The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

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Platty Joob shindig

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Just checking in to see if anyone is watching. It’s breakfast time here in NZ and the nation, as one, is crowded around their TV screens, drinking in every moment of Duran Duran and Rod Stewart while they eat their morning Weetbix(sic).

I’m gilding the lily a little bit – yes, it’s on TV here but I suspect I’m the only person I know who’s actually watching the show.

Highlight so far is Alicia Keys crowbarring in her famous song about New York by having a preamble ramble about how “London feels like home… so in many ways this song is just as much about London…”. Yeah wha’evah, AK.

Anyway, I am enjoying the frosty, eyes glazed-over expressions of the royals until they realise they are on TV. Particularly Kate – her resting face is severe with pursed lips and the narrowed eyes of a ruthless operator.

Benjamin Button songs

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For those that don’t know, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is about a man who is born old and as tine goes by he gets younger, not older.

This is 2nd Thought by OMD. Written when the lads were about 20 years old.

Listening to it again just now, makes me think that it sounds more like a late-period song, a lyric reflecting on the past – the song itself is quietly confident and not busting a gut to be a hit. Just a nice groove established and a bit of reflective ramblin’. If they were in their 50s you might even accuse them of “phoning it in”.

I realise that this may be a little bit niche but there are plenty of songs where the knackered old performers are trying to sound young and vibrant, but I think the opposite is rare. Unless of course you know different.

Where have all the actuaries gone? (Energy prices)

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Reading about the hike to energy bills of 54% makes me wonder if the wheels have come off all aspects of fiscal infrastructure. Systemically, it seems the Treasury has given up.

You can’t pass on a 54% rise to people who can’t afford it. It’s too much. Lots of people won’t be able to pay it and many more will take Edwina Currie’s caring advice from 30 years ago to simply knit a bobble hat. By putting this through they are not going to get the money. It’s nuts.

In the old days, actuaries would be deployed to wrestle with an issue like this and come up with some way of handling it but perhaps the government has run out of goodwill. In any complex field of economic management, you can’t throw a price rise like this at people and expect them to pay it when you know a lot of them can’t. It’s very much a last resort. This leads me to think that the Government has lost the support of the civil service.

I had a similar theory about the last year or so of Trump. Routine logistics became harder and gaffe after gaffe happened because he » Continue Reading.

Emergency Box

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Every once in a while I think about my terrible emergency box in the shed. This is meant to be a box of emergency supplies that will keep you alive should there be a global power cut or an earthquake/tsunami. Or Jacinda plunges the country into an oppressive and aggressive dictatorship model as shown in the Eurythmics video for “Sex Crime!”. If you’ve seen the video, it’s very good. In fact that Eurythmics video would be a good starting point if someone wanted to expand the band’s ideas into a book, film or stage musical of some kind. I have embedded the link here so you can see for yourself. It’s MUCH better than Total Eclipse of the Heart (don’t @ me !!!).

Here in the Shakin’ Isles, it’s common to have an emergency box and an occasional barbecue chat on this subject allows the alpha males to ramp up their inner Alan Partridge to the highest high. I hate being left out so I’d like to get a good one together. Can you help?

At the moment I have a really clever wind-up radio that doesn’t need batteries. And, er, that’s it. There used to be other things in » Continue Reading.

Soft Cell and Pet Shop Boys – Purple Zone

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This is something I didn’t know was coming – so it’s nice to see and hear. Worth it for the way that Chris Lowe and Dave Ball light up the screen. Song sounds a bit like a Coldplay song but with PSB’s Always on My Mind playing in the background.

It’s exactly what you’d imagine such a collaboration to sound like, so it’s not disappointing – but I’d like the beats and the synth lines to be louder and more forceful.

ICC Womens World Cup 2022

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Incredibly tight games so far and England did their very best to lose yesterday, but they scraped a win in order to stay in the tournament.

The commentary here in NZ is really good, from women players who know the teams well. In one game we had a married couple out there batting for NZ – possibly the first time this is has happened in international cricket…? Imagine having a miscommunication with yer missus over whether there was a quick single available at long on – and then sending her back, causing a run out! I’d never hear the end of it.

Songs of admiration about sport

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This morning, my thoughts turned to Malcolm McClaren’s single “Double Dutch” – a ridiculously catchy song. It’s about the prowess of the New York-based high school competitive skipping teams in the 80s. If you’re not familiar, watch the clip – it’s truly amazing.

Now. Malcolm could have put a song together about anything. Yet, on this occasion, he’s so impressed by the Double Dutch skipping teams that he devotes a whole song to it. Unusual? I say yes. How many other songs are written about sport from people outside of sport? Not many.

I can think of one more relatively obvious one but I will let you work that one out so I don’t hog the limelight.

To be very clear on this – I am not talking about songs by sportspersons, or songs to promote personalities, clubs or events like FA Cup Finals or World Cups. No comedy songs either. So “Howzat!” by Beefy and the Middle Stumps will not qualify here. Or that wretched rave single about Cantona.

I want the song you nominate to be a sincere tribute to a particular sport where the writer is so inspired that they have to write a » Continue Reading.

What class are you? (New Statesman quiz)

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We British have cast off our class-obsessed past and now operate in a free and open society where antiquated notions of class, race, gender, aristocratic advantages and old school connections are a thing of the past.

All of which is bollocks, obviously.

Anyway I took this test and I am delighted to say that I am “working class”. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

No cultural references in this quiz – it’s all about how rich you are, which I think misses the point.

Anyway, I’m off to creosote me whippets in t’ tin bath in me shed. Is your result what you expected?

https://www.newstatesman.com/society/2022/01/quiz-which-class-are-you-according-to-the-great-british-public

“Out there” Macca

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My first real-time awareness to the stranger side of Paul McCartney was when Coming Up was released. I was about 12 and getting into pop music. At the time, I didn’t realise it was him and the song just grabbed me straight away. It’s *obviously* him, I realise that now – but without context and just hearing this immediately brilliant pop song on the radio stopped me in my tracks and it was brilliant to eventually find out the truth.

Temporary Secretary was from the sane album and sounds even less like him. And let’s be clear about this, the song is completely great. Could be Silicon Teens/The Normal, could be a Residents number (but the fact it’s got a tune rules that out), or “Weird!” Al Jankovic, or at a push Randy Newman or at an even bigger push Frank Zappa. But no – it’s everyone’s favourite scallly, aahr Paul.

So – what I would like you to post is Macca songs that don’t sound at all like him. Not the meandering sound experiments, but preferably songs that on first listen don’t make you think it’s him. I’m sure there are quite a few.

Buying records out of sheer recalcitrance

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This was a discussion that popped up on Twitter this week and I thought that the good people of the Afterword might have something to add. Basically, have you a read a scathing, dismissive one-star review that says something like “it’s a sad mixture of the worst elements of the Wombles and Racey” and thought – “that sounds great! I’m off to the record shop!” ? Plenty seemed to have done this. You?

My one was the purchase of a this Sigue Sigue Sputnik 12” single, largely because absolutely everybody slammed it (and them). Even actually buying the thing was made a little difficult by the guy behind the counter. But I like basic, chugging synth beats with strange noises going on and I thought it was the best new thing available that week. I could imagine The Cramps doing it. I didn’t exactly shout about it but I think enough time has passed now to post this without fear of ridicule (which is something I am scared of).

Mr Nasty

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I often think of this character – a regular guest on Jellybone, the children’s radio programme on LBC in the mid-70s.

This barely-viewed YouTube clip has recordings of his interactions with children, as he defends arguments like “the sun is cold”, “water is dry” and “Australia is in Scotland”. He aggressively shouts down opposing views, sets up a ridiculous and bizarre counter-argument- and in the ensuing confusion declares that he’s won. Indeed, he boasts that he has never lost an argument. There’s even a live clip of him defending his position on the earth being flat.

In the 70s this was a ridiculous character there to entertain children. He’d have his own news channel now, eh readers?

Domestic Dilemma

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We had some heavy rain about three weeks ago and a leak developed in our bedroom ceiling. Oh no!

Did a bit of ringing around and I spoke to Fred from a local company that attends to this kind of thing. He’s local – and said he’d pop round. I didn’t hear back for a week. He then appeared at my door, saying he was on his way to another job and he could have a look now, if I want. Really nice guy, seemed really genuine – we had a laugh.

He said he’d pop round a few days later to have a proper look and do a quote etc. Well, it’s been about 10 days now and I have no idea when or if he’s coming back.

If you were me – would you just get in touch with someone else, or give Fred a chance, since he is such a nice bloke? I’m so bloody British that I don’t want to offend Fred. I’m think I’m going to say “sorry Fred, appreciate you’re busy but we have to sort this out pretty urgently, so we are getting someone else in to do it. Thanks.”

Fair enough?

Art movements

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A reference to the WTF-ness of Trout Mask Replica in another thread has got me thinking – and that often means a thread in the Afterword. Aren’t you lucky?

Last week I went to an exhibition of Surrealism and very good it was too. Starting with the post WWI Dadaist movement, we were taken towards original works by Dali, Man Ray, Magritte and a film by Rene Clair. It was about two hours in another world and I can imagine that it must have been thrilling to be a part of it. However, I have this gnawing feeling of pragmatic cynicism like a devil on my shoulder, telling me that this was something constructed by well-off academics who seemed free of the need to work for a living.

Bill Bryson observed that an unusually large number of great writers, artists and poets were employed by their church – vicars who tended to have a nice domestic set-up with a parsonage all set up for them, usually with staff. It wasn’t until the 20th century when we started to educate en masse so that literacy was a basic standard rather than something available only to a privileged upper class. » Continue Reading.

Throw off your mental chains (hoo hoo hoo)

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I don’t have a single original thought in my head – so this is a rebranding of the “songs from acts you usually dislike” kind of thread.

I know this song really well to the point that, oh God, I think I must have bought it at the time. And it’s still triffic. Quite a tum-te-tum chugger, understated, pleasant, dignified. If it wasn’t for the 80s horns, it would be darn near perfect.

I won’t get carried away – I don’t think 5 Star are due a reappraisal but this isn’t half bad and if it was Janet Jackson it would have sold gerzillions.