The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

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Big Gold Dream BBC 2

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Great documentary about the Scottish post-punk scene up on iPlayer right now. Fire Engines, Josef K and Scars feature heavily. Contributions from, among others, Bob Last (Fast Product), Malcolm Ross (Josef K and Orange Juice), David McClymont (Orange Juice), Alan Rankine (Associates), Vic Godard (Subway Sect) and the customary assortment of baldy men.

Narrated by (one-time Postcard artiste) Robert Forster.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08n8q3f/big-gold-dream

“But people didn’t talk like that then!”

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I have a bit of a thing about anachronistic dialogue in dramas set within living memory. Recently it’s the flashbacks to 1996 in Undercover (BBC 1) which have been exercising me.

The week before last a newspaper hack had a right old rant about the ubiquity of the word ‘iconic’, which I’m pretty sure only did become ubiquitous well into the noughties. In Sunday’s episode, there was a whole riff, key to the action, on the expression ‘tipping point’, which again I would hazard didn’t come into popular parlance until some time after 2000.

So does this matter? On the ‘no’ side, I suppose here it could be argued that 1996 is being looked at through a 2016 lens, and the use of 2016 language makes it easier for modern folks to relate to the characters. On the ‘yes’ side, why shouldn’t language (the writer’s medium, after all) be subject to the same rules as, say, fashion or music in drama – it would be ridiculous to have a character listening to Coldplay or wearing carrot jeans in 1996, for example.

Yes, on reflection I probably *should* get out more. In the meantime, any thoughts (either on rightness or wrongness » Continue Reading.

Brushes with Greatness #1

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It is 30 June 1979. I am 16 years old, and waiting , along with my Boys’ Brigade compadres, at Glasgow Central station to board a train to London, our ultimate destination Adelboden in Switzerland.

But who is that over yonder? Ah, it’s Jimmy Pursey, Paul Cook and Steve Jones – the ‘Sham Pistols’, if you will – fresh from their triumphant gig the previous evening at the Glasgow Apollo. Whipping out my copy of Sounds I approach the Hersham Huxter and ask him how the gig had gone. I don’t catch his response, although it sounds strangely like ‘Fakkin’ awful!’ He signs my Sounds with his trademark ‘Fanx’ and I return to await the train. At some point during the journey, Cook or Jones or maybe Pursey runs through our carriage covered in flour or talc with one of the other two chasing him with a walking stick.

Your own recollections of the Sham Pistols, please, or perhaps your own brushes with rock’s B-list…

http://s800.photobucket.com/user/noboruwataya5/media/P1070112_zps0qduog03.jpg.html

What’s your favourite Law?

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Thanks to the ‘Scotland or North Korea’ thread, I now know about Poe’s Law. That set me thinking about the multitude of other ‘laws’ which the internet has spawned, Godwin’s, for example, or Rule 34 (‘If it exists, there is porn of it’).

My hands-down favourite ‘meatspace’ law has to be Parkinson’s Law (‘Work expands to fill the time available to do it’).

Wot’s yours?

Bowiewallow

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There’s been admiration here for Adam Buxton’s 2013 appreciation of David Bowie (highlight for me is Buxton’s uncanny imagining of Bish Bosch-era Scott Walker covering ‘The Laughing Gnome’).

Bowiewallow parts 1 and 2 is/are Buxton’s personal response to Bowie’s death and includes interviews with various slebs and civilians whose lives were touched in some way by the odd-eyed Chameleon of Rock. In part 1 there’s a skype interview with Dara O’Kearney, who had a long correspondence by email with The Dame (one highlight for me was Buxton’s response to the background barking of O’Kearney’s dog).

Part 2 contains a (for me) extremely illuminating interview with Johan Renck, who directed the videos for Lazarus and Black Star and who, for a non-native speaker, has a formidable command of demotic English. I even learned a new expression – ‘butt-hurt’.

http://adam-buxton.co.uk/ad/2016/03/24/podcast-ep-13-14-bowiewallow-pt-1-2/