The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

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Is the BBC biased?

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In classic ‘get your excuses in early’ style, all sides of the election debate are lining up dear old Auntie as the reason why they’re not going to win. Usually if all parties are disgruntled with the coverage they’re getting you can probably say the broadcaster is doing a good job. But we’ve seem to have gone beyond that and into this weird reality where the fact that all sides are complaining about the BBC means there must be some substance to it.

The problem with conspiracy theories is after a while everything becomes evidence of conspiracy, and evidence that disproves the theory must therefore be… part of the conspiracy.

Here’s three stores from the BBC leaders debate, alleging pro-tory, anti-libdem and anti-tory bias. They’re all from sources which I’m sure we can agree are themselves unashamedly biased.

https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2019/11/23/bbc-news-editing-the-audience-reaction-to-boris-johnson-is-really-not-okay/ https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1208396/Brexit-News-General-Election-latest-Jo-Swinson-Liberal-Democrat-BBC-debate https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7716685/BBC-faces-bias-row-Boris-Johnson-confronted-hostile-audience-Question-Time.html

I’d be interested to know what the venerable members of the AW think

England v Australia

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The Cheats v The Chokers. My heart says England, my head says Australia.

The Hollies Stand (named after the ATIB Hitmakers, obviously) will greet David Warner with all the respect that great ambassador for the game and his country deserves. The M6 is still blocked with sandpaper convoys heading for Edgbaston hardware stores. It’ll all be in good humour and if he plays well, they’ll applaud him for it.

I can’t see myself getting much work done today. This is about cricket, by the way.

Kill Tory Scum

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A band called Killdren have had their slot at Glastonbury cancelled because it’s come to light they have a song called Kill Tory Scum. I’m in two minds about this.

On one hand, I do get exasperated by abuse and violent imagery being used to demonstrated strength of feeling. It’s easier than engaging with facts, but it’s not going to do much bring two sides of a debate together. This case does seem particularly wince-making – it’s hard to imagine any other word – ‘Labour,’ for example – that you could put between ‘kill’ and ‘scum’ and not expect to get shot down.

On the other hand, it’s rock’n’roll. It’s supposed to be big and dumb.There’s a proud history of inarticulate howls of rage to be upheld here. There’s a reason political and philosophical treatise aren’t written in rhyming couplets with a repeating chorus and a shouty coda, and there’s a reason why Bono sounds like a dick when he forgets this. That’s because he’s a dick, but that’s not my point. Even when it’s more considered, popular music has always maintained a vengeful side:

And I hope that you die And your death comes soon And I’ll follow » Continue Reading.

Danny Baker, the racist?

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Our former Word Blog colleague has got himself in a spot of bother. Yesterday he tweeted a photo of a chimpanzee in a suit and captioned it ‘Royal Baby Leaves Hospital’

Interpretations of this seem to fall into two groups: 1. The lifelong Millwall fan is obviously a racist 2. The cheeky chappie man of the people did a racist thing, but isn’t a racist.

Dan threw in a third explanation, which is that he never made the connection between a day-old mixed-race baby and a chimp, because he doesn’t have a ‘diseased mind.’ That’s fair, if you accept that despite being a massive footie fan and pundit, he never realised what all the monkey noises and banana-throwing was about. In a subsequent tweet, he added a couple more theories; 4. it was a joke and 5. I had cancer once, you know.

My guess is, if you liked him before yesterday you’ll still like him now and if you didn’t he’s guilty as sin. And if he doesn’t lose his job he’ll have Spurs to thanks for giving people something else to get excited about. Thoughts, anyone?

Generation Sex

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For chaps of a certain age – a few years younger than the AW regulars I suspect – here’s a curious little thing. Cook, Jones, James and Idol on Tuesday night in LA. All the hits, if you prefer Swindle to Bollocks.

They all got old as did we, but there’s still something about Steve Jones’ supercharged Chuck Berryisms and Cook’s thumping enthusiasm that makes me go a tiny bit trembly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJB3cmj9638&t=2464s&frags=pl%2Cwn

Unexpected things to get passionate about

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Get me, doing list thread. While cooking tonight’s dinner I’ve been listening, for the first time in over 30 years, to Bauhaus’ Press The Eject and Give Me The Tape. Don’t for goodness’ sake try this at home – it really is the most overwrought goth guff. I can’t imagine what 19-year-old me ever saw in it, with his stupid hair and his stupid coat, and his stupid cheekbones.

Anyway, there’s a song on it called The Spy in The Cab and it’s about, ahem, the ‘all-seeing mechanised eye’ which stops lorry driver exceeding the speed limit and their contracted hours. ‘Automated autonomy,’ apparently. At least I think it is; maybe I’m missing something.

It occurred to me that tachography must be one of the weirdest things anyone’s ever got really cross about in song; but I may be wrong. Are there songs about traffic light sequencing or over-sold extended warranties? I’m sure there are.

David Ford Animal Spirits

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What does it sound like?:

The John Maynard Keynes Blues Explosion? I have to declare an interest here because I’ve known the boy Ford since he was a spotty oik playing third rhythm guitar in my pick-up band in the 90s. This album, his fifth-and-a-half, goes where none has ever gone before, with a fusion of blues rock, Americana and economic treatise. If Robert Johnson had met Adam Smith at that fateful crossroads, and Milton Friedman had showed up with his SG and Marshalls, it’d sound something like this.

It sounds great, actually, courtesy of producer James Brown, not that one, the other one. Like the coolest PPE professor at a provincial university, the one the girls with glasses go for, Ford patiently take us through the last 20 years of unfettered capitalism, pointing out the fallibility of monetary policy over crunching guitars, pinpointing the moment greed went bad over rock-solid riffs. It’s a series of three-minute lectures, but without the polemic you’d expect from most musicians with a political point to make. It’s disappointed dissection rather than diatribe. All very reasonable.

As Rockenomics concept albums go, it perhaps runs out of steam a little, with the big soppy » Continue Reading.

All Things Must Paste

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I love this picture of a billsticker pasting over an advert for Jarrod Dickenson’s Ready the Horses album and looking down to see a somehow familiar face looking up. Such is our allotted 15 minutes; one man’s brush with fame erased by another’s fame with a brush. Or something; that doesn’t quite make sense. Better captions are probably available.

Apparently it’s not a set up, by the way – he was just passing.

View post on imgur.com

KFCUK! Is the chicken crisis symbolic of the decline of Britain? Or what?

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A much-loved purveyor of greased bird parts puts out a tender for its distribution and chooses – hello! – a lowest-offer boxshifter with no experience of moving soggy poultry. On day one, less than a third of the chain’s high street obesity farms receives its order of reformulated hen lumps.

This goes on for days. The British public panics and swamps the police with calls for justice. The fuzz point out, with some justification, that dealing with salt-fed chicken scarcity or Zinger-related disgruntlement is not high on their list of priorities. Meanwhile breasts and thighs go pale and sweaty in the backs of vans. Charities can’t take them, because hunger doesn’t kill people, chickens do. A lot of chopped chook gets chucked. Farmers and franchisees – small family businesses – bear the brunt.

The media loves it and schedules are cleared for minute-by-minute updates from the KF-cene of the crime. Slack-jawed Boneless Banquet gobblers, their pasty faces already de-scaling as withdrawal takes hold, line up to announce, wattles a-wobble, that this denial of their usual fat-stacked BucketFeast is dangerously prolonging their lives. Social media goes into meltdown with You Had One Job memes exploding servers across the country. KFC joins » Continue Reading.

Do all crowds sing in tune?

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Thought you might like this. There’s a theory that in a large group of people the sharp and flat singers will cancel each other out and you’ll get something like perfect pitch. Our boy David Ford tested this at the Milk and Cookies charity show on Saturday, using the audience and a mixing desk to recreate an Afterword-friendly classic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCkE0dMLmTM&feature=youtu.be

Pork Jesus

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Was anyone *really* offended by Greggs Nativity Sausage? Does anyone know anyone who was? Who is most entitled to be offended by it – Christians, Jews or vegetarians? And are you now a) more or b) less aware that the apostrophe-free apostate Greggs sells sausage rolls?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/41997936/greggs-sorry-for-swapping-jesus-for-sausage-roll-in-nativity-scene

If it was Pret a Manger it’d make more sense.

Doorknockers

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Do you ever get people turning up on your doorstep selling you stuff? What are they offering and what’s your response?

This week I’ve had:

A deaf guy called Jack whose card said he was selling his drawings to feed his kids. His sketches were… do you need hearing to draw? Apparently you do. I made appreciative noises but he was gazing at his portfolio and couldn’t hear them, so I tapped him on the elbow and said, can I just give you a couple of quid? He got that okay. We were both happy with that transaction – he got a bit of wodge and I didn’t have to own his art.

An ex-con called Peter, on parole and selling door to door from a big bag on his back. He introduced himself and asked if I’d like to see what he had in the bag. Thinking back to Jack I said no, not really. He said: “Well enjoy your life of ignorance then,” and stormed off. I felt terrible. Not because I’d annoyed him, but because I’d annoyed him and he knew where I lived. And then I felt even more terrible for thinking that.

A lovely chap » Continue Reading.

Be Here Now

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Released 20 years ago today, apparently, so I’m listening to it for the first time in, ooh, nineteen years and fifty-one weeks. 10 years ago, at a press event, I found myself at the bar with the then editor of Q. I asked if he ever got grief for Phil Sutcliffe’s infamous 5-star review, even though he’d probably still been at school at the time. He shook his head and said “Every cunt in the world still says ‘You owe me £10 for Be Here Now.””

So is it all that bad? Not all of it’s that bad. There’s just so much of it. Too many tracks, and too many tracks on each track. Everything’s an ounce too long and an eighth too loud. Noel and producer Owen Morris famously had a problem turning things down, in more ways than one. No excess is too excessive here. Be How Now assaults the eardrums the way it assaulted its makers’ septums.

Listening to it now, the problem’s obvious enough – the songs aren’t very good, and making them longer won’t cure that – and Noel’s a one-trick guitarist, so multi-tracking won’t hide that either. It’s a new musical sub-genre: Thrash-Plod. It’s » Continue Reading.

The Smalt

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What does it sound like?:

It sounds like a bargain! How many of us music enthusiasts on this music-based site have had to put up with a salt shaker that doesn’t play our favourite music? I know I have. Well, no longer. The NEW! SMALT is the answer to our prayers. Not only does it have a crisp and powerful bluetooth speaker to stream your Steve Howe outtake compilations, it also help you monitor your sodium intake by letting you choose the amount of salt you desire which it will dispense into a small, removable tray. It’s easy and SMALT does all the measuring for you!

You know how shaking a boring old-fashioned fist-mounted salt pot up and down makes you look like a wanker, right? Well no more. With NEW! SMALT’s interactive connectivity and easy-to-use app, you can dazzle your friends by whipping out your phone and pouring your salt with it. You can shake your phone and salt comes out! Of the SMALT, not the phone. And you still look like a wanker! They haven’t thought this through.

And here’s another bonus! The SMALT includes ambient mood lighting for those special occasions when you want to entertain » Continue Reading.

The Stars Sing Lennon & McCartney

by 14 Comments

What does it sound like?:

Around ’63-‘64 The Beatles were shitting out songs like a labrador on vindaloo and, because my parents were cheapskates and wouldn’t shell out for Sgt Pepper, this 1967 pooper-scoop of the thinly-smeared excrement they trailed behind them was my first introduction to the sound and smell of the Fabs when I found it at the back of the stereogram 10 years later.

Let’s start with the cover. Lennon, McCartney, stars… wallop. That’ll be £50 please. Paul’s whistling in this photo – can we call it The Stars Whistle Lennon and McCartney? No? Suit yourself. The artist has thoughtfully added clip-art frames to John (already transitioning) and Paul (still full moptop) as if to say: Don’t worry! They’re not really adrift in the vacuum of space! It’s just pictures!

And the stars! Pity poor Kenny Lynch, bottom of this default-font bill. The notion of ‘stars’ gets a bit inverted here, as you’d think that this motley collection of Epstein-stablemates and blokes whose sister Paul’s trying to shag would normally not exist in the same universe as their benefactors. But then ‘Lennon and McCartney Get Sung by People Who Will Dine Out on Their Brief Association » Continue Reading.

No Parlez

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What does it sound like?:

It’s not fair to blame Pino Palladino for all the excesses of the 1980s. He probably wasn’t the first to roll up his jacket sleeves, or wear a matador hat on stage, or think that drums should go ‘ptchoo’ instead of ‘thwack’. But he’s the reason why this bargain-bin classic remains firmly rooted in that cursed decade, along with trimphones, the C5, effective labour representation and colonial expansionism.

Pino’s fretless and flanged bass scribbles through Love of The Common People like a crayon across the face of the Mona Lisa. It wobbles like a weeble on a see-saw. It staggers like a drunk in a bouncy kebab shop. It writhes like an inflatable wraith outside a secondhand car dealer. On the originals of the soul classics that anchor No Parlez, the rhythm sections are nailed down to the groove. They play, they don’t spray. Pino is not so much in the pocket as all over the front of your trousers, like splashback piss from a tin urinal.

Young Paul does his best to find space between the gurgles. He’s also up against the Fabulous Wealthy Tarts, whose constant chatter frustrates his attempts to express » Continue Reading.

Grand Theft Audio

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A kid in the Lower Sixth used to shoplift records to order. You’d look for him after Assembly and say: “Have you got ‘Do Anything You Want To Do’ by Eddie and The Hot Rods?” and he’d just nod and say “Woolworth’s or Smith’s?”

Other teenage entrepreneurs ran a more traditional business model. They’d seek out rare or sought after discs and sell them on at a premium. This was basically a monetised version of the Panini Football Sticker market we’d all traded in a couple of years before. Their Stock Exchange was a noticeboard outside the toilets. Buzzcocks – Spiral Scratch EP – £2. Williams, 5A.

Paul blew away the competition on price, product range and his innovative next-day delivery service. He really was the Amazon of his day, except that where Amazon just doesn’t pay any tax, Paul didn’t pay anything at all. His single-price-point structure predated Pound Shop by decades – you could order Walk on By by The Stranglers (7”, picture sleeve, blue vinyl, B/W Old Codger and Tank) or six sides of Welcome Back My Friends To The Show That Never Ends and you’d pay a quid either way. It was an elegant egalitarian model » Continue Reading.

Spotted in London today

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I bet that somewhere on the internet there’s another photo of this man in this street. A prize* to the first person to post one

*Not actually a prize

Travesties

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Venue:

Apollo Theatre, London

Date: 15/03/2017

One doesn’t frequent the theatre as much as one ought, nor will one in future if the theatre continues to stiff one for eighty-three notes plus a £1.75 ‘Restoration Contribution” for a seat in Row B of the Circle. In an odd way it’s the smaller amount which hurts you more – having recovered from the mugging at the Box Office, you find yourself reeling all over again at their temerity in coming back to you with hand outstretched for a levy to fund the polishing of the proscenium or the re-sticking of the stucco. Such costs, you might think, would be intrinsic to the gross figure previously presented, but not so. Throw in train tickets, a couple of Shaftesbury Avenue burgers and half a bottle of claggy Malbec each, and the chiz household is well on its way to £250 in the hole for the privilege of sitting side-by-side in silence in the dark all evening, something we normally expect to get for free at home. A modest mortgage renegotiation at half time scores us two thimbles of Haagen Daas, the ice cream equivalent of a Farrow and Ball testing pot; it’s » Continue Reading.