| The K-erching! of Pop |
[Jul. 1st, 2009|02:50 pm] |
I suppose it was inevitable, but even so, it causes the bile to rise at the back of my throat.
Michael Jackson, as you might have heard, is dead. The King of Pop has moonwalked his way to the great gig in the sky and now the real business has begun of selling his death to the masses.
It’s nothing new, of course. Ever since The King (no assignation needed) checked out of Heartbreak Hotel the money makers have been quick to cash in and milk the grieving fans for all they are worth. The same thing happened with Cobain, Mercury, Lennon and lest we forget the Queen of our Hearts, Diana Spencer.
Somehow, though, and perhaps because no entertainer since Elvis has permeated society and culture in the way the Jackson did, the frenzy surrounding his death seems particularly distasteful.
Here in the UK a popular ‘chat’ magazine called OK! Has produced its version of a Jackson tribute issue and to show their love and admiration for one of the greatest entertainers of recent times they’ve not gone with the obvious picture from his finest years, nor one of him as a doting father, nor even one of his recent visit to London to announce his record breaking run of shows at the O2.
No, instead they’ve gone with a close up shot of him on a stretcher, oxygen mask strapped to his gaunt face, being wheeled into an ambulance, and if reports are to be believed that he had stopped breathing some time before that, technically dead. Yep, OK magazine really love and respect him.
The other notable cynical ply to tap into the grief of the hardcore Jackson fans comes from the promoter, AEG Live, who have come up with a ruse to attempt to minimise their losses from refunding upwards of £50 million in ticket sales that would be laughable if it weren’t so sickening.
Knowing that the ‘true’ Jackson fans will want some final memento to remember their hero by, they are making the kind offer of allowing the fans to be sent the original tickets for the gig, a hologram encased in plastic designed by Jackson himself, in return for waiving their right to a refund.
Now, given that the average ticket price was somewhere between £50 and £75, and that the tickets themselves must have cost all of a pound at most to produce (and probably considerably less given that there will have been approximately one million of them produced), this is nothing but a shameless ploy to play on the emotions of the diehard fans who will want to have something to remember the night they never saw their hero.
These examples are but two of many that I’m sure we’ll see over the next few weeks, the most obvious being the currently in production DVD of the tour rehearsals that will no doubt be released ‘because the fans demanded it’, but the one saving grace is that Jackson himself, whatever you thought of him, is not around to suffer anymore at the hands of those who seek nothing more than to exploit him. |
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| Holland No More |
[May. 30th, 2008|09:32 pm] |
This weekend will be the last time I'm in Holland for some time, and possibly the last time ever depending on what the future holds in terms of travel.
I leave my current job in a few days, on to pastures new in every area of my life, but I take with me some very good memories of my times in Holland.
Yesterday, when I arrived in Eindhoven, I dumped my bags at the hotel and went for a stroll into town to find something to eat and drink. As I walked I noticed several people dressed in orange shirts, but initially though nothing of it. Before long, however, the town began to fill up with hundreds, and then thousands of people - men, women and children alike - all dressed in orange. Some wore hats, some overalls, some sarongs, but everywhere was bathed in the orange glow that reflected from the acres of clothes that were packed into the town square and beyond.
It turned out that the Netherlands were playing Denmark just down the road at the PSV Eindhoven stadium, so we watched in the hotel bar while sinking a few cold ones.
I have fond memories of nights in two different, but virtually identical, rock bars - one in Rotterdam, the other in Amsterdam, and both times ending up deep in conversation with locals about this, that and the other. Tomorrow night I intend to revisit the one in Amsterdam, for one last goodbye to the city that I've become very familiar with over the last couple of years. It'll never top London or Paris, of course, but I've walked its streets enough to have discovered the real city beneath the public image of red lights and stag weekends, and it's a beautiful place.
I'll miss the trains, too - clean, fast, on time, and passing through beautiful countryside on the journey between Schiphol and Eindhoven. I remember accidentally getting off at the wrong stop the first time I took the train, and wandering around a pretty little town called 's-Hertogenbosch (or Den Bosch) for an hour before conceding that I was in the wrong place and that I would need to return to the train station and resume my journey. I've been meaning to go back on purpose but sadly the opportunity hasn't arisen. Oh well, been there once at least.
Eindhoven will remain in my heart, too, for its wonderful churches which I have photographed extensively and despite not being at all religious have stood inside and felt an undeniable calm that is absent from many of the churches I have been in.
So, I sit in the warehouse near Eersel, waiting as the clock moves ever nearer to midnight and the end of my final working day here. Outside it's dark and the neon signs that punctuate the industrial park are shining brightly. Ninety minutes to go and despite the slight feeling of contemplation that comes when something draws to an end, I feel energised and ready to leave this phase of my life behind and stride confidently into the future..... |
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| Next stop, Jaywick. |
[May. 12th, 2008|09:23 pm] |
There are some places that when you find yourself in them, are a little too reminiscent of the Twilight Zone. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and in fact can be quite refreshing after the relative normality of the rest of the planet.
One such place is Jaywick, a suburb of an English seaside town called Clacton, located on the east coast in the county of Essex.
Clacton itself is nothing particularly special. But for the town's prefix on many of the shops and cafeterias, you could be in one of any number virtually identical seaside towns in the British Isles. It's a pleasant enough place, though, and has one of the finest fish and chip restaurants that I've ever had the pleasure of eating at.
Travel a couple of miles south, though, and you find yourself in Rod Serling territory.
Driving into Jaywick feels very much like stepping onto the backlot of Universal Studios, or onto the set of a movie. The houses on the sea front are essentially glorified beach huts that have outgrown themselves, and at regular intervals there are overgrown paths that lead from the beach into the suburb itself.
The first time I went there, about a year ago, there was hardly anybody on the streets, which gave the place the feeling of an old abandoned film set.
As we walked down on these overgrown paths, however, I noticed a house that was utterley destroyed. All of the windows were smashed, and the remains of curtains flapped lazily through the broken panes in the gentle breeze.
The house was at the end of the row, and faced the ocean, some several hundred yards away over what is ironically one of the most beautiful stretches of beach that I've ever seen around the coast of the UK.
Opposite it, was another empty house, this one burned out, the interior barely visible through the narrow windows.
As we stood looking at it, our curiosity piqued, a couple of small boys walked up to us and stood watching out fascination for a minute or two before one of them piped up, "There's a body in there, you know."
Of course, the rational side of my adult mind reasoned that this was impossible, that the house would have been searched by the fire brigade once they had put out the fire. However, there was a small region of my brain that couldn't help think that I wouldn't have been at all surprised if there had been a cadaver lurking in the shadowy interior.
While a part of me wanted to enter both houses and take photos, there was something just a little bit off about the place, and so we left.
A couple of days ago we were in the vicinity of Jaywick and out of curiosity I wanted to go and see whether anything had changed. Incredibly it hadn't, save for a gaggle of clearly local families sitting outside the pub that was at the other end of this particular overgrown walkway.
It was almost as if Jaywick had been left to die, like a terminally ill patient that nothing could be done for.
In a few weeks I'll be moving house, and we'll be living about fifteen miles from Jaywick. My curiosity refuses to let go of this strange suburb and so I know I'll be going back for a third time, to document it, and perhaps even get up the courage to enter the smashed up house.
Rod Serling would be proud of me, I'm sure, and I'll share my thoughts when I return from my adventure.
If I return..... |
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| Quick, quick, slow. |
[May. 11th, 2008|10:59 pm] |
Time. The one thing that we never seem to have enough of.
I've touched on this subject before, but there just doesn't seem to ever be enough time to write, to watch movies, to catch up regularly with friends. It seems to fly by, to disappear in the rear view mirror at an alarming rate.
Except sometimes it hits the brakes, it seems to stand still. Sometimes it even seems to stop.
Eleven days ago, when I got that first desperate phone call from Deborah screaming that she was being rushed into hospital the hundred minute drive over to Colchester seemed to take much, much longer.
For the whole journey I had a myriad of thoughts racing through my head. I didn't know what was wrong, and so my usually welcome fertile imagination turned on me. Suddenly my partner in crime had become my nemesis as I imagined everything from a false alarm to the unthinkable.
Sitting there in the accident and emergency unit as she lay on the bed in agony, the minutes stretched into hours as I willed the doctors and nurses to do something. They were, of course, doing their very best as quickly as they could, trying to comfort and treat everybody who was wheeled through the doors, but it wasn't fast enough. It never is when somebody you love is hurting.
I'm feeling this time slow down again tonight as I once more wait for news. I'm trying to occupy myself. I've watched a film. I've played GTA IV. Now I'm writing, drinking black coffee and smoking too many cigars. I sit. I wait. I worry.
Time. It always seem to go by too quickly.
Except when you want it to, and then it crawls...... |
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| Nobody's Fireproof |
[Apr. 14th, 2008|04:26 pm] |
It's a universal truth that if you play with fire, then you might just get burned.
It's also a universal truth that some people have the misguided belief that they're fireproof, and so not so much tiptoe as tango through the raging infernos of chance, oblivious to the fact that they're so very often just seconds from catching fire, moments from the inevitable crash and burn.
The subject of today's lesson most likely had this misguided belief that he and his beautiful fiance, the woman of his dreams, without whom nothing else mattered, as he so tragically and accurately proclaimed, could dance through the flames like asbestos ballerinas.
But he was wrong.
She got burned, metaphorically and physically, and shuffled off her young, mortal coil in a scalding bath, while he slept off his narcotic dalliances in the bedroom.
They played with fire, she got burned, he got branded with the guilt of having taken her hand and leading her onto this particular burning dance floor.
Without her nothing else mattered, he had said, and in the end he was right.
Thirteen weeks of guilt rest awfully heavy on a man's shoulders, and in the end he fulfilled his prophecy. End of the line.
Nobody's fireproof. Nobody.
(x-posted from my blog - http://notesfromtheasylum.blogspot.com/ ) |
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| The Sleeping Beast |
[Mar. 2nd, 2008|07:03 pm] |
Eight hours ago I was walking the streets of Amsterdam, just me and my camera, and once again enjoying that wonderful feeling of tiptoeing around a sleeping beast.
Twelve hours previous to that I was walking those same streets and the beast was awake and alert, but still unaware of my presence.
As I walked the brightly lit streets under the pitch black sky I observed as groups of young men from all over Europe, and beyond, travelled in packs from bar to coffee shop to prostitute, and back again, watching their behaviour as they succumbed to their drugs of choice, be they alcohol, weed or women.
For despite their language and culture, they all behave the same in Amsterdam. The pack mentality is a strong one, but among the groups there is always, by necessity, the runt of the pack. The one who is the last of the followers, the last in line, and the most easily led.
As I walked the streets and canals, the cold night air desperately trying to work its way through the layers of clothing that I wore, I drank in the atmosphere, for it is itoxicating, but as with my previous visits, which are an extension of work commitments, I always find myself there alone, and so can indulge the writer and photographer in myself and just watch.
I have no need of the drugs or the sex - the former I have no desire for with the exception of alcohol and nicotene, the latter I have no need of thanks to my current relationship being so very fulfilling - and so I am there for the spirit of the place, for the atmosphere.
Last night I stood on a canal bridge, feeling the wind try to blow through me, smoking a fine cigar, and watching as a group of young men stood at the open door of a prosititute in the red light district, clearly trying to persuade one of their number, no doubt the aforementioned runt, to indulge himself.
I smiled as they ultimately walked away and the girl, dressed in a dazzling white bra and knickers combination, went back to flicking through her magazine, waiting for the next potential customer to come along.
The city was truly alive, and by experiencing the one side of it, it always makes my early morning strolls through cities all the more satisfying, as I savour the contrast.
It was already light by the time I hit the pavements, but whereas last night had been acompanied by a constant low humming of conversation and laughter, this morning was as quiet as the grave.
As I walked along the same canals I could actually hear the beating of the seagulls wings as they flew over me, scanning the ground for the remnants of last night's fast food on the ground.
For ninety minutes I walked, and in that time I saw barely a hundred people, which sounds a lot but is nothing for a city of the size of Amsterdam.
The shops, bars and red light windows were all quiet and empty, and if I paused long enough I could almost hear the city breathe as it slumbered. As I walked I felt, as I always do on my early morning city excursions, a feeling of peace and tranquility, something I've felt walking the streets of London, Paris and Nottingham many times.
If you've never done this, then do try it. Take a trip into the heart of your own home town or city as the sun comes up and just walk. You'll be amazed. I always am. |
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| The Song Remains |
[Feb. 21st, 2008|08:16 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  thoughtful | ] |
Things come and go, people arrive and depart, sometimes staying for a few brief moments, sometimes for a lifetime.
One thing that always remains are the songs.
I'm sitting listening to August And Everything After by Counting Crows and I'm reminded once again just why this is one of my favourite records. Ever.
It fills my head with images, and memories, and desires. It gives me hope, it makes me despair, the music lifts my soul and the words break my heart because I understand them completely.
Since coming into my life thirteen years ago, Adam Duritz's lyrics have reached into my soul and ripped out my very being, holding it up in front of me, broken and bleeding for me to regard, to consider, to refelct on and ultimately to heal.
There's nothing so powerful as a song that is you, and so many of the Counting Crows songs seem to tell my story, even though I've never been to some of the places, or met some of the people, but still, they're me.
Duritz sings of love, of loss, of walking the fine tightrope that is sanity and of occasionally falling from it. He yearns for solitude and peace, and yet craves company and understanding. He sings pain, he sings joy, he sings from the heart and he sings me.
And I listen, and learn, and empathise, and remember and try to forget and re-live fragments of a life that isn't my own but could be.
If there is something beyond this life that we struggle through, then I have but one wish, that I can take the songs with me. For they are me, and I am them, and as long as I have them then I am never alone.
"We couldn't all be cowboys
So some of us are clowns
Some of us are dancers on the midway
We roam from town to town
I hope that everybody can find a little flame
Me, I say my prayers, then I just light myself on fire
And I walk out on the wire once again"
Counting Crows - Goodnight Elisabeth |
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| Dressed To Sell (The Golden Age Of Singles) |
[Jan. 21st, 2008|08:47 pm] |
If you walk into any record shop these days looking for the new single by a band, you’ll be lucky if you get presented with any choice beyond several versions of the song, most of which are completely unnecessary remixes, spread in various configurations across a series of five inch CD singles.
If you’re really lucky, you might get a poster included that’s been folded so many times to fit it into the five inch square jewel case that by the time you’ve opened it up the chances of it fulfilling its stated purpose of hanging on your wall are slimmer than getting a word in edgeways with Russell Brand.
If you’re really, really lucky you might get a series of postcards, or a set of faux Polaroid’s, or even a calendar that is inevitable so small that you can’t help but wonder if it was originally designed for distribution in Lilliput.
Occasionally you’ll get a vinyl release, but usually only in the case of up and coming indie bands that no-one has heard of yet, and quite probably never will (but for those few that do, the early fans can forever smugly ask “do you have the seven inch vinyl of so-and-so? No? Shame, I’ve got ten copies myself”).
Even then the packaging will undoubtedly be plain and uninspiring, more often than not just a standard cardboard sleeve with similar artwork to the CD release.
In the case of dance music twelve inch vinyl releases, the packaging is even blander, usually just a plain white card sleeve with a sticker advertising the artist and track name and very little else. True, it does the job, but there’s not the sense of excitement that we used to get in the latter years of the eighties when my favourite bands were putting out singles.
Back in the days before CDs appeared on the scene, a state of affairs that no doubt seems inconceivable to any of today’s music fans under the legal drinking age, there was much more creativity and imagination involved in the release of a new single, particularly in the rock music arena which I grew up in, where almost literally anything was possible.
The advent of a new single wasn’t just about what it would sound like, although pre-internet and MTV we would be eager awaiting getting our hands on new material, as the only chance we usually got to hear new music from a band would be if one of the local rock DJs managed to get hold of an advance promotional copy, it was also about what it would look like, and what it would come packaged with.
There were, of course, your fairly standard seven and twelve inch picture bags, but the record companies twigged early on that fans like myself were only too willing to shell out on multiple collectible versions of their favourite band’s singles, and so set their marketing departments the task of finding ways of feeding our addictions and filling their coffers.
The next step up from the bog standard picture bag was the gatefold sleeve, previously only the domain of rock albums like Iron Maiden’s Piece Of Mind with its gorgeous wraparound Derek Riggs artwork that the record companies knew would sell enough copies to justify the additional production expense.
Poison’s Nothin’ But A Good Time single came in a particularly eye-catching lime green gatefold sleeve adorned with dayglo pictures of the chicks-with-dicks themselves. Great song, garish cover, but this was the realm of the hair band and gimmicks like this did sell additional copies of the singles. I regularly bought all of the limited editions of many a rock band, not with thoughts that they may one day become valuable and provide me with a nice little nest egg (a good job too, as it turns out), but for the sheer joy of having all these unusual releases.
Poster bags were another popular format, which were understandably more common among the better looking bands, not only enticing us to buy additional copies of the single, but also giving us the means to plaster our walls with spandex-clad long-haired mascara-wearing men. Which was nice.
Picture discs offered a wide range of possibilities, and the various marketing departments didn’t disappoint, rising to the challenge of parting me from my hard earned on an ever-increasing basis.
There were of course the bog standard picture discs in seven or twelve inch format (or both occasionally) that would replicate the regular edition’s artwork, some of which were particularly effective.
Iron Maiden were one of my favourite bands in this medium, and luckily for me (and Steve Harris’s bank account) they produced picture discs of some variety for pretty much all of their eighties output, albums and singles alike.
My personal favourites were Derek Riggs’s awesome artwork for Aces High, which gave you the opportunity to have twelve inches of Maiden mascot Eddie’s grimacing face, topped off with a World War Two flying helmet, revolving forty five times a minute on your record player, and the Powerslave album, which faithfully recreated the detailed cover, one of my favourites.
London quartet Dogs D’Amour went one step further than this, combining the best of both worlds by having a gatefold sleeve into which the twelve inch pictures discs for their Satellite Kid and Trail Of Tears singles could be inserted. What made this stand out, however, was that each of the singles had a cartoon strip drawn by singer Tyla, who designed all of their covers, which when placed correctly into the gatefold sleeve enabled you to read the whole story.
In addition to the usual circular picture discs, there were a good number of shaped discs, which due to the limitations of the area available to actually score the grooves into the vinyl usually carried identical tracks to the seven inch release.
One of my favourite examples of the shaped picture disc was W.A.S.P.’s PMRC-baiting single Animal (Fuck Like A Beast), cut into the shape of the bloody buzz-saw codpiece modelled by Blackie Lawless on the cover of the regular twelve inch.
Another favourite, and for my money one of the most imaginative picture discs ever to be released, was Guns’n’Roses classic Paradise City. The vinyl itself came as an eleven-inch disc cut into the shape of a gun, which was cool enough anyway, but the icing on the cake was that it came complete with a snakeskin design cardboard sleeve in the shape of a holster. A bottle of Jack Daniels to the bright spark who thought that one up.
Though I wasn’t quite as keen on it as I was on picture discs, coloured vinyl occasionally tempted me to part with my cash. I had a myriad of coloured twelve inch records, including silver (Queensryche’s Silent Lucidity), gold (Ozzy’s So Tired), yellow and blue (the excellent Dan Reed Network’s two disc Rainbow Child release), white (somewhat predictably Whitesnake’s nineteen eighty-nine redux of Fool For Your Loving), red (Judas Priest’s Painkiller single) and even luminous green (I’m looking at you, Poison, for Your Mama Don’t Dance).
I was particularly enamoured, however, with a show of patriotism from Bon Jovi for their Lay Your Hands On Me release. Putting out no less than three seven inch coloured vinyls, in red, white and blue, I thought it was both a clever marketing ploy and a great addition to my stupidly large collection. As if three versions weren’t enough, though, they ensured that my wallet was thoroughly cleaned out by also releasing it on a shaped picture disc.
Black PVC sleeves were another reasonably popular ploy by the record companies to part me from my money. Maybe it was due to the inherent risqué factor of the shiny, sweaty material (after all I had trousers made from the same stuff), or perhaps just because my addiction to limited edition packaging was spiralling dangerously out of control, but I even picked up possibly the worst KISS single of all time, Crazy Crazy Nights, in a PVC sleeve.
The Cult went one step further by not only releasing their Sun King single in a twelve inch black PVC sleeve, but also affixing hologram sticker to the front which inevitably I thought was the coolest thing ever for several minutes after I bought it.
W.A.S.P. had to go just that little bit further again, of course, releasing their I Don’t Need No Doctor single in a special blood pack (a gimmick recycled by Slayer in nineteen ninety-one for their Seasons In The Abyss CD single), but my personal award for the most original and outrageous format of all time goes to Bay Area thrashers Vio-lence.
The band, known for their aggressive marketing, came up with the ultimate in offensive packaging, even managing to get the format banned from some record shops, when they decided to release their Eternal Nightmare single in a special ‘vomit pack’.
This was a clear plastic sleeve filled with vomit (actually vegetable soup and vinegar, but it still gave off enough of a vile aroma to induce the genuine article if you got too close, especially on hot days) into which the single could be inserted. Sadly for the band it did little to raise their profile, but it did guarantee them a place in the history of music marketing.
Sadly the days of interesting formats seem to have gone the way of 8-tracks, cassette singles and Michael Jackson’s career, but back at the height of my collecting frenzy I was happier than a pig in shit every time another limited edition came along.
I do wonder, though, if just as I mourn the loss of these wonderful curiosities, that as the record companies are finally embracing downloads we’ll soon be mourning the loss of the simple five-inch CD single. |
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| A Dream Within A Dream |
[Jan. 11th, 2008|07:48 pm] |
“Is all that we see or seem, but a dream within a dream?” – Edgar Allen Poe
I was pleasantly surprised over Christmas to find out that one of my favourite movies of all time has at long last been given the Special Edition treatment on DVD, albeit only as an Australian release.
Picnic At Hanging Rock is a strange, ethereal movie, and one that many of my friends who I’ve raved about it to over the years have subsequently watched and failed to see what all the fuss is about. A definite Marmite movie, or perhaps that should be Vegemite, given its Australian heritage.
Originally released in 1975, the story revolves around a group of schoolgirls from a very prim and proper boarding school in the Australian outback who go on their annual Valentine’s Day outing in 1900 to Hanging Rock to enjoy the titular picnic. However, while they are they four of the girls wander off to explore the upper slopes of the Rock and three of them (and later a teacher who goes to look for them) disappear without trace.
On the face of it Picnic appears to be a period piece wrapped up in a mystery, but following the source material closely, the 1967 novel by Joan Lindsay, director Peter Wier breaks with convention by never actually providing a resolution to the question of what happened to the girls.
Far from harming the movie, however, it is this lack of closure that sets Picnic At Hanging Rock apart and ensures that the story lingers in your mind long after the credits have finished rolling.
Author Lindsay was deliberately vague in the opening paragraph of her book as to whether the events were based on fact or were fictional, and it is this ambiguity, that remains largely unanswered to this day, that had caused admirers of the movie to debate this point ever since, and to search for clues within both the film and the original text with which to solve the mystery.
I first saw this movie by accident when it was shown late one night on television, and have been both captivated and haunted by it ever since. Weir evokes a wonderfully dreamy and at times unsettling atmosphere, largely due to his inventive use of slightly slowing down much of the film stock, and allows the story to unfold at a very sedate pace.
Having seen it several times over the years, I am still unsure as to what my thoughts are as to the reasons for the disappearance of the girls, which thanks to the combination of an impressive screenplay by Cliff Green and Weir’s breathtakingly beautiful visuals could feasibly be anything from them having fallen down any one of the many deep holes that lurk within Picnic Rock’s myriad dark and twisting pathways, to extra-terrestrial abduction, and all points in between.
Joan Lindsay did hint in one interview that the story was a mixture of actual events and her imagination, and had no qualms in disclosing that the book almost wrote itself, coming to her in dreams over a period of a few weeks, all of which fuels the speculation that at least part of the tale was drawn from events in her youth. In addition, there is a stone monument located near Picnic Rock that serves as a memorial for three girls that went missing near the rock in the mid 1800’s, and who later turned up murdered, but there is no such closure in either the book or the movie.
Ultimately Picnic At Hanging Rock is a delightful, if slightly unsettling, viewing experience that never fails to captivate me for its two hour running time, and is deservedly considered as one of the movies that firmly put the Australian film business on the map in the 1970s. Still screened each year after twilight on Valentine’s Day at the base of the Rock, this is a movie that lodges itself in the subconscious and remains with the viewer for a long time.
As a final note, I must mention that there was originally a final chapter to the book explaining what supposedly happened, and which Lindsay wisely removed from the finished manuscript. While an interesting theory (which I won’t reveal here), in my eyes it actually serves to destroy much of the power of the book that stems from the unresolved mystery. I prefer to ignore this explanation and instead revel in the eternal mystery that the film presents.
(for more of my musings, head on over to http://notesfromtheasylum.blogspot.com ) |
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| From Hair To Eternity.... |
[Jan. 8th, 2008|05:49 pm] |
(cross posted from my new blog - http://notesfromtheasylum.blogspot.com )
I'm currently writing a book on the 1980's rock scene, and in particular how if affected me as a teenager living in Nottingham, England (home of Robin Hood for those of you on foreign shores, but don't even think of mentioning Kevin Costner!).
This has been a long gestating project, some three or four years in the planning, during which time I've written something like 60,000 words of notes on various topics, and which I'm finding now that I'm actually about two-thirds of the way through the first draft, was an invaluable exercise.
So, how does one go about researching a book on rock music?
Well, for me it mainly involved revisiting some of the publications of my youth, most notably Kerrang! magazine which any rock fan brought up in the eighties will know was the holy grail of all things rock and roll in those days. Today it's still an OK magazine, but many of its writers have grown up, like me, and now write for Classic Rock magazine, and so I too have moved on to these more mature pastures, though I like to think that aside from retiring from the mosh pit several years ago after nearly crippling myself (don't ask!), I still rock every bit as hard as I used to. (Well, nearly....)
Wading through some hundred and fifty issues that the magical wallet-lightener known as eBay forced upon me (yeah, right), memories of the old days came flooding back - the first time I went to a genuine rock gig (Iron Maiden, 1986, Nottingham Royal Centre), the first time I saw Guns'n'Roses (1987, in a small club venue called Rock City, again in Nottingham), my first stage dive (not sure when, but I'm pretty sure it was at an Onslaught gig at Rock City) - I could go on (and frequently do, particularly when I get together with my old friends) but you can read all about it sometime later this year if all goes to plan.
The other grinding, tedious, boring task (Who am I kidding? It's been a blast) I put myself through was watching dozens of old rock videos on YouTube. For all its faults (like the world needs footage of another dumbass stapling a ten dollar bill to his forehead, or another teenager showing me just how much better at Guitar Hero III he is than I'll ever be), this is probably the greatest thing that YouTube has given my generation. The ability to dial up virtually any of the old school rock videos is so addicitive that just the other night I found myself glued to the screen for several hours as I played one after the other after the other.
However, to save you trouble of weeding through the hundreds on offer, I proudly present a list of five of my favourite hair metal clips for you to track down...... enjoy!
David Lee Roth - Just A Gigolo
Zodiac Mindwarp - Prime Mover
KISS - Let's Put The X In Sex
Twisted Sister - We're Not Gonna Take It
Poison - Nothin' But A Good Time |
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| Cats and Canvas |
[Jan. 6th, 2008|12:40 pm] |
(Note: cross-posted from my new blog - check it out here http://notesfromtheasylum.blogspot.com )
I don't tend to watch much television, preferring to spend my time with movies, books or being creative, but every now and again something catches my eye that demands my attention.
One such programme was an episode of BBC2's superb Natural World series (which currently airs on Fridays at 8pm) about the snow leopard. I'm a big fan of wildlife programmes, and whenever I find myself complaining about the exorbitant license fee that the BBC charges each year for the 'pleasure' of watching their mostly humdrum output, I invariably counter my own argument with the rationale that programmes such as Planet Earth, which was, and is, quite simply the most incredible series that's ever been made about the world's wildlife, would never get made if not for this mandatory levy.
As it happens, the precursor to this hour long insight into the near-mythological snow leopard was a brief segment in the Planet Earth series which focused on a quest to obtain footage of the elusive cats which yielded only the briefest of glimpses. This time, Pakistani journalist Nisar Malik, who ordinarily is more at home covering the conflict in Afghanistan, applied his unparallelled geographic knowledge of the country to lead a small team on an eighteen month quest to learn more about the snow leopard.
Watching the programme, I found myself amazed, surprised and inspired, all in the space of the fifty minute running time. Amazed due to the absolutely gorgeous footage of these beautiful animals - by sheer chance they discovered that the female they were tracking had a year old cub, and so we were priviledged to observe her teaching him to hunt, and to the, at times, touching way in which they interacted with each other. Surprised, because as Malik observed, when most people think of Pakistan they automatically get a mental picture of the country as an unstable nuclear power on the world's political stage, but in reality the people are peaceful and welcoming, and the country itself, with its huge mountaint ranges, is quite simply one of the most beautiful places on the planet.
The inspiration from this programme came, funnily enough, not from the leopards, but from a solitary shot of a Markhor, a member of the goat family with unusual spiraling horns, standing on a steep rocky slope, silhouetted against a vast grey sky.
For quite some time I've had an unfulfilled urge to paint using oils. I'm an enthusiastic photographer, which is why the shot of the Markhor caught my attention as the composition and the power of the simple image leapt off the screen, and so something inside me finally snapped and I found myself heading into town to pick up the necessary tools to try and replicate this stunning image in oil paints.
Once back home, I set up my new easel, prepared my palette (which only consisted of two colours, black and yellow) and froze the frame of the Markhor on my television. I lightly sketched the outline, and the picked up my brush and just dived head first into the painting.
I'm a big believer in just going for it when it comes to being creative. If it feels like the right thing, then just do it. Outside of art class at school, some twenty years ago now, I have never painted single thing in my life (aside from emulsioning various walls over the years), so as I began to see the paint form the picture on my televsion screen, I felt a growing sense of satisfaction, and a real feeling that in some way I was experiencing what 'proper' painters describe as the feeling of expressing themselves.
Once I'd applied black paint to the canvas to depict the mountainside and the Markhor, I picked up the yellow brush and began to fill in the sky. Why yellow? I'm not sure, it just felt right, until I accidentally mixed it with the black, that is, and found myself with a potential disaster on my hands.
However, I soldiered on, and by experimenting with the accidental mixture of colours, found that I had inavertently created the effect of a raging fire behind the silhouetted Markhor, and was hit again with that feeing of expression, and very satisfying it was too.
As for the finished painting, I'm really pleased with it. Considering it's my first effort, and in a medium that I had no experience in whatsoever, I think I've produced something that I can be proud to hang on my wall, and more importantly, unlike the many photographs that I have framed on my walls, and those of friends, this is an absolutely unique work of art. Even if someone offered me a million pounds for it, I don't think I could sell it, not only because it's my first, but because even if I replicated the circumstances of its creation perfectly, I could never paint it exactly the same way.
So, I guess the only thing left to do now is reveal my, ahem, masterpiece. My first, but definitely not my last foray into oil painting, I present "Markhor On Fire Mountain".
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| 2008 - New Year, New Life, New Blog |
[Jan. 6th, 2008|12:32 pm] |
Hello all, and welcome back to my irregularly scheduled LJ.
I'm not one for new year resolutions, and you won't find any here, but I have decided that this year is the year that I get serious about my writing career (or my aspirations to have one).
As some of you know, I've already self-published one book, A Week In Paris : An Illustrated Journal, which was greeted with very enthusiatic reviews and praise, and I have another, To Die For : 25 Saturday Night Fright Flicks, which will be available on amazon and play.com towards the end of the month (more about which next week when I officially launch it into the world).
I've really decided to go all out with the writing, though, and so I've set up a brand new blog, link below for those of you who are interested. Unlike my LJ, which I promise I'll update more often (oops, was that a resolution?) this blog will be more like my version of writing a newspaper or magazine column, and will hopefully entertain and enthrall :-)
http://notesfromtheasylum.blogspot.com/
Please drop by, see what you think, let me know if you like it, or even if you don't.
Regardless, here's to a great, and creative 2008 to each and every one of us.
Cheers. |
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| Hola Holland |
[Aug. 31st, 2007|08:39 pm] |
So here I am back in Holland for work. This is my fifth trip out here to Eindhoven, home of Philips electronics and some football team called PSV. The first couple of times I flew directly into Eindhoven airport, but this used to entail getting up at stupid o'clock to drive for an hour to Stanstead airport, so I decided a year ago to start flying into Amstedam Schiphol airport and get the train down to here.
Schiphol is much the same as any other international airport, apart from the fact it has a few multi-coloured cows in the departure lounge (no, really!), but the real joy is the train journey down to Eindhoven. Incidentally, Schiphol always conjours up feelings of being slightly intoxicated, usually due to the pint of Guinness in the departure lounge at Luton (sorry, London Luton - after all it's only 30-odd miles outside of the capital), and the tin of Heiniken in the air. Plus my first stop is always the Stop'n'Shop to pick up a couple of packs of fine cigars to last me the duration of my trip. The upside is that you can still smoke indoors in Holland, so I always pause for a while at the bar, which is where the downside comes in, as they serve the weakest, piss-poor excuse for beer that I've ever come across (even in the heady days of 10 pence at pint at Zhivagos rock club in Nottingham back in the 80s).
But back to the train journey. Dutch trains are among the cleanest and most spacious that I have ever come across. Some of them are even double-deckers, which provides a wonderful view of the countryside as the flat meadows and towns race pace the window. Cows and goats graze lazily, interspersed at this time of year with field after field of corn rows, reminding me of the old Children of the Corn story by Stephen King (which in turn reminds me of the lousy movie with Linda Hamilton, but hey ho, swings and roundabouts).
Eindhoven itself is fairly unremarkable, seemingly modelled on the same 1960s concrete hell prototype that the likes of Stevenage and Hemel Hempstead were birthed from. Cold, ugly and an affront to the eyes. Its saving grace is that there are a couple of magnificent churches here, which I intend to get up early tomorrow to photograph, and that occasionally you find a statue staring down at you from a bridge, all Greek or Roman influenced, and completely juxtaposed by the otherwise ugly architecture.
The place we are based with work is actually about 15 kilometers from Eindhoven, a charming little village called Eersel. This is a world apart from Eindhoven, and could easily be mistaken for a set from Von Ryan's Express or some other WWII movie. Walking down the solitary main street earlier I could almost imagine a platoon of German infantrymen marching ahead of a Panzer tank coming towards me.
Eersel is lovely, and was in fact declared a protected village in 1967 to guarantee the future survival of its authentic character. The main street is lined with warm, inviting restaurants, all candles and hanging baskets, so inevitably we made our way to one that we've frequented before, the Mastebolleke (feel free to snigger, we did). In my quest to try different things, I chose an interesting combination of Ostrich and Kangaroo, the former tasting like a sweet beef, the latter a sweet lamb, washed down by a few glasses of Hoegarden. Highly recommended.
As I type this, it's approaching 9:30 here, which means that we have another hour or two before we can knock off and return to the bars in Eindhoven for a last hurrah for this quarter (having extensively sampled the wares of the hotel bar the evening before). Tomorrow I'm heading off to Rotterdam to sample yet more ale (well, lager - there's not much in the way of proper ale out here, but when you can drink the various premium beers here, you really have no cause for complaint) and to take far too many photographs. I've never been before, but I'm looking forward to discovering another new place, after wandering around the narrow, picturesque streets of Amsterdam last time I was in Holland three months ago.
It's dark now, but we're amusing ourselves with Dara O'Briain on YouTube, several packets of largely taste-free sweets and a six pack of Coke Zero while they load up the last lorries downstairs in the warehouse. It may be a long day work-wise, but the rewards of exploring Rotterdam in a few short hours more than make up for it. 'Til tomorrow, then. |
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| Always The Beacon (a poem) |
[Jan. 31st, 2007|07:35 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  optimistic | ] |
Always The Beacon
She stands in the shadows,
A light in the darkness,
His light,
For his darkness,
And she waits.
He longs for the shadows,
A darkness in the light,
His light,
For his darkness,
And she waits.
Until finally he realises,
That the light is not to ward off the darkness,
But instead it is to guide him to it,
To her.
For she is never the lighthouse,
She is the beacon,
Always the beacon. |
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| Deep Water (a poem for a friend....) |
[Jan. 30th, 2007|07:32 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  worried | ] |
Deep Water
She swims, and he watches.
She swims into the depths,
Where the sharks are.
She dives, deep,
Staying under until her lungs protest,
And he watches her.
She surfaces and smiles,
Believing that she is happy,
Believeing that this is love,
Believing because she can’t bear not to believe,
And he watches her, and waits.
He waits until finally she realises,
And her nerve breaks,
And her heart breaks,
And he swims out once more to rescue her,
To bring her back to safety,
To try, once more, to put her pieces back together. |
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| Let Me Count The Ways....... |
[Jan. 18th, 2007|01:48 pm] |
OK, it's that time again. I'm pissed off so it's time for a long overdue rant.
I'm writing this from an industrial estate an hour outside of Paris (France, no less), but my grrrr moment occurred a few hours earlier, sometime around 5am GMT when we were passing through security at London Luton airport. As per usual I took my laptop out of my case, dumped my wallet, keys and phone into the requisite containers, put my coat on the conveyor belt, and walked through the metal detector to ensure that I wasn't hiding anything nasty (is that a rocket launcher in your pocket etc...)
So far, so good.
Then the Piltdown man dressed as security straps on his jobsworth hat and we're off. He holds up my nifty wallet, a black canvas thing with the Punisher skull on the front and attached to a twelve inch chain that is then usually attached to my belt, in a kinda punky-stylee way. "You can't take the chain through," he says and I look at him in disbelief. I've taken this wallet through security control several times before, and in fact walked right through with it just six weeks ago, the very same place that I'm standing now, when I went to Amsterdam with work.
So, of course, I inform him of this to which he replies that it's a security threat as I could strangle someone with it, and he just about wraps it around his neck to prove his point. (Of course at that moment the prospect of attempting this myself has suddenly become a very strong urge, which I manage somehow to suppress). "You can check in into the hold," he helpfully tells me, somewhat unhelpfully. Yes, I think, how fucking useful that is when I'm only carrying hand luggage, and even if I wasn't that would entail trecking back down to the main hall, retrieving my case, holding up the plane, and pissing everyone else off.
"But it was a present," I protest, knowing that it's in vain but trying anyway. "Sorry," he says, with not a ounce of sympathy so I reluctantly unhook the chain from the wallet and say goodbye to it, while resisting the urge to try and point out to him that if he thinks I could do some damage with twelve inches of chain, then imagine what I could do with the very sharp pens that are in my hand luggage, with the very sturdy belt that I am wearing (considerably more robust for the strangling of persons), or even with the laptop itself which in no way could be used to bludgeon some poor traveller to death.
So, off I go to find some early morning coffee, pissed off at the powerlessness of the situation because if I were to protest any more than I already have then I'd no doubt become a security risk and be barred from flying, even though whoever made up these stupid rules clearly didn't give them much thought as they make no sense. I'm all for preventing terrorists from carrying bombs onto planes, or from flying them into buildings in their quest for 72 glasses of wine (should have read the small print, suckers), but all this kind of thing succeeds in doing is reminding me just why I've used Eurostar the last three times I've been to Paris.
I spy the holy caffeine grail and just as I'm thinking that I'll drown my frustrations in a double espresso, what do I see? Cue dramatic increase in blood pressure. In the Accessorize shop there is a rack of, not unsurprisingly, accessories which include a number of, yep, you guessed it, chains, one of which is virtually identical to the one I have just had confiscated from me.
At this point I lose the will to live, and can't help but wonder just what was the fucking point of what I've just been through? Knee jerk rules put in place with no thought that serve only to piss off the very people you're supposedly tring to protect. I despair, I really do.
Anyway, I'm over it now, and looking forward to a nice blue steak and a few glasses of red wine in several hours. |
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| Reflections |
[Dec. 19th, 2006|01:02 pm] |
It's been a funny year. I've achieved so much yet feel so hollow and empty. Funny, huh?
Oh well, I hope you all get what you want for Xmas and have fun. I'm looking forward to the company of old and dear friends, and for the whole thing to be over, so until next year (which I think is going to be a good one), be safe, be happy and take care.
Fett
xx |
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| Eindhoven or bust...... |
[Dec. 1st, 2006|10:19 pm] |
As is occasionally the case I find myself in a foreign country with work, and as has been the case a couple of times before, I'm writing this from a warehouse in Eindhoven, Holland. Usually when I've had to come over here I've taken a flight from Stanstead at 6ish in the morning (those long time readers may remember avery sweaty dash across the departure hall 2 years ago), which by extension entailed me hauling my lazy ass out of bed at studpid o'clock to ensure that I didn't miss the only plane direct to Eindhoven.
However, this time I've done things a little differently, and instead got a plane on Thursday afternoon from London Luton (and no, I have no idea why it's called London Luton being as it's a good thirty miles outside of London) to Amsterdam, and from there a train down to Eindhoven. Simple, no? Well, almost.
The flight itself was great, a cheap seat on a bright orange Easyjet with a lovely view out of the window over the wing. Best of all, as we took off the sun was just going down so I managed to get some great pictures of the sunset across the wing. A great start to my short trip. That done, I lost myself in Chris Moyles's book for 40 minutes (and a surprisingly good read it is too) until we began our descent into Amsterdam. having thought ahead, I crammed everything I needed into one small hand luggage sized suitcase (laptop, camera, change of clothes and a couple of thousand power leads and adaptors) so there was no staring at baggage carousels like a lost soul for an hour while gorillas pulverized my cases before chucking them out of a hole at the top of the conveyor belt. Oh no, ten minutes after landing I was buying my train ticket to Eindhoven.
The trains in Holland, like those in France (and let's face it just about anywhere else in the world except Britain, and maybe India) run on time and are frequent, so I was pleased to discover that there was an intercity down to Eindhoven that took about 90 minutes every half an hour.
I climbed aboard and having thought ahead I got our my Long Way Round DVD (a fascinating TV series about Ewan 'Obi Wan' McGregor and his mate Charley Boorman riding around the world on motorcycles) and went to power up the laptop. I pressed the button and....nothing.
**Flashback**
I'm passing through security at Luton. I've opted for the quicker line which means that I will be scanned by this new machine where you just stand still with your arms above your head like you're doing the YMCA thang, and they whoosh you with x-rays. That done I pull my boots back on, put my jacket on and go to retrieve my laptop from the woman who asks me to turn it on just to check that it's not some thermonuclear device. I press the button and the screen comes to life. 'Thank you,' she says and I close the lid. Without. Turning. The. Fucking. Thing. Off. Again.
**Flashback ends**
So, away goes the laptop, and out comes Chris Moyles once more (well, his book, as he'd never fit in my case himself) and also my MP3 player. By now it's pitch black and as the train speeds through the various suburbs of Holland, the office blocks and flats lit up beautifully, I'm having Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds piped into my brain, and it makes a wonderful soundtrack to the passing scenery. I feel very much at peace and contentment washed over me as I read, listen and occasionally glance up, transfixed by the passing landscape. Occasionally I imagine seeing green flashes in the distance and burning buildings, but that's what you get for having an overactive imagination.
Some time later the train stops, earlier than I would have expected and everybody gets off. (Of course having had my music on I didn't realise at this point that I'd missed a crucial announcement, more of which later....) Not wanting to spend the night on the train, I pull my things together and get off, thinking that Eindhoven station looks a bit different to how I remember it (from the 15 seconds I spent in it two years ago when I was stumbling back from a club at 5am, but that's another story for another day), but undetered I decide to walk to the hotel, as it's such a nice night.
As I set off, there's a nagging doubt at the back of my mind that I'm not actually in Eindhoven, one that steadily grows the furthre I walk due to the lack of any mention on any shops or signs of the name 'Eindhoven'. Now, logic would dictate that I should simply ask someone 'Am I in Eindhoven?', but no, I'm a man, and so stubborn in asking such trivial and useless questions. Of course I know where I am, which I concede is not actually Eindhoven. So, where the fuck am I?
I retrace my steps to the station and check the schedules - I'm actually in a town some 40km from Eindhoven, and the reason people got off the train was because it was cancelled. Feeling a little stupid I wait for the next train to complete my journey and finally arrive in Eindhoven station 20 minutes later, and walk the several hundred yards to the Holiday Inn.
Four people I know from work are already here, having flown out earlier in the week, so I quickly freshen up and join them in the bar for a pint and a delicious home made burger and chips (sorry, fries here in the US-centric Holiday Inn). It's now 10 o'clock and someone suggests we go to a coffee bar. So, we all pile into a taxi and end up at a place called 'Pink' which sells lovely coffee and a selection of cigarettes that you won't find in Starbucks. As only one of us is a regular participant, we all try something very mild, three of us content to leave half of it, but one of us is very quickly mellowed out and proceeds to giggle for about half an hour, much to the amusement of the girl behind the bar, especially when we cruelly send him up to refresh our drinks and watch as he makes his way to the bar like he's walking through treacle.
As it happens, we're all cheap dates, as 20 minutes later we're back at the hotel and have retired to our respective rooms.
Today has been boring - we got to work at 9:30am, and it's now 10:15pm, and I've had two conference calls with the US and been working on the most tedious spreadsheet in the world. We're stuck here for another couple of hours, so that I can ensure, Gestapo-like, that no shipments leave the warehouse after the witching hour (for 'tis against Accounting rules and all that), but then a beer or two beckons.
Tomorrow, however, will be interesting, as I will be rising early, catching the train back to Amsterdam for an 8pm flight, and making the most of several hours of free time in Amsterdam itself.
>>to be continued........ |
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| Halloween is upon us..... |
[Oct. 27th, 2006|11:24 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | excited | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Bride Of Monster Mash! | ] |
Well, long long time, no post, but I'm back!
I'm really excited because tomorrow night is the launch party for the Bride of Monster Mash project I've been involved in - check it out here... www.bride-of-monster-mash.com - and I just found out that I'm DJing from midnight! :)
So, if anyone's in London tomorrow night, come along and say "Hi" - I'll be the one dressed as a masked psycho killer ;-)
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