Monkey Magic

I loved the first Arctic Monkeys album. For a year or so, Alex and the lads were my new favourite band. Lyrically, I'd not heard anything so exciting from a young band in years. I wore the virtual grooves out of Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not. Fake Tales Of San Francisco, I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor, Riot Van, Mardy Bum... god, I adored that album.

And then came Favourite Worst Nightmare, the difficult second album that broke my heart. Or rather, cooled it to indifference. I couldn't hear the same magic anymore, they just didn't seem the same band. I started seeing other people. We drifted apart. I wondered if we'd ever get back together, if I'd ever feel the old tingle when I heard a new Monkeys song... or whether I'd just have to keep on searching for that mythical band that never lets you down.

Then Crying Lightning, the first single from their just-released third album, caught my ear. The reviews were positive (especially from Hanan). Go on then, for old time's sake, I'll give them one more chance.

It's too soon to tell whether Humbug is as good as their debut, but I know for certain that it's better than FWN. If for no other reason than that it features Cornerstone, the best song I've heard this summer. The story of a young man who's met the girl of his dreams then let her slip through his fingers (presumably without first getting her phone number), he's now searching every pub in town in the hope that he'll meet her again. Along the way he finds a lot of girls who could be her...

I thought I saw you in The Battleship but it was only a lookalike
She was nothing but a vision trick under the warning light
She was close, close enough to be your ghost
But my chances turned to toast when I asked if I could call her your name

Such a beautiful song, I even forgive Alex Turner the heinous ghost/toast rhyme that should surely have been banned from lyrics after Des'ree's Life (“I don't want to see a ghost, it's the sight that I fear most. I'd rather eat a piece of toast, and watch the evening news"). Anyway, the chorus more than makes up for it...

I elongated my lift home
I let him go the long way round
I smelt your scent on the seat belt and kept my short cuts to myself

Just brilliant. Yes, as in shining brightly. Don't believe me? Listen for yourself...

The Secret Garden

More photos from our mini-break. We stayed in a small village in the north Lakes, just south of Penrith. A gorgeous, miles-off-the-beaten-track hamlet; it has no supermarket, no bank, no post office and no cashpoint, though it does boast a pub, a postbox, a telephone box, and (because this is England and we're clearly insane) an upmarket cruisewear shop and a dog grooming parlour.

It also has a wonderful secret garden that's like something out of CS Lewis or, erm, The Secret Garden (including the biggest thistles I've ever seen and a stone altar for your local pagan sacrifices)... the only Saxon church in the North West, dating back to the 11th century... and an enormous topiary squirrel.

"No No No! Stop Stop Stop!"

That was the sound I made halfway through our mini-break in the Lake District when I accidentally deleted all the photos in my camera. The sunny day photos from Monday and Tuesday, that is.

The less sunny photos I took during the rest of the week aren't quite as spectacular...





I'll post a few slightly brighter ones tomorrow.

The Top Ten Nines

Because I'm anal, it was somehow inevitable that I follow my Top Ten Tens with a Top Ten Nines and so on. No jumping ahead now, but seven is going to be a monster. On the other hand, nine is probably the least represented number in my mediaplayer. A few runners-up from Scissors For Lefty, Tiny Dancers and Panic At The Disco (sounding more like Jellyfish than ever) scraped the bottom of the barrel, but there really wasn't a lot to choose from.

And before you ask, no, there's absolutely no place for possibly the worst Beatles recording ever, Revolution 9.

"Oh, but Rol, it's the Fabs being all experimental and envelope-pushy and far out, man..."

No, it's not. It's the Fabs being all shitty and pretentious and disappeary-up-their-own-arsy, and it almost ruins the White Album with nine minutes of bollocks. Worse still, it steals the name from one of their best ever tracks, and one of the few Beatles songs I can still listen to without getting bored. Utter twaddle.


10. The Ramones - It's Not My Place (In the 9 To 5 World)

Let's start as we'll eventually end. Yes, fundamentally, all Ramones songs sound the same. But it's a good enough sound, so who cares? Plus, the video reminds me of Kenny Everett.

9. Somatic - No. 9

I couldn't find any reference to this record online (apart from Amazon, where you can buy their subsequent debut album for a penny). It's a gorgeous string-drenched, vaguely Kate Bush-esque song from the late 90s. Let it was over you, now that I've gone to the trouble of uploading it to youtube...



8. Frightened Rabbit - Square 9

Like most Frightened Rabbit songs, this seems to come from the perspective of an sweet, hopeless romantic who's been kicked remorselessly in the knackers. Which is exactly what I want from a love song.

It'll be like square one
Where we fell in love
Forget about square two
There was no me and you
Just like square one
Where we fell in love, under the tree
Forget about square three
Oh that wasn't me
like square one
Where we fell in love
Forget about square five
I was only half alive

7. Prince - Love 2 The 9's

From the Diamonds & Pearls album (i.e. when Prince still had it), but you won't find this on youtube or anywhere else on the net for that matter, because the purple midget has a habit of suing any of his fans that post his stuff online. As with Jacko, you ignore the artist as a person, and concentrate purely on their sizable (for such a shortarse) contribution to the musical landscape.

6. The Moldy Peaches - Lucky Number Nine

"Indie boys are neurotic" sings Kimya Dawson as this song opens. You're telling me?

5. The Ataris - Eight Of Nine

From my favourite Ataris album, back when they did the widescreen Springsteen-arama note perfectly, and before they started taking themselves too seriously and stopped feeling half as good.

Appreciate the good times,
But don't take the worst for granted.
'Cause you only get so many second chances.

4. George Harrison - Cloud 9

My favourite Beatle by far, though this album owes far more to the post-ELO Jeff Lynne production sound that it does traditional Harrison (see also The Traveling Wilburys and most 80s Tom Petty). Still, Harrison's voice is unmistakable, and grew warmer and richer with age.

3. The Temptations - Cloud Nine

This is the point where the Temps leave behind the traditional Motown template and discover a strange, late 60s / early-70s hinterland between soul and disco. Wonderful.

2. E - Tomorrow I'll Be Nine

Before Eels, E's solo career was a strange and wonderful thing. This is from his second and final solo album, Broken Toy Shop, and introduces the E Child, who would return later on tracks like Saturday Morning.

"They're always looking at me funny
I'm always doing something wrong
I'm thinking they'd be better off if I was gone."

1. Dolly Parton - 9 To 5

I'm past trying to defend my choices. The truth is, I looked down my list of Nine songs, and asked myself the simple question - which of these would you most want to listen to again right now? And it's not kitsch, it's not irony... this really is my answer.




But what's your answer? Favourite Nine songs in the comments box, please.

Mr. Toppit

Do you ever read a book and feel like you've missed the point? It's obviously well-written, an enjoyable enough diversion, but you find yourself more wanting to get to the end not to find out what happens as to begin reading the next book on your To Read list. This is especially frustrating when it's a book that both your friends and the critics have raved about. Mr. Toppit is that book for me.

Chev, whose opinion I respect in most things (except the first Spider-Man film and Gwen over Mary Jane) called this "quite the best book I’ve read in a while, and one of the best debut novels ever". The critics called it "painfully funny", "a robust comedy and a dark, ironic family drama", and "a masterly tale of quiet torment". But me, I just thought it was OK. A story about a writer whose death brings far greater success than his life, and how that success eventually destroys his family; I didn't really find myself connecting - or even liking - any of the characters, and didn't find any of them to be particularly 'take charge'. Everybody seemed to react rather than act, and after a while this just started to annoy me.

It's "a staggeringly clever book," says Chev, "but one that may leave some readers scratching their heads." I guess that's me then. There appears to be, from Chev's review, far more going on here than I realised. None of the plot's revelations appeared particularly surprising, and yet Chev says, "this is a book that will reward - and deserves - multiple readings." I've obviously missed something huge, but the problem is that I didn't get enough from my first reading to have any desire to go back and try to unravel the book's secrets. Which is annoying, because I feel like I've failed - like I'm not smart enough for this book - like I should have tried harder... but that in turn just makes me angry and resentful of the author. I feel like someone staring at one of those Magic Eye pictures, unable to see the Unicorn, while everyone else shouts, "it's there!!! Can't you see it? D'oh!"

Grrr.

West Nab

Something else I was inspired to do after reading Simon Armitage's Gig was climb to the top of West Nab.

I've lived in the shadow of this hill most of my life (well, actually I lived in the shadow of Deer Hill, which is slightly further north-west and lower in altitude than West Nab, but it's basically the same peak) and yet I never realised that it was the highest point around. I've climbed up there on occasion before, but never really stopped to consider the view - and what it means to me - until reading Gig.



I'll let the Marsden metrist explain, and only butt in when I have something to add...

The head of West Nab is a heap of giant boulders, gouged and sculpted by the wind.

(The indentations in the rock below are big enough to make a really comfy seat.)

The air up there is fast and sharp. There's almost a pattern to the boulders - it's almost a henge, but no quite.

At some point in history, smaller stones have been cut into blocks and used to form a fold or pen. Maybe it had a roof at one time, but it's just a couple of walls now.

Other signs of human activity include the chiselled graffiti; these obstinate outcrops must have blunted the blade of many a knife over time.

(The one I photographed below made me wonder 'are John & Sally still together, 17 years later?')

And there's a concrete OS trig point close to the summit, pointing north.

(There's also a recently built cairn, prompting me to wonder if my old mate the Deer Hill Cairn Builder has been up here recently.)



Gig goes on to describe the view in various directions from the summit of West Nab in terms of Armitage's musical and artistic influences: Manchester, Joy Division and The Fall, the Smiths and Elbow to the west, and beyond them, Liverpool's Bunnymen and Teardrop Explodes...




...from Sheffield in the South, the Comsat Angels, Pulp, the Human League and the Arctic Monkeys...



...while to the East it's Hull where Armitage only sees Larkin and Marvell, but personally I'd add Paul Heaton; a little further North is Leeds - Bennett, Harrison and Henry Moore (let's not forget David Gedge and The Wedding Present); then my own workplace hell, Bradford (Hockney and Priestley - what no Terrorvision?); Haworth (the Brontes); Mytholmroyd, Hebden Bridge and Heptonstall (Hughes and Plath).



As I said, I've been up West Nab before, I've even admired the view. But I've never stopped to think of it in these terms, and I'm grateful to the chief Scaremonger for giving me that, and the paragraph below, which sums up perfectly why I love this part of the world, and the music and art that its given us, and why I'll always think of it as home...

There are thousands of other stars beyond this circle, in every direction, all worth setting a course for, some of them many times brighter. But these are the stars I tend to steer by - the constellation closest to home. You can't choose your place of birth. It's given. But in the great wheeling zodiac of the world, this nameless northerly arc revolving around the rocky spindle of West Nab is the sign I'm happy to have been born under.

Extracts from Gig, copyright Simon Armitage, used for review / appreciation purposes, removable on request.

Buy Gig from Amazon by clicking here.

I Wish I Was A Salesperson

Well obviously I don't, not really. But...

I wish I had a thicker skin, that's all. That's the major difference between creative types and salesy types as I see it, and I've been observing the two beasts in action for many years now. Your true creative takes every criticism, every knockback, every rejection to heart. S/he stews and ponders and frets and mopes and second guesses and rages inside over the merest slight, and never accomplishes half as much as they could if they just had an ounce of the confidence of the average salesperson.

On the other hand, I swear there have been occasions when I've screamed "fuck off and die, you incompetent cock-shuffler!" into the face of your average salesperson, yet within the hour they've been back at my desk like nothing ever happened, with another stupid, inane, death-of-the-soul request and a big, shit-eating grin to accompany it. Water off a duck's back.

Down - that's the difference between sales and creatives - down! Sales people have it, creatives get it.

But why does it matter to me? I've got to the stage where any criticism hurts like a knife in the kidneys, even for work I couldn't give two hoots about. I mean, it's one thing to get a publisher or agent's rejection letter for a piece of writing I've sweated blood and tears - and months or years of my life - over. But why should I be bothered if a saleperson rips to shreds an advertising script I've spent less than ten minutes on and have no personal, emotional attachment to? Will I ever learn to walk away from criticism like Tommy in Coward Of The County learns to walk away from a fight?

It won't mean you're weak if you turn the other cheek...

That's my other great failing. I don't know if this is true of all creative types, but I suspect it is for a lot of them... I bear the hell out of my grudges. 'Forgive and forget' is not really in my utility belt. But you just can't be like that if you're a sales person. You have to be forgiving. Or at least appear to be. You have to smile at your enemies, take whatever they throw at you, then go back for more. If you want to be a success. There's no time for voodoo dolls and curses and deathwishes - these are luxuries that can only be enjoyed by creatives.

Come the Armageddon, this world will be given over to the rats, the cockroaches, and the sales people. I mean no disrespect when I write that - I admire that tenacity, that persistence, that indestructibility. I really wish I had more of it myself. Let's face it, us lily-livered creative types'll be dead before the first bomb drops. And anyway, even if I did mean it as a slur, it wouldn't matter to your average salesperson... they'll have forgotten all about it by now.

In which I get interviewed by Simon Armitage...

...sort of.

As mentioned in yesterday's post, one chapter of Simon Armitage's book Gig is devoted to an interview with indie legend David Gedge of The Wedding Present. It's one 40-summat bloke from Huddersfield chatting with another 40-summat bloke from Leeds (albeit one who now lives in LA), and as such some of the questions may be unintelligible to Southerners and Foreigners - sorry.

Anyway, as I'm unlikely to ever get interviewed by Mr. Armitage myself, I thought I'd steal his questions and replace Mr. Gedge's answers with my own. You may consider this rather sad, or desperate, or stalkerish, or just plain pathetic. You may well be right, the way I feel about my own career trajectory / creative oblivion right now, I could hardly put up much of an argument.

Still, it's a blog post...

Dave or David?

Davey.

Smoking or non-smoking?

Non.

Aisle or window?

Window, but only if the next two seats are empty, otherwise aisle.

Magpie or Blue Peter?

Blue Peter. But Magpie stopped when I was very small.

Purvis or Singleton?

Noakes.

Tea or coffee?

Green tea.

West Pier or Palace Pier?

I've never been to Brighton.

Huddersfield or Halifax?

Huddersfield, obviously. It's not built on stilts for a start.

The Wedding Present or The Birthday Party?

The Wedding Present. (Sorry, Nick.)

Hughes or Heaney?

Larkin.

Mick McManus or Kendo Nagasaki?

Giant Haystacks.

Wet shave or electric?

Wet.

Canine or feline?

Feline.

Batter or breadcrumbs?

Batter.

Celtic or Rangers?

I haven't a clue.

Ketchup or HP?

Ketchup.

Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs?

Dogs.

Mum or Dad?

I agree with Gedge. You can't ask that. However, Dad would want me to say Mum.

Marmite or Bovril?

Bovril... if I had to choose.

To be or not to be?

To be. (Most of the time.)

Lennon or McCartney?

Harrison.

Paul or Heather?

Would anybody really say Heather?

Swapshop or Tiswas?

Swapshop?

Corduroy or denim?

Cords.

PC or Mac?

PC.

Brown or Blair?

Dumb or Dumber?

A God with a beard or a God without a beard?

I'd be disappointed if he was cleanshaven.

Heaven or Las Vegas?

Hmm...

Dandy or Beano?

Spider-Man Weekly.

Revie or Reevie?

I told you, I can't answer football questions.

Bough-ie or Bo-ie?

Bo-ie.

Speak now or forever hold your peace?

Speak now.

The devil or the deep blue sea?

The deep blue sea.

Blur or Oasis?

Blur.

Scraps or bits?

Bits. I was in the chip shop the other night and saw someone ordering a bag of bits. By themselves. Why would anybody want just bits?

Morrissey or Marr?

Moz.

All or nothing?

All.

Acoustic or electric?

Depends on my mood.

Should I stay or should I go?

Get away from me.


Should you be short of a blog post and feel like turning this into a meme, go forth and reproduce...

Gig

When he was a teenager, Simon Armitage wanted to be in a band. Failing that, he settled on being a poet - and ended up leading a downsized version of the rock star life, touring the world, performing before live audiences, appearing on radio and television, taking tea with David Gedge and doing his best to dodge an encounter with his hero, Mark E. Smith... even, latterly, recording his own record with his self-confessed mid-life-crisis band, the Scaremongers. Gig is the story of how that happened, but it's also the story of Armitage's relationship with pop music, and how important it's been to his life.

It's concerned me, every once in a while, that listening to music from almost a quarter of a century ago - or worse, going to see ageing bands still playing that music - makes me trapped in the past or out of touch. But it concerns me no longer. It doesn't bother people who listen to Beethoven, so why should it bother me?

It's a hilarious, touching, at times even heartwrenching (the anecdote about a sorry porn star is especially moving) story of a Huddersfield lad done right, and as with much of Armitage's work I found it hugely inspirational. I may never get to live the literary dream as he has, but reading this encouraged me to keep trying.

(On arrival in Australia...) I check in at the hotel and am handed over to a helper who suggests I might be hungry after such a long journey. I tell him I think I probably am. 'Great,' he says, ''cause I could eat the crotch off a low-flying duck. I take this to be a statement of his appetite rather than his tallness, although the image prompts me to reply that I could probably make do with a sandwich.

Plus, I couldn't help but smile at his review of a Paul McCartney show at Sheffield Arena...

Like vegetarians who eat tuna fish, people who don't like pop music like the Beatles.

Ouch.

The Top Ten Tens

I've not done a music countdown for a while (not had the time), so why not? I've decided that the Top Ten format gives me a nice structure (and stops me going on forever), so hopefully this will become a regular feature again. Why not start with a Top Ten Tens? (On the radio station, they have a feature called The Top Ten @ Ten. It's basically The Golden Hour, in common with just about every other local station in the country, but minus Simon Bates. Which must be a plus.)

Tempted as I was to bend the rules and include the likes of Sweet And Tender Hooligan or Memphis, Tennessee, that wouldn't really be fair to the genuine Ten tracks... because they'd pretty much all be edged out by impostors. So it's just Ten or 10, with one slight... unavoidable... exception.

Runners up came from Theaudience, REM, Pearl Jam, The Soup Dragons, Harry Nilsson and the Beach Boys... but there can only be ten.


10. Dusty Springfield - I Close My Eyes And Count To Ten

Still cooler than a room full of Duffys and Adeles.

9. The Divine Comedy - Ten Seconds To Midnight

From the album Promenade. I found a very scary version of this on youtube, but decided not to link to it.

I don't have a lot of interest in cricket, but I'm tempted to check out Neil Hannon's latest departure, The Duckworth Lewis Method. From what I've heard, it sounds like he's bowled a maiden over.



8. The Beautiful South - Perfect 10

I can't help but feel that if the Beautiful South had enjoyed less commercial success, they'd have been more critically approved. Ah, sod the critics, and sod anyone who doesn't like this song. Paul Heaton is a genius - so much so, this isn't the last you'll hear of him in this post.

7. XTC - Ten Feet Tall

Vintage XTC. I tried to find the Ben Lee song with the same name, but I couldn't, so this is what you get.

6. Elvis - I Was Born About Ten Thousand Years Ago

I'm not sure I've ever come out as an Elvis fan, but now's as good a time as any. This is from Walk a Mile in My Shoes: The Essential 70's Masters, and I reckon it's Elvis does Sympathy For The Devil. Kind of. I'm not one of those people who believe Young Elvis is the only Good Elvis. I love all eras of Elvis, unashamedly. And I like the 'About' in the title of this song. Precision sucks.

5. The Teardrop Explodes - Count To Ten And Run For Cover

Taken from the wonderfully named album Everybody Wants To Shag The Teardrop Explodes, this is Julian Cope the way I'll always think of him. A little manic, a little mental, with a real ear for pop. As with many Teardrops songs, this has really nice trumpets. If you can find a copy, listen to it.

I was recently reading Essential Daredevil Volume 4, and I came across the story that gave Cope his band name. As with many DD stories from that era, it's utterly bonkers. Which seems kind of appropriate.



4. Paul Heaton (aka Biscuit Boy / Crackerman) - 10 Lessons In Love

From Heaton's long-forgotten debut solo album, this is the much darker flipside to Perfect 10. It could almost have been subtitled 'Men Are Such Scum', written as it is from the perspective of a bitter woman who's been loved and left far too many times to count. Pulls no punches when it comes to cynicism.

3. Cinerama - 10 Denier

You can't go wrong with a bit of Gedge. Infidelity has rarely sounded so cool...

Now, I really must get dressed
She might already have guessed
She knows that I've been here before

No, of course I didn't tell
"I'm gonna cheat on you today,
By making love on someone's floor."

And I don't need any more persuasion
I'm waiting for the right occasion
It's hard breaking someone's heart in two
When she thinks she's still in love with you

Of course I'm feeling mean
Oh it's really quite obscene
Your hungry mouth locked onto mine

And I lose my self disgust
As guilt makes way for lust
When you run your fingers down my spine

You know I'd love to stay
And stroke your ten denier
Until she goes away

2. The Stone Roses - Ten Storey Love Song

The Second Coming is, I think, unfairly maligned. Yes, it's the classic case of Difficult Second Album, and it couldn't ever live up to the hype, and it caused the Roses to implode, leaving King Monkey to his patchy (though occasionally brilliant) solo career and John Squire to the Seahorses and his painting... but it does still contain some pretty good tunes. This is one of the best, with a nice Birdsy groove.

1. Bruce Springsteen - Tenth Avenue Freeze Out

A huge track from my joint-favourite Bruce album, and a powerhouse live.



So what about you? Do you have a favourite Ten Song? Go on...

The Rainbow Orchid

People reading this blog who don't know a lot about comics might think, from my occasional geekish posts on the subject, that I do know a lot about comics. But actually, that's far from the truth. I know a lot about the comics I grew up reading (mainly Marvel, DC, and a few indies and small press books), but I know very little about British or European comics, Japanese Manga, or many other genres and subgenres.

So when it comes to appreciating the work of Garen Ewing, specifically his lavishly illustrated series The Rainbow Orchid, I don't have the same touchstones and reference points that many reviewers rely on. But none of that really matters, because I love Garen's Ewing regardless.

Whereas others have compared Garen's work to the best of Hergé, I find instead a very British take on the kind of RKO serials that inspired Indiana Jones. A riproaring period adventure, rich in detail (both art and story) involving the globe-spanning search for a legendary orchid, packed with the kind of rogues, romantics and rapscallions you'd expect to meet in an old Bogart movie or a classic Conan Doyle novel. A comic for adults then, but one which might also be enjoyed by enjoying by discerning children.

Now, after many years working on the title online and self-publishing, Garen's strip has finally been snapped up by a professional publisher, Egmont, and the first volume of The Adventures Of Julius Chancer: The Rainbow Orchid (which I've had annoying habit of referring to erroneously as The Rainbow Orchard in the past - sorry again, Garen) is now available to buy for just the click of a mouse. It's a gorgeous package too, with the top notch production values that Garen's stunning artwork truly deserves. Without doubt, the most beautifully rendered graphic novel you'll see all year.

Morrissey famously sang, "We hate it when our friends become successful", but I'm afraid I have to disagree with my bequiffed hero this time. I couldn't be happier to see Garen's work triumph like this (I've even been showing this book to non-comic readers with the shameless boast, "this guy once drew comics for me!") and I can't wait to read the further adventures of Julius and his chums... or plunk down my pounds for a ticket to watch the inevitable big screen adaptation. It can only be a matter of time...

You can get on board the Rainbow Orchid express, read a preview of the first volume, and discover some great behind-the-scenes secrets over at Garen's website. Do yourself a favour and pop along today.

The New Ten Commandments Of Driving

Found chipped into the tarmac on the hard-shoulder of the M62 between Huddersfield and Bradford...


1. Thou shalt not drive at 30 mph when the speed limit is 60, only to put your foot down to 70 when I try to overtake you. Consistency is everything. I don't mind you driving at 30 as long as you stick to 30. If your only goal as a driver is to piss me off, well guess what - you just succeeded.


2. Thou shalt not drive HGVs up steep, narrow, windy country lanes specifically signed as "Not Suitable For Heavy Vehicles" (particularly Crimble Clough in Slawit.) Those signs are there for a reason, not just to inconvenience you. When you get stuck and cause a massive tailback all the way to Aberdeen, you'll look like a prize tit, won't you?


3. Thou shalt not drive onto motorways at 40 mph, in the fast lane of the slip road. The whole purpose of the slip road is for you to accelerate to match the speed of the motorway traffic. If you want to cause a hazard and drive on so slow that even lorries have to pull out to let you on, at least do it in the inside lane.


4. Thou shalt not drive with your front bumper on my back seat. Stopping distances exist for a reason. Likewise, if I'm leaving a decent stopping distance between me and the car in front - that's not a gap for you to swoop into like Batman. You cretin.


5. Thou shalt not nervously edge out of junctions till you're blocking half the road. Go or not go, there is no try. Alternatively, thou shalt not pull out of a junction really fast in front of me, causing me to slam on my brakes... and then slow down to 20. Either you're in a rush or you're not - make up your fucking mind!


6. Thou shalt not turn without indicating. I'm not a mind-reader. Likewise, thou shalt not leave your indicator on for half an hour after turning, so everybody else has to guess whether you're planning to turn again, or you're just a knob jockey.


7. Thou shalt not drive in the middle lane (or worse still, the fast lane) of the motorway at 60mph or less when there is no slower traffic to your left (or right, I suppose, if you're driving in one of those countries where they do everything on the weird side of the road) and you basically just can't be bothered to pull over.


8. Thou shalt not drive JCBs, tractors, combine harvesters, tanks or other excessively large and slow vehicles during the rush hour just for your own perverse, schadenfruedy kicks.


9. Thou shalt not brake repeatedly when approaching green traffic lights, only to put your foot down and race through said lights when they change to red. Once again - make up your mind!


10. Thou shalt not drive an Audi. (Basically, commandments 1 - 9 rolled into one, plus a few thousand more thrown in for good measure.)

You Have Killed Me

A few random things that have taken my fancy, or that I've bumped into on the interweb this week...


Morrissey Killed Princess Di - Fact! This is truly, truly frightening. And hilarious. And sad. In both senses of the word.


A stunning piece of artwork that's a must-click for booklovers everywhere... Digging Words (with thanks to Chev).




Saw Mesrine: Killer Instinct (or L'instinct de mort, if you insist) at the weekend. Enjoyed it more than I do most gangster movies (I often get bored with the same unavoidable template of rise and fall, boom and bust, crime and punishment). A full review will follow once I've seen the second film, Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1 in a couple of weeks, but in short: Vincent Cassel has a weaselly kind of charm; Gerard Depardieu has turned into the French Brando (no, seriously); and director Jean-François Richet is a BIG fan of Bullitt.


Still at the cinema, I have no interest whatsoever in the GI Joe movie, beyond a profound regret that Christopher Eccleston has once away thrown away his Hollywood cred (wasn't Gone In Sixty Seconds bad enough, Chris?) Being British, I don't even have any nostalgic connection to the toys - it was always good old Action Man for us, and I doubt I'd bother to go see a film based on that either. But this... this is just bizarre. What the hell was Julianne Moore thinking?


Solving Problems The David Hasslehoff Way


A while back, I wrote a post about a band I'd discovered too late (i.e. after they split), Luxembourg. Well, their lead singer, David Shah, has started a new band called The Melting Ice Caps, and many of their songs are now available to download for free from their website. He seems to have cornered the market on writing "I'm a failure at everything I try to do" songs, which I always have a lot of time for. (As is often the case, thanks go to Larissa.)

Selfish Bachelor (lyrics copyright The Melting Ice Caps)


I don’t have a wife

and I don’t have a husband.

I don’t have any children I know of.



I don’t have a life

and I don’t have a band anymore,

or many friends to speak of.



I’ve had too much time just pleasing myself;

Now I am too stuck to please anybody else.



I’m a selfish bachelor

with only myself to blame

for another night slumped on the sofa,

but I do know being loved,

like I know being alone.



I was free to do anything,

so I didn’t know where to begin.

You try to take it all in

and you wind up with nothing,

but I do know being loved like I know being alone.



I get up when I want to,

eat breakfast in my dressing gown.

We can’t all be as glamorous as you.

Put jokes in the chorus

to make it less serious,

but the pay-off line always rings true.



I don’t have a wife

and I don’t have a husband.

I don’t have any children I know of.



I don’t have a life

and I don’t have a band anymore,

but I’ve got all these songs.

The Vesuvius Club

Lucifer Box is a dandy. A cad. A rotter. A bounder. A roue (sic - no missing g). He's exactly what you'd expect from the hero of a novel by the League of Gentleman's Mark Gatiss... or from the Oscar Wilde meets HP Lovecraft quote on the back cover (though Wilde meets Jules Verne might be more appropriate).

In his first adventure, portraitist-cum-secret-agent Box attempts to foil a dastardly plot to murder scientists, frame respectable citizens, and obliterate Italy under a lake of lava, while also taking time to seduce young women (and boys), brag his way into dens of vice and iniquity, and stop for afternoon tea - because anything less would be uncivilized.

Reminiscent at times of Grant Morrison's excellent Sebastian O, The Vesuvius Club is the very definition of a ripping yarn coupled with a bawdy romp - let's face it, when Stephen Fry calls it "the most delicious, depraved, inventive, macabre and hilarious literary debut I can think of", you know you're on to a good thing.

Henry Mancini's Pink Panther Theme, Spoken Phonetically

The joys of being a homeowner, part 1.

We have ants. I like ants. I like watching them work together to carry food that's much, much bigger than them back to their nest. I'm amazed by their industry, and how clean they are. And if they'd just stayed in the garden, I'd have been happy to let them carry on about their business.

Unfortunately they couldn't help but venture further, and when I went out to hang the washing on the line on Saturday morning and found them all over the doorstep and the front door, I knew something had to be done about it.

Not wanting to set down poison (there's a lot of cats about and I'm not sure how it might affect them), I checked the internet for alternatives. A variety of suggestions presented themselves (including soaking pipe tobacco in warm water overnight then pouring the liquid into the ants' nest to nicotine them all to death), but the easiest option seemed to be babypowder. To be honest, we didn't hold out much hope for its effectiveness...

...but wow, that babypowder is some nasty shit. God knows what it's doing to your baby's arse.

I do feel bad though. I don't like killing anything, and I do like ants (unlike, say, moths or centipedes or woodlice). They have character. But I'm not sharing a house with them unless they start paying rent and cleaning the bathroom every other week.

Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

Sixteen Candles

The Breakfast Club

Planes, Trains & Automobiles

Pretty In Pink

Weird Science

Some Kind Of Wonderful

Uncle Buck

And, of course, Ferris Bueller's Day Off...



With a resume like that, we can excuse his later descent into dross starring McCauley Culkin and giant St. Bernards.

Farewell, John Hughes... the teenagers of the 80s salute you!

First Among Equals

So I ring the shall-not-be-named cable/internet/phone service provider...

"Hi, when I signed up, I had one of those Recommended By A Friend codes that was supposed to get me £30 knocked off the price of my first bill..."

"Yes, Mr. Hirst."

"Well, I've received my first bill, and you haven't knocked the £30 off."

"No. Well, you see, that won't be deducted from your first bill... it'll be deducted from your first bill after you've paid your first bill."

"So... you mean... my second bill?"

"Not as such..."

The Fire Inside

A few weeks back, I wrote about my discovery of The Enemy's latest single, Sing When You're In Love, and how it reminded me of everything from the Boomtown Rats to Drugstore. A few of you agreed, making extra suggestions - it really is one of those songs that echoes so many other classics.

Since then, I've been listening to the band's second album, Music For The People, only to find that the whole thing reeks of homage and impersonation. That's not necessarily a bad thing though - because they've got everyone else's voice down to a tee.

51st State, for example, is a Clash anthem for the 21st century. True, Strummer fans may well turn their noses up at it, but if it gets the kids into London's Calling, is it really such a bad thing?

Nation Of Checkout Girls, meanwhile, could well be the best song Paul Weller hasn't written in 20-odd years. Be Somebody evokes the ghost of the Undertones (though not as angel-voiced as when Feargal was still singing) while Last Goodbye outdoes Noel and Liam at every turn. The hidden track even sounds like The Band or early 70s Elton John!

I really should object to all this shameless semi-plagiarism, but I just can't bring myself to hate The Enemy. No, they haven't got a single original idea... but if you're gonna steal, at least steal from the masters (Noel & Liam excepted).


Another of those songs Sing When You're In Love reminded me of was The Fire Inside by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, from way back in the early 90s. I've also been listening to Bob Seger's Greatest Hits lately, and really wish I'd paid more attention to him 20 years ago. We've Got Tonight and Hollywood Nights aside, Seger doesn't have much of a profile in the UK. He never broke big over here like Springsteen or Billy Joel, and didn't even receive the critical notice of Tom Petty or John Mellencamp. So I don't know how it'll be received when I come out and say that I love every song on his Greatest Hits and find myself hankering to investigate the albums those songs originated on. I got a slight case of album sadness thinking about this, remembering the days of my youth when discovering an artist like Seger would have me heading off down the record store to flip through old, dusty, plastic-sleeved vinyl, before taking a record home and dropping the needle into the groove. There was something to that process, that ritual, something that's forever lost from the joy of discovering music in the digital age... and every now and then, I get all melancholy for the old ways.

Anyway, The Fire Inside still stands out as one of the best tracks on this album, and it brings back memories of the first time I heard it. Back then I was working as a producer (fancy name for tea boy / phone op) on an evening radio show / phone in, and both me and the presenter loved this single, so we'd try and sneak it into the show whenever we could. Those were the days when playlisting was becoming more strict and DJ choice was quickly being eliminated, so I guess we felt like rebels sneaking this song onto the air when we knew the bosses weren't listening. Ha. Big men! The last desperate V-signs of a dying breed. We lost that battle in the end.



Listening to this song again now, not only do I hear echoes in that aforementioned Enemy track, but also in one of the stand-out cuts from the debut album by Airborne Toxic Event. That's a weird name for a band, isn't it? I always think they should be a metal band with a name like that, the music they make just doesn't quite fit. They do have a great sound though, and Wishing Well is one of my favourites... but Bob Seger really does deserve some royalties here, there's just no denying it.

Re: Morse

I've not read any Inspector Morse novels since John Thaw died, though back in the 90s I devoured them all. But every now and then, I get to feeling bad about all the books on my shelves that I mean to re-read but never get round to. Anyway, I fancied a bit of Morse again after all this time, so I started again at the beginning.

Last Bus To Woodstock is similar to many first-in-the-series novels in that you get the feeling that the hero hasn't quite fully formed into the character we all know and love. Of course, there's also the issue that Colin Dexter's Morse is quite different to John Thaw's: slightly less classy and a heap more sleazy. One of the recurring themes in the Morse novels (somewhat downplayed in the TV series) is sexual frustration and the hidden peccadilloes of the middle class / intelligentsia. Behind the robes of every stuffy Oxford don, there's a shaken up bottle of raging, repressed hormones, just waiting to pop. And the police inspectors aren't much better.

Dexter's plots are famously labyrinthine, inspired by the kind of cryptic crossword clues that have most readers (myself included) scratching their heads long after the solution is given. But as with most great whodunits, the fun is in the unravelling rather than the thread you end up with. And there's no denying that both on the page, and on the screen, Morse is one of the truly great fictional detectives. He's also a wonderful pedant. (I can't help wonder what Morse would have made of the fact that I read this novel in the Third Inspector Morse omnibus. Does chronology mean nothing to these people?)

But as to the fact that Dexter's Morse is actually younger than his long-suffering Sergeant, Lewis... that's just wrong!

eBay Bye Bye

So eBay is changing its rules again, and as of October 19th (or September 22nd - reports vary), it'll no longer be cost effective for me to sell there. They changed the rules a few months ago to a system that seemed much fairer to sellers, with no charge for items listed at 99p, meaning that unsold items could be listed again and again until they eventually sold. This was particularly good when selling old CDs or comics, because sometimes it takes two or three listings (or more) to make a sale, but eventually you find someone who wants your no-longer-listened-to copy of Symposium's On The Outside or Marvel Team-Up #65 (which you've bought the Essentials reprint of anyway). OK, you only made about 80p after final value and Paypal charges, but you could usually top that up a little with the postage charge meaning you got about a quid per item if something sold for 99p, making it just about worth the effort... but not for much longer.



From October, all items listed in any media category - including CDs, books and comics - will be forced to offer free P&P as their first domestic postage option. This has been the case with DVDs and computer games for a while now, making it pretty much impossible to make any money selling anything but high-demand items in those categories, and now they're extending it to all media.

Here's eBay's justification...

Excessive P&P costs are often mentioned as a major reason for buyers spending less on eBay - especially in the very competitive media categories. Where eBay has tested making offering a free delivery service a requirement, we have seen buyers respond positively and conversion rates of listed items rise.

Media items are often impulse purchases and buyers perceive free P&P as a great deal. By making postage & packaging free we aim to attract more buyers to the media categories and increase sales for media sellers.

Bollocks. Let's be honest here, shall we?

By making postage & packaging free we aim to make more money for eBay.

Let's take my old comics as a prime example. (Comics is the best example actually, because although many shops offer free delivery for CDs, no dealers I'm aware of offer free postage on comics.) Say I list Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #26 for 99p with free postage (but no upfront eBay charge). If it sold for 99p, it'd cost me 76p to post. After a final value charge of 9.9p and a Paypal charge of 23p, I'd be making a loss of about 10 pence on every comic sold.



Ah, you say, why don't you put up your original listing price to cover postage charges? Because then, I'd also have to pay a 10p upfront listing fee, a charge which would be incurred every time I relisted any unsold items (apart from the first relisting). So your options are - list an item free for 99p, risking that it might sell for that price and you'll make a loss; or list for (say) £1.99, pay the upfront and rear end fees, and be unable to relist more than once without having to pay again. Bastards.

Don't worry though, eBay has an answer...

Tips for media sellers:

Free P&P only applies to the first domestic option – you can still offer further chargeable service options.

Oh, that's OK then. I'll list my item for 99p, offer free postage as the first shipping option, but ask any potential buyers to skip that and go for the secondary option of actually paying for postage. Yeah, that'll work. Idiots.

So (higher value items aside), me and eBay are done. I'm sure I won't be the only one forced to boycott them after this... but will they lose enough as a result to reverse the decision? I doubt it.

Meanwhile, where do I go now to flog my old CDs and comics? eBid? uBid? Amazon? Back to the comic marts? Or down the charity shop?