Boom and Bust

London Fields # 59

First published Inpress, Melbourne on 29 December 2008

NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here

But you really don’t care for music, do you? Isn’t it more than a little ironic that the debut single of this year’s winner of The X Factor is a cover of Leonard Cohen’s classic Hallelujah? The fastest selling download in UK history was released just after the final, so it’s fair to assume that all the late contenders recorded their own karaoke rendering of the same arrangement. The sheer commercial hard-headedness of it just fills my heart with seasonal glee. Saturday night telly is where the BBC and its commercial rival ITV battle it out in audience-voted talent quests, the modern day equivalent of variety shows. Even Peter Kay’s one-off piss-take Britain’s Got The Pop Factor And Possibly A New Celebrity Jesus Christ Soapstar Strictly On Ice spawned its own single, and it seems nothing will stem this tide of bilge passing for entertainment.

Pop may well eat itself, but television feasts on its own entrails. Literally in Charlie Brooker’s Dead Set (E4), which focussed on a microcosm of refugees hiding in the Big Brother house whilst the world outside fell to zombies. Brooker was also behind Screenwipe, an informative, cruel and bloody funny show about television. On ITV, the award-winning TV Burp saw Harry Hill take a gentler ramble through the previous week’s viewing, replete with some lovely running gags. While BBC Four had a series of biopics of famous comedians and their bloody depressing lives, it wasn’t a vintage year for TV comedy. New sketch shows failed, Pulling improved but wasn’t recommissioned. With the exception of Peep Show, the brighter lights were the newcomers, like No Heroics, or The Kevin Bishop Show. 2008 also saw the serious decline of the documentary. reality TV and lifestyle challenges had already done damage, but the new decline was evidenced by ‘mission’ shows. Even Horizon turned mental illness into a game of Spot The Looney.

Dramas prepared us for the end of the world. Spooks saw a Russian sleeper planting a nuclear device in central London, and the ropey Spooks Code 9 was set in the aftermath of a nuclear attack by terrorists at the 2012 games. Survivors (a remake of Terry Nation’s 1970’s original) began with a pandemic wiping out over 99% of the earth’s population, and next year we’re promised a new version of The Day Of The Triffids. While I suppose anything is more entertaining than Hole In The Wall or I’m A Has-been, Restart My Career, you start to wonder if we’re being slowly prepared for a new, tougher world, one where you can only hold onto what is yours by force.

In the real world of London’s streets, 28 teenagers died violently and gangs fought post code-based wars. Britain talked its overvalued housing market into a crisis, and we all just watched helplessly as the credit crunch inevitably became a recession. For sure, someone made a nice profit out of the misery of wrecked lives. Every day a further 350 Londoners lose their jobs; unemployment stands at 1.8 million, the highest since 1991, and predictions expect this to rise by another million by 2010. But the most telling sign of the downturn has been the loss of an integral part of British life and one of the country’s retail giants - Woolworths. Perhaps actually closest to the long-gone Coles Variety stores, Woolies modern Australian equivalent would be Target or K-Mart. Yet Woolies wasn’t an outer suburban megastore - with 807 stores they held a place on every high street. Nothing has felt less like Christmas than watching a wake of buzzards descend upon the 27 000 soon to be unemployed workers, to pick clean the carcass of the dying beast, all to the sound of piped Christmas songs. Ironic also as this was where many a single of Christmas Past was bought.

My catch cry of live gigs this year seems to have been ‘Oh, maybe it was just a bad night’. Hence Robert Forster was dull and uninspired and Nick Cave at Hammersmith seemed a little out of love with The Bad Seeds, perhaps wishing he was playing Grinderman instead. The exceptions to ‘bad nights’ were wonderful. My Bloody Valentine joined the rare echelons of acts whose reunion was a good idea, and Edwyn Collins, who I was a little scared to see after his stroke, proved bloody great, both musically and spiritually. The baggy workings of Working For A Nuclear Free City hinted at a possible return to Madchester, and Frank Turner’s enthusiasm and sheer joie de vie made every show special. Get Well Soon as a full band surpassed their excellent debut album, and Fuck Buttons dark rave provided an exhilarating contrast to boring Carling rock acts.

With Top Of The Pops gone, and only very large stores carrying any physical singles at all, does the singles chart really matter any more? Railing against bad cover versions, I feel a little like Alex DeLarge, strapped into a chair, my eyes clamped open, screaming “It’s a sin!” Yet as I write, the campaign to get Jeff Buckley’s cover of Hallelujah is gaining momentum. Perhaps there is some hope for the future after all?

© James McGalliard 2008

A Seasonal Catch-Up

London Fields # 48
First published Inpress, Melbourne on 30 January 2008
NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here

The end of the year is always a rush when you’re writing about music. There are writers’ polls to complete, the need to summarise the year just gone, and to make tips for 2008. And in the UK, the period prior to Christmas is a mad time for gigs. Along with pantomime season come tours from The Pogues, and from Madness. It would be a shame to let some of the great performances in this period get lost in the constraints of obligation and deadlines. So now that 2007 is finished, and 2008 previewed, it’s time to look back at some of the wonderful acts I saw as the year ended, but had no time to write about until now.

Just as Christmas comes but once a year, recent years have seen The Blue Aeroplanes gather in Bristol in December for annual shindig. Who you ask? Along with James they were the great English live act of the early 90’s that never toured Australia. They were creating literate artrock before Pulp had got their act together. They had a dancer before Bez had dropped an E. There were never keyboards – they’d add another guitarist - but you could always hear their separate playing. There have probably been forty members in the band’s history, but through it all Gerard Langley, a poet more than a vocalist, has declaimed thought-provoking ideas over the whole joyous maelstrom. This gig managed to recapture that special spark that made me an instant covert from the first time I saw them live. For much of tonight’s gig there were four guitarists on stage, jumping to six for the encore. Being a long term ‘Planes fan can be a bit like taking part in a veterans day parade, as each time there are fewer and fewer of us who swing our arms over our heads to the lyric 'let those arms rotate like helicopter blades'. Sadly, unlike those parades, there is no younger generation taking the medals and replacing those who have fallen. On the basis of their live glory tonight, that’s a loss for all of us.

Coming back to London, I caught Spiritualized Acoustic Mainline for the third time in the year. It’s a real shame that this version of Jason Spaceman’s act is about to be retired, especially as it never got to Australia. Each time I’ve seen them and loved it more, and in the candlelit environs of the Union Chapel, it found its perfect setting; the cross between hedonistic and religious was simply divine. Jason was joined by three gospel singers, a string quartet and long-term collaborator Doggen on keyboards. There was a Daniel Johnson cover, some Spaceman 3 material and even Oh Happy Day all reworked for the strings and the singers, and lead by Jason’s acoustic guitar. I lost count of the magical moments, but as Goodnight Goodnight segued into a beautiful, traditional reading of Silent Night, the spirit of the season descended. Or when Ladies And Gentlemen… melted into Elvis’ Can’t Help Falling In Love, the gospel harmonies complementing and lifting hearts. It’s so rare to come away so stunned and elated – it was a special night indeed.

The Union Chapel has always been one of my favourite places in London to see certain bands. On one occasion Mark Almond performed here in a cassock; on another John Cale played the best of the many shows I’ve seen him play – the natural resonance of the church adding a special edge to a spine tingling take on Hallelujah. But it is a functioning church, and a few years ago the governors decided that there was a conflict of interest between the sacred and the profane, and the gigs stopped. It’s so great that they reconsidered, and now it’s reopened to live music, with the proviso that alcohol is only consumed in the bar outside.

But it was doubly special in December, as it was the chosen venue for the first public performances in over ten years for the Penguin Café Orchestra. In fact, the night I went marked the tenth anniversary of the sudden death of PCO founder Simon Jeffes. Yet this was no wake, but a celebration of the music he had created. PCO had its own particular dynamism and rhythm – I’ve always thought of it as being a little like a bicycle with slightly square wheels – it rolls along and its speed varies, but the tempo it keeps is all its own. The setlist was based on the Concert Programme CD, so was effectively a greatest hits live. Most of the musicians were the same people I’d seen perform on numerous occasions through the ‘90’s – the big differences were slightly less regimented playing, and that they were speaking between the songs. You’ll have heard PCO, perhaps without knowing it – on ads, or the film Malcolm; even My Friend The Chocolate Cake's style owes much to them. But it was great to hear these tunes have the chance to live again – the audience was unfeasible warm on a bitter night. But there was a sense of elegy too; that that maybe this would be the last time that these songs would be played live by these people. But then again, is there a better place to contemplate transience than in a church?


© James McGalliard 2008