tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40904394157751701022024-03-05T11:55:27.392+00:00Raymond Weir(is mostly barking at cars) Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14496611393590832257noreply@blogger.comBlogger185125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090439415775170102.post-76938188131474135712023-01-24T19:39:00.002+00:002023-01-24T20:10:37.462+00:00How will you know when you know?<p>'How will you know when you know' is a song about being in a band and hitting the wall of realisation that you are probably not going to be the next U2. In the first verse, there is excitement and optimism as the musicians plan for another adventure, loading up their van for a gig (in the exotic location of Aberdeen). The second verse is written from the perspective of the morning after the night before, grinding through the daily routine and trying to analyse events through the enervating fog of sleep deprivation. <i>What was last night all about? Why did we do it? Was it really a good use of our time?</i> The video was produced by Eddie Macarthur at Stealth Studio in Glasgow. <span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: inherit;"> </span></p><p class="yiv7778561100MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; line-height: 15.5467px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LF_2XUUPyLc" width="320" youtube-src-id="LF_2XUUPyLc"></iframe></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /> </span><p></p>Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14496611393590832257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090439415775170102.post-73459671166011254402023-01-14T22:02:00.000+00:002023-01-14T22:02:14.353+00:00My Gang<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In anticipation of the latest Eisenhowers album
(Judge a man by the company he keeps) going double platinum, I somewhat
optimistically pressed 2 million CDs. In spite of one decent review on
Unknownindielosers.com, we’re still only 0.00085% towards our target sales
figure. There is definitely room for improvement, so the PR team at Waste of
Point records have organised a ruthless publicity campaign which involves me
‘putting out’ a series of live acoustic performances of various songs from the
album. Below, you'll find a link to ‘My Gang’, a song about political
polarisation. The most noteworthy detail of the music is that the
song (absent lyrics) was written, more or less, in the time it took to play it.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">My modus operandi when composing
is to sit and strum, pluck or plonk with no particular aim in mind, other than to go in the direction the music seems to want to go. Of course, this will be influenced by how I'm feeling, whether I'm playing loudly or quietly, whether I'm forming chords or picking out single notes and so on. On this occasion, once I found the opening chord and a rhythm that felt right, the forward momentum became irresistible. The sequence and structure arrived within a couple of minutes because the 'song', even in its nascent form, knew where it wanted to go. </span>Within
moments, I had a working title and an idea of what the lyric would be about.
The subject of political polarization interests me and I wanted to explore a
landscape wherein dialogue between opposing sides isn’t just frowned upon or
rejected; it is taken to be undesirable. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">There are other ways to write songs; I’ve got
material that has been in development for years because I don’t know how to
finish it, or haven’t devoted the energy necessary to achieve closure. But this
one was signed, sealed delivered in a very short space of time. I believe
‘My Gang’ is a well-written and a well-executed song. It’s not original and
it’s not going to change the world, but in three minutes or so, it encapsulated
some of the things I wanted to say about what passes for political discourse in
the 21st century. The video was splendidly produced, as ever, by Eddie
Macarthur at Stealth Studio in Glasgow.</span><span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So … here’s the next blow in my continuing war of
attrition with the record-buying public. 2 million CDs (a) take up a lot of
space and (b) weigh a ton. Please buy one, because structural damage to one’s
house is no laughing matter. ‘Judge a man by the company he keeps’ is available
on Bandcamp, Spotify, iTunes, CD Baby and all the usual sources. </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uvfKDmNU5yo" width="320" youtube-src-id="uvfKDmNU5yo"></iframe></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><p></p></span></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><br /><p></p>Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14496611393590832257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090439415775170102.post-24453297409777898622021-10-01T08:57:00.003+01:002021-10-01T11:18:59.277+01:00The clean versus the unclean: An open letter to Members of the Scottish Parliament<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhusaDv82yYxGxemkYCqU1JvjBsLg2Nv6XitboXZKKv8MT9dXAmlOqvn986Y3Qkkmu4VMqBg9jFSzoJ_h04gLy3LOfsgfcrszxAYcns043xomitsLDu-IH1vi5efFACeeS1Qr0F9Y0Msmg/s270/unclean+4.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="270" data-original-width="187" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhusaDv82yYxGxemkYCqU1JvjBsLg2Nv6XitboXZKKv8MT9dXAmlOqvn986Y3Qkkmu4VMqBg9jFSzoJ_h04gLy3LOfsgfcrszxAYcns043xomitsLDu-IH1vi5efFACeeS1Qr0F9Y0Msmg/s0/unclean+4.jpg" width="187" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Dear MSP<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">I hope you can
take a couple of minutes out of your busy schedule to read this.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Today is a
big day for everyone in Scotland, but it seems that many people haven’t quite grasped
the significance of it. I refer to the introduction of the so-called 'vaccine passports'.
I object to them as a matter of principle, but before you are tempted to dismiss
me as a crank, I will point out that I’m neither an ‘anti-vaxxer’ nor a
conspiracy theorist. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Having watched,
with mounting concern, as the British and Scottish governments reacted to the
virus by engaging in sustained bouts of psychological warfare on their own
people, I welcomed the arrival of a vaccine and was relieved that we were finally
able to glimpse some light at the end of a long and very dark tunnel. My age
and my caring responsibilities for my elderly father led me to conclude that
being double-jabbed was the appropriate choice for me. I have no difficulty accepting
that the vaccine has been important in breaking the link between cases and
hospitalisations, but the benefits don’t seem to have accrued in quite the way we
were led to expect. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">By now, our national
conversation ought to be focusing on the appalling damage done by some of the political
decisions made in response to the virus. By that I mean the patients not
diagnosed, the illnesses not treated, the support groups abandoned, the lost
jobs, the destroyed businesses, the suicides and the broken families. And much will eventually be written about the crushed hopes of our young people, often disgracefully traduced by
the media as ‘super spreaders’, their education disrupted and devalued by a political
establishment which reacts to statistics like a nervous dog reacts to sudden noises
in the street outside. Many have come to believe that the Covid cure will eventually
be judged to have been more damaging than the disease, but instead of having
conversations about that, we are being held in a state of febrile confusion by
ever-moving goalposts and increasingly ridiculous and contradictory rules. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">And now, in
Scotland, we appear to have accepted the division of citizens into ‘clean’ and ‘unclean’.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">History, when
we are willing to pay attention, warns us against such developments; it tells us
that this has happened before and that it doesn’t end well. It tells us that
the unchallengeable invocation of concern for public health provides a golden
ticket to those of an authoritarian bent. And, when people are motivated by a desire
to exert control over the lives of others, they will welcome and embrace
(sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously) any conditions which allow
them to consolidate and enhance the mechanisms of control.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">If you are
one of those MSPs who view themselves as part of the opposition and you voted
against the vaccine passports, I feel that I should disabuse you of the notion
that you have somehow discharged your duties. Because it wasn’t your job just
to vote against this bill. We all knew that the authoritarians would carry the
day; we knew that merely counting the votes in the house would give them the
permission they required. Your job was to not to quibble about the practicalities of the bill; it was to oppose the principle of it and make it as difficult as humanly possible
for it to pass. You would have lost the battle, of course,
because they are currently in charge. But you would at least have given an
important signal to a proportion of our demoralised, fearful, but increasingly
angry population. And your vigorous opposition would have forced the
authoritarians to reveal just a little bit more of their true natures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">You may feel
that what I have proposed would have breached the normal rules of engagement,
but perhaps the ‘new normal’ we’re being asked to accept also requires new
rules of engagement. You were elected to protect the rights and freedoms of all
citizens, not just the clean. Someone has to make a stand, however unpopular
that might be, for the unclean. If not you, then who? And if not now, then
when? If you are unwilling to draw the line at dividing citizens into clean and
unclean, where exactly might you take a principled stand? On compulsory
vaccinations, perhaps? Or excluding unvaccinated people from the employment
market? Or how about forcing the unvaccinated to wear badges in public?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Some of you
reading this will think: “Oh, don’t exaggerate … none of those things are going
to happen.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">In response,
I’d say: how do you know that? Given what we’ve been trained to tolerate over
the last eighteen months, <i>how do you know that</i>? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">The descent
into totalitarianism does not happen with a big bang and a sudden announcement that “Big Sister is in charge and you’ll do as you’re told. Dissent is not an
option.” The retreat from civilisation is always gradual, featuring hundreds of
little steps, some of them barely perceptible, but each with the goal of preparing
you for the next one and acclimatising you to the direction of travel. How many
of those little steps are you willing to take? Is there any point at which
you’ll say ‘<i>enough</i>’?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">I’m just one
person -a vaccinated person- but I’ve now reached that point of principle, my personal
line in the sand.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">I have
friends and family who, for perfectly legitimate reasons, have concerns about
the vaccine. I will not consent to them being treated as lesser citizens. I
will not consent to them being excluded from society on the grounds of choices
they have made about their own health. I will not consent to handing a world
like this over to my children and grandchildren. I will never present medical
papers or proof of vaccination in order to enter a bar, a cinema, a concert or
a football match. Going to gigs and big sporting events are two of my favourite
things to do. My sacrifice -such as it is- may be modest, but it is one that I
feel compelled to make, because my head, heart and gut are completely aligned
in opposition to the direction of travel. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">The introduction
of this law was a significant and, I believe, shameful moment for our country.
You were in a position of relative power and could have made a difference.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">I fear that
history will judge that you were weighed, you were measured and you were found
wanting. <o:p></o:p></span></p>Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14496611393590832257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090439415775170102.post-31332289960073904382019-02-20T21:10:00.003+00:002021-02-22T10:45:21.834+00:00C to the power 4<div class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yahoo_quoted" id="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yahoo_quoted_1121725653">
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I</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> was out for a walk the other day and, quite by chance, came across this
challenging and exhilarating piece by the Scottish street
artist Fiona Menzies-Cunningham. Her graffiti work, currently on view at
various locations around Glasgow, is charged with powerful ideas which
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<span><span><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><div class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp62e5965cyahoo-style-wrap">
<span><span><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><div>
<span><span><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>Menzies-Cunningham, by refusing to exhibit in bourgeois galleries, is one of the
few modern artists willing to make resonant her participation in a
genuine critical dialogue around toxic masculinity and white hegemony by
taking art to the people.</span> Her free-to-view graffiti skillfully interpolates notions of power, class and sexuality into a <span>cultural paradigm which not only transcends materialism, but rages against the malignant logic of the hetero-patriarchal male gaze, all the while acknowledging <span><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span>that social constructs (like gender) are part of
the fatal flaw of language and can only be mediated by heuristic approaches to ontological inquiry.<span><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><span> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><span><span><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br clear="none" /></div>
<div>
<span><span><span><span dir="ltr" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span>This piece, entitled <i>C to the power 4</i>, is located near Knightswood Park and has already attracted quite a bit of attention.</span></span></span></span><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><span> The
first thing one notices is that she has chosen to adorn a building in
which the windows are protected by wire mesh. The curtains are
permanently drawn, a perfect illustration of Brexit Britain's
closed-mindedness and isolationism. Each window is, in fact, a unique 'territory' marked by an individual 'cunt'.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp62e5965cyahoo-style-wrap">
<div>
<span><span><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br clear="none" /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div>
<span><span><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><span>At first glance, these four <i>cunts</i> appear to be more or less identical, but closer inspection reveals a <span><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><span><span>devious simplicity in the remarkable way that Menzies-Cunningham manages light. There <span style="font-family: inherit;">is a certain </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">morbid
fluidity to the brushstrokes, a subtle grading of rage, the insidious
chiaroscuro forcing us to acknowledge and confront the nature of oppression. There is an almost subaqueous quality to the spatial
relationship between the individual letters in each word, but one might also say that the
space between the <i>cunts</i>, the lucid purity of those gaps, delineates a rigorous substructure of <span>deeply critical thinking. </span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><span><span> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY9Vbwb2feMVaIFQ6pQQ-I3YdtH8RInjAENY5LefU9UaPzHN-xyBRT6J4ZVx7-oLvam2Vwsro6Q9ozsKPmTGLyAbv2QbJVZL0XL0JqJv_2QjpTktjCi4QPBVgIF6XjP0-Smiiw1aeggRQ/s1600/car+edited.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="687" data-original-width="1600" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY9Vbwb2feMVaIFQ6pQQ-I3YdtH8RInjAENY5LefU9UaPzHN-xyBRT6J4ZVx7-oLvam2Vwsro6Q9ozsKPmTGLyAbv2QbJVZL0XL0JqJv_2QjpTktjCi4QPBVgIF6XjP0-Smiiw1aeggRQ/s400/car+edited.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><span><span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div>
<div>
<div class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp62e5965cyahoo-style-wrap">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span><span><span>We expect each <i>cunt</i> to offer a glimpse into its own hellish world, but when we try to look through these windows there is no ‘view’ to be had. The mesh, the glass and the grey curtains merely confront us with a brutal reflection of our own opaque paranoia. <span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span>It would be relatively straightforward to interpret these <i>cunts</i> as being the four horsemen of the
apocalypse (Trump, Brexit, toxic masculinity and white privilege), but a <span>closer examination forces us to consider the subtleties of the artist's worldview. <span><span><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><span><span><span>
There is a sense in which these <i>cunts</i> visually and conceptually
activate a distinctive formal juxtaposition, asking us to consider
whether </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><span><i>culture</i>
really is interchangeable with <i>truth</i>; only from such a position
(which is, surely, a position of trust), can one truthfully </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">forge a constructive feminine paradigm of legitimate expression.</span></div>
</div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><span><span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><div class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp62e5965cyahoo-style-wrap">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><span><br clear="none" /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
</div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><span>This piece <span>is both menacing and playful because of the way the artist uses
the reductive quality of her motifs to spatially undermine the
exploration of <span><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><span>our response <span><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><span>to discursive trans-misogynistic violence. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">For
what it's worth, my reading is that the 'left to right'
running order of <i>C to the power 4</i> would be: white privilege (leading
to) toxic masculinity (which in turn leads to) Trump (which is
accompanied by) Brexit, but I know that other interpretations are
available. One is teased, for instance, by the ambiguous calligraphy of that last <i>cunt </i>on
the right; it might actually be 'Clint', which could be an allusion to misogyny and homophobia in Hollywood
westerns. </span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="qtd-body">
<div class="yiv8587457768yqt2098402814" id="yiv8587457768yqtfd87171">
<div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><span><span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br clear="none" /></div>
<span><span><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<span><span><span><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="qtd-body">
<div class="yiv8587457768yqt2098402814" id="yiv8587457768yqtfd17505">
<div class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp62e5965cyahoo-style-wrap">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><i>C to the power 4</i> bridges </span></span><span><span><span>the gap between our notion of 'the powerful' and
our everyday lived experience. Through the <span>disjunctive perturbation of this negative space, Menzies-Cunningham has asked questions to which we previously had no answers and provided answers where previously there had been no questions. Her beautifully congruent synthesis of </span><span><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><span><span><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><span>consciousness and narrative presents us with </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">a stark choice:
succumb to the oppressive constructs of patriarchy or embrace the liberating paradox of fragmentation within an inter-sectional landscape. It is now, surely, time for us to foreground the intrinsic apparatus of equity within a renewed, empowered, 'higher' consciousness in which <i>cunts</i> can only be understood within the critical framework of <span><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><span><span><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_3l3x yiv8587457768ydpe6006b13yiv0854646940ydp9e8feff3yiv2321871806ydp59b483bbyiv8863549490ydpdf2081b4yiv0222251114ydp6c83b6ae_1n4g"><span><span><span>dialectical third-wave feminism.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></div>
</div>
</div>
Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14496611393590832257noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090439415775170102.post-9579961071754560852019-01-20T00:00:00.001+00:002021-02-15T15:07:36.035+00:00On not being 'there' there<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">I</span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">f you
have parented a teenager, you will know that there is a difference between
going out and going <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">out</i> out. Going
out means you are leaving the house to do something with friends, but that ‘something’
won’t involve much in the way of drinking and clubbing. Going <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">out</i> out, by contrast, will involve both
of those activities, along with some others that parents would rather not know
about. There are certain aspects of modern life which require a similar nomenclature. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">If
you’ve been to a concert recently, you may have noticed the phenomenon of
people recording the event on their tablet or phone. They will have paid money
to be there, but chosen to limit their participation in the gig by mediating the
experience through an electronic device, presumably so they can watch it later.
But the ‘watching it later’ can only be a facsimile of the actual experience. Someone
might claim about a concert that “I was there … look at what I filmed”, but I’d
suggest that their decision to film it means that they weren’t <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">there</i> there. The memory of recording an event
is not the same as a memory of watching it; by definition, the former will be of
a lower resolution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">I used
to think that not being <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">there</i> there was
something of a bug in a 21<sup>st</sup> century life shaped by technology, but I’m
now more inclined to interpret it as a feature. For many folk, it seems that any
event (a night-out, a birthday meal, a picnic in the park) hasn’t really happened
until it has appeared on Facebook or Instagram. But if you’re using
up time and energy trying to get the perfect image to post on social media, if
you’re already curating an experience you’ve yet to have, you’re not really <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">there</i> there at all. Being <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">there</i> there would not involve putting
the actual experience on hold while you recorded it, turning it, effectively, into
something else.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">This curating
culture extends to recording stuff as mundane as people ‘reacting’ to something.
You can find hundreds of videos on Youtube of so-and-so <i>reacting</i> to Arsenal’s
third goal against Tottenham; or so-and-so <i>reacting</i> to the 'Red Wedding' in Game
of Thrones; or so-and-so reacting to the trailer for the new Avengers film. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">We are
social animals and we crave communal experiences, but where exactly does the pleasure
reside in watching someone else react to something? What’s the thrill in observing
other folk doing mundane things? The judgemental part of me fears that it’s a
bit like sub-contracting your own response to a third party, but the charitable
part would concede that it probably just helps some people authenticate a
shared experience. Or perhaps it represents something more significant. Maybe digital curation is part of some
evolutionary process whereby our species will develop the appropriate
neurological software to allow us to become truly technological beings. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">The ‘observing
other folk at the mundane’ phenomenon is perhaps best illustrated by Gogglebox,
a TV show about people watching TV in order to talk about it on TV. I’m not
entirely sure where the appeal of this show lies (I don’t think it's with the sparkling
wit of the participants). Is it, perhaps, that we are comforted by seeing other
people doing the same lazy stuff as us? Does it somehow validate our decision
to sit on the couch and watch rubbish on the telly because we can pretend that
what we are doing, like those Gogglebox folk, is having a communal
experience, observing and commentating on our cultural milieu? If it is true
that watching TV is a passive experience, then how should we describe the act
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">watching other people</i> watching TV?
Not that long ago such an act would have been
considered absurd. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Where
can it go from here? Are there meta-contexts of curation, observation and
reaction that we’ve yet to explore? With a little imagination, we could easily
expand our curated universe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Perhaps someone should
make a fly-on-the-wall documentary about the people who have to edit the
footage for each edition of Gogglebox (that must be quite a job, wading through
hours of material to find the entertaining bits). Then we, the viewers, could watch this programme and create some home-made content
by recording ourselves <i>reacting</i> to a show about the
trials and tribulations of the people who edit the footage of the people who
watch TV in order to talk about it on TV. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">This new
programme (let’s call it 'G-Box Infinity') would feature us reacting to watching the people editing
the Gogglebox footage. Once that was shown on TV, the Gogglebox people could
watch 'G-Box Infinity' in order to talk about it on TV. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Then, in
the comfort of our living rooms, we could watch the Gogglebox people watching
and talking about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">us</i> reacting to
watching the trials and tribulations of the people who edit the footage of the people
who watch TV in order to talk about it on TV. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">I could
go on, but there is a danger that I’ll accidentally set up a temporal feedback
loop and blow a hole in the fabric of time.</span></div>
Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14496611393590832257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090439415775170102.post-74314094793345898492018-12-17T20:01:00.001+00:002021-02-15T15:08:39.839+00:00The collective noun for TV talking heads <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd1w9QVbGcA-tiejl5EX1AjjEOr8iXbGzGMXqg24Ux4X-rknrQIULG0o-U5a2YYoIdb2ri4F8YL1flpJ0CSJUkXg_QzBGGTnfFHZoYe8hfZdF4qgS4BWzzELrVydRLUHR2bv7iGrMI0iM/s1600/roxy+2.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="177" data-original-width="284" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd1w9QVbGcA-tiejl5EX1AjjEOr8iXbGzGMXqg24Ux4X-rknrQIULG0o-U5a2YYoIdb2ri4F8YL1flpJ0CSJUkXg_QzBGGTnfFHZoYe8hfZdF4qgS4BWzzELrVydRLUHR2bv7iGrMI0iM/s320/roxy+2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">
The BBC documentary<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span></span></b><span><b> </b>‘Roxy Music – A Musical History’ achieved something quite
remarkable. The remarkable thing was this: it made a tragic, middle-aged Roxy
fan boy like me turn off after about ten minutes. Had I kept watching, I’m
afraid I might have ended up breaking something in our living room.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Some folk in TV land must think that a definitive template for quality has been established
by programmes like ‘The nation’s 100 favourite telly adverts’ or ‘The greatest-ever
soap villains’, wherein a bunch of well-worn video clips are assembled for the
purpose of showcasing the ‘witty’ and ‘off-the-cuff’ observations of C-list
celebrities. You can tell from their eyes that, generally speaking, these TV talking
heads don’t know (or care) much about the subject matter; they’re just reacting
to clips they’ve been shown five minutes before. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">One of
the reasons that online content is often more interesting than TV content is
that the folk who make the online stuff usually care (sometimes to the point of
insanity) about their subject matter. A talking head on TV, by contrast, only really
cares about being a talking head on TV. Such a person will dream of the money
shot, the moment they’ll coin a phrase so cute, pithy and resonant that they’ll
be hired to do a whole bunch more talking head stuff on shows like ‘Britain’s Weirdest
Game Show Contestants.’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">I generally avoid this kind of programme, but felt that I could not pass up the
chance to watch an hour devoted to one of my favourite bands. Alas,
merely 600 seconds into the show, having absorbed a series of blows, all of
which sign-posted the grim direction of travel, I had to reach for the remote
and terminate my participation with extreme prejudice. Maybe I should have
watched the whole thing before writing this review, but those 600 seconds contained
quite enough inanity for me to get the gist, featuring as it did some world-class
superficiality from Sadie Frost, Shaun Ryder, Alan McGee, Sian Pattenden and
Emma Dabiri (no … me neither).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">The commentary seemed neither apposite nor insightful, but what made it worse was that some of
it was used DURING THE SONGS, the director clearly having interpreted each of
the instrumental passages as an opportunity to insert analysis like this:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span><i>"Bryan Ferry</i> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span>wore glitter on his
eyes.”</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span>And this: </span></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span></span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span>"</span></i><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span>T</span></span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span>he instruments</span></i><span></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span> all had a part
to play in the Roxy sound.”</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span>To anyone</span></span><span></span><span> interested in finding out about a fantastic band, my advice would be to
avoid this programme. Instead, do yourself a favour and check out some old
clips on youtube. At least that way, you won’t have to encounter a phenomenon
which surely deserves a collective noun, preferably something pejorative and
judgemental to reflect its pestilential vapidity.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">How about a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">jabbering</i> of TV talking heads?
That sounds about right.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">There ... I’ve
done something useful with the time I could have spent shouting at the
television.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDXnbuUKEaA" target="_blank">Roxy Music, live in 1973.</a> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14496611393590832257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090439415775170102.post-4362165043819970832018-12-09T21:56:00.001+00:002021-02-15T15:09:39.038+00:00You can check out any time you like (but you can never leave).<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3rzs6-Od6a5vVsc-vzzZJtPrSCu7FLZKJyUk0Jug3WCjsFnAfWFzlvQjsodASTkbwqQqVsyoOU1FlpWfwt2lMEwXw5wvt1ayOHEbkgWVhSEEw8taCstKHgyhOwJTk_F1fZK7cKBKdrGg/s1600/border+5.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="267" data-original-width="189" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3rzs6-Od6a5vVsc-vzzZJtPrSCu7FLZKJyUk0Jug3WCjsFnAfWFzlvQjsodASTkbwqQqVsyoOU1FlpWfwt2lMEwXw5wvt1ayOHEbkgWVhSEEw8taCstKHgyhOwJTk_F1fZK7cKBKdrGg/s320/border+5.jpg" width="225" /></a></div>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Watching the news and social media responses to the Brexit
negotiations makes me wonder what people expected from a process that was bound
to be complicated, painful, protracted and prone to brinkmanship. The level of ineptitude shown by the British Government may have
surprised people, but it doesn’t account for the catastrophising zeal of those commentators
who consistently attempt to invalidate or sabotage both the <i>goal</i> and the <i>process</i> of the
negotiations. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>One of the juiciest cherries
atop this absurd cake is the acknowledgement by Scotland's First Minister that
the 35 Scottish Nationalist MPs at Westminster will back any proposals for a
second referendum on the Brexit terms. One</span><span style="color: #26282a; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> must accept that nationalists will, by definition, view
everything through the prism of their desire for independence; with that in
mind, it doesn’t take a huge leap of faith to imagine a situation in which
Scotland’s 2014 independence referendum might have resulted in a similar
melodrama.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Imagine, for a moment, a world in which that independence
referendum had resulted in a narrow win for the Yes team. There would have been
all kinds of heated discussion about the future, with just under half of the
population dismayed by the result and just over half in a state approaching euphoria.
Many within the Yes movement would have been elated, but some might also have
urged a note of caution about the challenges lying ahead, perhaps considering
it foolish to assume that it would be easy to dissolve a 300-year old
partnership. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Our First Minister would have had to appoint armies of civil
servants to deal with the many complexities of what, for the purpose of this
flight of fancy, we'll call <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Scoxit.</i> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There would, surely, have been questions over border controls,
currency, share of national debt, location of key businesses, ownership of
assets etc. Perhaps, given the closeness of the result, there might even have
been some division within the independence movement. Hard line <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Scoxiteers</i> might have argued for
immediate secession from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">rump UK</i> with
as little compromise as possible; others may have reasoned that the hopes,
fears and aspirations of the half of the population which did not vote ‘Yes’ would
have to be taken into account during the negotiations. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Imagine, on the losing side, that a group of rich and
influential people (bankers, politicians, business folk, cultural taste-makers)
started to cavil about the result. Imagine that their default line of attack
was that the Scottish electorate had been ‘duped’ and did not understand the
complexities of the issues concerned. These low-information voters, it might
have been argued, were forcing us to break up a successful partnership that had
endured for centuries. That <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Scoxit </i>vote,
portrayed by some as essentially anti-English and driven by ‘blood and soil’ xenophobia
would have to be overturned; a second referendum (or, if you will, a peoples’
vote) would be required. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The discerning reader might consider this to be a dismally low-resolution
interpretation of a binary vote, but let us imagine for the moment that such a
fanciful notion somehow had the power to gain some traction in the public consciousness.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As the deadline for the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Scoxit
</i>settlement loomed, one could envisage the negotiations stalling, perhaps snagging
on technicalities and conflicting interpretations of some of the terms contained
within the Act of Union. The First Minister would have been caught between a <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">rock</i></b>
(the ‘Stop Scoxit’ movement, agitating for a second referendum, but perhaps
willing to consent to a settlement involving as little disruption to the Union
as possible) and a <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">hard place</b> (the
<i>Scoxiteers</i>, insistent that a newly-independent Scotland should not be bound by
rules, terms and conditions dictated by Westminster).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Aiming to maintain a conciliatory approach to an increasingly
divisive issue, let us imagine that the beleaguered First Minister might have flown
to London to present a compromise deal, one which –arguably- contained just
enough juice for both parties to accept, allowing us to get on with the
business of forging effective links between Scotland and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">rump UK</i>. Imagine that this plan was quickly rejected by the Westminster negotiating
team and that the First Minister was sent homeward to think again. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Weary of being traduced for their ‘stupidity’, their ‘ignorance’
and their ‘xenophobia’, it is not difficult to imagine that Yes voters would have
started to fear that the prize they had won was going to be denied by intransigence
in London. Many would have been angry about a ‘foreign’ power deigning to grant
secession only on terms that seemed unduly punitive. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There is, of course, a possibility that those voters might have
weighed up the stalled negotiations, the slights to their First Minister, the endless
slanders and calls for a ‘peoples’ vote’ and thought: </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"Well
... this is rather more hassle than we expected. Maybe all those celebrities are
right; perhaps we should just have another vote."</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Or perhaps they would have taken a deep breath and said:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"Now,
perhaps, some of you are beginning to understand why we wanted to leave the UK.
We were asked a question and we gave you a clear instruction; now, please, give
us what we voted for."</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Given the circumstances, which of those responses would have
been more likely? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">To ask that question is to know the answer.</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"></span></div>
Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14496611393590832257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090439415775170102.post-4014857628025442702018-11-04T12:07:00.002+00:002023-01-02T21:24:51.648+00:00About that FIFA Club World Cup ...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhclvWqSdn6U5jR6kxOz_J4W1ovAfj5DZYYGLYT-us8vc-ZRluZ3KYHHim-WD3tRz4bP4DzRQBfhr31HvF9fnD3soTBSOdiKWju_waCxpB6NCf5ZqkbavphrCFWIDAfIDqp9WRjyDEKZlc/s1600/infantino+1.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="275" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhclvWqSdn6U5jR6kxOz_J4W1ovAfj5DZYYGLYT-us8vc-ZRluZ3KYHHim-WD3tRz4bP4DzRQBfhr31HvF9fnD3soTBSOdiKWju_waCxpB6NCf5ZqkbavphrCFWIDAfIDqp9WRjyDEKZlc/s320/infantino+1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="background: white; vertical-align: top;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Speaking at the opening<span> of the Asian Football Confederation's new headquarters the other day, FIFA president Gianni Infantino reiterated plans to
expand the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/45984904"><span color="windowtext">Club World Cup. He said he wants to make it a</span></a> "real competition" that "every club
in the world can target".</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Thank
goodness it’s going to be a genuine World Cup for clubs and not, as some had suspected,
a ‘<i>let’s get all the big teams playing each other in the middle east and then rake
in TV millions</i>’ Cup. Mr Infantino
is clearly looking after the interests of the global game and not just building
strategic alliances by courting dodgy regimes with big barrels of cash; FIFA’s spotless
reputation means that we can trust them to look after the best interests of the
sport.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>
</span><br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>The claim
that ‘every club in the world can target’ this new competition is, though, worth
a little bit of scrutiny. In what meaningful sense can, say, Ayr United, Bolton
Wanderers or Carshalton Athletic ‘target’ the Club World Cup? </span>FIFA has
211 member countries; the big, traditional footballing nations have thousands
of professional and semi-professional teams (if you want to make a whole morning
disappear, go look up the number of teams and leagues in Brazil). Even a small
country like Scotland has 276 registered professional and semi-professional
teams; England has 480 affiliated <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">divisions</i> with more than 5,000 registered teams. It would not be unreasonable to estimate that, across FIFA’s member countries, there
might be an average of, say, 750 professional or semi-professional clubs. If they
can all legitimately ‘target’ (i.e. enter) this new competition, the Club World
Cup could start with 158,250 entrants. How
might that work? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>First, let’s address the question of whether games should be organised
on a one-off ‘knockout’ format, or on a ‘home and away’ basis. For the sake of argument,
let’s assume that we’ll be going with a straight knock-out format (to avoid the
tournament becoming a tad unwieldy). </span>The
observant reader will have noticed that an ‘all-in’ draw featuring 158,250
teams in a knock-out format will, at some point, throw up an odd number of
surviving competitors. If all the teams went into the hat for the first round draw
(it will have to be a big hat … maybe a barrel would be more appropriate. Or,
now that I think about it, a skip; or rather, <i>several</i> skips), by round 5 we’d
be left with 9,875 teams; put simply: odd numbers don’t work in cup
competitions. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>
</span><br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">My guess,
therefore, is that FIFA will arrange a preliminary round in which the
bottom-seeded 56,416 teams will play each other for the right to enter the full
competition. Once that preliminary round has eliminated 28,808 minnows, the
first round ‘proper’ will feature 129,792 teams playing 64,896 ties. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>
</span><br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">There are
one or two practical issues to consider. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>I
estimate, based on extensive research (i.e. watching the draw for the quarter-finals
of the League Cup on TV the other night), that it takes an average of 38
seconds to draw two numbered balls from a hat or barrel, or skip (or skips). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With 64,896 games to arrange, our first round draw
will, therefore, take somewhere between 28 and 29 days to complete.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> I think </span></span>FIFA
should brand this draw as a month-long celebration of football administration.
Factoring in time for commercial breaks, celebrity appearances and bringing on substitutes
when people collapse from exhaustion, the draw would be a terrific televisual
sporting event, a bit like the Super Bowl, but with less Beyonce.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>
</span><br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">As a
Scottish football fan, I’d love to see our smaller clubs get a chance to compete
on the world stage. Imagine the tantalising prospects such a draw might
deliver:</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>
</span><br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverurie_Loco_Works_F.C." title="Inverurie Loco Works F.C."><span color="windowtext">Inverurie Loco
Works</span></a><b> </b>v Fótbóltsfelagið Giza</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>
</span><br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Whitehill Welfare v Jagiellonia
Białystok</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>
</span><br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Esportiva
Guaxupé v Newtongrange Star</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>
</span><br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">(One of
the downsides of that last tie would be that, since deregulation, the bus service
between Newtongrange and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaxup%C3%A9" title="Guaxupé"><span color="windowtext">Guaxupé</span></a> has been shocking;
this, combined with kick-off times designed to suit TV channels, might put off some
Newtongrange fans from travelling to Brazil).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>
</span><br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Once the
matches get underway, they’ll probably be spread over several days in order to
maximise TV revenues; by scheduling around 1,000 games per day, the first round
could be completed in two months. I won’t go into the logistics of rounds 2 to 14,
save to say that by the time we get to round 4, the number of competing teams
will have been reduced to 16,224; by round 7, we’d be pretty much down to the
‘elite’ level of 2,028 teams. Only by round 12 will we have reached the magical number of 64 teams, proven by scientists
to be the highest number that football fans easily understand (it’s a bit like
the theory that birds can only count up to 5, which makes it OK to steal eggs
from their nests if there are 6 or more in it. Or maybe they can count up to 6?
Whatever).</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>
</span><br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">If one
or two of the smaller teams manage to benefit from kind draws and a bit of luck,
there would be an outside chance of some mouth-watering quarter-final games. How
about Real Madrid v South Normanton Athletic or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakamega_Homeboyz_F.C." title="Kakamega Homeboyz F.C."><span color="windowtext">Kakamega Homeboyz</span></a>
v Manchester City? The prosaic truth, though, is that the last eight will
probably feature world football’s most popular ‘super clubs’, plus Paris Saint Germain. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>
</span><br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">With
tight scheduling and round-the-clock fixtures, it should be just about possible
to complete the entire event within a calendar year (remembering that the first
month of each new year would be entirely devoted to making the draw for the
first round). And yes,
I’m aware that the preliminary round draw must always precede the first round.
In a tight footballing calendar, it is therefore possible that we might have to
play 28,208 preliminary round ties for ‘year two’ while the tournament for ‘year
one’ is still running. Not ideal, I know, but it would at least help FIFA
advance their strategic goal for the total football environment, i.e. televised
football happening <b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">all the time.</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Everywhere.</i></b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><b> </b> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">The final
will probably be played in Riyadh or Doha on Christmas Eve, kicking off at
3.25am GMT. </span></div>
Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14496611393590832257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090439415775170102.post-84976683518527214652018-10-29T18:18:00.001+00:002021-02-20T11:18:24.077+00:00Tribute Act blues, part 2.<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKdWXPoR0pjw_Q8K4ip2A3oDEHBIdc1Rz3_lG5JeXlBHlsiqM_h6YI7YKqDTkec1zvZ8b_BHHCOCRUgvM2lJE_G7XcsdvA2tIIyD9_RaHyWT4tmvRmDtYI9xJj6XxLo48B6glBO7cXOi0/s284/AAAA+Queen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /><img border="0" data-original-height="177" data-original-width="284" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKdWXPoR0pjw_Q8K4ip2A3oDEHBIdc1Rz3_lG5JeXlBHlsiqM_h6YI7YKqDTkec1zvZ8b_BHHCOCRUgvM2lJE_G7XcsdvA2tIIyD9_RaHyWT4tmvRmDtYI9xJj6XxLo48B6glBO7cXOi0/s0/AAAA+Queen.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The release of the Freddie Mercury biopic reminds me that I once had a spell playing with a Queen tribute act.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">We played lots of gigs and built up a small but dedicated group of fans who followed us around the country. We got to know some of these fans quite well. One of the most devoted was Tessie, a friend-of-a-friend of our drummer. She was quite a big lady with a lively sense of humour and a fondness for pranks. She enjoyed our gigs but, more than anything else, she loved playing practical jokes on the band, invariably involving some spurious ‘emergency’ about one thing or another. On the way to one show, we got a voicemail message stating that the venue could not provide electricity after 9pm (that turned out to be Tessie). The day before another gig, we got an email asking if we could insert a couple of Abba songs into our set as there was a fan convention taking place in the town in which we were due to play (that turned out to be Tessie). Her pranks were occasionally amusing and usually harmless, but could sometimes be a pain in the neck when we were preparing for a performance. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">I remember one gig at a small town on the Ayrshire coast. We arrived late after our van had broken down on the motorway. Not only did we have no time for a soundcheck, but the manager of the venue proceeded to put us under additional pressure by making an unusual request. <i>Bohemian Rhapsody</i> was normally the closing number in our act, but he asked if we could start the show with it. He felt that, because we would be playing to a ‘difficult’ Friday night crowd, we might need something big to get the inebriated locals onside as quickly as possible. After some awkward negotiations, we reluctantly agreed to open the set with what would normally have been our show-stopper.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The last thing we needed at that point was another complication, but shortly before the gig was due to start, we got a phone call from a woman claiming to be from the local bee-keeping society. She told us that they had been using the venue for a meeting earlier that day and that one of their members had accidentally left a large working hive behind in the 'trap room', immediately underneath the stage. </span>According to this woman, we wouldn't be able to start our concert until they had removed the hive, as there was a strong possibility that a sudden outbreak of amplified music would send thousands of agitated bees flying up through the floorboards to attack members of the audience.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Despite the suspicion that this might be yet another prank by our number one fan, we agreed to check out the story. Upon entering the trap room, we came across a large wooden structure, which looked like a cross between a wardrobe and a series of stacked boxes with holes in them. None of us were experts. We might well have been looking at something a professional bee-keeper would use, but it could equally have been a stage prop for concealing a large human being.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Mindful of the fact that we were due onstage in a few minutes to start our show with Queen’s most famous tune, I turned to my bandmates and asked the only question that seemed appropriate:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><i>“Is this a real hive? Is this just fat Tessie?”</i> </span></div>Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14496611393590832257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090439415775170102.post-80645469495720102612018-10-23T09:44:00.001+01:002021-02-20T11:21:48.359+00:00Great news from UEFA<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirF-x2yRjJs5345lW6AyGZWYLy-nWpLb-ZfayoPqz71IZtuHwDMiOGetMH2Y518jq32p3hDfLIxcL2zIVWN4XmFyz0GlLeirDXOIZqpSKfD7AtXnoBkxmCq5NNR4LjA0bR0oTdSUIObpE/s1600/uefa+3.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="300" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirF-x2yRjJs5345lW6AyGZWYLy-nWpLb-ZfayoPqz71IZtuHwDMiOGetMH2Y518jq32p3hDfLIxcL2zIVWN4XmFyz0GlLeirDXOIZqpSKfD7AtXnoBkxmCq5NNR4LjA0bR0oTdSUIObpE/s320/uefa+3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">
At long last, details have<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> emerged about UEFA’s much-anticipated new ‘third’ club
competition, The ‘Equity and Diversity’ Shield, which is due to launch in
season 2019-20. </span>European
football’s governing body has decided to move with the times, recognising that
the old paradigm of competitive contact sport is perhaps out of sync with
modern thinking. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Unlike
the other two major club competitions, participating teams in the ‘Equity and
Diversity’ Shield will not be drawn from specific geographical locations, but
will –according to a statement on UEFA’s website- be selected from ‘communities
of interest’, a move designed to “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">transcend
the outdated notion of tribal boundaries, which are intrinsically decisive and
oppressive</i>”. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Under
the new format, any ‘goals’ which happen to be scored during a game will be
only part of an overall <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">qualitative assessment</i>
made by a panel of judges, who will mark each team based on elements like: co-operation,
social awareness, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sportspersonship</i>
and cultural sensitivity. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">For
example, a team which does not score any ‘goals’ during a game may instead
accumulate ‘merit points’ by performing an interpretive dance commemorating the
historic achievements of indigenous communities, or perhaps by facilitating a
series of workshops on themes like racism, transphobia or patriarchal
hegemony.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Any
‘goals’ conceded will be balanced out by an assessment of the inclusivity of
the merit activities undertaken, measured against specific performance criteria
focused on Equity and Diversity. Additional merit points will be awarded to
teams drawn exclusively from communities or groups facing systemic oppression. Points
will be deducted if a team is perceived to have unfairly benefited from
privilege (for example, if it was discovered that a member of their squad had
previously owned a slave plantation or had an uncle who was in the Gestapo). </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
tournament will have no outright winner as such, but 16 qualifiers
from the group stages will take part in a celebration of Equity and Diversity to be held at the end of each season. The four most worthy teams (as
chosen by the judges) will then be awarded joint custody of the trophy for three
months each. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>UEFA President Aleksander
Čeferin said:</span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">We must move with the times and accept that
concepts like ‘winning’, ‘losing’, ‘scoring’ etc. are becoming increasingly
inappropriate in the modern world.</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Academic
studies suggest that the act of ‘scoring’ a ‘goal’ in a football match can be
interpreted as an unconscious celebration of heteronormative penetrative
intercourse and that this is not always consensual. Depending on the
circumstances, members of the team conceding a goal might then be made to feel
like ‘losers’ or even victims of abuse. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Our new
rules are designed merely to take a little bit of the focus away from the
problematic activity of ‘goal-scoring’ by recognising that there are many ways
to succeed in football. That is why the judges will be considering other
performance elements, like good co-operation, social awareness, cultural
sensitivity and so on.”</span></i><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As
an avid football fan, I welcome this news. Some reactionary forces within the
game will be hostile to the proposed changes, but we should remember that
football was once played without goalposts and crossbars; it was once played
without referees; it was once played without red and yellow cards. The introduction of ‘merit points’ is just part of the natural evolution of the
game. In time, most fans will get behind the new format and support the drive
towards <i>equality of outcome</i> at all levels. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A
spokesperson for the BBC has already announced that they will be bidding for
the exclusive broadcasting rights for the new tournament. </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"></span></div>
Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14496611393590832257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090439415775170102.post-17551861983481504902018-10-18T12:01:00.003+01:002021-02-20T11:27:41.892+00:00What goes around ...<span id="goog_1529757961"></span><span id="goog_1529757962"></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">I have
never really wanted to meet any of my creative heroes, mainly because of the worry
that, if they turned out to be twerps, it might put me off the very work which drew my admiration in the first place. Accordingly, I usually find it easy to separate the person from the work. If I first had to
approve of the personalities or political views of folk whose music or
literature I could enjoy, I’d probably need to ditch about 90% of my books and CDs. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a more pronounced example of the gulf between
‘how highly I rate someone’s work’ and ‘how unimpressed I am with them as a
person’ than the case of Graham Linehan. I loved
his writing for the sitcoms ‘Father Ted’ (co-written with Arthur Mathews) and
‘The IT Crowd’. </span>These shows
created surreal worlds wherein events invariably conspired to cock a gentle snook
at prevailing orthodoxies, institutions and personality-types. The scripts were often rich in sceptical observations of the kind that could only be made by a thoroughly
grounded person. At least … that’s what I thought until I started following him
on twitter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">I soon
discovered that, on cultural debates, he came across as … well, let’s be polite
and say ‘not a very nice person’. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>His strident <i>right-on</i> persona dispirited me to the extent that I had to ‘unfollow’ him,
worried that continued exposure to his shrill pieties might somehow impact on
my enjoyment of his creative work. Earlier this year, he disgraced himself by condemning
a fellow comedian (Count Dankula) over his now infamous ‘Nazi-pug’ video. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">It seems,
however, that Linehan has now fallen prey to the very thing that he practiced: the
twitter pile-on. In case
you haven’t caught the story, he has been cautioned by the police for <i>dead-naming</i>
(no, I didn’t know that was a thing either) Stephanie Hayden, a trans activist.
Presumably looking for something to do after solving all of the local crimes, the
police sprang into action when Linehan chose, in an online spat, to mention a
biological fact: namely, that the person he was arguing with had been born male. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Let’s,
for the moment, put to one side the chilling realisation that the Orwellian
nightmare of <i>thoughtcrime</i> has been eagerly embraced by the British
police.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">After cultivating
a belligerent online persona, Linehan surely can’t have been surprised by the
extent to which people were prepared, in tennis parlance, to return his serves
with interest? Having, among other things, slandered Brexit supporters as
RACISTS (yes, he did use capital letters) he is now being served with a civil
court action for being a TRANSPHOBE (capitals appropriate).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>His problem
is that, even in comfortable middle age, he has yet to grasp a simple truth
that, once understood, ought to inform adult political discourse: namely, that
the opposite of a <i>good</i> idea is not necessarily a <i>bad</i> idea; it is often just another
idea, imagined by someone with different life experiences and different thought
processes. </span>Good ideas not only can, but do (and almost inevitably <i>will</i>) come into conflict. An acknowledgment of this
fact should be on the map guiding us through the territory between competing ideologies.
Because, to put it simply: how we negotiate that space defines our humanity.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Had Graham
Linehan been plotting these misadventures for one of his comedy characters,
my hunch would be that the story arc would end with a moment of realisation,
after which the chastened hero would be a wiser, more measured, more conciliatory
person. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">He must
be a smart guy to have written the things he has written. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">I hope
he has it in him to become as smart as one of his characters.</span></div>
Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14496611393590832257noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090439415775170102.post-74351724106689206942018-10-12T23:31:00.001+01:002021-02-20T11:13:40.729+00:00Tribute Act blues, part 1.<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</xml><![endif]--><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCuHKcFMLnaZOshbWaG40s8h-_FKSLs3vGYMIzrvMZGZzhG8hUIhCPhupfQQtKnVe58dGfFsZqOUR70gIxsUl8avH8cqOfugnjSs4o5YjNECIZregZ5YfRaEfSTPZo8AmSSrhJB657s20/s225/AAAAAA+steve+miller.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCuHKcFMLnaZOshbWaG40s8h-_FKSLs3vGYMIzrvMZGZzhG8hUIhCPhupfQQtKnVe58dGfFsZqOUR70gIxsUl8avH8cqOfugnjSs4o5YjNECIZregZ5YfRaEfSTPZo8AmSSrhJB657s20/s0/AAAAAA+steve+miller.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I used to play with a tribute act dedicated to the music of The Steve Miller Band (you may recall hits from the 70s and 80s like ‘The Joker’, ‘Abracadabra’ and ‘Take the Money and Run’). We called ourselves 'The Steve Miller Band' Band.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">After gigging for a few months, we noticed that we were getting the liveliest reaction at our shows when we played the songs from Miller's repertoire that were being refused airplay because of what the broadcasting authorities deemed to be 'inappropriate’ language. So popular were these songs in our live set that we eventually decided to ditch all of the mainstream material and concentrate exclusively on Miller’s 'x-rated' stuff.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Accordingly, we changed our name to '<b>The (banned) Steve Miller Band' Band.</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We started to get more bookings and built up quite a following. Things went so well that we started to produce our own range of merchandise to sell at gigs: t-shirts, posters, key-rings etc. One of the most popular items was an encircling strip, made of rubber, which could be worn on the wrist or lower forearm. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It was, of course, 'The (banned) Steve Miller Band' Band band.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Our gigs were lively affairs. People would often get carried away by the energy of the music, to the extent that inebriated audience members would throw stuff about the place. On a tour of small towns in the north-east of Scotland, we once played a particularly raucous gig at Stonehaven at which a member of the audience had to receive medical treatment after being hit in the eye by a piece of merchandise which had been thrown by an over-enthusiastic fan. We were booked to play at Banff town hall the following weekend, but when the local council heard about this incident, they took immediate action (on the grounds of health and safety), forbidding us from setting up our merchandising stall and selling any of our goods. Needless to say, the local press picked up on this story and, on the day of our gig at Banff town hall, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">North East Weekly</i> ran this headline:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">'(Banned) Steve Miller Band’ Band band banned!</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Over the next few days, however, news emerged that Banff council had denied issuing any instructions about our merchandise. It was consequently discovered that not only had our manager exaggerated that ‘Stonehaven concert injury’ report, he had also concocted the ‘Banff council outrage’ story in order to generate some publicity for rest of the tour. A spokesperson for the National Union of Booking Agents then revealed that our manager was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">already serving a suspension</i> for a previous breach of agency rules and actually had no right to be managing any act at this time. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>After that revelation, this sorry tale came to an undignified end with this dramatic headline in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘Inverurie Advertiser’:</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #26282a; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Banned band manager planned '(Banned) Steve Miller Band' Band Banff band ban!</span></b></span></div></div>Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14496611393590832257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090439415775170102.post-45310267955204941232018-04-30T22:47:00.003+01:002021-02-22T11:10:37.705+00:00Making an album, part 11: Recording with my dad.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuQ3CXqFZJCmgezVoc90y3WW8VIAu7gpxZrwprVbdOOopekLPhGhwZj2tX242M4skSiJYOrtPg9aiTJAk4KNC-B-jqAPw2xzXC_w7m-mlwA7M3ADBCsGkaB89P68sGcxCocD_ODWxyVwM/s1600/smiling.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1224" data-original-width="1600" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuQ3CXqFZJCmgezVoc90y3WW8VIAu7gpxZrwprVbdOOopekLPhGhwZj2tX242M4skSiJYOrtPg9aiTJAk4KNC-B-jqAPw2xzXC_w7m-mlwA7M3ADBCsGkaB89P68sGcxCocD_ODWxyVwM/s320/smiling.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">
In 2014, I started<span> writing about the process of recording some songs with the intention
of making an album. The project that I started documenting back then has grown
arms and legs and morphed into a multi-headed beast (more about that some other
time). I’ve taken several detours along the way, but the one that means the most
is about to get a proper release on an actual record label, something I had
barely even considered as a possibility when I started out.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">My dad was born in 1940. In his early twenties, he was part of the Bob Dylan
generation and his devotion to that cause is overwhelmingly reflected in his
record collection, but he was also influenced by Scottish folk artists like Hamish
Imlach and Matt McGinn. He played guitar and wrote his own songs and it’s clear that my interest and
passion for music is inherited from him. He loved playing, but -apart from family
parties- he never performed in public. His three kids, at some point or
another, all ended up playing in bands, so I suppose we took his musical
interests just a little bit further. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Having worked into his seventies, he had often seemed weighed down in recent years by
the responsibilities of looking after our ailing mum. As she became more and
more reluctant (and less able) to leave the house, it started to look like
dad’s health and well-being would best be served by giving him opportunities to
get out and about. From a selfish point of view, that allowed me to re-connect with
him through music and our getting 'out and about’ involved taking in shows by
the likes<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>of Don McLean, Joan
Armatrading, Paul Carrack, Ray Davies, Lucinda Williams and Sheryl Crow.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">One night in the spring of 2016, he handed me a CD with some of his own songs on
it. It came as a bit of a surprise, because, wrapped up in my own stuff, I had
somehow overlooked the possibility that this quiet and unassuming man who
looked after my mum might still feel the need to express himself through the
medium of song. As a self-absorbed nitwit, it hadn’t occurred to me that dad
might still be writing or thinking about music in his mid-70s. I took his
CD home. I really, really wanted it to be good, but there was a small, cowardly
part of me that dreaded the possibility that it might not be. How could I possibly
have responded to that? What could I have said? But that small cowardly part was
worrying for no good reason; the rational part of me <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">knew</i> that dad’s stuff would be good. I had, after all, heard him
around the house often enough when I was a kid. I knew that he could write
songs and he could sing. And, once I started working my way through his CD, I knew
that we had to record his songs. We had to make an album together.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Like all great ideas, once it was out there it seemed so obvious that I cursed myself
for not thinking of it sooner. When I ran it past him, his first response, as I
expected, was to shy away from the possibility of being put in the spotlight.
He seemed a bit reluctant and said: “<i>I don’t know if I could do that</i>”. My dad
had been a musician since his teenage years, but had never played gigs or made
a big deal out of his talent. His public performances extended only to
strumming the guitar at gatherings with family and friends and I knew that it
would take a bit of persuading to get him into a recording studio. Once he
had warmed to the notion, we discussed whether it was going to be a
singer-songwriter album, that is, him sitting in front of a microphone
strumming his guitar, or whether it was going to be something else. I pushed gently
for ‘something else’ because I felt that his songs deserved to sound much
bigger and better than any of the home recordings he had made. His original
demos had a charm of their own, but I knew that he had material that could comfortably
thrive in a grander soundscape.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">While</span> working on the arrangements, I had to keep in mind that we had different tastes
in music. I enjoy lush sounding recordings with interesting textures and love discovering hidden details and subtle layers in the mix; by contrast,
my dad generally prefers things a bit simpler. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s an old-school songwriter and he likes
recordings and songs to be about performances but, as a ‘jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none’
kind of musician, I’m almost entirely dependent on studio manipulation and
clever editing techniques. I could no more play a decent guitar solo than I
could build a car from cutlery, but I’m reasonably <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">au fait</i> with the technology that makes it sound like I am getting
away with it. I learned a lot from working on his material. Although some of
the songs we recorded are more than fifty years old, the themes are still
relevant, perhaps even topical, in 2018: prejudice, legal injustice, the
follies of war, love and regret. My dad is a better writer than me in the sense
that he’s got a purer sense of what a song is. My songs are often high on
artifice, coquettish little creatures that flirt with my various musical
influences; by contrast, his stuff goes directly to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">message central</i> with an emotional heft that I don’t think I can
match.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">Once the</span> recording process was underway, my brother got involved. Although he lives in
London (as does his drum kit), we usually managed to arrange our sessions to
coincide with his visits to Glasgow. Other musicians were recruited to the
cause as we started to pull the collection together. Two of the songs on the
album feature contributions from a man who has written an actual number one hit
single. Danny Mitchell wrote ‘If I was’ for Midge Ure, which topped the charts
in 1986. My brother knows Danny (who now runs a studio in Glasgow) and told him
that we were working on this project. He expressed an interest in getting
involved and, within a couple of weeks of being sent some rough mixes, he had
recorded some lovely pedal steel guitar and mandolin. Through the miracle of
electronic mail, he sent us the parts and we were able to drop his tasteful and
appropriate contributions into our recordings.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">During the dialogue about which songs we’d be recording for the album, I got
used to the idea that my visits to the family house would occasionally feature some
little moment when dad would pull an old cassette tape from a drawer and say something
like: “<i>do you think we could maybe do something with this one?” </i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">On one such
occasion, as the tape hiss gave way to the opening chords of another
long-neglected tune, I was instantly returned to my childhood, anticipating the
words and melody of something that I hadn’t heard for many years. He had
written a song about the disaster that befell the village school at Aberfan and
his opening lines summarise the story far better than I could ever do.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">21st October 1966</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">A whole mountain moved, became
unfixed</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">A whole mountain moved, it was
made by man</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Moved half a mile down on the
school at Aberfan.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">I hadn’t
heard or thought about that song for such a long time, but I knew it entirely, a
song that my dad had sung as he sat and strummed his guitar while his three kids
probably ran around the house creating merry hell and knocking lumps out of
each other. And that’s what made me a singer and a songwriter; my dad modelled
that behaviour for me. Years later, I ended up doing the same thing, sitting
strumming an acoustic guitar while my own kids painted murals on the furniture,
dressed the baby in drag or built an alien ship out of chairs and tables (sometimes
all at once). I still write songs and I still get something spiritual and
uplifting from the process of making music. That is one of the things I’ve
tried to explain as I’ve been writing about recording my own albums; working on
music is soul food and, when I do it, I’m doing it for me; except, in this case,
that’s only part of the story. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpaGxUquRP2ofNpIKRvYQcvXvTTe1yX0xxr-ADB8ZYLyLvi3b0oSI52AbsehYjeEikN9s6yDQ6vk4Lzb8Dhyphenhyphen-4cAtXzQE6Y6gIDjMmLMlYpAR2zdzL11lvhxb66Ps0MsYzmy7s0AOByQc/s1600/studio+lads.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="913" data-original-width="1432" height="204" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpaGxUquRP2ofNpIKRvYQcvXvTTe1yX0xxr-ADB8ZYLyLvi3b0oSI52AbsehYjeEikN9s6yDQ6vk4Lzb8Dhyphenhyphen-4cAtXzQE6Y6gIDjMmLMlYpAR2zdzL11lvhxb66Ps0MsYzmy7s0AOByQc/s320/studio+lads.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Towards the end of the recording process, we spoke about how we might promote the work.
With typical modesty, dad insisted on not using his own name on the album cover,
saying that it was “<i>too much like blowing your own trumpet</i>”. We eventually
managed to reach a compromise by using his initials and surname. We also struggled
to come up with an appropriate album title until, late in the day, while browsing
through some photographs of post-war Glasgow, we came across a picture of two
old ladies chatting in the street with the caption: ‘This has been me since
yesterday’; we knew there and then that we had hit the jackpot. For those unfamiliar with the Glasgow vernacular, this is a phrase –once quoted in
a sketch by Billy Connolly- that was formerly in common usage. It was the kind
of line that might be used by two people (usually women) meeting on the street,
each comparing notes on how busy they have been. “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">This has been me since yesterday”</i> one might say, to be countered by
“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Aye, I’ve not sat down since I got up”. </i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">The
phrase tickled my dad and I think it spoke to his sense of being a proud
Glaswegian.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">During</span> the time we spent recording this album, tragedy and trauma visited our family.
After a long period of illness, our mother died in the summer of 2017 and so
never got to hear the final fruit of our labours. I’m sure, however, that she
would have been quietly pleased that -at the age of 77- dad’s music was finally
getting a well-deserved public airing. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>Her
death had a big impact on him and, in the following weeks and months, we began
to suspect that all was not well. Having devoted several years to being mum’s
primary carer, it became apparent that the absence of the attendant daily
routines had revealed issues with his mental health. No longer anchored by his caring
duties, he became prone to lapses that appeared to signal something rather more
significant than the forgetfulness one might normally expect from a man of his
age. Towards the end of the recording process, it was obvious that he was adrift
and that his abilities were diminished. After a number of distressing episodes,
we discovered that he was </span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">succumbing to Lewy Body Dementia (LBD), a progressive
brain disorder which impacts on behaviour, cognition, and movement. LBD
presents itself through a range of symptoms, including problems with memory,
thinking and visual hallucinations. One of its characteristics is that it can
become rapidly debilitating and, just a few weeks after our last recording
session in September 2017, he had deteriorated to the point where he required
full-time nursing care.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">After a
few months concentrating on dad’s welfare and other family stuff, I started
approaching record companies with a view to gauging interest in what I thought
was an excellent album and a great story. How many times, after all, does
someone make their recording debut at the age of 77? The fact that this story had
an unfortunate sting in the tail made the prospect of an official release all
the more poignant. When I told my dad that Ian Green at Greentrax Records had expressed
a firm interest in releasing the album, he was chuffed. I know that when we
started out, he would happily have settled for running off 30 or so copies to distribute among relatives and friends. He’s still inclined to hide his light under a
bushel and I’m sure there is a part of him that can’t quite believe that anyone
outside his immediate social circle could be interested in his songs.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">My recording
journey has been fulfilling and I hope it’s not over, but I doubt that I will
find another highlight to match sitting in a recording studio with my dad, polishing
up his songs, working out harmonies and considering whether that drum roll
going into the second chorus is making too much of a statement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">He might
not be in the best position to enjoy whatever interest will now be generated by
his recording debut, but we know at least that our dad had a great time working
on his album. It may have been half a century in the making, but some things
are worth taking your time over.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">‘This has been me since yesterday’ is released by
Greentrax Records on 1<sup>st</sup> May.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-spacerun: yes;">You'll find some samples from the album here: <a href="https://soundcloud.com/acweir" target="_blank">https://soundcloud.com/acweir</a></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"></span></div>
Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14496611393590832257noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090439415775170102.post-86040174514751971502018-04-28T08:55:00.002+01:002021-02-20T11:39:54.694+00:00Burn the witch!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU2TNcuq5EVvGEn9hlqLwTRQe2FkVv-1bUJ_-XXLFkgMy0ZNf8D9HrxC58n3gWqmDvO2mJCbOh4uHu-ap8pGhaDQ_TJ6rdAqrMLs6yuoqFpGqbbU3XCNupSovHxM2g_8PVZRXPOcwqSWw/s1600/dankula+2.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="194" data-original-width="259" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU2TNcuq5EVvGEn9hlqLwTRQe2FkVv-1bUJ_-XXLFkgMy0ZNf8D9HrxC58n3gWqmDvO2mJCbOh4uHu-ap8pGhaDQ_TJ6rdAqrMLs6yuoqFpGqbbU3XCNupSovHxM2g_8PVZRXPOcwqSWw/s320/dankula+2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span class="ydpcf8fb8b5uficommentbody"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The comedian
–a term you might choose to apply loosely- Mark Meechan, a.k.a. Count Dankula,
has been fined £800 after appearing at Airdrie Sheriff Court charged with </span></span><span class="ydpcf8fb8b5uficommentbody">aggravating
religious prejudice.<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> His crime was to
post a video on youtube, during which he trained his girlfriend’s dog to
respond to the words “gas the Jews” and to perform the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sieg Heil</i> with one of its paws.The video is not particularly funny and it would be easy to argue that it is in bad taste. That,
however, is an observation which should only merit a response of ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">so what’?</i></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span class="ydpcf8fb8b5uficommentbody"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">At the start
of the clip, Dankula announces that his aim is to transform the dog from being
what his girlfriend regards as the cutest thing in the world –a little pug- into
the least cute thing imaginable: a Nazi. </span></span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But Sheriff Derek O'Carroll
found him guilty under the Communications Act of a charge that he posted material
which was grossly offensive because it was "anti-Semitic and racist in
nature" and was “aggravated by religious prejudice”. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span class="ydpcf8fb8b5uficommentbody"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The clip
wasn’t sent to anyone in particular; it was uploaded to a server and was only
viewable upon demand. And, in </span></span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">spite of Dankula’s explanation of
the joke, the context of his words were deemed to be irrelevant. If the </span><span class="ydpcf8fb8b5uficommentbody"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">context
provided by the comedian was irrelevant, then it must surely follow that </span></span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Sheriff
O'Carroll’s use of the phrase “gas the Jews” in court was also anti-Semitic. The
only way those words couldn’t be interpreted as anti-Semitic would be if one
acknowledged the importance of context. If context is irrelevant, shouldn’t Sheriff
O’Carroll be charged too?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">One
of the <span class="ydpcf8fb8b5uficommentbody">worst things about this case (and
there are many bad things) is that other comedians have been willing to throw a
fellow traveller under the bus, indifferent or oblivious to their wretched acceptance
of a milieu in which the context of words can be deemed irrelevant by the
authorities. Just how complacent, stupid or tribal do you have to be in order
not to grasp that the creation of such conditions might one day result in your
own imprisonment? </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Some
have observed that Dankula didn’t get sent to jail and that his fine of £800 will
probably be paid by donations from his supporters. Indeed, at the time of writing,
his crowd funding page has raised around £114,000 to cover the predicted legal
costs of his appeal against the sentence. Such observations are facile and
ignore the two main points. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This shouldn't have gone to court. The fact that it did and
the way that it did, should set our alarm bells ringing. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The fine is irrelevant, because <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the process itself is the punishment</i>. The precedent has been set;
if you wish to avoid the possibility of a two-year legal battle with its
attendant fees, stress and adverse publicity, you had best rein in your online comments,
opinions and jokes.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span class="ydpcf8fb8b5uficommentbody"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Last week, a
young woman from Liverpool was convicted of hate speech for posting the lyrics
from Snap Dogg’s track <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I’m trippin’</i>. One
wonders how this can be possible when neither the author nor the publisher of those
lyrics have been prosecuted. Nor has any action ever been undertaken against
the many folk who sing along with the lyrics at Mr Dogg’s concerts. The person </span></span>who made the complaint was PC Dominique Walker, who works for the Hate Crime Unit
of Merseyside Police. Let’s lay that one out for inspection: A person who gets
paid to spot ‘hate crime’ makes a complaint about a ‘hate crime’ incident in
which a young woman has quoted lyrics from a song that has been broadcast,
promoted <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and performed on many occasions.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="ydpcf8fb8b5uficommentbody"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Perhaps we
should acknowledge the possibility (and by that, I mean the probability) that
someone who <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">gets paid</i> to spot ‘hate crime’
ought not to be able to bring a ‘hate crime’ complaint against a member of the
public. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="ydpcf8fb8b5uficommentbody"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Perhaps we
should acknowledge the possibility (and by that I mean the probability) that it
is in PC Dominique Walker’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">professional interests</i>
to find and prosecute examples of ‘hate crime’ in the same way that it was in
the best interests of witch-finders in the 17<sup>th</sup> century to find and
prosecute witches.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Anyone
who can look upon these prosecutions with equanimity should consider the
possibility (and by that I mean the probability) that one day it might not be ‘reasonable’
folk who happen to share their views who will get to exercise this kind of capricious
authority. <span class="ydpcf8fb8b5uficommentbody">Perhaps they should try and envisage
a world in which the most </span>reprehensible people imaginable have been
granted the power to behave as the police and the courts have behaved in these
cases. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
a mature democracy, people who make frivolous accusations of ‘hate crime’ would
be ignored and considered ridiculous. Personally, I’d favour a more remedial
treatment, perhaps involving them being marched through town, put in the stocks
and pelted with rotten fruit. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But
we can’t claim to live in a mature democracy when the actions of the
authorities are edging us ever closer to an age in which that ‘stocks and
rotten fruit’ option might begin to look like a quaint remnant of a golden age
of progressive enlightenment.</span></div>
Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14496611393590832257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090439415775170102.post-18741400884856911172018-04-06T11:31:00.001+01:002021-02-20T11:35:15.641+00:00'Listening' requires ... listening.<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv9KDwqE6sUK-cg2AOKNHXa0gRSdaBMIyzBZQThvJhsnLkYqPwyfoP8UR15aTJ4KIcXPBtpZgX7qI-734nt0QfpwsUu3ZOtpcxLo6sgV3Z57GwW36xHjRj1Ftv2msSd3YIXQqHo5WIItg/s1600/DR+1.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="225" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv9KDwqE6sUK-cg2AOKNHXa0gRSdaBMIyzBZQThvJhsnLkYqPwyfoP8UR15aTJ4KIcXPBtpZgX7qI-734nt0QfpwsUu3ZOtpcxLo6sgV3Z57GwW36xHjRj1Ftv2msSd3YIXQqHo5WIItg/s200/DR+1.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Further
to my previous post about long-form internet TV, I thought it might be worth
flagging up at least one show that the curious viewer might wish to check
out. There
are many people providing excellent and challenging content in long-form chat
shows on the so-called ‘intellectual dark web’. Among these are Joe Rogan,
Stefan Molynuex, Sam Harris, Gad Saad and Dave Rubin. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">The latter’s
‘Rubin Report’ is one of the most reliable and civilised on the market. Rubin
is a charming man with an open, inquiring mind and he will often demonstrate
that he’s prepared to do the old-fashioned thing of changing his mind when the
facts change. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">He's a gay man from the old liberal left whose life experiences led him to the
conclusion that a number of his key assumptions were mistaken. His oft-expressed
view is that he didn’t leave the left; ‘the left’ left him. He tells
a nice story which illustrates why he now finds himself thoroughly embroiled in
the fight for enlightenment values. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">He was </span>invited
for a drink by an old liberal friend that he hadn’t seen for several years.
During their conversation, his friend expressed the view that he was somewhat alarmed,
not only by Rubin’s willingness to engage with ‘objectionable’ people, but by
the fact that he appeared to have changed his mind on a number of big topics.
The friend implied that Rubin’s ‘conversion’ was motivated by financial
concerns, because his show was obviously picking up a lot of subscribers. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">After a
frustrating exchange of views, Dave decided to ask a question which he thought
would at least create some kind of base from which they could start to build a reasonably
constructive dialogue. I’m paraphrasing, but this is more or less what he asked
his friend: </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">For the purposes of this discussion, are you
prepared to allow that my aim is the same as yours, namely to try and make the
world a better place; and further, that my positions are not only sincerely
held, but have been arrived at through careful consideration of the available
evidence?” </i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Without
a second’s hesitation, the friend replied: “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">No,
I’m sorry … I can’t.”</i> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">And
there, in the shell of a nut, is an illustration that, in an age of tribalism
and entrenched group identity, there can be no dialogue between opposing
viewpoints. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Dave
Rubin, unlike his former friend, understands that, unless you can approach political
conversations with the belief that there is at least a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">possibility</i> that the other person might just know something that
you don’t, then -whatever else you are doing- you’re not really listening. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>Here’s a
recent example of his work, a free-ranging discussion with </span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Steven
Pinker, a cognitive psychologist at Harvard University and the author of ‘<i>Enlightenment
Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress’. </i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK3mm8P21ao" target="_blank">Dave Rubin meets Steven Pinker</a> </i></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"></span></div>
Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14496611393590832257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090439415775170102.post-4232380319900871242018-03-04T21:09:00.001+00:002021-02-20T11:33:22.258+00:00I think my TV is broken <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaYuH-TVbqxGvMwLcSv6Vn-ErrvrRPVV9_ufNWBI368Lxw53uVRVCxNBUNb6hN-j9XDKVr3hdLe62_jYjDGXJ5occrjUbXM6tOitQTPxmFDmI2fA98OmyVh-bh_zOg_9uCuSfX4_lyx1Q/s1600/TV+2.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="225" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaYuH-TVbqxGvMwLcSv6Vn-ErrvrRPVV9_ufNWBI368Lxw53uVRVCxNBUNb6hN-j9XDKVr3hdLe62_jYjDGXJ5occrjUbXM6tOitQTPxmFDmI2fA98OmyVh-bh_zOg_9uCuSfX4_lyx1Q/s320/TV+2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">
I've been talking with people recently about the increasing<span style="line-height: 115%;"> popularity of ‘long-form’ internet chat shows and wondering: </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 115%;">a) why
this is happening and </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 115%;">b) why so much of the really interesting political and
philosophical content is being produced in America. As far as I can tell, there
are very few British equivalents (although I’d be delighted if someone pointed
me towards something which would disprove that assertion).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 115%;">I'm not sure why this seems to be the case, but there
are, I think, a couple of ‘broad brushstroke’ observations that could be made. Perhaps
because of the way the nation had to win its independence, the American psyche
seems more readily tuned to notions of intellectual freedom, particularly to
ideas that might, broadly speaking, be described as iconoclastic and /or
libertarian (although I realise that these days that, in itself, might be seen
by some as a pejorative term). Americans have a positive concept of citizenship
which –generally speaking- makes them less inclined to trust centralised
authority.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">By contrast,</span> many British folk see themselves as subjects.
Our psyche seems more readily tuned to deference and I think this applies as
much to institutions and political parties as it does to class. Perhaps as a
result of the conditions which prevailed during and after World War 2, our political
discourse seems more likely to be framed within implicitly <i>statist</i> concepts and
notions. Indeed, some of these have become such articles of faith that many folk
appear to be unaware that there might be other ways of thinking about them. To
take two obvious examples: Start a thread on any social network questioning the
sheer wonderfulness of either the NHS and /or the BBC and you’ll soon encounter
something very close to cult-like behaviour (by that, I mean an unwillingness
to consider the possibility of any deviation from received views).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">I only have</span> an outsider’s superficial grasp of American
mainstream media, so I won’t comment on the failings which are causing people on
that side of the Atlantic to look elsewhere for nourishment. In the UK, the
mainstream channels persist with the pretence of impartiality, a notion that permeates
a lot of news content like a bad smell. Just occasionally, political debate
‘red in tooth and claw’ is allowed to break out, but generally speaking, the quality
of discourse is dismally shallow.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 115%;">It is inevitable, once consumers start noticing
this, that some will decide to shop around. The popularity of the so-called ‘intellectual
dark web’ has come about because people are rejecting the orthodoxies and pieties
of the mainstream media, demanding instead content which treats them like
adults and which recognises that every story contains degrees of nuance. They want discussion that isn’t stale and managed; they want debate
which doesn’t banish some topics to the realm of the forbidden.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 115%;">With the mainstream media unwilling or unable to provide
such a service, some consumers will naturally flock to platforms which allow real
conversations, unmediated by spin, to take place between real people. The popularity
of these alternative outlets is evidence that there is, after all, an appetite
for serious discussion about complicated ideas.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">But don't expect mainstream journalists to do
anything about it. They </span>haven’t even noticed that the television might
be broken.</span></div>
Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14496611393590832257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090439415775170102.post-58606098693643822152018-02-17T09:16:00.001+00:002021-02-18T21:38:06.622+00:00Vinyl Diary, part 4: New Wave<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 115%;">In 1993, the rock press started to talk about
something called ‘Britpop’. I had no idea what it meant, other than that
someone had invented yet another music genre. The phenomenon went on to carry some
cultural weight, although perhaps not always for the reasons celebrated by some
commentators. Depending on your point of view, Noel Gallagher hanging around
Downing Street with Tony Blair was either the zenith of ‘Cool Britannia’ or the
precise moment at which rock music relinquished its risible claim to be the
standard bearer for anything resembling a counter-cultural movement. Here’s a
clue: If you’re sipping tea with the Prime Minister, you may still fancy
yourself as a rebel, but you are most definitely <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">inside</i> the tent, pissing out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">It is generally accepted that the first two Britpop
albums were by Suede and The Auteurs. Suede had some good songs, but the
production on their album was awful, spoiled by an excess of washy reverb and the
vocals being too far back in the mix. The singer, Brett Anderson, wrote lyrics
coyly alluding to vague homosexual encounters and once claimed in an interview
that he was </span><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">"a bisexual
man who never had a homosexual experience". It seemed a bit lame, </span><span style="line-height: 115%;">but
at least he looked like a bona fide pop star.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">By contrast, Luke Haines of The Auteurs, with his
foppish hair and junk shop clothes, looked more like your well-read sixth-form mate
who would sit at the back of the class making snide remarks. He sang like someone
who had only previously performed in his bedroom, with the vocals all double or
even treble-tracked; his weedy voice and cynical tone conveyed the impression of
someone who was, perhaps, out to take some revenge upon the world. For all of the </span><span style="line-height: 115%;">vocal limitations, his songs certainly
had a bit of devilment and wit about them. When I heard ‘Showgirl’ on the radio
for the first time, I was struck by the boldness of the opening few bars. The
sudden drop after the line “<i>I took a showgirl for my bride</i>” sounded brave,
assertive, brimming with confidence; it compelled me to shut up and listen. The
songs on </span><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘New Wave’ appeared to explore a bohemian demi-monde of actors,
musicians and dancing girls, stuck permanently between jobs and waiting for
their big showbiz break. In ‘Valet Parking’, Haines sang “<i>I’m sick of parking
cars</i>” and you got the feeling that he meant it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 115%;">His lyrics could be acerbic, but were sometimes mysterious
and allusive. On the splendidly cryptic ‘Idiot Brother’, he directed the
following line at surely the only person in the world who would understand what
it was about:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">"And what about our fat friend<br />
With the golden ear?"</i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"></i><br />
<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I had no</span><i> </i>idea what was going on, but it was fun trying to guess.<br />
<br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">
'American <span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Guitars’ was interpreted by some as a Britpop statement of intent, something
along the lines of: ‘<i>we’ve had enough of these bloody yanks influencing our pop
kids’</i>. But the lyric is clearly celebratory, with Haines -for once- expressing
genuine admiration about something, perhaps in recognition of an authenticity that
he felt his own work might have lacked:</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 115%;">"Some
people are born to write, some people are born to dance<br />
Thought I knew my place in the world, thought I knew my art.<br />
Glad to be there, see them begin.<br />
It was easy to see them, they were the best band to be in … American Guitars"<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">I really liked the sound of the group. </span><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The uncomplicated
guitar and minimalistic piano always served the interests of the songs, while James
</span><span style="line-height: 115%;">Banbury’s
cello added a certain <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">je ne sais quoi </i>to
the proceedings. On </span><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Bailed Out’ –which, in the wrong hands, might
easily have turned out to be a bit of a plodder- Banbury’s deft lyricism lifted
the track into another dimension. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 115%;">Despite making a distinctive contribution to the
sound, Banbury was viewed as a mercenary by the group leader. In the first
volume of his memoirs (‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bad Vibes –
Britpop and my part in its downfall’</i> published in 2009), Haines, throughout
the text, refers to him merely as ‘the cellist’. The book is bitter, bitchy and
misanthropic, but there is also humour in the mix, with the author being honest
about what a twat he could be at times.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 115%;">‘<i>Bad Vibes</i>’ paints an illuminating picture of the
thin line between failure and success, but it is even better on the thinner
line between ‘modest’ and ‘massive’ success. The Auteurs famously lost out on
the Mercury Music Prize by one vote to Suede; I don’t know if that made any difference
to their respective trajectories, but Suede went on to be huge and The Auteurs didn’t.
Haines eventually got over the disappointment and, henceforth, only felt sick
about the injustice of it all once every couple of minutes.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 115%;">One of the reasons I think I liked ‘New Wave’ so
much was the fact that I was -at the time- in a band which, to my ears at
least, ploughed a similar furrow to The Auteurs. “If this is Britpop”, I
thought, “bring it on”. My hope was that my own band might get a record deal on
the back of some timely zeitgeist-surfing. We also hired, at considerable
expense, a cellist to play on some of our recordings and the results convinced
me that we were in transition from being half-decent (we were quite a solid
unit) into something quite interesting. But finding a good cellist who would
do the stuff that the rest of us were willing to do (paying for rehearsals, gigging
in grotty pubs, paying for van hire etc.) was about as difficult as finding a
unicorn that could cook; all the good ones wanted MU rates just to get out of
bed. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br />
My band never managed to secure that elusive record deal. But I eventually
got over the disappointment and nowadays only feel sick about the injustice of
it all once every couple of minutes.</span><br />
Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14496611393590832257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090439415775170102.post-54146050579290909562018-02-15T22:17:00.003+00:002021-02-18T21:30:32.677+00:00Let's play ... Quidditch?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQhYJrGj9s88Fn6-LMxlsMgPQdmVwNSd4pSRlfuTfc17Y4DCgrWLT1uNswIPu5QZ6b1itH9sVma4XWCI4-WcuyyuqLAPB83U0BJq_EK0uKqrnh6znJNVTWndklgUcmB6u5ad7QAV8YE04/s1600/version.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1058" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQhYJrGj9s88Fn6-LMxlsMgPQdmVwNSd4pSRlfuTfc17Y4DCgrWLT1uNswIPu5QZ6b1itH9sVma4XWCI4-WcuyyuqLAPB83U0BJq_EK0uKqrnh6znJNVTWndklgUcmB6u5ad7QAV8YE04/s320/version.jpg" width="211" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">
When I was out for a walk the other day, I spotted<span style="line-height: 115%;"> a
sign (pictured left) in the middle of Kelvingrove Park, where the University
of Glasgow’s ‘Quidditch Club’ was holding an open session. The sight of the cavorting
students made me stop and think. I wasn’t sure what to make of it; was this a
good thing or a bad thing? Upon returning home, I told my 19-year old son about
the Quidditch Club. He drew a look of disdain and uttered four words, the first
two of which were “that is”, the fourth of which was “tragic”. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 115%;">I think I understand why he responded like that. The
idea of people investing time and energy in a game that was made up by an
author, a game made for flying wizards on broomsticks, does seem quite silly.
Those students were only pretending to play a pretend game because they are not
wizards, they don’t have broomsticks and they can’t fly. It’s obviously not a ‘real’
game, so they must be a bunch of losers. Well … perhaps not. According to my internet
machine, there is a governing body (founded in 2010) called the International
Quidditch Association. The version being played by those students is sometimes described
as ‘Muggle Quidditch’, because it accepts that the participants aren’t wizards,
don’t have actual broomsticks and can’t fly. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">After making</span> that discovery, I reviewed my impulse
to pass judgement. What is the difference, after all, between running around
with a stick between your legs and, say, pretending –as I sometimes do- that a tricky
putt on the 18<sup>th</sup> green is actually for the US Masters?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 115%;">Lots of young folk prefer to get their kicks sitting
in front of a computer, so we should applaud the fact that the Quidditch Club members
were out there having fun, taking part in an activity which involved physical
exercise and social intercourse. There are worse things those students could
have done with their time. They might have joined some ‘<i>triggered-by-inappropriate-words-in-literature</i>’
group and, instead of 'Quidditching' in the park, been out demonstrating their
belief in equity and diversity by burning books or pulling down statues.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 115%;">This made me think a bit more about the extent to
which fantasy should be a legitimate part of an adult life. Is playing a game invented
by an author a less authentic fantasy than some others we could name? Are
students running around with broomsticks any more tragic than those who escape
into works of fiction or those who follow football teams around the country or those
who pretend that their tricky putt on the 18<sup>th</sup> hole might win them a
major golf championship? (Don’t answer that last bit, because you’ll just hurt
my feelings).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 115%;">Some would argue that there are plenty of problems
in the world for us to solve and that frivolous pastimes just distract us from
the serious business of improving the lot of the poor, the disadvantaged and the
oppressed. But people who can only talk about serious stuff are, generally speaking,
the sort of people that you wouldn’t want to be stuck in a lift with. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 115%;">The game of Quidditch is nonsense on stilts (or at
least nonsense on a pretend broomstick), but a life lived without fantasy, fun and
frivolity would, I think, be far less rich than one concentrated on purely
utilitarian concerns. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">This topic</span> is probably worth exploring in some
depth, but I’ll leave it for the moment. I need to get back to practising my
golf swing, because the US Masters is only a few weeks away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span></span></div>
Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14496611393590832257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090439415775170102.post-40397788776554387122018-02-12T17:39:00.001+00:002021-02-18T21:27:36.272+00:00The view from the hole<div><br /></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</xml><![endif]--><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizO9vbFAS6RXr6Qi04MZNDjDT_U7alY9mvXMFdnE-_7U29sTczG2KYgGTHTs83fbJSmMr9BvkWyAWTjGRSV1SEA-9qu5i_l_F5AF_V0b6hpNQ6Pt4uuxN8CCN-CqhBhaL8Tktzh1DxTY0/s275/AAAAA+blindfold.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizO9vbFAS6RXr6Qi04MZNDjDT_U7alY9mvXMFdnE-_7U29sTczG2KYgGTHTs83fbJSmMr9BvkWyAWTjGRSV1SEA-9qu5i_l_F5AF_V0b6hpNQ6Pt4uuxN8CCN-CqhBhaL8Tktzh1DxTY0/s0/AAAAA+blindfold.jpg" /></a></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Further
to last week’s post, I have been involved in several interesting discussions
with various folk over the merits and demerits of Doctor Peterson’s work. A lot
of the criticism being circulated online claims that his views are somehow
‘dodgy’, but the critics don’t often get around to a full examination of those
views, preferring instead to focus on how dreadful his audience is. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The more
interesting topic, I think, is to ask <i>why</i> Peterson’s message is resonating
with so many young people. His recent speaking engagements in London (booked
before the transmission of that Channel 4 interview) sold out in minutes. A few
weeks ago, an American college campus invited him to speak at their 400-seat
theatre. He was ‘no-platformed’ by the usual zealots, so the organisers of the
event decided to book the only available local alternative, a 1,500-seat
concert hall. It sold out.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Much of
the criticism characterises this audience as ‘alt-right angry white males’ (although
mostly male, Peterson’s audience is clearly mixed); that level of analysis -and it is an act of generosity to describe it thus- will get us nowhere. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The
Independent published an article about the Channel 4 interview under this
headline: </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">'When
white men feel they are losing power, any level of nastiness is possible.' </span></i><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">That
wasn’t just intellectually feeble; it was utterly reprehensible. This kind of
thing actually reinforces one of Peterson’s key messages: namely, that identity
politics is a dead-end street and -at the end of that street- lies a whole heap
of trouble. When I was growing up, to have assumed (and judged) someone’s views
from their ethnicity, age or gender would have been considered discriminatory,
vulgar and racist; now it has become the norm. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">We are in
a deep hole with this stuff, yet some folk want to keep on digging. I’d suggest
that one of the reasons for Jordan Peterson’s popularity is that many people
have decided that they don’t like the view from that hole. </span></div>
Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14496611393590832257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090439415775170102.post-20211055454832862092018-02-06T19:57:00.002+00:002021-02-18T21:17:57.878+00:00Take the Red Pill<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">If there is anyone out there who still</span> <span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">hasn’t
watched Cathy Newman’s Channel 4 News interview with the Clinical Psychologist
Jordan Peterson, I would strongly recommend that you check out what was a
wonderfully illuminating piece of television. I found it riveting, but I’m not
sure if that was in spite of -or because of- the interviewer’s insistence on
trying to put words into her interviewee’s mouth at almost every turn. If you
try counting the number of times she says “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">so what you’re saying
is</i> …” before inserting a ridiculously skewed interpretation of what he has
actually said, you will need all of your fingers and some of your toes. It is
evident that ‘listening’ and ‘responding to what the other person has actually
said’ were not part of Ms Newman’s game plan. </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br />
<br />
<span>Some have argued that it was her job to
challenge Peterson and not to just nod in agreement with whatever he was
saying. This is a fair point and, if Channel 4 News applied that principle
across the board, it would certainly present itself as a more balanced source
of information. Peterson may not be right about everything, but even when he's
wrong, he has reached his position because he has at least considered the available
evidence. But, in an age in which feelings appear to trump reason, he is
regularly libelled as a neo-Nazi, slave-trading, baby-eating agent of the
patriarchy, or something. </span><br />
<br />
<span>Ms Newman’s lazy assumption was that her
guest was an ‘alt-right' misogynist provocateur. Her researchers (I’m assuming
she will have had some help) must be pretty dim if they thought that some
back-of-a-fag-packet observations on this man’s significant academic oeuvre
would cause him to recant his views. Mainstream news outlets regularly claim
moral superiority over so-called 'fake news' sources, so examples of this kind
of shoddy practice deserve to be highlighted and ridiculed. </span><br />
<br />
<span>There is a sense in which the exchange also
illustrated what can happen to polite discourse once certain difficult topics
are declared ‘off-limits’. Perfectly reasonable people who might, under normal
circumstances, be prepared to discuss those difficult topics, start to retreat
from debate. Once you’ve witnessed some poor sod raise his head above the
parapet only to be monstered as a misogynist /racist /transphobe /Islamophobe
(they’re all the same thing), it makes sense to keep your opinions to yourself.
But people who shout those magic ‘shut-down’ words to dismiss their opponents
eventually lose the ability to argue. And, when they come up against someone
who won’t shut up and won’t back down, someone prepared to use logic and reason
to make their points, the shouters have nowhere else to go. They don’t have the
tools to argue because they’ve never had to do it; once their magic words lose
potency, shouters are stuck in a very deep hole. </span><br />
<br />
<span>I have been following Jordan Peterson’s work
since his experiences at Toronto University dragged him into what -for
shorthand purposes- I'll call the 'cultural debate'. During that time, he has
conducted himself with dignity and intelligence. He has had <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">exactly</i> this kind
of discussion many, many times and is way too smart to be intimidated by folk
who, rather than listen, choose to project their own ‘evil Nazi’ fantasies onto
him simply because he doesn’t share their worldview. </span><br />
<span>His critics, generally speaking, don't want
(or are not equipped) to refute his arguments. Their standard approach is:</span><br />
<br />
<span>1) Try the magic words, like misogynist
/racist /transphobe /Islamophobe. </span><br />
<br />
<span>When that doesn’t work, </span><br />
<span>2) Adopt the 'straw man' approach (like Cathy
Newman) by deliberately misinterpreting his arguments ("<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">so ... you're saying
that all women are stupid</i>?"). </span><br />
<br />
<span>When these tactics fail (and they always do),
resort to: </span><br />
<span>3) Playing the 'victim' card. </span><br />
<br />
<span>On youtube, the average Channel 4 News
interview gets a few thousand hits. On big stories, the numbers might head
somewhere north of 100,000. The Newman-Peterson interview, at the time of
writing, has had more than six million views. Once it went viral, Channel 4
announced that it had consulted ‘security experts’ (but curiously, not the
police) because of ‘vile misogynist abuse’ received by their presenter. With
the help of their ideological allies in the press, they attempted to switch the
narrative from ‘<i>hectoring presenter embarrasses herself with civilised
professor</i>’ to ‘<i>female presenter bullied and exposed to vile misogynist
abuse</i>’ from Peterson’s so-called ‘army of trolls’. Make of that what you
will. As a fan of his work, I’d be more inclined to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">thank</i> Ms Newman
for handing him such an epic victory.</span><br />
<br />
<span>However one chooses to interpret the
interview, it feels like something significant may be happening. </span><br />
<span>It’s not unusual for the younger generation
to rebel against what is on offer from the world created by their parents and,
when I listen to the kind of conversations that are going on, when I check out
some of the podcasts, I get the sense that a cultural shift may be taking
place. Jordan Peterson appears to have connected with a young audience in
search of authentic meaning, an audience that suspects it could get a better
deal than the one they’ve been told is the only one on the table. We assume
that young people need their information delivered in bite-sized chunks, yet
many of them clearly have the appetite to absorb long and deep discussions
about complicated political and philosophical ideas.
</span><br />
<span>(To take one example, Joe Rogan’s podcast
with Petersen and Professor Brett Weinstein lasts for 2 hours 45 minutes and
has been watched by 3 million people). </span><br />
<br />
<span>Some young people seem to have worked out
that television and newspapers aren’t going to help them. Why trust a tired
medium in which demonstrably partial people have set themselves up as the
entitled gatekeepers of information? </span><br />
<span>They seem to have worked out that, by and
large, teachers and college professors aren’t going to help them. Why trust a
profession in which the intellectual gene pool is so dismally shallow? Lots of
young people understand that when someone is in favour of every kind of
diversity except intellectual diversity, that person is more of an
indoctrinator than an educator. </span><br />
<br />
<span>When critics point out that Peterson’s
message is not exactly 'new', they overlook an obvious point: To many young
folk, what he’s saying <i>seems</i> new because, generally speaking, they will
have been taught by people who adhere to the dead-end ideas of post-modern
cultural relativism. And the people who taught those people will, generally
speaking, have been taught by people who also adhered to those ideas. And the
people who taught those people … you get my drift. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #2c353c;">In the science fiction film
‘The Matrix’, the rebel leader Morpheus offers the main character Neo a choice
between two pills: red or blue.</span><span></span><br />
<br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #2c353c;">"This is your last chance. After
this there is no turning back. You take the blue pill: the story ends, you wake
up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill:
you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes." </span></i><span></span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; mso-ansi-language: EN;">The
hero must choose between the convenient falsehoods maintained by the blue pill
and the inconvenient truths revealed by the red. </span><span></span><br />
<br />
<span>Having been trained to react to cultural
relativism’s trigger words, drilled to respond to the poisonous diktats of
identity politics, young people are now being 'red-pilled' by Jordan Peterson.
If we are to avoid hurtling towards a nightmare post-dialogue age wherein
'right' and 'left' are literally unable to communicate with each other, I can't
think of a more important job or, indeed, a better man to do it.</span><br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
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<span class="uficommentbody"><span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcjxSThD54" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">If you haven't watched it, here's the interview.</span></a> </span></span></div>
Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14496611393590832257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090439415775170102.post-20091343169875857542017-11-11T22:39:00.001+00:002021-02-18T21:03:13.874+00:00Vinyl Diary, part 3: Against Nature<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUP3cU-BAj49Qcqt-2BFPgki3o_IbuQZkSvECUH6JP2a-toEvMHPVC9Znt6vwgnrb7GLO98jHjKyDVZ0-J8-qcTiE2yh-wOCWRcejwWqDMK5zkFFsZI4Mv4ZFSzrYuOKIImQje_gJh7Ss/s1600/probably+this+one.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1522" data-original-width="1600" height="304" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUP3cU-BAj49Qcqt-2BFPgki3o_IbuQZkSvECUH6JP2a-toEvMHPVC9Znt6vwgnrb7GLO98jHjKyDVZ0-J8-qcTiE2yh-wOCWRcejwWqDMK5zkFFsZI4Mv4ZFSzrYuOKIImQje_gJh7Ss/s320/probably+this+one.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">As a tragically obsessive consumer of music, I am used to the idea of<span style="color: #222222;"> expectation out-performing reality. It has too often been the case
that the act of imagining the tantalising possibilities of an
eagerly-anticipated album has provided rather more fun than the experience of
actually listening to it. Having learned to live with that kind of disappointment,
it was always a particular treat when something managed to match my hopes and
expectations. <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span><span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">In the mid-80s, I had been a fan of the cult (i.e. chart-avoiding)
band Microdisney. The talents of composer Sean O’Hagan and singer /lyricist Cathal
Coughlan were finely balanced, with an ever-present tension between their sophisticated
music and the somewhat caustic lyrics. O’Hagan’s love of the Beach Boys and
Steely Dan was obvious, while Coughlan’s default mode of righteously-vented
spleen helped give the songs something of an edge. <span> </span></span></span></span></div>
<span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #222222;">Such was the talent of these two men that, when Microdisney disbanded
in 1989, it seemed obvious to their small-but-dedicated fan base that something
else, something special, would emerge. For what seemed like months, I scoured
the music press in the hope of some news until, at the fag end of the decade, the
splendidly eclectic Snub TV featured a video of Cathal Coughlan and The Fatima
Mansions performing a song called ‘Only losers take the bus’. Filmed in a </span>deconsecrated synagogue, it <span style="color: #222222;">featured Coughlan, besuited
and bound at the pulpit, staring down the camera to perform a rip-snorting track
based on a tough electro-rhythm, some kick-ass rockabilly guitar and a typically
spiky lyric, seemingly focused on a self-made millionaire with unhinged views.
I particularly loved the crazed injunction in the instrumental breakdown to “<i>Get these dead bodies off my race track!”</i><span> </span><span> </span></span></span></span></div>
<span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #222222;">When the mini-album ‘Against Nature’ appeared on Kitchenware Records,
it lived up to my fanboy dreams. I had no problem with the fact that it didn’t
sound like a coherent band project, because I was charmed by what appeared to
be a sonic snapshot of where a talented singer-songwriter’s head was at;
indeed, the absence of focus felt more like the <i>presence</i> of possibility, a promise of future riches to be forged
through Coughlan’s </span>idiosyncratic eclecticism. The collection contained nods to
Microdisney on ‘The Day I Lost Everything’ (featuring a splendid monologue
referencing both Jimmy Tarbuck and Santa Claus) and ‘You Won’t Get Me Home’,
wherein the writer wallowed in his fascination with losers and grotesques: <span> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>"The Prince of </span>Caledonia, he drives a
diesel van</span></i></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span><span><i>
and he peddles skag in Hamilton. He's the reality man, reality man."</i></span></span><br />
<br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">'Bishop of Babel’ was, to all intents and purposes, a
power ballad, while ‘13th Century Boy’ represented a jolly, if slightly skewed,
take on Stock, Aitken and Waterman’s chart-dominating disco formula; it may
have been intended as a pastiche, but it worked pretty well as a pop tune. <span> </span></span></span></div>
<span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Freed from the pressures of working for a major label and
writing for a band, Coughlan
essayed his love for Scott Walker through a couple of particularly haunting tunes.
The lush synths of ‘Big Madness’ set a disconcertingly mellow backdrop for a
chilling lyric, which opened with a killer boasting of his exploits with a “<i>weeping
spinster</i>” before going on to explore the territory between romance and dangerous
obsession. ‘<span style="color: #222222;">Wilderness on Time’, featuring just voice and harpsichord, was raw
and full of longing, set off by a wonderfully unhinged opening line:</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #222222;"><i>"When my </i></span><i>taxi arrives<br />
Say that I'm dead, having swallowed my leg"</i></span></span></div>
<span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Hearing Coughlan on this kind of vocal form, you can’t
help but wonder why he didn’t become the voice of his generation; his singing is beautiful,
expressive and just dripping with <span>gravitas</span><i>.</i>
<span style="color: #222222;">In Microdisney, his grouchy misanthropy (at times,
outright nihilism) had been ameliorated by O’Hagan’s deft tuneage, but once
Cathal got the keys to the car, the listener had to endure an altogether bumpier
ride. He went on to make more thematically coherent albums with The Fatima
Mansions, although there were times when the band’s dreary muscularity bludgeoned
the tunes into a bloody pulp and it was frustrating to hear a man with a golden
set of pipes opting for the kind of testosterone barking favoured by vocalists with
a fraction of his talent.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span><span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">On stage, Coughlan and the Mansions could be electrifying. I
remember one gig at Glasgow University when he deliberately whacked himself in
the forehead with the microphone and drew blood. I had actually driven past him
and the band in town earlier that day and –for a fraction of a second- had been
tempted to roll down my car window and shout “Only losers take the bus!” Thankfully,
I thought better of it. If a guy could deliberately whack himself on the head
with a microphone, who knows what he might have done to an idiot fan pathetically
trying to ingratiate himself by half-wittedly demonstrating his knowledge of an
obscure band’s oeuvre?</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span><span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">His solo work since the demise of the Mansions has been articulate,
sophisticated and sprinkled with occasional gems, but contains way more shade
than light and is, to my ears, somewhat thin on melody; the fact that beautiful
melodies <i>do</i> occasionally break out
makes one suspect that, in shying away from pop music, Coughlan is cutting off
his nose to spite his face.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span><span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>In that sense, </span>‘Against Nature’ might be viewed as the template
for a brilliantly off-kilter pop career that never quite happened.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span><span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Here's a link to that first TV appearance:</span></span></span></div>
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<span><span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span><span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaSi2Z74Ou8" target="_blank">Only losers take the bus</a></span></span></span></div>
Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14496611393590832257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090439415775170102.post-57365124066894441342017-10-01T11:19:00.001+01:002021-02-18T20:59:47.437+00:00Vinyl diary, part 2: The Birthday Party<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtDSQc4dS2ipS2Ge181lRfHPAjcFVAQ4_0Y51FwnlJNE3ViUbRccLPfN-UR9L9C80zYojyMyzU6rW1yvfQQJYT4E1TvLi-rMbV3xI2TVah7q6oMwCuRZTE4qdEqf8gfezJfCicUXOLEAg/s1600/IR+2.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1085" data-original-width="1600" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtDSQc4dS2ipS2Ge181lRfHPAjcFVAQ4_0Y51FwnlJNE3ViUbRccLPfN-UR9L9C80zYojyMyzU6rW1yvfQQJYT4E1TvLi-rMbV3xI2TVah7q6oMwCuRZTE4qdEqf8gfezJfCicUXOLEAg/s320/IR+2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">For a nerdish young music-obsessed Glaswegian in the<i><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-style: normal; line-height: 115%;"> late 70s and early 80s, the 'Lost Chord’ record shop had an almost mythical status. It was located in the
bohemian West End, the part of town where poets, intellectuals, posh kids and
people who played in bands hung out. If -like me- you lived on the dull south
side, getting there required not only dedication, but an ability to decipher bus
timetables which openly mocked the restrictive notions of linear time. Once inside
that little shop, I’d spend hours fingering through rows of obscure or rare
vinyl: rare imports, Japanese picture discs, bands I’d only read about in
reviews and bizarre compilations of bands I’d never heard of; ‘Lost Chord’ had
everything that the tragic obsessive might dream of. </span></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
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<span><span><i><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; line-height: 115%;">On one such visit, armed with all I had saved up from my shelf-packing job in a
supermarket, I almost fainted when a flick-through one of the sections revealed
a copy of ‘The Birthday Party’ by The Idle Race, an album I had been dreaming about
for months. Having become a massive ELO fan, I was working my acquisitive way
backwards through Jeff Lynne’s recorded catalogue. A previous visit to the shop
had unearthed an American compilation of songs by The Move and, these being the
days before the internet, I knew of Lynne’s first band, The Idle Race,
only in mythical terms; their albums might have existed somewhere in the same
way that Bigfoot might have existed somewhere.</span></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
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<span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-style: normal; line-height: 115%;">I can't remember what I paid for it, but if the bored assistant with the long
hair (they </span></i><i><span lang="EN" style="color: black; line-height: 115%;">always</span></i><i><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-style: normal; line-height: 115%;"> had long hair) had asked for one
of my kidneys, I would probably have considered it a bit of a bargain. But when
I got the album home, it was not -to paraphrase PG Wodehouse- that I was </span></i><i><span lang="EN" style="color: black; line-height: 115%;">underwhelmed</span></i><i><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-style: normal; line-height: 115%;"> by it, but I wasn’t exactly </span></i><i><span lang="EN" style="color: black; line-height: 115%;">whelmed</span></i><i><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-style: normal; line-height: 115%;"> either. The
issue was not so much that the songs were unlike either ELO or The Move,
because there were times when you could clearly trace the musical lineage. It was
more that they committed the sin of excessive frivolity. When you’re young and
serious and you pay attention to what is said by the high priests of taste in
the music press, there is perhaps nothing more heinous than music lacking in that
quality beloved of immature males: </span></i><i><span lang="EN" style="color: black; line-height: 115%;">heaviosity</span></i><i><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-style: normal; line-height: 115%;">. And The Idle Race clearly lacked
</span></i><i><span lang="EN" style="color: black; line-height: 115%;">heaviosity</span></i><i><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-style: normal; line-height: 115%;">. According to the New Wave Taliban,
jolly-sounding tunes were OK, but only if (for example in the case of Talking
Heads or XTC) there was perceived to be an ironic or subversive edge to the sound.
The way that XTC, for instance, sang ‘</span></i><i><span lang="EN" style="color: black; line-height: 115%;">Bap-ba-oo’</span></i><i><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-style: normal; line-height: 115%;"> on ‘Radios in Motion’ with tongues
firmly in cheek, was nothing like the way that, say, David Essex might have sang
‘</span></i><i><span lang="EN" style="color: black; line-height: 115%;">Bap-ba-oo’. </span></i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; line-height: 115%;">It bugged me</span><i><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-style: normal; line-height: 115%;"></span><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-style: normal; line-height: 115%;"> somewhat that ‘The Birthday Party’ featured sound effects and vaudeville
clips, as if it was some kind of novelty record. And as for the lyrics … who the
hell writes songs about a man working as a skeleton on the ghost train, or a
man in his thirties playing with children’s toys? Or how about a song about someone
sitting in a tree? Consider,
ladies and gentlemen of the jury, these lyrics as exhibit A: </span></i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span><span><i><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-style: normal; line-height: 115%;"><i>I often</i></span></i><i><span lang="EN"><i></i> sit alone up in a tree<br />
Waving to the ones that wave at me<br />
I think well just how stupid can they be<br />
Waving to a man up in a tree?<br />
</span></i><span lang="EN"><br />
<i>What they don't know is I am counting
them<br />
I even count the ladies and the men<br />
I put the numbers in my little book<br />
And only me can ever have a look</i></span></span></span><br />
<br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN">What the hell</span><i><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-style: normal; line-height: 115%;"></span><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-style: normal; line-height: 115%;"> was Jeff on about? Having been introduced to his work through the
wondrously lush and tuneful album ‘A New World Record’, I struggled to connect
this weird Jeff Lynne – that young bloke on the cover </span></i><i><span lang="EN" style="color: black; line-height: 115%;">without a beard</span></i><i><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-style: normal; line-height: 115%;">- with the one I knew and loved, the master orchestrator and symphonic
tunemeister, the bearded musical genius behind ELO. </span></i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-style: normal; line-height: 115%;">But had I </span></i><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%;">listened without
prejudice, I would have noticed that s<span style="color: black;">ome of the
motifs that would make him famous years later were evident here in nascent form;
lush strings, layered harmonies, beautiful melodies and deft chord changes. <i><span style="font-style: normal;">It took me a while to get
over myself and appreciate that the songs were just fine; in fact, some of them
were much better than fine. Despite the gimmickry and the music-hall jokes,
it was obvious that even this beardless and callow young Jeff knew where the
melody monkey lived.</span></i></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span><span><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-style: normal;">There is</span></i></span></span><span lang="EN" style="color: black;"><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span></i></span>a muscularity and vigour in
the playing and production (courtesy of </span><span lang="EN">Eddie Offord and Gerald Chevin) which prevents even the most <span style="color: black;">whimsical material from sounding effete. As you might expect, there is a strong Beatles influence, but there are also one or two nods to The Kinks (particularly on ‘</span></span><span lang="EN-US">Lucky Man’ and ‘Mrs. Ward’). </span><span lang="EN" style="color: black;">‘The lady who said she could fly’ is beautiful and
melancholic, while ‘Morning Sunshine’ is a lovely </span><span lang="EN-US">psychedelic pop ballad which would anticipate some
of Lynne’s future triumphs. ‘End of the Road’ is so
unremittingly jolly and English that it sounds almost parodic; in fact, it is
simply a song that comes from the age before irony, from the days before pop music
became aware of itself. The great thing about material like this is that it is <i>exactly what it appears to be.</i></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span><span><span lang="EN">Although<i> </i>they were well thought of
by the music press in the late 60s, The Idle Race failed to make a
significant commercial breakthrough, a factor which would surely have
influenced Lynne’s decision to join The Move in 1970. <span style="color: black;">Although
this album is of its time, there are moments when ‘The Birthday Party’ manages
to transcend the gloriously sunny and naïve era from which it emerged; as ever
with Jeff Lynne’s music, it’s all about the tunes.</span></span></span></span></span>Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14496611393590832257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090439415775170102.post-43643489837484428182017-09-25T10:51:00.001+01:002021-02-18T20:58:38.101+00:00Vinyl diary, part 1: K-Scope<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpMYXYwNx2InUWmRlayjDUb4262rXG4SlBbAc3HhtYbu91Wyy3iQ_aVjny-5xIDD9XruEQsLQW5zPaREXEP84OyigWF31dvpbC_hv7ecp3OsUuwsGgi4vrVhwrsbfPE04uUbbyWyQ3iF8/s1600/edit+2.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="950" data-original-width="1600" height="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpMYXYwNx2InUWmRlayjDUb4262rXG4SlBbAc3HhtYbu91Wyy3iQ_aVjny-5xIDD9XruEQsLQW5zPaREXEP84OyigWF31dvpbC_hv7ecp3OsUuwsGgi4vrVhwrsbfPE04uUbbyWyQ3iF8/s320/edit+2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">I recently bought my son<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; line-height: 115%;"></span></span><span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; line-height: 115%;"> a turntable for his birthday and, since he owned no vinyl, I spent
a couple of weekends scouring various second hand and charity shops in the hope
of assembling an interesting little ‘starter’ collection for him. In the modern parlance, I was able to put together a decent selection of ‘vinyls’ for
his nascent collection, including records by Bootsy Collins, Robert Palmer, Bowie,
Joni Mitchell, Funkadelic, Steely Dan and Stevie Wonder. Yes, you’re right; that
is a ‘tragic dad’ kind of selection, but I’ve learned to embrace the tragedy,
so don’t judge me. As well as the stuff I was able to pick up in the second-hand
shops, I donated a few items from my own collection. As the saying goes: ‘<i>Greater
love hath no man than this: that he is willing to give away his vinyl copy of ‘The
Isley Brothers Greatest Hits’. </i> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span><span><span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; line-height: 115%;">Those shopping</span></span></span><i><span><span><span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; line-height: 115%;"></span></span></span></i><span><span><span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; line-height: 115%;"><i> </i>trips took me back to the days when my Saturday afternoons would be
spent browsing, buying and generally hanging around record shops. Over the years,
I bought some really mediocre stuff, but also discovered some artists that I treasure
to this day. Such was my devotion /addiction that, at one point in my
(admittedly rather sad) life, the cultural highlight of the year would have
been HMV's January sale. For someone whose disposable income went mostly on
music, that seasonal temptation to gorge on the discounted goodies was impossible
to resist.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span><span><span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 115%;">My son's taste in music is much more eclectic than mine’s would have been at his
age. One of the reasons for that, I think, is that I had to physically go out
to find and buy music, whereas he merely has to browse and download (and let’s
not get into the subject of whether or not downloading music for free is
stealing, because I’m right and you’re wrong). The act of investing energy,
money and time in acquiring something gives you a greater emotional stake in an
artefact. My son’s musical taste may be wider and, in that sense, more
culturally sophisticated than mine’s ever was, but I’d argue that my deep
connection with certain records is based not only on the physicality of the
artefacts, but on what it cost me to get familiar with them; having committed
to buying an album, I had little choice but to stick with it and give it a
chance to lodge itself in my consciousness. My boredom threshold, out of
necessity, was located several miles down the road; had I had the ability to
click a mouse and browse through a million digital files, I wouldn’t have developed
the relationships I have with certain pieces of music. </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span><span>
</span></span><br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span><span><span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 115%;">Since
acquiring his groovy new turntable, my son has confessed that he has started to
spend his spare cash on vinyl, mostly obscure groove-based foreign stuff. Part
of me feels like I have helped open up a whole new world for him, but another
part feels like I may have administered his first dose of heroin.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span><span><span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 115%;">The examination of my own dust-gathering vinyl collection allowed me to re-connect with some
music I had forgotten about. One gem I had (almost) forgotten is ‘K-Scope’ by Phil
Manzanera. It was released in 1978, but I reckon I picked it up in one of those
HMV sales sometime in the early 80s. </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span><span>
</span></span><br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span><span><span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 115%;">Manzanera
was the guitarist with Roxy Music and, although ‘K-Scope’ is billed as a solo
project, he was smart enough to surround himself with some really talented
people, including Mel Collins, Eddie Rayner, Tim and Neil Finn, Simon Phillips,
John Wetton, Bill and Ian McCormick, Andy Mackay, Paul Thompson, Kevin Godley
and Lol Crème. That’s quite a cast list and the quality of musicianship is
evident throughout, something which might not necessarily have impressed any young
Turks who’d still have been fighting the punk wars when this album was released.
</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span><span>
</span></span><br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span><span><span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 115%;">The
lead vocals are handled by various folk, but Manzanera’s finely honed art-pop
sensibilities give the album compositional consistency. ‘Remote Control’ is a brief
and sparky slice of prog-punk, while ‘Slow Motion TV’ sounds like a cross
between The Stranglers and 10CC (in a good way). ‘Hot Spot’ is probably as
close as the album gets to sounding like Roxy Music (albeit with their disco
shoes on) and there is much to love about the languid Latin-reggae groove of
‘Cuban Crisis’, the tale of a loser musician (‘<i>just a dime-a-day tunesmith</i>’) pining
for his departed girlfriend. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span><span><span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 115%;">Manzanera’s
guitar work is distinctive without being flashy; the beautiful colours and
textures he creates on ‘Gone Flying’ might have sounded more like Eno’s ambient
work were it not for the rhythm section of Philips and McCormick cooking up a
quiet storm. The highlight of the album, I think, is ‘Walking Through Heaven's
Door’, which appears to delineate a drug-fueled adventure in an unnamed foreign
city. It starts out sounding like an 80s take on ‘Surf’s Up’-era Beach Boys,
before John Wetton’s gut-churning bass pulls it into the kind of menacing groove
territory once occupied by Magazine or early Simple Minds, before an extended
end section, replete with hypnotic mantra, lulls us towards anthemic oblivion. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span><span><span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 115%;">When I bought ‘K-Scope’ I considered it quirky and charming, but maybe just a little
bit too ‘prog’ around the edges; now, several decades on, it sounds witty,
fresh and sparkling. Check this out:</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span><span><span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 115%;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Utq-Za3zmMA" target="_blank">Walking through Heaven's door. </a> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; line-height: 115%;"> </span></span></span></div>
Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14496611393590832257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090439415775170102.post-62198887570648413922017-05-31T22:26:00.002+01:002021-02-18T20:56:36.033+00:0028 years of 'business as usual' <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY1iYb6ACeeusI1am0Y1eU5RzxMhCb2WCox4UPKDWbuqoDjZynx8s_WTAvcwVwfaKmX_BISO17LD-Jz3tHl_2eofdYz-rTRLITgu9p19YIKKoy3jLyH6XTRIH9Cy6QgicvQ80JZE_xWjk/s1600/SV+4.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="184" data-original-width="275" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY1iYb6ACeeusI1am0Y1eU5RzxMhCb2WCox4UPKDWbuqoDjZynx8s_WTAvcwVwfaKmX_BISO17LD-Jz3tHl_2eofdYz-rTRLITgu9p19YIKKoy3jLyH6XTRIH9Cy6QgicvQ80JZE_xWjk/s400/SV+4.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">In February 1989, Iran's
Ayatollah Khomeini issued a death sentence -or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fatwa-</i> against the British author Salman Rushdie. Rushdie’s crime
was to have written a book -The Satanic Verses- that was perceived to have been
overly critical of Islam. As a result, he had to be given round-the-clock
police protection and was forced to go into hiding. He currently lives in North
America, but the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fatwa</i> has been
re-affirmed several times and, as recently as 2016, more money was added to the
bounty on offer for killing him. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">At the height of the book
burnings and riots, some commentators felt that a vigorous response from the western
authorities would have been not just appropriate, but necessary. Instead of apologising
for this author’s ‘blasphemy’ and waiting for the heat to die down, I thought that
we should have printed thousands of copies of The Satanic Verses (a rather dreary
book, it has to be said) and distributed them free in schools, libraries and
health centre waiting rooms. We should have filled huge skips with the offending
books and left them in every town centre, just to make a point. We should, at
the very least, have been confident and assertive enough to have made it clear that
intellectual freedom was the bedrock of our civilisation. We should, at the
very least, have given this message to the medievalists: Feel free to practise
whichever religion you want, believe whichever ancient fairy stories you like,
but do it in peace; do not seek to impose your rules on people who do not share
your beliefs. If we’d made our position clear at the time, we might have saved
ourselves a whole heap of trouble.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">The fact that our political and
cultural leaders have continually shirked from their responsibilities to
protect ideals we’re supposed to hold dear is not the fault of crazy fundamentalists
like the Manchester bomber Salman Abedi. Contrary to what some people appear to
believe, crazy fundamentalists have been around for centuries; Islamists were at
it long before there was any such thing as British and American foreign policy
to be outraged by, long before there was any such thing as the United States of
America. In a world in which history books
are readily available, it is, therefore, puzzling to explain the desire to
interpret the actions of murderous Islamists as anything other than what they
are. Some folk will use anything -literally <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">anything</i>-
as a stick with which to beat the capitalist world; others may be in denial
about their fear, preferring to disguise it as social conscience. There is too,
somewhere in this unholy mix, a generous dollop of good old-fashioned condescension
of the kind that denies agency to the terrorists. To claim that we don’t know <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">why</i> they do such things is to ignore the
fact that they <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">always</i> tell us exactly
why they do such things. Instead of imagining and ascribing a range of politically
palatable motives, we should perhaps accept the obvious ones: That they want to
kill us because they hate us and our way of life; that they want to kill us
because they are members of a barbaric medieval death cult. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">But for all their shortcomings,
crazy fundamentalists do tend to notice when people cave in to pressure and they
will have noticed that, since 1989, we have been doing quite a lot of caving
in. In the post-‘Satanic Verses’ landscape, who knows how many authors and
journalists have excised characters, themes or lines from their stories and
articles because they feared reprisals from Islamists? You might argue that it
is impossible to quantify things that only <i>might</i> have existed, but we have
clear evidence that our cultural landscape has been altered to accommodate certain
cultural ‘sensitivities’. In the world that existed on the day before the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fatwa</i> was issued against Rushdie, it
would not have been considered controversial or dangerous for a British citizen
to have, say, published an image of the prophet Mohammed. But in 2017, how many mainstream
newspapers or TV stations would publish or broadcast a cartoon of the prophet?
That’s not a difficult question to answer, because it was revealed to us two
years ago, in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, when nobody had the guts to publish some cartoons and
say: <i>’This is what all the fuss is about</i>’. Of course, lots of folk
composed eloquent editorials declaring their abhorrence of intimidation and
violence and their ‘unshakeable belief’ in our rights to freedom of speech, but
-for the sake of not offending sensibilities- they decided against publishing
the cartoons. David Dimbleby revealed that it was official BBC policy that: “<i>the
prophet Mohammed should not be represented in any shape or form” </i>and even a
right-leaning newspaper like The Telegraph only printed a pixelated image of one
cartoon in order to avoid causing offence. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Consider, therefore, the enormity of the cultural shift that has taken place since 1989: In
the 21<sup>st</sup> century, western atheists now choose to adhere to rules
previously only imposed upon folk who, through an accident of birth, are guided
by the revelations of a man who (according to legend) was visited by an angel
in his cave in the desert some 1400 years ago. If western atheists can’t bring
themselves to blaspheme, what hope is there for those in the Muslim community
who believe that Islam’s reformation is long overdue? Wouldn’t just a modicum
of bravery on our part light a torch for those who hope to reform that
religion from within?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">But instead of showing</span> bravery, we’ve been busy drawing and re-drawing our lines in the
sand. Having first got ourselves acclimatised to the idea that a British author
might have to go into hiding because of the ‘actions’ of one of his fictional
characters, we then got acclimatised to the reality that a secular European film
maker (Theo van Gogh) could be murdered for making a film critical of the
treatment of women within Islam. But
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">don’t worry</i>, we were told. The terrorists
won’t win; we’ll get on with business as usual. And when some French journalists got slaughtered, we got acclimatised
to the notion that we shouldn’t publish ‘offensive’ cartoons. But don’t worry, we were told.
The terrorists won’t win; we’ll get on with business as usual. Now we’re acclimatising to the idea (recently articulated
by the Mayor of London) that terrorist attacks are just a part of modern life. But don’t worry. The terrorists
won’t win; we’ll get on with business as usual. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Then, sooner or later, we’ll hear
the initial reports of ‘an incident’ and we’ll know in our gut exactly what is
going on and who will be responsible. Details will be sketchy and the official
news sources won’t want us jumping to conclusions, but –gradually- the bloody details
will begin to emerge. Until the moment of awful confirmation, we’ll pray that
the body count won’t be that high. Then, once it has become impossible to deny
that it is what we knew it would be, the all-too-familiar dance will begin. We’ll
pretend once more to speculate about the motives. Did the assailant act alone?
Did he have links to any known terrorist groups? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Was he part of a bigger network? What could
have driven him to this? And before they have even finished scraping up the
body parts, some commentators will issue warnings about how this ‘might provoke
a backlash’, fantasising about imagined nastiness as opposed to absorbing the actual
reality of murder. The ‘might provoke a backlash’ commentators will believe, contrary
to the available evidence, that we are pitchfork-wielding savages, ready to
burn stuff down and string people up at the drop of a hat; in these
circumstances, we are told, we shouldn’t get angry, because that’s what the
terrorists want. Yes, how terribly <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">unsophisticated</span>
we must be to get angry about, for example, a bunch of silly teenagers getting
blown up at a pop concert. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Then we'll go to our candlelit
vigils, we’ll have our observed silences, we’ll change our avatars and hashtags
and we’ll do a bit of community singing (and maybe that guy with the blue piano
will be there to play ‘Imagine’). And while all of this is going on, some people
will get more worked up about a professional polemicist like Katie Hopkins than
they will about bodies being scraped off a pavement.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">And our<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>
leaders will say: Don’t worry. We’ll get on with business as usual. The
terrorists won’t win. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">But to people
like Salman Abedi, what exactly is there to be won? And what does <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">winning </i>look like? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">That's
easy: it looks like business as usual.</span></div>
Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14496611393590832257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090439415775170102.post-85407470539577278662017-02-25T11:51:00.001+00:002021-02-18T20:48:28.061+00:00The Scottish Cup Round 5: Performance Art <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq35b4zL4lWgZUQtNkwL3aevmyI8pEXyvuMaWifUqbRk2akIFasAQNp-bSb94pt5RyvUk3HOUYx6ZwthagS278IucY4AmRCMg6Rl3rRfSlbx3SELsJIFal_O83KCVgqBK_U2RRMeNUu0s/s1600/where+is+the+ball.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="145" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq35b4zL4lWgZUQtNkwL3aevmyI8pEXyvuMaWifUqbRk2akIFasAQNp-bSb94pt5RyvUk3HOUYx6ZwthagS278IucY4AmRCMg6Rl3rRfSlbx3SELsJIFal_O83KCVgqBK_U2RRMeNUu0s/s400/where+is+the+ball.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">In his classic dystopian novel '1984', George Orwell famously had the party apparatchik
O’Brien make the following assertion: "<i>If you
want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.” </i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> Watching Scottish Premier
League football can be a bit like that. It was bad enough when the Old Firm
routinely carved things up between them, but since Rangers had their
liquidation event in 2012, watching Celtic demolish the opposition has become about
as much fun as watching a big rich kid beating up a bunch of poor little kids. The Scottish
Cup, at least, has managed to provide some welcome relief from that, with
Hibernian, St Johnstone, Hearts and Inverness all winning the trophy in recent
years. And this season, once again, the only game that matters is the tie at
which one of the so-called provincial clubs will (hopefully) thwart Celtic’s pursuit
of the domestic treble.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Although
I was not exactly hopeful that Dunfermline Athletic or Hamilton Academical would
be capable of stopping that big rich kid from getting what he wanted, their fifth
round tie at East End Park appealed to me for a variety of reasons. Within my
lifetime, Dunfermline have won the Scottish Cup, finished in third place in the
league, come within an ace of reaching a European final and also flirted with
extinction. Founded in 1885, the club reached peak achievement in the 1960s
under three different managers, with Jock Stein rightly credited for kick-starting
the glory years by leading them to a Scottish Cup triumph in 1961. His replacement, Willie Cunningham, took the club to
another Scottish Cup Final (which they lost to Stein’s resurgent Celtic), the
quarter finals of the European Fairs Cup and, remarkably, finished just one point behind the champions,
Kilmarnock. That 1964-65 league table is a thing of rare beauty, representing
the only time in the history of the Scottish League that both Rangers (5<sup>th</sup>)
and Celtic (8<sup>th</sup>) finished outside the top four. I checked with Ladbrokes
and can confirm that the odds against that happening again are currently 83
million trillion gazillion to one. In 1968, under the stewardship of George
Farm, Dunfermline once again won the Cup and, in the following season, reached
the semi-final of the European Cup Winners Cup, losing narrowly to the eventual
winners, Slovan Bratislava. </span></span></div>
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<span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">As part
of my elaborate pre-match preparations, I had surfed the YouTube (as the young
folk say) looking for footage from the glory days. The most remarkable clip featured
a Fairs Cup tie against Valencia, when, having lost the first leg 4-0 in Spain,
Dunfermline hosted the return at East End Park the week before Christmas in
1962. The Spaniards, I’d imagine, might have been somewhat bemused by the referee’s
insistence that the frozen pitch was playable; twenty minutes into the game and
already three goals down, they most certainly would have been bewildered by the
scale of the thrashing being administered by the eager and skilful young
Scottish forwards. You can see from the body language that the Valencia players
didn’t really want to be there; by half time, they were 5-1 down and the tie
was squared on aggregate. I don’t know what the Spanish is for ‘<i>What the actual fuck</i>?’ but I’m guessing
that someone might have used words to that effect in their dressing room at
half time. The clip I watched featured an interview with the TV commentator Bob
Crampsey, who revealed that, for the last ten minutes of the first half, he could
not hear himself speak, such was the noise from the crowd. Dunfermline
eventually won the match 6-2 but, these being the days before the away goals
rule and penalty shoot-outs, they went on to lose in a play-off. </span></span></div>
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In 2013, facing a huge bill for unpaid tax, the
club went into administration and made several high-earning players and their
assistant manager redundant. They endured a 15-point deduction, a Scottish Cup
ban and suffered eventual relegation. Allan Johnston was appointed as manager in
May 2015 and, on the face of it, has appeared to turn the club around, restoring
it to the second tier of the Scottish League on a modest budget. This is all a
very long way from the late eighties, when Dunfermline bought the Hungarian
international Istvan Kozma from Bordeaux for £540,000. I suspect that if I
popped into Ladbrokes (other bookmakers are available) and asked for the odds
on a Scottish provincial club signing an international player from the French
first division for half a million big ones, I would be politely directed
towards the ‘Elvis is still alive’ counter. </span><br />
<br />
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Hamilton Academical, established in 1874, is the only professional club in British
football to have originated from a school team and was admitted to the Scottish
League in 1897, after the resignation of the one-time world champions Renton.
You may ask how Renton could legitimately be described as ‘World Champions’;
the answer is that, as Scottish Cup holders, they played a challenge match in
May 1888 against the FA Cup holders, West Bromwich Albion, to claim the coveted
title. The word ‘insular’ doesn’t quite cover it, does it? The Accies have twice
finished runners up in the Scottish Cup, the last occasion being in 1934/35. Readers of a certain vintage may recall the publicity they generated in the mid-seventies
when they were taken over by Jan Stepek, a first-generation Polish immigrant
who had built a considerable local business empire. Speculation was rife in the
football world about just how many Polish internationals would soon be signing
up and, no doubt, helping the Accies rocket
their way through the divisions. It seemed then like the most exotic and
exciting idea imaginable, but how times have changed: in the run-up to this cup
tie, nobody batted an eyelid when it was announced that Giannis Skondras, a
former PAOK Salonica right-back, would be making his Hamilton debut. </span></div>
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A banner on their<span> website states that Hamilton is ‘More than a football club’, but strangely,
the site features no information at all about their history. The club has, rightfully,
earned a reputation for developing young talent. James McCarthy and James
McArthur both came through the Hamilton ranks and earned moves to the English
Premiership before forging international careers; their manager Alex Neil was
also poached by Norwich in 2014. </span><span style="color: #252525;">While some clubs
will sign players and train them to sit on the bench, Hamilton have
demonstrated a willingness to gamble on young talent by giving it game time. I
understand why it must be tempting for a talented young player to sign for one
of the big clubs, but there is, surely, more chance of getting games at a club
like Hamilton? I’m no expert, but I do know that you can’t get better at
playing the piano by <i>not</i> playing the
piano.</span></span></div>
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<span><span><span style="color: #252525; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">The weather was pretty foul and I was thankful that East End Park -like all proper football grounds- was located within easy walking distance of the town centre.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>I</span>t has a capacity of just under 11,500, with the vocal faction of the home support largely congregated in the Norrie McCathie stand at the town end. Although they are currently a division below Hamilton, Dunfermline had the weight of history on their side and there was a sense among the crowd that a cup upset was on the cards. It was almost possible to forget about the cold as the teams emerged to the rousing strains of ‘Into the Valley’ by local heroes, The Skids (although it was sobering for me to consider that that song is now 38 years old). I wondered if, somewhere else in the football world, another club’s PA might have been blasting out the b-side of ‘Into the Valley’ as its team took to the pitch. I was a bit of a fan back in the day and that b-side -‘TV Stars’- was often a highlight of the Skids live set, a ready-made football chant featuring the immortal, rousing, anyone-can-shout-along-with-this-one chorus of: “ALBERT TATLOCK!” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">The ho</span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">me team looked
keen in the early stages and it was no surprise when they took the lead on the half
hour. The Accies defence was dozing as Higginbotham sent a neat through ball to
McMullan, who ran straight down the middle and finished with some aplomb. The
Dunfermline <i>Ultras</i>, while not exactly
in full voice, made encouraging noises as their team continued to press for the
remainder of the half. They were well worth their one goal lead at the interval
and I quite fancied their chances of progressing. By contrast, once I saw the size of
the queue for hot food, I didn’t fancy my chances of acquiring either a life-restoring
pie or (to take the local recommendation) a steak bridie. I was right to be pessimistic
because, by the time the game had re-started, I had been forced to settle for a
measly cup of Bovril to help ward off incipient frostbite. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span><span>Dunfermline carried their energy into the early part of the second half and created another couple of good chances.</span></span> McMullan, on the break, shot wide when he looked certain to score, then Moffat fired straight at the goalkeeper when he would have been better advised to find an unmarked colleague. Higginbotham then broke down the right and, torn between crossing and shooting, he saved the Hamilton goalie some work by opting to do both things, badly. The optimists in the home support might have been dreaming of another glorious cup run, but this wizened (and freezing) old observer began to suspect that Dunfermline would live to regret those missed chances. </span></div>
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Hamilton started to look like a team from a higher division and were now tapping into greater resources of skill, composure and team work. They were finding unmarked men in wide positions, which may have been down to fatigue on the part of the home side, or it may just have been that Premier League players are better at seeing, finding and exploiting space. After a period of flirting with the home goal, Hamilton moved to the 'heavy petting' stage and only goalkeeper Murdoch’s awareness and athleticism preserved Dunfermline’s fragile dignity; Brophy looped in a good-looking effort which the goalie did well to get his fingertips to and, when Talbot was forced to head against his own crossbar, there was a growing sense that the equaliser was imminent. Redmond was whipping in some vicious corners and, when the ball wasn't cleared from one of these, he found himself in space before cutting inside on his left foot and curling a beauty past Murdoch in the home goal. Only two questions remained to be answered: one, could Dunfermline hang on for the draw and two, could my fingers avoid frostbite? Deep into stoppage time, a MacKinnon shot was heading for the net before Murdoch, diving to his right, tipped it around the post. The Hamilton <i>Ultras </i>behind the goal, having risen in anticipation of a last-gasp winner, had barely returned bums to seats when the final whistle blew. </span></div>
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During the match, I got chatting to Steve, a Dunfermline fan attending with his boys. When he asked why I had journeyed from darkest Weegieland to the Kingdom of Fife, I explained that I was trying to catch a game in each round of the cup and writing about the experience as I went along. We exchanged notes on the idiosyncratic charms of various lower league grounds and Steve briefed me on the strengths and weaknesses of the current Dunfermline squad; he was a lovely bloke and he spoke with passion about his club and about what it meant to the local community. When I mentioned that I had watched that Valencia clip before coming to the game, his eyes lit up; he then told me about an event that had taken place in September 2010, when -at half-time in a game against Cowdenbeath- the eight goals from that remarkable European tie had been re-enacted as part of a community initiative called ‘Celebrating Fife’. Young players took the roles of both teams (and the match officials), with their choreographed performance based upon footage of the original game. Dunfermline’s community coaches trained the youngsters to re-stage the original moves as faithfully as possible and some new match commentary for the piece was written by the local playwright, Gregory Burke. <br />
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What a brilliant illustration of football as living theatre, football as history, football as a vibrant expression of cultural pride. Visiting East End Park, you really get the sense of a club in touch with its roots, a club that knows it belongs in the town, belongs in the heart of its community. That sense of history pervades everything from their website to the match programme to the atmosphere within the ground, wherein the folklore reminds us that it is possible for a club –and a town- to punch above its weight. The players who pull on the black and white jerseys in 2017 may be actors working to a different script, but all of them will have dreamed that someday they will take part in something that grandparents will want to tell grandchildren about, something so astonishing that someone, somewhere, decades from now, will teach a group of kids to re-enact it, pass by pass, move by move, goal by goal. <br />
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But the inspiration for that particular piece of performance art will have to wait for at least another year: Hamilton won the replay on penalties.</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></span>
Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14496611393590832257noreply@blogger.com0