Running, the FPR, enjoying the Catholic persecution complex and great songs to jog to

In training for the Liverpool Half Marathon, I had First Proper Run (FPR) last night.

People who have run, given up, drifted away and started up etc will recognise the FPR.

The FPR is the one that heralds a campaign and it has to be accompanied by a range of acoutréments. Mine was no different.

Like all modern eejits with too much time on their hands and a range of pointless technology at their disposal, I had everything racked up to the max: heart rate monitor measuring fat man strain and GPS monitoring speed, elevation climbed and every footfall and deviation.

And then I exploded out for a 32 minute 5K - take that Mo Farah. (Mo is more than twice as fast).

I suppose in past times I'd have been disheartened with it having run so much quicker in the past, and I would invariably not have run again. But this is the FPR.

Not this time. I remember reading about how Greg Lemond would lean into the pain and hurt when going into the red on his bike. I'm looking at doing the same but at a much, much humbler a level of achievement.

This time I'm going to enjoy the pain as I build up and get faster and ignore the guilt associated with not doing enough training in the past - there's nothing I can do about that, now. I call it enjoying the Catholic persecution complex.

Anyway, these posts will be about running and music and raising money for MS charities. You need good music if you are to survive the FPR and the week of 'getting back into it.'

First up, an oldie. Incredibly The Stunning's Brewing Up a Storm is 20 years old. Which means I am 20 years older. But as Hugh Dennis used to say on the Mary Whitehouse Experience: "It's got a good beat."

The Onion visits the locations of The Wire

Shack: Britain's greatest ever unheralded band

I have tried to change CDs in the car in recent months, but can't. And as a result I now realise Shack are the greatest band. Ever. That's it.

So there.

And this is their best song. This will, however, wind up the purists, who will prattle on about 'Waterpistol' and 'Here's Tom' etc. To them, I'm sorry. (I'm not.)

Ultimately, me and purists know that Mick and John are the greatest unheralded songwriters Britain has ever produced.

And HMS Fable is boss because it is one of the few records I bought from more than 10 years ago that I still play the arse out of.

I think it is perfect. Literally perfect.

The Wire in utero

The Wire - Bible

Bob Geldof's tribute to Gary Moore

Gary Moore was one of a triumvirate of great Irish bluesmen, including Van Morrison and Rory Gallagher. Alas, after his recent death, we are left with only the first now. Here is in his pomp playing with BB King and listen to the touching and intelligent tribute from Bob Geldof on BBC Radio 5Live's breakfast show last Monday.

Raymond Chandler on Radio 4

A new series of, and on, Chandler is airing this week on Radio 4.
Read more about it here at the Radio 4 website.
But more importantly, please listen to Ian Fleming speaking to a clearly refreshed Chandler for the BBC on the above link. It is apparently the only recorded example of Chandler speaking about his work. The old boys do blow smoke up one another's fundaments, but that ain't no thing, just getting them together is good enough for me.
I love Chandler's writing and the fact that it transfers so beautifully to radio, surely, in no small part down to the compelling nature of Marlowe's character.
(BTW: Picture courtesy of the Daily Telegraph)

The threat to Britain's libraries and public service

There is essentially a deep ideological battle about Britain's public services and its funding of key cultural and educational institutions.

The Tories want to hack them away from the state and make them profitable or place them in the voluntary sector. To complete this they are disingenuously using the idea of community or society, which we all believe are attractive and important forces for social cohesion, and to cloak the overall vision of monetising them, to use that horrible internet word.

The Tories love the idea of the third sector (see the satire on 'The Fourth Sector' in The Thick of It) as it reduces the cost to the public purse.

For example, the Tories want to shut libraries and schools and other public services and push the dogma of volunteerism - if you love it so much do it yourself. Why? It cuts capital and labour costs.

What replaces it? Well, there is a vast industry involved in bidding for grants, largely governed and administrated by powerful and well connected private sector companies - but still currently in partnership with the public sector.

Take away the public sector and you have a wonderfully fluid and profitable sector of public life run by private sector companies.

What results in education, the health service or education? Well organised special interest groups, usually private companies, delivering services where they are profitable.

Look at employment services - Reed et al. Clinton-style reform of the public services rendered in public private enterprise form, but delivered for profit with the reform of welfare and its savings at its core.

That's a specific example to the labour sector, but it is one that will be rolled out across all of Britain's public sector.

The sad thing is that many senior Tories have convinced themselves into buying into the idea of the Big Society as a post New Labour sincere embracing of reform of public services as an empowering force. In actual fact, it's just a delusional post modern New Labour-style Orwellian linguistic exercise that assuages themselves of the guilt of actually being Thatcherite.

Or, if you are more cynical, they are just pissing on your head and telling you it is raining.

Leave it to Fr Ted:

Father Ted: What was it he used to say about the needy? He had a term for them...
Father Dougal McGuire: A shower of bastards.

The Seven Ages of Man/Woman in Popular Music: Part 3 The Lover

And so, after childhood, Shakespeare's melancholic Jacques turns his attention to adulthood and the long slow slide to death and that moment in which Beckett's Pozzo says, 'the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more.'
The third age of man and wochap sees us as the heartbroken lover,

And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow.

What are the great songs of the love lorn? For me there is no contest, the Mighty Smokey with help from his Miracles.

Reactions from The Word massive here

Seven Ages of Man in Pop: Part 2 Teenage Years

SO, in a bid to win the 'Statin' the bleedin' obvious, innit?' award for this millennium, I'm going to stick my neck out (and steal the work of countless esteemed writers and thinkers) and say that popular music's history is inextricably tied-up with the emergence of teenagers as an economic group in society.
Even 60 years or so after this emerged, pure pop is still primarily obsessed with the first flushes of love, moving towards adulthood and getting yer end away for the first time.
Now, there are many thousands of artists who have written about being a teenager - Teenager in Love, Teenage Kicks, Teenage Riot and the really quite creepy Sweet Little Sixteen, we could go on ad nauseum.
The 'Orrible Who not only made a career out of writing about teenagers, but Townshend could be considered as someone who has helped form our entire concept of being a teenager in post war Britain given his centrality to the Mod and rock movements.
But, if one song captures the first flush of teenage sexuality and the awkwardness of that age, then the mighty Fountains of Wayne nail it with this wonderful song.

Responses from The Word magazine massive here.

The Seven Ages of Man/Woman in Popular Music: Part 1 Childhood

Harry Chapin's Cat's in the Cradle came up on the randomiser today and it struck me as one of the greatest songs about growing up. By some circuitous route it got me thinking about Shakespeare's Seven Ages of Man speech from As You Like It.
So what are the best songs about the seven ages of man or woman?
Today is childhood.
I'm kicking off with the aforementioned Mr Chapin's beautiful paean to childhood/ adolescence and fatherhood.

The New Economy of Comedy - Liverpool Confidential

A piece about Arena comedy and how the whole industry is experiencing its greatest ever boom in Britain's worst recession for 20 years.

In Praise of Children's TV: Terry Deary's Horrible Histories

AS evidenced by my trip out to see the mighty Big Howard and Little Howard show on Saturday afternoon, my life is less hardcore political stand-up these days and more children's telly.

Now, unluckily for Miss H, being comfortable 21st Century 'pretendy' lefties, me and Mrs H have decided that there'll be no Disney Channel in the house, so Children's BBC is our mainstay.

Luckily the BBC is producing a handful of the best programmes airing anywhere on the planet, and the two funniest.

The first is the aforementioned BH&LH and the other is Horrible Histories, adapted from the best selling books by Terry Deary - more than 200 and counting. His latest WII novel Put Out The Light, signed by the author for Miss H on Saturday at an in store, is being devoured. It's a multi POV book which looks at the blitzes of the second war and how they affected both British and German Cities.

However, I think Deary will be known most for Horrible Histories because it's funny, witty, clever, intelligent and iconoclastic in its approach to explaining history to the pre-teen market.

Sure, it's light on context, but it makes up for its lack of methodological rigour in its post modern plundering of pop culture to explain the Romans, the Greek empires and British history of all eras. I have a friend who teaches Egyptology at the University of Liverpool who uses a sketch in an introductory lecture to first years.

The actors help too: Mathew Baynton, known for his work as Deano in BBC's Gavin & Stacey, Sarah Hadland (from BBC's Miranda), Martha Douglas Howe and the annoyingly talented Ben Willbond are among the pick of a cast which really gathers together a who's who of modern British comedy's top acting talent.

By far the funniest actor on display in the funniest ongoing sketch is The Mighty Boosh's Simon Farnaby as Death in the section called Stupid Deaths, where, er, stupid historic deaths are brought to life.

The sketches are brilliant but for my money it is the songs that win out every time. From heavy metal Vikings to High School Musical Spartans, its' clever appropriation of modern pop idioms to explain broad historical themes and periods - it is both laugh out loud funny and bears frequent watching, as our house can testify.

My favourites, however, are the Westlife style parody of the four King George's of England and the tipper toppermost is Baynton as Charles II of England as an Eminem-style, self styled rapping King of Bling.

Little Howard And The Magic Pencil Of Life And Death

Venue: Lenny’s Bar & Grill, Liverpool

It’s been a rite of passage of mine to bring young Miss H to her first comedy gig, I got to do that today thanks to Little Howard And The Magic Pencil Of Life And Death and the wonderful Tongue in Cheek Comedy organisation in Liverpool.

Part cartoon, part scatological children’s book and part stand-up, Little Howard And The Magic Pencil Of Life And Death is a brilliant vision of comedy at its truest.

Ostensibly children’s show, but with much double entendre-ing for the adults, it is an inventive riot of ideas.

(Big) Howard Read, stand-up and illustrator, took his animated six-year-old alter ego, Little Howard, on a journey to avoid the dark menacing force of Cartoon Death, (actually called Rodney and really Read in a Grim Reaper suit), as the latter seeks to steal back the magic pencil of life and death which allows you to invent and obliterate cartoon characters.

Little Howard and the various other characters come to life on the video screen thanks to Read’s masterful illustration and the wonders of an Apple Mac and a projector.

It’s an anarchic, witty brilliant show with 10 times the number of ideas than the average comedy show - especially in an era dominated by the cheap alpha male macho posturing of TV panel shows.

The first half was ostensibly a warmer for the post interval Magical Pencil of Death segment, which was, in itself, an extended CBBC show on stage.

But, in the first half, the illustration games, audience interaction, which saw children from the audience get up and ‘play’ with Little Howard, was just as enjoyable and, again, more inventive than any show I have seen for a long time.

In the second half Big and Little Howard defeat Rodney (Cartoon Death) but only after Little Howard uses the magic pencil to turn himself into a ‘real’ 3D boy who hovers round the room thanks to the 3D glasses distributed by Read, sorry, Rodney.

You’d be hard pressed to find any theatre experience more riotous, more funny or more life affirming than this as you hear children laughing like drains in a comedy club at three in the afternoon.

At the end of the day, the show’s success is all down to Read himself. He’s a masterful and likeable stand-up in his own right, and leaving aside his illustrations and the brilliant technology that brings the Little Howard world to life in the live environment, his ability to work an audience of any age is extraordinary.

As someone who sees a lot of comedy, I can honestly say that I haven’t laughed as much in years and, more crucially, neither had either my wife or daughter and it was the latter who was most important in our shared rite of passage.  

Magazine design: Less of a process and more a combination of trial and error and serendipity

THIS wonderful video of  the coming together of a magazine article package goes to show that when designing, it's less about a regimented process of following templates or processes, but more to do with trial, error and simple inspiration.

And, that process is hugely enjoyable.

 

The mighty, mighty James Lee Burke

I have written about American novelist James Lee Burke a few times here and have rather been on another binge of the great man's work in recent weeks.
Having just listened to the fabulous audio book version of his 2008 Dave Robicheaux novel Swan Peak, expertly narrated by Will Patton, I have been excitedly hoovering up reviews and interviews the great man has been doing to promote his newest Robicheaux tome The Glass Rainbow (Chapter one extract here).
I, like all James Lee fans, will always love (and be piqued to the point of frenzy) by any first chapter of a Robicheaux book which sees the hero of the novel's notorious malcontent buddy Clete Purcel entering the narrative with the words: "Am I interrupting anything?"
All hell's going to break loose when Dave's former partner from the New Orleans Police Department, one half of the Bobbsy Twins and long term trouble magnet, turns up saying that.
Here is James Lee speaking to BBC Radio 2's Simon Mayo, a long term fan, about The Glass Rainbow.

Seu Jorge: the greatest encore I ever saw

LOTS is spoken about the best gig and the best solo and whatever, nothing much is ever talked about the best encore you ever saw at a gig.

YET'S TWIST AGAIN... Super Furry Animals

I've seen my fair share of no shows, perfunctory 'Hey let's play the new single again' and 'Here's our favourite cover', but nothing touches two I saw in Liverpool's best music venues.
The second best was the Super Furry Animals (right) coming back on to the stage at the Royal Court, dressed as Yetis and playing a white noise guitar version of That Man Don't Give a Fuck which was introduced with a 10 minute techno mix with a sample of Bill Hicks intoning 'All Governments are murderers and liars'. (Great alternative review here at Time magazine.)
However, the best was Brazilian legend Seu Jorge (Last FM link) at the Liverpool Philharmonic a few years ago.After doing a mesmerising two hour mega show full of solo acoustic hits and full band material, he took the band on a tour of the stalls and upstairs to the balcony of the great old hall one and all beating out a samba rhythm. I was 'that' close to the man, I touched his dreds, blud.
All gigs should close with a parade - or may be that's the Northern Ireland in me coming out.
Here's some more youtube footage of a magnificent evening I enjoyed with our much missed mate Dave McManaman RIP - if you stare closely you'll see me and Macca dancing up on the balcony.

Spotify Playlist for the North West Massive Mingle (which I missed)

I have put together this playlist for the meeting of the North West branch of The Word magazine bloggers. It's a shame I had to miss it due to work commitments, they are among the best nights of the year.
So this playlist features a lot of French hip-hop I eulogised here, one song from Washingtonian Ankh Amen Ra,  the brilliant Rachid Taha makes an appearance and there are some songs I have loved for many years by Irish singer songwriters Nick Kelly, Damien Dempsey, Paul Brady and Christy Moore.
In the cruelly overlooked/ nearly were section, there are two songs by Beulah, one each from Liverpool indiers Smaller, Replacments front man Paul Westerberg and San Francisco indiers American Music Club. Belfast guitar soundscape kids And So I Watch You from Afar get stuck in while Texan country legend Guy Clark performs a song which has haunted me for years.
Spotify users click on the link below, everyone else, the full playlist is below the fold.
Massive North West Mingle

Sweet Seoul Music: #2

Dave Candler has posted his second Korean Homesick Blues podcast. I've not listened yet, but I recognise a name or two that I like and know that Dave knows the score, so go 'ead and listen, la.

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