51

51

Saturday

Black Sabbath

Enough of footballers lawyers (actually, there might be a Channel 5 series in that...), it's time to squeeze out a quick post about the weekend on the pitch, before Sky Sports subscriptions are cancelled en masse and we all scramble to find a favourite summer sport.

Talking of Sky, they will inevitably be dubbing tomorrow 'Survival Sunday'.  As usual.  I rather liked the alternative 'Black Sabbath' I heard suggested on the radio earlier this week.  Then the usual montage of how the protagonists reached this sorry state could be sound tracked to  'Paranoid'.  Perfect!

Our Lips Are(n't) Sealed... pt 127

Tedious as this is becoming at one level - the identity of a millionaire footballer playing away from home ZZzzzzz - it is becoming something of a lightening rod for the whole issue of the control of information and the rights of the individuals involved.

It's also setting the battle lines for a fight between the judiciary and Parliament as legal experts - such as Vera Baird QC (Solicitor General 2007 - 2010) - queue up to 'deplore the use of Parliament to wreck the properly decided judgment of the court'.

While MPs such as John Hemming point to Article 9 of the Bill of Rights which he says make it clear that the dealings of Parliament cannot be questioned.  In effect, Parliament remains sovereign, which was certainly what I was brought up to understand.   Of course it's not hard to find someone who will take the opposite view, especially where British and European law collide.  But it is a serious point - who has primacy, the those who make law or those who interpret the law?


Friday

Our Lips Are Sealed (slight return). Or Superinjunction, on and on and on...

It's the story that won't lie down.  Big Brother 'star' Imogen Thomas has been back in court seeking to get the superinjunction stopping her publishing details of her affair with a footballer, amid counter claims of blackmail demands.

She lost.  The footballer - whose identity is already known to anyone who wants to know - won.  They sound like lovely people.

Meanwhile Lord Stoneham, the Liberal Democrat peer (yes, you know, that Lord Stoneham - er no, me neither) waded into the whole mess naming former Royal Bank of Scotland Chief Executive Fred Goodwin as having taken out a superinjunction to prevent publication of his affair with another high profile banker at the time RBS was collapsing.

The argument used by Lord Stoneham is that Goodwin's affair meant the CEO did not have his mind on his job at the time RBS collapsed and required bailing out with tax payers money.

A very weak arguement in my book. It looks like a case of using Parliamentary privilege to blow a hole in superinjunctions as a whole.  Fine.  A laudable aim and Lord Stoneham picked a good target.  Even if it feels a bit like 'we can't get you for anything else Fred, so let's at least embarrass you in public.'  Still there are lawyers all over the radio complaining about it, so Lord Stoneham must have done something right!

Is this what Nick Clegg means by 'muscular liberalism'?


Thursday

Gig Review: Our Mountain, Guile, The Yams - The Rainbow, Birmingham.

If it's worth doing it, it's worth overdoing it seems to be The Yams attitude. Three guitars and keyboards crammed onto the stage at The Rainbow does seem ambitious, but with all the guitars and some growling bass present in the mix, they quickly show their audio arsenal is not just for show as they quickly reveal a capacity for some heavy slabs of sound.

Opening with a song that sounds like it's about to break into a cover of ‘California Uber Alles’ gets the attention, although it never does launch into a full blown version of the Dead Kennedys classic,  it quickly settles into a pleasing riff of its own.

But the beauty of The Yams is their disciplined sound, simple in terms of finding a heavy, stoner rock groove and sticking with it, but take a closer look and beyond the initial pull of the heavy riffing and there's a lot more going on.

Each guitar contributes a different layer to The Yams sound, making is surprisingly clean, for all the weight it carries.  Keyboards however, were sacrificed before the wall of guitars. Or perhaps the keyboard player has more of 'Bez' role, playing in the hole just behind the strikers, as it were...

Impressively build riffing is the hallmark of The Yams, if they can get past the inevitable Queens of the Stone Age references and perhaps convince people they're from southern California rather than South Staffordshire, they might get the audience they deserve.

 
Next up are Guile stretching their legs and taking some new material out for a run, giving us a tantalising peek into their work in progress, while delivering a haunting set of beautifully crafted psychedelic blues punk, drenched in slide guitar and held together by thundering bass and drums.  Over it all the cracked, wounded voice of Neal Sawyer, sounding like a man with the weight of world on his shoulders and the pain of rejection in his heart.

Kicking off with the repeated jab in the face that is relative new song 'Kill Your Dreams' Guile then tore up the set list to preview new material for a small but attentive audience.



Showing a willingness to experiment with rhythm and texture that suggests a capacity to add a whole network of B road detours to the Guile motorway, this set at The Rainbow certainly offered some intriguing glimpses into the future.

One thing we do now know, is that the insanely infectious 'Deep By The Dockery' will be released as a single in September. Yes a single. You know, complete with b-side tracks. Proper old school!



Tonight 'Dockery' was played with glorious abandon, competing with a stretched out epic improvised take on 'I Wish I Was Heartless' for highlight of the night. Although both may have been eclipsed by a tight, nasty, urgent take on the set closing howl of alienation that is 'Alone On The West'.

Which is a good place to leave things, 'Alone On The West' is also going to be the title of Guile's forthcoming album. For my money their potent mix of blues, country, punk and psychedelia, continues to mark them out as one of the great unsigned hopes.  Only problem is, I'll have to find something new to say once the album does come out!

What to make of Our Mountain?  They try, they really do.  And in places they almost pull it off. Mainly with some dirty, '60's garage rock & roll with a set closer that felt like they finally dropped their art-house guard.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves.  The nucleus of Our Mountain hail from Australia and the rhythm section could easily pass for Nick Cave alumni.  Which I'm sure they are sick of hearing, but it's the sound of the Bad Seeds that's playing as they take the stage.  If the cap fits...

Well there are certainly echoes.  Our Mountain seem to have one foot in performance art and the other in a greasy garage doing up old motorbikes. Frontman Matthew Hutchinson comes on like the man who was thrown out of The Monkees for being too rock & roll - the man in the silk shirt and pudding bowl haircut is a ball of energy, pulling a variety of unlikely guitar hero shapes before exiting the stage mid-song to continue playing as part of the audience.

But then he has to, with statuesque, blond Abbey Lee, doing her ice queen, keyboards and er, dustbin lids routine, stage right, there's a fight for attention going on.  Which is no bad thing!

Our Mountain have some good ideas and better riffs, but ultimately didn't quite convince on this showing, perhaps trying a little too hard, while Guile and The Yams gave us honest from the heart rock & roll.


Wednesday

Longships

Currently enjoying the Wonders of Iceland season of programmes on BBC Four (rapidly becoming my favourite channel!).

Which is a good excuse for some pictures of the Hugin longship, which can be found at Pegwell Bay in Kent.


It's actually a replica, built in Denmark and sailed to England in1949, to mark the 1,500th anniversary of the voyage taken by Hengist & Horsa which is considered the starting point of the Anglo-Saxon invasion of England.

When I was a lad, I just knew Hengist & Horsa as cross channel car ferries.  Ah the ignorance of youth!

Tuesday

Public Image

I quite often take video clips when I'm at gigs.  Among the bands I've 'bootleged' - their description, not mine! - are Guile.  I've never made great claims for my clips, it's just a way of sharing the gig with friends as far as I'm concerned, but this professionally filmed clip of Guile really does put my amateur efforts to shame!





Hopefully more this footage will see the light of day.  It really ought to, for my money, Guile are as good an unsigned band as you'll find right now.

Here's what Clash magazine said about them:

"...fine gritty, dirt-smeared blues that occasionally delves into the dark reaches of Doors-esque psychedelia. With menace and melody cramped into one tight space, it’s like the aural equivalent of the black lung....."

Meantime you can check out more of Guile on You Tube here.



Monday

Our Lips Are Sealed

It seems this is all it takes to grab the news headlines in our celebrity obsessed media...


...these six tweets seem to be dominating today's news.  I've edited out the names of the actors, TV presenters, footballer and TV chef that are mentioned.  Not because of the super injunctions or the claim that some of the names are not correct.  I just can't be bothered to feed the profiles of these z list 'celebrities'.

If you do want to know, a quick Google of 'super injunction Twitter' should sate your curiosity.  But that isn't really the point, I couldn't give a monkey's about what people off the telly are doing behind closed doors.  The worry is that this kind of legal gagging order is becoming common place for those that can afford it.

And while I don't care what chefs, actors and footballers get up to off duty, I do care what MP's and oil companies are doing that prompts allegations that they also take out this kind of super injunction.

Have already seen at least one member of the legal profession claiming that super injunctions are not the provision of the rich / famous / influential, on TV today, but are open to us all.  Which is interesting, when injunctions covering two famous people seem to cover both parties, while other injunctions only offer protection to one side, while the other is left in the media spotlight to fend off questions s/he is not allowed to answer.  

It's a situation that will only get worse if the proposed changes to legal aid go through, warping the legal system even more.  You remember that?  The thing we're all supposed to be equal before...

I'm not in favour of a privacy law per se, far too much already goes on without multinational corporations, politicians or any of the people who have real influence over our lives being answerable for their actions. While rumours abound on the 'net, the truth gets lost in the kerfuffle.

The current situation is rapidly becoming a farce.  Unless of course you're one of the lawyers involved - they just keep charging by the hour!

Further reading:
not sure how long this will last, but some interesting reading and, the The Guardian's most recent comment on the whole issue, which they've been looking at for some time.


Sunday

Spiral Scratch

Just finished watching  series 3 of 'Spiral -The Butcher of La Villette' - on BBC Four.  It didn't quite fill the hole left by the excellent Danish thriller 'The Killing' but it was another example of gritty European television, full of flawed but believable characters that refused to give us a neat and tidy conclusion.

Quite a few similarities between the two though, strong female leads in Sarah Lund (played by Sofie Gråbøl) and Laure Berthaud (played by Caroline Proust).  Both obsessive about their case to the point of bloody mindedness.  Both scruffy and apparently unconcerned about their appearance.  Both drive their colleagues and bosses to distraction, with their refusal to follow any sort of rules or protocols.

All good so far and of course both benefit from being set in cities - Paris and Copenhagen - that lend themselves to being filmed and have uniformly strong supporting casts. (The acting in 'The Killing' in particular, is exceptional.) 

Both series also seemed to take great delight at unpicking the flaws where politics meets the judiciary and law enforcement.  In fact that's a common thread you can trace back to 'The Wire'.  Which I suspect influenced both programmes and probably explains why they work so well, even without a detailed knowledge of the French or Danish penal systems. 


Spoiler Alert - don't read on if you've yet to finish watching both season 3 of 'Spiral' and season 1 of 'The Killing'.

Saturday

Fairway To Heaven

I find myself feeling surprisingly sad at the news of Seve Ballesteros passing away.  Not that I'm a huge golf fan, but perhaps that just shows the impact of Seve.  A mercurial talent who woke up the golf world with his brilliant attacking style.  Never one for the efficiency of 'playing the percentages' as so many of the modern players seem to, he could be wildly undisciplined one moment and utterly brilliant the next.

Of course everyone will be remembering his famous shot from the car park, in the 1979 Open.  He always seemed to be in the trees, or the rough or in a bunker, but the thing was, his recovery shots were so good, that he often went on to win.  As he did at Royal Lytham & St Annes in 1979, becoming the youngest Open champion in the process. 

I'll leave it for others to do the full scale obituaries, that's not what this blog is supposed to be about (although what it is about is a very good question...), I guess I just liked the fact that Seve seemed to me to be a bit of a maverick, doing things his own way and that's something that should always be applauded in my book.

I did think of linking this post to an appropriate piece of music, but my favourite golf related song - 'Fairway To Heaven', might be misinterpreted.  Or even cause Peter Allis to sue if he ever heard it - I very much doubt he was sampled by Gaye Bykers On Acid with permission!

Friday

What A Waste

Went out and 'exercised my democractic right' yesterday.  A wasted vote in the local council elections and probably much the same in the voting reform referendum.  It looks like less than 40% of the population have decided that the system is just fine, while the 60% who may have a different view, chose to vote with their feet.

Was it all a waste of time?  Pretty much on the face of it, but I still think that if you can vote, you should.  Partly down to idealism; I still think it's the least we should do after what others went through to get us the right to vote in the first place.  But also, voting gives you the right to complain.  If you can't be bothered to vote, why complain about the government?

Still, a nice sunny day and the walk down to the polling station will have done me no harm...

I guess that must be 'British democracy' for you. We know a song about that, don't we children?


Thursday

Motorcade

I found myself in the unusual position of being driven back home after a weekend away recently and decided to take a few pictures from the car, just to see what would happen.

Here's a few variations on a couple of the shots I took, after a bit of Photoshopping...







Wednesday

This Side Of Heaven

Probably the best oyster stout in the world...

Found myself in Whitstable last Bank Holiday, and I have to mention this place...





...it's the Whitstable Oyster Company's restaurant on the beach.  Absolutely superb fresh oysters and stout.  Walk along the seafront a couple of hundred yards and you'll find a modest tin shack called The Forge, where you can get equally high quality doughnuts.  But don't take my word for it...  





...sun, sea and top quality nosh!

Can't seem to find a website for The Forge, but you can find out about the Whitstable Oyster Company here