Everyone's got a friend called Dave. Mine lives in Stafford, and today we went for lunch, sampling a fine pie and pint at the town's new Pie and Ale bistro type place. After I dropped him off, I got home and checked Facebook* and was dissapointed to find that I'd missed an altercation with a door to door salesman by literally minutes.
The just of it was that some chancer with dodgy ID had turned up at Dave's place "not selling anything" byt wanting to get him "a better deal" on his electricity bill. Dave sent him packing in what reads like a hilariously confrontational manner, but it reminded me of an experience I had some 8 years ago...
The date was 26th June 2002. I'd finished universiy the previous month, and was continuing my actually quite enjoyable part-time job in the garden centre for Focus DIY while trying to find a full time job and start a career. Each Wednesday I would scour Stoke's Sentinel for jobs, especially in the Sales section, because I'd convinced myself that's where the real money was (yes, I really was that naive).
I saw the advert. A small box advertising a junior position in Sales and Marketing. Graduates welcome, no experience neccessary! I gave them a call, and was invited to go to their office the very next day for an interview.
The day of the interview was quite hot, and I felt uncomfortable wearing my new suit in the centre of town. Their office was very modern, and I was led down some steps to wait for my interview. I was surrounded by other candidates (I recognised one as a barman from the student union, which probably wasn't a great sign), and while I waited a video played in the corner of what looked like a corporate love-in event, with lots of awards been given to their sales people. Still, I was there for a job, so I suspended my cynicism.
When I was eventually called into the interview I found myself face-to-face with the manager of the place. He explained that the office was actually a franchise of a much larger group whose corporate video I'd been watching earlier. He'd worked for them, got on very well and opened up his franchise in our city. I was impressed, he was maybe about 28 and had obviously done well. He told me more about the job - "We like to market directly to our customers, it means we can get out message across clearly. We work for a number of clients..." he then listed well known energy companies, charities and credit card providers for whom this company worked on behalf.
He seemed very pleased with me, said he was glad I was well turned out and dressed smart, and invited me back the following day to shadow one of his sales managers on a typical day's work.
The next day I got up early and drove down to the office. I was introduced to Trevor, who I would spend the day with. He was a very enthusiastic character who proceeded to march me across town to a sandwich shop. On the way he gushed excitedly about how much he loved working for the company and how supportive they were, that it was the thrid biggest company in the world (I knew that wasn't true). He explained that we'd be meeting a couple of his sales team staff and be driving to Crewe to meet clients and give them a demonstration of the product we were selling - cheaper energy.
At this point, I genuinely beleived everything I'd been told, and began to picture myself in an hour's time, sitting in an office while I watched these guys did a presentation on this mysterious energy product. I was good at presentations while at university, so I should take to this easily...
We met the sales team, crammed into the back of a Citroen Saxo and began the 20 mile journey up the A500 to Crewe. There was a lot more excitement about what a great company this was to work for... but hang on, now we're heading into the council estate area of Crewe?
At this point I'd already twigged something was amiss when they started talking about their 'goals' for the day. This was apparently because if they set themselves goals they were more likely to achieve them. Then, the moment of clarity. Three photocopied maps are produced, and streets are allocated to each team member. Instantly, my inner voice says "This is door to door sales. It is beneath you."
Now, I know that sounds like a very conceited and slightly pompous attitude to take. Maybe if I had no other income and mouths to feed I would try to make a living from door to door sales. But I hadn't spend 4 years to go on the knock, and my part-time job would be better. Still, here I was in Crewe with a whole day ahead of me so I might as well play along.
The next few hours saw us knock on perhaps 100 doors. Trevor moved at lightning pace, obviously the more people who spoke to, the more sales he'd get. he got £30 for every sale he made. Thinking about it, you'd only need to get 5 to make £150, not bad for a day's work, right? The whole day he got 1 person to sign up. And the only pay was commission.
Throughout the day he went on and on about what an amazing oppurtunity this was. We met up with the rest of the sales teams for an afternoon break. One of the sales team pathetically announced he'd 'shortened his goals' which as took to mean as realising no-one was going to buy off him. Trevor continued his bluster, saying he was going to buy a brand new Lambourghini Diablo (it was out of production) like one he'd seen at a show the previous month. One that apparently had got a load of subs in the boot (mid engined car...).
Once the day was over, the plan was to go back to the office, where I would be given some kind of test. Trevor had asked me throughout the day how I felt about working for them, and while initially maintained a veil of eagerness, I was gradually becoming more reticent, until i told him I wasn't sure it was for me.
His attitude immediately changed. "I can't put you through to the test" he told me. The next ten minutes he ranted once more about what an immense opportunity I was giving up. "Don't you want to be a millionaire?" he desperately asked? "Money isn't everything!" I told him. Once he realised I wasn't interested, he then walked at an even faster pace, and ignoring me. I knew I was 20 miles from home, but was it really worth sticking out for another hour and a terse car journey back to Stoke? No.
Luckily, my friend and colleague Jane lived in Crewe, I knew she'd be sympathetic to my situation, and would probably give me a lift home. As I walked away from Trevor, still furiously charging to the remaining addresses on his map, I pulle dout my phone and turned on for the first time that day. A text arrives... "Hello from a hot and sunny Glastonbury..." sender? Jane.
*******
This day was an important life lesson for me. Many times during my subsequent career at the head office of one of the building societies I would have an opportunity to go and work in sales, and while i would dip my toe in it, I never got to the point where I actually had to sell as part of my daily life.
It made me see the people who do these jobs in a new light too. Everytime someone comes around to try and sell me power, I know they aren't really from the company they say they're from, they're employed by a company to flog whatever the office has got a deal with at that particular time too. Same with the 'Chuggers' - the charity muggers on the street who try to sign you up to direct debits.
*Yes, i'm back... I know it's nearly 2 years since I last wrote a blog, but I held out for 7 months before returning
Wednesday 10 February 2010
Monday 7 April 2008
It would never happen now: Fuzzbox
"When it's good, it's wicked at the same time"
I continue to attempt getting this blog on Blogger's "Blogs of Note" which seems to be the only way to get any traffic to it whatsoever. Unfortunately, they prefer to put ramblings of people building log cabins or making paper aeroplanes as opposed to any proper discourse. Still, in the spirit of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em," here's something that's come up in the last couple of hours that's prevented me from beginning any of the five books that arrived from Amazon today.
Fuzzbox? Remember them? Me neither. But when someone requested Pink Sunshine on the Chris Evans drive time show this evening, I remembered pretty much all of the song despite not hearing it for 19 years. So began a fascinating half hour romp through Wikipedia and YouTube doing all the research possible (and neccessary) on the band. Not since I rediscovered Sisters of Mercy's Dominion have I been so happy to wrench a half forgotten 80s pop tune from the back of my mind.
But before we continue hand in hand down this pastel-colured memory lane, why not refresh your memories with the immense Pink Sunshine. Difficult to pick out a best bit as it's all good, but I quite like the breakdown before the instrumental section.
That was a high budget video back in '89.
Of course, Fuzzbox (nee We've Got A Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use It), were as manufactured as Coca-cola spinners and bum-bags. But these brummie pop queens apparently started from extremely rough roots as a low-fi punk outfit. And compared to Simon Cowell's contemporary water-carriers, they sit somewhere between Bob Dylan and Pink Floyd in the credibility index.
Combing through the various Youtube clips, the band appeared on various kids shows like Wacaday*, but my favourite one is this one from BBC1's Saturday Superstore.
Yes, it sure was a different age. Look how pleasant the girls are - they actually look happy! Not like press-briefed Sugababes or stage-school prepped KT Nash Duffy Melua types these days.
However, the most odd thing about this interview is the fact that it took place at all. Mike Read infamously smashed up Frankie Goes To Hollywood's ode to gay sex Relax on air, yet seemed happy to have Fuzzbox on air despite releasing a single Love is The Slug. I guess Mike Had chilled out a bit by then. Check out the video to see if you get the same overtones I do (or maybe I'm just imagining them...)
I feel sorry for kids today. They weren't around when pop music was like this. They didn't get to see relatively raw acts become the slick polished machines that Fuzzbox were at the Pink Sunshine stage, and they don't get to see their bands implode in quite the same way. By the time many acts release their first single, their success is inevitable, and there are no surprises or happy accidents.
Following the equally memorable Your Loss, My Gain they went back underground.
So wherever they are now, here's to Fuzzbox, their unique brand of 80s power-pop, their innocent and friendly interview technique, and their pretty bass player.
SEE ALSO: Shampoo, Roxette
*Random Fact: Fuzzbox did Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka-dot Bikini a full four years before Timmy Mallet and Bombalurina.
I continue to attempt getting this blog on Blogger's "Blogs of Note" which seems to be the only way to get any traffic to it whatsoever. Unfortunately, they prefer to put ramblings of people building log cabins or making paper aeroplanes as opposed to any proper discourse. Still, in the spirit of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em," here's something that's come up in the last couple of hours that's prevented me from beginning any of the five books that arrived from Amazon today.
Fuzzbox? Remember them? Me neither. But when someone requested Pink Sunshine on the Chris Evans drive time show this evening, I remembered pretty much all of the song despite not hearing it for 19 years. So began a fascinating half hour romp through Wikipedia and YouTube doing all the research possible (and neccessary) on the band. Not since I rediscovered Sisters of Mercy's Dominion have I been so happy to wrench a half forgotten 80s pop tune from the back of my mind.
But before we continue hand in hand down this pastel-colured memory lane, why not refresh your memories with the immense Pink Sunshine. Difficult to pick out a best bit as it's all good, but I quite like the breakdown before the instrumental section.
That was a high budget video back in '89.
Of course, Fuzzbox (nee We've Got A Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use It), were as manufactured as Coca-cola spinners and bum-bags. But these brummie pop queens apparently started from extremely rough roots as a low-fi punk outfit. And compared to Simon Cowell's contemporary water-carriers, they sit somewhere between Bob Dylan and Pink Floyd in the credibility index.
Combing through the various Youtube clips, the band appeared on various kids shows like Wacaday*, but my favourite one is this one from BBC1's Saturday Superstore.
Yes, it sure was a different age. Look how pleasant the girls are - they actually look happy! Not like press-briefed Sugababes or stage-school prepped KT Nash Duffy Melua types these days.
However, the most odd thing about this interview is the fact that it took place at all. Mike Read infamously smashed up Frankie Goes To Hollywood's ode to gay sex Relax on air, yet seemed happy to have Fuzzbox on air despite releasing a single Love is The Slug. I guess Mike Had chilled out a bit by then. Check out the video to see if you get the same overtones I do (or maybe I'm just imagining them...)
I feel sorry for kids today. They weren't around when pop music was like this. They didn't get to see relatively raw acts become the slick polished machines that Fuzzbox were at the Pink Sunshine stage, and they don't get to see their bands implode in quite the same way. By the time many acts release their first single, their success is inevitable, and there are no surprises or happy accidents.
Following the equally memorable Your Loss, My Gain they went back underground.
So wherever they are now, here's to Fuzzbox, their unique brand of 80s power-pop, their innocent and friendly interview technique, and their pretty bass player.
SEE ALSO: Shampoo, Roxette
*Random Fact: Fuzzbox did Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka-dot Bikini a full four years before Timmy Mallet and Bombalurina.
Monday 17 March 2008
Creme Egg advert
Only E4 loving irono-studes would find this advert funny:
But seeing as they're gonna have the munchies quite a lot... is that the idea?
But seeing as they're gonna have the munchies quite a lot... is that the idea?
Sunday 2 March 2008
Behind the walls of Jericho
A few weeks ago, I wrote about QTrax and the media industry can't grasp the new internet age. Once again, I've found myself on the frontline in the battle between creator and consumer.
What now seems like months ago, I saw an advert on some non-descript cable channel for a post apocalyptic drama series set in the US. Mainly because in it, Lennie James could be seen looking into the sky as some balistic missiles were being launched. James played Sol in Snatch the celebrated (by a narrow demographic) millenial Guy Ritchie flick. I like some of the other parts he's played (Alan Erasmus in 24 hour Party People), and I was happy to see James had landed himself a high profile role in a major US TV drama, escaping the confines of British lad-flick association.
I completely forgot about it afterwards. Cable channels have unfathomable scheduling, which make no effort to conform with regular viewing patterns. Trying to watch something in sequence requires the researching skills of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, encyclopedic knowledge of the TV Times, and an intermediate grasp of calculus. Because of my fairly scheduled week, I have to make time for a regular TV series, and the only one I can be bothered with at the moment is the improving Ashes to Ashes.
For some reason, it moved to the front of my mind again today, and I proceeded to check Wikipedia and read the entire plot synopsis for every episode so far. It sounded fascinating - the fall of the United States, nuclear armageddon, character driven storylines and X-Files type conspiracy theories. The first series DVD release for R2 is actually 10th March, but according to Amazon, this will be £39.99 in the shops.
Now I don't know about anyone else, but blowing shy of forty sheets on a TV series I haven't even seen seems a bit risky. But according to Wikipedia, all episodes for the new second series are available FREE on the CBS website. "Ahh! This is just like iPlayer!" I thought, and before you could say "streaming online content" I was clicking on the first episode of the new series.
Oh dear. I clicked on the play button, it briefly came to life only to be interrupted by a very badly recorded 'sorry this content is not available' message. It would appear that only people in the USA can access it, CBS using some kind of fancy IP address blocker to stop my godamned limey mind from melting at the sight of television not yet deemed suitable for those of us across the Atlantic.
I was totally infuriated, some petty rights issue meant I couldn't see the program before buying it. Is that unfair? To have some idea about what you're spending your money on? I swiftly fired up BitTorrent, searched for the same episode I should have seen on the CBS site and promptly downloaded and watched it.
I thought it was brilliant. And I am going to buy the boxed set next Monday.
Amongst other things, I religiously watch the web version of Countdown With Keith Olbermann every day on the MSNBC website. And despite only visiting the USA for a week in 1994, I can tell you that Vicks will give you the best nights sleep since before the rooster went blind. That remembering first steps and first smiles should be inextricably linked with getting your child's first pair of Mickey Mouse ears. That Duracell batteries are used in a lot of firemen's walkie talkies. And that reponsibility is called "Liberty Mutual" under a certain set of circumstances that I can't quite recall right now. How do I know? Because I've sat through the adverts, stupid!
So I have to ask, what was wrong with putting Jericho on the ITV website and splicing every ten minutes with a promo for Yorkshire Tea? Playing the video on a non-fast forwardable player so we couldn't skip them, it's no great cross to bear, and anyone who actually likes the programme will be happy to do it.
Over the last few years, we've seen Firefly, Farscape and Futurama be cancelled by networks who've failed to market their shows correctly, only for them to be resurrected in some form thanks to grass roots movement. Hell, even the fans of Jericho managed to get a second season after sending 20 tons of peanuts to CBS. What the networks need to realise is that these shows CAN be successful, they just need to think about who their viewers are and how best to target them. Genuine fans aren't going to mind streaming episodes containing adverts if it's easier to do than illegally downloading it. I would have done it with Jericho if they'd made it possible. And I would have been able to watch it my own leisure, instead of when it happened to be on television.
My message to the TV networks is this. Think about who is watching your programmes. If your key demographic are viewers aged 21-35, then think about how they live their lives. Invest in targeting your programming (and therefore your advertising) directly to the people who want to watch it, instead of inconveniencing them by making them be in the house at a certain place at a certain time. It's the future - I've tasted it!
What now seems like months ago, I saw an advert on some non-descript cable channel for a post apocalyptic drama series set in the US. Mainly because in it, Lennie James could be seen looking into the sky as some balistic missiles were being launched. James played Sol in Snatch the celebrated (by a narrow demographic) millenial Guy Ritchie flick. I like some of the other parts he's played (Alan Erasmus in 24 hour Party People), and I was happy to see James had landed himself a high profile role in a major US TV drama, escaping the confines of British lad-flick association.
I completely forgot about it afterwards. Cable channels have unfathomable scheduling, which make no effort to conform with regular viewing patterns. Trying to watch something in sequence requires the researching skills of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, encyclopedic knowledge of the TV Times, and an intermediate grasp of calculus. Because of my fairly scheduled week, I have to make time for a regular TV series, and the only one I can be bothered with at the moment is the improving Ashes to Ashes.
For some reason, it moved to the front of my mind again today, and I proceeded to check Wikipedia and read the entire plot synopsis for every episode so far. It sounded fascinating - the fall of the United States, nuclear armageddon, character driven storylines and X-Files type conspiracy theories. The first series DVD release for R2 is actually 10th March, but according to Amazon, this will be £39.99 in the shops.
Now I don't know about anyone else, but blowing shy of forty sheets on a TV series I haven't even seen seems a bit risky. But according to Wikipedia, all episodes for the new second series are available FREE on the CBS website. "Ahh! This is just like iPlayer!" I thought, and before you could say "streaming online content" I was clicking on the first episode of the new series.
Oh dear. I clicked on the play button, it briefly came to life only to be interrupted by a very badly recorded 'sorry this content is not available' message. It would appear that only people in the USA can access it, CBS using some kind of fancy IP address blocker to stop my godamned limey mind from melting at the sight of television not yet deemed suitable for those of us across the Atlantic.
I was totally infuriated, some petty rights issue meant I couldn't see the program before buying it. Is that unfair? To have some idea about what you're spending your money on? I swiftly fired up BitTorrent, searched for the same episode I should have seen on the CBS site and promptly downloaded and watched it.
I thought it was brilliant. And I am going to buy the boxed set next Monday.
Amongst other things, I religiously watch the web version of Countdown With Keith Olbermann every day on the MSNBC website. And despite only visiting the USA for a week in 1994, I can tell you that Vicks will give you the best nights sleep since before the rooster went blind. That remembering first steps and first smiles should be inextricably linked with getting your child's first pair of Mickey Mouse ears. That Duracell batteries are used in a lot of firemen's walkie talkies. And that reponsibility is called "Liberty Mutual" under a certain set of circumstances that I can't quite recall right now. How do I know? Because I've sat through the adverts, stupid!
So I have to ask, what was wrong with putting Jericho on the ITV website and splicing every ten minutes with a promo for Yorkshire Tea? Playing the video on a non-fast forwardable player so we couldn't skip them, it's no great cross to bear, and anyone who actually likes the programme will be happy to do it.
Over the last few years, we've seen Firefly, Farscape and Futurama be cancelled by networks who've failed to market their shows correctly, only for them to be resurrected in some form thanks to grass roots movement. Hell, even the fans of Jericho managed to get a second season after sending 20 tons of peanuts to CBS. What the networks need to realise is that these shows CAN be successful, they just need to think about who their viewers are and how best to target them. Genuine fans aren't going to mind streaming episodes containing adverts if it's easier to do than illegally downloading it. I would have done it with Jericho if they'd made it possible. And I would have been able to watch it my own leisure, instead of when it happened to be on television.
My message to the TV networks is this. Think about who is watching your programmes. If your key demographic are viewers aged 21-35, then think about how they live their lives. Invest in targeting your programming (and therefore your advertising) directly to the people who want to watch it, instead of inconveniencing them by making them be in the house at a certain place at a certain time. It's the future - I've tasted it!
Monday 11 February 2008
Time may change me, but I can't change time
On Friday night, my friends and I ventured to the wild and dangerous underbelly of Stoke-on-Trent and to that city's one half decent music venue, The Sugarmill. It was a tearful return to the place that had seen me spend many a Friday night in my formative years, watching the dregs of the Britpop scene working their way through the northern toilet venues. To mark the occasion, I wore my period Adidas Firebird jacket (black with white Stripes, a la Noel Gallagher on the cover of Cigarettes & Alcohol) and matching Superstar trainers.
Of course, I stuck out like a sore thumb. Not because I was a hideous anachronism with clothes and musical tastes that were ten years out of date, but because both bands on the bill were eighties influenced acts, and my get-up was a futuristic indication to a yet to be concieved mid nineties revival. Principally we'd gone to see Alphabeat. Although we were hell bent on going to the Sugarmill even if Napalm Death had been playing, Alphabeat's MySpace page allowed us to audition a few of the songs beforehand.
If you need to know that the maximum age of a MySpace music fan is about 19, then listen no further than their track Fascination, practically a dynamic-by-dynamic remake of David Bowie's Modern Love. Of course, your average knuckle-dragging listener to Radio 1 is too busy revising for their GCSEs to know they're being duped by a blantant and uncreative reinvention of the past. Only when they finally become disillusioned with the current music scene can the past be truly discovered, revealing a lineage of grave robbing that started with the Stone Roses lifting Byrds licks, and has run a 20 year parallel between influence and influenced to the present day. It seems the current trend is for now-obscure Nile Rodgers produced albums of the early eighties to be ripped off in the quest for fleeting fame.
Bowie hangs heavy in the air at the moment, not just because his less memorable 80s output is being "reimagined" by Scandanavian chancers, but because the long awaited sequel to the BBC's Life On Mars has come to our screens. Yet while he seems to be nodding all the right heads, the Thin White Duke maintains a Macavity-like absence, preferring to watch from the sidelines while lesser beings do his bidding.
Like millions of others, I was an ardent fan of Life on Mars and got totally caught up in solving the unusually intelligent puzzle of whether Sam Tyler had a) gone mad; b) was in a coma; c) had stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator. Factor in John Simm and Phillip Glenister's sublime performances and all that seventies nostaligia, Life on Mars, together with Top Gear doublehandedly justified the existence of the BBC for a whole two years.
When the second series ended, and with John Simm unilaterally deciding there would be no more, Life on Mars seemed destined to join the ranks of Fawlty Towers, The Office and Twin Peaks as self contained, cerebral and era defining television series that didn't overstay their welcome, and (with the exception of the latter) came to a satisfying conculsion.
There's nothing the British like more than a bit of nostalgia. A new decade and a kitsch wardrobe beckoned. It was time for everyone to involved to cash in their creative chips for the immediately announced sequel.
Wow! The new series would be set in the eighties! Gene Hunt's brown Ford Cortina would be replaced with an Audi Quattro!
The new protagonist was DI Alex Drake, a female lead (played by Keeley Hawes) that would stick an even bigger thorn into the side of misogynistic Gene Hunt than Sam Tyler's noughties modern policing ethic had in the original.
I actually missed the Thursday night broadcast, but caught the episode on Saturday morning, thanks to the BBC's new fangled iPlayer service. Now us licence-fee paying Brits have the oppurtunity to watch some the TV-tax funded programmes we would otherwise miss. Impressive, almost TV quality picture on a 19" monitor which will be great until the BBC try to justify making the licence fee compulsory for all internet users.
Ashes to Ashes didn't get off to a great start for me. My first gripe is that the show has been relocated to London, yet Gene Hunt's entire team has followed him down from Manchester. The reason for this is obvious - the eighties only happened in London. In the north of England, it was the same dreary run-down distopia that it had been for the previous ten years. Were it not for Only Fools and Horses and Stock-Aitken-Waterman records, the entire decade would have passed by unnoticed.
Second complaint was the highly annoying opening scene, with Alex Drake attempting to diffuse a hostage situation only for her own 11 year old daughter to wade in and become the hostage herself. I loved my parents when i was 11, but if I'd seen someone pointing a gun at their head I would have let the drama play out a little before bursting through a police cordon and taking charge, and such gauche sentimentality is a contemptuous risk to take in an opening episode.
Gene Hunt made his big dramatic entrance in a shot that was obviously intended for the teaser-trailers, but looks hopelessly out of place in its proper context. It wasn't looking good, and with so many obvious and corny eighties pop cultural references crammed into every frame (knickerless tennis player, Ultravox, George and Zippy)I was getting rather bored. Keeley Hawes gave a borderline hysterical portrayal that was at odds with John Simm's brilliantly paranoid performance in the original series. With the mystery of why he was there nicely wrapped up in the final episode, all her attempts to make sense of the situation seemed rather pointless.
About a third of the way through the programme, I remembered my golden rule of watching the first episode of a new TV series. It's always rubbish.
In the case of a phenominally successful franchise as this, writers are caught between establishing a new feel to dinstinguish it from predecessors, pandering to existing fans looking for something fresh, while at the same time trying to not alienate first time viewers.
I didn't see much of the first series of Life on Mars, so I didn't see it struggle to its feet like a newborn foal. While the second series was cracking television, I unfortunately saw the clumsy conclusion, the show unable to suspend its own disbelief and falling at the final hurdle.
Thus, Ashes to Ashes shouldn't be judged too harshly on its first episode. I wasn't impressed, but I've still got goodwill for the franchise and I want to like it. Despite her annoying introduction, Keeley Hawes showed promise once the episode established itself in the final quarter or so. And although Glenister seemed to be playing it up (and in turn, the director played up to Glenister), the old magic flickered in and out like Drake's connection to the real world. Hopefully there won't be too many amateur moments directly comparable to its seventies forbear, and once its established, it could turn out to be great. I hope the BBC can pick the ball back up and run with it.
We missed Alphabeat, but instead caught the rather excellent Palladium. An exciting looking outfit, they were another eighties flavoured band that reminded me of Duran Duran and similar guitar/synth-pop of the day. Certainly a break from the usual indie schmunglists that waft in an out of the Sugarmill. Despite there only being about 30 people there (and half of them were screaming 15 year olds who'd probably found out about them on their MySpace page), they played like they were at Madison Square Garden, throwing themselves around the stage and even indluging in some extended instrumental sections. We stood like the three miserable looking has-beens we were - you'd hardly expect us to scream with the girls (although I did whoop a few times) - but it was great. The most authentic eighties experience of the whole week.
Of course, I stuck out like a sore thumb. Not because I was a hideous anachronism with clothes and musical tastes that were ten years out of date, but because both bands on the bill were eighties influenced acts, and my get-up was a futuristic indication to a yet to be concieved mid nineties revival. Principally we'd gone to see Alphabeat. Although we were hell bent on going to the Sugarmill even if Napalm Death had been playing, Alphabeat's MySpace page allowed us to audition a few of the songs beforehand.
If you need to know that the maximum age of a MySpace music fan is about 19, then listen no further than their track Fascination, practically a dynamic-by-dynamic remake of David Bowie's Modern Love. Of course, your average knuckle-dragging listener to Radio 1 is too busy revising for their GCSEs to know they're being duped by a blantant and uncreative reinvention of the past. Only when they finally become disillusioned with the current music scene can the past be truly discovered, revealing a lineage of grave robbing that started with the Stone Roses lifting Byrds licks, and has run a 20 year parallel between influence and influenced to the present day. It seems the current trend is for now-obscure Nile Rodgers produced albums of the early eighties to be ripped off in the quest for fleeting fame.
Bowie hangs heavy in the air at the moment, not just because his less memorable 80s output is being "reimagined" by Scandanavian chancers, but because the long awaited sequel to the BBC's Life On Mars has come to our screens. Yet while he seems to be nodding all the right heads, the Thin White Duke maintains a Macavity-like absence, preferring to watch from the sidelines while lesser beings do his bidding.
Like millions of others, I was an ardent fan of Life on Mars and got totally caught up in solving the unusually intelligent puzzle of whether Sam Tyler had a) gone mad; b) was in a coma; c) had stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator. Factor in John Simm and Phillip Glenister's sublime performances and all that seventies nostaligia, Life on Mars, together with Top Gear doublehandedly justified the existence of the BBC for a whole two years.
When the second series ended, and with John Simm unilaterally deciding there would be no more, Life on Mars seemed destined to join the ranks of Fawlty Towers, The Office and Twin Peaks as self contained, cerebral and era defining television series that didn't overstay their welcome, and (with the exception of the latter) came to a satisfying conculsion.
There's nothing the British like more than a bit of nostalgia. A new decade and a kitsch wardrobe beckoned. It was time for everyone to involved to cash in their creative chips for the immediately announced sequel.
Wow! The new series would be set in the eighties! Gene Hunt's brown Ford Cortina would be replaced with an Audi Quattro!
The new protagonist was DI Alex Drake, a female lead (played by Keeley Hawes) that would stick an even bigger thorn into the side of misogynistic Gene Hunt than Sam Tyler's noughties modern policing ethic had in the original.
I actually missed the Thursday night broadcast, but caught the episode on Saturday morning, thanks to the BBC's new fangled iPlayer service. Now us licence-fee paying Brits have the oppurtunity to watch some the TV-tax funded programmes we would otherwise miss. Impressive, almost TV quality picture on a 19" monitor which will be great until the BBC try to justify making the licence fee compulsory for all internet users.
Ashes to Ashes didn't get off to a great start for me. My first gripe is that the show has been relocated to London, yet Gene Hunt's entire team has followed him down from Manchester. The reason for this is obvious - the eighties only happened in London. In the north of England, it was the same dreary run-down distopia that it had been for the previous ten years. Were it not for Only Fools and Horses and Stock-Aitken-Waterman records, the entire decade would have passed by unnoticed.
Second complaint was the highly annoying opening scene, with Alex Drake attempting to diffuse a hostage situation only for her own 11 year old daughter to wade in and become the hostage herself. I loved my parents when i was 11, but if I'd seen someone pointing a gun at their head I would have let the drama play out a little before bursting through a police cordon and taking charge, and such gauche sentimentality is a contemptuous risk to take in an opening episode.
Gene Hunt made his big dramatic entrance in a shot that was obviously intended for the teaser-trailers, but looks hopelessly out of place in its proper context. It wasn't looking good, and with so many obvious and corny eighties pop cultural references crammed into every frame (knickerless tennis player, Ultravox, George and Zippy)I was getting rather bored. Keeley Hawes gave a borderline hysterical portrayal that was at odds with John Simm's brilliantly paranoid performance in the original series. With the mystery of why he was there nicely wrapped up in the final episode, all her attempts to make sense of the situation seemed rather pointless.
About a third of the way through the programme, I remembered my golden rule of watching the first episode of a new TV series. It's always rubbish.
In the case of a phenominally successful franchise as this, writers are caught between establishing a new feel to dinstinguish it from predecessors, pandering to existing fans looking for something fresh, while at the same time trying to not alienate first time viewers.
I didn't see much of the first series of Life on Mars, so I didn't see it struggle to its feet like a newborn foal. While the second series was cracking television, I unfortunately saw the clumsy conclusion, the show unable to suspend its own disbelief and falling at the final hurdle.
Thus, Ashes to Ashes shouldn't be judged too harshly on its first episode. I wasn't impressed, but I've still got goodwill for the franchise and I want to like it. Despite her annoying introduction, Keeley Hawes showed promise once the episode established itself in the final quarter or so. And although Glenister seemed to be playing it up (and in turn, the director played up to Glenister), the old magic flickered in and out like Drake's connection to the real world. Hopefully there won't be too many amateur moments directly comparable to its seventies forbear, and once its established, it could turn out to be great. I hope the BBC can pick the ball back up and run with it.
* * *
We missed Alphabeat, but instead caught the rather excellent Palladium. An exciting looking outfit, they were another eighties flavoured band that reminded me of Duran Duran and similar guitar/synth-pop of the day. Certainly a break from the usual indie schmunglists that waft in an out of the Sugarmill. Despite there only being about 30 people there (and half of them were screaming 15 year olds who'd probably found out about them on their MySpace page), they played like they were at Madison Square Garden, throwing themselves around the stage and even indluging in some extended instrumental sections. We stood like the three miserable looking has-beens we were - you'd hardly expect us to scream with the girls (although I did whoop a few times) - but it was great. The most authentic eighties experience of the whole week.
Monday 4 February 2008
Pop will eat itself
There was an enormous whoop of panic in the music industry this week when online music provider QTrax announced that it was not only going to provide free downloads, but had several major record labels signed up the service with up to 25 million songs on tap. The story was reported in The Times (London), appearing on page 3 of the paper version, and also making a few waves on the BBC news website.
QTrax had apparently blown 500,000 sheets (sterling) on a glitzy launch for champagne quaffing Cannes Film Festival goers, announcing that the artists would recieve their dues by way of advertising revenue generated from the site.
By Tuesday, common sense finally prevailed amongst the dervish-like hype surrounding what at face value seemed to be a final nail in the coffin of traditional music supply. Oddly reminiscent of the launch of 1994's Rise Of The Robots, QTrax had inflated news of Warner, EMI, Sony etc's participation in talks for the venture as full blown commitment to the service. Needless to say, this had all been quashed by Tuesday.
This latest chapter in the music industry's slow suicide is just another indication that not only have the big providers totally failed to grasp changes that the internet has made to the way we consume media, but that the product they're selling is increasingly commercialised, artisically compromised and culturally bankrupt - and that consumers are getting wise to the fact.
If you think I'm wallowing in schadenfreude, you'd be quite right.
My considerable irk at the music industry comes from my early CD buying experiences, when I first got the disposable income to go to HMV and blow a day's wages on the music of the day. Nowadays, traditional retailers are slashing prices to get people through the doors, but back in those days it was perfectly normal to pay £12.99 for a first-week-of-release CD. If you wanted listen to something a bit more select, prices would be ramped up to £15.99, presumably because you were more likely to have decided before getting in the shop that you wanted it and would cough up the extra coins they were unexpectedly charging when you saw it on the shelves. Let's face it, if you'd had your heart set on Generation Terrorists by the Manic Street Preachers, you were unlikely to get back on the bus empty handed for the sake of a couple of quid.
Being a serious music fan, I spent a lot of money on overpriced albums only to find out that the only decent tracks were the ones I'd already heard, or that there were no decent tracks at all, and that I'd only bought it on the recommendation of some self serving dopehead monthly music journalistic who'd drawn a parallel between Primal Scream's Vanishing Point and Sly and the Family Stone's There's a Riot Goin' On.
If the cynical overpricing of so-called 'serious' music was letting down the credible side of the medium, the twin evils of the NME's hegemonic grasp of the weeklies (following the demise of Melody Maker), and the beginning of Pop Stars/Pop Idol/X-Factor's poisonous run in 2000 meant that both indie and mainstream pop were ineffably compromised. With the mainstrem media and the once credible music press on their side, it was all looking good for the music industry.
Of course, they'd failed to reckon with the internet. Even in my darkest moments, my faith in humanity is restored by the human race's ability to triumph in adversity, and the whole try-before-you-buy concept of piracy is our biggest weapon against the forces enticing us to buy unimaginative and exploitative music, recommended by advertorial writing sycophantic journalists and celebrity radio disc-jockeys.
Being honest, I'll admit to scamming a fair bit of music off the internet for an 18 month period earlier on this decade. It was in the days of dial-up, and my crimes were nowhere near as serious as I could commit with my broadband connection. But I look at this philosophically. On the 17th March 2003, I deprived Kelly Osbourne of whatever she got for Shut Up, but I actually saved myself a tenner because the song was rubbish and I only would have found that out if I'd coughed up the dough for the album - and then it would have been the record company who 'd exploited me. However, Elton John, Eminem, Michael Jackson, Rammstein, Electric Six and even Kelly's dad DID subsequently get paid following a cheeky download from Kazaa.
Anyway, it's time to get back to my original point about QTrax. It might have blown up spectacularly in their faces, but the cowardly abandonment by the majors shows that they're still not ready to embrace the new age. If they want to save their skins, they're going to have to start backing artists instead of products, and realise that when people buy an album, they want twelve good tracks, not four singles and eight slices of white bread.
It depends if QTrax recover from their ineptitude, or if someone else learns the mistakes and finds a new way forward. It's as clear an indication that the days of exploitation of consumers AND artists by the music industry does seem to slowly be coming to an end.
Whatever happens, I hopefully won't be buying Ta-dah by the Scissor Sisters again.
QTrax had apparently blown 500,000 sheets (sterling) on a glitzy launch for champagne quaffing Cannes Film Festival goers, announcing that the artists would recieve their dues by way of advertising revenue generated from the site.
By Tuesday, common sense finally prevailed amongst the dervish-like hype surrounding what at face value seemed to be a final nail in the coffin of traditional music supply. Oddly reminiscent of the launch of 1994's Rise Of The Robots, QTrax had inflated news of Warner, EMI, Sony etc's participation in talks for the venture as full blown commitment to the service. Needless to say, this had all been quashed by Tuesday.
This latest chapter in the music industry's slow suicide is just another indication that not only have the big providers totally failed to grasp changes that the internet has made to the way we consume media, but that the product they're selling is increasingly commercialised, artisically compromised and culturally bankrupt - and that consumers are getting wise to the fact.
If you think I'm wallowing in schadenfreude, you'd be quite right.
My considerable irk at the music industry comes from my early CD buying experiences, when I first got the disposable income to go to HMV and blow a day's wages on the music of the day. Nowadays, traditional retailers are slashing prices to get people through the doors, but back in those days it was perfectly normal to pay £12.99 for a first-week-of-release CD. If you wanted listen to something a bit more select, prices would be ramped up to £15.99, presumably because you were more likely to have decided before getting in the shop that you wanted it and would cough up the extra coins they were unexpectedly charging when you saw it on the shelves. Let's face it, if you'd had your heart set on Generation Terrorists by the Manic Street Preachers, you were unlikely to get back on the bus empty handed for the sake of a couple of quid.
Being a serious music fan, I spent a lot of money on overpriced albums only to find out that the only decent tracks were the ones I'd already heard, or that there were no decent tracks at all, and that I'd only bought it on the recommendation of some self serving dopehead monthly music journalistic who'd drawn a parallel between Primal Scream's Vanishing Point and Sly and the Family Stone's There's a Riot Goin' On.
If the cynical overpricing of so-called 'serious' music was letting down the credible side of the medium, the twin evils of the NME's hegemonic grasp of the weeklies (following the demise of Melody Maker), and the beginning of Pop Stars/Pop Idol/X-Factor's poisonous run in 2000 meant that both indie and mainstream pop were ineffably compromised. With the mainstrem media and the once credible music press on their side, it was all looking good for the music industry.
Of course, they'd failed to reckon with the internet. Even in my darkest moments, my faith in humanity is restored by the human race's ability to triumph in adversity, and the whole try-before-you-buy concept of piracy is our biggest weapon against the forces enticing us to buy unimaginative and exploitative music, recommended by advertorial writing sycophantic journalists and celebrity radio disc-jockeys.
Being honest, I'll admit to scamming a fair bit of music off the internet for an 18 month period earlier on this decade. It was in the days of dial-up, and my crimes were nowhere near as serious as I could commit with my broadband connection. But I look at this philosophically. On the 17th March 2003, I deprived Kelly Osbourne of whatever she got for Shut Up, but I actually saved myself a tenner because the song was rubbish and I only would have found that out if I'd coughed up the dough for the album - and then it would have been the record company who 'd exploited me. However, Elton John, Eminem, Michael Jackson, Rammstein, Electric Six and even Kelly's dad DID subsequently get paid following a cheeky download from Kazaa.
Anyway, it's time to get back to my original point about QTrax. It might have blown up spectacularly in their faces, but the cowardly abandonment by the majors shows that they're still not ready to embrace the new age. If they want to save their skins, they're going to have to start backing artists instead of products, and realise that when people buy an album, they want twelve good tracks, not four singles and eight slices of white bread.
It depends if QTrax recover from their ineptitude, or if someone else learns the mistakes and finds a new way forward. It's as clear an indication that the days of exploitation of consumers AND artists by the music industry does seem to slowly be coming to an end.
Whatever happens, I hopefully won't be buying Ta-dah by the Scissor Sisters again.
Monday 28 January 2008
Kicking the social networking habit
This week, I finally summoned up the courage to quit Facebook. In my mind, there has been a swell of ill-feeling towards the social networking phenomenon for about a year or so. It was quelled when I quit MySpace in June of last year, but since Facebook reached critical mass in about September, I've become re-frustrated by the essential pointlessness of it all, and increasingly resentful of my dependance upon it.
Social networking sites allow people like me to give themselves the illusion of a broad network of friends. That is to say people in their 20s, very possibly single, and feeling slightly abandoned because many of their friends have either settled down or have moved away.
Getting in touch with old friends, reacquainting with former objects of affection and even noseying on people who I hadn't formally made "friends with" but who's life it became fascinating to monitor - just a bit voyeurish, but not as much as, say, watching Big Brother: Celebrity Highjack.
When I found Facebook, I thought I'd found MySpace without its drawbacks, and happily extolled its virtues to anyone who seemed willing to listen.
However, the aforementioned moment of critical mass came when Facebook moved from the early adopter phase. This meant dealing with long-forgotten schoolfriends, colleagues from work who I barely knew or even just recognised my name and people who I couldn't even recall speaking to but apparently just wanted to be associated with me. My "friend count" swelled from a modest 30 to about 70 or so withing the space of a couple of weeks, mainly because everyone seemed to be in competition to get the highest number of "friends".
All of a sudden, my news-feed was full of irrelevant information about people who I didn't care about, while I tried to deal with the ridiculous amount of application requests that promised such illumnating journeys into my own pysche to reveal what my stripper name would be, what kind of kisser I was etc.
The most insidious of the 'book anomalies were the desperate attempts to create massive groups with millions or so members. I must admit to attempting this myself, with the worthy intent of getting Angus Deayton reinstated as the presenter of Have I Got News For You. By far the worse and most blatant attempt at self promotion came from some needy fool who created a group called "Six Degrees of Separation - the experiment."
When I last checked this group, it was up to something like three and a half million members. I thought about posting on the forum, questioning the creator's methods, asking how the experiment would be measured, and accusing them of running what was essentially a vanity project. Unfortunately, I didn't think my voice would be heard amongst all the other people who'd started off threads like "does god exist" and "say one thing about the person above you".
My first act was to decline the few friend-whoring dregs who tried to add me, swiftly followed by a phased deletion of some of the tertiary and then secondary friends. None of these people made any comment about me deleting them. Even people who I worked with. I then trimmed down my profile information (which had in all honesty perhaps been a little too long) to a brusque description of my current activities and a quote from Apocalypse Now.
To quote Hunter S. Thompson, the decision to flee came suddenly. Or maybe not. Maybe I had planned it all along, subconsciously waiting for the right moment. Whatever, after another round of snooping on the few remaining friends that remained, I found myself going through the deactivation process like some kind of base motor-reflex, with no real road-to-damascus moment inpriring the act. That was a week ago.
When I attempted to leave MySpace 18 months ago, I was back on within a few days, worried that I was missing out on wild flirting with a lonely, adventure-seeking 24 year old single girl from South Staffordshire. Things seem different now. I think the fad, like the wider "Web 2.0" revolution will die out - I'm not the only one with these sentiments, and there's only so many times we'll keep moving out west to new services before we realise they're all exploiting the early adopters who bring in the mainstream who in turn ruin it by being the brain-dead miasma we've come to expect them to be.
Yuwie, anyone?
Social networking sites allow people like me to give themselves the illusion of a broad network of friends. That is to say people in their 20s, very possibly single, and feeling slightly abandoned because many of their friends have either settled down or have moved away.
Getting in touch with old friends, reacquainting with former objects of affection and even noseying on people who I hadn't formally made "friends with" but who's life it became fascinating to monitor - just a bit voyeurish, but not as much as, say, watching Big Brother: Celebrity Highjack.
When I found Facebook, I thought I'd found MySpace without its drawbacks, and happily extolled its virtues to anyone who seemed willing to listen.
However, the aforementioned moment of critical mass came when Facebook moved from the early adopter phase. This meant dealing with long-forgotten schoolfriends, colleagues from work who I barely knew or even just recognised my name and people who I couldn't even recall speaking to but apparently just wanted to be associated with me. My "friend count" swelled from a modest 30 to about 70 or so withing the space of a couple of weeks, mainly because everyone seemed to be in competition to get the highest number of "friends".
All of a sudden, my news-feed was full of irrelevant information about people who I didn't care about, while I tried to deal with the ridiculous amount of application requests that promised such illumnating journeys into my own pysche to reveal what my stripper name would be, what kind of kisser I was etc.
The most insidious of the 'book anomalies were the desperate attempts to create massive groups with millions or so members. I must admit to attempting this myself, with the worthy intent of getting Angus Deayton reinstated as the presenter of Have I Got News For You. By far the worse and most blatant attempt at self promotion came from some needy fool who created a group called "Six Degrees of Separation - the experiment."
When I last checked this group, it was up to something like three and a half million members. I thought about posting on the forum, questioning the creator's methods, asking how the experiment would be measured, and accusing them of running what was essentially a vanity project. Unfortunately, I didn't think my voice would be heard amongst all the other people who'd started off threads like "does god exist" and "say one thing about the person above you".
My first act was to decline the few friend-whoring dregs who tried to add me, swiftly followed by a phased deletion of some of the tertiary and then secondary friends. None of these people made any comment about me deleting them. Even people who I worked with. I then trimmed down my profile information (which had in all honesty perhaps been a little too long) to a brusque description of my current activities and a quote from Apocalypse Now.
To quote Hunter S. Thompson, the decision to flee came suddenly. Or maybe not. Maybe I had planned it all along, subconsciously waiting for the right moment. Whatever, after another round of snooping on the few remaining friends that remained, I found myself going through the deactivation process like some kind of base motor-reflex, with no real road-to-damascus moment inpriring the act. That was a week ago.
When I attempted to leave MySpace 18 months ago, I was back on within a few days, worried that I was missing out on wild flirting with a lonely, adventure-seeking 24 year old single girl from South Staffordshire. Things seem different now. I think the fad, like the wider "Web 2.0" revolution will die out - I'm not the only one with these sentiments, and there's only so many times we'll keep moving out west to new services before we realise they're all exploiting the early adopters who bring in the mainstream who in turn ruin it by being the brain-dead miasma we've come to expect them to be.
Yuwie, anyone?
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