modestic #3
Contents:
Beginning Ramble - It's a ramble. And it's at the beginning.
Favourite Stuff - How do we decide on our favourites...?
Bored of Music - So little to get excited about...
Blackadder, The Pilot Episode - A treatise on the plague in 1242. No, really!
Earthshock - DVD review.
Science Fun - It is!!!
17 Paragraphs About The Reading Festival - You really need me to tell you what this is...?
Our Friends In The North - "No, not tomorrow; today."
A Single Life - A history of the single.
Dalek Doomsday, The Truth - The real story behind a lost Dr Who classic.
You Should All Be Murdered - A new feature in which I decided that someone should be murdered. And yes, it is named after the song...
A Load of Balls - First person to say "what's new then...?" gets it...
Frisbees - Woo-hoo. Free stuff! Frisbees=freebies. Geddit...?
Randomness and Randomosity - Bits & bobs that fit nowhere else...
Copyright and all that malarkey...
I apologise for the last issue; apart from the pieces that were by people other than myself, it was terribly average.
Also, in several random places exclamation marks cropped up; these weren't supposed to be there, and indeed are not in my raw HTML file. And as the message was made simply by cutting and pasting that into my list thingie, it's very odd how they got there… And they're not there in the copy at the archive… Hmm…
And as you can now tell, what with the being the end of August, this issue didn't appear at the end of July like I said it might. Two reasons; 1 - not enough contributions and 2 - I couldn't think of a Final Thought.
I do like this issue, though. Starting to get a much better balance of articles…
Favourite Stuff
I've been thinking today about how something becomes your "favourite". What it takes for it to rise above the rest, and sit firmly at the top of the list as "my favourite xyz ever". Whether it be film, TV show, song, episode of a TV show, animal, pizza topping, whatever.
You see, as of today, I have a new favourite ever TV show. It's not a new show currently running, and it's not even a show I'd never seen before but had discovered through repeats/DVD etc. No. It's a show I first saw seven and a half years ago, and seen from beginning to end at least four times. Yet only upon this latest viewing has it done the seemingly unthinkable and ended Twin Peaks 12 ½ year reign as my favourite TV show.
Yet Twin Peaks, when that became my favourite, was still an ongoing thing. I must have seen about three or four episodes before thinking it was the bestest thing ever. Certainly by the sixth episode I saw - the one that answered the big question - it was up there on its pedestal. Yet my new favourite took that much longer. And that many viewings.
Blue Velvet was my favourite film after one viewing. (And remains both my favourite film, and the only one ever to give me a nightmare.) And other favourite things must have taken at most days for them to worm their ways into my head. Certainly within a week of first hearing it on the glorious There And Back Again Lane compilation, Heavenly's Atta Girl became The Greatest Song Ever Recorded.
Seven and a half years.
Four viewings.
In a way I'm glad I have a new favourite, if only it shows that I'm not so stuck in my ways that my opinion cannot alter. I'm not sticking with opinions formed years ago when I was a different person to who I am today. I can change. I can renew.
And, boy, is that a damn good feeling.
I'm sure one day I'll find a better song out there than Atta Girl. Even though every time I listen to it I find I love it just as much as ever. That I think it's the closest thing to a perfect pop song I have ever heard, or am likely to hear. But despite this, the day I stop looking for that better song, I think, will be the day I kill myself.
Bored of Music
But I am bored of music these days. There's so little out there that I am finding exciting. No new, tiny, obscure records by bands that only half a dozen people have heard of have come my way in such a long while. Even the rare times I've listened to John Peel lately, I've come away cold.
Heck, my favourite song so far this year is that tatu one.
And only a few weeks back I heard a true abomination on the radio. Yes, before I begin this rant, I know, bad cover versions have cropped up since the charts began, but this latest one is worse even than the previous nadir, West End Girls by East 17 (dyswtdt?). This new true abortion of a record is Baby I Don't Care, by Jennifer Ellison. Wendy James sang the original with passion, emotion, almost virtually screaming some lines. When she sang the title, you believed her. You believed she really didn't care. It was a true punk pop classic.
Jennifer sings it with the emotion of a dead trout. Her voice is so lifeless, so passionless, so boringly averagely bland, that you can't help but wish that Wendy would come along, kick her off the mic, and say "Oi, bitch, shut up, THIS is how you sing it", before belting out a corker of a tune. Then, of course, Wendy'd beat her up…
Of course, the only reason why this turgid effort has got anywhere near a record store is 'cos a record label wants to make a quick buck off of a blonde trollop with a big (silicon enhanced?) chest, who used to act in a soap. There'll be this single, a follow up and an album, which will bomb. And to try to garner interest for the flagging sales there'll be a "hey lads, look at my jubblies" photo shoot for Maxim or Loaded or FHM. Or all three.
Sometimes I wonder.
Black Adder - The Pilot Episode
By Chris Arnsby
If anyone ever comes to write the official history of the Blackadder television series it will probably go something like this. In the beginning was 'The Black Adder' written by Rowan Atkinson and Richard Curtis. It was too expensive with lots of location footage, a weak leading character with a stupid whiney voice and wasn't watched by enough people to justify its existence. On the verge of being axed, Ben Elton came in to help write a second studio bound series with a much stronger more sarcastic characterisation for Blackadder and thus a TV legend was born. Now personally I don't go along with this. I've always felt that the first series is vastly underrated. It's certainly better than say Blackadder IV and probably III as well with lot of excellent lines and visual jokes but for those that feel the Blackadder dynasty started with series II it's interesting to see that Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson had got it almost completely right from day one.
Some text at the start of the programme sets the scene," It is Europe 400 years ago. In Spain war rages as Christians from every land fight off the threatening terror of Turkish Invasion. The French... are in uneasy peace. But in England, under the tutelage of a powerful King the ship of State ploughs a steady course as the Court awaits the Queen's Birthday and the return of a Scottish Hero from the War...."
Blackadder is still played by Rowan Atkinson, although with a much stronger edge especially in the scene at the end where he is begging for his life; on which more later. Tim McInnery plays Percy almost exactly as he would in the next two series but Baldrick is played by Philip Fox who now mainly seems to play one off parts in series like Casualty, You Rang M'lord, Heartbeat and I'm Alan Partridge (playing the estate agent in 'A Room with an Alan' on the series 1 DVD). According to the IMDB he can also be seen as 'Husband on the Great Wall of China' in Superman IV. To be blunt, he's not very good here and his playing of some lines is very flat.
Of the more minor characters John Savident (Fred Elliott in Coronation Street) plays the King and Elspet Gray (Chancellor Thalia in the Peter Davison Doctor Who story Arc of Infinity) the Queen while Robert Bathurst (Tod Hunter in the first episode of Red Dwarf) is Edmund's brother Harry. John Savident and Elspet Gray play their characters well without making any great impression, although Elspet Gray has an amusing bit of business that involves brushing the shoulders of people she is introduced to. Robert Bathurst comes off less well, his Harry gets some good lines but seems to be a stock dim witted character. Personally I much prefer the Prince Harry from the TV series with his seemingly effortless life and preference for the running of the castle and its drains to the affairs of state.
The major change from Pilot to series episode comes when Edmund plans to assassinate McAngus in an attempt to get back the lands given to the Scotsman by the King. There's a rather lengthy slapstick hanging sequence that runs on for too long without being very funny - although to be fair the picture quality makes it hard to see what is happening. During the 'Death of a Scotsman' play there are also some pretty good spoofs of Shakespearean non-jokes that didn't make it into the series (Baldrick playing a character called Buttock gets the exchange "Aye thou art a right Buttock"/" Aye and a left one too if truth be known"/Cut to shot of Royal Audience sitting in stony faced silence).
As in the series McAngus is saved from death when Edmund realises that the Scotsman has letters revealing that Harry, first in line to the throne, is a bastard. However in the pilot this leads on to a lengthy and surprisingly ambitious duel which ends with the King asking McAngus to spare his son's life and this to me is the scene that results in the characterisation that we see in the first series of The Black Adder. When McAngus forces Edmund to beg for his life Atkinson plays the speech with real anger and contempt. It's an uncomfortable scene to watch and makes you realise that here is a man who would never willingly put up with the situation he is forced to endure; second in line to the throne and looked down upon. Put bluntly, if you dropped this version of Edmund into the first series he would never tolerate the humiliations that are heaped upon him and I can't help wondering if Atkinson and Curtis realised that there was no way that this Edmund would fit into the world that they had devised making him instead into the weaker and more impotent character that we end up seeing. Although it's interesting to note that this stronger Blackadder fits better with the plot of the last episode of the first series 'The Black Seal", wherein Edmund assembles a group of villains as his personal retinue to take over the Kingdom.
The pilot episode of Blackadder can be downloaded from Kazaa (www.k-lite.tk) although it can take a while to download and -as can be seen from the pictures- the quality leaves a lot to be desired. Still, it's well worth the effort because it shows us a new side of a series that most people think they know pretty well.
Earthshock
The latest in the continuing release of the Doctor Who canon onto DVD sees Peter Davison and co up against the Cybermen in an exciting action adventure sci fi yarn so typical of the public perception of the series as a whole.
The Dr Who DVDs are typically well produced, on a shoestring budget, and Earthshock is no exception. The sheer quality of these disks, the range of extras and the amount of care put in to ensure the best quality of these disks puts many Hollywood films to shame. Whereas they have their generic press pack interviews, and "making of" features which are little more than puff pieces, the Dr Who DVDs have a range of both archive and specially made extras, and enhancements. This is of course most noticeable on the black and white stories, with their use of the revolutionary VidFIRE process, which improves the quality of the pictures by several degrees of magnitude. Long may it carry on.
Earthshock is, of course, not one of the black and white tales. It hails from Peter Davison's first season in 1982, and saw the return of the Cybermen after a 7 year absence. Watching the tale 21 years later, I was amazed how little I remembered of it. I recalled the cliffhanger to Part 1 ("Destroy them, destroy them at once!" - one of the very few I recall from those many years ago), and the end, but little else. I enjoyed it then, and I enjoy it now. It's an entertaining adventure yarn. Well written and directed, with sets lit by someone that realises that darkness can hide a multitude of sins (oh, if only Warriors of the Deep was lit in the same way. You wouldn't laugh at it as much then would you?). It is quite superb. Mind you, there is a bit of a blatant example of Chekov's Gun that sticks out like a sore thumb… But of course there's the end of part 4 as well. The only other thing I remembered at all clearly about the tale…
As we have come to expect from the Dr Who Dvds, there is a multitude of extras. We have alternative CGI effects, which are quite subtly done, and are a great improvement over the original "barbers pole" laser beams, and the destruction of the… well, the bit at the end.
There's also the location film sequences, which feature bits snipped from the finished programme, a cringeworthy etract from a programme called "Did You See", a music only option, the usual informative production subtitles, and the photo gallery.
The commentary from Peter Davison and his three assistants, Janet Fielding (Tegan), Sarah Sutton (Nyssa) and Matthew Waterhouse (Adric) is nigh on perfect. There is the righyt balance between humour, behind the scenes anecdotes and technical details, and their attitude to the programme is entirely spot on. Of all the Dr Who commentaries, the best are always the ones with Peter in. There is something about his presence that just brings out the best in whoever he is commentating with. I want more, many more of his tales out NOW, just for his commentary. Oh... Warriors of the Deep is gonna be so very, very good...
The other highlight of the extras, though, is the newly shot documentary Putting The Shock Into Earthshock, which details the reaction of fans to the show at the time. It's something that would never happen now. There were two huge shocks in Earthshock. The first was the appearance of the Cybermen in the thing. Until they appear at the end of the first episode, no-one knew they were even in it! The lengths they went to in order to stop this being found out are astounding. And then they pull off another big shock at the end of Part 4… In this day and age there would be spoilers ahoy but then… It is a superbly made piece. It's a "talking head" style docu, but it works perfectly. It goes into more than just the two shocks, though, with a range of other behind the scenes info. I do hope there are more docus of the quality here on later disks; best extra of the whole range so far, I would say.
The clay-mation Part 5 is very, very funny. It's short, but when I saw it I almost rolled with laughter. If you don't know what happens at the end of Part 4, don't watch this until you've seen that…
Earthshock, as a whole complete package, is probably the best of the Dr Who DVDs so far, and if you've never got one yet, this is th one to go for!
Easter Eggs: Yes. Go left on one of the options on the Special Features menu - the 40th Anniversary Trailer IIRC - and you get a clip from the comedy show The Real McCoy which is quite superb.
Rating: Silverback Gorilla.
Science Fun
with Professor Theydon Bois, South West London University (formerly the Clapham School of Movement and Dance)
Hullo!
As you may know this month I have been looking into the question of the missing mass in the universe. As you may know this is a problem that has stumped astronomers for ages - why is there only 10% of the mass in the universe that should be there?
Now, I've had a bit of a think about this and I realised that if this extra weight can't be seen then it must be hidden so I had a bit of a hunt round. Excitingly after only a few minutes I found a haul of missing mass behind my fridge - some stale pasta shells, a can of deodorant, a lot of dust and what seemed to be a mummified toad. Using my kitchen scales I weighed the mass and found it came to a smidge over 2 lbs or about 1 kilogram for you decimal types. There must be at least 10 million fridges in the UK which means that the total amount of missing mass that could be hidden behind them, in the UK ALONE is 20,000000 lbs or 9828.5714 tonnes.
Assignment 1: Illustrate this figure using a graph or possibly a pie chart. Alternatively draw a picture of your fridge.
Assignment 2: Pretend that the universe weighs 9.8 62 tonnes. A mummified toad weighs 1 lb 3 ozs. If a mummified toad were to account for the 90% of the universe's mass that is missing what would it have to weigh? How long would it be (to the nearest mile)? Where would you hide it?
Next issue: Fluoridated water, your ticket to the Earth's core!
17 Paragraphs About The Reading Festival
1. In a field on the edge of Reading, we gathered once again for three days of music. Bands we wanted to see, band we'd not touch with a barge pole, and new bands we had never heard of before just waiting to be discovered. Those of you that read the Munch Reading reviews would know how in depth they were. This ain't. Highlights. That's all you need… Those old articles rambled on forever…
2. Many bands blur into one. Alien Ant Farm are really only memorable for their "Smooth" cover versions (Criminal & Operator). I have vague memories of Kinesis being quite lively, but remember nothing of their music. And I know I saw The Sun and quite liking them, but now the details are gone. But overall, my excitement for music has had a shot in the arm, so you can ignore that "bored of music" piece now...
3. As ever, The Camp Shop got its usual "I'll have seven Kenneth Williams" type comments. This particular seam of comedy will never cease.
4. I did start to watch The Thrills as I liked the sound of their name, and had a vague idea I knew them. Then that "So much for the summer" song came on and I remembered exactly who they were, and left the tent…
5. …and went to see Beck who - as ever - was quite brilliant. Loser is stil his best though. He did a medley of pop so9ngs such as that "it's getting hot in here, so take off all your clothes" song and a TATu one that wasn't All The Things She said. Still, a genius.
6. Another genius is Evan Dando. I wish I could have seen the Lemonheads when they were still around, but at least he still plays some of the old songs. It's A Shame About Ray still sounds as great after all these years, though. Best was the slow version of Into Your Arms, which was quite, quite perfectly beautiful.
7. I'm surprised at how many Mull Historical Society songs I knew. I thought I'd never heard a single one, but several songs are familiar. Not familiar enough for me to tell you their names or anything, mind you… I'm sure these were the ones that got the audience to sing "How 'bout I love you more". I could be wrong.
8. Ladytron impress greatly. A six piece clad entirely in black playing syntho-goth-pop type stuff. A band I had heard so little of, yet I want to hear so much more. I will buy their records…
9. A good thing about living around the corner from the site is that when you need to do a Number 2, you can stroll home and do it in the comfort of your own home, and not in a cramped cubicle perched atop what is essentially, a hole over a pile of piss, shit, blood, spunk and vomit. Festival toilets are disgusting. And always will be…
10. Elctric Six were, well, ELECTRIC. Quite, quite barking. The roof of the tent nearly blew off when Gay Bar started. And they almost managed to top it with their finale; a cover of Queen's We Will Rock You. Forsooth, verily, indeed they did rock us!
11. When Blur played Girls & Boys, the moshpit was like the fifth circle of Hell. I decided to hang about for a few songs more, and that would be all, But then For Tomorrow came on, and all of a sudden it was the fifth circle of Heaven. A moshpit of half a dozen of us (none of whom I knew), and Blur's best song ever, ensured I stayed there until the end. Off the top of my head, I'd say that Blur 2003 doing For Tomorrow is the second best bit of any of the six Readings I've been to. Better than in 1999, as I wasn't in the thick of a moshpit then.
12. So, after the wimps have all gone to bed on Starurday night, a gang of us, well, me Bec, Esme, Fuzz and Cletus (chap from the tents near to us; to be honest, I can't remember if that was actually his name or not, but it was something like that) and a couple of his chums proceed to go around the camp site singing Gay Bar, and approaching people and singing lines at the. We found 2 Gay Bars on our journey. The first admitted that they were just pretending to be a gay bar, the second said that they were closed. Then it started to rain and we scurried back to out tents and slept.
13. Primal Scream sucked big donkey balls. I'd have like to have heard Velocity Girl, but… Mind you, it is good to see that at least one c86 band is having such great success, especially as their track was the best thing on the tape, but… Ah well. They played a couple of decent songs, but their best years are at least a decade in the past now.
14. The sixth circle of Hell came with The Yeah Yeah Yeahs' moshpit. I knew not a one of their songs, but was greatly impressed by their rock posturing, and the accentuated glam-ness of singer Karen O. I only lasted 20 minutes in the pit before edging myself back to safety.
15. A quick escape as soon as they finished meant that I could see ¾ of Metallica. That's the good thing about festivals; you get to see bands you would never normally go and see. Metallica are Spinal Tap made flesh; the only band to release an album in a matt black sleeve, with a design on it in gloss black with no sense of irony. They rocked. Truly. Despite only knowing four of the songs they played - Sad But True, Nothing Else Matters, One, Enter Sandman - they impressed greatly. A big fuck off rock set with fireworks and loud guitars. What more could you ask for? I wasn't quite brave enough to join the moshpit - the seventh circle of Hell, surely - but was sorely tempted when the opening chords of One were played; it is surely one of the finest heavy metal songs EVER.
16. Top three songs of the festival; 3 - One, Metallica. 2 - Gay Bar, Electric Six. 1 - Blur, For Tomorrow.
17. So, what would be good for next year? Well, I'd kinda like to see all the following; Morrisey, The Cure, Iron Maiden, Tender Trap, The Pixies, Darius, Juliana Hatfield...
Our Friends in the North
First of all, I will apologise in advance for this article. If you know the show, it'll probably tell you nothing you don't already know. And if you don't, it'll probably bemuse you as there will be scant explanation of what I'm raving on about. But I have to write this piece, and I have to write it now, and in this style, because Our Friends in the North is the Greatest TV Programme Ever. (You were wondering when that was going to come, weren't you…)
It's 9 episodes of sheer, complete, and utter genius. It follows the lives of four people from teenagers in 1964, through to their late forties in 1995. It takes in love, friendship, hate, passion, corruption, housing decay, police corruption, homelessness, alzheimers, the miners' strike; so many things it is virtually impossible to pinpoint exactly what the series is "about". If you look at one character's thread, their stories will cover entirely different themes to the others. Where Nicky is intensely political, Geordie's catchphrase seems to be "what election's that, then?"
But no matter what the political machinations are at any given time, the thing that makes it so great is the characters. And that the leading four characters are played by such magnificent actors. Heading the cast is one of this country's finest actors ever (he can hold his head up amongst the likes of Gielgud and the like, in my opinion) Christopher Eccleston. His character, Nicky Hutchinson, seems to have the most to do as the years progress, as he becomes disillusioned with the Labour Party and ends up joining the anarchists, and later rejoins the Labour party and grows into a - well - average middle aged man. Daniel Craig as Geordie Peacock does appear initially to be the most successful of the four friends, as he ends up in the middle of a porn empire in the swinging sixties. Working for Benny Barratt (a superb Malcolm McDowell once again proving that if given the right material, he can give a great performance), it seems the world is at his feet. It all goes wrong of course. Mary Soulsby is played by the only genuine Geordie of the four, Gina McKee. Initially she seems a little bland, but she soon shows her true light, as things progress. And Mark Strong's Tosker Cox, "Crazy name, crazy guy". He's the one you think at the outset will be least successful, but in the end…
The politics of Our Friends in the North are very much to the left. Most of the characters in the Labour party are seen very much as "the good guys", and when we see the Tories they are inevitably shown as devious and manipulative. I mention this because if you're a staunch supporter of the Tories, you'll probably hate Our Friends because of the politics. But you shouldn't.
It is very hard to write a reasonably short piece on Our Friends, as it covers so much ground. But I'll tell you this for nothing; it contains more heartbreaking moments than anything else, and the more I watch it, the more emotional I get, and at increasing numbers of scenes.
There is a scene, right near the end of the last episode, where all four of the friends are alone in a room, together, for (I think) the first time since the first episode (there's a bit at the end of 1974 where they're together in the same place, but not "together"). And it's just after everyone else has left, and the four of them are alone, and for a few seconds, the four of them just look at each other. They don't say a word. They look. And smile. And this can't last more than 10 seconds. But the impact it has. Brings a tear every time. There's just so many scenes that do. There's the final shot of Geordie walking across the Tyne Bridge; I can guarantee that every time, as soon as that bloody Oasis song - Don't Look Back in Anger - starts, I'll have tears welling in my eyes.
It's not perfect in some respects, though. As the series starts, it's clear that Nicky, Mary, Tosker and Geordie are clearly not the 18 year olds they are supposed to be. But as long as you can suspend disbelief, it shouldn't affect things too adversely.
An article like this can only skim the surface of how truly great this programme is, and the depth of the complex story its 9 60-75 minute episodes encompass. For a start, this piece hasn't even mentioned Austin Donohue, Eddie Wells, John Selway, and so many other characters that are so vital to the story.
Trust me when I say that Our Friends in the North is the Greatest TV Programme EVER. And please, do yourself a favour, if you've never seen it, go out and buy the DVD. It may seem a little expensive, but you'll not regret it…
A Single Life
By Jason Maloney
Everyone remembers their first single. Which song, whom it was by, and doubtless where they were when they either bought or received it. That is the beauty of the single, as much a rite of passage as that initial "proper" kiss in adolescence. Both represent the beginning of a journey, a dipping of toes into unchartered waters. As kissing leads to what used to be quaintly dubbed petting and then, heaven forbid, sex itself, so the single is the entry point into the dizzying world of popular recorded music for most young things, before moving onto compilation albums and full-length works by one act. Of course, to prolong the analogy, one never loses the passion for kissing, and likewise well into adulthood the appeal of the single remains.
As originally conceived, the single (originally pressed on 10" 78rpm vinyl, then superceded by the 7" 45rpm discs which soon became the norm for some 30 years) was a brilliantly simple idea. One song per side, the main "A" side given prominence for sales collation purposes. It was the perfect vehicle for the emerging Rock'n'Roll phenomenon, and the public's love affair with the black plastic lasted until the early 1990s, when CD gradually (some would argue belatedly) replaced vinyl as the chief format for singles. Then the relationship became more complex, and perceptions began to alter as the record industry took it upon themselves to fiddle with the evergreen winning formula.
CD by nature can hold far more music than the smallest vinyl offspring, and the temptation to increase the number of tracks and total playing time of the single proved irresistible. Soon, the basic A/B sided 7 inches' days were numbered (and not as a limted edition). Alternative formats such as the cassette single ("cassingle") and CD single were introduced in small quantities during the late Eighties, usually as little more than marketing gimmicks to augment the standard vinyl edition's chances in the Top 40. None of these early releases shared any common characteristics in terms of length or price, but they made for nice collector's items. It took about five years for CD to take over the mantle as prime single format, by which point regulations had been established that for chart eligibility a single could last no longer than 25 minutes and contain no more than 4 tracks.
This would later be amended to 20 minutes and 4 tracks, then to 20 minutes and 3 tracks when the rise of multiple formats (any three from CD1 (normal version with some B-sides), CD2 (remixes), CD3 (more remixes), 7", 12", cassette and latterly DVD) made the business of finding enough recordings for the extra tracks increasingly troublesome. Although that's not the official line, naturally.
Enough of the technical waffle. For now. Like any invention closely tied to social upheaval, demographic trends and cultural evolution, the single has had its ups and downs. Boom years were 1964 (Beatlemania at its peak, with the other Merseybeat bands joining in), 1978 (Newton-John and Travolta's endless summer of Grease, Boney M weighing in with a brace of million-sellers), 1984 (Frankie Goes To Hollywood's utter domination, while Wham! and other starlwarts of the Last Great Era Of Pop TM also helped themselves) and 1996 (Oasis and The Spice Girls selling obscene amounts in a honeymoon period for British music). Doom years have been the mid-1970s (Glamrock on the wane), the late 1980s (Pet Shop Boy's #1 from March 1988, Heart, sold a then all-time low of 45,000 copies to reach the top) and the early 1990s (Bryan Adams aside, just a handful of singles passed 500,000 sales in either 1991 or 1992). The peaks would generate roughly two or three further years of healthy turnover, the troughs would invariably be followed by a changing of the guard; Punk and New Wave kicked out the lingering embers of Glam and teen pop, as well as forcing hoary rockers to rethink their approach, Britpop temporarily elbowed trashy europop and Stock Aitken Waterman to the sidelines (how fleeting the pleasure proved to be).
The problem is, since the Age of Spice there has been no benficially seismic activity within pop. Just more (and more) of the same, manufactured outfits peddled by a buisness who clearly could not believe how disgustingly lucrative, and culturally important, the Spice experiment had been. Who could really blame them for abandoning the cause of guitar-based music, and plonking all their Cadbury's Creme Eggs in one amazon shopping basket. After all, old habits die hard.
Pop music, for the major record labels, has always been about control, profits and following the latest success, whatever it might be. No sooner do they luck into something insanely popular, than..hey presto, here are six hundred more acts just like 'em, kids. Usually, the status quo (that's your non hairy, three-chord guitar merchants type) restores itself through a combination of unavoidable visionary talent from outside the machine and the free will of the record-buying public who don't always gobble up everything they're fed. The two mindsets - now generically labelled Pop and Indie, both terms having outgrown their original definitions - somehow co-existed quite happily, any weekly Top 40 made up of cheesy tosh and more credible artists alike, with neither confined to one end of the chart spectrum.
There were dreadful chart-toppers, there were genuine classics. Some Top 3 rundowns read like a vivid snapshot of the time, where the biggest acts slugged it out for the still-valued No.1 crown. The 25th anniversary of the UK Singles Chart in November 1977 saw Abba's Name Of The Game win out over We Are The Champions by Queen and the Bee Gee's How Deep Is Your Love. Just how memorable a trio is that? By contrast, can anyone actually remember the Top 3 for the chart's silver jubilee less than a year ago? I thought not. If you can, you probably cheated.
By no means flawless, the single survived half a century more or less intact, in spirit if not exactly body. The Top 40 system, too, became an icon in itself, the fluctuations in fortunes every week and the continual promise of something new each Monday tapped into a psychological quirk of the human brain; the fascination with numbers and the addictive fix which music offers ingeniously combined. For that is the core element of why people have loved the Top 40 chart through the decades; everyone wants to see how high their personal favourite singles can go, everyone subsconsciously or otherwise likes to observe the progression of those records both upwards and then in the opposite direction. Remove that from the equation, however, and it's a different story.
In an ever-faster consumer world, with less patience, more voracious demands and a growing array of sources from which to get what they desire, the music business attempted - with typically myopic greed - to keep the Top 40 "relevant" and the single format "alive" via a series of industry machinations which, sadly, have backfired with dire consequences.
Whilst it's true to say there has never really been a completely level playing field - since no all-encompassing price structure has ever existed and those issuing the records will always seek to bend those rules which are in place with freebies, special editions and sundry other "incentives" for stores to stock the release and the public to purchase them - artificially lowering the price on the first week of release (or artificially raising it thereafter, whichever way you prefer to look at it) as a virtual standard practice was going to end in tears. Other than creating a skewed Top 40, perhaps more damagingly it has engendered negative consumer attitudes towards the single as a format. Pick up the single in its first 7 days on the shelves, folks, or pay up to 300% more for the pleasure from then on. Nice one. Online e-tailers such as amazon.co.uk don't even offer the initial discount, so for the casual buyer, and/or anyone unable to march into a sizeable highstreet Megastore quickly enough, a single will usually cost a penny under 4 quid. For two or maybe three songs on a disc that plays for as little as ten or eleven minutes (and no more than twenty), that is plainly too much. Especially when supermarkets and the big online services now offer new chart albums for between £8.49 and £9.99.
The labels then compounded the problem by extending the pre-release window to quite ridiculous lengths. Sometime in 1996 it was deemed a wise move to distribute promotional copies of a major single to radio and allow the video to be aired as many as six weeks before it could be bought in the stores. This unsurprisingly nutured the restlessness within today's media that heralds tomorrow before yesterday is over, and constantly seeks exclusives and getting in first with new releases. Building up interest around a record is nothing new, but such has become the need to make an immediate impact before the next aggressively-marketed hit comes along that Week One is virtually the be-all and end-all of a single's lifespan. Fail to make a splash instantly, and it's over.
The advent of multi-channel Music Television through digital and cable services (instead of just is pioneer MTV), radio's continued commercialisation (yet to quite emulate the dangerously corporate-controlled levels across the Atalntic, but bad enough), and the repositioning of all major record companies from standalone empires run by maverick entrepreneurs to merely another entertainment branch of some global leisure conglomerate where the accountants carry out orders from the top brass, have all dictated this trend and impacted hugely upon the pop market. While the emperor's new clothes of Britpop was distracting all and sundry with its superficial delights, these three crucial developments were taking place, changing the scenery forever.
As long as sales remained healthy, the underlying malaise of arrogance and can't-see-the-wood-for-the-trees incompetence could continue. The justification being that whatever damage had been done to the Top 40, the bottom line was still being met. People were still buying singles in something resembling the quantities of old. This is no longer the case.
The year-to-date sales figures from January 1st to June 30th 2003 illustrate just how dire the situation has become. Just a solitary single sold more than half-a-million copies; the lame Comic Relief-inspired teaming of Gareth Gates and the Kumars on the woefully unfunny Spirit In The Sky. The rest of this particular top 10 includes a paltry six records with sales of over 250,000 units, and alarmingly a long-running hit such as Evanescence's Bring Me To Life (4 weeks at No.1) isn't among them.
For all their ubiquity, the likes of Christina Aguilera's Beautiful and Cry Me A River by Justin Timberlake have yet to reach even the 200,000 mark. Further down the list, boyband-of-the-moment Busted have sold just 100,000 copies of their chart-topping You Said No. Others, such as Liberty X, Mis-Teeq, Delta Goodrem and S Club, have also struggled despite appearing to be hugely popular.
Understandably alarmed at their self-inflicted crisis, the BPI are seeking to reassess the structure of the UK chart. Possibilities include shifting the publication date to a Friday, and the age-old nugget of introducing added elements into the mix such as airplay. Of course, neither option will rectify the mess the record companies, with the demographic advertising-driven aid of the media, have made of the singles market.
The chart format, which has been in place for over 50 years, of a Monday-Saturday retail window with the resulting tabulations compiled for publication shortly after (the next day, in fact, since September 1987) is pretty foolproof. If the chart has lost both its credibility and now its potency, no amount of smoke-and-mirror tricks will hide that fact. The key issues of pricing, multiple formats, the extent of pre-release promotion and actual product quality (which deserves an examination of its own another time) all need to be radically addressed.
In an age when revenue from ringtones of popular songs eclipse that of singles sales, perhaps any attempt to revive the market is doomed. It may well be that after 50 years, the love affair with the single is over, as technological advances and market forces contrive to offer a plethora of more desirable, more immediate entertainment options. Yet, the success of ringtones and text-message voting proves that disposable income continues to be spent on music, and the latest hits in particular.
The interest in pop music remains, but until the industry comes out of denial, and tackles perceptions and trends of their own making, sales will continue to fall and the chart's relevance will decrease even further.
Gratuitous Wombat Picture #4
Wombat; My Carrot's bigger than your carrot.
Roo; Freud would love you...
With so many tales of missing Doctor Who episodes, modestic was recently contacted by someone with a very interesting tale to tell. Make of it what you will…
Dalek Doomsday? The Truth
By Robert Madillo
The story of exactly what happened to the 'lost' sixties story Dalek Doomsday is one that has never been correctly told. Until now. It was rumoured that the entire story had been completed, but destroyed under the orders of their creator Terry Nation. This is in fact totally untrue. Mr Nation had nothing at all to do with it, nor did any of his associates (are you taking notice, lawyers?).
Dalek Doomsday was written, for transmission in the fifth series, by Andrew Ross, a newcomer to the series (Mr Ross would later go on to be a script editor on Dixon of Dock Green, amongst others). By this time, the production team were getting rather bored with the Daleks and wanted a story that would write them out of the series forever, without any way at all they could return. Evil of the Daleks was supposed to be the Daleks' final story, but even then, the producers knew that there was still plenty of scope for further Dalek stories. Around this time, Ross sent in an outline for a story called 'Doomsday' which told the story of a race of beings called the Sinivanians who had invented a machine capable of removing things from the space time continuum. The team liked his idea and asked him to incorporate the Daleks in the full script, which was to be a six parter (not a four parter as some have suggested). In a nutshell, the story went like this;
The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria land on the planet Sinivan, and are soon captured by the local authorities who imprison them. After languishing in the cells for a while, they are released and are told of an invasion fleet which is en route to Sinivan. The Doctor immediately recognises the ships as being of Dalek design. Upon arrival, the Daleks do a spot of exterminating, but instead of heading for the military bases and such like, they head towards a research facility, which is, coincidentally where the Doctor and Co landed. It doesn't take them long to realise what the Daleks are after; a machine called the Time Destroyer, which removes people from Time, thereby meaning they have never existed (they never stopped to think of the paradoxical nature of using such a device). The Doctor deliberately breaks the device in the nick of time, but the Daleks capture everyone and force him and the head scientist to rebuild it; they want to use the machine on the Doctor, to eliminate all his meddling in Dalek history. Eventually, after much (too much) procrastination and padding, the Doctor announces that the machine is working and tries his best to dissuade the Daleks from using it. Of course they ignore him, but instead of destroying the Doctor, the machine removes the Daleks from Time; they have never existed. All of a sudden, Sinivan is restored to its previous condition and everyone who the Daleks killed is alive again. As a final parting gesture, the Doctor makes the machine remove itself from time.
Apart from the paradoxical nature of the machine and its effects; if the Daleks never existed then they couldn't have caused themselves to never exist etc, the actual story wasn't that good, the first couple of episodes were very good, building up the tension, but the middle was very flabby and the conclusion was extremely illogical. But the story was never completed, in fact, only the first two episodes were.
After the second episode had been completed, the sets for the story were completely destroyed. Someone, somewhere had got their wires crossed and thought that the production crew had finished with them. They were torn down and what could not be reused (ie most of it) was burnt.
The expense of recreating the sets was deemed to be too high and production of the story was abandoned. The cast and crew went on to film the next story; The Web of Fear, and Dalek Doomsday was locked away in the archives and forgotten. The Production notes and all documentation for the story mysteriously vanished in the early seventies.
Miraculously, the two episodes survived the archive purge in the mid?seventies, which was probably due to the fact that they were misfiled under something which bore no resemblance to Doctor Who at all.
In the early Eighties, there were murmers of a previously unheard of Doctor Who story, but no information was forthcoming. Almost a decade later, in 1992, at a car boot sale in Kent, the two episodes turned up. How they came to be in the possession of whoever sold them (their identity is unknown) is one of the great unsolved mysteries of our time. The two episodes were in a pile of between six and ten film cans (the story varies depending on who you believe) which were for sale as a job lot at the sale. In the remaining four to eight cans, again depending on who you believe, were (allegedly) all of the Web of Fear (if there were eight cans in total), all of The Invasion (if there were ten cans) or The Tenth Planet 4 and Power of the Daleks 1 (if there were four cans). The exact number of cans bought at the sale has yet to be determined, as have their contents (or indeed if there were any other cans there in the first place). It also seems odd that the episodes would even have been telerecorded onto film in the first place, when this medium was used primarily for overseas sales.
Eventually, the two episodes came to rest with their present owner (who will remain nameless). This person invited me to view the episodes with regard to purchasing them. I was more than a little sceptical to start off with, but then I saw them. I can guarantee to you all that these episodes exist. This collector also did a little research on Andrew Ross, and managed to contact him, and was able to obtain a copy of the full script for all six episodes, which he let me read.
The actual episodes are in pretty good condition, whilst not being perfect, they are still of a broadcastable quality. Troughton, is as always, on top form and the two episodes are extremely good. The Daleks don't actually put in an appearance until about halfway through the second episode. The first episode's cliffhanger being the Doctor's announcement that the fleet that the Hylans have detected is a Dalek fleet, the second being the Doctor's realisation of what the Daleks want.
Unfortunately, the price the collector had set for these episodes (£25,000 each) was well above my ability to pay, so I had to decline to purchase them. Maybe when I win the lottery...
You Should All Be Murdered
People who should be cleansed from the Earth to make it a better place to live...
#1 - Mick Hucknall
Why?
The evidence is plain to see and can be summed up in these words; Stars. A New Flame. Fairground. Money's Too Tight To Mention. I could go on, but I believe you get the picture. Any one or two of these songs in question, and there would be a possibility that Hucknall should get 17 years hard labour instead of execution, but the sheer amount of execrable tunes that he has foisted on us over the years, and which is still continuing today, can lead to only one verdict; death!
Why Not?
Er, there must be a reason. But I'll be jiggled if I can think of it…
Method of Murder?
Hucknall should be put in a locked room, and be forced to listen to his worst song, A New Flame, on repeat for 24 hours. Duringt this time, he must stand still, motionless. Every time he moves, an electric shock will pass through his body. Once the 24 hours is up, the room will slowly fill with acid, which will eat through his flesh and bones slowly, causing ever more pain as it rises. Knowing that there is no escape, he will have to choose between trying to stay alive for as long as possible, or plunging his whole body into the acid, killing him outright.
Verdict?
Death. What else could it have been?
A Load of Balls…
A couple of snooker books.
This month, I have been mostly reading Snooker biographies. (First person to say that Snooker is dull, gets a cue up their… nostril).
First up was The Hurricane, by Bill Borrows. Alex Higgins, is without a doubt, my favourite snooker player. Despite the fact that he rarely won anything, despite the fact that he's never going to win anything again, despite that he's not been in the World Championships for a decade, he remains my favourite. It's his pure passion for the game that gets me. The book tries its best to capture this side of him and it almost succeeds. There are many accounts of his famous victories, but a lot of it is quite dry; it's difficult to capture the excitement of a tense match in print. Especially when you know the outcome.
It's when describing Higgins' personality and temperament that the book comes alive. It starts with the author recanting a tale about the time he met with Higgins to discuss the book being an Official Biography, and tells of his outrageous demands, and that he completely flew off the handle into a rage at a slight faux pas on Borrow's part. Then, as the book progresses, there's his alcoholism, wife beating, various assaults and other petty misdemeanours and so on. Painting a picture of a man who when he is in the right mood, he is a pleasure and a privilege to be around. But get him on an off day, and you want to be nowhere near him.
It's kind of a tragic tale in that he had so very much potential as a player, yet his tally of titles is - for someone playing professional snooker at the highest level for such a very long time, 22 years - way too low. For example, he won the world championships just twice. Higgins is undoubtedly a genius, but one with great flaws. Rating: lion.
Still, winning the world championships twice is twice more than Jimmy White, the subject of the other biography. Well, ghost-written autobiography. Behind the White Ball is more about telling stories from Jimmy's private life than what he got up to on the table, and is thus a much more refreshing read. We all know what happened in that semi-final in 1982, but we may not know of the various things that went on behind the scenes. And that's where this one really scores, as we find out what Jimmy got up to in his youth, the various scams he and his friends pulled as they got into snooker. At times you'll read it, and think "you idiot", but Jimmy is never anything less than honest about his imperfections, which is unusual in an autobiography of this type. What is also good is that as White and Higgins are (were?) friends, there's overlap between the tales as we see both sides of the same coin, as it were. A great read. Rating: tiger.
Frisbees
Ah, I remember these. Haven't had one in ages… Mainly 'cos I was out of the loop for a while. Must see about getting more… Of course, you don't do a fanzine jsut to get frisbees, but it is nice to receive them; especially of stuff that you wouldn't normally get to hear.
Anyhow, the first ever frisbee to be reviewed in modestic is this; The Star Spangles, with I Live For Speed. The Star Spangles are - and I do so hate comparing bands with other bands, but it's just such a quick and easy (oh, so easy) way of describing someone - kinda like a cross between The Ramones and The Strokes. None of the three songs on this CD even makes it to 3 minutes long. Slabs of fast, raucous, loud guitar pop which zoom along leaving you barely enough time to draw breath. Is the speed they love what you experience in a fast car, or the white powder? Either way it doesn't matter. "Got my guitar, gonna be a star", the singer exclaims at one point. Whether they will be stars or not, time will tell, but I Live For Speed is certainly a step on the way. Hopefully they will step out of the Strokes/Ramones shadows and bloom into something special. Rating: chinchilla.
Reading the press release for Donnie, by Jet Johnson, I was filled with a sense of dread as they were described as a "supergroup" featuring members of several bands I'd never heard of. Super…? Hmm… However, as soon as I put the single in the drive, all fears were dispelled, for Donnie is a spellbinding slice of cute-twee-indie-guitar-pop. Yeah, true it's the same sort of thing I've heard a million times before, but I fall for it every time. Hook. Line. Sinker. Copy of Angling Times. Donnie is an ode to none other than er, Donnie Osmond, and is a cracker. For further evidence of twee-ness you need only look at the title of the second track; Cats In Heave (acoustic). Purrfect. (Sorry!!!) Only the third track Aynd disappoints, but hey, we all remember what Meatloaf once said! Rating: kitten.
I'm sure I saw Bowling For Soup at Reading one year, and I'm also sure that the guitarist gave me his beer when I gestured that I'd like a sip from it. But I digress. Bowling For Soup do amusing nu-metal-skate-punk-pop, and Punk Rock 101 is no different. Any song that makes mention of Tommy and Gina from Livin' on a Prayer can't be all bad! Bowling For Soup ain't ever gonna change the world, but who will? They're a bit of fun, and that's what matters, really. Rating: crocodile.
Breaking America by The Ga*Ga*s (or however its spelt) is, well. Not much cop. It's so little cop, it's about the left leg up to the knee of the cop in question. The song just does nothing for me. Generic rock by numbers. Grr. Breaking America? They'd be lucky to break Chiswick. Rating: bluebottle.
Jane's Addiction are one of those bands that I never really got into first time around, and well, I probably won't get into them now, not if Just Because is anything to go by. Yeah, I know some people rank Perry Farrell as a genius on a par with Kurt Cobain or Black Francis, but both these gents are several times better than him. Mind you, it could be a Black Francis thing where his earlier stuff is much much better, but heck, it's the here and now, and this really ain't good stuff at all. Rating: wasp.
(I should also be reviewing the news Jane's Addiction album, Strays, but I really don't have the strength to. If anyone would like to review it for the next issue, just drop me a line and I'll post it to you…)
Best Frisbee this issue: Donnie, by Jet Johnson.
Randomness and Randomosity
Accrington Stanley Update: less than a month into the world's greatest football team's promotion into the Nationwide Conference, and The Stan are not doing too bad, considering. They have played five matches (2 won, 3 lost), and are currently in 14th place with six points. Not the best of starts, especially compared with last year where they monopolised the top spot for 95% of the season, but it's early days yet...
Tender Trap have a new song for download on their website. It's called Friendster and is fantastic; but then it would be, wouldn't it…?
I've just finished watching Season 2 of Babylon 5 on DVD. I want to crash straight into Season 3, but I can't 'cos the thing ain't out 'til November. GRR!!! 'Tis truly the best science fiction TV prog EVER. Yes, better than that one you're thinking of now. Yes, and that one. Oh, and certainly better than that one…
You do realise that as soon as I watch Twin Peaks again, it'll re-take its place? Yes. Good… Glad I cleared that up...
Whatever Happened to: Juliana Hatfield?
Hey... I've just noticed that this is the first issue without a review of an Ozzie soap opera DVD. Kinda sad, that...
Final Thought: post where it comes from on the message board and you might win some CDs…
Coming next month in modestic #5: stuff. I dunno. Wait and see, yeah…?
Copyright and all that malarkey…
Thanks to: Seriously Groovy for the Jet Johnson CD, Warren from Infected for all the other CDs.
This e-zine can be forwarded on to whoever you so wish on the proviso that nothing in it is removed, added to, or altered in any way. In fact I positively encourage you to forward it! If you were forwarded this e-zine by a friend and wish to sign up for it yourself go here.
You can see old back issues of that old fanzine Munching Carpet, if you are at all interested, here... At present you can see Issues #1-3. Issue #4 was supposed to have been up by now. But isn't. It will be some time. Be patient with me...
(Note; that last paragraph is a subtle hint for more people to send me articles. Ta.)