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The other day I told someone at work I was excited that a new football season was coming. Five minutes later I revised this. I was relieved. As far back as the mid 80s I remember crouching round a crackly radio on a Sunday afternoon, listening to the World Service feed hosted by ABC. My best friends Ben and Saul favoured reigning champions Liverpool, but I - because my grandfather had been born there, but also probably out of peevishness - settled on Leeds. A man with a measured English accent read out the scores, with the slightest of pauses adding exquisite agony ("Tottenham Hotspur 1, Derby County.... 2"). They were in order, from First Division down, and after a few minutes you lost your place in a blizzard of names and numbers so thick I always missed the Leeds score - which I would have to check 24 hours later in the Monday copy of The Age. Ben stuck with Liverpool, Saul (also peevish) gravitated towards Manchester City, and I celebrated a promotion to the First Division in 1989. Leeds scaled the heights, "lived the dream", and were on the slide once I moved over here permanently. I saw Leeds play League Football for the first time in October 2004; a dire 0-0 draw against Stoke City, with pensionable striker Brian Deane leading a very blunt line. In September 2005 I moved up north permanently to work on Corrie, crossing the Pennines regularly to see Leeds play in the 05/06 season (the second year in the Championship, the second tier of English football). Kevin Blackwell was the manager, a coach who got the job by default in the shambolic last months of our Premiership existence. Blackwell now had us playing classic lower league football: lump the ball up to a big lump up forward. Rob Hulse, the big lump, fired us to many wins but I was faced with the classic supporters quandary: admiring the results, disliking the style. One cold October night in 2005 I watched us play Southampton from the South Stand. Theo Walcott made his first start. He tore us apart. But we won 2-1, courtesy of a headed goal from Hulse. We'd played horribly. It felt unfair. Blackwell stuck round like a bad smell through a campaign that ended with a play-off capitulation against Watford, and then a poor showing in the following season that led to his sacking. Our unlovely chairman Ken Bates (who warrants a separate blog entry of his own) appointed Dennis Wise as manager, and a horrible season climaxed with relegation and a pitch invasion in our final game. Points deductions and two playoff defeats followed, and today Leeds United begin another season in League One. The omens are not good. Continuing our tradition of selling off the "crown jewels", last week our finest young player, Fabian Delph, was sold to Premiership club Aston Villa. Visiting teams come to Elland Road, a stadium so decrepit that it required no redressing for The Damned United, the film of Brian Clough's 40 day reign at Leeds United... set in 1974. Despite all this doom, despite all the ridicule from my friends that Leeds are beginning their third season in the third tier..... relief. Yes. Relief that the numbing summer stretch of rugby and cricket is over. Relief that I can graze football websites and argue with and insult friends again. Relief that, after three months of the results and table of last season being frozen in time, all is now possible again. And with Fabian Delph vacating the centre circle, my favourite player will come back into the team... David Prutton  (jarring segue alert) Last Saturday the final episode of the series went out. I produced the last two eps; they got good critical word and strong ratings. They'd been a bugger to do. We lost a key guest character two weeks into prep and had to do running repairs on the story. Scripts were locked off very late. Everyone was tired, running on near empty; it was a difficult shoot. The bruises had faded by the time it went out, but the praise made it all feel worthwhile. Enter Charlie Brooker  After five years enjoying the sight of various cultural artefacts shrivel under Brooker's gaze, it was jarring to have that acid spotlight turned onto me. (Channel 4 don't allow embedding but watch part of it here) What did I think of his attack? Firstly, a kneejerk instinct to protest that he'd taken the episode wilfully out of context. Shocked at his relentlessness of his spite, and a (bleating, I admit) resentment that he'd refused to play the guilty pleasure card, which he does so for many other shows. Next, that this must be how it feels for all his targets: that the nature of his humour is to wrest the "thing" out of its context; to absolutely be unfair, not engage on any terms but his own. I knew the episodes were not as good as they could've been (they were so troubled that it's a miracle they turned out as well as they did). Even so, they were mine, and I spent a lot of time and effort making them. Teresa asked whether I found it funny. I wanted to, but couldn't. (I don't mind if you do.) Lastly, a small pleasure (obviously a rationalisation) that he'd paid attention to us. People like Brooker will never like the show, but mostly they pass by unaware it exists. |
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Am into the fourth week of a no alcohol, crisps, sweets, meat, caffeine regime. Headaches every waking hour for the first week. Now, a lightness and clarity: Producing is most of all a job of organising people and things, marshalling things that must not be forgotten: the detox has helped. I'm sharp during the day. At the end I’m drooling, monosyllabic, wrenching one foot in front of another. The detox has precisely matched my first shooting block. I’ve tried to see as much shooting (particularly on location) as I can and immerse myself in that world: I want to learn its language. It’s a mass of craft guilds (sound, camera, sparks, ADs, costume, makeup) that work in an interlocking whole; frustratingly, often working in serial rather than parallel fashion (eg. lighting lights a scene, the AD summons the cast, costume and makeup do their checks). My initial instinct was that there seems so much dead time. It can seem like the crew defaults to only doing something when they are asked to: sitting back down when lighting comes in to do a tweak. And sauntering to checks so slowly! But, I have come from a different universe. Short runners like Secret Life have the adrenaline rush of a contained period. People give their all knowing there's an endpoint. This show is their five days a week forever. The schedule is calibrated for a certain template of an episode. My episode at the moment has about 15 more scenes than the norm: fast bite-sized scenes throughout. Though the episode is right on time – maybe even a little short – fitting it inside the schedule has been difficult. As someone who shares the writer's instinct that the show could do with some speeding up, this was depressing. How has it felt? In my sometimes interminable sessions with a leadership consultant guy I detail how I have stepped out of a script comfort zone into this new role. Scripts are what I love and feel comfortable with. The warm glow of being trusted with the job is still with me, and a sparkle of disbelief that I was. If I were laying this job out in a pie graph, I probably spend a lower portion of my time being creative. However, the creative calls I make in this job carry more authority: in script stage, on the studio floor, in the editing suite.
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12. COLE MEDINA - Love You Inside Out Slow motion vocal Bee Gees joy 11. BELBURY POLY - The Hidden Door 10. ANITA LANE - Lost In Music 9. WHITE DENIM - Shake Shake Shake 8. DENNIS WILSON - Holy Man Off the best bar-none reissue of the year. I was so chuffed that ol Denny made the UK Top 20 when it was released. 7. NO AGE - Cappo 6. HEARTBREAK - Living Just For Fun The circular opening keyboard figure makes me happy 5. MUSIC GO MUSIC - LIght Of Love 4. MAGAZINE - Definitive Gaze 3. VERNON ELLIOT ENSEMBLE - Witch's Theme Courtesy of my favourite favourite music blog, xxjfg. 2. PORTISHEAD - The Rip Never liked the first two albums. But this was great. 1. CHECKMATES - I Keep Forgettin' Off the Spector produced album 'Love Is All We Have To Give'
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 I love post apocalyptic scenarios. I even stomached Zach Snyder's remake of Romero's classic, 'Dawn'. I never saw the original TV adaptation of Terry Nation's novel. Evidently it was strong enough to warrant a remake. As an avowed hater of costume drama's flight from present day reality (a phenomenon that is fuelled each year when yet another Austen season of adaptations is launched - WHY?), I thought the idea had some promise. 28 Days Later, and the first half of 28 Weeks Later, showed that the Brits do apocalypse well. It dovetails with the occasionally grim national mood. 'Survivors' is helmed by Adrian Hodges, who did 'Primeval' - the ITV attempt to match the 'Doctor Who' stronghold on Saturday night drama . In the first ep we met all our key characters, a focus-grouped collection of men and women of differing class, caste, and age. . In this and the following two eps since broadcast, the money is on screen - this is event television. Helicopter shots, panoramic shots of sun dawning on planet earth, explosions, vistas swept clean of human activity. Part of the thrill of post apocalyptic drama is imagining yourself as the last person on earth. What could you do? Roam the department stores and supermarkets of the world - stride down the street naked. You know - anything. Along with the dread of confronting whatever (zombie virus, mass blindness, deadly walking plants) caused the apocalypse in the first place. Oh, but this is rubbish. So rubbish. Some voices in the editorial process clearly thought 'Survivors' would work better as a state of the nation peace. Yes. This is like 'Lord of The Flies', but with adults. Who you recognise from other crap BBC dramas ('Bonekickers', 'Hotel Babylon' etc). It's dire. And I'm making myself fall asleep just writing about it... |
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...on the job front, of which i can talk more when it all becomes official in a few days. suffice to say I'm excited and a little frightened. it could be the making OR the breaking of me. twinned with this is I seem also to be embarking on my first serious relationship since before two jetliners steamed into the WTC. I'm all in a whirl. in the meantime, i made a video for rob's upcoming wedding - PS: oh, and he DID actually invite me. But ragging on Rob seems to come easier to me than praising him. Ach, I'll save that for the soppy best man speech which I really need to start composing. |
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         all music is new heard for the first time. As recorded, it's an object - a performance fixed in place -but in those first moments of appreciation it comes alive again. why is it that on hearing it I years later I can remember places... faces... that I had forgotten ever existed? It is as if i have immersed myself so deeply in the music that I, literally, leave a me-shaped imprint in it. In that first moment of appreciation, when the fixed form of music is fluid, it captures those emotions and thoughts - like a time capsule. (is that why music is so connected to nostalgia? discuss) This is the music that I've loved this year - http://www.zshare.net/audio/166397750aa |
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Times have changed and it took the Valentines show last week to remind me of this. How many modern bands would so batter an audience? 23 minutes of shrieking white noise later, punters stumble away so bludgeoned they forget to ask for an encore. yet - ecstatic. (I recall watching Bela Tarr's 'Werckmeister Harmonies' at the Melbourne film festival a couple of years ago. Tarr holds a particular tracking shot of a character walking along a railway line for over ten minutes. All around me in the dark were the tiny thud of seats returning to their upright positions. Each thud shored up my sense of myself as a hard-bitten cinephile) Were MBV punishing us? Testing us? What were they saying? Was it, as I seem to be hinting so far, their comment on how facile music has become in their absence? But, as I've read in a few reviews, their set contained nothing new - showed no sign of modern day tinkering - it was rigidly, almost perversely, backward-looking: a facsimile of their 1993 tour set, their last before disappearing. I can intellectualise this all I like. At a normal gig there are loud bits and soft bits. During the MBV set there were loud bits and louder bits. During You Made Me Realise, louder and louder still. No respite. I saw them twice and patterns started to emerge: 0-2 minutes: the trace of the song structure still remains, probably only as a memory. 2-5 minutes: grinning. they're really not going to launch back into the song are they? cheeky bastards. 5-10 minutes: this is getting boring. and louder. stop please. 10-15 minutes: the noise shakes every part of my body. if it were a chemical compound, this sound could strip paint from a wall. AND: have I grown? I can see the stage now. I can see that Bilinda and Kevin's hands are strumming their guitars. Yet I can't hear any music. Realise why I can see them now: the crowd is thinning. people are leaving, hands clasped to their ears. 15-20 minutes: people are grooving like they can hear music. what are they moving to? but I can hear something now too: there's something coming through. A song. I don't want it to stop. 20-23 minutes: I realise: I have been dreaming while the noise rises. I remember mowing the lawn at my nan's place on the mountain, when i was a kid. the noise rises higher through the frequencies: imagined the sound of a cat hissing, crossed with a bomb. They break back into the song - as if they had just pressed pause on it. I imagine a world which you could pause... the catch being that you have to endure the howling blitzkrieg of 'Realise' while time stands still. While revving myself back up for the two London shows, I listened back to 'Loveless' and the track Soon in particular. It's such a sexual song: how the blurred lines of guitar meet the cooing vocal. When I first fell for the band I was going out with my first serious girlfriend and we were shagging a lot. It was kind of like learning a new language; one without words. With neither of us knowing what we were doing, sex could last hours - circling round and round. Neither of us were particularly good at it but we didn't know any different. It had this waxing and waning intensity - something every MBV song shares. Except for the brute force of 'You Made Me Realise'. |
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 Damo once accused me of having "misogynistic musical taste". I told him he was talking shit. He said: "okay, name me a female singer you like". I thought. I drew a blank. This came back to me last month when I went to see Glass Candy. I don't have any gig-going pals in Bristol so I get to think a lot as I sip my cider and peer round. The Croft is a venue on the edgier side of town, in the shadow of tower blocks. It's at the bottom of a big rolling hill and the tight dark gig room where Glass Candy played smells of ancient damp.  Glass Candy are a New York two-piece. I'm kind of fascinated by their label Italians Do It Better, because almost all of the key bands on their roster are produced by a guy called Johnny Jewel. Johnny Jewel - I love that name. Anyway, because of Jewel, the label has a consistency and focus; analog synths and beatboxes, one finger melodies in the style of Kraftwerk, warhol-esque imagery, and most of all - singing elusive lyrics in dispassionate, echo-drenched vocals - women: Glass Candy, Chromatics, Farah, Indeep. It's very simple but tuneful music. The reference points are New York, but Chromatics and Glass Candy are from Oregon - a disconnect that I wonder over as I nurse my pint of Blackthorn. A fat, dishevelled looking guy sits behind the bar, over which several T shirts are strewn. People linger; he studies them glumly as they look at the designs. He's Mike Simonetti, head of Italians Do It Better, one of the hottest record labels in the world. Selling T-shirts. Nursing what looks like a monstrous hangover. From where I'm sitting it doesn't look that glamorous. A guy walks behind the bar and whispers something in Simonetti's ear. He has jewels appliqued to his face - like gleaming black tears. Johnny Jewel. As well as being house producer, he's a member of Glass Candy. He does the keyboards, samplers, drum machines, with the singing handled by Ida No. Another great name. THAT's showbiz: showbiz names. Donna Summer. Candy Darling. Ida No. While I watch Glass Candy I think how maybe the music is about this imagined idea of what New York could be, when you're a long way away in time and distance: Studio54, Bianca Jagger, Halston, Flashdance. The haze on Jewels keyboards is so thick as to sound like the haze from an old LP; the echo on Ida's vocals is so pronounced and artifical, like the echo Spector gave John Lennon on 'Instant Karma'. But in a way I can't quite expain, the whole thing transcends the sum of its retro parts (even during a cover of 'Computer Love') and becomes absolutely visceral: each song a drama. Five songs in, Ida No's microphone which had been popping stops working. She's cool about it and just laughs, but Johnny Jewel kicks off. He stomps up to the sound desk where a pony-tailed guy is twiddling some knobs and practising a bewildered look. Jewel is immediately under the desk like a man who knows his gear. Minutes pass and people start drifting out of the room. Jewel steps back up on stage. "We'd love to play more but the fucking sound guy went home an hour ago" he says. He takes Ida No's arm and they sweep through the crowd together. And don't come back. |
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I worked at the now-defunct Batman Records for six years (Swanston Street under The Lounge and Elizabeth Street up the road from JB Hi Fi). James, Stephen, Con, Graeme, John, and Paul introduced me to many artists I still love to this day but the longest lasting, deepest marking eyes opening came from David Carroll, bug-eyed with a taste for Hawaii shirts, who introduced me to a quintet from Hawthorne, CA....  This was 1994 and The Beach Boys were very square. Kokomo was still fresh in my mind. My Dad loved them. I'd spent the last few years listening to The Smiths and Ride and like every other indie kid I was waiting to see what the second Stone Roses album was going to sound like - if it ever arrived. I still remember tipping up to work one lunchtime with David and hearing this strange, circular piano melody playing, bridging into a oscillating orchestral section which then bridged to a barbershop chant which bridged to something else. Through it all the central melody kept hanging in the air, looping through each section. It was the 'Suite' of Heroes and Villains, the truncated version of which was the Beach Boys' follow-up to Good Vibrations. Before Brian lost his nerve (or whatever you'd like to believe happened), this would've been the centre-piece to 'Smile', now possibly the most famous unfinished album in the history of pop music. This was 1994 though - before the internet, before Mojo and Uncut - a time when musical treasures were only uncovered with determined effort, and discoveries were guarded with an equivalent suspicion. The premier magazine of musical trainspotters, Record Collector, wrote about later genres du jour like Krautrock and Afrobeat, but the articles were long, dry, professorial; columns of tight-spaced text unleavened by pics. It took me months to convince David to make me a 'Smile' compilation. To match the quality of the music, he demanded that I buy the most expensive blank tapes on the market (Sony, a five pack - he used three for the comp and kept the rest for himself). It was a Friday night at work when he handed them over. On the first tape he'd drawn an image of the 'Smile' album cover, as it would have been -  A 270 minute compilation sounds like a lot, but when he handed them over David let it be known that there were many treasures he'd left OFF. Now, with 27 hours worth of Beach Boys in my Itunes (I just checked), I can see why. But it was more than that. David had spent years looking for 'Smile', combing record fairs, ordering Japanese bootlegs, swapping tracking sessions with other collectors - what had I done? The year before I'd been picking my nose listening to How Soon Is Now. To hand it all over to me would have cheapened the life-shredding effort he'd put into the search. That Friday night, on the two and a half hour drive down to the family beach house in Inverloch, I heard the music that almost, almost, became the most radical musical statement a mainstream pop group has ever made. And it was so almost finished! It was rough, but after the baroque orchestration of Pet Sounds this seemed like a deliberate, logical progression. It was nonsensical and silly, but also profound and haunting. That night when I went to sleep in the single bed that my feet always hung out the end of, the music ran on, infusing my dreams. 'Smile' was once THE premier heroine hit for musical nuts like me. It was the missing narrative link in the game of oneupmanship that Brian Wilson had been playing with the Beatles since ''Beach Boys Today' was topped by 'Rubber Soul', then 'Pet Sounds' which was topped by 'Revolver'... 'Smile' was once the musical equivalent of those alternate histories in which the Germans win WW2. Now, with Brian Wilson having been coaxed back to finish 'Smile', the open-ended nature of the thing is over. The ground is too trampled. But back in the day it was so enticing. And, distant like a horizon line, there was the dream that if you - the music collector - gathered enough of the raw material, the backing tracks, the outtakes, you might - in a feat of alchemy that Brian Wilson never managed - finish 'Smile'. (This was more of a potent fantasy than I knew - Lewis Shiner based a novel on it, 'Glimpses') Talking about 'Smile' has sidetracked me, as it always does (in person I see the glazing eyes of the listener and know to cut it short). Since that time, The Beach Boys have been an enduring presence in my life. From 'Smile' I pushed into the late 60s albums, through to their fine autumnal efforts in the mid 70s. Once those were in my system I reexamined the pre-'Pet Sounds' album with fresh eyes. And then, last of all, into the patchy coke-driven efforts of the late 70s and early 80s; even as their talent withered, I found traces of what they'd once been. Or maybe I was just being peevish? With almost every part of the BB's output now held up and eulogised, perhaps 'The Beach Boys Love You', 'MIU', and 'Carl and the Passions' are the last redoubt of the musical trainspotters, the Record Collector readers and tape makers. Just before I left Australia in 2004, Brian Wilson played 'Pet Sounds' at the Melbourne Concert Hall. Brian's voice was scratchy and my dad's binoculars revealed he was singing most songs with reference to an autocue. But it was no matter. The whole place was willing him on, singing along. The standing ovation after 'God Only Knows' was so loud it almost became white noise, euphoric. Listening to the Beach Boys, searching and collecting, had been such a solitary experience - this was so public. After the show finished I saw David from a distance across the lobby. I hadn't worked at Batman Records for four years and he'd set up his own shop in the meantime. We didn't speak, I didn't know if he saw me, but I kind of wish I'd gone over and thanked him for the tape he'd made me ten years before. If you've bothered reading this far, I have a present for you: a Beach Boys mixtape. It's assembled from odds and sods (the golden period, 1967 to 1976) that if you're not the biggest fan in the world you might not necessarily know. I derived a slightly worrying amount of pleasure putting it together and hope you enjoy listening to it too. http://www.zshare.net/audio/1157900326f PS: naturally, I've kept the best stuff back for myself. |
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Uncle Bryn is my favourite character on TV. Such joy for life! Listen to how he luxuriates in the novel pleasure of being on "the M25". In lesser hands than Rob Brydon Uncle Bryn would've been an amusing loser hick. Uncle Bryn is the favourite uncle you wish you had - his many flaws overshadowed by an overwhelming love of family. |
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It was my 33rd birthday. I was on page 65 of the scary film. A good bit. Shit has gone down and the characters are flipping out. Satan has just come calling in the guise of a befuddled old gent wearing a Kathmandu parka. I'm considering what happens next, enjoying that I don't quite know yet, when the phone rings. Private number. Two days later I'm on a train to Bristol, the 90 minutes slower and 30 quid cheaper route via Salisbury and Bath. Outside, rain has turned playing fields into lakes. I read every section of the paper, then go over my notes. Two hours out of a job interview I always get fatalistic. If you haven't absorbed it by now it's too damn late, I think to myself. I write down the names and positions of all the characters I can remember. There's 20 main cast. I get 18. Nagging drizzle when I arrive. The wind blows my umbrella inside out. One hour out of an interview I get superstitious. I try not to read the awful weather as a sign. I hold a cafe door open for a man. He thanks me. I am trying to draw good vibes to me, like a supermagnet. I'm wearing a Dunlop trainers, jeans, black Fred Perry shirt, grey v-neck, and suit jacket ensemble. My mum would say I look "smart". I've noticed in the window of the train station loo that the shirt collar slumps under the jacket. I tug it upwards and make a mental note to do this again right before the interview. The studio is on an industrial estate. I walk along a long bleak road lined with warehouses in my preppy (and now sodden) ensemble. I'm too early, and it's raining harder now. The security guy on the door has a safety jacket in fluorescent orange, two rotten teeth and a West Country accent. He tells me to "wet insayid". This is the canteen. It's lunchtime and the air smells of stew and damp clothes (oh... that's me). A man with a blood sodden face tucks into apple crumble and custard. Every seat is taken so I linger by the bulletin board. Press cuttings. A notice warning against walking home from the studio alone. Some rooms vacant ads. I study them and wonder if I will call one of those numbers. Two tables have been pushed together. Two men and woman face me from the other side of them. I tug my collar up. "They squeak" says the most senior of the men, after we've done introductions. "The tables squeak. Some of the other people were a bit freaked out by it". Age hasn't granted me much wisdom, but it has given me this: job interviews follow a well trodden pattern. If I can jolt this with a flash of humour or a well-judged question I can turn it into something resembling a conversation. If my ability is a given, the remaining question is whether they can bear to spend nine hours a day with me... so the more informal you get, the better. That's my theory anyway. I'm about to launch into a story about my last time in Bristol, a bucks night for my flatmate's brother where we went mini-car racing and I clocked a time a full half minute slower than everyone else on the track, when the senior guy says "we have some questions for you". I notice each has a piece of paper in front of them. "Fourteen questions" says the woman. Fluorescent light. I notice an inflamed patch on the senior guy's chin. Maybe his razor was blunt this morning? That used to happen to me. How must our faces feel, I wonder, going through this ritual five mornings a week? Since working and writing from home I've shaved less frequently. If I got this job I would need to shave every day. I imagine 9am first draft meetings in this conference room, with the fluorescent light draining all the colour from my face except for the inflamed patch on my chin. "Fire away" I say, planting my elbows on the table. SQUEAK. |
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In Richard Dawkin’s TV explication of his religion wrecking ball ‘The God Delusion’ he argued for the poetry of science and logic. I like his idea but how accessible is it, really? With my rudimentary knowledge of such matters I can’t. Numbers have never been my friend. Dawkin’s argument came back to me the other day while I was writing the scary film. I don’t believe in god, or ghosts. Early one morning ten years ago my then-girlfriend and I heard footsteps down the passageway of our house. That’s the closest I’ve come. Yet my film hinges on appearances by an avenging spirit and the Devil. I can’t think of many movies that elevate logic into poetry. The footsteps I heard that night might’ve just been an old falling-down house creaking. Why does that feel so disappointing? I would much rather it were a ghost child (fifty years earlier the house was an orphanage). When I think about all the movies and stories I’ve read over my life, this begins to seem like a primal narrative urge: we want to believe that there is something more to life. And something beyond death, maybe. I wonder whether Dawkins allows himself to enjoy ghost stories? |
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End of year lists. Pah! What music have you
With reference to my Itunes play counts, I present the following: my TOP FIVE tracks of 2007... 1. AU REVOIR SIMONE – “Fallen Snow” – 90 listens  
Poke around YouTube and you’ll find the all-girl Cause nothing's worse than seeing you worse than me Fallen Snow was the soundtrack for my move from (full disclosure: the Au Revoir Simone track “A Violent Yet Flammable World” should technically slot in at Number 2 with 66 listens, but I want to feature a few artists so I’ll skip over that. Already, a vagary of my imposed system! Tracks listened to at the start of the year have more opportunity to rack up play counts) 2. 0 DEGREES OF SEPARATION – “Human Beings, Gather Round” – 62 listens
Ah. Let me explain. 0 Degrees of Separation was a one-off tour early this year featuring Adem, Vetiver, Juana Molina, and the legendary Vashti Bunyan. Ahead of the tour they rehearsed for a week or so, all together – for that’s what this was, a collective show. Though very different music, it had echoes of the old Motown revues where a core band stayed on stage and people came forward to sing, then sat back down to play xylophone or whatever, then came back up and did their thing again. It sounds hippy and it was, in the best sense of the word. I turned up to Bridgewater Hall and walked in just as Vashti was up on stage apologising for letting ‘Just Another Diamond Day’ be used on a T-Mobile advert. For anyone aware of Vashti’s history, the apology was entirely unnecessary. And what a remarkable looking woman at 62! Long dark and silver hair, tall, with a gangly swinging teenager’s walk. As remarkable as Vashti was, my highlight was when Adem called for the lights to be dimmed, and led the singing for the hummed ‘Human Beings, Gather Round’. With the song filigreed by pump organ, xylophone, and gently clattering prayer bells, it was magic. The best gig I’ve ever seen.
“Not everything works perfectly, but when it does - The Guardian, January 2007 3. PONI HOAX – “Antibodies” – 48 listens
This reminds me slightly of the great Depeche Mode songs off Violator, romantic and sad. Poni Hoax put it about that this track, the first from a new album produced by re-edit master Joakim, is part of a new genre that they've coined heroic disco. It’s apt for this track which is maybe a doomed love song, maybe about AIDS, maybe maybe. Looking up the lyrics would empty out the emotion of the greatest pop song I’ve heard all year. Sometimes I prefer not to know. I was listening to Antibodies a lot while writing the film. The urgency of it, the say your piece before it’s too late and we all die - classic urgent pop.
4. JOY DIVISION – “Decades (Martin Hannett mix)” – 41 listens
I never much got Joy Division. I didn’t like Ian Curtis’ voice, and an ex-girlfriend loved them so completely I left them well alone for many years. The movie ‘Control’ brought me to them, or rather its imminent release because I wasn’t mad on the film itself (assessing a film on the basis of how authentically someone does an epileptic fit seemed… wrong to me). My first visit back to I’m not too ashamed to admit I blubbed through most of it. The rights and wrongs of Curtis having an affair and hanging himself aside, his bravery with those questing lyrics and performances, no matter that they pushed him closer to the edge, staggered me. Paul Morley, normally a bullshit artist of the highest order, argued that by dying, Ian Curtis gave Factory a focus and sense of purpose that it would never have otherwise had. True. A CD release of Martin Hannett’s ‘preferred’ versions of Joy Division tracks is now available. This version of ‘Decades’ isn’t structurally different from the Closer version, but there’s less keyboard counter-melody and electro-drums in the mix. Paradoxically, the producer’s own version sounds less produced, but at heart Hannett was a dub guy and he liked to strip things out. This version of Decades is one of those alchemical moments, a ground zero of genius production, lyrical content, and performance. As the song enters its last minute the band kicks out of a skittish rhythm under Curtis’ questioning “Where have they been? Where have they been?” and open up into a long loping stride that in my fanciful imagination feels like it is ascending into the clouds. 5. SALLY SHAPIRO – “He Keeps Me Alive” – 39 listens
Sally Shapiro is an enigma, and I like that. I’ve always promised myself that I would never become a pop culture grump, but sometimes I would rather not know about the avatars who produce the music and films that I love. Why do always we want to know more? For myself the internet has become an addiction that I service with indiscriminate hour-long ingestions of information. Is some art not all the more evocative for being unknowable, but intriguing at the same time? Keeping the world at that arms-length, refusing the publicity tours, is the truest test of whether the work is worth a damn… great work speaks for itself. It should. Sally Shapiro releases a handful of publicity photos to mark each changing season, but other than that we know nothing about her. Sally Shapiro is not even her real name - it is a project that encompasses a singer, production, and writing team. She appears briefl in the video of her most recent single ‘Jackie Jackie’, but she is not really the subject of it – it is about the dreamings one of her fans, in a poster-covered bedroom. The music is disco in the icy Scandinavian sense, Moroder keyboard (her breakout single “I’ll Be By Your Side” has some lovely Europop stylings) and English-as-second-language lyrics about finding and losing love. The music summons up a past disco age of artists like Valerie Dore, but completes the deal by being very very good: pitched right into that golden pop triangle of happy-sad. HONOURABLE MENTIONS TO MAKE ME LOOK COOLER THAN THAT LIST SUGGESTS:
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A treat, reader, for sticking with me this long. In the space of a fortnight 'Brown Piano' by A Mountain Of One has slalomed into my top ten tracks for this year, any year maybe. It's an epic journey to... somewhere. Take it. Let me know what you think*. Film responses are dribbling in and generally they've been very positive. If I'm being brutally honest - and this is what this blog's for - they've almost been too respectful. I was expecting and hoping for a few radical, brutal takes; if I'm going to take the film up another few levels I need a scare. Work on the other two projects - the adaptation and the scary film - has been steady, slowed by preparation for a job interview on a TV drama. I watched about ten episodes to get myself up to speed. The interview went well, they seemed like nice people and I could see myself there. If the team is good, I like working with other people. I raise my game. Yes, sometimes there's compromises, but I'm not the type to kick off if a few words are changed round. TV taught me to choose my battles. * This is my first time round posting music and all the usual disclaimers apply. If anyone's bothered by this, let me know and I'll take it down. If you like it as much as I do, please buy it. |
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I'm a voracious reader who lost the habit when a big part of my work became reading. This was about four years ago and my life's poorer for it. So it's reassuring to read that the fears I hold about the gaps in my reading are shared by the heavyweights of the literary world. I haven't read Moby Dick either. Or any Proust. Or Don Quixote, Finnegans Wake, On The Road, Thomas Pynchon or Kurt Vonnegut. I did get to the last chapter of Ulysses though. Why I didn't push onto the end I don't know. |
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In writing, as with investment, the wisest course is to spread your creative energies through a number of projects. In practise I have always struggled with this. I don't have that kind of discipline. Once I find an idea I fall in love with it; a breathing and sleeping obsession. With the film in recess while my readers pick holes in it, I'm considering my next move. And as much as I hate taking this into consideration, I have to be strategic. I live in England. The film I've been slaving over is set in Australia. My next few projects need to be English. I have a few things in mind. One is to adapt a novel, a childhood fantasy written by a legend of the genre. When I was a kid I loved it. I can see a great movie in it. A few years back the idea of adapting it first hit and I (sacrilege!) marked up a copy of the book with treatment notes. The novel meanders along charmingly through a number of episodes before ratcheting up things in the last few chapters. The challenge in adapting it would be to preserve this charm while ratcheting up the narrative drive (the duck gliding along the lake while underwater its legs furiously paddle away). Adapting the book will be a doddle in comparison to getting an option to do so. My ill-informed view of the situation is that some time ago the family sold the rights to a company that, on their website, say:
The other project is not even an idea. Did you ever see The Woman In Black? It was a TV movie of the late 80s. It frightened the bejeesus out of me. From memory there wasn't any gore - just chilling suspenseful storytelling. I'd love to write something like that. Something that could be made on a budget: low cast, no explosions, no FX. A cracking good story, well told. This is what I love about writing. The idea for this film is somewhere in the keyboard that I am typing on right now. It's there. It's just the right combination of keystrokes away. |
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Over the last few weeks I've been blasting my friends with daily facebook status updates. "76 of 140". "92 of 139". Yesterday, "16 pages to go". Now it's "finito". As much as anything is ever finished - 'finished' is a pretty flimsy word isn't it? I could and will keep on tinkering on this forever, making it better (hopefully, and shorter). "Films aren't released... they escape" someone wise said once, perhaps. Recently as cinematic junkfood I sat down with the first Star Wars. A couple of minutes in I discovered to my horror that I'd chanced upon the 1997 "special edition" version that George Lucas allowed his goons to tinker with. Aside from the egregious story change that had Greedo shooting first , every crowd shot was jammed with digital creatures doing kerrraaaaazy Where's Wally japes. I can see why George was tempted. It's nice to tinker. But unless you're really careful, you're just filling in the margins. Good editing is a process of cleaving back all that is unessential. As a way of really getting to grips with the story you're telling it's a good exercise: would the edifice collapse without this scene? I'm not mounting an argument for conventional narrative here, just craft-solid stories that use every element in ways that are both logical and surprising. Last night I watched a beautifully told film story - The Lives Of Others - in which the last half hour was a continuous emotional crescendo. It all came from the strong foundations of the first hour. Concerns? Heaps plenty. I clipped it back a little but it's still 131 pages. Too long. There's a complicated psychological dance between the two main characters and I think I've missed a few steps. And the worst fear of all: is it really a film at all? No matter how hard I've tried, this baby might not fly. The only judges of that can be other people, and that's the next stage of my process. Farming the script out to some trusted compadres and sifting their responses - or dismissing them as the ravings of a lunatic. I might just take another brief look over it before I press "Send" though... |
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The dullest thing in the world must be blog entries where the writers apologise for their tardiness in writing an entry. Presuming an audience waiting, coughing and shifting in their seats, for the next facinating entry. Though it's been a month, I have no such presumptions. The second draft, after a delayed start, is in motion. I don't have a printer and my nearest printing place is 30 p per page (for Australian readers that's roughly 75 cents), so I've got two sets of computer notes that I'm working off. Lots of Alt-Tabbing. It's slow going but for a few days last week I hit a rich seam. Have you heard of Stockholm Syndrome? I wonder if I've developed this with my script. The idea has menaced me, in waking and dreaming life, for six years and only now do I feel I'm starting to understand it. In order to write it convincingly, completely, with heart and soul, I've had to submit to it (only while I write, dear reader. Don't fear for me. Too much). Is all creative writing a kind of Stockholm Syndrome? To branch off from my script - and I feel I have to, for there's not much to say other than the second draft is going pretty well so far - this weekend I visited Manchester for the first time since I left about six months ago. I loved it. Manchester is, quite simply, one of the best cities in the world. To make my moving away to London even worse, my favourite cafe/bar in Manchester, the Night and Day cafe, is now open for Sunday lunch. Once upon a time, the lack of a good Sunday venue to have a coffee and read the paper was my one barrier to happiness in Manchester. And the best record label/DJ collective in the world - B-Music/Twisted Nerve - are doing a Friday night residency at a new caf called Trof which is the dog's bollocks. Manchester was good while I was there, but it's gotten even better. Yes, the streets are still haunted by the ghosts of my romantic fuckups, but they didn't menace me too badly. It's Monday and I've given myself until next Friday to get the second draft done. The days from here till then will need to be good ones. Vomit draft speed, almost. Next time I check in with you I hope to be smoothing it off. The plan being, it'll then be good enough to start showing around to people. People that might be able to get the film made. Or tell me I've wasted six years of my life being hostage to a mad, mad idea. |
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One of my favourite writers told me you should write first drafts as fast as you can. She calls it the 'Vomit Draft'. It's messy and chaotic, but you've blasted past the hardest bit, which is the beginning. (John August, writer of Go, Big Fish etc, recommends precisely the opposite. Potayto, Potato) I wrote the film in four weeks, on good days hitting my target of ten pages a day. This qualified as vomit draft speed. I planned to assemble my edit notes via reading the script twice. When I edit my own work I find it difficult to resist tweaking lines as I go and pretty soon I forget about reading and commence the draft instead. There's so much material in this script, I needed the first read to give me the big picture. Is the pacing right? Are the progressions for the main characters convincing? At what points am I bored? It's also one of the last times - I think - when you're fresh enough to ask yourself "What's not here that should be here?" The script is long - 138 pages - and it read long. Writing fast and finding out about the characters on the fly, there was some ham-fisted plotting and dialogue. Looking over my notes right now, most read "make sharper", "too quick", with a very occasional "good". (My favourite note, pertaining to a montage in the second act: "more evil apocalyptic momentum". Did I really write that?!) I knew going in that I wanted to cut about 30 pages for the second draft, so the slight drags in pace didn't overly worry me. An issue for next draft. Before the second read I spent a few days writing detailed character bios for my principals. There's a set of brothers that in the first draft are kind of meh - I'm changing it so they start estranged and get closer over the film. I know, it sounds mooshy... but it's all in the execution. My ear'sve been softened by a few years in the UK, so I spent a couple of hours cycling through my memory banks: grouse.... jeez.... it'll be Cherry Ripe.... ripper Rita.... arse over tit.... back seat bogan... I also found some corkers courtesy of the ABC Wordmatch site. It's great. You can search via region, age, or subject. My personal favourite, which I will try to find a place for: you're in more shit than a Werribee duck. I can die happy if I've helped the cause of classic Aussie slang. Yesterday and today were taken up with the second read. And man, that was pernickety stuff. Line by line. I concentrated mainly on the first two acts because the flow-on will entirely change the third. I surprised myself by feeling better about the script after the second read. The structure is basically sound, and some immediate fixes suggested themselves to me. The beauty of overwriting, as I did, is you can just cut the boring bits. Much easier than making stuff up. Next time, I hope, I'll be deep into the second draft.
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