made me laugh; things like that always do. But it didn't make everybody laugh. Veteran gay rights activist Peter Tatchell said: "The word 'faggot' is being sung as an insult, alongside 'scumbag' and 'maggot'. In this abusive context it is unacceptable." There was even a lively debate on the rehabilitation of the term "slut" BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour. The Pogues, of course, got their name from a quaint Irish expression. Someone should explain to these people what "pogue mahone" means.

The news media seems to have overlooked the fact that a variation of this non-story has happened before. Some years ago former Boyzone frontman (frontboy?) Ronan Keating recorded a cover of the song and changed one of the offending lines to "you scumbag, you maggot you're cheap and you're haggard." I saw him in an interview on a Pogues documentary last year and he claimed that he was pressurised into doing this and - apparently - still feels bad about it. Now, I don't think it will come as a surprise to anyone that I'm not exactly a fan of Ronan Keating and his oeuvre, but when the former front man of a boy band - a class of performer not renowned for their fierce artistic integrity - expresses guilt over an act of cultural vandalism you know it must be pretty serious.

I don't have the time or the inclination to write a lengthy essay on Neo Puritanism so I won't. Let's just say that it seems to me that if we were to delete from every song, movie or book every word, phrase or pejorative term that somebody somewhere finds deeply offensive we'd live in a world with a lot of dead air. The only safe option for artists would be instrumental-only tracks, silent movies and Bowdlerisation. I don't think I want to live in that world. I'd probably get a rash.

There's plenty of things in this world I find deeply offensive and the list seems to grow every day. Most of what I hear on Radio 1 nowadays offends my sensibilities, but that's just me being an old fart and having an atavistic hatred for bland, production-line pop and charisma-free DJs. Peter Tatchell often offends my sensibilities, not because of his gay rights activism - I've no problem with that - but because I get the impression he's a pinch-faced, self-righteous, humourless churl. I am rather fond of Woman's Hour, however, but that's because I'm an unrepentant Radio 4 junkie.

But while there are plenty of things that offend me, I wouldn't want them to be censored. On a more personal note, as an Irishman I don't much care for the term "mick". I'm sure Shane MacGowan doesn't like it, either. It's a racial slur, and I don't like racial slurs. But I don't let the use of it in one of my favourite films - Withnail & I - interfere with my enjoyment of the film. And I certainly wouldn't want it to be dubbed out or exchanged for something more benign. That would be dumb as rocks.

A spokesman for The Pogues said that the band "found it amusing" that Fairytale of New York "should suddenly have been deemed offensive." I find it all a bit amusing, too. Still, I can't help but wonder whether which other twenty year-old songs would upset the Neo Puritans.

Would Duran Duran's 'Hungry Like The Wolf' be condemned for encouraging binge eating?

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The Pogues, Birmingham Academy, 16th December 2007

I went to see The Pogues the other week. Really, I did.

I suppose I should write a review or something, but it all seems a bit redundant. A Pogues gig is everything you'd expect a Pogues gig to be, only moreso. It was boozy, bawdy, boisterous and - by bloody bejaysus - it was a whole lot of fun.

This wasn't the first time I'd seen them live, and it won't be the last. At least, I pray God it won't be the last. Shane turned 50 on Christmas day and has spent most of those years living on a diet that would make Dr Gillian McKeith question her faith. He and the lads [sadly minus the great Philip Chevron, recently diagnosed with throat cancer] belted out their Anglo-Irish splicing of Irish folk and punk rock like they've always done: with demented passion and shambolic gusto.

They'd mixed things up a bit since the last time I saw them. This time around there was less reliance on their excellent mid-80s masterpieces Rum, Sodomy & The Lash and If I Should Fall From Grace With God. Amongst other things, the capacity crowd were treated to blistering renditions of 'Boys From The County Hell' and 'Streams of Whiskey' from Red Roses For Me, 'Summer in Siam' and 'Sayonara' from Hell's Ditch and 'Rainy Night in Soho' from 1986's Poguetry in Motion EP. There were others, I'm sure, but I'm relying on memory here. This was, after all, a Pogues gig. You don't take notes at a Pogues gig, let alone remember much.

But while there was a welcome extension to the catchment area of their setlist, in all other respects it was business as usual. They're not the kind of band who do radical reimaginings of their classics. You won't hear 'Fiesta' delivered a capella or a 180bpm drum'n'bass 'Dirty Old Town'. No, The Pogues give their audience exactly what they want - and why shouldn't they? This was, after all, a nostalgia gig. And don't be getting sniffy about that: if a man can't wallow in unbridled nostalgia at this time of year - with the band who were responsible for The Greatest Goddamn Christmas Song Ever - than when can he?

The atmosphere, of course, was wild and incandescent. It always is when The Pogues play, but this time it felt even more intense. At times it seemed more like a football match than a gig, although that might have something to do with the recurring chants of "One Shane MacGowan, there's only one Shane Mac-Gow-an" to the tune of the Macarena. You get a lot of that at Pogues gigs.

You also get a lot of drinking. Not that I'm being judgmental: I did a lot of drinking, too. It wasn't really an evening for the cappuccino crowd. But as I found myself caught up in the booze-fuelled, slam-and-embrace-the-bystander carnage, I couldn't help but feel a sudden twinge of irony. Was I turning into a caricature of myself? Were we all turning into characters from a Pogues' song?

Maybe, maybe not. Who cares? I was having fun. Everyone else was having fun. As soul searches go it wasn't exactly thorough. In fact, you couldn't call it cursory.

Brother Younger and I took our dear oul' mum to the gig. Now, I wouldn't normally be so irresponsible as to encourage a senior citizen (however feisty she may be) to go to a spit-and-sawdust, Rock-and-Roll venue like the Birmingham Academy. But The Pogues mean a lot to the Lennon family. Long ago and far away I got my Dad into the Pogues and my Dad got me into Johnny Cash. I like to think of that as a perfect, mutually beneficial cultural exchange programme. Dad passed away twelve years' ago but Mum, Brother Younger and I still have vivid memories of family holidays in the Lake District with a soundtrack made up of 'Sick Bed of Cuchulainn', 'Drunken Ira Hayes' and 'Sally MacLennane'. Like I said, The Pogues mean a lot to us.

The Academy is a standing-only venue and Mum has a slightly dicky knee, so she got herself a seat in a zoned-off disabled section with a perfect view. Mum's very resourceful like that. While she was there she got talking to a middle-aged couple, a lady on a wheelchair and her able-bodied boyfriend/husband/significant other. Mum's very good at introducing herself to strangers, too.

Anyhow, as the night progressed the man got more and more wasted. After a minor altercation with a bouncer, eventually and inevitably he chucked his guts up all over the feet of his wheelchair-bound significant other. She had to clear it up after him.

If that isn't a scene straight out of a Pogues song I don't know what is.

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I've been quiet again

Enjoy the silence, because it won't last. There's a reason for this, of course. There's always a reason.

I'm hammering the keys of my bruised and woe-begotten laptop at 3.15 am on Christmas morn. There's a reason for that, too, but it's not what you might think.

I've just finished building my brother Rob's Christmas present. I hope he likes it. My brother Rob - AKA, Brother Younger - is somewhat more practical and pragmatic than me. He's a carpenter by trade, and a very good one at that. He enriches people's lives through the medium of wood and when he builds something he builds something useful like a kitchen or a staircase or a patio. Being somewhat less practical and pragmatic than him, I built him a website. It involved no heavy lifting and I managed to complete it without getting a splinter. Ree-zult.

It's a fairly modest affair, but I'm happy with the results. You can find it at www.roblennon.com.

Initially, I tried to build the site using Notepad, Paintshop Pro and my somewhat rusty grasp of HTML. I say "rusty", but I doubt my web design skills were ever metallurgically pure. In any case, I tried to build a site the old-fashioned way and the results were squonky to say the least. If I left it as it was it would have looked so late-1997 that the Government would probably have slapped a conservation order on it and declared it a Website of Special Scientific Interest.

In the end I cheated and used a rather nifty hosting and website design package called Mr Site's Takeaway Website, and it did exactly what it said on the tin. Granted, I fiddled around with the HTML a bit, but that's just the way I am.

As a brief aside, Brother Younger - when he's not being more practical and pragmatic than me - is also prone to low humour and theological high jinks. It must be a family trait. Like I said, he's a carpenter, and he once told me that: "In this line of work, the next step on the career ladder is Messiah."

If you live in or around Birmingham, if you're partial to low humour and theological high jinks and if you have a home or a business that contains wood, you really should go here and give him a call.

Merry Christmas, by the way.

Retina Burn

Rol tells it like it is:

And finally, why is it that when you get one of the aforementioned crap-headlight types behind you, and slowing down to let them pass has no effect, they're always going to the exact same place as you? You keep thinking, they're bound to turn off here, they're bound to turn off there, but no, they're with you all the way. All the way to your office parking space, all the way home to your very driveway / garage / onstreet parking area. I'm surprised they don't follow you inside and ask for a cup of tea. Or a cloth to polish the dirt off their headlights... just in case they're not dazzling enough.

The National, Birmingham Irish Centre, 6th November 2007

"I wish that I believed in fate

I wish I didn't sleep so late

I used to be carried in the arms of cheerleaders."

- The National: Mr November

"Everything I can remember

I remember wrong."

The National: Daughters of the SoHo Riots

It’s been a long time since I last visited Birmingham’s Irish Centre. I remember going there as a child, my Dad supping a pint of Guinness in the lounge while my little brother Rob and I scoffed vinegar-soaked chips and slurped watered-down Coke and tried to play pool on a table we could barely reach. Back then, Rob was significantly shorter than me and “little brother” was more than just a figure of speech. Ah, simple times.

And, look… there I am again: slightly older, none-the-wiser and now I’m standing outside the Irish Centre. I’m waiting for the coach that’ll take my family and me to Aunt Maria’s cottage in rural County Monagahan - via Hollyhead and the Irish Sea - and aren’t I the sulky wee gobshite! Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan was about to be released on the big screen and I was going to an Irish village with one shop, three pubs and no cinema. There was no doubt in my mind that I wouldn’t get to see Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan in the way that God intended, and this caused me great anguish. But I’d more than make up for it in later years, and – for that matter - in recent weeks.

As I got older, the Irish Centre became a regular fixture in my teenage calendar. I went to numerous gigs there – from late-80s seminal indie darlings like The Sundays to raucous Irish folk bands like the Wolfe Tones. It was also the regular venue for my sixth form college’s end-of-term disco. Yes, we called them “discos” and we weren’t being ironic or post-modern. That’s how O-L-D I am.

I can still remember one end-of-termer during my late teens, as the proper old-school, non-superstar DJ – a middle-aged man known as The Mighty Quinn – put on the obligatory Pogues track and the dancefloor erupted, as Anglo-Irish dancefloors have a tendency to do during obligatory Pogues tracks. It was Fiesta, one of the barnstormers from the classic If I Should Fall From Grace With God album, and it wasn’t long before I found myself entwined in a spinning huddle of drunken bodies. Fast, faster then even faster we spun, like some booze-fuelled, high-octane centrifuge of booze. Faces, lights and sounds melted into a dizzying, synaesthetic blur until, inevitably, I lost my grip, flew through the air and crashed into some vacant tables and chairs parked nearby. Within seconds I was back on my feet - dusting off the booze, ash, glass and bits of table – and launched myself back into the fray with tremendous gusto.

These days, my recovery time is a bit more sluggish. If I was catapulted though the air and crashed into furniture now I’d probably be in a body cast typing this with broken fingers. Or dead. Or possibly a broken-fingered corpse.

Like I said, it had been a long time since I’d last visited Birmingham’s Irish Centre. More than seventeen years had gone by since I’d last made an eejit of myself in the main hall, but when I went to see The National last month very little had changed. The same tricolour flag was hanging in the corner, the same Irish lakeside mural was on the wall and – unless I’m mistaken – the same fittings and fixtures were behind the bar. It was as though the place had been preserved in amber, a weird time-capsule of faded 70’s working class elegance. Nothing had changed, only me.

For me the Irish Centre is still loaded with meaning, and few places resonate with my memories – with my personal history and mythology - in quite the same way. As I glanced around the main hall – at the chipped paint on the Céad Míle Fáilte sign, at the school assembly hall stage with its gold foil drapes - it set off a wild cascade of half-remembered moments. Dreamlike glimpses of lost innocence and lurid triumphs, a nonlinear slideshow of images that all run together and never make sense. The shy 16 year-old gracefully disappears in a room while his boisterous older incarnation raises his heavenly glasses to the heavens. Snapshots from a simpler time, when all the wine was all for me and we were heirs to the glimmering world.

It was the perfect place to see a band like The National.

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Did Morgan Spurlock find Osama bin Laden?

From MSNBC News:

Rumors are flying that filmmaker Morgan Spurlock of "Super Size Me" fame may have done what the United States government has failed to do for the last six years — find Osama bin Laden.

The speculation first began at the Berlin International Film Festival in February, where Spurlock showed a select group of potential buyers 15 minutes of footage from his new documentary, "Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?" The film follows Spurlock through the Middle East in his search for the elusive leader of al-Qaida. According to Slashfilm.com, The Weinstein Co. quickly snapped up the picture after seeing the clips.

Adding to the belief, Daniel Marracino, the film's director of photography, is quoted in Variety, saying of the movie, "We've definitely got the Holy Grail."

BBC News haven't picked this up as yet, and perhaps with good reason. The way I see it, it either has the potential to be the single biggest body blow to the Bush Administration's legacy or it's a misguided cosmic-scale hoax that would put Morgan Spurlock in the Clifford Irving league and potentially wreck his career. But it does present a tantalising prospect: could a likeable documentary-maker who made his name bingeing on burgers have accomplished what the world's only super power and the global intelligence community have monumentally failed to do?

Sometimes a 'WTF?' just isn't enough.

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Brummie of the Year 2007 is....

(Sustained drumroll. Collective gasp of anticipation. Vigorous wrestling with a glitzy-looking envelope.)

...John Tighe, the Landlord of the mighty Spotted Dog pub in Digbeth.

Congratulations to a well-deserving winner. This man has taken a stand against the gentrified hordes, and for that I salute him. You can read about John's valiant efforts at his campaign website. May his commitment to the authentic live music experience continue to upset the delicate sensibilities of irredeemable gobshites and their polite, James Blunt-soundtracked dinner parties.

So say we all.

Commiserations to the runners-up, particularly my good friend and erstwhile gigpimp Pete Ashton. Here's the full results, courtesy of the award's organisers Birmingham It's Not Shit :

Who’s Brummie of The Year 2007?

• Richard Pawley (1%, 10 Votes)
• Condori : Big Chief Busks With Recorder (hats off to the buskers) (2%, 20 Votes)
• Martin Mullaney (2%, 25 Votes)
• Soweto Kinch (4%, 44 Votes)
• Carl Chinn (4%, 48 Votes)
• Catherine O’Flynn (12%, 133 Votes)
• Lisa Meyer & Jenny Moore of Capsule (16%, 186 Votes)
• Pete Ashton (29%, 336 Votes)
  
• John Tighe of The Spotted Dog (31%, 353 Votes)

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Voix pour Pete.

As I mentioned in a previous post, my good friend and erstwhile gig pimp Pete Ashton is in the shortlist for Brummie of the Year. The deadline to vote is midnight tonight, and last time I checked, Pete was in second place.

As I mentioned previously, Pete has tirelessly encouraged, urged and sometimes forcibly coerced the city's artistic community to use the Internet to their best advantage. Pete is a true renaissance man - a world-renowned neurosurgeon, a leading particle physicist, a record-breaking racing car driver and a chart-topping rock star - and many of us feel that his groundbreaking work in cartography has helped put Birmingham on the map

Now, I don't know about you, but I don't think its right that someone with these credentials should end up as number two. It's undignified, and it makes the rest of us look bad.

So - for one last time - I urge you to go here and Vote for Pete.

Yes, you. Don't try to look away. That won't work.

Evel Knieval is Dead

As a 70's kid, Evel Knieval will always have a special place in my heart. I spent many a Saturday morning tearing up and down the living room carpet with my mean and menacing Ideal Toys wind-up Evel Knieval Hawk Cycle set. Not the Stunt Cycle that everyone else had, but the goddamn Hawk Cycle. I also had a rather groovy and massive Evel Knieval Stunt Van, a sort of plastic moulded, bachelor pad Wendy House on wheels. And, no, it wasn't girly. It was positively Gonzo.

Like any self-respecting Age of Beige pre-pubescent with a wind-up Evel Knieval Hawk Cycle and Stunt Van, I'd re-enact the [other] Jumpsuited One's death-defying stunts using anything I could lay my clumsy wee hands on. With hindsight, some of these rug-based feats of derring-do were quite surreal. Jumping over scores of double decker buses is mad enough, but jumping over die-cast metal replicas of James Bond's silver Aston Martin and white Lotus Esprit, Starsky & Hutch's Ford Torino, the Tracy family's Thunderbird 2, an Eagle Transporter from Space: 1999 and a Six Million Dollar Man action figure is positively buggier than batshit. I'd like to have seen the real Evel Knieval try that.

(No, I'm not being facetious. I really would like to have seen the real Evel Knieval try that. Really.)

Earlier I glibly mentioned the word 'Gonzo' in passing, but a few years' ago I saw Evel Knieval being interviewed on a BBC TV documentary and was quite taken aback by how Gonzo he really was. He actually looked a bit like Hunter S Thompson, but maybe a pair of oversized Polaroid sunglasses will do that to a man. In any case, he told the interviewer about a biography that had been written about him in the 70s that he took objection to. It made all sorts of lurid claims about his private life and eventually the subject caught up with his biographer and set the record straight, Evel Knieval style. I can't remember the details, and I'm paraphrasing ever-so-slightly, but he said something along the lines of: "Well, a man can't type with broken fingers."

Happy landings, Evel Knieval. May your X-2 Skycycle take you to a better place.

Rest in Pieces.

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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

To some, it may look like a typically seedy New York intersection. To others - and you know who you are - it may convey a certain spooky resonance...



More here.

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Is Nothing Sacred?

Comedic actor John Michael Higgins ("Best in Show," "Fred Claus") has been cast in the lead role of an American remake of cult Irish comedy "Father Ted."

According to Higgins: "It's not on Craggy Island, it's a fishing village down on its luck in New England..."

The big question is, will it work? Only a scant few shows (eg. "Pop Idol", "The Office") have made the transition, most have crashed and burned or not even gotten off the ground. Higgins himself is dubious "The English have a very robust history of being unkind about religion. We don't have that in our country, we're frightened of it. It's basically that you guys are doing an Irish joke, and we don't have that. So I'll be Father Ted, we'll see how it goes."

Shooting is scheduled to begin in January.

From here.

Fecking eejits. It's almost enough to make you want to support Blasphemy Laws, if it wasn't for the fact that Father Ted itself is probably blasphemous.

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Dystopian Myopia

I finally got around to watching the film Children of Men this evening. First impressions? Let's see: "Phew", "Fucking Hell" and "Wow". Those were my first impressions.

I've always been something of a connoisseur of dystopian fiction. I don't know where it began. Maybe it was while reading the classic comic series V For Vendetta at a formative age, or maybe it goes further back. Perhaps it was Judge Dredd in 2000AD, or maybe it was the "Days of Future Past" storyline in the The Uncanny X-Men comic series. This will mean nothing to anyone who wasn't raised on Marvel Comics, but I can still remember how that chilling tale of a dark future fried the circuits of my ten year-old brain. To this day I continue to suffer from an irrational fear of giant purple robots.

Or maybe it wasn't comics at all. Perhaps it was watching the "Mirror, Mirror" episode of Star Trek, the original series from the 1960's (not to be confused with, um, shit). That was the one where Kirk, Bones, Scotty & Uhura found themselves in a twisted parallel universe where the Enterprise was the flagship of a sadistic, totalitarian Empire, their crew mates were evil no-good-shit doppelgangers and Spock had a sinister looking goatee. This story had quite an impact on me, as anyone who's seen the current state of my facial hair will testify.

(I can also remember having some kind childhood epiphany whilst watching the cult 70s sci-fi flick Logan's Run, but I'm not altogether sure that was triggered by the film's bleak post-apocalyptic backdrop and chilling theme of state-enforced population control. It probably had more to do with seeing Jenny Agutter in a skimpy sci-fi skirt.)

As I reached my teens this interest in the genre was fuelled by films like Blade Runner, Fahrenheit 451, Brazil, Escape From New York and Orson Welles's adaptation of Kafka's The Trial. It was also nourished by comics like Alejandro Jodorowsky & Jean "Moebius" Giraud's Incal trilogy and by the novels of Philip K Dick. By the age of 17 I'd read Orwell's 1984 - still one of my favourite novels - for the first time, and have re-read it every other year ever since. In my teens I wrote my A-Level English extended essay on 1984, Huxley's Brave New World and Koestler's Darkness at Noon [which, strictly speaking, wasn't a dystopian novel as it wasn't set in a fictional regime]. At University I managed to indulge myself on dystopian classics like Yevgeny Zamyatin's We after wangling my way onto a course called The Literature of Totalitarianism, despite the fact I was studying History at the time. I wouldn't have got away with that in a dystopian regime, fictional or otherwise.

I even had a stab at creating my dystopian fiction with the small-press comic Stonebroke. It was about a post-apocalyptic bus driver and his one-man war against a corrupt taxi empire. The less said about that the better. Let's just say it was described in some quarters as "Mad Max meets On The Buses".

The reason why I'm telling you all of this now is because I watched the dystopian film Children of Men this evening. I'd like to think my "Phew", "Fucking Hell" and "Wow" were said with some authority.

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To be or not 3D

I mentioned in a previous post that I'd been to see Beowulf at the cinema and enjoyed it tremendously. I didn't get around to saying why I enjoyed it tremendously, but that's because I was interrupted by a phone call. These things happen.

I thought Beowulf was a grand, bold and jaw-droppingly magnificent piece of classic heroic fiction that was epic in every sense of the word. There, that wasn't so difficult. It was a guilty pleasure of a movie that reminded me of why I fell in love with cinema in the first place. Sorry, Rol.

It certainly broke new ground in terms of visual storytelling, but I felt that this was one of those rare occasions where eye-popping CG trickery didn't disguise a weak plot and shonky characterisation but heightened the mood and served the story. Kudos to Messrs Zemeckis, Gaiman & Avary for pulling it off.

Just to clarify matters and put things into perspective, I don't think Beowulf was the best film I've ever seen. It's not as good as - say - Citizen Kane, Vertigo, Breathless, Yojimbo, Luis Bunuel's Discrete Charm of the Bourgeoisie or Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan. But it was certainly the best film I saw last Sunday night.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I saw the 3D version of the film. I hadn't seen a 3D movie since I was a kid, and was somewhat gobsmacked by the advances made in this technology. I'm embarrassed to admit this, but on a couple of occasions I instinctively ducked for fear of getting my eye poked out by a digitally-rendered spear. I'd like to think that this conveys the eye-popping effectiveness of the technique, but I suspect it probably displays the feeble-minded gullibility of my brain. In any case, it probably makes me look like a member of that legendarily dumb Lumiere Brothers' cinema audience who panicked at the sight of an advancing train.

Let's be clear about something, though: 3D films are a gimmick. In fact, they're one of the oldest gimmicks in the book. Before the film started there were trailers for a remake of Journey to the Centre of the Earth [in 3D] and a re-release of Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas [also in 3D - yay!], so it looks as though this particular gimmick is about to make something of a comeback.

Which is fairly interesting, to me at least. When 3D movies were first introduced in the 1950s- along with CinemaScope, Cinerama, Scratch-O-Rama and a veritable plethora of audio-visual snake oil - it was at a time when cinemas were losing vast chunks of their market share to a troublesome upstart medium called television. Hollywood film studios and cinema chains feared for their future and were desperate to find new ways of delaying their impending Ragnarok and of getting bums back on seats. Now, half a century later, those same industries once again believe they're losing vast chunks of their market share to another upstart medium and are just as desperate to halt and reverse the arse-to-seat attrition. And just as the 1950s studio chiefs and cinema owners tried to find new gimmicky enhancements that couldn't be duplicated on a humble black and white telly from Radio Rentals, their modern day equivalents are digitally-tweaking old gimmicky enhancements that can't be duplicated on a humble laptop screen.

Alphonse Karr knew what he was talking about.

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Many Small Worlds

I've liked the band Eels ever since I listened to their Beautiful Freak album ten years or so ago. I've never seen them live, but they're touring now so I might try to catch them.

The reason why I mention this somewhat tedious factoid is that I just saw a trailer on BBC4 for a forthcoming doc about Eels frontman Mark Oliver Everett. It turns out that his father was Hugh Everett - he of the Everett-Wheeler-Graham school of quantum physics.

Robert Anton Wilson's bloody marvellous Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy is what first got me interested in quantum physics. Here's how he described the Everett-Wheeler-Graham model in the appendix:

An alternative to Bell's Theorem and the Copenhagen Interpretation. According to Everett, Wheeler & Graham, everything that can happen to the state vector does happen to it.

To put it another way, then, the father of the frontman of the Eels' was the brains behind the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics. That's mad, that is. It's positively buggier than batshit.

Incidentally, I first read RAW's Schrödingers Cat Trilogy at about the same time as I was first listening to Eels' Beautiful Freaks album.

Typical, huh?

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Beowulf

Tonight I went to the cinema to see Beowulf. It was the 3D version, so I'm currently suffering from a mild bout of sensory overload. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I thrive on sensory overload.

Beowulf - in case you don't already know - is veteran genre director Robert Zemeckis' CG blockbuster adaptation of the classic Old English poem. Featuring a screenplay by the mighty Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary and a heavyweight cast of motion-captured semi-synthespians - including Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins and Angelina Jolie - it's already cleaned up at the US box office and looks set to do the same over here. To the best of my knowledge, big-budget movie adaptations of classic poems are a bit of a rarity; top-grossing movie adaptations of classic poems, though, are rarer still. I can only imagine that Hollywood scriptwriters are now strip-mining poetry anthologies for inspiration. Personally, I'd like to see Disney Pixar tackle Philip Larkin's Sunny Prestatyn, or Dreamworks Animation try their hand at at Sylvia Plath's Lady Lazarus. But that's just me.

Of course, not everyone's going to be happy about this. The other morning, I was listening to a review of the Beowulf film on Radio 4's Today Programme. A guy who had illustrated an edition of Beowulf and an expert on Anglo-Saxon literature dismissed the film as a shallow, migraine-inducing, CGI wankfest. Actually, that wasn't the exact phrase they used. This was, after all, Radio 4's Today Programme. Ever since the Hutton Enquiry they've gone to great lengths to avoid phrases like "wankfest". But that was the gist of it. I believe the Irish poet Tom ["I hated it"] Paulin was talking about it on The Culture Show last night. I can't imagine he gave it a ringing endorsement, though. I imagine he hated it.

Well - with respect to those learned experts in Old English poetry - they can go and kiss my pert wee Irish arse.

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Def Star

Some more YouTubery, this time courtesy of my old pal Graeme.

I think it speaks for itself.

Californication

I don't watch much TV nowadays; I'm definitely more of a Movie/DVD Box Set kinda guy. Partly it's because I spent a ridiculous amount of my childhood mainlining on cheesy action-adventure American imports. This may have left me with an encyclopedic knowledge of The Six Million Dollar Man, Airwolf and Manimal, but it's done little to improve my overall quality of life. Nowadays I prefer to do other things and make up for all that time spent suckling on the glass teat.

The other main reason why I avoid TV is because I can't stand watching soaps, sports, reality shows, property porn or anything with a phone-in vote and/or the word "Celebrity" in its title. The TV schedules weren't designed for people like me.

But last night I watched the show Californication for the first time and was pleasantly surprised. In case you don't know, this is the new raunchcom in which David Duchovny plays Hank Moody, a highly-sexed and highly-troubled novelist who moves to Los Angeles. Despite not being an fan of the X-Files, I've always quite liked Old Blank Face and loved his oddball roles and cameos in Twin Peaks, Zoolander and especially The Larry Sanders Show. I thought I'd give it a try.

Anyhow, I was working on my laptop while the show was on in the background when something made me sit up and pay attention. Duchovny's character was shopping in a convenience store and charming the hotpants off a scantily-clad surfer girl when he told her: "Life'll kill ya."

Hmm - thought I - that's the title of a bloody marvelous Warren Zevon song and album. I'm a big fan of Warren Zevon - in fact, I'm rather evangelical about his work - so maybe the writers of the show are too. Or maybe they're not. Maybe I'm just projecting my Zevon obsession onto their work. Who knows? And - more importantly - since when did blurting-out a Zevon song title work as an efficient chat-up strategy? I've got loads of his albums and can be a cocky sunovabitch at times, but I wouldn't dream of approaching a member of the opposite sex and saying to her "Werewolves of London", "Mr Bad Example" or "Excitable Boy". It's weird, freaky and inappropriate behaviour, even in LA. Granted, "Carmelita" might just work, but only if you were absolutely certain that her name was Carmelita.

This internal monologue was promptly settled when, later in the episode, Hank and his ex-girlfriend Karen [Natascha McElhone] went to see a performance by their daughter and her band. What song do they play? A cover of Zevon's haunting "Don't Let Us Get Sick" [the final track on his Life'll Kill Ya album]. There was a different cover of the same song later in the episode, just in case you missed it the first time around.

Apparently, the series is full of Zevon references. I found this on Wikipedia:

The show frequently references the work of musician Warren Zevon. When doing a crossword puzzle, Hank was stuck on a question for which the clue was "5 letter word for excitable boy"; the answer is Zevon. Excitable Boy is the name of one of Zevon's most popular albums. In the episode "Absinthe Makes the Heart Grow Fonder", Hank tells the surfer girl he meets at the store "Life'll kill ya," — the name of a Zevon song and album. In the same episode, Becca's band plays "Don't Let Us Get Sick" and later in the episode a cover of the song is played as well. And in "California Son", the episode opens with "Mohammed's Radio". In "The Devil's Threesome", Hank tells Charlie "Your shit's fucked up." Charlie answers rhetorically "My shit's fucked up?" The latter is the name of a Zevon song. In the episode "The Last Waltz", a cover of Zevon's song "Reconsider Me" by Steve Earle and Reckless Kelly can be heard.

The show features loads of sharp, snappy dialogue. I particularly liked the line where Duchovny's character is described as an "Analogue guy in a digital world." I might be paraphrasing, but that won't stop me from using it at the earliest opportunity.

So there you have it. If you like Warren Zevon, you'll probably like Californication. If you like sharp dialogue, you'll probably dig it as well.

Oh, and I forgot to mention: if you like raunchy sex, there's plenty of that, too...

Gigpix

When he isn't encouraging, urging and sometimes forcibly coercing the city's artistic community to use the Internet to their best advantage, my friend Pete Ashton also finds the time to be a rather talented photographer. That's award-nominated polymathematical Renaissance Brummies for you. I sometimes suspect that his interest in photography is not unrelated to history as a comics aficionado. After all, he's not the first illustrious Peter to have moonlighted as a shutterbug.

Anyhow, I was browsing through his Flickr pages and found the following pics he took at gigs I recently attended. They're rather good.

Here's Jim White from last month's gig at The Barfly that I wrote about here:



And here's Jim's able support, the immensely-talented Jenny Owen Youngs, who Pete admittedly "kinda fell in love with for an evening". Glad to know it wasn't just me, then.



And - last but not least, here's the mighty Jeffrey Lewis at the Hare & Hounds in Kings Heath who I wrote about here. He was crouching down in order to operate an OHP that was projecting one of his hand-made budget videos onto a screen whilst he narrated a song. I think it was the bloody hilarious 'Champion Jim', but I'm not quite sure.



Pete also took some pics at Thursday's Curate's Egg event featuring Gallon Drunk, but they'll have to wait as I haven't written about it yet. But he didn't take any pictures of Tuesday's The National gig at the Irish Centre as he wasn't there.

But I was...

Dancing Fool

Some YouTubery, courtesy of the Brummie of the Year nominee who sent me the link. It's from the Rootsville Festival that was held at Birmingham's Custard Factory during the last weekend of June and features the stunning set by The Dhol Blasters and The Destroyers. The former are masters of rapid-fire traditional drum-action, the latter are Conservatoire-trained swaggering maestros of Eastern European folk. So now you know.

They played on the event's 'Lakeside Stage', otherwise known as the pool outside the Medicine Bar. The pool had been drained and a marquee put up over it, which struck me as a nice, practical touch. I'm not as young as I used to be and my knees tend to struggle with the rigours of underwater moshing. Sadly, it was pissing down torrentially and the marquee didn't quite cover the pool. As the evening progressed the drained pool seemed to gradually refill. It added a certain element of squelchy danger to the proceedings, and my Converse All-Star boots haven't been the same since.

A couple of minutes into the clip you might notice a slim man in a stylish brown leather overcoat dancing energetically, idiosyncratically and somewhat dangerously in the foreground.

That's me, that is.

Vote for Pete

My good friend and erstwhile gig pimp Pete Ashton is on the shortlist for 2007's much coveted Brummie of the Year award. He is, by his own admission, "dead chuffed about it"; I am, by my own admission, dead chuffed for him. For those who don't know Pete, he's worked tirelessly towards encouraging, urging and sometimes forcibly coercing the city's artistic community to use the Internet to their best advantage. His Created in Birmingham site has - in a remarkably short space of time - become an invaluable resource for writers, artists, designers, popular beat combos and all-round creative types whose postcode starts with the letter 'B', while his own personal blog has saved me countless hours of sorting out the web-based wheat from the online chaff.

On a personal note, this blog itself probably wouldn't exist if it wasn't for Pete's patient but relentless campaign of harassment, but don't hold that against him.

The Brummie of the Year award is organised by the rather excellent Birmingham: It's Not Shit website, and - courtesy of the site and in the interests of impartiality - here's a full rundown of the nominees:

Pete Ashton - blogging evangelist to the creative community, good friend and erstwhile gig pimp to Tom Lennon.
Lisa Meyer & Jenny Moore of Capsule - bringing much needed gigs (and cake!) to Brum.
Carl Chinn - larger than life local historian.
Condori : Big Chief Busks With Recorder - on behalf of all our buskers and street entertainers.
Soweto Kinch - Mobo award winner and Town Hall associate artist.
Martin Mullaney - Camcorder Councillor, trying every which way to involve people in local politics.
Catherine O’Flynn - First time novelist who’s wowed the literary world this year.
Richard Pawley - Wants to build a 600 foot tower - and jump off it.
John Tighe of The Spotted Dog - Keeping Digbeth noisy, or so we hope.

Voting closes on December 1st, so go here now and engage in the democratic process.

I think by now you already know who I think you should vote for...

The National

I'll be off to see The National at Birmingham's Irish Centre with my old friend Nicky on Tuesday. It'll be the second time I'll see them this year [they played at the bloody marvellous Latitude Festival in July], and their albums have been on heavy rotation on my monolithic Kubrick-esque stereo for two years or so. Yes, I still call them "albums". How quaint.

If you're unfamiliar with their music, then I strongly suggest you take urgent steps to remedy this. I started with Alligator in 2005 and then acquired their follow-up Boxer this year. I'm a simple-minded buffoon, so I tend to approach these things in a linear, chronological manner. You can mix it up if you like.

I've described their music in an email to a friend this evening as "New York melancholia shot through with wry, laconic humour ", but that doesn't really do them justice. So I'll let someone else do them justice for me:

"Gothic in its detailing but jaunty in its execution, Boxer is something far richer than orch-pop (translation: rock ‘n’ roll topped with violins). Rather, the band find ways to combine the expressive depth of composed music with the urgency of pop. It's a sound built with guitar, bass, piano and drums and festooned with brass, woodwinds, backing vocals, strings, and organs. A product of dedicated labor, happenstance, and alchemical reactions, the music reveals new layers with each successive listen.

"There are nods toward a host of iconic Americans—F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Carver, composer Steve Reich, Bob Dylan and the Band, Jonathan Ames (especially Wake Up, Sir!), even a bit of Grateful Dead. There are sketchy suggestions of Leonard Cohen, Grace Paley, Nick Cave, John Ashbery, The Smiths and Tom Waits. But The National’s pedigree is becoming harder and harder to trace. They may remind you of distinguished ancestors but, now, The National sound like no one so much as themselves: a meditative rumble that starts in the heart, gets caught in the brain, and resonates outward."

I nicked that from their MySpace page as I'm feeling lazy. It happens.

Death of a Chiropodist

This is a bit of an oddity from the archives, but that's never stopped me before. While clearing out some old stuff from the attic of my mum's house I found this parody I'd written a long, long time ago in an adolescence far, far away. It must have been 1988 or 1989, and I must have been 17 or 18.

It was published in my Sixth Form College's ragmag while I was supposed to be studying for my A-Levels. One of those A-Levels was Philosophy, which will become somewhat apparent later on. I also remember writing a fake biography of the college's Vice Principal at the time which didn't get published but almost got me suspended. Amongst other things, I claimed he got his Doctorate for inventing a nasal contraceptive. As it was a Roman Catholic Sixth Form College - and the man in question was rather staunch in his beliefs - this went down like a bride with a spinal injury [ie badly]. Luckily, I wrote it under a pseudonym and Denied Everything. Sadly, it no longer seems to exist. Oh, well.

What follows is a bit clunky in places, but some of the gags still hold up surprisingly well. It's flawed and I certainly would have written it differently now. For one thing, I'd have given it a better ending, and I probably would have given it a better middle, too. And I'd probably be somewhat less inclined to swipe quite so shamelessly from Jackie Mason stand-up routines and the films of Woody Allen and Steve Martin. Of course, at the time I didn't think of it as nicking gags; I thought of it as paying homage. I suppose it's reassuring to know that in at least one area of life I've become more virtuous.

In any case, I've valiantly resisted the temptation to change any of it. Think of it as a snapshot from the past, or a portrait of the artist as a young eejit.



A cool October breeze brushed against the lapels of my new blue powder suit. This was highly unusual as it was now July. The corpse lay on the sidewalk, outside Rabbi Bernstein's While-U-Wait Circumcision Parlour. The name's Kapovoski, Lt Emil Kapovoski... I'm a cop.

"It's a mess," muttered Sgt Mahoney, in his stereotypical Irish accent. "Stabbed with a blunt kitchen utensil then hurled out of his tenth storey office, miraculously hitting the sidewalk in the Lotus position." But I already knew the details. Mahoney was right, it was a mess. Visually it resembled Bonnie Langford's voice.

Mahoney cleared his throat. "His name was Hutchindale, Andrew Hutchindale. He was a chiropodist. " There was a brief but unnecessary pause. "His feet..."

Then I noticed it. The corpse was wearing a pair of rubber flippers, the type commonly used by deep sea divers and other underwater swimmers. It was the fourteenth rubber flipper-wearing chiropodist homicide in the last fortnight. I was beginning to detect a pattern.

I searched Hutchindale's pockets and found my first lead. It was a calling card that read:

David Faughaughnahan PhD, BSc, CSE, HGV
Chiropodist of Distinction

Within ten minutes I was arguing with Faughaughnahan's secretary. After showing her my badge and threatening her with an unaccompanied recital of Beowulf, she let me past.

I paused at Faughaughnahan's door. I could hear a commotion going on in his office. Discretely, I entered the room, crawling along the carpet like a commando. Faughaughnahan was arguing with a woman. I decided to intervene.

"Ahem," I said, clearing my throat. "The name's Kapovoski, Lt Emil Kapovoski. I'm a cop." There was a brief but unnecessary sense of deja vu. I stood up. "Are you David Faughaughnahan, Chiropodist of Distinction?"

"Who do you think I am," replied Faughaughnahan, "Joanna Lumley?" It was a trick question, but I already knew that Joanna Lumley spoke with an English accent.

The woman who had been arguing with Faughaughnahan looked across at me and sobbed. "Is this about Andrew?" she asked. I pretended it was. "My name's Dr Cynthia Chandler. I'm a chiropodist, but you can call me Cynthia. I met Andrew at university. I was studying feet and he was a lecturer at the advanced ingrown toe-nail research faculty. He was my lover."

She burst into tears, overcome with grief. Dr Chandler was my favourite type of chiropodist; the type with long-tanned legs. I gave the dame my routine visual once-over. She was a looker alright, with a split in her skirt that went right up to her neck. I'm a cop; I notice these things.

"What's your business with me, Lieutenant?" asked Faughaughnahan.

I slapped the calling card on his desk: "This is my business. It was found on the person of your dead pal Hutchindale."

"Well, I know nothing about it," said Faughaughnahan. "I've never seen that card before in my life. Just look at the font. Do I look like the kind of guy who'd use Arial?"

"Alright, I'll go," I said. "But you'll be hearing from me again. In the meantime, get yourself a good lawyer and don't be checking any feet outside of town."

I left the office and Cynthia followed. Outside the building I lit a stoagie and turned to Cynthia. "What were you two arguing about?" I asked. "Fallen arches?"

She gazed into my eyes: "I suspect he's been sending me obscene phone calls in Yiddish."

That was disgusting. "That's disgusting," I said as I passed her my stoagie. "By the way, I got a verruca I picked up from a previous case. Can I book an appointment?"

I hoped my metaphor was graphic enough.

It was 7.30 when I knocked on the door of Dr Chandler's apartment. I was dressed to kill. I wore a beige fine-striped double-breasted suit, a shiny paisley waistcoat and maroon shirt, all available from Angellussis, 672 Oxford Street, London. The shoes were were part of the Vendee winter collection, and available from all participating stockists.

She opened the door and I gazed into her eyes. She was wearing contact lenses, but I had no moral objection. She let me in and asked me to sit in the lounge whilst she went to her boudoir to slip into something more comfortable. Minutes later she returned, dressed as Pagliacci.

She sat beside me. "So, Emil," she asked, "are you any closer to finding Andrew's killer?"

I paused, considering whether her last sentence was grammatical. "Yeah," I said. "It's Faughaughnahan. Without a doubt. Now about my verruca..."

"Oh that," she said. "I left all my chiropody tools in the boathouse."

I jumped off the sofa: "The boathouse?"

"Sure," she said. "I'm a member of the local sub-aquatic society."

Even a chiropodist can put her foot in it. It all made perfect sense: the rubber flippers, the argument with Faughaughnahan, the contact lenses... "Cynthia Chandler - I'm arresting you for the murder of Andrew Hutchindale. You are the Chiropodist Killer!"

"Alright, I admit it," she said. "It's a fair cop."

"But why?" I asked.

"It was to avenge my father. Theodore Chandler was once the greatest chiropodist in this city, but his fellow chiropodists formed a consortium, undermining my father's position and ultimately destroying him..."

"But," I interrupted, "you haven't got a father. You're a fictional character in a lame parody in a cheap dimestore rag mag. You don't exist, your father doesn't exist and you're going to have to come up with a better excuse."

She was furious: "Existence is a predicative, ontologically-necessary truth. Even a flatfoot cop like you knows that! Didn't Descartes say 'I think therefore I am?'"

"I think he did, but he might have thought differently if he was facing fourteen counts of chiropicide."

She was screaming: "But if a tree falls in the middle of a forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it still make a noise?"

"Not if it's got a good lawyer." I plucked a stogie out of my jacket pocket and lit the wrong end. "You forgot one thing, sister. Wasn't it Nietzsche who said: 'If you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also?'"

I was interrupted by Cynthia, who was leaping towards me with a pointed stick in her hand. Dames never like it when I mention Nietzche. I ducked, she missed and smashed through a plate glass window. Within moments, car horns were screaming from the street below. What a waste, I thought. Cynthia Chandler, another death in a city full of death. "What is the purpose of life," I asked myself, "when it invariably results in death?" I thought of those great pessimistic icons, of Arthur Koestler, Albert Camus and Morrissey. Wasn't it Søren Kierkegaard who coined that immortal phrase: "Life is grossly overrated; I'd much rather be dead." But then Kierkegaard was married to a Bohemian Cossack woman, and his neighbours constantly threw live cattle into his house...

Dream Within a Dream

Last night's Dream Within a Dream event at Birmingham's Ikon Eastside was fun. As well as being a Halloween-themed night, it was also the venue's Closing Party for the season. The current incarnation of Ikon Eastside is a disused factory in Digbeth, winter is upon us and disused factories in Digbeth get bloody cold in winter. It all makes sense to me.

The main event was organised by 7-Inch Cinema, Birmingham-based [I think] organisers of hip and groovy underground film events. I missed the first hour's worth on account of tardiness and random acts of raconteuring, but I caught Black Galaxy and their live soundtrack performance that accompanied the German Expressionist influenced silent flicks The Fall of the House of Usher [USA 1928] and Danse Macabre [USA 1922]. Very good shit it was, too.

The other highlight of the evening was a performance by the band Broadcast, who provided an improvised accompaniment to a pair of early Peter Greenaway shorts. Short films, that is, not boxer shorts. I don't think I'd want to see an accompaniment to Peter Greenaway's boxers, improvised or otherwised.

I was a bit of a Peter Greenaway nut in my teens. For a certain type of subversive but sensitive teenager in the 80s, Peter Greenaway films were a staple of the late-night Channel 4 schedules. They were arthouse films that featured an abundance of nudity, so I suppose you could say they provided a valid, intellectually legitimate excuse to watch dodgy softcore smut while your parents were out. Apparently. For some teenagers in the 80s, but not me of course. Of course.

In any case, these short films by Greenaway featured precious little that would, as Raymond Chandler once memorably said, make a Bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window. 1978's Vertical Features Remake featured a rotating sequence of images of, um, vertical things. You know, benign stuff like trees and goalposts and fences and roadsigns. If there was anything vertical and fruity I must have blinked and missed it.

But, for fear of sounding a bit wanky, the choice and the pacing of the images - and their juxtaposition with the music - was sublime. More good shit, then.

The other thing that caught my eye was an installation in a separate part of the building by filmmker/photographerScott Johnston [filmficciones]. Concealed behind an enticing velvet curtain, it was called The Divine Edgar. As in 'Edgar Allan Poe', but not as in 'Edgar Wright', 'Edgar Rice Burroughs' or 'Edgar Bones from Harry Sodding Potter'. According to the flyer, it featured 'audio enhancement from Pram.' I've written about Pram before; I hope they haven't read it. I've never been on the receiving end of a avant-garde cinematically ambient kicking. I don't think I'd enjoy it.

The flyer itself caught my eye and captured my imagination. To wit:

The Divine Edgar.
The imagination of America's greatest writer of the
macabre was tormented by many fears - most
predominantly his horror at the prospect of
being buried alive.
He visited this unthinkable premature death upon
a number of his protagonists, perhaps in some way
attempting to give others a glimpse into his most
personal night-terrors.
And yet is it really possible for us to understand his
palpable fear of this most harrowing fate?
Perhaps only if we were to live it for him.......

At the bottom of the flyer was an rather ominous disclaimer that read:

I, the undersigned, accept full responsibility for my own
physical and mental being, both during and after
The Divine Edgar.

SIGNED____________ PRINT NAME____________

Would I really be prepared to risk life, limb and mental stability for the sake of regional art? Of course I bloody well would: that's how hard I am. As a 12 year-old I eagerly signed a similar disclaimer to get on a Bucking Bronco ride at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, and that one featured even more ominous phrases such as 'high risk', 'broken bones' and 'potential hospitalisation'. I haven't really changed that much since then.

I carried out a self-administered body-search for my notoriously elusive pen, but to no avail. Then I looked at the queue. It was massive. Much bigger than the one for the Bucking Bronco. The Divine Edgar would take five minutes, and only one person could venture into it at any one time. In life, some things have to be faced alone; I guess that applies to claustrophobic spooky-themed regional art installations, too.

Anyway, I carried out a quick head-count guesstimate and multiplied it by five. By that calculation, I'd still be in the queue now.

I went out for a cigarette instead.