It's 1976 ... it's Top of the Pops!

Anyone who doesn’t watch BBC 4 (and that’s probably about 95% of the viewing public) may be unaware that the station has been running old editions of ‘Top of the Pops’ in sequence, starting from 1976. They’re also scheduling the show in the old TOTP slot on Thursday nights. Unless my arithmetical abilities have undergone a spectacular deterioration, I reckon that means we’ll reach the final edition of the show sometime in 2041. By that time, of course, pop music probably won’t exist. Or, if it does, we’ll all be flying around in jetpacks and ‘music’ will be taken in the form of a pill. Or maybe it will be stored in a virtual cloud that you’ll access by blinking to activate the i-tunes chip that your robot parent will have had fitted in your head as a present on your fourth birthday.

Apart from one aberration when Jonathan King was edited out of a show, each edition of the 1976 TOTP is being shown exactly as it appeared at the time. King’s contribution was cut, presumably because his well-documented crime was deemed by someone at Broadcasting House to have been so heinous as to merit being airbrushed from history. After writing to the BBC, he got a nice apology from Director General Mark Thompson and an assurance that it would not happen again. Let’s see if they can stick to that promise when the time comes to re-run Gary Glitter’s ‘Another Rock ‘n’ roll Christmas’.

Whatever else it did, Top of the Pops represented the 'settled will' of the audience; that is, it played the most popular songs of the day. Whenever we complained about the content (as we certainly used to in our house) we were really complaining about other people's awful musical tastes. And, judging by the fare on offer from 1976, there was plenty to complain about.
I may go into some detail on this topic.

Sir Furious ... 25 and counting.

When football chat turns to the topic of who is the best manager of all time, we don’t always consider the factors that would allow us to tackle this question with a degree of scientific rigour and objectivity. Some of us will talk about the manager that we like the best, or the one we think did the best at the club or country that we support. Football is a competitive sport, so how else should we judge football managers, if not by results? And, when we try to judge, those results should be viewed in some kind of context, with consideration given to the circumstances under which they were achieved. We can argue until the cows come home about which managers we like the best, but the 'best' -by any objective measure- is the person that comes out on top most often.

So … here are five reasons why Sir Alex Ferguson is the best manager of all time.

1. He’s had unprecedented success with an unfashionable club.

Most professional leagues are dominated by a handful of powerful clubs, so anyone who can buck their local trend deserves to be considered an exceptional talent. Perhaps you’d have to live in Scotland to appreciate the scale of what Ferguson achieved at Aberdeen in the early eighties. To break into the Celtic-Rangers duopoly was a monumental achievement; to win a European trophy is simply off the scale. It can be argued that Brian Clough, with regard to over-achieving at unfashionable clubs, has a better record than Ferguson. His feats at Nottingham Forest and, to a lesser extent, Derby, were remarkable, but Clough doesn’t score in the other categories.

2. He’s had success over a sustained period.

Ferguson won promotion with St. Mirren in the mid-seventies and won his first league title with Aberdeen in 1980. 31 years later, he's still winning. Old-timers might mention Bill Struth at Rangers, who managed for 34 years, amassing ten league titles, ten Scottish Cup, two League Cups and various other Glasgow Cups and Merchant Charity Cups. With all due respect, some of these trophies don’t carry a whole lot of weight in historical terms and Struth’s Rangers (like Jock Stein’s all-conquering Celtic in the 60s and 70s) competed in a relatively weak league that is generally dominated by two teams.

3. He’s had success with different clubs, in different leagues.

Some managers have great success at one club, but fail to replicate that success elsewhere; Don Revie, for instance, was outstanding at Leeds, but did little of note away from Elland Road. It takes truly exceptional talent to achieve great success in more than one job and Ferguson has been a league champion and a European trophy winner with two teams in two countries. Mourinho has succeeded in Portugal, England and Spain, while Huddink, Robson, Trappatoni and Eriksson (and probably a few others) all have very impressive CVs, but none of them score as convincingly in the other categories.

4. He has successfully built a number of winning teams over a prolonged period.

He is now on his fifth or sixth successful team at Man. Utd. Bob Paisley scores highly for his work at Liverpool, as does Jock Stein at Celtic, but again, not to the extent of Sir Furious. Bill Shankly resigned immediately after Liverpool had dismantled Newcastle in an FA Cup final, so Paisley inherited a side that was already very successful. He clearly took the club to another level, but his team-building achievements occurred within the span of a single decade. Jock Stein worked at a club with massive domestic advantages, playing –to all intents and purposes– in a two-team league, wherein any achievements by the old firm have to be viewed in the context of an extremely lop-sided domestic set-up.

5. He’s won the trophies

Nothing in the modern era compares with the haul achieved by Ferguson. He has won twelve league titles at Man. Utd, three at Aberdeen, four major European trophies and god knows how many FA Cups and League Cups. It's a frightening total.
Some have suggested that for a club of Manchester United’s stature to have won the Champions League ‘only’ twice is a tad disappointing. Bob Paisley, after all, won three European Cups in five seasons and, since it is the major trophy in club football, there is a case for saying that he was more successful. But the European Cup in those days (much as it might be difficult for fans of Liverpool, Nottingham Forest, Aston Villa and Celtic to concede) was a knock-out tournament in which two successful rounds (perhaps against part-time Scandinavian or mediocre Eastern European opposition) took you to the quarter-finals. The European Cup was an easier tournament to be successful in than the current Champions League. That’s why teams like Malmo, Bruges and Partizan Belgrade could make it to the final. That’s why teams like Nottingham Forest, Aston Villa and Steau Bucharest could win it.

It has been claimed that Ferguson was lucky to survive at Manchester United after his first three seasons appeared to lack any obvious signs of progress. He inherited what was, in effect, a glamorous social club that played occasional games of football. He recognised quickly that Ron Atkinson had left behind a talented squad, but knew that he’d have to dismantle not only the team, but the whole culture of the club. That was always going to take time and, if the progress at first appeared to be relatively slow, it now seems clear that Ferguson was far too driven and talented not to have succeeded, one way or another.

Some critics have said that he would never have been as successful if he had ended up at, say, a Portsmouth or a Leicester, but all you have to do is look at Aberdeen's record 'pre' and 'post' Ferguson. You don’t need to analyse much more than that. Saying that Alex Ferguson wouldn't have been successful away from Manchester United is a bit like saying Roger Federer would never have won the British Open if he had taken up golf instead of tennis. It's entirely hypothetical and pretty close to being pointless. So here's another hypothesis: Had he left Aberdeen for Wolves or Tottenham when he had opportunities in the mid-eighties, he would have been successful with them and would eventually have moved on, because Alex Ferguson was born to manage Manchester United.

The Law 3, Cheats 0

As expected, former Pakistan cricket captain Salman Butt and fast bowler Mohammad Asif have been found guilty of ‘conspiracy to cheat and conspiracy to accept corrupt payments’. Another bowler, Mohammad Amir, admitted to these charges prior to the trial. All three plotted to deliberately bowl ‘no-balls’ during a test match against England last summer and now face the prospect of going to jail.

Before the trial, some folk made the mistake of trying to underplay the seriousness of these offences, basing their interpretation of events on an erroneous assumption that mere no-balls do not decide cricket matches. It is clear, however, that if -during the course of a match- a player is motivated by the desire to do anything other than overcome his opponent, the outcome of the game has already been changed.

I can understand why folk might be tempted to believe, for example, that deliberately getting run out (or dropping a catch) is somehow worse than deliberately bowling the odd no ball. But that ignores the main point: you're either a cheat or you're not, in the same way that you are either 'pregnant' or 'not pregnant'.
Whether you are three weeks into a pregnancy or eight months into a pregnancy, you are still pregnant. Whether you deliberately drop a catch or deliberately bowl a no-ball, you're still a cheat. You have betrayed the spirit of the game and you should forfeit the right to be part of that game.

A plea for metric time

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I have complete confidence in the ability of the EU leaders to come up with a cunning plan to subvert the pesky laws of economics. If anyone can find a way to keep us printing, borrowing and spending non-existent money for another few decades, then Sarkozy, Merkel and company are just the lads and lasses to do it.

In fact, I think we should go all the way with the Euro boffins and adopt some more of their wizzard schemes. For instance, I’d like to see the UK move over to the ‘metric’ time system used in some parts of the Eurozone. Over there, I am given to understand, they have 20-hour days (in two blocks of ten), an extra day in the week and a 'rollover' 32 extra hours each month that you can use for holidays and special occasions (or you can 'bank' them until your retirement). It may sound a little complicated, but it’s really a much fairer system than what we have now. Why, in this day and age, should we be shackling folk to the social construct of an old-fashioned calendar and to the oppressive restraints of strictly ‘linear’ time?

Under the metric system, the extra day (Euroday, added on between Thursday and Friday) is made up of the 4 hours that are taken from the 7 ‘old’ days in the traditional calendar. That leaves 8 hours extra per week, or 32 per month. If you want to 'bank' your extra hours until retirement, you can apply for a special licence from the EU time commissioner. Or, if you are happy to use those 32 extra hours at the end of each month, you simply notify your employer in order to qualify for the time off. The current ruling is that no more than 66.6% of this ‘extra’ time can be used to augment the normal weekend allowance. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled on several test cases involving folk who have tried to use only a few of the 32 hours (carrying the remainder over to the following month), but the administration involved in maintaining that kind of system would be nightmarish.

The EU time-boffins are currently drafting an updated version of the legislation, to allow for more flexible ‘time-banking’ arrangements. It should be ready by 2015, or next Tuesday.

Old songs never die

I was astonished when a friend alerted me recently to the fact that a limited edition single by a band I fronted in the late eighties had been sold on e-bay for £170. My guess is that the folk who were bidding for it were interested because it is rare, not because it is a work of towering genius (because it isn't). It is possible (or maybe even probable) that these bidders were hardly interested in the music at all. They may well have been specialist collectors interested solely in gathering artefacts from a particular time and place. In this case, their passion would appear to have focused on obscure Glaswegian pop acts of the late eighties.

When I buy music, it is usually because I like the song and /or the artist. I say ‘usually’ because I recall, with a degree of embarrassment, that I was once bedazzled into purchasing an Alicia Keys album on the back of a beguiling TV appearance. Talented as she is, I suspect that had Ms Keys looked like Jabba the Hut, I would have been rather less beguiled and rather more inclined to let her middling tunes pass me by. I’ve nothing in particular against her music, but the fact that, once purchased, I hardly played the album in question indicates that I was hypnotised more by her beauty than her talent.
So, the odd exception apart, I buy music because I like how it sounds. Whilst it’s true that there are artists that I really like (or even love), I don’t feel any particular need to own everything that they have ever recorded. If they’ve put out something that doesn’t hit the mark, I’m quite happy to let it go. But the true collector has a different mentality; he or she (and let’s be honest and acknowledge that ‘collecting’ is an overwhelmingly male occupation) will need to own everything once his full attention has focused on the object (or objects) of desire.

The unfathomable logic of this need to collect has now seen fit to bestow ‘value’ upon an obscure old song that, all but forgotten, had long been grazing in the far fields of memory. It’s been slightly odd coming to terms with the fact that music I made more than two decades ago has -for whatever reason- acquired some significance for a small group of people. Even odder is the fact that collectors are willing to pay extraordinary sums of money to own an artefact that had long ceased to have anything but sentimental value for me and, I’m sure, for the other musicians involved in making it.

As it happens, I have several of these valuable artefacts gathering dust up in my attic. Without wishing to get carried away or to diminish the exalted status of this rare piece of vinyl, I’m thinking that this might be the break that has been tantalisingly just around the corner since 1988. It may be time to quit the day job.

The trouble with trolling

It has been interesting to hear some of the comments made over the last couple of days in relation to the case of Sean Duffy. In case you missed it, Duffy from Reading, Berkshire, was jailed for 18 weeks for sending abusive messages on social networking sites. His victims were the bereaved relatives of people he didn't know and had no connection with, including the family of the Worcester teenager Natasha MacBryde, who killed herself after being bullied. He pleaded guilty to two counts of sending communications (via Facebook and YouTube) of an indecent or offensive nature.

Duffy appears to be a pathetic individual whose horrible and stupid actions have caused a great deal of grief. Some have suggested that the fact that he suffers from Asperger's Syndrome is a mitigating factor. This syndrome may well cause him to lack empathy, but there is, surely, quite a leap from merely ‘lacking empathy’ to posting the kind of vile messages he inflicted upon the grieving families.

We can argue about whether or not his condition may have been a mitigating factor, just as we can argue about whether or not a jail sentence was the appropriate punishment for his actions, but what is more concerning is the possible fall-out from this case. Almost all of the news reports have described it as a ‘trolling’ offence. Trolling, in internet slang, is the practice of posting inflammatory messages in an online community with the intent of provoking heated responses. Trolling is not big and it’s not clever, but it’s also not what Duffy was doing; his malicious actions deserve a far more pejorative label. The fact that he has been labelled as a ‘troll’ should worry us all.

If the notion that trolling can be criminalised is allowed to fester and grow, there will be grave implications for freedom of speech. Should we start to concede that trolling might be a criminal offence, we might as well declare open season for all of the single-issue zealots and grievance-monkeys who would jump at the opportunity to prosecute ‘trolls’ who expressed ‘unacceptable’ views on any number of topics – abortion, climate change, immigration, creationism, whatever.

The desire to close down debate is, in essence, a totalitarian impulse (both Stalin and Mao-Tse-tung criminalised and pathologised local dissent). If we open that door to the criminalisation of 'trolling', we face a bleak future.

It’s a fact of life that some people are morons and have stupid, hateful, ill-informed opinions. Internet traffic merely reflects that fact. That’s why the trolls should be left alone.

Art for art's sake

Songwriting and performing are subjects close to my heart, perhaps because I’ve written literally dozens of hit songs and played to thousands of people in fantastic venues all over the world.  No … wait a minute, I was thinking about someone else there.

Over at soundcloud, I regularly post songs, usually accompanied by a few brief notes designed to illuminate some of the musical and lyrical aims of each piece.

The idea for this particular song (‘Novelty Act’ by The Eisenhowers) came to me while I was driving home to Glasgow at stupid o’clock, having played a gig in Aberdeen to not very many people. At that time in the wee small hours, faced with the prospect of dragging myself into work on a meagre ration of sleep, it seemed like rather a foolish way for a responsible adult to spend his time, an idea conveyed in the opening line: “To get right to the point: it’s looking bad.”

Up until sometime around your mid-to-late twenties, it’s relatively easy to maintain the enthusiasm, energy and belief required to play in a band. The combination of wide-eyed innocence and exuberant ambition can be intoxicating if you're on the inside, but also quite endearing for the observer. At that stage, you are pretty resilient (in fact, you’re close to being bullet-proof) because, essentially, you believe that your big break is just around the corner. As the years pass and you begin to realise that you are still quite some distance from becoming the next U2, you’ll wonder, sometimes, why the hell you are still doing it. Your friends and relatives, once full of enthusiasm and willing to turn up in numbers at your gigs, will start to withdraw, perhaps puzzled and slightly embarrassed as to why, in the face of all the available evidence, you’re sticking with it.

From that point, a peculiar brand of resilience is required to maintain your efforts, but it’s a brand that may lead those friends and relatives (and don’t even think about your enemies) to write you off as being -at best- slightly eccentric, but more likely drifting somewhere on the outskirts of Delusionsville, just a few short stops away from Nutter Central, where 55-year old postmen can turn up at the X-Factor auditions believing themselves to be the natural heirs to David Bowie or Jon Bon Jovi.

Anyway … to get right to the point. I concluded a long time ago that people should make music because they want to. If they are 'successful' (whatever that means), then good luck to them. If they are not 'successful', who cares? If you’re getting something from playing music, you should continue to do it. That 'something' could be peace of mind, catharsis, the sheer joy of making some meaningful noise, or perhaps the admiration of three slightly drunk folk at a midweek acoustic gig. Your 'something' might even be the deranged notion that somehow your genius will one day be recognised by the rest of humankind. Whatever. Making music might occasionally lead to heartache and humiliation, but it’s still better than lots of other activities I could name.

And that, I think, is what the song in question is trying to say. In spite of being forged in the dark foundry of jaded cynicism, it somehow manages to express a degree of optimism about the creative process.